TRANSCENDENCE, page 4
He’s stunned, and keeps staring at me for a while. Then he blinks several times, and shakes his head. “That’s quite a story, traveler. What a curious thing it must be, to see cities that look like your own but have a different history. There must be endless wonder out there.”
“This is the first city I've found that isn't a crypt. From what I can tell so far, many cities haven't survived, and some are deadly even to enter. The most wonder I have found is in the heat of this fire and the food you gave me.”
He nods at this, absentminded or unconvinced. “Your story starts so much like ours, I wonder how many other worlds suffer the tyranny of Capitalist masters.”
I arch my eyebrows upwards at this, but don’t prod with a question. I’ve said nothing of the economic and political realities of our city, I’d never even thought about it much. Was this a truer cause of our oppression, or would it have happened regardless?
“I’ll start our story on a street corner, but of course there are centuries that lead to that moment. The lower classes, the Pests chiefly among them, were tired of being kept under the heel of society. A rage simmered in the streets that all could feel, and with every starving child and early death it rose and rose until violence was inevitable.
“It started as an increase in thefts, fights in the streets, and escalated from there. Our streets became so dangerous that no honest person would walk them after dark, no matter where they came from. It was so bad that those grisly automatons would patrol them, but they were few and our rage was endless. It flowed in the streets where they were not.
“We did not know the impotence of fighting each other, until he showed us. With no more than a voice amplifier and a chair to stand on, he preached from the street corners of Meadow Hearth. Not of gods and religion, but of politics. He decried the horrors of unfettered Capitalism, he showed us how we were cogs in a great machine.”
We had similar street corner preachers in my city, but no one paid them any attention. They shouted about everything, usually incoherent, drunk, or insane. A backdrop that formed the din of the streets.
“As the days passed, a crowd grew around him. He would teach us many things in that time, of alternate forms of government, of different thought through history, and word spread through the districts of a truth-sayer. For those who listened, we learned that our rage was misdirected. We had been hurting our brothers and sisters in our anger, and in doing so, hurting ourselves. Our fight was not with them though, it was with the society. It was with the shackles they made us wear.
“I was an early believer, and soon I spent every day listening to him. His words swept the streets like wildfire. The violence stopped, the anger paused, and we all listened. Besides his talking, there was silence. We became his children, his students.
“Meadow Hearth became unproductive. En masse, we stopped working, stopped contributing. We stopped offering our blood to keep their machine running. People helped their brothers and sisters instead. We shared our food with the hungry, and healed the sick amongst us. For the first time, many of us felt a beauty and rightness in our days, a glow that came from working together. In those short days, love flowed and our hearts were so full.
“We should have known, of course, that it couldn’t last. A cog that doesn’t turn can stop even the biggest machine, and nothing was more important to the society than the humming of that machine. Two Inquisitors came, and accused our shepherd of inciting a riot. The irony of it still haunts me. They walked through a street full of people sitting and quietly listening to an old man talk. And they called it a riot!
“When they tried to take him away, that was when we stood as one for the first time. We linked arms with our brothers and sisters, and said no. The metal devils tried to force their way through the crowd, to get to the old man, and that anger that had been held in check, that had simmered at a near boil for so long, exploded. But no longer was our anger misdirected, we knew the truth of it all, and our violence was righteous.
“The automatons never made it past the first row of people. Plasma swords appeared on all sides, and cut them down. We knew at that point the streets were no longer safe, more automatons would come and destroy us all. The preacher quieted our fears, and led us through the maze of tunnels underneath the city to hide. Occasionally, the robots would find us, but by then we were entrenched and prepared for them.
“On that day, we became one people with one goal—to tear down the machine that used us. We took off the yoke of the oppressors then, and became our shepherd's knights. We showed our devotion by crafting these pendants.”
At this, Edward lifts the metal coin he wears around his neck and shows it to me again. The horror that was building in me through the course of his story becomes real, and crashes over me. A chill races up my spine, as adrenaline courses through me. The sleep and comfort I felt only moments ago is far gone.
“Wait, this man, this street corner preacher, was the Narrator?” I ask incredulously. He’s there in my memory, laughing in delight at watching me struggle to change my city. I see him passively saying that he watches all of our worlds suffer. Was he passive, though? Or was he creating the suffering, to see what we’d do?
Edward nods in response. “That’s correct, although I didn’t know who he was then. When asked his name, he would always respond that he had none. ‘I am the voice of your anger, I do not exist beyond that’, he would say. At some point during this time, he began to predict the future.
“I know now that he was not a seer, but at the time we all believed, or we did when it started to come true. He told us that darkness would slowly creep into the city as the machine slowed down, and we had to be poised to strike when it did. And so, we militarized. In secret, we gathered gear. We learned tactics of war. We trained everyone amongst us, the women, the children, the elderly. We knew this would be our only stand, our only chance, and everyone committed to it. And as we did, just as he said, the city began to shut down.
“It started with a slow cooling of the air. As if a fire was dying, the temperature ticked down day by day. At first, it was imperceptible, and then it was all we could think about. Did you ever realize that the city is kept at nearly the same temperature, constantly? I’d never thought about it before. We learned to shiver for the first time. The upper echelons of the city were in an uproar, no one understood what was happening.
“Soon after, their flying cars stopped charging. Sun Gate and Cloud Spire were set in a sudden paralysis, some of their towers weren’t even designed with stairs. Overnight, residents were stranded in their ivory towers. The automatons that had sought us out were rerouted on rescue missions, and down there in the sewers, we laughed and laughed at their foolishness. It’s clear now that we were just as foolish as they were.
“The darkness came last, with a slow dimming day by day. Our anticipation grew with it; we were hungry for the darkness, we had made a home with it long ago. The city was in chaos at this point, emergency councils ran constantly in Sun Gate trying to solve the problems, and trying to understand their source. Slowly, it became clear that the automatons were no longer able to charge either. We found them frozen in the street, stopped for eternity mid-task. As the lights faded, I noticed the same from our prophet. He secluded himself from us, the society he’d built.
“When the lights collapsed with a sudden snap, the dam that had been built around our rage broke.”
He pauses here, and stares into the fire. It’s clear now what haunts him. I can tell by the small number of people in the clearing, by the lack of other lights as I stared out across the city on the steps of the Medical Authority. I assumed at first that there were others somewhere else in the city, but if there are, it’s no great mass. A chill goes down my spine as I realize that Edward is not a war hero, not a revolutionary—he’s a mass murderer.
He continues. “A fever took us, it was like nothing anyone had experienced. I see visions now from those days of violence, and wonder if they’re real. We ate through the city like a plague. There was nothing to stop us. All the technology that once protected these lofty heights meant nothing when the power got shut down. When the violence finally stopped, when our lust was sated, we noticed that our prophet had disappeared.
“To some, this was a sign that our righteous rage was satisfied. They truly saw him as a manifestation of our anger. I felt confused though, lost in his absence, and I didn’t believe in the mysticism of it.
“Years later, I found the gate at the top of that tower. I stepped into it, and met the Narrator, the face behind the mask of the prophet. He told me he oversaw countless cities like ours, on countless different worlds. Seeing him there, I had never believed in him more. Until I asked him why he chose to guide our world, to free us from our oppression. He laughed in response, and said; ‘I helped you out of boredom, and to see what interesting place your city goes from here.’
“In my stunned silence, he continued to tell me that our city existed on a planet that didn’t see its celestial sun for an entire century, and that it then stayed in the sunlight for another five centuries after. He told me that our city is powered from that sunlight, and so now in our dark age we will live in this cold, dead place until it shines on our city again. He wanted to see if our small society would persevere, or collapse back to earlier ways of civilization, or disappear entirely. I realized then that he was not some benevolent god, not a wise prophet, but a child playing with dolls. We are his playthings, and to him, our lives are no more consequential than that."
Edward spits into the fire, disgusted. And I see him for what he is—cast out, used up, played for a fool. A husk of a man that is left only with his memories and his regrets. He bargained his humanity in the hope of creating a better world, only to realize that their messiah didn’t guide them towards salvation, but its opposite. And now, he's stuck in this world that's slowly dying, and wondering how long their survival will last. How long until his people starve? How long until they collapse into violence over scarce resources?
It hits me now that I am not sitting at the fire with a friend, with someone who comes from a background like mine that I can understand. This comfort and understanding I've felt from our similar history, it blinded me. He knows what I am, knows that I can leave this place. I am here with someone trapped in a cage of their own design, and I have mistakenly told them that I have a key to leaving.
My mind blazes through possibilities as Edward and I sit next to the flickering fire. I feel for my wings, but they’re like a numb limb. There’s not nearly enough power in this city to charge them. Underneath my clothes, I’m still wearing the cosmic armor that saved me when we stormed the Medical Authority tower in our city. But my head is unprotected, and the armor will only slow the plasma swords of the four guards to this makeshift shelter. They all have combat training, I might die in minutes trying to fight my way from here. But I have a cat, and they’re not expecting that.
I sling myself from my chair and bolt for the door, but Edward is impossibly fast. He intercepts me from behind before I’ve made half the distance. He wraps an arm braided with muscle around my throat to choke me. At the noise, the four guards at the door come in. They stare at me struggling in his arms. I lock eyes with Charon’s yellow slits in the dark, and motion toward them with my hand.
“Sorry brother, but we need your key to leave this place,” Edward says in my ear, and slams the knife from the table into my side. He had it this entire time and I didn’t even notice, but he also didn’t notice the impossibly thin armor under my clothes. He doesn’t know what it’s capable of. He is expecting the knife to pierce my side, tear into my vital organs, but instead all of the energy redirects backwards. All the force he puts into the blow travels back through the knife and his hand, and I hear them both shatter in an instant with a sickening crunch.
The next moments are like a flash of frozen images. Everything happens all at once, but I process each moment and respond. Edward screams, and his grip on my throat loosens. The guards at the door start towards us in momentary confusion until a shadow breaks free from the wall, and rips into them. I slip underneath Edward’s loosened arm, pivot around, and spring the hidden plasma knife on my wrist through the bottom of his chin. His screaming stops in an instant with the hot smell of cauterized flesh.
I turn back around, and find the guards in a mess. They stand facing all different directions, confused and trying to find Charon in the dark. There are already several dripping gashes on all of them. The nearest of them is turned away from me, his plasma sword humming. I run to him and shove my knife through the back of his head. It sticks out through his forehead like a new, glowing horn, and he drops to the ground. I don’t stop to fight the others. Instead, I rush through their confusion and out the door. I turn back to see Charon right on my heels.
Shouts go up through the shanty town, and plasma swords turn on all around me as people rush to join the fray. I embrace my conditioning, and the food in my belly, and sprint for the Medical Authority tower. By the time I make the stairs, I turn and see the gap to my pursuers is already growing. Behind them, I hear wails traveling up from the fires as people discover their leader’s death. I slow my pace only slightly as I enter the tower and climb the long stairwell.
The run up the stairs is grueling, but I know however it pains me, it is demolishing the people behind me. I hear their panting breaths and flagging footfalls echoing all around me in a cacophony of sound as we ascend. My own breathing is ragged when we hit the top stop, and Charon next to me makes similar sounds. But we know where our exit is, and we race to it. Through the grand hall, and the cleaning room beyond, we reach the control room and the door that leads into the only home we have now. I throw it open, and we plunge through into the safety of the Cosmos. The door shuts behind us, and closes out the evils of another world.
Five
Dorothy
Idream of my mother, a dream I’ve had so many times that I know its rise and fall like a well-worn book. She died when I was five, and my memory of her face and form are that of a child. She’s haphazard, proportions all wrong for my now adult size. Her arms stretch down from above me, impossibly long, and lift me up to her loving face. It’s a face that I can never quite make out in the dream, only her gigantic hazel eyes and curled black hair are clear. She holds me aloft and we spin in the sunlight, and I ache for a world where I grew up with this woman. With her beauty, purity, happiness.
A cloud shields the sun, and the dream changes. As it always does. There is no life where this dream ends in happiness. My mother’s face draws in on itself, sharpening features, until she has to set me down. She’s too tired now, too shrunken and desiccated. The cancer races through her, eating her insides, and I feel all the anger and confusion of my youth rise back up. Why does my mother stay sick, when everyone else gets cured?
And then I stand above her, my hand coming down to hold hers. The sky darkens, and I smell rain at the window. She smiles at me, at the smell that she always loved, and closes her eyes.
I open my eyes into bright light, and think momentarily that the dream is repeating. This cruel loop of memory spinning around and around until I sink into grief again. Long arms reach down to me, and grasp my shoulders. A blank metallic face fills my vision, reflecting my own image of hazel eyes and dark brown hair. She notices my waking, and with a self-consciousness she retreats.
“Hello daughter, you were moaning in your sleep so I came to ensure you were okay,” the Great Mother says, sheepishly. I am in awe again at how much emotion she expresses.
I raise the reclining chair I was sleeping in, and throw my legs over the side. I hold my head in my hands for a moment, rubbing my eyes to clear the weight of sleep and memory. How long has it been since I had someone that cared for me? That would compassionately wake me from a bad dream? I remember how I left her then, with the weight of understanding that her sentience came at the price of her grief. I want nothing more than to give her a way out from this tomb. It’s an empathy I don’t feel often.
“Great Mother, does anything hold you here still?”
She pauses for a long time, and looks around the room. This beautiful library that has been her companion and teacher for so many years. “I feel like I have been waiting for something since we passed our destination. Waiting to see if fate would guide us somewhere new, waiting to see if my wards would survive, waiting to see what came next. There is nothing left for me here now.” Her voice is hard, angry.
“Come with me, then. I don’t know how we find him, but we can’t let worlds continue to be playthings for the Narrator. I’m certain his actions aren’t just limited to your city and mine.” My memories of grief were like a chrysalis, coalescing the cool weight of purpose in me through the night. A righteous rage builds in me now with every word. “He has to be stopped.”
“You would have me as a traveling companion? I doubt that I will be useful.”
I stand and reach up to put my arm on her shoulder. Her tensed shoulders ease under the weight of my hand. I consider covering up what I’m feeling, but something about her drives me to honesty. Maybe it’s the loneliness from the Cosmos affecting me.
“I’m not looking for a useful companion, I’m looking for a friend.”
As we move past the life pods again, I notice the contemplation in her steps. She walks slowly and looks to either side of her, as if saying goodbye to her wards. I follow behind her silently, giving her the time she needs to come to peace with leaving this place. When we get to her hut, I follow her inside.
“Great Mother, how will you charge once we leave the city?” I say, realizing the oversight.
