Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (2 page)

The second time she left him was shortly after he thought they were both settled and secure in their relationship. He’d suggested selling her old beat up vehicle to help pay off some of the mountain of debt she was still buried under from the years of school required for her degrees, which stirred up her frustration. Offering to let her use his, which sat idle most of the time anyway, seemed to only make her angrier. Citing her desire for self-determination, she hastily packed a bag and stormed out into the night, on foot if his memory serves, as her vehicle was getting repaired again. This time she was gone for several months until a chance encounter leaving a restaurant made them both realize that their passion for each other still burned.

Gavitte’s career continued its steady growth, but each step up the ladder only revealed more red tape that needed to be cut, more hurdles to kinds of change he’d told himself he’d one day be able to make. Make the small sacrifices up front, compromise now, and later you’ll be able to make the real changes, he’d told himself. He hadn’t realized it yet, but he’d walked himself into a trap. Too far engrossed in the system to get out, he’d made too many commitments and depended too thoroughly on the security it provided to ever really make the changes he’d once dreamed of.

The third time she’d left him, he’d known it was final, though it took him by surprise. Sure there had probably been signs, but he’d grown steadily more engrossed in his job and less in tune with the rest of the world. His commute home had been like any other day, the train ride was hot and boring. By the time he made it up the stairs to their apartment, all he could think about was taking off his hot shoes and sprawling on the couch.

She met him at the door, her face calm and her eyes cold. Behind her on the floor was a suitcase packed and waiting to be pulled through the door. There was no anger, no fire in her eyes, just a kind of melancholy sadness that broke Gavitte’s heart before she even said a word.

“You’re not the man I met all those years ago. I can’t live with the compromises you’ve made. We’re done, I’ll always remember what we had.”

The last part stung the most. She kissed him on the cheek gently before brushing past into the hall and out of his life forever. Most of his life had become so automatic that no one at work noticed that anything was wrong. He still showed up on time, filed the right papers in the right folders, and generally took care of business, but almost a full year later, something is still dead inside. She took something with her when she left, something he hadn’t realized was necessary, and something he didn’t even know he had. She left him empty, his life merely the reflected pattern of what is expected of him.

Today something is different though. He doesn’t consciously realize it, but instead of replaying the entire scene of her leaving over and over on the train ride, his mind wanders on. The name Angelina keeps echoing through his mind as it has all morning. The thought of someone unknown placing their faith in him awakens something he long thought he’d lost.

The smells of diesel fuel and closely packed human flesh, alternating darkness and glare of light, and the constant rattle and clamor of travel on an underground train combine, washing over him like cloud vapor. He breathes in deeply, savoring the momentary rightness of it all. Today something is going to be different, something is going to be good. He doesn’t know what, when, who, or how; but today he has a strange name and a poorly written poem slowly breathing life back into his imagination.

Some subconscious part of him listens to the voice announcing the stops and reminding the passengers that they need validated fare or could be placed in jail. His mind still lost in his daydream, he hears the name of his stop called and absentmindedly prepares for arrival.

Upon arriving at his destination, a terminal no longer quite as grand or romantic as its name once suggested, he pushes his way toward the door, past the piles of trash and up into the orange light of day. His first breath of air not laden with the smells of refuse, urine, and humans packed to closely together nearly leaves him vomiting in a gutter once more, for up here such organic smells are a thing of the past, replaced entirely with the odor of sulfur and burning fuels. Coughing his way through the smog, he manages to dash across the street turned parking lot by the immobile traffic and up the wide marble steps of a government building. This building, like the rest of its brethren towering above the congested city streets is built on a grand scale to fertilize some politician’s ego; a national hero’s name stands emblazoned across the top, the letters imprinted in the frieze nearly as tall as Gavitte. The building he approaches is several years younger than he is, having been built to modernize and improve the bureaucracy that lives within it. Of the grand historic building that once stood in its place, only the steps remain. The steps were built back when politicians were still expected to interact with their populace, giving speeches in the open upon these very same steps, where even the lowest class citizen could yell comments from the back and be heard. Now the steps only serve as a symbolic backdrop for political ads and a means to tire the steady stream of government functionaries who climb them each day. Where the building that used to stand here was once a place alive with debate that created the policy that changed the way life was lived in the country, the new building’s voluminous interior is filled with endless layers of management that only create paper. Several junior Senate members like Gavitte were forced to relocate their offices here when the more senior members of the Senate had insisted on remodeling the traditional building for Senate offices. While the senior members enlarged their offices, Gavitte actually embraced the move, because it made his job managing the hordes of managers that fill this building that much easier, not having to fight his way across town to get to their offices, but merely walking down the hall.

As if to bring Gavitte back to the present reality, one of the personal crafts belonging to a senior member of the Senate from one of the ruling families roars over his head and settles on top of the dome capping the office building. Something so important to his schemes that he would not trust it to an electronic communication or a subordinate must have arisen. The presence of one of the powerful in this building is a rare occasion, usually followed by a political dog fight, which can spell disaster for someone in Gavitte’s position. The craft’s exhaust belches forth a line of black clouds that slowly dissipates into the haze hanging over the city as he mentally shrugs and continues up the stairs towards his office. He’ll need to learn what he can about the visit, but it is more important that he keeps his head down and out of this particular game until he can fully understand the pieces on the board.

He reaches the airlock at the doors and passes through without incident, joining the throngs of overworked and underutilized government employees scurrying about on their important errands. Slipping across the lobby he enters a short hallway where the elevators stop. Ignoring their shiny and inviting doors that throngs of his fellow government employees are piling through, he pushes open an unmarked wooden door with a brass handle. On the other side he is greeted with the relative peace and quiet of a harshly lit emergency stairwell. It is only three flights up to his floor, but by the time he makes it his lungs, which still haven’t purged all the smog from outside, are screaming at him. He rests a minute before straightening his suit and stepping out onto the richly carpeted hallway.

The few people he meets nod in greeting and hurry on their way, each footstep muffled by carpet and each greeting merely a matter of habit. Through the years he’s worked on this floor, he’s grow to recognize everyone by appearance, but he could count on his fingers the ones outside of his tiny organization that he actually could greet by name.

His trudge down the hallway ends well short of the large corner offices at the far end, but he is far enough from the elevators and break room that it is time-consuming to fill up a glass with water. Unlocking his door, he steps through and into the vaguely musty confines of his office. The blinds are drawn allowing only small shafts of light to penetrate the otherwise dark room. He navigates through the stacks of paper and around the chair reserved for guests, this too with a stack of paper nearly spilling over the arms, until he reaches the side of the window. Opening in the blinds he lets the light fill his office, illuminating yet more stacks of paper that cover nearly every flat surface, except the floor. It is clean because the janitorial staff won’t empty your trash if they can’t vacuum. Sliding aside a relatively short stack of very urgent requests, he sits at his desk and makes sure everything is ready for his day to begin—no appointments until later this afternoon, no deadlines sneaking up in the next few days. Satisfied with the state of affairs, he exits his office and heads to the break room.

*

The morning passes like so many before it, papers in and papers out. The trail must be created; some things passed onto those with more power, others handled, and still more shuffled sideways to different departments. Each time a document crosses his desk, another form must be generated and attached to validate Gavitte’s continued work.

It isn’t until with the after lunch complacency in full effect that he finds himself before the assembled congress giving a report that no one is listening to. He is speaking on the projected effects of the approaching spring weather on the people’s desire to travel longer distances and thereby increase the smog in the suburbs while reducing it in the cities. Behind him several charts are displayed, each one showing a statistical variation that was considered noteworthy by the statisticians on Gavitte’s staff. He is droning through the notes his aides prepared, not fully comprehending what he is saying, simply allowing his mouth to follow the course that has been set.

His mind wanders back to the morning and his commute, and a little taste of anger and frustration bubbles up, causing him to stumble with one of the relevant figures for the chart he is talking about. A couple members of the crowd before him giggle softly at his stumble before turning back to whatever tasks had been occupying them. The other members, who had been more thoroughly engrossed in their own business, glance up, but once they realize Gavitte is simply pausing in his speech, they to return to their other activities.

Gavitte’s cheeks flush a little with embarrassment that he messed up such an easy speech before the entire congress. He forces his mind back into gear and starts back into anticipated effects of moderately reduced smog on youth. His mind doesn’t have a chance to wander off again before something falls into place, and the anger and frustration come roaring back tenfold. No longer is the flush on his cheeks from embarrassment. Years of facing the complacency, smugness, and selfishness before him finally push him over the edge that he hadn’t know he’d been treading.

His head begins to race with thoughts of this morning: thoughts of the woman he’d lost, thoughts of this as-of-yet unknown woman named Angelina; someone out there is waiting for a signal. That someone believes in him but needs a sign, some sort of a signal that he is ready to do something. He pauses, this time intentionally, takes a sip of water, and opens his mouth once more.

This time he doesn’t speak about marginal statistics, now he is speaking about something important, something that matters.

The Capital

Police Headquarters

In the heart of an edifice erected to proclaim the might of a civilization—if not through its architectural merit than through its shear mass—there is a room. This room, like many of its kind, is lit by a single source of light dangling from the ceiling by a single wire in the exact center, above a table that, despite its rough life, still manages to maintain a smooth reflective gloss. The shiny surface reflects the harsh light, preventing the hunched form of William from comfortably looking anywhere but directly at the dark government issued suit before him.

The interrogation is in the “good cop” stage.

“Now William, tell me again what you were doing at the airport,” the man in the suit asks kindly, as if his tone is enough to balance the psychological and emotional abuse and the night deprived of sleep, water, or any comfort besides the hard metal chair William is sitting in. William’s eyes stare through him. He has withdrawn, shutdown his interface with reality, and this interview will likely devolve in the same way as the myriad of others he has already endured. The faces above the suits may have changed several times, but the process is always the same: calm, fair questions, and if he doesn’t answer them in the way they want him to, shouting and threats, followed by time locked alone in complete darkness. The suit reaches down into his briefcase that is set neatly beside his chair and slaps a plain beige folder on the table to bring William’s attention back to reality. He folds his gloved hands neatly once more before him atop the folder while he waits for William to make eye contact.

“I said, I was just hanging out with—” his response is cut short by a sharp gesture from the pale glove of the man in the suit’s right hand.

“We know that’s not what you were doing, tell us what you were doing.”

“I’m not going to say what you want me to so you can just send me to a work camp.”

“Oh, we don’t need you to say anything Pseudo-Citizen 3742; the decision has already been made,” the suit says coldly as he closes his folder he had not even glanced at before standing, turning crisply, and striding out of the armor-plated door. As the door closes behind him, the suit reaches back into the room and, almost as an afterthought, extinguishes the light, plunging the cell into complete darkness. William is illuminated by nothing more than a faint glow coming through the bottom of the door once it is slammed shut.

William is left in the darkness with only two things by which to orient himself: a hazy memory of an awkward and cold night with friends standing and joking behind a grassy knoll while the rain fell on them and watered their drinks, and a massive headache stemming from the swollen and broken left half of his face. He would reach up and touch the throbbing and oozing place where his eye should be – if only to confirm that it is still there – but his hands are chained together in his lap. If he were to touch his face, he’d find small pieces of gravel and asphalt embedded in the skin where it had been slammed into the road next to his parents’ vehicle. However, he doesn’t even think to move his hands and test the reach of the shackles that bind them to his feet; he is numb from shock, and so he sits still, staring at the door, and then slowly closes his eyes. As the footsteps of the black suit round a corner in the hall and begin to grow quieter, William opens his eyes so as not to be deprived of all his senses. Almost out of his range of hearing, the footsteps pause just long enough for the suited man to flip a switch.

Then it is completely dark. And silent.