When Eric awoke he knew even before opening his eyes that he was back in his old familiar bolt hole; he was very proud of his handmade home and the smells of the shanty-like hideout, with its corrugated walls and ceiling and its real metal door (granted this was not actually hung on hinges and had to be kind of shoved out of the way rather than opened in a more traditional fashion, leaving just enough space for a scrawny kid to squeeze through) immediately made him feel safer, although the nagging sense that he was missing something important… something didn’t quite add up. Like…
Eye sat up in bed and shook Eric’s head, hissing to Eyeself. Something was wrong with Eye, a broken connection…
Eric blinked, what the fuck was that? He thought, his heart hammering in his chest. Am I hearing voices?
Needing something to do to occupy himself while he waited for equilibrium to return, a task around which to organize his swirling thoughts, Eric lurched to his feet and over to the big black box that occupied a third of his little living area, serving as storage and table and sometimes even a secondary seating area when he got bored with sitting on his bed. It was easy to get bored when you lived by yourself in a little metal room inside a larger pile of scrap metal and machinery, the only human (that he knew of) for miles around, surrounded by hundreds of piles of scrap metal and scrapped machine parts in no particular pattern, the only rule in their arrangement seemed to be that a path approximately wide enough for four people to walk abreast was left on all sides of each mound, and none of the piles were more than about 8 feet high; their upper reaches just out of reach when Eric, who was not a very tall young man, tried to jump and grab at things piled on the top.
Realizing that he had stopped after only a step or two of his short journey across the rust colored dirt floor of the shanty and that he had been headed this way intending to grab something to eat, and some water, he finished his perambulation and reached down to unlatch the box. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the clever way the box immediately, but with measured precision, like the perfectly engineered thing that it was, opened to allow him access to the carefully climate controlled interior. Mouth watering more from genuine hunger than in any kind of gustatory anticipation Eric reached in and grabbed a firmly vacuum packed reflective mylar package and a metal can that sloshed a bit as he picked it up. Breakfast and hydration, he nodded to himself, proud of how well he could take care of himself.
…Yes! Eye is a very grown-up Eye can take care of Eyeself Eye…
The thought came out of nowhere and Eric felt himself having to almost physically clamp down on the voice in his head, if such a thing is even possible he thought to himself, it certainly does feel like a physical effort to stop…
Stop what?
Eric shook his head, he didn’t know what he needed to stop but he really wished it just would. Maybe food and drink will help.
He sat down on top of the black box, now closed and protecting the remainder of his food supply, he figured he had enough sustenance for several more weeks stored in there - after that? Well, Eric’s world had not failed yet to provide… Cracking open the can of filtered water he quickly drank half of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before tearing open the mylar and examining the dehydrated meal therein. Not that it mattered which of the several varieties of meals on the menu this one was - none of them were very palatable, but if he poured the second half of the water into the pouch and waited a minute or two for the flakes and pellets in the bag to soak up the moisture he could at least choke the resultant food-like substance down and there was no doubt, at minimum, that it was nutritious: Eric had found that one pouch was usually sufficient to get him through a day, unless he engaged in some unusual exertion above and beyond his usual…
What did Eric do all day?
Here his head began to throb and he pushed against the voice that he could now sense as a malignant presence hovering at the edges of his consciousness, as if he had only succeeded in forcing it into mind’s cellar and locked the door, not managed to actually banish whatever the voice signified, quite the opposite in fact: he could barely think for all the hammering and yelling now coming from behind the imaginary cellar door somewhere back behind his eyes (EYE) and down. One last push inside his head, although it felt rather ineffectual since he had no idea what that even meant and it didn’t seem to have any calming effect on the malignancy clearly intent on rising back up behind his eyes and taking control.
Aware of a sudden urgency, Eric rolled the now empty mylar package into a neat tube, inserted that in turn into the now empty water can and crushed the can beneath his boot. The resulting compact aluminum puck went into one of the pockets of his coat, making a metallic *clink as it hit something solid at the bottom. Curious, Eric dipped his hand all the way into the pocket and, pushing the can-puck aside, felt for whatever it had made such noisy contact with. Eric’s digital exploration quickly discovered that the pocket was already occupied by a heavy-feeling metal tube of some sort, he saw brushed steel when he pulled it out and examined it, no obvious features except for a thin, nearly invisible, line around the circumference about an inch from one end. The tube felt both cold and warm in his hands and was somehow extremely pleasant to hold, he quickly dropped it back into his coat pocket though when he realized that holding it seemed to make the voice and its attendant cellar door hammering all the louder and more insistent.
His bladder once again reminded him of the hierarchy of his needs and he cleared the short distance across the floor, pushed aside the metal door, squeezing through the resultant gap and crawling along the short pathway he had tunneled through, and built out of, the very metal of the pile of metal he had chosen to build his shanty in (by virtue of its being, he thought, about in the center of the strange array of rusty hillocks dotting the landscape here) emerging a short time later into the dusky light between what passed for day and night around here…
…gray-sky now and bright-sky come Eye soon the dark-sky next Eye time soon…
Grimacing at the strange harshness of the voice that seemed to be slowly seeping back around the cracks in the cellar door and sending tendrils through his confused mind, as if whatever was muttering and stuttering in the dark recesses of his mind was reaching up and looking for purchase, for an opening to retake the controls, Eric thought. Stumbling several steps to get further away from the threshold before pulling his coat out of the way and unzipping, grunting in relief and satisfaction as his urine streamed out arcing and steaming in the slightly chilly air, splashing off the rusted metal of some ancient machine, here in the mysterious emptiness of this place where metal things came to die.
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Sweating, swearing and with much coughing and clearing of throats a bedraggled group of young people, eight in total including Aspirant, finally emerged in a slow moving cloud of rust colored dust, some of which was just a regular feature here in this barren and sere land but most of which they had brought with them, indeed created, in their long grinding journey up through the tunnel as they dragged their load of heretical materials up to the surface, doing their part to purge the Sanctuary of the electro-magnetic fields that the Parents taught them were the cause of all human disease, both of the body and of the mind. When the work of purging was done and they had fully rid their underground city of all such invisible poisons they would surely abide in eternal life in health and happiness, or so they had learned from the moment they were old enough to absorb the knowledge of their people. The magnetic taboo was so central to the way Aspirant and their people lived that it was difficult for them to even think of the unseeable but deadly fields surrounding ferrous metals and metal made machinery without shuddering in disgust. Imagine then the discomfort of this band of eight, as they dragged their odious load up that eternal slope, only to emerge on the surface in a place pocked with seemingly endless mounds of the reviled substance.
By unspoken agreement the group finished dragging the netted load up to the first truly horizontal ground they had seen for many hours and, almost in unison, released the burden. Stretching and cracking knuckles and rubbing wrists and forearms pushed to the limits by their recent exertions the group remained arrayed much as they had been during their journey, a loose pack, arranged in pairs along the sides of the net bag so as to evenly distribute the load. No particular order or hierarchy: they were all initiates, of the same non-rank. It was clear to Aspirant that they were not the only one feeling a little lost, not sure what to do next or who should be the one to voice a plan, to give directions.
After an awkward, though not unwelcome, ten minutes of standing around and doing nothing other than enjoying the doing of nothing, the return of sensation to numbed hands and the relaxation of tensed muscles, however sore, one among them cleared their throat.
The low, growling nature of the resulting noise indicated that the speaker was probably a Blade. Most Chalice had a higher sound in their voices, especially now that most of them had finished the changes. Blade or Chalice, it mattered little, Aspirant’s people put very little energy into worrying about the physical trivialities that separated the two sorts of human. A healthy society had little use for the vestigial organs dangling between an individual’s legs or alternatively tucked away somewhere inside. The obvious exception, of course, being those called to don thepurple and green robes of the Procreators. Procreators smelled funny, something to do with the hormone and pheromone cocktails they used in their rites, and tended to remain rather aloof from the rest of Sanctuary’s citizenry, which was an arrangement suitable to all parties. The Procreators were a necessary part of the Plan, Aspirant knew, but the strangeness of their clothing and rituals (and the aforementioned smell) seemed alien to the rest of the residents of their underground redoubt and it was sort of… uncomfortable to think about what they had to do in order to continue the species so they usually did not.
One thing that the people of Sanctuary had long ago learned was that no matter how much one de-emphasized the differences between the two physical types certain features, personality traits as well as physical, remained, though in truth these consistencies were by no means absolute and as with most things there were as many exceptions as there were rules. The lower voices of most Blades for instance, as well as the tendency for some among them, most particularly the larger, more muscular ones (usually, though by no means always, these were Blades) to insist on being the first to speak and the first to act, particularly in the face of group hesitation. While it was generally understood that this was uncivil and not ideal it was also accepted and could at times even be useful. There were situations when it seemed that groups with no clear hierarchical order, such as this expeditionary force they were a part of, might get stuck in eternal indecision if one amongst them didn’t speak up and force some sort of action.
The growling throat clearing noise again and then a voice, deep, definitely Blade thought Aspirant, spoke into the dusty silence, the exhalation of breath not used to raising voice above the rustling and disconcerting noisiness of outside (caves were generally silent places) carrying their words on reddish eddies of swirling dust:
“We need to finish up and head back before the end of this light-time, we do not know how long that will be, the Librarians say that it can vary on the surface from 8 to 14 hours depending on the time of year, also when it is colder it is known that the light-times are shorter, we must not delay further.”
The voice stopped, the speaker was one of the two larger initiates who had been at the front of the group as they dragged their burden up here. They waved an arm at the cloud of steam accompanying their words, as if to emphasize the chill in the air. Not that it was necessary: now that the heat of exertion had left their body and the sweat cooled across their skin Aspirant found that they were shivering slightly and gathering their discolored robes around them searching for some more shelter from the swirling chill carried on the reddish brown breeze.
Not knowing how or why they chose to (later, reflecting back on these pivotal early moments Aspirant would think it was as if an invisible hand had reached into them and pulled the words out of their throat) Aspirant found themselves speaking.
“Maybe…”
They hesitated, as all eyes shifted toward Aspirant, not all of them looked friendly, though they counted among them no one that had any real reason to dislike Aspirant, the whole company was nevertheless surly and exhausted and looking for a target for their ire. Too late now Aspirant thought, and tried again:
“Maybe we should take a look around first, find the right way to go…”
With a wave Aspirant indicated their surroundings, now easier to discern in the ever increasing light.
The group was standing about ten feet from the mouth of the tunnel which was their road back to Sanctuary, but before they could return they had to dispose of the load they had struggled so mightily to get this far. There was no use just leaving it here, that was not how it was done, and they were expected to return with the empty netting, the strength of its fibers wrought by technology now lost in the degaussing and though not a heretical object itself it was not replaceable under the rules of the Parents under whose benevolence they all prospered.
“We have to find a proper spot to unload this” indicating the heretical material with a dismissive shake of their head Aspirant continued.
“If we scout ahead and find the best spot first we won’t all have to drag this behind us while we are looking.” Aspirant finished, wishing they had never spoken up but relieved and even a little proud that their voice had not quavered and they had gotten to the end of the sentence without choking.
Aspirant did not have to look up to know that the voice that spoke next was the same Blade as before, the one from the front of the group.
“Yes, two of us should go look, there is safety in numbers, the other six can stay here and re pack the load or something. The sooner we find a suitable spot and rid ourselves of the burden the sooner we can all return to Sanctuary and…”
Sensing more than hearing the gulp that swallowed the end of the Blade’s words Aspirant looked up and saw that they were looking directly into eyes that looked as scared as Aspirant felt at the prospect of what came next.
Aspirant nodded in acknowledgment, finished the sentence for the flustered looking young initiate:
“return to Sanctuary and be cleansed” they said solemnly.
“But first we must finish our task.” The Blade continued, then:
“You. What is your name?”
“Aspirant.” There was no question who the question was directed to.
The Blade nodded
“How fitting,” they growled “I am Seeker”
A pause and an appraising stare which Aspirant matched with a fierceness they found to be more genuine than they realized themselves capable of. After a pause, Seeker grinned and strode toward Aspirant, the first of them to break formation since their journey had begun. Aspirant took a step forward to meet the friendly advance and held their hand out to clasp the outreached hand of the young Blade, amused and emboldened by the obvious cheerful enthusiasm shining through despite all the exhaustion, the filth and the fear.
Aspirant found themselves liking the Blade immediately, which was well as the next words their new friend uttered were:
“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go scouting!”
And, without further ado, the tall initiate named Seeker strode off down the nearest pathway between rusty downs, Aspirant found that their feet were already headed along the same path to try to keep up and to catch up with Seeker who acknowledged Aspirant as the two matched strides with a solemn nod and the slightest twinkle of a friendly smile, and so the two set out.