18

The next morning she was up early again-- her footfalls going to and from the bathroom

dripped into Emmet's sleep,

*******************************************************

and he in turn leaked half-slurred words; “But what are you doing with the tomato?” he

asked.

Myra giggled and clamped her hand over her mouth, so as not to wake him.

She got her shoes on and closed the door carefully behind her.

Which door? Which world?

Numbers. A doorknob. A hinge. A creak. The air was heavy, almost steamy.

More squeaking, down a trail in the undergrowth.  She walked through and saw him

jimmying around inside a sprinkler box with one hand and stuffing his cigarette back in

his pocket with the other.

“Hello again!” she cried, delighted. “What are the chances?  How are you?”

*************************************************

He was choking, like a dog having a seizure. “I'm ok, what about you?” No, not now,

not right now! Please go away, please just go away. “Are you alright, are you doing

alright?”

“Yes. I'm ok.” Then go away. “I was wondering, where is it you live? I mean, there must

be somplace for the staff to live, where is that?”

“Yes... over there, over at the northwest corner... I'm room 405, but there are thousands

of them, little niches like the houses of pigeons, too many for anyone to fill. This was

built for so much more... it should have been so much more. Maybe it was, at first, I

don't know.” She said nothing, did nothing. Steady, stay still. He should go. He should

tell her, again, he had to go, smile (always smile, he remembered, smiling was good),

smile and maybe wave and go away. But he had to finish fixing this sprinkler box, then.

Tell her to go away. Yes, yes, say to her-- “I can't focus, I'm so sorry but you'll have to

go away.” Yes, say to her--

“I love pigeons,” she said. “I love everything about this place. I don't even know why.

It's like paradise.”

“A broken paradise. Everything's sick, it's dying. I can't fix it, they need the full

spectrum of sunlight. It's supposed to be the whole spectrum of sunlight but I guess it's

not. It's all so unhappy, unhappiness kills, we clone them and clone them and clone

them till it's too fragile. It was supposed to be so much more-- the Ark Project, then the

Gardens, now... it's just a zoo, now... it was supposed to be so much more. I think it

was.”

“Yes...”

Had he said that out loud or was it all within his skull? It didn't matter; she didn't

understand. She thought she did but she didn't. All the people reading, and they thought

they understood, and maybe they did, but probably they didn't. They understood it the

way they saw it, not the way he saw it. And he saw nothing. “You have to go,” he

echoed, blind. “I can't focus, I have to fix this. You need to go.”

He felt for the ground with a hand, and, finding it, sat down. Laid down-- he was dizzy,

floating, drowning. I'm going to die then, right now then. Won't I? And they'll never

even have known me, they'll hardly have met me. He couldn't die, though, because if he

did the others would have more to do, and they'd all die too, of exhaustion, and then the

gardens would all die too. He started to finish to fix the sprinkler box.