Alluvium (13 page)

Autumn looked down at her slightly larger stomach and back up to Hollis. “If that’s what you think then so be it. You’re not a knight in shining armor. I don’t need you looking after me anymore, and I’m starting to realize that I never needed you in the first place."

“Sure, you can think that," laughed Hollis. “But you won't survive long on your own. Not on this world."

Autumn shook her head at his ignorance. “I’m not alone," she said, placing her hand on her stomach. “But you will be," and she advanced towards the exit of the cabin, resisting to look back to what she was leaving behind. She pushed aside the sliding door and ignored Hollis as he punched a nearby wall in the backdrop. Into the corridor she fled and hurried her pace through it, trying to hold back the oncoming tears, and began looking for a place that was far away from her troubles.

Lately, in each of their shared moments, Hollis would flash the heat of indifference, in fast and short bursts like lightning. She knew he cared for the child and herself, and told this to her often, but sometimes this truth was buried deep below layers and layers of lies and false faces. Hollis was a Russian-nesting-doll of a human being, and far within his many shells was his real self, drowning and gasping for air. How much time, Autumn wondered then, would it take to unearth him from his self-made tomb so she could finally have all of him.

Autumn knew that she could only rely on herself for survival and nobody else, and she would continue doing so until her child was born. She did not need to find a father for her baby, and Hollis was surely no longer a suitable candidate for the position, not in his current state of confusion. She would not wait for him, even when he says he’s making progress with the Computer. She couldn’t afford to wait. It would be just two months when the baby would arrive and in that time she would need to prepare a better world. Autumn was young and scared and seemingly alone, but no matter the chaos before her and the unknowns of it all, she was willing to do anything for her unborn baby. Her love was unwavering.

Autumn opened the door to her own personal cabin and entered, ready to release her anger in a fit of screams. She turned to her bed to grab a pillow and muffle her cries but found someone already sitting on it, comfortable and calm.

Saul smiled back at her from the bed.

“Hello dear," he spoke soothingly and stood over her in a quick move. “Is there something wrong? You look flustered."

Autumn opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. What could she say? She had been trying so long to hide from him that she knew this day would eventually come.

“You don’t need to tell me. You’ve been stressed just like me," whispered Saul as he placed his hands on her hips. “It's been hard around here lately, in the colony. There's been plenty of death and deceit to go around. Plenty of lies. So we need to try to relax."

Saul breathed hot air into her ear. “We need to try to be human again," he said, and began to slide his hands down the sides of her body, gripping his fingers under her jacket and around her skin-tight colonial suit beneath, feeling the subtle curves of her pregnancy.

Autumn could not hide her body anymore. In the coming weeks, nothing could cover the roundness: no fleece, no coat, no dress, nor corset. Her attempts to stunt Saul’s sexual cravings were about to fail. He wanted her to undress, layer by layer, to kiss her skin and feel her body, and it would be then, in her bareness, that he would see the truth. Her truth. What would Saul do then? On a world so small, there would be no place to hide from his rage.

The clothes would not come off, Autumn decided then. She wanted to stay buried, safe beneath the sand. Un-breached and alone, like Hollis Reyes and the unborn curled in her womb. But she knew that she could not hide forever. Her own due date was nearing. With each day, the sand between worlds was shallowing, and just as she was digging to Hollis, Saul was digging to her. It was inevitable that each would be found by the other, and right now, Saul was nearly there.

“No, Saul- stop," she protested, holding back his restless hands. “It’s late."

Saul continued to massage her body, pulling off her coat and moving his hands to the zipper on the front.

“Why stop? Why hold back? You have nothing to hide from me."

Autumn tried harder to break his domination. “Please, not now. I don’t feel up for it. I don’t feel well," she said.

Saul’s force grew stronger. He began to yank at her coverage, yanking the fabric on her suit.

“It's been too long, Autumn. Too long you’ve been running from me. Always wearing all these clothes. I need to see you. I need to see all of you," he hissed, raising his voice and turning a violent red. “No more running away!" He zipped down the front of her suit half-way, touching the bare skin.

“No! Saul, stop! Dammit, stop!" Autumn screamed. She held back with all her ability, hopeless and horrified, coiled in his constricting arms, and before she knew it her hand whipped across his right cheek, snapping his head to the side. The sharp clap reverberated between the two fighting bodies, ceasing Saul’s aggression. He pushed off the pregnant woman and touched his burning cheek in amazement, as if God had bled, and slowly the fire cooled in his veins. Autumn had resisted and won, but not without suffering her own damages. The front of her suit was torn open and showed the front of her body half-exposed. She was unearthed, at last.

Saul’s eyes fell to her bulging waist, and he looked resolved in what he saw.

“You have something to tell me," he said with no inflection or surprise.

Autumn let the air escape from her lungs as she held onto her protruding abdomen, hoping it hadn’t popped and deflated in the struggle.

“I do," she cried.

The beams bent with the wind. They rattled and cooed and twisted in their foundation. Through the gaps between the buildings, the heavy desert wind pushed and rocked the beams even further. Like thin trees on a tall mountain, the rickety metal structure swayed back and forth in the breeze, and the man in the Crawler could see this very clearly from his position. He knew that the base of the structure was too weak to hold upright so much metal and concrete, and in its half-built state, there would be no telling when the tower would fall under the structural circumstances.

The wind had been harsh and relentless for some time now as if a great storm was coming on the horizon, waiting for the right moment to strike and topple the tower. The man in the Crawler beneath the building did not want to see it fall because he had created it with his own hands, and yet, it was because of this very reason he knew that it would. He had seen it happen in his past works too many times before, in another life, on another world. He remembered that day, the one that mirrored the current, and the destruction of the last building he ever built on Earth.

The young man was in the city of Tel Aviv in the state of Israel during the height of the war. Ahead of him was a tower that looked just the same as the other on Mars: unfinished and neglected by its builder. Except this particular tower was not unfinished, but rather destroyed by someone else. Scorch marks burned up its brick, and the window-frames were windowless. Glass collected at the buildings bottom with the rest of the fallen rubble that fell from above, and sparking wires protruded out the gashes in its side walling while broken piping rolled water from its spouts into the mess of other things at the basin. The building looked hollow from the outside looking in, but the man knew the inside was more or less intact, shielded from the blast. He knew that hundreds of untouched office blocks were still inside with tables and chairs and coffee pots and printers. He could pull his mind back to the days when the building was filled with the sounds of ringing telephones and fast-talking professionals. He could still save it, the man thought, because he was the best architect East of the Atlantic. He could keep the building from falling like all the others in the war-torn city if he only had more time. The particular building in question was once one of the tallest skyscrapers in Israel's bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv, but now it was the only skyscraper left standing in the wake of the passing war. It stood like the last flower in a forest caught by a wildfire. It would burn with the rest, the only question was when.

Another man, much smaller in size, exited a lumbering mechanical crane nearby while holding onto his hard-hat so that it would not blow away with the desert winds. He walked towards the somber architect staring at his broken building.

The small man spoke. “We need an answer, Saul. The Israelis are calling us back to base within the hour and by that time we need to have finished the job." The small man pulled a thin strip of rectangular glass from his belt and held it out to Saul, still panting from his walk across the burning sands. “Does it fall or does it stay?" he asked.

The small man's hand shook as he waited for Saul to take the phone and make the ultimate decision. Saul made no move either way and continued sliding his eyes up and down the crumbling citadel as it wavered high in the sand-tossed skies. It was the last standing skyscraper in the city. If it fell it would signify the end of an international historical site. There would be no turning back. It could not fall, but Saul knew that it must.

“Have you ever heard the story of the Tower of Babel?" delayed Saul, asking the small man without turning his head away from the trembling building.

The small man adjusted his helmet. “No, I don’t believe I have. I’m not a religious man."

“Not many of us are these days, but you don’t have to be religious to see the irony in the message. The story started long ago," Saul began, "after The Great Flood swept across the entire planet. I'm sure you've at the very least heard of it. It was a flood that spanned the entire world, drowning most of humanity in God’s wrath, but leaving a small population that managed to find solid ground and stay alive through it all. The small group of survivors, and the generations that followed, were not crippled by the aftermath of the flood as you might expect but instead united by it. It was as though the wave of death had helped them realize the meaning of life, and in the face of extinction, they joined together into one homogenous society. They survived The Great Flood, but more importantly, they survived each other. They thrived in the wake of genocide and built a powerful and rich utopia for themselves, unconflicted by any war or disagreement or difference because they were all one and lived in such a way. It looked like paradise, this new world of theirs. It was like a refresh button had been pressed and all the evils of their ancestors were taken with the water. Each day the people of this new world grew more and more divine and holy until eventually they grew so powerful they decided they had the ability to reach God himself. They decided to build a tower: the Tower of Babel; a temple so tall that they could climb its endless steps into the heavens themselves and become one with God. They spent many years and lost many lives building this tower, intending to finalize their evolution from men to higher spiritual beings.
Angels
. And eventually, the tower reached the point of the empyrean."

Saul turned to the small man at his side who was still wheezing from the day's physical exertion. “And do you know what happened next?" Saul challenged him.

The small man shook his head side to side.

“God stopped them. He saw that there was strength in their unity, and He divided them by confusing their speech so that they weren't able to speak to one another. He saw that their harmony made them too holy and too evolved for their time. Their species came too close to divinity and so He made them animals again. He made each one different from the next so that they would find chaos in these differences. So that they would find war and hatred and racism and prejudice. He separated the people of Babel and soon enough they became us because God knew that if they were anything like us they would never have the power to reach perfection again. After that, the Tower was destroyed and forgotten, and God was left alone just as he wanted, while we were left down here at war with ourselves, waiting for the next Great Flood to wipe us out so that we might become united again."

The small man looked confused at the relevance of the story. "So, what does that mean we should do?" he asked.

Saul smirked and looked back at the tower for one last time, finding peace in its brokenness. "I think lately God's been telling us to stay down here where we belong," he said, and pulled the phone from the small man’s hand, held it to his ear, and spoke loudly. “Let it fall," he said, and so it did.

Many years later and many worlds away, Saul whispered the same words to himself as he observed his other unfinished tower from the helm of the Crawler he was in. It was only a matter of days before it would collapse onto itself, so he would need to hurry to get what he came for and get out. He unstrapped himself from the vehicle’s seat, shook his helmet to be certain it was secured over his head and the oxygen was flowing, and stepped out of the rover and into the desert. He looked around, spinning in circles, and took in all the other half-built buildings in the construction site. The Refugee Settlement did not look new, as it was, but rather ancient, like the decaying temples of a Martian civilization long since extinct. Saul faced the particularly broken tower at the end of the rotation and moved against the harsh winds towards it, fading into the mammoth shadow of the tall rickety structure. He slipped into the buildings wide entrance and out of the coming storm in urgency.

The inside was nothing like the outside, as it normally is with most things, and the building’s relatively polished furnishing contrasted with the weathered exterior. The grand apartment lobby was washed with appealing ocean blue and tan decor which was the favorite color scheme of Saul, who had designed it. Above the glass flooring, a large crystal chandelier swayed slightly with the creaking walls, and a triple set of elevators were stationed at both sides of the oblique front-desk in its center. Saul imagined there being other survivors from Earth with him in the apartment tower. He imagined the lobby being packed with families and friends and all of them praising him for his beautiful work. But there was nobody in there but him. A creator alone with his creation.