Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Gene sits up and touches Atlas’s head. “Are you okay?”

  He nods. Samuel clicks his tongue.

  “Would you look at that.” Scrutiny making small circles, Samuel waves his hand at windshield’s globs of forest-whipped auburn. “We didn’t—”

  Three massive SUVs, squeezed side-by-side across both lanes, emerge from under horizon’s hill. A palm’s width separates their glossed black sides and off-road tires, their military-grade rooftop floodlight bars buzzing white beacons though sun still shines. Double the sedan’s size, each vehicle roars head-on toward Atlas, Gene, and Samuel. Ravens cloud behind them, trees to the sides, and three untamed, unfed freight train behemoths rumble at their front.

  Samuel steps off the gas and lets the vehicle coast. “—die.”

  The SUVs don’t slow. The space between their grilles and the sedan’s bumper leaps closed. Huddling her deaf, Atlas hooks one arm around Gene’s nape, the other cradling her bowed chin, and closes his eyes. A metallic screech shakes the sedan’s frame. Before the SUVs’ high beams scorch their feeble low beams at point-blank, before Samuel, Gene, Atlas are flung into seats and air bags, before ravens scatter and white clusters spark behind eyelids, the charge that launches up Atlas’s spine shrinks his stomach and steals his breath. Gene’s hair tangles between his fingers.

  * * *

  A little further. Almost—

  Atlas’s thumb slips and scrapes fibers that break skin this time. It burns. He winces, squeezes together his wrists, his knuckles flat, and bends his bloody thumb into the twine with scant acknowledgement for its growing dampness. Eyes blinkless but unseeing, he thumbs down the cord and compresses its coils until the bottom ring reaches his knuckles. It there stops. He holds his breath and pushes his thumb down and wriggles his hands up with his elbows bending behind his back. The twine cuts hands’ circulation. He purples and his thumb, once again, slips from the twine. He grunts.

  “Atlas, please stop,” Gene says.

  With a thumped flourish, he tips back his head and it hits the SUV’s flank, one jostling backrest of a trunk’s siding. The SUV is bisected: two seats at the front, both occupied, then a thick, half-glass divider, then metal flooring that stretches to the trunk door soaking up evening heat. Steel’s diamond-patterned studs dig into Atlas’s tailbone, the same bare floor under Samuel and Gene. The customized cargo space could comfortably detain a dozen more, perhaps humans, packed as meat for trafficking. Atlas kneads his bloody thumb with thoughts of breaking it, to clear the rope.

  Subsequent vertigo diverts his attention. He sees Gene sitting cross-legged opposite him, Samuel to her right. Eyes closed, ankle-crossed legs outstretched, Samuel reclines against the vehicle’s side and only breathes. Like Atlas’s, their hands are tied behind their backs.

  A cut streaks Gene’s jaw and Samuel’s cheek swells red. One seatbelt-wide strip draws skin’s purples and blacks from Atlas’s chest, those induced by Corvus only now yellowing, and he imagines his fellow captives feel similar throbs across their ribs. Gene’s frown, however, homes on Atlas’s skewed Sideran sashes and the garnet-steeped bandage tying his arm.

  He narrows his eyes back. “Be still and comply then?”

  “No,” Gene sighs, “I just—don’t hurt yourself.”

  “And live out my utterly comfortable life in cords in an anarchist’s two by two box until murderous imperialists greet me at the destination?”

  She pouts. “You didn’t have to be so sassy about it.”

  “But, of course,” Atlas tilts his head, “it’s plausible they won’t kill me. They will you—bleed you over Pylon, watch me watch—but not me. Because death isn’t the worst fate.” He laughs. “Isn’t that correct, Cartographer?”

  “Atlas, stop.”

  “Isn’t that correct?” He raises his voice at the ceiling, ignoring Gene’s glance at the glass divider. “Why have you begun this? All I desired was freedom and you gave me unmitigated misery because your self-involved desperation scrawled my name on a piece of parchment perhaps hundreds of years ago.”

  Gene’s voice thins. “Stop it.”

  “Suffering, Gene.” Atlas drops his chin. “I am destined for eternal suffering. Always to be hunted, chained, stooped beneath my prison until I conform and, truly, I’ve lost my life at that point anyway.”

  “Atlas.” Gene leans after her shouted whisper, darkening as it spans the trunk. “You forgot that you’re not the one who’s ‘destined’ to bleed out on some portal.”

  “No. However, I’m the one that must live with it.”

  Her whisper shakes. “I don’t want to die.”

  Atlas exhales at the floor. He softens his jaw and tone and says, “I know.”

  “So don’t you dare act like you’re the only person who’s got problems.” Gene’s eyes glint. “Stop yelling. Stop complaining. Stop everything because you’re scaring me more and I’m squeamish by nature but I hide it and now I’m telling you and I—and—” She chokes. “I’m so scared.”

  The vehicle bobs Atlas up and down and he watches her knee do the same, its tremors masked. A horn muffled by trunk walls beeps a journey around the SUV’s fender. A swerve, Atlas’s, Samuel’s, and Gene’s hips rocking, and another horn blares as it passes. Backward rumbles and squealing brakes tell the Accenda’s captives that more vehicles leave the city than enter it.

  When Atlas speaks, against suspension rattles and the whiz of traffic, it’s quieter than intended. “You shouldn’t have begged Samuel to return to Pittsburgh.”

  “I didn’t beg.” Brows tensed, Gene sniffs. “It was Samuel’s idea.”

  “All right, kittens.”

  Atlas and Gene look to the corner. Eyes open, Samuel bends his knees and sits up.

  “Are you both going to,” he ducks his head, “shut up?”

  They close their mouths.

  “Seriously.” Samuel cringes. “I have the worst headache because, if you forgot, an SUV smashed into our getaway vehicle and that feral, oyster-faced goon yanked me out of it and randomly elbowed me in the face.”

  Gene says, “Because you went for your gun.”

  “Because you went for your gun. Shh, Denim. Your rebuttal’s flimsy and narrow-minded.” Samuel nods at Atlas. “He’s grumpy because he’s tied up. ‘Free Bird’s on repeat and, no matter how many times he asks, Lynyrd Skynyrd won’t let him join the band.” He turns to Gene. “You’re grumpy because he’s grumpy and because you’re a woman. Are we done?”

  Atlas and Gene glance at each other.

  “Good. Now,” Samuel jerks his head toward his side, “both of you get over here so we can talk about really secret things that will help us not die.”

  Atlas’s forehead crumples. “Such as?”

  Samuel gives Gene a look. “Tell him.”

  “Escaping, Atlas.”

  Atlas outstretches his legs, fixes his heels, and bends his knees scooting to the vehicle’s other side. Gene scoots closer to Samuel and Atlas squeezes into the corner between her and the divider. He looks through its thick glass, at the males behind it. The Accend in the passenger seat glares back at him. Spine stiffening, Atlas drops his stare.

  Gene stares at the floor’s same spot. “Samuel, what’s your plan?”

  She makes a noise and jolts. Atlas too, when her side throws his. He leans forward and squints at Samuel, who leans toward Gene without turning his body. Gene’s eyes widen and hands loose. She lifts them, twine snaking to her lap. Samuel grabs the scraps off her leg and shoves them behind himself; as he twists, a blade’s point flashes above his hip.

  He glances at the divider and speaks through his teeth into Gene’s ear. “Emotionally-distancing, impotent Number One and Number Two can still see you.”

  She throws her hands behind her back. “How do you have that?”

  “I was born with audacity, Denim.”

  “Shut up. How do you have that knife? They searched you.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “Do I want to know?�
��

  Samuel raises an eyebrow. “Do you?”

  She grimaces.

  “Pass the favor on,” Samuel slips his switchblade into Gene’s hands and nods to Atlas, “and then we’ll talk plans.”

  Gene presses her shoulder to Atlas’s and, facing strictly forward, feels for his wrists. A sharp tip grazes his knuckles. Atlas paling, Gene slides the blade’s two narrow faces between his arms; he widens them with little success; she saws downward. Razor-edged serration scratches his wrist and the saline down his neck beads a draft trap.

  “Please be cautious, Gene,” Atlas says.

  “No, I’m gonna be reckless.” Gene touches her cheek to his shoulder. “Joke. You can trust me, especially to tell funnier jokes than you do.”

  “Do you recall when you hit me with your vehicle?”

  She scoffs. “It feels like forever ago.”

  “Despite the incident,” Atlas frowns, “I trust you with my life.”

  Gene cuts through the twine’s highest coil and unwinds it. “You know,” she pulls his hands free, “if you weren’t standing in the road like a mentally-ill blind senior, then maybe I wouldn’t have hit you.”

  “I am mentally able.”

  “And that’s what scares me.”

  Atlas rubs his wrists behind his back, their throbbing red indentations. Hands’ clamminess wipes away any remaining wetness from his thumb’s scrape.

  “Despite the fact,” Gene straightens and slips the knife to Samuel, “I trust you.” Her brows’ inner corners lifted, she glimpses Atlas’s eyes in a millisecond of a leftward peek. “With my life.”

  Atlas budges his arm toward her. He finds her hand and wraps his fingers around it. “I will assure its safety. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  She nods and fakes a smile and looks to her right. “What’s your plan, Samuel?”

  “Oh, that.” He shrugs. “Just kick each Accend in the groin when they stop and try to drag us out.”

  Gene and Atlas sit and stare at the SUV’s opposite side, lips pursed.

  “Okay,” they say.

  Samuel blinks. Gene’s stomach growls. Atlas breathes. The SUV turns a corner and each of them sways into the other, three windblown pickets wobbling a return to stillness.

  “Just like that road trip to Montana,” Samuel says.

  Gene contorts her face. “I’m never getting in a car again.”

  “Friendships in Sidera were forbidden.” Atlas’s forehead crinkles. “Is this what it is like?”

  Samuel and Gene stare.

  “I don’t know,” Gene says.

  Atlas faces her. “How does Samuel remain with us? Do you believe he likes us?”

  Samuel’s jaw drops.

  “He’s always liked us, Atlas.”

  “Hmm.” Atlas leans around Gene. “I like you also, Samuel.”

  Nostrils flared, lip twitching, Samuel reddens to a vein-strung crimson and plunges his tone deep as the grave. “I have our only knife. Remember that.”

  Through twinges, Atlas forces his shoulders down and back, his arms close together, and squeezes Gene’s fingers.

  “Samuel, hold my hand,” she says.

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  “We might die in a few minutes.”

  “All the more reason not to.”

  “I’m scared, Samuel.”

  He groans. But after a breath, he shifts and Gene does too; Atlas knows he takes her free hand, because Gene angles toward Samuel and kisses his cheek. Samuel makes a face.

  Gene centers herself and scrunches her shoulders toward her neck. She drops them. “A human, an ex-Accend, and a Sideran fighting for freedom. This is what my dad always ranted about—the end of liberty as we know it. I thought he listened to too much talk radio.”

  “If all goes well, we shouldn’t have need for fight. I won’t allow Pylon’s opening,” Atlas says, though his last dream—though The Cartographer’s Presage echoes contradiction from some mental vault he strains to keep shut.

  She turns to him. “If ‘all’ doesn’t?”

  A fire comes.

  Atlas’s head spins and vision grays. He focuses it on his feet.

  Gene furrows her brow. “I’ll be—” She sighs. “Whatever you need me for, as long as it’s not running away—I’ll be here.”

  “There are two things I hate.” Samuel lifts his chin. “Rules and Siderans. And Anne Hathaway’s mouth. And young adult dystopian novels with love triangles.” He pauses. “And how Attie’s eyes are too close together. But if war starts, I’m not going anywhere—anything it takes to drive them home. Reminds me, there’s this Accend thing I’ve been itching to try—”

  “Aw, shoot!” Gene gapes at the vehicle’s roof.

  “What, Gene?”

  “I left all my towels in the washing machine at home and forgot to put on deodorant this morning.”

  “Actually, you left your towels on the floor, several paces from the raging water-box. As for the second matter, I can neither affirm nor refute.”

  “I don’t like how you said that.”

  Huffing out his nose, Samuel taps his sneaker against diamond tread. “I really have to pee this time.”

  “None of us have changed our clothes in a long time.” Gene grimaces at her knee. “I want to go home and eat and shower and figure out how I’m going to not pay rent.” She shudders. “Never mind.”

  Atlas closes his eyes and leans back. “We’ll all be home soon.”

  XLV

  Blood Is Power

  Sphere is universe’s most plausible shape. Spherical electrons revolve around spherical nuclei around planets around stars around universe of microcosms of macrocosms of microorganisms cycled through the blood. When galaxies meet edge of universe’s globe, all must turn and begin orbit again. Finite then dons infinity as cries beneath the crib mobile echo cries beneath sun drenching the fresh grave in which seedlings photosynthesize. Around and around, sunset and sunrise, genesis to exodus and exodus to genesis; and the imperial fear it. They keep their eyes forward. Never up, never down, never earth and never sky. They scope the close horizon, never beyond.

  Atlas squints through the SUV’s glass divider and to the windshield. Dusk washes it dim. The sun drops below trees and buildings stretching taller as they drive, and his gut too drops, darkens a shade. He clutches Gene’s fingers, breath chafing the lump in his throat.

  In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.

  “Girum,” Atlas mouths to his knee. “Circles. We go in a circle—we go wandering and are consumed—” He narrows his eyes. “We go wandering at night—”

  His eyes widen and illuminate. He jerks his head up, looks to Gene and Samuel, and says, “Pylon must be opened in starlight.”

  Samuel leans forward. Gene raises her eyebrows. “Hmm?”

  “Pylon must be opened in starlight.” Atlas darts his eyes between them. “In The Presage, I saw myself opening Pylon at sundown. Such wasn’t happenstance. Sidera’s first portal was opened after sunrise. Sidera’s last portal, Pylon, must be opened after sunset. Night perhaps weakens its seal.”

  “If you’re right, what better timing for our arrival,” Samuel says.

  He looks where Atlas did, through the windshield and to early lit streetlamps and planter ficuses sulking toward dark sage.

  Gene squeezes their hands. “I think we’re already downtown.”

  The SUV stops and all three jolt toward the vehicle’s front. With resonant finality, the Accend driver and passenger slam their doors shut demounting their behemoth. Samuel, Gene, and Atlas wobble into silence upon engine’s rest. A sandy skyscraper casts shadow through the windshield; Atlas’s pulse pounds his throat.

  The trunk unlatches. It swings outward and the Accenda stand before them, one wearing a black mask with slits for his eyes, the other: buzzed hair, thick jaw, flames dancing off his palm aimed forward.

  Samuel sits up straight. “Are we there yet?”

  Pale
fingers wrap around the two Accenda’s shoulders and push them aside. She steps up into the vehicle. Her fitted pants stretch against her hips, blouse drifts a second behind, hair burns ice crystals into ten eyes fastened to her glaring snowcap, undimmed by trunk’s shade. Eden smiles at Gene, then Samuel and Atlas.

  “Did he,” Samuel nods to the masked Accend, “drive with that on?”

  Eden twists her toes into metal plating as she crouches before Samuel. Rocking onto his tailbone, Samuel bends his legs, snaps them straight, and kicks for the space between her knees. Eden pivots. His foot grazes her outer thigh. Scowling, she thrusts a hand into Samuel’s hair and clasps another around his neck, his heels clattering to the SUV floor.

  Samuel’s voice scales the vice around his throat with a half-muted rasp. “Plan didn’t work.”

  Eden heats her palm. “The knife, Samuel.”

  “Putting ‘the’ before ‘knife,’ ” he hacks, “s-seems to me like you’re insinuating something, honey.”

  Eden constricts her hand and bursts a flame that shrinks Gene, sweats Atlas, and glows Samuel, his neck under red coals. He clamps his jaw and holds his scream. Pain escalates seconds after Eden retracts her fire and unclenches her fingers, soft around their first-degree and second-degree prints. Twirling locks of black hair with her left hand, she draws her right hand down Samuel’s shoulder, down the curve of his arm in a seamless caress. Samuel releases his groan in coughs.

  And swallows his hoarseness as he eyes Eden’s hand several icy shades removed from its previous flaunt, from the flush Atlas saw in her cheeks little more than a cycle ago. Atlas ponders the remnants of life commanding her youthful husk, once Sideran, and Samuel thinks on the inconvenience of neck blisters and how he didn’t like Eden touching his hair even when they were together.

  “Pretty manicure,” he says.

  Tilting her head, Eden runs smooth-tipped fingernails down Samuel’s chest. She plays with a button on his jacket.

  Samuel grapples his switchblade’s handle behind his back and Atlas remembers where he is. Samuel twitches; Atlas charges his palms. They glare into Eden, let go of Gene’s hands, and lunge with their own.