How They Were Found

by Matt Bell

  According to the captain, this is how we saved our men, how we kept them safe long enough for our beards to gray, for our bodies to grow stooped and fat.

  Still, the dim turned increasingly dangerous, first to themselves and then to the rest of us.

  We waited until they began threatening murder and mutiny, then the captain had them shot and stacked one by one in the courtyard, or else pushed them out across the ice to seek the meaningless shore, the phantom promise of the waiting transport ship, a ship that existed only in the stories I told the men. That existed only to give them purpose, to give them hope they might yet be saved.

  The captain says, At first, you chose who would stay and who I would force from the tower. You were still the major, even if no one remembered. You said it was my duty to give them someone to hate, if that was what it took to hold them together, to unite them in this new life they had no choice but to live.

  Later, after you dimmed too, I had to decide myself when it was time to use the pistol, or to drive a man out of the tower and onto the ice.

  I have done my best, he tells me, but I am not you.

  I have had to be cruel.

  I have had to become a monster.

  All these decisions, I have had to make alone.

  The captain stops speaking, turns his face toward the wall. There is only the sound of his breathing, of mine in turn, until he says, I wish you could remember for yourself.

  He says, It’s not as if this is the only time I’ve told you.

  XIII

  Now it is my turn to look away, ashamed, for him and for myself. For what we did together.

  I say, You have done your duty well, my captain.

  And you yours, he says. Better than you hoped, even.

  But why switch places? How did we know? That you would remember, and I wouldn’t?

  He shakes his head. You’ve had your three questions, and now you must go.

  No, I say. Tell me. How did we know?

  We didn’t, he says. We guessed.

  The captain says nothing more. Eventually, he falls asleep in his chair, resuming his quiet snoring, his hands folded over the ampleness of his belly. I try to stay awake, to hold on to what he has told me, to try to see how these newly remembered truths might save our men, but they cannot, or perhaps they already have. Exhausted, I doze myself, and when I wake I can recall only a little of what was said between us. Maybe it is for the best. Maybe whatever he remembered is an illusion, another hallucinated landscape we dreamed up together to replace all we have lost. Perhaps all there has ever been is this receiving tower and the others like it, separated by ice and snow and mountains, and then, somewhere else, some lost continent, shapeless in my mind, where some interminable war cost us everything.

  XIV

  I leave the captain alive not because I have promised to, but because I am afraid that at the end of my journey, it will be proven that he has always been right, that there is no ship waiting, that to lead these men out across the tundra would be to lead them to their deaths. I walk the halls of the receiving tower one more time, making one last effort to remember, to hold onto what is left of the captain’s words. I meet some of the dim going about their duties, each of them following my commands to leave me alone, obeying me as they would the captain. I take my time, knowing they will not remember seeing me, will not report my small betrayal. Eventually, I find myself wandering the rows of empty bunks at the far end of the barracks, too many beds for the number of men I can remember being lost. I try to remember who these others were, but I cannot. Their bunks are covered in dust, their bedding stripped to replace our own threadbare blankets and pillows. These bunks must belong to the dead stacked in the courtyard, but perhaps also to others like me, men who took it upon themselves to reach the sea long ago, farther back than I can remember.

  There must have been so many men here, and now they are nearly all dead and forgotten by us, the very men they’d meant to rescue.

  As a final act of defiance, I climb the tower to the listening room, where I make one last attempt to hear something, anything. I put on my headphones and slowly move the dials through the full spectrum of frequencies. I hear nothing but the hum and hiss of the omnipresent static, a blizzard of meaningless sound falling unceasingly upon my ears.

  There was a time when I knew over one hundred words for static, but now there is only the one, so insufficient to the complexity of the thing it describes.

  I take off my headphones, then move to shut down my console. Before I do, I change the password to some new word, some gibberish, something I would never have been able to remember, even in the prime of my life, all those long decades ago.

  XV

  I do not look back as I cross the threshold of the receiving tower, nor when I open the gate at the far end of the courtyard, but I can feel the captain watching me from atop the parapets. I wonder if he has kept vigil for all the others who began this desperate exodus, the lost men who once slept in those long empty bunks. I wonder if, like now, he kept quiet, hurling neither threats nor warnings against the piercing wind, leaving those brave men to question and to doubt, to wonder if it truly was the captain who was wrong, or only themselves.

  I wonder how long he waits for me before going back inside, at what point I will no longer be able to sense his heavy eyes darkening my every step. And then I know.

  XVI

  I discover Onchu—who I had forgotten, who I beg forgiveness of now that he is found again—while the aurora shimmers overhead on the first night of my journey. I scrape at the snow and ice around his face, revealing the black frostbitten skin which will never decay, this place too cold and removed from the earth even for maggots or worms. After I have stared as long as I dare, I use my pick to dig his body from the ice, so that I can get at the backpack clenched in his arms, the limbs immobile with frost. I have no choice but to snap the bones with my pick, then peel them away from the bag’s canvas.

  I open the pack’s drawstrings and plunge my hands inside, where I find fistfuls of photographs, frozen into unidentifiable clumps, then bundles of wrecked letters, misshapen ice balls of trinkets. At the bottom of the pack is a threadbare dress uniform, rolled tightly and creased with frost, unmarked except for its insignia of a major’s rank, belonging to some higher-ranking officer I can no longer remember. All these artifacts might once have told me who I was, who we all were, but not now. If I reach the coast, I will have to become some new Maon, a man who remembers nothing, who did not see his only friends frozen to the earth, who did not see his compatriots gunned down by their captain, the man who—as I remember it—once swore to keep them all safe.

  I leave these relics behind, scattered around Onchu’s frigid form. Let our memories keep him company, if indeed they can.

  XVII

  Even with all the blood, it is easy to forget the sudden shift of the ice, the fall into the crevasse that followed. To forget the snapping of bones, sounding so much like the cracking of the centuries-old ice beneath my feet. Eventually, I reach down to find again the ruin of my shattered shin, and then scream until I black out, unable to remember enough to keep from shocking myself all over again once I wake.

  In my few lucid moments, I stare up through the cracked ice, out of this cave and into the air beyond. I want to survive until the aurora blooms one last time, until the falling ruins of space streak across the sky again, but I have no way of telling which direction I’m facing, which slivered shard of sky I might be able to see.

  Rather than risk dying in the wrong place, I decide that I might be able to splint the bone with the frame of my backpack, if I am brave and if I hurry.

  I can at least hurry.

  Twisting painfully, I open my pack to find all the chemical torches broken open and mixed together, so that all my meager possessions glow a ghastly shade of yellow, barely enough to work by. I cry out more than once, but eventually I manage to set the bone, binding it with the wrenched steel of my pack frame and torn strips of blan
ket. After that, there is only the climb, only the hard chill of ice cutting through my belly and thighs as I drag myself up the frozen incline, each inch a mile’s worth of struggle, all to return to a surface as inhospitable as the underworld I am leaving.

  XVIII

  Back atop the ice, night falls, replacing the day’s darkness with something worse. Away from the illumination of the receiving tower, night is an even blacker shade of dark, and I crave a new word for it, crave a vocabulary I have mostly forgotten, words that could have described more than simplest night, snow, ice, failure, all of which have more than one degree. I have to keep walking, one crooked step at a time, or I will freeze. Everything I have left encircles me: my death, the aurora, and there, just beyond it, the veil which obscures this life from the next.

  XIX

  When I cannot will myself to try again to stand, I struggle instead from my back to a seated position and retrieve my pistol from its holster. It glows yellow where I’ve touched it, smeared with some chemical I no longer recognize. I pull back the slide, then put the muzzle to the fleshy muscle beneath my jaw. There is a tenderness there already, and although I wonder where it came from, I push hard anyway, feel the pain ignite my frozen nerves. I close my eyes, take a breath, and squeeze the trigger, howling as loud as the wind when the pistol produces only a dry, useless click.

  I return my pistol to its holster, force myself to my feet. I start walking, leaning heavily on my one good leg, dragging the other behind, until a stumbling collapse delivers me to the ice. I struggle to sit, surrounded by the loud creak of my frozen muscles, of tendons contracting away from bone.

  Then the pistol, then the confusion of the muzzle-press bruise, then the frustration of the empty chamber. Then the struggle to my feet, the few awkward steps, the next painful crash to this ice.

  I drop the pistol, fail to find it in the blowing powder.

  I try to draw the pistol, only to find it missing, lost somewhere behind me.

  Lying on the ice in the darkness, I hear a bird cry far above me, riding the currents of rising, warmer air that must flow even here. I cannot recognize its speech, cannot remember how to differentiate between the ravens and owls who hunt the tundra and the gulls and terns found only near the shore. As useful as that information might be, I know it doesn’t matter. I do not open my eyes to look, or even strain to hear the bird again. I am sure I have dreamed it, as I am dreaming all the other, older things I see flashing behind the closed curtains of my eyelids. And then the rest of me breaks free, flies away, rises above, taking the words that tied these dreams to me, and afterward there are no ships, no shores, no signals, no static, then no towers, no captains. Then there is no Maon, and then I run out of words, and then I

  HIS LAST GREAT GIFT

  SPEAR HAS ALREADY BEEN LIVING IN THE CABIN OVERLOOKING HIGH ROCK for two weeks when the Electricizers speak of the New Motor for the first time. Awakened by their voices, Spear feels his way down the hallway from the dark and still unfamiliar bedroom to his small office. He lights a lamp and sits down at the desk. Scanning the press of ghastly faces around him, he sees they are all here tonight: Jefferson and Rush and Franklin, plus his own namesake, John Murray. They wait impatiently for him to prepare his papers, to dip a pen in ink and shake it free of the excess. When he is ready, they begin speaking, stopping occasionally to listen to other spirits that Spear cannot quite see, that he does not yet have the skills to hear. These hidden spirits are far more ancient, and Spear intuits that they guide the Electricizers in the same way that the Electricizers guide him.

  What the Electricizers show Spear how to draw, they call it the New Motor, a machine unlike anything he has ever seen before. He concentrates on every word, every detail of their revealment: How this cog fits against that one, how this wire fits into this channel. In cramped, precise letters, he details which pieces should be copper, which zinc or wood or iron. The machine detailed in this first diagram is a mere miniature, no bigger than a pocket watch but twice as intricate.

  It’s too small, Spear says. He puts down the pen, picks up the crude blueprint with his ink-stained fingers. He holds it up to the specters. He says, How can this possibly be the messiah you promised?

  Jefferson shakes his head, turns to the others. He says, It was a mistake to give this to him. Already he doubts.

  Franklin and Rush mutter assent, but Murray comes to Spear’s defense. Give him time, the spirit says. At first, we had doubts too.

  Murray touches Spear on the face, leaving a streak of frost where his fingers graze the reverend’s stubbled skin. He says, Have faith. It is big enough.

  He says, Even Christ was the size of a pea once.

  THE FIRST REVEALMENT

  First, that there is a UNIVERSAL ELECTRICITY.

  Second, that this electricity has never been naturally incorporated into minerals or other forms of matter.

  Third, that the HUMAN ORGANISM is the most superior, natural, efficient type of mechanism known on the earth.

  Fourth, that all merely scientific developments of electricity as a MOTIVE POWER are superficial, and therefore useless or impracticable.

  Fifth, that the construction of a mechanism built on the laws of man’s material physiology, and fed by ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY, obtained by absorption and condensation, and not by friction or galvanic action, will constitute a new revelation of scientific and spiritual truths, because the plan is dissimilar to every previous human use of electricity.

  This mechanism is to be called the NEW MOTOR, and it is wholly original, a mechanism the likes of which has never before existed on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, or in the air above it.

  In the morning, Spear descends the hill into the village below, the several pages of diagrams rolled tight in the crook of his arm. On the way to the meeting hall, he waves hello to friends, to members of his congregation, to strangers he hopes will come and hear him speak sooner or later. He is confident, full of the revealed glory, yet when he reaches the meeting hall, he does not go in.

  Spear’s friends and advisors—the fellow reverends and spiritualist newspapermen meeting inside the hall—they have followed him to Massachusetts because of the revelation he claimed awaited them here. Already he knows they will not be disappointed, but he worries it is too soon to tell them about the blueprints, to allow them to doubt what the Electricizers have given him. He leaves the meeting hall without entering, wanders the town’s narrow streets instead, waiting to be told what to do next.

  It takes all morning, but eventually Rush appears to tell him which men to pick, which men to trust with the knowledge of what will be built in the tiny shed beside the cabin atop the hill.

  He chooses two Russian immigrants, Tsesler and Voichenko, who speak no English but understand it well enough. Devoted followers of spiritualism, he has seen their big bearded heads nodding in the back row at fellowship meetings, and he knows they will be able to follow the instructions he has to give them.

  After the Russians, he selects a handsome teenager named Randall, known to be hard-working and good with his hands, and James the metalworker, a man who has followed Spear since the split with the Church.

  He chooses two immigrants, an orphan, and a widower: men in need of a living wage, capable of doing the work and, most importantly, with no one close enough to obligate them to share the secrets he plans to show them.

  Spear selects no women on the first day, but knows he will soon. One of the women in his congregation will become his New Mary, and into her will be put this revealed god.

  THE FOURTH REVEALMENT

  Each WIRE is precious, as sacred as a spiritual verse. Each PLATE of ZINC and COPPER is clothed with symbolized meaning, so that the NEW MOTOR might correspond throughout with the principles and parts involved in the living human organism, in the joining of the MALE and FEMALE. Both the woodwork and the metallic must be extremely accurate and crafted correctly at every level from the very beginning, as any error will destroy the chanc
e for its fruition. Only then shall it become a MATHEMATICALLY ACCURATE BODY, a MESSIAH made of singular, scientific precision instead of biological iterations and guesswork.

  Before they begin, Spear gathers his chosen men together around the table in the shed, lays out the scant revealments he’s received so far. He says, This is holy work, and we must endeavor at every step to do exactly what is asked of us, to ensure that we do not waste this one opportunity we are given, because it will not come again in our lifetimes.

  He says, When God created the world, did he try over and over again until he got it right? Are there castaway worlds littering the cosmos, retarded with fire and ice and failed life thrashing away in the clay?

  No, there are not.

  When God came to save this world, did he impregnate all of Galilee, hoping that one of those seeds would grow up to be a Messiah?

  No. What God needs, God makes, and it only takes the once.

  Come closer. Look at what I have drawn. This is what the Electricizers have shown me.

  They have revealed to us what He needs, and we must not fail in its construction.

  As soon as the work begins, Spear sees the Russians have the talent necessary for the craft at hand. They work together to translate the blueprints into their own language before beginning construction, their brusque natures disguising an admirable attention to detail. At the other end of the shed, James shows Randall how to transform sheets of copper into tiny tubes and wires, teaching him as a master teaches an apprentice.

  Spear looks at the tubes the two have produced so far, and he shakes his head. Smaller, he says.

  Smaller is impossible, says James.

  Have faith, says Spear, and faith will make it so.

  James shakes his head, but with Randall’s help he creates what Spear has asked for. It takes mere days to build this first machine, and when they are finished, Spear throws everyone out of the shed and padlocks the door. He does not start the machine, nor does he know how to.