The rest began to arrive a few minutes later. They trickled in, one by one, quietly nodding their hellos. Of course Darla had ignored Martin’s request. She left her backpack at home and lugged in a monstrous piece of hard-shelled luggage.
“What do you need that for?” Martin asked.
“Well, let me see,” Darla said. “My clothes, my bowling ball, my stuff that survived the fire. I’m a skinny gal. If the tubsters can bring their guts and butts, then I should be able to bring a kitten heel or two.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Martin said. “What if everyone brought all their stuff?”
“Then they’d be as smart as me.” Darla laughed. “Obviously, that’s not the case.”
There was little use in arguing with her. Martin didn’t know whether weight was important. It was better to focus on moving forward. He started by counting them. Thirty-seven, including him.
“We have everyone,” he announced.
Thirteen years old. That was Martin. It wasn’t much. And none of the other kids could claim much more. Tiberia was the oldest, on the brink of fifteen. Not even a sixth of the way to the end. People had been known to live past a hundred. It seemed impossible, but apparently it was true.
Thirty-seven kids packed together. Two others out there alone, one of them probably dead. Thirteen years of knowledge, some faith, and a machine. This was supposed to return things to the way they were?
What was wrong with forgetting about the past and beginning again the old-fashioned way? Falling in love. Settling down. Starting a family. Martin did the math in his head. It could take dozens of generations, nearly a thousand years, to get the world back to where it was, with a few billion souls kicking around. That was what was wrong with the old-fashioned way. And who was to say it wouldn’t happen all over again? Who was to say the slate wouldn’t be wiped clean once more?
“Are we going or what?” Tiberia asked.
Martin broke out of his daze and looked around. Their eyes pled and their hands held tight to the loose straps that hung from their packs. They reminded Martin of himself a few months earlier, oars over his shoulder, looking out at the ocean.
“We’re all pretty nervous,” Riley squeaked.
“One second,” Martin told them. “A few more things to prep.”
He pushed open the door to the machine’s heart and stepped inside. As soon as the door swung closed behind him, he stumbled forward and caught himself on the edge of the basin. Nausea ruled his body. Convulsions ping-ponged in his chest, and as he stared down at the marble, he wondered what might happen if he bathed it in vomit.
“Magic,” his father had said. “It’s going to help us start over.”
Martin hated him.
Maybe it wasn’t the first time he’d felt it, but it was the first time he’d known it. Those kids waiting on the other side of the door, in the other chamber of the machine, they had been part of the world. Martin had been part of nothing, just some vague quest of a madman desperate for hope. Sketches on a piece of paper? Found in the gears of a Ferris wheel? This was what their future depended on?
Yet there was nothing he could do. His fate had grown roots. He couldn’t exactly walk out there and call the whole thing off. He could only keep going. Gulping back the panic, he lifted his head to see a reflection of his face, blurred and bloated by the shiny ripples of aluminum on the wall.
Now or never.
Martin instructed them to sit, and they did. He made it abundantly clear that question time was over by turning his back on them, but it didn’t stop them from whispering to each other. Humming softly to himself, he tried to block out everything except the procedure.
It started with a crank. Fifteen clockwise rotations until it was too tight to move. He yanked down two levers at the same time. A bloom of air puffed up in the chest of the machine and rattled the looser bits. Then he turned one knob 30 degrees, one 120, one 210, one 300. A pair of pedals, salvaged from an old bakery truck, came next. He worked them like a drummer, stomping out a one-two beat. When they stiffened up, he stopped and moved over to a large plastic handle that stuck out from the console. He drew it toward him in a steady motion, revealing a taut wire, and he paced backward until he was almost touching the crowd. They had quieted down at this point and were following Martin’s every move. When he dropped the handle, the wire pulled it back to the console, like the string of a talking doll. And the machine did talk, in its way. The whirring began.
It could be felt down to the guts, and kids instinctively pawed at the floor to stabilize themselves.
“Is it moving?” Wendy asked.
“Just starting” was Martin’s response as he flipped a series of switches and tapped his finger on a pink light that was beginning to blink.
“What if you do something wrong?” Sigrid yelped. “What happens to us then?”
“Could we crash?” Ryan asked.
Martin stopped for a second. “Everything is going perfectly,” he assured them with more than a little bite to his voice. “I’ve been practicing this forever. If one of you thinks you can do a better job, then feel free to take over.”
This shut them up quick, and he scolded them for their lack of faith with a piercing stare that was plenty harsh but was mostly a bluff. It was natural for them to question him. Though there was little point of it so late in the game.
Turning back, he inched over to a line of buttons and ran his arm across them, making sure to press each one. It didn’t have to be precise; it just had to be done. Needles on meters shuddered, then moved. He watched them until he was satisfied they were at full mast. Placing his mouth on the end of a pipe that curled and escaped into the wall, he blew a quick candle-snuffing breath. The whirring intensified.
Two more things to do.
He returned to the crank. Fifteen counterclockwise rotations until it was loose.
The breathing of the kids became synchronized. They might not have realized it, but Martin sure did. They were like one giant organism, clumped together on the floor behind him. He wondered what Lane was thinking. Did she view this as a big contraption, an elaborate entertainment like the ones she peddled? Was she just along for kicks, to see how spectacularly he would fail? He couldn’t bear to turn around and look, to catch her shaking her head, mouthing, “I told you so.”
And what about Darla? They had hardly spoken since the trial. At times it seemed she wanted nothing more than for Martin to build the machine; at other times, nothing less. Yet there was hardly a moment when she wasn’t talking about how wonderful the world and her life were before the Day. Surely she would be the most disappointed if it didn’t work.
And Trent, and Sigrid, and Tiberia, and Gabe, and Cameron, and Riley, and Ryan, and Wendy, and, oh God, he didn’t know everyone’s name. He did, he did. But not off the top of his head, not right then, when he was about to change everything, when he was about to grab the pendulum, when he was about to lift it and send it flying like a metronome on a giant clock.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …
It was done. The final step. The pendulum was swinging. The whir kept whirring. The breathing was steady and constant. And then, the light.
“This must be it,” Raul whispered as the first hint of light came from under the door to the machine’s heart.
It spread out like liquid on the floor. Before long, it was touching the walls and painting the faces of the kids.
“It’s gorgeous,” Gina said. “Is it starlight?”
Whirring became whistling, and soon the light shone so brightly that they had to close their eyes. Vibrations coursed through the machine in a series of pulses. The clamor of metal on metal galloped forth, then stopped. Static electricity swept through the room as if blown by a breeze and it grabbed at the tiny hairs on Martin’s arms. The whistle mutated back to a whir and the nausea in Martin’s stomach retreated. His insides felt downright giddy.
Whether one person started it and the rest caught on or whether it spontaneously happened all at once was hard to say. But the machine was suddenly filled with laughter. Giggles and chuckles and joyful gasps for breath. They echoed and folded into each other and created a symphony of delight. It might have lasted only twenty seconds or so, but it felt like forever.
Then, as the laughter evaporated, everything else retreated. The vibrations, the sounds, the light. Only the pendulum remained, cutting its path back and forth in front of the control panel.
… tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …
It was at least a few minutes before anyone spoke.
“Are we there yet?” Trent asked.
No one laughed. No one responded at all. Martin opened his eyes. The kids all looked safe, healthy. Whatever the machine had done, it hadn’t changed their appearance.
There were no windows, no way of telling where exactly they were. Everyone was still sitting, except for Martin, who was standing at the controls. Clearly, their expectation was that he would make the first move.
He walked over and touched his fingers to the corrugated metal of the machine’s wall, but only for a second, like he was testing the heat of an oven. Not sure what to expect, he wasn’t helped much by the results. A little warm. He pressed his ear against it and listened for a moment. A gentle wind was complemented by an unmistakable birdcall. Chickadees.
“What was that?” Cameron whispered.
Martin rushed to the door. He tossed it open and felt a cool caress of air as he took a step outside.
“Martin? What happened?” Cameron called out from the machine. A soft commotion followed.
“Let him go,” Darla demanded. “He must know what he’s doing.”
Outside, Martin found Xibalba.
It was exactly as they had left it. The buildings and houses were in the same state of ruin. Town Square was neatly plowed. Crusty, gravelly stacks of snow dotted the curbs. Kid Godzilla, scuffed and dented but alive, was parked in the distance, along the street.
A dark cube, about three feet square, was the only difference. It sat on the pavement a few feet from the machine. It hadn’t been there when Martin had arrived in the morning.
When he got closer, he realized what it was: the charred remains of the home page to Felix’s Internet. It used to tell the story of Xibalba, but all the writing had burned away. The only mark that remained was a short message gouged deep into the coaly surface. It said:
Welcome to Xibalba,
home of the last people on Earth.
Sorry, but we all killed ourselves.
Hang in there. Or don’t.
What do we care?
Martin turned around to see the confetti of disappointed faces bursting forth from the machine. At that moment, there was nothing he wanted more than to go home to his island.