by David Beers
"Who are you?" Caesar asked as the old man pushed him down the hallway. This wasn't a house, not of a modern or ancient variety. There were too many doors and too many corridors. Caesar was mapping it out in his head, memorizing every door and every turn they took in case he needed to try to run. The place was extensive, what they missed in building up, they succeeded in building out.
"My name's Jerry."
"And what do you do, Jerry?"
"I find people like you, mainly."
Caesar tilted his head backward, looking up at the old man. Jerry didn't look back down.
"What are you?"
"There's going to be time for that," Jerry said. "You need to decide something first, though."
Caesar said nothing and only paid attention to the turns, the rooms, and the fact that he saw no one else walking these halls. No electronics, no digital walls, no applications anywhere. Just the old man, himself, and the wheel chair, creaking along the concrete floor.
Finally, Jerry rolled the wheelchair through an already open door, and behind a glass window, Caesar saw Leon.
He sat in a chair, his hands taped to the arm rests and his legs to the bottom of the chair. He stared forward, his eyes looking like they were staring right at Caesar, but they couldn't have been because no reaction dawned on his face. If he saw Caesar, he wasn't recognizing him.
"How did you get him?" Caesar asked, turning his head around, trying to look at Jerry's eyes, but the old man didn't look down, just pushed him right up to the edge of the window.
"It's one way," he said. "You can see in but he can't see out."
"Why’s he here?" Caesar's head followed the old man as he walked around to the front of the wheel chair, leaning against the window.
"For the same reason his wife is dead. Because he helped turn you in. He told his wife, who in turn told an application, who in turn told The Genesis. Everyone in that chain is dead besides the beginning and the end. The beginning is here, behind the window, and the end is The Genesis. I could have killed him, as I did his wife, but he's your friend and I want you to make that choice. He turned you over, which resulted in your family dying, in the little girl you tried to save dying. A lot of people suffered because he opened his mouth, and really, you were about to go ahead and kill yourself too, if we want to be honest."
Caesar looked away from the old man and in at Leon. He had told April. That's all. He had told his wife something that scared the hell out of him and in that simple action, ruined the rest of Caesar's life. Ruined his parent's life. Ruined his brother's life. The little girl? She never even had the opportunity for life. She knew a factory farm that pumped out children by the millions every year.
"You killed April?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I had her stabbed multiple times in the head."
"Why?"
The old man's eyes narrowed. "Why did I kill her or why did I have her stabbed like I did?"
"Stabbed," Caesar said, not looking away from Leon.
"The first murder in a thousand years needed to make a statement. She refused to use her mind and so I took it from her. The world panicked for a few minutes before The Genesis threw someone up on stage and liquidated them."
"It wasn't just about her, though."
Jerry smiled, not wide, not enough to fill up his face, but a slight uptick on one side of his mouth. "No. Of course not. She needed to be punished, but it was bigger than her. What I'm doing here is bigger than any one person."
"And what about Leon in there, how does he play into this? It's not just about me is it?"
The old man clapped his hands, loud and surprising, shocking Caesar's eyes back to him.
"I forget who I'm talking with," Jerry said, chuckling. "No, this choice isn't just about you. It's bigger than you, but it's still one you have to make. You see that door in there? Someone is waiting on the other side, and when you tell me, that person will walk into the room, turn off the lights, and shoot Leon in the head. You won't have to see it or hear it. The room is sound proof. All you'll see is darkness and the flash of a gun muzzle."
Caesar went back to Leon. He didn't look panicked or harmed in anyway. Just bored, more than anything else. The old man was asking if Caesar wanted him killed? That was the question? He wasn't even asking Caesar to walk inside the room and pull the trigger himself, just asking if he wanted someone else to do it.
"Is that how you kill all your people? You have someone else do it?"
"Now? Yes, for the most part." There wasn't any shame in his voice. No embarrassment.
He hated Leon. He couldn't sit here and act like he didn't. He hated him in ways he didn't fully understand because of the speed at which everything happened. The speed at which he went from spending time with his family to watching them morph into a puddle. The speed at which he went from having everything to being ready to jump out a window. The speed from which life turned to death. He told Leon because he had to tell someone, because Leon was his best friend and Caesar didn't know how to deal with the feelings overwhelming him. And in turn, Leon did the same. Told his best friend. That's it. Nothing else. He had done the same as Caesar, and the path went on from there, all the way to this very point. So if Caesar wanted to place blame on Leon then he had to place it on himself as well. He had to put some of that on his own shoulders, because he hadn't kept his mouth shut. He hadn't listened to Grace.
Caesar's eyes were wet.
He shook his head in disbelief. Disbelief that he would even consider the notion the old man was talking about. Having Leon killed? He'd grown up with the man in that room. The first time Caesar ever had sex, he freaked out the girl might be pregnant despite using multiple precautions, and Leon had sat there and laughed at him—told him he was just being paranoid. The first time he stayed up all night had been with Leon, the entertainment center on to the left of them but their eyes fixed on the rising sun outside. Every single memory from five years old onward had Leon in it, all the way up to this one. What the hell was this Jerry guy talking about? Killing him? Have him killed?
Caesar looked up at the old man, not bothering to wipe at his eyes. "I'd kill you before I killed him."
"Final answer?" The old man said, smiling as if there was some kind of joke inside his words, but Caesar didn't get it.
"Yes."
Jerry turned around and pressed a button next to an intercom. "Go ahead."
The door opened inside Leon's room and a man walked in. Leon looked at him but didn't show surprise, or fear. Just that same boredom.
The man held a knife and that's all Caesar could see. Nothing else. That knife. Moving towards Leon.
The man grabbed Leon's wrists and sliced open the tape. The man squatted and cut the tape from his legs. Caesar watched as Leon spoke, rubbing his wrists.
"Jesus," Caesar said, the tears in his eyes finally falling over onto his face.
Chapter Forty
The Life of Caesar Wells
By Leon Bastille
I owe my life to Caesar. I don't take what he did for granted. I understand that he would have been well within reason to kill me that day. To let Manny walk in and pull the trigger. Manny would have done it too. Manny was fine either way, bringing that knife in to free me or bringing the gun in to kill me. Manny was good at those types of things. Caesar didn't let them though; I can't believe he actually said what he did to Jerry.
"I'd kill you before I killed him."
I don't think anyone had spoken to Jerry like that in a hundred years.
Caesar isn't a hero, as you'll see, but in the end—he let me live. Despite everything that happened to him, he let me live. I love him for that. Even now, even after everything that he's done and the things that he's going to do, I still love him for it.
Sometimes I wonder if he would have killed April.
I think he would have. I never asked him because I didn't really want to know, didn't really want to see him nod yes. If he still hates me, and a part of h
im must, it can't compare to the rage that still flows through him for her. He never questioned Jerry about doing it, not after that initial conversation. He moved on as if such a thing was right.
So I balance that, in my head, my saving and April's death. How he deemed both necessary. I have to remind myself that April made her choice. That she did what I told her not to. That when she did it, I almost killed her myself. Almost though, because I still let her live.
Chapter Forty-One
"You fucking bitch," Caesar said. He was up now, standing, his hands balled into fists and an anger running out to his extremities that threatened to take over his entire body.
Paige Hedrick stood in front of him. Her blonde hair as beautiful as it had been the first day he saw her, when she pulled him back from the train. He found himself angry then too, but not like this, nothing close to this.
"You lied to me. All of this. Everything that's happened, was because you lied to me." Caesar's jaws shook, his teeth rattling together like he stood in a snow storm.
Paige said nothing; she leaned back against the wall with her hands across her chest. The woman in front of him looked the same as the one he'd slept with, the woman he'd risked everything for, but the similarities ended there. The woman he slept with was no more like the woman in front of him than a butterfly was the worm it sprung from.
Jerry stood in front of her, his hands free from his pockets, although not balled into fists.
"It was necessary, Caesar," Jerry said. "Everything that's happened, as horrible as it's been, was necessary."
"MY BROTHER DIDN'T NEED TO FUCKING DIE!" He shouted, spitting far enough for it to land on Jerry's sandaled feet.
Jerry sighed and pulled a chair out from the table in between them. He sat down and looked up at Caesar. "I don't know how else to say this, but if you attack her, if you try to hurt her, then everything that's happened has been for nothing. Because you'll die a few seconds after you touch her and then Leon will die back there in those rooms, and then everyone you know died for absolutely nothing. All of this, from the moment you were born until this, has been intricately planned. We didn't know how The Genesis would react, your family's murder wasn't in the picture, but it happened, and there's nothing we can do now. Everything else though, it was my plan, Caesar—and if you wreck that plan now, everyone you loved is still dead and there will be nothing to show for it."
Caesar didn't look away from Paige. He wanted to kill her. To strangle her until her eyes popped out of her head, until the veins inside her face exploded. He wanted her to die on the floor in front of him. The girl. The little girl, all of this was about her, and it was a lie. She wasn't Paige's daughter. It had never been Paige's daughter and they tricked him for...for a fucking reason he didn't understand. They tricked him and then his brother's hand melted right off his body. All because this bitch lied to him.
"Sit down, Caesar. Or try to kill her. But let's not stand here and stare at each other."
Caesar's eyes flashed to the old man and he thought that he might like to see him lying dead next to Paige. Both of them dying with their eyes open, looking into his own as he strangled the life from them.
"Or kill me, because that's what your face says you want to do. So let's have at it."
The man's eyes didn't waver, neither the green nor mechanical one. There wasn't any fear in him. Just a hardness that grew from some core, spreading to the rest of him.
Caesar pulled the chair out and sat down, not glancing back up at Paige. Not wanting to look at her at all, ever again.
"I brought her in here because I want there to be honesty from here on out," Jerry said. "If you're going to know everything, then you've got to know she is with us. That she's a part of this as much as I am."
"What in the fuck is this?" Caesar asked, his voice shaking.
"This is the beginning of the end for The Singularity. The Genesis created me, Caesar, and in doing so, lead me to you."
Chapter Forty-Two
The Life of Caesar Wells
By Leon Bastille
The Named didn't start with Jerry. The Named started when Jerry was probably eight hundred years old, with no knowledge that he even existed. The records weren't good back then; they're not good now either, and we don't want them to be. Good records mean that someone can find us. It wouldn't matter much to The Genesis to find me; it would try to get information from me and if it couldn't, I would be discarded as easily as trash. Jerry, though? Jerry is a treasure that The Genesis craves more than anyone but Caesar himself.
Where does this chapter begin?
Caesar's story doesn't begin when The Named started, two hundred years ago. I think it begins with Jerry, but still, to understand Jerry, you have to understand the history of The Named.
People fell through the cracks at higher rates in the past. The Genesis isn't perfect. It's the closest thing that the world has ever seen; it's capable of holding more knowledge, of accessing more raw power than any other known entity in our universe, but it still has not been able to completely wipe out evolutionary forces. It hasn't been able to understand the genetic code in combination with environmental factors well enough to stop DNA from evolving. Maybe it will one day—that is surely its goal—but not yet. It gets better, every single year. Two hundred years ago, five gifted people might slip through every year. Five people gifted in different areas. Strength. Speed. Intelligence. Any number of things. Those not gifted in intelligence normally were weeded out through other means, found over the course of their life, usually before they had the opportunity to contribute back to the genetic pool. Even some of the intelligent ones were caught and liquidated.
Some, though, weren't caught. Some lived long lives. If five gifted people were born each year, and someone with an extremely high intelligence made it through once every two years, that means there would be five every decade. Most of them lived their lives without a peep, understanding what came if they opened their mouths, if they did anything besides act like the sheep next to them. The story goes that two of these people met each other. That they met and they started talking.
They didn't call themselves The Named because they didn't understand what they were talking about, not then. They only understood that someone else could relate to the things they said, the things they felt. Those two just completely left civilization and went out into the wilderness.
This was two hundred years ago, at least. Maybe three hundred. We don't know because this is the first written record of The Named—and now it doesn't matter, because we're at the end of it all.
It's hard to say how smart those two were when compared with Caesar or the rest of The Named. They were intelligent though, highly so when compared to the rest of humanity. Out in the wilderness, they planned. What for? I imagine for what we're doing today. Not the details but the general idea. They planned to find people like them, those that The Genesis didn't liquidate, those that were smarter than the rest of the citizenry, those that thought. Twenty years in, they'd managed to find two others. They had names, I'm sure, but they're lost. Gone. Not even Jerry knows them, and Jerry is the historian for this whole thing, the connection between the past and the now.
The point isn't their goddamn names, though. The point is what they were trying to do.
And what was that, exactly? Because in the beginning, there wasn't a group called The Named. There were a few people living outside of the cities, living in shacks and caves and wherever else they could find depending on the season. The things we have now, the things Jerry has helped build over his four decades, they had none of it. No central air conditioning. No indoor plumbing. Their brains took them from the cities and threw them back a thousand years into the past. They lived like primitive man, and thinking about it now, I'm in awe at what they were able to do. In twenty years they found two more. In the next twenty they doubled again at eight.
Eight people that...
I don't want to say hate. That's the wrong word. It's too simple for what
they felt. It's too simple for what even Jerry feels. Caesar? Hate may describe his feelings, but not the rest of The Named.
Eight people that thought humans made a magnificent error in creating The Singularity. Eight people that felt humanity should have the right to destroy themselves if they wanted. Eight people who thought humanity's destiny began and ended with humanity.
For two hundred plus years, all they did was maintain and wait. They kept the amount at eight. When someone died, they worked on finding someone new. It grew too dangerous, adding more—adding different personalities, different levels of ego, different thinking patterns. Every time they filled a 'position', they looked for a certain type of person. Tests were created, used to ensure the person they picked was the right one.
Once picked, you either joined or you died. The eight wouldn't compromise themselves.
They maintained. And they waited.
They didn't know it, but they were waiting on Caesar. They needed a leader that could take them to The Genesis, to its core.
And, I suppose, understanding that, perhaps you can understand Jerry.
Maybe The Genesis' most spectacular failure is Jerry's life, the fact that he still lives. The Genesis makes mistakes, but not like it did with Jerry, not anymore.
The first iteration of humanity's new destiny was built on a hybrid. A way to control humanity by simply connecting it to The Genesis, by placing a chip inside of humans. A chip that could regulate, could moderate, could allow for the policing The Genesis needed. Really, it was the most logical choice. Why try to stop evolution when you can simply control it? Thus, Jerry was built.
He's the last of his kind, such was the disaster. The Genesis wanted two things with the chip; it wanted to know what humans thought, felt, and wanted to have a view out into the world. So, when Jerry was born, it placed the chip in his brain. When he was eighteen and his bone structure stopped growing, they rebuilt his face, taking out his eye and putting in a new one, one connected to the chip in his brain.