“You’re remembering an earlier time,” she said. “How long has it been since we were here?” he asked.īut she reached over, caressed the top of his head. Now all of this was hidden, overgrown with thick, tangled vegetation. The last time he remembered being there, there had been a dark gouge in the dirt, shards of blackened ceramic scattered about, twisted bits of metal, a scorched smell. He ran most of the way until they neared the crash site, then slowed and walked, curious to see how the site had changed. He could move more quickly through the barren parts, then slower in places where there was something to see. “It just means that I leave it to you to decide.”īeing able to decide meant he could sometimes be fast, sometimes slow. “You’ve forgotten that too, of course,” she said. He looked around for a chef but, as usual, for as long as he could remember, there was only the two of them. Then he lifted the chair with her in it and slotted its legs into his shoulder grooves, just where it was meant to go. He fetched a hat for her and helped her affix it firmly onto her head, tightening the strap around her chin. He gathered the rest of the water from the distiller to take with them. “I’d like to see it at least once more before the end.”įor a brief moment she glanced directly at him and he saw in her face a mixture of surprise and pain.
He stood watching her eat and when she was done cleared the plate away, rubbing it clean with a handful of sand taken from the floor of the shelter. When he was done, he placed it before her. Then he dolloped the paste on a plate and shaped it to look vaguely like one of the pictures of food she had shown him. She kept smiling as he prepared breakfast for her, opening two packets of powder and mixing them with water collected overnight from the distiller.
She smiled vaguely around her as he secured her, never looking quite at him. He carried her to the kitchen and placed her in the special chair there, strapping her in so she would not fall out.
In the morning he woke her at the prescribed time. Either that or his mother was lying to him.īut why should she lie? She was, after all, his mother. Now he knew this was true of every living creature but one: himself. But he had also been taught that every living creature had an immature state: that every living creature began young and, as time went on, became old. “Or perhaps you always were, and still are,” she added.īut which was it? Weren’t these two very different things, to be never young and to be always young? He had been taught they were, even if he could not remember where and when he had been taught that: he just knew. She would not meet his gaze, perhaps because once she did he would be able to tell if she was dissembling. “Mother,” he asked, “what was I like when I was little?”
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