Benjamin Wiseman

 

Sunbeam for a Subway

 

0. The Intention

 

This started as a piece of fan fiction.

Then I decided to make it into a piece of innuendo stanzaic fiction

intended for general audiences.

 

This story is laced with influences from

popular mythology, reputed novels, modern politics, imported cartoons,

and perhaps unsurprisingly, my personal life.

 

1. The Frontier

 

We were stranded in a world that almost seemed like Earth,

but we knew it couldn’t be Earth.

There were no skyscrapers, no power lines, no pollution,

no other humans but the five of us children.

 

The optimist was our leader. He gave us a pep talk whenever

we despaired about missing our friends and families.

He was like the older brother I always wanted (unlike the one I had).

The optimist seemed braver than the rest of us.

 

The pragmatist was also our leader—in that he made

a lot of the decisions that kept us alive.

He tried to travel alone as much as he could, and that’s how we liked it.

The pragmatist had a disagreeable attitude.

 

The hedonist was the only girl in the group. She was immaculately beautiful.

She ate anything she wanted and never gained a pound.

She was eleven years old, the same age as the optimist and the pragmatist,

and that’s why they were unreceptive when she hit on them.

The hedonist made no pretenses of vulnerability.

 

The romanticist was a year older; he befriended the hedonist immediately.

He stole glances, suggested their destiny,

but the hedonist maintained she only liked him as a friend. He was overweight;

we all knew that was the reason. Alas, the romanticist

yearned for all the immaterial stuff he felt denied.

 

On the whole, they all felt unsure. They knew they would have to grow up fast.

Through miles of uncharted plains and forests,

campsites that consisted entirely of stick friction fires, under alien moons,

the future was always the hardest topic to breach.

 

Me? I was only eight years old. I didn’t have an identity yet.

I just watched and learned.

2. The Omniscience

 

We were not the only creatures in that world.

There were plenty of animals resembling Earthly counterparts,

but these alien animals were cartoonishly cuter,

they didn’t try to eat each other, and they spoke to us inexplicably

in our native language.

 

Some animals gave us advice and directed us

toward destinations of interest. Some animals just wanted to goof off

and waste our time. I had to play with a black bear for six hours

because I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that his eight-bit Nintendo

was a little too retro for my usual tastes.

 

Some animals were downright malicious.

There was this giant harlequin bunny who kept picking on us,

telling us to go back with the rest of our kind.

We said we didn’t know how to do that. We asked him for suggestions,

and that’s when he usually mumbled something and hopped away.

 

A few months passed (that’s approximate time; the pragmatist

was keeping track of the days, but we didn’t bother to ask him)

before we heard the Omniscience. A voice from the sky told us

we had a purpose in that world: a war to fight. The voice

didn’t tell us who or what we were supposed to fight,

 

or why we were supposed to fight it. We were told to stay vigilant.

The Omniscience said we should try to blend in,

so he gave us these walky-talkies that allowed us

to transform into anthropomorphized insects, which didn’t make sense,

since we were still the only insects, but we played along.

 

The optimist could become a moth, the pragmatist a wasp,

the hedonist a butterfly (how cliché), the romanticist a beetle,

and I could become an ant. At first, the romanticist and I

were the only ones who couldn’t fly,

but he figured it out eventually.

3. The Opportunist

 

For a brief period, there was an extra human in that world.

The opportunist appeared one foggy day.

He claimed to be the pragmatist’s twin brother.

Though the pragmatist couldn’t recall having a brother,

they did kind of look alike, so we took the guy at his word.

 

We asked him what insect he changed into,

and he said he didn’t change into an insect.

Then we told him that we all changed into insects,

and the opportunist said he could change into a bumble bee.

 

Being brothers, the pragmatist and the opportunist tried to become friends,

but the pragmatist just wasn’t the sociable type.

The optimist was nice enough to the new guy, but it was really the hedonist

who went out of her way to make him feel welcome.

This didn’t sit well with the romanticist. I know because I watched his eyes.

 

I watched him as he watched them walk into the woods at a time when

we were all supposed to be falling asleep around the campfire.

The romanticist followed the hedonist and the opportunist. I followed

the romanticist to the edge of trees just before a clearing,

where the hedonist and the opportunist were already kissing.

 

Kissing became groping, so it seemed inevitable—

but before they even had their clothes off, the opportunist was applying

that asphyxiation thing, and it was clear that the hedonist wasn’t enjoying it.

She couldn’t quite break away, but she was only given a few seconds to try.

 

Bursting from the trees, the romanticist buried his shoulder in

the opportunist’s midriff and took him to the ground.

The romanticist utilized every ounce of his bulk, knee-dropping

the opportunist repeatedly (I counted about a hundred times),

fracturing ribs, breaking ribs, forcing rib shards down

 

until they punctured the opportunist’s lungs and made him gargle blood.

The last ten knee drops were probably overkill.

When the romanticist was done, he confronted the hedonist.

It was true that no two of us were closer than the romanticist and the hedonist,

and it was true that they had the most in common,

 

but by any contemporary standard,

the romanticist confessed far too much affection—

but he couldn’t go back to that plutonic uncertainty,

not with a corpse already in the wager.

 

If the hedonist had been a little more experienced,

she would’ve run from the romanticist and declared his insanity.

Instead, she considered his arguments, and she struck a bargain.

All he had to do was lose weight for her.

 

Belying his body type, the romanticist didn’t hesitate

to accept the offer, reinforcing it with the logic

that if he was willing to kill for the hedonist,

surely, he was willing to diet for her.

 

When they were done talking, I joined them in that clearing.

We all slept on the ground as far from the opportunist as we could lie.

The hedonist took the romanticist’s tummy as a pillow,

and just before she dozed off, she remarked on a bright blue star

she’d never seen on Earth.

 

She said that as she was being choked,

she was placing all her desperate wishes on that star.

4. The Antagonist

 

We woke up late and reversed through the woods.

The optimist and the pragmatist weren’t there;

we figured they went looking for us. We went our own way

and met up with them again a day later.

 

We entered a meadow, saw an elevator, took it to the top,

and walked out onto the marshmallowesque cloud floor.

That’s where we found the optimist. His eyes were red,

his footing was uncertain, and he reeked of something unfamiliar.

 

Lacking his usual exuberance, he took us to a marigold castle

where the pragmatist had slept. For a castle, it was simple,

just one large room with turrets at the four corners.

There was no furniture, just brick floors, ceilings, walls, arched windows,

 

and the pragmatist standing triumphantly over the body of a flying pig.

The pragmatist bragged he had slain the castle’s owner with a few good stings.

He wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground anymore.

Dolefully, the optimist conveyed it was the means of acquisition

 

to which he objected, and that’s why he had slept in the clouds.

The romanticist decided this was his opening to tell the pragmatist

that the opportunist was intentionally deceased, expecting the pragmatist to be

distraught for the loss of his alleged twin brother,

 

but still somewhat happy about owning a castle.

As it happened, the pragmatist said he really didn’t care, but he said it too tersely.

A few minutes later, he found a more trifling reason to pick a fight.

Far too eagerly, they took their stances. The pragmatist struck

 

with no wasted movements: a body blow, an uppercut, mounted forearms.

When he felt that the romanticist was sufficiently thrashed, he stood up

and bowed to us. At this time, the optimist was feeling abnormally amorous.

He fondled the hedonist; she didn’t try to stop him.

 

Through lights that were dimmed but far from out,

this is what the romanticist saw. He shot to his feet and tackled the pragmatist.

Then he grabbed the optimist and tossed him on top of the pragmatist.

Then he knee-dropped the heap. With subsequent maneuvers,

the romanticist explicitly asserted leadership of our group,

ownership of the castle, and he implied to claim what was most precious to him.

 

Nursing his pride, the pragmatist didn’t contend a word,

but the optimist was none too keen on relinquishing primacy.

He said we should settle it democratically. I was undecided,

but my vote didn’t matter anyway, because the hedonist

and the pragmatist both decided we needed to take a new direction:

We had to go down. The Omniscience told us to take the elevator

 

all the way to the bottom to fight the antagonist.

After we defeated the antagonist, we would be allowed to go home.

The Omniscience said the individual who killed the antagonist

would become renowned, would be considered royalty in that world,

an enticement that must’ve been meant solely for the ego—

assuming the five of us were leaving.

5. The Pragmatist

 

We hit the button for B24; it was a long way down.

We exited into an igneous hallway. It should’ve been pitch-black,

but there were torches on the wall. At the end of the hall,

 

there was a steel door with an inscription:

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Upon which the optimist remarked, “It would take an awful lot

 

to get me to abandon my hope.” The optimist pushed on

the door with all his might, but it would not budge.

Then the pragmatist pulled it open. We entered a vast cavern,

 

a veritable subterranean amphitheater.

As large as it was, we didn’t see any way out but the way we came,

nor did we see the antagonist. Then the steel door shut behind us.

 

There was a massive rupture in the center of the floor.

With a puff of steam, out from the hole leapt a creature

with the legs of a frog, the arms of a bear,

 

the torso of a boar, and the head of a zebu. We knew this miscreation

had to be the antagonist we were supposed to fight.

It was eight feet tall; it looked ferocious. I sure didn’t want to fight it—

 

nor did the optimist. Though no longer our official leader,

he was the first to step forward and communicate. He said

we meant no harm. Then the pragmatist whispered to him contentiously.

 

The optimist nodded, but he didn’t retract

our supposed intentions—our negligible intentions.

The antagonist replied by telling us we would all die in that cave

 

by virtue of our intruding, but he said there was a silver lining.

One at a time, he would telepathically probe our deepest desire,

morph himself into, and let us have it before he killed us.

 

He randomly selected the pragmatist to go first. With a bear claw

on his zebu forehead (his psychic pose), he scanned

the pragmatist’s mind. The antagonist was perplexed.

 

He wanted to know why the pragmatist didn’t have any desires.

The pragmatist said desires hadn’t crossed his mind;

he was too busy solving problems. The optimist suggested a revival

 

of the opportunist, but the pragmatist said he honestly didn’t care

about his brother’s life, or the life of anyone who had died

or was planning to die, and he admitted that his existence

 

was rather pointless. The antagonist agreed with the pragmatist’s

assessment. He offered to just go ahead and end it, and that’s when

the pragmatist got offended. “I can do it myself!” the pragmatist asserted.

 

He took out his handy pocketknife,

flipped out the three-inch blade, and he stabbed himself in the throat.

He really jammed it in there good, twisted it a bit too.

 

Blood flowed down the front of his shirt like lava, and the pragmatist

died on his feet. The romanticist, the hedonist, and I were all

kind of fascinated by it. The optimist couldn’t bear to watch.

6. The Optimist

 

The antagonist could tell the optimist was distraught by the pragmatist’s suicide.

Perhaps mercy swayed the antagonist to choose the optimist next.

He probed the optimist’s mind, and then he became a vestibule of blinding yellow fire.

 

The optimist stared at it with rapturous eyes and walked toward it on weightless feet.

The romanticist and the hedonist were visibly acquiescent, as if they knew this was

the fate of the optimist all along. I didn’t want to accept it. I ran to the optimist;

 

I grabbed him by the leg and tried to tug him back. He looked down at me,

his face preemptive forgiveness. He wanted to know why I was trying to impede him.

I remember breaking into tears. I begged him not to do it. I said I needed him—

 

as a friend—as a brother—as a role model. I said we’d all be lost without him.

He wiped the tears from my eyes and told me not to worry. The optimist told me

it was all copacetic. In that vestibule of fire, he claimed to see

 

food for the hungry, love for the lonely, rest for the weary, and hope for the hopeless.

My grip on his leg faltered, and he continued to walk forward. I sat

on the rhyolite carpet and contemplated trying to talk him out of it again.

 

I couldn’t come up with anything more to say. Neither ascending nor descending,

the optimist walked into the firelight. The vestibule closed around him. He didn’t flinch

when his skin ignited. He must’ve smelled something the rest of us couldn’t detect—

 

something other than his own charring flesh. What was an eleven-year-old boy

was stripped to a skeleton. Then the skeleton became less distinct—

crumbling, disintegrating, and blending with the incandescence.

 

The vestibule became the antagonist (as we first saw him) standing beside the ashes.

I was still sitting, trying to prove that what I saw made sense, because if I failed

to prove it, then it wasn’t possible. I didn’t have time to prove or disprove;

I drew the attention of the antagonist’s mercy.

7. The Romanticist

 

At the time, perhaps I had an inkling of my deepest desire,

but the romanticist stepped in front of me and broke the antagonist’s concentration.

The romanticist volunteered to go next, saying it was only fair since he was the oldest,

but I couldn’t help doubting his futile martyrdom.

 

The antagonist got into his psychic pose and scrolled the romanticist’s subconscious.

I thought it was predictable. The romanticist’s deepest desire was the hedonist;

it was common knowledge. Even the antagonist was incredulous when he gleaned

a bowl of oatmeal. He demanded a reason; the rest of us were curious.

 

The romanticist was hungry, but a more detailed explanation was necessary.

Instinctually, he wanted burgers and pizza, but he wanted the hedonist even more,

so he would stick to his pledge and crave a less fattening satiation.

The antagonist chuckled at this line of reasoning. He informed the romanticist

 

he could become a corporeal equivalent to the hedonist to fulfill a more obvious

final wish. The romanticist was adamant. He declared he would accept no substitute

for the hedonist’s affection. So, one last bowl of oatmeal, and the antagonist was

all set to turn himself into it, but that was when he considered he was being duped;

 

he didn’t want to get eaten. Instead, he turned into that vestibule of fire again,

expecting the romanticist to simply walk into it like his predecessor. The romanticist

accused the antagonist of cheating. He refused to settle for a toasty vestibule.

The antagonist refused to change into a bowl of oatmeal. This was the stalemate.

 

The hedonist took out her walky-talky and changed into a butterfly to pass the time;

she wasn’t just passing time. She flew directly above the vestibule and flapped

an orthogonal wind current strong enough to dissipate and eventually extinguish.

This must’ve aggravated the antagonist. He changed back into our patchwork foe.

 

He squatted on his frog legs and wound up his bear claw

as the romanticist became a beetle.

The antagonist sprung at the hedonist and prepared

to swat down the butterfly.

 

The romanticist spread his wings and intercepted the antagonist

with incomprehensible rapidity.

The romanticist clamped the antagonist tightly

with his proportional beetle strength

 

and torpedoed him into the ceiling of the cavern,

impaling his boar torso with a convenient stalactite.

The steel door popped open. The beetle pulled back

and hovered beside the butterfly a while.

 

Then they flew a victory lap around the cave—

a mating ritual, but I didn’t know.

When they returned to the ground and their human forms,

they announced their engagement.

 

They would move into the castle in the sky. As the slayers of the antagonist,

they would bask in the adulation of that world’s inhabitants.

They weren’t coming back to Earth.

I could tell by the romanticist’s grin: this was his plan from the beginning.

8. The Hedonist

 

There was nothing left for me in that world (if there ever was anything).

I just wanted to go home, but I didn’t know how to get there.

In the meantime, I attended the wedding of the romanticist and the hedonist.

I was among the many creatures seated on the cloud floor to watch

the ceremony as conducted by a bearded dolphin ordained for something.

 

The antagonist was so widely detested (though none of the guests

could say they had met him), and so the romanticist and the hedonist got plenty

of wedding gifts: cups, utensils, a dining table, plumbing and electricity

for the castle, a blender, a toaster, a toilet, a shower, a refrigerator,

a king-sized bed—and all of these gifts were said to be

 

the first of their kind in that world, made exclusively for the deified humans.

Sure, I suppose I was happy for them. Then there was the honeymoon.

The romanticist and the hedonist got a cabin on the limb of a giant sirloin tree.

That’s not all they told me, but that’s all I wanted to hear of it.

I’ll let the Omniscience tell the rest.

 

There was a calm breeze through the thriving canopy,

the not too distant ricochet of a pristine waterfall, scraps of starshine

breaking through the foliage to maintain Floridian temperatures,

a one-room log cabin with a single piece of furniture

taking up more than half the floor:

 

a mattress filled with sap, topped with leaf-stuffed pillows and grape skin sheets.

There were discussions of childhood experiences into the twilight, an unspoken

yet mutually understood elixir for their apprehensions. Gingerly, they partook

of what they could offer. The addiction was immediate. Repeatedly,

they replenished themselves from the waterfall.

 

When the morning broke, they stood together at the end of the branch

and looked out on that world they somehow owned. The hedonist was

contented with her impending lifestyle and the romanticist’s devotion

and assurances to mold himself into the only man she could ever want.

The romanticist was also contented,

 

but not without the temperance of knowing that his ideal could not subsist

in a civilized environment. He wouldn’t have been able to hold

the hedonist’s interests in a world of fast technology and faster acquaintances.

An elegant argument had convinced her she was already home.

It had all worked out so perfectly.

 

It felt like a dream.

As the romanticist headed back to the cabin

prepared to sleep through the daylight beside his wife,

the seed of paranoia was planted—

the day he would wake up.

9. The Namesake

 

I got back to Earth a few months later.

The Omniscience provided transportation—with a contingency.

Since I had no part in slaying the antagonist,

I would have to come back and defeat another enemy to be named at a later date.

 

I said I’d never come back, and I had no intention

of holding up my end, so the Omniscience made me sign a contract.

I took the interdimensional subway back to my hometown.

I ran back to my apartment and turned the key. It was completely empty.

 

I asked my neighbor where the old tenants went.

He told me they moved to another country (wasn’t sure which)

because they couldn’t take the bombardment

of questioning from the police regarding their younger son’s disappearance.

 

I might’ve been at fault, but I didn’t blame myself,

nor did I dawdle accepting it. I took my family’s vacancy. I went back to school,

just told the teachers I was a new student

so they wouldn’t punish my prolonged truancy. No one in the cafeteria recognized

 

my face on the milk cartons; my secret was safe.

I knew I would need a job to support myself. I figured I could turn myself into

an ant and make money as a circus freak, but I lost that ability

when I left that world. Instead, I got a job selling snow cones in the park.

 

It wasn’t great money, but it was enough for when

the landlord finally caught on and demanded rent. I communicated nightly

with the romanticist and the hedonist through our

preternatural walky-talkies. I heard about how perfectly happy they were.

 

I heard about how the romanticist trimmed down

just like he promised. I heard about how, at the ages of twelve and thirteen,

they had unlimited leisure and plenty of activities to occupy it.

It wasn’t long before their activities bore an offspring. They named him after me.

 

The namesake didn’t change their lives all that much.

He was one responsibility in addition to zero, but he brought them closer

in an asymptotic kind of way, so they considered it a fair trade.

Every night of those first years on my own, beneath the tarp I used as a sheet,

I thought about how much they loved each other.

10. The Isolationist

 

I made it to high school without telling my story to anyone.

No one questioned why I didn’t stay after school for

extracurricular activities (I had to go sell snow cones).

No one stared when I wore the same khaki pants every day.

No one seemed to mind when I swiped carrots and cottage cheese

from other people’s lunch trays.

 

I raised my hand in class just enough to get a satisfactory

class participation grade. I only answered the easy questions.

I did okay on my exams—well enough, but not extraordinary.

I could scrape by financially until college, if I could pay for college.

When I didn’t think about affording college and all the other daily stresses,

I thought about how nice it would be to make some friends.

 

I eavesdropped on my peers’ conversations, trying to find some kids

who could empathize, a clique I could fit in with, but they all just whined

about how homework cut into television, gossiped about who some athlete

or cheerleader was dating, or bragged about knowing people

who knew people who could supply illegal substances.

They didn’t sound promising, but I kept listening.

 

A few months into my ninth-grade geometry class,

I made note of a girl who never spoke to anyone.

She didn’t wear skirts. She didn’t wear makeup.

She wore generic blue jeans and an old pair of sneakers.

Just like me, I saw her sitting alone in the cafeteria.

I’m not sure where I got the nerve.

 

We talked for an hour, the isolationist and me. She revealed

she had been to that world, just for a week, but it was enough

to leave her sullen and withdrawn, prematurely burned out,

and I just nodded along as she described how I felt.

We talked every so often over the next four years.

There were some trivial discussions, but mostly,

 

we questioned our existence. At the other end,

I still heard from the romanticist and the hedonist.

I guess that’s what came over me when I suggested to the isolationist

that we could be more than friends.

She just gave me this quizzical expression.

She had said from the start, “I just want to be alone.”

 

In vain, I thought I might be an exception.

So, things were a little awkward between us until graduation.

Then I went to the cheapest college I could find,

and she got a job where she wouldn’t have to think too much.

That was the way it was supposed to go; it wasn’t meant to be.

That was how the romanticist and the hedonist consoled me.

I reluctantly agreed.

11. The Nihilist

 

I commuted to the community college, and by commuted, I mean I walked.

After returning to my apartment one afternoon, ready to go back out to sell

snow cones, I found an unwelcome memo taped to my door.

The Omniscience had written to tell me about my new enemy.

 

The nihilist wanted to swallow every living creature in that world,

an abomination that would implode all consciousness in the vacuum

of its digestive tract. The nihilist was comprised of the same material

as all of that world’s creatures, so killing it was a simple matter.

 

The Omniscience instructed me to load up a pneumatic squirt gun

with acetone and to bring it aboard the conspicuously illuminated train.

I wasn’t about to blow money on a squirt gun,

and I wasn’t about to stop selling snow cones for even a day,

but the last line of the memo said, “First installment attached,”

and that was when I noticed the handsome check paperclipped to the memo.

 

I took the subway back to that world’s rural train station. When I was

coming home, it didn’t seem odd to me that the two should be connected,

but this time, I knew it was illogical. I picked up my acetone-filled,

air-powered, hundred-foot-range summertime novelty and put the strap

over my head like a folk guitarist. I stepped off the train and considered

my next move. Figuring one direction was as good as any other,

 

I strolled through a tranquil garden. I was approached by the harlequin bunny.

He was still telling me I didn’t belong there, as if ten years hadn’t passed,

as if I never had the courtesy to leave before my welcome was overstayed.

I knew he was right, but that didn’t stop me from using him as target practice.

 

The acetone gun worked; I erased the bunny. Then I heard the voice in the sky.

The Omniscience told me where to find the nihilist. I should’ve known;

I had to take the elevator up to the clouds. The nihilist was coming

for the romanticist and the hedonist, and it was devouring every creature

 

it could find along the way. The Omniscience told me

I had to stop the nihilist from causing any further collateral damage.

I would be generously rewarded if I fulfilled that objective—

as long as I allowed the nihilist to fulfill its objective,

the reason the Omniscience had created it:

the romanticist and the hedonist had overstayed their welcome.

12. The Modernist

 

By nightfall, I got to the elevator. It was the longest five-minute ride of my life.

By the end, I made sure the air gage on my squirt gun signified maximum capacity.

For the last time, I stepped out onto the cloud floor. In the light of the alien moons,

I spotted the nihilist immediately. It was hard to miss a thirty-foot burgundy

Pacman with a gleaming set of giant isosceles teeth. It was bouncing toward

the marigold castle in pursuit of the romanticist and the hedonist.

 

They were fleeing by air as the beetle and butterfly. I estimated they

could probably make it back to their castle, but once they got there,

they wouldn’t be able to last long under siege. I didn’t think about the reward.

I thought about how these were my comrades, the people I called my friends—

 

but then I reconsidered. What made them my friends? Sure, we still talked,

but every conversation left me feeling relatively miserable. I was almost resigned

to let the nihilist have them, but looking on from a turret window, I saw

the namesake. It occurred to me that he was the same age I was when I first

came to that world. He looked frightened—and quite justifiably.

I knew the hardship of being suddenly independent.

 

I sprinted to the conflict. As soon as I was within range, I opened fire on

the nihilist. It didn’t turn to see what was shooting at it. It kept pursuing the beetle

and the butterfly until it was completely extinguished. It took a lot of acetone, but I

still had half a tank left—more than enough to shoot down the butterfly.

 

I didn’t think; I just pulled the trigger and dissolved a wing. She crashed to

the clouds and became human again. The beetle did likewise and dashed to her side.

The hedonist looked fine (in fact, at the age of twenty-one, she still looked eighteen),

but the romanticist seemed to be able to tell that she was fading. He knelt down

and clasped her hand tightly. He wept a deluge. He projected thunderous

dissonant cries. He managed one coherent sentence: “I won’t let you go!”

 

The hedonist didn’t cry. She just lifted her head slightly and offered the romanticist

a comforting smile and the accompanying last words: “It was all a dream.”

Then she was gone. The romanticist’s hands were clasping nothing.

He looked up; he scoured the sky for the hedonist’s blue star.

He pleaded for someone to tell him why he couldn’t find it.

Then he stood up and turned to me.

 

His face was different; it was cold, maybe not so inhuman, but definitely, it was

the face of a monster. He charged me. I pumped my squirt gun as quickly as I could,

certain that if the romanticist tackled me, my fate would be the same as

the opportunist’s. The stampede was five feet away; I hadn’t even taken aim.

 

I expected to get crushed. The romanticist stopped as suddenly as he started.

He dropped to his knees and lowered his head. He didn’t want revenge.

He had what he wanted. For ten years, he had exactly what he wanted.

He couldn’t go on without it. I shot him point-blank. His body disintegrated.

 

In its place, there was an egg—

not unlike the egg that remained where the hedonist vanished.

My most plausible theory is that the romanticist and the hedonist

had become so adapted to that world that they were

almost as erasable as any other creature.

The eggs were all that remained of their Earthliness.

13. The Postmodernist

 

Standing right where I watched the romanticist and the hedonist get married,

I was finally overwhelmed by the events. I knew I was there, and I believe

I made a difference, but I was always uncertain about the extent of control

I had over my actions. Then, for the first time, I saw the Omniscience.

 

Just the way I remembered him, the Omniscience manifested as my older brother.

He told me he was proud of me. I had vanquished the scourge of the nihilist,

and I was almost done ridding that world of the irritatingly blissful humans.

I was told they would hatch in a matter of months. Their lives would reset

like a videogame. All I had to do was smash the eggs.

 

The Omniscience brandished what was presumably a check. I was told I would

never have to work again. All I had to do was follow one last command.

I stepped closer. I looked my brother in the eye. He was ten years older

than me, so he appeared to be the same age. I was never more certain,

never more in control than when I aimed my squirt gun

and soaked the Omniscience like a rite of passage.

 

The voice in the sky was silenced as easily as the bunny. The check was

still there, but it wasn’t a check. It was a coupon for a dollar off a medium

one-topping pizza. I ambled to the castle and made my way up to the turret

where the namesake had been observing. He was sitting the way I sat after

the optimist died. I considered bringing the namesake home with me,

but that world was his birthplace, the only home he would ever know.

He had as little right to live on Earth as the romanticist and the hedonist had

 

to live where I stood—trying to come up with some sort of consolation.

I pulled the strap of my squirt gun off my neck. As I handed it to the namesake,

my index finger brushed a drop on the nozzle. I was no happier to learn that

I was not so readily deletable. He held my gun with avid fascination. There was

no warm way to tell him. “Kid, you’re on your own, but you’ve got

a few good shots left. If the burden ever gets to be too much for you,

save a shot for yourself, but just remember, it’ll be your last.”

I didn’t check for signs of comprehension.

 

I exited the castle. I collected the eggs. I went down the elevator.

I went to the train station. I arrived on my planet. I returned to my apartment.

I made a nest out of discarded newspaper. By the time the eggs hatched,

all the arrangements were determined. The hedonist was adopted by

an Italian fashion designer, her rock star husband, and her diplomat boyfriend.

The romanticist was adopted by an American doctor who was married to his cause.

Under no circumstances would the romanticist and the hedonist see

each other again—not that I thought they would fall in love;

it was just a precaution.

14. The Survivalist

 

I don’t claim to know all of the nuances,

but I know who I don’t want to be.

 

There’s no Omniscience. The antagonist and the nihilist are vilified.

The opportunist is a void. He can never be contented.

 

The pragmatist is a pair of scissors. He’s useful when he’s sharp,

but even then, he’s a slave to his design.

 

The optimist is a piece of paper. He has the potential to be

an important document, but he’s more likely to roll up and burn.

 

The hedonist is a feather. She has no direction of her own, just

how the wind blows, but she’ll always end up in someone’s cap.

 

The romanticist is a rock. His fantasies withstand a slew of storms,

but when he’s finally flooded, he will realize his density.

 

Someday, I might be the isolationist,

but I haven’t given up hope just yet.

 

For now, I prepare for an indeterminate future.

I live to survive—call me the survivalist.

 

What of my deepest desire? The same as yours:

a life the pragmatist would care about.

 

What of that world? It was a sunbeam for a subway,

the frontier we’ll never enter.

 

Only the namesake can stay there. I made the choice,

but I didn’t make the rules.

 

No one wants to live in paradise alone,

but it’s no longer paradise with more than one person.

 

It’s an inescapable grounding.