How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Maybe she was delirious from blood loss, you know? Maybe she hit her head. But all she cared about was the discovery. There are so many of them, she said. I can see her face. I remember because she kept repeating it. I can see her face. She was saying so much—something about writing reminders to herself, about how it’ll be all her fault. Do you know what she might have been talking about?”

WHY DIDN'T YOU RECORD HER ON VIDEO?!??

she just rubbed her pendant, as if it held secrets only she knew. Sometimes I wondered if her fantasy and science fiction magazines, her UFO phase, or how she dragged me to a Bigfoot convention in Sacramento had made her a better scientist than me—maybe it was the reason she saw things in the dirt that no one else could.

The more we know about where our illnesses come from, the better we can prepare.”

watching the last remaining wild caribou migrate. When Dave tells me he has a splitting headache, I tell him to take his own advice and not jump to any conclusions. But I tell him this while standing across the room. When Yulia says she has a stomachache, I tell her to drink tea. We’ll be okay, I say, but I see the fear in her eyes. Dave tests positive for the new virus with both saliva and blood samples. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help Yulia. In the real world, people comfort themselves with ignorance, politics, and faith, but here in the domes only hard numbers matter. She has stopped running, her portrait of the research team left unfinished. We keep telling ourselves we’re going to

Comics let us see a brighter world, forget our troubles, allowed us to dream. And I wanted this for Fitch. He deserved another world.

“So, he’s okay for now?”

“I don’t think he was ever really going to be okay,”

Deep inside the pyramid the group shares more details about their lives, sings songs to keep up morale, reveals things they’ve never told anybody, because somehow not being able to see each other makes it all okay, like confessing to a priest or praying to the night sky.

“You’re special,”

the thing that makes you special is also killing you,

“What do you want?” I ask. I...

Not ...

Pig heart help.

Pig go back. Pig help people.

Pig sure.

Everything was always so goddamn dramatic and perfect in my head.

Are you just going to keep lying to people like you lied to me about Mom getting better?

If I closed my eyes, I could imagine Ayano in the room with me, but the recording always stopped, followed by a digital chime, and when I opened my eyes, I was alone on my knees with a plastic dog running on a lithium battery.

I’ve never been a hugger. It’s just not something men in my family have ever done, but I want to hug my son. I want to feel his heartbeat against my own, his tears on my shoulder. I want to connect to the only real part of my wife that is left.

“This planet is our home,”

“I’m not leaving just because we can.”

“I want humanity to be out there,”

“Of course. You have no idea how much I want that, but that doesn’t mean I want to be out there. Things are getting better here.”

He was dating his only real friend, his coworker and floor mate Val.

OF COURSE HE WAS

My engineer father once told me that marriage and who you fall in love with are largely a matter of chance, chemicals, and how far you’re willing to drive. He said who your kids turn out to be is even more of a crapshoot.

“When you wake up,”

“I’ll be there. And we’ll be home.”

I became an artist because I was terrible with people.

And so, I say keep dreaming. Because if we don’t find a new home, what did any of them die for?

It’s easy to be lost in fear. It brings people together, often for the wrong reasons.”

I could have loved you; I did anyway (and maybe if our lives had been different you could have loved me, too).

“Your mother loves you,”

“And I think she’s forgiven you, even if she’ll never admit it. She wants you, and your family, in our life, even if you’re an ocean away.”

This is what I’ve been doing for most of your life, I said. And one day, not long from now, this is where I’ll go. To observe, guide if needed. I’ll be one of them, little one. I’ll be among their first and their last. But I’ll always be your mother.

Nuri, my poor girl, looked betrayed when I left. The light within her flicked off for a moment when she realized I wasn’t coming back.

“We’re going to be okay,”

“As long as we’re together.”