by Fred Strydom
Shen is dead.
Stop
A ride
There was another white flash of light and I was back in the conservatory. The metal hand on my head unclamped. I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Gideon was hunched in front of me. The robot father was still in his armchair.
“Mr. Kayle,” Gideon asked. “Are you all right?”
I put a hand on my forehead to quell the images still spinning in my mind.
“Have some more tea, Kayle,” Father said. “It will soothe you. I’m terribly sorry. Really. I know that wasn’t easy. I know from my own experience. It is a tragic memory. One I have had to keep all this time, just for you.”
I stood up and felt the blood rush to my head. Gideon urged me to sit back down, and I did.
“So you see,” Father said. “You see now.”
“What did you see, Mr. Kayle?”
I had no way of explaining it to Gideon. I struggled to find the words. He handed me the cup of tea, I gulped it back, and then he took it and returned it to the table.
“Quon is a dangerous man. Dangerous and very, very powerful,” Father said. “I know this because Shen told me, but I also know this because, before he was killed, he uploaded his memories to me. Everything he had in the deepest recesses of his mind. I have been keeping them safe. Quon doesn’t know I have them, and because I am not human, hasn’t thought to take them from me.”
I finally regained myself. As soon I did, I began to rummage through everything else I remembered. The Blue Caribou. The commune. The New Past. Moneta and Jai-Li and Anubis.
“The New Past,” I said. “The Bodies that control the communes—they’re all being controlled by Quon.”
“I imagine so.”
It made sense. Until then, I had always been suspicious of the speed and efficiency with which the New Past had orchestrated their regime. Within months of Day Zero, there had been groups all over the world, collecting people and separating them from each other.
“Quon separated us from each other to prevent us from rising up,” I said.
“Correct.”
I thought about those nights of interrogation. The plugs on our heads, the rumbling grey machine that formed its reports, the Age of Self scripts we’d been forced to learn.
“But I don’t understand. In the communes, we were told our separation would initiate The Renascence. The Age of Self scripts were instructions for us to acquire collective consciousness … but they were really doing the opposite. They were preventing us.”
“Hm. With all the memories, the wants and desires of mankind at Quon’s disposal, he knew how enticing such a premise remained, in spite of the fact he had no intention of allowing such a thing. He prepared the scripts himself. He sold people an idea he knew they wanted—the idea of being united. The idea of humans evolving into something singular and cohesive and powerful … but then he did the opposite of what he’d promised under the guise of following through. Simple and malevolently brilliant. People didn’t know any better. Who could argue? Desire trumps reason, it seems. And after everything was lost on Day Zero, humans were offered the promise of exactly what they desired. To be led. To be taught. To evolve. Evidently, however, somebody forgot to pay the piper.”
I got up from my chair again and walked to the glass wall. I looked out over the murky countryside. Lightning flashed in the mountains somewhere far away, the finger of God pointing at some significant and remote destination.
“And we were brought here,” I said. “Everything that happened before brought us to your house. To you.”
“Shen did his best. Quon’s arrogance led him to believe the mismatched memories were the result of mere incompetence on Shen’s behalf, but he forgot about Shen’s own brilliance and resourcefulness. The captain of Chang’e 11 … The architect of my family. Shen led you here in the only way he could—through a proverbial back entrance. A maze of other people’s stories. Or a jigsaw if you will, of other people’s journeys and memories. Given to you. Guiding you. Theirs, and those of your own.”
I turned around. “Why us? Of all people.”
“Why not you? You are guided by a father’s love, no? Is there any more powerful reason?”
“Quon knows where my son is.”
Father nodded solemnly. “He does.”
“Then we have to find him,” I said. I glanced once again at my outstretched hand. I was still trembling, the weak aftershock of a mighty quake of knowledge that had shaken me from my bearings. “How do we do that?”
Father put his glass on the table in front of him and stood from his chair. He dusted his pants and began to walk to the door that led into the rest of the warm house. His hand extended to suggest we should lead the way. Gideon got up from his haunches, and we followed.
“I have one last thing to show you gentlemen,” Father said. “But please. After you.”
We stood in the front garden of the house. The earth was muddy and the air was dry but cold. Thick black clouds hung overhead, brooding between the peaks of neighbouring mountains. Father led us under the wooden gazebo beside the house. A large object was resting under a thick tarp. I presumed it was an autovehicle—the solar-powered car ordinary people had once bought and used to conduct their ordinary business. Father moved to the back and gripped the tarp.
“If you wouldn’t mind, Gideon. Would you grab that end and pull this off? My back is not what it used to be.”
Gideon did as Father had requested, and in a second, the tarp slipped off, exposing a large ovular object.
I knew instantly what sat before us.
Metallic and seamless—like a massive and perfect drop of mercury, hovering off the ground in a state of rest.
The Silver Whisper.
This was the gleaming pod Jai-Li had used to escape that tower in the clouds. An immaculate display of engineering perfection, exactly as she had described it. I put my palms flat against the curved metal side. The surface was smooth and cold.
“I know this vehicle,” I said.
“I’m sure you do. Shen insisted it be brought back here. No easy feat, I can assure you. Especially since it was broken. It was found between two mountains near Chang’e 11. Shen brought it here to repair it, and now I can say it’s good as new. I didn’t understand his interest in it at the time, but he said he’d brought it back because of two men who would be looking for a ride.” Father smiled quickly. He rolled on the heels of his feet, his hands behind his back. “I’d know if they were the right men, he said, because one would know how to open it. That was the only advice given.”
I backed away from the vehicle and put my hand to Gideon’s chest, a warning to stand back.
Another memory: “Jai-Li.”
At that, seams appeared on the side of the pod and a door rolled out to the ground, exposing its internal rungs. I felt the stirrings of hope, a faint tempting sense of elation, emotions I hadn’t experienced in longer than I could remember. I looked to Father to see if he’d object to me entering and he waved his hand happily towards the entrance. I went in and saw exactly what I had envisaged. The red seats. The panel of instruments. The outside of the house through the one-way walls. I was humbled by the reminder that a young girl had died in there. A young girl with a will and a dream powerful enough to go on after she could carry it no further. The memories of the mother’s story washed over me. I was once again alongside her in that monolithic tower. Once again at her side on the days of her mother’s collapse and eventual death.
“There’s a problem,” I said, exiting. “There’s a mother and a child looking for this pod. They’re going back to the crash site to find it. They’re expecting it to be there.”
“Then you’ll have to take it back there, Kayle. You’ll put it back where it belongs. It’s in far better condition than she’d left it, that’s for sure! But for now, it’s yours. Your ticket to that side of the world, to the site of Chang’e 11. Remember, you know she’s going to find it only because she told you she
was. The question you have to ask is why she told you.”
I stepped out of the pod and back onto the muddy earth. The arched door pulled up behind me and sealed shut, leaving no seams.
“By now you should realise you are part of something more than what you know, my friend,” Father said. “And a little mutualism goes a long way.”
Feeding us had been Mother’s primary concern when we arrived, passing on Shen’s story had been Father’s. Now our hosts did everything else in their power to make us as comfortable as they could. Gideon and I each took a warm shower and changed into new clothes that had been laid out for us by Mother. Shen’s clothes fit me almost perfectly but Gideon could only wear a large jacket and a pair of tracksuit pants; everything else was too small. We were offered two single beds in the spare room. Father told us he hoped we’d stay for breakfast in the morning. He assumed we were eager to be on our way, but said he would be honoured to have us at his table one last time. We assured him we would and then retired to our beds.
I couldn’t sleep. Gideon made no sound, and I wondered whether he too was struggling to cast his mind off from the shores of thought. I stared at the ceiling and retraced my journey back from that charming home tucked between those quiet, ageless mountains. The dizzying echo of Shen’s death bounced off the revitalised memory of Jai-Li’s escape and consequent crash. I thought about the Silver Whisper, how it brought the detail of a stranger’s tale into my own vivid reality, how it completed a circle of fate that held us in orbit around some immense, radiating truth.
I could hear Gideon breathing softly now, and guessed that he’d finally fallen asleep. He hadn’t said much all night and I wondered what he thought of everything we’d heard. Perhaps he was not interested. He did not remember any family that he’d had, or perhaps even did have. There were so many people who recalled nothing at all. I had one son to remember and that one memory had offered me everything there was to be offered by this world.
The weather had calmed. The house was black and still. Gideon’s rhythmic breathing finally coaxed me out of wakeful-ness and into a deep and needed sleep.
I thought that I’d awoken in the middle of the night, but I was only dreaming that I was awake. I was lying on my back on the same bed, in the room I shared with Gideon, but none of it was real. This was a dream bed and a dream room, and I was only my dream self.
The room was dark and soundless. I tried to get up from the bed but I couldn’t move. My neck was held down, my wrists and feet buckled to the bed with leather straps. I could smell the ocean. I could feel it moving beneath my bed. I could hear it slapping the sides. The bed was the raft.
A horrifying new impulse fired through me: the family, Gideon, the house and the Silver Whisper had been a dream, and this was reality. I was still floating across the ocean. I hadn’t gone anywhere or accomplished anything. My existence was as meaningless as it had always been …
I tugged my limbs but to no avail. My head was still on the pillow, the floral blanket was tucked up to my chest, the mattress still supported my weight, but this was definitely the raft, I told myself.
“Don’t bother,” a crackling voice came out of the dark. “Save your tugging for a dream that cares.”
Jack Turning.
I managed to see him, from the corner of my eye. Jack Turning, sitting on a chair at the window of the room, smoking a cigarette in the darkness. Threads of smoke twisted and curled from the glowing tip of his cigarette, becoming more shapeless the higher they rose. Jack was looking out the window, his face hidden in the shadows. He did not turn to look at me.
“You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Mr. Kayle’s cracked the code.” He tapped his ash on the floor. “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
The bed rocked gently on the unseen ocean that filled the room, but Jack sat fixed in his spot, unaffected by the elements.
“You think Quon’s the one to worry about?” Jack said. “You just wait till you find me. I’m waiting for you, Dad. I’m the one you really want. And you can forget about your pathetic little drip, drip, drip of optimism, trickling in there—I know you feel it. You’ll take any hand-out of hope you can get, won’t you?”
Jack pulled on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of grey smoke. Through the misty window of the room, a neon sign lit up the dark: the yellow trunk and green leaves of a drooping neon palm tree. A neon-blue word wired in cursive buzzed beside it. The whole thing was tacky—tacky and unmistakable.
The Blue Caribou.
The lights of the sign drew a faint line of colour on Jack’s profile as he stared out the window. The water beneath my bed began to rise over the top of the mattress. I yanked my legs and wrists again. Jack Turning didn’t bother to look back at me. He went on smoking, calmly, taking in deep, leisurely drags. Outside, the sign continued flickering.
“Who knows? Maybe you will find Andy. Maybe you’ll even save the world. Stranger things have happened.” He dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with his shoe. “But who’s going to bother saving you, big hero?”
The water rose over the sides of the bed and washed against me. I screamed. I wrenched my limbs. Jack did nothing. He just sat there. Lit up another cigarette. In a moment the water was over my face, sliding through my nose and down my throat. I was filling up with the ocean, and no sound could escape my mouth. The water rose quickly, over my body, to the ceiling of the room, pulling everything under just as it had with that suburb against the marshy shore. I wasn’t just drowning. I was disappearing, another forgotten part of that sunken graveyard, unworthy of the breathing world.
I was vanishing into oblivion.
We had breakfast with the family the following morning but I barely said a word. Father had made the breakfast—scrambled eggs and toasted bread. He waddled around the table in his purple apron, pouring each of us a glass of cold clementine juice. Then he whipped off his apron and sat down to join us—playing the role of the fool for his ever-amused children. I appreciated his effort at lightness but my mind was elsewhere.
The dream from the night before had robbed me of my few scraps of budding enthusiasm. I’d awoken sweating and in a disconcerted state. I knew I had to find Quon—that was a must—but now there was the pressing urge to find Jack Turning. He was out there somewhere, waiting for me, and nothing would be resolved until I met him face-to-face to settle some unknown debt.
After breakfast, Gideon and I collected our things. Mother gave us more food parcels and the whole family came outside to see us off. The weather was beautiful; the spiteful storm clouds were long gone, and we stood under a dome of bright blue sky. The mountains were clear and textured; every crack and bump could be seen from afar. Tufts of low-lying shrubs trembled in a tender breeze.
“Are you ready?” I asked Gideon as we approached the Silver Whisper, hovering beneath the gazebo.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
We turned and thanked the family for their hospitality. Father shook my hand and held it firmly as he spoke:
“Remember, Kayle. Victory isn’t getting what we want. It’s getting what’s owed to us. And what’s owed is balance. Balance between right and wrong, the guilty and the innocent, the saved and the damned. We mightn’t ever have Utopia—I’m not even sure it’s what we really want—but balance: that’s the first step towards retrieving Man’s stolen destiny. Towards peace.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.” I glanced from one family member’s face to the next, thanking them all. They were all smiling back at me. “We can only hope that one day people will have again what you have now.”
Father lifted his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Son and Daughter stood in front of them. The nicest family ever made waved their hands as I climbed into the pod after Gideon. There was only one place up front and he moved into the second row. I took the helm. The door rolled up behind us and we took our seats on the red chairs.
“Say g
oodbye, children!” Father shouted.
“Goodbye children!” Son and Daughter yelled in unison, and laughed. Mother smiled.
I sat before the panel of instruments. Several lights began to flash before I had pressed anything or given any command. There was the hum of the engine, the sound of the oxygen generator warming up. Gideon placed our bags under the chairs and leaned over to help make sense of the screens in front of me. I held my palm over a display screen, and dragged a list of its most recent logged-in coordinates. One of the coordinates was followed by letters and numbers: K49L3 J3NN3R. It did not take long to realise it was a crafty little code version of my name. I was overcome with anticipation. It was all true. Shen knew about Jai-Li. He had known this very moment would happen, and that it would involve me. And this code, this wink of Shen’s eye, served two functions: to confirm my place in that seat and to preserve my anonymity should an intruder get there before me. I selected the co-ordinates by twisting my wrist in the air above the monitor. The words lit up. Our destination was set.
“That must be it then,” Gideon said.
“Must be.”
We were now at the whim of a plan that hadn’t been revealed. And all we had to do was sit back and let the Silver Whisper take us wherever we needed to be. We could see everything through the shell: the family nucleus, waving and smiling, the rugged stone house Shen had built as a retreat from a broken world, the long unused road, the mountains, the desert land and the untarnished sky.
The pod floated forward slowly, from under the shelter of the gazebo. As it moved, the vines shook on their arch and the flowers trembled in their wheelbarrow. The sound of the engine grew from a low drone into a high-pitched hum, and then all sound stopped; we could hear nothing. It was the silence of a vacuum. I could hear my own heart beating and Gideon’s calm, metrical breath.
I was just about to say that something was wrong when the pod rose rapidly in the sky, suspending us high above the land, then raced forward at a perfect right-angle to its ascension.