by Fred Strydom
The world is not a desert. It is full of life and wonder. There are things out there far beyond what you have ever been allowed to imagine. Do not do what I did. Do not give up out of fear.
As I have said, if you are reading this letter, I am no longer with you. But no matter what has happened to me, do not spend a second weeping for me. Do not hold so tightly to your memory of me that I continue to hold you back. I deserve neither your sympathy nor your admiration. What I beg of you is that you do something for yourself. Find a way. Find love. See the world.
With hope and hurt,
Your mother
And that was it. That was the end of the letter. My mother’s final words, scrawled on a few pages.
As she had predicted, I did not understand everything at once, but I understood enough: the tower was not my home. It was my incubator. I was not being kept as a daughter. More of an investment, I suppose.
As I folded the senso-sheets into a tight square, I noticed something else: crude drawings on the back of them. I moved my hand over the pages and thin green lines appeared. I pulled my hand away and the lines began to fade. Ghost print, they call it. Secret digital print that will appear on a page only if brought near a particular, intended hand.
My hand, as it turned out.
I unfolded the pages again, flipped them over on my bed, then smoothed out the creases. It was an image of a maze, like one of the ones my tutor had often made me do. But this wasn’t some meaningless maze from a puzzle book. It was a map.
There were two drawings. The one was a vertical rectangle divided into smaller rectangular segments, with a horizontal line across the final segment. On the bottom right, there was a second square with corners, flaps, angles, and what looked to be a tunnel extending to the top right of the page.
The purpose of the sketch struck me in an instant: it was a map of the underground house. I could see the floor plan of the corridor, the living room and the room containing the weaponry, the oxygen tanks and the gasmasks. Loose words floated between the lines: “squat-hatch,” “keypad,” “air-pod—remember to speak your name,” “Exit A-3,” as well as “Code: 65388.” As the instructions floated in, I remembered the robot’s long, metal finger punching in that very code on the keypad.
My mother had drawn an escape route. For me.
My heart leaped in my chest. I could barely contain my surprise, my fear, my exhilaration. I flicked my head to the door, expecting my father to burst in and rip the pages from my hand. He never came to my room, and there was no reason for him to do so now, but I was filled with sickening fear. My father could never be allowed to see those plans. I folded my mother’s letter and slipped it into the shallow back pocket of my dress. Then I hopped off the bed and left the bedroom.
The house was cold and lifeless, as it had been for months, the black furniture and grey walls a stubborn stand against a world of colour and life. I would never again see that place as my home, I knew that, and what I did next was an easy thing.
I opened the front door and walked out, into the wide boulevard. There was no one around at that hour of the day. With the sun-orb high above me, I made my way towards the tube stop. I watched air bubbles rise in the water within the glass rail-channels. They changed shape as they floated and quivered up and out of sight, a strange blob-like family of their own. The tube pulled up in front of me and the doors hissed open. I entered the empty tube and took a seat. Then I pushed the button I had not pushed often, but was always all too aware of. It would take me to the top floor of the tower: to my father’s office.
Even now I can’t say why I decided to go there, but I do remember feeling both fearless and composed as the magnetised doors came together. I had already decided I would not be staying, but perhaps I needed to look once more at that aloof and uncaring face.
I needed to see it. Remember it. Use it.
Each of the levels flashed by my window. I closed my eyes, but could still tell when a floor had passed by the rhythmic whomp of air against the side of the tube. Without needing to stop for other passengers, the tube was able to build great speed as it raced to the peak of Huang-345.
I opened my eyes. The stacked floors flickered before me in succession, a jittery film that showed the vertical world of my childhood: the halls, fields and suburbs, once designed and built as a testament to human ingenuity, now the cluttered shelves of a musty broom closet.
The tube began to slow. The high pitch of my rushing glass vestibule lowered and softened until it came to a complete stop. At the edge of the platform a long red carpet led to the enormous double-doors of my father’s office. The walls of the lobby were lined with dark wood. The tube hissed open and I stepped out and onto the soft red carpet.
I approached the front door. It was an old-fashioned door: no blinking lights, glowing palm-plates, or numbered keypads. My father locked it with an old-fashioned key when he left the room. When he was inside, however, it was usually left unlocked.
I took a deep breath and realised: I had absolutely nothing to say to my father. Why had I even bothered going all the way up there? What was I hoping to accomplish? Besides, my father had never shown any interest in me. Why should this change now? My mind raced with indignant questions all trying to block the fear that was beginning to return. All I was looking for was a good reason for turning around, going back down the tube, and returning to my room for the next sixty to seventy years of my life.
I tucked my hand under the large brass handle and pulled.
The first thing I saw was the enormous glass wall. I saw the expansive blue of the sky, my eyes relishing the rare chance to flex out into infinity.
The door opened wider and the scent of the wooden panels in the lobby faded completely, replaced by stark marble floors and walls. At the end, I could just about see one lone desk in the distance.
But my father was not sitting there. He was standing in front of the wall of glass, his hands behind his back, staring at the endless rolling cloudscape before him.
I had never seen him simply stand and do nothing. Something was different. Something was wrong. He must have heard the doors open and the pat-pat-pat of my shoes as I walked along the hard floor towards him, but he did not turn around. He didn’t move at all. I finally reached the far end of the room and stood alongside him. As always he was wearing his immaculate grey suit, the unwrinkled maroon tie around his neck. His head was like a concrete block, his thin hair slicked and combed to the side. His eyes were narrow, his lips tight on his mouth, as if he was biting them closed from the inside.
I squinted through the glass. Outside, the sun struck the surface of the clouds, casting restless shadows in its constantly moving nooks.
Then my father opened his tight lips to speak.
We were wrong, he said. We were so wrong. How could we have been so wrong? And now, because of it—a miscalculation—everything’s lost. Everything’s finished.
I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or to himself. His head didn’t move, his eyes didn’t blink, but his lips were trembling a little. He went on:
Idiotic. Pathetic. That we thought we could control it. We thought we knew what we were doing. But we had no idea … have no idea what we’re doing. We’ve never known. We’re fools, and soon we’ll be even greater fools. Everything … every last thing we’ve ever learned and acquired will be gone. And we’ll be like animals again. Animals. Stupid, useless animals.
I had no idea what he was talking about; he was rambling.
Chang’e 11, he said. Chang’e 11 came back … it came back to us. A Trojan horse. We thought it was a gift—our lost cat had found its way back home—but it came back with something else … and soon everything will be gone. Our memories. Our identities. Wiped away. He got inside my head and he showed me. He showed me his plan to end us all. Whispers in my dreams. Whispers and laughter. A picture of an empty world. Everything we’ve ever worked for will be gone, everything we’ve done, and we’ll have to start again … like stupid, s
tupid animals …
A tear oozed from his eye and ran over his cheek to the right corner of his mouth. A man makes a life. He makes his choices. He lives with his choices. He paves his fate. He makes something of his life and all he wants is for his name to go on—to be remembered. That, above all. But now? This? A waste, he said, softly, and then, louder, a waste! A waste of time! It’s all been a waste of time!
His colourless face began to redden and tighten. I took one careful step back.
I needed to leave.
I wanted to say goodbye. Goodbye father, I’m leaving. But it wouldn’t have mattered. He wouldn’t have heard me. He was still screaming that everything was lost and that it had all been a waste of time when I turned and walked quickly towards the doors of the hall. With his voice booming behind me, I picked up speed until I was sprinting to the exit.
I slammed the doors shut behind me and fell to my knees. I was panting heavily and wanted to retch. I pressed my hands against the soft red carpet and closed my eyes. Then under my breath, I said it: Goodbye.
That was the last time I saw my father—and those were the last words I heard from him, those screams behind me: that we’d all go back to being animals again. Animals. Stupid, useless animals.
It was the last time I stepped into that ridiculously capacious room. I needed to leave immediately and I couldn’t waste another minute. In my head and my heart, it was finished. I, the daughter of a Huang, was finished.
So I pushed myself up from the carpet and ran to the tube stop …
The smoking mirror
Jai-Li stopped speaking. Her eyes darted to the side as the malformed shadow of a person crawled across the wall of the tent. The zip of the tent buzzed down and you saw it was Theunis.
He poked his head inside and beckoned you out of the tent. You turned back to Jai-Li, told her you’d be back soon and that everything would be all right. She smiled in appreciation of your assurance, but it was clear you were less than convinced.
You stepped out, zipped up the tent behind you, and approached Theunis. He was pacing in circles and raking his fingers through his hair. The heat of the dying fire was losing its reach and the icy wind that edged your skin was like the breath of death. But you kept your composure to help Theunis keep calm. Something had gone wrong. His eyes were wide and wild. His skin was damp with sweat.
You asked him what it was, but he couldn’t speak. There was the rustle of some nocturnal animal flitting about the trees above you, and Theunis jerked his head up in alarm. You shook him gently and said his name twice. Theunis. Theunis, what is it?
Finally he turned to look at you.
At first, everything had gone fine, he said, but hardly a few minutes after arriving at the commune, a young boy had summoned him up to the house on the hill.
He’d told himself it was a coincidence. They didn’t know, he’d told himself; they couldn’t have known. But then he’d walked into that white room with the large window and the pale moon swimming behind those shadowy shapes and found himself wired to that machine. The Body had fired off their questions—their weird, philosophical questions. Waited for the answers he was supposed to know by heart. Dreams. Numbers. God concepts. They had not asked about Jai-Li. So maybe it had been a mere fluke he’d been called to bear witness at that precise time. The problem was, he’d been unable to conceal his nervousness from the grey machine. The machine was hardly necessary, he added; he’d perspired and fidgeted like a boy. And, of course, the more nervous he felt, the more his anxiety grew. At one point, they’d had him sit for almost five minutes without saying a word. The longer he’d sat, the hungrier that thing had seemed to get, and the longer The Body had waited. After that, they’d sent him back down to the beach.
At that point you said it was okay, that maybe they still didn’t know, but Theunis was adamant. They did. They knew he was guilty of something.
You took a moment to think about what to do next and then you said to him that the two of you could not do this alone; you needed someone else to help you. Someone you could trust.
Theunis wasn’t sure there was anyone, but you said you knew somebody. Gideon. If anyone could be trusted, it was Gideon. You would have to do it in turns, rotate your shifts, otherwise there’d be no hope of securing the secret. And besides, you added, Gideon was one of the better carpenters on the beach. He’d be able to make the oar, quicker and better than either of you.
Your responsibilities were taking on new weight, new shape almost, and you were hit with a sudden sensation. Purpose. It was a feeling both familiar and anomalous to you. Before this, such feelings had only washed up occasionally, like rare and colourful shells on the bleak shore of your existence. When one arrived, and you picked it up and put it to your ear, you could still hear within its smooth folds the oceanic echo of the person you had once been. Now the feeling filled you, strengthening you, frightening you.
Theunis and you decided that he should go back down to the beach and stay there until morning. The Body would be watching him closely after his interrogation, so you’d have to be the one to stay with Jai-Li. The next day he would come back up the mountain and you’d go down to find Gideon. Jai-Li needed to stay out of sight and at least one of you needed to be constantly in sight. So that was the plan, for now. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best you could think of. Theunis handed you the bag of food and two rolled-up blankets. He thanked you as if you had agreed to do all this for his sake only, and then he left.
You watched as he rushed away into the darkness, beyond the light of the glowing moon. Then you turned and took the bag and blankets back to the tent. Jai-Li was probably hungry; she hadn’t eaten for at least a few hours. But when you pulled up the zip of her tent, you saw that she had already fallen asleep.
You reached up and curled your hand around the rough branch of the gigantic tree. You grabbed it tightly and hoisted yourself up. You slipped your right foot onto a woody protrusion, pushed down, and pulled yourself up some more. Your breath was misfiring, in and out of your lungs like a car battling to start.Your face pressed against the bark and you closed your eyes, willing yourself into a state of physical calm.You could not give up. Not yet.You’d seen the red shoe on the ground below and were convinced you’d find Andy at the top of that tree.
You looked down. The trunk of the tree ran downwards, vanishing to a pinpoint among the green canopy below. You gripped the tree harder.You had climbed for so long and you were terrified of being so high up. The fear throbbed in your throat and chest and stomach like a fat and unearthly slug.
You looked up. The top of the tree disappeared in thick clouds. Andy would be up there. He would be waiting for you.You were sure of it. So you decided not to look down again, and continued on, controlling your breathing all the way, gripping one branch at a time. The wind danced around the trunk, mocking you for your lack of dexterity. You ignored it, held tighter, and ascended.
Soon, the colours of the world began to fade.You realised you were entering the thick blankness of a cloud and you could barely see the next branch you were supposed to grab, let alone where the top of the tree ended.You stopped and lifted yourself onto a wide branch, taking a seat. Your head tilted up and around. There was nothing but the whiteness.
Had Andy come up so far? Could he have?
You were beginning to doubt it, but wouldn’t let yourself give in to the doubt. You had felt so strongly that he’d climbed the tree, and you had come up so far in spite of the fear pounding in you. You could not lose faith now.
You called his name.Your voice barely penetrated the thick cloud. You called his name again, louder.
Andy … Andy!
Nothing came back but the haunting stillness. You arched your head up. Through the white shroud above, you could feel the sickly, dull warmth of what you thought was the sun. But the warmth did not comfort you. It was a humid thickness, the sort in which terrible, diseased things grow. You squinted at the cloud and now you could see the faint outline
of a weak, glowing orb suspended somewhere far beyond. This must be the sun, you thought. The orb shone feebly, its shape barely distinguishable, like the intangible image cast on the back of your closed eyelids when you couldn’t get to sleep. It was very near and yet very remote, like a faraway planet brought close by the lens of a powerful telescope. It shouldn’t be called a sun. It was something else, an eye that could somehow see you more clearly than you could see it.
You were sitting there, still wondering what it could be, when a soft voice crept into your head. It seemed to be your voice, but it wasn’t the voice of your normal thoughts. It was clear and direct and had come into your head from somewhere outside. Above all, you were certain of this.
I’m beginning to understand, the voice said softly. I’m beginning to remember.
You did not know what the voice meant. But as it came into your mind, a new realisation dawned upon you: the voice was coming from the orb. It was speaking its mind through you, using your voice, becoming clearer and more direct as it went on:
Do you remember Jack Turning, Kayle?
Remember Jack Turning. Remember his face. Remember him. Remember his fear and his guilt. I will help you to end this, Kayle. This silly daydream of an existence. Where are you climbing? Who do you think you will find up here? You will not find Andy here, Mr. Kayle. You will not find him because he is not here. Soon, I’ll be there and I’ll show you for myself. But the alp on your chest is getting bigger, my friend. And they say it takes a human body a variable amount of time to decompose properly. It all depends on the conditions, Kayle, for there to be nothing but bone. You can understand that, surely?