Flare (34 page)

“I understand,” said Ash. “But the time is right. I know it is.”

/***/

He had one more glass of the cloudy white tea and then turned on his computer. The ceiling displayed a projection on the table and he got into the interface showing the map of his district. He mentally traced his pathway and then selected the two rooms near where he would open the door. He overrode their internal controls and set the doors to lock their inhabitants inside for two hours. The computer showed that the room’s inhabitants were now sleeping, but Ash didn’t want to take any chances.

It’s a bit too easy to manipulate their system.
They’re probably watching every move I make and letting it happen. But still, I have to play this through.

He thought about writing a letter to Courtney and Heather, just in case something happened to him, but decided against it. He’d faced death a hundred times in the last few weeks, and he didn’t write any notes then. This was just another day, another choice, and if it didn’t go well they’d just have to figure everything out for themselves.

He exited his room and walked through the common area. Dave wasn’t there, so Ash walked to a door on the far wall. He pressed a hidden button and the door slid open to reveal the rest of his district, to which he now had full access. He walked through the long hallway, seeing some open doors and new inhabitants eating, talking and playing inside. Ash ignored them and walked forward until he reached the end of the hallway. It ended in a
T
, and Ash knew that if he took a right he’d eventually end up at the locked doors that barred him from going to the meeting.

He took a left and then passed through the door at the end. He entered another hallway, and walked through it for five minutes. It led to three paths, and he took the center path. The center path ended in a door, which led to another hallway. The hallway ended in one more door, and past that another door, this one thicker and heavier than the rest. This door wasn’t hidden, either. He knew the emergency closet was nearby and found it along the wall, prominently shown and easy to open. He opened it thinking the door might set off an alarm, but if it did, the alarm was a silent one.

The door to the emergency closet opened and there were twenty suits, gleaming white even in the faint illumination. They were arranged well, hung up from the ceiling on the sides of the closet to allow a walking path in the middle. Ash strode through them and selected one that was his size. He swung the suit around while it was still on the hook to make sure it had no flaws, and then spun it around until it faced him. He opened it from the front and then turned around and backed into the suit. He pushed his fingers into the gloved hand and felt them out by putting his hand into a fist and then expanding it. It was bulky, but it fit, so he took his gloved hand and grabbed the hook and detached his suit from the ceiling. He zipped up the inner layer from the front and snapped the outer layer of the suit, which connected easily because it was lined with magnets.

He then walked to the back and looked over the helmets. He had read the specs on his computer beforehand and knew that all the helmets fit, and since they all looked equally oversized, he chose one and put it on. He tested it to make sure it snapped into place, and it did. He couldn’t see anything through the thick visor, so he took off the helmet and then left the closet.

He shut the closet and walked forward, helmet in hand. He pressed a lever to open the heavy door in front of him, and he heard it unlatch itself. He bent down to lift it up, and though it must have weighed two tons, he found that it rose easily, probably with the help of hydraulics. Once the heavy door was opened he saw another hallway that ended in stairs. He knew this was it, so he walked forward and then slammed down the heavy door behind him, and it hit the floor with a thud. He pulled a lever on the side of the wall and it latched itself shut.

He walked towards the stairs, helmet in his gloved hand, and ascended them, one by one. The stairs went up, and up, and up some more. He knew the most efficient design for stairs was for them to wrap around themselves, but these stairs just went forward and up.

He got to the top five minutes later and found a door, thicker than the door at the bottom of the stairs, but quite short and narrow and not much bigger than himself. He knew this was the end, so he did what he had read of the protocol and went through the motions of opening the door with his helmet off. He knew the helmets had settings so he could see through them at night and indoors, but he preferred to practice with his own eyes. He went through the motion three times, and then put on his helmet.

Once the helmet was on, he couldn’t see anything. But he knew where the lever to open the door was and reached for it, grabbing its ball in his gloved hand. He smiled to himself as he thought of Courtney. He then thought of Heather, and of Dr. Shaw. He thought of Nurse Elsa, Raj, the prisoner they called
Father,
and Leo. He thought of Francesco Landini and Sergei Rachmaninoff, and then of Alexander Pope, Frida Kahlo, John Nash, Stephen Hawking, Beethoven and Jean-Dominique Bauby. He thought of the silent bearded man who had brought them to this place. He thought of his mother, and then his father, and then Courtney one last time. He grabbed hold of the lever and pulled it down.

The door opened slightly and he was blinded by the light, even through his visor. His eyes adjusted, and the visor seemed to adjust as well. Soon he could see that the door was open, and that light was pouring from its edges. He pushed the door open further, and more light poured over him. His eyes filled with overwhelming radiation, but the mask adjusted again and he was fine. He then pushed the door open, fully this time. It opened from in to out, just like a normal door would. It didn’t slide open or disappear into the surrounding wall with hydraulics. It just pushed out, and soon it was open all the way.

Ash’s eyes and visor adjusted once more and though it was bright, he could see. He stepped forward, and soon he was completely outside, a lone man under the full gaze of the flare’s wrath.

/***/

Through the visor the world was both still and in motion at once, both stone dead and fully alive. The land was quiet, and nothing moved around him. But the light came through the visor as an orange haze, and it seemed to cook the ground below. A layer of steam came from the earth, rising from the ground in a constant wave and wafting up towards the blood-orange sky. Ash looked closer and realized that it wasn’t steam coming from the ground, and considered that it was the light refracting in strange ways, like the way the old sun would make distant air wavy near hot asphalt.

But this wavy air was all around him, and it didn’t seem like a mirage. The ground below him pulsated like embers in a fire, and the land on the horizon was blurred, as if it were overwhelmed by the light of the hazy orange clouds. The earth sparkled, but it didn’t have the ethereal beauty Ash had experienced during his sunset with Courtney.
It doesn’t have any beauty,
because every bit of it brings a sense of danger.

He was in an oven, in a volcano, in a small suit twenty thousand feet under the ocean. He was in space orbiting the sun, he was in a den of snakes, he was on a rope suspended inches above a sea of acid. He was a man in open water and his suit was a shark cage. He knew he was safe but was unable to truly feel that way.

He heard the ground sizzle, and then closed his eyes and the sound went away. He opened his eyes, and the ground sizzled again.

It’s my ears trying to make sense of what I’m seeing around me.
I’m safe in this suit, but I’m surrounded by a world doing everything in its power to cook me alive. My mind knows that I’m in a frying pan, and it’s doing all it can to get my body to leave.

Ash took a deep breath and relaxed, and then willed himself to remember that he was safe. He had read the specs on these suits, and they were built to withstand the sun’s rays indefinitely. He could lie down and take a nap if need be. He was in a cage in an ocean of sharks, but the cage would hold.

He calmed himself and looked around at his surroundings. He had come out of small brick shed, bleached a dull white by the sun. It was solid and was built to last, but unlike the structures below the surface, it wasn’t pretty. It was made out of brick. Perhaps its interior was made out of the plastic alloy, but the exterior was rough and unkempt, just like every other building Ash had seen before.

No traveler would ever notice this little box,
thought Ash.
It looks like an outhouse, or perhaps a scientist’s weather station.

Ash looked around at the endless expanse of burning land and laughed to himself.

They could have hung a sign over the entryway that said “The Salvation,” and it still would be hidden.
We’re so far in the desert that no one would be able to get here in the first place.

Ash’s eyes were fully adjusted now, and he looked beyond the shed towards the horizon, but he couldn’t see that far because the edge of the earth was too bright. He could see well enough however, and though the land around him was desolate, it wasn’t as empty as he had thought.

There were flat black panels planted into the ground far in the distance. They were thick and rugged, and looked like knobs of asphalt. Ash had read about these when he was underground and knew that they were solar panels built to take full advantage of the flare’s intensity. The Salvation had other sources of energy of course, but these solar panels were so efficient that he knew the section before him could power an entire city.

He also noticed some black discs in the ground, like a collection of sewer plates laid out in rows. He looked closer and saw that they were not discs but plants, and that they were not black but a dark, dark green. The plants’ leaves were thick and splayed outwards, absorbing the full strength of the sun. From studying schematics through the computer in his room, Ash knew that this place had been experimenting extensively with strains of agriculture built to withstand the flare. He knew that the angels weren’t just concerned with what happened underground. They were active on the surface too, cultivating crops, raising insects and harvesting rainwater and power, both solar and wind. They were self-sufficient in their bunker and could go their whole lives without seeing another sunrise, but they didn’t ignore the world above the ground, even if they claimed that they did.

He was tempted to walk up to the dark plant discs, bend down and feel them between his fingers. He wanted to know what it took to survive the day, to be able to spread your body open and take in the full power of the sun as it beat down mercilessly, minute after minute, day after day. He wanted to know what it took to absorb all that radiation and thrive from it.

He needed to get to the meeting, though, and could become lost if he traveled out to the plants. The sun was high in the sky, and the shadows off his suit were quite short. He had little to get his bearings, and he needed to leave now.

He knew that the meeting was directly away from the place where he had surfaced. It was far, but in a straight line. He went to the opposite side of the door, put his hands straight forward, and walked. Even though his shadow was now little more than a sliver, he knew that he was going in the right direction as long as it was directly in front of him.

/***/

He strode through the orange haze with his head down, staring at his shadow. It was small now, just barely gripping his feet, and he picked up the pace to get as far as he could before the sun went directly overhead. Though he was protected, he still didn’t want to walk with the sun in his eyes. He passed patches of the dark green discs and several cages that looked like they were filled with sparkling lights. As he got closer he realized that the cages weren’t filled with lights, but with insects, and that each cage held a different species. Some cages sparkled green, some red, and some didn’t shine at all. But they were all filled with life, with creatures that didn’t mind the sun. These insects were flying around as if this were just another beautiful spring day.

Ash saw thin black towers in the distance, and as he approached them he realized they weren’t towers, but trees. He passed through the trees, planted neatly in rows. None of them had the grand presence of the baobab-oak tree that was planted by the entrance to the Salvation, but they each had their own elegant strength to them, and they were all sturdy. Some had the needles of a fir tree, some had the broad leaves of an elm tree, but they were all clearly comfortable out here in the unprotected desert. Ash looked closer and saw that they were alive too. Each tree gave shelter to hives of insects, some green, some red and some so small that they were almost invisible.

Maybe it’s not a miracle that anything “survives” in this environment.
Maybe it’s just a matter of what we consider normal. Creatures built to live in deep-sea thermal vents
consider that normal, but they would die if they were brought to the surface. The sun is normal to these plants and these insects, and they thrive. Maybe that’s the secret to the Salvation’s survival. Find a way to make the sun “normal” and then go about the rest of your life.

Ash knew that he had to continue and he walked for another half hour, trusting that he was going the right way. The shadows under his feet had disappeared. He continued walking and the shadows soon appeared behind him, but they were too shallow to give him any sort of bearing. He saw an object up ahead, and as he approached he saw that it was clearly a small structure similar to the one from which he had exited. He got close to it and found that indeed it was just that, and he knew that this was the entryway to the meeting with Metatron, the founder of the Salvation.