“You know it’s not real, right?” No matter how old he got, Peter's face never got any less impish. If anything, the encroaching wrinkles might have added new layers of mischief and mirth to his visage. He looked as though he'd just as soon tweak your nose and cackle about it as shake your hand.

“I know many things aren't real, you'll have to be more specific.” Nadia, in comparison, had a subdued, restrained air about her. Not joyless, but certainly no-nonsense. A very serious lady, who said what she meant.

“Oh, don't give me that. I'm talking about the Gateway. The Beyond. What else would I mean?”

The two of them were in Peter's bedroom, where Nadia was helping him get dressed and into his wheelchair, as had become their custom. The room, much like any other to be found in the housing complex it was situated in, was comfortably and tastefully furnished. Peter and Nadia had heard about the kinds of living conditions people in the past had been subjected to, in a history class many decades ago, but such issues were long before their time. Nowadays, everyone had a comfortable place to live, which they could decorate as they saw fit. Peter had elected for a very classical style of room. The walls were a minimalist soft white, the light fixtures featured modest brushed metal trim, and the bed cover was a solid dark blue. The two had lived in this complex for years now, it was quite comfortable and familiar. Tonight would be the last night either of them would sleep here.

“Fixated, aren't you?” Nadia asked as she helped Peter situated his legs on the chair’s footrests.

Peter reared his head back in mock offense. The wide grin still splitting his face betrayed the artificiality of the performance. “Of course I am! Our day is tomorrow, in case you forgot!”

“Oh, I didn't forget. You never gave me a chance,” Nadia replied playfully. “I thought you stopped believing in all that ‘The Beyond is fake’ business decades ago.”

“No, no,” Peter replied with a chuckle. “I just got fed up with wasting my time arguing about it!”

“And now that you have immeasurably less time to spare, you've changed your mind?”

“Yes, actually! I'm running dangerously low on chances to bother my best friend, I've got to make the most of them!”

“You know I’m not susceptible to flattery, Peter. Not in the past 30 years, anyway. Besides, we should get moving. Don’t want to be late for our last dinner on earth.”

“They’d wait for us if we were. It’s our special day, after all.”

Peter and Nadia had been inseparable for around 90 years, ever since they met as children, 4 years after the day on which they were both born. Closer to 91, now, as they were both only one day away from their 95th birthday. A momentous occasion indeed, as they, like everyone else, would on their 95th birthday enter the Gateway into the Beyond, where they would be ushered into immortality. This was how it had been for as long as anyone living in their community could remember, far longer than that, in fact. Many of the exact details of the process had been lost. Nobody could tell you with authority, for example, where exactly the Beyond was, or by what means immortality was to be bestowed upon arrival, or why exactly people had to wait until age 95 before making the pilgrimage. Nobody had returned from the journey, and nobody much wanted to be the first to make it before their allotted time.

The two made their way out of the bedroom, Nadia pushing Peter’s wheelchair along. He was always the more impetuous of the two, but when his legs gave out and hers didn’t, she immediately seized on the ammunition with which to return his good natured ribbing. That, however, was 20 years ago, and the joke had worn thin in time.

She wheeled him through the softly lit halls and into a spacious dining room. There were a handful of sturdy wooden tables around the room, mostly empty, aside from the one on which their meals were waiting for them. The wood, of course, was synthesized rather than farmed, as was the case for most organic materials by this point. It was both more sustainable and allowed for the materials to see wider use.

Due to the robust nature of synthesis technology, choosing one's preferred meal was quite routine. There weren't any commonly-used ingredients which couldn't easily be acquired in abundance. Nonetheless, a last dinner on Earth was seen as a special occasion, necessitating a special meal. There were different schools of thought as to what this should entail; something unusual, something new, something representative of one’s time spent on the planet. Peter had planted his flag under the banner of extravagance and ordered salmon, caviar and wine. The only exception was the one staple he couldn’t pass up under any circumstances, least of all today of all days: good, strong coffee, taken black, which he drank before touching anything else. Nadia was more interested in comfort than adventure. She had ordered a simple cheeseburger, american cheese and ketchup and mayonnaise adorning its well-seared patty, and a cream soda.

They had both had a full, busy week of visiting with various old friends and relatives, people who wanted to take their last remaining opportunity to say goodbye. Their respective children, tearfully sending off their remaining parents – Peter’s and Nadia’s partners had both gone a few years earlier – grandchildren who gave them a final update on the states of the homes they’d built for themselves and their offspring, great grandchildren who were just starting to get their footing in the adult world, even the occasional great-great grandchild who didn’t really understand what was going on, and would only later realize the significance of this time in retrospect, new information recontextualizing hazy memories. It had of course been wonderful to see everyone again, but when you’re 94 years old, almost 95, even wonderful things are deeply, deeply tiring. They whittle away until you’re nothing but threadbare bone. Now was no longer the time for tiring visitation with beloved relatives, it was the time for relaxing in each other’s company and sharing a meal. Each of them deeply enjoyed their requested dish as they reminisced about their time together.

“Y’know, it was quite a shock to hear you throwing around these claims about the Beyond again. I thought I’d somehow stumbled back into high school. What’s next, are you going to sabotage the intercom again?”

Peter laughed heartily and took another sip of wine. “You’re damn right I will! And then you’re going to completely lose your sense of humor for a few months while you prepare for finals, right?”

“What sense of humor?”

“That one!” The two laughed raucously and Peter offered Nadia some wine. She happily accepted it, having finished her soda a moment ago. “I really am glad you mellowed back out, you’re much more fun like this.”

“I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.”

“As you well should!”

Nadia looked down at her empty plate, a faint smile still lingering on her face. “So what exactly makes you think that it’s all a ruse, anyway?”

“Hmm? Oh, right. I’ve been reading some uh… historical documents. Getting context, reframing things,” Peter replied.

“Historical documents, eh? Don’t think I didn’t notice that pregnant pause in the middle of the sentence, mister. Let me guess, you were trawling through the Old Web?”

Peter grinned deviously. “Ya got me! You know I can’t stay away from it.”

“Mm-hmm. I also know that it’s so clogged with conflicting stories about every possible topic that you could find ‘evidence’ for nearly any assertion a million monkeys could dream up.”

“Oh, who cares, it’s all in good fun.”

Nadia’s mouth had set into a hard, thin line by this point. “I’m sure. So what exactly is this ‘context’ you found?”

Peter leaned forward, lowering his voice despite the fact no one was around to hear them, and that even if anyone were, no one was about to hassle a pair of 94 year olds about what they said at dinner. “Apparently, back in the 20th and 21st centuries, overpopulation was a big problem. They say there were all sorts of plots and schemes to combat it, some out in the open and some clandestine, all cloak and dagger.”

“Now hold on right there Pete, I know that's not true. Every reputable source agrees, there was never a legitimate risk that the earth would be overpopulated, it was a distribution problem.”

“Alright, alright, well they thought it was a big problem, anyway,” Peter admitted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The point is, they were trying to do something about it!”

“Mm, I'm sure.” Nadia’s tone had begun to betray some exasperation. “And what exactly does this have to do with us?”

“Well, they spent an enormous amount of time and effort working on it.” The grin was back on Peter's face now that he'd managed to brush past the dispute and could start spinning his yarn. “They spent years trying all sorts of different ways to decrease the population without having to do anything too unsavory. There were anti-natalist activist groups, attempts to economically disincentivize having children, all sorts of stuff. But life expectancy just kept rising, especially in the northern hemisphere, and while birth rates were falling, they weren't doing so fast enough to counterbalance it. At least, that was the belief at the time,” he added quickly when Nadia looked like she might be about to interject again. “They weren't seeing the results they were looking for, no matter what they tried. They just couldn't get people to stop reproducing! So what are you gonna do, when you want to decrease population, but people won't cooperate with you?”

He paused and looked at Nadia expectantly. She stood resolute for a few moments, before rolling her eyes and relenting to his implicit request for audience participation. “I don't know, Peter, what do you do?”

“You attack the problem from the other end!”

“What, you mean kill people?”

“No no no, not against their will anyway. Voluntary euthanasia! It started with some of the biggest voices in the depopulation movement starting to get up there in years, enough that their quality of life started to suffer. Medicine of the time was getting better and better at keeping people alive, but it couldn't keep up in terms of making it comfortable to live that long. Eventually they realized, ‘we're a bunch of very old men and women who aren't really happy anymore and strongly believe there are too many people on the earth. Why are we still holding on to our own lives?’ Of course they didn't all just immediately jump off a bridge, it's not actually that easy to just decide to up and kill yourself. But, slowly but surely, they started talking about these things, and then one by one they started making arrangements to be voluntarily euthanized. All the while, they were spreading these ideas to their peers. More and more, people were reaching old age, losing more and more of their daily existence to pain and infirmity, with ideas in their head about how they can best contribute to the world, under such conditions. And many of them looked at their lot in life and said, ‘no thanks, I’d like to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.’ Many of them didn’t feel they had enough to live for anyway, what with the state of elder care in those days.” At this, his face darkened a little, just for a moment. But the smile quickly returned as he moved on. “Even so, they knew it still wasn’t enough. Individual action against what they saw as a systemic problem, and all that. Things stayed like that for quite a while, as much as a hundred years, some say. Technology continued to improve, as it tends to. Their cause began dying out, as quality of life began improving at higher and higher ages and it became harder and harder to convince people that they had little enough to lose for them to feel comfortable throwing their lives away for the sake of addressing this problem. They began looking for other ways of converting people, more effective methods than persuasion.”

“More effective than persuasion, huh? So what exactly does that look like?”

Peter gave a wide, toothy grin at the question, which doubled as a pause for dramatic effect. “Trickery! What else?”

“Trickery?”

“Of course, trickery! Old faithful!” Peter beamed and poured himself another glass of wine. “They looked at the technologies that were coming into existence, and they saw an opportunity. Scalable interstellar travel, teleportation, medical advancements. They incorporated, and announced a number of research projects to be pursued over the next few years. Of course, none of those would actually come into existence, but they’d sure as hell say they did!”

Nadia pursed her lips. “If all this technological progress was happening anyway, why would they need to fake it?”

“They were cynics! Nadia, it’s been hundreds of years, and can you name me a single extraterrestrial colony other than The Beyond?”

“Of course not, they don’t exist. The Beyond is situated on the first planet which was found to be hospitable without the need for unreasonably large-scale terraforming projects, and it took so long to find that that everyone just gave up on searching for more.”

“Exactly! These people knew that all this extraterrestrial settlement stuff wasn’t really going anywhere, was never going to be a legitimate solution to their worries about an overpopulated earth. They didn’t want to rely on it, but they did want to use it. So they set themselves up to waste a few years making it look like they were making progress so that people would believe them when they said they’d cracked it! Found a habitable planet, but just the one, set up a means of instantaneous transport but only one way, cracked immortality but it could only be done on people above a certain age!”

“Doesn’t this all seem a bit ridiculous?” Peter’s consumption of wine had significantly slowed down as he got into a proper rhythm telling his story, but Nadia’s had continued unabated while she listened, and her diction was beginning to go soft at the edges. “I mean, how is this stuff supposed to get from a fake scientific breakthrough to something everyone participates in?”

“Marketing!”

“Peter, come on, I'm not going to just buy that an ad campaign convinced everyone that a completely fake solution to the problem of death was available but only if you're old enough.”

“Oh, come on, the story’s more fun without these kinds of holes being poked in it.”

“I'm sure, but you're trying to tell me it's true!”

“Well it's just as believable as any other explanation, isn't it?”

“No, Pete, I don't think it is.”

“Ahhh, it’s not like you’ve got any better ideas.”

“Well I’d say no explanation at all is better than one that says it’s all an elaborate lie to serve as a solution to some long-debunked political bugbear!” Nadia hadn’t noticed the volume of her voice creeping higher and higher. It suddenly hit her, right as she finished her sentence, that she was practically yelling. She and Peter both let the sudden silence hang between them for a long moment, before she spoke again, softer this time. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be getting worked up about this. How about a game?”

Peter nodded, a soft smile on his face. As a younger man he likely would’ve insisted upon continuing their conversation, pressed and needled and joked for the rest of the night. He’d matured a lot since then. The impulse that led him to start these conversations had never left, but he’d developed much more of a sense of when to leave them be, at least for the time being. And tonight of all nights, he didn’t actually want to waste all of his remaining time causing distress to his closest friend.

No words needed exchanged about what game they were to play, there was only one they still bothered with. They played Go often, because neither of them was any good at it, even after all these years. They knew the rules, but beyond that they'd given up on learning. No stratagems, no attacks and defenses, just placing stones and watching the board develop over time. It was calming, meditative even. A collaboration more than a competition.

Nadia had been quite purposeful with her suggestion. She knew that the game would melt away the mounting tension that had built up during their conversation. She was, in fact, interested to talk more about this, and the gradually building complexity of the pattern on the board between them would be the perfect salve to allow her to do so. She quickly wheeled Peter, and his wine glasses and half-empty bottle, down the hall to a nearby lounge, where they knew a couple bowls of Go stones and a board could be found, as well as comfortable seats on either side of a low table.

The two of them remained cheerfully silent for a good many turns, the joy of the game filling the air between them like clouds of hookah smoke. Only once it had become almost too thick to see the board through did Nadia speak. “So why is it that you're so invested in this old story of trickery and conspiracy, anyway? If I may be blunt, what does it matter?”

“Hmm…” Peter tapped a black stone against his chin thoughtfully, eyes glued to the board as he decided his next move. “I suppose I could say I'm just being contrarian, and that wouldn't be untrue. But more than that, I suppose it was starting to bother me. Not knowing how this whole thing started, or why it kept up.”

“Ah, I suppose I wasn't really speaking your language when I said I preferred no answer, was I?”

“Ha! I suppose not! You know I wasn't bothered, though. Like I said, I'm being contrarian here.”

Nadia fell into silence, a thoughtful silence that Peter recognized. He knew better than to interrupt it; she would speak again in due time. In the meantime, there were more stones to place on the grid between them. As the turns continued to pass between them, Peter nursed his wine until the bottle began to run low. It was nearly empty before Nadia spoke again.

“Do you actually believe that whole story you told me?”

“I can't really say one way or the other. It's interesting, certainly, and I don't have a better explanation. But is it true? Who can say, at this point.”

“And what if it is fake? Are you planning on refusing to go through with the ceremony tomorrow?”

“Oh, not at all.”

“So that's it? You're going to enter the Gate, believing there's an even chance that you're going to your death?”

“I don't see why not.”

“Don't see why not? Peter, this whole thing is supposed to be about avoiding having to die.”

Peter grinned widely. “Remember, Nadia, I'm a contrarian. And I think that's game,” he added.

“Mmh, so it is.” Nadia glanced around, her brow wrinkling in annoyance. “Ah, damn it, we’ve done it again, Peter. Neither of us remembered to grab a paper to count up our score before we started playing. I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, don’t bother, Nadia. What does it matter which one of us ‘won?’ You and I both know that’s not why we play this game. Let’s just clear the board and play again.”

Nadia happily complied. Truth be told, she found sorting the stones back out into their respective colors to be one of the more enjoyable parts of the game. As she did so, her mind wandered back toward what Peter had just told her. Could he really be so unfazed by the possibility of death? She supposed it made some sense, he had already had a good 94 years here after all. And leaving home entirely would be something akin to a death in itself. Still, she didn’t think she’d be able to just nonchalantly die like that if she thought that were what she was doing.

Before long she had finished sorting out their stones, and she placed her first one. This time she paid more attention to the pattern as it took shape. Rows of tiny round soldiers, lined up across the board in tight formation, occasionally broken by odd outcroppings or happenstance captures. She got so swept up in the pattern that she barely noticed when Peter broke the silence.

“You said earlier that you thought no explanation at all would be preferable to the one I offered. Why is that, Nadia?”

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“Hmm? Oh, I just… Well, I suppose I found it in poor taste.”

“I can tell! But what is it about it that bothers you so much?”

“Well, I just… I suppose I’m a little invested in the idea of it all being real. It was hard, every time I had to send someone I cared about off into that unknown, but… I think it would’ve been harder if I thought they were truly just gone. I like the idea that there’s more, that they're still out there somewhere.”

“Ahh, I see. Well, I’m sorry to have upset you, my dear.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I know you didn’t mean any harm by it, Pete. If I’m being honest, I think it’s helped me to clarify my thoughts on the whole thing a little. I’ve spent so much of my life just taking it for granted.”

Peter smiled, reaching forward and patting Nadia’s hand. “Well, I’m glad to have helped, then, but nonetheless I could’ve done it with a little more tact. It wasn’t right of me, playing games with something you really care about.”

“Well, you're right about that. There are plenty of other games we can spend our last night playing, after all,” she replied with a wry smile.

“In my defense, they're not nearly as fun! I mean, would you really have preferred another interminable round of chess?”

“Of course I wouldn't! Against you, it's not good for much of anything beyond exercising my fingers!”

Peter laughed heartily at this and sat back to survey the board before placing his next stone. “I can't help it dear, I don't have the head for all those movement patterns.”

“No, you just have the head for centuries-old conspiracy theories.”

“It's fascinating stuff! Besides, I don't need to defend my interests to you, remember all those times you talked my ears off about 150 year old animation techniques? We all have our strange areas of interest and expertise.”

“You know I'm no expert, if I were I'd have tried my hand at it myself.”

“Expertise and confidence are different things. Regardless, my point stands. You have your interests, I have mine.”

“I suppose so, but you know, you’ve got me curious. If the Beyond is fake, if the Gate is a scam and we’re really just willingly walking into a deathtrap, why didn’t they stop the practice once it became clear that the earth wasn’t actually in danger of overpopulation?”

“Y’know, I’ve given a lot of thought to that one myself. I’ve got a number of pet theories. Maybe the practice just succeeded in averting the issue, and to keep their secret they just pretended it was never a problem in the first place.” Nadia opened her mouth to say something to that, but he cut her off. “I know, I know, that one’s a bit too cynical, even for me. Doesn’t really ring true to the world as I know it. Maybe the systems were just a little too entrenched by the time it became clear that they were solving an imagined problem. I mean think about it, we learned how those corporations used to run back then, they were these hulking byzantine molochian things that were just self-perpetuating after a certain point. Now imagine one run by people who literally thought they were saving the world. They probably would’ve built it to stay running for a long time, and without most of the people who were pulling the actual levers knowing what was going on, right? If you’re pulling off a lie on this scale, you need to keep the number of people who actually know about it as low as possible. You’re not gonna want to tell your rank and file employees, ‘hey we’re actually running a euthanasia program here, but don’t tell that to the clients, just keep em movin’ along.’ Hell, you probably don’t even want to tell your management team that kind of thing. No, you’d build the whole corporate structure in such a way where you just kinda set it moving and everyone keeps doing their thing with minimal knowledge of what’s happening at any other level. A series of cogs with no conception of the engine that turns them. Eventually, there might not even be anyone left in the company who ever knew what the whole thing was built for. My favorite theory, though, is that it's serving a different purpose now.”

“A different purpose?” By now Nadia was beginning to let herself get wrapped up in the yarn. Peter had a way of getting you caught up in whatever he was saying. Something about his demeanor, and the tone of his voice, just made it easy to lose yourself in the story, even if you were pretty sure he was just bullshitting the whole time. He'd always had a pervasive sort of easy charisma that was hard to ignore.

“A social one, instead of a material one. They’d realized that there was no need to control the population, but that wasn’t all the project was doing by that point. It had become a tradition. Something to rally around, something to give some structure to the end of your time on earth. People weren’t just morosely accepting it when their time came, they were enthusiastic. They saw each other off like their friend was leaving on a long trip, not like they were dying. So what if there wasn’t actually any need to cut down on the number of people in the world? This was putting a cap on how long someone would hang around and it was making them happy about it. Were they really just going to shatter that with an announcement that it was a fraud the whole time, that there is no beyond, that there is no immortality, that no one would be seeing their old friends on the other side of the Gate because the Gate was just a humane execution chamber with a friendly face? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. There’d be riots, there’d be heartbreak, there’d be countless downsides without a single upside.”

“So you think it stuck around just for the sake of morale? Social cohesion?”

“Well, remember dear, I’m not actually completely convinced it’s really fake,” he replied with a chuckle. “But, yes, if it is fake after all, I think that’s probably why it stuck around even after the ‘issue’ it was invented to solve turned out to be so much smoke in the wind. It’s not unheard of, plenty of cultures have historically had practices where people are expected to die before their natural time, because it does something for the community. People haven’t always been as precious about death as we are now, it used to be a lot more common and a lot more accepted, so long as it was being put to good use.”

Nadia stared thoughtfully at the board sitting between them. They had both stopped placing stones at some point during Peter’s story. The painting they had created with their two opposing armies now served simply as a decoration while they continued their discussion. “Do you know Peter, you’re actually starting to bring me around here?”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“I mean I'm not convinced that the whole thing is fake, but… I'm more comfortable with the question, when you frame it like that.”

“Is it just the fact that it's in service of something that's still valuable?”

“Well… I don't really know. I suppose it's just a little bit charming, y'know? This whole ruse, built on lies and misunderstanding, arguably based in malice, but it's grown into something valuable, something with a real purpose. One that we gave it.”

Peter grinned widely. “I know exactly what you mean. It's kind of beautiful, isn't it?”

“Toot your own horn now, why don't you?”

Peter waved his hand dismissively and chuckled. “Well it got you on board, didn't it? I think I deserve some credit for that!”

“Fair enough, fair enough!” Nadia laughed along with him, resting her head on one hand. “So is that why you're going through with it, even if it is fake? To preserve the social fabric?”

“Oh, I suppose that's part of it. There's a reason I haven't talked about this to anyone but you, Nadia. I'm not a teenager anymore, I don't want to upset people. Even beyond that, though, I'm not really interested in overturning the apple cart, here. I'm old, I'm tired. If this is it, it's it, and that's fine by me. I've had my fair share.”

Nadia thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “I think I agree with you, Peter. Even if it is a lie, even if it's not serving any purpose, I think I'm alright. It's been a long time.”

“Freeing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose? I don’t know, I can’t say it’s much more freeing than where I was before.”

What started as a chuckle from Peter turned into a yawn. “I suppose it’s getting late, isn’t it? We should probably head to bed. Don’t want to be late for our death, after all!”

Nadia rolled her eyes and began putting her stones back in their bowl. “Getting it out of your system before tomorrow?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to say something horrifying in front of all our friends!”

“Right, that’s just for me.”

“Exactly!”

Before long they’d sorted all the go stones back into their respective bowls and returned the game to the shelf it was stored on. Peter was right, it was getting late, and they were both feeling it. They were both going to be 95 in a few more hours, after all, and neither was keen to be awake when that particular milestone was reached. They returned to Peter’s room in exhausted silence, Nadia helped him into bed, and they said their amicable goodnights before she returned to her own bedroom.

Hers was a little more modern than Peter’s, and she’s added a few flourishes, most notably the blossoming cherry tree painted on one wall. Nadia had always loved the way cherry blossoms looked, their vibrant pink petals coating the trees only to blow away on the wind and cover everything else instead. The rest of the room was furnished in rich earth tones. The blossoms were the one splash of bright color and stood out all the more for it.

As she laid down in bed and closed her eyes, her mind began to drift back across the recent week of goodbyes. She’d be seeing everyone one more time at the ceremony, of course, but it wouldn’t have been possible to give everyone a proper farewell in a single day, and besides, her loved ones deserved some one on one time before she left.

In particular, she kept coming back to her conversation with her daughter, Stella. Stella was, of course, getting up there in years herself. She’d been born when Nadia was just 24, 70 years ago. At this point, there were few people Nadia had known longer. Most of her friends growing up had been older than her, and so had already left on their own journeys. It had been a difficult, weepy conversation.

“This isn’t the end, dear,” Nadia had reminded her. “You’ll be following along before too much longer. Only a couple decades, and I don’t think I need to tell you that at this age, that’s not very long at all.”

“I know, I know, it’s just…” Stella sniffled, wiping her eye with the back of her hand. “It’s still hard, y’know? You’ve always been around, my whole life. I know it’s not forever, but it’s longer than I’d like.”

Nadia held her close and ran her hand through Stella’s silver hair. “I know dear, I know. I felt much the same when it was my own mother’s turn to leave. It hurts to be away from loved ones, and doubly so if you haven’t had to do it before.”

Stella nodded. “I know I’ll be fine, but… Something inside me is crying out, insisting that I won’t be able to get by without you. And how can I blame it? I’ve never had to do it before, why should I assume that I’ll be able to now?” Her voice wavered at the end of the sentence, and she buried her face in Nadia’s chest. The sobs racked her body, and she made no effort to stifle them. No one was here to hear them but her own mother, who had seen much worse from her.

“We both know you’ve got yourself plenty put together, dear. But I understand. New situations are always scary, and this is one of the scariest.”

Stella nuzzled a little closer. “I almost wish I could go with you. I know I can’t, there are plenty who still need me here, but there’s a selfish little place inside me that wants to ignore all that and just follow you through. I’d really almost rather lose the whole world than lose you, Mom.”

Nadia nearly cried herself at this. She knew her daughter well enough to recognize the seriousness in her tone, the resolute certainty with which she announced such absurdities. They had barely spent a week apart in Stella’s entire life. Even compared to other mothers and daughters they were uncommonly close, Nadia had been Stella’s confidant and steadfast support through the most difficult moments of her life. There were things Stella had told her that no one else knew, foolish and unkind thoughts she was ashamed of, embarrassing moments no one else was privy to, secret triumphs that no one else could have appreciated the way Nadia did. There was no one else in the world Nadia was closer with. She had known Peter longer, but her relationship with Stella was incomparable. Nothing came close.

They spent the better part of a day together. Stella cried for most of it, cuddling her mother like she hadn’t since she was a child. She couldn’t help it, it was her last chance. Frankly, Nadia needed it just as bad. There were many people and things she expected to miss after her journey, but none so bitterly as Stella. Just the thought of being away from her for even a month, let alone years, felt like an ice cold dagger between her ribs. She had spent quite a lot of time preparing for her exit at that point, and having to give up Stella was the one part of it that she still didn’t feel prepared for. She felt she had as good of a chance of having a complete breakdown a week after the ceremony as she had of being fine.

As she thought back on this interaction, half-asleep and awash with thoughts from her conversation with Peter, she wondered how Stella would’ve reacted had she been around to hear the whole thing. She was certain the poor girl wouldn’t have been able to accept Peter’s view, in fact she’d probably be more hostile than Nadia had. Stella had developed a lot of patience as she grew up, but she was still never willing to sit silently by when people said things she found offensive, and Nadia was sure she’d have been disgusted by Peter’s theories. She wouldn’t have been able to blame her, either. The promise of getting to see her mother again was likely all that would keep Stella going for the next 20 years.

Come to think of it, it hadn’t occurred to Nadia that if Peter was right, she wouldn’t see her own mother either. They certainly weren’t as close as she was with Stella, but it had still been agony to let her go 27 years ago. Just the thought that maybe she was truly gone all this time, that maybe Nadia wasn’t about to see her again after she made her own journey, was… Well, it was sickening. It made her want to claw through her own skin, to rip out her hair and scream. She tried to put it out of her mind and go to sleep, but it wouldn’t leave her alone. It took her quite a while to drift off, and before she did, she spent some time crying softly into her pillow.

When she woke up in the morning, she only had vague memories of the thoughts that had tormented her in her half-awake haze the night before. They felt like bad dreams that evaporated when she awoke. The anxiety still gripped her for a few moments, but its claws had been reduced to smoke, they could no longer gain purchase. Rather than dwell on it, she stood up and dressed herself. A clean black dress, as was customary for such an event. She was allowed to wear whatever she wanted, of course, it was her departure after all, but she saw no reason to break from this particular tradition. She had already seen so many leave while dressed just like this. She was following in their footsteps, why shouldn’t she dress the same?

Once she was dressed (which didn’t take long, the dress was a very simple thing which could be slipped on very easily) she made her way to Peter’s room to help him get ready. Rather than the customary black suit, he had elected to wear the casual clothes he had lived many of his decades in. A plain green shirt, khaki shorts. Peter’s daily uniform which many were more than familiar with. He had never been one to bother with flourishes in his fashion. With Nadia’s help, it didn’t take long for him to get dressed and seated, ready for his big day. There was little else to do before the ceremony, all the other arrangements had already been taken care of. They had time to kill.

“Did you sleep okay, Peter?”

Peter glanced up from the task of tying his shoes. “Hm? I suppose so, why?”

Nadia shook her head. “I sort of… didn’t, I guess. I don't know, I definitely slept enough, but I feel like it wasn’t all that restful. Frightening dreams, I think.”

“Oh? Do you think our conversation last night had anything to do with it?”

“I… I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Would you like to talk about it? We’ve got plenty of time.”

“No, I…” She hesitated for a moment before speaking again. “I don’t remember enough about them to really be able to say much.”

“More just a state of mind, huh?”

“Something like that. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing.”

“Nadia, I thought you knew better by now than to downplay your feelings.”

“That's not- I just don’t think I have much to say about it, Peter.”

“Well, I’m here for whatever you do have to say, my dear.”

Nadia sat in silence for a few moments, lips pursed. She was struggling to remember what it was that had upset her so much the night before. Slowly, it started coming back to her. Just the barest hint of a sense memory at first, but before long she could clearly remember what had brought her to tears as she tried to sleep. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a slight tremble. “There are people you’re hoping to see today, right, Peter? If it is real, I mean. If they’re not just… You know.”

“Absolutely, of course there are.”

“Then why are you so comfortable with the idea that it’s not real? That you won’t have another chance to see them? That they’re just gone?”

Peter thought it over for a moment. “I already made my peace, Nadia.”

She looked away, folding her arms in front of her chest. “Well… I guess I didn’t.”

Peter reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but the small gesture of contact and acknowledgement was enough to convey what he felt for her. Nadia scooted over a little closer to him, and he pulled her into a tight hug. It had never occurred to him that other people were really pinning their entire hopes on the promise of seeing the departed again. He assumed everyone else did what he did, and treated it like a death. He saw the idea of maybe getting to see them again as a little silver lining, a possibility that would be nice if it came to pass. He wasn’t relying on it.

Nadia hugged him back as she felt a few tears roll down her face. “I just… I don’t know, I’ve lived for decades now assuming that I’ll get to see them again. I don’t know if I could’ve let go if I didn’t think that. I don’t want to lose them, I didn’t even want to let them leave.”

Peter nodded, rubbing her back gently. “It’s a hard thing to do. I got the hang of it over the years, but I’d never say it became easy. I don’t know if you can do it in the span of a few hours. Hell, I don’t know if a few months would be enough. And I don’t think you should have to, if I’m being frank.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re having trouble accepting the possibility that they might actually be dead, right? So don’t. Don’t accept it. That’s not a fact of reality, it’s some bullshit you heard from me, and honestly to hell with me, I’m an idiot!”

Nadia sighed. “I know it’s not a fact of reality, but… The thought still weighs on me. The possibility of it.”

“Well, before I said anything you were certain that the Beyond is real, right?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Do you think you can fake that certainty well enough to get through the next few hours?”

“What?”

“I know they say denial is unhealthy in the long run, dear, but we don’t really have a long run left when it comes to this particular topic. In a few hours we’re about to either find out that you’re right, or stop existing altogether, and by extension stop caring. I don’t think there’s really any need to come to long-term grips with a possibility that won’t matter anymore tomorrow.”

“So that’s it? Just don’t think about it, until I find out?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Nadia thought that over for a moment. It was hard to argue with. She wasn’t about to spend a month or even a week grappling with this. They were leaving today. “I don’t know, but… I can try, I suppose.”

“I couldn’t ask for any more, my dear,” Peter replied with a soft smile. “I’m sorry for having put you onto this whole train of thought in the first place. I like to think that I’ve gotten more considerate over the years, but it had truly never occurred to me that other people dealt with the departures differently than I did.”

“So you really just never treated it as if it were temporary?”

“Nope. Never. Even when I believed quite firmly in the Beyond, I never thought of seeing people I knew again as a sure thing. I mean, we don’t know what the place is like. How are we to know that we can simply visit each other once we’re over there? Or even that there’s only one place it leads to? Too many unknowns. I decided pretty early on that I would need to find a way to be okay with the prospect of never seeing people again after they leave. And I think I was perhaps a little too good at it, given how our recent conversations have been going.”

“I don’t know, I kind of admire it. You not only identified possibilities that never occurred to me, but came to terms with them, got comfortable. That’s nothing to sneeze at, Peter.”

“Well sneeze I will, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!” He grinned widely at the giggle this elicited from Nadia.

“I mean it, Pete. We both know a lot of people tended to look down on you for how much of a troublemaker you were, but I never thought that was fair.”

“Oh, come on Nadia, we don’t need to relitigate your opinion of me again.”

“I’m not looking to relitigate anything! I’m just saying, there’s a reason we’ve been friends all these years, and it’s not because I’m such a sucker for mischief. You see the world in an interesting way, it’s refreshing. It can be difficult, too, but I think sometimes I need that difficulty. Without you in my life, I suspect I’d have stagnated a lot more. I’d be a less interesting person.”

Peter shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s true, Nadia.”

“Well, think what you want. I stand by it.”

“I just think you should give yourself more credit. You're a deeply curious person, you're just more focused than I've ever been.”

“Alright, fair enough.” Nadia waved her hand dismissively. “Anyway, I think I've finished crying on your shoulder. Do you wanna squeeze in another game before we go?”

“You know I'd love to.”

Once again, Nadia wheeled Peter to the lounge where they customarily played Go, and they sat down for one last game. This one was carried out primarily in amicable silence. Both had grown somewhat tired of talking. They simply whiled away their remaining hours in comfortable collaboration, until the time came for Nadia to take Peter to their ceremony.

As Peter and Nadia entered the Departure Room, the audiences placed against the walls applauded. The main portion of the room was taken up with a wide walkway leading toward the Gateway, but there were areas around the edges where well-wishers could observe and make their love for the departing known. The room had high ceilings and wide windows to let in lots of sunlight. There wasn't any furniture aside from the audience seating, as there was no need for any.

This particular room contained two Gateways, side by side. Each was a rather plain-looking cylindrical chamber, which the departing would step inside of and close the door, never to be seen again. There were, of course, many such chambers peppered around the world. Great care had been taken to ensure that wherever you were in the world, you wouldn't have to travel far when your time came. Populated urban centers had thousands of them, smaller towns had only a handful. Most Departure Rooms contained only one, but at some point the decision has been made to prepare some with two Gateways so that, should two people set to leave on the same day wish to do so, they could leave from the same room. Peter and Nadia had of course elected to exercise this option.

They made their way to the center of the room, Nadia pushing Peter's wheelchair along, and stopped in front of the Gateways, both of which sat open, waiting for them. Some people chose to give a speech before their departure, but Nadia and Peter had said all they wanted to say to the audience over the past week. Instead, Nadia simply said to Peter, quietly, “See you on the other side, old friend,” before placing his wheelchair inside the Gateway on the right. Peter nodded back at her with a wide grin, and she stepped into the one on the left herself. The doors to both chambers slid shut to raucous applause, and when they opened, both were empty, just like every other time this ceremony was carried out.