Madelyn's Nephew (31 page)

As she slowed to a stop, the thing carved a gash down the back of her scalp. Hot blood gushed. The searing pain paralyzed her. She forced herself up and into the lift. Triggering the button, she hoped the doors would shut fast enough to keep The Wisdom out of the elevator. Otherwise, the tight quarters would ensure her death.

The lift settled down into the bedrock under the cabin. Madelyn held her breath and waited for the next cut. The world was black and her skin crawled with dripping blood. She felt lightheaded when the lift came to a stop. She spilled from the chamber and caught herself against the wall. Madelyn made her way to the fab unit and felt on the panel until she found the appropriate button. She hit it and slumped to the floor while the machine worked.

The machine chunked, spun, and then rang a bell when her first treatment was ready. She had a decision to make. It would have an effect no matter where she applied it, but she didn’t know which to heal first—one of the lacerations, or her eyes.

She froze at the sound of the lift. Something had triggered it to go back up.

Madelyn made a quick decision—her eyes might take hours to come back, and she wouldn’t survive that long if The Wisdom found her underground. She applied the wrap to her head, and then put the next one to her back. She prioritized the wounds based on pain.
 

“Greetings,” she said. Her panel didn’t respond. It wasn’t the way she normally interacted with it. “Greetings. I have an emergency.” Still nothing.

Madelyn pushed herself to her feet and felt down the wall until she found the panel. Somewhere on the thing was an override for the lift’s controls. Madelyn tried to picture the panel. A sharp pain jabbed into her side and Madelyn’s face twisted. For a second, she thought she was dead. The pain wasn’t a fresh wound. Her body was still reacting to the injuries from upstairs. Madelyn felt the panel in a panic. None of the controls were tactile. She found a spot marked with raised bumps and punched it. Nothing happened. Madelyn began to hit controls at random. She had no idea what she was doing.

The lift stopped.

Madelyn waited for the doors to slide open and The Wisdom to come finish the job.

She tried to hold perfectly still. After a full minute, she knew she had to move. Whatever was happening with the lift, she needed to get herself fixed up before she lost too much blood to be of any help to herself.
 

Madelyn went back for another wrap. She was using too many at a time. The burning and itching was driving her crazy. At least her energy was returning. As soon as she had the important wounds going, Madelyn turned her attention to her eyes. As far as Madelyn knew, all the healing wraps used essentially the same technology. They were miniature organisms which had only the goal to repair or replace damaged tissue. The eye patches had a transmission mechanism that was better suited for eyes.

She immediately flinched and tried to blink. That made the wrap hurt more. Madelyn folded her arms and forced herself to stay still. She sunk down to the floor and waited. Half the time, she was petrified that The Wisdom would make its way out of the lift and find her. The other half of the time, she had so much discomfort from the wraps that she wished something
would
kill her.

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Madelyn woke up itching and disappointed. Tiny lights sparkled in her vision, but she still couldn’t really see. The wrap on her eyes was cool. As far as she could tell, it had done what it was going to do. She peeled it off and kept her eyes shut while she used the machine to produce another one. There was a limit to how much healing a person’s body could endure in a short timespan, but Madelyn was willing to take the risk. The alternative might mean she wouldn’t be ready for whatever was going to happen next.

While she fit the new wrap into place, she made a discovery. She caught sight of a glow that seemed fixed in the world. Carefully opening one eye, she realized that some vision had returned. The room was dark except for the indicator lights on her control panel. It was coming back. Still, she applied the next wrap and then investigated her other wounds. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, but her body was in okay shape. The bleeding had stopped and the wounds were closed.
 

She crept towards the lift until her hands found the doors. She put her ear against the metal. The only noise sounded like shifting sand. Madelyn backed away. She found her way to the lounge and reclined on the couch. There was no telling how long she had before The Wisdom breached her cellar—she might as well make herself comfortable.

Madelyn woke to a loud thump.

The flashlight lights of reconnecting nerves were gone from her vision so she peeled off the warm wrap and tried her eyes. The room was a little blurry, but she was doing okay.

She moved quietly back to the control room and triggered the lights. The door to the lift was slightly parted. The gap was only a couple of millimeters, but it was enough to let in a small drift. Madelyn lowered herself to the floor and approached carefully.
 

It looked like sand piled at the base of the door—maybe a liter or two of it. She reached forward to touch it and then stopped herself. There was really no telling what the stuff was.

Madelyn turned back for the panel. She flipped through the screens until she found the view she was looking for. The door to the stairs was open. The same sand spilled from the doorway and out into her grandmother’s living room. Madelyn shrank back from the display.

Her stairs were long. She had just tumbled down them—she should know. They were relatively new compared to the age of the cabin. Of course, her grandmother hadn’t needed an elaborate underground storage facility with a Q-battery link, heat exchanger, and control system. Those were all things that Madelyn had installed back when there were still contractors who did such work. Now, The Wisdom had erased all that effort by filling the stairwell with sand.
 

The stairs were long, and then followed by the shaft that the lift operated within. All that sand had enough volume to fill her control room, lounge, and the storage area. If she managed to get the lift doors to open against the weight, it would bury her.

Madelyn was trapped underground.

She paced and thought about the construction of the place. There was an exit that led to the compost stack, and one that led to the leach field. Those pipes were only ten centimeters apiece. Even if they led somewhere, she would barely be able to fit her arm down them.
 

The heat sinks had much larger pipes, but those led straight down into the mountain’s bedrock. There was also a drilled well. Again, it didn’t lead anywhere useful.

The chimney was the only exit that went straight up, and that
could
fit her. She would have to climb vertically up the smooth walls for tens of meters. It wasn’t a solution. The chimney was built over the Q-battery. If she breached the walls of that, she would be dead in seconds.

Madelyn walked back over to the lift doors.

When she looked from the side, she could see that the doors were buckled in towards her. The sand had deformed the metal slightly. It was anyone’s guess if the doors would still slide on their tracks.
 

She put her hand against the metal. She thought she could feel the weight it was holding back.
 

Madelyn sighed.

She was going to die down there.

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“My name is Madelyn Ava Clarke. I’m the daughter of Jacob Mason Clarke. I’ve lived here for longer than anywhere else. My grandmother and her husband built this cabin back when this part of the world was a place of snow and ice. When they were just married, they came up here in June and nearly froze their butts off. They managed to build enough of a shelter to make it to December and then they fled. She said that in December the sun would only come up long enough for a hot cup of coffee and then it would go back down. It’s hard to imagine.”

Madelyn adjusted her posture so she would be better framed by the camera. Her hair looked terrible. There was still a big patch of her scalp missing from where The Wisdom had sliced it away.

“The next year, they shored up the place so it could last over a winter. They cut and stacked ten cords of wood and laid in the supplies they would need to make it through until spring. My grandmother made it. My grandfather didn’t. She raised their son alone.

“That was my father, Jacob Mason Clarke. He left here when he was fourteen. My grandmother had taught him how to read and do simple math, but he wanted more. He wanted to figure out how people got smart enough to launch rockets and beam signals all around the world. As soon as he got to civilization, he realized that what he really wanted to know was how people figured out how to translate the beauty inside themselves into the great works of art.”

Madelyn took a deep breath and let it out. She had veered off the topic, but it didn’t seem to matter. She had nothing but time. There was nowhere she had to be. She had food, water, oxygen, and heat.
 

“That’s how he met my mom. She was studying how to make beautiful things. He was studying how to appreciate them. I never met her, but I saw some of her art. My father had a painting of a tree in our living room. He would stare at it for hours. He showed me how to do it one time. You picked a spot just to the left or right of the center of the painting and you stared. You looked at that one spot until it seemed like you could burn a hole through the canvas with your eyes. Then, as your neck got stiff and your mouth went dry, you would start to see it. The branches of the tree would sway in the breeze. The leaves would flutter and flash. You could imagine the bird that was standing on a limb just out of sight. You could picture the nest that a squirrel had made on the other side of the thick trunk. The tree would come alive. That was a part of my mother’s spirit. At least that’s what my father said about it. He said that my mother had torn a corner of her soul and carefully brushed it into the painting.

“It hardly ever worked for me. My father had already used most of the magic in that painting by the time he taught me how to do it. He was selfish that way.”

Madelyn reached over her shoulder and scratched at the scar. It was just about gone. The Wisdom had probably figured she was going to die of her wounds, and had sealed her up in her own tomb. Either that or it didn’t like being underground. She had lived through the assault, but what did it matter? She was doomed.

“My brother and I were close when we were kids, but I always resented him. People were easier on him. He was always getting sick, or hurt, or scared. He always needed help in some way. The weaker he was, the more people went out of their way to make sure that he was going to be okay. They didn’t do him any favors. He never learned how to take care of himself and make himself stronger. Maybe if they had forced him, he would have become more self-reliant.

“His son is strong though. Jacob Riley Clarke can take care of himself. If he ever sees this, I want him to know that I admire him. He’s the best part of my grandmother, my father, and my brother all rolled into one. I’m glad I got the chance to meet him.”

Madelyn looked away from the screen. It was strange watching herself. It didn’t seem like she was actually feeling her emotions—she was watching some old lady have them.

“I know that nobody will ever see this. I don’t understand the precise reasoning. People have tried to explain it to me before. There’s too much video out there on the ether, so new stuff just gets lost. I suppose it’s like turning your face towards the sky and telling a wish to the stars. Someone
could
hear it, but nobody will.

“I’ve got nothing better to do. I’m trapped down here under my grandmother’s cabin. I was sealed in with sand, like an Egyptian mummy. After my father passed away, I used up all his savings and everything that my grandmother left to us to make this cabin last forever. I wanted it to stand as a monument—something that could be passed along to future generations. The only problem was, I never got around to making another generation. By the time I felt I was ready to have a family, the world wasn’t a good place for that kind of thing.”

Madelyn wiped her forehead. The process of telling her story was harder than she thought.

“I suppose it never is. It didn’t stop my brother. That’s where my nephew comes in. He’s the rightful owner of this place now, but he belongs with other people. He’s not a recluse, like me. It’s fair to say that I’ve done a number of things wrong in my life. I was never able to recognize when a man was bad for me, or when he was right for me. I didn’t think that my father was strong enough for the world, so maybe I let him go before it was truly his time. I should have taken my brother in when I saw him again. I should have hugged him and told him how much I missed him, or how many times I cried when I thought that he was dead. I should have cried for him when he did die.”

Madelyn wiped away her tears. Even the time for regret was too late, but she had to try to feel something.

“And, of course, I’m sorry for David. He and I could never quite come together in the right way. I wish we had. If you’re watching this, and you’ve got unresolved emotions for someone, don’t let yourself forget them. Don’t hypnotize yourself into amnesia because it’s easier than feeling the pain. You have to keep that pain close to you. You have to be comfortable with the regret so you can face it. It’s the only way to survive The Wisdom.

“I’m going to hang on down here for as long as I can. I won’t give up this time. There are people out there who would do anything to survive. It would dishonor their struggle if I were to give up. I understand that now. There is food down here, and fresh air. Entertainment will come to me from the ether. And, from what I understand, I’m a part of that network. As long as I’m here, I’m helping to keep that information alive.”