Everly was afraid to ask.
The man didn’t appear to notice Everly or Richard as they came in, continuing instead to stare at the plate of food in front of him.
“Hello, Maurice,” Richard said, approaching the man. “I hope you’re doing well this morning. I see one of the runners has already paid you a visit.” He nodded at the plate of food and then turned to Everly. “The runners are what we call the workers here,” he said, answering her half-asked question from the elevator. “Among other duties, they are responsible for bringing food to the residents on these floors. Many of those living here can’t handle even feeding themselves on their own.”
Everly watched as Richard sat down in the chair across from Maurice, smiling kindly at him.
“I brought someone here to visit you today, Maurice,” Richard said, and he gestured over to where Everly stood. “This is Everly. She is my granddaughter, and she is excited to meet you.” He looked pointedly from Everly to Maurice and so, taking the hint, Everly walked around the table and took one of the remaining empty chairs.
“Hi,” she said, voice small and uncertain. “I’m Everly. It’s nice to meet you.”
Still, Maurice did not move from where he sat, continuing to stare down with a vacant expression. Everly saw Richard’s smile tighten, but then he leaned forward and continued to talk to Maurice in an upbeat voice.
The man remained unresponsive through the rest of the visit. Richard kept up a lively one-sided conversation for about ten minutes, then bid Maurice a good day and got up, signaling for Everly that it was time for them to go.
Out in the hall again, Richard paused to look at Everly, asking, she assumed, if she was all right to go on.
Everly nodded once, and they continued.
They spent the day like that, going from room to room—or floor to floor; Richard never took her into more than one room on each floor before they went up another level—visiting numerous residents in varying states of awareness and sanity. All seemed to be at least sixty, some probably much older. While a few of the residents more or less recognized Richard, none of them were able to completely understand who Everly was. A good number of people were like Maurice, barely able to look their way when they entered the room. Others were like Lois—responsive but unintelligible, and sometimes hysterical. Richard went into each and every one of their rooms with the same wide, open smile on his face. He talked to them. That’s all, Everly realized. He wasn’t doing anything special or medical. He was just talking to them.
She wondered briefly if that was why he had asked her to come with him—if he just needed another person to help, to share the burden. Assuming all the floors were full of apartments like these, housing people like those she had met, there had to be hundreds, thousands of people living in that building. They had only been able to visit with a dozen or so residents—who went to all the other people during the day?
Everly kept trying to bring it up. In the hallways after they left a room, she’d turn to Richard and open her mouth, prepared to ask him again why these people were here. Why she was here. But every time she tried, he blew her off or walked away or spoke over her, loudly and enthusiastically about something entirely different. As they ascended floor after floor, visiting more rooms, Everly’s frustrations grew, becoming nearly suffocating as she tried to shove them down, at least long enough to get through the day.
After a couple of hours spent visiting rooms, Richard stopped Everly before they could get back into the elevator. “I think that is enough for today,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere else with me? I—” He cut himself off, eyes scanning the hallway. “I want to talk to you about today, but I know you’d probably rather do so someplace else. The Eschatorologic can be . . . a bit much, at first.”
Heart racing, Everly nodded. Finally, she thought. Finally she could get some answers out of him.
Richard told her to wait where she was for a few minutes, and he left her, standing alone in the empty gray hallway on the fifteenth floor—the highest they had managed to get that afternoon, visiting one room per floor. About ten minutes later he returned, adorned in the tweed coat and bowler hat she had first seen him in, and he ushered her back to the elevator. They exited into the lobby, and Richard began to quickly walk toward the door, Everly trailing in his wake. Before they could reach the door, a voice called out from across the wide room.
“Richard!”
Everly turned and saw Jamie’s tall form striding toward them, hand outstretched in greeting. Richard paused where he stood, hesitated for half a second, and then spun to face Jamie, a new smile plastered on his face. To Everly, the smile was tinged with a hint of something insincere, and she watched him closely as he walked over to Jamie.
“Jamie, how nice to run into you.” Richard put an arm around Everly. “I hear you’ve already had the opportunity to be acquainted with my granddaughter. Thank you, by the way, for being willing to help her with the elevator.”
Jamie waved him off. “Just doing my job,” he said, repeating the words he had told Everly the day before. “Though, you must have beat me to it; I didn’t have to do much for her.”
Everly saw Richard pause for a second before responding. “Right,” he said. “Well, at any rate, it was good you were down here when she came in.”
With a grin, Jamie turned to Everly. “Nice running into you again, Miss Tertium.”
Everly offered him a tight smile in return. Something about this was off. Richard, who was so friendly and open all day with the people they visited, suddenly seemed closed off, distant, despite the relaxed air he was trying to give off. Something about Jamie had set him on edge.
“Listen,” Jamie was saying, “if you both have time, there’s something I’d really like your eyes for, Richard, and I figured I could give Everly a tour of some of the lab space, too, in the process.” He winked at her. “Might be something she’d be interested to see. What do you say?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jamie, but we were on our way out for the day. I have to take Everly home before it gets too late. But I can come find you tomorrow, if you’d like.” Richard spoke with ease, but there was still a certain tension, a rigidity to his spine, that kept Everly watching Jamie closely as he responded.
“Is that so,” Jamie said. He grinned again. “No worries. There’ll be another day, right? Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’ll see you tomorrow, Richard.” He nodded at Everly. “Miss Tertium, a pleasure, as always.”
And then Richard was steering Everly away, out the front doors of the building, waving back briefly to Jamie as they went. Once outside, Richard looked like he could finally breathe again, like a noose had been released from around his neck. Everly watched him carefully, walking beside him as they descended the long trail of steps down to the road.
“What was that about?” she asked him, once she thought they were far enough away from the building.
He shook his head, not answering at first. “That was Jamie,” he said, then sighed. “Suffice it to say that while Jamie and I have similar goals in mind when it comes to the Eschatorologic, he has a very different preference of methodology. I would rather if you didn’t spend too much time around him while you’re in the building. That’s all.”
“Methodology? What do you mean?” All she’d seen Jamie do in the building was fix the elevator to let her use it. She couldn’t think of what would cause Richard to be so edgy around him. Jamie seemed nice, and so far he had only been helpful to her; but then again she’d also say Richard seemed nice enough, and what did she really know about either of them?
“It doesn’t matter,” Richard said sharply. “He just doesn’t . . . value the sanctity of what we’re doing as well as I do.”
“And what are you doing?” Everly pressed. “All you’ve done is show me rooms full of people who probably wouldn’t remember me if I went back tomorrow. What does any of this mean, Richard?” She saw him flinch at the use of his name.
Richard stopped walking, looking—really looking—at Everly for the first time that afternoon. “You’re right,” he said. “I owe you some answers.”
Everly crossed her arms, waiting for him to continue. Richard had taken on a look as though he were gathering all his thoughts together like yarn in a basket, trying to pull apart one strand from the rest.
“When I was twenty-six years old,” he began, “which is not much older than you are now, I stumbled across a genetic anomaly.”
That term—genetic anomaly—tickled at something in the back of Everly’s mind. She remembered the snippet on Richard that she’d found at the library. Something about a grant, right? Something to do with genetics?
“I was in the final year of my PhD program at the time,” Richard continued, “and found it without realizing I had been looking. At first it sounded outrageous—impossible. But it intrigued me, and so I began to spend more time searching for it, studying it, trying to understand it. Eventually, my studies with this genetic anomaly led to my discovery of the Eschatorologic.”
“What is it?” Everly asked. “This . . . anomaly. What does it do, exactly?”
“A good question.” Richard paused. “The anomaly is very special, and exceptionally difficult to explain. It is also rarer than I have ever heard of a genetic trait being among humans. If I hadn’t been so actively searching it out, for so many years, it is unlikely my research would have ever come to anything.”
A gust of wind blew between Everly and Richard then, nearly knocking off Richard’s bowler hat, and he clamped down a hand to keep it in place. His eyes had gone distant while he spoke, and Everly took this moment to study him. In the building, he had seemed so at ease, so content to move from room to room, speaking with the elderly residents and being among them. Out here, in the real world, she suddenly saw how out of place he appeared.
