is that he wants to write a holy book, yet does not believe in the possibility of holiness. And if there is no possibility of holiness, why bother writing at all?
The answer to his question strikes him as suddenly as an accident.
He must write to save himself.
A YEAR BEFORE THE CATACLYSMIC, FIERY, KIND OF CLICHÉD END OF ALL THINGS (OR NOT)
THE END TIME IS YOUR TIME
Alice has always been trying to save me.
The bus to Westing was full of newsies from recovery centers all across Virginia.
I had a window seat, and Alice had the aisle seat right beside me. I was pretending to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to exchange pleasantries, be pleasant.
The ride was long and bumpy, the outside world a thin windowpane away, which I would occasionally peek at, but there were soldiers on our bus, soldiers with guns. One of the soldiers sat across the aisle from Alice and me. He was in his early twenties, with faint blond wisps for a mustache and a rifle in his hands.
Alice reached out a hand. “Hi,” she said, with a wide smile. “I’m Alice Witaker. I’m very pleased to meet you. What’s your name?”
He stared at her like she had three heads.
“Not supposed to speak to you,” he said finally. “You’re cute and all, but I got my orders, and it’s nothing personal or anything.”
“Oh,” Alice said, her hand wavering in the air. “Oh, okay. I understand. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“It’s nothing personal or anything,” the soldier said, and turned away.
Alice looked crestfallen, so I pretended to wake up from my pretend sleep. I offered her my hand.
“Lucky for you I have no such orders,” I said. “I’m Noah Falls.”
Alice took my hand. “How was your nap, Noah Falls?” she asked, the hint of a reproach in her voice.
“It involved lots of sheep, Alice Witaker,” I said.
“Are your dreams often farm-themed, Noah Falls?”
“Aren’t yours?”
She cracked a smile.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.
It was thanks to Alice that, soon after I arrived at Westing, I learned the world was going to end in a year’s time. She dragged me to Bullsworth 112, where I sat in a circle of desks and listened to Morgan, president of the Believers, tell us about the comet Apep, her eyes wide and distant.
“—a mile wide,” she was saying, “traveling thirty thousand miles per hour. It’ll release as much energy as a one-million-megaton bomb.”
She didn’t mention the AwayWeKnow science articles in which NASA scientists put the odds of impact at one in ten thousand.
She said instead, that we shouldn’t trust what we read on AwayWeKnow. After all, if kids knew the truth, they’d panic. Only two things can stand in the way of panic—belief, or ignorance.
“These are our last days. So what do we do? We live our lives as if the world depends on our actions. We be better people. We manifest a better reality. This is our test, our trial.”
I could’ve filled in the rest for her. These last days are our tribulation, our means of lending our passing some semblance of meaning, our moment of self-definition in the light of the fires of Armageddon or whatever.
The fact that there was a chance the whole world, everything anyone ever did, might end so stupidly—not a good chance, but still a chance—was all the proof I needed that there were no better realities to manifest, no great trials and tribulations. You just waited and waited to run into some shitty accident of nature. A rock, a germ, a falling tree. An apocalyptic asteroid that would destroy all life as you know it. A banana peel.
I tugged at the sleeve of Alice’s dress.
She ignored me.
I continued tugging.
Finally, she sighed to let me know that I had prevailed, as I had known I would.
“Do you think,” I whispered, “that our esteemed president has considered that the odds of The Great Cliché hitting the earth are about the same as winning big in Vegas and blowing it on—ha—blow, hookers, and penile enhancement? I believe in believing in nothing, but if you must believe in something, why not Vegas?”
“‘The Great Cliché’,” she echoed. “Oh my God, you can’t even take the end of the world seriously.”
“I am very serious about not taking anything seriously,” I confirmed.
She studied me for a moment, with a doctor’s unnerving intensity, before settling on a diagnosis: “You,” she said, “are a troll.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Girl picked up some Internet lingo, courtesy of AwayWeGo,