The Annihilation of Foreverland

Boy.” Sid’s voice dropped an octave, filled with gravel. “No one is here to save you, it’s just us, punk. Just us.”
    Sid filled his chest with another deep breath. His shoulders bulged, his arms rippled. His skin turned a shade redder. Talons emerged from the tips of his fingers with razor edges.
    “I’m really going to dig this,” he blurted with a slight lisp as sharpened incisors bit into his lower lip. “I only wish Reed was here to make it double-dip ass whipping.”
    The others were growing, too. It would be like a pride of lions feeding on the lone antelope. Danny was not a lion. He closed his eyes, focused on a tiny point.
    Stay numb. Until she comes.
    Breathe, in and out.
    “I love this place, Danny Boy,” Sid stated, deeply. “I’m afraid you’re really going to hate it.”
    Sid took one more long breath and let out a roar. He lifted his tree trunk arms, flexed the dagger-tipped claws, and slashed downward. He would dice Danny into cubes. He would put him back together and do it again. And again.
    He was going to do it all night.
    But then Lucinda arrived.
    She emerged from the ground like a ghost.
    She smacked the edge of the sundial with her fist. It rang like a gong struck with a hammer. The vibrations shook Foreverland.
    Danny staggered. His vision doubled.
    Only Lucinda remained in focus, unaffected by the tremors emanating from the sundial. She had let loose a never-ending earthquake.
    “If you love this place,” she said, “then you will never leave it.”
    Lucinda walked toward Sid as he lost his balance. She plunged her hand into his chest. He continued to convulse, but slowly – very slowly – he began to settle like a bell reaching the end of its ring until he was as unaffected as Lucinda.
    His eyes were wide. His mouth was open.
    He shrank back to normal-size. When she gently placed him on the ground, he had become Sid, the gangly kid back in the Haystack. His expression was not angry or scared.
    It was vacant.
    She took Danny’s hand. Warmth penetrated his arm and filled him. And then they fell through a trapdoor that opened on the ground.
    Into the grayness of the Nowhere.

    Danny was on his knees when the circular room appeared.
    His hands were splayed on the floor. Twenty fingers were jiggling out of focus, the sundial ringing between his ears. His stomach turned and twisted. He thought he might vomit, then thought it weird since he was a digital body and hadn’t really eaten anything.
    He closed his eyes, focused on the tiny dot. In and out, he breathed until things settled. When he opened his eyes, he had ten fingers again.
    “He’s a bad kid.” Lucinda was sitting in the lone chair, center of the room. “I saw what he was doing… in the others’ thoughts.”
    “I thought the fight was a clue. You just wanted Sid.”
    “He tortures Reed,” she said. “He deserved what he got.”
    “What’d you do to him?”
    “I gave him what he loves.” She crossed her legs. “I gave him Foreverland.”
    It sounded like a bad thing.
    Danny sat up, allowed a few moments to adjust before standing. The floor swayed a bit. He felt like he just stepped off a roller coaster. A chair appeared. He grabbed the back but didn’t sit.
    “What’s that mean?” he asked. “How’d you give him Foreverland?”
    “He’ll never leave.”
    “You can do that?”
    She glanced away. “You’re all coming here, Danny Boy. You all join the voices in the Nowhere.”
    “I don’t understand, Parker was better. He couldn’t have stayed here.”
    She shrugged.
    He’ll join the voices? She couldn’t have that right. Parker was there, he was back. It had to be some mirror image that remained in Foreverland, perhaps the ghosts of ideas and thoughts that weren’t real to begin with. Perhaps that’s what the program was about, cleansing our minds of impurity, erasing the habits of self-destruction and reprogramming us with desirable thoughts.
    But then who would be deciding what to program? And who decided what was desirable?
    Zin might already be scattered in the Nowhere.
    “He is not,” she said, sensing his thought. “But he’s close.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I just know… he’s with his girlfriend. He’s a good person, Danny Boy. I like Zin.”
    But none of that would matter if Danny couldn’t do something because she was right. They were all heading for Foreverland. If they were really helping them become better people, then a satellite landing on the island