Revolution in the Underground (4 page)

She had worked herself up to imagining telepathic quarrels when the pair of birds returned.  They squawked angrily and pecked at her fingers—evidently upset that she had infringed on their usual space.  She put her index finger to her lips and whispered “shhh.”   She gave the birds a look as if they should know better.  Surprisingly this seemed to temporarily placate the birds.  When, after a while, they continued to squawk, she wafted at them gently with her hands until they again flew away.

Over time Ember’s still body became an inanimate object to Maggie.  Ember, with his hands still fixed on his knees, appeared no more alive than the marble birdbaths. 
At least the trees move in the wind!
she thought. The Elders sat in their chairs like pensive statues.  The platform seemed empty.  Dead.  Nothing about the scene interested Maggie anymore.  She had stopped fighting the birds, which had been returning periodically throughout the ordeal, and had accepted, even appreciated, their chirps as a way to fill the void.  She un-did her fabric belt and fastened it around her waist and the branch to prevent from loosing her balance while she napped.  She closed her eyes and felt the breeze against her skin.

***

Maggie was half asleep when she heard someone speak.  She was not sure who broke first but when she opened her eyes, it was an Elder woman who was speaking:  “What is… What is the meaning of life?”  Maggie bit her lip and covered her mouth to keep herself from laughing.

Ember looked up to the corner of his eyes as if the answer might be lodged somewhere deep within his brain.  Other than his eye movements he remained fixed.  The silence cut through the air like a knife.  Even the birds were quiet. 

Finally he rose to his feet and casually meandered to the edge of the platform.  He turned his back to the Elders and scanned the dark green carpet before him.  The tension was palpable.  Maggie’s confidence in her brother did not waiver.

“I was called here before you,” Ember began slowly and somewhat ceremoniously, still facing the forest, “to complete my Generalized Evaluation.”  A few of the Elders seemed to nod.  “Together we have sat.  Together we have stared.  Together we have thought.  With the sun beating down our backs, we thought.” 

  Maggie rolled her eyes.  She knew that Ember was preparing himself for a long and dramatic monologue.  Though she trusted his judgment she feared that he might lose control.  Maggie had seen Ember act this way many times before.  Usually he followed a predictable path: he would start with an air of conceit, then summarize self-evident truths or give several anecdotes, and finish with an emotional appeal.  Depending on her mood, Maggie found this side of Ember either fascinating or annoying.  Sometimes he would culminate with powerful calls to action, but other times his passion would give way to anger or despair.  During these moments, Maggie always felt that Ember was talking more to himself than anyone else.

“At first,” he continued, with slow, rolling words, as he turned back to face the Elders, “I thought about you.  I thought about the questions you might ask me.  I thought about what point you were trying to make by being silent.  And then, after the first hour, I stopped thinking about you.  I was all alone, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.  I thought about who I am.  How I got here.  Why I was here.  Where I wanted to go.  And how I would get there.” 

Maggie cringed.  She could tell by Ember’s sentence structure and increasing tempo of delivery that things weren’t going to end well. 

“And you know what?” he asked rhetorically and almost condescendingly as he walked closer to the Elders, “I thought about it.”

“Thought about what, child?” one of the Elder’s interrupted for clarification.

“Your question.  I thought about your question.  How could I not?” Ember laughed out loud.  “I had so much time on my hands, how could I not think about why I am here?  What the purpose was?  What the meaning was?  I considered the usual subjects: happiness and truth.  I considered the possibility that there was no reason at all.  That maybe
things
just
are
and
life
just
is
.  I concluded that I simply don’t know.”

The Elder that asked the question nodded satisfactorily but before she could ask another question, Ember continued.  “And I realized that I would probably never know.  The sad part is, before coming here today I actually thought… I actually believed, that somehow you could tell me… that somehow you would know…  but now… I see that you are no more found than I am.  You are lost just like I.  You pretend… sitting there with your robes—”

“That’s quite alright, child,” one of the Elders said.

“You have answered the question my child, you do not need to continue” another added.

“I’m not your child!” Ember retorted, seemingly enraged.  Maggie cringed again.  “My name is Ember Oaks and until today I thought I wanted to be just like you!  It wasn’t until now, sitting here above all the trees, beneath the blue sky, that I realized that I don’t want to be here!”  With these words came the audible gasp of at least four of the Elders.  “This is not my paradise!!”

“Ember!” Azure exclaimed as if to cut short his tirade.

“It’s not my paradise!” he repeated.

“Ember, stop!”

“No, you stop!  What are you hiding?!  You might fool everyone else down there but you aren’t fooling me!”

“Ember!”

“What are you hiding?!  Tell me!  There are signs, I have seen them.”

“Ember, stop it!”

“What happened during the Troubles?  What aren’t you telling us?  Where is everyone else?  What is outside Erosa!  There is more to this planet.  Where do the creatures come from?  Where do the creatures go?  Where does the river come from?  Where does the river go?!” he paused for dramatic effect.  “There are more like us out there.  I know it!  Where are they?”  Water started to pool in his eyes.

“Ember…  The Troubles…”

“The Troubles what?!  You mention it, but you never really talk about it! Do you think I’ll forget?!”  His face was red with rage.

“Ember, let me talk.  I’m telling you,” Azure explained calmly.

“Then tell me!” he retorted, desperately trying to maintain the offensive.

“The Troubles were far before our time—far before my grandfather’s time even.  There was… There was a great conflict.  Many people died.  Many, many people died.  Erosa was built as a relic of the past.  It is, as far as we know, the only of its kind.”

“You’re lying!” he shouted, on the verge of all out tears.

“Ember?  Look at us.  Look at me.  You said it yourself.  We’re no different than you.  There are no bad guys among us.  No one here is out to deceive.  We are as isolated as you are.  Why can’t you be like the other kids?  We have provided you an Eden.”

Azure stood up and motioned to his grandson with his long slender fingers.  He walked Ember to the edge of the platform and started whispering in his ears.  In her excitement, Maggie sprang her back backwards, not realizing that her belt still fashioned her to the branch.  She quickly and clumsily untied the belt, which promptly fell to the forest floor.  She leaped from branch to branch, desperately searching for a way to access another, closer tree.  After a few moments she finally found a branch close enough to the branches of an adjacent tree.  She crawled to the end and carefully jumped onto the other tree.  In this fashion she hopped from tree to tree until she eventually got close enough to hear Ember and Azure speak.

“…there has been a disquietude in the forest…  all is not… don’t know… start up…”

“Why? …what… mean?  …where… if…”

“More than… eye…  back… again…out there.”

              Maggie was frustrated.  She leaned up against the tree’s hard bark, but wasn’t able to make out any more words.  There was something about strained hearing that always gave her the worst headaches.  Before she knew it, Ember was climbing down the ladder.  She hung her head down in defeat and then followed him down to the bottom.

              “How did it go?” Maggie asked, feigning ignorance, as Ember stepped down from the final rung of the ladder.  Ember mumbled incoherently and looked down dejectedly as he turned to face his sister.  Maggie caught sight of the tears he tried to conceal.  The crystal droplets seemed to twinkle like incandescent gems.  Her heart melted.  She had seen Ember vulnerable before, but never did he look this defeated.  “It’s okay,” she said, trying to provide solace, “no one has to hear about this.”

             
“I don’t care about that,” he said with an acerbic laugh in-between sniffles.  “That doesn’t matter to me.” 

             
Maggie brought her forehead to his and put her arms around him.  “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.  I thought you were great.”  Ember did not so much as twitch.  He had already assumed that his sister had seen everything.  “You know,” she continued, “this wasn’t
their
paradise either.” 

Ember looked up suddenly as if some tremendous insight just dawned upon him.  All his tears seemed to dry up at once.  He was looking directly at his sister, yet he seemed to be looking through her.  “No, it wasn’t,” he agreed with his eyes still transfixed.  Without any need for clarification, they were both on the same page.  They knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, whom they were referring to.  “But…  Is it yours?”

Maggie tilted her head to the side, as she usually did when she wanted to avoid a question or when something innocently dangerous popped into her head.  “Let’s do something fun!” she exclaimed, extending her arms out with her hands still on his shoulders.

“You think that just because I looked up, you can coerce me into doing things?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“You know what you need?”

“No, tell me?”

“A visit to the landfill!”

Ember was surprised.  That was exactly what he wanted to do—and he hadn’t even known it.  Not wanting to sound too excited he said simply, “Ok, let’s do that,” and started walking.

For most Erosans the landfill was hardly a place to get excited about.  Many were unaware of its existence altogether—and for good reason.  The community had no need for landfills.  Erosa was, and always had been, very much in tune with nature.  In fact, Erosa had achieved one hundred percent sustainability a hundred years before either Ember or Maggie were born.  The landfill was, for all intensive purposes, an antiquated concept.  For some however, the landfill was an important remnant—the only link to a forgotten time and a mysterious past.

Reaching the landfill was always a slightly more-than-minor undertaking.  It was located on the forest floor about half a mile out from the rest of the city.  Since it’s putrid smell was known to attract dangerous creatures, diligence was required on the part of all travelers.

As Ember put his foot on the forest floor, he felt a shiver go through his spine.  Ember and Maggie stood silently, admiring the majesty of the forest before them.  The birds, crickets, and other insects became an orchestra—their chirps, hum and clicks a gentle and soothing serenade.  The ground was soggy and damp, and a light mist blocked the sight of the deeper forest.  The air was wet and smelled almost like mildew.  Maggie looked up at the wooden platforms of her village and then at the magnificent trees that surrounded it, and at once felt insignificant and un-worldly. Ember’s heart beat fast as his foot sank into the soggy soil.  He breathed in heavily and, for the first time that day, was really glad to be alive.

“Are you scared?”

“Ember!  I haven’t been scared of the forest since I was… like… eight.”

“Hey, I was just asking.  I know you’re a big girl now,” he said mockingly. 

Maggie did a little curtsy and said, “thank you,” in a high frill voice, as if to indicate that she wouldn’t let him bother her.  She picked up a fallen twig and smacked it against the trees as she walked.  According to Erosan lore, the sound of a twig hitting bark attracted forest creatures.  Though it was generally regarded as a myth amongst Erosan scholars, the general populace accepted it as true.  Maggie looked back at Ember and smiled, as if her actions proved how unafraid she was.

“You’re brave now… Let’s just see you do that when we get further away.”  Maggie distanced herself from her brother and weaved in and out of the forest trees, hitting them loudly with the twig as she went.  “The brave Maggie Oaks!  If only your friends could see you now!” Ember shouted after her.  Sure enough, as they traveled deeper into the forest, Maggie’s interweaving path grew closer to Ember’s—each strike weaker than the previous.  Soon the twig became limp in her hand.  By the time they got far enough away that they could no longer see their village, Maggie had dropped the twig entirely and was walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her brother. 

Though Maggie and Ember had visited the landfill nearly a dozen times before, they were never quite prepared for the feeling they got when Erosa fell out of view.  They weren’t more than half a mile into the forest and already their entire world seemed to be a distant memory.  Out in the forest it didn’t seem to matter if you were half a mile away or twenty.  If they happened upon a creature, it could have its way with them all the same.  It didn’t make a difference.

The forest transformed, as it always did, from a place of tranquility to one of hostility.  From the safe balcony of their huts back home it was easy to see a harmonious nature.  It was easy to let one’s mind fantasize about the forest’s mysteries.  Out in the forest, however, it was another story.  Suddenly nature didn’t seem so harmonious—suddenly the mysteries weren’t something to fantasize about, they were unknowns to be feared.  The once sweet and calming symphony became a dissonant and threatening cacophony.  Everything was so inescapably real.  There were no facades, only objective reality.  It was terrifying.  There was something about the deep forest that always awakened a primordial fear within Maggie and Ember—an undeniably, unmistakably powerful instinct to hide, protect, and run.

Maggie felt like a helpless animal.  She couldn’t shake the feeling that some terrifying prey was stalking her.  She knew her brother couldn’t protect her from a creature but it comforted her walking by his side.

For her sake, Ember started the conversation up again.  “Tell me… honestly… did it sound okay?”

“What?  You’re speech?  At the Evaluation?”

“Ya.  Sometimes I have all these thoughts…  All these things I want to say…  and then when the words come out, they don’t come out the way I like.”

“You mean, they don’t come
across
how you like?”

“Sort of.  It’s just, when I go to bed tonight I know that I’m going to think about how stupid it all was.  I know I’m going to feel silly.  I hate divulging my feelings like that.  I hate it.  I don’t want them to see me as just some overly-dramatic up-and-comer.”

“Ember, but you are overly dramatic.”

“I just wanted to know if it made sense.”

“Ember,” she said with utter sincerity, looking him directly in his eyes, “it made sense…  It made a lot of sense to me.”

“Did it?  I just know I’m going to feel stupid tonight.  I mean what difference does my little protest—”

“Ember!” Maggie interrupted, “Stop regretting things.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  You spoke from your heart and that’s all that anyone can ever ask from you.  I respect what you did.  You were honest to yourself, and that’s all that matters.”

“Thanks,” Ember managed to say after an unjustly long silence.

Maggie stopped dead in her tracks.  “D’you smell that!” she cried with an enthusiasm so great that all the anxiety of the day seemed worthwhile.  “It must be close.” 

Ember looked around as if his eyes might aid his nose.  A rancid odor struck him.  His head jolted back in protest and his upper lip issued a natural, almost instinctual scowl.  So fetid and offensive was the odor that Ember nearly suggested going back.  Eventually his higher order faculties took control and reminded him that soon he would habituate to the stench.

“Come on, it’s not that bad!  It’s the smell of adventure!” Maggie jumped up onto Ember’s back, throwing her legs to his sides and her arms around his neck.  Ember nearly toppled over.  She knew Ember didn’t like carrying her.  She knew she wasn’t a little kid anymore and she knew the feeling of her breasts against his back made him uncomfortable.  She didn’t care.  Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and tradition was tradition.  Ember lumbered his way into the landfill and set her down near the entrance. 

It was a very old landfill.  Its existence predated even that of Erosa.  So old, in fact, that many parts of it had already been colonized by pioneer flora.  Looking out from the center, one could see a clear snap shot of ecological succession: heaps of trash in the middle, spots of moss and rudimentary plants as one went outward, and a gradual accumulation of shrubberies and saplings towards the edges.  So smooth was the transition that it was hard to see where the landfill ended and where the forest began—a fact that led Ember to speculate, on more than one occasion, exactly how much of the landfill the forest had already eaten.

Nearly all paper items had long since deteriorated and the few that remained were far from legible.  Any scraps of metal had long since been removed by the engineers and recycled into useful pieces for their mills.  All that remained were the non-biodegradable material—mostly semi-rigid, translucent items and dark flexible scraps that Ember and Maggie were told were called “plastics” and “rubber,” respectively.

Maggie climbed a mound of decomposing trash, using her outstretched arms for balance.  “Why do we even bother coming here,” she shouted back at Ember, “no one ever finds anything good here.”

“That’s not true, one time Mom and Dad found a book.”

“Mom and Dad?”

“Yes, why?”

“I don’t know…  It’s just weird to hear you refer to them that way.”  Maggie mulled her brain for what it was exactly that perplexed her.  She ultimately decided that it wasn’t
what
he said but the
way
he said it—as if they weren’t absent, as if they had been there all along.

“Huh?” Ember mumbled with his mouth closed.

Maggie stared for a few moments, looking for the right words to express her newly realized feelings.  Believing the pursuit to be too difficult she moved on.  “A book?  Like, an actual book?  From the landfill?  From the past?”

“Ya… well sort of…  The front cover and most of the pages were missing but the last chapter was mostly intact.”

“How come I never heard about this?” she asked with a touch of indignation.

“I showed you once before but you didn’t seem interested.”

“I don’t remember you showing me anything of the sort and that most certainly doesn’t seem like something I wouldn’t be interested in!”  Maggie felt cheated.

Ember shrugged.  “Well you weren’t.”

Ember walked over to another mound and began kicking aimlessly at the trash, hopeful that something of interest might be unearthed.  Maggie meandered over to Ember’s pile and started prying at a thick plastic sheet wedged deep beneath the trash.

“What was it about anyway?” she inquired, feigning disinterest.

“Once upon a time there was a very clever king named Sisyphus,” he began grandly, “So clever in fact that he could even trick the Greek Gods!”

“What’s Greek mean?”

“Umm…  I think it was a large village that existed a really long time ago.”

“Hmm,” she voiced, simultaneously expressing satisfaction and intrigue.

“Anyway, eventually the Gods grew so angry of his treachery that they decided to punish him by forcing him to push a heavy boulder up a large hill.”  Ember’s tone lost its grandness and became increasingly informative as the story went on.  “No matter what he did, however, the boulder would always come crashing down just as it reached the top.  And so he was doomed to repeat this trial for all of eternity.”

“How morose!” she shrieked.

“Ya, but according to this one guy, we’re supposed to imagine Sisyphus happy.”  Maggie paused and waited for the explanation she knew was coming.  “Sisyphus always has a goal—he has a meaning and knows his purpose.  Never does Sisyphus contemplate the hollowness of life.  Always hope remains.”

Not wanting to appear insular she took a moment before responding.  “That’s silly.  How could he be hopeful if it always falls down.  Either Sisyphus is profoundly dumb or extremely irrational.”

“Well… the thing is… ahh…” Despite having thought long and hard about Sisyphus’ tale on more than one occasion, Ember was at a loss for words.  “Well… ah… you’re not looking at it right.”

“How should I be looking at it then?” she asked with a wave of her left eyebrow.  Maggie knew that Ember was off guard and wanted to strike while she had the chance.

“Well… ah…  You see, sometimes life just seems so absurd… I mean, there is no difference between our goals and that of Sisyphus’.  All are… ahh… what’s the word… equally irrational and absurd.  To call Sisyphus’ toils torture would be to call our lives torture…  Therefore we must imagine Sisyphus happy… so our lives will be happy too…  so we can make sense of the world.”  Ember’s articulation came out so disjointed and her sister’s face appeared so unsatisfied that he was forced to admit, “The reasoning sounds a lot better in my head.  I’m a little flustered right now.”