by Clay Gilbert
* * * * I shouldn’t be going back, Eternity thought. For so many reasons. The domes—if anyone sees me in the City, they’ll kill me. My parents probably already think I’m dead. In any case, he thought, dead would probably be better in their eyes than what he’d become. No. That’s not fair. They won’t completely understand, but they’ll come around.
They have to. But, of course, they didn’t have to. If they’d somehow become as brainwashed as the rest of the Black City’s people, then all they had to do was turn him in—
No. They’re my parents. They’d never do that. At least, he didn’t think so. But whether they would or notdidn’t matter. What mattered was that, unless he did something, they’d be killed. Somehow, although he didn’t know how he knew it, he was sure the Providers would discover their connection to him. With the whole city gone mad, this was the one offering Eternity could make to show his parents he hadn’t meant to hurt them—that what he’d become wasn’t somehow their fault.
That it was my choice. The residential sector where he’d spent nearly all his life seemed foreign now, and not just because it was night, and there was no one around.
I don’t belong here anymore—if I ever did at all. He’d never really embraced the Providers, though in his childhood, he’d trusted his parents’ judgment and thought that, since they followed them, he ought to, too. But that had changed slowly, until he’d realized that the fear was wrong, the oppression, the blind obedience and following—it was all wrong. No, I don’t belong here anymore, and it’s not safe for Mom and Dad either. His stomach knotted as he neared the housing block that had been his.
Housing in the Black City’s residential sectors was organized around a system of apartment buildings of a uniform size and design—tall, though not as tall as the skyscrapers of Govsec and made of a grey concrete so that they looked like steel stalks sprouting from the earth, notched here and there with a few strategically placed windows on each floor. Each family was allotted a block of four rooms on their assigned floor according to the Regulations set up by the Providers in the City’s beginnings. This often led to smaller families among Citizens, though some still risked bigger ones in the hopes of a larger income.
There was a large, concrete lot in front of each of the buildings, with a space reserved for each family’s vehicles. No vehicle larger than a hovercycle was used for personal transport any longer. A growth in population and the resulting need to conserve space for housing and working in the City had necessitated the development of mass transit systems like the skycar, while personal transport was limited to the smaller and more fuel-efficient hovercycle.
Eternity brought his cycle down so he could spot the apartment building where his parents lived. There it is. He flew still closer to the ground, listening to the generator pitch lowering from a hum to a purr, fading into silence as he touched down in his parents’ allotted parking space.
The windows of their building were dark, Eternity noticed with a grateful sigh. Eternity placed his hand on the scanner that contained the handprints of all those in the building, and found himself holding his breath for the instant it took for the light on the scanner to go green.
Even if his parents might think he was dead, they hadn’t reported him as such just yet. The handprint of a corpse was quite useless to computers as concerned with Regulations as were the Providers themselves.
A second hand-scan let him inside the block of rooms his family shared. He thanked whatever true gods there were that his family lived on the ground floor, eliminating the unnecessary noise of an elevator.
They’re asleep , he thought, his entrance greeted only by silence and shadow. There’s no one out here. But as he made his way into the small family room, Eternity was surprised to find he was wrong. His father lay slumped on the couch, alone in front of the now-silent glass wall. The late newscast had come and gone, and he was asleep.
“Dad?” Eternity whispered. He was shocked at how much his father had changed. His face, once round and red, and cheerful much of the time looked lined and thin, and he was paler, as if the time his son had spent away had drained the blood from him. “Dad?”
Eternity’s father slowly stirred, opened his eyes, and stared at his son with fright and wonder in his eyes. “Who—who are you?” he asked in a voice still husky with sleep.
“We have to get you out of here. The Providers will kill you.” The man was afraid. Who was this boy, with an unrulyshock of blond hair down past his ears, wearing clothes of a material he’d never seen, with high, black boots and eyes obscured by black sunglasses? Who was this boy? And how had he come to be here?
“Who are you?” he asked the boy again.
“Don’t you know me?”
“No!” Jacob shouted. “You’re one of them. One of those rebels. If the Providers want to kill me, I’m sure it’s your fault, somehow. Where’s my son? What have you done with him?”
“What’s all this commotion?” Jacob’s wife, Rebecca, called from the bedroom down the hall, emerging into the room a moment later, an expression of irritation on her face that quickly turned to shock.
Eternity broke into a smile when he first saw his mother’s willowy form, kind blue eyes, and golden hair. There had been times he had wondered if he’d ever see her or his father again.
“I had to go,” Eternity began. “I had to.” He’d begun to feel that if he kept his silence, they’d throw him out or worse. He took off his shades and brushed locks of hair back from his eyes.
“Jonathan!” Rebecca, embracinghim. Eternityfelt strange at the sound of the name he’d left behind—as if he’d stepped into a stranger’s body—but his mother’s arms around him felt like home.
“Sit down,” Jacob said. “Sit down and explain yourself.” This isn’t going to be easy, Eternity thought. His parents were relieved he was still alive. That was clear, but it was also clear they didn’t understand his appearance or his actions, and they even seemed a little frightened of him.
“I had to go,” he said again, and then he began to tell them everything: his early doubts about the Providers, his friendship with Ace, how he felt when Ace died, the reasons for his leaving, and finally, how he’d made a place for himself among the streetriders and become their leader. He told them about the people he’d met: Shadow, who’d become his best friend, Brain, Sentinel, Paladin and others.
Then he told them the real reason he’d come: “If they find out who you are, and how you’re linked to me, they’ll kill you.”
“But,” Rebecca began, in the voice of someone using logic as a last defense against losing her grip on reality, “I thought that’s why you changed your name—so they couldn’t trace you.”
Eternity nodded. “That’s a big part of it, but everyone’s wired into the Net from birth, and although we have ways of blocking the neuronet signals, we don’t know how foolproof they are. The domes—the people here—are getting suspicious. Mom, Dad, you work in Govsec. What did you think when you heard about the detainments? Did you think those people’d just be questioned and that’d be it?”
The looks on his parents’ faces said that they’d hoped that would be it, but even they weren’t sure. Finally, his father spoke, lowering his voice to a cautious hush—the same tone Eternityimagined those who’d been detained had used when they spoke against the Providers.
Lot of good it did them, Eternity thought, hoping he and his parents would be luckier. “Eternity,” Jacob began, his son’s new name still unfamiliar on his lips, “I don’t approve of what they’re doing, but there are people I could put in danger by leaving the way you did, and things aren’t so bad here. We have food, homes, lives. They gave us all we have. They made the City what it is. Maybe—just maybe—we should be alittle grateful forthat.”
Rebecca spoke up next. “If you could just understand, son, those people—the rebels—they’re not thinking of anyone but themselves. They don’t care who they hurt, or who they kill, as long as they get their way, and the Providers ge
t hurt. If they could just see how much the Providers have given us and the whole City!”
“How do you know,” Eternity said, “how much they’ve given the City? Because they tell you? Because that’s what History and Regulations say? And how do you know all the rebels are selfish? Ace wasn’t. He was the one who gave Shadow his home after his parents got killed. That’s how most of the people I know left the City. Most of them lost their parents to the Providers.”
“But you didn’t,” his mother said. “I might have, though,” said Eternity. “How much can they really be doing for the City when you have to talk in whispers ‘cause you’re afraid someone might be listening? They had Ace killed, and whoever killed him probably thought it was the right thing all because of them.”
More silence. Eternity felt as if the words he’d said were almost anti-speech, creating a space where it felt as though any more words would leave no more room in the air to even breathe.
“I still don’t understand, son,” his mother said. “Why this way? Why do this to yourself?” She gestured toward him as if he were carrying some disease that even his very presence in her living room might transmit.
Eternity just smiled. “I haven’t done anything to myself. I undid what they were trying to do to me. I look and act and say what and how I want to. I don’t care what any Regulations say. I never did. I was just scared.”
“And what about other people who are scared?” his mother asked. “What if you’re right? What if they have a reason to be? Doesn’t what you’ve done—what you’re doing—risk them, too? Do you think of them at all?”
Jacob watched his son and wife as if they were something from the late-night screencast. The things his son had said … They were things Jacob himself had thought, however fleetingly. They were questions he had asked, only he had never taken the risk to look for the answers. The Providers were the government and supposedly the gods, but this was his son. His family. He broke the glass wall of silence between them with aquestion: “What do you want us to do?”
“You’ve got the same choice Ihad,” Eternity said, “the same choice everyone has, but I can’t make it for you. I want you to come back to the Forgotten Citywith me. Ithink you’ll be safe there, and I don’t think it’s gonna be safe here too much longer.”
“All right,” Rebecca said. “I don’t understand this, and I don’t mind telling you I’m scared, but I’ve been scared of lots of things, lately. You’re our son, and Idon’t want to lose you again. We’ll come with you.”
“I’m glad. I’ll help you get your things. We should get out of here before daybreak, and that’s not too long.” * * * * Rebecca watched the only home she’d ever known recede away around her like a dream as her son’s hovercycle, with the three of them aboard, sped toward the place she’d heard him call the Forgotten City. Was what he said about the Providers reallytrue? Was all the historyand law of the City founded on a lie?
Perhaps it is. Rebecca had had her own doubts, from time to time, about the Regulations, had wondered why there was no room for any law or any other viewpoint than that of the Providers, and she knew Jacob had often wondered the same thing. He’d said as much more than once. But they always kept their silence because the City—and the ways of the Providers who governed it—was old, and the ways had been handed down and preserved for years beyond years. There was no war in the City, no hunger, no inequality. Why, then, should anyone question the ways that made it so?
Because it’s wrong , she told herself. There wasn’t any war because people were too afraid to speak their minds. No hunger because the Regulations governed even a Citizen’s right to choose the size of his or her own family. No inequalitybecause everyone was beneath the Providers. This was what her son—what Eternity—said, she finished, accepting his new name at last. And if the Providers forced her to choose between loyalty to them and love for her son, they would be the ones to lose.
The wide seat of the hovercycle only barely held the three of them. Eternity shifted to allow his parents just a bit more room. Then, when they were safely out of range of the Towers, he pressed the accelerator and the cycle climbed high enough that, should there be anyone below to see them, they would still go undetected.
“So you’re the leader now, uh, Eternity?” “Yeah,” he said, smiling to himself at his father’s hesitant use of his name. He had toraise his voiceso his parents could hear him over the thrumming of the generator and the wind in the cycle’s wake.
What’s going to happen to us? Eternity’s father wondered, and there was no immediate answer in sight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Western Sector?”
The incredulous tone of his father’s question made Eternity smile a little, but he only nodded. “Your base is in Western Sector?” his father asked again. “Not exactly,” Eternity replied.
Western Sector passed by outside, and with it, his memories of the girl from the time he thought of as his childhood—a time that had ended only a few short months ago. The redhaired newsperson who’d just disappeared from the screencasts had never been seen again. Unlike the newsperson who’d been killed, her body had never been found.
Where is she? He wondered.
Had she, like him, fled the City in rebellion? Was she, even now, searching for the Forgotten City?
“We’re not far from the Wall now,” Eternitytold his parents. “The Wall?” his mother repeated in a voice filled with the echoes of a whole life spent fearing what lay behind that colossus of concrete.
“Yeah. We’re headed for the other side.” There was nothing more to say. The ‘cycle gained altitude steadily, and the generator grew so loud that even if one of them had tried to speak, the words would have been torn to silence by the sound.
As they crossed over the Wall, the last few barren hulks of broken and deserted buildings, like the shipwrecks of the civilization this place must have known before the Providers came, rose for a moment then gave ground to the ancient, carefully-preserved buildings of the Oldtimers’ settlement. At that, Eternity smiled and thought to himself,
We’re finally home.
“Where to, now?” Jacob asked.
“My place,” Eternity answered with a trace of pride in his voice. The glowing, neon lights and flashing hovercycle flares of Crown Avenue seemed more jubilant than ever to Eternity’s eyes, though the rose-rays of sunrise had just begun to snuff the neon of the Avenue. It had lost its loneliness, Eternity thought, and this was as it should be.
It feels like the line we’ve drawn between their world and ours has been redefined somehow. He suspected his parents would agree.
* * * *
Eternity’s mother and father were alone. Their son had things to do—business that he told them about at night, keeping them up to date on the developments in the rebel community, and the plansof resistanceagainst the Providers. That aspect of life among the dissidents had been easier to adjust to. Once outside the Black City’s confines, outside the realm of the Providers’ influence, that influence had lessened somewhat. Everything they heard and saw in the Forgotten City cast the Providers’ actions in a new light. Already, after only two days among the rebels, both of them had a new sense of freedom, a knowledge that here the Providers’ Regulations held no sway. Here, they could live however they wished, think as they wished, without fear. Here, a different tradition had been established—for the two newcomers were sure the rebel community had existed in some form since the beginning of the Providers’ reign. Freedom was the tradition here. But was this new freedom worth fleeing their old lives in the City? They still weren’t sure.
Hours passed, and Eternity didn’t return. Therewas no use wondering where he was, they told themselves. He was the leader. He was where he was needed, and they were happy that he was doing what he believed in. He wasn’t a child anymore, they told each other in those small, sleepless, morning hours. He was nearly grown. But that didn’t make it easier.
They were all at once startled by the sound of the
vidscreen crackling to life. The newsperson’s face greeted them, a sight they were beginning to view with a new skepticism.
“Greetings, Citizens! A riot in Govsec has just been ended by a Citizen Patrol in what appears to be a renewal of rebel activities plaguing the City the past several months. Three youths dressed in non-Regulation garments were spotted riding hovercycles into the Sector at around eleven this morning. When confronted by the threatening nature of the rebels, particularly the seeming leader, a blond youth calling himself Eternity—a fact attested to by Citizens who overheard the rebels’ conversation—the citizens wereforced to defend themselves.
“None of the Citizen Patrol was hurt, thank the Providers, though one of the rebels, a youth apparently called Shadow, was wounded in the exchange of fire. The third in the rebel party remains unidentified. These three, and the rebellion theyrepresent, constitute a serious threat to peace in the City. All loyal Citizens are expected to aid the Providers in this matter. Good day, and live well, Citizens!”
Eternity’s parents sat in stunned silence. He’d gone to the City? Why? What did the business of the Forgotten City have to do with that place or those who lived there? Wasn’t it the business of the Forgotten City to be forgotten—to stay away from the City and the Providers? There was a loud thumping noise at the door to the family’s apartments on the top floor of the Leaders’ Hall, one that, Jacob observed with fear, sounded like it could have been made by a boot heel.
The Leaders’ Hall was one fixture of the Forgotten Citythat, unlike Crown Avenue, had been in the rebel settlement since Oldtimer Town was first built. At first, a source of protection for the leader—since in early days the rebel community had largely been composed of adults, and only the wisest and oldest could be leader—when the rebel community had shifted in favor of youth, the Hall became more a symbol of the position of leadership. Since its large size was an extravagance, even for the most egocentric leader, only the top two floors of apartment rooms were used for residence and meeting halls, in addition to the building’s lobby. The leader and his or her family customarily resided on the top floor, while the rest of the rooms between second and lobby level remained, by custom, empty.