By Ulysses Simon

You wake up in a land of the unnamed. You’re a poor soul whose life ended too soon. You know it, but you don’t remember why. Your memories are blocked by a wall of brain fuzz that doesn’t quite feel like amnesia but something more existential.

Trying to remember your life, before it ended, is like grasping for a single raindrop in an ocean. There isn’t a particular moment that comes to mind, no faces, no memory. You’re a blank hard drive with a template that’s labeled “formerly human”. You know you should love your mother, but the face is lost in a wandering afterthought of nothingness. A husk of ideals you are and nothing more.

In front of you is a seemingly endless line of other poor nameless like yourself. To both sides, thousands of more lines. No one has faces or bodies. You only think of them as standing because that’s the only familiar concept you know to describe it. But they are more like dark apparitions that a sense inside you automatically empathizes with. They are like you.  

They are dead.

The line moves quickly, waning shorter and shorter, pushing you towards whatever waits at the front. You don’t have control of yourself just yet. An invisible conveyor belt shifts you forward every once in a while to give you a sense of time and space.

You don’t know how much time passes, but you reach the top of the line. There’s a surprisingly earth-like kiosk with a moving mask inside. The mask is hollow and floating. It swivels back and forth, acting as the head to an invisible body.

You’re pushed to its view, and it looks you up and down with soulless black circles where the eyes should be. You hear a machine switch and ring, and the mask gives you a sheet of paper with a number on it. “Report to the white light when your number reaches 1.”

You try to tell them that you don’t think you’re supposed to be here, but you...

“Can’t remember a thing?” the mask’s disembodied voice mocks. “Report to the white light when your number reaches 1.”

That conveyor belt moves you along so it can say the same thing to the next in line. How rude, you think of that clerk. Your afterlife isn’t off to a good start. You have a vague sense of how places like this should go, but you find yourself confused and somewhat disappointed.

Eventually, the conveyor belt stops you in a crowd of other souls proceeding forward into a towering grey city. It's a bleak but booming metropolis if everyone suddenly woke up with nothing to do. There are streets but no cars. Apartments, but no lights on inside them. The stampede of nameless stumbles inside, and most of them disappear—husks morphing into bigger husks.

You’re carried in as well, but you don’t know where you’re supposed to be going. All you have are the instructions about the white light and a piece of paper with the number: 3,001,708,568.

The number startles you. It doesn’t feel right. The paper flashes, and the number ticks down one. You are now number 3,001,708,567.

More souls pass you by, and you can hear errant conversations.

“Well, what am I supposed to do while I wait?”

“Kill time. The world hasn’t stopped, apparently, just because we’re here. If you flick on a TV, you can see what’s happening back in real life. Not that it’s worth seeing at this point. Everyone’s already dead.”

“Was there an apocalypse? I can’t seem to remember.”

“The devil has risen, but the world goes on.”

You think that a view into the real world might give you some insight into what happened to you. You walk the streets of the empty city until you come across a sign that’s labeled, “Travelers Welcome.” It reminds you of a sports bar. A place with TVs. You wonder if you’d really get answers out of a place like this, but you think, what the heck? You’re dead. You’ve got nothing better to do.

You walk in, and it’s exactly what you pictured in your mind. An overcrowded den of people, the remnants of people, hooting and hollering around a bunch of screens. There aren’t any drinks, which you imagine is a good thing. Alcohol could pose a problem when people realize that they’re dead. If dead souls could get drunk, that was. Although there is a bar, this place functions more as a theatre room, where everyone talks through the movie.

On the screen, there aren’t any sports or any compelling dramas. It’s a young girl, dressed in a tradition that you internally know is uncommon. A long, plain blue dress and slippers. She has a head of dark hair as messy as a bowl of salad, and plain if not mediocre features.

She’s reading a book on a library sofa, legs bent at a ninety-degree angle and shoulders stiff as frozen cardboard. The book is labeled, “The Man Who Mastered Teleportation.” In the upper right corner of the screen is a name in a simple white font: Grace Wagler.

The crowd is far too interested in her reading. There are those who are pondering silently at the image and those making strange declarations over the screens implanted in their tables. All of them held the image of the same girl, reading her quaint little book.

“She’s not gonna last.”

“Put the book down, Grace.”

“No, read it forever.”

“She’s going to die. She’s going to kill herself.”

One of the nameless looks over to you. You don’t know if you have a face, but they can tell how dumfounded you are.

“She’s Amish.” They said it casually, not quite reading your confusion like they thought.

You have a lot more questions than that, but you try to explain that you’re not here to watch a girl read.

“I know. But you won’t remember anything. You’re nameless. Couldn’t find yourself if you tried. Accept it, friend. Your time is up. Time to watch someone else’s show now.”

The answer is dissatisfying and a bit degrading, so you decide not to engage further. You move your way through the other patrons, with “through” meaning actually walking through their incorporeal bodies. You want to try to find a table and screen all to yourself. If you can figure out how to work it, you could scour the globe and cure your brain fuzz.

Still, you see young Grace Wagler on every screen and wonder what the big deal is. For an Amish girl, the library she occupies is very full of technology. There are a few books packed into the walls, but most are there for decoration. Usually, people just check out a thin tablet and download whatever book they want. Those tablets lined the walls, and digital signs pointed to them, saying, “Access library here.” Though Grace's book was made of thin paper.

Eventually, another fair-skinned girl approaches her. The new girl is some preppy college student who got her inspiration for her looks from a line of like-minded sorority sisters.

“You know you can just turn on the TV instead of wasting your time reading,” the girl said.

“But someone recommended this book. I told them I’d read it, not watch it,” Grace said in a light, fluttery voice.

“What’s the point of a rumspringa if you just do the same things you do at home?”

“I can’t throw myself into it all at once. I’m not even sure if I want to try the same things you did. Everything is overstimulating. Even watching that TV makes me sick sometimes.”

“Ah, simple Grace. You’ll never learn what's out there until you open your eyes and give it a try.” She clicks on the television in front of them. A pair of co-anchors pop up. Today’s news story is a think piece on the rapidly declining birth rates around the world. An expert is scheduled to come on to discuss whether the new generations are just refusing to have kids or if there’s any truth to the argument that they physically can’t.

“But Hope, how could you leave everyone that ever loved you, for all of… this. It’s nauseating.” Grace gestured to the lights on the screen.

Hope shrugs. “Out here, I feel free. I can do anything I want to. And there are so many things that make me feel so many things. When you realize everything that you can do, it's hard to be satisfied going back there.”

“I suppose, I’m just terrified of all these things I’ve never tried.”

The next segment of the newscast presents a story on the new teleportation services in the local area. Prices are at an all-time low, meaning anyone anywhere can go anywhere in the world for a new low price.

In the background are people lined up for their turn at a human-sized glass dome. Patrons of the I.T.S., Instant Transportation Service, step inside the glass dome and then, in a blinking white flash, are suddenly gone, having appeared elsewhere in the world.

“Like that,” Grace says. “Seeing things like that still makes me question everything. Only God should be able to be everywhere at once.”

Suddenly, when she says that, the crowd of souls breaks out into a cheer. You’re never able to find a seat for yourself. Everywhere is overcrowded. But midway through looking, you find yourself paying attention to the conversation between the two girls. It’s your first glimpse at the world you’ve come from. The one you understand but don’t remember.

The cheers from the crowd are almost universal. Whistles. Clapping. Like the ending of a play, it's a standing ovation. You don’t understand, but a piece of that brain fuzz clears away. A distant memory of a blinking white light. Your shutter.

The blinking light makes you pay a bit more attention to the screen.

“You don’t have to worry about those, Grace,” Hope says. “I just used the I.T.S. today. There’s this pizza place in Chicago that I absolutely can’t live without. Like, once a week, I go get a Hawaiian deep dish and go eat it in Hawaii. It’s how I calm down after work sometimes.”

“Really?” Grace's eyes widen just enough to draw ire from the crowd.

“A friend of mine got a house in Montana just because of the housing market out there. He got basically a mansion for cheap. He hates the country, though, so he works nearby, in Pittsburgh. Then he goes straight to Miami whenever he gets off work. Think he has a girlfriend down there. According to him, home is just where we lay our heads at night. But if you think about it, we can be everywhere now, only because God gave us the ability to. Even if you don’t leave Hope’s Fern. You have to instant travel at least once before the end of your Rumspringa.”

A nameless booed loudly. “Don’t listen to her, Grace!”

“I just… don’t like them.” More applause. “It’s getting late. My folks will worry if I’m not back before dark.”

“You’re walking?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay… well, if you see my parents, tell them I miss them, I guess.”

“I will.”

There is something strange about that other girl. Something you can’t put a finger on but is unmistakably different from Grace. There is nothing inherently different about them besides their sense of style. Still, the way you see Hope is filled with bitter indifference. You find yourself glad that Grace is leaving her.

Grace restocks her book on the library shelf, the one titled “The Man Who Mastered Teleportation.” The author is William Charter.

“It’s a shame that a man like that could become the richest in the world,” a soul spouted.

Others chimed in. “You think he knew what he was doing?”

“There's no way he didn’t, and I hope he’s burning in hell for it.”

“Well, if he knew what he was doing, then why would he be dead? And why would you assume he’s burning in hell?”

“Cuz evil burns. It's how the lord says it is.”

“You don’t know what’s at the end of that light. Who's to say it's heaven or hell?”

“With what we are now, you seriously going to pull the atheist card?”

“We’re just souls. Plenty of religions have souls.”

“Yeah, sure, buddy. Well, no matter what rendition of hell you think there is, Charter is in all of them.”

After all this talk, you’ve finally had your fill of feeling like the dumbest nameless in the room. You ask who this William Charter is. Your voice surprises the soul nearest to you.

“Oh. You’re a new one. How’d you slip under everyone’s noses?”

You shrug and wait for them to answer your question.

“He’s the inventor of the teleporter. What he himself called the greatest invention of mankind’s brief lifespan. And the man who drove humankind into extinction.”

You have no idea what they’re talking about. From what you saw on the screen, humankind seems to be doing just fine, and the teleporters make life better, not worse in any way. You ask them what they mean.

“You’re here because the teleporters killed you.”

You’re taken aback. You ask them how they could know such a thing when they don’t know you.

“It's what killed everybody here. The only thing anyone remembers is that blinking white light.”

The information feels false. Another nameless confirms its truth before many others raise their voices in agreement. But how? you ask. Hope said she took the teleporter today, and she’s just fine.

“Hope is dead too.”

“William Charter is what you might call a mad scientist. He devoted his life to figuring out teleportation. I saw it in his book when Grace was reading it. He was a typical science nut obsessed with leaving his mark on the world. He created a concept, and some money-grubbing rich man took his ball and ran with it. Basically, threatened that if he didn’t perfect his machine, he’d never be able to work again. And sure enough, he did something. When teleporting, the machine breaks down the human body to the molecular level and recreates it in a new location, in a different machine. But every time someone new uses the teleporter, a new soul pops up here.”

“He didn’t create a teleporter. That idiot created a fax machine that shreds the original.”

“They’re pretty good copies, though, if I had to say. No one’s been able to tell for fifty years,” another nameless said.

A heavy pit sits in your stomach. And you remember Hope. A copy. A lookalike of the original. She must still believe she’s the same Hope as before, with the same sense of style, same mannerisms, and the same parents.

That means there’s still a version of you down on that planet. Somewhere, living the life you thought you were going to when you stepped into a teleporter for the first time. Maybe you were going off to work, or maybe to visit a friend. You were there right now as an empty copy of yourself. Dead.

It takes you a moment. So, everyone’s dead. It’s like suddenly killing every person who touched a car. Fifty years in a world absolutely reliant on its innovations was plenty of time to dispatch most of the world. An invisible plague spread across the earth. The end of humanity. Only able to be taken out by something they can’t see.

 But then a thought pops into your head. Grace?

“She’s one of the last good channels we get up here. Thankfully, she doesn’t trust the teleporters.”

 “Thank god.”

“Now don’t assume god has anything to do with it.”

“Oh, sue me.”

You suddenly understand. The entire room is watching a loved one’s last grasp at life on their deathbed, trying so desperately to cling to a string of life, if by nothing but instinct alone.

You look up to see Grace with an eye on an ITS station as she walks by it. It must be awfully alluring. It would save her a five-mile walk back home or a painful day of figuring out the automated bus system.

You feel yourself wanting to yell and be that mythical guardian angel, like in the stories. But you realize that you are nothing but a passive observer, just like everyone else here. Grace was in the hands of whatever being ran this place.  

She continues walking all the way down a mile-long dirt road with aching feet and dirt-stained black slippers. Her village is named Hope’s Fern. It’s a small prairie town in the heart of Pennsylvania. It wouldn’t be labeled on any map or GPS.

A small dusty town headlined by a hand-built church surrounded by a few miles of farmland. Only a few families live there. Amish culture wasn’t one of the ones that thrived in what they call the Instant Era. The communities were old-fashioned—no electricity, no mechanical devices, everything handmade, as they believed God intended.

Grace is welcomed home just a few minutes after the sun sets. Her father admonishes her for being as late as she was. Grace bows her head in apology and promises not to do it again.

She goes to tell her father all the interesting things that she experienced out in the other world. Though her father expresses his concern that, instead of singing in the choir and joining the Amish youth group, she goes out to the city to visit Hope.

“These new technologies are the first signs of the coming of the devil.” He rants. “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” He reads from the book of Revelations, trying to explain that this mark of the beast is hidden out in that ungodly world and that Grace should stay far, far away from it.

He’s a clone, too. He looks real, but you get the same feeling as you got from Hope. You wonder if his nameless is somewhere in this bar, watching the words he’s saying to his daughter. They’re still his words in a way.

Grace nods politely and goes to greet her mother in the living room. She is also a clone.

Before you know it, a few weeks pass in Grace's life. Her trips out to the city grow more and more frequent as time goes on. She hangs out with Hope, meets Hope’s friends, and now when she comes home, she doesn’t wear that traditional blue dress.

Now she was wearing something a little less modest. A nice blouse with a skirt that etches on the line of her knees. Her parents aren’t happy about it, but they suppose that this time in their daughter’s life is one when she will be made or broken and tested by temptation. All they could do was teach her the way and read her scripture whenever she came home.

But Grace starts asking to stay the night out in the city. Her father denies her. The crowd cheers. Grace doesn’t understand and gets into an argument about it. The first they’ve ever had, according to the other nameless. It catches her parents off guard, as they suddenly see their precious, innocent girl lash out at them. The corruption has begun in their eyes.

Grace lies in her bed, room lit by candlelight. Then a blue light shines under her thick cotton blanket. She borrowed a backup phone from one of Hope’s friends, who told her that she absolutely couldn’t live in the city without a phone. If she wanted to be their friend, she’d have to follow them on all their social media accounts and text in the group chat.

Even though Grace isn’t as interested in that kind of stuff, she does like the idea of a smartphone. All of the world’s knowledge is just at her fingertips. Before, she was afraid to tell Hope that she didn’t quite know what a Hawaiian pizza is or even where Hawaii is on a map. With this thing, she can find out in a matter of seconds.

But a couple of days ago, she discovered something that melted her mind and soul. Music. And not the organ or the choir music she would hear at church, but music with a distinct creative freedom, like she had never heard. The verses weren’t about the bible. They were about love and discovery and the power to become whatever you want to be.

These were the songs of Julio Vega. A pianist, known for his fabulous duets with all the great singers of the world. He would write and compose their songs and play the perfect piano melody to assist in the invisible act of empathy, spreading it to a million ears around the world.

Though she was upset to hear that he hadn’t created a new piece in over ten years. But even still, what he had was enough for her to beg Hope to borrow a pair of headphones.

She plays the songs, and the smooth, brisk melodies play throughout the bar. A piano ballad heralding the voice of a middle-aged man, crying for the love that took his youth. All the nameless close their eyes and sway back and forth. You try to envision a man’s fingers moving across a grand piano. It’s a relief from all the tense staring at Grace’s every decision.

More time passes, and Grace further descends into what others have been calling the dark side. One of the clones styles her hair. They let her borrow their clothes. She spends days watching movies and documentaries, learning about the world. One day, they take a group trip to the mall. It was a local mall since Grace was still unwilling to take a teleporter, much to the annoyance of some of the girls, but it's a fun trip nonetheless.

They happen to walk by a music store that’s selling keyboards. A few hundred dollars. One of them had a sign. “Comes with built-in lessons. Pair with the app to play like Julio Vega.” Grace stops, telling Hope that she absolutely has to have it. But it was worth $500. Too much money for a friend to loan out. She would have to get a job and buy it herself.

Grace gets a part-time job at a local supermarket. Nothing too hard. She just manages the drones that stock the shelves. She has no experience dealing with supply boxes and cranes that move on their own, but she isn’t actually required to touch them. All she has to do is watch them and be there if a customer complains. It doesn’t pay much, but when she gets her first paycheck, she jumps for joy.

Back in Hope’s Fern, whatever work she does is just rewarded with a dinner plate and a thank you if she’s lucky. Having the hard evidence for her hard work makes her consider things that she had never considered before.

The nameless see the glint in her eyes. There is a collective groan.

“The end of the Rumspringa is coming up.” One of the nameless said. “She’ll have to make her choice soon.”

You realize that several months have passed since you set foot in the bar. Time was far fleeting in this place, and you still felt like it was the same afternoon. Though you’re still getting used to the idea that afternoons no longer exist for you.

You look down at your sheet of paper. 2,533,203,901. The bar feels slightly emptier. Not by much, but there’s enough room for you to take a seat now.

“She’s gonna leave the village,” a nameless said.

“Damn that Hope. She’s a bad influence.”

“Someone should deal with her before she takes out the entire human race.”

“It isn’t too late. Her parents still can bring her back from the edge.”

“Right, she won’t want to leave her family behind.”

“What does it matter anyway if it’s the end of humanity? The clones are still there.”

“Don’t try to justify this.”

“They're right. Who are we to say that those clones aren’t just human too? They’re us, right?”

“They don’t have souls.”

“They don’t know that. The human race won’t actually be extinct to anyone but the dead.”

“It’d be nothing more than a simulation at that point. A damn perfect simulation, but it ain’t us. And that’s the problem.”

“Well, we’ve just been split in two. One that’s dead and one that isn’t. But if it's no different than us, then what’s it matter to everyone else?”

“How do you not understand that we are dead!? Which means they are dead too. They can’t even have children.”

“And what if they solve that problem on their own?”

“With more batshit technology? Give me a break.”

“They solved other diseases. They solved space travel. They’ll find a way.”  

The argument ensues, but you keep your head out of it. The end is coming to her Rumspringa, and Grace will be forced to choose between the outside world and Hope’s Fern. One of Julio Vega’s solo songs plays, which cools the arguing. It reminds you she still hadn’t bought that keyboard. And if she does, there was no way it’d be allowed back in her family’s modest cottage.

 You see Grace having a good time with her friends. They throw a small party to celebrate her, just in case they don’t see her again. Every time someone asks, she shrugs, saying she hasn’t decided yet.

But there are young men at this party. Something her father and mother would clearly reject. But you see her having the time of her life, showered with friends and music. You wonder whether Grace feels like she’s living in a simulation. She doesn’t seem to notice. All the faces and laughter are exactly what you would expect out of haughty teenagers. Nothing’s wrong, and you can’t tell whether or not that’s the biggest issue.

She has her first kiss. She knows she isn’t supposed to, and her parents would kill her if they found out, but she’s in the mood to experiment, with everything possibly coming to an end soon.

You’d seen the boy before. He would pop in and out of her social circles, always flashing a smile of interest. Michael—a nice boy, getting a graduate degree in architecture.

You watch Grace linger a bit too long in front of Michael’s presence. He offers to drive her home, and she accepts.

“We’re doomed,” says one of the nameless.

That night, the conversation with Grace’s parents doesn’t go well. They discover her stash—assortments of gadgets and memorabilia, she’d gathered over the past year. They accuse her of bringing that “mark of the beast” into their homes. When her mother asks her why, she says so she can listen to music when she sleeps.

Her father calls her corrupted to her face, saying that they’ll have to put her through another baptism to cleanse her sins. Grace tries to argue her side of things, but only digs herself into a hole in the eyes of her father. “I will not see my only daughter become a whore and a delinquent.

Grace looks to her mother to make the verbal beating stop, but she finds no comfort there, only a pained scowl and words that are just as vicious. “If you go back out there, you are not allowed back in Hope’s Fern, ya hear?”

A year passes. Your number continues to fall, and the bar is half empty. Grace lies comfortably on Hope’s couch. She lounges out in a tank top and pajama bottoms. After a restful nap, she goes to her room to practice piano on her keyboard. She’s been learning a new song. “Painful Goodbyes” by Julio Vega.

She hears Hope walk in. She complains about her new job in California and how living in two separate time zones is a bit of a pain.

Just then, Grace gets an AI reminder on her phone to head to work. She never set it herself. It just knows when she usually starts walking that way. She waves her friend goodbye, grabs her work shirt, and heads out. She puts her earbuds in and enjoys a long, peaceful walk to work.

The workday is long and uneventful. It's the usual cleaning up after loose drones. But she has a base knowledge of how to respark a wire or two now. That’s how she got her first promotion to assistant AI operator.

She sweeps the floors manually as a few of her coworkers funnel out of the building. Suddenly, remembering she finds the vacuum drone in a closet and switches it on.

“Nice to see you’re finally adapting to modern life,” one of them says.

“Well, why make life harder when millions of people have already worked to make things as easy as possible?” she nervously laughs.

“Now you’re getting it. Look, a bunch of us are going to New York to see a Broadway show. You wanna join?”

“Umm, no thanks. I picked up an extra shift, so I’ll be here pretty late.” You breathe a sigh of relief. Even after all this time, she retained her fear of teleporters, which must seem so unnatural to all her friends. The claps in the bar follow your relief.

But the instant transport machines are everywhere. At her job, when new shipments come in, they’re teleported for the robots to pick up out of the machine. Many customers have items teleported straight to them after paying online. There’s a full-service machine on every street. They’re becoming more common than fire hydrants. It’s a miracle that Grace has survived this long. You don’t want to speak it, but their grasp feels inevitable. In order to survive, Grace would have to be the strangest, most stubborn woman in the world, because of a baseless superstition. She didn’t know that it would kill her, and that feels like the biggest tragedy of them all.

The countdown on your number continues to flash down. Less than a million to go. Then you’ll be called to that white light. You wonder if you’ll get to see how the story ends before you go, but worry less about what’s within that light. You prefer not to think about it.

The bar is nearly empty. Just you and a couple of other patrons, sitting not far away. They linger like they want to say something but are too nervous to speak.

The next week, Grace goes to a computer store and gets a microchip planted into the side of her forehead. She lies on the table after a painless insertion. Michael is there to hold her hand through it. It was he who convinced her to get it after a long time of bragging about all of its benefits. Direct neural connections. Replayable memories. Perfect sight and sensitive touch. Everything possible in the world is put directly in her head.

It took a lot to convince Grace to get it done, but the moment she does, she feels she has made the greatest decision of her life. When the chip activates, a breathtaking chill shoots through her body, opening her pores to a sensation keen to a massage from the cosmos. She has to control her breath as something in her mind says, “Hello, Grace.” She smiles, a small scar looming on her forehead.

“It’s amazing,” she says.

“Right? Now you see how crazy it is that you were so afraid of this stuff. Nothing happened. See,” says Michael.

Grace stands up with slight assistance, still getting used to her new senses. They’re like nothing she had ever felt before—the closest feeling to superpowers man could have. She can change what she sees, what she feels. She can walk to melodies and make her own theme songs in her mind. She can never miss a moment because memories are a physical object now—an object that she can move and replace if she chooses.

“Does this make me the devil?” she asks.

Michael doesn’t understand.

“For wanting to experience something like this,” she continues. “Before I left Hope’s Fern, my father said I’d become a whore and a delinquent. They looked at me like I wasn’t human.” Her smile wobbles, and she starts to cry.

“No...” Michael says, and he hesitates before saying, “If you really want… with that chip, you can get rid of that memory.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she says as he wipes her tears away.

“Good. If we break up, I hope you’re not the type to try to forget me.”

“Don’t be stupid.” She punches him playfully.

“I got you something.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. On the screen is a ticket for a concert. A Julio Vega concert. Apparently, he’s making his big comeback and debuting a brand new song after 10 years.

The excitement on Grace’s face is something you can never forget behind any wall of brain fuzz. She lights up like a floodlight and nearly passes out from her own passion.

That passion dies a bit when she sees something else written on the page.

“It’s in England,” she says.

Michael's own excitement turns into a slight nervous fidgeting. “And?”

“You know I never want to touch those teleporters.”

“But look, this is something that you know you want more than anything. Why cut yourself off because you’re afraid of something without a reason to be?”

“Because I don’t want to.” She turns from him, crossing her arms.

“So what, I just bought these tickets and you’re not going to go? Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable? These weren’t cheap.”

“Don’t you think you’re being controlling? Don’t make me do something I don’t want to.”

“Controlling… Are you serious?”

Other people in the store start to stare, and the two go their separate ways to stave off any more embarrassment. You and the others in the bar are silent. You realize you feel something for Michael. But Grace can not get on that teleporter. No matter how much she idolizes that pianist.

Still, you wish it didn’t have to be that way. In some way, Michael is right. She’s cutting herself off for a fear that to her makes no sense at all. Grace has come here to this side of the world because she sees the beauty of things that could be. When sitting on our comfortable beds and sofas, only the impractical will choose to live in the Stone Age. It’s human nature to step forward and evolve and never to return to the broken, feeble conditions that humankind was once forced to live in.

Grace refused to regress, and now she refuses to evolve. You know the consequences of both. Grace doesn’t.

She walks back to her apartment alone. Confused. Heartbroken. Angry. Mostly at herself.

It’s a cold winter day. The snow is piling on the streets by her apartment. The piano plays in the bar.

She takes the elevator to her and Hope’s apartment. Michael is already there waiting in the breezeway. He’s seated by the door, covered in his winter clothes, blowing frosty air from his chapped lips.

“What are you doing? It's freezing out,” Grace says, but without thinking, she sits next to him. Michael doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t prepared a romantic speech, so they sit looking at the wall across from them.

She cuddles up next to him for warmth. “I’ve just always had this irrational fear. Like one day, if I make the wrong decision, I’ll end up all alone. I left my family to live out here. I left behind everything that I loved then to move to a place surrounded by people who are so different from me. It’s a dream that I’m not sure is good or bad. Now that I’m here, I can’t wake up. I feel stuck in a motion that I can’t stop.”

“You know they’re good seats.”

“Were you even listening?”

“You can’t blame yourself, Grace. You saw something. You wanted it and you went after it. Your dreams are what brought you here. To me. To Hope. To the real world. It’s natural to want more. Even if it kills you inside.”

“The world is already dead, Grace,” you hear yourself say.

The number on your paper ticks down to 1. A voice plays in your head. “It’s your time.”

You nod, and somehow you know exactly where to go. You step outside the now-empty bar. The city is desolate. All except for one lone nameless sitting silently on the sidewalk.

Before you go, you stand next to them.

What are you afraid of?

“I think I’m after you.” They show you their slip of paper. It says 2.

You extend the apparition of your hand to the nameless. You offer for them to watch you go through. If we all do it together, then it won’t be as scary. The end is always bound to come. There's nothing to be done. Humankind has evolved past their souls.

The nameless gladly takes your hand and walks just behind you through the city. It had shrunk immensely to just one street. The light is ahead, and you swallow your fear.

You enter the white light and, surprisingly, you hear the piano of Julio Vega, perfectly copied.