The Participants (13 page)

Zack's pace slowed to a crawl as they neared
the barn. Each step forward moved slower and covered less distance.
His breath came quickly. “Where is she? You promised to let Lacey
go.”

“She's waiting
i
nside the barn, Hess. I'll release her
soon as you willingly sit down in your chair and let me tie you up.
You're the one dragging things out. Take big boy steps if you want
to speed things up.”

Zack gathered his nerve and quickened his
pace. They stepped inside the barn, where Lacey sat bound to a
sturdy wooden chair, looking ragged. Her face was puffy from dark
emotion and retained water. Her pregnant belly rose and fell with
her rapid breathing. She started crying when he appeared.

“Things will be better now,” he said, unable
to stop the quiver in his voice. “I couldn't figure out a way to
save both of us, but you get to go home now. You need to take care
of the baby. Understand?” Zack collapsed into the chair beside
her.

The other Observers were
present, silent in the background. Erik slipped up behind him,
pulled one arm over the solid central rung of the ladder-back chair
and the other below, then cuffed them together.
I’m the only one who doesn’t carry handcuffs,
he thought, then laughed hysterically.

“Good boy, Hess. Now let's release Lacey.”
Erik stepped around to the front of Zack's wife, picked up a large
knife that looked suitable for hacking through a rainforest, and
stabbed it through the base of Lacey's jaw up into her head. As
Lacey spasmed, the woman named Erik twisted the knife with a savage
motion of her wrist and elbow.

Sudden rage seized Zack. “We had a
deal!”

Erik pulled the knife free and spit in his
face. “You dragged her into this when you escaped. Did you really
think I would let her run free after witnessing everything? Be
happy I gave her a quick death, Hess. I had a lot worse planned for
her. I'll have to find someone else to torture. Maybe Elza.
Everyone knows I never cared for the clever little bitch.”

The woman loomed over him with her knife,
then jabbed it forward into his face. Zack flinched away a hair too
slow. “It doesn't get any darker than not having eyeballs, Hess. I
can slice these things out all fucking day.”

For a fleeting instant there was a flicker of
nothingness. Then the world crashed into existence about her.
Information poured into her: facts, skills, experiences; all the
false memories she would need to fake the identity of the body she
wore. The new memories were dull gray in comparison to the stunning
recollection of a tent set in the middle of a frozen
wilderness.

The world sprang into motion around Elza.
While a moment ago she had waited for Hess in overpowering cold,
now she baked beneath a fiery sun in a lush field of Taro lined by
plantain trees. The brown-skinned women and men working the fields
cut greens with bronze knives and dug into the ground for the
starchy fruit. They would work at the harvest all day, then feast
that night, just as they would every day until the crop was
harvested and stored for the coming year.

Elza turned to the woman beside her, a
cousin named Lana who was also her best friend. Each recalled fact
pushed the tent further back in her memory, diminishing the
lingering sense of coldness. Lana put out a hand. “Are you well,
Nora?”

She looked down at the brown skin of her
hand, then to her shapely figure. Elza recalled that she was the
most beautiful woman in the village. Many of the boys hoped she
would ask them to be her man, but so far she had not chosen
one.

Elza placed her hands to
her temples. One moment she had been waiting for Hess and the next
she was here. There had been no transcendental union with the
Creator. There hadn’t been
any
experience from beyond. And now she was
surrounded by strangers she knew intimately. Fake memories of fake
people filled her head.

“No, Lana, I am not well.” Even the language
she spoke was different.

“Go in from the fields, child,” said one of
the older men. “No one will think bad of you if you need a break.
We will manage without you for a time.”

Elza nodded and ran to the
village, a collection of thatched huts where she had grown up
surrounded by a close-knit agricultural community.
No, I never lived here. I was with Hess this
morning. He promised he would be quick, but he didn’t make it back
in time.

The village was small and her long legs were
swift, so she was soon at the far side of the village. Rolling
hills stretched into the distance, dotted with small settlements
much like hers. Elza stopped running and sank to her knees.

Was he out there somewhere? She refused to
believe the Creator would discard Hess, no matter how poor of an
Observer he might be. He had to be out there. As her eyes scanned
the horizon, she remembered more false memories, of people telling
her that the land went on forever in each direction and that there
were as many villages as stars in the sky.

The Creator had separated them. Elza
squeezed her eyes shut, dwelling in the last moment they had
shared, visualizing the way he had looked at her. She sighed. All
the brutality and tenderness of that world was gone forever. A new
one stood in its place and it was her purpose to observe it.

“What is wrong, Nora?”

Elza turned to look at her cousin Lana. She
stood up. “Nothing. I just felt odd for a moment.”

Lana stroked her hair. “They will think
we’re lazy if we stay away too long.”

“Let’s go back to the fields, then,” Elza
said. As she rejoined the rest of her village, they smiled
encouragement at her. She returned to where she had stood when the
world began and bent to her task. It seemed a good world to her.
She thought even Hess would approve of this one.

He slumped in the chair, making himself forget
his circumstances. Erik had gone with Drake and Bridgette to bury
Lacey, grumbling that the others didn't know how to make a body
disappear. Griff stood outside the barn, looking uncomfortable,
leaving only the man named Ingrid to watch him.

Ingrid moved closer. “Why did you come
back?”

Zack shook his head, not sure he knew the
answer anymore.

Ingrid leaned closer. “Can you endure the
torture and the dark? I will return to free you in a few weeks if
you can.”

Zack shook his head again. He could not bear
it. Not for a moment longer.

Ingrid came still closer, until his lips
were by Zack's ear. “There is something else I can do. Something
that will stop all of this.” He heard Ingrid lick his lips. “I have
the power to open the sky.”

Zack twisted around to look at Ingrid. “The
Creator opens the sky.”

“No, Hess,” Ingrid
whispered. “
I
open the sky in world after world. The Creator isn't out
there waiting for our reports. The Creator sacrifices Itself to
bring a world into existence and sustain every particle of matter.
Until I open the sky, there is no Creator. There is only the world
and us.”

He swallowed. “You can end the world.”

“If I had known what was done to you last
Iteration, I would have opened the sky sooner. If you cannot bear
what is done to you, I will stop this Iteration now.”

Seven billion people live
on this world. Even if only one in a hundred is truly happy, that
is seventy million lives that want to live
. Zack shook his head. “You can't do that. You can't just
kill every person in existence.”

“They will never know a moment of pain.
Between one moment and the next, they will simply cease to exist.
It is the fate of everything that is made to one day be unmade,
Hess.”

“You can't kill creation to save me.”

“They're not real. You are.”

Zack shook his head. “Everyone keeps saying
that. But what makes us any different from them? Just because we
don't die? That's not enough.”

“No, Hess. We are so much
more than these creatures. Every particle of their matter is
sustained by the Creator's essence. But we are more than that.
We're not sent here to observe for the Creator, Hess. We
are
the Creator. Tiny
slivers of the Creator embedded within the world to
experience
Our
creation.”

“Don't do it, Ingrid,” Zack said. “No matter
what they do to me. No matter what I say. I don't want you to do it
because of me.”

Erik's voice boomed from the barn door. “Why
all the whispering, Ingrid? Do you have secret business with Hess?”
She strode inside, hard eyes skewering Ingrid. “Here I was thinking
Griff must be our rotten apple. Never considered the possibility
that you organized this whole operation just to make sure we
failed. Is that how things stand here?”

Ingrid sneered at Erik.
“Your mind is twisted from your hobbies. Remember the role I played
last time. Ask yourself if it makes sense for me to betray the
cause I started and championed. I still think
you
released Hess so that you
wouldn't have to follow the rules we established. The reason I am
whispering with Hess is I want him to tell me the truth of his
escape.”

Erik looked back and forth between the two
of them before settling her gaze on Zack. “I'll get the truth out
of him.”

“No,” Ingrid said, “you will make him say
the words you plant in him.”

Erik's hand drifted to the holster at her
waist.

“Car coming,” Griff shouted.

“Get rid of them,” Erik said.

From outside, the sound of the approaching
car grew louder. Erik scowled at him. “Be very quiet, Hess. Things
can always get worse. Always.”

The car's engine grew louder. Zack heard
Griff's shouts for the vehicle to get off private property. The car
door opened. Griff repeated his demand. A shot rang out. “Shit,”
Erik said. She pulled free her handgun and ran to crouch at the
side of the open barn door. Ingrid ran to the other side.

From where he sat, Zack saw Bridgette emerge
from the house, take a hit to her shoulder, and duck back inside.
Quebec strode into view, handgun held at the ready, swiveling to
point first towards the house, then towards the barn, then back
again. Erik took aim.

Elza walked into the guest pavilion of the
village and settled her travel pack to the ground. The local men
ogled her as she moved to the communal well. Gaining acceptance in
a new community was never a challenge for her. The greatest trouble
she had was escaping the men who proclaimed their undying love for
her. Even after more than one hundred years and four name changes,
she still wasn’t accustomed to the attention.

They wouldn’t chase me if I looked the same
as last Iteration. Infatuation is so shallow.

Some of the other women frowned in her
direction. According to the tradition in these parts, a woman could
ask any man to be hers. If he had previously accepted another
woman’s offer, he then had the choice to trade if he wished. Men
went to all sorts of trouble to impress women.

One of her men over the years had practiced
running and lifting heavy objects to make his form more appealing.
Most of them strived to gain a reputation throughout the village as
a hard worker so that they could bring respect to a woman. Without
exception, they all bathed and groomed themselves to an extent she
found laughable.

This world was very
different from the previous one. She thought it better in many
ways, but the carefree existence of the brown-skinned villagers
lacked a certain gravitas. People were too polite, conflict too
rare, food too plentiful, wants too trivial.
This cannot be the world Hess demanded of the Creator. It is
so boring!

She drank from the well, watching the people
around her, trying to decide if she wanted to settle in the area.
There were too many young men and not enough beautiful women. It
was counterproductive for an Observer to draw attention the way she
did.

When she finished her drink, one of the
older women approached. “Hello, friend. Are you looking for a new
home? I have a grandson about your age.”

You
think
you have a grandson my
age.
“Sorry, friend, but I am passing
through.”

“So sad. My grandson is a very good worker.”
The woman paused for a response that didn’t come, then continued.
“Will you at least accept our hospitality for the night?”

“I would be honored, friend,” Elza said.

“Excellent. Could you help us pound the Taro
into dough?”

Elza gave a slight bow. “I would be honored
to help feed the people.”

The old woman led her to a small pavilion
across from the well where a number of young women gathered. In
their midst was a single man who lifted and dropped one of the
large paddles into the wooden bowl holding the boiled Taro root.
Each of the women around him worked in teams, one pounding with the
paddle while the other moved the doughy mass between strikes. The
man worked solo, varying the angle of his paddle to spin and flip
the dough in an impressive display.

Elza’s feet froze to the ground as she
watched the man’s mastery of a woman’s task. He smirked as if he
knew she watched him. Her heart began to skip. Elza stepped up to
the man. “Why is it you do the work of women?” she asked.

“I like to do all the work,” he said. “Also,
there are pretty women here.”

Her eyes darted over him, taking in every
feature. “You are very good at this.”