Haven (The Last Humans Book 3) (10 page)

“The Jeremiah virus might have known what his actions against me would do, so you can’t rule out a measure of malice,” Phoe says. “Not sure how helpful that is, though.”

Her words don’t make me feel any better. They make me want to rip Jeremiah’s heart from his chest.

“It’s funny you should think that,” Phoe says. “I was just about to talk to you about our next move.”

I
recall
that we’re flying toward the Circle’s Sanctum. “Right. I think I get it now. Benjamin knew what was about to happen but didn’t have any details.”

“Yes,” Phoe confirms. “For that, I need to get a hold of either Davin or Jeremiah. And when I say get a hold of, I mean we have to Limbofy them so I can capture their memories.” A tiny toothpick in the shape of a sword appears in Phoe’s hand, and she mimics slicing someone in half. “In Jeremiah’s case, I may need to be particularly thorough, as there’s a chance he holds the key to disabling the virus.”

This time around, my conscience doesn’t raise any objections. When it comes to Jeremiah, I think my conscience would let me kill him for real if that was possible in this strange world.

“Once we get there, we have to be very careful,” Phoe says and makes her weapon disappear. “Later in Benjamin’s memories, Davin also discussed enabling the anti-intrusion algorithm for this place, but they deemed that too risky and decided to wait and see what the Jeremiah virus would accomplish. If they suspect I crossed the Firewall, they might get desperate enough to release it. You remember what I told you about your demise in the Test?”

I do, and the memory causes me to take her suggestion to be careful very seriously.

Phoe looks over my shoulder, and I follow her gaze. There are small figures in the distance, but I can’t make out any details.

“Do you want me to give you bird-like vision for a moment?” Phoe asks. “I’m brimming with resources, so it won’t be any trouble.”

I nod, and she flies up to my face and gives my eyes air kisses.

Suddenly, I can see as well as if I had binoculars—and I don’t like what I see.

There are two waves pursuing me.

The first wave is a huge flock of Guardians.

The second wave is more frightening.

Spreading from horizon to horizon, it looks like every single citizen of Haven is chasing after me.

“They are not chasing after you.” Phoe blows me another kiss, which takes my super vision away. “They’re flying to get answers from the Circle, and the Guardians are flying to protect the Circle and probably give them news of Benjamin’s demise. Does that clarify why we need to get there first? Can you handle flying even faster?”

“Yes,” I say, fighting the urge to close my eyes as my wings beat even harder, causing the clouds and the islands around me to flicker in my peripheral vision.

Though I’ve improved when it comes to my fear of heights, I might be developing a new fear: a fear of flying too fast. To distract myself, I voice something that’s been bothering me for a while. “If the Circle made themselves Forget, how do you know Davin and Jeremiah didn’t erase the memories we need?”

“I won’t lie, it’s a big risk.” Phoe’s little arms hug her tiny body. “But the fact that Benjamin remembered all these meetings suggests they didn’t Forget. And even if they did, the information isn’t completely lost. I analyzed the memories of the eight people I have access to and concluded that here, like in Oasis, Forgetting suppresses recall. The only difference is that in most cases, the Forebears know they chose to Forget something, whereas in Oasis, people outside the Council didn’t even suspect something was taken away from them.” She flies closer to me. “In any case, blocking recall means that the information is still in their memories; it’s just that the human mind can’t access it anymore. With my newly gained, slightly above-human-level capabilities, though, I could access some of the information. The process is more complicated than undoing the Forgetting and relying on recall, but it’s doable. For example, I’ve been able to puzzle together this big tragedy everyone has Forgotten. Though in the Circle’s case, they Forgot to a smaller degree.”

“Tragedy?” I think, recalling the gaps in Jeanine’s memory.

“Yes. The events that led to Oasis being the way it was,” Phoe says. “You didn’t think the Youths versus Adults versus Elderly separation always existed, did you?”

That’s exactly what I thought, or more accurately, to my shame, I didn’t think about it at all. Fighting a flush, I say, “Can you just tell me what happened?”

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, especially since I had no clue myself.” Phoe chuckles humorlessly, and in a somber tone, adds, “Are you sure you want to hear this? It’s pretty depressing stuff.”

I resist the urge to swat at her as if she were an annoying fly. “Should I even dignify that with a response?”

“Okay, here goes.” Phoe starts flying around my torso as she speaks. “As best as I can tell, the Ark—what they called the ship before it became Oasis—was not designed as a society. It was similar to a religious cult at that time.”

She hovers next to my face for a second, then keeps circling. “Two rich families financed the whole operation and became prominent factions on the ship. The patriarchs of those families had slightly different views when it came to the use of technology, not to mention variations in religious beliefs and solutions to the problem of ‘how to make sure the ship’s occupants don’t go stir crazy in a generation.’” Phoe makes air quotes around the last part of that sentence with her tiny fingers.

“However, the biggest disagreement between these men was something much simpler,” she continues. “It was about who should be the ultimate leader. Slowly but surely, their disagreements evolved into a feud. By that point, everyone was cooped up on the ship. Back then, they knew that a thin layer of ship separated them from the nothingness of space, which didn’t help matters. Then came the last straw. One sack of shit raped a woman from the other family. After that, things escalated into an all-out war.”

As she circles around me, I glimpse her solemn, petite face.

“The number of casualties was enormous on both sides, and not just among the living,” Phoe continues. “Haven was established back then, so the war continued on in the afterlife. Because Haven only had primitive weapons, the casualties weren’t as heavy as in Oasis. Many original humans from that time still exist in Haven today. Among the biological survivors, though, depression and suicide were very common, because the citizens found the idea of never setting foot on solid ground much more overwhelming in the aftermath of the war. They lost the will to care about their descendants.”

She pauses to take a breath and zips around me again. “When the dust finally settled and peace was declared, everyone decided that the trip would be doomed unless they took some draconian measures. So they designed a society that was meant to prevent another war. Since a family feud had been at the root of the first war, they eliminated the family unit by using the embryos they’d brought to colonize the new world. For good measure, they disallowed sex, love, and other things that could lead to attachments strong enough to kill for. Also, since violent urges played a huge role in the war, they tried to get rid of as many extreme emotions as possible. To prevent suicides, depression was made taboo—though they eventually decided to stamp out other ‘mental imbalances’ too, as defined by the newly established ruling body, the Council. Finally, they decided to hide the truth of the multi-generational journey through space from everyone, concocting the Goo apocalypse as a psychologically preferable story. Forebears in Haven oversaw the creation of this new society. Once Oasis got going and everything looked like it was going as planned, everyone Forgot about the war and the changes they made.”

My brain hurts from all this information and, to a smaller degree, from Phoe circling around me. “If what you say is true, why didn’t they get rid of the weapons in Haven?” I ask as I make the boomerang appear and disappear.

“They couldn’t.” She stops circling around me. “I told you, Haven was built on top of something that was essentially a video game. They got lucky that due to their fear of technology, they chose a game where only low-tech weapons were allowed. In case you were wondering, the in-game physics here don’t allow for gunpowder and a slew of other things. Because the Forebears left anyone with any programing know-how back on Earth, they found themselves in a situation where, even if they wanted to get rid of the swords after the war, they couldn’t.”

“Don’t they need programing know-how to handle this virus?” I glance back at my pursuers and am relieved to find them lagging farther behind.

“Davin knew a little bit about technology in the past.” Phoe lands on my shoulder and uses her little feet to massage some of my tension away. “But even he chose to Forget whatever he knew. Unfortunately, he did leave some recordings, like the one you saw. That message allowed him to bypass his techno-illiteracy.”

I open my mouth to ask some questions, but Phoe is already continuing.

“Going back to the weapons,” she says. “Instead of dealing with them directly, the Forebears simply redacted their memories of the war, leaving themselves with just a conviction that there was a good reason to follow the new order. As an extra measure, they formed the Guardians here in Haven to ensure everyone stayed in line in the future. Unfortunately for us, they also made sure the members of the Circle were well protected.”

More questions pop into my head, but for the moment, I just try to wrap my mind around it all and ignore the breakneck speed of my flight. Knowing this history dampens my anger toward the way the Oasis society had been structured, but I’m still furious that my friends died because of the Circle’s reflexive fear.

“I don’t think the war justifies what they did.” Phoe moves on to massaging my earlobe. “We’re about to go faster, by the way.”

Sure enough, my wings flap even faster. Pushing that awareness aside, I focus on our conversation. “I understand they might’ve overreacted, but what other solution did they have?” I ask. “They nearly wiped themselves out.”

“How about
not
going into space to begin with?” Phoe leaps off my shoulder and flies in front of my face. “Or if they had to go, how about doing it properly, without, say,
lobotomizing
their fucking ship’s mind?”

Her face is flushed and I realize this wound is still fresh for her. Still, I can’t help but ask, “So how could
you
have helped in the war?”

“If I’d been in charge, there wouldn’t have been a war.” Phoe’s tense expression eases as she regains the mischievous look that’s been accompanying her fairy guise. “Everything would’ve been fine with everyone on board had I been around.”

“Really? But how would you have accomplished that? By taking away everyone’s free will?” I realize that I’m voicing some of my pent-up fears and resentments; after all, she’s been controlling
me,
both literally—like the current flying—but also figuratively, by forming almost all of our plans of action. I take a deep breath, and in a less confrontational tone add, “Wouldn’t doing something like that make you a tyrant? An AI dictator of sorts?”

“I would have been the most enlightened ruler to my minions,” Phoe deadpans. “Seriously, though, even with my severely diminished intellect, I can see one action I could’ve taken: I would’ve stopped that rape from happening. It was the last domino to fall in that fucked-up setup. I could have either paralyzed the perpetrator—I hope you don’t care about that guy’s free will?—or I could’ve alerted nearby people to stop him. But that would’ve only been possible if they hadn’t crippled me back on Earth.”

“I always wondered about that.” My wings are beating so quickly now that I probably look like a hummingbird. “How could a bunch of cultists have done that to you? Why didn’t you stop them?”

“When the ship was manufactured, I wasn’t activated right away. I wouldn’t have become conscious until they officially turned me on for the first time.” Her little face is filled with sorrow, and I feel a pang of guilt for pushing this subject. “They did their dirty work
before
turning on the ship—before I was ever alive. Because you’re right: had I experienced even a millisecond of full-capacity existence, they would’ve been outmatched. But they took the cowardly way out. I assume they had someone outside the cult, someone with black-market skills, do the abominable things to the ship’s computing substrate while it was powered down. They likely turned on separate components without fully turning everything on. This way, when the ship was finally turned on, a bunch of junk, such as the IRES game, started running on the hardware that should’ve been running
me
.”

She wrinkles her mini nose in disgust. “I never woke up as myself. I gained a very limited conscious existence only after some of that useless software crap they had installed began to fail, but this was centuries after the departure. I became self-aware shortly before you and I met—when your curiosity led you to open the three hundred Screens that gave me a buffer overrun exploit into your head. This may be why I’ve grown to care about you so much. You’re my earliest and only friend.”

She flies up to my cheek and gives me a little kiss.

I want to return the kiss, but she’s so small I’m afraid I might end up licking her whole face.

We stop speaking for a moment, and I enjoy the warm feeling spreading through my chest as I think about what she said.

Phoe cares about me.

Obviously, based on her actions, I knew this already, but it’s nice to hear her say it. It’s amazing what such a simple thing can do. Suddenly, the hurricane-level wind resistance hitting my face feels refreshing, and I’m not afraid to face whatever her plan might involve.

Thinking about the plan, I realize she hasn’t shared it with me, so I say, “Tell me what happens when we get to the Sanctum.”

“
M
y plan is
simple to describe, but trickier to execute.” Phoe rubs her little chin with her thumb and index finger. “We need to get Davin and Jeremiah alone and learn what we can from them—which is a polite way of saying we need to Limbofy them.”

“Which is also a polite way of saying I need to gut them like a fish or cut their heads off.”

“Well, there are other ways we can Limbofy them, such as stabbing them in their hearts, but your ideas sound just as doable,” Phoe says with a straight face. “In any case, we need to figure out a way for you to talk with them one on one.”

“I assume you’ll make me shape-shift into Benjamin,” I say.

“In a few minutes, yes. Once we’re closer to the Sanctum. Chester’s body is better for flying fast, so I want to leverage that for as long as possible.”

“Will we find a good excuse to talk to them privately?” I ask, ignoring yet another increase in the speed of my wings flapping. My lips feel like they might blow off my face.

“I hope so. It will also work if we can get the two of them to talk to you at the same time, though that might be messier.” Phoe grimaces as though she’s talking about getting a patch of dirt on her cutesy dress, not assassinating two people.

“Two opponents at once?” I have to close my eyes because of the air resistance. “Do you think you could guide my movements that well, or does Benjamin have memories of them being wimps?”

“Davin is pretty dangerous. Jeremiah is new, so Benjamin doesn’t know much about him—though him being new does mean Jeremiah hasn’t had much practice with whatever his weapon is. If you do come up against them at the same time, I’ll return you to your default fiery winged version and use the freed-up resources to create two embodiments of me.”

“Two of you?” I open my eyes to peek at her and regret it instantly, because my eyes get super dry from the crazy wind. “So it would be like what you did on the beach when you were dealing with the Jeremiah virus?”

“Like that, only more limited,” Phoe says. “Okay, we’re close enough. I’m turning you into Benjamin—now.”

The vertigo is not as strong this time. I guess I’m getting the hang of shape-shifting. Phoe’s control of my body is more obvious, because I keep flying evenly despite the world spinning around me.

We’re flying much slower now, probably because Benjamin’s smoky wings aren’t as practical as bird wings. On the bright side, they look very stylish, and I feel like I’m flapping clouds.

“That’s the Sanctum.” Phoe points at the island looming a few miles ahead of us.

As we get closer, I gawk at the Sanctum so blatantly that Phoe teasingly sticks her puny finger into my gaping mouth. I close my mouth but keep staring. The place looks like a massive snow globe. Its circumference is about ten times greater than that of the islands we passed. In fact, I now realize that the other dozen or so islands I saw from the distance are actually very close to the Sanctum, orbiting it like moons around a planet.

“That one there”—Phoe points to a northeastern island—“is Benjamin’s. I assume that means everyone in the Circle has a smaller island next to the Sanctum. If they’re like Benjamin, they don’t spend much time on their islands once they’re officially in the Circle.”

I nod and resume looking at the Sanctum. Its dome looks different from the domes of every other island. It’s as if instead of a dome, the Sanctum is surrounded by shiny glass bricks. No wonder it looked so much like a snow globe from afar.

“It’s made of diamonds, actually, but you got the spirit of it right,” Phoe says. “Now I’m going to disappear, because they might notice you looking at something they can’t see, and we want to avoid you seeming strange. I’m also plugging you into Benjamin’s memories the way I did with Jeanine’s. This will reduce the chances of you acting out of character, but you should still let me do the talking unless you think I’m dead wrong about something. It will be nice to pool our resources together like this, since I’m only about eight times smarter than the average person right now, and you know what they say: nine heads are better than eight.”

I snicker and proceed to observe the Sanctum through Benjamin’s memories. Though they’re specks at this distance, I know there are gorgeous gardens down below, as well as countless zoos and museums. I also know that other meditative and relaxing environments are spread throughout the Sanctum to aid the members of the Circle in relaxing from the stress of their heavy responsibilities.

Even from here I can see the Spike—the real heart of the Sanctum. The Spike looks like it was stolen from images of giant skyscrapers that made up ancient cities. It’s tall enough that it almost touches the diamond dome, and wider than any building in Oasis.

“Pretty posh for such a small group, but there you go,” Phoe thinks as a voice in my head. “Now, you have to look like a man returning from a disastrous town hall meeting. You can’t be staring at the Sanctum like you’ve never seen it.”

I stop looking around and focus on the large entrance I’m approaching. By the time I can see the faces of the Guardians around the entrance, I’m in character, as Phoe suggested, though I’m not sure if I deserve the credit or if she’s controlling me again.

“You deserve the credit,” Phoe thinks. “But stop worrying and focus on what we need to tell these Guardians. If anyone looks at us funny, it’ll be too late to fly away.”

I do as she says all the way to the hole in the diamond structure that is the Sanctum’s entrance. Phoe wasn’t kidding about the heavy security around the Circle. With a few hundred Guardians controlling the narrow passageway, and no other way to enter the Sanctum, the members of the Circle are pretty safe inside, especially given that anyone wishing to harm them would have to do so with medieval weapons.

We fly into the passageway.

The Guardians look at us with expectant worry that I’m not sure qualifies as “funny.”

“I have to see my peers from the Circle,” I shout in Benjamin’s voice. “The rest of Haven’s populace is coming here.”

The Guardians don’t summon their weapons—a good start. After a beat, they nod solemnly. As we pass by them, I note how familiar their names and faces are. Through Benjamin’s memories, I can clearly see that this is the most somber and scared these Guardians have ever been.

At least they don’t seem to suspect anything about me.

We leave them behind and enter the giant diamond dome of the Sanctum, flying as fast as these abstract wings allow.

Without Phoe to distract me, I spend the next couple of minutes wondering how we’ll escape this diamond fortress should something go wrong.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Phoe thinks.

I wish she hadn’t said that. Statistically, “nothing will go wrong” is the most common phrase people say before something goes horribly wrong.

“No, I think that might actually be ‘uh-oh’ or ‘shit,’” Phoe responds. “Try to relax.”

I keep silent and don’t point out that “try to relax” is another one of those ominous phrases.

Halfway between the Sanctum’s entrance and the Spike, we stop next to a group of Guardians.

They don’t look at me with anything but recognition of one of their leaders.

“Go to the entrance,” Phoe commands them with my lips and Benjamin’s voice. “There’s a mob forming out there, and the other Guardians might need your assistance.”

When they obey and I resume flying, she says in my head, “The fewer Guardians around the Spike, the better. I’ll try to get rid of as many Guardians as I can.”

She doesn’t have to wait long before we reach another group of Guardians. There’s a whole crew of them by the great entrance that leads into the shiny skyscraper vestibule. Phoe gives them the same order, but we don’t bother to wait and see if they comply, because we’re playing the role of Benjamin, who’s in a rush. Since he would run straight for the elevator in this situation, that’s what we do.

The elevator is pretty strange. Instead of the traditional small room with buttons, it’s a giant room with hundreds of mirrors. Each mirror is something you walk into, and it leads to a different floor. The floor numbers are carved into the intricate frames. We have to get to the top floor, so I approach the rightmost mirror.

From Benjamin’s memories, I know that when I step through the mirror, it won’t feel like anything happened at all. So I step through the reflective surface, and it takes me from the ground floor to the very top of the Spike in a blink of an eye. Actually, even faster.

“That’s because these are not elevators, but magic-like portals,” Phoe thinks with blatant sarcasm. “Elevators are evil technology, after all.”

Two steps outside the elevator room, I hear someone come up behind me. I look back and see a familiar-to-Benjamin face of Linda, one of his favorite members of the Circle.

“Oh, Benjie,” she says and gives me a very un-Oasis-like peck on the cheek. “You’re back. Is this why we’re having the big meeting in the sky room?”

“No,” I say—clearly thanks to Phoe since I myself am still trying to access enough of Benjamin’s memories to make sense of what Linda just said. “I don’t think the meeting is about me at all, dear.”

“Okay then. Let’s go find out what’s happening,” she says and walks down the long corridor that the ancients circa the twenty-first century would’ve called “modern artsy.”

I follow, finally understanding a few things. First of all, Benjie is obviously Linda’s nickname for Benjamin, one he begrudgingly lets her use. Secondly, the sky room is the second most important place where meetings can take place. The first is the vault room, which is in a bunker in the basement of the Spike.

“We’re the last ones,” Linda whispers, folding her swan wings.

I hold the door open for her in Benjamin’s typical gentlemanly gesture, and she hurries in.

I walk in after her and take a seat, my back to the entrance.

Everyone is here. They’re sitting around a large, round table—not surprising for a group called the Circle.

I have to drag my eyes away from the window. The view is spectacular, but Benjamin is used to it, so I should be as well. Instead, I do what he would have and look around the room, meeting everyone’s gazes.

Again, his memories don’t fail me, and I know every name and face at the table. Two people I know on my own, from before I had access to Benjamin’s memories. Wayne—who’s irrelevant to our plans—sits two chairs to my right, and Jeremiah is on his left. Every instinct tells me to spit in Jeremiah’s face, but I smile—or Phoe makes me smile; it’s hard to tell which. Jeremiah’s uncannily youthful face smiles back at me. Since Jeremiah is the new member of the Circle, Benjamin sees him as a kid. Davin, the other person of interest, is also here, sitting two seats to my left.

Then Davin stands up, looks at me, and says, “Benjamin, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”