The Annihilation of Foreverland

throat, looking for a pulse. He didn’t really know how to do that, so he put his ear next to Mr. Lee’s mouth and listened.
    “I think he’s dead.”
    “Oh, man.” Danny looked at the tablet like it would tell him what happened. But he knew. “Oh, man.”
    “It’s not your fault, Danny Boy. You weren’t trying to kill him.”
    Danny shook his head. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, despite what the old bastards had been doing. He just wanted off the island. He wanted his life back.
    “What the hell?” Zin went inside the room. “Is that Sid?”
    Danny followed.
    There was a hospital bed with white sheets and a curtain next to it. Sid was on his back, hands folded over his chest and a needle poking from the center of his forehead. Danny approached with the tablet at his side. Zin cocked the stick back, ready to swing.
    Sid looked skinnier than usual. Sort of gray. His mouth was open, breathing. At least he was alive. Danny followed the wire from the end of the needle to a machine next to the curtain.
    “What the hell is going on?” he said. “I thought he already graduated.”
    Maybe that was the last step, one last trip to Foreverland where they download the rest of the memories, all reprogrammed for a better, more efficient mind.
    Danny reached for the curtain—
    “Take a look at this, Danny Boy.”
    Zin was looking inside a large window with the stick at his side. It looked like a waiting room. Danny could see the old men piled on the floor as he stepped up to the glass. They must have been standing there, watching, when Danny ignited their trackers. Some of them had knots on their heads where they hit the floor.
    Mr. Jones was in the back, laid back on a lounge chair. His fingers laced over his belly. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
    Zin tried the door. “Want me to pick it?”
    “No.”
    He didn’t want to find out if he killed all of them. Especially Mr. Jones. The guy cared about Danny in his weird way. He didn’t want to live with the thought that he accidentally murdered him. Even if Mr. Jones did acquire him.
    Even if his name was really Constantino.

    “What’s over there?” Zin asked.
    It appeared that the room was fairly large, separated by the curtain. Zin snuck up to it with the stick ready for action. Danny grabbed a handful of the fabric and yanked it to the side—
    A flash of silver.
    Zin wasn’t fast enough to stop the aluminum table leg from cracking Danny’s hand. The tablet hit the floor, the glass screen spiderwebbed. The old man jumped back, table leg back and ready for another swing. Danny got behind Zin, his hand already tingling.
    “You all right?” Zin asked, faking a swing at the attacker.
    “What the hell you kids doing up here?” the old man said.
    “None of your business!” Zin shouted. “What the hell you still doing awake?”
    The old man huffed, his eyes darting around. “You did this? You knocked out the power and killed the Investors? You did this?”
    He shook his head.
    “You boys are done, you hear me? You’re done, out of the program. You had your chance but you’re finished now. The Director will be down any second.”
    “Why is he still awake?” Zin muttered back to Danny.
    “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t on the tracker net.”
    “And neither is the Director,” the old man said. “You can say goodbye any second now. Any second.”
    He stepped behind the hospital bed that was on the other side of the curtain, this one parallel to Sid’s. An old man was on it, same position as Sid and a needle in his head that was attached to the same machine. They had never seen an Investor with a hole. They never went to Foreverland.
    “Isn’t that Mr. Williams?” Zin asked.
    Yeah, thought Danny. Sid’s Investor.
    Side by side, same machine. Needles in their head.
    That’s how Parker graduated. And when he was done, they never saw his Investor again.
    After that, Parker began parting his hair on the left.
    “What the hell is going on?” Zin said.
    “I think I know.”

66
    Reed felt nothing.
    Saw nothing.
    And liked it.
    He’d been trapped in a broken body for too long. He couldn’t remember the last time he was without pain. If this is death, then it is sweeter than imagined.
    But it wasn’t death.
    He drifted in the black nothingness, his identity drawn inside the needle, drifting toward Foreverland. He only knew the sweet release.
    But another body formed around him. This one firm and pain-free. Curled up. Fetal.
    He