The moon barely provided enough light for him to see as he forced his way through some bushes and into the forest. From his duffle bag, he pulled out a large LED flashlight that was much stronger than the light on his access pod. With his light bouncing around in all directions, Aris pushed his way through the dense forest. The sounds of small branches and twigs snapping beneath his feet combined with his heavy breathing. It was the first time in Aris’ life where he was exposed to such a rural landscape. Having spent his whole life in a hyper-advanced society, he had never been in a forest before.
It was the middle of the night and he was trudging through the forest on a wild-goose chase. It was certainly not the way he envisioned his night turning out.
Struggling to maintain his footing on the wet forest bed, Aris ploughed through the unforgiving terrain, handling each obstacle that came up. Spider webs and low hanging branches dangled in his face, but were shoved aside, only to be replaced by some undetermined insect that he frantically swatted away. Of all the potential hazards nature doled out, the one thing to cause him to lose his footing was a slick metal surface. Without warning, Aris’ feet slipped out from under him and he went down hard. His flashlight fumbled out of his hand and turned off. He moaned in agony and grimaced in pain. Now laying on the forest floor in utter darkness, he nervously felt around for his flashlight. Upon finding it, he turned it back on and returned to his feet.
What the heck did I step on? he thought. Shining his light at the ground, he was surprised to see a reflective metal surface glowing brightly. A stop sign? he said to himself. What’s a stop sign doing in the middle of the forest?
When he looked around again, he acquired a different perspective. Although he couldn’t see much, he could sense an unusual pattern in the growth of the forest. He shone his light around him and spotted an old fire hydrant, a sewer cap, and a streetlight – all of which were covered in living organisms and hardly recognizable.
Continuing on his way, he followed the GPS on his access pod. After a few more minutes, the forest became easier to navigate. As he pressed on, he discovered a pathway – the second indication he was on the right track. The path eventually led him to the forest’s edge, where he stood on a precipice overlooking the remnants of an old neighbourhood.
The moon cast a golden glow on the old buildings, highlighting the tops of the grand structures that poked through the tree canopy. The remains of a once prosperous civilization now lay in waste. As with most abandoned parts of the city, it was losing a battle against Mother Nature.
An eerie feeling consumed him, almost as if he was in a lucid dream. Aris looked at his GPS. It was no longer functioning, which made him increasingly nervous.
Descending down the slope, Aris emerged from the forest and entered the abandoned district. Now strolling through the dark street that separated the vacant buildings, he felt he was making progress. Surely whoever beckoned him would reveal themselves to him. Shining his flashlight left and right, Aris took notice of the crumbling buildings. They told a tale of what had happened not too long before, giving him a different kind of history lesson than the ones he received in school. By his rough estimates, the neighbourhood was over 200-years old and hardly resembled the city he had grown up in.
As he walked aimlessly, he eventually saw the silhouettes of three dark figures emerge from an abandoned subway entrance. He recognized Alex and Milo immediately and inferred who the other woman was.
When Alex reached the street level, she looked around in awe. It was the first time she had seen the old part of town herself. Weeds had replaced much of the pavement, disguising it from satellite images. Then she saw Aris.
“Aris, you made it!” Alex called out ecstatically.
“How’d you know I was here?” he asked.
“Security system.”
“Hi, I’m Mara,” Mara said as she bowed.
“It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Aris.”
“I’ve heard a lot of good things about you,” Mara said.
Aris smiled at the thought of Alex talking about him to her mother. Milo recognized that as well and became even more jealous of him.
“Can you please tell me what’s going on?” he asked. “Your face is all over the news.”
“We couldn’t just let her rot in prison,” Milo said in a condescending tone. “Someone had to rescue her.”
“Well, aren’t you a hero,” Aris quipped. “Alex is lucky to have you as a friend.”
The remark irritated Milo, but he did not retaliate.
They entered the abandoned subway system together and upon Aris’ arrival, dozens of people greeted him. This made him feel welcome as if he was the guest of honour.
“This is quite the set up you guys have here,” he commented, looking around in amazement.
“Thanks,” Mara replied.
“So this is where you go when you want to hide?” he asked. “Quite literally, you go underground.”
They came up to the equipment room and Aris saw a strange contraption hooked up to a series of really old monitors.
“What’s this thing?” he asked.
“It’s a dream recorder.”
“What does it do?”
“It records dreams, dumbass,” Milo said.
“Milo, be nice.”
“The device simply records a person's brain activity during REM sleep and then creates a digital copy.”
“That sounds amazing. What are you guys doing with it?”
“We recorded Mara’s dream and uploaded that digital copy into my brain. My brain reproduced that same brain activity so I was able to watch her dream in vivid detail in my head as if I was watching a movie.”
“Incredible. What was that like?”
“Well, it was a pretty interesting experience, but the system fried before I could experience the entire dream. However, it wasn’t a complete waste. We managed to obtain a partial transfer of the file so I was able to recover bits and pieces.”
“Why didn’t you just upload the dream back into Mara’s brain?”
“That’s a valid question. We thought my brain may be able to make connections hers could not. We figured since I have no emotional connection to the event, I could get a cleaner analysis of the dream, which would be objective and free from bias.”
“So what did the upload reveal?”
“It was very interesting actually. I saw Mara with Maxim Morrison, they were both quite young and from what I could tell, seemed to be very much in love with each other,” Alex began to explain. “Maxim told Mara he had a secret, but wasn’t sure how to tell her.”
“What secret?” Aris asked impatiently.
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. He showed her the plans for the space program. How he intends to build a ship to explore new extraterrestrial minerals, such as gold to put in the atmosphere.”
“Don’t we already have enough gold in the atmosphere?” Aris asked.
“Well, that’s where it gets a little murky.”
“Wait, how is that a secret, we already know about the plans for the ship from the schematics we found.”
“Right, here’s where the secret comes in – the mission is bogus.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has no plans on using the ship for space exploration or to mine gold. The purpose of the ship is to sustain life.”
“Why?”
“Is it okay for me to continue?” Alex asked her mother.
“Yes, it’s fine,” Mara said.
“The dream sequence was a little sporadic, but from what I could gather, he had asked her to go with him. He kept referring to Earth as a “broken planet”, and was trying to convince her to leave it behind and start a new colony somewhere else.”
“Wow, that’s heavy.”
“Wait, there’s more.”
“After that, the conversation shifted to me – their unborn baby. Maxim confessed that he had been conducting secret experiments on me without Mara’s knowle
dge. He told her I would be very special and would be the first of my kind – a child born with such extreme gifts, that it may be considered the beginning of a new race of humans. I was supposed to be the first of this so-called super race, but there were to be others. Together, we would all leave Earth and form a new colony elsewhere.
“Maxim Morrison had been doing secret experiments on you to make you the way you are?” Aris asked.
“Apparently.”
“Somehow that makes me feel better about myself and less of a loser.”
“I’m glad it makes you feel better, but how do you think I feel?”
“Yeah, Aris, don’t be so insensitive,” Milo scolded.
“So when Maxim told Mara the truth, she became furious and left him. I felt a lot of pain and sadness mixed with anxiety and betrayal.”
“He was no longer the man I loved,” Mara added. “He was power hungry with a malevolent agenda. I didn’t want to be associated with him anymore so I ran away and hid. Being single, young, and poor, I did not qualify for child rearing. I knew if I got back with Maxim I would be okay, but I couldn’t do it. It was the hardest choice I ever had to make. I decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and hide it from the outside world – only a few of my closest friends knew. They helped me so much by bringing me food and taking care of me, they are like my family, and that’s why many of them are still with me today.”
The group remained silent. They had all seen the video of the horrendous labour. Now with a few more details of the back story, they could infer the rest.
Chapter Thirty-Two
After describing the dream to Aris, there was still one very important thing Alex wanted to discuss.
“Aris, I appreciate you coming all this way, and so far I haven’t mentioned why I beckoned you. Milo and I have not been feeling well.”
“You want me to make you some soup?” Aris jested.
“No, we called you because there’s something wrong with us. Milo and I have been experiencing a lot of the same symptoms – nose bleeds, light-headedness, and delirium. We were beginning to piece together a theory and wanted your input. You were so helpful when we were trying to find Mara, we figured you might have some insight on this issue.”
“Sounds like you two have the Doomsday Virus.”
“What’s the Doomsday Virus?” Milo asked.
“Haven’t you been following the news?”
Alex shook her head and made a face as if to indicate it was a dumb question. “I’ve been in prison then hiding underground.”
“They’re talking about it on the news – millions of people are mysteriously dying and nobody knows the cause.”
“Millions?” Milo said skeptically.
“Well, thousands, but still that’s a lot. They’re calling it a plague.”
“A plague of biblical proportions?”
“What?”
“Never mind him, he’s just being silly. Tell us everything you know about this virus,” Alex said.
“I don’t know much, but not everyone is dying, many of them are just getting really ill like you guys.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wow, aren’t you just full of answers,” Milo said in a snarky tone.
“So tell me what you guys have come up with so far,” Aris said.
“We were exploring natural elements, but weren’t getting very far with it.”
“What about time?” Aris offered.
“What do you mean?”
“This virus just spawned abruptly and wasn’t around last year. Something caused it to occur now rather than before.”
“Great, we’ll add time to the list,” Milo said condescendingly.
“Also, what do natural elements have to do with illnesses?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Are minerals considered natural elements?”
“They could be, but I have the entire mineral classification in my brain – over 4000 known minerals, and I have never heard of any of them causing an illness,” Alex remarked.
“But if you have too much exposure to one thing abruptly, couldn’t that be poisonous?”
“What minerals have we been exposed to though?” Milo asked.
“What about gold,” Aris offered. Everyone was silent. “Think about it, gold is everywhere – we grind it up and put it in our atmosphere to negate the harmful effects of the sun. It only stands to reason that if we have been breathing tiny gold particles into our lungs since we were born, it would eventually cause us to become sick.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s it!” Alex exclaimed. “Aris, you’re a genius. The cause was right in front of our faces the entire time. We didn’t think of it because none of us have lived in a world where the sky was any other colour than gold so we took it for granted.”
“The timing is significant since putting gold in the atmosphere has never been done before in the history of humankind and we’ve been breathing in gold dust our whole lives. Maybe now we’re beginning to see the long-term, residual effects from that.”
“It’s not a virus at all.”
“If it’s not a virus, does that mean it can’t be cured? It’s not like we can take the gold out of the atmosphere. Also, why are some people becoming ill and other people like me feel fine?” Aris asked.
“Most likely there have been different levels of exposure. My guess is that you’ve spent very little time outdoors.”
“It’s true, I rarely leave my apartment, and whenever I do, I rarely leave the pyramid. The pyramid has filtered air so I haven’t been breathing in that gold crap like everyone else. See, sometimes staying inside playing video games can save your life!”
“Of course, like any good science, we need to test this hypothesis. Can you plug in and see if we can find any other reported occurrences or relevant data on gold poisoning?” Alex asked.
“It’s no use, you won’t be able to plug in here,” Mara said. “We don’t believe in it so we installed towers to scramble the connection. Remember, we are an agrarian society and don’t want to be corrupted by the modern world.”
“I hate to break this to you Mara, because you seem like a nice lady, but you are inundated with relics from the modern world. Technology consumes almost every aspect of your life,” Aris pointed out.
“The technology we use is fine since it is well understood by now. Humans have a tendency to rush into the latest technological innovation seemingly unaware and unconcerned of any ramifications that may follow. Look at the case in point; they solved one problem and created another.”
“You and your daughter are a lot alike.”
“So I’ve been told,” Mara smirked. “Even though we can’t plug in here, we have the next best thing. Follow me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mara led the way to the library. When they arrived, they stopped at the entrance and stared into the vast assortment of written knowledge. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the collection. At one point in time, the library would have represented the world’s most comprehensive database of knowledge, but now the same amount of information could be stored in something the size of a fingernail.
“Please tell me this is organized?” Aris asked.
“Yes, it’s organized according to the Dewey Decimal System.”
“I have no idea what that means, but let’s get started.”
Mara walked them through the narrow rows that were packed tightly with old and dusty books.
“So these are books, huh?” Milo said. “I’ve viewed pictures of them, but have never seen any up close.”
The shelves extended to the ceiling, which was over twelve-feet high. At the far end was the science section. As Alex passed through the rows of books, she felt like she was walking inside a giant brain. She extended her arms out to her sides and allowed the books to graze her fingertips as if she could absorb the information just by touching them.
“Okay,
so these three shelves are all our books on science. Please remember to put the books back where you found them.”
The four of them branched out in separate ways and combed through the vast collection of books trying to find anything related to symptoms for gold poisoning.
“I couldn’t imagine living in a world where people had to read books to get information,” Milo said to anyone within earshot. Nobody responded. “It must have taken people forever to get through one of these things, and how much of the information could they possibly retain?”
He picked up a book with a familiar title, Plato’s Republic. As he flipped through the pages he couldn’t help but think of how long it would take if he actually had to read it. He had downloaded the book many years ago and the complete transfer only took a few seconds. He flipped through a few pages and happened to stumble onto the section about the guardian class.
The premise was Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon discussing a theoretical city that would be both just and prosperous. They recognized that people’s natural abilities varied and each person was born with aptitudes that fit them for different jobs. Each person would therefore adopt a role in society, such as builders, weavers, farmers, cobblers, doctors, and so on. In regards to who ought to rule, it was determined that someone who was expert in kingship would be required – the guardian class.
Milo continued to read about what Socrates thought a guardian should possess.
The guardians will be gentle with friends and high-spirited with enemies, they’ll also be courageous, fast, strong, and have keen senses. The guardians will be the eldest and will have the best skill in watching over society. These men are instilled with great power, so every precaution must be made to preserve them. Therefore, they’ll be selected from a very young age from the ones that demonstrate a certain guardian disposition, and will be nurtured all the way up until they can fulfill their role. This class will be few, but the ones selected will prevail as sublime leaders. Among other things, they will be self-disciplined, which is the opposite of having a weakness of the will. As such, they will not be easily persuaded or tempted by things that might corrupt their soul.
Milo, now thoroughly getting into the text, smirked when he encountered the next part.
It is said that when a person is around bad company or a bad upbringing, these negative forces will incline his personality to be weak and corrupt, which will overpower any good inclinations. But if a person is self-disciplined, the better part will rule over the worst part.