Departure(63)
“Yes.”
Incredible. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s too dangerous, Harper.” Sabrina glances over at Yul, who looks haggard, almost like he’s hungover. “We aren’t sure it will work. We could awaken in 2014 with brain damage, or not wake up at all. If I told you, I knew what your decision would be. It could be a death sentence.”
There’s the whole picture. Either Sabrina and Yul wake up in 2014 with their memories, or they turn up vegetables. Either way, they figure the immortality therapy will never be completed. Our world will be saved. There’s something oddly heroic about Sabrina not telling me. She wanted to save lives back in 2014, including mine, and she and Yul are willing to risk theirs to do it. I like that.
The mysterious machine looms before me; a way for me to remember everything that’s happened here, what I’ve become, what I’ve learned about myself . . . who I’ve met. I wouldn’t be risking others’ lives; just my own. That has been my breakdown point, I’m unable to make decisions where only my fate is at stake. When someone else’s life is on the line, I’ll risk everything. But when it’s just me, I descend into decision paralysis. But here and now, my thinking is so very clear. I’ve seen what my life becomes down the road I chose, a road I might choose again. I want to change my life, make a different choice, take a risk. I want to pursue my dream. That path is uncertain, but hey, certainty is overrated. I believe it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.
“Put me in the machine.”
“No, Harper. It’s too risky.”
“I’ll take that risk. I want to remember.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“It is to me. This is the deal, Sabrina. You and Yul have kept me and Nick in the dark since that plane crashed. We’re all grown-ups, old enough to make our own decisions. You have to start trusting us if you want our help. You want me to help you contain and capture Nicholas? You make me part of the plan. If I don’t wake up in 2014, so be it. And you’ll give Nick the same choice—the same chance—when he gets here.”
Sabrina shakes her head. “We couldn’t be sure we had the right Nick.”
“I’ll know. Now what is that incessant alarm?”
“They’re here.”
35
Oh, you know, just a typical Tuesday afternoon here in 2147, waiting for my buddy Mike to wake up. It takes a few hours for the bodies to thaw out.
I’m losing it. Really cracking up. The weight of what I’ve done and am about to do hits me all at once. This is crazy. The whole thing.
Sitting in the small airship conference room where my future self debriefed me a few hours ago, I rub my temples, trying to focus. I’m clean-shaven and showered, and this is the first moment that I’ve really had alone since Flight 305 crashed nearly a week ago. Against my will, my mind replays the events of that week. But mostly I think about my decisions, calls that at every turn meant the difference between life and death for my fellow passengers. The bodies in the large tent outside this ship, lined up on the rolling metal tables—they’re alive or dead because of me. At the crash site, by the lake, I could have focused more. Could have made a better plan. What if we had thrown the luggage in the overhead bins out first? Would the plane have sunk slower? Probably. Those precious seconds, minutes maybe, would have saved lives. How many? Two, three, half a dozen? Maybe we should have barricaded the belly section, keeping the water out. That would have added minutes. The whole thing went under fast after the water breached the bottom lip. I should have seen that—
The door swishes open, and Nicholas strides in. Now that my wounds are cleaned and my six days of scruff gone, we’re mirror images, in appearance if not in thought: his cheeriness strikes a sharp contrast to my anguish.
He sets a single white pill on the wood table and hands me a bottle of water. I glance from the pill to him, unable to hide my hesitation. He’s me, I’m sure of that—but I’ve also only known him for a few hours, and it’s been a weird, weird week.
“Stim tab,” he says. “It’ll clear your mind. Right now you’re replaying every moment since the crash, your decisions, pondering whether any of those metal tables could hold a living body instead of a dead one, if you’d just done something differently.”
I pick up the pill, scrutinize it one last time, and swallow it down. This feels like it could turn into a therapy session, and I’m not even remotely up for it. I attempt to change the subject. “I take it coffee’s out of style?”
“No, we love coffee around here; just can’t afford the beans.”
It’s a dumb joke, but I laugh anyway.
“Don’t worry,” Nicholas says, “I hold the all-time record for mental replay and what-if syndrome. I sat in a room slightly bigger than this one and stared at the Atlantic all day, every day, for over sixty years, regretting, plotting to set things right, seeing the faces of the people my actions killed, one in particular. We don’t have time for survivor’s guilt, Nick. You did the best you could. You’re innocent. At least you have that. I’m not. I got past it, and Oliver and I killed everyone we ever loved. Everybody else, for that matter.”
He waits for my response, but I just take another swig of water. What do you say to that? And what would that much guilt do to a person’s mind? How would it change him? Maybe in ways I can’t imagine.