When will it open?

She saw the gold peak through the tissue paper and her eyes lit up. Alice pulled the necklace out of the box, its long thing chain dangling loosely between her tiny stubby fingers

“It’s pretty!”

“Yes. It is.” Her mother agreed cautiously. 

“What is it Uncle?” Alice asked. 

“A locket.  A very special locket,” the Doctor whispered. 

Her parents looked on with disapproval. It was real gold, eighteen karat easily. They couldn’t help questioning the motives of this semi-stranger giving something so valuable to a small child. It certainly didn’t fit with the barbies and stuffed animals that surrounded the six-year old.

The locket was heart shaped with an intricate design of flowers and vines that wound from the hinges to the clasp. Alice excitedly tried to pry open it, but it wouldn’t budge. She began to pull at it with all her strength.

“It’s really too much.”

“Nonsense,” The doctor smiled.

Alice’s mother looked into his eyes and a chill ran down her spine. They were the same pale blue eyes as her husband, but his seemed empty. While her husband’s eyes had a sky-like twinkle to them, the Doctor’s eyes felt like a thin layer of eyes covering a frozen bond. One step and they would crumble away, plunging you into the icy depths. 

“Why won’t it open?” Alice fumed.

“It’s a secret locket. There’s a special way to open it that you have to figure out for yourself.”

Alice began to examine the locket while her Uncle looked on. The Uncle that had barely been in their life up till now. The brother-in-law that had attended their wedding, only to slip out before the vows were even finished. The man who was always in the midst of some government project or think tank, whose work carried an obscure importance that made it impossible to question. She watched as his thin, pale, spidery fingers clasped the locket around Alice’s neck. 

“Now. Go play with your friends. Let me know when you figure it out.”

Alice gave the doctor a peck on the cheek and ran off to join the rest of the children. He stood up wearing a quiet smile, watching her as she disappeared into the crowd.

“She’s really grown.”

“This all is really too much.” The mother said.

“Oh no. I only have one niece. I need to spoil her.”

“Of course. Thank you,” Alice’s father offered. 

“Honey!” 

“I’m sure you have to get back--”

“Oh yes. I do. Sorry to just barge in here like this.”

“It’s no problem. We’re happy to have you? Right?”

“... Right.”

“Next week we’re having a barbecue. If you would like to join?”

“Oh honey, I’m sure he—”

“I would be delighted.”

Alice’s father went silent. The Doctor had never accepted an invitation. To anything. Not to a family gathering or an anniversary party or a game night. Why now? Dark suspicions began to run through the their minds.

The silence was broken by the Doctor’s phone ringing. 

“Ope! Apologies. Duty calls.”

“Sure.”

“Thank you for having me. It was a lovely party.”

The Doctor patted his brother warmly on the shoulder and gave Alice’s mother a loose hug before slowly making his way out the door. They watched him go, feeling a chill leaving the air as he closed the door behind him. 

The Doctor sat in his car, the sounds of carefree laughter ringing in the distance. He pulled out his phone and saw a long string of missed calls and voice messages waiting for him.  As he read through them, his phone began to ring yet again.

“Hello?”

“Doctor, thank God. We’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Oh? Is something wrong?”

“A sample has gone missing?”:

“Really? Which one?”

“The X-27 virus.”

“Oh God,” he said with a forced excitement, “Not that one. What happened?”

As the assistant bumbled on about failed safety protocols and security measures, the Doctor watched the children as they raced through the back yard. The faint glint of gold occasionally hitting his eye. 

“If this gets out, it will be—”

“I know. It could be the end of the world,” The doctor said as he started his car. “I’ll be there presently.” He put his car in gear and calmly left the suburbs. 

The next day, despite having spent half the night being yelled at by the Secretary of Defense, the doctor woke five minutes before his alarm went off. His body was full of energy at levels he hadn’t felt in years. Excitement shot through his veins with each heartbeat. The air tasted fresh and clean as he breathed it into his lungs. 

“How will it happen?” He thought.

As he showered, The Doctor imagined Alice sitting at her little desk, painstakingly examining the locket for a hidden clasp. When he brushed his teeth he saw her dangling it above her head as she laid in bed, pondering what mysteries it held inside. As she fell asleep, she would drop it, causing it to snap open when it hit the floor. He got dressed for work while imagining Alice reaching her limit and taking it outside and smashing it against a rock in frustration.

He rode lightning for the rest of the day. With a dangling sword at his neck and a doomsday clock ticking in the back of his mind, every moment was filled with meaning. Every light sparkled. Every bite was a revelation. Departmental meetings, water cooler gossip, sanitizing specimen treys, writing grant proposals; they were all now precious fleeting moments flying by as the end sped closer and closer.

It wasn’t a difficult puzzle to solve. The hinges on the outside were fakes, and all Alice had to do was try opening it backwards. The clasp would clock open and the air tight seal would break. It shouldn’t take her long. She was his niece after all. For now, The Doctor lived in Schrödinger’s apocalypse; alive and dead and watching the world stumbled around in its grave.

Days went by. Then weeks. Then years. His excitement would wain, but never extinguish. When it faded all he had to do was visit his niece. He would sit there sipping imaginary tea, or help her swing between monkey bars, all while watching the locket hang promisingly around her neck.

“Still haven’t figured it out?” he would tease. Alice would roll her eyes and groan. It was now a joke between the two of them. A running gag that they shared. Their “thing.”

 After her parents divorced and Alice moved away with her mother, the Doctor would stare happily at school pictures where the locket hung innocently against her plaid jumper. He’d search through selfies, looking for the chain peaking out from under her collar. In pictures from swim meets, he could always find the locket sitting on top of a pile of clothes left next to her mother.

He thought about her every day. He would ask himself, “When will it open?”

Time continued to slip by like this until The Doctor found himself standing in front of an event hall rented out by Alice’s mother for her sixteenth birthday. It had been over a year since he had seen the locket in person, and his hands were wet in anticipation.

The past several years had been the best of his life by a factor of ten. He had been prepared to die, even looking forward to it, but now he knew what it meant to truly live. He had put on some weight and his skin had regained its color. He was no longer the sickly pale skeleton that lived in a fluorescent-lit basement. He no longer felt the need to hide from the world. For the occasion he had even bought a new suit and his hair was freshly cut. To the world he appeared as a happy healthy man, with his whole life ahead of him.

He made his way through the hall, scanning the crowd for Alice. He skirted the food tables in order to avoid the clusters of adults pretending to have fun. If he stayed around them too long he could feel lingering traces of his old self begin to awaken. The blind optimism of youthful immortality was much more comforting. Everyone else was stuck somewhere between planning the next thirty years while and the last ten.

Finally he found her. Her long blond hair fell to her shoulders, where it seemed to flow into her pink satin dress. She was the spitting image of her mother, but with his family’s distinctive light blue eyes.

“Uncle!” She shouted before clomping across the room in heels she was barely able to walk in. She hugged him with her long thin arms and the Doctor noticed a slight tremble. After the hug, he held her for a moment and allowed her to catch her breath.

“You okay?”

“Yeah! I’m so happy to see you.”

“Me too. You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she said with a slight cough.

The Doctor’s eyes drifted down and noticed… “What happened to your locket?”

“Ah. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“What do you mean?

“I lost it a little while ago.”

The Doctor’s expression didn’t change. Why would it? This didn’t change anything. It was still out there. The world was still the same. This crushing feeling he felt in his chest had no reason for being there.

“You should have heard her when it happened.”

“Mom!?”

Alice’s mother walked over. She looked tired. Her hair had begun to grey and the bags under her were barely hidden by her make up. She seemed thin, almost frail. In fact, it was shocking how unhealthy she looked compared to her pictures.

“It went missing during our trip to New York. She almost made us miss our flight looking for--” Alice’s mother was interrupted by a coughing fit.

“Excuse me.”

“I’m sorry," Alice pleaded.

“No worries. It’s yours after all. I’m just surprised that the five year old was able to keep track of it while the young lady couldn’t.”

Alice glared at him.

He gave Alice a slight smile. “No worries. It’s not the end of the world.”

A friend called Alice over and she excused herself. She gave the Doctor a kiss on the cheek before clomping off. It felt cold.

“She’s really grown up. Hasn’t she.”

“She sure has,” The Doctor replied.

“You look great. Have you been working on some anti aging project?”

The Doctor watched Alice disappear into the crowd.

“In a manner of speaking.”

The Doctor spent the rest of the party drinking in a corner, his eyes glazed over, staring past the dancing teenagers.

The locket was missing.

It didn’t matter.

It was off somewhere in the biggest city in the world. Fallen on a sidewalk where it would soon be crushed under foot. At the bottom of a lost and found box where it would be picked up by a curious bell hop. Nothing had changed he told himself.

Nothing had changed.

Maybe now—

Nothing had changed.

The world would still end.

Even as he said that, he couldn’t feel comfort from it anymore.

The next morning he couldn’t get out of bed. He laid there staring at the ceiling while his phone rang repeatedly.

Everything was fine. The locket is still out there.

He rolled over slowly, coughing as he did so. His joints hurt, seemingly rusted solid over night.

There was a knock at the door, but he couldn’t bother himself to care.

He couldn’t care. It was too much.

He laid back down and resumed staring at the ceiling.

She lost it.

What did it matter?

The locket was still out there.

It was still out there.

She lost it.

Sadness washed across his face.

He breathed heavily.

It began to rattle in his throat.

She lost it.

His eyes closed as he drifted away.