The Last Man: Part Seven

Refugees, I thought? The people of the low city reminded me of images I had seen in books of Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first and Twenty-second Century wars and brutality. The faces were the same almost a millennium later. There I found the faces of Jews, Lakota, Palestinians, Rwandans, Afghans, and so many more displaced and destroyed by Human selfishness and ambivalence. It wasn’t a single look. Some were hardened, others hopeless, other were beyond hopeless to a place all their own, and a few steeled and dangerous. Most were a mixture of all these and more.

They watched me curiously as I passed. John Brown leaned and nodded towards a group of women observing from a distance. There were six of them altogether. Each carried an axe, or machete o pointed weapon of some sort. Theirs was far from curiosity, and instead were dangerous and even threatening.

“Best keeping your nuts clear from them,” cautioned John Brown, offering a reassuring wave to the band.

“Who are they?”

He did not answer. He only shook a finger in the air and continued through the makeshift community.

In the half light my relatively clean Associate’s clothing stood out and created something of a stir. But then something odd occurred. As I passed people stood and removed their hoods or whatever covered their heads and faces. I might have believed I had gone back to a time before racial homogenization. This was the ancient world man had endeavored to erase and deny. This was the lie of modern genetic engineering. There were Asian, Middle eastern, Hispanic, Polynesian, and many different indigenous faces. There were white, deformed, crippled and the old; everything but a face such as mine. Despite that I was awestruck. This was a decrepit rabble, and as such they were flawed to perfection. This was humanity for all of its many faces, and not the fraudulent utopian illusion of the Corporation.

We wandered back to the passage way, and the place I had emerged into this new world. Two huts build from wood and pieces of fabric stood close together. I studied and admired their construction. Despite appearances the round structures were quite sturdily built. Each held a basic pole frame. The fabric, found sheets of plastic or tarpaulin covered the tops. Panels of wood, plastic, sheet or corrugated metal provided the walls and helped to cut wind for those inside. Everything in this world smelled of wood smoke.

John Brown enjoyed the blessings of a large family. Families had long ago been eradicated by the Corporation as impediments to production and interference in education. I had come to admire this ancient and antiquated concept in books I discovered in the archives. This partnership of souls seemed to steel the passion and vision of history’s greatest men and women. I envied John Brown deeply from the moment his wife and I were introduced.

She held an aboriginal beauty, with long straight black hair and a round face. She was a small woman, nearly dripping with jewelry and precious stones I guessed were centuries old. Many of the women adorned themselves in this way, I had noticed. There was a terrific wisdom in her eyes, something that reminded me of the writings of Miss Alice Walker. It was not the wisdom of logic one might find in a scientist or a physician. It was an insightful wisdom, as though she was more looking through me.

Alice walker held a prominent position at the head of the fire. John Brown found a place next to her. It was less a subservient place as a less prominent one. Clearly Alice walker was the head of the family, a position she seemed well suited to hold, and respectful enough to warrant. Her parents were old and frail. Grandmother cradled a baby lovingly. I guessed the child was much less than a year of age. The child, like the little girl from the archives, was the mirror image of Alice walker.

They were sitting around a small fire. Small orange flames licked from beneath a piece of timber taken from the shore Pieces of dried moss her regularly fed into the fire beneath a pot of simmering stew. White tendrils of smoke curled into the air where they were promptly whipped by the sea breeze. That smoke held the same spicy, ocean scent I had awakened to earlier. Upon a flat stone beside the fire was a small stack of golden brown flatbread. The family made a space for me, allowing for my extra long legs. The grandmother ladled the brown stew with pieces of white fish meat and smell bits of vegetables into a bowl and handed it across to me.

“You’ll forgive the husband I have chosen,” she said with a good-natured scolding. “This was made to honor you as our guest, and as gesture.”

“Gesture?” I asked.

“All was explained by him. He acted imprudently, but quite understandably. This is our act of contrition,” she said. “To make peace between our houses.”

John Brown nodded abashedly and pursed his lips. “By sharing a meal with us you accept our amends.”

“Indeed,” I replied.

The family watched with a curious amusement as I tipped the bowl and took that first mouthful of warm soup. The taste was strange and harsh at first. It held the essence of the sea. More than that, I could discern layers, as each of the ingredients vied for prominence on my tongue. With each mouthful one of these new spices warmed the back of my throat. The soup quickly restored my strength.

“Very different, eh?” the grandfather smiled knowingly.

“Quite different,” I replied.

“Good?” asked grandma, almost proudly.

“Not sure yet.”

“Much better for you than that recycled chemical crap from the Corporation,” The gruff old man spat into the fire. The others smiled broadly. Their faces glowed by the crimson light of the fire. I believe I smiled as well, warmed a bit by the old man’s fiery spirit. I bit into smoky bit of fish.

“Never experienced anything…”

Grandpa reached over and tugged lightly at my cheek. “Made of blood and meat, child. This food is for the life, a good long life. Corporation food only to keep you productive till it’s time for your reclamation.”

In truth I was still undecided whether or not I liked the soup. It was far different from anything I had ever experienced, and yet, as I finished the last of it I was already longing for more. It was everything the Corporation’s black paste and yellow crackers were not. The stew was substantial, and I could admit for the first time at truly feeling satisfied from a meal. Tipping my head back I let the final bit drip into my open mouth, as though I was a starving man, as though my very existence depended on every drop and every morsel.

“May I ask why,” began Alice walker, “the Corporation didn’t send you for reclamation long ago?’

“I expect they will.”

“Maybe you ought to remain here in that case.”

“The Corporation has seen fit to put me on trial,” I said. “I have a chance to argue my existence; to stand for something.”

“Only to be condemned in the end,” said John Brown.

“Aren’t we all ultimately condemned?” I replied “Seems to me that the key is in the higher purpose we fight to attain.”

“But you are one man alone.”

“I am always one man alone.”

“But isn’t the key to pass on in peace rather than persecution?”

“One never has that choice.”

Argument was an art in the low city. It had been honed and celebrated and revered to the point of religion. Argument was less a tool for vanquishing or embarrassing an opponent. Instead it was meant to uncover the flaw in one’s own logic, or the boundaries of their ignorance. It was a keen exercise that made me battle my own thought for every strategically chosen word. It was brilliant as I prepared to match wits in court with the Corporation.

“I am sorry,” grandfather shook his head. He leaned forward a bit, his hands before him, as though tracing each word, as a sculptor might massage a piece of clay. He was adamant over his point. “Associates have no believe in god. You are raised as slaves and drones to live and be reclaimed by the Corporation. If existence and non-existence are equal concepts then why should any of this matter to you? Live, eat, work, screw, shit, if that crap allows you to, and then when it is your time for reclamation, so be it!”

He was right, and it seemed at first an impossible question.. I felt trapped by it, and knew if I could not discern a proper response it would be impossible to stand before the judges of the Corporation. The old man knew I was trapped and smiled broadly at his apparent victory. The others whispered and nodded, as though this was all a game. I looked around the fire and felt the warm rush of embarrassment rise to my cheeks.

What did it really matter? It was true what the old man said. Under the Corporation existence and non-existence, life and death were identical. The individual held no more importance or significance that a single corpuscle among billions rushing blind in their duties through a body. Death itself was inconsequential. Death itself was a moment, and not an eternity. I recalled something I had read by a late Twentieth Century thinker, Steven Wright:

…Everyone dies suddenly. You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re dead.”

Those words led me to a single conclusion. It led me to the idea that to live is to struggle, and that in not struggling is the real death. I would fight and continue to fight and remain fighting, even in the face of unmatchable eternity. The old man had gloated over his victory a bit too prematurely.

“Because I am,” I replied. The old man leaned back to consider the point. After an excruciating moment he offered a respectable nod.

“Go on,” he said. “You have my attention.

“Indeed,” Alice Walker added.

“I am, and I need to know at the end of these days that my struggle had real value.”

“But what value,” John Brown offered, “if you finis h this world as a slave?”

“Value that I refused to relinquish an inch in my struggle for freedom.”

“To what end?” asked Grandma.

“The fight is the end.”

“Not the destination?” she pressed to concept.

“The ultimate destination for us all is death. I suppose then to that end.”