Ganeden

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---Bryan---


     I wake up in bed. My bed. My posters hang on the wall, dangling from bits of tape that have peeled off in the summer heat. My alarm clock rests on my bed table just next to my computer desk. My clothes from throughout the week and a few of my books are scattered across the floor. Sunlight streams in through the blinds.

     I wipe the sleep out of my eyes. Breathe in the familiar scent of my bedroom. But what am I doing here? Just a second ago, I was... There's another smell, coming up through the vents. Pancakes. My mom's famous recipe.

     Is it possible... could all of this have been a dream?

     I laugh. No—some pretty ridiculous things have happened to me since the world ended, but nothing that ridiculous.

     I climb out of bed, my heart practically slamming against my ribs, and stumble out into the hallway. The hardwood floor beneath the carpet creaks under my bare feet. A tear comes to me eye. It feels like I'm wandering through a distant memory. I lean over the railing and peer down to the first floor. There's somebody in the kitchen—I can sense it.

     Resting a hand on the banister, I make my way down the stairs and into the kitchen. And there's Olivia, sitting at the table. What's she doing here? There's a stack of pancakes resting in front of her. She smiles at me, her dimples showing in her cheeks.

     Everything's just how I left it, before the world suddenly ended. I distinctly remember peeling all of this away. But the sight of Olivia banishes all other thoughts from my mind. I run over to her, and she rises from her chair and throws her arms around me. Within seconds, we're sobbing into each other's shoulders. The scent of peppermint floods my nostrils. I squeeze her and she squeezes back. It's really her—not some deity wearing a disguise.

     "Bryan," she whispers into my ear. "You found me." She pulls back but takes both of my hands in hers, looking me in the eyes.

     One by one, my memories start to bubble back to the surface. Like a puzzle that I'm slowly piecing together. The world ended. I jumped through a volcano. There was a glowing orb and some sort of mouth. And then I...

     "Are we... I mean, did I...?"

     "You're still alive," she says, tears trickling down her cheeks.

     "But what..." I look around. "Where are we?"

     She wipes her eyes. "Oh. I'm sorry. This isn't really your house—it's an illusion. I thought this'd make it easier on you." An illusion? And is she implying that she's the one who created it?

     "Then where are we?" I ask.

     "We're still in Ganeden."

     She leads me to the table and motions for me to take a seat. I draw up a chair, overwhelmed by the scent of pancakes and syrup.

     "You probably have a lot of questions," she says, sitting down next to me.

     "No kidding."

     "Are you sure you're okay? You've been through a lot."

     "I'm fine. What happened back there? What was that..." I shudder. "Thing."

     Olivia swallows. "That was the Shimmer."

     The Shimmer. I've heard that name before... but where? Eloise. The Shimmer is the thing that was chasing her. But... what was it doing here? Last I heard, it had chased Eloise to... The realization hits me.

     "It followed us here?"

     Olivia nods.

     "But..." I shake my head. I need to pull back—this is too much for me to process. "What happened to it?"

     "It's gone now," Olivia says, her voice uninflected. "And so is Aiebdel."

     "Aiebdel?" I wince when she utters the name, and all of the breath flees from my lungs.

     "He was a celestial. A god bound to a heaven rather than a world. Ganeden was his heaven."

     "But he's...?"

     She nods again. "Gone." She reaches across the table and places a hand over mine, beaming. "But Ganeden's still here. I guess heavens are different—they don't disappear when their gods die. And I wasn't expecting him to destroy the Shimmer either. But they wound up cancelling each other out. We couldn't have asked for a better outcome."

     "Wait." I draw my hand back. "What do you mean better than you expected?"

     She frowns and then sighs, her shoulders sinking. "This is going to be a lot for you to process at once."

     "Tell me."

     "Okay." She averts her gaze, leaning back in her chair. "Where do I start? So you know I've always been a bit... different. Remember how, when we were kids, I used to talk to clouds and trees and stuff like that?"

     I nod. She's always been a bit loony—that's one of the things I liked about her. But I'd always just assumed that's what it was: her being odd.

     "I was... special. See, celestials have this tradition where they designate somebody to... er... I'm not explaining this right. See, they hand-pick someone, often when they're very young, someone they think is worthy of being made into a god—a terrestrial, I mean. They call them god candidates."

     My eyes widen. "You were one of these... god candidates?"

     "Yes. And the celestial who was in charge of overseeing me, of watching over me until I was old enough to become a terrestrial, was named Aiebdel. When I finally came of age, after my fifteenth birthday—"

     "I remember that." Her birthday party—it's one of the last things I can remember before The End.

     "Yeah. There was supposed to be this ritual, and I was supposed to... transcend. That's what they call becoming a god."

     "So you're...?"

     She shakes her head. "Not exactly."

     "What happened then?"

     Olivia shudders, as if fighting back some awful memory. She takes a deep breath. I want to comfort her, but I'm too caught up in the story. I need to make sense of all of this. I need answers.

     "The universe always spoke to me. Told me things. Sometimes it told me things that the even the gods wouldn't tell me. And, well, I discovered something the gods had been trying to keep secret. I found out what happens during the ritual."

     She pauses, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. This is painful for her—I can see it in her eyes. But I need to know. "What is it?"

     "When a god candidate transcends... they destroy their old world and create a new one in its place."

     I'm on my feet. I don't know how I got there. I'm panting, glaring at her, my nails digging into my palms, drawing blood. "You mean... you...?"

     "No!" She shakes her head. "I didn't... How could you think...? No. Of course not! I wasn't willing to go through with it. I turned him down—said I didn't want to be a god if it meant doing that. But gods... have tempers. When I turned him down, he took it as a personal offence. What greater honour is there than transcending, right? So he..." She closes her eyes. "He ended our world out of spite."

     My legs feel like they're about to give out. I fall back into my chair. That orb, that radiance... that was the thing that destroyed our world? It was responsible for everything that's happened to me for the past who knows how long?

     We were helpless. That's all I can think about. We were nothing but a lightbulb. All it took was the flick of a switch... and it was all over. We couldn't have done anything to stop it. We were doomed from the moment he chose Olivia to be his god candidate.

     I can't even wrap my head around the idea of this Aiebdel, of what it means to have that kind of power. It's like two infinitely gigantic stones smashing against each other in my head—the very thought of a being so powerful makes me want to shrivel up and burrow down into the earth. There's something comforting knowing that this entity isn't around anymore. But still, just the thought of it... I need to change the subject.

     "And what about the Shimmer?"

     Olivia shakes her head. "No one really ever knew what it was. Just that it was going around devouring anything in its path. And once it set its sights on something... it never relented. That... well... it gave me an idea."

     I sit there in silence, waiting for her to continue. She swallows.

     "Well, Aiebdel destroyed our world. Doesn't that...?" She shivers. "You probably wouldn't understand—not completely. I was connected with that world in a way that..." She shakes her head. "It's not important. What's important is, I swore to myself I'd get my revenge. And when I found out about this... this Shimmer... I figured I could use it against him. But first I had to find him. I ripped from world to world, gathering what information I could from the terrestrials there. Some of them were cooperative. Others, not so much. One tried to make me into a vessel."

     An image of pseudo-Olivia flashes before my eyes. So she really had visited that world, just one step ahead of me.

     "Eventually, I managed to find this place. You should have seen the look on his face when I showed up. But he was willing to forgive me if I promised to serve him. So I did. I was able to get close. I learned things. The Shimmer had killed a celestial once before. They were all terrified of it. But still, I had to figure out a way to get it here. And then, as luck would have it, the Shimmer set its sights on Eloise."

     Suddenly, the pieces are all fitting together. Eloise... she was the key. Just not the key to reaching Ganeden, as I'd thought.

     She was the key to destroying it.

     "You... used me."

     "What?" Olivia looks taken aback. "I didn't... use you. I'm sorry I wasn't clear about what I was plotting, but you have to understand, I couldn't tell you the truth—Aiebdel would've known. I trusted you to bring Eloise here, and I hoped the Shimmer would follow."

     "You said things turned out better than you were expecting," I say, my blood warming. "You never told me what it was you were expecting to happen."

     "Bryan..."

     "What did you expect would happen when I showed up with Eloise?"

     Olivia sighs and crosses her arms. "I'm not going to lie to you. I thought the Shimmer would destroy Aiebdel... and Ganeden along with him."

     "And then what?" For some reason, I'm shouting. My voice feels distant, like it's coming out of somebody else's mouth. How can she sit here and tell me all of this with a straight face? "What was supposed to happen after that?"

     She shrugs. "Maybe I didn't plan that far ahead."

     Didn't plan that far ahead? I nearly choke. "You..." And then I start laughing. It's a mad, twisted laugh. The laugh of somebody who's falling apart. "You have no idea what it was like out there."

     "I do. I was out there too, remember."

     "No, you don't. You're not like us." I grit my teeth. "You have no idea what we had to go through to... how many of us died trying to find this place. This was supposed to be it. The light at the end of the tunnel. And you were willing to throw it all away for... for your petty revenge?"

     "Petty?" Olivia looks at me, disgusted. "Petty? He destroyed our world, Bryan! Don't tell me that doesn't piss you off!"

     "So what? We would've still had one—"

     "We do still have one!" She rises to her feet. "Ganeden is still here. And it's ours now."

     I can't bring myself to look at her. "You had no right to take that risk. You had no right to... to use me to carry out your plan."

     "What's done is done," she says, her eyes wet and trembling. "It doesn't matter. It all worked out in the end. We have this place now, and we have each other."

     I look around. At this... illusion, as she called it. Nothing but trickery. How does that make her any different from pseudo-Olivia? Showing me only what she wants me to see.

     I shake my head. "Where are my friends?"

     She shakes her head. "You need some time to cool down; this is a lot to take—"

     "Where are they?" I demand. "Take me to them."

     She bites her lip and nods. One second we're standing in my kitchen, the next we're out in the garden in front of the palace. Or what's left of it, anyway. Everything's still black and white, the sky a dull grey. The flowers and shrubs no longer sway in the breeze. In fact, everything is still. And distorted. Like a snapshot run through a blurry filter.

     And there they are, lying in the grass. Martha. Melody. Ace. Liluye. Crawford. Gail. And even Eloise. They're all staring up at the sky, all with their eyes wide open, all with a blank expression on their face.

     "What's wrong with them?"

     "Nothing's wrong with them," says Olivia. "I'll show you." She grabs my hand and walks me over to Gail. Then she touches Gail's forehead.

     The scene shifts. We're standing in an occult shop. A chandelier hangs above us, its dim orange bulbs lighting the room. The walls are lined with shelves upon shelves of various occult paraphenelia—skulls, tarot cards, crystal balls, Ouija boards, gargoyles.

     Gail is standing at the counter, flipping through what looks like a book of runes. She doesn't seem to notice us. She brushes a stand of her red hair behind her ear, chewing on a piece of gum. The door opens, setting off a cluster of out-of-tune chimes. Topher steps into the room. He's got both arms.

     "Toph!" Gail runs over to him and hugs him. "Ma told me you were back in town. I didn't think—"

     "What is this?" I ask, turning to look at Olivia. "Another one of your illusions?"

     "She's happy here."

     "It's not real," I say. "Topher's dead."

     Olivia snaps her fingers, and suddenly we're back in the desolate field, Aiebdel's ruined castle billowing smoke in the distance.

     "You've got them stuck in some sort of dream world." My voice catches. "You can't... they wouldn't..." I ball my hands into fists. "Let them out."

     "I can't do that."

     "I said let them out," I demand through clenched teeth.

     Olivia stands firm. "That's not your call, Bryan. I didn't do this to them against their will. They asked for this. You said it yourself. They've suffered—they all have. They all had burdens they couldn't bear anymore. They begged for me to take that weight off their shoulders. I helped them."

     "But it's not real."

     "What's real, Bryan?" She stares me down. "After everything you've seen, you of all people should understand that the universe isn't exactly what it seems to be." She glances at Gail. "Besides, it's only temporary."

     "What do you mean?"

     She looks at me hopefully. "I'm going to fix this place. I can make Ganeden a paradise again. But I'm not strong enough yet. Eloise gave me her powers, but that's not enough. I need to gather more. Once I have, I'll rebuild this world from scratch. Make it into our own personal paradise. And then I'll wake them up."

     My head's pounding. She was right—this is all too much to process. I can't... Can't what? I just can't. This is... wrong.

      "Are you going to throw me into one of those fantasy worlds too?" I ask, looking her right in the eyes.

     She sniffles. "I could," she says, clutching her arms to her chest. "If that's what you want. But I was hoping... you would stay here with me. Keep me company." She leans forward, and then suddenly she's kissing me. And I melt into the kiss—how can I not? It's everything I've ever wanted. She's everything I've ever wanted.

     But this isn't.

     When the kiss is over, she looks up at me expectantly. "Well?"

     I turn my back on her. "I killed Colby." Because she told me he was the enemy, is the part I leave unsaid.

     She places her hand on my shoulder. "Whatever happened out there, it wasn't your fault. Besides, we can fix—"

     "There's no fixing this, Olivia." I shake my head. "If the others would really rather stay in some dream world, I don't blame them. I promised them I'd lead them to paradise. They deserve to be happy. But I don't."

     "Bryan..."

     "I can't stay here."

     The silence is heavy—heavier than Aiebdel crushing us with his aura. This doesn't feel like me. Bryan would have broken down and cried. Em would have grabbed Olivia and kissed her again. But that's not who I am anymore.

     I'm nobody.

     "Where will you go?"

     I shrug. "Send me back to the nothing. I'll figure something out."

     "The nothing?" I can feel her eyes digging into my back. "Bryan, you'll die! You haven't got your powers anymore—you can't rip your way to safety."

     "I'll manage."

     "No, you—"

     "Are you able to send me back?" I spin around and lock eyes with her again. Tears stream down her cheeks. But she nods. "Do it then."

     "But..." Whatever she's going to say, she decides against it. She nods again, and a tear appears in the fabric of this universe. All I need to do is step through. I start to walk towards it. "Can you at least..." Her voice cracks. "Can you forgive me?"

     I glance back at her over my shoulder. "You're not the one I need to forgive." I can't look at her any longer—if I do, I'll fall apart. I take a deep breath and push myself through the tear. Ganeden vanishes behind me. And I'm suddenly back in the nothing.

     So here I am. Right back where I started. I slip—it's been a while since I've had to maneuver through non-space. My body isn't used to it. I wind up lurching and squirming and pitching and twisting. And I float. For who knows how long. I guess not for long at all—after all, there's no time here.

     All I know is that one second there's nothing here. And the next, there is. Well, not something. Someone.

     Comma bursts into tears. She's been hurt—there's blood all over her clothing. And the zillbane is slung across her back. Her hands fly to her toque. It's really her.

     "Hiya," she says, leaping over to me and taking me in her arms.

     After everything—after all we've been through together—that's all she has to say to me. Hiya. Is that really the best she could come up with? I ought to tell her off, you know? Say something like...

     "Hey."

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