Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  He speaks first. It comes out as a whisper too loud.

  “This isn’t your burden.” Atlas exhales. “I thank you for much beyond saving my life this night.”

  Gene’s silhouette, the only distinguishable shape in the dark, angles toward him.

  He wraps his arms around his stomach. “Return to your living establishment and I’ll finally leave you on your way.”

  “Will you stop? I’m taking you to the hospital. Hos-pit-al. It’s where normal people go, what normal people use, and how normal people recover from normal things.”

  Atlas presses his lips tight.

  “And it’s what I know.” She lowers her voice. “So let me help. In a way that’s less overwhelming for the time being.”

  Settling his back into Gene’s cardigan, pushing the makeshift bandage into his seat, he endures the resonance that follows her words. He lets the imagined echo dissipate.

  “What was your promise?” he asks.

  Gene faces the windshield. Her silhouette disappears.

  “That—” She stops.

  “Yes?”

  “Why do I always end up telling you everything? Not even my—” Gene’s profile appears again. “Now, see? I just told you that I tell you everything. I wouldn’t tell anyone else that I accidentally tell everything despite my hard efforts to not tell everything.”

  Atlas’s jaw shifts.

  She lifts a finger and says, “I know why. I took home a stray. You’re like a stray puppy. Quiet, doesn’t understand me, on the alien side, has ruffled puppy hair, and,” her finger falls, “you’ve got those eyes, like really big, blue—” Gene grabs the steering wheel and turns the ignition. “Let’s get out of this dark.”

  The engine rumbles alive. Two blinding beams cut through the thick but uninhabited shrubs at the front bumper. Atlas blinks until the inverted image under his eyelids fades. Gene backs out of their nook, swivels onto one narrow road, and then spins the gravel out of her tire tread as she speeds onto a wider one.

  They zip through a few more streets, all empty, all devoid of ravens and other late-night travelers. Atlas looks for his moon but can’t find it: the trees are too tall—or too close. His forehead crumples. This road, no power lines, fewer streetlights, emotes a distant, dreamlike feeling in the gut.

  Gene bites her lip. “Oh, no.”

  Atlas would express the same using different terms but for a reason less concrete, less discernable. Her wide eyes widen his.

  “I’m pretty, fairly, mostly sure,” Gene sits on her seat’s edge and squints through the windshield, “that we’re a hundred percent lost.”

  Atlas scans the road. He hasn’t seen a traffic light since they left their hideout and assumes a deviation of environment. As they progress, or regress, Gene’s vehicle more frequently jolts upon asphalt bumps. He clutches his stomach together.

  “No, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I have GPS on my phone.” With her right hand, Gene rummages through her purse on the passenger seat. She pulls out her miniature electronic rectangle. “But, naturally, my phone’s dead and the charger’s at home. Whew. Breathe. Don’t panic, Atlas.”

  He stares. “I am perfectly—”

  “Don’t panic.” She constricts the steering wheel till it chokes. “It’s okay. It’s all right. We’ll just keep driving and see where it takes us.” Grinning, Gene looks over a shoulder. “Hey, that’s not a horrible idea. Keep driving. We could do that, yeah?”

  “Semi-adequately.”

  “Keep driving.” She swallows. “Just keep—and then continue and all the while you—you’re okay ’cause healing quickly and I’ll be ’cause higher power or therapy?”

  Atlas doesn’t.

  “I’m tired.” Gene’s smile falls. “It’s been, you know, just—”

  “An excessively long, painful, and confusing earthly day,” Atlas says.

  She breathes out. “Yes.”

  A water tower peeks above the treetops and Gene spots it not long after Atlas. She accelerates. Several roofs, a billboard, and a few signs, chipped paint, faded lettering, trail after the tower’s chrome cylinder. They arrive in a small town bordered by a gas station and two or three houses moldering before large, unkempt yards. Another building, metal railings lining its second story, parts the forest with its water-stained wall shingles.

  Gene glances at the dashboard’s clock. “ ’S late.”

  12:36 a.m.—a combination of numerals indicating time Atlas trusts is comparable with the mid-moments of Siderans’ resting cycle. He slumps into his seat.

  “What’s—” Eyelids fluttering, Gene studies the closest building. “Motel?”

  She turns onto its parking lot and stops her vehicle by the front doors. She grabs her keys out of the ignition. The neon glow of the motel’s half-flickering logo steals Gene’s high beams.

  “Atlas,” she faces him, “I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head. “We should do away with these apologies and declare justice balanced for now.”

  “ ’Kay, lots of words and too tired. It’s been many, so many, much hours without my eyes closed.” Gene motions to the windshield. “I gotta sleep and you need to more. I don’t know what you want to do or where you want to go but,” she puts a hand on the center console, her fingers stretched toward him, “we should get some rest. I’ve got a little cash left.”

  Atlas sits up straight and suppresses a groan. He scoots toward one of the doors, opens it, and, stepping into cool night air, onto hard ground, waits for Gene to exit her side. She walks toward him.

  “You sure you’re okay for tonight? No hospital right this minute?” she asks.

  He nods.

  “Hold on—wait here. I’ll be back uber fast, like lightning fast, Superman fast.”

  Superman? Uber? He stares at his feet. “Is lightning the force induced by ionized storm cloud particles,” he looks up, “or excessive consumption?”

  She’s gone.

  Atlas props himself against the car door and searches for the moon again. Something tacky touches his shoulder. Sliding his hand over his shirt, he lifts his back off the door and grimaces. A white, gooey substance smears onto his finger; the same substance riddles Gene’s vehicle.

  “Both forces being, most plausibly,” he flicks the ravens’ final gusto from his hand and says through his teeth, “walkers’ curse for worldwide division.”

  Atlas listens to himself. His eyebrows come together. Holding his arm and center as still as possible, he scratches his temple.

  He reconsiders his education shift lessons on the individualization of earthly nations and their voracious colonialism, lessons of the dissension-contagion represented by each’s choice of appearance and occupation and association, and all other lessons repeated and repeated, and thinks of Gene.

  “It’s one room.”

  Atlas jolts toward Gene. She walks from the motel’s entrance and holds another rectangle, one different from her electronic device but about the same height and length. It’s paper-thin.

  “They only had one room left,” Gene slides her arm under Atlas’s shoulder, “and I had about one room’s cash left too.”

  Staggering with her staggering, Atlas grasps the back of Gene’s shirt and follows her up the outside staircase that rusts where the paint peels, that creaks under the breeze, let alone their heavy steps. They reach a door marked 209. Its metal nine tips to the side, hanging upright only by the support of the zero.

  “Would’ve thrown those potted flowers at the manager’s bald head if he wasn’t a senior citizen.” Gene scoffs. “One tiny room left and its price is raised because of the demand? Right. But it’ll be fine—don’t underestimate floor space. I’ll be plenty comfy with just a pillow or two.”

  With her free hand, she slides the card through a slot above doorknob and pushes the door open. They shuffle into the room. Atlas releases her and she him; Gene collapses to the single bed—a colossal thing he concludes is indeed for sleeping—but Atlas lags behind, b
athed in sour lamplight and hunching before faded jewel-tone drapes.

  He curls his fingers into fists.

  “I can’t thank you sufficiently,” he backs toward the open door, “for everything.”

  Gene straightens posture and scoots to the edge of the bed. She frowns. “But you’re still leaving.”

  “The ravens were no conclusion and far from the most dangerous of messages. The Accenda search for me.”

  She stands up. “But we’re lost and you’re hurt. Where would you go? How would you go?”

  “I’ll discover a way.”

  Atlas turns around and grips the doorknob, holding his weight up with it. He pushes the door agape.

  “Wait, will you,” Gene rests her hand on Atlas’s arm, “stay?”

  Her hand’s warmer than he remembers.

  Atlas turns around again and meets her eyes more prominent than he remembers. They’re gold; he didn’t know.

  The third surprise sinks into his aching center and bows its knots until they soften: it’s sun he’s been so long without that he’d forgotten how it burns his chest. The moon, though brilliant, hypnotic, could never mimic the feeling.

  “I would just,” Gene drops her hand, “feel a lot safer with you here.”

  “Yes.” Atlas glances behind him, at open night, returns his gaze to her swaying hand, and lets the door swing shut.

  He says, “Yes, of course.”

  VIII

  Pushed from the Nest

  Atlas creaks the faucet handle a centimeter to the right. Water spurts out of the showerhead. He jumps. Yanks the handle back to its original position, recoils, and watches leftover droplets collect and fall and the showerhead dry and the drain gurgle till its metal grate no longer warps beneath a puddle.

  It’s no contamination purge, the less-private cleansings Siderans hold every cycle.

  He takes a deep breath and turns the faucet handle again. Water shoots into the shower, pattering on tiled floor. His pulse speeds. No—he shakes out his hands—it’s most likely supposed to do that.

  He pinches his shirt’s bottom hem and tugs on it. He stops. His eyes widen.

  Is he supposed to undress first? Was he supposed to do that before he summoned the water? He drags his hands down his face, his under-eye rings stretching sharp their swags. What if the water summoner he put in motion isn’t the “shower”? What if that’s the smaller summoner by the door—the ceramic bowl?

  He can’t fit in that.

  Atlas narrows his eyes and lets his hands slap his thighs. He’s finished asking what he’s supposed to do.

  Pulling the bloodied shreds left of his shirt over his head, he winces. He traces the gash in his stomach with a finger. It’s red, swollen, and feels as bad as it looks in its uncleansed state. But though burned and throbbing, his skin has repaired the blackened crimson once webbed halfway toward his sides into a paler, more concentrated slit.

  Atlas exhales, leaps into the shower, and endures its onslaught as he scrubs a plethora of unidentified muck from himself. He dresses in a clean set of clothes Gene had in her vehicle: an extra pair of jeans and a black T-shirt they bought two days ago. He sweeps his fingers through his damp hair and steps out of the bathroom.

  Propped against its wooden headboard, Gene sits on the motel bed, her eyelids fluttering through open-shut cycles at a quicker rate every few seconds.

  “I said I wouldn’t sleep until you told me e’rything,” she says. “And I mean e’rything.”

  Atlas shivers. “You should rest.”

  “Why you—” Gene drags herself up the headrest. “Are you cold?”

  He frowns at his footwear and shakes his head.

  “Was the hot water working?”

  He snaps up his head and opens his mouth. Gene shuts hers into a skewed smile.

  “Aw, no.” Her eyes glitter. “You know the—” She twists inward her cupped hands. “The second—there’s two . . .”

  The inner corners of Atlas’s brows lift further and outer corners of his lips fall more. He rubs his arms.

  Gene swats the air. “Go ahead and start explaining stuff. Like what happened today, the conversation you had with that arrogant—”

  “Samuel.”

  “—guy with the hair, and everything else. Tell me everything.”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Start with Sai-dair-ah or Sid-air—or—” Gene scratches her head. “What is it?”

  “A significant amount of Latin in my dimension has branched far from its roots. Speak it how you wish.”

  “Okay.” She pushes her hands into the mattress. “Same question, different meaning: what is it? And what’s a Sideran?”

  “Sidera is a fragmented sky realm,” Atlas says. “I am a Sideran.”

  Gene inhales to her limit, makes a face, and bursts out her breath. “This is,” she slaps her legs, “so weird. Ha.” She grins with wide eyes. “Ha. Very weird. Okay.”

  Atlas shifts his weight.

  “Okay. All right.” Her eyes on wall stains across the upper molding, Gene sighs away her smile. “And you—as a Sideran—what are you?”

  His eyebrows tense. He studies the flickering lamp to Gene’s right, how it brushes warm glow across her knee and the comforter rippling between her fingers.

  She pats the bed’s edge and scoots an arm’s length between her and it. “What was it like—Sidera?”

  Atlas sits, running a hand over bed’s ember-glazed wrinkles. “At length, it became similar to a dream. Every cycle, I open my eyes never fully rested and look around my constellation—or I did. I would look around Taurus, the empirically assigned area to me and my peers, and discerning reality from fiction became a toil equal to what’s performed in the laborhouse. Circumstances never changed and so I never formed a conclusion. My fellow citizens would labor, cycle after cycle, life after life, and, at the moment of death, glance back to ask why they labored in the first place. No being knows because it doesn’t matter. All Siderans die as they were born—their lives for the Imperium.”

  “What’s that?” Gene asks.

  “The Imperium? They are the most capable of Siderans, having been organized into a league since Sidera’s beginnings. The five towers of Eos are the headquarters for Imperium’s five esteemed fields of labor: administration, security, development, curing, and energy allocation. They tell us in education shifts that this superior system was formed to serve the people, fairly issue the limited resources, bring peace out of war, and achieve liberty by dissolving segregation and uniting under one equalizing, simplifying rule.”

  “But who do you think they are?”

  “I think they’re not completely truthful.”

  “So,” Gene ducks her head, “who’s the dictator?”

  “The what?”

  “Dic-ta-tor.” She taps her palm three times. “Even alien empires mus’ have one or two sovereign leaders.”

  “Um,” Atlas glances at her feet and then lifts his onto the bed, “the Absolute, an entity of the Imperium, is our leader. I—” Cringing, he leans against the backboard as she scoots another arm’s length for him. “I don’t know what or who it is. Some have claimed they’ve set eyes on the Absolute but I believe it’s merely a term for the superior collective. Siderans aren’t to speak of the Absolute often. It’s transgression.”

  “How are there other dimen—” Gene yawns.

  “Hmm?”

  “Alien things and fire from people’s hands and portals and crazy,” she reclines and settles into bed’s wood and pillows, “stuff like that—how is it—how did we all not—” She yawns.

  Atlas rests his head to match hers and his hands on his stomach, swelling with air warmer and deeper than five minutes past. His spine slouches. “Hmm.”

  “How—I don’ know.” Gene closes her eyes and breathes out.

  He stares at the toes of his shoes, past them, to the other side of the room, at the bathroom door and framed paintings of forestry and windings of water bubbl
ing between ferns. Gene would stare at the same if her eyelids didn’t reveal a different view.

  “ ’S probably not, but I’m tryin’ to get a picture.” She budges crinkled her nose and lets fall her face with her volume. “Is Sidera beautiful?”

  Atlas registers her mumble a moment late. The first envisioned images of his homeland surface massive black barricades, Imperium guards, and frantic laborhouses that cycle sawdust through the skies. Sinking into the pillows at his back, he pushes imagination beyond constellation walls to the only seconds of gilt freedom he’d experienced.

  “Sidera is more than beautiful,” he whispers. “It’s perfect. The limitless golden plains are lined with flowers of every hue imaginable, its sun never setting, land never decaying. When you reach the edge of a floating isle, supported by nothing but infinite sky, you can watch wisps of cloud journey across the universe in a single sweep. You can see all existence. Everything. Endless. Looking up, you see an endless shade of blue that makes your neck sore while your mind wanders with the breeze. You hear endless song imagined with each blade of swaying topaz grass. And you feel an endless power in your soul because you can fly if you give yourself to the wind.”

  Something touches Atlas’s shoulder. Twisting his neck but keeping everything below it still as stone, he looks to Gene. She rests against him, her head on his shoulder. She breathes in and out, chest rising and falling, lips parted a centimeter. He’d go rigid if the touch wasn’t soft, freeze if it wasn’t warm.

  He hasn’t been touched by another save through necessity or punishment in the thirty-one full cycles lived as a Sideran citizen.

  Atlas turns forward, lightens his movements, and shifts his shoulder down and head up. Gene settles into the curve of his neck. Her hair draped over his shoulder, she melts into comforter’s lamp-grazed ridges, the same pillowed between her fingers and his, one stretch apart. Atlas rests his head against hers. He closes his eyes.

  * * *

  The medical specialist yanks Atlas up stairs steep enough, long enough to take the life of the most careful climber. Two Imperium guards follow at Atlas’s heels, their broad shoulders bobbing up and down, their palms charged, outstretched toward his citizen-grade shoes. They step around and around the core of the Curative Estate’s winding spire until they reach its second highest level. Atlas stumbles onto the landing. He doesn’t intentionally fight the medical specialist’s grip cemented to his leather shoulder strap; he’s simply too exhausted, too disorganized to speed his pace.