Veracity

by Mark Lavorato

  It wasn't anything obvious, but it was there, and I'm sure the Elders had quickly noticed it. It wasn't in his words or his walk, or in the way he behaved with people, but rather how he acted when he thought no one was watching, the look on his face when you came around the corner and met him on the trail, watching the ground in front of him with a desolate stare. He seemed dampened by something. And of course, I knew exactly what that 'something' was: guilt. Mikkel had simply come to the grim understanding that he was partially responsible for someone else's death.

  The Elders probably recalled how he'd seemed this way after Coming of Age as well, and might have seen it as a potential pattern - and obviously not a favourable one. Because if this was how Mikkel acted in the face of adversity (a thing that was bound to come up on a life-long journey, time and time again) it meant that, were he the leader, there might be periods of time when his lagging melancholy might leave the expedition directionless. A possibility that didn't inspire a lot of confidence, I'm sure. So, in the end, they probably decided to wait and see how long it would take for him to revert back to his normal self, as if to time it, as if to weigh out how long the crew might have to fend for themselves without clear guidance. And once they recognized that he wasn't really coming around, the decision was probably all but made.

  Suddenly, I became the focus of all their energy. The intensity of my education increased, the topics shifted and became more detailed, and the amount of time that I spent studying and talking with the Elders took up almost all of my waking hours. It was exciting to know that I'd been bumped up to their first choice, and there were times during those promising weeks, as I shuffled from one building to the next, that I would find myself looking out at the sea through the trees, the shining surface moving along with me between the branches, and just let my mind wander as to what we were going to find out there - mountains, plains, forests, relics, ruins, ice - and invariably, I'd have a smug little smile on my face by the time I'd opened the door to the next building. I was getting closer every day, was almost within reach, and I could feel it. Until finally, after spending so much time imagining what the opportunity would look like in the palm of my hand, one day, I opened my fingers to find that it was actually there.

  So, yes, when they announced that I'd been chosen as the leader of the expedition it wasn't really a shock, but one of the details that came along with it, I must say, was. Apparently, not only would Mikkel be joining the expedition, he was also going to be second in command! And the reason they cited for this was as logical as could be (and I felt stupid for not having seen it myself): if I were the only one who actually knew what the purpose of the journey was, and I were to get killed, become injured, or even fall seriously ill, then that purpose would become void. So, as was now plain to see, they had always planned on having at least two of us on the ship that knew the truth, hence providing the option of handing over the hidden responsibilities, were that need to arise. The Elders were sly - I'll give them that. Because they knew perfectly well if we were under the impression that only one of us would be going, we'd compete more fiercely, nudge our elbows in front of the other person more ruthlessly, and provide them with the perfect arena to find out who was most bought in, who had the most conviction. And thinking of it that way, I guess it wasn't really Mikkel or I who'd won this little skirmish, it was them. Again.

  And I have to admit that, of all the things I could have felt when I heard that Mikkel would be coming, mostly, I was disappointed. Because I had set out to beat him, to be better than him, to believe in things more deeply and honestly than he had. I mean - if both of us had always been guaranteed a place on the ship, it certainly wasn't worth all the effort I'd put in. Come to think of it, I could see that I'd put in too much - really, I would've been happier as second in command, to be able to have a say without having all the responsibility, to be able to go along without having to break up any of the potential squabbles of the crew. Yet I also knew that what was done was done. It wasn't as if I could ask Mikkel to trade places with me, even if I'd thought of doing it behind the Elders' backs once we left the island; simply because, ideologically, I didn't really think he could be trusted as captain.

  Which was the strangest part of it all: Mikkel, that rogue paper cutter that we were being so vigilantly protected against, that one person whose ethics and intentions were the most questionable of the entire island, was also the one who was going to have a level of authority in the very thing he could do the most damage with. It was a bit worrying, to say the least. And Mikkel must have sensed this hesitation on my part, because he made a point to pull me aside one day when no one else was around, to try and alleviate that very fear.

  "Joshua," he began, putting his hands in his pockets, "I hope you realize that things that might have been said in the past don't really stand anymore. You know that, right?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, knowing exactly what he meant.

  "I mean - you remember when we talked, and I was a bit confused? Well, I just want you to understand that that's all under the bridge now. I mean - I know why those ideas struck me back then, but I also know that they were wrong."

  "Oh. Yeah. Well - don't worry about it." I said, trying to be nonchalant. But really, I was interested to hear more - something a bit more convincing maybe. "Though, uh - I'm interested to know - why did those ideas strike you... back then?"

  He seemed hesitant once I asked this, but cordial nonetheless. "Well... I think that, mostly, it was because what we're doing is not only going against our nature or our instincts, but also against the very purpose of life. I think all of my confusion stemmed from that. But - I mean - that's over now. Everything's straight in my head; and I can't wait to be on the expedition. It's great that we actually both get the chance to go, no?"

  I held a hand out between us, "But wait - what do you mean by 'going against the very purpose of life'?"

  He looked down at the ground, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets, "No, it's just that... Okay. The one thing that all life has in common is that it wants to reproduce, spread out, and be as successful as possible. Think of trees, insects, animals; I mean - all of nature is exploitative and devious. Everything alive is as thoughtless to the world around it as it is to its own species, because its purpose is to be greedy and corrupt, to thrive as best it can as an individual, which only helps the big picture of things. Population explosions, the hostile taking over of territory, the callous weeding out of the weak; there isn't a day that goes by that we don't see them all taking place in the forest, on the beach, in the ocean. And, it just struck me back then that maybe our 'abject nature' was really just... nature, and so didn't necessitate being destroyed."

  "Hmm." I cleared my throat, "That's... an interesting idea, I guess."

  "Not really. It was an interesting idea. But not anymore."

  "Right."

  He took a hand out of his pocket and scratched the back of his head, then twisted to look behind him for a second. "Well... we should really be getting the boat ready for sailing class like we're supposed to. I just wanted to let you know that things were straight in my head, and that you've got nothing to worry about in terms of my 'philosophies', so to speak."

  "Oh. Well, thanks."

  For the next week or so, I thought a lot about this conversation that we'd had, but for some reason, couldn't really get a handle on it, or, more specifically, on a way to prove or disprove it. Until finally, probably because I was becoming frustrated, I decided to bring it up with Dana and see what he had to say (though obviously made it sound like it was a question of my own). "Do you think that there's a purpose or meaning to the life that's in the world?" I posed, rather out of the blue.

  He was sitting across from me, flipping through a book, and getting ready to quiz me on plant varieties that we would find in the lands we were travelling through, which had active chemical agents that I would need to use. When I'd asked the question, he looked up at me as if he'd been waiting for this theme to co
me up for a while, or had at least been prepared for it. "No, I don't," he muttered, flatly. "But you should know that that's a very human question to ask, and hence dangerous."

  "Why? I mean - why is it so 'human' and so 'dangerous'?"

  "Well, it's human because we as a species are forever straining to decipher some hidden message buried within, always trying to attribute reasons and significance to the things that happen, and to what we see around us. We love to give things this 'meaning' you're talking about. But the truth is, there isn't one that we can know of - not to life, not to anything.

  "In fact, when we find ourselves asking what something 'means', we should just replace it with the question we are really asking, which is: what do we want it to mean? See - the very fact that you asked that question, tells me that you're already inclined toward an answer, already bending in one direction or another. Because, let's face it: we see what we look for, hear what we listen for, and sense what we want to feel, and the asking of something's meaning is only the sound of our struggling minds trying to create an appealing answer."

  "So... that's it? Everything around us is empty? And the question is dangerous because it's always fruitless?"

  "No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it's dangerous because it's impossible for us to know if the answer that we create fits reality, but that regardless, we fit it anyway - with whatever substance we want or need to contain. We bend this supposed 'will' of the world around us to suit our own means, and, most often, to support ideas that, otherwise, we would never be able to find support for. We shove a meaning into something when we want it to rationalize our dirty work, or at the very least, to make it appear cleaner. And even if we don't do it for that reason, even if we do it while innocently trying to subjugate the universe, to make it all seem orderly and planned, it is still just as absurd. Because the real truth of the matter is that life is far too complex to be contained by the petty human notion of meaning. Life - that unending, undying, throbbing tangle of complexity - will never be summed up or affected by the silly little labels we pin onto it, will never take notice of the tiny selfish proposals we've had the audacity to stick onto its innermost atoms. It's greater than anything we could possibly ever pretend to be. Period."

  I nodded slowly. That's what I'd thought. Mikkel wasn't really on top of things; he just had the illusion that he was. And this was the problem with weighing anything that he said too heavily. Because Mikkel was clever enough to take things apart in a cognitive way, but not clever enough to realize that his fear was shaping how he splayed the dissection across the table for examination. Though, this didn't mean that he was going to be a problem on the expedition, didn't mean that he was going to inhibit it in any way. It just meant that he sometimes had a tendency to mislead himself, and that, knowing this, I would have to be careful not to recklessly follow him. And, really, being the leader put me in the perfect position to do exactly that. Yes, I rationalized, it was beginning to seem like the roles we'd been given would fit together perfectly. (Somehow, no matter how questionable things were shaping up to be around me, I was becoming increasingly confident that none of it would be a problem, that this expedition of ours was going to run smoothly from the very second we embarked.)

  "Now," Dana said, looking down at his book and snapping me from my thoughts, "getting back to what we were doing. Can you describe to me the vegetative characteristics of Atropa belladonna, please?"

  I interlocked my fingers on the table in front of me, "Yes. It has dull green leaves, violet or greenish flowers in the axils of the forking branches, shiny black berries, and a large tapering root."

  "Excellent. And can you give me a detailed description of where you would find it growing?"

  And I could, because after I'd been chosen, this was what a lot of my training was centred on, locating and keying the correct plants to make sterilization mixtures. The reason we had to spend so much time on it was because I would be using different vegetation from what was found on the island, and so had to know how to identify plants that would be foreign to me, and how to isolate their active ingredients. For months I worked in a lab inside the shelter with vegetation close to what we would supposedly find on this mainland that we would be exploring; boiling leaves and roots down to create tinctures, and sometimes adding them to others, to either intensify, or further separate a toxin inside of them. And generally speaking, that was what we were always trying to do: isolate a toxin; and usually a fairly potent one at that (as was made clear by all the precautions we had to take in the lab). And seeing how careful our safety measures had to be, led me to ask whether or not there would be any side effects to these sterilization mixtures; at which point I was met with a roomful of nodding heads. Of course there would be, they'd responded, as if it were a stupid question. They were quick to add that it was essential to understand the implications to that little detail as well. Which was that we'd have to flee from anyone I ever administered the mixtures to, the moment I found a way to slip it into a food source that was sure to be eaten by everyone in their group at the same time; because, rest assured, every one of them would be able to tell that they'd been given something, and would probably lash out because of it. Which also meant that we'd have to avoid them at all cost afterwards; though, they pointed out, that would be easy enough to do, provided we just continue on in the grid-like search pattern that had been routed for us on the maps.

  To be honest, exactly how the sterilization mixtures worked on the different sexual systems of men and women didn't really make a lot of sense to me. The Elders had pulled out a few of the most advanced chemistry textbooks, along with a few physiological diagrams to try and explain it to me once, but, and maybe because they knew how much I hated chemical theory, they decided to spare me the finer points. All I really had to know was that, apparently, the concoctions I was being trained to make had a specific kind of toxicity that would render sperm inactive, and cause the cell walls of women's eggs to weaken and collapse, leaving anyone who ingested it to be permanently sterile. They never did mention what the side effects would have been, but I can imagine they were significant, only because, if they weren't, we probably would have used a similar kind of chemical sterilization on the island, instead of having operations, which must have always had a risk of infection to them.

  But all of this training on how to make the mixtures didn't mean that the Elders expected me to start concocting them the moment we reached the mainland. No, instead, they'd already made a substantial amount of them for me to take along. In fact, considering how low the probability of finding anyone alive was, there was probably enough to last decades, if not our lifetime. These pre-made mixtures were kept in curious looking vials that would be stored in sturdy cases inside the captain's quarters, along with the lab equipment to make new ones when the time came. The cases themselves seemed to be designed exactly for this, as everything fit inside of them like a puzzle, carefully cut foam securing the different apparatuses, and tiny alcoves clutching the many vials of murky orange and green liquid. No space was wasted, and not one piece of glass was in danger of breaking.

  But all of this focus on the mixtures in my training would have been useless if I couldn't get close enough to people to plant it in their food. So, for quite some time, we also focused on the difficulties we would come up against in infiltrating a community that was probably unnerved. And then, to try and put the theories that came out of the brainstorming into actual practice, they had me running after a group of monkeys in the forest for a few days, experimenting with different behaviours to try and become accepted, and analyzing what seemed to work and what didn't. This all emphasized how unobtrusive we would have to be in order to enter a group of people, and that the prospect of being truly accepted by them wasn't all that realistic, or, in fact, even important. Rather, if we just concentrated on gaining sufficient trust as to have them lower their guard a bit, and take their eyes off us long enough for me to get near their food, that would suffice.

 
But to do this, I would obviously have to be able to converse with them, and so we also spent a fair bit of time doing adaptive communication exercises. Because it was impossible to predict what language people might speak, or how dialects of languages that were spoken might have evolved, they focused on teaching me how to communicate without language, and how to direct people to unknowingly teach you theirs. Most of this focused on moving from the naming of concrete nouns, to the isolation of useful structures. And just as it was with sailing and gardening, quite a few of the women were involved in these lessons, some of them surprising me by suddenly speaking in a completely different tongue, giving me a perfect chance to practice what I'd learned.

  Needless to say, I dove into all of these new topics with the greatest of energy - maybe even a bit exaggeratedly. I think there was a part of me that wanted to prove to the Elders that they'd chosen the right person for the job; and I think that, mostly, I succeeded. Every day saw their confidence in my abilities growing, and I know this because, for the first time in my life, they weren't afraid of letting me know when my progress impressed them. And it often did. I would do wonderfully, they sometimes assured, roughing up the back of my hair as they passed, or after closing their book at the end of a long lesson and then grinning at me with nothing short of pride in their expression. And, to tell the truth, I absorbed their encouragements, soaked them up until I believed their every word. I can almost picture myself now, caught in some private moment after one of my long days of training, staring at the ocean, smirking, hands on my hips, nodding with confidence. Yes. I would do wonderfully.

  * * *

  16

  It was completely different from how I'd imagined it. Nobody, either on the ship or lining the shore, was saying a word. No hollers of farewell, no cupping of mouths to shout out last-second goodbyes. Nothing. Instead, we just looked at each other, as if dazed, watching the span of water between us grow, and the details of facial expressions, and then of figures, and finally of land features, as they blurred with the distance. Every once in awhile someone would wave, an arm lifting from the throng of bodies like the flash of a tail in a group of animals, and this would, in turn, evoke a quick gesture of reply from the opposite line-up, but the arms would soon sink back out of sight again. While we worked to man the sails, the crew only paid attention to whatever they were doing for the absolute minimum amount of time required, their heads twisting back toward the island the moment it was safe to; all of them so intent on watching this scene of people stupidly watching each other. I think it's safe to say that this 'big day' that we'd all been anticipating was, to say the least, a little anticlimactic, especially considering the hectic nature of the preparations; and for myself, considering the build up of all the bizarre moments that led up to that morning.