October 12th, 2013
8:56 A.M.
Max sat cross-legged on her bed, staring out the window as she awaited the inevitable; the moment she'd spent the last five years dreading, hating, pleading for reprieve from, and ultimately accepting the inevitability of.
Today was the day she was going to die.
So naturally, she'd gotten up early.
She dressed as she normally would, but took the time to do her makeup. She then had a quick breakfast. She sat on the roof and watched the sun come up.
She did everything she could to make her last morning as pleasant as possible.
'Die' was perhaps an overly strong term...but then again, why not? Yes: die. Her body would, to the best of her limited knowledge, still be ticking. As far as everyone else in her life was concerned, Max Caulfield would continue pushing air past her teeth, but her mind would be destroyed. Overwritten by some interloping version of herself from an alternate timeline. But maybe it wouldn't be as bad as all that; maybe she'd just be displaced. Or she'd swap lives with this other version of herself - although given that the alternate timeline involved the deaths of billions of people, it didn't sound like such a great place to make a new home for herself.
All the while, hope sprang eternal, because of course she didn't actually want to die; but at the same time, she'd spent so many months and years coming to a vaguely and occasionally serene acceptance of something that sounded very much out of her control.
But what was a human being, what was a sentient entity, other than a collection of memories and experiences that influenced the development of a basic personality? If she were dying of a terminal disease and someone came along, someone who could transfer her consciousness into a new body, everyone would say she continued to exist. But if the reverse happened, if her body was fine, but her mind was condemned to immediate non-existence, and then some other Max, with exceedingly different experiences came and took her body over, then naturally...she died.
Right?
That made sense. It had to.
God knows, there was no one else I could talk to about this.
She glanced over to the large cardboard box pushed up against the bed. Her collected legacy, a gift to the Max that would take over management of her life. From the letter she'd written back in 2008, it sounded like Future Max would emerge into this new timeline with no real memories of the last five years to draw upon.
Can only imagine how fucking scary and disconcerting that would be.
She hoped the journals would help her catch up. She knew so little about the woman who would be replacing her, but if they were anything alike - and she knew that of course they were - she'd make it through the difficult transition one way or the other. Still, a written narrative was a poor substitution for actually having lived those years, but she'd taken fastidious notes; it would have to do. And more importantly, those hundreds of thousands of words written in her own hand would be a memorial to herself, as well. When this future version eventually comes and spends so many hours reading through years worth of entries - as she knew she would - it would be like Max was still alive, in some small way.
Or so she kept telling herself.
She took a deep breath, staring at the clock on her desk as it counted the seconds away. At first she thought to brace herself, but then wondered what the point was; she didn't know what to brace herself for. The letter made it sound like Future Max hardly knew the exact specifics any better than she did.
Would it hurt? Would she feel her brain being overwritten, neurons sizzling in pain as she was destroyed, piece by piece, day by day, memory by memory? Maybe it would be like falling asleep, seized by some great lethargy, the blackness overwhelming her. Or maybe it would be like throwing a switch: one millisecond, she'd be herself, the next, someone else would be in charge.
The last option upset her the most; as if the Universe could be so cruel and uncaring as to not even stop and take note of her annihilation; that it would be too busy to pause for but a second and acknowledge that she had lived, that she had existed. And that her existence had mattered, even if only by some small measure.
Jesus. Anything has to be better than being wiped out and replaced in an instant.
Didn't matter though. None of it did. It was going to happen - probably - and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. God knows, in those early days, she'd tried. Denial was the most obvious tactic she'd drawn upon, but after that day in Chloe's room five years ago, when everything happened the way the letter said it would, it put to rest any reasonable doubts she might have clung to.
That just left the unreasonable doubts. Those took a lot longer to come to grips with.
The second letter, warning her about Nathan Prescott and Mark Jefferson, the one she opened up at the start of this year, was a fresh reminder that this Alternate Max was writing to her from the future. It wasn't a quick thing, but she'd made a kind of peace with her fate over the years. More to the point, she came to accept what she could and couldn't change, and decided that it was best to live as full and rich a life as she could, given her limited time.
Time that was finally up.
Max glanced back at the clock again, surprised that the minute hand had swept past 8:57 a few seconds ago. She took another deep breath and tried to clear her mind of all thoughts...save for one. She closed her eyes and smiled, clinging to the comfort that thinking of Chloe brought her.
Her best friend. Lover. Girlfriend. They might as well be married, or at least engaged, even though neither of them had popped the question. Max was tempted to, in the last couple of months, even though it was illegal in Oregon. But with the great unknown that was her approaching end, she eventually realized that all that mattered was what was in their hearts.
There were no doubts there.
She breathed through her nose, in and out, trying to focus on that motion alone, as she had practiced so many times during her meditations. But she couldn't help but notice that time seemed to keep passing...and she was still here.
Cracking open one eye, she saw the clock was still reading 8:57.
...okay. What the actual fuck? That can't be right!
And then she felt it; something that was hard to describe, at first. The instinctive sense that the whole world had stopped moving, except for her. Shifting only her eyes, she glanced out the window and spotted a bird, stuck fast in mid-flight. Then she took note of the curious sensation that she was simultaneously existing and not existing; a feeling that as she sat here on the bed, in this particular space, at this particular moment in time, someone else was trying to do the same thing, but with only limited success.
She tried to rise up from the bed, but was unable to. She could still think, and see, and breathe, but otherwise she found herself now trapped in whatever temporal amber locked down the rest of the world around her.
She quickly discovered she could still speak. Without meaning to, she called out softly, "H-hello?"
"...Hello?" A voice echoed back. Her own. She could hear it, both in her ears as much as in her mind. The feeling of being both herself and someone else who was her - and not-her - was slowly becoming overwhelming; and yet she was still able to differentiate herself from the increasing presence filling her personal space.
"Are...is that you? Are you the Max from the future? What's happening?" she asked.
After a long pause, a voice replied.
"I don't know. It's never been like this before. One second, I was finishing up the letters. And feeling like total shit, afraid of what was going to happen when I jumped forward to the new timeline…and then...it took a while. Longer than it should have."
Max felt as if she were perched on a pivot point; an intersectionality of perfect balance. She wasn't going forward, but neither was her other self. She couldn't help but think back to those weird boulders that balanced on tiny points, the ones she saw on a trip she took to a national park in Colorado.
"I...I don't want to replace you. I never wanted to hurt you. I swear!"
"Well...good." Max laughed lightly, despite herself. "I didn't really want to be replaced. I mean, I've accepted my fate. Mostly. Y'know, when I thought there wasn't anything I could do about it."
She was starting to gain a deeper, intuitive understanding of what was happening. Somehow, she and the Future - well, Alternate, now - Max had become quantumly entangled. Superpositioned, as it were. Both existing and not existing at the same time. A quantum wave front that was waiting for some x-factor that would collapse the superstate, and move things forward into a final configuration where only one of them existed at all.
"I understood most of that. But how do you know about that stuff?"
Max smirked. "I did a lot of reading about quantum mechanics over the past few years. At first, I was desperate to find a Get Out Of Dying card. But then I realized I actually found it pretty interesting. I mean, not all of us got the smartest woman in the world to homeschool us." She paused, blinking. "Wowser. How the hell did I even know that?"
"I can see some of it from your end too. Like things from your life are bleeding through to my mind, just a little bit. Man, this is really…"
"...fucked up." they said in unison.
She laughed again, but then shook her head. "We can't stay like this. I mean, what happens from here? Something has to give."
"I don't want to kill you! I don't want to overwrite your mind. Believe me, I just wanted to put everything back the way it should have been from the start. And...and at the same time I had to save…"
"...everyone in New York City. I see it now. I understand. Damn, that's cray-cray." Another elongated pause passed between them. "Okay. So you don't want to kill me. And now that I know it's possible I can survive, I don't really want to die, either. No offense, but this is my life. I - uh - I've got more right to it, and…"
She winced, immediately regretting the words. They sounded so peevish and self-serving. Cold and heartless, even. No matter how true they might have been.
She gave a soft sigh and smirked, as she remarked, "It seems neither of us can live while the other survives."
"That not funny!"
Max gave a thin smile. "Oh, c'mon. It's a tiny bit funny." She bowed her head. "Sorry. I just spent the last five years making peace with this huge, impending doom. You didn't get that luxury. I can see that now. But I still don't understand what's keeping us stuck together in this moment in time."
"I…I don't..."
Waiting for what felt like a whole minute, Max gently pressed. "Hello? You don't what?" She could sense that her other self knew, but didn't want to explain. Explanations would mean the Future Max would have to fully face the truth of the matter.
But the elephant in the room could no longer be ignored.
"...I don't want to die…"
Max swallowed hard, biting down on the inside of her cheeks. She could feel it, now: the existential fear. The primitive urge to survive. All those things that she herself had to contend and wrestle with, day in and day out. It was acting like an anchor, keeping both of them weighed down and trapped. But there was more. The Alternate Max's voice was a tiny thing when she confessed, filled with pathos and self-loathing. Her other self was suddenly consumed with burning shame, and an overwhelming sense of cowardice. The conviction that she could be so much better than this: she should be a hero!
Finding her own voice again, Max whispered, "It's okay. I understand. Really, I do. I never hated you in the end. And I finally stopped blaming you. I just...I know how you probably feel right now, and…"
What could she possibly say to make it any easier, or better?
And then at last, the balanced of the equation shifted. A single, infinitesimal lurch, but that was enough. Max understood what changed: in her mind, the Alternate Max was tested; given the hero's greatest challenge, and in that one moment of human frailty, she couldn't help but judge herself a failure. That one faltering moment was all it took; that brief lack of conviction, coupled with an equal amount of shame in wanting to cling to her own existence. In her moment of weakness, the same anchor that was keeping Future Max bound to this moment was now instead dragging her down into the abyss of nothingness.
Max could see it now; she was going to live! All her remaining days stretched out before her, each and every one a precious gift. Gifts that had been - until this very second - promised to someone else. There wasn't anything that could be done to stop the process outright; already, she could feel the Alternate Max drifting away, fading like a photograph left out in the sun. To exist one moment, and then to simply be no more the next.
It stirred something deep inside her heart. An angry passion rose up, churning in her stomach and rising up into her brain. She hated the idea of this - or any - version of herself dying in this manner: alone and unmourned. She hated it with every fiber of her being! It shouldn't have to be this way! She was going to live! What was supposed to be the end was suddenly a new beginning. So couldn't she give up at least a little of that newfound time to what was essentially herself?
The world pulsed around her, in much the same fashion it did once upon a time in Chloe's bedroom. Five years back, when the Universe reached out and told her to close her eyes, make a wish, and promised to grant it. Five years back, when she turned away and begged the moment to pass her by. This time, however, she would fiercely seize this opportunity with both hands. She knew it had to end; that much was inviolate.
"But I'll be damned if it ends like this!"
Suddenly, Max shot up to her feet. Unprepared, and uncoordinated, she stumbled forward, landing on her hands and knees. She tried to stand, but found that she was having difficulty making her limbs work, as if all of her muscle memory was completely out of whack. Choosing instead to crawl over towards the wardrobe, she reached up, gripped the edge, and pulled herself up to her feet, her coordination improving by the second.
Finally turning and looking at herself in the mirror, Max - that is, the Max who went back in time, saved William, was taken captive by the government, held against her will, trained to be one of their agents, sent off to New York City, made it back home, found Chloe, and fell in love - gasped at the image staring back at her.
The body was changed; that was the most obvious difference. Clearly the Max of this timeline kept herself in shape, but not much more than your average eighteen year old would. Gone were the hard, defined lines, along with the chiseled abs and arms. Missing was the lean, thin, almost hungry look.
Gah! That explains why my body feels so weird! Huh...how come I never noticed the difference when I jumped back to 2008?
Her hair was styled dramatically: dyed black, cut short in the back, almost shaven, with long, heavy, vibrant pink bangs that draped down to just above her breasts. Dark kohl outlined her eyes, with subtle hints of blush and lip paint adding color. Her nails were lacquered in hues of lilac and black, with a fascinating 'cracked' look to the polish. Whoever this other Max was, she knew a hell of a lot more about using makeup than she herself did. Not to mention fashion, although her tastes were a bit...unusual. She was dressed in a tight black and purple t-shirt for some band called The Birthday Massacre, along with a pair of tight fitting dark indigo canvas cargo pants. The pockets of the pants were replete with designs of various characters from My Little Pony, and the legs were tucked into a pair of knee high Doc Martin boots. A black leather choker encircled her neck, from which hung a silver yin-yang charm.
Goth, but still sorta perky. Huh.
And that's when it hit her.
Oh...oh shit! I took over? Somehow? Or she gave up? No! Fuck no! I didn't want it to be this way! Not like this! All because I got scared, I was weak, and told her...I said...because I didn't want to die! That must have been enough to force her out, and let me take her place. That refusal to let go of my life. And now….now she's dead and gone because of me, and…!
Before Max could work herself up into a complete emotional breakdown, she felt a gentle voice whisper across her brain.
"Sunrise."
"Wh-what?" she breathed out.
"You have until sunrise. Then I have to take it all back. Forever."
The voice left her as quickly as it came.
And then Max understood perfectly.
She was still going to die; stop existing. Or at least stop existing in this timeline. Her end was coming, and there was nothing that could be done to prevent it. But the Other Max…
...no. The Max who belongs in this timeline…
...somehow found a way to take what would have been a sharp, singular end point and instead draw it out into a long, lingering line that would stretch on into the horizon, where it would ultimately fade away. She had no idea how she knew this, only that she was possessed of the realization that whatever 'unspent potential' that was unlocked in 2008 by the Emergence-That-Never-Happened had finally been cashed in, making all of this possible. The Universe had patiently waited over the years, insisting that the Max of this timeline make a wish. A wish for something that she felt deeply, passionately enough about. Like letting her stay, just a little bit longer.
And in that belated moment, the rules of the game were changed. Just this once.
Leaning hard against the dresser for support, it was all Max could do to keep from sinking to her knees, as the enormous weight of the situation pressed down against her. Bowing her head, she swallowed, feeling small and powerless; quite literally, in that she could sense that her abilities were missing. She could feel herself trying to push down on an accelerator in her brain, but there was no more car attached to it.
She looked back up into the mirror, into eyes that were almost not but entirely her own, inevitably reaching the obvious conclusion.
Well...this is it, Max. This is the end. You've got almost an entire day. So how're you gonna spend it? Curled up in this room, crying and desperately trying to find a way to cheat fate, or...or are you gonna see as much as you can? Find out if it was worth the sacrifice?
"Chloe...I...I could call…"
She glanced over at a framed picture sitting on the dresser. She reached over to grab it and brought it up for a closer look. It was her - well, New Max - looking just a little bit younger. Her hair was styled almost the same, but she was wearing an understated but glamorous looking black leather bandage dress paired with dark fishnet hose. She was smiling brightly, arm in arm with Chloe, ever dapper in a tuxedo cut for her feminine form. She had little trouble recognizing the blue - er - pinkette; while her hair was still cut close to the same style as in the old timeline, it was dyed pink with black fringe: the inverse of Max's.
Wow...what is this? Senior prom? Did Chloe stay in school? She would've graduated before me. I guess she took me as her date. We look so fucking happy!
She hugged the picture to her chest, blinking away the tears welling up in her eyes before glancing down at her fingers and noticing the silver claddagh ring on her left hand: heart pointed down in the 'taken' position. She held it up in the dappled sunlight, smiling to herself as she watched it sparkle and glint.
Oh wowser. We've probably been together for years in this timeline. God, where do I even go, right now? How do I find out everything that's happened?
Carefully placing the picture back down, she turned and started to walk towards her desk with the intention of checking the laptop computer; she nearly tripped on the oversized document box that rested against the bed. She might have continued to pass it on by, until she noticed what was written on the top, in black blocky letters.
TO FUTURE MAX
She kneeled down, removed the top and placed it on the bed. Inside were piles of composition books. There was a folded piece of paper on top of what must have been many years worth of daily remembrances.
She opened it up and started to read:
Dear Max (of the Future!)
If you're reading this, then I guess you were right. I'm gone, and you've been forcibly moved into ownership of my life.
The first thing I want to say is that I don't hate you, because that would be like hating myself, right? I think that was the hardest thing for me to really grasp in the end. That you weren't this shadowy antagonist who was entirely unlike me, and who was chasing me down over the years like a demon. We are, or we were, exactly the same. At least until that point in 2008, when you zigged where I zagged - thanks to your warning - and did whatever you did in Chloe's room that gave you your powers. The ones that let you save William, and made the government kidnap you, and brought us back to this point right now. I've spent so much time, trying to imagine what all of that must have been like, and what it would do to me if I were in your place. All so that I could better understand you. And while I don't really 'get' your experience, I definitely 'believe'. I mean, hell, after what I felt that day, how could I not?
I went through all those stereotypical stages. You know the ones? Denial, which came and went for the first few weeks. Anger...I don't know. You know me. We're not exactly the most angry person in the world, except when we are. But it bled through in ways, over the years. I think I jumped to bargaining pretty quick, and stayed there a long time, reading what I could about quantum mechanics and time travel, desperate to find a way to 'escape' what was coming.
And then depression? Yeah...I hid that as best as I could, because who else would understand what I was going through? Fortunately, being a teenager is a really amazing cover for deep brooding. But there was a summer that I made myself work as a volunteer at a hospice. Little tasks here and there: cleaning up, reading to the patients, helping to feed them. I told myself that I was doing it in order to see what people who were facing the end did, how they made peace with it. But the truth of it was that I was only just wallowing in it.. As if being surrounded by mostly old people waiting for the end let me say 'Yeah? Fuck you. I'm gonna die when I'm eighteen, and I don't even have any hope left. You at least got to live a long time!" I got addicted to all that quietly smoldering rage and self-pity
Funny thing, the hospice is also what also lead me to acceptance. There isn't some magical story about a dying child that touched my heart, or a grandparent who accepted their terminal cancer with grace and dignity. No: it was watching the failures. The people who never found solace before they died. Who cried and swore and begged and pleaded in the dead of night for death to pass them by so they could go on living. I saw so much of myself in those people. And one in particular. That's when I finally realized something important: I didn't want to end my life that way. Locked up in my room, pushing away the world, curled up and crying day after day, until the end came at last.
I finally accepted that there was probably nothing I could do. It was more likely than not that I was going to die. So fuck it, I might as well make what few years I had left count. Fill them with as many amazing experiences as possible. Take chances. Live twice as bright, for half as long. Push past my natural nervousness, and be more like the Max I wanted to be. If I was doomed to be a mayfly, I was going to be the best damn mayfly possible.
It was good. Great, really. Fantastic. I took some semesters abroad. I tried crazy new foods, I pushed myself to be the best photography student I could. I made friendships with as many people as would let me, and did my best to not fall into the mean, petty, stupid bullshit that most teenagers wallow in.
(Okay, I was a little petty, sometimes. But better than most.)
And I opened my heart and my soul to my best friend; our last two years together have been absolutely amazing.
In this box is a daily record of the past five years. At first I did it because I thought writing everything down would help me organize my thoughts and figure out what was going on in my head, and then how to escape what was coming. But there was a point where I remembered that you said something to the effect that if and when you took over, you wouldn't have any of my memories of the last five years.
So here they are. Everything that was my life. All my hopes and dreams, my fears and insecurities, my triumphs and tragedies. All that you'll need in order to fake it until you make it. I even created a color-coded index system, along with a special commentary volume, so you can bring yourself up to speed as quickly as possible...you're goddamn welcome for that! (LOL)
It's your life now, Future Max. Just do me a favor, and don't fuck it up, please? If you really have 'killed' me and taken my place, don't let yourself get pulled under by the weight of it. I believed you in the end, when you said you didn't want this to happen. That you were warning me in the hopes that somehow it might prevent this from happening. So don't mourn more than you have to, don't push people away, don't freak - okay, maybe freak a little - but don't tear yourself apart with guilt. I know that's asking a lot ,because I also know if our positions were reversed, I'd be totes insane with self-loathing and blame right now. Obviously, there'll be an adjustment. A big one. I can't even imagine what that whole process is going to be like for you. But all these journals are the best - and only - help I can give you.
So go. Live. Be awesome, and truly excellent. I've given you a mind-blowingly cool head start, so make the most of it.
Yours forever,
The Artist Formerly Known As Max Caulfield
P.S. Yeah, so like I said earlier, Chloe and I are in love. Deeply and insanely. I don't know what it was like for you, if you ever felt the same for her that I do now. If you only do one thing for me, you'll learn to love her too! She is simply incredible. She gave me so much strength, and a model to aspire to over the years. She doesn't deserve a single minute of heartbreak. But something tells me that if you are me, that if you gained your powers because you wanted to make Chloe stop hurting after William died, then this'll be easy for you.
Have a great life together.
The tears flowed freely, dripping off Max's cheeks and staining the letter clutched in her trembling hands. She was bowed over, as sobs wracked her body.
Oh my God….she prepared. She actually prepared. For everything. She was so fucking strong and brave in the end. Why couldn't I be?! Why did I…
She made herself stop. Then laughed through her sorrow. What was the point in trying to compare herself to...herself? What good was there in bemoaning what she felt was her lack of courage? Clearly she had it; all that potential was inside her, all along. It was just a matter of circumstance and development.
Putting the letter on the bed, she whispered to herself, "Well. I'm here. I've got maybe twenty one hours. There's no way I can avoid the end." She looked down at all of the journals, and picked up the first one, marked 'October 2008 - May 2009'.
"So let's find out what what awesome shit I'm dying for."
A/N: Hey folks. :-) I bet this is a lot quicker than you were expecting.
I decided to work like a fiend this weekend, and just take the finale solo. No beta reading, no outside editing, just me reading and rereading and trying my best to polish and perfect single-handedly, so any goofs are entirely on me. But it was kind of driving me nuts, having had the ending more or less done for weeks now, really, and I wanted to finish up. While the autist in me would have found a certain satisfaction publishing the last chapter on the one year anniversary of this series, as was my original plan, and while the smartest move would be to wait and have someone who was not me look through with critical, judicious eyes, I just didn't want to keep people waiting that long. I felt like the iron was nice and hot, and people would appreciate getting all of the remaining chapters this week.
So welcome to "The Last Day" a nearly 30,000 word plot arc that wraps up the series. I hope folks like it; I realize it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it resolved. It gave me a chance to try something I've been aching to do for the past three years...
Of the three, I find this to be the weakest chapter of the arc; it's the shortest (the next chapter will be the longest in the series) and...I kind of wish I could have delayed out the question on who would live and who would die much closer to the end. As I mentioned before, actually locking down and proceeding with an ending for Black Swan was probably the greatest and most difficult challenge I've ever faced, in terms of writing. It has changed a LOT from my original idea. Even once I knew that Max was going to take it all back, and try to influence the future to develop differently, the next problem was who would live and who would die. Originally, Max wasn't going to say a damn thing, and just pray and hope she didn't overwrite the new Max's mind. New Max would be sleeping late in October 2013, and that would allow her and Swan Max to talk...Swan Max would approach her in a dream, and tell her the story of her life, before dying, and New Max would wake up, thinking it was all only a dream. There was a certain poignancy in that, but not enough emotional punch.
Then I thought that Swan Max would kill off New Max, and the rest of the ending would be how to deal with that...but it made the ending become VERY DARK, and potentially take forever to wrap up. Max was going to spend years in therapy and almost lose Chloe in the process, but the story would have ended 16 years later with their daughter teleporting away as she Emerged on a plane that was crashing down. Neat but...still missing something.
I liked this the best, the notion that New Max thought she was going to die, and acted upon that. The belief is just as important as the actual event. I hope you enjoy finding out exactly what happened to New Max, and how it shaped her as a person in the next chapter, which should be out on Wednesday. And then the grand finale on Friday.
Have a good day!