So they continue to gather, in all stages of plague and cure, some contemplative, some hungry, all following the same subterranean current. They fill buildings and swarm in streets, forming vast populations not far from Living enclaves, but not even the hungry ones hunt. They listen to radios and stare at televisions and gaze up at the clouds, waiting for a signal to emerge from all this noise.
We have been dreaming of this moment. The world is not a closed cycle, endlessly resetting to zero. There is accretion. With every rise and fall, there is increase. We slip one rung down the ladder and climb two back up, and after so many epochs, from unquestioned bestial cruelty to a clumsy but fervent reach for progress, we are surely approaching a plateau.
We are ten thousand generations of humans and millions more of simpler things, a vast history of lives and experiences condensed like an ocean of oil, growing deeper and more refined with each new moment of beauty.
We want to ignite. We want to be heat and light. After billions of years, we are running out of patience.
WE
THE WOUND is so small. Two arcs, barely an inch across. Reddened skin, mostly unbroken, more of a welt than a wound. Abram refuses to believe this is enough to bring the change. This insignificant nip from a child’s little cuspids? Four tiny holes in his wife’s soft skin, barely even bleeding? After all they’ve survived together, this can’t be what tears them apart.
He closes his eyes. His mind races backward, searching for answers in the moments that brought them here.
“You all know what’s happening,” Branch Manager Warden says to the assembly. “Axiom is a walking corpse and we’re all in its belly. We have to cut our way out before it digests us.”
A hundred feet below Pittsburgh’s humming HQ, thirty-six young men stand crammed into the subway staff office, gathered to plan a revolution. Abram hovers at the back, near the door, listening.
“I know a lot of you grew up in this company,” Warden says. He’s older than any of them and probably stronger, his hairy forearms corded with muscle, but his eyes are sunken and tired. “Some of you were even born in it, and maybe it’s hard to imagine a life outside. But if we’re going to do this thing, we all have to be committed, so let’s hear it, guys. What scares you the most?”
There’s an uneasy silence.
“I know nobody wants to answer a question like that but I phrased it that way on purpose. I don’t want any macho bullshit compromising this mission. They train you to pack down your feelings and seal yourselves off, but that’s how you build a bomb. If one of you goes off we all die. So come on now, let it all out there if you’re man enough. What scares you?”
The assembly squirms, struggling to grasp this inversion of bravado.
“Is it the combat?” Warden prompts. “Afraid of getting hurt? Maybe dying?”
Still nothing.
“Is it punishment? What they’ll do to us if we lose?”
Abram stiffens his chin. “No,” he says over all the heads in front of him. “It’s what happens to us if we win.”
A murmur of nervous agreement passes through the assembly.
Warden nods. “The instability. The unknown.”
“I have a family,” Abram says. “I know the company has problems or I wouldn’t be here right now, but Axiom puts food on my table. How do I tell my daughter there’s no dinner tonight because Daddy had to chase a dream?”
The wave of agreement intensifies and all eyes turn to Warden for his response.
“I hear you,” Warden says. “I’ve got kids too, and yeah, that’d be a very tough thing to tell them. But I can think of tougher things.”
Abram crosses his arms but says nothing.
“How do I tell my kids that food is all I can give them? How do I tell them they have to spend their lives working in the dark to keep a broken machine running, sweating and bleeding for insane men they’ll never see? Men who don’t give a shit what happens to us as long as nothing interrupts their party?” His eyes are bleary and haunted in their deep sockets, glistening with emotion. “Ask that question, Kelvin. How do you tell your daughter her future will be a nightmare because Daddy didn’t chase a dream?”
Abram’s mouth tightens and his hands clench into fists. He turns and marches out. He’s heard enough poetry from weepy idealists. No matter how unstable Axiom may have become, it has to be a safer bet than this.
So Abram returns to his post. He collects his weekly rations and smiles as his wife cooks them. When he receives a new assignment, he follows it, even though it doesn’t quite make sense. Even though it relocates them to an outpost that’s off the supply route—the route will connect soon, Management assures him. Even though the convoy lacks adequate defensive support—the territory has already been cleared, Management assures him. Even though Management doesn’t answer his calls on the day of departure and his stomach is boiling with unease, he puts on a smile for his family and he follows his instructions.
They find the outpost abandoned and crumbling. No water source. No perimeter fence. The first messenger they send to HQ returns with a brief reply: Out of office for holiday weekend! Will get back to you next week!
The second messenger never returns.
One by one, the promises collapse. No supplies. No reinforcements. And no, the territory is not clear.
These last six months pulse through Abram’s brain like poison, congealing into a conclusion he can’t bear to face, a guilt too heavy to carry all at once. So he focuses on the wound in front of him. He can’t even call it that; it’s a nick, a poke. Kenrei’s skin is creamy soft and Abram has left worse marks than this in their lovemaking. Perhaps it won’t be counted. Perhaps the judges of this hideous sport will look the other way and give them both another chance.
“It’s happening,” Kenrei says flatly.
“No it’s not,” Abram mumbles. “Your eyes are normal, I don’t think it…” He trails off. The trickle of blood is darkening. Purple. Blue. Black.
“Abram.”
Gently, lovingly, she touches the gun on his hip.
He shakes his head. “There has to be some other—”
“There isn’t.”
“If we can keep you safe for a while…maybe they’ll figure something out…maybe something will change.”
“Daddy?” Sprout calls from behind the bathroom door. “Can I come out now?”
Kenrei gives him a hard look. “I won’t let her remember me like that.” Her voice used to be timid, her gaze always downcast and demure. Where is she getting this sudden strength? “I’ll do it if you won’t…” She slides the gun out of his holster and places it in his palm, pressing her hands around it like a gift. “…but I want you to.”
The barrel is still hot. Abram squeezes it until his hand burns. Then one by one, his fingers slide down to the grip.
“She’s yours now,” his wife whispers as her brown eyes pulse gray. “Find her a better life than this.”
Abram stares down at Sprout’s head as she rests against his shoulder, twitching and whimpering in her sleep. Most children are eager to share their nightmares, but she’s always kept hers locked away, crawling into his bed without speaking a word of the visions that haunt her. Where did they come from? Did he put them there?
Her eyes open at the grinding squeal of the stadium gates. When they boom shut behind the SUV she jolts upright, peeling her sweaty cheek away from Abram’s arm.