The Chosen

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” But Dex knew it was a lie just like all the lies she told him, told others. Just another pithy fabrication scrawled in a litany of fabrications upon torn fragments of paper and left taped to cupboards, mirrors and bed posts. Harbingers and shallow insights stolen from others and dumbed down to mimic original thought. She was never the same after their daughter’s death. It was in the days after the tumor arrived. Bedded in her brain and then the messages arrived. She scrawled them down in a fervency of import only felt by her. “Hope will be found in the ruins,” and other such nonsense.

He stayed because she needed him. He stayed because he needed to be needed and even in the isolation of her desperate mental erosion he clung to the illusion of their broken vows. Fifteen years next Wednesday. He never told Rachel of the affair, not even as the tumor returned to her brain and his knuckles whitened around the cold rails of the hospice bed which rested just two feet away from where their child was conceived, the sheets long buried away in the cedar chest her parents bought them on their wedding day. There is nothing that prepares you for this. Not his military training, not watching his parents die, his daughter die. Death will always find a new voice in which to speak. And in the implacable voice of dying, Rachel speaks.

“The wheels...the wheels are back. They’re back! Eyes. They’re full of eyes. They’re moving again. Back and forth. Just look at them.”

“It sounds beautiful, baby.” He tried to sound comforting, engaged but inside he was already grieving. The loss before the loss when every word, every breath was precious and felt like the countdown it was. It will be less than a week now.

The tape recorder lay just inches from her face on the pillow, drinking in her final words even as he slept. The final cold witness to the world only she saw. The last of her voice now fragile and haltering for soon there will be no more voice, no witness, no her. This is now all he had as his vodka bottles emptied and his hands extended in a supplication to a God he no longer believed in.

“Oh! The light!” She hadn’t spoken for hours as he leaned in closely, her voice now only a whisper.

“Tell me about the light, baby.”

“It’s the light...and the ones who like it.”

“Who, baby? Who likes the light?”

“The ones...with the eyes. They see. They see...everything. From even before.”

“Before what, baby?”

“Before...us. Before we were here. Before the fire. Oh…”

“What fire? What fire, baby?”

“Something’s happening. And it’s going to effect everything. Billions...and billions of lives.” He didn’t know how to respond. These were the things she said when the tumor first appeared. The writings he dismissed as nonsense but now wanted to have meaning, the last of her value before death took her. Her hands swam in secret incantations in the air before her. An act so intentional, so specific that it must have meaning. This private sign language known only to her and now so very very important, so important that he took pictures and scrawled them in a journal but knew in his heart were the mere mis-firings of a dying brain. He crushed his elbows into his knees and leaned in.

“I cheated on you, baby. Awhile ago. It was only once but that doesn’t matter. I did it. I’m so sorry and it never happened again.” The regret hits him in an instant. This egotistical confession purely for his own sake which benefits her nothing. Why lay this on her now you selfish selfish man, he thinks? He presses his face into his hands hoping she didn’t hear as she traces a circle between her breasts and crossing it out with a slash over and over again.

“Helen,” she rasps. His eyes flash open as he leans back in shock. There was no way for her to know this name. A woman from work who she didn’t know and was never mentioned even in passing. “Helen,” she repeats again. “Dead. All dead now.” He stares at her as she turns her head and opens her eyes for the first time in three days. She then mouths words he can’t hear as he strains to listen. She repeats them again in earnest as he moves the recorder closer hoping it has better ears than his. Her eyes are imploring as she nods as if to confirm he heard her. He nods helplessly back and she never speaks again. Two years ago now. She never wanted a funeral.

No wife now, no children and family long dead. His adoptive parents had no siblings and neither did their adoptive parents – an aberrant lineage of orphans and Dex with no blood connection now to anyone in the world. And that’s why he was chosen.

The Watchers had been a witness to this planet from before the time our first thoughts arrived. Before our first war, before our first birth. They saw our agony and yearning and waited their time until now. And they chose us to endure and Dex was one of the chosen for no other reason than he was alone and knew how to love.

***

Dex adjusts Rachel’s and his daughter’s ashes on the bureau just as he did every morning before coffee, before the news that now spoke in bright tones of the promising peace talks he knew would fail, but nudges the ashes regardless. His way of saying hello, having agency yet the last time he would do so. The team had to convene at the warehouse at noon sharp for it was their last day on the earth as they would know it.

The team numbered five and he knew nothing of them other than they were chosen like he was chosen – they had skill sets but no families or connections. No one to leave behind upon their sudden vanishing which was going to happen in exactly three hours. Each were allowed ten pounds of personal items and not an ounce more. He had been packed, unpacked and repacked for weeks. What really matters? What would you take from your home if it was on fire? It was an existential and winnowing question and it came down to what he knew it would be – sentiment, history and comfort. The laptop was the most practical. It contained every photo he ever shot, his music, his writings and most importantly the recordings of Rachel. All 240 hours of her dying. He brought his favorite leather jacket, jeans and boots, his medals from the military and in a choice of pure emotionality, his daughter’s favorite puppet – Animal from the Muppets. It left almost a pound to go and the choice was obvious and he had put it off until now.

He placed the containers of ashes on the table. Too heavy to bring in their entirety. Dex opens the junk drawer and takes out a maroon flashlight and dumps the batteries in the trash that will never be emptied and grabs a spoon and a small screw driver and removes the covers. Human ashes are an off putting non-white of bitter grit. Only pulverized bone long divorced from their origins. Was this from her skull or her hip? The finger that bore her wedding ring? Both sets of ashes look disturbingly the same though he knows he shouldn’t be surprised by this. He just thinks his daughter should look younger somehow. Taking the spoon, he scoops a delicate mound of ashes first from Rachel and then his daughter and repeats this until the flashlight is full and screws the cap shut as the residual ashes grind in the threads. He apologizes and places the entire lot of belongings on the scale. 9.9 pounds. Time to go.

Thirty minutes to the warehouse as the city bustles in its citiness. New construction on 7th and Main, the crane hauling an I-beam through the air like a child holding a stick. A line outside the bookstore for a signing as a writer begins their career. A family eats ice-cream outside the new shop on Michigan street. And all of it will be gone in less than a week. Erased in nuclear fire just as Rachel saw.

Dex turns into the alley, the warehouse should be on the right. Nondescript and without any markings. Just a faded roll-up door where Janice and the team should be waiting. He parks the jeep for the last time and grabs his bundle of memory. He runs his hand over the hood. “Goodbye, friend,” and heads inside. The space is a litter of objects without use – broken stacks of pallets, scrap metal and a forklift that seems inoperable but no one seems to be around. “I’m here,” Dex calls out into the darkness.

“Dex...” Janice appears in the shadows, her dreadlocks pulled back into a pony tail. “Everyone's here except for Carl and I can’t get a hold of him.”

“There’s not a lot of traffic, so I don’t know. How much time do we have?”

“An hour. Doesn’t seem real. All this time and this is it.”

“What if Carl doesn’t make it?”

“We leave. There’s no choice. We need him but there’s no time for a back-up. Not now. That window closed a week ago. You brought the recordings?”

“Rachel’s? Yes.”

“You haven’t listened to them have you?”

“No. Some, but no. It’s just too much. Days and days of it and much of it was just her suffering. The oxygen machine pumping, silence for hours and then words I couldn’t make out.”

“It’s okay. The Watchers have it all. They have it all processed now. She left clues of value for the mission. It wasn’t just gibberish as you thought.”

“When can I hear it?”

“During the transition. That’s what I’m told, but they don’t tell me much.” Janice looks at her watch. “We have to get ready now.”

Janice leads Dex to the service elevator hidden in the far corner. A simple metal grate and a set of simple buttons in dirty yellow. Up and down. They head down.

Janice looks over Dex’s stash. “Animal. He was always my favorite muppet.”

“It was my daughter’s. I couldn’t leave him.”

“We’ll have flashlights you know.”

“Not like this.”

The elevator jolts to rest as Janice raises the metal grate. The space is immaculate and devoid of anything other than a blue metal container which sits lit just twenty feet away. Two women and one man stand idle beside it. So normal, Dex thought. So boring yet chosen from among billions to be here. He knew they were not the only ones. Pods of people were chosen on every continent around the world to gather at this moment just as they were. Helsinki, Dublin, Prague and all of them thinking the same thing. Why us? The lonely orphans of this world chosen by an impossible algorithm to rebuild the world years from now.

The Watchers had been our witnesses for thousands of years now. The earth deemed unique and tragic among the creations of creations among the universe. Our endless wars, selfishness and greed yet bearing an impossible thread not seen in any civilization anywhere among the stars. That we could love. This quality...fragile and embattled yet persisting despite our rage and for this we were chosen to endure. And there were only thirty minutes left.

The container was already full with equipment whose functions could not be discerned and the small bundles of the team’s chosen relics. Dex saw photo albums, a wedding dress and even a tin of caviar. He placed his stash upon the scale that sat just outside. 10.1 pounds. Impossible he thought, but this was the final arbiter of weight and memory. He took out his war medals and placed them on the ground. Still not enough. Just an ounce to go as he sadly unscrewed the cap of the flashlight and poured a measure of ashes out over the tin medallions he earned for saving his platoon in Afganistan. The scale came up clean as Janice placed his stash on the preordained rack and the door slowly lowered. Carl was not going to make it. He would perish as all would perish except that he knew it was coming.

The bay of pods was prepared and waiting not a hundred feet away. They each had to strip completely and place on thick envelopes of a green sheaving cloth that covered even their heads. Above in the shadows was the cover that would seal them away into their journey into the future. A wave of grief overwhelmed them. The world and everything in it would die. The Watchers knew. They planned for this and made for a fragile escape. We few, we unlucky few Dex thought as the cover descended and they were trapped into the future. How many years he did not know.

It all seemed to happen at once. They saw the first bombs fall, then the second wave in rapid succession. Millions of people eased in ash as cities crumpled in twisting molten metal. And in the country sides, home steaders who had prepared for such an event fell to the sickness of fallout in the months to come in the fatal winds that sought their demise. The earth died and a hundred years past blurring in a vision of all future potentialities and a voice of a Watcher spoke.

“Dexter Minton. You must listen. Your wife gave you a warning. A clue. A direction you must follow but what we cannot discern.” Dex could not speak but in his soul called out for an answer. What was it? What did she say?

“Find the child,” the Watcher spoke. “That is what she said.”

And time blurred in a smear across his vision as creation and uncreation weaved atop one another. Worlds made, worlds destroyed yet they, this team arriving at a point, a moment set for them by those of greater eyes and wisdom.

The team stood naked under their suits on the ship of Watchers. The ones who picked them for this time. How much time passed Dex did not know. Fifty years? A hundred years? Janice stood on the deck as the Watchers vagued behind a screen for their presence, their appearance was too much to behold. Each had their task now. Procreation now a matter of stolen biology from their genes and now growing nascent in incubators. It was the only way.

Dex took his clothes from his stash and donned himself in the familiar. The door from the ship opened and the team beheld a world of ash and ruin. Buildings once familiar now crumpled in grey ruin. “Find the child,” the watchers said. The words prophesied by his dying wife. Somewhere in the dregs of the earth was a life he needed to find. The beginning of new beginnings and Dex set off in a leather jacket and a puppet at his side.