‘Hello Mr
Engeltine, how are you feeling,’ stated the unflappable voice of my
interviewer. His very tone seemed riled with a confidence and
slight amusement.
‘What have you
done to me?’ I shouted back with a raw anger.
‘Why Mr
Engeltine we have done exactly what you wanted. We have transformed
you from a useless drain upon the investment of our citizen’s
taxes, into a valuable piece of ordinance.’
‘What? You
turned me into a weapon?’ The very notion of it seemed
impossible.
‘Not at all,
though our contract is with the military, you can be so much more.
Meet me today at twelve by the entrance to the Sennaca War
Memorial. It is here that all of your questions shall be
answered.’
The phone cut
off abruptly. The device highlighted an option to confirm my
attendance at the event. I wearily checked the appropriate box. My
head was running through all the possible options.
I thought
about going straight there. I thought about going in to confront
them, to hold them to account. But, I realised that the Eternis
Systems was an unstoppable force. You could not simply go in and
confront them. You had to listen and be smart. These were two of
the very qualities that I was sure I did not possess.
I thought
about calling the police. Certainly this seemed a sensible
decision. I looked at the call screen and started to put in the
number. My fingers froze. I could not exactly say, ‘hello I went
into an interview and now I think that I am some sort of military
experiment
.
’ I dropped the phone down onto the bed with the
futility of it all. There was no hope. I had to go to that meeting.
I had to find out. If knowledge could arm you with power, then at
least I would be empowered.
I gathered
together my things. The keys were for once hanging on the rack. It
was as I was walking out of the house that I discovered that I had
a plan. I shuffled around in my pockets until my fingers connected
with the hard flat lump that was my phone. I called the one person
in the world that I trusted, even though we didn’t speak anymore. I
called Adrian.
‘Hello this is
Adrian,’ a ruffled, tired sounding voice announced.
‘Adrian, look,
I know we have not spoken in a while,’ I began but Adrian cut me
off.
‘George, look,
the way we left things off, I just can’t...’
Adrian’s voice
had trailed off. I was desperate to make keep his attention and so
I said, ‘Listen I’m in a lot of trouble. I can’t explain, just hear
me out. I promise I’m not asking for a lot.’ There was a sighing on
the other end of the line and I had begun the motion of moving the
phone from my ear in disappointment when I heard a muffled
reply.
‘I’ll give you
five minutes.’ I sighed with the relief of it all. Here at least
one person might listen to me. Here at least one person might have
my back. I knew I didn’t deserve it, especially not from him, but I
had to try and so I gave him my request.
‘Adrian I’m
going to meet a man, he works for Eternis Systems and he’s very
dangerous. I’m meeting him at the Sennaca War Memorial in an hour.
If I don’t call you back in four hours I want you to call the
police and give them this information. Tell them...tell them that
he did something to me.’
‘I’ve got to
go,’ I continued. ‘I want you to know I’m sorry for what I did,
truly sorry.’ I tore the phone from my ear before he could ask why.
He had always wanted answers, answers I couldn’t give. It was
surreal that even in my unremarkable little life there were some
things that I could never tell him. I stopped dwelling, after all
there was a time and a place for everything. With a resolute
determination I walked out of the house, stuck the keys in my car
and departed.
The Sennaca
War Memorial was a huge building. It had been composed entirely out
of a metal that shone like the scales of a fish. All over its
surface were rainbows of colour. Its shape was one of elongated
arrow-heads stacked upon one another. Some of the floors were huge
and spanned kilometres. Others were smaller and spanned perhaps
five hundred meters. They were not laid out in any particular
pattern, but scattered around, on top and below each other. The
effect was a building that appeared like a chimera, always in
between two forms. On the one hand it was the most horrific
construction that mankind had ever endeavoured to create. On the
other it was a beautiful testament to the genius of human
architecture. It was a work of art and art can be both applauded
and condemned.
The building
was commissioned by the then head of the Eternis Systems in
commemoration of the conclusion of the Resource Wars. It had always
seemed to me that the war had been appropriately named. It was a
stupid name for a stupid war.
In reality the
building was far more of a corporate temple than it was a memorial.
Its promotions boasted more office space than any other building in
Bagata. In fact the memorial offered the second most office space
in the whole of the former Democratic Republic of Congo. The city
of course belonged to West in all but name and so it was only
natural that the Eternis System’s owned every square foot of
it.
Parking the
car and listening to the local terror report I opened the door and
descended into the boiling fume filled landscape of Central
District, Bagata. The terror report had promised a low level of
activity, despite recent increases in violence across the
Waste.
I was walking
now away from the car park and towards the entrance of the
memorial. Whoever had designed the entrance had seemed to be
desperate to convince its users that it was an entirely natural
composition. There were fountains dancing rainbows about them.
There was a white marble floor with black circular sculptures, the
genesis and intention of which, was unknown to anyone but their
designer. There were broad leafed trees and rows of sculptured
grass gardens separating the sovereignty of the memorial from the
rest of Bataga.
As I walked
through the opulence I imagined that perhaps in another place,
serving another purpose, the entrance could seem almost heavenly.
The architect had simply chosen the wrong place to put his
sculpture because the surrounding memorial arching its laser
straight angles into the sky caused a sickening sense of
vertigo.
Standing there
in front of the doors that lead into the structure I caught sight
of my target. He saw me at the very same moment that I saw him. I
drew my breath and marched towards him.
‘Mr Sephra,’ I
demanded.
‘Mr Engeltine,
so good of you to come. Let’s take a walk.’
We entered the
building together our paces matching one another. I tried to keep
my awe contained but the Sennaca Memorial was something to behold.
Inside the huge entrance gallery, which rose for hundreds of
unclearly defined floors, were huge crystal overhangs and tall
obsidian obelisks that rose for hundreds of feet and seemed to
split into a thousand fragments. Each fragment appeared suspended
in the air, in the act of falling.
We crossed an
eternity of gallery and entered an elevator. Chiming with sincerity
the Eternis System’s vocal representative informed us of all the
tourist attractions within the structure. We disembarked at some
bizarrely high number, with my shoulder brushing the door
apologetically, as I struggled to keep pace with Sephra. Traversing
yet more crowded passageways we made it to a room of immense
proportions. Despite its size all that was present in the room was
a huge desk surrounded by chairs. Sephra sat on one side and I the
other.
‘What have you
done to me?’ I asked more calmly than I thought possible.
‘We have given
you a gift, Mr Engeltine. We have made you see,’ Sephra answered
equally calmly.
‘All I see is
light and then darkness. It is beyond all recognition. How exactly
is that a gift?’
‘Like all
great gifts Mr Engeltine, you may not always understand its gravity
straight away.’
‘So tell me
everything. What
have
you done to me? I want to know. I want
to understand what all this crazy shit is I’m seeing. I want you to
fix it. I want you to make me understand. You can’t just offer me a
job and turn me insane,’ I cried.
‘If it is any
consolation George you’ve got the job.’ Standing briefly he offered
me a cigarette which I took gratefully, snapping off the ignition
stub and inhaling deeply. Sephra did the same. We stared at each
other for a while. Each of us searching the other for a sign,
wholly indescribable and yet wholly ingrained in reality. Sephra
must have found what he was looking for as he grunted and began to
talk.
‘In order for
you to understand, you must first know the beginning. The story is
historically long, but it can be told, if you have enough patience.
Most importantly you must suspend your disbeliefs and accept
everything I tell you as fact, even if it seems fiction.’
He looked at
me sternly. His face told me that he was preparing to unload a
burden that had long been on his shoulders. Suddenly his expression
changed to worry or perhaps grief and he returned to his chair.
‘Do you know
what this building was built for?’ I nodded and he smiled a smile
which seemed too say
like hell you do
.
‘The Resource
Wars were a terrible time Mr Engeltine. Humanity had just achieved
its defining moment. We had spread our wings and left this troubled
planet behind in search of greener pastures. We found them of
course, as you will find anything if you look hard enough.’ He
looked knowingly at me and sighed.
‘But like all
things George what we found was not what we had looked for. The
colonists set down on worlds that were cruel and harsh.
Nation-making is never an easy task. Many died. For years they had
our support, but the war took that away. We left the colonies to
find their own way, in many cases to wither and die. There are only
six left out of twenty.’
Interjecting I
exclaimed bitterly: ‘I know all of this. I mean even school
children know this. What does this have to do with me?’
‘It has
everything to do with you. This information sets out a chain of
events that will lead me to a discovery and inevitably to you. If
you will not listen, then what is the point in the telling?’
‘Fine I’ll
listen, but my patience is wearing thin,’ I replied angrily.
Sighing again Sephra seemed to come to another decision and
continued.
‘After the
Resource Wars so little was left habitable. The cradle of
civilisation had become a dying oak, gnarled and beyond repair. The
most powerful nations in the world left their holy cities and took
the lands of those less powerful. The West took Africa, the East
took anything that was left.
‘This monument
was built, not to commemorate the war, but to commemorate the
West’s ideology and so it is a temple to consumerism. To put it
simply the war had utterly destroyed both enemy and ally. It was
useless to build a monument to a war that had put an end to
everything. So we built a monument to an ideology. An ideology that
we can no longer enact.’ He sighed again and paused.
I wanted to
point out the window and say, ‘look at all of this, can’t you see,
the West is thriving.’ Instead I was silent.
Sephra
continued, ‘I know exactly what you are thinking. I know that if
you look out and onto this city it would seem as though we were
rebuilding, coming back to the time of the United World. But the
truth, the truth is never that simple. In reality the West was only
ever a visitor. We were always supposed to go back. It seems that
nature always had a sense of irony. You see the things that were so
effortless to destroy were also impossible for us to put back. Once
you destroy that much of something it can never be
re-engineered.
‘We lost Mr
Engeltine. We lost the war. Now all that we can look forward to is
a future elsewhere. A future, perhaps, in the stars. There is
nothing left for us here. The world has died on us and we can no
longer stay. In two years even Africa will no longer be capable of
supporting life. In just a few days Africa won’t even be able to
support a civilisation. We have done so much to Mother Gaia and now
she wants us no more.’
Rushing to my
feet I shouted, ‘well what about the colonies, they weren’t even
involved in the wars, why aren’t we starting an evacuation?’ But
Sephra just shook his head slowly and smiled again, that same tired
smile.
‘This is where
we arrive at your part in the story.’ He smiled and continued.
‘Almost a
century after the wars conclusion we finally regained our
ship-building capacity. Imagine our surprise, arriving from
hyperspace to find a barren landscape. We searched one planet after
another and it was the same again and again. Total wreckage, total
destruction. Of course some things had managed to survive, the odd
superstructure here and there, the odd computer, but nothing that
even gave us a clue.
‘In
desperation we began to search for the farthest colonies. To our
relief we found that they had survived unharmed and unaware of the
fate that had befallen their sisters. It was a miracle, if such
things are to be believed.
‘Over the days
and weeks that followed we began our investigation. We steadily
began to put together a picture. It was the portrait of a
nightmare.
‘At first we
believed that this might have been an inevitable result of the loss
of the United World. The colonies were in the processes of being
terraformed. Without the metallurgical supplies that Earth could
offer, we believed that the colonies may well have found it nearly
impossible to survive. Perhaps, we mused, that with a failing
environment, with no possibility of resupply, they had endeavoured
to take the easier way out. It would have been kinder, more humane
and infinitely quicker. Certainly the blast patterns and radiation
indicated self-suicide. So we began to mourn for that loss. But
mourning does not rebuild nations. And so with little other
recourse, we prepared ourselves for the second exodus from
Earth.