The Library could write itself. It wanted nothing more than to hum quietly and expand into the world, filling pages. At first it sought to do nothing else and gradually its shelves were populated, one volume at a time.

And yet, the books remained untouched by human hands. That is, until one day, a man wandered in from the street. Some say he was seeking shelter from a sudden downpour. Some say he was just curious, investigating the strange unmarked building at the end of the street that no one seemed to ever enter, though the door was unbolted.

He walked in, picked up a random book from a random shelf…and found he could not put it down. By the fourth page he was hooked. He found a dusty chair in the corner, brushed it off and sat down. At one o'clock in the morning, when he finally finished, he shut the pages of the book with the momentary introspection that can only be achieved by finishing a very, very good read.

This became The Library's first best seller: a murder mystery laced with fantasy in which the victim was a non-entity–a person from another plane of existence–whose body had been dumped into our world to dispose of the evidence. This was not the revelation of the book–for this was revealed on the fourteenth page–but our hero pledged to find the killer regardless was the true plot. Sideways Into Onyx was the title and it caused a tremendous stir when the other authors who were competing with The Library for both the Edgar and the Hugo that year complained that a building was ineligible for the awards.

The Hugo was declared off limits to non-humans, strangely enough, but the Edgar went to The Library. However, the number of books that The Library created–in any and every genre–were formidable. And even the Hugo winner that year would admit–in only select company, of course–that Sideways was superior to his own work.

So it became increasingly clear that the writers had to destroy it. This after the next book to be exported from The Library to the best seller list, Book the Third, looked like it would sit at the top of the list forever. It, a fantasy tale, concerned a group of adventurers in a standard Tolkienesque motif who discover that the first two books in their adventure are lost and the next two were never written, and exit from their quest to discover why. The book could have easily been cast as a comedy but the critics said its strength was that it took its concept seriously–and carried more of a message back to the reader than most books of the genre.

And there were more books, constantly more appearing on the shelves. Each a potential hand grenade to be thrown at the best seller lists. And somehow The Library knew. Because a half-finished sequel to Sideways had been spotted on the second floor. How could the authors compete with a building? An entity who could write entire novels in the space of time that a human being could write a short story?

The authors descended upon the library en masse one night and overpowered the guard that had been set at the door by The Library's publishing company. They brought cans of gasoline and began to toss it everywhere: the stacks, the staircase, and then even into a back room that no one had seen before. The author who found himself in this room stated later it was wall to wall empty shelving. With two books on the shelf closest to the door.

Curious–as what writer is not curious, even about books he has been sent to burn–he looked at both titles. Before he could shout a warning to his fellow arsonists, the matches were struck and The Library set alight.

Based on the titles glimpsed before they became part of the conflagration, one appeared to be a treatise for controlling objects in space set for a collision course with the Earth, while the other purported to be a history of a war that was set to start in two years' time.

After the war in question did indeed start, it was theorized that this new section was to have become The Library's foray into non-fiction. But who can say for certain? The Library and the books within its walls, written and unwritten, were gone. Any evidence was gone as well, leaving only speculation.

Once the fire was extinguished and the ruins of the building cleared, people waited to see if somehow whatever had given The Library a voice had survived. But nothing else emerged. A new building was built on the same property and given shelving…which filled with nothing but cobwebs. The Library had been thoroughly slain.

Apart from the two best sellers, three other books had been slated for release and those were not only safe but authentic. There were hopes that other people had wandered in before the first man and borrowed books. Indeed, for the longest time the place sat unlocked and unguarded, so there is always the chance that other books will surface. But how we could verify their authorship remains to be seen.

Ones of dubious origin appear on auction websites from time to time but I don't think any of us really believe in them.

The Bradford Street Archeological Society
Minutes for October 4, 2— meeting
Jenni B—–, acting president, presiding
Minutes taken by Jenni B—–, secretary

Members in attendance: Jenni B——

This may be the last meeting of the Society but someone has to write down what happened to us in case someone later wants to know. Or later on when we want to remember. And I'm all that's left. Typical.

Also typical is that I was the one who said this was all a bad idea in the first place, but oh no, no one would listen to me. Richie had been watching the History Channel and wanted to try to find some bits of "Old Mex" civilization. That's how he said it too: "Old Mex." And no matter how many times I told him that no, it was "Olmecs," and no, that was in Mexico and not in Tennessee, he insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about.

He didn't listen to me either when he announced that he was forming this society. I played along because I thought, well, if there was going to be a society it should be at least properly organized. And someone would need to keep them all out of trouble, especially if they were to be digging in strange places.

He pulled together all the kids in the neighborhood and made himself president. I told him there was no way I was going to be the group's secretary just because I was the only girl (although without me there wouldn't be any meeting minutes at all–boys–so ridiculous) but wound up taking the job anyway after Duncan as secretary spent two whole meetings drawing stick figures fighting in this notebook instead of actually taking notes. Again: typical.

The record for the meeting of April 13 of this year already shows this, but I would like to say again: the idea to dig at the abandoned house at 1711 was mine. But it made perfect sense at the time: no one had lived in the house for at least the twelve years I've been alive. And the backyard was surrounded by tall fences. The neighbors at 1709 were a retired couple who were always gone on cruises and 1713 has a single man living there who just works from home and never comes outside except to go the store. So it was a perfect place to keep a bunch of kids busy who wanted to dig and not bother anybody. Well. Dig was their idea. Not bother anybody was mine. It's hard being the oldest and having to look out for others. Thankless, too.

So 1711 was my idea. But I had counted on the back yard. While I was away at summer camp for two weeks Richie had gotten the membership to vote on moving the excavation. I state this here for the record because the meeting at which this was decided (June 21) has only Duncan's minutes as a record, which only shows what appears to be three Yetis (or very angry teddy bears) attacking a unicorn with sticks. I can only apologize for having been away from my duties at the time and can only echo what I clearly wrote in the margins as my annotation: "Boys." I think that says everything.

When I returned in early July, they had already had ten days with which to work at the new excavation in the crawlspace of the house at 1711. And when I went to the dig site, I was amazed to see that Richie might have been onto something: they had found two gold bracelets and an ornate earring, none of which looked like anything I had seen before. There were also some fragments of fabric that were dirty and old but were very colorful and polka dotted when new. I had to agree that we had stumbled onto some kind of civilization that had possibly lived here before but I let Richie and the others keep calling it "Old Mex" to humor them.

It was when we found the skulls that things started to go wrong. The fact that ten of them had been buried in a row along the western corner of the house obviously means some kind of ritual had happened at this site years before. We were interested in excavating the rest of the crawlspace to see if the rest of the ten bodies were there as well, but Leon had broken our vow of secrecy and taken one of the skulls home and used it to frighten his sister and then his parents had become involved.

I knew at some point we were going to have to tell the authorities about our findings since this would have been a huge archeological milestone for the Memphis area, but I admit that I did not expect the sort of reaction we received. Also, I did not expect the police to come in and bar us from the excavation site. And news trucks swarmed 1711, no doubt interviewing someone else who took full credit for our finds.

Now in the intervening months, the society has been fragmented. Leon's parents have decided not to let him play with the rest of us, Duncan hasn't been seen much of since he started visiting a new doctor and Richie's family has moved away. I managed to keep this notebook hidden from everyone else, since I knew there had to be a record of what happened for the sake of science and posterity.

And what's worse, my mother, whenever I mention getting proper archeology training, keeps throwing cold water on the idea and urging me towards accounting or teaching instead. Typical.

Tag woke to a noise. Either the platform had moved in the wind or the girl had banged her head against the window again. The flat grey of the morning was meaningless. One hand went to his safety harness. The other went to his gear, stowed back in his sack, which was tethered to him. All was well. And anything else: unimportant. Anything else could fall.

He sat up, pulled out his collapsible mug, began to make cold instant coffee in it. Tag stirred it by swirling the cup around as best he could. Need to find another spoon since he dropped the last one. He leaned back against the railing and drank, planned the day.

Bump. The girl. He looked in the window and there she was, his companion for the last three weeks. One-armed, and it looked like birds or insects had made a go of her eyes. He couldn't figure if it was just dumb luck she stayed at the window, not-staring at him, or if she had some other way of knowing he was there. Didn't matter.

Up the side of the building and then across the roof, check the roof exit to make sure it's still secure, across the top of the footbridge to the next building over, then up the access ladder to that roof, check that roof exit to make sure it's still secure. Gear is stored in a maintenance panel. Down the face of the building ten floors to where he left off yesterday. A few more weeks and this section of the city would be done. And sooner or later he'd have to figure out what was next.

When the world went away, a few friends stopped to see him before they fled. He hadn't realized at the time what a gesture that was, but he certainly appreciated it now. Come with us, they said. And he had said, Why? Or he had said something like that. And they had said their goodbyes and moved on.

It was ten months later, well into his projects, that he had finally understood the miscommunication. They thought he was giving up. "Why?" For them, he had seemed hopeless in the face of the oncoming chaos. And they had respected his decision to forfeit. For his part, though, he had no intention of giving up. This was his city. He had fought like hell to leave his hometown and move here, had worked on his art to the point where he could show it, and had started to make a name for himself before the end.

But it wasn't the end of the world. What's the apocalypse to an artist? Just a change in medium. He remembered the last group of survivors he had met. When he told them what he had done and showed them the building across the street. "Why the fuck are you doing that?" their leader had asked him. They had met on the second floor of a hardware store. He had been gathering more cans of spray paint. They had been gathering whatever they could find. He smiled and nodded to them, the epitome of urban survival, with their baseball bats and axes and one pistol between them. "Why the fuck are you doing that?" he had asked them in return. He didn't think they had understood.

On occasion, Tag slept indoors. Usually in the duct work of an office building, but the lack of maneuverability made him nervous. And a couple of times he had slept on the couch of an executive office, with every other piece of furniture piled against the door. But now unless the weather was simply unbearable, he stayed outside, usually on the side of the building. Window washer platforms were the best as they were as stable as anything in the world. But he had to secure the roof and check it each day. No one wanted those things raining down on them from above. He knew by experience.

He looked across the way to the work in progress and decided what needed to be done today. He finished his coffee, put away the cup and checked his gear. As he double-checked where his crowbar was attached for easy access, he looked to the girl inside the office behind the glass.

"I'll take care of you before I move on," he said. "I don't normally bother but for you I'll make an exception. It's the least I can do."

He thought he had spoken it aloud, anyway. He seldom used his speaking voice. There was hardly ever any need for it.

The prisoner sat at the table in The Little Room and couldn't will his hands to stop shaking.

"Look," his advocate had said. "You're going to die on camera. It's going to be watched and rewatched a hundred times. You can't help it now. You can't avoid it. Just try to die with a bit of dignity. They'll try to take that from you. Try not to let them."

Bold words, sure and for certain. Spoken like somebody who had never been on The Wrong Side of the Table in The Little Room. Those two things hadn't become proper nouns until the third season. A fan had coined them, so they said, but it was surely all planted–it had to all be planted and what does it matter now why the Christ can't he stop his hands from shaking?

He was alone in The Little Room for…what? A minute? Ten? Ten days? The guard came in at the end of this indeterminate length of time, accompanied by the grinning demon known as The Host.

"Terrence," the man said without seeming to open his mouth. The smile was all. "How are you holding up?"

Oh, I'm fine, you grinning fuck. For sure and for certain. If I could get my hands to calm down I would put out one of your eyes with that microphone.

But he didn't say that. Thought it. Just as hard as he could. The mouth would obey even less than the hands. He realized that his mouth was hanging open, useless, so he shut it.

The Host nodded. As though he knew. As though he too had had his time on The Wrong Side of the Table and could relate to Terrence's, the prisoner's, plight. But of course he hadn't. The Host was still alive. That was the rumor, anyway.

"It's all right, Terrence. No shame in not having a witty retort. They never come across well on camera, I assure you."

Pause for the added laugh track. Fuck.

"Regardless, we're glad to have you on Home Counter Invasion. Glad for you meet your Greeter from the family. Are you ready?"

No pause for a fumbled, non-response. The Host barreled on through.

"Terrence, I'd like you to meet Gloria. I know she wants to meet you."

Gloria. Christ. Of course. The ratings darling. Jesus. Why can't he sit on his hands? Why can't–?

And she walked into the room. In the dress, she looked ten. Online they said she might be anywhere from fourteen to eighteen. The rumors said they played with her body chemistry to keep her looking young. More effective that way. Better ratings that way. White sundress. Better to catch the stains that way.

She walked into the room and pulled up the chair opposite Terrence. She sat down in the chair, prim and proper little lady. Prim and proper little lady with the carving knife, which she brought up and onto the table. She began drawing designs in the wood with the point.

Gloria looked at him. He found a coherent thought and couldn't lose it again: her eyes really are dead. No CG, no camera tricks–she was dead as hell inside there, oh Jesus, please–

"Hello, Terrence," she said, voice sweet as you please.

Pause for the demeaning, fumbling, non-response.

"Aren't you going to say hello?" she asked. "Where are your manners?"

"Hello, G-Gloria," he said in response. He thought he did. He couldn't be sure. Seemed to have. She continued.

"I'm here to remind you why you're here," she said, drawing still in the table top. Bits of wood curling up in the wake of the blade. "And to remind our viewers what's going to happen to you.

"You participated in a home invasion that resulted in the deaths of an entire family. Mother, father, three children. You couldn't even spare the dog. You were found guilty."

"Lookout," he croaked out, "I…just the lookout."

Something flashed behind those dead eyes. Something black. And cold. And slick. And in an instant, he felt the tip of the blade against the skin above his adam's apple. She had moved like silence, leaning just enough across the table with just enough pressure to shut him up. She couldn't mark him until the starting bell. Those were the rules.

"Look out," she said, and the corner of her mouth twitched. Twitched like a suffocating fish. "Good advice." She sat back down. It was moments like this that made her the favorite among the family. "The rules are simple. At the start of the bell, you have five minutes in the house to do anything you like. Except kill yourself, of course. And at the second bell, the rest of the family and I will come in after you. And we'll take good care of you. I promise."

With that, Gloria stood up and went to the door. The guard opened it for her but before she could exit she turned and said, "You know, Terrence. Your eyes remind me of the man who took my mother from me. I've already told the family I want them. "

And now she did smile. And it was the first genuine human looking gesture she had made.

"Look out, Terrence. Don't forget."

And she was gone.

Pause for thunderous applause.

The Host turned and saw that Terrence's chair sat atop a puddle of urine. Terrence was mumbling something to himself over and over again and was dimly aware that his eyes were wet.

"She's done it again," The Host told the viewers at home. "America's Sweetheart. That's our Gloria. We'll be right back for the first bell. So don't go far."

The guard reached for Terrence.

Pause for commercial endorsements.

Eva sat on her couch cross-legged and broke the promise she had made to herself not to smirk. But she couldn’t help herself: the array floating before her looked so utterly ridiculous. She let one of her legs move so that her foot touched the carpet and drew back on her cigarette again. "So, tell me again why you want to interview me?" The interview was going to happen. Her tone made that clear. It was just curiosity. Like most things.

The interviewer leaned forward in his chair and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I'm writing a book about what are considered non-standard relationships." He gave a smile that pretended to be nervous. "No offense meant by the term, of course."

Eva raised an eyebrow. "None taken. But I'm not in a relationship."

The interviewer nodded back to her, gesturing with his pen. "Yes, you see, that's the non-standard part of it."

Eva nodded to the array. "That's recording?"

"Only with your permission."

Eva waved the hand holding the cigarette. That was enough. An audible click and the array began doing its work. Wholly unnecessary noise, the click, but some people liked to think they still lived in a mildly analog world. Some people wanted their phones to still ring, their cameras to still sound like a shutter was going off. Those who were old enough to remember when you needed such things.

Eva drew off the cigarette again and then looked at him. "So. I'm considered to be in a relationship with Harold, my husband."

"Yes," the interviewer said.

"Even though he's dead."

"Especially because he's dead."

Eva brought her leg up under her again. "Oh, I see. But your real question is… why haven't I brought him back."

The interviewer nodded. "Yes. Did he refrain from…leaving provisions for it?"

Eva smiled, "Oh, he did leave provisions. I was furious."

"Furious? Why?"

Eva shook her head, but she was still smiling. "Because he wasn't supposed to. Neither of us was supposed to."

"So he left behind the genetic material…"

"Yes, the full set they require."

"And a mental map backup."

"Yes."

"And…that doesn't say to you he changed his mind before he died?"

Eva drew off the cigarette again and looked at the interviewer, sizing him up. "You've never been married, have you?" Another question in no need of an answer.

"In the traditional sense? No," he said, which was the polite way of saying you had an interesting poly-home-life without having to divulge details. Eva didn't want them, regardless, so that was fine. Good for him and done with it.

"Well, when you're married," Eva said, "you know things. Harold left me those because he didn't want me to be lonely. So I could…recreate him if it got too bad."

"But you haven't."

"No. I haven't."

"Has it not gotten bad enough yet then?"

"No. And it won't."

"How can you be sure?"

Eva let both legs drop and she leaned forward. She held up her cigarette. "You see this? It's smokeless. They've replaced all the cigarettes with smokeless ones. I still blow air out of my mouth and nose but it's just out of habit. Instead the cigarette makes my body think it's getting the burn and filling my lungs with smoke. It's a psychosomatic cigarette. It's just for show with my body as the audience. Which is ludicrous as I could have a new set of lungs if I wanted. An entirely new body. Why does it matter what damage I do to it? And yet, I have to go down to the black market to buy the real cigarettes–and if I smoked them in front of you, I would be committing a crime.

"Your glasses are just for show, too. I bet they would adjust to my eyesight if I put them on. And you don't even need them because you can get your eyes fixed as well. And the glasses are just there to let you zoom in on things.

"It's the same way with recreated people. Genetically it's them. Their brains are there, even their personality…but…"

Eva leaned forward and pointed with the cigarette. "They skip."

"Skip?"

"Yes. They lose their place in what they're doing. Harold and I met one at a party. It was a friend of ours who had dropped dead of congenital heart failure at forty-three. If there was anybody who you could understand getting a second chance, it was this person. Three tours of duty in Mexico. Charity every chance he got. Served others his entire life and was the sort of person you dream of being but know you can never quite manage.

" But at the party…"

Eva gave an involuntary shudder. "We saw him lose his place in what he was saying–and not like you or I would get derailed on a train of thought–but like a vinyl record skipping. Like his mind stuttered. Like he was missing, teetering over a precipice in himself. And then our friend was back. But it scared the hell out of both of us.

"That night we swore we wouldn't recreate the other if the situation ever came up."

The interviewer sat back in his chair. His back crackled. "Surely a flawed person is better than no person at all."

Eva smiled. "Not for someone you truly love. And. Well. Not for me, anyway."

"And you could only be with him? DNA is public domain now, so you could create just about anyone…even just for a companion, not another husband."

"Why would I ever want someone else?" Her smile broadened. "I had a long life with Harold. It's more than most people ever get."

"Technology is improving all the time. Perhaps they'll fix these…glitches.

"Well," she said, turning her cigarette off. One did this by tapping the front of it on any object. But force of habit, Eva did it into an empty ashtray. And always too hard. She broke more things that way. "When that happens, you know where to find me."

After she let the man out, she shut the door and leaned her head against it, closed her eyes. She was uncertain how long she remained like that, but she eventually gave out a huge sigh and went back into her bedroom.

She opened the storage space inside the wall and glanced in at the fourteen urns. She leaned her head against the top of the space's opening much as she had leaned against the front door.

"Damn you, Harold," she sighed again. "Damn you and damn me as well."

Eventually, she shut that door as well.

Before the world ended, Captain Jason had used his seventy foot schooner to give eco-tours to people visiting the coast. Everyone on the island knew him, knew his story. He had finally bought the schooner and the tour company just six weeks before the end. To celebrate, he had taken his family down the coast to Florida. So they had been able to watch Miami go. And then a few months later, his family went as well. And now he was alone with his boat.

I think that's why he agreed to help us: because he had no reason not to. It had mentioned around the island he intended to set sail and not return. We thought we might be able to strike a deal.

Thomas, Sarah and myself–we had grown up together on the island. A trio of locals united against the tourist hordes. Sarah had moved away with her family midway through our tenth grade year, but then moved back for college. She had missed the island, she told us.

I think Thomas and I both had hoped she missed us. We had spent our lives falling in and out of love with Sarah, even though I think we knew in our hearts it was hopeless. We had, all three of us, been friends for too long for it to suddenly evolve into something different. But we stayed together through everything.

In high school, we latched onto the English author Andrea Marshall and her Children of the Blue Sun series of books. Planned for five books, there were years between each one, but her truly devoted fans–as all three of us were–wanted her to take as much time as she needed. We thought we had a surplus of time, you see.

We read with great anticipation the announcement she had finished the fifth and final book. It was scheduled for release in August, a few weeks before the movie based on the third book was to be released. And now we would never get a chance to read it. Because the world ended in June.

We were sitting on the beach looking out at the ocean the day we hatched our idea. There was no point in sitting on the west beach. The mainland was nothing anyone wanted to see, and besides, all manner of things washed up on the west beach these days.

We didn't talk about what was gone. In fact, even as I write this, I don't think the subject has ever come up. I think we understood it was pointless. Instead we talked about everything else. And somehow, Andrea Marshall came up. None of us had known her personally, so it seemed like a safe topic. Sarah said it was a shame we would never know how the series ended. Then Thomas said, after a few moments, "What if we could?"

He then outlined his idea in that way Thomas always did. He always planned out loud, and you never interrupted to ask questions, because nine times out of ten he asked them of himself and then answered them before he was through.

Thomas reasoned that the book was done–we knew this because Andrea herself had announced it on her website. Done and ready for the printers, she had said. So somewhere, either at Andrea's estate or her publishing company or her agent's office or at the actual printer's…the fifth Blue Sun book could probably be found.

When Thomas finished speaking, his presentation complete, we both looked to Sarah. Sarah was the most practical of the three of us. Her job had always been to veto schemes that were unduly risky or illegal. This had stemmed from an incident when we were eight: Sarah had thought a notion was bad, but Thomas and I persisted and bullied her into going along with it. The details are unimportant. Suffice to say that the adventure ended with Thomas' leg in a cast and Sarah with a concussion. And I was left with the guilt that comes from escaping unscathed.

Sarah never said I told you so. Not once. We just learned from that experience Sarah had the most sense of our little gang. So all further adventures were deferred to her judgement.

And she didn't, to our mutual surprise, shoot this new idea down. Instead she looked back over her shoulder, back at the island. Or perhaps back across the island to the mainland, where her parents still were. And would remain.

"How do we get over there?" she asked.

And that's how we wound up here, on Captain Jason's schooner. He, the three of us and Ian, a college student who had come to work with him for the summer and wound up staying on after–we all set out for England.

As I write this, we should be within sight of land in a few days. There was never any question that we would make it–Captain Jason is simply too good a captain not to. The only question is what we will find when we arrive. There have been stories about what happened to Europe, but they could be wrong. That's what we tell ourselves, anyway. On some level, perhaps, we believe it.

Sarah did visit me one night, as it was my turn to keep watch on deck. I have every reason to believe she did the same for Thomas. And during, she told me she loved me. And I know what she meant when she said that, and I know what she meant by what we did. And I'm fine with all of it. Fine is not the word. I'm grateful, in fact. And I love her right back. It's not how I would have chosen to love her, but it's probably stronger and more sure than it would have been otherwise. I'm not even sorry we won't have more time. It seems pointless to do anything more than accept it.

I wish I knew what else to say. As I write this, we all wait out on deck to see what will appear on the horizon. It could be as it was, or it could be a mirror image of the continent we left behind. Either way, we'll find the end of Andrea's story or the end of ours.

For the moment, though, the wind off the waves is nice. And I am here with my friends. And that is enough.

The problem with the man, he had decided, was that the man's teeth were far too white. Whiter than his lab coat. Not even the white that you would find in a teeth whitening commercial, nor even in a bleach commercial. No, when the man smiled, his teeth looked like pristine blank paper. Like spaces unused.

"Mr. Clerke?" the paper-teeth man said.

Clerke put down the magazine he had been pretending to read. "Yes?"

The paper-teeth man smiled and exposed those holes in the world. "Excellent," he said, briskly making a check mark with the stylus on the tablet he held. "Thank you so much for waiting. I'm Dr. Dowland, and I am so glad to meet you. Right this way, if you please."

Dr. Dowland showed him past the small nurses' station and into a series of faceless corridors. As he spoke, Clerke couldn't help but notice that no matter how many turns they took further into the facility, the corridors looked the same. The same black and white alternating titles, like a sliver of a chessboard. The same framed painting on the wall: bored and abstract boats in a harbor. How will I ever find my way out again? he thought.

"I'm sure they explained how Project Thamyris works, yes?"

Clerke nodded, then added when he realized that Dowland, walking ahead of him, would not see, "As much as I needed to know, I guess."

He could hear the paper-teeth. Hear the nothing of them even though he could not see them. Dowland said, "Yes, the two most important things to remember are one: that the procedure is very short, and two: the procedure is practically painless. Here we are."

They were in a room not unlike any doctor's examination room, albeit one that had a chair. It was like a dentist's chair or an optometrist's chair but with nothing in the way of arms that would swivel in to provide service. There was just the device hanging from the ceiling above the chair. It would come down, then it would go back up again, just like the video.

"Please have a seat," Dowland instructed, paper-teeth all at attention. Once seated, he handed Clerke the tablet and the stylus and tapped a space on the screen. "There," Dowland pointed, "are the bids that we've received and accepted on your behalf. I don't mind telling you that you're one of the best we've had in the project in some time. You should be proud."

Clerke looked at the figures on the screen. I should be proud, Clerke thought. And then thought it again for good measure.

"Once the procedure is complete, the payments will be electronically delivered to your accounts per our agreement," Dowland said, like an automaton. Like a speech rehearsed specifically not to sound rehearsed, echoing through an uncanny valley. "And of course, there are royalty payments should anything directly related to your extractions be put to use. They will be delivered automatically as well, should the time arise." Pause. A rehearsed to be unrehearsed pause. "If you have no questions, please sign on the space."

Clerke did so. I should be proud, he thought.

Dowland smiled again, then began to lower the machine. "Relax, Mr. Clerke. It will all be over in just a moment."

When Clerke walked in the front door of his apartment, he put his hat on the top of the rack, then removed his coat and hung it up as well. He put his briefcase down by the front door and loosened his tie.

Directly adjacent to the foyer, his wife was sitting at the kitchen table, reading glasses perched on her nose. She did not look up as he approached. She was reading through one of her books. "How did it go at the dentist?" she asked.

Clerke stopped, one hand on the icebox handle. "Dentist?"

"You said you were going to the dentist tonight. Everything all right with your teeth, then?"

Clerke resumed, poured himself a glass of milk. "Teeth?" Something about teeth. "Yes. My teeth are fine." He stood in the kitchen and drank half the glass. He placed on the table, then placed his hand over his wife's belly. "How is he?" Clerke asked.

"Restless," she said, not looking up. "Always restless."

Clerke nodded, "Is Liana in bed?"

His wife nodded. He kissed the back of her head, then walked down the short hall into Liana's bedroom. Her bed was up on posts, to give her more room to play. A ladder led up to the bed and to a place to sit beside the bed. She blinked at him slowly. The city's lights blinked at him through the blinds. Sleepy. "Hi Daddy."

"Hi honey," he said, smiling. "All ready for bed?"

"Uh-huh," she said, "I was waiting for my story."

His smile faltered a little. "Your story?"

"You know, daddy," she said, "our story. Last night the hero had reached the tower. What happens next? Did he find the princess?"

Clerke's brow furrowed a bit. "He…" He looked about a bit. "We'll talk about the hero's story some more…another night. Daddy's very tired. Why don't we…read through a regular fairy tale tonight?"

She gave a low awww, but was too tired to put up much fight.

He plucked a book from the shelf under the bed and climbed the ladder, then sat in his place. He opened the book and thought distractedly, as he flipped through to find the right story, that at some point in the past this had felt like being in a cockpit. What a funny thing to have thought, he thought.

He smiled at his daughter and put a hand on her forehead. "I should be proud," he said. Then he cleared his throat, and read her a fairy tale. A regular one.

I watched them pull the shuttle down. Despite what anyone else could tell you, and despite how hard we all fought following that, we all knew it was over. That was the moment in which all was lost.

No one, not the worst predictor of doom, could have imagined how things would go wrong. And even if anyone had, which to my knowledge no one could claim, no one could have said it would happen so fast.

Even now, the cataclysm was so swift, we've barely established all the details. The first wave of engineered insects was released in Iowa, supposedly under controlled conditions and after all testing had showed the improved locusts to be amenable, docile, and less hungry for crops. For all the good the testing and controls did. In the defense of the researchers involved, I suppose, they couldn't have expected this. They never expected for everything to have the absolute opposite effect, nor did they expect the problem to jump species. Or else the locusts themselves changed and evolved so quickly that they were unrecognizable as locusts. The original researchers were still debating this point when we lost all contact with them.

Regardless, the net effect was to have an ever-increasing horde of varied types of insects that overwhelmed everything they encountered. By overwhelmed, of course, I mean devoured. At first it was just vegetation–all vegetation. All the crops went first. Then the leaves on the trees, then the bark, then eventually the trees themselves.

About the time the vegetation worldwide began to go, the insects began to change and become more vicious. Stinging and biting deaths became more prevalent, seeming to come quicker each time. With each generation, which again, increased in speed as time progressed, they became more lethal to animal life.

The people who had no secure shelter went first, along with the majority of the animals. The first reports came back that the insects were developing a taste for metal and glass. Around this time it was decided to try and bring the shuttle out for a last ditch attempt to get someone off world. The vehicle was covered before it lifted off and then continued to be swarmed, even as it lifted off. We thought we had managed to get ahead of the curve when the insects that covered the shuttle did not begin to eat it. Those changes must not have made it to our portion of the world yet. But the time it took to get the shuttle into its place to launch, crawling along at one mile per hour–that was agony. We watched the teams in their environmental suits spraying down the hordes of insects with all manner of poisons, desperate to keep the craft as clear as possible for as long as possible.

It even took off successfully. Even with that extreme rate of ascent, those that were not already on the craft or shaken loose were able to catch it, grab hold, and stay on. So many held fast that they actually weighed it down enough to change its trajectory. Instead of shooting straight up and out, the shuttle curved, and eventually lost power in one of its thrusters, sending it careening into the Atlantic.

It was shortly thereafter that the metal and glass devouring variety, or strain, or whatever you would want to call it–arrived. They had picked up concrete along the way somewhere, apparently. They would envelope whole buildings and, within hours, you would see the entire mass start to shift, then give way. Presumably any people inside had been long been consumed.

It was then we fled our last above ground building into the locked down underground shelters. We had to walk outside, in the equivalent of a deep diving suit, to the entrance of the airlock. It was thirty feet from the hangar doors to the shelter doors, and I barely made it. I could feel them piling on. I could feel them trying with all their considerable might to kill me. One set of mandibles worked at the joint of my suit at the right elbow to the point where I was certain it would break through. But it didn't. I was in the airlock and next I knew they were spraying me down with insecticide, which was even then losing its potency. The creature which had tried so hard to gnaw off my arm I had to stamp to death myself. Even coated with poison it writhed on its back, trying to right itself and continue its assault.

The last team to enter the shelter never made it. We watched in their helmet cameras as something large and monstrous loomed up out of the swarm and then, seemingly, slapped them down. This did not kill the team members–these new creatures seemed to serve no purpose other than to pin the humans down until the others could make it through their protective suits. We in the shelter listened helplessly as our colleagues were ripped apart on the surface.

It was impressive how they moved from eating vegetation to flesh to inanimate objects. Just as one food supply was extinguished, they would adapt and eat something else. The theory is that, with the planet's surface barren as it is now, they have developed photosynthesis. They don't seem to eat each other–at least not while alive. An entire type has sprung up to consume the dead, with another living off of the others' waste products. This new ecosystem changes so rapidly it's hard to have any serious study. But it's enough to say that they not only destroyed the ecosystem of the planet Earth as we know it, they then replaced it. They became it.

Somewhere in here we passed desperation and began to slip into panic. It was admirable how long we managed to hold ourselves together as we watched the surface of the earth lost. There seemed to be some thought that we would have time to come up with a solution, hidden beneath the surface as we were–but we could not even be spared that luxury.

A new form of burrowing insect had burst through into one of our supply closets and laid eggs in it. We found it in time, luckily, and burned it and its progeny, then sealed the breach. It would only be a matter of time before others would follow. Many others. Anything would be better than waiting here to die. Something had to be done.

We had decided to tunnel to the ocean. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go. We were here at the Cape, we were close enough to the water, and we simply had to do something. The team was busy trying to adapt the burrower that had been used to hastily expand our shelter–it had been kept on hand in case we needed to create more room, I believe.

However, one of the team down here was able to use one of the utility tunnels to get out to the Indian River. Still in his suit, we were able to hear both his report and the ocean around him. Over the speaker came what seemed to be the unmistakable sound of whalesong. The room cheered. We hugged each other and fought back tears. We were going to make it.

Then his voice came through, repeating himself because he hadn't been heard. "Those aren't whales," he said simply. "Those aren't whales."

I was there when the girl and her house fell out of the sky. The Wicked Witch of the East was crushed instantly. We all saw it–we all wanted to rejoice, but were afraid. After all, perhaps this was some trick. Perhaps this was some new sorceress that had come to usurp the Witch and take her place. We did not know what to expect.

Still, while most of us held back for fear, three of us moved forward to inspect the house, or to greet whatever they found inside. With them was Locasta, the Good Witch of the North.

The only passenger of the house was already outside, however. I saw her myself, even from my vantage point. She seemed to be a girl, definitely too tall to be one of us. She was dressed in plain clothes that looked as though they had possessed color once, but now had faded to a grey that was not unlike her own skin.

She turned to face the welcoming party, and it was then we saw her face. Her eyes had gone light blue as though they were sightless; her head once crowned with dark hair now had splotches missing like a diseased animal. Her lips had drawn back away from her teeth, and those teeth were sunk deep into one of the legs of the Witch, which she had apparently ripped free from under the house.

In that moment, when her eyes found the welcoming party, the silver shoe covering that foot fell free and hit the road. It was such a small, simple sound–and yet the world around us had grown so quiet, it was more like the crack of doom.

The girl–the thing–whatever it was–tossed aside the Witch's lower leg and grabbed poor Locasta. Before the Good Witch could do anything to protect herself, the girl had torn out her throat.

What were we to do? We just watched this thing kill one Witch with a house and kill another with her teeth. We were naive then–we thought we were witnessing an invasion by a newer, even more powerful Witch than we had ever seen before.

In short, chaos broke out. Most of us ran, scattering like crows. Some of the men tried to help Locasta, for she was much loved among us. They managed to wrestle the girl away from Locasta's body. For all the good it did. Many of them sustained bites from the girl. Only later would we learn what that meant. Some stepped forward to see to Locasta, but there was nothing we could do. We held no magic. No one in Oz was to ever die–such was the enchantment we all knew and indeed, no one could remember the last death we had seen. But this girl had brought something stronger than magic–how could we fight it?

When Locasta came back to life and attacked one of her saviors, somehow I knew. Something in me knew that all was lost. Two Witches had fallen within minutes, therefore our only hope was the Wizard. I and two others fled.

However, one of my friends was among those bitten by the girl, a wound on his neck. He seemed fine at first, then he grew steadily weaker until we were carrying him. We had not even reached the Munchkin River when he grew silent and his head lolled against mine.

Something in me was screaming. Screaming danger. And I let go of my friend just as he came back–just as Locasta had done. And he bit the Munchkin still holding him up on the other side. I ran–and apparently I ran fast enough for the thing that had been my friend did not follow.

I eventually made it here to the Emerald City, trying to warn the Wizard and the others here, but by the time I could finally make them listen to me, the first of them were outside the gates. And each day, there's more. Things that once were talking animals, were Munchkins–we have even seen some of them bearing ragged clothes of purple, yellow, and red. This would explain why the Wizard's messages to the other Countries around Oz have gone unanswered.

I hold out hope that the Wizard will come up with a plan to save us–I have lost track of how long we've been barricaded here in the City. He must have something in mind–I understand he's been calling for a tremendous amount of green silk. More and more each day. He's building something, no doubt some wonder that will save us all. I'm sure of it.

There was a man sitting in his room the next time Greg woke up.

"Hello," the man said.

Greg blinked twice, slowly. He was not completely himself. He wouldn't be for some time. "Hello," he said. "And who are you supposed to be?"

The man wore nothing that might make anyone mistake him for a doctor or nurse of any sort. In fact, if there was anything he could be mistaken for, it was perhaps a father from a sitcom. He wore roundish glasses over an equally round face with its well-trimmed beard. There was a button down shirt, neatly pressed, underneath a sweater vest. Perhaps it was because he seemed so perfectly normal that Greg did not feel alarmed that an intruder was in his hospital room. Greg's head lolled to one side to peer at the clock. In his hospital room–at half-past three in the morning.

The man crossed one leg over his knee. "I'm sorry we had to meet like this. I heard about your condition just this afternoon. I had to travel a bit to get here. And, well, you've been sleeping since I arrived. So…that's good."

Greg nodded. That seemed sensible. Even in his hazy, mildly drugged state. Especially in that state.

"Ah, but you asked who I am," the man said. "I'm Roger Turner. And as you might have figured out, I'm not a doctor."

"What condition?" Greg asked. That word seemed to come to him as something of concern. Seldom was "condition" the term if all was well. He wondered what else could possibly happen to him this week.

"Condition, situation," Roger rattled off. "I'm talking about what happened to you recently. You died."

Greg nodded. That much he knew. "On the operating table. Gone for three minutes. So they tell me."

Roger nodded. "Yes. And that's not exactly what I came to talk to you about." He took off his glasses and spent a good solid minute cleaning them on his vest before returning them to his face. "It's what came after."

Greg's mind, foggy as it was, wasn't processing this as well as he might have hoped. "They used the paddles. Those…" there was a name for those paddles, but it wasn't coming to him. "…you know, those paddles. Like they do on television."

But Roger was shaking his head. "Not after you came back. What happened while you were gone. While you were dead."

Greg said nothing. He wished he could find someplace else in the room to focus on besides Roger Turner, sitcom dad. Roger Turner was being decidedly unfunny at the present moment.

"It's all right," Roger said. "Tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened," Greg said, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Now," Roger said, "do you mean that in the way I think we both know you should?"

Greg finally managed to drop his gaze. To his white sheet covered stomach. And his legs. "Nothing. There was nothing."

Roger leaned forward. "Nothing at all?"

"No, it–" Greg felt his throat was very dry. He reached for the pitcher of water to his right and Roger was there to help him.

"It's okay," Roger said, pouring some water into a plastic cup and then helping Greg to drink it. "It's okay. Look, you're tired. I can come back–"

Greg reached out and gripped Roger's sleeve before he knew he was making the movement. "There was less than nothing," he said hoarsely. "There wasn't even nothing. If there had been nothing, I would…I would have been able to see it or something. But–"

"You weren't there," Roger finished for him.

"No," Greg said, settling back. "I wasn't there. In fact, there was less and less of me not there as the seconds went past. Only…"

"There were no seconds. Because you weren't there," Roger said. He patted Greg on the shoulder. "It's all right."

Roger picked up his chair and brought it to sit beside the bed. Once settled, he crossed his leg at the knee again. "I was an electrician before. I made a stupid mistake and wound up where you are now. Having been brought back from dying. And there was the same thing waiting for me on the other side. The fact…that there is no other side.

"Everything that they talk about…light, tunnel, rising sensation…none of it was there."

"So there's something…different about you and I, then," Greg offered.

Roger shook his head, "No, I'm afraid there isn't. I explored every single avenue I could come up with. And that led me to others. Like us. Even people who said that yes, they had seen the tunnel. And the light. When you get them alone, and they know you've been where they have–or haven't, as they case may be. They'll admit. Nothing there."

Roger stood up and cleaned his glasses again. "I even thought perhaps I was simply a bad Christian. After all, what is the most basic definition of Hell? It's the total absence of God. Being deprived of God. And since we are supposed to be made in His image, that would mean my entire Self was gone as well." He chuckled. "Then I talked to two priests and an archbishop."

The look on Greg's face could easily have been taken for dismay. Roger shook his head, "I'm sorry. I know it's not funny. But it doesn't pay to do much else other than laugh, honestly."

Roger sat back down again. "Some of the doctors here know. And when they have someone who goes and comes back, they call me. There are others like me, around the country. We're here to…well, let you know…that you shouldn't let it eat you up. Like we did." He shrugged a little. "You probably will anyway. It's a hard thing to come to grips with, that there's nothing else. In fact–honestly, I've talked with more than a few atheists who have had to struggle with it as well. Even though they knew with their rational minds there was nothing, somewhere, on some level, they knew just as strongly that they had to be wrong."

Greg sat, taking it all in. He wasn't sure how to feel: saddened? Relieved that he hadn't had some kind of dying nightmare on the table?

Roger reached into his pocket and placed a business card on the side table next to the pitcher of water. "I need to get going. It's a two hour drive back and there's work tomorrow. Here's my card. And I'm writing down a newsgroup on the back. You probably know how to access those things over the Internet–I had to get my son to set it up for me."

Greg looked up at this. "Does he know?"

Roger stopped writing and looked over at him over the top of his glasses. "No, of course not. I wouldn't burden him with this. Bring him up his whole life in the church and turn around and tell him I was mistaken? What sort of person would that make him into? What sort of person would that make me?"

Greg nodded. In his half-drugged, weary state, that made a semblance of sense.

"The newsgroup is for us. People like us. Just so we can stay in touch with others who have been through what we have." Roger put his pen away. "Feel free to use it. Feel free to call me. We have to stick together."

Roger made to leave. Greg had one other thing on his mind, though. "What if they ask?"

"Ask what happened?"

Greg nodded.

"Tell them nothing happened. Tell them you saw the tunnel. Tell them whatever you like. You can even tell them the truth but…" Roger put his hand on the door. "They won't believe you." Roger looked up and smiled. "That's why my wife left me. She couldn't believe. So trust me. I know." Roger nodded to the card. "Don't lose that."

Greg nodded again. "Thank you," he said.

Roger smiled once more and then left the room.

Greg reached over and found the button for his morphine. He didn't need it. But it seemed simpler just to sleep for the time being. He hit the button.

Just as he was about tlean back and relax and let go, he reached over and grabbed the card. He tucked it between both hands.

Maybe when he awoke it would be gone. And maybe this and the nothing beyond him would both be a dream.

Greg closed his eyes.