I found the note, transcribed below, stuck in a yellowing copy of Jacques the Fatalist, borrowed from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library a few months ago. I submitted it to the online magazine you’re now reading because it seems to be what the author would have wanted—to make sure the contents continue on.
The note wasn’t dated or signed, but it looked fairly old (semi-brown, stained in parts, and wrinkly, but not falling apart).
Rhonda downed the convenience store espresso and tossed the can in the backseat as the dashboard clock blinked over to 6:03pm. It clanged and rattled when it joined the others piled on the floor. She popped open the glove box, snatched a handful of yellow Wendy’s napkins and wiped the windshield, which was now covered with a thick nicotine film. The haze might be considered dangerous to most people. To Rhonda, it was an inconvenience. A chore. Another thing she had to do to maintain and upkeep.
Cleaning. Showering. Keeping toenails trimmed. Being alive was a lot of work and it never let up.
“Your father nearly broke his back trying to carry your sister upstairs”.
“I swear to god -”
“We just can’t understand her, she was doing so well”.
Kay almost laughed.
“If you could come over, try to talk to her, she listens to you…maybe if you were here?”
“Seriously?”
“You’re too hard on her”
“I’m done”.
Kepler-186f was the first planet of a similar size to Earth to be found orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. It is a rocky planet, which probably has some liquid water, and it is in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. A day on Kepler-186f could be weeks or months long. Its star is dim – the brightest it gets at noon is as bright as our sun an hour before sunset. The red star might mean that plants using photosynthesis are red instead of green.
No one followed me out here. I looked back every ten feet or so to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and then I doubled back through the long, rusty grass and into the swampy woods for a little while for good measure. Not that I was doing anything wrong, I just wanted to be alone. Ever since the earthquakes started, alone time was hard to come by, and to be quite honest it was driving me crazy. I know, I know, we are blessed to be able to serve those who have lost more than my family did, those who lost their homes and their family members and came rushing to the coast to escape the fires, the destruction and the unpredictable ground-shaking. But I needed a break. We all need a break sometimes.
Winter 1959
1
The Memory Merchant cursed his fate: A mixture of ice and snowpack covered the road. What should have been a 12-hour drive took almost 24 hours with tires that had seen better days. The old truck’s brakes weren’t better, screeching with every skidding stop. The pickup also needed new spark plugs and a timing belt. He suspected the ball joints were hanging by a thread or whatever ball joints hung by.
We didn’t expect her to be much fun and we were right – she wasn’t. Not that any of us blamed her: she had been through a lot and was destined to go through a lot more over the following year. All this while she herself was getting … well, getting less and less. It was right, though, that our hosts, Ann and Bradley, invited her to our annual Christmas get-together, along with the usual crew: me, of course, then Dana and Emory, and Ann’s oldest friend, going all the way back to secondary school, George, the homeopath, therefore the only one among us who did anything ‘interesting’, that is, out of the ordinary run of professional occupations that people like us normally follow: an accountant, an advertising art director, a doctor, and a sports and talent agent, that sort of thing.
Mavis Tuddenham couldn’t remember when she first realised the world was shrinking – really realised that it was really, actually shrinking, to be precise. Mavis always liked to be accurate about things.
She couldn’t recall any indication whatsoever of a diminishment in its size during her childhood and early adulthood. The world just was, and the universe, well, that was even bigger, mind bogglingly bigger, so mind bogglingly bigger that your mind couldn’t grasp just how humungously big it actually was, however hard you tried.
The train ride had been long and tedious. Evelyn, muscles sore and on the brink of falling asleep right where she stood, dragged herself along the cobbled stones without paying her surroundings any notice. Claude had seemed high-spirited on the train, doing his utmost to draw her excitement out, but now he, too, was quiet. It was dusk and the day had been dull and grey, so that darkness was not so much falling as thickening, expanding to kill the last hints of light. The town was quiet, the sound of the suitcase wheels dragging on the pavement the only thing they could hear. There was no one in sight as they navigated the narrow streets, seemingly twisting themselves deeper into the heart of the small town.
“You mean you aren’t coming home for Thanksgiving?” Eddie Yates whimpered like he had a toothache, but Annie was unmoved. Yes, it was true that months ago, before she left for college, she’d said to him, “If we’re both still virgins when we come home for Thanksgiving, then – fine. We can have sex.” Well, they both were still virgins. Yet some promises were made to be broken.
Annie had only told him that because she’d been sure she would find someone desirable to deflower to her. She was living on a college campus, for God’s sake. Except, she hadn’t counted on keeping company mostly with females. She lived in a girl’s dorm; she was an English major and heterosexual guys – for the most part – stayed away from classic literature; and, outside of class, Annie spent most of her time working with the campus group for women’s equality.