Flare (35 page)

He took one last look at his surroundings before he entered. To his right the ground was flat, except for a small rise that extended to the horizon. Ash realized it was a pipeline, and wondered if this was the tube that had brought him to the sewage treatment facility where everyone spoke Spanish.

Ash looked to the left and saw a dark spot in the far distance. It was the baobab-oak tree that they had first seen before they had gone underground. He saw a light to the left, which wasn’t a light but a silver tent reflecting the flare’s radiation towards him.

He knew that this tent held recent rejects from the Salvation, most likely on their first day headed back to civilization. He wanted to walk up to them and wait for nightfall, just in case one of them was Courtney, but he also knew that this was impossible. She had been rejected long ago and wouldn’t be there. But still, seeing the tent made him long for her. He hadn’t thought about her for a few days, but she was part of him now, staying deep within his long-term memory. Just seeing the silver reflection brought those feelings to the forefront of his mind, and he considered going up to the tent and talking to whoever was inside, just in case it was Courtney, or in case the inhabitants knew where she was.

He decided against it. Her location was not in the tent but hidden within the door in front of him, and no other place. He had to enter and find out where she was. That was the only way.

/***/

The door was open, and he entered it to see a set of stairs just as steep as the ones that had brought him to the surface. He noticed a door hanging from the ceiling twenty feet down, and when he grabbed it, it rose quite easily, steadily sliding upwards due to the hydraulics behind it, and after he walked through it closed behind him with a firm
thud.

It was completely black inside his helmet, so he pressed a button at the back of his neck and the face shield changed its hue, and soon he could see the faint outline of his surroundings. His vision adjusted again, and he saw that he was still in the stairwell, but he was completely protected from the sun outside.

He checked once more to be sure, and then removed his helmet slowly. He was back underground, and resumed walking down the stairs.

He got to the bottom and opened the thick door in front of him. It raised itself to the ceiling smoothly, and he walked forward down the long white hallway. He knew that the meeting was in front of him, to the first door to the left. He saw the door, and when he pressed the button to enter, it raised itself immediately. Another long hallway led to a darkened room. He heard voices coming from the room and approached it as quietly as possible. It was difficult to approach in silence with his big, clunky suit, so he walked slowly.

“
Asektora 33z
?” said a voice from the room.

“
Owa pumbwa oku shi kutya asektora 33-y-z, oshi li naye,”
said a male voice.

“Ondu vitego Metatrona … ihe, paife … otamu dhiladhila muule,
” said a female voice.

“
Nawa,
” said the male voice.

They spoke on and on in this incomprehensible tongue. Ash was skilled with languages, but he hadn’t heard this one before and couldn’t even begin to decipher a single word. He tried to deduce a language family, but he hadn’t heard anything close to it before. The syllables were sharp and clear, but they were all unfamiliar. He listened closely and heard many repeated words, and recognized that some of the speakers were themselves struggling with the words. From the sounds he inferred that the language was a simple one, perhaps invented, and that it wasn’t the speakers’ first language. It sounded as if they had just learned it a few months ago.

Ash crept around the corner and peered into the room. He saw Adriel sitting in the middle of the meeting, and her blonde hair shone in the darkness. There was another man named
Jophiel
that Ash recognized from his research into the Salvation’s computer systems. No one else was in the room, but they weren’t alone because there were projections on the darkened walls. He recognized Gabriel, the one who had introduced him to the Salvation’s tests, but he didn’t recognize anyone else. There were three others on the wall. One was a fair-skinned black woman, the other was a tanned man with Asian features, and the third was an older Caucasian man, perhaps sixty. He was balding and had a thick mustache.

“
Paife,
” said the older man. “
Owa pumbwa oku shi …
”

The older man trailed off into silence. The people in the meeting started to whisper amongst themselves in hushed tones, so quiet that Ash couldn’t even deduce the syllables. There was more silence, and then they resumed speaking English.

“There’s someone here,” said the older man.

Ash knew he was caught, but chose not to run. He had come to their meeting to get answers and needed to speak with them. While he was deciding his next move, the older man’s words boomed through in a deep but kind and warm voice.

“You can come out now, Mr. Ash,” said the older man, with a slight accent. “Please, reveal yourself.”

/***/

Adriel was shocked, and so were Jophiel, Gabriel and all the others except for the old man, who beamed at Ash much like a kind father glad to see his son after a year abroad.

“It’s okay, he’s no threat,” said the man to the others. “I warned you when we recruited a citizen of his gifts that we wouldn’t be able to control him. We could only hope to show him what we have to offer, and hope that he understands us.”

The man spoke English with crisp, sharp lines, and Ash guessed that he was of Eastern European descent.

“I take it you’re Metatron?” asked Ash.

“That is the name I’ve chosen for myself,” said the man. “Please, can you have a seat?”

Ash looked at Adriel, as if for assistance. She nodded and then walked to a far wall. She slid open a panel and got another chair, which she brought out to Ash. He sat between her and Jophiel and stared at the three people projected on the wall, with Metatron the largest of them in the middle.

“Thank you, Ash,” said Metatron. “And let me tell my compatriots here that we shan’t hide our words from our newest member. There are no secrets here in the Salvation.”

Ash couldn’t help but emit a small laugh.

“Do you disagree with this sentiment?” asked Metatron.

“Completely.”

“On what basis?”

Ash considered how to put his words politely.

“You’ve saved me and others, and for this I’m grateful,” said Ash. “But everything about this place has been one big secret so far.”

“Perhaps,” said Metatron. “But there’s a difference. We don’t keep secrets to bolster our own control, nor do we keep them indefinitely. We merely keep them because that’s the only way we can indoctrinate you into our ways, and we do reveal our truths to all citizens in time. Do you believe this?”

“Somewhat,” said Ash.

“That’s as much as we can hope with a mind as incisive and skeptical as yours, Ash,” said Metatron with a smile. “So I’ll tell you this. We reveal who we are slowly, until our citizens fully embrace what we’re doing, until they’re enlightened enough to reach this room and speak with me. You’ve reached this room not because of our trust in you, but because you’ve been able to outwit us, so we’re not—”

“I didn’t reach this room because I was able to
outwit
you,” interrupted Ash, “because I don’t think that can be done without you allowing it to happen. However I ended up here, I have a friend who was denied entry to this place, and I want to know where she is.”

Metatron nodded in understanding.

“Do you care about our secrets? The flare? The future of humanity?”

“I do,” said Ash. “But if I could only ask one thing, I’d choose to ask where my friend Courtney is.”

“Noble,” said Metatron. “Foolish nobility, the kind that drives men to die in foreign wars, to set their personal dreams aside to honor their family name … or to follow a distant love into the burning sun, even though it most likely means death.”

The gravitas of the old man’s tone silenced the room, and he stared at Ash with piercing eyes, eyes that could see if you were lying, eyes that could dredge up every last flaw of your being and bring them into the air for all to see.

“Do you believe that in following your friend, you’re being noble?” asked Metatron.

“I haven’t really thought about
why
I’m doing this,” said Ash. “Though now that you mention it, perhaps I am being noble, even foolishly so.”

Metatron laughed.

“Foolish nobility is the curse of humanity,” said the old man. “But if you pay the cost, you end up with the Great Pyramids, a voyage to the moon, and an underground bunker such as this.”

Ash nodded in understanding.

“Unlike the pyramids though, I didn’t build this place to be a monument to myself,” said Metatron. “I—
we
—built this place to be so sound, to last
so long
that it may even outlast our names. The Salvation may one day stand firm while the memories of all those in this meeting have long turned to dust. Do you believe this?”

“Yes,” said Ash, “there’s a difference between foolish nobility and pride. I can tell you that from what I’ve seen, most every piece of the Salvation is completely …
noble
.”

Metatron accepted Ash’s sentiment with a nod.

“Now,” said Metatron. “Would you like to know where your friend Courtney is, or would you like to stay here and learn our secrets?”

“I’d like to learn both,” said Ash.

Metatron smiled and nodded at the answer.

“Adriel,” said Metatron. “Please tell Mr. Ash why we are here, and what we hope to achieve.”

/***/

“Our leader, Metatron, started work on the Salvation long ago,” said Adriel. “It was a massive undertaking, but he kept it private.”

Ash nodded, looking incredulous.

“I suppose you are wondering how I kept this …
private
,” said Metatron.

“It’s not my first question,” said Ash. “But yes … I do wonder how you can build a network of underground cities without anyone knowing.”

Adriel nodded at Metatron, and he spoke.

“I said that there are no secrets here,” said Metatron. “But we do keep secrets from those outside our collective, and I admit that we’re quite skilled in that regard.”

Ash smiled, and Metatron nodded at Adriel again.

“Our leader was not a rich man,” said Adriel. “He was a thinker, and he had some radical theories.”

Metatron looked at Ash.

“Do you recognize me, Ash?” he said. “Perhaps from the quiet end of a journal, or maybe from a sparsely attended lecture?”

Ash suddenly realized that he knew the man. Metatron had been a somewhat obscure civil engineer, popular amongst academic circles, but not of an enormous stature. He had written books but was the kind of writer that one got into for a semester or two and then quickly abandoned as one grew into other works. He’d had a cult following at best and wasn’t the type of man to lead a revolution.

“I’ve read some of your works,” said Ash. “Your name is Janus Sondel.”

“Indeed it is, or it was,” said Metatron with a smile, unafraid of being revealed. “And if you recall, I was neither powerful nor wealthy. But I held the ear of those that were, the kind rumored to be the five people meeting in secret to run the world in collusion. Those rumors aren’t entirely true, but I did gain an audience in three of those alleged five, and let me tell you, the powerful can be quite
noble
when tasked with saving the human race. They can be quite secretive too, and they found ways to build this, pretending that it was for something else.”

Metatron’s gaze drifted off into the distance.

“I had a lot of theories, and one of the most bizarre was that the flare was coming,” said Metatron. “I chose not to reveal this on the lecture circuit, or post this ‘crackpot’ theory to news outlets, governmental organizations and the like. I told no one of the flare but my team and these rich men, and it was the correct thing to do.”

Ash considered this. Though Metatron’s reasoning didn’t yet make sense, the man sounded like he genuinely believed that he had made the right decision, or perhaps the only one he could make.

“We performed the analysis, ran the numbers time and time again, and we found that we couldn’t save the world from this on a global scale. If all the governments knew this was coming, it still would have been a disaster. So we made the Salvation, a shield from the sun engineered to withstand the radiation indefinitely, but only with a …
finite
population.”

Metatron seemed saddened by his own words, but continued on.

“This place works,” said Metatron. “And the only way we could make it work is if we made a real and inarguable limit on the population here.”

Ash thought about this.

“So some people can stay, and the rest can’t,” said Ash. “It’s as simple as that.”