I walk until nightfall, and there is no sound but my footsteps, which is like no natural sound and which sickens me still. I go alone to what’s left of the basilica, to pray, and when my knees fall to the earth the clang echoes in my ears and it is the only sound left in the world.
Sometimes, briefly, I forget, and I think that I am home.
There is a caesura between all that was and all that is, between the city I loved and the city that I know now, between my mother’s city and my own.
My left arm is gone now; it was the only part of me that could not withstand the blast. I screamed from the gurney for them to let it be: it was withered and misshapen; it was all that was left of her. But in those days nobody knew what was happening, or how long the effects would last, and there was a fear the spores might spread. They cut off the arm and burned it; two hours later they placed Rome under quarantine.
Caesar died instantly. In the wild and wrecked months that followed, in those frantic and fevered weeks of dead burying and barricading ourselves indoors, we went on without him. Those of us who survived were those with false arms, false legs, false eyes, bearing, all of us, my mother’s seal.
If the others suspected what she had done, we never spoke of it. To condemn her was to condemn her works; we could not afford to lose her genius now.
I was her keeper, in the end. I was the one with keys to her laboratory; I was the one who knew what she had built, who knew how it all worked. I was the one who taught the others how to secure buildings, far from the seven hills, how to keep the spores out.
I was the one without flesh, and so I was the one who could walk in the old city, unharmed. They sent me to count the dead, to take names and photographs, to remember them. I was the one who reported to them that my mother had died with the rest. I lied.
Her face is withered; her skin is green. She rasps when she speaks, and it is only because I know her so well that I am able to understand her. She lives on the Capitoline, in an empty tramcar, waited upon by the sightless servant who bears my face. She inhales poisoned air and engineers her own temporary remedies. I bring her pills, in as many different flavors as I can invent, and she insists that I am lying to her.
“That’s not how it happened at all,” she says. “There was nothing wrong with it. I checked it—twenty times. I made no mistakes.” Her story changes. Sometimes she insists that it was Caesar’s conspiracy, that he altered the formula behind her back, that he was jealous of her power. Sometimes she insists that I must have tampered with it in the laboratory, that I must have turned a dial too far in the wrong direction and forgotten about it, and so this is why the world has been destroyed. Sometimes, the worst times, she tells me that we are better off now, that this is only a temporary setback, a necessary ellipsis between the world in which I was born and the world she knows that I deserve.
She asks me about the laboratory, about my research. Sometimes, when I reach an impasse in my experiments, she is the one who tells me what to do next. She slips me formulas, chiseled into slate, and reminds me to polish her inscription at the gates. I carry the weight of her on my back when I go.
“You’re alive,” she says. “And that’s what matters. You’re alive, and they know us now. By our works, they will know us, and you will lead them into tomorrow.”
They made me Caesar. I never told her. It was the only way I could think of to punish her.
Last night I told the Senate that I have found the cure, that I have made perfect my mother’s research. I told them I have engineered a device that will destroy all the spores and purify the air once more.
There is only one problem, I said. We will have to destroy it first. We can’t risk a cell, a speck, a single gangrenous dot remaining. We will atomize the ruins, the colonnades, the vines; we will level the seven hills, and then—when everything is ash—we can rebuild.
They murmured “hail,” and licensed me to do as I see fit.
Tomorrow, I will put my seal on the decree, and then men in gas masks will tear down the ramparts of my childhood places; tomorrow I will erase my mother’s footprints and the sound of her voice from the face of the earth, and in the smoke of the earth I will bury her. I will walk out into the world she has left for me, and then with two sticks and a match I will build her up again.
About the Author
Tara Isabella Burton’s fiction has appeared in Shimmer, PANK, Daily Science Fiction and more. Her nonfiction, essays, and travel writing can be found at National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller, Al Jazeera America, The Atlantic, and more. In 2012 she received The Spectator‘s Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. You can sign up for author updates here.
Copyright © 2016 by Tara Isabella Burton
Art copyright © 2016 by Ashley Mackenzie
I suppose that, after a brilliant coed graduates from MIT and volunteers for the war effort, the only place the Navy can bear to send her is a nameless atoll in the Pacific.
They’re lucky it suits me.
I’ve been assured my job is tremendously important. I believe them. I know it is. I maintain a generator that powers a signal light that is visible up to thirty thousand feet, vertically. Our planes fly much lower than that, of course, but I mention the strength of its output because it’s a bragging point.
I maintain the signal. I am the landmark, the light in the dark.
This atoll is approximately an acre in size. The Japanese don’t have a name for it. We don’t have a name for it. So I am trying to think of a suitable name for it. Something to do with my name. Lucy, Lucia, Lucid, Lucifer. I’m not sure the US military would take kindly to the last one. Oh, too late, it’s done, then. The name of the atoll will be Lucifer. It means ‘light-bearer,’ so it’s very appropriate. It’s a reclamation of the name: not the Judeo-Christian bogeyman, but the light of science and reason.
Actually, my current situation—isolated, with limited responsibility and an overabundance of free time—is an ideal situation in which to run my dream experiments. I’ve brought with me Professor Gaertner’s text on lucid dreaming. The first step toward lucid dreaming, he posits, is hyperawareness of phenomena in the waking state. For example, I must count the fingers on my left hand several times a day. The reasoning being that, when I do the same thing out of habit within my dream and come up with a nonstandard result (three fingers, or nine), I will know that I’m dreaming.
And when I achieve this state, and keep it stable, I can begin my experiments.
* * *
Last night I had a breakthrough. While still dreaming, I opened my eyes and held my left hand in front of my face and counted five fingers; however, each of the fingers appeared cracked and roasted, like pork on a spit. But I was not alarmed. I simply recognized that this was a nonstandard result, and therefore that I must be lucid dreaming. I sat up on my mat. I managed to touch my right hand with my left index finger before my excitement woke me up. I considered it excellent progress.
I’m supposed to walk two brisk laps around the atoll every morning and log it in the station log, to assure the Navy I am keeping myself fit and alert and occupied. I did when I first arrived. But now I just wander at will.
In my notebook, I’m keeping a record of the tides. I’ve also begun to classify all the species here, like Darwin on Galapagos, except on a far more humble scale. For example, there are geckos, gnats, crabs, and little pigs. Albatrosses come and go. I’ve seen at least one frigate bird from a distance. I make note of the markings on their bodies and their habits of locomotion. I’ve developed a rudimentary classification matrix for the entire ecosystem, including the seagrasses that grow like so much hair between my shack and the sea, based on what will probably prove to be meaningless characteristics. But I have to occupy my time somehow. I have a newfound appreciation for history’s naturalists who made it their life’s work. Linnaeus, I hardly knew ye.
When I was finished cataloging everything, I did something I now regret. I carried one of the little pigs—a fem
ale, who was quite docile, and seemed happy to go for a ride—into the surf. I wanted to see if it could swim. I thought it must be able to swim, the species being so proximate to water, even though its ancestors were likely ship-borne vermin.
So I carried it down into the surf until I was knee-deep. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have gone so far out. I let it down into the water. At that moment, a wave of unusual force slapped my midsection and I fell into the water. I lost sight of the little pig. Then I glimpsed it again, underwater, twitching and writhing and sinking, clearly unable to swim. I reached for it but just then, another wave slapped me back, leaving me even more disoriented than before. I lost sight of it altogether this time. I didn’t recover it, or even see it again.
I felt quite bad. Maybe I should stick to physics.
In my dream last night, I managed to stand up in front of the full-length mirror I’d positioned at the foot of my mat. (The Navy sent it with me. Of course I must have a full-length mirror. God forbid I should be unaware of my appearance.) I was very intrigued to see that my image was not inverted—the MIT insignia on my nightshirt read MIT, not TIM as it does normally in waking life. I remember receiving that nightshirt my sophomore year; it was a gift from Professor Gaertner—-the wife Sofia, not the husband Bernhard; I should clarify, as they both bear that title—who thought I might be lonely as one of the only coeds at the Institute. I appreciated that.
And now here I stood, wearing the same nightshirt, noticing how MIT stayed MIT. This is the first deviation from known physics in waking reality.
In honor of the Gaertners’ German heritage, I’ve decided to call my experiment (and the universe it elucidates and its attendant systems) Traumphysik, which sounds more rigorous than “dream-physics.” Everything sounds more rigorous in German.
* * *
I had my daily check-in with base at noon. I’m told the war is going well. I take their word for it.
They asked whether I was keeping up with my fitness routine. I said yes.
They asked whether I had enough food and water. I said yes.
They asked whether I was having any trouble with the generator. I said no.
I heard another voice ask me if I was lonely and then muffled laughter and then shushing and then silence. I said nothing.
I lit the signal in the evening as a new squadron flew over. Supply planes, using my atoll for a landmark. I could make out the numbers on their underbellies. They looked like a school of flying fish overhead—and I, at the bottom of the sea. They flashed their call sign in Morse code and I flashed back. Lucifer. I am the light-bearer.
I’m developing quite a taste for coconut. I’m not tired of it; on the contrary, it’s the only thing I crave now. I split the hairy brown ones on a spike and then carve up the flesh with my knife.
* * *
Another breakthrough.
It’s 3:14 a.m. (pi! How serendipitous!) and I write by candlelight. I just succeeded in performing Galileo’s experiment on falling objects—in my dream. Before going to bed, I had placed a feather and a watch on my bedside table. When I got up in Traumphysik, I picked up the two objects, remembering to remain very calm. I raised my hands so that they were spaced above the floor equally. Then I let go. The watch and the feather both floated down, impossibly, maddeningly slow, like particles sinking in a column of water, but at the same rate of acceleration, as theorized would occur in a vacuum or (observably) in the absence of an atmosphere.
But oddly enough, neither the feather nor the watch dropped in a straight line. They fell diagonally and away from each other, tumbling as if down opposite sides of an invisible mountain.
I was so excited I woke up. I couldn’t help it. I had enough wit to light my candle and open my notebook. So here I record: This is the second deviation from the known laws of physics in waking reality. The next step is to repeat the process twice, to confirm the result.
But for now—back to sleep.
* * *
When I woke up today, I found that my watch was broken.
I didn’t actually drop it, of course—I was lucid-dreaming, not sleep-walking. It was still on my bedside table where I had left it. But it was stopped at 3:14 a.m., at the moment I woke to record my progress. It’s too bad. It was a graduation gift from the Gaertners.
But aside from that regret, this is an interesting result. It could be mere coincidence. Or it could be that the waking and dreaming worlds are related. Freud would furrow his brow and shake his head at me—How obvious, Lucy, how very obvious. But Professor Gaertner’s work takes the null hypothesis, as it should; he assumes that the dreaming and waking worlds are entirely uncorrelated, even despite all anecdotal evidence (and cultural momentum) to the contrary.
Regardless, I intend to continue with my experiments. I have to continue work on the dream world. Or is it only my dream world? Is the Traumphysik the same from person to person, or different? It would be fascinating either way: If Traumphysik is the same from person to person, that suggests the existence of a real physical world to which we collectively travel each night; on the other hand, if Traumphysik varies from person to person, then one’s own Traumphysik must represent the subconscious world in which one lives. One’s own Platonic cave. One’s own fires and figures and shadows.
There is no way to test other peoples’ Traumphysik at this time, as I am alone. Therefore I assume the null hypothesis: My Traumphysik is entirely uncorrelated to others’ Traumphysik. It is my own place.
* * *
I am thrilled to report that the first Galileo dream-experiment yielded the same result twice more: The watch and the feather fell at the same rate, down opposite inclined planes, and hit the floor at the same time. The watch is still broken, and the feather appears unchanged.
I’m recording all of my results in this notebook, as I was trained to, by Professor Gaertner. It’s a pity his other students were so susceptible to prejudice. My time there was calm at the beginning, and I was treated kindly as the only coed in his class. But then it became clear that I was the brightest student in the class. The others didn’t take it well. I recall a time when I was crossing campus at night, in the Cambridge winter, and was waylaid by several figures in black cloaks, who blindfolded and gagged me. I thought it might be a harmless “hack,” but I began to perceive malice on the part of my interceptors, as they called me rude names, and then led me to a place where I was stripped of my coat and shoes and outer garments until I was wearing nothing but my underclothes. I was told to count to twenty. Of course I could only do so in my head as I was still gagged.
When I removed the blindfold, I was alone. I walked home, which was several blocks away, in the snow, with the temperature somewhere in the single digits. The house matron had to draw a hot bath for me and I had to sit in it for an hour to thaw my extremities until we were sure I hadn’t gotten frostbite. When I got to class on Monday, my clothes were lying in a pile on my desk. I heard snickering around me. The others hid their faces behind their books. I sat down and folded the clothes and put them under my desk and carried on as usual.
That was just one incident among many.
I can’t be bothered with them, of course. Not then, not ever. Reason does not permit me to do so. Besides, Professor Gaertner noticed the abuse, and took pains to protect me. After all, his wife, Sofia, was also a professor and radio physicist, famous in Germany before they left the country. He was not threatened by a learned woman. Especially one learned in the sciences. I was, and remain, glad of their patronage.
And though I am ashamed to say it, I take some pleasure in considering how those young men are now in the trenches in the European theater. Speaking for myself, I highly recommend the Pacific theater. It is peaceful and calm. There is no one to bother me, except the little pigs, and I rather like them.
* * *
I did one full lap around the atoll yesterday. Not to please the Navy, but to please myself. It takes about ten minutes. That’s an estimate—since my watch broke, I’ve been
guessing at intervals. I’ve been estimating hours, too, like my noontime radio date with base. I can tell it’s noon when the short shadow of the palm tree outside my shelter crosses over a certain arrangement of bleached kelp at its foot. Then I get on the radio and call them.
I haven’t told them my watch is broken.
I haven’t told them much, in fact. Nothing about my Traumphysik, obviously. They wouldn’t understand, or they would find it an occasion to mock me amongst themselves, and I’m not in a mood to provide them that pleasure.
* * *
I’m still so intrigued by the result of my first Galilean experiment. It’s such an unexpected result that the objects fell at an incline, in opposite directions. This suggests multiple centers of gravitational pull. The feather is attracted to one center of mass, whereas the watch is attracted to another. They obey their own masters as if made of different substances. It’s extraordinary.
It’s clear that more data are needed.
In the meantime, I’ve progressed to another experiment. In keeping with Galileo’s findings, I decided to test the behavior of a pendulum in my Traumphysik. I tied a length of string through a pendant and hung it on a nail that protrudes from one of the beams of my shelter. In tying the pendant, I recalled its provenance. In my junior year at MIT, I was courted by a young man named Louis. He looked sharp in class, in his day-to-day wear, especially a maroon wool sweater. I had asked around, and been told he was dating a girl at Wellesley—but then he asked me to be his date to a Harvard mixer, so I assumed that that business was done with.
I bought a new necklace for the occasion at a jeweler’s in Beacon Hill—this very pendant, a cream-and-caramel cameo I thought very pretty. Anyway, I shouldn’t linger; this story has a predictable ending. I waited to be picked up at my dormitory for two hours, listening to radio dramas with the house matron. Finally I left the dormitory by myself and hailed a taxi and arrived at the mixer, where I spotted Louis in a corner, surrounded by our classmates and accompanied by a pretty blonde I could only assume was the aforementioned Wellesley girl. I exited quickly, the same way I’d come in. I didn’t want to provide the denouement. It was never mentioned again, by me or by Louis, who avoided me thereafter.
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