Elysium (30 page)

They went to a room of glowing buttons and turned on the light. Steven sat at the console. The screens above showed images of every aspect of life of the world inside the city. Lessons from so long ago had taught her about the system — a privilege because of her ancestry. She and her brother were descended from the man who had designed all of this.

“Remember this place, ’Twone.”

“Yeah, Adrianne, I remember,” he said and sat in an office chair and swung around and around and laughed and laughed. That was indeed what they used to do when they came here all those years ago.

“The projection system has been altered in recent years, probably by the krestge. The system projects a world that people cannot escape,” Steven said. “All the exits and vents have been blocked, covered from above. And there is no air flowing through to the underground.”

“So what are we breathing?”

“An increasingly toxic mixture of gases made mostly of carbon dioxide.”

“So we’ve been buried alive,” Adrianne said in a voice just above a whisper.

“I’ve been trying to reprogram the system, but it’s locked,” Steven said. “As people die, they are either replaced by projections or the livable area is shrunk down to accommodate the reduced population. You, me, and Antoine are some of the last ones left.”

Steven flipped a few switches, and the images on the screens changed. First the people disappeared, then the town dissolved away, then the sky. There was some movement, but mostly all was gray blackness in a cavern and a ruined underground, flooded with water in places. It was a home for the dead, a tomb.

** BREAK **

>>

>>

>> opendialog SECTOR: 10110001

: Did this really happen?

“What?”

: Are you imagining all of this?

“You tell me.”

: I don’t believe you.

“Don’t you believe your own eyes?”

: This is difficult to accept.

“Who the hell are you anyway? And how are you in my head?”

: end;

>>

>> continue

BRIDGE PROCESS: CONTINUED

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.
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Steven pressed more buttons and typed at the console for a long time. Adrianne didn’t want to disturb him in his work. Antoine continued to swing from side to side with his head bowed in the chair. She went to him and stopped him from moving.

“’Twone, I have to tell you something, and it’s going to be hard to understand. But I need you to listen.”

“What, Adrianne?” He looked worried.

“Baby,” she touched his hand and said, “how do I say this? … Nothing in the city is real.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything and everybody. Nothing is real.”

“Even Helen?”

“Even Helen.”

Antoine laughed. Adrianne scrunched her face. She felt helpless. The snaking scar on his brow wiggled when he laughed, an ever-present reminder that her brother’s mind was gone.

“There,” Steven said. “It’s done.”

“What’s done?” Adrianne asked.

He removed a memory card from the system and held it up for her to see. “This is the update to the Elysium system. Do you know what that is?”

“It’s the archive of our people maintained in the sky in the aboveground,” she replied. He placed the card into a small tube-like device and wrapped it well in plastic. Then he put it into a small duffle bag and handed it to her.

“You have to update the system.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“It’s not hard. Once you reach above, you place the projectile firmly on the ground facing the open sky, press the launch button, and back away. It will do the rest.”

“Shouldn’t you be the one to do this? You know more about it than me.”

“I have to stay here in the control center. There is only one way out of the city, and that’s through the water tunnels. Someone has to power down the pumping system and open the flow-ways to help you get out. It can only be controlled from here.”

“But how will they get out?” She was looking at the few movements in the grayness. Adrianne felt her throat tighten. “How will you get out?”

Steven pushed back his glasses and looked away.

“There has to be another way,” Adrianne said. “We can’t just leave you —”

“You have to. If you don’t update the system, no one will ever know what happened here.”

“You and Antoine have to go,” Steven said. He put something that looked like chewed gum in her hand. “Wear this in your ear. I’ll direct you through the tunnels as best I can with this. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”

Adrianne caressed Steven’s face and kissed him on the forehead.

“Come on, Antoine. We need to go now.”

“Where we going, Adrianne?” Antoine said.

“Above,” she said. “To Elysium.”

Antoine laughed.

Adrianne and Antoine walked hand in hand through the back rooms, passing bones and the decay of the ruin of their forgotten world. Adrianne thought of those who still lived in the projected town outside. Being deprived of air, they must believe themselves sickly while surrounded by fresh, healthy projections and a blue uninterrupted sky.

Steven’s voice sounded in her ear, telling her where the entrance to the water tunnel stood. The opening was wide enough so that they could walk through. Antoine had to duck a little. The further they walked into the tunnel, the more flooded it became. They walked until the water came up to their waists. Steven said not to worry. He was letting the water in slowly to empty the cistern enough so that they could reach it. They would have to swim through to the other side, to where the river would be, then swim up to the top.

They followed the path of the tunnel until it reached its grated hole. The grate was easy to remove. They did it together and walked on for what felt like hours until they reached the end. Before them was a concrete basin with overflowing water.

The voice in her ear crackled and was full of static. The few words that she could make out were: “You … have … to … swim.”

“Antoine, we have to jump in.”

There was fear in his eyes. She reached up to touch his face and caressed the scar on his forehead, the injury that took away her brother and replaced him with this beautiful man-child. Her heart actually ached to look upon him. He stooped over her, his bulbous eyes watering with fear.

“We’ll be okay,” she said.

He smiled and climbed into the cistern, and she followed. They both began to swim.

The water was deep and the current swift. She felt the arms of Antoine around her, bracing her up. He was pulling her along, keeping her afloat. They moved against the flow. Above them was water and more water. She held onto him and tried to not let him go. Together they swam, hand in hand. More water. Greenish-blackness all around. Slipping. His hand, his hand, where was his hand? She floundered and searched. The instinct for air forced her upward. Up and up and up, until her head emerged into the night sky. She took in a deep breath and splashed on the surface of the water. She looked all around in the dark. She couldn’t see Antoine. She couldn’t feel him.

“Antoine! Antoine!”

She coughed out water. There was no answer.

She swam until she felt the dirt and rocks and pulled herself to shore. The smell of fresh air filled her lungs, and she coughed.

“Antoine! Antoine!”

Still no answer.

Adrianne prepared the device for updating the atmospheric database. She dragged herself to the shore, still calling for her brother. She removed a small rocket from her bag, set it upright on the ground, ignited its engines, and backed away. The small rocket
whooshed
into the air, higher and higher, until it disappeared from sight. The rocket burst into flame above, flowering overhead into a multitude of directions, momentarily lighting the entire sky like a giant spider’s web set ablaze.

A shift in the wind. A distant heartbeat. The sound of crashing trash cans. Something was out there.

“Antoine?”

It wasn’t him. It was something else. Many things. They were coming.

Adrianne ran. She ran until her lungs burned. And all the while she kept calling his name.

“Antoine! Antoine!”

Adrianne was running and calling and running and calling. She ran so fast nothing could catch her. She ran and soared up into the air far toward the horizon. She was the wind. She took flight. She passed through a haze of green, and the land of darkness gave way to trees and a blue sky.

This was Elysium. This was Earth. This was home.

21.

Floating high above a place long healed from the dust and the mist. Dipping and swooping through the valleys of a land very much like paradise. Alighting on the branch of a tree to look down upon the inhabitants below. Watching, seeing, learning. A cool wind carried the overwhelming scent of pine. And there was silence, except for the occasional chirp or squawk from a bird and the flutter flutter of wings as an owl rustled the leaves. A group of rabbits huddled in the bushes, some of them digging their way into a new home.

A herd of elk passed. One stopped to chew on a leaf. Its antlers rose high upon its elegant head, spreading upwards like giant fingers into a crown. It spied Adrianne sitting against the trunk of a tree. It looked at her. The others continued on their path, uninterested. And soon the last elk, too, left to follow its herd.

Adrianne breathed deeply, feeling an ache in her lungs. She coughed and wiped her lips with her hand. Blood appeared on her fingers. She wiped them on the tree behind her, feeling its rough bark. The blood came off and disappeared into nothing.

A rustle in the trees. Adrianne tried to move, but her legs wouldn’t respond. The lower half of her body felt numb, as if it didn’t belong to her. She was helpless. Closing her eyes, she coughed again and waited.

The clock in her mind calculated minutes. It felt like hours. She could see something moving toward her. Its slow, light crunch over the twigs and dead leaves sounded as if it had the weight of a child. The bulky, weightless four-dimensional creature was much larger than that.

It stopped five or six feet away from her. Adrianne couldn’t see its eyes. The krestge had no eyes. But she could feel it looking at her. Its planar shifts made it more shadow than form. It breathed deeply. Adrianne was too weak to stand. Too tired. Too worn out. With her head bent, she waited for it to do whatever it was going to do. There was a long moment of silence. She faced it when it stood over her. To her surprise, the presence of the thing elicited not fear, but curiosity.

“Who are you?” she said.

A hawk cried from above, almost in answer.

“My~~name is~~~Tkeclc Zinn.”

Its voice rippled in the air like an echoing distant vibration.

“I was born~~on this world and raised~~in a small vill-age not~~far from this meadow. I am a~~research-er and I’ve been~~~look-ing into the history~~of the found-ing of~~our col-on-ies here.~~”

So they live here now
, Adrianne thought. It was what she had long suspected was their ultimate goal.

It continued, “I dis-covered~~your program run-ning~~~in the at-mos-phere … I was~~ surprised to find~~such a thing.”

“It wasn’t meant for the likes of you.”

“I~~un-der-stand~~your anger.”

It moved, and the air around it shimmered in a strange way, a shadow dancing on light. It had more than length and height and depth, it seemed to reach around itself, moving in and out of step with itself. Adrianne perceived that she was seeing it on all sides. It held something familiar in what Adrianne supposed were its hands. It was her portable console. Zinn laid it down on the ground next to her.

“I tried~~to fix this~~,” Zinn said.

It was rusted through, beyond repair.

“This can’t be fixed.”

“So~~it would seem.”

Adrianne rubbed a stray eyelash out of her eye and brushed it away.

“~~Would you~~like to stand?”

Adrianne thought for a moment then said, “I can’t. I’m broken.”

“I may~~have dam-aged some of~~your data files~~~with my bridge pro-gram.~~For this, I apo-lo-gize.~~~~May-be I can help. I still have~~some mea-sure~~of control to con-nect~~~into your systems.”

She felt a sudden jolt and the numbness in her legs released.

“There,” it said.

“Yes,” Adrianne said and located the access point from which the alien had gained entry and closed it.

“~~Please, come.~~I want to show~~~you something.”

Adrianne braced herself against the tree. Her hand touched the surface of the tree, and yet not. The air filled her lungs, and yet not. The sun warmed her face, the heat was there, and yet not.