Arcene: The Island (14 page)

Talia went to work. On her one hundred and eleventh birthday.

To the Top

Talia smiled and exchanged brief pleasantries with the few people she passed as she made her way up to the surface. It was funny, but even after so many years she still got a little tingle of excitement in her belly as she made the journey.

Once, it used to be quick, less than a minute as she lived so near the surface, now it took almost ten, and she kind of missed the old days. Still, the build-up was worth it. She liked the feeling, the excitement of the transition from dark interior to the bright light of day. The open space, the endless sky and infinite sea always made her feel more alive than she thought possible after being below through the night.

It was as if she forgot what freedom really was. It wasn't until the salt air and the breeze hit her that she truly felt at one with the world and her beautiful home. She was up early so most people were still asleep, shut off in their quarters, huddling together or wrapped in blankets to fight off the cold. It was always chilly, the why was something every child learned at a young age, along with much more about the world they would live and die in, or on.

The low temperature was because the walls were so thick, immensely solid and strong. The Island was a man-made structure built by people with immense vision and foresight. It was cold because heat couldn't penetrate such thick walls and it had to be that way so it could survive the stormy sea and the harsh winds that scratched and gnawed at the walls that kept them safe. Alive.

To Talia it felt like she had always known the story of The Island, as if she were born with the information already imprinted on her mind, but that wasn't the case. From before she could understand her mother's words she had told Talia of how they came to be where they were, and slowly the information permeated her senses, repeated over and over again as were so many other aspects of life on The Island. Once schooling started, the history lessons began in earnest.

They were expected to know the names of the founding Fathers and Mothers, to remember the dates and events that took place so long ago. So much led to them being the lucky ones, those that for the most part avoided The Lethargy, although it was never possible to escape it one hundred percent. Compared to those that lived on the land though — well, they were lucky.

They were shown the old communications equipment, how you could press buttons and talk to people all over the world via satellites that bounced your voice to anyone with a similar device. The children gathered around long-defunct computers and were told of how the world was: every home connected, endless information available at the virtual click of a button.

They learned of money, cars, and cities full of people crammed into too small spaces, breathing foul air, polluted by their insistence on never staying in one place. They learned of the scars cut deep into the countryside, trees and animals destroyed or displaced so roads could be carved out, allowing people to travel ever further from their homes.

On and on the lessons went, reminders of what had gone before, how lucky they were to live away from the mess their ancestors had made.

Every child knew the history of the old world, understood how diseased it was and why The Lethargy had come. They'd done it all wrong, interfered in the natural order of things, put their mark on the land with ever-increasing brutality until one day Mother Nature had enough and said, "No more!" It wasn't the place of the ancients to dictate how the planet should be, and they failed to control their breeding and their spread to every corner of the globe. Chewing up the finite resources of the earth as they went, putting poisons in the soil, even into the sky itself, clouding the sun with noxious gas and always craving more.

It had to stop, and it did. The children were taught that the planet was meant to be left to its own devices, for people to live quietly, grateful to be allowed to co-exist, never dominate.

They learned of The Reckoning, and how things then settled down, yet even now were still not back to anything like normal as so much slowly healed. It was the truth. The children knew they were the lucky ones, blessed to survive and live their lives in a tiny, isolated pocket of humanity where they could no longer do harm. They survived, their numbers grew, and they flourished.

You only had to look at where they were to know this was what the planet wanted for itself. Why else would the currents stop them leaving? Why would they have turned just as The Lethargy came like a broom sweeping away the unwanted detritus that had piled up and made it all go so terribly wrong? The sea itself wanted them to stay put. It grew stronger and eddied around The Island, cutting off the founding Fathers and Mothers, making them watch from a distance as the world went quiet and communication devices gave back nothing but static.

On very special days, an Elder would even come to talk to them, although it wasn't until the children were much older that they fully understood that the adult who looked as young as their teachers was in fact born before The Lethargy even had a name and had lived a very different life. Had a job, drove a car, lived in that world of claustrophobic need and want.

Sometimes Vorce himself came and sat with them and told tales of the life he had once lived, the terrible things he had done when a teenager, the wickedness as he grew older, and the obsession with more and more money, nicer things, bigger cars and more expensive clothes that drove his every waking thought.

He told of his family and the fact that even after all this time he still missed them, but it was for the best, the sacrifice he paid just as everyone did.

Vorce explained how everything grew quiet and peaceful again as whole countries went silent. People stopped driving their cars and the air cleared. They stopped sending food and goods from one side of the planet to the other.

He taught them why such things were done, explained it was so everyone had a job and nobody had time to think about what they really wanted to do with their lives. They never realized that life wasn't about big houses and clothes that cost you a month of your life in a depressing job, but that as The Lethargy turned the world quiet people finally understood life was for enjoying, for doing something with. A miracle.

That might be cleaning the damn Island, growing crops, or looking after children. Or it might be learning information and passing it on to others. It wasn't so much about the work you did as the state of mind you were in, the motivation behind your actions.

Above all, Vorce and the Elders told of the realization they came to as the distant world went silent around them and they found themselves cut off and alone — they realized they were lucky.

Temptation was gone. They would have to adjust their attitudes, think of survival in a more primitive way. Unencumbered by the trappings of a modern society they had come to rely on more than their own ingenuity and sense of what was right, they finally found the time to sit, be still, and think things through for themselves. They broke with what they had been told was the way to live their lives, and searched for something better.

Slowly, they changed. Yes, there were deaths — some couldn't cope with the isolation. And, yes, mistakes were made, many of them, but it all fell into place. Knowledge came to them, and they Awoke, and the true beauty and horror of what it was to be a human being in an infinite Universe was revealed.

The Noise was explored, powers of the mind unraveled in ways humanity had dreamed of but never thought possible, and even that paled into insignificance next to The Void, the place that was no place, the thing that was no thing. The non-matter, the energy that had endless forms and was the basis for everything, where life came from and where it always returned.

Life was nothing. Life was everything. You were born, you died, and the energy that made up a person would become other things, in other parts of the Universe. On and on it would go. Forever, just as it already had, and people could dance and play, scream and laugh, make love and fight, curse and sing for one reason and one reason only: they were incredibly lucky.

That was it, that was what it all came down to. You were lucky. Your life was almost an impossibility, except it wasn't, was it? You were alive, you got to experience such a rare and beautiful occurrence, and you had to be thankful, show you deserved it.

For Talia it took a long time to truly appreciate the truth of what she was told. Lucky, that was it? All the teachings, all the endless hours learning of the past, the history of the world and her home, and it all came down to that? Luck?

She wasn't special, singled out as worthy of being alive? It was just luck?

Yes, and no, was the answer. You were lucky, extremely lucky, but The Void didn't function by luck alone. You were lucky because the essence of you, not the person, but the real essence, the unknowable "thing" that was you at your core when you stripped everything else away, well, it deserved to be born a person. You didn't end up a worm, or a squid drying in the sun, or a bird, fly or maggot, you were a fully formed human being and there weren't many of them left, maybe hardly any.

Yes, there were people alive and struggling on the mainland, but did they know how lucky they were? No, was the answer. But those on The Island, they understood the truth of what it was to be a human being in the world.

It was a struggle for Talia to understand and accept this "luck," until one day her teacher explained it to her when she was old enough to get a grasp on the numbers. More than that, the concept of existence in the first place.

"You know how babies are made, right?" asked her teacher. Talia nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed.

"A woman produces eggs, one hundred thousand in her lifetime. A man produces four trillion of his seed, and each one is different, same for the woman. If it had been a different seed, or a different egg, you wouldn't be you."

"Wow!" The numbers were mind-boggling. What were the odds of her ever being born?

"But that's just the beginning. Parents had to meet—" the teacher held a hand up as Talia was about to interrupt. "Yes, I know, there aren't many people on The Island, but go back to before The Lethargy, what were the chances of their ancestors meeting? And then think about all the generations before, the unlikelihood of them meeting, staying alive, having a child, that child surviving and meeting someone to have a child with, and so on and so on. It goes back to the beginning of time, and you are the product of an unbroken line that began with the very first people and has all led to you being here today."

Talia found it too hard to take in. The numbers became meaningless as her teacher tried to explain further. Instead, she took a different approach.

"Okay, Talia, you know about atoms, right? The tiny things that make up matter, make up everything?"

"Yes, like little blocks that give us people and everything else."

"Exactly. Now, the number of atoms in the entire Universe, in you, me, everyone else on The Island, the atoms that make up the sea, the land, the air, the whole planet and everything else in the whole Universe, all the stars, and all the things we will never know, that go on forever out in the Universe, well, the number of all those atoms, the chances of you being here, being you and everything that happened to bring you to this point, it is so much larger than that number of atoms that I wouldn't know where to start if I had to say the actual number. You are more precious than the entire Universe. You are such an unlikely thing to exist that the odds of you being here are so close to zero that it may as well be. But it isn't, is it Talia? Because you are here."

"So, I'm a miracle then?" asked Talia of her teacher.

"Yes, Talia, you are a miracle of the most magical kind. You are alive. You are lucky."

From that day on Talia believed in luck, and she believed in miracles.

Maybe that was why 111 kept nagging at her consciousness. Could it be a lucky day, a miracle day?

"Hey, watch it," said the gruff fisherman before he realized who he was speaking to and bowed his head. "Sorry, my fault."

"No, Gramwell, it was my fault. My head was in the clouds and I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Yes, Talia. Thank you, Talia." Gramwell hurried away to the surface, keen to get away from Talia and his indiscretion.

She still found it hard to accept that people looked up to her if not physically then mentally, and when she looked in her cloudy mirror in her tiny bathroom she found it doubly hard to accept she was the age she was. She held a certain position now. Even with the whispers about her mother, and the gossip, there was no doubt in anyone's mind she was special. Awoken so young, powerful, going places in the closeted hierarchy of their home.

We're all lucky. I guess some of us are just luckier than others.

Talia stepped off the walkway and shielded her eyes against the glare of the early morning sun. It rose above the sea, promising a hot day and a darkening of her already chestnut skin as she directed work to maintain her home.

Last Inspection tour. Yes!

Bunch of Idiots

There was no doubt about it, this was a test. Talia walked over to her "Team" and tried not to scowl at the chaos they believed was them being organized. Why had she bothered to get up early, and try to get a head start on things, when as soon as she goes off to deal with the never-ending small issues, that always pop up at the last minute, they manage to make a mess of things and she has to organize them all over again?

Talia made a conscious effort to relax and think back to what her teachers told her. To how lucky she was, how lucky they all were. They were young, had a lot to learn, still babes in arms really, although many of them were well into proper adulthood and shouldn't need such close supervision. She let her shoulders drop, emptied her mind of bad thoughts. She was the Leader, had a role, and couldn't wait for the damn thing to be over.