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They tell you the drugs will take effect before you realize. The anesthesiologist, a white woman with a stiff, professional smile, offers up a canned anecdote about a patient that swore they had cheated him out of his surgery, that there is simply no way the operation could have occurred between blinks. She says it like it’s supposed to be funny. 

You don’t see the humor, and you can’t bring yourself to pretend. Anxiety has wrung you out so completely, all you can do is sit there, stone faced, as she sets up the machines and chemicals that will reach inside your body and brain and lock you into senseless slumber. It’s fine. It’s all fine. A small correction on a small error, the sort of thing this hospital does dozens of times a year. 

He had gone up and down that ladder dozens of times before, too. 

You bite your cheek. The sensation is not nearly distracting enough anymore. It’s too common, almost the default. There’s a groove in the flesh, ready for your teeth. This is preventative. Not going in for surgery would be the bigger risk. You and your doctor have been over this many, many times. You are not going to die. You are not going to die. 

A tone. It means nothing to you, a random noise in a setting full of them, but the anesthesiologist sits up and takes notice. “Just a moment, dear,” she says, too familiar. Everyone here is too familiar. What happened to all the stories about mechanical, unfeeling doctors that looked at patients like machines in need of repair? You’ve been cheated. 

The anesthesiologist goes to a clunky phone on the wall, picks up the receiver. She rattles off some combination of sounds, nothing worth devoting attention to. She frowns, sighs, and says “Apologies, I need to run off for a moment. I’ll be right back, then we’ll get you all set up!” She stands there, waiting for your response. You give her the barest nod, and she takes it. The door rushes open, she rushes through, and it closes with hardly a sound. One of those fancy cushioning hinges. Makes sense, for a hospital. No one wants to be woken up by constantly slamming doors. 

A clock ticks on the wall. You sit in your chair, stewing in the toxic sludge that’s left behind once your anxiety has boiled away all the water in your chest. No thoughts come. You simply exist. 

Later, you will be asked to describe what took you. Later, you will have an answer for them. Signifiers provided for you click will into place, give you tools to hook into it, concepts to nail it down, peel it open, render it clinical and known and dead. 

Now, you know none of those things. Now, you are alone, with only yourself. Nothing in your world has prepared you for what you are about to see. 

At first, you think it’s just the anesthesiologist, returned from whatever errand called her away. But no, she wasn’t wearing a white coat. Your doctor? Or a doctor. Your doctor, Dr. Gillian, works at a local practice. He referred you to this hospital after routine tests came back with the wrong numbers. A whirlwind of appointments later, here you are. Waiting to go under the knife of a practical stranger. 

But no, that isn’t right either. It isn’t just the coat that’s white. Everything else is white too. The pants, the shoes, the socks. The longer you look, the less it looks like white and the more it looks like an absence, a hole in the world, a coloring book not yet scribbled over. 

You are not going to die. 

The thing turns. It looks at you. It smiles. 

You do not die. 

You do not die. 

You do not die. 

You do not die. 

You do not die for a very, very long time. 

And then, out of nowhere, you’re sitting in a chair again. You’re waiting for the doctor to arrive. The only hint you get that this isn’t right is the brief sense of missing a step on a stair, or walking into a room and forgetting what you came in it for in the first place. But it passes. You’re waiting to be prepped for routine surgery. Your son is with your mother-in-law, because—

Because your husband is here with you, and it just made things easier. Yes, yes that’s right. He’s alive and well. Why wouldn’t he be? It only makes sense. And if you can’t recall his name or face right now, that’s fine too. It’s only nerves. Only anxiety over the surgery. He’s waiting just outside for you now. Pacing a rut in the cheap carpet, if you know him at all. He’s an anxious person, worries about everything. You remember that, before you don’t. The specifics drain away, lost between your fingers. All that matters is that here and now, you’re being prepped for routine surgery. 

The doctors sweep in. They have grave, serious faces. They wear them over their surgical masks, blood leaking from the badly hemmed edges. Voices muffled by cloth and skin are hard to make out, and their jargon flies over your head. You try to answer their questions, but they quickly give up and start talking amongst themselves. It’s fine. Your chart should tell them everything. You only need to do what they tell you. It’s only routine surgery. 

Complications, one hisses in a shuddering breath. Its gray tongue pokes against the surgical mask, parting the lips of the serious, grave face. Difficulties. 

No choice, replies another, in a similar but differently horrible rasp. Proceed. 

The mass surrounds you, and you wait to be taken to another room, one with big overhead lights, surgeons in proper scrubs, and a tray of shining metal edges. But they push you down flat. The chair reclines beneath you like a skull being flattened, ugly and screaming and with sudden cracks and collapses. Dozens of hands open up your hospital gown, exposing you to the cold air. 

The urgency hits you. A routine surgery has become an emergency. The doctors have to act fast, or else you will die. But surely they will. Surely all these hands and grave, serious faces they have crafted so carefully will be able to save you? Frantically, desperately, you search the eyes of the doctors for reassurance, or confidence, or even smug arrogance. You find none. Not even grim determination. Only grim acceptance. 

You are going to die. It is inescapable. You will die here, under these doctor’s hands, as they try so hard, so valiantly, to save you. They will crack open your body, reach inside, peel and snip and cut and burn, all while you lay there and scream.

You will die. The only question is how long it will take.  

You are sitting in a chair again. 

Except, no. You aren’t. You are very briefly positioned as though sitting in a chair, without the chair. Like a cartoon where the chair has been swiped out from under you and you haven’t yet noticed, your body still contouring to its curves. Unlike a cartoon, gravity doesn’t require your attention or understanding to work. The fall is short, but painful, landing exactly wrong and sending a bolt of pain from your ass to the crown of your head. The first thing you process after it all is cold tile against your legs. 

Inhale. Lungs expand, forcing open your ribs— no. They’re all closed again. Fingers rub against a scratchy hospital gown. Ribs rise and fall, they do not gape, jaws open wide for doctors to do what they must to try and fail to save you. Doctors with faces sewn on, operating on you here, in this dingy little room, with no tools but their own twisted hands, and—

-and your dead husband waiting for you in the other room. 

You’ve never been one to remember your dreams. They always slip away, like as soon as you sit up they drain out of your skull through your spine. Details get fuzzy, the shapes fade into nonsense, and by the time you’ve gotten out of bed they’re completely gone. Part of you expects that to happen now. Surely the feeling of rusty metal cutting through your heaving lungs will dissipate like mist in sunlight, insubstantial and unreal. 

You’re still waiting when a man, who you had not even realized was in the room with you, inhales and starts to scream. 

Things are complicated for a while. 

It’s a lovely euphemism, complicated. It conveys everything and nothing. Baking from scratch is complicated. Taxes are complicated. Family is complicated. Rebuilding the world after every single person has been through their most intimate and visceral personal hell for an eternity and no time at all is complicated. 

The staff get things under control, for the most part. A lot of people used to acting in crisis situations, compartmentalizing their own pain to get a handle on everyone else’s, manage to keep everyone else from rioting or fleeing in a mass. A nurse even thinks to get you up from off the floor, after a while. He puts you on a bed, and then runs off. You hear ranting coming from down the hall, punctuated by shrieks to “Get away, get away from me!” 

A doctor, not wearing a mask, or any face but her own, comes by later. Her eyes are sunken, her expression is blank, and she doesn’t ask for your name. She only takes your arm and looks at your band. She stares at it for a long minute. 

“You aren’t in the right bed,” she says. 

“Oh.”

Neither of you move. Your arm is still awkwardly in her grip. She twists it around, scanning the information on it. That’s what you assume, until she frowns.

“This isn’t-”

She stops. Her thumb rubs the fresh plastic, bright and shiny. 

“Okay. Sure,” the doctor says, mostly to herself. She’s younger than you. The exhaustion hid it for a while, but it’s obvious. A young, inexperienced doctor. Dealing with… whatever just happened. Your arm is still limp in her hand. Waiting for what the doctor will do to you next. “Stay. Don’t move. We’ll… figure this out too.”

She leaves without another word. 

The world ended. Then it was put back. 

These events happened 24 years after you were declared legally dead. 

The hospital lets you stay. They have beds to spare, even if they don’t have the people to take care of them. It would be a bigger concern, if half the patients hadn’t immediately left. It turns out, a lot of people in hospitals during the Change had nightmares about hospitals. You’re in good company, in that sense. You sleep there, and eat their food, and on your chart they write that you’re experiencing acute shock and getting consultation for a routine surgery. It’s nonsense, but no one is really checking those sorts of things.

Luckily for you, unluckily for many others, your situation is not unique. All over England, probably all over the world, people declared dead or missing are popping up alive and well. You watch reports about it on the TV up in the corner of your room. Those are the same, even if the screen is much bigger, flatter, brighter, and sharper. There’s apparently a website. You vaguely know what that is, but you sigh in relief when they also display a phone number to call. Phones are different, very different, but they function mostly the same. Input the numbers and wait. Hit more numbers when they tell you to. It isn’t that difficult. 

You’re put in contact with a social worker. He’s friendly enough, fraying at the seams like every other person you’ve seen or talked to since you’ve returned to the world. 

The next month is a blur. You’re shuffled out of the hospitals into a hotel, and then a shelter, then a different, worse hotel, and then finally a place in Council housing, given to you free of charge for four months while you get back on your feet and re-establish yourself. 

It strikes you as almost comically generous, but when you watch the news you see the haunted looks on the faces of the politicians, and the dazed, blinking faces standing by their shoulders, you can make more sense of it. Besides, the generosity of the government only goes for four months. Once those are up, you’re on your own. You have to start  paying rent here, or find another place to take you. 

Building a life from scratch, tracking down all your missing paperwork, those are distracting. Being shuttled around from place to place is also distracting. Almost enough to distract you from why you’re dependent on the government’s good will in the first place. Almost, but not quite. 

Your mother in law being dead isn’t a surprise. She was well into her 70s when you went to the hospital, and the idea of her making it another 24 years, while not inconceivable, was not something you honestly expected. The surprise was Jonathan. 

Not everyone was returned by the Change. While the numbers are hard to fully determine, there are people who vanished into that world of Fear and were returned as dead bodies or not returned at all. So far as your social worker can tell, Jonathan Sims was one of those unfortunate few. He was there, the Change happened, and then he was gone. 

You still remember how small and slight he felt in your arms, how hard you squeezed him. He didn’t believe you when you said everything was fine, that you were going to come home in a few days, perfectly alright and just needing some rest. His eyes were sharp, and he made you promise to come home. You promised. That house he was calling home is remodeled, now. Owned by some family of strangers. You walked by in a moment of weakness and kept walking in a moment of strength. No one is waiting for you there. 

Jonathan Sims didn’t have much to his name, but what he had you get. A bank account with more money than you would have expected, and a storage unit. They hand you that and the key. When you ask if that’s all, they say that’s all they had on file. It seems like a lot of money to have along with nothing else, but your sense of what a pound is worth is twenty five years out of date. Prices would shock you, if you had any shock at all to give. 

The money and the flat means that you don’t have any driving pressure to find a job, and without it, you spend two weeks doing nothing but blankly staring at the same BBC broadcast you watched for weeks in the hospital. You call in deliveries, eat, and watch TV. 

Once the two weeks are over, you take a train up to London. That’s where the storage unit is. 

Going to London isn’t new. You’ve been there before, for various trips and visits. You have— had friends that moved there, that you worked hard to stay in contact with when you all started having kids and settling down, or very deliberately not doing those things. Your social worker suggested getting in touch, reconnecting with them, but you deflected. You didn’t want to be a ghost from the past, showing up and rudely haunting the present. Who wants to deal with a friend showing up twenty four years late? You would hate it. 

London’s changed, while you were gone. It’s shinier, faker, and looks even more expensive than it used to be. Emptier too, though you suspect that’s more to do with the Change than anything else. The trains are basically the same, and you manage to find the address with minimal fuss. 

The kid that escorts you to the unit keeps glancing up at the sky. You wonder if he’s worried about it, or checking to see if it's still there. The sky was full of eyes, apparently. You didn’t really get much of a chance to look out the window while the doctors were working on you. It’s an idle thought, easy to touch. It doesn’t scare you, or upset you. It happened, and now it’s not happening anymore. It’s over. 

The storage unit is just like all the others, and the kid leaves you to it. You unlock it, and slide the door open. 

At first, you think it’s empty. The floor is a square of blank concrete, and Jon only kept this as a place to store things that he might have one day. A complete dead end. But, as the door moves upwards, the light finally hits a small huddled mass of furniture and boxes at the very back of the unit. What strikes you first and hardest is the couch. You recognize that couch. It’s your mother-in-law’s. Even covered in sheet plastic and dust you would know it anywhere, the awful floral pattern and the chip taken out of one of the armrests. As your eyes adjust other familiar silhouettes hit you, a chest of drawers with that ugly paint job, the bookshelf with the subtle wave carvings that would have been perfectly nice, if it had matched with anything else. 

She must have left everything to Jon, and he kept what he used and sold the rest. That might explain the extra money. The daylight doesn’t reach far enough to really see well, so you fumble with your keychain light. One twist and a small circle of pale light carves a hole in the shadows. The boxes have labels on them, crawled messily on in sharpie. Is that Jon’s handwriting? You don’t know.

The contents of the boxes are completely ordinary. Clothes, mostly professional with the occasional comfortable t-shirt and pair of sweatpants. The next box is nothing but books. You read every title, but instead of painting a picture the completely eclectic selection only leaves you more confused. There’s no running thread, no common interest; it feels like a shelf at a secondhand shop more than a person’s personal collection. Maybe that’s exactly it, that Jon was the sort of man who bought a random assortment of books just because he had an empty shelf. You set that box aside for now. It’s worth looking at more when you aren’t sitting on a concrete floor in a storage unit. 

Nothing else gives you much insight. There are dishes, bedsheets, random odds and ends; a box of shells and stones stands out to you. Jon must have dragged them all the way to London from the beach near Bournemouth. Maybe he was the nostalgic sort. He clung to home, the place he grew up, keeping his Grandmother’s furniture and the sea glass he picked up as a child.

It certainly would explain the tape recorder. 

When you first picked it up, first realized what it was, your heart had frozen in your chest. Frozen like a startled rabbit, stuck between hope and dread so completely all that’s left is stillness. When you pick up the bit of plastic, grip tight and fingers trembling, only to realize the recorder is empty, both flee and leave you with only relief. There’s nothing inside. Your heart cautiously moves again, beating like normal. Your doctor would lecture you on unnecessary stress, needlessly aggravating your condition. Unfortunately, your doctor is retired now, and you haven’t found the time to replace him. 

The tape recorder is familiar and clunky in your hands. Technology is all sleek and shiny now, everything from phones to televisions all the same flat glassy plastic rectangles. The tape recorder actually feels sturdy, like you could drop it and it wouldn’t shatter into a thousand pieces. Your fingers run over it, eyes staring into the empty place the cassette should go. It’s only as you’re fiddling with it that you notice the sticker on the back. 

The label reads PROPERTY OF T.M.I. 

That means nothing to you, and you don’t give it any thought. 

You only realize you put it in your shoulder bag when it clunks onto your kitchen table, hours and hours later. 

That trip to London takes almost all of your energy, so you spend another week doing nothing but eating and watching the BBC. You do add some cleaning to the rotation this time, at least. The future has improved vacuums, actually. You have no notes on your new vacuum.  Laundry seems about the same, even if the machines are shinier than you remember. 

Your social worker calls you. He says that he has good news; he’s found a support group for people like you, displaced and returned by the Change. He sounds so excited, offering to drive over personally to help you set it up. That’s when you realize that this will be some sort of computer driven thing, a video conference call over the internet. 

It sounds exhausting. Technology exhausts you, talking exhausts you, playing along exhausts you. 

You politely tell your social worker that you appreciate it, but you aren’t interested in that sort of thing. He says it’s no trouble at all, he’ll be over on Saturday, he’ll set the whole thing up, and before you can get a word in edgewise he’s talking about another call he has to make and saying harried goodbyes. The line clicks. The dial tone plays.

It says a lot, you think, that you’re the sort of person who considers calling back to tell him that you actually, seriously don’t want this, but ultimately can’t be bothered. 

Your days are so empty now. Before, you had no end of things to do. Mothers are very busy, and you didn’t have the sort of life where you could afford to stay at home all day with your son. Even before your husband died. Maybe that’s something you can do. You could go visit his grave. You haven’t done that in a while. Weeks, or decades, depending on how you count. 

The notion bobs up and down in your mind, but no motivation bites. You make some soup instead. It’s involving, and makes the flat smell better, and it’ll be something to offer your social worker when he shows up. You have tea and biscuits, but it never hurts to have options. 

Your social worker blows in and out like a hurricane. You don’t even get the chance to offer him tea, let alone soup. His explanations tumble over you like a waterfall, but he left behind a large print, very simplified sheet of printed instructions. It looks like it was made for the elderly. You’re not even 40 yet. 

The first meeting is… it is. There are introductions, ice breakers, and technical difficulties. You quietly revel in the fact that you managed to get things set up with minimal fuss on your own, and that you don’t have an extended back and forth with the proctor about how to unmute yourself or set up your microphone. You attribute that mostly to luck, and yet you can’t help but be annoyed with everyone else who can’t seem to pull off the same trick. 

“When did everyone get into video calls?” One man gripes. “Why add a camera into it? It’s just another way things can go wrong.”

“It helps being able to see each other! Makes for a more open and encouraging environment.” 

The man snorts. The sound is deeply unpleasant transmitted over the internet. “Yeah, sure. That’s what we all need. More seeing.”

You can’t help it. You laugh. You’re not the only one, but you aren’t in the majority. 

“Yes, well. It seems like we’re all here now, yes? Everyone up and running? Cameras and microphones all working?”

A dull chorus of yeses. The squares on your screen all light up green at the edges. 

“Excellent! Now, I believe Jesse was just telling us about himself?”

And it goes on. The man who complained isn’t Jesse. Judging by his little box on the screen, his name is Blake. Just Blake. Your first and last name are up onscreen, for all to see. If you had known that you could have just gone by your first name, you absolutely would have done so. 

“Excuse me,” you blurt out, after a game of two truths and a lie has finally, after an awkward eternity, come to a close. 

“Yes? Kareena?”

“Aren’t we here to discuss what happened to us?”

“Of course we are,” the proctor says, voice soothing. “We’re just breaking the ice a bit first.” She must see something in your face, because she quickly adds. “I’d be happy to stay on and talk to you if you have any questions for me, but right now we’re just getting to know each other! We’ll get into the heavier stuff later. No need to rush.”

“Yeah,” Blake adds, a sardonic edge to his voice. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

This time, no one laughs. 

Despite your misgivings, the proctor does offer up something actually useful. The group itinerary for the next meeting involves some basic tech literacy courses, and the one after that a brief and wide scope overview of current events, starting from whenever the person who was taken longest vanished from the world. It could be you. The proctor isn’t saying, because that information isn’t hers to share. It’s barely enough to get you to drag yourself to the computer when the day rolls around, but barely enough is still enough. You want those practical things. You want to have something to focus on. 

You don’t go to the cemetery. You don’t call the hospital back. They’ve left three messages now. That feels a little aggressive. Maybe your social worker is in contact with them. Or maybe it’s about bills you haven’t paid. That seems more likely. 

The meetings are helpful. You learn how to navigate google and find news sites, with a whole slide devoted to telling the difference between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources. World history is shocking, disappointing, and encouraging by turns, though that encouraging bit might be the proctor going out of her way to find some good news from the last forty years to share. 

(You weren’t missing for the longest. That fact sits in your chest for the rest of the day.)

It isn’t until the fifth meeting that there’s discussion about how it feels to be displaced. Not what happened in the past, before the Change or during it, but the reality of being in the now. How they’ve been adapting, what they’ve been doing, how it has made them feel. 

“Pissed the fuck off,” Blake says. 

A chorus of laughs, gasps, and agreeing noises. Blake tends to get the most reactions out of everyone. 

“Understandable,” the proctor says. “Would you like to elaborate on that?”

“I mean… what’s there to elaborate on? I’m pissed that some spooky prick carted me off and tossed me into the future.”

“So it’s anger aimed at what took you?”

Blake shoots her a deeply unimpressed look. “No. Actually I’m angry at the Prime Minister. S’all his fault.”

You don’t feel especially angry at what took you. It wasn’t really a person or a creature. More of a force. Getting angry at it feels a bit like getting angry at gravity, or light, or death. 

“I-I mean,” Jacquline says, voice hesitant. “I’m more angry at… the lost time? Than the reason it happened? Although I guess it isn’t really being angry, just— frustrated? Or annoyed? I— I missed so much stuff! And it’s either be annoyed about it, or— lock myself in my room and try to figure out how to cry again.”

Jesse nods. “I know exactly what you mean! Thank christ, I thought I was going mental. Who gets annoyed about losing five years of their life?”

“I do,” you say. “I get very, very annoyed.” It’s hard not to, the way it keeps coming up. It’s all the little differences, all the smallest points of friction, how everything is different but just similar enough to normal to be unnerving. “Especially about the timing.”

“Right! Like fuckin hell, arrive just in time for it all to have gone to shit, huh? Everyone freaking out about something that’s already over, nothing anyone can do! Infuriating. Absolutely goddamn infuriating.”

A chorus of agreements light up the screen. Others start talking about the little things that bother them. One swears the tap water tastes different, another talks about how their favorite brands aren’t on sale anymore and they have to figure out substitutes and replacements for every little thing. No one mentions losing family or friends. Probably for the same reasons you don’t mention it. It doesn’t fit the moment. 

That doesn’t arrive for another two meetings. 

The schedule marked it out as potentially difficult. The proctor made clear at the start that anyone could duck out, mute, or turn off their camera at any time for any reason. That was always understood to be the case, but hearing it said out loud again suddenly makes it much more real. They’re really discussing this now. You’re really discussing it now. 

Blake missed the birth of his niece and nephew. Jesse lost their parents while they were gone. Jacqueline doesn’t get into specifics, but she starts crying about losing ‘everyone’ in a way the proctor doesn’t ask her to explain. She turns off the camera, but doesn’t mute her microphone over her sniffles. 

“Kareena?”

You startle. “Y-yes?”

“If you’d like to share, you can. If not, we’ll move on.”

“It’s fine. I… lost my mother-in-law. She was old, and it happened about ten years ago.” You pause. Your mouth feels dry. Swallowing doesn’t help. “And— my son. He didn’t come back from the Change.” No one launches into performative sympathy. You’re thankful for that, at least. “At least, I assume so.”

“Assume so?” Blake cuts in. 

“There wasn’t a body. At least, not one matching his description. One of the more mangled corpses could have been him, or he just vanished into thin air.”

“Damn. That’s fucked up.” Blake shakes his head.  “Did he think you were missing or dead?”

“Blake, that isn’t very—”

“Dead. I vanished from a hospital. Easy enough to cover up.”

General grumbling and discontentment from the rest of the room abounds. Some people were declared missing, as they well should have been, but plenty were declared dead under less than clear circumstances, and nobody's happy with the way all sorts of higher ups in all sorts of governing bodies hid the existence of the supernatural from the rest of the world. Especially since it came to such an ugly head. Even the vanished were sorted into domains by the Change. 

“Gross,” Jacquline mutters. “It’s so gross.”

“Did you find anything out about him? I mean, you were… gone for a while, right?”

You haven’t gone into specifics, but over the meetings, it’s hard not to get a sense for… if not the exact amounts, then the ballpark. 

“I found some of his things.”

A long, awkward ten seconds of silence as everyone waits for you to say more. You don’t have anything more to say. 

There had been something on TV the other day. It wasn’t explicitly about death or dying, nothing as tacky as an advertisement for some funeral home or bereavement service. It might have actually been a puff piece about some flower showcase, now that you’re thinking about it. It doesn’t matter, except that it put the thought in your head. Your son, so far as you know, hasn’t had a funeral. Without a body, there hasn’t been any pressing need for one. It slipped right by you, lost in the haze. The idea lodged in your gut, and you can’t shake it off. 

But who would you be mourning, really? The child you remember, decades gone? The man who may as well be a complete stranger? Neither feels right. 

“That’s good,” the proctor says. 

“Yeah!” Jesse picks up the thread of conversation a little desperately. “Stuff’s important. And hey, maybe you can find— I don’t know, get something out of it? Like, find out about him through his stuff.”

“Hm.” You don’t have much to add outside of that. You’re almost content to let the conversation move on without you, drift back into the background of things, except—

There is that one thing.

“There was… something.”

A few of the heads and shoulders on your screen shift closer. You swallow. 

“Does anyone have an idea what T.M.I could stand for? I— tried to use Google to ask, but the pages I was getting back weren’t... ”

“If it’s okay, context would help,” Blake says. “Three letters stand for a lot of things.”

Your eyes drift as you recall it. It’s in the other room now, in some anonymous drawer in your kitchen. You didn’t like it hanging out in the open, accusing you with its presence. “It was a sticker on a tape recorder. Property of T.M.I.”

Jacqueline, with her camera still off, inhales sharply. Your eyes snap back into focus, just in time to see a mixture of confusion and dread. It’s not evenly spread throughout all the faces. Some are as lost as you, glancing around, trying to divine answers from the stricken expressions of everyone else. 

“Fuck man,” Blake mutters, just barely loud enough for his microphone to catch. “What absolute horseshit luck.”

T.M.I stands for The Magnus Institute. 

Once you know that, the internet floods you with information. Its history, its reputation, and the state of it now. Its destruction is the only thing that was truly different after the Change. People were different, left scarred and mutilated and occasionally even dead, but every other building on earth was precisely the same as it was left. Only the Magnus Institute was different. The fact it was a place explicitly devoted to the study of the supernatural made it an endless source of speculation and discussion.  

The official website is still up. Even you can tell it’s out of date, a relic from an internet you never properly met. But it must have been updated, because right there on the website is his name. 

Head Archivist: Jonathan Sims. 

He was a department head. That feels important. He was a successful academic. Maybe that’s where the money came from. Maybe he really did read all those different books.  

The website describes their mission statement, to research and record encounters with the supernatural. Already, the names and categories everyone has started to sort things into whir in your mind. It’s Watching flavored, dangerous secrets, knowing what things are and not being able to do a damn thing to help. Everyone was watched during the Change, but some were more watched than others. 

Plenty of people refuse to admit it, but the world had monsters and horror before the Change. You and your support group know that better than most. People online are very certain the Magnus Institute had something to do with the supernatural world, hidden beneath the normal until it suddenly rose up and ate them all. Others insist that it was such an obviously incompetent organization the actual monsters tore it down the moment they took over. The first thing you learned about the internet (second, technically, but you didn’t need to be told to mistrust everything written on it) was that you could find support for and arguments against every opinion on earth. That makes it less than helpful. 

You try the News button next. The articles about the rubble take front and center, almost all of them useless speculation and wild quotes from anyone off the street that claimed to have once thought about giving a statement. Evidently no one who ever actually worked there is interested in talking to the press. 

Going to the next page of search results gets you stories about an attack on the building, right before the Change. You’re surprised it didn’t come up in the articles about the building’s collapse… until you give it some thought. Two crazed gunmen going on a shooting spree, it’s not the sort of occult problem that would connect naturally to the end of the world.  The attack didn’t make many headlines either, near as you can tell. A few small articles about it being a ‘developing story’, with no follow ups actually providing the developments. 

Jonathan Sims is not listed among the casualties. Of course he isn’t. Your social worker would have told you if that’s what happened. There would be a body to identify.  

But he did work there. He was more than likely to be there that day. 

Maybe that’s the flavor of fear that took him. Random, unpredictable violence. People can’t seem to agree on if that was one of the ones that stuck. There are plenty of survivors who vividly know what it’s like to be torn apart, but there are still those mutilated bodies.

You buy another ticket to London. Ignoring voicemails is easy now. Not even a flashing light, just a little notification. Another one from the hospital, but you haven’t gotten any bills in the mail. It’s fine. You’re fine. You’re a little stiff, but you’re fine. 

The train ride back into the city is full of uncomfortable half dreams. 

It isn’t until you’re standing in the station that you realize you had no plan besides going back. Or, no plan but going back and bringing the tape recorder with you. Like this tenuous connection to the place will give you access to the things everyone else doesn’t have. No one else has been able to get anything out of anyone who worked at the Magnus Institute. Why would you be any different?

It’s fine. You can make this work. You’ll go to the wreckage and… if nothing comes of it, you can make this a trip to collect more things from the storage unit. That’s a perfectly sensible use of your time and money. A task you needed to do anyway. 

Asking for directions to the Magnus Institute gets you some exasperated looks, but they’re still provided easily enough. 

It feels different from going to the storage units. For one thing, it’s right in the middle of Chelsea. If you thought it was a posh neighborhood before, it’s only gotten posher while you were gone. There are more people around, going to fancy coffee shops and walking to high paying jobs. Unlike other parts of the city, you can’t for a moment convince yourself everything is normal. On top of everything being uncomfortably shiny and glassy, the eyes of everyone walking by are even more unsettled than in other parts of the city. Like they’re pretending harder, which only makes it even more obvious.

The site itself isn’t abandoned or anything. It’s in the middle of London, in the middle of everything. Despite that, it’s still rubble. Nothing has even been moved, except for shoving it all out of the street. It looks like a very courteous bomb went off, collapsing the stone edifice down upon itself and neatly sweeping all the debris inside the property lines. 

It’s not even abandoned in the sense of no one being around. As you walk up, you join a half dozen or so gawkers staring at the rubble. It’s a lot of stone, you notice. Brick occasionally. No rebar, no concrete. At least, none that you can see. It’s uncanny, almost. A wreckage of an ancient thing, freshly destroyed, in a modern city. 

A flash goes off right next to you. It’s a tourist, of course. He’s holding up his phone sideways, messing with the screen, while a girl stands off to the side, watching the street. 

“We’re gonna miss the next train,” she says.

“There’s always one right after! Come on, I just need two more minutes to get a real good shot. Pics of this place do numbers on twitter.”

Gripping the strap of your shoulder bag, you approach the Institute. Much closer to the building than the couple, or most of the other people staring. The police tape looks flimsy and fragile, more a suggestion than anything real and enforced. Or maybe it’s a simple reminder to listen to sense and not go onto the clearly dangerous property. 

It’s moments like this that you wish you were stupid. 

The couple wanders off first, to catch their train. The others you don’t bother paying attention to, but they all leave without speaking. The etiquette, for the locals that know better, is to treat this place like a grave, or a memorial. A place you go to when you want to think solemn thoughts, or pay your respects. 

That wasn’t your intention when you went to find this place. You still aren’t sure what your intentions were. Standing here now, you feel like you’re intruding. It’s patently ludicrous. You probably have a better reason to be here than all the rest of them. The feeling doesn’t go away. Your hand drifts away from the strap on your shoulder, and finds its way down, into the bag itself. Your fingers meet hard plastic. 

Before you can think about it too much, you pull the tape recorder out of your bag. You don’t even know if it works. You have no cassette to test it with. Flipping it over, the sticker stares back at you, as normal as it's ever been. Nothing about it looks like it came from some cursed house of horrors. If you hadn’t seen for yourself that Jonathan Sims was listed on the website, you might have thought TMI was some unrelated inside joke. That this was all a coincidence. It’s certainly cruel enough to be one.

Running your fingers over the letters doesn’t reveal anything new. You’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at a tape recorder. Nothing’s going to come of this. At this rate, you’re going to have to leave. There are only so many hours in a day, and you don’t want to be walking home from the train late at night with a big box of cutlery. You haven’t gotten your license renewed yet, or bought a car, and it wasn’t until this moment that you regretted that.

“Hey.”

You startle out of your thoughts. There’s a woman standing next to you now, looking at you intently. She’s wearing a hijab, jeans, and a slightly thicker jacket than you think the weather really calls for. 

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine.”

Disengaging from unwanted conversations with strangers is a skill you’ve long perfected. You turn to look back at the rubble, and begin thinking very hard about what you’re going to have for dinner that night. Most people take that as a perfectly fine excuse to back away. 

She doesn’t. She doesn’t get closer, or keep talking, or even keep staring at you. But she doesn’t leave. When you look back at her, she’s staring at the rubble. Her expression is different from the others you’ve seen here today. They looked solemn, or sad, or interested in a completely apathetic sort of way. It isn’t just looking at the rubble. She’s looking at it like a thing that might, or might not, be playing dead. 

“Did you—” you stop. The words slipped out before you caught them, and it’s too late now. She’s looking at you again. You have to readjust. “Do you… visit often?”

You wince. If someone had asked you that question, you wouldn’t have even turned to look at them. You would have hoped that, by ignoring them, they would realize that you weren’t interested in talking, or answering invasive questions. 

“Yeah. Probably shouldn’t, but, ya know.”

You do know. You say as much. 

“It’s weird how it’s all over,” she says, after another minute of silence. “Just like that. Switch flipped, and they’re all gone.”

“Are they? Gone? People aren’t so sure.”

“If they were still here, I doubt we’d be talking.”

“Screaming, maybe.”

She snorts. You weren’t trying to be funny, but you smile with her. 

“Basira.” She holds a hand out to you.

“Kareena.” You shake it. It means taking a hand off the tape recorder, and you let it fall to your side. Basira looks at it. 

“What’s that about?”

“Oh. Apparently it belonged to the Institute. I… found it. And brought it here.” You wrinkle your nose. “When I say it out loud it sounds ridiculous.”

“I dunno. People have done weirder things after all this.”

It’s true, but just because it is doesn’t mean you have to like it. 

“You were going to ask me if I worked here, right? Before you changed your mind.”

Sometimes, you wonder why your domain wasn’t more Seeing flavored. You’ve always hated the feeling of being called out. “Yes, well. I did change my mind.”

“S’fine. Plenty have asked. You get to be a regular around here and… well, people get ideas. I don’t mind. I did work here, for a couple years, near the end. It was mostly boring paperwork. A lot of researchers looking into stories from the public, and not finding much.”

“Ah.” Of course. It makes sense. If it was some haunted house in the middle of London, it would have had a bigger reputation before the Change. Disappointment still churns in your gut. Another scrap of nothing, another dead end. What were you hoping to find here? A thread of the supernatural still lingering? A breadcrumb trail to follow? Leading to what? 

Nothing good was ever going to come of this. You should apologize, make your excuses, and go home. It’s too late to even think about dropping by the storage unit. You should write this whole day off as a loss, go home, and go to bed. 

Except… Basira is still standing there. She doesn’t seem to mind questions. And surely, this academic institute couldn’t have been that big. 

“Did you know… everyone there?”

“Oh god no. Kept to myself, mostly. I wasn’t exactly social. Dunno if I regret that or I’m thankful for it.”

Then she looks at you. Basira looks at you, and it’s… expectant. Like she’s got a pretty good idea of what you’re about to say, so you may as well just rip the bandaid off and get it over with. Part of you hates that enough that it makes you want to leave, just out of spite.

Basira turns to face you properly. “Why do you ask?” she says, in a slightly softer tone. “Did you know someone that worked here?”

“No.” A car drives by. You swallow. “Did you know a man named Jonathan Sims?”

A long, long pause. 

“You look a lot like him.”

Your heart jumps into your throat. 

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to— make it weird. The resemblance is very much there. Are you a cousin of his?”

How much easier it would be if that was the case. Yes, she was distant, but through perfectly normal means. A cousin who only saw him a few times as a baby, tracking him down now that he’s the only family she has left. Or, had left. Tying up loose ends after the undone end of the world. For a moment, you think about running with that story. You don’t owe this stranger anything. A cousin would ask the same questions you want to ask. 

“No. Not a cousin. I’m his mother.”

“... right.”

Basira looks you up and down, blatantly seeing your age. Jonathan was 31 when the Change happened. Not counting the years you were away (no one in the group does, so you don’t either), you’re 34. The math does not check out. She probably thinks you’re crazy, or lying. Nothing else explains the easy agreement.  

“There’s a coffee place a couple blocks from here. Prices are almost reasonable, for Chelsea. And it’s quiet.”

You look up. “What?”

“I mean, we could talk here. If you want. But the coffee shop is an option too.”

It takes a second for the words to penetrate, then for suspicion to kick in. She doesn’t believe you, so why is she willing to listen? What does she want?

(Maybe she just wants someone to talk to. There was a whole meeting about assuming the worst and how to avoid it last month.)

The only way you’re going to find out is to go with her. You shove the tape recorder back into your bag, and agree to go get too expensive coffee with her. 

Basira’s eyes linger on your bag a bit too long to be normal. 

“So.”

The coffee shop in question had a manufactured ‘cozy’ vibe, the sort of thing that aims for warm and lands in cloying. Basira bought you both black coffees, which was fine, you didn’t really want to look at the menu anyway. You take a sip, and try not to grimace. It cost about three times as much as it should have, and it still tastes like garbage. Somehow, you aren’t surprised. 

“You’re Jon’s mother.”

You inhale suddenly, sending coffee down the wrong pipe. You manage to cough and swallow it correctly, while Basira apologizes. 

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that, I promise.”

“It’s fine,” you say, clearing your throat. 

There’s an awkward pause, where Basira waits for you to speak, and you wait for her. She talks first. 

“He mentioned you, once or twice. Said you lived, what, out in Devon somewhere?”

Your first thought is, of all things, did he lie about me? Pretend he had a mother somewhere, just to prevent awkward questions? 

Your second thought is Oh. She thinks I’m lying, so she’s lying first. Seeing if I play along. 

“No. I’ve never been to Devon. I’m from Bournemouth.”

“Ah, right. Must’ve gotten you mixed up with someone else. Probably Martin.”

It’s only then that you have the third thought. 

Is she lying to me? 

You didn’t see anyone named Basira listed on the website, but you also weren’t looking for anyone named Basira. On top of that, you’re pretty sure the only ones listed were department heads, and the head of the Institute itself. Maybe some board members? It all slips out of your mind, faded into the background of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist. 

But there you go again, assuming the worst. 

“It’s okay. I wasn’t exactly living there anyway.”

That gets a raised eyebrow out of her. You consider elaborating, explaining your situation, but you still don’t really know or trust her yet. There’s not assuming the worst, and there’s being naive. 

“How well did you know Jonathan?”

Her face closes off. “Well enough. We worked in the same department.”

“So you were in the Archives.”

A small snort. “Yep. Sure was. Right up until the end.”

There’s weight there, many things unsaid, but you can’t really find it in yourself to care about that. You don’t need the whole story. All you really need is—

… what?

What do you need out of this?

“What was he like? As a boss?”

You expect another snort. A comment about how ridiculous a question that is. Or, you hope that she just takes a moment to think, and starts talking about how he handled workplace disputes and managing stacks upon stacks of moldy paper. 

Basira doesn’t offer you those. She sits there, eyes drifting down to the table, like she has been asked to summarize her entire life up to this moment in twenty words or less. 

“Terrible,” she says at last. “Never had the slightest clue what he was doing. He wasn’t qualified for the position, and while eventually that didn’t matter, it— created a bad foundation, you know? By the time I got there, he wasn’t exactly trusted or respected.”

The defensiveness you should have over your son never arrives. Instead, you feel a sense of relief. It’s not the sort of thing you would make up, is it? Too mundane to be a hurtful story, too harsh to be a comforting falsehood. Basira isn’t lying to you. 

“I don’t think that’s especially important, though.” Basira takes another sip of her coffee. “I mean, some real shit people can be great bosses. Great people can be terrible ones. It doesn’t actually say much about someone, at the end of the day. Not what really matters.”

“Then what questions should I ask?” Frustration simmers in your gut. “I can’t just— he isn’t here anymore.”

You look at Basira. She looks at you. The world stops. You hold your breath. 

“He isn’t,” she agrees. 

Everything moves again. You inhale. You exhale, and it comes out shaky. 

“Right. Right.”

Basira puts down her cup. “Clearly you’re related,” she says. “Or you coincidentally look a lot like him and decided to make pretending to be his family your Post Change Thing. But I think the former’s more likely.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“So, what’s the story?”

‘The story’ is a very loaded phrase. Basira isn’t asking what happened, or why you’re here, she’s asking for whatever story you’re willing to give her. Like she’s expecting to be told a narrative, something meant to convince above all else. You decided that she isn’t lying to you, but she hasn’t returned the favor yet. 

“I… Jonathan never spoke about me. Or, if he did, he said I was dead.”

No confirmation or denial. Basira will let you tell your whole story before she gives you anything to go off of.

“That was, as far as he knew, accurate. I… have you seen reports? About people who were declared missing or dead before the Change, but were immediately found after it?”

“Ah. Yeah. Helped resettle a couple of those cases, actually.”

You sit up. “Are you with Replanting?”

“No. I have heard good things, though. They’re more out away from London, and I’m trying to stay local. I’m volunteering with Post Change Support. Crap name, but a good generalist organization. Do a little bit of everything.”

You nod. Your social worker listed off a bunch of names while he was trying to encourage you to move away from your home. You ignored them. Replanting’s support group had been a sort of desperate last shot. In retrospect, that explains why he really didn’t give you time to say no. 

“I was a cover up case. Disappeared in a hospital, and… it was just easier to say I didn’t make it through surgery than start a manhunt for a body they knew would never be found.”

You read somewhere, online, that part of the reasoning was that it was better for the family. A missing person is a false hope, and a legal nightmare. Without you dead, your family can’t claim any of your assets. They can’t get life insurance. It’s practical, they said. Easier for everyone. Who expected these people who had never returned before to all come back at once?

“I’m sorry.”

You say nothing. You’ve heard enough apologies. You’re all out of responses to them. 

“It’s just me, now. Everyone else had… nice, normal deaths.” You do not think about how you haven’t visited the graveyard yet. “He’s the only exception. Not… that I got to know him very well anyway. When I vanished, he was—” you swallow. “He was six.”

“God,” she mutters to herself. “Of course. Fucking hell.” Basira rubs her eyes. You give her a moment to collect herself, pondering how that should be your role, but grateful she’s picking up the slack. “And now the Change got fixed, and you’re back, and… you what? Just want to know more about him?”

“Yes.”

Basira looks at you. Then she takes her coffee, still steaming hot, and knocks it back like a shot. 

Almost reflexively, you imagine yourself saying I don’t mean to cause a fuss or if it’s too much trouble, that’s fine. Not even for a microsecond do you actually consider saying them. You’ve come this far. If Basira wants to get out of this, she’s going to have to say as much. You’ll decide how to react from there. Maybe you won’t let her. Maybe you’ll leverage being the general shape of a grieving mother for the first time, force her to talk. You have nothing but time, and nowhere better to be. 

“Okay,” she says. “I’ve gotta make a call. I’m not going anywhere, because that’s weird, and I’m not hiding anything from you.”

She does just that, while you sit there. It’s an incredibly awkward conversation. Basira keeps having to backtrack and re-explain herself, and at one point she actually holds the phone away from her ear to get away from yelling you can hear from across the table. Basira makes an aborted motion to hand the phone over to you, but your expression must tell her how you really feel, because she backs off immediately. 

“Look, just— come here? We’re at the less posh cafe near the Institute. You know the one. Or, if you don’t, Melanie definitely does.”

A few more back and forths, agreeing noises, and that volley of goodbyes that, even in the future, people can’t seem to shake. She ends the call. 

“I’ve got some friends that knew him,” Basira says. “It’ll.. make things easier. I mean, I’m only one person. I can only tell you so much.”

“It’s fine.” You’ll make it fine. Sure, you weren’t expecting anything of this magnitude to happen today, and this is the first time you’ll have talked in person to more than one person at a time since the hospital, but it’s fine. It’s just fine. 

Something sudden, unexpected, uncomfortable? That you can believe is happening. It’s just awkward enough to not be a fantasy, or a trap. This is real. You’re really meeting people who knew Jonathan Sims. 

Basira goes to get more coffee. You force yourself to sit there and not flee the building. 

The door has opened and closed a dozen times between the call and now, so you don’t reflexively turn to look. It isn’t until the pair are grabbing chairs to sit at the table that you get a good look at them. The first thing you notice is that they sit crammed together on one side of the table, despite the other side being free. They don’t make any noises to indicate you or Basira should move, either. One of them simply grabs an empty chair and squeezes in with them. It’s awkward and also intimidating. 

They’re dressed casually, but that could just be them being rushed out of the house by a random call they weren’t expecting. One with short, slightly messy hair is glaring down at the table, and one with dreadlocks tied up in a bun looks right at you. If you thought Basira had an intense stare, this one puts her to shame. You actively feel your skin being peeled off your cheeks. 

“Well?” Basira says, breaking the silence. 

“You look like the pictures, I’ll grant you that,” the woman with dreadlocks says. 

“Great,” the one with short hair says. The sarcasm is inch thick. 

“I— I’m Kareena. You are?” 

The conversational hook is about as subtle as a harpoon, but that’s why it works. 

“Georgie,” says the one with dreads. 

“Melanie,” says the one with short hair. 

A moment of quiet, where some polite formality or offer of hospitality should go. No one offers any, so you decide to move forward, come hell or high water. “Did you both work in the Archives too?”

“Before we answer any of that,” Melanie says, cutting you off. “How much about all this do you… know?”

Before this moment, you didn’t think there was anything to know at all. Which, in its own way, answers the question. “Only what’s been on the news. So, nothing.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.” Melanie sounds sincere. Like knowing that you’re starting from ground zero is going to change her approach. “There’s a lot of garbage detail we could get into, and maybe you’re interested in that, but right now, you wanna know about Jon? We can let you know about Jon.” Then, she hesitates. “I… don’t think I can give you a uh, respectful version? I wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice to speak at his funeral, but—”

“That’s fine,” you say. “Actually.”

“Oh. Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”

Another pause. Your eyes wander. That was a nasty habit from when you were a kid, not being able to just sit and look at someone while they were talking to you. Normally you’ve got a handle on it, but right now all your mental energy is going towards continuing to sit in this uncomfortable chair and not scream. You think you’re doing a pretty good job, all things considered. 

“Why the Magnus Institute?” Georgie cuts in. “Sorry, it just… doesn’t seem like the first place most people would go looking for this sort of thing.”

“It wasn’t. That was the storage unit. It was all anyone could find in his name, besides his bank account. And that’s where I found this.”

You dig the tape recorder out of your bag. Georgie reacts like you casually placed a live snake in front of her. Wariness, and no small amount of disgust. 

“If that’s a fucking tape player,” Melanie says, “I swear to god I am going to smash it right here, right now.”

Panic cuts right through you. “Don’t.” It’s only after you’ve spoken that you process the ‘if’. 

“Christ, of course it’s— well at least it’s off.”

“And empty,” Georgie adds. “No tape in it.”

“I’m not gonna lose it in public for no reason, but that thing even twitches, it’s gone. Sorry in advance. Mrs. Sims.”

“It didn’t do anything weird,” you say, because you really don’t want to ask exactly how blind the woman in front of you is, and there are more important things to worry about. “It just has a sticker on the back. ‘Property of T.M.I.’ That’s what led me to the Institute. To their website, I mean. And from there it was just about… seeing it in person.”

Seeing something, anything, concrete. Real and tangible. 

“Is the tape, does it have something to do with,” you struggle for the right word, “the supernatural?”

“You could say that,” Basira says. 

No one elaborates. 

“And unless either of you feel like explaining everything from the very beginning to a stranger at two o’clock on a Tuesday, that’s all we’re gonna say. Right?”

Georgie shoots you a look. “Is that okay with you?”

“I really don’t care,” you say, surprising yourself. The truth of it startles you. You really don’t care at all about whatever supernatural nonsense they’re talking about. Following the wave, you keep talking. “Maybe I will, eventually. Right now I don’t. Right now, all I care about is…” You struggle. “You all met him. You knew him. He was… a person. Who lived and talked and had opinions and ate food. I want to know about it. To make him more than… a thing. In my head. A blank space.” 

The coffee shop clatters and chatters all around you, like a sea of noise lapping against an island of silence in the middle of it all. You didn’t think anything you said was especially striking, and yet all three of the table’s remaining occupants sit there, struck silent. You lean back into your uncomfortable, trendy coffee shop chair. You have nothing else to say, so all you can do is wait. 

You had no expectations about who would break the silence, so you can’t say you’re surprised that Melanie gets there first. 

“He was—” she stops. Waves a hand around. “He was an Oxford graduate. Which I guess you should be proud of? But also made him a right prick.”

“Melanie.”

“She said she didn’t want sugarcoating, and I’m not sugarcoating.”

“I am also an Oxford alumnus, you know.”

“And you work hard every day to overcome your disability. With the occasional slips. Alumnus. Even Jon never broke out the Latin like that.”

“Oh he did. Back in Uni.”

“So he used to be even more of an elitist prick, and then he reined it in.”

Basira cuts in. “Dunno if you could rightly call him ‘elitist’ at the end there. Elite, maybe. Not elitist.”

Melanie snorts. It’s ugly, and it turns the mood. “Hard to come up with a better word for deciding he knew better than all of us.”

“It didn’t work out for him,” Georgie says, softly. 

“But he still did it. Sat there, listened to everything we had to say, and then decided that obviously he knew better than all of us. That’s the kind of guy he was. The kind who got an idea in his head and wouldn’t listen to anyone else about it. Ran into that over and over and over again.”

“What would you call that?” Basira’s tone is contemplative. “Stubborn or determined?”

“I’d call it pig-headed.”

Georgie sighs. “Whatever you want to call it. He was a guy in shitty circumstances who decided everything was his fault, so he was the only one who could fix it.” Georgie sounds like she’s trying to have the last word, but Basira either doesn’t pick up the signal or is actively ignoring it. 

“Can’t really throw stones in that department,” Basira says. “I spent a long time basically doing the same thing. Course, I pulled my head out of my ass eventually. With his help. He didn’t really have anyone who could do that for him, by that point.”

“Martin tried.” Georgie says. 

“He did.”

“Yeah.” Melanie slumps a bit in her chair. “Succeeded too. I mean, he must’ve. Considering.”

They all fall into silence.

“Sorry,” Georgie says suddenly. “We’re going around in circles, barely even saying a word to you.”

“It’s alright,” you say, because it would be weird to admit you vastly preferred that to being pulled back into the conversation. 

“If there’s anything more specific you want to know? A place to start? Obviously we’ve all got— a lot of feelings about him, but that’s us, not you.”

“If we’re being rude, please, call us out,” Melanie says. “Me especially. I know I can be a prick.”

Georgie smiles. “And you work hard every day to overcome your disability.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh it up, why don’t you.”

Conversation peters out again, and dread pools in your gut as you realize you really are going to have to figure out what to ask about Jon. Your brain is rendered blank, full of nothing but TV static, as you have forgotten everything you ever wanted to know about anything, not just Jon. Your eyes end up on your coffee cup, long empty, still clutched in your hands. 

“Wait,” Melanie says, saving you from the silence. “Uh, actually. Before you ask, I have a— completely random question. How do you feel about…” her jaw clicks shut. “Uh. Hm. I have no non-awkward way to ask this.”

“Ask what?” Basira says. 

Georgie must get what Melanie’s going for, because her eyes widen suddenly. “Right. Um. I guess that’s a place to start? If you want to know more about Jon?”

“Wha— oh.” Basira blinks. “I mean, sure? Wouldn’t call it a huge part of his personality or anything.”

“It’s still important,” Georgie says firmly. For the first time in a while, she looks directly at you, eyes sharp. You are suddenly extremely aware that you’re about to be judged for whatever you say next. “Jon wasn’t straight.”

It actually takes a second for what that means to sink in. “... oh!” That’s all you’ve got. Having been reminded gay people exist, your brain helpfully informs you that Georgie and Melanie, who are still crammed into one side of a coffee table, are almost certainly lesbians.  “That’s… fine?”

“Fine?”

“I’m not gay,” you say, before anything else. “But it’s fine.”

“... cool.”

Silence reigns once more. You sit there and ponder the fact that Jonathan Sims was a gay man. For some reason, that awkward, big idea, too large to comfortably fit in your hands, that feels solid and real. You try to picture him as the sort of person who loves another man.

“Do you—” you swallow. “Was he…with someone? Before the Change?”

All three of them exchange a look. It’s a deeply uncomfortable one. Some shrugging, eyebrow waggling, and a small sigh later, Georgie goes digging in her bag. 

“I don’t have any good pictures of them,” she says, hedging. “We weren’t really those sort of friends, by the end, but…”

What emerges from her bag is a stack of photographs. Polaroids, even, their glossy shine so familiar and expected that it takes you a second to realize they’re strange. People don’t take physical photos anymore. Everythings in digital cameras or on their phones. Did she somehow get ahold of old family photos?

“You brought those with you?” Basira says, surprised. 

“Yeah, well. I wasn’t sure, but if it was nothing I could just bring them back. Saved us all a trip.” Georgie undoes the rubber band holding the photos together and thumbs through them. Your hand, already reaching out expecting to be handed the whole stack, retreats slightly. “These were from a… in the spirit of cutting to the chase, a vacation they took. Right before the Change. They went up to Scotland, actually. Nice place.”

“You’ve been?” you ask. 

“Just recently. Same place they went, to uh, clean things up.”

Ah. So ‘before the Change’ means ‘the Change happened while they were both there.’ You aren’t sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it’s nice that their last few days on a normal Earth were spent together, someplace special. On the other, the Change snatched all of that away from them in an instant 

“Anyway,” Georgie says, “I found these when we were up there. Most of them are… not great? Really blurry. But…”

She hands you a photo. Your hand does not shake as you take it. 

This man is not your son. He’s white, first of all. His hair is a dull brown that sunlight adds some shades of red too. His whole appearance seems washed out and pale, aided only a bit by the thick cable knit blue jumper he’s wearing, along with a green windbreaker. His cheeks are red with chill, like he’s wearing entirely the wrong jacket for the weather, but he’s smiling. He’s not looking at the camera, and he’s leaning over a fence, trying to touch the edges of a brown blob you think might be a horse. 

“Martin,” Georgie says. “Basically all of them are of him. I think… Jon was the one taking all the pictures.”

“Oh.” Your breath catches in your lungs. This is a picture your son took of a man he loved. Seeing this moment and wanting it preserved. He looks sweet. Good with animals. 

Your husband was terrible with animals. Loved them, but always seemed to rub them exactly wrong. He always shrugged it off, happy to appreciate them from the distance they preferred. Your eyes prickle, and you swallow. 

“I’m guessing he isn’t available,” you say, keeping your voice even. 

“No. Sorry.” Basira sounds so tired. “He didn’t make it out of the Change either.”

It’s almost a relief. Or, no. It’s completely a relief. The idea of attempting to hold a conversation with someone you only share grief with is terrible enough, but when you aren’t even really grieving the same person? Hellish. Absolutely hellish. What a horrible thing to think about someone, that you’re glad they’re dead, so you don’t have to try to talk to them. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, because that’s what you say when you hear that someone’s friend, or coworker, or acquaintance, or any combination of those three relationships, dies. 

“Thanks,” Basira replies, completing the steps. It’s rote, and there’s a reason it's rote. The standard words give people something to say in situations where words don’t truly belong, but words are the only things you have to work with. 

You look back down at the photo. It’s blurry, and a bit out of focus. Not taken by a professional, or anyone that’s held a lot of cameras in their life. A lack of experience that, to you, implies a lonely person without many memories they want to preserve. But in this new world, where everyone takes pictures on their phones, maybe he just struggled with the view and didn’t know how long to hold the lens steady. 

“Can I—?”

“Oh, sure, here,” Georgie says, passing the rest of the stack to you. She wasn’t lying. The rest of the photos are, at best, nice Scottish scenery, usually occupied by a blurred Martin-looking shape. About two dozen of them in total. Your son was no photographer. You aren’t going to be giving these back. You hope Georgie isn’t expecting you to. 

“It…” Melanie starts again, breaking the silence. “Look. I’ve got my beef with the guy. I think he earned it. But, in case the polaroids I’ve been told are completely sappy aren’t proof enough, he— really loved Martin. Thought the world of him, would do anything, all that grand romantic stuff. It was— honestly? It was a pretty good look on him, I think.”

“Sort of exhausting to be around,” Basira adds, a slightly wry tilt to her voice. “But yeah. I agree.”

“He was like that in school too.” Georgie’s voice is nostalgic, bordering on wistful. “Like, that was Jon. You knew who he liked, and who he didn’t like, who he hated and— and who he loved. Was nice to find, after dealing with so many posh, fake brats. Or people acting sympathetic out of pity.”

It’s only then that it clicks. Georgie went to Oxford, Jon went to Oxford. “You knew each other.”

Georgie blinks, jolted out of her train of thought. “Oh, uh, yes? Sorry, we’re doing this all out of order. I met him at Uni. My sort of second year, his first.”

“Do you have anything from back then?”

She gives it a moment’s thought, then her face lights up. “Yes! Well, okay, nothing from back then back then, but I think I’ve got just the thing.”

She goes back into her bag, pulling out her smartphone. It has a black case with some sort of sheet ghost design on the back, but it’s mostly covered by her hand. She swipes and taps for a minute or two, and finally hands the phone to you. “Here.”

There’s a video playing. Initially all that’s in focus is a kitten, climbing over a pair of legs laying flat on the floor. The kitten is tiny but determined, clawing its way up and flopping over to the other side. Its fur is black, so it stands out against the tan slacks.

“Did you—?”

“Yes! Got it out just in time.”

The camera stays entirely focused on the kitten. It rights itself from its flopped position on the floor, limbs and head at awkward angles. It’s a young kitten, eyes and ears freshly opened, still getting used to being able to walk around. Now that it's gotten to the other side of the obstacle, it looks up, towards something.

“Aw, he likes you! She likes you? Whatever. The kitten likes you!”

“R-really? Do you think so?”

The kitten, unbothered by any of this conversation happening around it, walks forward. The camera follows, revealing that the legs are spread out flat on the floor, creating a v-shape. 

“Sure! Go on, pet it. Not like it’s gonna bite or anything.”

“Kittens can bite, actually. Cat bites are serious infection hazards, even worse than dogs.”

Despite that trivia, a hand slowly creeps into frame, hovering over the determined ball of black fur and limbs. It doesn’t make contact, only stays close by. It could be a desire for contact, or a desire to catch the kitten, should something go wrong. 

The kitten, rather than continuing onwards, has gotten distracted by the thigh closest to it. Evidently climbing over a shin wasn’t enough of a challenge, and this new hurdle is much more exciting. It lowers its body to the ground, tail twitching back and forth like an over excited metronome, and judges the jump. 

“Better watch out then. I think the little hunter is sizing you up.”

The kitten scrunches down, ready to pounce again, but before it can, that hovering hand finally reaches all the way down and (gently, carefully) holds it in place. The kitten, offended, squeaks like a put upon rubber duck. 

“Apologies, but I do like these trousers.”

“I warned you. But nope, you had to dress up nice for the cats.”

And I don’t regret it for an instant. You have to make a good first impression, after all. Put your best foot forward.”

Another hand joins the first, and in a slow, halting motion, the kitten is lifted off the floor. The kitten still squeaks like it’s crying out against all the injustice in the world, but it doesn’t squirm or try hard to get away. 

It’s only now that the camera zooms out. Not all the way, but enough. He’s wearing a button up. A dark navy with the tan slacks looks like he stepped right out of the definition of business casual, where there’s nothing actually casual at all about it. He does look like he dressed up for the occasion. If you didn’t know any better, you would suspect he had even starched his collar. 

Did he do that for the cats, or for Georgie?

Jon isn’t looking at the camera. He’s looking down at the kitten in his hands, and Georgie is still largely focusing on the cat herself. 

“Well, go on!”

“W-what?” 

“Don’t just hold it! Kittens are for petting, you know.”

“O-oh. Are, are you sure?”

“Jon, you’re manhandling that kitten right now. I’m sure stroking its cute little head isn’t going to suddenly be breaking any rules.”

“Right. Right, of course.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Jon shifts his grip on the kitten until it’s contained to one hand. The other opens up and, with a delicacy better suited to handling fine china than a slightly put upon kitten, uses two fingers to gently rub right between its ears. 

“Got you,” Jon mutters, just barely loud enough for the camera to hear. 

Your breath catches in your throat. 

“Sorry?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Just talking to the cat.”

But you know what he’s talking about. You know exactly what he’s talking about. The memory rushes at you like a tidal wave, fast and all consuming. 

When Richard was alive, he often took Jon out when he was out on jobs over the weekends. He spent a lot of time in suburban neighborhoods, working out patios and gardens, beautifying them or doing repairs. Jon learned quickly how to stay out of the way, to play in the grass and explore off in his own little world. Richard had a knack for catching Jon right when he was about to wander too far, calling him back to safety. 

A lot of those houses had cats. Jon loved cats. Richard would go on and on about how Jon would post himself by any window with a cat in it and stare for so long even the cat got bored and wandered off. More than once Richard had to clean a window Jon had pressed up against for hours. He kept some spare glass cleaner around, just for that reason. 

But Jon’s favorite cats weren’t locked up in the houses he didn’t have any access to. His favorite cats were out and about just like him, wanderers without collars or names. He would chase after those, or sit as still as he could for as long as he could, trying to lure them close. Of course, as soon as Richard got close, the cats always bolted. 

“You know what he said to me? When I asked what he was doing?” Richard asked one day, eyes full of mirth. “He said that he just has to pet the cat, and that means he’s got it. It’s his cat. Because cats will only let you pet them if they like you, and if they like you, you can keep them.”

“That makes perfect sense to me,” you said, completely straight faced, and Richard laughed loud enough Jon wandered into the room and asked what was so funny. 

The video continues to play. It’s a lot of cooing over the kitten, and a bit of juggling when Georgie hands the phone off to Jon so she can have her turn with the kitten. You watch the entire thing, entirely absorbed. When it’s over, you take a moment to breathe, and then hand the phone back.

“I can send that to you,” Georgie says softly. “If you like.”

“Please.” Your voice doesn’t waver. You aren’t crying. There’s been a shift in your emotional landscape, but it hasn’t hit yet. Maybe the tide is rolling out, and the tsunami will hit later, but right now… right now, all you feel is relief. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Melanie says. “I mean, we’ve all gotta look out for each other, right? After dealing with spooky bullshit.”

You nod, then realize your mistake. “Right.”

“So! In the spirit of community building after tragedy, Georgie’s gonna tell us all the stories about Jon and the Admiral, starting with the fact he insisted on naming their shared cat The Admiral.”

Georgie laughs. “You act like I didn’t agree with him that it was the perfect name. You said it was the perfect name when you met him!”

“Now that he’s a dignified old man, sure! It fits! But who looks at a kitten and says ‘you know what fits this ball of squirming limbs and fur? A title! Control of Her Majesty’s Navy!”

“Wasn’t that the joke?” Basira says. “It seems like the sort of thing he’d find funny.”

“Yeah, actually. He would insist everything he did was dignified, including spilling his food everywhere and tearing up the sofa. Completely straight faced, too. That was part of the gag.”

“That sounds like him,” you say. 

The conversation pauses. Just before it becomes awkward, Melanie jumps in. “Well, now you can’t just say something like that and leave us all hanging.”

You blink at her. 

“Georgie never got to meet Jon’s Gran, you know. And because Jon was the sort of guy who really did believe all the Being Proper stuff, he never told her any goofy stories about when he was a kid. And you know what? I think that’s a crying shame. An absolute waste. It’s her right as an—” She hesitates. 

“An ex-girlfriend,” Georgie says easily. 

You nod. “You were adopting a cat together. I sort of assumed.” It does make you happy to know that they both figured themselves out and met other gay people, instead of trying to force it to work. You had some friends who did that. You hope they outgrew it, while you were gone. 

“Anyway, ex’s rights! So go on! Tell us about little kid Jon. I’m sure he was a terror and I want to hear about it.”

“Remind me,” Georgie says, innocently, “who was it that climbed onto her roof and tried to stake it out for Santa Claus?”

“I told you that in confidence.”

Laughter bubbles up your throat. You muffle it with your hand, but it doesn’t do you much good. Everyone at the table looks at you expectantly. For the first time in a long time, your throat doesn’t close up. “Jon was the same way,” you say, thinking back. “Always wandering off as soon as you took your eyes off him for even a second. We had to get so creative to keep him out of cupboards and drawers. Those child locks simply weren’t enough. Everything had to go up on high shelves, or else he would somehow get into it. Luckily he wasn’t interested in putting things in his mouth very much, but every time we had company over, we would have to explain why our pans were under the sink and the cleaners were above the fridge.”

“Sounds just like the sort of thing he’d do,” Basira says. Her voice is warm, and a little wistful. 

“Yeah,” Melanie agrees. “Makes sense that he liked cats so much. He basically was one, wasn’t he?”

And of course, with a segue like that, you have to tell them about all the times Jon went running after cats, both when you were watching him and when Richard was. It’s so easy. A familiar patter, stories about your child you’re ready to tell at any moment. But the difference here is that instead of cooing or offering platitudes, the women at the table offer up stories of their own. Georgie tells the most, exploits from his days as a University student, but Basira offers up some anecdotes from work, and even Melanie talks about a time her and Jon went out for drinks. You take these stories and you hold them close, right next to all your other Jon stories. 

There’s so much you’re missing. Entire decades of Jon’s life you weren’t around for, that none of these women knew him well enough to have any insight on. Later, you will mourn that loss. But right now, that’s far away. Right now, you have stories, and photographs, and people who knew him who offer up their numbers and email addresses to you without you even asking for them. It’s so much more than you ever thought you would get. 

The train right back home is long, and the sky is dark outside your window. You see a few scattered stars, daring to peek out against the waves of manmade lights. The countryside is all dull dark shapes now, more a rolling and rising thing that speeds past your window than any specific hills or fields. Only the occasional square of yellow or orange light flits past the window, street lamps or houses that you can’t properly see. You aren’t paying it much attention though. You’re listening to voicemails on your phone. 

Time isn’t running out, or anything. There are still months you could wait, years even, before anything starts to get truly bad. 

But… now you don’t want to. 

It’s too late to call them now, and despite Replanting’s best efforts, you still aren’t the most technologically literate person in the world. 

You call to set up an appointment first thing the next day. You have to be checked over again, you can’t leap right back to the operating table, and you’re grateful for that. It gives you time to talk to your support group, and to your new friends. 

Everything isn’t fixed. You still have problems you need to address. You still need to find a job, and a place to live. You need to heal from this upcoming operation, on top of the parody of one you faced during the Change. You need to visit the cemetery, and find a place to lay Jon to rest properly. There are so many things you need to do.

But that just means there’s no sense in sitting around, not doing them, is there? 

So you stand up, crack your knuckles, and get to work.