We glide through the city streets, the transport much more fluid than the steam-powered hovercrafts back home. As we wind through marketplaces, outdoor schools, and what appears to be a business district, I can’t concentrate due to the logjam of questions in my throat. Finally I lean forward and speak.
“The Fallen Five are a legend,” I say. “When those Recruits disappeared more than ten years ago, it was the only time the Trials were ever cancelled since their inception. We need to go back. I have to talk to them.”
I leave out the part about needing to ask them what the hell happened to the fifth Recruit, Orestes Goslin, that turned him into a crazed cannibal surviving in the wilderness until his gruesome murder.
“Don’t worry,” Cassius says. “You’ll get the opportunity to speak to them.”
I ignore him. “Why did those Recruits never go back home?” I ask Straton. “Did they choose to stay here by their own free will or are you keeping them here?”
Straton shakes his head. “Did they look like they are under any duress to you?”
I slump back into my seat in lieu of giving the obvious response. No. They looked to be in excellent health, and happy. Too happy. I can’t help but remember the disheveled condition of Orestes Goslin—Cypress’s brother—when we encountered him right before that harrowing escape from the Fleshers.
At one point during our tour, we enter a crowded square with a building that appears to be some sort of cathedral. Disembarking, we enter the building and stand in a cordoned-off area in the rear. Despite all the people here, everything is quiet and solemn. The participants bow their heads and kneel as a golden platter hovers back and forth, row after row, dispensing what look to be rectangular-shaped crackers. The worshipers chant their gratitude to an entity known as the Begetter.
“Consume the flesh of the Begetter and become one,” they recite in unison. Then they place the crackers into their mouths.
The whole ritual conjures images of the Priory, and I shift my weight from one leg to another.
Digory’s hand slips into mine again and our eyes meet. I lean into his shoulder, allowing the heat of his body to counter the weariness of my own. Whatever happens to us now, each moment we spend together is a gift I don’t intend to waste.
The ceremony ends with the gathering bursting into song, and then we’re escorted out and back onto the transport, moving on just as the crowd in the square begins to disperse.
I decide to take a different tact with Straton. “This is quite some eco set-up you have here,” I say. “How long have you been down here?”
Cassius answers instead, pursing his lips. “There’s a lot about the history of our world that you don’t know. That I myself didn’t know until I first encountered Sanctum.”
I’m intrigued. “All we’ve ever been told is that the Deity wiped away the old world in the Great Ash Wars millennia ago, because we as a species had become weak and sinful, too dependent on creature comforts and baseless desires. Or some such religious rubbish.” Memories of Prior Delvecchio’s sermons rush through me, Cassius and me sneaking out of the Priory as children to play in the fields behind the waste treatment facilities instead. A pang hits me as I look at the stranger that Cassius has become.
“On some basic level, that’s true, I suppose,” Cassius says now. “But that’s more the Establishment’s way of dealing with the masses, treating them like children.”
I fight the urge to sneer. “You act like you’re not a part of them.”
“I’m not.”
Our eyes hold for an uncomfortable moment before I finally break away.
Straton turns to Digory and me. “I think a visit to the archives is in order.”
Our vehicle leaves the broad daylight of one quadrant and enters the dark night of another. It’s like gliding along a vast dark sea. Up ahead, a sleek, bullet-shaped building lights the way like a lone beacon. The domed roof appears to be an observatory.
“What’s with the four regions divvied up by time of day?” I ask Straton.
“It’s a constant reminder of the four stages of humanity’s life cycle,” he replies. “The dawn of life during birth; the peak of day, signifying adulthood; the dusk of old age; and finally death, when we rejoin the Begetter.”
I pause to consider this. “So, in spite of all your reliance on science and tech, you still practice your own form of religion just like the Establishment does?”
“Except our religion is the one truth.” The vehicle glides to a halt. “Time for some answers to your questions,” Straton announces.
My suspicions are overridden by my thirst for knowledge.
Cassius steps out of the transport before me and turns to offer me a hand down. But I ignore it and instead turn to give Digory unneeded help, the two of us striding past Cassius to follow Straton and our Flesher escort into the domed building.
Once inside, we travel down a series of gleaming passages and enter an elevator, flanked by Fleshers standing sentinel. In spite of now having seen so many of them up close, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to their ghastly appearance.
We exit the elevator and climb a steep spiral staircase, passing through a doorway into the observatory.
The domed room is enormous. Square panels are irregularly spaced throughout the curving ceiling. Directly above the glass in its center, the starfield shines overhead, much like it did on that night so long ago when Digory and I sat overlooking the ocean on the tower during our Recruit training—a lifetime ago, it feels like.
Clathrate Life Extinction Event data selected, a computerized voice announces.
A low hum fills the room and the lights dim.
We’re no longer in the observatory. The room has been replaced by a blinding-white, snow-covered tundra stretching impossibly wide in every direction. Animal species I’ve never seen before populate the horizon, many with snow-white fur. Then the view plunges through the snow and into the sea.
“Buried deep in the seabeds are methane clathrate compounds,” Straton explains. “Here, in the Arctic Ocean, because of the lower temperatures and lid of permafrost preventing the escape of methane, clathrates existed in shallower waters.”
The images flicker to the surface, where massive ships are tearing their way through the ice. I flinch as chunks of simulated ice are flung in our direction. Soon a montage replaces the ships: massive machines digging through the snow, enormous pipes excavating the surface, destroying all that beauty.
Cassius shakes his head. “Unfortunately, our ancestors became obsessed with exploiting all our natural resources as energy became scarce. This led to rises in sea temperatures and levels, which triggered the sudden release of enormous amounts of methane from the compounds buried in the ice.”
I shake my head. “Isn’t methane a pretty powerful gas?”
Straton nods. “The effect was like firing a massive gun. Once the methane was released, it created a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, increasing temperatures even further—”
“And further destabilizing the methane clathrate in the ocean,” I say. The awe I’ve been feeling turns to horror.
“Yes,” Straton replies. “It was like a runaway train, warming the planet in less than a human generation.” He points to the images, shaky cam shots of dying animals, dead fish floating in the oceans. “Explosions of burning methane covered the planet in smoke, dust, and ash, firestorms that remained in the upper atmosphere for years. Large land masses flooded and created a global cooling that scrubbed out animal life both above and below the surface.