“The answer was right there in front of them,” my father said. “But they chose to be blind. They chose temporary ease over long-term stability.” And now that I am out in the very world he was talking about, seeing the effects of not being one with nature, I understand what he meant.
I used all my free time in Seattle reading about current events, catching up with what happened to the world since the 1983 EB left off. The world is as my parents had described its condition leading up to the war. That part was true. Whole species of animals becoming extinct. Natural disasters becoming commonplace. Diseases running rampant . . . diseases that could be avoided in a healthy setting, following the Yara, treating nature as it should be treated and receiving the reward. Why, when offered practical immortality, would man turn his back on it?
Then it hits me. Miles acted so weird when I insisted that my father hadn’t aged that I didn’t press the point. He treated his mother’s illness as normal. He thinks of disease and death as unavoidable. Reading and Conjuring seem like magic tricks to him. They don’t know. . . .
From the way my parents and Whit described the world, it sounded like a choice mankind had made—when presented with the Yara, they rejected it. But what if they had never known about it at all?
In that case, our “escape” from the nonexistent World War III was like abandoning ship when things were at their most dire. But why would the elders do that? Why couldn’t they live among “nonbelievers” and try to change things for the better with their knowledge?
Why not work from inside the machine to change it instead of running away and waiting for end times to destroy it so they could rebuild it pure and new? It just doesn’t make sense. I know deep down that my father and the elders are good people, even if they lied to us. So why would they sit by on the sidelines and watch the earth destroy itself? It almost seems like they hold a secret they don’t want anyone to know.
The gas-pump light on the dashboard flashes red. The dial underneath it is on the E. “E for empty,” I remember Miles quipping as he pulled over to get gas. I wonder how far I can drive before the car stops working.
The only buildings in sight are barns set way off the road. I drive for another fifteen minutes, keeping my eye on the gas needle, and begin to worry that I won’t make it to a gas station in time and will be stranded in the middle of the Utah wilderness. I have no doubt that I could survive until I made it to a town. But if I strike out on foot, I will be a sitting duck for my pursuers—especially Whit, who could find me in mere hours.
I see yet another sign for the main highway, and this time I follow it. My heart is in my throat as I turn onto the entrance ramp. I’ve been so worried about running across Whit that when I don’t see the big green vehicle from my Reading of Poe the moment I pull onto the highway, I feel a surge of relief. And I feel even better when I see a sign indicating that there is a gas station ahead.
In five minutes I’m pulling off into a Shell station lit up from the inside, and the only person there is the girl behind the cash register. I have watched Miles fill the car with gas enough times to figure it out myself, and in no time I am standing at the counter, handing the cashier a hundred-dollar bill. I left the sunglasses Miles bought me in the car, so I stare downward to hide my eyes, but the girl behind the register doesn’t even look at me.
I’m feeling so jittery that when a car turns into the station, I’m ready to make a dash for the bathrooms. But when I see that it’s a small red car and a woman in a cowboy hat steps out, I breathe easy and walk back to Miles’s car.
I don’t want to stay here, out in the open, any longer than I need to, but I’ve been driving for two hours and was already starving when Miles and I arrived at the motel. One minute is all I need to dig through the trunk and pull out a couple of apples, a bag of walnuts, and a bottle of water. I toss them into the passenger side and go back to close the trunk when I hear a familiar squawk. I look up to see a black shape hurtling down into the fluorescent-lit station toward me.
Poe lands on the ground and ruffles his feathers once before squawking again. There’s only one reason that Poe would search me out, and that is if Whit directed him to. Panicking, I pick up the bird and close my eyes. I feel nothing. No connection.
It is only then that I see the tiny flashing light coming from Poe. I lift him above my head to get a better look and see a metal ring clamped around his leg with something electronic attached to it. It must be a device used to locate the bird. Whit sent Poe to find me and will follow this machine’s signals straight to me.
I try to crush the metallic tag between my fingers. No use. I remember the way I broke Miles’s phone—the fire that I Conjured to melt the insides—and try to repeat it. Nothing happens. My heart seizes with despair. I am no longer connected to the Yara. I feel naked. Powerless.