The Construct was very long and very wide and very gray, and it hung in the air without wires or engines. Ramps, starting from the very bottom, where the spaceships docked, ran around the interior, all the way to the very top. At each floor, they stepped out of the construct and into the open air, circling until the next entrance, and then tunneled back inside. When Village had first arrived ten years prior, the ramps and their extrusions looked to him like some thick thread, spiraling in and out of a pencil. Dresser, who had already been there ten years when Village arrived, told him that they there had been glass enclosing the outside pathways, but that they had fallen away, and never been replaced. Dresser had never seen them himself — that was long before his time. Decades and Decades, he said.

Another thing that Dresser told Village, and a thing that Village saw for himself, is that there used to be many, many more guards. During Dresser’s first year, each ramp had six guards — three going up it to the entrance above, and three going down to the entrance below — but by the time Village arrived, they had just two guards per ramp. Now, there were only two guards left total. One circling from the top to the middle, and one laboring from the bottom up.

Village worked from the top down, every day. He was allowed a five hour rest, down from six the year before, and then had to be back on patrol. When one of them rested, either Dresser or Village, the other had to walk their whole route. Not back-breaking work, and for that Village was grateful. His father, with his thick Clayish accent, had been a farmer when their side lost the war. He had been saving to open a shop before their new government took it all away.

The two guards met in the middle, and took a short break. Village was nervous. Dresser made him nervous. Dresser walked upright, back rigid, feet stomping, like he was marching in a parade. His first night, he’d taken Village aside, and made sure he understood what an honor it was to guard this place. He’d done it the second night, and the third, and the fourth, too. A true believer, Village’s wife would say. Village would never say that to Dresser.

“We’re low on e-cig cartridges,” Dresser said, voice deep and quiet, like far-off thunder over ocean waves. He was gigantic, tall and broad, with defined muscles and a strong, sharp jaw. His hair, black as night, was finally going gray. He handed Village a cigarette, an honest-to-god hand-rolled cigarette, and lit it with an honest-to-god match.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these,” Village said, looking at the little thing between his fingers, leaking smoke like a newborn train engine. Village did his best to keep his hand still. It was hard. His fingers were short and spindly, much like his body, and his voice, and the scratch-patch of his blonde hair.

“We’re low,” Dresser repeated, taking the cigarette from Village, who had not yet taken a hit, and took one for himself. 

“When’s the next visit?” Village said, filling his lungs with second-hand smoke.

“They’ll be here when they think appropriate, and that’s fine by me.” 

Dresser took the rest of the cigarette and finished it and walked out onto the ramp. He flicked the stub into the sky, and watched it sink like a stone in the clear air. Village joined him. Dresser was still looking down, and so Village looked up. The sky was blue and the wind was cold, and gentle. They were deep in space and this shouldn’t be possible, and when Village had been told where he was going and what he would see he didn’t believe it. But then, in the dark recess, far away from home, there it was. The construct, as vast as it was, wasn’t visible at first. Visitors and attackers alike were greeted by this great, brown swirl of wind, howling silently in the sky. How they did this, Village had no clue. A marvel of engineering, much like the construct itself. Blue sky all around, and at the end of it, a brown maelstrom. 

Village finally looked down, having looked at nothing, to find Dresser gone. Village wondered how long he had been staring up at nothing. His heart started to pound, and he felt lightheaded. There was almost no chance of being removed from this place, and from his post — nothing short of sabotage of the construct would get him removed. But he was the only person here with Dresser, and what if Dresser decided to punish him for standing still? What if his aimless staring was the last straw, and that he had a file a mile long, and this was the last straw? 

“Village.”

The voice came from behind him, and Village turned suddenly. Dresser was standing there, in his gray uniform with the splash of green over the chest, looking at him like he was slow and slower still.

“Yeah,” Village said.

Dresser held up his hand. His dark black communicator, shaped like and the size of a chocolate chip cookie, blinked orange in his palm. Village reached for the one on his belt, and felt it vibrating, and saw that it too was flashing orange. Village’s face turned red. Was he losing his sensation? Was his mind going? Is that what the aimless staring meant? 

They made their way down the ramps together, Dresser walking just a little ahead, and Village a little behind. He tried to say something, to convince Dresser that it was a temporary mistake, and that he was doing fine. He wondered if the communicator was sending them to a meeting with high command. It had flashed orange, which meant a ship had docked, but it hadn’t produced a message, which had never happened before. Did they not want them to know what was coming? 

“What?” Dresser said, looking over his shoulder at Village.

“What?” Village repeated, face reddening.

“You said something about them not wanting us to know what’s coming.” 

“Did I?” 

Dresser frowned, and shook his head, and faced front again. Village squeezed his hands into fists to stop himself from shaking. 

On the third ramp from the bottom, back outside, they could see the ship. It was rectangular and ugly, with plasma scores and scars decorating the vessel like ripped-wide holes in a pincushion. Village frowned. Ships did not leave passengers here. They docked, and they waited for their master’s return, and then left into the storm. 

The very bottom of the construct was much different than the rest. It was the same size and general rectangular shape, but there the similarities ended. A line of checkpoints, with hand scanners and face analyzers, ran the length of the room. They were accompanied by small metal arms, blocking the way forward to the rest of the facility. Dresser had said that they used to be manned, before his time — now, they were all automated, and most were offline. Now, all were that way. All entries had to be manually processed, by both guards, though usually only one did the task. Dresser was the senior, and Village the junior, and thus Village from up top had to walk down and let people in. 

A group of people in suits and ties stood waiting. Two women, and one man. The two women were tall and blonde and thin and identical, and the man was tall and fat and brown-haired. Their hands were empty, and they were devoid of security. This was also unusual. Village had never seen anybody without bodyguards before. 

“Hello,” one of the women said. Her suit was much like her twin’s suit — thin and well-fitting and without wrinkles — and the only difference was the color of their ties. This woman’s was Blue, and her twin’s was Green. 

“Greetings,” Dresser said with a smile, his voice raising half an octave, and washing into shore. 

“We’re here to see the inside,” said the man, who had black tie and a black suit that was much too small. 

“Do you have the proper paperwork?” Dresser said. Before the words had rung in their ears, Green Tie had produced them from the inside of her jacket. Dresser took them, and looked them over. He looked up at them, eyebrows raising, and slotted them in his pocket. 

“Alright,” Dresser said. “That’s step one. You will now need to make a call from our facility to the appropriate number, and get their say-so.” 

“The paperwork is thorough,” said the man.

“Yes, it is,” Dresser said.

The man stared at Dresser, and Dresser stared back. Green and Blue stared at Village, and Village’s anxiety began to climb over the wall curiosity built. They were beautiful and alluring and the first women he’d seen in person in ten years. Never had female dignitaries passed through here, and he was still five years from his first visit home. He had photos of his wife, and his daughter, too. But this was something new, and unsettling. 

Would he cheat on his wife, if given the chance? Of course not. But (and this ate at him), what if the opportunity presented itself? He considered himself a good man. He took this job because it guaranteed a future for his children, and his children’s children, and his wife, too. What if he thought that he deserved a little downtime? What if his wife didn’t even mind? What if she was doing the same, all alone, without sex or love or physical touch, monogomaous to a man who’d abandoned them?

“Village.” 

Village came to, and this time he had eight pairs of eyes on him, and his face grew so hot.

“Yes sir,” Village said.

“Mr. Korak and I are going to make the call. Please stay with his companions,” Dresser said. His face was creased, right around the eyes, and Village knew that meant he was mad. Dresser wouldn’t talk to him for a while. He wouldn’t get any cigarettes, or cartridges. His nerves were already shot. 

The tall and fat Mr. Korak and the tall and broad Dresser walked away, towards the ramp, and the second floor, where the entrance to the guts of the construct lay. There were others, one on each floor, barely visible outlines leading to things Village would never see, but they closed those up, one by one, as the number of guards dwindled. 

Green and Blue walked up to Village, and stood next to him, and he realized finally that Dresser had let them through the checkpoints. Village hadn’t even noticed.

“Village is an interesting name,” Blue said. Her voice was the same as her twin, but there was something different about it. An elongation in the middle. A twang she had long since buried. He realized it was the same thing he had done, so long ago.

“My parents didn’t speak English,” Village said, mouth getting ahead of his good sense. “They were poor farmers and when the new government came they asked my mom and dad where their village was. They thought they were looking for someone important named Village. I was born a day later. They thought they were helping me.” 

Village took a deep breath; he had spoken in one long unbroken gasp and now he was out of air. He made himself look at Green and Blue, certain to see the same crease around the eyes that Dresser had wielded like an invisible hammer, but instead he saw only curiosity. 

“A Clayman, guarding the construct,” Green said. Her voice had no twang. If she was a twin of the other, how could they not have the same twang?

“A great honor,” Blue said, her accent fully gone, replaced by a sharp edge. Did she think he wasn’t grateful? He was grateful.  

“A great honor,” Village said. “Progress. Real progress. My family never would’ve thought I would do something like this. I’m honored to guard this place. The crowning achievement of our people.” 

Another deep breath, but less of one. They seemed nice enough. Green and Blue looked at one another, eyebrows raised. 

“Fascinating,” Blue said. She took an e-cigarette from her jacket, and took a long pull. She passed it to Green, who did the same. 

“Want?” Green said, smoke leaking from her nostrils. 

“No, thank you,” Village said. Green took another hit, and Blue did too, and Blue put it away.

“We’re ready,” said a voice behind them, and they all turned to look. Dresser stood with Mr. Korak, whose face was set in stone. 

“Exciting stuff,” Green said, and left Village and Blue alone. 

“Can I tell you something?” Blue said, when the footsteps had ceased. 

“I’m not much of anything, ma’am,” Village said, and cringed. He had meant to say that he didn’t know much about anything, and that he wasn’t much of a listener, and it all came out wrong. His stomach felt like a pit of acid, and it flopped at this new, intrusive thought — what if this was a test, and he was failing it, and he was sent back home, and his ten years meant nothing-

“You’re an anxious son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Blue said, and Village’s mouth dropped open.

“I-” Village said, and said no more. Blue waited, with her eyes raised.

“What I was gonna tell you,” Blue said, the crunch of her accent returning with full force, “is that I’m a Clayman, too. If you couldn’t tell.” 

Village nodded. Blue looked at him.

“How does the army say it? Speak freely? Let’s give that a try. Speak freely, commander.” 

“I’m not military.” 

“Speak freely is the operative phrase, Mr. Village,” she said.

Village took a deep breath, and measured his words, and then nodded, like he was confirming his ability to speak aloud with some imaginary conductor. 

“I thought I could hear it in your voice. The accent,” he said.

“Good ear,” she said. “I’ve worked awful hard pinning that motherfucker down.” 

“Your sister doesn’t seem to have one.” 

Blue laughed. It was high and strong and delicate and it fit every fiber of her physical being.

“My sister,” Blue said. “She’ll love that.” 

“I-I’m sorry,” Village said. “You two look just alike. I just thought-”

“Relax. It’s fine. I’ve had a lot of plastic surgery. It’s… well. It’s what we wanted people to think, so they wouldn’t look too deep,” she sa

“Why would you want people to think you’re sisters?” he said. None of this made any sense. Was she messing with him? Was this the way the government fired him? Had he screwed up so badly that they wanted to humiliate him in small ways, until he threw himself from the construct and into space below? That would void his contract-

“I told you, Mr. Village. I’m a Clayman, just like you. You think they were gonna let a Clayman rise to my position? Please. I wanted to work in government, and Andi loves me, so she lets me wear her face. It’s weird. Better weird than unemployed.”

“You two are lovers?” Village said. He tried to replace Green with Andi, and found he couldn’t do it.

“Unfortunately,” Blue said with a smile. “No kissing in public, though, lest we scare the children.” 

Village didn’t know what to say to that, and so he didn’t say anything at all. Soon after, Dresser came and retrieved Blue. He didn’t say anything to Village, though the younger man thought he saw a hint of red creeping into the corners of Dresser’s eyes. Without instruction, or person to chaperone, Village returned to his patrol.

The construct ended with a ramp going to nowhere. Dresser had told Village that they had plans to add on, make it bigger and more comprehensive, but that those plans were abandoned. It was an odd blindspot for the senior guard — he didn’t know when the idea was discarded, just that it had been, and he only knew that because they had never gone through with it. 

Village walked fast, usually completing his route in a comfortable fifteen down and twenty-five going up, but when he had reached the top from the bottom he had just… stopped. He walked up to where the new door was supposed to be, and sat down. His heart was beating very fast. There was a lot going on today and he had never sat down once in ten years. 

Blue’s face and her twang lingered in his mind. It made him feel ashamed, and tired. Village hadn’t realized the depth of his loneliness until he’d see the twins — not twins, he reminded himself, and he felt a rush of sympathy for the two women. He would’ve changed, too, if he could’ve.

And though he tried to pretend it wasn’t true, Blue looked more than similar to his wife. Tall and blond and thin, with a laugh that cut through you and layed on you, like the blanket from your crib. Again, his heart beat fast — again, he wondered if Blue gave him the chance, whether he would take it. 

He couldn’t imagine what he was missing back home. Not that it was impossible — on the contrary, it was the easiest thing in the world. It was that he couldn’t allow himself to do so. If he thought about them, and the lives they were living, it would send him tumbling over the edge. Considering the kind of man he was (“you’re an anxious son of a bitch,” Blue said, and his gut tightened) him pitching over the edge in some fit of temporary sadness-into-madness would make too much sense. Village got up, and began walking his route again.

When he got to the middle, he found Dresser smoking a cigarette, out on the ramp, looking out into the night sky.

“They left,” Dresser said.

“Ship came back for them?” Village said.

“How the fuck else would they get out of here?” 

Village cringed. A deeply stupid thing to say. He needed to watch his words more carefully. He might even avoid the center, or speed or slow his route, so he could avoid Dresser altogether. This middle ground between the two seemed a spot for Village to humiliate himself. 

“They’ll be back tomorrow,” Dresser said.

“What were they doing in there?” Village said.

Dresser took a long, long pull on the cigarette, and handed it over to Village without looking. Village took it, and Dresser blew the smoke free like a freight train, and walked away. Village considered calling after him, wondering if his supposed partner expected him to run after him and give back the stub, but Village held his tongue. He took a long pull himself, and then, mimicking the older man, flicked the stub into space. 

Village took the first rest, breaking the pattern. Protocol stated that the highest ranking members got to sleep first, and then followed a chain of seniority. The cots were in the same room as the level-by-level entrances to the interior of the construct, which had never mattered to Village before. But now, with Mr. Korak and Blue and Green (Andi, he repeated, Andi Andi Andi. Ms. Andi. Mrs. Andi. Miss Andi) having gone into the center of the place, it felt foreign, and cold. 

The entrance was on the second floor, and barely perceptible against the wall. Seams, cut so fine and clear, formed a wide door — its size reminded Village of his cousin’s old car repair shop back home. There was a secondary door, cut into the middle of it, if only people were walking inside. It, too, was nearly invisible. Village wasn’t even sure how it worked. They told him it could read his palm — his heat, his palmprint, his fingerprints — and thus would open accordingly. But he could see no scanner on it. It just pushed open when he pushed it. 

The room itself was a simple rectangle — a smaller version of the gigantic floor they had just left. Cots were folded up into the wall, meant to lay flush, but they didn’t. Poorly built showers and toilets lined the wall, protected by glazed glass. They had been installed, according to Dresser, during his tenure. Before, they had slept in a separate facility that floated next to and docked with the construct. 

“It was a ratty shithole,” Dresser had said, one Thanksgiving night, as they sat on their cots and ate dry turkey.

“It wasn’t nice when I got here, and it got worse. Nobody ever serviced fucking anything. You might as well shit and piss off the fucking walkways,” Dresser had said, during Christmas, as they opened presents from back home. Village’s wife had gotten him the box set of a popular fantasy novel series. Dresser’s wife had sent him copious amounts of drugs that he threw over the side and into space.

“I quit years ago,” Dresser had said, and left it at that. 

Village unfolded his cot, and it creaked loud, and he frowned at the way the sheets pulled off the corner when he climbed up on it. He got off the bed, and redid the sheets, and got back into bed. He didn’t pull the blanket over him — hadn’t in years, since he was only allowed five hours of sleep. He found it easier to wake up when he was already a little cold and miserable. His boots, still on his feet, bunched up the sheet at the bottom of the cot, and it took Village every inch of his being to ignore it.

He dreamed of the day, after his thirty years were up, that he’d come back home. He’d be fifty-five then, most of his life passed on by — his wife and daughter and son’s lives, too, having progressed, but they would be well-fed and housed and educated and even maybe, once he hit his twenty years like Dresser, would be living in genuine luxury. In the dream, they were living in a house on the lake, surrounded by a field of green and yellow and waving grass. The lake was cold and clear, and a small boat sat tied to a small dock. His son would be tall like his mother, with small hands like him, painting something on that dock. His brown hair would be short and his smile would be crooked. His daughter would be off running, circling this lake, which grew and grew as the dream progressed, getting in better and better shape, training for the Olympics she couldn’t take her eyes off of when he left her at age eight.

His wife, though, in the dream, was not outside. Village found himself planted outside the front door, unsure of where he came from, with vague memories of having just been on a train, and that train billowed black smoke straight up in the air. Village wore a white linen shirt, and blue jeans just a little too tight, and sneakers that he hadn’t seen since he was in college. His blonde hair was still thick and long, tied back in a ponytail. He was himself again.

He knocked on the door, but nobody came. He turned the knob, and it didn’t turn, but the door swung open anyway. It felt like a warning. Upon his entrance, a set of stairs rose up on the right side of his vision, creating the interior as he saw it for the first time. Hardwood floors and hardwood stairs, with grip pads in the middle for unsteady feet to use. Further in, past the stairs, was a tile floor, white as snow, and the western half of a white-oak kitchen table. A light fixture, fake candles and all, hung above it, swaying in a breeze he could not feel.

“Honey?” Village called out, in a voice he recognized, and had long forgotten.

“I’m upstairs!” she called out, her voice burned into his brain.

He took the stairs two at a time, feet pushing on the grip pads, thundering up towards the love of his life. Once he had her in his arms, he’d grab both of his kids in his arms. He’d snatch up his son first from the dock, and carry him under his arm like he used to before he left, and then he’d chase down his daughter, giggling as she escaped, dodging left and right, already a speed skater, or was it a sprinter, or was she in the 400m, and eventually he’d catch her too, and he’d bring them back in to his wife and they’d all laugh, like no time had passed, and their luck had been good. 

Hardwood floors. Orange and brown, like the first floor. The ceiling a little low. Not ten feet, maybe nine. One door on the entire second floor. All the way at the end, a flimsy thing of poor quality, painted white with a gold knob. He reached for the knob and turned it and it too did not move, but the door opened and it seemed to pull him inside.

And there she was, with her back to him, writing some piece for some publication, hard at work. Her long blonde hair. He reached for it, and it felt so soft in his fingers, and he felt her smile as his fingers pushed through the curtain of her hair and onto her neck, and she turned, and it wasn’t her.

“Hey there,” Blue said, staring up at him, smiling with real warmth, and inside she felt like his wife, and they did look similar, but they weren’t the same person, and he knew that.

“You’re not her,” Village said.

“Does that matter?” she said. 

Village gripped her neck tight, and he pulled her in close, and he felt himself resist from somewhere else, like he was in control room miles away and he was just an RC car, and this old him who was young him, with a ponytail and too tight jeans, was jerked away from Blue, who stared up at the space he had just been occupying, like he wasn’t there at all.

And then Dresser came into the room, yawning, and it was time for Village to go back on patrol.

Mr. Korak and Blue and Ms. Andi came back the next day, just as they had told Dresser they would. This time, they waved them through the checkpoints, even though protocol dictated that they go through the same process. Once again, Mr. Korak and Ms. Andi left with Dresser, and Village was left alone with Blue. 

“Do you wish you had been born someone else?” Blue said, her accent gone today, suppressed deep. 

“What do you mean?” Village said.

“Andi has always been part of the nation. Her parents were government employees. No doubt to her heritage, or abilities. Made things a lot easier on her,” she said.

“I guess that’s… a perspective I can understand,” Village said, unsure of what to say next. She was obviously powerful and well-connected and if he said the wrong thing, even to someone who seemed friendly the day before…

“That is a very good answer,” Blue said with a smile. Village was confused. 

“How much education have you had, Mr. Village?” Blue said with a smile.

“I have a degree,” he said. 

“In what?” she said.

“Agriculture.” 

“Did you want to be a farmer? Like your parents?” 

“No. It was just the only thing I already knew how to do.” 

“Not the only thing,” Blue said, looking around the construct.

“No degree required for this work,” Village said.

“Meaning it’s a job for stupid people?” 

Village opened his mouth to reply, but he had nothing to say. 

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.” 

She took out a real cigarette, unlike the e-cigarette from the day before, and lit it up. She offered it to Village, who took it reluctantly, but didn’t smoke it. She smirked. 

“I’m not infected with the plague, Mr. Village,” she said. He quickly took a puff, and then handed it back.

“You really are an anxious son of a bitch, aren’t you?” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” he said. 

This time, when Dresser came to get Blue, he didn’t leave. Blue went upstairs without him, and Dresser stayed with Village. Dresser’s eyes were bloodshot red, and the collar of his uniform had been stretched at the neck, like someone had been climbing up his chest. His hands shook a little, and he stood next to Village for a long time without saying anything.

“You know,” Dresser said softly, his voice half an octave higher, “I’ve only got ten more years here, and then I get the big bonus. The one that sets me and my family and my family’s family for life. Forever. Safe and sound, back home. Thirty years of my life, and it’s a flowing fucking river for everyone else.”

Village didn’t say anything. Dresser had never looked like this, or talked like this, and Village’s anxiety was finding new rooms to fill. 

“I don’t have to stay here past twenty. Did you know that? I’m sure you do. I could retire with that full plus half pension, which is still good money. Comfortable, if not extraordinary. My kids and grandkids might struggle some, but not much.”

Dresser pulled at his collar like he was trying to rip it off.

Dresser took the first rest, and that made Village feel better. A return to the pattern — something familiar to cling to, if even if the weather was getting worse. The rule was that, at the five hours, the guard next in line came and woke the sleeping senior. But Village didn’t do that this time. He didn’t want to get close to Dresser, lest he go off down that dark path. Village wasn’t sure he could take another conversation like that. His nerves were shot, which almost made him laugh, considering how anxious he always felt regardless. 

At the five hour mark, Dresser did not appear. Village left him alone. At the six hour mark, he did not appear, and Village left him alone. At the seven, and the eight, and the nine, he did not appear. Village walked his patrol like everything was normal. By the time he came to, slumped up against the wall, having collapsed in exhaustion, it was hour sixteen, and Dresser was shaking him awake. 

He had slept for two hours, and that would have to be enough, because Mr. Korak and Blue and Ms. Andi had returned. 

“Do you know what the construct is for, Village?” Blue said, her accent coming free as soon as her cohorts had been led away.

“No ma’am,” Village said. “I was told that it was the pinnacle of technology, and what made our civilization possible.” 

Blue threw her head back and laughed, and he could tell it was fake, because it sounded like the laugh his wife did when she was mad at him. Fear rose in his throat, and Blue noticed and her face changed from joylessness to real concern, and it scared him.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was… well. I wasn’t laughing at you.” 

Village didn’t say anything. He looked at his hands. They were rough and he was stupid. Of course she wasn’t laughing at him. How could he be so stupid? He was just a farmer. A degree in Agriculture. She must think him a rube. His wife must think him a rube, the way she worked with words. 

“I don’t know what it does either,” she said. “Neither does Andi, or Mr. K.” 

He wondered if she was lying to make him feel better, and that felt narcissistic, and that felt foolish, and that felt selfish, and he could feel himself spiraling, and he began to sweat. 

“I really am sorry,” she said, and he could hear the note of annoyance, and he thought of the dream, and her in it. 

“It’s fine,” he said quickly, finding his bearings. “I’m an anxious son of a bitch, remember?” 

She smiled at him then, real warmth and sunshine, and nodded. 

“Worse things to be,” she said, and glanced at the first floor wall, where the first floor entrance to the construct would be, had it not been locked down for decades and decades. 

“I’ve got twenty more years here,” he said.

“That’s a long time,” she said. 

“Good thing I’m patient,” he ventured, and she laughed for real this time.

“You’ll need it here, V.” 

His wife used to call him V. She didn’t anymore, not since he left. No pet names — just Village. She said that she loved him and that she missed him but she didn’t use pet names. No nicknames. But Blue did. 

Blue told him a story about being in college, before she changed her face, and how she had been a great athlete. Blue said that she gained some renown in their little part of the country, and that she could see a path opening up for her, even as a Clayman. But then she had graduated and didn’t make the Olympic team, and the path she had seen lead her to the hoods of new and used cars at dealerships eager to use her name, but not her face. She was still a Clayman, and people might tolerate something with your name on it, but not your face. So, of course, she took the work, in their shitty little advertisements, and pranced around their shitty little showrooms. And then one day, she couldn’t take it anymore, and in Andi’s arms (who she’d sold a beautiful electric sports car just a few months before), and they came up with the plan to change her face. 

“And now look at me,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “Now I’m a government official officially. Living the good life.” 

Village didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t say anything at all. Blue leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for letting me ramble, V,” she said.

Dresser gave them the first rest, as an apology for his overstay, but Village slept in fits and starts. He dreamed again of his wife with Blue’s face, but it was less a dream than a memory, and when he awoke and fell back asleep he was back at the moment of the dream he had been pulled out of. A linear progression — a dreamlike interpretation of a real-life event, in which old Village played young Village and Blue now played his wife then. 

It started during their third date, at a hot dog place twenty miles from his place and a mile from hers. An accidental date, coming together through his genuine happenstance of being in her town for work at the same time her work had been flooded by an errant bathroom. He had climbed out of a taxi, one of the newest electric ones, still reeling at the newness of the vehicle, when she had come running out of her tall skyscraper, laughing hysterically, as water snuck out behind her. They saw each other, across the street from one another, and their heads cocked to the side, and they both smiled, and even though Village couldn’t prove it, he was sure they were both thinking the same thing.

There were intervening moments before the hot dog place, but no sooner had he thought about serendipity, did he find himself munching a hot dog, crispy and hot and covered in so much fucking mustard that it squirted out of his mouth and onto the table below.

“Nice aim, partner,” she said, with Blue’s face, and he smiled with his old face, full of food.

“I ‘aim’ to please,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. 

He remembered how he felt then, too. Anxious, and afraid, and barely holding on. In her presence, where he wanted to be, and he was still running. He was afraid that she wouldn’t want a fourth date, as he had been afraid she wouldn’t want a first or second and now this third, and he was afraid if she knew about him deep down and his fears and the stuff he was afraid of, that she wouldn’t want him.

He almost told her, mouth full of questionable pork, that he loved her. He didn’t then, of course, and he knew that in the dream as he had in that moment. A rare moment of self-control.. In this moment, in this dream, in his real life, he wondered about a timeline where he had blurted out his fake, desperate love, and where they would be now.

And then the dream jumped again, and they were in her bedroom, and he was already inside of her, and she had her fingernails deep into his back, and her mouth was open, and her legs tight around him, and then Blue’s face on his wife’s body rose up and their lips met, these people in the future living out the past.

When he woke up, his underwear was soiled, and he felt ashamed.

Dresser’s legs hung over the side of the walkway, dangling in the breeze. A cigarette sat between his fingers, and a beer bottle was clenched in the same fist. His eyes were bloodshot red, and his uniform collar was stretched. Village spotted him at the top of the ramp, and took a few tenuous steps toward him and stopped.

“Come on down, partner,” Dresser said, almost yelling, voice half an octave higher. “Come sit next me.” 

Village obeyed the senior guard’s command, and sat down next to him. He folded his legs underneath him, criss-cross, so that not part of him was over the edge. Dresser noticed, and smiled.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you, Village?” Dresser said.

“No,” Village said.

“Splay them legs out. Let them hang. You can do it. I promise. I won’t tell.” 

Dresser wouldn’t take his eyes off Village, so Village splayed them legs out over the side. He felt unsteady, and unstable, and his head began to swim. It felt as if the whole construct was rocking back and forth — as if it was hollow, and bobbing in the ocean.

“Yeah, there it is,” Dresser said drunkenly, taking a swig of beer. “You feel it, don’t you?” 

“Feel what?” Village said. Dresser didn’t respond.

Dresser held out his beer for Village to take, and Village did, but he didn’t take a drink. Dresser didn’t seem to notice. He was staring out into space, into the blue of the artificial atmosphere, to the brown swirl that somehow kept the atmosphere in check. He smiled at nothing.

“My wife is an addict, like me,” he said suddenly, and slowly. 

“Yeah?” Village said. 

“She and I met at a frat party in college. Spent the first ten years together fucked up as hell. Then, when I was thirty-one, I took this job. Haven’t seen her since.” 

“Could go back now, since you’ve hit your twenty years.”

“And miss the giant cash bonus once I hit thirty?” Dresser said, smirking. Their contract stated that a thirty year stint meant you would receive a cash bonus on top of a 160% pension — 20% of whatever you made, net, before taxes. A lot of money, and not all that much money, for an extra ten years of your life. 

“Nobody has ever stayed the thirty,” Dresser continued, taking the beer bottle from between Village’s knees without looking. “Makes you wonder if it’s just too hard, or if they make you come home.” 

“Why would they make you come home?” Village said. Dresser’s eyes were vacant.

“I’d always figured I’d stay, cash or not. Go for forty years, though you don’t get anything extra. You have to leave when you’re eighty, no matter how much time. I’ll only be seventy-one then. What’s the difference between fifty-one and seventy-one, when the alternative is returning home?” 

Dresser drank the last of the bottle, down to the drop, and tossed it over the side. It peeled through the air, flipping over and over, and then disappeared from sight. 

“You never talk about your family,” Dresser said softly. 

“They’re good,” Village said, and his heart began to race.

“No addicts or fuck-ups there, huh?” 

“That’s not what I was saying.” 

Dresser took out two e-cigarettes, and handed one to Village. They activated at the same time, and took a pull at the same time, but Village let the vapor out first. Dresser held it deep within.

“My supervisor was named Frank. I tell you about him?” 

Village shook his head. He really hadn’t. He’d talked to Village a lot in their early days, but not much anymore. Village had hoped it was because he had run out of stories.

“So, Frank,” Dresser said, sucking on the e-cigarette, “had been arrested for shoplifting like twenty times. Little stuff, over and over. Not for any real reason. He’s just kind of a weird fucking guy. Anyway, his state got harsh on crime or something else stupid towards the end of his shoplifting career, and he got busted, and sentenced to, like, thirty years in prison. For stealing a twenty dollar watch from a big box.” 

“Holy shit,” Village said. That was the right answer, because Dresser nodded.

“You’re goddamn right, holy shit. Thirty years for shoplifting. Back in the old days, judge might give you the option of the military or prison. We ain’t got a military like that anymore, even in Frank’s time, so they offered to send him here. If he served ten years, his debt would be wiped clean. Ten for thirty. Easy trade. He ended up staying twenty for the big pension.” 

Dresser coughed. He looked at the e-cigarette in his hand, and flicked it over the side.

“The pinnacle of our civilization,” Dresser said, coughing again, clearing his throat. “The most impressive thing we’ve ever done. The Construct! And yet, when recruiting for security, they pick a guy whose only claim to fame is that he stole a bunch of women’s panties and cheap, probably already broken watches.” 

Dresser looked at Village. His eyes were bloodshot, as they had been a lot lately. Village wanted to scoot away, but to get away from Dresser meant chancing a fall into oblivion. Village was so anxious he could hardly breathe.

“I’m an addict,” Dresser said slowly. “I’m an addict, off the needle only because I ran away from home. Frank was a petty thief, and if half the stories the other guys used to tell were true, they were a bunch of knockoffs and criminals. That’s who they have protecting this place. How great can it actually fucking be?” 

Dresser stood up, pulling himself away from the edge like one false move wouldn’t send him straight down into nothingness. He stuck out a hand, and Village took it, and Dresser pulled him to his feet. But Dresser didn’t let go. He pulled Village close to him, towering over Village, even though he was only a few inches taller.

“All these petty crooks and addicts,” Dresser said, his breath sour with booze, “and you, a farmer, who sold his lands and moved to the suburbs.”

Village’s hands began to sweat, and he willed himself not to tremble in Dresser’s grip.

“Did you rape your kids, farmer boy?” Dresser said, moving them closer to the edge. Village began to shake.

“No!” Village said, hardly able to get the words out.

“Murder a politician?” 

“Of course not! Dresser, please-”

Closer to the edge, and closer to the edge.

“Did you steal a Corvette from a rich guy, or fuck a rich guy’s daughter?”

Village’s heel slipped over the side, and his foot dangled in the air. Dresser had a tight grip on Village’s hand, squeezing so hard, like he was trying to break it. 

“Please, I didn’t do anything wrong!” 

Village began to tear up. Dresser smiled. He pulled Village back over the edge, and with an indifferent shove sent him sprawling onto the ramp.

Dresser picked up the e-cigarette that Village had dropped. It had, miraculously, not tipped over the side.

He flicked it at Village and hit him in the chest.

Village avoided Dresser the next day, and the next. Mr. Korak, Blue, and Ms. Andi returned each day, but Village did not join his partner in greeting them. He stuck to his own route. He didn’t want to dream about Blue again, and so he started jogging his patrol. His goal was to exhaust himself — so much so that when he went to rest, he would be too tired to dream. It worked, though he found himself too afraid to go to his cot, so he began sleeping on the upper floor of the construct. He curled up in a ball at the top of the inner ramp, right in front of where the next door would’ve been cut, if they’d continued to build. 

This arrangement was acceptable to Dresser — evidenced by the bed clothes and food and water he left sitting outside the room when he took his sleep. He could only make himself go into their shared room on the second floor when he needed to use the bathroom, or take a shower; even he had enough shame to not piss and shit over the edge like an animal, or bathe in the bottled water that Dresser left out for him. 

This went on for three weeks. On the twenty-first day, Village found no water and no food left for him outside the door. He knew Dresser was in there resting, and he didn’t go inside to check for supplies. He simply went back to patrol, and when it was his time to rest, laid down in front of where the door would’ve been, and fell asleep.

He hadn’t been asleep long when a hand reached out, and touched his shoulder. 

“V,” Blue said from behind him, and Village jerked like he’d been shot, turning over and scooting away from the sound of her voice. 

“What the fuck,” Village said, breathless. Blue was in her customary suit and tie, hair pulled back and perfect, but her eyes were black, and her make up was streaked by tears.

She led him downstairs by the hand. Village felt like a kid again — like his mom had woken him up for Christmas morning, or one of the myriad times their new government had made them move. Village wondered why those things registered as the same to him, and he did his best not to think about it anymore. 

They stopped in front of the second floor entrance to the construct interior, and the room that Village and Dresser shared. Mr. Korak and Ms. Andi stood outside. Mr. Korak had taken off his tie, and was playing with it in his hands. His shirt collar was unbuttoned, and pulled away from his neck. Ms. Andi was still perfectly put together, her makeup as picturesque as the first time Village saw her. But she was still in the way that Village wished he could be still when he was afraid. 

Mr. Korak opened the door without saying anything, and after a moment, walked inside.

The door to the construct interior was open. Village felt Blue’s small, warm hand at the center of his back, pushing him towards the doors, and for one hysterical moment, Village felt like a cartoon, trying to escape. He wondered if he planted his feet, in his rubber extra-grip boots, if he would slide on the floor like it was ice. The hand in his back remained, and another hand took his, and Village began walking towards the darkness promised by the interior door’s opening. 

Mr. Korak went in first, and Ms. Andi last. Blue kept her hand in his and on him as they walked in. Village could see nothing. Mr. Korak flipped on the lights, and the sudden illumination froze Village in his tracks. 

And then he saw Dresser.

His senior partner was swaying at the end of a rope, tied onto an exposed beam in the ceiling. His face was blue and his eyes were open, staring at nothing, and his lips were a thin line. His fingertips were black with pooled blood, and his uniform collar had been ripped down to his chest. His chest hair and nipple were exposed, and Village kept staring at that exposure — the only part of Dresser Village could look at and convince himself his partner was still alive.

“Did you pack up books?” Village’s father said, in the accent Village didn’t have.

“I think so,” Village said, only nine.

“We’ll get you more if you didn’t,” his mother said, and Village was proud of her perfect English.

“Promise,” his father said, and then they were all in their beat-up truck, off their latest farm, heading to a new one, a worse one. Always a worse one.

“Mr. Village,” Mr. Korak said, and Village fell back into his body like a man down a hole.

“Yes,” Village said. 

“Mr. Dresser was helping us with something. Will you continue his work?”

“Alan,” Blue said angrily.

“The work has to continue, Nora, whether we like it or not.” 

“Give him some fucking time to breathe, for Christ’s sake.” 

Village’s eyes were on Dresser’s chest hair, and the nipple within it. He fought back a hysterical grin. Like a tiny volcano in a thick, coarse forest. If Dresser was a girl, it’d erupt with milk. Village laughed — a short bark that ended as soon as it began.

They all looked at him strangely — this grin, growing on his face; the weird, quick chuckle — and when he looked at Mr. Korak, Mr. Korak stepped to the side.

“Will you help us?” Mr. Korak said, uncertain. 

“Yes,” said Village, in an accent that wasn’t his.

Village cut Dresser down (a ladder Village had never seen was within the construct interior) and laid his partner on his cot. He shut Dresser’s eyes, and removed the noose from his neck, and when Village asked where Dresser had gotten rope none of the three looked him in the eye.

The construct interior was bland. A massive column, as big around as three oak trees side by side, stood in the middle of the room. It ran up and down, all the way to the top and bottom. It was off-white.

“Other rooms like this one are on every floor,” Ms. Andi said. 

“I know that,” Village said, and Ms. Andi looked at her shoes.

Around the base of this massive column was a ring of buttons and levers and lights, all covered in dust. The whole room was covered in dust, save for the spots where Dresser had and the trio and Village continued to trod. Part of the ring was also free of dust, where the four had been working all this time.

“We’re trying to get it to work,” Mr. Korak said. 

“It doesn’t work?” Village said. A revelation. That should’ve sparked anxiety in him. He felt nothing at all. 

“It works,” Blue said, or Nora said. “We just don’t know how.” 

Dresser had been here the longest of any living person, according to Mr. Korak. Alan. According to Alan, the rest of the guards who had retired had died only a few years after they left. 

“Not that that’s normal or anything,” Alan said quickly.

They had thought Dresser, just by being here, might be able to help him. Things he absorbed by metaphorical osmosis. Or maybe things he’d heard, but didn’t realize were important.

“We’ve made good progress,” Andi said. “We managed to get that panel open, and power to this part of the ring. Some of the buttons reacted when we pushed them. Nothing seems to have changed, though.” 

Everyone who worked on the construct’s creation had been dead for three centuries, and over the years new tech was built on top of old tech. The further up you went on the construct, the more technologically advanced they were. 

“The first floor is so old we can’t even figure out how to get the door open,” Alan said sheepishly.

“Any floor above the second was built with computer codes that were lost to history, as they say,” Andi said. 

“A boring story, not worth telling,” Alan said quickly.

They wanted to know if Dresser had ever said anything to him, or if over his ten years had noticed anything. Even if it was mystical. 

“Especially if it was mystical,” Alan said.

But he had nothing to tell him. Nothing mystical. Nothing special.  It was a big gray pencil in a fake blue sky, held up by brown, swirling wind (they didn’t even know what the brown wind was for, and that made Village feel like a cartoon again). 

“What happens now?” Village said, fog rolling over him like a busy harbor. Alan slammed the panel shut, wiped his hand. 

“Goal one was to make sure it was still working,” Alan said.

“Yes sir,” Andi said.

“Power still flows, despite us not knowing why.”

“Yes sir,” Nora said.

“Seems like it’s working, then,” Alan said, looking at Blue and Andi. 

“Yes sir,” Andi said. 

“Yes sir,” Nora said.

“Looks like we’ll have to be satisfied with that,” Alan said, and turned and left the room. Andi followed, and after a moment, and a look at Village, Nora followed. 

Village followed them out, and caught a final glimpse of Dresser. They all headed for the ramp, heading down to the first floor. Village stopped on the ramp, and stepped to the edge. He looked over the side.

“V?” Blue said, stopping at the bottom of the ramp.

“Nora, come on,” Alan said. “Ship’s waiting. I wanna get our full report sent off soon.” 

“What are you doing?” Blue said.

“I asked what happens now, and nobody answered,” Village said. His partner swung from a rope. It probably took a while. Falling would take even longer. 

“V,” Blue said. 

It was almost funny. He spent all that time being anxious and afraid, shivering in dread about ruining this job, and wasting his time. 

“If you want to leave after ten more years, Mr. Village, you may,” Alan said, putting one foot up on the upward slope of the ramp. 

“Ten more years,” Village said. He felt light as a feather. He felt as light as the fog that was lifting him onto his toes. 

Village looked over at Alan, and Andi, and Nora. Beautiful, and moneyed, and done with their work, even though they had failed as miserably as they could. Dresser, who had always done the job, hanged by the neck until dead. Village, who’d always done the job, on the edge.

“How about eight?” Alan said, and Village laughed. 

“No, thank you,” Village said, and tipped forward. 

Gravity overtook him, and he fell like a bird dipping into a birdbath. He imaged the whole sequence — his face as the beak, bending at the waist until horizontal, finding no water to drink and instead counting to fold in, and then he would be chewing gum, one half folded over the other — and it seemed peaceful, to be transformed in his falling, so that the thing that dropped and died wasn’t a father of two and a husband, but nothing important at all.

But Blue was there, and she grabbed his hand, and somehow held him from going over the edge, and her too.

“Don’t,” she said, straining, hair breaking free of its ties, and whipping around her face. “Please.” 

Village was looking over his shoulder, his arm pulled behind him, and his chest over the blue sky and brown wind. One foot was still in stair-step, and the other on the edge of the construct. He heard Andi gasp, and Alan groan. 

“Please,” Blue said, digging her fingernails into his wrist. 

And so, Village pulled himself back from the edge. He folded his arm, like he was doing some sort of bicep curl, and that brought him close enough to the edge that Blue was able to pull him to safety. 

Blue fell to the ground, and Village remained steady. Andi rushed up the ramp, and she got there as Village reached out his hand, and they pulled Blue to her feet. 

“Nora,” he said, and Blue looked at him.

“You’ve never said my name before,” she said.

“I always just thought of you as Blue.” 

She looked at the tie hanging from her neck, and rolled her eyes.

The interior of their ship was nicer than the pock-marked, laser-scored outside. Soft floors, and soft couches, and a soft bed for Village to sleep in. The walls were gray and the furniture was brown. The bathroom he got by himself had expensive stone-tile floors, and green-pink gradient walls. He left his uniform on the white marble bathroom counter, bunched up into an unrecognizable ball. 

After his shower, he stood, naked and dripping, in front of the mirror. He had never been heavy, and the walking of the job over the ten years had made him skinny, but the three weeks of jogging had added some definition to his thin legs. There were no mirrors at the construct — he hadn’t gotten this good of a look at himself in ten years. His pubic hair was long and wild, his penis almost buried within it.  He felt as if he was watching his body from inside —  piloting a ship that looked just like him. 

When Village awoke the next morning, he found clean clothes sitting outside his door. He took another shower, and found breakfast already cooked and sitting on a table near the kitchen. In the sink in the kitchen there were three plates and glasses, and Village took that as a sign to eat alone. 

After he was finished he wandered the ship. He found an exercise room, filled with free weights and treadmills, and just down the hall he found a study full of real, honest-to-god books. Village hadn’t worked out in years but he did so now. He had long since figured out the length of his route in seconds, and he adjusted the speed on the treadmill until it felt comfortable. He walked for nearly two hours before he came to his senses. 

He flipped through a lot of the books, aimlessly, breathing in the different smells. Some of them were centuries old. Paperback novels, romance and science fiction and hardboiled noir, and some big hardcover tomes about Greek history and Roman mythology. A “Study of Ancient History” one of them said; a textbook for a college course, written four hundred and sixty-six years prior. Ancient history, writing about ancient history.

By the time he finished in the study, it was time for dinner. He had missed lunch, though he’d heard them eating as he wormed his way through one of the romance novels. There was a desk in the study, too, with drawers that pulled open freely, but he didn’t inspect any further. It was real wood, dark and rich, accompanied by a black leather seat as comfortable as the bed he’d slept on. He brought his dinner of beef stroganoff and french fries and water back into the study, and at the desk. They had all given him strange looks, when he picked up his plate and walked away.

“You can call your family and let them know you’re coming,” Andi said, three days into a two week journey. She handed him a phone, as he read in the study. She was wearing a button down shirt, tucked into jeans, and those jeans were tucked into cowboy boots. Her hair was free and hanging over her left shoulder, down to her breasts. 

“Thanks,” he said, and she left him alone.

He remembered his wife’s number, and they let him keep the phone, but he never dialed it. He didn’t want to talk to her, or them. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get off the ship at all. He knew he would have to. It wasn’t as if he could circle the world in this thing. But he pretended for most of the two weeks that he would stay on there forever. 

“Better here than back home,” Dresser had said, more or less. 

Village wasn’t afraid that his wife would drag him into some black hole he couldn’t escape, nor was he reluctant to see his kids again. But something about it now all seemed so pointless, and it seemed pointless to try to make them understand. The only person that could understand was Dresser, and he was still laying on that cot, almost certainly rotting away by now, stinking up the place for whoever they sent out there to scoop him up. 

Blue woke him up in the middle of the night. She was drunk, sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Sorry for waking you,” she said, wearing a long t-shirt, wobbly in her inebriation. “We’re only a few hours out.” 

“Okay,” Village said.

“They’re gonna send more people out there. New guards. Well, one more. They’re going down to one. No scientists, or technicians, or engineers.” 

Blue laid down, legs hanging over the edge of the bed, and her back flat on the comforter. Her head rested on Village’s ankles. 

She scoffed, and shook her head, and the bony back of her neck rubbed up against his shins, and he winced but didn’t move. 

“Oh,” she said, too casually, and Village somehow got that this was why she was here, “Alan convinced them to give you the full pension. Not the cash bonus, but the twenty years.” 

“Thanks,” Village said.

“Yeah,” Blue said. She closed her eyes, and they laid together in silence for a while.

“What about you?” Village said, through the haze.

“Alan’s got a promotion in line for me and Andi,” she said quickly, like she was waiting for him to ask. “Keep us quiet. Bump in pay and in title. Project Leads or something.” 

“Everything you ever wanted,” he said mechanically. 

She looked at him for a long time.

“Yeah,” she boomeranged, “everything I ever wanted.” 

The ship touched down at Raimondo Air Force Base, near Dakyō, in the Yokatana Prefecture, exactly where he lifted off a decade ago. It had been little more than a rectangular yard, fenced in by metal walls and filled with temporary structures of green canvas, but it had all changed. Buildings, made out of concrete and steel, populated the rectangle like a miniature city. Signs written in Japanese and English labelled buildings like  “SHINRYŌSHO/INFIRMARY” and “SHOKUDŌ/CAFETERIA”. 

As soon as the ship doors opened, and the four of them stepped out, government agents appeared. Blue hugged Village tightly, kissing him on the cheek, and pulled back as if she wanted to say something. But she didn’t, and instead squeezed his hand, and Alan didn’t look at him, and Andi gave him a small, embarrassed smile, and left. One government agent, a short man with dark skin and a small, thin mustache, handed him a bus pass.

“Bus’ll take you to your neighborhood,” he said.

“I’m taking the bus?” Village said.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the agent said, “but our work comes first.” 

The agent left him standing there, holding a laminated bus pass that shined holographic in the light. Free bus rides for a whole year, it read. It was an impressive piece of hardware. Village wondered what it would cost to replace it, should he lose it.

The bus pass was just outside the Air Force base. Nobody pointed Village in the right direction, and he wandered for a bit before finding the exit. Guards let him through without a second glance, and shut the gate closed behind him before he could turn and say thank you. 

A bus, floating above the ground, soon appeared at the stop. Village stared at the floating machine. Technology that had always been possible — the construct was proof of that — but had only just now trickled out to the civilian population.

“Sir,” said the bus driver, a heavy-set woman with strong Japanese ancestry. Village got onto the bus.

When he had left Dakyō, it had been a city split by its cultural ancestors. Buildings were recognizably American, or recognizably Japanese. The people were the same. Consciously different, almost aggressively so, despite the city having been formed as a way of finally, finally, finally putting to the past to bed. 

But now nothing looked as it did. He couldn’t tell where one culture began and the other ended. Ten years and somehow two things had become one. A messy one, of course — smudged and scraped, chalk dust blown about — but one all the same. He wondered if that was a good thing, or a bad thing, and if one culture had triumphed, and if this was less a fondue than a vat of acid. He wondered if he was just seeing the echoes of whatever civilization had finally given in, and been beaten; starlight from a distant galaxy, breathless gossip already out of date.

Horizontal and two-story vertical farms, like the gradient of green-pink in the starship bathroom, opened up into real open land. The vertical farms had freed up so much space, and the suburbs he had left behind still existed. He looked out the window of his bus, the long rectangle thing bobbing like a fishing lure, and watched as one glossy neighborhood after another passed them by. Soon, he fell asleep, and he did not dream. 

He woke up as they reached his stop. Village’s house was seven houses from the entrance of the neighborhood, and as he walked off the bus and onto the sidewalk he breathed in fresh air, and listened to the sound his feet made on the concrete. 

His yard was green, and well-maintained. A basketball hoop was installed on the driveway, and a basketball sat in the shade of the house. It was two stories and brick, and the shutters were green, and the door was, too. A forest green. A new color, replacing the black they had been when he left. A car, still on wheels, sat in the driveway. It was white and a little old and on the back was a sticker for Dakyō State.

He heard the front door open, and he stepped away from the car, and looked towards the porch. His wife was standing there, blonde hair cut short, a few more wrinkles around the eyes, but still the woman he’d fallen in love with and left behind. The children hid behind here, teenagers though they were, acting as if they were greeting a deliveryman. 

Village walked up the concrete sidewalk, and up the wooden stairs he’d built and varnished before he left. The bushes in front had been replaced by bright, beautiful flowers. 

“I like the flowers,” he said, and smiled. He felt nothing at all. 

Nicole threw her arms around him, hugging him as tightly as she could. His kids followed suit, pouncing on the two of them, and Nicole laughed. Village mimicked their actions and expressions.

“I love you, V,” she said, kissing his cheek.

“I love you, Nicole,” he said, and she hugged him tighter. 

They made a hasty dinner, throwing it all together as fast as they could go. His son Sam and his daughter Amanda and his wife Nicole, right in front of him. Macaroni and cheese, leftover in the fridge, and then into the microwave. Pulled pork, into the oven, just for a few minutes. And then they were sitting down, eating and laughing, and he watched their faces close and smiled when they smiled.

Sam went out to shoot after, and Amanda went with him, and they left the front door open, and Village and Nicole could hear the bouncing of the basketball, and they didn’t speak for a long time.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming home,” she said. She wasn’t angry. 

“No,” Village said softly. He hadn’t wanted to, not even for a moment. He woke up and bathed and ate and worked out and read and bathed and slept and did it all over again. She didn’t even ask if he wanted it to be a surprise, because she knew him as well as anyone.

“Take your time,” she said, and kissed him, and went outside to be with their kids.

Village followed, and sat on the steps, and watched Sam and Amanda and Nicole play. He wanted to join up, but he was glued to the stairs. Laughter and voices and warm wind, with different smells. Feet on the ground. He gripped the wooden stairs he had built. It was warm and sunny and clear today and the weather would be the same tomorrow.