Relics

by Jon Ray

How much more could there be? The question passed unspoken, but it was all they could think about. Marion and Allison were both slick with sweat, as sore and as tired as they had ever been, unwilling to stop even for an instant to regain their breath.

  The going had been fairly easy, at first. As they approached the area where the Barge had breached the ceiling, they found a few jagged, boulder-size chunks of concrete strewn randomly along the hallway. Then, as they passed those stone markers, they saw the rising mountain of debris ahead. It cascaded down the corridor, filling the narrow space from wall to wall, a rising slope of broken stone, crushed appliances and jutting rebar that extended from the corrugated floor to the distant ceiling, and beyond. On both sides, the metal walls were beaten and scarred, hundreds of mediascreens either shattered or buried beneath the enormous avalanche.

  Marion and Allison had exchanged a wordless look, and then moved steadfastly forward, staring up at the still-shifting slope, the faint penumbra of the sun swirling with concrete dust.

  The initial climb, in the tight confines of the hallway, was relatively simple. They moved from stone to stone, using the walls for balance, the rubble mostly stable beneath them. But once the hallway ended, the mountain of concrete gradually steepened and spread. The ragged surface shifted dramatically, and random stray rocks occasionally tumbled down from the breach above.

  As they climbed carefully toward the peak, it became more and more obvious what had happened. The Barge had hit the ceiling and kept on going, grinding its way through the Build like a battering ram. It had plowed into the structure at a haphazard angle, shedding garbage and concrete in a violent deluge, funneling a landslide of rubbish into the room below.

  It was there, as the slope rose sharply into a near-vertical climb, that Marion finally stopped to take a breath. He paused and squinted across the rocky wall, his hand half-raised as it searched for the next hold. And then, for perhaps the first time in his life, Marion marveled at his own shadow. It fell from his fingertips like a puppet, creating a shimmering black wedge against the broken stone. There was something about the light — the hazy charcoal blur of his reflection — that made him dizzy with anticipation. He turned toward Allison, wanting to share the moment, reaching out to grasp her hand as she pulled herself up behind him.

  The boulder fell out of the sky like a bomb, catapulting over the broken surface, spinning so close that Marion felt the sting of silt against his skin. It slammed into a concrete ledge less than a meter away, splitting into two separate chunks as it fell.

  Marion and Allison watched in frozen silence as the two pieces exploded against the steel walls below, spraying twin plumes of concrete dust into the air. The mountain shifted and settled beneath them, a few stray pebbles dancing across the rocky surface below.

  “Close,” Marion said. It was all he could manage.

  Allison let out a nervous laugh, her breath a spiraling cloud. “You’re not kidding.”

  Marion steadied his shaking hands, focusing on the climb ahead. Every rock felt loose now, every handhold shifted ominously beneath his grip, but he fought back the fear. They would not be stopped — he swore it to himself. There was no way in hell that they could quit now.

  The rancid odor hit them as they neared the crest. It flowed down the steepening slope, filling the air with the sour aroma of spoiled milk. Marion covered his nose and mouth, trying not to gag as he turned back toward Allison.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Yeah.” Allison nodded, so tired she could barely speak. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Here’s hoping.” Marion turned back toward the pale light, beginning the final steps of their ascent.

  Allison let him take the lead, knowing that following his path was better than trying to forge a separate route through the unsteady landscape.

  The climb was nerve-racking, with every step, every handhold threatening to plunge them back into the abyss. But Allison kept her eye on the glowing breach above, letting her wasted muscles pull her forward one stone at a time. And then, suddenly, Marion broke through — he dragged his body up and over the broken ledge, spun around, and reached back through the angular rocks, beckoning for Allison to follow.

  From that moment, her body seemed to move of its own accord. Her hands clawed achingly forward, sunlight descended upon her, and Marion reached down, lifting her into the world above.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Allison pulled herself upright, holding onto Marion’s shoulder, still weak and shaking from the punishing climb.

  “Not exactly the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, huh?”

  It was, quite simply, the world’s largest landfill. For as far as they could see, on every side, a rolling landscape of garbage stretched into the distance. Some of it seemed surprisingly fresh, while other piles seemed like remnants of an ancient culture. But it was all of a piece: a stinking monument to everything that had ever been broken, discarded or rendered obsolete, a vast catalog of possessions that had once seemed necessary for survival.

  More than anything else, there were cars — hydrocells, electrics, and rusting combustions. Rows of crushed frames, piled like bricks one atop the other, an oxidized maze of automobiles stuck in one final, infinite traffic jam. Around this vehicular landscape lay widely scattered piles of construction debris, including a number of multi-story buildings that looked like they had been lifted from the city by an enormous tornado and deposited almost intact eight levels up. There was also, directly in front of them, a sloping mountain of tires that rose so high it looked like it was pressed against the ceiling.

  Without another word, Marion reached out and took Allison’s hand, helping to keep her steady as they began to traverse the blighted path ahead. They walked a long way in silence, skirting scattered stacks of tires, moving forward through whichever human-size opening seemed most convenient. It wasn’t until Allison stopped and dug her fingernails into his palm that Marion finally snapped out of his stupor.

  “What happened?” He stared at her, suddenly panicked. “Are you hurt? Did you step on something?”

  Allison stared at him, seemingly unable to speak. But she was smiling, and her brilliant green eyes were glowing. She reached out and placed her palm against Marion’s cheek, slowly turning his head toward the spectacle overhead.

  As Marion swept his eyes up, he felt an overwhelming mixture of wonder and shame. Am I so used to looking down? It was unbelievable, he thought — they had risked so much to reach the sky, and yet somehow, upon arrival, he couldn’t be bothered to look up and see it.

  But there it was: a choppy streak of light, shining dimly in the distance, slanting through a crack in the Build’s metal shell. The light was dusky and soft, the color of cloverleaf honey, illuminating a swirling column of dust and dirt that rose languidly toward the hidden sun. Marion squinted his eyes, peering through the blurred web of his lashes, dizzy with excitement.

  “Can you smell it?” Allison was pushing her nose into the air, a look of awe filling her face.

  Marion raised his nostrils and sniffed, trying to get past the vile odor of the dump. At first he couldn’t find it, but then — lurking beneath that rotting breeze — he discovered a hidden seam of freshness, a cool, earthy current that smelled like no scent he had ever known. He drew a deep breath, feeling the distant tendrils of real air tickling his nose.

  “It’s there,” he murmured. “It’s really there.”

  Allison grinned at him, looking slightly drunk. “Let’s go find it.”

  They had, finally, reached a land where nothing shined. As they stumbled forward, winding their way between crumbling walls of garbage, the night rolled in like a slow-motion blackout. That tantalizing beam of light faded, arcing toward them as evening fell, and then dissipating like a ghost as the sun breached the horizon.

  As the haze disappeared, Marion tried his best to remain calm, moving forward as if nothing had changed. But everything had changed. Watching the slanting light f
ade, Marion felt completely disoriented. He wasn’t sure if it was noon or midnight, but it definitely didn’t feel like sundown. Then it hit him: what they were witnessing, through that distant crack in the ceiling, was a natural sunset. This was the celestial sun meeting the earth’s true rotation, signaling the end of the day.

  Marion had always assumed that the Build’s artificial day matched the actual terrestrial day, but why would it? For all he knew, the sunlit hours he knew were artificially lengthened to boost productivity, or shortened to increase complacency. If there was one truth he had learned over the past few days, it was this: everything is unreal, and nothing is as it seems.

  As the gloom crept over them, thick as syrup, Marion marveled at the purity of the darkness. There were no streetlights, no glowing neon storefronts, no stoop bulbs illuminating the path ahead. There was nothing new, or polished or illuminated. It was a void so impenetrable that it seemed amazing they could see at all.

  Still, they continued on. As night fell, their eyes adjusted, and the piles of trash around them began to glow with a mysterious luminescence. As they picked their way among the debris, Marion felt like he was walking on the surface of the moon.

  Most of what they passed was nondescript garbage. But every once in a while, they would stop and exchange a look, if only to verify that they were both seeing the exact same thing. Like when they passed a row of industrial washers, filled with piles of moldering clothes waiting for a wash cycle that would never come. Or when they stumbled across a well-preserved brownstone, lying on its side like a child’s discarded toy.

  And then, without even knowing it, they reached the end.

  It began with an unexpected stumbling block. Marion tripped first, lurching sideways as his foot slipped on a sheaf of paper. Allison reached out to steady him, but in her exhaustion she simply added her weight to his, sending them both to the floor in a sprawling pile. They landed awkwardly on an uneven landscape, the air around them suddenly thick with a wet, loamy odor.

  It took them a moment to get untangled, and a moment more to figure out exactly what had happened. As Marion pushed himself up, he slowly realized what they had wandered into: a huge, cascading valley of books — scattered in single volumes around them, but quickly rising into a mountain of rotting pulp. There were paperbacks, hardcovers, leather-clad holy books still flecked with gold leaf, stacks of poorly bound financial reports, all piled up like the remains of the world’s most idiosyncratic library. And coating it all, like a dusting of powdered sugar on an almond croissant, lay an endless layer of official-looking paperwork — a planet’s worth of once-important correspondence spread about like so much mulch.

  Marion and Allison turned toward the mountain’s paper crest, heads swiveling in unison, finding the thing above them at the exact same time.

  Allison opened her mouth, but the sound that came out was not a recognizable English word.

  “I know,” Marion said, his voice thick with disbelief. “I know, I know.”

  Crowning the distant peak above them, in a pose so perfect that it seemed like a cruel joke, was the top half of the Statue of Liberty, torch arm poking through the split ceiling, corroded metal gown streaked with moonlight.

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Allison turned to Marion, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the statue.

  “Look at the ceiling,” he whispered, as if afraid someone might be listening.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not… where her arm is, it’s all torn open. On purpose, I mean.”

  Allison looked back at the ceiling, and saw that he was right. Where the statue’s wrist jutted into the night, the Build’s riveted metal plates were split and curled up like so many orange peels, the ragged edges beaded with rivulets of cooled molten steel.

  “Holy smokes. Who in the hell did that?”

  “I have no idea.” Marion finally looked down, so swept with emotion that he honestly wasn’t sure how to continue. “But we need to get up there, right?”

  Allison reached out with one hand and gripped his shoulder, squeezing gently. “Eventually. But maybe we should stop for a while. You know, get some rest?”

  Marion locked onto her eyes, his gaze an intense mixture of conviction and exhaustion. “You want to stop?”

  “Honestly?” Allison glanced up at the statue, then back at Marion. “No, I don’t. I want to get out of here. I don’t care if it kills us, I just feel like we really need to get out.”

  The fog of confusion fled, and Marion’s face hardened into a look of pure relief. “Me too.”

  They began the climb together, heads bowed, seeing nothing but the shifting pile beneath them. They were too weary to look forward, so they focused instead on the ground below, judging their progress through the logbook of pages left behind.

  The books came in waves, like striations on a fossilized tree. First there was a pile of medical texts, glossy pages covered in mold-specked dissections of the human form. After that came a long seam of geometry and algebra textbooks, followed by a massive pile of leather-bound classics: everything from Plato to Homer to Shakespeare to Dickens, thousands of cracked and faded spines crammed together like cobblestones against their knees.

  After a long stretch the books thinned, revealing a hard-packed crust of earth below. Marion felt the pebbly surface beneath his hands, but it wasn’t until he began to choke on the rising dust that he was jolted to full attention.

  “Well, would you take a look at that.” Allison’s voice was low and raspy in the rough air, but resonant. It echoed in a way that Marion had never quite heard before.

  “They stitched her up.”

  As she said it, Marion saw it, his exhausted brain rendering the surreal scene with Allison’s words projected on it like bootleg movie subtitles.

  The statue’s robe was split from breast to stomach, a gaping incision that had been closed with a tight coil of wire threaded through crudely punched holes. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that a number of other sections, on both sides, had also been reattached — each one expertly fitted and held in place with kilometers of thick coated cable.

  Telephone wire.

  Marion recognized it right away. While he had never seen the stuff in person, he had spent enough time inside New York’s public libraries to know exactly what it was. A technology that had been created for exactly one purpose — a purpose that had reached obsolescence hundreds of years ago.

  There was no avoiding the obvious conclusion: the statue had been reassembled, piece by jagged piece, with a binding material scavenged from the Brightlands. It had been rescued, hoisted into place, and carefully positioned to provide an exit from the Build.

  Marion felt a sudden, painful wave of disappointment. He knew he should be grateful, but he mostly felt annoyed. People had come before them — people who were obviously well-prepared, and with intelligence and foresight. They had breached the Build, and had come back to erect a monument to their exodus, so that others might follow.

  “Are we going?”

  Marion growled his reply, knowing full well that Allison already knew the answer.

  “We’re going.”

  Toward the end they could barely speak, and their heads hung from their necks like sagging streetlights. The spiral stairs that rose from torso to torch had been haphazardly installed, and scaling them felt like climbing the world’s largest rusted-out fire escape. Worse yet, the stairs ended abruptly at the lady’s armpit, leaving nothing but a crudely welded ladder to ferry them forward. The ladder, surprisingly enough, led them not toward the crown, but into the statue’s extended arm.

  The final climb was so arduous that Marion felt like he might collapse at any moment. But he preserved, hand over aching hand, struggling into a warm, humid rush of air. And then, out of nowhere, he felt the first drop of water hit his upturned face.

  “Rain!” he called back, realizing that the news broadcast wasn’t really necessary.

/>   “Oh, thank heaven,” Allison called back. “I was afraid that might be coming from you.”

  Marion laughed and raised his face, feeling the first real raindrops of his life fall wet against his cheeks.

  They had done a pretty good job down in the city, Marion had to admit. The temperature and weight felt almost exactly the same — although these drops felt more random, somehow. But there was definitely one big giveaway: the taste. Rain in the city was ever-so-slightly sweet — a grace note that was added, Marion assumed, to cover the taste of fluoride (and whatever else) they put in it.

  But these drops were surprisingly brackish, and Marion found himself momentarily paralyzed by their alien flavor. He hung from the ladder, mouth gaping wide, savoring the rain as it splashed against his tongue.

  He let the dark, salty water form a glorious pool inside his mouth, and he thought this is how it should be. Not sanitized, not diluted or refined, but fraught with strange imperfections. The rain should taste of fresh earth, the wind should carry a sweet, animal stench, and the ground should crumble pleasantly beneath your feet. Without that, you had nothing. Nothing but emptiness, boredom and despair — the infinite tyranny of perfection.

  “We should keep moving,” Allison finally said, slapping Marion’s calf. “Those rungs are going to be a lot trickier once they get wet.”

  Marion shook the rain out of his hair and commenced climbing again, his exhausted muscles pulling him up into the storm until, suddenly, his head was in the open air, and a bracing wind was stinging raindrops against his skin.

  “What’s it like?” Allison shouted up, manic with anticipation.

  “It’s…” Marion paused for a long moment, taking it all in, his head swiveling around like a weather vane. “It’s weird. There’s these things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Black boxes, like coffins, all around the torch. They’re tied to the walls.”

  “Coffins?”

  “Yeah, but not.” Marion hauled himself up slowly onto the torch’s narrow observation deck, staring up at the tarnished copper flame towering overhead. The gold leaf had disappeared eons ago, but it still somehow retained the quality of flame — a fiery essence framed by ashen sky. “At least I don’t think they are.”

  Allison scrambled up after him, moving so quickly that Marion was afraid that she might catapult herself over the slanted floor and slam into the wrought iron wall below.

  “Watch out!”

  “I’m good,” Allison panted, delirious with fatigue. “I’m great. Look at the clouds!”

  Her enthusiasm was infectious, and Marion turned immediately to scan the clouds above. They were low and dark, pregnant with rain, and unlike anything he had experienced before. It was impossible to say exactly why, but there was something about the undulating color — the depth, the richness, the gradations — that turned the tempestuous ceiling into the most fascinating canvas Marion had ever seen.

  “Whoa, what is that?”

  Marion dropped his eyes to find Allison already sliding down the tilted incline, her dress wrapped tight in order to keep the rough metal surface from scraping raspberries into her thighs. Her feet landed against the wall with a satisfying smack, and Marion saw exactly what she was excited about.

  At the lower cusp of the torch’s base, at about seven o’clock, one of the carefully filigreed sections had been cut away, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. Before he could begin to stop her, Allison rolled over the opening, straddling it with her legs, her hands pressed firmly against either side of the unexpected exit.

  “Oh my god. There’s a rope!”

  Marion crab-walked down to join her, cautiously poking his head over the edge to peek out. He leaned forward, feeling the wall’s sharp metal edge against his chest. They were on the edge of an abyss, he realized, his heart hitching like an overworked piston.

  Dangling below them was, indeed, a rope. It was an incredibly thick length of line — the sort of thing he’d only ever seen anchoring schooners at the seaport — creaking loudly as it spiraled in the wind. It was knotted expertly around the torch’s wall, tied with obvious care and precision by a pair of hands that had, judging by the hemp’s undisturbed layer of mold, abandoned ship a long time ago.

  Looks like a double sheepshank. Marion was proud of himself for recognizing the knot, but his pride was soured his annoyance at the fact that someone else had tied it. He slowly traced the rope’s length all the way down, finding its distant, bushy tail sweeping the surface of the Build like a mop.

  He tried to imagine himself climbing it, but could not.

  “Should we go down?”

  Marion peered into the slanting rain, wishing he were braver than he was. “Honestly, I don’t think I can.”

  “Me neither.” The sound of relief in Allison’s voice made Marion feel a million times better. “I mean, look at this rain! But then where should we go? Back inside?”

  Marion looked up at her, wanting to say “no,” but also unable to think of a better plan. He was just about to admit defeat when, behind the halo of mist surrounding Allison’s head, he saw something truly astounding.

  It was a rusting rectangle of steel, welded firmly to the outside of the torch wall, spanning the gap above Allison’s head like the sign of a hip restaurant. But instead of a celebrated chef’s name or an incomprehensible jumble of Mandarin, someone had gone through the time and trouble to burn an entire phrase into the metal surface. It had obviously been completed some time ago, as the cursive letters had faded into a dark, rippling wave covered by layers of iron oxide — but the words were still fully legible, and the phrase itself shone as clear as a Times Square billboard.

  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

  Marion couldn’t believe it. It was like a giant cosmic joke — a cruel prank that diminished everything they had endured to get here. Allison saw him staring and craned her neck around, her eyes narrowing in confusion and disbelief.

  “Who did this?”

  She shouted the question, as if expecting an answer from the roiling clouds above. But Marion already knew. Whoever had done this was long gone, watching from a distant remove. They had infiltrated the Build, created an escape route, and disappeared into the Brightlands, waiting patiently to see if anyone else had the will to follow.

  Understanding that, Marion suddenly understood everything. He spun around, looking up at the mysterious black boxes with renewed interest.

  “The same people who left these,” he said, pulling himself up the wall, his fingers searching for some sort of opening or clasp. What he discovered, after a minimum of effort, was a taut rubber strap, securing the case like a poorly wrapped birthday gift. He hunched over the box, running his hands over the strap until he found a flat metal buckle, its rusted surface half-buried in the container’s weathered plastic surface.

  “You think?” Allison crawled up behind him, wiping rain from her eyes. “But why would they…”

  “Because they knew we were coming.” Marion dug his fingers under the buckle and yanked, feeling it snap free like a rotting rubber band. And yet, even unclasped, the box remained firmly sealed. Marion stationed himself in front of the case and curled his fingers under the lid, pulling with all his might.

  Finally, with agonizing resistance, the thick plastic cover slowly separated from its base, swinging up on hinges that felt like they had been greased with industrial glue.

  “Holy cow, you’re right.” Allison leaned into the open container, yanking out pieces of treasure for inspection. “Look at all this.”

  The first box was full of vacuum-packed food: rice, dried beans, granola, instant oatmeal, crackers, and even chocolate bars, each sealed inside its own hard plastic shell. The second box was filled with similarly protected parcels of shoes, jackets and assorted clothing. The third contained a carefully packed tent and an assortment of camping equipment, including two slightly moldy backpacks and a portable propane stove, duct-taped to a pair of gas
canisters. The final box contained the most welcome discovery of all: twenty liters of water, sealed stacks of bedding, and a pair of hammocks, still in their original packaging.

  Marion pulled them out and held the packages up, staring at the faded tropical scenes on the labels with utter stupefaction.

  “They really thought of everything, huh?” Allison marveled.

  Marion nodded, wondering if he had perhaps fainted during the final ascent, and this was all some sort of crazed dream. But then Allison reached out and grabbed one of the hammocks, yanking it out of its sleeve with feverish hands, and Marion followed suit, unspooling the nylon fabric onto the wet metal floor.

  They worked quickly — tying off the hammocks without speaking, each of them absorbed in their own exhaustion. The appearance of such unexpected bounty had changed things in a way that neither of them could fully articulate — at least not now, when they could barely stand, much less speak. So they concentrated on stringing up their beds, setting camp in the most improbable place imaginable.

  And once the hammocks were firmly secured, they both sank backwards, falling into their respective berths — heads close, feet apart, the torch’s flame rising between them.

  Marion looked over at Allison, so tired he could barely focus. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite make his tongue work. So he held out his hand instead, feeling incredibly serene. Allison reached out and grabbed his hand, smiling sleepily, twining her fingers firmly inside his.

  The rain gradually slacked, and a warm wind swept across the surface of the Build. Far overhead the clouds began to shift, and a small, ebony scrap of sky appeared. Marion gripped Allison’s hand, felt her squeezing back, both of them barely able to breathe as a growing circle of night appeared overhead, framing heaven, filled with stars.

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