— But it would all be better if you could gallop.
— It could be.
— And where would you go?
— I don’t know.
— Thomas, we all get what we work for. Maybe there’s some variation, but still. I worked nine years to be a vet and wanted to work in Boulder. I’m a vet and I work in Monterey. You see what I’m saying? Your friend wanted to be an astronaut and he’s an astronaut. Maybe he’s going on a different spaceship. So what?
— If you knew anything about the Shuttle you wouldn’t say that. There’s a big difference between a reusable spacecraft that can land and maneuver, and a stupid fuck-all stationary space kite like the ISS. Sara, I just want to get something I want. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any significant thing I wanted. You have no idea how weird it is to envision things and have them come to nothing. No vision has ever come true, no promise has ever been kept. But then there was you, and you were the promise that would obliterate all the disappointments of the past. Everything about you insisted on it. Your color, your hair, the way light projects from every part of you. You were the sun that would burn away all the putrid broken promises of the world.
— I wasn’t that.
— I know that now.
— The helicopters are getting louder. They found you.
— They found us. You know, I really don’t want to be caught.
— Thomas, please let me live.
— I’m not going to hurt you. Wow, they are really getting close.
— Okay. Let’s go.
— What? What do you mean?
— I’m ready. Let’s go. I want to go with you.
— No you don’t.
— I do. I’ve been sitting here thinking, and even while I was denying it to you I was realizing that you’re right. These can’t all be coincidences. An astronaut, a congressman, your mom, me. It all has to mean something.
— It does, right?
— It does. If I say I’ll go with you, you’ll unlock me?
— Of course. I’ll have to have us handcuffed together, though.
— And then what?
— We run to the shore and to the boat.
— What about the others?
— They’ll be fine.
— Are there really others?
— Of course. Six of them.
— Will you let me see them?
— No. Why?
— If I’m going off with you, I need to make sure you haven’t harmed anyone.
— You don’t trust me. And there’s no time.
— I do trust you.
— We don’t have time to go visiting everyone. And you don’t want to meet my mom. She wouldn’t believe we were together anyway.
— So we don’t visit your mom. Just let me see the astronaut.
— No. He’s a phony. I already said good-bye to him and everyone else. I’ll let you see the congressman.
— Okay. Let’s go.
— So I unlock you and we go and see the congressman and you come with me?
— If we get away.
— What do you mean, if we get away?
— They’re so close. We’ll have to hurry. And you’ll have to let me run free, too. If we’re handcuffed we’ll be too slow.
— But then we might get separated.
— No we won’t.
— Oh no. You’re trying to get away.
— No.
— From me!
— No, I just think we’ll be faster that way.
— I don’t think you believe in me.
— I do. Of course I do.
— I don’t think you believe in any of this.
— I do. I do. But we should go. I want to go together.
— Oh god.
— What?
— You’re trying to trick me.
— I’m not.
— All this time I’ve been so direct with you. I’ve told you what I believed should happen. I’ve told you what I want and what would be best for both of us. I’ve offered you the chance to be part of something like destiny, and you’re just trying to slither out of it.
— Thomas. I just think we should go.
— I’m not going with you. Oh shit, you just murdered me.
— No. Thomas.
— You’re just like Kev. You seem like these paragons of virtue and heroism but in the end you just want to stay alive. You don’t want to be part of anything extraordinary.
— Don’t hurt me now.
— I’m not going to hurt you.
— Promise me.
— Forget it. I’m leaving.
— And I’ll be safe?
— To what end?
— To keep living.
— That’s my point. That’s not enough.
BUILDING 53
— Congressman?
— They’re all over the place, kid. Don’t you see? Stay away from the windows.
— Are you okay?
— I’m fine. But you’re as good as dead. Stay low, and close to me.
— That’s okay. I can stay here.
— At least stay low. Stay alive.
— You know, you’re my only friend. My only living friend.
— What about the astronaut?
— He’s no astronaut. Not my kind of astronaut. And every other light has gone out. You see how dark it is out there? But I think you and I are the same. You’re the man I’d like to be.
— Missing two limbs.
— It doesn’t matter. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who means what they say.
— Okay.
— You’re like a father to me.
— Thomas, please keep your head away from the windows.
— Sorry. Do you know that no man has ever given me advice like you have? Listened to me like you have?
— That can’t be. At your age? How old did you say you are again, son?
— Thirty-four.
— Christ on a cracker.
— There are millions more like me, too. Everyone I know is like me.
— I thought you were twenty-five. God help us.
— Like I said the other day, if there were some sort of plan for men like me, I think we could do a lot of good.
— You talking about your canal again?
— A canal, a spaceship. A moon colony. Maybe just a bridge. I don’t know. But the walking around, sitting, eating at tables … It doesn’t work. We need something else.
— What do you want to build? The world’s already built.
— So I just walk around in an already-built world? That’s a joke.
— That’s the joke you live in.
— But that’s a perfect inversion of why I exist. I’m the guy who you send to dynamite the mountain to make way for the railroad. I’m the guy who gallops through the West with a load of dynamite to blow the fucking mountain.
— To clear a path.
— For the railroad. Right. I was supposed to be that guy.
— It’s too late for that. Two hundred years too late.
— I showed up two hundred years late for the life I was supposed to live.
— I hear you, son. I truly do.
— Do you? Does anyone else?
— I don’t know.
— What they don’t realize is that we need something grand, something to be part of.
— And the Shuttle was that for you?
— I don’t know. Maybe the Shuttle was some dumb fucking space glider. But now it’s dead and Don’s dead and Kev is chained to a post. Fuck it. And you know what’s really pathetic about Don being shot by twelve cops in his backyard? It meant nothing to no one. He was no martyr, he died for no ideals. And the only thing worse than the silencing of a martyr, a real martyr — someone with dangerous ideas — is silencing someone who has nothing at all to say. Don wasn’t opposed to anything but himself.
— I’m sorry about all this, Thomas.