by Eden Wolfe
"Something, there has to be something here."
On and on, the pages flew. Night passed and morning rose, and years of work were reduced to fire starters, for all the good they were. Manically grasping at the next green file, and the next, and the next. Casting away the first page in the seventeenth file, it hit him straight between the eyes. He fell against the back of his chair like Goliath, the code in front of him his David. He felt the air crushing his chest.
"And there it is."
Just a few letters held all the secrets, perhaps generations-worth of them. Forgotten in one line of code, misplaced, intentional or not, the effect was the same on a global program for the survival of man.
Perhaps no one knew it but him. It was possible; he’d always been able to see what others missed. The code could have been an accident. It could have been unintentional. It could have been mistaken direction, focusing on the wrong isolate.
Or it could have been a choice.
Planting a time bomb in the male sequence, messages that passed from line to line, from generation to generation unnoticed.
Yes, it could have been a choice. And had he not found it now, no one else would have until long after they were all dead.
A dormant message that intensified with time. A death warrant. A line of code that could not be changed. A line of code that would kill them all.
He nodded his head slowly, knowingly, for hours as he ran the predictions and the possible explanations through his mind.
When did I first know? I somehow always knew. The creation of Rainfields? Perhaps it goes back as far as that.
Lucius pulled his rolling body up from the chair, just long enough to drop over on the bed.
Have I been in denial all this time?
Denial.
I was a pawn, or worse -
Insignificant.
Defeated, he waited for the sun to rise before summoning Adam.
Adam had arrived within an hour of his call.
So close to him, Lucius felt Adam's breath move the hairs of his upper lip.
This boy. Now a man. And he is here in front of me, as chance would bring us back together.
Not chance, Lucius stopped his thought, perhaps there's such a thing as destiny after all.
Everything felt raw in him. He searched Adam's eyes, pleading with them silently.
"You might remember me from a long time ago - " he started quietly but stopped short.
There was nothing. No indication in Adam's face that he had any memory of those early days.
Seems his design is more naturally human than I thought. The Ariane design would remember almost everything from the time their eyes could focus.
"I looked different then," Lucius continued, hiding the note of shame, just barely. "I wasn't in all of this," gesturing to his rolls of flab, "I was a picture of what a man should look like."
"Of course. I knew of you, Lucius. We all did, your reputation preceded - "
"No, no. Never mind then."
There was a sting of sadness, but it wasn't so bad. He'd always known the consequence of the choice he'd made, and even now he knew it had been the right decision.
But, well, it would have been nice to see just a flicker of recognition.
When he'd handed the infant boy after his incubation birth to Myra, the Willing Woman, she held him close and cooed. But Lucius knew she would never give him what he could have. There was something to this sense of filiation after all. It wasn't blood - but it was a deep and heartfelt passion for life. For his life. For Adam's life.
He'd turned out well, this boy of his. Lucius smiled inside, felt fire lighting his eyes.
It wasn't just pride, it was hope.
It only takes one. Adam is my one, and he is good. Look at him. Healthy. Smart. Brave. Even if he doesn't know just how important he is.
Lucius knew he was beaming. The tragedy of the code was mellowing in him already.
There will be another way. With Adam, there will be another way.
He took a deep breath and relaxed. “I’ve read it.”
25
Adam
"I've read it," Lucius lifted the orange file in the air before dropping it on the table like it was nothing at all.
"So?" Adam approached, eager. This was it, it all hung on Lucius now and whether he saw if it could be done.
"I read the Green Files too."
"You think they're related?"
"No. No, I don't."
"So then why the Green Files?"
"Have you read them?"
"Sure."
"And nothing struck you?"
"There have been a lot of gaps despite best efforts."
"Despite best efforts," Lucius repeated.
"Please, Lucius, I've got to know. The file on 4957 - do you see it?"
"See what?"
"The potential."
"Yes, I do."
"You do!"
"Yes, but it's delicate."
He felt Lucius watching him, but he couldn't stop staring. He waited for the next words out of Lucius' mouth. It was like they would never come.
Lucius straightened in the chair and his body made a noise, rumbling deep. Adam tried to stay focused despite the din of bodily fluids rising above the hum of the generator. "What you're trying to do here, Adam, it's risky at best. It will be impossible to predict whether this pseudo-human would even come out viable, take a breath at all. There could be consequences."
"They seem worth it, don't you think?" Adam needed Lucius to get further into it. He didn't need a rundown of the ethics; it was about possibility.
"Worth it? Worth what? Your career, or more? This would be more than enough to get you disappeared, if not permanently, then long enough for you to have no more value in the scientific community."
"Value, huh. I'll tell you my value," he turned away. "I'm barely more than an experiment. My Willing Mother would stare at me in shock. Sometimes it was like she couldn’t look at me at all. Like you, Lucius, I'm a walking fossil. I'm already dead."
"That's not true."
"It is true!" Adam pulled back his voice, noticing the sharpness in it. He still needed Lucius. This wasn't the time to patronize the patriarch of modern science. "I just don't want to go out thinking I hadn't done everything humanly possible to find another solution. In my decades of research, in your double or even triple the years, have you ever seen anything like this, like 4957?"
"No." Lucius looked him straight in the eye. "I have not."
Adams gently bounced his head. "Then we must. We can, so we must. It only takes one."
Lucius looked off to some distant place, and it seemed hours before he spoke again.
"You can't just use any womb. You're going to have to identify a carrier that is more robust than common. Most of those aren't in the Willing Woman program."
"I’m getting one, Crynal phenotype. And we’ve reduced the viable gestation period to 3.6 months."
"Crynal. Yes." Lucius nodded before resting against the back of the wheelchair. "You'll have to figure out how to move the planned births across to different carriers, but frankly I don't care about politics. You can handle that part."
Adam was elated. That was easy by comparison.
"Don't be dismissive, Adam. This is neither easy nor safe. You are treading in very dangerous waters. Have you understood that?"
"Lucius," Adam approached even closer, the stench of the chair was powerful, but he had to look deeply in the scientist's eyes. "You really think it's viable?"
Adam saw something soften in the man. The corners of his eyes dropped lower as Adam felt the hot air whistling out his nose.
"Yes." Lucius' eyebrows rose in recognition. Adam couldn't read this gentle change. It felt intimate, personal. Suddenly Adam felt he was intruding on a private moment, though he was a part of it. He wanted to ask, but something in him kept him quiet. He didn't know what to say, all he could think about was telling Sara.
26
Sara
I'm a traitor, Sara said to herself, her eyes fixed on the sky out her bedroom window. She grasped the amulet around her neck, praying even though she didn't believe the stories about the settlers being omnipresent. Still, she found herself pleading for forgiveness.
This is it for me. It's only a matter of time.
When Adam had arrived at her door with the news, she'd thrown her arms around his neck, a wave of joy and gratitude and wonder overcoming her.
And then it happened. His lips on her lips and they were devouring each other like the world was at its end.
You’re going to be disappeared, Sara. They'll see it all over your face. They'll read you like a book. They'll know what you've done. And that you wanted it.
She rolled over onto her side and looked at Adam's sleeping eyes. Those eyes. This feeling in her gut wasn't supposed to exist. She knew they had scrubbed it out generations earlier. And yet there she was, living proof that love wasn't just for the collective. She loved Adam until her heart twisted inside her.
Adam's eyelids fluttered but didn't open. His shoulders lifted and fell, waves of his breath washed over Sara's skin.
How is he so at peace?
The Directive of the fourth generation repeated itself in her head. They'd memorized it in sixth level. It reinforced that there was no place for what she and Adam had between them. The words echoed in her brain as she watched the rise and fall of Adam's chest.
"We shall be as one, across land and sea, a humankind that is kinder than all those who came before the Mist. Kinship is not within individual relationships, no sister is our sister alone - these exclusive ties weaken our collective bond and demonstrate a lack of commitment to the greater family. Love does not belong in its diluted state between two people. Our family of humanity will be respected with reverence, our relationships deep across boundaries and geographies. We will not accept the violence of our past; we will hold peace in our hearts and through our swords. We will slay no other in anger but breed love in our acts of survival."
She hadn't understood what it meant until now, even if she had dutifully studied it, memorized it, and accepted it as rule of law. Sara had always wanted to serve through Central Tower. She knew it was written into her genes. If commitment to the greater laws of Lower Earth meant she could achieve that dream, she had been ready for that. She had left the home of her first Willing Mother without looking back.
The disappearances were the answer to this Directive. Ripples of stories where those who disappeared in the night had committed some treacherous behavior. Betrayal. Sometimes against society, sometimes against the Queen herself and on a rare occasion, against oneself, for which the disappearances were intended to be a sanctuary of healing for those minds that were troubled. Suicide was a known epidemic, they had learned of it in the sixth level, but Central Tower had been able to address that through tweaks to the code. A predisposition for contentedness with their situation.
But Sara was now anything but content. Ever since she'd been told to shift her focus from crop killers to improving the common code of women, she had been suspicious. It wasn't right for their human resources to be so distracted from their natural resources. And yet, across the Tower, more and more researchers were being pulled off the very programs that had been the reason they joined in the first place.
Sara was losing faith.
And then there was Adam. She didn't have words to describe what she felt when he was near her. She tried to balance it with her fear of disappearance, but the feeling was more powerful even than her need to self-preserve. Whatever it was, it had a hold on her. And she wanted more.
She'd known it the moment his lips were on hers.
When finally their mouths had separated, she had seen something deep in his eyes. They shone like crystals, like sunlight on the northern seas, undulating color underneath the brown veneer. She felt it then and knew he felt it too.
Fire.
It was deep in her and it was hot. They had sat at the table for hours in conversation, their hands clasped. It felt more important than it ever had. The stakes suddenly higher, their own lives on the line for it.
"I can make it happen, Sara, I know it. 4957 will be the new human."
"I believe you."
"I can't do it alone."
"I'll help."
"I'm scared." That blue again, it blinded her.
"Me too."
"Sara - "
"Yes?"
He stopped, mid-breath. The tears began to well in his eyes, she watched the little waves inside them grow, until he blinked and they came down, two perfect parallel paths on his cheeks.
"I think this might be it."
She nodded. She believed it. The timing too perfect, the conditions were just right. This is what they had been working towards for so long.
He stood, grabbing at her, his arms tangling in with hers, clumsy and urgent, they crashed together, bodies and faces, their mouths breathing each other, drinking in each other in mad bursts. The table fell over, the chair fell over, they lurched together and landed against the wall in hot breath, so fast she thought her heart would explode.
They passed several minutes there, bodies against the wall. Just breathing, his chest heavy against hers.
She led him to the bedroom, they sat side by side on the edge of the mattress. He spoke facing straight ahead.
"Please hold me."
Sara took him in her arms and brought him gently down to lie on the bed. Fully dressed, with their shoes on, they spent the rest of the night in silence, his hand tightly clasped to hers, even in his sleep.
We're as good as dead, Adam.
She turned her eyes back to the rising sun.
27
Maeva
The Queen woke in the dark, already almost at Rainfields edge, and she cursed her blood for what it did to her in the night. She had been caught unaware more often these past weeks, in deep sleep, which had never been her way.
Now her legs carried her miles away before her consciousness even caught up.
Of course, she thought, of course, it would be this place. Today of all days. Of course, it would call me to it.
She slowed for the final steps, approaching the edge with gentle feet, softer than cotton in the breeze, as slow as the earth turns, displacing only a few pebbles as she went.
The moon glared white. She stared at it as in the periphery of her vision. She remembered in vivid color the time she jumped.
Jumped, I jumped. I didn’t step. They called to me; Mother beckoned me. Oh, my child. So much I owe you.
Ariane, her first. The disfigured infant, the Queen's own face reflected in the horror of the child’s.
Other memories, faces, of those she’d loved and of those she’d hated, floated across her sky. Into her peripheral vision. Into her line of sight. Faces were everywhere. Maeva shook her head.
Focus, Maeva. This is the moment you must focus more than you ever have in your life.
She fixed her eyes on the moon, on her intent.
We're in such a delicate balance. So many who have come before, so many who fought to survive. And now it's on my shoulders. But my own offspring? How many must be born and die before we get this right?
She asked the question knowing part of the answer. She had created this. She was responsible for it. There was only ever supposed to be one; their multiplicity was her own doing. It had seemed so right at the time. Assurances, for Lower Earth.
She would see them killed, but she would not fall for Lucius’ trap.
"They'll see it on my face," she called to the moon, "They'll know exactly why I'm there. They’ll see right through me."
Panic rose in her gut. She looked through the sky for some answer, any answer.
"What would I do if they know what I've come for? What would I do? I’d falter, I’d fail. Can I possibly leave it all to fall in ruin? Incite some civil war, worse than Lower Earth has seen since the Mist? No! I can't let that happen. It's not going to ha
ppen in my time. I know what they'll all say. It will all come back to me, the destroyer, the Fool Queen. The one who ruined it all!"
The sky gave no response.
"Mother! What is this life you have put me in?”
All was quiet.
Even the voices were silent.
“How is this what I’ve become!” She ripped at her skin. The pain eased her mind. She tore at her arms, her neck, her chest. Welts rose, flesh folding on itself. She didn’t stop, not yet, she needed some response.
And still, all was quiet. No sound but her blood rushing to heal. She held it back, forced herself to feel it. To feel the pain.
The Queen stood, skin flapping and flesh seeping, her ugliest self and she felt it was right. She was right to be ugly in this of all places.
She inhaled the sea spray, letting it sting in the wounds. Waiting, her world on hold, for just a moment longer. Everything inside her was desperate to heal, but she held the blood in place.
And then she let her biology react. The blood rushed into the gashes wasting no time, running like rivers pulling air and time inwards, splitting cells at breakneck speed, turning wrangled veins into petal-soft cheek, lips, eyelids like butterfly wings.
And she was back in her body, the Queen's body. Solid, healed. She glowed in the moonlight.
Turning her back on the night, she started slowly across the damp moss on black jagged rock, not feeling the cuts, mind clear and focused.
"No, Mother. Not this time. It will not be my hand," she spoke into the night, resolved.
She set her course for Archer, to steady him for what he would have to do.
"It will not be my hand."
Her foot slipped on the moss.
She had never before missed a step. She found herself on her back, staring at the black sky. Her head struck, she was shaken, forced to go to the very place she didn't want to revisit.
Her mind drifted back, back to her first-born child’s birth. And how she had made such a great tragedy of her.
