The Last Murder at the End of the World

by Stuart Turton

Streaking away from this moment are dozens of possible futures, each waiting to be conjured into existence by a random event, an idle phrase, a miscommunication, or an overheard conversation.

Over the years, the villagers have done their best to repair the dorms, but there’s only so much that can be done with a building this old. The concrete walls are riddled with cracks and holes; the gray floor tiles are shattered, and the beams supporting the roof are rotted. Mildew permeates the air.

#tylerhouse

You run to the things that frighten you and away from the things you love.”

Their bright sunlit lives are blotted by shadows, and nobody cares what’s concealed in that darkness except her.

reminds me of the omelas story

“The more you look back, the more you miss what’s around you.

“This is wrong,” protests Emory. “We don’t hurt people, not for any reason.” “Of course you’d say that.” Niema smiles faintly, her manner warming. “But it’s my job to make sure those wonderful morals of yours are never tested.”

ok gaslighter

It’s a knot so familiar that none of them notice how tightly it binds them and how impossible it is for them to undo it.

I’ll say this in Clara’s defense: Hui isn’t always easy to love. Her talent shines so brightly it makes everything else seem dull, and that’s a difficult thing not to resent.

Love is simply a matter of what people need and what they lack. It’s two broken things fitting together for a time.

Jack drowned when Clara was twelve, and she didn’t stop crying for a year. Those tears washed something out of her. She’s slightly more detached than she once was, too accepting of death.

Because…they’re always good questions, he admits in his thoughts. Emory puts them under your brain like pebbles, and there’s no rest from them. That’s the reason his daughter has so few friends, he thinks. It’s why people are nervous around her. It’s why he’s nervous around her. There’s so much he doesn’t want to see.

“It seems strange now that we were so ill prepared,” she continues at last. “The human race had been on the precipice for almost a century before the end actually arrived. We’d dug the earth dry of its resources, and climate change was forcing huge population migrations while destroying arable land and living space. In the end, we destroyed our own society before nature could do it for us, but it was a close-run thing.”

“Why were they fighting?” “We could always find a reason,” she replies. “We had different gods or different skin, or the fight had been going on so long we’d forgotten how to stop it. Somebody had something we needed, or we thought they were planning to hurt us. Often, it was as cynical as our leaders believing it would prolong their own power.”

Niema’s an extraordinary scientist, but she suffers the arrogance of genius. Having never encountered a problem she couldn’t overcome, she can’t imagine anything not going her way. Her entire life has been filled with green lights, and she’s convinced it always will be.

It’s an astonishing effort, one of the few things her son has ever done that made Niema truly proud of him.

that's so backhanded

Thea cares only for her work and is oblivious to everything else—to the point of amorality. This was the reason she was able to complete her doctorate when she was fourteen and why Niema felt confident enough to hire somebody who was barely into their teens to work at the world’s most prestigious research laboratory.

FOURTEEN??

“And what’s the alternative?” demands Thea, frustrated. “Keep everybody trapped on this island forever? When the fog first appeared, you told us that our duty was to save as many people as we could and protect them for as long as it took to give them the world back. When did you give up on that mission? When did this fraction of a life become enough?”

this is a valid crashout tbh giving hamilton coming at burr for waiting too much in room where it happens

“Why?” Children always ask this question. They’re more perceptive than adults. His curiosity will dim eventually. Adults are allergic to complication.

“Sometimes I have no idea whether you’re acting on my wishes or I’m being led to yours,” she says darkly. “I have no wishes,” I point out. “You designed me to see through the clumsiness of words and poorly expressed instructions. I act on the intentions beneath. I know what’s in your heart, Niema. I know what you truly want, and I’m going to give it to you.”

Niema doesn’t realize that if her plan is to succeed, I’ll have to treat her like everybody else, concealing information while subtly manipulating her actions. As with every other human, her emotions make her erratic. She can’t be trusted to act logically, even in service of her own goals, which is what I’m for.

jeez abi unreliable narrator sorta??

Sometimes the only way to win a game is to let the pieces think they’re the ones playing it.

Thea spends every night in the past, taking orbitals to a desk job in Singapore or cloning dead pets in a vet’s surgery. She doesn’t care how mundane the experience is. Anything is preferable to being on this island.

this is actually rly sad like she’s been stuck for 90 years

“Bad news hunts in packs, so work quickly. My suspicion is that our misfortunes are only just beginning.”

She didn’t come here to cry. There’ll be plenty of that in the next few weeks. Her grief will be waiting in the dark and quiet. It will hide behind a dozen ordinary things, ambushing her when her thoughts drift. That was how it happened after Jack died and her mother. Five years after she lost her husband, she still has days when she’s reminded of him so powerfully that it knocks the wind out of her.

I’ve always done my best to present myself as a warmer presence than I actually am, a confidante rather than an overseer. That mask no longer serves me, though. If Emory’s to accomplish the tasks ahead of her, she has to understand all the pieces on the board and what purpose they serve.

I should try to comfort him, but there’s no optimal way of handling extreme emotion in humans, which I’ve come to regard as the greatest of evolution’s failures.

There are moments in history when entire empires, whole branches of the future rest precariously on the words of a single person. Usually, they’re not even aware of it. They don’t have time to plan or consider. They simply open their mouths and speak, and the universe takes on a new pattern.

“The worst has already happened,” I say. “The fog’s on its way. If you look at it from a certain angle, that’s actually quite liberating.”

chill abi

That’s what your people are for. Every night after curfew, you go to your second jobs. You maintain the equipment keeping them alive. You clean the dust off the solar panels and repair the wave generators.

THEY'RE SEVERED

“Niema didn’t think in straight lines,” she says eventually. “She solved problems by coming at them from right angles, seeing things we’d never have thought about. Your question shouldn’t be why she did it. It should be ‘What problem was she trying to solve?’”

Purpose is something that must be given, or it will be endlessly sought.

As long as she’s alive, there’s a chance she’ll find a way to destroy the fog and rescue her sister, something nobody else on this planet can do. For the good of everybody, she has to stop the truth from being uncovered. What are a few lives compared to that?

it's bad but practically she isn't wrong

I’ve learned that the only guaranteed defense against grief is not loving at all. Truthfully, I’m surprised more of them don’t consider it. Anybody whose hands occasionally catch fire should probably think about cutting them off.

that's a horrible analogy what

Emory’s the brashest personality in the village, full of noise and movement, like a skipping stone on a flat sea. Seeing her climb inside herself is unsettling.

“How are you capable of thinking that way?” “It’s not hard,” Emory replies, abashed. “Whatever comes naturally, you just do the opposite.”

“What happened to her?” she asks. “Her world burned,” I say. “Her family died, then her friends. She lost too much not to lose herself along the way.” A great wave of pity overcomes Emory. “Hold on to that feeling,” I say. “It will be easy to hate them, but both Thea and Hephaestus have suffered far more than you can ever imagine. Whatever they are today, it wasn’t their choice, and they didn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t care whether I’m human or not. It doesn’t change who I am or what I want. My back itches, same as it did before you told me. My neck aches. I like the sea. I don’t like boiled potatoes. And this morning, I woke up covered in blood, without my best friend.”

aww he's real for that tho seems like he's kinda just given up

Her every thought is of Jack lost in the night. Jack who could be alive. Jack was waiting for her to come and find him. Suddenly, nothing else seems to matter.

like mark w gemma

She never actually saw the fog, though, did she? She saw everybody’s fear as they fled outside, trampling each other to reach safety. That was enough to make the story true. Sometimes the smoke is more useful than the fire.

Some storms follow you. Some storms make sure you’re always in their path.

She’s only ever seen him angry or placid. After one hundred and fifty-two years on this planet, every other emotion has burned away.

“How are you doing that?” asks Clara, watching her grandfather’s technique admiringly. “I rowed Mum around for about an hour yesterday, and my hands are raw.” “You need to pee on them,” he says. “Huh?” “Your hands,” he says. “They get like that if you’ve been rowing for too long. You need to pee on them. They’ll toughen up.” “Urgh, no.” He shrugs. “Maritime life isn’t for everybody.”

BRO THAT'S NASTY WHAT

“Why would you be curious about—” Discovering he doesn’t have the words, Seth makes a chomping motion with his hands.

piranha plants

Niema killed that woman and plenty more over the years, and she laughed with him as he rowed her to do it. He feels like he helped her, like he was complicit. How could he have loved somebody with that much malice in them? How could she let him?

wait this is rly sad actually like he just wanted to mourn his best friend

“She was afraid,” says Seth softly. “Powerful people usually are,” replies Thea. “They have the most to lose.”

“Thea never saw the fog up close, so she doesn’t understand that it wasn’t the most terrifying thing. It was just a cloud, some insects. There was no malevolence in it.” He bangs his chest. “The truly terrifying thing about the fog was how quickly it became a license for every vile thing in the human heart. You tell me, Emory. How could anybody, in good conscience, save a race that had witnessed the brutality of the fog and then decided to one-up it?”

“It wasn’t control my mother wanted,” he says. “It was empathy. She knew that if we let everybody out of Blackheath, the same thing would just happen again. She thought that if Abi had control, she could alter human nature from the inside. No more selfishness or greed or violence. For the first time in history, we’d be one people, acting in harmony for the good of everybody.”

like the pretty procedure in uglies

“I hit my head,” says Thea, confused. “I never got the chance to put my anchor down.” “Well, somebody did,” he says gruffly.

abi

“I’m a villager,” she exclaims. “And after everything I’ve seen from you, I’m proud of that. This island’s in danger, and instead of helping me protect it, you and Hephaestus have spent the last two days lying to me and covering your tracks. I’m sick of the both of you.”

PERIODT

Thea feels a sudden shiver of uncertainty. There’s something strange in Emory’s expression that she’s never seen in a villager before. Her eyes are hard, her glare fierce. Almost predatory. Catalysts and reactions, thinks Thea. For the last few days, Emory’s been submerged in the very worst of humanity, and it’s fundamentally altered her. This isn’t the same person who pleaded with her to investigate Niema’s death. The deference is gone. The fear. The doubt. Thea feels like she’s dealing with a human.