# Read the first page of Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu Read the opening of Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu free, no signup. Surreal tales of shape-shifters, star-makers, and babies made of snow. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/where-we-go-when-all-we-were-is-gone-sequoia-nagamatsu - Genre: Science fiction - Year: 2016 - ISBN: 9781625571168 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781625571168&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781625571168 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781625571168 ## The opening Woman (Identity Concealed): And we heard a crash outside. People were running down the street. There was smoke. I’m not sure from where. Everywhere? We felt the ground shake, so I grabbed my son and we ran with the crowds. They pushed. We pushed. We didn’t dare stop. There was an old woman, and I wanted to help. Everybody was screaming. A man ahead of us turned and pointed up. His eyes wide, his mouth twisted. And that’s when I saw it. Young Boy (Identity Concealed): Godzilla. It was him, I swear. My friends and I were hiding in the school cafeteria with our teachers. He was fighting a giant spider. Picked it up and slammed it right down on a bridge. Bam! Our teachers told us to get away from the windows, but how could we? My friend Toru and I cheered: Go Godzilla Go! I could wish for nothing more than to die for a childish dream in which I truly believed. —Ryūnosuke Akutagawa What isn’t remembered never happened. Memory is merely a record. You just need to re-write that record. —Serial Experiments: Lain The Return to Monsterland Train Car, 1998 Mayu called me from the train car that Godzilla had grabbed hold of—no screaming or sobbing, no confessions of great regrets, no final professions of love. She did not ask to speak to our five-year-old daughter, who was unknowingly watching the news coverage of her mother’s impending death, as the train crashed into the side of a skyscraper and through a set of power lines. My wife spoke of feeling the radiation of his body coursing through her own, the view down his cretaceous mouth, an atomic breath swirling in a maelstrom of blue light. And then, before there was nothing but a roar and static, she said: “You should be here; he’s simply magnificent.” Godzilla (irradiated Godzillasaurus) {Descp. Resembles Tyrannosaur with pronounced arms. Dorsal plates similar to Stegosaur. Semi-sapient. Powers: Atomic breath, nuclear pulse, imperviousness to conventional weaponry (and meteor impacts), regeneration, amphibiousness, telepathy with other Kaiju. Weaknesses: High voltage, Oxygen Destroyer WMD, Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria, Cadmium Missiles, MechaGodzilla} Field Notes: lumber-waddle. posturing roar. rhythmic stomp with son. perhaps a game? picks up palm tree and throws. swats sea gull. Defecates two-meters high—radiation: 15 krad. moves arms up and down. calisthenics or victory dance. long roar. shuffles across beach. throws log into water. throws rock into water. Two weeks living among their kind on the island reserve we’ve created for them, and I still can’t wrap my head around the love my wife felt for these creatures. During the atomic age, when nations illuminated the atolls dotting the Pacific, we gave birth to many of the Kaiju. Annihilation begetting annihilation when the living ghosts of Hiroshima still roamed the streets. The Ministry of Defense contacted me partly out of kindness, I suspect. The widower of the famous monster biologist, the silent partner who stayed in the lab. I knew the creatures almost as well as Mayu did—the half-life of their blood, the frequency of their telepathic thoughts, the variations of their origins and resurrections. I could, without a doubt, answer Japan’s questions of new monsters being born in the wake of Fukushima, of old monsters shaken out of armistice. And so I said yes because I hated their kind, because my daughter, now a college student, still reads the letters her mother left her, because I need to experience the beauty my wife saw before she died. ## Books with a similar feel - [Trips in Time by Christopher Priest](https://uncovered.ink/read/trips-in-time-christopher-priest.md) - [To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu](https://uncovered.ink/read/to-hold-up-the-sky-cixin-liu.md) - [Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang](https://uncovered.ink/read/stories-of-your-life-and-others-ted-chiang.md) - [Vanishing Acts by Ellen Datlow](https://uncovered.ink/read/vanishing-acts-ellen-datlow.md) - [The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-singers-gun-emily-st-john-mandel.md) - [Shriek by Jeff VanderMeer](https://uncovered.ink/read/shriek-jeff-vandermeer.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.