Veracity (4 page)

The corners of his mouth pulled up into a smirk, "Then follow me."

We walked the whole way without speaking. I'd assumed that we would go to the mystical Great Hall, where we would look through some of the forbidden books that resided there, so I started to become quite interested in where we were going when we turned at a fork in the trail and began to climb up a regular hill. Of course, as children, we had explored in this area before, but only found a kind of prickly vegetation that became either too dense to continue, or too painful. After walking for quite some distance, Harek stopped and turned to his left, facing one of these impenetrable bushes. He reached out and carefully picked it up, pivoting it slightly as one would a door, revealing a vague trail on the other side of it. He stepped aside to let me pass, and then closed the bush-like door behind us. The trail continued, walled with thick vegetation, until finally, it opened up into a tiny clearing high on the slope of a rise. I could see that there was something manmade that we'd come to visit, as there was a vaulted archway leading into the hillside, and a rectangular piece of grass missing from the hill itself, further away from us, which could only have been a kind of opening from the building underground. The archway had the same incredibly thick walls as the Great Hall, and a single metal door that barred the entrance. (As a rule, the architecture on the island belonged to only one of two schools: rustic and wooden, created directly from the raw materials around us, or fortified bastions made of thick concrete; this new building, obviously, being one of the latter.) I also noticed that there was a small panel of metallic buttons on the wall beside the door, which, as far as I would ever know, didn't have any function at all.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"I don't think it would make a lot of sense to you right now, but we can explain it later if you'd like." Harek looked at me and could see that the answer he'd given wasn't quite enough, and, though they usually didn't care if we were left in the dark, he seemed to suddenly sympathize. "Well, I can tell you it's something our ancestors made. How's that?" He looked up at the thick concrete, which had several different colours of moss clinging to its side. "Something to protect themselves
from
themselves," he added, as if to himself.

"What?"

"As I said, I can explain later if you'd like. But for now, let us go inside." He leaned in and started yanking on the door to open it, which, to my surprise, was as thick as my chest was wide, and from the looks of it, also incredibly heavy. As I passed through the doorway, I ran my hand along the volume of the metal, amazed, and then looked inside. It was a simple cemented corridor that was dimly lit with electrical lighting, a thing that was extremely rare on the island. Harek shut the massive door behind us, and after the darkness had echoed with a deep crash, we continued down the corridor, which eventually opened up into a large empty room. There was a single bench that lined the walls, and which almost continued around the entire perimeter, being interrupted only twice by other metal doors.

"Please, have a seat," he opened up his palm to point at the bench. I sat down, smoothing the creases in my pants more than I needed to, and watched him walk into the centre of the room. I seemed to be feeling a million things at once; I was nervous, afraid, excited, mesmerized. I couldn't believe that, finally, I was there, I was going to be included into the ring of secrecy. This was it. Everything I'd been waiting for.

"Do you know what Coming of Age is all about, Joshua?"

"Uh..." This caught me a little off guard. For some reason, I hadn't expected to be very involved. I thought it would be about listening, not speaking. I looked at the bench beside me, wondering what to say.

"Let me rephrase that question. Have you ever heard any rumours about it, made any guesses with the others?"

"Um... no, not really."

Harek cleared his throat, swallowed. He seemed to mark me on the bench with his line of sight, lowering his head slightly, as if he were aiming one of the slingshots we'd made as children. And indeed, it felt like his words were being fired at me; they were sharp, loud, quick. "Wrong. That is completely false. And not only is it wrong, it is the absolute worst answer that you could have possibly given me. And I will tell you why: we are going to be honest with each other, Joshua. We are going to be so honest with each other that there will not be a single secret between us. I will tell you things that are of the harshest, truest nature imaginable, and you will agree to do the same, or we cannot even begin the process that we are about to set forth. Do you understand that? Do you?"

My voice was small. "Yes."

"Good. Then let me ask you again. Have you ever heard rumours of what Coming of Age is all about?"

"Yes."

"And what were those rumours?"

"Um... that something went wrong in the world, and that we're going to fix it."

"And do you believe that?" he asked, watching my mouth open, reading my hesitation. "Remember, complete honesty."

"Not really, no."

Harek grinned, relaxed a bit. This, apparently, was the right answer. "I didn't think so," he said, sounding almost relieved. He put his hands behind his back and began to walk in slow, distracted circles around the room. "And, in fact, you were right not to believe. It was a complete lie. And we have told that lie to almost everyone that has Come of Age so far, and we will continue to do so. But not with you. You, Joshua, are among a tiny, tiny group of the most talented individuals on the island, and we have singled you out as someone who might have the skills and tenacity to take the truth, to hold it in your hands, but most importantly, to do what you should with it." He had been looking down at the ground while speaking, only raising his eyes to give me sidelong glances every now and then, but he turned to face me at this point, squaring his shoulders with mine before he spoke. "So then - let us start with that truth.

"First off, I should tell you a little something about what is beyond our island, as you were always sneakily asking about it as a child. I think it's probably obvious to you that there are other islands as well, some being a little smaller, but most of them larger, a few of them being enormous landmasses, which would take a great many years to travel across by foot. There are places where the terrain itself stretches out across the horizon, as does the sea from our vantage point. There are mountains so high that ice clings to their tops, barren deserts that stretch out for unthinkable distances without a drop of water, and basins of jungles so large that they act as a very lung for the earth.

"And the first truth that I want you to try and fathom is that, of all the land that wraps around the globe, of all the liveable spaces in the entire world - except for a few handfuls of people like ourselves - we are alone. There is no one else."

I shifted on the bench. The room seemed to have become uncomfortably small, stuffy. He was moving a little fast for me. I already had questions - many actually. But this was clearly not the time to ask them. I focused all of my attention on him, telling myself that I had to concentrate on keeping up. Nothing else.

"Yes, as you've probably guessed, there were people at one point, and those people were scattered everywhere, living in almost every imaginable place. But they are all gone now," he stopped for a second, "which... is another story in itself.

"But," he continued, suddenly walking toward me and sitting down on the bench. Once he was seated, he shuffled closer and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, cupping his hands as if they were holding something small and important. As he paused before speaking, both of us looked into the shadows under his fingers at that nameless thing that he might be holding, and seemed about to explain. "But first, I have a quick history lesson to give you.

"See, about 30,000 years ago, in the middle of one of those large landmasses that I just mentioned, there lived a people called the Neanderthals. These 'people' lived a fairly unobtrusive existence, hunting, gathering fruits and other edibles, burying their dead, playing flutes made of bone, and building small religious monuments. But they weren't the only 'people' to be walking the earth at this time - there were others - a scattering of species that all belonged to the hominid class.

"I know, as we've had many classes together on the subject, that you have an excellent grasp of how the system of evolution works. The mutation of a species emerges which happens to be more fit in dealing with environmental changes that have happened, or are about to take place, and so is the one that survives and procreates, gradually weeding out its competitors. The most 'fit' form survives, and the others perish. It is a simple, efficient, magnificent system.

"The system, however, is based on the presence of mutations, on the fact that something goes wrong inside of every millionth cell. Usually, this 'thing that goes wrong', either dies out, or slightly improves the species. But let us just imagine for a moment what might happen if something went extremely, exceptionally wrong in one of those mutations. What if, by random chance, every, say, ten-millionth new species, a creature spawned from the system that could find a way to jump out of the system itself? Can you imagine the repercussions?

"If, inside the system, a plant were to mutate and sprout an abnormally large leaf, it would suddenly convert more energy, grow better than its competitors and pass this trait onto its progeny, improving the overall state and function of the bionetwork that it's in. But if the plant were to find a way to jump outside of the system, to supersede evolution by growing legs and systematically plucking every one of its competitors from the ground, what would be improved then? This, of course, would no longer be 'natural selection'; it would be 'artificial selection', being done by the one species arrogantly choosing itself, making the obviously bias choice
for
evolution. A catastrophe. Because once something is outside of that magnificent system, once it has taken arrogant control over it, there simply cannot be the same constant incremental improvement as there was inside of it - in fact, quite the contrary. Let's put it into an example of humans (for ease of understanding). Imagine there is a boat with various kinds of people on it. Let's say, a religious pacifist, a scientist, a doctor, and a murderer. And on this boat, there are only enough food rations for one of them to survive the journey. Let me ask you, who survives? Who lives to create a new society once they reach land, to pass their beliefs onto the next generation? Is it the kindest, most giving person? Is it the most moral, the most humane, the one with the highest sense of life, or of responsibility? Do you think the 'fittest' to survive that boat journey, would be the 'best' person, or the 'worst'?

"So, to continue with the earth's history, as you've probably guessed from my speech, one of those rare depraved species did emerge, and subsequently, the world saw its first ever weapons, and within a fragment of time, the Neanderthals, of which I mentioned before, became extinct, along with every single other remaining hominid species that existed. They were all hunted down and systematically slaughtered by this new vile strain of being; a species that, for the first time in nature, seemed to realize the possibility of abusing its own power. And it certainly didn't stop at massacring its competitors, it moved on, decimating a staggering amount of other plant and animal life as well, adopting a disastrous conduct of excess, oppression, and destruction, even against its own kind."

Harek stood and walked to the centre of the room, "So then," he stopped and put both of his hands behind his back, "as you've probably guessed, that species of which I speak, the hominid that hunted down and killed the others of its class, the murderer that made it to shore and created its sickened world there," he turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised slightly, sympathetically, "is, of course, us."

Looking back, I think my reaction was to be expected. I just chuckled, shook my head. He had to be joking. In fact, I was sure he was joking, and seemed to be waiting for him to smile, to say something that would release the air of expectation. But he didn't. He only stared at me, gently nodding, until my smile began to fade into an expression that must have resembled concern, unease. Though maybe panic.

"Are you trying to say we're monsters?" I shook my head with slow distracted movements. "I hardly think... I mean - are you serious? We're not monsters. We're not. I'm sorry." But I suddenly didn't feel as sure as I'd sounded.

"I, too, am sorry," he said, continuing to nod. "But I am sorry that we
are
monsters. I'm sorry that it's all we've ever been. And most of all, I'm sorry that it's all we'll ever be." Having said this quietly, decisively, he turned to circle the room as he'd done before, and continued to talk. I watched him suspiciously.

"You wouldn't believe the things that we've done to each other and to the world around us. In fact, there is nothing we haven't destroyed, no amount of pain that we haven't inflicted upon the earth, the creatures on it, or our 'fellow man', no atrocity that we haven't carried out. We've boiled children, dismembered men, burned women, repeatedly raped, mutated, tortured, and then caringly healed the people we'd done this to, to be tortured again. We have studied ways of stimulating the body's nerves in order to make people feel more pain. We have..."

"Stop," I interrupted. "You're wrong. I mean - maybe someone else did that, but not me, not you. We haven't done those things."

Harek, who'd been speaking almost serenely while doling through his list of butchery, snapped his head in my direction as soon as I'd interjected, his eyes awake, wild. "Haven't we! Can you be so sure of yourself? Am I to believe that I'm standing in a room with the very first exception to the rule, of which, I might add, we have consistently and unfailingly laid down behind us for thousands upon thousands of years? Am I to believe that?"

"Well," I muttered, "I guess so, because I don't do those things. And I wouldn't." I was sure that Harek was going to be furious with this, but instead his body relaxed, and to my surprise, he began to laugh, throwing his head back and turning his body around once in a fit of hilarity. I didn't join him.