Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (22 page)

Ezra’s words would come to me in the night.  “But why not try?” he would ask me.  “What’s the point of doing what we do if there’s no hope for change?”

“Skepticism is a luxury afforded only in the absence of fear,” I would reply, not understanding my own reasons at first.  But as I began to dissect it, things became clearer.

I
t was Ezra’s thirtieth birthday.  Corbin, Roger and Miquel sat around the dining-room table as I lit the candles.  Even Pumpkin and Boo had a place, though only the cat and Roger wore the traditional coned, paper party hats.

“Happy birthday,
” Roger said with the blow of a party favor.

“Here, here,” Miquel added.

“Speech!” Corbin called, his hands cupped to his mouth.

Ezra stood, graciously playing along.  “I would like to thank everyone here for being so supportive of me in the past.  And I hope to be far more helpful to the Hyperion in the years to come,” Ezra sat back down and then added, “So I understand there are presents?”

“Oh, me first!” Roger said.  Both Roger and Corbin toppled their chairs, rushing out of the room in an effort to beat each other to their gifts.  “No running in the house,” I said instinctively, but my voice lacked authority.  Only Miquel saw how much, and so I avoided his eyes.  Roger came back first with a box wrapped in newspaper, bless his heart.  He handed Ezra the heavy package while Corbin brandished his similarly wrapped gift.  “They go together,” Corbin explained.

Roger made a condescending gesture to Corbin’s gift and mouthed, “batteries.”

Setting the large box down on the table, Ezra unwrapped it delicately and opened the top.  Inside was a welding torch. 

“We know how big a part of your life this hobby has become.”

It had started at first with some simple wood working and hand carvings, but over the past ten years, Ezra had become more and more enthralled with creating and molding things with her hands.  Just a few summers ago she had even turned the back garage into a workshop complete with a blast furnace and forge.  She made everything from model ships and glass bottles to build them in, to swords and jewelry.

Truly touched by the thoughtfulness, Ezra picked up and exa
mined the instrument and ran her hands over the hoses and gauges still coiled in the box.  “This is top of the line, guys.  I don’t know what to say.”

“Well you know us,” Corbin said presenting his gift with a smile. “We give for-you-for-us gifts so we expect stuff in return.”

Ezra next unwrapped a protective face shield with a fire decal coming off the black view port.

“I know the paint job won’t last long,” Corbin offered.  “But at least for a while, yeah?”

Ezra was visibly warmed. “This is great, guys.  Thank you.”

Roger put a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.  “Well, you need to know that we only celebrate birthday’s every ten years; so we have to make ‘em count.  Oh and after you get to like two-hundred, no one gets you anything – just a heads up – I was crushed.”

“Happy birthday, little-mom,” Corbin laughed.

“Yeah, happy birthday.”

“Thank you both.”

Corbin turned to Miquel. “What about you old timer?  What’d you get
her?”

Rarely one to go along with Corbin’s sense of humor, Miquel simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys, dropping them on the table with a jingle.

“Oh that is
not
cool,” Corbin moaned. “We gotta have a spending limit next time.”

Miquel chuckled in his deep voice. “It’s a
lso a combination gift,” he explained. “Miss Lori does the rest.”

“Ooo, what is it?  I wanna know,” Roger asked.

“I’m afraid it’s a secret boys,” I told them weakly.

“What’s wrong, mom?” Corbin asked.

“I must cut the celebrations short and ask our lady of the hour to go upstairs and pack a bag.”  I was trying my hardest to sound cheery.

“Pack a bag?” Ezra repeated.

“I’ll explain it all later.  Now hurry along.  Get your things.  We’ll be gone at least three days.”

Uneasily, Ezra made her
way upstairs, followed closely behind by Boo.  When she came back down, only Miquel remained as I had ushered the other two out.

“I’ll be holding down the fort while you’re gone,” Miquel said, seeing him to the door. “Take good care of Mom.”

“I will,” Ezra replied though things still seemed foggy to her.  “Goodbye Boo-boo.” Ezra knelt down and scooped her up. “Try to be good for uncle Miquel.”

“Si,” she replied flatly. 
After a kiss on the head, Ezra set her back down and then took one last look around the bookstore before heading to the car.

“
S
o where are we going?” Ezra asked, nervously.

“South Gothica.”

“Really?  Why?  What’s in Sogot?”

“It’s part of your training.”

“My training?”  Ezra laughed, mocking the notion, “Is there another library down there?”

“You’ll see.  Just try to enjoy the scenery till then.”

Ezra frowned and turned to look out the window. “You know I haven’t been this far down the road since Miquel first brought me here.”

I nodded.

“Huh,” she continued, thinking aloud. “It hasn’t changed at all.”

“Did you think it would have?”

“Well, yeah I guess.  I mean it’s exactly the same though.”

“Ezra…” I began, but
she took my weariness as disappointment.

“I know, I know.  It’s just strange, that’s all.”

As we made it further south and the familiar sights of trees turned into dense neighborhoods and strip malls, we both grew uneasy.

“Is there any danger involved – in us leaving?” Ezra asked.

“Leaving what?  Our comfort zone?”

“I just meant…”

“There’s always danger.”

Ezra settled into her
seat, probably not wanting to antagonize me any more at the beginning of a long trip.  With her head on her hand, she stared out the window alone in her thoughts.  I let her stay that way for a long time.  The less I thought about what we were doing and why, the better.

E
zra sat up quickly and looked around.  I think she had fallen asleep somewhere in Central, I’m not really sure where.  I just hoped our presence would go unnoticed by my children.  I was supposed to be heading to Pantheon Theatre.  Instead here we were in a south western neighborhood of Sogot.   

“Where are we?”  Ezra asked.

“A cemetery.”

A willow tree, like the one inside Artemis lane, sat in the middle of a similarly sized graveyard.  On the other side was a funeral with a small group of people gathered around a casket.

“Who died?” she asked.

“Carson Jackson.”

“Who’s that?”

“No one.”

“Lori?  What’s going on?”

“Carson was born in the projects of Solthweros, a Sogot community.  This is its cemetery.  Just a week after being released from prison he was shot by a man named Harry Piliotti, a PIPER, hired by the community.  Carson was nineteen years old.  His mother is over there.”

“How did you know him?” Ezra started to say but I cut her off by shaking my head disappointedly.

“I read his file.  The cypera who wrote it used a template like a journalist covering the same old story. 
Paradigmatic black youth.  Fatherless.  Lacking all civilized qualities.
”  Ezra knew these phrases from countless sentiner files.  Everyone in Gothica did, though probably by different names.  The last one was the most dynamic.  It meant to us, that this child had never been told he was loved.  He had never been given a gift.  He had never been cradled or held.  He had never known anything but survival in the most grotesque sense of the word.  He had been born outside of civilization and was then punished for not fitting into it.  Unfortunately, to the rest of Gothica, especially those who had money or power, Carson lacked all civilized qualities in a different sense of the phrase.

Not too far away, the mother wept on her boy’s casket.  “What is the response?” I ask rhetorically.  “
Tough on crime
,
For Profit Prisons?
”  Catchphrases for exacerbating the problem.  “The Gothican Way makes responsibility very clear.  If you fail or if you don’t succeed, you have no one to blame but yourself.  It’s as simple as that.”

“We know it isn’t,” Ezra said worriedly.

“
We
do, but that’s because we know the history of Gothica!  About cycle!  We have empirical data instead of uninformed emotional responses.  We know specifics like when Gothica’s zoning boards laid out neighborhoods, they did so with deliberate racial prejudices that have endured in many horrible ways for thousands of years.  We know that there is a wage barrier between welfare and a profitable working life.  We see the invisible walls that were set up long ago and which continue to have a devastating legacy in all aspects of Gothica.  All anyone else sees is the present, and so there is no empathy.  They see the world through
their
lives,
their
experiences and can’t imagine anything else.”

“How else would you expect them to look at things?”

“No other way… for the
average
person.  The average Gothican can’t think beyond himself, just like the average Gothican born into it, can’t escape poverty.  But cycle isn’t just about the average person, it’s about the exceptional people too and how it stops them from doing any good or enacting any change.  It stops them from even wanting to, and any that are left after that are fighting the whole darn city!”

Ezra was perfectly still, looking right at me.  His eyes, once so young – still so young – were full of fear.  “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I
know
why Carson died and what can be done to correct it for future generations.  Up until now I have been unwilling to
fight
to make it happen.”  I bit my lip, then pushed on.  “You and I have one lifetime here; what kind of person or mother would I be if I left it for you no better than I found it?”

“Lori,” Ezra said, as if
she had suddenly written me off as senile or over-reacting.  “I think we should go back home.”

“No!  I’ve read reports like this for too long!  And it’s just wrong – the whole city is wrong!”

“Lori, you taught me how to see past that.”

“To what, Ezra?  To posterity?  If I have done that, than I have truly failed you.  I am a mother.  Not just to the sentiners, but a real mother.  To you.  And I will not leave this world no better than I found it!  Not for my child to inherit.”

“Lori, stop,” Ezra pleaded. 

I wouldn’t.  “We know that things won’t equalize.  We know that the invisible hand of the market won’t set things right.  For
thousands
of years, cycle has done nothing but concentrate all the wealth at the top and all the misery at the bottom.  It’s not that the system has failed; it’s working perfectly – just like it was designed to.  And do you know what?  I believe in my heart, truly deep down inside, that if the average Gothican knew about this, they wouldn’t stand for it.  If they could only connect their hatred of injustice with a motivation and willingness to help, then things could change.”

“It won’t!” Ezra shouted and I took in a startled breath. “This whole city will be destroyed before anyone lets that happen,”
she exclaimed.

“I know,” I said, putting the car in gear.  “Which I why I have to do this.”  I pulled away from the corner and drove slowly down the street.  “I don’t know how much time I have.
  It should be plenty with all the kharma I’ve saved up over the years.”

“Lori, don’t talk like that.  Stop the car.”

“
Please!
Be quiet, and let me speak.  I have seen how this will end.  All of it.  And though I will die, that knowledge will live on in the consciousness.  You will see-”

†
Delan
o
†

I
t couldn’t be.  How didn’t I know?  Why didn’t she
tell me
?  Oh god.  God, don’t let it be true.  I burst into Cassandra’s apartment.  Ezra was in the living room, utterly unharmed and sitting on the sofa.  Cassandra held me back as I rushed towards him. 

“Delano,”
Cass said, warningly.

“What happened?” I demanded of Ezra as he quivered there pathetically.

“I don’t know!” he screamed through tears.

“It was a train.” Cassandra said.  “We pulled him from the wreckage.”

“So help me, if you did this, I will find a way to kill you!”

“Delano, it wasn’t his fault.”

“What were you doing in Sogot?” I snarled.

“She wanted to change things!” Ezra wailed.  I pushed forward into Cassandra who struggled to hold me back. 
Marley came in from the kitchen and stood ready to jump in.