I don't know whether I should turn Kevin in or help him get rid of the body, but I'm hoping God gives me a sign soon because we've only got a few more hours of darkness, and I've got an important meeting with a major retail chain at noon. 

“Why would you throw away your future? You've been so blessed. God brought you back for a reason, for big things, Son,” I tell him as the moonlight shines on a pale freckled cheek he's turned to avoid meeting my gaze. I hate to imagine the headlines: “Miracle Boy Arrested for Murder,” “Harker Ministries Heir Suspected in Killing,” “Kevin Harker Takes a Life Weeks After Second Chance.”

Can this really be the boy who told congregations on Sunday about his miraculous waking from a 3-day coma? I'd beamed with pride as my handsome 18-year-old son had brought floods of tears, “hallelujahs”, and donations with his flawless delivery of the closing line we'd practiced together: “My father, Pastor Harker, has always told me that God has a special plan for me, and God, our Lord, has brought me back to serve His will and restore the world's faith in miracles.” He's such a natural speaker; he's got his father's charisma, a feel for when to let the voice crack soulfully, an instinct for when to take a dramatic pause and deep breath, a sense of how to angle the moistened eye toward the light...

But his silver tongue has been silent tonight, so I try again, this time grabbing his shoulder: “Son, why would you throw away your future and put our ministry at risk like this? What were you thinking?”

Still looking at the ground, he replies, “Dad, you know how I said that God spoke to me before I came back?” I nod. “I told you about him giving me a second chance at life but not about the test of faith he gave me. I thought it would end like Abraham's test and that God would step in to stop me, but even if He didn't, I'd still know it was His will.”

“You're telling me that God said, 'Lure a classmate out into the woods and shoot him'? That sounds more like the voice of the Devil, Son.”

“Actually, the voice I heard was just like yours, Dad.”

“Son, Satan has many tricks and...”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, and I came back, didn't I?”

Not so sure I want to hear the answer, I ask, “What exactly did the voice say to you, Kevin?”

“It said, 'I'm giving you one more chance, but if you don't find a replacement by the end of the month, you're gone.'”

I feel the world spin and my legs wobble weakly beneath me. The rest of his words sound like echoes heard underwater inside an indoor swimming pool. I tell Kevin to wait while I go home to get a shovel and some other supplies that he might've brought himself if he'd been thinking straight. As I drive, my mind plays an endless loop of the phone call I'd taken in the hospital room right before Kevin woke from his coma. Chet, my wife's idiot cousin, had managed to piss off the representative from the leather company that was supposed to supply material for the limited-edition Patriot's Bible we've got coming out in a few months. I'd told Chet, that habitual screwup, that he'd be looking for another job if he didn't find a new supplier.

“Chet,” I’d said, “you’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass, but with everything we’ve got going on right now, I don’t want to upset Martha, so I'm giving you one more chance, but if you don't find a replacement by the end of the month, you're gone.”

We wash the bodies by the shore, kneeling on rocky coastline. The tradition is to work quickly, to complete the cleansing while the wash water is still warm, in contrast to the lapping waves of the ocean before us. We want the children to be comfortable, even though we know that makes no sense. There is no discomfort for the dead.

Four small bodies lie on reed mats, but our knees have no such benefit. For us, pain is part of the ritual. We work in groups of four around each body: head and feet, left and right. We work together, wringing our soft cloths in soapy water, careful over skin, tilting the bodies left and right, lifting each limb to get all the way around it, cleaning between fingers and toes, under each fingernail, each toenail. We know how to do this. We've all bathed our own children.

Our world is shaped in fours. The four seasons our ancestors experienced each year live on in our traditions, though now we only have two seasons: hot and less hot. So many fours: the four species of tree remaining, the four types of birds whose song still fills the air, the 1/4 inch of coastline we've regained each year since the flood that reshaped so much of our previous world.

And, of course, it takes four children to create a new one.

Our community is relatively peaceful. Nevertheless, many dangers stalk our young -- asthma, heatstroke, emphysema, heart conditions -- even things our ancestors thought long vanquished -- cholera, smallpox, polio. But we do not let death have its victory unopposed. Our community preserves the precious bodies until there are four -- sadly, this does not take long. When we have reached this number, we lay the bodies on the shore and begin the process of renewal, washing them, then placing them one by one into a small ark, sending them sailing together into the sea.

The whole community comes out to support the four washers, who, in accordance with our traditions, are not family, but rather trusted friends--this, because the children belong not only to their immediate family, but to us all. When the washers finish, other members of the community then place the departed into the boat. Together, we drag the ark into the surf, and together we watch the tide pull our children out to sea, until their boat is a mere speck bobbing on the waves. At this furthest point, we all turn our backs on them and go.

Twelve hours later we return together to watch the silhouette of the ark returning with one form standing inside. We eagerly await our one revived child. Four families lean forward in the lapping waves, straining to see whose child returns--the four children always return in the shape of one of them; the same, but changed, alive and fully healed, but only vaguely the same as the child who left.

This new child will be paler than the original, thinner, their movements slow and fluid, as though they are living underwater. They will be bald, with organic growths on their heads: one child came back with groupings of ridged mounds like barnacles, another was lined with spotted frills like ribbons of kelp, another sprinkled with craters like the surface of the moon. One child was a walking bouquet of roses. All our recycled children are beautiful and unsettling, familiar and utterly alien to us. They have come back to us, smelling faintly of kelp and brine, but they have never really returned.

On this afternoon, four families yearn toward the incoming boat, hoping that whichever reconstituted shell of a child that returns will look like the one they sent out, theirs to take home. Four families will have made up a bed, hoping to tuck a simulacrum of their beloved child into it at the end of Recycling Day, desperate for this changeling to fit snugly into the shape left in the mattress, and approximate the void all four children left behind.

Four families clasp their hands against their chests, blinking away the wind and sea spray. Their teeth are clenched, their knees weak, their hearts shuddering away in their chests. A moan of recognition--of knowing what is not theirs--rises above the pounding surf. Hands cover faces, shoulders slump, and sobs erupt as the identity of the recreated child becomes clear. The community gathers around three mourning families, wounds freshly reopened, while a small, intimate cadre remains in the surf to receive the one remaining child. One family quietly celebrates, lifting their new returning child out of the ark. This vessel emerging from a vessel looks around, bewildered, not yet knowing how or what to speak. It cannot yet realize that, though it feels like a child, it no longer is one. It is instead a symbol, a figure of desperate hope and bitter disappointment, a receptacle of grace in a world forever changed.

"It didn't have to be like this," one of the town elders says, always says. "We could have chosen differently." Thus begins the service. An elder recounts the ancient tale of a time when the earth had cleaner air, more land, more animals, more birds and trees and hope. More warnings that were never heeded. And then came the second great flood, four decades of heavy rain, rising seas, this altered world the inheritance of those who have survived.

"But the Great Powers are merciful," the elder intones. "They saw our suffering lo those many years and stopped the rains. The sun has returned, more powerful than ever, and the waters are finally receding. As penance, and in gratitude, we recycle our children, and the Great Powers are pleased with us and, in turn, direct their work to preserve us."

Some of us wonder if that's true, if the receding waters are a sign of favor, or if greater horrors are awaiting us below the crashing waves. But none of us dare to doubt out loud.

Later, after the service, one family will take their old/new child home, like an urn holding their altered dreams. And the community will know the recycled child is there, and families will live in hope that, when one of their own children perishes, they might be blessed enough to welcome their own vessel back home, wash the brine of the sea off its skin, kiss it goodnight, and tuck it back into its childhood bed.

‍ ‍__________________

Note: this piece was written in response to, and presented in conjunction with, an exhibition by Seattle writer and visual artist G. G. Silverman. Sponsored by the City of Shoreline, it was titled "Artifacts from a Future Disaster" and envisioned the aftermath of a future catastrophic flood. More information is available here: https://www.ggsilverman.com/artifacts-from-a-future-disaster

She was forty astronomical units out. Forty times further from the sun than she was used to, and she would never be this close again.

Agatha lay awake long after the lifestyle assist tone signaled powerdown. Waiting, wishing for sleep in the tick and hum, the ambient glow of systems indicators aboard the tiny craft. Pressure, O2, onboard PDU, hatch status, external temp. She picked at the tensile webbing cradling her in the bunk. It kept her from floating, but wasn’t gravity.

There was more food in the hold than she could use for this journey. Far too much, even if there were more crew members instead of just herself. More food than she would ever need.

She had calculated the stores more than once.

First, after pre-burn, her nav computer set at the nominal position.

Another count once her pod hit the Kuiper Belt, the long, dark edge of the solar system inconceivable miles across. It transitioned everything she knew; from the sun’s light to electromagnetic background radiation in the deep space beyond. The solar gravity was still calculable here, but thin like a memory on the pod’s blue nanoceramic hull.

A couple work sessions ago, she counted stores a final time; well into the KB now, it was something to do, pulling food stocks out. Black and yellow striped canisters and mylar packages filled the living area, a hive of giant carbon-mesh bees.

She was alone, not lonely, she told the Psych Management Interface, PaMMI. She was just alone. Sometimes busy, never busy enough. She felt like a refugee with enough food to feed two of her for their whole human lifetimes, her main concerns basic maintenance, breathing, and eating that food.

PaMMI underscored the enormity of her mission, the understandable nature of anxiety when faced with such a task. Encouraged her to feel into the nervousness, to perhaps connect with the bigger picture. PaMMI asked her to create a ritual out of meals using the food, to celebrate the abundance.

Agatha said she would think about it.

Years ago, when this opportunity arrived—if opportunity it was—she had been at loose ends. Between her career and just a job, between useful productivity and a later life of less as she aged. Agatha had no living family, no romantic relationships. She was a prime candidate for this program and could understand why.

Earth was offloading some of its human cargo. Selling a big story of brighter days ahead. Single people, women and men—sometimes alarmingly young, or confusingly elderly. They were all trained, then sent on humanity’s Next Great Adventure.

Not one mission; not a few people to Mars or Triton this time, but thousands of small, single-person pods into nothing.

Most would find only more nothing. In the event one or some discovered a new and habitable world, there was a Process they had been trained to follow to initiate panspermia. Their genetic material could spark repopulation on a new world, those corporeal forms mulch for new humanities elsewhere. Continuity of the species was thus assured, new homes for new humankind across the arm of the galaxy. It was a job for life if you wanted it. It was freedom, of a sort.

The retention strap tightened gently around her arm, and she shifted position, still sleep would not come.

She knew the mission was bullshit. But there were few options Earthside, no real reason to exercise any of them, and she needed the job to earn anything more than subsistence ration. So she joined up and started the trail into the dark. A Traveler.

With food that no one would ever eat.

The lifecycle-assist wake-tone chimed. She hadn’t slept at all.

Agatha clamped onto the deck. Crouched in the dark polymer and aluminum galley beside her bunk, in what she knew was her tomb, she started to cry.

After sitting there for a while—she didn’t know how long and didn’t care—the feeling of being a pharaoh ceased. Coffee.

She pressed the button for her first cup, waited for the drips to stop. She listened to the steam, let the scent of it shine on her.

PaMMI checked in, wished her a good morning. How was Agatha doing?

Fine. She’d slept well.

PaMMI prompted her to focus on what she could contribute today. The journey was rich with opportunity for growth and reflection, and PaMMI would be there if Agatha needed anything at all.

Agatha closed the Interface prompt and sipped her coffee. They had not doubled her rations by mistake; she wasn’t carrying some other Traveler’s food. There had been too much, that’s all, and no need for it elsewhere.

In the final decades before the missions began, many of humanity’s historical problems were solved. Few people went hungry. No more of the climate events that had rocked the previous century. Wars were seldom fought, and petty crime never entirely lost its grip, but serious personal violence was rare.

There was plenty of food. So, had all the Travelers gotten the same excessive amount? Weight had been accounted for through a sequence of technologies for rapid de- and re-hydration. That solved terrestrial transport and negated the issue for long range space. It wasn’t all disgusting food either, although a lot of it was. There’s no substitute for fresh broccoli, Agatha thought.

She broke into laughter at that, as she had not in years, tears streaming and coffee spilling. PaMMI activated and reminded her she could journal if she wanted to create something. PaMMI encouraged small acts of self-care.

Agatha closed the Interface prompt. She did not wish to journal.

Broccoli.

She knew what she had to do.

Bringing up the first load of food stores took only a few minutes. The black-striped yellow canisters filled the airlock’s several cubic meters, and when no more canisters would fit she sealed the inner door. A mechanism hummed and hissed.

LOCK: CLOSED displayed the pad near the door, in both Standard English and New Chinese. Flashing red and yellow chevron indicators pointed toward the deck. The inner door was secure.

Two options were available on the pad: PURGE and OPEN OUTER. Agatha absorbed their corresponding NC Hanzi characters for a moment, her fingertip tracing the blocks and lines. She’d never learned to read it well, just the basics for the market.

She pressed and held PURGE for the required two seconds. A double-beep acknowledged the command. Pressure built for a moment in the lock, then the outer hatch was cast open flinging the cannisters into space. Several months of food stocks tumbled away in silence.

Agatha watched the cannisters vanish in the dark. How many were left, and how many should she keep?

The outer door auto-closed and she started back to the hold for more.

She found the pixie by the side of the road on her way back from the woods. The poor creature was fresh dead, still bearing a trace of living flush. Luminescent bones shone through sepia skin stretched over its tiny form like leather. It was barely larger than her hand when the woman knelt to cradle it. Her heart lurched when its gossamer wings fell away. The world was cruel to tiny things.

You weren't supposed to touch the fair folk—but as the woman looked around, she spied no other soul. Surely it would be alright, so she brought the pixie with her.

Her home was a comely cottage boiling with flora, ringed by a crooked fence and adorned with ruby bright flowers. Setting her lumber down, she walked the length of the small yard.

Humming, she picked on a suitable spot between her dead asphodels and dying poppies. Gentle as wind skimming the surface of a lake, she dug a furrow and lowered in the pixie's body.

For a contemplative moment she sat before the barrow. Shutting her eyes, she listened to the woods that sheltered her home. The wood was alive, but silence was her companion, a dear friend.

She wondered if she should say something. Instead, she settled for touching the mound before beginning her nightly routine.

‍ ‍* * * *

She woke knowing it was a dream.

The world blurred as she strained to keep from losing herself in the reverie. Dark smudges surrounded her, drawing her deeper into the silver blue somnolence. Candles twinkled above like stars stolen from the night sky.

A shadow encircled her wrist and she shivered as though death itself had snatched her. The cotton in her ears muffled the sounds of the court to a mere winter's whisper. Drifting, dreaming, dazed, she was led into the mass of half-real bodies. Spinning shadows with glistening wings brushed her lips, cheeks, shoulders. Ephemeral hands found the small of her back and slid into her hair as intimately as a most cherished companion.

Dancing felt like drowning, brought back from the brink each time the shadows drew her into a whirling waltz.

The breath left her as she was pulled into the arms of a looming shadow.

Atop its head glittered a crown of hoary mist. On its waterlogged smear of a face were set twin chunks of ice.

Thank you, the shadow whispered. You gave my kin proper repose. Would you like a reward?

Drunk on the dream, the woman nodded. Her eyes fluttered as the shadow leaned closer and tilted her chin up. Winter brushed her parted lips and she welcomed it inside.

Then give me your name.

And, willingly, she offered it

* * * *

The woman shot up, panting. She clutched her chest as though seeking to free her drumming heart.

Moonlight shone through a crack in the curtains. Mist streaked low across the floor, highlighting a path that pulsed in the half darkness. It breathed as she did, and when she moved it beckoned her forward.

Her body rose from the bed, mind still soft with sleep. Her lips grew blue, as if talking might shatter her teeth like shards of ice. Swaying she slipped from her bedroom, ignorant of the frost crawling up sugar glass windows.

She blinked. And found herself outside.

A tremor wracked her body like leaves shaking when a tree was felled by her axe. Though the sky cried white, she felt but for a single flake that kissed her nose.

Rubbing sand from her eyes, she looked around, gaze drawn to the pixie's barrow.

And the body beside it.

A man curled around her plants, asphodel petals brushing his brow as the sad-looking poppies drooped onto his legs. Her gaze was drawn to the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept.

The woman lifted her hands to stare at the axe grasped between them.

Her body knelt and turned the man over. Even as the wind rose to a mournful dirge of howling voices urging her forth, he did not wake.

The woman undid his shirt and ran her hand over his chest. Before the woods called her to serve, she'd known the art of the body—how to carve it as butcher and binder, how to serve it before the most discerning of the fair folk.

With this knowledge she pressed her hand against his sternum. Raised her axe. And brought it down in one smooth swing.

The axe sat beside her in the snowy grass as she pried the man open in search of her reward. Her hands sank into warm, red water, fetid steam rising to her nose. From the shattered ribcage, she lifted out the heart, slick and thick with a trace of life.

She pressed the organ to her cheek to feel its beating, beating, beating. Breathlessly, she split it like the ripe flesh of fruit, and watched a crimson river spill forth to water the barrow.

The ground began to glow as something stirred awake. Cracks spread, splintering the earth like glass as it bubbled and convulsed in other places. A beam of fervent light punched up as what lay beneath struggled free with a hunger.

The barrow rippled when a hand broke free in a rain of dirt. Chilly blue fog rolled out from the earthen gash. Delicate, free of the scars and callouses of hardship. The hand swept through the air, talons curling, drawing her in with their intoxicating movements.

Come.

Smiling hazily, the woman took the hand.

Light swelled in a burning radiance to fill the world, the sun itself descending to blot out the wood-ringed clearing.

Slowly the glow receded. When the golden-white disappeared, the cottage was gone. Nothing remained but a ring of fungus reaching out from a fresh sheet of snow, white spots shining like tiny moons in a bloody sea while the scheming moon illuminated a single red spot.