Chapter Sixteen
Value
Value
He wanted to ask how it was Bashir had even gotten to his bed side. As they tip toed through the dark they crossed the open vestibule before exiting without so much as another patient in sight. Strewn across the sky the moon soaked clouds drifted overhead blotting out the starry expanse. If not for current circumstances this would have proven to be a beautiful night. His fists clenched when he saw shadows melding and shifting in the peripherals. A dismissive wave backwards from Bashir was all it took before the scurrying figures fell into position at their flanks.
"Where is everyone?" They paused at the corner of one of the electronic labs. Bashir sliced an invisible throat with the wedge of his hand glaring at Nero before turning to crane his neck around the corner. Waving them on they slipped across the street in single file before the bright spark of a torch ignited the area around them in sterile blue. Fast; they had prep-cut most of the grating earlier in the day. The bar popped with a hiss and was clutched with a pair of gloves before being tucked away in a bag. That seemed excessive to him but he was masquerading tonight in a hospital gown so it's not like he exactly had say over what was and wasn't out of place. One by one they slid down beneath the gate and scaled down the uneven terrace before coming to the soft blanket of sand below.
Looking up he could see the synthetic auroras skittering as invisible particles came into contact with the shield. Somehow they had managed to deflect that as well when they cut the gate. He turned in time to see them carrying on. They passed the water vein he had tested what felt like an eternity ago and as they stepped past and through the neighboring huts Bashir and the others carefully unwound their keffiyehs.There were quick swigs of water as their pace settled into a stride that Nero could keep up with even barefoot.
"How is it we just slipped out of the most protected location on the planet without a soul seeing us?" Nero asked again, hardly a whisper as he took count of their escort. Seven, hardly difficult to miss even in the night.
"Who works the late shifts?" Bashir replied as he tapped at the holo display on his wrist and swiped up sending a message.
Nothing spectacular or obvious jumped out at him so he just kept walking with a shrug.
"The same people that work every other shift there. Processors. You'd be amazed how many machines can turn the wrong way in a three minute sequence. How much they depend on the workers. Without their eyes and ears", he snapped his gloved fingers, "you vanish into thin air. Of course you're not really vanishing. We'll drop you off home when we're done." The mood had gotten amicable as others began to chat amongst themselves. In the middle of the night, having just broken a suspect out of his jail bed, he was floored with it all.
"I don't understand. Surely by now they've torn all of my belongings apart and shred any last trace of record through and through about me." He rubbed his arms when the whistling wind pricked him with its frigid lick.
"For better or for worse the firewalls in place to protect the ruling family are at odds with the law. Try as they might they know what your last name so there is only so much they can delve before it becomes a security liability for everyone. You've got resplendent plot armor after all."
The joke had a few chuckles coming out but Nero wasn't laughing. He remembered vividly the scratched ink on the pages of that journal and his stomach warped and bent and felt like it was eating itself.
"Have you heard from your father?"
"No."
The reality almost keeled him over into a fit of dry heaving. I'm the last one who spoke to him. I'm the last one who saw him. The whole slum began to swirl as he felt out for a hold.
"Uh oh, he's about to get real obvious real quick!" One of the escorts stepped a clear berth as he watched Nero stumbled. If he'd had anything in his system from the past day it would have greeted hem all in a pool of acid and enzymes. Instead only sand shifted as he caught himself on his palms and knees.
"We have to hurry still." That strong grip took one of his arms and helped him to his feet as the plant's exhaust, unending, seemed so close now. "Before daybreaks and then we're all caught and this was all for nothing." As he carried on Nero paused in his steps.
"If you haven't heard back from him by now... then it's my fault." Bashir paused and turned to look at him.
He smiled and shook his head as the escort carried on and began spreading out along the perimeter of the facility.
"That's the most Zhir thing you could do. Hoist someone's entire life of decision making and place it squarely on your shoulders. He knew what he was doing long before you or I came into existence. He didn't get caught because they found the book. No; it's because the book needed to be written that he would eventually get caught. They perpetuate the cycle and he was determined to sow the seeds to break it." He pointed to Nero, then thumbed to his own chest, "And so we continue."
He turned and Nero struggled to keep pace in the ankle high sand. Cool as the night may be the scrape of the sand was enough to have him stepping gingerly on his toes.
"Why me Bashir? After all of this why did you trust me? Why did Commodus?" He followed as they met the solid concrete wall that surrounded the plant. A keypad greeted them and one of the crew got down and began unfastening the cover to the device.
"Because Nero, I felt bad for you." As they sat waiting for the gate to open the reality exploded against him. A heavy sledge hammer crushed his abdomen. An anvil pressed and squeezed both of his temples on either side at the cavalier response.
"What?"
"You know, felt bad for you." He watched as the sparks skittered from the wiring that was now exposed and being permanently tampered with. "You didn't choose where you were born any more than we did. But I could see it from the beginning. Starting from your earliest memory you were different from them. You didn't get joy out of abusing the Processors. You didn't carry a disgust for someone like me. It's easy to tell. They say the nicest things, they sound angelic in their delivery and they call you the sweetest names." He rubbed his eyes with the back of his glove. "Yet what they do is clutch their belongings. They offer us the scraps once they've been thoroughly finished. Even though we're the ones who built it all. Everything." The sparks illuminated his face as he made another gesture to the idle crew who began taking point when the red diodes shifted green against the aged stone amalgamation.
They shifted inside as carefree as could be. He stood watching as Bashir remained silent looking to him. Forever passed. He didn't know why but so much about this moment set his hairs upright and he could feel every breath pierce his lungs. Arid air, no different than any other day of his life dried his throat and his tongue. His stomach was plump with sand. Heavy like he'd scooped a fistful and ate it whole.
"What's inside there?" It was the best he could come up with.
For the first time in a long time he felt it curl across his neck. It eased around him as weightless as the breeze. It was welcoming him with open arms. No resistance, nothing between him and it. He was scared.
"The answers you've been looking for all along. The answer to all of your questions boiled down into one finite point. Everything you've been working at the past years. Everything you wanted to learn with my father and everything that your father has done his very best to shield you from until he could mold you into his perfect spitting image. Everything that they lied to you about but was here in plain sight. The truth Nero." He didn't budge and he didn't insist. He simply waited.
His knee-jerk caught him off guard. Intrinsic programming that had begun from the moment his cells were forming and had been instilled in him for his entire life fired into defensive mode. Survival mode.
"There's no one here guarding this. It's just a dump." He balked at the entrance and was assured that he'd never been lied to. "It's just a disposal facility. Just junk." His toes curled in the sand. His knuckles sore.
"It's true." Bashir put up no opposition. The unspoken message loud and clear. You tell me that you know, that you understand, that you comprehend what I'm saying. But there is a difference between knowing and understanding. There is a difference between knowing of something and living something.
"If it was something worth keeping locked up there'd be guards all over. But we just walk right in? And this answers everything?" He was pleading. He didn't want to walk into the ancient maw of sandstone and concrete. The harsh metal appendages that bulged and disappeared back into the heterogeneous skeleton. The cracks in the foundation didn't even come close to toppling. It would remain standing for thousands of years before the sand eventually eroded it down to nothing. Just more sand.
"And yet here it is." He stared at Nero now. There was no one coming to stop them. The further they had gotten from the garden and the plant the less and less there were measures. No one cared what happened out here. No one cared what ever happened to the people out here. In the desert the only thing that kept you safe was yourself and your courage. Or what got you killed. "I can lead you to it Nero but I can't make you see it. I can talk until my tongue dries and I can hand you every book filled with every page and every letter. I can read it to you but I can't make you listen. I can take you to the doorway but I can't push you through it. No one can choose this except you. No one can make you face the realities of our world. You have to decide this for yourself." He turned and disappeared into the darkness of the structure.
Only the stand kept him company now. No one was going to come along and take him home. No one was going to push him into the threshold. Enter. Leave. Nothing would stop him from turning around. He could make it home in a few hours and would wake up tomorrow and would face a scolding. He'd have to endure more tests and more endless interrogations. That was going to happen no matter what. The answers he'd been looking for. The thing that bound all of it. The thing he felt was unlike sitting in that bed only a few hours prior. The notion that it could all end in a moment was liberating. He had been ready to greet it. The idea that something so powerful was sitting on the border of the desert. Something that he'd been searching for this entire time was right here all along. No one stopping him, no one to deter him. All of his work up until now had been for the betterment. Why was he frozen now? What was he afraid of? What was waiting in there?
The answer would never leave him. He stepped inside expecting a cadre planting explosives and the missing link and The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. All he was met with was the oppressive heat. Sweltering, a thousand suns burning in his face. Molten yellow and red and orange bled together along the conveyers and tracts. Heavy cast iron housed the pluming lifeblood of the plant as it oozed and flowed through the unfathomably heavy arteries of black and soot-covered alloy and stone. They had been waiting. Seated, standing, leaning; all of this had been orchestrated to get him here. Bashir stood in front of one of the belts. In the dim light there was only blurs of shapes: jutting metals, fractals of light emitting, sparks- and in the recesses of contours only shades of black and white coated in the red-orange hue. Your eyes perceived light in the cones. He'd learned that as a child and in the absence of light there were no more colors. That's why at night as you look over the few objects you can make out they're in monochrome. He stepped up beside Bashir and looked at the belt. Processors. What had been, some still were, and their fragments. The sand encrusted in them, the boils, the tumors, they were all from the outskirts. They had all been heavily dosed with radiation. All of them were still surrounded by their shields. Occasionally they flickered only instead of the fluorescent blue of the modern era they had a gold-tinted encapsulation. Fraying at the edges with chromatic waves, they were at odds with the dated circuits that still cycled and the withered edges where circuitry had been sheared. Limbs that were no longer enclosed had wires and sparks temporarily fighting to cling to life. Or whatever remained in the corroding brains. Some were exposed, some were simply lumps of sand that had bled and melded under the intense fission. All of them were shades of gold. Not the lava-hue, their own brilliance. A cycle that had never failed. Circuits that had been made hundreds of years ago that never once skipped a beat. His eyes followed them on the belts until they dumped unceremoniously into the pool of slag.
"Here you are. The answer you've been searching for all this time." Bashir remarked. Not a shred of pompous spite or sarcasm. Only the truth, barely audible over the grinding of the machine before them.
He could hardly breathe. His throat felt like it was tightening around an apple. He forced himself to take a deep inhale. The pungent raw odor of oil and metal and sand and stone fused inside his lungs. He heaved and felt the blood vessels in his eyes threatening to burst. Salty water pooled in his eyes. I know. That was always the knee-jerk to the ugly truth. We know. Of course I know. I'm not stupid. You tell me the truth and my response is always I know. But to know is to be aware of a thing. To confront that thing is to understand. He knew what the plant was. What the plant did. But now he understood what the plant meant. He saw how those century old shields still hummed. Still fought defiantly as they were dumped into the molten furnace. How they remained protective of their wearers even for minutes. Crackling violently as they held the magma at bay until the heat inside them fractured little by little. One of the faces stared back at him as the lava encroached. How the dirty face had spent several lifetimes beneath the toxic sun. How many times had it witnessed the cycles? How many lives had encompassed the now blotted memories and the warped neural net within its porcelain and steel skull? That too was visible as the lava devoured it and eventually not even the prosthetic eyes remained.
The radiation was never necessary. The technology was there centuries ago. The slow boiling of every cell, the self-destruction of the many cancers brought on by the sun, the poisoning of the wells in the ground, the contamination of the entire planet and its people was never a fault. They made the shields, they traded them, they sold them, and eventually they destroyed them. Fabricated obsolescence. A designed shelf-life. A problem that was manufactured to maintain capital. None of it was necessary and yet all of it was mandated to keep the machine turning. How many died on Calantha? How many were tossed out into the outskirts and hunted for their ancient technology just because they refused to cease? He had spent months if not years outlining plans. Researching the decay. Trials and errors and margins of lethality. Measuring and processing data and compiling reports. Endless hours of presentations to boards and hearings. He was trying to find a cure for a problem that didn't exist. These deaths were not an accident. This problem was not natural it was man made. It wasn't a problem. It was supply and demand. It was the divorcing of nature from humanity. The problem was once they had created things out of necessity- not in search of profits. These weren't made to die or to fail they were made to protect living things from the inevitable. And so they had to be expunged. They distorted the "reality", "just the way things are", "you can't save everyone", "you can't fix every problem".
None of it had to be. None of it was necessary. All of it was avoidable. Everyone could have been safe. No one had to die from the slow boiling of their insides. No one had to get poisoned just for trying not to dehydrate. No one had to fear biting into fruit. No one had to live wondering if the sand was going to kill them in their sleep or if one day the shield over their hut might give out. It wasn't a problem. It was a biproduct of the wheel turning. It was the system operating in its complete and perfect form.
This was the design working as intended. And it took him his entire life until now just to understand that.
