There's a stand in Principality. It sells all sorts of stuff: food, clothes, and also an other junk. If you browse for long enough, you would come across a peculiar bottle. “Old Archie's family juice”. The list of ingredients is long, and you're half sure that some of the ingredients are just made up. The description on the back reads:
“What kept the underground running all those years? It wasn't those deceitful Directors or those lazy logisticians. It was knowing that at the end of every day, you could really on Old Archie's special juice to keep you going. With a new and improved recipe from the mind of Old Archie and his family, this drink will always leave you wanting another bottle. Buy now, and see what a proper drink tastes like.”
Below this, in the most minute text, there is a series of safety warning. In particular, there is a large list of possible side effects, including fever, vomiting, and unexpected death. It then says that the Old Archie Family brand is not responsible for any detrimental effects you may get from choosing to consume the drink.
At the front of the bottle is a picture. Old Archie and Sophia are at the centre, with various people surrounding them. Promethea is sitting down next to Archie, Elias Se. is standing next to Sophia, and Luna is smiling above them all. Below the picture is a caption: “loving family product”.
“It was something else, Archibald. It’s not something you can just put into words. And believe me, enough poets have tried.” His father puts down the bottle and offers a rare smile. “The Ocean was my mistress, and she made me a happy man. Don’t tell your mother I said that.”
The boy nods. He doesn’t get it, not really, but he’s learned to fake that look of understanding. He points to the umbrella in the corner of the room, propped against the wall. “And that kept you dry.”
His father chuckles. “No. Well, yes. But not at sea. That was for rain. You know, like a shower, but from the sky.”
The boy repeats the motions. Nod. Rub your chin. Look like you understand. His father doesn’t look convinced, so he throws in a question to seal the deal. “Is the Ocean still there?”
His father frowns for a moment, as though he had managed to forget the disaster, just for a moment. “Sea’s probably still glowing with all that radiation,” he murmurs into the mouth of his bottle, no longer speaking to his son.
The boy dutifully returns his attention to his book. Assorted Plays of Taylor Swift. His eyes follow the words but he isn’t reading. Not really. Just waiting.
A few minutes later, the boy puts down the book and clicks his fingers in front of his father’s eyes. Nothing. The old man is asleep, half-full bottle still gripped in his hand. With a practiced motion, the boy slides the bottle down and out of his father’s hand. He steps outside and pours its contents into the dirt. Then he leaves the empty bottle on the counter and looks for a blanket for his father. He finds one, a thick piece knitted by his mother, left unfinished, rendered in the deepest blue the boy has ever seen.
It barely covers his father’s thick frame, half-melted into the couch. “I love you, dad,” the boy says.
His father can’t say it back. But he doesn’t need to. Words can disguise intentions. But there’s no hiding the soft smile which passes over the old man’s lips, suppressed as quickly as it arose. He always was a light sleeper.
The boy tiptoes back to his room. He hopes his old man dreams of the Ocean, of the two of them, sailing across it together. He hopes he isn’t constrained to this place even in sleep.
This place. This life. His father had spoken of how the world ended so many times before. When the announcement came and they were herded to safety below the surface. His father had been about to set off on a voyage when it happened. But what the boy can’t understand, no matter how hard he tries, is why his father didn’t just keep going, out into the Ocean.
Then, he would have been happy. For a little while, anyway.
Written by George S.
It’s a long - and ill-advised - journey for a man in Archie’s condition to take. But he has to see it. Has to experience it, at least once. It takes hours of walking, but then he reaches the crest of a sandy hill, and it comes upon him all at once.
The shore. A beach. The blackened remains of a long-decayed dock. He treads carefully over the rocks, making his way to where the sand is coated in a layer of sea foam. For a moment, he thinks he doesn’t see the Ocean, just endless sky, stretching out forever. Then his eyes focus, and he sees where blue meets blue, the sharp divide between air and sea.
It’s there, below him. The Ocean. And it is beautiful. The ripples running softly along its surface, the light of the sun catching in its coils. And then there’s the sheer scale of it. It takes up everything. It could sink the entire Underground beneath its waves.
Beauty is the wrong word. It’s not just admiration. It’s fear as well. Looking at the Ocean, at its vast unimaginable depths, he feels awe. This is what his father felt. Archie is looking upon a higher power now, something so much more than he will ever be.
He’s crying. How unseemly. Why is he crying? He bats at his eyes, but soon gives up fighting the tears.
It’s not enough to see. He must be part of it. Archie walks into the water, feels the cold bite at his ankles, and sinks down to his knees.
He closes his eyes, and then, he just is. There in the water, he ceases to be an old man, kneeling in the surf and sobbing out a lifetime of regret, and he becomes nothing but sensation.
He does not think anymore. He merely feels. His tears run down and become one with the water which surrounds him, which surrounds everything. The air in his lungs remains only a moment, and then it returns home. His body, too, will be soil. He feels the last vestiges of ego drift away. He is - has always been - nothing but a meeting of chemicals, a momentary reaction, a bubble in the grand mixing vessel of the cosmos.
I get it now. He’s on his back. The waves lick at his hair. Change isn’t frightening. It’s us. We are change. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The water lifts his head softly from the sand, holds his face up to the sun. I’m ready to change again. He finds his lips, although they do not seem to belong to him any longer. They peel apart and release the single syllable. Pop.
It’s a perfect ending. The kind of death that washes away a lifetime of wrongs. This is absolution, says a voice Archie has never heard before, never will again. You can rest now.
And then, tearing through his dim consciousness, there’s another voice, his own. It’s a total fucking cop-out, is what it is. Get UP, you bloody old fool.
Archie jerks his head forward, eyes stinging from the salt, and he’s still there in the shallows, hacking up water and scratching sand out of his hair.
What just happened? That was his moment. He was ready to go.
“Shit,” he says to himself. “Fuck.”
Archie stands up and brushes the grime from his neck. After taking a moment to recover, he looks out at the ocean once more.
Whatever he felt is gone now. Just a big bloody bathtub.
He takes off his soaked jacket and tosses it over his shoulder. It’s a long trek back home, but he's wasted enough time here. It’s family card game night tonight and if he doesn’t get there soon he won’t have time to stack the deck. He needs to be up early tomorrow too. He promised to visit Nina and Cruciver in the morning. And then he was planning to drop in on Constance, see if he can’t catch her by surprise. And while he was at it, he might pay a visit to -
He’s broken from his thoughts by the roar of a tall wave crashing down against the sand. Archie flicks open his umbrella and the tattered canopy absorbs most of the splash. He doesn’t look back as he begins to climb the hill once more.
“Sorry, dad,” he says under his breath. “No rest for the wicked.”
Written by George S.