CHAPTER 10 YEAR 37, MONTH 11 NARRATOR: JOHN The police never found Mohawk A**hole. Police don't find criminals. They don't really solve crimes like they do on TV. Police officers just hang around and try to pin stuff on everyone they see until they hit their quotas. Firebird is right. Our police aren't any more real than his are. I tried to get Firebird to make peace with Bruce, but he wouldn't do it. He agreed not to kill him though. I got another old Trans Am. I found a Martinique Blue '78. I loved it almost as much as I'd loved my '75. But I hadn't forgotten my crowdfunding gimmick. I would have to suffer for my attachments. I would have to destroy my car for the movie. Firebird and I had cameras. Firebird and I had money. Firebird and I had stories to tell. We'd written our stories down in both timelines. We were going to make our movies in both timelines, too. We could shoot in the same places at the same times. We could trade places to direct the scenes we'd experienced, and play ourselves in each others' movies. While we were at it, we'd get guided tours of each others' timelines. We headed to Australia first. Watching our actors recreate the death of Firebird's family hit me harder than I thought it would. The boys we found to portray us as children did wonderful jobs of it. I did all the stunts in our car chases. I didn't want to be responsible for someone else getting hurt. The big one was climbing out of the moving Beetle into the Trans Am while it was being towed by a tow truck. It was easy for Firebird because he'd done it for real. I figured, if he'd done it, I could do it. And I did. Firebird persuaded Mad Skelli to portray herself in his movie. I got to meet her again. She's really something. Bruce had returned to Australia to continue his work as a tattoo artist, only this time in Epoxyclypse. I found his shop and stopped in. I explained that I'd been bouncing between timelines for years, but it was a risky thing to do. If your counterpart failed to meet up with you, you'd be stuck. We still had no idea where Mohawk A**hole was in Tomorrowland. We might never know. "No worries mate," Bruce said. "Life's an adventure." NARRATOR: FIREBIRD We got all the footage we needed in Straya and California and Arizona. The only thing left to shoot was that road trip across the USA I'd done a few years back. And I guess John still needed to get that footage of his car getting smashed. My movie was not gonna end that way. I was gonna drive off into the fucking sunset. The actors and crew were traveling with us but it was Christmas Eve so we gave them a few days off. John had planned some strange stops and some strange places to swap timelines. He refused to explain. That's how I found myself in Tomorrowland's version of rural Pennsylvania standing outside a camper door holding a package of Tim Tams. A woman opened the door. I recognized her even though I hadn't seen her face in decades. It was my sister. I looked down at the bikkies in my hand. Suddenly they made sense. "I brought these for you from Straya. From Australia I mean." She hugged me. "You sound like you have an Australian accent already." She invited me in. She took one bite of the bikkie and had to spit it out. "These are disgusting" she said. We laughed. No one ever made me laugh quite like she did.... Does? Did. There were three places that looked the same before and after the apocalypse. Wasteland Weekend. Detonation. And New Jersey. Last time I'd seen this house it was a pile of charred remains. Dad opened the door. He still had on that self winding dive watch I'd been playing with when he died. I tried to act like everything was normal. I tried to act like I wasn't staring at a ghost. I gave vague answers when he asked about my life. After we'd caught up I went up to John's room. I opened his closet. His Hot Wheels collection was still there. I found his Trans Am and put it in my pocket. I went back downstairs. I asked Dad "Do you have an old reel of film in your safe?" "You know I think I do" he said. "Your mother put it there. I don't think I've watched it since the day it went in. I can't bring myself to look at any of that stuff now. The part of grieving they don't tell you about is the shameful desire to allow yourself to forget. Everyone talks about how they think about the dead person every single day. No one admits how much they look forward to that first day they don't." "Could we make an exception and watch the film? Just once." Dad found the film in his safe and fired up the old projector. It was me and Mom. I'm a baby in her arms. She's singing. I know that song. She's singing Close To You by The Carpenters. The last of the weird stops John had planned for me was the cemetery. It was at the top of a hill. Night had fallen. The snow on the ground had hardened into ice. Christmas lights were hung up all around town but the streets were empty. I was alone and shivering. It had been a long time since I'd seen a white Christmas. Cemeteries are stupid. Are dead people supposed to take up space forever? Eventually the whole world will be covered in graves. When I die let necrophiliacs fuck me. Let cannibals eat me. Whatever's left just chuck in the nearest rubbish bin. I found John's mom's headstone. I reached into my pocket and placed John's Hot Wheels car on her grave. I laid down beside her. I stayed there so long that when I tried to get up my jacket was partially frozen to the ground. It was time to trade places with John again. One last goodbye. I closed my eyes and let the snowflakes fall onto my tongue. I opened my eyes and the Christmas lights had vanished. The trees were gone. John's mom's grave was gone. The other monuments were all knocked over. I was back in Epoxyclypse. You motherfuckers in Tomorrowland have no idea the glory you hold in your hands. You have no idea. You have it. You waste it. You take it for granted. You don't even know where that glory comes from. You don't care to know. Don't you get it? It's you that has to create that glory. It's you that has to protect that glory. Don't neglect it. Don't throw it away. No one's gonna hand it to you. It has to come from you. What are you gonna do? Right now. Today. What are you gonna do to keep that glory alive? I returned to my car and got out my keys. My Hot Wheels Trans Am fell out of my pocket and went spinning down the icy road. I'd left John's Hot Wheels on his mom's grave. What was I gonna do with mine? Drop it in the snow where Mom's grave would have been if she'd gotten old enough to die of cancer? I've said my goodbyes. Fuck it. It's a meaningless trinket. I'll leave it behind on the damn street. I got in and turned on the accessory switch. Fucking fuck fuck fuck. The radio was playing AC/DC's Back In Black. I'm just messing with you. Really it was Close To You by The Carpenters. I got out to go after that damned Hot Wheels car. As soon as I got out of the car another car emerged from the darkness. I jumped out of the way as it smashed into my Trans Am. My Stellar Blue 1975 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. The car that had taken me on thousands of miles of adventures. The car that had survived the goddamn apocalypse. They were never gonna make another Trans Am. Now my badass car was just a heap of twisted metal. A woman got out of the other car and pointed a gun at me. It had been over a year but I recognized her. She'd pointed a gun at me before. I knew that this time she'd make damn sure it was loaded. "If I were in your shoes I'd walk just as you do" I said. "What does that mean?" she asked. "If I were you I'd do just as you are doing." "I'm going to kill you. You're not scared?" "I like being alive. But I'm not attached to it." "Good cuz I'm about to blow the ghost right out of your skull." "Attachment leads to suffering." I said. "That's what my mother used to say. Come on. Walk with me." "Ok" she said. "But I'm still going to shoot you." "If at any point in our conversation you need to shoot me then go ahead." The principle of Chekhov's Gun says that if you put a gun in a story it has to go off at some point. Why would I have mentioned guns if no one shoots any of them? Not a single gun has been fired in this whole damn narrative and we're getting near the end. If this story is fictional then this gun pretty much has to go off. If it's nonfictional then maybe I still have a chance. She followed me as I headed down the hill to pick up my Hot Wheels. "Where's the kid?" I asked. "I found a sitter" she replied. I found my Hot Wheels beside an old iron bench. I picked it up off the icy ground and sat down. She sat down beside me keeping the gun pointed at my chest. "What's with the toy car?" she asked. "It was in my mother's hand when she was blown to bits. It fell out of my pocket. I was just gonna leave it here but...." "You were just gonna leave it on the ground?" I held up the car and turned it around in my hand. "A hunk of die cast metal won't bring her back." "Sure it will. Every time you look at it." She showed me a necklace she was wearing. It was made of paperclips connected end to end with a tiny lock for a charm. "Before the race my husband gave me this. He said if anything went wrong I had to promise not to forget him. He couldn't stop saying it. He made me promise. Not to forget him. He still makes me promise. Every night in my dreams." "When I see Mom in my dreams it's a dead giveaway. I instantly know I'm dreaming cuz I know she's dead. But in that moment I can tell her everything I want to tell her." "What do you want to tell her?" "That I'm happy. Mom thought I was perfect and she wanted nothing more than for me to be happy. She was wrong but she got what she wanted." "I think there's something she would have wanted to say to you too. I don't think she finished. Attachment leads to suffering. Yes. But that doesn't mean you should never get attached. Because you'll also suffer for the attachments you fail to make. It means you have to choose your attachments wisely. When you can choose them." "Can I choose to have no attachments?" "No." "Then what have I been doing my whole life?" "Denying you have them." Maybe now I could tell this story in the voice of that little boy whose family got blown to bits. I noticed a tiny flicker of light in the sky. It was a passenger jet at cruising altitude. Fuck yeah. Somecunt finally got one of them jet planes flying again. The best time to be alive is tomorrow. The second best time is today. I'd rather be alive at the best time but I can settle for second best.