Flare (26 page)

Ash also reconsidered his notion that this was a tree grown somewhere else, uprooted and replanted here in this remote location.
This baobab-oak tree was born a long time ago, and brought here when it was a sapling.
They planted it and allowed its roots to grow into the earth and around the pipes. They knew it would grow large. They knew it would survive. They knew the flare was coming and designed the tree to survive it, while everything around it died.

/***/

Ash woke up, perhaps an hour later or perhaps more, but it was still dark so he couldn’t have been out too long. He was quite groggy but saw three silver body bags around him, one small, one medium sized, and one incredibly large. He listened and heard footsteps, and then looked to see two men in thick, white protective clothing wearing helmets with black face shields. They looked like biohazard suits, but the material was much thicker, as if it was designed to survive space.

The men were surprised to see him awake, and Ash noticed that one of them was carrying a fourth silver body bag. Ash looked up at the face shield of the man holding the bag, and he saw his own reflection, small and cowering beneath them. Ash held up his hands to show that he wasn’t a threat. The man without the silver body bag jabbed Ash in the neck with a needle, and Ash felt tired again, only this time the sedative was a knockout punch. Within five seconds, all Ash knew was darkness.

PART III

TWO KINGDOMS

ADRIEL

Sleeping, dreaming, vivid dreaming. Not lucid, but vivid to the point of it sticking with you for a while. A dream of his father and his mother, fighting. No added half-truths, just a pure memory recalled while he was under, turned into reality by dreams. No Landini, just Rachmaninoff’s “Elegie in E Flat Minor” in the background, played imperfectly, ominous and muddied with missed keys in every stanza.

The dream is of the last day his father and mother were together as man and wife. His mother to die of cancer three years later, his father to unravel at that point, but for now they were just fighting.

He has no friends,
says his mother.

Her voice holds too much concern and too much truth to be hurtful to Ash’s young ears. He hides upstairs with Heather and hears everything, like he always did. Their parents had stopped hiding their fights behind hushed tones and closed doors long ago, because the altercations had become too common and started too quickly to be contained. They often fought in front of Ash and they usually fought about him, and this instance is no exception. Heather locks herself in her room and begs Ash to come with her, but he stays outside and hears everything.

Not one friend,
his mother continues.
Not one.

He doesn’t need friends,
says his father.
He’s a genius and—

He needs friends. Of course he needs friends.

Why?

His father too angry, too quick with his words to realize the nuances of his response, both the clumsy overtone of asking
why
a kid needs friends and the underlying meaning: that since Ash was exceptional in everything else, he’d be exceptional in needing friends too.

Ash’s mother, ignoring her husband’s flippancy and equaling him in anger, has a response at her hip, an answer germinated a thousand times by herself in the car, while jogging, while trying to sleep.

Because you get one shot at a childhood,
she says.
One shot. You get one set of friends from your youth, and he missed that boat. You took that from him.

I took his friends? How could I—

By sending him to a university at this age. Without my knowledge, you took him out of high school and put him in a university as a thirteen-year-old.

He’s wasting his time in that place—

Then send him to a different school, not college.

He needs to go to a university,
says his father.
He’s too talented to be playing games with the kids around him.

But this university? Why this one?

Because it’s the best in the world, ten percent acceptance rate, and they recognize what he has. They don’t accept kids, but they made an exception for him. That should tell you something.

It does,
says Ash’s mother.
It tells me that he’ll have no friends there either. Bring him to the community college at least. They have a program there for kids like him, and he’ll have friends at least.

He’s too good for that,
his father says.
You don’t send da Vinci to community college.

You do if it’s the only way he gets friends,
says his mother.

What he has is too important, and he needs—

What he needs is a childhood, and you won’t let him have one!
You’ve prepared him to outcompete, take tests, but you haven’t prepared him for life!

I’ve prepared him for life,
says Ash’s father.
I’ve prepared him for life more than you can possibly imagine.

More? I can imagine a lot more for him.

Let me rephrase,
says his father.
I’ve prepared him for life more than you could possibly understand.

What I don’t understand,
says his mother,
is the fact that your mea culpa for the accident so many years ago is not to punish yourself, but to punish him. You’re punishing your own son, stunting his life for something you did.

His father is quiet, absorbing the barb directed at his one weakness, the one way to pierce his armor. She hasn’t mentioned it in a decade, let alone as an accusation, but there it is. Not a mistake, not an unfortunate circumstance, but something
he did
.

But his father won’t back down, not now, because he’s defending something important, something greater than his own pride.

I broke his outer shell,
says his father,
me, no one else. When he was a kid, I set him back. And yes, I gave him a little more attention at first to make up for it, to fill him with a few extra skills so he’d have an edge in life. But while doing that I found what he had inside of him, and I realized it was more important than me, than you, than Heather and even than him. Have you heard him play piano? I have him play Rachmaninoff and he’s better than Rachmaninoff. Better than Rachmaninoff—do you realize what this means?

Just because he can play piano,
says his mother,
doesn’t mean he should—

Let me say what I have to say,
his father continues.
Have you seen him do math, write stories or paint? He’s not just skilled, he’s brilliant, the best in his field whatever he does. Not good, not great, but the best. We could raise him as our star son, have him come home with trophies and end up in some high-paying career that lets us brag at parties, but he’s too good for that.

His father gathers himself for one more statement, perhaps the last thing of meaning he’d ever say to his wife.

This is not about me making amends for what I did,
his father says,
nor is it about me achieving my unfulfilled ambitions through him
.
If I could die nameless to help Ash achieve his potential, I’d gladly do so. But he’s got eighty years on this earth. It’s important that we take the time to do what’s right in the first twenty, so he can change the world in the rest.

His mother has no more arguments, so she begins to repeat herself.

He needs friends—

He might not get friends,
says his father.
But he’ll have me.

What do you mean?

I’m moving there,
says his father.
He’s too young to have a roommate and live in the dorms, I agree. So he’ll live with me.

You didn’t tell me about this—

They begin to argue again, descending back into their routine of accusation and counteraccusation, words sharpened into barbs and thrown forward to hurt. The sounds of Rachmaninoff’s “Elegie” get deeper and deeper, and more and more notes begin to miss. The music plunges into a dirge while Ash’s father speaks of his son’s potential, and how much the world would need it fulfilled one day.

/***/

Ash woke up in complete darkness. It took him a few moments to get his bearings, and then he realized he was in a bag. He had been long accustomed to bags and covers by now, and he didn’t feel claustrophobic when he opened his eyes, smothered by dark cloth.
I’d feel paranoid about waking in the open.
I’m like a rat now. Rats need small, dark enclosures and fear the open.

Ash examined his surroundings and remembered he had gone to sleep last. He’d been under the tree with his friends, he’d seen them wrapped in silver blankets, and then the suited men had come to knock him out. It was all clear, and though the sedative drugs had been heavy, their fog had lifted and had left his memory intact. He was alert, and he was okay.

He tried to figure out where he was.
I’m in the silver bag. Am I still outdoors under the sun?
He figured that might be the case, though it didn’t feel like it. It was too quiet. It was completely quiet, in fact. He listened for a minute and heard nothing. The surface was flat beneath him. There were no bumps under him, and it didn’t feel like the rough ground of the outdoors. He yelled twice, and only heard the tinny echo of his muffled voice.

I’m indoors.
I’ve got to be. They wouldn’t just leave me …

Ash felt the inside of his bag, and there was a small zipper with a rubber string attached to it, and he could tell it would open the bag up. He waited a minute, then ten more minutes. He then decided to peek out.

He pulled the string slightly and a white light came in, blinding him. He instinctively closed the zipper and shook it off in a panic, like he was brushing a spider from his face. He breathed heavily for a half a minute and then realized he was okay. The light outside was just a light, not the sun. He gathered his courage and opened the bag, at first just a bit, then all the way.

The light was overpowering, but his eyes soon adjusted and he could see. He was inside a white room. There were doors all around him, seven in all.

/***/

The doors were white too and nearly blended in with the walls. He noticed that one of them had a green light above it. The other doors had lights too, but their lights weren’t on. Ash walked to the door with the green light and touched it. It slid open to reveal another white room.

The room had a white table, and on the white table was a clear jar filled with balm. The jar had a picture of a leg on it, and Ash instinctively looked down at his own calf. The cuts from his fall had all been stitched up, and he realized that the injury still stung. He put the balm on his leg, and it stung less.

He examined the room and found that there was a shower at the other end. He walked towards the shower and found a handle next to it, and he pulled the handle to reveal a compartment with towels and toiletries. For some reason there was a pair of goggles in there as well.

Ash took off his clothes and then stood in the shower, and before he could turn it on, he heard a beeping, as if the shower was warning him of something. After five beeps, the walls started to spray a mist from all around. Ash looked closer and saw that the wall was dotted with small holes, and that they were exuding the spray. The vapor stung his eyes, so he got the goggles and put them on.

They’re decontaminating me.
They want to eliminate any pathogens from the surface.

The balm protected his leg from the slight sting of the antiseptic, and the treatment lasted only a minute. After that, there was another beep, soft and long, to indicate that he could begin bathing himself. Ash turned on the water, and the shower was good. The stream came out crisply, and he reached for shampoo and soap, which were both built into the wall. He stayed in the shower for ten minutes, and then ten more. He didn’t care where he was, or what this place was all about, it just felt good. He got out of the shower, toweled off and opened up the compartment to take out a razor and shaving gel. The razor was beautifully made, and the gel smelled like mint. Ash was able to cut his whiskers perfectly, and he felt cleaner than he had since he could remember. He found another handle on the wall and pulled it back to find an outfit of stark white clothing, and all the pieces fit him perfectly.

/***/

He exited the room and closed the door. He heard the
thunk
of it locking, and the light above it faded. A green light appeared above the door to the right, and he couldn’t resist checking if any other doors were open. None were, so he opened the green-lit door and found a room that contained a table and two handles in the wall. The first handle held a pantry with plates, cups and utensils, all elegantly designed and made of a lightweight, flexible material that Ash didn’t recognize. He pulled on the second handle and it was filled with colored blocks of what appeared to be food.

Ash took one red block and one dark-green block and put them on the table. He then poured himself a glass of water from the sink and sat down. He drank the water slowly and eyed the two strangely-colored cubes of food in front of him. They both had the shape of tofu, but looked thicker and heavier. Ash cut off a small piece of the dark-green block and let it sit on his tongue. It had the flavor of broccoli, but with a softer aftertaste. He took another bite. Though it was a vegetable in cube form, it still tasted good.

The red block had the flavor of a rare steak, and it had the same texture. Ash found it odd that a steak could be processed into a solid cube, and he took another bite out of it cautiously. He thought about it for a moment and realized that it must have been meat grown out of stem cells. He’d tasted a vat-grown steak before the flare, but this cube tasted much better. Ash ate the entire red block and didn’t get that thick, dead feeling one got after eating real meat. He reasoned that this steak must have been stripped of its cholesterol and fat, and was perhaps enriched with vitamins instead.

He took a few bites of the vegetable block but couldn’t take any more, because the vat-grown meat had filled him up. He brought his dishes to the sink, rinsed them off and then exited the room. The door locked behind him, and the green light above faded and appeared above the next door.

Whatever lies ahead, I don’t fear it.
And
I wish that Courtney, Heather, and even the big man were here with me so that I could protect them. I don’t know how, but I know I could protect them.