Break the Bastion

by Christopher Rankin

  “We need to see this thing close up,” She said.

  “What do you think it means?” He asked. “And who the hell is that up there?”

  “I’ve seen a map like that before,” Callista told him. “In my Dad’s office. He told me it was a map of mineral deposits.”

  Lucas gave her a look of skepticism. “Why would he lie?” He asked her. “The answer could tell us something.”

  “I guess everyone lies,” said Callista, turning away from him. She took out her leather tobacco bag and started to roll up some anxiety pill powder with the shredded leaves. She slid her bedroom window open a crack, spilling in the sound of the ocean. “Even my dad,” she added.

  “I’m sorry he lied to you,” Lucas told her while looking through the scope. “Sometimes love can make people act in strange and not always such nice ways.”

  She took a drag of her cigarette, leaned back on the carpet, and looked straight up at ceiling decorated in glowing star decals. After watching the smoke drift into space, she turned back to Lucas.

  “You talk like you’re a hundred years old,” She said. “You don’t sound like anyone I know.”

  “I guess my upbringing has been…unconventional.”

  She looked at her cigarette, saying, “Sometimes I worry what smoking these things does to my memory. I still don’t remember much before four years ago or so, when my mom went nuts. I made my dad take me to the doctor to get my head scanned, thinking I had a tumor or something. Well, they had nothing. I remember reading somewhere people can block out memories subconsciously or something, but I don’t think I believe it.”

  “One day everything will just be there,” Lucas said. “Like it never left.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Lucas didn’t answer her. Instead he seemed to study her face, the tension in her lips, the green and brown striations in her irises, with both curiosity and pleasure. She wondered why the strange moment of silence seemed so comfortable.

  “What are you sick with?” She asked him. “Morgan said no one at school knows.”

  “No one and school and no one anywhere else knows what’s wrong with me,” he answered. “Not doctors, not specialists, no one.” He took his eyes from the scope and looked at her. “I guess some people weren’t meant to be here very long.”

  “Morgan said you don’t talk to anyone at school.”

  “That’s right,” he told her, looking back into the telescope. He sounded proud at the admission. “Getting rejected is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I don’t really talk to many people at my school either. I mostly talk to my Dad.”

  “Makes it hurt worse when he lies to you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It does. Morgan and I were talking about you the other day.”

  “Oh?”

  “He wonders how you don’t get lonely.”

  “I always feel less lonely when I’m by myself,” he said. “Dealing with bullies like Nox is a small price to pay.”

  Callista admired the makeshift telescope and pointed it back at the Bastion. The figure in the dome and the map were cloaked by a patch of fog. “You must be pretty smart,” She said. “You must do really well in school.”

  “Terribly,” said Lucas. “Sometimes my mind works ok even well but I can’t focus at school. It’s hard to breathe and I can’t keep a thought in my head. The teachers are either too scared to get close to me or they think I’m really stupid. I’m just glad they leave me alone.”

  “Do you know why Lorrance chose you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I think he chose me,” she said, “somehow because of my father.”

  “How do you know he didn’t choose you, for you?”

  Callista just shrugged her shoulders, saying, “I’m nothing special.”

  In a moment of quiet, with Lucas just looking at her, it was as though he had just figured her out, decoded something before even she could have.

  “Did you send me a message tonight?” He asked. “Did you tell Strix that only I could help you?”

  She looked confused. “He said you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t say why.”

  “Oh,” he answered, looking disappointed. “I must have misunderstood.”

  She and Lucas tried again to capture the image of the map with the telescope but it, along with the artist, had vanished. They sat on Callista’s floor for a few quiet minutes while she finished her doped cigarette.

  …

  On his way home that night, Lucas asked Strix, “Why did you tell me Callista wanted to see me tonight? You lied to me.”

  “We kept true to the spirit of the truth,” said the owl.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You both wanted to see each other. She was thinking about you and you were thinking about her.”

  “How did you know I was thinking about her?”

  “Human behavior is fairly predictable to us. Especially yours.”

  Lucas stopped on the path, angling his head back to Strix in his backpack. He asked the owl, “Are you manipulating me, Strix?”

  The owl considered his question. Eventually Strix told him, “We assure you that we have the best of intentions, Lucas. Please trust us. You’ve been doing so well with the experiment.”

  …

  Chapter 18

  An Old Friend

  The following Morning, Morgan woke to the whistling of his brother’s wheezing. Brian had a one-hundred-and-three fever and sweat bleeding through his sheets into the mattress. Morgan went over to him with some water and a dry washcloth to dab the sweat from his forehead.

  “It’s a bad one this time,” said Brian, his flushed face struggling to form a smile. “Don’t tell Dad. I don’t want him mad at me.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll deal with him. I just want you to feel better.” Morgan ran his fingers through Brian’s sweaty mop of hair, telling him, “That’s your only job. To feel better.”

  Downstairs, their father was getting ready for work. His job necessitated irregular shifts and backbreaking labor and his mood before work always seemed appropriate. He typically cursed under his breath while he put on his coverall uniform, saying that he deserved a better life and kids had been the death of his dream of going to war.

  He had just been put on a new project with a new boss that he described as being, “up his ass.” Instead of his typical day of unseating barnacles from the pumps, now his group was tasked with fitting an automatic system. The man had lamented that he was in charge of, “making himself obsolete.”

  He shouted up the stairs to the boys, saying, “Morgan, you better not miss school again today. I don’t want to get interrupted with another phone call! Brian, call your brother if you need anything.”

  Then he left for his short walk to the Bastion.

  On Morgan’s way out of the bedroom, he heard Strix say something. “Morgan,” said the owl. “We would like to accompany you today. Would you please bring us along in your backpack?”

  “Why?” Morgan asked. “Do you get lonely or something?”

  “We will need to go on a brief excursion,” said Strix. “We’re afraid it’s important, Morgan.”

  Morgan sighed, saying, “Fine. But my Dad better not find out or I’m in for it.”

  …

  The pine woods around the the Old Tsunami Watchtower felt considerably less haunted during the day. The trees were spray painted and carved with messages, profanities and the initials of generations of teenagers. The grass and brush had been so thoroughly trampled and the soil coated in campfire ash that some patches of land looked like dunes of moon dust. Everything smelled like a mix of burnt wood, stale beer and cigarettes.

  The open-air elevator scraped its way to the tower’s crown, where Morgan found Blaise Lorrance staring out to the ocean. Something about the inventor’s posture and his stance seemed strange. His body didn’t resemble the usual dried-up noodle. Lorrance was upright, with his should
ers back, staring out to the sea like a boat captain.

  It was as though another man had stepped into Lorrance’s skin and bones.

  Besides that, the old man seemed to be in a conversation with the thin air above him, like speaking to an invisible angel.

  “Hello, Mister Battle,” Lorrance said, without turning around. “I see you brought your electromechanical friend along. Hello, Strix.”

  Strix spoke from Morgan’s bag, saying, “We brought Morgan for a discussion with Blaise Lorrance.”

  “Of course,” said the old man, turning around. He stared at Morgan, searching his face for the next flicker of expression. “My boy,” he went on, “thank you for coming. The three of us need to speak, alone.”

  Lorrance’s unfamiliar and commanding tone unsettled Morgan. He asked, “Why, alone?”

  “Because you’re the key to the experiment. You’re the key to…washing away the disease. You’re the key that’s going to unlock the future. You’re the key to everything.”

  Morgan backed away, telling him, “I don’t understand what you just said or this experiment, at all.”

  “Don’t worry. You will,” said Lorrance, almost as though it were a threat.

  “I still have no idea why you and Strix chose me. It still doesn’t make sense. I’m just a future factory worker or homeless guy. You’re wasting your time with me.”

  Lorrance snorted and chuckled, looking at Morgan like he was a complete fool. “Never forget you said that,” Lorrance told him. “In time, the memory will bring you quite a laugh. You were chosen because of your heart. It’s that simple. More life swims through your veins than just about anyone on Earth. Most humans are barely here, barely alive, mostly dead inside. This force, this terror and rage, this thing inside of you, may feel like nothing more than pain right now, but it will turn. I promise you. It will become your life’s energy source.”

  “It hurts,” said Morgan. “So much sometimes.”

  “Of course it does, Morgan. It hurts us too. Human kind has turned to cruelty and darkness. Every day that goes by, this world lowers us to something worse. How could anyone with a decent heart not hurt? How could one find happiness and satisfaction in all this?”

  Morgan joined him in leaning against the railing. Lorrance’s words resonated with him and he said, “I do get mad about a lot of stuff. The stupid war, the greedy scumbags, all the corrupt and phony crap does piss me off. But I have to tell you, Doctor Lorrance, I don’t understand most of what you’re saying.”

  Blaise Lorrance grinned and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Of course, not.” He inhaled a deep breath and stared out to his Bastion that held the ocean back. “I didn’t understand until I met Strix.”

  “What do you mean ‘met?’ I thought you built him.”

  “I met him in my imagination. Then I built him.”

  Morgan looked even more perplexed. “OK,” he said. “I don’t get it, but OK.”

  “What do you think of it?” Lorrance asked as he looked in the direction of the Bastion. “It cost me twenty years of my thoughts, my dreams, my life.”

  “In history class,” said Morgan, “my teacher said that civilization would have died out without the Bastion. She taught us that not enough people would have survived without it.”

  “The damn thing should have never been built,” snapped Lorrance without looking at him.

  “What?”

  “I should have just let it all die,” said the old man. “Now I know what the world could have been, what it was meant to be. This,” he said, looking out over the blanket of decaying city bowing to the Bastion, “is never what I thought would happen. I thought all the trauma of the floods and the technological victory with the Bastion would drive people to be something more. I thought it would be a fresh start. I realize now what I’ve done. I propped up something that needed to die. Something that was already dead.”

  Below the tower, on the surrounding ground, all sorts of washed-up artifacts from the old world were sprinkled around the area. Teenagers had been collecting the stuff for decades. Old road signs, bits of ships and buildings now underwater and even personal items of people long dead had been placed like offerings.

  “The children, the young people, sense the truth,” Lorrance went on, “but we teach them and make them forget. We make them accept this. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not really,” answered Morgan.

  “How is your brother, Brian?” Asked Lorrance. “Strix mentioned his illness has been progressing.”

  The confusion in Morgan’s face transformed into despairing anger. “He’s having a hard time,” he said. “It’s not easy for him.”

  “It’s not easy for you, either.”

  “I know there was a cure years ago that was lost in the floods. Everyone says you’re the greatest scientist alive. Do you think we could get it back? Do you think we’ll ever be able to help Brian?”

  The question made Blaise Lorrance sigh. He lowered his head, telling Morgan, “I wish I could but even I’m not great enough to make up for this empty world, I’m afraid. The entire scientific enterprise now is dedicated to disassembling, rather than reassembling the human anatomy. I doubt any one man, even Blaise Lorrance, could accomplish something like that alone. Even if it could…”

  “What do you mean ‘even if it could?’”

  “I’m sorry, my boy. I didn’t mean anything. I’m just an old man.”

  At that moment, Lorrance’s face went empty and lifeless. He appeared hypnotized. The old inventor’s body quickly withered like an orchid in salt water. His upright stance became the twisted wreck that Morgan remembered. Then he just stood there, looking bewildered. It was as though Lorrance was surprised to see Morgan suddenly standing there.

  “Oh, Morgan,” said Lorrance in his usual half-hushed voice. “It’s been so good to see you.” He asked, “I haven’t said anything that upset you, have I?”

  Morgan didn’t know what to say. It appeared to him that Doctor Lorrance was experiencing some sort of side effect of advanced age. He turned his attention back to the Bastion and ocean in the distance, staring out to the wall blurred by haze and mist. “Someone lives up there, don’t they?” He asked Lorrance. “On top of the Bastion?”

  Blaise Lorrance broke into a sly smile. “What a place to live,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s not me up there.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “An old friend,” said Lorrance. “We were once close. Time, however, Morgan. I’m afraid time tore us in two.”

  …

  Morgan showed up late for school that afternoon, sneaking in after lunch recess with the crowd of other students. Nox Jaborosa still hadn’t returned to school and apparently, the police had been looking for him earlier that morning.

  No one seemed to know what had happened to Nox, other than he hadn’t been home since the day of the incident with Strix. His father had reported him missing. Some of his friends said they saw him running around in the alleys near the school. One kid said that he saw Nox screaming at the Bastion a few nights earlier.

  Morgan found Lucas sitting by himself in the cafeteria. He wasn’t eating. Instead, he had his nose in a biochemistry textbook that looked more appropriate for a university graduate student.

  “A little light reading, I see,” Morgan said to him. “Any particular reason you’re studying something you won’t be tested on?”

  “I just wanted to understand,” said Lucas. “Strix recommended it to me to help me get better.”

  “How can you even understand it?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Lucas like he had already considered the question. “It’s like my brain is working better. Things just seem clearer to me lately.”

  “Any word on Nox?” Morgan asked him.

  “Just rumors. No one has spoken to him since it happened.”

  Morgan leaned across the table and whispered, “What do you think Strix did to him?”

  “I don’t think I w
ant to know.”

  Outside the cafeteria, the late morning sky was turning dark and threatening and the wind was picking up. The crashing of the waves against the Bastion was getting louder as the noise cancellation systems reached their capacities. Streaks and shreds of black clouds whipped across the sky. After a few minutes, the pounding of the waves was accompanied by heavy splashing from the top of the Bastion. Salt water and seaweed fell to the ground at subsonic speeds, as though the ocean was emptying on top of the school.

  A sudden and eerie hush swept over the cafeteria full of students.

  Lucas and Morgan heard murmuring in the crowd and pretty soon, many of the students stood up. They pointed to the window, at something.

  The first scream came from one of the freshman girls. She cried out, “What’s he doing out there!”

  Outside the cafeteria window in the storm, Nox Jaborosa stood completely naked. His body was covered in mud and bits of shrubbery. The whites of his eyes looked as bright as sunspots against the storm. His arms and chest were crusty with blood and he was still bleeding. It looked as though he had scored cuts into his flesh.

  Nox looked straight across the cafeteria, to where Lucas and Morgan were sitting. He held a hunting knife up in the air and nodded with a knowing smile.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Morgan asked.

  Nox took the knife and held it to his mouth. He took a long, hard lick, running his tongue all the way down the sharp edge of the knife. The smile never left his face. Blood filled the inside of his mouth and ran down his cheeks.

  The act sent the occupants of the cafeteria into an uproar. Some of the students ran. Others just stood transfixed and nearly paralyzed at the display.

  Nox reached his right hand into his bleeding mouth. He pulled it out and started to write something in blood on the cafeteria window.

  Streaks of blood took the shape of ears and owl’s eyes on the glass.

  “Break the Bastion!” Nox shouted. “Break the Bastion!” He repeated it over and over, while pounding his fists into the window.