Eden

Twenty-Seven

These are people from all through time, I realize. Perhaps all the people who have ever lived. I'm here, and Lexi is too, and we're both obviously from the modern world. But a lot of these people aren't, I don't think. A lot are from very, very long ago. Before the styles of clothes and makeup that I'm accustomed to got started, anyway. Which is why I don't recognise much.

I think. I'm not sure what to think, but I try, as I look around.

I think, and realize that this distant pastness might also explain why, when I first woke up, that first man, in the first room, asked when I was from as well as where.

When, because I could have been from any time, I suppose. From anywhen. Or at least, if not anywhen and we're all arriving in chronological order of when we died, then he's been doing his welcoming job for so long that he still remembers when people were arriving from times long before mine. He remembers, and perhaps he couldn't quite see the differences between us, or remember where things were up to, so he checked by asking me.

He checked. Because the modern world has been around for such a short amount of time that it's completely forgettable to someone here.

That's an unsettling thought. It's a slightly worrying thought.

I'm here with people from the long-distant past. And the world I'm used to is only a very brief, very recent part of history.

A part most of them won't even remember.

I think about that. I wonder if it's good or bad.

It might be interesting to meet people from the past, I think, but it might also be very dangerous, too. There's no sign of violence here, not right here in this market. There's no violence, or any sense of a threat, nothing like that, but I think about the past, and how unpleasant it seems in films. I think about cruelty and violence and carelessly inflicted suffering, and suddenly knowing that everyone around me is from that past, a horrible cruel past, suddenly makes me feel a lot less safe.