Estimated oxygen time: 22:08:38
My fingers closed around the perfectly cylindrical form of the canister, and I burst with elation that cannot be described, hugging it close to my chest. “Yes! Thank you, God Almighty! Fuck yes!” A tiny part of me noted how manic my hoarse laughter sounded, but that wasn’t important anymore. What was is that the punishment was finally over, that I was free to use my own natural time as I saw fit. What was that she had said? I secured the strap around my wrist and pointed the nozzle where I didn’t want to be, which was down, and turned the valve.
I left the corpses I was standing on, too fast, twisting around as I soared. A wall slammed into me, reminding me that I still had no talent for rocketry, but I still climbed upwards, towards the light.
I struggled to control the little, powerful tool. Even with the strap twisted around my wrist, I felt constantly on the verge of a slip that would condemn me to spend the rest of my day here, waiting for Vempress to get bored and come get me.
There was an echo of Vempress’s mind resonating in that contraption – a willingness to leap into danger, with the minimum amount of precaution needed to survive. An extreme confidence in her own skill, one that I sadly did not share.
The gap between the walls widened and widened until finally the entirety of the star lit sky was above me, and I was flying, free.
Looking down I was reminded that it was from this very fault that I’d taken off after my first visit in Diocletian’s cave, with the rocket they’d given me after killing Third. Ironically, the canister had a much stronger kick than the rocket, and could probably take me all the way to the airlock. There was nowhere to go, now. All I could do, all I could change, was here.
I directed the exhaust to the opposite direction of the airlock, and flew high above the crater’s pocked terrain, twisting it shut once I got enough speed. When I passed over the airlock, less than a minute later, I directed the jet the other way, turning the valve just enough to fire a correcting burst of thin oxygen-mist—first too weakly, then too hard and moving the other way, then correcting again. I finally managed to land at the edge of the valley.
The light blinked, and I saw Yahushua, hanging by his helmet between the two metal rods. He was completely motionless. My comm picked up the sound of shallow, quick breathing, which meant he wasn’t quite dead yet. The light blinked again, and I saw his closed eyes, his slightly open mouth. I considered waking him up, but what for? Better that he slept, if that was sleep at all.
I looked away; I didn’t want to watch him die. I wasn’t much better off, and even if I were… It didn’t matter. I had work to do. I needed to focus. Why had Vempress placed an unconscious Yahushua in the post, quite literally, of the welcoming committee? Was it a deliberate decision, or the absent-minded mistake of someone who had hardly slept for a week? Any clue to her mental state may be the difference between success and failure.
I threw myself in a shallow arc over the valley and scouted the bodies for someone hiding in ambush, going over the faces to see if any were still puffy and pinkish. Some—lucky to have avoided the worst of the day—had dried, mummified faces beneath broken visors. Most of the others were blue and frozen but untouched by vacuum, left to choke in their own gasses, either at the end of their natural time or, more likely, after having their oxygen plugged out.
At the apex of my flight, I looked over the horizon, looking to see if there was anyone around. Nothing but stars and rocks.
I hoped Nina was alright. Stupid. I hoped she wasn’t dead yet. Why had Vempress let her live, despite breaking her deliberate word? A whim? I wasn’t sure her insanity was something that I could even understand or predict.
A hoarse voice, screaming in fear and confusion, pulled me from my thoughts. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I recognized the helplessness, like a newborn’s. I turned around, watching the mouth of the airlock close, after having spit someone out.
I stood there, waiting for him to stop rolling and land; watching as the mental process unfolded. He was looking at Yahushua, even before he landed, transfixed by the silhouette, lit by a couple of asteroids that were shooting past the horizon. He crashed to his knees, and in the light I saw bloodshot blue eyes set in a clean shaven, soft face.
“Peace,” I said, from above.
He turned quickly around, to one side and then the other, until his eyes found me. “Oh god. Oh god. Please don’t kill me,” he shrieked. “I don’t want to die, please,” his pleas turned into a soft murmur, leaving the safety of patterned speech on breaking free into a torrent of unfiltered helplessness.
I walked closer, slowly. “Relax. I’m not going to kill you. It’s going to be fine.”
“Really?” His eyes lit up. “Can you get us back inside?”
“No, that’s impossible.” Vaguely, I noted I was still somewhat affected by the time I spent in the fissure.
“Then how the fuck is it going to be fine?” There was anger in his voice, but a sheepish, somehow unthreatening type of anger.
“I meant that I’m not going to hurt you. And if you’re lucky, no one else will.”
He breathed quick, shallow breaths, and I realized that I wasn’t hearing Yahushua any more. “So, I’ll die when the oxygen runs out? In…” he looked at the side of his visor, shook his head violently. “Twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes? I don’t understand what’s going on. Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Yossi. I got thrown out too.” As I spoke, I saw his eyes lose focus, turn again to Yahushua. “What’s your name?”
“David,” he said, distracted. “Fuck, so this was done to him deliberately, but all of those people,” he looked at the valley around us, and the bodies that filled it, “died with time?”
“Some, perhaps, died at the end of their natural term, but most were killed violently.”
“Who are you? Did you do this?” His eyes darted towards the blade clipped at my side.
“My name is Yossi,” I repeated. “And most of these people were dead before I got here. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Most?”
“One guy was killed in front of my eyes. His body is over there. And he tried to kill me first.” This was probably the worst day of his life, a situation supposedly easy to emphasize with, but all I felt was cold. Was it like that before Vempress threw me into the chasm? I didn’t know.
“Then who killed him?”
“The same person who did this.” I pointed at Yahushua.
“Eh, ok. Shouldn’t we run the hell away from here?”
“No. I talked to her, and she’s not going to harm us for the time being. She even gave me this blade.” A powerful gesture, wasn’t it?
“Are you going to kill me with it?”
I looked at the man’s eyes, blue, but opposite from Vempress’s in any other way. Even shocked, there was something in them that spoke of an inability to do harm. Was I reading him correctly, or would he turn against me the moment he got his grip? I wasn’t going to beat Vempress without taking chances.
I unclasped the blade from my waist and handed it to David, handle first. He looked at it as if he couldn’t fathom its purpose or meaning.
“Take it,” I said.
“Oh, sorry.” He stood up and reached for the bag-wrapped handle, grazing it with the tips of his fingers, then closed his fingers around it. For a moment, he held it in front of his eyes, so close that it almost scratched his visor. He turned from the blade to me, his bushy eyebrows almost touching. “This is a sword,” he said, finally. “Ok, listen, I’m gonna be straight with you: I don’t understand what the hell’s going on.”
“It’s ok. We really are safe, for now. Just take deep breaths.”
“Deep breaths? Won’t that make my air run out sooner?”
I recalled Ctesibius’s explanation about how life support works. “I don’t think that’s true.”
He stood on legs shaky, even with almost no weight to support, and looked at Yahushua one more time, then at me. I hoped he wouldn’t throw up.
“Ok,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“I got thrown out too, like I said. I’m just spending my day in Last Day Town.”
“No, I mean here, here. Why are you waiting by the airlock? Why did you give me a sword?”
What’s the shortest way to put it? “When people get here, when I got here, there was no aid, no camaraderie. Everything was frightening. I gave you the blade so you could protect yourself, but also so you’ll know that there’s at least one person that actually cares about your wellbeing. I want to better this place.”
He gave me a careful look. “You’re aware that the place you’re trying to better is a hole where people are thrown out to die?”
I shrugged. “I’m already here. I guess I might as well try.”
“Ok, ok. I think I can wrap my head around this,” he said. “Though it is a little much.”
“Well, take your time. It’s not like we’re in a hurry,” I said. He didn’t quite laugh, but something in his eyes changed, as if he acknowledged that a joke was something that could still exist.
An oval asteroid, revolving slowly around its own axis, crossed the sky slowly, at an angle perpendicular to the rest of the belt, peculiar and beautiful. David turned to follow my gaze. “Don’t worry about it too much,” I said. “I think I’m still in shock, too. It takes a while.”
“Are you ok?” he asked, and I found myself taken aback by that.
“This isn’t about me. How are you dealing?”
“This is just… so far from what I expected. I expected to be dead already, naked in space. I didn’t even know you got a suit; I thought the bodies just floated out to space. So instead of being dead right now, I’m trying to find the words to talk to another throw-out...” He brought a hand to his face, but it bumped against the glass of his visor. He shook his head, a small, frustrated motion.
“Resident. We call the people in Last Day Town residents. It’s a lot to process, I know.”
“So, ok, what do the residents do here?”
“Something useful, I hope.” I shrugged. “What do you want to do?”
“Well, I used to be a therap -”
My hand rose on its own, a confident motion, and to my surprise he turned silent. I fumbled for the words. “One of the traditions people used to have here, was not talking about yesterday, about the inside. I suspect they had a reason for that, and I’d like to honor that tradition. Let’s not speak of the inside, not here. Tell me what you want to do, today.”
He gave me an odd look. “I like helping people with talking, so talking to people sounds natural, but, you know, I’m going to, you know, well, and I feel like that’s something that requires attention. This feels like a weird dream, more than anything else. I don’t really feel like working. I’d ask what you did in real life, but you say you’re against that.”
Real life. I didn’t like that distinction, but I wasn’t sure whether it was true or false. A journalist? A blogger would have been more accurate.
“People who were here before us found it detrimental, and I’m inclined to believe them. We should go, though, if we want to do something useful with our talents. Do you feel well enough to walk?”
“I think so. Where are we going?”
“I’d like to offer you a new job, at a new clinic.”
He laughed, for the first time. “That’s absolutely insane.”
“Probably. Come on,” I said, and found comfort in tradition. “We haven’t got all day.”
#
Estimated oxygen time: 21:51:31
Had David been alone, he probably would have opted for something like a crawl, a horizontal climb. The poor guy could have used some more time to adjust, but time was the only thing we didn’t have. He was reluctant at first, making every leap very carefully, as if safety mattered. As if he still had a life to lose.
“Just… try to flow with it, ok? Try only tapping the ground, not really landing on it.”
“Give me a second, will you? I just need to get the hang of this,” the pitch of his tone went up, as well as his shoulders. I felt a pinch of guilt. This guy had so little time left – he shouldn’t spend it being scolded by some asshole. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about this place?”
I told him the history of Last Day Town while he practiced. It was good. It helped me keep things fixed in my mind, made them feel real. I told him about the lines and the places where they had spent their time. I told him why Vempress had let me live.
The sky was empty when we reached the edge of Last Day Town’s crater, illuminated by faint starlight. He didn’t have it in him to climb up the near sheer wall of the crater and we agreed that I should use the canister to bring both of us up. After some deliberation, we decided that I’d carry him on my back. The canister needed both of my hands, which meant that he still held the blade with one hand while hugging my neck in the other. It would have been terrifying with anyone else, but this man was so timid that I was more worried he’d drop the blade than slash my suit open.
We flew up, a little unstable, until the plane above the crater came into view. We spent more time than I would have liked falling down, finishing the arc, pushing each other mid fall and landing on our own legs.
Even though I’d aimed to climb the wall at the same spot as last time, I must have gotten something wrong, because the statue was nowhere to be seen. I recognized the spot in which we had risen out of the crater, and turned to see Ctesibius’s cliff at the same angle it had been when I’d last been there.
“What is it?” David asked.
“Something’s changed. Let’s go.”
I walked to where the statue should have been. The shuttle was still there, but there was something wrong with it – a side panel was sticking up in a way that didn’t make sense, and instead of the wall that had the door in it, the flat side was towards us, revealing what had to be landing gear.
I left David and pushed myself forward and over the shuttle. I stopped myself with the jet, landed on top of it, and saw that the opening was now pointed upwards.
“Is that how you get in?” he asked behind me. I didn’t answer.
Below me, the statue lay on its back, broken in two, the top half shattered on the ground, the bottom still welded to the shuttle. The fabricated bag had somehow held together, strengthening the impression that the statue wasn’t a heap of metal, but a broken person. The helmet, with its visor made of glass shard glued together, was flattened like a deflated balloon. The joints of the limbs had been broken too, the weak welding giving in to the stresses as the shuttle leaned on it.
An asteroid would have broken the statue to pieces, spread the pieces far and wide. This was no asteroid hit.
David was beside me. His footfalls were so soft I hadn’t felt the vibration through the metal. “You okay?” he asked.
“Why would anyone do this?”
He looked down at the broken statue. “Build such a thing?”
“No, that I understand. It was beautiful, when it still stood. What I don’t understand is why someone would tear it down. And I don’t think one man could have done it.”
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Doesn’t it comfort you? That people still managed to cooperate? It would be even easier to get people to cooperate for a good cause.”
“Seems like we have a good cause in front of us, right now.”
“What’s that?”
“To set this thing right.”
#
Estimated oxygen time: 21:10:59
David got himself under the statue again, and I followed. We held on to the its legs to lift the whole structure up, bending our backs at weird angles to push at the uncomfortable, bent surface. The top of the statue lay in our way, and the fold of bag that hung between the shuttle and the ground made the approach more difficult. We prepared to push up, and I counted to three. But when the time came to push, the shuttle only rose on my side, as if David wasn’t pushing at all. I let it drop back.
The shuttle bumped against the rock with an impact I felt throughout my body. I stepped away, painfully straightening my back. “What happen- ” I begun to ask, but stopped when I saw him. Bent forward, hands on his knees, panting.
He looked up at me, his mouth open at a weird angle. “It’s too weird. I didn’t expect any of this. I expected to be naked in an airlock, I expected to choke inside of my own suit or get killed for my oxygen. I didn’t expect...” he took a deep, sudden breath, “to be here,” and another, “working construction,” and another, shallower one, “and making plans.”
Does he have anyone like Keren, who’s to be thrown out here? If he does, it would probably be easier for him. If he didn’t have anyone like Keren—someone to worry about in the future, to plan for, it would be harder for him. But she wouldn’t have wanted me to be in the future, I realized, she wouldn’t have wanted me to think about her. She would have wanted me to be here, now.
I went over to him. His hands were on his knees, so I couldn’t hold one, so I put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s going to be alright.”
“Yeah?” The pitch of his voice climbed on that one word. “You know something that I don’t?”
“We don’t have long, it’s true. But before we go, we still have time to do something useful. To help somebody.”
“I’m all for that, really, but there are some things I’d like to process, first, like that fact that I won’t fucking exist tomorrow. That all of this,” he waved a hand, “is over.”
“Of course. And that’s exactly what we’re re-founding Pythia for: so we’ll have a place to process that. But not here.”
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do now? Just keep it in?”
“Focus on the task at hand. The statue will have to be fixed at some point, but first let’s roll the shuttle over. When people get here for the first time, we can make them feel like something’s actually under control, even a little thing like the shuttle being on its correct side.”
“Fine. I’ll give it a shot.”
We got under it again and pushed with all our strength, so hard I thought the thing would topple over onto its other side. It rocked once, twice, then settled into place. We looked at it for a moment. The statue was bent in such a way that it didn’t seem like a person anymore, only a pair of trunkless legs and a crumpled flag laying behind them.
David’s expression had changed to a pale grimace. I’d managed to distract him for a while, but he remembered again.
“So,” he said, “I just sit here and wait for people to come, and when they do I offer to talk to them?”
“Well, you might need to move around a bit, to find people, and perhaps they won’t be so reluctant to get into the cave when you’re holding tha - ”
David’s gaze had left me to track something moving above us; his eyes widened in horror. Vempress zoomed past us, landed on a rock and bounced back and up, using her thrusters to turn her jump into a complex, looping curve. In the face of her virtuoso flight, we seemed even more feeble and helpless than before, leaning on the shuttle.
She finished a corkscrew motion, her appendages spinning around her, and landed only a couple of paces from us. I stretched to the tips of my toes, bowing my head and avoiding eye contact. There was no thought in the action, I just really didn’t want to spend any more time in the fissure. “Peace, Vempress.”
“I wanted to see how my new investment’s getting along,” she said. David stared at her, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“This is David.” I said. “David, this is Vempress.”
She snorted. “Pythia. His name is Pythia now. If you want the line built, you need to act as if it’s already functioning.” She turned to David. “Say it. What is your name?”
“Pythia.”
“My name is Pythia, Vempress.” She corrected him.
“My name is Pythia, Vempress.”
“Better. Have you had any confessions yet?”
“We just got here. I was going to look around and see if I could find some people to come over.”
“I see. In that case, let me be a visitor. As the guardian of the line, I would like to exercise my right to confess.” It was reassuring to see her play along like that; to see some of her old Diocletian demeanor returning.
“Pythia,” I said to David, whose shock had barely abated. “Will you please go into the shuttle, and hear Vempress’s confession.” It’s going to be fine, I wanted to say, when he turned to look at me, his eyes even wider.
He opened his mouth, but Vempress spoke before he did. “Not him, Yossi, you. Didn’t I say that you should lead by example? I want you to hear my confession.”
#
Estimated oxygen time: 20:55:46
She entered the shuttle first. I followed, closing the door behind us. The background noise on comm went silent as the faraday cage blocked all radio signals that from outside of the chamber. She sat by the far wall, facing me, and I sat down with my back to the door.
I realized that I had never been in a real confession, and didn’t what one should look like. Whatever happened in this very shuttle, between Pythia and me, was unorthodox. But there was no reason or time to let Vempress see that uncertainty. I recited:
In the name of line Pythia, I am your confessor. You may speak freely.
“Sure I may,” she said.
“What would you like to talk about?”
I couldn’t see her shoulders in the darkness, but she made the same face she did when shrugging, then sank deeper into the corner between the wall and floor, as far as the jetpack would allow. “I don’t have much to say. Things are what they are. Fortunately, there’s no need to analyze anything.” She sounded comfortable, though the walls of the shuttle were as cold as the rock, minus 50 degrees. The bags weren’t designed to isolate from contact, not like the boots. It had to hurt. She seemed relaxed, but she still made sure she wouldn’t fall asleep.
“Do you feel fortunate?” I said.
“No, no no,” she clicked her tongue with the dismissive tone only a native Russian speaker could muster, though I’ve never heard a trace of accent from her. “Just a manner of speaking. I earned it. I learned and I practiced and I planned; everything I have, I took. I picked up the leftover lives and quilted them into a continuous one. There’s nothing lucky about it.”
I had nothing to say to that.
“Still, I feel bad for you. Not because you’re going to die, but because you’ll never know what it feels like to...” She composed herself. “Have you ever had that dream when you’re small and unable to speak or move? Do you remember that horrible feeling? Being an immortal in the land of the dying, having everyone fear for their life because of you, is the exact opposite of that feeling.” She smiled the smile of a predator then, drunk on blood. Her bright eyes shone, reflecting the violet light.
“Then why did you choose me as your confessor? I don’t fear you. I’ll do what needs to be done to get the most of the time I have, and because you’re in power, that means obey you. But I am not afraid.”
“Oh, aren’t you?” Her blue, cold gaze pinned me in place. “Maybe, if you and I were the last to be thrown out, you could be what you pretend to be. But because there’s a future to care about beyond the hours you have left, I can take that future hostage.”
“Nothing to pretend. You can still kill me and it won’t matter much.” The words, spoken aloud, didn’t ring as true as they had before.
“It just wouldn’t feel right if you died and Last Day Town was the same, would it?”
There was no need to confirm or deny this. We both knew she was right. “Any difference I’m going to make here is only going to be because you allowed it. The question is only what you’re going to allow.”
She tilted her head. “I was thinking about tomorrow. Shouldn’t surprise me that you weren’t. At the end of the day, after you have reestablished your favorite line, Pythia will be safe from me. But the others won’t be. I still need to breathe, and that oxygen has to come from somewhere. Pythia will have to comfort others not just for dying at the end of the day, but for being hunted. Help them ease the terror caused by looking up at the black sky and wondering if I’m there.” Her voice was dreamy, as if she was someplace warm and safe. “But that wouldn’t work either, now would it? You’ve seen what animals the Residents can become when left alone, and they will resent Pythia for not having to endure what they do, for being safe, and there won’t be a structure of lines to facilitate who gets to confess when. So either I expose Line Pythia to constant danger, or I keep Pythia hidden in some cave and safe from the others, which means they will have hardly have any work and would probably go insane by themselves, and they might rebel out of the same spite as the residents. Was that a part of your vision?”
She enjoyed this, letting me have hope and then taking it away. My heart pounded in my chest, a slow, heavy beat. Whatever I did, I couldn’t beg. “You raise good points. I can’t convince you this is a good idea, but perhaps I can offer an even better one,” I said, not knowing yet what that idea might be.
Her smile stretched with greed. “Like what? You keep surprising me.”
For some reason, this normal phrase illuminated the situation I was in. I was in a small, dark chamber with a murderer, a coiled snake, and I was afraid of her, even though I was dying. The oxygen display at the side of my visor reminded me that I couldn’t keep wasting time. An urge rose in me, to breathe as many breaths as I could, but I forced myself to take deep, slow ones. I couldn’t allow myself to sink into a panic—I couldn’t let Keren find Last Day Town in this state, and I couldn’t change anything if I lost my nerve. But what did it matter, if I lost it? We were both fucked anyway, perfectly doomed.
“Shock finally sunk in, huh?” she said. “Some people take a couple of hours. Snap out of it, ok? This is finally getting interesting. What’s your offer?”
I shook my head. Pretend to keep it together. Buy time. “I’ll tell you—but first, confess, truly. Use Line Pythia while it still exists. Get everything off of your chest.”
Her expression hardened for a moment, but ultimately she chose to indulge me. “What is there to say?”
“Anything you want. The confession isn’t for me.” I tried to make it sound like Pythia had—like this was a real institution, with real traditions, instead of something I’d just made up.
“I don’t need to cry on your shoulder. I don’t need to tell you about my hardships for you to tell me that they are indeed hard. I already survived longer than any human being managed to survive out here. Except for King, perhaps, if he even existed. You remember? Here lies King of Hellhole, I see him as he dies… Pythia told me about him after you left. Turns he had something similar going on before the lines, or the first people to make the lines, killed him. They didn’t just kill him – they tortured him, too: I hear the O2 whistling, meaning, that they’d made a cut to his suit, then closed and opened it to make his dying longer. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, that first punishment given for taking oxygen. I’ve had a lot of time, in general, and I discovered two things in that time, as I wrestled immortality out of the jaws of Last Day Town. One: I don’t need sleep, and in fact I function better without it. Two: Despite what everyone told me, I don’t need anyone’s help.”
“I won’t argue with that,” I said. “And yet, Line Pythia existed even before Last Day Town, and Ctesibius and Anaxagoras deemed their services worthy up until the end.”
“Maybe, but what emotions did they have to confess? They used Pythia to come to terms with their death, but I don’t intend to die. That is my confession: I will not die. Do you want me to talk about my feelings? The only emotion I feel is determination.”
“Nothing else?”
She let her hand swing from side to side for a second, pondering. “There’s a thrill when hunting, especially when someone really puts in the effort to survive.”
The undertones hidden in her leering smile; how could I describe them? If you’d never seen the smile of a killer, looked into the eyes of a cannibal, words could not convey the horror. If you had, you’d know there’s no use trying to describe it. “And there’s beauty, when I’m high enough above the crater to see everything clearly. But I hardly notice it behind the constant drone of this determination.” She took a deep breath, and let it slowly out. That leering smile was gone, now. “This is a waste of time.”
“Maybe, but you have so much of it. Why are you in a hurry?”
“Your flattery is becoming obvious, and even if it wasn’t, it’s pretty clear what you stand to gain from getting me to open up. The time of the hunt draws near—ha, no: that’s too dramatic, even for me. But still, it does. It always does.” I had expected her to get up and leave, but instead she only became more invested, looking directly at me. “My life is harder than yours,” she continued. “We both worry about the future, but I actually have to live in it. You’re weak enough to do this one thing and let go. You won’t know what it’s like to stay awake for so long. You won’t know what it’s like to hold on, to plan everything out so failure isn’t an option.” Sure seemed like failure was an option when Dov threw that knife. “You wouldn’t understand,” she concluded, her voice bitter.
“I might,” I said in my softest, most sympathetic tone, but I could already feel her slipping back into her armor.
“No,” she said as she rose to a crouch, absentmindedly wrapping a hand around the handle of her weapon. Something hard settled in the corners of her mouth. “That’s enough of this exercise. I’m done talking. Let’s hear your suggestion, then.”
I sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Ask me that again if you want another visit to the chasm, without the canister this time. Answer the question.”
“I’m proposing a new structure to the new society,” I said. “Instead of staying foreign to Last Day Down, let yourself become a part of it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Reclaim Line Diocletian, but let it rise to the glory that the name carries, that of an emperor. Let the other lines live, but rule them with all this power that you have now that Diocletian never had. Three newcomers per day will be allotted to your oxygen supply, much more than is needed for breathing, supplying the jet pack and your pressured room. The rest of the newcomers will be initiated into the lines, just like before.”
“And I’ll just live with them? Why?”
“Because they would all be working for you – Anaxagoras collecting trash so Ctesibius could invent whatever you tell them to, and Pythia there for the occasional vent. Doesn’t it make sense that the one that had been here the longest will be the one giving the orders?”
“And you really think Residents in lines could live in the shadow of my blade?”
No, but it will be an improvement. “They didn’t like living under the blade of Diocletian, but they knew it kept the balance.”
She laughed. “Until you came.”
I shrugged. “Until I came.”
“So you’re asking me to assume the role of Diocletian again, and take the oxygen from newcomers. But I’ve done something very similar to that already, and it didn’t work so well.”
“It might work differently – ”
“I don’t want it to work differently. Having to negotiate with the other lines, keeping track of what they know and what they don’t… it was… Tedious. Things are much better the way they are now.” Her tone softened just enough that I wasn’t sure if she was joking, but I didn’t interrupt. “You’ve really convinced yourself on this idea, haven’t you? That the lines are the correct solution to the Last Day Town problem. You’ve never been through it, so you don’t understand the pressure. Each and every individual in the old Town was constantly on the verge of losing their mind. Even Pythia started their life cycle under the threat of Diocletian. I sliced enough Pythia bags to know they wouldn’t give up a second of their life if they had any alternative aside for a more painful death.”
“What if you put a reward in front of their eyes? Give one of the Firsts an oxygen balloon once every twenty-four hours, as a reward for good behavior. Make sure everyone knows that they just might get lucky if they stick to the straight and narrow.”
“You’re learning, aren’t you? But you haven’t understood the key principles. The Residents agreed to take part in lines when they knew no one else was better off. They cooperated, knowing that everyone else is going to die just the same as them, but once they find out I’m the only one who gets to breathe tomorrow, they will not rest until either they are immortal like me, or I’m dead like them. And I’m certainly not going to spend my time hiding my immortality again. Fuck that. Why the hell would I choose to surround myself with something as volatile as dying people? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I winced. “So the only options we have are the tournament, or this chaos?”
“I’ll credit you this much – your idiocy inspired me to come up with a better plan. Here’s what we’re going to do: Four people, sticking to the old duties. No more First, Second, and Third, but only one. A single Pythia for taking care of mental health, an Anaxagoras to find useful trash. How long do you think it would take a single Ctesibius to build an alarm clock, or a shower? They’ll do what they’ve always done, but instead of dying, they’ll each get their oxygen replenished at the end of each day. A Diocletian will be placed to handle the newcomers, but instead of giving them a rundown, they’ll unplug their oxygen, and I, in return, will give them immortality. You wanted people to suffer less, right? Now the newcomers won’t have to spend their last day in fear.” Because they won’t spend it at all.
The thing was, that this plan could actually work for her. With her weapons, with her experience in killing, no one will be eager to try her. Especially when she kept the wrench to herself, making sure it was only through her they could get oxygen. And food… I didn’t want to think about that.
Keren in a spacesuit, floating out of the airlock, expecting to meet Diocletian or Anaxagoras and instead getting pinned down and having her oxygen taken, left to choke in her suit like Dov.
Vempress seemed satisfied as she scanned my face. “You were right—this really has been useful.”
I didn’t answer, fearing she would easily hear the bitterness in my voice.
“Meet me at the airlock in four hours, just before the ore hauler passes, and bring as many residents as you can. I want them to see the light show, for old times’ sake. If you can make it happen, you’ll be rewarded by making this place much better than it was before.”
I managed a nod. It was a gross hybrid between my vision and Vempress’s, but at the very least, I was still allowed to go out, to be with the people. And I was coming up with a plan, already. Don’t think about it or she’ll read you. Keep playing. “One more request.”
She rolled her eyes, like a mother indulging a child asking for one more story to be read. “What is it?”
“I’d rather not tell them about the oxygen. I want tell them about the lines, and the roles. To show that it’s enough to unite them. If they agree, you will be the one to tell them about the oxygen.”
She lifted her eyebrows, but her expression was still one of amused interest. “Why, for God’s sake? It would be so much easier to get them to cooperate if you offered them a lifeline first.”
“Because then I won’t get a chance to prove it to you.”
“Prove what?”
“That the lines could still be remade, like they were.”
She squinted at that, as if trying to see if I meant it or just taunting her. “Did you not hear what I said? People submit themselves to lines only when they have nothing better to do. Without oxygen, they won’t listen to you.”
“The lines didn’t do it out of fear before, but because they wanted to leave something after they were gone. I can prove it.”
“You won’t succeed,” she said.
“I barely had an hour with this guy, and he’s already willing to take the role of Pythia.”
“Seriously? You were lucky to come across the only person ever to come to Last Day Town who’s more spineless than you are. Improbable that you’d be this lucky again.”
Insults were a good sign. “Maybe. And maybe people want to be a part of something bigger.”
“You won’t convince me to keep the lines.”
“I won’t even try. Tell them that you’re going to give them oxygen, and if you’re right, I’m sure they’ll be relieved. But I’ll still assemble them into lines, just to show you that it can be done.”
For a moment she seemed as if she was about to grind her teeth, but then she smiled, instead. “Another wager, then? What a devil you must take me for, that I cannot refuse them. But fine. You say that people will help strangers that they’ve never met, and I say they will only act to survive. But our last wager was boring – let’s make this one more exciting – if you manage to bring me four residents who agree to serve as a line without knowing that I will give them oxygen, you get another twenty-four hours of oxygen. On the house.”
“Really? You would let me live another day?”
“See how excited you are? All it took was an offer, and all of your pretense evaporated. But don’t get too excited - I’ll interrogate them, making sure that they’re actually convinced.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“You die, having made no difference. Do you accept?”
“What if there aren’t four residents left?”
“There are. Trust me.” A manner of speaking, no more.
“I accept, of course.” I said.
“Good. But you got your condition, so I’m going to demand something in return. Meet me here in two hours, on the timer.”
“To report?”
“No… this was interesting to me. Let’s meet here and talk some more. Who knows: maybe I’ll actually feel like confessing.”