Placed on a card table at the end of a desert road there was an iMac G3, its hulking cathode ray enclosed within a turquoise-colored plastic housing. In the distance a long mountain range pointed cold peaks toward a blistering white sky. Two tourists, just arrived, watched through large protective eyewear as words danced comically from corner to corner across the screen of the G3:

“What does it mean?” the woman asked.

The man shrugged. He stepped back and snapped a picture with a disposable camera.

“Just, probably, don’t leave home or something,” he said, putting the camera into the breast pocket of his safari vest mottled with dark stains.

“We came all this way for this thing to tell us we never should have left?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“Let’s get drunk,” she said, and she knew just the place. Lucky coincidence, a shack being out there, with a metal sign above the door that had DRINK painted on it in pinkish craquelure. The sign implied not a suggestion but a demand. There was a wee solar panel on the canted tin roof providing the juice for the cord that ran from the G3 through the open door. The door, plywood sheathing with a couple of hinges, was propped open with a rusted metal bucket. A man was within view, inside the shack, watching them. He sat behind a bar. His arms were dry leather exposed through a tank top; his hair stringy and shoulder length; a beard crept down his throat like gray moss. He looked as if he had been quietly waiting for a long while. Waiting for them, specifically?

They went and bellied up, took off their eyewear and knocked sand from their boot heels.

“Names?” he said, holding a ballpoint pen pregnantly to a notebook open on the roughhewn bartop. His fingernails were long and dirty.

“What for?”

“For my ledger,” he said. “I’m the name collector.”

“Chartreuse Brown,” she said. “Just tell him so we can get something to drink.”

“Errol Brown.”

“Good names,” the name collector said. “Very good. Some names I get, they’re weird, but weird is not necessarily interesting. Something both weird and concise about your names, and that’s a combination I like. Do you have money?”

He snapped shut his ledger and laughed.

“It’s a joke! I have light and dark. Nice and icy, both.”

“Two lights,” Errol said.

The name collector pulled sheets of paper from under the bar. The type was small and smudged to the point of illegibility.

“Sign anywhere,” the name collector said, slapping down two ballpoints.

“And these are?” Chartreuse said.

“Promissory notes,” he said. “They say, in way too many words, that you’ll pay me back when you can. No time limit, just whenever, with whatever.”

“No drink if we don’t sign?” Errol asked.

“‘Fraid not,” the name collector said.

They scribbled on the papers. The name collector opened his ledger and made a notation. He put the ledger and the promissory papers beneath the bar.

The first beer went down fast. So did the second. Chartreuse belched and looked around sheepishly.

Another woman walked in. She was fancy and clean with a patterned silk shawl over her head and bugeye sunglasses and a snakeskin clutch under her left arm. A seven-foot giant with an earpiece stood at the door.

“Henrietta!” the bartender said.

“Darling! Can you believe it?”

“Of course, I always knew you’d return. I never had a doubt.”

“Oh stop.”

“You had success written all over you.”

“That and vulture doo. Who are these?” she said, nodding to Errol and Chartreuse.

“These? These just walked in. They’re your ghosts of Christmas past.”

 “I don’t know about all that, but you keep an eye on them,” the woman said to Chartreuse, wagging her finger playfully.

“Keep an eye on who?” Chartreuse said.

“On whom? Why, on all of thoom,” the woman said. “Remember, you’re the boss.”

She pulled a packet of crisp paper money from the snakeskin and handed the packet to the name collector. He smiled warmly, feigned reticence to accept the cash but in the end made no strong effort to refuse.

“It was lovely to see you again,” he said. “I’ve taken a picture of you in my mind.”

The woman tossed a coy pose. Errol snapped a real picture.

“Goodbye, love,” she said.

Chartreuse and Errol watched as she dipped into a vehicle with dihedral doors. The vehicle drove away silently, gliding as if on ice. The name collector still wore his warm smile as he placed a metal box on the bar and put the cash packet inside.

“Well,” he said, pulling two more lights, “nice to have a rainy day fund.”

Errol and Chartreuse sipped their third round like civilized people. The name collector crouched behind the bar to put away the metal box.

“Good gravy, I’m buzzed,” Errol said. “Got any food?”

“Sorry,” the bartender said, popping up. “The food council is notoriously slow with licensure.”

“Oh? How long have you been waiting?” Chartreuse asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Long time, long time. Years, decades. The food council moves at its own pace. They say the first chief food councilor went his entire career without issuing a single license, which sort of set the tone for where we are today.”

“That’s insane,” Errol said, his voice trailing up at the end with a burp.

“The beer council is much faster,” the name collector said. “Always has been, for obvious reasons. It’s much more important to have lubricated minds than full bellies. Oh, they hand out beer licenses like Costco hands out free samples.”

Errol and Chartreuse looked at each other.

“Well,” the name collector said, “like Costco used to. Maybe you don’t remember. Magical place. Pallets of stuff as high as the eye could see. Magical. You couldn’t step inside without blowing your entire weekly budget. Oh, but it was worth it. My mother would take me. I’d nibble on cakes and pies while she would fill the cart with steaks bigger than your head and tubs of cream cheese bigger than a small child—well, bigger than me at the time. Oh, and the smell. Forget madeleines. What I wouldn’t give to smell a Costco again.”

“I’m sure it was very nice,” Chartreuse said. “There are still a few of the old warehouses out there. Derelict now, I’m sorry to say.”

“Magical.”

She sipped and shifted on her stool and cleared her throat to speak.

“Marcus,” the name collector said before she could get her words out.

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“You were going to ask my name?”

“Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

“People usually ask around their third.”

“Marcus, okay. Nice to—Marcus, who was that woman?”

“Someone once like the two of you. Look at her now.”

“What do you think she meant? ‘Keep an eye on them.’ Who was she talking about? Who am I supposed to keep an eye on?”

“Whomever you like, I suppose,” Marcus said.

“But what does it mean?”

“What do you think she meant?”

“Keep whomever out of trouble?”

“Seems reasonable.”

“But it’s not my job to keep people out of trouble.”

“It’s not?”

“Of course not.”

“Isn’t it all our jobs to keep each other out of trouble?”

“No, not really.”

“But wouldn’t that be ideal? If we all did that for each other?”

“It would be a real nice thing,” Errol said. His beer was almost gone and the focus in his hazel eyes had gone soft.

“Okay,” Chartreuse said, “but why didn’t she say it to him? Or to you?”

“You should have asked,” Marcus said.

“It’s not my job to keep anyone out of trouble,” she said.

“Why does it bother you?”

“Who said it bothered me? I was curious.”

“You seem bothered,” Errol said.

“I’m not bothered. If I say I’m not bothered, I’m not bothered.”

“Perturbed,” Errol said.

Chartreuse ignored him.

“Where exactly is the bathroom?” she said.

“It is exactly ‘round back of the shack,” Marcus said. “It’s not much to sneeze at.”

Chartreuse left.

Marcus notated.

Errol gazed.

Chartreuse returned.

“That was awful,” she said. “A scorpion nearly stung me right in my—do you know who I am, by the way?”

“How would I?” Marcus said.

“You seem like, I don’t know, some kind of spy or clairvoyant. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, until recently—”

“—you mean until a decade ago,” Errol added.

“Yes,” she said, “before the last—what number reversion are we on?—before the latest reversion, I was regional administrator for a shipping concern. I came out here with my husband because—”

“—sounds fun,” Marcus interrupted.

“What does?”

“Shipping. Logistics, right? Sounds interesting.”

“Thank you, but no, it wasn’t interesting at all. It was very small potatoes, and boring. Commerce, you know, wasn’t what it used to be.”

“Tell me about it,” Marcus said.

“I’m between jobs myself,” Errol said.

“Oh, he’s being modest,” Chartreuse said. “My husband was a pioneer. He pioneered the practice of hot shitting, which gained an absolutely fanatical following. Do you remember hot yoga? Think hot yoga inside a communal bathroom.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but it sounds horrifying,” Marcus said.

“Yes, but we did quite well with it,” Chartreuse said.

“Marketing,” Errol piped up. “Everything is marketing. You find a market with a need and full the void. Fill the void. Fulfill the void! And if there isn’t a market, you convince people there should be. Make a market out of nothing and you’ve got a monopoly on your hands. You’re printing cash, voila.”

“He was struggling, you know? Oh, but who wasn’t? And one day I told him, I said to him, why don’t you come up with the stupidest thing you can think of? A fool and his money, et cetera. Well, Errol took it from there. A real stroke of brilliance. My initial reaction was more or less the same as yours, Marcus, though in the end I was proud of his innovative—ness.”

“Probably didn’t hurt to be rich either,” Marcus said.

“You yourself just expressed nostalgia for, I don’t know how to phrase it, splendor within reach? Well, still, I was genuinely proud of his ingenuity in marketing the grotesque.”

“So where’d she get all that money, Marcus,” Errol said. “That woman? What she gave you must be a small piece of what she has. You can’t make that kind of money anymore. You can’t buy a car like that.”

Errol’s free hand, heretofore lain like a dead fish on the bar, began to clench.

“Apparently you can,” Marcus said.

“But where,” Chartreuse said. “How?”

“You should have asked her,” Marcus shrugged. “All I know about is things out here. It’s all I’ve known for practically my entire life. Are you violent people?”

Marcus smiled at Errol as he slid his hand under the bar. Errol unclenched his fist.

“No,” Chartreuse said. “Not particularly.”

“That was a lot of money, though,” Errol said. “And I’m getting—”

“—fairly pissed in more ways than one, yes we can tell, we all have eyes and ears and a good sense of smell,” Chartreuse said.

Errol finished his beer.

“More?” Marcus said.

“Yep,” Errol said. Marcus gave him a fresh mug.

“What happened to us?” Errol said.

“Who knows?” Marcus said. “Time is a circle, empires fall—”

“Easy for you to say,” Chartreuse said.

“Easy?”

“Easy,” Chartreuse said. “Time is a circle and you’ve got it made.”

“I do?”

“And, by the way, time is a straightforward path as far as any individual is concerned,” she continued. “What matters, truly, other than individual existence? Nothing, far as I can see.”

“So how’s it easy for me?”

“You’ve got this,” Errol said.

“You’re secure,” Chartreuse said.

“My kingdom,” Marcus said, stretching his arms.

“It’s something,” Errol said.

“It’s more than something,” Chartreuse said. “It’s important.”

“Why?”

“You play an important role,” she said. “You’re an outpost for the nicest of the damned.”

“Are you nice?” Marcus said. “Are you damned?”

“Enough,” Errol said. “Tell us something we can use. What do the words out there mean? Why does everyone think they’re so damn important? Just tell us whatever it is you tell everyone who makes it this far and we’ll be on our way.”

“You’re talking about the relic?”

“Is he having a laugh?” Errol asked Chartreuse.

“I’m afraid my husband’s right,” she said. “The meandering nature of this conversation seems intentional, as if you’re trying to waylay us. What do the words mean? You said it, don’t regret not asking the question. Or do you not know?”

Marcus turned his palms upward.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How would I? I’m just the name collector.”

“What about the beer?” Chartreuse said. “What about this whole beer scheme?”

Marcus straightened up. “I’m something of an entrepreneur too,” he said.

“This is a waste,” Errol said, getting up to leave.

“Wait,” Chartreuse said, placing her hand on his forearm. “Have another.”

“Why? Why drag this out?” Errol said. “We haven’t eaten in forever. He’s probably the gravedigger too. I bet that woman’s the only one who’s ever come back.”

“Because, love, he may know some small answers that can get us to the bigger ones,” Chartreuse said.

Marcus grinned, showing a decaying front tooth.

“Shut up,” Errol said. “Both of you, shut up. I’m going to sit over here.” He dragged his barstool over to a cloudy single pane window where he sat and held his beer swaying and squinting at some faraway vision.

♧

Marcus notated in his ledger. Errol put his beer on the windowsill. There was an array of trinkets and doodads on a shelf running above him. He took pictures of Chartreuse and Marcus.

“What are you writing in there?” Chartreuse said.

“Tracking the beers,” Marcus said.

“What else?”

“Random thoughts. Interjections.”

“Will you really answer any of my questions?”

“I said you should ask questions.”

“But will you?”

After a pause he said, “If I have an answer I will tell it to you and if I don’t I will tell you that I don’t. That’s my new rule. I think we need to have personal codes. Can I get you another?”

“No, my head feels full of shrapnel. What do you know about madeleines?”

Marcus looked away.

“You were talking about that store,” she continued, “Cost Company? The way it smelled? But isn’t a madeleine a type of cookie?”

“Was. How did you know?”

“I used to read my mother’s dictionary. It was the only book we had, other than some decaying compendium of axioms. What did you mean when you said, ‘forget madeleines’?”

“Nothing,” Marcus said. “My words mean nothing.”

“First you suggest a baseline of honesty, now you’re already lying,” Chartreuse said. “Come on, I intend to make good on those promissory notes. I’m going to make it out there. That woman has given me hope, and then I’ll come back. I’m holding up my end, so hold up yours.”

“Why are you asking?”

“I don’t have much to go on to try to make this experience worthwhile. The madeleines are like a sore thumb, a squeaky wheel. Why’d you say it?”

“They’re cookies about memories. It’s something from a book about memory.”

“A book? How?”

“There are books on the relic, thousands of them. Just one after the next. Made up ones, textbooks. You can’t tell who wrote them. It’s a never-ending scroll.”

“Where did the relic come from?”

“Like I said, I don’t know.”

“Let me rephrase. When did you come across it?”

“It was here when I took the job. It was in that corner, where your husband is, collecting dust. I took off the cover and cleaned it the best I could. It still had its power cord. So I got approval from the energy council for the solar panel because I told them I wanted a beer license and you need refrigeration because people expect cold beer. The energy council is always keen to move beer-related solar requests to the front of the line. But the beer license was less important to me than the relic. Soon as I got power I turned it on. Later I figured out what was on there.”

“So you put it outside?”

“Yes.”

“As a sort of a—an attraction?”

“Something of interest, yes.”

“And this ramshackle tavern just happens to be here as well.”

“Bingo.”

“How do you get the beer?”

“From Ray. He delivers biweekly.”

“Who makes the beer?”

“I’ve no idea. The last thing on the beer application it says, ‘Check here for beer delivery.’ I checked the box.”

“They don’t make you pay for it?”

“The economy out here runs entirely on promises,” Marcus said, holding aloft the notes Chartreuse and Errol had signed.

“So the relic has books, thousands, and you’ve read them?”

“Not all of them, but many. I didn’t used to be much of a reader but turns out it’s terrific entertainment.”

“You know more than you’re letting on.”

“I know less and less every day.”

“Yet you leave only a single sentence on the screen for people to see. Why?”

“It was there when the relic first powered up. Someone wanted that to be the message.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t they see the rest? Why shouldn’t we see the books?”

“That’s not up for consideration.”

“Because you’re as self-interested as anyone else.”

“You think that’s it?”

“Yes, I think you’re breaking your own code.”

“It’s my code, I can do what I want with it.”

“Fine. How do people find out about this place?”

“How did you find out?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a myth. What do the words mean?”

“I think their meaning is both obvious and personal.”

“So how do you make the relic give books?”

“You have to know how to use it. There are special tools that make it possible.”

“These tools, how did you get them?”

“People brought them to me instead of money payment. Not that they knew what they had. I’ve returned the promissory notes of every person who has come back and given me something of value. One man brought me a brass button. It was pretty. A woman brought me a toy dog that does flips—your husband’s photographing it. It was funny.”

“You really are a collector. What do you do with the notes of those who don’t return?”

“I keep them. I use them. For the beer, for bribes. The councilors are interested in the idea of a piece of paper holding value in itself. They sort of marvel at the concept. You hand over a promissory note and they touch it with their fingertips and fold it so it’s nice and even and they place it delicately into their jacket pockets. Of course, you can’t bribe the food council. They’re beyond reproach. But these things, these objects people bring me, they’re worth more than a million promissory notes. I like them.”

“Don’t the councilors know there’s still real money out there?”

“Seems not. They’re all third generation. They don’t know what the cities are like. They’re sure it’s all killing and chaos, or desolation. But I get a sense of what’s happening by the things people bring and the types of people who come. Seeing you two, I would say things are bad. No offense. But seeing my friend and what she had to give, I would say things are very good, maybe prosperous. There are many moments of contradiction out here, yet the councilors live inside structures. They have meetings and conferences and decide things and undecide them and then decide them again. They don’t know that we even once used relics to move money around. You probably don’t remember. This was before the Great Reversion.”

“My mother used to tell me about her relics. To my ears they seemed to make us gods.”

“Those facts are gone for our third gens. History is a closed vault. There’s no one out here left to open it. You must be second gen. How old are you?”

“Forty-nine. You?”

“Seventy-one.”

“Why don’t you tell the councilors?”

“Even if I could gather enough promissory notes to bribe them to speak at one of their meetings they’d just laugh. They think they know everything.”

“You look good for your age.”

“I try to stay limber,” Marcus said, winking. “You look good too.”

“I don’t,” Chartreuse said.

“One day you will.”

“Look at all this shit!” Errol yelled. He pulled down hard on the shelf but it held firm. The toy dog jostled off the end and started flipping in place where it landed.

“I should probably cut him off,” Marcus said. Errol knelt over the dog and took it in both hands so it wouldn’t move. He covered the mouth as if suffocating it, then let go. The dog fell to its side with shaking legs and Errol put his hands to his face and began to heave. Chartreuse did not help or comfort him. She stayed with Marcus. Errol looked at him with wet eyes.

“We’re so hungry,” he said. “Can’t you give us something? Look at all you have.”

“I can’t sell food without a license.”

“I said give!”

“I can’t do that either.”

“Where is the food council?” Chartreuse asked.

“Within the central council. Go the way you came, about six or seven miles, turn left at the crossroad—”

“The council’s not here! They’re there! Why do you give a shit about their rules!”

“Their purview is here. Their purview ends on the other side of where the relic sits. The rules apply where we are. Presently, here. In this place.”

“Could we go out past the relic and you could give us some food there?” Chartreuse said. “We really are—well, the situation feels existential, from our point of view. You can see that.”

“That’s not how it works,” Marcus said. “You won’t find anyone out here willing to leave the purview of the council. Me included. It’s too dangerous.”

“Why won’t you help us,” Errol whimpered into his chest.

“What’s too dangerous?” Chartreuse asked. “What’s out there?”

“You two would be out there. Let’s say, for example, that I give you food and you get your energy up and then you kill me. If we’re outside the purview then wherever you leave my body is where it will stay. The idea of becoming carrion is very terrifying to me. If you kill me here, then Ray, the beer man, would find me and I’d get a proper burial with high council honors. Do you understand? I like the idea of being revered one day. It’s the only thing I really want.”

“Why would we kill you?” Chartreuse said.

“To take my title,” Marcus said, “to take my business. If I died outside the purview it would be like I’d never existed. If the council won’t recognize that I ever existed, and if you’re in here, then that which you covet is yours. Property equals possession.”

“I don’t want to be name collector,” Chartreuse said. “Neither does he.”

“It’s something,” Marcus said. “You said so yourselves. If we went beyond the purview you might change your mind, now that you know.”

“You didn’t have to tell us,” Errol said.

“There’s supposed to be some sort of lodging, yes?” Chartreuse asked. “Some sort of shelter for the night?”

“Make a right at the crossroad. Doors close when the rays disappear over the mountains.”

“And do they have a fucking food license,” Errol said.

“They’re the only ones,” Marcus said.

“And they’ll give food if we sign more of those papers?”

“Oh, gladly. Ray runs it. Tell him I said hello.”

“Of course,” Chartreuse said. “And thank you. I think.”

“It’s been my pleasure,” Marcus said. “I hope this experience is everything you hoped it would be.”

Chartreuse went and lifted Errol’s arm over her shoulders. He was slender and slight despite the size of his frame. “Don’t thank him,” he mumbled. “Look at me. How would I kill anyone? He’s the one killing us.” They shuffled away, two as one. One exhausted and defeated, the other exhausted but bitterly determined.

♧

“Put me down,” he said.

He lay on his back on the sand.

“Are you still drunk?”

He lifted his eyewear to his crusty forehead and breathed deeply from his belly.  “Not really,” he said, sitting up. “I just pissed myself.”

The shack was a blip between them and the mountains.

“Get up,” she said. “We’re almost to the crossroad.”

“Give me a minute,” he said.

“Sun’s going down,” she said. “We have to move.”

“No,” he said, resting on his back again. “I’d rather see the stars come out.”

“We have to go. We’re almost out of time.”

“You go.”

“Okay. Yes, I’ll go. That’s a good idea. I’ll go and I’ll send help in the morning.”

“I know you will. And I’ll tell you something. I don’t mind the idea of becoming carrion. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Stop it. I’ll make them send help as soon as I get there.”

“As soon as you get there. Even better than the morning.”

Chartreuse knelt. She put a hand to his rising chest. Errol exhaled and shuddered. He looked away into the dusk. She put her broken lips to his. A cool, dry wind passed over them. She closed her eyes and stayed with him for a moment, though there really was not a moment to spare.

♧

January 7, 2026