The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (31 page)

“Several well-placed individuals,” Maryanne told her, “are attempting to obtain the identities and the locations of the leaders of a place called Golden World, to bring them to justice.”

Maryanne went on to explain about the workings of Basket Town. And, although it was poverty stricken and violent, “There are places far worse than here,” she said. “Where there is no light of
hope.”

To live in Basket Town, Maryanne explained, a woman only needed to be fertile. Once she passed her time, she was sent to die at a place called Red. Some believe this to be another planet, some a distant part of their own world, others, a euphemism for
extermination.

The Security agents were the ones that executed all the orders against the citizenry. Although they could have any woman in the town at any time they chose, their leaders enjoyed marking out certain days at random throughout the year for letting all the agents loose upon the city. The women called them Savage Days. The agents called it
R&R
. During these terrifying times, convoys of transporters would roll into the city, releasing thousands of agents from their iron bellies. Any woman that did not appear to be carrying was supposed to be free game. But as the years went by, most of the agents would ravage any woman they came across, whether she was carrying or not. But Stephen was among those men that refused to add to the miserable existences of the citizenry of the town.

During one of the Days of Savagery, she told Sofia, he found her while she was hidden among the refuse of an alleyway. Speaking kindly to her, he soon convinced her that he would do her no harm, and he soon became, not only her personal contact, but also her confidant, avowed husband and doorway into the secretive underworld.

As the years went by, they bore several male offspring, but there was no possible way for them to keep the children from eventually being taken during the raids.

“But these days will change,” she said. “Everything will become what it had once been, only better.”

After her short synopsis regarding the current situation, Maryanne’s tale took them back to the alleged roots of all their problems. Intrigued with her story, Sofia listened, wide-eyed, but
skeptical.

Seemingly fantasy in nature and bordering on the mythological, Maryanne began by recounting the tales of the other worlds that she had become learned in through her childhood upbringing and the small details that she gathered during her encounters with Stephen: a Red Planet where war continually unfolded, and another world, called Golden, where, it was assumed, the richest of men and women were gathered. She even seemed to be mentioning Labor by the description she was giving, but she called it
Blue.

Upon hearing the names
Red
and
Golden
, Sofia interrupted her, explaining that she and John had come across thousands of crates bound for these two places. She explained how they thought that they were merely cities that existed somewhere on Labor’s planet. Giving a brief account of her and John’s journey on the flying craft and their
home
hidden in the woods, she described the weapons of war that they had found inside the crates marked
Red
, and the sweet treats that she and John shared together from Golden’s boxes, one of the many luxuries of the short-lived experiences that the two of them had together.

The stories that Maryanne had been handed down were seemingly reassured in their truths by the affirmation of Sofia’s own words. She had been shown the blacked out names that had once been stenciled on the walls of their room and on the wood panels of the buildings outside. Maryanne also had Sofia’s description of the crates stored in the air transporter and of those hauled on the backs of the vehicles of Sofia’s native planet.

Seemingly relieved to know that her mother had not given her the watered-down analogical version, or the simplistic, localized account, Maryanne appeared to feel more confident in her
presentation.

She continued with her narrative well into the night. According to the commonly held belief of the women of Basket Town, though, not all of them, she stressed, there was the same line of thinking regarding these other worlds: Red Planet’s wars were planned and executed under the strict terms of the ruling class so as to be perpetual in nature.

“It’s believed that it’s a method,” she said, “for keeping the population in fear, and its growth under control. It’s also a means for entertaining the blood lust of the wealthy.”

“It was said to exist with a soil of a deep burgundy hue, its waters run red, like the blood of the billions of men and women slain upon it over ages unknown.”

While layers of similar stories with varying details obscured its ancient history, Maryanne unfolded the story to Sofia according to the traditions that her own mother had taught her.

“Red Planet,” she explained, “was once a thriving world filled with peaceful cities and villages that functioned in a spiritual and economic security under the Ruler of Goodness. It was eventually overthrown by a foreign military that was motivated by power and
greed.”

Taking Sofia by the hand, Maryanne walked her over to the window, pulling back its cloth covering and revealing the millions of stars twinkling in the night sky, and the thousands of
wishing stars
that polluted its beauty.

“They invaded from an unknown planet hidden deep within the blackness of space.”

She went on to describe “the corralling of the conquered peoples into the military’s great transporters, sending them to the planet Raw, where they were further separated according to their sexes. The women were settled into what would come to be known, after hundreds, if not thousands, of years, as Basket Town, while the men were forced deep into the underground to mine for necessary elements.”

“Raw was the name designated to the planet upon which we now live. It was so called due to the vast amounts of usable resources that exist in its valleys and hills. It also houses an immense water system that only flows near the soil’s surface under the flatlands, giving that area its fertility.”

“It was under this prodigious project,” Maryanne continued to explain, “that the industry of Planet Blue came into existence. The brightest, most intelligent of the peoples were sent to its walled domain to engineer the weapons for war, and oversee the construction of the tools and systems that would keep the economies functioning in their proper orders.”

“It was the workings of the laboring classes of Red, Blue and Raw that would keep the peoples of Golden World bathing in their unending luxury, oblivious to the sufferings of their subjects, wild and extravagant in their living, morally bankrupt in their souls.”

“In order to keep their materialism alive, they knew that they needed to keep their slaves’ population growing,” she continued to explain.

“The self-anointed overseers allowed for festivals several times a year, permitting the conquered men and women to unite for one week per event. As the growth of the peoples began to exceed their expectations, however, the multi-annual times of meeting were put to an end, and the ruling military was given the task of making sure that the population would remain true to their original plans.”

“As for the benevolent Ruler and his son, it was said that they fled into the burning heat of the Great Star, along with their armies. There, the Soldiers of Goodness await their orders to seize back their Ruler’s position among the heavenly bodies. The existing governing agency would continue its dominion until the time of their return: the day when the Ruler would become Savior, and would restore peace once again.”

Sofia hung on every word that Maryanne spoke. As they communed together late into the night and early into the next morning, Sofia found her stories to be almost too incredible to be true, yet they were exhilarating to her soul. A history of which she had never known, an explanation for her whole existence was being delineated to her. Her only wish was that John could be by her side, listening. These, she believed, were the answers that he had been seeking.

By the seventeenth week, John had taken the lives of more people than all the personal contacts he had ever made during his entire life in Labor. His heart was like a rock in the snow, cold and hard. His mind was a microcosm of hatred.

Released from his shooting-range,
room-of-death
, permitted into the training facility outside, it was near impossible to remove the images of the bloodied bodies that had accumulated and bunked with him over the past four months. Everything in the world had some bizarre sort of related morphology about it that was reminiscent of the eyes, the splatter and the puddles of his
room
.

Escorted by Crawford and Michaels to the Red Simulator, he had finally graduated to the third tier of his training. Taking hold of his new uniform, John removed his crusty, wretched, blood stained attire, letting them crumble to the floor, gathering at his ankles and feet. He was only a few short weeks away from attaining the official status of an agent of a Sweep Team. For all it was worth, other than killing, John still had no idea what their ultimate purpose was.

Naked for only a moment, he was commanded to remain still with his arms held straight out in front of him, his palms in the supine position. Michaels approached him with a machine held in his hand that resembled a pistol. Pointing its “barrel” at an angle to John’s open hand, it made contact with him. With a pneumatic puff of air, it injected a metallic device under his skin, not much larger than a grain of rice.

With a motion to commence, John pulled on his newly awarded shirt and pant. As the last button was eased through its hole below the collar, he was now adorned with the tiger-stripes of deadly black with slashes of red. His
mission
was changing, his trainers informed him. Although he would still sleep in the
room-of-death
, his training was moving into the practical realm: he would now learn to survive and kill under difficult circumstances and in harsh conditions. Poisoned and polluted environments would become the norm. He would learn to bring death to those hiding in complete darkness where goggled, night-seeing devices were necessary. The art of tracking and hunting for those that were deserters of the battlefields would be his primary objective. He was becoming a member of an elite unit, a living
Monster.

The Simulator was just ahead. The sign above the palm scanner indicated that it was the place where he needed to present his ticket in order to pass through. With a quick wave of his hand into its red, glowing camera, John was now more than ready to enter its arena.

Like tiny bubbles popping in her belly, Sofia could feel the first movements of the child she was carrying inside of her. Placing her hand upon her abdomen, she thought it strange that she was unable to sense the activity that was taking place just underneath the
skin.

“Maryanne,” she giggled, “it tickles when he moves.”

Maryanne dropped the last of the fruit into her basket. After adjusting the cloth carrier that wrapped over one of her shoulders and under her other arm, she pulled her breast from the mouth of her infant son and briskly walked over to Sofia, who had settled for a break in the shade of one of the orchard’s
trees.

“When that child begins to kick with a passion, you’ll remember these days with more fondness than you can imagine,” she said, kneeling down and rubbing Sofia’s shoulder.

“I’ll feel him more and more from this time on, won’t I?”

“The more he grows within you, the sharper his kicking gets, and the stronger will your love be for him.”

With a sweet smile, Maryanne strolled back to her basket, waiting until a nearby, roving Security vehicle was out of sight before reaching down and extracting a thin-skinned piece of fruit for Sofia.

“Here,” she called out. “Catch.”