CHAPTER TEN: THE ACTIVATION DAY

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“Just hold me for a little while, okay?”

The words swam in my memory.

My fingers tingled a little. My lips more so. We’d kissed. More accurately, she’d kissed me. I’d been too stunned to move for a few seconds. And now I felt empty. Lost. As if half my life had been torn away. In a very real sense, I supposed it had.

Five years? Five years until I could see her again?

For the first time in my life, I absolutely hated Tellroan. There had been many nights that I’d stayed up and wondered what Mom was doing. Why she had to be gone so often? Those mysteries had never really been assuaged. But I’d never been so resentful as I felt now.

Mom came back almost every day, at least. April wouldn’t, and I didn’t even get the satisfaction of knowing why. She was just gone. Poof. Out of my life forever. Or for five years at any rate, which might as well have been forever. She wouldn’t even be at the activation ceremony. She’d be too busy running tests… or something. I didn’t actually have any idea. All I could do was let my imagination fill in the gaps. Was she scared? Worried? Was she missing me as much as I was her? I bit my tongue and clenched my fist in an effort to avoid letting tears fall. She was my best friend!

‘Is. She is my best friend,’ I thought firmly.

I felt a little guilty, shorting Monroe in my head. I’d known him longer after all, but we weren’t as quite close as April and I had been. Were. I suspected he felt the same way. Sudden anger bubbled in my thoughts as I noticed Monroe’s absence yesterday as well. Where had he been all day yesterday? He hadn’t reminded me of my date, but he’d known April was leaving, where as I had just been kicked in the face with it.

I wasn’t really sure what I’d expected, but her parents had asked me to leave when they’d both gotten home around two in the morning. I sort of understood. I was a very close friend but not the same as family. April would be leaving them behind, too.

On the upside, they weren’t destitute anymore. There was usually a generous stipend allotted to families of Tellroan employees able to see Sunsoul. I didn’t know the details. What I did know was that the chance of getting a job at Tellroan if you couldn’t see Sunsoul was practically nil.

My goals hadn’t changed though. Where before I was pretty sure I wanted to work for Tellroan, now I had a burning passion to get into that building. My dreams of being a teacher fell by the wayside, supplanted by my desire to stay with April. Somehow.

I went through the remainder of the night in a sort of numb stupor. Hours dragged by as I sat, staring at the television, hearing and seeing nothing. Almost before I knew it, morning had come. Eight fourty. Eight fourty one. Eight fourty two...

Mom was gone. With the activation set for one in the afternoon, she would probably be gone for the next few days. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it would definitely be the most important. I didn’t know what she did there but I knew today was big for her. A chance to meet Scarlatte herself? Mom would be over the moon.

I still wasn’t exactly sure why she didn’t want me at the Activation ceremony. She’d seemed almost worried about it. But the alternative was going to Haley’s party, where I’d have to explain why I’d bolted on her the other day. Then again, Monroe would be there, and I could really use a friend to talk to. Maybe to yell at.

How the fuck could he have not told me? How…

Dammit.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, jolting me out of my numb stupor. I looked at it and blinked in surprise as it showed me a positively ridiculous amount of missed calls and text messages. Nine messages and thirteen missed calls.

“Speak of the devil,” I murmured to myself and answered the newest call, still shocked at how distant I must’ve been to have not noticed my phone before.

“Monroe,” I snapped, coldly.

“Hey. Ah, how’s things?” Monroe stammered awkwardly.

“Been better Monroe. Been better. The fuck, man?”

I could practically hear my friend wince apologetically. “She asked me not to say anything, Bran. She didn’t… I didn’t really want to tell you anyway.”

“So, you figured leaving me in the dark was the better idea, hmm? Fuck you man! Fuck you!” I screamed, before throwing the phone across the room. The damn thing didn’t even dent, and I hissed in dissatisfaction, hearing the minute sound of Monroe’s hollow apologies on the other end.

Even as I raged inwardly, I knew it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I should’ve spent more time with April, but I didn’t. I’d forgotten her and wasted what little time we’d had. I should’ve spent more time helping her get her scholarship. Maybe if I had, then…

No. There was no use running my thoughts in circles like that. April was going to be one of Tellroan’s permanent workers. The mystery workers. The ones who tended to cut off all ties to the rest of the world and devote themselves to whichever tower they’d been employed at entirely.

Something was still strange though. Even the people who could see Sunsoul were usually allowed to keep in touch. What could be so important, so dire, to convince her to remain in complete isolation from her family? For years?

She’s one of the best. Maybe that means something?

I didn’t know, but slowly, the inklings of an idea began to form in my mind. An insane idea, that might possibly get me jail time. I thought it would be worth it though.

“Did you just… throw your phone?” Monroe asked when I picked it back up, sounding a little worried.

“How long did you know about the Sunsoul? Huh?” I asked, ignoring the question. “You two been having a laugh behind my back for years about it?”

Monroe hesitated. “H-Huh? What about Sunsoul? I mean, April didn’t actually say anything, but I kinda got the feeling she could see it when you spotted the Array a few days ago. When she told me she’d be going to work at Tellroan and wouldn’t be able to contact us anymore, it made it a little obvious.”

Well. That took the wind out of my sails. “So, you didn’t know before Monday?”

“I found out Wednesday. That’s when she told me. She could see it before?”

“She freaking used it man.” I hissed. “Summoned a green ball of light right there in her bedroom!”

“Impossible,” Monroe replied curtly. “There are like eight people in the states who can do that, and maybe two hundred worldwide. That April could is just… just…” He trailed off, thinking about what he was saying.

“She can. And better than almost anyone. She said we wouldn’t even be able to contact her, Monroe. Tellroan is tight with all their new employees. Secretive. But they don’t cut off all contact. They at least get video chats and emails and stuff. Not April though. Why?”

“I… didn’t question it. It’s Telilro. Everyone knows Scarlatte is paranoid. You gonna ask your mom?”

“Something like that,” I hedged cautiously. My mom. She worked at Tellroan. She was high in its command structure. Not really near the top but one of the leads of… something. A research division, I thought. Co-Chief Executives Manager, which I was more and more sure was a title created simply to bore people into not asking any further questions. Her degree was in Environmental Biology, though more recently, a degree in Biology just meant you wanted to study Sunsoul and why it was destroying the environment most the time. Just like a degree in Astronomy meant you wanted to look further into the solar system, rather than out anymore.

“I’ll call you back,” I said when Monroe let the silence last too long, and the sadness of losing our best friend started to feel a little too close. A plan was beginning to form in my mind. My mom was already at Tellroan, and I knew about the activation party this afternoon. She had discouraged me from coming without actively telling me not to, but she didn’t say I couldn’t go.

“Wait. Monroe. That invite to the activation still open?” I asked.

“Uhm. Yeah? Wait what?” he asked, trying to catch up to my train of thought. “You’re not going to Haley’s–?”

“Forget Haley. The Activation today. When are you leaving?” I interrupted.

“Pretty soon. It’s already getting bright. Probably, about two hours,” he said, then hesitated. “Are you… going to do something stupid?”

“Maybe. I’m coming over. I’ll be going with you if that’s okay,” I said in a way that implied that it had better be okay. His parents were usually cool with me going along to things, but this was an adult party. Monroe was not excited about going, and me asking to attend would likely be weird. That wasn’t my problem though. I hung up before he could reply.

I gathered my courage and… my recklessness. I had my own job to do before this party started. It would take all my sneakiness and cunning.

...Or. So I thought. Stealing mom’s spare keycard was actually stupidly easy.

Several hours later I arrived at the activation party in high spirits. Monroe’s family hadn’t batted an eye at my request to attend, and even allowed Monroe to come with me instead of forcing him to ride with them. They were too busy actively not talking to each other to spare much attention for Monroe and I, so getting them to agree was quite easy… if uncomfortable. Tellroan shined like a stark metallic obelisk. Its height was the first thing anyone noticed, even approaching it from dozens of miles away. That made it easy to forget just how wide the base of it was. Standing in its shadow, it was more comparable to a mountain than a tower. It stretched into the sky higher than almost any other building in the world, excepting its own twins. During the rare storm, when the clouds provided a flimsy shield against the sun’s rays, the Tower could be seen cutting through them, stretching up into eternity.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was common knowledge that the air at the top of the tower was tough to breathe. According to Scarlatte, there would be no need for manned maintenance at levels that high, though. All the actual functions of the tower took place on the lower floors. Its height was to catch both Sunsoul and sunlight above the clouds and use it to generate the shield. Each ray of light that erupted from the tower would provide power, protection, and eternal light to the land below. And land was the right word. It acted as a conduit, dividing out its power to all the hundreds of thousands of light poles placed as far east as Nashville and as far West as Tulsa. St. Louis too would be protected by the light of the tower. Early estimates when Milwaukee’s Tellvera first activated assumed that it would reach as far as St. Louis, but that had proven optimistic. Tellroan would reach that far though. It would even make a giant half-oval chunk of the Scorched Lands safe again.

My fingers shook as I thought through what I had planned. Was I really going to try to sneak into the upper floors of Tellroan? There was quite a deluge of information on what the first level of the tower was like, as that was open to the public. The base level was so wide that it rented its space out to various companies and businesses so they could run their own operations there, much like any of the old Skyscrapers used to do in big cities. The sheer amount of space granted by a circular building almost two miles wide, just on the first floor alone, was mind boggling.

The second level was also open to the public, though it served as the courthouse, DMV, and a few of the more stately functions of the area. When you had a building that stretched unfathomably high into the sky, it apparently kind of emasculated the government. So the local courthouse – already barely standing and practically impossible to protect from the damaging sunlight – moved into the Tower too. That still didn’t make much of a dent in the available space left, though it was filling quickly. Soon residential areas and whole cities might exist on the first floor alone.

The third floor was where information became fuzzy, but it was mostly believed to be the main administrative layer of the tower. Where finances were handled and cubicles were lined up forever onward. The tower, upon completion, served many purposes for the surrounding area. One of those functions was providing power and the shield. People couldn’t directly pay for their power though because Tellroan couldn’t exactly shut off the power for a late bill. So, instead, the government paid Tellroan for the power it would shell out on a permanent basis. So taxes rose. This required people. Each township or hub Tellroan would cover had its own representative, usually their respective Mayors, so there would be hundreds of people there, serving the best interests of their individual communities. This was also where most of the people here in town worked, and it was as high in the tower as you could get if you didn’t actually work for Telilro.

Beyond that, my Mom probably knew what was up there. Hardly anyone else though. It was theorized that the floors above the third were mostly hollow. Something about its own weight crushing itself if there were actually floors all the way up. There were most likely maintenance floors or observation decks every so often, and the main scientific labs probably weren’t at the top. That would make for one long wait in the elevator, no matter how fast it moved.

We walked into the enormous tower, and I felt my excitement rise. I didn’t have much reason to visit the Tower and even going into the lower levels was a treat to me. I was quickly overwhelmed with the size as I walked in.

Just as I’d seen it during my eighth grade field trip, it was an enormous maze of stark grey halls, offset by bright glass windows and shining signs for company names. Everything from Nike to Walmart to AT&T had an office here. Some used the place like a headquarters while others rented enough space to turn their portion of Tellroan into a full distribution center. Most the exterior of the building was actually surrounded with the massive sun-shielded semitrailers for those companies who used the building for shipping, and that showed inside.

It felt like the inside of home improvement store, mixed with the floor to ceiling glass windows and white lights of an office building. It wasn’t like the hub though. None of the divisions were for retail or services. It felt like a warehouse, boxes and people operating forklifts visible through some windows, while comfortable offices, lounging sofas, leisure rooms, and the occasional café lined others.

Visitors like Monroe and I were everywhere, most of us gawking at the massive size of the place as we followed the signs directing us towards where the activation ceremony would be. The more I saw, the more I wondered why in the hell I’d wanted to go to Haley’s party at all when this had been an option.

“It’s incredible,” Monroe breathed. “I wonder what the upper floors are like.”

“I know… The activation is going to be great, too. I’m looking forward to standing in the sun,” I said distractedly. I tried to focus on what I’d come here for. I was going to use the elevator to go up to the higher levels. I was going to find April and talk to her. If it would really be the last time then… well. I didn’t know what I’d do after that.

The crowd was directed to a large auditorium, which I realized looked a lot more like an aircraft hanger. On one end were a pair of gigantic closed doors and a portable stage had been erected on the side adjacent to the doors. I followed, expecting that I would get a chance to slip back into the building during the party. Irritatingly, I hadn’t spotted anything that looked like it might be an elevator.

We’d lost Monroe’s parents in the crush of the crowd and more people were spilling in behind us. As we entered the auditorium and began to take stock of the scene of this party, I found myself a little unimpressed. It was just a big room. But it wouldn’t be safe outside until the actual activation, scheduled for more than an hour from now. Were we all expected to just hang out in this hanger until then?

“Bran, hey, Brandon. Look! Isn’t that Doctor Fontaine over there?” Monroe exclaimed excitedly.

I looked and sure enough, the woman leaning against one of the auditorium’s pillars was none other than Violette Fontaine. The infamous scientific prodigy who had convinced the governments of the world to build her a spaceship when she was only twenty five. She looked unobtrusive, quietly looking up at the stage, then over to the hangar doors. I abruptly realized that they were going to open them. Probably soon too.

We found a place to stand relatively free of people, and looked towards the stage where Scarlatte was just walking out. I grinned and Monroe grinned back at me excitedly. The woman was old, and looked it, though I would swear she looked younger than she had last time I’d seen her on the television. She had long, flowing platinum white hair, and she wore a sort of suit-robe mix that made her look like a witch had dressed up for a job interview. She held a walking cane with jewels embedded in the handle. They sparkled with an admittedly impressive glow. She carried the cane as if it were a prop though, completely unneeded as her confident stride took her to the center of the stage.

“Ladies and Gentleman!” Scarlatte’s voice burst out over the excited murmur of conversations and shuffling feet with an exuberant air of showmanship. “Welcome, one and all, to the fourth of these ceremonies to take place in our world, and hopefully the most successful one yet! My guests I am Doctor Chandra Scarlatte, and welcoming to the activation ceremony of Immortality Engine Number Four. Designation: Tellroan!”

A wild cheer erupted from the crowd and I found myself shouting as well. Monroe, much more reserved than me, merely clapped. Still, a wide grin spread across his face.

“Now, my guests. This ceremony’s purpose is to watch the activation. How would we do that from here, inside the tower? I’ll tell you how. We won’t!”

The old woman held up her hand and a perfect sphere of what looked like burning blue glass seemed to burst into life in her open palm. The crowd cheered once more as the blue fire took form. The woman smiled a secretive smile at her captivated audience before she raised her palm just a tad higher, and the blue light erupted, climbing to the top of the auditorium in a beautiful pillar of flame. The lights dimmed as the blue fire took over the show.

The last of the flame leeched into the ceiling and began to slide down the edge of the room, forming a blue dome that began to sink down to the floor. I was mesmerized by the massive show of power and skill. In the back of my mind though, I wondered why Scarlatte’s Sunsoul was blue, when April’s had been green.

The sunsoul finished encasing the room and the whole place seemed to get a tad colder. The crowd continued to cheer for Scarlatte as she raised her hands to quieten them. Then, realizing she probably wouldn’t be able to, she turned towards a control room sitting above the entrance to the auditorium and shouted, “Open the hangar doors!”

At her command, the massive hangar doors began to open outward, letting sunlight spill in and seem to sparkle as it passed through the glistening blue shield. Yet no one was harmed as the room brightened to a light I could hardly ever recall seeing. I gasped in awe as I felt the sun touch me, and felt no pain through the blue shield Scarlatte was projecting. The crowd joined me, fading to awed silence as the sun was let in, and washed over us without harming anyone.

“Special thanks go out to Janice Yates, Jack Tew, Evolyn Bellflower, Blanche Meadows, Doug Phillips, and Catherine Quaker, all of whom will be maintaining this barrier until the activation! Please, step outside! Enjoy the sunlight, and have some refreshments! Thank you all for coming, and we hope you love standing in the light as much as we do!”

I blinked. Mom!?

Sure enough, there was my mom, holding up her hand and adding a thin flow of green Sunsoul to the blue barrier Scarlatte had made.

The enigmatic old woman waved her cane and walked off the stage, slowly walking outside as the barrier warbled its way out of the hanger like a balloon.

“I guess I knew your mom could use Sunsoul Brandon, but it’s different knowing she can and seeing her do it!” Monroe exclaimed. “April can do this too?”

I nodded dumbly. I’d never really seen Mom use it either. Why? Why wouldn’t she be using it all the time? I would if I could!

We both continued gawking in shock as we followed the crowd outside into the dome of Sunsoul that protected us from the deadly sunlight above. Eleven A.M. and we were almost standing under the sun. Amazing.

“Is this all you can do?” Came a sudden voice. Not loud, but it boomed in the awestruck silence.

I blinked and searched through the crowd for the familiar voice.

Without warning, another ball of light appeared in the palm of someone else’s hand. I couldn’t actually see her but everyone knew Violette Fontaine’s voice. The sunsoul gathered in her open palm was the same pure green as what I’d seen April use, but this burned more intensely than either April or Scarlatte’s blue flame had.

The green fire shot up into the sky, bursting through the blue shield without affecting it. Above the blue light a bigger shield formed, falling down over the blue one and surrounding it in a larger dome. “And I’m not even trying, Scarlatte.”

“Ahh, you finally came to visit. Everyone! We have a special guest this evening. The destroyer of the world herself, Doctor Fontaine!” Scarlatte exclaimed, holding out her hand to the woman in a formal introductory way. She spoke as if trying to induce a round of applause, but no one clapped. Space cleared around the pariah as more and more people realized who she was. I edged away from her too as the thinning crowd revealed the small woman. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. I was completely un-noteworthy here and if I wanted to sneak away, I’d have to remain so.

I knew intellectually that it was Violette who had actually taught the aged old woman Scarlatte, but it was nearly impossible to not regard them the other way around. Violette was still strikingly beautiful for a woman in her forties. While Scarlatte certainly seemed spry for an eighty-year-old woman… she was still an eighty-year-old woman.

“Good evening, Chandra,” Doctor Fontaine said. “I know you’d given me an open invite. I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. I just thought I’d add an extra layer of protection. Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“I assure you, no harm will come to anyone here. And once the activation is completed, there will be no further need of bawdy showmanship, eh?”

I realized suddenly that there would be no better time for me to slip away. Everyone was focused on the two of them, to the exclusion of all else, but both shields still encased the hangar so people could go back into the building for bathrooms and the like. Slipping away as the drama unfolded before me, I left as the two women began a truly unrivaled trade of insults thinly disguised as compliments.

I had to find April. I had to see her again. One more time.