by H C Edwards
There was also no doubt he’d receive a curfew violation once his points were logged in with transportation and there’d be hell to pay with Dad, but he would worry about that later.
“Exchange,” Quentin confirmed in between ragged breaths.
An outline appeared and the door of the transport popped out and slid horizontally to the side. He ducked in and squirmed on the plush seat, trying to get comfortable as the door closed.
The screen powered up and the map of the neighborhood was displayed. He ignored it.
“Head straight to the wall.”
A woman’s voice, similar to Sia’s but with less inflection replied.
“This transport is insufficiently charged to reach your destination.”
“Shit.”
“I do not understand your request.”
“Just get me as close as you can,” he replied impatiently.
There was a slight hum and the soft blue light inside the transport dimmed into a miniscule aura as the transport unplugged from the charging station and moved down the street smoothly with almost no feeling of motion.
There must have been an upgrade recently because the noise dampeners had improved. He couldn’t even hear the soft sound of the airlifts beneath the car echoing throughout the frame.
Quentin ravenously ate his snack pack, barely tasting it; some sort of honey and oats concoction, and then drained half his water bottle. He felt rejuvenated after and leaned restlessly back into the seat and watched as the neighborhoods started to slide by.
It didn’t take long to pass into the Waste Belt, a buffer zone of sorts between the Inner Zone and the Outer Zone, filled with the recycling plants where nearly everything in Akropolis was repurposed into something else. No machines ran at night here as per law, so there were no lights as well. It seemed a wasteland, the darkened buildings like stone giants gone to sleep.
“It’s too quiet.”
“Would you like me to play some music?” asked the computerized voice.
“No. I wasn’t talking to you.”
I was talking to myself, he almost said, but there would have been no point.
There were no other transports on the road this late at night. The only ones traveling at this hour would come from the center of the neighborhood where the council headquarters and the labs were…or if there were an emergency, and he couldn’t for the life of him recall the last time there was an emergency.
There was little chance he would be spotted, and even if he was, by the time anyone came out to investigate he would be out of the transport and beyond the Wall.
Of course, there was always the possibility that transportation would revoke his travel privileges after his after-hours trip was logged, which meant he’d have to catch a ride to and from class with his dad every day for a couple of weeks.
That was something that while banal to the point of being torturous, paled in comparison to the disappointment he would receive from his father. Somehow that sad, helpless look cast his way and the inevitable reference to ‘if his mother were here’ were more than enough to cast a pall over his rebellious nature and make Quentin swear to himself to not let it happen again.
But he always did…and he couldn’t even say it was any other fault than his own, and while he would hold true to his own promise for as long as he could, the moment she called or messaged him he will be out the door no matter the hour or the consequence.
He wasn’t sure what that would be called. He imagined a classmate or two would laughingly call it lust or some other diminutive expression that barely scratched the surface and he was certain his psychology professor would label it obsessive, a physiological reaction to a subconscious urge or desire that could be characterized by the loss of his mother and the need to fill that void emotionally. His father might have called it ‘love’ once upon a time, but now he would just call it reckless.
Lately that seemed to be his reply to everything Quentin did that seemed the least bit rebellious or outside the norm. His father’s paranoia grew daily and often Quentin would catch him staring out the windows apprehensively as if he expected to see security transports pull up in front of the house.
“That’s enough of that,” Quentin muttered.
Indeed it was. Traveling down that mental path tended to leave him in a quiet and contemplative mood that bordered on anxiety and depression. Those were emotions he was not willing to cater to at this point and time. Quentin preferred to focus on the feeling of excitement and wonder that was bubbling just beneath the surface, the barely contained energy that reflected in the bobbing of his knee and the drumming of his fingertips against the armrest of the transport.
And again…there was her.
The transport began to slow. He had been traveling in the Outer Zone for a while now. The Wall had to be very close.
“Prepare for docking,” said the female voice.
The transport pulled over to the side of the silent and dark street to the charging station. Quentin could hear the clamps as they took hold of the wheels.
“Destination is 2.1 kilometers away.”
“Great,” he said, and meant it.
The transport slowed until it finally came to rest. The soft blue glow intensified in the interior until he could see his reflection in the windshield. He used his fingers to comb through his hair, wishing he had taken a moment before leaving home to curb the angry cowlick that kept popping up on the side of his head.
The transport door opened. After glancing at his watch and realizing how much time had passed he practically leapt out running.
Quentin didn’t worry about the noise anymore. In the outer zone only about half the houses were occupied and those residents cared little for attracting interest. Most of them were ‘lifers’, or those who had chosen to disconnect permanently from the Cloud.
He probably could have shouted at the top of his lungs and not a soul would grace a window long enough to glance into the street. To see something meant you had to say something. It had to be reported and then there would be an interview and outer zone residents didn’t care too much about those.
Not that Quentin blamed them. Having been through a few interviews as well he could honestly say that they were uncomfortable at the least and quite possibly more to those that didn’t have the sort of privilege that he did.
There it was.
Even from a few streets away he could see the Wall. It was blacker than the night sky, a stoic monolith standing guard against the dangers of the world beyond.
It towered an insurmountable number of feet into the air, straight up, though he always felt as if it loomed. Not a scratch or pockmark marred the surface. It stood resolute and eternal…and cold. Even in the warmest part of the day it radiated cold.
Quentin was winded by the time he reached the last street but he gamely jogged the final crossing to the Grove, feeling less exposed once he was under the shadowy embrace of the trees and foliage that preceded the base of the wall.
The Grove was one of the most sacred of places in Akropolis, the last vestiges of nature cultured and allowed to flourish under the watchful eyes of the gardeners, a teeming collage of all the flora and fauna that could be mustered together inside the Wall before it went up.
Here, all of the plants and trees were raised and nurtured to co-exist in the same habitat, as were the citizens of Akropolis itself, though it seemed as if nature was better at it.
The moment Quentin stepped past the boundaries of the Grove he used the glow from his watch to find the trail. It took only a matter of minutes as he had become familiar with this particular path.
He pushed past a couple of red ferns and gingerly stepped over a rather large clump of brittle prickly pear cacti to get there but once his feet stepped onto the trail he didn’t need the glow of his watch anymore. In fact, he was able to step up his pace to a jog again.
It didn’t take long before Quentin spotted the trunk of the Brazil nut tree that he knew towered above most of the
maples and oaks in the Grove, which meant a sharp turn to the left was coming.
He slid a little leaping over the huge exposed root of the Brazil tree and might have tumbled into a large maidenhair fern if he hadn’t reached out and grasped a low hanging branch to steady him.
His heart did a little jump and he laughed out loud.
The Grove was best at night he always thought. Under the cover of darkness he could imagine what it would have been like to wander endlessly beneath the forests of old, to hear the sounds of wildlife rather than the hum of the giant humidifiers hidden somewhere in the shadows and the simulated noise coming from the speakers in the branches of the trees. There were still insects but sonic stations were set up to keep them far from the trails.
It didn’t take long to travel from the edge of the Grove to the Wall. The trail practically headed straight for it after the giant Brazil tree and after five minutes of heavy jogging the path gradually took on a parallel course to the massive structure. After a few dozen meters along the path there was a large deviation away from the Wall, where there was no apparent reason for one. The trail simply decided to veer drastically away.
Quentin often wondered what came first, the opening in the wall or the divergence of the trail. One would easily preclude one or the other in various scenarios so while it mattered little it always preyed on his mind since its discovery, or rather since she revealed it to him.
He slowed down right before the trail veered off and rather than take the wide excursion away from the Wall, he stepped across and avoided ferns and little budding plants as best as he could in the darkness. About ten yards in he took a sharp left and walked straight to the Wall, feeling the natural coldness that seemed to emanate from it sweep over him.
Closer to the wall the foliage thickened to the point of suffocation. He had to reach out with his hands until his palms brushed against the hanging vines. There was dampness about them and even a musky scent but anyone who had spent time in the Grove would know that these were synthetic plants.
Quentin’s hands formed a spear and opened up a gap in the vines. He wedged his body in sideways and had to lower himself a few inches and squirm.
This was the part he disliked the most. Aside from the crushing sense of claustrophobia, the crack in the Wall emanated all of the cold that seemed trapped within; as if the opening was a wound that bled freezing air.
Just a few feet in and his teeth were chattering. He wondered not for the first time if the Wall would take this moment out of all the years of its existence to shift suddenly and close upon him. Out in the open in the fresh air such a notion was laughable but in the belly of the giant all ludicrous thoughts could be considered plausible.
He was making good time when his shirt suddenly caught on something in the crevice that brought him to a halt. His legs were already burning from the run in the neighborhood and the jog along the trail and they immediately began to tremble with weakness. He tugged forward hard but his shirt wouldn’t comply.
Quentin stood up instinctually to relieve the pressure on his legs and felt his chest and back wedge into the narrow top of the crack, becoming stuck instantly. Panic immediately set in as his worst fear seemed to be coming true; the Wall had closed in on him.
He began to struggle, thrashing about and digging in with his feet. He would have shouted for help had he the breath, but his chest was compressed and it was all he could do to wheeze in a child’s amount of air. Already, he was starting to feel light-headed and faint.
Quentin might have struggled there in the depths of the Wall until he expired, but at that moment he thought of the dream at the beach and somehow it gave him a sense of clarity, dispelling the cloudy faintness that had gathered around his head.
His body went still. He expelled the remainder of air he had trapped in his lungs; just enough to compress his chest cavity and allow him to wiggle back and forth for a few seconds until finally he slipped back down into the wider part of the crevice.
Quentin sucked in grateful breath after grateful breath until his heart began to resume a somewhat stable rhythm. He then took two steps back the way he had come and slowly squatted about half a foot until he felt the back of his shirt slip off whatever part of the wall had snagged it.
His relief was so great he almost cried.
Quentin had never measured the width of the Wall. It was enough to know it felt an eternity each time he went through the opening.
This time it was especially so.
When he finally crawled out the other end he fell to his knees and just sat there, arms limp beside him, letting the air and open atmosphere swirl around him.
It took but a minute, a precious minute, but finally the chills and the trembling left his body. He stood up and rubbed his arms briskly, then began to walk away from the Wall.
Here on this side there was no foliage, no budding plants or ferns or trees decorating the landscape. On this side of the Wall there was nothing but dirt and rocks. Even the sky was barren, blanketing the landscape with a layer of clouds that seemed impenetrable.
On this side of the Wall the world was dead; nothing could survive. The rad levels were high enough that a day out here was certain death. Quentin was lucky enough that his exposure was minimized, and so he had thankfully not suffered any long term adverse effects. It was a risk but one he took with little hestation.
The soft light from the neighborhood behind the Wall was the only light source in the pitch black, and while the reflection of that glow off the clouds was enough to reveal the outline of the landscape it wasn’t bright enough to avoid stubbing his toe on large rocks or stepping into a hole in the earth and almost falling face first.
Quentin knew she would hear him coming long before he got there. His eyes had adjusted slightly more and he could see her outline there on the edge.
She was always willing to get closer than he was. It was her fearlessness. At times he wished he could emulate that but there had always been a bit of caution to taper his recklessness since that day at the beach, instilled by his father’s incessant worrying no doubt.
Quentin didn’t greet her; just came to a stop a few steps behind her and breathed in the sight. Here at the edge the blackness was near absolute, a vast void that was almost thick enough to touch. The air always felt clearer out here even though it carried the ash of the world on its winds.
He took in the sight of her.
On the edge there wasn’t enough ambient light from the neighborhood to make out all the details but he didn’t need to. He could close his eyes and sketch her from memory; from her pert mouth and half-lidded hazel eyes to her almond skin and raven hair.
He knew as she stood on the edge that she had her eyes closed and was feeling the caress of the updraft, perhaps imagining a time when the landscape was lush with greenery and long stretches of water.
She would be smiling slightly as well.
A big part of him hoped that it was due to his arrival, even though he knew it was most likely the excitement of what was to come.
When she finally turned to him he could see the soft white of her teeth and knew that at least that smile was all for him.
“You got here just in time,” she said, stepping away from the edge as she knew it made him uncomfortable.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he replied, and that was true in more ways than one.
“It’ll be any second now.”
She turned back to face the edge and the vast emptiness. Her hand found his and grasped it tightly.
Sure enough, a few seconds later far past the cliff and out in the deserted plains, a mile away at least…a light appeared in the ground.
It started off as a crescent and grew into a full moon, a white light so bright it sent up a column into the sky. There was a slight rumbling that began in the rock beneath their feet. Quentin could feel it travel up his legs until it set his teeth to vibrating…and then he saw the tip of it appear.
Sleek and cylindrical it emerged from t
he opening in the earth, the pointed conical tip leading the way. After a few seconds it came to a halt and the rumbling in the ground intensified.
HIs hand grasped hers even tighter. He could feel his eyes straining to not blink, his heart hammering so fast it became a low rumbling of its own to match that from the earth.
A great plume of smoke and light erupted from the opening out in the planes. Quentin gasped and held his breath…as he had each time before, and yet it always felt like the first time.
Out of that great billow of smoke emerged the cylindrical object, moving at what seemed ridiculously fast for its vast size. It seemed to pick up even more speed as it approached the overhanging clouds and within seconds it was gone with nothing but the memory of fire and smoke and the dim receding glow in the hazy sky, followed eventually by a low boom like that of thunder.
They looked back down as one to the circular opening that was even now closing, that otherworldly bright light suddenly cut off, casting the plains back into inky darkness.
As soon as that light was gone she looked down at her watch.
“I have to go.”
This was normal but this time Quentin sensed urgency and an anxiety that had not been there before.
“There’ll be another launch three weeks from now on this day. I think it will be the last…the very last one.”
“How do you know this?”
She shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Her voice was soft, forlorn.
“Is everything ok?”
He was aware that she had not released his hand yet as she usually did, a self-conscious gesture he always assumed but maybe it was more purposeful than that, for she suddenly grasped his other hand and brought them both up to her chest, holding them there like one would hug a childhood stuffy.
“You might not see me for awhile,” she said, and Quentin could tell that she was frowning even though he couldn’t see it.
“What-“ he meant to ask but she squeezed his hands fiercely to silence him.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” she struggled verbally. “It just means I can’t.”