Much as in Possibility 0.1, Proto woke, climbed out of his cryogenic pod, went to the bathroom and got dressed. Then:

  As he walked out of the closet, he peered again at that glass wall. Earlier, it had looked opaque. But now that the mist had dwindled a bit, he realized that the glass had just fogged up. Even now, he could see some clearness creeping up from the floor.

  Approaching the glass, he swabbed a finger against it. It came back wet, and the glass was clear.

  Idly wondering what lay outside, Proto leaned one eye against the clear spot like a peephole—then blinked at seeing a flash of movement on the other side.

  Squinting his bleary eyes, he caught another glimpse of—something—before it moved out of view.

  Was that a belly button . . . ?

  There were a lot of things in life that Proto wasn’t sure about. Why semi-trucks were bigger than trucks, for example, and whether a Siberian tiger would defeat a saltwater crocodile. But, replaying what he just saw in his head, he felt sure of one thing.

  That was a belly button.

  Proto reached for reasons someone might be shirtless outside. This wasn’t easy. He was in a cryogenics facility, presumably full of scientists or doctors or researchers. Whoever they were, they should be wearing white lab coats. Not going bare-bellied.

  While casual Fridays had been growing increasingly casual before his accident, he doubted they’d gotten quite that casual. Especially not after sky-fallen flames had wrought ruin upon the Earth.

  What in the world . . . ? he wondered.

  But maybe that was just it. Maybe it wasn’t something in this world that was responsible for this oddity. Perhaps this rather dreamlike strangeness had its origins in a rather dreamlike place.

  Somnus had asked him who his true love was. It had seemed like Somnus was going to set him up for some grand romantic ending with whoever it was. Maybe in one of those Possibilities, Proto’s true love would be waiting for him, shirtless.

  It seemed . . . sort of tacky. And not really Somnus-like. But at least hypothetically imaginable.

  To be sure, Proto had turned down those Possibilities in the dream realm. He’d opted to return to the breathing world. And Somnus was the Lord of Dreams, not the Lord of the Breathing World.

  But who really knew what Somnus could do? He had connections. He’d gotten Dievas—the “Lord of Light and Master of the Skies,” apparently—to heal Proto. Maybe Somnus, working together with his Element friends, had arranged for Proto to have a grand romantic ending here in the breathing world.

  And maybe that’s why someone was waiting shirtless outside of Proto’s room.

  This raised the question of what, exactly, Proto should do now. He’d just gotten dressed. Should he have?

  He felt sure his true love was Black. He’d planned to seek her out in this postapocalyptic world. But maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe she was on the other side of that door, thoughts of romance on her mind, waiting half-garbed—or, indeed, in nudis naturalibus.

  If so, greeting her in his high-school tracksuit probably wasn’t the best way of perfecting this romantic moment that she and Fate had arranged.

  Then again, throwing open the door, wearing a broad smile and nothing else, probably wasn’t the best idea either. Even Black might find that a bit much. And what if it wasn’t Black? What if it was some random researcher, who’d been itching her belly?

  He decided on a compromise. The same compromise chosen by every romance book, eager to draw eyes in the most amorously visceral way possible, while still being displayable on Barnes and Noble’s shelves. He’d go shirtless.

  Off went the tracksuit’s top half. He tossed it awry. He brushed his hair coolly off his forehead, leaving one stray strand to hang there. He faced the mirror and, ever so casually, stretched and flexed.

  . . . hm. His lips quirked downward. He tried a few different poses, but none of them really solved the underlying problem.

  True love is true love, Proto! he reminded himself. Black likes skinny rocker types!

  Well, there was nothing for it now. The “moment had come, ready or not,” as Somnus would say. And all he could do was confront it with a stiff lip, a firm jaw, and a bare ribcage.

  Grabbing the door’s handle, he threw it open.

  There was Black, wearing her worn-out Muse T-shirt—which, like most of her shirts, was girls’ XL and didn’t even reach her belly button—together with her usual short jean shorts.

  Blinking as the door abruptly was thrust open, she looked Proto up and down.

  Then, she burst out laughing.

  Proto sighed. He’d overthought this one, hadn’t he?

  “Wow, Moo.” She studied him again. “I’m sorry. But I’m not sure what you were expecting.”

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled, eying his shirtless self. “Long time no see?”

  “Long time no eat, more like!” She waved at his ribcage. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Takes some real stones, walking out here looking like Mick Jagger. A rack of ribs in shiny polyester pants. You really nailed it. And, hey, I’d nail it too. But I’d be laughing while I did it.”

  “And that is where the story of Paint It Black begins,” narrated Proto.

  “Psh. Thanks, Moo,” smirked Black. But she made no witty retort, instead just looking him over. Somehow, her gaze was faraway at the same time.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “You look like you just drank a bottle of wine and listened to The Rainbow Connection.”

  “Well, you look like the cover model for Play-skeleton, but you don’t see me commenting,” she replied.

  “Also. I guess I should mention.” She looked up at him, blinking twice. “Glad you’re okay, Moo.”

  He held his hands out. She clasped them both—paused and looked up at him again, lips pressed—and threw her arms around him in a hug.

  Warmth permeated him. Some came from her slim frame, pressed against his bare chest, but even more was welling from within him. This is really her. This is really me, holding her.

  When they finally withdrew, she sighed a smile out.

  “Disappointed?” he asked lightly.

  “Moo, I’ve been disappointed ever since I was born after the 1960s.” Her smile declined toward wistfulness. “No. Just marveling at how everything can change, and then one thing doesn’t change in the slightest.”

  “‘How everything can change’?” he repeated.

  Her lips pressed. “Well . . . hm. I’m not sure where to begin. Like I said, a lot’s changed.”

  This could mean all sorts of dire things. But Proto had a good guess what she was getting at, and what she didn’t want to tell him.

  “Oh?” he replied.

  “When I say things changed,” she went on, “what I mean is . . . I don’t work at Black’s Rock anymore. Or the Starbucks beneath it. Or the University. Or anywhere in town. Because none of that is there anymore.”

  Yep. Seeing her wince, Proto decided enough was enough. “Believe it or not, I think I know what you’re talking about,” he broke in.

  Black blinked. “I can’t say that’s the reaction I expected. Go on?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird, but back when I was in there”—he thumbed toward the cryogenic pod—“I was sort of conscious for a while. I could hear people talking outside. About how the skies had gone red, and some weird beings with wings had rained fire from the heavens, and cities were burning. And how, to stop them, some scientists ended up creating invisible Boundaries that divided the Earth into Fragments. And, basically, modern civilization came to a crashing end. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but, um, is that what you’re talking about?”

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  Even as Proto said this, it sounded absurd to him. Hear people talking? While I’m frozen?! And they’re just chilling outside my pod, having a chat?!

  On the other hand, it was nowhere near as absurd as the actual explanation—that the Lord of Dreams had updated him on Earth’s big news while sipping absinthe in an elegant 19th-century lounge.

  In any event, Black seemed to buy it. People will buy anything when it gets them out of telling a long story they don’t want to tell. “Yeah, that about sums it up. No dream! Guess the guys in lab coats came back after I left. Maybe the power cut out or something, and you thawed out.”

  “In any event, you’re cool, I’m cool,” she concluded. “But not too cool. Not anymore.” She flicked some frost off his pants.

  “Yeah, you’re cool too, Muse Concert Girl,” he affirmed.

  She flicked his ear. “Isn’t it just so fitting though? I save for years to buy my own bar. I slave away, tending other fools’ bars. I finally do it. I get a bar. I fill it with good drinks. I mortgage my mortgage. It’s a dream come true! And then, wouldn’t you know it? Boom! Bar’s gone. Literally. None of that stuff mattered!”

  “On the bright side,” noted Proto, “I take it your mortgaged mortgage is gone too.”

  “You never know! Somehow, they find you!” waved Black. “But yeah, none of that mattered. All that really mattered was that I dated some guy for a few weeks right after high school, went to a concert on a mountain eight years later, had maybe the best day of my life, and then lost him again the next day.”

  “If you reduce life to the parts that matter, it sounds like a teen movie,” mused Proto.

  “Is that a quote? F you, by the way, but it’s true,” she replied. “Teenybopper Black, that’s me.”

  “Anyway, the point is,” she went on, “after I lost you, a year or two later, I decided to go to another random-ass concert on the same random-ass mountain. In memory of some random-ass guy who called me Muse Concert Girl.”

  “Wait.” Proto was having trouble focusing amid his giddiness, but something she’d just said was nagging at him. “You’re saying you randomly were at that concert venue? The night the skies fell and . . . ?”

  “Right?” Black threw up her hands. “Crazy, huh? I mean, the concert part was random, anyway. Me being here at the Cold Corpse Collection right now is less random. That was mostly thanks to a text. And a dream.”

  “You mean the text I sent you right after . . . ?” Proto began slowly, unsure if he should go on. It seemed like Black had conceived of some explanation for all this, and he was hesitant to share some detail that’d make it all stop making sense.

  “That’s the one!” she blithely accused.

  “So, yeah. Two days after our concert, you text me about going to another concert. Or so I thought,” she said. “You told me about a couple randos you were friends with, how you met them near the Summit Exhibition Grounds, how we should all meet up sometime, blah blah. You included some address. I tapped it. And Google Maps takes me to some dot that’s just slightly below the Summit Exhibition Grounds.”

  “I figured you just tried to touch the Exhibition Grounds and missed it on the map.” Black shrugged. “Not the first time you targeted one thing and somehow ended up at the other thing slightly below it, huh?” She batted her lashes sweetly at Proto.

  Proto blinked. “I . . . um.”

  He’d sent her the address of the cryogenics facility. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might think he’d sent the wrong address.

  “Yeah. Keep umming.” Black rolled her eyes. “So, of course, I instantly start planning this concert double-date of yours. I find out the next big concert on the mountain’s in almost two years. And I’m like, ‘Why not book expensive tickets two years in the future with a guy I’ve gone on one date with? What could possibly go wrong?!’”

  “So, I texted you something about this new concert,” she said. “No response! One day, two days. And I’m like, ‘Man, he hasn’t even put me on Read yet! Must be busy getting his Red on.’”

  “Okay, come on now!” complained Proto.

  “Hey, just telling true stories!” she replied. “Anyway, I finally searched for your name online. And that’s when I found out you got smeared by a little red Corvette going faster than Prince’s guitar solo at George Harrison’s Rock Hall of Fame induction.”

  “So, there I was, tears on my face, two concert tickets sitting pretty in my inbox. ‘Oh, Moo. Such a screw-up. Hit by a car! Touched the wrong spot on Google Maps!’ I cry to myself. And I decide I’m gonna go to the concert in your memory,” recalled Black. “Because I’m late-stage Gen X, and that’s what we do.”

  “Fast forward a year or so. I have a dream,” she went on. “Real nice dream, till two weirdos showed up. Their names were—eh, I forget. Peabody and Sweaterpuppies, I’ll call them.”

  “So, yeah, I’m chatting with a pair of pussywillows,” she recalled, “and then Sweaterpuppies randomly tells me, ‘Hey. On the night of such-and-such, you’ve gotta go stay at a Safe Place.’ And she says ‘Safe Place’ like it’s where Happy Gilmore’s Happy Place and the school counselor’s Safe Space went to get hitched.”

  “Also, the ‘night of such-and-such’ happened to be the night of the concert,’” recalled Black. “So I told Sweaterpuppies, ‘Well, I sure hope the Summit Exhibition Grounds is a Safe Place, cause that’s where I’m gonna be!’ And, to be fair, concerts are the closest thing to a Safe Place that I’ve ever had.”

  “Even if they involve moshers smearing Viking artists in turtlenecks,” noted Proto.

  “Even if!” agreed Black. “So, yeah, Peabody gets all excited when he hears ‘Summit Exhibition Grounds.’ He says, ‘That must be it! That’s near where he’s frozen!’ And Sweaterpuppies says, ‘Yes! That totally makes sense!’ And Peabody’s like, ‘Aitvaras works in weird ways!’”

  “And I’m like, ‘I . . . feel like I’m about to get initiated into a cult. Or maybe serial-killed. Either way, I’m out.’” So I pinched my arm real hard. And as I’m waking up, Peabody shouts, ‘Wait! On such-and-such date, go back to the Safe Place!’” Black shrugged. “And that was that. I woke up.”

  “Except . . . I thought about it more. And I thought about it, and I thought about it,” she recalled. “And I looked up that address you gave me, looked more closely at it. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s a place where they freeze people! Just like Peabody said.”

  “At that point, I still figured this involved a serial killer. Or at least a cultic ritualistic suicide. One way or another, someone’s getting iced,” noted Black. “But it was too late. The mushy sentimentalist in me had taken over! And when she takes over, the rest of us stay silent and despair; for there’s nothing we can do.”

  “In short, here I am! Your name was on some papers up front,” she concluded.

  Proto smiled and marveled at everything he’d just heard.

  “So . . . what the F, Moo?” said Black. “You look like you just ate the pill that makes you ten feet tall.”

  “Nothing. That’s just . . . awfully lucky,” he managed. Luck, Fate, or . . .

  “Yep, guess so!” She shrugged, and her shirt slid a couple inches higher above her belly button. “Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky too, Moo!”

  Proto’s lips curved up. “Oh? Is there a claw vending machine here?”

  “A claw?” Black raised her brow. “Here I am, like, ‘Hey Moo, please remove my knickers and play with me.’ And Moo’s like, ‘What? Knick-knacks to play with?! I’ve got quarters!’”

  Proto blinked. “Um. Are you—”

  “Nope, just kidding! No knickers, no knick-knacks. First base before third.” She flashed a peace sign, then waggled her fingers. “Peace out.” She turned and strolled away.

  Ah, some things never change.

  Grabbing his tracksuit jacket and slipping into it, he followed her out of the room and through the halls of the Atlean University Cryogenics Facility. Electronics hummed low, and lime-green glowstrips reflected dully off the dark grey walls. No one else was in sight.

  As they walked, Black offered no explanation of what they were doing or where they were going, even as they approached the reflective glossy door leading outside.

  He caved. “Sooo. Where we headed?”

  “Into the bright outdoors! Slow down, see the sights with me, Moo!” And indeed, Black threw open the door and strode into the shining day. Thick grass and red-brown Earth sprawled out before them, halting at a nearby precipice.

  “Feels like you’re in a CCR song, doesn’t it?” She approached the cliff and surveyed the shifting, glimmering leafscape in the distance. “You want to take up hiking with me?”

  Proto, awash in daylight for the first time in almost two years, squinted and smiled. “Let’s do it.”

  “Right out here in Nature, huh?” she replied. “Well, au naturel is best.”

  He eyed her sidelong.

  “Right after we find that claw vending machine.” She patted him on the back and walked on.

  Proto chuckled quietly and followed. They’d only walked a few minutes along the cracked road when he had a sudden intimation.

  “Are we heading to that little town we visited?” he asked. “Belladrengr, was it?”

  “Not bad, Moo! This is why I bragged to people about my boyfriend. He knows what’s what,” replied Black. “Don’t be too proud though. You’re still the guy who tried to unfasten a pullover sports bra.”

  “Oh, for F’s sake,” grumbled Proto. “You know how ready I was? How much I’d prepared? To not be the guy who couldn’t unfasten it, when the moment of truth came?”

  “You really should’ve realized things weren’t gonna play out that way, the first time you saw me in a tight shirt,” she noted. “Which was every day. When you sat directly behind me in math class.”

  “I was eighteen!” he groused.

  “Well, I was fifteen when I got it!” she pointed out. “And I can’t say I ever tried to unsnap the elastic band.”

  “I was eighteen and male!” he clarified.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like female me ever tried to unsnap that weird elastic band at the front of your male undies!” she retorted.

  Ah, isn’t this cute? came Miss Beatrice’s voice abruptly. I miss those days!

  Adolescent banter during post-adolescent dating? asked Somnus-Proto Lawyer. Or when elastic was enough?

  A bit of both, she sighed wistfully.

  Well, I’ll do my best on the banter front, replied Somnus-Proto Lawyer. As for the rest, I’m good.

  Oh, you! she chided. Good start.

  “But yeah, things are going well enough in Belladrengr,” Black was saying. She’d been talking about the town, as Proto listened to the voices in his head. “No mayor or anything. Guess he was down in the city when it all went down. So, we’ll need to find one someday. Who knows, maybe it’ll be you, Moo!”

  “Wow. Karen Black, suggesting we subject ourselves to The Man?” questioned Proto.

  “Don’t call yourself The Man,” she chastised. “Anyway, Mayor Moo, don’t get me wrong. I’d love to live in a share-and-share-alike, live-and-let-live, law-free commune full of flowers down on Lake Shore Drive as much as the next ex-groupie. But that only works for cool people, and, I hate to say it, there are a few uncool people out there!”

  His brow arched. “You hate to say that?”

  “Nah, just kidding. Way too many uncool people,” she replied. “Except maybe in 1968. I’ve searched for uncoolness there but still haven’t found any.”

  “So, what’s so uncool out there?” He waved off the cliffside in the city’s general direction.

  “Well, flaming ruin is, by definition, sort of uncool,” she answered. “And violently plundering houses and shops in roving gangs probably falls on the uncool side of the spectrum too.”

  “So it begins,” mused Proto. “Give her a couple years, and she’ll be dying her hair blonde, wearing red lipstick and tailored skirts, and speaking grimly about urban looters and fiery chaos to aging suburban audiences.”

  “Moo, that hits way too close to heart! I’m nearly thirty!” she cried. “Our jokes of ten years ago are no longer jokes!”

  Proto started to correct “ten years” to “eight years.” Then he realized it had been ten years now, hadn’t it?

  “Only most things are ironically funny now, not everything?” he instead replied.

  “Yes! I never thought it would happen,” she lamented. “I’m late-stage Gen X!”

  “Well, at 29.5, I’m right there with you,” he observed.

  “I like how you keep track of your age down to the .5s, even while you’re frozen in a block of ice,” she said. “Your inner five year old never goes away, does he?”

  “Better five than nearly thirty, right?” he pointed out.

  “Don’t say that!” she chided. “Anyway, speaking of frozen and aging people, you’re looking a lot better than I expected.”