Revolution in the Underground (22 page)

“And then, a year later…  My father left…  And… well… he ran into you two… and… you know the story from there.  At least he died knowing that another world existed… that I was right…  and it is only fitting that his death would begin the liberation of his people!”

“Why did—”

“Yet there are still people slandering us!” she interrupted.  “I do not believe what Styles said for a second.  My parents were not sleeper cells!  I understand that there are some curious coincidences, but I know that my parents were both committed revolutionaries!  The fact that they gave you the seeds proves it!  And it kills me that still, today, people call them crazy!  If only they knew!  But alas, they will see soon.  It breaks my heart.  Even now, people call
me
crazy!”

“Are you?” Ember asked swiftly.

“I’m
not
crazy!  I’m not—”

“It’s okay if you are,” Ember explained with a soaring heart, “it wouldn’t make a difference to me.  You know, sometimes I think that I am a bit crazy myself.” 

“No…  I’m not… I’m not…”

“Kara?”
              “Ya?”

“I know that there is something that you aren’t telling me.  It’s okay, I won’t judge you.”

“What do you mean?”

“What were you doing just now?  Just a few minutes ago?  Who were you talking to?”

Kara could no longer look Ember in his face.  She looked down and shielded her eyes with her hands, but her cheeks, which were blushed red from embarrassment, betrayed her.  “I know… I haven’t told you the whole story.”

“Tell me then,” he said, too curious to broach the subject more delicately.

“Promise you won’t think differently of me?”

“Promise,” Ember declared solemnly, though he would have agreed to almost anything at this point.

“Sometimes I talk to her… my sister…” Kara said with a defeated voice.  She paused as if this explanation would have to suffice.

“What?” he said, trying to incite her to continue.

“I mean, I know that she’s not
really
there!  At least not like
you
are here!  I know she’s not in front of me!  Not physically!  But she is… she is here,” Kara said, dramatically bringing her hands to her heart.  “I feel her.”

“You have a sister?”

“That’s the thing…
I
don’t even know for certain…  I was only four when I left, and I had that terrible concussion.  I hardly remember anything.  Everybody… except for maybe Sven… thinks that I have made it up… so that I could have a friend to play with.  They think that just because I talk and play with things that aren’t there, that I must be crazy.  Because I make strange facial expressions and hand gestures that I must be crazy.  That it must be related to the concussion… But I don’t see her when I talk to her…  I just feel her!  I can’t explain it.  I know that it’s me who’s talking for her, I know that she’s not really there—yet I feel like she is.  I think that somewhere, up above, I have a twin sister—an identical twin sister.  And… I think her name is… Maya.”

“Maya,” he said, trying out the pronunciation.

“But of course… all of this is too coincidental for everyone else!  They think I have misunderstood childhood memories of staring at my own reflection…  Even her name… Maya…  They think my infantile mind crossed it by exploring simplistic phonetic alterations of my own name!”

“Why do you care what they think?!  You know what you know and they can’t take that away from you!” he said, trying to comfort her.

“Oh, Ember… but they can…  It’s not that simple.  Memories… Reality…  Existence… It’s not as concrete as you think it is.”

“What are you talking about?  Of course it is!  If something happened, then it happened!  If you have a sister, then you have a sister!”

“Ember… please…” she pleaded, seeming exhausted.  “Do you know how much I have thought about this?  I know the evidence.  I know that I had that concussion.  I know that it is awfully strange that, beyond hazy memories of forests and rivers, I remember nothing of the world above.  My own biological parents are a haze.  And my sister… well… she’s even more of a misty vapor.  She’s only a feeling really.  And I know that if I were to invent a sister, I would probably pick her to look and act just like me.  I know it’s all too convenient…  And every doubt that others raise adds to my own!  I don’t know what is real Ember!  Do you see the problem?!  My own senses—my own perceptions—I’m not sure that they can be trusted!”
              Ember didn’t know what to say.  It had never occurred to him that his own thoughts and that his own senses might not be real.  “Uhh…” he mumbled to fill the pause.

“And then sometimes I wonder if I’m real!  If I’m just someone else’s imagination!  Sometimes I feel…  like a specter in an immaterial world.”

“I… I… don’t understand.”

“If I told you,” she said with a spirited boom, “that you weren’t real… that this whole thing… Everything you know and love… wasn’t real… That it all was just the imagination of another…. What would you say?  What would you do?!”

“I would say… that…”

“That I’m crazy?!”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that!”

“It’s okay… because I don’t care what you think or say!  If I knew that it was all fake… It wouldn’t change anything… because I know, that in my world—in my mind—I exist… even if I don’t
actually
exist… I am here… alive in some form… some manifestation… In this same way, my sister exists.  If I believe that my sister exists then, I think in some way she does!  If she does exist and if she is my identical twin, then she shares my same genetics.  Semantically, the argument can be made that we are the same beings divided corporally only.  Then, if you follow me, why can’t I divide myself arbitrarily even if she doesn’t technically exist?  Why can’t I artificially self-create my own manifestations?  Divide myself in two? Could I not say that she is real, if she exists here in my mind?  What is reality anyway? What is identity?”

“I think… that you don’t really believe this,” Ember said, having had done his own share of metaphysical reasoning before.

Kara looked askance, as defeated as ever.  “Look…  I know that I’m justifying it to myself… I know it’s a bit out there…  I don’t know what I believe…  It’s just… try to understand where I’m coming from…  Suppose that someone told you that, after all of these years, your sister, Maggie, didn’t actually exist.  That she was just a figment of your imagination and that, this whole time, you were talking to yourself.  Now imagine that everyone tells you that.  What would you do?  You would start to believe them, right? Imagine the pain.  The suffering you would feel in your heart.  The loss. And you would let them mar the memory of your sister?  ‘No,’ is what I say!  They can’t take her away from you!  Even if the whole world says it’s so, it doesn’t really make it so.  You can create life from imagination and words, but you can’t take them away!  Those memories you have, even if they’re all fake to others, they’re still very real to you.  Your sister then, would be a part of you—just as real as you are.  Do you see?!”

“But my sister is real… I can see her… I can touch her…”

“I know that… but… my sister… I still think she exists somewhere out there.  I feel it deep down… and I need this… I need this theory to make certainty out of uncertainty.  I need this… you see… it is actually a really rational belief, designed to give myself a foundation.”

“But, why do you need to talk to her?  Wouldn’t it be enough to just think it?”

“I guess—and I hope you don’t find this too simplistic—I do it because I like it.  I find it consoling.  When I talk to my sister, she’s always a child.  She’s always innocent and hopeful.  It makes me feel good.  I don’t know why I make the faces I do… I don’t know why I talk the way I do… It just feels right.  And the thing is, there’s nothing irrational about that!  In fact, it is quite rational!  It’s different, but rational.  I could fight it, but what sense would there be in fighting something that makes me feel good about life?”

“And Sven?  What does he think?”

“Sven?” she laughed.  “Sven puts up with it.  I know he doesn’t like it.  He’s the one who told me that I should hide it from people.  He probably thinks that it’s a consequence of the concussion, and I can’t fault him for that.  But does that really matter even if it was?  Does it really matter where it came from? How it came to be?  Or even if it’s real?  If it gives me solace?  In this crazy, absurd world, if I can find solace anywhere, shouldn’t I take it?”

And just like that, all of Kara’s secrets were made bare before him.  She had lost two sets of parents through heartrending circumstances.  She had, quite plausibly, invented a sister to cope with her grief and she had used labored metaphysical reasoning to justify her actions.  She seemed dangerously confused yet was unwilling to change or do anything about it.  Her past was troubled, her present, insecure, and her future, uncertain.  She was irrevocably flawed, perhaps even tragically and fatally so.  And Ember loved it.  He loved all of it.  Everything, down to the most flawed quality.  He loved it, and he loved her.  Never before did she appear to him so beautiful as she did now.  His heart soared with waves of emotion.  He wanted, more than anything, to create a world together with her—to become one in mind and spirit—but he knew that now was neither the time nor place.

“The passion of the extremes,” he said, resorting to one of his favorite lines for he knew not what else to say, “is always preferable to the dim twilight of the middling path.”

Just then, Maggie walked in, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes.  “What are you guys talking about?”

***

Meanwhile, Sven and Styles entered an abandoned laboratory.  On the floor were broken Erlenmeyer flasks, discarded Bunsen burners, and magnetic stir bars.  Styles turned on the light switch, but only a few fluorescent tubes flickered in the back, accompanied by infrequent sputtering sounds and occasional showers of sparks.  In the very back of the back of the lab, in an otherwise empty corner, was a large, human-sized, hollow tube whose contents it appeared to have been removed long ago.  Presently, they approached it.

“Can you tell me what’s going on now?!” Sven asked, evidently annoyed at the day’s long journey.

“We’re beginning the last phase.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“It means that we need a computer for the sequencing.”

“A computer?  Are you kidding me?!  This place looks like it’s been completely ransacked by the Police.  They would never have left a computer here!”

Styles entered the evacuated chamber with unusual reverence and timidity.  He closed his eyes for a moment and appeared deep in thought.  Sven popped his head into the chamber, for it was not quite large enough to accommodate two grown men comfortably.  As Styles crouched down and put his hand on a tile, the chamber lit up in a blinding opaque, sterilizing white.  The tile, on which his hand was still placed, glowed a soft green.  Below them came a swift swishing noise.  The tile sprang up about an inch from the ground.

Sven looked around in amazement.  There were pockets in the Underground that were unusually technically advanced, and Sven in fact had seen most of these places, but it was nothing like this.  It wasn’t that the technology was so incredibly elaborate—on the contrary, it was quite minimalist—but rather that it was so digital, so electronic.  There were no cogs, no intricate meshwork of moving parts.  It was like nothing he had ever seen.  This was, Sven knew, the fabled advanced work of pre-Underground engineers.  Sven had heard stories about the sprawling cities of old—so advanced that all necessities of life were provided for, so luxurious that there was no suffering.  He knew the rumors of a golden city from the past—the golden lights and soaring buildings—whose technologies were so unfathomable that no single person knew how any one thing operated.  Though he didn’t know with absolute certainty, Sven believed that this chamber was from that time.

Sven looked again at the outside of the chamber.  It was of a metallic, industrial luster whose cylindrical center, which was no longer completely intact, was transparent plastic, nearly an inch and a half thick.  Along the base, printed in stenciled, bold, capitalized, dark red letters was “S T Y L E + 5.”

“I need you,” Styles declared, “to get over on the other side of this tile.  It will be a tight fit, but you can manage.”

Sven, in the middle of his observations, was caught of guard.  After minutes of struggled cramming, he squeezed his way in.  Even with his knees and neck bent, he had a difficult time fitting inside.  “Now what?”

“Use your finger tips to pry open your side, and I will do the same with mine.  The tile is attached to the base by a metal bar and will naturally resist our efforts.  If we let go, it will recoil.  Once we have pulled it up about a foot, you will shift inwards, straddle the tile on both ends and pull it up by yourself.  Meanwhile, I will exit the chamber, and retrieve the computer, which is underneath.  You will need to hold it for approximately one and a half seconds.  Do you think you can do that?”  Not expecting the task to be too demanding, and having a lot of confidence in his own strength, Sven answered affirmatively.  “Any questions?”  Sven shook his head ‘no.’

They stuck their fingers beneath the tile and started lifting, but as soon as they started, the tile seemed to recede downwards.  The harder they pulled, the more the tile pushed back down on them, as if it had some channeled their own energy against them.  Sven was surprised by the resistance of the tile, and even more surprised by Styles’ strength, which seemed, by the tilt of the tile, even greater than his own.  The tile crept down on their fingers, uncomfortably pinching it against the ground. 
If only I had a better grip
, Sven thought to himself.  He looked at Styles to see if they should abandon the cause, but he, who was looking down at his own fingers with a face reddened from exertion, gave no such indication.