by David Beers
Chapter Twenty-Two
At eleven o'clock, Caesar stepped off the train and into his parents' apartment hallway. His hands no longer shook, but he kept them shoved inside his pockets anyway. If they started shaking again, he didn't want anyone noticing. Not even his family if possible.
"Why do you care about them seeing your hands shaking? You're here to tell them aren't you? You're going to get them killed anyway, so why not let them see everything."
Caesar didn't listen to Grace speaking in his ear; he walked forward, heading to his parent's front door. He didn't know exactly why he was here; when he brought Leon over earlier in the night, he had hoped his friend might give him some support, might give him strength for what he planned on doing. Instead, his friend did the smart thing: told him to stop with the madness and to keep him out of it. If Caesar wanted to go down this path that ended in a melting body, fine, but he shouldn't ask Leon to join him. His friend wanted nothing to do with it.
He sat alone in his living room, silent, for a long time after that. Neither he nor Grace speaking.
And then the note came.
A noise had arisen from the scroll sitting on the living room table. A message. Caesar looked at the table, not moving, not caring what it might say.
"You need to read it," Grace said, having already accessed it.
Caesar had turned his head towards her voice, hearing the shakiness in it, the...fear. Grace didn't experience fear as far as Caesar understood. He knew she could, but he'd never seen it happen. There was nothing for assistants to fear, nothing for applications to fear at all. They were The Genesis, basically—what could touch them besides their own decisions? Yet, here she was, her voice sounding like she'd received word that Caesar was scheduled for liquidation. Like the message itself might be his death warrant.
"Read it," she said again.
He reached forward, picking up the scroll from the table. "What is—"
But then he saw.
Two simple words, hand written. No sender. No address. Just two words written on the scroll with nothing attached.
We know.
The shakes came after that. His whole body shivering as if he stood naked in an arctic winter, just waiting to die. Someone knew. What, though? What he was thinking? What he was talking about? What he was considering doing? Who? Who could possibly know besides Grace and Leon?
"Is it real?" He asked Grace.
"I don't know."
"It could be a practical joke, right? Someone just randomly messaging a stranger, trying to scare them?" He stared down at the scroll, seeing the words, not willing to erase the note and not willing to pick it up and study the words. Unwilling to move. Unwilling to do anything but sit here and shiver.
"When was the last time you saw a practical joke? Those, as much as anything else, have been bred out of humanity," she answered him.
"Then who, and why? Why send it?"
"Because they can. Because what you're doing has reached its end. I told you, Caesar. I told you to stop, to not do any of it, and now someone knows."
"Then why didn't they just report me? Why let me know?" Caesar asked.
"How am I supposed to have any idea, Caesar? You started a dangerous game and to think that you could outsmart the entire world is arrogance I can't begin to understand."
He didn't say anything else to Grace. He only stared at the words and thought. Who could know? Who would know and not report him? All the questions led to one conclusion: he didn't know and wouldn't know until the writer came forward. A few minutes later, the shivering subsided and Caesar gained control of himself again.
"So now you're going to your parents? Everything else tonight hasn't been enough to calm you the hell down? Still not convinced shutting up and doing your job is the most appropriate course of action?" Grace asked as he dressed himself in his apartment.
He ignored her then, just like he was now, finally arriving at his parent's—an apartment that lived amongst the clouds at the very top of the skyscraper. His brother was here, most likely awake, and his parents here too, although most likely asleep. Why had he come? For comfort. For acceptance. The rest of the world might toss him from the top of this building rather than let him think the thoughts that currently whipped around his brain, but his family...they would keep him. They would love him. He came because he was frightened, because he didn't know where else to turn. Someone knew, maybe multiple someones, and he couldn't turn the thoughts off in his head. It was like he had unearthed an oil-well, and no matter what he did, the oil just kept shooting up. He knew no way to plug it and so the black thoughts about this world and his place in it just kept struggling to the top. And so he'd come home, come to the place he grown up in, and—
"You're going to get them killed. You're going to get all of us killed, Caesar. If you don't see that, then you're blind. You're here and thinking about telling them, about asking them for their support. Do you want your brother to die? He's sixteen. This isn't just about you and me anymore. You're making this about everyone you know. You're going to infect them all with this sickness, and they're not going to survive. You and me, we might already be dead because of it, but they don't have to die, Caesar. They don't have to know."
She was right and he didn't care. She was a machine. An application. She wasn't human and only here because his parents had decided he needed an assistant. Now they were tied to one another, even if he didn't prefer it. He couldn't make her go away, but he didn't have to listen. Didn't have to do anything but keep moving forward and find someone that would comfort him.
He walked to his parents' door and slowly pressed the alert button. He waited, unable to hear the sounds that slowly filtered through the house, letting his family know someone was at the door.
When it opened, his father stood there in a robe.
"Caesar? What's wrong?" Sam asked.
* * *
Caesar sat down at the kitchen table and his father put a cup of coffee in front of him.
"Your mother's asleep, and I don't know if Cato is, but he didn't open the door when the alert went off. I can wake them up if you need me to."
"No," Caesar said, bringing the cup of hot liquid to his lips. He sipped it and put it back to the table. Coffee beans grown in a lab. Coffee beans that never touched dirt and never felt an actual rainfall, everything about them artificial. Even the DNA underlying the beans wasn't real in the sense that it grew from evolution's process. The Genesis had managed to recreate the genetic code and now no one ever need own a farm again. Everything could be produced from a lab.
And goddamnit, why couldn't he stop thinking like this?
"What's going on then? Why'd you come so late?" His Dad sat down at the table across from him.
"Do you like your job, Dad?"
Sam chuckled, a low noise. "That's an odd question to ask this late at night. I suppose I do. It's important, helps the world keep turning. What makes you ask that?"
"You and Mom ever replaced your assistants?"
"No," Sam said. "Why are you asking all of this?"
"Can we go outside?"
Sam didn't answer, just stood and walked to the living room, pressed a button, and the wall opened up for him. They both stepped outside onto the porch, a thousand feet above the street below, but completely encapsulated in glass. The wind and weather couldn't enter the area, although the glass automatically started blowing air in a mimic of what a porch thousands of feet below might have felt like.
The wall shut behind them and they were alone, outside, suspended above a drop that would leave little besides a blood spot on the ground beneath.
"What's all this about?" Sam asked.
Caesar listened for Grace, ready for her to tell him to shut up, to say nothing, to keep the rest of his family out of this. To let them live. She kept quiet though. She was as silent as the night beyond the glass he stood in.
"I don't know if I can keep doing my job," Caesar said. "I don't know if I can keep liquidating child
ren."
His father sat in one of the over-sized chairs, reaching to the table to his right and grabbing his cigarette. He didn't put it to his mouth, just held it in his hand.
Caesar's own hands began shaking again, no longer in his pockets, but holding each other in front of him.
"Sit down," Sam said. He waited for Caesar to find his seat. "You're far too young to retire, son."
"I know." Silence passed between them, Caesar feeling his father was waiting on him to finish, to say something more. "I just can't keep killing kids. I can't keep sending them to their death because they're color blind or their IQ doesn't fall within a predetermined range."
"Who have you told about this?" Sam asked.
"Leon."
"His wife?"
Caesar shook his head.
"And what about Leon; what's he going to do about what you told him? What exactly did you tell him?" His father brought the cigarette to his mouth, pulling on it, the synthetic smoke moving into his mouth and down through his lungs, giving his lungs and the environment as much pollution as filtered water.
"I'm seeing someone who is scheduled to receive a child in a couple years. I found out today I have to liquidate the little girl. She might confuse her reds and greens when she gets older. I told him I didn't want to."
"What did he say?" Sam asked.
"He said I was crazy and not to tell him anything else about it."
His father took another pull, the electric glow at the end looking as silly now as when The Genesis first introduced it. The thing wasn't a cigarette, was nothing like a cigarette—contained not a trace of tobacco, and yet people still bought them, still smoked them. Unable to let go of that part of the past, even a thousand years later.
"Is he going to tell his wife?"
"I don't know."
His Dad looked out the glass to his left. Lights in other apartment complexes shone out, but none nearing the magnitude of the moon's light from this high up. "You might have gotten yourself killed tonight," his father said.
"I know. Grace says I might have gotten you all killed for showing up."
"Grace is smart. Probably the smartest application I've ever met. You would be wise to start listening to her more than you do."
"I'm sorry," Caesar said, guilt opening in his stomach like a blooming, black rose.
"No, no, that's not what I meant. You're welcome here with all of your problems. Your mother would say the same. I just mean in general. You should give her advice more attention than you do. More attention than you have your entire life. Your hatred for applications is barely kept below the surface, and it's good that you've managed to not let many people see it, but she's a positive for you—whether you want to admit it or not." His father pulled on the cigarette again. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. What should I do?"
"You should liquidate the girl," Sam said. "The world is the way it is and anything you do to change it is going to be little more than a leaf dropping into a river. You might cause the slightest splash, but probably not even that. The river is going to keep on moving, taking you under too. You should liquidate the girl and let the woman deal with her pain in whatever way she needs."
Caesar didn't say anything for a few moments. His father sounded like a man saying the truth, but one who didn't like his own words. A man who ate his vegetables because they kept him alive, but not with any joy. Leon had run from the apartment, fear and shock ruling him. His father sat peacefully, if sad, smoking on a cigarette as he said these things.
"And what if I don't?"
"Then you'll probably die along with the little girl. Maybe the mother too. The Genesis takes no pity on those not fit for its society," Sam said.
"What would you do?"
"Me?" The light at the end of the cigarette lit up his father's eyes, showing little more than black orbs in the porch's darkness. The orbs looked at Caesar though and no longer out the glass window. "I'd kill her. I'd kill her a thousand times. I'd slit her throat myself if that's what The Genesis commanded. I'm a coward, Caesar. Why do you think I named you Caesar?"
"He died trying to consolidate power."
"He died doing what he thought was best for his Republic," his father shot back. "Yeah, I'd kill her and I'd sleep sound the same night. I've gone along to get along my entire life, and that's not going to change now."
They both sat in the still darkness for a time, neither saying anything.
"Then why are you listening to me tell you this? You could be liquidated for simply not reporting me."
His father breathed in the cigarette and turned his eyes back out to the night. "My cowardice doesn't extend to my children."
"What should I do?" Caesar asked.
It was a long time before his father answered. They both just sat on the porch, feeling the simulated breeze and staring out of the glass structure.
"You should do what will allow you to sleep at night."
"Even if it means I only have a few more nights left to sleep?"
"Yeah," his father said. "Even if it means that."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Paige sat on the bench, her face a picture of concern.
Caesar sat next to her. Grace was somewhere around, he knew that although she hadn't spoken to him since his parent's hallway. She had remained quiet after his conversation with his father, hadn't even woken him up this morning. She was here but acting as if she wasn't. Acting as if he had no assistant. He didn't know what that meant, what she was thinking, but he didn't imagine she would approve of him sitting here on this bench with Paige. Especially after last night. He ended up going to sleep three hours before showing up to work. He made plans to meet Paige at noon, and now they were here, on this bench in the park, alone for the most part.
Paige hadn't said anything on their walk over and she wasn't speaking now, either. Just watching Caesar, waiting on him to say something. To tell her why he asked to meet, and why he asked to meet here. Why he looked like he was carrying around the whole of humanity's guilt.
"What I'm going to tell you, Paige, could get me killed. I need you to understand that before I speak, okay?"
He met her eyes and they didn't show the fear that Leon's had. They showed worry; they showed curiosity, but not fear.
"Then why tell me?" She asked.
"Because it concerns you."
She didn't speak, seeming to give him the space to say what he needed.
"If you tell anyone this, I'm dead. Okay? I need you to say that you understand that. I'm not going to ask you to keep what I tell you to yourself, but I just want you to understand the consequences of not doing it. I'll die, plain and simple."
"I understand," Paige said, her voice a whisper.
"Your daughter, Laura, is scheduled for liquidation. By me. I was supposed to do it yesterday, and if I don't do it today, questions will be asked."
Caesar didn't want to look up at her, didn't want to see her face, but he refused to stare at the ground, to look away. Her eyes filled with water but her face didn't crack, not completely. She tried to contain whatever pain welled inside of her, tried to not let it out. Caesar couldn't imagine what the little girl meant to Laura—perhaps the last piece of her husband. Perhaps she planned on loving this little girl in her husband's stead, doubling up what would have once just been the love of a mother for her child—heaping on the extra love that she could no longer give her spouse. What Caesar just said ended that notion. Caesar just told her there would be no love, at all—not for her husband and not for her daughter. That everything she had built her life around the past ten years was gone, cast out into the ocean, never to be seen again. Three sentences and her world destroyed.
"Why?" She asked.
Caesar felt tears in his own eyes. He knew he was going to tell her the reason and he knew how stupid it would sound coming out of his mouth. "She might be color blind in the future."
Paige whimpered, but the tears still managed to stay in her eyes.
She brought a hand to the corner of her right eye to stem it. "Are you going to?" She asked after a few seconds, her voice having settled.
"If I don't, I'll probably die," he said, looking away for the first time. And what else was he going to do? Live forever? Was that the plan? He was already dead. That's why Grace was silent. She knew that he'd crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed. He'd told two people his plans, and this was the third. It simply wasn't possible for them all to keep quiet, to keep his secret, and more, if he planned on going through with whatever ridiculous notions his head dreamed up, then it wouldn't matter if they kept quiet. He would be liquidated before the day ended. Caesar was already dead and he realized it for the first time sitting next to Paige. Maybe he made the decision to die the moment his brother sounded so excited about his job. Maybe he made the decision long ago, before he was even born, when he was just a mixture of genetics inside the gene pool. He didn't know and it didn't matter. "I'm going to get her out," he said. "If you want me to. I'll get her out and you two will have to run. You'll have to leave the city. Any city. Anywhere The Genesis is, you'll be found. You'll have to run and you'll have to continue running, because if you don't, you'll both be liquidated. I'll let her go but your life will never be the same."
Paige nodded, her hand back at the corner of her eye. "Okay," she said.
"You're serious? I'm not meaning you get to run to another quadrant. Anywhere that girl registers will set off alarms. Anywhere you register will set off alarms. You'll have to live off the grid, both of you, forever. You'll be alone once you have her, and...she's six, Paige. She's not an adult. She's never been out into the world before."
"It's either that or we kill her, right? Either she comes with me and we run, or you and I kill her?" She asked.
"You and I?"
"That's what you're here doing, asking what I want, right? Whether I want to kill her or not. If I said to do it, I'd be as much at fault as you."
Caesar kept quiet.
"I won't kill her. I can't do it," she said.