Simon held up his hand and pointed to a building far in the distance, a black lump, a mass that he would have taken as nothing but shadow had Simon not pointed it out. “You will find the others scattered around if you look hard enough. Zeta is over there. Theta too,” he said pointing, his head dipped, ashamed in a way that would suggest the destruction was all his doing. As if he had been Zack's captor. “They are all out there.”
“But in Delta it is night time all the time. There is no daylight. There is nothing.” Zack slapped his palm against the glass, his eyes cast on the shadow of Delta. One thought and one word surfaced. “Leonard.”
“There is a lot to explain,” said Simon as he rested a cautious hand on Zack's shoulder.
“Tell me why,” said Zack. Simon took a step away from Zack before stopping. It was only brief, and he didn't look around to face Zack. Instead he glanced over his shoulder, his eyes downcast.
“I think now is the time to go to your quarters. We have a lot to discuss.”
Chapter Twenty
By the time Simon opened the door to Zack’s new living quarters, the anticipation of the truth outweighed Zack's excitement. He had walked next to glass as clean as the clearest ice, trees full and lush as they only grew after the heavy rains of a wet winter. The floor upon which he walked was maintained, dust-free and polished, the air drenched in the smell of beeswax. His gains felt like blood money, gifts from the Devil, his soul sold for thirty pieces of silver and a room on level seventeen in Omega Tower. The room offered him everything that he had been dreaming of for the last ten years, and as he looked around at the objects it was hard not to let himself enjoy it. The bed was almost double in size, bigger than it had appeared on the television. All of the linen was white and crisp. There was a duvet too. Not that he would need it because the warmth in Omega Tower was sweltering. Zack pulled at his collar, the material scratching at his skin, flapped it back and forth to let in a draught. There was a wardrobe which suggested the prospect of clothes, and therefore the possibility of more than one outfit. There was a small sitting area with a table. One entire wall was made of glass, and as Zack stepped towards it he could see all the way across to the remnants of St. Paul’s cathedral and the river. He should have been overwhelmed by the enormity of his prize, but it was as if everything represented some diabolical ill gain, his comrades sold out, their lives traded for his. One of the windows came to life, just like a television. It began speaking.
“Welcome to Omega Tower, Mr. Christian,” a natural voice announced. Zack closed his eyes for a second, before moving back towards the middle of the room. He noticed from the corner of his eye that there was a woman's face on the screen, waiting patiently for him to do something. He ignored her and turned to face Simon, who was standing near the door looking anxious.
“But I don’t understand,” said Zack. “Why didn’t I know that this is what was on the outside? Why was it so dangerous to tell us that the sun shone, or that plants grew? I believed the world was as good as dead.” He paced towards the window again, his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “What have I been looking at all this time?”
Simon closed the door behind them and took a step forwards. The sound of the door being closed prompted Zack to turn around. He saw Simon raise his hand to offer out one of the chairs, but Zack batted his suggestion away with a quick flick of the wrist. In this moment, he didn’t want anything that Simon was offering. Instead he was wondering if they would let him back into Delta. If he could turn back time. He would promise to keep quiet, say nothing. What was one more lie? One more bargain? How could it be that life flourished here and yet those in Delta knew nothing of it? How could he allow himself to be part of that? He wrapped his arms across his chest like a prophylactic straitjacket to stop himself going crazy, clenched his teeth to stop himself from speaking. Grit your teeth, Zack.
“Zachary, it is a lot to accept, and a lot to understand. I grant you that.” Simon pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. He crossed his legs and edged back in the over-filled seat, propped up like a cherry on a cupcake. “But you have to understand the complexity of our society. Take a look around.” Simon offered his hand back up and cast it towards the wall of windows like one might cast a net. “Tell me, what do we really have to offer? What life is there beyond that glass? Not a single building, not a single resource. Where would we house people? How would they live if we opened the gates of possibility today? To everybody?”
“They could stay where they are. They could live where they live now. Nothing would have to change. But by keeping them prisoner like you do, you’ve taken their freedom. They are living a lie.” Zack stared into the distance, the black building that he now knew to be Delta just in view if he leaned to the side and arched his head. The sunlight was reflecting from the roof, an intact pyramid, evidence of the lies and rumours that had spread through Delta like a disease. He was disgusted with himself for winning the lottery and leaving Leonard behind. He had been pulled from the deception, thrust into reality, offered his prize. But it was tainted and tarnished, a duplicitous reward. For every materialistic thing he had won, he had lost a facet of morality just by being here. He thought of the times in history when people stood passively and allowed things to happen. When slavery was justified because black people were of lesser intelligence. When people believed that for them to be held was a privilege. They were provided for, what more did they want? When the people of a pre-war Germany found salvation in a new leader, one who proposed an answer, and a way for the working man to prosper. How bad could that be? It was the Jews' fault that the country was in ruins, right? They deserved it. Those same people who before would have shared their table or offered their hand in friendship quickly learned to become enemies. It was easy to excuse the atrocities when your hands remained clean. That way it was possible to pretend. And in doing so they turned a blind eye, enjoyed the spoils. They no longer had to want because they had. Now it was Zack who had something. He had something that he didn't deserve, that he hadn't achieved, and that in order to enjoy he just had to blind himself. His hands were cleaner than they had been in years, so why could he not pretend?
“Zachary, please. It is natural to feel this way at the moment. But you have to try to see the wider picture. How do you think we live? Hmm? We rely on these people. We relied on you, when you were there. Without the work you did and that they still do, the question is not how Omega Tower would survive. It is how any of us would survive. And that includes those in Delta.” Simon stood up and joined Zack at the window. The smell of his cologne was intense, wood and flowers, the scent of autumn. It stung Zack's eyes and made him look as if he was crying. “Imagine if everybody learned that it was safe. That radiation was at a safe level. That the nuclear winter had passed. They would all venture outside, right?” Zack nodded. “And tell me then, what would they find?” Simon closed his eyes, as if the thought was painful to him. “They would see that there are no resources nearby. Some would leave in search of a better life. Others would panic. So instead we provide them with security. Give them the essentials,” Simon said, as Zack reached his hand to the distance where he knew his parents' home once stood. “But for us all to survive, we have to stick together. We are working to rebuild. To restructure. We are actually doing work outside and trying to save what we can. Slowly we will free people, at first one by one, and then two by two, until eventually we can open the doors and say to people that once again they can all live freely.” Simon inhaled, took a big breath in as he regarded the work outside. “You see that over there,” he said, pointing to a metal structure. Zack focussed and found that he saw several men crawling over it, so small it seemed they were like ants on a tree branch. “They are rebuilding a resource centre. A place where people can shop. Food stuffs, drinks. Things we have started to import. Denmark is trying to help us rebuild. They were against what happened, considering their close proximity. Norway is doing its bit, too. Those people over there, you see them? They are clea
ring roads. They are looking for areas suitable to consider building homes.”
“You still haven't told me what happened to us.”
“We were punished for making a mistake, Zachary,” Simon said as he walked past the wardrobe. He opened it, his hand rifling through a row of clothes. Long sleeves, short sleeves, hangers full. The wardrobe full. He closed it again. “We believed we were above the law, Zachary. Above the control of the international community. We believed we would always be supported by our allies. No matter what we did.” Simon turned to see Zachary looking confused, knowing that he so far hadn’t really enlightened him. “We were planning a nuclear strike. It was perhaps the darkest moment in our history as a nation.” Zack could almost feel sorry for him as Simon hung his head low. His chin was almost resting on his chest.
“Why?”
Simon braced himself, fighting off the memory as a priest would fight off evil, and he pulled his lips in tight before continuing. He steeled himself. “We received intelligence that another country was planning a nuclear strike.”
“Which country?” Zack asked, but Simon ignored him and continued with his story.
“They denied it, of course, but the intelligence was sound. NATO and the UN called for peaceful negotiations, and called an emergency meeting between all member states. The early diplomatic approach didn't result in a diffusion of the threat. After we concluded that the diplomatic approach had failed, our response was to offer a counter threat. Many countries offered similar responses. We weren't alone. We believed that our size and standing in the world would be enough of a threat to stop them.” Simon stood with his hands resting on the back of the armchair, a smile and reflective giggle passing his lips. Zack decided to sit down opposite him. He imagined Simon as part of the negotiations, the same pensive face, hair slightly dishevelled. Zack leaned in closer like a child at story time. “Remember what I said at the beginning, Zachary. The threat was nuclear. It was real. We couldn't play with it.” His eyes were wide and unapologetic, as if the whole mess on the other side of the glass was his fault and that he needed to justify it. He brought a fist up to his lips. “Our threat wasn’t enough.”
“So they bombed us?” Simon moved towards the window, brushing the soft cotton quilt cover as he moved past it. Zack swivelled around and watched him, wondering if he was thinking about his loved ones that were lost. Simon began shaking his head.
“No. Their response was to amplify their threat and so in turn we responded as we saw appropriate. We escalated our threat. Come on,” he said, his hands thrown up in the air, begging for Zack's understanding. “You’ve seen it on the television. One country threatens another, diplomats make statements. This is all the public face of what, behind the scenes, is a legitimate threat of war.” He moved back to the small table, his finger pointing at Zack as he sat back down. He balanced his elbows on his knees, locked his hands together. “The other countries backed up, wanted to continue with the diplomatic negotiations.” Simon said it as if the idea left a bad taste on his tongue. “They warned us to do the same. The U.S. Russia. Even those two were united. They all insisted that the diplomatic solution was within reach. We didn’t believe it. So we took the decision to test-fire our newest weapon.”
“Where?”
“Malden Island. It’s a small uninhabited island in the Pacific. It was a site of H-bomb testing in the 1950s. It was a place we always kept our eye on. In case we ever needed it again.”
“So then what?”
“The other nations ramped up their pressure. There was a huge diplomatic outcry because a nuclear weapon had been fired. But this time the pressure was on us. We tried to contain the hype, keep it from the media, but it started to leak out. At first we did well at keeping the facts from the public domain. We tried to say that the test had been planned for a long time. That it was unrelated to the recent threats.” Simon shook his head. “But the backlash was huge. We could control the media, but not the internet. We could shut down some sites, but not places like YouTube or Google, for the sake of our good President. We were a democracy. It was freedom of speech. So instead we shut down the internet altogether. That way we looked blameless. Called it a cyber attack.”
“I remember that.”
“Of course you do. Life without the internet? That wasn't life, back then. We used it for everything. To not have the Internet felt in some way primitive. Anyway, we stood our ground like we believed any powerful nation would do. We balked at those who backed off. Laughed at them, privately.” Simon rested back in his chair, pulled at his collar. His words had the bitter taste of white phosphorous, the sting of friendly fire. He was like Oppenheimer, who as a young scientist with a love for particle physics never realised that with success he would simultaneously become the destroyer of worlds when he created the first nuclear bomb. Only in the face of death did he see the flip side of science, the contradiction that discovery could lead to destruction. “The threat remained,” Simon said quietly. “Everybody started talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They condemned us. Even for testing.” His head dropped before he looked back up, his gaze darting about the room to avoid eye contact with Zack. He stared out to the ruins. “But we had made up our minds. We believed the threat to be real and so we took action.”
“You bombed them?”
“Yes.”
“And they retaliated?”
“No. I believe now, in hindsight, that in fact their claims were largely exaggerated. I doubt that they would have even had the strength to perform a test detonation.” He leaned forward and looked to Zack, wiping his top lip with a sweaty palm. “We had become arrogant, Zachary. Stupid. We had become a beast. Human memory has a tendency to soften, to be moulded in time so that the facts and realities of the past are forgotten. Somehow the tragedies of history become less tragic, and pain becomes chronic rather than acute. But when we landed that bomb it was a reminder. You wouldn't have seen the images that I saw, but......” Simon paused a moment, and Zack didn't interrupt. “I do not know which country served our punishment. We knew it was coming. They gave us a warning but we were not able to launch a counter attack. Even if we had had time, the weapons they used were much stronger than anything we had available. They dropped what we have estimated to be six missiles. MIVRS. A nuclear weapon capable of exploding into many smaller weapons so that the damage is much wider spread. The kind of damage that can destroy a country.” He touched his eye, perhaps to wipe a tear, perhaps just to tend to an itch. “It's funny how the mistakes of the past are only remembered once they are repeated. We remembered when we looked out at our own land. We saw the face of the past come to life before our own arrogant eyes.”
“But why didn’t it destroy this place? Why not Delta?”
“For many years we had been building. There were always threats, and we had been taking measures against possible strikes. It really was a time of great development,” he said, temporarily bolstered at the thought of past successes. “We built a number of buildings we believed would survive a strike. Different shapes, different structures. We have learnt a lot. You would appreciate the work from the perspective of an engineer. Fortunately we were mostly right, although some didn’t survive,” he said, looking north towards the absent Gherkin which should have been Eta Tower. “But the majority did. One of them was Delta, another where you are standing today. We are rebuilding, Zachary. We want a free nation once more. We will achieve it. It is for all who survived, and for all who were lost. We must rebuild our lives so that we can undo what was done by us and to us. We must rebuild like other post-war countries. Restore our pride and become great once more.”
Zack brushed his hand over his head, his hair bristling against his fingers. Beads of sweat had formed on his brow. He slicked his palm across his forehead and wiped it on his trouser leg. “And in Delta?” Zack asked, thinking about the lights that Leonard had insisted he had been seeing. “What was I looking at?”
“It's called Scenic Simulation Programming, Zac
hary. A necessity.” Simon swallowed hard. “The windows function as a projection, much like this pane of glass that you see here,” he said pointing at the woman's face in the window. “They were designed that way. Originally the idea was that playing a virtual reality background could brighten up a working office. It was state of the art back then. Imagine,” he blabbered, a smile creeping onto his face, “arriving at work in the rain and spending your day looking out upon a glorious, sunny day. Imagine what that could do for your mood? For productivity.” He realised as soon as he had finished speaking that his imagination had begun to run away with him. “Anyway,” he said, composing himself. “The original theory was sound. Only now we use the programme to project an image of the world immediately after the nuclear war.” He stood up and walked over to a chest of drawers. He picked up a small glass tile, the same as Zack recognised from the isolation room. Simon performed a series of movements with his finger, tapping and swiping the small piece of glass. For a moment Zack thought that the Sun had dipped behind a cloud, but then the darkness intensified. “If it makes you feel at home, you can play it here. They'll remove it from general use soon enough, though.”
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