Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Atlas stares at Samuel and Gene.

  “That’s what’s wrong. Pay attention once in a while, Attie.”

  Gene wipes her cheek and sniffs. “It’s all—I’m . . .”

  His pants soaking, Atlas sits next to her; Samuel steps toward her.

  “I’m,” Gene grimaces, “all wet and gross.”

  Sidewalk reflects the gray mass above, its contoured lowlights, and Atlas rubs his neck, elbow on his knee.

  “He just left and I don’t know—” Gene exhales a tremor. “Rent’s due and I don’t have the means—I’m so stupid.”

  Atlas lifts his hand to Gene’s back. He holds his breath, lowers his hand, and presses his palm to her shoulder blade. He pats it. Samuel rolls his eyes.

  “Don’t you dare say it,” Gene whispers. “Don’t say ‘Life will be stupid—’ ”

  “I wasn’t,” Atlas says.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Gene scoots toward him and leans against his shoulder. Raindrops trickle down their backs, ripple the sky, and Atlas holds very still.

  * * *

  The Presage.

  Mine.

  Atlas sifts his fingers through his clean, damp hair and changes into a fresh set of clothing, his wet tunic and pants on the bathroom counter. He fastens all his leather bands and sashes around his left arm, one wide bulge over his elastic sleeve. Thoughts of leaving them with his Sideran attire made his gut churn. Loss has become frequent.

  The Presage. His. Lost. Sidera, Elisium, Pylon—Atlas wipes fog from the mirror—Sovereign. He looks at himself. Atlas’s eyes glow his childhood’s same blue but the wrinkles around them deepen. Rings under them darken. Earth’s atmosphere weighs on his sore shoulders and the pulse of wind through his veins sputters a strain.

  “Atlas of Taurus, faber minus 27, age twenty. Step onto the platform and salute your Imperium.”

  Atlas did. He touched his right fingers to his left shoulder and the Imperium examiner adjusted a lever on the scale panel.

  “55.32 kilograms,” the examiner said. “You remain under the acceptable and degrade your Imperium.”

  Atlas stared into the grooves under his bony, bare feet.

  “A report will be made concerning your inadequate synthesis and labor without true intent. Your Imperium cannot continue to increase your cyclical supplements. The collective has suffered enough for your inadequacies.”

  “I apologize,” Atlas whispered.

  “You degrade us, citizen. You cannot be demoted any further in your labors and your sickly bones yet hang idle.”

  “I apologize.” The platform beneath Atlas distorted; he blinked. “I apologize.”

  “Continue this and the pyre, for the thriving of Absolute and all, will become your final obligation.”

  A droplet splashed Atlas’s foot. “I am sorry.”

  Atlas narrows his eyes and his reflection copies him. The Presage—the barrier-shattering, war-inciting prophecy of three dimensions—his.

  He exits Gene’s bathroom, enters her living room. Gusts pushing it, afternoon rain drums against evening’s window, and though night douses the curtains, streetlight projects falling swarms through drapery cracks, streaking Gene’s wood floor in a melted weave of honey light and chocolate shadow. Rain treads a rhythmic pulse that calms Atlas’s. The rings under lampshades lay warm glow, and Gene sits on the couch, in the merging of these rings, her feet kicked up, a blanket over them, as Samuel leans from the seat opposite her.

  “—and that’s when I put him in a headlock and said—” Samuel’s eye glints. “I told him, I said, ‘This is what happens when you don’t vote Libertarian. Big government’s gonna come in and take all you got.’ ”

  “But you were bluffing,” Gene says.

  “You kidding me? I’m a self-proclaimed radical anarchist. The only thing I’d take to the voting booth is a Benelli M3. But he peed his pants and ran off and I stole all his ammo and sat on his couch to watch cable television. It’s worse than you remember.”

  Samuel looks up and Gene looks behind her shoulder.

  “How much blood?” Gene asks.

  Atlas shrugs.

  Samuel grins and points. “Atlas Shrugged.”

  “Man, Atlas.” Smiling, Gene sighs. “How many times are we gonna do this? If you want to keep your Sideran clothes, you have to stop getting them gnarly. Do you know how much bleach I’m going to have to use this time?”

  Atlas eyes her and Samuel. “You seem to be feeling better.”

  Gene nods. Samuel doesn’t. Sitting up straight, Gene drags her blanket onto her lap, her feet onto the floor, and motions to the couch. Atlas sits by her.

  Samuel stands and upturns his jacket collar. “Well, I’m out. I’m gonna go do,” he shifts his jaw, “stuff. I’ll see you whenever.”

  He opens the front door and rain’s volume explodes.

  “Don’t murder anyone,” Gene yells.

  Samuel turns and frowns. The lines around his mouth sharpen and droop and his brow furrows. He steps out the door; it shuts. Silence descends.

  “I didn’t—” Gene faces Atlas. “That was supposed to be a joke. Kind of.”

  She exhales and rubs together her hands and grimaces. Atlas shakes his head.

  “He will recover.” Eyeing a blister on Gene’s arm, he mirrors Samuel’s face stained in memory. “But I simply can’t imagine—what you, what he, through these hours—”

  “Please don’t,” Gene says. “Let’s not talk about this morning.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Eden and I are the only ones who should be saying that.”

  Atlas’s brows tense. “You?”

  “I,” Gene holds her breath and stares into distance, “told you not to kill her in the dungeons. I remember that.”

  He narrows his eyes, opens his mouth—

  “I keep asking myself why. Why did I save her life so, days after, others—” Gene squeezes her hands till pink and throbbing, a bandage on her finger unraveling. “It’s my fault.”

  “Never, Gene. Listen. The fault is not yours.”

  “I just didn’t want you to lose it. I couldn’t watch you kill her like that because of what she did and lose your innocence right there because it wouldn’t have been the same as before, as defense, and you—I couldn’t. I never wanted that.”

  “What do you want currently?” Atlas angles toward her. “Anything.”

  Gene meets his eyes and darkens hers. “I want to kill her.”

  She breathes trembling air and Atlas stares out the curtains’ part, rain’s pitter rolling a rumble, thunder too fatigued to sound.

  “I’ve never heard anything like that before.” Gene’s eyes soften and water. “Never seen anything like that.”

  Atlas nods.

  “No, stop. Uh-uh.” She speeds her breathing and hits her lap. “Let’s talk about something else. Have I told you that story about the cricket in my sock drawer? What’s your least favorite Latin phrase?”

  “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” Atlas says, eyeing the burn cream on the table behind her. “I promise I will find her, Gene. She will never again hurt another being and we will mend.”

  “I can’t believe her ex-boyfriend hangs with us.”

  Atlas looks into the grooves between floor planks between oily globs of rain shadow and hears gargled screams, sees burning blood. He shakes out his head. Forces a breath. Blinking away tears, Gene ducks a notch and frowns at him.

  “Okay. No more.” Gene pulls her feet onto the couch, pivots to Atlas, and crosses her legs. “New subject. Tell me about Sidera.”

  Atlas squints. “What of it?”

  “For one, I know it wasn’t really the environment for it, but do you have any friends you miss? You probably weren’t even allowed to talk. Could you send letters or anything?”

  “No, not really, and no.” Though images of a hooded being with kind eyes smoke through Atlas’s memories like incense through a chemical fire
. He likely dreamt it. “Anyway, writing is reserved for scribes, among the most honored of Imperial ranks.”

  “But is it possible—” Gene closes her mouth, eyes wide.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, in Sidera, do people—Siderans—do Siderans, if they want to, do they?”

  He glares. Gene does back.

  “There was a question?” Atlas says.

  Gene slides her hands under her knees and stares at the couch. “Do Siderans have relationships?”

  “Like I answered, all acquaintanceship and unauthorized social conduct are considered treasonous and therefore prohibited according to decree 16.B, clause five.”

  She makes a face. “No, I mean, if all relationships are ‘prohibited,’ how do people in your dimension—like, I’m guessing Siderans don’t grow out of the ground or just pop into existence . . .” Gene lifts her hands and raises her eyebrows.

  Atlas waits.

  “Gracious. Do you pop out of the ground? Or do you fall off of trees or emerge from cocoons that incubated under Sidera’s surface for thousands of years?”

  He scoffs. “That’s ridiculous. Cocoons couldn’t withstand the internal pressure of Sidera’s core. Steel pods are much more suitable incubational vessels.”

  “So, then—then how do Siderans reproduce?”

  Atlas runs his right fingers over his left, studies them, repeats. “Per full cycle—about a year in earthly terms—a chosen few, or most actually, persons of age are escorted to the reproduction manor three to six instances, depending on current population objective. There they stay for five labor and rest cycles with their analyst-selected partner. Then they return to labor and life continues as Imperium sees fit.”

  Gene contorts her face; she stares.

  “What?” Atlas says.

  “That’s not weird to you?”

  “What is?”

  “Um.” Gene inhales through her teeth and rocks backward. Her flush fluctuates between ashen yellow and hypoxic mauve, her grimace hinting at nausea.

  “That’s . . .” she puckers halfway toward a smile, “bad. So, next question—no, I can’t. But you know?”

  “No.” Atlas reads her, illiterately. “What?”

  Words blurring, Gene blurts a second-long sentence: “You were one of the chosen.” Her face blanks, glassy gaze drinking lamplight. “What’s wrong with me? You don’t have to answer that. The one before, not the other one—don’t talk to me.”

  Atlas leans from Gene and eyes her. “From the moment I became of age—turned fourteen at the new full cycle—”

  “Holy heaven.”

  “By that moment, Imperium analysts had reached a consensus that I didn’t meet reproduction standards. Such was my fault. I was a small and weak boy and balanced on the line between disloyalty and legality. They concluded I was not a being who should influence upcoming generations.”

  Gene glares, jaw clenched, eyes glinting. She claws her legs and opens and shuts her mouth twice. She makes a noise that makes Atlas jump.

  “Eden’s right. Let’s go to war. Come on.” Gene stands. “Let’s,” she pumps a fist, “kill some people.”

  “Gene, it’s all well. I was initially relieved I didn’t get chosen for reproduction.”

  “Initially?”

  Atlas looks at the coffee table and, an eyebrow raised, Gene sits.

  “Was there anyone, you know—” Gene says. “Never mind.”

  Atlas bends down. “There is no ‘anyone’ in Sidera. I hadn’t known a being, an individual until I met you two earthly weeks ago. I then understood what it meant to hold ownership over my own self and wouldn’t desire it any other way.”

  She smiles; she frowns. Her posture hardens and tone deepens.

  “About that. What my dad said—when I hit you with my car, I wasn’t going to work, not that early. I’m sorry.”

  “Hmm?”

  “That morning, when I hit you, I was texting my dad about the sessions he’s been paying for. I was going to therapy.”

  “Hmm?”

  “A place where people go when they aren’t well in the head.”

  “Ah. A hospital.”

  “No.”

  “Then how would you describe it?”

  Gene sweeps her fingernail, bobbing up and down, across the grooved texture in her pants.

  “Gene,” Atlas shifts posture, “when am I permitted to ask about your life?”

  She gestures to her surroundings. “Here it is.”

  “I intend—when am I permitted to ask about your past? How you have lived on Earth? What you’ve discovered? If you’re happy?”

  “I’m happy,” she says, but her inner brow lifts.

  “And what else?”

  Gene wets her lips and answers in one breath. “I have a mom, dad, three brothers, and many dead pets. I’ve discovered I like singing, running through the grass without shoes on, not talking to grocery store clerks, twelve-hour sleep segments, bubble baths, picture books, dark chocolate—like the really gritty stuff because I want to at least seem grown-up. I’m too impatient for learning and folding laundry and when I buy a planner, it ends up in my trash because the first blank page gives me panic attacks.” She looks at the floor. “I liked The Phantom Menace.”

  Atlas smiles. “Adequate. Could you elaborate on the past?”

  “Come on, Atlas,” Gene lifts a finger, “I know what you’re doing. Let’s skip the frilly stuff and get to the topic we’re avoiding.”

  He stiffens.

  “I know it’s something neither of us want brought up but—”

  “It wasn’t my intention.” Atlas’s voice leaps three notches. “The elaborate glass vessel in your cleansing room was on the counter’s edge and everything was unreasonably—unreasonably slick because of the moisture from that, Imperium help me, complex shower spout and there was little I could—”

  “Dude, what are you talking about?”

  “It fell,” Atlas whispers. “It shattered on the floor.”

  Gene laughs. She stops and makes a face. “You broke my soap dispenser I never use.”

  She grabs a pillow off a folded quilt, the same Atlas has felt before, and throws it at him. It smacks his face and falls to his lap.

  “No, you dope,” Gene says. “I meant to bring up how you were a scrawny boy in Sidera.”

  Atlas settles the pillow and grimaces. “Angular is more accurate.”

  “Uh-huh. You were adorable. I bet your parents were proud.”

  “Parents?”

  Her eyes widen. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. You were separated from them at birth, duh. Sorry.”

  Atlas’s forehead crumples. “Can you define the term?”

  “Parents? You don’t know what parents are? Oh, boy.” Gene breathes in. “Your parents are your mom and dad, mother and father—”

  Pater, Eden had said.

  “—the ‘analyst-selected partners’ who formed you. Your family. They’re supposed to look out for you. My dad was the scruffy, old guy who came here today.”

  “I don’t approve of him.”

  “Parents aren’t always meant to be nice.”

  “Your forerunners are types of constellation overseers then—each an arbiter. Each Sideran of constellation to arbiter, each of region to legate, each of empire to Absolute. We all share a parent.”

  “Those aren’t—parents are just yours, Atlas. They choose to be together for you. For nothing in return, parents tuck you in at night, hold your hair back when you’re throwing up, feed you, clothe you, tell you to dream, learn, love, and wish, beyond anything, you grow up to become more than they were.”

  Atlas flares a nostril and skews his face. “Governmental authority to influence the child in the hands of the two? Each one to two? Such lasts until the child reaches maturity?”

  “Um, mostly.”

  “Is each qualified?”

  “Not everyone.”

  “Seems perilous.”

  “That’s love.”


  Atlas looks at the pillow in his lap and runs his hand over its slip. It brushes him back. Its padding contours to his fingers, leaves them softer after he retracts, the pillow inflating to its previous form. He narrows his eyes.

  “Parents—disastrous concept. This?” Atlas lifts the pillow. “Unreasonable. Such is why walkers are overindulged. Each has freedom and yet they subject themselves. Each has,” he jabs a hardening finger at the quilt, “that and yet persons in suits crave thousands more.”

  Gene ducks her head. “What’s going—”

  “None deserves reward. This is wrong.”

  Atlas drags a hand down his face and crinkles his scowl. He blinks into his palm. A tremor shoots through his spine and rattles his teeth and amasses a knot behind his sternum.

  “Atlas,” Gene scoots toward him, “what’s wrong?”

  He sits still until the heat behind his eyes ebbs. “I am.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I don’t deserve this, Gene.” Atlas pushes the pillow off his lap. “Everything I’ve known, everything there is—I simply—this is the indescribable aching within my gut I’ve endured for two weeks and I wish I could, only for a moment, sit on this couch as you have without shame describing its every corrupt fiber in which a heretic such as I indulges. If I hadn’t looked over constellation walls or caressed the coin belonging to only me or desired much more, none of this—I question my escape by the second.”

  “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this.” Gene grabs the pillow and sets it in his lap. “Nothing. Is that—are you feeling guilty for this morning?”

  He fixes his stretched lip, upturned brow, damp eyes staring through the pillow, through his lap. Gene tilts her head.

  “What’s making you feel guilty?”

  “Ownership.”

  She inhales—

  “I feel guilty for feeling guilty. The Only Escaped cannot escape Imperium’s doctrine.” Atlas runs a knuckle under his nose. “I’m very conflicted.”

  “Sometimes,” Gene says, “what makes us the happiest is what makes us the most uncomfortable.”

  Her words ring on pittered glass, the last of the rain dripping from leaves, sinking under soil, all glazed behind lamp’s reflection between curtains. Something hoots in the far trees and rain pauses. Gene wrings her fingers; the sound of their rubbing resonates.