by H C Edwards
All of these things and more were housed within the walls of The Pantheon. For better or worse, and most likely worse in Trey’s mind, the future of humankind was being manipulated and programmed and altered to a point that some had called it an induced evolution, while others the pinnacle of human ascension in the universe.
Trey’s transport came to a stop about three hundred yards from the entrance to the Pantheon. What lie betwixt that were stretches of gardens to rival The Grove, consisting of every natural blooming flower, fruit, and vegetable that had been saved, all slightly genetically altered to live harmoniously together. Between these gardens were automated walkways with seats that allowed citizens to sit with comfort and enjoy the passing view, replete with fat bees that buzzed lazily around the tops of the flowers but bred to never cross the path of the walkways.
It was meant to impart a sense of serenity and calm before one entered The Pantheon, which seemed necessary as it was perhaps the most stressful and busiest spot in the city. Here, the ratio of breeders to QUBIT leaned towards the former, and the council consisted of all humans, each one elected from the council itself as well as the governors, those that oversaw a certain sector’s production/needs, all breeders as well of course.
They spent every moment of the day attempting to prolong the human life until they could find a cure to the genetic defect, an extolling toll birthed of the last Great War, and also the reason nothing could exist beyond the Wall.
Trey stepped towards a walkway which slowed and paused for him. He stepped on and chose an empty seat, of which there were many.
Slow morning.
Though he had been on each walkway to admire each garden a hundred times over it never got old and he always looked for the hummingbirds with an almost boyish sense of yearning.
The trip ended too fast, as it always did, and the sense of wonder disappeared the moment the walkway deposited him at the east entrance of the Pantheon, in which were housed the council chambers, the praetorium, and the Akropolis library, home to the largest collection of books in the known world.
Trey barely looked up at the curved walls of The Pantheon as he entered. If he had been a new visitor to Akropolis, perhaps from one of the less developed sanctuaries like New Springs or Springfield, he would have stared in awe at the reflective surface of the dome, how even up to a few dozen yards away it looked like a mirror of the world just traversed. Up close the illusion faded quickly, until you could see beyond the palladium glass and the people that buzzed about like the bees in the garden. The illusion of near invisibility was a causality of the ionized electrons that interacted with metamaterials in the glass. It was unlike anything else in the world.
Trey waved his hand at the door and heard a beep that signified his access. He crossed over into the foyer.
Here was another awe inspiring sight and one that tended to cause pause even to those who were frequent visitors to the central building.
The lobby stretched the entirety of The Pantheon and was meant to make one feel small, a tiny cog in the great scheme of things. The vaulted ceilings and lattices fifty feet overhead borrowed from gothic cathedrals of old while Greco-Roman columns with a diameter of at least ten feet appeared to prop up the rest. Reliefs adorned the borders of the ceilings and the walls were giant murals that were actual recreations of the greatest works of art that had ever existed. The architecture borrowed from many different eras in human history and yet still seemed to blend together in harmony despite their obvious differences.
Trey turned to his left immediately upon entering the lobby and headed towards the gilded double doors covered in carvings of winding ivy. This was the entrance to the council chambers, where doctrine and law was passed down that regulated every facet of life in Akropolis.
Posted at the doors were two guards, these ones wearing near transparent helmets as well as sealed suits, creating a vacuum that repelled gases and even microbes. They were comfortable enough and a small pack they wore on their back filtered the air for them. They always reminded Trey of the old helmets used by the first astronauts in space, and while the special suits seemed an unnecessary precaution these days they were kept for intimidation purposes, as a reminder that the ruling council’s protection was a serious matter.
Trey recognized the two guards posted, Sern and Gonzalez, and they him. They didn’t bother to ask his business or validation for his visit. He was here so often his presence was just as periodic as the council members and governors. They stepped aside and allowed him through with almost imperceptible nods.
The council chambers mirrored Akropolis, with concentric circles of single piece desks, four rows in all. The outermost ring was for the councilmen while the inner rows were composed of various positions that were of importance in governing the different sections in the city.
Business that was open to the public was scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the council deliberated on their own the rest of the week.
Not all councilmen, governors, and section advisors were present every day. In fact, except for big business, it was rare to find the council chambers even half full.
Today the council chamber was completely empty except for the councilmen, which meant this was a closed session. These were rare and usually portended a drastic change that would affect all of the citizens. Whatever transpired here would be for his and their ears only…which didn’t exactly bode well.
When Trey stepped in, six men and six women stopped their private conversations and waited for his approach in silence. He had never been greeted this way. In truth, he had only been to the council chambers once in a closed session, over two decades ago, and that had been to discuss the drastic decline in fertile births.
In that session the council had been considering certain avenues that would heavily infringe upon the freedom of the citizens under their care. Desperate times and all that. There was even discussion of moving a part of the breeder population into The Pantheon's lower levels in order to allow the constant monitoring and manipulation by their 'gene therapists' as they were called.
It had been Trey's idea to recruit breeders from other sanctuaries, a temporary bandaid that they could all afford considering the affluence of their sanctuary. It was an old idea, born of the military recruitment commercials he saw as a young boy, and the council were grateful for it. While the decline would not halt until they finally found a cure, the influx of breeders they were able to convince into relocation stabilized their numbers enough to stave off immediate disaster and gave them some breathing room as well.
That session had seemed dire at the time and yet the greeting he recieved then was mild to the atmosphere he had just walked into today.
The sudden silence would have been daunting to anyone else, and though Trey felt a slight trepidation for what this portended, he stepped into the inner circle before the council without the slightest hesitation or expression on his face.
“You wanted to see me.”
When he spoke it was obvious he was addressing Councilman Talbot. This infraction would have been deemed rude had it been anyone else, but the other council members understood his loyalties.
“Yes, Major,” Councilman Talbot said, and when he spoke Trey understood that he did so for the majority of the council.
Trey gave a cursory glance to the left and right at the other members. Six men and six women who controlled each aspect of Akropolis; all selected by a vote of their peers and all human. They seemed especially grim and though they looked straight at him they did not meet his eyes.
"How long have you been with us, Major?" Talbot asked after a long pause.
"Long enough to know you wouldn't be stalling unless you had some bad news, Sir," Trey replied.
This earned a chuckle from the old man and for a moment Trey thought perhaps it wouldn't be so bad after all. But then the councilman's voice ended in a long sigh.
"We've had some distressing news from another sanctuary," he continued. "And when I say distre
ssing it is closer to..."
"Catastrophic," Councilwoman Egbert finished for him when it seemed as if Talbot wasn't going to.
She was in her sixth decade and looked thirty with her smooth skin, high cheekbones, and almond shaped eyes, but she had been a part of the council for the better part of thirty years. In all that time Trey had never seen her crack a smile. Her expression had always been stoic and impenetrable. Even her haircut, a bowl shape with bangs that gradually sloped to a trim just below the earlobes seemed to permit no nonsense. Not a single strand was out of place. Had there been, Trey was certain she would have plucked it out immediately as if it were an anomaly.
"Which sanctuary?" Trey asked.
"New Charlottesville," Talbot replied, his earlier hesitation gone, replaced by the steel that Trey knew so well.
"Charlottesville," Trey repeated under his breath.
He tried to recall all that he knew about their sister sanctuary. Being a coastal settlement, its design was more conical, with the wide end pointing towards the harbor. What he remembered most was the giant wind turbines that rose out of the ocean. These harnessed the coastal winds and powered the generators that ran the sanctuary.
Like Akropolis and all the other sanctuaries it had a wall, but rather than using an electromagnetic field to keep out the radiation, Charlottesville had scavenged from the old town and a nearby airport that was still operational right up until the end, and built an actual roof that encompassed the entire settlement. They then sent a current through the ceiling to create a field that bounced the rads off. A complete enclosure; the only one of its kind since The Mountain.
Charlottesville's main source of food was its giant kelp farms, which they manipulated into various meal packs much as Akropolis did with its soy beans. Trade still happened via the underground network and Trey knew this to be the major import from their sister sanctuary, as soy and QUBITs were exported to them.
All this took but a few seconds to process and when he considered the term 'catastrophic' that Councilwoman Egbert had dropped, a grim theory began to formulate in his mind.
"A hurricane," he stated more than asked.
Trey glanced up to see all of them nodding their heads, Councilman Talbot staring straight at him.
"I told you he was astute."
"But they've been handling them for years," Trey interjected. "Surely the damage can be repaired."
Councilman Talbot was shaking his head and dropped his eyes to the pad in front of him.
"We've been receiving reports from survivors that used the trade routes to escape before they flooded-"
Trey was startled.
"Flooded?"
"Yes, from what we have gathered it appears as if the sanctuary was hit by a tsunami."
"How could a tsunami break through their wall? It's just not possible,” Trey said with disbelief.
"It didn't break through the wall," Councilwoman Egbert said. "It went over it."
This gave him pause.
"But that would mean it was-"
"Over two thousand feet tall," Councilman Talbot finished.
Trey was stunned. He thought about what that would mean. The roof of the sanctuary was designed to withstand gale force winds up to three hundred miles per hour and could take a beating from all the debris that came with those winds, but a wall of water that high would be...unstoppable. It would have caved in the ceiling almost immediately, pummeled buildings into rubble; there would have been no time for most of them to get away.
“How many escaped?” Trey asked.
Councilman Talbot sighed.
“Too few…too few,” he said, shaking his head.
Councilman Egbert tapped on her pad.
“We had to seal the tunnels,” she said. “The flooding is extensive. Our trade routes are cut off, as well as any hope of further rescue.”
“How many?” Trey reiterated.
“Six hundred and twelve humans,” she responded, her voice softening at the end.
It was the first time he had ever heard any kind of compassion from the councilwoman.
Trey was stunned. There had been almost 850,000 citizens in Charlottesville, with roughly 60,000 humans. It was a staggering loss to their kind, especially since it was the third most populous of all the sanctuaries. To think that they were all gone so quickly seemed almost ludicrously improbable…but then they wouldn’t be having this session otherwise.
“And the synthetics?”
The council members looked to each other. The discomfort was palpable in the air.
Councilman Yander, a very squat and wide man, whose countenance resembled a brick fireplace opened his wide mouth and was somehow able to speak while also grimacing.
“None whatsoever,” he said in a gravelly voice. “The ones who made it to the tunnels stayed behind to operate the transports.”
“I assume air support is on the way,” Trey said.
This question was met with silence. It seemed like there was a lot of that going on during this session today.
“What seems to be the problem?” Trey asked.
Councilman Talbot looked to his left and right. The other council members nodded to him and then rose to leave the chambers in unison, taking their pads with them.
Once they had all departed Trey left the floor and mounted the steps until he was standing before the older councilman.
“I’d like to know what the hell’s going on, respectively.”
CouncilmanTalbot looked up from his pad and Trey could see that the years were catching up to him quickly. The councilman looked ancient now, defeated, and Trey had to wonder if there were many more years left in the man before he finally passed.
It would be a sad day when that happened because it meant that Talbot would lose his seat on the council. He could be revived, but no synthetic was allowed to sit on the council. It had been decided long ago that those who had passed beyond the constraints of death were less likely to take into consideration the frailties of our race as a whole.
“Did you know, Major, that when they offered me a seat on the council all those years ago…that I declined?”
“Sir?”
“It was right after they disbanded the Corps,” Councilman Talbot went on, staring down at his clenched hands, perhaps recalling the days when they were not covered in wrinkles and liver spots.
“I was angry with them, you see. I felt that they were making us vulnerable, weak. It took me a while to realize that it was the opposite.”
Talbot stood up from his seat and began to walk around the chambers. He was like this, a man who needed to walk while he talked. Trey, on the other hand, stayed his position.
“When they finally took us out of the streets, I noticed a change in the people. They seemed less afraid, less…helpless. I think what it came down to was that we were no longer needed, and our constant presence was only a reminder of the death and destruction we had all witnessed in our lives.”
He waved about him with one arm.
“This was supposed to be our Utopia, and you cannot have Utopia with lions prowling around inside the walls.”
Talbot paused and looked straight at Trey.
“And that’s exactly what we were, Major.”
Trey didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing.
The councilman continued as if he hadn’t really expected a reply.
“So after a few months of doing nothing but wandering around the city and watching the people, I had a sort of self-revelation. I understood that I was not angry with the council for disbanding the Corps, but rather angry at myself for not being able to let it all go…the war, the violence…the soldier in me. In this world we were obsolete. There was no one left to fight. All of us were concerned with only our own survival, the survival of our species. I don’t know if that has ever been the outlook in our history.”
Talbot had circled all around and was now just a few feet from Trey. The councilman paused and passed a hand across his face.
He chuckled.
“I figured, at the least, I would be there for counsel when the tables turned, when mankind reverted back to his old ugly self. Then I could chide them for their fallacy, their innocence, and we could do what we always did…get back to soldiering.”
“We will always be soldiers,” Trey finally responded, because it was true.
“Oh yes…yes, I know. That too, is part of the problem. The point of all of this…this rambling from an old man, is that when I finally realized that we were done being the violent and insatiable animals that we were, I was able to let go of that part of me that kept looking for an excuse to fight. I was able to embrace this new beginning and make decisions for the good of the citizens based on hope…not fear.”
The councilman had come full circle to his seat, and when he sat it was with a heavy sigh and the creaking of bones. He looked drained, his skin sallow and glistening with a light sheen of sweat.
“I was able to look down at my hands, and for the first time, not see all the blood there from the men and women we lost or the lives taken because of the decisions that we made.”
“Sir,” Trey interrupted, for he was starting to get a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“That there is blood on these hands again,” Councilman Talbot said, proffering both limbs as if in offering.
“We’re not sending transports…are we?” Trey finally asked, and the look the councilman gave him confirmed his worst suspicion.