The awnings ratcheted to block the descending sun. Flying ants buzzed about as evening approached.
Pandor, his mouth a humorless thin line, stepped up. “What do you recommend we do?”
Sergian tugged his jowls with his hands, transforming his frown into a smile.
Pandor turned to Dominy and whispered in his ear, “At the Decimation, I’m sure I saw Sergian smile when your master got the scalpel.”
Sergian nodded toward Pandor. “Thank you for the question. The timeworn ways—some of which even served adequately in the past—are no longer sufficient. We must introduce contemporary ideas. At Aspiria, there’s another way, an original way.” He flicked his bangs to the side, and his gaze roamed over the throng. “Who of you out there, who is to say which is the right way? Who is—”
Genna leaned forward.
Stand tall. Dominy stepped ahead of the opinionated girl. “Petrece would have!” His outburst interrupted the string of rhetorical questions.
A wash of gasps broke through the crowd as heads craned toward Dominy’s voice.
Dominy swiped flying ants off his sweat-beaded brow. Surely, the council and the guardian didn’t also agree with Sergian. Impossible. He stepped closer. “So instead of searching for the truth, we should modify the Code to read, ‘searching for a truth’?”
Nervous laughter bubbled up from the crowd.
A stage handler yelled, “Quiet! Master Sergian is our head of council and this is not your time.”
Sergian nodded in thanks. “I should be upset, but I’m not…”
Pandor whispered to Dominy. “Oh, I thought this was an open forum.”
“Upset?” Dominy flailed his arms. “Why would you be upset when you called for an open forum?”
The handler took a step down the platform stairs. “Let him finish!”
Sergian waved off the few voices of support from the crowd. “Yes, of course, open forum.” He pulled open the neckline of his robe. “I understand change is difficult.” His gaze lifted, and the corners of his mouth followed. “But change will occur, or the once unimaginable becomes a possibility and then a reality. Listen, the stresses placed on you—students of Aspiria—are now overly onerous. We must continue to reform the way we teach our classes, judge our students. Yes, too much stress is destructive to too many students. Reform is for the welfare of all Aspirians. Reform is good! From now on, there’ll be no more publicly displayed test results.”
Genna stepped up again. “No!”
Pandor whispered to Dominy. “He’s mad. Decidedly mad.”
Dominy continued his two-step-forward dance with Genna. “What about the Meritocracy!”
Sergian glared at Dominy. “I’ve studied these modifications for years and have carefully planned out this process with the council. I realize it’ll take time to adjust to these … small changes. But give us that time. In the meantime, on a minor issue, I’m pleased to report we’ll redesign classroom chairs with the number-one priority: comfort for our students.”
A few heads nodded.
Sergian clenched the sides of the dais with both hands. He torqued his big head to the skyline: the research labs, the transport pad, the reactor, and the accelerators. He smiled, but his facial muscles tensed from the effort. “Let me assure you these reform proposals are not restricted to students. Upon final council approval, masters will be asked to produce more research of true value: less pure research, more applied research. And now—like what Windlar accomplished before me a generation ago with the intergalactic missions—we’ll exchange something of value, in this case our research, for provisions. The result is what I call tradables. Yes, we’ll trade Aspirian research for provisions. And the fortuitous result? Aspiria will require fewer Provisioning Thirds, and therefore we are free to lower the standards for mastership. Yes, masters will sacrifice a little freedom in exchange for fewer Provisioning Thirds. Yes, Aspiria can have more masters. More Aspirian masters!”
A few cheers rang out, but Dominy and most everyone else, stood stunned. His throat constricted, bottling a rage boiling inside him.
Pandor whispered, “The intellectual capital of civilization is lowering its standards?” He turned up his palms. “And tradables? I thought Aspiria had a surplus of material goods.”
Sergian smiled. “Yes, I can make that happen. In order to facilitate this transition to tradables, we’ll reduce the assigned classwork in certain non-essential subjects. Students, we’ll take every precaution in change, but we must protect the welfare of all our students…” His gaze swept across the crowd before fixating on the outsiders. “And not just the few.”
The descending sun settled behind the stage. Filtered through a cloud of ants, the fiery ball was a burnt orange smudge. Hiding test scores? Lowering standards? At Aspiria? Someone pushed Dominy from behind and he stumbled through the crowd. “No! We’re a meritocracy. This is all wrong!”
Sergian squinted and pointed directly at him.
Oh, Divinity! The head of council waved Dominy to the stage. He glanced at the Transport Center and back at Genna. It’s over for me.
Sergian switch off his microphone, grinned and turned to Matham. “Not bad, only one malcontent storming the stage. I expected worse. Much worse.” The students were becoming desensitized to his words. Re-form. He imagined how the crowd would have reacted a couple of years ago. He’d be laughed off the podium, or more likely, laughed out of Aspiria. They weren’t laughing now. He noticed his newly assigned student cowering from the confrontation. “Escort him up to the stage.”
Matham trembled. “Master, what’re you going to do to him?”
“Go get him.” Sergian’s gaze lifted to the congregation and the corners of his mouth followed. He flicked the mic on. “Students, please be patient for a moment.” He switched the mic off. The Malcontent staggered to the base of the stage. Matham led him up the stairs.
Sergian lumbered over to him. “Who are you?”
“Dominy, a First.” He ascended. “Talia’s my master.”
Talia. If he only could’ve seen her reaction to his reforms—and just days after she left the council. Justice was beautiful.
“She was assigned to me after Petrece left.”
A lump pounded inside Sergian’s stomach. It was unfortunate about Petrece, but for the greater good he had to seize control of the council. His body twitched and a calmness settled over him. He eyed the familiar-looking boy. “So, you’re a victim?”
“A victim? Oh no, Master.”
Sergian tapped his notepad and skimmed the data. “Yes, yes you are.” He wrapped his heavy arm around Dominy’s shoulder, swallowing him in the folds of his robe.
A girl ran toward the stage. “What’s happening up there!”
Sergian waved her off.
“I’m not a victim, I don’t understand, Master.”
Sergian whispered to the student. “I have a soft spot in here.” He touched his chest. “In my heart for losers.” He switched on the mic, turned to the crowd and raised his notepad. “Thank you for your patience.” He raised Dominy’s arm. “We have our underachiever right here! Look closely at this face.” He pulled the boy’s thick hair back from his forehead and paraded him around the stage. “Yes, take a close look. Because this is the face of the new, more fair, Aspiria.” Sergian fought back tears, tears of pure joy. “A victim of Aspiria. We love him! So, give a hand to someone who truly needs supportive friends.”
The crowd erupted in cheers.
Chapter Eleven
Dominy stepped through the small basement door, turned, jumped and slapped the hand-printed sign above the doorway: SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH.
He strutted over to the other outsiders, fanning his face in a futile attempt to ward off the smell of the dank air mixed with bookbinding glue. Joining them in work detail, he stripped the warped backing off some spare shelving and created a makeshift table. Positioning it under two hanging lamps, he supported the surface with an old dictionary pedestal and the largest boo
ks he could find. Genna joined him and moved old fixtures, reading desks and side tables in a wide semicircle around the table. Maybe they’d be partners after all.
Pandor scraped caked grime off yellow phosphorbulbs. Cal scrubbed the basement walls. He looked up, saw Nalton resting and grimaced. “Back to work.”
Nalton picked up his broom, lifted it overhead in a threatening wave, laughed and resumed sweeping the floor.
“Cheer up, everyone.” Genna spread her hands out to the piles of dusty documents. “We’re surrounded by all this—the true, the good, and…”
“The beautiful,” they all said in harmony.
The outsiders squeezed in around Dominy’s wobbly table, their faces illuminated, their bodies shrouded in shadows and commenced the inaugural WA meeting.
“The Worm Alliance is now in order.” Dominy unknotted the brown ribbon that secured a scroll labeled Worm Alliance—Bylaws. He smoothed out the paper and held the document as if it were Scripture. “Before it closed, my mother led the mini-academy on P9. That was our oasis. The basement will be ours. Our effort to keep the Meritocracy alive. I drew up these bylaws, bylaws based on original Aspirian principles.”
“You sure this is a good idea? Maybe buried deep in that speech lay some interesting observations.” Pandor surveyed them as though gauging their reaction. “Some partial truths.”
Dominy winced at those three words. “That’s blasphemy.” Pandor was hard to figure. He was determined to not stand out—except for his scores, of course. Yet he seemed unusually interested in becoming friends with Matham.
Pandor picked up the scroll. “It’s not these rituals, these bylaws. I like these. These are good, decidedly, but I just don’t know.”
They stared at Pandor in silence. Dominy pointed toward the door. “I’ll remind everyone the Alliance was presented to you as an invitation, an invitation you’ve accepted. However, as an act of kindness…” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Genna cringe. “Okay, scratch that. I’ll ask this only once: does anyone want to leave?”
Again, silence.
“If so, go now, no questions asked.”
Pandor’s chin drooped into his robe. “No, no.” But the tone of his voice said maybe. “I just wish Matham was here.” Pandor’s face sagged under the dim lighting, his gaze flitting around the room as if Matham were hiding somewhere behind the stacks. But his new best friend was not invited. Sergian demanded all his free time. And Matham wasn’t an outsider.
Genna placed a hand on Pandor’s shoulder. “Maybe someday.”
Pandor forced a smile and turned to Dominy. “I will still argue that different opinions are a good thing.”
“Differences of opinion are only a virtue until the truth is discovered. Now let’s pledge our allegiance to these principles and to each other.” Dominy grabbed Genna’s hand to his left and Nalton’s to his right. The others did likewise, forming a chain around the table.
“We shall search for the truth,” they said as one.
Genna fluttered her fingers in the air.
Nalton ascended to the other seven outsiders.
“Speaking of the truth.” Cal slapped down Lives of our Guardians in the center of the wobbly table.
Dominy’s shoulders clenched, his vocal cords twisted. “You still have that?”
“You’re sweating, down here?” Cal shivered, excessively. “Did you notice anything strange about this book?”
Oh, Divinity. “Uh, huh?”
Cal opened the book to the first biography. He placed his notepad on the bottom edge to keep the pages from flipping. “Did you read this about Lucean?”
Dominy sighed like a balloon releasing its air. “Yes, oh, yes, Lucean.” He had desperately wanted to tell them about the ancient guardian described in the first bio but didn’t dare draw attention to the last bio, the missing last bio. “I pretty much memorized the entry.”
Genna looked at him sideways. “Spill the beaker. Enough drama. What’s up?”
Dominy leaned over the tabletop. “According to this logbook, Lucean was an infamous guardian from ancient times.”
Genna pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “Lucean? I have never heard the name.”
“Exactly, nobody has. She’s not referenced in the Aspirian Worldwide Encyclopedia. Why hide a record of her existence? I think Sergian might be involved in some sort of cover-up. This will become river-water-clear to you in a moment.” Dominy closed his eyes and recalled the Lucean excerpt. “Her bio’s a bit confusing because the source material the authors relied on was written in an obscure vernacular. The upshot is that Lucean was an Academic, one of the founders of Aspiria, but later, something happened. Something changed her.”
Genna and the others took out their notepads and placed them on the table. “Was she sick?”
“No, Lucean wasn’t sick, not physically, but the stress of the academy apparently weighed on her. She separated herself from the other Academics, becoming infamous for two reasons.” Dominy pressed in tighter and whispered, “First, for her so-called game.” He held out his palm toward Cal.
“Luce’s Cubes.”
Dominy nodded. “I only learned of their existence after questioning Matham about Sergian. Matham didn’t tell me much interesting—except to say he once caught Sergian playing with the cubes.”
“Shhh, not so loud.” Pandor’s gaze fixed on the basement door.
“This—quote—game of Luce’s Cubes was based on…” Dominy spread out his arms.
Cal shook and tossed imaginary cubes across the table. “Luck. No skill was involved—all luck.” The others shook their heads in disbelief.
Dominy lowered his voice to a hush. “Whether she played the cubes herself is unclear—at least from this document. A game player rolls two numbered cubes, and if on her first roll, she totals seven, she’s a winner. If not, she continues rolling until her original number comes up. As long as that number comes before a seven is rolled, she’s still a winner.”
“That’s it?” Genna asked. “Why play games of random chance at Aspiria?”
“Exactly. And at the same time, Lucean plotted to…” Dominy shook his head. “Reform Aspiria.”
The outsiders stared at him, stony-faced.
They leaned over the table and took turns studying portions of the Lucean biography.
Dominy read snippets of her Doctrine. “‘Contemporary ideas … An original way of thinking … Reform for the welfare of all Aspirians … Reform is good’.”
Cal slammed his fist on the table. “The exact words Sergian used.”
Genna pulled back her head. “Look at this, Dreamer. Put your eye to the paper. There, see the tiny star scrunched against the upper corner of that word.”
Dominy followed her instruction and slowly raised his head. “A galactic discovery. It’s an asterisk, a footnote pertaining to ancient history, and it references a pamphlet residing in … the Basement Media Vault?” Is that the secret room where I saw Sergian?
Cal grabbed his notepad. The logbook’s pages flipped opened to the back.
“Odd. A page is missing.” Genna stared at Dominy. “You okay? You look like you just saw an imaginary number.”
Dominy dropped his gaze, mopped his forehead with his sleeve and snatched Guardians of Our Lives. “Everyone, follow me.” He led them south, running through the rows of books, to the partition door. He cracked it open and peeked. The wall-blinds disappeared. The modern room was deserted. They tiptoed through the partition door and pressed up against the glass. Etched into the glass just left of the door were words he hadn’t seen before:
Media Vault
Master Access Only
“Restricted documents at Aspiria, the bastion of openness and transparency?” Dominy turned. The outsiders were squinting at the words, their faces a haunted shade of sulfur yellow. Dominy pointed at the vault. “And one of those documents is a research pamphlet on ancient history. That’s got to be the template for Sergian’s reform scheme.”
In stunned silence, they walked back to the table to see their notepads lit up like a landing pad at night.
“Sergian’s reforms are official.” Dominy read the message. “‘This decree, set forth at a meeting of the council, in an effort to stabilize test scores, proclaims henceforth no exam results shall be posted publicly and, in addition, places certain restrictions on masters’ research’.”
“Look.” Genna pointed at her notepad. “The second paragraph of the decree—one of the nonessential subjects he’s eliminating? History. He’s definitely hiding something.”
Pandor spread his hands. “If so, why wouldn’t he just get rid of it?”
Genna stared at Pandor as if he was crazy, they all did. “Nobody would do the unthinkable at Aspiria, destroy intellectual property.”
Dominy’s morning meal of lentils gurgled up from his stomach. He swallowed back the nasty bile. “Anyway, I bet the vault is security-protected and Sergian probably doesn’t know that Lives of Our Guardians exists, or it’d be sealed too.” Dominy sat down at the table and gestured for the others to join him.
Genna twisted the ends of her hair. “We still have the guardian to protect Aspiria’s principles.”
Dominy dropped his head, his lips trembled. “Most likely, Sergian and the council aren’t even consulting Everlen. The decree says it was approved with only two-thirds of the Big Three. Hey, maybe we can contact Everlen.”
“Worms talking to a guardian? That’s probably never happened in history.” Pandor laughed. “Anyway, if we have to rely on him, we’re in trouble—the walking cadaver’s as good as dead.”
Aspiria Rising Page 6
