Mayfly Series, Book 1
Page 35
“I’m old enough to be one,” Jemma says. “That ain’t what I meant.”
“I know, I know. It’s been so long since I’ve been around the Children that I’m not used to the way the words have changed. Fifty more years and we won’t be speaking the same language.”
Fifty years? She can’t comprehend it. But she asks, “You used to come around us?”
“We used to. We tried to help them. But most of the kids we talked to didn’t want answers, they didn’t want help. They wanted someone to blame,” James says. “They started to attack us when we came to them, so most of us just gave up. The last thing we did was leave the books all over the Southland.”
“I knew it,” Pico says.
“We figured the kids who could handle the answers could piece together enough clues to find their way to us. Like you. But no one came. That was fifty years ago.”
“You keep saying years that don’t exist,” Jemma says. “No one’s that old.”
“How old do you think is old, Jemma?”
“Twenty, twenty-five?”
“I’m a hundred and sixty-two years old,” he says.
She blinks. “But the End—”
“I was old before the End, and I’m still here.”
“When did the End happen, then?”
“A hundred and four years ago,” he says gently. “One person could live that long before the End, if they got lucky. But you—you’ve probably had nine or ten generations during that time.”
“That’s why we lost everything,” Pico says.
Jemma looks at Pico, and Grease, and Lady, all the hopeful faces who’ve traveled so far for just this moment, just these answers, and thinks: Maybe it was worth it. “Can you tell us?” she says. “Can you show us how?”
“How…”
“… to live. The only thing that matters.”
“We can tell you about the End.”
“How you know so much?” Pico says.
“Well,” James says, “we caused it.”
Jemma searches that ageless old face, for regret and sorrow and everything else that must be there. And it is. She should have so much anger, but this is bigger than anger.
“But what is the End?” she says. “What causes it? Where does it come from?”
“You’re breathing it,” he says.
She’s stunned. “Then how am I not dead?”
“The things that do it, they’re always there. We call it the Wind. It’s floating in the air, doing nothing—until you grow up and your brain does, too. Your brain constantly changes until your twenties, but sometime around sixteen or seventeen, the Wind starts to recognize you as an adult. It’s like it’s watching for the brain to assume the right shape. Then what used to sit there quietly suddenly attacks you.”
“It’s just waiting for us to get old?”
“Not just old,” James says. “Better at seeing the world, at accepting it. That’s why some of the smarter, the wiser Children die younger.” The Touched. Like Apple. Like Pico and Grease and Tommy … and maybe her. “That’s the real irony. The second you become like an adult, you die.”
“It’s machines, just like we thought,” Grease says. “Machines you can’t see or touch.”
“Nanobots,” James says. “Machines smaller than the smallest speck of sand. They’re simple and weak by themselves, but if you have billions of them floating around you, they can do almost anything.”
“Why would you make something like that?” Jemma says.
“The first nanotech was used in clinical trials for cancer. It got adept at sniffing out the cancer, removing it.”
The children stare at him, blank.
“It could cure cancer,” James says.“It could cure the worst disease of our time. More than that, though—we discovered nanotech could communicate to the brain and help the body repair itself, over and over again. The Wind was supposed to fix grown-ups, to make them live forever. Only grown-ups, because kids were still changing. But the nanotech didn’t fix people. It shut them down.”
“Not you, though.”
“No, not us. We had other … procedures done, in the first part of the Long Life Project. Before the End came, before the Wind. It can’t touch us, partly because it no longer recognizes us as exactly human.”
“We don’t understand that either,” Pico says to Jemma, “and we been here for days.”
“You will,” James says. “But it would have been hard even for the, as you say, Parents to have understood in my time.”
“If you know this, if you started it,” Lady says, “why can’t you fix it?”
“We’ve tried, and we’ve failed, many, many times. There’s not enough left of the old world. Not enough technology, not enough people. Before I met you, I would have said it’s no longer possible. Now I would say—I don’t know what’s possible anymore. Whether we fix it or not is entirely up to you.”
“What?”
“The haze, Jemma,” James says. “You can use it to see, can’t you? You can use it to talk to others.”
She nods.
“The haze and the Wind are the same thing,” he says.
Like Apple said. He never claimed to be smart, to be especially kind. He just saw everything. She misses him so much.
“The Wind is simply endless networked nodes that communicate to each other, powered by a supercomputer,” James says, and shakes his head at their blank faces again. He starts over. “Imagine all of these things floating through the air, floating inside you. Their only job is to take fuel from the sun, to create more nanobots—and to talk. They listen to the body, they watch the world for signs of trouble, and they report it.”
Jemma’s head can barely keep up with James, but she is starting to understand him because she knows the haze. She can visualize these nanobots hovering in the air, wanting to show her things. Wanting to be heard.
“This all matters, Jemma,” James says. “We’ve always known it was theoretically possible. If the nanotech can talk to other simple circuits, then it could talk to computers, it could talk to other machines, it could talk to you.”
He leans toward her. “Theoretically. But it’s always been theory until now. The Wind connected you to us, through a computer that stopped working years ago. It wants something from you. It’s not only causing the End, it’s giving you visions. It’s speaking to you. And in the hundred and four years since the End happened, this is the first time I’ve known it to speak.”
The old man won’t say more, and offers to walk them to the kitchens. The boys leap at that, at a whole world of food that disappeared with the Parents. Jemma starts to follow but is caught again by the sight of the ocean. Lady stands at her side.
“We’ll go there soon. To the ocean,” Lady says softly, and squeezes her shoulder.
“I don’t think I can handle any more new stuff this week,” Jemma says, and hugs Lady tight. They don’t lose sight of the ocean.
So much lost. Apple, Zee, the Holy Wood. Their innocence. But the four of them, they’re still here. “Let’s go in,” Lady says, then beams like a Kinder. “You gotta try the ice cream.”
EPILOGUE
The captain cradles his arm, the one with the missing hand, as if he’s lost a baby. Lose one hand in battle and he can’t stop showing it to the whole town.
Tommy’s stopped paying attention to him. He hates the way his mouth moves. “It was a rescue mission. A big one. So I took it serious.”
“So … serious,” Tommy says. “So serious you brought a machine gun? You brought the Last Lifers? To rescue one person?”
“Those were our secret weapons,” the captain says, a stubborn stupid look on his face—Stubbid, Tommy says to himself. Captain Stubbid.
“Yes. Secret.” Tommy smiles kindly. “Any idea why we didn’t paint a sign on the Kingdom that said, ‘Our gun is bigger than yours’?” Besides the fact that none of you can read.
“Ahh.” And to Stubbid’s credit, the seriousness of what he’s done hits h
im now. What little color that was in his face is now gone.
“Are your troops ready?”
Stubbid nods. “Rested from their march. Ready to go when we get the word.”
Tommy motions with his hand for Stubbid to stand. “Thanks for rescuing me, Captain,” he says. “But be careful out there, okay? You lose another hand, and the Little Man may not have a use for you.”
The captain gets paler still, gets out the door before Tommy can say another word. The Little Man causes fear, even here in Newport.
He didn’t mean to get captured. He couldn’t see that. But he was headed south from the Flat Lands of Ell Aye after recruiting Last Lifers and saw Jemma, saw the haze thick around her, and knew he had to get closer. So he left his armed guards and searched for her. They stayed as close as they could, the Chosen warriors, but none of them counted on the flood. He couldn’t see that, either. Turns out the haze wasn’t good at seeing a lot of things that were kind of important.
But it had worked, hadn’t it? Found out about the Holy Wood, a mystery in the hills of Ell Aye. And got inside the Kingdom when none of the Chosen warriors had ever gotten out alive.
He could have left sooner—the Kingdom’s cages hadn’t been meant for someone who knew anything about machines. A thick pin in his sleeve let him wander around the Kingdom at night, marking their defenses and their machines. The mocycles that Grease had made? He has to have one. What could the Chosen army do with those?
Then, when he was ready, he signaled the army, and they attacked in the places he’d known were weak. Only Jemma had actually listened to what he’d told her and was ready. He almost wishes he hadn’t talked so much to her, but he could never resist winding people up.
Tommy slips into the streets of the Newport harbor, smelling the familiar smells of fish guts, trash, and smoke. What a dump. All along the harbor, the Newports built tin shacks slopped on top of one another so no one has to walk to the main street of Balboa. Two of them washed away to sea in a storm last month.
There are no fortifications like in the Kingdom, but also no worries of attack. The Kingdom will never leave its home, like a turtle in its shell. Until someone bigger scoops the whole thing up and throws it in the pot.
Tommy hates it here in Newport, can’t wait to get back to the Hill, where the breeze never seems to stop blowing and he can see what feels like the whole world from the tower.
This, though, stopping in front of a wharf—this is why he’s here. Boat after boat, sails of white, decks of white, ready to run with blood. From here they can raid the coast, look for new homes and new kinds of Lowers to take captive. Tommy read a story once, of a blond race of warriors called the Vikings, who raped and pillaged their way through a mystical land. If ever there were Old Ones to belong to, it was them.
We will be Vikings.
Everywhere along the streets are the soldiers who will fill the boats, lounging on the docks, playing dice. Last Lifers roam the streets, still capturing dirty looks from people not used to seeing brown skin wandering without the Lowers’ brand. That’s fine. They have their purposes.
Li steps in line behind him. This one has been useful. Tommy hates to admit it, but he wouldn’t be that far without the giant Last Lifer. The Last Lifers were too fragmented, unfocused, for his promises to work on more than a dozen. Jemma’s boyfriend and Pico killed those.
Tommy almost gave in then, already ready to tell the Cluster that he had changed his mind and have the Last Lifers slaughtered, when Li marched up the street with a hundred Last Lifers. “Heard you got guns,” Li said. Tommy had looked around at the Last Lifers and realized: Li is the only thing they fear besides the End. Another look at Li’s eyes of blackened souls, and Tommy knows why.
In the Ferry Square, three Kingdom warriors hang from a scaffold spread-eagled. The bodies are rotting now—the ceremonies have already claimed the best parts for eating. Tommy ate a tongue.
They still need more guns. He is going to have to get them from the Ice Cream Men, who won’t want to trade them. But he’ll get them anyway. The weapons will change the face of the upcoming war.
The soldiers grow thicker together, and Tommy sees the first of his giants. The giant nods, scowls.
No one wanted to trust him, to trust an eight-year-old, when he told them he could stop the End. When he was desperate to be accepted here, to show he deserved to survive, the haze came to him. It showed him how to cut a nerve in the brain that keeps the Giants from maturing, so that the End skips them over. Now the first of the Giants is nineteen, and growing still. Tommy promised the Last Lifers that they could become Giants, that this isn’t the last of life, after all.
Guns? Last Lifers? These Giants are the real secret weapons.
There’s a twinge of jealousy, though. His way might stop the End, but it’s not one he would take. The people the Giants used to be are gone. They fall backward into childhood. Jemma and Pico and Grease, though, they’re looking for the real end of the End. They know more about it than he does. No matter how much he questioned them, how much he tricked them, they never gave that up.
Other people have been able to use the haze before Jemma. One of his gifts is to see it on them like a blanket, and Jemma is swaddled in it. He’s always had those people killed so he doesn’t have to share the haze.
The three have disappeared from him in the haze, mostly, after the escape. Once he’s met others, he can pull them up at will, watch them as easily as checking his own reflection. Jemma stays dark.
In a wide spot on the waterfront, the Chosen line up, in rank: Palo, Newport, Lowers, Last Lifers. The only place, the only time in history where they’ve all come together. And he brought them there. They’ll roll forward from this town, roll through the Terminal as if it weren’t even there. They’ll roll up the Ell Aye river and into Malibu. Everything they see will be theirs, and once he discovers the source of the End, it will be theirs forever.
The warriors look at him expectantly as he climbs onto a pile of crates above them. They smell of fish and blood. One of his lieutenants steps to his side.
“They’re ready for you, Little Man,” the lieutenant says.
He doesn’t speak right away. They can wait for the Little Man. He half closes his eyes, and casts once again for Jemma. This time he sees her, just for a moment. She’s laughing. Next to her are Lady and Grease and Pico—and a man. Even through the haze, he can see that the man is older than anything else on this earth. A man who doesn’t belong in this world.
“Oh, this won’t do,” Little Man whispers, and steps to the waiting crowd.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Sweat has made a living from words his entire career, starting out as an award–winning tech journalist for InformationWeek magazine and moving into marketing. He led the content marketing team for Yahoo and pioneered its use of social media. He directed PR for two of the top advertising agencies in the country, Deutsch LA and 72andSunny. He now runs his own Los Angeles–based PR and marketing agency, Mister Sweat. Jeff is the author of Mayfly. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
The People of Ell Aye
Chapter One: The Holy Wood
Chapter Two: The Stack
Chapter Three: The Bowl
Chapter Four: The Olders
Chapter Five: The Circle
Chapter Six: The Long Wall
Chapter Seven: The Mayflies
Chapter Eight: The Exile
Chapter Nine: The Lands Beyond
Chapter Ten: The Holy Motel
Chapter Eleven: The Tarpits
Chapter Twelve: The Last Lifers
Chapter Thirteen: The Harsh
Chapter Fourteen: The Window
Chapter Fifteen: The Waking
Chapter Sixteen: The Mamas
Chapter Seventeen: The Skyplane
Chapter Eighteen: The Silver Flower
Chapter Nineteen: The Library
Chapter Twenty: The Book and the Bear
Chapter Twenty-One: The Wild
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Raft
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Lectrics
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Ice Cream Man
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Map
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Betterment
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Flames and the Flood
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Cannibal
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Prisoner
Chapter Thirty: The Face in the Box
Chapter Thirty-One: The Riders
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Boy and the Mocycle
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Beginning
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Fake Place
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Kingdom
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Girls in the Ring
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Machines
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Golf Cart of the Apokalips
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Night Mountain
Chapter Forty: The Rollertrain
Chapter Forty-One: The Biters at the Wall
Chapter Forty-Two: The Thunder Gun
Chapter Forty-Three: The Dead Lands
Chapter Forty-Four: The Old Guys
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Sweat
A Feiwel and Friends Book
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