34: Chloe – Fear of the Well-Known

Caught up musing on my not too distant history, it took whoever was phoning me a third ring to break through the thoughts I’d been sifting through in my haze. When the call finally registered, though, I managed to hit pause on those mental reruns to give a voice other than my own mind’s the time of day.

“Hi there, is this Chloe Heralds?” came a chipper tone.

“Depends what you want.”

“Oh, my god. Hi! Big fan. Well, average fan. Do reporters get fans? I haven’t called at an inconvenient time, have I?”

“Uh…”

“Hey, I couldn’t ask for your autograph, could I? Might be worth something one day. Might even be a piece of history. Y’know how James is always talking about the value of history. Learn from the past so you don’t repeat its mistakes in the future! Actually, he wants to see you up in the control center. Told me he learned to stop his cheeks going red or something. Can you come up?”

“Who is this?” I said.

“Oh, it’s me! Charlene? Charlie. James’ secretary? We spoke earlier, on the messenger. Can you come up and I’ll take you to him? He looks a little down. Keeps talking about us and them and the old days.”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll be right there.”

I hung up before the screwball chatter became a conversation and nabbed the headset Reece had left me. The pink coil fit snug around my ear, and a brush into a ponytail kept my hair from obscuring the lens, and out of my eyes when I drifted through the tunnel to the TurboLift. Was there was a barber aboard the ArkRing?

With all the students locked into classrooms, learning how to rebuild an entire world from scratch, the car was free to take me up to Command without stopping every few floors, and I got a whole minute’s peace without anyone yammering for my attentions. It lasted until I emerged into a double heighted room, just below another Gangway, empty and cavernous, save for a circular desk rig at the center and a couple of small doors off one side. The receptionist’s face was a perfect match for her voice.

“Hey, that was quick.” Charlene said. “Didn’t I call you like a couple of minutes ago?”

“Lucky you. I was already on the way out.”

“Cool beans! James is in the bathroom. You can wait for him here or I could take you to him?”

“Nah, that’s fine, hun. You let the man pee.”

“No problemo. There’s a spare seat back here if you want. Don’t want you getting your toes trod on out there.”

I took in the empty room. “I think I’ll be fine, dear.”

“No, really. There’s a class and an engineering team on the way up now.”

As soon as she said it, the elevator dinged open behind me and out came David Yao with three of his stooges. He offered up a gruff grunt in recognition, then pointed his boys to one of the circular walls between the building’s organically shaped supports. They got to work on it just as the second TurboLift opened and a gaggle of kids exploded out into the room.

I kicked off the wall and dove behind Charlene’s desk like it was trench and gave her a “Good call.”

From behind the cloud of kids, an elderly, tall woman waded out. I didn’t recognize her until the child between my eyes and her face drifted overhead.

“Hey, Mayor…Nina.” I said. “Small world.”

“Chloe?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Same as before. Trying to get Kinsley to spill his gut. You?”

She leaned across the desk. “I’m teaching a class. The kids are learning how the superstructure works today.”

“Damn, woman. Look at you, all teacher to the young ones. What’s that like?”

The scream of two kids launching themselves into headfirst flying kicks was answer enough.

“Honestly, it’s exactly like running a city.” Nina said. “Only the stupidity’s excusable because the citizens are all under ten.”

A sharp whistle pierced the room and it shut the kids up. We turned to the whistler as he tried to stand for a presentation. It could have worked if there was gravity, but David just rotated in the air.

“Hey, brats, listen up.” he said. “You probably noticed the weirdo shape this building has, right?”

The kids nodded.

“It’s like a big balloon!”

“Or a bouncy castle!”

“It looks like the toys in my mom’s drawer!”

“Yeah, well these panels here work like Lego. Yeah, you kids like Lego. They fit into these round spaces between the supports and that lets us create rooms. They become walls and even the floors.”

He explained the concept of wall panels to the class with all the charm of a self-build instruction manual, while behind him his apprentices prized it free. The disk was ten times their height and half a foot thick, but it was passed between hands easily without the inconvenience of weight. The emptied space they removed it from revealed a window, through which the Earth stared back. David waited until the children’s oohing and squeals of “Whoa!” died down before attempting to continue the lesson.

“I’ve always been a fan of modern architecture.” he said. “These buildings have a solid superstructure with modular internal walls. That means the outside is stronger than most builds, but the inside is a lot more versatile.”

David’s apprentices maneuvered the former wall into the hands of the children, and under his bone dry instructions, attempted to work as a team to slot it into a waiting hole. It was good practice for their upcoming years and took a little time, but soon Charlene had a new, utterly pointless floor on one side of her desk, and once they were done, the kids got an applaud and a genuine “Well done, everyone!” from her, me and Nina. David offered his own generous thumb up. Then they gathered at the new window to gawk at their first live view of the world.

The ice shell was a psychedelic swirl. Auroras crashed into storms smashed across the underbelly of its translucent skin, a whole new view I’d never get tired of, but for the kids and Nina, this was the first time seeing te Earth with their own eyes, not glimpsed through a screen from the protection of their part of the Ring. The Crèche was in a central chamber where the world never shone. They took it all in, in awed silence, until James broke it buzzing Charlene to take me to his office. She did just that and returned to her new view without a single upbeat word.

. . .

James had a disappointingly humble office. I expected the human race’s new self denying dictator to be enthroned in an elephantine room with plush carpets and beyond-ancient antiquities lining the walls, lounging majestically on a golden pedestal while denying its decadence. Instead I was met with a larger end broom closet with barely enough room for two belted chairs and a desk. Even the monitor he had was boring, a standard screen wallpapered with another Stardust the Super Wizard caption. It was the only color in an otherwise blacked out isolation chamber. His secretary’s desk alone was twice the width of his whole room.

“Don’t you get claustrophobic in here?” I said.

“No.” James said. “It’s efficient.”

“Well do you mind if we talk outside? If I have to spend more than seven minutes in this closet, aline with you, I’m gonna feel like I’m back in highschool. Especially since we’re already at the height of heaven.”

“Fair enough.” He said. “Follow me.”

He led me back out, floating past the backs of his secretary and the quelled class, pausing only to gawk at a flair of aurora before taking me to a conference room through the absent floor. Once inside, he locked the door and didn’t look at me. Then he killed the lights.

“My father had different aspirations than the rest of my family.” He said as soon as the door clicked. “He left our responsibilities to take a seat in a small town lodge when I was a baby.”

James seemed graver than usual and I was suddenly aware there was no other door to the room. I wedged myself on the other side of a conference table bolted to the ground, and kept my eyes trained on him.

Maybe he wasn’t aware I’d moved. His voice was a whisper. “My father wanted to show off the purity of our bloodline. The lodge didn’t take outsiders in unless they were just like them. He fit in perfectly.”

“Now by lodge,” I said, feeling around for similar latches to those Reece’s goons had been working on. “Do you mean klan?”

“We lived in a picturesque suburban palace, looking down at the common people, disguising our intolerances on the pretense that only those born in our country truly belonged. Everyone else was a threat to our way of life.”

“Yeah, well you know what they say. It’s human nature to fear what’s different.”

“No, it isn’t. There’s an emotion stronger than fear, you know.”

“Love?”

He chuckled at that. “Curiosity is stronger than love, my dear. Curiosity tempts the happily married to stray. It drives explorers into darkness. Curiousity is why you followed me into a dark room. Differences and novelty evoke curiousity, even more potent than fear.”

“Then what are we afraid of? Being the same?”

“When I was young, a family of Middle Eastern descent moved in next door. We were friendly with them and they were friendly with us. We even went to each other’s parties, and there was no animosity for our difference in worshipping practices.”

“But they weren’t members of your lodge, I take it?”

Only a thin strip of light made it through the crack around the door, casting an incomplete silhouette around his face. Probing in the dark with my fingertips, I almost missed his slight nod.

“Correct. But we didn’t fight. I’m not talking about mere civility, either. Our families were friends.”

“And I’m guessing from the way you said ‘were,’ that’s no longer the case?”

“When our parents found out their daughter and I were seeing each other, that’s when all hell broke loose. I was sent away by my mother to live with my grandfather, the head of the Kinsley Foundation at the time. You see, as long as we were separate, as long as one family was them and the other was us and the colors didn’t run, there was tolerance. Only when there was a danger of mixing, a blurring of some arbitrary line, that’s when the tolerance ended. That’s when people like my father declare war.”

If there were any latches, I couldn’t find them. I checked my earpiece to make sure it was still recording.

“I’ve heard similar arguments before, James. All while the rich learn business and the poor learn nothing worth knowing, the divide gives us an identity.”

“And that identity is poison. We can never be the other. We can never be all rounded without feeling like we’ve betrayed our own. Like my father, most people prefer the world to be firmly divided into quantifiable, easily boxed categories. They have no tolerance for abstract thoughts.”

I floated around behind him, close but out of his direct line if sight. “So what are you trying to say, James?”

“Choosing the best and brightest for the practicalities of rebuilding was ninety-nine percent of the reason we gave.  But being part of a secret society helped. Like a religion, it bound certain minds, no matter their creed or color or country of origin, while excluding those who weren’t worthy. We worked behind the scenes while the masses carried on with their mundane lives. You see, nothing motivates a group like being part of a plan and in on the secret.”

“So,” I said. “Is this it? Your confession?”

“Oh, Chloe, Chloe, Chloe.” He said, opening the door. “This is your confession as much as mine. It’s my family’s and the confession of all those alive today. You see, it’s not what’s different that scares us, it’s the loss of identity. If everyone is Us, then who are They? And if We deserve to live and thrive, why shouldn’t They as well, especially if They are Us, understand?”

“You lost me.”

“That’s how we chose who lived and died. We planted seeds of discrimination, this time against those of less intellect. And for all of yours, you played the role of the snob with virtually no prompting at all. You all did. We made you okay with the death of billions by coaxing you to believe only certain people deserved to be saved.”

I stopped feeling around and focused on the back of his head. “Don’t you dare put the blame on us, Kinsley. Don’t you fucking dare.”

He stepped through the door and locked his eyes on my headset. “Don’t ask me to shoulder it all on my own.”

The door clicked shut behind him and I was left alone in the dark, alone with more thoughts to sift through than I’d already started with.

“You bastard.”