The GOD Box

by Melissa Horan

  “Wait!” Miek said, “Are we allowed to stop you if we need an explanation?” Before he finished the question he could have got his answer from the look on Jonathan’s face. Intentionally, though, he waited for verbal confirmation.

  “If there’s vocabulary you don’t understand, yes, concepts, no.”

  Okay, that was weird… but okay, Gabe thought.

  “Alright, what does vo…ca…bulary mean?”

  Jonathan exhaled loudly out of his nose… “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously.”

  “Words that are difficult to understand.”

  “Great… and the one earlier… coll something?”

  “Colleagues. People we work with. Can I move on?”

  “Sure. Only if you really want to.” Miek said as though he was talking to a four year old.

  Jonathan ignored that and pressed forward, “It was a lot different than here. Our entertainment… or, our leisure activities-“

  “Great, you should probably define any words over ten letters or more because we’re complete idiots.” Samson cooed in his rumble of a voice.

  “I don’t know what you do and don’t know!”

  “Your entertainment…” Dane insisted, now distracted from his conversation with May, was trying to get this show on the road.

  “Our entertainment is what we call movies, or television, the internet. Which… are people acting… in a box…” nice, Jonathan, thought Gabe… “and we could choose what we wanted to watch… but the people weren’t actually there… Or… we could get on the internet and communicate with someone thousands of miles away. We call it technology, or advancements in communication.

  The look on Samson’s face clearly said, ‘wow, these guys are on crack’.

  “Let’s pretend we understand.” Dane said kindly and made a hand gesture signaling for him to continue.

  “We had cell phones which were plastic boxes we held to our ear and talked into to someone who was far away. We had cars which are like … horses… but… faster… like a box people could fit into with wheels.” Poor Jonathan had no idea how little sense he made. Especially since they didn’t know what horses were… Gabe realized that they wouldn’t know what horses were… shit. That was the only word he could process for five minutes while he started absent-mindedly at the fire. That was his fault. They didn’t know what horses were. They didn’t have horses. They didn’t have any animals. Gabe needed to talk to Jonathan. Every other time, except the third time they had had some kind of plan… And for that one, they didn’t have a plan because they died before they could start over, so that world just continued.

  Those things that you forget about in dire situations… yeah, these were them. Before the end of the modern world they were working with this ‘remedy’ as they called it, or the disease as they referred to it to May and Dane earlier, was just water, but infused in it was a disease that started confusing human senses and diluted them until they died without even realizing. Jonathan had figured out how to not let it have effect on plants, but didn’t have time to figure it out for not effecting animals. That explanation alone didn’t cover it. Even the areas that they hadn’t injected these were failing because the ecosystem was drying up. Whatever animals there had been in the area were moving on to fresher pastures. Right? But all the while Gabe was recognizing these dire circumstances the other conversation continued as normal. They didn’t know any better.

  “Anyway, I’m just telling you this to say that we could get whatever we wanted whenever we wanted technologically, basically.” That didn’t connect to them, but they agreed no questions about concepts, so they didn’t ask questions. He continued, “Our government was… well… I guess I can say whatever I want, they’re not over our shoulders now. They screwed us all and damned us to Hell.”

  “What’s Hell?”

  “Nope, that’s a concept, not vocabulary, I’m moving on. Not that the organization was awful. Any decent person could have figured it out, but society was poisonous. We were in a massive war, and we were china’s puppet, we were in so much damn debt. People just couldn’t figure it out…”

  Gabe wasn’t sure where this was going and why Jonathan moved from technology to government. Gabe’s mind was still on the animal theory. Gabe was a man who always had questions, and always had about five answers… wouldn’t animals have migrated this direction? The image of the map they used to have (before they lost it) popped up in his memory.

  When they started this project, it was with the anticipation that Jonathan’s formula in the remedy would work, but as the war pressed closer and closer, without a viable prospect for not affecting animals, they had to come up with a backup. In the area they were clearing, they went to great trouble to build an animal preserve with its own water source. They couldn’t save every animal. Certain predators would void the whole attempt. So they mostly saved some domestic animals; cows, sheep, chickens, goats, ducks, just a few bulls and buffalo… animals that could be used… a few snakes, bugs and small critters to help preserve nature. Then, inside the lab there was a freezer somewhere that was preserving DNA of all other kinds of animals that when they decided to keep the society, they could bring more.

  Each time they put the remedy into a water source during the clonings, they did so with caution; that they only put in enough disease to cover the city so that it would never reach this Eden, hopefully sparing a few wild animals as well. They couldn’t save every single animal.

  On the syringe they used, there were five measuring marks – not the typical measures – a half of a mark would spread the disease five miles in three days. They tried to draw the animals out of the city, though. Yet, after so many times, would they just leave the area? No, that was part of the problem with last time. While they were being attacked, the remedy was smashed in Gabe’s hand next to the well. In three days, the disease would travel a good fifty miles. Oh, hell.

  He heard Jonathan’s last comment and vaguely connected it with something he was staring at in the book. Gabe spoke up drearily, “They’ve got that far.” He held up the book which had those answers, then went back to staring at the fire.

  Starting over so many times was not in the plan. Special effort had to be made to keep it away from animals, from zoos…

  Jonathan plunged on, “… they said, boohoo, morality is gone. But who friggin’ cared? They were missing the whole point. We were more intelligent than that now. Love everyone, and stop punishing them because they are different. Don’t just tolerate, encourage, right?”

  “Right!” Dane said, clearly ready to move on to a new subject. But Jonathan kept going. They didn’t groan, they had more politeness than that, but they made silent looks at each other, which Jonathan didn’t see, to compensate for the lack of expressing their frustration verbally.

  Sometimes it was a shame what a passionate fool he was, Gabe thought. More often than not, it is utterly shameful. But, what could be done? Gabe saw no reason at present to stop it. This was all the more beneficial for Gabe anyhow. Number one, because he could clearly identify what wasn’t helping, and could adjust when he re-explained everything later. Number two, they could see Gabe as he was: intelligent and quiet. And why was Jonathan talking about this stuff anyway? None of that was his area of specialty. He didn’t care. Whatever. Gabe went back to the book.

  This was all not very curious what he was reading about. It was all about discovery and knowledge through observation of nature; its cohesiveness, and that human behaviors should exist in, more or less, a similar pattern. Religionists called it an excuse for lack of will, believing that was exactly what we were fighting… to become more that we naturally were. Gabe never quite understood that logic; nature was a good thing, human nature was a bad thing…? Sometimes but not always? Whatever. That’s why religion was not part of the curriculum he and Jonathan created for the new world…(s). Nonsensical and caused so many frickin’ wars.

  As he kept reading he remembered how irritating philosophy was
. So many potential roads that sounded nice, but they never told you how to get there, or could tell you what there was, or if we should get there, or if we wanted to get there, or if we should want to get there, and whether or not there was any hypothetical disillusionment about being there. Why would you be okay with never having answers? That’s just about the entire dilemma they now faced. And it contradicted. He hated that.

  Jonathan had arrived at a breathless and directionless point of his panic attack of a rant and was looking at Gabe, who gave him a face that clearly said, you’re on your own, big boy. Maybe the kids had sort of followed it? But they looked emotionally and mentally harassed.

  Dane had a pathetic look of hopelessness and fear that this could never work and what was humanity, ever, really? Shear panic crossed their eyes. May looked like she was trying to find logical order in how Jonathan was thinking and piecing things together the way he was, which made her expression contorted and drunk looking. This approach was wise and probably would have the best results, although her knowledge of Jonathan was too minimal, Gabe thought.

  Gabe finally felt more in control than ever, even though none were looking at him. He asked calmly, and as though he’d heard and seen nothing peculiar, “Do you have more books I can read? I feel like that would be helpful.”

  “We do have one little one.” They said. The rest they had left at home. How far was that? Gabe wondered… was it too soon to make the advance by asking the question? Probably. They would want a game plan first. Loose he and Jonathan on their sleepy town? Real food, aka anything other than fruit was sounding great, however. He thought longingly about the beef jerky in his pockets. Certainly by now Jonathan had given into the temptation and scarfed some unseen.

  Gabe was handed the next little book and then he passed the first one onto Jonathan, who loved to read and would be preoccupied for the next little while. They say to be really intelligent you have to be able to take something complex and simplify it for a child… well…maybe Jonathan was the exception. Gabe would be the first to admit Jonathan was brilliant, though also the first to remind that it took a lot of patience before said brilliance was visible.

  Gabe let the next little book hang in his fingertips over his leg as he started asking questions, “So what started your search for us?”

  Dane answered, “I don’t see the harm in sharing this. My friend Darian and I were part of a convoy… sort of a… bodyguard… for a certain politician.”

  A bodyguard? Gabe wondered. That seemed to contradict the whole great peace story they were hoping for.

  Dane continued, “I ended up wandering a little that evening, mingling here and there, met May, etc. Darian and I were walking and talking one night about the politicians we’d seen and talking about the philosophies. We probably went a good two miles outside of town, and in the middle of a jungle we stepped on something very tough and unnatural. It was over-grown, but was very distinctly different. There were millions of little black pebbles, many of which were glistening in the moonlight. We followed that another good distance, but didn’t see an end and decided to turn around. Obviously we had no brilliant, nor haunting ideas then what it was – after all it wasn’t a box we put to our ear and talk into…”

  They all smiled and so did Gabe, surprisingly, because he had a million thoughts in his head, some more profane than others. His question and answer happened all at once. Question: How did they go far enough to find a road? Answer: last time, they didn’t have time to structure a plan and a place. A group of people were travelling when they started over and this must be where they travelled to. They had to start over right where they were, and didn’t have time to think or map out where anything was. Ah, crap.

  “Turns out, when I talked to May the next day, she knew what I was talking about. We wanted to know what it was, but didn’t feel a rush. I decided to stick around in the town as the party moved on back home. I’d taken schooling at home for years and wanted to learn and study from a new perspective. It seemed like May and I had considered every idea that had been available to us and one day decided to follow the road to see where it went, so we packed a few things and left.”

  How did they know it was called a road? Nevermind. What other word did they use in the twenty-second century? Path? Trail? Nope. The word road made complete sense.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About two years” May said.

  “And how did everyone else get involved?”

  “Eventually we needed to seek civilization so we headed toward the city and made stops in other little towns along the way. We would work for money and room for a few months at a time, so we got to know people and some joined us for various reasons.” May clarified.

  “In all that time, you’ve only had these two books?” Gabe was the one skeptical of all their theories, now.

  Miek scoffed, or “coughed” intentionally. “Yeah, right.” He said.

  “We trade them in towns. We can’t carry a hundred books.” Dane interjected frankly.

  Samson looked at Gabe like he was utterly dense.

  “So why not change the world, run in politics yourself?” Gabe asked.

  “Half our philosophy goes against that.” Dane said.

  “Samson’s thought about it.” Miek said blandly, “Right Samson?”

  There was obviously some joke Gabe didn’t get. Or maybe they just all didn’t want it that obstinately that even Samson thought it was funny.

  Samson retorted, but in the strangest way possible. He simply stayed quiet with a raise of his brow. This was probably a typical response from him and Miek continued,

  “Nah, they woulda smelled you first and realized they didn’t want someone who refused to bathe.”

  Samson had a rumbling voice that was naturally very slow, “Oh, yeah, speaking of, I’m overdue to get naked and rub myself in the dirt, thanks for reminding me.”

  They were all smiling. The air relaxed… they were making jokes, being themselves. What a good sign. Gabe thought his sigh was almost audible: Ah, that feels better. Catharsis at last.

  “So what do you do now, are you still nomadic?” Gabe asked.

  “Whatic?” May replied.

  “Travelers?”

  “Not at the moment. For the last few months we’ve been staying at a town where another friend’s family lives. He decided not to come with us, but people know us there.” May said, “We’re gunna be heading to Dane’s city within a day or so.”

  Gabe nodded, “… Good.” As they ate, Gabe drifted into oblivion, consciously and subconsciously weighing and measuring everything they said, then comparing his memories to that. He abruptly interrupted his musings to ask how many cities there were. With a shrug, May and Dane told him that it depended what he meant by cities. There were lots of small developments, more than fourteen. The biggest city was where May lived, and then there were two smaller cities besides that and two even smaller towns. That was a total of nineteen. How would they ever be able to kill nineteen cities worth of people? Noting the difficulty that presented, Gabe slipped away again quietly.

  Dane was walking around stretching as they discussed plans for going to his home town. Neither Gabe nor Jonathan was paying much attention until Dane finished up by saying, “Thank God, I haven’t been home in over a year. My mother will hate me.”

  Accidently too dramatic, Gabe snapped his head up with panic in his eyes. Jonathan was looking at him, but Gabe didn’t want to catch his eye. What did Dane just say?

  Promising them knowledge in exchange for their lives was easy. They would have to give hardly anything to satisfy them, a mere one-hundredth of what they really knew. Ignorant fools. Everything Jonathan knew was still his to own, to control, to plan with. They would be clueless from now until they decided to kill Jonathan and Gabe. Because they would decide to, eventually. Radical ideas and change like this weren’t well suited to even the rising generation. No one wanted what was best for them. The patience it took to experiment; to look o
utside of the box, was just too agonizing.

  Chapter 4

  Jonathan, with some quick wit asked, “Thank God? What does that mean?”

  Dane paused and tilted his head, thinking hard about it. He shrugged and frowned. “I don’t know… Just a phrase.”

  Gabe relaxed. Although, knowing their abnormal curiosity they may try to find out what it means… but if they haven’t yet… maybe it would be okay. Hesitantly he went back to thinking, afraid if he left the conversation too quickly again he would miss some other warning word.

  The big ideas staring him in the face, at the moment… there would be many more later, were the concept of freedom the role of women in society. May’s behavior was fascinating, not that she could by any means be a sample to generalize all the women by, but still interesting. So was their relationship – Dane and May’s relationship that is. He would be watching.

  The first time they started over Gabe remembered how horrified he was. Only twenty years into their civilization… Gabe couldn’t even think how to describe it; that was unheard of.

  …

  That first time of cloning, Gabe woke up, thinking that the memories were slow to arrive. To at once have no memories and then have thousands was a strange feeling – not even exhaustive as one might assume. Just there. Just suddenly knowing precisely what you were doing in existence when the moment before you were blind in a water-filled pillow. This first time and every time after, Gabe lay there for a few minutes silently to contemplate. He remembered that excitement, which he only felt once from the cloning. The excitement that felt like a kid at Christmas – something you’ve been hoping and waiting for was finally here. He smiled and bobbed his feet up and down – Jonathan was already up and ready, like an older brother who knew how this worked and was even more zealous than you. They even spoke a few friendly words to each other.

  Up those stairs and into the opening, suddenly they were on a covert mission, being scuttled out of the cave without knowing if they were with friends or enemies. Assorted weapons lay at their captor’s sides dangling to and fro against the flow of the movements being made. There must have been a dozen pairs of shuffling feet. At the edge of the cave, the men, or women (Gabe wasn’t sure which) dipped into that disgusting water, forcing Gabe and Jonathan with them. Completely not expecting this, Gabe slipped and dipped under the water for only a second before the back of his shirt was grabbed . He was practically being carried while choking against the water he inhaled and the pull of the neckline on his esophagus.