May 11th

It took about two more weeks until Teresa had fully recovered. The night with Wisdom seemed like a distant dream to her now, so she wasn’t sure what exactly had even transpired. The fact that Wisdom kept teasing her by acting as if she had no idea what she was talking about made it worse. For some reason, this filled Teresa with a feeling of deja-vu.

Finally the day came at which she could resume travelling together with the Future. They sat together at the kitchen table having breakfast as Teresa tried gulping down one bite after the other (the Future actually kept putting food on Teresa’s plate as if she wasn’t satisfied with how little she ate).

“Look at this,” Teresa explained between two bites, “this is the number 67 million,” as she drew many zeros into the air with her finger. “On average, we gather 2.5 tears a day,” she added as she painted this number into the air as well. “67 million by 2.5… meaning it’s twenty six million eight hundred thousand days… by 365, so… 73,425.”

That last number she underscored with two lines in the air. “73,425 years. That’s how long it will take us. Now, adding in the rate at which tears evaporate in the conditions of your basement…”

Teresa hesitated. “Well, let’s just assume those tears never evaporate. Otherwise, we’ll be here forever.” She sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing. We have a long road ahead of us. Seems like we’ll travel together for a while.”

“Speaking of!” Wisdom exclaimed, placing a smartphone on the table after having written some messages. The only reason Wisdom had even gotten one was to bother Teresa about showing up to meetings, but now she had started annoying other people with it as well. “I have a date this evening!”

Teresa rolled her eyes. ‘Speaking of’? That had nothing to do with what she just said!

Wisdom looked at the Future as if she was listening to her speak, but then said: “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to tease her. I’m always nice to her, promise! Why should I spend time with someone just to be mean?”

Yes, why?!, wondered Teresa.

“Anyway, I’ll join you guys by then. It’s been such a long time since I’ve talked to her. Do you think she’s doing well?”

Teresa felt out of place. Usually when Wisdom and the Future spoke to each other, at least the conversation made sense based on Wisdom’s side alone. But here, she just didn’t understand a thing!

Disgruntled, she continued giving her best to swallow one bite after the other. It was only when she’d eaten her third bread bun that the Future started clearing away the things on the table.

An hour later, both of them left the house. They walked through town for a while until the Future stopped in front of a multi-storeyed apartment building and looked at the battery of doorbells. Teresa watched the Future’s finger hover over the name tags, until she finally pressed down on one after a bit of hesitation.

At first, nothing happened. Then, a terrible fear crept over Teresa. The Future pressed again, and a few seconds later, the voice of an old woman emerged from the speaker.

“Yes, who’s there?”

A few moments passed. The Future didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched Teresa with her big doe eyes. Teresa was shocked.

“What am I supposed to say, damn it?!” she hissed almost silently while the old woman repeated her inquiry.

“Uhm,” Teresa shouted into the microphone in panic, “I am… I’m a chimney sweeper. I need access to the basement. Would you kindly open up?”

A horrifying moment passed, then Teresa heard the buzzing of the door opener. Before she could even move, her companion already held it open for her.

They went up two floors until the Future halted in front of an apartment door and started looking through her bag. Teresa, again, had a bad misgiving as it dawned on her the two of them were about to break into a home. Indeed, the Future produced a credit card and offered it to her, making a gesture to the door with her head.

“You can’t be serious,” Teresa whispered. “Are you aware that we could be arrested? Look at you! You wouldn’t even be able to run away if you tried!” Teresa didn’t want to mention it directly, but the Future’s body was littered with wounds and bruises, both fresh and old, none of which seemed to be healing. “Also, do you think I know how to open a door using a credit card?! I’ve only ever seen it in movies…”

The Future seemed completely unfazed by anything she had just said, so Teresa snatched the card, mumbled a resigning “Fine, I’ll do it,” and turned towards the door, only to realize that, probably by its owner’s negligence, it hadn’t actually completely fallen shut. In other words, it was open. She looked back at the Future in confusion, only to see a hint of a mischievous smile on her face.

Teresa was bewildered. Had teasing her somehow become an Olympic discipline?

They both sneaked through the entrance and found themselves in a messy two-room apartment. The wardrobe stood wide open and was filled with women's clothing. Directly next to the entrance door stood a small cabinet that the homeowner had placed a bunch of unopened letters on; her name was Rebecca. Teresa tried shaking off her uneasy feeling and instead tried focussing on whatever the Future was doing. Right now, she was going through a closet filled with removal crates and some unused stuff; like a dusty vacuum cleaner, a badminton bat with a broken net and a hard drive.

From the rear part of the closet, the Future produced a smaller red box and opened the lid for a second. Much to her chagrin, Teresa wasn’t able to take a peek inside, as the Future immediately stowed the box away in her bag.

On the outside, for a while, Rebecca just leaned against the entrance door to the apartment complex she lived in, because she had trouble gathering the necessary energy to pull out her keys and go back in. She was tired and exhausted, but finally managed to go in and walk up the stairs to her home. On her way, she passed two women, one of which had black, curly hair and seemed rather distressed. Paying them no mind, she entered her apartment to find what she’d come back here to get. She opened her large closet to look through all the old stuff she almost never needed.

She was looking for a red box with sensitive contents that should never fall into another person’s hands.

It seems I hid it so well even I can’t find it, she thought to herself after going through her stuff for half an hour without finding a trace of that box nor its contents. She sighed. What a shitty day, for real.

But then, her gaze fell upon a small, time-worn booklet stuffed into the corner of a removal crate. She pulled it out and started turning a few pages. It was an old photo album from her childhood; more than 20 years old. Finally she paused when she saw a picture of an old, wrinkly face belonging to a man with a big smile. At the point when that picture was taken, he’d been around 90 years old.

He stood in front of a mound with a few small paths dug through it; a place Rebecca had used as a playground back then. She got goosebumps thinking about those times. Maybe it was time to go back.

Teresa stood in front of a random overgrown mound in the midst of nowhere. Her legs were hurting from the long drive on their bikes, she was socially exhausted, tired, and she didn’t see any point in being here.

“Is there any point in us being here?” she asked the Future, who had long since sat down in the grass and, instead of answering, offered her some vegan cake that Wisdom had baked.

Teresa accepted the peace offer begrudgingly, since lemon cake was her favourite. “What you are doing to me is not okay, you know that?” she complained. “There’ll be a day when all the cake in the world is not enough.”

With these words, she spread out her coat in the shade of a gigantic oak to sit on it. Then she picked out a boring article about some new particle that CERN Collider had recently found that questioned the entirety of the standard model of particle physics, written by one of her ex co-workers, and put on some music.

She spent about an hour reading until she lost motivation, tossed her phone in the grass and laid down in the sun.

Not a single cloud was in the sky that day. It took a while until her eyes had accustomed to that brightness. The longer she stared at it, the more the azure tone that slowly faded into a dark blue filled her with melancholy. A few planes cut through the sky as they left their straight contrails.

There was no moon to be seen, and no stars. And yet, they naturally appeared in Teresa’s mind. And it reminded her of the one thing she’d often longed for, but never really attained: She wanted to be alone. Not just alone, but wholly and irretrievably isolated and detached. She wished so much to be stuck on the moon, or have her own hole in the ground in Marianas Trench. Somewhere she was guaranteed never to meet anyone, no matter what. Or maybe… On some lonely planet on some lonely galaxy in the midst of the gigantic Böotes void, far out in the depths of the universe.

Sometimes when she looked into the sky like this, she couldn’t help but feel that instead of looking up, she was actually looking down. ‘Down’ because she was stuck to a large orb, and below her was this amazing, never ending nothingness. And she’d imagine that at any point, she could just fall off, if gravity decided to stop function for a second.

She sighed. Maybe she should have stepped into her father’s footprints? Last time she’d seen him was during her final school year. He’d departed for a one-year space mission to live on the ISS. After his return, he continued working for a space agency somewhere on the neighbouring mainland. By now, judging from his age, he should be retired, but Teresa knew him well enough to suspect that this wouldn’t have stopped him from continuing his endeavours.

Teresa had never left that island she was born on. Most of her friends from school had. She thought of how long she hadn’t seen Joshua.

But, even if she had become an astronaut, she knew full well that being one, they’d never leave her alone. She would have to report back all day, and the people on the home station would observe her every move. And yet, she felt attracted to that world for some romanticized reason.

At some point, Teresa noticed someone approaching. A car stood a hundred metres back, and a woman at the start of her thirties came out. She was lanky, had a high forehead and smiled at Teresa from afar. Just when she was close enough, she opened her mouth.

“I would have never thought to find other people here. What a coincidence!”

“Yes, coincidence, I’m sure,” snarked Teresa low-voiced and looked at the Future, who had fallen asleep on her picnic blanket with a half eaten piece of bee sting cake in her hand.

“Oh my god, what happened to her?!” the woman shouted immediately, bowing down to her.

“Just leave her be…”

“I think she needs an ambulance.”

“Yeah, I agree. I called one a while ago. They are on their way.”

Rebecca slowly turned to Teresa, not knowing how to react to that sarcasm. “You’re not here to bury the body or anything, right?” she asked and it looked for a moment like she was haunted by a ghost. “Are you responsible for this?”

“We all are responsible for this,” murmured Teresa. “Don’t worry, she’s just sleeping.”

The woman stood there in the sun, squinting. Being asked that question seemed to immediately flush the existence of the Future out of her mind while she thought about how to answer. Based on her clothes and her looks, she reminded Teresa of a lawyer or a banker.

“I feel like I’ve seen you before… Do we know each other?”

“No,” Teresa said immediately. “Anyway, what brings you here?”

“Ah… Nothing, really. I spent a lot of time here when I was a child. My great grandfather drove me here regularly and let me play on that hill.”

“I see,” replied Teresa and wondered as to whether she should wake up the Future. On the other hand, why would she fall asleep if that wasn’t what she’d wanted? But… What if she only fell asleep because she trusted Teresa to wake her up once something happened? She came to the conclusion that she had no way of knowing, and it was probably better not to remind that lawyer-looking girl of the beaten-up looking girl after she was already suspicious…

In the end, she just let her sleep. In fact, she was a bit frustrated, so she went back to her articles to continue reading and escape the social encounter. That encounter didn’t seem to mind her and just kept walking about that place full of memories of her past.

Some time went by. The breeze felt nice on the skin. Faint scent of flowers filled the air, but the pollen pricked a little in the nose. When Teresa’s playlist ended, she took out her earbuds, and that seemed to be taken as an opportunity.

“My name is Rebecca, by the way,” the woman said and held out her hand.

Teresa couldn’t say she was surprised to hear that name. If she had learned one thing from her time with the Future so far, it was that things just happened to magically work out most of the time.

“Teresa,” she murmured and shook her hand a bit reluctantly. After the handshake, Rebecca sat down in the grass in front of her.

“How long have you two known each other?”

“Uhm… Not sure I’d actually really say I know her.”

“What’s your occupation?”

Is this some kind of deposition?, Teresa wondered.

“Is this some kind of deposition?” Teresa then, also, asked out loud.

“Oh god, I’m sorry. I was just curious.”

“It’s fine,” said Teresa. “I’m having a bit of a rough day. Sorry if I’m being blunt.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. My day has been a mess so far, too.”

“Well, to answer your question, I’m a professor with Atlas-University. Teresa Hargrove.” She spoke of this with no pride. More like she was mentioning a decaying fish a house cat had smuggled from the outside onto the living room carpet.

“Oh, seriously? What’s your subject?”

“I teach different things. Mainly in the areas of environment preservation, climate science, and sometimes biology.”

“Oh… what a wide range,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah. Well, unfortunately, these topics are closely related.”

“How so?”

Wasn’t that obvious? Was this girl just trying to keep the conversation alive no matter how? “If you have to ask, you probably don’t want to know,” sighed Teresa. She wasn’t sure how many more signs she was supposed to send about her not wanting to talk about this. Or at all.

Rebecca pressed her lips together and looked down to the grass for a few seconds. Then, she said: “You know, my great grandfather loved this place because it is so far away from everything. And it’s… completely unremarkable. There is only one way leading here, and there is nothing to see. It’s a play that’s not worth visiting. A place not worth the trip.”

“That’s what your great grandfather loved about it?”

“Yes, because that makes the trip feel like a safety wall. You don’t come here to get here.”

“You come here to get away from somewhere else,” closed Teresa.

“Exactly. The reason I tell you this, is because that means it’s safe here. And you seem like you have something to say.”

“I don’t think I have anything to say,” replied Teresa.

“Oh, I think you do. Because ever since I’ve got here, you’ve been rude. You’ve been sarcastic, you’ve spoken to me as if I only knew the half of this. And you don’t know me at all, and ever since I got here, I didn’t do anything that could justifiably make you angry. Oh, but I’m not criticizing you. All I’m saying is, feel free to be completely honest, and say what’s on your mind. If you want, you can tell me whatever you’ve been holding in.”

Teresa had to admit that this woman made a compelling argument, while also being extremely annoying. “Fine. If you truly want to know. I’m sad because the world is ending.”

“Oh?”

“Yep. That’s my big secret. Only it’s not really a secret. People just don’t want to talk about it.”

“It seems a bit excessive, though. I mean, if politicians finally start doing something, we can still stop climate change, right. And even if it happens… It’s not gonna be the end of the world, is it.”

Right. Teresa wondered why she had even tried to say anything.

“Funnily, when people think about how many people will die due to climate change, they often picture themselves in a world with fewer people. The truth is, it will more likely be a world without them in it.”

“So, you are saying we have to stop it.”

Teresa shook her head. “I don’t think we can. It’s exponential growth. It’s capitalism. And we can’t stop that because it’s a self-running system that resists change. It’s not like people aren’t trying, though. It’s just. I’ve tried for so long, telling people about this, learning about this, doing things about it, and it feels like I am slowly being crushed anyway.”

“That must suck.” She paused for a moment. “But, if you stop fighting, if everyone stops and watches it happen, then it’s an automatic loss, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And that’s exactly why I feel so bad about giving up.”

A few moments passed. Teresa decided to change the topic. “Well, now that I have told my secret, time to tell yours. Why did you come here, exactly? It wasn’t for the scenery, right? And you didn’t bother a random stranger into a conversation about an uncomfortable truth when you had nothing to say yourself, I presume.”

Rebecca looked back and bit her own lips again. “Yeah. It’s about my great grandfather. Or… rather, about myself. You know… When I was a teenager, I had an unhealthy obsession with true crime. I engulfed all documentaries about crimes, books about them, stuff like that. I couldn’t satisfy my curiosity about this topic no matter what I did. And it finally led me to ask my great grandfather a question.”

June 3rd, 2002

“Uhm, Pa?” Rebecca asked cautiously. She wanted to make sure not to mess this up. She even brought him to his favourite place in the world for this. He couldn’t drive anymore, so Rebecca had illegally driven the car here. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to drive; she had a license. But she wasn’t yet allowed to drive without a registered adult in the car, and her great-grandfather technically wasn’t on that list.

“You uhm, you used to be a policeman, right? And you were a soldier in the war, too.”

“Yes,” her great grandfather answered with a voice so old it barely had any sound in it. His condition had worsened considerably over the last few years. As sad as that thought made her, Rebecca thought that if she messed up this question now, she might not get another chance. So she braced herself. Took a deep breath. And finally, nervously, asked:

“What does it feel like to kill someone?”

His grey, unfocused eyes darted over her face. He slowly leaned back against the bark of the oak. “You sure you want to know?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I have thick skin. I’m already 16 after all.”

Rebecca could barely contain herself. She watched him attentively as he seemed to think about how to answer.

“For most of them, I don’t even know if I felt anything. It was my job, after all. When someone has a weapon drawn on me, and I on them, the first one to shoot gets to stay alive and go back to their family. If you think about it more than that, you’ll go crazy.”

His job. Do or die. His family. So those three were the guardians to his sanity.

“Most of them?” Rebecca asked. “What about the others?”

He suddenly recoiled a little bit. His hand automatically found his way to his belt, to the place where his weapon would have been, if he still carried one. When his fingers found nothing, he just rested them on his thigh. He looked away from Rebecca, to a random spot at the foot of the mound she used to play on when she was small.

“What others? There were no others.”

When he said that, Rebecca felt shivers down her spine.

April 27th, 2017

She halted her recount, and once a few seconds passed, she stood up, signifying Teresa to do the same. They walked a few steps, now standing exactly besides the Future who was still sleeping. Rebecca tried to say something, but couldn’t, so she first sat down where the mound started to go up, and gulped. Her eyes seemed a bit teary, but she tried her best to keep herself composed. Looking away from Teresa, she continued:

“I loved my great grandfather. He was someone I had always looked up to. Someone I felt I could rely on. When he died, I cried for a long time.”

Now, she seeked Teresa’s eyes, as if asking for approval. “After I had asked him that question, somehow, something had changed in how I perceived him. I felt like I broke something and couldn’t go back. And after he died,” she said, her voice cracking, “I first went through his old things and found a red box containing his revolver. The one he’d had since taking on his job. I called the police and they dug up two skeletons right here where we stand. Both had been shot to death. One belonged to a man they couldn’t identify; he’d been dead for over fifty years. The other one was a more recent death, only about twenty years before them digging her up. It was my great grandmother.”

This gave Teresa cold chills. Not only based on the merits of the story itself, but also because it meant that right now, the Future had that gun in her bag right to their feet.

“I don’t know why he killed them,” Rebecca added after a while. “But I still have his revolver. And sometimes I just sit down looking at it, asking myself how it must have felt when he used it on them.”

Finally, she broke down and started crying. Teresa looked at the Future, who was still sleeping. Slowly, Teresa went down, putting her fingers on Rebecca’s knees to support her, and at the same time, slowly reached into the Future’s bag with her other hand. She fumbled around until she got what she wanted, and slowly pulled it out.

Teresa wasn’t proud of what she was about to do. In fact, it made her feel awful. She looked at Rebecca to find an opening, but that woman was so broken, she was full of openings. She had her eyes closed most of the time, and tried to wipe her tears away as they were watering down her make up. Teresa laid her hand on Rebecca’s hair to distract her by comforting her, then, in the blink of a moment, put the sample tube she found in the Future’s bag on her cheek and caught one of the tears as it fell.

“It’s going to be fine,” she said while putting the stopper on the tube behind her back with one hand. In doing so, she started to feel a bit dizzy.

After Rebecca had calmed down a bit, they talked a little, with Teresa trying to cheer her up. About an hour later, Rebecca drove home.

Right as she had left the scene, Teresa poked the Future’s belly with her foot. “Wake up already. If you leave me alone with something like this again, I’m going to ditch you.”

The girl opened her eyes and rose up with Teresa’s help. “There you go, your trophy,” she said, presenting the tear to her. She thought for a moment, then said: “You know, usually when we do stuff to people, it feels like we are actually helping them, you know? It feels like after meeting us, they’re better off. But today? I don’t know. It just feels to me like we made her cry for nothing. For nothing but that tear. I didn’t like it.”

She sighed and took a look at the spot where the bodies had been buried. “Well, who knows. Maybe talking about it and crying her heart out helped her arrange herself with it. I sure hope so.”

They packed their stuff and went back to their bikes. “If I understood your conversation with Wisdom this morning correctly, that means we are going to meet up with her next, right? To meet her… date?”

Now that she thought about that, Teresa wouldn’t be surprised if that date didn’t turn out to be a date at all. She replayed what Wisdom had said that morning in her head.

They mounted their bicycles and slowly started moving. Were they about to meet someone who knew both Wisdom and the Future? If so, who could that be? It… couldn’t be another member of the Future’s family, right?

When that thought occurred to her, Teresa started pushing the pedals a little harder.

It couldn’t be, right?