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Chapter Five

Dreams followed.

When Delen awoke, thin wisps of memory fluttered surreptitiously around his skull. Commons, lit blue, its tables stacked one atop the other, higher than the ceiling – higher than he could see – but still within the room. Ezequiel, sitting atop that tower, his mouth stretched in a grin of triumph, teeth and fingertips stained red. His eyes glittered. Lips trembled. Staring. Field, cast beyond the horizon. Row after tilled row filled with any type and number of produce, all dead. Only darkness above. People wandering the rows, plunging their hands, then faces, into molding compost. Water flowing from showers, out and through the doors of their quarters and halls. Rising. Drowning. A single light in Rec, its beam – impossibly brilliant – focused on a discarded panel. Moving closer, vision a smooth, unbroken line. Nantale, her hand already buried between her legs, rising and falling with obscene rapidity, staring out of the screen. There is cheering. Another hand, not hers, guides her from view. AEGIS takes her place, wires running through creases in her central Hub post. She moans, her voice stitched together from hundreds, millions of dead. His father standing before a panel in Education, guiding him step by step through another sex talk, cycling through image after image of Ezequiel and Nantale in the act. Pointing, chuckling, doting on the way the boy so easily brings her to climax. Gavriil is gone, but the pictures remain. There are countless.

Pain rebounded through his skull. His clothes were damp with sweat. A mixture of drool and tears clung to his cheek. His eyes throbbed. He squinted against the light of Pyre, trying to reorient himself to the waking world. The dreams came back to him then, and the tears – Ancestors, how did he have any left? – followed. The images were fickle and began to fade shortly after, but something inside him begged them to stay and distract him. Maybe he could even lose himself in them entirely if he tried hard enough. Horrible as they were, they were only abstracts. Just ideas. Fake. There was solace in that.

But that way led to nothing. If anyone knew that, it was Delen. Five, maybe six years ago, he had spent a little over a month trying to fully lose himself in his dreams. He had come into a stretch where his nightly musings, after probably a year of AEGIS feeding him fantasy stories daily, would always involve some kind of personal heroism. Every night he had been something of a paragon. The feeling was pure intoxication. Beat the bad guy. Save the world. Get the girl. Formulaic, sure, but he woke every morning with a raging erection and pumped so full of adrenaline he wanted run to Field and till the whole thing before breakfast. Instead, he would just take care of it in the shower and go drown himself in more of the system’s tales.

So, he slept, spending less time in Commons or Rec with Ezequiel and Nantale and more in quarters. Gavriil allowed it for a time, until his son’s slumber wormed its way into when he should have been on watch in Hub. Then the hammer fell. Delen did what he could not to reflect on that day. After that, Gavriil took it upon himself to wake Delen if he overslept, not giving any effort at all to hide his disgust for his son’s state of being. Those dreams faded not long after.

Ironic, really.

The misery abated, if only a bit. Pyre came more into focus as it did. He rolled off the ground, wiping the slick patch from the side of his face with a sleeve. Part of him expected AEGIS to talk to him. To make some effort to console him, psychoanalyze him, or at least tell him to man the fuck up, but there was nothing. Nothing but the dull hum of piping beneath him, whisking away Sabina’s ashes.

He stood. His legs were solid, which came as something of a surprise. The door was close, maybe a dozen feet away. He stared through it, wondering. What was out there? Celebration. A people joyous with anticipation for new life. New life that would, how did Sabina put it, improve their position for generations to come. Not what he would have produced, certainly. The Council knew that much.

Delen looked over his shoulder. The incinerator was open. He knew how to activate it, and for a moment – maybe two, maybe more – his eyes glazed over as he prodded that mental barrier. He could do it. No one was here to stop him. Just step over the boundary, and with a few swipes of one finger put an end to all of it. At least as far as he was concerned.

He blinked, and the image broke. Yes, he certainly could end his story there, but that was not the way. He had come from the same stock as the rest of them, from the same Ancestors he venerated. If nothing else, he deserved answers.

Delen swiped a hand through his hair, cleared his throat, rubbed his eyes, and ran that same damp-feeling patch of skin across his shirt, then made for the door.

Celebration pageantry greeted him. Music, rhythmic and upbeat, pulsed through Aldridge’s arteries. Light, normally a yellow white, replaced briefly with that murky orange of Burning, shifted between an array of blues, purples, and teals in tandem with the beat.

All of it only served to worsen his headache. Delen pressed the index finger and thumb of one hand onto both of his temples and kept walking. He only made it a few steps.

“Delen.”

He turned around. Two pairs of legs stood out from the left wall, vanishing behind his hand. He must have walked right past them, oblivious. If only they had kept their mouths shut.

He dropped his hand. The pain returned, albeit in a more subtle pulse. His eyes shifted between them. To their credit, he supposed, they did not look away. “What?”

The question seemed to catch them by surprise, as though they never expected him to stop. Nantale glanced at Ezequiel, her face a mesh of worried lines and angles. Ezequiel mirrored her expression but recovered from it more quickly. Or at least hid it better. He took a step forward, pulling Delen’s attention from the girl. Protective. Smooth. Just what a man should do when confronting an angered bull.

“Listen,” his voice threatened to hide amidst the music. So Delen did. He waited, and listened, while the kid who had once called himself his friend mulled over a speech. Delen remained a statue, eyes locked. Finally, Ezequiel shrugged.

He sighed and raised his hands to the side. “We didn’t know.”

Delen kept staring. Waiting. There had to be something else, right? Something more profound to have made them saunter away from their own, personal Celebration to hunt him down and remind him of the fact that it was no longer his day. No longer his life. But, no, that sure seemed to be it. He scoffed and turned back toward wherever it was he was headed before.

“No, Delen, please wait.”

Nantale, that time. She stepped out in front of Ezequiel, cutting the distance between them in half. He watched her make the move out of the corner of his eye as he turned. Watched Ezequiel reach out and put a couple of fingers on her wrist, stopping her from going any farther. He nearly lost it right there. Anger, hot as Pyre, flashed up his spine. It vanished just as quickly. Nothing much left as fuel.

“Why?” He mimicked Ezequiel’s shrug. “Don’t you two have somewhere to be? I’m sure Gavriil and Akello are already toasting a grand day in your honor. Wouldn’t want you to miss it. For the good of Aldridge, and all that.”

Ancestors, there was so much sadness in her eyes. How much pity she must have felt for him. “It isn’t like that.”

“There’s a lot of confusion right now,” Ezequiel chimed in. “Everyone has questions, and they aren’t giving answers. Not yet, at least. I doubt anyone noticed we’re gone.”

“Please. They noticed. You got the blessing to bring life, remember? Everyone thinks you slunk off for a nice fuck.”

Nantale pulled a face. Ezequiel took another step forward. “Come on, that’s not fair.”

Fair? Was he joking? Delen laughed. “By all means, don’t let me slow you down. You’ve been after her for so long I’m surprised you kept your pants on until now. Try not to embarrass yourself in there.”

How quickly that façade of concern fell away. “Look, you f-”

“Ez, that will not help.” Nantale turned back toward him. Her husband.

“And you,” Delen set himself toward her. “That was quite the show in Pyre. You got me. I guess I’m easy to get though, aren’t I? I have it worse than him and you knew it. Just pulled me along on that string. What was that kiss to you? Curiosity? Pity? Or did you really just want to build me up to get a better laugh with him later?”

“You know me better than that.”

“I don’t know anything. I never have, and that’s why I’m here and he’s there. I don’t know shit, and they fucking led me on for years and let me think it was all going to be ok. You did. All of you. But Gavriil was right this whole time.”

“Delen.”

“Enough. Stop. I’m done with this. I don’t know what you thought you were doing coming here but get off it. Go break in your new quarters, get your laughs out, whatever. Just go away.”

She bit the inside of her bottom lip, blinked, and nodded. “If that is what you desire. Before we go, you should know the Council wishes to see you in Education.”

Ah, so that was why they came to find him in the first place. Not to offer condolences or whatever passed for their attempted excuse. To deliver a message. It made sense. Why would they bother, otherwise? They both got what they wanted, they had no other use for him. He stole one last look at the two of them, then turned and left before the anger could fully take hold. One of them took a step forward, but he did not let it deter him. Unsurprisingly, the one step was all they took.

At least they had given him a place to direct his meandering. No one else came between him and Education.

All five members of the Council were present, filling the room to twice its usual capacity. No one said anything when he entered, so he went to take his usual seat. The table to his left, where Nantale had been every day for years, was empty. The Council sat at the back wall, Akello on Sabina’s former seat while the rest – Klavdia, Erin, Herig, and Gavriil – each occupied a chair they had pulled in from Rec or Commons. Delen looked between them. The women each had the same posture, backs straight, legs crossed, a hand perched under the chin, faces just slightly dour but mostly passive. Herig, Sabina’s oldest son, sat forward in the chair, his legs jutting far from the edge, both elbows on his knees and hands under his jaw, a bit of a vacant look on his face. First time on the job, Delen mused. Gavriil, as usual, sat back in the seat, arms crossed, left leg bouncing rhythmically, his face little more than a chiseled visage.

Delen had never hated a people more.

Akello watched Delen. Watched as he entered and as he sat. Watched from his perch on the former Elder’s chair, head resting gently on his right palm. Once Delen had finished his scan of them, Akello cleared his throat.

“None of us wished to be here.” Delen snuffed out the jaded smirk that followed the Elder’s opener. “You believe otherwise. Only natural. If I were you, well… no, I don’t suppose I know what I would do. Blame. Recriminate. Strike out. Retreat. Anything would be understood. Before we begin in earnest, I want you to know how deeply I appreciate you coming to us as requested. A mark in your favor.”

Taking marks now, were they? Delen’s lips narrow to lines. His fingers curled into fists. He said nothing.

“The slight you feel was in no way intended to be personal. No individual member of the Council can be singled out for blame – the decision was a consensus. There had been concerns for some time, and the revelations provided during your exam were enough to tip our hand. You understand, yes?”

During the exam. Delen’s eyes flicked up to the opalescent black strip that filled the space where the room’s walls met the ceiling. AEGIS. She had shown them the footage as well. The entire Council had watched him spy on his peers. On them. Watched him get off to their private moments. Spy on their secrets.

Later, he might have understood. At that moment, he couldn’t give less of a shit. “Does it matter?”

“Mind yourself, boy,” Gavriil growled.

Akello raised a hand toward the other Councilman. “In the time the Gate was closed, once the first Ancestors deemed it necessary to govern the advancement of their peoples in Aldridge, they instituted the exam for just this purpose. Our Ancestors were subjected to the same scrutiny a month or more prior to their joining. As generations continued and life became more regimented, the exam became something of a foregone conclusion and steadily drew closer to the day of Celebration itself, until we arrived where we are today. Each of us has gone through it; our hidden desires cast out before us and before our elders. Yours, however, proved something more challenging.”

As Akello finished, Gavriil came to his feet. “You exploited the voice of the Ancestors, our very link with our creators and the being which allows us to exist, to afford yourself a cheap thrill. You took advantage of your neighbor’s obliviousness to AEGIS’ might in order to pry into their secret lives. You ignored the importance of your station, shirking responsibilities and foregoing review of AEGIS’ diagnoses. Worst of all, each of these things was done as nothing more than a means to distract yourself. There was no malice in them, only a rank incompetence which revealed you were not to be trusted with our most important role, the fostering of a new generation. These are the charges laid against you.”

Delen felt tears coming and let them. He wanted to defend himself, to say that they had it all wrong, but what was the point? He knew as well as they did that everything Gavriil had proclaimed was the truth.

“Thus, it was the judgment of this Council to strip your place in succession and let you prove yourself. Some of us,” Gavriil glanced toward the elder, “saw fit to allow you time to process the judgment. Your duties in Hub remain during this time, but you will not be required to report to Education again for three days. When you do, you will be joining Vanesa. See to it that you direct your efforts this time around. In two years, when the time of the next Celebration draws near, there will be an even greater level of scrutiny and our judgment will not be so lax.”

They were going to kill him. Delen looked up at his father and saw nothing beyond a concrete mixture of conviction and disdain. Frustration and hopelessness boiled to the surface. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Do you understand your position?” Akello’s voice.

He wanted to speak his reply but knew his voice would not allow it. He nodded.

“Very well. As we are each in agreement, I see no need to talk on this further until it is my time to step into Pyre and return my ashes to the people and place that spawned them. Let us not dally, there is still a Celebration at hand. Delen, you may choose to do as you see fit at this time. You are not expected to participate, though you may if you desire.”

Chairs slid, feet shuffled. In a moment they were gone, and he was left alone in a room of ghosts. He waited a moment longer before opening his eyes. Out of habit, they were already trained on the chair. He could almost see her there, still. The ghost of a life that was. He thought back on the past few weeks, wondering how long Sabina had considered passing over him. The exam was certainly not the first mark against him. All it had shown was the spying. Ignoring his duties was something the Council, by way of Gavriil, must have known for some time. It certainly explained why his father had taken to covering longer times in his shift.

A ghost to his left, one of a life that was to be. One that he was supposed to replace with a little girl. Delen turned away from the empty table. Vanesa. He could count on two hands the number of times he had interacted with the girl in the past six months. Never a need to, really. She was Ezequiel’s partner, bound to him, and too young to be a part of their group. How she had idolized Ez. She was probably as broken up about what took place as Delen. The thought brought on a laugh. There was no joy in it.

He spent an hour in Education, thinking. Perhaps thinking was the wrong word – persuading. Had he been slighted? Absolutely. Was he furious? Of course. Had he deserved it? Well, that was the thing…

Yes. Yes, he had deserved what happened. Their accusations were all true. He had abused his relationship with AEGIS. He had abused his relationship with Aldridge. He had abused his station and responsibilities. Beyond that, he had never shown them any good reason to bless the joining. When had he been anything but worthless to Nantale? When had he shown her any grace or affection? As a boy, apparently, and the day of the Celebration. Ezequiel showered her with love daily. If anyone deserved her, it was Ez.

White hot anger flickered across his brain at the thought, but he snuffed it out. There was no point in being angry. He was right. They were right. Delen needed to prove himself to the Council and, most importantly, to the Ancestors. He needed to become more like them. Make them proud of their offspring and the world they built. Devotion, that was the key. Everything was just as it needed to be.

Delen went to the floor. He did not know the time, nor did he want to ask AEGIS and be forced to hear her voice, but he expeted he had missed a prayer calling somewhere along the way. If not, an extra one couldn’t hurt. He pushed through the required prayers and added a few of his own, then took a breath and looked to the door.

He left, his pace just under a run, his mind made up. A Celebration was taking place, as had been dictated by those same Ancestors centuries before. His first show of solidarity with their plan, of devotion, could be nothing less than conforming with their dictates. Such a display was the right thing to do. It had to be.

Scurrying through the halls, he repeated the phrase to himself. The right thing to do. Another step. The right thing to do. Again. Again. No room for other thoughts. Flood them out. He had his mission, his obligation, and to allow anything else was to fall back into the old ways. Best to keep going. To shove out everything and anything else.

The right thing to do.

Until he made the last turn and saw the door to Commons, Delen honestly believed he could go through with it. That he would waltz right through that boundary and into the festive, exuberant glorification taking place beyond. Hey Nantale, great to see you, sorry about earlier, you look amazing, best of luck. Really hope he gives it to you good. Ez, man, you finally got the payoff you wanted. Get in there, hot and heavy, and don’t spare the details. Super happy for everyone, high fives all around.

Alright, maybe that was overkill, but he could still show his face. Put on the mask, make an appearance, and give everything he had to keep that mask on until he left. Ten minutes, max. Only ten. Doable, certainly.

As he watched the door, oscillating through bouts of doubt and conviction, it opened. A little girl exited. Even as she walked – stumbled, more so – Delen could see her trembling. Tears flowed down her cheeks, dripping in thick droplets onto her shirt and the floor. Her dark hair was a disheveled mess. She lurched into the wall and slid to her knees, the sound of her cries reaching his ears. Between a pair of deep, thick sobs, her eyes lifted to find him there. Delen watched as her face sunk even farther, as it broke with the kind of pain that no one in Aldridge should ever have needed to endure. He recognized it.

Vanesa Onaedo looked up at him, some twenty feet away, with a look of such vulgar contempt he was forced to turn his eyes away. She ran from him.

Maybe they had more in common than he realized.

Delen lifted his eyes toward Commons one last time, hoping to drag that feeling of necessity up from the depths that little girl had thrown it. He needed to be in there, to show himself. The Dieyes would be bringing Sabina’s ashes to the congregation soon, if not already. If he turned away, he would miss that part of the ritual and, in part, no longer be a whole member of Aldridge. A part of their ancestry would be missing from him. A break in the chain. Not fully, no – her ash would be cast into the ducts and inhaled over time – but diminished.

Akello had told him it was fine, though. Delen wanted to believe the elder would not lie to him, not again, not so quickly, but there was always the chance it was another test.

Still, he watched the door. Still, he hunted for that absent urgency. It was gone, replaced by that gnawing, endless despair. He turned and walked away.

There were only three places in Aldridge Delen felt fully at peace. Places where he could allow himself to be what he was, to fall into himself, and reflect. Quarters, naturally, was the first. Any other day, he would have found himself trekking that direction, ready to cast himself on his bed and let whatever needed to bleed out of him come. Not today. Not the day which would have brought Nantale into those quarters. Without her, quarters stood a monument to his failure.

Hub was another, but every part of it marked opposition to him. Where he would once have gone there to distract himself, to dive into some belief or story or escapism from the Ancestors, that relief was no longer possible. The Council had made that abundantly clear. And to abide in AEGIS, whom he once thought his protector; well, there would be a time to speak with her again. Later. He wanted nothing to do with her as he walked the halls toward his destination.

The Gate.

Like Pyre, the Gate was a monument to death. That was where the similarities ended. Pyre offered rebirth through ash. It afforded the chance of new life, of renewed generations. Its room was made for community and convergence, for ritual and admiration. It was watched after. Cared for. Feared, yet adored.

The Gate was a just a door. Larger than most, yes, but no bigger than Field’s. It bore no special markings. No expansive room spoke of its importance. There was, in fact, no room at all. It simply ended the branched hall between Field and Commons, which extended a few dozen feet further than both. A single, unremarkable panel set into the wall to its right.

Beyond that simple, unassuming door was death. Full death. Death without the chance of rebirth, without the reconstitution into Aldridge and continued growth into generations. The death which had swept down and over the world of his Ancestors, scouring them from the surface. The Great Death.

Delen had always felt at peace near the Gate. There was a finality to it which was so opposed to the cycle represented in Pyre it fostered an entirely different approach. Rarely did anyone come to the Gate. Twice, if memory served him. Every other time he had come, he had arrived alone and remained that way. Not even AEGIS made her presence known there, in the terminus of Aldridge.

He drew up close to the door, letting his eyes wander across its structure. Remarkable in its normalcy. He knelt, then leaned forward, placing the palms of his hands and crown of his head on the flat surface. Letting the slight chill of its steel soak into him.

Somewhere behind him, the Celebration was in full effect. People he once thought of as friends laughed, danced, and feasted. They shared stories of Sabina’s life. They toasted to their future and that of generations to come. Not a single note of that revelry reached this corner of Aldridge.

Somewhere else, likely in her quarters, a little girl wept at the injustice done to her in the name of another. How she would curse his name. In time, they could reconcile, of course. Time heals all wounds, or so they say. He had always appreciated time. Its inevitable flow, the certainty of advancing along his life’s path. Until the Council built a dam. Until he handed them the stones to do so.

Delen turned and rested his back against the Gate. An hour. That was all he needed. An hour, and he would head back into Aldridge proper. Maybe try for the Celebration again. Maybe just assume duties in Hub and try to set himself along the right path. What other choice did he have? He breathed deep, his lungs filling with the sweet air of silence. Opposite him, stagnant air of a dead world lapped that same steel. Inches separated them. He concentrated on that air, feeling it move as he breathed. Feeling it try to worm its way through the Gate and into his lungs, to fill him with the aroma of a world that once had been theirs.

Continue to Chapter Six