The Library a Thousand Earths Away
It never occurred to me how few stars I could see from back home in Worcester, Massachusetts. The real Worcester, although we're not supposed to use that word anymore. Real. I can see why some of our visitors find that phrase offensive, and I try to be considerate. Hospitality is really the only thing we have here. Hospitality and books. I walk through the town, also called Worcester, and listen for something in the distance: Birds, insects. I know better than that. There was no fauna before we came here, just forest as far as the eye could see. Night on Earth … my original Earth … was dark and noisy, and I never even realized. Funny, that.
My name is Josiah Webster. In my old life, I was a librarian, and strangely enough, after a time that's brought so much change for so many, I'm a librarian still. I leave the library – the same odd blast of yellow-bricked '70s architecture that once stood so conspicuously downtown, except there's no downtown now – and walk home in the dark. It's a cool night, but they all seem that way here. There are lights on in some of the houses. The lights are out in my mother's window. She goes to bed early. It strikes me that her house had once been in California. After things had settled down and people had adjusted to the change, she joked that she had thought about moving closer to me and my wife, but this was going a little far. The lights are on at Shangri-La, the Chinese restaurant I used to frequent, and Nick's Bar and Restaurant, where I used to drink. They didn't used to be right next to each other. I enter the bar, and Shaun the bartender greets me with a cheer, begins making my Manhattan before I even ask. We've been here a year now, and somehow, we're never out of whiskey. I don't know why some stocks replenish themselves and some don't. I don't know how long it will last.
Shaun's favorite band, Pink Martini, is playing on the jukebox. They're out there, somewhere, I'm certain, lost in the same free-fall of parallel worlds that touched us all. Authors and musicians survived. Some of them arrived here when I did, when our homes were ripped from the disintegrating Earth, others made their way from parallel world to parallel world, drawn by the signal in their bracelet. Oscar Wilde is here, now, and Toni Morrison. Terry Pratchett was the first to find us, the parallel structure to his “Long Earth” novels catching his notice almost immediately. He's here at the bar, talking animatedly with Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Wil Wheaton, Yoko Ono, a gaggle of local poets and hip-hop artists, and a pair of gunfighters who just made their way here recently. There were tears when Pratchett arrived. The entire universe had been destroyed and reborn, and yet one seeming resurrection evoked an emotion that dwarfed every impossible thing we'd witnessed. I hear tell that Superman's out there somewhere, and Hogwarts, and even an Earth filled with zombies. They say that David Bowie is alive out there somewhere, too, and that thought makes me happy, as the day he died was also the day the universe ended, a fact that's tinged his songs for many: Some call the superhero who fell through layers and layers of parallel universes to crash land in our Worcester that day The Man Who Fell to Earth. When they think I'm not listening, there are more than a few folks who call me the Man Who Sold the World.
***
David Bowie had always been one of my favorite musicians, so news of his death hit me hard. I had most of his albums on my phone, and was listening to them on shuffle, “Diamond Dogs” giving way to “Young Americans,” then “Let's Dance” and “Rock 'N' Roll Suicide” and then, as I was leaving the library and security was locking the door behind me, “Five Years.” Which was ironic, in retrospect. I nodded to the security guards as I left, secure in the knowledge that they'd be watching. Downtown wasn't as bad as it used to be, but the parking lot in front of the library could be dangerous at night, and their presence made us all breathe a little more comfortably. The thought hurts as, when it was all over, none of them made the trip here.
That was a cold night. I remember that much. Much else about it is a blur. I remember feeling something was wrong before I saw the light – at first a flickering star, and then I thought a satellite, and then a comet heading straight for the parking lot, blazing red and growing larger, until it hit with a tremendous explosion, the pavement convulsing up against the sky, cars shattering into shrapnel.
“My Prius!” I exclaimed. It seems ridiculous now, but I only had a few payments left on that car. Almost in a trance, I began to work my way toward the point of impact. I'm not a brave man … not really … but it was as though someone were calling to me from inside the crater. I could hear the security guards behind me, shouting for me to come back, but I was transfixed. I pushed through the smoke to find a man lying there.
He was about my height, but muscular. We had the same dark hair, in almost the same neat business cut. He was wearing some sort of silvery spandex that clung tight to his body, and although the fall and impact didn't seem to damage it, it was radiating steam. He was wearing a blue cape, and had some sort of star insignia on his chest. He was wearing a domino mask, but when he looked up at me, I recognized my eyes.
“You're ..” I stuttered, and he nodded.
“They call me Skyknight,” he said, looking into my eyes with the same amazement I felt. 'Where I'm from. I'm a ...”
“Superhero,” I said, and nearly laughed. All the years I was a nerd, hiding in my room with stacks of comic books, somewhere out there was a version of me that was living that fantasy. I don't know how I understood that, but ...”
“Our minds are already connecting,” he said. “Psionics. One of my powers. I'm transferring what memories I can to you, before ...”
“You're dying,” I said, and it caught in my throat. I was watching myself die. Absently, I wondered why security hadn't come to pull me away from here, but I realized Skyknight was pushing everyone away, so we could have this conversation. “There was a war,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “A war on edge of the multiversal rift. My Stellar Squadron against the Devourers, manifestations of other-dimensional evil which seek ...”
“Total nihilism,” I said. “They want the multiverse to have never been born.” In my head, I can see the last stand: the Shadow Stalker, flesh transformed into night, cutting through the hoard with his shurikens. The Red Centurion, a Soviet destroyer robot that developed a soul and devoted itself to peace, now letting loose with the full fury of its laser artillery. The Witch, always tentative in her powers to transfer and exacerbate physical and emotional trauma, tearing apart the invading armada from the inside out.
Dozens of their compatriots had died in this last stand, buying time for Professor Magnitron to finish downloading as much of the multiversal DNA onto a recording device as he could … enough for Skyknight to make a mad dash for the Silent Ones, the beneficent, all-powerful alien beings who sat in defense of the cosmos. The plan was for Skyknight to bring them the data, and they would use it to restart the universe. Skyknight wasn't the only hero working his way toward them … champions from all across the universe were converging, each one carrying a piece of reality, so as much could be saved as possible. It was a mad, desperate gamble, but the Devourers had nearly finished their work. Everything was ending.
“When the download had finished,” he said, his voice wracked with agony, “I flew toward the Silent Ones without even saying goodbye, wasted no time at all. Flew straight through the Devourers and felt my invincible skin shred. My healing matrix repaired it, over and over again, but I could feel it was draining too much of my life force. I had to shift universes, over and over again, seeking out one of my counterparts from a parallel Earth. The recording matrix …”
“Is keyed to our genetic code,” I said, and I could understand why. If it fell into the wrong hands, it could be used to restore the universe … wrong. It could be left at the mercy of one of Skyknight's enemies. I could see the goodness in his heart, the cleanness of his mind. It wasn't like mine at all, with my neuroses and depression, my petty grudges and hatreds. He was everything I always wanted to be. For a moment, I recalled I dreamed of him as a child, pretended one of my action figures was him.
He pressed a device into my hand, not much larger than a cell phone. He told me the Silent Ones would come for it.
And then he died, and I could feel myself quake inside with fear and loss. I was very literally watching myself die. Worse, I was watching the very best version of myself die. He was a superhero, and I was just me. I had no idea how to save anything, let alone the multiverse. I looked down at the device, and saw it was cracked and smoking, and in an instant, I knew everything was doomed.
***
The multiverse had been ending for a long time, of course, and we had been sensing it on our Earth for decades. When DC Comics published Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, it was groundbreaking. Before that, the idea of a universe ending … let alone being reborn … was too much, even though several pre-Christian cultures had the concept of the world dying and being reborn as part of their belief systems. But no, Crisis was an immensely huge concept for the '80s comic buyer. Not so much anymore. Doctor Who had rebooted the universe, as did Fringe. Marvel Comics recently had its Secret Wars comic, where the multiverse ended and Dr. Doom saved fragments of different realities and merged them into one world. That's not so different than this place, really, although the survivors of our meta-apocalypse were spread over adjoining Earths.
Robert Heinlein, who had made his way here not long after Pratchett, explained that writers were imaginative people, but since the multiverse was infinite, anything they could imagine was out there somewhere. The poet Elizabeth Bishop, who found it ironic that she had trekked to an alternate version of Worcester, which was a city she hated in our previous world, balked at the idea that our fictions were real, but the cartographers that have trekked across the parallel worlds tell us there is an Earth not far away with a gangland Chicago in North America and a Westeros where Europe should be. Bishop, as a poet might, attributed the subconscious awareness of what existed in other worlds to the natural perceptiveness of writers. Part of them knew what was out there, and they only thought they imagined it. Heinlein didn't like that argument, as it took human mind and imagination out of the question, but there was no denying that we were living in a world – worlds – where our fictions were very much alive, and somehow, by whatever means, writers had seen it coming.
***
I was in shock when the emergency personnel pulled me away from the body, muscular and surprisingly gentle men realizing my distress, and guiding me away from the steaming corpse, into the sea of blue and red lights as the firefighters and EMTs ran ahead into the crash zone. Sirens blared from all directions, their drone all but muffling everything else.
“What is this made of,” said one, as he tried to cut Skyknight's cape free from the debris it was caught up in. It broke his blade. They began pushing hunks of concrete to try and pull him free, but it was too late. He was gone. He wore my face, and he was gone. It was too dark and hectic for anyone to make that connection right away. “Are you OK?” someone asked, and when I started to answer, all I could manage is a chattering of teeth. They threw a blanket over me as I sat in the back of an ambulance, pondering the inert piece of metal in my hand.
Eventually, I collected myself enough to call my wife, Anna, to pick me up. She worked part-time as a copy editor at the newspaper, which meant I had pulled her out of work, but “the car exploded in the parking lot” was a good excuse, even by newsroom standards. She also played music … folky singer-songwriter stuff, so I counted my lucky stars she wasn't at a gig, or she might not have gotten my call for hours. When she arrived, she launched into a thousand questions I couldn't answer.
“I didn't see it,” she said, as I sat in silence in the car, “but I heard the paramedics say there was some sort of superhero in the crash site. Can you imagine? Did you see anything?”
I turned to face her. She was only sort of looking at me out the corner of one, eye, the rest of her attention on the road. Her smile was a little too tight. She was concerned about me, knew something was wrong but couldn't put her finger on it.
“You don't even like comic books,” I said, and she laughed a little. It sounded something like relief.
“Not true,” she said. “I liked Sandman, and Fables, and ... I don't know ...”
“The grown-up comics,” I said. “Not the X-Men or Avengers or anything where grown men wear their underwear on the outside.”
She laughed, and nodded.
“Exactly,” she said. “I'm perfectly OK with your homoerotic male power fantasies, dear, but let's not pretend they're more than they are.”
The laughter came loud and sudden. I was almost shocked by it, and more surprised to discover I was crying.
“I saw him, Anna,” I said. “I saw the superhero. He gave me this.”
I held up the metal brick in my hands. She almost took her eyes off the road, but was too cautious a driver to do that, even now.
“Josiah,” she said, her face serious now, her voice preternaturally calm. “What is that? What are you taking about?”
The story came in fits and stutters as I tried not to leave out any detail.
“He had my face, Anna,” I said, my face drenched in tears. “He was me. He was me, and he died, and I have this … thing … and I have no idea what to do next.”
Anna was silent for a long time. The blood seemed to have drained from her face.
“I think,” she said, and then paused, contemplating her next words. “I think … if all of that's true, and you're not completely losing it ...”
She glanced in my direction to assure herself that I wasn't completely losing it.
“If it's true, then we won't have much time to worry about what to do next. The next thing will come to us.”
***
My neighbor, Rachel, is at the bar, drinking a beer. She's tall, and dark-skinned, and has a sort of solidity in her presence. The biggest group of people in New Worcester are the ones that work in the library, and its numerous annexes. It is, after all, the reason we survived. The next largest group is the farmers. The city is surrounded by virgin, arable farmland, and while the nanotechnology embedded in everything seems to recreate most of our provisions – except meat – the few scientists in our number are pretty certain it's a temporary measure, and that they'll eventually wear out. We figure we have another year or so, so getting farms up and running has been a priority.
Rachel grew up on a farm in Western Massachusetts, and moved to Worcester to study biology at WPI. She wasn't quite done with her degree, but it put her miles above just about everyone else when it came to organizing the crops … what we could find, what we could salvage from what came with us, what the nanobots could build. Somehow, despite everything, we've got corn and wheat growing. We've got cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, squash – so much squash – and chickpeas. Our entire community having to turn vegetarian at once was difficult, but somehow we managed. We had to … we burned out the meat in a matter of weeks, and there's no fauna here to hunt. A few people looked at the odd household pets that came with us, but we all agreed that was a line we wouldn't cross. I've lost 20 pounds since we came here. I haven't felt this healthy … well … ever.
There weren't that many people with actual farming experience in the group that came to New Worcester. Most of whom Rachel recruited were gardeners. This was new territory for everybody. Sometimes, when the airships come from the other Earths, we send out requests for a few more farmhands to join us. We've gotten a few, but most people want to stay close to what's left of their Earths. Those that do come are usually more interested in the library.
Shaun pours me a Manhattan and I sidle up to Rachel at the bar and inquire after the farms.
“We're doing OK,” she says, in her youthful, understated way. “Really OK. The ground here's really fertile. Way more than I would have expected without fauna to make … you know … fertilizer. The whole area's way richer in nutrients than our Massachusetts. I don't know how that is, but travelers tell me all the Earths are a little different.”
“Maybe that's why the Silent Ones put us here,” I mused. “A world where we had a chance to survive.”
“Oh, that's rich,” said a low, belligerent voice from behind me. Dan had been a football player when we were in high school, and was still a hulking bear of a man. We weren't close … truth be told, he was kind of a bully. After school, he went on to become a drunk and served time for … something. DUI, I think. Found Jesus when he got sober, and went on a spree friending everyone he went to school with on Facebook. When the sky fell, and we were whisked here, he made the trip, but his parents and sister didn't. He blames me for that. He's not the only one.
“Yeah, the big, mysterious Silent Ones wanted to give us a chance to survive, but they dump us on an empty world with a CVS, six restaurants and … what … 20 libraries?”
“45,” I say, and almost regret answering. He's totally blitzed.
“And you,” he shouts. “You save me, but not my parents. You saved the woman who broke up the damn Beatles, and not my sister or her kids. Why? Just tell me why, Josiah.”
I was ashen-faced, and couldn't bring myself to reply. Rachel was up an in his face. He worked for her now, and had a modicum of respect for her, so she backed down at his reprimand. A couple of the bigger guys had also gotten up to restrain him. Bobby, who had a been a local poet and community activist back home, had a good 75 pounds on Dan, and all of it was muscle. He put his arm around Dan's shoulder and walked him outside to cool off. I went back to my drink.
“You can't keep stewing in guilt, Josiah,” said a placid voice behind me. I looked up to see Yoko Ono's smiling face. “You can’t keep carrying the guilt for everything we've lost. It wasn't you who destroyed the universe.”
“No,” I said, coolly. “I just decided who got to live.”
***
I collapsed on the couch as soon as we got home from the library. One of the reasons we moved into the apartment was that the living room had built in bookcases, enough to handle the bulk of our books. They lined almost every wall, for panel in the entertainment center where the TV sat. I think Anna always suspected that wanting to be surrounded by books was some sort of librarian pretension, but the truth is, I always felt safe when I was surrounded by books. They were my refuge when I was a nerdy kid, and I think that plays out in my need to be surrounded by them at home.
Anna put The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on the stereo, knowing it was my favorite. She preferred vinyl, but humored my move to digitize our entire collection. Little did I know that would eventually come in handy. She poured me a glass of bourbon, and our cat, Bast, jumped onto my lap, which was unusual behavior for her. I sipped my drink and listened to Five Years.
News guy wept and told us/Earth was really dying, sang Bowie. “Cried so much his face was wet,/Then I knew he was not lying.
I laughed at the song this time, now fully cognizant of the irony. We probably didn't have five years. Skyknight had been in a panic. The death of the multiverse was imminent, and I was sipping Woodford Reserve with the cat curled up on my lap. I had no idea what to do. Anna, always more sensible, shrugged and ordered pizza.
We ate, listened to Bowie, and passed the alien device back and forth between us. We were words and music people. Our technical knowledge began and ended with setting up the computer.
“Well,” said Anna, shrugging. “Maybe we could Google it?”
There were worse ideas. I grabbed my laptop and searched for any keywords I could remember: “Skyknight.” “Multiverse.” Nothing. “Witch.” “Red Centurion.” “Shadow Stalker.” Nothing. “Silent Ones,” I typed. “Devourers.”
The device Skyknight gave me pulsed with a weak blue light.
“Do you think ...” I asked, hesitantly, “that it's communicating with the Silent Ones?”
“Dear,” said Anna, “We're lucky if our phones pick up our own Wi-Fi.”
It's true. Our signal at home always sucked. We dropped calls, had to buffer videos, it was really annoying in a First World Problem sort of way. But something was happening. The device's pulsing grew a little brighter now, and there was a weird, almost imperceptible hum in the air. Reflexively, I grasped for Anna's hand. Bast felt it too, and skedaddled out of the room, probably to hide under our bed. Something was coming. The air felt wrong. I fought down being sick.
The air rippled around us, and I tried to ask aloud if it was the Silent Ones coming, but soon the corpse of a human woman fell through the rip in reality, falling to the floor amid a rain of red robot parts. They seemed at first to be draped in shadow, but I soon realized the darkness draped over them like blanket. I could see a hand composed entirely of night lying severed amid the rubble.
Then three forms stepped out of the rubble and into my living room. Even now, I can't properly describe them. They were sharp teeth and harsh music and metal scraping against metal. They were dressed in something that seemed equal parts black silk and shame, some fabric of memory that you'd tried to forget. When they spoke, they spoke in emotional aggregates instead of words, but their meaning was entirely clear. They had just murdered superheroes, and now they wanted Skyknight's device.
***
Not a lot of people know that I still have Skyknight's memories. Anna, of course. But mostly, I found I could only confide in the knot of fantasy authors that had collected here. Terry, of course. Neil. People who could really grasp what it means to look through eyes that have seen intergalactic wars and mad scientists with cyborg zombie armadas. Skyknight's world was so different than mine. Sometimes, I would wander away from the city proper so I could be alone underneath the stars, knowing that none of the things he saw were likely out there. His universe was gone, and I was the sole inheritor of that knowledge.
I met Yoko on one of these wanders. She was one of the original residents of New Worcester, and for the most part, a popular one. She had taken on the role of spiritual mentor to many who had ended up here … a weird world where Michael Chabon and Henry Rollins were among the residents, but there were very few priests of any sort. Mostly because I didn't know that many. A guy I knew in high school was a Presbyterian minister, and he sort of started a triage multi-faith chaplaincy, which I thought was kind of impressive, all things considered. But Yoko had a sort of calming presence. She listened, and when I told her about my other set of memories, ones which included being transformed at one point into an ape and another time being shrunk and trapped in a petri dish by an alien tyrant. She laughed, and told me that she thought being a superhero would also be good fodder for making art.
“You could convey a set of experiences no one else has ever lived,” she said. “Did your Skyknight doppelganger make any art?”
I don't think he did. He wasn't a very creative man, in a lot of ways. His responsibilities made him very lonely. He liked to read, though, and he loved music. We had similar tastes.
“Did they have the Beatles on his world?” she asked, and I nodded. It's not that it was a sore subject with her, but we both knew that her late husband, John Lennon, was out there somewhere If I understood the mechanics of how we were transported to the new worlds, it would likely even be the Lennon of our world. But Yoko had been alive when the world ended. Hell, I followed her on Twitter. Lennon had been dead, so whatever version of him was out there, he would be younger. Maybe. It's hard to say with any certainty. Fragments of our world survived, but none of us were unchanged.
***
The Devourers didn't so much speak as project their feelings at us. Anna and I were clutching hands, both of us shivering, our teeth chattering. We were crying, and when I tried to speak I vomited. My underpants were soiled.
In every superhero fantasy I had ever had, I was at least brave in the story. That didn't happen here. No mere human could be brave in those circumstances. You looked at the Devourers, and you felt the pain of every murder victim since Able. You have no iota of control in that situation. My wife and I held each other, and prepared to die.
One of the Devourers held out what appeared to be a long, clawed hand, and reached for Skyknight's device. A thousand things flew through my head at once: I wished I had his powers. I wondered if I'd actually live to see the end of the universe, if it would happen all at once. I wondered if Bast had escaped. It occurred to me that my cat would live to see the end of the universe, and I wouldn't. I wondered what Skyknight would do in this situation, and then I remembered: He died.
The Devourer lurched forward, toward the device, and I felt Anna adjust her grip, digging her nails into my palm. It hurt so bad, I screamed, but the Devourers didn't seem to really notice. Then, I realized what Anna had seen – the device was pulsing brighter now, blue light, even as it seemed to be meting into a lump of molten metal. Had they come too late? We were going to die, but maybe the universe could still be saved?
The light glowed brighter and brighter, until it was blinding. We could only see between pulses as two large, humanoid figures appeared between us and the Devourers. We didn't know who they were, didn't know if we'd survive, but we both knew, to our core, that in that instant, we were saved.
The warmth of the blue light engulfed us, and I could feel the fear melting away, could feel the queasiness in my stomach subside. In front of us, the Devourers seemed to recede into nothing, bear back by the sheer presence of what I now know was the Silent Ones. We were both still crying, but it was out of joy now, a rapturous joy unlike anything we had ever felt. Within moments, the Devourers were gone, leaving us alone with the Silent Ones and the bodies of the fallen superheroes.
The light subsided, but the Silent Ones were still too unbearably beautiful. Staring at them was painful. Instead, I fixed my attention on the metal device that was supposed to save a remnant of our multiverse. The Silent Ones saw it, too, and I was filled with a sadness that sank all the way into my blood. One of the Silent Ones stared up at the ceiling, as though searching the heavens for something. In front of him appeared an ebony sphere. At first glance, it appeared no bigger than a basketball, but then I caught it from another angle, and it seemed enormous, as big as the sky. It was pockmarked with spaces where the devices were supposed to go, but it was clear that very few had made the journey. I realized what that meant: This was Armageddon, and the only civilizations across the multiverse that would survive were the ones the heroes managed to record on those devices. The overwhelming majority of them failed. Whole sentient species would be lost from eternity. Alien civilizations doomed to extinction.
Our civilization was doomed, too. Our device had been destroyed. I could feel the Silent Ones' sorrow, and wanted to cry. That's when David Bowie's voice appeared to break the silence. There's a Starman … waiting in the sky …
In a fit of sentimentality, I had set my ring tone to Bowie's “Starman” that morning, after I heard the news of his death. The Silent Ones stared at me quizzically as I pulled the phone from my pocket … It was my mother calling.
I found out later that Skyknight's fall to Earth has made the news, as had reports of strange lights. At the time, I just thought it was a bizarre, absurd moment amid a looming tragedy. Now I know that phone call from my mother saved humanity.
***
How do you choose who lives and who dies? What human being can make that decision? There are maybe 4,000 residents of the new Worcester, a hodgepodge collection of people I had some ephemeral connection to: Family, friends, co-workers, former classmates, but also celebrities I followed on Twitter, strangers who “friended” me on LinkedIn, nearly every person who did an event or taught a class at the library. People who worked at every library I had professional connections to, which was a lot – I was a rep to the American Library Association, and had helped plan a couple conventions. At the end of the day, though, it wasn't even really me who decided who lived and who died.
When I produced my phone, the Silent Ones stared at it, and then reached for it. I could feel an overpowering compulsion to surrender it to them. They took the phone, Bowie still singing, and inserted it into one of the slots. Immediately, I could feel it connect to my brain. It felt a lot like my psionic link with Skyknight, earlier, but cleaner. More immersive. In an instant, my brain reached out and touched every single person on my contacts list, as well as all my social media connections. Anna and I could both feel ourselves being pulled elsewhere, and it wasn't just people: Homes were being drawn to the new world, businesses that were listed in my contacts.
But it wasn't enough of a blueprint to restart humanity elsewhere, which has been the Silent Ones' plan all along, so one of them cracked a desperate, last minute plan. He reached out and embraced us, and we felt ourselves drawn to him, as though we were sheltered beneath invisible wings. Both of our minds were pushed even further, and we felt them touching every book we owned, every DVD, comic or album. We felt the world slipping away from us, felt everything disintegrating, The Silent One pulled us tighter, weaving what information he could glean from our home into something. We were at the center of a vortex of light, but we felt safe, loved. Eventually, the swirl of light quickened, and we were both overcome with bliss, screaming out in ecstasy before blacking out.
We awoke on the ground, Bast between us, licking Anna's face. There was only one Silent One in the room, and we knew, instinctively, that the other one had died to save us all.
***
I finish my drink, and bid Shaun and Yoko Ono and everyone else goodnight. It's a short walk home … everything is really close together. Anna is home, listening to an Ani DiFranco album and reading a book of poetry by Patricia Smith. Unsurprisingly, fiction has gone out of fashion for pleasure reading. It's too much like nonfiction, now. People read poetry more than ever, though, and we've learned that's true from Earth to Earth. Reading fiction began to feel like peering too closely into the life of someone you might eventually meet.
That's what happened in those final moments in the old world, as the Silent One held us tight: He connected our minds to our library, and pulled analogues of every fictional world from across the multiverse into the new series of parallel Earths. Nonfiction, too, although that pulled from our own world, which meant that there pieces of our own Earth's history scattered about the new Earths. Indeed, we don't actually know if these worlds were created for us: There are residents of an Earth who claim they were here already, and they had previous knowledge of how to travel between the worlds. Pratchett thinks it may be his “Long Earth,” from his novels with Stephen Baxter. But it's impossible to say. I've expressed disappointment that the Librarian from his Discworld novels hasn't made his way here yet, as several other fictional librarians such as Isaac Vainio or Rupert Giles have, but we've seen no sign of Discworld at all, or really many alien worlds. There's still a lot undiscovered, though. There are people out there searching for the original Biblical lands, but there are a lot of Earths that everyone was scattered among. Maybe millions. Maybe more.
Pratchett thinks they're all out there, in space somewhere, and I'll admit, it makes me happy to know that somewhere there may well be a world carried on the back of four elephants, all standing on the back of a turtle. Other bits of fictional worlds I would have classified as “alien” exist on one Earth or another. Reports have reached us of Westeros, Modor and Pern all existing out there. Some people, it seems, have the natural ability to “step” between these worlds – which supports Pratchett's theory – and in some places, ships have been built to travel between worlds.
And then there's the authors and musicians. All the ones who's work we had in our collection appeared in different places across the multiverse, but they all seemed to appear with wristband devices that allowed them to travel easily from world to world. They also seemed to have a homing beacon that leads them to the library. Evidently, the device was a gift from the Silent Ones, whom we've not seen since, as is the nanotechnology that keeps this city running, which evidently didn't happen on other Earths. We've sent out word for visitors and pilgrims to bring books. We're trying to catalog the new worlds, and to see how deeply the fictional histories differ.
It's still a long trip – the bulk of humanity is thousands of worlds from here – but we've had a steady trickle of authors, poets and musicians making their way here. Yoko – who appeared here originally because I followed her on Twitter – has tried not to get her hopes up that she'll see her husband again, but she can't help it. None of us can. We've survived the apocalypse, and found ourselves in a place where many of the stories and artists that we love have literally come to life, awaiting discovery across a thousand unfamiliar skies.
It never occurred to me how few stars I could see from back home in Worcester, Massachusetts. The real Worcester, although we're not supposed to use that word anymore. Real. I can see why some of our visitors find that phrase offensive, and I try to be considerate. Hospitality is really the only thing we have here. Hospitality and books. I walk through the town, also called Worcester, and listen for something in the distance: Birds, insects. I know better than that. There was no fauna before we came here, just forest as far as the eye could see. Night on Earth … my original Earth … was dark and noisy, and I never even realized. Funny, that.
My name is Josiah Webster. In my old life, I was a librarian, and strangely enough, after a time that's brought so much change for so many, I'm a librarian still. I leave the library – the same odd blast of yellow-bricked '70s architecture that once stood so conspicuously downtown, except there's no downtown now – and walk home in the dark. It's a cool night, but they all seem that way here. There are lights on in some of the houses. The lights are out in my mother's window. She goes to bed early. It strikes me that her house had once been in California. After things had settled down and people had adjusted to the change, she joked that she had thought about moving closer to me and my wife, but this was going a little far. The lights are on at Shangri-La, the Chinese restaurant I used to frequent, and Nick's Bar and Restaurant, where I used to drink. They didn't used to be right next to each other. I enter the bar, and Shaun the bartender greets me with a cheer, begins making my Manhattan before I even ask. We've been here a year now, and somehow, we're never out of whiskey. I don't know why some stocks replenish themselves and some don't. I don't know how long it will last.
Shaun's favorite band, Pink Martini, is playing on the jukebox. They're out there, somewhere, I'm certain, lost in the same free-fall of parallel worlds that touched us all. Authors and musicians survived. Some of them arrived here when I did, when our homes were ripped from the disintegrating Earth, others made their way from parallel world to parallel world, drawn by the signal in their bracelet. Oscar Wilde is here, now, and Toni Morrison. Terry Pratchett was the first to find us, the parallel structure to his “Long Earth” novels catching his notice almost immediately. He's here at the bar, talking animatedly with Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Wil Wheaton, Yoko Ono, a gaggle of local poets and hip-hop artists, and a pair of gunfighters who just made their way here recently. There were tears when Pratchett arrived. The entire universe had been destroyed and reborn, and yet one seeming resurrection evoked an emotion that dwarfed every impossible thing we'd witnessed. I hear tell that Superman's out there somewhere, and Hogwarts, and even an Earth filled with zombies. They say that David Bowie is alive out there somewhere, too, and that thought makes me happy, as the day he died was also the day the universe ended, a fact that's tinged his songs for many: Some call the superhero who fell through layers and layers of parallel universes to crash land in our Worcester that day The Man Who Fell to Earth. When they think I'm not listening, there are more than a few folks who call me the Man Who Sold the World.
***
David Bowie had always been one of my favorite musicians, so news of his death hit me hard. I had most of his albums on my phone, and was listening to them on shuffle, “Diamond Dogs” giving way to “Young Americans,” then “Let's Dance” and “Rock 'N' Roll Suicide” and then, as I was leaving the library and security was locking the door behind me, “Five Years.” Which was ironic, in retrospect. I nodded to the security guards as I left, secure in the knowledge that they'd be watching. Downtown wasn't as bad as it used to be, but the parking lot in front of the library could be dangerous at night, and their presence made us all breathe a little more comfortably. The thought hurts as, when it was all over, none of them made the trip here.
That was a cold night. I remember that much. Much else about it is a blur. I remember feeling something was wrong before I saw the light – at first a flickering star, and then I thought a satellite, and then a comet heading straight for the parking lot, blazing red and growing larger, until it hit with a tremendous explosion, the pavement convulsing up against the sky, cars shattering into shrapnel.
“My Prius!” I exclaimed. It seems ridiculous now, but I only had a few payments left on that car. Almost in a trance, I began to work my way toward the point of impact. I'm not a brave man … not really … but it was as though someone were calling to me from inside the crater. I could hear the security guards behind me, shouting for me to come back, but I was transfixed. I pushed through the smoke to find a man lying there.
He was about my height, but muscular. We had the same dark hair, in almost the same neat business cut. He was wearing some sort of silvery spandex that clung tight to his body, and although the fall and impact didn't seem to damage it, it was radiating steam. He was wearing a blue cape, and had some sort of star insignia on his chest. He was wearing a domino mask, but when he looked up at me, I recognized my eyes.
“You're ..” I stuttered, and he nodded.
“They call me Skyknight,” he said, looking into my eyes with the same amazement I felt. 'Where I'm from. I'm a ...”
“Superhero,” I said, and nearly laughed. All the years I was a nerd, hiding in my room with stacks of comic books, somewhere out there was a version of me that was living that fantasy. I don't know how I understood that, but ...”
“Our minds are already connecting,” he said. “Psionics. One of my powers. I'm transferring what memories I can to you, before ...”
“You're dying,” I said, and it caught in my throat. I was watching myself die. Absently, I wondered why security hadn't come to pull me away from here, but I realized Skyknight was pushing everyone away, so we could have this conversation. “There was a war,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “A war on edge of the multiversal rift. My Stellar Squadron against the Devourers, manifestations of other-dimensional evil which seek ...”
“Total nihilism,” I said. “They want the multiverse to have never been born.” In my head, I can see the last stand: the Shadow Stalker, flesh transformed into night, cutting through the hoard with his shurikens. The Red Centurion, a Soviet destroyer robot that developed a soul and devoted itself to peace, now letting loose with the full fury of its laser artillery. The Witch, always tentative in her powers to transfer and exacerbate physical and emotional trauma, tearing apart the invading armada from the inside out.
Dozens of their compatriots had died in this last stand, buying time for Professor Magnitron to finish downloading as much of the multiversal DNA onto a recording device as he could … enough for Skyknight to make a mad dash for the Silent Ones, the beneficent, all-powerful alien beings who sat in defense of the cosmos. The plan was for Skyknight to bring them the data, and they would use it to restart the universe. Skyknight wasn't the only hero working his way toward them … champions from all across the universe were converging, each one carrying a piece of reality, so as much could be saved as possible. It was a mad, desperate gamble, but the Devourers had nearly finished their work. Everything was ending.
“When the download had finished,” he said, his voice wracked with agony, “I flew toward the Silent Ones without even saying goodbye, wasted no time at all. Flew straight through the Devourers and felt my invincible skin shred. My healing matrix repaired it, over and over again, but I could feel it was draining too much of my life force. I had to shift universes, over and over again, seeking out one of my counterparts from a parallel Earth. The recording matrix …”
“Is keyed to our genetic code,” I said, and I could understand why. If it fell into the wrong hands, it could be used to restore the universe … wrong. It could be left at the mercy of one of Skyknight's enemies. I could see the goodness in his heart, the cleanness of his mind. It wasn't like mine at all, with my neuroses and depression, my petty grudges and hatreds. He was everything I always wanted to be. For a moment, I recalled I dreamed of him as a child, pretended one of my action figures was him.
He pressed a device into my hand, not much larger than a cell phone. He told me the Silent Ones would come for it.
And then he died, and I could feel myself quake inside with fear and loss. I was very literally watching myself die. Worse, I was watching the very best version of myself die. He was a superhero, and I was just me. I had no idea how to save anything, let alone the multiverse. I looked down at the device, and saw it was cracked and smoking, and in an instant, I knew everything was doomed.
***
The multiverse had been ending for a long time, of course, and we had been sensing it on our Earth for decades. When DC Comics published Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, it was groundbreaking. Before that, the idea of a universe ending … let alone being reborn … was too much, even though several pre-Christian cultures had the concept of the world dying and being reborn as part of their belief systems. But no, Crisis was an immensely huge concept for the '80s comic buyer. Not so much anymore. Doctor Who had rebooted the universe, as did Fringe. Marvel Comics recently had its Secret Wars comic, where the multiverse ended and Dr. Doom saved fragments of different realities and merged them into one world. That's not so different than this place, really, although the survivors of our meta-apocalypse were spread over adjoining Earths.
Robert Heinlein, who had made his way here not long after Pratchett, explained that writers were imaginative people, but since the multiverse was infinite, anything they could imagine was out there somewhere. The poet Elizabeth Bishop, who found it ironic that she had trekked to an alternate version of Worcester, which was a city she hated in our previous world, balked at the idea that our fictions were real, but the cartographers that have trekked across the parallel worlds tell us there is an Earth not far away with a gangland Chicago in North America and a Westeros where Europe should be. Bishop, as a poet might, attributed the subconscious awareness of what existed in other worlds to the natural perceptiveness of writers. Part of them knew what was out there, and they only thought they imagined it. Heinlein didn't like that argument, as it took human mind and imagination out of the question, but there was no denying that we were living in a world – worlds – where our fictions were very much alive, and somehow, by whatever means, writers had seen it coming.
***
I was in shock when the emergency personnel pulled me away from the body, muscular and surprisingly gentle men realizing my distress, and guiding me away from the steaming corpse, into the sea of blue and red lights as the firefighters and EMTs ran ahead into the crash zone. Sirens blared from all directions, their drone all but muffling everything else.
“What is this made of,” said one, as he tried to cut Skyknight's cape free from the debris it was caught up in. It broke his blade. They began pushing hunks of concrete to try and pull him free, but it was too late. He was gone. He wore my face, and he was gone. It was too dark and hectic for anyone to make that connection right away. “Are you OK?” someone asked, and when I started to answer, all I could manage is a chattering of teeth. They threw a blanket over me as I sat in the back of an ambulance, pondering the inert piece of metal in my hand.
Eventually, I collected myself enough to call my wife, Anna, to pick me up. She worked part-time as a copy editor at the newspaper, which meant I had pulled her out of work, but “the car exploded in the parking lot” was a good excuse, even by newsroom standards. She also played music … folky singer-songwriter stuff, so I counted my lucky stars she wasn't at a gig, or she might not have gotten my call for hours. When she arrived, she launched into a thousand questions I couldn't answer.
“I didn't see it,” she said, as I sat in silence in the car, “but I heard the paramedics say there was some sort of superhero in the crash site. Can you imagine? Did you see anything?”
I turned to face her. She was only sort of looking at me out the corner of one, eye, the rest of her attention on the road. Her smile was a little too tight. She was concerned about me, knew something was wrong but couldn't put her finger on it.
“You don't even like comic books,” I said, and she laughed a little. It sounded something like relief.
“Not true,” she said. “I liked Sandman, and Fables, and ... I don't know ...”
“The grown-up comics,” I said. “Not the X-Men or Avengers or anything where grown men wear their underwear on the outside.”
She laughed, and nodded.
“Exactly,” she said. “I'm perfectly OK with your homoerotic male power fantasies, dear, but let's not pretend they're more than they are.”
The laughter came loud and sudden. I was almost shocked by it, and more surprised to discover I was crying.
“I saw him, Anna,” I said. “I saw the superhero. He gave me this.”
I held up the metal brick in my hands. She almost took her eyes off the road, but was too cautious a driver to do that, even now.
“Josiah,” she said, her face serious now, her voice preternaturally calm. “What is that? What are you taking about?”
The story came in fits and stutters as I tried not to leave out any detail.
“He had my face, Anna,” I said, my face drenched in tears. “He was me. He was me, and he died, and I have this … thing … and I have no idea what to do next.”
Anna was silent for a long time. The blood seemed to have drained from her face.
“I think,” she said, and then paused, contemplating her next words. “I think … if all of that's true, and you're not completely losing it ...”
She glanced in my direction to assure herself that I wasn't completely losing it.
“If it's true, then we won't have much time to worry about what to do next. The next thing will come to us.”
***
My neighbor, Rachel, is at the bar, drinking a beer. She's tall, and dark-skinned, and has a sort of solidity in her presence. The biggest group of people in New Worcester are the ones that work in the library, and its numerous annexes. It is, after all, the reason we survived. The next largest group is the farmers. The city is surrounded by virgin, arable farmland, and while the nanotechnology embedded in everything seems to recreate most of our provisions – except meat – the few scientists in our number are pretty certain it's a temporary measure, and that they'll eventually wear out. We figure we have another year or so, so getting farms up and running has been a priority.
Rachel grew up on a farm in Western Massachusetts, and moved to Worcester to study biology at WPI. She wasn't quite done with her degree, but it put her miles above just about everyone else when it came to organizing the crops … what we could find, what we could salvage from what came with us, what the nanobots could build. Somehow, despite everything, we've got corn and wheat growing. We've got cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, squash – so much squash – and chickpeas. Our entire community having to turn vegetarian at once was difficult, but somehow we managed. We had to … we burned out the meat in a matter of weeks, and there's no fauna here to hunt. A few people looked at the odd household pets that came with us, but we all agreed that was a line we wouldn't cross. I've lost 20 pounds since we came here. I haven't felt this healthy … well … ever.
There weren't that many people with actual farming experience in the group that came to New Worcester. Most of whom Rachel recruited were gardeners. This was new territory for everybody. Sometimes, when the airships come from the other Earths, we send out requests for a few more farmhands to join us. We've gotten a few, but most people want to stay close to what's left of their Earths. Those that do come are usually more interested in the library.
Shaun pours me a Manhattan and I sidle up to Rachel at the bar and inquire after the farms.
“We're doing OK,” she says, in her youthful, understated way. “Really OK. The ground here's really fertile. Way more than I would have expected without fauna to make … you know … fertilizer. The whole area's way richer in nutrients than our Massachusetts. I don't know how that is, but travelers tell me all the Earths are a little different.”
“Maybe that's why the Silent Ones put us here,” I mused. “A world where we had a chance to survive.”
“Oh, that's rich,” said a low, belligerent voice from behind me. Dan had been a football player when we were in high school, and was still a hulking bear of a man. We weren't close … truth be told, he was kind of a bully. After school, he went on to become a drunk and served time for … something. DUI, I think. Found Jesus when he got sober, and went on a spree friending everyone he went to school with on Facebook. When the sky fell, and we were whisked here, he made the trip, but his parents and sister didn't. He blames me for that. He's not the only one.
“Yeah, the big, mysterious Silent Ones wanted to give us a chance to survive, but they dump us on an empty world with a CVS, six restaurants and … what … 20 libraries?”
“45,” I say, and almost regret answering. He's totally blitzed.
“And you,” he shouts. “You save me, but not my parents. You saved the woman who broke up the damn Beatles, and not my sister or her kids. Why? Just tell me why, Josiah.”
I was ashen-faced, and couldn't bring myself to reply. Rachel was up an in his face. He worked for her now, and had a modicum of respect for her, so she backed down at his reprimand. A couple of the bigger guys had also gotten up to restrain him. Bobby, who had a been a local poet and community activist back home, had a good 75 pounds on Dan, and all of it was muscle. He put his arm around Dan's shoulder and walked him outside to cool off. I went back to my drink.
“You can't keep stewing in guilt, Josiah,” said a placid voice behind me. I looked up to see Yoko Ono's smiling face. “You can’t keep carrying the guilt for everything we've lost. It wasn't you who destroyed the universe.”
“No,” I said, coolly. “I just decided who got to live.”
***
I collapsed on the couch as soon as we got home from the library. One of the reasons we moved into the apartment was that the living room had built in bookcases, enough to handle the bulk of our books. They lined almost every wall, for panel in the entertainment center where the TV sat. I think Anna always suspected that wanting to be surrounded by books was some sort of librarian pretension, but the truth is, I always felt safe when I was surrounded by books. They were my refuge when I was a nerdy kid, and I think that plays out in my need to be surrounded by them at home.
Anna put The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on the stereo, knowing it was my favorite. She preferred vinyl, but humored my move to digitize our entire collection. Little did I know that would eventually come in handy. She poured me a glass of bourbon, and our cat, Bast, jumped onto my lap, which was unusual behavior for her. I sipped my drink and listened to Five Years.
News guy wept and told us/Earth was really dying, sang Bowie. “Cried so much his face was wet,/Then I knew he was not lying.
I laughed at the song this time, now fully cognizant of the irony. We probably didn't have five years. Skyknight had been in a panic. The death of the multiverse was imminent, and I was sipping Woodford Reserve with the cat curled up on my lap. I had no idea what to do. Anna, always more sensible, shrugged and ordered pizza.
We ate, listened to Bowie, and passed the alien device back and forth between us. We were words and music people. Our technical knowledge began and ended with setting up the computer.
“Well,” said Anna, shrugging. “Maybe we could Google it?”
There were worse ideas. I grabbed my laptop and searched for any keywords I could remember: “Skyknight.” “Multiverse.” Nothing. “Witch.” “Red Centurion.” “Shadow Stalker.” Nothing. “Silent Ones,” I typed. “Devourers.”
The device Skyknight gave me pulsed with a weak blue light.
“Do you think ...” I asked, hesitantly, “that it's communicating with the Silent Ones?”
“Dear,” said Anna, “We're lucky if our phones pick up our own Wi-Fi.”
It's true. Our signal at home always sucked. We dropped calls, had to buffer videos, it was really annoying in a First World Problem sort of way. But something was happening. The device's pulsing grew a little brighter now, and there was a weird, almost imperceptible hum in the air. Reflexively, I grasped for Anna's hand. Bast felt it too, and skedaddled out of the room, probably to hide under our bed. Something was coming. The air felt wrong. I fought down being sick.
The air rippled around us, and I tried to ask aloud if it was the Silent Ones coming, but soon the corpse of a human woman fell through the rip in reality, falling to the floor amid a rain of red robot parts. They seemed at first to be draped in shadow, but I soon realized the darkness draped over them like blanket. I could see a hand composed entirely of night lying severed amid the rubble.
Then three forms stepped out of the rubble and into my living room. Even now, I can't properly describe them. They were sharp teeth and harsh music and metal scraping against metal. They were dressed in something that seemed equal parts black silk and shame, some fabric of memory that you'd tried to forget. When they spoke, they spoke in emotional aggregates instead of words, but their meaning was entirely clear. They had just murdered superheroes, and now they wanted Skyknight's device.
***
Not a lot of people know that I still have Skyknight's memories. Anna, of course. But mostly, I found I could only confide in the knot of fantasy authors that had collected here. Terry, of course. Neil. People who could really grasp what it means to look through eyes that have seen intergalactic wars and mad scientists with cyborg zombie armadas. Skyknight's world was so different than mine. Sometimes, I would wander away from the city proper so I could be alone underneath the stars, knowing that none of the things he saw were likely out there. His universe was gone, and I was the sole inheritor of that knowledge.
I met Yoko on one of these wanders. She was one of the original residents of New Worcester, and for the most part, a popular one. She had taken on the role of spiritual mentor to many who had ended up here … a weird world where Michael Chabon and Henry Rollins were among the residents, but there were very few priests of any sort. Mostly because I didn't know that many. A guy I knew in high school was a Presbyterian minister, and he sort of started a triage multi-faith chaplaincy, which I thought was kind of impressive, all things considered. But Yoko had a sort of calming presence. She listened, and when I told her about my other set of memories, ones which included being transformed at one point into an ape and another time being shrunk and trapped in a petri dish by an alien tyrant. She laughed, and told me that she thought being a superhero would also be good fodder for making art.
“You could convey a set of experiences no one else has ever lived,” she said. “Did your Skyknight doppelganger make any art?”
I don't think he did. He wasn't a very creative man, in a lot of ways. His responsibilities made him very lonely. He liked to read, though, and he loved music. We had similar tastes.
“Did they have the Beatles on his world?” she asked, and I nodded. It's not that it was a sore subject with her, but we both knew that her late husband, John Lennon, was out there somewhere If I understood the mechanics of how we were transported to the new worlds, it would likely even be the Lennon of our world. But Yoko had been alive when the world ended. Hell, I followed her on Twitter. Lennon had been dead, so whatever version of him was out there, he would be younger. Maybe. It's hard to say with any certainty. Fragments of our world survived, but none of us were unchanged.
***
The Devourers didn't so much speak as project their feelings at us. Anna and I were clutching hands, both of us shivering, our teeth chattering. We were crying, and when I tried to speak I vomited. My underpants were soiled.
In every superhero fantasy I had ever had, I was at least brave in the story. That didn't happen here. No mere human could be brave in those circumstances. You looked at the Devourers, and you felt the pain of every murder victim since Able. You have no iota of control in that situation. My wife and I held each other, and prepared to die.
One of the Devourers held out what appeared to be a long, clawed hand, and reached for Skyknight's device. A thousand things flew through my head at once: I wished I had his powers. I wondered if I'd actually live to see the end of the universe, if it would happen all at once. I wondered if Bast had escaped. It occurred to me that my cat would live to see the end of the universe, and I wouldn't. I wondered what Skyknight would do in this situation, and then I remembered: He died.
The Devourer lurched forward, toward the device, and I felt Anna adjust her grip, digging her nails into my palm. It hurt so bad, I screamed, but the Devourers didn't seem to really notice. Then, I realized what Anna had seen – the device was pulsing brighter now, blue light, even as it seemed to be meting into a lump of molten metal. Had they come too late? We were going to die, but maybe the universe could still be saved?
The light glowed brighter and brighter, until it was blinding. We could only see between pulses as two large, humanoid figures appeared between us and the Devourers. We didn't know who they were, didn't know if we'd survive, but we both knew, to our core, that in that instant, we were saved.
The warmth of the blue light engulfed us, and I could feel the fear melting away, could feel the queasiness in my stomach subside. In front of us, the Devourers seemed to recede into nothing, bear back by the sheer presence of what I now know was the Silent Ones. We were both still crying, but it was out of joy now, a rapturous joy unlike anything we had ever felt. Within moments, the Devourers were gone, leaving us alone with the Silent Ones and the bodies of the fallen superheroes.
The light subsided, but the Silent Ones were still too unbearably beautiful. Staring at them was painful. Instead, I fixed my attention on the metal device that was supposed to save a remnant of our multiverse. The Silent Ones saw it, too, and I was filled with a sadness that sank all the way into my blood. One of the Silent Ones stared up at the ceiling, as though searching the heavens for something. In front of him appeared an ebony sphere. At first glance, it appeared no bigger than a basketball, but then I caught it from another angle, and it seemed enormous, as big as the sky. It was pockmarked with spaces where the devices were supposed to go, but it was clear that very few had made the journey. I realized what that meant: This was Armageddon, and the only civilizations across the multiverse that would survive were the ones the heroes managed to record on those devices. The overwhelming majority of them failed. Whole sentient species would be lost from eternity. Alien civilizations doomed to extinction.
Our civilization was doomed, too. Our device had been destroyed. I could feel the Silent Ones' sorrow, and wanted to cry. That's when David Bowie's voice appeared to break the silence. There's a Starman … waiting in the sky …
In a fit of sentimentality, I had set my ring tone to Bowie's “Starman” that morning, after I heard the news of his death. The Silent Ones stared at me quizzically as I pulled the phone from my pocket … It was my mother calling.
I found out later that Skyknight's fall to Earth has made the news, as had reports of strange lights. At the time, I just thought it was a bizarre, absurd moment amid a looming tragedy. Now I know that phone call from my mother saved humanity.
***
How do you choose who lives and who dies? What human being can make that decision? There are maybe 4,000 residents of the new Worcester, a hodgepodge collection of people I had some ephemeral connection to: Family, friends, co-workers, former classmates, but also celebrities I followed on Twitter, strangers who “friended” me on LinkedIn, nearly every person who did an event or taught a class at the library. People who worked at every library I had professional connections to, which was a lot – I was a rep to the American Library Association, and had helped plan a couple conventions. At the end of the day, though, it wasn't even really me who decided who lived and who died.
When I produced my phone, the Silent Ones stared at it, and then reached for it. I could feel an overpowering compulsion to surrender it to them. They took the phone, Bowie still singing, and inserted it into one of the slots. Immediately, I could feel it connect to my brain. It felt a lot like my psionic link with Skyknight, earlier, but cleaner. More immersive. In an instant, my brain reached out and touched every single person on my contacts list, as well as all my social media connections. Anna and I could both feel ourselves being pulled elsewhere, and it wasn't just people: Homes were being drawn to the new world, businesses that were listed in my contacts.
But it wasn't enough of a blueprint to restart humanity elsewhere, which has been the Silent Ones' plan all along, so one of them cracked a desperate, last minute plan. He reached out and embraced us, and we felt ourselves drawn to him, as though we were sheltered beneath invisible wings. Both of our minds were pushed even further, and we felt them touching every book we owned, every DVD, comic or album. We felt the world slipping away from us, felt everything disintegrating, The Silent One pulled us tighter, weaving what information he could glean from our home into something. We were at the center of a vortex of light, but we felt safe, loved. Eventually, the swirl of light quickened, and we were both overcome with bliss, screaming out in ecstasy before blacking out.
We awoke on the ground, Bast between us, licking Anna's face. There was only one Silent One in the room, and we knew, instinctively, that the other one had died to save us all.
***
I finish my drink, and bid Shaun and Yoko Ono and everyone else goodnight. It's a short walk home … everything is really close together. Anna is home, listening to an Ani DiFranco album and reading a book of poetry by Patricia Smith. Unsurprisingly, fiction has gone out of fashion for pleasure reading. It's too much like nonfiction, now. People read poetry more than ever, though, and we've learned that's true from Earth to Earth. Reading fiction began to feel like peering too closely into the life of someone you might eventually meet.
That's what happened in those final moments in the old world, as the Silent One held us tight: He connected our minds to our library, and pulled analogues of every fictional world from across the multiverse into the new series of parallel Earths. Nonfiction, too, although that pulled from our own world, which meant that there pieces of our own Earth's history scattered about the new Earths. Indeed, we don't actually know if these worlds were created for us: There are residents of an Earth who claim they were here already, and they had previous knowledge of how to travel between the worlds. Pratchett thinks it may be his “Long Earth,” from his novels with Stephen Baxter. But it's impossible to say. I've expressed disappointment that the Librarian from his Discworld novels hasn't made his way here yet, as several other fictional librarians such as Isaac Vainio or Rupert Giles have, but we've seen no sign of Discworld at all, or really many alien worlds. There's still a lot undiscovered, though. There are people out there searching for the original Biblical lands, but there are a lot of Earths that everyone was scattered among. Maybe millions. Maybe more.
Pratchett thinks they're all out there, in space somewhere, and I'll admit, it makes me happy to know that somewhere there may well be a world carried on the back of four elephants, all standing on the back of a turtle. Other bits of fictional worlds I would have classified as “alien” exist on one Earth or another. Reports have reached us of Westeros, Modor and Pern all existing out there. Some people, it seems, have the natural ability to “step” between these worlds – which supports Pratchett's theory – and in some places, ships have been built to travel between worlds.
And then there's the authors and musicians. All the ones who's work we had in our collection appeared in different places across the multiverse, but they all seemed to appear with wristband devices that allowed them to travel easily from world to world. They also seemed to have a homing beacon that leads them to the library. Evidently, the device was a gift from the Silent Ones, whom we've not seen since, as is the nanotechnology that keeps this city running, which evidently didn't happen on other Earths. We've sent out word for visitors and pilgrims to bring books. We're trying to catalog the new worlds, and to see how deeply the fictional histories differ.
It's still a long trip – the bulk of humanity is thousands of worlds from here – but we've had a steady trickle of authors, poets and musicians making their way here. Yoko – who appeared here originally because I followed her on Twitter – has tried not to get her hopes up that she'll see her husband again, but she can't help it. None of us can. We've survived the apocalypse, and found ourselves in a place where many of the stories and artists that we love have literally come to life, awaiting discovery across a thousand unfamiliar skies.
Victor D. Infante is the Entertainment Editor for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the editor-in-chief of Radius and the author of City of Insomnia from Write Bloody Publishing. His poems and stories have appeared in dozens of periodicals, including The Chiron Review, The Collagist, Barrelhouse, Pearl, Spillway, The Nervous Breakdown and Word Riot, as well as in anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, Spoken Word Revolution Redux, The Last American Valentine: Poems to Seduce and Destroy, Aim For the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry, The Incredible Sestina Anthology and Murder Ink: 13 Tales of Newsroom Crime. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts with his wife and pet ferret, and harbors deep-seated opinions about politics, literature and pop music, not necessarily in that order.