Authors: Mark Lavorato
"But to get your mind shifting a bit, I want to pose an interesting question. Do you remember that charismatic man that I spoke of earlier? Well, he died long ago. Yet you and I are still breathing. Think of that for a moment. We are some of the last people alive on earth. Why is that? Are we better? Are we more worthy? Was our life granted to us because of some exceptional thing that we did for the universe? Do you think we 'deserve' to be here, Joshua?" he asked.
I squirmed in my chair, realizing that I was expected to answer. When I spoke, my voice was almost a whisper. "I... can't really say. I mean - I have a hard time imagining that anyone
deserves
anything, really."
Dana's face lit up with a warm smile. "I couldn't agree more. We don't
deserve
this life, neither of us has
earned
the right to be here. No. No, we stole it. And I understand that this is a hard fact to face; but a fact it is - we are living on stolen time, time that was taken from countless others. And as odd as it may be, The Goal hasn't taken either of our lives; instead, it has given them to us. So then, doesn't it fall logically that, in some curious way, we are also indebted to it? And if so, what is The Goal really asking from us? Is it something unreasonable to give in exchange for our very lives?"
I felt my forehead contorting with thought, and, as if content to see my mind at work, Dana lowered his eyes and tipped his teacup to peer inside. Then, in his slow and deliberate way, he lifted it to his mouth and swallowed what was left.
"Okay. I'm going to leave you for a bit and come back later this afternoon. I'll bring a few different books from the Great Hall for you to start paging through, which will hopefully spark an idea of where you'd like to start." He stood up and gently replaced the chair to the exact spot where he must have found it, and disappeared around the corner. I listened to him walk down the corridor, and almost jumped out of my seat with the sudden metal clang of the door slamming shut, which was followed by the subtle sounds of his testing the latch to make sure it was locked. A few moments later, I heard him clearing his throat as he walked down the trail away from the shelter. After that, I was alone.
I looked around the courtyard, knowing that I was expected to start thinking about things, but the truth was I didn't, I couldn't. My mind was a complete tangled clutter of everything I'd ever thought or felt in my life. Nothing, not even the slightest segment of my existence, was what I thought it had been. Memories, stories, sensations, lessons, explanations, everything leapt into my head at once, and I was suddenly forced to judge them with the greatest of scepticism. Which of them was a lie, which of them truth, and which of them fell somewhere into that grey area between? Was this what they had meant by veracity? Was this what I would have to do for the rest of my life, wade through the dense muck of a reality that was constantly reinventing itself, scouring the horizon for the only high ground that wasn't an apparition? I hoped not - because if that were the case, I was already lost.
My head dropped onto my arms, and I felt my eyes rolling around in the confusion of their sockets. Where was I going to begin? I knew that I would have to take every one of my notions, every belief, the very structure of everything I thought was true, and rebuild it all again board-by-board, nail-by-nail. What a daunting task, overwhelming even - especially as it seemed likely they wouldn't let me leave until I was finished.
I sat there until my eyes eventually slowed, and gave way to a blank stare that brimmed with tears. It didn't take me long to figure out that, even if I didn't want it, even if I was convinced the Elders were mistaken, I would still have to accept a little guidance from them. It was really the only chance I had.
8
"That's an interesting book to put into the selection."
I lifted my head from the pillow at the sound of Harek's voice wafting over the walls from outside the shelter. There was something curious in his tone, the words colder than they should have been, cutting almost. Another voice, which I would learn was Dana's, gave a muffled reply. I stood up from the bed, which was where I'd been laying for most of the afternoon, and walked out under the sky of the courtyard, hoping to hear something more. But I couldn't. And the reason for this wasn't only that the men had stepped closer to one another and lowered their voices, it was mostly because of the birds.
It's funny how appreciative of silence one can be while eavesdropping on a conversation that is towing the fine margin of earshot. I hadn't even noticed the birds before that, but they suddenly had all of my attention, chirping away inside one of the garden's trees. I would manage to catch one of the men's words, maybe two, and would strain my neck into the air, ear cocked to the clouds, hoping to catch the sense of what was being said, but the birds' racket seemed to be drowning out everything important.
Finally, clicking my tongue, I walked as close as I could to the tree and threw up my arms, hoping to scare them away. But instead of flying they became instantly and solemnly quiet, which, I thought, suited me just as well. Before turning around, I squatted to look through the thick leaves and saw a few of them hunched over, reverent, still - it seemed like it worked. So I turned my attention back to the conversation outside the walls, jotting around the courtyard to find the spot that had the best acoustics, and eventually found that standing on top of the table was as good as I could get. But the moment I stopped moving, the songbirds started up again, first twittering hesitantly, and then quickly gaining confidence, their volume swelling with each second.
"...Actually, I think you're being a bit..." I caught one of them saying, before his voice was obliterated by the chorus. I looked over at the tree and shook my head. Then stepped off the table, picked up a rock, and pitched it into the leaves as hard as I could. An explosion of tiny wings burst into the air and spiralled out of the courtyard. I watched them until they'd completely disappeared from view, as if they might deviously manoeuvre back into the garden again if I wasn't careful. But they were gone for good. I stepped back onto the table and twisted my neck to the sky to listen. I could tell right away that this conversation was going to be worth every effort I'd expended.
"...Well, no. I guess what I'm asking is, don't you think this might confuse things more than clarify them? I mean - he has enough on his plate as it is, without our introducing imaginative tidbits from obsolete cultures," said Harek.
"Hmm. Yes. Well, to be perfectly honest, I would have a hard time calling anything in this book a mere 'imaginative tidbit'," retorted Dana, doing a horrible job of masking his irritation.
A stiff pause followed before Harek said anything, and when he did, all of the melody in his voice had become flat. "Look. You've painted a few pictures in your time - some of them I even liked - but I'm really wondering if introducing this as a topic would be part of our collective mandate, or your personal one. I mean - what do you
really
see this book serving?"
Dana cleared his throat. "Okay, I'll give you my reasoning. I was wondering what might happen if, while simply walking among the ruins, they stumble upon a striking piece of art or architecture. If we just pretend that humanity has never done anything exceptional, how do you think they're going to react to such objects? Do you think they'll doubt the essence of the person that made it, or do you think they might doubt their education, which, in its complete one-sidedness, made no mention of such things? Now, just think of it, if that
were
to happen - and I think we can both agree that it's a very real possibility - it would throw a lot of other things into question as well, wouldn't it? And to me, it's obvious that such precarious questioning should be done under our close supervision, instead of in a place where we have no contact, and never will again. If there are any weak points in our outlook, Harek, I want to nip them in the bud right now, not wait around crossing our fingers, hoping they never surface. To me, bringing this book in is an attempt to be proactive, not - I assure you - out of a desire to complicate things."
There was a thoughtful hesitation. "Mm hmm. I see..." Harek finally murmured, and then broke off for a few seconds, sounding as if he were shuffling the soil at his feet with his sandals. "I really wish you'd brought this up in the last assembly. Then at least we could have some kind of consensus on it. It's just that... I'm not sure this is the kind of thing we should all be throwing our own individual twists into. Which is - let's be honest - exactly what you're doing."
"Yes, you're right; and I do realize that. And on account of it, if you
don't
agree with my idea of being proactive, I'd be happy to leave this book outside on the ground, and we can all talk about it during the next assembly at length, and..."
"No, no... no," Harek interrupted. I could picture him holding his hand up for a moment, his head turned to the side, "I... I think it's fine. Just make sure that it's done in a way that steers clear of idealizing any of the artists in there. I mean - most of them were tyrants, perverts, and criminals who just happened to paint in what little time they were sober. Make sure he knows that."
"Of course, of course," Dana reassured.
I could hear the awkward trundling of two sets of feet.
"Well... then - a good day to you."
"Good day."
Dana's footsteps entered through the open door of the shelter, while Harek's began walking away.
Thinking about it now, I don't really know why Harek was at the shelter that afternoon, though it's safe to assume that he was busy doing something, somewhere in one of the more secretive parts of the building that I was never allowed to see. I remember once, while working in the shelter's laboratory a few months after that day, I was left alone for a couple of minutes and snuck a quick look behind one of the many doors. It gave way to an impossibly long corridor, which burrowed deeper into the hillside until it diminished into blackness. I shut the door soundlessly, my hand pressing against its surface for a few seconds afterwards, as if it were about to burst open again. I understood then that I was living - and would always be living - strictly on a need-to-know basis, and if there was anything to do about this fact, it was learn to accept it. That was just the way it was.
I heard Dana unlatching the metal door to the corridor and fighting to open it. I scurried off the table to sit in one of the chairs, trying as hard as I could to look as if I'd been relaxing there the whole time. He came around the corner with a stack of books in his arms and smiled, then walked over to the table. As he reached out to put the pile down in front of me, his movements suddenly stopped, and he frowned with intense concentration at a few pieces of dirt on the tabletop. He gave me a glance. In response, the edges of my mouth rose into a suspicious grin. At that same moment, Harek stepped onto a twig somewhere along the trail, and the distant, yet clear snapping of it was enough to tell Dana everything.
He relaxed, smirked. "I see. So - did you manage to hear the whole discussion, or just part of it?" I was relieved that the tone of his voice wasn't an angry one; if anything, he sounded amused.
"Uh... only some of it. I think. I gathered that it was about a book of some kind?"
"Hmm..." his smirk grew, "I doubt very much that that's all you gathered." He finally set the books on the table and sat down. "I won't make the mistake of underestimating you, Joshua. You're a clever young man; and I know that because you were a clever child, always taking in more than we wanted you to, focusing in on exactly the things we were trying to avoid - continuously. And maybe it's even because of that that I wanted to get this out of the way, that I wanted to show you the one thing that you might consider a glitch in the machinery, a discrepancy. Because I have a feeling that, with you, if we don't deal with this at the outset, we'll be dealing with it every day afterwards.
"So then," he said, leaning forward and sliding the top book off the pile to reveal the one beneath. The book in question was titled
An Illustrated History of Art
, and had a man who'd been carved from white stone on the cover, staring serenely off to one side. I looked at it for a few seconds, searching for some deep implication, something that was dangerous, that would cunningly undermine everything that the Elders believed. But no matter how I looked at it, it was still just a naked man carved from stone. If there really was a profound controversy here, it eluded me. I slumped my shoulders before looking up at Dana. As strange as it was, he seemed a little disappointed with my disappointment. He looked down at the cover more intently than he had before, as if encouraging me to look again. "Go on," he entreated, suddenly waving his hand between us, gesturing for me to examine it more carefully, "take a look inside."
"Oh, sorry." I pulled the book toward me and opened it, releasing a surge of sweet, musty smells into the air. The book fell open with a painting on either page, both of which were by a man named Francisco de Goya. One of the paintings was a scattering of men that were either lying down and bleeding, or lined up against a wall looking like they were about to bleed; the other painting depicted two people buried in a field up to their knees, apparently clubbing each other to death, which was even more confusing. Let alone couldn't I imagine how any of this would go even slightly against the Elders' beliefs, I was having an even harder time thinking of ways I might 'idealize' the people who created them.
"You... didn't exactly pick the happiest paintings in the book," Dana began, almost sounding a touch offended, "but, really, they bring up the point I wanted to make just as well. Which is that art, in its many forms, has existed wherever humans have existed. You can think of it as a kind of voice, a tap into the bloodstream of a culture. It's been used in countless different ways throughout history (the paintings in front of you were a kind of protest, for example), but it's always come from the same sliver of the societal spectrum. It is almost always the voice of the liberals, the freethinkers, the tolerant.