John and I left the family once my strength had returned. We followed utility tunnels and sewers; the viscera of the Corporation, running far below city streets. They were low forcing us to bend a bit. Not much but enough to slow our progress. There was no light, but for the murky yellow Kinetic lamps that came on overhead as we passed. The oval lamps, affixed at inrevals at the top of the sewers, flickered to the point of failure, their haphazard rhythm conspiring with the pain in my head to make me queasy and unsteady. It was like trudging through a diseased mind, or the fading memories of a dying soul.
I could discern no true direction, and had the impression of winding and doubling back numerous times. Our feet splashed through ankle deep water and muck. The scented sea was a distant memory here, replaced by the pungent bite of human waste and general decay. I tripped, slid and stumbled past dark and lifeless shapes that I preferred not to think too much about. The walls and ceiling pressed in upon me, their crushing weight felt fully in my chest. One hand strained to the wall, the other reassured my latent terrors upon John Brown’s shoulder.
In time we came upon the stinking fetid carcass of a wild dog. I might have missed it, as my eyes, unaccustomed to the quality of darkness here, were all but useless. John stopped suddenly before the carcass, catching me before I spilled forward into the mess. He reached down and lifted the dripping mess with a frown. The flesh had been picked from the head and neck. The naked skull dangled by sinewy strands. Fat white maggots boiled and dripped in clumps from beneath the matted brown fur.
“No good,” he said, keeping his voice at barely a whisper. Even still the sound carried a great distance. “Makes for good warm coverings. Better for a fresh kill.”
“You kill them?”
“It’s them or us. Mangy things hunt in packs. When they have got the hunger I seen these take down a big strong fellow once.”
“We won’t see any?” I asked. Suddenly even the tiniest sound became ravenous dog packs. I wished for a weapon, while looking continuously over my shoulder.
“Who can say?”
“A disgusting mess,” I remarked, the acidic bite of bile rising in my throat.
“This one still good for something.”
He carried it little farther on where milky-gray daylight flooded into the sewer from a drainage pipe. City sounds roared from the hole, familiar sounds that, after the sea, now seemed wholly obscene and abusive. The shadows from an heavy iron grate covering the opening were etched upon the gray-green concrete walls, and across the rust colored sludge flowing at the bottom of the sewer.
John motioned for me to remain behind. Suddenly he ran towards the hole, holding the carcass out to one side, his arm cocked back and ready. His strides were calculated and powerful. Each footfall came down hard, splashing loudly. Just shy of the hole his arm drew back farther, the skull bouncing wildly. With a mighty groan John flung the carcass up onto a high ledge within the hole. Without losing stride he dodged into the shadows at the far side of the hole and turned with a satisfied expression.
My eyes rose to the dripping carcass. The skull and one leg were draped over the edge. The remains were quickly set upon by a slimy fat brown rats seeming to materialize from nowhere. With that John Brown quickly waved me over. I hurried past the hole, but slipped. He reached out and caught me, drawing us both to the shadows beside the hole.
“I don’t understand?’
“Come,” he said, leading me cautiously to the hole. Just above our heads the swarming rats fought over the rotting flesh, angrily glaring swiping and hissing at one another. A little higher I could make out the blue light of Sentinel. John Brown pulled me back away from the hole.
“Sentinel not so smarts as it like to thinks. The primitive thoughts of them rats confuses Sentinel. Just hears all sorts of gibberish.”
“Clever,” I remarked, as we moved deeper into the bowels of the city.
The sewer narrowed. The ceiling was much lower than before. It is impossible to tell where or how far we had gone. The pain had returned to my head with a fury. Not as bad as before, but enough to become a burden and cause John Brown to wait for me to rally myself several times. I was reaching the limits of my endurance. The throbbing pain drove my head down almost rhythmically. I groaned and told John Brown I could go no farther.
“Please, I am begging,” I moaned, falling against the cold, moss-slicked wall. He came over as I slid to my knees. My eyes searched his for a moment. “Forgive me. I’m still not so strong.”
I fought for breath in that transient grave. My eyes turned upwards, my mouth agape in a silent scream. I would have scratched and dug my way to daylight. A cold sweat ran in rivers down my body.
John could see that I was struggling. He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Pull yourself together.”
I could have died there. I could have stopped my heart simply by wishing it so. What life remained in me seemed intent on pulling itself free from the world. I held tight to his strong arm, staring deeply into his eyes, begging silently for rescue. Life and death were equal agents, both fighting in every cell of my weary being for ultimate victory. As for my part I was entirely undecided.
“I wasn’t… I am not prepared…” I stammered.
“No worries, this is the place we were arriving at.”
“Where?”
“Come, for to see.”
I could see nothing but the endless dark, and the sewer running off into that nothingness. I managed to reach my feet, still using the walls for support. John started off again, but I refused to move at first. He paused and turned, an odd grin betraying a certain strain to his patience. I looked up and back through the passage and, seeing nothing still, believed that one or both of us had lost his mind.
There was a sudden sound from behind. It was far away, but closing quickly. Not the splashing of water, like footfalls, but a swishing sort of sound. It was the sound of something large moving quick and effortless through the sewer.
John stood and drew a long knife hidden in his clothing. There were more sounds now, the same sounds coming straight at us from the opposite direction. John moved to the middle of the sewer, turning his body to meet whichever threat reached him first.
His eyes widened at something terrifying and unseen. The knife dropped from his hand into the muck, as though any resistance was a futile and ridiculous gesture. He stumbled back, turned and was quickly engulfed in darkness. A muffled cry went out, but was quickly cut short.
Alone, I turned. All thoughts disappeared in a fog of terror, replaced by terrible and desperate visions of all manner of horrors. The sounds were much closer now. My hands clenched instinctively, the blood running from them, turning the knuckles cold. I resolved to fight, and fight until the last breath and last drop of blood left my body.
Two great beasts emerged from the dark, rising on two legs. Their mouths were open revealing huge razor sharp teeth. Their eyes were cold and as black, perhaps blacker, than the tunnel itself. They were covered in long thick fur in patches of beige and brown and black. A moment later I felt a knife point at my back.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
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.”
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.”
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Last Man: Part Six
There was no telling for sure just how long I had been out that second time. When I awoke the pain had subsided, only to be replaced by hunger and thirst. My throat burned and I felt terribly weak. Furthermore I was drenched in sweat from lingering chills that ravaged me in unconsciousness. The girl was standing over me. I managed a smile before she ran to fetch her father. Even the simple act of smiling was almost too much.
John Brown returned a moment later. He placed a hand on my chest to prevent me from getting up, which doubtless took him very little effort. His manner was courteous and sympathetic. He took the rag from beneath my head and gently wiped my forehead and cheeks. I held his wrist as he drew away. Never had I known such tenderness, and I was not prepared to let it go too soon.
“Afraid that clomp did a bad one for you,” he said, pulling me up to a sitting position. “Best sit tight until the life comes back to you.”
I nodded, far too frail for much else. I could manage but a single word.
“Water,” I said hoarsely.
“Go fetch some drinking water,” he motioned to the child.
She was back in an instant with a small pale blue plastic dish, the kind assigned to Associates for drinking. It was chipped at the rim in several spots and smudged with black charcoal fingerprints. She held it too my lips. I cradled it with her small hands and gulped down the coldest water I had ever tasted. Much of it ran down my beard and down my neck to stain my shirt.
“Thirsty, eh?” John Brown chuckled.
“How long was I out?”
“Long time,” he said. I could see that it had worried him somewhat.
John Brown helped me to sit. The pain had retreated to the sizeable lump at the back of my skull. Not that it would remain content there. It was an ember that was all but exhausted, awaiting the kindling of my exhaustion to erupt in a new conflagration.
“A little weak,” I said fighting the swelling in my throat. I took another sip of water,
John brown slipped an arm around my waist and helped me to stand. “Feel something better when you get some sustenance down your tube.”
My legs were fools, refusing any command or memory that the rightful place for a man is one two feet- or in the grave. It was strange to be held strongly by my assailant and savior. As I held tight to his waist the former seemed the remotest possibility. He half carried me through the door and down a short passage to a wide chamber that opened to the sea.
The ceiling here was much higher, yet low enough that if I stretched enough I could certainly have touched the soot-stained concrete. It was much higher nearer to the sea, extending part way out over the littered shoreline. The place was swathed in a sort of permanent twilight. The floor gave way to a pebbled beach. The air was filled with a mixture of the sea, struggling humanity and wood smoke.
An amber sun sat low, peaking to one side of the chamber. Suspended in a copper sky, the fattened disk threw shadows from hundreds of great supports that held the city. It took some time before my eyes adjusted enough to notice clusters of people and small shelters behind each support. The shelters were small and primitive and hasty, as if they might be torn down at a moment’s notice and moved quickly. As for the people, I could tell nothing of them except that there were hundreds or perhaps thousands. For the moment they were shapes and demons, as unconcerned of me as I was curious of them. I knew nothing of their lives or their existence, and therefore, in that ignorance, they were nothing (and perhaps even an enemy).
For the moment I was more enthralled with the sea. In this light it appeared as dull bronze. Long slow lazy waves pressed steadily towards shore. There was a great expanse of refuse and detritus that formed something of a barrier between the sea and the shore. Further out it rose and fell with the incoming waves. Along the beach it surged and retreated with a crackling, chattering sound. Choked within this mass the hull of a ship rotted and rusted silently.
I was finding my feet more easily now. Not well, but better. Still I braced against a support. Steadier now, I drew away from John Brown and his daughter and went down to the shore. Above me the city appeared as a great towering wall, like pictures I had seen of glaciers preparing to calve into the sea.
For a time I could only stare, awestruck. Oh, the hours and days and years I had stared from my window at the sea. This was a moment I wished to bask in as long as I could. John came up behind me. I spoke without taking my eyes off the incredible expanse before me. The sun played like topaz jewels upon the waves.
“Never been this close to the sea before,” I gasped. I glanced back at John brown. He smiled warmly at the comment. “I’ve only seen it from high above.”
I found a solemn eternal power to the sea. The concept of god had been dismissed and discredited a thousand years earlier. Those myriad references in ancient texts were merely romantic and curious notions to me, just as the Egyptian or Greek Gods must have seemed to Twentieth or Twenty-first century men. But owing to the seas’ absolute authority, and the primordial intimacy it seduced in me, I could hardly discount the possibility of god. Something of the sea touched deeper than Sentinel or the Corporation could ever aspire to.
I moved closer to the water’s edge. I could stand better on my own now, finding strength as I drew in the sea with deep long breaths. The ruins, far out to sea, seemed so much closer. They were a destination far more attainable than I had previously entertained. I imagined falling into the sea and floating there. Invariably the waves would draw me to the crumbling towers. Black and brown hands would reach out and bring me safely and surely into their embrace.
“Do you know anything of those ruins?” I asked John Brown. The girl hugged his side. Her eyes were far away and sleepy. None of this interested her much, that much was certain.
“Afraid not.”
“Does anyone know? Has anyone been there?” I almost felt my eagerness and curiosity running away with me, a natural response at being so close to them.
“Maybe there is one who knows, but I don’t…”
“Who? I must know. Please.”
“A member of the Jurga,” he replied grudgingly. “Best to let some things be alone.”
“Can I go there?”
“Maybe this idea not so good one.”
“I beg you.””
“Papa,” said the girl sympathetically, “my belly wants food.”
He lovingly stoked her cheek and motioned for me to follow. I could see better now, as we climbed back up the beach. I could see better, and not just with my eyes. John Brown led me in a lazy sort of way through that community of shadows, past ramshackle huts and small groups gathered around smoldering fires. I paused and looked back at the distant ruins, my heart bursting from my chest and rushing out across those bronze seas and knew I must find a way.
John Brown returned a moment later. He placed a hand on my chest to prevent me from getting up, which doubtless took him very little effort. His manner was courteous and sympathetic. He took the rag from beneath my head and gently wiped my forehead and cheeks. I held his wrist as he drew away. Never had I known such tenderness, and I was not prepared to let it go too soon.
“Afraid that clomp did a bad one for you,” he said, pulling me up to a sitting position. “Best sit tight until the life comes back to you.”
I nodded, far too frail for much else. I could manage but a single word.
“Water,” I said hoarsely.
“Go fetch some drinking water,” he motioned to the child.
She was back in an instant with a small pale blue plastic dish, the kind assigned to Associates for drinking. It was chipped at the rim in several spots and smudged with black charcoal fingerprints. She held it too my lips. I cradled it with her small hands and gulped down the coldest water I had ever tasted. Much of it ran down my beard and down my neck to stain my shirt.
“Thirsty, eh?” John Brown chuckled.
“How long was I out?”
“Long time,” he said. I could see that it had worried him somewhat.
John Brown helped me to sit. The pain had retreated to the sizeable lump at the back of my skull. Not that it would remain content there. It was an ember that was all but exhausted, awaiting the kindling of my exhaustion to erupt in a new conflagration.
“A little weak,” I said fighting the swelling in my throat. I took another sip of water,
John brown slipped an arm around my waist and helped me to stand. “Feel something better when you get some sustenance down your tube.”
My legs were fools, refusing any command or memory that the rightful place for a man is one two feet- or in the grave. It was strange to be held strongly by my assailant and savior. As I held tight to his waist the former seemed the remotest possibility. He half carried me through the door and down a short passage to a wide chamber that opened to the sea.
The ceiling here was much higher, yet low enough that if I stretched enough I could certainly have touched the soot-stained concrete. It was much higher nearer to the sea, extending part way out over the littered shoreline. The place was swathed in a sort of permanent twilight. The floor gave way to a pebbled beach. The air was filled with a mixture of the sea, struggling humanity and wood smoke.
An amber sun sat low, peaking to one side of the chamber. Suspended in a copper sky, the fattened disk threw shadows from hundreds of great supports that held the city. It took some time before my eyes adjusted enough to notice clusters of people and small shelters behind each support. The shelters were small and primitive and hasty, as if they might be torn down at a moment’s notice and moved quickly. As for the people, I could tell nothing of them except that there were hundreds or perhaps thousands. For the moment they were shapes and demons, as unconcerned of me as I was curious of them. I knew nothing of their lives or their existence, and therefore, in that ignorance, they were nothing (and perhaps even an enemy).
For the moment I was more enthralled with the sea. In this light it appeared as dull bronze. Long slow lazy waves pressed steadily towards shore. There was a great expanse of refuse and detritus that formed something of a barrier between the sea and the shore. Further out it rose and fell with the incoming waves. Along the beach it surged and retreated with a crackling, chattering sound. Choked within this mass the hull of a ship rotted and rusted silently.
I was finding my feet more easily now. Not well, but better. Still I braced against a support. Steadier now, I drew away from John Brown and his daughter and went down to the shore. Above me the city appeared as a great towering wall, like pictures I had seen of glaciers preparing to calve into the sea.
For a time I could only stare, awestruck. Oh, the hours and days and years I had stared from my window at the sea. This was a moment I wished to bask in as long as I could. John came up behind me. I spoke without taking my eyes off the incredible expanse before me. The sun played like topaz jewels upon the waves.
“Never been this close to the sea before,” I gasped. I glanced back at John brown. He smiled warmly at the comment. “I’ve only seen it from high above.”
I found a solemn eternal power to the sea. The concept of god had been dismissed and discredited a thousand years earlier. Those myriad references in ancient texts were merely romantic and curious notions to me, just as the Egyptian or Greek Gods must have seemed to Twentieth or Twenty-first century men. But owing to the seas’ absolute authority, and the primordial intimacy it seduced in me, I could hardly discount the possibility of god. Something of the sea touched deeper than Sentinel or the Corporation could ever aspire to.
I moved closer to the water’s edge. I could stand better on my own now, finding strength as I drew in the sea with deep long breaths. The ruins, far out to sea, seemed so much closer. They were a destination far more attainable than I had previously entertained. I imagined falling into the sea and floating there. Invariably the waves would draw me to the crumbling towers. Black and brown hands would reach out and bring me safely and surely into their embrace.
“Do you know anything of those ruins?” I asked John Brown. The girl hugged his side. Her eyes were far away and sleepy. None of this interested her much, that much was certain.
“Afraid not.”
“Does anyone know? Has anyone been there?” I almost felt my eagerness and curiosity running away with me, a natural response at being so close to them.
“Maybe there is one who knows, but I don’t…”
“Who? I must know. Please.”
“A member of the Jurga,” he replied grudgingly. “Best to let some things be alone.”
“Can I go there?”
“Maybe this idea not so good one.”
“I beg you.””
“Papa,” said the girl sympathetically, “my belly wants food.”
He lovingly stoked her cheek and motioned for me to follow. I could see better now, as we climbed back up the beach. I could see better, and not just with my eyes. John Brown led me in a lazy sort of way through that community of shadows, past ramshackle huts and small groups gathered around smoldering fires. I paused and looked back at the distant ruins, my heart bursting from my chest and rushing out across those bronze seas and knew I must find a way.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
THE LAST MAN: Part Five
The world returned grudgingly as unfocused shapes and sounds, and in hues of umber and jaundiced grays. Even that dull shadow-less light strained my eyesight. My head was a void at first. It took a moment before molten pain crashed through to fill that void.
A new and strange scent filled the air. It was entirely unknown to me. There was a bitter spicy warmth which awakened all of my senses in new and almost sexual ways, despite that pressing pain. I recall laying there for a while more focused on those paletted smells than on worrying over the nature and severity of my injury.
I was on a billowy soft mattress, most unlike the then bare foam mattress and cervical brace Associates slept on. This was deep, molding to my form until I almost felt, happily, that it would engulf me completely. There was a character to it in the way it felt and smelled. There was, a humanity, an intimacy the likes of which I could not recall knowing before.
The concrete ceiling above was slanted steeply and low. The concrete itself was unfinished, with exposed rebar. There were tannish-brown water stains, emanating from deep cracks. Chunks of concrete had broken loose, some of them quite large, which gave me a bit of concern. It was too much to take all at once. I closed my eyes and groaned.
It was noticeably colder than the city, or even in the archives down deep below those busy city streets. There were sounds. They were far away sounds, deeply resonant sounds and heavy thundering sounds. There were of course, the muffled distant sounds of the city. I could hear the waves clearer now, washing powerfully, sounding hollow and low.
There were closer sounds too. I could hear urgent and heated whispers, though it was impossible to make any sense of what was being said. It wasn’t children, that much I was sure. If I had been in slightly better condition I would have inferred that whatever it was those heated exchanges were about me.
After a time I managed to sit up, though it was still an open question if I would be able to remain there for long. My head was supported in my hands. The pressure helped alleviate the pain somewhat. More than that, it held the dizziness at bay, which would have very quickly made me vomit.
“Papa, come quick now!” a child said.
I strained to look up without moving my head. The girl from the archives stood in a crooked doorway or more accurately an uneven break in a concrete support wall. She was dressed in rags. Her eyes were fixed on me with a mixture curiosity and suspicion, quite unlike anything capable of Associate children. There was a second wall behind her. A soft orange light waxed and waned across it from an unseen flame.
I made no effort to move or look up or defend myself. The blow, at least for a time, had rendered me defenseless. I wasn’t helpless as much as I was entirely indifferent to my fate at that moment. Death, I decided, would be no worse that the thundering waves of pain hammering the inside of my skull and extending down throughout my body.
I was still trying to focus, my eyes still fixed the floor. A man came in the room. All I could tell at first was that he wore the high black jackboots of a Section Twenty-one trooper. I had no fear. The boots were in atrocious condition. They were worn and terribly scuffed. Cracks had formed at the ankles and across the toes so severely that the boots seemed ready to fall apart. His simple gray Associate trousers were filthy, and tucked into the tops of the boots in typical Section Twenty-one style.
“Not a shred of fight in me,” I moaned softly. It was simpler not to look up. For the moment it hardly seemed to matter.
A brutally long silence followed. It was enough to awaken some animal imperative for survival and resistance. The imperative built in my chest, but without any response from the rest of my body.
To my great surprise the man laid a cool damp rag across the back of my head. I winced, but more for the unexpected nature of the gesture. The affect in my heart and my head was instantaneous. I gave a long low groan as, for the moment, the tension eminating from my wound down into my torso was relieved.
“Obliged,” I said, reaching back to bring the rag tighter to the lump on my head.
I managed to look up, into the face of the oldest man I had ever seen. He was far older than any Associate I knew of, for he would have long ago gone to reclamation. His face was bronze in color. The deeply lined flesh as hard and weathered as the ancient leather-bound manuscripts I had come across in the archives. His face was long and square, reminding me of black and white photographs of John Brown, the abolitionist I had read about.
“Took a mighty big clomp to the lid,” he pursed his lips sympathetically. He wore bits and pieces of old Associate clothing, sewn crudely together and patched in parts. Like the child behind him, a fur wrap was thrown across his shoulders.
“Anyone you know?” I quipped, discovering that it was excruciating even to smile. “I’d like to have a word.” I felt dizzy and nauseous suddenly. “Perhaps it could wait a while.”
“My daughter is this one,” he motioned to the girl cowering behind him. “Heard that screeching and guessed she was being murdered. Couldn’t have that be, you see.”
“Just wanted to know who was pelting me with books. I was supposed to be alone down…”
“This is what she told me what happened. I figured, and then we brought you back here for fixing.”
He had such an odd way of talking. Not stupid, but simple. I gave them both a strange and perplexed look. He seemed to take immediate offense.
“Don’t think ‘cause we swill down here in the low city that manners don’t come to us!”
“Low city?”
I tried to stand, but my heads and legs conspired against me. He caught me just as I was about to spill onto the floor. He was incredibly quick and strong. It seemed no effort at all to hold me up.
“Mister, that clomp still be fresh.” He gently pushed me back to the mattress. “Best you sleep some more time then.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I had to know. “Why didn’t you just leave me in the archive?”
“Don’t let them bugs and rats eat you up.” He drew a hide across my chest and shoulders. It had a musky, salty smell. He studied me a moment. “Besides, you’re not like them kind up there in the city. You’re a different one. You dress like them. I don’t mean for your color and all, but I feel a difference in you. No sir, we don’t see many others like you.”
“Others?” Not sure I’d heard him correctly. “There are more like me?”
“Best be inside the sleep now.”
Sleep, such as it was, really was not much of a decision I had to make. That little bit had fully exhausted me. I closed my eyes, disappointed that I was far too spent to bask in the moment. I felt cheated. I could not celebrate that there were indeed others like me! I tried to imagine what I would say to them, if I would embrace them or embarrass myself with uncontrolled emotion. I was thinking all of this when the darkness descended over me once again.
A new and strange scent filled the air. It was entirely unknown to me. There was a bitter spicy warmth which awakened all of my senses in new and almost sexual ways, despite that pressing pain. I recall laying there for a while more focused on those paletted smells than on worrying over the nature and severity of my injury.
I was on a billowy soft mattress, most unlike the then bare foam mattress and cervical brace Associates slept on. This was deep, molding to my form until I almost felt, happily, that it would engulf me completely. There was a character to it in the way it felt and smelled. There was, a humanity, an intimacy the likes of which I could not recall knowing before.
The concrete ceiling above was slanted steeply and low. The concrete itself was unfinished, with exposed rebar. There were tannish-brown water stains, emanating from deep cracks. Chunks of concrete had broken loose, some of them quite large, which gave me a bit of concern. It was too much to take all at once. I closed my eyes and groaned.
It was noticeably colder than the city, or even in the archives down deep below those busy city streets. There were sounds. They were far away sounds, deeply resonant sounds and heavy thundering sounds. There were of course, the muffled distant sounds of the city. I could hear the waves clearer now, washing powerfully, sounding hollow and low.
There were closer sounds too. I could hear urgent and heated whispers, though it was impossible to make any sense of what was being said. It wasn’t children, that much I was sure. If I had been in slightly better condition I would have inferred that whatever it was those heated exchanges were about me.
After a time I managed to sit up, though it was still an open question if I would be able to remain there for long. My head was supported in my hands. The pressure helped alleviate the pain somewhat. More than that, it held the dizziness at bay, which would have very quickly made me vomit.
“Papa, come quick now!” a child said.
I strained to look up without moving my head. The girl from the archives stood in a crooked doorway or more accurately an uneven break in a concrete support wall. She was dressed in rags. Her eyes were fixed on me with a mixture curiosity and suspicion, quite unlike anything capable of Associate children. There was a second wall behind her. A soft orange light waxed and waned across it from an unseen flame.
I made no effort to move or look up or defend myself. The blow, at least for a time, had rendered me defenseless. I wasn’t helpless as much as I was entirely indifferent to my fate at that moment. Death, I decided, would be no worse that the thundering waves of pain hammering the inside of my skull and extending down throughout my body.
I was still trying to focus, my eyes still fixed the floor. A man came in the room. All I could tell at first was that he wore the high black jackboots of a Section Twenty-one trooper. I had no fear. The boots were in atrocious condition. They were worn and terribly scuffed. Cracks had formed at the ankles and across the toes so severely that the boots seemed ready to fall apart. His simple gray Associate trousers were filthy, and tucked into the tops of the boots in typical Section Twenty-one style.
“Not a shred of fight in me,” I moaned softly. It was simpler not to look up. For the moment it hardly seemed to matter.
A brutally long silence followed. It was enough to awaken some animal imperative for survival and resistance. The imperative built in my chest, but without any response from the rest of my body.
To my great surprise the man laid a cool damp rag across the back of my head. I winced, but more for the unexpected nature of the gesture. The affect in my heart and my head was instantaneous. I gave a long low groan as, for the moment, the tension eminating from my wound down into my torso was relieved.
“Obliged,” I said, reaching back to bring the rag tighter to the lump on my head.
I managed to look up, into the face of the oldest man I had ever seen. He was far older than any Associate I knew of, for he would have long ago gone to reclamation. His face was bronze in color. The deeply lined flesh as hard and weathered as the ancient leather-bound manuscripts I had come across in the archives. His face was long and square, reminding me of black and white photographs of John Brown, the abolitionist I had read about.
“Took a mighty big clomp to the lid,” he pursed his lips sympathetically. He wore bits and pieces of old Associate clothing, sewn crudely together and patched in parts. Like the child behind him, a fur wrap was thrown across his shoulders.
“Anyone you know?” I quipped, discovering that it was excruciating even to smile. “I’d like to have a word.” I felt dizzy and nauseous suddenly. “Perhaps it could wait a while.”
“My daughter is this one,” he motioned to the girl cowering behind him. “Heard that screeching and guessed she was being murdered. Couldn’t have that be, you see.”
“Just wanted to know who was pelting me with books. I was supposed to be alone down…”
“This is what she told me what happened. I figured, and then we brought you back here for fixing.”
He had such an odd way of talking. Not stupid, but simple. I gave them both a strange and perplexed look. He seemed to take immediate offense.
“Don’t think ‘cause we swill down here in the low city that manners don’t come to us!”
“Low city?”
I tried to stand, but my heads and legs conspired against me. He caught me just as I was about to spill onto the floor. He was incredibly quick and strong. It seemed no effort at all to hold me up.
“Mister, that clomp still be fresh.” He gently pushed me back to the mattress. “Best you sleep some more time then.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I had to know. “Why didn’t you just leave me in the archive?”
“Don’t let them bugs and rats eat you up.” He drew a hide across my chest and shoulders. It had a musky, salty smell. He studied me a moment. “Besides, you’re not like them kind up there in the city. You’re a different one. You dress like them. I don’t mean for your color and all, but I feel a difference in you. No sir, we don’t see many others like you.”
“Others?” Not sure I’d heard him correctly. “There are more like me?”
“Best be inside the sleep now.”
Sleep, such as it was, really was not much of a decision I had to make. That little bit had fully exhausted me. I closed my eyes, disappointed that I was far too spent to bask in the moment. I felt cheated. I could not celebrate that there were indeed others like me! I tried to imagine what I would say to them, if I would embrace them or embarrass myself with uncontrolled emotion. I was thinking all of this when the darkness descended over me once again.
The Last Man: Part Four
I held few illusions that this trial was little more than a show, at least for the Corporation. There could be no doubt they intended me for reclamation the moment judgment was rendered, as if that judgment was ever really in question. The mere fact that I had been allowed to pour through these volumes, forbidden as they were, would have been proof enough that my fate was sealed.
So why fight? Why resist the inevitable? What is the point of struggling against death, if death is the only and ultimate outcome? But death is never the enemy, only the end of pride and struggle. As for pride it is our blessing and our enslaver. To struggle is the true purpose, struggle to breath, struggle to love, and struggle to be. It is the unreasonable pressure asserted against our struggle. That is the only true enemy, and it always comes as much from within as from without. It is the conspiracy of both which robs us ultimately of liberty. In one badly damaged volume these precious words stirred me:
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
I knew nothing of this man Patrick Henry, except that he must have been extraordinary. Little of what he wrote remained. Mold had eaten away or stained many of the pages. What remained dissolved to the touch, leaving this short barely readable passage, and occupying a shred hardly the span of an open palm. Still, a man may hold exalted words and remain a bastard in life!
There was a crashing sound just beyond the limits of the lamp. I stood and turned suddenly, losing Patrick Henry’s words as they flew from my hand. Books tumbled and splashed. Whatever it was, it was much larger than the rats, who normally kept their distance. I raised the lamp higher, squinting to see better.
“Keep back!” It was clearly a child’s voice. That voice had a raw, feral sort of quality. There was a threatening quality, a fight first character I felt certain was real. “I swear I’ll rip yer guts off!”
“Out,” I shouted into the darkness. There was a moment of silence.
“What?” The voice called back.
“Rip your guts out-out, not off.”
I had never heard a child speak in such an insolent and primitive manner, particularly to an elder Associate. Such belligerence would certainly have meant an intense Redirection program and, failing that, reclamation. The Channels do instill proper hierarchical reverence and strong communication skills-GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS, one hears everywhere in the Channels.
“Show yourself,” I shouted after the phantom, attempting to sound much braver than I actually was. A book sailed out of the darkness, past my head. Another struck my chest. Not terribly hard, and I grunted more from surprise than pain.
“What is wrong with you?” I complained, dodging two more volumes. With the final one I’d had quite enough and charged over the largest mound. My feet skidded and slipped down one side, splashing brackish water onto the next mound.
I was across it in a second, batting away a panicked fusillade of fluttering and dissolving manuscripts thrown up from my fleeing little demon. It was too little too late, however. With a stumbling tackle I brought the biting and screaming urchin down.
There was a brief but furious battle amid the rotting paper, scattering insects and pungent black water. The lamp was between us, the light flickering wildly amid arms and legs and a snapping of teeth. It seemed forever before I was able to subdue the cretin, only to discover, to my great surprise, that it was a young girl!
Her simple pale filthy round face, half concealed by overlapping layers of tattered fabric, was the last thing I recall. An instant later something heavy smashed against the back of my skull. With a blinding white flash and searing sharp stab of pain the world faded to darkness and nothingness.
So why fight? Why resist the inevitable? What is the point of struggling against death, if death is the only and ultimate outcome? But death is never the enemy, only the end of pride and struggle. As for pride it is our blessing and our enslaver. To struggle is the true purpose, struggle to breath, struggle to love, and struggle to be. It is the unreasonable pressure asserted against our struggle. That is the only true enemy, and it always comes as much from within as from without. It is the conspiracy of both which robs us ultimately of liberty. In one badly damaged volume these precious words stirred me:
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
I knew nothing of this man Patrick Henry, except that he must have been extraordinary. Little of what he wrote remained. Mold had eaten away or stained many of the pages. What remained dissolved to the touch, leaving this short barely readable passage, and occupying a shred hardly the span of an open palm. Still, a man may hold exalted words and remain a bastard in life!
There was a crashing sound just beyond the limits of the lamp. I stood and turned suddenly, losing Patrick Henry’s words as they flew from my hand. Books tumbled and splashed. Whatever it was, it was much larger than the rats, who normally kept their distance. I raised the lamp higher, squinting to see better.
“Keep back!” It was clearly a child’s voice. That voice had a raw, feral sort of quality. There was a threatening quality, a fight first character I felt certain was real. “I swear I’ll rip yer guts off!”
“Out,” I shouted into the darkness. There was a moment of silence.
“What?” The voice called back.
“Rip your guts out-out, not off.”
I had never heard a child speak in such an insolent and primitive manner, particularly to an elder Associate. Such belligerence would certainly have meant an intense Redirection program and, failing that, reclamation. The Channels do instill proper hierarchical reverence and strong communication skills-GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS, one hears everywhere in the Channels.
“Show yourself,” I shouted after the phantom, attempting to sound much braver than I actually was. A book sailed out of the darkness, past my head. Another struck my chest. Not terribly hard, and I grunted more from surprise than pain.
“What is wrong with you?” I complained, dodging two more volumes. With the final one I’d had quite enough and charged over the largest mound. My feet skidded and slipped down one side, splashing brackish water onto the next mound.
I was across it in a second, batting away a panicked fusillade of fluttering and dissolving manuscripts thrown up from my fleeing little demon. It was too little too late, however. With a stumbling tackle I brought the biting and screaming urchin down.
There was a brief but furious battle amid the rotting paper, scattering insects and pungent black water. The lamp was between us, the light flickering wildly amid arms and legs and a snapping of teeth. It seemed forever before I was able to subdue the cretin, only to discover, to my great surprise, that it was a young girl!
Her simple pale filthy round face, half concealed by overlapping layers of tattered fabric, was the last thing I recall. An instant later something heavy smashed against the back of my skull. With a blinding white flash and searing sharp stab of pain the world faded to darkness and nothingness.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
THE LAST MAN: Part Three
THE LAST MAN
PART THREE
Despite assertions this is hardly a perfect society. It is imbued with all the miserable faults and foibles of the human heart. This desire for perfection, this impossible destination will certainly be the downfall of civilization, for in striving for perfection we become separate from ourselves. All the great literature, inspired thought, Art and music are the product of blessed insecurities, unrestrained passions and exalted perversions. They are unhinged anger, psychosis and guilt. Indeed, the greatest irony is that we were perhaps more perfect when we were much less perfect.
Freedom is a malleable alloy. There is no standard but what a man will or will not endure. Beyond that limit his freedom begins and ends. Within that closed room there is no consideration for anyone else’s freedom. Their freedom is an extravagance, a courtesy, not the divine sanctity of another’s solemn sovereignty. It can be bargained away. Though, in truth, the bargaining of one man’s freedom makes all other’s negotiable.
Ours was bargained away long ago. Freedom became defined more by security than by liberty. Few questioned those who blathered that the dead cannot be free, and so they bartered with the state that sovereign right for the weight of a few more breaths, a few more hours against eternity. It wasn’t wild specters that imperiled freedom, but freedom that imperiled the state. It imperiled the Corporation while it was still a small thing, while it might have been crushed and set aside among the other failed and forgotten ideologies, like fascism, and communism, feudalism and theism.
There were those who resisted Sentinel at first. Isolated and shunned by weak willed neighbors, they were quickly dealt with. Their ashes filled the sky from those first terribly crude reclamation centers. They were the lucky ones. They were the last of the truly free, the ones who would not go quietly. They cursed and stood defiant even as the flames devoured their flesh. I wonder if there were men and women like me among them. I wonder if they were the last. Perhaps they were the strongest, those most defiant. I wonder. That thought gives me strength.
It made perfect sense, on a childish level, to eliminate race from humanity. Centuries and millennia of strife, classism, racism and social stratification would be swept away. A new era of mankind, a grand step in evolution would be taken. Race was not the issue, but merely the symptom. A fool will raze the world before facing his own ignorance. The question remains of whether I represent the world or the fool?
I grew tall and lean, much taller than the other children. It was as though being black in a grayish-white world was not enough! My hair grew long and straight and stiff until I wove it into braids. My beard grew thick but short. And there I was, at first ashamed of features echoing my African ancestors.
Not that I only acknowledge that lineage. It was known even in the Twentieth Century that no man could rightly claim a single undiluted ancestry. The blessed diversity of the species was once scribbled through all races and all parts of the world. A melting pot or soup? Certainly a stew in which ingredients maintained a unique character while adding to the taste. How I must have appeared as a monster among all the rest. Now I am as a rare jewel; so proud and beautiful.
You might ask how the world came to be this way. Was it a deliberate process, or the accidental ignorance of our blind collective fate? A nation of good intentions can easily be swayed by the violent acts of a madman or a revolutionary. Broad passions about the rights of man are smothered. All the words of all the holy books ever written, all the best intentions of the enlightenment, the sanctity of the Reformation, or passions of the French revolution were rendered meaningless through the obfuscation of truth, lawyer-ism, and the collective abandonment of individual sovereignty. Hardly a revolution, it all happened with a whisper and over generations.
The Corporation had nothing to lose by putting me on trial. What they had to gain is certainly in question, for it would have been simpler just to send me to reclamation. No one would have known. There will never be any headlines and no programming concerning the trial. No Associate anywhere in the world will ever know. There will never be a popular uprising, no outrage and no curiosity. Perhaps it is a distraction from the burdens of time, or an implicit indication that some unknown and unseen autocrat in the Corporation has a conscience.
And so I was told of a secret archive where the last remaining references to the old world are kept. I was free to use them as I pleased to prepare my defense, as long as I did not take anything away. It was an incredible privilege, I understood, for I would have at my fingertips all that had become forbidden for centuries. Certain that my fate was sealed even before the trial I decided the archives would bring me closer to others like me, though they were long dead and gone.
I dreamed of them for days, hardly sleeping from breathless excitement and fantasy. I would find these treasure and consume every word as a starving body consumes every morsel or drop of food-even the tasteless, colorless vita-wafers that suffices for sustenance for Associates. My mind filled with shelves filled with endless manuscripts, of breathing in the air and scent of them. What I discovered was something much different.
Sadly the archives were not in some ancient catacomb, or some neglected but still elegant old world ruin. There were no dusty windows leaking pale dim light upon towering shelves stacked with untold volumes. There were no sheets of cobwebs to swept aside in discovery of soulful treasure. The “archive,” was in the basement of a sub-basement of one of those massive towers along the coast. Indeed, it was nearly in the low city!
It was a long descent through long sparsely lit concrete passageways and down uneven, hastily crafted steps, as if this had all been an after-thought to the building above. The air grew heavy. The biting smell of cold sewage grew stronger with each step. There were sounds; the dripping of water, the rhythmic thumping of the waves upon the shore, the groan and settle of the building.
At last I came to a metal door. The hinges had rusted and it was with some effort that I finally managed to open it. There was no light inside. That paltry light from the hall fell on some strange shape, like a creature slumbering in its tomb which, now disturbed, would turn and devour me. I half believed, fear banging against the inside of my chest, that the Corporation had somehow tricked me into that bitter end.
There was a small lamp in my jacket. The light was pathetic, but just enough to reveal what was called an archive. In a single great heap, and a number of smaller ones, the wisdom and works of mankind rotted and moldered: Kish, Mandela, Plato, Ellison, Dostoevsky, Freud, Ovid, Sefi Atta, Castaneda, GuanZi, Twain and Dante.
Standing water made islands of each great mound. Obsidian black, the water appeared like some mirror to another world. Stagnate pools had rotted many of the volumes into formless mush. Many more had been devoured or ruined by insects and rats that swarmed in places. What remained was terribly fragile under anything but the most careful touch. How sad, as I sat upon this throne built from the rotting history, wisdom and confession of humanity, like some sad monarch of nothing.
PART THREE
Despite assertions this is hardly a perfect society. It is imbued with all the miserable faults and foibles of the human heart. This desire for perfection, this impossible destination will certainly be the downfall of civilization, for in striving for perfection we become separate from ourselves. All the great literature, inspired thought, Art and music are the product of blessed insecurities, unrestrained passions and exalted perversions. They are unhinged anger, psychosis and guilt. Indeed, the greatest irony is that we were perhaps more perfect when we were much less perfect.
Freedom is a malleable alloy. There is no standard but what a man will or will not endure. Beyond that limit his freedom begins and ends. Within that closed room there is no consideration for anyone else’s freedom. Their freedom is an extravagance, a courtesy, not the divine sanctity of another’s solemn sovereignty. It can be bargained away. Though, in truth, the bargaining of one man’s freedom makes all other’s negotiable.
Ours was bargained away long ago. Freedom became defined more by security than by liberty. Few questioned those who blathered that the dead cannot be free, and so they bartered with the state that sovereign right for the weight of a few more breaths, a few more hours against eternity. It wasn’t wild specters that imperiled freedom, but freedom that imperiled the state. It imperiled the Corporation while it was still a small thing, while it might have been crushed and set aside among the other failed and forgotten ideologies, like fascism, and communism, feudalism and theism.
There were those who resisted Sentinel at first. Isolated and shunned by weak willed neighbors, they were quickly dealt with. Their ashes filled the sky from those first terribly crude reclamation centers. They were the lucky ones. They were the last of the truly free, the ones who would not go quietly. They cursed and stood defiant even as the flames devoured their flesh. I wonder if there were men and women like me among them. I wonder if they were the last. Perhaps they were the strongest, those most defiant. I wonder. That thought gives me strength.
It made perfect sense, on a childish level, to eliminate race from humanity. Centuries and millennia of strife, classism, racism and social stratification would be swept away. A new era of mankind, a grand step in evolution would be taken. Race was not the issue, but merely the symptom. A fool will raze the world before facing his own ignorance. The question remains of whether I represent the world or the fool?
I grew tall and lean, much taller than the other children. It was as though being black in a grayish-white world was not enough! My hair grew long and straight and stiff until I wove it into braids. My beard grew thick but short. And there I was, at first ashamed of features echoing my African ancestors.
Not that I only acknowledge that lineage. It was known even in the Twentieth Century that no man could rightly claim a single undiluted ancestry. The blessed diversity of the species was once scribbled through all races and all parts of the world. A melting pot or soup? Certainly a stew in which ingredients maintained a unique character while adding to the taste. How I must have appeared as a monster among all the rest. Now I am as a rare jewel; so proud and beautiful.
You might ask how the world came to be this way. Was it a deliberate process, or the accidental ignorance of our blind collective fate? A nation of good intentions can easily be swayed by the violent acts of a madman or a revolutionary. Broad passions about the rights of man are smothered. All the words of all the holy books ever written, all the best intentions of the enlightenment, the sanctity of the Reformation, or passions of the French revolution were rendered meaningless through the obfuscation of truth, lawyer-ism, and the collective abandonment of individual sovereignty. Hardly a revolution, it all happened with a whisper and over generations.
The Corporation had nothing to lose by putting me on trial. What they had to gain is certainly in question, for it would have been simpler just to send me to reclamation. No one would have known. There will never be any headlines and no programming concerning the trial. No Associate anywhere in the world will ever know. There will never be a popular uprising, no outrage and no curiosity. Perhaps it is a distraction from the burdens of time, or an implicit indication that some unknown and unseen autocrat in the Corporation has a conscience.
And so I was told of a secret archive where the last remaining references to the old world are kept. I was free to use them as I pleased to prepare my defense, as long as I did not take anything away. It was an incredible privilege, I understood, for I would have at my fingertips all that had become forbidden for centuries. Certain that my fate was sealed even before the trial I decided the archives would bring me closer to others like me, though they were long dead and gone.
I dreamed of them for days, hardly sleeping from breathless excitement and fantasy. I would find these treasure and consume every word as a starving body consumes every morsel or drop of food-even the tasteless, colorless vita-wafers that suffices for sustenance for Associates. My mind filled with shelves filled with endless manuscripts, of breathing in the air and scent of them. What I discovered was something much different.
Sadly the archives were not in some ancient catacomb, or some neglected but still elegant old world ruin. There were no dusty windows leaking pale dim light upon towering shelves stacked with untold volumes. There were no sheets of cobwebs to swept aside in discovery of soulful treasure. The “archive,” was in the basement of a sub-basement of one of those massive towers along the coast. Indeed, it was nearly in the low city!
It was a long descent through long sparsely lit concrete passageways and down uneven, hastily crafted steps, as if this had all been an after-thought to the building above. The air grew heavy. The biting smell of cold sewage grew stronger with each step. There were sounds; the dripping of water, the rhythmic thumping of the waves upon the shore, the groan and settle of the building.
At last I came to a metal door. The hinges had rusted and it was with some effort that I finally managed to open it. There was no light inside. That paltry light from the hall fell on some strange shape, like a creature slumbering in its tomb which, now disturbed, would turn and devour me. I half believed, fear banging against the inside of my chest, that the Corporation had somehow tricked me into that bitter end.
There was a small lamp in my jacket. The light was pathetic, but just enough to reveal what was called an archive. In a single great heap, and a number of smaller ones, the wisdom and works of mankind rotted and moldered: Kish, Mandela, Plato, Ellison, Dostoevsky, Freud, Ovid, Sefi Atta, Castaneda, GuanZi, Twain and Dante.
Standing water made islands of each great mound. Obsidian black, the water appeared like some mirror to another world. Stagnate pools had rotted many of the volumes into formless mush. Many more had been devoured or ruined by insects and rats that swarmed in places. What remained was terribly fragile under anything but the most careful touch. How sad, as I sat upon this throne built from the rotting history, wisdom and confession of humanity, like some sad monarch of nothing.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Last Man: Part Two
It is wrong to assume anything akin to love between my parents. They were like the others, simple Associates and nothing more. I cannot even tell you their names. Their faces I know only from the case file, small two by two inch images without names or traceable numbers. Not that it would matter. There was no more thought to their coupling than a sneeze or a yawn, or the evacuation of a bladder. It was a release, the chemical fusion of egg and spermatozoa. It was a mandate, reproduction and production, the only measurable criteria for avoiding reclamation. There are only two things certain in life, they say; reclamation and the Corporation.
It is amusing to imagine the horror on the faces of the doctors as I was pulled brown and glorious from my mother’s womb. I can well imagine her horror as well. As if she was guilty of some misdeed, or felonious affront to society. There is no way of knowing, of course. There is nothing in the file. But my sense is that she and my father were sent to reclamation after that. Their files end abruptly the day I was born, and nothing more is heard from them again.
And so I charged headlong into the world, a stain on the conscience of man, an aberration that becomes the accusation. Of course that assumes that I was intended to survive at all. In a world where aberrations are extinguished, removed from the world by Section Twenty-one, reclaimed for spare parts and recycled bio-mass, I was saved. I was saved because of the color of my skin. I was saved to further the frontiers of genetic science.
A child must learn that the world is a dangerous place, and that life is always a fatal condition. The child evolves into recognizing the differences among people alternately as threats and blessings. Such things are taught as much as learned. From the youngest age my recollection was one of being segregated from the other children. Where they were channeled into conformity, parceled into channels and skills to benefit society and the Corporation, I was left alone. While they found community, I found that these thoughts, running so deep, were all that I could rely upon. While I as different was eschewed, they as the status quo were embraced.
I am certain, though I cannot prove, that I was slated for reclamation a hundred, perhaps a thousand times. The hidden hand of the Corporation was impotent in the face of the arrogance of science. And as I, by merely existing, had humiliated science, it’s pride could only be saved by proving I was a freak aberration and not something more. After all, the mere thought of individuality had been bred from humanity, and that which could not be bred out was socialized and marginalized. I should not have existed, and yet there I was, and that is what ultimately saved me.
But life is not merely survival. To survive, to truly survive depends upon so much more. There were caregivers, teachers, doctors, and even scientists who were kind. Nothing overt, but those rare moments of kindness and mercy came as a sudden downpour over the desert of my young heart. I collected them, held each one as though it was a precious jewel.
I think that is where I began to believe that I was special, altogether different from all the rest. Not just because of my color, but because I was saved, because I was rescued from death. There were children who could not or would not conform.. Some would fight, asserting their independence, or cry uncontrollably. All of them were removed from the group and sent away for reclamation. Some simply passed away in the night. The Corporation has no use for the weak. A few escaped, probably to the low city and to an unknown fate.
The hours and days and years I have struggled to understand why I was saved. Not by virtue of the Corporation’s benevolence, Science’s egotism or Section Twenty-one’s oversight, but by something eternally and intrinsically human. It was my obsession, but mercy and decency and hope defy science and cynicism. Not that any of those were the intention of the Corporation. They are random acts, imponderables that bely our humanity, and by quirk or by fate have not entirely been erased from humanity.
For fear of endangering one such Associate I will relate a story here. Do I fear for her safety? Absolutely, but then I console my guilty conscience with the knowledge that after so many years surely she has gone to reclamation by now. The decrepit and unproductive are obsolete and a burden on society. Certainly her ashes have long ago been thrown into the wind. This is how I assuage my guilt over relating this story .Rationalism, the most dangerous characteristic of the human heart, for it is the lie every man employs to hide the truth even from himself.
My earliest recollection is of the Channels. It would be wrong here to suppose anything akin to the once practiced sort of education children were once subjected to in the Twenty-first or even the Twenty-second Century. To be sure it was a step in the evolution of the Channels. Manual dexterity meant a life in data entry, electronics or production. A strong constitution guaranteed physical labor. Agility predicted a life in the service, or among the ranks of Section Twenty-one. The weakest and slowest were ignored, left to starve until they died or were scheduled for reclamation. The most obstinate escaped to the low city to live and die like scavenging vermin. Not even the Corporation or Section Twenty-one venture into the Low city.
In the Channels I was neither slow nor weak. I was nothing, which was altogether worse. If there is hope a body will fight for every moment of existence, a hypocrisy in the face of eternity. But there comes a time when even the most obstinate and independent child comprehends the futility of life. That may be nothing more than a confluence of loneliness and loss of hope
These brave words, my defiance might have been extinguished forever. The possibility (or impossibility) of me, of these moments might have been reshuffled among the infinite card deck of possibilities. That single understanding reveals the true nature of fate, but also of hope.
I recall that I was terribly young. I would say five or six solar years of age. It is impossible to say for certain as those records are the property of the Corporation. The months and years pass uncounted in the seemingly endless Arctic days and nights. To the Associate, time has no more relevance than a passing sneeze. Time is a character of the individual, and that was long ago erased.
Centuries ago, in the folklore of the time, people believed in angels. Did angels ever really exist? Were they real or an amalgam of all that is good in the human species? As history has been erased as irrelevant, except in my case, and only to satisfy the Corporation’s illusion of fairness. Who can say? For my part I believe in angels, at least the earthly sort. It is the reason that I offer this defense, this rebellion, this subversion.
“You must eat this, child. “ The woman’s voice was almost at a whisper, very soft and low. Her face was obscured in shadow. She was daring Sentinel, but apparently the Corporation was uncertain on how to deal with me. The other children were asleep. Their rhythmic breaths rose as a chorus through the hall. A thousand, ten thousand beds, and I alone was dying among that sea.
I can still feel the concern and humanity in her voice, as clearly as if she was in the room with me now. Her hand gently cradled my head, lifting to a spoon and salty warm liquid. Most of that first spoonful dripped down my chin. It was the first human contact I had ever known, save for the other children who would dare each other to run and touch me. Every night she would visit me for food and her saving touch. Sometimes the smallest mercy can change the world.
In time she would lay beside me, as if some part of her longed for a closeness long mandated out of existence. It was as though, despite science, socialization and the imperative s of the Corporation, part of our earlier history resonated within her. Could its productivity be measured? Certainly not, but to me, in that dark and quiet hall, it was beyond measure.
“Why?” I managed to ask her, my cheek pressed to the softness and warmth of her breath. I could feel the beating of her heart and felt so connected to the Universe. At that moment eternity was less a threat, and instead was to be pitied in its endless march. For in that march it was without the capacity to appreciate the beauty of a moment.
“I don’t know,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “Something I, I…you’re so very special.”
“Why am I different?”
She thought a moment, running her fingers over my hair. “You must fight them by fighting for yourself. Fight them every step and they will allow you to live, enough to challenge them, but never enough to frustrate them.”
“There is no other way?”
“I don’t know why you are different, but you are here, and that is all I can tell you. Just know that you are very special indeed.”
A tear fell across her cheek. She caught it and pressed her wet fingertips to my cheek. She held me tight, muffling a cry. In the morning when I awoke she was gone. Perhaps Section Twenty-one had taken her away for the offense of compassion. Maybe she realized her transgression or was reassigned. I took it in stride and took her words to heart, and never saw her again.
It is amusing to imagine the horror on the faces of the doctors as I was pulled brown and glorious from my mother’s womb. I can well imagine her horror as well. As if she was guilty of some misdeed, or felonious affront to society. There is no way of knowing, of course. There is nothing in the file. But my sense is that she and my father were sent to reclamation after that. Their files end abruptly the day I was born, and nothing more is heard from them again.
And so I charged headlong into the world, a stain on the conscience of man, an aberration that becomes the accusation. Of course that assumes that I was intended to survive at all. In a world where aberrations are extinguished, removed from the world by Section Twenty-one, reclaimed for spare parts and recycled bio-mass, I was saved. I was saved because of the color of my skin. I was saved to further the frontiers of genetic science.
A child must learn that the world is a dangerous place, and that life is always a fatal condition. The child evolves into recognizing the differences among people alternately as threats and blessings. Such things are taught as much as learned. From the youngest age my recollection was one of being segregated from the other children. Where they were channeled into conformity, parceled into channels and skills to benefit society and the Corporation, I was left alone. While they found community, I found that these thoughts, running so deep, were all that I could rely upon. While I as different was eschewed, they as the status quo were embraced.
I am certain, though I cannot prove, that I was slated for reclamation a hundred, perhaps a thousand times. The hidden hand of the Corporation was impotent in the face of the arrogance of science. And as I, by merely existing, had humiliated science, it’s pride could only be saved by proving I was a freak aberration and not something more. After all, the mere thought of individuality had been bred from humanity, and that which could not be bred out was socialized and marginalized. I should not have existed, and yet there I was, and that is what ultimately saved me.
But life is not merely survival. To survive, to truly survive depends upon so much more. There were caregivers, teachers, doctors, and even scientists who were kind. Nothing overt, but those rare moments of kindness and mercy came as a sudden downpour over the desert of my young heart. I collected them, held each one as though it was a precious jewel.
I think that is where I began to believe that I was special, altogether different from all the rest. Not just because of my color, but because I was saved, because I was rescued from death. There were children who could not or would not conform.. Some would fight, asserting their independence, or cry uncontrollably. All of them were removed from the group and sent away for reclamation. Some simply passed away in the night. The Corporation has no use for the weak. A few escaped, probably to the low city and to an unknown fate.
The hours and days and years I have struggled to understand why I was saved. Not by virtue of the Corporation’s benevolence, Science’s egotism or Section Twenty-one’s oversight, but by something eternally and intrinsically human. It was my obsession, but mercy and decency and hope defy science and cynicism. Not that any of those were the intention of the Corporation. They are random acts, imponderables that bely our humanity, and by quirk or by fate have not entirely been erased from humanity.
For fear of endangering one such Associate I will relate a story here. Do I fear for her safety? Absolutely, but then I console my guilty conscience with the knowledge that after so many years surely she has gone to reclamation by now. The decrepit and unproductive are obsolete and a burden on society. Certainly her ashes have long ago been thrown into the wind. This is how I assuage my guilt over relating this story .Rationalism, the most dangerous characteristic of the human heart, for it is the lie every man employs to hide the truth even from himself.
My earliest recollection is of the Channels. It would be wrong here to suppose anything akin to the once practiced sort of education children were once subjected to in the Twenty-first or even the Twenty-second Century. To be sure it was a step in the evolution of the Channels. Manual dexterity meant a life in data entry, electronics or production. A strong constitution guaranteed physical labor. Agility predicted a life in the service, or among the ranks of Section Twenty-one. The weakest and slowest were ignored, left to starve until they died or were scheduled for reclamation. The most obstinate escaped to the low city to live and die like scavenging vermin. Not even the Corporation or Section Twenty-one venture into the Low city.
In the Channels I was neither slow nor weak. I was nothing, which was altogether worse. If there is hope a body will fight for every moment of existence, a hypocrisy in the face of eternity. But there comes a time when even the most obstinate and independent child comprehends the futility of life. That may be nothing more than a confluence of loneliness and loss of hope
These brave words, my defiance might have been extinguished forever. The possibility (or impossibility) of me, of these moments might have been reshuffled among the infinite card deck of possibilities. That single understanding reveals the true nature of fate, but also of hope.
I recall that I was terribly young. I would say five or six solar years of age. It is impossible to say for certain as those records are the property of the Corporation. The months and years pass uncounted in the seemingly endless Arctic days and nights. To the Associate, time has no more relevance than a passing sneeze. Time is a character of the individual, and that was long ago erased.
Centuries ago, in the folklore of the time, people believed in angels. Did angels ever really exist? Were they real or an amalgam of all that is good in the human species? As history has been erased as irrelevant, except in my case, and only to satisfy the Corporation’s illusion of fairness. Who can say? For my part I believe in angels, at least the earthly sort. It is the reason that I offer this defense, this rebellion, this subversion.
“You must eat this, child. “ The woman’s voice was almost at a whisper, very soft and low. Her face was obscured in shadow. She was daring Sentinel, but apparently the Corporation was uncertain on how to deal with me. The other children were asleep. Their rhythmic breaths rose as a chorus through the hall. A thousand, ten thousand beds, and I alone was dying among that sea.
I can still feel the concern and humanity in her voice, as clearly as if she was in the room with me now. Her hand gently cradled my head, lifting to a spoon and salty warm liquid. Most of that first spoonful dripped down my chin. It was the first human contact I had ever known, save for the other children who would dare each other to run and touch me. Every night she would visit me for food and her saving touch. Sometimes the smallest mercy can change the world.
In time she would lay beside me, as if some part of her longed for a closeness long mandated out of existence. It was as though, despite science, socialization and the imperative s of the Corporation, part of our earlier history resonated within her. Could its productivity be measured? Certainly not, but to me, in that dark and quiet hall, it was beyond measure.
“Why?” I managed to ask her, my cheek pressed to the softness and warmth of her breath. I could feel the beating of her heart and felt so connected to the Universe. At that moment eternity was less a threat, and instead was to be pitied in its endless march. For in that march it was without the capacity to appreciate the beauty of a moment.
“I don’t know,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “Something I, I…you’re so very special.”
“Why am I different?”
She thought a moment, running her fingers over my hair. “You must fight them by fighting for yourself. Fight them every step and they will allow you to live, enough to challenge them, but never enough to frustrate them.”
“There is no other way?”
“I don’t know why you are different, but you are here, and that is all I can tell you. Just know that you are very special indeed.”
A tear fell across her cheek. She caught it and pressed her wet fingertips to my cheek. She held me tight, muffling a cry. In the morning when I awoke she was gone. Perhaps Section Twenty-one had taken her away for the offense of compassion. Maybe she realized her transgression or was reassigned. I took it in stride and took her words to heart, and never saw her again.
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