“We care because we are human,
and we are human because we care.
He who shuns his brothers and sisters
is not human.”
Sister Candice, Berwick Chapter
At a stage early on in its existence, Man decided he would be different from the rest of the animal kingdom. He was made of the same stuff, for sure, but his animalistic motivations would be forced to contend with new powers of logic, emotion and free will.
No longer was he content with ignorance, he sought truths. Fed up with barbarity, he sought society.
His base desires have deeper roots, however, and continue to abuse his motivations for their own purposes. History, it seems, is merely a landscape pitted with the outcomes of the constant struggle between the divine and the base.
In the sparkling streets of Newport, Rhode Island, a figure stood silently and watched as busy people bustled by. There was always motion. Motley crowds of individuals did important things and went to places urgently to perform more important things.
There was a hum. If you took away the cars, the buzzing lights, and all the other man made paraphernalia that filled the world, there would still be that hum.
Low toned, omnipresent, it sat just under the range of hearing, almost to the point of being felt.
It was the sound of humanity, of civilization. It had been around for thousands of years, and still it had not changed.
From the ancient Egyptians working the fields, through to the Spanish explorers crossing great seas, across nations and cultures, the hum remained unchanged.
It rippled. It bobbed. It carried on as the people that made it continued to do exactly what it was that they did, this and that.
Ryan was unnoticed in the throng. In his gray pants and black jersey he was neither threatening nor appealing. He did not look wealthy enough to rob, nor was he overly attractive.
His brown hair was cropped just so, not in the latest fashion, nor in some outmoded way. He stood against a wall, covered heavily in graffiti, and it only complemented his unimportance, hiding him in full view from the others walking, running, strutting by.
He closed his eyes and listened closely. The hum was being throttled by the ungraceful mechanical whirring and electronic noise surrounding him.
Cars honked, phones squealed, neon signs buzzed like gnats. Overhead a maglev shuttle clattered and clanked along its magnetic supports as it ferried those within to somewhere better.
There was life in Newport. Human life. It was one of the few spots in America that had been untouched by the ravages of the Hanean War. The people of the town had not been unaffected, of course.
Every citizen had family and friends lost in the disaster. Not that a casual observer would notice. In the years following the bombs, chemical and radioactive warfare, the wounds healed, the media reported less and less about the atrocities, and it became easier for the individual to go back to his life.
Life. It was and continues to be the great conundrum. It is a fallacy to believe that all things natural are beneficial and benign, and therefore anything artificial is, by default, an evil.
But life is indeed unnatural. By rights it should never have happened. Religions have grappled loosely with it, scientists have tried to put it down to statistics, but nothing comes close to explaining how it came to be.
But still it exists. Beyond any doubt.
The conundrum lies in the observations of natural systems. A rock, strong and sturdy, will eventually be eroded to dust and be strewn across the ground without so much as a hole to remember it.
A river may bubble along for eons only to dry out, leaving a cracked bed. A gigantic star will consume all of its fuel and gradually sputter out.
Little by little a system wears against the onslaught of other systems, bashed, beaten, ground and pulverized down to nothingness, swallowed and reformed.
But life fights against nature. Gravity pulls it down, so it gets up again. The sun sears its skin, so it tans. In freezing cold climates under sheets of ice moss will grow. Next to volcanic vents deep under a crushing weight of water bacteria will thrive. Chip a stone and it will remain so, but cut a finger and it will stubbornly heal.
Death is not the opposite of life, only a stepping stone in a perpetual, mind boggling cycle. Without death there could be no life, no way for the battered being to make way for the next soldier.
No, Entropy is the true antagonist, a vile evil that life does battle with every moment of every day. It is an insidious evil that comes in many names. 'Chaos' it is called, and 'Disorder'. But, by far, the most popular name of this evil is 'Nature'.
Nature is a monster. It beats us, burns us, suffocates and kills us, yet spitefully we survive, struggling and fighting against the gaping maw of nothingness.
Some call it 'Mother', but what mother denies her children? What mother would sooner see them rot than grow?
And so Ryan listened. He listened to a girl chatter on a telephone about nothing in particular. He listened to a car sounding its horn angrily and the driver cursing profanities at the pedestrians passing in front of him.
A knock to his shoulder and a muttered apology from nobody in particular brought him out of his thoughts.
“These people have indeed lost their way,” he said to himself, “They have grown complacent. They do not hear the whistling of the wind coming to claim their souls, but instead have glutted themselves with indulgences.”
A dog scampered past, paused to sniff his feet, and then continued along. He watched as it was swallowed by a sea of legs.
His shoulders slumped as a heavy weight lowered upon them. For a while he stood, desperately trying to avoid the conclusion that was dancing in his mind.
He sighed deeply, far too deeply for a teenager, “And so the struggle must be reignited.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked along with the crowd until he came to the shuttle station at Memorial Boulevard.
A short while later he had climbed the stairs, looking out over the sea of people waiting impatiently to climb into a pod-shuttle.
A stranger amongst the strange, he blended perfectly on the outside. Inside, however, he was churning. So many people. So many sad, unhappy faces.
From high up on the stairs, the view of the water to the West would have been inspiring, if anybody had cared to look at it.
A janitor dressed in a drab orange wandered around aimlessly, picking up this and that off the floor.
Ryan laughed softly to himself, watching as the crowd dropped their waste, and the janitor picked it up and put it in his little bag. He did not laugh out of spite, rather at the irony: The lowliest among them was the also most worthy, for it was he who acted most against entropy.
To his right was a dull door leading to the magnetic levitation control facility. The handle would not budge.
“Hey!” yelled a voice, “You're not supposed to be over there! The shuttle's that way! Hey!”
Ryan turned to see the janitor marching over to him. He stood still and waited as the man puffed his way toward him.
“You're not supposed to be over here!” he said again.
“I did hear you,” said Ryan.
“What are you, eh? Some kind of smart ass?” sneered the janitor into Ryan's face. He smelled like stale alcohol mixed with chewing mint. The skin on his head was flaky under a crop of thinning, dark hair.
Ryan sighed, “I am not, as you say, a 'smart ass'.”
His contempt was palpable. “Furthermore I can assure you that I have good reason to be here.”
The janitor looked unsure. The man, an adolescent really, before him had not seemed terribly important before, but, as he watched, an air of certainty, of grandness, grew about him.
He bit his lip and managed to say, “Oh yeah?”
Ryan rolled his eyes. Dealing with the general population was not something he enjoyed doing. “Yes. And those reasons have nothing to do with you. If you wish to bring this to the attention of Manager Keith Sullivan...”
“Oh, you know Mister Sully, then?” said the janitor, his face breaking into a smile, “That's all right then. Sorry about the barking and all that, you know, but we get rags around here sometimes, doing all sorts. But you're not a rag. So if Mister Sully needs you to go in, that's good enough for me. Here, let me get this, then.”
In truth he was relieved that he did not need to take the matter any further. It was out of his hands now, and he could return to the task for which he was employed.
The janitor fumbled in his pockets and produced a key, unlocked the door and ushered Ryan in. Sullivan was a powerful man about the station. He wore a dark suit, kept a trim mustache, and earned quite a bit more than the janitor did.
As a consequence, he had learned that anyone bearing 'Mister Sully's' name also belonged to such a powerful clique.
“So, you a rep or something? Only ask 'cause Mister Sully ain't so fond of salesmen, you know.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Only you don't look like a salesman.”
Ryan looked impatient.
“I am not,” he said, “And my business is my own and Mister Sullivan's.”
“Oh.”
“I thank you, and I will be sure to mention your vigilance to Manager Sullivan next time I see him, mister, er...”
“Ashraf.”
Ryan smiled.
“Ashraf,” he repeated, “I will be sure to remember your name.”
“It's not an unusual name, where I'm from.”
“I did not say that it was.”
“Only that a lot of people do. See, I'm actually a descendant of the great house of El Vizul. That's my last name, see? They were a powerful influence across Arabia and Syria before the war,” said Ashraf, eager to share his tale, “They owned oil pipelines, fishing stocks, supermarkets. Why, back then you couldn't sneeze without the permission...”
Ryan held up his hand for silence, “Ashraf, I do not mean to be rude...”
The janitor was crestfallen, “Oh, of course, of course. You gotta do some important stuff, then. Just be sure to close this when you’re done.”
He pinched and pulled his overalls, turned and went back to picking up bits of insignificant items of rubbish and putting them in his bag. Ryan watched him for a bit longer, then went in and closed the door behind him.
A hall stretched before him, with pipes and electrical cables running the length, lit with a series of tired fluorescent lights.
Whirs and rumblings echoed throughout. The buzz of the lights mingled with the clanking of pipes while a compressor down the hall joined in with its own chorus. It was like listening to an orchestra warming up, only that they never got to the main song.
Although it sounded like discord, there was a rhythm.
It was the rhythm of machines doing what they were supposed to be doing. Individually they were insignificant, but as a whole the system came together to fulfill a purpose.
If one machine stopped making the right noise, as it inevitably would, it would be repaired or replaced, whichever was more convenient or cost effective. The parts of the old machine would be broken, stripped, melted and crushed to become, perhaps, part of a new machine, a new purpose.
Ryan made his way down the hall slowly, listening for the tell-tale sound of workers but nobody was about. The whole magnetic levitation control system was fully automated.
A primary control system was fed a myriad of data from sensors scattered about the tracks, compressors and shuttles, which it used to ensure that the shuttles stayed on the tracks. It was backed up with a redundant control center which would kick in if the primary system ever failed.
It had never failed.
A camera, recessed neatly in the wall, blinked at Ryan as he went passed, silently watching his progress. His presence was not expected, certainly not one of the normal happenings within that tunnel. In a split second the decision was made to report the incident to the security server.
Three levels up, in a small tower overlooking the station, Henry was kicking back in his swivel chair. It was a drudge of a job, but it paid money. Money meant that he could enjoy things like eating and sleeping.
It was a bonus that he often employed these two favorite past times while earning his keep.
In the past year there had only been a handful of 'incidents'. Many were concerned patrons worrying about a bunch of loitering rags.
Others had involved missing children, all of which were found without incident, having wandered off to get lost in the throng. One of the more interesting events had kept Henry occupied for a whole three hours. An actual, live crabman had made its way into the underground power unit.
A few blasts from his sidearm had made short work of it, spattering quivering bits of flesh all over. What took some time, apart from cleaning up, was figuring out how it had gotten past the barriers.
A bit of crawling and poking around revealed that the main sewage grate had several bars melted clean through. No sign of any other intruder was found, and the incident was put down to a breach by Luddite fanatics. It became yesterday's news, then last week's. Within two months it was all but forgotten, but at least Henry had a welcome distraction retelling the story to anybody that would listen, and a grisly souvenir in the form of a crabman's dried up hand.
A monitor flashed to life, beeping noisily, requesting his immediate attention.
“Intrusion Detected - Control Access Corridor,” it read, showing details of a figure skulking along a corridor, the images warped from the angle of the cameras coupled with their fish-eye lenses.
It took a few seconds for Henry to put his coffee down and sit up noisily, and a few seconds more to grasp the situation. The figure did not look imposing or menacing, more like it was wandering into a store to browse.
Henry heaved himself out of his comfortable chair and strapped on his holster.
No doubt the access door had been left unlocked and this was some curious foreigner who was looking for the bathroom.
Still, if one had gotten in, there might be more, and if a bunch of rags were to cause havoc in the tunnels, he would never hear the end of it. Henry checked his sidearm, swigged the last of his coffee, took a deep breath and opened the elevator. The doors slid closed behind him.
After a few seconds they opened again, displaying the service entrance, well lit and welcoming. He stepped out cautiously and looked around. Everything was as it should be; the double doors on the other side of the room were sealed, all lights were on.
An air pump kicked in, whirring for a few seconds before coughing to a stop.
To his right he fiddled with a latch and opened the cover to a security monitor. He punched in a few keys and it brought up a map, highlighting the currently tracked location of the intruder.
Making a plan in his head, Henry turned off the monitor, closed the cover and walked to the double doors. They slid open and he stepped lightly into the corridor.
A gush of coolant through an overhead pipe made him flinch, but he kept his eyes focused at the end of the corridor.
There were a few manholes joining corridors here and there, and there was a chance that the intruder could use these to escape, but these were inhabited by muttrats. They would be sure to let out a squeal if anything came close. No, if the intruder was around, he would be wandering the corridors.
Henry picked up the pace and trotted as quietly as his jangling harness would allow him down the hall to the corner.
He turned to the left, past the coolant recycling processor with its enormous inlet valves, and took the next right. He paused every so often to listen for footfalls or any other sign to betray the location of the intruder but above the hissing and groaning of the pumps, fans and compressors he could not make out anything.
It was unnerving. In his office above he had complete control, video and sound at his fingertips, air conditioning, coffee and a comfortable seat. Down here, in the bowels of the magnetic levitation system, his presence was insignificant.
Beads of sweat started to break out on his brow. He opened an inspection panel and viewed the read out.
It meant nothing to him, giving data relating to flow amounts and temperatures, all in green. Everything was as it should be.
Funnily enough, it did not reassure Henry. It felt like the hush of a crowd before a spectacle, the calm before a tempest. Something was not right and that something was linked to whoever was down here.
Where the hell was he, anyway?
He closed the panel silently and turned down the next two corridors and halted. Around this area was where the computer had signaled the last location of the trespasser.
Gingerly he peered around the corner to see yet another empty corridor. A blast of steam escaped from a pipe at his feet, billowing throughout the corridor before being whisked away by the air extraction system.
Instinctively his hand crept to his holster and touched the hilt of his pistol. Adrenaline crept through his stomach to his chest, creating a sickly sensation of anticipation.
Would he have to fire? Surely not. Surely this whole thing was a misunderstanding, and he would just need to give a few gruff instructions in slow English, make a few hand gestures and politely show the intruder out. That was all.
No, that was not all, and his stomach told him as much.
Quickly he checked behind him, in case anything had dared to follow. He drew out his pistol and held it at the ready, pointing toward the floor with his finger alongside the trigger.
Another blast of steam swam around his boots. He took a few steps forward, listening intently, scanning for anything that could possibly indicate another person.
From beyond, there was nowhere else to go except through a couple of manholes, which he quickly inspected, or through to the control system maintenance, and unless the interloper had a key, he would be well trapped.
A muttrat scampered away into a service tunnel at his approach. They were harmless, when not in a pack, being nothing more than a mutated product of the radioactive and toxic cocktails unleashed during the Hanean War.
He peered around the corner and saw, at the far end, a figure performing an operation upon the access door.
Henry took a breath and stepped around, sighting the laser target directly on the intruder's back.
“Freeze!” he called, walking with deliberate strides, letting his boots clank heavily upon the floor's metal grating. A blank face turned to look at him.
“Put your hands up,” called Henry, feeling more in control now that he could see the intruder in front of him, “Slowly now.”
Ryan stopped what he was doing and did as he was asked. He stood up straight and placed his hands above his head, looking expectantly at Henry.
He was relieved. No, he would not have to shoot, but he might need to put a fist in somewhere. Maybe. With a bit of luck.
“Step back from door now,” commanded Henry, “And keep those hands up. That's it, slowly now.”
He sighted the laser square on Ryan's chest, finger still next to the trigger.
Henry kept the ball rolling, “Your name?”
“Ryan. And yours?”
“Ryan who?”
“Ryan. And you are?”
That was exactly what Henry wanted, a reason to be hostile.
“Don't be a smart ass. You a Luddite? Huh?”
“No. I am not a Luddite.”
“You know what this is? I've got this aimed directly at your chest,” he said, “I don't know if you've ever seen what a burst from a S-40 does, but I can assure you, you don't want to find out, and I don't want to have to clean it up afterward. Now, what's your full name?”
Ryan remained silent with is hands above his head. Henry began to feel uncomfortable. He had caught this intruder red handed, he had the upper hand, yet the way Ryan looked through him, he may as well have been holding his coffee rather than an S-40 pistol.
“What are you doing down here? Actually, before you answer that, how did you get down here?” asked Henry, annoyed that he did not appear to be threatening.
“The answer to the second question is, I came through the door and walked down the corridors until I arrived at this location.”
Henry snarled, “What did I say about being a smart ass?”
Ryan remained deadpan, “You said not to be a smart ass, and that you had your pistol aimed at my chest. You then went on to ask a redundant question in relation...”
“What? Shut it!” yelled Henry, his voice finding a convenient gap in the constant background noise, “I'm not here to play games. How did you open the door?”
“I did not open the door. The janitor outside opened the door.”
“Why? You know him?”
“I know the janitor, Ashraf, well enough,” Ryan nodded, “Well enough for him to open the door for me, at least.”
Henry licked his lips.
“I'll have to take that up with him later,” he said, “Now the other question, why are you here?”
Ryan smirked, “I do believe the question was, 'what am I doing here', and this I shall answer first. I am attempting to open this door to the control system for the maglev shuttles. To this end I have attached a resonance lock pick, fashioned by colleagues of mine, onto the locking mechanism which I was about to activate before you came along.”
Henry's eyebrows furrowed as he took all this in.
“Right, OK, so we're still being a smart ass then,” he grumbled, “But I guess you're cooperating.”
Ryan nodded, “I am. And now I will answer your other question, 'why am I here'. I asked myself that question a long time ago. It is a question that has no single answer, but can be answered only through one's actions.”
“Yeah, ha ha. I don't do philosophy,” growled Henry, adjusting the pistol in his hands, “And I'm getting tired of your shit. Tell me plain and simple, why are you here?”
Ryan took a breath.
“It would do no harm to tell you, but then again, it would do no good. Still, if you insist... I am here to plant a disruptor on the two control systems, thus derailing up to twenty shuttles and causing injury to and the deaths of hundreds, potentially thousands of people.”
Henry could not believe his ears. Blood drained to his feet.
“You... what?” he muttered.
Ryan took a breath and repeated, “I am here to plant a disruptor on the two control systems...”
“Why? Why would you want to do that?” blustered Henry, “You bloody Luddite!”
Ryan's face broke for a second into a scowl, but he regained it quickly. “You mistake me. I am not a Luddite. Moreover, I do not want to do it, I never said I wanted to do it, but that is why I am here. It is something that must be done, and I am tasked with it.”
Henry stood silent. If this had been a crabman he could have blown it away. If it was a group of rags a simple threat of violence or a blast from his pistol would have sent them running.
This situation, however, this was something else entirely, something which he started to wish he had not come across.
“My arms are getting tired, may I put them down?” asked Ryan.
“No. Hell no. Hell no! You can walk over here slowly, turn around and face the wall, is what you can do. Alright? Come on, and no fast movements or I'll put a hole in you so big you can stick your disruptor through it.”
Ryan shrugged and stepped toward Henry, his feet barely sounding on the metal.
“That's it,” said Henry, glad to be getting this over with, “Like I said, nice and slowly now. Good, now turn and face the wall.”
Ryan did so.
Henry propped the pistol under Ryan's neck and reached behind him to feel for his cuffs somewhere in his belt.
In fact, he had never needed to use them in his entire career. For a split second his brain fought to remember from basic training the proper way to apply them, but as soon as his fingers grasped the familiar metallic arches it came flooding back.
“Let's get these cuffs on you, smart ass, good and proper, and then you can tell the Governor at City Hall what you just told me,” Henry muttered.
He pressed the cuff against Ryan's wrist and closed it with satisfaction, pulling it roughly down. Confident that this man in front of him no longer posed no threat, he holstered his pistol to free his other hand.
Henry grabbed Ryan's right hand to bring it down, but no sooner had he done so than Ryan twisted, whipped around, slapped Henry a blinding blow across his eyes and took his pistol out from the holster, holding it firmly under his chin.
It was a terrible turn of events. Henry's head finally caught up with his racing heart, cursing himself for his situation. Ryan thrust him against the other wall where he stood, clutching his damaged eye.
“If you put your hand anywhere near your belt, I will shoot you. If you try to call anyone, I will shoot you. If you give me any reason to think that you will interfere with what I must do, I will shoot you,” said Ryan impassively, “Now lie face d