Witch.
We stared at the word spray-painted in red across the door to our room, one hand on our hip. That last morning in Convergence, our little city on the seabed, we’d taken our usual walk through the orchard. Pickers plucked the fruit off the branches, their metal claws rolling poison-red apples carefully into baskets. We’d closed our eyes, half-remembering and half-imagining clear sky above instead of the blue undulations of ocean currents. The feel of sunshine on skin and the sound of humming bees instead of the metallic buzz of the Pollinators.
They allowed earthworms and a few insects down here, but beyond that, the only animals were humans. No resources could be wasted. Everything must be recycled. They kept the soil as rich as they could in artificial circumstances, but no matter how shiny the apple, it never tasted as good as the memory of the ones that the part of us that was Tove had as a child.
“It’s time,” we whispered at the scrawled warning.
The door to our rooms opened with a whoosh. We’d prepared for this. We’d always known this day would come, though we feared we might have already left it too long.
We’d heard the rumors, of course. Most in Convergence, if they looked at us at all, saw someone they call Maris, as if we were still that singular woman. They all know we’re far more than that. But superstition and magic make more sense than the technology that makes us possible.
Superstition and magic make more sense than the technology that makes us possible.At yesterday’s Council meeting, we had argued that the radiation levels were low enough for us to return to the surface. Since Councilman Aaron’s death and the shake-up in leadership, we had hoped those in power would finally approve another mission.
What a relief to no longer see Councilman Aaron in that room. When Aaron took Diane’s son Judoc under his wing, there’d been next to nothing we could do. All our warnings fell on unhearing ears. Judoc had loved Aaron more than his real father, who died when Judoc was two. But, whenever the Councilman looked at us with his flat, shark-like eyes, we saw only the secret the four of us shared but did not speak.
Aaron’s right-hand man, Daniel, had succeeded him as head of the Council, and if anything, that made us more afraid. Aaron, at least, had largely left us alone. Aaron had traded on charisma, but Daniel had always leaned on his strength. Daniel had done most, though not all, of his dirty work. He was the same age as Judoc, and they were almost brothers—save that no part of us claimed him as our own.
At that last Council meeting, we’d stood in front of the chamber to plead our case. Judoc had stared at us from across the room, his council robes heavy, his achingly familiar blue eyes inscrutable, his mouth set in a thin line. We’d stumbled over a sentence in our speech before recovering, holding our chin high as we awaited the verdict.
There’d been a vote, thumbs turning up or down like in the gladiator stadiums, even though Ancient Rome was no longer taught in Convergence schools. Tove remembered, so the rest of us did too.
Judoc could have broken the tie. He paused. As the silence lengthened, the tension in the room wound tighter and tighter. In the end, he placed his palms flat on his thighs. He abstained.
At the sight of Daniel’s face, we knew our chance to do this officially had failed. The re-vote wouldn’t go in our favor, and we wouldn’t be able to bring it up again for years.
As time passed, fewer in Convergence even showed an interest in going to the surface. Down here is safe, the Council said, in so many ways. We have everything we need. Some of the older crafts were no longer maintained, and if we left it much longer, getting to the surface might become impossible—except for the largest emergency evacuation craft.
Between that and the red-scrawled witch warning, the time had come. It wasn’t safe for us here any longer—if it ever had been—and we were tired of waiting.
It was now or never.
We rubbed our nose with the back of our hand as we packed the food we’d slowly smuggled from the kitchens. We filled up as many water bottles as we could carry. It’d be enough for a week, at best. But from studying the above-ground reports and from what part of us remembered from our last trip, we had reason to believe there’d be clean water and food on the surface.
The first Recordkeeper had been Tove. She’d been fourteen when she watched skyscrapers fall beneath a fire-scorched sky. Radiation ate its way through many, right down to their bones. The soil soured, the leaves shriveled and curled. The world itself turned against humans because humans had turned against the world. The planet had won, in the end, over the humanity of the past.
The world itself turned against humans because humans had turned against the world.The last morning above sea level, Tove had decided to swim out to the submarine rather than take the boat like the others. She—or that part of us—paused, one hand on the railing that would take her below, for good. One last look at the orange sky, the yellow smog, the black trees. One last moment of poisoned sun on skin.
Tove had lived the rest of her life down here in the pristine bubbles of Convergence. As Tove grew older, she became afraid that people would forget what had happened above. In the last hours of her life in that body, she connected to the machine, as Diane, her protégé, connected the electrodes to their skulls.
Reminiscing—the more romantic term we still used for technical memory-sharing—was a common enough activity back then, but it was usually isolated, something to preserve a specific skill, say, or a language. As far as we knew, no one had dared to take it this far, and Tove wasn’t even sure if it would work.
A push of a button, a pulse, a pulse, a pulse, and Tove exhaled her last breath. The first I became we.
Maris came later, eight years ago. Now, all three of us are here. Tove, Diane, Maris. Every memory, every hope, every regret, all amalgamated into one body.
Now, all three of us are here. Every memory, every hope, every regret, all amalgamated into one body.We opened the top drawer of our desk, picking up the Datapod and holding it between our fingertips like a seashell, considering, before finally putting it back.
We zipped up our jacket and tucked the gun we’d printed in our Replicator into the small of our back. Hacking the Replicator hadn’t been easy. Guns were the ultimate contraband—the glass of Convergence was bulletproof, but shooting it would still be… ill-advised. We didn’t anticipate having to use it, but the idea of leaving entirely empty-handed seemed even more ill-advised. We shrugged on our backpack and made our way through the quietest corridors of Convergence for the last time.
Everyone left down below was the offspring of those rich enough to hide. All these years later, Convergence had forgotten just how many had been left behind above to die. Those in this underwater city had lived kind lives, overall. The part of us that was Tove struggled with survivor’s guilt and still had nightmares of those long dead.
We paused, head swiveling side to side before we opened one of the service doors to the inner corridors, emerging near the escape hatch. We’d stolen the codes, but one wrong move could sound the alarm. We held our breath, muscles tense, until we were safely inside the submarine. If Aaron had still been around, we weren’t sure we would have made it this far. He’d underestimated us once but wouldn’t have made that mistake again.
Daniel, though, was a damned fool. A dangerous one, but a fool all the same.
We entered another command and the outer door to the airlock opened, seawater rushing inside. And here it was: the end of our time beneath the sea. The beginning of our quest for something more under the sun.
“Goodbye, Judoc,” we whispered, our throat closing with too many emotions to name, before we eased the craft into the deep blue and left Convergence behind.
The craft rose in stages. When it finally breached the surface, we hesitated before opening the hatch. We’d pored over all the official reports, graphs, and studies—both the ones we were allowed to access and the ones we weren’t. All signs indicated it was safe enough to come up. Yet despite our belief, we still had a moment of doubt: What else might be waiting for us?
We pushed open the hatch, the steel door heavy and the hinges creaking. We pulled ourselves up the final rungs of the ladder with shaking arms, blinking at the sudden brightness. The scent of sea salt hit our nose, overpowering our senses.
The shoreline was heartbreakingly familiar to the part of us that was Tove, yet also utterly changed—even to the part of us that was Diane and had come up for an afternoon in a radiation suit.
The sky above was no longer orange but such a deep, brilliant cerulean that, despite the older memories, the part of us that was Maris wanted to fall to our knees at the sight of it. Not painted, not a hologram. The real, true blue of the wide, open sky.
We took out the Geiger counter. All readings nominal. Our head bowed, and we felt wetness on our cheeks. We wiped the tears away, struggling to regain control. We had to reach that shore before anyone below realized we’d left. Would they come after us, dragging us back down? Or would they simply execute us? Who would they send?
We wrangled the small inflatable boat into the water and clambered inside. We began rowing, but our muscles struggled with the oars. Eventually, we gave up and let the waves take us to land, our body swaying with the movements of the current.
Our boots sank into the sand. In the shallows, we tilted our head back and threw our arms wide. We’d been right. The dirt wasn’t barren. This world wasn’t dead.
We could smell so much—some scents unlocked Tove’s memories, but others we couldn’t begin to place. We felt the wind on our skin, drank in the green of the trees, growing tall and unbowed. We were so very small in comparison, and yet our heart was limitless. We wanted to cry again, but we didn’t want to waste the water.
The dirt wasn’t barren. This world wasn’t dead...we were so very small in comparison, and yet our heart was limitless.Once on drier land, we unfolded our old, crumbling map with shaking hands and consulted the compass. We’d spent ages mapping our route to the nearest city. There was a library with a vault beneath it that might have survived, where Tove’s mother had once worked. It was as good a destination as any. It’d be full of lost information and maybe help us figure out a good place to set ourselves up longer-term, if we didn’t find what we truly sought along the way: proof that we weren’t alone.
We set off into the forest.
Everything was vibrant and untamed. We kept stopping to run our fingers along the velvet softness of a petal or to pluck a blade of grass and inhale its sharp, green scent. We sank our fingers into the damp soil, bringing up dark brown earth, dotted with pale roots and wriggling worms. Yes. The soil might have been stripped and degraded years ago, but a century without humans had brought it back. Or, as Diane specifically had always suspected, things had never been quite as bad as Convergence claimed.
Yes. The soil might have been stripped and degraded years ago, but a century without humans had brought it back.Tove’s old memories and Maris’s new tactile experiences clashed in a strange cognitive dissonance. Even with Tove’s memories, everything felt new. At first, the world was too quiet, but then, as if it grew used to us, the sounds resumed.
We reached a stream and sat on the smooth rock, listening to distant, melodic birdsong. Water dripped, and moss dampened our footsteps. Everything was so very green. We inhaled sharply when a creature emerged from the foliage.
It didn’t have two heads or extra eyes. Its grey fur looked soft and its tail was a bristled brush. Tove knew it for a squirrel. It chittered angrily at us, nose twitching, before disappearing back into the foliage. Our cheeks ached, and we realized we were smiling so widely it hurt.
We cupped our hand in the stream and tested it with one of the machines in our bag. Safe. We drank the cool, clear water, and it tasted like life itself.
We drank the cool, clear water, and it tasted like life itself.We came to the edge of the forest and reached a wide, open field, and it was such a bright yellow our eyes almost watered.
Nothing but sunflowers stretched out into the distance.
We knew that Ukraine had planted sunflowers next to the abandoned nuclear plants, and Japan, too, after one of its tsunamis. Even with all our combined knowledge, the names of those countries meant little enough to Tove and less than that to Diane and Maris. Names in books. Events from history. Far-off places we’d never been and would never go, for even if we could travel that far, whatever remained of them was long, long gone.
They’d planted sunflowers because they helped save the soil, drawing up the radioactive isotopes and trapping the toxins. We knew the official terminology: Hyperaccumulators. Phytoremediation. Vacul.
But they were also bright, bold, beautiful symbols of hope.
We pushed our way through the stalks and pressed our lips to a sunflower that was as tall as a lover. Running our fingertips along the seedpods, we smiled, the corners of our lips turned up in victory.
We’d found water, and now if we plucked a few flowers, dried and roasted the seeds, we had a ready source of fat and protein. We’d seen other edible plants and we had some of the seeds from Convergence’s seed vault hidden deep in our pack.
We could make it up here, alone, if we had to. It’d be hard, but we could survive. All we needed was a bit of earth.
Reluctantly, we turned our back on the sea of yellow and returned to the forest, a few sunflower heads stuffed in our bag. We walked until our feet hurt and the sun kissed the horizon. We found a clearing, and it took us close to an hour before our fire properly caught, and our tent sagged alarmingly.
We’d just warmed our meal when we heard something much larger than a squirrel moving through the undergrowth. Our body tightened, our heart rate hammering. We’d seen no proof of humans. The back of our neck hadn’t prickled, but had they been following us all along, waiting until we were alone?
We eased the gun out of our pack, holding it in our hand but not pointing it directly at the intruder.
We waited, stiff and still, until a figure in a radiation suit walked straight into our camp.
We recognized the familiar cut of the suit and the Convergence patch on the shoulder. The helmet and visor hid the person’s face, but we recognized who it was from the tread of the walk. Of course we had. Part of us was relieved, but that didn’t mean we weren’t still in danger.
“What are you doing here?” we asked.
“I’ve come to bring you home.”
“What are you doing here?” we asked. “I’ve come to bring you home.”The arms were held loosely, at the ready, but he didn’t reach for the gun at his own waistband.
“You may as well take that off,” we said, conversationally, lowering our weapon and pointing our chin toward the silent Geiger counter on the log next to us.
Slowly, the figure removed the helmet, revealing features so familiar, so dear to us, that we wanted to cry.
“Hello Judoc,” we said, evenly, to our son. Our once-friend. It was unclear if he’d be our enemy. “Welcome to the world above.”
“You have to come back to Convergence,” Judoc said. He was a man of almost thirty now, but his hair kept falling into his face, and the part of us that was Diane resisted the urge to push it away like we had when he was a boy.
Judoc shored up the wood so the fire didn’t sputter as badly, then heated his own meal. He’d always been so practical, so good at making things with his hands, but his every movement was sharp and jerky.
Judoc was angriest at Maris, his childhood friend, for accepting the memories. He was next angriest at his mother, Diane, for dying when he was twenty-two. Tove had passed when Judoc was only eight, but he resented her for wanting her memories preserved so badly that she’d been willing to take over two other lives to ensure they carry on.
“We wouldn’t have had a chance for the surface,” we said. “So we decided to make our own way before it became impossible.”
“I know you’re upset with how I voted, but this is excessive. Even you have to admit that.” Judoc exhaled, hard. “Stealing a craft, hacking codes, and coming to the surface on your own? It’s foolish, and it’s dangerous. That graffiti was only some teens playing a prank. They’ve been reprimanded and made to scrub it off. It’ll be long gone by the time we get back.”
We wrinkled our nose at the use of that singular name. “We’re sure it’ll look right as rain.” We sometimes used those anachronistic sayings, perhaps to deliberately annoy him. Judoc had never felt rain on his face, though neither had this current body we inhabited. “We won’t be there to see it.”
“Maris,” he tried again. “Let’s go back.”
“Convergence told you, over and over, that the world above is too dangerous for us.” We cocked our head at him, gesturing at the woods around us. “Yet here we are. Safe and sound.”
“Just because the Geiger counter is silent doesn’t mean it’s actually safe to be up here long-term.”
“That’s not the reason they’re afraid of coming up here again, and you know it.”
Judoc’s shoulders hunched. Years ago, when he’d first become a Councilman, we’d urged him to search through the files. He hadn’t looked. He hadn’t wanted to see.
“Did they actually send you up here after us?” we asked. “Or did you sneak away, too?”
His lips pressed together. The latter, then.
“You had your rebellious phase as a teenager, but you’ve been so good at toeing the line since. Breaking the rules for us? You shouldn’t have.” We couldn’t quite keep the sharp sarcasm from our tone, and he winced.
“Stop that. We head back tomorrow,” he said, as if there was no room for argument.
While we appeared outwardly calm, our guts churned. “Give us a week, Judoc,” we bargained. “Let’s see if we’re right in more ways than one.” We threw another twig onto the fire. “We’re heading to the vault of the library where Tove’s mother worked.”
There’d been a server failure in Convergence a few decades ago. Historical records, in particular, had been corrupted. Unrecoverable, or so they said.
“I can prove they lied to you, Judoc. That they’ve lied to everyone.”
“I can prove they lied to you, Judoc. That they’ve lied to everyone.”“I know you still believe Councilman Aaron deleted all that information on purpose.” He took a bite, chewing. “Diane always had a vendetta against him, but we both know you’re looking for something else too.”
As far as we knew, this was the first time he’d said Diane’s name aloud in years.
Down below in Convergence, the Council controlled the resources, and they controlled the information. Up here, where there was room to sprawl? Where there’d be no need for population control? Where there might be other wilder, uncontrollable humans to contend with? They feared humans up here for a century would all be twisted, tainted, and dangerous.
Better to hide, down in the deep, where it was safe and where they had the power. We could say that to Judoc, but he wasn’t ready to hear. He wasn’t ready to listen.
“We’ve seen healthy animals,” we began. “The birds are singing. And, last time we were up here, we saw—”
“You’ve never been up here, Maris,” he cut us off. “The other members of the survey team combed the whole area. Not even a footprint. Whatever memory Diane shoved into your head, it’s fake. I’m sorry. There’s no one left.”
“Then who planted the sunflowers?” we shot back. The wind and the bees might have kept it going, but the field hadn’t looked wild enough. It had looked…tended to.
Judoc’s lips thinned, but we caught a flash of uncertainty. There. We could use that.
We-as-Diane had been on the last reconnaissance mission, decades ago. It’d been after we’d blended with Tove but before we’d joined Maris. We’d been swaddled in a radioactive suit like the one Judoc had worn, carefully collecting samples. The Geiger counters had claimed higher radiation levels, not unlike Chernobyl, but even then, we’d wondered if they’d been tampered with. None of us had seen any animals during that trip, but at the tail end, on our own, we-as-Diane had caught sight of something extraordinary. Something impossible.
A boy, about seven or eight. Skinny limbs, shaved head. Threadbare clothes, but clean. Small, but not underfed. He’d looked a little like Judoc at that age. No signs of mutation.
He’d stared at us, a mixture of bold and afraid, before rushing back into the forest.
We’d told the others, but, as Judoc said, no one else had seen anything—or if they did, they didn’t share it. That was when Aaron had realized how deeply we threatened Convergence and all he wanted it to stand for.
We leaned forward. “Deep down, I think you suspect we’re not truly the only people up here. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come after us. You’re here to protect us.”
“Deep down, I think you suspect we’re not truly the only people up here.”His eyes darted about in the growing dark, and his hand went to his gun.
“A week,” we said again. “Out to the library and back. If we see no one, or if we can’t convince you that Convergence is lying, then we’ll return and take its punishment without complaint.”
His eyes searched our face. When had he last looked at us that boldly? Diane felt a surge of love. Tove found him frustratingly stubborn. Maris, though—Maris missed him something fierce.
“Go to sleep,” he said finally, and we wondered if he knew we were lying. “I’ll take first watch.”
As we zipped the tent shut, Judoc was staring, unblinking, into the fire.
He still hated us, but we’d cherish one more week with him, all the same.
The next morning, Judoc consulted the map, silently letting us know he agreed to our terms. Now that he knew the world above was safe, we knew he wanted to spend a little more time in it. We’d counted on that curiosity.
As our two bodies walked through the forest in silence, the three of us thought about death. Tove’s death of natural causes. Diane’s death of less natural causes. Maris’s body was still hale and hearty, but radiation damage had worked its way epigenetically into many in Convergence. Too angry cells were all too ready to multiply and divide, again and again. When Maris’s time came, we suspected there wouldn’t be anyone willing to take our memories, even if we went back below the waves. We might very well be the last Recordkeeper. We hadn’t yet made peace with that.
Judoc paused when we came across rusted cars on a cracked asphalt road. We saw empty houses, windows boarded shut or gaping and dark. We didn’t look inside the cars or the houses, afraid of what we’d find. Eventually, inevitably, we came across bleached human bones, and it was almost a relief.
Judoc crouched, resting a fingertip lightly against the skull’s forehead. The bones showed minor signs of mutation. Had that person been a monster, as Convergence feared? Or just another human, fighting against their cells betraying them—just as Convergence did below, in a different way?
“Rest in peace,” we whispered.
We walked, and we walked, and we walked. Judoc wouldn’t touch us, not even when we needed help down a steep hill. He wouldn’t meet our eyes, afraid of seeing echoes of his friend, his mother, and a stranger. Despite everything, had the superstition rubbed off on him, too?
A memory broke through, with all the jagged edges of emotion. We-as-Diane asking a nineteen-year-old Judoc if he’d take our memories when the time came.
His face had twisted in revulsion, and we’d realized how wide the gap between us and our son had grown. Judoc had fallen in with a group of impetuous young people. Ones who wanted power, who clung harder to religion, who were rejecting aspects of technology they considered “tainted,” like Reminiscing. We’d watched him turn, little by little, from the boy who’d begged us to read him bedtime stories to a surly young man, mistrustful and fervent.
“I’d never lower myself,” he’d spat. “And I’ll never forgive you for what you allowed yourself to become.”
We pushed the memory away, listening to the birds and the wind through the trees.
We pushed the memory away, listening to the birds and the wind through the trees.At the end of the second day, we made camp again. Judoc set up the tents and found dry wood. We started the fire, doing a better job this time, boiled the tea, and set the pre-packed food to warm. How strange, to eat potatoes grown beneath the sea or meat grown in a vat while up here. We hadn’t risked packing any of the seafood, figuring it’d spoil too soon, but I found myself missing the chewiness of a scallop or the softness of flaking, white fish.
If we didn’t find anyone else, there must be some quiet valley near a stream, with an old house with land where we could plant our seeds. We imagined a cottage of warm stone, with a trellis of roses climbing the side. There would be sunflowers out front.
On our third day, we entered the outskirts of the city. Even with Tove’s memories, we were overwhelmed by how large and sprawling it was. Side by side, we stared at the broken sprawl below us. A few damaged buildings stood, but most had collapsed. We felt more uneasy here than in the forest. Our hand kept straying to our gun. So did Judoc’s.
He took the lead, his body language wary. We were both sweat-stained and blister-sunburned, despite hiding beneath hats and long-sleeved clothing. The sun was less dangerous than it had once been, but that didn’t mean it was safe for skin that’d never felt it before.
We spotted birds, mostly crows, and a red fox darting down an alleyway. The buildings were choked with vegetation. We passed a crumbling courthouse, and restaurants with knocked over chairs. Stores had been looted long ago. There were more skeletons, but not as many as we feared. It still felt like we were walking through a mass grave. Tove had gone to school in this city. Played with other children on that very ruined playground. They were all gone. Tove was the only one left who remembered their faces or the sound of their laughter.
Judoc bowed his head, his hair covering his eyes.
Finally, we reached the library. The building was made of grey stone. It seemed sound enough, and the doors were unlocked. Inside, trees grew from the gaps in the flagstones. By the grand staircase we paused to touch the metal cheek of a bronze statue. We-as-Tove didn’t recognize who it was, and its placard was long gone.
“Come on,” we said, pointing to a set of stairs leading to the basement. “This way.”
Judoc watched us closely as we tested the lock of the vault. It was set to run on a backup generator, but that didn’t mean it’d survived a century. We held our breath until the keypad lit up. We searched the depths of our memories and entered the code.
The door swung open.
The servers were dark and some of the metal was corroded.
Judoc squinted. “They could be recovered. Maybe.”
“Even if it can’t be,” we said. “Look.”
Shelves of books led off into the darkness. There were more boxes stacked against the walls. There were so many volumes, it’d be a struggle to store them all in Convergence. We tried to imagine them, stuffed into the library until it was overflowing. Crammed into the edges of the Council room or spare tables in the cafeteria, in people’s quarters, or even lined up along the corridors beneath the transparent ceiling, sharks and fish occasionally swimming above.
Shelves of books led off into the darkness. There were so many volumes, it’d be a struggle to store them all in Convergence.It was a treasure trove.
“Do you remember the day we got in trouble for trying to swim to the surface?” we asked. Judoc and Maris had both been seven.
He shot us a suspicious look, then relented. “Of course.”
“Mr. Amis still has no idea how we stole those diving suits.”
A swallow. A dip of his head. “We weren’t particularly good escape artists.”
“Didn’t even manage to reach the airlock,” we agreed. “Do you remember what I said to you after Mr. Amis and Maris left?”
A grunt. But at our use of “I,” as Diane, his eyes snapped up.
“I cut you some orange slices fresh from the greenhouse. And I said that one day you and Maris would help get the world back.” We smiled. “And look: you have.”
He sucked in a breath.
The library contained a lot of material, but people could always scan the books and bring back the knowledge that way. Ideally, though, they’d learn from the past and keep the physical reminder as well as a digital backup.
“Convergence likely won’t send anyone up here to recover it all, even if you tell them about this, you know.”
Judoc opened his mouth, perhaps wanting to contradict us, but no sound emerged.
“What will you do, when these books show the full extent of the Council’s lies?” we pressed. “Are you brave enough to crack open the covers and even look?”
Judoc’s nostrils flared, his shoulder muscles bunching.
“Meet me upstairs,” he said, opening a book at random from a shelf, if only to answer my challenge. “I’ll stay down here and do a preliminary survey. I… need a break.”
From us, he meant.
“Of course,” we said. “We’ll wait for you.”
“Don’t run off.” His eyes bored into ours. “Do you promise?”
“You have our word.”
We took a book of our own—American history—and left him in the vault. We climbed the stairs slowly, our footsteps whispering on the marble. We sat on that grand staircase, opened the book, and began to read
Judoc came up close to two hours later, just as we were wondering if we should go find him. He collapsed more than sat on the marble staircase next to us and put his head in his hands.
He knew, now, that we’d told him the truth.
Judoc was dirt-stained after three days in the forest, his forehead damp with sweat. We both smelled of body odor and soil. His eyes were red.
“Are you ready to talk about it? Properly?” our voice echoed against the stone. The acoustics reminded us-as-Tove of a church.
“When I look at you, sometimes I see Maris. But then there’s this way you hold your face and it’s just so exactly like my mother…but most of the time, I see only a cold stranger.”
We paused, then chanced sitting beside him. “Holding all of us is difficult,” we said. “It requires restraint. We also often bite our tongue because we know you don’t want to hear what we have to say.”
“Even the way you just said that. It’s so… flat.”
We opened our mouth and bit our tongue deliberately, pulling our lips back from our teeth.
Judoc sniffed, glancing away. “Before my mom took Tove’s memories, she was so… present. So… warm. After, she was different. I still tried to love her, but it was like loving someone through glass. She wasn’t fully there. Then the same thing happened to you, Maris, and it was almost worse.”
We raised our hand, wanting to put it on his, but rested it on our thigh at the last moment instead. “There’s a cost to remembering, but we chose this.”
“There’s a cost to remembering, but we chose this.”“Maris had next to no time to decide properly, and you all know it.” His words were sharp. “My mom got sick so quickly.” He heaved in a breath. The air around us felt suddenly heavy.
We said nothing, not wanting to interrupt.
“I don’t understand why you never asked me again instead of going straight to her.” He was bouncing between referring to Diane as someone else and as us, still unable to reconcile the two, much less the three.
“You gave us your answer,” we said, faintly surprised.
“You’d asked when I was still practically a kid. An angry, pissed-off kid.”
We stared at him, trying to make sure we didn’t show too much pity. It must have been hard for him to have been raised the witch’s son. His father had died when he was so young—cancer, like so many others. It had been so easy for Aaron to sweep him up and away from us.
“Would your answer have changed after three years?” we asked, carefully.
His mouth opened, then closed. “I don’t know. Maybe, if only to spare Maris.”
His anger had always been so righteous. He’d always wanted to be strong. But much as it might have broken a mother’s heart, Maris had been stronger.
“We wanted to ask you again.” We’d been dancing around a truth for so long, and we couldn’t slip away from it any longer. “But we also wanted to spare you from what you’d learn.”
“What does that even mean?” His exasperation made him as plaintive as when he’d been a boy and fought us about eating that last tree of broccoli.
Sunlight drifted through the broken windows, catching the dust motes. We felt like the moments before a tsunami, when the water rushes away from shore, storing up for the wave to come.
“Because we weren’t only dying… Aaron killed us.”
Judoc sucked in a breath, recoiling from us. “That’s nonsense, Maris. Diane and Aaron didn’t see eye-to-eye, but he wouldn’t…”
We shook our head as he trailed off. “After we shared what we saw on the surface… Aaron was afraid. That if Convergence went up, and we found out we weren’t alone, then everything would change. He’d worked so hard to mold Convergence into what he wanted, that he’d let nothing upset his vision. Especially not us. Diane’s body was supposed to die so quickly that our memories couldn’t pass on. But he didn’t manage—thanks to Maris.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Judoc’s voice rang with more certainty, but there was a crack in its bell. Memories rose: Aaron ruffling Judoc’s hair as a boy. Encouraging him to join activities to let out some of that teenage rage. Shaking Judoc’s hand in his Council robes for the first time. Aaron beaming with pride. Aaron had loved him almost as much as he’d hated us.
“Wouldn’t he?” we barely whispered the words.
Judoc didn’t want to believe, but we knew he did.
“If you took our memories and discovered what the Council had done,” we continued, “you wouldn’t have let it stand. You couldn’t have gone up against him then, even if you’d wanted to. He was too powerful—had too much sway. We kept it quiet long enough that by the time Aaron realized the Recordkeeper had carried on in Maris, he himself was already sick.”
Judoc’s brows drew down. “You didn’t kill him, though.”
“No.” Cancer had done the job for us. “A few years after he passed, we thought we could raise the idea of coming up to the surface again, but Aaron’s beliefs live on in Convergence. Yet they’re not immutable. Daniel is more vicious, but he’s not as strong. He’s not as liked. People would follow you over him. You could change things, down there… if you wanted to.”
We sat next to Judoc in silence. We’d given him plenty to chew on.
“When did you realize that Maris had become the Recordkeeper?” we asked.
“Almost immediately.”
“Yet you kept our secret, even from Aaron. Why?”
“I didn’t know, at first. Thought I was protecting you, maybe. Not from Aaron, but…”
The memory of the red-stained witch scrawled on a door hung between us. We’d stayed isolated down there. Before discovery, it was because we weren’t sure we were believable as only one person. After, it was because no one wanted to be near us.
“Maris is still here,” we said, eventually. “Muted, perhaps, but we are all three of us here. We understood your anger and grief at first. But we thought, we hoped, with time... you’d come back to us. ”
Without warning, Judoc broke down, taking us both by surprise. He cried ugly, loud sobs, like when he’d been a boy.
Before we could second-guess ourselves, we drew him to us, tucking his head beneath our chin and wrapping our arms around him.
“You’re right, you know,” we whispered into his hair, and the part of us that was Diane came to the fore. “We should have asked you. You deserved that choice, and I am sorry I took it from you, Judoc. I’m sorry.”
We stayed there for hours. Two bodies, four lives. Every time we thought the pain was ending, more welled up, crashing against the storm barriers. We feared being swept away by it, but Judoc was our anchor.
We’d journeyed to the library largely in silence, but we spoke the whole way back to shore. We shared memories. Some were happy, leaving us laughing until we held our sides. Others were harder. We told him what it had felt like to die, and what it was like to carry on. Judoc listened and became a different sort of Recordkeeper.
We told him what it had felt like to die, and what it was like to carry on.On the third day, when we finally reached the beach, he paused. “You’re not coming back with me, are you?”
We smiled and put a hand on his cheek. “No. But you must.”
He had a bag of history books from the vault, and he’d read them by the light of the campfire each night.
“It might be dangerous,” we warned. “There are those who still believe what Aaron preached. Daniel, yes, but so many others. They won’t like you challenging them.”
“No. But if they believe what I’ve learned...” He trailed off, licking his lips. “Are you sure you won’t come?”
We smiled sadly. “They won’t believe it from me. Superstition would take a lot longer to disappear. You are our home, but Convergence isn’t. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
He nodded, with difficulty.
“Do us a favor and go to our rooms as soon as you can.”
“Why?”
“We left a Datapod hidden in the top drawer of my dresser. We uploaded some of Tove’s memories of the old world to it, for anyone who might want to Reminisce. They’ll be afraid of the witch for some time, but a few might be tempted to peek at our memory of a tiger sleeping in the sun when Tove went to the zoo as a child. Or to experience what it was like to sit in a restaurant surrounded by strangers. To take off in an airplane at sunrise on a clear day and see what the world looked like from above in the pink-gold light.”
We lowered our hand and blinked out at the sea and the horizon. “There are also memories of how frightening it’d been to watch the world poison. If at some point, Convergence does leave behind its fear and decides to rise from the waves, there’s only so much that can be learned from books, after all. We must remember. We must, so we don’t do it all again.”
“We must remember. We must, so we don’t do it all again.”He swallowed. “And what will you do?”
“Keep searching.”
“If you find others up here, you have no idea if they’ll kill you on sight.”
“I choose to believe they might be kind.”
“And if you don’t find anyone?”
“We’ll make a space for ourselves. Here.” We reached into our pack and passed him a tracker. “Here. You’ll be able to find me easily enough.”
He hesitated, clearly desperate to ask us to return one more time, but he knew we had his mother’s stubbornness, along with Tove’s and Maris’s. He was no match for the three of us.
“Go on now,” we said. “We’ll be waiting.”
He gave us a last embrace, and we hugged him tight.
We watched as he rowed back out to the submarine craft that waited for him, and he slipped back beneath the waves.
We disappeared into the forest.
