Sam decided to enter a nearby building to get out of the rain.
As soon as he stepped inside he found himself in awe. Contrary to its rotting exterior, the inside of the building was expansive and magnificent. The walls and floors were clad in faux marble. Pterosaur skeletons hung from the high ceiling. The support that ran through the center of the elegantly curving spiral staircase read: “American Memorial Museum.”
In the darkness of the entrance hall, Sam could make out rows of exhibition cases. As he stepped closer, he found most of the glass to be cracked and broken and the cases empty. Sam stopped. He thought he could hear voices coming from upstairs. He held his breath and strained his ears, but the noise had already gone.
Sam crept up the spiral staircase. The first thing he saw at the top was something that looked like a long car. Farther away lay an overturned gramophone like the one Heartman had at his lab. Cameras, projectors, and what looked like circular canisters of film—relics of the old world—were piled up haphazardly.
Next to those were huge stacks of books. The exhibition cases that lined the walls were full of jumbled collections of bones, both big and small, and fur of animals that Sam couldn’t identify. Farther along stood some bulky, deep-set monitors, along with a board that was captioned “Television Sets.” And beside those was a strange-looking contraption that was made of a dial inscribed with the numbers 0 to 9 and connected by a cord to some sort of funnel-shaped device. Sam read the description card to find that it was an early telephone. He carried on down the hall.
Sam walked past an exhibit that depicted Native American life, before stumbling on a board that illustrated the concept of the Apollo program. Beside it was a case that was captioned “Moon Rock,” but this also stood empty.
There was another exhibition about Columbus’s discovery of America and the achievements of Amerigo Vespucci, from whom America took its name. The next exhibition area was a wall plastered with all sorts of images, including prints of red-and-white soup cans, a photograph of a cliff with the enormous faces of four presidents carved into the rock, a picture of a smiling family flashing the peace sign between two people zipped into a duck costume and a mouse costume, and print media that reported on a presidential assassination.
It was all that remained of the American dream. The American history that Bridget taught Sam about when he was young depicted an America that had already been torn to pieces and scattered to the wind. Would stitching America back together with a thread made from the remnants of the American dream really bring back the United States of America that Bridget dreamed of?
Sam didn’t think so. If Edge Knot City was a miniature version of America after the Death Stranding, this museum was nothing but a metaphor for the America that had existed before.
Sam heard voices again. It sounded like they were whispering. They seemed to be coming from the next room. Sam exited the room he was stood in, walked down the hallway, and stepped into the room next door.
He was immediately confronted by a row of soldiers with their guns at the ready. Sam instinctively grabbed for his ID strand. But they were just life-sized replicas. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and scanned the room. It was full of life-sized mannequins. It was like a forest of people. When Sam inspected the models of the soldiers more closely, he found they all had different equipment and represented different soldiers throughout the ages. Among them was a soldier that looked just like Cliff.
And there weren’t just soldiers. There were men in suits and cowboys wearing huge hats. There were even some models that looked just like the characters found in movies and comic books. On the chest of one mannequin that wore a red and blue body suit was a symbol of a spider, whereas the mannequin dressed in the black bodysuit had pointy ears. The face of the mannequin that had a star on its chest and a shield in hand was half-covered by a mask. Had the past heroes of the United States of America once worn masks?
Sam heard a voice from within the forest of people and made his way deeper, under the watch of America’s heroes and cowboys.
—Sam? Are you there?
As Sam heard the voice, the mannequins all moved to the side, creating a path.
There was nothing between them now. Before Sam stood a woman clad in bright red.
—Can you hear me? Sam?
Amelie? Why? Sam thought he asked, but he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice. It felt like being trapped underwater. He couldn’t hear a thing. Then his body became heavy.
—I can see you, Sam. You came.
Amelie said that she saw him, but it didn’t look like her eyes were perceiving him. Her body and her eyes may have been turned his way, but she seemed vacant, like a mannequin without a soul.
—I’m on the Beach, Sam. Our Beach. The one where I was born. Higgs will never find me here. He can’t. So, don’t worry.
Contrary to what she was saying, Amelie seemed worried. Sam had no idea how she was accessing here from the Beach. Perhaps she was manipulating Sam’s consciousness and speaking to him within a dream. But if what Amelie was saying was the truth, there was no need to be afraid of Higgs. Maybe this dream was just showing Sam what he desperately wanted to be true.
Wake up, he urged himself. Dreaming about this won’t fix anything.
—Sam, I’ve kept things from you.
If this is a dream then wake up! Sam begged. The mannequins had formed a circle around Sam and Amelie. All of them were wearing the same mask—Higgs’s golden mask.
—I’ve worn a mask for the longest time. Everything Higgs said about me is true.
All the masks on the mannequins tore away and fell to the floor.
—I could end it all. Us. Mankind. Extinction. That’s what I am.
The faces of the mannequins were all flat. There were no eyes, no noses, no mouths. Even the heroes in their masks were the same. Their faces where the masks had been were gone. Even the faces of those heroes that had protected America had been snatched away.
—But it’s not what I want to be. All I want is for you and me and everyone in this world… to be whole.
The mannequins collapsed to the floor, each one knocking down the next in a domino pattern.
—Sam… Promise you’ll stop me. Don’t let me end it all.
Amelie began to disappear from her feet up. She was disintegrating into fine particles, just like the BTs.
—I’ll be waiting for you on…
She disappeared before she could finish her sentence. Sam was left all alone in this room among a pile of soulless mannequins. All alone in a museum that contained the last traces of America.
Sam’s memories of leaving the museum were hazy. He had no idea how long he had stood in that empty room after Amelie disappeared. It was as if he had sleepwalked out of there. Before he knew it, he was back outside. The timefall was still falling.
Maybe this museum was the same kind of Beach as Cliff’s battlefield. A fantasy museum born of an anonymous someone’s lingering attachment toward America that connected to this world.
As if to support Sam’s theory, the doors to the museum closed behind him and didn’t allow him to enter again.
Sam hadn’t realized when he first arrived, but the Bridges facility that he was looking for was right in front of the museum.
Sam’s cuff link and ID strand were authenticated, and the door opened, greeting him with the smell of dust and rust. Sam was on alert as he entered, thinking how cave-like it seemed. There was no other sign of life in this manmade metal cavern. Bridges staff must have been stationed here once upon a time, but there was no trace of them left. Sam wondered if the staff here had been slaughtered along with the Bridges I members who had accompanied Amelie all the way to Edge Knot City. Sam fiddled with his cuff link and the delivery terminal rose out of the floor. He had been through this routine so many times now. The receptor that would receive the Q-pid was now ready, so all Sam had to do was hold the six shards of metal to it and activate the Chiral Network. The whole continent would finally be online. Sam would finally be able to put down the baggage he had been forced to carry ever since he had transported Bridget’s body to the incinerator.