The Conformity (36 page)

I can feel all their gazes on me. Casey slips her hand in mine—her real hand, the one full of warmth. You can forget these things. The press of a hand from someone you love and who loves you. The smell of hair. The bite of tears making their salty path down a cheek.

Jack looks worried. We've come so far. We've spent so much time apart when once we were so close. When things were simple. Three square meals a day, TV privileges on Saturday. Class with Mr. Appleby. Assistant Warden Booth watching over us.

Parens patriae,
the sign in juvie said. I never found out what that meant. Booth had jabbed a finger at me and said, “When you're in here,
I'm your daddy.
”

All that runs in my head, faster than thought.

It's time.

Jack nods and says, “Okay, Shreve.” His Adam's apple works up and down painfully in his throat.

Once more, we join ourselves, bridging the space between our bodies. We share sights and sounds. We see from many eyes.

It's nothing to ascend. The sky welcomes us, and we become cocooned in wind.

A star streaking east, burning bright against the morning.

The world jars, goes gray and drab. We're moving faster than the speed of sound, and the superheated air around us begins to phosphoresce.

The ether's full of alarm, hissing and spitting. The Conformity knows we've come. Behind us, two great circles follow us, and more behind them. They're joining together; they're marshaling their strength.

Whatever it is, whatever dark thought in God's mind the entity in the east is, it's not above fear. It's not above self-preservation. It's
one thing made from many
, and it wants to survive.

The land flows beneath us like waves on dark seas.

We've come to the end now, the end of the land, the end of all things solid. The laws of physics have changed, and we feel heavier and lighter all at once. Slowing. The color has gone, and now sound is gone too, and heat.

Soon light itself will be gone. But for now it's still here, the sun shining so far away, just a pinprick in the sky. The earth has become featureless, gray. It looks like some three-dimensional topographical rendering: bland, smooth, plastic. Beyond the land, a flat mirror—waveless. The ocean. Only its reflective properties indicate it is liquid. And in the sky, the first Conformity. Static. Still. Crowned in flesh. We float above what was once Maryland.

No sound comes from it because there's no sound anymore, no horrifying stench rippling in miasmatic waves. The avatar of the entity is huge. A small moon hanging in space. It's so large that it bends perception. No longer is the earth
down.
No longer is the sky
up. Down
is toward the Conformity, and
up
is away.

Oh fuck. God. Oh. No.

I've been so stupid. I can't match this thing. We can't match this thing. I am a mote in this God's eye. I am a single atom against all the fabric of creation.

I thought to swallow this entity whole. I thought I could bend it to myself and make it become
one with us
. There's no making it bend. It will not become part of us.

It's a black hole. It's the death of light.

We are so completely fucked.

I can do nothing but separate myself from them. I wrench myself away from Jack, from Ember. I tear my consciousness away from Tap.

And finally from Casey.

Go!
I scream soundlessly.
Run! I can't stop it. I was wrong! But I can delay it!

I get a momentary image of Casey flailing with her ghosthand, grabbing for me, for anyone. Jack blasting, his fury titanic, making the great surface of the Conformity shudder and ripple.

I am wrong.

I can do nothing as my body falls away.

The world spins, flipping over and over once more.

Everything slows. The earth rises and looms in my vision. The last thing I feel is when my body impacts with the plain, smooth ground. My feet and legs break like glass rods in bright explosions of pain. My pelvis becomes a thousand calcium-sharp shards. My vertebrae pop and explode one by one as my spine hits. My viscera is liquefied, spilling out in wet sprays. My skull hits the earth, flattening into a sack of blood and gore.

Just a small—infinitely small—smudge on the face of the earth.

I am no more.

I am no one.

“Hey, boss,” Bernard says, snapping his fingers. “We've been waiting for you.”

It's the assembly field at the campus. Bernard's there, with Dani standing by him. Everything's covered in snow, and our breath hangs in the air. He's smiling.

“It's happened, finally,” Dani says. She's not smiling. But she's not grim either. Just stating the facts, ma'am. “You're dead.”

That makes sense. I feel dead. But not dead inside, if that makes sense. I feel like I could eat some pizza, but that's just a thought. The memory of flesh. I can't remember what pizza is. I feel like I'd like to kiss Casey again, or hug Jack, but I can't remember what either of those things would feel like.

“You might be dead, man-child,” Bernard says, “but that don't mean you're done.” He hums. It's an easy tune to remember.

Here we go, into the wild blue yonder …

In the ether, above the dark plane.

It's always been about proximity. The nearer you are to something, the easier it is to affect it. It's gravity, really. The power of mass. But my body is gone now, and I have nothing other than love tethering me anymore. I can pass through the silences of stars with a thought. I can see the whole of my history, every life I've ever touched.

Incarcerado no more. I am free.

Behind me stretches a long line of dead. They've been loosed from their prisons too. We are all beyond death. We are beyond the Conformity.

I pass into the stasis field amid the great howling rage of the entity. He sees me. He knows I'm coming.

“I sense you passing on those etheric heights,” Quincrux said. Says. He's with me here now.

I can feel the entity lash and squirm at my presence. But I am stronger. I have the weight of a million lives behind me.

They called me a punk. They called me a thief. They called me a devil.

That I am. I'm all those things.

We're born into pain, our constant companion through life.

It's worth mentioning what I cannot remember: the feel of sun on my skin, my mother's breath laced with alcohol, the smell of Booth's aftershave, Jerry's smile. I can't remember what Jack looks like or how Casey kissed when we finally came together. I can't remember the fear I felt for the Witch, the defiance I felt toward Quincrux. I have only the emotions of this moment. I can't remember what it was like to have balls or take a shit, or the taste of candy or the coolness of water on my tongue. I can't remember pain. And maybe that is the final prison: pain. The pain I've held so dear.

All of it's gone.

In the end, it's a titanic contest of wills, the entity and me scratching and grappling with thoughts, bolstered by hate. Buttressed by love. The black thing is old and knows all the wiles of man. But I'm young and, goddamn it, I'm a habitual line-stepper.

I'm the Li'l Devil.

I'll unseat this god from his throne.

Reborn into the world.

forty

JACK

Screaming. Shreve falls away and there's a moment of panic—I can feel a flutter of his mind—and then he's gone.

Casey's howling now, desolate. Somehow she's remained hanging in the air, and I feel her weight encircling my waist—she's latched on with her ghosthand.

The Conformity shudders and contracts.

There's no sound still, and the massive globe of flesh hangs there, but something is happening inside it, something loosens, and even though I'm no bugfuck I can feel it.

Behind it in the east, the first rosy blush of morning tinges the sky in great radial streaks. The sun shatters on the dark sea into an infinite mosaic of colored light. The sky grows blue, and the earth becomes brown. Green. Gray.

The sound, when it comes, is huge and hard to take in all at once. It's the sound of billions of mouths around the world all exhaling in unison. Almost all the human race.

“Holy shit,” the Conformity says. “Do
not
try that at home.”

It laughs, and the force of the sound waves pushes me back. It laughs and laughs.

Then the Conformity begins to flatten, becoming oblong. Spreading out and descending. It's losing its cohesion, settling to the ground. Breaking into individuals. Separating back into distinct and perfectly whole human beings. But before it does, the last sound comes, whispering.

“I love you guys,” Shreve says through a billion mouths. “I love you.”

The words burn me like fire. I can't bear it.

Shreve.

“Later, taters,” he says.

And he's gone.

epilogue

JACK

It takes me six months to find him, but once the immediate aftermath of the Release is over and people begin taking stock, piecing back together the fabric of civilization, it isn't that hard. After all, his name is Vigor Ferrous Cannon. And I can fly.

The world post-Conformity has righted itself, but it will never be the same. People wake with dreams that are not their own. They remember lives they haven't lived. Millions died. But billions more survived. And they live with an understanding of one another they've never had before.

There's hope.