June remembered one time listening to a movie that was in Spanish but subtitled. She’d wanted to know what they were saying. Her friends laughed their asses off when one of the men said something…

But it didn’t seem funny.

So she’d decided to learn Spanish. And then she’d found out that learning it, really learning it, was a lot harder than just cracking a book.

The same went for this. Teacher didn’t have her make anything else but the pencil. First, as she remembered. Then with a few changes. New. Old. Different colors.

“To weave reality out of nothingness, you must move beyond your memories,” Teacher said.

He had a pair of green army men dueling in front of him.

Show off, June thought.

“And by creating a new image, a new, artificial memory, as it were, you can fix that memory within your mind and use it.” He paused. “Would you like to create such a memory—say a horse, to speed your way?”

June blinked. A horse… The one time she’d ridden a horse she’d fallen off of it. But…

“What about a bike?” June asked.

Teacher leaned back. “Interesting. I had not actually considered that. Bikes were long, long after my time. What type of bike?”

Well, I could use the memory of Hank’s bike but… That didn’t feel right. Hank had given her that memory and he adored his bike. But she’d always wanted…

June closed her eyes, remembering the time she’d hung around the store. Dad hadn’t been willing to buy it for her—he wanted his daughter protected by air-bags and a car.

Not that it helped in the end.

But now… “I want a reverse trike.”

“What?” Teacher asked. He leaned forward. “Show me.”

June closed her eyes. She’d spent so much time researching it. Coming up with safety studies and reasons why it’d make sense for her to have. Why it was safer than a regular motorcycle and cheaper than a car and…

And she remembered the one time she’d convinced the salesman to let her spin it around the lot. Slow, not fast, but even so, the way it rumbled, and was so steady…

“Fascinating.”

June opened her eyes. In the space between her and teacher, she could see it. The three-wheeled vehicle, big tires and the engine looked just like she remembered them. But it was transparent. Not real.

At that thought, the image flickered.

“Careful,” Teacher told her. “The image is yours. The memory is yours. Here, it is real. Do not forget that.”

June nodded, and then stared at it. She felt…

It was solid. I felt the warmth, the way the sun had heated it, when I got onto it. Slowly the image became stronger, no longer transparent. It sagged on its wheels before the springs bounced a little.

“But it’ll go away!” June said.

“Yes. But tell me, what do you need to make a vehicle go. What do you always carry with you, or at least so I’ve been told.”

“A key.”

“Create it.” Teacher held out his hand. “I have some power here, so I will assist you.”

June focused on the image of the key, the way it’d fit right into the lock.

I can sense it… And then she felt Teacher’s power, the way wisps of memory were floating around the trike, somehow making it more real where they touched it.

And then, with an almost physical “snap!” the trike was real, June holding her key.

“Now, when you desire it… you merely use the key as a focus.”

“I didn’t… I couldn’t have done that by myself.” June shook her head.

“Not yet, but you needed less help than I thought,” Teacher said. “Most importantly, you did not attempt to take the true memory, which is a common mistake. You showed that you have learned.” June saw Teacher’s eyes widen in the way they did when he was smiling. “But now be off with you. The trike will be further solidified if you drive it around town, and it’s time for your rest.”

“You’d think we could do without rest down here,” June muttered.

“Oh, many do,” Teacher told her. “They merely have to forget being human.”

“Right…” June nodded. “Okay, Um, thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

June reached down and stared at her key. Moments later, the trike just shimmered and seemed to flow into the key.

Huh, that’s super neat. I wonder how long it will be before I can do that without any help? Probably a long time.

With that, June waved to Teacher and started her walk to the bottom of the ziggurat.

----------------------------------------

When she hit the bottom, June pulled her key out from her pocket and stared down at the ground. The key had… weight. She stared at it and imagined turning the key in the ignition, bending down and thrusting it into where the ignition would be.

Seconds later, the trike faded into existence, the key very firmly in the ignition.

“Yes!” June said, and got onto the seat. She stared at the pink helmet dangling from one of the handlebars. It had the cat ears that Dad had thought were so funny when he’d bought her the helmet.

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A promise that next year, she might get the trike.

“Well, Dad, it’s not next year,” June said. “But thanks anyway.” She buckled the helmet on, wondering if “something that could save your life” counted when you were dead. The bike came to life, the engine rumbling as she got onto the seat.

This’ll be great. I can also give Sally a ride.

And then June took off down the road. She didn’t go too fast. Granted, you couldn’t die in a wreck, but it still hurt. And it was really impolite to run someone over if you were driving.

June drove through the empty neighborhoods she’d passed through. Some of the lights were on in the windows, some illuminating the gloom with a warm yellow, some a cold, disturbing blue. June shook her head. Those weren’t apartments you wanted to go into. It wasn’t as bad as the Dimlit Halls or the bad neighborhoods, but not everyone here was the kind of person June wanted to meet.

Mary was nowhere to be seen. June figured she’d gone to her little apartment to pray for her mother and rest in the big soft bed, the memory of the real bed where she’d died.

As June headed into the more lively parts of the City, people waved at her. Some knew here, most just stared at the bike. June hadn’t just selected the bike because she wanted it, but because she’d never seen another like it in the Memory Lands.

I can rest and then tomorrow I’ll go see Hank’s race. Maybe I’ll get into it—that’d be funny. June glanced down at the speedometer.

She was doing twenty miles per hour.

Okay, maybe not. Hank went a little faster than that, and—

Suddenly June threw the brakes on, nearly flying over the front of the trike. In front of her there were cars, horses, people, all of them annoyed, all of them waiting for the road to clear.

The City always ensured you had enough room to move. What the hell… June got off of her trike, and pulled the key out, the vehicle vanishing as she did so. She pushed through the crowd.

“Goddamned newcomers!” A man said, dressed in the fashion of the well-to-do from the 1800s.

“I Bet they’re pissed off about not getting to go to heaven,” a redheaded girl said. She looked like she’d come from the 1960s, but the bullet hole in her head indicated that she hadn’t come here naturally.

I wonder why she’s kept it. Probably something central to her memory, or maybe she was a suicide. Suicides had a very hard time losing the stigmata of their deaths. Behind her, June saw an old, ratty VW bus, a few people standing by it, evidently friends of the girl. They also had…

June shook her head. It wasn’t her business.

What is my business is what is—Oh. No.

The street was crowded with a rapturist parade, and unfortunately, unlike the man June had met, these people were serious, a larger group than the ones June, Hank, and Sally had met on the way down.

They were mostly dressed as they had been when they died, but their skin was withered and washed out, their hair gray. What June figured you’d imagine what you looked like after a few days in the ground.

Which is kinda stupid, since nobody was around to bury.

“My friends!” The leader of the parade was standing on top of a little stage that had been set up, in the middle of the road thank you very much. “This is not our final destination! This dark place is both a warning and a mercy! For did not the end come as a thief in the night, as we were warned!”

“I don’t recall the Bible talking about aliens!” someone called. There was laughter, but some of it was uneasy. Not everyone, even those who had been here for centuries was entirely accepting of the Memory Lands.

“But were they aliens, or were they demons?” The man looked around, his eyes burning. “For they led us down here, made us use our anger to strike them down instead of accepting the truth, that we had been freed to join Him in heaven!”

There were more cat calls. The man wasn’t deterred.

“And now we exist here. In a creation of our own unfaith, but one day, the dawn will come, and those who are prepared will join the faithful to rise up, one last time, and those who are not, will see the final night come over them. And they will—“

“I’ve had enough,” June muttered and started shouldering back. There were safe streets that she could use to get around this—

“June Williams!”

Oh Jesus. Mom. June hadn’t seen her for weeks, but it’d be her luck to meet her here now. After all, there was a reason June knew about the rapturists.

Mom had been pretty good-looking for someone in her forties, and she still kept it… sort of. Her hair was gray and stringy, her cheeks hollow but not as bad as some. According to Mom, when they’d been talking, she’d died on the way to her job, pulling over because she wasn’t feeling well. Then she’d decided she’d been a sinner and missed the boat.

And what was worse, she believed it. June couldn’t pull the trick she’d pulled on that idiot preacher.

“What is it, Mother.”

“Where have you been?”

“Learning, working. I went up—“

Mom’s mouth opened, wider than it should have been able to.

Oops. Mistake.

“You went to the Living Lands? I told you never to go there. That’s blasphemy!”

June took a deep breath. “No, Mom, it isn’t blasphemy. It’s going up and looking around.”

“Blasphemy!” Mom repeated, and now some of her friends were glaring at June. Behind her, the rest of the crowd was watching because of course June wanted an audience.

“Mom, this isn’t hell, that wasn’t blasphemy and you really need to get a grip. God didn’t have anything to do with this. The aliens did, and if this is something set up just for us, why are there people here from the dawn of time!”

“That’s enough, young lady!” Mom lashed out and grabbed June’s hand, and started pulling her. “You’re coming with me.”

Except June didn’t move. Mom pulled again, and June just stood there. She was shorter than Mom but…

“I know a lot more about this place than you do, and I haven’t been… recreating myself. I mean, look at you. Pale, white hair, what are you, some haunted house helper!”

“This is a sign of our penance, young lady, and you should—“

“It’s a sign you couldn’t handle the fact that Dad Moved On!” June shouted, finally losing her temper. “You were the one who went to church all the time, and you had to drag him there, and he still Moved On!”

And then Mom slapped her, the sound loud in the air. Everyone paused. The slap didn’t hurt June, at least not in the sense of causing pain.

“He only Moved On because he was unable to shoulder this burden! You will—“

“Enough.”

June turned to look at the guard. This one was dressed in what looked like a mixture of ancient armor, a khopesh in their hand, while a Greek helmet obscured their face.

“You have disrupted the peace of the street. Leave.”

Mom glared at the figure but turned and left. June glanced at the guard, but it gestured for her to leave as well. June didn’t hesitate as the rest of the crowd dispersed. Guards were old, and not many wanted to risk setting one off. Granted, they didn’t care about much. Murder someone on the street, no problem. Block access and cause a jam… well.

Mom had to just fall for that idiotic… June shook her head and then angrily rubbed her eyes. She pulled the key out and took off as quickly as she could, moving through the traffic, cutting down a darker street, not exactly safe, but June was moving fast and didn’t listen to the whispers coming from the alley mouths.

Finally, she got to her little apartment. Emphasis on the little. Older spirits and those with powers like Teacher, could create or claim their own homes.

Spirits like June got what the City created for them, tiny little cubical apartments, holding a few of their most cherished memories that the City had used to form the place when they died. June stopped in front of the tall, crooked building and called her trike back into the key before she headed up the stairs, ignoring the occasional gleam of eyes from shadowy corners. She was on the twentieth floor, but the building helped people get to their rooms, and moments later, June was in a hallway with dozens of doors in it.

Too many doors for a physical building, and she bet any architect from the Living World, if there were any left, would have gone nuts trying to plan this building out, but June and the rest weren’t exactly material. She touched her door, pulled it open…

And was in a tiny room. On one side, there were some of her books, and the bed had the big fluffy pillow her grandmother had made for her.

Grandma had Moved On long before the Invaders showed up. June had checked.

She fell onto the bed, now in her night clothes, and rolled over and grabbed the pillow, hugging it to her. Most stories, when you go to the afterlife, your family doesn’t get more dysfunctional.

June shook her head. If she didn’t get some sleep, she’d be a wreck tomorrow.

“Well, one good thing,” June murmured as the darkness rose up around her. “We don’t dream.”

And then she was out like a light.