Revolution in the Underground

by Michaels, S. J.

  “Yes, I understand… I agree.”

  “And then I started thinking about the rest of the world… Everyone else out there… They all go about their own business, unaware of our existence! Think about my village back home? Think about how they exist at the same time! Only distance separates us. I don’t know if this is making any sense right now… It’s just, the simultaneity of it all… it blows my mind! How they can exist at the same time but at a different place. When I think about them it’s like I’m transporting through time and space!” Ember’s face lit up with an alarming exuberance. “And your people too! Your family back home! They’re there too! Living, walking, breathing all the same and at the same time, but in a different place… and here we are…” He moved forward towards her, uncomfortably entering her personal space.

  “Yes, I know it’s crazy,” she said, leaning backwards to reclaim some privacy.

  “But you… I don’t think you’re crazy! I wouldn’t care if you were… I love your flaws, I love your passion. You’re so incredibly real!”

  “Why… why are you doing this,” she said, laughing awkwardly as she stumbled backwards.

  “Look, I know I have only been here three weeks and I know that you have been here for nearly fifteen years, but still I think there are some fundamental universal truths that I am authorized to speak on… I mean, I know this is your place… and I know I sound crazy right now, but I think the matters on which I speak currently apply equally throughout our different worlds.”

  “Ember…”

  “Kara, I have only been here three weeks, but already I feel like I have known you forever.”

  “Ember, don’t… don’t do this.”

  “Kara,” he said, his heart pounding, his face beaming with starry-eyes, “I love you. I have always loved you. I loved you before I even knew you, and I always will love you.”

  “Ember, stop. Don’t say that.”

  “Why?! Why can’t I say it?! I love you Kara! I said it! Look, nothing bad is going to happen! We only have one life! I don’t know what’s going to happen in a few weeks—”

  “Ember, please!”

  “—but quite honestly, I’m not sure I even care. This has been the happiest three weeks of my life, and it is worth it, even if I never return! Kara, I love you!” He leaned in, placing his hands lightly on her shoulders, and went in to touch lips. She closed her eyes, turned her head, and with her forearms up and her palms weakly open, feebly resisted against his advance. Aware of her hesitancy, but believing it be misplaced, he continued, and when he kissed her on the lips he felt, deep down, that she wasn’t all that resisting.

  “Ember…” she said, finally pushing him away about a second later than what was appropriate for the type of reaction she wished to convey. He stared at her and advanced again, but she turned her head. “It’s okay,” she said, slowly walking backwards. “Everything is fine. We’ll just pretend like nothing happened.”

  “But I don’t want to pretend.”

  She continued to walk backwards away from him. But then, finally, a smile so subtle, yet so breathtakingly beautiful, came to her lips. Ember fell into sheer ecstasy at the sight, even as she backed away and spoke unpromising words. “Okay… okay… Just don’t tell anyone. Okay… Don’t tell Sven.” And with that, she ran up ahead to join Maggie and Luna.

  Chapter 18: Ulterior Motives

  Kara was unusually chipper the next morning. Though she was clearly pretending that yesterday’s conversation with Ember never happened, she made no attempts to avoid him—if anything she sought him out and actively engaged him, as if to prove that she wasn’t uncomfortable. Maggie and Luna both took notice of her abnormally jovial manner but did not bother to probe for a cause.

  Ember was frustrated. It was the first time that he had poured his heart out and not regretted it the next day, yet Kara was acting as though nothing had happened. Ember was bothered, first and foremost, by the lingering feeling that his love was unrequited. He kept playing her restrained smile back in his mind, over and over again, but it did little to ease his suffering. A secondary, but perhaps equally troubling concern was that his words were too anemic to kindle passion. He had longed to rouse the emotions he believed to be latent within her—to lift the shackles of convention and fire up unbounded feelings, to open up a new world of possibilities—and the thought that he was somehow unable to do so made him feel impotent.

  He would have preferred if she tried to avoid him—at least then he would feel as though he had stirred passion and perturbed the status quo. As it was, he felt lost and alone, weak and ineffectual. Her merriment was a ploy of self-delusion—a blatant compensatory effort to cement the past and hamper the developing future, and Ember wasn’t going to accept it.

  “What’s the matter? What’s going on?” he asked with urgency, aggressively taking her aside.

  She looked up at him and laughed, “Nothing’s the matter. Why are you so serious?”

  Even as she pretended, even as the frustration grew within him, he loved her all the same and desired nothing more than to stop making her feel uncomfortable. At the same time, however, he could not restrain himself until his interrogation yielded results. “Yesterday? What about yesterday? Do you have any regrets?” he asked in urgent whispers so the others wouldn’t hear.

  “Me? Regrets? No. Why would I have any regrets? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I see how it is,” he continued, his voice escalating in volume. “Well, I meant what I said and I don’t regret anything. Are you just going to continue to act as though everything were normal?”

  “Ember?” she snapped, raising her voice to match his in both volume and tone.

  “What?”

  “You want to know something?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes, tell me!”

  “You sure you want to know?!”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I want to know! Tell me!” he begged.

  “You are a blind romantic. This is the real world, and you need to grow up.” A sharp pain came to his heart. His hands shook nervously, even as he ran his fingers through his hair to conceal his angst. “I don’t know what you think this is… some sort of fairy tale? What do you think is going to happen? Huh? When we get the sequence? When we go to Imperium? What do you think it’s going to be like? You’re not making it easier for anyone. Do you understand?!” By this time they had attracted the attention of Luna and Maggie, both of whom made no attempt to hide the fact that they were listening. “There are a lot more important things going on right now than you and me? Do you understand that?!”

  “Yes…” he said, humiliated but strangely relieved.

  “Good… now let’s try to go about the last few days as pleasantly as possible, okay?” Kara shot a questioning glance at both Luna and Maggie. Maggie looked away, but Luna stared on, smiling as usual. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” Maggie answered, curious about the outburst and surprised by the dormant rage.

  “Ok then… so here’s the plan. We go back to Sven’s place and… Luna? You’ll swap places with Sven… and then the four of us will go to the meeting to discuss the recent bomb blasts.” Kara seemed to have been made hyper by her confrontation with Ember.

  “But Styles doesn’t like me anymore,” Luna protested.

  “Styles doesn’t like anyone, and never did,” Kara said informatively. “He will probably want to begin the extraction and sequencing soon, and, if I’m being quite honest, I don’t particularly trust him. Luna, since you’re the only one who knows what he’s doing, you’ll have to stay with him and keep an eye out.”

  “I don’t trust him either,” Ember admitted.

  “Right…” Kara said dismissively, not knowing whether or not he agreed as part of a cheap trick to win her affection.

  “I don’t think…” Maggie said hesitantly, “that he’s as bad as we think… I have seen a softer side of him.”

  “Ok… Su
re… But Luna, do you think you can do that? Do you think you can keep a watch on him?”

  “Sure… but I don’t know what you expect me to do if I find him suspicious or if he goes overboard. I won’t be able to stop him, you know?”

  “That’s okay… just let us know and we can all confront him together.”

  The walk from Kara’s place to Sven’s was unusually quiet and tense. As embarrassed as Ember was, he was actually quite pleased with the turn of events, as his sense of self-efficacy had been restored. And in her anger he saw a reciprocated, albeit suppressed, love and passion. Unsettled by Kara’s outburst, Maggie and Luna were content to follow behind. For Kara, the brisk pace of the walk was surprisingly leisurely and therapeutic.

  When they arrived, Mrs. Helsinki was in a complete frenzy. “Kara dear… Come in! Come in! Shut the door! Did you hear?!”

  “What? What?! What happened?”

  “There was a bomb at the meeting today! Oh my goodness, I was so worried that you were there! I’m so glad you’re okay! Come here… come here dear,” she said, bringing Kara’s head to her bosom.

  “I’m fine, it’s okay. Were there any fatalities?” she inquired.

  “Oh yes… I do believe so! I heard from a friend of a friend that eight revolutionaries were killed… Dear… I know that this is your cause, and I know that you and my Sveny believe really strongly in this… but it’s just getting too dangerous. It’s not your fight. You can’t go back there! You have to stop this!”

  “Okay… okay… Mrs. Helsinki… Just calm down. Is Sven here?”

  “Yes! He’s in the basement, but he won’t come up to talk to me, and he won’t let me go down either. I think he’s trying to keep an eye out on that strange boy… Between you and me,” Mrs. Helsinki said, pretending to whisper as though Styles might hear, “he’s been acting very strange lately.”

  “Who? How so?”

  “The boy… the cute one with a strange haircut… I always write him a little note with every meal, and he used to write something back on it.” She gave the look of one who was exposing an invaluable secret.

  “Mrs. Helsinki, there is nothing to… Wait… What? Really? He wrote notes to you?”

  “Yes, all the time… usually pleasant, simple things… thank you’s… stuff like that… But,” she said seriously, “he doesn’t do that anymore. He’s hardly eating anything, and he never leaves that basement. I’m starting to think that there’s something wrong with that boy…”

  “Okay, thank you Mrs. Helsinki,” Kara said, heading towards the basement with Maggie, Ember, and Luna in tow.

  When they entered they saw Sven pacing back and forth nervously. “Did you hear?” he asked with alarm.

  “Yes, your Mom told us all about it.”

  “They’re discussing it at the square now. Come on, let’s go!” he said, running up the stairs.

  “Wait… What? In broad daylight?”

  “Yes. Come on, we have to go! If we don’t act now, they might use this as an impetus to launch an offensive assault!”

  “Uh… Okay…” Kara said, dragging Maggie back up by the hand. “Luna’s staying with you,” she cried back to Styles, as she went out the door.

  “Whatever,” Styles moaned indifferently.

  “See you soon!” Maggie said cheerfully to Luna, gracing her long slender fingertips with her own, as Kara dragged her back up stairs. Ember followed closely behind.

  “Take care of my Sveny!” Mrs. Helsinki said as the gang ran out of the door.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom,” Sven shouted back.

  ***

  A crowd of people carved out a circumference around the eight mangled corpses. Bradbury, standing before the crowd in all his glory, effusively lamented over the dead bodies, speaking at length about leaderless resistance and the need for chaos in action. A few other high-ranking revolutionaries offered their take on the incident, occasionally spewing invectives at one another—each speaker and each subsequent lecture increasingly becoming more bellicose in an attempt to appease the crowd and win more attention. No one, however, spoke more outrageously than Bradbury, with his violent patois, booming voice and ferocious gesticulations. Needless to say, this public display was contrary to typical revolutionary modus operandi.

  Sven and Kara pushed their way to the front, Ember and Maggie not far behind. “What’s going on?” Kara asked another female revolutionary who was also standing on the sidelines.

  “There was a bomb at the meeting today. Eight people killed.”

  “That could’ve been us,” Kara said slowly, as much to herself as to the woman. “If we had left just a few minutes earlier—”

  “I know what you mean,” the woman said, “my husband and I were going to attend this meeting as well… If our daughter didn’t ask us to make her breakfast, we could’ve both been dead.”

  Kara stared ahead, pondering the events of the morning that led to their altered fate. “Who died?” Sven asked, while Kara tried to recover.

  “Michealis, Ethan, Susan, Crystal—”

  “Crystal died?! I liked her!” Sven said, immediately feeling profane for not honoring the other victims.

  “Yes… Etna, Sam, and Paul were killed too. I can’t quite figure out who the eighth person was… Her face was too badly burned.”

  “I see,” Kara said, “and what have they been talking about.”

  “It’s been going on like this for sometime,” the woman explained. “They have mostly been riling up the people, calling them into action. Bradbury over there has been saying that we should all contribute to the war effort by throwing make shift mortars and bombs at the enemies.”

  “And who exactly does he think the enemy is?” Sven pressed.

  “Isn’t that obvious? The establishments of course. He’s been saying that anyone who wrecks destruction and death upon either Auctoritas or Imperium should be considered heroes, regardless of the casualties or collateral damage.”

  “And the others?”

  “Some are suggesting that we provoke a war between the two establishments, while others seem to think that the time is right for an armed invasion.”

  “And this they discuss out in the open, for the world to hear?” Kara cried in disbelief.

  “I know,” came a voice from behind. “I’ve been telling them to go inside… to keep our plans under wraps, but it appears that it has all gone to their heads.” It was Daryl, the middle-aged man who had returned from Imperium.

  Kara and Sven were thrilled to see him. Kara, who was particularly animated, jumped on him and gave him a big hug. “Daryl, we’ve missed you so much. We’ve been meaning to talk to you alone for some time now but we never got the chance.”

  “I’m excited to see you both too, I just regret that it had to be on this occasion.”

  “What do you think is going to happen,” Sven said, returning to a serious position.

  “I don’t know… They have really done it this time… I mean, we can’t just sit back and let them bomb our own people.”

  “You still think that we can do this non-violently, right?” Kara asked.

  “I’m not sure… I’m just not sure any more… Hold on, I want to listen to this,” Daryl said, pointing to Bradbury, who had just now meandered into the center of the circle, amongst the cadavers.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bradbury cried out with his raspy booming voice, “the time is nigh upon us! Look at what these heartless heathens have done to our people?! They come here, to the last vestige of freedom in the Underground, and dare to spill our blood? No! We will not allow it! We will take a stand!” The crowd roared to his bellows. “Eight of our finest have been stolen from us today… They think we are too weak to respond… well… are we?!”

  “No, we are strong,” the crowd chanted in unison, their fists pumping to the rhythm.

  “For every one of ours they kill, we will kill one thousand of there’s! We will not rest until The Tyrant and The Despot, and all of their wretched spawn, a
re systematically annihilated—wiped clean from the face of this Underground, and expunged from the annals of history!! They have made it abundantly clear that they will seek to do whatever they can to spoil our concerted efforts… But it isn’t enough… because we will retreat to the safety of our homes, and from there we will be invincible! We will strike on our own, with no other guidance but our desire to make it rain bombs and mortars on their heads! Divided in action but united in spirit! Now is the time to act! We can wait no longer!”

  There was a rustle from the back of the crowd. Increasingly Sven and Kara’s attention, and that of everyone else in the crowd, was split between Bradbury’s diatribe and the growing disturbance at the southern most edge of the crowd. At last even Bradbury stopped to see what was going on. Sven and Kara puzzled at the parting crowd, until at last Styles walked forward.

  “What’s he doing here?!” Sven whispered to Kara. “He shouldn’t be showing his face like this in public! The Police are after him.” Kara put an open hand in front of him to indicate that though she was on the same page, she preferred to watch the unfolding action than discuss it. Ember and Maggie pushed ahead to get a better vantage.

  Styles walked through the open center decisively and with an alarming aggressiveness. Confused by the challenge, but not wanting to lose the crowd’s attention, Bradbury spoke aloud, “And what do you want sir? Come to join the cause?”

  Styles stared at the man menacingly and then slapped him across the face so swiftly and so compactly that a blink of the eyes was all it would take to miss it. Bradbury instantly brought his hand to his cheek to lessen the sting. Several members of his entourage leaped into action, but Bradbury coolly waved them off.

  “Now sir,” Bradbury said smugly, “I must warn you that it is not wise to engage a man of my experiences to battle. If you wish to—”

  Styles slapped him again, twice as hard as last time. Again Bradbury waved off his entourage, but this time he did not reply as haughtily. For all his pomp and pageantry, Bradbury was a reserved man with no intention of escalating a confrontation before a massive crowd. Regardless of how confident he was, he would never risk humiliation on such a grand scale. There was a touch of fear in his voice when he spoke—the type of fear that comes upon realizing that one’s combatant cannot be discussed out of conflict. “Comrade, I assure you,” he began conciliatorily, “I am not your enemy, I do—”