Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy)

by Jonathan R. Stanley

  Setting the large box down on the table, Ezra unwrapped it delicately and opened the top. Inside was a welding torch.

  “We know how big a part of your life this hobby has become.”

  It had started at first with some simple wood working and hand carvings, but over the past ten years, Ezra had become more and more enthralled with creating and molding things with her hands. Just a few summers ago she had even turned the back garage into a workshop complete with a blast furnace and forge. She made everything from model ships and glass bottles to build them in, to swords and jewelry.

  Truly touched by the thoughtfulness, Ezra picked up and examined the instrument and ran her hands over the hoses and gauges still coiled in the box. “This is top of the line, guys. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well you know us,” Corbin said presenting his gift with a smile. “We give for-you-for-us gifts so we expect stuff in return.”

  Ezra next unwrapped a protective face shield with a fire decal coming off the black view port.

  “I know the paint job won’t last long,” Corbin offered. “But at least for a while, yeah?”

  Ezra was visibly warmed. “This is great, guys. Thank you.”

  Roger put a hand on Ezra’s shoulder. “Well, you need to know that we only celebrate birthday’s every ten years; so we have to make ‘em count. Oh and after you get to like two-hundred, no one gets you anything – just a heads up – I was crushed.”

  “Happy birthday, little-mom,” Corbin laughed.

  “Yeah, happy birthday.”

  “Thank you both.”

  Corbin turned to Miquel. “What about you old timer? What’d you get her?”

  Rarely one to go along with Corbin’s sense of humor, Miquel simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys, dropping them on the table with a jingle.

  “Oh that is not cool,” Corbin moaned. “We gotta have a spending limit next time.”

  Miquel chuckled in his deep voice. “It’s also a combination gift,” he explained. “Miss Lori does the rest.”

  “Ooo, what is it? I wanna know,” Roger asked.

  “I’m afraid it’s a secret boys,” I told them weakly.

  “What’s wrong, mom?” Corbin asked.

  “I must cut the celebrations short and ask our lady of the hour to go upstairs and pack a bag.” I was trying my hardest to sound cheery.

  “Pack a bag?” Ezra repeated.

  “I’ll explain it all later. Now hurry along. Get your things. We’ll be gone at least three days.”

  Uneasily, Ezra made her way upstairs, followed closely behind by Boo. When she came back down, only Miquel remained as I had ushered the other two out.

  “I’ll be holding down the fort while you’re gone,” Miquel said, seeing him to the door. “Take good care of Mom.”

  “I will,” Ezra replied though things still seemed foggy to her. “Goodbye Boo-boo.” Ezra knelt down and scooped her up. “Try to be good for uncle Miquel.”

  “Si,” she replied flatly. After a kiss on the head, Ezra set her back down and then took one last look around the bookstore before heading to the car.

  “So where are we going?” Ezra asked, nervously.

  “South Gothica.”

  “Really? Why? What’s in Sogot?”

  “It’s part of your training.”

  “My training?” Ezra laughed, mocking the notion, “Is there another library down there?”

  “You’ll see. Just try to enjoy the scenery till then.”

  Ezra frowned and turned to look out the window. “You know I haven’t been this far down the road since Miquel first brought me here.”

  I nodded.

  “Huh,” she continued, thinking aloud. “It hasn’t changed at all.”

  “Did you think it would have?”

  “Well, yeah I guess. I mean it’s exactly the same though.”

  “Ezra…” I began, but she took my weariness as disappointment.

  “I know, I know. It’s just strange, that’s all.”

  As we made it further south and the familiar sights of trees turned into dense neighborhoods and strip malls, we both grew uneasy.

  “Is there any danger involved – in us leaving?” Ezra asked.

  “Leaving what? Our comfort zone?”

  “I just meant…”

  “There’s always danger.”

  Ezra settled into her seat, probably not wanting to antagonize me any more at the beginning of a long trip. With her head on her hand, she stared out the window alone in her thoughts. I let her stay that way for a long time. The less I thought about what we were doing and why, the better.

  Ezra sat up quickly and looked around. I think she had fallen asleep somewhere in Central, I’m not really sure where. I just hoped our presence would go unnoticed by my children. I was supposed to be heading to Pantheon Theatre. Instead here we were in a south western neighborhood of Sogot.

  “Where are we?” Ezra asked.

  “A cemetery.”

  A willow tree, like the one inside Artemis lane, sat in the middle of a similarly sized graveyard. On the other side was a funeral with a small group of people gathered around a casket.

  “Who died?” she asked.

  “Carson Jackson.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “No one.”

  “Lori? What’s going on?”

  “Carson was born in the projects of Solthweros, a Sogot community. This is its cemetery. Just a week after being released from prison he was shot by a man named Harry Piliotti, a PIPER, hired by the community. Carson was nineteen years old. His mother is over there.”

  “How did you know him?” Ezra started to say but I cut her off by shaking my head disappointedly.

  “I read his file. The cypera who wrote it used a template like a journalist covering the same old story. Paradigmatic black youth. Fatherless. Lacking all civilized qualities.” Ezra knew these phrases from countless sentiner files. Everyone in Gothica did, though probably by different names. The last one was the most dynamic. It meant to us, that this child had never been told he was loved. He had never been given a gift. He had never been cradled or held. He had never known anything but survival in the most grotesque sense of the word. He had been born outside of civilization and was then punished for not fitting into it. Unfortunately, to the rest of Gothica, especially those who had money or power, Carson lacked all civilized qualities in a different sense of the phrase.

  Not too far away, the mother wept on her boy’s casket. “What is the response?” I ask rhetorically. “Tough on crime, For Profit Prisons?” Catchphrases for exacerbating the problem. “The Gothican Way makes responsibility very clear. If you fail or if you don’t succeed, you have no one to blame but yourself. It’s as simple as that.”

  “We know it isn’t,” Ezra said worriedly.

  “We do, but that’s because we know the history of Gothica! About cycle! We have empirical data instead of uninformed emotional responses. We know specifics like when Gothica’s zoning boards laid out neighborhoods, they did so with deliberate racial prejudices that have endured in many horrible ways for thousands of years. We know that there is a wage barrier between welfare and a profitable working life. We see the invisible walls that were set up long ago and which continue to have a devastating legacy in all aspects of Gothica. All anyone else sees is the present, and so there is no empathy. They see the world through their lives, their experiences and can’t imagine anything else.”

  “How else would you expect them to look at things?”

  “No other way… for the average person. The average Gothican can’t think beyond himself, just like the average Gothican born into it, can’t escape poverty. But cycle isn’t just about the average person, it’s about the exceptional people too and how it stops them from doing any good or enacting any change. It stops them from even wanting to, and any that are left after that are fighting the whole darn city!”

  Ezra was perfectly still, looking right at me
. His eyes, once so young – still so young – were full of fear. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I know why Carson died and what can be done to correct it for future generations. Up until now I have been unwilling to fight to make it happen.” I bit my lip, then pushed on. “You and I have one lifetime here; what kind of person or mother would I be if I left it for you no better than I found it?”

  “Lori,” Ezra said, as if she had suddenly written me off as senile or over-reacting. “I think we should go back home.”

  “No! I’ve read reports like this for too long! And it’s just wrong – the whole city is wrong!”

  “Lori, you taught me how to see past that.”

  “To what, Ezra? To posterity? If I have done that, than I have truly failed you. I am a mother. Not just to the sentiners, but a real mother. To you. And I will not leave this world no better than I found it! Not for my child to inherit.”

  “Lori, stop,” Ezra pleaded.

  I wouldn’t. “We know that things won’t equalize. We know that the invisible hand of the market won’t set things right. For thousands of years, cycle has done nothing but concentrate all the wealth at the top and all the misery at the bottom. It’s not that the system has failed; it’s working perfectly – just like it was designed to. And do you know what? I believe in my heart, truly deep down inside, that if the average Gothican knew about this, they wouldn’t stand for it. If they could only connect their hatred of injustice with a motivation and willingness to help, then things could change.”

  “It won’t!” Ezra shouted and I took in a startled breath. “This whole city will be destroyed before anyone lets that happen,” she exclaimed.

  “I know,” I said, putting the car in gear. “Which I why I have to do this.” I pulled away from the corner and drove slowly down the street. “I don’t know how much time I have. It should be plenty with all the kharma I’ve saved up over the years.”

  “Lori, don’t talk like that. Stop the car.”

  “Please! Be quiet, and let me speak. I have seen how this will end. All of it. And though I will die, that knowledge will live on in the consciousness. You will see-”

  †Delano†

  It couldn’t be. How didn’t I know? Why didn’t she tell me? Oh god. God, don’t let it be true. I burst into Cassandra’s apartment. Ezra was in the living room, utterly unharmed and sitting on the sofa. Cassandra held me back as I rushed towards him.

  “Delano,” Cass said, warningly.

  “What happened?” I demanded of Ezra as he quivered there pathetically.

  “I don’t know!” he screamed through tears.

  “It was a train.” Cassandra said. “We pulled him from the wreckage.”

  “So help me, if you did this, I will find a way to kill you!”

  “Delano, it wasn’t his fault.”

  “What were you doing in Sogot?” I snarled.

  “She wanted to change things!” Ezra wailed. I pushed forward into Cassandra who struggled to hold me back. Marley came in from the kitchen and stood ready to jump in.

  “You don’t get it do you?” I sneered at Ezra. “She did it because of you! You never believed in the cycle. So she had to show you!”

  “Delano!”

  I pulled my gun and fired, the first shot hit, but the next five went into the ceiling. I pushed Cass and Marley off me and stormed through the kitchen to the door. At the bottom of the stairs, I could sense Ezra clutching his chest. The bullet, spurred by my malice, had drawn blood, but to my despair, no more than a drop.

  †Miquel†

  “I was sitting at the table when suddenly Pumpkin began to feel lighter on my lap.” I explained to Ezra, my wretched heart wishing to cry out but my will holding back tears for the child’s sake. “Then he was gone entirely… That’s when I knew. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Ezra nodded. It was an utterly empty motion that only pronounced the hollowness she felt in her every movement. Boo meowed at her feet and she knelt down like a dishonored knight begging forgiveness. The cat leapt into her arms and did her best to offer consolation. “Looks like I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on,” Ezra said, mostly to herself. “I’d better get started.”

  †Delano†

  Fourteen

  My skin cracks as I shift in my seat. Large parts of my body are covered in the brown and black scabs of charred skin from the explosion at Pantheon. The patches feel foreign and dead as my fingers trace idly over the back of my palm. Blood leaks from a few rifts in the plastic-feeling blotches, yet, for some reason I keep on flexing my muscles, breaking open more and more of the burns, just to grapple with that searing discomfort.

  I have been cooked like this before – when the burns were so deep my muscles were medium rare, and thin, watery blood had seeped to the surface of the bubbled skin. This time though, the physical pain is comforting. The only reason I feel any of my wounds at all is because I desperately want to. I want to feel that intense pain all over me, and I want it to scar. I want my face never to look the same again and it infuriates me that I will be fully recovered in another few days.

  In the van following us sits Corbin and Roger. I take a moment to wonder how Corbin is dealing with this but just catching a glimpse of his face in the side-view mirror makes me realize that he simply isn’t; his mind has shut down. Someone’s home… but the lights are off.

  Sabetha is on autopilot. She’s been driving for six hours and hasn’t blinked yet. Her mind must be racing with questions and worries, but at least she’s staying on the right side of the road.

  I turn back to look out at the apple orchards of North Gothica. Those fields are about as haunted as the cell, but tonight they are silent. In a short while we’ll be arriving at Ezra’s house, and… well, at the moment, that’s as far ahead as I’ve thought.

  Ezra comes out of the library as our cars pull up, that stupid cat in his arms. We park and the four of us pile out onto the sidewalk of Artemis Lane.

  “Thank goodness you’re all safe,” he says. He and I make brief eye contact and I look down to the pavement. “I saw what happened on the news,” he continues. “Please, please come in.”

  We enter through the front door with a bell tinkling flatly. It smells different and most of the lights are on.

  “I was so happy when I received your call,” Ezra says to Corbin, leading us into the den. We slowly ease into our seats and I revel in the pain it causes me.

  “Sorry, if we bleed on your sofa,” Roger offers with a chuckle that turns into a pained cough.

  At this, Ezra quickly asks. “Is there anything I can get you? Bandages? Lemonade?” Everyone lets out a tense laugh at his sincerity. Except me.

  Without an answer, he leaves for the kitchen and returns with a tray. I refuse the tea.

  “You must be exhausted. I have quarters set up for everyone.”

  “We can’t waste any more time,” I say.

  “I’ll need to know what happened, then. I’ve been hesitant to look into the consciousness for myself.”

  I scoff, but Corbin takes the opportunity to suck up. “That was probably a good thing. You might have made yourself a target.”

  “Are there any other survivors?” Ezra asks.

  Corbin looks down at the carpet and then shakes his head, no. I finally realize just how little Ezra knows about what happened. I guess I just kind of expected him to. It’s his job.

  Ezra sighs deeply and purses his lips for a moment, then continues. “Tell me what happened.”

  I go on to explain, to the best of my understanding, what transpired, but get distracted as Roger puts a comforting hand on Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra taps it and tacitly reassures Roger he is okay. I finish retelling the events, but I guess I’m not too good at hiding my utter disdain for our librarian.

  “Have you given any thought to what it could have meant? About being shadows, I mean,” Ezra says.

  “Of course,” I snarl. “It was a warning. Everything up until the expl
osion was all a warning. And I was too stupid and arrogant to see it.”

  “Then you believe the consciousness destroyed the theatre,” Ezra states.

  “What else could it be?” Roger asks, with a hint of hope.

  “It’s just that…” Ezra begins but trails off melodramatically.

  “What?” I demand.

  “This isn’t the usual method of the consciousness.”

  “For fuck’s sake…” They’re all still scared. Scared to admit to themselves that we’re doomed.

  Ezra resumes. “You may be right Delano. Until we know more, it’s safe to assume the consciousness did target the sentiners. But what that means is far worse. The sentiners being closest to the consciousness, knowing the most about the city and about its true face makes us likely targets for the first tremors. But it’s likely not the end of this. This episode could prove to be the opening of fault lines deep within our reality.”

  “How big?” Corbin asks softly.

  “It would have to have been a long process to get to this point. Who knows how much momentum is behind it or how deep these fissures are.”

  Everyone’s afraid to ask what that means so Ezra moves in a new direction. “I can’t imagine what you are all going through. But we must decide what to do with this second chance, and quickly.”

  “Decide what to do with it?” Corbin asks.

  Roger’s shoulders sink and his head drops as he mutters, “What can we do?”

  I sneer at him.

  “Have you got any great ideas?” Sabetha snaps at me.

  “This is a difficult question,” Ezra interjects. “And we should all think very carefully about it before we make any decisions.”

  I glare at him. “What the fuck do you know about making decisions?”

  Ezra stares at me blankly.

  Sabetha stands up from her seat and glares at me. “It’s not her fault, Delano.”

  I rise to face her, a large split running down my back and oozing blood. “What the fuck do you mean by that!” I spit, my eyes watering with a surge of overwhelming remorse. “Did you see all of this coming? Was it obvious to you?”