The Great Forgetting (32 page)

“I've got good news and bad news,” the boy said.

“Uh, good news first, please,” said Jack.

“Well, I found him. The guy from Mu. He's alive and he's still a pilot. So … you know, we've got that going for us.”

“So what's the bad news?”

“We've got a little farther to go.”

3
    Scopes stood on the beach and watched the waves deposit globs of crude oil all around him.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Al-Qaeda had destroyed Deepwater Horizon and now the ocean floor was bleeding crude and the waves were poisoning the shore. Oil stocks were tanking. That was bad enough. But Deepwater was also a HAARP relay and now half of Louisiana was getting a weakened forgetting signal. It would be pointless to have the Maestro reset the broadcast again until a new relay was built and that might take months.

These attacks were coming in waves and Scopes could barely keep up. Oklahoma City. Fort Hood. Boston. Terrorist cells, each trying to expose the Great Forgetting. He didn't know for sure, but Scopes thought these terrorists might be the Maestro's pet projects. What new memories was the Maestro sneaking into the code?

Sometimes Scopes wondered if something was wrong with the algorithm itself. Maybe there was a bug in the system. A virus. That would be bad. Scopes needed it to continue long enough for the Wichita brothers to make a perfect mess of things. The Great Forgetting needed to hold together until then.

His phone vibrated loudly.

Scopes answered.

“How bad is it?” It was the eldest brother.

“It's bad,” said Scopes.

“Well. Leave it. I can handle things down there for a couple weeks. I need you elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Malaysia. That group from Franklin Mills just surfaced in Washington State. They bought illegal passports from an asset in Seattle. Then Jack Felter booked a flight to Kuala Lumpur. They left before I could flag their new IDs.”

Damn it.
Cole.
Somehow the kid knew about Zaharie Shah. Probably his father told him. That was unfortunate.

“Why are they flying to Malaysia, Scopes?” the man asked.

“That's where Cole's father relocated a prisoner of war. We cooked his brain, made him forget. But he was from Mu. And the kid can make him remember how to get home.”

“Stop them.”

Scopes nudged a glob of oil, rolling it back down the beach, into the water.

4
    Zaharie was returning from the Pasar Malam on Petaling Street, swinging a plastic bag full of red snapper and artichokes, when he noticed the American boy watching him from across the street. There were Americans in this section of Kuala Lumpur, quite a few. But most were IT types or ESL teachers. This kid was different. Uninitiated. Like his left foot was still firmly set in Manhattan. He blinked at Zaharie. Zaharie smiled and continued on. His car was parked around the corner.

The red snapper was a present for his wife. She hadn't spoken to him since they'd quarreled two nights ago. A stupid argument about fixing the drainage behind their home. She liked the way he prepared snapper. Just olive oil and cracked salt. He'd use the charcoal grill with the mesquite he'd saved. The sun was setting, casting a rose glow on the Petronas Twin Towers in the distance. It would be dark soon. They could eat by candlelight on the patio.

“Excuse me?”

Zaharie stopped. The odd teenage boy was directly behind him now. His dark hair was messy like he liked it that way. A very American look. Something about his demeanor set off alarms in Zaharie's mind, like an abort warning on approach.

“Can I help you?” he asked. “Are you lost?” There was a hostel on Jalan Thambipillay, not far from here. The kid was probably staying there.

“You're Zaharie Ahmad Shah.”

“Yes. Do I know you?”

Suddenly, two men jogged out of the alleyway behind him. One was a thin gentleman with overlarge ears, a normal-enough-looking fellow, but the other man was a giant, a red-bearded beast like a Viking from some myth. They grabbed him and before he could shout for help, they'd pulled him down the alley and around a trash bin that smelled of oily
nasi lemak
.

“What do you want?” asked Zaharie.

The boy pulled a pair of pliers from his jeans pocket. “We want to help you remember,” he said. The Viking pulled Zaharie down to his knees and held him there. The other man kept his head still. The boy stepped forward and then the pliers went into Zaharie's mouth. The tool tasted like gun grease.

Zaharie screamed. But only for a second.

The boy held the pair of pliers before Zaharie's face and in its teeth was a tooth, a nerve still dangling underneath. The pain was numbing, excruciating, but Zaharie stayed quiet. That wasn't a nerve dangling from the bottom, he realized. It was a bit of copper wire and it was attached to a tiny transistor someone had plastered into a crevasse of his tooth.

“What…,” he began.

And then the memories hit him like a tsunami: the dumb birds that lived on the beach outside Peshtigo; the great geodesic dome in the center of the forgotten city; the lonely mountain capped in snow; the herds of purple buffalo moving across the plains of Ende. Mu. Then: the plan, his capture in New York, the interrogation by that Hound, Scopes, and the agent who looked like an older version of this boy before him.

“Do you remember?” the boy asked.

Zaharie nodded. “Yes. I do. Tell me. Has it happened yet?”

“What?”

“The end of the world.”

5
    Sam stood on the back porch of Zaharie's home, leaning against the railing. She watched the jets circle KLIA, Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Malaysia. It was all so alien: those weird towers, like something from a kid's book about the future, the strange smells of the wet markets, the hurried clip of the language. She didn't consider herself ignorant. She managed her own business. Had married a doctor. But when Cole had told them that they must travel to Malaysia she'd realized she had no idea where that even was.

“Same neighborhood as Vietnam,” the Captain had said, as if that should make her feel better.

That was three days ago.

That was another thing that troubled her, the speed at which everything was happening now. Like she'd been thrown from a raft and was being carried along by a current, faster and faster, toward a waterfall. Cole often spoke about gradients. Jack had explained it as an uphill battle, this urge to understand the Great Forgetting. But gradients could be downhill, too, they could be declines. And that's more like what this was. She was trapped inside a car with no brakes, steered by men, careening downhill toward who the hell knows what, in complete darkness.

Jack got passports for himself and Cole in Seattle, off a Russian man he'd found on Craigslist. The Boy Scout, the history teacher, breaking the law again. So quickly he'd set aside long-standing morals. The Russian, when they met him at a Tim Hortons, was just some kid. A nerd. He gave them two new identities. Until they got to Mu, Jack was “Christian Kozel.” Cole was “Luigi Maraldi.”

It worked. Of course it worked. They put the plane tickets on Sam's business card. Coach from Sea-Tac to Kuala Lumpur. Five seats. Three thousand dollars through Priceline. And now here they were, on an alien island, just not the one they were looking for. One last detour.

Sam thought about the night she'd first kissed Jack, three days after the fair, on the shore of Claytor Lake. How she felt safe for the first time. The touch of his hand on her cheek. How the fireflies were like connect-the-dots in the air.

The patio door slid open and Jack came out and handed her a blue beverage, something called
aiskrim
that tasted like lime and milk.

“It's set,” said Jack. “We leave tomorrow morning. Early.”

There was something different about Jack, a hardness she didn't care for. He was becoming as single-minded as Tony ever was. All he could see now was the way to Mu. When he looked at her it was as if he was simply counting her, checking her off his list of responsibilities.

“Fuck you,” she said.

He winced like she'd slapped him. “What'd I do?”

“I just wanted a good life,” she said. “A simple life. That's all I ever wanted. I fucking deserve it, too. What the hell are we doing here, Jack? Why aren't we home in bed? What we should do is use your passport and keep going, to Australia or somewhere. Start over. It doesn't matter if we find Tony. I don't think it matters anymore. We could be safe again. The police will never find us over here.”

He went to her and put his hands on her arms, but she tossed them off.

“The forgettings go all around the world,” he said. “It's not just the United States. What if you wake up tomorrow and don't remember who I am or that we ever met?”

“We're not going to be any happier on Mu, remembering.”

Jack sighed, looked out at the city of blue-and-white light. “All the answers are on that island. Zaharie says there are people there who can help us. It's the only place that's safe anymore. It's the only place the Great Forgetting can't reach.”

She grabbed his shirt, pushed him back, then drew him near and held him close. “This is a crazy fucking plan,” she said.

“It's a crazy fucking world.”

6
    Late that night, Jack went for a walk. His mind was racing, clicking down the list of everything that might go wrong in the next few hours. As crazy as the plan sounded, the risk was minimal. Or at least as low as it would ever be. But Sam's derision eroded his confidence, leaving him anxious and paranoid. Maybe she was right.

Zaharie's home was in that tony section of Shal Alam on the outer rim of Kuala Lumpur, near the golf course. It was a gated community, safe. Jack passed the main gate and took a turn down the running track that led along the Sungai Damansara, a muddy tributary, drainage for the monsoons. It was just after sunset and he could feel the trapped heat of the dirt trail evaporating into the night around him.

“Hello, Jack,” came a high-pitched voice directly behind him.

He whirled on his feet, nearly falling. And there it was. The Hound. Not just a Hound. The big guy. The one they called Scopes. Their leader. A foot away from him. Caught! And so close. Another three hours. That's all he would have needed. He thought of running but saw the revolver in the holster at the Hound's hip and knew that it would get the draw before he'd taken three steps.

“Easy,” said Scopes. “I'm not here to kill you.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

Scopes looked to the river. On the far shore a man was trolling the bottom for carp with a homemade rod and reel. “I thought we could talk.”

“You came all this way just to shoot the breeze?”

The Hound's eyes sparkled under the brim of his Panama hat. “I'm going to let you go to Mu. You and your family. You deserve it. To be happy. To be safe. It's the last happy place on earth, didn't you know? Better than Disneyland. Hell, I'll join you there soon. We'll drink lemonade on the beach and talk about our adventures.”

Jack steeled himself, waited for the inevitable “but…”

“But I want you to stay there. Don't leave Mu. Don't come back.”

Jack looked closely at the Hound. He seemed sincere, earnest. What Jack really sensed was a sadness. A deep, old, stubborn sadness. Weary and tired.

“How would I deserve that happiness if I knew that everyone back home was living in a world run by a couple capitalists who can rewrite our memories with a simple phone call? That's not freedom.”

“You think people want freedom? Everyone is scared. They don't want freedom. They want to forget. They want to forget all the bad, scary things.”

“The Great Forgetting was wrong,” said Jack. “But these new forgettings. Nobody voted for them. Why are they doing it? Do they think they're making the world safer for us by making us forget again?”

Scopes laughed. “They don't care about making the world a better place. It's not that complicated. All they want is money. Money and power. And power comes from money, so really, just money. Just money. Something out there messes with the price of oil, they make people forget. That simple. A storm in New Orleans wipes out a couple refineries? Boom, gone, forgotten. A sex scandal involving subcontractors in Iraq? Pick up the phone, tell the Maestro to delete six billion memories. It's greed, Jack. Simple greed.”

“So why are you helping them?”

“Helping them? I own them. I told them about the Great Forgetting. I gave them the password for the Maestro.”

“I don't understand.”

“It's greed we should have forgotten. Not history. That's what the founders didn't understand. We forgot about all those bad things, but we left greed in the box and that's why it didn't work. Every war, every act of terrorism we've seen since we hit that reset button, it was all based in greed. It'll never stop. The only thing left is to let greed run its course.”

“Run its course?”

Scopes nodded. “I found the two greediest men in the world, two brothers who want to control the world with their oil money. Buying influence. Stealing elections. They sank a hundred million dollars into the Tea Party last year, not because they're patriots but because the Tea Party will do away with all regulation, the only thing keeping greed in check. Then corporations will run the world. They're close. Very close. They control the Supreme Court, Congress. They'll have the White House. It's going to happen. And it will work. For a few years, it'll work brilliantly. They will be rich beyond even their dreams. It'll work right up until their laborers begin to starve to death. When that happens, the workers will finally rise up and murder everyone at the top. It will implode.
Everything
. The world will fall. And the only culture remaining will be the one that never forgot, the culture of Mu. We can rebuild then. We'll have our history back, all of it. Because, Jack, and here's the thing: the only thing that could ever keep our greed in check is the horror of our shared history.”