The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey

by Millerson, Brady

  Although he and Sofia were quite a few meters away from the nearest group, John could see that the individuals kneeling down were holding handheld computers that they had plugged directly into the main frames of the once protected systems. As the technicians began inputting data onto the screens of their portable units, the humming ceased, and the other men, without being ordered to do so, began lifting the heavy shells and replacing them back to their former states.

  “That’ll take care of it,” one of the computer techs said, lifting his hard hat and wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “Hey, why don’t we just relax here for a little while? They sent us here, and I’m in no hurry to go back,” said another worker.

  “And what are we going to do, let ourselves get buried alive? No thanks,” said another, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  “Well,” said one of the men in a low, deceitful tone, “I’d been loading for the prissy folks at Golden World all day, and you’d never guess what I’d found.”

  With those words, all the men began to gather around, questioning the man and begging to be let in on his secret.

  “Take a look at this,” he said to the gawking wonder plastered on his comrade’s faces as he removed a few bottles of dark, straw colored liquid from the sack hanging on his thigh.

  “And this too,” he said pulling out a long rectangular box, which he proceeded to open, revealing the smaller, cellophane covered boxes inside.

  One of the men walked over to him and placed his arm around his shoulders, announcing to the cheering of the party, “Jimmy here’s one of the best. Always looking out for his mates.”

  With those words they began passing out the smaller boxes, of which everyone tore open with a savage hunger. Removing the long, brown, cylindrical items from inside, each man placed the cigar between his lips, while the thief among them walked around, assisting them by providing a flame with his stolen matches. Exhaling small plumes of smoke from their noses and mouths, they were like giddy children during a celebratory gathering, noisy and jovial.

  Opening up the bottles to the delight of all the men present for the occasion, they began passing them around, sharing the alcoholic contents with laughter and cursing. It did not appear to John and Sofia that the men would be leaving anytime soon.

  As the afternoon wore on, the soreness in Sofia’s hips were becoming less and less tolerable. The two of them had remained motionless under their blankets of dust for several hours. The bottles of the inebriated workers were emptied some time ago. The men, drunk with overindulgence, stumbled about slurred in speech and half laughing in their confused states of mind.

  One of them declared, “We need to return to the warehouse before someone notices we’re missing.”

  Unknowingly abandoning most of their equipment, they began making their way towards the end of the compound. They were nothing more than a disheveled moving mass of idiocy heading back to their base of operation.

  As they disappeared around the edge of the bluff, John and Sofia sat up, their ashen coating falling from their bodies like thick icing melting from a cake in the heat of the day. The team’s merry, but disjointed singing was partially silenced by the distant sound of another flying transportation vehicle in the north that was making preparations for landing. The voice of the men, playfully voluminous, slowly but steadily faded, indicating that they were just outside of the compound returning from whence they came. As the engines of the sky drew closer, the workers became less and less audible until only the roar of the vehicle overhead was all that could be heard.

  It would have been too dangerous for them to be out in the open during the day’s light, especially with the Labor workers roaming about so freely. But, with the amount of time that the men had just spent working their way into their drunken stupor, the dim ambience of the dusk was beginning to settle in. The time of day most conducive to wandering about was almost present.

  Pulling themselves up to their feet, John and Sofia began slapping at their clothing, removing the fine powder coating.

  “Let’s leave everything here buried in the ash. If we hurry we can follow those men to see where they’re headed to,” John said.

  “Let’s not get too close to them,” Sofia added with a concerned tone.

  “We won’t. I just want to see where they’re going.”

  Moving their feet gently and silently upon the canyon floor they made their way to the edge of the bluff, peering over the rocky fringe. The workers, in their rambling conditions, had not gone very far. Struggling to maintain their composures, the drunkards were unsuccessfully attempting to feign sobriety.

  The downward slope of the ash-covered path that they were making their return on was undoubtedly giving them a challenge with regards to their balance. Frustratingly stumbling over their own feet, they were cursing and mumbling incoherently.

  As the incoming transporter made its landing somewhere on the other side of the hill to the north, its engines cut out. The dull ringing of the ears and the distant ramblings of the inebriated workers were the only audible sounds.

  Moving slowly and quietly at the bottom of a towering cliff, John and Sofia made their way to a sloping edge. As he was about to take a look around it, John realized Sofia was no longer tailing him and holding onto his shirt. Looking back over his shoulder, he could see that she was holding herself back, hiding a short distance behind him. Content with her safety, he continued with his former action.

  The workers were exiting out of the canyon, walking on a path that rounded the base of the final hill. John held his hand up, keeping Sofia at bay. After several minutes had passed by he eventually lost sight of the men. Turning back and taking Sofia by the hand, he led her towards the canyon’s outlet, continuing on the same path as their drunken guides. Keeping her near every ash-covered boulder that he could find, just in case they needed a quick cover, a place to hide, John began rubbing the fine dust into his clothing and onto his skin once again, encouraging Sofia to do the same. He was taking every extra precaution he could think of to ensure his and Sofia’s safety before moving across the barren, open land between them and the final mound.

  Upon reaching the base of the hill, they left off following the workers. Moving up the steep face, John was hoping to continue tracking them from a higher and much more inconspicuous position.

  The rocky mound was wider and taller than he had anticipated. Instead of continuing with the pursuit, John chose to leave off their current objective, having them work their way to the top first. Hoping that the advantage gained from the higher ground would allow for a better understanding of what it was that he was actually getting them into, John laid out his plan for Sofia. It seemed like a reasonable decision to her. Anything that would keep her from delving further into the inner recesses of the Forbidden Zone would be more than acceptable.

  As they began nearing the summit, they could scarcely hear the sounds of several engines faintly idling somewhere to the north.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, scaling ahead of her.

  Sofia was struggling behind, clinging to the protruding rocks that were functioning as their steps and grip-points. She was well aware of her own mixed feelings of fear and excitement of finally reaching the end. But, the wonder of the unknown was helping to make the difficult climb seem all the less unmanageable.

  Pulling Sofia up and over the final edge of a short cliff, John made certain she was safely with him before continuing onward. The land mass had flattened out. They were now able to walk the rest of the way unhindered by further acclivitous areas.

  The hill’s apex was well within sight. And a calamitous event, that had already been apparently unfolding somewhere on the other side, was causing a raucous activity of incomprehensible shouts and muffled speech. Tones of men, caught in the throes of anger and fear, boisterous and cruel, were followed by several echoing cracks, like the distant sound of gunfire.

  “Wait here, girl,” John said, attempting to sit Sofia on the ground.
“Let me go make sure it’s safe.”

  “But, I want to…” Sofia began to object.

  “No, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Just stay put and I’ll be right back,” he demanded, pushing her down by the shoulders, forcing her to sit upon the ash covered surface.

  “John, wait,” she began to say, but he was not listening to her. Within a few seconds of time, he disappeared over the hilltop.

  The lip of the downward slope was unstable and slippery under his feet due to the thick powder that had built up over the years. John settled beside a layer of ash-covered stones, using them to secure his body to the hillside. He suddenly found himself overlooking the installation of their destination, and he could hardly believe his eyes. Burnt, blackened concrete launch pads spread out in rows and columns, loaded with missile-shaped transporters docked and ready. Scaffolding butted against them with technicians and inspectors moving about like ants scurrying about. Multitudes of high-volume, metallic warehouses organized in the same manner: rows and columns that spread across the land for several kilometers set him in a momentary awe. He was an alien witness to the compound’s breadth from such a high vantage point. Had he finally found the Red Plant?

  Below, on the road at the northerly base of the hill, the continuing commotion brought him out of the amazement of his discovery. He watched in horror the annihilation of the men he and Sofia had been spying on all afternoon. Several Security members, clad in black and masked with similar breathing systems as the workers, but fitted with eye protection that gave them the appearances of walking insects, had surrounded the group, apparently executing most of them, as several men lay, some face down in pools of blood, others thrown back in various contorted positions, bleeding profusely from their heads and chests.

  “I don’t want to die,” one of the last surviving men stuttered before a bullet was fired into his skull, bone and matter following the exiting slug. The other Security members turned their weapons on the two remaining workers. With a single shot each, the men fell in the same manner.

  The gunshots coincided too perfectly with John’s disappearance from her view. As he had not returned for several minutes, Sofia was certain that a terrible event had befallen him. Although he expressly forbade her from following him, she needed to know that everything was well and that he was still with her. She put it in her mind that he would probably be walking over the hill at any moment. But if he did not return to her soon, she would go against his wishes, and seek him out on her own.

  The tension gripping the muscles of Sofia’s chest with each minute that passed by was more than she could bear. It had been five, maybe even ten minutes since John walked over the ridge, but it felt like hours. Finally ignoring his demands, Sofia stood up and began to cautiously make her way up the remainder of the slope.

  Nearing the hilltop, she could hear the voices of men, although indiscernible, talking amongst themselves in a non-threatening manner. John was sitting at the edge of a cliff-like formation on a northward drop. Covered in ash and nearly invisible to her visual sense, Sofia nearly walked by him, as he blended almost too perfectly into the environment.

  She was hardly quiet as she closed the gap between them. John turned to her holding his hand out, signaling for her to stand still. By John’s reaction, it was quite apparent that the two of them were close to danger. Crouching down and proceeding to cover her body in the same fashion as he had done, Sofia was soon just another natural formation buried within the powdery gray world.

  Leaving the blood-bathed bodies where they fell, the Labor Security officials boarded their vehicles. The lead official removed his mask before taking his seat. John was able to catch a glimpse of the man, who did not look dissimilarly to the Monster from such a distant view. As the door closed, the Security transporters turned back towards the direction of the launch area and warehouses. The dense clouds left in their wake followed them in plumes of billowing smoke.

  The day was well spent, and nighttime was soon to be upon them. The automated lights of the fenced-off installation were beginning to pop on, dimly at first, and slowly brightening.

  John was suspicious of his familiarity with the agent he had just seen. Could that have been his father? The man was equally heartless, taking the lives of the workers without hesitation. Perhaps, he thought, he could find the answer to that question as well, once they infiltrated the compound below.

  By the time the setting of the Savior over the westerly hills was upon them, an innumerable series of transporters had come and gone. John and Sofia’s lengthy wait in the darkening land was rewarded with another inconspicuous capture of the behind-the-scenes workings of Labor’s authoritarian structure. The cone-shaped illumination of the headlights of another wheeled vehicle appeared from the direction from which the Security personnel had earlier disappeared. With a rectangular bedded trailer in tow, it was heading towards the site of the massacre. The bloody area had been long covered over with a thick layer of ash. Prepared for what it was that was awaiting them, the men that exited the newly arrived transporter, orange suited with full-face masks that connected to a case hanging upon their thighs, blew the gray, powdery layer off of the corpses with the motorized blowers that were strapped to their backs.

  Dragging the bodies beside the trailer, they were soon stacked up like the warehoused crates, mere objects without any significance as human beings. It was nauseating for John to watch: working in teams to hoist them into the bed, the men held the corpses by the hands and ankles. Swinging them back and forth in a pendulum manner until there was enough momentum, the orange suited agents released their grips, throwing the dead into the awaiting container.

  With a strong metallic thud echoing in its hollow, the first few bodies made contact with the floor of the trailer. After the first layer was piled in, the remaining cadavers were landing with a grotesquely spongy bounce.

  By nightfall the deceased were gone. The area around the execution site was now strictly lit up by the towering poled-lights situated throughout the compound and lining its entire perimeter. As equally bright as the noontime daylight, the brightness was reflecting off the whitened surface of the surrounding environment and the metallic warehouse structures, casting a strange aura upon the land. The beams dispersing through the dust carried a winter like glow across the base and the outlying vicinity.

  Leading them back to the ruins, John was in deep thought about what exactly it was he was hoping to obtain once inside the compound. The workers, their deaths forever seared into his mind, had mentioned Golden World. Someone had to know something regarding that area. And, perhaps, some answers regarding the Red Plant would manifest if they found the time to do some in-depth investigating.

  Sofia did not ask what John had seen on the other side, or what fate had befallen the drunken men. By John’s demeanor she was aware that something awful had come to them, and she was in no mood to hear the details.

  The ruinous station was now their temporary base of operations. John figured that they would need to further reconnoiter the area before making a decision as to how to proceed. If time did not permit them a sufficient span, enough to accomplish all the things he wanted, they could always return back to the ruins and wait until the following night.

  Sofia refrained from speaking a single word during their return. It did not feel appropriate under the circumstances. Answers to her questions would be forthcoming soon enough, whether she liked it or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The northerly sky was aglow over the distant hilltop as they reached the abandoned station. Recovering their packs was found to be quite the chore, as the layers of ash had built up to a significant degree since they last saw them. Finding their gear hidden in the dimness of the night was not going to be an easy task.

  Locating the general area where they had left off in pursuit of the drunkards, they crawled upon their hands and knees, pushing aside the powder until they found their belongings.

  “I know you’re n
ot going to like this,” John began to say.

  Sofia was beginning to hate those words. Nothing good ever followed them. Before he had the chance to lift his hand, rudely interrupting her, she cut him off mid-sentence.

  “I know what you’re about to say, and if you’re thinking of leaving me here while you go in there, you’d better think again,” she boldly announced. “If something were to happen to you, what would become of me? You’re all I have. Please, don’t leave me behind like that again.”

  Her words were piercingly convicting. And John was beginning to realize how selfish he was becoming. All along he had been neglecting Sofia’s feelings for the sake of his own curiosity and self-fulfillment. She was quite correct in her words, but John was so sure that they were close to the answers he so desired. They were so close he could almost taste them. He had brought her this far, but he knew that it was being effectuated through a terrible form of deceit on his part. If he went into the base alone he would not need to keep watching her back, too. It was all about him, now. He was no longer thinking as if the two of them were one, and it frightened him.

  As John reorganized his thoughts and removed the single, objective motivator in his whole excursion from the equation, Sofia was all that was left: his best friend and companion. Her security and happiness needed to be his greatest concern, even if his desires said otherwise.

  “Okay,” he said. “I won’t do that to you again.”

  Crawling beside him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, saying, “Thank-you.”