Defenestrate The Masses
Tempting The Future
Her boots crunched the fanfare to her arrival. Edward had already started the fifth book, “Abandoning the Fight”, and it wasn’t getting any easier. The Sword of Damocles rested unsteadily over his head, even as anxiety streamed in. Devereaux was certainly brow-beating him with the possibility of sanctions, but there were none that would alter his current practice.
At least there was Helena. Edward assumed the better of her now, a concept that sat quite comfortably on him. Her closeness kept him warm in both heart and soul. She was perhaps what he had always needed. She could be curt or brash sometimes, but Edward put this down to being indirectly affected by the company she kept, and the things she had been made to do. Edward assumed she wanted a solution as much as he did. He had softened and had begun to reveal the secret verses he would find in every book. However, some of the symbols and ciphers he kept to himself.
“From a central place All needs are served. Once all agree, They become the word.” spoke Edward aloud.
“Sounds like the Above to me.” put in Helena, sifting through a reference book resting on her cross legged lap.
“Could be, but it could also point to a central seat of governing, such as the centre of the City.” added Edward. He was partially distracted by the plans of a Builder’s desire. They were slightly more difficult to determine, having changed much in the intervening time from the original idea. They were of the Skyport, and presumably a model for all other Skyports about the City. They suggested freedom in many respects, unlike the product that stood in plain sight out of the large window. That now represented control and incarceration. It was through that Skyport Edward was initially brought in and subsequently interned. It was a beacon to him of hopeful ideals meeting destructive forces. It meant pain now, where once it meant joy - the joy of travel.
“I once travelled to every place imaginable from that Skyport, you know.” included Helena. She had silently moved to Edward’s side. She traced the lines with her finger, drawing invisible walls, “Don’t these all confuse you? I mean, they just look like draftsmen’s sketches, a scrap book of ideas. A casual observer would see nothing but an old man’s journal of remembrance. Other than that, I’m at a loss.”
“There is more than the things you see. There are concepts beyond the visual element. I see further than the word. I sense the possibility of the word, that within this there is a meaning to be gained. If you take for granted everything is there for a reason, each stroke or line or colour has a meaning, and a whole new other dimension of philosophical and ethereal ideas presents itself. It’s like the meaning within the meaning. See here? This line just looks like a slip of a writing instrument. But if you look at it as though it was not a mistake, that it was deliberate, it could mean a curve or the bending of an idea. Context is everything, which is why I study them so closely. Even still I feel they only point to a possibility, not a solution. Where that is I don’t know yet, which is why I study them all.”
“You must rest, Edward. You need your sleep.”
“I don’t have time to rest, Helena. There is much to do and the time runs out.”
“Fly straight and narrow like the starlings do. When the answer you seek has presented itself, rest remains its council.” chirped up Huginn. Muninn rotated its head, a metallic whistle from the friction of the turn.
“Who asked you, bird.” said Helena. Muninn made a buzzing sound in reply.
#
Edward found himself at a true low point one day. He had not slept since the investigation for him started as a captive. Helena did not help with the constant conversations she started. The truth pushed him on, gladly, but the strength ebbed continually like a dripping tap. He took to sitting longer at the desk than looking at the books, something that had not escaped Helena’s constant attention. She called him on it, her chatter turning in Edward’s head to that of a screaming child. It was grinding on his soul, sapping further his energy, drawing him further and further from the search. She would bring up subjects that had little to do, or contained tenuous links to the matter at hand.
In a moment of clarity, Edward made an assumption. It happened slowly and gradually, but it had started in earnest - everything Edward thought or did was in some way tainted by her odour. It was possible she might be the source of his fall, drawing him to the conclusion that he must focus again, press beyond her words, soar to the ether beyond. But he couldn’t tell her. She would be either disappointed or dig deeper with her intentions of sapping his energy and distracting him from the object of his incarceration.
Axon Dendrite had it right all along. Even the birds had tried to tell him. But he was starved of affection, clinging to any port in a storm. They all told him not to trust her. Jude Ennis, his friend from the Wedge, had also tried to get it across to Edward she was poison waiting to kill him, but the closeness, the affection she seemed to pour onto him - the coy looks, the promise without the delivery? He should have seen it.
The sixth Volume, “The Ever Present”, brought Edward to introspection. The blueprint was that of the Library, obvious in its geometrically equal spacing around the square floor within the Pyramid, a place he had visited and gained the first Volume in what seemed an age ago. Back then he thought the words were salvation, eliciting a solution, but as he pressed on, Edward realised one more Volume completed was one less to work out - nothing spectacular. The verse within the pages gave a glimpse of desire for the end product, but gave little hope, “A factory of phrases, A home for the bound, Smell of age and activity Permeates unto the page.”
But it was the small victories Edward dwelled upon. Victories capable of renewing the fight once lost, breaching the wall of defeat to climb the battlements of success. Things, though, were about to change.
#
Edward was well into the seventh Volume, “Growing With Apathy”, which described in varied detail of the Communal Area and Arboretum, designed to inspire the people with a hope of nature, repairing and providing both life and love. Life from the plants and trees, love from the joining of people, from different walks of life in one beautiful area. High ideals, surely, but attainable ideals nonetheless.
He was just on the translation of the verse, “Loneliness is ever defeated, By the cover of another; So much is made Of communal emanation” - a fine statement indeed - when his attention was dragged to something outside. He wouldn’t normally pay attention to such distractions, but this was different. There was a commotion on the Skyport runway. Only now Edward noticed he hadn’t seen Helena for at least two days.
A Skycraft arrived, one similar to the vehicle Edward had been transported in himself to the same place. Two Proctors bundled out of the vehicle, obviously distressed from effort within it. Next was thrown out a large sack, brown and animated. The two outside Proctors were quickly met by a half dozen armed ones from within the Skyport. The sack struggled and was pulled into a stable position by the first two Proctors. Two further Proctors exited the vehicle, one striking the bag in its centre, the other ripping the sack from what turned out to be a bound figure, with a further bag over their head. The figure was tied crudely at ankle and wrist. The figure then hopped to remain upright, despite the rough treatment the Proctors gave them. A more senior Proctor pushed through the crowd and took a shock stick from one of the gathered. He powered up the device, the two spikes arcing lightning between them. He said something unreadable to the bent and bound figure, applying the tip of the power stick to a random point on the torso. The body writhed in pain, struggling to escape the infliction. The Proctor spoke again to the figure, shaking the shock stick to return power to it, but it had been depleted. He grabbed another, copying his previous action. This time it brought the figure to their knees. The Proctor kicked them in the chest, making them collapse to the ground, foetaly huddled. Two Proctors brought the figure back to their knees, where the more powerful of the Proctors kicked the figure bone-crackingly hard in the head. The figure dropped, this time more animated, fitting on the floor. The Proctor kicked them once more in the head before speaking to the still struggling figure, taking a shock stick and putting it to the head of the figure, which jolted, kicked out their legs and feet, uncontrollably flailed their bound arms until they became motionless. The Proctor prodded the body with a foot. The figure remained motionless. Another Proctor took the bag from the head and propped them to a sitting position facing Edward’s window. The face was bloody, bruised and cut, but it was unmistakable. It was Axon Dendrite. They had killed Axon Dendrite.
After a minute or so, the crowd dispersed and one Proctor took Axon’s body by the collar and unceremoniously dragged his corpse from view.
She knew. Perhaps she had always known. This was meant for him to see. It was meant to provoke him into fear and attention, to push any part of him that wasn’t compliant. Helena had obviously been the carrot at the end of the stick. When Edward had seen through it, she must have become aware, reported back and was left with no other choice. It was her last act, of distraction or compulsion, of temptation and betrayal. She had served her purpose. This was it. Do or die, and the message was very clear.
She had tainted all he had done since they first met. Why couldn’t he have seen through it then? But the truth was he had been too young minded then. She had played on that, implanting suggestions that would entice him later on. It had almost worked, and Edward was sure in most cases where Helena Romaine was concerned, it usually did work - and well - gaining whatever prize she and her employer viewed as their goal. She was good, but for Edward, not that good.
Conrad had surely put mental road blocks in place in case something like this would happen. It was a certainty that once one possessed something, another would want it. This was why the Builder’s high ambitions ultimately failed, because those who have are hunted by those who do not. Utopia was an interesting concept, but it could never happen, as man would always want what the other had, whether he desired it or not.
A voice rattled over the PA system, crackling and feeding back from the decrepit little speaker in the corner of the room, echoed almost inaudibly in the stone and marble room, “I see our little exhibition didn’t go to waste. I’m glad. I would hate to have killed him for nothing. I thank you, and my wife thanks you, for your attention. You didn’t know? You see, Helena is my wife. We make such a good team, don’t you think?” It was the faintly amused voice of Daedalus Devereaux, somewhere deep in the complex. Perhaps he had watched the whole theatre of Helena and Edward, isolated in his luxurious office, laughing and smiling to himself at the play that had taken its curtain call. He must have revelled at the skills of his wife, while secretly fuming at Edward’s perception in detecting the deception, blowing it apart. Drastic measures, it seemed had been employed, if excessively. What real harm had Axon Dendrite been? A friend, a confidante, an inspiration, sure, but he posed no real danger. He had a propensity towards using explosives, but he had his heart in the right place. He did not deserve this, and in Edward’s name also. Edward would not forget this sacrifice. It would weigh on his every thought from now on, until the end. With that, and the intended action supplanted into Edward’s mind, he pushed harder into his work. Those who deserved it would get their retribution, sooner or later. In the name of the people - all the people of the world.
“You are not alone, master. You are never alone in a world that loves you.” This time it was Muninn who spoke, even to the surprise of its partner, which snapped its mechanical head towards its contemporary. As though shamed, the metal bird Muninn concluded with a whir and crank, spinning its head awkwardly.
And the eight Volume spoke to him in other ways. Its title, “Misery Loves Company” had never seemed more apt. Even the verse within it spoke of hope in darkness, “Those who sit and do nought but think Are industriously a benefit To the receivers of wisdom, No longer in exile, But they become builders of things.” The Builders had been right. They just didn’t have the people to populate it, before the rot set in. Even now, to Edward, the closer the end, in relative terms, the further the exit seemed.
The plans were those of the Think Tanks, a place the Builders would rest, within isolation pods, to clear the mind of all distractions for the furtherance of imagination and knowledge. It was where they planned their exploits and where the core of the City was designed. If only Edward had access to one, then perhaps the solution would present itself and he wouldn’t have to fight through the gallons of problems and distractions he was fed on a daily basis. He would do what he always did - he would work through the problem and find ways to fix it. It was all he could do, given the circumstances.
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