by David Beers
Leon turned his head slowly, evenly, like his neck muscles were a machine rather than flesh—everything working in a steady, unhurried motion—and looked at the man. His mind went back to the knife. Went to it shoved hilt deep into the plaster ceiling. Went to the piece of paper that it pinned to the ceiling. Went to the black letters typed across it.
"Would you do it again, if you knew what would happen?"
"Do what?" Leon asked. The man in front of the crowd screamed, but that didn't matter. It was in another place, his scream—behind a thirty-foot concrete wall, so dull that it might not even exist. Only the man next to him mattered now, this old man who wore sunglasses and a hat. Because the old man knew about that knife and the question it pinned to his ceiling and Leon was beginning to doubt the man in the glass vat knew about either. He was beginning to doubt that the man in the glass vat killed anyone, ever.
"Would you tell your wife about your friend?" The old man turned his head, his black glasses facing Leon. "You look confused, Leon. Is this not what you wanted? The man accused of killing your wife about to be murdered?"
Leon felt his right hand start to tremble.
"Let's not have a scene. That wouldn't do anyone any good." The old man's voice was finally a whisper, sounding like Leon imagined the knife had as it moved through the air, right before it entered his wife's skull. "I just want to know, Leon, would you do it again? Would you tell on Caesar?"
"Did you kill her?" Leon asked, his own voice matching the old man's. Not consciously, though. There wasn't a whole lot of conscious thinking going on inside Leon.
"Not in the sense you're thinking, but for our purposes here, yes, I did. I made sure April Bastille would never tell an application anything again. I'm wondering now if I should make sure of the same with you." The old man turned his head back to the black man. "That guy in there. He's where he is because of your decision. Caesar, whatever is coming to him is because of your decision. Your wife, well, that was both of you. Had you kept your mouth shut, things would be very different right now. Are you happy how this is turning out?"
Another scream from in front of Leon, no longer behind that thirty-foot wall but from another universe. He didn't look.
"You killed her..."
"Yes...Yes. Yes. Yes. I killed her. Move on from that Leon, and quickly. She's gone. The guy up there is gone. And Caesar may very well be gone too. What you need to figure out right now is whether or not you need to be gone. I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to hear yours as well." The man swallowed. "I know you're at a disadvantage here, for multiple reasons including your breeding, but I need you to answer my question. Would you do it again?"
Leon's right hand shook like Parkinson's lived inside him.
"No, you old fool. Of course I wouldn't," he said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Caesar didn't stand up because he didn't believe what he saw in front of him. A mirage, a hallucination, a trick of the lights—any of it made more sense than what was actually there.
Caesar's mother, father, and brother all stood in front of the glass cage he lived in.
Sarah, Sam, and Cato.
They had walked out of the darkness, slowly, as if they weren't quite sure where they were going. Their arms weren't pinned behind their backs though; they weren't being forced into this endless room.
"Caesar?" His mom said from thirty feet out, her voice full of pain, but hope too. Hope because she must have thought him dead, must have thought him already liquidated, and now here he was, still alive.
He stood and walked to the edge of his box. He wanted to call out to her, to say her name, but it couldn't be real. His family couldn't be here. Why? Why would he be allowed to see them?
Why are you still alive? His mind asked.
But he didn't know that answer any more than this one.
Cato ran, breaking away from his parents and heading to the glass cage. "Caesar!" He shouted with only the joy a person not recognizing the circumstances surrounding him could muster. A joy that said the same thing his mother's question had, but without the doubt. Without the pain. The joy of a sixteen-year-old.
His father said nothing, just kept walking, holding Caesar's mother's hand.
Cato made it to the glass.
"Is it you?" Caesar asked.
"Who else would it be?" Cato asked, smiling.
Caesar looked to his parents who walked up behind Cato.
"How did you get here?" Caesar asked, looking at his Dad.
"An application showed up at the house and told us if we wanted to see you we could." His Dad put his hands, palm up, in the air.
"What's happening?" Sarah asked.
Caesar looked to his father, his eyebrows rising. He knew better than to ask his father a single question about what they had talked about on the porch, but he found it hard to believe that even now his father hadn't told her.
"Why are you in here?" Sarah asked, panic not just creeping into her voice, but nearly reverberating off the glass surrounding Caesar.
Caesar looked at his brother. This was the last time he would see Cato. Right now. Whatever The Genesis was doing, it wasn't in Caesar's favor. It wasn't going to let him out, let him go, let him live again. This was part of the torture, the same as Leon's conversation had been. Part of the process of breaking him. Of letting him see everything that went wrong when you decided you knew more than it did.
"I let someone go," he said, finding his mother's eyes. "A little girl. I was supposed to liquidate her and I didn't. I found her mother on the outside and I let her go."
Tears rushed to his mother's eyes. Her mouth opened slightly like she had something else to say, but nothing came out.
"What's going to happen?" Cato asked.
Caesar looked down at him again. I'm going to die. Except could he say that to his brother? Could he tell it to a sixteen year old who would never have the intelligence Caesar did, who would never understand, not fully, why Caesar did what he did?
"I don't know," he answered.
"Are they going to let you go?" Cato said.
Caesar looked to his father, wanting some help, wanting his father to say anything that might release him from this burden of saying no, I'm not going anywhere.
"Yeah, of course they're going to let him out," Sam answered, meeting Caesar's eyes.
Caesar looked at his mother. She was near the point of crying. She knew his father lied, knew that he did it to keep Cato's hope alive, at least for now.
"When do you think they'll let you come home?" Cato asked.
"Soon," Caesar said. "Shouldn't be long now." This was the last time he would see his brother and he was lying to him. Telling him something that he knew to be false, and even so, he didn't know what else to say. Didn't want to see his brother devastated, not now, not here. "How long can you guys stay?" Caesar asked.
"I guess as long as we want," Sam answered. "Doesn't seem any hurry to get us out of here."
"Might as well have a seat, then," Caesar said. He sat on the floor, his legs crossed and almost touching the glass.
Cato was the first to follow his lead, and then the rest of his family did as well.
They sat and they talked for hours, and it was good. For a little bit of time, things were good.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Only silence lived in the hallway. Silence and maybe death; like no life lived here, or had ever lived here, or could ever live here. Caesar knew that there was at least one application next to him, knew that his arms were bound behind his back and despite him seeing nothing besides metal walls and ceilings, forces much deadlier than those surrounded him. Even so, he thought he might have been the only actual life to ever walk down this hallway. Applications weren't life. The Genesis wasn't life. Not in the same way as Caesar. It lived, but only with intelligence. It had no flesh. No blood. No cells. Nothing that made up the rest of the world. This hallway was built by applications for applications. If another human had ever walked this
path, it was only to go to whatever end awaited them. He was in a place very different than the cities, very different than the wilderness. He was in a place made for another life form, from something that evolved not from the singular cell that started on Earth, but something else entirely. For the first time, Caesar was on a part of the Earth not meant for him.
He sat in the middle of the glass box when the walls came down. They simply slid into the floor and the ceiling above him winked out of existence as if it was only a digital replication of glass. Caesar sat on the floor, looking around at the darkness, feeling the air that surrounded his cage for the first time.
"It is time for your judgment." The application floated next to him, unseen, but dangerous—surely. It pinned his arms and stood him up, then Caesar started his walk. He made it to the edge of the light, the boundary he had looked at for who knew how many days. And then darkness surrounded him, the application not slowing his walk in the slightest. He kept his feet moving because he knew if he stopped for a second, the application would drag him by his hair if needed. He felt the firm grasps on both arms, the grasp of the invisible application, using the oxygen around him to form holds which felt like iron.
Judgment. Yesterday, if it was yesterday, had been his last contact with the world. Caesar had been right; his parents visit only a tease, an acknowledgment that Caesar had lost. That no matter what he had done to The Genesis, no matter how he had disobeyed, his fate would be worse because he was losing that which he held closest: not his life, but his family.
Fine, he thought as he walked onward. Fine. I lost. But Laura won. Paige won. I lost but you lost too. The Genesis lost because it didn't find Laura.
The application stopped him abruptly and he listened as something happened in front of him—machinery moving. A vertical line of white light appeared, and then he understood the noise: doors opening. The vertical line grew out horizontally, and the white light poured from the opening door in front of him. Caesar couldn't raise his hand to shield his eyes; he could only squint, not wanting to fully close them, not wanting to miss what might come.
Is this it? The judgment?
The door stood open completely and the application forced Caesar forward again, stepping across the precipice from the black hallway behind and into the light filled room before him.
He stumbled as his eyes adjusted enough to understand the room. The application didn't stop moving, didn't slow for a second, but Caesar barely felt the pain as his foot twisted slightly and the grips tightened on his arms. He felt nothing because of what he saw.
In the cage, he had looked out at a room that seemed to not end, but was covered in complete darkness. He couldn't see the end because the light ended. Here, in this place, light didn't end.
Neither did the room.
He saw them, all of them, not knowing it was possible. Not knowing that all these years Grace had been invisible, she could have been any shape she wanted, could have formed into a beautiful woman or a dinosaur from the earliest of times. She could have changed the air around her to be anything she wanted, but instead chose to remain invisible. And of course. Because how could cities continue to operate if they were filled with what he saw now?
Applications filled this place, not just the ground next to him, but the air as well. Few were anything of real substance, but all could be seen, looking like glowing orbs. White, green, blue, black, as many colors as humanity could imagine filled the room. They flew around, some moving so fast that Caesar could only see where they started and where they ended, completely missing the movement. They need not worry about crashing into each other, because they simply moved through any application they contacted. Constantly. Blue and green colors mixing with each other for a split second before continuing on their path.
Flying bolts of light filled the air and ground around Caesar, nearly to the point that he could focus on nothing else but their beauty.
He peered through them as he was forced forward, finally seeing the pattern that he missed, missed because the lights flying around his head kept him from understanding the true purpose of this room. This wasn't a playground for applications. This was humanity's beginning.
He wasn't allowed to stop and stare, the application kept him walking at that same grueling pace, but he looked as long and hard as he could.
A container eclipsed anything else Caesar had ever seen. He imagined if he stood next to the sun, only then would something surpass what lay before him in magnificence. A transparent tank, inside it an endless horizon of unborn babies.
They floated, their eyes closed, in a pink tinged liquid. A tiny tube connected to each one of their stomachs, the tubes clear, only noticeable because of the different shaded liquid they fed the children. A million artificial umbilical cords dropping into the tank and attaching themselves to unborn babies.
Caesar couldn't see the end of the tank, either to the left or right. It appeared that however long this room was, the tank stretched the length of it. The ceiling might have stood two hundred feet high and the tank reached the top, where the umbilical cords disappeared into the ceiling. To his left and right, Caesar saw only children, some the size of his index fingers and others looking like they might weigh a solid eight pounds. Children were created here, no longer in the bellies of mothers, but in this vat. This tank filled with a pink liquid, this artificial womb. The children didn't move, didn't cry out, just floated in the tank, once in a while moving a limb ever so slightly.
There were so many that they overlapped one another, touching without even knowing.
The application pulled Caesar underneath the tank, into a tunnel built at the bottom, and he looked up, seeing babies only inches from him—not understanding what surrounded them, where they were, or how different this was from evolution's own birthing techniques. This tank, that went on and on forever, was their mother. The only one they knew.
Caesar watched as one of the babies, a bigger one, was pulled upward. Pulled by the tube attached to its stomach, through the liquid. The tube cared nothing for the other children, as the one it pulled bumped into them and jostled them around. Large or small, the tube pulled its child past all the rest, raising it to the top, to the ceiling where...where it would perhaps be birthed into the world. Or maybe liquidated. Maybe already not meeting specifications. Caesar lost sight of the child as other children floated through the liquid to its previous spot.
He walked for what felt like ten minutes, walking through countless human beings, walking through a child production plant, unable to see anything besides the tank that surrounded him—huge in the same sense worlds are huge. Applications passed by him, their rays of lights going back and forth in the tunnel, moving somewhere to serve these babies...or to serve The Genesis, which manufactured these children. He had thought those applications were what mattered when he walked into this room and now he realized they were merely servants, that not a single one of the thousand applications zipping around him mattered, that the millions of babies in the vat above him were what mattered.
He finally exited the other side and he would have turned around to look again, to see the vat from this side, if his bladder hadn't almost given out on him.
Caesar saw the same glass container he had seen as a child. The same one he had witnessed the adulterer die in. The same one where the man melted, his face dripping like heated plastic, his eyes turning from solid orbs to long strings of goo. He saw the vat, but this time there wasn't a stranger inside it.
His family stood there instead.
Sarah, Sam, and Cato. All of them naked, all of them holding onto each other, gripping each other's bare skin in the most frightened way imaginable. Only death's immediate threat could make someone grip another like that, only the knowledge that death floated just over their heads could conjure the fear shaking through them.
"No," Caesar whispered, his feet completely stopping their forward movement. "No, no, no, no, no."
The application dragged him onward, the toes of h
is shoes skating across the floor because he could no longer hold himself up.
"NOT THEM! They didn't do it!" He screamed at anything that would listen. No applications flew around this place. No other life besides himself and his family in front of him.
He hadn't even seen the screen behind, the clear glass hanging from the two hundred foot high ceiling, not until it turned black. Then his family's naked flesh sat in front of a black backdrop, looking that much more starkly pale.
White lines dropped down the top of the glass screen, looking like thin lines of paint, spaced maybe six inches apart. They dropped at different speeds but all flowed to the bottom of the screen, hitting the floor at different times.
"NO!" Caesar shouted again, at the white lines and the black screen, at the application still dragging him along. Spit shot from his mouth, but none of his rage mattered in the slightest.
"Caesar Wells." The words came from everywhere at once, just as they had in the cage before. Louder now though, more air to ricochet off. The white lines on the screen vibrated with each syllable, looking like electricity shot through each trail of paint. "You've admitted to conspiracy to remove a minor from population control. Is this correct?"
"YES. YES. I DID IT! NOT THEM!" He shouted, the application having stopped his forward movement, but now he tried to surge forward, tried to break the grip that had walked him through this place. To see his parents naked, holding his brother, in a container that was meant for him.
"The girl's name was Laura Hedrick, correct?"
"Yes!" he cried out. "Yes. I did it. I let her go. Not them."
The floor next to his family opened up in a round circle and Caesar saw the top of another glass cage begin rising. It moved upward, slowly, but eventually he understood what was in it. The brown hair of the girl he first saw lying on the grass. The further up the container moved, the more he saw, until he was looking at a young, naked girl—Laura, who would have been a Hedrick if allowed to grow old.
"No," he whispered. The girl was alone, not with Paige. Where was Paige? She wouldn't have just let the girl go on her own. And if Paige wasn't here, then that meant Paige was already dead. Maybe not liquidated. Maybe killed some other way, maybe she had fought back and applications murdered her on the spot. The girl though, Laura, had been saved for this, saved for Caesar. So that he could see what all his struggle had gained him. His family and the girl he tried to rescue, all standing before him without a stitch of clothing between the four, all looking at him. None said a word. None cried out. They just looked at him, knowing that this was their end. That whatever happened to Caesar after this, they wouldn't witness it.