Falstaff put up his broad hand. “Wait, just wait. Do you really think you’re the first person to have figured this out?”
“Well, normally I wouldn’t think so. But no one’s let on. And if you knew this, it only proves that you’ve been lying and can’t be trusted.”
Falstaff turned his face away and began to pace. “I don’t know for sure where we are. Maybe we’re on Earth, maybe not. Maybe some other planet, I have no idea. Do you recognize anything out there?”
“No, the city’s been mostly destroyed.”
“Exactly. I’ve heard these ideas before, Daniel. Maybe they’re close to the truth, maybe not. But it never goes anywhere because the men who come up with these ideas are always gone within a few days. They don’t come back from their scenarios, or maybe they just aren’t there when the rest of us wake up one morning.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I’m one of you. How could I threat—”
“If we could only get out of here we might find out more. Don’t you want to know?”
“Come closer, Daniel. You showed me that piece of wrist band. Let me show you something.”
Any new information at all seemed worth taking risks for. He stood beside Falstaff, who could toss him out that window with the flick of a wrist. “What is it?”
“Grab my hand and lean out the window. You’ll see some letters spray painted on the outside of the building just above. You won’t have to lean far—they’re big and easy to see. And I’ll be holding on the whole time. I won’t let you fall.”
“Just tell me what it is.”
“You might not believe. You have to see for yourself. Someone else showed me, now I’m showing you.”
It didn’t matter that he didn’t trust Falstaff at all. He just needed to know anything he could find out. He grabbed the big man’s hand, leaned out, and looked up. Spray painted in black over the window opening: U B O in huge black letters. “Okay. Please haul me in.” And Falstaff did.
“You saw them.”
“I did, but I guess I don’t get it. Ubo, it’s the name of this place, or what the roaches want us to think is the name of this place—they implanted the word when we came here. We thought, or were led to think, that Ubo was the name of the world. But people are gullible—they believe whatever is presented to them. Apparently it’s just the name of this one building. So what? What difference does it make?”
“Does that look like an official name to you? Spray painted like that?”
“Maybe not, but still—”
“Have you ever seen news coverage of disaster areas, how the responders spray paint body locations and numbers on buildings? And warnings? DANGEROUS? DO NOT ENTER? That kind of thing?”
“But it’s so high.”
“It has to be high enough that people can see it from far enough away that they know not to get too close to the building. And look out there—see how there’s nothing for hundreds of yards between us and the rest of the city? As if the whole area has been cleared into a kind of No Man’s Land?”
Daniel looked out. It was quiet out here, the building out by itself away from everything else. And there was a great deal of scarring in that empty space, so if structures had been demolished and removed, you might see those traces, a kind of ghosting. He could still hear the waves hitting the foundation.
“An old resident here, he said he’d figured it out. He said we’d probably find it written on other buildings in that ruined city, if we ever got close enough. Unidentified Biological Organisms. UBO.”
“But what does that mean?”
“We’d talk about that, he and I, a couple of others. There were theories. Before he and the others started disappearing, not coming back from scenarios, not there when I woke up. Maybe a plague, certainly something dangerous. It doesn’t sound welcoming, does it? An infection maybe? Certainly not anything you’d want to take out of here and carry back to the people you love.”
“But why jump to that conclusion based on three letters? They could mean anything.”
“It just makes sense. It fits. Do you have a better explanation, and would you want to gamble on it?”
Daniel did not.
FALSTAFF LEFT HIM alone. Daniel couldn’t help but imagine his family out there somewhere, struggling, no doubt in danger. But he wasn’t going anywhere. Was he infected with something? There was no way of knowing. But he couldn’t say he felt well, certainly not that he felt normal. He hadn’t felt normal since he’d been here. He was so far from normal he might as well have been on another world.
“You fellows were out here a long time. Were you discussing the—Henry?” It was Gandhi. Daniel hadn’t even heard him come up. The fellow was beyond light on his feet—he was as weightless as a ghost.
“Oh, Walter. Yes. That, and odds and ends.” Daniel had some inkling how lies might have come easily to Falstaff.
“Can you see much of the city from up here?”
“A bit. See for yourself.” Daniel moved to the side.
“No, no. I’m fine here. I don’t like tall, open areas, to tell you the truth. I’m always afraid, I have this fantasy—” He looked down at his feet. “That I might jump off.”
“Are you feeling suicidal?”
“Well, no, at least, no, I’m not. Now poor Henry, he’s someone who’d be justified, thinking about suicide. I can’t even imagine. Compared to the rest of us, well, it would be an insult to him, I think, for me to contemplate suicide.”
Daniel studied him. “I don’t think of it that way. There’s no shame in it, to have those urges. Not that you should act on them—there’s always a better path. But there’s that quote from Thoreau, you know it? ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ We seldom adequately understand what the other feels, so how can we judge the quality of their pain? And this place, who could blame you for feeling desperate?”
“If I just had something else to do,” Gandhi said. “Besides the scenarios. Anything to take my mind away from them.”
“Can I ask you, what was your life like before? Did you have a family?”
Gandhi looked up with a vaguely grateful expression. “There was never anything particularly special or interesting about my life. And I suppose that would be the point of anything I’d have to tell you about myself.” Daniel began to object. “No, it’s alright. Just let me say it. When I was a boy I dreamed that I was going to be someone special, someone with some elevating sort of talent which would raise me above the everyday and the run-of-the-mill. Good parents encourage that sort of thing, don’t they? They tell you you’re special, you have the capability of doing something wonderful someday. They say they’re proud of you even when you haven’t done anything yet to particularly make them proud.
“They tell you you’ll do great things, even when you’re smaller than the other children and skinny, no matter how hard you try to add muscle or even fat to that slight presence you have in the world.
“That’s all well and good and positive, and it does build confidence. But at some point you have to deliver, don’t you, otherwise it’s all a bit meaningless?
“I believe I had reasonable expectations—I knew that any such talent required singular focus, years of practice, and obsessive devotion. So anytime I perceived even a hint of talent I…”
He stopped then, as if he’d forgotten what he was going to say. He looked as if he had stage fright. Some people, when they had to speak to others, it was as if they were actors on stage. They had to figure out what they were going to say, otherwise they were too shy to speak. “Take your time, we’re friends, aren’t we?” Daniel patted Gandhi on the arm. “I’m interested in anything you have to say. But you sound as if—it just seems like you’re unnecessarily hard on yourself.”