Flare (44 page)

It’s right there for anyone to take.
It’s like the guards don’t care anymore.

Zeke took the key and opened the front door of the cage. The prisoners looked at him with faint gratitude, like tired men relieved after an impossibly long workday.

One of the prisoners took Zeke’s key and walked over to the cage where they kept Scox. The brutish man was sleeping chained to the floor, and Zeke saw that they had shackled another man within the cage, mere inches from the end of Scox’s restraint. Zeke unlocked that man and he was more grateful than the others to be liberated, and he immediately saw Zeke as his savior.

“I don’t know how to thank you, brother,” said the freed man. “That guy they put me in with, he … I don’t know how to thank you, I …”

Zeke gestured that the man needed to be quiet, and the man did so. Scox was still sleeping, perhaps due to withdrawal from the EverRed, but Zeke knew that this bestial man was still dangerous in any state. Zeke quickly looked at the other prisoners and motioned for them to go. Zeke didn’t want to be thanked and didn’t care to be seen as a savior. All he wanted was for these men to take their freedom, to find a way to leave this place and never return.

/***/

“The guards in the hangar must have left, or maybe they just don’t care anymore, but word’s still gonna get back to the tanker that the prisoners are roaming free,” said Barabbas from their alcove an hour later. “We still got some element of surprise left, but they’re gonna know something’s happened, and they’re gonna send someone. Guards out here might have lost heart, but the ones coming from the ship’ll still be fierce, so be prepared.”

They waited, and eventually saw a boat filled with scowling men sent to investigate. The night sky was quite bright, so they could see it well, even from far away.

“Now it’s my turn to take the lead,” said Barabbas. “I’m gonna investigate by myself. Stay right here.”

Barabbas turned to leave, but Zeke grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Zeke then pointed at the boat, in particular to a big man at the back. Zeke recognized him as the man dressed in riot gear who had fought in the pit.

“It’s okay,” said Barabbas. “I can take him.”

Zeke wouldn’t let go.

“I’m not being cocky,” said Barabbas. “I can sneak behind him. I’m sure he’s a great fighter, but he walks clumsily. Look … he’s even got a limp.”

/***/

A half hour later, Barabbas came back with the big man’s riot gear and threw it at Zeke’s feet.

“I knocked him out when he got separated from the group,” said Barabbas. “Now put this on.”

Zeke looked at Barabbas incredulously. This was a suit of armor, clothes made to defend and kill.

“Relax,” said Barabbas with a smile. “You aren’t gonna fight anyone. We’re going to the ship and you need a disguise. It’s in a state of pandemonium right now and they won’t recognize me, but you, however, are quite distinct, and we need to cover you from head to toe, understand?”

Zeke understood and put on the riot gear. They walked out into the night, quietly but not hiding either. They found a small paddleboat on shore and Barabbas got in and bid Zeke to push it out. Zeke did so, and the saltwater soaked his clothes with a bracing cold. He pushed the boat until he was up to his waist and then got in, and together they paddled towards the tanker. Zeke heard screams coming from the vessel, and he listened closely to hear if one of them was coming from Courtney.

/***/

The ship was chaotic, with angry men running around in a panic, barking orders and occasionally coming to blows with one another. It still smelled of both human waste and cedar, and though Zeke passed through unnoticed in his riot gear, he was still wary. Barabbas was wary too, and pointed to a group of brawling men in a distant hallway. Some were wielding knives and yelling, others were on the floor pleading for their lives.

“These guys don’t have any more prisoners to torment, so they’re turning on each other,” said Barabbas. “And I think the drugs are running out here too. The yelling men with the knives have plenty, but those on their knees begging for their lives do not.”

The men on their knees are once again sane,
thought Zeke.
Sanity brings fear back to a person, fear that shouldn’t have escaped in the first place.

“Now, don’t waste time breaking up these fights,” said Barabbas. “These people are coming out of their haze, and this is what happens. I know where they keep the girls like your friend, so let’s go there before one of these crazy guys with a knife decides to find her first.”

/***/

Her cell was dark but sparse, filled mostly with young women but some boys too. They were all quite attractive with youthful, symmetrical faces and clear eyes. The key was twenty feet from the cell, on a guard who was sleeping deeply. Zeke went up to the man, and though he smelled of burnt cedar, he smelled more of alcohol and wasn’t likely to wake any time soon. Zeke took the keys and opened the cell. The kids ran out and hugged both Barabbas and Zeke, even in his riot gear.

“I’d advise you to leave this ship as soon as you can,” said Barabbas to the kids before taking a deep breath. “Tell everyone else to leave too, even those who had previously tormented you. If they look sane, bring them with you. Take the guard too, and forgive him when he wakes up.”

Zeke smiled behind his mask. He knew that Barabbas didn’t see much value in sparing the lives of the dockyards’ captors, in particular the guard who was now passed out at the edge of the room.

“Where should we go after we leave?” asked a young man with shimmering, beautiful skin and straight white teeth.

“I don’t know,” said Barabbas. “We haven’t thought that through yet. But I’d advise you to make as much distance between yourself and this ship as soon as possible, because it’s going to get real ugly, real fast.”

The young prisoners left, and Barabbas introduced himself to Courtney.

“This is your friend,” said Barabbas as Zeke took off the riot mask. “You owe your life to him, because I wouldn’t have found the time to come here.”

Courtney hugged Zeke, and then Barabbas told her his plan for the tanker. After sharing this, Barabbas looked at Zeke with surprisingly kind eyes.

“It’s time we part, brother,” said Barabbas. “I don’t know what your path is, but I sense it’s too big for this place and this day, so stay alive and get back to our school, and do whatever else it is you were brought here to do. Get as far from this ship and these dockyards as possible, then forget everything you’ve seen here, because the world doesn’t need this in its history. No lessons learned, no candlelight vigils, just let this place burn into nothingness and then start again. Can you do that?”

Zeke nodded.

“I don’t know if you’ll see me again, and I hope you don’t,” said Barabbas. “I hope you take care of those kids and I don’t have to come around to sully what’s there. I’m not just talkin’ from low self-esteem either. I’ve seen their future, and I’m not a part of it. You’ve seen me at my best, and if I survive I might come back at my worst, and if you ever see me months from now covered in cuts and smelling like cedar, you’d best dispose of me. Shoot me down like a dog, because that’s what I’ll be, a rabid dog that doesn’t know what he’s doing any more.”

Zeke didn’t nod at that, and Barabbas recognized this.

“I understand, your destiny isn’t to destroy, even if it’s rabid dogs out to take your kids away. So I tell you what, can you at least take the kids far, far from this place?”

Zeke nodded at that.

“Good. Because now is
my
time and though I shan’t shed blood, I
was
put on this earth to destroy,” said Barabbas. “Now leave this ship, and if you run into trouble …”

Barabbas nodded his head towards Courtney.

“Let her do the talking,” said Barabbas. “Whatever your role is in this world, it doesn’t involve words.”

/***/

They ran into trouble on their way out. Lilith stood in front of a doorway, smelling of cedar and with fresh dust-covered wounds on both arms. She was completely nude save for a belt of knives around her waist and a shotgun in her arms that she pointed at Zeke and Courtney. Zeke stood in front of Courtney and held his hands out wide.

“I know who you are through that gear,” said Lilith. “You’re the charred one, and this is your little charred sister. I get it.”

“Let us go, we—” said Courtney.

“Instead of killing you I want to graze you both, one shell apiece, armor or not,” said Lilith. “Just enough to knock you both down and leave you helpless. Then I’ll have you both to myself.”

Lilith put the fantasy in her mind and smiled at it. She raised her shotgun and was about to pull the trigger, but Courtney stepped out from behind Zeke and stopped her.

“Wait,” said Courtney. “Think of yourself.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not,” said Courtney. “The drugs are leaving you short-sighted. If you shoot us, you’re going to miss out on all the pleasure to come.”

“I won’t miss out on anything except for the feeling of my lips on yours as you quiver from a bleeding—”

“You’ll miss out on the pleasure, because if you shoot us, you’ll die. Do you notice how all your sisters, and even your lord Legion himself, have abandoned this place? Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t care.”

“You should,” said Courtney, “because they fled this ship to save their own lives. I know you can’t understand a lot of things now because you’re high on EverRed, but you must value your own life.”

“I don’t particularly care if I live or die,” said Lilith, walking up to Courtney and stroking the shotgun tip up Courtney’s inner thigh. “I just don’t care—”

In a single motion, Courtney grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and pointed it away. Before Lilith had a chance to pull the trigger, Courtney kicked her in the groin and wrested the gun from her hands. Courtney pointed the shotgun at Lilith and let a moment pass before she spoke.

“You should care if you live or die,” said Courtney. “So leave this ship or burn to cinders.”

“I won’t burn,” said Lilith, unafraid. “You can shoot me, but I won’t burn. The sun hasn’t claimed me yet.”

“You’ll burn under the moon, not the sun. You’ll burn so brightly that you’ll fall in the water in flames, and still feel the heat as you drown.”

Lilith furrowed her brow. She didn’t understand.

“Your lord Legion picked the worst possible place to start his empire,” said Courtney. “He chose an active tanker filled with crude oil,
flammable
crude, and there’s a guy headed to the bowels of this ship with a couple of matches. We’re leaving right now, and if I were you I’d do the same.”

/***/

Zeke took off his riot gear before jumping into the water. Their paddleboat was gone, so Courtney and Zeke decided to swim to shore. The current was pushing them outwards, so Courtney advised Zeke to swim parallel to the coast. They soon reached calmer waters, and reached land shortly thereafter.

Zeke saw men running around the prison hangar in a panic, former prisoners and guards alike. They were frightened because they had run out of drugs, because there was smoke now coming from the ship, and because they had no more shelter to protect them.

Zeke thought about walking up to the people and trying to get them to stay calm. He wanted to show them that he had a working vehicle, one that would take them all to safety if they just stayed calm.

No.
You’re not these people’s savior, and this is not your place. They have time to find shelter, and they’ll find it. This is not your place, and these are not your people.

Zeke guided Courtney to the truck in the alcove, and she stepped in while he started the engine.

“There’s something running towards us,” she said.

It was the fox, and she was running straight for the truck’s cab and not the bed. Zeke opened his door and the fox jumped in and sat next to Courtney. Zeke wished he had brought some milk or eggs, but the fox seemed happy just to be with them.

“Let’s go,” said Courtney.

Zeke started the truck and they drove off down the coast. They’d circle back for their buried supplies later, but for now they had to leave. The tanker was now on fire, and the flames were spreading outwards and upwards like the Devil’s dying hand, touching the night sky with red-fingered tendrils one last time before it was dragged back down to Hell forever.

ISAIAH

Ash woke up to the soft sounds of the main theme of Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” The song had been augmented by one of the children in sector yR8 playing keyboard, and the boy had replaced the woodwinds with monastic voices to give it a more human feel. The child also claimed that the monk’s voices were perfectly suited to rouse one out of bed in the morning, and Ash agreed with him. He never felt tired when he awoke, even if he set his alarm earlier than necessary. An elderly man from Ash’s own sector had made a light setting that synced perfectly with the song, and just as the monk’s voices made their crescendo, the light on the wall burst as if from a sunrise. Ash added the sounds of birds, and he arose eager to face the day.

Ash sliced off a sliver of meat from the cube of lab-grown chicken and threw it in the skillet. He put some oil on it and then some of the hydroponically grown broccoli that had been automatically placed in his refrigerator while he slept. He threw in some cumin and a dash of mango-infused curry, and then went to take a shower.

After the shower, he dressed and ate his breakfast with some pear tea on the side. The drink went well with the chicken, and Ash decided to share the combination with the district’s database of recipes. Ash’s room had already kept track of what he cooked and how much of each ingredient he had used, so all Ash had to do was turn on the projector and swipe his hand over the light to upload the recipe.

/***/

Ash took the train to district
xr7
and walked towards his language lesson of the day. He and others were scheduled to learn the Salvation’s invented language of Malachian, but Ash noticed that most of the people in xr7 spoke Mandarin amongst themselves.

The class was filled with fifteen men and women from all different districts, and their teacher was a statuesque Indian woman who explained to them the value of learning this new language.

“We are attempting to create a common linguistic,” said the woman. “Not to replace any language, but to enhance our world as an addendum. We don’t need Malachian to be spoken in the home in lieu of one’s mother tongue, and we don’t even need it to replace English, which still seems to be the
lingua franca
of choice.”

The Indian woman paused and looked at the class.

“I must repeat that this language will not threaten the languages we already have, even the rare ones,” she said. “In fact, we have made booths to record the natural speakers of
all
the languages that still remain here, and the programs will in turn teach these rare languages to our children.”

“
Malachian
is a simple tongue with few words and predictable grammar. We’re learning it to bring a uniqueness to the next phase of humanity’s evolution. As you may have heard, its vocabulary doesn’t have many negatively connotated words such as
deceit,
greed
and
murder
.

“This lack of descriptors will help mold our future
.
Malachian will be our holy language, reserved for our most important decisions and actions. When we speak Malachian, we’ll not be able to do anything illicit or underhanded because there will be no words to describe the concept of such actions.”

/***/

Ash, like the other students, found the language remarkably easy to pick up. There was an elderly, raspy-voiced man who spoke only Mandarin, and another young woman who spoke only Spanish. Each one picked up the tongue quickly, both the vocabulary and pronunciation. Ash liked the language too. The consonants had crisp, strong edges that were easy to enunciate, and its flat, calm tone sounded graceful to his ears.

The elderly man spoke the words easily, even with his raspy voice. He didn’t wrestle with the syllables, nor did he need to work his strained mouth around the short vowels. His speech came out just as effortlessly as it did for the young Spanish girl and Ash.

By the end of the class they were able to have a rudimentary conversation with one another in Malachian. The raspy-voiced man even told a joke, and everyone laughed.

/***/

After the class Ash walked through the hallways and saw the booths about which the Indian teacher had spoken. He saw an old lady in a rectangular container speaking a language that didn’t sound quite like Mandarin, and Ash reasoned that it must be a Chinese dialect. The booths were soundproof from the inside but broadcast their sounds externally. Ash listened to the words with a small crowd around the container, and together they watched a projection of what was going on inside, with all words translated into subtitles of multiple languages at the bottom of the display. Ash noticed that the woman was speaking to a three-dimensional computerized avatar who was asking her questions in Mandarin. As the old woman replied in her own vernacular, the avatar gradually started repeating those words back to her. The avatar was soon speaking in the woman’s own dialect, and this caused both the old woman and the surrounding crowd to smile.

The children are smiling too
, thought Ash as he looked around,
even the ones who have been separated from their parents.

Ash took a moment to think about these children, the lucky orphans whose past had been wiped clean in order that they might live beyond it. Ash knew that these children had faced the dark truths of the world a few weeks or even days ago. That truth had been parents torn from them, or parents giving them up willingly. A parent accepted into the Salvation wouldn’t abandon a rejected child, but when the roles were reversed, parents would inevitably leave their children to abandon
them
. They would do it after tears and hesitation, but they would always leave their children here. There was nothing outside of this place but death. Parents would
orphan
their children, or even split apart their family by taking a rejected sibling with them to the surface while their accepted brother or sister stayed, but parents wouldn’t take a child back to the surface willingly.

The left children would shed tears and wail, but the Salvation had a plan for them. They had a process to wash the pain away, to take those dark truths of the world and lock them permanently on the surface. The children would cry, and then they would rest. They would go into a room and talk with one of the angels, and they would again cry, but less than the first time. After a week there would still be tears, but after two weeks there would be none. They had a new family now, one that would never abandon them, because there would never again be a need to do such a thing.

This place helps us care for one another, just as the crowd now cares for this old woman and her obscure dialect,
thought Ash.
But we’re not to care for anyone outside, not even our closest relatives, and not even those left in our memories. This place teaches the children here to forget their parents, to banish them forever to an outside world that no longer exists.

/***/

Ash was assigned to go to district
uu4
to work on a solar panel production station. He could have fixed it from his own room, because the place automated everything so well that physical presence was rarely a required option. But Ash liked to travel to these places, to see everything firsthand rather than as a projection on the wall. There was nothing like being there in person, and he had time to spare.

No one is ever in a rush down here.
They tested me with moral choices and simulated flash floods, but the problems here require no such thought, and no such urgency.

/***/

The train ride took two hours, and Ash read the whole way. His eyes scanned the projected words on the seat in front of him, a quick tale written by a woman in a fellow district. The story was quite good and the words yielded a striking punch, setting up one idea in the reader’s head before obliterating it and bringing up two more. But Ash couldn’t help thinking of other things, so he eventually let the words wash over him like warm water, enjoying their texture but letting them pass by without really thinking of their meaning.

At the end of the train ride Ash turned off the projection and walked out the door, forgetting the story just as completely as the children here were taught to forget their parents, banished forever to the surface above.

/***/

Ash was greeted at uu4 by a handler and brought to the district’s solar panel production station. The panels’ design was ingenious, made completely of synthesizable materials. Ash knew that there were mines down here, but whenever they could make something out of their renewable plastic alloy they would choose to do so, even when they needed to make solar panels.

The handler explained that the surface above uu4 was covered with constant storms, rain and lightning bolts that made the night just as dangerous as the day. They had insulated the solar panels until they could withstand the weather with ease, but the handler explained that this was at a cost of efficiency. The solar panels could grab more energy despite their insulation, and they just needed to figure out how.

Ash stayed in the district and studied the problem for two days. Each layer of the solar panel had its own brilliant touch and its own elegance. Its insulated shell wouldn’t bring the lightning, but if it did, it could still handle it. The panels could take power from the sun while it rained, and even while submerged in a flood. They provided quite a bit of energy too, enough to light up uu4 and several other districts, each of which had their own functional power-generating systems and backup systems too.

There’s a backup plan for everything here, but these systems don’t fail in the first place. I know that no structure is foolproof, and no mechanism can go on indefinitely. But if such a system existed, it would be here. It would be this place, and the thousands of devices, rules and theories of the Salvation. If I had to guess, I’d say that this place will never fail.

/***/

Ash spent the next two weeks writing, performing and drawing everything he knew and putting it all into the Salvation’s database. He played every song by Landini twice, and then played every other song that he could recall. This took three days.

He then wrote down every mathematical equation he could think of, and every theory that he could remember, even the ones that didn’t seem like they would work. He had ideas for a pair of novels and a children’s book, but because of time he just wrote extended outlines for all three and entered them into the Salvation’s computers. He had four potential treatments for three rare types of cancer. None were proven, but he wrote them down in detail nonetheless.

He even wrote down theories that were probably of no use to the Salvation. He had a scheme for a new type of traffic light, and an alternative to both socialism and capitalism. He entered both into the database and then spent the next three days writing down everything else he could remember, from theories to designs, from sketches to architecture. After this was done, Ash had a glass of the pear tea and relaxed for an hour.

“Please let me know the highest-level problems you have yet to solve,” said Ash to the computer afterwards. “I’m not talking about improving the efficiency in a water heater or augmenting a song. I’m talking about the big things. Tell me what you’d really like to know.”

“Why do you want us to ask you this?” asked the computer’s artificial voice.

“Because I want to help, to do something big,” said Ash. “And I don’t want to wait.”

The computer gave Ash four problems. One was an engineering problem that would help redesign the train, one had him compose a new style of improvisational music somewhere in between classical and jazz, and one had him posit a theory that would keep the population steady for at least ten thousand years.

“For the fourth question, we need you to assume that these ten thousand years have passed,” said the computerized voice, “and the earth is once again habitable.”

“I assume these hypothetical inhabitants would want to leave for the surface,” said Ash. “Would this be correct?”

“Yes.”

“All right, what do you want to know?”

The computer’s voice explained that it wanted a general set of social and moral rules that would ensure that the citizens not only survive the transition, but would also keep the Salvation’s culture intact.

“Can you describe what the surface conditions would be like?”

“There will be an array of possibilities,” said the computer. “We want you to develop a baseline set of values that will help protect against anything and everything the citizens might encounter.”

“I’d like you to give me some clue of what this new world might look like,” said Ash. “Just to get me started.”

The computer listed twenty-two scenarios. One had them emerge to find a desert, with the oceans largely drained. One had the earth covered in a sweltering forest, one had the world flooded, and one had the world covered by storms. The computer kept listing possibilities, and Ash nodded at each one.

The final scenario had the world covered with fertile soil and moderate climates, but the land was covered with tribes of humans who had survived the flare all this time. These tribes were quite violent, and would attack the citizens of the Salvation at every opportunity.