Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

BUILDING 53

— Congressman?

— They’re all over the place, kid. Don’t you see? Stay away from the windows.

— Are you okay?

— I’m fine. But you’re as good as dead. Stay low, and close to me.

— That’s okay. I can stay here.

— At least stay low. Stay alive.

— You know, you’re my only friend. My only living friend.

— What about the astronaut?

— He’s no astronaut. Not my kind of astronaut. And every other light has gone out. You see how dark it is out there? But I think you and I are the same. You’re the man I’d like to be.

— Missing two limbs.

— It doesn’t matter. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who means what they say.

— Okay.

— You’re like a father to me.

— Thomas, please keep your head away from the windows.

— Sorry. Do you know that no man has ever given me advice like you have? Listened to me like you have?

— That can’t be. At your age? How old did you say you are again, son?

— Thirty-four.

— Christ on a cracker.

— There are millions more like me, too. Everyone I know is like me.

— I thought you were twenty-five. God help us.

— Like I said the other day, if there were some sort of plan for men like me, I think we could do a lot of good.

— You talking about your canal again?

— A canal, a spaceship. A moon colony. Maybe just a bridge. I don’t know. But the walking around, sitting, eating at tables … It doesn’t work. We need something else.

— What do you want to build? The world’s already built.

— So I just walk around in an already-built world? That’s a joke.

— That’s the joke you live in.

— But that’s a perfect inversion of why I exist. I’m the guy who you send to dynamite the mountain to make way for the railroad. I’m the guy who gallops through the West with a load of dynamite to blow the fucking mountain.

— To clear a path.

— For the railroad. Right. I was supposed to be that guy.

— It’s too late for that. Two hundred years too late.

— I showed up two hundred years late for the life I was supposed to live.

— I hear you, son. I truly do.

— Do you? Does anyone else?

— I don’t know.

— What they don’t realize is that we need something grand, something to be part of.

— And the Shuttle was that for you?

— I don’t know. Maybe the Shuttle was some dumb fucking space glider. But now it’s dead and Don’s dead and Kev is chained to a post. Fuck it. And you know what’s really pathetic about Don being shot by twelve cops in his backyard? It meant nothing to no one. He was no martyr, he died for no ideals. And the only thing worse than the silencing of a martyr, a real martyr — someone with dangerous ideas — is silencing someone who has nothing at all to say. Don wasn’t opposed to anything but himself.

— I’m sorry about all this, Thomas.

— But this’ll keep happening. You know that, right? If you don’t have something grand for men like us to be part of, we will take apart all the little things. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Building by building. Family by family. Don’t you see that?

— I believe I do.

— Who says we don’t want to be inspired? We fucking want to be inspired! What the fuck is wrong with us wanting to be inspired? Everyone acts like it’s some crazy idea, some outrageous ungrantable request. Don’t we deserve grand human projects that give us meaning?

— Thomas, there’s a light under the door. I believe they’re here.

— Of course they are. You can tell them you’re here. I’m done.

— You want me to call out?

— Go ahead.

— We’re in here! Everyone’s safe.

— God, that sounds really horrible, doesn’t it? Nothing in the world sounds worse than that, to be here and safe. Say it again. I don’t think they heard you.

— We’re in here and we’re safe.

— Jesus Christ. That is the saddest thing I ever heard.