Adrian could see so clearly what his city would look like, where the municipal building would be, the library, the schools, and a hospital. He was determined that this would be a place worthy of raising children. There would even be parks in this new world. The panels of artificial light he designed would flood this cavern with the warmth of the sun.
But he also wondered and worried as he watched his designs take physical shape. How would the city work? It would be up to the people to govern themselves. Could they? No matter how well he planned, he couldn’t help with that.
He was lost in his thoughts when a voice screamed his name. It was Kim, standing on the other side of the pit. Over the banging, the hum and the crack and the sizzle of the welding sparks, he couldn’t hear. Adrian edged closer to make out what Kim was screaming.
“Adrian, the baby’s coming!”
“What?”
“The baby’s coming!”
Adrian leaned in more. “What?”
“Hey, boss, look out!”
“Oh, shit!”
“Damn, is he okay?”
“Somebody get a doctor!”
“Don’t move him!”
“Fuck, that’s a lot of blood!”
“Where’s the damn doctor?!”
“Fuck!”
“Adrian … Adrian … can you hear me?” The doctor waved his fingers before his eyes, then took some notes. “Reduce his dosage by 25 milligrams. Maybe tomorrow he’ll be more responsive.”
“Adrian … Adrian?” the doctor said.
Adrian moved his eyes toward him.
“Blink if you understand me.”
He blinked.
“Do you know where you are? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
He blinked twice.
“You’re in the clinic. We are taking good care of you. Don’t worry, just rest.”
The doctor tapped him on the arm and smiled grimly. Adrian felt feverish, as if he were smoldering behind his face. Heavy, drowsy. His head turned, his consciousness followed moments later. Cool lids closed over hot eyes. Slowly he drifted back to sleep.
The doctor peeled back the bandage on Adrian’s head, exposing a stitched deep cut turning brown at the edges. Adrian submitted to his hand, staying still as the doctor placed a new bandage carefully over his healing hurt.
“And how is that back of yours?”
“Fine,” Adrian lied.
“Let me check.”
Adrian turned, lifted his shirt, and leaned against a chair. Large lines of unhealed flesh marked his back. The wounds appeared as if something were ripped off.
“Do you feel any pain?”
“Not really,” Adrian said.
“Uh, huh. You know, there is really no use in lying to your doctor. It was a serious accident you were in. That scaffolding could have killed you.”
“There are others who are in more pain than me.”
“Maybe so, but the people need you to be clear-headed.” Then the doctor remembered himself. “Or, at least as clear-headed as you can be.”
He injected a medicine deep into the flesh near Adrian’s spine. Within moments the pulsing pain of the wounds became numb.
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” the doctor replied.
Adrian pulled down his shirt.
“Doctor, I believe I’m well enough to see my wife now.”
The doctor didn’t answer, only put away his instruments and turned away.
“Maybe you should sit down.”
“Sit down for what?”
“There is something that I need to tell you.”
Cold blackness fell down like rain. Drenching clothes. Soaking them to the skin. Words, words, and more words. What was said made no sense. Sorry. We tried. There was nothing we could do. You have a son. Keep him. Raise him. She’s not in pain anymore. Not one more day. Not one more hour. No more gasps for breath. No more suffering. She’s not coming back. Was there sorrow? A whimper. A cry. A wail. Who made those sounds?
A snarl vibrated from behind the locked door. Adrian sounded like a large cat with teeth made for rending flesh. He hissed, then went quiet like a menacing dark spirit in the back of a cell.
“How long has he been like this?”
“All night.”
A growl, low and intense.
“This is not working.” The doctor wrote out a new script. “Stop the medication and give him this.”
The window was a wash of nightfall colors. Orange drowned by pink and purple and blue, and a dot of green that briefly held in the air like a solid object, then faded away. A shadow bent his head towards the failing light. A man broken both in mind and spirit. His beard fully grown and curled at the edges, ungroomed and sprinkled with spit.
“Stephen,” Adrian said, “I know you are there.”
The little man stepped into the vanishing glow of the evening sun. No one else would come to witness this embodiment of grief. Only Stephen. He pushed back his glasses and rubbed his hair.
“You’ve been here for hours … almost every day.”
“I didn’t think you should be alone,” Stephen said and drifted back towards the exit. “Don’t worry. I’m leaving now.”
“Stephen?”
“Yes?”
“Stay for a moment.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“Have you seen my son?”
“Yes. Antoine. He is well. Sheila is taking care of him.”
“Antoine? Good. That’s good.”
Silence.
“Have you ever thought about what will be left behind when we’re gone?” Adrian asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What will be left of humanity? Ever wonder?”
“Sometimes,” Stephen said.
“We are stripping our monuments clean so we can make our new underground cities. All our databases, all of the information about who and what we are, will corrode in a matter of years without human intervention. Our books will disintegrate. … There should be something left of us, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” Stephen said.
Adrian placed a memory card on the window sill.
“This is for you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s my plans for your atmospheric encoding project. Multiple layers of code in the atmosphere can be networked like a spider’s web over the surface of the Earth. It should still run your warning program, but it should also be a giant database where we upload our books, history, all our knowledge. … It will be a memorial to mankind.”
Stephen stepped forward and carefully picked up the card.
“Okay,” Stephen said. “I can get started on this.”
“And I want you to do something for me.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to make sure that she is remembered. … I want you to make it so that the sky will have her memory living up there. … I want you to make her beautiful like she was. …”
“I’ll try.”
The door creaked open, slicing a sliver of white into the shadow.
“Stephen?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
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14.
The sky was a cloudless blue, blue, blue as far as the eyes could see. No sun, just blue. The fresh scent of ozone lingered in the clean air. The trees tempered the wind. The grass was soaked with dew. And the weather was warm, like it always was.
A bearded man sat on the park bench, wearing ragged shoes. Black dirt caked his face and clothes. His yellowing eyes gazed upon the children at play, running in a zigzag game of their own making, falling down to stain their clothes with green. Their laughter echoed high up into the firmament then back down. He smiled to himself and whispered words to someone who wasn’t there. No one responded but he heard an answer.
Yes, this is good. This is very good.
He considered all the people with shadows under their eyes as he slowly rose. The creak of his legs made him feel old before his time. He clumsily hobbled across the soft lawn. The soles of his shoes flip-flopped — the rubber bands he used to keep them attached were lost or broken long ago. The soft grass tickled his feet. He laughed to himself with the sensation. Mothers pulled their children close as he passed, and some covered their kids’ eyes. The bearded man was a harmless fixture in the park. Some even remembered who he was. Others didn’t care and only wished he would go away.
He shuffled out of the park and into city streets thick with people. People, people, everywhere. All with the same sickened look and shadows under their eyes. They gave him a wide berth. It was the smell. He mumbled to a man who tried to give him money, “I made the sky, you know.” The man nodded and hurried away.
Down the boulevard, he saw corner after street corner after street corner, on and on ad infinitum. He scratched his ass and smelled his fingers and laughed. It was all such a beautiful illusion.
He knew where he was going. Better than anyone, he knew the way. Past the stores and the vendors’ tables that were lined up along the edges of the sidewalk with handmade crafts, T-shirts, scarves, and leather holders for the pocket gadgets. Past the shops and cafés. Past the people in their beautiful neat clothes and jewelry made of copper and gold. Their sounds were a blending stream of conversations and sighs. He stopped to stare at his reflection in the window of a clothing store, where the plastic people looked at the mannequins in their styled outfits. He didn’t recognize himself, but it was him, only a him he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.
The City Hall that he had designed himself was open to the public. He walked through the front door unhindered and shuffled over the tiled mosaic floors, taking a moment to stare up at the oculus, which drew in a large stream of light from above — the ceiling decorated so delicately with indented squares carved out to lessen the weight of the dome. He slipped into a back room and then through an open door to the outside into an alley, checking behind him to see if anyone followed. Of course, no one did. He stepped over the boxes and the bones from devoured fried chicken and through the potent stench of urine to touch a brick wall. He found the brick marked with a “T” in black magic marker and pushed at the third brick down. A door opened, and he walked through.
This was the place behind the walls, behind the sky, controlling the day and the night and the wind and — soon — the rain. The hidden place maintained by The Twelve, that everyone knew about but refused to remember. The secret rooms that Adrian had designed. He walked past the guards and the staff and all those who owed their very existence to him. He walked through the hall past the one-way observation window where the city was laid out to be seen. Through another hall, to the stairway made of cinderblock walls painted off-white. To the rooms above set aside only for him, where there was a warm bed and clean sheets and fresh towels. A home Adrian rarely came to because he’d rather sleep on his city streets.
He could feel Hector enter. The man who was his friend, but from a time long ago and a place of trying-to-forget.
“Honey … look at you …” Hector said, “you can’t go on like this.”
“Please, leave me alone.”
“I’m your friend. I can’t leave you like this … I know it hurts, but it’s been years. …”
“Leave me alone!” Adrian screamed. The words spewed forth like hot liquid.
“I will not leave you alone!”
“It’s been too long. She would not want this for you. And what about your son?”
“That’s why I’m here today. Today of all days. Today is a very important day.”
“I know what day it is,” Hector said.
“I’m back for my son. For my son. Yes, my son. My son and I are going to Elysium. We are going. Yes, we are going. My son and I are going. Elysium. Elysium.”
&nbs
p; “You shouldn’t let Antoine see you this way. He still looks up to you … At least, the memory of you.”
Adrian rubbed at his beard. Something came off on his hand, and he smelled it and turned his head.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right.”
“The bathroom is that way,” Hector pointed. “And spend plenty of time in there. Scrub it all, honey, please. Scrub everywhere.”
The shower stall was a clear glass-enclosed closet. Steam was his only curtain. Water spread over him like a cleansing rain. The warmth of it stimulated his limbs and soaked his skin. Shampoo with the scent of pear splashed into his eyes and stung. He scrubbed and scrubbed. Dry flaky skin turned into a darkened flow where it streamed towards the drain and gathered with the foamy remains of soap. Adrian was angry with Hector for invading his space, and he loved him for it. His presence outside the bathroom door made Adrian feel responsible somehow. Not better, just more responsible. He had to shave; someone was here. He had to eat; someone was watching. He had to clean up; someone could smell.
Adrian turned off the water and stood enshrouded in a steam so thick he could hardly breathe. Nothing held him, only the moist air. He was lost in time, surrounded by a warm humidity, a fog, a cloud, while thoughts of her buried and decomposing in the soil whirled in his mind. He hugged himself and rocked as if in prayer. Then leaned against the wet tile, moaning quietly.
“Hey, you all right in there?” Hector shouted from the other side of the door.
“I’m fine,” Adrian said too quickly, with a flash of fear that Hector might come inside.
“You’re so quiet … Okay, take your time. When you come out, I have a surprise for you.”
Adrian lifted the toilet seat and let the warm pee stream out of him. He stared, mesmerized by his yellow creation. He flushed. His moist hand wiped the fogged mirror of the medicine cabinet. Facing back was him, and not him. He was somebody else. Someone he didn’t recognize. Someone he didn’t want to recognize.
“Papi?” The door opened and Hector’s head came into view. “Oh, honey …” he said as he let himself in.
Before him was a ghostly, haunted-looking man. There were shadows under his eyes and Adrian’s beard had gown long enough that it was curling at the ends. He looked like Zeus or maybe a Caesar.
Elysium Page 13