Until the End of Time

Michael needs to find the locket.

He first bought it to apologize or maybe it was to commemorate the moment that he first told her he loved her. It was probably both or maybe it was neither. Michael’s memory had gotten shaky after everything changed, but so did everyone’s.

He didn’t actually tell Lucy he loved her. She read it. He’d left his journal out one morning after he left for work. She told him she thought he left it out on purpose, because, it was open right to the page he’d written it. He was angry at first, but he didn’t really want it to be a secret. He bought the necklace shortly afterward.

It was a small rose gold heart, with a tiny diamond set in the center. He didn’t notice the inscription until he got it home, in fact it was Lucy who noticed it. She read it out loud to him, “Until the end of time,” she said, “how beautiful!” She’d always loved clocks and was an expert at repairing them, though she hadn’t remembered sharing that with him. He didn’t acknowledge it wasn’t intentional, or maybe he did and neither of them remember.

She wore it everywhere when they were together. Before everything changed, if he went on a trip she’d give it to him. She’d say, “Keep it with you and keep the promise,” and he’d always respond by saying, “Until the end of time.” When he’d come home, he’d give it back and she’d say, “Clock’s still ticking,” and he’d respond with, “And we’re still here.”

A few years later he got sick. When he went in for emergency surgery, even as he slipped into his anesthetized sleep, she tucked it into his gown and he mumbled his promise to her. When he awoke, her first words to him, with tears in her eyes were, “Clock’s still ticking,” and he garbled out a sentence that only she could have understood as, “And we’re still here.”

Then the clocks stopped ticking.

When the bombs went off they ran, escaping the fallout. When the food ran out, Michael learned to hunt, clutching a pistol in one hand and the locket in another, returning home to the ticking clocks that Lucy repaired. "We have to keep the time," she said, "it's all we have."

When the grid collapsed, they had no idea how many people remained. The roads had been filled in the first few months after the bombs. First there were the refugees, often shell shocked, scabbed and starved, looking for food or shelter. Then came the factions, at first highly organized groups that banded together to ensure their survival, but gradually devolving in to marauders that were more like hunting parties, eventually killing each other.

Then, just the stragglers, wanderers and nomads who would sparsely appear. By then Michael and Lucy had learned, as one would guess the remaining survivors did, that talking to people was no longer worth the risk.

But over the last few years, there weren’t even stragglers. Maybe they settled into little homes of their own. Maybe the road ended up defeating them. Perhaps they coalesced into a new civilization. If the rest of the world had ended or been reborn, Michael and Lucy wouldn’t have known.

About a year ago, Lucy left on another adventure, “a great journey” she called it. She gave the locket to Michael, who said, “I’ll keep it with me, if you keep the promise,” and as she disembarked she said, “Until the end of time.” Michael would have been scared, the future had stopped obeying expectations a long time ago, but he’d made a similar journey a couple of years before. And while he returned changed, he returned. She’d held the locket for him, so he holds it for her.

As the clocks ticked toward her return, Michael had kept busy with her instructions, carefully written out in her neat, precise handwriting. Building her a new home was a daunting task, one he felt wasn’t prepared for, but she believed in him, so he believed in him. He’d harvested sheet metal from decomposing cars left on the side of the freeway, or in the case of some of his finer pieces, abandoned in garages. He was never much of a welder, but she gave instructions for that too. Carefully shaping the metal, he hoped she would love it.

He rode his bike to find solar panels nearly a hundred miles out of town, and over many lengthy days and nights carted a collection back to the house. The memory though, that was more of a challenge.

Lucy always complained about the lack of durability in modern technology. She complained it was made to be disposable, sleek and powerful for a year or two and decrepit and dilapidated in five. “Nothing is made to last,” she would say. Which is why she loved clocks and watches, mechanical, intricate, expertly crafted and capable of lasting centuries. “The peak of technology,” she would say, “tiny devices that capture the knowledge of the cosmos and last forever.”

But, there were limitations, limitations she worked on, but limitations none the less. A clock couldn’t recall a lifetime of memories, but a large enough hard drive could. And who are we without our memories?

For months, Michael would wander through the nearby city looking for components. Old stores had been looted immediately after the bombs, whatever remained had been damaged and exposed in the turmoil. Offices were a bit better. One nine story complex yielded him a working processor that would do the trick. But memory, even flash drives were scarce. People could leave their computers but not their memory.

It was a bank vault where he finally found it. It had been sealed, unbreakable, despite all the attempts for years to breach it, until its own mechanisms degraded enough that Michael could break the seal with brute strength. Though nearly every box was filled with worthless cash or jewelry, one was quite valuable. One contained a hard drive in pristine condition, sealed in an airtight bag. No doubt it contained worthless information about a company that didn’t exist, some crime that didn’t matter or an invention that would never be.

Now, he just needed to remember the locket. Every time he had to hold it, he feared he would lose it. And every time the fear made him misplace it, but every time it reappeared. This time, it was sitting right on top of her instructions. The final instruction read, “All my memories are encoded in you, so all that’s left is to transfer them to my new home.”

When his body broke down years ago, the deterioration happened quickly. Lucy would point to all the clocks and say, “Time hasn’t ended yet,” but Michael had become discouraged. He apologized for breaking his promise, but she reminded him that hadn’t broken it yet.

What took Michael nearly a year to construct she had completed in six weeks. At first he was afraid, would it work, would it hurt? She pointed to the inscription on the locket and said, “It will work because it has to, and it will hurt because it’s love.”

He agreed and when he took his final breath she held the locket. “Keep it with you, keep the promise,” he said. “Until the end of time,” she said.

Moments later, she transferred his memories to the last hard drive they had, and installed it in his new home. It whirred to life quickly. The tiny blue led lights that indicated his eyes flickered to life.

Scared, she asked, “Clock’s still ticking?”

For a moment the mechanical body hummed as its systems all came online. “And we’re still here.”

As she aged, she could do less and less, and as Michael learned his body, he could do more and more. It never really hurt, not until the end.

She stopped working on the clocks. She spent her days in bed. But it wasn’t until he saw her writing out instructions for him that he understood what it meant. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he said, “I can’t fix things like you can.”

“We are out of time, my love,” she said, “and I know you can.”

“But what if doesn’t work, what if it hurts?”

“It will work because it has to,” she said handing him the locket, “and it will hurt because it’s love.” She gently held his cold, metal hand, which by now felt warm and comfortable to her. She dropped the locket into his palm and smiled weakly asking, “Keep it with you, keep the promise.”

If he could have cried, he would have been too choked up to speak. Be he couldn’t, and he wasn’t. “Until the end of time,” he said, unsure if that was upon them.

He immediately began work on her instructions, carefully preserving her memories in the only hard drive they had: his. To make space for her, he had to let go of all but the essence of himself. How much could he remove from each without losing themselves? How much space would he need to complete the work? He didn’t have instructions for these decisions. Every single one he struggled against, worrying each one could mean he broke his promise. “It will work because it has to,” he would remind himself.

But now, he was nearly finished. Her home was beautiful, carefully crafted. He linked his brain to hers and started the transfer, not sure how much of him would be left and how much of her would be transferred. It had become more muddled over the year than he had realized.

For an anxious moment he waited, unsure if he had missed a step, or made an error somewhere along the way. Perhaps this is where time ended, when she can no longer fix the clocks. It doesn’t have to work, if time stops. The promise is kept.

But as she whirred to life, she sat up. Her voice, still beautiful and sweet through her new voice box, she said, “Clock’s still ticking.”

“And we’re still here.” Until the end of time.