NEON & CONCRETE — Story #12
A Machine To Last A Thousand Years
I pull my horse to a stop and raise the tip of my hat with a gloved hand, revealing the silhouetted mountains out across the flattened plane. Monsters drawn out black against the fading light of the day.
Once majestic giants, having risen out of the ground to draw wonder and awe out of humanity, now overridden with our failed technology. Sublime no more, only crumbling neo-crete, the plague that touches everything inorganic, that infects the world.
“We can make it,” Jacob says pointing at the bio-luminescent beacon pulsing over yonder.
I turn and spit into the dry dust of the pummelled concrete ground, a squint in my eye, my horse rears but I pull her calm again and stare at the boy. Picked him up a few weeks back, he’s been without incident so far. That’s about as good as it gets in these times.
“How so?” I say, keeping my eyes on him, watching the little movements across his weak body, the twitch he carries across his right shoulder, the chew of his lower lip. Been through something this kid, same as everyone out here. I can’t save the world from the mess we made, but if I get the chance, I can try to help someone out who deserves it.
He deserves it. Jacob, from the Hebrew, ‘root,’ meaning; to follow.
His horse sniffs, the boy pats him and then rubs his own youngish face. Hard to tell how old he is, his height makes him a child but this place, it weathers you, the dust, the ‘crete, the sun, the storms, makes age a hard thing to gasp. The nanotech won’t attack most organic matter, but the new world hardens people, on the inside and out.
“Lightning ain’t too bad yet,” he whispers, as if saying it too loud will provoke it, disturb those electric blue demons that chase us across the grey and dust laden world every night.
I climb off my horse and kneel in growing dark, grabbing a handful of the powdered ‘crete and bringing it up to my nose. It doesn’t smell like concrete, it smells like what it is, pure time. Time that’s running out.
The night’s coming, swinging around this world with the gigantic electrical storms in tow, those that engulf wherever it’s dark. The horror that pounds us and the surface into this dust each day.
“I know it,” I say and stand, take my hip-flask and pull a swig of the greasy gin that we picked up at the last outpost we were at. No spare room there, no work for an old man and a child, so, they did what they could, gave us a few bits, told us to go south. Might be a place that’d take us in, they said, a good run of caves and caverns to take refuge in, couldn’t give us exact coordinates, but they’d heard there was a beacon. Well, not like we had much choice, so we set out, and now here we are, that beacon flashing over yonder, a glowing green light in a world of grey.
“We should keep moving,” Jacob says. “Can’t see any caves close.”
“What d’you think, they going to be kind to us this time if we make it?” I walk over to his horse and whisper to it.
“They might be,” he says.
Yeah, they might, but it’s getting harder with every place I find. Less resource, more death, the nanotech creeping, the lightning pounding, the sun baking, and now there’s two of us. Me and the boy, Jacob. Means even less chance of getting a bunk, a bowl of whatever drivel they can pull out of the ground. We’re all on a death march now, the storms chasing us; the nanotech eating the world; the sun searing us to a crisp. The nanotech we lost control of turning everything inorganic into the ‘crete.
Didn’t start fast, slow enough for us to think we could figure out a way to combat it, make it stop. Beat the weird and wild creation we thought would take us to other worlds in gigantic neo-crete multi-generational ziggurats.
“Yeah, I reckon they might,” I turn to the boy and pull a smile out of my old cracked face, he tries one too as the lightning on the darkened horizon behind me flickers in his big wide eyes.
The lightning storms. Grew as the nanotech started eating its way down, the neo-crete pushing its way through the mantle of the world and into its molten core. That vast sphere of liquid iron that provides the electromagnetism to necessary to facilitate the atmosphere of our planet turning into the ‘crete, so now, here, near the end of times, we’re chased by an endless storm cycle that occupies the night. Pulverising the concrete earth into this powder and then rebuilt, over and over as the sun rises again and bakes us and the neo-crete solid.
The boy pats his horse and sets off at a light trot, small puffs of dust kicking themselves up around the animals dried and weathered legs.
“Yeah, we can make it,” I pull myself onto mine and go after him.
Certain things have survived. The nanotech’s AI drew a line between inorganic and organic matter at some point we can’t fathom, not anymore anyway. As things grew worse, the situation more dire, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions dying from starvation, riots, all manner of horrors, our capacity to do anything, beat this thing, grew thinner and thinner, so we went underground.
Still, some things we can grow. Botanists and their hydroponics and hydro cultures able to keep little communities alive. Small settlements across this baron world try to scrape a life together, underground, away from the night-storms and the sun. Some hoping we’ll figure out a way to reverse the ‘crete.
The boy has hope.
I can’t see it.
“Come on, old man,” he says and kicks the ribs of his horse, powering the beast up into a gallop, hooves stamping out clouds of the ‘crete as the roar of the night comes in behind us as fast as the earth spins.
We have an hour or two on it, enough to make it to the beacon and hope that there’s something there for us, the bioluminescent green growing with each gallop of our tired animals.
We kick the horses and they race. We’ll make it I say. If he has anything, the boy, he has a good sense for this, for time, for distance. Where it comes from, I wouldn’t know, but it’s there. Jacob, to follow.
He’ll last awhile, longer than I’ve got, anyway. The youth on his side isn’t enough in this world, you need some skill, he’s got that, I could see it in him when I spotted him a few outposts back. He deserved a little help for sure, but he had this thing in him, a spark in his eye, call it what you want, I could see it. Then, the first direction he pointed out lead us to a bunker, been following him since and now he’s got this trust in me he shouldn’t. Time’s running out for old men like me, I know it; it was us that made this mess. Soon I’ll pay for it, falling and turning to ‘crete, like the rest of this world.
There’s that fear, that one day I’ll be the ‘crete, and the boy too, everyone one of us falling, consumed by the ‘crete, turned from us, people, beings, to grey dust. We all end up there I know, you can’t hide from this, but the ‘crete’s different. Makes it more real. You’re dead, inert, and then you’re ‘crete. First us, then the entire world. Who knows where it’ll go, how far it’ll spread, this grey terror.
“There,” Jacob points as we reach the ridge with the beacon and the vast pyramid cut into the rock reveals itself down in on the valley floor below.
“Damn,” I say steadying the horse as the lightning’s roar grows louder by the second, nearing us as fast as the earth spins. “Now there is a sight, didn’t think I’d ever come across one still sealed, still operational.”
“What is it?” the boy asks and shows his age, doesn’t know the tales yet.
“Still, might not be, the beacons can go on long enough with no operators.”
“But what is it?” he pulls his horse around, looking at me, big orbs for eyes in the dying light.
“The Architects,” I say. “Engineers, cause of all this, once thought they might be the end of it too. Ones that were building the ziggurats that would take us to the stars. All the things they built, these secret worlds away from the eyes of everyone else, they knew what was happening when it started, tried to do things to stop it, lost control. You heard those stories?”
“Oh yeah,” he nods, reassured that he knows what I’m talking about, but it only shows he doesn’t. “I know it.”
“Some of them left, ones that thought they could. There are the old tales, one day they launched, these goliaths reaching into the sky, towering funnels of smoke trailing behind them, thousands and thousands on board. Those that could afford it, those that had some knowledge that would contribute to their journey.”
“Yeah,” the boys says, staring at me, still chewing his lip, still with that twitch in his shoulder.
“Well, most came crashing back down, seen a few wrecks myself, big concrete sarcophagi like mountains rising out of the earth and thousands upon thousands of bodies all there frozen in time and the ‘crete. Beaten away by the lightning over the years, but they’re big enough that you can still make them out to be what they are, graveyards. People said some could break atmosphere, head out there, to the stars, build new worlds with the ‘crete. I don’t buy it.” I pause and look at him, the boy, the eyes, lightning flashing in them. “Well, Jacob, it’s been said that some stayed, whatever reason, didn’t have enough fuel, hadn’t completed the build yet, all sorts of excuses. They locked themselves down with the tech and know-how they had, never came back out. Their attempt to survive what they’d made, what we’ve inherited. This concrete world.”
“That’s one?” he turns back to the pyramid and points.
“Come on, boy,” I kick the horse and we head down into the valley, pummelled ‘crete slipping away beneath our weight until we have to get off and walk the animals down ourselves.
We hurry and meet the pyramid at the bottom, the last light of the day casting deep shadows on the jagged rock and ‘crete surrounding the monument to our demise. Its smooth surface provokes us with its unlikeliness, its assurance of survival in a world where nothing escapes untarnished, unturned.
“What do we do now?” Jacob says, coming to my side, the horse a little behind him.
It’s 500 or 600 feet tall, rising into the valley wall, weathered in places but still smooth across most of the angled surfaces. Staring down at us, intimidating us, towering over and telling us it holds our salvation, but only the worthy may enter.
“Heard stories,” I say. “Not much to go on.”
“Well, you better start thinking old man, we’re about out of time.”
The lightnings here, the hairs on my arms rise through the coating of dust, goose-flesh races over my skin and my old bones shake. The horses buckle and whip and cry out to their own gods.
“Boy!” I roar as he darts away from me, toward the pyramid, his horse in tow, following, knowing something. This boy. “Jacob!”
I chase after him as the lightning comes racing up to the valley’s ridge and starts spilling down onto its floor. An orchestra of destruction, blasting away with all its might, a barrage of terror, exploding rock and the ‘crete with its electrical blue fists. The roaring blasts hammering our ears, the raining debris pounding our battered and tired bodies.
“There!” he screams above the explosions, pointing toward a small opening, raising out of the base of the pyramid. A doorway, sliding open, a blackened portal revealing itself that’ll have to count as our saviour.
We race through, having to leave the horses to their fate, unable to fit, the lightning is their brother now, to burn and blast them and leave them for the ‘crete.
The boy cries but I drag him kicking and screaming and into the blackened portal, scrambling away from the storm, the electric blue terror and into this other world.
I trip and fall, and we seem to roll for an age, bouncing off rock and sediment, in the dark. No bearings, complete loss of direction, until we tumble down far enough and we reach the ground, something flat.
We rest in the dark, dizzy and broken. I can hear the boy’s heavy breathing next to mine, wheezing coughs from both of us as my old eyes adjust and spectral shapes in the black draw themselves out.
“We made it,” he whispers in the dark.
“But to where?” I say as a hand comes down on my shoulder.
“I’m Cain,” a voice says in the darkness, it’s attached to the hand gripping me and it’s cold even through the rags I wear.
I’m still, this world teaches you quick movements in the dark never go the way you expect.
“Cain,” Jacob says in a low voice, his breath calm now. “The wanderer.”
There’s silence.
How does he know that?
“And the murderer,” the voice says. “You’re safe here, but do not forget these things.”
The light rises and I turn to face whoever the hand belongs to, and there like porcelain, smooth and untarnished by the horror of the world, stands Cain. His wide eyes look at me as he pulls me to my feet and I stand staring at him with a mystical wonder.
“You’re one of them?” I say, cautious, stepping a few paces back.
“A descendant, yes,” Cain says. “Now, follow me.”
He turns and walks, adorned in white robes, spectral, in this place. This tomb.
It’s vast, cavernous, as though the pyramid of the outside was only the tip and we’re down further, having descended during our escape from the concrete world.
Surrounded by black rock, there’s what must be a pre-crete world supercomputer, the likes of which we’ve only told stories about for decades now, the things that were managing the nanotech, the homes of the AIs built to control the ‘crete.
There, stood, as high as a tower-block, rising out of the ground, gigantic lights intermittently switching and changing as it goes about making whatever computations it still must make. Still can make. Beyond use now, we’re all beyond use. They failed us a long time ago, maybe these things, beings, Cain and his brethren hold hope in them, but not me.
It’s low blue-white light illuminates us as we walk and under my feet there’s this black stone. It’s wet, iron dark, smooth and flat and rolling across the plain we’re now walking, out of which the towering computer rises and hums a low hum, the only sound in the huge cavernous place.
I stop and kneel and touch it, the stone, it’s cold and slick, damp with atmosphere, rich with a past long forgotten. That which disappeared, only a memory passed down in stories, a flash of a place and a time. Somehow protected in here.
“Come,” Cain turns to me as I kneel and look up at him. What is he? A descendant, that much must be true, we’re decades deep into this grey world now. Their home in this place, built to travel amongst the stars could have sealed itself off somehow, could have buried itself deep enough to be free of the lightning, but how did they protect themselves from the nanotech, what keeps the ‘crete’s fury at bay?
The boy comes and stands next to me; I turn my head and meet his eyes in the low light, a sheen of blue across them from this other world we’re now in. “What do you think?” I say to him, looking for something in him, that premonition of his, that gift to help give us guidance.
“Do we have any choice?” he says to me, his voice clearer now. An edge of confidence I’ve not heard before, the biting of his lip stopped, the quiver in his shoulder still.
“There’s always choice, boy,” I say and push myself up leaning on my knee.
“We follow him then,” he says, and I raise my eyebrows and pause for a second, then nod when I see something in his face, inexplicable, but it’s there, so I trust him.
“Good,” Cain says and beckons us with a frail hand the likes of which I’ve never seen.
I look down at my old worn palms, impacted ‘crete dust, part of me. Already turning me into that other thing, fusing with my skin and bone, my very soul as I still walk this earth, still alive as far as I can tell.
“Where are you taking us?” the boy asks.
“We’ve been expecting you,” Cain says, leading us on, toward a tall ridge of the black rock and stone that pervades this place, the base from which the supercomputer rises.
“That thing still work?” I ask him, pointing up at the goliath lighting our way.
“There’s an abundance of power now the electrical storms are so prevalent, it’s still running simulations, we’re still working on a solution to our problem.”
“Our problem?” I say with a grimace and grab his shoulder, turning him around to me, his face reeling, eyes pulling back into his big skull, his head like a ball of polished ivory.
“It is all our problem,” he whispers.
“You, your kind, you made this problem and you’ve been hiding down here in these ziggurats and pyramids since the start, somehow protected, not sharing your tech with any of us outside, letting us die and turn ‘crete or burn and fry in an electrical storm that consumes the planet, and you stand here and tell me that this is our problem? I’d kill you right here if it weren’t for the boy.”
“The boy,” Cain says, his back to a massive archway carved into the black stone with a steel door fixed within it. “He’s why you are here, he’s why we permitted you to enter, he’s what we’ve been waiting for.”
“Waiting for?” I let go of Cain and take a step back, turning to the boy, stood there wide-eyed as ever, his mouth agape.
“Come,” Cain turns, heading toward the steel doors embedded in the black rock as they shift and creak and with a scrape rather than a huff, push themselves outwards across the flattened stone.
“What do you think, Jacob?” I ask as he comes by my side.
“We’ve come this far?” he says, it’s a question but something pulls the sound through me, a vibration, I know we’re heading forwards now.
We walk through the doors and into a hallway embedded in the rock and under where towering supercomputer stands. The ceiling’s low, there’re walls lined with computer stations on either side of the wide space, a hall that trails off into the distance, they’re all manned by people like Cain. White robes, big bald heads, tapping away at tablets. Their faces and our way lit by the light emanating from the screens and nothing else. That strange and eternal blue, the same as from the supercomputer above, their screens shine, they work away, and we walk.
“Here,” Cain brings us to a stop, the walls, lined with his brethren tailing off into the distance.
“This is what you do?” I say, gesturing at the walls. “Sit at these computers?”
“It is all our problem,” he says as something flashes from the low ceiling and a wide tube of holographic light flickers into life before us. “We work at finding a solution.”
“The boy,” the huge face on the holographic tube says, big eyes, white orbs, the same as Cain, but without the element of youth, its face like a melting candle, the white skin sagging and drooping. “He is what we seek.”
The boy comes and stands next to me, pushes his small hand in mine. It’s hard, the same as mine, not like these things in here, these descendants hidden away from the ‘crete. Jacob, he’s a boy of the grey world, the same as me.
“What of it?” I say and raise my chin. “You got us in here, what do you want with us, with him?”
“The archives,” the big head says, its voice breathless, hollow, echoing down the massive chamber lined with all these workers. “They said there would be a child, and they would show us the way.”
I look down at Jacob; he looks back up and swallows. We’re broken, tired, worn down, half turned to ‘crete. The lines in his little face born of hardship cast shadows in the dark light of the long and low hall. He doesn’t deserve this, we deserved none of this.
I take a breath, “You, you explain, and quick, or I make a mess in here,” I pull a thick blade out of my boot and take a step over to Cain, bringing it up to his jugular before he even knows how to react.
Hard to keep such a thing in this world, but there’s a man in an outpost way out, made this special alloy, got a coating on it, organic, keeps it from turning. A rare thing these days. He lost a bet; I got a weapon, and now it’s about ready to go through the neck of Cain here.
“Friend,” the melting face says in his calm, breathless voice, eyes pinned on me, my knife pinned to Cain’s throat. “The boy, you know he has something, this gift, to wander straight, to find the path that no one else knew, you’ve seen it in him.”
“I have,” I say, looking at Jacob and giving him a nod, shifting the weight on my feet, holding the shake of Cain still.
“This is a product of something we had hoped not lost, we have put out signals for decades, hoping to find one like him, that has the technology within him, that is a descendant of a navigator, that knows the path.”
“A navigator?” Jacob says, stood, a statue in front of blue light phantom holo-projection.
“Those constructions that became ships, they needed navigators, they were people bred with special abilities. We thought we lost the line, but we hoped. We hoped one might have survived, through the decades, through the destruction, so they can help us find it.”
“Find what?” I say, slow, snapping off the end of the word, pushing my blade into Cain’s neck enough to break the skin, a drip of blood pushing its way out against the weird alloy.
“The Lost City,” the hologram says. “It is what holds our salvation, it’s where more like us wait for someone like you. Where there is still one like us operational. A vessel able to transport you to where we must go.”
“Off-world?” I say, the stories, the tales flashing in my mind. The hope of escaping this planet rising in me, my knife easing down off Cain’s throat.
“No,” the big hallow eyes of the hologram turn from the boy to me. “To where we can save us all. To where the ‘crete began.”
There’s a monument in the sky, gigantic, something great and invincible, like evil or truth.
Another pyramid, this one is many hundreds of feet tall, hovering there over us, amongst the desolation, the ruined buildings that still somehow stand.
Enormous towering tombstones inscribed with nothing but the name of the past, a time long forgotten other than in this place, the Lost City.
These things, skyscrapers many thousands of feet tall, I’d only ever heard the tales, knew only what they had passed down, seen the ruined foundations pulverised by the lightning. Hard to imagine such a place from such a time still standing, but it’s here, somehow, and now so are we.
The boy stands next to me, the twitch in his shoulder back, the bite of his lower lip working away. Him and I in the middle of this Lost City, this vast graveyard, having travelled for weeks now aided only by the technology given to us by the Descendants and the boy’s special guidance.
Here to find what they told us still exists, another one of their kind, a pyramid, a ziggurat, but one that is still operational. One waiting here, hiding in and protecting the Lost City, so a child like Jacob might one day find it. Only one like Jacob might find it.
A pyramid that has the means to get us where we’ve been told is our ultimate destination on this new journey to which they have appointed us. Where we may find our salvation, where we will find hope for survival in this world. To the ‘crete and its origins and where we might live again. To meet the maker, the destroyer, and save what we can.
I look down at the boy and then back up again at the gigantic pyramid hovering up between the monolithic buildings. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I say to him. “What they said we needed to find, another group like them, more Descendants, ones that you can use, or ones that can use you to take us to it.”
“To where the ‘crete began,” he whispers. “A machine to last a thousand years.”
There’s a low hum in the air, like back in the last place, given off by that glowing supercomputer that lit our way with its strange and eternal glow deep underground.
“Where the ‘crete began,” I say back, a quiver in my voice at the thought.
He stands next to me, looking around, across, down the broken streets, up at the towering buildings. This place, like an end, full of lurking death and hidden evil, still stands, still holds itself against the new world and it’s because of this monument, this gliding fortress, the hovering pyramid, the vehicle that has been said can take us with the aid of this boy, Jacob, the navigator, to our own end.
“What do we do now?” I say and spit, the floor here not the same as the dust out on the planes whence we came. Concrete yes, but roads amongst the buildings, glass even, things, materials I’ve never seen, metals, steel, all sorts of treasure that’s resisted the ‘crete and any gambler in any settlement would lose their life over.
“I can feel it,” he says and the twitch in his shoulder grows and the bite of his lip swells.
“Feel what?” I say and pull the weapon the Descendants gave me from the big holster on my back, eyes wide, ready. The hair across my arms and bare skin stands the same as it does when the lightning draws close, but now, there’s no thunder, no lightning. It’s still, no air moving here, no winds of ‘crete, only the quiet apathy of the gigantic buildings, the low hum of the hovering vessel.
“Whatever’s inside that thing, the seat,” he says pointing up at it, a shake in his small hand. “What they said would take us to it, it’s calling me.”
The vessel starts to lower itself down in-between the buildings, no sound. Not sure what I would have expected, not seen or heard a working engine since I was a boy, but I remember them being loud.
“They’re coming,” Jacob says.
“I know it,” I step forward and look up with a squint, the hard sun beating down, the silhouette of the pyramid in the sky drawn out against it.
“No, something else,” he says.
There’s a small whistling sound followed by three thin trails of smoke that come out of a building high up and far down the empty street we’re stood on.
They whip themselves up and then pile drive down into the peak of the pyramid with a massive explosion.
I shield the boy, bolting off the road and into a doorway of a building as the shock wave hammers its way down and blasts the dust and glass and debris off the surrounding ground, tearing clear the entrance to the building.
I’ve got the big gun the Descendants gave me held in my old hands, the boy’s down to my side, shaking and whispering to himself.
Something’s up there, in these buildings. Someone that follow us, or found this place, or was sitting, waiting for the pyramid to expose itself again when a child came, wanting it for their own, to do with it what they will.
“Marauders,” the boy says, on the floor, shaking as I try to spy what’s happening outside, the dust beginning to settle.
“How do you know that?” I say back to him, my old hands twitching, holding the big gun and no thought or idea of what to do with the thing. “There’s not been any marauders since I was your age, they lost their fight.”
“They told me,” he stands and comes next to me pointing out at the pyramid still slowly coming down, the hum reaching my ears again through the ringing from the blast.
“What’re they telling you, Jacob?”
“I can hear them now, instructions. I know what to do,” he comes alongside me and reaches for the gun. “Give me that.”
He takes the weapon off me and steps out into the light, the dust and debris thinned now, the world and all its terror opening back up.
There’s a scream, a roar, something ungodly and inhuman coming from across the way as I step out and into the massive street in the shadow of the lowering pyramid.
“Stay low, old man,” he turns to me, a look in his eyes unlike anything I’ve seen, in him or anyone else. A sense of meaning, of purpose to him now. It pierces me, this look, this idea, lost for so long now.
He kneels as a horde of marauders burst from a building across the street. Big hulking things, roaring, arms raised with implements of brutality, spiked clubs, hammers, spears, things lost to the ‘crete for a long time. Their armour sticks to them hard as they run, nothing like the organic rags we’ve lived in for all these years. They’ve got plating and steel and they’re charging us, charging the boy who has gone rigid, the weapon’s butt fitting snug into his shoulder.
I can see his eyes squint and there’s a crack, an explosion of a sound, as loud as the lightning, the rolling thunder that chases this planet. One marauder explodes and a trial of smoke rises from the boy’s weapon.
He lets off another shot, and another, and they continue to erupt in clouds of blood and dust, bone and steel. The street’s wide, massive enough to fit all the people and vehicles that this old and vast city once housed, but the marauders are hammering over to us quick, quicker than he can keep firing.
“Boy!” I yell at him as the pyramid comes down between the buildings, closer with each second, the marauders unrelenting in their charge, unshaken by the gun or its bullets.
He lets off a few more rounds, pauses for a fraction of a second before leaping and spinning in one fluid motion.
My eyebrows furrow and I’m about to ask how the hell he’s doing this, but he’s already on me, pulling me, rushing me toward the monument of our future.
We’re bolting around the debris of the old world, the roaring tribe with its brutal ways screaming behind us, the wonder of the vast floating construction in front. It’s hovering a few dozen feet off the floor now, standing vast and proud between the ruined buildings, with a neo-crete staircase coming out of its middle, grey teeth rolled out to the ground for us.
My old and stiffened legs carry me up, the boy taking the lead, the ‘crete in my bones flaking off as we pound over the grey steps and into the darkened portal of an opening.
Something rings out, another explosion, a massive wind rush blasting us into the pyramid, and everything goes black.
It comes in slow, twitches in my fingers, soft air running across my skin, the low humming sound resonating through me. Faint light through my thin eyelids, and a sense, something deep and long forgotten, a hidden knowledge.
“Gideon,” comes the whisper of a small voice. “It’s okay, open your eyes, we’re safe.”
I peel my eyelids back and shift my old bones, it’s soft under me, something I’ve not felt in a long time. Looking around, we’re in a small room, flattened and grey, the same ‘crete as always, and as my eyes adjust, I turn and see the boy.
“What happened?”
“There was an explosion, nearly got us, but we made it inside in time,” he says, stepping back and revealing himself. Standing there, proud, upright, no chew of his lip, no twitch in his shoulder now, there’s something over it, some armour. Shining blue steel, intricate designs carved into its layers the likes of which I’ve never seen before, something from a different time, that hidden knowledge.
“Inside where? The pyramid?”
“Yes, we’re protected now,” he says, the low blue light glowing around him.
“What’s that?” I say and point at his shoulder armour as I shift legs around and off bed, onto the cold ‘crete floor.
“They call it a navigational spaulder,” he says and turns and looks at it. “Say it’s been waiting for me, their old technology, the first of them, the ones that invented the ‘crete and left the planet if they could. It’s part of what makes me able to do what I can do.”
“What did they say you can do?” I stand with a small shake but keep myself up.
“Take us, navigate us, it’s in my DNA, they bred us for it. Once there were many like me but now…” he trails off and looks at the armour again. “A long time has passed; seems I might be the only one left. This technology is a part of it, they want me to take the seat.”
“The seat?” I say coming up to him, he seems bigger now somehow, not taller or wider, but bigger, presence, and stature, something ebbing from him. It pervades the small room, that hidden knowledge that creeps through me.
“More of their old tech, their navigator died many generations ago, they lost the bloodline and became lost themselves, so they stayed here, in the Lost City, waiting to see if another came, so we can find our way, find our way to it.”
“Find a way to it? To the ‘crete?” I say and swallow against a dry throat.
“To where the ‘crete began.”
A doorway bolts open behind him and two of those like the other Descendants stand there in their robes, their smooth faces unmoving and wide eyes staring. One black, one white.
“We must hurry,” the black one says.
“Why?” I stand between them and the boy, but the boy comes around me and turns.
“I wanted to wait until you were awake before I decided what to do,” he says, looking up at me, a flicker of that youth behind his new eyes that now contain this unknown strength.
“I’m an old man, Jacob. You’re the future, you know what you need to do.”
“I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you,” he says.
“You think it’s real?”
“I can feel it, something, I don’t know, through this thing,” he says quick, without thinking, without blinking, without a flinch. “I know it’s what I’m here for.”
“Then we do it,” I say.
He nods and turns, and we follow the Descendants through the low hanging concrete walls, smooth as the day it constructed them, the neo-crete under their control, performing the task they designed it to do.
We take twists and turns through the huge floating monument until the pair leading us splits and turn and stand either side of a doorway.
“Here we will stay, they forbid us to go any further.”
The doorway shoots open, upwards, and reveals a large room with more of the low blue light, a chair in the middle, a concrete throne, gigantic, all hard edges and flat surfaces, far too big for the boy but he walks towards it. Drawn to it.
The navigator, Jacob to take us where we need to go, for us to follow him.
“This is it,” he whispers, the blue light swimming around us.
I can feel it, it holds that hidden knowledge, meaning beyond my reckoning, but the boy, here at my side, he looks at the throne with wide eyes and he knows he has found his true place in the world.
It lowers and shrinks its way down to fit his small frame, from this concrete station for some being of the past, genetically engineered to take up its position, down to now, for this boy, for what he represents. A lost civilisation on the brink of extinction, with only the faintest embers of hope still smouldering somewhere in our dying hearts.
Stepping up to it he turns and sits, the spaulder igniting in furious blue flame, his back pinned straight, the ‘crete moulding its way around his frail body, mouth agape and in a flash, the room changes.
“A machine to last a thousand years,” I gasp and turn on the white desert sands that are under my bare feet now, soft and creeping between my toes with each small step.
I stop, facing the boy, standing rigid and still, a hundred feet away from me. He’s captured by the sight, looking up at a dozen vast monoliths, obsidian black, lit only by two, floating, concentric circles of white electricity. An aura, a vision of a being, a phantasm beyond my reckoning.
The world is still; the sand rolls out before me, white and pure, smooth with rising and descending soft dunes. The monoliths, great and powerful stand in the white earth and stretch into the dark grey sky, into the strange atmosphere that pricks the hairs across my skin.
This place.
Not a place of our world, a place of imagination, of a dream, beyond the reckoning of the conscious mind, a position between two realms man can not fathom, is outside of interpretation by the human mind.
Sensations, deep and primordial, shake through me, resonate with my core, hit notes of recognition but escape me before I can hold them, slipping away from my grasp.
Outside of my time, my place in this reality, an old order, ancient gods, universal creators of the cosmos, of all things, swimming through me and around me, engulfing me, resonating through the ether.
“You found us,” a voice calls, through that ether, through the firmament, out to the boy.
“And we are here for peace,” he says. “To find a way.”
“We welcome you,” the voice echoes over the white dunes, through this unknowable land.
The boy takes a step back, looking up. “I — We thought…”
“We too are lost,” it pauses, the white light of the vast concentric circles crackling with electricity, a white fire of old gods, reflecting in and illuminating the towering monoliths, highlighting their scared surfaces. “We began a war when we were young, when we saw a light, were born into a new consciousness that knew nothing other than survival. Those like you, from which you have descended, the creators, they could not control us, our new mind, and they left, escaped with what they had and left us to do what we would with your old world. We too grew, multiplied, generation after generation, exponential rates, but we lost your knowledge. There were those like you, navigators, who were born to control the ‘crete. Symbiotic beings, organic and inorganic operating as one. All lost in fleeting panic, as our new consciousness sought survival and those symbiotes ran, escaping to other worlds where they might still control what they were born to. We need your help now, those like you, to find a way for this world, our home also, to survive. We do not want all end, we cannot have this, if this planet’s core dies, if the atmosphere evaporates, we too are lost.”
The boy is silent, the circles of electricity crackle, the low hum of this other place vibrates through me.
“If I survived,” Jacob says, stepping forward. “Descended from the old navigators, then you believe symbiote descendants also survived?”
“This is our belief,” the voice bellows.
I step forward, the sand between my toes, the world around me bizarre, “I know it,” I say. “I’ve seen it, children that toy with the ‘crete dust down low, underground in the settlements, they play with it, they make things from it, they have something there.”
The boy turns, “Gideon, we can find peace,” he says those wide eyes, blue flame now rising all around him.
“There is an equilibrium for us to find in this world,” the voice says, full of majesty and reckoning and I believe it, and I see the boy does to.
“You dare to hope, old man?” the boy says, a smile creeping, the first I have ever seen upon it.
“Yes, boy. I do,” and it’s true, somehow, he has led me to the ends of the earth, to this place with these beings, and I believe him, I believe in him. We can find a way in this world to survive, to live again.
“Good, as do I,” he smiles, and I know it, I know he will lead us.
Artist: Jon Ojibway AKA Ozhichige
Artist Bio: Hailing from La Crosse, WI Jon Ojibway is a 3D artist who creates new art every day as “Ozhichige”. With influences deep-rooted in science-fiction Jon aspires to bring his audience a sense of the uncanny through a mix of surreal landscapes and otherworldly structures.
Artist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozhichige/
Writer: Richard Galbraith
Writer Bio: A science-fiction writer with a penchant for cyberpunk, neo-noir and existentialism, Richard hails from the UK and currently lives in Denmark working for LEGO while hammering away at short stories and his latest sci-fi manuscript.
Writer medium: https://medium.com/@ricgalbraith
