The Annihilation of Foreverland (9 page)

Reed didn’t look up, not even when Danny was a few feet away. He sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring at the ocean. His bare chest was red. The edges of his shoulders poked out like his skin was hanging on him like an old shirt. The tracker bulged on his neck.

Danny started to say something but the sound of the surf blotted out his hesitant words and then he just didn’t know what to say, so he swallowed the lump and looked at the water, too.

“What do you think’s out there?” Reed finally asked.

Danny squinted, shading his eyes to search the horizon but nothing disrupted the flat line. No ship or island or rock, just water.

“Home,” Danny said.

Reed didn’t tell him if he was wrong or right. He got the feeling he was wrong.

Danny continued to search the horizon. Just because he couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He came from someplace and it wasn’t the island. Out there, somewhere, were his parents and a place he called home. And when he graduated, he would see them again.

“Tell me what home looks like,” Reed said, without looking up. “Better yet, tell me about your favorite Christmas. Think about the best Christmas you ever had, when you got everything you asked for and the world was the greatest place to be. Tell me what it was like.”

Easy.

It was the time he got a skateboard half-pipe. He came down the stairs rubbing his eyes and his little brother was opening these big boxes from Santa and all Danny had was a green envelope. It was a message to look out the kitchen window. Danny pressed his hands on the cold glass. There, standing six feet tall and filling the back yard was the thing he wanted most in the world.

The half-pipe was covered in all his favorite stickers – Fallen and Zero and the fiery red head of Spitfire. His mother, wearing her pink robe with dyed blond hair hanging in her eyes, went onto the back deck with him.

But when Danny went through the back door, he stepped in three feet of snow. His mother was wearing a coat and her hair was black and short and she was smoking a cigarette. And his dad was there, too. He was fat and unshaven with a cigarette stuck in his lips. He handed Danny an air rifle and said Merry Christmas and aim for the cans he set up in the back yard. The yard was empty except for a dozen Budweisers.

Danny looked back to his mom because he had a half-pipe, not a rifle, but now she was shorter and wearing a tank top and the snow was gone and there were palm trees next to the house.

“They didn’t erase our memories, Danny Boy.” Reed still hadn’t looked up. “They filled us with random ones, layered them one on top the other until we don’t know which ones belong to us, which ones are false.”

He was right. They didn’t feel like his memories. And they were never the same parents. But Foreverland, that was different. “In
the
Haystack… I remembered…”

“They put your memories inside the needle. Every time you go ins
ide, you get more of them back but
you come back to the flesh, they get mixed with an ocean of random ones that aren’t yours.”

“Why?”

“The more you go inside the needle, the more you feel like yourself. The more you like it.”

Danny tried to remember Christmas again. He knew who he was, he remembered getting what he wanted. He remembered the half-pipe covered with stickers and the sound of the skateboard clapping on the metal coping. But then he couldn’t actually remember skating.

Then he realized he didn’t know how to skate.

“She sent you,” Reed said. “She told you to come find me, didn’t she?”

There wasn’t a hole in Reed’s forehead, only a scar where it used to be. He went into the Haystack and endured the suffering without taking the needle. After Danny went to sleep, Reed stayed in that dreadful room. He’d done it before, Danny had been told. Reed was a sick puppy, he was told.

“How do you know that?” Danny asked.

Reed remained still and quiet. “You can trust her,” he finally said.

“Do you know her?”

“I did, once upon a time.” Again, quiet. A slight shrug. “Or maybe I just think I do. It’s an ocean of thoughts, Danny Boy.”

Danny wanted to ask him a hundred questions. Everyone on the island was buying everything the Investors were selling, gobbling it up like a bunch of hungry fish, and here was a kid that seemed to know something. Danny wanted to know why they were on the island and why Reed didn’t take the needle and who the girl was…

But then a cart came over the dune and began driving down the hardpacked beach, the water skimming beneath it. Reed never looked at it, just continued staring. The cart stopped in front of them. Mr. Jones rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared at Reed. It was the first time since Danny had come out of the Haystack that the old man didn’t look happy. He patted the empty seat next to him.

“Come along, Danny Boy. Your camp is looking for you, they’ve been waiting at the game room. You don’t want to disappoint, now do you?”

Mr. Jones’s eyes flickered at Reed when he said that. Reed didn’t notice. Or seem to care. He just stared at the ocean, not looking for anything, almost like he was waiting for a ship to arrive. The girl said to tell Reed that they found him. He did that.

Now what?

Danny got on the cart. They left Reed behind. He’d stay there the remainder of the day. Maybe longer.

The next time Danny would see him was through the bars of his cell.

Reed had spent time on every section of the island. Most were sandy beaches; a few sections were cliffs. At first, he explored these areas in search of an escape while all the other boys wasted time in the game room. It didn’t take long to see the futility of the choppy surf and rocky coral. Of course, he hadn’t seen the south end where the old men lived where hope may still exist.

But hope was no longer in Reed’s vocabulary. He extinguished it. Twenty-five trips – now, twenty-six – through the Haystack will scrub that out of any person. Boy or man.

Reed spent his time on the north end because no one else did. He would remain on the beach for days while the sun spread warmth deep into his bones where the cold torture felt unreachable.

He rarely saw anyone on the north end. Not even Mr. Smith, especially since he wasn’t talking to Reed anymore. Mr. Smith didn’t show up when the last round ended. Reed walked back to his room and curled up under the covers, chattering in and out of fitful sleep where he dreamed of turning blades and endless rain.

Reed came to the beach just before the sun rose, when the sky was glowing orange and purple. He sat, watching the waves come in. There was a time when he decided escape was impossible but still looked for a sign that he was wrong.

Not anymore.

Now he just watched the waves crash, reminding him of the one sustaining lesson:
h
opelessness.

Reed had given up hope that he would one day find a way off the island, to discover home somewhere out there, to be rid of the ceaseless random thoughts churning in his head. Because to hope was to reject the present moment, the only thing that was real, regardless of its misery. Reed clung to the present moment like a buoy. Reality had frayed. He didn’t know who he was.

He hadn’t given up, only the hope that things would be different. He found his suffering was bearable when he did so, that he accepted the totality of life, regardless how he felt about
it
, whether he liked it or not.

And like it, he did not.

Reed couldn’t look at Danny. If he did, he would risk clinging to hope again.

He wasn’t surprised he’d come. He had an intuition that he would seek him out. Reed’s intuition didn’t come in words or thoughts, it came in dreams. The only consistent thing about them was
the image that followed them: r
ed hair.

He didn’t know who she was. He sensed her presence the day he woke up in a lab staring at Mr. Smith’s hopeful grin. Her essence warmed him. At first, he thought he’d imagined it like all the other random thoughts, but the essence that accompanied her was different than all the others.

It was fragrant.

He didn’t know her name. Didn’t know if she meant anything to him or if she was real. He may have given up hope for escape, but he wasn’t able to expel hope concerning her, hope that she was real, hope that he meant something to her. When things were darkest it was hope that he would see her one day that warmed him.

But that was as far as he hoped. That was it.

He couldn’t look at Danny because he’d see the hope in his eyes. Danny needed to accept and understand where he was. This was the island. It was the end of the world. Home didn’t exist, not anymore. If he hoped to find something better, he would eventually look inside the needle. But the answer wasn’t in there.

But he would go inside. They all did.

Reed wasn’t disappointed when he did. Danny confirmed what he suspected.
She’s in there, too.

It was harder to know that she was in there than suffering through the Haystack, knowing that if he took the needle he would find her. But he would have to stay strong. In his dreams, she told him to resist.
She told him that someone would come for him and show him the way.

And then Danny appeared at the beach and he knew it. He just knew it.
Maybe he was the one that would put an end to all the suffering. Maybe he would give them hope.

That was why he couldn’t look at him.

Class was in session.

About thirty of them in small desks arranged in tidy rows and the teacher discussing the world economy. He was propped on the corner of the desk. He was mostly bald and his bottom lip glistened when he took a moment to gather his thoughts.

Some of the guys in the back row were asleep, carefully hiding their faces behind the people in front of them. Danny was up front and had taken to doodling on a piece of lined notebook paper. It started out as a tapestry of curly lines, but then a face took shape in the middle of it all. First the eyes, then the petit nose. He began to darken the hair—
“Danny Boy?” The teacher had crossed his arms, scowling over
his
glasses. “Art class is not today. I’ll advise you to join the discussion or I’ll be forced to report you to your Investor for tutoring.”

Danny folded the paper.

After a long, uncomfortable pause, the teacher continued in the same droning tone about the recent flash crash of the New York Stock Exchange. Millions of dollars were lost in a matter of moments. The market closed early that day and all trading suspended. A week later
, the culprit was found: s
ome dopey day trader that lived in his parents’ basement that hacked his way into the market and over reached.

“You don’t mess with money, boys,” the teacher intoned with a gurgle. He cleared his throat. “Money is power and it will find you.”

The teacher asked for questions. He was answered by the sound of soft snoring somewhere in the back but didn’t hear it. He had no idea why everyone started laughing.

“Okay, I understand this is not a stimulating topic,” he said, finally standing up with a grunt, “that’s why I got special permission to do an exercise today.”

Their interest piqued.

“We’re going to use tablets for our class discussion today.”

There was no buzz, no excitement. There was a fully-loaded game room in the next building, why would anyone care about a tablet?

The teacher unlocked a cabinet in the corner of the room. He pulled a box off the bottom shelf and slid it across the floor. The guys sleeping in the back continued sleeping. The others looked bored. Danny listened.

They were going to begin a business in a simulated program. It could be anything: services, goods, investing, whatever. All they had to do was show they could create a fake business that made fake money in the fake world inside the tablet and that would prove they had some understanding of economics.

A few of the guys started taking them out of the box. The teacher stopped them by holding up a knobby finger. “And remember, these tablets are not allowed out of this room. The repercussions of such an infraction will be severe.”

Ass = grass.

When he dropped his hand, Danny was the first one to the box. He found a seat next to one of the Sleeping Beauties. The tablet felt warm in his hand. It fit nicely.

The teacher got stern with the rest of the boys barely making an effort.

“We’ll be here all day,” he said. “Until you finish, I swear to God.”

Every second in the class was a second away from the game room. They began breaking down into small groups. Even woke up the sleepers. The teacher advised them on how to begin. Danny, though, stroked the smooth glass as instincts bubbled inside him. He ignored the instructions and, with all the excited chaos, called up a virtual keyboard on the touchscreen.

His fingers raced over the keys with the tablet snuggly cradled in his left hand. He swiftly hit a combination of keys to override the operating system. The screen went black. A cursor blinked in the upper left corner. He began typing again.