Eden's Jester (12 page)

“And someone told you to put it all here?”

“No, we built it.”
 

“How long ago was that?”

“A long time,” Tool said. Misery flowed from the creature.

I looked around. There was no sun. Nothing moved except for the Builders (as I decided to call them). I wondered how they measured time in this place. “Long” could mean ten minutes, or ten eons.
 

“Tool, is there someone in charge I could talk to?”

He gave me a blank look.
 

“How about someone who told you how to build this?”

More blank.

I adjusted my sight to see deep inside of Tool. His soul was very simple. It had almost no variation, just lattice after lattice that looked like the pyramid structure. They were a race made to do one thing--build these pyramids. The knowledge of how to do it and the need to do it was built into their most inner selves. They could do nothing else. They
were
nothing else.
 

With the pyramids complete, they were a race of workers without work. I understood their plight. Devoid of purpose, the world becomes stale. This place didn’t need any help in that department. The brown rocks and dragon-backed hills were monotone and lifeless. No clouds dotted the sky, no squirrels ran, no birds soared. There was only the helpless milling of these aimless souls. They wandered like ghosts, looking to find something of their past, though they didn’t know what.
 

The little voice in the back my mind--the one that desires my demise--was making a commotion. What these guys needed was something to do. That would fix them up just fine.
 

I sat next to Tool and commenced an internal brainstorming session, the two of us staring at the finished pyramids. With my toe, I drew a picture of the five pyramids in the dirt. Tool looked over and studied the drawing with a frown. He lifted his foot and brushed my drawing away. Then he made another that was, well, perfect. Tool watched me with suspicion as I moved down a few feet and repeated my drawing. It was hard to think with him dusting my doodles.
 

He scooted next to me and reached for my drawing.

“Hey, stop right there. Make your own drawing. I’m trying to think here,” I said.

In response, he drew a picture directly adjacent to mine. Then another, then another. He kept drawing until there were several images, my sloppy one in the center with four perfect ones surrounding it.
 

It was a complex of complexes, just as the pyramids were pyramids of pyramids.

That gave me an idea.

“Tool, why did you stop building?” I asked.

“Because it is finished,” he said.
 

Maybe, maybe not. I figured I’d swing for the fence. “It is not finished, Tool.”
 

He looked alarmed, then curious, then stumped. Then, “It is finished,” was all he said.

“Look, Tool.” I pointed to the picture in the middle. “This is what you’ve built. Those things there.” He grimaced. “Okay, okay. Mine isn’t very good. I get it.” I then drew a box around each of the five drawings. “Look familiar?” I asked.
 

It was a repeating fractal pattern where smaller groups of five combined to form a larger group of five, and that pattern could expand forever.
 

“And when this is done, you can make five more of these larger complexes.” I said.

He looked at the drawing, thought for a moment, and passed out.

Oh crap. Ten minutes in the place and I’ve already killed the smartest guy here. Why does this keep happening to me?

I bent over and checked for any sign of life. I could find none, but who is to say what kind of vital signs robots have? I smacked him on the cheek a few times and said his name loudly in his ear. Nothing. I looked around for help, but no one seemed the least interested.
 

I looked to see if Tool’s soul showed any signs of moving on. It was still there, but had changed. Before, the lattice was vibrant and pulsing in its naturally mechanical fashion. Now the pulses looked like a nuclear reactor about to go postal. I stepped back, pretty sure that it wasn’t healthy to stand so close to a nuclear soul. Then, Tool sat up and looked around. I guess he had rebooted.

 
He saw me and began to beam. “It is not finished. We are not finished.” he looked up at me. “Elson.”
 

Tool called to several others and showed them the picture and explained. Within minutes, Builders were dropping like flies. Then, like Tool, they recovered and scurried about in a frenzy of activity. Shovels, picks, and chisels were passed out. Everyone got busy.

They began to sing. Their voices thundered with strength and industry. They were at work, and it was good.

I watched for a while, fascinated by how quickly they organized and mobilized. They were like ants: each knowing his place and performing his part to make the whole successful. There were no arguments, no intrigues. They were one with their purpose. They were happy. And though their lives and ambitions were simple and forever limited, I could not help but feel that this was right.

I turned to go and found myself face to face with Tool and two other Builders. One stepped forward and spoke.
 

“You are Elson. We build this next ‘complex,’” he worked the word with some difficulty, “for you. Work well, Elson.”
 

They bowed deeply, and then returned to the building site. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that, where I come from, these kinds of complexes were tombs.
 

CHAPTER TEN

I returned to Melanthios’s thread and began to surf its length, heading for home. Soon the barren pyramid world was gone, replaced by blackness.
 

Stars and huge gaseous nebula surrounded me in every direction. I knew this place--the astral plane. It wasn’t exactly outer space, but it was similar. Where outer space was filled with vast empty spaces and gigantic galaxies, the astral plane was the micro-analogy. It was what the space between atoms--inner space. Those not familiar with astral travel could easily mistake it for the vastness of outer space. I always thought it was ironic how the infinitesimally small was nearly indistinguishable from the infinitely large, from the right vantage point.
 

Something nagged at the back of my mind, that there was a secret to be unraveled here. Something just beyond reach called out, promising at last to provide a missing piece of some puzzle. But I had a friend to spring from prison. Whatever it was would have to wait.

I could have hopped off and found my way home from here. But there was something deeply satisfying about being delivered back to the material plane courtesy of Melanthios.
 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“You look like you’ve been pulled through a knot-hole or two. You okay?” Jill asked.
 

Her eyes glinted with a mirth matching her smile. Whatever was funny about my appearance escaped me. Her mock concern reminded me of someone greeting a friend at the finish line of a marathon--while the achievement was admirable, the comedy of suffering was better.

“Being jammed through a knot-hole with a sharp stick would have been better,” I said. There was no shower that would wash off the dusty grime left by Legion.

“Really.” She pushed a drink toward me. It was too large to be an espresso though right about now I wouldn’t have minded one that large.
 

“What’s this?”

“Vanilla latte. The drink of champions. Trust me.” she said.

“The drink of champions, huh? I doubt it.” I took the large cup and sipped. It was marvelous. I smiled and weakly raised the cup to her.

The television in the upper corner of the room was playing the national news, as usual. Some disaster had engulfed a small town in the midwest and the National Guard had been dispatched to clean things up. I sipped and listened.

“ . . . authorities are attempting to talk several remaining families into putting down their firearms and evacuating the area. They have barricaded their homes and refuse to allow guardsmen to provide any assistance, saying they’re not coming out until ‘they’ are gone. Who ‘they’ are is still unclear. It appears that the townspeople have been holed up in their homes for several days, fighting an as yet unknown threat.

“Captain Hoganmueller, in charge of the local evacuation, went on to say the remoteness of the town contributed to the delay in help arriving. What caused the townspeople to feel the need to defend themselves with guns and barricades has yet to be determined . . .”
 

It sounded like the aftermath of some bad horror movie.

I watched Jill wipe clean the chalkboard behind the counter. She began to write today’s specials. The chalk shrieked with each stroke. My ears ached at the abuse.

The center of the board simply read, “Great Coffee Comes Through Great Responsibility.” In smaller letters on the left, she wrote, “Shared Planet.” On the right, “100% responsibly grown and ethically traded.” Down the center she listed several obscure and exotic coffees, mostly from places in South America that probably don’t exist.
 

Once finished, she slapped the chalk-dust from her hands and stepped back to admire the board. Happy with the message, she looked at her watch, then came over to me.
 

“The sun’s coming up,” she said.

“Huh?”

“It’s going to be one heck of a sunrise today. I know how you love the morning. But you’d better hurry, or you’ll miss it.” She smiled and walked away.

I looked out the window and could see the sky brightening with the dawn. I felt like it had been a long time since I had enjoyed the color of the sun. But I was in no mood.

“Go, Elson!” Jill called from the back of the shop. All right. I can take a hint.

I left Jill and the coffee shop, working my way through the gravel pits to my favorite sunrise perch. No one else comes here. It’s private property and the mining company has a decisive lack of humor when it comes to trespassing.
 

I approached a grassy hilltop in the area the gravel company calls the North Plant. Craters and litter-covered mounds proved these mines were active. Huge pieces of rubble and large holes dotted the landscape like some berserk god had thrown a fit. But the grass was green and there were many small man-made ponds there. With the exception of the rare tractor passing by, the place was deserted. It was a very pleasant scene.

Sunrise is my favorite time. I love the colors and the feeling of the world waking up. It’s interesting that, if you were to take the colors of any sunrise and put them on some clothing, you’d be a fashion pariah. But in the sky, color seems to have magical properties. The colors of a sunrise always match. Sunset is the same. It’s almost as if a divine artist were saying to the world, “Look, I can make art that you can’t.”
 

I didn’t think anyone would be looking for me, so returning to my normal routine wouldn’t be a risk. Aeson would never believe I could escape without his direct intervention. He was going to be surprised. I almost wanted to pop in and say, “Hi, sorry that I couldn’t disappear for eternity, but, you know, I’ve got stuff to do.” Until I knew more about whatever he was packing, I’d be staying clear of his strongholds.

Something Aeson had said nagged me, and got me thinking about horror--well, horror movies, in any case. People loved to be scared. What made them most afraid revealed much about them. To know what really scares people, pay attention to Hollywood. It works hard to make money by scaring people. The movies that scared--I mean really scared--a generation were movies about the undead: zombies and vampires. Vampires reminded me a lot of Aeson’s fluffy pet. I had the vague sense that Fluffy would be busy loose in Hong Kong, but that would have to wait. The zombie movies had something that was more familiar. There was something about them that reminded me of what Aeson had said at the Gathering. I had seen lots of zombie movies. The truly scary ones had some common elements: society breaks down and small groups of people are on their own, fighting the unknown and incompressible forces of evil. When people can group together and organize the fear goes away. And here comes a horror-loving Aeson, promising a better world by breaking a society up into smaller more vulnerable units. A bit too coincidental.
 

As the sun crept above the horizon, I felt its warmth wash through me. After my stint in the Abyss, such pleasures felt richer, and more necessary. I breathed in the glow of the moment and made for my favorite hilltop to enjoy the morning and devise my next step.

But, of course, it wasn’t long before the morning was ruined.
 

Just as I was about to take a seat, the deep boom-boom of a giant bass drum crested the hilltop in waves of erratic energy. Someone was making quite a ruckus.

A ruckus I hadn’t started.
 

It wasn’t hard to spot. A cloud of dust rose above a nearby ridge. I climbed to the top to see what was happening in the ravine below. Swirling and pluming dust devils obscured my vision. I could make out several figures at the base of the ravine. The ground heaved like someone shaking dirt from a rug. The minor earthquake was immediately followed by a percussion that caused my latte to explode in my hand.