Only a fool believes human life has ever held any real value. Selective lives perhaps. One’s own life is most precious to them, but beyond that all life becomes negotiable. All wars, governments and economies are based upon that singular fact. Life is, in fact, an exorbitantly expensive proposition, not at all compatible with the bottom line imperative of economic theory. It is a cruel juxtaposition that a society values, or devalues life against the abstraction and invention of markets and economics.
It was the same for the Corporation, whose core philosophy of efficiency was a lie, or worse, a blind hypocrisy! It was no more evident than in the sewers below the Reclamation center. Great fissures had opened where the combination of stress and neglect had conspired to undermine the “great society.”. In places hasty repairs were made to prevent catastrophic collapse of the structures above. Those repairs were primitive, hasty and deadly gambles. The bones of those who perished anonymously in that desperate endeavor remained scattered about the ground. One poor soul had become entrapped in a mammoth mass of concrete and wire, forever imprisoned, the skull’s mouth agape, the eyes empty and haunting. The concrete held the bony fingers in place where they clawed desperately in eternal escape.
We slipped quickly into one broad fissure, single file through a narrow gap between two walls. There was no light here. We moved by torchlight. Bethune was ahead of me. Like the others her full attention remained on the route ahead. Taller than the rest I was forced to bend and twist to make it through at all. Behind me the remainder of Bethune’s security force followed. I felt cornered once more, and broke into a sweat, the breaths trapped and falling short in my chest.
We were below the Reclamation center that much was certain. The massive furnaces warmed the near wall. No one spoke a word, but if we had the din would have forced us to shout. Smoke leaked into the passage. Bethune and her guards quickly covered their faces. I had only my sleeve, but as the passage grew narrower raising my arms at all became nearly impossible. The smoke stung at my eyes and burned in my nose and throat. The wall grew hotter with each step until it was almost too much to touch at all. It was little consolation that the smoke had lessened somewhat.
At last we came to small black chamber. It was crowded well enough, and several of Bethune’s guards were forced to crouch against the wall to make room. The air was quickly heavy and humid with the press of bodies. Flickering amber torchlight fell upon the sloping floor where a wall had collapse in broad, broken chunks of concrete. To one side a newer wall had tipped and now rested precariously against the far wall. It was fractured in a hundred places and seemed about to crumble at any moment. Death, in that case, would be instantaneous.
The shuddering rumble from the Reclamation Center overhead did nothing to quiet my fears of being crushed and buried forever in that place. Behind us lay the way we had come, hardly more that a dark crag in the wall. Opposite, and a treacherous climb over jagged rock and tangled rebar was the only other way from the chamber. Bethune touched my arm, tearing me from taking stock of this bewildering scene. A number of her entourage where already climbing up to that new hole, pulling themselves up and into it. She motioned for me to follow.
It was an arduous climb. Bethune was ahead of me, carried on the back of a guard. I was awed by that awesome display of strength and fortitude. Her example encouraged and rallied me higher, and further than I might have managed alone. This was not a natural space. Hand and footholds had been carved and hacked into the walls. Fatigue burned in my shoulders and arms after only a short climb. A distant sliver of drowning light high above grew as a promise. The need to reach it outweighed life itself, for the combination of terror and an un-abiding hatred for that place compelled and inspired me forward with a renewed energy. When I at last reached the top a sudden upwelling of emotion nearly caused me to cry out. Only the incredible sight before me held those fluid and volatile emotions in check.
We emerged upon a high ledge, among sturdy iron lattice framing the top half of the building. From within the Reclamation Center appeared even larger and more ubiquitous that it appeared from the city. It would have been nothing for a small aircraft to run a circuit around the interior. Perhaps, depending upon the stalwart nerves of the operator, it might even cut among the lower fifth of the smoke stacks held within the building.
The architecture was, from books I had devoured on the subject, an abused and organic sort of Romanesque, like the ancient Porta Nirga in what was once the ancient city of Trier. Below the wide ledge Bethune and I stood, overlapping rows of great stone pillars a hundred of feet high dwarfed the long queue of doomed Associates assembled neatly in rows of 5. The long column wound out into the permanent twilight where thousands waited stoically to meet their end. Their heads were bowed, hands laid upon the shoulders of those before them as black clad Section Twenty-one troops pressed them ever forward. The tunics of each Associate had been removed leaving them naked and vulnerable. No one wailed or begged for mercy or resisted. The line crept forward, ever forward, snaking through guide-walls that wound and narrowed, extinguishing any hope for escape. The walls and pillars were blackened overall, and scorched deeply in places where huge conflagrations had swept the great hall in the past.
A crippled and tarnished light fell through a row of high windows at the top of the building. These sooty pinnacles shifted slowly around us, chased and eclipsed by smoke pouring without end from three brick smokestacks that even here appeared impossibly tall. The light faded steadily, like truth before a well crafted lie, so that the scene below remained in a permanent dusk. It merged with a monstrous opera, the thunder of machinery, the roar of the furnaces and the cries of the doomed.
The air held its own character as well. The stink of burning flesh, of vomit and waste joined that of singed stone and brick. They joined with the heat of three great furnaces, whose arched and gaping entrances were akin to looking into the setting sun. I lifted a hand to cover my nose and mouth, but with little affect.
Even in the murky light of the hall it was possible to discern some long abandoned order to this place, to see where Associates arrived for Reclamation. In that order it was even possible to project a sort of perverted mercifulness on the part of the Corporation. A sort of triage area where Associates were once injected lethally now stood empty and forgotten, but for exhausted and distraught Reclaimers that were scattered about and among simple slabs of stone. But order and efficiency could hardly describe the scene below any longer.
Bethune and I moved closer to the ledge, looking out across the barbaric theater, the capitol lie, the murderous hidden hand of the Corporation. The others remained well hidden behind us. Bethune and I were protected from view by those shifting talons of light. Below the windows I spied a blue sentinel safely confused among a flock of cooing and chattering pigeons. I left Bethune and stepped right to the edge, near enough that with hardly any effort I could have flung myself off. The cruelty and hopelessness the Reclamation Center evoked were nearly enough to compel me to do just that. Oh, Dante you could hardly have conceived of a crueler or darker hell!
Ten Reclaimers met each new group. These Reclaimers reminded me of the faces I had seen in the Low City. A glance to Bethune brought a solemn nod that confirmed that terrible truth. They were stripped to the waist, soot-stained, their sinewy bodies painted and scarred by their unending task. There was a heaviness in every movement as they led each Associate to the ovens. It was the weight of a soul that has died in a body that has yet to realize the pointless end awaiting.
A single electric jolt to the neck felled each Associate into unconsciousness. Quickly they were carried forward and thrown alive into the flames. But what might have seemed at first to be a merciful, if horrifying end, was instead far more nightmarish and chaotic. Most were quickly consumed. Others, as if suddenly awakened from a stupor, flailed and convulsed in the flames. Others escaped fully alight, only to meet their end and be driven back at the point of long iron pikes. A few of these human torches reached their would-be slave executioners in running, murderous battles beyond any human description. One body, so animated by vengeance, flesh curling and blackening from the flames devouring him, fended off stabbing pikes to drag a Reclaimer back into the oven, like some devil come to claim a soul.
This, this was the ultimate outcome of denying the human heart. This was the logical destination along the road of a history followed blindly. It was not that evil resided in that heart, but that it was burdened by this cursed animal flesh, for all its blind intentions. That flesh is far too short-sighted and far too selfish, conspiring to convince the heart that it is the bearer of ultimate sin. Pondering this I pulled gently at my tunic, as though I might tear that flesh away.
I moved a hand across my sorrowful heart and lamented that the will of the flesh was strong enough to turn mankind from the ultimate lessons of history. Man had instead become embroiled in the episodes of history, confusing one for another. Mankind had confused weakness with compassion, control over reason, and in the process had abandoned its own heart…
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Last Man: Part Ten
Bethune handed me one of the bricks. The texture was coarse, and seemed as if it might crumble under the slightest pressure. In fact they were quite strong. This was the source of the stale ammonia smell I had noticed while bound and blindfolded. I tested the brick’s weight in my hand. Each was much lighter than it appeared. They were light enough that children could carry a dozen or more on their backs. I watched them come and go, returning empty handed and leaving quickly with a fresh bundle.
She lifted it from my hand and placed it among the others, her fingers trailing from the brick almost lovingly, as if it was a prize possession. Bethune faced the wall and regarded it with great satisfaction, the way a muralist might stand before his work, fully dwarfed and engulfed by that work. She turned, her face much brighter than before. Her collection had enlivened her.
They were stacked to the ceiling, 12 high and three deep, running the length of a long shadowy chamber that formed the foundation of a building. The city had been built and rebuilt so many times that it was literally honeycombed with such chambers. The people of the Low City had carved tunnels that interconnected the chambers and sewers in an impossible maze. That was the real power Bethune and her followers could rely upon. In open battle they would be decimated by Section Twenty-one troops, but in the Low City Bethune’s fighters would bleed their enemy in Guerilla-style combat, or unleash attacks on the city itself.
“This is what you wish the Corporation and Section Twenty-one to see?”
“Not so much see as know,” she took my arm again, leading me away. John Brown remained behind. “These bricks, their waste, is our weapon. The Corporation should know that we long for a peaceful life, but we will settle for a just death if provoked.”
My thoughts were terribly conflicted. I recalled our conversation about memory and Sentinel and altering my thoughts. Was betrayal of these people as simple as the burden of memory? Could I reform and reshape memory to thwart sentinel? I replied to her as honestly as I knew how.
“I feel torn.”
“Of course you do.”
“Part of me would betray you.”
“And part of you sympathizes with our struggle.”
“Without doubt.”
“An honest man,”
“An honest man will have no other,” I replied, quoting Thomas Jefferson.
“Best I should be on good behavior then,” she smiled.
Perhaps my reticence was in understanding the relationship between the people of the Low City and the Corporation. To be sure it was complex, and hardly a simple conflict between good and evil. It was as intimate as old world marriages, as conflict, hate and vengeance bonds adversaries for eternity. Perhaps it was something more. Perhaps it was that Bethune, by employing children and bargaining with the lives of all the rest, had come to reflect her enemy much more than she realized. Had had each side descended to the inhumanity or proposed inhumanity of their adversary? It was an easy line to cross in war, for all its myriad moral and ethical negotiations and entanglements.
I needed to rest a moment. It was all too much, both the journey and sorting all of this out. I felt as weak as I had in the sewers earlier. Bethune gently stroked my cheek. She had softened considerably, her caring reminding me of the woman in the Channels who had saved me with that same loving touch as a child. This time I believe it was genuine on her part.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’ve had better days.”
A bit of fresh air will do nicely.” There was a hidden intention behind her words. Perhaps there was genuine respect and caring, but how much it was from unselfish humanity was impossible to say. What was true, above all else, was that I was a propaganda tool for Bethune and her movement. It was important never to forget that simple fact.
From the catacombs we entered the sewers again. A phalanx of bodyguards led the way, while more followed as a rear guard. They were vigilant and ready for a fight at every turn. Throughout the sewers Sentinel had been smashed or disabled almost as quickly as Section Twenty-one put them up. Unprepared or unwilling to fight a brutal and protracted war against the Low City, Section Twenty-one quickly abandoned the effort. At one junction, there among the brownish-gray filth, we came upon evidence of how hastily Section Twenty-one had quit the fight. Still partially clad in their black uniforms, and picked over my dogs and other vermin were the remains of two troopers.
The sewers at last opened to a narrow stretch of beach. It came sudden and unexpected around the last bend. The salty sea air came over me as a merciful release of pressure might save a smothering man. I gulped in that first breath, and felt its power rush into every cell of my body, returning me to full life. Bethune’s fighters seemed unmoved by it, and Bethune herself almost seemed repelled at first. They had grown accustomed to the sewers, the dark labyrinth and stealing from place to place to keep clear of Sentinel and Section Twenty-one. Both sides doubtless had long ago forgotten what the real reason for the conflict was. All wars are the same. The real reasons fade and are buried from the first blood, the first drop of blood and an endless parade of crimes and perceived crimes by all sides.
Filth ran in a ruddy-brown rivulet from the lip of the sewer opening. It trickled across the narrow sand where it mixed with the sea. The lazily swelling surf drew it along the shore line in an oily sheen. The sun had swung back to where I had last seen it at the settlement among John Brown’s family. A solar day had passed for the world. A lifetime had passed for me, it seemed.
A dozen or so of Bethune’s security force dropped to the sand and took up defensive positions along the sea wall. It was much easier to discern the successive levels of the city here than in the tunnels and sewers. They were built upon one another like stratified layers of rock. They bulged outward under their combined mass and the weight of the new city rising through low clouds. We were very near the Reclamation center. The low rumble of its massive furnaces shook the earth. Wind off the sea scattered the smoke plume from towering stacks into a thick orange brown haze.
It was hardly more than fifteen or eighteen centimeters to the beach. I climbed down first and held a hand to Bethune. She took it gratefully. With a grimace and self-effacing groan Bethune struggled from the opening down to the beach.
“Thank you, my dear,” she held tight to my arm. She smiled philosophically. “The Corporation has done away with the aged. I’ll tell you, it is quite a privilege. I cherish every day for its new perspectives and greater knowledge, but it comes at the terrible price of a vibrant and increasingly unusable body.”
“It almost makes the Corporation’s case,” I offered, referring of course to Reclamation.
We went slowly along the seawall. Periodically my gaze would drift to the ruins out at sea. By this light the fires seemed brighter and more certain than ever. They flickered wildly, no doubt the excited motions of people moving back and forth. I thought to ask Bethune about them, about whether she had been there or knew anything of the people there. The question, at least for now, seemed entirely out of place.
“If you happen to believe the Corporation should hold the power of life and death,” she said. “Shouldn’t that freedom be sacrosanct to the individual?”
“When are the individual’s rights outweighed by the needs of the community?”
“Or the Corporation?”
I nodded. “Or the Corporation.”
“The rights of the individual are at the core of our struggle in the Low City.”
“And so you would sacrifice thousands for that noble cause?” I baited.
“If absolutely necessary,” she replied quickly.
“For the needs of the society the rights of those individuals are bartered.”
Bethune stopped and stared at me for some time. There was a storm of thoughts and emotions in her eyes. They were at once explosive and surprised. All at once her expression changed and she smiled broadly.
“I believe you almost are ready to face the Corporation. But first there is one last thing you must see.”
We turned and started back for the sewers. The bodyguards retreated as well, forming something of a protective human envelope around us. I paused a moment for one last glance to the ruins. I lingered just a little too long. One of the guards ushered me up into the sewer and back among the world of shadows.
She lifted it from my hand and placed it among the others, her fingers trailing from the brick almost lovingly, as if it was a prize possession. Bethune faced the wall and regarded it with great satisfaction, the way a muralist might stand before his work, fully dwarfed and engulfed by that work. She turned, her face much brighter than before. Her collection had enlivened her.
They were stacked to the ceiling, 12 high and three deep, running the length of a long shadowy chamber that formed the foundation of a building. The city had been built and rebuilt so many times that it was literally honeycombed with such chambers. The people of the Low City had carved tunnels that interconnected the chambers and sewers in an impossible maze. That was the real power Bethune and her followers could rely upon. In open battle they would be decimated by Section Twenty-one troops, but in the Low City Bethune’s fighters would bleed their enemy in Guerilla-style combat, or unleash attacks on the city itself.
“This is what you wish the Corporation and Section Twenty-one to see?”
“Not so much see as know,” she took my arm again, leading me away. John Brown remained behind. “These bricks, their waste, is our weapon. The Corporation should know that we long for a peaceful life, but we will settle for a just death if provoked.”
My thoughts were terribly conflicted. I recalled our conversation about memory and Sentinel and altering my thoughts. Was betrayal of these people as simple as the burden of memory? Could I reform and reshape memory to thwart sentinel? I replied to her as honestly as I knew how.
“I feel torn.”
“Of course you do.”
“Part of me would betray you.”
“And part of you sympathizes with our struggle.”
“Without doubt.”
“An honest man,”
“An honest man will have no other,” I replied, quoting Thomas Jefferson.
“Best I should be on good behavior then,” she smiled.
Perhaps my reticence was in understanding the relationship between the people of the Low City and the Corporation. To be sure it was complex, and hardly a simple conflict between good and evil. It was as intimate as old world marriages, as conflict, hate and vengeance bonds adversaries for eternity. Perhaps it was something more. Perhaps it was that Bethune, by employing children and bargaining with the lives of all the rest, had come to reflect her enemy much more than she realized. Had had each side descended to the inhumanity or proposed inhumanity of their adversary? It was an easy line to cross in war, for all its myriad moral and ethical negotiations and entanglements.
I needed to rest a moment. It was all too much, both the journey and sorting all of this out. I felt as weak as I had in the sewers earlier. Bethune gently stroked my cheek. She had softened considerably, her caring reminding me of the woman in the Channels who had saved me with that same loving touch as a child. This time I believe it was genuine on her part.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’ve had better days.”
A bit of fresh air will do nicely.” There was a hidden intention behind her words. Perhaps there was genuine respect and caring, but how much it was from unselfish humanity was impossible to say. What was true, above all else, was that I was a propaganda tool for Bethune and her movement. It was important never to forget that simple fact.
From the catacombs we entered the sewers again. A phalanx of bodyguards led the way, while more followed as a rear guard. They were vigilant and ready for a fight at every turn. Throughout the sewers Sentinel had been smashed or disabled almost as quickly as Section Twenty-one put them up. Unprepared or unwilling to fight a brutal and protracted war against the Low City, Section Twenty-one quickly abandoned the effort. At one junction, there among the brownish-gray filth, we came upon evidence of how hastily Section Twenty-one had quit the fight. Still partially clad in their black uniforms, and picked over my dogs and other vermin were the remains of two troopers.
The sewers at last opened to a narrow stretch of beach. It came sudden and unexpected around the last bend. The salty sea air came over me as a merciful release of pressure might save a smothering man. I gulped in that first breath, and felt its power rush into every cell of my body, returning me to full life. Bethune’s fighters seemed unmoved by it, and Bethune herself almost seemed repelled at first. They had grown accustomed to the sewers, the dark labyrinth and stealing from place to place to keep clear of Sentinel and Section Twenty-one. Both sides doubtless had long ago forgotten what the real reason for the conflict was. All wars are the same. The real reasons fade and are buried from the first blood, the first drop of blood and an endless parade of crimes and perceived crimes by all sides.
Filth ran in a ruddy-brown rivulet from the lip of the sewer opening. It trickled across the narrow sand where it mixed with the sea. The lazily swelling surf drew it along the shore line in an oily sheen. The sun had swung back to where I had last seen it at the settlement among John Brown’s family. A solar day had passed for the world. A lifetime had passed for me, it seemed.
A dozen or so of Bethune’s security force dropped to the sand and took up defensive positions along the sea wall. It was much easier to discern the successive levels of the city here than in the tunnels and sewers. They were built upon one another like stratified layers of rock. They bulged outward under their combined mass and the weight of the new city rising through low clouds. We were very near the Reclamation center. The low rumble of its massive furnaces shook the earth. Wind off the sea scattered the smoke plume from towering stacks into a thick orange brown haze.
It was hardly more than fifteen or eighteen centimeters to the beach. I climbed down first and held a hand to Bethune. She took it gratefully. With a grimace and self-effacing groan Bethune struggled from the opening down to the beach.
“Thank you, my dear,” she held tight to my arm. She smiled philosophically. “The Corporation has done away with the aged. I’ll tell you, it is quite a privilege. I cherish every day for its new perspectives and greater knowledge, but it comes at the terrible price of a vibrant and increasingly unusable body.”
“It almost makes the Corporation’s case,” I offered, referring of course to Reclamation.
We went slowly along the seawall. Periodically my gaze would drift to the ruins out at sea. By this light the fires seemed brighter and more certain than ever. They flickered wildly, no doubt the excited motions of people moving back and forth. I thought to ask Bethune about them, about whether she had been there or knew anything of the people there. The question, at least for now, seemed entirely out of place.
“If you happen to believe the Corporation should hold the power of life and death,” she said. “Shouldn’t that freedom be sacrosanct to the individual?”
“When are the individual’s rights outweighed by the needs of the community?”
“Or the Corporation?”
I nodded. “Or the Corporation.”
“The rights of the individual are at the core of our struggle in the Low City.”
“And so you would sacrifice thousands for that noble cause?” I baited.
“If absolutely necessary,” she replied quickly.
“For the needs of the society the rights of those individuals are bartered.”
Bethune stopped and stared at me for some time. There was a storm of thoughts and emotions in her eyes. They were at once explosive and surprised. All at once her expression changed and she smiled broadly.
“I believe you almost are ready to face the Corporation. But first there is one last thing you must see.”
We turned and started back for the sewers. The bodyguards retreated as well, forming something of a protective human envelope around us. I paused a moment for one last glance to the ruins. I lingered just a little too long. One of the guards ushered me up into the sewer and back among the world of shadows.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Last Man: Part Nine
My eyes were bound tightly. The cords that held my arms cut tightly into the flesh. My fingers numbed to the point of cramping. Any effort to work the circulation back into them succeeded in spreading the pain through my arms and into my shoulders. I wanted to scream but refused my captors any satisfaction whatsoever. Still a man has his limits, and mine were becoming all too familiar, but there are different limits, and for different times; limits for endurance, limits to love and forgiveness and limits to understanding. Above all there is a limit to tolerance, but that limit is also the most difficult to calculate.
The reek of sewage was distant here, replaced by the gagging stink of dry urine. It had a weighted, dry character. A fire crackled close by. It was an oppressive heat, weighted with the bite of stale ammonia. I could feel the flame’s radiated power against the left side of my face, enough that I leaned as far as I could for fear of being burnt. I was seated on the ground against a wall. I felt trapped and alone, teetering on hopelessness, and wondering why I deserved any hope in the first place.
Was I lucky to be alive? For the moment I was undecided. The beasts from the sewers revealed themselves as fearsome women fighters. As quickly as they appeared, like some sort of subterranean phantoms, I was subdued and bound. Only a fool would have dared resist, only a fool, or man intent on his own death. I was struggling with one while fighting to avoid the other.
The sound of footsteps saved me, whether it was my rescuer or executioner there was no clue. At that moment I would have preferred the blade to remaining bound and forgotten in that place. I almost wished for it. Still I tensed, straightening a bit in anticipation of a knife blade diving into my flesh, or for atrocity of a machete blow. I tipped my head back, straining to see along the sides of my nose.
I was dragged to the middle of the room, Not violently, but enough that there was no hope for any sort of resistance. The metal on metal sounds of knives being unsheathed turned the blood in my veins cold. A hand fell over my eye, pulling my head back sharply. I groaned through gritted teeth, expecting my throat would be cut. It was difficult imagining a horrible finish. I resolved not to cry out in some feeble means of robbing from my murderers any satisfaction. Oh, how time is relative in our lives. I tried to console myself that the murderous sawing characterizing the act would be finished in seconds. I fought to reassure myself that any true pain would be extinguished quickly with the gush of life’s blood. All that cold recognition seemed fruitless against the rampaging hysteria of my body. But then the knife sliced neatly through the binds, and the blindfold was torn away.
A woman stood before me. She was flanked by two female bodyguards. John Brown was behind her. There was a terrible bruise across his face, which I had little sympathy for. Through his fingers, as he felt his bruised and swollen nose, I could see he was ashamed, enough that he seemed unwilling or incapable of looking at me directly.
The woman was small, and beset with great physical impairments. A stroke had left her virtually paralyzed on one side. The arm had atrophied the hand and fingers curling and almost useless. The foot dragged behind. For balance and support she held tight to a sturdy iron walking stick that clanged or scraped as she moved. The stroke had damaged an organic beauty. The pain of a difficult life and the stress of leadership had further abused that beauty. A cloak was pulled low to cover the impaired side of her face. Still I sensed an intense and brilliant mind obstinately resisting her affliction. A dagger hung around her neck, helping to keep the cloak in place. I doubted it was there for any purpose other than to rob an adversary of taking her alive. That prideful and obstinate character is exactly the sort I ascribed from my readings to Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of sharecroppers who became an education and Civil Rights leader under President Franklin Roosevelt during the Twentieth Century.
“Please forgive our diligence,” Bethune said. Her voice was breathless and fragile. Her difficult and slurred words were an obvious frustration for her. “Section Twenty-one hunts us at every turn.” She glanced disappointed at John. “He has put everything at risk by bringing you here.”
“Shame consumes me,” he gushed. I was unsure just who that apology was directed to. “My attention was simply…” Bethune stopped him with a wave of her hand.
“Men are such emotional creatures,” she said, “given fully to their cravings. Your friend acted impetuously. It I that reason they are considered totally unfit for warfare.”
“Men?” I asked surprised. John Brown was head and shoulders above all the women there, and seemed more threatening, at least to me-the lump across his face notwithstanding.
“They sexualize warfare. It distracts them from any real strategy and rationale.”
“There is a rationale for war?” I asked. The conversation suddenly gained momentum.
“In truth,” Bethune hobbled a bit closer, “war represents a vacuum of intellect and morality, hence the need for rationale. When we have left ourselves no other choice, rationality and excuse are all we have to protect our egos.”
Could she not see the fundamental flaw in that logic? Like that of the Corporation, her rationale was a lie, wholly based in a rejection of intellect and morality. In that regard it was fundamentally short-sighted and selfish.
“So you have abandoned intellect and morality?”
“When presented with no other choice,” she said.
“The choice is yours, is it not?”
She grinned, the most vibrant emotion she had shown. As though it threatened to run away with her, Bethune quickly collected herself, and nodded with satisfaction.
“In any case,” I said, working the blood back into my hands, “I asked him to bring me here.”
John looked up sharply and knew I was lying on his behalf. He nodded appreciatively.
“Notwithstanding,” said Bethune, “He might have used better judgment.”
“Indeed,” he bowed submissively. “Dumb and stupid.”
She ignored him. The guards helped me to stand.
“He told us all about you,” she began. “About the trial and the Corporation. We are not unsympathetic, but it is a fact that Section Twenty-one will decipher your thoughts,” she continued. “The question now is what will they decipher?”
“What does Section Twenty-one have to fear from you, or anyone of the Low City?”
“Resistance, defiance, disdain.” Her eyes held mine. “All the true threats to any power. The Corporation alternately views us as a nuisance and threat to be eliminated, or an opportunity to be exploited. We are none of those things.”
“And what about finding some accord; mutual existence.”
“Ha!” she laughed. “There can be no peace without common agreement. There is only power and vengefulness masquerading as peace. They offer nothing and we give nothing in return.”
“A vicious circle.”
“There is no other way without humiliation.”
“No compromise?”
“Who would compromise first?” Bethune shrugged. “And there you see the dilemma. The first to concede anything becomes the fool.”
“The Corporation is so powerful! Don’t you fear that they will one day simply dispose of you completely?”
“If they dare.” She thought a moment. “I concede the point. Section Twenty-one and the Corporation can exterminate us, but they will pay a very dear price.”
She was holding something back. It was not something I could decipher. Rather it was something coldly calculating every heartbeat, every change in the wind or with the slightest variation of light. It was the dark sense of someone who has already resigned herself to death, of someone who had not abandoned life, but abandoned limits. Hers were the eyes of a soldier so filled with contempt for the enemy that no act, no sacrifice or act of brutality was beyond reason. It was not something she retreated from in the slightest, or showed the slightest remorse over.
“So why tell me all of this?” I asked. “If I return Sentinel will see all of this, just like you said.”
“Perhaps.”
“Memories can’t be hidden, not from Sentinel.”
“Ah, Sentinel’s flaw is in believing that memories represent reality. They are skewed by impression and our limited perspectives. They are also your pawns to construct or reconstruct as you please. Ultimately memories are quite malleable and alterable.”
“But why?” I asked.
“There were very bitter discussions regarding you fate,” she replied. “We came to a final consensus, and that is that you are to be the messenger.”
“Messenger?” I asked. “What sort of…”
Bethune strained to lift her impaired hand. It fell against my chest where I caught it with my hands. Her smiled held a potent mix of satisfaction and conniving guile. “And now I will show you something that I believe you will find quite interesting.”
I glanced around the room at the guards. “I suppose then I am at your service.”
Her eyes found mine. Bethune she nodded, “Quick and strong mind. You will make an excellent messenger.”
What that message was exactly I had no clue. What I was thinking of at that moment was Sentinel. Could I expect to beat something capable of seeing into my deepest innermost thoughts? I would have to find a way or my trial would be little more than an exercise in the ridiculous. Bethune took my arm and looked knowingly up at me.
“You know things,” she said. “You know things that Associates were never meant to learn. That makes you far more dangerous. The natural thing will be to prepare your arguments, but that only plays into Sentinel’s hands. Feel them in your heart. Know them better than you know yourself and react to their arguments without hesitation.”
“Not exactly sure how,” I said.
“You already have, with me,” she replied. “Now you must perfect your command of your own thoughts and memories.”
“And I will prevail?” I smiled knowingly. I held few illusions that the Corporation had not already decided the outcome of the trial.
“Against Sentinel and the Corporation?” she scoffed. “Most certainly not! You may out class them with your arguments, but they will send you for reclamation win or lose. You will be satisfied with the fight, and in the end that is all you can hope for.”
The reek of sewage was distant here, replaced by the gagging stink of dry urine. It had a weighted, dry character. A fire crackled close by. It was an oppressive heat, weighted with the bite of stale ammonia. I could feel the flame’s radiated power against the left side of my face, enough that I leaned as far as I could for fear of being burnt. I was seated on the ground against a wall. I felt trapped and alone, teetering on hopelessness, and wondering why I deserved any hope in the first place.
Was I lucky to be alive? For the moment I was undecided. The beasts from the sewers revealed themselves as fearsome women fighters. As quickly as they appeared, like some sort of subterranean phantoms, I was subdued and bound. Only a fool would have dared resist, only a fool, or man intent on his own death. I was struggling with one while fighting to avoid the other.
The sound of footsteps saved me, whether it was my rescuer or executioner there was no clue. At that moment I would have preferred the blade to remaining bound and forgotten in that place. I almost wished for it. Still I tensed, straightening a bit in anticipation of a knife blade diving into my flesh, or for atrocity of a machete blow. I tipped my head back, straining to see along the sides of my nose.
I was dragged to the middle of the room, Not violently, but enough that there was no hope for any sort of resistance. The metal on metal sounds of knives being unsheathed turned the blood in my veins cold. A hand fell over my eye, pulling my head back sharply. I groaned through gritted teeth, expecting my throat would be cut. It was difficult imagining a horrible finish. I resolved not to cry out in some feeble means of robbing from my murderers any satisfaction. Oh, how time is relative in our lives. I tried to console myself that the murderous sawing characterizing the act would be finished in seconds. I fought to reassure myself that any true pain would be extinguished quickly with the gush of life’s blood. All that cold recognition seemed fruitless against the rampaging hysteria of my body. But then the knife sliced neatly through the binds, and the blindfold was torn away.
A woman stood before me. She was flanked by two female bodyguards. John Brown was behind her. There was a terrible bruise across his face, which I had little sympathy for. Through his fingers, as he felt his bruised and swollen nose, I could see he was ashamed, enough that he seemed unwilling or incapable of looking at me directly.
The woman was small, and beset with great physical impairments. A stroke had left her virtually paralyzed on one side. The arm had atrophied the hand and fingers curling and almost useless. The foot dragged behind. For balance and support she held tight to a sturdy iron walking stick that clanged or scraped as she moved. The stroke had damaged an organic beauty. The pain of a difficult life and the stress of leadership had further abused that beauty. A cloak was pulled low to cover the impaired side of her face. Still I sensed an intense and brilliant mind obstinately resisting her affliction. A dagger hung around her neck, helping to keep the cloak in place. I doubted it was there for any purpose other than to rob an adversary of taking her alive. That prideful and obstinate character is exactly the sort I ascribed from my readings to Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of sharecroppers who became an education and Civil Rights leader under President Franklin Roosevelt during the Twentieth Century.
“Please forgive our diligence,” Bethune said. Her voice was breathless and fragile. Her difficult and slurred words were an obvious frustration for her. “Section Twenty-one hunts us at every turn.” She glanced disappointed at John. “He has put everything at risk by bringing you here.”
“Shame consumes me,” he gushed. I was unsure just who that apology was directed to. “My attention was simply…” Bethune stopped him with a wave of her hand.
“Men are such emotional creatures,” she said, “given fully to their cravings. Your friend acted impetuously. It I that reason they are considered totally unfit for warfare.”
“Men?” I asked surprised. John Brown was head and shoulders above all the women there, and seemed more threatening, at least to me-the lump across his face notwithstanding.
“They sexualize warfare. It distracts them from any real strategy and rationale.”
“There is a rationale for war?” I asked. The conversation suddenly gained momentum.
“In truth,” Bethune hobbled a bit closer, “war represents a vacuum of intellect and morality, hence the need for rationale. When we have left ourselves no other choice, rationality and excuse are all we have to protect our egos.”
Could she not see the fundamental flaw in that logic? Like that of the Corporation, her rationale was a lie, wholly based in a rejection of intellect and morality. In that regard it was fundamentally short-sighted and selfish.
“So you have abandoned intellect and morality?”
“When presented with no other choice,” she said.
“The choice is yours, is it not?”
She grinned, the most vibrant emotion she had shown. As though it threatened to run away with her, Bethune quickly collected herself, and nodded with satisfaction.
“In any case,” I said, working the blood back into my hands, “I asked him to bring me here.”
John looked up sharply and knew I was lying on his behalf. He nodded appreciatively.
“Notwithstanding,” said Bethune, “He might have used better judgment.”
“Indeed,” he bowed submissively. “Dumb and stupid.”
She ignored him. The guards helped me to stand.
“He told us all about you,” she began. “About the trial and the Corporation. We are not unsympathetic, but it is a fact that Section Twenty-one will decipher your thoughts,” she continued. “The question now is what will they decipher?”
“What does Section Twenty-one have to fear from you, or anyone of the Low City?”
“Resistance, defiance, disdain.” Her eyes held mine. “All the true threats to any power. The Corporation alternately views us as a nuisance and threat to be eliminated, or an opportunity to be exploited. We are none of those things.”
“And what about finding some accord; mutual existence.”
“Ha!” she laughed. “There can be no peace without common agreement. There is only power and vengefulness masquerading as peace. They offer nothing and we give nothing in return.”
“A vicious circle.”
“There is no other way without humiliation.”
“No compromise?”
“Who would compromise first?” Bethune shrugged. “And there you see the dilemma. The first to concede anything becomes the fool.”
“The Corporation is so powerful! Don’t you fear that they will one day simply dispose of you completely?”
“If they dare.” She thought a moment. “I concede the point. Section Twenty-one and the Corporation can exterminate us, but they will pay a very dear price.”
She was holding something back. It was not something I could decipher. Rather it was something coldly calculating every heartbeat, every change in the wind or with the slightest variation of light. It was the dark sense of someone who has already resigned herself to death, of someone who had not abandoned life, but abandoned limits. Hers were the eyes of a soldier so filled with contempt for the enemy that no act, no sacrifice or act of brutality was beyond reason. It was not something she retreated from in the slightest, or showed the slightest remorse over.
“So why tell me all of this?” I asked. “If I return Sentinel will see all of this, just like you said.”
“Perhaps.”
“Memories can’t be hidden, not from Sentinel.”
“Ah, Sentinel’s flaw is in believing that memories represent reality. They are skewed by impression and our limited perspectives. They are also your pawns to construct or reconstruct as you please. Ultimately memories are quite malleable and alterable.”
“But why?” I asked.
“There were very bitter discussions regarding you fate,” she replied. “We came to a final consensus, and that is that you are to be the messenger.”
“Messenger?” I asked. “What sort of…”
Bethune strained to lift her impaired hand. It fell against my chest where I caught it with my hands. Her smiled held a potent mix of satisfaction and conniving guile. “And now I will show you something that I believe you will find quite interesting.”
I glanced around the room at the guards. “I suppose then I am at your service.”
Her eyes found mine. Bethune she nodded, “Quick and strong mind. You will make an excellent messenger.”
What that message was exactly I had no clue. What I was thinking of at that moment was Sentinel. Could I expect to beat something capable of seeing into my deepest innermost thoughts? I would have to find a way or my trial would be little more than an exercise in the ridiculous. Bethune took my arm and looked knowingly up at me.
“You know things,” she said. “You know things that Associates were never meant to learn. That makes you far more dangerous. The natural thing will be to prepare your arguments, but that only plays into Sentinel’s hands. Feel them in your heart. Know them better than you know yourself and react to their arguments without hesitation.”
“Not exactly sure how,” I said.
“You already have, with me,” she replied. “Now you must perfect your command of your own thoughts and memories.”
“And I will prevail?” I smiled knowingly. I held few illusions that the Corporation had not already decided the outcome of the trial.
“Against Sentinel and the Corporation?” she scoffed. “Most certainly not! You may out class them with your arguments, but they will send you for reclamation win or lose. You will be satisfied with the fight, and in the end that is all you can hope for.”
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Last Man: Part Eight
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.
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.
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.
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