Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Atlas finds it. His chest and his swelling head. Cyclone’s heat ruptures cobalt, ruby, emerald sun in cascades down his tongue. He skids through the tornado and screams, skin burning, vibrations bursting his throat he stretches to sound, but, somewhere, in some dimension stroking his spine with thunderclouds, he likes it. He finds body and body slips under wind’s whirlpool. Gravity of ten Earths grabs hold.

  He plummets.

  * * *

  The figure is hooded. He walks muted thuds into aisle’s sound-insulating rubber and passes thirty cribs before reaching Atlas’s. A hundred in rows, humming beams of ceiling spotlights sting Atlas’s eyes; he shuts them. A hand touches his head.

  “Atlas,” the male whispers, “you are cherished. Remember that.”

  Atlas rolls onto his side and squeezes his eyelids together.

  “Your name—written by the mapper of universe’s future, echoed through the firmament for so long we nearly forgot and here you are.” His voice softens. “So small, fragile.”

  The male tilts his head, his hood drooping around his shoulder, and pinches Atlas’s bed padding. He yanks apart the seam. He slips something into the thumb-wide tear: a small gold object. He smooths the seam together again and drapes a section of Atlas’s blanket over it.

  “They will attend to that. They will make certain—” The male exhales.

  Blinking through spotlight, groping for the seam tear, Atlas wraps his fingers around his blanket and pulls it into his cheek. He slows. He stops and yawns. And rests his head into his blanket, his limbs falling limp.

  “They cannot interfere. Understand, please. A few will watch from a distance but you must be on your own. When the right cycle comes, you must go to Earth. You must open Pylon, Atlas.” The male strokes Atlas’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You are the sign that, if we are extremely fortunate, many will finally prepare to depart and live as they should have long ago. Perhaps Siderans will learn to gaze above constellation walls at last.”

  Atlas sighs. The male’s voice dims and rides the line between the ripples in Atlas’s blanket and discernible consonants and vowels. Atlas looks sideways at the male’s pewter-gray Imperial jacket. His chest sash buckle blurs.

  “I believe truth exists outside Sidera and I believe you will find it. Bring us to it.”

  Nestling his head, Atlas curls himself into a ball and again closes his eyes.

  “In Genesis, all was created. Abraham’s chosen soon walked the Earth. Exodus came, the chosen people enslaved, land unyielding, and what they truly needed was another Genesis. We always do.”

  Atlas drools; the voice withdraws.

  “Moses was a man and he freed legions. Perhaps these earthly murmurs I should be more careful to hide away. But Atlas is more than man, born to free dimensions. To seek, find, protect, and then sacrifice—”

  Shadows crawl from alleys and stretch gridlines from streetlamps, moon mounting the first stars above skyscrapers. Sun stoops low. Atlas looks her in the eye.

  One last sunlight ribbon grazes her cheek, glistens her hair gold, and then shrinks behind City Hall. Atlas’s palms sweat, heart jars nausea up his throat. He squeezes a hilt, its blade pointed down toward the center of a gentle meter-wide light ringing their feet, where street’s breeze bends and shadows shrink. Ions saturate his blood. Her closeness erupts them, siphons a charge upward, ring’s white glow blooming out of blackening road by nothing but the proximity of the force that pulses under her skin.

  Stillness compacts silence. Atlas bursts a breath from his mouth that quivers her bangs and draws her tears.

  “Gene.”

  Her face smooths to stone but eyes whisper volumes. Her neck dribbles blood; he doesn’t remember why. Twinkling pearl reflections, tears roll down her cheeks.

  Gene whispers, “With my life.”

  He knows what she means.

  He swallows a metallic charge on his tongue that magnifies the scent of iron staining her collar red. Sun sets; Pylon stretches its ring of light into sky. It envelops them. Gut seething, muscles twitching, Atlas wraps his fingers around Gene’s shoulder and, with his dominant hand, wrings the dagger’s leather until its texture patterns his palm.

  Toes centimeters from his, Gene gasps out power he never before appreciated. Pylon glows and her scent electrifies and Atlas drinks down a constricted throat. He frowns.

  “Are you prepared?” he mouths.

  Gene darts her eyes between his and, budging her head a centimeter up, centimeter down, nods. A tear splashes Pylon; its white light bursts wind through Atlas’s veins.

  He raises the blade to her waist. It reflects Pylon’s naked sun. He sucks a breath, locks his fingers white around her shoulder, absorbs the unanointed gateway’s power up his legs, through his heart, to his dilated pupils, and then thrusts—

  “—but such remains in the future. Rest now.” The hooded male sculpts Atlas’s blankets around his back. “Sleep,” his voice cracks, “and worry of future things when they arrive.”

  A female’s footsteps approach with haste. Two or three infants hear and cry out and Atlas stirs. The female cringes and lightens her step, her boots rolling toe-first, her richly purple Imperial jacket swaying forward at her slow, her polished bands and catalytic gauntlets same as the hooded male’s. An insignia of the Administrative Citadel stitches her coat’s breast. She jogs on her toes till stopped before Atlas’s crib, and the collective cry quiets.

  She leans toward the male’s hood and whispers, “He knows.”

  He faces her. “That is not possible. He couldn’t—”

  “But he does. We have been betrayed or Imperium discovered our records or their torture and prodding finally exhumed the mapper’s mind.” The female looks over a shoulder and lowers her voice. “The Sovereign knows. We must assume he knows more than I hope and flee this instant.”

  The hooded male pinches the bridge of his nose, its tip peeking from shadow. “Who told you?”

  “A new decree told me. Have you not read it?”

  “I,” the hooded male speeds his words, “act as a warden, not a legate. What exactly does The Sovereign know?”

  “Beginning immediately, new laws require thorough, surprise inspections and an empire-wide search for that.” She nods to Atlas’s bedding, to the coin. “We should not talk here.”

  The female turns; the male grabs her shoulder. He frowns at Atlas.

  “I may never see him again. Please.”

  She sighs and grabs the crib’s rail, angling into Atlas and his guardian. “Other legates—Vega and the rest have let slip of Administration’s concerns. Absolute—Sovereign knows of the liberator written in The Presage but not his name, thank Imperium. He knows of Pylon, the Walker to open—”

  “He knows of the Walker?”

  “Not who it is. Only that it is. And that Pylon requires blood and the liberator’s ultimate sacrifice. No one knows the identity of the Walker.”

  “The Cartographer does,” the hooded Sideran says.

  “And, some cycle, the only other being meant to experience The Presage will join him in that knowledge.”

  Both of them turn to Atlas, who chews on his blanket’s corner.

  “Is the plan in danger?” the male asks.

  She exhales. “Yes. To what extent? I do not know.”

  “No.” He scoffs. “No. The Presage cannot be wrong. It is prophecy. Atlas will free Sidera.”

  “We only know Atlas, through the Walker, is to open Pylon and Siderans will travel through it.”

  “Exactly—an exodus.”

  “Yes, but what kind?”

  The hooded male sharpens tone and shoots a whisper. “Don’t tell me you imply The Cartographer never wished for the freedom of—”

  “No, that is not—I am beginning to believe The Sovereign is changing fate.”

  “Can fate be changed?”

  “I—” The female stiffens and presses her lips together. “The Sovereign gathers plans to our gateway. I imply that he c
ould use Pylon against us.”

  The male looks at his feet, his hood dangling toward polished floor reflecting feathered patches of spotlight a thousand times.

  “You must remember why we were sealed inside Sidera, why no being can escape,” the female says. “Doors do not have disposition. Their wielders, however, do. Travel is power and, not a moment ago, you left Sidera’s last key to an infant.” Her eyes water. “Knowing what we know and desiring what we desire—we are so few. Only you and I and him—” Face contorted, she glances at the crib. “It may be too late for escape.”

  The male grasps her shoulder and ducks his head. “Are you afraid, if Pylon opens, the supposed fire beings of Earth will flood Sidera?”

  “I am afraid Siderans will flood Earth. I am afraid The Sovereign is not satisfied with his current empire.”

  “The war,” he whispers.

  “The war.”

  —the blade sideways, one swipe, one blink of a hiss of a steel leaf. Gene freezes her face, her breathing, her agape mouth and tensed brows. Her eyes widen to their limit; Pylon’s light dances in them. Shoulders lifted, face chalky, she looks down and creeps her hands toward her waist.

  Blood drips from her shirt. A red slit from her core’s right to left trickles a sheet down her front.

  “Atla—” she mouths.

  He glares at the blood painting the dagger. Thoughts paused, stance still, Atlas smells iron whirling, slithering through air and lungs.

  Gene tips. She collapses to the road, her body curved to Pylon’s ring.

  It explodes. Pylon’s beam launches into night sky and splits into branches that web to the tips of skyscrapers and beyond, a tree of lightning without thunder. Its trunk sears into Atlas’s retinas. The ground quakes. Gene’s blood shatters Pylon’s seal and an invisible wave ripples heat across the city until electric wind weaves through every alley and hisses in every ear and sweats every street.

  Atlas turns his bloodied hand in Pylon’s light and his neck bristles. Hair blasted backward, eyes blasted narrow, he leans forward.

  His foot slides; he looks at it. The road’s wet. Her blood paints his shoe, seeping to the inner edge of Pylon’s light, where its touch ruptures another thousand energy bursts.

  Drifting, swirling, her blood spills onto Pylon between hums of bounding beams oscillating among stars and Atlas tastes every drop. His palms pulse wind—but warmer—fire.

  Palms burning, charged fingers lift to the circle of blood. They propel streams that grab the light and ride it upward, spinning a vortex—

  “Now, look—” The hooded male pats Atlas’s head. “You caused him sadness.”

  Atlas whimpers and the female rolls her eyes.

  “There are more important matters at hand.” She jabs her finger into her palm. “After all of the talk—they are suspicious. They could initiate Decree Expulsion. All these infants—if Imperium grasps a fraction of a hint that the upholder was born—”

  Atlas explodes his cry. It echoes off four walls and floor and ceiling despite their insulation, reflecting with the white lights. A dozen other infants cry a chain reaction down the nursery. Face red, Atlas rolls onto his side and grasps his blanket; room’s wailing raises his sobs.

  “But what is more important,” the male frowns and slips his hands under Atlas, “than consoling an infant?”

  Whipping her head around, the female pales. “You must leave. You will be discovered.”

  “I will stay for a little longer.”

  “If they discover me, I have influence, but you—” She glares into the shadow of his hood. “You they will burn alive.”

  “I will stay,” the male lifts Atlas, squirming, grimacing, to his chest, “a little longer.”

  “You endanger him, yourself, and all Sidera. I understand he is your nepos, but the death of your kinship should not be repeated. Be reasonable.”

  “Do you not wonder why Siderans have no word for brother—for nephew?” The hooded warden strokes Atlas’s back. He sways and hums.

  The female grabs his arm. “I beg you. Please.”

  Voices and footsteps rumble through a hallway off the nursery’s far nook. The female goes rigid; her breath sticks.

  Holding Atlas to his neck, clutching the infant gown that drapes white over his arms, the male nods to a nearer hall and whispers, “Go.”

  The female blinks tears from her brown eyes, unaccepted eyes, eyes Imperium cuts out, then whispers a few words back and turns and runs out of the nursery. One approaching voice yells from the far hall. It carries its clarity through lights’ buzz until the tapered end reaches Atlas.

  “—hooded citizen to violently react. Execute immediately.”

  The male brushes Atlas’s head with a thumb and sings a whisper: “Sleep, sleep, the morning come.” He trembles. “In dark of night, in quiet blight, here, to you, I will hum—”

  —vortex popping multicolored sparks where the solid glow of a pillar once stood. Pylon launches blood red coiling around every shade of ember orange and molten steel. At Pylon’s base chases cyan twined with magenta with yellow shimmering as Sideran plains. Atlas’s eyes follow all upward. Colors unnamed climb after the already known and, clinging to the light ring, spout a churning geyser that bores Earth’s thermosphere three hundred kilometers out of view.

  The road warps. Hot wind swirls outward. The blood of Genesis soaks the ground brittle and wind-driven, hand-thrust power breaks open a portal.

  Sunlight streams from it. Street’s darkness flees. Blue sky peeking from its widening fissure, the portal expands—

  The hooded male kisses Atlas’s head. He squeezes his back and then rests Atlas back in his crib. Eyelids heavy, Atlas stops his squirming and crying and sinks into his bed. The Sideran folds his blankets over his body.

  The Imperium guards reach the nursery’s entrance. The warden steps from Atlas’s crib but continues his song:

  Our empire tumble

  They build a pyre

  The time of fire

  All in sun will crumble

  —portal expands a light-haloed door that lays golden land and reaches for sun. He sees it. The other side. Pylon’s whirlwind skidding him on his heels, narrowing his pupils, Atlas peers into his home dimension. He stands; Gene bleeds. Because of him. Because of him, the road’s tornado expels a portal and gapes its gleaming jaws to heads of legions of Siderans waiting inside.

  But tonight you shall rest

  Cantus, cantus

  Quietis, quietis

  On moon’s fiery crest

  Chanting, crying words of Praise, tens of thousands of Siderans raise their fists and push toward Earth. They wave flags, lift their heads to Atlas’s side of night, each bobbing, brunette scalp dotting another body until all blend into horizon as brown mass. Pylon opens wide enough for the nearest citizen’s shoulders. Bodies pour out.

  Sleep, sleep, the morning come

  In dark of night

  In quiet blight

  Here, to you, I will hum

  The portal pries city clouds. Its crackling brilliance accelerates and stretches a thirty-meter-wide maw to golden plains thundering footfalls, to blue sky resounding hymns.

  Shoulders heavy, Pittsburgh at his back, Sidera at his front, Atlas lets his arms dangle and his stance slouch. It’s finished.

  Song pours over Gene’s bleeding body; song echoes through the streets.

  Sleep, sleep, the morning come

  In dark of night

  In quiet blight

  Here, to you, I will hum

  XL

  Wind to Spread and Earth to Burn

  Atlas gasps and staggers backward. The Presage slips, clinks, flops over its metal stems as it hits floor unseen. Foot twisting, Atlas follows; he hits the floor and claws a smooth, cool surface under his bruised hip.

  He gags. He rolls onto his hands and knees and coughs between them. Spit dribbles down his chin. His elbows buckle and front drops, and he sinks till his forearms press floor, wipes his mouth on h
is shoulder. Breath ragged, he looks into shapeless black with throbbing eyes. They brew tears. He blinks his tears to the floor. Their splashes shake his eardrums as thunder.

  “Is that it?”

  Atlas jolts to his knees and lifts his chest. He grasps his hair. Darts his sightless eyes.

  “Why are you crying, Atlas? Is she it?” The Sovereign says. “Really?”

  Atlas holds the lump in his throat.

  “The walker that opens Pylon—humanity’s shining representative, the Walker. But it’s not a title at all.” The Sovereign inhales a meter from Atlas’s back. “The liberator’s ultimate sacrifice to free Sidera. I’m understanding now. It’s coming together. She just seems too average. Is she really?”

  Jaw clenched, Atlas turns his head toward the voice and digs his fingers into his pant legs.

  “Is she? Your Genesis Walker—she’s the Walker that opens Pylon.”

  Atlas twitches.

  “Ah.” The Sovereign sighs. “Perfect. Thank you, Atlas. I have what I need.”

  Atlas pushes off the floor and stumbles to stand. He charges his hands. He spins and spins around for the trickle of Sovereign’s voice.

  “Do not pretend,” Atlas cuts his eyes through black, “you know one fraction of Gene or my—”

  “Samuel too. It’s just so weird, you know? Banana pudding on her shirt, road trips to smelly hotels, bickering about who’s more elegant—sorry, who has more elegance—not exactly the crowd I would’ve expected to hold the keys to universe’s greatest war portal.”

  Atlas freezes.

  “My daughter and her ravens, puer. I have seen all. I am all.”

  Swinging his hands left, toward the voice, Atlas outpours a gust. It stirs the air and sings its hiss into distance, where it withers to death. The Sovereign breathes behind. Atlas jerks toward him, snaps straight his arms, and shoots a stream. It slips into darkness as the first.

  “You cannot touch her from your tower,” Atlas yells. “You cannot open—”