by Ben Woollard
With reluctant pain and shrinking I felt myself descending from the stars, and limitation once again returned to frame me in walls of self. I knew now what Tahm had wanted from me, the extremes to which a person must be pushed to see the truth that shined down from the firmament. This was where I was being led, and I saw in it the truth of revelation. I lay there, returning to myself, my small and weak perspective, the stars again twinkling above me, and cried until I fell asleep, the raging truth had grown a stone within me that I felt solidify in sorrow for those who had not seen, those who did not yet know the moving ocean that I’d felt us all to be.
***
I woke up to a clear winter sky, the sun shining down and making all the banks of snow glisten in its rays. I was cold, and sat in stillness, breathing deep to make myself warm up. Inside I felt that everything was changed, and the space within me I’d touched by the work I’d done with Tahm felt as if it had been torn open, and now shone with light. I sat and dwelt in it the whole of morning, and found in it everything I thought I’d ever needed. Yet with it seemed to come a will to move the world in a certain way. I still had the sense of being lead, and I knew my life still had a purpose to be fulfilled, no matter how much I would’ve liked to sink inside that space forever, gone into the flowing of that sea, made massive in its endlessness. I must’ve sat that way for hours, as I always did from then on when I needed to regenerate and remind myself the reason for my living.
When I opened my eyes I saw Tahm sitting on a log beside me, staring absentmindedly out at the sunlit clearing where we sat. I looked at him and smiled, and felt he knew through what and where I’d been. He smiled back at me, and for a moment neither of us said a thing, just sat in recognition of the moment.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Tahm said finally.
“Me too.”
“I’m also sorry to say I’ve come to say goodbye, Sam.”
“Goodbye? What’re you talking about? There’s not more to do?” I asked, unbelieving.
“Oh yes, always work, the universe needs labor that’s for certain. But for me, my time on here is ended, I go to take my place above. A new time is starting, a new cycle. It already has, in fact. I’m just the last of the relics from before. It’s time I step aside and let the new become itself, and pass onward from the wheel.” I sat without saying anything for a moment, letting his words sink in.
“I understand,” I said, and meant it, though I couldn’t articulate how. “Still, I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t know where to go from here; I still need your help.”
“You have everything you need, Sam. Trust yourself and move forward.” I nodded, despite the uncertainty that remained within me.
“You’ve seen the heights, there nothing more that I can do,” he said, and as he spoke his image was already starting to fade, the landscape behind it shining through. As he disappeared he spoke to me.
“May you the bear the light that forged you, and for all the winds that do bewail you, the blaziness of dawn is just ahead. Do you hear the rushing water, laughing on the shores? Times aren’t moving forward, but round and round, together all at once, interlacing places, people, sights, and names. Already you’re a part of this, the whole of it connecting in and out. Until the day when everything has risen, remember: the golden rising dawn’s ahead.”
And he drifted out and out, his image shaking like a curling wave as it disappeared. He moved beyond some barrier, and everything was still. Tahm was gone, who was sent to set a mechanism moving. I stood there, alone again, my brother dead and family missing. All of it weighed down upon me, but through it all I felt the glowing stillness in me, and found the strength and reasons for my moving on.
I began to walk through the woods aimlessly. I didn’t know where I was or where I should go, but I had the feeling it didn’t matter much, and despite the desperateness of my situation, I couldn’t help but feel more at peace than I had in my whole life. I admired the sight of the light shining through the trees, and the way the leaves made patterns on the sky. Everything smelled fresh and fertile, and the snow crunching beneath my boots brought me an endless sense of satisfaction. I felt no need to think, and I was simply there, the whole world laid out in front of me. Of course I still felt sadness and despair like wounds that bled endlessly, but it seemed so bearable; I seemed so irrelevant now, and I wasn’t sure what the concept of myself even really meant anymore. What was the difference, really, between me and all the rest? I may as well have been the forest, and it seemed to me it was more than that, for I’d never looked upon myself with outside eyes, yet of the trees and snow around me I had full awareness; they seemed infinitely more real than myself.
I walked all day in this way, no direction, no hurry, sucking on snow when I got thirsty, amazed by how little I desired food despite the small amount I’d eaten in the last days. Still, I knew I needed to find some way out of the woods, a road to get on my way. I figured I should head to Linhof, where I’d find shelter and a place to sleep and plan further movements. As the sun set I allowed my walking to become completely automatic, and I let the momentum of it carry me wherever it might. I felt blank as I went, and when night fell I kept on going, not knowing why or where, only that it seemed easier to keep on than to try to stop and sleep.
As the night drew in, and darkness grew around me until I merely stumbled through a wilderness I couldn’t see. At some point in that darkened haze I saw ahead of me a small light, flickering out between the tree trunks. I followed it, part of me sure I was deluded from fatigue. I reached the light, and saw it was a campfire behind which sat a young man, his arm in a sling and his face a hopeless physiognomy. I kept on, and without hesitating walked into the firelight. The man jumped up on seeing me, gripping a knife in hand.
I introduced myself and shook his hand, and was fascinated to see in his skull, as if it were translucent, something living. It was the image of the bird I’d seen fly above the city. It was inside his mind, which opened out into abysmal vistas, and in there sat the creature. It noticed me, and at my touch began to flail. The man was affected by this, and began to shake in pain. I could see it spreading out through him from its origin in his mind, and I could see the tendrils of the creature pulling at his muscles to try and make him move his hand to kill me.
He looked at me with terror, but I only stared with interest. How was it that I could see through him so clearly? I felt no fear, and when he tried to lunge at me, a halfhearted attempt built on the commands of that creature and his own reluctance, I grabbed his hand and moved aside so his knife struck only at the air. As I moved I touched my hand to his forehead on an instinct, and extended all my focus upon the connection that was inbuilt to the thing that lived inside that space. Him and the creature screamed together, and I felt something like the wind pulse out from my hand. The man collapsed in agony, and the thing inside him screamed so loud its cry shook everything around us, so that even the trees vibrated with its noise. I acted automatically, and it seemed to me that something not my own poured through me into him, and there began to cut off the connection to the abyss that lay inside his mind and tried to force his hand to kill me.
We stood there locked in that position, until a surge went through us both. I saw the connection between him and the space sever, dissolved, and we both fell back. Exhaustion over took me to a degree I’d never felt, and I sat across the fire from him and it was all I could to keep from collapsing then and there. When he recovered from the shock of it, he looked up at me amazed.
“How did you do that? You got rid of it! You actually got rid of it!” he exclaimed, his hands and voice shaking.
“I- I don’t know,” I said, my voice weak, my body wanting nothing more than sleep, everything in me felt cracked and tired, dried out like old dirt lots.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” he asked me, excited now.
“Sam,” I said, feeling blackness encroaching on my vision. “I’ve been lost out here, saw the firelight and followed it.�
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“My name’s Franz,” he told me, and shook my hand again, hesitating a little at first, but then with full energy when he saw it wouldn’t cause the pain it had before. I smiled at him, trying my best to stay awake, but failing quickly. Sitting there, having only just gotten through the introductions, I passed out besides the flames, and slept soundly until morning.
When my eyes opened Franz was already up and heating snow beside a new-built fire. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a Gov uniform, though it was dirty and ragged almost beyond recognition, and he’d turned the inner shirt into a sling to hold his wounded arm.
“You’re UCG?” I asked him.
“Not anymore,” he said. “Thanks to you.”
“That thing inside you, what was it?”
“I don’t know myself, to be honest. It was put there by The Device the Singulars were using.” I froze, the reminder of that machine was not something I’d expected.
“You mean the UCG has The Device now? But how’s it that The Device did that, I thought it was for unification.”
“It was, something changed with it after the Singular collapsed. Now it ties people to that thing you saw. I don’t know what it is, but it has some kind of power that it gives you, only at a cost that you don’t realize until long after you’ve allowed it in.”
“Is that what you’re doing out here, then? Hiding from it?”
“Something like that,” he said. “I’d had my doubts about Shilk for a while now, although I did my best to hide them from myself. But they sent someone that I care about to slave in the mines up north, and I couldn’t justify it anymore, so I left to find her. Only it didn’t work out that way, so I ended up hiding out here. I thought I was fucked, to tell the truth: they could find me wherever I went. That is until you cut them off, however you did that. You really don’t know?” I shook my head.
“I really don’t. It just happened. It wasn’t like I did it on purpose, it felt like something had me do it, like I was just a conduit.”
“Well, however you did it, thank you. I owe you; you probably saved my life.”
“Don’t worry about it, seems something led me here for both our sakes. If I hadn’t found you I’d probably still be wandering around lost, could be dead for all I know.” I hadn’t eaten except the smallest piece of bread in something like three days and I was feeling it more than I cared to admit. My stomach cramped and my body felt weak and frail. “What’re you planning to do now?” I asked.
“I’m going back to Columbia and exposing Shilk for what he is: just a shell for that thing that whispers in his ear.”
“Won’t they be looking for you?” I asked. Franz sighed, and stared up at the treetops, a light snow now beginning to fall down from the slate clouds that hung above.
“I suppose they will be, but I don’t see what kind of choice I have. They’ll be looking for me at the mines, they’ll be looking for me in the city, at least if I go there I might be able to tell some people what I know.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “They won’t be looking for you in the settlements, or at least you’ll have some kind of chance of hiding. Why don’t you come with me? There’s been talk of a resistance to the UCG, I’m sure they’d be glad to have you.” Franz thought it over for a minute.
“Well, sounds better than a suicide mission. I think I’ll take you up on that, Sam.” We agreed that we should leave right away, and we packed up what little supplies we had. I was still carrying my pack with Grandpa’s cane and my few camping supplies. I hung it on the horse’s saddle and we started walking in the direction we assumed the road was in. Neither of us had much of an idea where we were heading, and it occurred to me we might get lost and starve out here without anyone to help us. We managed to find the road after a few hours, though, walking in the direction Franz thought his horse had taken him since he’d come blindly into the woods. I was surprised how close we were to it, and how close I must’ve been to finding it the whole time I was running around in the undergrowth, wandering in parallel to it. We were both nervous about being out in the open, so we kept to the trees, taking turns riding on the horse, and ducking further into the woods anytime we saw another person coming down the road. We didn’t talk much as we went, each of us keeping our attention on the horizon behind and in front of us, but after awhile we grew more secure and struck up conversation.
“You never told me about how you ended up out here,” Franz said, and I told him the whole story of how I’d moved to Linhof in hopes of setting something up for my family, and how I’d gone back to Columbia to see them, and everything that’d happened there and since, my voice choking and forcing me to silence when I spoke of Shiloh’s death. As I recounted it all, leaving out Tahm and the things I saw while in the woods, I noticed that Franz looked pale, and stared straight ahead.
“Sam,” he said, when I was done telling him the story, “it was me.”
“What’s that?”
“It was me. I was one of the troops that chased you and your brother. I didn’t shoot him, I promise you. I was angry with the man I was with for using his gun at all, but still, I’m partly responsible for your brother.” I was silent, and looked out at the dismal way in front of us. I didn’t know what to feel in that moment, and I let myself go blank, and just sit with the place that’d been fully built inside me since the other night.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “You’re not responsible. If anything I’m just as responsible as you are. I attacked those Gov troops first. I knew I shouldn’t have come back to see them, but I did it anyway, and now Shiloh’s dead and god knows what happened to my mom and grandpa, they might be dead too for all I know.” I could see that tears were beginning to run down Franz’s face, and I felt sorry for him, all the pain of realizing the thing he’d done had been for nothing but a madness that grew inside him. It was the same thing I felt for all the terror that’d come to those I loved for my own stupid choices.
“We have to stop it, Sam. No matter what, I’m going to put a stop to this, destroy that thing and everything that Shilk has built.” I nodded slowly.
“Just make sure you don’t become him in the process.”
We came to a small crossroads, and Franz ran from where we walked behind the trees to read the sign that stood at the fork, checking the roads in all directions to make sure no one was coming.
“Linhof, right?” he said, jogging back to where I stood with the horse.
“We’re only a days walk away, that way,” he said, pointing to the road that stretched off to our right. We kept walking, and exhaustion hit me with every step. I drank the freezing water melted from the snow inside my bottle, chugging it to try and keep my stomach full of something, though it wasn’t working well. My body was growing gaunt and unhealthy, and everything ached.
Chapter 12
The Memoir of Franz Thompson
I felt regret bubbling up in every corner of myself. The freedom Sam had given me from that creature had brought along with it the inability to block out all the feelings and the memories of the horror that I had been a part of, and my mind reeled with the realization of all the lies I had been fed and chosen to believe. My only motive now was to liberate those sent to slavery, to dismantle the structure that I had helped to build, and which was even now spreading its corrosive limbs across the landscape, threatening to eat everything it touched.
I could tell that Sam was barely holding on to consciousness, and he was nearly falling over from lack of sleep or food, so I let him ride the horse for most of the way while I walked, leading the animal through the trees. We moved slowly, but at least we could have confidence that no patrols would be able to see us.
We kept on walking through the night and when dawn broke we began to see the outlines of houses on the horizon. Sam had us go around the settlement, on the chance that UCG troops might be watching the main roads. We skirted the limits of the settlement and came through the trees onto a poor-looking homestead with a tiny h
ut sitting on the edge of a field. Smoke filed upwards from a small chimney, and as we approached Sam dismounted the horse and walked up to the front door, knocking twice. An older man with greying hair opened it and for a minute stared at us without recognition.
“Holy shit! Sam! What happened? Come inside!” he said, the words all tumbling out one after another. I tied the horse to nearby log and went inside the house, which held a stove and had a mattress laying on the floor. The man, who introduced himself as Theo, served us tea, bread, and pickled carrots as we all sat at the table, crowded into the corner across from the stove, the warmth of which began to fill me. I let the air soak into my body; it was the first time I had felt comfortable in days, although it seemed as if it had been years.
I sipped the tea and ate the food slowly to keep my stomach from bursting. Me and Sam stared blankly down at the table, unable to speak for a while. Theo didn’t force us, and merely looked at the condition we were in and frowned. I was too tired to perform any of the proper motions of politeness; all I wanted was to lie down on the mattress in the corner and sleep for days. Finally, when we were both full as we could be with our shrunken stomachs, Theo asked us what had happened. Sam shook his head.
“Later, Theo, I need to sleep, and I’m sure Franz here feels the same. After that I promise I’ll tell you everything.” Theo nodded.
“You can sleep on the mattress there,” he said to me, pointing at the bed beside the stove. I thanked him, and had never been happier to lie down then I was in that moment. As soon as my body was supine I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes nearly the entire day had passed, and the light was growing dim outside the window. Sam and Theo were sitting at the table talking in low voices, and I could see that whatever Sam was saying to him was making a dark impression.
“You slept even longer than I did,” Sam said when I got up and sat down next to them at the table.