Wren stumbled through the streets that evening, mystified by the conversation with Pip. Whether myth or truth he still could not be certain. Was it his own bias causing this uncertainty, or something more? He never questioned the society that raised him before. The society that gave him everything. But, he considered, it only needed one lie for it all to fall in his mental construct he had built stone by stone since birth. Yet now it appeared to be built on sand within his subconscious. He wanted it to fall. Without Clea, there was no point in the construct. He could still remember those early days: The three of them, in class learning about the nature of their world, the complex inn workings required every day to keep the machine moving, and even about the past. “The past informs the future!” Their professor always stressed. “Even if it is but an estimation at times. It is, indeed, our best estimation, thanks be to the Keige.” Thinking they had the multitude of career paths open to them, how foolish.
“Why must we learn about these animals? They are dead. They serve us no purpose,” One student would ask.
“Diversity,” The professor would reply. “You must understand the beauty of the natural world, in all of its forms. Past, present, and even future. You arrived here off the backs of these poor creatures. They suffered for you.”
Wren liked all the animals, to imagine what they could have been like. The still images on the page had to suffice. The fossil records deemed these photos accurate, but his imagination would still wander. The Ursa, Pardu, Leo, Ophid, Lupi, or Dactyls. To see them, even touch them, would open a new world, wholly separate from his own. Yet they were only accompanied by insects and rodents, small reflections of what once was. These small wood dwellers were the only company in parts more unknown to the common city dweller should a young Sapien wander off to find them.
-
“You won’t catch me, Wren!”
“You have to call me Corvallis, Anhinga” Wren called back.
“It doesn’t matter, no one is out here to correct our ‘proper speech’, respecting the houses and family name nonsense. You’re Wren to me when I am away from society and niceties. In my heart, not my head. Clea too. Just Clea.”
The Ferwoods, known as such for generations, was one of their spots of solace and adventure. These days, it had a much more mysterious moniker given to it, the whispering woods, for its infamy in the stories that were told about it. But as a child, these woods were the closest concept to nature and freedom that they could ever dream to attain. The trees were dead, the flowers withered, and the grass never grew. But to children it was a playground of imagination. The squirrels could play in their trees and hide nuts in the ground. The birds could sing their songs and lay eggs while the insects hummed along. The water could flow and be splashed as fish swam to freedom from a suspecting little hand. All of this was but text on a page for their history books to the people of Nidus. No one knew how a squirrel, a deer, or butterfly truly appeared to their naked eye. They only had pictures. The last remaining animals were livestock, purely for survival purposes. Food, transport, and power induction were all that remained as purpose for horses, cattle, and mules.
His mind raced just along the side of this new revelation, running ever closer to its realm but never touching it. He stayed in memories he knew were true like Clea, Roram, and the woods. A dome? What was Pip talking about? It didn’t even make sense. New Eurasia was a continent, massive in scale. Nothing could be that large and remain hidden from the very eyes that looked up in the night sky every evening. But then, he was so quick to question the truths of their past, of the Keige, of what his father taught him. Pip also had to have seen the very edges of the region as he traveled from his homeland to here. Wren nor anyone he had known ever wandered outside the city. It was only wastelands. Now he questioned his knowledge on such terrain. Pip may be right; why did he care about origins? The Keige always worked. They made life better. Or was it convenience disguised as betterment? He suddenly wasn’t sure what better really was; worse never existed for him or his family. Keige were all they knew. For generations everyone adopted them, being a sort of second nature. Progress had reached such a peak, such a note of extravagance and excellence, that it made the word void. They no longer needed progress, just maintenance. And again, his heart fluttered back down as he headed to the monitoring center, where he would be for the rest of the night come morning.
Passing great stone buildings and walking through empty streets, he kept his gaze away from the street dwellers. There may still be some progress to be had, he thought. No one should live that way. Still more, there existed street vendors of every kind. They catered to all parts of the senses, even those unseen. Everything a Keige could touch, so could man. ‘Ace those pesky exams! Give us your Keige today, walk out smarter tomorrow’ one sign read. Another shone bright as Wren strode past. He knew what it said. It always disgusted him. Experiencing erotic euphoria via Keige was a perversion of the invention. It all felt that way in the end to him. Changing your physical attributes, your mental capacity, using Keige for an act that you should experience, or using them in the name of violence. In some sense, they made us gods.
“Want to give your Keige, son? I can give you anything you desire. Part with your Keige. I can smell it on you. Your Keige. Please. Your Keige.” The streets no doubt housed Sapiens broken by more than time. He did not respond, only continued his stride toward the setting sun. A somber tune, if one existed, played over in his mind. Did the Keige call to us, or we to them? He pushed the thought out of his mind as thoughts of the dome began to take control again. It awakened a new rage toward his father. Kess had told him everything, or so he thought. Memories began to swirl in his mind and jumble his emotions. He hated when he could not organize his feelings or give an origin to each one. He always believed he could outsmart his natural inclinations, yet thus far only they claimed victory. Fixing his gaze on his memory again, recounting it once more, he knew another discussion awaited regarding Pip’s history. Information still loomed in the dark that he felt was intentionally hidden from him. It had been many months since he had found the poor soul; he had lost track of time if truth be told. Pip declined to speak more on it, but with this new revelation, he now felt that there were other secrets waiting inside.
Wren had been too trusting. He ought not be so foolish. If there was something to hide, then what? Maybe Pip had found something meant to remain hidden. Or worse, he chose to leave his people. Considering this, Wren felt all the more foolish. Doing good deeds seemed to wipe away common sense far too often. It was quite puzzling that Sapiens still felt led to carry them out after all this time.
The Monitoring Center was disproportionate in its ratio of height to width. It occupied much of the surrounding area without dominating the skies. It wasn’t built to impress, and Wren made sure he remembered that as he approached it. He hated the building because it did not resemble the others around it nor the rest of the city. The Keige made construction trivial, so it seemed they purposefully designed the center like so just to torture its workers. Brushing aside his disdain, he slid his Keige into the lock. “Corvallis, Wren,” it read aloud. The door slid open as he briskly walked in to escape the cold.
“Thought I’d never see you again, boy,” a husky voice called out. Reid Bolga, watcher of the Keige and keeper of order. In NeoEurasia, the pinnacle of human evolution wasn’t as beautiful as one might be led to believe. For every advancement there was an equal opportunity for an unfavorable outcome to make its way into the world. And thus, Wren had purpose in the world: a stipend for survival, and work to eat his time as he traversed day in and out through the cobbled streets.
“Very sorry for the disappearance, sir,” Wren said.
“As long as your scrawny ass is covered I don’t care much. Anhinga saved ya I’d say. He just happened to be here already when your shift began. Maybe tell him next time you plan to ghost us.”
“Yes, of course,” he replied as he quickly moved to his position for the night. He preferred to not speak to Bolga more than necessary, especially if he was going to remain lucid throughout the night. In truth, Wren liked to work with his hands, even in days such as these, where the Keige ruled; such an invention held promises of intimacy with nature, yet it only yielded apathy. Curious, the counterintuitive result of it all. Whether traveling, carrying objects, or tending to one’s needs, feeling the progress was more satisfactory than simply seeing it.
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Thankfully, there were no hours to be recorded. There were tasks, outcomes, deliverables; whatever they needed to be called by different companies to accomplish the same task. They all meant one thing: keep the city moving. To do that, keep the people satisfied. To do that, address every alert. Repeat this cycle over and over. This wasn’t the only monitoring center but it was the primary monitoring center. Without them, no answer would be given to an emergency that Keige would send out. This center funneled in all the alerts and responses throughout the murmurs, as well as addressing the ones that occurred in the murmur it occupied. On the holographic board in front of the current user was a screen of data: the murmur, the individuals residing in it, what they were experiencing at any given moment, and the last negative response received from each Keige. The data was then spliced into three sections: the chi, or ‘X’, for the body. It was reminiscent of DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. The Psi for spirit, or mind, symbolizing a cup ready for its hopes and dreams to be fulfilled and overflowing. And then Lambda, for soul, pointing to the heavens to remind us from whence we came. Facetious to Wren, as thoughts and deeds were so often confused. These symbols were etched into every Keige as well when they were created alongside their bond to their user. Of the endless customization that existed for Keige, these were the exception, simply because they didn’t work as intended without them. Just excluding one made the device worthless. Looking back, Wren hadn’t known anything different. He had wanted one since learning of its existence, dreaming of the day he could receive his own. It wasn’t until much later that he began to regret creating the everlasting bond. The memories may haunt, but this is the reality we all live in, he thought. There will always be ebbs of evil to compromise good.
-
He peeked around the corner, spying on the back of a chair. Padding quietly across the stone to see the everflame casting a dim light on his father’s face.
“Found you!” He exclaimed.
“Well there’s my boy. Looks like you finally gave yourself up! I had been looking so long I decided to let you come out.” He clearly was playing along to the sudden game that had been going on in Wren’s head.
“You can’t fool me, father. What are you working on?” He peered over the desk to see his father’s notebook, ink materializing on the pages in a pattern, creating a shape he did not recognize.
“Nothing serious. Just letting my imagination get away from me.” He leaned back , the everlight shining through his beard, illuminating it to Wren’s eyes below. The scar on his right cheek shone brighter today, the deep line running through his beard and up to his eye. It appeared to have small branches from this line, like an expert carving in stone.
“I appreciate the act. It allows me to see the world not how it is, but how it could be. I realized when I was a little older than you that the Keige were only limited by the imagination of the user. I saw all that it could do, all that it had done, and found it mesmerizing. Buildings like our home, rail cars, maps, weapons, currency, communication, emotion, dreams, interconnectivity, knowledge sharing. If your mind could conjure it and your body could feel it, your Keige could hold it.”
The sheer possibilities enraptured little Wren’s mind. “I can’t wait to have one,” he managed to blurt in awe. Being young and in the world without one made it an abysmal place; hearing his father talk about it now only seemed to tease his mind all the more.
“Not yet, little one,” he said with a smile across his face. “A few more years, then we will see. There is still much for you to learn without such a tool. We wouldn’t want you too reliant on it.” He looked down at his son with a solemn look in his gaze. “Oh yes, take a look.” He moved the diary closer for Wren to see. “This is how I imagine the Udo.” The Sapien-like images had an uncanniness to them, dressed in cloth, loose fabric, sandals, and scarves wrapped around their face.
“It looks like one of us,” Wren replied, looking closely.
“Not exactly, look closer. Longer arms, larger jaw and forehead, a larger torso. They would be shorter as well if you had something with which to compare this picture with for scale. Well, not all of them I’d wager. And if this were colored, their skin would be darker.”
“Like Roram?” Wren exclaimed, thinking he understood.
“No, much darker. There are many shades to skin tone. We Sapiens only have but a few. And given how we live in this climate, any darker skin tones would only remain through genetics. There aren’t many left.”
Kess was better off keeping these thoughts internally, as Wren was far too young for such topics. Climates, genetics, and changes over time were not concepts to be grasped for him in that moment.
“But I am getting off track. It’s just a quick drawing. We don’t know what they truly looked like. We have found a few bones throughout the land from long, long ago. There are stories passed down from the war. But that was ages ago, they could look quite different now.” He sat back in his chair, staring into space. “Should they still exist, I would love to meet them.”
“I thought they were bad. Professor Jay in developmental ecology said so,” Wren responded proudly.
“Last we met, maybe so. I prefer to keep an open mind to the fact that it is almost always more complicated than good or evil. History proves that and so do you and I. One day you’ll see.”
He grabbed Wren and set him on his lap, the image on the page now imprinted in his mind. He would forever hold it. Soon, when he received his Keige, the image would live on inside of it. For him, it was a beckoning into the unknown, though he did not realize it. It became a cornerstone of everything he would desire. For within the Keige lay the Udo. Though he would say he longed to find the old key, what truly longed for was to meet its maker.
“And this? Is it a different type of Udo?” The pages began to flip as his father closed the notebook, only to be stopped by Wren’s inquiry.
“Oh, this? No, quite the opposite. I call them Shades, or more precisely, Rephaim. The word comes from a very old story, its meaning probably lost to time. I came across it and liked the sound of it. So it stuck.”
The drawing gave Wren an uneasy feeling. Though but a sketch, the eyes seemed to penetrate his being, searching it for intentions and deeds unknown to anyone save himself. The body was formidable, large and unyielding, the head staggeringly large in comparison to its torso.
“Come now, no need to dwell on it. It is only a drawing.”
“How do you know of them? Are they real?”
“But a dream, little one, but a dream. Better for them to linger here on a page than in here,” He said, pointing toward his temple, then to Wren’s. “Same goes for you. Don’t let them in.” He grabbed his son and disheveled his hair, giving him a tight squeeze.
“Now, off you go. There are more monsters to uncover outside,” he whispered with a smile.
-
“Asleep again?”
“He’s had a long day, I’ll get him.”
Roram moved from his post over to Wren and nudged him. “Wake up buddy, still on the clock.”
“Sorry, I’m up. Had to have been five minutes or less.”
“No idea. Could’ve been five minutes or an hour. Nothing has gone off thankfully. I thought you were just doing your job impeccably.”
“How do you know I wasn’t? Asleep or awake, looks like the same outcome.”
“how convenient for you,” Roram jabbed sarcastically, going back to his post to monitor the north zone. Clea, meanwhile, monitored the west zone. She knew those streets as if she had designed them herself. Wren had stood up to wake himself only to see her off in the distance among the many screens and people. They hadn’t talked since he’d last seen her in the library cove. He needed to speak with her but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Looking longingly her way, a red flash drew his attention away from her and to the screen, making the decision for him. Bodily harm, south zone. Keige A456 used as a weapon against B562. Body in critical condition based on the readings. Wren drew up the coordinates and status of both users and sent them to the zone’s medical and enforcement departments. He then created a case that would contain all of the status identifiers as a log that would inevitably be used in the court system. It would always end the same way if convicted, if the deed be deemed worthy of it. These days they often were. Severing. The separation of one from their Keige was worse than death, it was said. Tortuous and unprecedented to one’s entire being. Creating them was one horror, reversing it was a different one entirely. Why Sapiens would even consider crime of any kind still boggled him. They could track every deed and movement. Any trial that followed a crime was always fair, because the essence of the Keige could only be fair.
Wren believed the behavior was related to stimulants. He remembered one breakthrough study, in his early days of schooling, that a kidney protein from an ancient hominid had finally been synthesized for use in Sapiens. Klotho, they had called it. This discovery had been made hundreds of years prior, but learning about it then made it feel fresh and new. Where they had found it, he couldn’t recall now. It was kidney tissue frozen to bone. Or was it excavated on the mainland? Regardless, it was intended to address the longevity of the brain, increase its functions, and even allow the recipient to live longer. And in some effect, that was what they saw today. The average Sapien could comfortably live for over 200 years. Yet many had their suspicions of the side effects of such a powerful stimulant. It was never wise to observe such great benefits, little consequences, and not question it.
Those, however, that opted out of Keige use saw significantly less time on the planet. Those Sapiens were pitied, as they did not experience life to its fullest as was intended. This wasn’t because they were hated. No, they were merely forgotten.Could one be worse than the other?
These thoughts soon led him back to his mother, as they so often did. She became one of these forgotten, though she hadn’t started that way. He could still see the dreams in his mind’s eye. The sallowed face, thin hair, dark eyes, blood dripping from them. She would walk toward him and stare, then turn away, lingering close by but never looking at him, gazing up into a sea of darkness. Simple yet unforgettable. Heartbreaking and terrifying. It was not how he wished to remember his mother, but it was now all he had left.