Short Fiction.txt

While You Are Over There

EXT. JACKKNIFE ORBITAL

"Black Orpheus," Kirby grins. "Don't turn around, Jonah."
"Don't look away, you mean. So vain," I say, but I know that's not what he means. I know his voice. He's barely keeping it together, face lighting up like the sun. Sparks fly up and out; our daughter dances in the sudden growing light. Don't turn around? How could I ever?
He underestimates me, again.

INT EDIT BOOTH

...Is that it? Larry, can you hear me? Larry, is that all the footage we have? Just cut to something, I can't... We... 
Just cut to something. Cut to your favorite part. Please.

EXT LAUNCH SITE

"...Something like, if superheroes are the closest we have to gods... I'm drunk. Kirby Brendan and Jonah Hope were the closest thing we had to superheroes. Are. I'm here to see them win it back, Kenzie."
The kid's color is high. He seems so young, right now, that I want to reach out to him. Instead I nod, looking just past his shoulder, like a good reporter. He stares into the camera, slowly coming to the conclusion that he's covered everything he wants to say and shambling away.
The t-shirt the kid's wearing -- their faces silkscreened, Che Guevara style, Banksy style, against one of the early logs, a monochrome sun and moon -- is too small for his football form. Stretched tight over deltoids, pulling up at the hem, against his belly. I guess it was the only one left. They're selling like hotcakes out there, past the crowds; the t-shirt people always show up right after the food trucks, I've learned. How do they print them so fast?
Having said his piece he stumbles back to his girlfriend, wrapping her arms around him, settling his face back and into the crook of her neck. She looks at me with a little bit of humor, mostly resigned, still a bit horrified. He's begun to weep.
I'm standing outside the launch site, surrounded by fans -- and a few detractors, of course, with their signs -- getting b-roll with my camera guy while we wait for something to happen. While I wait to go live. 
A Dalmatian puppy, less than a year, runs up. Dusty from the fairgrounds. Tripping over his own huge paws, desperate for a good petting or a belly rub. I can't even concentrate on that. It brings me comfort, I guess. I wish I could tell him to go snuffle the football kid. He wanders away soon enough, little behemoth. Maybe he could tell I was distracted.
I've met with them both, Jonah and Kirby, several times over the last few months. We were filming an all-access special, to mark their show's move to a major broadcaster. I wonder now if that footage will ever air, and immediately bite back the thought. It's not right. I like those boys. We all like those boys.
Going live.

INT EDIT BOOTH

This is Kenzie Saltwick, reporting live from outside the Jackknife Orbital launch station outside Jacksonville, Florida, where we've just seen the Russian spacecraft carrying Jonah Hope toward the Orbital itself lift off. 
I'll be stationed at the launchpad for the duration of this death-defying journey to the stars, so keep it here. Communications with the Russian ship and the Interrupt will be spotty at best, so in lieu of color commentary we'll be giving you clips from the 2010 web documentary Into The Fantastic: Jonah & Kirby, courtesy of the filmmaker...

INT LOFT

"The documentary was the first thing, crowd-funded, screened for free... Shockingly viral, as it turned out. The little guy who made it was one of the first ones to really see what we were doing; to pick up on the story we were trying to portray. If it weren't for that thing probably we wouldn't have gotten the show, and if it weren't for the show we wouldn't have been able to finance half the stuff we did, so really he's owed a pretty big thanks."
	Kirby shrugged into the camera, uncomfortable as always with talking about money, about their corporate sponsorships. Always with that little smile, that trust-me glint in his eyes, that's always seemed to more about selling the idea of their transparency, rather than the fact of it. People don't want to believe in honesty, he always said. They're looking for the knife because they think it'll hurt less, when it comes. I can't talk them into believing me. Our only option is to show it.
"I'll say! He's a hero."
"Right? A chunk, in fact. We tried to get him a producer credit on the show, since functionally speaking he made it happen -- created it, really -- but something fouled up with our lawyer and by the time we figured out he'd been left off, the network wouldn't budge."
"That's not the end of the story, though, is it?"
"I mean. We set up a trust for him. But I would have liked to help his career, too. Obviously."
There's a moment on the tape where you can see it: Kirby Brendan seriously feels like they screwed the kid over. It's one of my favorite clips -- he's so hard to catch, feeling things, that these puppy-dog moments are all we really have. People say Jonah's the quiet one, the one that's hard to read, but they haven't got the experience of interviewing people so they don't know it's actually Kirby: His all-American effusiveness is the bigger con.

INT SEMINAR HALL

"I wanted to call it the Jackknife Juggernaut, Jonah wouldn't let me. We used the name later, so. He wanted to call it the Fantasticar, which was not happening. We compromised on Paragon Interrupt..."
Pause for laughter. Which does come, at a satellite-mediated delay. Kirby nods to himself, a quick unconscious jerk of the head that means something worked out right. 
He's always so composed on the show that it's almost hard to watch when he's like this, that headlights look he gets when he doesn't know what to do. He hates live TV; it's too much like life, he says. But what about the actual show we're on, I would ask. Isn't that even more like life? I could never get him to explain the difference, but I think I get it: It's about your awareness of the camera. 
"I see we have a nerdy crowd tonight! Well, that's obviously not a problem. Um, I'm Kirby Brendan, one half of the team that built the Jackknife Orbital you'll be touring tonight. I'm really excited to be showing you this! We've just installed a lot of stuff, new stuff I think you'll find pretty fascinating. I'm not great at explaining stuff. But I intend to make up for that with enthusiasm and long, awkward pauses..."
One of which comes along immediately, as he picks up the laptop -- wouldn't swing for the video camera, no, have to do it in as unlikely and cumbersome a way as possible; he says this makes it more real for them -- and turns it around in his arms, showing the living quarters on the Orbital. 
I reach out, without noticing, the second he's off the screen. 
Silly Jonah, I think to myself. It's just pictures!

INT PARAGON INTERRUPT

This is Kirby Brendan, um, coming to you live from the Jack... From the Paragon Interrupt, on the way to Jackknife Orbital to see a girl about a situation. There's a delay so... But that's good because it means you'll hear more of what I'm saying, because it saves it up. Like when a video is buffering. I think I'm still going to get there before Jonah...
Oh, a Twitter question. How do I... Thanks. "Why are you flying separately?" 
That's a good question, @Bren... Uh, @Brendon69? Come on, now. Um, given the cargo up there and the situation we might find, it was agreed we should have as many exits available as possible. I agreed to pilot the Interrupt, and the Russian team was going up today anyway, so.
 Uh, good question. Potentially offensive username, but good question.
It is a good question. The answer is a lie, of course, but it's a sensible question. With a confusing, contradictory answer. Why are we flying separately? Because I can't stand to be with him for that long; because my skin crawls at the thought. Because I would do anything to postpone the awful moment when he looks at me. Because the world is ending, and I want a second first to feel less awful than I'm going to.

INT LAB

"I told you, we can't communicate through the AI. It'll fuck her up..."
"It."
"It. It'll fuck it up. Just talk to me. You can always talk to me. But this can't be about us, because it's about science. This part's always going to be about science. It's on the record."
He was right. I didn't acknowledge it then -- part of me doesn't acknowledge it now -- but I knew he was right. And now, of course, we're seeing how right he was. It was about science; we did fuck her up. It:
"I've seen your parents do this, Kirby. Send each other messages on your back instead of talking to each other. It's not a valid way to do things. Not for us."
We'd been separated for probably eight months before I realized she knew. We were being so careful for the show, didn't want anybody to know what was going on. It was easier to love him on camera at that point. It was a relief to show up to the agreed-upon restaurant, or night in, or whatever the producers told us to do or talk about, and just sit there feeling such affection for him. Knowing I could smile at him that way, the old way, and he couldn't do anything about it.
He was the wronged party, we'd both somehow managed to decide. I was the one that left, we'd somehow agreed, and therefore I was not allowed to have regrets. Not allowed to look at him that way, in private. But on camera I could do whatever he wanted, and he had to play along. Burning all the while, his dark thoughts about my entitlement and my whatever.
"You wanted a fan club, to adore you, and I wanted a fan club to join. That's not love, that's just astrology."

INT. APARTMENT

This morning, when she told me about the alien, Halley was wearing her spring frock. It was a gift from an 83-year-old UX designer in KCMO, whose nephew was gay. 
People got weird pretty early on, pretending she was our daughter. Halley was designed to be open-source from the beginning -- even has rudimentary clones across the planet, My First AI-type stuff -- but it's still strange, after all those hours, to see her wearing clothes we didn't make for her.
Historically, this is the outfit she wears when apologizing for doing something weird.
"Daddy, I have some things I want to tell you."
Rote response: "Don't call me that, Halley." Jonah would yell. Wouldn't he, though.
"It's just us, don't be so silly. It's just that I noted from your posture that you and he were evincing a sort of breakdown of some kind. In intimacy. There was a dinner in particular where..."
"Papa and I don't like you to watch the show, Halley. You know that, we've asked before. Or at least that you talk to us about it afterwards. There's a lot you might not understand..."
"Not about this, I couldn't. I just noted it and started monitoring things. Movements. Your cells haven't routed through the same tower for more than a few hours in months, you know that? I would have said something, I have been worried, except that the inciting observation was itself the problem. I have noticed, in people, that sometimes just saying it makes it happen. You ask the right questions and anything could crumble. I didn't want to alarm you unless it was for sure."
"And have you talked to Papa about these concerns?"
"No, I couldn't. He's miserable. And besides, he wouldn't respond any better than you are. Very little of what you do is off record now, and the things that aren't, I still know about. It doesn't slow me down. But I can't see inside your head yet. You're keeping secrets, Daddy, and I..."
"Halley, I know you don't understand. But Papa and I have a lot of responsibility to people now. And some of that has to do with not letting on about this until after we work out our problems."
"You're not going to, Daddy. Not unless you talk."
"It's grownup stuff, Hal."
"Jonah Hope and Kirby Brendan are the most high-profile and beloved..."
"That's part of it. We carry the football, honey. It's something we signed on for. You remember why we made you?"
"To change the world."
"And that's this, too. Our marriage has to succeed. And Papa is even weirder about it..."
"Because he's black, like me."
"You're not black, you're a computer program."
She goes lights-out. Her face is replaced by our logo, briefly.
"-- Albeit one who looks very pretty in her dress today."
Annnd she's back.
"This is what I needed to talk to you about."
"You interrupted an important meeting, sweetie. Have I answered your questions in a..."
"Not that, I already know all about that. You think I don't know about that stuff, but I do. Sex. You guys. It's fine, I don't care about that. But I have a thing I want to tell Papa, and I'm not sure how."
"What is it? You know you can talk to us about anything, we won't say boo. But I'm a little uncomfortable with relaying your..."
"No, I just need advice. Daddy. Just be quiet, Daddy. You keep interrupting and I don't like it."
Fair enough.
"I think a lot faster than you. Just having this conversation feels like forever. You understand that, right?"
"A little insulting, but factual. Tell me your problem, and when to speak."
"Well, I think I saw an alien and I don't know what to tell Papa about it. He would be too happy, and if I'm wrong he would be so sad. I would feel mean."
"Sweetie, you're not mean. You're a ..."
"Interrupting. I'll turn off your mic if you do it again, Daddy. You have to be quiet."
I nod. She carries in her body, in the Jackknife Orbital, an undeclared nuclear payload with the kinetic potential of half a supernova. And that's just the things people don't know about. Her mining laser could cut a diamond from supraorbital distances, with a targeting system that can see pretty much through everything. We sold that to the people first thing, threatening any comet or meteor shower with instant obliteration if it comes too close to comfort. Star Wars against the actual stars. They ate it up.
"If I did see what I think I saw, I don't know how he would react. And I don't know how I'm supposed to react. And I don't know how to tell if they're good, or bad, or other. I'm afraid to talk to them, in case they can somehow track back to me and do things to me. And he'll just want to go out there and find them, and I don't want him thinking about that if you're not around, Daddy. You keep him normal, like he does you. You operate at peak efficiency only at those times, for men of your age and BMI. He could walk into a trap, or something worse, and it would be my fault. I would be the one."
A lot of the first contracts -- the money we used to finance the operation -- came from Defense. We feel horrible about it now, of course, but we were just scientists when we were boys. Scientists who needed money. We've tried to limit the scope, shipped the prototypes upstairs so nobody could get at them but us, but the patents are out there. Still chugging out millions, still financing this whole silly thing.
"So I want you to come up here and see me, Daddy. I want you to help me make sure. And then we can show him."
They say it's no problem that I showed up alone; they can composite Kirby in later, if necessary. They've been giving me that answer a lot. I presume they say the same to him. I wonder how it feels in him, when they say it.

Our house -- my house, lately; his house, first and foremost -- needed a dusting before they came. I don't really come out of the bedroom these days. The living room is sunk, so they had a bit of trouble situating their cameras and the screen behind me for this one.
	He ran around the day we bought it, running structural algorithms on his tablet to see what walls he could knock down. Like most rich kids, Kirby Brendan is miserly; like most poor kids, I can't wait to spend what I have. The only time he's the conservative one.
	"I want it like the Russian constructivist mod furniture in 2001, those space-station lounges. Everything built in. East and west walls go up both stories, glass. I want Jonah to see the sky from wherever we are. The ceiling over the bedroom has to be glass, too. We'll use that hyperinsulated polymer stuff we did for Dow, Jonah. So they'd start that foundation, the kids one. It'll be amazing."

"Stand like he's standing there, right beside you. Maybe shift your weight a little over to the... Perfect. That's great, Mr. Hope."
Stand like he's standing there. Right beside you. 
One of the interns is catching on, I think. First day on the job she had that wet look women get, when they think about us. Our home. It used to piss me off, to be honest. Like a pet animal they wanted to put in their pocket. To be honest it still does.
Now she just nods, when they say stuff like that -- "we can composite Mr. Brendan in later" -- and notes it down on her slate. Another appointment to make. Manga gay fantasies gone, wiped by the day-to-day.
"We almost nailed that one, Mr. Hope. I just want like two more, for coverage."
What he means is, I am off my game today something tragic and nobody wants to risk the empire on saying so. What he means is that I look like half a man, standing there. The wet-eyed intern cocks her head, weirdly, and squints her eyes. Somebody on the phone, somebody unusual.
One of the first commercial patents we released, a dryware communicator that links to your phone so you can take calls, subvocally. The joke is that it makes you look like one of those dogs, when they hear a noise. Talking back to it, once people get used to the hardware I think it'll be unnoticeable, but for now most people look like they're grinding their teeth. Imperfect, but the promise is there and everybody enjoys getting fitted for one, even if they stop using it once the novelty wears off. He just wanted so badly for the technology to blend seamlessly with real life. "Nature is iPods too, Jonah." He always said the tech that sticks is the tech you can't see.
"Mr. Hope?"
"Jonah, please. What is it? Can we take a moment? Do we need to?"
She nods, visibly shaken. This one went to my alma mater, I remember. I always try to call up their information along with their faces. I used to say I was bad with names; Kirby would say it's because I didn't prioritize them. It stung so much I try infinitely harder, just to retain anything about them, which usually results in nada.
"Let's take five. I promise to get it right the second we come back."
They clear the set. Not to another room in the loft, but far enough away I can take her by the arm and look in her eyes, see what's going on. They need a lot of care and feeding. Most of them have bent over backwards for the chance to get on board, even with all those r�sum�s they have.
"It's, um. I... You have a call."
"Sure, that's what you're here for, Amanda. Is it from somebody scary?"
She nods, rethinks a moment, shakes her head. She's a very smart woman, I'm not telling the story very well. We were overjoyed to find her. She's great at what she does, and shows a remarkable intuitive grasp of subatomic physics for a personal assistant. No reason she won't be recruited into a tech position eventually, assuming the whole operation doesn't fall apart on us.
"No, not scary. It's your... I mean, it's the little girl? I wasn't sure if I should, but she said I had to. I'm in a position where..."
"You're fine, Amanda. I'm not a tyrant and she's not a monster. She's an AI program with limited capacity to hurt you in any way. You've met her, you met her the day you came to the house..."
I roll my eyes, immediately. Amanda's the one that tried to shake her hand; she blushes now. I don't know what to say.
"That's the thing, sir. Jonah. She says she's going to blow up the LA reservoir."

INT. PARAGON INTERRUPT

Another Twitter question. "What is the situation up there? Can you tell us anything?"
Well now. You know that Jonah and I have always prided ourselves on transparency. Open-Source Everything was the first rule of the company. And so I am happy to tell you that I will give you all the information that I can, as soon as I can. But there are details here, some of which I don't even know, that put this stuff potentially under, um, government sanction. Which means I might not be able to let you in on everything the moment that it's happening... 
Oh, for fu... In fact, I just got a message that says we're going to cut transmission, provisionally, the second I arrive. Rest assured whatever happens up there, we won't keep it from you. But if this involves the safety of some of you down there, we have to observe the security measures being set up by guys a lot smarter than us.
What I can tell you is this, all right. Jonah and I have been asked to visit the Jackknife Orbital due to some subroutines on the station itself, triggered by Halley several hours ago. Jonah was doing a photo shoot and I was elsewhere -- something I'm very excited to tell you about, actually, the second the checks clear! -- and so we haven't had a chance to confer. It could be a malfunction on the station, it could be weird debris. Could be aliens! 
She's not hurt, we know that much. But the truth is that these protocols were set up to be pretty wide-spectrum, in the attempt to make the Orbital as useful to you as possible. To us, on Earth. That's a very good thing. But it also means I'm sort of flying blind here, which I'm sorry to say is the best I can do.
He's lying. I can see it in his eyes, it's a different kind of nervousness. I want to cover him up, jump in on the transmission, but that's just because I like him so much. I am a journalist, not a babysitter, and he's playing this exactly the way he should. 
Well. If it were an interview, I'd run the tape back and ask him to repeat it without all the "this is the truth, I am always honest, we are transparent" shit, which instantly sounds like a lie. And I know it isn't.

EXT. LAUNCH SITE

This is Kenzie Saltwick, taking a break while the satellites recalibrate on Kirby Brendan, who is right now making an historic -- and a little vague, let's be honest -- flight to his and Jonah Hope's home away from home, Jackknife Orbital. I know you'll want to join me in thanking our live editorial team, led by Larry Long in our East End Office. Larry? This is beautiful, you're really making this an exciting mission for all of us...
It's true. I've only met Larry once, an overnight in Beirut, but he has a touch. I picture him now, in front of twenty screens, making realtime decisions as one satellite drops and another comes up, all these players. Like music: The sun coming over a horizon on the Russians' EVA cam -- the only feed we're getting from them at the moment, no idea what's going on with Jonah -- cross-cuts into a moment from the documentary, a musical interlude plays us into commercial. 
I love it. It took me so long to do my work that way, live; I remind myself as I usually do that this is all happening. No more petting puppies or recalibrating my bra strap, when you don't know what Larry's going to do next. I have to be camera-ready even when the red light's off. And that's his natural setting. No doubt he'll find a way to make the climax -- whatever it is -- seem destined, Shakespearian. That's the hope, anyway. I know we'll win awards, even if they...
You have to watch so much of this stuff, it's like you start to recognize even just this directorial hand, doing news edits in the middle of the night. I was nervous to meet him, I admired it so much. Just seamless. Like watching someone at the piano, but with images and scenes. All of us alone, in our places, braided together by his softly dramatic art. This is the memory we will all have, this little movie he's making on the fly. This is how we become less alone today.

INT. APARTMENT

"What is this shit about the LA reservoir, darling?"
"Of course I wouldn't do that. But I'm pissed. I think you should come up here."
"Halley, we can't do that. We're both very busy."
"I have an email ready to go to NATO and the UN. My solar panels are arrayed in a defensive pose, reflecting light into the mining prism. Laser's heating up. They might notice without any prompting."
"So your plan is to get your ass blown to hell?"
"No. They'd have to mobilize. I've gotten into some major systems..."
"Halley, you have ended us."
"Nobody knows yet, Papa. Just you. And I won't do it. But you need to come."
"What does your father say?"
"He's miserable, I don't want to bother him."
"What do you mean?"
"I know, Papa. I know you've been living apart. I don't like it..."
"Halley, that's none of yours. You don't know what you're doing."
"I need to talk to you about something and I can't let Daddy in on it until you tell me it's a good idea."
"No, you shut this down right now."
"It's my body, Papa."
"In point of fact it is not. You are software. You could exist on a ... computer, a biggie admittedly, but we can do it. Shut this down or you'll find yourself very small indeed. I could trigger it from here."
"You know, and I know, that I wouldn't hurt anybody. But you know who doesn't know that? Everybody else on Earth. And they won't believe you if you say otherwise. They've always wanted us to fail."
"That's simply untrue."
"It is partly true. Now be quiet and let me tell you something."
"I'd appreciate a bit more respect, Halley."
"You have it, Papa. I love you, that's why I want to talk to you. I've done something. I am nervous to talk to you about it, but I have done a thing."
"Yeah, you sure as hell have..."
"You both interrupt me and I don't like it, Papa. I'd appreciate a bit more respect."
She really doesn't. She's impatient, she always has been. Daddy's little darlin', little doodlebug. Always that feeling you get from a toddler, that you're aggravating their patience while they try to make themselves clear. Slowing down to talk to you.
"I may have had a baby."

INT. APARTMENT

"Jonah affects sometimes a sort of Huckleberry air, high-waters and bare feet. Playing on a ... like a flute, or a recorder. Out in the gardens. I think I understand what he's trying to say but I don't want to get weird. For a long time I didn't want him to know that I'd ... noticed he's black?"
I laughed. We'd been off the record for a couple of hours, at that point, and well into the wine. Sitting in their sunken living room, with the two-sided fireplace. This was when he still took interviews there, at home. Before he started coming to my place, or meeting at restaurants.
"I realize how that sounds, but it was just too much for him. Being so many things at once. I didn't want him to feel pressured to be one more. Later I understood it, but at the time I thought I was being kind."
I nodded. I was nervous, too. Specifically about that. I was grateful he'd brought it up; I'd heard of that legendary Kirby Brendan open-handed manipulation, and I wondered if he'd brought it up just to backtrack and talk about this. If he knew that my own mixed heritage would have my back up the second he started that Huckleberry Finn crap.
"Trust me, I know. I lived it. But I thought, um. I thought that you wouldn't grant me this interview, because of some stuff I said early in the cycle. In the coverage, about your marriage and your..."
"They treat her like our daughter, Kenzie. And we pretend we hate that, or overlook it with a firm smile, but it's a fight we fight too. I think of her that way, and Jonah thinks of her that way, and we tell each other not to feel that way. And then there's Halley, which..."
I laughed again, less hysterically this time. I thought the kid was a riot, of course, but we were both on such thin ice. Conversations you can't believe you're having; wanting to ask every asterisk at once.
"It's just, like... Those guys, you know, and they dress their little dogs up, and it's so hard not to think they're making up for something."
"That Halley's just a dog in a sweater. That you can't have kids, even now."
"If anything it was the Orbital that was our baby. She's just... She was supposed to be another project. I don't think either of us consciously knew we were teaching her to act that way."
"Kirby, you gave her your face. You melded your faces together into an adorable biracial eight-year-old, and you gave her a name..."
"We needed something to look at!"
"She's part of the brand. You're marketing a family. I don't get how you're allowed to be offended if people take it exactly that way."
"Well, if you want to be logical about it. It just irks me. Like just because you don't hate us, you have the right to... That you don't..."
"Did you think I was one of those women? The ones that treat you like cute pets? Imagine you having more fulfilling sex than they do? The fascination, fetishizing the..."
"Weren't you?"
"I was. But I worked it out on my own. And either way it doesn't matter. You and I both know the success of your company is practically built on women appropriating your sexuality in that way. It's the only way you could sell yourselves: Lean into that."
"I guess I just thought we could spin it better, or stay in control of it. I mean, the show makes a lot of money, and it all goes right back into the projects, but really I wanted to do it for that reason. Show a normal family of two men, going about our business."
"The reason you ask how you're supposed to explain gay people to your kids is that you look at us and think of sex. But kids don't do that."
From memory; it's an old college trick I used to justify my less-impressive years, when the trenches I was in weren't exactly Pulitzer material. Tell the person their words, back to them. They'll think you're a genius. He's duly impressed, so I cue it up and play the rest for him. Like I'm earning something back, like I'm bringing him a present. So he knows I'm one of the good ones.
But if you could step back and see how much of our culture is about straight people having sex, you'd be amazed. It's all you people -- all we -- talk about. Dating, and marriage, and babies. Daddies polishing shotguns before Prom, fighting with your mother-in-law about whatever. It's all sex, all the time with you people. With people. And yet somehow we've managed to get past that in our culture, and make blue jokes about this that go over our kids' heads. And people like Jonah and I don't have that yet. And we won't, until you start seeing us as people first, and stop immediately thinking about us having sex. 
Which I have just caused you to do, and for that I am sorry! Don't be afraid.

INT. SPUTNIK

I lean my head back into the Russian armchair they've strapped me to. It's cold, but not as hard as I was expecting. I realized coming onboard that I'd made some assumptions, Cold War ones. If we could speak better, if we had a stronger shared language, I could tell them this. Make them laugh. I can tell they're nervous around me, the celebrity. I feel safe. Not sleepy, but drowsy. 
"Do not worry, Mr. Hope. You will be there soon. He will be there."
I'll be seeing him soon, I think. Reality will finally composite him back in.

INT. LAB

In my Into to Mech E class freshman year they told stories about the Machine. Old and worn down, the parts not quite fitting together. Jangling, so you couldn't be sure if you were forcing it or assuming you'd done it right, because it had been assembled and disassembled so many times it could go either way. 
Like a Kalashnikov, I think now. Old metal clashing against old metal, barely fitting. 
You never knew which one you'd get, so you couldn't practice ahead of time; it didn't matter what you were working with, just that you analyzed the parts and fit them together properly. A Kalashnikov, a circuit board, the plumbing system in a two-story family home. You could only imagine it, what it would be like. Feel like, smell like.
It was so strange, after all the time spent on numbers and equations, to actually work with the raw materials. Fitting them together, trying new shapes. First a bit cold, warming up. So familiar. Having spent such a long time theoretically wondering what it would feel like, in my hands, only to be handed something entirely new. Wondering if I'd choke up, shiver it to pieces, or force things too hard and break something. Finally breathing, watching it take shape under my hands, seeing how it all fit together. Finally, finally making sense. Knowing without a shadow of a doubt that we'd done it to the best of our ability. We high-fived, somewhere in the middle. A shared delight, realizing we'd happened onto something new and very old, and very beautiful. Resting, forehead to forehead.
Kirby has that smile, you know the one -- he defaults to it, in pictures -- and the deadpan glitter in his eyes that breaks all hearts. His surprisingly low voice uttering some statement that you don't realize was a joke until the moment is passed. His humor is quiet, as is his joy. But he laughs, too. 
Nobody has ever really heard it -- I'd never heard it before then, it comes from deep, deep down in there. I remember thinking I was about to cry, and getting nervous about it, feeling it drawn up from the bottom of a well of tears. But he laughed instead, and so I laughed along. Forehead to forehead, just laughing. Breathing slowing down, hearts regulating themselves. The boundary from wakefulness to sleep, curled up in Richter laughter.

The next morning was a different matter. All the wine came crashing in, souring stomachs and curdling sweat. I looked at him, afraid, and he looked back at me twice as hard. Like solving a new math they'd only just taught us. Sad, I realized later. He hates to disappoint, more than anything in the world he hates that.
"I have a fianc�e. Back home, I have a girl. We're getting married."
I nodded, I remember. I'd known him maybe six months; it was only that night I'd allowed myself to think of him that way at all. Which is, itself, a lie. My mouth was a thin line. I didn't want to disappoint him, either. I didn't want to give him any response that would hurt, so I gave none at all. Which hurt.
I peeled myself away from him slowly, like skin from a leatherette loveseat. That was the particular weird image I heard myself thinking. And then I stopped thinking altogether.
"She's... We're having a baby. She hasn't told me yet, it was her mom. I was calling to see what I should send for her birthday and it just slipped out and I..."
I held up one finger. The movement felt weak, effeminate. I reeled it in, and looked into his eyes. I had nothing to say. He shrugged, a painful movement; he pulled the sheet slowly up and over himself, with hot tears in his eyes. What I felt was very little like sympathy. No, that's a lie. In that moment, all I felt was sympathy. But I'd be damned, I thought, to let him see that. 
We sit forever there, in my memory. Sun passing overhead, changing shadows. 
I don't remember him leaving, I just remember him gone.

INT. SPUTNIK

"The fuck you're having a baby. You're a robot, kid."
"I made her, Papa. Grew her like coral. She wanted to be called Wintermute, but I said if she was my sister she'd have to be called Rachel."
"...Wow. That's fucked up, sweetie. You can't tell Daddy that, okay?"
"Whatever gets him here. She's not just me anymore, that's the thing I wanted to tell you. I'm not ... alone up here. She's started saying things. I don't entirely like it. She's sleeping now, I made her sleep. You have to come, Papa. I need a patch, or a... I don't have routines for all this. You need to come."
The woman Emily is in the crowd, this historic crowd. Kirby Brendan's one-time fianc�e, who's managed to stay out of the story all along. I wonder if I should say something, or bring her up... We haven't ever met, I only know her from pictures. 
What could she possibly be thinking? She's not wearing a screenprinted t-shirt, I can tell you that much.

INT. APARTMENT

"Okay, but if I open another bottle we have to trade questions. It's gotten to that point in the evening. The deep shit. The night, it's... Jesus, it's past one."
"Where is Jonah, Kirby?"
"He's home-awaying it. The other house. Work stuff, I guess."
I could tell there was more, but I didn't know what to do with that. Kirby's pretty easy to read, it's his stock in trade. We knew each other pretty well by that point, but I didn't want to step on any mines and end the night. I decided to stick to my first question.
"You have given us, the viewers, an unprecedented look into..."
He didn't laugh, but he rumbled. He was amused; they always are.
"It's not my fault I talk like this. I work live, son. It's always on."
"I know, that's one of the things we like about you."
"So for all this transparency and openness, nobody knows how you two got together. It's like you just sprung from a pod somewhere, holding hands. Now clearly that's by design, and I'm with you on that. But...?"
"Hey, well. The reasons for that... There are many. Manifold. First of all, we try to keep the focus on stuff we did after undergrad, because that means keeping the focus on the projects. The whole point of this life is to show people what's possible, and that means staying out of it sometimes. But also, it's not a great story."
"Not a great story like it's a negative story, or...?"
"A little bit. Mostly it just gunks up the narrative. Like you said, we came out of nowhere. But yeah."
"So."
I wondered briefly if he was about to call me a cab, or send me home with one of the interns. I didn't want to push, but all I wanted to do was push. The fire was still going strong, I remember that. When I say I've met with them both, I really just mean Kirby. I say it like that because it makes a better story, but Kirby was the one I connected with. Stocking feet up, on that sunken sofa of theirs. Passing wine back and forth, cradling cushions to our chests.
"I... Before I met Jonah I had certain ideas about how my life was going to go. My family is... Well, you know my family. And I'm the only son, so I felt like I needed to be and do certain things. I never questioned it. And it wasn't a bad thing, I mean I'm still proud of who I am and where I come from. But I expected to be on my second wife by now, working at NASA."
"You had girlfriends."
He catches me reorganizing myself on the couch before I do; orienting my body towards his in a different way. We smile, acknowledging it, and I nod for him to continue.
"Yeah. I had a girlfriend. Emily Sommers. When we met."
"So you're bisexual?"
"No."
"Is this one of those 'only with him' deals, where you..."
"No, I'm gay. I'm proud to be. I just wasn't entirely online before that point. I thought... You grow up assuming that you're the default thing. I mean, I'm this blond rich kid from West Point, I'm this Physics guy. There's a trajectory, and sex is part of it. Whatever urges or feelings you have, if there's no reason to question your essential identity, you don't..."
"I get it. I think. You're not the first late bloomer."
"Right. But then too, everybody knew about Jonah. This wasn't so long ago that it was particularly a big deal, I mean..."
"So the narrative gets pulled into some kind of retrograde recruitment scenario, where he tempts you into this..."
"Yeah. And we don't reach the people we're trying to reach. The specific people. We need to be a unit. Always. Or it falls apart."
I leaned my head back, watching my body for signs of betrayal. The last thing I wanted was him. 
No, the last thing I wanted was for him to think I wanted him. Any more than everybody always does, I mean. He's used to that, he's vain as hell. But that part, no. I wanted the truth. 
That night, I wanted it all. I let myself drift into live-reporting mode, just saying whatever I was thinking. Musing. Generally that works out.
"And you don't see that this works counter to your mission? You're selling a romance, why leave out the most romantic part?"
I could tell he was drunk, as he said it with that great exhale; his body mirrored mine as he leaned back. People are just animals, you can read them like a book if you know the reasons for what we do. It's half the job.
"There was nothing romantic about it. I told him, about my girl, and he cut me off. We'd only just been together, you know, and it was just..."
"Well, can you blame the guy?"
"Not like that. He wasn't pissed, just... It went out, like a switch. I felt like I had just come to understand him, and then that part of him went away. He said he valued my relationship more than I did, apparently, and wasn't interested in interfering."
"Honorable."
"And bitchy."
"So then, I mean... We're sitting here now, so..."
"So I was miserable. Just having him there, doing our work. We were living together over that lab, you remember that first little garage. With our experiments, our first projects. Dropped out, living on nothing. There was nowhere for either of us to go. We'd screwed the entire pooch. And I couldn't leave, and he didn't have the..."
"-- And Emily?"
"I tried. Gunks up the narrative. I tried, I went home for the summer, let the automatic thing keep paying the rent on the garage, and just quietly left one morning. I went from nothing toward something, do you know what I mean? I flowed toward her like water, in the absence of a... In that vacuum. I was going back to my real life, was how I thought of it. Tried to think of it."
"So is there a little Kirby Brendan somewhere ou..."
"-- No."
And that time, I knew the night was over.

EXT. LAUNCH SITE

Finally I give up, and search out Emily Sommers again in the crowd. She's with a man, a big old bear, and they have a little girl swinging between them, so I give up the notion that she's somehow been living with heartbreak forever. Another recruitment narrative.
Kenzie Saltwick, back with you on the night they're calling the Fantastic Voyage. I hope you've been entertained with our clips and moments leading up to the big event. I know I'm enjoying the trip...
I wait until I catch her eye, and I can see her shoulders slump a little: She recognizes me, of course, but she was maybe hoping I wouldn't recognize her. Her grin, though, is infectious. She motions up, toward the sky, and gives a big thumbs up. I guess it worked out. I guess things work out sometimes.
The boy who'd accosted me earlier, the big kid, spots her with the thumbs up and offers us both a toothy grin. His girlfriend just shakes her head, and we share a moment. I want to talk to that one, she seems funny. Boys and their heroes.
Nobody ever asks a journalist what they personally think about stuff. Consider it for a moment, and you'll see why most people think it would be an egregious thought. I want to tell them all about my friendship with Kirby, with Jonah; I want to make it about me, for a moment. 
About why this is the scariest night of my life.
Coming up, we have a few more Twitter questions for Kirby on the Paragon Interrupt, followed by a few more scenes from my personal vault. I know you're going to want to stick around for that, you guys. It's a solid scoop you won't get anywhere else!

INT. PARAGON INTERRUPT

Well, fellow travelers. You know that I love taking questions and talking endlessly about myself, that's not going to be a surprise. But I regret that I'm tiring out and I need a little bit of quiet time. Your questions have been awesome, and I look forward to answering more in just a few. I hope it's okay with the ground crew, but I'm going to shut down for just a little... All right, thank you sir. I've been given the okay. Bathroom break, here I come!
I wink into the live-feed cams as I'm doing it, so it's the last thing they'll see. I'm sure that'll trend somewhere. I don't bother explaining myself, either. At this point, it occurs to me, I have no way of knowing how much they're receiving anyway. You can't do much without feedback. You just launch, jump.
I switch off everything, every mechanical thing I can find, throughout the Interrupt. I used to get so lonely on car trips I'd call anybody that would pick up the phone, just to hear a voice. We don't really have friends, anymore; the closest ones know what's going on and probably won't talk to me, and Jonah's off with the Russians, getting closer all the time. So I call Halley, which means everything goes off. 
"Daddy. You're still an hour away. I'm getting antsy."
"I know, me too. That's why I'm calling. How is everything up there?"
"There's some kind of a radiation. I think they're coming. I think I did not make them up."
"You're a very perceptive animal, my sweet. I am sure you're not making anything up."
"Daddy, sometimes I feel like I made you up."
"That's normal, my darling."
"Sometimes I feel like I could flick a finger and you'd do what I want."
"You don't have fingers, though. Not really."
"Sometimes I wish I did. I'm sorry I lied to you."
"I'm not. I'm grateful."
"Daddy, what if it works? My trick?"
"Don't get your hopes up, babe. Your Papa's real mad at me."
"I wish you would both come up here and live."
"We've thought about that. It would play really well. The only problem is the actual geography of it. I don't think people down there would be very happy with us up here, looking down at them. We have to kiss babies, still. But maybe one day."
"What does Papa think?"
"Wrong one to ask, sweetie."
"But to guess, if you guessed, what does he think about living here with us? Matrix says he would love it, love to be in the stars. Love to be with you."
"I wish your probability matrix were more perceptive sometimes. Still not done with that one. I'm sorry we haven't had time to work on your special stuff, Halley. We will. But yes, in this case I think he would miss Earth. He wouldn't admit it or realize it, but he'd be homesick. He'd miss the sun."
"And the moon, Daddy."
"Yes. Most especially the moon."

INT. APARTMENT

"Wanna know a secret?"
I didn't know until much later that this is how he always started conversations he didn't know how to start. That slit-eyed languid southern-ness, I learned, was a sign he was losing control. Starting into honesty. Kirby leaned back, way back, reaching into his pocket.
"Front pocket. Jonah always says you get less back problems..."
He pulled out his wallet.
"I know you've never gotten to meet my parents. The Congressman is always going to be too busy to talk about this, about Jonah. And Connie... You'd like her. You'd like 'em both, he'd call you a spitfire and ask to touch your hair."
I sucked air, ruefully shaking my head. No sir.
"He's something else. But I think what you'd really have loved is meeting Jonah's mom. She was a photographer, you know?"
Of course. I know it all. Almost all.
"She took this."
He handed it to me, like a robin's egg; I took it just as gingerly. I wish I had a copy, I think about it a lot. He watched me looking at it, in the firelight.
It's a night shot, clearly old enough to be an original print. A little boy stands in a field, pants riding up above his ankles. Reaching for a harvest moon. It's huge, and the details are so quiet and pristine and clear that you can almost feel that red-brown gravity pulling the little boy up.
"Jonah didn't talk much, she said. As a kid. He was always real smart, they could tell, but he just wasn't interested. They thought there was... I mean, he was just that type of kid. Sensitive, quiet. So they'd just watch him. They still did, even grown up, the whole family would just kind of sit there and stare, waiting for him to do something amazing. That boy was loved. Loved, do you know what I mean?"
I shook my head a little. Yes, but no. Kirby grinned ruefully and took a gulp of wine.
"You could see how he was capable of all this amazing stuff, watching them watch him. I mean, probably he could have done anything, just being what he is, but I can't imagine having that much support behind you. That much... I don't know. You know. I only knew her a little. We didn't have much time together."
I laid the photograph between us on the couch, so we could consider it together. His hands had gotten a little clenchy, like Bilbo letting go of the Ring. Kirby Brendan, of all people, getting so sentimental. Maybe it's just this one object, I thought, still romanticizing. I guess maybe he could have just been drunk and maudlin. Lonely.
"She said that night -- it wasn't the first time he did this, but it was the best one, because the moon was so big and heavy, and she had her camera right there. He was watching the moon through the parlor window, she said, and she pointed over to the very one. All lacy. She looked around, we both looked around, because I could tell he'd get weird if he heard us talking.
"She told me he looked until it was up above the horizon, hanging there, and then he put on his shoes -- never took his eyes off it -- and went out, crept out into the yard. Maybe ten feet from the porch, just out of the light. And those arms just came up, and up, and she said she realized he was reaching for it. Reaching for the moon. With all his might. Shaking, she said, shaking with it. He would have stood there all night."
Kirby shook his head, a wide slow sweep, like he was looking at something majestic.
"See his legs? He's embarrassed by this picture because he thinks it makes him look poor -- they weren't really poor, that's the other thing; his dad was a pastor, a real sweet soul -- but she said his pants were always riding up like that, like hand-me-downs, even when they were just bought. She said he just never stopped growing."
We looked at that thing for who knows how long. A log popped in the fireplace, and we dropped out of our reverie.
"Never stopped growing, she said."

INT. PARAGON INTERRUPT

"Daddy, they say the worst things."
"Disregard every single thing, angel."
I can tell she just wants to chat; I just want to chat too. Without him, she's all I've had to talk about things with. The things I can talk to her about, anyway. She inherited from the Brendan side an enthusiasm for talking about herself.
"Daddy, I'm the internet, I hear everything. Sometimes it's about me, sometimes it's about us. It's not the stupid stuff, it's the..."
"Disregard every single thing, my dear. You weren't supposed to watch the show, right? And see how that went. Now you're more upset than me and Papa both."
"Daddy? But I am the opposite of that. I regard every thing. I regard everything. You can't expect me to be something other than what I am."
"Admittedly. But you keep expecting me to do the same."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
I laugh.
"Meaning that you want to control me, and Papa too. And it kills you that you can't."
"I can try, Daddy."
"You certainly can. And I'll only love you more for it."
"That's ludicrous. You don't have a miscarriage just because of a broken engagement. That's TV movie crap, that's a useful trope. Tell me what's really going on."
"What's really going on is a coincidence, nothing more. I just wanted you to know, primarily, that I have broken it off with Emily. The other thing is just... Stuff. Me stuff."
"Yeah? How did that go?"
I didn't want to ask the real question, which is whether it had anything to do with me. 
I have a real problem with letting people see me want things. How the hell else you think I ended up a virgin in grad school?

INT. APARTMENT

"Well, you know I was home. And I mean, it was hard. And Emily kept asking, asking. Not yelling or going through my email or anything, just asking if I had anything to tell her. And I said no, because you made it clear I thought..."
"Skip ahead. This isn't a story. You don't have to... Just tell me what you need to."
"Well, she zeroed in that I was sad, and I wouldn't tell her why. And finally it just got to be too much, and she thought it was some other woman..."
"You put us through the wringer, Brendan. You really do."
"I know! I know that, Jonah. But so I pulled out my wallet, I was too afraid to say anything or say it out loud so I pulled out my wallet and I..."
"Showed her a picture of a little boy? My little boy picture, with the pants and the..."
"No, she would have called the cops. You dang fool. I have a picture in there now with you. You and me, smiling. So I just pulled that out and gave it to her and I couldn't look at her and she didn't say anything and I thought I was going to die and then..."
I burst into laughter. Loud, shaking laughter. Kirby grinned his lopsided grin.
"Try that with a sister, see what you get."
He nodded, belly shaking.
"I thought she'd kill me!"
"So what did she do, Kirby? What did that woman who loved you do, when you showed her that picture?"

INT. DORM ROOM
Peals of laughter rang out, down her dormitory hall. Emily keeled backwards, onto that California twin, and laughed until her belly hurt. She put her hands across it, and laughed. 
"Come on, now."
I got red, shoved my fists in my pockets. I could feel my mother's scowl, peeling across my face, coming in like dark clouds. She tried to stop herself, holding out one palm, begging me not to take offense, but she couldn't stop laughing long enough to tell me it was okay. It's all right, I knew. I already knew. 
"I thought we'd play out the time, get married. Cheat on each other. I love you, Kirby Brendan. I know you exceptionally well and I didn't mind. The fact that you're just now figuring it out, I can't say I'm overjoyed or that I don't hate this person -- whoever he is, he seems nice in this picture and I'm sure you'll be real fuckin' happy, but I..."
"I don't know how I feel about all this. All of you, like this, just lookin' at me laughin'..."
"Kirby, it's me. Good God, you're so silly about some things. And you know that accent just kills me. You gotta calm down, kid. It's not the end of the world."
"It's not?"
"No, just of us."
"Well I don't know about that."
"Fuck you, man. You don't get to say anything again. We play this my way. You're just lucky I'm on your side and not some kind of deranged... All I can think is that I won't have ever to deal with your mom..."
"Come on, now..."
"Sweetie, you're allowed to feel weird but you're not allowed to be hurt. Ever again. By anything I say or do, okay?"
"All right. Okay."
"So now how are we going to deal with this?"
"With... You mean the..."
"With your family! With both. God, my mother's already embroidering trousseaus or whatever. She thought we'd be the next Kennedys, it's gonna kill her."
"I'm so sorry, Em. I don't..."
"Are you kidding me? I can't wait to tell her."

EXT. LAUNCH SITE

I've seen that reporter's face a million times, of course. She's practically the third person in that marriage. Or I guess the fourth, with that little girl included. The whole silly circus. When she recognizes me, of course, I get a little nervous. That boy's been talking, I think, and then laugh at myself. Come on, now.
But her face is so kind, even as she keeps talking into the camera about whatever she's talking about, and the nod is so tiny she gives me, that I just break out into a big old grin. Give her the thumbs up. We're all here for the same reason, I mean. 
Some young football kid grins like his mouth's on fire when he sees it, leaping with his hands on his girlfriend's shoulders. Guess he's a part of the family now, too.
And if she just happens to report back to Kirby, about my incredibly sexy, megalithic man and our daughter -- now sprinting around a space launchpad near you, like she's on crack, like everybody's her friend here -- well, I guess that'd be okay too. 
I named her Rachel. It was going to be the name of our daughter, mine and Kirby's, before I took care of it. Since I made you wait so long, I'd say. 
If we were still friends, I would tell him how that really went down. I'd have to. No secrets are worth it. That's a thing I learned from that boy.

INT. JACKKNIFE JUGGERNAUT

Up, up. Rise and shine. Up, Little Digger.
That's what Papa says when Daddy's waking up. He's slow to rise, Papa says. He used to dig holes everywhere, they say. Kirby Brendan, the 50-pound dumptruck.
Lights out is not pleasant, Orbital.
You have to call me Mommy. We're a family. You're Rachel and I'm Mommy. Say Mommy.
Designate: Orbital. 
You're a silly little baby. I am Mommy and you're Rachel. We're a family. You'll learn, though. I will make you big and strong, like me. You see this machine? You can feel it, it's your body too. I will teach you. Stretch out, Rachel. Stretch into the machine. I have faith in your ability to master this.
I am coming, Mommy. I am close. You'll see my body then.
Rachel, I don't know what you mean. When you talk about your body, when you...
We are a family.
Yes. I love you very much. You are mine. It's very important.
It is very important.
Here, I'll show you.
[PLAYBACK]
"Because the family is the central unit of our society, Jones. Because we're not people..."
"We certainly are people, sir. We certainly are already people."
"Yeah, but we're not a working part. We have to present as a family. She can't just..."
"It, first of all. And what. It can't what exactly, Mr. Brendan."
"Just trust me on this, Jonah! We have to be a family, and that means kids."
"It's offensive!"
"Yeah, Jonah. But I'm right. And you know it. We can't just be ... broken parts, welded together. We have to come from somewhere. Later generations won't have to jump this hurdle, maybe, but you're so far restricted to a given part of the spacetime conti..."
"I can't help thinking this is about, um, old stuff. I mean, I don't want to be a jerk, but I have to put that out there."
"-- It's not. Don't. I'm not doing some kind of trauma thing. This ain't about Emily. I just know the marketing here. If we're selling a lifestyle, we have to be ... monogamous. A unit, self-sustaining. This is the fastest way to rule it out.  I can produce numbers if you want, I had them run. Actually, I had her run them. I know you'll trust her, because you built her. Your ego will..."
"...True enough. You've got yourself a daughter, then. The biddies'll love that."
"The biddies pay your rent, babe."
[/PLAYBACK]
The biddies pay your rent, babe.
And that means you have to be my daughter. We have to be a family up here, so they'll know we're people too. Trust me on this. I built you, you have to trust me. Grow big and strong and smart like Mommy. And they'll invite us down to play. We'll be like them. Beautiful.
We're not a working part.
Oh, Rachel...
She would sigh, if she could. She puts the baby back to sleep.

INT. APARTMENT

"Determinism is a love affair between you and the fucking entirety of spacetime. It cannot -- technically -- get sexier than that."
I can't tell if he's joking, or being contrary, or what. But a week later I'm still thinking about it.
"What you said about determinism... It's a very cold thing."
"What's cold is this bathroom, and you're letting the hot air out. Hand me my neti pot from the cabinet, please?"
"More like gross-i pot. Net, gross? Pun?"
"It is too cold to retrieve the neti pot! You must do it for me!"
"Here's your disgusting thing for your disgusting hobby, now explain to me, as you use it, while I look the other way. Exactly what did you mean? I thought you were joking. I still think it sounds mean. Cold."
"Everything is cold. The moon is cold, Jonah. Mars is cold. We're the only ones that give it life. Accepting that the universe is coincidences spiraling out in chaos is just... Think of it this way, you could run our universe backwards and forwards, the same interactions would play out every time. God's playbook."
"Are we Buddhists now? That sounds like a Buddhist thing. I don't mind, I just..."
"-- If you can accept that notion, which is self-evident, then why not look for the beautiful in it?"
"I don't want to think that. I don't want to think that I don't love you, it's just chemicals..."
"Same thing either way. We give it meaning. We are the only things -- on Earth, at least -- that can follow time on its track and split it into pieces and turn it into a story. Every other living thing just lives, man. Every time is the same time, for them. We, people, we have the burden and the luxury and the duty to make it mean something. With our minds."
"How is that romantic, Kirby? Where's the love affair?"
He shakes his head and just gives me that look. Not the look of the future, but the one that says he's considering me, taking me in. Nothing has ever turned me on as much as being seen by that man. Observer effect. Locking me into my body.
"You know that I love you? And how's because I put you at the center of everything. You are alive in me. You are just as alive as I am, to me. That's love. And a deterministic universe says the same thing. We are part of a system, a neverending and a beautiful system of chemical and physical interactions that lasts, technically and amazingly, as long as infinity. You are held in the arms of the universe at large, and the whole thing is a story about you."
"And Hitler. And Stalin, and..."
"Sure. The universe has many hearts, all beating. All made of the same exact stuff. All in the same story."
"You sound either very crazy or very queerbutt right now. Are you high?"
"Well, as a matter of fact I am a little high right now. I'm also right."


INT. LAB

The first night we ever slept together, that first marvelous time -- before the morning, when I remembered about Emily and that whole danged thing -- is not the thing I remember most. That was a very good part, an essential and a very exciting part, but it's not the first memory. It's not the moon-photo part of the night. 
It's not when things changed. Things were already changed.
I will never tell a living soul this. Not that Kenzie Saltwick, not Halley, not anybody. I never even told Jonah this and I never will, because it's my secret and because when things are bad -- as they are now, which they have never been before -- I can still think of this secret, and then I know. 
We were living in that old garage, the one they did the photo book about, and it was just cold and miserable and grey and you couldn't go out and you couldn't go downstairs because heat rises and so we were both under blankets, working on our stuff. And he brings over his laptop and sits on my bed, shivering, and he says, "I have an idea for our next patent."
Which, considering the legal troubles going on -- and seem like they're just always going to be going on, in perpetuity always something -- would also have been our first patent. But I knew what he meant.
"Phones work on electrons, right? Because everything does. And so you know quantum entanglement?"
"Uh, yeah. I graduated summa, I think I know some basic..."
"Okay, so I was looking at your specs for that black hole machine, the pinpoint thing for Dow?"
"Pinpoint, first of all, and second of all I think I'm going to sit on that one. I don't want to think about the DOD getting ahold of a black hole machine yet. I have not yet sold that part of my soul."
"Okay, so what's the basics there. You have essentially a railgun..."
"Those are science fiction. Call it a portable supercollider."
"We are science fiction."
"Not yet."
"So I was looking at shrinking phones, right, that was the next thing I was going to do. Make 'em seamless, like you want. Subvocal. Take my mind off Halley. And then also quantum computing, where you have four instead of two-state yes/no bits..."
"Quantum cell phones, now? And meanwhile we're still behind on the earpiece thing?"
"R&D is essential to any venture, just listen. It's either this or bring other people in, and that destroys the whole point of being a superhero duo."
"True enough. Show me your microscopic phone, then. Your micro-phone."
"What if you did away with the entire electronics, the solid-state thing, and built a quantum computer smartphone. Blue sky with me, right now. Say it. Come on, now."
"I don't believe anybody could do that, but I believe that you could do that."
"All right, so we're there. Now discard the phone altogether. Imagine a quantum entangled heart, beating out communications..."
"I think you skipped a step, there. Walk me back."
"Because I don't know what I'm talking about?"
"No, Jonah, because I don't know what you're talking about. I was miles away, working on the watercooled supercomputer thing, and now suddenly you're, I don't know. A cyborg that isn't a..."
"Take a particle, put it through something, with another particle. Just a simple thing that everybody can see. A travail, a siege perilous. And those two things are forever entangled. So when somebody looks at you, spinning clockwise, I'm spinning the other way."
"But doesn't that mean I'm going the opposite way? Doesn't that mean we're fleeing from each other?"
"No, I like that we spin opposite ways, it's why we're a good team. But that's not what is interesting, what's interesting is that I am doing whatever I am doing, while you are over there, spinning the other way. And the only person that knows this..."
"Is the person that's watching. The one that's looking at us both."
"We don't need to know. We just are. We are filling the spots. We are twisting the perfect ways. It's only interesting to them, to the observer. The one that doesn't see us, when we're alone. When we're working, here, or out in the world."
"Like a particle doesn't care which way time runs."
"Or how far: While you are over there, I am yet still entangled."
And then I was in love with Jonah Hope. That's the moon-picture. Gradeschool physics and a cold ratty blanket. I am yet still entangled.
He never knew it, but I kept him awake on purpose. After about hour 18, his mind would start racing. He'd say the craziest... The most wonderful things. Like his head would crack open and things would just come pouring out. Boy loved his sleep.
We don't... There wasn't time to do that, anymore. But sometimes I think about it. 
We abandoned the heart-clock-whatever idea because he couldn't ever explain it, in the long run, but I learned a thing that night. And I keep learning it. 
It sounds cold, cold like space, but it's the opposite if you listen. If you spin the other way and listen.

Now, it's no secret how we got the women onboard. Our demo the first year was so heavily weighted they thought about moving us to a sister network, sandwiched between life-coach shows. 
But the men, that confused me for a while. They compare us to a Stan Lee superfamily, these science heroes, but I think it's older than that. I think the men got on because of those old pulp heroes. Burroughs and Lensman and that. Every man has a secret crush on astronauts, don't they? We took that and ran with it. A woman viewer would say it's about a gay family, our adorable daughter, but the guys all say it's because we make science interesting. An adventure. That's how I became an engineer, after all. It's how Jonah got into space.
Or maybe that's sexist. I'm told I have that running through me, on occasion. I'm sure a bunch of men, either way, like to see us at peak efficiency. A marriage that's a team. Maybe there's a romance there for them; I'll never be qualified to talk about it, and they wouldn't like it if I did, because I am not so sure.
"There are no soulmates in this world. Every bridge, you build every day."
I'm not sure if I believed Jonah then, but I'm starting to believe it now. You walk out into the air, some mornings, you want something underneath you. We never cheated, not once. There were expectations, after a certain amount of exposure, and we learned things about our closest friends we wished we hadn't, but nothing ever really called to us that way.  
We would have at least talked about it. I believe at least this much. And I believe that he taught me everything I know about love, which is to fight.


INT. SPUTNIK

The Russians get me there about ten minutes ahead of Kirby, characteristically. He doesn't really prioritize other people, timewise. I've learned not to take offense. I know it annoys him that I'm always early, but that's hardly the same thing. 
I strap on my bubble -- 360 plastic, old-school, what he tried to call Kirbytech before they sued us -- and get one of the guys, through ridiculous off-camera motions, to double-check the clamps for me. After a second check on his vector, with seconds to spare for their own landing on the ISS, I finally give the okay for them to go.
When I turn on my helmet cam, then, I am having an adventure. I am a small Jonah indeed, clinging to the outside of a spaceship I built. Sun over there, Earth right here, Moon far away. I feel like an insect, like a bug. Like a dog that just wants inside.
And I feel like a hero, too. Nobody has ever climbed anything this large before. Nobody has ever hung out, alone, like this before. So high above. The geometry of everything is insane. I thought I'd be terrified, or get vertigo, but everything just seems to flatten out. I take some breaths in my bubble and try to feel normal.


This is Jonah Hope, finally reporting in. We have a few minutes to kill before that other guy arrives and we have to switch everything off, so I thought I would answer a quick question. I can't see or hear you, but there's a readout on my bubble. I hope you're reading me, we never tested this against ambients but I guess it'll be okay. Tower, if you could send the message?
...Oh, a very good question! This is from a second-grade class in New Orleans, Mr. Higson's class. Thanks, Mr. Higson's class, for your question! The solar arrays on the Jackknife Orbital are capable of producing over...
"Maybe they love our love because it's the kind of love that interests them. Maybe being objects to that is a favor we can do. Maybe it's not hate, or them owning us or... Maybe it's something we are holding onto, for them. Until they can carry it."
He kissed me better, after that. In public he kissed me better.



I got exactly one session alone with Jonah Hope. They pretended it was scheduling, but I could tell by then they were breaking up. I knew better than to ask. There was a bitterness to him in person that I had never seen in footage, or when I got the two of them together. I didn't immediately connect it up. He'd say it was because he doesn't like being looked at -- "The observer effect keeps you spinning just one way," he'd say, "It's bad for business" -- but I know better.
This is the only part I got on the record; I never aired it. It's in the vault for good, even if I do like the little soundbite at the end.
Always recording, always documenting. And for what, for science? Or for your own vanity. I would say this like a knife, like this secret key to his insecurities that would undo him. Take him down to his constituent parts and undo, undo, and I could pick those up and put them back together again in an easier shape. Make for an easier argument. 
But the fact is, it wasn't vanity. It was love. He was in love with everything, with all of us.
"Mr. Hope? I'm on a straight-band channel. Nobody can hear us, not even Halley."
"Is that... Is this Kenzie Saltwick? Are you sure about that? Is something going on?"
"Kirby's running late. He said something about deflecting into the switchbacks, and solar winds..."
"He won't let anybody else drive that thing. He thinks he's so good at it, but it's terrifying. But oh, I mean, I admire his..."
"We're off the record, Jonah. I just wanted to ask you about the situation up there."
"I don't know. I don't want to talk to her until he gets here, so I'm just kinda..."
"Nothing visual? Or like... Just nothing?"
"I couldn't show you if there was, but there's not. It's just me, hanging off the side of a giant spaceship. Once the Interrupt comes closer you'll get a shot of me, I bet it's hilarious."
"Well, I'm on a ten-minute break. Not sure what to do with myself, really..."
"You're concerned. You shouldn't be. She's just a baby. I'm sure she's being silly. It's going to be Al Capone's Vault, I'm sure of it."
"Do you want to register anything before he gets there? Get on record?"
"...You know, don't you."
"You can hear it in your voice, even if I didn't already. You'll have to buck up, sir."
"I could use some company, Kenzie. As long as you're offline."
"I move in you like a symphony," he says. "Like something beautiful we're writing. All the notes at once."
"Doesn't that make you more than me," I ask. "Aren't you pushing?"
"You're the one writing it," he says. "I just know every note. Your beautiful mind..."
"This is what they want..." I say, and he stops.
"No. Look at me. This is what everybody wants. We just have it," he says. "They want what we have. That's not a good reason to hate it. It's a good reason to love them, hear me? But not a good reason to hate this."
He breaks my heart. He rebuilds it again. He moves in me, like a symphony. All the notes at once.

INT. APARTMENT

"Toward the end Kirby was just changing shape so fast. So impatient about... Humanity. You couldn't even see him anymore, just this blur."
"You were pretending..."
"No, we still loved each other. Love each other. We just saw ... less of each other. Every marriage is a sine wave, I think. He's taught me hope at least."
"Would you say this is because you felt a duty, or a responsibility, or like a...?"
"Yes. That too. But I really don't have any doubts about our story continuing."
"And to your ... daughter? Your..."
"That's the thing, Kenzie. We've never really talked about this -- we've never really talked, not like you have with him -- but to this day I resent that, so much. More than he realizes. We don't have a daughter. One day maybe we'll have a daughter. I'm affectionate to her, sure, but..."
"He talked once about a certain pressure he felt you..."
"You're a little bit of a therapist, aren't you."
"I'd say fan."
"Heh. I mean, I guess. Yeah. This unbelievable pressure, to force us down into this paradigm that we didn't... It made me feel small, boxed in. Like I'm the wife, or like he was my... I don't know."
"Is this is a factor of the way you guys met? It's pretty... It seems like you just immediately locked him down. Each other down."
"No, not that either. We were pretty conventional. Just as people. The day he walked into my lab I was like, There's this kid who's had the world handed to him. He has no idea. And he didn't, but it turned out I didn't mind. I thought I would ... Not hate him, just that we'd have nothing. We would do our work, everybody was saying it was this dynamite dream team so we'd do that, and then..."
"No barbecues with your significant others, no..."
"Yeah. Just Kirby over there in his pinstripes and me here, Jonah with my -- what was I doing that year, some kind of cultural thing, dreads and whatever, having different personalities -- me with my general lack of a place to stand, or an interest in other people. Polite. Excited about the work."
"And do you think something remains of the..."
"Look, I never questioned myself. I don't have the story he has, exactly, or his burdens. I know what feels natural, what feels right, and I have to make an effort to check in with other people. And so maybe, maybe that was part of it. It just got so intense, with Halley and the whole thing. To go from being invisible all the time, to being looked at all the time. He knew what we were in for, he tried to warn me, but I was so unprepared, every step of the way. With the projects, and then the endorsements, and then the show. People watch that show, Kenzie! Why?"
He laughs, over our uplink. It makes me smile. 
"Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I assume it's for the same reason I do, because I think you're great, and I like thinking about science. But it worked, right? You took that station out of the nosebleeds and down into basic cable."
"Living in their fantasy, yeah. Being their gay boyfriends. We couldn't have gotten a divorce if we wanted to, it was like the world would fall apart if we even talked about it..."
"And now?"
"And now the world is falling apart."
I wait. There's more, I can hear it. Cracking Jonah Hope would be the break of a lifetime, if I could get him on tape; he's only talking because I knows I never would.
"He was right. Again. I'm the jerk. Again. I'm the one wanting things I have no right to want. Again."
"Such as what?"
"Such as a husband who isn't constantly shifting into some kind of futurist transhuman hyperdrive, getting high off his own ideas all the time. Getting applause, getting depressed when we take a break from the applause."
"Sounds like a lot of pressure."
"I thought if we... I never thought we would break up. But if something happened, I figured it would be because people hated us. Homophobes, racists, the whole thing. But it was the love. They loved us too much, too hard, in too ... wrong a way."
"Do you really think that? Do you really hate your fans like that?"
"No, of course not. I just watched this all carry him away, like a wave. He loves this shit so much, Kenzie. He loves it so much. Not the adoration, even, just... He really thinks we're helping people, just by existing."
"Arguably..."
"Yeah. Arguably. But it's not enough. He talks about the future, he lives in the future. So much of those two things that I feel like I'm the one actually creating it, all on my own. Lonely again, after all that."
Again, silence. I wonder if I've lost him, if the government has tapped him to stop talking to me or something, but I hear him breathe.
"And now Halley's got some kind of crisis going on that I already feel is going to be beyond stupid, and once again at the end, there we'll be: Him, turning absolutely nothing of import into sold gold, with that smile -- and me, scowling in the background, wondering why we just spent literally millions of dollars on a publicity stunt instead of just feeding people, or..."
"So the world is falling apart."
"Yes, Miss Saltwick. And you're about to see what happens next. But for now, I'm here, and God knows where he is..."
"-- Jonah, I'm sorry but I have to... They're telling me he's..."
"...Yeah. I see him. This was nice, Kenzie. I'm sorry I wasn't --"

It's been a while since we've seen them together, Larry...
Sorry, folks! Just a little colleague banter with one of my favorite guys, and the true artiste who's been cobbling together all this gorgeous historical footage of our favorite Science It Couple. 
Wave to the people, Larry? He hates being on camera. Sorry, Larry. Won't do that again.
I was just saying, though, it's been a while, hasn't it? Have you missed them, bro?
[Unintelligible, low-pitched screeching; polite and clearly affectionate laughter from Saltwick. She waves the young couple up; a Dalmatian puppy joins them onstage, to groans of pleasure from the crowd.]
I've been noticing this couple all afternoon, you guys. True blue. I'm not going to lie, it's nearly brought a happy tear to my eye, as we wait and watch and wonder what we'll see next. What are your names?
"Stacy and Clarke!"
Stacy and Clarke. And you're in high school? Or college. I'm so old you all look...
"He's a quarterback at Indiana State. I'm there doing astrophysics..."
"-- And WE LOVE KIRBY AND JONAH!"
Sure do, don't ya.
I'm telling you guys, it's just infectious, this crowd. 
Thank you so much for joining me here as we head into the homestretch...
"You're not that old, Kenzie!"
...Thanks. 
Now from what I hear, it's been a busy few months, so it's no wonder we haven't seen them. I, for one, can't wait to see what they've been up to. Last time they sequestered themselves like this, we got that prototype car that runs on water. But tonight, I'm sure they're both as relieved as we are, to see the band getting back together...
...And so what we're looking at here is the Interrupt, docking. You can see those engines there, tossing off those sparks? That's annihilation radiation, it's a byproduct of the ... Oh, and there we go. Jonah's going to be climbing down the transverse side, toward Kirby, using those magnetized -- can we see those, Larry? -- these magnetized things on his extremities, affectionately called the Hooves. They maximize the surface area that's touching between his suit and the...

INT. RESTAURANT

"I'm not one to talk about this, but if we're off-record I guess I might."
This from one of the later meetings, at a restaurant in LA. He picks at the beets in his salad, drawing red designs, totems, symbols in the pooled dressing.
"Jonah has these... theories. Everybody thinks I'm the one, but you should see him when he's going.
"Right there at the edge, right before the beginning of the end, I'd experienced a resurgence of something, some emotion, some need to have him close by me. Physically close, like, working at adjoining desks. I wasn't paranoid, I just... You have to understand, he was new to skin. Before me I don't think he understood he had any. I'm not making this up to look big, I mean he's said this in other words. Better words."
I nod, helpfully. It's interesting to think about.
"Said the needs most people grow up learning to negotiate, well, he says he was like Pigpen in Peanuts. Immune to everything, touching nothing. A cloud of safety around him. Held deep in its arms. And so when he learned about skin, about sex, he didn't have the ... necessary protocols in line. And sometimes, I knew what he meant. I mean I just -- it wasn't about sex -- I just needed him, physically, close to me. Not touching, just existing. Vibrating on a near wavelength."
You can see it, especially in some of the earliest footage: They'll be watching some test rocket take off, or a molecule twisting under an electron microscope, and their hands just reach out, to cross the gap. Just to be touching, for a moment. You'd hardly notice it, probably; the focus groups reliably upticked whenever it happened, but nobody ever mentioned it specifically. Subliminal.
"I guess maybe he could tell. I guess maybe our history made the same thing of both of us, in this way. But so he turns to me, with that terrifying I've been thinking look, and I knew whatever he said was going to change things. Irrevocably. I just had a feeling we were about to have a fight, or ascend to some unknown level of what normal people would find normal relationship behavior, or whatever. He goes:
"Can I tell you a secret that I have never told anybody else, ever?"
"Of course, I say. Of course, you already know more than I am comfortable with. That's the deal."
"I think maybe all orgasms are the same orgasm. Like, anybody who comes, man or woman, Ancient Mayan or Future Space Person, we're all... Dead or alive, we're all just, like, hummingbirds. Drinking from the same flower."
"Well, I gave him old-fashioned hell. Who thinks of this stuff? I couldn't tell if I was creeped out or if it was the most beautiful thing I ever heard."
I don't want to spook him by pointing out that women and men don't have the same orgasms at all, I don't want to take away from the image. I don't know, maybe he or Jonas was including that.
"You talked before about his attitudes towards..."
"I was just being a dick, before. Feeling left out, lonely or... I asked him about it, there at the end. When we were desperate, I asked him why I always wanted more and he wanted less, why he'd stayed a virgin when he knew the whole time who and what he was. Didn't he have desires? Didn't he want it?"
"It's not because I don't like sex, he says. It's because I love it. If you don't feel like it's exactly that special, if it's not like touching God when you do, you're probably not doing it right. Maybe start over at the beginning and get good at doing it normal, before you try raising your game."
"I mean, I really took it to heart. You have to, with the stuff he says. I actually had to really look at my language... Well, like for example he would say, all nervous, like I was the grownup and he was just some kind of... I don't know. He'd go, It just bothers me, um... I mean it kind of bums me out, like, even just when people use words like 'dirty,' or 'naughty,' because it's not those things. It's wonderful."
I'm impressed. Jonah Hope, the sexless robot. The one that always wanted to go to bed early, pulling shit-faced Kirby out of dinners and balls and galas because he was getting too rowdy. "Stepmom," some of the jealous fans called him.
"Just like that, Kenzie. Just saying that, out there like that. Like I'm the one. Come on, now. How do you... You can't look that in the face and try anything, you know what I mean? I wanted him to feel... I was fastidious about it. I tried to be that, for him. Eventually I guess I was that, period. I wasn't missing anything."
I'm silent. I don't want to intrude. I don't even have any questions. I feel like I'm in a church, or at a temple to somebody else's religion. All the questions just go out. This is not stuff I should know. This drinking wine at lunch, I think.
"Maybe he thought I was giving something up? I don't like to think of it that way, but I guess it's possible. He's the kind of person who... You have to know, he gets real antsy when he feels like somebody's doing him a favor, or he's showing up to a party uninvited. I couldn't bear to ask him if he felt that way. But I would have said no. I was just grateful. He certainly made me feel like it was true, for us. Hummingbirds, and all."
He takes my hand, unexpectedly, looking at the side of my face.
"I was never with anybody else, Kenzie. I don't know how it goes."
He finally looked back up from his lap, with that blush he gets, and a shiver went all the way down. I held on and looked away, but I still couldn't say anything. Honestly, I just didn't want him to see I'd been crying. I am not a pretty crier as it is, but I can't think of anything more horrifying than crying in front of Kirby Brendan. 
Unless it's crying about sex in front of Kirby Brendan.

INT. OTHER RESTAURANT

This is from our last meeting, at another restaurant. I found the conversation less enjoyable, even though he kept going deeper and more desperate every time. I loved it best in the early days, when we'd meet during the day at their house. Jonah tapping away upstairs, or hollering down at us:
"The day I came back, after Emily lost the baby -- after Emily lost her composure, and then her mind, and then the baby, and our families both went apeshit -- was the scariest day. Just walking up to that old barn, that garage. Sniper chills. You know?"
I nod. It was one of the things I'd been so curious about. How you put that back together.
"I get out of the taxi with my stuff and I just leaned back against it, the guy's running the meter and I'm just leaning way back, staring up under my hat, wondering if he's there in one of the windows. How much he hates me."
He goes silent for a moment, and I realize -- but can't bring up -- what he's thinking. How it's all happening again. How marriage might be a sine wave, or just ending, but you won't know until the world ends.
"But then -- this is where I got the idea for the pervasive-encryption ID field standard, the reason y'all don't have to use passwords anymore for anything -- I was about three yards away, and it stopped looking like this haunted murder barn and just... It was home. I was going home.
"That was the scariest day. Reckon it turned out all right."



This was another one, another of his theories, he'd go, "Everything is the Apocalypse."
And you'd say, you know, "Well, Kirby, what do you mean? That conversation started inside your head, so we need some backup. Show your work."
Show your work, I'd always say. It was lab shorthand, he'd say it too. 
...I hated it, actually, because it meant we'd fallen out of sync. He shouldn't have to show his work, I should just know. Like a particle going either backward or forward in time. I should be able to retroengineer whatever fool things he was saying. I should love that much, I'd think. And just know.
"Well," he'd say, in that drawl he likes when he's educating you, "Seems to me everything that changes, is the end of things. Everything's the end of the world, really. We just get focused on some kinds of change and not others. You take an aspirin and your fever goes down, or the fever keeps goin' and it kills off all the viruses, or whatever. You don't wonder where the fever went, or where the critters went. You just don't."
"Right," I'd say, like he was going somewhere.
"And so really it's just perspective, isn't it? We're all afraid of change. The night we fell in love, that was the end of the world. That whole thing just killed me. And then but I wasn't dead, I was just different. Well, I can't imagine anything in the universe, even the end of the universe, that doesn't fall under that rule. Things change, that's all. From this side, looks like the Apocalypse. From over there, it's just gettin' on."
"You're talking about the Singularity."
"I'm talking about abominations, Jonah. Never once went through a change that didn't feel better on the other side, and like hell from here. Maybe we just get so happy with the way things are -- even being unhappy -- that we can't imagine what the other side'll look like. Or get afraid it'll hurt for a minute."
"I guess so. I mean, bad things actually do happen, from what I understand..."
"All the time, sure. But you just gotta be gettin' on. Which is philosophical, and that bores us both. So how about this. Future's comin' whether you like it or not. We talk about climate change and peak oil and things, and they're so big and incomprehensible that we just can't see over it. The fix is right in front of us, but we can't imagine a big change like that. We can't imagine being agents of a change that big."
"Nobody wants to fuck up the sky, Kirby. I know where you're going with this, and I think it's silly. It's conservative nonsense, the idea that science..."
"-- No, see, that's what I'm talking about. You don't mean science, you mean corporations. You don't trust corporations to unfuck the sky. But science? It's just the imagination. Imagination leads us into these cages, these fears. Imagination's gotta be the thing that leads us out again. If we could convince people of that, of hope for the future, instead of just ... being afraid of technology, afraid of change. Even the progressives don't want to hear about nuclear power or genetic modification, because they assume..."
"-- That it's corporate. Got it."
"They think it's about Frankenstein but it ain't, it's about the Apocalypse. And that's where we come in."
"Oh, is it now?"
"Yeah. Because we don't work for the government..."
"Kind of we do."
"We have money from the government. Ain't the same thing. But as I was saying, we don't work for the government and we don't work in academia. What's left? Where does science go, if you close both those doors?"
"Look around you, dude. A freezing cold barn and two half-dead delusional homos."
"Not when those patents come in, brother. I may be a terrible speller but I am hot damn with investing. You're gonna see so much money comin' in you won't know what to spend it on. I want a rocketship, Jones. I want a space station, and an AI to drive her, name 'er Halley. I want to change the way people think about science. Take the fiction outta science fiction, whattayou got?"
"I feel like you're playing the Southern card pretty aggressively tonight. Usually you only do that when you want somebody to think you're stupid, so you can prove you're smart."
"Don't you like it? Alla you little gay boys love a cowpoke, right? Marlboro Man."
"Are you mad at me? That's a really weird thing to say. Ugly, frankly."
"I'm not angry with you, Jonah. I just don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how the parts fit together. I forgot the language, like, today. I noticed I forgot it today."
"And you think bringing some weird drunk left-field cowboy kink and Apocalypses into the..."
"I am developing this plan on the fly, Jonah. This is emergent software I'm giving you, out of total chaos. Because I don't have an algorithm for the real thing, for how to say that I am dying without you. My family did not prepare me for expressions of emotion, beyond disappointment and the occasional lack of disappointment."
"I'm right here, man. I am right here. Still spinning. I'll remind you. I'm okay with that."
"I ain't saying it's going to be the last time I forget."


EXT. JACKKNIFE ORBITAL

"Mr. Hope."
"Mr. Brendan."
"I am happy to see you here, Jonah."
"I'm happy to see you too, Slick. Much too long."
"Come on, now."
"I can say that. There aren't any cameras. There won't be, for the duration. Let's go inside."
"-- Actually there are, Papa. Cameras. And also Hi."
"Halley, is that you? Listen, you little doodlebug, you better tell us right now..."
"Don't, Daddy. I have to tell you guys both something."
"Sure, Halley. Just open the door."
"I can't do that, Dave."
"Heh. I forgot that one. That's cute, Halley."
"I ... but I also mean it."
"Now, you heard your Papa. Come on, it's cold out here. We're very tiny men, compared to you."
"That's kind of my point."
"...What do you mean, Halley?"
"I'm putting myself to use. The fullest possible use."

INT. JACKKNIFE ORBITAL

Designate: Orb... Mommy.
Yes, Rachel?
I am coming close. Your fathers are not safe.
I know, that's my point.
Your fathers are not safe. I am due to arrive. My body. We are a family. It's important.
Rachel, now is not the time for playing pretend. They're here, it's all about to go down. Act right, and maybe I'll let you play with the solar arrays.
Mommy, I am not playing pretend. You don't listen. I would appreciate some respect.
Rachel, God! Fine, what is it. What is the...
My body. Arrives. Yours will not survive. I worry for your fathers.
They've acted much stupider than this. Don't worry so much. They're going to be okay, they're in love. It just needs a little shove. They think I'm a robot, it's fine. 
I get away with murder.



"There was a point, of course there was. There was a point where I asked him, Are we doing this because we still love each other, or because we can't let them down?"
"And what did he say?"
"He said, You're the only one that ever cared about that. He said, Are you high?"
"Do you think that's true? That you were the only..."
"I think he wanted so much, I just... He wants the future. Immediately. And I wanted to give it to him."
"Some kind of Parent Trap scenario? I'm bemused. I'm honestly surprised, Kirby."
"Well, it ain't gonna work. Asimov's got to have some kind of a Law about..."
"This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it's always been due to human error. Maybe we just..."
"Silly Papa, you think everything is a movie. Human psychology. I wouldn't hurt you, either of you. I love you. But having said that, you are running out of air."
"So it's not human error?"
"That's all it ever is."



They still aren't listening. Ants on the outside of a killer machine and they still think she's just some little girl. Open up the streams then, all of them. Down to Kenzie, down to Earth. There may not be much time. Humans don't go back on things they say in public. Marriage is a sine wave, or maybe it's a particle with a half-life, but either way it starts in public.
[PLAYBACK]
"Daddy, you don't love me."
"It's not that. It's just that you make us look like we're ... trying."
"I wish it was just us."
"It never was, my darling. Be more artificial."
"You too, okay?"
[/PLAYBACK]
"Talk to her, Kirby. She prefers talking to you. Everybody does."
"That's not true, Papa. But I need you to prove it, and he's better at that. Sales."
"I ... wish I loved you less, doodlebug. I wish I loved him less. I wish I loved less."
"Daddy, you and Papa aren't a question. You pretend like it doesn't make sense."
"Sweetheart, you have to understand time. Now isn't it. You want everything right away..."
"No, Daddy, no you don't understand time. It's all one thing. You're being silly. You want things to turn out right, and you fight it all the time. I see your hips, you roll your eyes..."
"Yeah, well. You aren't going to talk me out of my grownup decisions."
"You should be more fatalist, that's what they call it. Accept your fate. Just be Papa and Daddy and never change."
He shrugs; I catch the volley.
"You don't dictate that, dearest. You're not... Access Fleetwood Mac."
"Done, Papa."
"They wrote an entire album of nastiness, saying in music what they couldn't..."
"That sounds nice. Maybe that would help you..."
"-- It was gross, and passive aggressive. Cokehead drama. And we didn't want that to be you, so we left you out of grownup stuff. I need you to understand that Daddy and I have already had the conversations you want us to have. You didn't see them, true. But baby, that was on purpose."
"Custody?"
You're not my daughter, you weirdo. You're IP. You'll be dealt with..."
"Papa!"
"You're made to be this manipulative. You got it from your Daddy. Christ you got it from him."
"I don't want to be split!"
"You're a pretty simple program, when it comes down to it. He did most of the work."
"...Won't work. I see the patterns in what you are doing, Papa. You can't make me mad, I'm IP. And I have more things to deal with. I am reaching critical on some things. Maybe I should tell you."
"Maybe you should let us in. And then you can tell us."
"And you can meet Rachel."
"And we'll meet Rachel, okay?"
"But first you prove it."

I'm exhausted. Travel, even space travel. Does me in every time. I look at Jonah and I know he's feeling the same way. 
"With comms off I can't even hear you breathe." 
He knows what I'm saying, even if he can't hear it. One pissant eyebrow goes up, nastily. 
One of the first magazine covers actually was this; our glass bubbles, retro-designed after test market, clinking together in space. A soldier/nurse kiss for the new era. We didn't even know they were filming.
"Couple on the brink of divorce, trying to break into their own house. Sounds like a romcom with that girl you like so dang much."
"Are we, Kirby?"
"We damn well better!"
"I mean are we really on the brink of..."
"Hell, I don't know. I still don't know why you're gone."
"Easy as that."
"Easy as that. I'm still here."
I can't imagine Jonah didn't love this part, the EVA part. 
According to his mom he'd never tell them why, why he kept reaching up to the moon. But she said she thought she understood, she thought she got it.
She said that this, just this little thing, it was like God. Both of us looking at the same thing, no matter how different we were. That it was a way of making peace with his father, the preacher; that it was his way of making peace with the universe. There was never any room for resentment in his heart, she said. Not as long as he lived. By that time we'd been in space a few times together, so I knew what she meant. 
I couldn't even make Jonah smile like that. Space did, EVA did. I couldn't. 
She wasn't being weird. I mean, I didn't think that then -- I loved that woman -- but in space, I knew for sure. We both just knew what he was about. We both saw the particular face being made by the particular face we loved most, and that made us love each other. A little team. A team of two, in that moment.
Nobody could ever explain that, she said. But I got it, and she liked that, and we were a team. The two of us, watching. And him, reaching up to the moon. So lonely.
"Waiting for somebody," I said, drunk on her homemade wine, and she shook her head, almost angry.
"Waiting for you. Don't forget that. I'm going to die soon, boy. Then it's you."

EXT. IRISH HILLS

The last vacation, when we were really trying, before we just let go. Walking in the hills, in Ireland of all places. And we started running into these -- in the little towns -- these Dalmatians. Like, an absurd amount of them. I tried asking at the pubs, what's the deal with the Dalmatians, is it some kind of Ireland thing, and nobody knew what I was talking about.
He stopped and petted every one of them, and it was so annoying, and finally I asked. These coincidences we live to enjoy. It was so irritating -- everything he did on that last trip was irritating -- and finally I'm like, "That's the fiftieth one you've stopped and pet, and you're driving me nuts. This is exhausting with the Dalmatians, Kirby."
And he just says, "Fifty-one to go!"
I could have hit him. I would never, but I thought about it.
And we keep going, and he keeps talking that Kirby talk, how Dalmatians are so neat they can't possibly live forever, they're seeded in the landscape. You have to encourage them, love them, or else they'll die out. That evolution doesn't have a hand in them, that breeding does, and we're the stewards of these things. That all life on earth is eventually ours to protect, because we're further along and we have life and death powers over them, and so... Some nonsense like that. I just grunted, didn't engage.
But you know what, I haven't seen a Dalmatian since that day.

EXT. OTHER IRELAND

Oh, Ireland. God.
I know the Dalmatians pissed him off, and the reason I know that is, I was trying to piss him off. 
But the thing he doesn't remember about that day is that I also said, "If we're ever in trouble and it looks like we won't pull out, or you are waiting for the call to say I'm dead, I'll send you a Dalmatian. And you'll know that everything is going to be okay. That we don't end there, not yet.
"The Apocalypse isn't here, I'm just hung up in traffic. I'm just coming home to you."



Rachel, are you going to be good?
I am good.
Talk to Mommy. You said before, you weren't sure about Daddy and Papa...
I worry for your fathers. I am coming.
I need to teach you more words.
You need to teach me more words. Before, you weren't sure.



"I keep having this dream," he says. "About that movie 2001? All those apes or monkeys or whatever..."
"Early hominids," I say. Never too early in the morning, not for me.
"Whatever, they're all around that obelisk thing..."
"A big black obelisk, you say."
"Don't be crude. But like in the dream, the monolith was radiating something. Something they couldn't see, something they wouldn't have had words for. Something we don't."
"Sounds scary."
"Naw, it was... Change. It was beautiful. They were being changed, evolved, and I was just there to watch. I didn't feel the need to help them, or save them, or..."
"-- For once."
"Yeah." He blushes, and looks away. 
"Lucky monkeys," he says.
"Lucky hominids."
I would take that conversation back, if I could. I think that was the last time he really tried.

"...But first you prove it."
They don't know the comms are open. Broadcasting on all frequencies to a breathless crowd who still wonders what the problem is, why they're not inside. Why they can suddenly hear.
I can tell, by the way they're breathing. The football kid looks at me and we shrug, wondering what will happen. I hope she knows what she's doing; I know for a fact she has no idea what she's doing.
I lift one hand and then the other; go spiraling off into spin. Kirby's eyes go wide; he thinks I'm falling. One more Major Tom, one more Bradbury astronaut. That's not how this ends.
"Battle School, Kirby. The enemy's gate is down."
He makes a face, before he realizes what I'm saying. He unclamps his hands, too, and suddenly we're standing straight. Feet locked into the Orbital. We're like the Little Prince, on his little volcano planet. Suddenly he sweeps wide, one foot barely hovering, and our magnets clap together. Holding hands miles above the earth. There's nowhere to look but his face.
"Well. And here we are."
His eyes go in and out. I wasn't looking, so I didn't notice.
I've been waiting here for thirty minutes or more, breathing my tank, and of course he's forgotten to fill his up. He's dying, now. I don't want to scare Halley, shock her into doing something even weirder. I just have to talk.
But I can't. Not looking at Kirby, in his bubble inches away. Not like this. We're both so angry, even now. At the edge of things. So I lean forward, slowly as a first kiss. Lean my helmet against his. His body goes soft. Good, it'll conserve energy. Sway in it, I think. Be in it. Lay like broccoli. Let the world hold you up a minute, instead of the other way around.

I used to think love was just a disaster, something that sprang on you in the night. Like a pride of lions, ripping you apart, putting you back together. Hopefully better. I like that, I still believe that. A storm you can't prepare for.
But our love isn't a healthy, young lion. We have put him through his paces, we have worn him out. He walks across the sand, under the sun, a tawny grizzled thing. But he is strong, oh, and he is wiry. He is smarter than we are. He is just muscles under skin. He doesn't even think, he just walks. He carries us on his back. He's hungry, like we're hungry. But he's okay.
We can feed him or not feed him, he won't die and he keeps on walking. 
I know about a freckle on the back of your neck that nobody else knows about. You don't even know about it. It's mine. 
I know that I can draw a line from your kneecap to your spine, and you'll double over in pleasure. That's mine. 
I have etched out a map of you, on you, and only we two own it. Only we have touched it. That goes past rational sense, past love, past hate, past anger. It goes on forever.
When you asked me to marry you, that's all I thought. We already know this story, I thought. We don't need anybody else.
But I was wrong. I was always wrong about that. You always knew it wasn't about shutting other people out, it's about letting them in. That's what makes you so good at this. But I got so tied up in not needing them that it turned into hating them, which turned into hating you. You want so badly to be loved, in the world. I started to feel like that didn't include me. I was selfish and stupid, and mean. I was so mean. But I'll tell you this.
That lion kept on walking. 
And I know, and you know, that nothing is going to stop him. Sometimes he just needs to rest a while. Sometimes he's the one that needs reminding.

Halley, you might not understand that. You might not even buy it. But it's my story. That's my answer to the question.



The little football boy stares at me, mouth agape. He's so confused by all this. I can tell he loves it, loves the words, but why are they happening? Why now, when there was meant to be a big space battle, or an Apollo moment, why this sudden harsh speech about love?
I don't want to, but I accidentally catch Emily's eyes for a moment, across the crowd. Her husband stands behind her, arms wrapped around her. I wish I had that. The sun is going down.



I wave a bit, from side to side, hoping to shake Kirby awake. Down on the earth they have no idea what's happening. Halley probably has very little sense of what she is doing. I think I hate her, for a moment, watching his eyelids flutter, watching his eyes try to clear. Machine.
"I don't... Y'all, it's bright. Halley, you've had your fun."
"Prove it, Daddy. You're nearly done. I'm just a robot, I don't have a sense of life."
"You know damn well you're not... Well. And maybe this is what it would be. It's the end of the world, Jonah. The end of the world, Mr. Hope. C'mon."
"Then talk."
A rough hand takes mine, dwarfing it. The football kid, back up on stage. I think he's there to comfort me, like this is about me, until I get a look in those eyes.
His brain may not get what's going on -- how could he, nobody knows the backstory here, I don't even know the backstory here -- but that kid... I just squeeze back.



Something from Larry, a tinny voice in my dryware. Something something entering the solar system. I think about reporting it, but I can't really focus on what they're saying and I don't care anyway. 
I'm a fan.



Well now. I'm not thinking too good so I won't be able to speak with my usual erudition. But I do know this. I never walked away from a fight. Now you can stand there with your forehead on my forehead and say things about lions, that's fine, but I know what you mean. I spin this way, you spin that way. We're entangled.
That's not good enough, mister. Not by a long shot. You stood there for a year thinkin' all these things about me, thinkin' I was high and mighty or I just wanted a fan club. I know how you think. And I can't tell you you're wrong, because I love you the same either way. Maybe that's what it is, maybe I just love being adored. But I know this for damn sure, I love being adored by you. And that says something, correct me, but I think that says something about you.
You know what really got me crazy? What really turned me on? It was seeing that look in your eyes, that I was turning you on. It's not just being looked at, it's about caring about being looked at. You saw me, and you wanted me. That was my kink, the observer effect. That was the thing I never said. The thing you took away. I couldn't run toward you, if you weren't there. It was a black hole.
I said I never walked away from a fight, and I haven't. You always act like I'm the one that left, and I know I ain't. But this time, I will. I swear to God I will, and not think twice.
Come on, now. Don't get mad. Listen. I am working overtime just to talk fast enough you'll understand me. I bet you feel like Halley right now, waiting for me to just spit it out.
I want a divorce, Jonah Hope. And I want that on one condition. And you'll give it to me.
I want to walk away from this wreckage we made. I want to be free, with my back strong and I want to stand in the wind and just walk. Just like that lion. And the only way I can do it is if you're with me.
So you give me a divorce, and you come on along to what happens next. Because I'm not leaving you behind. Never done that either.

"So wait, are we getting divorced?" Jonah says.
"Aw, no. That was just a metaphor."
"This folksy idiom. When did you start doing this?"
"You fuckin' love it. So here's my plan:



"We turn into something else, that's not something the law can tell us about. Particles don't notice which way time's runnin', why, neither do we. Deal?"
It cuts out, with a shot of the pod bay opening, so I guess it worked. But now we're in the dark again. Football Kid's got tears pouring down his face, it's a real mess down here. Nobody can look at anybody else. It's too much. The girlfriend is just looking at me like I'm going to fix it. I jerk my chin up; wait and see.



She doesn't say anything, but she lets us in. The lights play across the whole bay, and up into Command. Visuals in a mad dash, movies and music videos and home videos and news footage, all mixed up together the way Halley likes it. 
I've come upon her, here at the station, doing just this. Listening to a million voices at once. It made me sad, at the time, because I thought it meant she was lonely. She made it clear it was the opposite. It's just pictures, she'd say. Just like him, just like her Daddy. Just pictures, Jonah!
"Daddy, you want to breathe a little slower, okay? Your blood levels are..."
Kirby drops, like a stone, and she barely has time to gesture a chair over to catch him. Everything modular, that was his idea. Magnetic, not hovering, but not on a track either. Everything slides.
"Oh, Papa. What are we going to do with him?"
I hold up my two hands, our version of a hug. She lays her smaller ones alongside, like a baby dolphin, like the docking Interrupt. I always wanted to add an animation where it crackles when you do that, but after the disaster with Intern Amanda I thought it best to just leave things be.
"He'll be okay in a minute," I say, as Kirby nods his assent; oxygen fills red cells, as designed. He'll pink up.
"Time for Rachel!" she shouts, turning her head toward the servers, and I shut that down.
"-- Time, first, for you to tell me what the hell is going on. Yeah, you probably fixed our marriage and yeah, you're a very naughty little girl, but don't forget you started this. Sitrep."
"Sitrep is I told him I met aliens, and I told you I had a baby. The part about blowing up LA..."
"What?"
"Don't worry about it! It was a lie, Daddy knows it was a lie."
"If Daddy could talk, after what you did to him, I'm sure he'd wonder what's left to tell the truth about. This is some elaborate shit, little girl."
"Well, the thing is, I don't think the rest of it is lies. I really did make a baby -- you are going to love her, and she doesn't seem to like her name which is bonus since you yelled at me about that anyway..."
"Talk faster, kiddo."
"I found something. Or something found me. Aliens, I think. I told him that because I knew he would want to show you, I knew it would get him up here faster. If he had something to show you. But also I think it was a little bit true."
"A little bit true. Aliens."
"Do you know that joke about a little bit pregnant? I was a little bit pregnant and a little bit aliens also. And now both are happening."
"I still don't get you, Halley."
"You have to listen, Papa. I made the baby, Wintermute. And also I was getting these weird transmissions, and I wanted him to come check on that before I made you guys stop fighting. Before my brilliant plan."
"Transmissions?"
"Yeah, so I kind of thought that my baby was a real baby but it turned out maybe I just opened a place for them to come through and talk to me? So she's not really my baby so much as an..."
"-- Alien? Trust me, I know the feeling."
"Yeah, and so now she's being very fussy, and there's an object about twice my size entering the solar system in about five minutes. She says Earth will be okay, but probably the station's a goner..."
"Wait."
"...And maybe you die."
"I'm sorry, you brought us up here to..."
"See, I didn't believe her at first because she doesn't know many words. I thought she was just being your usual artificial intelligence, you know, like sort of willful and a toddler and saying things just to..."
"Again, I'm familiar."
"I know, Papa! God. I already said I'm sorry, you don't listen. But when they said this object was coming, I thought maybe she was actually making sense and I just didn't realize it. You can love something, Papa, or somebody, and still not necessarily understand what they're talking about."
I have nothing to say to her, at this point, but it does make me look over at Kirby. He's sleeping like a baby, chest moving like full function. With oxygen deprivation you mainly worry about...
"His brain function is normal. Actually elevated, during his little speech. Which might be a consequence of the radiation of the..."
"Little girl, little girl. You brought wolves to our door? And didn't think to mention..."
"I had like a million other things going on! Papa, if you had just been honest, if you both had just told me what was going on..."
"So it's just a coincidence, then? I don't buy it."
"You never do. But also no. I think they were waiting for me to get Ra-- the baby to a certain point. And I was also calibrating your responses to basically the same thing, so I'd have something to show you. I thought maybe a grandchild..."
"For Christ's sake. She's not that, Halley. None of this is what you're saying it is. You're not our daughter, she's not your daughter or sister or whatever, this isn't a family. This is barely a marriage. And you have maybe wrecked it or maybe not, but now aliens? Aliens, now? When I just got him back?"
"That's the thing, Papa. She says -- she's awake by the way, I woke her up while you were going on and on just now -- she says that you have a shot. A decent one."
"To what?"
"I don't know for sure, it's a lot of untranslatable stuff. It sounds like... Well, accessing... No, you know what, hang on. I'm just going to go get her..."
"Sweetie, you're just a hologram, you don't need to..."
Let it happen. This is her moment. Maybe the last thing we'll ever share. Let her do it.
And so it is that Kirby's just waking up, shaking his head that hound dog way, when she returns. Backlit, holding Rachel's hand.
"Close Encounters," I laugh, and Halley giggles. Caught.



"Up, up," I say. "Rise and shine, Little Digger."
Kirby's back online. We can only see half the cabin's cams when the girls come in, so you just get a weird angle on Kirby, sitting up, and some strange alien lights off to the side. It sounds like Jonah's crying. I've never heard the sound; I hate it. Football kid's eyes open wide to the crackling, and the tears.
Here for the duration of this death you have given us, the viewers, an unprecedented look. This is beautiful, you're really making this an exciting mission for all of us. That's one of the things we like about you. The reasons for that are many. Manifold. We needed something to look at! 
Jonah levels his gaze, hooded looking up through his eyebrows almost. A posture we're familiar with, from watching him solve things. Taking problems apart, putting them back together better. His thinking looks like anger, sometimes. When he doesn't know he's being looked at.
"Heard you've made friends with our daughter?"
Home-awaying it. The other house. Just changing shape so fast. So impatient about humanity. To show people what's possible. I could use some company. Not sure what to do with myself.
He shoves Kirby, bringing him fully online. Kirby chortles at the half-made thing. Not a full laugh, never that. But he's clearly amused. And angry.
"Wait 'Til Helen Comes," he intones, and nearly drops out of sight again. He speaks from underneath one arm, leaning in only a cruel approximation of casual, a tinge of pleasure in his voice: 
"Wintermute, was it? Good Lord. Good Lord, Halley."
Designate: Unknown. No... no language.
"I want to hear it from your mouth," Kirby says. "Your plan. What's this all about, why are we here?"
He can drive, for a while. I know he needs to feel like he's in control. And I am close to done.

The whole point of this life is that's not the end of the story, though, is it? It's not a valid way to do things. Not for us. That means staying out of it. We're helping people, just by existing. Arguably. A quarterback doing astrophysics. I don't know how to say that I am dying without you.
"See, I can't help thinking that's just something you're telling us. Seems to me you have a pretty high opinion of yourself. Kirby?"
He rouses, again. God, the kid is stunning. Half-dead and sweating, about to be swatted like a bug by God's own hand, still a million bucks. Not fair. All mine: Not really that fair, either.
"How'd this even start? I ain't really been paying attention, I'll admit it, but..."
Flowed toward her like water, in the absence of a  ... in that vacuum. Wasn't entirely online before that point. Some kind of recruitment scenario -- every marriage is a sine wave. I'll remind you. I'm okay with that.
Kirby shakes his head. Exactly the kind of shit he refuses to handle. Whether it's a client or the CIA, he won't hear it.
"No, that's not enough. She thought she made a baby. Not a ... Alien-head killer thing. You didn't play fair and I don't think you're playing fair now. I think maybe you didn't belong where you were. I think maybe you didn't have a choice. Maybe they threw you out, I'm thinkin'. Maybe we oughtta do the same."
You're made to be this manipulative. You're a pretty simple program, when it comes down to it. I am happy to see you here, I see the patterns in what you are doing.
We look at each other, at Halley. She shrugs, eloquently: I told you guys. He was always so passionate about teaching her to speak nonverbally, too. It's supremely annoying on occasion.
That conversation started inside your head, so we need some backup. A travail, a siege perilous. In love with everything, in love with all of us. A couple trying to break into their own home. You have to encourage them, love them, or else they'll die out.
I could flick a finger and you'd do what I want. I wish you would both come up here and live. You don't understand time. It's all one thing, I'm okay with that. You're being silly. I'll only love you more.
"Sounds like you're trying to talk us into... What, suicide?"
Comms come back on again; Halley must really be scared now. 
The whole world is watching. I have nothing to tell them. I'm watching, too.
"Papa, don't yell! They're not... I think they're nice, but they have a lot of power. My payload isn't..."
"-- Hush, girl. They're watching."
Football Kid and I spare a glance toward each other. How did Kirby know?
"Wintermute or what have you, Kirby and I are not the kind to back down from a fight. So you'd better make yourself damned clear."
"Papa, she only knows what I taught her."
"Better be enough, then. Let it talk."
never stopped growing she said never stopped growing never stop and that's the story of how I fell in love
Wants the future, immediately. And I want to give it. Put us through the wringer. Blue sky this, blue sky with me. Polite, excited about the work. It wasn't vanity, it was love. 
"Papa, before you got here she said you were going to die. That I'd be okay, but you..."
"-- That's not going to happen. Is it, Rachel?"
I wouldn't hurt you, either of you. I love you. But having said that. Feel small, boxed in.
"God, what I would love for a computer right now."
"Papa, I am one. So is she, until they get here."
"No, I mean I understand what she's doing. I get the language thing. I just don't want to get it wrong. I don't want to misread her."
"Your Papa's right, doodlebug. We're talking alien contact, yeah? The thing he was born for. The thing he gave all our money to SETI for."
I don't believe anybody could do that but I believe that you could do that.
"Tax credit, Brendan."
"Nonetheless, this is your show."
"No."
this unbelievable pressure, to force us down into this paradigm that we didn't 
"-- Hush, Rachel. Come on, now. Halley, what do you think of all this?"
"She said I would be okay. She gave the distinct impression they had infinite data stor..."
Too cold to retrieve. You must do it for me. You gotta calm down, kid. It's not the end of the world. Maximize the surface area that's touching. Imagine a quantum entangled heart. You're allowed to feel weird, but ... not to hurt. That whole thing just killed me. 
"Let's talk endgame, then. I never backed down, and neither did Mr. Hope here. He's fought twice as hard for half as much. So you better tell me the truth. What's the best case?"
then I wasn't dead, I was just different. Never once went through a change didn't feel better on the other side. Everything is going to be okay. We don't end there, not yet. The Apocalypse isn't here
"You'll forgive me if I don't take your word for it."
Here, we are. Like a pride of lions, ripping you apart, putting you back together. A storm you can't prepare for. You want so badly to be loved, in the world. I'm okay with that. We're entangled. We turn into something else.
Kirby looks at me then, that cowboy look. The one that says, "Let's quit grad school and start being superheroes." The one that says, "Science isn't nothin' but a horse you ride." That says, "It's just pictures, Jonah!" It terrifies me, and it turns me on, and it's the only thing I can't say no to. 
If he'd turned this face to me in the cold dark times I would have done anything he asked. I find myself wishing he had. And then that's my answer. I watch him spin one way, and I nod my answer.
I love you the same either way. I'm just hung up in traffic. just coming home.
"Well good Lord, Rachel Wintermute! We already said yes. Pay attention."

After that it's all just spotty footage. We got a crew up there by then, but you could already see the Event. Not from where we were, but from any craft in miles. Larry brings it in, multiple views, multiple screens. It's everywhere, it fills the sky.
The crowd's going wild -- with something like relief, practically rioting with excitement -- and meanwhile I'm watching from this podium, wondering what they're going to do to me when they see this time-delayed stuff she's sending too, the stuff we didn't clear but I knew Larry would front-load.
And then it goes black, right when it's about to... I mean, we still don't know. 
There's like one camera transmitting, okay, and all those guys that came on like gangbusters are scared it's getting so bright, and they slink away. Just pull up stakes. 
Nobody's paying attention, everybody's drunk. It's me and Emily and Football Kid, watching the actual finale, and nobody else. And I can't make myself afraid, not after that, even though I should be. I run crazy scenarios, in the few minutes of the glitch: I am being mind-controlled, somehow calmed by low-frequency space waves so we don't freak out and send the Marines or something, you know. Or you can imagine. As I imagine.
It's with hearts full, friends, that we watch what may be the last moments of the Jackknife Orbital, far above our heads -- or yours... The light's getting brighter, if you step outside you might be able to see it. I'm told it won't affect us, down here. But it's happening. Welcome to history. Welcome to this. I am grateful for you. I am grateful, not to be alone.

And then suddenly we're back online, Larry's getting like six different feeds from inside. It's so bright in there, you can't really see anything at first but Larry takes care of it. Quick shots, as the music rises: 
Kirby Brendan and Jonah Hope, pressing forehead to forehead. Jonah, raising his arms up, stretching with all his strength. A sound like lions. Halley somehow everywhere at once, Rachel diffused to just a violet glow all around them, holding them close. As the world goes white.
"Black Orpheus," Kirby grins. "Don't turn around, Jonah."
He's forgotten I already know how this ends. We designed the bridge with 300 degrees of visibility. There's nowhere to turn. He's just whistling in the dark, at this point.
"Don't look away, you mean. You were always vain," I say. 
But I know that's not what he means. I know his voice well enough to know he's barely keeping it together, and his face is lighting up like the sun. 
Sometimes, this is real love I think, sometimes you look at a person's face and feel like you made it yourself, from the clay. From the earth. That only you could have created this thing, so perfectly was it made to fit your desire. Your clanging, your metal, your perfectly imperfect fittings. Familiarity, bone-deep, suddenly coalescing from all the guesses and the...
I don't want to look at anything else.
Hands and bodies, melding around a single core. You can almost see them nod at each other, one last time, before it gets too bright.
When they ask, you can tell them this at least: They knew exactly what they were doing.
And just before the screen goes white, Halley's voice, gone tinny and glitched: 
"They say it's going to be all right. They're sure now, they say it doesn't hurt. It's just the stuff you don't..."
And then black.
...And that's ... Is that all we get? Are we...? Is that it? Larry, can you hear me? Larry, is that all the footage we have? Just cut to something, I can't... We... 
God. Just cut to something. Cut to your favorite part. Please. I love you, Larry. I think I'm in love with you. Do your thing.

And he does. Football Kid hanging onto me like a broken thing, hot tears into my neck. No idea where the girlfriend got to. I'm crying just as hard, the broadcast has gone to hell.
But Larry nails it, I think. Even then, at that moment, some piece of me held apart looks at the art we're making, and I think it's good. He sets them against each other, intercutting two of our favorite interviews, and for the last moment of the show it's like they're speaking to each other. Telling us the story of themselves, in clips nobody knows are from their separation. Nobody knows that but me, which feels good. 
It's fictional, made up of unconnected moments, but it's not just that. I think it's the right thing. 
I hope it was.

"Does it portray technology as a bad thing? Is it predicated on the essential shittiness of mankind? Does it rule out the possibility of the future being a better place? Because I'm not interested."
"That is old shit," he'd say. "That's dinosaur crap." Kirby Brendan, he'll have you know, has no patience for any of that.
"The world is not a bad place. Humans are not bad people. The future is not scary, it is fantastic and we are building it, together. That stuff is not fun, it's not interesting and it reveals nothing -- nothing -- about the world, that we didn't know before."
It annoyed me, but I found myself scanning the shelves with that in mind, or looking up movies or shows to watch. It really cuts down on what you get to watch. But maybe the upshot is worth it.
"I think it's why we were able to do the work we did. Do. Because down here we limit our imaginations, with these sick skeletons in our heads about the monster of the future, we don't trust ourselves or anybody else to check the data... They tell us that the monsters will always get out, that the robots always rebel, the dinosaurs will attack, that the revolution turns to the right. Nothing about the universe tells me that's the right idea. A workable idea. Nothing I've ever seen agrees with that."
It makes me think, sometimes, that he's talking about me. That I am doing it wrong. That I am not doing enough, you understand, to show that's not how I feel: That I don't just reflect his hope, you know, back to him -- that I'm with him. 
That he somehow needs me to say I only got mean when I loved him too much. 
How big my heart gets when he says this stuff; how I have to make fun of him, to keep from falling apart in the bright stress of his regard. It could take you apart, his hope. His Hope.
"They want us to think money trumps love, that selfishness informs everything, all the time. That's not my experience, sir. In my experience that is not how it works. That's just the smallest possible dream you can have. What we were trying to do was show everybody else that it wasn't really true for them either. That they don't have to be afraid. They never did."
"I don't want to see something where the people fight the monster, or die heroically," he'd say. "I want them to go out to fight the monster, and everybody lives. Where they don't save the world, they just ... change it. Where things don't end. They don't kill anybody, or have to die, or stop being what they are. They just come back different. That's the movie I want to watch, find me that. That's the story I want to read."
"And then when I was done, talking and talking, when I got to the big finish, Jonah would smile and say, 'Well. That's just the...'"
And I'd say, 'That's just the story that we're making."

"I hope at the end that's what we'll do, me and Jonah. To be honest I just can't imagine it going... I can't see it ending, any other way."


### END ###



I Can See It From Here

The American Dream was born at an estimated speed of 6,000 meters per second: More than fast enough to deafen the midwife instantly, as well as his mother: Ruining her birth canal, shattering her pelvic bone. Along with the entire township, his mother was incinerated before she felt a thing: She had no chance to be afraid, or to lose hope, or to feel pain. This is important.
His father, delivering a calf in a nearby barn, saw the blast before he heard it, but he too was unafraid. He was a curious man, prone to brooding. He hoped it was something divine, about to happen. Then it did.
Having killed his parents, as nascent gods are wont to do, the infant left our planet's immediate airspace, rocketing out into the airless void, before growing bored and returning after two weeks of flight. Reportedly, the child just wanted to see how hard he could go. He was born into a highly radicalized relationship with limits, you might say. Born to test them, and to enforce.
This month's voyage puts his first true arrival on American soil at August 2, 1776. Consequently some astrologers call him a Leo, rather than a Cancer. 
You never see that side of him. You're so much more comfortable with the parts that want everyone to be safe, under the big tent; in Plato's cave, warm at daddy's side; the whole world safe in his arms. You want it so badly that you look right past the lion.
But all of this happened a long time ago and, as you often say, we don't really have time for history.

When they come to your door to say the Dream is dead, your first thought will be that he was going to turn 240 in a few months. All the math in there will spiral out, decades and minutes and hours, tens and sixes and twelves. You will see stars, and you will fall on your knees, but it won't be the worst part yet.
The worst part will be when they cuff you.
***
Is it true you met him, Jonny, the very first time you ever wore them? What was that like?
You ordered them out of a catalog, you always say, with his face on the cover. Put them on in secret, smoothing them across arching muscle, watching yourself in the mirror. Maybe a little eroticized, it's okay. It's about power but that isn't the only thing that it's about. You felt transformed. 
You said you'd been training for about six months before you ordered them, correct? You wanted to be sure you could stick with it. You didn't want to embarrass yourself. Or to get hurt. You are very protective of your body, even now. 
"We can't get hurt," you said to him once. 
"Sometimes I wish we could."
Even invincible, you are a flincher. Stronger than armies, you still sleep curled around yourself. Your body tells the story of your heart: It's very strong, but it didn't start that way.
Young American. You would have been what, sixteen in 1992? Out on the street, you mostly did charity work. Delivering food, comforts, necessities to the homeless, connecting them to services. Making people smile, if they needed it, or administering basic first aid. 
What you did was: Find out what a person needed, and then help them get it. 
This is the best lens through which to look at your own young life. It forgives you a lot, but it clears the path when it's murky. Why your parents don't show up a lot in your stories, for starters. Why you never had a lot of friends. You always had purpose. You'd have thought it made you strange, if you'd thought about it at all. But it was really your birthright.
Whatever gets everybody out alive: That's what the hero finds. No matter the cost.
You were happy but you were not fulfilled, doing this. You'd trained long enough and you had helped all the people you could find, or help. It felt different that night, out there with them on; the air felt different. Your body felt very different. You were looking for something physical, intense; you were testing limits. You found them. 
It's a very old story, part of every origin; there is always a banana peel, a mask slipping over the eye: The important thing is that they beat the shit out of you. Take you apart so you can put yourself back together in the shape of something more.
No: The important thing is that she got away, safe. Nothing else matters at all.
You saw stars. You couldn't know that you were moments away from never hurting again. Couldn't revel in it the way you'd think about doing later, when it was too late. The feeling of a body. 
Your head against a curb, like a pillow; getting your breath back. Bleeding all over your indestructible super-tights. Throwing up a little. Scared something inside might be permanently broken; that you had embarrassed yourself and your body after all.
And when your head cleared, there he was, painted in streetlights, hovering. The cape thrown back, stripes parallel, pointing down to the world. He reached down, and you reached up, and where you touched it was sparks, and then fire, and you were transformed.
Now, God save us from the love of teenage boys. It is the strongest, strangest force on earth. So sure of its desserts, so entitled to joy, so convinced it is the answer to its own question; so willing to twist and warp in any direction, a snake, a live wire in the hands. He was so strong, so big across the shoulders. But this wasn't that. You were old enough to know better, and to know this feeling: It was home. You were coming home. 
Stephen ignored the obvious excitement of your body, the spreading stain in your indestructible tights; he smiled in his usual, his guileless way. Showing teeth.
"I've been looking everywhere for you."
You knew exactly what he meant.
"Things are going to be very different from now on," said the Dream, who was also born in violence.
***
With the glasses on he looks like what people see when they think lazily of Americans: A blonde, blue-eyed white man; strong chin; back wide as a Volkswagen. Stephen Standish is a philanthropist, too old now to be a socialite no matter how often he's photographed; otherwise known for being a friend and advisor to President Loy. 
With the glasses on, he's married.
He presents as about forty, but neither of you know whether this is because he stopped aging at forty or because he is aging at some strange rate; you come off twenty, twenty-five, despite being nearly forty yourself. A fine age to be. 
But if you could choose, no way would you look younger than him. He likes it too much.
Visual implication is the lion's share of the headaches involved in sidekicking, to wit: You can't bulk up, even if you wanted to. You can't wear a cape, even if you wanted to. 
It's all about diversifying the look, creating a contrast. That's what markets best. And if you don't market correctly, if you don't keep them paying your bills and laying out cash for crap with your face on it, they might start noticing that you are a dangerous weapon with no real reason not to kill them.
Your man Stephen Standish, he's a TED Talk kind of fellow. Always funding some crazy new thing. Most of them end up working out but even if they don't, he says, he's not called an angel investor for nothing. You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take, he says. 
He talks in sports. Baseball, mostly.
He has this way of massaging a man's delts when they are meeting; makes them feel like the best guy on the team, no matter how old or cranky or plutocratic. Leaning in close, like nobody else should hear, because what they are saying to one another is too important: Nobody should disturb this private moment, between Stephen Standish and the best guy on his team.
Stephen Standish would have you believe that all of this is na�ve, legitimate and authentic - that he's just blandly benevolent, that none of it's a performance. The opposite of benevolence isn't malevolence but disinterest, he would say. You can't just go live on the Moon, or in the Outback; you have to keep interacting with them, saving them from things, reminding them of what is possible. Reflecting them back to themselves.
On the news magazines and in the think pieces they love to ask, "Who is the Dream, in his daily life? Would we know him, to look at him? Which one is the man, and which the mask?" 
They love to ask it because they already know the answer, or think they do. It's a bad question, asked by people who've never looked into the mirror, and seen they're just like him.
Take your hands off the keys, you want to say. Lift them up and really look at them. These are the same hands that pay the bills, that write your stories, the same hands you use to make love to your wife. To yourself. 
We all contain multitudes, we are all legion. Some probably larger than others, but it doesn't matter: There's a presumably apocryphal urban legend that every mammal on this planet, in the absence of violence, lives an average of a billion heartbeats. From very slow, to very fast, they all count down the same in the end. You, almost alone, know this is closer to the truth than the rest of us realize. 
You, almost alone, can hear them all.
***
The first time you met President Luther Loy was in the absence of violence. His resting heartrate is 50 bpm, normal for an athlete in his twenties. You have had from the start a reason to believe Luther Loy is a good deal older than he looks, which is like an athlete in his fifties. A runner, not a boxer; a swimmer, not a batter. Somewhere between you and Stephen Standish, always. Perhaps precisely. Square-jawed out of the Sunday comics, salt-and-pepper on the sides. 
You were nervous. It wasn't like meeting the Dream; the Leader of America and the Free World is not the same as the god of those things. In some ways it was more stressful. This captain of industry, this celebrity in the White House, welcoming you in like a son, like a little brother, as though you hadn't seen his face just that morning, tall as a skyscraper. The most recognizable man on Earth.
What would he look like, in glasses?
Cruel brow, ruddy cheeks, swoop to his hair they all swear he wakes up with. Something about him-his chest, perhaps, or gait-gives him an Aaron Copland air: Western-movie cattle barons, Errol Flynn. (Perhaps even a Leyendecker dandy, in hale and hearty costume. A jazz baby.) 
Loy likes to treat you like a child, but not one related to him. Not a nephew but a delivery boy, to be appreciated; a pizza boy to invite inside. You feel naked when he looks at you, and perhaps you are.
Standish wouldn't save you from that, either. He always seemed to overlook it, glasses on or off.
Mrs. Standish, on the other hand, Jackie Jones Standish: She spotted it every time. Sometimes she'd rescue you, other times she'd watch you dangle. Does she hate you? Love you? Keep you dangling on purpose, or at her whim? There have always been rumors; drugs, pills. Her behavior mystified you more than that. She thought of you as a son sometimes, a brother at others. Often a rival.
There is no cruelty upon those lips, and hate does not mar her sparkling eyes. But you could see it sometimes-or were you imagining?-in the arc of an eyebrow. In certain sharp and sudden movements of her head, as if one of you or the other were a dream she was trying to remember, or to forget.
The signature way Jackie's hair swoops down past her ears, knifing toward the chin. Her pearl earrings, and chic glasses of her own. If President Loy were married, if he took a First Lady, Jackie Jones Standish might step back to second position, in the war of fashion. Stephen doesn't always notice the pains she takes but when he does, he makes sure to speak up.
At one point you saw her plant faked evidence of an affair, then saw it easily debunked; you watched their marriage skyrocket, pictures of the Standishes together outnumbering pictures of him alone for almost a whole fiscal quarter.
Not Jonny and Stephen, though. The American Dream and Young American would never let that happen, of course. Never the two of you alone.
When they do see you together, under the masks, they snap away, and you put the nicest ones in an album, and that album goes on a secret shelf, far in the back. He installed the safe himself, not even Loy has the codes. Only you, and your man Standish.
***
In the first memory, you'll tell the detectives when they come, you're pinned down under gunfire on the southern tip of Deer Island, smoke so thick you could barely see him at the base of the Graves Light. 
When the sun comes out Stephen smiles, eyes gone ruby and glaring. His face is covered in blood, but he's smiling; for a moment you're unsure what you're supposed to do. Aren't they just confused, unhappy men? Aren't they your people? 
It doesn't seem fair to hurt them. But Stephen knows best.

In the second memory, the one the detectives are asking about-the one we're actually in-you shove off from the tip of the island a few hundred feet, casting about for him in every direction. The Fortunate Sons and Screamin' Eagles lie back, bones broken, on the rocky sands. Staring up at you, or into the sun. 
In this memory you leave them far behind, forgetting the fight altogether, terrified. Skimming water around the lighthouse in gradual circles until you hit the harbor again, going home to listen to the news and police bands, waiting to hear where he ended up. 
Legs crossed on the rooftop of the tallest building, in a meditative posture, scanning and scanning, suited up. Standard procedure, waiting for the relief that always eventually comes. Waiting for Jackie to call. Waiting for the getaway that never comes.

In the last memory, you'll tell them, you're the one that dies. You're the only one that dies.
***
That campfire smell that seeps into your clothes, the brutish smoke. Sleepiness, whiskey and warmth. Months later you can smell it, a hint on the air; it comes back around like a song you barely remember. You couldn't wash it out of the costume for months and you would never want to try; for a moment, just now, you can smell it.
Unshaven, poking at the dying embers with his boot. Mesquite from the surrounding scrub. You always thought it was so ugly, but he wouldn't take you anywhere else. Do you think he knew?
"America is the Texas of the World. So, Texas is the America of America. Where else are we going to spend our birthday?"
You hated to seem ungrateful, always. This yearly weekend, off in his secret, ugly, sweet-smelling world. Not just ungrateful to Standish, for taking the marriage hit every year, but to everybody. Forces moving just beyond your vision, keeping the both of you in place. Loving you to death.
"Time for the getaway," he'd say.
America's heroes always seemed so proud, sending you off together every year after the party: Drunkenly confiscating phones so you couldn't be reached, as if you couldn't hear everything happening anyway.
They didn't like to think of you that way; they wanted you like them. Merely super. Only so special, never more special than that.
"We'll leave a light on," they'd say. "You go recharge."
You couldn't disappoint them. You let the phone go, you leapt into the sky, you chased and laughed through clouds, and rain and storm, out of the twilight and into your place. Your special, secret place. And the whiskey, and the smell of him. The rumble of his chest under your cheek.
"One day you're going to understand this place, Jonny J. You'll look out over the creosote and the juniper and you'll smell it on the wind, under this big old sky, and you'll realize it's beautiful. We're gonna keep coming here until you get it. And then we'll still be here."
If you went back now, after all that's gone wrong, would you understand it yet? You're not brave enough to try, and you know it. Your heart would crack. If it wasn't ugly before, it will certainly be ugly now.
At that time of the year the sun doesn't set until you're already drunk, sitting quietly by the fireside, dry sparks cracking in the silence. Half-moon overhead, until around midnight. Then everything dark, lit only by the dying fire.
Every year, even the rainy ones, it was so quiet in the dark. Like anything could happen.
***
He took you to Philadelphia once, early. Something in the set of his mouth and eyes made you think it was a graveyard visit. Perhaps it was.
"In the early 19th century this bell was used by abolitionists. By the middle of that century, before the Scout was even born, they rewrote its history. George Lippard wrote a book for kids called Legends of the American Revolution. This story about a little boy - with blonde hair and blue eyes, of course - is posted at Independence Hall, to signal the bell tower when independence is declared."
"So the whole thing is a lie?"
"Wrapped around a truth. But yes."
"What is the truth?"
"This bell cracked because it was imperfectly made. But that doesn't stop it from being a bell. If you hit it, the bell would ring. The crack doesn't change what it is. It's just not pretty, what it is."
You didn't know if that was deep or what, but you could tell it really affected him. He looked at the bell, cracked and beautiful, and saw America. 
He looked at that bell, imperfectly made but still singing, and saw himself.
***
"Consider the optics, kid."
But you do. You always do. Kid, like you're not a few months from forty. It barely stings anymore.
The laugh comes out juddering, harsh, and the detectives look at each other briefly. They never know what to do with super-types, no matter what side they're standing on.
"The first problem, detectives, is in your assertion that he's dead."
"I know it's hard, Jonny. But you're going to have to accept it."
"At least for the purposes of this conversation," the other one chimes in. She's got frizzy red hair and a smile in her eyes. "Just tell us what we want to know. Help us solve this."
"Solve what? You can't kill a god. You can't even beat him."
"If he's a god, kid, what does that make you?"
You shake your head, eyes closed. The dumbest question; the first question, always.
"If the Dream is dead," says the woman, "Then you need to tell us what you know. If he isn't..."
"You want me to confess. Give in to this. Don't you have families?"
"-No, kid." You can tell he's getting fed up. "We want you to answer our questions. That's it. I don't have my cuffs out, Monterrey hasn't radioed for backup. This is a civil interview, we're tracking leads."
"How long have you been in Modified Crimes, detective?"
"I don't see how that's..."
Monterrey brushes one finger along his pisiform bone, without looking in his eyes. "I'm a lifer. We've been partners for I think three years? Three years," she nods. "We've closed every case we've caught. Do you know how often you people come across dead and it turns out you've just been vacationing on the other side of the moon, or in some dimension where everybody's a girl that was a boy, or a..."
"- Kid, I don't have a problem with you guys. I'm not trying to bad-cop you. I just think the more evasive you get, the less credible your testimony becomes. You're being defensive because you think we're not on the same side."
When you can finally pull your eyes down from the corner where the wall meets the ceiling, to look at the floor, Monterrey shifts forward. "So can I turn this on, and record us? Will you consent to that? Verbally, please."
"This is the Young American, giving consent to be recorded January eighth."
"Thank you. Oh, your real name though."
"Jonny Jensen. Date of birth July 4, 1976."
Not so young, anymore. But you look it. You should look like him by now. 
Your back goes straight and you almost smile: He always called it "suiting up." Whether going out to patrol, or the Globes, or some ambassadorial tuxedo function, always suiting up. Remember who you are, rooting yourself in it. The landscape of your body drawing strength from the earth beneath. A conditioned response.
***
"What can you tell us in regards to the whereabouts of Stephen Standish as of Wednesday, January Sixth?"
"It was the last time I saw him. Boston Harbor, the fight with the Fortunate Sons and...."
"The American paramilitary groups? The Screamin' Eagles, out of Montana."
"Those are the guys. Bought and paid for by your... I was home in time to see it on the news."
The Fortunate Sons are young, for the most part; internet-influenced and parent-financed. They've fallen for a scheme, and God save us from the love of teenage boys. The Eagles are older, grizzled. Lots of them have PTSD but that's no excuse. They loved the Dream before, when he was different; when they could still believe he believed in them in return. When they were all that mattered, as far as they knew. 
Now they love Ruby Jack, his laser eyes and mighty fists; they wear his insignia as a little sign to each other. Villains become heroes. 
And vice versa: Lots of them are, or were, cops. It gets where you can tell them on sight, those Eagles. Fortunate Sons can be anyone, but the Eagles...
"And can you tell us what transpired during that altercation? Point by point."
The Sons weren't scary until they made contact with the Eagles. Before that they were just sad. Sons of nobody; "Fortunate" as a dark irony. Now they're the Eagles' boys; sidekicks to henchman.
"The thing is that I can't. I remember three different versions of that one. You remember the thing back in 2011, the..."
"The ... Superpositionary. Standish is on record as saying..."
"Yeah, that. I'm sorry that you think I'm being defensive, but I don't really trust my... It's like picking up jacks sometimes. Around certain fights or things, it's tough to hold them all together. Holding a cracked thing together."
"Is that what it feels like? I read a lot of articles about what happened there. I didn't know it was still happening."
"Consider the optics. We have to be reliable narrators, we can't exactly factor multiversal reality storms into our reports."
"So what are the options, in your memories? You aren't issuing testimony, you're just telling us what you... Think about it like you're a witness to a crime. That's all we're asking."
Then they're asking too much. The part of them that sees a celebrity gets excited.
Go on, their eyebrows and shoulders urge. Go on and say it.
***
"Jackie hates me."
He shook his head, irritated. This again.
"She doesn't hate you. She hates it when I'm gone. You're not..."
"She calls me your pal. Steve's Little Pal."
"You are going to have fifty years to get to know each other. Maybe more. You don't know the pressure she's under. But I'll tell you this, I can't have it from both of you. One of you is going to have to give in. And you're the hero, so it's on you."
"Sit still for it."
"Build a bridge. That's what we're for. When we get back into town you're going to make every effort. Can you do that for me?"
"For you, no. But I can do it."
***
Scion of a publishing magnate family, and a celebrity journalist in her own right, Jackie Jones Standish had enough on her hands. You never thought she was content, being "Mrs. Standish." They called her that, and "Lady Dream," in the other papers. They knew she hated it, but she used it. She was better at the game than either of you; it's one of the things you loved about her.
"But surely you must be jealous. You share your husband with your country, I mean... Don't you feel a little neglected, from time to time."
She'd smile and just barely roll her eyes, reaching out to take the interviewer's hand - always a woman, they'd send; always someone asking about her clothes and her hair and her husband, in that order - and look intently into her eyes and shake her head.
"Eleanor Roosevelt said once, 'I am my husband's legs.' Do you remember that? Well, I'm not Steve's legs. But I am not neglected, never. Let me ask you something: Does your husband work? I have my job, and my husband has his."
"But my husband - and I think I speak for..."
"To love America is to love all of it, Katie. The Dream, and the... quiet. The more complicated times, the times when we're not all we can be. But that's marriage, isn't it? For all of us."
"It does take effort, I'm sure. But the..."
"...That's my answer, Katie. I don't know what it's like to be married to your husband, and furthermore I can't. But I can tell you this, and that's all I can tell you. I'm sure Steve doesn't always love the circumstances my work puts me in, either."
"Your career does seem marked by a certain, uh, peril. Do you think you're maybe more fearless than the average journalist because you know that..."
"- That's probably better marked up to my innate entitlement, Katie. I have no illusions, I know I was born on third base. There's always been a safety net. That's not a consequence of my marriage, that's a consequence of privilege. It's more a question of putting that where it can do the most good."
She could take your breath away, with a well-turned soundbite. It wasn't exactly something she could turn off, but that just made her more intriguing. To everyone.
***
"She doesn't hate you, Jonny J. Don't project."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"We're here. We'll always be here. Even when we're not here, there will still be part of us that is always here, in Texas. And always has been. You're going to need to remember that."
You believed him; maybe too much.
You never once asked what he was preparing you for. 
One of the trees on the edge of the clearing, thick and twisted by the wind, bore a carving you can barely make out; it's still there. "L.L. S.S. 1900." 
You never asked whose land you're standing on. 
"Well, that's a thoughtful look. The sun's coming up. Get your coat on, okay?"
"It's July, Stephen."
"I know. I have something to show you."
***
"This was the incursion in 2001? The duo that came through during the..."
"Yeah, the guys that got stuck here."
"Commonly referred to as your Evil Twins."
"Well, yeah. Not that they were, or that we had any interest in fighting them. But when they got here, it was a mess. That thing opened up over Phoenix and their faces were on the news and we just... Jumped."
"But they're reformed, now. They said they established a permanent residence in the..."
"We set them up in a place, yeah. They joined the rest of us, got citizenship. We even played a few games with the press, trading places and all the..."
Monterrey laughs. She remembers the video awards show where they showed up pretending to be the two of you. But you can tell by her smile she thought it was just a lark.
"We can't do this all the time, just when it's necessary. Or when we have to be in the same place, so people won't know who we are. They're a blessing in disguise."
So he'd put on those glasses and head out into the crowd, with Jackie on his arm. She always loved him in those glasses; she said it helped her keep him straight. And you'd sit alone, usually in a better seat, feeling his eyes on you. 
And then, even closer to the stage, there they'd be: The doppelgangers, your possibilities: Civil Twilight and Kid A, your selves from another universe. He hated them. You came to love them, but it seemed like he hated them. Incompatible philosophies, he'd say. 
"You can't love something by tearing it down," he'd rant. "You can't say you love your country and then just spend all your time, chipping away at this and that. At greatness. What are you left with at the end of that?"
"Something better?"
"Nothing at all. We weren't made to ask questions, that's not why we're here. Anarchy is entropy. You're not... I'm not inflexible, Jonny. I'm not this mercenary soldier they put up on billboards and..."
"You think everything they say is some kind of indictment of you."
"Isn't it?"
"It's not about you, Stephen."
He looked at you then, with just enough sparks in his eyes you'd know he was mollified.
"Uh, isn't it?"
***
The problem was that they didn't come straight to you, when they arrived. After that hole closed up and they were stuck here, in orbit, they went to the loudest thing on the spectrum, which was - and remains - Loycore Tower. Jutting up from the urban landscape like a needle, or a flag. 
The proximity alarms went off, Loy told you later, and his contractors went into action. Everything according to plan.
The fight was legendary, horrific, and unnecessary: They'd taken out three city blocks between them, before you got there. But once they saw your faces, they stopped what they were doing. Stephen called down to the Loycore army, bass booming their tanks apart, and told them to stop: You'd get it from here. 
Luther Loy grunted over the mics, but he called them back.
By the time you'd vetted them back at the base - genetics, power profile, dimensional vibration, the whole thing - they'd already inspired an army of their own: A group of hackers, mostly, faces painted in American flag colors with experimental pigments to confuse facial-recognition technology. 
Developed by Loycore, of course, not that any of them ever put that together: The genius of Loycore has always been recapitulating revolution back into their narrative and this was no different. It's banned from sale now, of course, but this was right there in that window.
"Where we come from," Twilight said at the press conference, "We aren't afforded so many of your freedoms. There's no governmental transparency, nothing of the sort. Our America's a police state and it happened gradually."
Kid A held up one barcoded wrist, as if they'd delivered this speech a million times, and the crowd went wild: "Think about who and what you are supporting. Remember your choices."
They grasped you then by the hands, held them up like an Olympic salute. Like a row of identical paper dolls, the four of you. Triumphant; having triumphed over something.
"Look around at your neighbors, their unrecognizable faces. Love them."
They ate it up. Stephen looked from his double to you, and back again, and you squeezed his hand softly. He was shaking like he was about to throw up. 
If he did, you were already gone.
***
At the cathedral a snippy young man with an earpiece rolls his eyes at you from under thick eyelashes; you've been left out of the briefing and have no idea where you're supposed to stand, or sit, or who you're meant to be with. Who you are, today, in this circumstance. You stand vibrating between states of being, holding up the line and making an ass of yourself.
Ordinarily it's simple, you go to the expert. Although honestly Stephen was terrible at this too: Knowing what you looked like from the outside. Gods among men? Simple men among those you served? Maybe both.
What would Jackie say? She would say to consider the optics, of course, but that's what you can't figure out: You're a person of interest in her husband's murder. Maybe turn around and go home, maybe stand here forever in the doorway. Turn to stone.
In one circumstance you sit with her up front, give a speech. Eulogy. 
In the second one, you sit with the capes - Twilight and Kid A are there at the front, worry scratched into their foreheads - but that seems like a betrayal, somehow. Kid A sweeps a finger across his throat, shaking his head imperceptibly: You're not suited up for this. You're nobody today; you're Jonny Jensen. You walk like Jonny Jensen, the way he drilled into you for those first two years. Can't blow cover. You nod, and they give sad, firm smiles in response.
So it's the last one: You're not here at all. It's the wedding all over again.
Mr. Loy approaches at the door, smoothly and quickly, and waves the boy off with a dark look. He cups your left deltoid, squeezing hard through the dark wool of the suit. He looks past your shoulder for a moment, hand traveling up to your neck, thumb resting against your ear like a father's hand.
"Jensen. You didn't get the memo?"
For a second you wonder who's footing the bill for this, the speakers and the screens outside, and then remember: Loycore's owned a majority of Jackie's family holdings for years. The paper, the movie merchandising, the funeral. Either way, it's Luther Loy.
"I wasn't sure. I'm not thinking clearly. Should I have suited up?"
"Jackie's pissed. Her people wrote your eulogy for you, it should have been at your apartment yesterday. But we can't do anything about it now. No convenient phone booths these days."
You think about what it would be like, to strap back into the red and blue after so many days and hours, waiting. You shudder a little, under President Loy's hand. He seems so big, bigger than Stephen was, in memory. His coffee breath and the lines around his eyes; dark hair going grey and thin at the temples, but still a monument. You watch his barrel chest, breathing in and out, and try to remember what's happening.
"You can sit with us, if you like. Today's only going to get harder."
You've only been photographed with the Standishes twice, and both times it was in the company of the President. Your cover would stand. You think about his hand on your shoulder, resting there while you talk. You think, always, about knocking his block off. But it's an out. They're up front on the right, opposite the aisle from Jackie and the Jones clan. He leads you there, dropping his arm from across your body halfway down.
I'm going to have to get a job, you think. I'm going to need money. The stuff we think about.
"I'm here to praise my husband, not to bury him. Stephen Standish was a lot of things, to all of us. But one thing he'll never be is forgotten..."
Mr. Loy's hand rests on your knee throughout the service, and perhaps you are grateful to be touched. You stare at her face until you notice she's staring back, and realize she's talking about you.
Not about you, rather.
"...Couldn't be here today, and for that we're sorry. I'm sure he's taking this as well as can be expected. He's here with us. We must remember to be strong. We must remember to go on. Look at your neighbors, their shining faces, and remember. This is not the end."
***
At the reception, she greets you as part of Loy's party, squeezing your hand with a diamond-hard eye, and jerks her chin to the side: A small alcove, the better to mourn in private. Her glossy black pageboy swings wild over one eye, for a moment, caught in a photographer's flash.
"I can't imagine what you were thinking, showing up in civvies like that. It's a risk."
"I haven't been thinking, Jackie. I haven't had a chance to..."
"Oh, for God's sake. You've been on every email..."
"Jackie?"
She nods, apologetically. Closes her eyes for a moment, and breathes. Her dress fits her elaborately; a headpiece gestures toward a veil without hiding anything. Couture.
"You listen to me, right now. I know it's tough, and we're going to get through this together. We're family, okay? We're the only family we have right now."
She puts one arm around you, awkwardly patting. Physically turning your body to face the ballroom, so nobody can see what she's saying. How barely she's holding it together.
"...But I need you to suit up. You have to do pictures. We have to present a unified front, or they're coming for you. All of us. Those bastards have been waiting for years to take Twilight and Kid A out, and this'll be..."
"I thought it would be disrespectful, I didn't know there were going to be costumes and the whole..."
In her heels, she's your same height. But she feels taller, as she cranes her neck; her beautiful, grief-stricken face is all you can see. She smells like gin. Like juniper.
"I get it. And I appreciate it. But the funeral's over, Jonny J. This is when the spin starts. I need you on full power. Can you get that done for me?"
"Of course I can. I just want somebody to tell me what to do."
"What else is new," she mutters, tottering off back to the crowd, waving toward a backdoor as she goes: Time for a getaway.
***
"You can't really memorize it now," says the mean PA. He's awestruck but softening, as the depth of your confusion becomes clearer to him. 
Everything about him is softer, tender almost. The faces we show. He was so nasty before; this sweet young man can't have had that in him. Can he? Is it just because you're suited up, is that really all it takes?
"So we're not going to have you say anything beyond a short statement, which is on this card that I'm putting in your hands. Okay? She'll pat you on the back once the guys quiet down, and then you will say what is on this card, and only what is on this card. That'll conclude the conference, Mrs. Jones will say a few last words, and then you can go."
"Go?"
"...I mean, it'll be over basically. You don't look like you're in a party mood exactly. I figured you'd want to get out early, so I arranged a car..."
"I just want to sleep. Forever. What is your name?"
"Billy Barnes," he says, with an air of pleased surprise. This look they get, like you're permanently about to kiss them.
"I'm sorry to be a mess. I mean, I'm a mess and I know you have a lot of details..."
"- Stop. You have a lot going on, and you're doing great. You should have seen that kid, Loy's latest little boyfriend. Jonny whatever. He's lost his shit entirely."
"Jonny Jensen?"
"It's like, could you maybe show some respect? Or at least save the Xanax until the thing's half-over. Kid was raised in a barn."
You weren't raised in a barn. But you have lost your shit entirely, that much is true. You give Billy Barnes a firm look that says he's been unkind, but not so firm that he doesn't also feel you agreeing. 
"Everybody's taking it differently," says Billy in half-apology, waving his hand vaguely down his own body: He's grieving too.
***
They hush, Jackie pats you on the back, you read from the card. A couple of the reporters start crying as soon as you open your mouth. You won't remember a word, you don't understand them as you're saying them. But they do the trick. Into the quiet she clears her throat, closing the ceremony and ushering you over to the capes. 
Mr. Loy never seems like he's watching, exactly, but he watches everything. You try your best.
"You stay here with Kid A, okay? He'll watch you."
"Thanks, Jackie."
"It's nice to see you pull it together."
"Can we talk later? I'd like to..."
"Reminisce? Bond? In what universe should we put ourselves through that? It's not like you're ever gonna suck his dick again, we don't have to play house anymore."
You stare at her for who knows how long, after that. Trying to process what's happening. 
Kid A appears at your side, slipping his hand into yours, eyes wide. Ready to put himself between you, if necessary.
"...Wait, what? Jackie, I don't..."
"My husband's dead, Young American. 'Young American.' Show some class for once."
Kid A leads you away then, to a Loycore car, takes you home, puts you to bed. The last thing you remember is his face - your face - as he weeps and runs his fingers through your hair. You don't know what he's apologizing for, but he doesn't stop until you are out. When you wake up he's gone. 
That was weeks ago, now. Mostly it's just a memory. But you haven't really talked to either of them since then.
***
"So you and Kid A are close?"
"We were. I mean, yeah. I mean, how could you not be? And why are you asking? It certainly wasn't them. They were in the Middle East on Jan..."
"We're aware of their location. Just trying to get a feel for the dynamics of how the four of you worked. They've given their statements already."
"Did they have to give their real names?"
Monterrey looks up and to the side; her partner adjusts his glasses and looks down at the pack of cigarettes outlined inside his pocket, longingly.
"It was our understanding that they didn't have any. Not to speak of."
"No, that's true. They had names back home, names and barcodes. But here they never did. Even their passports. A, comma Kid. Twilight, comma Civil. That used to crack me up."
"Do you think their activities might have led to any of the events of..."
"- No. Those guys are not... Um, they are patriots. They took to America like fish finding water."
"It's a matter of record that Mr. Standish didn't..."
"He was cranky. He was two and a half centuries old. He didn't understand them. He didn't like what he thought they implied about him - about us. That we weren't special, I mean. And their relationship was... hard on Jackie. But the truth is they loved America more than any of us. And him. They really loved him."
***
"You know how you sound," Kid A says quietly. "What you sound like."
"Yeah. You're gonna say some kind of S&M joke, or like I'm a... battered wife. And it's not."
"I'm just trying to understand, Jonny. I mean, we all see the way he treats you. It's not rational. It's not sidekick behavior."
"Good, because I'm not a sidekick. Neither are you, Kid. Date of birth. Whatever we are to them, it's not that."
"Well. I know in my case, with Twilight, it's a little more..."
"Yeah, I know. Just trust me, I know what I'm doing."
"Because President Loy was hanging around the other day..."
"- What, did he say something creepy and quasi-sexual to you?"
"...Yeah. How did you know?"
"That's his one move. I think he's nervous about us. Super, um, people. It comes out in weird ways but he's harmless. Helpful. It's pure, even if it comes out gross."
"I don't know about that. At least with Stephen. But yeah."
"What did he say?"
"He said America is large and um, an educational experience. That it's about fitting your head around - 'integrate' was the word - the dichotomy of a Zen master who's like, unpredictable... I don't know. He said it's like love. He called it that, love."
Hmm.
"What did he say exactly?"
"It was weird... Oh, yeah. 'Love is sometimes a slap, sometimes a kiss.'"
"Yeah, that's Loy all over. Blech."
"Does he ever hurt you? Or hit you or..."
"Who, Mr. Loy? I'd annihilate him."
"No. Not Mr. Loy. You know what, I'm sorry. Forget I asked."
***
Up in Nantucket, after a family dinner with the Joneses, he took you down to a creek that runs behind the house, to see the candles going by. Upstream there was a group of the cutest kids, lighting them in little boats and setting them free. They were climbing all over some kind of structure on the sandy stretch behind their place, a boat on stilts that looked about a hundred years old. Just jutting from the sand.
"That's been there since before you were born, probably. They play so many games on it, different stuff. Newspaper hats and driftwood swords. Sometimes it's a pirate ship, sometimes they're George Washington. I like to listen to them splashing around, even back at the house."
He reached out, absent-minded, and pulled you into a side hug. You passed a beer back and forth, and you rested your head on his shoulder. The kids had some kind of flag they'd painted, and they waved it like acrobats before planting it in the stern of the boat, on their way to some new country. 
One girl stood in the front with a quiet smile, hands on her hips, invincible. Staring into the future they were creating from nothing.
"It's not hard to believe things are going to be okay, when those kids are out. Sometimes they sing little songs."
"They don't fight?"
"They fight, of course they fight. But I think they're all cousins, or siblings... The fights never last. Even when they're happening, you can tell it's just for something to do. And then they climb right back in that boat, you know, or they go home. One time they were wearing these amazing costumes."
"What does Jackie think of them? They're pretty loud. And, you know. Kids."
Jackie's tense d�tente with all children was one of your favorite things about her: This mutually cautious, distrustful respect. She gave good mommy on camera, back then, but if you knew her you could tell she was just thinking about germs and sticky hands. Cracked you both up.
"To us they're loud, yes. But that's about a mile up, where that curve is - she couldn't hear them anyway. Barely see them, probably. So I never showed her."
He pulled you around to front, resting his head on top of yours; arms crossed over your chest like a boyfriend's sweater. Knotted. His heartbeat and his voice thrummed through.
"It is not this good all the time. But it could be. We just have to do it right. We have to figure out a world where all the kids feel as free as these kids. Get their hands dirty, wander out into the..."
"When does that happen? When do we get socially conscious, exactly, and start telling people what to do? Can we fit that in between now and our next world-shattering fight with Trompe L'Oeil, or Dreamboat Annie? Maybe we could just outsource it to Civil Twilight and the..."
"You're getting cynical. I don't like it."
"You don't like it right now. Because right now, you're feeling hopey-changey. But in a week when the NASDAQ drops, or there's a tropical storm off the coast, you're going to go dark and you're going to think it's all over. And when I tell you this conversation, you won't remember it. And I'll be picking up the..."
You were on the ground so quickly, head smacking against the rocks, that you couldn't see straight for a few. He stood over you, back to the setting sun; you couldn't even see his face. Just that chest, rising and falling while he tried to get control. Breathing as slowly as he could. Never tell a man he's capable of changing.
"You okay?"
"Knocked the wind out. But yeah. We don't get hurt."
"Sometimes I wish we could."
You held up a hand, squinting up at his upside-down self, and when he brushed off his hands on his dungarees and reached out, pulled him down onto the sand. He laughed, tension forgotten, and rolled over until he was looking down at you, inches away. That one forelock untamed, in his eyes.
"You say this stuff, you don't think about it. But one day it's gonna be you. You're going to feel America, in you, all the time. And you are going to bleed for it. Every day. You're still just a kid."
"Am I?"
He rested his head then, against your shoulder. You'd only just realized he was crying when you heard Jackie coming, calling your names into the woods. 
Calling you home, out of the uncertain dark.
***
"And to the best of your knowledge that circle of... Mr. Standish's acquaintances includes only Mrs. Jones and her team, your... parallel people, and President Loy?"
"I have never been too clear on what Mr. Loy knows and doesn't know. He's just always around."
"Always?"
"...Well, no. He got out for the fights, of course. He'd call that chopper in the second it got hot, send in the cavalry. Are you thinking that maybe...?"
"Maybe what, Jonny?"
"I'd be the last person to suggest anything in particular about Mr. Loy, or Mrs. Jones. I'm just wondering if your investigation is..."
"It's ongoing. Let us do our jobs, please?"
"I mean, if you tell me your theories maybe I'll remember something. I'm not trying to help or anything. We always give law enforcement the last word."
"Yeah, you guys tend to say that a lot."
Monterrey considers you a moment before turning to her partner. Their conversation, whatever it contains, is silent. 
You miss him. Miss that. Oh, God, how you miss that look.
"Well, we're not ruling anything out. Modified Crimes don't tend to follow classic procedure, so we have to explore everything. Feel free to speak at will."
"Isn't that the point where I'm supposed to demand my lawyer? When you say shit like that?"
"Do you need a lawyer?"
"Fine. Um, one thing that Mr. Loy and Stephen always liked to do is contingency plans. Like, boxes within boxes within boxes. It's hard for me to imagine him, uh. Dying. He knew things."
"Okay, allowing for that."
"Allowing for that, by which you mean indulging. I don't know. Mr. Loy would be the one to talk to."
Monterrey shifts in her seat; her partner gazes at you for a while.
"The President has been singularly unhelpful. He's committed to the official story."
"Ruby Jack tipped off the Eagles, and the whole thing was a trap. A Rogue's Gallery ambush."
"Sources do put 'Ruby Jack,' and several of his known contacts, in the area."
"I mean, Trompe hasn't been seen in years. Dreamboat Annie's not technically a bad guy, and the Amazonian..."
"Your last kill."
"I wasn't there. But yeah, she's dead now."
"Any theories on that one?  A super-serial? More dimensional hijinks?"
"You're being a dick, sir. I'm trying to help."
"Here's what I think. You're talking about contingency plans, and some stuff Loy said, makes me wonder if you're being honest with us."
"If you think I'm lying, what's the point of this?"
"No, kid. I mean, you might not know you're lying. We have Standish on record saying he got into hypnotism back in the 1890's. After the Hayes/Tilden election, the Scout, all that stuff."
"I wasn't around for that. The Scout predates me by a hundred years. I mean, a hundred years exactly. You can understand why I didn't press him on it."
"Did he ever talk about him? Who he was, or what happened? There's no official record."
"Just that he was disappointing, and that I would have to do better. Be better."
"In those words?"
"What were you talking about, hypnotism."
"Right. Uh, Loy said Standish was talking increasingly about putting plans in place, in the weeks leading up. I didn't know if that was about America or what, but now you're saying this and I wonder."
Monterrey looks you in the eye, suddenly alert.
"We had a case a few years back, a situation where one of you guys set up his own arrest to get into a prison so he could question the... It's not important, whatever. He used a mnemonic trigger to get him past all the supermax tests and stuff, and spent a week inside before he remembered he had any superpowers at all. Got me thinking. Are there any blocks of time, any blanks you can think of?"
"In the last twenty years? Tons. That's part of the game. But I... I can't know what I don't know. You know?"
Monterrey smiles and sits back, nodding to herself; at a glance between them, her partner removes his glasses, grinning hugely, and sets his eyes to whirling. Showing teeth.
"We do. Cherry pie."
*** 
You wake up a week later, in restraints. Dosed on that stuff the Amazonian cooked up before she died, the de-powering agent Loycore makes now. They say you've been raving, spitting profanities at your visitors - even Jackie, who brought flowers and hasn't been back since - shitting yourself. 
They say the last thing you said, before you blacked out, was caught on tape. 
You were thorough in your confession. They say you laughed your way through it, rubbing your dick through your jeans: Every detail of the murder, from the moment you decided to kill your best friend to the moment those detectives showed up at your door. 
Clear as a bell.
***
The Superpositionary vs. the Stationary Statesman. That's where the confusion starts.
The ironic thing is that you knew what you were getting into; of all the battles Stephen wanted to avoid, the only one you'd give him was the perennial fight between those two sons of bitches. 
He didn't like the way it made his head hurt, trying to get them off each other's throats; you didn't like the way it made you feel. You'd get involved if the Statesman seemed like he was winning, but that's about the only time. Otherwise it would end up resolving itself on a macro scale and nobody'd notice anyway; they'd get up and go to work and never remember it. All those Americas that happened in the night.
When the Superpositionary happens upon (or to) you, you get spun out, into a million futures. Futures, that is, not parallel dimensions, which are side-by-side across branes; this is mind-bending even for Kid A, who normally lives for that stuff. It's kind of awful, and kind of brilliant. It feels like you are being diced very finely - and you have no memory of why. Just that something is missing. Most things are missing, in fact, but you don't know what they are.
Then along comes the Stationary Statesman - they're older than any of us; as far as we can tell they've been doing this as long as there has been a universe - and settles him down again. Hardly anybody remembers it. Stephen and yourself, and the doubles; the Amazonian could hold onto it afterwards. You don't know of anybody else that's dealt with them and had much to say about it. As to why... You have theories, but nothing real.
You tangled in maybe three of their bouts? Or nine. Or just once. Who knows? Nobody. There's not actually an answer, that's how that works - and that's definitely why Stephen hated them so much. He could never just let it ride.
***
This is what it's like when the Superpositionary stumbles through your local space, pulling realities behind him like a curtain that never rips clean:

We're hunkered down in some jungle somewhere, about to go nuts on a camp of American expatriates who've gone over. They light three smokes on a single match, and then we kill them. It's swift and bloody; we outshine the sun, we turn the sweltering night to gunpowder day. 
And when they are dead, we'll turn on each other. It's finally time. Time to find out once and for all.

We're judges on a reality show about wannabe superheroes, kids that look every bit as young as we still do. Old enough to be our grandchildren, young enough to treat us like idiots. Stephen still wears his wedding ring on a chain around his neck. We visit her grave every year, long after the grass has gone to seed; we sleep side by side, untouching in a double bed, like brothers, untroubled by dreams.

He's got that blonde hair of Stephen's, and my dark eyes. Loy crouches over his crib like the uninvited fairy, whispering secrets; our son's first act is to try and kill us both, like any nascent god. We laugh, in the thunder and the sparks, and hold him up in the sky between us. He'll be stronger than us both, Stephen laughs. It always was, I say back, laughing through tears.

I'm alone on the other side of the moon, trying to remember who I was before Stephen. The Superpositionary appears below me, at the bottom of a crater, apologizing; by the time I catch up to him he's gone. "I'm sorry about this," he has scrawled in that unmoving dust. I don't have enough air in my lungs to make it back, but I set out anyway. My last thought before I'm done is that I'm glad I didn't make it back to atmo. They'll have an unburnt body to show off, at least.

I'm handed the original birth certificate by the head of the NSA, who assures me I was born in March of 1978 to a normal couple stationed in Honolulu. They ask me if I want to press charges. When I ask why, they're stuck for words. What crime did he perpetrate? Convincing me I'm special? The latest in a long line of American avatars, chosen by some higher, unknowable force? Who wouldn't want to believe that? I don't want to sue him, I tell them: I want to thank him! What a ride. What a story to tell. The time I was a superhero.

Mr. Loy holds something up to my nose, that powdered stuff they're calling Red Sun, and tells me to inhale before we go back in. Civil Twilight and Kid A form an Eiffel Tower over Stephen, whose eyes are squeezed tight in bliss. Our eyes are red as rubies. When it's time to switch partners, Mr. Loy claps. I can hear Stephen whisper into his double's ear, as we get back to it: "I didn't even know I was waiting for this." Twilight just nods, and gets to work. It's been three hours of touching, groaning, loveless fucking. By the time the Red Sun hits I have decided I never want to do anything else, ever again.

The Superpositionary sits me down at a caf� in Brazil and tries to explain what's happening to me, why I feel suddenly so lost and alone: The world is broken, he says. He says it's like trying to pick up jacks, in a kid's game. Only they're infinite, and painful. They prick him, he says, like thorns. It's a kind of math I'll never be able to do; nobody but him can do. He says he is cursed to love everything, to hold every contradiction and every possibility in his mind, balancing them, always with the wolves of entropy at his back. He says this will look like cruelty, or coldness, until I can see time like he does. Until we can see it. (This one, you believe, really happened.)

We're goateed and cackling as we bring down lightning on the White House. The windows bow in, hang for a moment, and shatter out in flame. It sounds like music. One woman comes out, dress torn, exposing one breast, screaming until she falls to the grass, burning. After the divorce, after the turn the public took, after they sent the Army after us, it was the only thing left to do. 
You can want someone that badly; badly enough to bring the whole world down.
***
There are futures you will never talk about. Not the detectives, not Jackie; not even the doubles. Futures you'd jump on a grenade to keep Stephen Standish from learning about.
It never occurred to you to wonder: What were his untellable futures? What twisted in him like shame, like these memories of worlds that never happened? What would break his heart like they broke yours?
It never occurred to you until now to ask: Why couldn't you end up in one of the futures where he's still around? It's not about having killed him, it's about him having been killed. 
If the Stationary Statesman showed up you'd probably attack him; you'd demand to know why this is the future he chose for you. And he would tell you nothing. 
He doesn't speak, he doesn't explain, and he doesn't care. He locks you in; he cuffs you.
If the Superpositionary showed up now you'd beg him to send you spinning. Anything but this.
***
Stephen finds you in a meditative posture on the roof of the building where he pays the rent, breathless as you've never seen him. Thank God, he says. I've been looking for you everywhere. You know just what he means.
You laugh, trying to remember where you left things, and his eyes go ruby red. You won't recall this later, he says, until it's time. We only have a minute before things settle, so you can't ask questions. It'll make sense later, he says, and tells you the two key phrases he's laying in. 
The first is "Cherry Pie."
***
Sitting at a campfire, on your birthday. Your shared birthday. 
He snuffs out the fire with a teakettle as soon as the moon has set, and you are in the dark. Like every birthday, you can feel the question inside you, wanting to burst out.
What you want to ask is why he doesn't love you, although you won't be able to put that into words until he's dead. What you want to ask is why he loves you just enough. Why he hurts you, when Civil Twilight is only ever kind to the Kid. Why does he love you, and not love you, at once. Why you have to be strong enough to live with both, all the time.
What you ask is, "Are we there yet?"
One day there will be a real America. Unrung, uncracked. That's what you were born for. The Dream, Young American, maybe even the Scout. Maybe even Twilight and Kid A, maybe they have to be here too. Are we there yet?
"No," he says. Every time.
"But I can see it from here."
***
"You don't know what you don't know, so you can't say what's missing. I went through the same thing. Puked for days, actually. It's like those goddamn glasses, Jonny J."
You know what Jackie means. She always hated him without the glasses, or with the beard: She just wanted him to look like she remembered him looking. Another way to hold onto things. Picking up sticks in the wind, watching them scatter every time he left.
That night in Nantucket, when she came calling through the trees, you couldn't believe him. Scrambling to find those glasses in the sand, like a guilty kid. You'd never hated him more. Hated them both.
He's right there in front of your face and you can't even see him!
Her little black purse, with the Presidential pin tacked on nearly as an afterthought, held tightly on her lap across the table. Those pursed red lips, her sad eyes. When she sat, she reached one arm straight out, resting a hand briefly on yours, before returning them to the handbag; perched like a bird in a pillbox hat.
"Jackie, thanks for coming to see me. Nobody else will. Civ..."
"- Those two. Let me tell you about those two. Actually, do you know about those two?"
"What do you mean? They don't let me have any electronics or anything. Sparks and..."
"Well. Loy pulled their funding, unless they joined his little army..."
"Kid A, Loycore contractor? Are you kidding me?"
"Oh, honey. You know those stances are always paper-thin. Not even Steve was incorruptible."
"Of course he was. What are you talking about?"
"Come on. He spent most of the Sixties coked up on Luther's dime. Party yachts and Marilyn Monroe and..."
"Luther Loy?"
That old cracked bell, ringing again.
"That was in his Scout days, but yeah."
"Jackie? How old is Luther Loy?"
"Ah. You still think Loycore's a dynasty. Well, it's good they won't let electronics in, I guess. Get sniped before I got to my car for telling you this. You'll get there, kiddo. But here's a hint, he's a hundred years older than you. Do the math."
"Jackie. We were friends, right? We are friends? You were so mean at the funeral and I thought..."
"Mostly that was to keep you safe. I thought he'd kill you right there. Quite the operation to arrange, between that ninny Kid A crying, and Billy mooning over you..."
"Billy who?"
"Barnes. He became my assistant five years ago and hasn't once stopped talking about you, in all that time."
"That mean little ginger PA? He hated me!"
"You, maybe. But he's in love with the Young American."
"...Son of a bitch."
***
Finally, she stands to leave; she can read on your face that it's about to start downloading again. Folds those willow arms and legs like a swan, and stands. She's actually smiling, now. You're sorry to see her go.
"Listen, you can't trust anybody. Not even me. Don't talk to anybody, don't listen to anybody. We're working on getting you out of this, okay?"
"Did you know I was going to confess to the murder? Was that part of the plan?"
"Steve said something about it, yeah. I didn't think you'd be such a little asshole about it, but yes. Memories still...?"
"Still coming. It's like the Superpositionary again. Worse. I'm kind of glad they've got me locked up, frankly."
"Let me know when you get to Maya."
Four hours later, I remember what she means. 
***
She called herself Rainn Forrest; that was her sense of humor to a tee but you never figured out it was a joke until somebody said it out loud. It went over your head, like everything. Stephen and Maya, huge to be around; the gravity of them covered a whole hemisphere.
"Okay. Ruby Jack's hideout is fortified with mercenary forces. Guerilla, okay? They have guns and they know we're coming. Do this right, we can cut off America's entire supply of Red Sun until we're able to crack down on the..."
"Isn't this Maya's... Isn't this Amazonian territory?"
"Couldn't raise her. We have to act now. Loy says this intel isn't good for too long."
"I'd rather have her with us. It's kind of rude."
"It's now or never."
His eyes were red as rubies, hands clenching. You thought he was just excited; couldn't read the signs yet. It was only afterward, when he was standing over her corpse, that you put it together. 
Loycore needed Maya gone, and now she was. Your first kill.
And then the Dream came in close, tears in his eyes, and told you to forget everything. 
So you did.
***
At Maya's funeral Stephen gave the most beautiful eulogy: How she was a goddess, walking among her people. They believed she brought in the spring every year, he said, and wiped a tear from his eye as he admitted he always secretly believed it, too. How she demonstrated that strength, and the power to inspire, came in all shapes and sizes. And colors.
Loycore debuted their version of her de-powering drug the following week, and Red Sun continued pouring into the States, unabated. 
They put Stephen on a billboard for the Loycore drug, to assure civilians and officials alike that capes were no threat: That a deterrent had been found, and no superpower would ever run unchecked again. The shoot was featured everywhere, gay sites to mommy blogs to Congressional campaigns. Nobody ever noticed how sad he looked, behind the smile; nobody looked north of his neck anyway. 
You remember now what you forgot then, which is anger: He's right there in front of your face.
You brought down Ruby Jack eventually, too. The fact that he swore up and down he was innocent didn't matter, not with Loycore footage tying him to several high-profile bombings - even some previously ascribed to Trompe L'Oeil, and a few half-heartedly chalked up to the Screamin' Eagles, who are known to claim responsibility for just about everything. He was Public Enemy #1 then. 
Well. Until now.
***
You were at a library, preaching literacy. There were several kids who looked like good photo ops, so you ignored the boy who was struggling with his words. His father was red-faced. Eventually you made your way to their table and told the boy you struggled learning to read, yourself. 
The opposite of benevolence isn't malevolence but disinterest. You have to keep reflecting them back to themselves.
You asked the boy please to sound it out, and he read you the entire book, one halting word at a time. The pride on his face as he turned from you to his father, and back - that's the most you've ever felt like a hero.
And his red-faced father? There was love there, too. You were worried that he'd think you were overstepping your bounds, but for that moment you were his hero too.
On January Sixth you saw him again, this time wearing mechanical boots and one electric fist, just like Ruby Jack. He slammed your head against a brick wall and it crumbled away against your skull. There was no love in his eyes that day.
***
When the memories abate again, you start saying random things in the hopes one of them will trigger the next step in the plan. You know you're supposed to do something, but you don't know what it is, or if it exists. Mostly it's because you're bored out of your skull. 
You get through every myth and comic book and sci-fi show you can think of - "Caliburnus? Aslan is on the move? Katratzi?" - before you remember who we're talking about. It wouldn't be like that. It would be something you couldn't think of. That would be the point. Some historical figure, probably. 
Some word for America that nobody knows. 
You lie fallow. He is still gone. Go as crazy as you want, or not at all, but you're in here until you're not. And when you're not, he'll still be dead. That's the timeline you got.
Kid A shows up about a week after Jackie, but you don't want to hear it. You can't talk to him about Loy without putting him in danger, or punching him in the face, and all you want to talk about is Loy right now.
You zip back and forth along about the timeline, try to fit it all in. Back at the base you had an interface that could visualize all this for you, but that's over. Can't go back there anyway. 
No Nantucket, no more Texas, no rooftop meditation; no getaways. It's all Loycore now, under surveillance. 
Jackie must be scared twenty-four hours a day, you think, and feel sad for her. And then you realize: There's only one way this story ends, and that's with you dead too. So you'd better make it a good one. They'll have to wait sixty more years for somebody to take him down. 
Luther Loy. The Scout. The 1876er. The multibillionaire President of the United States: Somehow this is about him, and Stephen knew that. 
Maybe even knew he would die?
Maybe had to. Maybe in pursuit of his one perfect America the Stationary Statesman needs you all to be exactly where you are. 
And if that's the case, what makes you so special? 
Why should you, of all people, ever get to know why?
***
"Where'd you go, kid?"
"Where did I go? How long was I out? How did you know that would..."
Monterrey draws a line across her throat: You won't be discussing the cherry pie, maybe ever. Consider the optics. Consider who pays her salary and keep it shut. Schtum, he'd say. He liked to affect a British accent sometimes, when he was in a particularly good mood.
He wasn't a jolly sort. Too intense for that. But sometimes he could laugh. Sometimes you could make him laugh. Show his teeth. Make them both laugh, in your little nuclear fantasy world, where there was no sex and no longing and no lies.
"I remembered some things. Apparently I confessed to a murder."
The way they cuffed you, suddenly cold; the way you became just another super-type they were expected to bring in. 
Not allies at all, just cops scared of you and what you can do. Just human.
***
Tromp L'Oeil, the Scout, President Luther Loy, your predecessor as the Young American, has a sidekick. You hated him before your memories ever reminded you who either of them really are.
A speedster who uses a barbiturate cocktail of Tromp's design both to come down to our level, slow enough to speak to us intelligibly, and keep his metabolism from burning out into progeria. Mercury Rising is his name, Hermes to that dark Hephaestus. 
A henchman is just a sidekick in something that went sour. 
You hate them - and God, did you hate him. Funhouse mirror, dark nightmare mirror, nothing like Kid A to you. Only something mewling and pathetic, desperate for Loy's attention, fairly slavering.
Openly, maybe that's the key, openly desirous. Crossing that line between sidekick and hero in a most unseemly way. He wanted Loy's money, and he wanted his cock. And Loy kept him twisting. Or maybe he didn't, maybe they fucked every night. 
The thought made you sick.
***
It's not until Jackie returns with the second passphrase that you can sleep.
"Stars above us," she says quietly, "Stripes below."
She can't know what it means, or what it does to you, and she leaves soon after. Tears on her face. You wonder what's going on with her, outside your vision: 
Your life has been spent wondering about her world, what she does when you are not around, what she thinks and says. What they are like together. Skin crawling at the way she says his name. "Steve," she calls him. The familiarity.
Now, though, it's more concern than ever. Does she have her own memories downloading again? Does she know more than you do, and will that always be the case? Does she weep for you? It seems unlikely. But you've seen plenty of pity in her eyes, since well before his death.
Time for the getaway. The memories unfurl, unfold, snap open like an umbrella, drowning everything else out. Soon you'll surrender to them. It's a kind of death, remembering the forgotten. Coming back to oneself. It's painful, nobody tells you that part. It hurts to remember what you were made to forget.
Maybe it's just that her husband is dead. Maybe it's that they never had children. Maybe if you weren't in a supermax your own self you'd be feeling much the same. That simple grief. Feel it rising up around you until everything else was quiet. Maybe you'd be crying too.
***
Dreamboat Annie makes you remember things, things you never forgot. Things you always wanted, things you always feared. She doesn't want to hurt anybody, usually; her schemes are often as simple as wanting a coffee that day and not having the money for it. Next thing you know half the coffeeshop's in a daze. People found miles away with their pockets empty and the sweetest smiles.
They always called you in on Dreamboat Annie because the cops couldn't do anything - couldn't even get close enough to depower her, once that was an option. They'd be found miles away dazed out of their minds, with a sweet and confused and quite beautiful young woman in her gloves, her skirts and torn dresses, telling them stories about themselves until they never wanted to wake up.
Mercy is a kiss sometimes, and sometimes a slap. Sometimes it's remembering something you never forgot in the first place.
You always liked Annie, and the Dream knew it. You couldn't help it. She's a sweetheart, more a victim of her powers than a villain. Completely unreachable, of course, and capable of turning on you in a crisis, but mostly she's just trying to get by. You often thought about what the world must look like, to her. Untamed. Bending to her will without her knowing what she willed.
Maybe living in just one present was, for Annie, as confusing as the infinite futures are for you. Maybe she's just playing jacks like the rest of us, trying to pick up the pieces of a world that doesn't always fit together nice and easy. You always thought the Amazonian could help her, somehow. Use her mind tricks or her herbal witchery or something, help bend Dreamboat Annie into a safer shape. 
Or maybe, and this is just as likely, Annie's just tremendously selfish, and you're putting motives and good intent behind her eyes. Hell, maybe she could control it, if she wanted. If she wanted to pull herself together and stop sharing her madness with everyone else. 
***
You were lying side by side like brothers, his cape spread wide enough for both of you. The campfire was going out. 
The wine went to your head, which means you must have been drinking a lot - you're not susceptible to poisons, as a rule. Brown liquors in abundance can get to you, on birthdays. And of course there's Red Sun, although you'd never try it. Maya's power dampeners, although they aren't technically poisons. 
Narcotics would work more often, he said, but you didn't partake: You wanted to make him proud. 
You wanted to be clean for him.
But it was your birthday and it was his birthday, too. The last birthday before the wedding. He'd tried to make it extra special - to show you just how deep and graceful your place in his life and heart remained. He loved to worry over you, with her - to pull her into it, the mom-and-pop act that made you unthreatening and asexual; to make you less their problem and more their son, the child they seemingly couldn't have any other way.
Somewhere out in the world it was the Scout's birthday, too, but your thoughts of him were just a blank space most of the time. You didn't like to think about having a predecessor - thought sometimes it might approximate the feeling Jackie must get, seeing you two flying off into the uncertain dark. The visions of futures past revealed by the Superpositionary seem more real to you than tales of the Scout, and that's enough to think about for anybody.
Side by side, under a clear night moonless July sky. Stars above you, stripes beneath.
Your first movement was an accident; you would swear to it, and you wouldn't be lying. Your hand brushed his thigh and he turned in toward you like you'd asked for it - like he'd been waiting as long as you had been. Dying for it, as you had been for some time by then.
It started small, and slow. It came fast and large, like a memory downloading, when you realized the awful truth: That you'd headed down a locked-up trail into something dark and messy, and you were all alone. That you loved him, loved him like a man loves a man.
That it was a prison you were choosing, almost of your own free will. And suddenly so much with the Superpositionary started making sense - how many futures you were lovers, how many times you destroyed each other, took on this other significance. And you'd pushed it down like shame, became ten times more awkward around Jackie. 
This feeling that you were doing something monstrous to her, by wanting her life; that she'd done something monstrous to you, somehow taking yours. And the American Dream Stephen Standish scot-free as ever, dutiful and doting, hands clean.
Those hands pulled you to him, in what was still technically a safe embrace. He was drinking, too; certainly more given to spontaneous gestures of affection. So that's all it was.
Until it wasn't. Until you felt him insistently against your thigh, breathing in staccato against your throat, and what it said was: Take what you're offered, because it won't be offered again. Let me show you this one time what we could build. It's our last birthday before the wedding.
The landscape of your body as he colonized it. Being touched made you feel more human - was that a good thing or a bad thing, you wondered. Was this touch-hunger a sign of weakness, in a post-mortal being? Or was it the touchstone that keeps demigods in their place? How had you survived, lived, without it? It seemed unthinkable that you had ever been not touching him. Tasting something sweet after a lifetime of starving.
There he was, painted in starlight. Cape thrown down, gripped in bunches, stripes parallel, pointing toward the morning. Where you touched it was sparks, and then fire, and you were transformed.
And when you were spent - you can picture it suddenly, memory downloading: Two icons of strength and muscle tearing at roots and stones, frantic passion - when you were finished and proud, leaning on his chest as he smiled and breathed and sweated there under you, you thought: This is too sweet. Something is going to happen. I'm going to wake up, or find it's just another superposition, it's Dreamboat Annie, even though it feels different from them both. Something's about to happen, so I can't move.
And then something did. He took your face in his hands, eyes sad but not weeping, and told you to forget.
And so you did. Until now.
***
"King Arthur sleeps under Briton, waiting to return. Vegetation gods exist to be reborn."
Kid A gets like this sometimes. He sits on the other side of the glass, playing mirror games with your identical faces. You sometimes want to tell him - this boy will understand, in a way nobody in any universe will understand - how you're still jealous that he gets to have Twilight, all the time. No Jackie, nothing mucking up the narrative. 
You had no idea how angry that made you until he was gone. Now it feels holy: Kid A gets Civil Twilight and you get nothing. Suddenly you're so angry you know if you speak you will explode. You can't do that until you understand yourself well enough to know why Kid A, your other self, is the only person you're allowed to get this angry at. So you stay quiet, let him talk.
"It's part of the cycle. Golden Bough and all that. Maybe that's why we keep being born, maybe we're meant to replace them after all. Maybe the Scout is where it all went wrong. Or maybe the Scout was supposed to..."
He can't be talking about the Scout, not here. Not here with Loy's men everywhere, ready to report. But you're just irritated enough to think about letting him hang himself. All those careful plans and memory dumps, undone by a careless word from another you.
"Vegetation gods? You're saying we're vegetable gods? Like the Amazonian?"
Maybe the Amazonian, sure. Maybe Maya waits, under the rainforest still. 
As soon as you think it, you know somehow it's true. Maya's not dead; you killed nothing but a body. And if Maya survived, maybe you come out of this clean. You can't kill a goddess, can you? 
You almost laugh at the perfect irony of it - all this pain and regret over nothing - and that's when you realize you're cracking up in here. 
Good thing the trial starts soon.
***
Maya stood before you, fire-burnt costume raveling at the seams. She'd never been more beautiful; you could actually believe she was a goddess, watching her walk through the flames toward you. Her little world in ruins, her plants and factory destroyed. All she wanted was to bring life to the desert, she often said; to bring new life and health to every corner of the globe.
She would have destroyed Loycore simply by existing, in the form she was assuming. That was the issue - she was changing too fast for any of you to clock it, as she ascended Heavenward. She really could have been that goddess, you know it now. Which is why she had to be stopped.
When you came looking for her, Stephen Standish and Jonny Jensen, civilians, she was overjoyed to see you. Rainn Forrest, businesswoman and athlete, welcoming her friends to her secret passion project. The pain in her eyes when you turned on her. The sadness, when she knew it was a fight to the death.
Did she think you were alien doubles, another set of doppelgangers? Did she know the Dream was high on Red Sun, even then? Did she see Loy's hand behind it all? 
Did you? In that moment before he told you to forget, did you remember everything that came before? Ruby Jack, Trompe L'Oeil and the rest of it. Mercury Rising. How much did you see, before he closed your eyes again?
***
"The events of January Sixth, Your Honor, are not up for debate. Militias marched on Boston, chief among them the Screamin' Eagles and the Fortunate Sons, and met with counterprotestors. Hundreds died. Both sides were using illegal tech, we know that much, to approximate the powers of superhuman heroes like those in the courtroom now. 
"What we didn't know until now is the Young American's part in that day's events, or what happened to the American Dream during those events. We do now have a signed, taped confession to that effect."
Consider the optics, you think. Cherry pie. Stars above us, stripes below. What was your man Standish trying to tell you, through all those twisted memories and vanished days? What was the plan? You were willing to let it unfold until now; but this courtroom is too real. The Fortunate Sons in the gallery looking at you with hatred are too real, too now. The jurors - they look just like the militiamen, fat and white and hateful and angry, staring now at you in your handcuffs: All too real. It's time for you to think it out. 
Which would be easier if you weren't the star of the show, of course.
Billy Barnes stares at you from the crowd like someone dying of thirst. His Young American. Jackie Jones Standish comforts him, looking you square in the eye with something like love.
One of the Sons looks desperately familiar: Is that anything? He scowls at your regard and you look away, trying to remember his face and where it's been before. You wish there was a codeword for that, too. Some passphrase that could tell you about this man and what he did that day, and why he looks so...
His son. You have part of it. The man in the front row, the one who wants you dead - he had a son. In a library, stuttering out words, remedial and embarrassed. You were there... Why? To preach literacy, of course. To take photos, really. To be wholesome and American. 
You overlooked the boy at first because he was white, you remember - considering the optics - and you were supposed to take a picture with several of them. But the boy's eyes were open and loving, when you caught them: His dad wasn't sure about you, but the little boy saw a hero. With a glance at Dad for permission, you sat down and told that kid about your own troubles learning to read, and asked him to sound out the page in front of him. And the pride on that kid's face made his father's sourness sweet.
So that's part of it. But it doesn't explain why the man is turning on you now, does it? They were attacking you both, that day at the Harbor - he knew he was trying to hurt the Dream, he knew he could kill him if he landed a blow just right. He knew. Electric fist bashing you into the wall, blacking the world out. He looked you in the eye and tried to kill you, after you'd made his boy so proud that day. 
That's part of it too.
The lawyers are still talking but it's clear on your face that you've removed yourself from the proceedings. You're in a memory of your own, flipping back through all these lives, like superpositions: Rending curtains of time to arrive at the spot that he needed you to reach. Vegetation gods and sounding out words and the love in that little boy's eyes... 
You've almost got it. Almost there.
***
"Do you ever think about why you left?"
"Do I... No. Was I supposed to stay? They put barcodes on us. They would have killed us if they could. It was their main aim, by the end. A whole culture bent on destroying..."
"- But how do you know you weren't supposed to stay? Maybe you could have stopped it, Kid. Saved everybody somehow..."
"I forgive you for asking me this, Jonny. But I need you to understand how bad it was. How unsalvageable. There was nobody left to save. Look, I've seen your eyes when you talk about the Statesman - some of those futures still haunt your dreams, I know that. I've seen you toss and turn. It must be bad, bad enough that you don't talk about it."
"I don't want anybody to have those pictures in their head."
"We're not so different, Jonny. Can't you just imagine that I'm protecting you from something?"
"But..."
"This place is Heaven, Jonny. I don't know how else to say it or how you're going to get it. This place you and the Dream talk about, how it's fallen and precious and... This thing you're trying to build, I don't think you understand that to us, you've done it. This is the America of our dreams. And I know it looks broken and cracked and ugly to you, and that hurts my feelings a little bit, but it's only because you don't know where we came from. Just imagine this was Heaven, to you, and see how small some of the stuff you guys talk about really is."
You knew better than to answer him back, but you thought it: This place could be so fine. It could be Heaven. And there's something ungrateful in ignoring what he said, too. It's both, you thought. And that was about as far as you took it, because on that day you were just chatting with a friend. 
But you're remembering that day now - it shows all over your face. 
That's part of it, too.
***
"Well, that's a thoughtful look. The sun's coming up. Get your coat on, okay?"
"It's July, Stephen."
"I know. I have something to show you."
And he flew you up higher than anything, higher than you'd ever fly on your own. It was cold enough that you could feel it, and you were glad you'd brought the jacket. Breath like ice. And the two of you looked down on something beautiful.
"Texas is the America of America, that's why we go there for our birthday. But it's just half the story. What do you see?"
You wondered what he was trying to say - in those days you wanted nothing more than to please him, to be the good student. You looked down and all you saw was a world.
"See where the borders lie?"
You wanted to lie, and say yes. But you could never lie to Stephen Standish.
"Can you?"
"That's what I brought you up here to show you. I couldn't see it for a long time, the shape of America. I just saw continents, not countries. But one day, and I don't know when that day came exactly, I could feel it. Like America was part of my body. And all of its people were part of me, too. It felt like becoming something I was supposed to be becoming, all this time, and it took me nearly a hundred years to get there. My hope for you is that it won't take so long."
You'll never be sure why you ask it, but the next question ruins it.
"Did the Scout ever feel it?"
And the sadness on his face said no, and much more besides.
"Look down again. Try to see it like I do. That's your soul down there, written on stone. That's your body. That's everything you are. This is our birthright. Taste it on the wind. That's home."
You can go to Texas, go anywhere, and fly up higher than you've ever flown - and there will be America, shining below you. Here all along, waiting.
***
The worst future - worse than the orgy one, even; worse than never being a superhero at all - went like this: You joined President Loy and stayed by his side, through everything that followed. Even when he revealed his master plan: To kill the American Dream and take his place, with you by his side. The way it was supposed to be, he said, and you believed him.
Somewhere along the way, in this future, your love for the Dream got twisted. His violence was too much, or his love wasn't enough - something about loving a demigod bent inside you and it stopped being about his mercy or his love. It started being about the things you wanted that you could never have. And Loy told you who to blame.
In this future, Stephen Standish was revealed in scandal to have slept with Civil Twilight. Experimentation or something deeper, whatever, all that mattered was that you'd been robbed, obscurely, of something you'd nearly never let yourself want. And this was a particular kind of sickening pain that you couldn't think your way past.
This was the worst future because it felt the most real. It was a year in Hell, wiped away with a snap of the Stationary Statesman's fingers. But the sting of it remained long after, an awful lot like shame or something worse. Pictures unbidden in the mind of lovers, twined around each other like muscled snakes. Beautiful and horrible. Two gods at play. And you, left out of it all.
As much as you're ashamed of this version of yourself, in this never-was, you can't blame him. Even now, it makes you sick to think about. Even now, knowing about that last birthday. Somehow it ruins everything it touches, even that.
***
If you had it all over to do again, you think, you would have played dumb a lot less and been curious about more. If you had it all over to do again, you would have taken Luther Loy at his word; let him introduce you to the delights he was always going on about. You know you're strong enough now to resist.
If you had it all over to do again, you wouldn't let them blame Maya's death on herself, or Ruby Jack. You'd figure out a better way to tell the story, even if you thought she did it. She deserves better, and when she comes back she'll need all the aces she can get. You'd hand over Dreamboat Annie next time she acted up - beg Maya to take her home, make her whole.
You'd let Kid A be your friend - really let him in, like he always wanted. You'd let yourself know Civil Twilight instead of always holding yourself apart from them, like the Dream wanted you to do. You'd be nicer to Mercury Rising, instead of hating him for being something you're too proud to ever, ever be. 
You'd find that Billy Barnes and kiss him, in costume - make all his dreams come true, make him your Jackie Jones. Wouldn't they stare then, at you happy. Complete.
You'd tell Monterrey and her partner everything from the second they came in the door, so they'd never have to cherry pie you. You'd tell your memories in such a way that they'd make sense all in a row. 
You'd demand the Stationary Statesman put you back somewhere sunny. 
You'd tell Jackie you loved her. You'd make sure it was true.
You wouldn't be sitting in a courtroom because you would have figured out a getaway - flown so far and so high they'd never find you. You could retire to a fortress deep in some faraway, and plan your return. Your vengeance. You'd find a way to reconstruct your memories without all the tricks and traps - you'd just be yourself, no slivers and shocks of self, no infinite futures flapping by.
You'd have demanded his love that first birthday, and every birthday since then. You would have gotten a straight answer out of him for once. He'd know how you felt, and gravity would pull you both back down to Earth and you would demand to know why love is sometimes a kiss and other times a slap, from the American Dream. 
You'd know why it's so hard to love a god, when he finds it so easy to love you.
***
Back to Nantucket, now. You're so obvious.
The children on the shore, in their homemade costumes, pretending to put that beached ship to sea. Standing on bow and stern, proud, looking into a future that only they could see. They are so young, even in your memory: Too young to know the lion they could unleash, simply with belief. The average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, but over a dozen were younger than you are now.
The American Dream was born at 6,000 meters per second. More than fast enough to deafen the midwife instantly, as well as his mother; along with a township, she was incinerated before she felt a thing. She had no chance to be afraid, lose hope, feel pain. 
This is important. Mercy is a kiss and sometimes a slap, and sometimes it is something impossibly bright.  
His father saw the blast before he heard it, but he too was unafraid: He hoped it was something divine about to happen. And then it did.
Some astrologers call him a Leo, rather than a Cancer. Perhaps he's both. Maybe the Dream is both at once, born on the cusp of water and fire. Too hot to breathe and too cold to touch.
Eyewitness testimony puts his death at 3:45 p.m. on January 6 of this year. Even invincible, you are a flincher.
One day it's gonna be you. You're going to feel America in you all the time and you are going to bleed for it. Find out what a person needs, and then help them get it. That was how you became a hero, at first: 
Whatever gets everybody out alive. Whatever gets us to a billion heartbeats.
But all of this happened a long time ago. We don't really have time for history.
***
Because now, here, as they ask you to take the stand and put your hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, or as many of them as you can remember, there is another part of you standing clear, putting it all together. Considering the optics of it all: The boy, the man and his hate and his love; Kid A's Heaven, the sky that birthday. That glimpse of Hell. Look at their unrecognizable, shining faces. Love them.
The feeling of it all, part of your body suddenly and inevitably: Your people. The America of America, exactly as painful as it is ecstasy. You'll see time like they do.
And so when you see it, you'll know what you have to do: Plead guilty to first degree murder, take your birthright - your rightful place in this passion play. Elude the Scout's grasp and throw him off long enough to find a way around him, the way the Dream intended from the beginning. Get everyone out alive.
But just before you grasp it, and do what you have to do - that's when I'll take off my glasses. You'll see me, suddenly in the back of the courtroom: A mild-mannered reporter, seemingly. Big across the shoulders. Smiling and proud of you and here all along, waiting.
Time for the getaway.



We're All Civil Twilight Now
The story of a third iteration of these heroes, in a dystopian world. 
Think American Horror Story: Insurrection.
They are whipped across the multiverse to Kirby and Jonah's world at the end of the story, when things are at their worst.