Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Lips pressed together, Atlas follows Samuel to the front counter, then out the gas station building, toward the first pump. He hangs behind Samuel as he pumps gasoline into his vehicle. Samuel grimaces.

  “Grah,” he waves Atlas off, “scat, Betty.”

  Atlas glimpses Gene through the Mustang side window and whispers, “Will you keep her safe?”

  “Whatever. Sure.”

  He sighs. “You mustn’t say a word. She can’t know.”

  Samuel nods.

  Atlas ducks his head. “After this, we may never again meet. Goodbye, Samuel.”

  “Sweet soul sucking. Wipe that streaming eyeliner and,” Samuel points to his Mustang, “get in the fugly car.” He pats it. “Sorry, babe.”

  Samuel clicks the pump onto its holder and they climb into the vehicle. Eyes glazed, Gene glares past the front seats, beyond Atlas and Samuel, through settling dust and the murmur of stereo speakers. The car roars a rev that swamps the radio. They speed onto the highway, the driveway curb rocking them side to side, and weave into the meander of traffic condensing, blotting the golden road. Gene reaches over the center console and twists a nob on the dashboard. The radio’s voice intensifies.

  “Guys, listen,” Gene says.

  Her urgency tenses Atlas’s posture and shifts Samuel’s weight. The digitized voice speaks as urgently but two shades sterner.

  —investigation continues. Grant will remain closed between Fifth and Fourth Avenue and Forbes between Smithfield and Ross Street. Police have yet to release further information on whether those roads will be opened to the public by Monday but say the sectioning of the scene shouldn’t interfere with travel—

  “City Hall in Pittsburgh.” Gene glances between Atlas and Samuel.

  They stare forward.

  She exhales and turns down the stereo volume. “That’s where Eden killed the officials at the charity auction.”

  Samuel slowly nods. “Good job, Denim.”

  “They’ve closed off like four blocks for investigation. The entire area’s been closed completely for a couple days now, which is weird. I’m sure,” Gene leans as far forward as she can, “the police aren’t at the crime scene day and night.”

  Atlas studies her.

  “This could’ve been the reason Eden killed those people, I mean, apart from her hatred of authority. She could’ve been trying to clear the area of cars and people and other roadblocks. Maybe she’s even got the police to keep the area large and open somehow.”

  Atlas’s eyes widen. “Arranging the city.”

  “The area’s perfectly set off for some kind of encampment. Or big portal.”

  “Boys and girls,” Samuel juts his jaw, “we know where Pylon is.”

  “Get on the freeway,” Gene points out the windshield, “and then get off exit 71A. Head north from there.”

  Samuel accelerates and two vehicles honk as he swerves between, around them. The engine growls, wheels thunder. Tires scrape two lightened streaks around dark gray striping the lane’s middle; and they zoom up a ramp that meets other lanes of a straight strip bordered by concrete brushed by forestry smearing horizontally. Atlas watches the red needle in the speedometer creep toward 85, the streetlamps quicken their backward beat, feels his heart mimic them. Gene twirls her thumbs and bites her lip. Samuel presses a button and bass rumbles and irregular, complex beats drown Atlas’s.

  Overhead green signs flash and depart. Without slowing, Samuel weaves into a fender-grazing gap between two semi-trucks and Gene doesn’t object.

  She motions to a green sign: 71A. “City Hall’s just up there.”

  Samuel drives off the ramp and onto a brick road, a quaint, ruddy tessellation shadowed by skyscrapers that heighten as road lengthens. Concrete mounts sky and the forest falls behind. Blocks of mud and sand and rock, refined, pinch together their vanishing points down streets left, right, ahead. Samuel eases on the gas. Atlas looks at wide sidewalk, engraved lampposts, median’s planter, parallel monoliths of windows reflecting windows reflecting windows that gleam the sun toward which they stack, and familiarity squeezes his lungs.

  Samuel veers two corners. He decelerates under the belly of a steel beast, an overpass, its rivets bleeding rust, scaffolding passing at their windows, and then turns onto a parking lot. Their tires grate loose asphalt. They bob over potholes.

  “What—” Gene whips her head around. “No, don’t—turn around. You were on Grant Street. It was just a little further.”

  “I have to pee,” Samuel says.

  She narrows her eyes. “No, you don’t.”

  His mouth falls open.

  Gene and Samuel breathe into retorts while Atlas reads Samuel, who glances back. He parks under the overpass’s shade in the lot’s corner.

  “Samuel,” Atlas shifts his eyes; “must have the peeing and I must,” he searches the air, “do acts.” He scratches his chin. “Yes. One moment.”

  Samuel and Atlas pull their door handles and Samuel reaches across Atlas to press something on his door.

  “And I have to lick a walrus.” Gene flicks open her hands. “What the blood is going on?”

  They get out and slam their doors shut. Samuel pockets his keys.

  Atlas eyes them. “Did you lock Gene inside your vehicle?”

  “No, I locked my car and Gene happened to be inside with my sawed-off door locks she can’t grab without taking the door apart.”

  Atlas turns his head centimeter by centimeter toward the Mustang. Gene yells. She claws at the passenger’s, then driver’s door, screams, and Atlas snaps back to Samuel. They walk around the vehicle.

  Atlas’s soles roll a dithering plant before the trunk, and all tottering on wheels’ suspension stops, all shrieks guillotined silent. Head back, chin retracted, Atlas peeks into the rear windshield and turns white; through the glass, Gene meets his eyes. Hers glint, twitch, her jaw clenched, all other features blank. She bores her liquid stones of eyes into his. A chill tears up his spine. Samuel screeches open his trunk and its underbelly takes her.

  “Samuel,” Atlas shrinks, “I’m fairly positive Gene hates me.”

  He hums. “That’ll happen. Just tell her you love her more than scrolling for Benedict Cumberbatch gifs and she’ll be fine eventually.”

  A knife halves Atlas’s heart. He furrows his brow, peers at weeds sprouting from an asphalt crevice, and thinks of words never spoken to Gene. Something prickles his spine and it’s not her glare that sparked it.

  Chain you. Take you. Only divided can you be unified. You’re so much more, Atlas. I love you. Beloved, blood is important; come to me and I will cut you and cut you—sky shattered by Pylon as I watch hundreds of thousands dance in the bloodied streets of corporate, bureaucratic America. Atlas claws his head.

  “—and that’s my Remington 870 MCS. I’ve been meaning to get a forend light for it but,” Samuel shrugs, “she’s beautiful without it. Oh, and over here’s my M4A1 Carbine—stole that one off a dude in Louisiana and you’re not listening at all.”

  Atlas jumps. “Can you repeat that?”

  With a thumb and forefinger, Samuel flicks Atlas’s forehead.

  “Ugh.” He recoils. “What have I done?”

  “You,” Samuel points at him, “need to pay attention. You’re going to put a bullet in my girlfriend’s skull and you’re going to do it within the next ten minutes. You’re going in alone. Alone against Eden and at least a handful of cronies who can, with heat, explode your brain. They’ve probably been hiding around the same blocks for days now, stationing their ravens, antsy to get down, to spot your very white, obvious target-wear, so now’s the time to pick a weapon, rush into the crime scene, and shoot.” Dipping his chin, he finds Atlas’s level. “I’m giving you full access to my arsenal and I don’t do that for just anyone. Don’t miss.”

  Atlas draws a deep breath. “You know I dislike projectile weaponry.”

  “You’re a pansy. Do you want to kill Eden or not?”

  He nods.


  “Then take the friggin’ rifle.”

  Samuel looks over each shoulder, scans vehicles’ roofs, the nearby road. He then reaches into his trunk.

  He grabs a long, black weapon, several downward protrusions, carry handle on its top, and gives it to Atlas. Atlas’s arm drops under its weight. He clenches one hand around the pistol grip and the other around its barrel, its grooves pressing pattern into skin.

  Samuel purses his lips and makes a face. He grabs the rifle from Atlas and returns it to the trunk. “Never mind.”

  “For the love of—” Atlas stares at his empty palms. “Why?”

  “The Colt M4’s a bit conspicuous for a left-wing urban capital that’s seen the recent violent murder of a senator; I think the kickback would blow you to the highest reaches of Asgard; and you looked,” he tilts his head, “ridiculous.”

  Samuel puts one of the trunk’s handguns, a 9mm, and an extra loaded magazine in Atlas’s hands. Atlas breathes out. He slips the extra mag under a left armband, retightening it once settled. His band constricting his left, both arms fall and black metal brushes his hip and leg on either side. He scours memory for images of configuring these metal hunks.

  “What will you tell Gene?”

  Samuel shakes his head.

  “Express that—” Atlas looks at asphalt, “that I will be well. That all things will be.”

  “And I’ll be lying?”

  Atlas clutches his handgun and lifts his eyes to the street’s far end. “Thank you, Samuel.”

  Samuel slams his trunk shut. “If you die, I’m gonna kick your memory in the kidneys for being an idiot.”

  “Memories,” Atlas’s brows tense, “are incorporeal.”

  He snaps. “You never change.”

  Samuel walks to the driver’s door and wraps his fingers around its handle.

  “Have to be quick,” he says. “Watch for cops. And everyone. Stay off the main road—go right from here, look for a cramped alley to skirt the yellow tape, come at City Hall from the back, lighten your steps, and,” he lifts his chin, “act like me. Don’t hesitate.”

  Atlas opens his mouth. But Samuel hops in his vehicle and starts the engine. He skids into reverse, Atlas stepping backward, and then peels from the parking lot, down the street.

  Behind overpass’s shade, window’s tint, Gene looks out the rear windshield. Atlas looks back. She no longer clenches her jaw; her eyes water, her frown deep.

  A breeze streams through the alley and shocks Atlas’s neck, touches his lip still remembering. His arms fall limp, his feet dug five kilometers into earth. Gene presses her palm to the glass.

  The Mustang turns the corner and she disappears.

  XXXIII

  We Go Wandering

  “Attention, Discipulus 27.”

  Atlas tore his eyes from the skylight. He cringed under the gasp of the curly-haired girl across the room, straightened posture, and stood. His knee bumped his work bench. The table wobbled before nine other students, a slight, dull, explosive wobble on thick legs meeting marble floor. Its thud resonated in his ears and his knee ached seconds later.

  He stared at his instructor’s chin; she stared back.

  “Does the Curative Estate require an additional patient or are you well enough to serve your empire?” said Instructor Tauri.

  Atlas parted his mouth but nothing came out. His legs trembled. Palms sweat. A hundred of his peers gawked and the girl with curled hair, who should have been, according to law, cut inside the womb before breath, again gasped.

  “Discipulus 27?” Instructor Tauri stepped toward his bench, the closest to the front. “Our beloved Imperium has mercifully laid before us this curriculum essential to the whole’s progression. Do you impede us with disregard?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then salute your Imperium for its generosity and proceed to explain the meaning of ‘In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.’ ”

  Atlas pressed his right fingers to his left shoulder and, letting them fall, inhaled gravel. “It is a palin—” he quivered, “palindrome.”

  “Explain the meaning.”

  “It is the same backward as it is forward?”

  “No, explain the phrase.”

  “ ‘In circles, we go by dark and consume—are consumed by fire.’ ” Atlas swallowed. “It means nothing.”

  Instructor Tauri stood erect, eyes blank, feet together. “ ‘We go wandering at night and are consumed by fire.’ We have learned of night. Why is there no night in Sidera?”

  “Because there,” he breathed, “is sun always.”

  She stepped again toward him and her boot clacked a dozen echoes across room’s dome lit by sun, filled with locked cabinets, benches, seats connected. No paper. No books. Instructor Tauri of Janus’s middle-children recited.

  “Because Absolute has removed darkness from this land so we do not burn in it.” She dipped her chin a notch. “That means everything, 27.”

  Atlas twitched. “My name is Atlas.”

  His instructor bent forward. “Make yourself clear and speak with dignity, Discipulus 27.”

  “My name,” he lifted his eyes and glared into hers, “is Atlas.”

  The room behind him sounded a silence that could fit in a closet but expanded imagination of it past constellation walls. Atlas dropped his eyes.

  Instructor Tauri curled a fist. “Your alphabetical label pertains to empirical census only. You will not speak that here.”

  Atlas rocked with his pulse and wrung his fingers into his pant legs. Instructor Tauri strode around his work bench, past four other students, and outstretched her arm. She clutched Atlas’s hair. He shrunk into his center, but she yanked down his downward head and slung him to his hands and knees, the bruised one shooting pain up his leg, bones jutting into stone. He yelped a choke that dissolved in the earthquake between limbs and marble.

  “You,” Instructor Tauri jerked his hair and released it, “are not yours.”

  She retrieved the weighing board. Atlas was fortunate he was eleven full cycles aged: this board was not bloody. His instructor strapped it under, over his shoulders, around his chest, and centered it on his back. She placed on it, piece by piece, each weighing four kilograms, eleven blocks of stone for eleven full cycles he’d lived. His spine caved, its knobs creaking, stone shifting. Instructor Tauri resumed the lesson.

  Atlas’s shoulders hunched; his arms rattled. He bared his teeth, bit the rips that shuddered through every muscle, and blinked tears onto marble streaked in sun.

  Clink.

  “For the love of the Imperium,” Atlas whispers.

  He exhales a burst and bends down, snatches his handgun off the concrete. He whips his head around. No walkers or ravens. His weapon fell through damp fingers in shadow. He squeezes its grip and brushes his free hand along an alleyway wall, around the corner, poking his head out far enough for one eye to squint.

  He looks past two buildings bordering a wide, empty road. Its black letters truncated under slouching edges, yellow plastic droops between pylons littering the intersection ahead. Orange cones and yellow tape spot and sever gray concrete and beige brick.

  A vehicle buzzes by and Atlas recoils into his alley two persons wide. The sedan reaches the tape and cones and turns around. It drives the way it came. Atlas breathes out, turns the corner, and steps from his alley, fingering his handgun up his wrist, smothering its barrel at his side. Though noonday’s approach scatters cover of shadow, he strides higher his head and fluid his cycle and mimics a Samuel-like indifference. He nears the tape, feels for any bodily charge resisting air’s ambient flow. His eyes’ corners interpret motley shapes along the street. Across it, one female walker with spiked hair talks on her phone and walks the opposite way; a male wearing an umber, hooded sweatshirt too warm for sun’s onslaught crosses the road behind him; but both keep their eyes forward.

  Scalp sticky, Atlas halfway jogs to the yellow tape and its sidewalks bare, free, curb to wall clear as Sideran land, t
he road flat and view far. Plumes of cumuli drift. Sound dies to the expanse of his education room twenty full cycles ago and settles an unsettling that expects the beeping, yelling, whirring of sixteen days ago.

  Atlas glimpses, past the tape, through the pulsing of vision catching heart’s ripples, a familiar gray building. Its smooth slabs.

  His eyes bounce off it and fall to his blurred stride. They widen. Pylon—he could tread it.

  “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” his lips pour.

  His gut twists. The palindrome replays in mind as he reaches the intersection and, lifting an arc from it, ducks under the yellow tape. He glances down the left street, right, forward. Not another being. The asphalt morphs to brick cobble that soaks in a quiet rumbles from highways distant encase, heartbeat lifting to throat and ears.

  Atlas’s eyebrows tense. He walks across the intersection, for the gray building.

  “We go wandering,” he whispers, “at night and are—”

  A scuff scrapes ground behind him. Atlas jolts and turns—

  Movement. Whiplash and pain. White bursts, black, and he falls.

  * * *

  “Atlas.”

  He budges two fingers.

  “Aaaatlas.”

  His head beats war drums that stir nausea. Crimson sun sears his retinas and swirls the colors behind his eyelids. He crinkles them.

  “Atlas,” her breath brushes his ear, “it’s time to wake up.”

  His heart jerks. He opens his eyes.

  Her outline glows a meter off her skin, sunlight glistening on her hair, burning it gold. Atlas squints through throbbing. Face shaded, she bends over him and tucks her hair, tickling his arm, behind an ear. Her soft jaw catches a crescent of sun.

  “I attempted to suppress it but I can’t any longer.” Atlas coughs. “And I apologize. I’m so sorry.”

  She touches his cheek. “Shh.”

  “I must tell you—”

  “You have,” she presses her palm to his face, “all the time in the world.”

  Elbow scraping road brick, he cringes and encloses the back of her hand with his; but its usual warmth stings with a sallow, twilight chill.