by Clay Gilbert
“Here and there, along our way,” she said. “Eternity, sometimes we do things for reasons we can’t know, and sometimes, when we leave a place, or when we die, we leave behind things that may have tremendous meaning for someone else, someday. You know the signpost out at the place where the big black road widens?”
Eternity didn’t.
“You mean Crown Avenue?” Shadow asked.
“That’s what it’s called now, yes. It’s called that because we found that old signpost in the shadow of the Wall. There are huge deposits there. We’ve collected some of them, sifted through them, left many things behind. We don’t know where the original Crown Avenue stood or how long it’s been gone, but that signpost and the street it marks means freedom to so many now, when a long time ago, it was probably just another place, another road.”
“You must have helped with the Renovation, too,” Shadow said, remembering. “Yes, I knew Ace. He’d seen some of our collections—even some of the really dangerous things, like books—some with pictures of the way things were in the world before Them. No one’s really sure what that world was like, but Ace wanted Crown Avenue to look the way it might have then. He wanted it to be what it’s become. We gave him all we could to make it happen.”
“Ididn’t reallyunderstand what was driving him back then,” Shadow said. “You weren’t the only one.” Dhania laughed, but then her face grew serious. “Ace never really understood about the Mother and the Father. He was mostly interested in this life, rather than anything beyond it, but he knew it was important to try and build back that part of the world that they—the Providers—want people to forget. Here, before I forget—” She reached down to one of the shelves that covered the room, picked up a small, shiningsilver object, and held it out to Eternity. “This is yours. I offered it to Ace, once, but it wasn’t meant for him. It’s been waiting for you.”
Eternity traced the tiny, shining wheel with his fingers, feeling the smoothness of each silver spoke. He clasped its chain closed around his neck.
“It’s beautiful,” he told Dhania. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. There’s really no need to thank me, though. When we’re ready to receive them, we find the things we’re meant to.”
Eternity thought of the path he’d been led on since he first began to question the ways of the Providers, and nodded. “The Mother and Father of All—how can I learn more about them?”
“Come and see me again sometime, and we’ll talk more, but mainly, look inside yourself. Try to find the still places within yourself, Eternity. They’ll be waiting for you there.”
“I will,” he said, “and I’ll come back.”
“We should be going,” Sentinel called down to Eternity and Shadow from the steps leading up to the house.
“All right,” Eternity called back. “Thanks again,” he said to Dhania, who only smiled. * * * *
“I can’t sleep, man.”
Shadow’s voice didn’t disturb Eternity, who wasn’t asleep either. The two layin twin beds, arranged side-by-side in the small attic room above Sentinel’s shop. The old man had offered to sleep downstairs and let his guests have the upstairs for the night.
“What’s wrong?” Eternity asked. “It’s just—it’s been a long time since I met anyone new who reallyknew Ace.” Eternity thought he saw tears in Shadow’s eyes, shining in the moonlight. Eternity looked up at the ceiling, thinking how, without his boots or shades or leather jacket, Shadow seemed different somehow. More fragile.
More like a boy, he thought, then remembered his own age. Is it possible to be a boy—and a man, too?
“Eternity?” asked Shadow.
Shadow’s voice sounded small to Eternity—and frightened. “Yeah, man. What’s up?”
“I miss Ace. I hate them for killing him.”
“So do I.” There was silence in the room for a moment. “Tell me about Ace, Shadow. I haven’t heard your story.” Shadow took a deep breath. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Go on, tell me.”
“All right,” said Shadow, his tone one of relief.
“Where I was born just isn’t important. It doesn’t matter where I lived. What matters is that I had two fathers, and now they’re both gone. My mother left when I was two or three, I guess, and she and Dad got divorced. The City doesn’t have a huge divorce rate, and sometimes it still hurts that my familyhad to be part of it. Dad was always unhappy, though. Grown-ups think kids can’t tell, but I could. I knew he had things he wanted to do, dreams that would never come true if he was just another face in their crowd.
“Maybe that’s why Mom left. Idon’t know. Maybe Dad was too much of a dreamer. Whatever. I loved him for it. After a while, he was my whole world. It was like we were each other’s secret from the world that tried to keep us down. Then, one day, he went to work and never came back.”
Eternity thought of his own parents. Would that—could that—happen to them because of me? “There was no explanation. They might have called it a ‘citizen’s arrest’ or a ‘detainment’. He might have been mentioned on the late night report as a threat to the City, but there was nothing. He was just gone.
“Maybe he got careless. Maybe he made some sarcastic comment about Them at work. Somehow, they knew. It wouldn’t have been hard. They have eyes in the City, Eternity—thousands of them—and Theytook myDad. Iwas eleven, but I was never really a kid again after that night.
“I wandered the streets for maybe a week. Then, late one night, a guy I didn’t know, dressed all in black leather, with long black hair, cornered me in an alley. He wasn’t armed, and I wasn’t scared. I knew he wasn’t with Them.
“‘What’re you doin’, kid?’ he asked. All the words came out at once, and his voice was kinda gruff like he was just a little mad, but it sounded like he cared, and I could see it in his eyes. Ace was our age then—he had just become the leader over here. He took me in, and he became my second father. I loved him almost as much as I loved my real Dad. I saw a lot of the Forgotten City in those days. Ace took me everywhere and showed me everything. I haven’t told you about the Renovation, have I?”
“No,” Eternity said.
“The Renovation was the time when Crown Avenue and the part of the Forgotten City that the streetriders live in—that’s us, bythe way—were built. During the Renovation, Ace told me all of his plans for the Forgotten City’s future. I’ll tell you, man, anything Ace dreamed, he could do. He didn’t let anyone stop him. I’ve never known anyone else like that, not even my dad. Ace was my hero. You could almost say I worshipped him.”
Shadow smiled. “What can I say? I didn’t have anyone else. That’s why I’m called Shadow. It was a name a couple of idiots threw at me when I was thirteen. ‘Aw, look! It’s Ace’s shadow!’ It hurt, but when I got to thinking about it, it was a pretty cool name. I’ve been Shadow ever since.
“The next six years were busy. Ace was supervising the Renovation, and I was alone a lot during the day. I made my own contacts among the other streetriders, and kinda shook some of the rep I had for just being an extension of Ace. I still lived with him in the Leader’s Hall. It’s the tallest building on Crown Avenue, and you can see almost the whole Forgotten City from there. It’s the only building outside Oldtimer Town that was here before the Renovation. They say the Forgotten City’s leaders always lived there.
“Anyway, Ace and I were still close. I think he tried to separate himself from me a little, so I’d be more independent. It hurt, though. I moved out the year I turned sixteen. Ace didn’t say a thing. He wasn’t even there when I moved out. He knew I had to learn to take care of myself. And I did.
“I took to the neon street—Crown Avenue—and I lost myself in what I found there. It was beautiful, man. All of Ace’s work, all of his dreams come true. The holograph houses restored, the virtual reality arcades, the huge new buildings, and Crown Avenue itself. I was so happy about finally being accepted, I nearly forgot about Ace. It was the first time people saw me for me, and I loved
it. Then, one day, Ace was gone.
“I didn’t believe it at first. Some of the ‘riders you meet on the Avenue will talk a line of trash just to test people, see who’ll bite. So I went to the Leader’s Hall looking for him. Iimagined how the whole scene would playout. ‘Ace, man,’ I’d tell him, ‘you can’t imagine what I just heard. So funny!’ But his stuff was already packed in boxes when I got there. The whole place was bare.” Shadow paused for a moment, as if it were a struggle to make the words and memories combine. “I just sat down on the floor and cried. I wanted to ask him howhe could havelet them do it. How could he have let that happen?”
Eternity remembered seeing the screencast about Ace’s death on the late report. Remembered wondering the same thing himself. “What’d you do after that?”
“I’ve been alone since then. I’ve learned to make it by myself. I’m not his shadow anymore—only myself. Just Shadow. But it hasn’t been that long, you know, and that story tonight,” Shadow made a sound halfway between laughter and a sob. “You know, most times I just don’t think about him. But every so often, when I get really sad, I imagine he’s there. Iimagine he looks like he did in that alley a long time ago, like nothing in the world can get in his way. Helooks down at me, andhe says, ‘Stop that cryin’,Shadow. It’s gonna be all right.’ And you know, man? When I think about that, I know it will be.”
They were both quiet after that, and not too much time passed before Eternity heard Shadow’s breathing pass into the easy pattern of sleep. He smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself, Everything’s gonna be alright. Somehow.
* * * *
“You’re gonna love Crown Avenue, man,” Shadow said.
He and Eternity were headed out of Oldtimer Town on their hovercycles. Shadow had suggested they check out the streetrider side of the Forgotten City. “It’ll be fun, man. You gotta meet people.” After what he heard from Dhania the day before, Eternity didn’t need any convincing. The youths had taken their cycles high above the Forgotten City, and from that height, Eternity imagined he could see all the way back across the Wall to the Towers at the City’s dark heart.
“There it is.” Shadow’s statement over the cycle’s intercom went unnoticed by Eternity, who was transfixed by the wonder and strangeness of the sight below him. The thin strip of blacktop that he and Shadow followed into the Forgotten City began to widen as they entered Oldtimer Town, but then it became a four lane asphalt hydra, spreading in every direction. Here great, new buildings of brilliant and flamboyant design stood alongside the renovated holograph houses of a hundred years before. Here electric letters pulsed promises of wondersforboth mind and body within beckoning arcades. Here the roar and whine of engines met the cacophony of music and the shouts from the sea of youths milling below. This was Crown Avenue, heart and lifeblood of the Forgotten City.
At last, thought Eternity. They couldn’t see him here, couldn’t touch him. Here he would be free and safe among people who were like him. At that moment, the tyranny he had left behind in the Black City meant nothing. All that mattered was the new world that surrounded him.
Suddenly, he could hear Shadow’s voice from the intercom. “Isn’t it great?” his friend asked.
What an understatement. “Sure is, man. Where are we headed?”
“Thought we’d just cruise the neon for a while. Any complaints?”
“None at all.” Ace, Eternity thought, you did great, man. Whatever else Ace had done—or failed to do—he’d built this place, at least. Eternity knew the hands of the Children of Memory were in the wonders he saw here, too. They helped give him the dream, but Ace was its builder. He’d seen it through. Ace would have stopped the Providers if he could. Were they really gods, Ace? Is that why you couldn’t do it? You were the magic man. If they got you, I could believe they were gods. ‘Cause if they aren’t, who are they?
“Eternity,” Shadow asked, “why don’t we go visit one of the arcades?” “Lead on.”
* * * *
The Cortex Vortex, proclaimed a green neon sign above a pulsating neon-tube rendering of a human brain. “The games in here are illegal in the City,” Shadow said. “The Providers don’t like people playing with their own minds. It cuts in on their turf. The games in here—well, you plug into them, and they plug into you.”
The arcade doors slid open automatically, and the two youths entered. A hairy man dressed in a shiny silver suit held up his hand. Eternity and Shadow froze as he ran a small transmitter over them.
“Clean,” the man called out, and motioned them in. “Next!” Passing the entrance, they heard a voice call out from behind a booth on their left.
“Shadow!” The entrance to the booth whirred open, and a young man stepped out. He looked about eighteen. “Brain!” cried Shadow, and the two embraced. Brain wore a plain white shirt, a brown leather jacket, and pants that looked to Eternity like alligator skin (although they couldn’t have been—there weren’t any alligators anymore, except in pictures in the thoughtfeeds). His head was as cleanlyshaved as any of the Black City’s inhabitants, and his brown eyes gleamed at them from a face of the same shade. A face that, Eternity sensed, could show his feelings or hide them like a mask, if he so chose. Brain carried himself with an assurance that said he’d been in the Forgotten City a very long time.
“Where you been, man?”Brain said to Shadow, who grinned at him.
“I’ve been around.”
“Who’s the new streetrider in town?” Brain asked, jerking a thumb in Eternity’s direction.
“My name’s Eternity.” Brain put out ahand, palm outstretched, and Eternityclasped it. Then Brain turned his hand sideways, and Eternity clasped it again. Finally, Eternity tapped his chest with his fist, and Brain did the same in reply. The hand signals were the ritual greeting of the Forgotten City. Shadow had taught it to him while they were in Oldtimer Town. According to Shadow, it had started as a code between rebels in the Black City in the days before there had been any rebel settlements beyond the Wall, and it’d been even more important to recognize each other than it was now. Now, though, it had fallen into disuse among all but the streetriders of Crown Avenue.
“Smooth, man,” Brain said. “You know the signs, all right. Cool tag, by the way. I wish I’d thought of it myself.” Brain broke into a smile, and all three of them relaxed.
“Your head,” Eternity blurted out, uncomfortable with the sudden silence.
Shadow shot him a look, but Brain only grinned again. “Yeah, it’s shaved. Crazy, huh? It’s cool to me, ‘cause Iwant it that way. No one tells me to keep it this way—not that anyone ever has.”
Eternity’s eyes widened. “You never lived in the City?” “Nah. Myparents are Oldtimers. Undergrounders, too. Iwas born here.”
“Wait a minute,” said Eternity. “Undergrounders?” “I thought you’d know about ‘em,” Brain said. “Come with me. You too, Shadow. Too many people here. Iwouldn’t put it past the Providers to know about us here, even though nobody thinks they do. They have eyes, man. Eyes everywhere. This way.”
Brain led them down a corridor lined with neon tubing and through another sliding glass door into a room whose size and sparsely furnished look reminded Eternity of the Hotel Paradise.
That seems so long ago.
“Now we can talk,” Brain said, when they were all inside.
“Yeah, it’s true. Iwas born in the Forgotten City. Myparents are Oldtimers. Not too old, though. They were part of the project to power the Forgotten City, which really didn’t get finished until Ace came. That’s why they were called Undergrounders. The Underground was the community that grew up around the project. Because the wires had to be run underground, the people supervising and the people actually working at putting the wires in had to be around full time it was decided they had to be housed down there, too. The Council—the Oldtimers’ Council, this was before Ace— thought it would be too much trouble, but they agreed after a little convincing. When the first excavations began, people were
shocked.”
Brain’s voice shrank to a whisper. “There was a huge underground chamber right underneath our city—beyond the Wall, right in the middle of the damn Deserted Sector! It was obvious evidence of construction right smack in an area supposedly forbidden to anyone! There were papers, too— unreadable mostly, bein’ so old. You know people in the City don’t read anymore—not what they don’t have to, anyway—and even in the Time Before, they say people didn’t read on paper much. My mom and dad said whatever was in those papers was just parts and bits, like the nuts and bolts of an engine no one knew how to put together anymore. There was some stuff about the neuronet, and how somewhere high in the Towers, there was a secondary network, a master network that contained everything the Providers knew. This second network, the papers said, was supposed to be something people didn’t need anything but their minds to access.”
“Hmm.” Eternity thought about what Brain had said. That wasn’t the way the neuronet was understood to work. The thoughtfeeds were one-way broadcasts, time-released and controlled. If information was free for everyone to access, if there were a way people could do it for themselves, without any controls or limits—he thought about the mind techniques Ace had known about. They were the bare beginnings of something similar, but still not the same. Had Ace found out something he wasn’t supposed to? Had those people down in that chamber? Or maybe they’d all been taken out just for getting too close. Hell, he told himself, maybe it really was all a fairy tale. He still wasn’t sure what to believe, but Brain started to speak again, and Eternitykept listening.
“People talked at first, then the talk died down. Construction on the Underground went on, and by the time it was done, people had forgotten all about the chamber.
“My parents didn’t forget, though. Nobody else from that first construction group did, either. There were bodies down there. Bodies. My parents told me everything, and when I was old enough, I joined the tech crew. We helped Ace power up the Forgotten City, and something else, too—we figured out how to jam the neuronet signals from the City. We were pretty sure signals from the Net were just one-way, but we weren’t taking any chances. We couldn’t stop thinking about those bodies.