“Umm. Our hearth.” She pointed at the trailer/cinder block structure. “We offer you to become our family.”
“If you are without parents or anyone to look after you, we want you to know you are welcome to stay with us if you want.” Teryn leaned forward, elbows on his knees, concern on his face.
She stared into the bowl. Hope and sadness collided. Admitting she needed someone to take care of her felt like declaring her parents dead. But… all that blood. Hours ago, she’d turned on a digital music player not to feel like the last person left alive in the world. Choked up, she managed only a nod.
“Are you still hungry?” asked Mala.
Kiera nodded again.
The woman gave her another ladle of stew before portioning out some for herself and Teryn. Kiera stared down as she ate, gripped with sorrow for the loss of the life she thought she’d been living. Scenes from her endless school year came and went. How could she miss people who never existed? The robot mentioned that weeks in VR could’ve felt like years. Perhaps her parents had been dead far longer than she knew.
“I spend most of my time hunting for scrap,” said Teryn. “And fixing up some stuff people trade for. It’s been enough to get by, trade for some Ponics and whatnot. Mala grows a few things here, but the dirt’s no good.”
The woman shook her head, sighing. “We need to fix the holes in the awning. The poison rain is getting in. If I could only get approved, it would be so much easier for us.”
“Approved?” asked Kiera.
“For a work permit.” Mala sighed. “It is difficult. I have been reading, but the test is not easy.”
Kiera scraped up more stew and shoveled it into her mouth, careful not to spill any of the hot substance on her bare legs. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to be full. “What are you learning?”
“The Citadel has many machines. I am trying to fix the ones that make the air cold and clean it. The books will start, but to really learn, I must work the basic job. Many people try for jobs, but they take only so many. I will keep trying.” She smiled.
“So… what do kids do here? I’m not sure how to be in a tribe. Where I came from, it’s different.”
“You’re a bit small to work yet.” Teryn winked. “You’ll help around here. We could use a hand with keeping the place clean. Maybe I’ll teach you a bit of tinkering. You’ll have to play though. Make some friends.”
“Okay.” That sounds… normal.
“We already have a room set aside.” Mala stood with a smile, though it appeared strained. “You can have it.”
Teryn put his arms around Mala, holding her for a moment before kissing her cheek and muttering, “You will have a child soon enough. And it will need to be a boy, as we already have a daughter.”
“I will keep trying,” whispered Mala.
“We will keep trying. Do not blame yourself.” He kissed her again before smiling at Kiera. “I will be back soon.”
Mala’s smile became genuine. “Come, Kiera. I will show you.”
She got up, set the bowl on the cooler where she’d been sitting, and followed the woman to the front door. The right end of the room (the camper trailer) had a tiny kitchenette cluttered with junk, a big sofa, coffee table, and a recliner chair older than the Earth itself. A small square table occupied the center of the dwelling with four metal-framed chairs around it. The red fake-leather cushions made them look salvaged from a pizza shop. On the left, a large bed sat tucked into a cinder block alcove by some shelves holding plastic storage boxes, and a steep stairway―more of a ladder―went up to a second-story room.
“Up there.” Mala gestured at the ladder. “Is the room you will call yours. You are perhaps a bit old to have night scares, but if you are frightened and wish to share our bed, you would be welcome to.”
“Thanks.” Kiera hugged her new mother. “I’m sorry you haven’t had a baby. Are you sure it’s okay I steal his room?”
Mala patted her on the back. “You have stolen nothing.”
She led Kiera out a back door onto a low porch made of wooden planks decorated with a few plastic chairs and one wicker chaise lounge. A path made of hubcaps and metal plates led about thirty feet to a narrow cinder block building with a shower curtain for a door, currently slid all the way to the side to reveal a wooden bench with a toilet seat on it.
“Wow. An actual brick crap house.” Kiera laughed.
“I wish your father had built it a little farther away. Whenever he makes use, we will know.”
“Ugh.” She scrunched up her nose.
“Go on and see your room. I need to preserve what we did not eat.”
“Okay.”
They entered the house together, though Mala continued out the front door while Kiera ascended the ladder. The small area at the top had barely a third the space of her old bedroom. A wooden bookshelf on the right held two toys: a grungy teddy bear next to a rocket ship made from pipe segments and scrap metal. Opposite the shelf, a thin mattress sat on the floor in the corner. Above it, two missing cinder blocks in the otherwise solid wall formed a window with a sheet of clear plastic hung over it on the outside to protect from rain.
The room smelled like wet wood, but nothing felt damp. She crawled in and sat on her new bed, the toy rocket ship at eye level.
“New bedroom…” She scuffed her feet back and forth on the floor. “No TV… no Supernova 2 game console, no Ashleigh….”
Pining for her friend who probably never existed, stuff she never really owned, and thinking about her other friends from school brought silent tears. It might have been completely fake, but that life felt more real than a few fleeting glimpses of running down a hospital corridor in the middle of the night with two frantic parents she barely spent four hours with a month. She pictured the tank, how terrified she’d been at the sight of those robotic arms and needles, and stopped crying.
“None of them were ever real.” Ashleigh’s contagious giggle danced across her memory. “She was so stereotypical tween. Boy bands and obsessed with clothes. No wonder. She was a program… someone’s idea of what an eleven-year-old girl is like. All the kids at school were characters. That nerd they kept picking on, the sports kids… everything was so perfect.” She wiped her face. “I’m not going to cry over programs.”
On top of that, she felt utterly ridiculous sitting in her bedroom without a stitch of clothing on. Duh. They want me to be their kid… I’m going to ask them for something to wear. Maybe they think I like this.
“Kiera?” called Teryn from downstairs. “Come here, please.”
She stared at the ladder, all of a sudden wanting to be alone with her grief. A sigh leaked from her nose. Will they kick me out if I don’t listen to them?
“Kiera? Are you up there?” called Teryn.
“Yeah. Coming.” She got up, crept to the opening in the floor, and stared down. The ladder looked too steep to walk on like steps, so she turned around and climbed with her back to the room below.
Teryn met her at the bottom, smiling. “Got you something.” He held up a piece of hide with a hole at the middle.
“What is it?” She reached out and felt the material. Soft leather on the inside, short fur on the outside… like a Doberman.
“A poncho.” He pulled it over her head and spun it a bit to the right. “With a hood.”
The poncho fell around her to the knees, loose, comfortable, and soft enough to feel like a dress with long sleeves. She raised her arms, only her hands sticking out past the edges. It took her brain a few seconds to process that he’d given her clothing. These people who had offered to welcome her into their home and adopt her had already started to take care of her. When that realization clicked, she looked up with fresh tears in her eyes.
After staring at him for a breath and a half, she flung herself into a hug, muttering, “Thank you,” over and over.
He picked her up, holding and rocking her side to side. Unable to remember the last time her actual father had held her like
that, she broke down and sobbed. After losing everything, nearly being sold into slavery, almost being eaten by a pack of wild dogs, and spending several terrifying days on her own, she finally felt safe.
Kiera closed her eyes and clung tight to him, overcome with gratitude.
I’m not alone anymore. I’m not gonna die.
15
The Gathering
Kiera spent her first night in her new room curled up on her side, staring at the dingy wooden bookshelf. Teryn made the toy rocket ship in expectation of having a baby, but it had spent years sitting on a shelf in an empty room. She thought back to the bandits who tried to kidnap her, how they said villagers would’ve given up half their home to have a kid. Maybe they had been right, and perhaps they would’ve traded her to would-be parents instead of an owner. Still, she couldn’t trust people who’d kill an old man and throw her in their cart like some other piece of junk they’d found out in the desert.
She fanned herself with the dog-leather poncho. No trace of a breeze stirred in this room and she missed her air conditioning. After a while of tossing and turning, unable to sleep in the heat, she stood on the mattress and pushed at the plastic covering the hole in the wall. She spotted a metal clamp inside the opening on either side, angled upward like something you’d stick a flag in. A moment of searching around with her hands located two wooden poles, a broom handle cut in half, on the floor between the mattress and the wall. She stuck them in the sockets on either side of the window to prop the plastic sheet outward like an awning, letting in air.
Relieved, she lay back down and closed her eyes.
Her dreams mixed the school that never happened with the scary corridor in the basement of the Citadel Corporation office. Ashleigh and Marlon ran alongside her screaming that the world is dying and they had to hide here. She reached the tank and found her game console floating in it.
“It’s about time you got here,” said the console.
Kiera shot upright in bed. She blinked at the cinder block walls and the dingy mattress beneath her. “Whoa. That was weird.”
Since the sun had come up, she rolled off the bed to her feet and climbed downstairs. Mala stood by the small table in the middle of the room, setting a large bowl at its center.
“Good morning. Teryn is fetching bread. I was about to wake you.”
“Morning…” Kiera wasn’t quite sure what to call her. Using the woman’s name didn’t feel proper, and after being here only hours, Mom might be overdoing it… but these people wanted to take her in. Again, she thought of the digital music player, not wanting to be alone. “…Mom.”
Mala’s huge smile caused a moment of guilt, like she’d tried to take advantage of the woman’s desperation for a child by calling her that. But she needed a home. It would take a while to get over the fear of being stranded alone in the desert with nothing, not knowing if she’d live three more days. This couple welcomed her into their home, barely knowing her, offered a safe place, protection, and even the promise of love.
Legacy and his Child of Earth stuff sounded crazier and crazier. Save the world? Yeah right. I’m safe here.
This place had the emotional warmth she’d been missing in the real world, her old life. The fake life tried to make up for it, changing her parents, but it went too far. They didn’t act like real people, more like the perfect family from a TV show.
Kiera hugged Mala and walked to the outhouse. She stepped from hubcap to stone to a piece of old computer case, avoiding a line of pill bugs as big as a man’s thumb. The shower curtain doorway slid aside with a shht. She stepped in, closed the curtain, and sat on a modern toilet seat bolted down over a medieval bench. A small shelf on the left held a collection of old books, most rotted or water damaged to the point little of the text remained.
Those aren’t here to be read… She bit her lip and giggled. Guess they really are better than e-books.
Within seconds of her returning to the house, Teryn walked in the door. He’d gone into town, trading a couple of vegetables for a loaf of bread. Another villager, Errol, farmed wheat. His wife worked in the Citadel and brought home seeds as well as some manner of treatment for the soil that allowed plants to grow.
Kiera sat with her new family, eating a breakfast of bread and sliced raw vegetables. “Are there still eggs?”
“Eggs?” asked Mala.
“Yeah, eggs. Like scrambled or fried or omelets?” Kiera gnawed on a tough carrot. “They come from chickens.”
“There is chicken from the Citadel,” said Teryn. “You can buy it with numbers. It’s food. Blocks…” He held up his hands to indicate a brick-sized shape.
“Omelet, too.” Mala nodded. “Also blocks. Wrapped in clear.”
“Like the protein bars?” Kiera cringed. “So… fake-o eggs.”
Her new parents looked at each other, shrugged, and resumed eating.
“Guess there’s no actual chickens left.” Kiera stared at her plate, at the pitiful vegetables, and smiled. “This is good. Thank you for the food.”
Teryn leaned over and ruffled her hair. “You are our daughter now. Oh… that reminds me… the Gathering.”
“Yes.” Mala nodded, eyes wide with happiness. “We must.”
Kiera looked up. “What?”
“Elder Lonna holds the Gathering once each month. Our whole village meets in the center and we talk about things, vote, plan to build new houses if needed, and so on.”
Mala grinned. “Whenever there is a new baby, the parents present them to the village during the Gathering. We must present you.”
Uhh. The woman looked so excited to finally be able to present a child, Kiera swallowed her initial no thanks reaction, and forced a smile. It couldn’t be any worse than when she had to sit on the lame saddle thing for her ninth birthday at that steakhouse. “Okay.”
Teryn tapped a finger on his chin. “I wonder if we will need to present her to the Sky Spirits. She’s a bit big to hold way up in the air.”
“What, like The Lion King?” Kiera giggled.
“The what?” asked Mala.
“You’ve seen the New Dominion?” Teryn looked horrified.
She shook her head. “No, it’s a really old movie. A baby lion is born and they hold him up to show everyone.”
“A lion?” asked Mala.
“Umm.” Kiera stared at them. “It’s a big cat.” When that further confused them, she sighed. “Forget it. It’s an animal that’s not around anymore.”
“Oh.” Teryn exhaled. “I suppose something like that. Since you’re no baby, I don’t think they will insist on it.”
“The village is close.” Mala reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Once they all know you, everyone here will protect you. When you are an adult, you will do the same for any child here.”
She smiled. “That’s kinda nice. Where I came from, most people didn’t even talk to their neighbors.”
“After we eat, I’ll show you around the garden. It will be nice to have a helper.” Mala smiled.
Kiera looked at her hands covered in dirt, black lines around her fingernails. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Bio-Mom scolded her for getting filthy and sent her off to the bathroom to wash. “Garden? I’ll get dirty.” She stuck her tongue out with a giggle.
Mala tilted her head.
“I’m joking. I’m already dirty. My other parents were neat freaks. If they saw me like this, they’d faint.”
“Oh.” Mala nodded. “We are sorry for your loss.”
Kiera swung her feet side to side. “Thanks. I… don’t think I really even knew them anymore.”
“Enough sad.” Teryn patted her shoulder. “Go and help your mother in the garden.”
Three days later, Mala woke Kiera at sunrise and led her across the scrap field behind the house to the sands beyond it. Five minutes of walking later, they arrived at an artificial waterway that stretched as far as she could see to the left and right. About twenty yards wide, the enormous concrete trench held more
water than Kiera had ever seen in one place before, not counting video or pictures of the ocean. To the right, it disappeared into the endless silt desert. To her left, the canal entered the pine forest outside Exxo.
Mala walked with her to the edge. The manufactured river had a shape similar to the bottom half of a stop sign, the walls beneath the surface covered in patches of green algae.
“Is it safe?” asked Kiera.
“If it has not rained within a few hours, you can drink this, yes. The rain is not healthy. It takes some time for it to become pure. This water comes from the Citadel. We are here to clean ourselves. Today is the Gathering.”
Mala removed her dress and slid into the water. The calm current created vees around her where she broke the surface, but didn’t push her along. Kiera dropped her poncho near her mother’s dress and jumped in. As soon as she entered the water, a constant vibration and high-pitched mechanical noise seeped into her bones. She clung to the wall, the angled part too far down for her feet to reach while keeping her head above water. The flat section at the middle of the bottom had to be at least twenty feet deep.
“What’s that sound?” asked Kiera, shivering at the chilly water and clinging to the wall so the current didn’t sweep her away.
Mala poured handfuls of water over her head. “This river goes across flat ground. You are hearing the machines that push it.”
“Oh. Is it dangerous? Do people get sucked up by the pumps and hurt?”
“I have never seen such a thing happen. But we only swim and bathe here by the village. I have never been in the river closer to the Citadel where the machines are.”
She relaxed, treading water while her mother washed her hair. Due to the special occasion, Mom used some of their precious ‘cleaning elixir,’ which Kiera figured to be liquid soap from the Citadel. The purple gel smelled flowery and lathered a lot more than expected. She gazed along the path of the river into the barren distance.
Far away from Exxo, a dark shadow rose over the ground. Its trapezoid shape reminded her of the Citadel Corporation logo, but she couldn’t remember them ever building any actual giant pyramids. A ropey twist of clouds, like a captive tornado, whorled above the dark spot. She gazed upward, following it to the sky and the cloud dome overhead.
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 15