Page 24 of Middlegame

They’ve lost. They didn’t even know they were playing a game, and still, they’ve lost. They lost a childhood together, they lost the balance they could have provided one another, and now they’re going to lose their lives, all because he doesn’t know how to finish the figures surrounding them, red drying into brown as his sister’s chest rises in shallower and shallower arcs, winding down toward eternity. He can’t keep them on the improbable road. Not alone. Neither of them could ever have made this journey alone.

When she stops breathing, his own heart will follow hers into the dark. He knows that as surely as he’s ever known anything, as surely as he knows the difference between myth and miracle, between legend and lie. It’s almost over.

The gunfire continues outside, and it’s not like it is in the movies, it’s not loud and dramatic. It’s a whisper in a thunderstorm, and that whisper is going to be enough to kill them. Erin’s gun speaks periodically through the din, and either her silencer isn’t as good or she’s just not using one, because he hears every shot she fires.

He hears when her gunshots stop.

This is it, then: this is the end. They’ve lost, it’s over. Erin is dead and Dodger is bleeding to death and he’s never going to reach the Impossible City, and he’s never going home. This is where they stop. He fumbles for his sister, gathers her in his arms, not caring how much damage he does in the process of pulling her as close as she always should have been. It’s not like he can kill her. She’s already dead. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“Dodger. Hey, Dodge. I need you to wake up. I need you to help me stop the bleeding.”

Her eyes stay closed. Only the shallow rise and fall of her chest betrays the fact that she’s still with him.

There’s so much blood.

“Come on, Dodge. Leaving isn’t a competition. You don’t have to get me back like this.” His own injuries aren’t as bad as hers. One bullet to the side of the head, taking out a chunk of his ear. It bled like nobody’s business, but there were no arteries involved; if it weren’t for the fact that he can feel her impending death looming over him like a shadow, he’d expect to recover. He won’t. “You can’t. You can’t go. I just got you back again. Are you listening? You can’t go. I need you.”

Her eyes stay closed. There’s so much blood.

When you can’t win the game, knock over the board. He doesn’t remember who said that. Maybe it was his first girlfriend, Alison, with her equal passions for chess and for picking fights over the smallest things. Maybe it was someone else. It doesn’t matter, because they’ve been working toward this since the beginning. This is the only way. Her chest is barely moving, and there’s so much blood, there’s so much blood, and it doesn’t matter that he knows the words. The words are what’s going to take her away.

“I can’t do this alone. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He leans in until his lips almost touch the curve of her ear, exposed by the short sweep of her blood-soaked hair. He doesn’t lean close enough to get her blood on his face. One of them should die as close to clean as possible.

“Dodger,” he whispers. “Don’t die. This is an order. This is a command. This is an adjuration. Do whatever you have to do, break whatever you have to break, but don’t you die. This is an order. This is—”

This is her eyelids fluttering but not quite finding the strength to open, lashes matted to her cheeks by a gluey mixture of blood and tears.

This is the sound of gunfire going silent outside. Not tapering off; just stopping, like the world has been muted.

This is the world going white.

This is the end.

We got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we

The owl looked at Avery and Zib. Avery and Zib looked at the owl. It was difficult not to notice how long the owl’s talons were, or how sharp its beak was, or how wide and orange its eyes were. Looking directly at them was like trying to have a staring contest with the whole of Halloween.

Privately, Avery guessed that the owl did not give away licorice or candy apples on Halloween night. Dead stoats and stitches were much more likely.

“You are very loud,” said the owl finally. “If you must spend the whole day fighting, could you do it under someone else’s tree?” The owl had a soft and pleasant voice, like a nanny. Zib and Avery blinked in unison, bemused.

“I didn’t know owls could talk,” said Zib.

“Of course owls can talk,” said the owl. “Everything can talk. It’s simply a matter of learning how best to listen.” . . .

—From Over the Woodward Wall, by A. Deborah Baker

Book II

Reset

No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics.

—Bell’s Theorem

The call was coming from inside the house.