The Enthusiasts

By Nathan Kowalla

When Humanity abandons faith.
After Science discovers material emptiness.
New Realities will emerge.

A SOFT, WAVERING LIMBO encases the earth, yet many still don't see it. The masses feel protected under the rule of a supreme organization of commerce that preaches freedom, while its actions favor fortification and protection of its borders and monopolizing its influence through proprietary technologies.

Emerson Myshkin is a bit of a rebel. A hacker with a cause he clings to The Tablet - full of humanity's forgotten knowledge - in search of encouragement that the arc of morality must bend toward justice for all.

Humanity overcame all obstacles to live in perpetual peace and comfort only centuries ago, or so he believes, yet nothing could be further from his reality; living with a band of
survivalists in North Garrison in the year 2280.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Dec 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780228804628

Nathan Kowalla

Nathan Kowalla has written his first book. You're holding it! Enjoy.

Book preview

The Initial Chapter

It was getting warmer, transitioning into Sketch season. They were coming out of the woodwork. Their resiliency was nothing short of astounding, given no reason at all to keep on living as far as Emerson was concerned. Like a species of annual cicada, they seemed to swarm up from the underground, yet, to Emerson as well, this year it seemed their numbers were thickening. Could they be reproducing? Certainly. But not with any real success, right? Or, like the cicada, could there be a periodic variation that manages to lay in hibernation for up to seventeen years before rising up next to their favored tree roots, digging up, up, up through the cool rich black soil, eventually surfacing into the rich atmosphere above to chirp their resounding, boisterous love songs off their rumbling hyper-sensitive ribcages? To serve what purpose? Possibly nothing more than to sing their song and plant their babies in the safety of their favored tree bark to carry on the family tradition. Emerson knew The Sketch held a purpose, as did the mysterious cicada. Though a somewhat daft annoyance for the most part, when they arrived in numbers such as this, a swarm , they could become more than an annoyance. Knowing they must share some commonality, Emerson on occasion felt awestruck, making him quite possibly the rarest of rare breeds to begin with. Emerson didn’t fit into any category of human he was familiar with; who was he to judge another who appeared and behaved differently? For the most part Emerson tried to keep conflicting ideas such as these out of his mind; in fact, he was good at it, and getting better! Traveling alone only exacerbated his growing paranoia over his perceived specialness, which could just as well be substituted for loneliness. He disliked both of these words, or concepts, lobbed at him by an outsider. But what was he to do? He was alone, and anyone he met seemed alien to him. Most horrendously, his own self! Imagine feeling alienated by everyone, including your own self! he thought.

For a split-second (shorter than the blink of his eye) Emerson blacked out. The message he received while unconscious went something like this, and is presented here for your eyes only:

Tap… Tap… Tap… The fragile beak of a small unborn chick pecks. Still wavering, hidden within the shell, Chick is left alone to hatch as his mother, fully anticipating his arrival, scurries about. Chick sits, legs utterly useless for mechanical leverage, fragile body soaking in a bath of fluid, unaware of anything and everything. Chick taps with his beak at the membranes which insulate his opaque birthing capsule. All the tools required for Chick’s escape are within his grasp. Armed with nothing more than a soft, but stiffening! beak and a self-developed will to persist, Chick will overcome the obstacles laid before him and will live a life he cannot imagine from the cramped space in which he currently resides. Held back by divinely orchestrated necessity, inside the vessel of life where mere shadows from the surrounding world translate through Chick’s inner white dome of protection, he cannot see because he need not see. Yet Chick senses. Chick feels. Chick has an urge to spring his elastic vertebrae every so often. Tap… Tap… Tap… Chick, in many ways, is knockin’ on heaven’s door like Bob Dylan did. Chick will persist, as all others have. Such is his nature, and through his determination he will learn to soar above and over much of the grand majesty that his eyes, beak, and feathered-over senses have brought into manifest.

You stand, here and now, inside the circular center of a massive, dark, and illusive cave consisting of intersecting tunnels. You enter and exit these tunnels, passageways, or whichever you like, over periods of time consisting of any given length from a nanosecond leading all the way to an eternity. Some entrances, so small you can barely notice them, just appear as small cracks in the foundation of solid stone that surrounds you, insisting you squeeze your body through to reach the other side, occasionally even holding your breath, forcing your diaphragm to draw up into your chest to make passage through. Other entrances or exits (who can tell the difference?) appear gaping and massive, so large, in fact, that you may think you’re not even within the same network of underground topography as you have always been. The passageways, some secret, and some not-so-much, are hollowed out of hardened stone. (Some areas even produce gold, diamonds, and other crystallized gemstones seemingly of value.) The passageways appear in front of you, branching off in every possible direction imaginable. Most passageways you assume came from people wandering the cave before you, yet some paths you’re certain to have discovered all on your own. Looking down any tunnel entrance you put your attention on (although you cannot look down more than one tunnel at a time), you are likely to see countless branching entrances beyond that. The monotonous pathways appear infinite, with each connecting intersection offering choices beyond your scope of comprehension. You focus on choosing familiar routes to travel, perhaps relying on your intuition given that nothing around you ever appears particularly certain, or uncertain. On many occasions you feel that you’ve returned to an intersection discovered once before, and this can be disheartening at times and comforting at others to the weary, homesick traveler. When you close your eyes and lay down on the cool, damp, rocky floor in the center of one of the intersections, simply refusing to choose a pathway to continue your expedition, somehow, mysteriously, you end up in a different intersection upon awakening. You cannot end your life in the cave, but the idea of ending your life exists somehow, although this is impossible. You are therefore doomed to make choices.

You do not know how large the cave is, or how you arrived in the cave, and you’ve never known anything outside of the cave, but you do, however, believe that there IS an outside of the cave in which you have been feeling somewhat lost or trapped inside of your entire life regardless of your sense of obvious freedom and seemingly endless space. You also believe that the pathway to the outside is likely up above you for some reason, even though the cave’s tunnel system has never truly indicated whether you are elevating or descending as you traverse its labyrinth of intersecting paths. The connecting tunnels occasionally rise and fall, but you are unaware of whether you’re approaching the thing, place, or idea you call Surface. You have fear. You’re fearful you could fall victim to the lung-smoldering sulfur you’ve smelled before, that which you assume is leaking in from somewhere beneath the bedrock of the cave. Or maybe, as you’ve also wondered, is if the cave, with all its endless intersecting tunnels, is all that there is. Surface, of course, has always just been a comforting notion. Some of the surrounding tunnels have a natural, ambient light cast around the cusp of their entrances that you can see clearly, and some appear darker and dull, but you’re never without sight while wandering quasi-aimlessly through the cave you call your home, for lack of a better word. For the purpose of finding new, unseen areas in the cave, you feel you’ve improved your other senses over your sight as you’ve learned that your sight cannot be relied upon for accuracy. You know from experience that some well-lit paths lead to darker intersections, and some darker paths lead to brighter intersections, and sometimes you care about this, and mostly you don’t, but again you are faced with and attempt to come to terms with the fact that you are doomed to make choices.

There. You have just chosen a path.

Maybe they do just come up from the ground, Emerson thought. He wondered about The Sketch and questioned how they managed to survive on what must be next to nothing at this point. Yet he’d recently spotted one hovering over a Jonny-Gotta-Go that must have been pushing three hundred. Even the craftiest Outsiders were now starving off, so how could The Sketch endure?

Fortunately, that song popped back into his head, and he went right back to humming a chorus-only rendition of From a Distance for an unknown length of time. He’d heard it a week earlier in a random selection from a nineties’ playlist he’d set blaring through his Spectra Temporal speakers, something he enjoyed doing when his life allowed for such indulgences. They sounded like velp, and he knew it, but velp is so much more than nothing, which was roughly the sum total of what else they’d been living on back home. He didn’t particularly love the beat. The vocals sounded decent at best, but it was one of those songs that you just couldn’t shake. A song some psychoanalytic marketing guru was convinced sent thirty-to-forty-something divorcées stampeding toward the produce section of their local grocer in search of fresh kumquats for no good reason other than The Bette Midler Citrus Correlation.

Emerson’s skin temperature suddenly dropped as he felt the cold, casting shadow of a looming high-rise in his path. North Garrison. This place used to be so beautiful, Emerson reflected, while mildly condemning himself for never appreciating it properly back when it was worth appreciating. He pulled up on his jacket’s beefy metal zipper and connected its split collar together, stopping where the collar’s ridge met just above his top lip for protection against any stray wind gusts he would encounter.

Exhale. The feeling of his breath misting into the fabric of his upturned All-Weather-Magellan Exploration X-Treme Edition winter jacket brought back memories as a boy growing up in the city, getting through similar cool winters, and using the same technique then as he did now. The air circulating around the ridge and touching his ears felt good to him. He looked like a walking chimney with dark brown hair, moseying quietly down the empty street. He took a moment to enjoy this feeling, and, with another step forward and another deep breath he repeated the process, savoring the exhale of warmth into the comforting airflow exploring his body now like an experienced lover from underneath the elemental protective coat. He had been reliving short, happy moments (as they came with welcome distraction) as he walked alone. He tried to recall only the friendly interactions he clung to on occasion as he tried to convince himself he was on a nature walk of sorts.

He was in his dorm at MIT, listening to his favorite Jersey-Synth-Rock album at a reasonable volume while tossing around the ideas of particles being both waves and particles at their essential subatomic levels. All particles are essentially the same, he rehashed for the hundredth time to a vaguely receptive crowd of his roommate and his roommate’s current girlfriend who seemed intrigued by his philosophical mish-mash of quantum theory and some much older Greek philosophies. The ideas were both new and unheard of as Man continued to struggle with his own evolution. Man’s attempt to create his own set of rules in a false reality were making for some self-induced, excruciating sets of growing pains that reverberated throughout modern society. A system that was at odds with its programmer. How? Why? Emerson pondered then.

He had loved the way she (the roommate’s girlfriend) looked at him. Flashes of a smile. A curve of light skin. A fuzzing red halo-top sweater that stretched effortlessly under the force of her shoulder propped on the bed. A slanted hair style of mixed auburn and caramel framing delicate features… He recalled that they had only met a few more times in passing. He was ashamed, even now, years later, thinking that he was betraying his likely deceased roommate’s trust just by thinking of her. He had only started thinking about her now, and anytime he craved reprieve from frightening thoughts of scarcity and danger while alone in his bedroom, or shower, or walking along these filth-covered streets. He certainly hadn’t been enamored with her back then when she was real. But, she was so nice. Emerson changed the narrative on the spot, for private-self-preservation-fantasy-indulgence’s sake. Is there any other kind? There was no roommate. She belonged to no one. They had just met on their own. He, and the hot girl from college that he couldn’t be certain of what her name was anymore. He said something funny to make her laugh, somewhere, and they both discussed how they were single and could make passionate love any time they wanted, and in fact right now would be the perfect time – they were in love for God’s sake!

You’re right, Emerson said softly to himself as he conceded to the instructions of an inner voice of reason he heard, reminding him that any memory he enjoyed, whether having actually happened or not, would turn sour regardless of who or what it was about. He can only push himself to somehow feel good right now, in the present moment, for his self-manufactured sense of peace to last forever.

From where Emerson stood, Raven’s Tower looked to stand roughly four miles ahead of him in the distance. He had set an ambitious goal for himself as he insisted on reaching the tower before nightfall. Ambitious goals are easy to set, he remembered, yet again disembarking from his protective inner voice’s diction and revisiting his first-year college dorm room where he decided to put together every piece of new, flat-packed, self-assembly furniture he had arrived with on campus. The desk and bed he’d selected, while not girthy by any standard, were still too large for the postcard-sized room he shared. And the large, stiff, cardboard chunks that encased the furniture in his new, bustling, assembly and staging area were flung about, cluttering the entire space, partly spilling out into the adjoining hallway. A possible bout of laziness, or just a careless lack of foresight to clean-as-you-go, became too much for him that day. Now, Emerson reveled in how he would handle such a task so much better after being forced to learn more hands-on real-world skills while spending nearly a decade at camp, living off the land, so to speak. He’d have a plan. He’d have a knife nearby to open the cartons instead of puncturing the sealing tape with a stray pen tip and then ripping the seams apart at the cardboard edges with his fingertips. He’d empty most of the carboard and all of the SpectraFoam out into the campus dumpster which he recalled being about three hallways down from his doorway. He’d keep one large piece of cardboard to work on for furniture and floor protection during the assembly.

Emerson gave a half-smile and a head nod to himself as he moved down the street in the wake of another momentary and pleasant blackout. The streets he reluctantly trotted down featured gaping potholes connected by deep penetrating cracks that yawned out into chasms at some points and eroded into the pavement. The downtown (once conceived around commerce, conveying a nearly poetic ode to social superiority and opulence) now appeared as an expression of hopelessness with broken street lamps and multi-level car pileups outshining any signals of success or prosperity. Emerson assessed one such impassable section of cars which formed an unscalable mountain of trash and road debris directly ahead. On instinct, he ignored the obstruction and instead held his palms up briefly as he began to transition from just thinking about his new furniture assembly approach to discussing it at low volume with someone who remained unseen.

And I’d have a ratchet screwdriver, he huffed to himself with a subdued groan attached. That crazy kid didn’t have a ratchet screwdriver! Imagine what we could have done with a ratchet screwdriver. And I’d have the smaller stubby one too, in case they try that ‘narrow gap, tough to get in between the shelving after step thirteen’ business, with the Handy Helper instruction guy looking down at all the broken velp, scratchin’ his head with the phone in his hand like he’s gonna call someone to come fix the velp he broke. It was then Emerson realized he was serving himself no longer. What would the neighbors think? the crazy person asked aloud using Emerson’s lips. But Emerson knew he wasn’t actually crazy. Not yet, he murmured again to himself with another faint smile creeping across his worn face. He wasn’t hearing voices, or actually engaged in conversations with someone outside of himself. He just relished the escape of acting foolish and a little out of his mind. He wasn’t Sketch, the voice affirmed, less than confident. But, that’s what he really wanted now - to be out of his mind. Nothing could harm a crazy person. That’s what’s so great about it. The inherent fearlessness Emerson saw in them was what he hoped to emulate from The Sketch; maybe it was their purpose to serve him. What’s the worst you can do? Kill me? Emerson was addressing someone with his questions now. The Big Man upstairs.

Alarmingly his mother faced him and gave a shriek. Then a stern warning came. ‘Cut it out right now!’ Her accompanying stiffly held index finger waved in his face to let him know she meant business. With his increasingly gratifying stance, Emerson shook the image away and tried to defy his mother’s wishes. He thought about calling God out on His velp again, but his voice didn’t manage to carry the words out of his mouth this time. He reconvened with himself and decided to go a little easier on the Creator. Maybe they could mediate and come to some mutual understanding and negotiate more favorable terms. He told God that He’d made a mistake… again, and he would like to be reimbursed for his time and suffering. Then, after hearing no gavel pounding, no judgment of any kind, Emerson chose to halt the barrage of insults he wanted to hurl up through the clouds, and instead refocused on his mission. Again he composed himself. This was getting easier every day, he encouraged himself triumphantly as he managed to break the viciously addictive cycle of blame and judgment birthing a torturous, unrelenting sense of angst. He spoke the words in a whisper to make them a little more solid in the surrounding world:

You love me. You know what the future holds in its infinite, eternal unfolding. So, I am not afraid. I’m determined to find You. I know You’re in me because I’m the one who knows You. I know I’m eternal, and immortal in You. I go forward with my head held high, and Our eternal spirit; my eternal spirit, creating the ultimate, perfect outcome together. Emerson sighed. …I miss her.

Although he did his best to continue his walk in faith, the possibility of God’s plan involving him not seeing Sasha again seemed outrageous and potentially too much for him to bear. He continued to beat that recurring thought out of his fluttering mind as he strode forward, adjusting the shoulder straps on the increasingly straining backpack he bore.

He had lost much, but he couldn’t lose her. He knew there was a potential in her that most certainly had not yet been fulfilled, and that was of no fault of her own. She held a purpose that still needed to be played out. He didn’t feel that way about any of the others. His uncertainty about Sasha’s condition and her whereabouts may have added another hundred pounds of emotional weight on Emerson’s shoulders. She was tough, but she couldn’t be out on her own. Not without him. They hadn’t spent a day without checking in for… Emerson couldn’t recall. And although it may be a distraction, he didn’t want to be bothered doing the math. That awful feeling continued to froth up from his stomach and seep into his brain again; he just didn’t know how to shake it. Where was he going? Why? The thought of prayer surfaced again. No, that’s all he had done that afternoon. Since he’d lost her. It wasn’t working. He felt his breath quicken. How is this happening? A panic attack? Now? I haven’t had one in years!

Suddenly, the once comforting upturned jacket collar felt like a noose tightening around his neck. He unzipped the coat wide open, letting the sides part ways again as a cool winter’s breeze blew through the gaping open undersides. Cold air traveled around his back and down the thick sleeves of his jacket, quickly chilling him to the bone entirely. A wicked breeze ensconced the sweat-stained armpits of the undershirt he wore under his jacket which no longer comforted him. He clenched the sides of the specialized thermal material together after five long seconds of wanting the cold to change something for him. He wanted to be hit with an epiphany, or something to help him overcome his overwhelming sense of inadequacy while out traveling on these dangerous streets alone. He zipped up the ThermaCore-insulated sides of his jacket that featured several different sized pockets and pouches: some hidden, and others visible all over its inner and outer layers. He narrowed his vision ahead, made his mark, and then sprinted to an abandoned Honda Accord seen smooshed under several other scattered and forgotten makes and models of motor vehicles covering the city, discarded like Pronto McBega’s Combo Number Five wrappers.

Emerson felt and listened to the thin metal car body seemingly crunch under him as he turned and then planted the back of his head into the side door panel of the old sedan. The old gasser appeared to have met with a crusher at some time, and it now resembled the shape of a four-year-old’s best go at a green-shaded rectangle. Instinctively, his knees folded up to his chest and he wrapped his arms around them as the self-inflicted torture of opening himself up to the elements took its full affect. He sat, panting, while remaining desperately still and demanding that he get a better hold of himself mentally somehow. Everything felt big to him, way too big to handle. Rubbing his hands together as a friction warmer against his numbing fingers in the cold, he knew he was in danger here, whether walking or sitting still. He was far from camp, and although every few steps he took forward gave him an inclination to turn around and head back for the safety of home, he remained stuck in an infinite loop where a rock and hard place met one another in endless confrontation over what to do next. He knew he’d only get a few blocks behind him before his conscience would demand he turn around and continue moving back toward the tower in hopes of any last-ditch efforts he could think of to reconvene with Sasha. He couldn’t live with himself were he to return to camp without knowing that he’d at least done everything he could to get in touch with her, no matter how distant the long shot looked.

Noises could be heard in the surrounding area outlined by the tall, nondescript, glassy, concrete boxes that reached upward to the heavens in the former financial district of the city. If Emerson could accomplish anything now, he’d try to convince himself that the strange barrage of sounds ranging from whistling, growling, moaning, vomiting, and screaming that struck his eardrums from near and far as he sat motionless was coming from a nearby zoo, full to capacity with different animal species. But, alas. He knew this was not the case. All of the bodily functions, mating calls, and foreign languages he heard surrounding him originated from only one species: The human race. The abandoned race. The lower race. The subsect of himself which Emerson was sure had risen to existence only after Man snuffed out the last thought of compassion He held toward someone with nothing to offer Him.

Emerson heaved against the Honda. These are people… he eventually acknowledged. Sensing their pain and suffering gave Emerson pause, and eventually his inner panic subsided a great deal. He unfolded his legs from his chest and then took in the scene again with fresher eyes. The intensifying volume he heard flaring-out from down the grand hallways of the city he realized was not good. He needed to get off street level. He could attempt to make safe passage forward while avoiding the converging groups of Sketch that seemed to be aware of his presence now if he moved up. And if that wasn’t enough reason to leave the streets behind, he also needed to circumvent the estimated forty-six-car pileup he was currently resting his body against; an obstacle which appeared impassable by ground.

Gazing up, taking in the entire rooftop of the closest building, he still got a flutter of butterflies when eyeing up the massive footbridge systems put in place by other travelers and city wanderers over the years. He and Sasha, along with countless others, had watched it develop over time around the city’s core to the point it was at today. Nearly all the buildings downtown were linked by the albeit very shoddy handiwork of travelers needing to cross blocked or saturated areas of the city, trading stealth for safety. Exhaling wearily, Emerson knew what the right move for him was now. He hustled toward a tall fire escape ladder bolted against the siding of an adjacent building and began to ascend above the cluttered city floor with one thing on his mind: Get to her.

2

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;

the most massive characters are seared with scars."

– Kahlil Gibran

Sasha’s mother spent all her savings (and then some) to freeze an embryo that had been merged with her husband’s sperm for safekeeping at a local clinic during a time when fear of an incurable disease manifesting in many forms of bodily harm had become an epidemic that hystericized much of the planet. Sasha’s mother, Margret, died six months before her husband passed. In the final weeks of his life, as he lay on a cot, growing impatient with Death’s uncompromising pace inside an overcrowded hospital wing of the Salt Lake City Regional Medical Center, Sasha’s father suddenly had a strong motivation to do something.

After managing to find a holoport, he began researching as best he could in his fractured state. Propped up on a pillow he had wrestled away from a fellow invalid down the hall, his weary eyes gazed at a data stream he had only heard rumored through local channels of an underground organization that would buy human embryos to be harvested after Pandemic had (most optimistically) died off, sometime in the unknowable future. A once proud man, her father was, who claimed to have lived by a code of honesty throughout his life, had recently stopped clinging to hope in the time of such a dark worldly health crisis.

After his wife’s passing, the doctrine left from the fabled Artificially Intelligent Enlightened Beings as well as the previously practiced Interfaith woven principles of ancient times were abandoned by this man who refused to accept that his cruel existence, which had now stolen his wife from him, was worth anything more than a scowling curse from his bed as mankind was wiped like velp off the heel of any imagined Creator’s shoe… But nonetheless, he felt a surprising and sudden motivation in the last of his days to at least fathom sending a last-ditch Hail Mary pass downfield in hopes of leaving something of a family legacy behind. He would do this if only for the sake of his wife, who had always wanted to conceive a child. In one of their last conversations she had spelled out her remorse over them not trying harder to find a way to conceive earlier, before, when they were healthy. The embryo was frozen with the idea that a cure for Pandemic would be found quickly, that it would all blow over as everyone suggested in the beginning. As soon as that happened, they’d start their family and delay their happiness no longer.

Sasha’s father’s name was Henry, and Henry’s research consisted of fumbling through pop-ups offering all kinds of pregnancy aids along with endless pitches from internationally renowned fertility clinics. (Oddly enough, the state of catastrophe had sent the late stage fertility market soaring. Natural birthrates were way down, with what Henry mercifully assumed good reason. Who would want to bring a kid into this velp?) After much mumbled cursing and pounding on his bedside table, demanding the overworked nursing aides to log him back in after countless public terminal expiry timeouts, he eventually ended up speaking to a woman from a CryptoPing bouncing anonymously around the globe. After checking off the Spectra Cyber security notifications which flashed incessant warnings of potential fraud risks associated with contacting such a high-risk network, he chuckled inside for the first time in months at the thought of fearing to take a risk over malicious content in his current state. Go ahead, please steal my identity. I don’t want to be here. Yet he still did feel a bit wary over the process as he battled his guilt over not having his wife’s approval in the matter.

A slight twinge of relief soothed him after he heard the reassuring voice of a female agent at the end of a real, old-timey, FaceTime chat, which on its merits alone gave her an extra boost of trustworthiness and sincerity in Henry’s eyes. Her calming voice gave the impression that selling embryos was the hip thing to do nowadays. To most people Henry knew, this idea would seem strange, frightening, and probably some scammer velp. But, after a few short minutes of being told of the simplicity and righteousness in providing a precious embryo to their organization in this urgent time of need, the voice on the other end of the line put Henry at ease with his decision. This was the right choice to make for his unborn child.

The following day, or perhaps longer as Henry’s Spectropiphine drip confused the matter, a man introducing himself from the foot of his deathbed as Mr. White arrived with several documents for Henry to sign. Henry, exhausted, looked them over. Each one he read as carefully as he could, although his mental deterioration was taking its toll on his reasoning skills. He actively tried to look like he was reading the last half of papers, which he signed while shooting nervous glances at a nearby wall clock. He was counting the seconds until he thought it would be appropriate to set these papers down and put code to line. He did ask Mr. White several times how much money his child would receive, along with when the money would be received. They discussed how the child would be looked after, and where they would be looked after. Finally, he asked if the child would be able to know who his biological mother and father were. Henry sent Mr. White thirty-one Snap-its of him and his wife in different poses set in the foreground of several pleasant backdrops taken from some of their favorite locations in the city where they had grown up, never left, and spent most free time imagining escaping together somewhere to do something other than working and living there. Regardless of any late-stage harbored regret, the snaps looked like solid gold perfection to Henry now. He asked Mr. White that they be kept somewhere for the child to see when they got older.

Mr. Jameison, Mr. White responded, the program being developed by some of the greatest minds in medical research and biological science is in full swing. The embryo you provide to us will be kept in cryo freeze until the cure for Pandemic is discovered. After that, the embryo may be chosen for harvesting with the presumed premeasure that genetic mutation will be installed as an immunity gene to the child. If chosen, the child will be granted the five million dollars in trust we talked about, which will be made available to them on their eighteenth birthday. They will be taken care of by the most highly trained professionals in the fields of psychology and child development. They’ll be nurtured to become confident members of a new, healthy society. Mr. White paused for a moment to take a breath, gather his thoughts, and add a tone of condolence to the sick man. Your child will know who their biological parents were. They will know what a precious gift you gave them in your absence. Trust me, we wouldn’t be offering this kind of money if we weren’t planning on taking care of the investment.

The last part about investment put a little sour note in Henry’s mind. He hated thinking of his unborn child like a mutual fund or a share in some company stock. He ignored this negative thought and soon asked another question. "So, what is the new way of thinking in the medical community these days? Or is it the same as old? The one that got us into this mess. It started with people changing DNA structure, and mutations. Yeah, I may not be the smartest, but I remember hearing the history before the Holy Beings started their little festival and everyone was supposedly happy. Well, what’s next? Get the Mechs going again and start letting them handle all our problems while we get so Goddamn lazy we forget how to wipe our own asses? Then, when they have us right where they want us, too dependent and weak, they can leave us to die and create some plague to wipe us all out!"

Henry’s voice had elevated to a throat crackling shout by the end of his heated monologue. He felt something warm on his leg then and quickly realized he had involuntarily urinated in his seat, soiling his light green hospital issued pajama pants during the outburst. A flash of sobriety came over him as he took his lack of bladder function as a reminder that he was in the wrong most of the time these days.

It seemed that something Mr. White said had changed Henry’s mood from optimistic to both figuratively and literally pissed in a matter of seconds. Henry seemed as shocked as anyone eavesdropping on the conversation around the crowded hospital room after his very off-character emotional outburst. There were four other patients sharing the room he’d lived in over the past month separated by a thin curtain, along with several other sick or recently deceased persons lining the hallway outside within earshot. A few subtle gasps were heard from some concerned, nosey neighbors around the small room that featured little more than two crosses with Bible scriptures printed on them along with a shrine in the corner with a Buddha statue positioned in a traditional meditative pose. They all appeared to be glaring at Henry and Mr. White in that moment.

…I’m sorry… I think it’s the uppers I’m on that make me angry. I know it does no good to get upset, but I guess I’m just overwhelmed with- Henry paused, then sighed, all this… Henry’s liver-spotted right hand waved over the pile of legal papers sitting in front of him. Even in his sharpest days this jargon had been too redundant and ass-covery for his liking. He had never liked lawyers, but they had forcefully popped back into existence during Henry’s lifetime. The last fifty years seemed like nothing but men in suits explaining through media and ruling chambers how, under the right circumstance, any action is justifiable. Henry joined what seemed like a chorus of lung-hacking coughs that reverberated through the hospital walls as he signed the last papers in the mountain of documents piled on his bedside table that Mr. White had arrived with.

Before leaving, Mr. White procured a clean pair of hospital pajama pants which he encouraged Henry to change into. I understand completely, Mr. Jameison. No need to apologize, Mr. White reassured as he handed the folded bottoms to the feeble man contemplating what death could possibly look like on the inside. Well, I’ll be off now. Rest assured you’ve made the right decision, and I hope you recover soon. Mr. White gathered the documents, uploaded, walked out the door, and almost immediately made a call through his comm implant upon his exit while shuffling past the bodies littering the hospital wing floor.

Two weeks after signing the documents, Henry Jameison was buried next to his wife of twenty-three years, Margret, at the Salt Lake City Cemetery. Through clerical error in the overwhelmed record keeper’s office, Margret’s name remained forever misprinted on the Certificate of Last Breath as her maiden name. Records had not tracked her and Henry’s shared Jameison last name. No ceremony for either of them was recorded.

Two years following Henry’s death, the company Henry had contracted the embryo to was purchased by a large, multi-national conglomerate named Spectra Inc. The sale was concluded after the Nation’s Congress passed a law allowing for the thousands of signed parental agreements which the company was obligated to fulfill to be considered null and void. The highly irregular amendment in contract law was passed under the argument that the economic hardships of paying out the thousands of multi-million-dollar open settlements was too costly – citing that the purchased company’s nearsightedness in creating those agreements was what had sent the smaller biogenetics research firm into financial turmoil and in need of rescue from bankruptcy in the form of a Spectra Inc. financed bailout. If not, it was argued successfully, the sale would not be able to go through, leaving several thousand unborn lab babies, already immune to Pandemic through the recently discovered breakthrough mutation vaccine, to die for no good reason. The motion was passed by Congress, thus terminating any and all obligation by the new company to follow the original signed contracts in any way. Following the new law created specifically for their firm’s circumstance, Spectra released the agreed upon purchase funds to the small research firm’s Board of Directors in the amount of Two-Hundred-Fifty-Billion Dollars… Or, roughly over eight times more than the congressionally overruled and discarded Guaranteed Child Maturity Savings Grants. On the day the new law was passed, both Acquired and Acquiring firms in the company acquisition stood before the nation to state that the agreements were far too costly to endure.

∞ Thirty-three Years Later ∞

Wake up!

Sasha’s eyelids broke open like a startled cat waking up next to a Mornin’ Kick-Start blender.

Where am I? The urgent wake-up call was coming from inside her head.

It took a minute, but flashes of the last couple of days began surfacing as her eyes scanned the small, stark white room she found herself in. Her body remained prone, with her head tilted sideways and stationed against something resembling soft. A steel blue door with no handle centered the wall facing her. The room couldn’t be more than ten by twelve, she thought. Also, noticing the walls were newly drywalled and painted, she figured, no scuffs or dents. More awakening occurred, causing her to witness her insides seemingly come back online. She was slowly taking in her solitary environment as she recorded notes both subconsciously and consciously while examining the physical space she found herself in. Shortly after, she searched any recent memories for clues to how she may have ended up in the mysterious location.

Not that waking up in strange rooms with no idea how she’d gotten there was particularly new for Sasha. But, she thought to herself, it had been a while. She recalled breaking away from Emerson to draw two security guards off him. Pulling chase from the heat outside of the Spectra off-site Data Storage Area. She remembered that a brisk foot chase had ensued. One of Sasha’s strange and difficult to interpret emotions came up; it reminded her of the separation she felt. No Emerson. Velp. All that had mattered prior to her ending up here – wherever the hell here was – had involved a three-month, well-sourced mission, spearheaded by Emerson to fetch some holosphere transcripts, and possibly some kind of translator, or was it an emulator program? She never understood the lingo, but she’d heard Emerson and Teddy discussing the terms at camp for several months prior. Regardless of the specifics, her part in the plot remained ever the same – she was the hired gun: a helpful set of eyes when infiltrating targets, and the perfect mind, body, and soul needed to clear the place out if velp turned sour – at least that’s what she told herself most days. Although she had never been paid for a job. The makeshift survivalist camp they lived in had quietly accepted a credo made up of naturally formed communist ideals for the most part, and her role in the group seemed plain and simple, just the way she liked it.

Sasha felt a deep stinging sensation over her palms that now flowed up her arms. She popped up off the bed and pulled back the foreign-to-her shirt sleeves she wore, folding them in place at her shoulders to reveal several long diving incisions razor blading across the surface of her skin. Inflamed abrasions seen tearing off in several directions like well-ridden mountain bike trails criss-crossing her forearms. They were probably pretty deep, she thought, noticing the amount of crusted dry blood patching the fabric of her new, snuggly formed sleeves which branched off an otherwise loose-fitting medical gown she presently found herself in, knowing she had never put it on herself.

Barbed wire, she whispered in solace, recalling more from her evidently failed escape. Spectra had every type of theft deterrent imaginable, yet nothing seemed to work better than the spiral wound barbed cable running over top of the company compound walls. In her attempt to flee, immediately after scaling a corner of the concrete sectioned outer wall she had no choice but to land with both hands into the sharp wound steel which hooked and clung to every inch of flesh that it touched. She had fallen into the brush outside the compound where she quickly regained her composure, sprang out of a painfully planted squat, and then hit her full stride while sprinting through the surrounding low-lying brush of prickled greenery.

How’d I get caught? she asked herself through the hazy batch of remerging timeline. I could handle the grunts they’d have working security in data storage, she asserted. Her recall was still fuzzy, and her head hurt. Sasha lay back down on the tiny bed which had kindly been provided by her captors. Closing her eyes, she continued the replay of what could have followed. She remembered running… that was about it. She was running through a field, but she got caught somehow.

The white speckled ceiling tiles became a source of frustration for her in this state of being held against her will and not finding the answers she was searching for inside the tight cell. The holding cell’s dull, institutionalized interior decorating motif distracted her with memories from her childhood and also brought out some of her underlying fear and rage to fester with as she lay, helplessly in wait…

Sasha’s memories continued to draw blank as she tried reaching for more of them amidst her confusion. She could barely remember her name right now. She stopped suddenly, upon hearing some muffled voices outside the room. She deduced the deep octaves belonged to two men, but she couldn’t make out a single word through the thick holding cell’s door. Maybe it was a different language. Holy velp! Maybe she was in a different country!... A new life!

She settled herself once again, returning her thoughts to what had happened to Emerson during their split with the facility guards. Was he being held here too in another nearby cell? Then she recalled they had previously agreed on a meeting place were they to split. The rendezvous point, if separated for any reason, was Raven’s Tower. Neither of them had been near the tower in some time, and the exact place to reconvene was never really discussed. Instead, they had just casually agreed to wait for one another, around the front gates.

We’d gotten away with so much velp lately, that the chance of actually getting caught had faded away. We were sloppy. The plan was sloppy. She assured herself of this now as there was no other acceptable explanation for being captured. The stinging thought of her own incautious arrogance leading to mission failure dug at her more deeply than the lacerations on her forearms. We were too cocky perhaps, or maybe the sense of desperation was getting to them… even getting to Emerson finally. Raven’s Tower is a terrible meeting place, now that she thought about it…

‘If we get lost, or disoriented somewhere in the city, we can always spot the tower. Plus, The Sketch thin out closer to Spectra territory.’ Her prior conversation with Emerson played out and illuminated the reasoning in a vivid daydream while she contemplated what to do next from her empty cell. The voices of interest outside had passed, adding nothing of worth to her experience.

She learned of new areas of discomfort as she sat up again on the bed. Her face hurt, along with her entire right side. A strange and foreign sense of worry about Emerson’s condition came over her then as well; it was a relatively new feeling for her and she kind of liked it. He couldn’t make it in the big, scary world without me, she thought as her palm rubbed against her throbbing forehead. Anyone else with her injuries would be in serious condition or dead condition.

What are we, him and I? she asked for the countless time. They didn’t sleep together, nor did they have any real romantic involvement to speak of. Although she took much of his playfulness as flirtation, it never went past the odd hair stroke or long held gaze. He had even used the L word with her on occasion, but then he explained that he did so out of a sense of feeling that it was important for her to hear that from someone genuinely and regularly outside of a relationship involving any sexually entwined weirdness, he asserted, for lack of a better term. The word love was treated as some kind of psychotherapy he was administering to her, while admittedly unqualified. He just thought people should start saying it to each other more often. Either way, that fact didn’t seem to bother Sasha terribly, given that she assumed by now he was taking some oath of abstinence, or something that gave her a small twinge of awe in witnessing the nobility in the way he carried on seeming not to need physical contact from anyone. His rejection of her actually appeared stoic and almost admirable in some way.

She smiled again for a moment, letting herself escape as she went back to school and rehashed her first meeting of Emerson on campus. He was there as an MIT student, working remotely as authorities frantically attempted to relocate from the flooded Cambridge site. Sasha never paid attention well enough to remember what he was taking. She thought it was Advanced Sciences in Cyber Security or something — none of it interested her. Not the studying type, she was nearly failing in all her classes. She’d decided which classes to take on a whim, majoring in Biology when pressed to make a decision. The idea of Biology may well have dropped out of the sky, with the mere concept of the science sounding remotely interesting given her history of being born and bred in a lab.

Sasha was begrudgingly intrigued by this guy who was friendly to everyone and yet seemed to be drawn to her of all people. Or, at least he made her feel special. She kept ignoring his attempts to get her attention when he casually dropped over to gab about classes he wrongfully assumed she cared about. Formal education was thought a dying art form, so everyone on campus thought college was just troush’n amazing. Like what they were taking was going to change the world. Like learning what somebody else had half-assed figured out only to have it altered or debunked decades later would lead them somewhere. How she wished to fit in with them in their fairy tale! But alas, at age eighteen Sasha had spent too much time in the real world. The college was a slave camp masquerading as progressive liberty; everyone wore their chains with an ambiguous sense of pride. Educating the populous held only one true purpose: to be underpinned by The Authority the moment someone’s dynamic research showed promise of a breakthrough to develop a new killing machine, domination strategy, or Fountain of Youth for those with the real power to wet their beaks. Kill, Eat, Screw. You could dress it up in whichever way you’d like, but that’s what all that learning amounted to. Everyone from the priest to the gutter dog thought the same way; they just employed different tactics with varying levels of success. Not to mention God’s part in all of it. (The sliding out of the right vagina part...) An acute urge to tear this tiny room apart surfaced within Sasha suddenly. But she was a new woman. She was not like the hippy-dippy clueless idiots from college, but, as if learning through some type of osmosis or example, she paused, took a breath, and reigned in control of her life again. She could remain calm: they’ll never break me, she reasoned. I won’t let them.

Reliving the afternoon that had changed her life, Sasha recalled sitting in the east wing library, not wanting to move for fear of being noticed and accosted by him with demands to say hi or tell him what she was doing later. Sasha pretended to be studying her texts on Cybernetics, but after Emerson busted her for study-posturing, out in the open, commenting that she’d opened to the same page every time he walked by, she went on the defensive. Her inherited fears of being lesser than everyone else welled up from a dark burning territory held within. This is exactly why I hate anyone ever noticing me! Sasha had developed a strong social anxiety over the years while living in captivity at The Institute. She had long developed coping mechanisms for this which involved never speaking to anyone. People can’t just start talking to you out of nowhere. As long as you don’t give them a reason to, she hoped.

Whoa! Twelve pages into the text and we’re nearly done the semester. Impressive! he commented inside the semi-crowded library.

She blushed with embarrassment. Thinking that her head might explode as she shut her books, she jogged out of the library in a swoop, dodging any eyes that may be watching. I knew they were all watching me then, she thought. And they were all talking about her too. Everyone in the school heard, and they immediately told everyone they’d ever met, and those people spread the word until they blackballed her from every possible relationship she could have, and they laughed at how awkward she was, and it was so pathetic for someone to be so insecure, they said. And, she knew she could never change because of where she was born, and how she was raised, and what she was, and more importantly, wasn’t. There was no escape for her, not even under a tightly-pulled-over-head dorm room blanket after skipping the rest of her afternoon classes and locking herself in the dorm she shared with gawking, pretentious strangers, some of which she’d actually grown to like, but regardless of how close she was with some, she lied to them, she had to lie, no one really knew her, they couldn’t. But now they’d know everything about her past. Everyone would. She lay there for how long? nearly catatonic under her blanket, still feeling the faux cotton against her skin in her raw imagination, hoping to wait out the growing hateful mob outside. In her mind she might as well be dead then. She thought she still heard Emerson’s continued harassment follow her out the library doors into the hallway as she exited, but all she actually heard was the thumping beat of blood pouring through her temples, spilling out her cheekbones.

Now sitting captive in her cell, she couldn’t hold back a feeling of fond reminiscence. God, everything was so different then, she thought, kicking her heels back at the knees, laying forward facing on the tiny cell bunk now, Baby-Sitters-Club-style. Did that even happen? She knew that the Sasha sitting in this cell today wouldn’t have reacted like that. That was her big problem back then? Someone noticing her? She thought now she’d do anything to go back and have that life if she could. She never appreciated how easy everything was then. We were both so different then, she reflected. He wasn’t the same person either… not at all. She quickly digressed back into her trance, joyfully sinking into how young and naïve he had seemed. What should I have done then to change my future that is, The Now?... She should have been more forward with him then, she should have just kissed him the next day in the gym… but she missed her moment. Sasha remembered locking herself in her dorm room for the night, unable to carry on after the humiliating library ordeal.

The next morning she had woken up early and gone to the gymnasium to run track with the intention of collapsing to the floor in exhaustion. And who was stretching in the corner wearing that insanely stupid tri-colored stretchy headband? The last person she wanted to see, Emerson Myshkin. She remembered imagining stomping his face into the light hardwood gymnasium floor somewhere along the boundary lines for basketball and volleyball. She’d be in trouble, sure, but it would end the threat of him terrorizing her further. It wasn’t fantasy. She actually did think about killing him. It may be my only option, she had figured.

He noticed her immediately after she did the opposite. Their eyes met, and then an awkwardness set in for a few long seconds in the space between them after they both instinctively broke eye contact, wanting their mutual, faked anonymity to remain intact. Emerson felt bad for upsetting her and came over to apologize for what he had said. She would learn that Emerson was great at keeping the peace and diffusing her explosive temper in the years to come. Well, maybe not, but he was nice. He told her it wasn’t right for him to make her feel embarrassed, and it was a joke gone bad. He didn’t tell her she was sensitive, or too sensitive, or that she shouldn’t let things rile her up so much, or that it wasn’t a big deal… His response was unlike anything she’d ever known. He said he was very sorry and told her he knew what it felt like to be embarrassed. He eventually admitted that he seemed to have a strong interest in her, that he just couldn’t seem to shake… But, for her sake, he suggested that it might be best if they didn’t speak to each other again.

There was a paradigm shift in Sasha’s mind at that moment. She had grown up in an environment centered around suspicion, detachment of emotions, and knowing that anyone and everyone could eventually become your enemy. Trust no one was literally the motto of her platoon on the training grounds of The Institute. But somehow, she recalled, despite all the training, counseling, and predetermined genetic makeup instructing her to the contrary, I actually believed him. His words somehow bridged a thought-to-be impassable threshold, a wall I put up fell down momentarily as though I could see into another reality I’d thought to be fictional, pure fantasy. He was sincere, he actually meant he was sorry and wanted better for me. I’d heard the words before, but only as cover up by liars attempting to save face or escape someone’s restitution. Nothing can explain why I believed him, as nothing can explain what I did next. The rumblings through the crowded gym floor, the incoherent dull roar heard by several side conversations taking place around her, and the soft rubber athletic footwear squeaking against the rising and falling floorboards fell silent then. No one had ever sincerely apologized to her for anything in her life. No one had ever pursued her, or paid any genuine attention to her either (unless plotting to get something in return). The Institute preached a good game about creating soldiers for protecting the peace and freedoms of the public, but by the time Sasha had reached early adolescence she was well aware of the hypocrisy touted by its pledge to keep people safe. It certainly didn’t include me! Just another inventoried livestock asset in the cradle-to-the-grave Super-Soldier program that the top-secret facility manufactured.

She felt the urge to vomit as she attempted to hammer down a resurfacing memory of a particularly unpleasant night spent in her room when she was nine. It was the first night that she had become brutally acquainted with the sadistic evils of this world as four older boys snuck into her room after lights out. She quickly dispatched that scene, wiping it from her mind now with a short-lived revenge fantasy killing spree where she slashed the four boys’ genitals off, forcing them down their mouths before carving and tearing their limbs off their bodies and bathing in their blood while they screamed for mercy during her frenzied attack. She replayed the kills several more times in her head as the ages weren’t fitting into her ego’s realm of belief. She couldn’t be nine in the fantasy. She’d have to be older, maybe sixteen, which put her older than the boys… no, that didn’t work. She changed it again: it didn’t happen to me. Instead, she saw it happening to a nine-year-old girl and the boys were men, adult men raping the girl, and she gutted them like fresh fish but didn’t stay to enjoy it. She ran over and protected the girl and took her away from that awful place. She felt a little better after the somewhat comforting violent restitution fantasy allowing her to live another day, but the undeniable truth of that night would continue to haunt Sasha for much longer. She’d experienced many other horrors in her life, but the first cut remained forever the deepest.

That’s not what Emerson would want me to think about, she told herself. But being caught and separated from him meant she would have to call on the old Sasha to get out of whatever mess lay in front of her. She knew she was only kidding herself when she tried to be different anyways. Deep down she was the same person she’d always been, and that would never really change.

Sasha had read in the file handed over to her from The Institute on the day she turned eighteen that she had been utterly mute for five years in early childhood. She was only recorded playing or speaking softly to herself by surveillance video. Not much had changed for her as a young adult: she barely managed to get accepted into college, and only because The Institute pulled strings to get her there. Her world opened up in the gym with Emerson after that

Reviews for The Enthusiasts

[Nathan Kowalla · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

FRESH! Sci fi with a pop culture twist! Fantastic!