Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  Atlas scowls. “Persons aren’t born with specific disposition. They learn, grow, change.”

  “Yet,” Kraz glances at citizens through his eyes’ corners, “some are born with abilities that can, without catalyst, blow over twenty-one bodies in a single sweep.”

  Atlas ducks his head. “Abilities? You mean to say ‘affliction’?”

  Kraz stares.

  “Then, Kraz of Corvus,” Atlas lowers tone, gates’ groans riding it, and leans toward him, “do you believe beings are born content within constellation walls?”

  “No.”

  “Are you willing to assist me in discovering an immensely vital prophecy and returning home free if it could, in fact, preserve the freedom of an entire dimension?”

  “What prophecy could do such?”

  “A prophecy that holds the metaphorical keys for war.”

  “And you desire the keys?”

  Atlas hardens his mouth.

  “Are you prepared for that burden?” Kraz asks.

  “I don’t—” Atlas cocks his head from Kraz. “I need the prophecy. It is intended for me. My obtaining would hinder the true enemy. Will you assist me?”

  Kraz casts his stare through ranks ahead. “Yes.”

  “Onward, citizens.” The sentry waves them forward. “Onward to constancy with drive.”

  The gates behind boom shut. Screeches cease; feet’s thudding amplifies; Atlas’s breath shrivels behind his sunken heart. He looks to the gate, the closed, eighteen-persons-high wall, and trembles under a familiar constriction knotting his gut. Arteries jolting pupils dilated, memory flashes his life.

  Guards walk on either side and one props the Curative Estate door. Squeezing red handprints that enclose his shoulders, they throw Atlas up the stairs. His small body flies and trips into rubber gloves that squeeze the more.

  Guards walk on either side as they exit assessment and one leans into Atlas’s ear. “This is the cycle you will discover,” his tongue clicks, “why frivolous gazing is unwise.”

  Guards walk on either side and Atlas holds his chin high until the capital gates lock shut, echoing the beat of war drums. He looks down.

  Guards walk on either side and Corvus’s citizens march deeper into their pen paved by a marble road, wagons to the left, twenty new guards to the right. Bridling breath, pulse, Atlas watches the vigil heading their group. Mouth shut and straight, eyelids relaxed a fourth of the way down, the vigil steps forward with his hands behind his back. A chill shoots up Atlas’s neck. He’s seen a vigil, a guardsman or woman whose district spans all Sidera, only in distance, only a few instances.

  “A vigil leads us why?” Atlas says.

  “Many are being called to the central courtyard due to the seriousness of the fires.” Kraz inhales through his teeth. “There were perhaps others in other constellations. All Sidera has been alerted.”

  Atlas lifts onto the tips of his toes and squints toward the closest tower. At its base, above the doors, a massive engraving reads VIS HORREVM. The Energy Storehouse. He glimpses Imperial workers in esteemed yellow unloading wagons stacked with solar cells and great coils of copper wire, unfazed by the mass arrival.

  Corvus’ surviving walks into threshold of the tower’s shadow, under path’s first archway dangling banners of red and gold, each waving Sidera’s national gilded Star. Their shoes patter smooth, black, white-webbed stone that gleams in sunlight, but the marble under shade reflects a deadness; only the black of the towers’ east glitters.

  Kraz flashes his eyes over the Storehouse. “What prophecy do you seek?”

  “The Presage.”

  “The Pres—I believe I—” Kraz’s forehead crinkles. “I may know its location.”

  Atlas freezes. A Sideran at his back bumps into him; Atlas resumes forward. He makes a noise.

  “Very humorous joke. I may know its location,” Atlas says, very proud of his mocking tone. “Blessed and everlasting Absolute, has Samuel been teaching humorous jokes in education houses?”

  “What is Samuel?”

  “A black jacket and hair.”

  A Sideran behind them, smudges on her cheek, burns her stare into Atlas. They march past the Energy Storehouse, past the Curative Estate on the distant right, under the series of flag-laden arches that stripe one central highway comprising Eos’s venerated Arcade. They march toward the tallest of the towers. Fifty, sixty—one hundred guards stride from the opposite gates and toward the same.

  At city’s center, the Imperium century stops in a line curved around the Arcade’s court, one barren, black-marbled floor of a yard encompassed by towers, the palm of Sidera’s hand. Maroon jackets steep inky under Administrative Citadel’s permanent shadow, the marble floor a cavern pool luring swimmers to sink through dimensions. The most easterly fortress overlooks its umbra greater than could any Pittsburgh superstructure, even at twilight. Lips parted, feet automatic, Atlas falls into its enchantment. The staring citizen his subconscious acknowledges, marble’s turf takeover, the width of the Administrative Citadel’s base and western shade, the expanse between five towers to contain it and the black water underfoot wobble Atlas’s knees.

  “The Presage—” Kraz gazes forward. “I speak genuinely. Its location—when Imperium spoke of you, they spoke of a prophecy called The Presage. I remember the remark concerning its safe storage.”

  Atlas wrings his hands against his pants. “Show me.”

  A mass shoves his shoulder and blurs past his eyes and through the crowd. Atlas turns to it; Kraz runs from him. A knife in his throat, Atlas presses off marble, rotates his shoulders parallel to crowd’s grain, and runs after Kraz. His foot slips. He staggers and bumps into three citizens. He bites his gasp and sprints out of the crowd’s threshold, from glaring eyes and turning heads.

  Kraz runs for the Storehouse’s fanned staircase. Atlas pushes heel into yard’s bottomless lake feigning solidity and his foot slides and twists. He cringes. Checks his ankle.

  He crashes into something. Atlas stumbles backward and, steadying, stopping, raises his head.

  The Imperium vigil straightens his shoulder band and stretches his affliction gauntlet. His frame consumes Atlas’s view. He looks into Atlas’s eyes.

  “I must,” Atlas stares, “pee.”

  The vigil, the second within sight, stands and simmers a navy glint in his eye. His face hardens into stone millennia aged. His pupils drill holes through Atlas and explore private depths.

  “My identification is 27 Tauri, Generation Janus,” Atlas whispers. He turns white. Siderans do not pee. “Siderans do not pee.”

  Atlas retracts his head, chin toward his neck straight as the Citadel, and steps around the vigil. Then runs. He beats his feet into marble, past the vigil, through Storehouse’s shadow. His brows tense; he hears one set of footfalls only. Atlas glances behind a shoulder and the vigil stands still, facing the crowd, arms at his sides. No being looks toward Atlas.

  Brushing its steel slabs, he slows at the Storehouse’s base and follows Kraz around the side unoccupied by wagon unloaders. Kraz gestures. They duck behind the entrance’s staircase twelve meters wide, head-high. They gasp for breath.

  “That vigil—” Atlas leans against the staircase. “They didn’t pursue us. Something is wrong. I don’t understand why—”

  “We must continue moving,” Kraz says. He straightens his knees and, whipping his thick hair, turns and jogs around the tower’s curve.

  Atlas sighs. He pushes off the staircase and follows.

  A minute of wide-curved sprinting and they reach the Energy Storehouse’s northeast side, sun touching Atlas’s cheek. They break from their curve and run for the next tower. Atlas squints up at it.

  Its height bends his neck and raises his eyes to the tiered rings of stilettos girding the steeple’s taper: fifty spears in all. The tower’s apex—its spire rears the largest point. Its very tip, the highest physical solid in Sidera, holds a five-point, black, metal star.

  “The Administrative Citade
l,” Kraz says.

  Though sun spills, Atlas wraps his fingers around his tunic collar and tugs it closer to his neck. “The Presage is in there?”

  Kraz nods. He accelerates and bobs his tone to the bob of his shoulders. “Let us discover this freedom you seek.”

  XXXVII

  The Sovereign

  “Why do they,” Atlas chokes, “construct so—so many—”

  “Stairs?” Kraz says.

  “Yes.”

  “Imperium builds many stairs so that persons can reach different levels of a tower. This tower for instance.”

  Atlas glares into the back of Kraz’s neck.

  “We—” Kraz exhales. “We near level thirty-nine. If we follow this railing a few paces farther—”

  “We’ll arrive at this library you speak of?”

  “No, that is level fifty.”

  “Absolute help me.”

  Kraz cringes. Atlas throws his foot up the next stair and angles his head. He narrows his eyes at Kraz’s profile.

  “Does,” Atlas shifts tone, “that offend you?”

  Kraz turns from his gaze and picks up pace. “I do not hear much loose language.”

  Forehead crumpled, Atlas grabs the railing, sucks staccato breaths, and thrusts himself upward. He watches stone’s black bulk and silver mortar blur gray and the solar streaks against his knees gleam on the east and fade on the west. The shaft spirals. Golden light trickles from star-shaped sunslots near the ceiling’s stepped underbelly. They climb; the sunslots rise; the closed doors of level XL grow and arrive and depart and shrink. The closer of two to the inner railing, Atlas’s left foot drags blisters swelling sensitivity, his right foot launching his ankles, knees, body to twist with the stairs’ curve.

  “Kraz,” Atlas gasps, “what labor does Corvus perform?”

  He looks up the stairs. “Various. Our limited population may receive any labor the other constellations do not sufficiently perform. Last labor cycle, we received many dried plant stalks for processing and bundle.”

  Kraz springs over the next level landing, step light, breath steady. Atlas stomps behind.

  “What did you s—” Atlas trembles, “see before the fire began?”

  Scratching his ear, Kraz sinks into darkness around the tower’s west. When Atlas’s pupils adjust, Kraz jogs six slabs ahead. Atlas strains his thighs and urges the pounding of feet, grinding of knees until two steps again part them. He plods for several quiet seconds, repeats his question in mind, and shapes his mouth to repeat it out loud. Kraz glances at him, expression unaffected. Atlas shuts his mouth.

  “We were fortunate,” Kraz says, “the Citadel guards were preparing the courtyard for accumulation. Otherwise, we would have never been able to travel through the watch’s entrance unnoticed.”

  Atlas well knows, having voiced concern before entry. He squints at level forty-one’s angular numerals above the doors and thinks on level one’s obsidian husk that reverberated with sterile vacancy. Even the uniform chambers, down to the last sash, were empty, the gauntlet depositories gaping open and bare.

  “It seems we’ve been fortunate in several instances for the last hours.”

  “Hours.” Kraz bursts an air pocket from his mouth. “Such a strange term. How long did you reside on Earth?”

  Atlas frowns. “Not long.”

  He gulps sips of oxygen burning his lungs. His head injury from perhaps two earthly days ago, before Pittsburgh’s City-County Building, throbs his vision and clenches his jaw anew. Ground’s shock shoots pain through his legs. He counts the hours on Sidera, hours without sitting, lying, sleeping, and exaggerates the numbers until mind fogs and forgets.

  His chest constricts. Brows tensed, he searches mind’s fog for chest’s aggravator and glimpses Gene. Her face and half-smile and irises’ glimmers that remain after it falls. He grimaces. Heat brews behind his eyes.

  “This Presage will express what exactly?” Kraz asks.

  Atlas’s vision blurs. “I don’t know.”

  Kraz raises an eyebrow. “And it will assist you how?”

  “I—it’s—I feel—” He huffs out. “I don’t know. The wind draws me toward it. I feel incomplete and I simply—I need to hold it.”

  “You lust after a document.”

  Atlas curls his fingers. “You’re half my age. You know little. Be quiet.”

  Kraz twitches. He mutters something. Atlas angles an ear toward him.

  “—it Sol-surface dry, sulfuric vanity—”

  Atlas contorts his lip. “What was that, Kraz?”

  Mouth curved upward, he twists to face Atlas. “I finished education with utmost praise.” Kraz trips on the next step, staggers, straightens, and smiles. “I know much, Atlas.”

  Atlas nods. Sight’s tunnel grays; his body sways from mind’s command. He blinks away vertigo, but the overgrowth of questions and expectations snarls around an inflexible desire for what treasure lies at tower’s top; and vertigo migrates to thoughts. He slaps his hand down on the railing, palm smearing sweat, and streaks, squeaks his grip upward. They slow. They walk the next seven levels. Rhythm and repetition dilute the following minutes into eternal dream.

  Atlas glances downward. The edges of helical slabs of descent into vapor weaving westward shadow seduce the illogic strung through his quaking bones; he looks down; so far down; and leans, as a snake to its charmer, back toward voluntary plunge 450 meters deep.

  “It is grand, is it not?” Kraz says.

  Atlas exhales a shake and looks forward. He leans into his step. “I’ve never before been in the Citadel.”

  They climb through eastern sunlight and the dirt on Kraz’s tunic glows beige. In a sunslot’s corner, Atlas glimpses blue sky far above Eos’s walls.

  “Perhaps,” he whispers, “The Presage will instruct me on how I can easily return to Earth.”

  “Perhaps.” Kraz motions ahead. “Level fifty. It is here.”

  Atlas groans and drags his aching foot up the last step, onto a landing. The stairs level. The shaft ends. A doorless doorway reaches three persons high and six meters wide and opens to a corridor wider, taller. Above the arched door frame, carved in stone, a thick, smooth “L” marks the uppermost floor.

  “This is the library?” Atlas asks.

  Kraz beams at Atlas. Then swings around and jogs through the doorway. Atlas trudges after.

  Their footsteps echo. Eastern sunslots stream breeze through the corridor’s upper half and pour sun upon a marble floor. The black of the stairwell disperses. Atlas and Kraz walk through a vaulted nave of sorts and lift their chins, open their mouths, to gaze at its glimmering walls.

  A million sapphires spot patterns and shapes upon walls painted gold. Fastened out of Sidera’s cavern veins, crystal forms the baseboards: translucent slabs that scoop from the floor into engraved columns of a blind arcade that upholds ceiling’s barrel vault, blending from indigo to sky blue on its rise. Atlas lifts his head. The ceiling swirls navy with cerulean and gleams thousands of clustered, strewn, random, methodical golden dots reflecting multicolored sparkles dancing as eyes dart. Each spurs five points.

  Atlas stares. His walk slows. His heart jolts and mind registers: he stands above all Sidera in the Administration’s highest.

  “Here.” Kraz gestures to the hall’s end.

  Atlas lowers his chin. Kraz stops before a golden door, Greek characters chiseled across its archway, and turns around.

  Atlas reaches him. “The Presage is in there?”

  “Among the most important of texts.” Kraz unlatches the door and grabs its handle. “Prepare yourself, apostate of Taurus.”

  He grimaces. Atlas eyes the door latch, a metal protrusion that flashes indiscernible unease, and his grimace softens and forehead wrinkles. Kraz yanks the door toward himself. Metallic hinges groan and darkness seeps from the doorway, across marble floor. Atlas steps forward. His eyes narrow and pupils dilate.

  Atlas says, “I’m unsure this is the correct—”

&n
bsp; He lurches. Kraz shoves Atlas’s back. Air in his lungs bursting out his mouth, Atlas staggers through the doorway, gasps, outstretches his arms in shadow. The door creaks and slams shut behind him.

  Vision vanishes. Breath rattles in his ears and dries his throat. Atlas spins around, glaring into, at, through naught, and gropes for the door that embraces its frame gapless and squeezes out the corridor’s every sun fleck. Invariable coolness answers his hands’ sweep. He scours the slab with his fingers. Then curls them into fists; he bangs on the door, claws for some handle, retracts, steps back, thrusts forward, slams his shoulder into solid steel disguised as gold.

  His world shakes, pops, but it’s not the door. He cringes. His pulse rumbles to a roar that sweats his skin cold and shrinks his insides gnarled.

  “Kraz,” Atlas yells.

  He bangs on the door. The charge in his veins pumps a metallic tinge over his tongue; this power drags his muscles down; this wind blows his gaunt bones of adolescence to stammer for standing. He sways. He props himself on the door and, chin to his chest, puffs shoulder breaths.

  “Kra—” He wheezes. “Kraz.”

  His body sinks and knees bend. Black presses on his shoulders, sides, lungs. He squeezes his eyes shut and scrapes memory for gilt plains. He sees instead stale, suffocating underground walls of Elisium’s dungeon and starless night and the ravens that croaked it. He sees constellation walls. His head lightens, slumps, and life expels from his mouth and unbridled energy spews from his skin and clouds kilograms about his shriveling.

  Darkness wraps him. He bursts open his eyes and is unsure he did. No shape, outline, gray, or spot give size to room or assurance of reality. He lifts his palms to his face. He doesn’t see them. Dropping his hands, Atlas clings to the door and stretches his eyelids to their brink.

  “After all this—”

  Atlas jolts. He whips his head around. A voice creeps from shadow.

  “—the following and following and blindly following, I’m surprised you don’t like blindness.”

  Atlas flattens his back against the door and glares outward as he pushes the tremors from his spine.