The Last Utopia

by Michael M Finch

  Dawne’s smile warped. Now it looked more like the manic grin of a lost desert traveler who had found water.

  “We could be on the verge of the greatest breakthrough! Maybe there has been a mutation in your DNA, maybe you have lived a certain way, but everyone in your family has been blessed with the gift of magic! This should be impossible! Just imagine: If your case could be replicated for everyone in the city, we would no longer have to sacrifice anyone for the good of the group!”

  As he spoke, his hands ran all over the place, grasping at the chance in front of him. However, Dawne soon regained his composure. After a short pause, he spoke in his previous calm tone.

  “By then, every mage would have to give just one percent of their mana pool and there would be ample power left to fight back the darkness and restore the city. So this is our request, and our offer: Lay down your arms and cease this pointless battle. We offer you and your sisters a seat on the council and a position as the heads of the tower’s mana research. All we want in exchange is that you don’t destroy what might be the last bastion of human life on this forsaken world, and instead work with us, for a brighter tomorrow.”

  I wanted to refute, but couldn't. I could never forgive the monsters for what they had done to Eileen and all the other young mages who had given themselves into their care, but no matter how hard I thought, I couldn't find any reason to refute. They were right: Any choice against them would be petty and self-destructive.

  Even worse, there was a tiny chance I could save Eileen if I complied, so how could I not? On the other hand, how could I, after everything I had done? Dawne’s words swirled in my head, just like the faces of everyone I had left behind on my way here. Sophie, Eileen, the Mystic, Amy, Nate... my mind became a mess, split between reason and emotion, as it ran in circles, ever faster. The world around me soon followed and started to swirl just the same. Before I had realized, nausea overcame me, and the world went dark.

  - Seven

  The nausea went as suddenly as it had come and left me in the corner of a small room. Before me sat a simple coffee table, with a couch on either side. On the far wall, a small window led out into a dark, starless night, and multiple paintings were leaned against the furniture. However, the quaint atmosphere had gone through unnatural destruction.

  Large chunks of the wallpaper were missing, ripped off in a haphazard manner, while the wall itself seemed to have suffered under a hammer. Several hairs and tables had been destroyed and their leftovers were strewn across the room. The paintings had been sliced apart with knives and splashed with dark paints. To me, it was an image of absolute chaos. In spite of the room's sorry state, its chaotic nature wasn't its strangest feature. Everything around me seemed blurry and unreal somehow. Sharp, overlapping angles and dark colors made it hard to pick out details.

  At first I rubbed my eyes to get out whatever dirt had blocked my vision, but as I looked around some more, a feeling of familiarity began to creep in. I had been here before. Finally, my sluggish brain connected the pieces. This was the old painter's room, the home of Carlos Oraya, my first ward! To be more precise, it was the painting I had seen in Mr. Oraya's hallway on my first visit, the one which had almost sucked me in, the gateway. Although I had been careful to avoid contact with it ever since, I still remembered all the details. The dark colors, the chaotic room, all of this was just the same as in the painting. Confused, I looked around.

  “Ah, you're here already. Please, have a seat.”

  A voice from my left made me jerk around in shock. There stood the mad painter, Carlos Oraya, and painted one of his pictures, unchanged from the time I had last seen him. Almost on reflex, my body followed his words and took place on one of the couches. Beneath my fingers, the upholstery felt firm, yet brittle, with a rough texture, as if it had been made out of dried paint.

  “Coffee?” the painter asked after he had picked a pot off his old stove. With raised brows, the old man shook the pot and caused the liquid inside to slosh around. Of course, I was in no mood for coffee.

  “What is this, where am I?” I asked instead

  “Here, you might need this.”

  Unperturbed by my question, the painter took his seat to my opposite and put a cup of steaming coffee in my front, just as he had done on my previous visits. Unlike the rest of the room, he and the coffee seemed just as real as I remembered. Somehow, this made sense to me. After all, they hadn't been part of the original painting.

  “Where do you think you are?” the painter asked with a bemused smile.

  “Is this some kind of hallucination? Am I dreaming?” All by itself, my hands grasped for the familiar warmth of the coffee.

  “If I was simply the result of your dreams, would I know the answer to those questions? In truth, it doesn’t matter whether or not this room is real. All that matters is the reason you are here.”

  “The reason?” I parroted like an idiot, while I blew away the steam from the coffee.

  “You seem awfully confused. Torn between two choices, each one as bad as the other.”

  “So my brain built this hallucination for me to find an answer?”

  My fingers tightened further around the ceramic cup.

  “Again, you shouldn't ask a hallucination so many questions. At least not metaphysical ones.”

  “So what should I ask then?”

  “How about your real question? The one you cannot answer by yourself?”

  “...the council people are right. I can't jeopardize the entire human race just because they were mean to me. Very, very mean. But that doesn't change the fact that they're right. Still, there's also many people I am indebted to. Sophie, the Mystic... Eileen. Many people I need to do right by. If I back off now and work with the Council, I will betray them. If I go against the Council, I kill the entire city. I can't make that choice.”

  Again, my eyes returned down to my coffee.

  “So that's what you believe your choice to be? Your duty towards your friends and family on one side, and your duty towards all humans on the other?”

  “That's right.” I took a small sip, and the familiar bitterness of Mr. Oraya's coffee spread a cozy warmth throughout my body. “Who could ever make a decision like that?”

  “Although this is not my war to fight, I think you could do with some advice. First you should think through the consequences of your choices a bit more. Does humanity's fate really rest on your shoulders? Are there no places left besides the city? Will our future be hopeless unless you submit to the council?”

  “It won't be?” I looked up.

  “Who knows? The world is a large place.” After a shrug, the painter turned to the window of pure blackness. “How do you know anything they've said is true? That any of their promises are real? Weren’t you worried about illusions before?”

  “But it all makes sense, doesn't it?” Another sip of coffee entered my body and cleared my mind.

  “Well, at least their stories sound mighty strange once you think about it, don't they? If they've kept the descendants of the Archmages alive for sentimental reasons, wouldn't that be a large waste of mana in such trying times? Though even if everything they say is true, who is to say that you and your sisters being mages isn't just a coincidence? In Astralis, the chance of someone being born a mage is about a thousand to one. With how many people have been born in the city over the millennia, something like this is bound to happen eventually. However, if your family's magic talent is a coincidence, and if the council finds out, what then?”

  As I thought about the words of the council some more, I realized that the painter was right. There also was no guarantee this wasn't another bit of deception, just like the fake teachers or the entire outer city had been. I wanted to ask more questions, but the painter wasn't finished yet.

  “That's not all though. These guys keep talking about the future, but what future do they really want? Think about it. Don't they just want to reverse the mana blight, turn back the clock to a time long past? How
would they return to the past in a world that has already changed its fundamental nature, irreversibly so? Who can claim true perfection, who can retain a stiff system without true progress? They can hold on to the status quo for a while, but stiff and unchanging as it is, Astralis will fail. Maybe they will cure the symptoms, maybe the city will linger on for some time longer, but the rot has set in. Nothing can turn back time, not even magic. Yet all these Grand Mages want to do is return to the old days, hold on to their fantasies for just a bit longer.”

  More and more, the painter's questions bombarded my mind. As my confusion cleared, a deep dread filled me, dread about the unknowable days ahead.

  “Now then, rather than the fake choice presented by these mages, here is your true choice: Flee into the past, known and terrible, or step into the future, unknown and terrifying. Though if I may be so selfish and make my own request: If you choose the future and destroy the city in all of its pompous order and rules, the chaos ensued would surely be glorious. I would like to paint it. It may just be my masterpiece.”

  “How do I make a choice like that? I don't even know what's real anymore.”

  “The least you can do is look behind the final, hidden curtain and learn the last truth. After all, that's what your teacher would have wanted.”

  “But I can’t tell real from fake, not anymore. I don't know how.”

  “You do. It's all in your head. You just haven't noticed yet.”

  A mysterious smile concluded the painter's speech. With a clink, the coffee cup landed back on the table. Now blessed with direction, I no longer needed its warmth. For no reason I could discern, my eyes were drawn to the window over Oraya's shoulder, darkness itself. In front of my eyes, the black frame grew and began to engulf my vision. Before I could make my choice or ask any more questions, the night outside had swallowed the entire room, and me with it.

  When I came back to my senses, I still stood in the same spot as before, still the lecterns before me and the balcony behind. The council members seemed unaware of my episode and awaited my answer with bated breath. In their eyes, my talk with the painter could only have lasted a moment. However, within that moment I had understood something important. In my head, the pieces of a puzzle I wasn't even aware of fit themselves together.

  Why had the Mystic trained me in the light-bending shape to such an extent, even at the cost of my sound-bending, something which had harmed me again and again? Why had he insisted I save all my mana up for this moment? Why had he implored me over and over to do what he himself couldn't?

  At last I understood what the old man had regretted all his life. It wasn't that he had faltered at the last moment and chosen to retreat. Rather, at the crucial moment he had lacked the skills, the mana or the courage to press on and uncover the final veil, the last secret of Astralis. I still didn't sense a light-bending shape within the room, but I didn't have to see the barrier to know how to disrupt it. Destruction was always much easier than creation; and I still had plenty of mana left to play with. So I shaped my mana, as much as I could, and released it into the air, to unveil the last of the city’s lies! Finally, the council members realized my plans.

  “Stop!”

  They screamed and bounded over their lecterns to rush towards me, but unperturbed, I did as the Mystic had taught me. Countless shapes of force flew towards me, aimed to kill, but they bounced off my shell with no effect. The barrier discs of the guardians were really efficient after all, and the attacks of the council contained almost no mana. They would need minutes to break through, and I only took seconds to spread my shape throughout the room. The Grand Mages managed just a single step off their high chairs before they disappeared, and the illusion with them.

  Freed from my final chains, I took a deep breath and looked around. Although the shape of room was still the same, it had been transported hundreds, thousands of years into the future. The vibrant red and brown colors had washed out and made way for a uniform gray. My first look went over my shoulder, back out of the opened window.

  To my dismay, I found the outside unfazed by my disruption. At least on this the council had been truthful: The outside world was in a sorry state. As for the Grand Mages themselves? In place of their lecterns, I found seven pods, familiar in appearance. A closer look confirmed my suspicions. They seemed almost the same as the training pods which had housed the second year students down below, the traps built to drain the mages of their mana. Only here, they seemed heavier, clunkier and much, much older.

  Just like the ones down below, here as well I found windows in the front, to look at the Grand Mages inside. No matter which of the pods I picked, I found the same image. Corpses, dried up and mummified, lay there in a bed of cables and tubes. Though there was no light in their hollow eye sockets, I could see the faint movements of their chests. They were in even worse states than Eileen had been, yet somehow they were still alive.

  “What have you done, you brat!?” a voice shrieked from one of the pods. It was just another magic trick of course. How could these things still form words without lips, tongues or throats?

  “Why waste all this perfectly good mana just to uncover our shame!?” the voice continued.

  “...it's all been a lie still, huh? All of it made up. You don't look like you became a mage this generation, 'Grand Mage Dawne'. And your pods are ancient too. You're the original seven, aren't you? The great Archmages, clinging to life by whatever means necessary.”

  “Please wait! Yes, it is true, but we are the only ones who can save the city! No one else has even a fraction of our knowledge! Please look outside and see the world! We cannot fake that! Everything else we said has been the truth! Only if we work together can we rebuild the city as a shining beacon in the darkness!”

  “Doesn't matter. You've built the entire city from lies, from the foundations of the sewers up to the top of the highest tower, just to keep yourselves alive for a few moments longer. Just to keep alive your malformed, incestuous brood. You've only ever cared about conserving the past, to preserve this purgatory just a little while longer. You're not looking for solutions. You’re happy where you are.”

  I moved closer to the central pod, the one the leader had designated as his eternal resting place. I began to collect whatever I had left of my mana, the last of my reserves. I didn't even need a fancy shape for this. Destruction was easy.

  “Stop! Or the ancient Archmages will use their strength to retaliate!”

  “You know, a friend of mine had a good theory: The mages would have to channel and shape all the mana for the machines somehow, do the calculations. There had to be some sort of processing center. I just realized: That's you, isn't it? That's why you didn't kill me just now, or enslave me or do whatever you'd normally do with dissidents. You can't. You need every ounce of your being just to stay alive.”

  Finally, the corpse turned quiet, though only for a moment. When I arrived in front of the pod, a final, defiant voice resounded in the room.

  “You will shoulder the demise of the human race! You will commit the greatest crime in the history! You will kill your own sisters!”

  My answer was calm, my will unswayed.

  “Whatever outcome, I will bear it on my conscience. Whatever the meaning of life, this city doesn't provide it. Whatever 'utopia' means, this city is the opposite. Rather than see it mold and fester any longer, I will make a decision, and burn it to the ground.”

  My hand pressed against the warm pod and forced the last of my mana inside, right into the central heart of the city. To stop its beat and end its flow. Forever.

  Epilogue

  “And that's it. The story of how I destroyed the last utopia, the paradise on earth, Astralis. The human race wasn't destroyed. The world hasn't ended either. And here we still are, trapped in the heat just like everyone else. I don't know if I did the right thing back then, really. Maybe the people in the city had been better off with their normal lives. I'm sure many hate me for my decision. I'm sure many died as well
, and all of that's on me. Eileen's eyes still haunt me every night. However, I understood that there is a future out there for all of us. Even if it might not be the most convenient, or the easiest choice, it's a choice we have to make if we truly want to live. We need to leave behind the comfort of everyday life. If we don't, we will never find our future and will never see what it might hold.”

  Silence returned to the humid cave. The men around the campfire watched the stranger who had just finished his tall tale. They weren't sure how much of his fantastical story had been the truth, but they realized that something about him was different. There was something that set him apart from all the others who wandered this hellish world.

  “Big Bro, we gotta go!”

  The strange man's female travel companion called him from the entrance of the cave. She was right. A look out of the entrance proved that the deadly rays of the sun had begun to die down. They had all been forced to take temporary shelter from the midday's terror in this cave, but at least for today, the worst was over. Once again, it was time to move.

  Without another word, the traveler got up from his seat and offered his listeners a polite nod, before he turned on his heels to meet up with his sister. His steps were light, yet steady, like those of a man who knew his goal, but was in no hurry to arrive.

  Finally, as they were left behind by the siblings, the men realized just what made the two so different. Unlike all others in this forsaken world, the siblings were not lost.

  As they walked out into the fading light of day, each step brought them closer to their future.