Chapter 5 – Extinguishing the Light
“The crones were right. There’s treasure shimmering in the fatcats’ tower.” Crotch giggles the moment his wide feet thump onto the subterranean floor.
I hear Shiv’s wrist flick into his pocket, and I know he’s drawn his razor.
“Pray, Crotch, that they’re none of the crones’ monsters down here as well.” Shiv whispers.
“No one touch anything,” hisses Sweet Tea.
I shake my head. “I’m too scared to try.”
Shimmering pinpoints bath us in light. The illumination dispels enough of the darkness to reveal that the lights wink from small boxes stacked atop one another upon shelving that stretch into shadows no matter the direction we face. More than ever, I wish I had never heard a single one of those crones’ stories concerning the fatcats and their tower. I hate the crones for the fear they fed to my imagination. Every hair on the back of my neck stands upright. I sense a legion of eyes have fallen upon me.
“What are all the lights, Sweet Tea?” There’s fear in Shiv’s voice, and that makes him a very dangerous man with a razor at the ready.
“I don’t know.”
I shake my head. “Not good enough. You have your own hunches, and we’ve pushed Sparker’s machine far enough to deserve to hear them.”
“I think those lights might be all that remains of the fatcats. Those lights might be the fatcats dreaming in their machines,” Sweet Tea answers.
“I knew we’d find the angels of the fatcats in the tower.” Crotch’s excited voice rings down the corridor of blinking lights.
With a speed I never guessed she possessed, Sweet Tea’s hand slaps Crotch’s face with an echoing clap. The giant doesn’t flinch, but Crotch’s face nonetheless turns red and his lower lip trembles. Crotch squeezes his hands into fists. Sweet Tea has hurt the oaf’s feelings, has struck him the moment he thought the angels had revealed themselves to him. I fear Crotch is about to pick Sweet Tea up off the floor and squeeze her until her spine snaps.
Sweet Tea still shows no sign of fear. “Shut your hole, Crotch. We’re in the heart of the mystery now. We have a real chance of learning what truly happened to the fatcats. But keep your mouth shut. We can’t guess what might be lurking down here with all these lights.”
Shiv stretches a finger and almost touches one of the lights blinking upon a box. “Could I choke the spirit of this light with my finger?”
“I don’t know,” Sweet Tea responds, “but there’s no way to know how many lights are winking down here. I doubt we could count them all. There has to be a better way to wrench those fatcats out of their dreams.”
Our steps echo in the silence as we follow Sweet Tea through halls and corridors teaming with sparkling light. It’s a maze of twists and turns, with all the rows of boxes and lights looking no different than another. I doubt Sweet Tea has any idea where she’s headed. I don’t think even old Sparker has the smarts to guess at the dimensions of this world beneath the tower. But Sweet Tea’s got a better shot than the rest of us to find whatever might be hidden within this labyrinth. Sweet Tea’s the only one who might learn if those lights are truly the angels Crotch desires. She’s the only one who might find a way to reach out and rip those fatcats out of the dreams they’ve enjoyed for so long while the rest of us languished in the world’s remains.
Sweet Tea’s pace quickens. She must recognize something the rest of us cannot. We twist around another turn and suddenly find ourselves facing a giant, glowing screen.
“A television set,” Shiv smiles. “No one’s ever found a working television in all the waste. They really did glow like the crones claim in their stories.”
Crotch smiles. “The crones were always right.”
“They weren’t even close,” snorts Sweet Tea.
Sweet Tea sits behind a desk, and her fingers tap along a panel crowded with letters. I consider myself smarter than most in our hovel, but I can still hardly read. Thus I have no chance of understanding what all the numbers and words scrolling on that giant television might mean. Sweet Tea’s fingers dance madly. Occasionally, she pounds, frustrated, upon the desk, or flexes her hands after a particularly long turn hammering away at all the keys. The rest of us can only stand silently as we wait.
I know Sweet Tea’s found what she’s looking for when she laughs.
“They were always arrogant,” Sweet Tea smiles. “They didn’t install half of the security measures into their machines that Spark suspected they might. None of their doors are anything that Spark hasn’t taught me to break. They didn’t think anyone would be left in the waste with enough intelligence to reach them.”
Sweet Tea punches a last letter on the panel, and the lights that surround us begin to extinguish. The golden lights first turn dark, winking out in waves. The blue and the white motes follow, blanking out in pulses, until only a patch of light remains to keep the dark at bay for only a little longer.
“I won’t let you kill them!”
Crotch lunges at Sweet Tea a second before the last light goes out. I hear Sweet Tea shout, and then I hear Crotch curse and grunt. There’s the sound of a massive fist hammering into muscle, a sickening crack of breaking bone. My eyes fail to adjust to the darkness as I listen to Sweet Tea’s body slump upon the floor. I can’t move in the pitch black, but the shadows do not hamper Shiv. I’m hardly surprised when I hear Crotch emit a brief gasp of fear before that sound turns into a choking gurgle. I don’t require any light to know how Shiv’s razor has sliced through Crotch’s throat.
Shiv’s voice is in my ear. “Pushing that machine through the waste was worth it, Bug. We’ve finally killed those fatcats in their dreams.”
I reach out for Sweet Tea, and she grunts when my boot accidentally kicks her.
“Did we get them?” I ask.
Sweet Tea’s breath is ragged. “I think so.”
“We should never have brought Crotch with us.”
“We had to, Bug.” replies Sweet Tea.
“We would never have pushed that machine to the tower without his strength,” adds Shiv.
“How badly are you hurt?” I sigh.
“I’m afraid my ribs are broken real bad,” Sweat Tea growls in pain. “There’s blood in my mouth, and it’s getting harder to breath. I’m afraid my lung’s been punctured by a rib.”
“Shiv’s real good in the dark. We’ll get you out of here.”
“It’s fine if he doesn’t,” Sweat Tea answers. “We finally made the fatcats pay for what they did to our world. We made them pay for forcing the rest of us to pick up the pieces.”
Our victory proves short and false as the lights suddenly return in new waves of blue, gold and white. The room is again illuminated, and I see Crotch’s corpse resting facedown on the floor, the large pool of his blood staining the hard floor. I see the fear arrive on Sweet Tea’s face to compliment the pain that’s contorting her features, see her wide eyes drift back to that giant television screen, searching for meaning in all the cryptic letters and numbers as the lights of that underground world return to wink at us.
“What’s happening?” Shiv shouts.
Sweet Tea coughs, and blood falls upon her chin. “The fatcats were never in danger. No matter what we did. They’re not here below their tower. These blinking lights are only duplicates of their souls.”
“How can that be?” I ask.
Sweet Tea’s eyes close. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you understand. They’re far above us. Sparker was only half right. He knew the tower marked where we would find the fatcats. But he was wrong to think they slept below the ground. The fatcats dream above us. They sleep in that blue star that winks over our heads.”
Anger fills Shiv’s face. “That’s impossible.”
“Maybe, but it’s true,” Sweat Tea struggles to respond.
Panic overwhelms me, and I abandon Sweet Tea to the dark to follow Shiv as he sprints through the halls of blinking lights to find that hole leading back to
the surface. Somehow, Shiv finds it without any problem, and he’s well up the rope ladder before I reach it.
I’m only starting to climb the rope when I hear a buzzing filling the sky. I’ve never seen a buzzkill, but I’m certain I’m about to see one of the machines that drove my great-grandparents beneath the ground. I struggle onto the surface and see a pair of dark, winged shapes flying low on the early morning’s brightening sky. Shiv screams at those approaching machines, and he raises his blade against them. The shapes buzz for a few moments more, and then there is a hot, blinding beam of light. When I open my eyes, Shiv is simply gone.
I know that the fatcats are somehow guiding those buzzkills in their blue star winking directly overhead. I know there’s no reason to run. There’s no shelter that will hide me from the fatcats’ reach. I only stand and listen to the coming buzz, knowing that my death will be nothing more than temporary entertainment for those fatcats laughing down at my rage.
In the end I know that none of us ever had a chance of disturbing those fatcats in their sleep.