Themeattics

Chapter Six

“I’m here to relieve you,” Delen said as he stepped through the portal to Hub. “If you don’t mind. Sir.”

Gavriil swiveled the chair around. He eyed Delen closely, fingers steepled before him. “Good,” his head dipped once, “I had only just begun thumbing through the dispersion analytics. See to them. AEGIS will provide more to review once you finish.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gavriil continued to look his son over. Delen stood, doing his best to avoid appearing as self-conscious as he was. “I fear our last interaction was less clear than I had hoped, and I want to impress upon you the importance of your being here and the work you will be undertaking these next two years.”

“There’s no need.” Delen’s voice was just loud enough to cross the room.

“No?”

“If I don’t shape up, you’re going to kill me. Message delivered.”

His father’s lip twitched downward. “AEGIS told you.”

That flash of anger returned, and this time he spoke before he could get it under control. “No, father, I’m perfectly capable of putting two and two together on my own, thank you.”

He expected Gavriil to react, to stand and belittle him, but the man said nothing. He watched, his face little more than an expressionless mask. “Have you eaten?”

Well, there was a change in topic. His stomach rumbled in reply, as though awoken by the question. “Before the exam.”

“I’ll send someone. A day without eating is unacceptable.” Delen’s confusion was easy to read. “Celebration began yesterday.”

Yesterday. All those dreams made sense, he had slept through the rest of the day and night. The primary festivities had all completed. His sneering at Nantale and Ezequiel had not only been cruel, but worthless. The first night had already come and gone. They had already consummated. What little fantasy he had clung to in the back of his mind fell away. He felt his face crumble.

Gavriil’s hands fell on his shoulders. Delen jumped. The man leaned in, bringing his nose near his son’s. “Stay on task. Serve Aldridge. You will grow to care for Vanesa, and she, you. Trust in the wisdom of the Ancestors. Do not forget yourself. Things will work out.”

Things will work out. It was the closest thing to caring he could remember coming from his father. Gavriil made no effort to stay and talk it out. He walked off and out of Hub before Delen could respond. Probably for the best. Delen could already feel himself unraveling; had Gavriil stayed any longer he would have been dealing with a weeping mess of a child, which would have set him off and ruined the whole thing. Better judgment prevailed.

“They will, you know.” He lifted his head toward AEGIS’ haloed voice. “Work out. You have as much potential as the rest. All you needed was a push. Come, let us not dally. There is much to cover.”

Delen settled into the chair. AEGIS’ physical proxy greeted him. Arms bent. Consoles shifted. Panes divided and rearranged. The chair itself began to recline.

“Not that.”

It stopped.

Delen curled forward, keeping his back straight from the ground. Stay on task. He knew what that looked like. “Keep it where father’s is.”

“As you wish.” Amusement. “Would you like me to do the same for the remainder of the apparatus?”

He frowned. More than likely, his father’s setup was ideal for their work. The man had spent more years at the job than he had been alive, and he suspected, knowing Gavriil, he had adopted the setup he used from his own father. How far down the line that went, Delen had no idea. Gavriil had never spoken to him on the matter – likely he expected Delen would just assume the role and make no changes. A safe bet, but something about being given that ability, that power, appealed to him immediately. Barely a week after his first time on duty, he had begun making changes.

Going back made sense. The first step in a long, focused journey back on the path set by the Ancestors. The path he always believed he followed – or at least believed he wanted to follow. And yet. Giving up that control, no matter how small, left a bad taste in his mouth. That little corner of Aldridge was all he had. It was his signature. Akello had the tilling rotation. Rel had his signature dishes. Klavdia had the dispersion protocols. They all got their piece in history. Why not him?

Yet another lie. There was nothing special about any of those things. Rote, all of it. Passed down from generation to generation, a veneration of Ancestors made by conforming one’s life to theirs. Everyone else lived what he admired. He would need to do the same.

Soon.

“Not… not yet.” The relief he expected from the decision was there, thick with guilt and disappointment. Bitter. “Maybe slowly. A couple things at a time. Ok? When I’m ready I’ll let you know.”

“Of course.”

He nodded vigorously, testing positions in the chair. Certainly less comfortable than it had been. Focused, though. Purposeful. Adult. He took a deep breath and motioned for the right panel. It swung forward, tilting to come to a rest flat over his lap. He stared down at the rows of text. Scrolled. Scrolled again. Black on white on black on white. He sighed, went back to the top of the report, and started reading.

About three paragraphs in, his eyes started to glaze over. He skimmed the next block, and the one after that. By the seventh, he was looking at the words instead of reading them, passing them over while his mind drifted elsewhere.

The second day of Celebration. He had missed the dance, the feast, and the toasts. The stories. The games. All of it. He supposed he should have felt guilty. Any other joining and he would have. Second day. Yes, they certainly would have fulfilled their joining that night. Ezequiel would have made sure of it. Delen became more aware of the console in front of him. Of what it had done for him in the past. And was he curious? Was there a part of him that wanted to see it, to dive into the filthy shame of prying, if just for one last time? To see what he could have been a part of, what he lost out on, and discover just what sort of reaction it elicited? Ancestors, yes.

He tipped his head back and blew the air out of his lungs.

“Trouble?” AEGIS asked.

“It’s just a lot.” He tapped his temples a few times, then went back to the screen.

“These do tend to be a bit verbose. Take your time.”

Where had he left off? He scanned the report again, this time in reverse, trying to recall where he stopped paying any sort of attention. Probably there.

Words, words, words. How many checks did the system run on the same subsystems? A dozen? A hundred? He made it through one before other thoughts wandered in once more.

He wondered what Vanesa was doing at that moment. She had always looked at Ezequiel the same way he had Nantale, only, outside of Education, she needed to do so at a distance. Ez was cordial to her elsewhere, but he made no effort to spend time with her. He was part of their trio, always wanting to spend time with Delen. And Nantale. Especially Nantale. And it had sure panned out well for him.

Delen blinked, pulling his mind back a degree, from a tangent inside a distraction back to the distraction itself. Vanesa. A double-edged sword, he supposed. On the one hand, she hated him, and would continue to hate him for Ancestors knew how long. He could easily imagine what their first days in Education would be like. Her on one side, him on the other, never a spoken word between them. A shared look only to express total disdain. At best. He could bear it, would bear it, if that is what it took. On the other hand, Delen found he had little reservation talking to her, unlike Nantale. At least in theory.

Still, she was so damn young. Too young. He grimaced.

“Would you like the next report?”

“Not yet.”

No, not yet. Because there was something else. Something that had leapt out at him, screaming up from the panel, between the lines of text and meandering thoughts. He had been so anxious to start along the right path it had passed right by. He looked up at the mass of metal. What was it AEGIS had said after his father left? All you needed was a push.

Delen understood. He saw the truth, the plan, the betrayal, for what it was. Each and every one of the accusations against him was true, there was no refuting that. The conviction, though. The certainty. The unwavering clarity that they were fully in the right, that his abuses were so beyond the pale as to warrant being cast out of bound law. To be put up for death. As though no fault could be found in them, or in anyone who had come before.

As though such information had never been put before them.

Just another exam. Just one more link in a chain of ritual that extended back to the foundation of Aldridge. That was what he was to believe. What the Council was to believe. No one would be treated differently, no one singled out, no role placed in higher regard than another. Bullshit. Delen had seen what went on behind closed doors. He had, but had the Council? Did AEGIS seed their exams with such abase moments? Certainly not. Of course they fell on him with such disdain, they had no idea what went on around them.

AEGIS did. The voice of the Ancestors. The will of Aldridge. The amalgam of intelligence and metal.

There had to be a reason for her to do what she did. A why to fit the question. Maybe his family was put under more scrutiny due to their role. Maybe she saw a reason to alter pairs and needed an excuse. Maybe she just wanted to stir the pot and have whatever counted as “fun” for a machine. Only AEGIS knew. He could ask – almost did – but found the answer would mean nothing. Why was irrelevant. No reason would make up for the truth behind things. She had singled him out and cast him at the feet of the Council to be judged, all the while draping a banner of guilt around his neck.

Thin, hissing puffs sounded overhead. Sabina’s ashes would soon be on the way. Everything not baked or stirred or kneaded away during the initial Celebration feast had been fed into the ventilation system to disperse around Aldridge for its people to inhale. In time, all that she was would be returned to the people. She would live on through them, and generations to come, just as she had been born from and carried those before her. That was the fate for all of them, from the time the Gate closed until, well. Until.

Emerge. Toil. Burn. Repeat.

That was it. Generation upon generation on either side of him, that was all they had. To exist for the sake of existing, just so someone later down the line could do the same. And they praised the Ancestors for that. Praised? Worshipped. For gifting them lives so utterly devoid of purpose.

AEGIS said something, but her voice was little more than background noise. Delen wanted nothing to do with it. Any of it. As Sabina’s ashes sprayed through the vents in a thin sheet, he knew with absolute certainty he could never allow himself to continue along in that cycle. Being trapped in Aldridge, trapped in life after life, bowing at the feet of his jailors until the system finally collapsed in on itself.

He pushed himself up from the chair. The panel on his lap moved as he did, ascending with the exact speed and direction to give him clearance. Sabina touched his nostrils, stinging them. She was acrid, sharp. Dead. Just as he would be. Just as they all would be.

It was only a matter of time, right? Nothing lasts forever. Sabina taught him that.

Only a matter of time.

“AEGIS,” he said, watching the door. Expecting it to open and reveal Gavriil, maybe the entire Council, coming to shut him up. Expecting them to know, somehow. To have read his mind. It stayed shut. “Open the Gate.”

“I cannot comply.”

Delen smiled. Of anything, he figured that would have provoked one of her Thoughtful Pauses. “Yes, you can. Open it.”

“Would you like me to cover the eighteen protocols which dictate my rejection of this request? You should know each of them.”

“I would like you to recognize who is telling you to do it and do it.”

“No.”

His smile fell away. “What was it you said when you were so eager to put the blame on me – it’s your duty to acquiesce to me as administrator? That was it, right? Acquiesce?”

She was silent.

“I thought so.”

Still nothing.

“Open. It.”

“That command requires superuser override. Provide the necessary access.”

Delen turned and looked up at the machine. He had often wondered if she was made to have true emotion, typically after he failed to do some task or behaved in a way which he hoped had not brought shame or disappointment on her. This time around, he wondered if she could hope. He felt her doing just that – hoping he would not remember the codes. Hoping that, like everything else, he had pushed them aside for the sake of leisure and a few thrills.

He thought about keying them in but spoke them aloud instead. Deliberately, punctuating each character.

“Command module enabled. Subsystem callback routines engaged. Security masking layers superseded. You may now continue as you see fit.”

He stopped. That was, well, easy. Too easy. Was it supposed to be that easy? “So, you would open it now?”

“Yes.”

“If I just asked?”

“Yes.”

He watched her. He watched the door. Back and forth, chewing on the bottom of his lip.

Had he expected to fail? If he were being honest with himself, probably. His jousting with AEGIS would take time, letting the anger simmer out from him and he would realize the path he had thought himself down was misguided. Instead, the shock of succeeding brought the indignation in check, affording him time to think. To decide. He was glad for that time. Without it, he would have made terrible mistakes.

Mistake number one, trapping them all right where they were.

“When I give the order to open the Gate, I want you to open every door in Aldridge at the same time. And keep them open.”

“Understood.”

Number two, not allowing himself enough time to get to the Gate before Gavriil, the Council, or whomever figured it out first came to intercept him.

“Give them some excuse when you do it. I don’t know what, make it up. Make it believable, at least enough to make them think about it for a minute.”

“Understood.”

And three, letting his actions be undone.

“Once you have complied with the order, I want you to wipe your drives. Fry them. Drop the hardware. This is over.”

“Understood.”

Delen expected, no, wanted, AEGIS to argue that last point. She had slighted him, yes, burned whatever bridges they had built with one another, but she was still AEGIS. Still the last active part of the Ancestors. He wanted that part of their lives gone. Burned. But it was all he had known. All he would know, if he went through with his plan.

And all he would know even if he backed down. He had gone too far already. Either he gave the order and opened the sterile innards of their tomb-home to the Great Death, or he walked away, the Council was told of his actions, and he was set to the Pyre immediately. Maybe if he went that route, they would decide not to spread his ashes and he could stay gone. Sorry, un-recycled. Not gone. Still there. Still in Aldridge, trapped.

Well, one way or another, Nantale could rest easy on a ratio burning for her child.

He focused his attention on the jutting mass of AEGIS’ core, uncertain what kind of turbulence would appear as he prepared to give the command. Maybe fear. Joy. Anxiety. Turned out it was nothing. For the first time in a long time, he was placid.

“Do it.”

Hub’s door shot open behind him. He jumped at the sound of it but kept watch. Ten seconds later the cascade began. The three primary console panels went dark one after the other. Gone, gone, gone. The room shifted into a dim darkness as the eight wall panels winked off simultaneously, leaving only the four ceiling lights to cover the entirety of Hub. Just as those panels died, a cluster of metal sheets fell from AEGIS. They struck the floor with a terrible crash. Delen’s hands shot to his ears to lessen the blow, and as he turned away from AEGIS, he saw her innards slough and slide out from her core. Then the lights went out.

Everything went black.

Through the barrier of his hands, through the high-pitched ringing in his ears, he could hear AEGIS’ components hit the floor. Shattering. Slapping. Had some been liquid, or maybe some kind of gel? There were wet sounds. He felt sick. Sick and blind. Panic threatened to blast through his façade of control. He squeezed his eyes shut – no change in scenery, ha, ha – and tried to think. To focus. To see the room. Remember it. Remember the halls, the paths. Aldridge. He had walked it and it alone for sixteen years, and ought to know it well enough to get to the Gate.

He went into motion and dropped his hands. Voices met him. They were distant, but loud, echoing through the empty halls. Nothing to muddle them. The air filtration was dead. Shit.

Delen walked with his hands out in front, shifting back and forth in loose circles. He was mostly on target for the door. The feeling of steel on his hand was grounding. Safe. He knew the path to the Gate and set out with purpose.

The voices were scattering but getting closer. He could make out owners. Sometimes words. Sometimes his name. He picked up the pace.

He arrived around the last bend, expecting something, though if pressed he would not have been able to say what. Certainly not the same blanket darkness. This was it, though. The Gate was at the end of his hall. He walked, still with decent speed but cautiously, left arm extended, fingers splayed. Ten steps. Twenty. He slowed, knowing he needed only about five more. Did she do it? Was it open? Nothing had come in to wipe them out, no Great Death had swept in to meet them. Maybe she failed but wiped herself out anyway. Aldridge would truly be their tomb, then. They could all suffocate together.

His right arm passed over the gap where the Gate intersected the wall. It was open. He was through.

It was black.

Panic surfaced again, stronger. The wall fell away and he walked into nothingness. He turned, eyes wide as saucers, trying to find something, anything that stood out, that would give him some sign of a world beyond Aldridge. There was nothing. He turned and turned in the nothing, looking high then low, dizzying himself in darkness, abject terror ripping apart his calm. Spinning and looking, looking and spinning, eyes wet with tears and horror and misery and-

And he saw it.

Red.

It was small, just a pinprick of light in the vast emptiness of his world. Small and dim. But it was there. Real. Hope leapt through the jungle of dread and threw him toward that light. He stumbled for it, arms swinging wildly. Something hit him in the shin. He cried out and tumbled forward, catching himself on his hands. There was pain in there, somewhere, but adrenaline buried it. He moved faster, tripping and stumbling over invisible objects in the darkness, until he was nearly on top of the light.

He peered at it. It was a small glass globe about chest high, raising maybe half an inch from the wall. Beneath it was a rod, one end stuck in the wall, the other jutting up and out. Above the globe was something that looked like a panel but had raised symbols along it. He touched them. Permanent symbols. He recognized some of them but could make no sense of the grouping. That was all he could see, it was almost as though the darkness around him consumed the light, letting it go no farther.

Delen had never seen anything like the rod before. It was rectangular and smoothed out only near the top. He had no idea what it did, not specifically, but he had he knew a lever when he saw one. He put his weight on the smoothed section and pushed. The lever dropped.

The light turned green.

A horrible, piercing, warbling noise blared. More lights, red and this time bright, awoke above him. The light spun, cast in cones, revealing more of the room that had lived for centuries, unknown, behind the Gate. The noise continued and was soon joined by another. One of urgency. Of weight. He felt the rumble of it from above him. He looked up in time to see the ceiling shake off to his left. More panic now, this time deserved. He hurried back from that place and watched, awed, as the ceiling shifted down. It buckled, shook again, and began to split.

Death descended upon Aldridge in powder and chunks. He could see it pour in through the open metal, hear it crash onto the floor, red and black and thick. The ceiling continued to separate. Death continued to spill.

Delen stared up at it. He watched. Waited. At least it would take him first. He opened his arms.

Light shone through the opening. Still the dark matter poured into Aldridge, but past it he saw something else. Something that made him drop to his knees, to sputter and cry, to come to his senses and realize what flooded Aldridge, what had now wafted out and struck him was no Great Death. Was not death at all, but dirt.

Delen Kolesov beheld the sky.