Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  “From Sidera.”

  “Silly you. From fancy biotechnology. Magic? Nah. Genetic manipulation and experimentation.” Samuel looks behind his bobbing shoulder. “I don’t know everything but I know things. Also, I can use a search engine.”

  Atlas crinkles his brow. “I’m not delivering The Presage into Eden’s hands.”

  “Even if she satisfies your vengeance and overthrows the Imperium?”

  He watches Samuel’s back with tight lips.

  “Who’s tortured you more, Attie? Because I’m pretty sure the Imperium beats Eden in that category,” Samuel says. “Ever heard the phrase ‘the lesser of two evils’? Or,” his eye glints a frayed moonbeam, “ ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”

  Atlas waits.

  “Not bad words to live by.” Samuel shoves his hands into his pockets. “Help me get The Presage, after you read it of course, and I’ll tell you all I know. Then the Accenda will take care of the rest and finally leave you and your human pet alone. Win-win-win-win.”

  “You promised two of such the first instance we made an agreement.”

  “And I’m guessing you’re smarter to it. No tricks. I’ll be miles from Eden without the house keys only you can get me.”

  Atlas steps onto different ground: harder dirt, fewer pine needles, more pebbles. He peers through the dark and spots a highlight in the Mustang’s roof, its black sheen reflecting one glimmer that trickles through the forest canopy. Samuel’s shadow glides across it.

  “I agree to your terms.” Atlas halts by the driver’s door, at its sliver of moonlight reflection. “If they contain your pledge to never again harm a walker.”

  Samuel’s silhouette steals the reflection. “What a nutty and impossible request!”

  Atlas’s pulse speeds. Fists harden.

  “You’re just cranky,” Samuel scrunches his invisible nose, “ ’cause you know, deep down, all our recent good times in Elisium, in here—it’s been a little bit your fault too.”

  Atlas slams his hand into the vehicle’s molding, swings around Samuel’s body, and throws his other hand into the section a centimeter from Samuel’s shoulder. He leans in.

  “I am not experiencing an overly pleasant night.” Atlas finds Samuel’s eyes and stares through them. “Two females slaughtered. Both because of you and both seared into my retinas for my dreams’ artistic interpretation. If you touch another being, believe me, Samuel Covey, I will overturn the universe to discover your helpless, cowering body after the instant you prick a walker’s finger and, simply put,” he holds his hand to Samuel’s ear, whispers wind out his palm, “explode your skull from the inside out.”

  Samuel bites his cheek. “Mmm.”

  “Do we have an agreement?”

  “Do you know me at all?”

  Atlas narrows his eyes. “And you me?”

  Samuel pops his lips and stands up straight. “Whatever. Anything you say, doll face.”

  Ducking under Atlas’s arm, Samuel opens the driver’s door and gets in his Mustang. He resurrects engine’s resounding grumble, revs it twice. After cringing into the headlight’s glare, groping for the door handle, Atlas blinks adjusted his vision and slips into the passenger’s side. They back out of the dirt pathway.

  Samuel switches on the stereo and Atlas’s mind goes numb. Trees and their agitated, climbing snarls dance across the moon, the receding road receding him into stupor, and he forgets every past word, every scene. The light’s gone out in his eyes; in the deflation drooping open his mouth, Atlas looks into his own reflection on the passenger window and instead sees Minkar.

  XII

  However Buried It May Be

  And bursting, breaking, hurting—new. So many bright and fresh lights pop, pop, popping in his head until his frontal lobe expands against his skull and ruptures a strip from memory. Atlas rubs his temple. Presage—lost in some place and the Walker and a mapmaker and something else. A portal and—and—

  “Are we going back to your girlfriend’s house or what?”

  Atlas jumps and, grasping his seat, yells, “For the love of the Absolute, you cannot force another decision from me!”

  Samuel purses his lips. “A little overwhelmed, honeycakes?

  “Yes.” Atlas drags his hands halfway down his face and then stops. Head snapping up, he glares at Samuel. “No.”

  “The confession usually comes after the lie.”

  “What is this ‘my girlfriend’?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder.” Samuel swings his steering wheel right and veers into a new lane. “Do you not understand anything I ever say and just ignore it? Like you hope I’ll just shut my mouth?”

  Atlas squints out the windshield. “Females under the age of adulthood possess no acquaintanceship with me.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I’ve made a decision.” He straightens his back and breathes in. “Take me to Gene’s resting habitation and then we will depart for the—” he scratches his head, “the—”

  “Coin?” Samuel says.

  “The coin. We will depart for it in Helena after sufficient rest and when the new cyc—day arrives.” Atlas ducks his head peering out the window. “Or later this day.”

  Through bobbing glass, ridges of strati flush pink and the sky opens its eyes. Its navy surrenders to the maturing cerulean that would hush a whisper on their rolling river of a road too desolate, too groggy to beckon early travelers. The sun’s not yet above the trees. It hangs below, yawning spectrums toward sky’s crest, stretching its rays over cool earth, through rustling forest cracks, and to Atlas’s window where morning dew clings at the corners. He exhales. The window fogs and clears and the dew fades.

  Dawn’s quieter than he imagined. It hasn’t approached him like this in his four days and its glow—he leans forward—steals his thoughts and soothes his throbbing veins in a manner more alien than expected. Samuel’s vehicle drones a cruising backtrack to warmups of songbirds, his stereo off for the first minutes since they left. Atlas glances at him. He doesn’t look back.

  They stare out the windows.

  A road sign indicates their return to Monroeville. Thick woodland, shorter still than the towering evergreens of Minkar’s forest, recedes to blocks of businesses and vehicles weaving between them. The highway whirs and rattles and roars awake metal polymer trundlers startling birds into flight, and forks into streets. Samuel winds down several. He follows a snaking two-lane under occasional residential orchards and by evenly trimmed lawns. A great flare peeks over horizon.

  Atlas strains his eyes through its raw burn and seeks his gentler, more colorful view one minute past. He doesn’t rediscover heaven’s blue until a tall something—a structure blocks the sun and swells his pupils in shadow; Gene’s apartment complex cuts a chunk out of sky. Samuel turns onto its parking lot and shifts down his gearstick.

  Between two peaks in the apartments’ roof, the sun rises. Mouth open, Atlas gazes.

  He draws down his eyes and Samuel parks. At the base of one stairwell, a figure walks from the complex, dangling a set of keys from her fingers. Gene. Atlas smiles. He throws open his door and slams it shut on Samuel’s noise of protest.

  Gene stops walking. She turns her head, squints at Samuel’s Mustang, and, rubbing her arm, spots Atlas. She pockets her keys. He shakes out his legs wobbling toward her.

  “You’re alive,” she says.

  Atlas nods. He stops before her and she smiles. With her fingertips, Gene pushes on his arm.

  “Hey.”

  “Hello.”

  Gene’s mouth falls agape. Harder this time, she shoves her fingers into his arm. “Hey.”

  Atlas grabs his arm and makes a face.

  “You did what I told you not to do,” Gene swings her hands to the left; “and I didn’t know what to do,” she swings them to the right, “and there was so much to do and—” She breathes out. “I didn’t know if you’d come back, even if you were alive and, I mean, I was so confused—”

&nb
sp; “I planned to return.” Atlas’s pulse speeds. “Is my reappearance satisfactory?”

  Gene pouts. “Yeah.”

  “Are you well?”

  She sighs and mumbles, “I guess.”

  “Then,” Atlas frowns, “I apologize?”

  “For?”

  He rocks on his heels. “I am unsure. Your expressions, words, and actions are conflicting.”

  “You’re apologizing for taking a dumb risk for a dumb reason.” Gene raises her voice. “That’s what you’re apologizing for.”

  “Yes? I am sorry. Should I leave?”

  Gene scoffs. “No.”

  Atlas stands motionlessly and she glowers. Five, six seconds. The corner of Gene’s mouth quirks and her eyes glisten.

  “But,” she says, “you still did a really stupid thing.”

  “You were the being who expressed that ‘life will be stupid unless you do stupid things.’ ”

  They glare at each other. Then Gene’s bit lip pries to laughter; and Atlas stares at her watering eyes, her wrinkled nose and pinched cheeks, smiles, and too laughs, without command, without heart’s icy jolt for the first instance in his life.

  “Ha ha hee hee.” Samuel walks up from behind, arms folded, and says, “So fundorable.”

  They stop, Atlas first, with a jerk and chill, locking his lips. He and Gene face the Accend.

  Gene points. “What’s he doing here?”

  “In summary,” Atlas draws a deep breath, “there is a prophecy lost in Sidera that contains vital information for beginning the Sideran-Accend war, which could overthrow the Imperium. A gold coin, many kilometers from here, is the key that could open a small portal to Sidera. I cannot retrieve the coin alone. He’s to accompany me.”

  She folds her arms and mirrors Samuel. She eyes him up and down.

  “It’s okay, blondie,” Samuel says. “I’m a Capricorn—Attie is a Taurus. We’re compatible. We’ve put aside our differences and won’t try to kill each other anymore.” He clasps his hands together. “Two halves of a star-crossed sandwich.”

  “Do you remember Morgan Freeman?” Gene asks.

  His eyes narrow.

  She pats her shoulder bag. “Also, my dad’s a member of the NRA.”

  Samuel gasps. “Some Republican with Gene’s genes is a member of the Netherlands Racquetball Association? I’m impressed. They’re pretty exclusive.”

  Gene turns to Atlas. “You’re hurt.” Brows tensing, she touches the cut on his temple. “How did this happen?”

  He flinches at her touch but not for the pain. She apologizes and he diverts his eyes to the concrete and wrings his hands against his pant legs.

  —last breath wafts on stale air: the remains of muffled gasps burned from within shriveled lungs. She slides down the wall—

  “Okay, well,” Gene’s hand hits her thigh, “let’s go inside and sit. You both look awful.”

  Atlas and Samuel frown.

  “Good heavens.” She exhales. “You know what I meant.”

  Under the new sun’s rays, Atlas follows Gene up the stairs and Samuel trails behind. She glowers at him over a shoulder.

  “What?” Samuel mouths.

  Atlas catches Gene’s movement and copies her, glowering at Samuel, but Gene prods Atlas onward.

  “Don’t be rude.” She shoots a scowl over her shoulder. “Atlas is sorry. Please come in.”

  Samuel rolls his eyes; Gene stomps up the staircase; Atlas hugs his stomach still sore. They mount the top story and enter Gene’s apartment. Gene scurries ahead of Atlas and Samuel and brushes a pile of halfway matched stockings off the couch, tosses wads of torn envelopes into her refuse cylinder, kicks a hooded garment under an end table. Breath short, she stops darting across the small space, closes the front door, and spins around.

  “So—” Gene skips her puffed-cheeked contortion of an expression between Samuel and Atlas. “You want to go to Sidera?”

  Samuel jumps onto her recliner and kicks his legs up on its armrest. “We want The Presage.”

  “Press-what?”

  “Press-what: noun, the Sideran prophecy that could start fun war ’cause it discloses the identity of the human portal opener guy and other important stuff that could open Pylon, the giant interdimensional gateway.” He waves his hands forward. “Go tell everyone you know. It’ll be funny.”

  “We must retrieve the coin that brought me to this world so I may return momentarily.” Atlas sits on the couch’s edge. “It is in this ‘Helena, Montana.’ ”

  Gene sits next to Atlas. “And the rebel Sideran in West Virginia told you all this? He was really there? He’s a—he’s against Sidera?”

  “Yes.”

  Her forehead crumples. “And you want to start war?”

  “Yeap,” Samuel says.

  Atlas squints at his knees. “I don’t know.”

  Samuel lifts his chin and gazes down on Gene. “Bitty Titan never knows what he wants.”

  Ducking her head, she tracks Atlas’s eyes and lowers her voice.

  “You want truth.”

  He nods.

  Gene straightens and stares into thick stillness, watching sun seep through her curtains’ cracks and tickle glittered the dust settling on her coffee table. She watches a wedge of shadow creep its migration across a stack of scrawled notes. Then looks Atlas and Samuel in the eye. She speaks first.

  “When do we leave?”

  “We?” Atlas pivots his head till his eyes meet their corners. “There is no—”

  “I’m coming,” Gene says. “I’m helping you get to Sidera.”

  “But—”

  “Stop right there. I’m coming.”

  “I don’t believe such is a wise idea.”

  “I think,” Samuel nestles into his chair and crosses his ankles, “that Denim is her own woman and can do what she wants, you disgusting misogynist.”

  Gene’s eyelids droop. “Let me speak for myself.” She turns to Atlas and jabs a thumb at Samuel. “What he said, minus the name-calling.”

  “This journey may not,” Atlas glimpses Samuel out of his vision’s periphery, “be safe, Gene.”

  She leans forward. “I have to do this. Don’t leave me here because I sat in silence for eight hours last night, staring out the window, and knew I didn’t want to join a comedy club or learn to dance either because I knew,” she inhales, “I couldn’t go back to that. Sitting in silence. My job. Everything. After everything, I can’t go back. Please.” She bends down and smiles, but it doesn’t touch her eyes. “I gotta do those stupid things.”

  “And if those stupid things bring about your death?”

  “Death is not doing them.”

  Samuel brightens his tone and raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, Attie, it’s destiny. God and rainbows and Buddha and leprechauns all want her to come.”

  “Can we speak alone?” Atlas motions to Gene.

  “Sure thing.” Samuel nods half a dozen times. “A nice lady once told me you can do anything you put your mind to.” Pursing his lips, he looks into distance. “Was that the one I killed?”

  “Leave. Now.”

  “Ohhh,” Samuel’s jaw drops, “you want me to leave? Whatever, man.”

  He hops onto his feet, upturns his jacket collar, and strides to the front door. He exits, creaking the door shut centimeter by centimeter until, too many seconds later, it’s shut.

  Atlas faces Gene. “You can’t.”

  “I have to.”

  “Do you know who Samuel is?”

  “He’s a murderer.” She frowns. “Like he just said.”

  “Then you know I must confide in him despite his tendencies. Samuel’s people have the capabilities to revolutionize Sidera—”

  “And turn it into what?”

  “I’m unsure.”

  Gene glances at the front door. “ ‘Revolutionize’ isn’t always the same thing as ‘make better.’ ”

  “Do you have another option for an interdimensional attempt at liberation?”


  “And you’re sure that’s what you want?” She shifts her weight. “Sideran liberation?”

  Atlas exhales ruptured the filter in his voice. “I am positive! For the love of the Imperium. Why does every being keep asking me such?”

  “Sorry.” Gene stares at her rug. “I just—I don’t like trusting the killer outside my front door.”

  “Neither I.”

  “But I don’t think you are.” She looks up and the edge in her tone buoys. “Heaven knows I don’t want to. But I don’t think you’re trusting the killer outside, the one you know won’t keep his promises if he has his way. You’re not confiding in the murderer. You’re confiding in the humanity—”

  “That repugnant Accend contains no—”

  “—however buried it may be.”

  Atlas clenches his jaw.

  “I don’t know what they did to you in Sidera or how they kicked you when you were down or how much anyone would ache to kick back but,” Gene squints at a scratch on arm, “there’s still innocence in your eyes. You see past Samuel’s exterior. I believe it too—redemption can find the worst of us.”

  He shakes his head. “You assume I’m kinder than I am.”

  “Not kind. I think you escaped Sidera because you saw what others didn’t. You choose to see good.”

  “And if this good I see is delusion?”

  “It’s better to get bruised climbing fences than it is to stay within them.”

  Atlas traces the lines in his palm. “Bruised or burned?”

  “Let me come.” Gene rests her hand on his knee; it warms. “I need to see what’s out there.”

  He studies her hand, holds his breath, and, without speaking the words of permission, nods. She smiles.

  “Oh, I forgot!” She jumps off the couch and lifts a finger. “I have something.”

  His breathing returns at triple speed. Gene tiptoes a jog across the living room, into another room down the hall, and back, swinging around the corner with a white fabric in her hands. She holds it up.

  “I, uh,” she dangles the material, “fixed your clothes. While you were gone. I fixed them.”

  Atlas’s eyebrows come together.