by David Beers
What was Caesar’s agenda? Death for The Genesis, sure, but at what cost? Is it worth humanity’s extinction? Is it murder they were accomplishing or freedom?
“What would you do?” He asked.
“The application was right; you won’t survive longer than a few seconds if you don’t have the surgery. So really, everything is pointless if you don’t get it done. If you go forward, if you continue, you’ll have to have it done, and you’ll need to make sure that you’re okay with the consequences. I can’t decide that for you, Caesar. For me, though? I decided a long time ago my convictions were worth more than my life; you have to decide that for yourself.”
* * *
Jerry walked a few feet in front of Caesar. They hadn’t spoken much since the plane landed, only began their trek back to the compound, each with a bag over their shoulder. Caesar wore completely different clothes than when he’d left while Jerry’s were the same threads across his back.
He first saw the building twenty minutes back, and God, he didn’t know something could feel that good. Especially not with this building. The past six months it seemed like a strange home, some place that wasn’t his, some place that could never be his. The smell was different, and the feelings that it brought out each time he breathed in a hallway or even his room made him feel like he didn’t belong. This place was for others, for The Eight, for the rest of the people in The Eight’s movement. Not for Caesar.
And still, glimpsing the tiny building, with miles of underground tunnels, happiness sprung from some unknown source, bubbling into his brain and out onto his face, where he formed a smile. Leon was there. Leon, his buddy since before they knew their parents. He was waiting. That was something. That was more than anything Caesar had anywhere else.
Caesar wasn’t the same person he was when he left this place, not fully—but part of him was the same. The part that remembered Leon, remembered what it was like in another life and in another time. The part that looked backwards and not into the darkness of the future.
Someone walked out of the front door but he couldn’t tell who it was, they were still too far out.
Did Jerry feel like this at all? When you lived as long as he did, did you have a home anymore, or was each place you ended up just another strange place, somewhere different from where it all began for you?
More people came out the front door as word passed around that they were back, that they had survived and were finally home.
Twenty feet out, they started clapping. The Eight stood outside, kids, other adults—more and more pouring out every minute. Soon the entire compound might be out here in the front, the desert beneath their feet and the open sky above their heads. How long had it been since all of these people were out here at once? Had it ever happened?
Would they applaud if they knew what he had done? What Jerry had coaxed him to do? Would they care at all?
Jerry stepped up and Caesar behind him. He looked around the assembled crowd, trying to find Leon. There were too many people, too many faces so that he couldn’t find the one he was looking for.
People were hugging Jerry, and he was bending down for each one, granting them the time they wanted. Everyone glad to have him back. Their leader. Their savior. Caesar was only Jerry’s savior. None of these people believed, nor did they care. The person that had taken care of them, that had brought them out from the cities, that had made them a family here—that was Jerry. Caesar was a newcomer and one that hadn’t done much either. Even what he did in the city, with Pierre, they didn’t know about that and it wasn’t something that Jerry himself couldn’t have done. He was Jerry’s tag-a-long to these people, nothing else.
He felt the hand on his back, a firm grip on his shoulder, and he turned around, having missed the crowd encircling them both. Leon was there, smiling. “Glad you’re back,” he said, then pulled Caesar close and hugged him. Caesar hugged back, wrapping both arms around Leon.
“Everything go okay?” Leon asked, stepping back.
Caesar nodded but dropped his eyes as he did.
“We should talk,” Leon said. “Once you get unpacked.” He was still smiling but not with his eyes. His eyes said that something was wrong, that things weren’t the same as when Caesar left.
“Okay,” he said.
Paige walked up beside Leon, a little smile on her face, but it touched her eyes as well. Caesar half-turned his head and looked at Jerry behind him, still shaking hands and hugging people, talking to those that came to him. He looked back at Paige, surprised she was in front of him and not Jerry.
“Not lost?” He asked, smiling too.
“The line’s longer over there. Figured I’d stop at this one first. You okay?” She asked.
Caesar didn’t drop his eyes this time. “I’m okay.”
“Good. Should be a pretty big feast tonight now that you guys are back. Some of the women have been planning it since you left. You two eaten anything?”
“Not in a while.”
“That’s what we figured,” she said.
The two of them stood and stared at each other for a few seconds, Caesar unsure of what to say but not wanting to pull away. They hadn’t spoken this much since he moved in here, hadn’t looked at each other like this since they were together—two different people in a different place.
“I don’t know about you two, but this is getting a bit awkward for me. Maybe you guys can gaze into each other’s eyes somewhere else?” Leon asked.
Paige laughed and then Caesar did too.
* * *
Seven of The Eight stood in the room. Caesar stood just inside the closed door. Leon wasn’t here; he told Caesar he was going to unpack his bag for him, and that was more than fine by Caesar. He could barely stand up. Only wanted to find a bed and lay down in it. Still, there were seven people here besides him and there should have been eight. That’s why Jerry called the meeting.
“Manny’s left,” Jerry said. “Does anyone know where he’s gone, at all?”
Chapter Twenty-One
He had to be careful here. He knew that. Manny wanted to do something very, very specific and if he messed up, that specificity would turn into a generality that could destroy everything he held dear. He understood that but still, he couldn’t not do this. Someone had to do it. Jerry wouldn’t. None of the other Eight would. There was him, and if he didn’t put a stop to this, The Eight would be sacrificed for Jerry’s false belief.
Manny stood in front of a sync, his hands at his side.
There was no other way to communicate with The Genesis. Not for him. Not anymore. He needed to place his hand in this sync and then he would have his chance. He knew the power of these things, still remembered them from his childhood. They swept through your mind like a tsunami through a city, filling up every building and breaking down every barrier. A sync almost got him killed when he was ten; he hadn’t been able to judge how much he fed it, and he fed it a lot. Applications showed up and...
You don’t need to go there now. You need to focus on this sync. The one in front of you.
His family, his past, all of that was behind him. He had to think about Brandi and Dustin right now. He had to think about Jerry, about everything they had built.
You tell it what you want it to know and nothing else. Don’t let it in.
Manny lifted his hand up and held it just in front of him, palm down. There were people here, in this library, but none of them looking at him. They were busy with their own reasons, their own purposes.
Get it over with. You put your hand in and it’ll be done. More than fear of what he might give away hung over Manny, though—even if he didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t, either. He was...
A traitor.
The word whispered in his head like a lover late at night. Speaking sweetly, sexily, except that this lover was dead. A corpse. Rotting flesh with a sagging tongue and teeth falling out of the mouth that whispered in his ear. Everything he had built his life on was coming to an end right n
ow. Even if no one else ever found out, even if he somehow went back to the compound and told Jerry he had gone away to think and he was fine now; he was on board. Even if he did all of that, he was still...
A traitor. Goddamn the word. He wanted to say he wasn’t, but how could he? His life, his whole life was dedicated to the eradication of The Genesis and now he was about to communicate with it. To voluntarily give over information that could get people killed. Get people other than Caesar killed, get his own people killed. He had obligations to these people, to Jerry, to The Eight. He had obligations to his wife and obligations to his son, to make sure that they grew up in a world very different than the one he did. And he had an obligation to himself. The problem was that all of these obligations had turned into a fucking storm inside his head, a storm that he couldn’t see through, and when he thought he could for a second, could see just a single strand of light poking through, another bolt of lightning crashed down.
Even so, even with all of those obligations, he was here, standing in front of this sync. Had traveled miles on miles to get to this place, because the most important obligation was to his wife and son, to make sure they lived in something different. Lived under different rules. Under different rulers. The obligation to himself and to Jerry, to The Eight, that could go by the wayside if he had to choose.
He stuck his hand in the Sync.
The rods (he always thought of them as rods, even as a child) shot up through his arm. He felt them passing through his veins, leading directly to his brain, and then he felt them enter, enveloping the entire organ, trying to push inward.
No. He fought it. The first time in his life he had ever fought the sync’s entrance.
The rods pulled back, waiting, sensing that the person they were dealing with wasn’t someone normal, wasn’t like the other people who had come to this place.
Manuel Lendoiro.
The words filled his mind like a surprise wave would fill a swimmer’s mouth, shocking and salty. How long had it been since someone said his full name? Twenty-five years? There was no need for his full name in the compound, no need for last names because of the few people that lived there.
Are you ready to die? It asked. He didn’t know what it was, but something had arrived, something other than the rods that usually expanded to facilitate downloading and uploading. Something here bigger than those rods, bigger than anything Manny had ever dealt with before. The Genesis? Maybe, but if not, he couldn’t imagine the massiveness of that entity.
I’m here to give you Caesar Wells. You know him?
The thing inside his head laughed, a chuckle that echoed long after it stopped, bouncing through the synapses in his head. What makes you think we want him?
Do you or don’t you? Manny asked. I didn’t come here to play games.
You shouldn’t have come at all, Manuel Lendoiro. You should have stayed at home and waited for death to come to you. Why you would chase it, I don’t understand.
He’s coming for you. Caesar. He’s amassing people behind him and he’s coming for The Genesis.
And you tell us this, why?
Manny didn’t speak, not at first. He thought about lying, but why? Most likely this thing would know, and more, it didn’t matter if it knew.
He’s not the right person, Manny said. He’s not the one that’s going to end you.
The entity inside his head turned its chuckle into a laugh, so deep and full that Manny thought his ears might burst. Nothing can end us! It said, still laughing. If you want him dead though, that’s fine. Bring him to us and we will kill him for you. You can search for your savior elsewhere. It is no matter to us.
Manny stood there, his hand in the sync, stunned. He had listened to Jerry for so long, heard so much from so many people that he lived around, that everything had become an echo chamber. They would win. They would defeat The Genesis. There was no other way. And here he was, talking to, if not The Genesis then its emissary, and it laughed at him. Treated him, treated the whole movement like little more than a joke. No. No more than a joke. That’s what Manny was, standing here, his hand in this sync—a big joke. What had he thought? That his rag-tag group of people out in the desert would mount something against this intelligence? Would somehow make a difference? Had Jerry actually convinced him of that?
Why so quiet, Manuel Lendoiro?
He blinked, tears coming to his eyes. He had come here to betray his movement in order to save it. And this thing, this being, said it didn’t matter at all what he did. He could report Caesar or move on, in the end, it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference.
He’s after an application we know as The Tourist. He most likely knows where it resides now. He’s going to try to find it and then find you. All of what he said happened only in his head, but even there his voice sounded lifeless.
Thank you, Manuel Lendoiro. We will meet him there. Is there anything else we can do for you? We can, if you’d like, send someone now to end your meaningless little life, or we can let you go ahead and finish living it out, if that’s what you prefer. What’ll it be?
Manny took his hand from the sync and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Life of Caesar Wells
By Leon Bastille
Manny.
I should have killed him. I should have walked in that room and cut his throat while he lay next to his wife. I’m a coward, I suppose. Maybe that’s the real difference between Caesar and me. Not his intelligence. Not the things he’s done, both cruel and courageous. Just that I’m a coward and in the end that made all the difference.
I didn’t kill him, though. I let him live and walked back down that hallway. I decided I would talk to Caesar when he got back.
Jerry built Manny, made him second in command. Made him think that anything was possible, that the world would turn back, that The Genesis would fold, that The Named couldn’t fail. I guess, as I write this, I’m wondering whose fault is it that he did what he did? That he turned Caesar in? Some of the blame rests with him, surely, there’s no way around that, but is there more to go around? Probably. Jerry was an idiot in the way he brought Caesar in. So confident, so full of himself that he couldn’t be wrong about Caesar, but yet giving no one else any real reason to believe. What did he expect to happen? That Caesar would come in and The Eight would welcome him, would throw roses at his feet?
I’ll give it to Manny. He believed in what he did. Somehow, in his own head, his justifications added up. Caesar wasn’t the one they wanted, so he had to go, even if no one else saw it.
I’d like to ask Manny now what he thinks? I know what he believed back then, but what about now, after everything is nearly done? After Jerry’s game has played out, what does he think? I won’t get the chance, but...
I think he’d do the same.
Manny was smart, but not as smart as he believed. His problem was that he couldn’t see the long game, not nearly as long as Jerry and certainly not as long as The Genesis. Manny saw what was in front of him, he saw Caesar and he saw the little that Caesar brought to the table. He saw Jerry’s enthusiasm and it all terrified him. It all made him think that the end was near, that there would be no long game. He didn’t think about what came next. He showed up at that sync and put his hand in and only imagined he was saving The Eight. Saving the compound. Saving his wife and son.
His belief in his own intelligence caused all the disaster. His belief that if he wasn’t Jerry, he was the closest to him. That he could make decisions in the same manner, with the same execution, and get the same result. He thought that he could keep The Genesis out of his head, that he had the capabilities Caesar did. He didn’t. Manny was special when you looked at the rest of society, miles above everyone else, like a mountain over a lake, but The Genesis was the sun that shone above that mountain. Arrogance, I suppose, is what got everyone killed—Manny’s arrogance.
Now, if he were to answer the question about whether he still would have told, his response wouldn’t
have anything to do with whether he was right in his actions. He wasn’t. His response would be based on what Caesar did after. Now, he would have the ability to look at the long game. Even though Manny killed a lot of people with what he did, killed them in an instant, he would still have to look at what the original dream had been and what Caesar delivered. Manny thought Caesar wasn’t the right one for the job, and he was both wrong and right. He didn’t deliver what Manny and Jerry wanted, but he did make it to The Genesis. He did what none of the rest could have. All of that came later, came after Manny’s decision.
A lot came after, really. In fact, everything came after. Up until that moment, up until Manny stuck his hand in that sync and told whatever was on the other side what Caesar wanted, all of it had been foreplay. Manny put the condom on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Have you heard from Manny?” Caesar asked.
Jerry shook his head.
Caesar didn’t know, really, why he asked. It didn’t have anything to do with what came next. To take his mind off the moment, he supposed. Leon relayed to him everything Manny had said. Paige relayed the same to Jerry. Everyone inside The Eight understood; he thought Caesar was going to get them all killed, basically. That didn’t matter right now, though. At all. Manny wasn’t back and no one knew if he was coming back. His wife had been in hysterics and only calmed down over the last twenty-four hours or so.
Caesar had one last decision to make today and the decision was in front of him now.
“There’s no more time?” He asked.
Jerry shook his head.
He knew it was true. If he was going after The Tourist, the surgery had to happen. There wasn’t any way around it, and if he wasn’t going to do the surgery, then everything had been for nothing. His parents. His brother. All the time spent here. The council they blew up and the man he murdered. All of it just rain in the desert, doing nothing for no one.