CHAPTER 16
Here.
There had never been any deep thinking about "Here."
What could Deacon mean?
Both had that thought. Each handling it his own way.
Without much comment, they ate dinner and went right to sleep.
Mark was up, fully dressed, a smile on his face. What? wakens Zav.
When Mark notices him stirring, "Hey! Morning." Said in that way Zav knew that Mark wanted to say something more.
He assembles his body, seeing himself linking and locking parts, like a kid’s toy.
"Okay." After the toilet, a shower, standing before the closet: one side his, with two box shelves; the other, the same. Only khakis - so he just begins, robotically.
"Okay?" Mark’s "Go!" signal.
It was outlandish and ridiculous and foolish - not like Mark at all! - "Quite the imagination," ending their breakfast; rising from the table; seeing no one else but the server: this eating room just two steps down from their own - all that was included on their first day "tour."
"It has to be!" Enthusiasm. "Evil, get it? - deeply down. Like Deacon was getting at - what would you do to a girl who wouldn’t give back?" Something obviously Mark had considered, but totally a foreign notion to Zav.
"Walk away from her?" timid; faltering.
"No!" with a kick-punch of the air Zav had never seen Mark do - but which Mark had done often with Cilla. "No! You’d kill her!"
No words. No images. Killing was something that even the reports from Africa did not discuss. Heroes only captured Enemies, never killed. Killing was something which only happened by accident. Theirs was a time when even animals were not killed. Animals-as-food a concept inconceivable. So, Zav just couldn’t.
Deacon said: "For most of human time, animals were killed. Hunted and killed. Domesticated and butchered." Flickers: Zav cries: tears silent: when he first sees these words come alive in the dying eyes of slaughterhouse cattle. Equally, Mark’s eyes blinked and blinked; rapidly.
Even with his words, Mark couldn’t have meant what Deacon had not yet revealed, "Kill her," and he whips out his cock and strokes it, "Shoot her!" Zav sees the sperm bullets - but not since before Thirteen had he - and never would he have thought, but Yes! in his mind’s eye he grasps the import of Mark’s action.
Deacon’s discourse made Mark look like a genius. "What did we Ascend from? Leave behind?" Again, his questions are all rhetorically toned. "If we have Ascended, there must be something Descended. That is Africa. In that way, Africa is us. A balance. Actually, a mystery which is still unfolding." Turns on the lumen: "You’ve seen this a hundred times, if not more, on Gathering Day." It was a diagrammatic rendering of the Earth on its axis, rotating. "As you know longitude and latitude. As you know up and down. As you now the four directions. So, there is the Ascension and the Descension." With a clap: a visual neither had ever seen. "Notice, this is two vases next to each other." Teasing, "Or is it?"
"Two people kissing." Zav right on the button.
Mark: "Where?"
It was Mark’s faith: his belief in himself: in columnarity, which was tested, and which grew. He had to struggle and labor to get everything into his columns: neat fit. Though he could do this, it still didn’t seem real. "Not so much a balance as a negation," this phrase of Deacon really threw him.
Zav pushed back into his chair: fully relaxed.
"Gathering Day catechism, again. You learned that The Ascendancy was a shift in time and space, right? But did you ever really think about that?" Cup. Half. Empty:Zav. Why the fuck think about that?: Mark.
"This we know. This has been revealed. There are many mansions in Our Parents house. An ancient quote; modified. Useful. We are on an upper floor. Below us is Africa. But it is us. Just a different time and space."
Unlike the day before, a server entered with coffee and cake. They broke.
("Just?!")
"Lumen off!": darkness fades to softness of dusk: Deacon presses an unseen button: i-head-sets flipped up and out from the middle of the table. Both boys were mildly amused: technological sleight-of-hand!- but restrained themselves. It was that trick, not the i-head-sets, for such they had worn, often, in Advanced Courting.
"This is the vision," and they were off in a flash: an imaginal flash. I-head-sets locking on as if body parts: an immersion virtual reality toy they had often used as kids, now a something more: it drove them, they not it.
:vision - a man in flowing robes - Deacon? - back always to them, voice thrown: deep baritone, arms sweeping, hands pointing ... "The Descended are Evil. Their hearts are Evil. Their souls are Evil. They have not Ascended. More, they do not seek to Ascend!" Pictures, images, flicks: all kinds of holographs flashing, flying, flitting, fulminating ... "Watch!" And a man and a woman are in bed. They begin to caress and kiss. They move about each other’s body as Mark and Zav had been taught in The Course. But there is something different, odd, peculiar. This slowly dawning. It is their eyes! Eyes which are not embracing the others. Eyes which stare off, so far off, that it is crystal clear that they are seeing only themselves. Not worship! This an alien practice; exotic. But the boys are immediately enlightened, come to fully feel this Evil, not simply know the words, but become the lovers. Scenes again. Chasing and catching: then emptying. Zav clearly feels the emptying. Heart-thump. Watching the seed flow within but not really ever leave the cock. He observes it; is drenched by the restraining sensation of it! ("No sex even while having sex.")
Immersion: Peering through scene after scene, of lovers - no! of cocks and cunts, so it comes like a shout of discovery: Mark’s ears burn: cocks and cunts and the transformation into guns and violence, in the withdrawal and the glare of hatred, the pounding of a fist into her face, the body whipping by gun-barrel, the murderous glee and the firking of the virgin corpse ... rapid and fierce and expanding in tempo and depth of knowledge into "War!" and grasping it as linked: "War of the Sexes!" and "Sex as War!" ... historical charting: names given to times and periods, "Atomic Age," "Roman Civilization," "Moon Jubilee," "Martian Interlude" ... coming full speed to dead stop to a quiet moment: in a plush garden, a man and a woman, again. But with care. Love. That kind of love which is what Mark and Zav have been taught. Caressing. Worshipping. Yes, each boy relaxes. Sighs. Worshipping. She at his Pillar. Flowering it with her kisses. Praising it with her fingers. The boys are hard. They are this Pillar. She bringing the Pillar to the softness of her downy Grove ... But the man jerks away from the woman - not violently, but imaginally, the boys can see it clearly; sharp: know that she can too - jerks and falls upon the ground, fully away from her: there stroking himself - Worshipping himself! - an act so desperate and forlorn that both boys are brought to tear’s edge: slip. precipitously plunge! frightfilled ... he, worshipping himself, playing himself, drawing his seed, splattering it into his hands - most amazingly: the Moment shattering vision - shaping from his seed another woman: not her but like her: sister face, sister soul, but it is clear, it is vision, it is seen: sister sees only him!
Mercifully, Deacon abruptly halts and ends the session. "Resume at Three." So, they have an hour to nap.
Each naps, wordless.
Each naps, dreamless.
"Why is this vision Evil?" A true question. He waits for their answers.
Mark: blinded to the source of his own insight: Steady. Confident. - "As you said. Balance. If this man could create a woman who only worships him, then how could she ever learn to become a woman? She’d just think she’s him. There’d be only men."
Zav: almost smug that he understands - "It’s not Evil. I mean, not only just Evil. Nothing can stand by itself, so it must’ve seen itself as Good?" ending not as he anticipated: as a question.
Mark frowns a Huh?
"Let me ask you - be on guard here! - from how you’re both seeing: What is Evil about The Ascension?"
An impossible thought. No seed from which to spring. No decaying bloom from which to fall.
Deacon waits an excruciatin
g five minutes.
"You’re not half as smart nor as sixth as clever as you think?" - each hears directed at himself.
"But that’s why you’ve been Elected."
Elected? each was about to say; what does that word mean to Deacon?
"Yes," and he is full attention upon them; seated at the table for the first time; lumen off - "Elected. Haven’t you wondered where your fellows are?" Just at the asking of that question does the unhailed question dawn on the boys. "At first, we were going to send the whole graduating class. Literally thousands, hundreds of thousands. We thought we should flood the time, fill up the space. That with so many, that, mathematically, one or two would discover the answer."
"But ...?" expressed on their faces, not in tongue.
A shift in the topic: "Do you think you met just by accident?"
"Sure," after a moment’s pause.
"Sure," right on its back: Zav.
Deacon laughs: harshly, almost as long as a howl. The boys flinch: laughing at them. They feel down; badly down.
Deacon taps the table with his fingers as his laughter dies. Continues tapping as his mind is, clearly, elsewhere. Where?
"There is this notion of Sin. Of an Original Sin. I want you to really think this one through. That there was or is something so Evil in us that it defines our being. Are you following me?"
A look at Zav. At Mark. "Of course not!" muted sigh.
"You saw the Dumb story. It’s called Adam and Eve. It’s why it’s from the Mormons that we Ascended. You’ll learn this," pausing as if he had struck them, pausing to be careful with what he must now do: "Tonight as you sleep you will dream. Dream deeply. Trust me. In the morning you will know. As much as you need to know. But I want to say - I’m sure the General said this too - that I’m proud to have met you. Privileged to have instructed you." He finished and then stood up. Both boys stood up, also.
"One last thing," as he picks out two envelopes, "Commit this to memory. Like Gathering Day catechism."
He leaves the room: quietly and softly - balance to his entrance.
Zav and Mark reflexively open their envelopes: read.
Original Sin - "We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression."
Given all that had been said: all so strange and weird and unsettling: as each reads, each thought he understood. Shrewdly, each memorizes the sentence, exactly - Just in case!
:tonightasyousleepyouwilldreamdreamdeeply: