by David Beers
“Your parents—how are you feeling about them? Really?”
He told her everything over the past day, everything that he could anyway. The basics of what happened after they were separated, the basics of what happened once he arrived here. The basics of Jerry. She knew more about him, though, than Caesar did. She knew about the original plan, the first iteration of The Genesis’ attempt to save humanity. All applications knew Jerry still lived, but thought him like some kind of Big Foot monster, something that people might say they’ve seen, but could never prove. Hell, he might have died actually. The Genesis never put any information out about him, never mentioned him at all.
All while he’d been organizing this rebellion out here in the desert.
“I don’t want to talk about them right now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Leon, how’s he doing?”
“You’re extra gabby. Even by your standards.”
“I’ve been locked up in a cage for six months. What did you expect?”
“I’m going to have to lock you back up,” Caesar said, smiling.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I need to talk to Jerry.”
Grace went silent then, following Caesar down the hall. He found the room Jerry was supposed to be in and opened the door without any thought to what might be behind it.
Paige lay face down on a table, her shirt off. Jerry stood above her, his left hand holding a bottle of yellowish paste and his right hand covered in it. He looked up and Paige turned her head to the door.
Caesar’s eyes went to her back. He hadn’t seen the wound besides the first time he arrived. Hadn’t really even thought of the damage she took six months ago, of what it might feel like or have done to her. The wound hadn’t healed, not completely. The top and bottom of the slash was fine, but the center still made a hole across her back, the black stitches looking fresh, as if Jerry had just changed them out. The skin was red though, seriously so, although there wasn’t pus or anything else leaking from the torn flesh. Just a red, inflamed growth that spread around the still unfixed skin.
The wound looked greasy, but that was only the salve Jerry had on two of his fingers.
“They cut her with something that isn’t allowing her skin to heal. The two flaps of flesh aren’t recognizing each other, it’s like each one thinks it’s speaking to a piece of metal, rather than her own body. It won’t grow over.”
Caesar swallowed.
Paige said nothing, only looked at him standing at the door.
“Are you going to be alright?” Caesar asked after a second, unsure of what else to say. A wound that wouldn’t heal? How could anyone be okay with that? That meant death. Wounds that wouldn’t heal meant the body died, because if it didn’t heal, it got worse; it grew infected until it killed the host.
“We don’t know yet,” Jerry answered for her. “She’s fighting off the infection well enough right now, and this salve helps, but if we don’t find a way to close up the hole, eventually her body will give up. There’s just too many pathogens in the air. Too much to get inside there and wreak havoc.”
Paige didn’t look any certain way about the whole ordeal. She stared at him with the same look a woman getting a massage might have had.
“I’m...I’m sorry for interrupting. Jerry, will you grab me when you’re done?”
“Sure,” he said, and as Caesar turned to leave Jerry bent back over his work.
* * *
“I just want to know what his plan is, that’s all,” Leon said. “It’s not an unreasonable request.”
Caesar took a sip of the coffee in front of him. He drank it all day, the only thing he’d tasted out here in this desert that tasted better than what The Genesis had fed him his whole life. The soup they ate daily, the meat they found out in the desert, all of it was bland, lean, and lacking any real refinement. The coffee though, beans Jerry grew himself, that was something different. That tasted as good as anything The Genesis had ever created.
“It’s not ready yet,” he answered.
“Then when will it be? I don’t understand why you trust him so fully, Caesar. I don’t understand why you follow him so blindly. You’re the leader here, at least you’re supposed to be, but we all dance to Jerry’s tune.”
“What should I do?” Caesar asked.
They sat in Caesar’s room; Caesar at a small table and Leon lying out across his bed. They spent a good bit of time in this room, talking, thinking. Before it had just been the two of them, but now Grace was here. Caesar had forgotten what that felt like, to always be watched, monitored.
“Ask him what the hell we’re supposed to do, maybe? It’s been six months, Caesar. Six months of sitting out here in this desert, meeting people, listening to people, learning, but nothing else.”
“Blowing up an entire room of people is nothing?” Caesar asked.
“So? What’s the plan with that? To let people know you’re here? That you’re planning on planning a revolution, because that’s what it feels like.”
Caesar smiled. Leon didn’t like Jerry and Jerry didn’t like Leon. Leon didn’t like Jerry because he killed Leon’s wife and Jerry didn’t like Leon because he’d almost gotten Caesar killed. They only tolerated each other because of Caesar.
“He’ll tell me when he knows. The past twenty years were spent looking for me; they didn’t spend time making a plan of what to do when they found me. Six months really isn’t that long of a time for what we’re trying to do.”
“All this brainpower and someone couldn’t think up what to do when they finally found you? They had to wait for you to get here to start considering that?”
Caesar laughed, bringing the coffee to his lips.
“You think Jerry would kill me if he heard me speaking to his Messiah like this?” Leon stared up at the ceiling but was smiling too. He changed his voice to mock Jerry. “No one speaks to our Savior like that. No one.”
Caesar stood up and walked to the bed, slapping Leon’s stomach weakly, causing him to half sit up in his laughter.
“You think he’s full of shit?” Caesar asked, standing next to the bed.
Leon’s smile faded and he went back to looking at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t know what he wants to do, Caesar, and that’s my point. How can we know if you’re going to be good at any of this, how can we know if you’re supposed to be the one that leads these people to kill The Genesis? You’re smart, but what else? What are you going to do when the applications come? When you can’t see them and they clamp down on your arms just like they have the rest of the people they liquidated. You can’t even run from them because you don’t know they’re coming. Full of shit? I don’t know about that. He believes in you; I just don’t know if I believe in him.”
Caesar turned and walked to the small television in his room. He saw these for the first time when he showed up here. The Named had tooled with them until they were up and running. They watched different programs, different shows, whatever anyone could find on the net and then figure out a way to hook up to these ancient devices. Caesar spent some time watching because there wasn’t much else to do in the desert. Leon was right. They waited a lot. They waited on Jerry’s orders. They waited on a plan that was supposed to tell Caesar what came next.
“Are you scared?” Leon asked. “Of what he thinks you’re supposed to be, does it scare you that you might not be it?”
“No,” Caesar shook his head. He paused, thinking of how to say what came next. “I don’t have anything left to do. If I can’t do what he wants then I’ll die and that’s fine, to be honest. I don’t plan on this going on too long, if you really want to know. Whatever Jerry cooks up, we’re going against something that doesn’t know the word defeat. We’re going up against something smarter than all of us combined, something with unlimited resources. When you’re going up against something like that, the only thing to fear is death, and I’m more than ready to meet it.”
* * *
“An application, Jerry? Are you serious?”
Jerry kicked the sand at his feet. The small granules bounced a few inches and then lay still again, waiting on another object to move them. He didn’t answer Manny. He knew before he made his decision what Manny would think, what Manny would say. He knew it and made the decision anyway.
“I don’t get it,” Manny said. “You put us all at risk by bringing her back. Every one of us is now in danger because that application is here. How sure are we that The Genesis can’t reestablish a connection? How sure are we that the application won’t send information back to The Genesis, to try to make up for what it did before, to get back in The Genesis’ good graces?”
Jerry continued staring at the sand. Both of their backs faced the door to the bunker. It looked like a four bedroom house, with a flat roof. If someone were to walk up on it, they would have no idea that tunnels weaved for miles beneath their feet.
“Your wife, Manny, do you love her?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Manny asked.
“Do you? Do you love her?”
“Of course.”
“Your son? What about him?”
Manny didn’t say anything.
“You have them. Why can he not have this one thing? Why can he not have the only thing still left from his past? He has no woman, no children, no parents. Why deny him this one thing?”
Manny shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. Because that application goes against everything we’ve built in there. It is the antithesis of what we’re doing. It’s dangerous, Jerry. You could get us all killed trying to make that man happy. And more, how are you so sure he is the one we want? You told us all that he is, but how? I’ve listened, I’ve gone along, I’ve taught him, but we deserve more than your word on it. How do you know that you’re not putting us all at risk for someone that isn’t even what we need?”
And there it was, the question that had been bubbling up from the bottom of whatever ocean they all floated on. The issue that needed addressing but that Jerry didn’t know how to address without simply showing them. He knew because he knew the man down in those underground corridors. Jerry knew him the same as he knew himself. He knew what Caesar was capable of, what lengths he would go to, and what his mind would be able to do. He only needed to show Caesar it was possible. Caesar wasn’t The Genesis, but he was the closest thing to it that any of them would ever come across in human form. Not Manny, not himself, not anyone in the building behind had the potential Caesar did. But he couldn’t tell them that; they needed to see it. Then they would believe, but not before.
“In your interactions with him, what did you think, Manny?”
“He’s fucking smart. Is that what you want to hear? Sure. He might be smarter than any of us, even you. But that doesn’t make him the Second Coming. Being smart is necessary, it’s not sufficient.”
Jerry looked up from the sand and out at the mountains in the distance. His right eye registered moisture and from there the probability of rain. He could see a hawk feeding its children, dropping chunks of food into each of their mouths. That was one of the differences between Manny and he, that his eye allowed him to see and know things that someone not built like him just couldn’t. The other major difference was his span of life. Manny was in his forties, and it didn’t matter how brilliant he was, forty years of life couldn’t match a thousand.
“How long have you traveled with me, Manny?”
“A while,” he said.
“How long?”
“Twenty years or more.”
“Then will you go just another year? That’s all I’m asking. Just one more year and you can quit if you don’t like where we’re at,” Jerry said.
“I’m not...Jesus...I’m not saying I don’t want to follow you Jerry. I wouldn’t follow anyone else. I’m just wondering if this is the correct direction, if everything we’re doing is going to pay off, if you’re placing the right amount of trust in this man.”
Jerry turned his head to Manny. His second in command for ten years. The only other one who knew everything about this operation. If Jerry fell, The Named went to Manny. Not to Caesar. Not to anyone else. It went to the man next to him, the one now wondering if this entire plan had been wrong from the get-go. Because if Jerry had picked the wrong person, then he hadn’t adequately outlined the criteria of the person he needed when he started looking decades ago. And Jerry didn’t believe that, not in the slightest. He knew what Caesar was, knew what he would become.
“He’s the right one, Manny. He’s the only one that’ll be able to do this. Give me a year, that’s all I ask.”
* * *
Manny looked at his son lying in the crib. He slept with his tiny arms curled up near his face. Manny didn’t reach in to touch him though he wanted to. He couldn’t get enough of his son, couldn’t get enough of his smile, couldn’t get enough of the games the boy liked to play. Manny could hold Dustin forever, could look at him until the world entered another Ice Age. He didn’t know if Dustin would carry the intellect that he carried, and he didn’t really care either. Intellect was fine, but not having it was fine too. This wasn’t anything about building a race of intelligent people; that would be no different than The Genesis’ plan to build a race of average people. If his son ended up genius or handicapped, Manny’s love wouldn’t stop, and he only truly realized that the first time he held the boy.
He thought he had joined this group, The Named, for himself. To do what was right. To stop the oppression that was The Genesis. He realized now, though, that wasn’t true. None of this had anything to do with him; it was about Dustin. It was about his son growing up in a world in which he could do as he pleased, in which he determined his future, not some monolithic entity that he would never meet. All of this, everything Manny did now, including the conversation he just had with Jerry, was for Dustin.
He didn’t know what Jerry was doing anymore.
And that scared him.
Four years ago, before his wife, Brandi, before Dustin, it wouldn’t have scared him at all. Manny gave Jerry near implicit trust, or at least he had. Could he do that any longer, though? Could he continue to follow the man blindly, when he had people that now followed him blindly? He didn’t know, but he was beginning to think the answer was No.
Manny watched Caesar for the past six months. He’d eaten with him, studied with him, and planned for him. It wasn’t intelligence that mattered here, and Jerry knew that too. The person they were looking for needed an edge, needed an ability to take things to an extreme that The Genesis had nearly bred out of society. The person they wanted must be willing to kill the child lying before Manny if it meant he could then kill The Genesis. He didn’t see that in Caesar. He saw a man hurting. He saw a man full of anger. But did he see a sociopath? No. And that’s what they needed. Someone with sociopathic tendencies who could direct them toward The Singularity. Jerry had found someone intelligent, made him angry, but in the end that anger would fade and everyone involved in this would stand before The Genesis without a leader, without a person who had been willing to do what was necessary.
Jerry once thought Manny might have been that person.
Manny once thought he might have been that person, too.
Now he knew that he wasn’t the person for the job and he knew why. Jerry knew why. They both knew what it would take, something major that Manny turned down over ten years ago. He made the decision knowing what it would mean for his future, and he also made it knowing that Jerry was looking at this other person, this Caesar—studying him for the same reason that he once studied Manny, because there was potential. Because he might be the one they needed. Manny made his decision, and even now, looking at Caesar and watching Jerry gloat over him, he wouldn’t have made it any differently.
None of that changed the fact that Jerry might have made a mistake. None of that changed the issue that Caesar didn’t possess the right capabilities any more than Manny did. Th
ey were all hitching their wagons to a horse that would falter before it ever reached the final destination. Jerry didn’t see it. He couldn’t because he had searched so long for this man and now he saw nothing else but Caesar. Caesar Wells.
Manny had to be the one that guided Jerry now. That’s what he understood, standing there looking at his son. It wasn’t about him, about Manny; it was about Dustin. It was about Brandi. He had to do this for them because if they followed Caesar, they would all end up dead, liquidated and without a chance of ever turning the tide on the monstrosity that humanity created.
Chapter Five
Caesar was finally growing used to sand. He hadn’t ever seen it before Jerry brought him here. He knew what it was, of course, had read about it, but he’d never actually experienced it. He liked to walk barefoot over it, when he could find shade, otherwise the sun heated it to an unbearable degree.
He walked on it now, but wearing sandals. He could still feel the tiny grains as they flipped up from the ground and in between his foot and the rubber sandals he wore. It wasn’t the same as walking barefoot, but it worked. He could still feel the give of the earth beneath him and that was half of it. The way the sand moved when you walked on it, not holding firm like the streets he grew up walking on. There was give to sand. There wasn’t any give in the cities.
Caesar listened to Leon, but he didn’t buy into what he said, not completely. Leon wanted Jerry to give them direction, to tell them what was going to happen. Caesar...didn’t.
He wasn’t going to tell Jerry that, wouldn’t even tell Leon. He agreed to do something, agreed to take the reins of an organization he hadn’t even understood. He did it because he was angry and pained and had nothing else. There were talks between Jerry and he that Leon didn’t know about. That no one knew about besides the two of them. Conversations about what would most likely happen when things started moving. Conversations about killing people. The Council over Quadrant Two, that had been a test and Caesar knew it. Could he kill from a distance? He’d been able to. Those people, all of them were cowards, capable of nothing on their own. They would have thrown him to the wolves if it meant they could live an extra day. That was different than the kind of killing that Jerry thought this would lead to. That was different than holding a gun to someone’s head and pulling the trigger. That was different than killing children because those children had been armed and were coming at him.