The Death of the Wave (10 page)

Let it begin again,

to the charge, there is nothing,

nothing left to take away from me.

Your move.

–Descartes.

For a few weeks more

they tested my mathematics

in application to the stars.

I braved the last exams,

but here there were few gunshots.

I had never seen a world such as this.

It gleams like the birth of the world,

it is perfect and silent,

the hush of a church on less than holy ground.

When I passed my last exams to their satisfaction

I was reassigned to Health Corps

to play with the pretty toys in the labs.

First, development.

I was staring at a slide, carefully gauging

when a slim cool hand came around to grasp mine.

“Careful not to lower the scope too far.”

A soft voice whispered in my ear

and I hesitated on the dial.

“You’ll break the glass.”

I shook off this stranger, defiantly,

turned and faced

Galileo’s adolescent,

smiling at me with eyes as black as dying.

He was astonishingly inappropriate for the setting

in a three-piece suit,

casually toying with a piece of equipment

worth more than I would make in a year, in ten years.

And I could only start and stare.

“Boring work, isn’t it,”
he murmured lazily,

and smiled again his rehearsed little smile.

I turned to my work.

“It is…not…not really… all that boring….”

I babbled idiotically.

“No need to lie to me,”
he replied.

The son of the king shook his gleaming head

and gestured with one hand.

“Follow me.”

I jogged behind him, an ungainly figure in oversized whites

trying desperately to keep up with his furlong strides.

“What will I be working on—” I questioned,

not knowing his name.

“Darwin.”

“Darwin.”

And considerately, his steps began to slow.

He led me outside in the snow

where a Palace car was waiting

and told me:

“Lives.”

I remember.

I remember the cold.

The marks our footsteps made in the snow,

and how the falling snow glittered like diamonds

in your dark hair and lingered like a lie.

Your black eyes were shining

and you smiled to see my confusion

as I shivered, watching the sleek car pull up to meet us.

You never felt the cold,

and as we waited,

pulled your suit jacket from your lean shoulders

and draped it over mine.

“Where are we going?” I questioned through chattering teeth.

But you only smiled again

your empty, mysterious smile.

You and I climbed in the back of the car

and I heard you whisper directions to your driver,

directions that must have led to the Camps.

I had never been out of the Hives, Darwin.

None of us in my Hive had.

I lived in ignorance of how it might have been for the others.

Life in the Camps had been a vague thing, a warning.

A nightmare upon waking.

But lives, Darwin?

We had been lucky.

For outside, the gates,

they closed behind us.

Descartes.

Memories of you,

the first time I had written

it was your hand guiding me.

And once, there was music,

music from the minds of men long dead.

Descartes.

Yours were the first kind words

that I had heard from your kind.

I had grown to hate the pale face of the aristocrat

and the dark eyes,

and the lips that gleamed

like blood in the snow.

Until you.

No one ever asked me

what it was to be a Breaker.

We do not even have names.

Descartes.

I was once a Breaker.

But now I am nothing

but memories of you.

In your mind, you created the rebellion.

By your hand, you outlined the plan.

We would share the works of the masters with the world.

Wake them to the inequalities between Palaces and Camps.

We would dismantle the tests.

Silence the Voice of Eden.

And one day—

One day—

the Tree of Eden would burn.

Such lofty plans,

from the Breaker who broke

and the aristo-who-wrote.

Galileo’s bastard son.

How I loved you.

For we had our very own son.

The boy who stalled a rebellion.

Who was destined to live in a Hive

and one day become an Artist.

For then the Camps awaited us,

the shanty-town ramshackle of Poet’s Camp,

the colorful madness of Perform

all falling apart, and half forgotten.

Darwin.

Your driver opened the door,

and we stepped out into a world of desolation.

The Camps.

Narrow streets.

The sound of something beautiful

playing mournfully over makeshift rooftops.

And you lifted your head to hear it,

as I trembled in the snow.

“What is it, Darwin?” I whispered.

The mournful sound that twisted and wailed

as if it had remembered all the sadness in the world.

For you smiled to tell me:

“Music.”

And for once that word became more than a word.

The first time that I heard music.

Does art need to be beautiful?

Does love need to be fair?

We found the player in Musician’s Camp.

The man with the instrument he called a violin

leaning against his broken house and playing

as though the strings were lit on fire.

Beside him lay a still, cold child,

and he played as if playing to the child.

Darwin, alien in a three-piece suit,

you asked him why he played.

Why continue on if the world was ending?

If Author had sharpened the control of the Citadel—

if the Palace and the Camps were so far separated—

did he know of the injustice?

But he only smiled and played on,

as relentlessly, again,

the snow began to fall.

We watched the blinking of the neon lights.

The all night pharmacies

where huddled men and women

waited for a sackcloth angel.

The lines of the forgotten.

And Darwin asked of me:

What do you know?

But I knew nothing,

and so said:

“Everything.”

The supercilious tug of a smile

that faded, as he lifted his head

to the single trill of the violin

that had been taken up by others.

Music I had no name for,

the thrill of an orchestra playing on broken bows

and he shook his head.

“I promised you lives,”

he whispered,

and I drew his jacket closer

to keep out the cold.

“These Proto-pills, you took them in the Hive—”

“We all did,” I replied softly.

And he nodded and said:

“That will be your task.”

“Distribution?”

“Development.”

His dark eyes were half hooded.

“Artists in the time of first Author lived half the life

of a Scientist in the Palaces.

Now it is less.”

His gaze never flickered.

“So tell me then, Scientist.

If the Proto-pills are meant to

extend the lives of Scientist

and Artist alike—

why are they not working?”

I had no answer.

So he smiled to say:

“Design.”

I had been given a chance, and I was always going to take it.

My Breaker had forgiven me,

remembered me, and granted me nods in corridors.

She often came back from her Hive

exhausted and alone,

and would not speak of what she had done.

She was nearly impeccable,

exhausted, but still cleaned her uniform

of any trace of villainy.

I have lived in the Hive system,

and knew where she would go.

My Breaker, for she was close to mine.

She had begun to trust me.

But it was not enough.

Not close enough.

Galileo spoke to me in his white chambers.

The angel spoke to me.

He told me of his fears of my Breaker.

The beginnings of the stirring in the Camps,

classified information that was revealed.

And I feared for her.

I feared his suspicions.

But the angel spoke to me

the Artist whose name was a lie,

for he called me Artist,

and never spoke my name.

My name is Blue,

but the king, he remembered me.

He told me to watch her,

to watch her where she goes,

and learn of what she did.

And I saw her death in those black eyes.

But I was in love,

and love makes you blind.

I kissed the hem of his robes,

and burned my lips on silk

from a place once called Arabia.

Galileo, you had promised

that I would be the savior of Eden.

The protector of the State.

And would always be remembered.

And I believed you, Galileo.

I believed in you.

Greatness, for all the citizens can aspire

And if pure words turn fates,

Light hearts burnt upon a pyre

I’ll build in the states

Listen, tell a tale, my liar

Each in fire hates.

Only, close the doors behind them.

I had sent the words out into the world

and there is no going back.

For it is the words

that define immortality.

It is the mere fact

that the words exist at all.

I was to save the people

no matter the cost.

And if I die,

I will live on

under my name.

For I am words

and words know how to wait.

I had sent the words out into the world

and there is no going back.

For it is the author

that defines immortality.

It is the mere fact

that I exist at all.

I was to save the State

no matter the cost.

And if I die,

I will live on

under her name.

For I am words

and words know how to wait.

For we are

For I am

On the side of the angels.

So it began.

The Camps had been caught by fire.

For pure hearts build.

Citizens turn upon the tale.

The words burned in a fire!

How quickly they deciphered the messages

that I had given them.

My clever Artists.

In the Camps, they were building their guns, their blades

out of what they could find.

Useless debris, put to use.

They had begun to deface the posters.

The Camps were almost ready.

They trembled in apprehension.

All they needed was one more spark.

One more spark that was stolen from us.

The Voice, the Voice of Eden,

still called out the Edicts every hour

over the sound of the gunshots.

Soon it would have been silenced.

Soon, when they were ready.

The children were hungry, the Citadel had cut off aid quickly.

But we had to wait.

Wait, or risk the failing of our future.

Better to die out of love

than to die for hate.

Better we die together

with the words of our history ringing in our ears

than to peter out by population.

We were great once.

We could have been again.

I dreamed of a world where we existed

and the people knew the truth.

For we stood there with the new world order in our hands,

and the promises that you Artists gave me

could have won a revolution.

I loved you all.

Had it been enough.

G
reatness, for
all
the
citizens
can aspire

A
nd if
pure
words
turn
fates,

L
ight
hearts
burnt
upon
a pyre

I
’ll
build
in
the
states

L
isten, tell
a
tale
, my liar

E
ach in
fire
hates.

O
nly, close the door behind them.