The Man Who Ended the World by Gurley Jason

Author:Gurley, Jason [Gurley, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Published: 2013-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

The Box

There's something not quite right about Steven these days. Stacy has been observing him more carefully, treading more softly around him. He is sluggish in the mornings, stays up all night long, takes no pleasure in his video games. He has stopped drinking the juice that Stacy makes for him, and is instead abusing his supply of energy drinks. He'll watch the news lethargically, then erupt at some development or another. When something horrible happens, he cheers, and then mopes about for hours, grumbling about the insignificance of the event.

He doesn't wear any clothes at all now. He hasn't shaved in days. He hasn't visited level two in ages. Stacy continues to cycle the water in the pools, but Steven probably wouldn't even notice if she allowed a film to settle across the surface.

Before Steven disappeared into the bowels of the Earth, he planned dinner with each person he thought he might miss. Dinners were not an unusual way for him to interact with his acquaintances -- for none of them were truly friends. He liked the finite nature of a meal. You eat, you drink, you manage a little talk, you're done. He thought it was the decent thing to do, spending time with these people before he went away and waited for them all to die.

But the meals were uncomfortable to him, so he cancelled the dinners after the third one. He couldn't help but stare at the people who sat across from him, studying their faces, wondering what expressions they might wear when the end came. He felt an obligation to warn them, and yet doing so would undermine his great plan.

It isn't that he actively wants people to die.

It's as if the story of humanity is an enormous novel, and he's somewhere in the slow middle passage. All he wants to do is skip to the end to see what happens. He's not sure he can bear to flicker in and out of existence without seeing the endgame. He must know.

It is all he can think about anymore.

• • •

Stacy reads Steven's communications. There aren't supposed to be any, other than his contact with people who know he is living underground -- people like Tomas the architect, or various other contractors who have signed secrecy agreements. But lately Steven's sending out little message flares to the outside world, and Stacy has been flagging the ones that concern her most.

One in particular changes everything. It's deeply encrypted, and she runs a complex decryption process for nearly fourteen hours before the contents unearth themselves.

The message is comprised of video and audio. The video is of Steven himself, sitting on the hood of a vehicle that Stacy does not recognize. Steven is clothed in an ordinary T-shirt and blue jeans. And combat boots. Stacy has never seen him wearing combat boots.

In the video message, Steven is speaking to an unknown recipient.

I support your cause, he is saying, and while I cannot publicly do so, I can certainly assist you in ways that I think you may find useful.

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