The Fourth Sage (The Circularity Saga) (12 page)

"Excuse me," she says. "Would you mind cleaning the table after I'm gone. I'm still eating."

"So sorry. I didn't... I didn't mean to... So sorry," he says.

Why does he look like he might start crying at any moment?

"What happened to you?" he asks.

"I fell," she says, with a smile. "It's not a big deal. I'm back at work tomorrow. If you would excuse me now, I'd like to finish my breakfast without being disturbed. Thank you."

Her glance goes from him back toward the screen.

"Let me know if there is anything I can do to... help." His voice trails off as he turns abruptly and disappears from her field of vision. She makes a mental note that she might have to report him if this happens again. The information she has about him—his hacking into the system and disappearing from surveillance altogether, among other infractions—might be useful later on. There cannot be privacy. This single fact is very clear to her now. Protection of the whole should be the primary concern of
any
responsible citizen.

She finishes her bread, washes it down with the rest of her water, and gets up. Time to read up on some school stuff, she decides. She exits the dining hall and walks toward the open classroom. She has to complete her study hour and probably make up for the last couple of days. She feels her resolve not to slip up again strengthen. Too much time is wasted by personal matters.

She reaches the open classroom and sits down at one of the individual tables. Its surface is a screen that she navigates with her fingers. She logs in. At the beginning of each reading, each study period, stands the moral code. She reads through it as if for the first time. Why has this not made sense to her before when it is now so clear? There is comfort in following it—comfort and safety. It should be everyone's goal to follow it and help others do the same.

Next she flips through a couple of pages that tell her about options she has once her contract with Electrical is up. Those are the steps up her career ladder. One button she has never clicked says "Management." After she clicks it, a page opens:

ARE YOU A LEADER? ARE YOU WILLING TO FOLLOW NOW, IN ORDER TO LEAD LATER ON?

Aries reads through a couple of pages thinking that this might actually be a viable option. There is a four-year training program she could enroll in at the end of her contract in Electrical. It would give her the option to move up a few tiers over time. It's not for everyone and the tests to get into the program are extensive. Whoever gets to that point has to have a pristine record.

ARE YOU CUT OUT TO GO ALL THE WAY? ASK YOUR SUPERVISOR OR SPEAK TO ONE OF OUR VIRTUAL RECRUITERS RIGHT NOW.

Aries lets her finger hover over the next button: “Virtual Recruiter.” She has fourteen months left on her contract. It's probably a good idea to start the process now, so that she's ready when the time comes.

She becomes aware of something in her peripheral vision and turns her head. It's Seth. He sits at one of the desks looking toward her. Why is he looking at her? She remembers her conversation with him from a couple of days ago in which he told her that he was watching her. She concentrates on the screen again, her finger still hovering over the Virtual Recruiter button. She can feel his glance on her. Should she confront him? What would be the right thing to do? She can hardly report him for looking at her.

She gets up and walks over to his desk, sits down across from him.

"Can I help you?" she asks, looking straight at him.

"I don't know. I'm sorry I... stared at you... again." He smiles slightly. If he expects her to smile back, he is very much mistaken.

"I would appreciate it if you would not do that. I need to catch up on some homework and find it very distracting."

He doesn't say anything back. Why doesn't he say anything back? Just as she opens her mouth to say something, he opens his.

"They got to you, didn't they?"

"Excuse me?"

"What did they do to you?"

"I fell. It's not a big deal. I'll be back at work—"

"I'm not talking about your face, Aries.”

They look at each other. Aries wonders what he's talking about.

"I'm talking about you."

Aries thinks about this. He's right. She has changed. Before, she didn't care. Now she does.

"I have been mistaken. That's all. I have misused my rights and must find a way to become a more responsible person, Citizen—"

Aries Free-Born!

The thought cuts through her mind like a razor, interrupting her train of thought. Where did that come from? She recognizes something in Seth. It's no more than a fleeting sense that he must once have been what she would call a friend. The thought leaves her as quickly as it came.

"Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I'd like to finish up my work. Have a good day." She gets up and returns to her terminal.

When she sits down, her screen has a message on it:

YOUR SESSION HAS TIMED OUT. PLEASE LOG IN AGAIN.

Aries logs back in, scans through the two pages of the moral code and opens the main window. From there she clicks on "Social Conduct." Time for her to freshen up on it. She begins to read, completely unaware of Seth getting up from his station and walking past her toward the exit. He looks back at her. If she had looked up she would have seen his face, would have seen the pain in it and the fear for her. But she doesn't and he turns and leaves the room.

* * *

Taken from **//voice recorder file q.119_04_5xtl.ut// kiire_understaad

From what I can gather, MXXT//3 had initially been developed to alter the emotional response to trauma. It was found to sever the connection between the traumatic event and its internal response. The event can subsequently be seen on a neutral plane, without the emotional reaction previously experienced in patients. The MXXT//3 project, however, has been abandoned since its initial stages. The serum made the patient too receptive to autosuggestion and, given time, eradicated cognitive reasoning based on natural, human impulses. Reports indicate that the serum, in one single dose, completely eliminated a patient's individual voice, character, and personality. Given time, patients subjected to MXXT//3 experienced complete loss of self. No case of reversal has been reported to date.

//**q.119_04_5xtl.ut /// Upload complete___//

* * *

Somewhere between the seventieth and the seventy-first floor, a hawk sits on a small ledge deep in the shadows. Her haunting and relentless cries echo through the vast space. Several workers in the water treatment unit lift their heads. They have never heard this sound before and one of them suggests that it must be coming from the steam regenerator valves. Another makes the sign of a cross in front of him—an ancient symbol of a long-forgotten pilgrim's belief.

Born-of-Night jumps off the ledge and flies up forty floors, and from there another thirty more. Her cries reach far into the space, falling on ears that cannot place their origin. Nobody understands their meaning. The one who does is not here, is nowhere to be found. Not out here and not in the hawk's mind. In its place is emptiness. Emptiness of thought and emotion.
I came for you, Aries Free-Born. To release you from your chains. So you can free your people.

As her wings take her up, ever higher inside the building's core, she cannot fathom why she does not get an answer. For since she can remember, she could feel her presence, could read her thoughts, could hear her call. Instead there is now only silence. As if the one who stands at both the end and the beginning of an age, the one who was born to restore balance to her world and her people, is no longer there, has vanished into oblivion. And Born-of-Night gives voice to her pain, to her loss, and to her mourning. The one she came for is gone; she can no longer find her in her heart.

Two

//voice recorder file log**q.411_08.1_5xtl.ut kiire_understaad//

The city arose from a small mining town, close to a thousand years ago, to one with a population of ten million souls. When the Corporations took over about two hundred years past, air and ground pollution began to increase. Eventually, people could no longer safely live in their homes or even plant vegetables in their gardens. The Corporation built five super high-rises, each holding close to sixty-five thousand souls. They were built like cities, with shopping malls, hospitals, and factories. The Corporation sold spots inside to the highest bidders. Direct sunlight became a commodity. People with the most money were able to live in Tier Six, the outermost tier. Soon the different tiers were filled with people based on their usefulness to the Corporation and according to how much they had paid.

Many people—mostly those who couldn't afford to buy a spot in one of the buildings—tried to flee the city. Many died trying to slip through the minefields and electrified fences surrounding its borders. The poorer population took the offer of working on the buildings for a very low wage in return for a spot inside. But when the buildings were completed and people began to move in, the construction workers found themselves in limbo. Under the pretense that modifications had to be made, several years went by until the workers realized that they had been lied to.

The rebellion began eighty years ago. People organized themselves. The buildings were fortresses, impenetrable from the outside, so they began to transmit broadcasts to the people inside, urging them to stand up and try to stop the Corporation. The few who rose up inside the buildings were imprisoned. On the outside, the poor—desperate and hungry—turned against each other. Crime increased exponentially. And something else happened. Suicide rates went up. What at first were isolated incidents soon became an epidemic. What nobody knows (even to this day) and what I just now discovered was that one of the Corporation's bio labs had developed a parasite that lived inside a single string of bacteria. The parasite was distributed into the city through the water. It induced severe depression in most inhabitants. But that was only the side effect. The purpose of the parasite was to penetrate the host’s stomach walls and spread to the inner organs. The water that was used to flush it out brought about the very opposite. In the end, people died. They died at home, on the streets or in one of the few remaining hospitals. The city became a ghost town. The broken pavement and overgrowing vegetation now bear silent witness to what its inhabitants had to endure.

What we were told, however, was something completely different. We were told that there was a radiation leak in one of the nuclear reactors thirty miles outside the city. It made the whole valley completely uninhabitable. Even sunlight became dangerous. Or so it was claimed. People inside the high-rises were so glad that they had survived, had a spot of safety, they did not question anything. What fear can do... But I cannot be silent anymore. The truth has to come out. I'm just not sure h—

//voice recorder file log**q.411_08.1_5xtl//upload interrupted//

Chapter 8 — Decisions

"You say that time is a wheel, turning in its inevitable path,

that nothing has the power to change its predetermined course.

But let there be but one small pebble willing to be impelled into its track;

its direction would be altered forever."

[
The Book of Croix
— Vol.4]

Aries wakes up the next morning, her shirt clinging to her, completely soaked through. She notices that her pillow is wet as well but can't remember anything from last night except that someone seemed to have repeated her name over and over. A dream. At the same time she thought that the name didn't belong to her but to somebody else entirely.

She steps into the UVL shower, drops her clothes and continues to stand there long after the ultraviolet laser has done its thing. A shiver brings her back and she gets dressed. The dining hall holds no surprises. She watches the comings and goings for a while, thinking that being here isn't so bad after all. She and the rest of the kids are provided for. They have certain freedoms and the restrictions on their lives are, by and large, not only helpful but are in fact necessary to keep everything in order. She cannot fathom that she had ever held the thought of needing to escape this. This is her home. Now and forever. When she arrives at her locker in Electrical, she sees Ty coming toward her. She takes out her hard hat, tool belt, the small notepad, and her harness.

"You're here," she hears him behind her.

She turns around and looks at him.

"I am."

It is as if all the color bleeds from his face at once. She registers that he has trouble keeping his poise.

"It's good to see you," he says, but his eyes belie his words.

Aries forces a smile. "What do you have?"

"I... um... we have... a problem with... a corroded cable on the 160th floor…" His voice trails off.