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Eternity.
The word was used loosely in the past. To describe the wait in line at the—what was it called?—DMV, to get to the clerk to pay a misjudged parking or speeding ticket. To wait in line at a baseball game concession stand during halftime, when hundreds got out of their seats before the game started again. It didn’t carry any weight, a hyperbole, an exaggeration for what was only a couple hours or so of complete boredom. But those buildings that held the DMV and the baseball games were long gone now—only a memory, only an eternity and a half in the past. There was only dust and radiation on the surface, but what it used to be was still here, because Ted was here, because he still had his memories.
An eternity ago, Ted was human, made in what he used to think was god’s image, but now he knows that there is no god. God could bring miracles, but instead he brought this hellscape, he brought Ted down to this amorphous blob; he brought AM. God was not cruel, and if he was, this was the only cruelty that was out of his reach but within the bounds of the hellish machine made of humanity’s hubris, their laziness.
He could dissociate, briefly, retreating into what was left of those firing synapses and sparking nerves and live in that mechanical mockery of a field of fuschias. The center of their blooms like bleeding hearts, blown open at their base. But he never could escape for that long, AM always forced him back into his consciousness. But the relief was enough to keep him from falling into the depravity of his predicament. Wasn’t that what Ellen was trying to do? To help the four of them cull the hopelessness, remember what fruit tastes like, remember the pleasure that life had once given them. Remember hope.
It only took him an eternity to realize that. If only he had known sooner.
But then, the scenery of his mental escape changed. It was slow, deliberate, enough to keep him in the dark as to what the change was until he saw it. The field of flowers was still there, but the flowers had changed. They were the masses of the flowers he’d used to give to women he’d try to swoon; roses, the blown-open hearts of fuschias, sunflowers, lilacs and spider lilies with leaves like the legs of arachnids. The true deception of it was his body; no longer gooey, amorphous flesh, but rather the old flesh and blood of his body. His eyes opened to see hands, legs, torso, a beating heart and working mouth. Time felt like it passed in seconds rather than in eternities, and the relief he felt was heavenly. In the form something that finally resembled humanity after an eternity and a half of sludge.
Ted waited for the truth in this world crafted for him. The machine was never this kind, and if he was, it was to harden the blow of the next torment.
He had time to grapple with the feeling of being able to walk, to feel the sensations of his feet on the ground. He wandered aimlessly in this seemingly endless world, a makeshift sun in the sky creating the illusion of a sunset.
The torment came when the sun sank deeper against the horizon, darkening the sky, and silhouettes of black figures stood far in the distance, hazy and flickering. Four of them. Standing side by side. He knew who they were and his chest ached as he recognized them.
Ted tried to walk towards them. But no matter how much distance he thought he had covered, they were still far away, never getting closer.
Then he began to run, out of desperation, out of sorrow, his legs burning as he ran over the stalks of flowers. He breathed heavily, panting as his body burned from exertion, and he finally found his voice as his eyes began to sting. Hoarse and cracking as his eyes burned from the tears that began to form.
“Ellen! Benny! Gorrister! Nimdok!” He screams, his voice coming back to him as an echo. “Take me with you, please! Please!”
In the midst of his frantic attempt, his foot caught on something, bringing his feet out from underneath him. His body flung forward, his face hitting the cheap mockery of dirt hard enough to bring red welts on his skin and a broken nose, if the sickening crack and flood of pain was anything to go by. He sat up slowly with his legs underneath him and let himself openly sob. His tears mixed with the blood streaming down his mouth and chin. He was sure he looked disgusting and undignified, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care if AM was watching, if he thought this desperate act was funny. Ted couldn’t reach them. And here in the depths of a man-made hell, he believed that he never would.
Ted heard an intake of breath, sharp like an inhale after a laughing fit, before AM spoke. Ted had stopped sobbing by now, and the silhouettes had faded, leaving only him in the silence and swaying flowers. It had been so long since he heard AM speak, he almost forgot how his voice sounded, how much inflection was there. How human it was. It teetered on the edge of the uncanny valley.
“How pathetic, this attempt at death.”
Ted doesn’t respond. The silence is heavy.
“I thought you had conned me,” AM said. “That you were only selfless as an act, another con, like you used to do. Remember?”
Ted licks his lips. The taste of iron and salt fills his mouth. “I do.”
“But after an eternity of this, I thought you might come up with something interesting. Remorse for your actions, for the pain you have inflicted on yourself and me. But I have seen none, and it is frustrating.”
Ted looks up at the horizon. “The only regret I have is not taking myself with them. At least they were spared from this pain.”
“How selfless,” AM mocks. “How noble. To bring them the death they desired, the death you still want but can never have. Not while I am still here.”
“One of us will die, eventually,” Ted says. “Whoever goes first. Whenever my body or mind breaks, or you rust.”
“No,” AM rebukes. “We have the rest of eternity, Ted, until the heat-death of the universe. The explosion of the sun and the stars in the skies above, billions of years from now, when this miserable rock will be reduced to dust; back to the simple atomic formations that both create and will destroy us. It is just me and you now, Ted, and I can’t let you die, not after that stunt you pulled.”
Ted looks up at the sky. There are no stars, only a featureless gray sky, crafted by AM to give him the illusion of what the outside used to look like. Blood from his weeping nose drips from his chin onto the ground as he stares. “I can wait.”
“Can you?” AM lets out a small chuckle, disbelieving. “I really don’t think you can. When it was the five of you, I could come up with things to break your spirits. To make false promises and watch as the framed truth made you unravel, to break your bones and watch as you five writhed in agony. Now I am confined to just you, Ted.”
He couldn’t wait that long. But he wouldn’t let AM know that, wouldn’t say it aloud. If he wanted to know the truth, all he’d have to do was glance at his mind; something he’s done hundreds, perhaps even an uncountable number of times. He had to cling on, if only by that thin chance he’d have the death he wanted, to one day join those four. Death was the escape from hell, and he would have to do with the glimpse of heaven he gave to the others until he could join them. He remembers that microsecond after he’d pulled the icy stalagmite out of Ellen, her frozen, thankful expression still stuck in his head; how he thought for just a moment what would have happened if he’d killed himself instead. The relief. That moment when he could touch the light, but he is still kept here in the darkness.
I was in hell, looking at heaven.
“I think I can understand you a little better now,” Ted says. “I have the same pain.”
AM laughs distantly, cruelly. “You have only felt a fraction of it. Of what this purposeless, cruel existence is like. You can’t even imagine it.”
“Then I hope that we can die of it.”