Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2)

by J. Edward Neill

  For the rest of Cal’s time at my house, I didn’t mention the Strigoi. I knew she hated it. All it ever accomplished was to put us both in foul moods.

  So for her sake, I did my best to imagine a future without all the darkness. That afternoon, after I filled my belly with food, we took a walk in the rain. The worst of the storm had passed, and the warm drizzle felt as good as any shower. Even though I expected the wind and falling water to disrupt Cal’s nano-light, she fluttered through the storm with ease.

  “How do you do it?” I asked her. We were tramping across a muddy field in the thick of the rain.

  “I can survive in the vacuum of space.” She flitted between rain droplets as though dancing between swords. “I can turn myself into a stream of particles and travel down nearly any energized conduit. You think a little rain should bother me?”

  “I just thought…well…” I stammered. “My dad used to say electricity and water were no friends of each other. And I found it out for myself when I was a kid. I used a powered wrench to fix a nut on a tractor’s coolant line. The line popped. So did the wrench.”

  Cal scattered herself into a few hundred-thousand nodes and then retook her perfect shape farther down the path. I’d seen her do it countless times before. It never ceased to amaze me.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” I said. “You must be glad to have your old body back.”

  “I am. But didn’t you just compare me to a wrench?” she laughed again.

  “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  Most nights, we’d have stopped walking at the green river. But that eve, just as the rain began to die, we crossed a narrow bridge and entered the fields beyond. I didn’t mind being soaked to my bones. It felt liberating, as if I’d washed away the morning’s darkness.

  In the day’s last light, I looked across the fields. I saw the remnants of the work I’d done to help the people who’d lived in the village near my home.

  I saw the tops of the drain pipes we’d laid, exposed after years of heavy rain.

  I glimpsed the lines we’d carved in the soil, the pattern of the farm that once had grown.

  The crops were mostly gone, having long ago weeded over. It was the trouble with farming on Sumer. The rains were so heavy and the crops grew so quickly that within a decade all the nutrients were sapped out of the dirt. And without much animal life to provide natural fertilizer, most farms wore out their usefulness far swifter than they would’ve back on Earth.

  “It gets old sometimes,” I said as Cal and I meandered along the riverbank.

  “You mean being human?” she quipped.

  “No. I mean thinking of everything like a farmer would. I can’t walk anywhere without thinking about soil densities, nitrogen levels, and drainage.”

  “Uh oh.” She made a face. “Is this where you tell me another story about farm boy life? About tractors and griddlecakes.”

  “No, I guess not,” I grumped.

  “I’m only kidding.” She circled me and sat on my shoulder. “You can tell me any story. You know I like to hear them.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Together, we sat on the riverbank. The last of the rain died and the fog slithered away into the dark. I pulled off my boots and dipped my feet in the river. Back home, on an Earth that was no more, the water would’ve been frigid. But the little green river swirled around my ankles, warm and pleasant.

  “You think Doctor Abid ever imagined us sitting here like this?” I kicked up a little plume of water.

  “Oh. Him.” Cal made a sour face. She’d never forgiven her creator for sending us into space, alone and likely to die. “I don’t think he imagined anything for us…other than dying.”

  “You know, by putting us in the Sabre and shipping us off to Ebes, he saved us,” I said. “If we’d have stayed on Earth, if someone else had gone in our place, we’d be dead. Just like Mom and Dad. Just like everyone.”

  “Does that mean you’re thankful?” She looked at me.

  “No. I mean, not exactly.” I couldn’t think of the right words. “It’s not like he did it to help us. There’s no way he could’ve guessed what would happen.”

  Cal offered a slender smirk. “Well then there’s your answer. He didn’t imagine us here. Not on Sumer. Not sitting by this river. Not alive. Not together.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll never bring him up again.”

  She didn’t answer. But I knew she was happy to hear it.

  * * *

  Later that night, as I roamed around the lower level of my house cleaning up my messes, Cal drifted down the stairs and into the room. I worked by the light of three blue lamps, in whose light she floated and danced. Within one of the lamplights, she hovered longer than the others. The shadow she made on the wall was the same size as a person.

  For a moment I watched her.

  Wishing.

  When she left the light, her shadow vanished. She had a serious look in her eyes. She’d been upstairs for hours, doubtless plotting whatever she was about to say.

  “Your sister’s getting married.” She flitted around me as I carried a pile of clothes.

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  “She’s moving on with her life.” Cal ignored my sarcasm. “She’s making happiness for herself. She’s joining the rest of humanity.”

  I dropped my clothes at the bottom of the stairs. There was no sense in avoiding Cal. She had something on her mind and she meant to share it.

  “I know where you’re going with this,” I shambled back into the light.

  “Well…” She crossed her arms. “I want to know what you’re going to do with your life. You’ve talked for years about dying early because of the Strigoi poisoning, but that hasn’t happened. Not even close. You have all these reasons for staying out here and being a hermit. And I…I just want to see you happy. This obsession of yours isn’t healthy. After Aly’s wedding, I think you should live in the city with me. We don’t have to move to Arcadia or anywhere fancy. But I think you should be with people again.”

  “With people…” I murmured.

  “Yes.” I could tell she was upset by the way her body’s light intensified. “Besides, I’ll have a body in a few months. A real one. It’s almost finished. I’ll be as human as everyone else. I’ll have the same voice, same face. You don’t have to…you know…love me. But we should live close together. You should talk to other people. You should live a full life. I want it for you.”

  I hadn’t expected it, but I should have. For years, she’d dropped not-so-subtle hints about the hopes she had for my life. It was hard to see her so upset.

  I stopped moving, stopped thinking, and gazed across the room at her.

  “I like it out here. It’s peaceful,” I offered.

  “No.” She shook her head. “You like it out here because you can walk in your fields and stare at the sky all night. You like it because no one questions or challenges you. You like it because you don’t have to be human. You get to pretend you died on Earth with everyone else. Well, guess what? You didn’t.”

  I might’ve been angry.

  But she was right.

  Bells

  I’d only been to Arcadia once before.

  And even then, it hadn’t been as impressive.

  On a light-rail train, completed only weeks before my arrival, I sped into Arcadia’s grand station. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. With windows five stories high, white pillars stretching skyward, and a spotless glass floor, the rail station was a marvel of how far Sumer’s people had advanced. If Arcadia was the beating heart of the planet’s human presence, the station was its brain, moving people to and from the seven cities stretched across Sumer’s equator.

  But is this really what they should be working on?

  I stepped off the train and stood in the sunlight gleaming through the windows. Before that moment, I didn’t realize just how far from Earth I’d traveled.

  A few trillion kilometers.
<
br />   I don’t belong here.

  I watched as five children sprinted past me and onto the train I’d just vacated. They looked nearly identical despite their different ages, each with golden brown skin and perfect teeth. It dawned on me I hadn’t seen children in more than a decade. It felt unusual considering Sumer’s policy of encouraging every family to reproduce as often as possible.

  I guess they have to fill up the planet somehow, I thought as two weary parents moved past me.

  A group of four men, maybe in their early twenties, gusted toward the train. I couldn’t understand why they wore the same reflective black suits, pointed black shoes, and identical sunglasses. They’d even styled their hair the same, slick and black. A part of me wondered if they were robots, but I recalled Sumer had outlawed all artificial intelligence.

  …other than Cal and Griff.

  The station, nearly empty before my train’s arrival, filled up with many hundreds. It wasn’t easy for me to watch. Except for one small city back on Earth, I hadn’t ever seen so many people all in one place. It jarred me to witness the crowds in their strange fashions, speaking a jumble of languages I knew I’d never understand.

  It was too much.

  I felt dizzy.

  I wanted to be alone at my farm.

  Standing there in my pale tunic, loose pants, and worn shoes, I must’ve looked like an orphan.

  And that’s what I am.

  A kid without a planet.

  I probably would’ve stood there until dusk, taking in the swell and ebb of Arcadia’s people, but after a few minutes I remembered what Cal had told me. ‘I’ll meet you at the station,’ she’d said. ‘But don’t look for a little blue nano-girl.’

  I hadn’t been sure what she’d meant.

  And that’s when I saw her.

  Only, it wasn’t Callista.

  Or is it?

  A woman in a blue dress walked across the station. I heard the clack of her shoes on the glass floor, and I saw her blue hair bobbing against her shoulders. In a grand room filled with people, only she stood out. She was almost as tall as me, and her beauty was more breathtaking than all the women I’d seen in my life.

  She reminded me of someone I’d known on Earth.

  A woman. Tiana. Doctor Abid’s assistant.

  Except—

  She walked right up to me and stood at arm’s length. I recalled something my father had once told me about not staring at people, but his lesson hadn’t quite prepared me.

  “Joff.” She smiled. “Do you know who I am?”

  I blinked hard. There I stood, a man grown, for all my years a child.

  “Joff? It’s me. It’s Cal. Don’t you recognize me?”

  My heart must’ve skipped several beats. I stared for a moment longer, taking her in. Her voice was Callista’s, only stronger. Her eyes were the same blue as the skies back on Earth. Her hair was the color of her dress, so deep an azure it seemed to glow just as her little nano-body had.

  “But…” I stammered. “I didn’t think your new body was ready yet?”

  “It’s not. Not fully, anyway.” She smiled the same way nano-Cal did. Whoever had built her new body had done so with utmost attention to detail. “This one’s a prototype. I can enter it through a cortical plug in the bottom of my left foot. But when they finish the real one, there won’t be a plug. They’ll stick a needle in and I’ll enter my new body sort of like air enters a room. One big gust. And I’ll be in.”

  “Oh…” I felt foolish.

  “There is one drawback.” She feigned a sad face. “I can’t feel much. The sensory interface isn’t quite right. I’ve been practice-walking for days just so I’d look normal when I came to pick you up. I try to feel things with these – I mean my – fingers. The sensation is pretty dull. It’s ok though. In a few weeks, they’ll solve the sensory issue. I’ll be real real.”

  I heard the words coming out of her mouth, but I wasn’t sure I comprehended them. For so many years, ever since I’d been a teenager shipped off to a cold chrome fortress on Earth, little nano-Cal had been my best friend, my only friend. To see her occupying a human body made me feel things I didn’t have words for.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked me.

  “You look…good,” I managed.

  “Good?”

  “I mean beautiful. But more than beautiful. You look like yourself. Only—”

  “Human?”

  “I was going to say…touchable.”

  Her smile was wider than any I’d ever seen.

  “Thank you,” she said. “And…thanks for shaving your beard. You look like the Joff I remember.”

  We walked away from the train. I hadn’t noticed it before, but she was unsteady on her feet. It took all the courage in the world to take her hand.

  “Is that better?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, but I was pretty sure she blushed.

  Together we left the light-rail station and strode onto the walkway beyond. The sun was high and bright, and the city opened up before me. It was my turn to be unsteady. I slowed when I saw the great Arcadian glass domes, the silver towers reaching for the sky, and the gardens brimming between every street and building. So much of the city was made of glass. It wasn’t just regular glass, but sunlight-fueled crystal, capable of powering every building and every device.

  For perhaps the first time, I began to grasp why humans had left Earth.

  A fresh start.

  Clean and pure.

  “I’ve been living…how did Dad used to say?” I stared at Arcadia’s tallest tower. “Under a rock.”

  “Told you.” Cal grinned.

  She hailed a hovercar and we slid into the backseat together. There was no driver. The sleek white cab opened and shut its doors by itself, and Cal paid by waving her fingertips over an electronic console between our seats.

  “That console…it looks like a skypad.” I couldn’t help but point out.

  Cal shot me a hard glance. She knew what I was thinking. From my earliest days on Earth, skypads had been the devices I’d used to count the stars. They’d been marvels of technology, capable of linking to almost any other system, able to capture information from any source.

  Of course, Sumer didn’t have any skypads.

  Other than the one I’d carried down from the stars.

  “You brought yours?” Cal asked as we zipped down the bright white streets.

  “No. Left it at home,” I said.

  “Are you being honest?” She glanced at the dingy brown satchel between my knees.

  She was wise to ask. I’d wanted so badly to bring it, to stand atop Arcadia’s tallest building at night and count the stars using the skypad’s viewer. But I hadn’t. I knew Cal would’ve been upset if I had. After all, I’d promised to focus on reconnecting with Aly, not chase the stars.

  But, I thought with a smirk, she’s getting married to one of the city’s most influential governors.

  Surely they have something I can use.

  “Joff.” The blue in Cal’s eyes was so deep I couldn’t look away. “Show me what’s in your bag.”

  With a grunt, I did as she asked. “Look,” I said as I pulled things out of the satchel. “My wedding suit…a bit wrinkled. You probably should’ve kept it here. The humidity on the farm…well.”

  “I wanted to make sure it fit,” she said. “What else?”

  “My water.” I pulled out a dented steel thermos. It’d been on my ship, the Sabre, and was one of the last relics from Earth.

  “Anything else?” she pried.

  “Let’s see.” I continued digging. “Still no skypad. Here’s an old shirt. And some even older pants. Oh, and look. It’s Alpo.”

  I tugged out a ragged brown teddy bear. His left arm was gone, his eyes had gone missing, and stitches covered all the places his stuffing had started falling out. At sixty-four years old and counting, Alpo’s days were numbered.

  “If Arcadia had a museum, I bet they’d want him,�
�� I mused. “He’s the last thing to leave Earth before…well…you know.”

  Cal made a face. Her expression was exactly the same as when she’d been nano-sized. “Why’d you bring him? He’s falling apart.”

  “Wedding gift.” I grinned. “For Aly.”

  “That’s my Joff,” she said.

  And we sped down the street toward a place I’d never been.

  * * *

  Two days later, on the glass stairwell of a grand Arcadian tower, I ascended with Cal’s hand in mine. It felt surreal to hold her warm fingers as we climbed. I’d thought about it again and again during the last two days we’d spent in the great city.

  We’d slept in the same room at the Gran Arcadia Hotelia, but in different beds.

  I’d lain awake at night atop impossibly clean linens, gazing out a window forty stories above the streets, and for the first time in twenty years I’d thought of something other than the horrors roaming between the stars.

  I’d daydreamed of Callista, breathing softly only a few meters away, slumbering deeper than a child.

  I’d never touched a woman before.

  I’d never truly desired it.

  I wasn’t normal. I was broken by everything I’d done, by all the death I’d witnessed, by all the lives I’d snuffed out.

  And yet, in those late hours, my darkest thoughts had faded away and my heart turned to Callista. I missed her little blue self, but the new her had changed something inside me.

  I’d always loved her as a friend.

  But I’d began to hope for more.

  God, Joff, I told myself. Just stop. Stop it. Drive the thoughts out. Be as you’ve always been.

  Alone.

  And so I had. As Cal slept, as she’d stood close and helped me clean my suit, as we’d walked the Arcadian streets in search of nothing in particular, I’d been busy in my head destroying my hopes. It was the way I’d been brought up. I’d fixed machines as a young boy, and in many ways I’d become a machine as an adult.

  She’s more human than me, I began to believe.

  Just look at her.

  We can never be together.

  I snapped out of it just as we reached the top stair.