The Annihilation of Foreverland

There was a name on the front.
    Harold Ballard.
    He willed the book to be gone, for the room to disappear. He was ready to leave. But none of that happened. The book remained. And it opened.
    And the Director witnessed Harold Ballard’s past.

    Foreverland faded into sunbleached colors.
    First the sky turned lighter blue, then white. Then the ocean followed. Whiteness crept over the trees. It was a different kind of nothingness, not filled with random memories of lost identities but the void of non-existence.
    Foreverland was ending.
    Reed walked out of the trees just before they evaporated.
    He crossed the Yard with the white void nipping away the ground behind him. He went to the sundial. Put his hand on it. Just like she told him.
    And he was absorbed by it.
    He left Foreverland as it ended.
    Forever .

67
    Why didn’t we see this before?
    It seemed so obvious, now that the answer was lying in a pair of parallel beds. An old man and a young kid, their brains wired to the same machine.
    “Don’t you see, Zin? They kept us physically fit and exercised our brains. They let us doing anything we wanted so that we were happy. The put our memories inside the needle and made us go after them. You said it yourself, you just wanted to leave. You belong inside Foreverland.”
    Zin was squeezing the stick with both hands. His face relaxed but his hands didn’t.
    “It’s a body farm,” he said.
    “Every Investor has a kid,” Danny said. “And when the kid graduates, we never see the Investor again, do we?”
    Zin stepped toward the old man. “Oh, we saw one of the Investors. We saw one inside Parker’s body.”
    “How are we doing so far?” Danny asked the old man.
    He backed into the door, slid all the way into the corner, the table leg held in front of him like a four-sided long sword.
    After Danny went inside the needle the very first time, the old men were telling Mr. Jones that he got a good one. Yeah, he got a kid that would graduate soon. A smart one. And Mr. Smith was so desperate because Reed refused to cooperate. The amount of money it took for them to acquire one of them had to be a lot. These were billionaires from all over the world that refused to die. The Director showed them a way that they could live another 70 years. All they needed was a kid that no one cared about and bring him to the island so they could lure him out of his body, scatter his identity into the Nowhere until his body was empty.
    So they could take it.
    “The rich old bastards?” Danny said. “None of them are using their real names. It’s all regular names like Jones and Smith. None of them really want to know who each other are. They aren’t helping us, Zin. They’re just kidnapping kids that no one will miss, kids with a troubled past and no connections. Like you and me, Zin. No one’s looking for us. No one will notice when our bodies return to the outside world. Without us in them.”
    “You’re done,” the old man said. “You’ll go right in the oven for this.”
    Danny grabbed the back of Zin’s shirt before he charged. The table leg was shaking in the old man’s hands. Zin tried to get loose.
    “WHY ISN’T HE KNOCKED OUT?” Zin shouted.
    Danny shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Tie his ass up, we’ll figure it out later.”
    “Don’t come near me.” The old man reached behind him while holding his table leg in the other ha n d. He scattered the items off the table, swung his arm around with a syringe in his hand. He pulled the rubber cover off with his teeth.
    “There’s enough in here to kill one of you,” he said. “Come after me, and one of you dies.”
    “If someone has to do, then I vote for you.” Zin raised the club over his head.
    Danny stopped him, again. “Don’t hurt him.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Zin didn’t drop the stick. “Weren’t you listening to your own story? He’s one of them… he’s some rich old bastard that’s going to kill one of those kids out there and steal his body. If we ace this old bastard, we save the kid. Eye for an eye, Danny Boy.”
    He poked the stick at him. The old man hit it like they were dueling.
    “Who’s your kid?” Zin asked. “Which one of us were you going to steal, you sick bastard, huh? Did you import a nice little Kenyan for your next life?”
    The old man’s head was shaking as bad as the table leg. Danny’s grip loosened. Zin stepped closer.
    “A Kenyan too dark?” Zin said. “How about a Canadian, they got nice white