The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy (21 page)

“Won’t be needing my tobacco in there,” he says.

I don’t know what to say, so I fight back the tears and say nothing. He wraps his hands behind my neck, pulls me forward and kisses the top of my head, just like he used to do when I was a young boy. Then he turns and walks across the room and through the door without looking back.

As the door seals close, I say:

“I love you, Dad.”

CHAPTER 34
But What About Eden?

Just Great.

The door’s locked.

Turning back, I enter the round room again.

I look at the closed door to Eden, the blank LCD screen that had displayed my father’s name just moments ago. I see his makeshift pipe abandoned on the seat where he left it, and I’m overcome with longing already to see him again. Then I notice a sort of phone hanging on the wall. A sign above it reads:

RETIREMENT ANXIETY HELP LINE?

I pluck the receiver off its cradle and hold it up to my ear. After a few seconds, it beeps and a voice comes on:

“How may I help you?”

“I’m stuck down here.”

“Anxiety is a common response to change,” the scripted voice drones out. “You’ll feel much better once you’re invited inside for a tour of the retirement process. And if you’d like, we can—hey, wait a minute,” the voice changes from scripted to sincere, “we don’t show any other retirees. What’s your name? Where did you come from?”

“My name is Aubrey. I came from the lake house.”

There’s a muffled pause on the other end, someone talking in the background. Then another voice comes on:

“Aubrey, is that you?”

“Who’s this?”

“This is Dr. Taft. We met the other day, remember? How did you get in there? Never mind, I’ll be right down.”

Less than a minute later, a hidden panel in the wall opens and Dr. Taft waves me into a vestibule leading to a staircase.

“My goodness, boy,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re lucky you didn’t walk through the wrong door and get rendered into Eden. We need you around here, you know.”

“Sorry,” I say, “I was just looking around.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here anyway,” he says. “Radcliffe is much too slow about things, and it’s high time we got you up to speed. Come on up. Today’s the perfect day to visit Eden.”

He hits a button and the panel seals shut.

I follow him up the long flight of stairs and through a door into a control room where several scientists look up from their workstations, their backs hunched, their fingers frozen at their keyboards. They take me in with red-rimmed eyes, then return to their work without a word. They sit in front of a wall-length window overlooking an enormous circular pool surrounded by a metal catwalk and covered with a domed ceiling. The pool is pulsing with red bursts of electricity that light the scientists’ faces, giving them the appearance of old men staring into some giant flickering fireplace.

“Is that Eden?” I ask.

“Yes. And you’re just in time to see how it works,” he says, pointing to an LCD display on one of the workstations.

The display shows another circular room, smaller, more sterile, with a strange chair mounted in its center. The chair faces a wall flashing with more relaxing nature scenes. A door slides open, and a naked woman steps into the room with her arms crossed over her breasts. I recognize her as the woman I just met from Holocene II, although her head has been shaved and she looks thinner stripped of her jumpsuit.

She steps up into the chair and sits, her eyes darting around the room before settling on the screen, the waterfall scene there making her smile. The lights dim slightly. The chair reclines on automatic hinges. She takes a deep breath and leans back, her body relaxing into the contours of the seat. When her head hits the headrest, a syringe darts out and pushes a needle into her neck. She winces. Then she smiles, and her eyes slowly close. She looks young and peaceful sleeping naked in the chair.

Then the chair transforms, locking her ankles and wrists in place. A strap unfolds around her chest, cinching her into the seat. Braces flip out and trap her head. A panel in the ceiling opens and robotic arms descend, a steel disc encapsulating her head. A whining sound rises on the display speaker, and then the arm pulls away, taking the top of her skull with it. Her mouth opens in a sort of sleeping sigh. I gape at the exposed folds of her brain, vomit rising in my throat. Another arm lowers, covering her head. It lifts with a soft vacuum sound, pulling her brain free. A smaller arm slips a blade underneath, severing the brainstem. Her jaw drops completely open, her bottom teeth showing, her tongue lolling out. The arm lifts her brain toward the ceiling, slides away on its track, and disappears into an opening in the far wall. Her body sits strapped in the chair, her jaw resting on her chest, her open skull empty and red. The straps free from her ankles, her wrists, her chest. The head braces retract. A trapdoor opens in the floor, and the chair tilts forward until the dead weight of her brainless body slides off, disappearing in a tangle of limp limbs into the hole.

“Watch here now,” Dr. Taft says, pointing at the window.

The mechanical arm slides through the wall carrying her steaming brain out over the circular pool.

“Why is there smoke coming off her brain?” I ask, choking back my sudden need to vomit again.

“It’s cold in there,” he says. “Twenty below in the pool.”

“Why isn’t it frozen?”

“Glycerin,” he says, drawling the word as if it were some key ingredient in a favorite recipe. “Electrical currents move better in a cold brine, plus it helps to preserve tissue. We mix glycerin in to keep it from freezing.”

One of the scientists taps his keyboard and a rope of wires rises from the red pool, a plastic coupling on its end. Another scientist guides the brain down with a joystick, lining up the brainstem with the coupling. The coupling senses the stem and constricts, connecting the brain to the wires. Then the arm releases its suction and the brain plunks softly into the pool and disappears. The red light pulses a little brighter, as if greeting the newest member of Eden.

“Can you locate individual people?” I ask, thinking maybe I can see my mother. “I mean, can you see what they’re dreaming up? What they’re remembering?”

He shakes his head. “Dreaming up? Remembering? What has Radcliffe told you? Besides, we don’t bother tracking who’s who. And it really wouldn’t matter much anyhow, seeing as they all get tethered together in test groups.”

“What do you mean test groups?”

“Test groups for peaceful habitation.”

“Peaceful habitation?”

“I know,” he says, tossing up his hands. “Sounds crazy to me, too. We all know there’s no way in eternity humans could ever live in harmony with themselves, let alone the rest of the planet. But some of us needed proof.”

His voice seems far away—his words foreign, his message delayed. I look directly at him, confused.

“You mean to tell me you run tests on them?”

“Oh, it’s quite harmless,” he says.

“Harmless how?”

“They have no idea who they are, really, or who they were. No memory, no willful participation. They’re all good as dead when we loop them in. Of course, we make sure to erase any traumatic events every time we begin a new test.”

“I’m confused here,” I say, truly baffled by what he’s said. “What kinds of tests did you say you run?”

“Oh, all kinds. You name it. We feed hypothetical worlds into the system and see how they respond. We accelerate their time, expedite the results. We’ve tried every government, every form of economy. We’ve tried too few resources, too many, just enough. We’ve tried different social structures. We’ve even toyed with neuroanatomical differences in the sexes. Increasing sexual dimorphism, decreasing it, and eliminating it all together. And with every test, we get the same result. Humans reproduce unchecked. They over consume, and destroy their environment. Then they destroy one another. Every test. Every time.”

“But what about Eden?” I ask, trembling. “What about living in a virtual paradise forever with the people you love?

“Nursery rhymes,” he says. “Nothing but nursery rhymes.”

“It’s all a lie?”

“We needed to tell the poor people something to make life bearable down there. The truth would be inhumane”

The horror of what he’s saying hits me hard.

“So you’re telling me this is one big test incubator?” I say, gesturing wildly toward the window. “That all these brains are nothing but test subjects?”

“What you’re looking at,” he answers, “is a giant petri-dish culture of the worst parasites to ever be created. And we have nearly nine-hundred years of test results to prove it. But, who knows—maybe you’ll find something different.”

The red pulsing makes me dizzy.

My flesh breaks out in sweat, my knees buckle.

I turn back to the LCD display just in time to see the chair tilting forward and my father’s lifeless body sloughing away into the open trapdoor in the killing room floor.

I lurch backward, reeling, falling, reaching. I grab Dr. Taft and turn and puke on his coat.

He grips my shoulders. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”

I place my hands on his chest and thrust him away from me. He loses his balance and falls flailing on top of the desk, knocking keyboards and monitors onto the floor. The scientists scramble to their feet and stand motionless, staring at me, not quite knowing what to do.

I race for the exit and plunge into the dim red light of the underground cavern.

I pause to bend over and puke again.

Then I rush to the boat.

CHAPTER 35
My Last Mistake

“You use them for social experiments?”

Dr. Radcliffe looks up from his book.

“Ah,” he sighs, nodding, “looks like someone’s been on a little field trip.”

I step farther into the study.

“You murdered my father!”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” he says.

“Of course, you wouldn’t!” I shout. “You’d use some fancy term to rationalize it, just like you do with everything.”

He waves to the empty chair.

“Have a seat. Let’s talk.”

“I’m tired of talking,” I say, standing my ground.

He closes his book and sets it aside.

“I wanted Eden to work. I really did. But the brain just doesn’t go on the same without the body. It doesn’t dream, it doesn’t remember. It reverts to some primal state. Responding to stimuli—sure. But with no volition of its own. None, I tell you. And no connection to the prior life of its donor.”

“So you enslave them as test subjects?”

“I did it for the greater good,” he replies, throwing up his hands and letting them fall in his lap again. “I thought maybe we’d find some way humans could live peaceably. Some system of government, some environment of equality. I didn’t do it to harm anyone, Aubrey. I did it in hopes of freeing Holocene II one day. Can’t you see that?”

“I see that you’re a sick, sick man,” I say, spitting on the carpet to show my contempt. “A sick and evil man.”

He leans forward and looks at my spit stain

“Well, you might be right there, kid. We’re all evil men. And that’s the problem. That’s why we need to be destroyed. The whole stinking human race.”

I stand there staring at him, wishing I could pick up a fire poker and bash in his skull. But my anger dissipates into self-loathing. I’m just as guilty as he is. Guilty of going along with him, guilty of buying into his crazy dogma. I should have been firmer with my father, more insistent. I should have made him leave with me. He’d have known what to do. The thought of his body sliding off that chair makes my stomach turn again.

“You need to pull it together,” I hear Dr. Radcliffe say.

“What’s that?”

“You need to focus on what’s important here. We’ve got a job to do, and not much time to prepare. You’ll have the whole planet. You’ll have Hannah. You’ll have as long as it takes to accomplish what needs to be done, and then you’ll have the honor of being the last man.”

“The last man? Really? That again? What’s the point of such a perfect planet if nobody’s here to enjoy it anyway?”

“To let some greater thing come to be, of course.”

“I don’t believe you even know what you’re saying.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn yet, young man. Why don’t you come with me in the morning? I’m leaving at first light to inspect what murderous things some of your precious humans have been doing up north. I’d like for you to see it yourself.”

I shake my head.

“You’ll come around,” he says, picking up his book again. “You’re a smart boy, and there’s no other choice.”

“I do have one question for you.”

“Sure,” he says. “Anything.”

“If you needed me so bad, why weren’t you looking for me after the train crashed?”

“We did search for you,” he says. “We looked everywhere. We mobilized most of our fleet to the west coast trying to find you. We never thought you’d already look like one of them.”

“One of who?”

“Those savages.”

“What savages?”

“In that cove,” he says. “I’m just glad you survived.”

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, a new and darker horror grips my heart and rips it from my chest—

It was me they were looking for. I brought all those drones to the cove. The first fly-by that killed Uncle John. The warship that mowed down the men. The drones that slaughtered the woman and the kids. Me! They were looking for me.

“Where are you going?” Dr. Radcliffe asks.

“I need some fresh air.”

“Good thing there’s a whole world full of it out there,” he says, chuckling. “And put my boat back in the boathouse, will you? Smells like rain tonight.”

The wooden door closes in the rock wall behind me with a solid and final thud. I pause and consider going back and saying goodbye to Hannah, but decide against it.

I walk the shore and climb the bluff to where Jimmy and I first saw the lake house. I remember how magical it looked that night with the windows lit and the torches burning. I remember being mesmerized the next morning by Hannah hitting balls. Stopping, I look down at the lawns, the tennis courts, the dock. It doesn’t seem like much of anything to me now.

Heading into the forest, I find the fallen tree where Jimmy and I spent that night. My old pack is still there, empty and blackened with mildew. I reach down and pick it up, something heavy in its bottom. I reach inside and find Uncle John’s knife. I turn it in my hand, as cold and hard and real as the fact that I drew those drones that murdered him.

I walk into the forest, down toward the river, retracing the way Jimmy and I came up. My mind wanders and I walk in a trance, navigating by some faded memory of our having come this way before, without actually recognizing anything I pass.

I think about the horror of that day, the cannons, the men vaporizing into bloody mist. I think about the women, the kids, the bodies stacked on the funeral pyre burning in the night. I think about my father’s lifeless body sliding into that trap, his brain suspended in the mindless grip of that robotic arm. And I think about my mother lost forever in that rancid red soup.

It’s dusk when I reach the river. The trees are dark, the water black. The only light comes from the sun-bleached stones littering the riverbank where they seem to glow in the shadows of coming night. I bend down and pick one up, cold and heavy in my hand. I hear a branch break and turn toward the sound, listening for a minute, a minute more. But all I hear is the deep river flowing quietly past. Calm comes over me. A kind of peace I haven’t known for a long time. I slip the stone in my pack. Then I choose another and slip it in, too. I bend and pick up stone after stone, adding each to the pack, and when the pack is full, I cinch it closed, and lift it to check the weight. Heavy enough. I swing the pack, hoist it onto my back, slip my arms beneath the straps, and knot the ends tight at my chest.

I pick Uncle John’s knife from my pocket and pitch it into the river. Then I wade in after it. My legs shiver uncontrollably in the cold, the current tugging my waist, and my breath steams in front of me like some ghost escaping already from my chest. I look up at the dark sky. Not a single star in sight. I guess no one is looking down after all. There’s just me here all alone, looking up, looking around, looking anywhere to avoid looking at this new loneliness I’ve found.

My legs stop trembling and I feel my thoughts numb.

I step farther into the river and give myself to the current, my feet dragging on the bottom for a moment before slipping into the depths. Then I lean back and let the heavy pack take me down.

It’s peaceful—the silence, the cold.

I feel the pack knock against the rocky riverbed, drag along the bottom, catch a snag and then stop.

I’m weightless. I open my eyes and watch the shadows of my life rippling away on the dark surface above. I exhale my last breath and empty my lungs, the bubbles carried away in the swift current. I close my eyes and imagine my father cupping my head in his hands, kissing my hair, telling me he loves me.

Then I open my mouth to fill my lungs—

I can’t do it. My body won’t respond to my command, my lungs won’t inhale. Panic overtakes me—survival instinct, maybe even regret. I twist and turn in the straps, kicking my legs, flailing my arms. Then I hear my father’s words, “Breathe good energy in, breath bad energy out,” and I relax and settle into my fate, my arms going limp and dangling in the current at my side. I laugh inside to think that this is where everything led. Somehow it all seems unimportant to me now, even silly. But here it is for real, the final moment, my last mistake.

My lungs give up their fight. I gasp the cold river in.