Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (32 page)

And now, even as he and Oma and Skwurl watched, one of the remaining skyscrapers wobbled and fell, a plume of dust rising into the sky in its place. A moment later, the tremendous boom of the collapse reached their ears.

“I
knew
it,” said Oma.

“What the—?” said Patrick.

“A little hard to jibe with the stories they were telling you yesterday, right, Patrick?” asked Skwurl. “We were still living in the Stone Age fifty years ago here on Ith and all the technological wonders around us were brought to us by Rex? The world was a dark and primitive place till the light of the Minder lit up the world?”

“What
is
this place?” he asked.

“Here? New Jersey, you mean?” replied Skwurl.

“No, I mean this
whole
place.”

“You starting to accept that maybe this isn't a dream?” she asked.

Or maybe, he considered, what they were seeing just made it even more certain to be one. “Why are they knocking down New York City?”

“It's one of the last few bits of evidence left. The bigger sites—because they're more work to erase—they've left for last. But Oma's town used to have other houses in it. And that building behind us, that'll be torn down pretty soon. Probably tomorrow. The Reclamation Squad is working its way up this side of the Atlantic Coast right now. Here,” she said, standing and leading him to a patch of woods to their right.

She led them down a path and then out to a bulge farther down the cliff. There, through a gap in the trees, they could see the river's near shore. A large crane was docked directly below them. People in green work suits were driving machinery back and forth from what looked to be an old boatyard. Old white-hulled boats and a few outbuildings were being broken up and their wreckage taken over to a pile by the shore so that the crane could dump it out in the river.

“See anything interesting about those workers down there?” Skwurl asked.

“They're wearing green and they don't like boats?” said Patrick.

“Say ‘20-X' to your suits,” she said.

“What? Okay, ‘20-X,'” he said, and nearly lost his balance. It was as if he'd been shot out of a cannon—the command had caused his view to telescope so that he felt like he was only twenty yards rather than a quarter mile from the scene.

“They're all wearing those collars,” said Patrick as he got his bearings. The people in the green suits were wearing blue fabric collars like the animals he'd seen in the Pubers' hometown. He realized these must be some of the people Oma had told him about when they'd been in the exercise park.

“Belties!” said Oma.

“Criminals and enemies of the Deacons,” said Skwurl. “Conscripted for manual labor, and especially for the sort they can't have regular citizens knowing about.”

“What'd they do? Were they Commonplacers?” asked Patrick.

“Some were. But many were people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and also any survivors of the Purge.”

Patrick's telescoped vision locked on a woman shoveling debris. Her face was tear-streaked and she seemed to be talking to herself like she was crazy. He hastily aimed his eyes at the horizon and told his suit to turn off the zoom.

“I've never seen one in real life before, only heard the stories,” said Oma. “It's so
sick
, Skwurl.”

“How can it happen? How can they enslave people and get away with it?” asked Patrick.

“Remember,” said Skwurl, “how they told you that fifty years ago a virus killed every person over the age of three but the Seer? Well, when you have a population of a couple billion, even the craziest genetically engineered virus isn't going to get
every
body. So they captured and collared all the adult survivors and turned them into secret slaves.”

“What?” said Patrick.

“Crazy, right?” said Skwurl. “But you know the first thing Rex had mass-produced after the virus particle, and its vectors? MoK collars. Kind of revealing, don't you think?”

“What's it like?” he asked.

“What, living in a world run by a bunch of evil freaks?” replied Skwurl.

“No,” said Patrick. “I just meant wearing one of those collars.”

“Well,” said Skwurl, “you can still think your own thoughts and speak your own words, but basically from the neck down, you're just along for the ride. Depending where you are, certain motions are mandatory, allowed, or prohibited. They set up grids and algorithms so a single operator can oversee up to a hundred belties.”

“Does it hurt like they say it does?” asked Oma.

“Imagine not just having no control of your body, but
somebody else
controlling it.”

Patrick and Oma both nodded.

“Well,” said Skwurl. “My replacement should be here any second and I've got to get back to the train.”

“Where are you going?” asked Oma.

“Back to headquarters,” said Skwurl. “We've got a lot going on.”

“But—” Patrick started to say.

“Don't worry,” she said, already hurrying back up the path. “You're in good hands … or something.”

As they watched her disappear into the woods there was a soft whooshing noise in the sky behind them, and a sudden wind. They quickly turned and saw—coming in just over the treetops—a sight that fairly proved to Patrick that this indeed was all a dream.

 

CHAPTER 53

Twin Tailings

“Where are
they
going?” asked Carly. She'd been standing at the window halfheartedly looking for her cat—it seemed to have disappeared along with her brother. Or maybe a day before or after. She couldn't say for sure. It wasn't like she saw it every single day. But nobody could remember having seen it in at least a day, and they'd looked through the entire house yesterday. It was definitely gone.

Eva, who'd been sullenly eating a bowl of granola at the center counter, looked up from her iPhone and asked her younger sister what she was talking about.

“Lucie, Neil, and the Twins. They're going someplace.”

“What?” asked Eva. Because of all the hubbub about Patrick's having gone missing, their parents had instructed them to stay home—no church or sports yesterday, no school today. She got up from her stool and joined Carly at the window, just catching a glimpse of the four figures turning off the driveway and down the sidewalk.

“Isn't that weird?” asked Carly.

“That's more than weird—it's seven in the morning. I don't think I've ever seen Lucie or Neil up at seven in the morning, umm, ever.”

“What do you think they're doing? And why are they bringing the Twins?”

“Freaky. Let's follow them.”

Carly looked at her older sister, wondering if she'd ever said “let's” do anything to her before. “Sure,” she replied, trying not to seem too excited. “Why not? Should we go tell Mom and Dad?”

“I don't think so,” said Eva. “Let's just leave a note.”

 

CHAPTER 54

The Dreamer's Dodge

“My-Chale!” said Oma, awestruck.

“Hello, Oma Puber,” said the griffin, his voice deep and slow as he tucked his enormous wings along his leonine flanks.

“And you are Patrick,” it said with a kindly wink that somehow reminded Patrick of his school librarian, Mr. Kirschner.

“Yes, hi,” said Patrick, unsuccessfully trying—along with Oma—not to stare too hard at the fantastic creature. Its feathers glinted like they were spun from metal fibers, its beak was massive and intimidating, and its eyes were large and somehow human despite the lack of eyebrows or even regular lids. He was also struck that while its body was definitely that of a lion's, it was that of a lion at least three times bigger than any he'd ever seen at a zoo—the creature was as tall at the shoulder as one of those big Budweiser horses, and doubtless a whole lot heavier.

And yet once again—as with Purse-Phone the giant—Patrick somehow didn't feel any fear of the apparent monster in front of him. Despite the wicked beak, the massive claws, the overall sense he had that it could have plucked a small car from the highway and flown off with it, there was something considerate, respectful, and even shy in its manner.

“Let's get inside the old building,” it said, gesturing back up the path. “The sky-eyes will be back online momentarily.”

Oma and Patrick mutely followed the enormous eagle-lion back to the sand-colored building, entering the debris-strewn lobby through its splayed, broken-hinged front doors.

“I hate to be brusque,” began the griffin, sitting back on its haunches in front of what looked to have been a reception desk, “but we don't have much time. And we have a problem to address.”

“What problem?” asked Patrick.

“The fact that you still think you're dreaming.”

“What makes you say that?” said Patrick.

“Most people, the first time they see a griffin, they get a little worked up. In fact, they tend to
flip out
. But you seem pretty composed. Like you probably have decided that you're
imagining
me.”

Patrick figured there was no point being less than honest about it and nodded.

“These past two days have been implausibly strange, have they not? So strange that you have decided that you can't be awake and that the reason you don't remember any other dream being like this—so detailed, so intricate, so real, so complete—is that the
details
of dreams are forgotten when people wake up from them.”

“Well,” said Patrick, “I mean all of this is pretty, umm”—the word
unrealistic
popped into his head, but he worried it might be unkind to say—“
different
from what I'm used to.”

“But is it
so
different that you can't possibly believe it to be the same reality that you believed in the day before yesterday?

“Sometimes it helps to think of a problem the other way around,” continued the griffin. “One might ask, how can a person who's awake ever prove that what's around them is
not
a dream?”

“Well, that's pretty easy,” said Patrick. “Doesn't it kind of depend on what you know to be usual?”

“Usual?” asked Oma.

“Well, what you're used to. Real life goes on for longer than a dream, right? So you're more used to it. And it fits with what you know when you're awake. Like, until two days ago, I never heard about a place called Ith where everybody's eyes are big and their ears are small and there are giants and griffins and sky-cars and stuff.”

“But why, then,” asked the griffin, “does it seem like it's all part of the same experience? Is it
usual
that while you're in a dream you remember everything from your
waking life
?”

“Well, I mean,” replied Patrick. “I thought about that but maybe it happens all the time, and—like other details—you just forget it when you wake up?”

“That,” said My-Chale, “is called the Dreamer's Dodge: people will forgive their actions, or inactions, because they treat life itself as a dream. It's a practice especially common among people who believe in an afterlife that is more substantial and meaningful than this one.”

“So—I'm sorry—what's your point?” asked Patrick.

“If you
suspect
something is a dream, then you'll care somewhat less about what happens to somebody in it, and how your actions affect them, than you would if you believed it was
real life,
right? You'll maybe give yourself an out. You'll maybe make excuses, you'll maybe feel okay dodging a responsibility you feel to them—and especially so if that responsibility is difficult.”

This made sense to Patrick. If you thought something was just a passing dream, you wouldn't care quite as much than if you didn't.