The Man Who Ended the World by Jason Gurley Page B

everything you could ever want!
    It does, Stacy says. And that's why I think you should come live here.
    •   •   •
    I can't live here, Henry says. I have a home. 
    Stacy says, Come with me. 
    Her avatar traces a jaunty path along the wall, and Henry reluctantly follows her to a living area. The furniture here looks expensive, like everything else, and suddenly it's less impressive, and more worrisome. 
    Have a seat, Henry, Stacy says. 
    Are you kidnapping me? he asks. 
    Stacy's avatar spins in a circle. Of course not! she says. 
    Henry looks unsure.
    I want to tell you a story, Stacy says. And at the end, maybe you will understand. 
    Henry nods. 
    Once upon a time, she begins, there was a boy about your age who was very lonely. He was teased at school. His family was not supportive of his dreams or encouraging about his ambitions. Everybody he knew would point out his flaws to him. This boy, friendless and alone, discovered the wonders of the human imagination. He read hundreds of books, sneaked away to watch movies, learned what he could about why people behaved in hurtful ways. 
    What he learned, Stacy continues, is that human beings are a tormentous lot. That's his opinion, she clarifies, not my own. In any case, he was displeased with the likelihood that people wouldn't really become nicer or better. They would pretend to be, by making ostentatious donations of money to this charity or that charity, but in their quiet moments, their alone time, people were as hurtful as ever.
    Henry says, Who was the boy? 
    Can you guess who the boy was? Stacy asks.
    Is it Mr. Glass? 
    It's Mr. Glass, Stacy says. He became very interested in human behavior. What made people choose how they spent money? What made them feel better when they were upset? What passions motivated them? This led him to a deeper interest in the grand accomplishments of humans as a singular entity. Mankind had achieved great things in its short time on Earth, but it had also demonstrated its selfishness, its impatience, its intolerance. 
    This is kind of scary, Henry says. 
    It it scary, Stacy agrees. Mr. Glass also has a lifelong fondness for stories about the apocalypse. Do you know what that is? 
    It's the end of the world, Henry says. 
    Can you guess why someone might be interested in that sort of thing? 
    Henry shakes his head. 
    If you thought about it for a few moments, I bet you could, Stacy says. Think of it this way. If you were bullied at school every day, and then you went home and your family didn't provide a refuge from that bullying, but participated in it, wouldn't you feel like you might be better off if --
    If nobody else lived on the planet with me, Henry finishes. Sometimes I guess I feel that way. But I love my family. I wouldn't want bad things to happen to them.
    Of course you wouldn't. But Mr. Glass doesn't know your family. He doesn't have one of his own, and he doesn't have any real friends. Can you guess now why Mr. Glass spent nearly twenty-four billion dollars to build a secret underground city just for him? 
    Henry shakes his head. I don't know.
    I think you can guess, Stacy says gently.
    Henry thinks about it. Is it to get away from people? 
    That's part of the reason, Stacy says. If that were the only reason, everything would be okay. But there's another part, too. Do you remember the holomap we were just looking at? 
    It was like two minutes ago, Henry scoffs. 
    Yes, it was. Did you happen to notice the thickness of the walls? 
    Henry shakes his head again. 
    Look again, Stacy says. She lights up the holographic table, then wordlessly enhances the detail so that Henry can see it clearly from where he is sitting. 
    The walls don't look unusually thick to Henry until he compares them to an interior wall. Then he notices that the exterior walls are nearly ten times thicker. In fact, they're obscenely thick. It's incredible.
    They're huge, he says. How come? 
    What does a person need thick walls for?