Defying Doomsday by Tsana Dolichva & Holly Kench

Author:Tsana Dolichva & Holly Kench [Dolichva, Tsana & Kench, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922101426
Publisher: Twelfth Planet Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Even though you both know better, he asks you out to the theatre and you accept. It’s a production of The Human Comedy, after all. It’s pretty much never produced and you’ve wanted to see this on stage since you were a kid. This is a production that fulfils the promise you heard in the show’s cast album. The audience laughs and applauds at all the right places. Their massed attention keeps the sets and actors solid and opaque. Before, during, and after the show, you are both perfect gentlemen with each other. Even in bed.

Your experiments are going better, you suppose. At least iron cubes now reconstruct as something metallic, if not cubic. The result still kind of looks like breakfast. Latch’s work shows more promise which is why, you tell yourself, you find yourself back in Latch’s lab, caged again in the contraption that, weeks ago, convinced you that you had the body of a spindly teenager too weak to bench even an empty bar.

Latch flicks the switch and you brace. Outlines of ghostly lab benches and computers from the other side of the wall overlay the solid lab benches and computers here.

“How do you feel?” The expression on his face smacks of fear.

“A little weak. A little small.” You hold up a hand to stop him when he reaches to unstrap you from the harness. “But I’ve been more intimidated by you before.”

It’s not a good idea for you two to date each other. Eventually, he’ll become too annoyed at how you constantly misperceive yourself to deal with you. Maybe, one day, his mere existence will cow you so much that the despair will finally get to you. However, he’s sweet and smart and you two have far too much in common.

Besides, the rate of the fading is increasing every day. Unless someone figures out what’s going on, one day, super-perceivers won’t be enough to keep the world in existence. You don’t want to be alone when the world fades away, and you don’t think he does either.

“Latch.” You can’t look at him. “There’s a production of The Golden Apple coming up.”

Again, another lost gem you thought you’d never see in your lifetime. Something about the end of the world makes artistic directors program shows that only diehards can love.

“Really? Where? I saw a concert version once.”

“The Berkshires.”

“Well, we gotta plan a weekend trip or something.”

You were planning to see it anyway. It might as well be with the one other person who will appreciate it.

Slowly, what’s on the other side of the wall gains heft and solidity. The visual contradiction of what’s there overlapping with what’s here becomes a bit much for you and you squeeze your eyes shut. Computers and benches from the other side, though, remain in your gaze. Whatever Latch’s contraption is doing, it doesn’t just spread your attention over an area, but one physically isolated from you. There seems to be a lot of attenuation even over the few feet to the wall, though, given how slowly things are returning.

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