Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Samuel bursts a quiet laugh. “You’re Sideran.”

  Gene licks her lips and rocks onto her hip, adjusting her legs. Atlas immobilizes his hand; mind’s dissonance twitches it, but she settles still.

  “Yes. I am Sideran.”

  “You didn’t know day from night before about two weeks ago. Take your nap, Attie.”

  Atlas tightens his frown. “I was born in scorching sun and, for thirty-one years, bled under its rays that so tied me to labor grounds singing of freedom from choice. Yet I chose my prison by diving into the deepest black of Earth. I crave the infancy I lost and never cease imagining returning to my laborspace, where I may pound nails rather than take them to my chest. I know my contrast.”

  Samuel rests his elbow on the passenger seat and his forefinger on his forehead, a triangle of dim windshield light between his shadow. “You’ve very selective with understanding metaphors. You know that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you weren’t the only one born into slavery. Every Accend’s fooling himself.”

  Atlas squints out the window and Samuel sighs.

  “I don’t know what freedom is, Atlas.”

  A branch’s shadow quivering a bolt down his face, Atlas cuts deeper the grooves in his brow. “Neither I.”

  Samuel drops his elbow and faces forward.

  “But I believe in it,” Atlas says.

  Samuel nods. He shakes his head and taps his leg and listens with Atlas as vehicle’s steel sound barriers amplify every internal tick.

  “Elisium and Sidera are two very similarly messed up dimensions.”

  “Earth needs protection.”

  “That’s it then? I go to war and die?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Don’t do so for you.”

  “Then what, Furby Face? What do you live to die for?”

  Atlas follows feeling of his arm down to his and Gene’s hands and stares till his pupils adjust and the shape of her knuckles shows.

  “A view,” Atlas thinks he says, but his lips don’t move. He leaves body for a second and a half.

  Samuel lifts his chin. “She’s straight stupid—hope you know.”

  “Stupidity contains straightness?”

  “Bah.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “Compared to all your poodle, Denim’s almost stupider given she’s—” Samuel makes a face Atlas can’t see. “Better. I don’t mean just than you. You know.”

  A gust stirs the far trees and Atlas mouths, “No.”

  “Has no clue what kind of quicksand she’s strolling into. Human flesh bags freely stroll around and around this world, too weak to run, never knowing why they started, never knowing where they’re walking. Huh. Walkers.”

  “Complete knowledge of a destination,” Atlas’s eyes haze and blackness takes their hands, “may be a poor motivator.”

  “You’re saying no one wants to know?”

  “I’m expressing perhaps it is better not to. More than the obvious and assured, the unknown—an obscure, curious glimmer can entice, as the moon, a glimpse, a coin . . .”

  Samuel swings his head right a notch and, his voice lowering into dissipation, Atlas narrows his dry eyes a notch.

  “I intend,” he whispers, “few far regions of Sidera can escape sight from an adequate vantage because Sidera has no planetary curvature. If there were no constellation walls to conceal the horizon, I might never have left for it.”

  Samuel swings forward and Atlas sinks into his seat without budging, eyes frozen, head heavy.

  “I don’t know.” He swallows and blinks and shifts a shoulder. “I have been contemplating. If our genetics as Sideran and Accend have been physically fortified, would you truly be growing human? Could an Accend ever transform his race?”

  Samuel shrugs. “The DNA’s in me forever.”

  “Could it be possible for you to regain your powers in some way? Become more Accend again?”

  “Happy, happy question. Sundrops and lollipops.”

  “Could it occur?”

  “Maybe I like keeping the answer to that question as an ‘obscure, curious glimmer,’ Puff Pastry.” Samuel juts his jaw. “Eh, that’s a lie. I do want to know. There’d have to be some major assimilating involved and glowy stuff I can’t pop out of my hands anymore. I’m done talking about this.”

  Atlas looks to his invisible feet. Samuel exhales.

  “I think about assimilating Denim, the guy at the gas station, the brunette teenager walking to school, reddish highlights on her bangs, panda backpack, locket necklace, every third minute,” Samuel whispers. “Best not finding out your answer.”

  “I apologize.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Atlas frowns and nods and doesn’t know it; Samuel doesn’t see it.

  “What about you?” Samuel says. “You addicted to the wind or something as girly?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m going out on a limb. You breathe and absorb certain undiscovered—for humans, at least—airborne nutrients, process them, and then use some concocted compound to manipulate the air around you. Something like that, right?” Samuel leans back and kicks his feet up on the dashboard for the sixth time. “Where do you get your power?”

  Palm cupped around hers, Atlas squints for Gene, angles his ear toward her breathing’s flux, air’s charge altered at each cone of exhale, inhale, and brushes his thumb over her hand. He strains pupils’ adjustment from her hand to her arm to her shoulder catching three dissolving moon flecks where her hair curves, her head propped on the vehicle’s side. She lies still. Her chest expands, contracts only.

  Samuel looks out the windshield and doesn’t encroach to repeat his question repeating in Atlas’s head.

  XXXI

  Burden to Carry

  Leather sticks and clicks as Atlas presses his palm into his seat and twists onto his uninjured side, seat’s backrest sweating his cheek. He bends hitched his legs, but his feet again slip to his square of floor. A block of an armrest pinches his ribs and the passenger door panel, extending along interior’s flank, batters his shoulder. He squeezes his eyelids together and minutes pass without another gust to puppeteer branches’ shadows, shadows bloating into shapelessness as moon dips below horizon. Black settles; Atlas fidgets under its weight.

  Hours. He let Gene’s hand to herself, watched glass’s moonlight sheen fade too many ago. Atlas sighs and claws his hair. His pulse speeds, palms dampen before he begins estimating time till morning. He curls into himself and his back only twinges; but claustrophobia shakes the nerves carrying wound’s pain and he grimaces.

  “Atlas?”

  He opens his eyes.

  “Are you awake?”

  Lifting his head, Atlas rolls toward the seat’s other end. He peers through nothing and sees the resonance of her whisper sonorous as insect wings, fluttering into his lungs to pause his breath. Samuel snores from the front. Atlas inhales.

  “Gene?”

  She exhales. “Good.”

  Atlas darts his eyes in a studded circle. “Such is good?”

  “No, it’s—sorry. I should let you sleep.”

  Her whisper stops. Brow tensed, Atlas sinks under silent black piling on his shoulders.

  “Please don’t,” he whispers.

  “Can’t sleep either?”

  He shakes his head and forgets she can’t see it.

  “At least Samuel’s getting some rest,” she says.

  Samuel hiccups on a snort. He shifts and falls quiet.

  Gene creaks her seat. “Are you okay?”

  “He should be,” Atlas says. “Don’t be alarmed at those sounds. They are most likely normal.”

  “You, dummy. Are you feeling okay?”

  “It hardly aches anymore. I will be well by morning.”

  “But are you okay?” Gene whispers. “I mean, are you worried? About tomorrow, I mean.”

  “I—” Atlas breathes, “yes.”

/>   “ ‘Yes’ you’re okay or—”

  “I’m afraid.”

  Black steals her. She returns. “Hold your hand up.”

  Atlas stiffens. “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Why should—” He glances about and quickens his breathing. Centimeter by centimeter, he raises his hand into the black. “What will happen?”

  Gene touches his wrist. Atlas freezes. She curves her hand around it, then her other hand, and coasts her fingers upward. She encloses his hand with both hers. Warmth more allaying than the vehicle’s floods his palm, his arm, body. She draws his hand toward herself, his arm outstretched, and, uncovering the backs of his bent fingers, holds them to her cheek.

  “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “Gene,” Atlas says louder than he should. “Let’s exit this vehicle.”

  Her voice wavers and hands lower his. “It’s not safe.”

  “Hmm. Yes? I don’t care.”

  Atlas twists his hand and squeezes hers. He reaches, gropes for the passenger’s door handle, finds it, and, pushing the seat forward, pulls. A thump, a swing, and tepid air washes his face. Slow, muffled bumps jiggling the front seat, he guides Gene and himself out of the Mustang. He nudges the door to thump shut.

  “Okay.” Gene squints at the soil on which she steps. “Wow nut—now what?”

  Atlas touches the stained slit where his bandage bulges his tunic, cringes but soon softens, and looks to leaves’ highlights playing with dark gray.

  “Now, we walk.”

  A serrated gap of skylight tickles the trees at horizon. Closing his eyes, Atlas runs his hand along the Mustang’s frame and, opening them again, steps and steps through the crunch of pebbles and grit. He draws Gene forward. His fingers fall from the vehicle body and he outstretches them, sways them side to side before forest’s gap impersonating some semblance of glow and shape. He presses foot to fallen twigs and sizes them by thickness and pliability, steers from the denser groups. Releasing Gene’s hand, resting his on her shoulder, he ducks beneath a branch that scrapes his ear, and she too ducks.

  “We can’t just leave Samuel—”

  “He will be well alone for a moment.”

  “Well, where are we going?”

  Atlas glances at her, at a gray crescent tipping her nose. “Have you seen the stars?”

  “Tonight? Nnn—” Gene slows pace. “Oh. That night—a couple weeks ago when I said—” Her voice sounds her smile. “You remembered.”

  Air and nothing else brushes his face for the next several paces. The gap widens and glow builds. Atlas reaches for horizon’s leafy rift, grabs a fistful of foliage cool on his palm, and drags it from view. Five more steps, shifting of branches, widening of gaps; they walk into a clearing. Trees fall behind.

  Gene and Atlas lift their heads and turn, palms upward, arms drifting outward, to atmosphere bloomed from encircling treetops. A hill. A shrubless knoll large enough to blur the farther trees and shorten them to thumb’s height. As they flee Atlas and Gene’s, surrounding terrene mounds mingle, roll till dense, shrink under sky and bow to distance’s desaturation—distance yet flickering suburban stretch as gold flecks near as one’s own nose.

  Navy grass flows across a field that rivals Elisium’s. Atlas steps, head turning, earth’s fur bending underfoot, and his mouth falls open. This field, however, cradles air clear as Sidera’s, its walls stooped below its yard. A constellation Atlas finally sees at night.

  He stops. Forehead crumpled, he lifts his eyes and his dropped jaw expels a breath.

  “Gene.”

  She pauses her spin and walks to him. They look up.

  A million dots, white, blue, dim, bright, sparkle in the black dome that gravity holds from Atlas and Gene. The dots zigzag, angle, curve into stippled shapes and shoot tapering spurs from their centers. Each quivers a flame: a spark, a beat, whispered Morse code glistening in the eyes of the emotional. Tiny suns and Atlas never knew there were so many. His vision blurs; the spots fog.

  “Hui,” Atlas says.

  Gene bends toward him. “Hmm?”

  He blinks, meets her eyes, and grins. He grabs her arm and runs for the hill’s top. She gasps. They run and stagger over grass blurring, wind whipping hair, distorting sound. At the crest, Atlas slows and laughs forgetting the pain up his back and beams at Gene. He throws his hand at the sky.

  “This is what?”

  Eyebrows raised, she smiles and nods. “Sky.”

  “Stars—those are that? This—” Atlas flourishes both hands upward. “It is those?”

  Gene smiles and nods.

  Electricity pumps through his heart, to each limb, and back. He sifts a hand through his hair and catches his breath. Head parallel with sky, he again spins. The world above strings dots into arced lines closing circles as he closes his.

  His unblinking eyes sting until his grin stretches, and they water. He hugs himself, drops his chin, rocks back on his heels, and smiles at Gene.

  “There are many.”

  Lips pressed a curve, she eyes him. “Yep.”

  She sits and he does too. Grass tingles his hands pushed into earth. He leans back and looks up.

  “It’s so clear tonight,” Gene whispers. “It’s beautiful.”

  Atlas nods. He looks at her and back at the sky. He looks at her. She lies down, sweeping her arm over the blades that curl from her sleeve rippled with contrast, her hair spilling off her shoulders. He follows and curves spine to earth.

  He expects pain, zipping from his bandage and far across his lumbar region, between sinews and within visceral depths, but breeze lays its balm that penetrates his skin and awakens the breeze simmering behind his diaphragm. What should sear only nips; its barbs accelerate the gooseflesh overrunning his arms and neck.

  He shudders and scoots toward Gene. Stars shimmer in her irises. Atlas rolls onto his side and, brow furrowed, Gene does too. Her breath disperses on Atlas’s face and his wafts strands of her hair.

  “You—” Atlas swallows. His mouth makes an involuntary popping noise upon opening. He clears his throat. “Yes.”

  Gene flushes pink, smiles. Atlas grimaces and again rolls onto his back, Gene following. She takes his hand and pats it with her free one.

  “I intended, thank you.” Atlas shoots his eyes around the sky. “I would have never known of this otherwise.”

  Gene beams. “I knew you’d love it.”

  His eyes widen. “What?”

  “Stars. You see things like no one else and,” her smile falls, “it’s really, really nice.”

  The breeze shivers Gene, prods Atlas. Holding his breath, he scoots the distance remaining between them and pulls their hands onto his leg. Her side heats, presses his, her lungs waxing, waning; he moves with the motion.

  “I’m glad I hit you with my car,” Gene whispers.

  He breathes twice into her side. “As am I.”

  “I mean it. In a non-awful way. I’m not violent. I don’t like violence. I sometimes jam whole celery sticks down the garbage disposal but,” she motions to the stars, “that’s different. It’s not like I enjoy it.”

  Atlas nods. “You are the most unselfish, beautiful being.”

  “But I did.” Gene clutches his hand. “I always do. I’ve enjoyed it and buy an extra big bag every time and look forward to that part of the day when I get to not eat it and—grr-shwoop—grind it up. Sorry.”

  He glances at her. “Hmm?”

  “I’m,” she glances back and glows a smile in her eyes, “much happy you came and then me. I came with you.”

  Atlas looks into the lines, spokes, liquid white before the saturated amber in her eyes and, diverting his down her jawline, breathes the closest space he’s breathed with another being. He forces words from boulders in his throat.

  “You have carried me since, Genesis.”

  Gene blinks, rubs her eye, contorts her face. She sniffs. Forehead crinkled, Atlas shifts toward her and frowns at the tear on her cheek luring sky
glimmers to there sparkle, pools swaddling her eyes’ gold.

  “No, delicium—” Atlas props himself on an elbow. “What saddens you?”

  She shakes her head. “Mm-mm. I just . . .”

  He watches her cheek’s tear.

  “ ‘Genesis,’ ” she says. “Nobody calls me that without my last name with it, like a reprimand. But when it’s said like—” She folds forward her shoulders in a collapsed shrug. “You can say it anytime, if you want.”

  She wipes her cheek and laughs, and Atlas doesn’t, for the heaviness wrapping his ribs.

  “Good heaven.” Gene skews her smile. “Aren’t we supposed to be watching stars or something?”

  Atlas lies back. Gene’s voice rises and her hand squeezes his and a thread of a phoenix tail blinks across the eastern sky.

  “I’ve actually done some research online. I might know stuff. About stars.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are they?”

  “Um.” Gene purses her lips. “Let’s start smaller. Look.”

  She releases his hand and, her arm close to his eye, circles her finger around a group of bright dots: four in a tall rectangle and three girding its center in a diagonal line. Atlas’s pupils adjust seconds later to twenty—thirty more in between, on the outskirts. Their colors emerge: bronze-bordered white, a couple yellow, fainter red, many blue as an assimilation flame.

  “That’s gotta be Orion,” Gene says.

  “The supplemental and organics processing constellation?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “I have seen it much closer.” Atlas squints at Orion’s central cluster. “Perhaps some things are more pleasing at a distance.”

  Gene bites her lip. “Not everything. Hey, lookie.” She points centimeters to the right of Orion, to a triangular formation. “The V thing. It’s Taurus, I think.”

  Atlas stiffens, brightens. “Truly?”

  “Mmhmm.” She moves her finger off the stars’ V and to a nearby soft cluster, six, seven, more blue suns. “And there’s the stars Electra and Maia and Alss—somethin’ and that—” Her eyebrows draw together.

  Atlas peers at the cluster’s flares that sing sapphire in his irises; his, theirs glisten the same shade.