Sentimental Man

“Hap, the pizza’s sour,” I say to my twin brother dryly.

He frowns. “It really was the best thing I could find.” He picks at something dark and sticky on the asphalt.

Mug chuckles, but doesn’t say anything. She just watches.

Hap’s frown deepens in defense. He starts to grumble, “Well, it’s not awful--"

“No,” I interrupt, “it’s pretty bad.”

Mug giggles.

My brother’s eyebrows go up, just like they used to. “I dare you guys to find something better!”

“You talking to me?” Mug asks.

Hap starts to smirk. “Of course I’m talking to you!”

“Guys, we should keep it down.” I glance around.

Mug silences herself immediately.

“Or what?” Hap challenges.

Mug closes her eyes. She hears them. They could be miles away, but she hears them. “They heard us,” Mug whispers. “They’re at the west border of the city, about three miles.”

“Should we go?” I ask her.

Mug gets on her feet and looks down at me. ”You dumb?”

So we get up and follow Hap’s lead as we head into the forest that’ll bleed over past the next border.

“You guys need to find a car,” Mug grunts.

“Yeah,” Hap says before looking back at us, slowing his pace.

“Don’t slow up,” Mug commands. Then, she squeezes my hand. “Go faster,” she tells me.

He squeezed my hand. “What is that?” he asked me. The world shook and the winds howled. I looked up into the clouds and I could see the earth again, up in the sky, hanging. How was it here and there? The fiery storm grew stronger and Hap squeezed my hand tighter-- my hand couldn’t breathe, and then I couldn’t breathe, and then no one could breathe. All breathing ceased for the new world to be born.

“They found us!” Mug whispers harshly.

“What should we do?” I ask Mug, already knowing her answer.

“You guys go ahead. Don’t stop until you get past the east border. Someone should be waiting for you there.”

“Wait, no!” Hap protests. He’s grown to like Mug a lot. Actually, he ends up liking her the most. It happens every time.

Mug doesn’t bother to argue with him as she knows that I reason with him the best.

“She’s talking about herself, Hap. She’ll meet us at the east border.” I lie. I squeeze Mug’s hand before I let it go. “Thank you, Mug. For everything.”

She nods and heads in the opposite direction, towards our pursuers. “See you at the east border,” she says without turning back to us.

I don’t skip a beat. I grab Hap’s arm. “Run.”

We start running towards the east border of the city. Whether we do or not, Mug will self-destruct, and we’ve died that way before.

Once we get far enough, I allow Hap to slow down with me.

“Did we reach the border?” He’s panting.

“Ten minutes ago.”

“You made me run ten extra minutes?”

“I had to make sure we were far enough.”

On cue, a mushroom cloud forms in the distance. I draw Hap’s attention to the explosion.

“What is that?” He grabs my hand and squeezes it.

“It was Mug. She was one of the machines.”

Hap grimaces.

I haven’t gotten this far in a while... “She went rogue. She only crossed paths with us to protect us. She wasn't actually meant to live.”

Hap is confused. When his heart breaks, he always gets confused. “We stayed with her for days. How come this isn’t affecting you?”

I wish I could tell Hap that I’ve gone through this before. I glance up at the sky to check for the Earth. Nothing in sight. “Let’s keep moving.”

We continue to walk past the east border when Hap utters, “So Mug was a machine, like them?”

I don’t look at him. “She’s different from them, she wanted us to live.”

“How do you know all this?” His question hangs to dry in the crisp autumn air.

In all my lives, I’ve never told Hap that we’ve all lived more than once. I seem to be the only person who remembers the original world before the Renaissance. It’s the machines’ goal to make us all forget there was ever a time that we existed without them. Somehow, amidst all their busy scrubbing and rinsing, they forgot about me. They forgot to make me forget-- they missed me.

“Hello!” A cheerful call from a parking lot.

I look past Hap to see a man waving to us, full of youth and whimsy-- the one who betrays us. I aim to match his energy. “Hi there! Could you help us out?”

Hap is hesitant and steps in front of me, his back to the man. “Can’t we just keep going, just the two of us?”

I’ve entertained Hap’s suggestion before. We never even make it close to the next town without this man. I look straight ahead of me. “I like this man. I want to go with him.” I only say this because this man is a machine-- he can hear us from where we stand.

“What if he’s a machine that’s not like Mug?”

“I doubt he’s a machine, Hap.” I pat him on the shoulder before moving towards the man.

His name is Fen.

“Hello!” He calls again. “My name is Fen! I’d be happy to help you two.”

“I bet...”

“I apologize for my brother. He’s a bit shaken from what’s been going on.”

“All is fine! You two must be twins. You look just alike!”

“Yes, we’re twins!” The cheerfulness is a bit exhausting.

“Well, I can transport you to the next border.” Fen turns and points in the direction of the distant boundary.

I eye the heart-shaped locket hanging by a tiny chain around his right wrist-- this one object that haunts me every life. I feel it is part of me, but I can’t remember how or why.

Fen catches me staring at his wrist and winks smugly.

I nervously look away from him and find refuge in Hap’s suspicious gaze. I’ve never been caught staring at Fen before. It’s because I haven’t gotten this far in quite a while. Nevertheless, I’m behaving a bit too much like myself rather than someone who’s been myself before. That’s dangerous.

“We’ll drive to the next border.” Fen starts walking towards a car at the end of the lot.

“What?” I ask Fen. We’ve never driven to the next border. We’ve always walked.

“Something wrong?”

“Why are we driving to the next border?”

Fen stops walking and I stop Hap.

My arm is around Hap’s wrist and I can feel his pulse elevating.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Fen turns to face us squarely.

Hap reads me like a book, like he always used to. “My sister doesn’t want to drive, couldn’t we walk instead?”

“I’ll get you two to the next border. It’ll be a quick walk.” Fen.

We walked for about three hours. Fen and I talked the most, about all that we saw on the way to the border. Although Fen was loyal to the machines, he was extremely easy to talk to. He was the friend that I couldn’t get enough of, even though I knew that every time Hap and I made it to him, he would betray us.

“Sorry I have to do this,” Fen always announced, wielding a weapon of some sort.

“You’re a machine? You tricked us!” I always said this, because Hap always fell for it.

“He set us up! I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him!” Hap always broke down into hysterics. I guess he was the only one at that point who was truly feeling, truly feeling…

I don’t entertain Hap’s suggestion. “It’s fine. Let’s drive.” This is the first time in a long time I’ve done something that I’ve never done before.

Fen smirks and we get to the car.

Cars were Hap’s thing. “What kind of car is this?” I ask Hap.

He doesn’t think. The name just comes out, like it used to, in the original world. “...this is actually a pretty rare make and--” He stops. “Why do I know that?”

There’s always something in every life that unearths a gem of Hap’s original Hap. It gives me a sense of home in a world in which I shall never find home again, this life overflowing with lives, lives in which we cannot find us. I’m not supposed to think like this, because it brings on tears.

When we get in the car, I wipe the beginning of my hot streams away. We take off.

“Border, here we come!” Fen announces this so enthusiastically it sounds sarcastic.

I know for a fact that we will not make it to the border with him. I glance around the vehicle for a hint of some sort. Why does Fen have a car this time? I sense Hap watching me. “What?” I mouth.

Hap smiles. “I like his bracelet,” he mouths back at me.

It’s a shame Hap doesn’t realize the gravity of the situation. I couldn’t live with myself (or what’s left of me) if I told him how we’ve lived many lives that the machines continue to construct to stay in power over us. Hap needs to be happy. Clueless, innocent, happy. That’s Hap. That’s who he must be.

“I like your bracelet,” Hap declares to Fen.

His volume initially makes us jump but Fen chuckles. “Thanks. I got it cheap, dipped it in gold. Sold it to some sucker, and stole it back.”

“Why’d you do that?” Hap asks.

Fen rubs the dashboard. “For the car. He seemed a bit sentimental, this guy. He saw the golden locket and lost his mind.”

“Sentimental?” I ask this.

“Oh, for sure. Machines probably went after his family and got them all. He probably got out alive somehow. Golden locket probably belonged to a dead wife or daughter. I guess he thought he could keep them alive somehow.” Fen is still referring to the machines as others to disassociate himself from them.

“So you gave him that hope and took it away?” Innocent Hap.

Fen stares at us through the rearview mirror. “In my position, you’d do the same thing.”

“Can I hold the locket?” The words spill from me, I can’t stop them.

Not a word from Fen. He takes the locket from his wrist and holds it over my cupped hands. The locket drops into my palms. Everything comes back.

Fen is lying about the story of conning a sentimental man into buying cheap jewelry, and stealing it back. If anything, Fen is the sentimental man. This bracelet belongs to him-- it’s real gold.

“Fen,” I utter shakily.

Fen shushes me, just like he always did-- when I would almost say something he didn’t want Hap to know, when I wanted to say something truthful yet mean, when I would catch him in an innocent lie-- Father would always stop me before saying too much because he realized (just as I do now) not everyone could handle reality. Fen isn’t a machine, and Fen never betrayed us. He was gradually aiming to save us. Father turns back to me. “Cliff,” he points ahead of the car, “...or border,” he points to the left of the car. “There could be a main base across the border.”

Which means there is definitely a main base across the next border, where we would be killed by the machines. At least if we drive off the cliff, we all die on our own terms. That is my father’s reality, and he will probably continue to do this forever. He’d rather continually kill us all than let us all be killed.

“You okay?” Hap asks me.

I cover my soaked face and pass him the locket.

Hap gasps as he holds it, and Father takes off.

I don’t feel the car turn to the left.