Children of Gravity

by E. R. Jess

  A pang of fear stretched down the doctor's bones, but he shook it off. “Mar would have known immediately. He can delve many people at once, and from quite a distance.”

  An air processor implanted in the nape of Meril's neck hissed. “UPC is a grand lie. It is over-sized and slow, but they will reach us out here. Revan was in control of the Redlist and it has always surprised us how many of his former colleagues ended up on it. Either he was finishing old business from his high position, or he was doing UPC's bidding. Doctor, the timing of your arrival is suspect. There is a new purge underway.”

  Dr. Epps shifted on his feet. He leaned against the glass with his hand. “It was a long time coming, we both know that. We kept you off of the radar.” The doctor turned to Meril and lowered his voice, “When Revan, myself and a few others decided to infiltrate UPC, we knew it was a vast machine. We knew it would take years to break people out of the control, if it was possible at all. Revan was impatient. He was listless and always stayed alone. I feared that he was beginning to believe in UPC, truly believe in their ethos. Then he made some mistakes and they conformed him, twice. But his true self fought through.”

  Meril asked, “And what of you, are you beginning to believe? You spent years in the comfort and luxury of the City-State. This wasteland, all this ash and cold; you must miss your bed.”

  “As a conformity scientist, I am given privileges others are not, by necessity. UPC needs clear minded humans to solve the problems of controlling the brain. And we are given a great deal of freedom,” the doctor answered, “but I will always know that UPC is barbaric and inhuman. They would kill every last man on the planet face if they thought that androids could do the work better. UPC wants more than to simply rule over a people. UPC, the Founder's Council, seek to control the fate of the stars themselves.”

  “And what do you seek?” Meril asked as she faced the doctor.

  “I want to bring that man back and finish his plans. If Mar can revive him, then we will turn Urban Population Control inside out,” Dr. Epps answered sternly.

  Revan was lowered into a four meter diameter sphere. The metal sphere's lid clasped shut. Light vanished and Revan was trying to balance himself on the uneven floor when the whole apparatus was lifted into the air and lowered into a wide pool of water. Revan could hear the water splashing around outside his round room, then all he could hear was his own breath.

  Mar stripped and stepped into the pool. He pulled an air hose along with him as he swam deep underwater. He stopped several meters underwater, floating parallel with the sphere. Through the dark water, he could see the blurry circle. He waved his hand underwater and the lights from above cut off. Darkness, lukewarm water and mute sounds of bubbling water was his world. That, and the memories of the man in the sphere. Mar began to delve.

  Revan was panic-stricken. He tried to crawl up the side of the sphere, tried to find a handle or seams or anything he could hold onto or something to help him get his bearings. A headache hit him quickly and he slid to the floor. He tried to mouth a scream, but only air came out. His mind was being dissected.

  “Revan Kore, this is the template. This is where we train our soldiers,” Mar said to Revan via his mind, “It is a peaceful place. The world is gone. You leave your troubles at the door.”

  Revan felt his brain shake inside his skull. His body convulsed. He eyes bulged. He was helpless to answer or react.

  “The people of the wastelands need one of two things. They need to be saved or they need to leave their bodies. Here, I help them decide. Here, I do what mere conforming could never do. I erase souls,” Mar said as the water shook with minute vibrations, “The good Doctor Epps wishes you to return to the world as you were in your prime. But I can't let that happen. Instead, you will become what we build here. We will see what kind of warder you will make.”

  Revan managed a shout. The sound echoed painfully through his chamber and out into the pool.

  Mar winced. The template amplified the sound and fought his control. “You remain willful,” Mar continued, in some pain, “This a good development. I thought they had reduced you to a husk. Let's see what memories linger in there.” Mar put his hands out and raised his palms in the direction of the sphere. His muscles shook in a quick, violent motion and all the water around jumped a meter. A shockwave flew into the walls of Revan's sphere.

  Revan went numb. His eyes rolled back into his head as his heartbeat slowed to nearly nothing. Mar's delving was so invasive that it could have killed Revan. Mar could have stopped all brain function in the man if he so chose. Instead, the two of them spent the next few hours re-watching, re-experiencing all of Revan's remaining memories in fast-forward.

  After a time, Mar stopped the memories. He slowed them down and watched a period in Revan's life before he was head of UCM, when he was known simply as The Elder, the unelected leader of the Free City. Mar watched Revan's rise to power, from a warlord to a ruler of the masses, all in moments. He saw The Elder mold and shape the Free City by force, and ever-present in the background was the City-State, looming over him. The Elder got too powerful for UPC's liking, and Revan's inner circle became nervous. They dumped him in the wasteland and left him for dead, hoping to claim his power for themselves. Mar slowed the memories down and watched Revan accept his fate, he jumped off of the back of a wasteland vehicle, taking care of the dirty work for his captors, he decided to choose his own fate.

  Revan was dying on the side of the road when a man found him, a Free City resident out too far in the wastes. The man did something Mar never expected to see. The man delved Revan, briefly, passively, but he delved him. Revan was soon taken back to UPC by a UA team shadowing him. Mar rewound the memory of the Delver, but it was recorded at a moment when Revan was going in and out of consciousness. Mar could find no more memories of the man.

  Mar stopped delving Revan. He released his control and the waters in the pool calmed. He swam to the surface. He shouted for someone to lift the sphere. The lights came on in the massive room and the sphere was raised by a winch. Open it, he shouted and Mar ran over to the scaffolding that Revan's sphere was nested in. The hatch opened and the men pulled Revan out, who was breathing hard and wide-eyed.

  Mar grabbed Revan and shouted, “Who was this man, this Delver? Is this the only memory you have of him? So help me I will tear your mind to shreds to find it.”

  Revan, shaking in fear, remembered what Mar had threatened. He motioned to one of Mar's gasmasked warders. “If you turn me into one of them, you will never know,” Revan said, unsure of his own voice, of his own thoughts.

  Mar dropped Revan and stormed off, shouting, “Clean him up.” Mar then said to himself, “We all get what we want eventually.”

  Chapter 7: White Picket Fence

  A pale, cloudy night greeted Kagan. There were no electronic lights or fires. A dull green dark had descended over a suburb. At the edge of a row of ash-covered homes, the landscape opened up, revealing a desert. Once-verdant grassland was replaced by a cracked ocean of jagged hills. Out on the horizon were arrays of launch towers left in disrepair; launching pads for the first of the general populace to leave earth for Gliese 370 in intertialess drive ships. The suburbia on the cusp of that exodus was erected as temporary housing for the hardy, yet well-to-do folks who ventured off on the forty year journey. Kagan looked into some of the homes briefly, finding only soot encrusted beams and walls. He set off into the desert.

  As the launch towers grew in the distance, so did a solitary figure. Kagan saw the person, slight in frame and walking an erratic path, and decided to press on, not fearing a single stranger. Not fearing much of anything. The Antikythera program would not let him get hurt.

  The figure was Omo. He was locked in a heavy sadness, struggling with failing limbs yet pressing on. He felt like he needed to get as far from civilization as he could. That he was not meant to be among people, that he was destined to be trouble for those around him.

  Kagan approached a few meters
behind him and cleared his throat. Omo whipped around and put a foot forward to rabbit. His eyes went wide and glossy as he saw the face of the man he thought he had killed in the theater. Omo trembled and lost all sensation in his extremities.

  Kagan didn't recognize him. He put out his hands in a calming motion. “Hold on there,” Kagan offered, “Looks like you're lost. This is not somewhere you want to be.”

  Omo clutched the inside of his palms. He shook visibly. His defenses began spinning up, a faint glow and waves of energy grew around his skin.

  Kagan didn't notice, he put his hands down and stood up straight. “Look, I understand. I know a thing or two about being out here. You're frightened and lost. You're hungry and feel uncontrollably ill. Like nothing will ever be right again. Well, it might not be,” Kagan stated and proceeded to walk around him, continuing to the horizon.

  Omo stood disarmed. He opened his mouth to speak as Kagan walked by, but nothing came out. It wasn't until the man he was ordered to kill was several meters away that he begin to understand. Omo bounded after him.

  Kagan heard him coming and gave the strange man a sideward glance. He slowed his pace to let him catch up. Omo walked alongside, a few meters to the left. He looked at Kagan's frame and gait. He wondered what had become of him after the shooting, how he was able to be up and around and back in good health. None of this was voiced. Omo had learned well about wrath. He eventually spoke with a raspy voice punctuated by awkward tics, “I am Omo. I am from the place where things are made.”

  Kagan raised an eyebrow. He chuckled and nodded. “Good to meet you, Omo. What kind of things did you make?”

  Omo searched for an answer before realizing there was none. “I didn't make anything. But I think they made me.”

  Kagan looked straight ahead as he asked, “Is that so?”

  “I think I was not real. Not until I left,” Omo said, unsure of his own words.

  “UPC made you?” Kagan asked.

  Omo shook his head, “I don't know. I remember that I was not real, then I was.”

  Kagan looked Omo up and down. He saw his disconcerting eyes and unnatural skin. He spat. “You're a toy that fell out of a box. They made you to be programmed and replace people like me. You're a servant or a lover. If I had to guess, they did indeed make you, and you're here to replace us on this Earth. Well, you can have it.”

  Omo's face contorted in acute sadness. He felt shame and regret.

  Kagan stopped dead. He sighed to the dust and put his hands on his hips. “I'm sorry. None of that is true.”

  Omo's eye watered. “It might be true. I'm a fake person and they forgot to make me real. But I am real now. I learned what I need to be alive,” Omo said.

  “There's nothing to it, really. You just do what feels like a good mix of what is easy and what is right. In the end, you're remembered for the best parts of you. You can fuck up plenty along the way. No one will mind.” Kagan said to the path.

  Omo looked at the side of Kagan's face with a great many questions, but quelled them internally. Omo said, “I fucked up along the way.”

  Kagan grinned. He tossed Omo a water bottle from his pack and kept moving.

  Omo missed the throw wildly and the bottle embedded itself into the dirt. He stared at it for a little while as Kagan walked on. Omo picked it up and held it to the pre-dawn sky. Its contents were cloudy and unappealing. He opened it and drank from it none the less. He then pressed on to join Kagan, who was then almost as tall as the launch towers in the distance.

  Promised Land

  It was pure fury. Pure vehemence tossed up into the air and sent whirling around. Dust storms from the southwest poured into the ruins. Dust and shards of broken concrete. Little squares of windshield glass. Dry splinters of wood. All whipping around in debris tornadoes. The white hot sun eclipsed by storm clouds made of jagged stone and glass. The dust storms forced everyone off the path. The group spent the better part of a day digging themselves shelters at the bases of ruined brick walls. The moved quickly when they could, ever seeking better shelter. More than a few of them had to be treated for puncture wounds and deep cuts.

  Eight would act as a scout, forging ahead, decked in two layers of armor plating. He would hastily prepare positions for the group to hide in, then trek back to guide them forward. There was no real shelter, no matter how hard he looked. A partial wall may have protected a handful of people before it was weathered down to a nub by the powerful winds. Sandblasted away before their eyes. They found refuge in a steel boxcar sitting out by itself in a level patch of city. Everyone squeezed in and made it home. The walls creaked. The rusty metal shook loose puffs of orange dust when shaken by the persistent gales. They needed to find somewhere safer.

  Makz weathered the storms with less grace. He ignored the splinters and rocks as best he could. He caught up with the pacifists as they stopped for the night. He saw the group nestled in the nook between the cooling towers of an industrial plant. The UA-X was at the center, with tents circling it. Makz spat and sighed. He looked around to see if anyone was lurking. Just a steady wind. And the feeling in his bones, a vibrant chill that kept his heart racing. Makz knew that the worst was far from over.

  He closed the distance from his overlook to the pacifists. He ran up to the first ruster he saw and slapped him on the back of the head. “The hell you doing?” Makz asked as he walked past the bewildered man.

  Eight came up with a furrowed brow. “Tell me you didn't just bring the world down on us,” Eight asked of Makz.

  “No, Eight, but you seem to be begging for it. I can see your little Cub Scout troop from miles away. As soon as this storm dies down, UA will be back in the air and will cluster bomb the whole state. You want these people to stay alive and pass on your bullshit philosophies to their weakling children, then you'll be listening to me from now on,” Makz whispered intently.

  Eight threw his hands up. “Makz, if you want to help, set up a laser perimeter and throw some camo netting over the UA-X.”

  Makz went to sucker punch Eight, but found himself face down in the dust. Eight held the back of his head, waiting for the moment that Makz realized what had happened and keeping him from lashing out.

  “Dammit,” was all Makz could manage. “Forgot.”

  Eight let him up slowly. “Can we get through this crisis without any additional problems?”

  Makz dusted himself clean. “I'm sure we can't. Look, your way, Alessa's way of protecting your people is flawed. You need to find a wasteland community to start your lives in. Most importantly, split up. Everyone should go their own way. The best way to keep you alive is to never see each other again. As for me, I feel more and more mortal every second I am with you.”

  Eight frowned lightly. He got flashes of recent memory from Makz, images of Makz and Kagan fighting off UA. He spoke calmly with a hint of defeat in his voice, “Clean the blood off yourself, there are children around here for shit's sake.”

  “Kids seen blood before,” Makz said.

  Vorn yelled out, “I have it, I have something.”

  Alessa, Eight and Makz joined him by a service bay in the side of the UA-X. Vorn unplugged his handheld from the vehicle's data port and held it up for everyone to see.

  “What are we looking at?” Alessa asked as she hefted Nanny into her arms.

  “The promised land,” Vorn said matter-of-factly, “Dernen found a place we can go. We used the maps downloaded from Alessa's data port.”

  Dernen said, “I heard about this place years ago. A relatively untouched town.”

  Eight took the handheld and scrolled around with his thumb and said, “If I'm reading this right, no one lives there, no settlements. The map is a few years old. A lot of unknowns.”

  “Prime real estate. What's there that people wouldn't want to live near?” Makz asked warily.

  “Ah,” Vorn answered, “I was nervous too, I thought maybe it was a toxic area, some kind of radiation, but no. It's just an old community. Whatever is th
ere has to be better than this.”

  Alessa shook her head, “We can't trust the information in my implants.”

  Dernen said, “I know, but I have a feeling about it. It could be rough terrain getting there, but we can handle it, we can hide out there until the storm and everything else blows over.”

  Eight scratched his head. “It'll need scouting first. I don't want to take anyone in there without knowing more.”

  Makz took a long look at the handheld's screen. “I'll do it. Want to come along, darling?” he asked of Alessa.

  She set the toddler on her feet, patted her head, and nodded. “Yes, yes I do.” Alessa gave a glance to the blood drying on Makz's shirt.

  “Good,” Makz exclaimed, “Eight, would you bring us some water and supplies?”

  Eight put his hand to his face and agreed grudgingly. “Just tell us what you see.” Eight handed Makz his improvised armor.

  Vorn looked at Makz with a raised eyebrow and pointed west with his hand, “That-a-way. Good luck.”

  Alessa and Makz went to get supplies. Eight and Vorn stayed silent until they were out of earshot. Vorn spoke up, “So we're not talking about Kagan?”

  Eight shook his head, “No, we are not.” And one of Makz's memories shot across Eight's eyes. It was of Kagan walking away from a pile of hurt soldiers spattered with blood. Eight squinted and rubbed his eyes to banish the images. “It'll give Makz and Alessa something to talk about.”

  “You trust him with her?” Vorn asked.

  Eight scanned the sky, he watched streams of dust clouds make their way into the upper atmosphere. “Vorn, I know him so well that I get confused which one I am. I don't have to delve him, it just shows up in my mind. I can see his future drawn out before him. We needn't fear him, he needs us.”

  Alessa and Makz made their way to inner Sacria, a stark desert pocked with the skeletons of industry. They walked the dusty wilds patiently, with the day sapping their energy and the night freezing their bones. They came to a great precipice, the lip of a canyon that marked the border of the open desert with an island of buildings and streets. It was a large community with its own city center. A modern factory town. It was a new kind of stark beauty to Makz and Alessa, who broke their self-imposed silences to congratulate each other, and Vorn and Dernen, from afar.