Aeon Thirteen

by Aeon Authors

  “Once you repolarize, then you can take it from there?” He eyed my tightly braided head with faint disgust. Almost as if he’d seen too much of it. “Okay then,” he said to their worried nods. “We’re going to depend on the fact that Guards never deviate from protocol. They’ll get their head count from the encoding computer and never match it against warm bodies. I’ll stay out of direct sight. Tomorrow morning, they will conduct the Reinstatement Ceremony and assign work details for a complete inventory. The deep-level inventory crew will include one ST. Make sure he has the package and I’ll slip in with the crew.” At their dubious looks, he laughed his booming laugh, that now seemed a thing that no longer belonged to us. “Don’t worry, I will look unobtrusive. I’ve done it before.”

  “Why not just go down now and we’ll meet you there tomorrow?” asked one ST.

  Schnell looked at me.

  “Pearl is coming with me. I must arrange a way to get her included on that crew, and to manipulate the computer so that we can be well away to the ship before her Recovery Alarm sounds.”

  Silence. Punctuated by the Return Signal hoots. They all looked at me, their faces full of envy, fear, and anger. I didn’t know what to put on my face—the tremendous swirling relief I felt? Some bit of triumph? Regret for their fate, the awful fate I was escaping? I chose a bland, faintly surprised expression that had served me well in the past when men had propositioned me.

  “Make sure she gets the surgery as scheduled tonight,” he ordered. “She’s encoding for Tomas, so she’ll spend the night there. The Guards won’t interfere with that ritual.”

  With that they left, without a whisper to question his instructions. We did not look at each other; we already belonged to different worlds. I would not be sorry that I could go when they could not.

  “Did you think I would forget? That I would leave you?” he asked me, sweeping his fingertips over my braids, hesitating momentarily so that I thought he might pull the braids out. “The hours I spend with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, my rosary, my rosary.” 5

  I kissed him in reply.

  The assembly was harrowing and perfectly according to Regulation. We all knelt, tiered by rank and number, as the Guards marched in. Every hair rose on my exposed neck. One by one by one they filled the front, sides, and back of the Meeting Hall. The thumping of their boots cut through the susurrus of weeping, moans, and hushed hysteria around me. I couldn’t look up “rosary”—didn’t dare go near the files now. Every hour apart from me—until tomorrow. I had only to get through the next twelve hours. Count them every one apart, until I could be with Schnell, until we would walk through the bottom of the world to freedom.

  “The Regular Session is convened,” came the announcement.

  Every Guard stood in his place, hundreds of them, flags of the Confederated Union held by five guards to bracket a central position. The Guard General strode in to fill the slot.

  He was large, big as Schnell, but corpulent, with crimson in his face. His black eyes gleamed like metal as he scanned the room, and he dictated some remarks I couldn’t hear to an aide at his side. At my side, Casidy wept.

  “They’ll drain the pool, I know,” she whispered. “And all the plants there, they’ll incinerate them.”

  “I know,” I said, quietly out the side of my mouth. “I had to destroy my trees. I thought I owed them death at friendly hands.” She turned her head, I could see her features twist in my peripheral vision.

  “They’ll find your trace in the files,” she hissed. “They’ll punish you for what you and that… that horrible man did.”

  Two prisoners down from Casidy, I could just see Tomas lean forward. I shook my head. We needed to shut her up now or she would bring attention to us all.

  “You’re right, Casidy,” I said. “We should never have looked at any of those papers. If only we had listened to you all along.” But as sincere as I tried to sound, she saw through me.

  “To think I wanted to be you, to look like you.” Her voice sounded like ash. “But you’re cold and awful and selfish. You’ll just leave us all here to rot, won’t you?” In my surprise, I almost turned to her. Up front, the guards began reshifting for the inspection. “Oh, yes, everyone knows how you tricked him into saying you’d go. And everyone hates you for it. But you wait, your beauty,” she spat the word, “will be your downfall.”

  The Guard General began to pace the rows, beginning with the five STs and moving down the ranks, pausing here and there to ask questions. I couldn’t hear, and could only barely see when they entered my field of vision as I kept my eyes to regulation height. I wanted to draw no attention. Only twelve hours—maybe only eleven now.

  Booted feet walked evenly down our row. Casidy trembled. The boots paused before me. I didn’t look.

  “Prisoner B3-5-410—eyes up.” A gruff voice commanded.

  Obediently I raised my head. The massive Guard General towered over me

  “Informal name?” he asked.

  I considered lying. Considered where my rebellion would begin.

  “Rose,” I said. I put on what I hoped was a dull, unappealing face.

  “How charming - antiquated.” He turned to his aide. “Add this one to my concubines.”

  “Sir, Prisoner B3-5-410 is scheduled for surgery tonight to be mated to Prisoner B3-5-406.”

  The Guard General glanced at Tomas, flicking his fingers slightly in his direction, then stroked my face. “So tender—and a virgin, too.” Then he slapped me hard, running his fingers lightly over the flushed and stinging skin. I blinked back the tears. “Responsive as she is lovely. I have no doubt Prisoner B3-5-406 will be pleased to yield his right to me. Have yourself encoded for me tonight.” And he continued on.

  I didn’t dare look down the line to Tomas. After the assembly, as we climbed stiff-kneed to our feet, Casidy paused a moment. I thought of what Schnell would do, and then looked directly into her eyes, her hatred running off of me like oil.

  “It’s what you deserve,” she said, “except of course, you will escape that as well.” She tried to toss her thin blonde hair, forgetting the sculpted braids wouldn’t move, and walked out. Tomas laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “All will be well, my princess,” he said, as if we were still ten years old and reading interdicted papers in the dungeon. “Faustus will save you.” I felt a chill.

  “But that’s not how the story ended, is it?” I said, and then winked at him, to show I knew differently. My relief at having an escape dizzied me to all else.

  The surgery was fast and painless. The tech asked me for my formal request for encoding, though I could see he’d already punched in the Guard General’s pattern. The Regulations say I get to choose, but of course I would not make any other choice. Any other man I chose would be executed, freeing me up for re-encoding.

  Afterwards I headed to Tomas’ room, according to protocol. Tomorrow, once I had completed any unfinished duties, Tomas would formally yield his rights to the Guard General. And I had to agree to it, ask for it. This sort of thing was well-covered by the Regulations. And we all believed, or had believed, that it was as it should be. It was all our choice, just so long as we did exactly as the Guards told us to.

  I walked down that hallway, one I had walked a thousand times before, only now a Guard stood every ten paces. A Senior Tech stopped me on the way. It was the one who had accompanied Schnell to the pool that day, a few days and forever ago.

  “Prisoner B3-5-410, due to your promotion to Tech Aide three days ago,” and he looked at me solemnly, both of us knowing the ‘promotion’ had occurred only in cyberspace, “your presence is required in Core, to consult on your deep-level maintenance project. We regret interrupting your honeymoon night.” He nearly rolled his eyes at that.

  “I understand,” I nodded. “Duty calls.” I wanted to run to meet Schnell, but I held to a Regulation walk. I had been counting—eight hours yet to go—but perhaps it would be
now.

  When I arrived, another ST informed me that one of the back panels was malfunctioning on the deep-level monitoring unit. The several Guards standing by looked through us. I was just another Tech Aide, doing my job. I squeezed behind through the crawl duct to find Schnell inside, his long-limbed body folded to fit the tight space. Both curled into balls, we huddled close, like the bears he had told me about, sleeping in caves of earth, not metal.

  “Where the gorgeous East with richest hand showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat.” he whispered. 6 “What name did you give him?”

  “Rose,” I said into his ear. “So that I would remember your rosary and not your poems when he says my name.”

  I felt him scowl, suddenly angry, though just as quiet. “Don’t even think it for a moment! That I would leave you here to be debased, tortured, and ultimately worn-out and killed by him. I’ve changed your status, retroactive to several days ago. He’ll have to allow you on the deep-level team tomorrow, before he can take you. It’s Regulation and you’re already scheduled. He won’t deviate from Regulation, that one.”

  “How do you know how do to that?” I asked. “Change the computers and how the Guards will and won’t act?” Schnell dropped his forehead lightly against mine.

  “What is the package?” I asked.

  Schnell closed his eyes against my braid. Outside I could hear the normal exchange of commands and information.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked. And then, “I need to know.”

  His voice whispered across my cheek and hair. “No one is free,” he said. “Everyone is in prison colonies, just as Obidion. Like you, they all believe their tale is unique, that they failed Civilization. The Guards go for so long because they have so many colonies to maintain. The Domestication Maintenance schedule is a lie. Everyone is encoded. Everyone imprisoned.”

  I nodded, knowing he could feel me in the dark. I had somehow known, deep in my—not my heart—my self.

  “And the package?”

  “You are unique in that,” he muttered. “Your ancestors were the first Prisoners. What no one knew—except a few of my ancestors—was that those rebels had developed a self-encoding device. It can be placed in the utero-units. It counterfeits the Regulation encoding. A person who grows in such a unit appears to be encoded, but can turn it off with a thought.” He clutched me tighter. “Do you see? The next generation will grow as if model Prisoners, then turn as one and defy the machines. Kill the Guards. I was born at great risk to make this happen. I’ve spent years getting here, finding mythical Obidion. You, and our children, will spread the SED through the known worlds. You will be a great help to me. I think I was fated to find you here as well.”

  “The next generation, though,” I said. “Not us—I didn’t form in the modified units.”

  He shook his head. “That’s part of why I came. You had the information we needed, here buried in your ‘dungeon.’” I felt his smile at my childhood joke. “Along with all those old texts people tried to save from the burnings. I simply showed your STs where to find it, how to install it. Even now the new babies are being installed into modified machines. I’ll take a copy with me tomorrow—or rather, this morning.”

  I kissed him, careful not to make it seem like one of the last.

  “But I am encoded,” I said.

  He bristled. “Irrelevant,” he snapped. We both paused, listening that the outside sounds continued their normal drone. “I can hide you, find a way. I’ve given up my whole life to this quest—I deserve one gift. My Pearl. My Rosary.”

  “Was he happy?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The man who sold everything he had for that one pearl?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Schnell curled his fingers under my cheekbone, following the smooth curve to my lips. “It was the Kingdom of Heaven he gave everything for. I seek nothing less.” His mouth followed his fingers and he kissed me with all the longing any of us has for paradise.

  I had no choice but to betray him.

  In none of the old stories did the rescued princess fall off the back of the horse and bring the ravening wolves down on her Prince. Schnell and I, we might have had a few days of Heaven, but they would have found me. Every cell of my body would have told them exactly where to find him—the man they didn’t know existed. I would not be the one to turn the key in the lock on all the Universe. The treasure he would take from Obidion had to be the SED. Not me. Even a silly, vain girl could see that. Only a man in love could close his eyes to it.

  I went to Tomas’ room and asked him to help me. And in the morning, at the Reinstatement Ceremony, Tomas delivered me naked and in chains to the Guard General. I could see the man beginning to show through Tomas’ face, as he refused to shed a tear. He handed the leash to the Guard General and spoke the formal words, gifting the beast with his erstwhile mate, virginity intact. In my turn, I begged to be released from all further maintenance duties, saying I could not wait and must become his concubine at once.

  Schnell saw it all on the vids, while he waited for me to join him. The ST who went to meet him said Schnell made it back through the hatch. Had asked him to give me a message, then changed his mind and left without a word. I nourish the hope that he hates me enough to have no regrets. Enough hate to free him. To fight. That I become like only one of the many ivory scars on his warrior’s back.

  For myself, I like to think of him, sometimes try to imagine that it’s his hands on my body. I count his rosary to the lashes.

  Sometimes, when the Guard General is sated with blood and lust, I visit the utero-units, which Schnell reset that last night. I watch the embryos grow and imagine them winging through the stars.

  Notes:

  1 - Matthew 13:46 (return)

  2 - “No. 214,” Emily Dickinson (return)

  3 - “The Crystal Cabinet,” William Blake (return)

  4 - History of England, Vol. V, Ch. 23 Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (return)

  5 - “My Rosary,” Robert Cameron Rogers (return)

  6 - Paradise Lost, II, l. I John Milton (return)

  One Avatar, Hold the Anchovies

  S. Hutson Blount

  “Originally, I had an idea for a comic strip featuring grumpy retired mythological figures. I found two problems with this: 1) it had been done before, and 2) I can’t draw for squat. Cannibalizing the plans for the first few strips yielded the core of the story.

  The Albanian-owned pizza place in North Dallas is loosely based on a real establishment I frequented. I don’t know the family personally, and none of these characters are based on them. The pies are fit for divine consumption, however.”

  I’M AN OLD MAN in this business. It’s all kids now. My co-workers are ten years younger than me and not noticeably inclined to do any work. Delivering pizza isn’t a good job, but it is a job. The mysterious relationship between effort and reward seems to have escaped the notice of the pimple-cream classes. This is the heart of how I wound up delivering a medium deep-dish with sausage and mushrooms to a major mythological figure.

  I was working goalie at Sunshine the night of the lunar eclipse. “Goalie” is the driver we had to reserve to make emergency deliveries when the kids got lost, forgot, wrecked their riced-up econoboxes, or just plain decided to eat the pie themselves. Old Lady Januzaj had about zero tolerance for that shit. It didn’t play back in Albania, and she wasn’t about to bend the rules for any snot-nose American kids. The Old Lady had no great love for me, either—I think she caught me eyeballing her daughter Rina once. Rina’s in community college, and Januzaj treats her like a treasure, and in imminent peril from every Y-chromosome on the planet. She doesn’t seem to have much affection left over for her sons, or any other human being that I could tell, but she grudgingly allowed me to keep working for her since I actually did the job. In return, she kept me in rent money with a little left over for beer.

  And so it came to pass that my long-suffering Mazda pickup shuddered
to a halt in front of a dingy one-bedroom crackerbox in Lake Highlands. It was the sort of house they were building here in the Fifties, brick in hospital pastel colors and fake shutters attached to the outside of the windows. This one looked like it hadn’t been kept up since fear of Sputnik had chased the original owner indoors. The corpse of what had been a boat poked out from the covered carport. Whoever Eric Aten was, he must run up a fortune in electric bills. It looked like Klieg lights were on in every room.

  I banged on the door after the bell failed me. “Sunshine Pizza!” A little snow flurry of old varnish from the door floated down. It was early for junebugs, but they were in force here on the porch, doing their best to get into the house.

  He got one more knock. “There’s a pizza here for an Eric? It’s thirteen twenty-two with tax.”

  More junebugs hammered on the barred windows, making gong noises on the window AC unit.

  “I’m coming! Stop with the pounding!”

  The voice sounded geriatric, which definitely bode ill. Retirees will haggle with you or try to use coupons from every other pizza chain.

  The door opened, and I was blinded by the glare. Whatever the source was, it was in the entryway shining right into my eyes, and as bright as a magnesium flare. I squinted at it and looked sideways. “Thirteen twenty-two.”

  The voice came from about the level of my chest. “Robbers! If that Januzaj woman didn’t know how to make such a sauce, I’d tell her what she could do with her…. What’s wrong with you? Why’s your face all pinched up like that?”

  “Could you turn that light off, sir? Or down?”

  “You? You’re seeing a bright light over my head now?”

  Jesus. The eclipses always bring out the freaks. “Yes.”

  The light dimmed. A lot of details swam into view as my retinas decided to end the strike. The light proved to be some kind of globe fixture over and not behind the old man.