Best to Forget

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. And every night the ring of eleven stood in a circle and sang their chorus. Their harmonies held as fine a pitch as a tabernacle choir. Without a conductor, or the need for one, their combined voices blended from a rich harmonic chorus down to a single-note solo and back to harmonies again. Then they would smile at each other and return to their homes on Maple Street, walking purposefully, peacefully in the purple night. No goodbyes. No “see you tomorrow night” or “catch ya later.” Silence—actually more like a silent wake. A trail of audible radiance no human having heard it once would ever, could ever, forget.

These eleven would never remember.

There is no telling how many nights the midnight choir had joined to create this magic. Without someone to record, observe, or document the event there was simply no telling. There was no evidence that the moment had occurred. No memory of it. No memory of anything.

On Day One, as it would come to be known, an elderly couple that had been married for over 60 years looked into each other’s eyes and saw a perfect stranger. A mother, moments after giving birth to her new baby daughter, lovingly picked up the tiny stranger and asked, “Where did you come from?” A veteran airline pilot turned toward his copilot and asked, “Where are we?” just as a flight attendant entered the cockpit with a look of terror on her face. “Oh wow! We are so high! You can see for miles!” She leaned her head between the pilot and copilot and the three of them gazed out the windows of the speeding jet. In about sixteen minutes the plane would land in the Pacific Ocean about fifty miles off the coast of San Diego, California. Not a soul would survive the crash, or the fire, or the drowning. The navy men aboard their training vessel watched as the plane splashed into the sea. They would gasp in awe, then turn their heads away, squinting from the blinding sun, and relax into whatever activity drew their curiosity. And they would hum, or sing, and some would whistle graceful melodies, or peppy tunes, or mournful tones. Within a few minutes the group of seabees, witness to hundreds of deaths only moments ago, would be enjoined in nothing less than delightful song.

To this day, there is still too much to know and too much that cannot be explained. The world, it is assumed, suffered an attack by unknown source. A tremendous amount of loss occurred, an incalculable loss. But to say the world “suffered an attack” doesn’t quite explain all that changed on that day. Suffering, as it happens, is measured by contrasts, by tolerance for change, by memory of what was and is no more. The world is not suffering. It is a peaceful world filled with what could best be described as riddled with human grace. Kind people mingle with other kind people. Old and young, tall and small, silly and stoic, all kinds, all sorts of all mankind are just that: kind.

It is an easy world. It is a safe world. It is a world of midnight harmonies and purple midnight skies, and a kind of silence that cannot be described by the lack of sound, rather by the utter eradication of noise. The noisy voices, the stewing, seething hisses of angry shrews, the cries of injured soldiers, the angry shouting of unhappy couples, the groans of the broken hearted, the furious cries of injustice were simply and suddenly absent. Roaring motors now rust on the bottom of the ocean. Desiccated roadside corpses have, for decades, become nothing more than dust in the steady, blowing wind. The blood has dried. The bones are buried beneath grasses and flowers. The rains have washed away the ashes of the fires and the creek beds are abundant with new life. The oceans are clearing. The death, the sounds of death, the sadness of death, indeed the evidence of death are simply gone. Or at least not remembered. It has been sixteen years. 16 years, 4 months, and 3 days to be exact. Today is 16.04.03

* * *

Abigail, Rack, Elle, Mokey, Landau and Chip stood in the elevator lobby. The marble floor shone, the marble walls rose twenty feet up to the ceiling, the brushed steel elevator doors reflected back half-distorted images of the five teens and Chip.

“It’s your turn, Elle,” said Chip, nodding toward the directory. Elle stepped up to the directory mounted behind clear glass doors on the lobby wall. She laughed a single “ha.” “Very funny, Chip,” she half-groaned. Then with a quick double-check, entered the code numbers that would summon the elevator into the keypad.

“What.” Mokey half-asked. "What did he do this time?" Elle, almost reluctant to say, took in a breath of courage and leaned in toward her young co-worker, and half-whispered, “The elevator code is the date day I got my first period.” Mokey blushed, Elle blushed. Chip tucked in his laughter with a not too innocent, “What?” Eyeballs rolled, heads dropped, everyone prayed for any kind of interruption. And there it was.

The lowered heads simultaneously rose to greet Otis and Sam. Nods and stiff grins were cast as precisely as a flock of flamingos, as the two old men shuffled past, pushing a rolling canvas cart past the elevator bay—just passing by. The shiny floors, the shiny doors, the clear glass windows—all were the work of these two men. They had provided custodial care to this building decades before Day 1. And now they lived in what was, back in the day, the third floor cafeteria. The cafeteria kitchen was their kitchen. The mens room was their bathroom. The ladies room was their laundry room. They called it the clean room today as they had called it way back when. They didn't "remember" that is what it had been called. That was just what they called it. Clean is what is was, after all. They slept, not side by side, but head to head under the long table in the executive conference room. In all the world, there was no better, safer, more appropriate place for Otis and Sam than the third floor of the headquarters of Universal Mining. This was where they were on Day 1 and this is where they would remain until the end. The end being nowhere in sight.

The elevator door opened and the flamingo heads turned to enter. Abigail, Rack, Mokey, Landau and Chip boarded. Elle remained behind, re-entered the code and the door closed. She stood alone, listening to what little sound existed. Otis and Sam’s wheels. Some gentle mutterings between the two of them, a quietly whistled tune they shared. And there it was, the distant sound of an elevator door opening and closing three floors down. A quiet motor brought the elevator up to the lobby again. Elle heard the car brake engage. She entered the code again and the doors opened. Chip waved his arm, in an “after you” gesture. Elle entered. Chip stayed behind and entered the code to send her on her way. He opened the glass doors on the directory and plucked out the little, white plastic numbers that he had placed there that morning before the kids had arrived. Kids. They weren’t kids. They were the people running the world. The irony wasn’t lost on Chip. He would do anything for these kids. Indeed he may have saved their lives. Most certainly they would save his.

* * *

Here he was, a man of what? 35? There was no way to say for sure. Unless and until the kids were able to unearth some record of his birth his age would remain one of the countless mysteries this odd new world kept concealed. His job was to protect and guide them to the best of his abilities, as it had been for sixteen years. Changing the elevator codes was part of the protection scheme. The basement of this building was the command center and, more important, the sanctuary where these kids had worked, at least in the case of Elle, since age 5.

Chip closed the cabinet doors, locked it up, and set the key on the top edge of the case, out of sight. It wouldn’t be long before Rack would be able to reach it. Chip already suspected Rack had seen the key but he would never have risked reaching for it even if he knew for sure it were there. Not Rack. He would have lifted Abigail up by her armpits and made her grab the key. Rack was never one to claim responsibility for anything…not even if it made him the hero. It was hard to say if it was humility that drove him to this extreme, or the desire to remain invisible which as he grew was becoming less and less possible. He missed being little. He had been a wunderkind, and now that he was approaching adulthood—whatever that meant—soon enough he wouldn’t be able ride on his youth, or impress anyone with the huge toothless grin he flashed when, at age six, he hacked into the security feed for every security camera in the city. The advantage the crew had gained by this new level of surveillance was a true game-changer. And this hyper-intelligent goofball kid had cracked the code. Now the team would be able to keep an eye on the town, on the streets, and on their parents. But more important, Chip would be able to keep an eye on the kids after they went home every night. Was he a guardian or a spy? To Chip, 100% guardian. He hadn't a single sinister bone in his body. After all, he lived in a world of abundant virtue. To be anything less than a good man would be poisonous perhaps, and most certainly unnecessary.

Chip spent the short elevator ride from the lobby down to the third lower level to mentally sort his plans for the day. So little responsibility rested on his head these days now that the kids could reach the gas pedal. They were maturing faster now, even faster than when they were four and five. Their early childhood development had been both terrifying and exhilarating to watch. Terrifying because it was so swift. Exhilarating because it was probably going to be the thing that saved the planet from...he always got stuck on the next thought...from what? The planet had never been better.

He had to learn how to parent children who were not his own. He was sixteen on Day 1, and only about twenty-one when he became their guardian, chauffeur, coach, and big brother. Technically, he could have been a brother to one or more. In fact, he could be a father. The resemblance between him and Landau was growing more and more obvious as Land grew. It wouldn’t be long before the kids were able to restore some of the digital data from before Day 1. Books filled with written histories were in abundance. But personal data, as in who begat who, was nearly impossible to find and even harder to trust. So much file corruption had occurred, and so many databases had simply been destroyed that it was almost not worth the effort. The overrriding question always loomed, did it matter? The question that needed answering wasn’t, is Landau my son, or my brother? It was what happened? And can we fix it? Still, the questions that haunted Chip’s dreams were these: Why wasn’t I affected? Why did my parents and all the other people on earth lose their memories, and their ability to form new memories? Why can’t I remember where I was that day? Why can’t I 'walk in peace' like everyone else? Why am I not drawn to the midnight singing circles? What happened, or didn’t happen to me, and why? Can the kids fix it? What will happen if they do?

The question that never once occurred to him was, why are the night sky clouds purple?