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The Tribes of Purgatory

Seven

Caleb’s hands trembled as he reached for the keypad next to the inner door in the shelter. The code was simple enough, but it was the unknown lying just beyond the next door that had him terrified.

1…6…4…3…1…

Each key he pressed put off a quiet but noticeable beep. At the end, he hit the green button below the keypad. For a moment, there was silence. Then a loud sound of metal on metal clanging, then squeaking as the door opened.

Caleb stepped through the door and into the shelter. Once a year for the past 9 years, he would step through the door and sit in this room. He touched a pad on the wall just inside the door to the right and the room came to life–lights turned on for the first time in a year, and a fan began humming, providing ventilation to the shelter.

He stopped and just surveyed the room. It was round, with unpainted concrete walls, an uncovered concrete floor, and a bare concrete ceiling with a few lights attached to it. Opposite the door was a table and behind it hanging on the wall, a speaker, with a keypad on the wall next to it. Toward the back of the room, closer to the door were six benches.

Just by walking in, Caleb remembered his visits to the room. As a younger child, sitting on the cold floor and hearing the ascension announcements on the speaker. Then, as he got older, moving to the benches in back until last year, when Peter called Caleb forward to assume his position as leader of the tribe. On that day, he was happy, he was proud, and he felt the power and importance of the position. It never dawned on him on that day that his time to leave the tribe would come, and that he’d be terrified of what he had to do tomorrow.

Then the outer door closed with a loud metallic bang, making Caleb jump and turn to see what the noise was. In the process, he tripped over one of the benches, falling in a heap to the cold, hard floor. He pushed himself up and sat on the bench, holding his head in his hands and just wishing the whole ascension process would just go away. If only he could just give up being the leader, give it to Jacob, and go back to fishing, hunting, and gathering the fruits and vegetables in the grove.

Things were so much simpler when he was younger.

But for now, his heart was pounding. Outside of the fact that tomorrow was a day he wasn’t sure he was prepared for, he also wasn’t confident in his ability to successfully lead the Ascension Day activities before he had to leave the tribe forever. That was why he was here a day early: to make sure he had everything down so that it would at least go smoothly, if it wasn’t going to go well for him.

“Okay, okay,” he said, more to raise his spirits than anything else. “Could be worse. You could be dead tomorrow.”

He sighed and stood up. He headed over to the table and opened its drawer and pulled out a tired, worn manila envelope. He stared at the outside of it and thought about how many years leaders of the tribe had been here before him, going through the same anguish. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened the envelope and pulled out the small stack of papers inside. The type on the front page practically screamed at him:

Ascension Day

Tribal Leader Instructions

“Yes, I know,” he muttered as he turned the page.

The following pages held a simple step-by-step instruction list for what he was to do: gather the tribe at noon, have them sit in ranks based on age, demand absolute silence and attention, reassure the tribe about the future if the past year had gone poorly, or praise them if it had gone well. Then turn on the speaker, enter a code into the keypad, and wait for the Ascension Day announcements that would follow just minutes past noon. After the announcements, welcome the new leader, and demand allegiance to the new leader from the tribe.

Then came the blue page.

At the bottom of the packet was a blue piece of paper, titled simply: Ascension Day Tribal Leader Transition Instructions. There were five bullet points on it under a bold-printed paragraph:

It is vital that you as tribal leader follow the following five instructions to the letter. The future of yourself and your tribe depend on it fully. Do not share these instructions with anyone in your tribe, including the new tribal leader unless you are specifically instructed to do so below. Replace the packet in the folder and return it to the drawer when you are finished reading.

  1. After the Ascension ceremony, give the new leader the code for entry to the shelter.
  2. Instruct the new leader on how to turn on the lights in the shelter and where to find this folder.
  3. Instruct the new leader on the basic responsibilities of the tribe for hunting, fishing, gathering, education, and cleaning.
  4. Instruct the new leader on the intake of new tribal members as you were instructed by the leader before you.
  5. You and any other departing members of the tribe must depart the tribe immediately after giving these instructions to the new leader. Go to the river, making sure you are not followed. You are instructed to float down the river. It is best to find a large tree branch or trunk and take it into the river. Hold on to the wood and float down the river. You will be met at your destination.

Caleb stared at the page. His whole future, broken down to five short instructions.

So this is the future—float down the river, but to what?

“That’s it? You will be met at your destination?” Caleb flipped the page over but the back side was blank. “What happens at my destination? Where’s my destination? I don’t want to die!” None of the short stack of papers had any more information. It was all flat, bureaucratic, and to the point. No compassion, no understanding, and moreover, no explanation.

He looked around the room and tried to make sense of what he’d read and what he was seeing. Everything in the room, regardless of how sparse it was, seemed to be closing in on him. This room held his doom. Everything here just began to represent the end of everything he knew.

He had decisions to make, but couldn’t think here. He put the stack of pages back into the folder and put it back in the drawer, then leaned against the wall and slid along to the door. He fumbled with the keypad to get out of the shelter, but got the outer door to open again, and made his way out of the cold grey room and into the fading afternoon sunlight of the camp.

Outside of the shelter door, Caleb staggered toward his hut, but ran broadside into Jacob coming back from the day’s fishing. “Caleb?” he said.

Caleb stared straight ahead, toward his hut, “Go Jacob. Put it all in storage.”

Jacob watched as Caleb plodded across the camp and into his hut. This tribal leader thing was starting to weigh very heavily on Jacob.

2009 11 20 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

Six

The gods hardly knew what to make of the Earth anymore. The tribes, once a huge great tribe, had then been scattered, and now were back together as one large mass across the entire planet, competing for space with the oceans, forests, deserts and animals. The freedom and spirit of the people had been sucked away by their leaders for their benefit rather than for the benefit of all.

Nations had formed from the villages and cities. And the nations were led by a select few who ruled absolutely over all who lived within their borders. While there was still peace on Earth, people had become selfish and angry—leaders desired more power and money over those they ruled, and the people in the nations became poor and angry at their leaders for taking away their freedoms. Crowds gathered to yell at leaders. Leaders punished those who led the crowds. And what once had been open societies became closed and secretive.

So the gods thought long and hard about what to do for their favorite planet. It was eventually decided that one of them would take human form and live among us forever to work to help shape the Earth into the perfect world it once had been and that the gods desired it to be. But the gods knew that if they failed, they would need to destroy the Earth and heavens that they had worked so long and hard to create and perfect.

So it was that the gods announced to all the people on Earth that one of them would come to be among us forever, travelling from nation to nation, city to city, tribe to tribe, never revealing their true form to us, but helping right our wrongs and teach us the ways to a good life. The tribes will not know when this god is among us, but they leave behind unmistakable signs of their presence when they move on to their next destination on Earth.

These places will be made shrines must be protected at all costs. For if we defile them, the gods will surely destroy us in their shame for what we have become.

- – - – - – - – - -

Simon finished his shift no closer to answers than he was when he started his day. But he knew what the next step was—to define what it was that he was searching for. The problem was, he was looking for whatever used to be in the hole in his memory, that massive gap in his life, his entire being, and he had no idea what he might search for to help fill that in.

After leaving the Communications Room, he made his way down the lift to the main lobby, and headed out of the gleaming white into the cold grey of the city.

Normally, he took the tram back to his dormitory halfway to the edge of the city. But tonight, he needed to think. Tonight, he would walk the couple of miles past virtually identical buildings to his.

Before crossing the street, he looked up. He knew the sky was dark when he left the Communications Room, but down here on the street, the floodlights on the tops of the buildings gave that unnatural greenish-white glow to everything, doing nothing more than emphasizing the fact that the city was almost uniformly grey and drab.

He’d always wondered why they had to light the city at night. Sure, the explanation was that they did it so that workers who worked non-daytime shifts could still feel like their shift was during the day. But the fact of the matter was that whatever sunlight made it into the caverns of the city during the day had a different color and warmth to them than the giant floodlights high above everyone’s head. And how much different would it be to everyone else if they could just see the night sky once in a while, just like he could when he left work every night? If the guard wasn’t standing at the door to the lift, he’d spend more time looking out at the sky, wondering just what lay out there in the field of stars that were suspended above him.

He crossed the street right behind the departing tram that would have gone past his dormitory. Heading west on the broad avenue, he looked at the grey buildings, the same tired, blank faces rushing past him, the plainly lettered signs over the few shops on the street, and then it came to him.

We’re all the same.

But what did it mean? Everyone he was passing dressed similarly, albeit in a rainbow of colored robes. But the faces were all pale, silent, and almost colorless. And every one was adult. He stopped and turned around in a circle, watching the crowd move past. The whole city was built for adults—chairs were all the same height. Doorknobs and windows were all at the same height.

So why? How do I search for this?

Now things were clicking, he thought. His mind rifled through so many different questions and ways to query the database that he barely noticed the time pass before he arrived at Dormitory 28—his home. It was just in time, though. He needed to write all of this down.

He went up in the lift, out into the hall, and to his room at the end of the hall. The pad of paper was in the drawer next to the door, but the pencil wasn’t with it. The drawer next to the bed didn’t have one either.

“Welcome home, Simon.” The computerized female voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room. “You have one message. You seem agitated. Please let me adjust for your mood.”

Before he could answer, the walls, ceiling and floor all changed colors from the bright white to a calmer, warmer yellow. But Simon was searching the drawer under the monitor on the wall opposite the bed.

“Simon, you seem upset. I am preparing some tea and chocolates to improve your mood,” the computer intoned. “You have one message.”

He turned around and tried to scan the whole room at once. A ha! Under the bed! He dove onto the floor and scrambled under the bed as best he could. But nothing was there. Just the warm yellow glow of the floor.

A narrow shelf protruded out of the wall next to the door and above the drawer. And out of that rose a simple white cup of tea and a plate of round chocolates.

“Please help yourself,” the voice said, coming as much from the floor immediately below him as from anywhere else in the room. Then there was a pleasant, multi-tonal bell sound, and the monitor turned on to show a series of pictures of waterfalls and fields of wildflowers. “Is there something I may assist you with?”

Simon rose slowly to his feet, and unconsciously reached for the tea and plate of chocolates. Defeated, he sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip of the tea. Wait…

“Yes! Pencil, please.”

The bell sounded again. Then up out of the shelf rose a pencil. He grabbed it and the pad and began scribbling thoughts madly.

“You have one message,” the voice said again. “This is day two. You will be cleansed during your sleep shift. Forty-five minutes until curfew.”

Damn it. I should have taken the tram. Don’t have much time to write.

He filled four complete pages with notes and questions and doodles of all description.

At minute forty-four, another bell. “One minute until curfew. You have one message. You will be cleansed during your sleep shift. Lighting entering sleep mode.”

“No, no, no!” Simon yelled at the walls as the light went from yellow to orange to brown then to black. As the lights went out, the monitor went off, and Simon’s head hit the bed. The pencil and notepad lay next to his body on the bed where he had dropped them. At the top of the pad, in very large letters was the word: KIDS.

2009 11 02 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

Five

By the time Jacob woke up, the sun was high in the sky so that very little light was coming into his dugout. He came out of it into camp and stretched his arms up toward the sun. He looked around and found that the tribe had left camp, presumably to hunt or forage. Listening for a while he heard the yells and laughter of younger kids coming from the river beyond the grove. But the serenity of the camp right now was how Jacob commonly knew it—peaceful and quiet. But unlike how it was at night, during the day when it was like this, it was simply empty. And when empty, the camp almost seemed hopeless and dead.

He walked to the hut in the center of camp. Once inside, he pressed the button to activate the water pump. After the water coming from the tap turned from brown to clear, he washed his face and hair, splashed some water under his arms, and headed out into camp. But as he stepped out of the door, he was greeted by Caleb.

“Jacob, we need to talk.”

“Yeah?”

“Ascension Day is in two days. I need your help. Besides me, you’re the oldest one here. We need to start getting ready for the announcements.”

Jacob nodded.

“Let’s face it. You’re the next leader of the tribe. No one else is as old as you, and Peter was my age when he was called onward last Ascension Day. I can set things up in the shelter for the announcements. But I need you to take charge of the tribe after you finish working tomorrow night.”

“Okay. I can do that. I’ll be exhausted, but someone else will have the overnight task the next night, right?”

Caleb looked at Jacob. “Yes. I expect that you’ll be the leader, and Ezra will probably become the night person.”

Jacob was a little surprised, but tried to take it in stride. “And what about you?”

Caleb stopped and looked at his feet. “I don’t know. All I know is that the leader who is called onward leaves the camp and is never seen again. They walk through the grove and are gone forever. I don’t know…” His voice trailed off. He took a minute to collect his thoughts, then looked back at Jacob. “Honestly, I don’t know where I’ll be or if I’ll still be alive by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“Caleb, it can’t…”

“But it’s what we do, for the tribe, right?” Caleb said, straightening up and collecting himself with a steely resolve.

A chill shot through Jacob as he thought of all the implications. If he became leader, he’d be in the same position as Caleb next year. He would be the one wondering what lay ahead. He would be the one asking Ezra to watch over the tribe.

The two boys stood looking at the ground and at each other for a while before Jacob broke the silence. “I’ll go and help everyone. They’re fishing, I guess?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Jacob headed through the grove, his mind heavy with thoughts about how much things would change on Ascension Day—and how what he’d been looking forward to so much had just become so much more complicated and troubling.

When he got to the river, he met Ezra on the shore. Small groups of the tribe were knee to hip deep in the river, casting their nets for fish.

“We’ve had a great catch today, Jacob,” Ezra said. “More than enough for today and tomorrow.”

“Great, Ezra. That’s really great.”

At the same time in the center of the camp, Caleb was standing in front of a huge metal door leading to the underground shelter. He’d been given the keypad code almost exactly one year ago, and was told he couldn’t ever forget it. He had been reciting it before bed every night since, just so that he’d always remember this part of the instructions he’d received. He took a deep breath and carefully entered the four digits on the key pad then hit the green button. He stepped back as the door swung open.

This was the start–and end–of one of the chapters of his life. He just hoped that the next chapter led to another and not to the end of his story.

2009 10 23 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

Four

The gods were very sad and disappointed by what the people had done, and stopped watching the Earth for a little while. But a short time for the gods was centuries for the people of Earth.

The Earth became quiet and peaceful, but also darker and colder. Without the gods there to keep the Earth in its careful orbit around the Sun, it drifted further and closer then further away. Some parts of the Earth became very cold, and others very hot.

But after the years of solitude on their own continents on Earth, and because of the changes to their own lands, humans became restless and curious about what laid beyond the vast oceans of the world. Stories had been passed down from generation to generation about how the people had once been a great tribe working together for the good of all living things on Earth. The people believed that they could find better places to live and others like them to live with.

These stories proved to the people that the gods were there. Every one of them knew the gods were somewhere in the heavens watching them, protecting them, helping them.

Sometimes, the stories said, in earlier generations, the gods had taken human form to go among the people and tell them what their purpose was, or to encourage them to do things and grow and develop.

But the people knew they were born from the gods, and that they once had been one great tribe in the world.

So they built boats and ships and voyaged to find other lands and find the other people in the world. When they landed on the distant shores, they met each other again, engaged in trade and settled in each others’ lands.

Settlements became villages. Villages grew larger and became cities. Cities formed nations. And select groups of people within the nations became leaders, and enjoyed the power that gave them to rule over the people of the nation.

By the time the gods looked back at Earth, nothing was as it had been

———-

High up in the Central Building was a small chapel. Like some of the levels of the building, this one was completely open to the world—no windows or even walls. Just railings set in several feet from the edge of the floor and support columns at equal distances across the room.

But it still had the same flat, blinding-white ceiling and floor as the rest of the building. Sheer white curtains hung above the railings and flapped in the wind blowing in from outside, making them almost fade into the white of the surroundings.

Set starkly against the white of the room was the bright red robe of the Elder as he knelt in front of the only apparent furniture in the room—a white altar with a white candle on it.

All of this was still too new to Genevieve, and she didn’t know quite how to divide her attentions—watch the Elder constantly for signs that he needed her assistance, or look at the expanse of white nothing that she saw all around her?

“You know this is a place for meditation, right?”

“I’m sorry, Elder. It’s all just so…” she struggled for the right word, but it wasn’t coming. “So white.”

The old man chuckled. “Yes it is. It’s very white.” He strained to slowly get up, and Genevieve rushed over to help him up to his feet. “Honestly, the only reason I come here is for the peace and for the view.”

Genevieve glanced out past one set of rippling curtains at the grey of the city and became confused.

“The city?”

“No, no. Come over to the railing with me, Genevieve. Look deeper than that. What do you see out there?”

They made their way slowly to the railing. She pushed the edge of a curtain aside to get an unobstructed view. Below, there were roads, trams, and masses of people walking. Above that, grey buildings shooting up high into the sky, but not as high as where they were right now. Well above that, a grey sky that almost perfectly matched the tone of the city. But in between the tops of the buildings and the sky, well off in the distance was something different.

“What is that?” She said, straining to see the thin band of brownish orange that almost seemed to glow in contrast to the plain flat grey.

“Ah, to have young eyes again,” the Elder said wistfully. “Amazing, isn’t it? That, my dear, is the desert. It surrounds us completely. It’s what separates us from the others. It’s where we send our youth to ‘learn independence and dependence,’ whatever that means. It’s the great mystery, Genevieve. And I intend to explore it before my time is done.”

Genevieve stammered. She didn’t know what to do. The Elder was…Well, old. Their rig certainly couldn’t make it very far out there, in fact, it could barely make it long distances in the city. And what was that about the youth?

“You were there, Genevieve, before ascension day. Then they brought you to the city to have you serve me.” He turned to her, and then looked deeply into her eyes. “Before they…”

The lift doors in the center of the room opened, and the Council Chair stepped out.

“I thought I might find you here,” she said, bowing to the Elder slightly. “You created quite a stir in the chambers, going off-script.”

“I’ve never had a script.”

“But the story has always been the same. For at least forty years, it’s been the same on the first day of the new session. Give us all the history of the city to help give the new Council members some sense of our past and what they belong to here and what it all means.” She sighed and walked over toward him. “Today, for whatever reason, you decided that wasn’t enough.”

“You’re right.” The Elder motioned them toward the altar. Genevieve took his arm and supported him on the way. Then when they were in front of it, they both started to sit down, and stools appeared out of the floor. He carefully arranged his robe, and then looked at the Chairwoman. “It’s important for them to know where they come from. Not the sterilized version we give them.”

“Sterilized? That is for their own protec…” The Council Chair stopped and looked at Genevieve, then back at the Elder. “Could we have this discussion without her here?”

“Absolutely not. I hold Genevieve in the highest confidence. She answers to me, not you.”

“She was assigned by us to you, and when her task is done, she will be given a new assignment that…”

“She will not be reassigned,” he interrupted. “She will serve all of the elders in her lifetime. I am certain of that.”

Genevieve was clearly uncomfortable. All the talk between these two important people was about her, and while her place at all times was to be at the Elder’s side to assist him, she didn’t want to be there right now as the center of attention. “Excuse me, I…”

“We are talking about important things,” the Chairwoman said very firmly. “We are talking about things that we all agreed a long time ago that people outside of the Council did not need to know about. The Council goes to great lengths to ensure everyone in this city has a good, productive life.”

The Elder smiled at her and leaned closer. “Yes, but what about a happy life, or a fulfilling life? What about the intangibles that you can’t measure on your reports? What about the empty holes that you leave in people? What about the questions everyone has about where they came from and what they’ve done?”

The Chairwoman started to stand but sat back down, forcing the stool to do a quick reverse midway through its retreat into the floor. She glanced angrily toward Genevieve and then back at the old man. She lowered her voice to a stern whisper. “Can we not have this conversation right now?”

“If not now, when, madam Chair? I’m an old man. I don’t have much more time left. And if I can’t have my attendant with me for private discussions, then why do I have an attendant at all?”

The Chairwoman looked at him very angrily. “You’re right. You’re an old man, and I look forward to the day when I have a different Elder to deal with. But right now, I’m stuck with you, and I will have to ask you to either stop this conversation as long as she is here, or have her leave. I will not have this discussion with her present. I cannot!”

“Elder, I can leave if it…” Genevieve started, but she was quickly cut off by the Elder.

“No, Genevieve. You serve me. You will do what I wish, and I wish you to stay with me. If the Council Chair will not discuss these important things with you here, then I believe we must leave. Help me up, won’t you?” He offered his arm up, and she gently helped him off the stool, which dissolved back into the floor. “Perhaps another time, madam Chair?”

The two shuffled slowly across the room to the lift. As the doors opened, the Chairwoman stood up. “Don’t cross me, old man! You’re not above the Council!”

Stepping into the lift and turning around, the Elder looked at her. “Ah, but neither are you, madam Chair.”

The doors closed and a gust of wind blew through the curtains, extinguishing the candle. Within moments, though, it relit itself.

2009 10 09 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

Three

The gods were very pleased with that they had created. The Earth was a glittering blue-green jewel in the vast blanket of sky they had made. The gods believed it was perfect. The air smelled sweet and clean. The water was crisp and clean and pure. The soil was black and rich and perfect for any crop anywhere around the globe. But most importantly, thought the gods, it was the home of their greatest creations—humans– and they loved visiting the Earth and watching it from the heavens.

But because humans had been made mortal, over many generations they became simple creatures, living their lives, hunting and gathering, seeking companionship, having children, caring for the land and water and animals, and then getting old and dying. The gods longed for more purpose from their creations.

So the gods gave the people the power of creativity and intelligence, and endowed them with a restless and curious spirit. Through thousands of years, people grew and adapted and developed, becoming inventive and resourceful, creating tools and weapons, building huts and shelters, and quickly finding their way to rule over all of Earth’s living creatures.

At first, the gods were pleased. People were becoming more like the gods in their abilities to make things and control herds of animals and even fields of crops. Everyone worked together and made the Earth a wonderful place in the universe.

But the gods looked away for a split second in their time—three hundred years for humans—and humans began to disagree with each other over land, crops, animals, buildings, weapons, tools, and each other. And the disagreements led to fights. And fights led to wars. By the time the gods looked back at the Earth, all had changed. Tribes had formed and had made alliances with some tribes and enemies with others. The gods feared that the people they had created would destroy each other.

The gods discussed how best to deal with this problem. They talked about destroying Earth—taking it from the sky and making it disappear completely. They talked about simply removing all people from the Earth. But the gods did not like either of these options because it destroyed the one thing the gods loved most about the Earth: humans.

So the gods made the people forget their past hatred and anger toward each other and divided the land into six parts and separated the tribes to the far corners of the Earth, and left them there on their own, because the gods had become so very disappointed in the people they had made.

For centuries, humans would not know of others like them on the planet.

– — –

Simon hated his assignment. He’d hated it for every day he’d had it—over 25 years now. This assignment, he’d decided ages ago, was a prime case against giving assignments on Ascension Day. Because if he was desperately bored and unhappy in his position—an important position–how many others must there be just like him in the city.

But it was almost time for his twice daily status report. At least this brought some activity. He watched a countdown on one of the many monitors on the wall in front of his station. 5…4…3…2…1…

Right on queue, the door to the room swung open, and Faith, the record keeper, walked in, tablet and pencil in hand. Just on time, Simon thought. As always.

“Your report for the period, Simon?”

“My report,” he said with a sigh and deadpan monotone, “is the same as it always is. All systems functioning normally. No contacts. No responses. Next broadcast in two hours.”

Faith finished checking off boxes on the form on the tablet and looked up at him. Her eyes changed from official disinterest to intense displeasure as she glared at him. “There is no need for commentary. Simply make your report. After all, we need to do this twice a day.” Her face softened ever so slightly before she swung around on her heels and headed back to the door. She stopped right in front of the door and turned back to him. “Thank you, Simon. Really. Your assignment is important here.”

He walked over to the screen with the countdown and pressed it, and it began counting down again from 14,040. To you, maybe, he thought.

His daily tasks, as routine as they were, were considered to be some of the most important in the city. He and three others manned the communications station, a lonely room of monitors, keyboards, buttons and dials set in a small room—practically a shack, really—atop the Central Building. It was known as the Communications Room, and all of the equipment fed into and out of the antenna towers outside of the shack on top of the building. The towers pointed every which direction: up, down, east, north, south, west, all broadcasting at four-hour intervals, and then listening for the intervening three hours and 54 minutes.

The leaders of the city–or he assumed the leaders ordered this project–were broadcasting to what they hoped were other cities, if any more existed in the world. And that’s what he was tasked with watching for during the listening phase of his assignment: any response from any other city anywhere. Any sign of the purported life that existed outside of the city. The only real mystery to his job was what they were broadcasting in the six minute message. For all he knew, it could have been a simple greeting, or a plea for help and contact, or a request for a better egg salad recipe, or directions to a good restaurant. But for 25 years, he pressed the large blue button on the console to send the message every four hours, then watched the monitors and listened to the quiet white noise of the hidden speakers for signs of a response and to make sure all the equipment was operating normally.

For 25 years, there hadn’t been even a hiccup in the system. The only thing that moved on any of the monitors were the changing numbers on the countdown screen, and he was growing increasingly positive that static was the only sound that the speakers were capable of making. That boredom and monotony was why he’d decided to begin a search eight years ago.

Well, really, the search hadn’t started yet. Simon had spent the last eight years studying how the communications system was set up, and how the equipment in the Communications Station was configured. After all that time, he’d finally found an opening: a way to get into the Central Building’s computer system, and more importantly, how to hide his access to the system, and even more importantly, how to search its massive database.

Tonight, his search could finally begin. He sat down at the console, pulled the keyboard closer to him, entered a series of keystrokes that changed one monitor to display the system’s login, and then looked ahead with anxious anticipation.

But then, in a flash, he realized he had no idea how to define what he was looking for.

2009 10 02 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

Two

A flurry of activity buzzed around the hallways of the Central Building. Assistants were practically running from place to place to get things done for whomever they reported to or served. Papers were being exchanged. Talks were taking place between Council members as they walked through the halls.

And in the middle of it all, seated on a small bench near the entryway to the building sat Genevieve. She sat perfectly upright, feet and knees tightly together, covered perfectly by the bright red robe she was wearing. She was facing straight ahead toward the doors to the Council Chambers, but her eyes were darting every which way, taking in the flat, almost blinding white of the walls, ceiling and floor, and the non-stop activity that swirled around her.

The robe draped over her enough so that the nervous shivers she was having were almost completely hidden. But she was sure that her face probably displayed the terror she was feeling inside. This was the most important task of her life up to this point, and there were expectations. She couldn’t disappoint anyone.

Just then, all activity in the hallway stopped. It seemed the entire building became silent at once. The doors to the Council Chambers were pushed open by two white-robed attendants. Behind them strode two men and a woman, all dressed in blue-grey robes. As they approached Genevieve, she stood up, waited for them to stop a short distance in front of her, and bowed slowly and deeply. While she was bowed down, she quietly cleared her throat.

“Members of the Council,” she said on straightening up. “I bring you the Elder.”

The woman of the group took one stride forward. “We welcome you.”

Genevieve turned slowly and walked out of the entryway toward the waiting rig. It idled silently, being the only electric vehicle left in the city. The peeling paint and cracked tinted windows also betrayed its age. She opened the back door, and reached her hand in. An old, bony hand grabbed hers, and slowly but gracefully, the Elder emerged from the rig and stepped down onto the cracked and broken sidewalk.

“The Council welcomes you, Elder.”

The old man straightened up slightly, more to realign his back than to appear taller. He nodded at her and then looked up toward the top of the building, which he could not see from where he was standing. Genevieve offered her arm, and he took it, leaning on her heavily, and the two of them slowly made their way toward the building.

“Nothing ever comes easier, Genevieve,” he said. “Moving is becoming a chore.”

Genevieve was disappointed, but was careful not to let her feelings color her speech. “You are doing quite well, Elder. You set the pace for all of us.”

“Ha! The trams move quickly. My rig moves quickly. The youth of our city move quickly. These people in the building moved quickly before I got here. You’re the only one among them who follows my pace. I’m old but I’m not an idiot, Genevieve.” He was chuckling.

“I…I’m so sorry, Elder. I…”

“Stop,” he said, reassuring her. “This is your first Council appearance as my attendant. You’re doing exactly as you should. Don’t worry so much. You’re too young to be so concerned about meaningless things like an old man.”

She was speechless. Meaningless things like an old man? This was, after all, her position in life, what she had spent the last two years training to do. Since being assigned back to the city on Ascension Day, this was the only path she has known.

The pair entered the building, where the three Council members bowed deeply to the Elder. He nodded in recognition, and they led him into the Council Chambers. Everyone in the room stood, and remained standing until he made his way all the way across the room to his seat—oddly, Genevieve thought, the only chair in the room. She took her place behind him, and after all of the Council members bowed to the Elder, they all, almost in unison, began to sit down, only to be met with white stools that rose up from the floor, as if they’d been extruded from the floor itself.

The opening formalities of the meeting swirled around her as she tried her best to just look straight ahead. But she was sure she looked bug-eyed, looking every which way at the whole room, and the faces of the Council members set against the entirely white room. It seemed so sterile and impersonal for such important things to be discussed here, she thought. Then her reverie was interrupted when the Elder spoke for the first time. This, she realized was the reason he was here: to share his knowledge of the history of this place. Why the Great Tribe settled here. This was tradition for the first meeting of the season by the Council. The first meeting before they sent out the Ascension Day notices.

“…Yes, madam Chair. I recall a great many things about this city before the isolation,” he said, clearing his throat and shifting slightly in the chair. “It had been called Bismarck first, before my time, then Dakota, and then when the rains and water left and the winds came, we seemed to lose all sense of who we were and what was nearby.

“Centuries ago, when the dam was destroyed and the river returned to its banks and eventually dried up, people started flocking to the cities. My grandmother talked often about there having been two states here, North Dakota and South Dakota, which they merged into one state because of the dwindling population.

“The drought got worse, and the city grew, proud of its ability to create water and sustain huge populations. This city collected all the people who lived in the territory, most of them farmers or ‘townies’ as we called them. We brought everyone into this one place and built a new civilization in the hope that one day we could leave again and make it elsewhere, to find another one of the cities, assuming there are any left.”

The Elder paused. The room was completely silent. Genevieve carefully studied the Elder from behind, looking for the signs that he was getting tired. After a few deep breaths, he resumed.

“Our tribe, our Great Tribe has been here my entire life. Almost one hundred fifty years. We have survived, and perhaps, even prospered here, living like this, building this great wonder that is our city,” he looked out at the Council, then pushed himself up from the chair. “But there is so much more. There must be so much more that we have not accomplished.”

“We lack any ability to travel beyond a couple hundred miles. We can’t communicate further than that same distance. And in my entire lifetime, we have come no closer to accomplishing anything more than that.” He staggered a bit, and paused again. Genevieve could tell by the look on the faces in the room that he had decided to go off-script. She was starting to worry. She offered to help him back into the chair, but he refused her hand.

“This, I fear, is the last time I will be here,” he said. “You must listen to me and hear what I believe and think.” He sat down, took a deep breath, and fixed his gaze on the Council Chair seated in front of him and almost whispered. “You must hear me out. I’ve been ignored for far too long.”

A few Council members stood and yelled or cheered, but were quickly glared down by the Chair. “Ladies and gentlemen, please! Some decorum!” She turned to him and leaned in close. “This is not the time nor the place. If you weren’t who you were, I’d have you isolated.”

Genevieve didn’t know what to do. The last place she expected to have the Elder threatened was in the Council Chambers. She moved beside his chair.

A wry smile crossed the Elder’s face and he began giggling lightly. “What,” he said as loud as he could, “you mean like our children?”

Simultaneously, the Council jumped to their feet with yells and hoots and the stools disappeared back into the floor.

2009 09 25 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink

The Tribes of Purgatory

One


In the beginning, there were the gods. They were immortal and had grown bored with their never ending existence. To fight their boredom, they met and decided to create a universe in which they could travel and experience new and different things.

So first, the gods created the sky from a vast dark blanket. They threw it into the heavens and pulled on all sides so it stretched as far as the eye could see. The vastness of the new sky pleased them, because they could have great adventures and keep themselves amused.

But while the sky was vast and the gods could travel in it for days and days on end, the darkness alone did not give them solace. So they created the stars from the embers of their fires, and blew them across the vast blanket, left hanging in the sky to burn and smolder for as long as their own fires would burn.

But the gods realized the stars needed energy to help fuel their fires. So the gods created planets and placed them in the heavens to orbit the stars and give the stars perpetual fuel so the sky would never go dark again.

The planets were good, and of a multitude, but each seemed to be the same as the next. So the gods decided to make something different.

The gods created the Earth. Earth was to be a special planet, filled with all manner of living things. This special place would become the gods favorite planet, so the gods took special care in forming it.

They made it out of dirt and sand and clay and rock, and formed it into a ball and threw it into the heavens where it continued to spin and was captured in orbit around the Sun.

But the planet was brown and dark and lonely, with no life on it whatsoever. So the gods created life in the form of plants.

They created seeds for the plants from their skin, hair, toenails and drops of blood. And to feed it all, they made the water from their tears of joy and tears of sorrow.

They made the birds of the air, the fish of the water, and the animals of the land from the plants, wood, stone and clay of the Earth. The animals, birds and fish would eat the plants and each other as necessary to continue their lives and species.

Then the gods decided that there needed to be created a new form of life. A new form of life made in their image.

Then they created man and woman. Created directly from the gods, the people were made of bone and flesh and blood and organs of the gods. But the gods made humans mortal, so that they would not have to suffer the endless boredom of immortality. Then they were placed on Earth to serve the gods and be good stewards of the world the gods had created. They would eat the plants and animals as necessary to continue their lives and species.

This was millions of years ago, and we people have long since forgotten why we are here and what our purpose is.

———

Dawn was approaching. The eastern sky was beginning to show the telltale signs of light and the stars hanging there were fading into the lighter hues of morning.

And Jacob was getting tired. His task for the night was to tend the fires—the most important job in the Tribe and ensure that all of them burned brightly, warmly, and more importantly, never went out.

There were eight fires that circled the camp, and their purpose was multi-fold: first, to provide warmth during the cold nights and cooking heat during the day; second, to offer light during the night; and third, to keep the wolves and other predators of the night away from the Tribe.

Jacob was humming a happy tune of his own making while he finished collecting more firewood and kindling from the floor of the small grove of trees next to the river. He’d gone there once an hour through every hour of the night for nearly a year, after everyone else in the Tribe had returned to the huts and dugouts in camp. His bare feet, while heavily calloused, were still cut every night by the sharp stones and branches of the river bed and grove, and his feet showed the scars of the yearlong assignment. That assignment, he was relieved to remember, was ending in just two days when Ascension Day came. In just two days, he reminded himself, he could begin sleeping at night and rise during the day to see the midday sun again. His pale complexion would once again be allowed to get golden and bronzed.

He separated the firewood and kindling he had collected on this last trip into two piles near the center of camp. By the time the sun started rising over the horizon, he always had piles that stood taller than his five-and-a-half-foot-tall muscular frame. For a fourteen year old boy, that was accomplishment.

Now, he knew, it was time for his favorite time during his work shift: watching the sunrise.

He walked out of camp, careful to avoid the entries of huts and mounds of the dugouts, and once past two of the fires on the eastern edge of the camp, he ran the short distance up a gentle hill to get to the top of the rise. Once there, he sat down, looked at the brightening blue of the horizon and waited.

As the sky became lighter, it began to reveal the world that lay beyond the Tribe’s camp and the safety that the river and ridge provided—for just past the fading grass of the outer slope of the hill were miles and miles of desert. He and the Tribe had voyaged into the desert many times since he arrived here when he was very young. They travelled out to perform tasks that were given to them by whoever was the leader–hunting and forraging, or exploration, or, on the particularly horrible occasions, to bury one of the Tribe.

Every time he came to the top of the rise, he began to wonder which direction he had come from. On the few occasions he had gone there during his nighttime shifts, he’d noticed a dim orange glow from the south, across the river. He wondered how far away it was, and whether he or the Tribe could make it across the fast running river.

But for now, as the last noticeable stars in front of him were completely enveloped by the coming dawn, he began to scan the desert. The land was flat and sandy, a golden yellow blanket on the ground broken only by a few scattered trees and only a couple of dunes. There was no life for miles in front of him, save for him and the pack of wolves about a half-mile away sitting in the shadow of a dying tree. The only reassuring feeling was knowing that just a few hundred yards behind him was his Tribe.

As soon as the first rays of sunlight broke past the horizon, Jacob got up and started to run back to camp. His nightly effort was over, and it was time to start waking the others.

He let out an excited yell–just two more nights until Ascension Day.

2009 09 17 Paul The Tribes of Purgatory Comments (0) Permalink