*
‘What did they want you for?’ she asked. The wait had obviously made her a little frustrated.
‘It doesn’t really matter right now.’ She frowned at him. ‘Do you remember when you asked me before if I loved you or not, and I hesitated a little.’ She nodded unsure of what he was saying. ‘I hesitated because that was the biggest question of my entire life. I felt something so strongly that I wasn’t really sure if I felt anything at all. I love you Kalen. I want you to know that no matter what may happen, no matter what situation we may find ourselves in, I love you. I will never leave you, for who else could fill the hole that you would leave in my heart.’
Her eyes welled up, those beautiful eyes. She said nothing for there was nothing to say. Instead she threw herself around him and squeezed him tightly. He grasped his arms around her and squeezed her back. They seemed to want to join together forever. Their oneness made them stronger. It seemed as though each of them wanted to squeeze each other hard enough that they would sink within one another. That they would combine forever in a perfect union. But Salem knew that there was one last thing that he had to say. He did not let go of her, but he pushed his head and chest away from her a little, just enough to see her face.
‘Kalen, my beautiful Kalen,’ he began stroking her hair. ‘The captain is going to make an announcement in a moment. What she is going to say is going to distress you quite a lot. But I want you to know that I am here for you, and will be until time itself falters and dies.’
She didn’t even hesitate in answering, ‘I could see it from the moment that you came back in. I knew somehow when you staggered through that door. Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes my love. Something terrible has happened.’
‘The world will never be the same, will it?’
‘No my love. The world will never be the same.’
‘Is it okay, will it all be ok?’
‘Yes my love. We have each other.’
They would make a life together, he just knew it. He would hold her hand at the altar as they took their vows. He would look into her eyes from across the table thanking whatever forces had brought them together. He would watch her as she read a book. He would be the father of her children, and he would love every one. He knew that it would all be okay. He knew that no matter what happened he would live forever happy. It was no lie what he had told her, and so her told her again so that she knew that he meant it.
‘Yes my love. We have each other.’
Broken Arrows
There they rose, all of them. A hundred great towers, works of art every one. Perhaps that was what they were, works of art. At least this was real. The wind still bit the skin. The air tasted just a little polluted, not senseless and sterile. The sun still burnt the body. The rain still lashed itself down, tearing at hair. This was the real world. This is what it meant to live, to really exist. Here was the world. It stretched out before her, never ending. Nothing here could ever end. Life was eternal.
She was crying. Her hands shook. When she walked out to the shop people looked at her and saw her sadness, but they did not know why. If they had ever bothered to ask, if they had made it through her door they would have known why. If you were to walk inside her home the first thing that you would notice was her son.
Wires, he was made of wire. No, not artificial, but artificially held together. She had lost him to those wires three years ago. At five he barely looked like a human. He was nothing but bone. If one, pushing aside the door, should see him there, they would remark that he was ill, that these machines were his life support. But the case is never as simple as that. Young Iago was not ill. He had not been ill at two when he was hooked up. It was his mother who was ill.
She turned a little, one eye catching a glimpse of him, and shuddered. She had tried to pull the wires before, but they had stopped her. They thought that they knew best. But she was his mother, she knew best. She had known best before he was even strapped into that abominable creation. But she knew all the same that it was her fault, and her burden to bare.
When Iago was two months old she realised that she was ill. Too ill to care for him at any rate. She knew she would die before his first birthday. Her fear of doctors had given the disease too long to spread. It had been too long. She would die.
Then the letter came. Ascension hailed and she answered the call. Hurray, the cavalry were coming, her life would be saved. With their help she could manage the disease. Her future seemed secure. But then it got worse. Iago had barely blown out his two candles before they came for her. Of course she had known that it would become more aggressive. What she did not know was what to do with Iago.
But again Ascension answered her prayers. It was a cure. But it would incapacitate her for months at a time. Each treatment would leave her unable to care for her child for months. What would she do? Her child was too young to take care of himself.
There again came the answer. A reality beyond our own, and it was virtual. Iago would be connected, he would be plugged in, the computers would take care of him. The advantages were apparent. Faster learning, a tailored environment, and most of all it was a hundred percent safe. She was one of the lucky ones, she was getting both of the treatments before anybody else. For once she believed her luck had finally changed.
At least the treatment worked. Within two years she was disease free. She was free, her life would be complete. But when she recovered and unplugged Iago he became listless and would not move. Try as she might she couldn’t get him to do anything. Only the doctors knew what the problem was.
Like so much on Ascension everything became an addiction. Without the stimulation of the artificial environment that he had lived in for so long he would die. He had become an addict and there was no recovery from that.
It wasn’t as though anyone on Ascension cared right now. The United World had gone, there were riots everywhere, power was limited. Everything was being destroyed. She wondered where her future lay. She hated the fact that the only future was here, on this monstrous station. The society that had murdered her child was the only thing left of the old world that had survived.
Some of her friends, who had only the faintest glimmer of what was going one, wondered if she might return to what was left of the United World. But they all knew that that was impossible. The news reports came in daily. Earth was a wasteland and all the technology that could fix the problem was being used for territorial gain. The civilisation that had almost forgotten the words for murder, starvation and genocide, now found the three returning with a new meaning.
Besides, Ascension was not a place you could leave under any circumstances. Once it had you in its thrall there was no escape. Some remained here because they were given a power beyond measure, others because of the technological supremacy of the station, and she remained here because her child could not be moved. Where was the point in it all? What was the point in anything right now? Even knowing this she knew that deep down she would never leave. If Ascension seemed to be hell then she did not even know how to describe what was left of Earth. It was now a place so desolate even the devil had deserted it.
What she wanted most was a companion. Someone who could tell her when it was all going to end. Somebody who could look after her child whilst she could get on with the business of living.
She knew there was no such person. Ascension was a society of junkies, (immensely intelligent addicts, but junkies all the same).
One day she had gone out. She had walked down the Grand Concourse and watched all the busy people. She had forgotten that her child was propped up in a chair alone. She took a water taxi over to the Commercial District. From the top of the tallest building in their beautiful internal city of water she had watched the suns track their way across the sky. When she had tired of the view she had taken the rail network to the docks and watched the stars. A credit had bought her a small Light-craft. She had flow
n over the oasis of the collection lights of the Blue Clarity generators and held her hands out to the stars. She laughed as the light washed over them, she thought she could even see home.
For hours that light had entertained her. But the thoughts of her son returned. She noticed the gaps between the stars, and soon they grew. Soon she realised that there were more gaps than stars. More empty holes that brilliant light. More desperation than happiness.
Iago stirred in his half-sleep. She wondered what it was the computer was displaying. A flick of her wrist conjured up a holo. The feed told her all that she needed to know. He was living in the world of his favourite cartoons. She hated it. All of those friendly images had been images of doom for her child. They had drawn him in and they had taken him away from her. Thank god she had never bothered with getting any further genetic upgrades, if she had she might have ended up like everyone else on the streets. In a world where you can buy dreams, what was the point in reality?
There was a presence behind her. ‘What?’ she asked the machine. The golden woman looked at her, pixels flickering in the air currents.
‘Governor Carvelle demands an immediate audience with you.’
‘Do I have a choice?’ she replied. The machine beamed at her question.
‘Carvelle wishes to inform you that this audience is not mandatory in any way. But if you do not attend you may miss out on an opportunity to help out your child.’ The bastard and his bloody machines. Of course she had no choice.
‘When?’ She dropped her pad onto the kitchen table.
‘Immediately.’ The machine disappeared. The courtesy it was supposed to possess leaving it completely. It had performed its job, there was no point in further civilities. Sometime she thought that they were too smart. Of course some of them really were that smart, but at least Ascension had not gone so far as to stop regulating them. That would have been a true disaster.
She looked down at what she was wearing, Carvelle was always easier to persuade if the person that he was talking to was sexually attractive, or so she had been told. Screw him, she thought as she struggled with her most revealing gown.
A quick couple of seconds with a Personal Stylist, not a person, but a kind of chair, and she looked a little less bedraggled. At points she wondered why it was that she often looked so damp, without ever being near water. Even though she could see the Commercial District from her windows she was too far away for the water to reach her. Besides her clothes were supposed to be self cleaning. Regardless it didn’t really matter. If Carvelle could help her child, she needed no more reason to delay.
She was about to leave the house when she spotted Iago groaning out of the corner of her eye. The lack of exercise and solid foods put him in a terrible amount of pain. She walked over to him, bent over, and kissed him on the head. She knew that if she moved him from the machine he might die. She also knew that he could not hear here, much less feel her. Despite this she whispered to him anyway, ‘I won’t be gone long my love.’
The grand walkways were busy. The people in their many millions were leaving their homes and places of work to get their fix from the angels. There was such a frothing agitation in the air. It made her scared to walking among their terrifying bodies. All were muttering, none listening to the other. Each person seemed to live their life little differently from her son. They lived in a society that lived apart from itself. Each single person divorced from the other. Maria had told her that she hadn’t spoken to her husband in years, maybe that was just them. She believed that families must talk to one another. It was surely human nature. Ascension made her question everything. Carvelle would have said that that was the point, that human nature needed to be challenged in order to evolve. But she wasn’t sure. Something seemed to be best left unchanged.
The station was as busy as ever, she could not afford her own vehicle and the Ascension State wasn’t about to give her one. She was an embarrassment, a failure in the eyes of evolution, and so their charity would only extend so far.
She knew the people around her looked down on her. She was one of the eccentrics; she didn’t have any implants for harvesting energy from the angels, she never casted, she never used a neural implant. All this they could see, just by looking at her. All that they saw was a series of computer generated statistics, never her. Maybe if they could see her for what she was they would have helped. But they hadn’t and they didn’t. So that was that, she was all alone and forever undone. Her friends didn’t have the time for her anymore. She knew she couldn’t be the only one who was alone. But there she was, amongst the hordes of people, and not a single eye glanced down at her.
The train arrived. It hovered over nothing at all and she almost missed seeing a rail. Sure, it had been antiquated back on Earth, but then again, Earth was antiquated. ‘Embark citizens. Welcome to the Administration line. This line terminates at Ascension Centre for Administration. Casting is prohibited on this carriage.’
She was going to hear that voice the entire way there. If only Carvelle had offered her Mass Transport, she could have been there already. She could have presented her case. He could have turned her down. She could have returned. She could have settle back into her own personal hell and leave theirs well alone.
The terminus came and went. Officials in uniform jostled with her as they went about with their work. They all looked so professional. She almost believed that there were people managing this station. At times it seemed as the though the thing could run itself, that no human presence was ever really require. None of the officials ever seemed addicted, she supposed that Carvelle must rational the supply of the Promethean Layer to those critical to Ascension’s operation. He must have known that the Promethean Layer was a dangerous thing. He would certainly be mad it he didn’t.
The doors opened. Carvelle rose. He looked drunk as usual, though it wasn’t so long ago that she could remember him seeming like the very embodiment of vitality. Perhaps it was the news feeds, he always seemed to have a love of the airbrush.
‘How are you? Has your disease returned?’ He motioned for her to sit, she accepted without hesitation. There was something powerful about Carvelle. He was a man who could make anybody do what he wanted them to. She didn’t resist him for long. She might not have been ill, but she certainly didn’t feel well.
‘I am better,’ she replied shortly. Carvelle’s face glistened with a sort of energetic perspiration.
‘I understand that you have been making several complaints to the major media establishments about my role in your son’s condition. I have witness reports from sources that claim to be your friends which state that you are behaving in a very negative fashion towards Project Ascension. Is this true?’ His eyes were wild, but he barely frightened her. She could suffer through anything that he had left to deal. Life had nothing left for her anymore. Without her son, what could he really do?
‘All of it is true,’ she leaned forward on her seat daring him to do something. She wanted to make him feel angry. Just a portion of the anger that she had been forced to go through would have been enough. Instead he smiled.
‘I understand,’ he stood up and moved gracefully over towards the blackened window. She realised just how big he was, that it wasn’t just an illusion. His hand waved at the window and it became transparent. A view of the huge cityscape of the Centre for Administration came into view. She could see the holo-banners, the light-craft, everything.
‘Your son’s condition is regrettable,’ he continued. ‘Every child on Ascension is a gift. It breaks my heart to see yours in such a state. Here on Ascension we help everyone, we give the gift of the Promethean Layer to everyone, we extend our hearts everywhere.’ He turned back towards her and straightened himself. His face softened. ‘What happened to your child was indeed regrettable. It was a mistake, a mistake we must never repeat.’ Then his face became hard. ‘But sometimes in the course of evolution we make mistakes. It can sometimes be a necessary evil. Because your son reacted the
way that he did to Immersive Virtual no other child will ever be exposed to it. Perhaps that is of little comfort?’
She stood still. She had expected many things from him. She had expected rage. She had expected exile. But she had not expected compassion. She replied to his question, ‘no, it is of little comfort.’
He smiled again and raised his voice to an almost unnatural height for ordinary conversation. ‘I understand, believe me I do. But look at what we have built here,’ he swung his hand about the vista behind him. ‘Look at what we have achieved. We have built the perfect world. Here we are all part of perfection. Your child might be ill today, but tomorrow, who knows? This is the future, there is nowhere else left to go. If you place your faith in us, we will place our faith in you.’ He did not wait for a reply. He merely motioned for her to leave. She was a little in awe of his countenance. There were few people like him in existence. His voice could make you do or believe anything it wanted you to. And so, she got up and left.
Back on the train, crammed in with the horde of commuters, she realised what had happened. She had fallen for PR. It was just that, plain and simple. There was no real emotion in that man’s eyes. She had dreamt it. It had all been an illusion. But, in spite of it all, she knew it to be true. She hated the reality, but she had to accept it. There was nowhere else to go. And if there was anywhere in the entire universe where her son had the best chance of survival, it was here. She almost smiled at the irony. Her own personal hell could be her own son’s heaven. She wondered what it was that fate would throw at her next. She hoped that it wasn’t something sharp.
The grand concourse of the Commercial District was ahead of her. It was so wide, it was so luscious. She smelled the flowers that grew everywhere in this part of Ascension and dreamt of Earth. She dreamt of her healthy child, when he played, and he laughed, and he loved. Everything seemed different. There was no longer any grey. The artificial rain had disappeared, the grey was gone. Replacing them both were the brilliant suns. The world was alight with life. She wished that she could kneel down there, in amongst all this beauty, and let the world wash into her. She wished for its vitality. She wished for anything, anything but this.
Here was the world. It was here for all to see. One day, she knew it, her son would see this. He would breathe the real air, smell the real flowers, and dance and play in the real world.
It was here, during this moment of perfect contemplation that one her friends came up to her. She was smiling. Her name was Sam.
‘Hello citizen,’ she beamed. ‘You do recognise me don’t you?’
‘Of course Sam. It’s good to see you.’ She tried to put on a voice that did not reflect the misery she felt.
‘Today is going to be a great day dear, don’t you worry about that.’ Sam’s face positively glistened, it was awe inspiring. But she didn’t know why. ‘Ascension never abandons its citizens. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes. At least I hope so.’
‘Well now you don’t need to hope. We are coming to bring you Ascension.’ She looked up. A crowd of people had gathered around you. Some of them spoke sweet words, ‘don’t worry,’ or the inspirational, ‘we’re here to help. Today is going to be a great day!’
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Carvelle has spoken for you, you are our citizen in need, and we are here to help.’
The group drew around her. Sam held her left hand, a stranger held the other. They walked her forwards in a circle. The suns played across all of their faces.
The group walked into her apartment building. Hundreds of people crowded the corridors, all were chanting for her success. The lift was a similar situation.
Why should this be happening, she asked herself? Despite herself she smiled. They reached her apartment and Sam opened the door. She saw a sight that made her cry. Could it be real? She held out her hands. She had to touch it. There he was. He was on the floor playing.
She dropped to the floor, hands outstretched. He caught sight of her and wandered over to her. His beautiful face was smiling. She felt him touch her. She drew him close. She was laughing like a mad person. It could not be true. It wasn’t possible.
A shadow cast itself over the two. She looked up and found Carvelle looking down upon her with fatherly perfection. ‘Ascension is a family,’ he said. ‘You, my sister, are part of our family. With love and with charity, we found you a cure.’ He placed his hand upon her head. ‘You need no longer doubt your faith, there is no longer any question.’ He smiled a wonderful smile. She fell in love with that smile. ‘Ascension awaits you.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you. Oh dear lord, thank you.’