The Supervisor (contest remix)

He was dreaming again, his mind drifting through the fogs of hazy unconsciousness. In his head, a hydraulic lid closed between him and the world over and over again. In his head, a century passed in the blink of an eye. An eye... His squirmed under bluish lids as the world groaned and air screamed. He opened them and winced as he pupils adjusted to the dense darkness of the cave. The earth shook, things broke around him, and as he'd look back on his brief awakening later, he could swear he heard them screaming... The generator continued working, humming with the white noise of electric sleep. For an uncontrolled 60 years, he slept on. And dreamed. And waited.1

Gray dormancy fell from his mind and his ancient eyes opened to read the lights flashing on the LCD glass lid. A computerized voice spoke in digital Russian that conduced through the greenish cryo-gel and reverberated in his brain.2

“Generator malfu-”3

The voice stretched and corrupted before cutting off abruptly. The lights in the glass continued to flash urgently and fruitlessly, as he was damned if he knew what any of them meant.4

In fact, he was damned if he could remember anything at all.5

“Oh, God...Who am I?” His thoughts hurt his mind, which hadn’t been used in over a century for anything but conducting his fragmented dreams. The question continued to echo in his fevered head as the LCD lights flickered briefly and went out. Something crashed outside, and his chamber gurgled as the celluloid plasm drained slowly out the slowly opening door.6

Out into the warmer room he fell, his head spinning, aching with the pain of being awake. White noise, a product of extended sensory deprivation, roared in his ears, nearly deafening him to the sounds of his own screams. His eyes darted wildly around, a grayish film just beginning to clear from them.7

The room he was in; metal, dirt, something moving in a corner. The smell of rot. A grunt, a snort and the sprinkle of stirred dust. The shuffle of something moving closer.8

He shook his head violently, and his watering eyes cleared enough for him to make out the form moving towards him. He caught fragmented images in the blinding white light of the room, little bits of waking nightmares combined with the sad reality he had awoke to; widely spaced eyes, face like a child, a mouth full of rotted, crooked teeth, the missing spaces filled by metal shards and jagged bits of glass. A shred of gray cloth hung from its gaping maw, its wet nostrils bringing up clouds of filth with each ragged breath. Its long arms dragged as its floppy feet propelled it slowly and gracefully forward.9

“What...” The data and memories collected over a lifetime flashed through his head like flickering flames of ghostly witchlight, none of them making reference to a thing like this.10

His blurry eyes focused. The thing was right above him, its putrescent breath coming out in whitish clouds of freezing moisture around his face. He looked deeply into its black eyes. It looked back into his yellowish ones. A long moment passed between the two. Milky goo dripped from the thing’s mouth and splattered softly on the floor. It closed its mouth and ran a greenish tongue over its hideous teeth. The man clenched his fist, and all his joints popped simultaneously. His face contorted and his eyes narrowed menancingly. Slowly, the beast backed away before turning and scampering off. More things lurking in the corners followed it out past a collapsed vault door, their sharp claws digging easily into the slicks of ice about the floor, making clicking scrapes that faded into the shadowy distance. He stared after them, shifting his eyes from the route of their escape to the red sign on the steel door.11

“Vault,” the man read. “or12

(“Welcome to the crypt, gentlemen. I trust you’ll enjoy your stay.”)13

“-the crypt, as the doctor had put it.” But who was the doctor14

The man stood, his legs shaking as he did. His body was protected against atrophy by his machine, but he was still very out of practice in the ordinary processes of motion. Eventually his eyes found focus, but the images he took in did little to subside the pounding eminating from somewhere deep in his skull. He turned shakily as he surveyed the room around him. Five cells, including the one he came out of, all of them gray with a layer of whitish dust. The glass shield-like lids were broken on all but his. A dead man existed for each cocoon; sprawled, half-in, half-out, dragged to the center of the room. He looked to the iron door of "the vault" and noticed the thick indentations in the metal from the things that had pryed it open. A layer of frost covered everything, yet the room was still warmer than his frozen compartment.15

“It's a crypt.” He said, smiling as he turned about, yellow eyes penetrating the gray darkness “Where are you now, Doctor? Not here. Not alive.”16

A flash of memory coursed through his systems; a memory of a crash and a low rumble. He wondered how he knew the doctor was dead.17

“The whole world is dead.” He looked around, bewildered, scanning his surroundings as if trying to find evidence to confirm it. His thoughts were muddled, ephemeral; fuzzy around the ages and sepia-toned like the memories from some far-removed past life. “I awoke,” he thought, his head still shaking slowly, “What happened?”18

The constant churning rumble in his head died as he thought. He had been pacing as he thought, his auto-piloting body propelling him to the first cell in the far right corner. A corpse hung impaled on a shard of crystal glass from his chamber, his arms and back mostly eaten away by the creatures.19

“That’s Barrenkov! He’s dead.” He didn’t sound surprised at the last part. Everything was dead, and that was a fact. He was surprised, however, as he surveyed the others. “My God! I know these men!”20

He slowly trudged around the small room, a heavy silence finally settling on him as his ears adjusted to the white noise of the waking world. He toed the next body to turn it on its back.21

“This was Kulesh.” His announcement shattered the silence and startled him, still unaccustomed to the sound of his own voice.22

“Brontolsky.” He said, standing over the next corpse. He could tell by the tattoos on his neck. His face was mostly gone.23

The next body had an arm and leg removed. His face was left untouched, the defining marks of memory being the heavy mustache and eyebrows. The man sighed. “My teacher, Commander Torbenchenk. Is nothing left untouched?” He forced his gaze away from the destroyed old man. “I know these men. Good men, all of them. They knew me." But he didn't know himself. "Who am I?”24

His mind reeled as more realization trickled into his damaged pysche and the rest of his heavy post-cryolization amnesia left him.25

“Of course. I’m General Volheiin Yorvenchov. I was put into cryogenic freezing for service in time of war by the Soviet Union in 1977, after I accomplished the Siberian Training Program.” His tensed, proud posture gave into his resumed slouch. “But what happened? Something-26

(The rumbling of the earth. Screaming air past the cave mouth.)27

“happened. Somehow they forgot about me. And what were those,” he looked to the entrance, expecting them to be watching him, “those things?”28

(The whole world is dead.)29

He looked again at the dead bodies, a renewed feeling of panic falling on him. They were greenish white, with sores covering them where they were untouched by the creatures. They were not just eaten. They were decomposing.30

“The gel....the gel was supposed to keep us from even dying during cryosleep, much less falling apart. There is no bacteria in that chamber. It’s possible that they were dragged out long ago, but,” he looked at the wet condition of the bodies, the gel still sliding from his own, “I doubt it.” In his military way he coldly assessed his situation. His eyes widened as he considered a terrible possibility. Militarily, he raised his hand to his eyes. And, militarily, he refused to be surprised with what he saw there.31

His skin was a pasty green with cold, bluish sores on his knuckles and fingertips. The strange ironic laughter of a man who was trained to never smile echoed through the secret cryogenics chamber in northern Siberia. Past the broken door it floated, past the generator, whose tubes were torn by fresh mutant claw marks, past the freezing waterfall that powered it, through a tunnel and out a mountain where it died in the howl of the tundra wind.32

It had been almost a week; a long procession of days spent trudging through the endless desert of winter. Volheiin Yorvenchov didn’t know where he was going, or why, or what had happened to the world he knew. Sometimes he came across ruins that jutted out of the snow, cities once familiar, but now just crumbling monuments to a once-proud civilization. The General remembered the days of the hammer and scycle, with the proud red flag and the Great Equality. It was a good system. A fair system. A system uncorrupted by politics. A system that could act. It was a system that they would fight for. Now it was only a memory, and he had the strangest feeling that he was the only one left with it.33

Strange that the whole world had died, and the thing he was most concerned about was the Communist party. He had, indeed, lived for it, but he had also hoped to die for it. He felt angered that it had died first and denied him the priveledge.34

“There must be something out there," he said, staring out into the vast expanse of white laid before him.35

The wind howled. Any human would have died of the cold. Yorvenchov didn’t even feel it. His extended freezing had made him resistant to the effects of cold, his decomposing cells decaying and reproducing too rapidly to fall prey to temperature extremities.36

“There must be something out there.”37

But so far, the world was empty, and the tundra was endless. And he was beginning to think that it had somehow swallowed the whole of the earth.38

“Big, hopeless white death, stretched out on all sides, eating up all of Russia, Europe, the oceans, hopefully America.” Yet somehow he knew that it did end, and the stubborn survival instinct he had developed in his training kept him stumbling through the infinite realm of hopeless ruin that he used to call his home.39

“I’m thinking like Arn.” But who was Arn? He was a pessimist, he knew that much. He was someone significant to him, someone he had let down, someone who had learned not to expect much of him. But who was he really? He kept doing that, bringing up names or faces triggered by a word, or a sight, or a feeling; fragments of the man he once was arising in the midst of his fevered fog of the forgotten. He was losing things just as fast as they came to him, and he wondered how long it would be before he lost it all.40

He remembered his home. He had once had a rich cottage estate in the hills on the south-eastern coast. He had bought it before looking at it, sold only on the way that the real-estate agent had said it was “nestled” in the hills. “Nestled.” He liked that. It meant safe and peaceful. Those were things that the General was not used to. It took only one word to sell him a house. But that was alright; he could afford that carelessness. He had been rich. He had owned four televisions, an enormous stone fireplace, and a special cabinet where he kept all his medals. He was a proud, important man.41

Now he was crawling through a shell of reality with his pale, greenish skin slowly giving way to more and more bluish sores. The wind was rapidly picking up, arctic thunder roaring and rumbling overhead. Flying bits of ice stung his face, and now he was seeing things.42

Just ahead, there seemed to be a point where the winter ended and some form of desert began. He had thought it was just a simple mirage (although he had never heard of a mirage in the arctic) but he realized that he was actually getting closer to it.43

Through the dervish of snow and wind and what looked like swirling sand on the other side, the outlines of people slowly materialized.44

Volheiin’s face cracked into a maniacal smile as he broke into a short, sputtered giggle.45

“But the whole world is dead,” he thought. “Dead people are here.” He giggled more as his vision slowly faded to black. His limp body fell softly and noiselessly onto the icy permafrost.46

Things stirred in the darkness. Words without meaning echoed against decaying walls and tried to make themselves real. In the far distance, behind a red door, men screamed orders and machines fired and popped. Most people can keep everything behind doors. Here, there was only one. Everything else was lost, wandering, disorderly.47

Something was wrong here. Maeida knew it. There was something bad about the way things moved. She saw images of the gods every now and then, but they faded like everything else. Nothing lived long here.48

“That’s because the whole world is dead.”49

His voice was scary, high pitched and cracking, echoing all around her. A deeper voice, stronger and more determined, resounded just after the first.50

“WHO ARE YOU??????”51

It had noticed her! Maeida winced at the roar. The winds of broken thoughts swirled around her in gale force.52

“GET OUT!! I AM THE GENERAL!!! GET OUT!!!”53

Maeida fell out of the stranger’s mind in a rush of color and consciousness.54

“Did you get through, child?” Truthsayer Lorris, Maeida’s grandmother smiled. She knew what Maeida’s answer should be. She was surprised to hear her say:55

“Yes.”56

“Don’t you lie, girl. I couldn’t get through. A Learner, like you, has no real chance.”57

“I’ve read well before,” Maeida said indignantly.58

“That you have, child, but are you sure you don’t overestimate your abilities?” Lorris was losing patience with her 10 year old granddaughter, who had insisted on coming in to try and read the strange man the Stormseekers had found near the border.59

“A mind entry cannot be imagined. I felt him. I was there. His mind…” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “His mind is rotten.”60

The Truthsayer resumed her warm smile. “Of course, dear.” Her doubt remained as she stood slowly, her joints popping as she clutched her cane. “Now let’s go get some supper.”61

The two left, Maeida glancing back over her shoulder at the sleeping man on the table. She didn’t tell her grandmother that he had known she was there. The Truthsayer’s doubt was already great enough. Nobody had ever known when her or grandma was there before. They weren’t supposed to know.62

He did.63

Hours passed. The sleeping man ate and drank in his unconsciousness, drifting in and out of a comatic state that none of the scholars or philosophers could decipher. Maeida was the only one who seemed to know.64

“He’s searching.” She told the Elders.65

A council of the wiser of the village; representatives to their respective fields, sat around the stone table in the Temple. They were a very diverse group, truly encompassing all types of people in the town. Some were old, and some were young, but they were all Elders.66

“He’s searching for himself, and trying to accept that he’s almost gone.” Maeida looked down, her voice quieting as she spoke. “He’s not from here. He knows things that he can’t accept, and other things that he can’t make himself see.”67

The Elders remained silent, either in contemplation of the statement or waiting for Maeida to continue. Maeida was finished though, and the room’s silence was overthrown by a flurry of whispers and then words. The Council of Elders was once again divided. It was either one thing or another, and the mysterious mutant’s fate was to remain unsure. Maeida sensed there indecision, and it seemed that now was her chance to make a suggestion.68

“Kill him.” Maeida mumbled, the finality of her mature words strange coming from her young lips. “Kill the bastard.”69

Her grandmother glared at Maeida, but said nothing. Maeida had insisted on the man’s evil since he arrived, and the council was just beginning to take the girl’s statements seriously. She was, after all, a part of the council. Her and her grandmother were the Truthsayers.70

“Maeida, that course of action is a bit too drastic. Are you so sure of your sense?” Councilman Elder Kraft, gazed down at the ten year old girl. He, of all the Elders, found it easiest to see her as a peer. “You know he could be the S-“71

“I know who he could be, Philosopher. I’ve read the Rules.” She pointed up to the metal plaque in the back of the room. “And I’ve read your texts. But he’s not. I know. The risks are too big for all of us.”72

The Chief Elder stood after a prolonged silence. “We will allow his stay until, and after, he awakens. We will question him and allow him a chance to fufill the predication of the texts.”73

“Then I want nothing to do with him.” Maeida growled angrily. “Leave me out of it. But I’ve warned you. I’ve warned all of you.”74

Maeida was followed out by her grandmother. The two walked in a concerned silence the whole way home, each trying to understand what the other was thinking.75

The night was quiet as usual, a silence only broken by the low, ominous hum of tornadoes forming on the distant border. They formed constantly where the Pit met the Northlands, but never really made it to the Center Village. Inside a crumbling building, under the roof of a room labeled “Florsheim Shoes”, the strange mutant stirred in the bed next to him. His body tensed and his instincts screamed for him to run, just as they did every time that thing had moved in the past hour. Lever was afraid of the stranger. He had heard many things going around town when the man first arrived. The Stormseekers had brought him in three days ago, after their weekly search for mutants along the border. That, of course, was why he'd volunteered to keep watch over the rotting monstrosity; the Stormseekers. Lever wanted to Stormseek one day, to fight off the mutants from the Northlands and take their scrap caches. He wasn’t afraid of the mutants. He wasn’t afraid of anything; he was a trained warrior. He was afraid of this man, though. He was mutated, the doctors had said so, but he was different. He looked like he was dead, but he breathed, his chest moving up and down with each slow inhale and exhale.76

He had heard that Maeida said he was the Evil One. Maeida said a lot of things, though. Some people said he could be the Supervisor, and that was almost too much to hope for. But when he had seen the man’s rotting visage on the street as they took him to the medical, he had decided to agree with Maeida.77

He had nightmares about the man that night; strange dreams of him laughing as Lever burned down the village. He had woken up afraid of not only this man, but himself. Lever liked the village. He thought it looked pretty, especially when it wasn't on fire. He wanted to leave, then, and bequeath his duties to whoever else would take them, but the words of his hero kept him still.78

“It’s just another step along the path to being a Stormseeker,” Captain Envolt had told him.79

Lever had been in Seeker school since the day his parents died. He was too young to remember, but it was put on record as: “Death of The Decimator.” The doctors called it cancer. Lots of people died of it. Maeida’s parents, her mother a Truthsayer and her father the head of the Stormseekers, had died of it. They say the mutants may carry it, but the main theory is that parents pass it down to their children. Lever was lucky he didn’t have any signs in his bloodstream.80

The mutant shifted in his bed again, his knees bending as he pushed up his legs and his hands drifted up to his face.81

“By the gods!” Thought Lever, “He’s waking up!”82

General Yorvenchov massaged his aching head and opened his eyes slowly. He immediately noticed how much his pain had subsided. He felt only a slight sting on his sores and the barely perceptible pound of his ever-aching head. He stared up at the ceiling, and he realized that the mirage people must have been real.83

A squeak and a rustle next to him caught his attention. A boy, about 14 or 15, with sandy blond hair stood next to him, a wooden chair falling as he jumped to his feet. Lever’s little blue eyes opened wide as the General’s gaze met his.84

Lever’s fear peaked. “What was I supposed to do now?” He thought. “Oh, gods. His eyes… they glow! What was I supposed to do? Do? Do? OH!”85

Lever backed away from the bed. “I have to go tell... um.... some people... that you're awake.” He rushed off, scampering out of the room before Volheiin say a word in response.86

The General pivoted himself on the raised bed. His joints popped as he stood, but he felt rather good compared to his condition before. A bandage slid off his exposed chest and hit the floor with a wet slap. He saw that the people had done their best to patch him up, what good it may have done. His open sores had widened so that the edges were just visible around the strips of white wool cloth.87

“It seems,” he rationalized, “That I have found civilization. In a dead world.” Somehow it was almost humorous.88

He strolled over to a shelf on the right wall of the room. His shirt lay there, cleaned and folded. He put it on, surveying his surrounding as he fastened each bronze button: rusty metal racks, a glass case in one corner, a counter in the opposite, tools and sharpened shards of metal next to his shirt on the shelf, ancient fluorescent fixtures above him.89

“It’s a shopping mall.” He said, with a slight ironic giggle. “And they’re using it as a hospital of sorts. These people-” he heard footsteps approaching from outside the open doorway- “they may know.”90

An elderly woman in what appeared to be a patched quilt and an old man in the ruins of a pinstriped suit entered the shoe store.91

“Glad to see you awake.” Chief Elder Michael faked his best smile. “I’m Michael, and this is Lorris, the Truthsayer. What is your name?” Michael spoke slowly and loudly, as if he didn’t expect to be understood.92

Volheiin felt insulted. “General Volheiin Yorvenchov.” He said, straightening his slouched shoulders in a military fashion. “At least, I was a General.”93

The two elders looked confused. Volheiin didn’t want to explain it. He had so many questions for the strange people that he didn’t know where to begin.94

“How-“ he started before cutting himself off. The Elders waited patiently. “What is the year?”95

“By our record, it is 71.”96

Volheiin pushed aside the useless bit of information and tried again. “What happened to the world?”97

The Chief Elder leaned closer to Volheiin as he spoke. “That’s what we were hoping that you could tell us.”98

The Center Village was a farm town, mostly mud and livestock. Yorvenchov recognized chickens, sheep and cows. The houses themselves were made of ancient cinderblocks and wood, mostly, with the occasional tin roof or side on the bigger shanties. The mall behind him was an enormous structure, its hallway leading from a large indoor living area to the many roomy stores around it. It ended sheered away, with a crude stone wall built to keep out the weather.99

People stopped their farm work and children stopped their play as Volheiin walked by. He felt uncomfortable, but marched on proudly under the weight of so many state.100

“Where are we going?” asked Volheiin, who had to slow his normally quick stride to keep up with the older folks that lead him now.101

“There.” The Chief Elder pointed to an intact building in front of them.102

“This,” said Chief Elder Michael, sweeping his hands eloquently to indicate the room, “is the temple.”103

Volheiin looked around. In front of him was a large table made of ancient oak, and carved by the hand of a very skilled craftsman. Elders lined the table, with the Chief Elder at the opposite end. A brazier of embers sat in the middle, illuminating the rest of the room. There were plastic chairs stacked up against the walls, a carpet crisscrossed with a spider web network of roadway, dotted here and there with the occasional house or field, faded blue paint on the walls, and a metal plaque on the back wall just behind the Chief Elder. The General knew the true function of such a place. It was not a temple. He smiled softly, an expression that he had been frequenting ever since his release from his long freeze.104

The Chief Elder stood slowly from his throne-like wooden seat as the rest of the council made their way to their battered metal chairs. The Truthsayer sat hunched over in the corner, her dead-looking, milky eyes fixed on Volheiin.105

“My fellow Councilmen, I think you know why you are here.” All eyes turned to Volheiin. “But he does not.” Michael took one step to the metal plaque on the wall. “These are the rules.” A list of ten things was compiled on the small plate. “They were made by the ancients before the time of the Change. They teach us to treat each other with kindness, to share our possessions, to follow the example of our elders, and to live in harmony with our world. They are a plan for living.”106

Volheiin glanced about again. He knew what this place once was, and its use as a temple was excruciatingly funny to him. “It’s a day care center!” he said aloud, in a rather excited mumble, a small burst of giggling escaping his lips. Oh, of all irony! These people lived by the rules set on the wall of a day care center!107

Michael stopped abruptly and looked at Volheiin with interest. “What was that?” He asked.108

Volheiin furrowed his brow. He had just had a major revelation, and his smile faded as his mind went blank once more. ‘Day Care’? The meaning of the words faded as his ragged brain tried to grasp them. “Never mind.” He said, confused at his own outburst.109

“Yes…well, I meant to show you Rule 10.” He pointed to the final line of text on the plate. “If something is to happen, wait for the supervisor.”110

The elders around the table looked once more at Volheiin, some eyes haboring skepticism, others holding only hope.111

“Something did happen, Mr. General. The Great Change happened; the plague that killed the ancients and laid waste to the old world. Now we wait for the one who is the Supervisor, the Pastliver, to lead us back to the old ways.”112

There was a tense moment as everyone considered, not for the first time, the implications of the Tenth Rule.113

Volheiin felt pressured to break through a quickly-dawning silence. “So,” he said, “you think I’m the one. I have to ask; what has lead you to this conclusion?”114

Michael settled into his padded chair once more. “The granddaughter of our Truthsayer, who also has the truthsense, saw your dreams as you slept. You know some of the past.”115

The General nodded. Indeed he did know the past. He looked up at the wench in the corner, whose gaze had never left him the whole meeting long. “Tell me, what is the truthsense, Chief Elder?”116

“It is a rare gift, sometimes passed down generations. It allows the person who has use of it to see into the minds of others.”117

Volheiin grinned and stared intensely into Lorris’s eyes. “Do you read my thoughts now, old woman?”118

“I can read none,” said the Truthsayer, shifting uncomfortably in her plastic chair, her massive patched cloak draped around her like a shroud. “Your mind is blocked to me.”119

“Are you sure?” asked Volheiin, false disappointment in his voice as he continued to grin.120

She glared at him as she tried harder than before, with his yellow eyes fixed on hers. Slowly, she did get a faint reading. It was laced with hate and an image of the room they were in.121

(The whole world is dead.122

Children playing in the room with strange toys. Parents watching from discrete corners. People turning to bone turning to dust.123

The whole world is dead.)124

”He knows things.” Lorris thought.125

Then, as quick as the vision came, it was gone.126

The philosophers worked out of a long building made completely of wood. It was in the opposite corner of the village from the temple, away from the center of town as much as it could be. Kraft sat at the round, candlelit table, introducing the other philosophers as they rummaged for papers.127

Testing a potential was a very important event, especially with one so likely as this strange wanderer.128

“The little one by our cabinets is Byrd, my apprentice. The tall one, who is in the outhouse at the moment, is Web, my associate. I am Elder Kraft, the head Philosopher.” Kraft’s genuine smile was infectious. “This is all very exciting for me. I’m very anxious to begin.”129

Byrd dropped a stack of papers on the table and shuffled across the wooden floor in his robes to go get more. A log cracked in the fire as the wind howled outside. It was another stormy, overcast day. Volheiin figured that they had many of them, being as close to a collision of fronts as they were. He wondered why, if there was so much rain, their was such a lack of vegetation outside of the town. The town itself had cultivated much of it, from crops to trees for lumber. Volheiin wondered if something had happened to the natural soil.130

An awkward silence ensued. Kraft continued his smile, his fat cheeks dripping with enthusiasm. He ran his hands quickly through his long, black hair at the temples. Something banged in the distance, a random bit of scrap, perhaps, that'd caught a bad bit of wind. Byrd dropped his final load of papers on the table and sat down, tapping his thin fingers, his dark eyes continually shifting to the door in the back of the room. Kraft’s smile faded slightly.131

“WEB!”132

Byrd jumped at the sudden noise.133

“Web! Get in here now!”134

A few empty seconds passed before the door flew open and a tall, lanky teen stepped inside. He didn’t look like a philosopher, with his short-cropped brown hair and sheepish grin. While the his two colleagues were dressed in full, brown robes made of a fine wool, he was dressed in black cow-skin shorts and a tight vest made of an old rug of some sort.135

“That’s him?” He asked. He silently appraised Volheiin with smiling eyes. “Well, let’s get to work.”136

Three days of study passed with the philosophers. Three days, filled with bland chicken dinners, cold mornings rising from a hard cot, and a chaotic blur of late-night excited whispers at the confirmation of a single fact. It was three days of violent nightmares, and three days filled with the constant reminders of how much he had truly forgotten.137

They did their studies out of many books, which they called “The Old Texts”; works left behind from before the Great Change. Some of them seemed familiar to Volheiin, though he couldn’t place any details. The rest were notes written by past philosophers after studying the Old Texts.138

Volheiin grew increasingly annoyed with Kraft; especially the way he never answered a question without first turning to the page in the manuscripts.139

“What happened during the Great Change?” It was a question that had lived in the General’s mind since he had arrived, now being the only time he had had a chance to ask it.140

Kraft glanced about the table until he found what he was looking for. “In Book One,” Kraft flipped through a colorful spiral notebook he had pulled out of a tupperware container, “on the third writing.”141

It was late, and the room was lit by an indulgent number of candles. Byrd slept in his cot in the doorless room off the right wing of the building. Web was off cavorting with the young females of the town in the main chamber of the mall. Kraft spoke in shallow whispers that forced Volheiin to lean slightly forward whenever the Elder Philosopher spoke. He continued flipping through the old pages until he stopped, seemingly finding what he sought.142

“Ahh… Here it is. Did you know this book was written by the Chief Elder’s grandfather? His name was Colgate. He was a brilliant philosopher.”143

“That’s great.” Thought Volheiin, but he held his impatient tongue.144

“It says that the Great Change was a war of some sort. The last Great War. There are many theories about the specifics.” He looked down to the text for the first time in the session. “The first theory says that the world was destroyed by several shots out of a Space Station called the Death Star-“145

Volheiin did a slow, grinning nod familiar to the philosophers by then. It was a nod that said he remembered enough to find what they were saying ridiculous. “That’s another myth. A book I think. Maybe a movie.”146

Kraft sighed. “Ok.” His plump fingers dexterously flipped the yellowed page. “Theory two says that at some point humanity was overthrown by the Science machines. The gods worked together to fight off these machines of magic and freed the suffering world.”147

Volheiin twisted his face into a look of incredulous confusion. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Where the carcasses of these rusting machines now?”148

Kraft looked aghast that Volheiin would challenge the Theory of the Gods’ War, which was the most popular theory of the Change among the philosophers. “Well……ummm…they…I don’t know.”149

“Exactly.” Volheiin was growing very tired of the fantasy these people lived on. He wondered if there was any of the reality he knew in those texts. “Tell me the next theory.”150

Kraft found the man interesting, sitting there in his relaxed position, killing age-old philosophical studies with a wave of his worn hand. But the Elder respected his word, not doubting for a second that this man before him was not the Pastliver.151

“The next theory is called the Toy Theory because it was just something that old Colgate thought up. It has no basis on the texts. It’s just an idea, a musing, hardly considered to be-“152

“Just tell me the theory, Kraft.” Volheiin’s grip on his impatience was growing looser and looser.153

“Very well.” Kraft had dealt with much of General Yorvenchov’s emotional outbursts over the past three days. “It says that at some point the nations of earth entered a final war with eachother, somehow knowing yet not caring that they may destroy the entire world. All the major countries triggered massive weapons against one another, maybe science, maybe magical, and ultimately killed almost everything. Not really the most well-formed of theories, and very unlikely once you think about it. For well-meaning leaders to simply turn a blind eye to casualties and unlease weapons of such power-” Kraft paused as he realized that the General actually seemed to be considering it.154

The plausibility of the statement was just settling in with Volheiin. He had seen the creation of powerful atomic weapons. He had seen the struggle for oil and the indulgent use of industrial resources.155

(The air screaming past the caveThe earth shakingThe whole world is dead)156

“It could be-“157

Kraft leaned forward in his chair, too accustomed to dismissal to expect the General to agree with anything. Especially the Toy Theory, which was considered to be a brilliant bit of fiction, but never regarded seriously by the philosophers.158

“I have seen these energy weapons.” Volheiin seemed to be in a sort of a daze. “I studied them. They called them ‘atomic bombs’.” He looked at his hands, glazed with the thinness of his poisoned skin. “Radiation sickness.” He mumbled, “Only different, because I was in the chamber. Maybe a different kind of bomb.”159

(The doctor said that just next store to us, the future of the glory of the Soviet Union rests in a test tube and a microscope. Do you know anything about quantum physics? He said something about that. You should go ask him.)160

“What do you know?” Kraft had his charcoal stick poised over a clean piece of thin wood.161

(We are making weapons that the rest of the world could never dream of over there; guns that run on the quanta of charged air, fires that never go out until they are isolated in a vacuum, quanta bombs that create chain reactions among the alpha and beta particles.)162

“I know why the world changed.”163

(No, General, nothing is impossible.)164

Things bounced about in Volheiin’s head, memories he never knew he had, twisted voices saying familiar things long ago. Smiles on the lips that spoke of machines of death. A sealed vault. A master plan. The clean faces of men he would never see smile again. A gray hydraulic lid. A fragmenting past. The sound of a world dying. A bizarre mutation of a human being staring at him in the cryo-chamber with its black, beady eyes.165

Volheiin continued his dazed mumble. “We killed ourselves.” He looked up. “All of us. We killed ourselves and I’m the only thing that’s left.”166

Kraft shifted his ample weight and reached across the wooden table to place his hand on Volheiin’s arm. “Then you are the Supervisor.”167

Volheiin only looked up hopelessly, his sunken eyes pools of shadow in the candlelight.168

“There is one last thing we must do.” Kraft stood, his chair creaking as he did. “Follow me.”169

Meiada propped herself up on one elbow to watch the monster and the Elder Philosopher walk out the door. The Truthsayer’s home was across the street from the Philosopher’s Quarters, and the front window gave Maeida a splendid view of what she feared would happen.170

“Grandma!” She yelled, “Grandma, they are taking him to the Hall! They are taking him to see the gods!”171

Lorris looked up from her weaving and said nothing.172

“Is there anything you can do?” Maeida was furious.173

Lorris shook her head. “Sadly, dear, things out far out of my control. This decision was made by the Chief Elder and the Philosopher. I had no words in their choice.” The Truthsayer picked up a raggedy doll of the table next to her. “Now”, she said, tossing it to Maeida, “why don’t you go play with the other children. Remember, the use of your toys pleases the gods. The rules say: ‘Play Nicely.’ Mind the Rules and go be a normal child for one day.”174

Maeida absent-mindedly picked at her dolls’ hair. “You agree with me now, don’t you Grandma? You know he’s rotten inside.”175

Lorris sighed, remembering the red disorder of the General’s mind. “Perhaps, child. Now go.”176

The Hall of the Gods was a tall shanty with brick walls and a vaulted tin roof. Whoever constructed it so long ago put some time into it. The inside was dark and shadowy, the only light eminating from five candles; one at each corner of the square room and one in a holder in the center. The wooden interior walls were lined with colorful posters and paintings, lined straight and organized like a museum display. In rows like soldiers were a series of plasticized cardboard cutouts, their waxy surfaces giving an ancient glare in the light of the candles.177

Volheiin spun in a wide circle, his eyes wide open and his mind basking in the warm glory of reminiscence. He knew every face around him, every glossy captured image. There was one in the corner, a powerful looking man in a plaid shirt with dusty jeans, a leather hat, and a rifle at his side. An American; in fact a symbol of America, with his slow drawl and quick draw.178

(C’mon pilgrum, we’re moving west.)179

Across the room, small Chinaman was engaged in a leaping kick, his cropped hair flying over his face, his mouth opened in a fierce yell.180

Next to him, on the wall, was a poster of a man in a tuxedo. His black bearded chin was touching his chest as he bellowed into a microphone.181

“Do you know them, Yorvenchov?” Kraft watched the man with interest.182

“Yes.” Volheiin glanced about. “I do. I know all of them.”183

He knew what they felt like, things they said, everything. As if they were close friends. Were they gods, though? It certainly seemed like it. They were visages and memories that had not died with the rest of the world; eternal countenances serving as the last remnants of an ancient culture.184

“I know your gods.”185

Kraft took Volheiin through, naming off every one as if proud of his knowledge. The first one, the American, was the Gunslinger. The Chinaman was the Fist of Fury. The singing man was the Voice. Another familiar man in rhinestone-studded bellbottoms was the King. A blond woman in a white dress was Norma Jean. On a dark wall, where the candles’ light failed to shine, a crumpled, torn poster sat apart from the rest.186

“That,” Kraft pointed, “Is the Evil One. The Storyteller. The EvilSpookyStrange. The Cryptkeeper.”187

The poster proclaimed that very name in large, red dripping letters.188

“He is the one we fear, the one that will come and lead the people to ruin.” He looked at Volheiin. “Nobody knows whether he or the Supervisor will come first.”189

Volheiin looked long into the poster. The corpse of a man, with his oversized book and skull candle, a cobwebbed library behind him. Something from way in the depths of his memory began to eat its way into his consciousness. Something from his childhood. Something with paper and colors and too many pictures on one page.190

“So evil,” he thought, “evil survived as well.”191

Kraft moved to the last god in the hall, set apart from the others on a table. It was a stone bust, etched sharply in black marble.192

The dome head, the hook nose, those wild eyes.193

“Oh, God.” Volheiin fell on his knees before the statue. It was an image his people had sought to preserve forever. And here he was, after forever, here he was. “But you are dead.” He spoke to it. “Everything we’ve worked for, great Stalin, everything we’ve worked so hard for is gone. The Soviet Union is gone. The great equality is gone. The scythe and hammer are gone, forever.” He looked into the marble eyes of his great ruler, pleading, searching for anything. The eyes showed cold power, even carved in stone. In that power, the General found hope. There was a future yet.194

“Rise, Supervisor.”195

“What?” Volheiin faced Kraft.196

The jolly man was smiling wider than ever before, hopping excitedly from foot to foot.197

“Rise, Supervisor. Rise to lead your people. You have recognized the gods, you have frowned upon the Evil One, and you have kneeled before a visage of yourself. You are the Supervisor.”198

Volheiin looked back at the bust of his leader, a bemused half-smile crossing his face.199

“Myself? “ he thought. “Almost. Give me time.”200

General Yorvenchov smiled broadly and walked confidently towards the door. There was a future yet.201

Maeida watched as Volheiin exited the Hall, his stride bold and his grin wide.202

“Oh, gods,” she thought, “he’s going to do it! I must confront him now, before it’s too late for all of us!”203

With one hand she slipped her doll into her pouch pocket on the front of her dirty dress, standing as she did. It bounced about as she ran, her feet getting stuck every now and then in the suction of the fresh mud of the road.204

Volheiin stopped and scowled at the little girl running towards him.205

“You’d better stay out of my mind, you little bitch. I hope you trip and break your little ESP mindsnake neck.” He thought as loud as he could, hoping her ‘truthsense’ could pick it up.206

But her run never faltered, nor did she seem to at all notice.207

“I know what you are going to do.” She stopped, a little out of breath, in front of him.208

“Why? Been ‘sensing’ me lately?” He repeated his previous thoughts to her again. Again, she showed no reaction.209

“No. It’s just very obvious. Let me tell you one thing first: You are not the Supervisor.”210

The General stared down at Maeida, giving her his best doubting look.211

“I saw two things when I did sense you, as you slept. They were at war with each-other, and neither of them was the Supervisor.”212

“What do you know about it, little girl?”213

She looked up at him coldly with the practiced stare of a much older person. “I am a Truthsayer.”214

“You’re a little girl.” He sneered, his entire rotted face contorting in hatred. “And you’d better be good and not and not get in my way.” He walked on.215

Furious, Maeida send her most powerful mindbeam to him, a noxious wave of psychic power that screamed “STOP!” in his head.216

Volheiin spun on his heels, his sneer intensified to the point of grotesque, a freeze-frame horror portrait of cold intensity.217

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!” His thoughts roared in a terrible wave of mind energy that shot like a cannonball and hit Maeida directly.218

Her eyes widened under the shocking power of the psychic assault, and she took two stumbling steps backwards before falling in the mud.219

“You should talk with me, General.” Meaida’s voice quavered with either anger or fear.220

“I have no reason to talk to you.” Volheiin continued walking.221

“I know who Arn is.” She yelled after him.222

General Yorvenchov stopped but did not turn around. He felt a familiar nausea as a memory set in. “So do I.”223

(Black hair. Gray eyes like his father.224

“Where are you going dad?”225

“I have to go away, go away to serve the government. I’ll see you when I wake up again.”226

“When will that be?”)227

A tear ran down the face of the hardened military man. He didn’t know what he had said in response. “I remember Arn as well,” he said to Maeida.228

The memory slowly faded, just as all the others had. Volheiin held onto it as long as he could, languishing in the last rays of the first pure emotion he had experienced since he awakened. He wiped at his eyes.229

“He…He was just another part of a dead world.” As the last traces of the memory left him, his smile resumed itself.230

Meaida watched from the mud, defeated, as the General marched on.231

The center of the town was the only part of the road that was not composed entirely of mud. Jigsaw patterned chunks of concrete and bricks covered the ground, with shoots of seeded grass penetrating from in between. Volheiin stood on a raised hexagonal platform in the center. A crowd was gathering, all faces taut in anticipation.232

The General waited for the people of the town to amass around him. Everyone needed to hear his announcement.233

Rumors floated in a din of whispers into the air and the mass of white faces wove of tapestry of hope. Thunder rumbled in the still evening air.234

“I’m sure you all know me.” The General spoke as a general should; loud, clear, demanding, every statement carrying the definition of a command. “For the past three days, I have discussed many things with the philosophers, who study the world I once lived in.”235

A murmur arose in the crowd, dissolving as suddenly as it came under the steely gaze of the General. His eyes were just beginning to become luminous in the gathering gloom of the oncoming storm.236

“We have learned many things, though my memory may be quite unclear. Of these things, the only thing that I find important is that my world is gone.” He swept his stare across the listening masses. “And I have been left behind.”237

“The Pastliver,” someone audibly whispered.238

“He is the one.”239

“He has come!”240

“I come to lead you,” said Volheiin. “I come to be the Supervisor. Follow me or doubt me, but I shall see us back to the ways I knew, and I shall remake the orderly and magnificent world that I remember!”241

The whispers overtook the silence, and soon the attentive crowd had turned to a churning hiss of excited commentary. The whispers loudened to speech, and speech to cheers. Soon the entirety of the townspeople present were applauding a man they had waited for since before they were born.242

Again, thunder crashed in the distance. Volheiin closed his eyes and relished the moment. He was the leader he was born to be, the ruler, the Supervisor. There was a future, after all. It was a future he saw in the shining eyes of his followers as they were illuminated by the lightning of the imminent storm.243

“Something must be done, Michael.” Councilman Sparrowhawk had taken the Truthsayer’s part on the matter. He was a very influential speaker, and he always chose one side of everything and defended that side bitterly.244

T245

The Truthsayer herself was quiet, unsure of her own opinions. Maeida sat in a corner, her silent scowl a testimony to the cause presented by her grandmother.246

“He has passed the tests. He has fulfilled the prophecies. What more do we actually need?” Chief Elder Michael sat forward. The elevation in activity of late was tiring the old man, his normally proud stature giving way to an exhausted slouch.247

“So just like that, we accept his leadership?” Sparrowhawk slammed his bony fist onto the table. “I will not stand for it.”248

“Nor will I, “ Lorris agreed quietly.249

Some eyes turned to Maeida. She sat up slightly in her little plastic chair. “You know how I feel in this matter. There’s no use in me trying to elaborate on it. Nobody listens anyway.”250

“We’ve listened, Maeida.” The Chief Elder folded his hands. “Circumstances this monumental have no room for missed opinions.”251

Sparrowhawk started to speak again. Michael made a cutting gesture with his hands to show he was not finished.252

“We shall have a representation. State a simple ‘agreed’ or ‘opposed’ when you are called.253

“Philosophers?”254

Kraft stood. His trademark smile reflected his absolute devotion to his cause in a gently stated manner. “The Philosophers agree with the acceptance of the Supervisor.”255

“Truthsayers?”256

Maeida snorted at the ridiculous formality of stating opinions.257

“We Truthsayers hereby oppose the acceptance of this man as Supervisor,” said Lorris.258

“Maintenance and construction?”259

A lanky younger man named Glass stood. He hardly ever spoke in meetings, and his horse voice was timid as he said “The commission of Maintenance and construction finds itself in agreement with the acceptance of the Supervisor.” His eyes glanced over furtively to test the reaction of the Truthsayers.260

“Farmers?”261

“The Farmers are strongly and vehemently opposed to this mutant’s acceptance as anything.” Sparrowhawk took on his usual tone of contempt.262

“Stormseekers?”263

Captain Envolt stood, his rippling muscles and multiple scars a testament to his position. Every anxious gaze fell on him, entranced by the power the man held now; his decision determining the fate of the village for generations to come.264

“The Stormseekers accept the Supervisor and pledge to serve him and defend for him the Center Village.”265

“No!” Shouted Sparrowhawk as he jumped to his feet, his hands slapping on the table.266

“I warned you,” Maieda mumbled. She stood, knocking over he little chair, and skulked out of the room.267

As Lorris stood to follow her granddaughter, someone came rocketing through the temple door.268

“Captain Envolt! Captain Envolt!”269

The Captain turned to face the out-of-breath soldier before him. He was dirty from hours of riding on the enormous ostriches that were reserved for the Stormseekers. Sweat slicked his face like a strange mask. He swallowed hard as he attempted to speak, words coming out in unintelligible murmurs lost in the whoosh of exhalation.270

“Slow yourself, scout. What you have to say can wai-“271

“They’re amassing sir! They’re amassing and marching towards the border.”272

“Oh, gods! There’s no time to waste! Ring the bell! Call the Seekers to arms! Firebrands, tipped darts, spears, blades and any customs. We are at full armory.” He turned to the Elders. “Excuse me, Council, I have to go prepare for war.” He looked at Michael. “With your permission, sir?”273

“By all means.” Michael gave an exhausted chuckle as he waved his hand in his usual way. But now the gesture had lost some of its power.274

Envolt exited with the scout in a volley of heavy footsteps that faded into the squashy sound of drying mud.275

“Why,” said the Chief Elder, rubbing at his temples, “must everything happen at once?”276

The armory was already being emptied as the Stormseekers prepared for battle. It was suspected for a long time that the mutants would organize into one clan in the end. They had never foreseen that time to be in such a near future.277

Lever watched as the enormous Captain dressed in his wooden armor.278

“Can I go to fight today, Captain?”279

Envolt glanced briefly at the boy as he fastened his helmet.280

“No, Lever. Normally I would say yes. I see you’re getting pretty good with your darts.” He smiled briefly, but then reverted to his previous grave demeanor. “But an Amassing is a terrible thing, a thing we’ve not yet dealt with. I suspect many good men will die.” He looked down at his hands, speckled with the scars of mutant claws. “I may be one of them.” He looked to the boy again. “If I should perish, I want you to serve the gods faithfully by working under the Supervisor.”281

Lever was horrified. “He scares me, Captain. Is he really the One?”282

“I gave him my support.”283

“Why?”284

The Captain sighed softly. Air whistled past two missing teeth under a scar across his jaw. “Because when he calls, people will hear him. That’s what everyone needs right now; a leader. A Supervisor.” Envolt picked up a belt full of poisoned darts. “You take care of him for me, kid. Maybe I’ll be back, and you can see field time on our next battle.” He tousled Lever’s thick blonde hair and set off to the stables for his mount. From there, he set off to the border; to war.285

Just outside the last reaches of the mall was a cave. The ancients had constructed it long ago, presumably for purposes of transportation along long, tunneling tracks. Green and blue tiling glistened in the light of torches, all placed in the center of the room. Large, mutated rats scurried about, escaping the intrusion of light by seeking solitude in the pooled shadows. If Volheiin had seen the hidden cave, he would have called it a “subway”. But he never did see the cave, which was the point of them meeting there. Nobody knew it existed except the newly formed Secondary Council. A meeting was currently underway.286

“Our failure today was only another testament to the influence he has somehow gained, as if a few fragmented memories grant him divinity. Now is the time, after the Stormseekers leave.” The shadows danced across Sparrowhawk’s grim face as he spoke animatedly. “In the absence of their might, he will be vulnerable. So will we. Although the Captain has pledged himself to the Supervisor’s cause, he would defend the people if anything goes wrong. I think the Evil One knows it. He will try to take power.”287

“I agree,” said Maeida. “In fact, he is probably trying now.”288

Little Lever, the newest member of the Secondary Council, wished he had something to write this all down with. This was important stuff, the kind of stuff the Supervisor would want to know. It was a very important assignment Lever had been given, and he knew it. He had been wrong about the Supervisor. He was scary, yes, but not evil, as these people thought. He was respectable. And besides, Captain Envolt liked him. Lever crossed his legs and continued his usual participation of saying nothing.289

“The Chief Elder, however weak he is, will not see any radical changes happen in the absence of one of the council members.” Web’s chief role in the meetings thus far was to find ways around any problem that was pointed out, to try and convince himself that no trouble lay just beyond the horizon. He felt guilty for attending the meetings, especially since his mentor was the General’s biggest supporter.290

“But sometimes,” he thought “sometimes right is just right.”291

“You’re correct.” Lorris said, leaving Web confused as to what the mind reader was responding. “The Chief Elder will not let anything happen. That doesn’t mean it won’t. He has the side of most of the people. He can do anything he wants.” She looked at Sparrowhawk. “Is your clan ready?”292

Sparrowhawk nodded quickly. “Yes. Mostly my farmers, though. Not much fighting experience.”293

Maeida laughed. “Not to worry,” she said, “Everybody who has fighting experience is off along the border by now.”294

Tornadoes twisted their way along the edge and died in drifts of falling snow and sand and dirt that swept up again as another sheerwind was born. The fronts met here; the Pit Desert and the Northlands, presumably a phenomenon brought on by the Great Change. From the distance, a great dust cloud approached the Border. A small troop of Stormseekers was already stationed, mostly rookies, fresh out of the school. Their weekly check had been just at the right time. The Captain led them, his ostriches clad in the same wooden armor as he. He thought of his armor as a reflection of himself, scarred and battered, bearing the stains of his every wound. Now it carried the same thick coat of desert dust that stuck in his mouth and made him spit every half a minute, even through the woven faceclothes designed to prevent just this problem. With the end of his ride in sight, he took off his hip flask and took a long drink of water. He would need everything he could get in battle.295

The troop commander saluted as the Captain approached. He let his ostrich drink from her water bag as he spoke.296

“Where are they?” he asked.297

“You came just in time, sir. You can see them, if you look close. You can see them through the storm barrier, all lined up and waiting.” The troop commander was a small, scared man with beady eyes and dainty fingers.298

“How did this man get to be a commander?” though Envolt, but he kept strictly to business.299

“They won’t come through,” he said instead.300

“Why not?”301

“They can’t stand the heat. That’s probably why we have beaten them so easily in the past.” He swallowed hard, his prominent facial muscles tightening around his rigid cheekbones. He reared his bird to face the positioned army.302

“Ready your firebrands, men. We will cross the storm.”303

The soldiers never questioned the command. Stones struck and sparks showered down on metal pitchforks slick with oil. Soon the entire army was polka-dotted with the furious flames of crude oil on iron, adding more heat to the already scorching desert.304

“They wait for us, men. Let’s meet them.”305

The Captain took one last look back at his army before lashing the reins on his ostrich and charging into the barrier.306

Winds of hot and cold roared around him, belting him with dirt and snow and small shards of rock and sand that dug into his skin. He kept on his mount as best he could, though, digging in his heels and squinting for the end. At last, the wind thinned out, and the cold conquered the warm. He was on the other side.307

His spear went up, lashing at air, his battle cry muffled by a torrent of snowfall. The soldiers came through behind him, all with similar reactions.308

The mutants were gone, the only thing to proof that they were there at all being footprints that faded into infinite white.  Small shards of metal lay here and there, fallen from the bounds of twisted flesh. No attack, no battle; a retreat.309

“They must have been scared off by our numbers,” concluded Captain Envolt, the soldiers behind him already beginning to talk and laugh about the experience. He shivered lightly. It really was cold as freezing hell beyond the border, and it was no place for a battle. He watched as the men’s firebrands slowly went out and the smoke was carried off by the powerful winds.310

“What now?” asked the meek commander.311

“For now, you stay and stand guard.”312

A look of horror crossed the commander’s face.313

“I,” said Envolt, “Am going home. I have more important matters to attend to.”314

“The Supervisor?” asked the commander quietly.315

“Yes,” said Envolt, “the Supervisor.”316

He stood on the same platform as the day he declared himself. The same cheering crowd was gathered below him, and he wore the same expression of joyful bliss as before.317

The day was nice, and Volheiin was darkness bathed in light; the benevolent sun behind him only increasing the size of his shadow.318

He spoke as the villagers had never heard a man speak before, his words igniting into little flames of inspiration in their minds. He had a system, a great, organized master plan. A plan with a future.  A plan they could see. And people cheered and people clapped and roared and bellowed and ate up every word. And Volheiin, his crowd won, his promises made, and his every ambition poised and ready spring this broken culture into the economics of communism, began his cry for change.319

The report Lever has given him the night before had upset him very much. He knew he had to step up the movement, to rally the people to defend him once the time came. And he was also interested as he heard who was there. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone.320

“I have here the medical reports for every citizen of the town.” He held up a thick bundle of thin metal sheets. “I have read of them and found that, still, about a sixth of the population has the Decimator, the cancer that you thought you’d all killed off over three years ago!”321

The people looked shocked, as he wanted them to. It was all too beautiful. He had led men to battle before, but leading the masses to a new socialist frontier was an entirely different matter.322

“And it’s here!” he yelled. “Right here in these obvious documents. Somebody knew about it. Somebody let it stand.” He looked around at his tame, attentive crowd. “What are we going to do about it? Are we going to let it continue killing us, preying on us?” He paused again, letting his implications sink in. “No! We are going to stop it.”323

Another memory flash ravaged his senses. He was getting used to them by now. This one he took with only a deep breath, hoping the crowd would not notice.324

He saw a man on a balcony with a railing in choppy black and white, yelling in impassioned German to an ecstatic crowd.325

“He was a great leader,” thought Volheiin as the thought faded. “A great leader like Stalin. A great leader like me.”326

“Reform,” he addressed the crowd once more, “cannot happen without cleansing. The only way to stop this cancer is to kill it.”327

The people understood. The moment of truth had come.328

“If you know you are a carrier of the Decimator, come forward and help us solve this problem once and for all.”329

A moment of disturbed silence followed. People whispered. A lady in an oversized yellow raincoat broke away from the crowd and left. The silence continued. A man who pushed his way from the back of the crowd and jumped on the stage shattered it.330

“For the cause,” he said. From his baggy, raggedy clothes, he produced a poison dart. In one, quick motion he jammed the dart into his throat.331

The crowd gasped. One wide-eyed gurgle and a fall off the stage away, the head of the Committee of Maintenance and Construction was dead, his cancer with him.332

The crowd remained in silence for a short moment longer before erupting into a flurry of applause. The clapping found itself in unison soon, and they began chanting Glass’s name. A rather beautiful woman of about thirty hopped up onto where Glass fell. She slit her own throat in one empowered slice.333

“The rest of you,” Volheiin yelled above the din, “the rest of you will be found out!”334

In an almost empty building, with colorful carpet worn where much-used folding chairs were slid into place for ages, a final candle flickers and goes out, reflecting off a forgotten set of laws and leaving a once important man to sit in the darkness.335

Lever stalked through the lonely night with a list, his darts, and another big assignment.336

The night was cold, the heat dying quickly in the dry air. All of the shanties were dark. Usually, a light burned in the Philosophers’ chambers at this time of night, but tonight it was dark. Perhaps Kraft felt he had nothing left to study.337

Lever quietly stalked his way through the orchard, the place where they grew and harvested the trees. The carpenter’s house and shop were just off the right edge of the forest of pines and evergreens. The home of the Truthsayers was in front.338

The Captain told him to serve the Supervisor. Although he found his current work disagreeable, Lever supposed he was the only one in the village who could do it.339

“It’s not about the people dying,” he reminded himself, “It’s about the cause, and the great cleansing.”340

He looked down at the names on the list, a few of which were checked off. He had many more to go tonight.341

It made him dizzy, killing people. He had never done it before. He had found his first victim sitting alone in a dark room, expecting to die. The Chief Elder had chuckled when he saw Lever enter, a dart ready in his hand.342

“So you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” He chuckled again.343

“Yes, sir.” Lever sounded meek and ashamed.344

“Why?”345

“For the cleansing. You have the cancer.”346

The Chief Elder laughed again. “Oh, I think we both know that’s not true.”347

Lever’s dart caught him between the neck and shoulder. He died quietly and quickly, an ironic smirk still on his face.348

The next one on the list was the elder Truthsayer. Then, after that, her granddaughter. Lever bit his bottom lip. He had played with Maeida in his younger days. One of his assignments in Stormseeker school had been to watch the toddler while Lorris was off trying to read the mutants along the border.349

“What must be done must be done,” he thought glumly. “For the cause.”350

He scurried out towards the house, lurking in the shadows, truly a creature of the night.351

The door slid slowly and noiselessly open.352

Maeida awoke. She felt something; an intensity of thoughts, a strong drive towards something wrong. Shadows darkened and something or someone moved stealthily across the floor towards the bed where her grandmother slept.353

Lever looked down at the sleeping woman, his eyes adjusting to the thick darkness. She was helpless, her throat exposed and her deep sleep breathing coming in rattling streams. In the past, she had been kind to Lever, sharing with him her smiles, her wisdom, and her meals.354

“What must be done must be done.” The thought was becoming a chant to justify the evil the he knew he did.355

“The world died a long time ago. I remember the noise it made. It groaned and stirred and even the air screamed at its passing,” the Supervisor had told him. “These people are alive by accident anyhow. I just want to see them live. Death is a sacrifice they should be willing to make.”356

Of course, the Supervisor was right. He was very good at being right. It was his job to be right, and it was Lever’s job to let his dart pierce the skin of this woman.357

Maeida felt her grandmother come out of sleep. She felt her presence slip away. Then she felt nothing except the dizzy, cold emotions of a killer. She knew it would happen sooner or later. That’s why she kept a wire under her cot. She reached her hand down to find it.358

“Oh, gods,” she thought, “it’s not there.”359

But soon her fingers traced the line of a slick, metal strand, capped by weighted bars on either end. Her hand closed around one of the bars, the wire extending from the end of her fist, just as she heard the sound of approaching footsteps.360

“It’s amazing,” she said, “how little my assassin feels. Whoever it is has no sense of morality left at all. He, if it is a he, is suppressing his emotions so well.” She closed her eyes and feigned sleep her best, thoughts of her grandmother bursting like bubbles in her tired mind. “So must I.”361

Lever raised his dart, ready to fling it once he was in range. He did not want to see Maeida before he killed her.362

“She was my friend,” he thought. His mind weighed and set priorities for the last time that night. His hand went to his belt and he grabbed another poisoned dart, just to make sure she died quickly.363

Maeida kept her eyes shut. With her mindsight, she penetrated the darkness and saw the silhouette of her would-be murderer.364

“He’s right where he needs to be. Here goes.”365

She leapt from her bed in a flurry of sheets. With one practiced motion, she swung the bar on the wire, wrapping it around her assailant’s neck while she was in the air. The metal bar caught on the wire and tightened. Her weight as she hit the ground and rolled carried it down and through. Lever's body hit the ground before the head did.366

“Now,” said Maeida, pocketing her weapon in her little nightgown and picking up her doll, “I have things to do. Many things to do. Who knows how many more killers he dispatched?”367

She ran out of her home without looking back, leaving the dead body of both her attempted murderer and her grandmother to rot in the same darkness.368

Sparrowhawk’s home was a masterpiece of sod, wooden beams, and boulders. It was said that having it built was his first act as an elder. Farmers toiled over it for eight months, all of it overseen by only him. It was a beautiful dome structure in the day. At night, it was a shadowy lump in the midst of other shadowy lumps, cast in even greater darkness by the bulk of the Main Hall behind them.369

Maeida ran as fast as she could through the farmers’ village, continually catching her bare feet on clumps of sandy dirt.370

The door to Sparrowhawk’s home was made of wood overlain with a thin coat of falling sod and grass from the orchard. He kept a stone behind the door, but there was an open window overhead with a jutting bit of main beam running through the roof’s peak just above that. Maeida jumped as high as she could, boosting herself by springing off the large door handle, and swung her wire. It wrapped around the extended piece of log and held fast as she swung herself in.371

“Sparrowhawk!” She was whispering as loud as she could, her voice teetering above a hiss but not quite yet a yell.372

Somewhere in the darkness there was a lazy swoosh of woolen sheets. Maeida made her way past a large table in the front of the room, strafing to the right to avoid a low cabinet. Wood, dirt, rock, all cast in the same blue. Outside, the sun was beginning to cover the horizon with an orange haze. Morning was coming after all.373

“Sparrowhawk!” The mound she saw on the cot in the corner stirred again. She picked up a heavy wooden cup off the cabinet and chucked it as hard as she could. It hit the sleeping man square in the chest.374

“Sparrowhawk!” Maeida whisper-yelled again.375

“What the hell?” the man thought. “What the-“ he started to say.376

“Is the army still ready?”377

He looked dazed, the mental lethargy of sleep still draining from his mind. “Why?” he asked, a yawn escaping with his words.378

“He’s sent out assassins, to enforce his new cleansing policy.” She twisted her pretty little face into an angry scowl, her brown hair luminescent in the rising sun outside. “Now is the time for us to act.”379

Sparrowhawk sat up. “He will have many of the people to defend him, probably half the town."380

“Not now he won’t. It’s too early. Let’s get him while he’s defenseless, taking the army to keep down the angry supporters when they realize he’s dead.”381

“Envolt,” said Sparrowhawk, “he’ll be back soon. Do you really think he’ll accept the fact that you killed his Supervisor?”382

“I’ve told you before, Envolt is not a stupid man. He knows that if this man was really the Supervisor, we wouldn’t have to kill him.”383

“I’m not buying it.”384

“You have no choice.”385

Sparrowhawk looked up at the strange little girl before him. They both knew who’s name was also on that list.386

“He would have killed all of us to get to power.” Maeida looked down at her hands. “He has a plan; something from the past. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but he’s obsessed with it. Some of the people he assigned to death actually did have the cancer. Most did not. I was on the list.” She stared deep into Sparrowhawk’s wide eyes. “I think we both know who else was.”387

“Michael…” said Sparrowhawk.388

Maeida turned her back to him. “And my grandmother.”389

Sparrowhawk stood, grabbing a pair of wool and leather trousers from his bedpost. “Let’s go,” he said. “The farmers are sleeping at arms in the Main Hall.”390

Captain Envolt was tired. It took all his strength to keep from falling off his saddle as he reached the stables. His mount immediately collapsed into sleeping position as he pulled her into her stall. Normally he would have set camp at the onset of darkness, but tonight some strange feeling kept him going.391

Something was going to happen. He knew it, and he knew he should be there for it.392

In a sleepless daze he walked out of the stable, already hearing the breathy grunts of his sleeping ostrich. Something rustled behind him as he let the leather flap door swing shut behind him. A few of the birds squawked. The Captain started to turn around.393

“Nothing’s there,” he thought. “I’m just overly tired from riding all night on some weird truthsense kind of kooky intuition that I don’t even understand.”394

Other noises followed behind him as he walked away. He ignored these completely.395

"I should have made camp," he thought. "Everything is perfectly fine here. I should have just camped at the Border and waited for them to amass agai-"396

But this thought was interrupted. From behind him, a bird screamed and the leather door flap was ripped away. There was another shriek and the sound of the others squawking and rustling their wings.397

Envolt whirled around, his eyes wide as he studied the darkness of the stables. “What is the-“398

The final bird stopped its squawking and a rain of feathers shot out of the open doorway. He caught a glimpse of something pink and twisted dashing out.399

“They’ve followed me!” his mind screamed. “They’ve gotten past the border guard and followed me all the way here!”400

Silently, he broke into an exhausted run towards the center of town, to a ramshackle shanty that the Supervisor called home.401

“Two roads diverged in a wood.”402

The great General Yorvenchov had no idea where he had heard this, but it was definitely pertinent. There was some diverging going on here. He could see the opposing force off in the distance; makeshift firebrands of wood and slick tar already lit as they slowly advanced.403

“And I took the one less traveled by.” Volheiin said aloud. That was not actually what the saying had meant, but it somehow made sense to him.404

He stared down at the boy below him, who looked up at him curiously.405

“Just something I read somewhere,” he said.406

Byrd turned away from the General and continued sharpening his knifes.407

“That boy looks like someone,” thought Volheiin, “but408

(When will you be back?)409

“who?” He laughed aloud, a giggly sort of laugh he was having trouble controlling lately. It was just funny to him how some questions could never be answered. Dead people were trapped like cobwebs in his mind, and names without meaning bounced about and spilled into his consciousness all the time. His head was a roar of thoughts, a din of forgetfulness. And he was getting worse.410

He surveyed his army in his military fashion. He was ready for war, with his uniform cleaned and pressed, all the medals he once had now replaced by metal ornaments of his own making. His people were ready, too. While their enemies wielded the slow overkill of firebrands, his soldiers were equipped with the quick finality of poison darts and blades.411

“Two roads diverged in a wood.”412

His road and their road, fighting through the woods of idealism.413

“Does this mean we’re on the right path?” he asked himself. “Is there anything that’s less traveled by left?” He laughed again, confusing himself with the source of his own mirth. It was another uncontrollable, giggly laugh, and he couldn’t seem to stop it after it started.414

Echoing laughter shattered the morning silence as the farmer troops of the Secondary Council advanced on the town center.415

“What was that?” asked Sparrowhawk, his wide eyes darting about.416

“Oh, no,” said Maeida, “it’s him. He knows we’re coming.”417

The troop cornered the edge of the entrance to the Main Hall and came face to face with the militia of the Supervisor.418

The Supervisor looked over his opposition. Mostly farmers, a few from the building commission, and the little girl, Sparrowhawk, and the Philosopher’s associate were leading them.419

“Web I did not expect,” thought Volheiin, “But I knew it would be the witchy brat and the loudmouth at the head.” He looked down at Byrd, who was still sharpening knifes, and then looked up quickly, his eyes wide, as if he’d just remembered something important. “Then that must mean Lever is either among them or dead.” But no remorse crossed his mind. “That was plan A anyway. I knew that would eventually come to a head. Now plan B will clean up what A left alive.”420

Maeida stared at the General, trying for a reading. She couldn’t get anything but fevered bits of frantic nothing.421

“Maybe that’s all his mind has become,” she thought. “It rots, just like he does. He is the Cryptkeeper.”422

General Yorvenchov stared down at the powerful little girl from his place upon the speaking podium, knowing she was trying to read him again.423

“Should I give the order to attack, General?” Kraft asked, his wooden armor rattling as his ample belly shifted under it.424

“No,” Volheiin said, “wait on it.”425

He favored Maeida with his most sarcastic grin.426

“Do you want responsibility for starting this war?” he asked, his grin broadening. “Which is your road less traveled by?” He giggled again.427

Neighbors looked each other in utter spite, weapons raised and ready to spill blood. Kraft stared coldly at Web. Web stared apologetically back.428

In the distance, a rooster crowed at the first rays of sun that made their way above the horizon.429

Muscles tensed, tempers flared, the air thickened with the scent of battle about to happen.430

And then Captain Envolt stumbled in. He ran right in between the two groups, bewildered by the number of people gathered, but determined to deliver his message.431

“They,” panted the out-of-breath Captain, “followed—and—now—here-“ he managed to get out in between breaths.432

Something pinkish-gray and quick bounded noisily off a tin roof and landed on the Captain, it’s enormous claws puncturing his torso and tearing him in two.433

In a rain of bloody fireworks, the mutant arose from its crouched position of landing. More popped out from behind buildings, on top of roofs, sitting in the shadows.434

Men gasped, women screamed, everyone backing up a few steps.435

The General retained his smug, fearless smile as the black eyes of the mutants all looked up at him. He looked at them. A moment of understanding passed between the two; monster to monster.436

The Supervisor giggled again.437

A mutant turned to the opposing troops, his tongue lashing between his jagged teeth. Everyone took another step back, too scared to think. A few farmers on the flank turned and ran. Three mutants broke from the group, easily chased them down, and separated their heads from their bodies.438

“Oh, gods,” thought Web, “we’re dead!”439

The mutant facing the Secondary Council army walked slowly up to an older farmer on the front line. He looked into its eyes, unafraid. It pointed one claw and slowly, slowly slid it in to his chest. The man crumpled and fell.440

A younger man next to him stabbed at the thing with his pitchfork. It grunted sharply and tore out his throat. The other mutants and the Supervisor’s army just watched as the whole army of farmers moved in to attack the one mutant, anything near it falling in a spray of delicate red.441

Soon the other mutants joined, slowly and one-by-one. Men went down in waves, only one or two mutants falling along with them. Flung firebrands ignited buildings and homes until the whole center ring of the village went up in flames.442

The Supervisor’s army watched, stunned at the violence as they were captivated by it.443

Volheiin just laughed, his hysteria mounting as the battle raged on.444

Kraft turned towards the General as if seeing him for the first time. His open sores had multiplied since he arrived, and his skin had gained more of a greenish hue than before. His thinning hair had mostly fallen out, just as did his teeth. He had changed, fallen further down the path that he had started on by simply surviving. And he was laughing. And he was evil.445

“Maybe,” thought Kraft, “maybe he is the Cryptkeeper.”446

At this thought, a mutant turned from his business with the opposition and leapt over the heads of the Supervisor’s army onto the stage. Kraft’s eyes widened in their usual surprised way as the beast bit off his head and most of his shoulders. The people around Kraft, astonished at their sudden vulnerability, turned their weapons on the mutant. Now battle cries and mutant roars rang from both sides, with Volheiin’s constant laughter as an echoing backdrop. Nobody noticed the little girl slipping out of the fray and away from the village.447

Maeida didn’t even know she was running until she was almost to the edge of the town. She didn’t know where she was going until she reached her secret spot; her subway.448

She clambered into the darkness, tears running down her face.449

“Gone,” she thought, “all gone and ruined. I warned you, all of you.”450

Faces of the ones she lost ran through her mind, and her sobs echoed through the tunnel.451

“What if they find me? What if they don’t? What does it matter, I have nowhere to go!”452

Footsteps outside. Maeida held her breath as she stepped behind a pillar, pressing her face against the cool green and blue tiles.453

“Who could it be?” she wondered, imagining Volheiin’s rotted form ducking under the entrance way.454

“Maeida?” It was Byrd. “You’re here aren’t you?”455

Maeida dried her eyes as best she could and stepped out from behind the pillar. “Yeah, I’m here Byrd. How did you know to come here?”456

Byrd shrugged. “How did we all know?” he said.457

A small multitude of children was lined up behind him, some in the wooden armor of the Supervisor, some in the plainclothes of a farmer. All of them were united in their loss, and they had only one place left to go.458

“There is a future yet,” she said, unsure of where she had heard it before. “There is a future yet.”459

It was another beautiful afternoon, and he was fairly sure he had almost caught up. Through the gentle haze of midday desert heat, he could see their outlines in the sun, and he was sure they could see him. His walk fell to a crawl as the hours dragged by, and when they finally found him, he was on his belly, ready to die of the oven sun.460

“I’ve been following you.” Volheiin smiled at Maeida, his skin hanging off his face in grayish, sun-baked strips, his teeth crooked and loose in his mouth. “The mutants ate the village and left me, so I had to leave too.” He giggled, his horse voice rattling like beads in his throat. “I’m the Supervisor, you know. You have to help me.”461

Maeida slowly turned and began to walk the opposite way. Volheiin reached up and caught Byrd by the ankle.462

“You know, you look like Arn,” he giggled again. “That’s my son.” He laughed hysterically and then silenced abruptly. “I remember that, yes. I remember things now.”463

Thoughts collided in Volheiin’s head, breaking apart in starburst patterns of reminiscence and forgetfulness. That little red door in his mind, his last organized thought, had been thrown open and now he had nothing left.464

“I don’t want to look like Arn,” said Byrd, covering his face.465

“It’s ok,” whispered Maeida. She pulled her doll from her pocket.466

(The use of your toys pleases the gods.)467

“Good job, gods,” thought Maeida, “paper gods, burned with the rest of my village.”468

She set down her doll; set down her gods in front of Volheiin. He watched as the rest of the children followed suit, covering the ground before him with dolls, rattles, tops, and other colorful bits of homemade childhood.469

Maeida walked on.470

They didn’t talk again until the figure of the Supervisor faded into the distance.471

“They were the same.” Maeida said to no one in particular.472

“Who?” asked a small, plump blond girl.473

“The Cryptkeeper and the Supervisor. The past ruined us.”474

Silence ensued.475

“What do you think the Stormseekers will do when they get back?” Byrd turned his head towards Maeida.476

“They’ll probably try to rebuild.” She sighed. “Pick up where we left off.”477

“Why don’t we just go home, Maeida?” asked a younger boy with red hair. “Just to go back and check?”478

“Because,” she said, “our world is dead. I heard that from him.” Everyone knew who ‘he’ was. “If we have learned anything from his madness, let us learn to walk forward."479

And so they did.480