The Archytas Read online

  They entered the room in hushed silence, there was no sound at all except for Tom’s rapidly beating heart.

  The God Chamber was a perfectly white room of vast size. All that was in the room was a huge holographic image of a man, his presence looming across the expanse. Below the man was a second metallic door of nondescript nature, placed directly opposite the door that the human and alien had entered from.

  Yudar stood in awe. His neck arched as he tilted his head up to stare into the eyes of his creator.

  “I have been waiting for you,” bellowed God.

  Yudar knelt down and bowed his head gracefully. He tried to speak but no words came out.

  “You have done well to make it this far, but now you must face your final test.”

  “Anything...” Yudar paused. “Anything you ask of me, my master.”

  “Your final test is to work hard and provide power to those above. If you succeed, you will be reborn, and will enjoy the ultimate in satisfaction. A perfect life in the city of Utopia. There will be no pain, no suffering, only endless joy and complete contentment.”

  “A life in Utopia?” asked Yudar, confused.

  “This is God’s way,” said God. “This planet has finally reached the stage of perfection. The system that is here can survive indefinitely, with the help of those wishing to exceed beyond the current state of being. Of course, it might feel like a sacrifice now, but everyone must play his or her part to reach the final goal. A place in paradise, an eternal paradise that will never shatter.”

  “I will do as you ask,” said Yudar.

  “There are difficulties ahead,” God stated. “You think you have what it takes?”

  “I do, and I understand.”

  “Be warned though, many people fail, and sadly this is how it goes. If you fail to complete your final goal, you will be banished to the netherworld to endure a life of endless pain, torture, and suffering. If you cease to live whilst undertaking this task, the same fate will apply. You have to be strong, strong until the end. Can you be strong?” asked God.

  “I can.”

  “Your task,” began the giant holographic projection, “is forty years of labour. Once your task is completed, your eternal soul will be transported into the body of a newborn Utopian, and you will be free to live out the rest of your days in an idyllic paradise. Are you ready to begin?”

  “I am ready, God, thank you for blessing me with this opportunity.”

  “Thank you for being such a loyal servant, I hope others of your species can find me too. Everyone is welcome in the afterlife.” God glanced at Tom briefly, “Thank you, Tom, you can leave now.”

  Tom bowed and exited through the same door he had entered from.

  The other door to the God Chamber slid to the side, revealing a wash of bright white light that glistened from its opening. It was so bright that Yudar could hardly make out the hologram of God; his image becoming fractured, distorted, and only fragments of his figure remained.

  Yudar ambled forward, body shaking with excitement as he entered through the doorway and into the arresting white light.

  13

  Carter had returned from the Sol-ship. It was Queen-of-Clubs-7, the last day of the card, and three days since he had begun thinking about birds, a thought that had not left his mind. He had tried in vain to talk to some of the other three hundred and nineteen men that were his so-called friends during the journey back to Terra, but he had been greeted with the same muted responses, just like the response he had received from Maxwell.

  Regardless, Carter was not one to let his emotions get in the way, none of them were; and if his colleagues did not want to talk about dreams or birds, then it could not be helped.

  With rested legs from a long day in space flight, Carter felt satisfied by another card of work completed. He decided to take a detour from his usual route home. He followed in line with the others, until the lanes became empty and he was almost lost. He ambled through symmetrical streets, crossing various pathways and roadways, before turning around and heading back in the direction of his home.

  As he walked, he thought again about the birds. He thought about his previous simulation dreams, the fractured memories of each. None of them seemed to have any relevance to the images trapped within his mind.

  Eventually, he arrived at the street that housed his podpartment, and as he walked to the entrance to his building, a voice startled him.

  “You are late.”

  “Late for what?” asked Carter, as he turned to face the speaker.

  “I expected you to be home earlier,” said the figure.

  Carter looked the man up and down; green eyes, dark skin, white hair, generic, but a face he did not recognise.

  “Who are you?” asked Carter.

  “You can call me Yudar,” said Yudar.

  “What are you doing outside my building, Yudar?”

  “I will keep it short. I got word that you were asking questions. The sort of questions that you should not be asking.”

  “Is it a problem to ask questions now?”

  “No, of course not, our society was built on questions. Without questions we would still be crawling around in Local.”

  “So, why are you here then?”

  “I am curious, and I may be able to help you. I want to know what you remember.”

  “Birds,” said Carter. “A lot of birds.”

  “What were the birds doing?” asked Yudar.

  “Nothing special. They were flying around, thousands of them, vortices of birds. They looked to be protecting something, I don’t know what.”

  “Interesting,” said Yudar. “Do you often remember your dreams? After all, it is quite uncommon.”

  “Usually not. Fragments of dreams that last for a few seconds after waking, but never with such vividity. The strange thing is, the dreams I have been experiencing shouldn’t contain birds, I don’t understand it.”

  “Look, I have to get back, but I did say that I might be able to help. There was a historical event we recorded, an event involving birds. Two-of-Hearts-4 2774, that was the day it happened.”

  “Two-of-Hearts-4 2774.”

  “Right,” said Yudar, signalling farewell.

  “Wait a moment, how do I contact you?”

  “I will find you, it will not be soon though, too suspicious. I will be back sometime in the next few years.”

  “Okay, thanks, Yudar.”

  “No,” said Yudar, a smile forming from his lips, “thank you.”

  Carter signalled farewell and walked into his building.

  In his podpartment, he did as the stranger had advised, and programmed his pod to Two-of-Hearts-4 2774.

  14

  Yudar was standing on the other side of the God Chamber, in a clear state of astonishment.

  He winced at the bright lights that shone down on an endless sea of sand, making out dark silhouettes of figures moving around on the manmade desert. The moment was short lived though, as two men wearing jet-black hazmat suits grabbed Yudar by each arm, and dragged him toward a strange mechanical object. They forcefully placed his wrists tightly in shackles attached to short chains.

  As the bright white lights faded away, Yudar could see thousands of people in restraints. They were each working around ancient machinery, turning huge metal poles attached to wheels, operating what looked to be mammoth generators.

  The men looked ill, too thin to be well fed; they looked like skeletons wrapped in thin white plastic, their bones stretching through their skin. Some young children, perhaps just five or six years old were also working, faces blank, trying to pull food sleds along the uneven sandy surface.

  The air was thick with a terrible stench. It took Yudar a while to figure out what it was, but eventually he recognised it to be the pungent smell of human fæces. He could see piles of excrement, pools of sick, and trails of blood soaking into the browning sand.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  The men in hazmat suits toss
ed Yudar toward the machine.

  “Work,” one of them said.

  “God’s orders,” added the other.

  “If you don’t, you will end up like that guy,” he said, pointing in the direction of a huge furnace. Two more men in hazmat suits were dragging the naked body of a man toward the fire, shrill screams were coming from his limp framework. Yudar watched as the men tossed him into the flames with practiced precision.

  “Shame,” said the first man.

  “Another one heading to the netherworld, all because he didn’t obey.”

  Yudar began working at once, having seen the display, fear pumped through every one of his veins. The men exchanged a hidden grin with each other through their helmets and wandered off.

  There were millions of slaves working beneath Utopia, each of them looking sick, malnourished, and very close to death. Some of the new arrivals still had their clothing, but most of the slaves wore garments reduced to rags.

  As Yudar worked, turning a heavy wheel that provided power to the people in the city above, all he could think about was his mission.

  15

  Jenkins headed toward the column of birds surrounding his land, he glanced behind him as he ran, and saw the other farmers approaching at speed.

  Thoughts raced through his mind. Surely there was nowhere to escape to, they would catch up with him, maybe kill him or, at the very least, destroy his crops.

  As he reached the boundary of his farm, he pushed through the swarm of pigeons. On the other side, his farm was a lush field of green and white; unharmed crops, clean air, and free from the ravenous pigeons.

  Eventually, he reached his farmhouse, and once again looked over his shoulder. They had not caught up yet. Behind him, just a sea of black in the distance.

  He entered his farmhouse and headed beneath to his grandson’s laboratory. As always, Justin was working on something. He was holding a screwdriver in one hand, and was idly fingering some unusual metallic device with the other.

  “They know?”

  “Who?”

  “The farmers, they know we did this and they want revenge!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” his grandson said calmly, “we’ve won.”

  “What are you talking about? This isn’t a game!”

  “Geoff, you worry too much. We wanted victory and we’ve done it. The birds have spread to Outer-Utopia. Soon, the farms there will have nothing, no crops, no food to feed the rich and powerful. This is victory. We can survive here; we have enough food for ourselves. We can live a simple life, just like we always wanted. No stress, nothing to worry us, nothing to trouble us, we can live out our time. We can survive.”

  “Listen,” said Jenkins, “the other farmers are angry. They know you are behind this, and they are coming here right now, they might kill us.”

  Justin scoffed, “Kill us? They won’t kill us, we’ve saved them. Saved them from slavery, broken them free from the system. Those in the capital can’t survive without food, without food they can’t feed their slaves, without slaves they have no power.”

  Jenkins shrugged and wandered back up the stairs to his farmhouse. He did not share the same vision as his grandson, and he felt remorseful.

  Outside, he brought his binoculars up to his eyes, and looked back in the direction of the town hall. It was difficult to make out through the column of pigeons, but he saw them, the other farmers. They were in deep discussion. Mr Jones looked to be smashing one of the pigeon’s heads open with a rock whilst screaming something about cabbages. Jenkins needed to take a better look, so began to walk, slowly, with trepidation, toward the boundary of his land.

  As he approached, he could see the absolute rage on the faces of the other farmers. They stared through the wall of pigeons, focusing intently on Jenkins. It scared him, their eyes, their anger; it filled him with the deepest fear.

  As he reached the pigeon wall, he could see that much like the birds, the farmers were trying to cross over, to enter his field.

  “Come out of there,” said Mrs Applegate.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you,” said Bruce Margrave. “We just want to talk.”

  “I can talk from here,” said Jenkins, confused.

  “Just come over for a second, it’s a matter of urgency,” said Raynard Batty.

  Jenkins watched for a while in stunned silence. The members of the Farmers' Alliance could not cross over to his farm; somehow, they too were unable to penetrate the boundary of his fields. They were the same as the pigeons. Cogwheels and string.

  16

  “Did he fall for it?” asked Jamie Somertri, as he sat opposite his father at the dinner table.

  “He did, those Delusionists always do,” said Tom, laughing.

  “For the rest of his life he will be tortured?”

  “That’s right, fated to a lifetime of slave labour, thinking that after forty years, he will be swept away to some imaginary Promised Land. He won’t eat a proper meal for the rest of his life, he won’t even know when his forty years are up. There is no concept of time inside Corebase, no clocks or calendars.”

  They both laughed manically.

  “I suppose those kind of deluded people believe in just about anything,” said Tom, grinning, as he placed a thick slab of steak into his mouth and began to chew.

  They both paused for a while, enjoying what looked like a delicious meal.

  “Is mother okay?” asked Jamie.

  “Yeah,” said Tom, “I managed to get her another twenty-four months, thanks to Yudar. She is awake now if you want to go and see her; working too.”

  The meal was interrupted when the CRT-screen turned itself on, something that would only happen when important news was needed to be shared across Utopia.

  The man pretending to be God, the president, was about to address the nation. Tom thought it strange, the man he had seen just a few hours ago, now wearing a suit and tie.

  “People of Outer-Utopia,” said the president, a trace of smile on his face. “Today, a great thing has happened. Just when our slave numbers were starting to dwindle, a miracle occurred. An alien species from a planet in the Fornax Constellation responded to our messages, and visited here in hope of meeting God. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, our incineration rooms haven’t stopped in over a month, and just as we needed more workers, the stars responded.”

  A few advertisements flashed up on the screen in brightly lit text. A new type of Trac-car, one percent faster than the previous model. A quieter than ever robot servant with an inertial measurement unit, capacitive touch sensors, full freedom of movement, and twelve sonar channels. And a state-of-the-art holographic display drive.

  The adverts ended and the president continued to speak, “They will come, more and more of them, if you find them, we urge you to be nice to them, let them land their ships, lie to them, capture them, tell them stories, and bring them here. They will be oblivious to deceit, genuinely convinced that I am God. I need not mention the urgency of this situation, but I would like to add, we are offering double health credits for the next three months, for each successful slave turned in. Good luck, Outer-Utopians.”

  With that, the CRT-screen turned itself off and resumed its state of silence.

  “Double rewards?” asked Jamie, enthusiastically.

  “Better get out into the meadows, keep a lookout, if we can get six or seven more at double rewards, mother might just survive long enough to see us to completion.”

  “Then we can finally move inside the walls?” asked Jamie.

  “That’s right, but we will have to pray for her every day.”

  17

  Carter was shaking. He had woken from his simulation dream. Fragments thrashed in his brain, thoughts drifted in and drifted out as he tried to focus. He could remember particles, fractures of a time long before he was animated. Something was not right.

  As he took his morning shower, he replayed everything back in his head. Carter always found that whilst showering his mind
was sharper, clearer than ever. A moment of clarity and focus, marred by images left behind from a simulation dream. He felt that only a small part of it had engraved itself into his memory, and he tried desperately to catch any remnants of thought, before those moments became forever lost.

  After dressing, Carter left his podpartment and joined the line with the others.

  It was King-of-Clubs-1, the day after he had met with Yudar, and all he wanted was to dream again.

  At work, Carter felt distracted, constant flickers of simulations returned and went away as he cycled at an unproductive pace.

  He closed his eyes, legs in motion, and thought hard. He could see images amongst the darkness, colours and shapes, skies lit with fire, and birds falling to the ground. He could make out small details, the fire glowing a vivid orange in his mind.

  A thought came from elsewhere and Carter began to get confused. He wondered if he would usually see colour when he closed his eyes. Dreams and thoughts were black and white, or so he believed. Why was it that he could remember the brightness of yellows, oranges, and reds amongst a backdrop so dark and grey? Visualisations of colours in the dark. Colours in memories. Maybe it was the first time, maybe they were always there, but, as hard as he thought, as much as he tried to evoke such images, he was in no way certain that such thriving spectrums ever existed in his past; memories burnt and faded, lost in quiet contrast to all that he was recalling.

  Carter thought it was odd, why it took until now to allow such a thought to manifest, a thought so simple and obvious; one that even a newly animated child would perhaps consider when questioning their very existence and surroundings.

  He looked for connections. Dreams of birds, seeing colours, allowing thoughts to linger in his mind longer than they should. Carter felt himself changing, shifting, becoming different, and escaping from wherever his mind had been idling before. He did not know what was going on. He needed to speak with Yudar.