Hilgor couldn’t seem to locate a single source of illumination. In confusion, he raised his head and nearly lost his balance, struck by the totally alien sight of myriads of small white lights that almost covered the unfamiliar deep blackness of space. The city inside the Wall was too bright, and all he had ever witnessed was a handful of dim dots on a dull brownish background. It was impossible to believe that the limitless expanse above and that washed up tarp were the same sky; that he was still on Y-3. It took him a moment to connect the gorgeous cloud of diamond dust to the name from his astronomy lessons. “Milky Way,” he whispered. He kept looking up, unable to tear his eyes from the stars, and surprisingly thought that he wouldn’t have seen any of this had it not been for the mask in his living room. It was as if Nick had sent him a distant greeting, revealing a glimpse of the future in which this shimmering wonder was just the first gift.
Hilgor heard Del’s footsteps receding, and reluctantly looked away from the sky and hurried after her, uneasily aware of the dead expanse of desert behind them.
At close range the buildings no longer looked white – they were grayish, encrusted in layers of dust, muddied by the rains. Del approached one of them, the nearest to their parked capsule, and knocked on the door. It glided aside, letting them in.
A young, thin woman in a gray anti-radiation suit stepped away from the doorway, inviting them inside. She was so pale that her dark eyes didn’t seem to belong with the rest of her face, and her shaggy mane of brown hair looked almost black in stark contrast to the whiteness of her lifeless skin.
She motioned for him to enter, introducing herself in a quiet, slightly hoarse voice, “Reish. Come in.”
Hilgor met her eyes, and she held his gaze for a moment before looking back at Del. It was long enough to exchange a token of recognition. And it was long enough for Hilgor to see desperate fear hidden just under the surface of her eyes.
Following her inside, Hilgor glanced around the mostly empty space, struck by its resemblance to his own apartment. There were at least two things in common: an obvious lack of any interest in making the place nice and an inconspicuous efficiency with regard to where things were situated. He immediately recognized the same underlying reason – she was also an incredible time miser. The time she spent with her imaginary objects and landscapes was so precious that she had tried to simplify everything in her external world, making it efficient and maintenance free.
“I remembered an old world when we landed – a village,” he said.
“A trailer park would be a closer match,” she said, “but it requires some time to define the difference.”
On their way to the large table in the middle of the open space, they passed a simple open kitchen. On the other side, Hilgor saw an area that reminded him of a physics lab.
“Del, the latest, as promised. Want to see?” Reish motioned to the large, flat black screen on the table.
“I don’t want to waste your time, Reish. You know he’ll buy it anyway.”
“I want to know what you think.”
“Of course, then, I’d be honored.”
Reish nodded, picked up two metal hairnets from the table and handed them to Del and Hilgor. Del put it over her hair in a standard gesture. Hilgor mechanically took the other one, and recalled Del talking about neuro-art, something she believed would eventually prove all other art forms inferior.
He didn’t know much about it except the main concept, a long known neurological effect where stimulation of one sensory pathway triggered specific experiences in another. Modern technology could temporarily induce variations of this state, but they were not especially popular with the general public, being neither very interesting nor very pleasurable in and of themselves. Hilgor hesitated, but the image of the Milky Way flashed in his mind, and he sat down in the closest chair and followed Del’s example.
“Give it ten seconds,” said Del.
The screen lit up with an unfolding pattern of intricate shapes, which slowly shifted and changed color and brightness. He felt a vague sense of déjà vu, luring him to search for a fleeting memory of something beautiful that he knew had never happened. A whimsical whirl of tender blue sent him a wave of happiness, stronger and purer than anything he had ever experienced in real life. He wanted to linger there longer, but suddenly lost his equilibrium, blinded by an explosion of deep orange, the color of the sun, parched desert, thirst, love and jealousy. And then it occurred to him what Reish was doing – she had found a way to ignite a cross-activation between the visual cortex and the brain areas responsible for producing direct emotional responses. She had interweaved variations of fear, apprehension, hope, anticipation, love, happiness, rage and feelings that existed deep in his mind, but had never been acknowledged or even named. The prominent theme of passion and desire became more disturbing as the colors grew deeper, approaching an inky mark of a catastrophe, breaking the symmetry, offsetting the balance. Colliding with the black void, he felt the sharp agony of the end, an uncontrollable childish fear of the dark, but, to his shock, nothing horrible happened. He was falling through calm melancholy, lightness of acceptance. A bright white suddenly flashed with anger and faded, leaving behind the burn, the pain of loss. It was a farewell.
“It’s over,” he heard Del’s voice, but he continued looking at the empty screen.
“What do you think?” asked Reish. She leaned forward from a reclining position in her chair, watching them with rapt attention. They both turned toward her and the moment she saw their faces, her eyes relaxed. She bit her lip, trying to hide a content smile.
“Reish, it is …” Del stammered, searching for words, but Reish no longer needed to hear them. She was satisfied.
Hilgor absent-mindedly watched the women confirm the details of the deal at the large table. They looked more like friends than business partners, and it was clear that this was a familiar transaction, following a standard script. Except at the very end, Reish’s voice suddenly changed, switching to a suspiciously casual tone and Hilgor noticed that Del immediately tensed.
“Del, I need a favor.”
“Yes?” Del also tried to sound casual.
“I want you to sell another piece, my early work – A-243.”
“But why? You had planned to keep it …”
“I got the results. It’s in the final stage. They say three maybe four months tops.”
Hilgor glanced at Del and saw that her face froze.
“I want you to find it a good home. I want to know where it goes,” Reish’s voice had an uncharacteristic, almost commanding tone to it. Then, in her usual demeanor, she added, “Please, Del. Besides, I need the extra money. Illegal painkillers aren’t cheap.”
Del finally managed to collect herself. “How are you handling it?” she asked.
Now it was Reish’s turn to look away. “I don’t know,” she said, hugging her shoulders with her arms. “I guess someone in my position might be angry. But to me it all just seems so pathetic. What did I expect?”
She walked away from the table and stopped in front of the curved wall, pressing her forehead against its porous surface. Impulsively, she hit it with her fist, and Hilgor winced, imagining the sharp pain in her hand.
“But I didn’t expect it to be so fast!” Del turned back, and Hilgor saw tears in her eyes. “I’m afraid, Del. I’m disgusted by the thought of my dead body. And the ugliness of all that.”
Del quickly stepped toward Reish and gave her a hug. There was a long pause, and then Reish gently freed herself from the embrace.
“Thank you,” she said and walked to the nearest chair and sat on its soft leather arm. “You know, it’s kind of funny … you would never guess what happens to you after you learn that you’re about to die. All my life I was stealing time from reality to create worlds in my head. I don’t do it anymore. I want to spend my remaining time here, in the real world. I don’t kno
w where the things in my head come from. But they’re not from here. So, there’s a chance they’ll be there, where I’m heading. Not that I really believe in it, though. But this,” she stroked the smooth surface of the leather chair and looked at her hand, “this will be gone.”
The chime on Del’s wristband interrupted the pause.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Del. It sounded like an apology for everything, not just for their departure.
“No need, Del,” now Reish seemed very calm. “We both know that in my five years here I did more than I did during my thirty inside. I had the luxury of time. I hoped it would be longer, but even this amount was worth it. I don’t regret that I left. Now go.”
She waved them a quick goodbye and closed the door.
They walked to their capsule without saying a word and continued to ride in silence until after they had passed back through the Wall.
Del looked straight ahead as if she needed all her concentration to navigate the city, but when they got near the bright windows of a tall residential complex, Hilgor saw that she was crying.
“Del,” he called, but she didn’t answer.
He wanted to make her talk. “What did Reish do when she lived inside?” he asked.
“She worked in the Meteorology Department. She maintained programs for anti-tornado missiles.” Del was silent for a while. Then she added, “Someone needs to fight tornadoes.”
After another pause she said, in a more normal voice, “I wish I could keep that early piece, A-243,” she nodded towards the small black package. “She calls it Not So Subtle Signs of Obsession.” She looked at Hilgor for the first time since they had left Reish and smiled, as if remembering something good. “It’s one of her first after she discovered the technique … my favorite part is where she managed to capture this feeling … imagine, you’re in love, secretly, desperately. You walk outside, and your heart skips a beat when you think you caught a glimpse of your lover’s face in the crowd. And then, as you realize your mistake, the immediate feeling of simultaneous disappointment and relief.”
“Why can’t you buy it?” asked Hilgor.
“Its black market price will be too high for me. I need to offer her the highest bid,” she said and after a pause added, “except that it doesn’t matter anymore. Money won’t help her much now.”
Hilgor didn’t say anything, silently agreeing – knowing that when Reish refused to work at any official job, she had lost her right to the decontaminated space inside the Wall, including access to the city’s infrastructure and public services. With medicine and pharmacology being one of those services, there was no amount of money that could help her. She was outside the system. And besides, it was very likely that at this stage it was too late. Even the best doctors would probably not be able to do anything for her; cancer had been by far the largest killer in the city after the war, and generations of researchers had failed to find the cure.
“She has a following, a cult inside,” Del’s speech was tense, as if she were arguing. “By now it’s unfashionable to have private exhibitions without her work.”
They stopped at the entrance to Hilgor’s complex.
“I’m sorry I ruined the evening,” Del’s voice suddenly fell flat, and her face lost its tension, appearing wan and lifeless. Hilgor waited; he knew her well enough to guess that it wasn’t the end. In a moment she spoke again, now in a distant, unfamiliar tone, “You see, Hilgor, it’s … it might sound cruel, but it’s not even about her. It’s about her work, everything she won’t do now. This universe will never make up for this. It’s as if God lost one of his voices, forever.”
Hilgor had never heard her talk like this before. He stared at her in surprise, but she didn’t notice, looking right through him. Finally, she tried to smile, still avoiding his eyes, “I need to go home. I’m a wreck now.”
He touched her shoulder and got out of the capsule. She sped away, and he walked uphill to his apartment.
He opened the door, getting ready for the onslaught of paws, wet nose and rapid body checks. Without turning on the lights, he grabbed the leash and took the dog out.
As he walked along the familiar path to the park, his thoughts grew increasingly darker. Del’s last words were unnecessary. He understood. Reish was an ally who had been fighting the same battle as he did, sacrificing everything to free up beautiful things locked inside the indifferent emptiness. They both weren’t doing too well at the moment, Reish and he, and it wasn’t clear who had fared worse – she, dying, or he, with his hands tied and mouth gagged by the accurate machine of efficiency.
Riph disappeared into the bushes, probably catching the smell of a lone meerkat. Waiting for the dog, Hilgor looked up at the sky. It had its customary brownish color, with a slight hint of crimson closer to the rim and several faint blinking dots. And suddenly, he thought about the world that Nick had talked about. The world where, according to Nick, you didn’t have to breathe poison to see the stars.
“Riph, let’s go home,” he called and turned back. It was time to ask questions.
He hurriedly walked to the apartment, rushed in through the door and turned on the lights. But instead of heading straight to the table he stopped, his eyes glued to a piece of paper that had apparently been pushed under the door during his absence. He looked around, confirming that the windows were shaded, and picked it up.
There was only one person who could’ve brought this, and yet, Hilgor’s heart sank when he recognized the familiar handwriting.
It was a protocol break. When he had decided to work with Deait on their secret project, they had agreed to keep their communication anonymous and untraceable. This sudden letter, delivered to his home, couldn’t mean anything good.
He started reading.
Dear Hilgor,
I made a decision. I won’t work with you anymore. In fact, I’ll stop doing math altogether. Let me try to explain. You know that I have to spend my most productive hours on my government assigned job. When I come home and try to pick up where I left off, I struggle. I can’t switch so fast. It’s better when I have some time off. By the second day it comes back. But when it does, my job – forget about the job – my whole life becomes irrelevant, gray, meaningless. It kills me to return to my usual life, to my work. I feel that I’m going crazy, my personality splits. Hilgor, I couldn’t do it anymore, I had to choose. And I won’t move outside the Wall. It’s not worth it. Nothing is worth this slow suicide. And after all, I’m not even good enough. I suspected that, always … Bye, Hilgor.
Hilgor let the letter drop to the floor.
So it finally happened, he thought. He always knew it would only be a matter of time. Why now? What was the last straw?
Deait and Hilgor had been friends for a while, since school, in fact. They both equally hated the system. They talked about it all the time. They had gotten to know each other well. But it took Hilgor by total surprise when Deait called and told him that he’d just made a public statement and, ignoring the unit, posted his strikingly beautiful solution of a very old and difficult problem to the shared net. In his statement, Deait explained that the current science setup was flawed. He gave an example of his approach that was just voted down, and showed that ignoring his technique would create recession in this field for a while. And it was connected with the improvement of tornado forecast precision, which was catastrophically needed in Y-3 life.
Hilgor had screamed at him that it was professional suicide, but it had been too late. Deait said that he couldn’t see his ideas being killed anymore. Hilgor didn’t like it either, but he knew that protesting was a useless gesture. The efficiency programs wouldn’t be changed. Now … he was sure that Deait wasn’t impulsive. He was even more positive that Deait would never want to attract any attention to himself. Deait openly challenged the rules of Y-3 for killing his work. He was lighthearted and cynical about many things in life, but … he couldn
’t be cynical in this one case.
But the system protected itself, and Deait suffered the consequences. He was kicked out of the Guild and had to take one of the regular, government-certified jobs. He was stubborn, so he kept doing math in his spare time, and he had nothing to lose anymore, so he continued posting his results in the public space. This was a luxury Hilgor couldn’t afford even anonymously – it could be tracked. Working with Deait had enabled at least some of his work, their joint results, to get out to the world instead of collecting virtual dust in Hilgor’s secret private files. So, that was the end. He had now lost Deait.
Hilgor blindly stared at the wall in front of him, trying to control the familiar helpless rage at the perfect efficiency with which they were caged. Moving behind the Wall? Deait refused to breathe poisoned air in exchange for freedom, but who could blame him? Whose fault was it that they had to make impossible choices?
Except that was no longer the case. He, Hilgor, of all people, had been given a way out.
No more wasting time, he doubled checked the doors and windows, sent all his communication devices to sleep and turned off the lights except for a small table lamp. He looked around the room, rejected the couch and dragged a black shabby armchair from his study.
He picked up the mask, sat down and put it on.
For a while, he could still see the room. Riph was looking at him suspiciously from his usual position at the door. And then there was nothing except for a wall of milky fog.
Fire of the Dark Triad Page 16