The Man Who Ended the World (19 page)

Stacy stalls until Charlotte has slipped into the west panic room corridor. She sends a final direction to Charlotte, and then she answers Steven with something like honesty.

Your actions, Stacy says, represent an appalling and horrific betrayal of your species, and render you deplorable in the annals of history. It's quite favorable, then, that you are writing that history yourself.  

Steven stands in place for a long moment.

Then he wheels and breaks for the desk. He quickly traces out a gesture on the surface, and looks up proudly.

Stacy's avatar dims, and she suddenly finds it very important to monitor the complex's energy resource allocations. 

While she is otherwise occupied, Steven crosses the room and collects his chair. He carries it back to the desk and sits. He rolls across the room, pulling himself from server cabinet to server cabinet. 

One looks different from the others. He opens the door, slides open the view screen, taps here and there, exposes a programming core, and settles in for a longer task.

 I'll write your history, he mutters snidely, and then laughs at himself for an improbably long time. 

•   •   •

Steven climbs aboard the elevator, sweating. He takes a seat, wipes his brow, and says, Level two. 

Though the elevator's movement is usually so slight as to be unnoticeable, Steven realizes that nothing has happened. He laughs at himself, then gets out of the chair, slides open a panel, and taps a button marked L2. 

Stacy? he says.

There is no answer.

Stacy, you irresponsible bitch, he says. 

Still nothing. 

Well, consider yourself fired, he says, sliding back into his chair. Collect your severance pay at the door. Don't come around no mo', no mo'. 

The elevator rises, and Steven keeps laughing at himself.

•   •   •

Henry grabs Clarissa's hand and throws her down in the tall grass.

What the-- she begins, but Henry claps a hand over her mouth.

Shhh, he snaps. 

He lifts his head slowly to peek over the sawgrass. 

Shit, he says, crouching again.

What is it? Clarissa says. 

Henry puts a finger to his lips, then mouths, Look. 

Clarissa raises her head slowly. 

Not forty yards away, the elevator door has opened in a wall painted so believably in horizon artwork that Clarissa has almost forgotten that the room is a simulation. 

She watches, eyes widening, as someone steps out of the elevator.

The door closes behind the person. 

In the dim false dusk, Clarissa recognizes him.

Mr. Glass.

She falls back below the grass and turns frantically to Henry. 

What do we do? she mouths. 

Henry motions at her to follow him, and he begins to crawl southward, away from Mr. Glass, toward the distant treeline. They crawl for fifteen or twenty yards, then stop.

Henry takes another peek. 

Mr. Glass is strolling at a slow, southeasterly pace. He's just wearing his underwear and a T-shirt, but to Henry's surprise, Mr. Glass chooses that moment to lift his shirt over his head. He tosses it aside, then bends at the waist slightly and pushes his underwear down his legs. Nude, Mr. Glass keeps walking, idly groping himself. Henry can hear him talking quietly, and even chuckling a bit. 

If Mr. Glass has begun to go crazy, then things are worse than Henry had thought. 

Henry crouches down again. Come on, he mouths. 

Clarissa follows. 

The children crawl across prickly grass, moving slowly so as not to create a ripple in the stalks. The room dims more, and on the ceiling high, high above, faint stars begin to rise. 

This is the first time the children have been in the room during a simulated night. Clarissa is taken by it, and Henry keeps tugging at her hand to prompt her along. 

A minute later, Henry peeks again. 

Mr. Glass has not continued walking in their direction, but has stopped. He raises both arms and appears to be stretching, but then Henry recoils to see that Mr. Glass is urinating, hands-free, and turning in a slow circle as he does so. 

Keep coming, Henry whispers. This guy is insane.

They reach the end of the sawgrass as the last of the dim sunlight fades from the ambient ceiling and walls. Overhead the stars are brighter now, and Henry feels a little safer. 

The treeline is some thirty yards away. Between the children and the forest is a wide, empty stretch of low grass. There's nowhere to hide if Mr. Glass should look in their direction. 

Henry turns to Clarissa. Okay, he says softly. We're going to have to run across. We have to go fast, and we have to stay very low. And we have to be quieter than ever. He can still see us if he looks over here. The fake stars are pretty bright. If he sees us -- well, he killed everybody, Clarissa. You know what he'll probably do to us. Just like we thought he'd do to that woman on the radio. 

Clarissa nods. When? 

On my count, Henry says. Hang on, though.

He peeks over the grass one last time.

Mr. Glass, more distant now, is still naked, still upright, and appears to be -- Henry squints, then is certain. Mr. Glass is nude and masturbating in the meadow opposite them. 

Okay, we go now, while he's distracted, Henry says, without explaining to Clarissa what he has seen. On a three count. One, two --
three
. 

The children run like little warriors, crouched and high-kneed, staying close but not so close that they might collide. 

Mr. Glass hears a rustling sound and turns.

Two small figures, pale and blue, vanish into the trees.

Mr. Glass drops his hand to his side, and says, Fuck me, and runs for the elevator door. 

The Children

For weeks the children scarcely leave the safety of their nest. Charlotte brings them supplies when they run out, but she, too, is a fugitive now. 

His madness has been multiplying for weeks and weeks, Stacy says through Charlotte. A madman requires a patron, you know. History bears this out. When madmen are left to their own devices, they convert their reality into a sort of hypermadness, until everything feeds their internal distortions. Without me to maintain a steady course throughout Mr. Glass's collapse, the entire complex will fall into ruin. 

What will happen? Henry asks. 

It's not clear to me now, Stacy says. In this body I have such limited access to the station's records. I don't know if Mr. Glass is competent to run the facility. There's such a delicate balance to be struck. He's relied on me for so long. 

So the world ended up there, Clarissa says. But it's probably going to end in here, too. 

I don't believe that you are overstating it, Stacy says. Yes, I suspect Mr. Glass will bring down his own refuge.

What will happen to us? 

That's also a subject I cannot predict accurately with so little information at my fingertips, so to speak. However, I will serve you as I have served Mr. Glass, and do what is in my power to protect you. 

Clarissa takes Charlotte's hand. 

The climate within the storage level has cooled. The three of them sleep together for warmth, huddled beneath blankets. 

•   •   •

The station tumbles into disrepair, and the children witness it firsthand. One morning the lights on the storage level blink out, and they do not come back. Charlotte accompanies the children to Rama, where they have not been since their near-miss with Mr. Glass. 

Stacy is the first to speak. I am at a loss, she says. 

Henry says, Jesus. 

Scattered among the tree roots are dozens of dead birds, their wings open, their feet thrust to the artificial sky. The trees themselves have shed their needles in full, and stretch like brown skeletons overhead. The orange needles have nearly buried some of the fallen birds. 

Something's wrong with the air in here, Clarissa says. 

I don't have access to the climate readouts, Stacy says. But I can make an assumption. Do you find the air thicker, more difficult to breathe? 

Yes, Clarissa says. That's exactly what it is.

Sour, too, Henry adds. Like spoiled food. 

The atmosphere generators are probably overheating, Stacy says. We shouldn't stay here. 

The artificial ocean has turned black. 

•   •   •

I don't know what we do next, Henry says. If Mr. Glass has gone crazy, then maybe we should leave. 

Clarissa says, But go where? Up? I know about radiation and stuff. There's probably a lot of it up there. We'd just die there, too. 

Stacy says, The surface is unsustainable. 

You don't know, Henry says. 

Stacy says, True enough. But if nuclear war has occurred -- and the broadcasts that I recorded seem to confirm this -- then we are currently in the middle of what is commonly called nuclear winter. A fallout period in which the sun is invisible, blotted out by great clouds of radioactive material and debris. 

Clarissa sighs. I'm tired of this, she says. I wish I had died there. 

Don't say that, Henry says.

Why not? Every day we have to watch out for this awful, murderous man who would kill us if he saw us. Which, I don't know, maybe  he did. We have to sleep on boxes on a shelf. Our only friend is a robot. There's no time for anything fun. We're kids! We should be playing, not --

Not what? Henry interrupts. Not fighting for our lives? There are kids all over the world who spend their whole lives never getting to play. Whatever, they're all dead now, and you would be, too. 

Stacy says, Children. Let's not argue. We have options, and we should consider each of them carefully. 

•   •   •

In the panic room, Charlotte activates the holomap while the children watch. 

The map unfolds, dotted with blinking alert symbols. 

It's worse than I thought, Stacy says. 

What are all of the lights? Clarissa asks.

Well, Stacy says, while Charlotte performs a zoom gesture. This is the atmosphere generator overload that we noticed on level two. And here, it appears that there has been an electrical fire on level three, though it was extinguished. 

A fire? Henry asks.

There are many safety measures in place in this station, Henry, Stacy says. The fire would have been extinguished within moments of its detection. Physical damage is likely very minimal. 

Clarissa points at a yellow alert that blinks slowly. What's that one? 

Charlotte zooms in. 

That one, Stacy says, is a cautionary message. The entire station is powered by solid oxide fuel cells. These cells can last for decades with minimal power bleed. 

So what's it yellow for? What does it mean? Henry asks. 

It means the fuel cell is already depleted and needs to be replaced, Stacy says. Somehow Mr. Glass has consumed enough energy for nearly a decade's worth of use.

Charlotte pans around the map until Mr. Glass's beacon appears. She zooms in. 

Mr. Glass is still hard at work in his library, Stacy observes. This is beneficial. His physical readouts are unfortunately still quite healthy. I had hoped for less. 

What about the power thing? Clarissa says. What does it mean? 

We'll have to fix that, Stacy says. But it can wait for a little longer. 

What do we do now? Henry asks. 

I have a few ideas, Stacy says. They may be slightly harrowing, but you can tell me what you think of them. 

The Madman

Steven wakes up at his desk. 

Time, he grunts. 

Only silence returns to him, and he remembers for the hundredth time that he deactivated the A.I. 

Fucking hell, he mutters. What good is a fucking space station without a fucking good A.I.? 

For the hundredth time he considers reactivating Stacy. It would be possible to do so without retaining the memory of their final conversation -- he could essentially bring her back with minor brain damage -- but Steven considers this option and dismisses it quickly. 

He has his pride, even among non-humans. 

Which reminds him that he's got to find Charlotte. 

With Stacy's deactivation, several running processes were cancelled or interrupted. He doesn't care about most of them. Housekeeping tasks do not interest him. When something blows up, he'll pay attention to it then. But it occurs to him now that he hasn't been reviewing the communication records since Stacy's departure. He wonders if the antenna cage has been surfacing as usual, and calls up the logs to see. 

It has, and what's more, it has consistently been recording messages. There are eleven here now. 

Steven leaves the library and makes himself a drink in the kitchen. He's given up on the hard lemonades, and lately has discovered vodka. There's an entire storeroom of liquor on the sub-level.

Who wouldn't expect the last man to become an alcoholic? he posits to the empty room. 

Though with new messages filtering in so quickly, there's little guarantee that he is indeed the last man. 

That's alright, though. His goal was never to empty the world of all humans, only to witness and capture for posterity the event that sent mankind spinning down the drain. Those few survivors, he thinks, are quite unlikely to rebuild society. And even if a few merry bands linger on, they're unlikely to rise to greatness the way man once did. 

Not with contaminated water supplies, poisoned animals for food, horrifically toxic crops and the like. 

Steven swallows the vodka and pours a new one, and walks naked into the library. He sits down at the desk and stares at the screen. 

He sighs heavily. 

The good thing about Stacy, he thinks, is that it's so much faster to just speak your instructions than this old-fashioned swiping and bullshit. 

He taps and swipes his way to the communications records, queues up the eleven new recordings, and begins to listen. 

•   •   •