Reboot

On a normal day, a Tuesday afternoon I think it was, I was lying in that net that hangs under the bowsprit in front of the boat - my favorite spot. If there were waves, the bow would crash into the sea and I’d get close enough to touch the water. The spray cooled me down; stemmed the sizzling for a little while. I could listen to my thoughts there, or share them with dolphins when they happened by. But on that particular day, my ride was interrupted by a sudden rash of excitement. The twins yelled for me to come back up on deck. They yelled all the time, so I saw no reason to hurry, but this time there was a disconcertingly rattling screech in their tone, one that made me stretch my neck and crinkle my eyes to see what was up.

I dried myself off and joined them around the radio. I was about to say something silly, I mean what could be this Important, then I froze as I heard a nervous newscaster haltingly describe disastrous events occurring all over the world. He sounded scratchy, fading in and out as if he were holding a microphone too close to his mouth. Maybe he was alone or limited in other ways. Over the next three days, we hardly budged from that spot; we even slept on makeshift beds nearby as the broadcaster described a series of catastrophes that could lead to only one possible outcome:

“Israel is under attack. World leaders are meeting… There is a strange disease spreading all over the Middle East. Nukes are flying…” -Oh my God! No.- “Iran is gone. Fighting is spilling over. Now India and Pakistan are at it… China just attacked Russia…” What? Why would China attack Russia? No one knows, but apparently as a preventative measure. Russia launches. America waits. Why is America doing nothing? Maybe they’re hoping to ride it out. “China is destroyed. Africa is in turmoil as countries fight for scraps. Russia attacks Africa.” What? They’re looking for a new home maybe? Since taking such a hard hit from the Chinese. “Europe steps in. Russia is against a wall and unloads everything they have on Europe and America. North Korea joins in and destroys South Korea, Japan; their missiles head towards the U.S. The reply is devastating.” For three days we listened to this in stunned silence. Once in a while a disbelieving nervous giggle looked for momentum, but never found footing. Shaking heads, shaking heads.

“NewYork….is…..gone…Paris, London, Tokyo, Moscow….millions, maybe billions of people are gone.” The man wept, his voice cracked.

And then, finally, on the third day:

“God bless us all and good luck”… the radio whimpered.

It went out with a blip and stayed quiet. I jumped on the radio and turned it on and off and on and off until Jacques stopped me. Maybe it was broken? I looked at him, looking for too many answers. He stared back into my tired, desperate eyes with a hopeless look of his own. We hugged. No. the radio worked fine. There was simply no one on the other end.

We sat, numb, for a long time, each of us utterly devastated. Until then, there was a fleeting hope that it might be all some sort of Wellesian bad joke or that it would end on a positive note somehow. Now it was confirmed. The world was dying.

A crushing weight gripped my heart. I clutched at it with both hands. It hurt. It was a physical pain. Breathing was difficult. I looked around as if I could find answers elsewhere; in the waves or in the sails, in the faces of my mates who were all equally dismayed… No words seemed appropriate. No action possible. There was just the lapping sound of the water against the ship, telling time and speed. Jacques vomited over the side. I sat, alone and cried softly. “No, no, no, no, no…” The twins, Frank and Harald, huddled together whispering back and forth, arguing, consoling, arguing. The boat kept sailing, the sun still shone, but our world was gone. How much of it? We didn’t know, but it was a big chunk certainly. My family. My brother, my sister… My God, everyone…

Conflicting feelings pushed me to a dark place. I suppose it was shock, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I was happy I was alive, sad for the dead, yet I felt relieved and guilty because I survived and angry that someone had actually done it. Some asshole had finally pushed the button.

Eventually, Frank sat up. “We will go home. I have to see if my children are alive. Harald followed up with “Yes, Yes, we must go home…”

I was out of it so I said nothing. Jacques eventually came around, sniffling, eyes all red. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand while turning away from the ocean. He was not smiling this time. He would never smile again. “No, we can’t go. Not until we have more information. There is fallout to worry about. The war might not be over.” They started to argue. Maybe it was because that had come from Jacques, and Harald and Frank had no respect for him, but the twins got louder and louder, dug in deeper. I paid no attention to them. I was lost in my thoughts: “Where to go, what to do…”

Finally it was my turn to wake up and I just shook my head. Of course we couldn’t go home, not now. Not until we knew more. The twins would realize this eventually. They’d have to, right? When the twins started grabbing at Jacques and swinging wildly like 10-year-olds trying to fight, I pulled them apart and calmed them all down. It was easy. They didn’t have much fight in them. Everyone just crumpled back down on the deck.

A little while ago we were sailing on the ocean without a care in the world. Now we discussed nuclear fallout.

Frank looked at Harald the way twins look at each other, no words needed, but a whole lot said…and then he looked back at Jacques and me and said we should sleep on it. We were all exhausted; let’s discuss it again in the morning. That seemed reasonable so we retreated. We all wanted to be alone anyway. It was getting dark. I headed to my cabin and crawled into bed where I spent the next few hours cringing through visions of destruction and horror.

It took a long time, but I started to doze off. I was so tired. Just then, though, in the middle of the night, dragging me out of that comfortable cloudy state that comes just before heavy sleep, I heard a scream and a splash. I thought it was a dream of course. My nights would be full of horrors from now on. I blinked hard. Shook off the sleep, sat up and paid attention. But I heard nothing and relaxed again. I was about to go back to it when curiosity got the best of me. I grunted loudly, threw off my cover and wrenched myself out of bed.

I walked out on deck to find Frank and Harald looking overboard.

NO! That scream; it had sounded familiar. That weird look they’d shared was now clear to me. Jacques. He’d survived the third world war only to be tossed overboard by the twins. I screamed “WHYYYY!” And rushed to look for my friend. I put my hands on the railing and frantically yelled his name. I knew it was ridiculous. Nothing could possibly be done, but I couldn’t help it.

I imagined his face looking up as he sank. He wouldn’t look down would he? He’d look up, alone and scared, toward the last light, until it blinked out in the cold depths. Until he blinked out. How deep would he go before…?

I looked up at them, a deep sadness threatening to end me, blinking off the tears that came tightly. Frank and Harald looked at each other with that same stereo quiet understanding. And then they came for me.

“We’re going home, we’re… we’re going home and that’s it,” said Frank in a tone I hadn’t heard from him before, shaky and mean. He was a different person.

I shook my head. “No!…no….of course you can’t. Frank…. Harald; come on, think about this,” I screamed. “It’s suicide.” Through my anger, I tried again to let them see reason, but I was wasting my time.

The moon was full and glaring in a cloudless sky. Combined with its own reflection on the water, it drowned out the stars and made everything else very bright and clear. I could see every detail of the expressions on the twins’ faces. The dancing shadows from the moving lanterns on the ship only made them seem more dangerous. Resolute determination. Absence of doubt. Insanity. The news of the destruction had been too much for them. I steadied myself.

They separated, attacked me from both sides; instinctual, but untrained, uncontrolled, sloppy, slow. I dodged, tried to stay away from them, keep them in front of me, my hands away from my body, palms up, trying to calm things down. They weren’t very agile, and they didn’t get me by surprise, as they must surely have done with Jacques. I imagined he must have been staring out at the waves in the dark; sad, unable to sleep. They’d just grabbed him from behind. If I hadn’t heard the scream, they would’ve come for me in my sleep and I’d be dead too. Jacques’ last act had saved my life. A debt I could never repay.

One of them hit me with a gas lamp. He took a big awkward swing, I saw it, or at least the idea of it, but I was in a state of elsewhere and my reaction time was affected. A glancing blow, didn’t hurt me too much, but it woke me up and pissed me off. I stopped running and stood my ground, angry now, seething. Jacques was worth a thousand of these idiots and he’d been erased for no reason. Frank took another swing at me with the lamp. It hit me full on the shoulder, but I didn’t feel it, I didn’t even move. He swung again, but I’d already started jumping forward, inside the swinging lamp’s arc. I hit him in the stomach with my right elbow. He oooofed and fell on his ass, where he sat moaning while rubbing his belly. He looked up and behind me, inadvertently telling me that his brother was lunging for me. I quickly turned around and grabbed his wrist as it whizzed past my head, twisted it, which gave me complete control over him, I turned on myself, exhaled with a soft sigh and let him follow through right over the side. Let the attacker put himself in an off balance situation and use his momentum. Basic stuff. He screamed like an angry goose until he hit the water.

Nasal, I thought.

Harald forgot I was there for a second, his turn to scream “Noooooo”, and he ran to the railing, grabbed it with both chubby hands and leaned over to see how he could help his brother. He turned back towards me with a helpless look, hands open in a ridiculous supplicating gesture, thought about asking me for help, then he remembered that I was the one who tossed his brother over. He blinked once or twice over wide open wet eyes, something clicked in his brain, and then he attacked with fury, all limbs wildly splayed in every direction. He went for my neck with both hands. I poked him in the eye with my index finger and as he screamed in pain, I grabbed him by the neck and the crotch, lifted him up in the air with a burst of adrenaline-fueled frustration, I exhaled a loud liberating “AAAH,” and I sent him screaming after his brother. I didn’t expend any effort to lift him in the air, it just happened. I yelled my frustration at the sky.

I had no choice. I had no choice. I had no choice.

They’d both snapped. Right? As I stood there, shaking, looking from one place to the next, I couldn’t make any sense of anything. Had this really just happened? Going back to any mainland before we had more information was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, right? I needed to know I had been right. I stood in the soft glow of the coming dawn pulling in short breaths in quick succession, in shock. I couldn’t think. I just stared at the waves and blinked the sweat and tears out of my eyes. I was alone on a big boat I couldn’t pilot. The world was gone. Everyone I knew was gone.

Once the adrenaline rush passed, I fell asleep, right there on the deck in my bottom jammies.

I woke up just before the sun, broken, lonely and under such a weight of debilitating sadness that even the slightest movement was impossibly trying. I was anchored to that deck.

Desolation.

I’d just lost my last friend and killed two people, and I may be the last person left on Earth.

I just lay there and waited for the sun.