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The wash cycle winds up towards the end. The spinning gets louder, rocking the machine from side to side. Sitting on top of it, Gordon shakes and jumps, kicking his legs to the rhythmic thump thump of a belt buckle against the glass door as it spins. Doing laundry was never a part of his duties here at Red Valley, but he'd always end up doing it anyway, so he volunteered. The laundry room is familiar, even if it's been 40 years and the washing machine has more functions than his phone used to have, and the detergent smells like pine instead of sea breeze.
The spin cycle finishes and the machine beeps. Gordon jumps off and grabs the basket. In all these years nobody invested in a dryer, so he lugs the wet laundry outside to hang it to dry.
Scottish summers aren't supposed to be this warm and sunny. 40 years of progressing climate change has brought the crisp mountain air to the edge of ignition. Wildfire seems inevitable.
The upside is that the laundry will be dry before the sun sets.
The weather reminds him of Rio, back when he was little, living with his mother and spending his days at the beach. He’d run through the winding streets as she yelled at him to wait up. Then, as soon as his feet hit the sand he’d drop everything, including all of his mother’s warnings, and plunge into the water. He’d splash and swim and collect seashells and catch crabs in the net and get his fingers pinched for his efforts, then run to his mother for snacks and sun-warmth. On days like those, the sun was saffron yellow, and he was dry before the sting from the crab’s pincers went away.
He can almost smell the breeze on the Scottish mountain air.
The Red Valley base had already been semi-dilapidated back in 2020, but now it's pretty much a ruin, at least from the outside. The farmhouse had been kept in a usable condition by Aubrey and Hester, but the yard is overrun by tall grass and ivy creeps up any walls it comes across. It looks like nature wants it back, after all the violations of the natural order that took place here. For now, it's still their base, but Gordon would love to see this place abandoned for good, hopefully burned to the ground.
Wooden poles had been installed in the tall grass with string stretched between them in a much too complicated of a configuration. Gordon sets the laundry basket on the ground, and the grass swallows it up almost entirely; he just hopes he won't have to fight whatever creepy crawlies live in it for clean underwear.
He hangs the clothes on the strings and pins them with wooden pegs, and then he moves onto the linen sheets. Any kind of medical facility is bound to produce staggering amounts of laundry, and he's used to shaking out, stretching, and securing yards of fabric, but with the way the clotheslines are arranged around him he feels surrounded by floating ghosts, or walls closing in around him as the wind moves them. He's lost in a labyrinth of white linen, trying to find his way back without touching any of the clean sheets.
Here, in Red Valley, the clothes are saffron yellow, and the infirmary sheets might as well still have stains from the pre-Warren cohorts, but it’s so warm out it almost feels like childhood again. The sun shines through the fabric and blinds him to everything except the ghosts of test subjects past floating in the wind around him.
"Gordon!" calls out a voice from somewhere outside the maze.
Warren. Right. He was supposed to hurry up and join Warren in the mess for a movie. They've been trying to catch up on everything released in the past 40 years and – predictably – so far, they'd barely crossed anything off the list Hester made for them.
"Gordon?" Warren calls again, more unsure this time. He'd been uncharacteristically anxious since they woke up.
"Here!" he responds and thinks, screw it, and charges straight through the fabric which parts like a curtain, finally letting him out. The walls weren't as stubborn as he'd thought – or maybe he just wasn't the monster this labyrinth wanted.
He almost stumbles in the grass, long blades tangling between his shins, and comes face to face with a mildly concerned Warren.
“What were you doing in there?” he asks.
“What does it look like, Warren? What could I possibly be doing with a laundry basket outside? What could it be, Warren?”
“Okay, fine, fine. But why didn’t you respond? Didn’t you hear me?”
Gordon sighs. Warren has been a touch overbearing since Gordon woke up, not that anyone can blame him. Still, there’s very little danger in doing laundry, even at Red Valley, so he has no excuse.
“I heard you. I’m here, aren’t I?”
Warren’s face does something that Gordon would describe as pouting and Warren would describe as frowning. He was doing better than Gordon remembers from before, but he can still be irritable at times. Somehow, Gordon keeps antagonizing him when it’s the last thing he wants to do.
He takes a step towards Warren to get rid of some of the distance between them and pushes further:
“Why were you looking for me? Did something happen?”
“No,” Warren twists his hands together. He won’t admit that he just got anxious and had to make sure that Gordon was really out there, even though he knows Gordon knows that. In fact, Gordon can relate better than anybody – after all, he was the one always either saying goodbye to Warren or missing him. He gets it, so he doesn’t mention it. “Um, uh, well- Aubrey, well, she said something about dinner?”
Right. The dinner they’re all supposed to have together – him, Warren, Aubrey, and Hester. Officially, it’s to get to know each other better, since Gordon’s never actually met them, and unofficially to make sure that Warren and Gordon’s collective ducks are all in a row. And they are not being subtle about it. Gordon sighs again.
“Yeah. Alright. Let’s go.” He might as well get it over with. Dinner with his best friend who doubts his memories, his doctor and savior who will likely make notes during the meal, and her wife-slash-emotional support who will likely be assessing their psychological state and giving them journaling homework. Lovely.
*
The farmhouse looks mostly the same. Everything looks mostly the same, to be fair. Except that it doesn’t. It looks the same except there are people around and everything is saffron yellow, including his and Warren’s toothbreesh. A weirdly cheerful color for a place like Red Valley.
So, everything is mostly the same, which makes it all the more jarring whenever something isn’t the same. Like, for example, sitting at a table with Aubrey Wood and Hester Hiyashi, four plates of indistinct mush between then – not saffron yellow, thank god.
It’s awkward. Of course it’s awkward; every conversation Gordon’s ever had in his life has been awkward, but it’s even more so with two people who’ve only ever heard your voice and apparently liked it so much they decided to co-opt it for their pet AI without your knowledge or consent. Not that they could have obtained his consent until now, but he doubts they’d change it anyway.
“How are your stitches, Gordon?” Aubrey asks, as though she’s not the one checking them and changing the bandages every day, but Gordon recognizes an attempt at small talk when he sees it, so he answers:
“Um, yeah, it’s fine. Like, it hurts a bit, but that’s to be expected. And it doesn’t hurt more than it did yesterday so that’s good, right? I mean, it’s starting to itch a bit, but it’s- um- yeah, it’s fine.” Nailed it.
Aubrey looks at him for a long while. “I almost forgot that you just- never use 5 words if you can use 20. I’ve gotten too used to Gord, I suppose.”
Gordon’s not sure how exactly he’s supposed to feel good about that. There is a robot using his voice and doing it better than him. Figures. Gord talks smoothly, without stumbling over his words, without his voice cracking and hitching. He’s never been particularly fond of his voice, but this is like the final nail in the coffin. He’s never going to speak again.
Starting immediately, because he’s not sure what to answer to Aubrey’s comment. Is he even supposed to? Is he-
“Yeah, it’s weird. Like- it’s so eerie,” Warren interrupts his spiral before it gains momentum. “He sounds like a creepy psycho robot version of you.” Thank god for Warren.
“Well, everyone here is quite attached to him,” says Hester, ever the mediator. “Aubrey did change the voice for you, Warren, but I’m pretty sure if you tried to change it back people would riot.”
“You don’t have to change it!” Gordon jumps in. “Just- it’s a bit weird.”
Warren nods along, “Besides, Gord made me realize that if you sounded like that when we first met, I’d have never agreed to meet you in that parking lot. Would’ve assumed you were planning to kill me.”
“So, I sound more trustworthy like this?” Gordon asks incredulously, voice cracking on the last word as if to prove a point. The usual feedback was – talk slower, smoother, make it seem as though you have your shit together.
“Yes.” Warren states. Thank god for Warren.
As they move on to dessert – not-coffee and baked goo – Gordon starts feeling a bit more comfortable; he’s almost made it through the whole meal, and it was nowhere near as bad as dinner at his parents’, so overall it’s a success in his eyes. Newly acquired Gord-related insecurities notwithstanding.
On the other hand, Warren has gone quiet and pensive, which is never good.
Aubrey seems to notice it too because she turns to Warren and asks, “Everything okay? Warren?”
He startles a little, but he quickly shakes it off. “Yeah, no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” they all wait him out until he continues, “It’s just – weird. Everything is so weird.”
“That’s to be expected, Warren,” Hester has her Therapist Voice on, but Warren starts shaking his head before she can get going.
“No, I know, I know. But it’s one thing to know that 44 years passed me by, and it’s another thing for it to fully sink in.” They all stay quiet. There’s really no platitude for this occasion. “I think it’s only just starting to sink in. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Aubrey mutters softly.
The silence unfolds between them, and they all try to drown their missed years in it. None of them has lived through it all. Each one got time-out, each one is the wrong age. That, at least, is something they have in common.
“I feel so old even though I’m one of the youngest people here,” Warren says after a while. “Even though I’m one of the oldest, too.”
Gordon hasn’t been out of the cryopod long enough to contemplate the state of his personhood vis a vis his age and the age of the universe, but he trusts Warren to set the course for his incoming conundrum. So, he chuckles and plays along, “Yeah, I’m not sure if I’m an elder, or if I should be picking out the theme of my middle-age crisis.”
Aubrey looks both amused and understanding as she says, “What, getting frozen for 44 years wasn’t enough for a middle-age crisis?”
“Well, no,” Gordon responds, “I wasn’t really here for it, was I?”
Aubrey just shakes her head, and they all go quiet again. There seems to be plenty of silence to go around these parts, especially among the hyper-sleepers. As if something is still frozen for them, just barely thawing and starting to drip and leak at the seams. Eventually, they can hope to be warm enough to fill the empty minutes with their restarted heartbeats at least, but for now they need this; the serenity of an experience shared with someone without having to trade an explanation for shreds of understanding.
“I’m 82 years old,” Warren says.
The silence dips around his declaration, then bounces back into shape. It holds; it stays.
*
They sit on the couch side by side. They've been sitting on that couch for 5 hours now. It's dark outside and the only source of light is the TV, still playing one of the newer Star Wars shows (well, newer by Warren and Gordon's standard).
"Fuck!" Gordon jumps off the couch, jostling Warren who slumps sideways without the counterweight.
"What? what did you do?"
"I forgot the laundry outside."
Warren laughs at him. Then he keeps laughing until he starts wheezing and convulsing on the couch while Gordon keeps standing in the middle of the room, not sure if he should run outside to try to salvage the unsalvageable or save time and sit back down.
The longer he keeps standing, looking between the couch and the door, the harder Warren laughs.
"You're not helping," he says at last, sitting down on the floor – a completely unnecessary midpoint between something he can't do and something he wants to do.
"I wasn't trying to," Warren responds, wiping away his tears. "There's nothing you can do. Too late. The laundry is all wet again because of dew or wild boar piss or something."
"Or something."
"Yeah," Warren continues wisely. "So just leave it for the night and pick it up tomorrow when it's dry again. Just don’t forget this time."
"Leave it? What if something happens to it?"
"Like what?"
"Like- well, maybe that wild boar. Maybe it summons ghosts. I don’t know?"
"Yeah, that's exactly why you should leave it. Lest you end up covered in wild boar piss too."
"Oh, fuck off," Gordon mutters, slumping down until he's lying down on the floor.
Warren looks at him, illuminated by the flashing TV screen. Neither of them cares about the new Star Wars, but the lightsaber fights look pretty reflected in Gordon's glasses.
*
There's knocking on his door. Which is – fine. Gordon can't sleep anyway, and he really doesn't mind Warren's company. (It can only be Warren at this time of night.) If anything, after all they went through, he finds it reassuring. He gets up to open the door and, just as expected, he finds Warren with a pillow under his arm and a blanket around his shoulders.
Warren doesn't say anything, but that’s fine, too – he doesn't need to. They spend so much time together these days they rarely need to talk. And besides, there are only so many reasons Warren would show up in Gordon's bedroom at 2 in the morning. He needs the comfort of hearing Gordon breathe. He needs to not be alone.
And Gordon doesn't mind – at all.
He lets Warren into his room, closing the door behind him. The window is wide open – the summer night is warm, and the old cottage is stuffy. White drapes float on the breeze, ghostly and bright against the night sky as they hang above the bed pressed to the wall by the window. Gordon can hear the crickets, the long grasses dancing in the dark.
Warren makes himself at home on the edge of the bed. Neither of them tries to pretend that they'd rather not sleep together.
Gordon scrambles over Warren to his place – the side of the bed near the window. Neither of them speak; they just breathe the dewy air and take in the serenity. Red Valley never used to be this peaceful 40 years ago. They used to worry every dream would be disturbed and frozen, only to be thawed out a week later, rotten.
Gordon lays on his back, hands together across his stomach as his ribs expand and shrink and dance in tune with Warren's. He closes his eyes and starts to slip off the edge of consciousness when he feels Warren turn towards him and throw his arm across Gordon. He moves closer, pressing his head against Gordon's chest where he can hear his heart.
Warren has been doing that a lot lately, since Gordon kontinued. Being the only person frozen over and over in his time, Warren never experienced waiting for someone else to wake up. Never had to sit, back against the pod, tortoise in his lap, and listen to electronic beeping instead of a heartbeat. He never had to worry about the side effects, the medical procedures, the sight of a body failing to wake up. Never, until Gordon, until 2064.
Gordon thought it made sense. He was used to waiting for Warren, but Warren was used to Gordon always being there when he woke up. No wonder it hit Warren so much harder. He had a difficult time making sense of a world without Gordon ready to talk his ear off the second he was coherent enough to listen. He felt the lack very deeply, and the circumstances of Gordon's cryonic preservation didn't help to calm him down.
It was natural that he'd cling to his best friend now that he had him back. And Gordon welcomed the company, the touch, the together-ness, even though he wasn't used to it. He let Warren press as close as he liked, fold against him in the most impractical yet comforting way, and he didn't mention it when Warren started to snore in his ear.
*
The air had smelled of petrichor all day, and now finally it gave up holding the moisture in, entranced by the darkness where nobody could see it breaking down. Drawn by the noise and some intrinsic pull towards nature – especially the dangerous kind – Gordon climbs over Warren’s sleeping body and leaves the cottage to go outside.
The sky opens like arms ready to embrace the world. It's sudden and loud – the thunder rolling over the clouds, the rain against roofs and widows, the ozone in the air. Gordon feels the rain on his face, and he can't remember the last time he cried – for all he knows hypersleep could have frozen his tear ducts permanently. But it feels good to be a part of something as cathartic as a summer storm.
He hears warren shouting over the thunder, telling him to come inside, and he wants to yell back, say he'll be just a minute – but he knows his voice won't be heard over this scream of nature, and it wouldn't matter anyway.
Gordon stands within the downpour, tempting the lightning to strike him when he feels the air shift. Like this, part of the storm, he could feel a single droplet hitting the grass or a fly passing through the cloud. What he feels though is Warren approaching – bare feet on wet ground, clothes shifting against skin, breath growing colder.
Warren stops within reach, as always, just in case. He breathes with the storm, lungs filled with dark clouds, exhaling the wind that howls through the valley. Faces wet, they turn to each other.
“Come inside, you’ll catch a cold,” Warren says.
“Just a minute.”
“Gordon, you’re soaked.”
“A minute.”
“Gordon.”
“Can’t you feel it? How it’s the same storm that used to scare us at night, 44 years ago?”
Warren sighs. “Thats not how storms work.”
“Well, nature is one big cycle, isn’t it? It’s back. We’re back,” Gordon pauses. It’s true, or at least it feels true. “The world has turned in a perfect circle. Everything since I woke up has been a miracle, don’t you get it?”
Warren just looks at him. He knows what Gordon means, he has to, Gordon’s sure of it.
“Not only am I alive but you’re also here and alive and awake,” Gordon continues. “And Aubrey and Hester. Even Bryony.”
Warren keeps looking at him, unconvinced.
“I want to experience everything, the way I never did in my previous life. So, just a minute.”
“Fine.” Warren says at last.
He comes closer and wraps his arm around Gordon’s torso, keeping him upright, just in case.
*
The morning begins to sing. Sun rose a while ago, already loud with the heat, and Red Valley is no longer quiet like it used to be in Gordon's caretaker days. There are people everywhere, and each of them has a task to carry out, and each of them takes up space and time and he’s already lost so much of it he’s not sure if he has any to spare.
Warren is snoring next to him, vigilant as always. Between the two of them Gordon was supposed to be the one keeping watch while the other slept, except that has changed recently. Well, most of it changed – Warren's deep slumber and discordant snoring are the same. Not even 44 years in hypersleep could fix that.
He sits up in bed, Warren's arm slipping off his waist to rest in his lap with the rest of the blankets. Gordon looks out the window, too bright and noisy but so real. He wants to go outside, he wants to feel the grass underneath his bare feet, he wants to sing, he wants to stay inside and shut the window, lock the door, and bury himself under Warren's weight and the unchanging noise.
*
The wind wasn't particularly strong – more of a breeze, really, but the wooden pegs didn't hold. The white sheets, painstakingly washed, bleached, and hung out to dry were now floating through the air. They escaped, broke away from the clothesline and drift in the sky with the clouds, and every time a sunbeam shines just right, the light glides across them. In those moments, the fabric looks brighter than white, like light itself – if light could be caught and folded, to be put away in the linen cupboard for colder ways. And it would make more sense for the sheets to fly away, but instead they kept circling the sun, high up, getting closer and further, and always moving but never away.
Looking up at it, Gordon can't help but think that they’re held in place by the comfort of it all, at least until the air cools or the sun goes out in a blaze of terror.
But for now, it’s like this: the air is warm, too warm for a jacket. The sun hangs in the sky, scorching everything that dares to stay still for too long. Having grown up in Rio, Gordon knows you’re not supposed to stay still on a day like this, but you’re also not supposed to run away.
For now, there’s the sound of heat crushing you into the air, and there's the comfort of knowing that the night will come and go, giving way to another too-warm morning of sweaty calves trying to untangle and morning breath exhaled into each others faces. You don't know what will come for you – if it will come, though it probably will – and you should run away preemptively, you really should. But you are held in place by the comfort of things familiar and old, and body heat under summer heat and the storms that come and go, pushing you together in need of reassurance. You are held in place by the comfort of having survived the end of the world and having made it out well enough to do laundry to the tune of cicadas in the undertow of tall grass. You are held in place by the comfort of being together, the only place where that's ever been true. You should run away, but there’s no destination which could offer you sounds and smells and feelings that have remained unchanged for 44 years. You didn’t die here, and though you might still, for now you are safe in this stillness. The air itself is precious, and you are here together, as if everlasting. You will find the next grave to rest in, but theres still time. For now, you settle and breathe in a little deeper each time.