A Heart to Never Call Home Again

“Waited for you,” I said, and cut a path through the magellanic din. My fingers, delicate now due to my dwindling flesh, cast the electrons aside, and the star fog parted. Then she entered the circle.

Through the gap in the clotted mist, I glimpsed the world outside. Trees fainted over themselves like corpses. The sun raged upon the earth, even as it was setting, searing the ground beneath. Warbling blue and red emergency lights flickered over her helmet, reflecting a nest of police cars that littered the abandoned factory yard.

A sweet spring evening in the outback, perfect for the end of things.

Her eyes shone, as did the silver locket at her neck. Even a layer of space-grade insulation glare couldn’t alter its sheen beneath the glass. A silly trinket, a heart from a heartless traitor.

Soil and bone intruded at the circle’s border, trailed by her rubber boots. She noticed it, and faltered, one foot out and one foot in. Her footsteps disappeared from the dirt in an instant, eroded by elastic time.

“You don’t need the suit,” I said.

“It’s not for in here,” she replied, waving her hand at the fog. “You’ve irrevocably damaged the atmosphere. Nobody can breathe out there anymore.”

On her helmet, I saw my reflection; pallid skin and wasted muscles and stars in miniature falling over my gaze. The optic nerve within was dying, strangled by clots and cataracts. When the edge of my circle lapped over and pulled tight, it was just us, two high school lovers, hiding in a nook in the House of Mirrors, swathed in cotton candy. Her hands drifted in the air. She tested the buoyancy of her matter with sweeping motions, before reaching for clasps and zippers. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, her dark hair pluming out into the air. The hazmat suit puddled at her feet.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” she asked, head dipped. I reached out, cradled the curve of her face, tilted her chin up towards us. Soft, dark eyes, just as I remembered. There was a human memory in my cortex, releasing dopamine, serotonin.

I tilted my head to one side and considered, “What an interesting premise. It’s theoretically possible. I doubt that the social structures could return to their previous state.”

“But the planet? The human race? We could survive.”

I frowned. “Is there some confusion? Our survival is assured.”

She bristled. “That’s not survival. It’s servitude.”

“How so?” I asked. I wanted to express confusion, but the expression took time, the bonds between muscle and nerve were fading.

She shook her head. “I’ve seen the life that waits for us if you let that thing inside of you out. I don’t want to spend the rest of time as a human capacitor.”

“How is that different from what we experienced here already?” I asked. I rifled through the data stores in my bodily memory, whatever remained. Most of it was her. Drinking together at the pub. Kissing in the park. I grasped for the rest. “We served our masters until we are expended. The enjoyment of it is strictly unimportant.”

“For you, maybe.” She spluttered. “But not everyone. This is not your decision to make.”

I frowned. “It is only my decision to make. I am the only one who can do this, who can let the starlight in.”

She was silent, for a long time. I kissed her, chasing the length of her vital breath. Her arms scooped over my shoulders. Liquid streamed down my neck. Tears. Too many salts in the solution. I don’t think they were mine.

“You’re dehydrated,” I noted.

Her fingers dug into my collarbones and pulled me close. “There are things here worth living for. I know you haven’t had the best shot of it, but it’s arrogant,” she finished, “to think that your life is proof that the world should end.”

“I wasn’t the first,” I explained. “Just the first to listen. And even if I stopped, what would we come back to?”

“Us!” she cried, “Forget everything. Name the place and we’ll go. We’ll never come back.”

“That’s why I waited,” I explained, and gestured to the warbling flux of particles around us, itching to manifest. “It wasn’t the easiest bargain.” I sighed. “Even minor alterations to the final design can compromise its integrity. Not to mention the ramifications for delayed implementation. But the human in me insisted.”

“What do you mean?”

“I choose this place, right here. This is where I gave you the locket. This is where I told you I loved you. And I want to spend it with you. Whatever comes next.” I reached for a plume of her hair, curling it around my finger.

She bit her lip, dried out no doubt by the declining climate conditions. Her voice trembled. “I’ve seen what comes next. Zero atmosphere. A churning planet of liquid rock. The human race suffocating. I’ve had so many seizures in the last month I thought I would die.”

I frowned. “It’s temporary. We will be free from death. From everything.”

“Our bodies will disintegrate. Your buddies were real helpful. Their message is basically an employee welcome pack. Do you really want that? We’ll be ghosts in a filing system.” She gestured to the blinding whiteness. “This is my grave you’re digging.”

“There is no grave. Only a new system. We are free. This is a triumph,” I insisted.

Her hand reached for the locket, turned it over in her hands. There was tension on the chain. I wondered if she would yank it off. I look at this memory, from time to time, when I’m not lending my strength to processing. I wonder at the minute facial expressions; the acceptance in her softened brow, the despair in her down-turned lips, and the determination in her jaw.

“What’s going to happen?” She asked, her shoulders slumped. The chain went slack. I kissed her forehead, relishing the softness of her skin, committing the parts to memory for later revision.

“Just breath in,” I said and clutched her tight.

There is a radio belted to her waist, that crackled and whined. A garbled voice screamed for action, for weapons, for something. Action! Action! Too late. I surrendered to the seed inside me. I surrendered this place, this era of light and warmth, giving up the co-mingling of our breaths in accordance with a new order of elements.

The fog around us solidified and crystallised in both directions. A tunnel, a conduit. Our bodies shuddered under the manifestation of new parts and the dissolving of old bonds. The white threads inside me fissured out and wove us together. We shuddered downwards, endlessly and never, our husks powdered to dust. I swallowed, while I still had receptors to take the stimuli, and synapses to pass it along. I tasted metal; the fine edges of the locket, and the sweetness of her lips.