Arcene: The Island (16 page)

"Thank you for your honesty, Talia. I do not encourage superstition, so I know that you are reluctant to speak of such things, but this is no mere coincidence. This goes beyond that, this is not a normal day. It's not only that we have a guest, it is these numbers, your birthday. Your one hundred and eleventh. But there is more."

"More? You mean the number holds even more power?"
What can it be? Why is this all so linked up? It's just coincidence, isn't it?

"Much more. And I must say I'm surprised I didn't pay more attention to your birthday, but there are always birthdays, almost every day. It's easy to lose track. If we celebrated everyone's then we would get nothing done. But this day? Oh, it will be glorious, Talia. You know the stories, of the previous guests?" Talia nodded, she knew. "Good, then you know it will be for you to decide? You found the girl. It is a girl, is it not?"

"Yes, a girl. Well, a young woman I suppose, but I didn't look at her closely. I was, um, rather shocked."

"We will find out who she is soon enough. But it is your find, your decision, as is the way of things. And on your birthday too, how exciting."

"But what should I decide?"

"Talia, it is not for me to say. We have had no guests for so long, but the tradition remains. Everyone knows of it, so it is for you to think about. Be sure to make the right decision. This is a day people will not easily forget, and it could seal your fate, your future, and how others see you for eternity." Vorce, turned and looked back at their home.

His face was a mask, told her nothing, but Talia knew the responsibility was hers, as it had been for those before her. This was no easy decision to make. How much time did she have? Who was she kidding, she knew already, didn't she? Her name would never be forgotten now. All she had to do was pick who else would accompany her. Would they want to? Yes, they would, of course.

Talia focused, her mind had wandered away from Vorce. He was gone, already moving toward the entrance to the interior. He would wait there, wait for the guest to be brought to him.

A small part of Talia hoped the girl was good, although it would be a first. People from the mainland were always bad, rude, and greedy individuals who were Judged accordingly. Still, even though she knew her verdict was a foregone conclusion, Talia still hoped that maybe, just maybe, things had changed and she could just get on with cleaning the damn Island.

Well, I guess I better go and get her then.

Rather Surprising

Ever since an early age, Vorce was obsessed with forts. He'd build hideaways out of bedding, getting scolded repeatedly by his mother for stealing all the sheets. As he got older, he progressed to nailing planks in trees, then learned how to successfully construct a proper, if somewhat unconventional tree house by himself when only thirteen.

When he looked back on those times, centuries ago, he couldn't help but smile at the young boy and his rather ill-advised constructions. He'd fallen off, or through, his numerous attempts at building something incredible and special, never able to find enough wood to complete projects that became ever more epic as he aged. But he learned a lot and put his obsession to good use. He became an architect.

He was paid by rich people to design luxurious and always somewhat quirky homes. But it was never satisfying, it was all so mundane. Vorce set his sights higher, and by his mid-twenties he took his knowledge of what the rich wanted and became rich himself.

Rather than get paid to design and oversee the construction of houses, he invested every single penny he had, and a very hefty loan from the bank, into building exactly what he knew those with money to burn wanted.

He built a state-of-the-art mega-home, with every imaginable technological device he could install. It had more rooms than was sensible, was lavish, opulent on a royal scale, but always with an eye on the budget. He had a lot of contacts and knew which materials looked impressive while still costing relatively little. It meant he built something incredible for a price nobody would believe if he told them, which he didn't, and it sold the day he put it up for private sale, going through his list of potential clients and not getting far before it was snapped up.

The process was repeated. Soon, there were multiple projects going on at once, then a business, then a worldwide Corporation. He woke up one day, five years later, and realized he was not only rich, he was disgustingly wealthy. He had more money than he could possibly spend on anything he wanted.

Vorce now lived in a home that was too large, with acres of grounds he couldn't hope to care for without a vast team. He owned a business that was so successful it was like printing money, and he found himself one of the richest men in the country. Nobody had ever heard of him.

One thing Vorce never understood was why nobody had caught on to what he did. Why had nobody else thought to pander to the uber-rich, build exactly what it was they wanted and turn an appropriately large profit? Laziness? Ineptitude, or something else? He never could figure it out. The truth was, he had a special insight into what the people he dealt with truly desired.

They wanted to show off their wealth, be as current as possible with trends in architecture, technology, and the luxuries they took for granted, but he brought something else to the equation: a nameless feeling to his buildings, a sense of place. And however vast or over the top and often seemingly ridiculous they appeared to him, he built them so when you walked through the front door you felt instantly at ease. Home. No easy thing to manage, and he was unsure how he did it, but each of the buildings he designed, constructed then profited from had that magical element — he had a waiting list years in advance just for the opportunity for clients to hand him massive sums of money he no longer knew what to do with.

The Lethargy changed everything. As with everyone else in the world, it didn't happen overnight, but the realization dawned that things were no longer as they had been, as they should be. Something was wrong with the planet.

There was a sickness, and Vorce decided he better act, and quick, before everything he had worked for was wiped out. He was under no illusions about wealth. It was transitory, and no matter how rich you became it was all meaningless — virtual numbers that could be obliterated. All it took was for the banking system to collapse, a series of errors by a human, incarceration, madness, or, and this was what he suspected was happening, people would just suddenly realize that it was all pointless and money wasn't an actual, real, genuine thing. It was just made up, only working because of the unwritten rule that everyone obeyed — they agreed to abide by the system.

They used money to get ahead in life as they had thought of no other way. Well, what if they changed their minds, or didn't care? What if values changed? He would have no money then, or he would, but it wouldn't mean anything.

The thought nagged at him for months. Something was definitely wrong. Clients handed over their money, seemingly no longer caring about it. The edge was gone, the drive and ambition. Then people became harder to get hold of. Calls weren't returned, or conversations were stilted and people left in a daze, agreeing to anything he said without taking any notice. He could have given them nothing, asked for anything. Nobody cared.

Vorce took action.

As he grew into a man, so his fascination with forts had grown, taking on a distinct type of obsession. He became fascinated by constructions off the mainland. Buildings on desolate islands, incredible structures atop tiny rocks jutting from the water in the middle of nowhere. The quirkiest and most ingenious structures humans managed to build, these were what held his fascination, what he focused on.

He learned all he could of the most inspiring buildings out in remote places, or set in rivers, seas and oceans. The often bizarre and quite illogical ideas behind their construction fascinated him. As his wealth grew so did his obsession, for it was no longer just research online, it became real.

Vorce visited many of the famous, and not so famous, fortresses. Sometimes even homes people built in the most unlikely of places, but it was the fortresses that held the greatest fascination. Strongholds against foreign invaders, buildings designed to be prisons, those for medical and biological research and more — he took his private jet and roamed the world while money piled up in his bank account faster than his jet could burn it as fuel.

A whole jet, slicing through the sky so one man could pander to his own obsession. It was insane, that he could do such a thing, and he always expected the police to be there when he landed, to cuff him and take him away for such mindless extravagance. They never did. People envied him his waste, and he visited so many luxurious places, so many abandoned fortresses, that he grew increasingly obsessed.

The forts held a strange fascination when he looked at the endless pictures and read their histories online, but visiting them was a different matter entirely.

Padmadurg in India. An island fort built in the seventeenth century. Closed, but always open to those with enough money. It was incredible, amazing. Beyond amazing. Standing on the crumbling walls, looking across the acres-large landscape, the work that had gone into it, the detail, the beauty, the feeling. It was one of the most incredible days of his life.

Fort Alexander in the Gulf of Finland. An eerie, silent place used for biological research where the scientists often contracted the diseases they investigated.

Solent Forts, the first built off the UK coast, of course held special fascination. Like many other defensive forts, they were obsolete before construction finished.

Maunsell Sea Forts, a successful part of Britain's defenses in World War Two, were amazing to visit. Huge structures on splayed concrete legs, once connected by walkways. Incongruous steel insects in the Thames estuary. The history fascinated him. How bizarre to think they once housed guns and searchlights. Home to pirate radio stations in the nineteen sixties, what went on to become the familiar sounds of Radio 1 and Radio 2 for the BBC.

He visited them all.

Fort Boyard in France. Abandoned, then used as the setting for a TV show.

Fort Carroll in the United States. Over four acres of magic. How these places could be deserted amazed him.

He traveled. He found them all.

Vorce visited places so remote he often wondered if the effort involved was worth it as he trudged up mountains, flew in helicopters, abseiled onto dangerous platforms where he stood, surrounded by the ghosts of the past. It always was.

So, at the height of his fortune, as the world fell asleep around him, Vorce dreamed big.

Then he Awoke.

He knew what he had to do.

Vorce began construction of The Island.

The Big Build

As Vorce stood at the stone entrance to the Island's interior, thoughts from the past continued to well up, almost overwhelm him. It felt like a lifetime ago but at the same time only yesterday, how odd. He watched, face impassive, as the beautiful, and she truly was, girl strode off the platform and her rather impressive dog joined her.

Here was a person who had seen a lot, more than anyone else apart from him, and she was clearly extremely self-possessed. She would not prostrate herself before others that claimed they were her betters. She would not back down from a fight. This was a proud girl, although girl hardly fitted, not when he looked at her through The Noise and saw all manner of unusual surprises.

No matter, people were people, always had been, always would be. When you got right down to it everyone was just delicate flesh and bone. Now, where was he? Why such old memories now? Because of the girl, that's why. A guest after so long.

When Vorce Awoke, he understood there was a change coming. Actually, it had already arrived, it was merely that nobody had given it a name or taken notice yet. He'd noticed though, and with everything opening up to him in ways he never thought imaginable he began his work in earnest. He didn't court fame or more wealth, knowing both would be useless. Rather, he kept as low a profile as possible, picked his location carefully, even set in place breathtakingly costly underwater machines so that when ready the sea itself would ensure that The Island truly was a permanent home.

There was to be no going back once the work was done. He would allow himself time to decide if it was the right decision, a few years at most, and then it would be impossible to leave. As construction neared completion he understood he'd acted just in time — the workers grew apathetic, everything became increasingly difficult, all energy seemed gone from the world.

Finally, it was finished.

Vorce had used up almost every last penny of his vast fortune to build The Island, but it had surpassed his wildest dreams. He sought out, and paid well, the best minds on the planet to aide in the complicated build. Specialists that knew how to deal with the complexities of building in the sea and all the difficulties that came with it.

The actual architecture and design was his and his alone. Some of it was folly, some practical, but above all else it had to be home, feel right. It had to be a place that would help in the forming of a new society, one where there had to be a leader, rules, myths and half-truths the future generations would take as fact to ensure such an epic undertaking succeeded.

He felt like he'd done a decent job. The day of completion, Vorce and a number of other men and women, people he felt worthy, those he could see would remain Whole or Awaken, waved farewell to the last few workers as they left on helicopters, never to return.

The pilots and the crew were the last to know of the place, everyone else had either succumbed to The Lethargy or had been eliminated by Vorce — men would always kill for money, and Vorce still had enough to pay those with a taste for such work. It was a nasty business, but he had to ensure nobody would ever tell of The Island. He didn't feel it made him a bad man. After all, he was trying to help humanity survive. That meant sacrifices.