by Michael Soll
I made a big splash and followed the mark until it bounced off the wall and hit another ripple. I watched curiously for a moment, wondering where the other ripple had come from. Had a previous splash of mine lingered out of sight? Had the force of my hand created a ripple I had not noticed until it smashed back into the one I had been watching? Was I watching the wrong ripple?
I jumped to my feet and heaved a mushroom as far as I could, across the water towards the other side and that’s when I saw their small army. There were a couple dozen Bungs moving across the other ledge, weapons in hand.
I quickly screeched our call to arms signal. Eyvindur, Beadurinc and Gunnar dropped the bodies and looked across the water as several flying objects hurled their way. Gunnar stepped in front and swiped the projectiles away with his spikes.
I leapt into the water toward the army, plunging beneath and cut my way through below. The water was disrupted as a foreign body crashed into the liquid beside me, blood obscuring my vision.
I slashed passed him through muffled screams, dodging falling bodies and navigating around seeping blood. I pushed through the water, stabbing ahead and slicing water behind, propelling myself forward like I had practiced in our Central Stream throughout my childhood.
I arose to thickened air filled with heavy screams. A woman held a man in her arms, four slices across his chest. She cried for help, pleading with an invisible force either incapable or unwilling to acquiesce. The light was scattered and most of the yells emanated from the darkness between blocks of green haze and shattering white rays.
I jumped onto land and was immediately hit by the white beams. I sliced down, cutting the mechanism in half and falling into darkness. I connected with flesh until screams turned to echoes. I heaved myself across the ground to a man holding his sword up high.
I jumped onto the wall and dug my spikes into the dirt and sped horizontally, away from his cumbersome swipe. I launched myself from the wall and sliced his throat, quickly moving to my next target. I obliterated all who appeared before me, swiping and screeching, ripping apart when a screeching came from across the cavern.
I turned and spotted Gunnar as he lifted a boy and heaved him against the rocks, shattering the spine, and bringing an avalanche of dirt down into the water. On the ground beside him, I saw Beadurinc smiling with vacant eyes, blood smattered across his lifeless face. I hurried over and looked down at the boy as he looked past me, his long flowing hair dampened with either his or another’s innards. I picked up the head and closed his eyes.
Gunnar hurried over to me. “We’ve gotta go --”
“No!” I screamed, standing my ground. “We take them all out!”
“It’s only us. Eyvindur’s gone too. We need to retreat.”
I ignored him and growled, ready to take on all of Newbury by myself. Gunnar hurried over and grabbed me, picking me up with one arm and retreating back into the tunnels. I screamed and swiped at the air. Beadurinc’s head fell from my hand. I grabbed at it, catching him by his long hair. His head dangled back and forth as Gunnar tore through our path, swiping above to collapse the tunnels behind us.
My guardian carried me the entire way, my body limp and drained. When we reached Nanash, I was finally released. I fell to my knees and screamed at the top of my lungs. Everybody hurried out of their huts as I held Beadurinc’s head up high.
Harva appeared, startled by the scene before her. “What happened?”
“It was a trap,” I uttered. “They knew we would come. They were waiting for us.” I turned to the Council. “No more waiting. Strike them down now.”
She helped me to my feet, and I looked out at my village. “Where’s Spec?” I asked, noticing his eyes were missing from the crowd.
Harva looked at me, confusion across her face.
“He’s gone,” she said, as if the information should have been known to me long ago. “He said he was going to help you navigate to the water.”
I fell back to my knees as the betrayal swept across my bones. I could see his face before me. I could sense his being in striking distance.
I felt my spikes penetrating his flesh and his life escaping his body. I could feel his end.
And all I could do, was smile.
SECTION FIVE
New Endings:
“Did you eat something that didn’t agree
with you?” asked Bernard. The Savage nodded.
“I ate civilization. It poisoned me.”
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Old Beginnings:
I couldn’t let them hurt her. That was reason enough for me. That was all I needed to leave Nanash and return to Newbury, spoiling their attack and saving Kaolin.
I burst through the Earth like a spiraling ball of fire, immune to dirt and gravity and right and wrong and the planet and all that was within. I pushed through melted tunnels, corroded and divided.
I had taken a pair of unwatched spikes because I needed, because I wanted. I cut through terrain, heading toward my world, toward the all that mattered, toward my other, toward my heart. I could feel it thumping and beating and pulsating and screaming my name, urging me to move quicker than I had ever before. I needed to move quicker than ever before. I needed to get back before the water was tainted and my future was tarnished.
I clobbered through the ground, furious and unforgiving, uprooting innocuous specs of dirt that smacked me in the face and clung to my tiny hairs, unwilling to fall back to the ground where they may lay dormant for all eternity. And then, I punched through, and I could breathe again.
***
I found the Mayor and told him the Nanashi plan of infecting the drinking water. He immediately sent a couple dozen guards to squash the attack while he sent the other soldiers to protect the border, in case of a subsequent breach.
I was held in chains for several hours until their attack was confirmed. The Mayor and Riley watched me from a distance, discussing matters I could not hear until they finally approached.
Riley sat in a chair across from mine, except he had the ability to walk away if he chose.
“Jennifer said you were inducted into the NaNa tribe. And during the raid, James saw you dancing freely amongst the savages.”
The Mayor took a seat beside Riley. “Now, we understand Kaolin was brainwashed by the NaNas. We’re just trying to figure out if you were as well.”
He leaned forward and spoke softly, but that didn’t take away any power from his words. If anything, it made his speech more potent.
“See, I can rationalize that to the people. You two are victims. Captured and transformed. Weak wills, you see? Tinier brains.” He gave Riley a look, prompting his Chief Advisor to leave the room.
“I like you, Spec. I do. And you just saved a lot of peoples’ lives. A lot of good peoples’ lives. Maybe my own. Maybe you saved our city. Maybe our entire race. Did you know that? Did you know you were doing that when you came back? Did you understand the consequences of your actions?”
I watched him closely as he watched me even closer. It had only been recently that I was forced to understand what people were saying when they were saying something else. He wanted a hero, not for my benefit but for his. I was the closest thing he had to a son. If I were to have betrayed the city, how would that look on him? But if I had purposely saved Newbury, I would be a hero and so would he.
In Newbury, it mattered what other people thought. It’s a strange concept; each of their well-being depended on the group’s consensus. The Mayor was mayor because people chose him to be. In the Hive, people did their jobs and that was that. It didn’t matter if you kept to yourself or didn’t. Being liked was a personal decision, not mandatory. In the hive, we worked for each other and survived off the other. We only lived if each person put in the effort. In Newbury, survival depended on one’s ability to be liked. The Mayor was supreme in Newbury but in the hive, his words would be meaningless.
“Is that what you meant to do,
Spec? You came back to save our city. You’re a hero then…”
I was not good with words. It was inconsequential for me growing up, but here, I was at a disadvantage. I wonder though, if I was born Newburyian, would I be a master of words like the Mayor? Would I think the hive was a strange and backwards place? Would I think a person like my father was immoral or bad for the person he was, for the things he did? Would I think he just didn’t know better like the Mayor did I? If I were born in Newbury or Nanash, would Spec even exist? Or would I just be a duplicate of those I have met on my journey thus far? A leader? A warrior?
And after some time without a response, keeping the Mayor in suspense, something he was not used to, I replied: “Yes. I came back to save Newbury.”
The Mayor was pleased. Never had a man been so happy to hear a lie.
“Good,” he said as he unshackled me. “Let’s go celebrate.”
***
The city came out to praise Spec, the Hero of Newbury. The music played, soft and pleasant and the dancers moved in a square, soft and pleasant. And that’s when I saw Kaolin standing with James. She was watching me from across the dance floor. Hundreds of people stood in our way of reconnecting but I had overcome sturdier barriers.
“Oh my God, Spec! You infiltrated the NaNas, that’s so amazing!” a boy shouted as I walked across the dance floor.
“Is it true they bathe in human blood!?” a girl squealed.
“I heard they can bite through bone. Did you ever see that!?”
I pushed past adoring faces and spotted Bryan standing in the middle of his own crowd, showing off his knife throwing technique.
“The key is pinching the tip and the quick release. That’s how I took down all those beasts and that traitor, Cotta.”
I stopped for a moment and stared at the boy. I watched him regale others of how he took down the evil Cotta, how he helped invade the NaNa village and rescue the good while purging the bad.
Death wasn’t a foreign concept. In the hive, a lot of people died before their bodies could mature. I was able to witness the beginning and end to many lives. I was no stranger to the concept of finality. I had seen siblings die the moment they entered this world, born without life. I had left my father behind and by leaving, he had died. If there was one thing I knew, it was death. But never had it caused me the pain that it had with the passing of Cotta. Never had I been so angry. Never had I felt an injustice, but how could I? Growing up, there was no such thing as justice. There was no concept of fair. Things happened and that was that. The world wasn’t cruel, it just was. But now, I realized, people were cruel. They added misfortune to the world that could not exist without their existence. But they also brought goodness as well. They were the ones who filled the empty with right and wrong.
And as I watched Bryan gleefully laugh about ending my friend’s world, I felt a deep sense of contempt, or at least that’s what the emotion felt like as described by Joey. How do I explain a feeling I had never known? How can I tell another the pain I’m feeling and know they understand? Just as when we stare at a color. Do we both see the same colors, or do we just have the same words for an experience we assume we are sharing? Different eyes, different world.
But there Bryan was, being lauded by others for doing a cruel act. Why was it cruel? Because I deemed it to be. It was cruel and that’s what I believed and so it was true. To those cheering him, they believed his actions to be just. They believed him to be a savior. How can one act be both right and wrong?
I thought about the world that once was. Was it just one big Newbury? One Nanash? One Hive? Was it an amalgamation of all three? I dream of going above, but I do not wish to go back to what once was. I do not wish to see the cruelty that existed before my time. Bryan shakes another’s hand and I wonder, did the Sun congratulate itself when it scorched the surface and every lingering civilization?
There was a time when people had greater weapons than swords and spikes, but what’s the point of such ways to kill people when you have no need to kill? Would Newburyians have swords if Nanash did not exist? If Kaolin and I made a new Hive, would we build our own swords?
I continued to push through the crowd and my thoughts when I finally reached Kaolin and James. She embraced me and squeezed tightly as James watched with a deep resentment in his eyes.
“The big hero,” he said indifferently as his eyes spoke differently.
“No. You’re the hero,” I replied. “You saved Kaolin from the massacre.”
“That’s right. I would’ve rescued you too, but you looked a lot like a NaNa.”
“Well, looks can be deceiving. Or so I’m told.”
“Yes, they can be.” He smiled and patted me on the back. “Let’s celebrate!”
He took me by the hand, firm and powerful and pulled me over to a lady who stood before a variety of alcoholic beverages.
“What can I get you?”
“A bottle of wine!”
The two of them shared a laugh and we all began drinking…from a glass of course. From the bottle would be uncivilized.
Everything became hazy as the world became blurry. James became funnier and the music became better.
I grasped Kaolin and kissed her. I didn’t care that James was watching or all of Newbury. I was impervious to their thoughts.
She laid her head against mine. “We need to leave,” she said. “I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want the eyes on me, I don’t want the chains around my throat.”
“What do you want?” I asked, ready to give her anything.
“Unfiltered air. Unfiltered ideas. I want to leave.”
I nodded. “I’ll take you wherever you want. Whether the surface or the center of the Earth. As long as you’re beside me.”
“I want the surface. Tomorrow. Before they figure a way to separate us again.”
I smiled. “Done.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I am Spec:
How many times had my thoughts been sparked in another’s mind before I ever considered them? How many conversations had been spoken and uttered above the ground years before they were extinguished, resurfaced beneath the surface within me? Is there such a truth as new or fresh or novel in a world with incalculable moments with innumerable members with brains and voices of their own? Have my yearnings been yearned by many before? Will my desires be desired by my descendents deep in the future?
I am Spec. There will never be another me. There will be similar iterations, but there will not and cannot be another Spec. There is only one Kaolin and only one Valasca. The one Cotta died with Cotta…
But was there truly only one Cotta? Was he only one? Was he a singular voice and presence? I remember the young Cotta, before he ever chipped into the dirt with his ax. I remember the Cotta, covered in filth, tunneling through to the Old Hive. I remember the Cotta dripping with water, cleansed of the soil and past. The Cotta entranced by Newbury and the one reborn in Nanash. He was a copy of himself, skewed and changed by the world. He moved like the river that almost brought my death.
I am Spec. Tomorrow I will be as well, but tomorrow I will be different. Yesterday I was different, but I was Spec. Before I left the hive, I was a Spec who dreamt of the surface and nothing else. And now, I dream of Kaolin. I am different, and just like the river, I slowly alter the world around me. If it weren’t for me, Cotta would be alive. Would Joey be alive? Would Newbury be alive? How can I, nothing more than a grain of dirt have such an impact on a world made of infinite grains?
It was night and I was back in the Mayor’s house, in Joey’s unaltered room, sleeping in the bed beside a memory that would not vanish. Kaolin was back in her home, being repressed and suppressed, but it would be for the last time. I thought about destiny, a concept introduced to me on my journey, the idea that events which have happened could only happen. That there is one future and it has already been decided. The idea that Cotta and Joey needed to die because they were to die. Destiny was an invisible
man writing my story, and I could do nothing but observe it. All of my thoughts were his thoughts and I was forced to live them. He introduced the solar flare to our planet and forced me out of the hive and willed the knife into Cotta. He controlled the all that was. But I refused to believe it. I refused to believe any of it, even if it was his will making me refuse. I believed I had control over my own choices and decided my own fate. And since I believed it, it was fact.
I arose from the bed and sunk downstairs where the Mayor sat again, like he had so many times before. He picked at the tip of an ancient knife, once used in a battle on the surface long ago. He held it firmly in his hand as my shadow cast across him.
“The Hero of Newbury!”
I watched him from afar. I didn’t say a word because I did not know what to say. I had no words to say.
“Take a seat.”
I stood for a moment, watching him glare into my eyes. He pointed at me with the knife and repeated, “Take a seat.”
So I sat, across from the man with the weapon.
“You know what my father said to me the day that he died? Of course you don’t, how could you? Let me rephrase that. Would you like to hear what my father told me?”
He picked at his nails with the tip of the knife, scratching the underbelly, freeing his fingers from grime.
“Yes.”
“He said to me, in his raspy voice, because he was manly, you see. And manly men have raspy voices. I couldn’t look up to the man if he squeaked like a mouse. You don’t know what a mouse is, do you? You don’t know a lot of things. My father would love you -- you embody everything he told me the morning he died. He said, ‘Son,’ in that raspy voice of his, remember? ‘Son, live every day as if it were your first.’ Not last, not like that saying you hear everybody say. No, he said ‘Son, live every day as if it were your first.’ I always wondered, ‘how do I do that?’ But then, how could I live every day as if it were my last? How do I know what my last day would be like? If it were like my father’s, I would be living every day immobile in bed, sick and beleaguered. But now, I’m supposed to live it as if it were my first. See the world with eyes wide open, full of hope and mystery. But how does one infuse mystery in a story read time and time again?”