Light Bearing

by Ben Woollard

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “I think there’s something more to it than that, I just can’t quite see what it is. It’s a sense of apprehension I can’t shake; it’s following me around lately. I just want to get everything ready here so I can get my family from the city soon as possible.”

  “I don’t blame you. I know it’s hard to trust people, especially organizations like the Gov, after what we saw, but I don’t think you need to worry so much, Sam. Things will be all right. It won’t be too long now before we’ll have enough room and food out here for your family to join us, then we won’t need to think about the Gov at all except to pay them their dammed taxes so they’ll leave us be.”

  “I hope you’re right, Theo, I really do.”

  I went to sleep hopeful with Theo’s words in my head. Everything is gonna be alright, I kept telling myself. I’m sure I’m just worrying for no reason. I drifted into the first unfitful sleep I’d had in a while.

  I woke up to the sound of someone yelling my name. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from my own dreams or if someone had really called for me. The noise seemed to reverberate through everything: my head, the walls, the still air in the night outside. I listened, but didn’t hear anything, and laid my head back down and let myself be resubmerged. As I fell back asleep my mind became a whirl of images that seemed to pass away just before I could recognize them. They were bizarre and colorful, made out of shapes and movements that couldn’t exist anywhere but in my imagination. They all began to swirl, the colors bleeding into one another, and out of the mixture of them a face emerged. It was the face of Tahm Pucket.

  “Sam,” he said, “time’s come. We must begin. Come out to the woods.” I woke up with a start, and found my pulse beating so fast that try as I might there was no chance of my going back to sleep. I rubbed my eyes and reluctantly put on my clothes and boots and went outside. I saw a small light shining in the tree line where I’d seen Tahm a few weeks before. I followed it, cursing to myself about the lateness of the hour, the craziness of following some dream. When I reached the light I found it was suspended on a tree branch, under which stood Tahm, looking tired and disheveled. I was surprised by this and thought it was a striking change from the serene look I’d seen him wearing the last time we’d met.

  “Ah, glad to see you’ve come,” he said as I approached.

  “I didn’t find sleep working too well after you woke me up. What do you want?” I asked, letting my voice show my annoyance, and the distrust I still felt for the old man.

  “I’m sorry we must begin at such an hour, but in truth it’s part of what’s to come for you. You must be able when the time comes. I know that you’re still not convinced by what I told you, that you still crave the easy life and world that you think you have the choice to follow. I tell you now that choice is nothing at all, and that it’ll bury you along with all the others if you choose not to heed the lessons that I bring.”

  “And what lessons might those be?”

  “The first was of the bleeding wings that even now encroach upon you: things are taking evil turns, and although you might not see it now, they will come. The second is the one that I’ll impart tonight. There are those that dwell among the forest here that you should come to know so you might break the narrowness of thought that you inhabit.”

  “Who lives out here? You mean the animals?”

  “Yes, and others still. You must learn of the larger space if you’re to face the thing that comes. I think maybe that you’ve seen them already, or heard their names. Even now they sit upon the boughs and watch us from above.” I looked around but couldn’t see a thing except the cast shadows of the lantern that hung above us.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “You must look harder. I’ll show you now, but you must learn from what you see. But first you must make an oath to me: that you will do as I ask. The times to come will not be easy, but they will make you strong.”

  “And why should I promise you anything?”

  “Because if you refuse the things you’ve seen will come to pass and devour all your kind.” I stood thinking for a minute and decided little harm could come from it.

  “Alright,” I said. “If what you show me isn’t some lie I’ll do what you say.” He smiled at that, his toothless mouth showing and his eyes looking tired as it’s possible to be. He reached out his hand and I shook it. As soon as he grabbed hold of me I felt as if my eyes were opening, dilating like they never had before. I looked around and saw small figures looking at me from the branches of the trees. I shouted and stepped backwards, tripping and landing on the ground. The figures took on nearly every form imaginable, but none were much taller than my knee. Some seemed terrible to me, their eyes gleaming in the darkness over fangs and leather skin. Some looked like deformed humans, others looked like tiny children, only with skin of all different colors, some feathered, some covered in fur. They all looked directly at me, and some laughed at my falling down.

  “These are the natives of the forest. They’ve lived here since before the first cities.”

  “What are they?” I asked. Tahm laughed and all the creatures laughed along with him, making the night buzz with high-pitched sounds and what seemed like the shaking of small rattles.

  “There are many different sorts, but all have been here since before the first man stepped foot upon this country. There are only a few who now remember them.”

  “Momma used to talk about them,” I realized, standing up from where I’d fallen. “I never believed it.”

  “Well, believe it now.” Tahm said. “Have I met your conditions?”

  “Conditions?” I asked.

  “Is this proof enough for you to take my other words as earnest?”

  “Oh, right.” I was so stunned I’d forgotten the deal we’d made. I looked up at the eyes staring down intently, and it seemed a whole city had its attention set upon me. “Yeah,” I murmured, “this is enough. What do I have to do?”

  “We must begin to meet on regular occasion. We must make you ready for the pain to come, and this must be done through regiment.”

  “What sort of regiment?”

  “The kind that disciplines the mind. You’ll see. For now go home and rest; I’ll call you in the coming evening.” At that all the apparitions in the trees began to scatter. I saw them fly away, but many simply faded into darkness, or disappeared among the trunks of the trees themselves. As they left my senses returned to normal, and with them exhaustion poured down on me. My head nodded back and forth, my eyes becoming bleary. As I left the lantern hanging from the tree began to flicker and the light dissipated into dark.

  Chapter 5

  The Memoirs of Franz Thompson

  The atmosphere within the UCG began to grow tense. Some of the members of cabinet, who were supposed to have a say in all official decisions, and to be able to veto them, had been increasingly angry with Shilk and his political allies for going over their heads, with some calling for a restructuring of power, which Shilk, of course, opposed. Throughout the city, leaflets were being spread everywhere with UCG slogans and mottos, such as “the light of civilization burns brightest under discipline,” with hand painted imagery of workers happily toiling in the factories. Other leaflets, often distributed by Red Caps, showed drawings of Shilk displayed as the altruistic leader of the UCG, something that only added to the resentment of his cabinetry. People began to whisper that he was planning some kind of power move. For my part, as well as the majority of the Red Caps that I knew, we all supported the idea of a Gov run exclusively by Shilk. We all felt that he was the most capable leader we could have, despite the horrors he had often commanded us to perform. In fact, those type of stern commands made us respect him more, as we felt that a man who can do what must be done is who should be in charge, and he always managed to convince us that such orders were the right thing, and that we were a part of a higher cause to bring peace and salvation to everyone. We spent so much time near him that it
was hard not to be captivated by his magnetism.

  About this time the UCG began to develop a solid understanding of how to operate a set of mines that had been discovered a few years before. The equipment and practices for gathering and transporting the materials had been slowly collected and put in place, so all they needed were the miners. They began advertising on the Daily News that they were looking for people to work the mines and the delivery routes. It didn’t seem to me they had much success, however, and every morning when I came into Central I would see that only a handful of dirty, ragged men and women were standing in front of the newly established mining commission. New internal organizations and bureaus were popping up all over the place, and nearly all of them were run by people close to Shilk, or by Shilk personally. These new subsections of the Gov made the structure swell and heave, and the majority of the UCG came under the Shilk’s direct control.

  This didn’t sit right with everyone, though, and there was a growing voice of descent from within the UCG, especially the cabinet members, led by a man called Davis, that felt they were being ousted. It was for that reason that Shilk called a secret meeting of the Red Caps.

  We met under darkness, in a building on the other side of town from Central. At that point our numbers were in the hundreds, and we filled the large hall of the building to the maximum. Shilk stood on a platform above us, and we were silent when he raised his hand in greeting.

  “It has become ever more clear to me,” he began. “That the future of the UCG, and of our entire civilization, from Columbia to all of the former United States, must rest in the hands of the strong, lest it fall prey to the same cyclic downfalls that have put us in our current position.” We stood rigid, soaking in the words with glee.

  “We are already seeing the cracks begin to form in the solidarity of Gov leadership, and if it is allowed to continue the inevitable result will be the downfall of everything we hold most sacred. I have spent my life in service to the people, and in doing my utmost to understand what it means to be a civilization, and what it means to hold that civilization together. The conclusions I have reached are inescapable! We must be unified! The power must be held in the hands of those who share a common vision of the future! There are many within the UCG that have alternative plans for what they want that future to be, and so I have taken it upon myself to protect us from those plots, to protect civilization itself. It is only through an iron grip that stability can be realized! All of history supports this notion, shows it with the clarity of diamond! We are, together, the harbingers of the what will be, of the great country that we will build together!” We all cheered and stomped out feet in unison. Shilk went on in this manner for nearly an hour, often pounding on the balustrade before him, sweat dripping down his face.

  Everyone stood rapt with silence as he spoke, and only when he lapsed into silence we all cheered more and shook the building. Shilk had become in that moment like a god to us; we no longer just believed, but knew that he was the leader our fallen state demanded. Indoctrinated as we were from our youngest years to love authority and to fear above all else that said authority might collapse, we thought the preservation of the order Shilk preached to be the highest imaginable calling.

  I remember the rising sensation in my chest, the feeling that we were all together, being called to live a life of meaning. We had been born at the center of two imagined boundaries: on one side, order and salvation, and on the other, ruin and savagery. The choice was an easy one, and the achievement of this goal is what Shilk offered us in that speech. Or so we thought at the time, so Shilk told us as he spoke from the balcony of that old hall, his voice reflecting from the chipping paint of the walls and dust-covered floors on which we stood. Shilk told us that his political opponents were to be watched, and kept away from any meetings where decisions were being made, as well as physically restrained from communicating with one another, or with anyone within the UCG. We clapped in acceptance of this holy task and the prosperity we were so certain it would bring

  We cheered, all of us at once, as a single body, a single will. This was to be the first of many such speeches that Shilk gave privately to the Red Caps. They filled me with enthusiasm that suffused my mind and came out in every word I spoke. When I told Lucie about it, however, she didn’t take to it as readily as I had.

  “Listen to yourself,” she said. “You’re raving, and all for that old politician!”

  “Old politician? That ‘old politician’ is the only thing holding any of this together!” I said, waving my arms around at the street we were walking down. “Can’t you see, Lucie? These shops, the money we use to buy our bread, the repairs that keep the buildings from falling into dirt like the outskirts, that’s all because of him!”

  “I don’t see how one man could be in charge of all that,” she said defiantly. I was shocked; the idea that Shilk didn’t deserve the entirety of credit I laid at his feet had never even occurred to me. But Lucie wouldn’t listen, and I dropped it grudgingly before it turned into a fight. That was the first time in my life that I realized the possibility of a different perspective, though it did little to shake my faith in Shilk or his vision of the UCG.

  ***

  Of all the Red Caps, none had become more fanatical than Remus. He spoke of nothing but the ideas fed us by the General Director. Everything he said was repetitions, although this tendency wasn’t uncommon among the Red Caps, and I often found myself repeating things Shilk had said, myself. As a result of his commitment Remus received an ongoing stream of special attention, and Shilk even went as far as to declare him his personal bodyguard. After that I didn’t see Remus much except when he was at the side of the General Director. He always seemed tired when I saw him, his eyes sunken and his shoulders slouching.

  Then Remus came to talk to me. He said he had something to show me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s got to do with The Device.”

  “I thought it didn’t work.”

  “Come on, just come with me, I’ll show you.” We went to the same building that Shilk had brought us to only a few months before. When we came out onto the mezzanine I saw the General Director standing with three Red Caps around him.

  “Ah, Franz!” he greeted me. “Good to see you, my boy!” I saluted and looked down to where The Device stood, Godard and the workers looking up at us as if waiting for something.

  “May I ask why I’ve been brought here, sir?”

  “Of course! I’ve asked Remus to bring you here to offer you an opportunity. I’ve decided to form a special unit in the Red Caps, and, at the recommendation of Remus here, you’ve been selected as a candidate.” Remus smiled at me, but there was something in his expression that I didn’t recognize. He had been changing lately, and I saw in him little of the person he had been when we were still cavalry together.

  “I’m honored sir, but –er– why are we here, specifically?”

  “Ah yes! I was getting to that. You see, Franz, those first tests of The Device that you witnessed were a failure due to the fact of our test subjects being Singulars. Since then we’ve made a few remarkable discoveries, namely that the nature of The Device has changed somewhat.”

  “Changed how, sir?”

  “It’s really quite remarkable,” Shilk said. “It appears, as Godard has taken pains to explain to me, that the so called ‘higher space’ that the Singulars were always ranting on about has completely collapsed, and reformed itself in a new way. We’ve tested it on several subjects, and each remained unchanged, except that they gained access to this space. Through it they can communicate with one another, passing messages, in the form of any directed thought through the… intermediary.” I looked at Remus, who was nodding his head emphatically.

  “But doesn’t The Device merge people together somehow?” I asked.

  “That’s the beautiful thing!” Shilk said. “The new space is structured, and each individual remains on the edge of it, while also having access to it. The
Singulars, quite by accident, have made the ultimate strategic technology! Now, back to you, my boy. This new unit will be the first of its kind; the first to incorporate this new technology into itself.” The full implications of what Shilk was suggesting dawned on me.

  “You mean you want me to go under The Device?”

  “That’s right! It’s perfectly safe, I assure you. I’ve already undergone it myself, as have Remus and the others here today,” he said, gesturing to the other Red Caps standing placidly behind him. “We can all attest to the painlessness of the process, and that you have nothing to fear, nothing to fear in the least! Isn’t that right, Remus?”

  “That’s right, sir. I mean really, think about it Franz!” Remus said to me, grabbing my arm. “Instant communication: we’ll be an unstoppable organized force. The perfected tool of order!”

  “A perfect tool for civilization!” Shilk declared.

  I’m happy to say that at least I hesitated in the taking of their offer, although I have my doubts as to whether it was an offer at all. But that’s all I did: hesitate. I was still under Shilk’s spell, under the spell of the myths the UCG had pounded into my heart and mind. Their words sunk into me; I really believed that I was be a warrior against chaos, a bright sentinel holding back collapse, and all the hints of the truth of what I was walking into couldn’t shake from me the sentiments that swelled inside my chest. I agreed to be connected to The Device.

  “You’re making the right decision, Franz,” Shilk assured me as he led me down the stairs. “The absolutely correct decision!”