Authors: Mark Lavorato
He took in a deep breath and eyed the ground in front of his feet, "No. You weren't." After raising a hand to his face and grooming his beard for a few seconds, he continued, "And to be honest with you, that is the sole reason I've been asked to see you this morning: to tell you the story of what happened to the world, and where we, the island, fit into it all."
I promptly sat up straight and folded my hands together on the table, trying not to look as impatient as I was. Seeing this, he turned just enough to look at me. "But before you get too excited, you should know that it's not going to be an easy story for you to hear. Because after hearing it, the way that you see your world - our life here, the island, and all of us on it - will never be the same again."
I remember that my face numbed with this last sentence, that there was something in its tone that made a liquid weight settle into the bottom of my stomach. I realized, at the last possible second, after having swum too close to the centre of the whirlpool to return to safety, that I'd completely underestimated the depth and magnitude of what I was about to be drawn into. Yet there was no turning back, no way to swim against the currents. The only thing I could do was listen, be pulled under.
I watched Dana face the garden again, hesitating for only a moment before he began.
7
"This story began with one man. He was a charismatic man - well spoken, compelling - but most importantly he was standing behind some fascinating ideas. Basically, just as Harek told you yesterday, he'd determined that humanity was nature's one fatal flaw, that we were the most deviant mutation, the greatest cancer, the final parasite. He recognized that we had found a way to shirk the governing systems of nature, and as a result were undoing everything in our wake, and would only shamelessly continue to do so.
"Of course, such an idea wasn't exactly novel - every culture that has ever lived has had its tiny population of truth-seekers - but what makes this story different is that this man finally had a clear and realistic plan to do something about it. He proposed a simple remedy: end our destructive reign altogether; rid the world of our species and give nature the chance to heal, to renew itself, to create something better.
"Yet, how does one go about such a thing, especially considering that the very stem of our brain, the nucleus from which all our actions are based, is solely responsible for keeping our species alive at all cost? Well, he knew that there were two ways a person could override this powerful, intrinsic urge: either through complete desperation, or through the highest form of intellectual reasoning and belief. Obviously, he focused on the latter. Because if there is one thing that sets us apart from the common parasite, it is that we have the capacity to be self-aware; and if that awareness is exceptional, if our self-understanding is thorough enough, we can overrule even our deepest instincts.
"And so that man set out to look for people who might possess such a high level of understanding - and he found them. Everywhere. Quickly and quietly he gained support among the scientific and academically elite, and received funding from a few wealthy individuals, who, he'd discovered, happened to be radical idealists behind closed doors. He then set up a system of almost complete anonymity, so that if one person were caught, or even wavered, the whole organization would continue to function. And perhaps because each person's identity was so veiled, people felt more comfortable to offer whatever service they could, and soon the anonymous messages, which were being secretly relayed through tight social rings, were flowing.
"Within a short period of time this man's organization, which never once adopted a name, had become a silent, compact union, consisting of only the most crucial and strategic members at its centre, and which then fanned out into a grid of resources all over the world; regular men and women who were employed in every facet of intelligent society, including research, communications, and military.
"That organization formed a three phase plan called 'The Goal'. The first phase was clearly the most significant. As strange as this may sound to you right now, traditionally, an enormous amount of time, energy, and money has been put into developing more effective ways to kill each other. And as such, there were laboratories all over the world that were busy cultivating diseases to be used as weapons. Some of the scientists in those laboratories appeared to be working for their governments, but were really working for the society. Collectively, they developed five separate strains of an exceptional virus - five to account for possible individuals or pockets of population that might prove naturally immune to one of the forms, as sometimes happens in nature - it was a virus that slowly affected the nervous system and ended in paralysis and death. These infectious agents were amazingly hardy, but also had a long incubation period, making them virtually impossible to detect for about five years. Yet during that time the person carrying the disease seemed healthy and continued travelling around, unknowingly spreading it on a global scale.
"As you might be able to imagine, the first phase... well, it worked - to say the least. Suddenly, almost overnight, it was discovered that there was a global pandemic of a terminal disease. Panic set in. First, everyone scattered to find a cure, but they quickly realized that it was too late - which was when things became unbearably ugly. Different groups of people, organized into skin colour, languages, and thoughts on God, began blaming one another, pointing fingers, and eventually even dropping some very potent weapons in a few places. They did what every human culture throughout history did when faced with the need to hold together: they fell apart.
"The second phase involved secret secluded shelters that were built by the military of several different countries to withstand huge environmental changes, which might be brought on by those same potent weapons that I just mentioned. Obviously, it was the rich and powerful that had the connections and resources to make it to these safe havens, but they also had at least one society member among them. That society member then poisoned the elite, secured the shelter from the inside, and admitted other members, who, incidentally, had been living nearby and in quarantine for years.
"Once everyone was safe inside, they hunkered down to watch and wait. They could monitor what was happening in the world from instruments deep inside the bunkers, which communicated with devices that circle the earth (in fact, some of the moving stars that we see crossing the sky at night are those very instruments). They carefully recorded both the movement and concentration of people as the population diminished throughout the decades.
"After many, many years, there were only a few tiny pockets of survivors left outside the shelters, which had either created strongholds and had managed to keep the viral contamination out, or had outlived any of the potential carriers. It was at the end of the second phase that groups of specially trained soldiers (who had obviously been sterilized before setting out) were dispatched from the shelters around the world to destroy these last clusters of people. Once they'd succeeded, they fanned out to spend the rest of their lives to search for, and then wipe out, any smaller groups that the instruments in the sky might have missed.
"Which brings us to the third and last phase of The Goal. The third phase involves another group of specially trained young men that will be sent out from the shelters. These expeditions will be acting as a kind of sweep, a last check for undetected pockets of human life. And if any of these expeditions should find people, they will have been trained to infiltrate the group, and then to chemically sterilize them. In this last phase, violence should never enter into the equation, as there are too few people, and too much land to cover, than to risk any loss of life to the expedition members."
Dana stopped for a moment and scratched the back of his head, then, in that odd way of his, turned to face me with his eyes closed, opening them just as he began to speak. "As I'm sure you've been able to pick up along the way, our island is one of those safe havens. And you, and all of the younger people on the island, were born and have been raised as a pool of individuals with varying talents, so that we might select the best suited of you to run or support one of the third phase expeditions." He paused, clearing his throat.
"So, that should give you a pretty good idea of how it all fits together; who we are, why we're alive. Obviously, we are all members of that amazingly far-sighted and responsible society that I've been talking about - and you, Joshua, are among the last generation of our vile race."
He stopped talking and raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for a response, as if this were the perfect time for me to share any thoughts or reflections I might have; as if a person, after hearing such a story, would be capable of having a calm and articulate discourse on anything. I could only stare at him, wide-eyed, noticing that the birds had either flown away or fallen silent, as there was no sound whatsoever in the courtyard except my breathing; quick, shallow breaths, drying my throat. I swallowed to try and wet it. Which didn't work.
I don't know if there are words that exist which could describe what I was feeling at that moment. But it's occurred to me since it was probably an emotion in and of itself; something that could only be described as 'the feeling people get when they find out the only reason they're alive is to assist in the eradication of their own species'. I couldn't move a muscle - something slow and tingling had crawled across my neck and down my back, and seemed to be paralysing me, cinching me uncomfortably to my chair. I focused on every tiny movement that Dana made, the expanding of his chest, the blinking of his slow eyelids, the delicate flaring of one of his nostrils.
In only a few minutes, it had become vividly clear to me that he - along with every single one of the other Elders for that matter - was a mad, crazing lunatic. I didn't even feel safe enough to shift my eyes; though at the same time, I was straining to take in the detail of my periphery, looking for a way out, running through the possibilities. I thought about the courtyard, the walls around us that were too high to climb; then the door that was left ajar, but would only lead into the other chamber where the entrance was almost certainly barred. And it all became clear to me right then: they brought me to a fortress on purpose. They knew how I was going to react. They were probably even
expecting
me to try and run - or fight. Come to think of it, maybe he had a knife under his shirt, and was just waiting for me to lash out.
I eyed the folds of his knuckles, swallowed again, felt the saliva scratch down my oesophagus.
After a few moments, Dana leaned over the table toward me, and, unable to stop myself, I leaned back, keeping the same amount of space between us. He snickered at this. "Joshua. Relax. You should really see yourself right now; you're deathly pale - your hands are trembling. Come on. I mean - ask yourself: What are you afraid of? Do you really think that anybody on this island would hurt you? Do you think that the same people who have cared for you all of their lives, who have nurtured you from birth, would ever allow any harm to come to you, let alone inflict that harm?" He shook his head, "And if it's the future that you're fearing, ask yourself this: Could you picture any of those same people forcing you to do something that you didn't believe in? I mean - true, we might have some philosophies that you weren't aware of, but we're still the same people you've known all your life. So do us the service of keeping that in mind before you judge, all right?"
I nodded, and he leaned back into his chair again, reflecting for a bit before continuing. "Though, to be perfectly honest, I might be a bit to blame for your reaction here. Maybe I was moving through the story a little fast, maybe I should have given you a bit more time to keep pace, to ask questions." His voice was calm, reassuring. "And really, if I were to think about it more objectively, we're almost asking the impossible here, we're asking for you, in the span of only a few minutes, to keep pace with an idea that took years to develop. I guess that would be enough to confuse or frighten anyone.
"But I want you to bear in mind one thing. We didn't tell you the whole story because we thought you'd agree with us; in fact, we were almost certain you wouldn't. I think every Elder can admit that, at a glance, the concept of The Goal can appear fanatical, even deranged; and indeed, if that's what you're thinking, that's perfectly fine. The only thing that we wanted to accomplish this morning was to provide you with a completely transparent view of the big picture. That's all.
"And now that it's done, the next step should come fairly natural. We need you to doubt. We want you to question, in the deepest way, the ethics and rationale of everything inside the story I just told you. Because the last thing we want you to do is unthinkingly nod and adopt our beliefs. No. We want you to probe them instead, scrutinize them, rip them apart and piece them back together, only to see if you happen to come to the same conclusions we have. If you don't, then you're welcome to continue living a sheltered existence here on the island (albeit under much stricter supervision of course, as - and I think you can appreciate this - we've trusted you with a few extremely volatile facts here). However, if you
do
find that you come to the same conclusions we have, then we would train you to set off across the ocean with a select few from our community, where you would be asked to wander around a landscape that is gloriously healing from our wounds, and make sure that it is uninhabited, unmolested, and pristine. And then, once you were finished there, to continue onto other lands, exploring, discovering, and adventuring for the rest of your days." He watched me for a few seconds, as if allowing time for these last words to sink in.
"So then - you'll need to begin asking yourself a few questions. And, in order to find answers to those questions, you'll have to do a bit of research. Consequently, you will be one of the few people who have unrestricted access to the volumes of information in the Great Hall, and I would encourage you to use that privilege as much as possible. However, that said, having such an enormous breadth of data at your fingertips, it would be easy to get lost or sidetracked while delving into open-ended questions. For this reason, you'll need someone to help you formulate a process, someone to bounce ideas off, and to dig up relevant information in the Great Hall for you. I will be that person, supplying you with whatever you need - history books, war chronicles, atlases, or other reference material - and will meet with you every day to discuss your thoughts, and help you move forward through your own process.