THE LAST MAN: Part Eleven

Only a fool believes human life has ever held any real value. Selective lives perhaps. One’s own life is most precious to them, but beyond that all life becomes negotiable. All wars, governments and economies are based upon that singular fact. Life is, in fact, an exorbitantly expensive proposition, not at all compatible with the bottom line imperative of economic theory. It is a cruel juxtaposition that a society values, or devalues life against the abstraction and invention of markets and economics.

It was the same for the Corporation, whose core philosophy of efficiency was a lie, or worse, a blind hypocrisy! It was no more evident than in the sewers below the Reclamation center. Great fissures had opened where the combination of stress and neglect had conspired to undermine the “great society.”. In places hasty repairs were made to prevent catastrophic collapse of the structures above. Those repairs were primitive, hasty and deadly gambles. The bones of those who perished anonymously in that desperate endeavor remained scattered about the ground. One poor soul had become entrapped in a mammoth mass of concrete and wire, forever imprisoned, the skull’s mouth agape, the eyes empty and haunting. The concrete held the bony fingers in place where they clawed desperately in eternal escape.

We slipped quickly into one broad fissure, single file through a narrow gap between two walls. There was no light here. We moved by torchlight. Bethune was ahead of me. Like the others her full attention remained on the route ahead. Taller than the rest I was forced to bend and twist to make it through at all. Behind me the remainder of Bethune’s security force followed. I felt cornered once more, and broke into a sweat, the breaths trapped and falling short in my chest.

We were below the Reclamation center that much was certain. The massive furnaces warmed the near wall. No one spoke a word, but if we had the din would have forced us to shout. Smoke leaked into the passage. Bethune and her guards quickly covered their faces. I had only my sleeve, but as the passage grew narrower raising my arms at all became nearly impossible. The smoke stung at my eyes and burned in my nose and throat. The wall grew hotter with each step until it was almost too much to touch at all. It was little consolation that the smoke had lessened somewhat.

At last we came to small black chamber. It was crowded well enough, and several of Bethune’s guards were forced to crouch against the wall to make room. The air was quickly heavy and humid with the press of bodies. Flickering amber torchlight fell upon the sloping floor where a wall had collapse in broad, broken chunks of concrete. To one side a newer wall had tipped and now rested precariously against the far wall. It was fractured in a hundred places and seemed about to crumble at any moment. Death, in that case, would be instantaneous.

The shuddering rumble from the Reclamation Center overhead did nothing to quiet my fears of being crushed and buried forever in that place. Behind us lay the way we had come, hardly more that a dark crag in the wall. Opposite, and a treacherous climb over jagged rock and tangled rebar was the only other way from the chamber. Bethune touched my arm, tearing me from taking stock of this bewildering scene. A number of her entourage where already climbing up to that new hole, pulling themselves up and into it. She motioned for me to follow.

It was an arduous climb. Bethune was ahead of me, carried on the back of a guard. I was awed by that awesome display of strength and fortitude. Her example encouraged and rallied me higher, and further than I might have managed alone. This was not a natural space. Hand and footholds had been carved and hacked into the walls. Fatigue burned in my shoulders and arms after only a short climb. A distant sliver of drowning light high above grew as a promise. The need to reach it outweighed life itself, for the combination of terror and an un-abiding hatred for that place compelled and inspired me forward with a renewed energy. When I at last reached the top a sudden upwelling of emotion nearly caused me to cry out. Only the incredible sight before me held those fluid and volatile emotions in check.

We emerged upon a high ledge, among sturdy iron lattice framing the top half of the building. From within the Reclamation Center appeared even larger and more ubiquitous that it appeared from the city. It would have been nothing for a small aircraft to run a circuit around the interior. Perhaps, depending upon the stalwart nerves of the operator, it might even cut among the lower fifth of the smoke stacks held within the building.

The architecture was, from books I had devoured on the subject, an abused and organic sort of Romanesque, like the ancient Porta Nirga in what was once the ancient city of Trier. Below the wide ledge Bethune and I stood, overlapping rows of great stone pillars a hundred of feet high dwarfed the long queue of doomed Associates assembled neatly in rows of 5. The long column wound out into the permanent twilight where thousands waited stoically to meet their end. Their heads were bowed, hands laid upon the shoulders of those before them as black clad Section Twenty-one troops pressed them ever forward. The tunics of each Associate had been removed leaving them naked and vulnerable. No one wailed or begged for mercy or resisted. The line crept forward, ever forward, snaking through guide-walls that wound and narrowed, extinguishing any hope for escape. The walls and pillars were blackened overall, and scorched deeply in places where huge conflagrations had swept the great hall in the past.

A crippled and tarnished light fell through a row of high windows at the top of the building. These sooty pinnacles shifted slowly around us, chased and eclipsed by smoke pouring without end from three brick smokestacks that even here appeared impossibly tall. The light faded steadily, like truth before a well crafted lie, so that the scene below remained in a permanent dusk. It merged with a monstrous opera, the thunder of machinery, the roar of the furnaces and the cries of the doomed.

The air held its own character as well. The stink of burning flesh, of vomit and waste joined that of singed stone and brick. They joined with the heat of three great furnaces, whose arched and gaping entrances were akin to looking into the setting sun. I lifted a hand to cover my nose and mouth, but with little affect.

Even in the murky light of the hall it was possible to discern some long abandoned order to this place, to see where Associates arrived for Reclamation. In that order it was even possible to project a sort of perverted mercifulness on the part of the Corporation. A sort of triage area where Associates were once injected lethally now stood empty and forgotten, but for exhausted and distraught Reclaimers that were scattered about and among simple slabs of stone. But order and efficiency could hardly describe the scene below any longer.

Bethune and I moved closer to the ledge, looking out across the barbaric theater, the capitol lie, the murderous hidden hand of the Corporation. The others remained well hidden behind us. Bethune and I were protected from view by those shifting talons of light. Below the windows I spied a blue sentinel safely confused among a flock of cooing and chattering pigeons. I left Bethune and stepped right to the edge, near enough that with hardly any effort I could have flung myself off. The cruelty and hopelessness the Reclamation Center evoked were nearly enough to compel me to do just that. Oh, Dante you could hardly have conceived of a crueler or darker hell!

Ten Reclaimers met each new group. These Reclaimers reminded me of the faces I had seen in the Low City. A glance to Bethune brought a solemn nod that confirmed that terrible truth. They were stripped to the waist, soot-stained, their sinewy bodies painted and scarred by their unending task. There was a heaviness in every movement as they led each Associate to the ovens. It was the weight of a soul that has died in a body that has yet to realize the pointless end awaiting.

A single electric jolt to the neck felled each Associate into unconsciousness. Quickly they were carried forward and thrown alive into the flames. But what might have seemed at first to be a merciful, if horrifying end, was instead far more nightmarish and chaotic. Most were quickly consumed. Others, as if suddenly awakened from a stupor, flailed and convulsed in the flames. Others escaped fully alight, only to meet their end and be driven back at the point of long iron pikes. A few of these human torches reached their would-be slave executioners in running, murderous battles beyond any human description. One body, so animated by vengeance, flesh curling and blackening from the flames devouring him, fended off stabbing pikes to drag a Reclaimer back into the oven, like some devil come to claim a soul.

This, this was the ultimate outcome of denying the human heart. This was the logical destination along the road of a history followed blindly. It was not that evil resided in that heart, but that it was burdened by this cursed animal flesh, for all its blind intentions. That flesh is far too short-sighted and far too selfish, conspiring to convince the heart that it is the bearer of ultimate sin. Pondering this I pulled gently at my tunic, as though I might tear that flesh away.

I moved a hand across my sorrowful heart and lamented that the will of the flesh was strong enough to turn mankind from the ultimate lessons of history. Man had instead become embroiled in the episodes of history, confusing one for another. Mankind had confused weakness with compassion, control over reason, and in the process had abandoned its own heart…

The Last Man: Part Ten

Bethune handed me one of the bricks. The texture was coarse, and seemed as if it might crumble under the slightest pressure. In fact they were quite strong. This was the source of the stale ammonia smell I had noticed while bound and blindfolded. I tested the brick’s weight in my hand. Each was much lighter than it appeared. They were light enough that children could carry a dozen or more on their backs. I watched them come and go, returning empty handed and leaving quickly with a fresh bundle.

She lifted it from my hand and placed it among the others, her fingers trailing from the brick almost lovingly, as if it was a prize possession. Bethune faced the wall and regarded it with great satisfaction, the way a muralist might stand before his work, fully dwarfed and engulfed by that work. She turned, her face much brighter than before. Her collection had enlivened her.

They were stacked to the ceiling, 12 high and three deep, running the length of a long shadowy chamber that formed the foundation of a building. The city had been built and rebuilt so many times that it was literally honeycombed with such chambers. The people of the Low City had carved tunnels that interconnected the chambers and sewers in an impossible maze. That was the real power Bethune and her followers could rely upon. In open battle they would be decimated by Section Twenty-one troops, but in the Low City Bethune’s fighters would bleed their enemy in Guerilla-style combat, or unleash attacks on the city itself.

“This is what you wish the Corporation and Section Twenty-one to see?”

“Not so much see as know,” she took my arm again, leading me away. John Brown remained behind. “These bricks, their waste, is our weapon. The Corporation should know that we long for a peaceful life, but we will settle for a just death if provoked.”

My thoughts were terribly conflicted. I recalled our conversation about memory and Sentinel and altering my thoughts. Was betrayal of these people as simple as the burden of memory? Could I reform and reshape memory to thwart sentinel? I replied to her as honestly as I knew how.

“I feel torn.”

“Of course you do.”

“Part of me would betray you.”

“And part of you sympathizes with our struggle.”

“Without doubt.”

“An honest man,”

“An honest man will have no other,” I replied, quoting Thomas Jefferson.

“Best I should be on good behavior then,” she smiled.

Perhaps my reticence was in understanding the relationship between the people of the Low City and the Corporation. To be sure it was complex, and hardly a simple conflict between good and evil. It was as intimate as old world marriages, as conflict, hate and vengeance bonds adversaries for eternity. Perhaps it was something more. Perhaps it was that Bethune, by employing children and bargaining with the lives of all the rest, had come to reflect her enemy much more than she realized. Had had each side descended to the inhumanity or proposed inhumanity of their adversary? It was an easy line to cross in war, for all its myriad moral and ethical negotiations and entanglements.

I needed to rest a moment. It was all too much, both the journey and sorting all of this out. I felt as weak as I had in the sewers earlier. Bethune gently stroked my cheek. She had softened considerably, her caring reminding me of the woman in the Channels who had saved me with that same loving touch as a child. This time I believe it was genuine on her part.

“You don’t look well.”

“I’ve had better days.”

A bit of fresh air will do nicely.” There was a hidden intention behind her words. Perhaps there was genuine respect and caring, but how much it was from unselfish humanity was impossible to say. What was true, above all else, was that I was a propaganda tool for Bethune and her movement. It was important never to forget that simple fact.

From the catacombs we entered the sewers again. A phalanx of bodyguards led the way, while more followed as a rear guard. They were vigilant and ready for a fight at every turn. Throughout the sewers Sentinel had been smashed or disabled almost as quickly as Section Twenty-one put them up. Unprepared or unwilling to fight a brutal and protracted war against the Low City, Section Twenty-one quickly abandoned the effort. At one junction, there among the brownish-gray filth, we came upon evidence of how hastily Section Twenty-one had quit the fight. Still partially clad in their black uniforms, and picked over my dogs and other vermin were the remains of two troopers.

The sewers at last opened to a narrow stretch of beach. It came sudden and unexpected around the last bend. The salty sea air came over me as a merciful release of pressure might save a smothering man. I gulped in that first breath, and felt its power rush into every cell of my body, returning me to full life. Bethune’s fighters seemed unmoved by it, and Bethune herself almost seemed repelled at first. They had grown accustomed to the sewers, the dark labyrinth and stealing from place to place to keep clear of Sentinel and Section Twenty-one. Both sides doubtless had long ago forgotten what the real reason for the conflict was. All wars are the same. The real reasons fade and are buried from the first blood, the first drop of blood and an endless parade of crimes and perceived crimes by all sides.

Filth ran in a ruddy-brown rivulet from the lip of the sewer opening. It trickled across the narrow sand where it mixed with the sea. The lazily swelling surf drew it along the shore line in an oily sheen. The sun had swung back to where I had last seen it at the settlement among John Brown’s family. A solar day had passed for the world. A lifetime had passed for me, it seemed.

A dozen or so of Bethune’s security force dropped to the sand and took up defensive positions along the sea wall. It was much easier to discern the successive levels of the city here than in the tunnels and sewers. They were built upon one another like stratified layers of rock. They bulged outward under their combined mass and the weight of the new city rising through low clouds. We were very near the Reclamation center. The low rumble of its massive furnaces shook the earth. Wind off the sea scattered the smoke plume from towering stacks into a thick orange brown haze.

It was hardly more than fifteen or eighteen centimeters to the beach. I climbed down first and held a hand to Bethune. She took it gratefully. With a grimace and self-effacing groan Bethune struggled from the opening down to the beach.

“Thank you, my dear,” she held tight to my arm. She smiled philosophically. “The Corporation has done away with the aged. I’ll tell you, it is quite a privilege. I cherish every day for its new perspectives and greater knowledge, but it comes at the terrible price of a vibrant and increasingly unusable body.”

“It almost makes the Corporation’s case,” I offered, referring of course to Reclamation.

We went slowly along the seawall. Periodically my gaze would drift to the ruins out at sea. By this light the fires seemed brighter and more certain than ever. They flickered wildly, no doubt the excited motions of people moving back and forth. I thought to ask Bethune about them, about whether she had been there or knew anything of the people there. The question, at least for now, seemed entirely out of place.

“If you happen to believe the Corporation should hold the power of life and death,” she said. “Shouldn’t that freedom be sacrosanct to the individual?”

“When are the individual’s rights outweighed by the needs of the community?”

“Or the Corporation?”

I nodded. “Or the Corporation.”

“The rights of the individual are at the core of our struggle in the Low City.”

“And so you would sacrifice thousands for that noble cause?” I baited.

“If absolutely necessary,” she replied quickly.

“For the needs of the society the rights of those individuals are bartered.”

Bethune stopped and stared at me for some time. There was a storm of thoughts and emotions in her eyes. They were at once explosive and surprised. All at once her expression changed and she smiled broadly.

“I believe you almost are ready to face the Corporation. But first there is one last thing you must see.”

We turned and started back for the sewers. The bodyguards retreated as well, forming something of a protective human envelope around us. I paused a moment for one last glance to the ruins. I lingered just a little too long. One of the guards ushered me up into the sewer and back among the world of shadows.