"Maybe you do. But how can I if Processor Theory has nothing to do with faith?" I carried it farther.
He shook his head. "I think you have more faith than I do, Nat-Nicki.” His slip-up was a testament to how comfortable he was around me; he was even mildly playful. “I mean, it takes more energy to stubbornly believe the idea that we are made by aliens,… made by aliens,… made by aliens when it gives you much less of a headache to believe that we were designed to live on these planets simply until we have accomplished our purpose.” He shrugged, his fingertips carefully placed against one another as if he was drawing a point of focus from the physical gesture. "I've found in my life that the simplest answer is usually the truth. Not to exclude the fact that it is usually the wisest."
I shook my head in swift disagreement, a smile creeping out of its hiding place. Why am I getting so high off of this? "Brain surgery isn't simple. But it has been the correct treatment for some diseases."
"But the choice to undergo brain surgery, though a hard choice to make, is a simple one. Once the factors are accounted for and the desired end result has been ascertained, the choice is simple. The paradigm cannot dictate the choices, Nicki. It’s a formula that is only supposed to work when given the full factual data. Without the necessary information, any choice is a shot in the dark.”
I smiled. "There is some sense in that, but I don't know if I can believe it."
"Why?" He was earnest; not judgmental.
"Because-" I searched for the right words to explain myself. "I'd love for there to be some great purpose to life, and meaning in existence. But it's wishful thinking! I don't want to believe something just because I WANT to. I need to know it's true."
He placed his chin in his hands.
The silence stretched. I resisted the urge to chew a nail.
Then he nodded. “I understand." He looked into my eyes with a thoughtfulness that was new to me. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time anybody looked at me like that.
It created a bubbly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried to shrug it off. "And now for the most important question of all." I fiddled with my thumb ring in order to avoid those dangerous eyes. "Why did the Amaranth Protection leave us if the... deity... really wanted to bring us closer to it?" My words hung in the air like spider-woven silk.
Sam looked at his hands. "That's a good question, and honestly the one that I struggle with the most." He dragged a deep breath through his chest and looked back at me. "I don't know."
I nodded, avoiding his gaze. I mirrored his response. “I understand.” The silence was excruciating. I wanted to know so much more, I wanted to find something that would make me feel like Natalie again, but I couldn’t. Everything was before me, there was nothing behind me. I was Nicki-Ray until further notice, and the weirdest thing about it was that I found myself enjoying it way too much. Who would I even be when the dust settled and my life was thrown back together? I didn’t have time to answer the question because Sam continued the conversation. I was grateful; I didn’t want to think about my problems anyway.
"But, you know, that's what life is. Sometimes you don't know- sometimes you don't even believe, but you keep after it until you know again. Until you remember why you started in the first place." His forehead crinkled as he spoke. “I guess what I mean is this- sometimes the feelings fail you. And when that time comes, that’s when it's time to remember why you started. That's why it's so important not to base your decisions on feelings alone. It will be gone in a matter of time. You must put your faith in something that not only feels right, but leads you right. So that when you get tired and you only see a lot of grey area, you have the goodness of your path to remind you why it will feel good once again. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and forever."
I didn’t care what he said; I was enjoying listening too much. He spoke with passion, it was so attractive. Not just on a physical level, but on a much deeper one. I didn’t feel that way about Processor Theory.
"If you always strive for goodness and mercy, you have the whole rest of eternity to look forward to, knowing that you are doing the right thing and are in The Great Will. You need not fear anything. Even death is not to be feared because it is merely the "Doorway" that we step through to find everlasting joy."
"What about pain?"
"That's the hardest part.” He was quiet. “It’s hard to suffer. But without pain, there would be no compassion. No basis for understanding. Without our hardships, we wouldn't care about anything else but ourselves. So you see, pain has a use."
"You seriously missed your calling."
He chuckled. "How's that?"
"You should have been a Proclaimer."
His smile faded and he looked away, his face as barren as stone. "I was.” He was quiet, waiting for me to respond. He looked like he expected cruel words.
Right then I shut up. I knew what pain looked like. It was written all across his face.
We sat in silence for many minutes. It could have been an hour- maybe more. I concentrated on staring out the window, thinking about Sam’s past while he drove and kept as silent and impassive as a pillar.
I tapped the window pane with a fingernail.
He glanced my way.
I caught his eye. “I’m sorry.”
“For what- it’s not your fault.” His voice was lower than usual.
“For bringing it up; for dragging it out of you. For reminding you.” I was upset at myself.
“It’s not any worse than anybody else’s.”
I smiled sadly. “But it hurts- I don’t even know the situation and it hurts me to think of you hurting.” I added hastily, “Because I consider you my friend.”
If he noticed my dead giveaway, he gave no clue. He sighed. “It’s okay. I know you’re dying to know why I’m not a Proclaimer anymore. And to be fair, I kind of owe you an explanation- given my propensity to drag you into conversations that never have a proper ending.”
We chuckled and I fingered my thumb ring again.
"Proclaimers have hard lives," he admitted. "Those that are called to it encounter severe hardship. Some are even tortured and killed in the territories that are most hostile to the Formist view.”
"And yet they do it anyway," I murmured under my breath.
"Nobody wants to hear how they could be living better. Nobody wants to know how they're screwing up, even if you tell them the truth in a loving way. But the truth IS love. Once you know the truth, you've been set free and you labor under delusions no more. Of course there is always temptation, we aren't in the third realm yet, so it is natural that life can't be perfect here no matter how hard you try."
“But why do they do it?” I continued, still mulling over my question.
He shook his head. “They do it because they are called. Something within them that’s both a part of them and yet belongs to the universe calls them out.”
Amaranth, I thought with more than a little trepidation. The way he was speaking about it, it made it seem so real. I could imagine believing it and worshiping it with him just by hearing the conviction in his voice. I shivered.
“It leads them and if they are faithful, they follow.” He spoke in agitation.
“Do you have any Proclaimer friends you hang out with?” I tried to change the topic smoothly, sensing that blame would appear in this conversation and crush him under the weight of it.
“I used to. We don’t really have words anymore.”
“Oh.” I was quiet. So much for that. “Should I drop it?”
He smiled wanly. “Please don’t if it would help you to know.”
“Well.” I glanced at everything but him. “Why won’t they talk to you? I’m assuming you wouldn’t have cut off contact.” He’s too noble for that.
He sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of a hand. “It’s true.” The agitation drew near to the surface once again. He shifted in his seat, fiddling with the autopilot settings as if using them as an excuse to do someth
ing with his hands. “They won’t talk to a previous Proclaimer who gave up his post.” Now he fidgeted with his hair, running his fingers through it. “It’s kind of a rule- you see if you keep in contact with those who have ‘fallen away’ it presents a greater temptation for yourself. And temptation must be carefully avoided at all costs.”
“Why would anyone want to get rid of your friendship?” I was adamant. “That’s not just rude- that’s jack stupid.”
He chuckled. “Thank you.”
“No- Sam- I mean it! I can’t believe this. They’re jackin’ stupid for following a shazzy rule, a rule that obviously wasn’t meant to apply to you. You’re clearly a person who loves helping people, don’t they see that? It’s written all over you!”
He looked a little overwhelmed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Part of it was because I was involved with youth and training them up for leadership and missions. So it made my “abandonment”, as they termed it, all the more bitter. They saw it as an attempt to corrupt the young.”
“Twisters!” I rolled my eyes.
He smiled and laid a hand briefly on my shoulder. “It’s ok. It really is. They aren’t skipes. They are very good and kind people.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I toned my abuses down. The city loomed before us, balancing in the sky as if by magic. It was elongated, balancing on a point at the bottom, raised up by a slender line all the way to shoot high into the clouds and vanish. I guessed that was the shuttle tunnel, where the shuttle would be launched into space and soar through the Doorway that was always open in the mesosphere above Tera’s capital, Sky City. Just a few hundred feet below the stratosphere, the city flared out from around the slender line that stretched to the sky, making an inverted cone. Instead of sweeping outward gradually, it seemed to hold back and suddenly push forth, as a reenactment of the beginning of a mushroom cloud. The disc was thick and appeared much too heavy for the veritable reed it was wrapped around, but that didn’t seem to deter anyone from visiting or living within the questionable structure.
As we drove closer, the slender twig shooting up into the stratosphere grew in strength and width until it became a pillar, and then a massively ancient tree trunk, and then finally it was so big that I wasn’t sure how wide it was.
~
"Look at this-” Sam gestured over the expanse of human population lying at our feet and rising up into the sky in a formation of towers. We were outside the main tower on a balcony, hundreds of feet above the table of the city. He was warmed up by now, having caught my weird sense of energy from before when we were discussing Proclaimers in his car. Even as we rode the elevator that sucked us all the way up to the main floor of the city, he hadn’t stopped talking and pointing things out to me.
Glancing around, I could see hovercraft and sky boards zooming and flitting around. It was a bustling city. I wondered how the “Peace Through Science” talks were going.
"How could we have come to this point in history by ourselves? How could we come so far to understanding our origins and future, and yet never become gods ourselves?" His eyes were alight, in a way more glorious than mere physical beauty could make a person.
He held a light within that I did not quite understand. It made me both hungry for it and wary of it. It was a strange paradox. "Maybe we're not meant to be gods. Maybe the universe has other plans in mind for us." I reached out a tentative hand to test if there were force fields encapsulating the balcony.
"Why is it so difficult to substitute the term "Creator God" for the term "universe" in your vocabulary?"
I shrugged. "It just doesn't make sense, is all." I was hedging. I didn't feel comfortable with the way the conversation was heading. I wasn’t sure where I stood. I wasn’t a strict Processor, but I wasn’t a Formist. I shrugged, hoping he would stop. "I don't want to talk about this right now. You can understand that, can't you?"
He nodded. He leaned over the little balcony railing, resting his elbows on the edge. I shivered. "You're not afraid of heights?"
He glanced back and grinned, shaking his head. "Deathly afraid."
"Then why do you..." I stopped, realizing what he had done.
"Because I trust this rail is going to hold me- and I trust the force field is in place." He demonstrated leaning out farther over the rail, in a brazen move that elicited a gasp from me. I was at his side, pulling his arm back when the pink rays of energy spread out from his forehead pressing against the field. He obligingly came away from the balcony, with my hand still clutching his sleeve.
"Hey! Whose protecting whom?!" I couldn't keep the chastisement out of my voice. "You're supposed to be more careful!"
"Why?" he asked gently, searching my face. "Why should you care when we’re both just animals, come about by nature’s fanciful processing that has absolutely nothing to do with higher impulses?"
I looked away. I didn't feel too keen on explaining the opposite-sex principle to him, especially when I was still reconciling the whole David fiasco and my burgeoning attraction to Sam himself.
"How can we believe in a Process that completely negates the purity of love and sacrifice?"
I realized I was still holding his sleeve.
“And when I say love, I don’t necessarily mean romantic love. I’m talking about what motivates people to die for their friends and children. People who sacrifice their comfort to make others safe.”
"I don't believe that part of it," I admitted, referring to his earlier statement. "I think there IS some sort of higher order or else our predisposition to love and care for one another doesn't make sense. So- I guess I do believe in a higher intelligence." I let go, feeling his eyes on me.
"You just don't want to call Him God," Sam finished quietly.
I felt my blood rush angrily and gave in to its impulse. "I don't need you to tell me what I do or don't want. I'm perfectly able to let you know!" I looked away quickly, headed for the opposite side of the shielded terrace and crushed myself aggressively against the protective guard rail. It was elbow-high. I surveyed the city before me, blind to its delights. Maybe I was being a baby, but I was tired of feeling this way- it was confusing! I liked Sam, I didn’t know what I thought about this discussion of “god”, I was grumpy from spending the day in a rattle-trap of a car (Sam had switched his Federation issue with something a lot less obvious and less maintained before we left that morning) and I was just enough annoyed and tired and hungry that it all came out in a huff. Besides. It’s Nicki-Ray’s fault, not mine. I shook my head. What’s going on with me?
"Shouldn't the shuttle be leaving soon?" I finally spoke up.
"Yes." He was inscrutable.
Our cover was to act like brother and sister until safely through the Doorway. We were traveling from Tera to Hecta by shuttle and would be stopping off on the Space Dock that hung out in space right near the Doorway on the other side. Then we’d switch to the next shuttle. It would take us into orbit around the planet until locked onto coordinates for a landing point that was closest to our destination. I still didn’t know where we were going after we got to Hecta. I didn’t even know where I’d be sleeping tonight.
He seemed to jump tracks for a moment. "Why don't you slap some sense into me?" He was sincere. "I deserve it. It was thoughtless of me to try and prove a point by putting you on the spot and... I'm sorry about that."
He was agitated; I could tell by the way he fidgeted with his fingers. When Sam was agitated, he was characterized by movement; and when he was calm he was still. David was the opposite. I shrugged, smiling a little. "Thank you."
I wasn't angry at him. I was angry and scared because of the way he had looked at me, like he had me all figured out. It cut me to the quick. I didn't want anyone to ever figure me out, because once they did, they wouldn't want me. And I was afraid that he had seen into me. At that moment, he had seen all of my vulnerabilities. And he had looked at me with an expression of... I wasn't sure what. It certainly wasn’t apathy. And that was what scared me the mo
st.
"Forgive me?"
I shook my head. "There's nothing to forgive. We're all human. It was just a little squabble between siblings and we worked it out. You're not a sinner."
His eyes twinkled, a rarity, I realized. That was a shame. His blue eyes were something altogether marvelous when they sparkled.
"Oh, but I am." He held out his arm. I nodded at his request and took his arm with no hesitation. There wasn't much warmth seeping through his jacket, but it was comforting just the same. On reflex, I curled my fingers around his bicep.
The automatic suction doors heaved themselves open with vigor as we approached and then slid securely behind us, making the sharp whoosh-like noise of old-age airlocks. The private sector might have better financing than government associations, but they weren't as updated with the technology. They did however, have cleaner facilities. We were back inside the 79th floor and making our way to shuttle launch C.
Fortune's Detour: Prequel of the Deka Series by Abigail Schwaig Page 10