The Elders (14 page)

“The mask and the black outfit are common during the Celebration, as are white and gray robes.”

He walks over to the desk and picks up an object. It’s a blue Zorro-style mask, one that only covers the eyes.

I realize he’s changed out of his plain hippie clothing and into a blue kimono-type outfit.

The truth begins to dawn on me.
“You guys are having a masquerade? In the morning?”

That would explain the two men in masks—three, if I count Gustav.

“We find that the Celebration is a good way for everyone on the Island to start their day, and for us to catch up with friends and family before we start the century without them.”

“But masks?” I point at the frozen Jamie’s head.

“They can spruce up any festivity, don’t you
find?” Gustav says, putting on his own.

“So I guess he didn’t attack me,” I say stupidly, looking at the frozen version of the guy. My heart is still pumping from the adrenaline rush I just experienced.

“No,” Gustav says and gestures for me to follow him. “Now tell me everything.”

One thing is clear: if my attacker is the Super Pusher, Gustav is unlikely to be him. There’s little chance he
changed his clothing
this
quickly. So, as we walk out of the room, I proceed to tell him what happened after I left the fountain get-together. Gustav doesn’t bat an eye at the story of how Victoria tried to seduce me and looks unreadable as I tell him about the fight.

“That is most unfortunate,” he says thoughtfully after I’m done. “But as you now understand, it could’ve been any one of the people
already pulled in for the Celebration.”

“Or more likely, one of the Elders.”

“No, it wasn’t one of us,” Gustav says and starts taking the stairs down. Over his shoulder, he adds, “What would give you such a preposterous idea?”

I debate telling him about the Super Pusher, but decide against it. “I only know a handful of people here and most of them are the Elders.”

“That is true, but the fact
remains that if one of us wished to make you Inert, you would now be Inert.” He navigates the slippery stairs expertly, as only someone who’s done so a million times could.

“You sound very confident.” I place my hand on the rail; unlike him, I could easily trip over the polished marble.

“I do, but believe me, this confidence is not rooted in hubris. It’s merely a pragmatic way of looking at
reality. Whoever attacked you must have been one of the Ambassadors, or someone who already lives on the Island, which includes the staff, our relatives, and many other people.” He reaches the end of the stairs and waits for me.

“But I still think—”

“Darren, why don’t you take my word for it for the moment? You will see the truth shortly, during the Celebration’s Challenge Game. In the meantime,
having me around should prevent any more unfortunate attempts.”

“I guess,” I say, following him down a corridor.

I don’t say more because I’m distracted by masked figures—two men and one woman—walking toward us. My heart skips a beat when I look at the leftmost man. He looks identical to my attacker. I sure hope Gustav will have my back if push comes to shove.

Then I look closer and notice
that some of the details in this dude’s mask are a bit different from that of my attacker’s. For one thing, his mask has small nose holes, whereas my attacker’s mask was missing that detail. Seeing these masked people is reassuring in a way; it’s not that I didn’t believe Gustav, but as Eugene likes to say, “Trust, but verify.” On second thought, it’s also pretty frightening. This masked event will
allow my attacker to walk around like nothing happened. He might even try to go at me again if the opportunity presents itself, and there isn’t much I can do about it.

“That settles it,” Gustav says as we reach the end of the corridor. He opens the door, allowing me to go in first. “In this room, you should find a suitable mask for yourself.”

The room we enter is every hardcore Halloweener’s
wet dream. There are historical costumes, military uniforms, medical scrubs, and everything in-between.

He points to a rack of robes. “Those are for the Celebration.”

Rows upon rows of kimonos of all different colors, styles, and sizes are lined up against the wall. Each robe comes with a mask. The masks, for all their simplicity, differ in subtle ways. Black, white, and gray ones dominate over
other colors, like Gustav mentioned, but the whole spectrum of the rainbow is represented.

I settle on a green getup, just to be different.

“Great choice,” Gustav says, admiring my new garb. “Let’s go.”

He exits the room, and I follow him, ignoring the chafing of my over-starched kimono. We walk through the Castle, and I can’t help complimenting the intricate wall rugs that look like avant-garde
paintings. Gustav seems pleased by my reaction, so I decide to ambush him while his guard is down.
 

“Can you tell me about Nirvana?” I ask as we round the corner.

He stops dead in his tracks, his eyes like ambers behind his mask. He recovers swiftly, however, and says, “This is something we should discuss when the others are around, though I’d love to know how you came across that term.”

Since
he doesn’t give me an answer, I decide to be vindictive and, in my best imitation of his voice, say, “It sounds like something we’ll discuss with the others. I’m a big fan of quid pro quo, you see.”

He doesn’t say anything back, but I catch him rolling his eyes in annoyance. Good. We walk in an uncomfortable silence for a couple of minutes.

“Is the Celebration taking place outside the Castle?”
I ask, noticing that we’re walking toward the intricately designed entrance doors.

“It takes place all over, but most of the merriment is happening at the fair.”

As we walk farther, he tells me more about this tradition. As he alluded to earlier, this gathering is a way to motivate the Island residents to go about their day. It’s also a nice start to the century, which the Elders plan to spend
by themselves. I strongly suspect the latter is more of a reason than the former. During the Celebration, the Island’s citizens are told the highlights of what the Elders achieved during the prior day’s Session—what he calls the hundred or so years spent in the Quiet. Apparently, the Elders don’t really talk to anyone after they do this Session. They have this whole set of rules of how they live
outside the Quiet, some of which George hinted at. One of the biggest rules, it seems, is to not stress their physical bodies with unpleasant conversations. This rule, he assured me, is to make sure their bodies age as slowly as possible.

“Seems antisocial,” I comment as Gustav and I walk into town.

“But don’t you see how wasteful it would be to expend our mental resources outside the Mind Dimension?”
Gustav retorts. “It’s far more rational to conserve our body’s energy and conduct our business when real-world time is at a standstill.”

“But don’t you end up with the most boring lives imaginable while outside the Mind Dimension?”

“Simple lives, yes, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call them boring. Even if those lives are perhaps uneventful, we more than make up for it when we Split the next
day.”

He proceeds to describe what their day outside the Quiet is actually like. It all revolves around a bunch of research they’ve been doing on the subject of longevity. He explains that when the Elders maximize their lifespans, they don’t just add a year here or a few days there as normal people do. It’s multitudes of centuries and millenniums of time in the Quiet that they gain. So they try
to mingle with close friends and family, with no stressful topics allowed, in order to satisfy their basic needs for human companionship. For nourishment (his term), they eat mostly unprocessed, plant-based foods, emphasizing greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, and berries, with the very occasional wild fish mixed in. They do numerous relaxation techniques, drink a glass of red wine, work out in
a special gym, nurture physical relationships with their loved ones (Gustav speak for daily hookups), walk barefoot through nature during most of the day, and make sure to get adequate amounts of sleep.

“So, in other words, when you’re not doing your Sessions, you’re living in a health nut’s paradise,” I conclude, casting a suspicious glance at one of my attacker’s lookalikes as we pass him by.

Gustav laughs. “You sound just like Victoria. She resents that lifestyle. If we didn’t enforce it for all the Elders, she’d probably smoke, curse, and—”

“Why did she join you then?” I ask. “She strikes me as someone who likes her freedom.”

“Because she enjoys her Sessions. We all do.”

“Arts and crafts for a hundred years? Sign me up.”

“That’s just one aspect of it,” Gustav says. “We do the
things that make human beings unique. We do them all, and we take great pleasure in them. Victoria is very much one of us in that.”

I nod absentmindedly as I look around.

The houses in this town are more decorated than a suburban neighborhood at Christmas, only the actual motif of this celebration is more reminiscent of Thanksgiving, what with the harvest-oriented decorations. A dirigible so
big and colorful it would give the floats of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a run for their money drifts across the sky.

“I heard you pass judgment when it comes to certain Guide-on-Guide crimes,” I say when I’ve heard enough about their lifestyle. “Does that happen during the Celebration?”

“Not exactly,” Gustav says. “It’s something we only discuss with the Ambassadors. They give us new cases
to review during the Session, and when it’s done, we hand over our decisions on the prior day’s cases.”

“Are they all murder cases?” I ask, recalling how Thomas and Liz mentioned something along those lines.

“They concern a variety of complex issues, things that require wisdom to judge.”

It’s clear he’s not comfortable discussing this, and I don’t push the issue, since it’s not really that
important to me.

Throughout our conversation, I noticed more and more masked, cheerful people pulling their friends into the Quiet. My mental tally of near-duplicates of my attacker has reached double digits.

“Can we stop to listen?” I ask as we near a group of masked musicians, one of whom also looks like my attacker. The music they’re performing is incredible.

“Sure,” Gustav says, lowering
his voice.

“What’s that song they’re playing?” I ask in a reverent whisper after a couple of minutes. “I think it’s the most hauntingly beautiful melody I’ve ever heard.”

“Thank you,” he whispers back. “I wrote that score myself.”

When the song is over, we resume walking, and I wonder whether I’ll become desensitized to all this breathtaking art surrounding the Island. I’ve been meaning to
take Mira out to do something ‘normal,’ and after this, that something might not be a museum, at least not for a while.

We approach a heavily decorated square, and I suspect that my attacker-lookalike count will soon reach triple digits. I surreptitiously move closer to Gustav.

This square seems to be the epicenter of the Celebration. Crowds of people surround stalls filled with games and displays.

Gustav stops in the middle of the square. “I see that the rest of my peers are here already. That means the meeting will be on time.”

I look around. He’s right. Though masked, the Elders are easy to spot, and though Gustav didn’t explicitly say so, it appears the Elders don’t prefer the boring black, gray, and white colors. Instead, I see a whole spectrum of colors, from Victoria in pink to Alfred
in orangutan orange.

On the left side of the Square is a big black-and-white table. Gustav walks toward it, and as we approach, I see the twin Elders, Frederick and Louis, sitting opposite each other. Despite their masks, they’re easily recognizable. They’re each dressed in purple, with masks that are just strips covering their eyes, like Gustav’s. Their table has one of those checkerboard patterns
on it, similar to tables in New York City parks. Fittingly, they’re playing speed chess on it. Given the number of spectators, their game must be an interesting one. It’s impossible to tell which brother is Fred and which is Lou (as I’ve decided to nickname him).

“Transformative technologies are a double-edged sword,” one of them says after making his move. “Nanotech could lead to the deadly
Gray Goo scenario, with nano-replicators gobbling up the whole world. Robotics and AI could lead to our extinction by a different route, with our own intelligent creations getting rid of us.”

“Every technology has risks and rewards, brother,” says the other, countering a move, then hitting the clock. “The rewards have prevailed thus far. Nanotech can cure cancer and feed the world. AI can—”

“Check,” the first brother says instead of arguing, and moves his bishop to B6 at the same time.

The brothers continue the game. Their banter seems meant more for the crowd than for their own amusement.

“They once played chess for two days,” Gustav whispers into my ear with something resembling pride. “Two Sessions that is.”

“No way,” I whisper back. “Two centuries of chess?”

“Indeed,” he whispers
back. “They didn’t just play it; they also read thousands of books the Unencumbered wrote about the game. By the end of the second Session, they’d written their own books filled with new, revolutionary plays and unbeatable strategies. Of course, as you can imagine, it’s impossible for anyone to beat them. Unless one of the other Elders decides to also dedicate some time to chess, they have
to play each other. The world’s best grandmasters and computers are no match.”

“Checkmate,” the crowd around us murmurs.

“Looks like Frederick will be our sacrificial lamb tonight,” the grinning brother says, finally allowing me to recognize him as Lou. “Gustav, what say you?”

The old man nods gravely and walks to the middle of the square.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Gustav says in a sports-announcer
voice. “Today’s challenger will face Frederick.”

People clear the middle of the square and go quiet. Everyone’s eyes are shining with fascination, but no one seems to want to volunteer for whatever it is Gustav is talking about.