Yesterday's Gone: Season One

it.”
     
    “Will?”
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “What happened?”
     
    “To the world? I don’t have a popped kernel of a clue, kid. Wish I did.”
     
    “But you said you knew it would happen?”
     
    “I did. Even knew the day, time, and what I was supposed to do when it did.”
     
    “What did you do?”
     
    “I went to live by the water. Slept by the border for most of a year, waiting for the post-modern Rapture, then eventually you. Night it happened, I went to the water and held my head under the ocean for a few minutes. By the time I’d surfaced, the world had gone hollow.”
     
    Luca could tell Will was wondering if he understood everything being said, but he kept quiet. Sometimes the best way to let a grown up know you got what they meant was to nod and not say anything at all.  
     
    Will smiled at Luca then went on.  
     
    “There were a bunch of us this one time, and they sent us deep into the Alaskan wilderness. There was nothing but nothing around us. A little like this,” he waved his hand across the empty beneath them. “We found something we didn’t expect and weren’t supposed to see.”
     
    This feels like listening time. No interruptions.  
     
    “We were deep in a cave on a crack of land I can’t imagine anyone ever having stood on before. Yet we found technology in that cave that I’d never seen. None of us had. Venturing a guess, I’d say it was there to measure something, but what I can’t even begin to guess without slamming hard into a wall of logic. My light was directly on it, whatever it was, but I couldn’t get a good fix on the tech because the alloy was dull and the cave was so dark. I could see it, but I didn’t know if anyone else could. You see,” he looked at Luca, “sometimes I see stuff that isn’t there, at least according to everyone else. That’s why the Air Force sent me to Alaska in the first place.”
     
    I think I see stuff like that, too.
     
    “Everyone saw it, though none of us knew what we were looking at. By the time we all agreed there were some strange things afoot among the ice floes, we saw a sharp flare of light, which looked a bit like the end of the world in the mean mouth of that cave. Then BAM!, we were out. No one remembers anything after the light. We woke up and the tech was gone. Some of the guys remembered seeing it, most didn’t. But I’m convinced whatever it was in that cave gave each of us “The Sight.”  
     
    “What’s The Sight?”
     
    “It’s what let me see you about a year before I did. And lets me still see all the guys from the Alaskan adventure, except Renny since he’s been dead for six years. Some of ‘em see me right back. They all could if they knew how, but most of the guys never realized things had changed. Here’s the thing.” Will leaned closer. “All the guys who knew about The Sight, well they’re all still alive. Right now, all four of them.”
     
    Luca gasped. There are more people! Maybe his mom and dad knew about The Sight, though even if they did, Anna probably didn’t. “There are more people?”
     
    “Of course!” Will slammed his hand on his knee. “There must be a ton. And that’s just easy math. Even if we lost 99% of the population, and I’m not so sure the number’s that high, we’d still have three million people in America alone. People will come together. We’ll start over and everything will be fine. Maybe even better than it was.”
     
    “Where are your friends?” Luca asked.
     
    “Didn’t say they were my friends,” Will’s mouth twitched, “and I’m looking for them every chance I get.”  
     
    “You mean with The Sight?” Luca didn’t wait for the answer. “I have The Sight, don’t I?”
     
    “I’d be as shocked as a man chewing on electric chocolate if you didn’t!”
     
    “How did I get it?”
     
    “Born with it, most likely. End of the world just brought out the best in you.”
     
    Will hit Luca on the knee, but Luca wasn’t feeling nearly as playful. From nowhere, he started to sob and cried himself to sleep.
     

     
    **
     

     
    Luca woke screaming from a nightmare unlike any he’d ever had in his whole life.
     
    “You dreamt about her, too, didn’t you? The girl Paola and her mom?”  
     
    Luca nodded.
     
    “You’ve been dreaming about them too?”
     
    “Yes,” Will said, “for almost as long as I’ve been dreaming about you.”
     
    “They’re with the trees,” Luca said, feeling like he might cry