Chapter 7 - Gravity

7.  Gravity

 

I woke up to the smell of meat cooking over an open fire. It smelled savory until I peeked out my window and realized it was feral dog being roasted over a metal industrial bin. 

I rose to my feet and approached the main room of the hut, but heard voices and froze. Whisper and Erika were speaking. 

 “So, tell me about Escher,” Erika asked. 

“He’s the leader,” Whisper said.  “That’s all you really need to know.  He founded everything you see, and he’s in charge of the Strangers.” 

Her voice sounded the least bit excited for the first time since I’d met her.  I idly wondered what her role here was.  Was she Escher’s girlfriend?  I imagined sex with her would be like going at it with a bag of ice�"all sharp edges and cold, forbidding places. 

 “Where did Escher come from, then?” Erika asked. 

I wished Erika wouldn’t be so curious about him.  I was, too, but it made me feel inferior.  It made me think maybe God felt this way about airplanes and the Internet. 

“I heard he used to be rich,” Grundel said, “and gave up his life of luxury for this.  But Whisper has known him longer than just about anyone.”

Whisper only nodded her head.  It was clear she wasn’t going to divulge the story. 

“Well, if she won’t talk,” Grundel continued, “I only know�"”

“Shut up, Grundel,” Whisper said calmly, almost kindly.  He immediately quieted himself. 

“He organized this … this society?” I asked from the doorway between the two rooms.

“Some of us used to have jobs like you, and all of us are rather disenchanted with the system.  All of our homes and property fell to the Orange Zone and eventually went Red.  Do you know how many people were left out in the cold, in the anarchy?  Let me tell you a secret about anarchy,” Grundel said.  “It’s only anarchy for about five minutes.  Then, the biggest guy realizes he’s King�"or at least until two guys band together and think they are.  Escher? Well, he’s about 1,000 guys.  Escher with a few thousand guys? That’s not just tribal warfare anymore�"that's a f****n' army,” Grundel said.  Then he looked at Whisper and stopped talking.

“Escher is a force of his own nature,” a high-pitched, nasally voice said from a corner of Grundel’s makeshift home.  I hadn’t noticed him before, of course.

“Sneak,” Grundel uttered sarcastically.  “I hate you, Sam.” 

I saw Erika’s green eyes refocus fuzzily as she realized that a fifth person had been in the room for some time. 

“Nice to see you again, Clark,” Sam said, taking a step forward and shaking my hand.  As soon as I touched him, his presence solidified in my mind. 

“I’ve seen you before,” I said vacantly.  “In Tasumec Tower.” 

“Yeah, and I told you this was going to happen… and it did.  You shouldn’t try to keep things from Escher.”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you take a walk with me, Clark?”

Erika began to protest, but Whisper laid a hand quietly on hers, letting her know she had no choice in the matter.

The morning light played strange tricks on the Orange Zone.  Where it had seemed alive the night before with campfires and small gatherings on every corner, it was now completely empty and seemed deserted.  It was easy to imagine how the police had a hard time tracking the Secret Society of Strangers; half the suburbs in America looked like this. 

“How do you do it?” I asked, looking to my left and right, then to my left again, and finally finding Sam.

“Disappear?” he asked, smiling.

“Yeah.  Pretty amazing.”

“I bet you’d be pretty good at it yourself… well, I mean if you had the proper tools.”

“Why do you say that?  And what do you mean by 'tools'?”

Sam pulled a rusty, ruined watch from a chain on his belt. The brass had long ago faded to green and brown, and the glass was smashed across the face.  “This helps,” he said, “but there's more to it than that, of course.”

“How does that help?”

“If Escher ever wants you to know, he’ll explain it,” he said. 

“So how do you know I’d be good at it?” I asked as we stepped past Strangers attending to their morning duties.

“Just your look.  And hell, you noticed me, and most people never do.”

“I’m very conscious of people watching me,” I said.

“I’ll have to be extra careful around you then,” Sam grinned.

“So how did you meet Escher?” I asked as we walked slowly down the street.  “Are you some sort of spy?”

“Better.” He smiled.  “I’m shy.”

“What?”

“It’s as much about not noticing other people as it is about not being noticed yourself.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Probably not.  Have you ever felt someone looking at you?”

“All the time,” I said.

“We naturally sense each other out. It's sort of a mental check we subconsciously make before we have contact with someone.  It’s hard-wired into us, and it shapes how we act around everyone we see. It’s why we feel comfortable walking up to some people but feel the opposite way with someone else.”

“I don’t really feel comfortable walking up to anyone,” I said. 

“Anyway, I skip that.  I never send out that feeler, never initiate contact. Thanks to my tools, I am able to just not send out those unconscious signals that other people respond to�"sort of like how dreading being singled out always gets you singled out.”

“That sounds too easy to work,” I said.

“You say that, but it's not as easy as it sounds.  Try standing in the corner of someone’s office for seven hours trying as hard as you can to not notice the man sitting three feet away from you.”

“Beautiful women must be your downfall,” I said, grinning.

“That goes for everyone,” he said sagely, “but there is more to it than just that. Escher gives the power, if he trusts you enough,” Sam said.  “Some of us are more.  You don’t understand yet, and maybe you can’t, but some of us have made huge sacrifices to follow Escher.”

“Some of you?”

“Those of us who are closest to him.”  He stopped me in front of a barred-up liquor store. “And here we are. It’s been nice knowing you.”

Sam snapped his fingers within an inch of my face, distracting me for a moment.  When I was finished blinking, he was gone.

I looked around, wondering if I could spot someone that my senses refused to recognize.  After a moment, I gave up and stepped into the store.

The shelves had been pushed to either side of the entryway, creating a makeshift cage for anyone who entered.  Inside, two men in camouflage jackets stood guard with guns in their hands.  A fashionably intense man lounged in a royal blue bean-bag chair between them. 

I noticed that when he relaxed, he looked a good deal older than I’d expected.  He might have been in his early fifties.

"Hello, Frightened Boy," his voice boomed warmly. 

"Sir," I mumbled. 

"Be happy to see me!  This can be resolved.  You can go back to your old life soon."  He reached into his robe and withdrew a square of black leather.  Inside, he withdrew my City Card and presented it to me. 

I choked on that for a moment. "After I've seen all of this?  You'd just…let me go?"

"Well, yeah.  I mean, your old life has a rapidly approaching expiration date, but you can enjoy it for as long as everyone else will get to.  And you won't be far away. If you cause trouble, we'll come and get you again.  No place is far from me."  He put the card back in his pocket.  “You’ll get it back when I have the footage.” 

 "I don’t…” I blubbered.

 “Either way, my domination is inevitable.  The pieces are already in place. Make no mistake, Banlo Bay will fall.  And after it does, it’ll finally be a wonderful place.  People will trust each other, love each other.  There is only one enemy that thwarts our progress.”

 "Who?" I asked.

 Escher paused for a moment before he said, "It’s nothing to worry about. It’s not something you need to know. All you need to do is give me those hard drives, and then you can go on with your life.”

S**t. Of course, except I don’t have them or know where they are. I didn’t want to tell him that, though �" what if he killed me?

"What keeps me from floating out of my chair?" Escher asked.

 "Gravity, I think," I said.  My head was spinning trying to keep up with him.  The sudden shift in conversation was making me uncomfortable. 

 "What is gravity?" he asked.

 "Newton defined it pretty well, I think.  It's like you said�"it's what is keeping you in your chair." 

 "No!" Escher shouted, standing up to illustrate his point.  "Newton was my kind of scientist, because science is bunk�"a waste of time and no better than religion�"but Newton didn't try to explain why things happened.  Newton's theory of gravity only measures forces in this galaxy.  He never said what gravity is or why it's there. He only measured it.  We still don't know what gravity is."

 "We'll know eventually," I replied, somewhat defensively.  I subscribed to science. 

 "We'll have a better guess before long," Escher said.  "The Bible says Adam was placed on the Earth, and the first thing he did was name things, categorize things.  This is very telling. It is man's first instinct to explain, to marginalize, and to assess threats.  As man becomes fat, man becomes bored, and when he takes this to the next level, science is born.  Man names the tree, but the tree existed first.  It exists whether or not we call it a tree.  Science is constantly wrong. It stays in one place, but the world keeps spinning."  Escher sat down before he continued. 

 "Are you really sure a floor can’t also be a ceiling?  I stay in my chair," he said, "whether or not we know why.  Why?  Because it has nothing to do with the universe.  Science is obsessive-compulsive behavior from a bored species, no better than putting all your peas in neat columns before you eat them."

 "But gravity explains the entire universe."

 "It's 80 percent wrong actually," Escher said. 

 "But, dark matter�""

 "Dark matter is what?  A variable in an equation that represents what is wrong with Newton's theory, that's all. It could be quantum loop gravity or causal dynamical triangulated space time or super string theory.  Or it could be because God said so… or none of it might exist and it’s all a single imagining. 

“What makes you think human beings are capable of understanding the universe?  Maybe our senses simply aren’t capable.  We don’t expect a mouse to understand why he is in a maze, do we? We only expect him to muddle through,” Escher reasoned.  “Or maybe we’re all creating the world around us as we move through it, but I’m creating it much better than anyone else�"or maybe it’s just all me."

 "It's better than nothing," I said.  “And because of science, we have engineering.  Cars, planes, trains�"”

 "It's infinitely worse than nothing," Escher replied.  "People say religion is the great killer, that religion starts wars and commits atrocities.  Maybe so, but science made them dangerous.  Science armed them.  Science is a base instinct of man, a way to keep him occupied and blind to the truth of the world.  Science breeds ideas like drilling holes in skulls to let bad spirits out.  And even worse, the need to explain things�"that turns into a need to know what to fear. That’s how he controls us.  That’s how he keeps us afraid of our own shadows and keeps us from trusting one another." 

 "If science is crap, like you say, then what is the truth?"

 "Tessellations are the truth. The tessellations that I draw.”

 You're not the truth, I wanted to say. You're insane. But you are surrounded by armed guards, and you're a volatile terrorist, so I'll just smile and nod.

 Instead, I said, "Science is man's best attempt at making order out of the things around him."

 "You've just described religion as well, my new friend.  You're admitting that science offers nothing worth believing in and little worth hoping for.  ‘Science will save us. Technology will set us free!’  Wrong!  Science got us here, to the end of civilization.  It’s my turn to take a crack at the problem."

 He stopped talking for a moment.  I didn’t say a word, but he seemed to expect this.  Instead, he studied my face, and ironically, I found myself wishing he would start talking again.

“I need that footage,” he said to me, changing tact again, making me think everything he said before was only to catch me off guard for this moment.  Every moment with Escher seemed to be like this.

“Who were the men on them?”

“Bad men.  They deserved to die, and they knew why.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“No one else can know why they died.  There are forces out there that could stop me if they had that sort of information.” 

“I see.”

“That’s why you can’t leave until I get those tapes.  I know you probably want to stop everything you know and love from being torn down brick by brick, but be reasonable.  If I have this tape, I can prevent myself from having to kill everyone.  You get me those tapes, and I don’t have to go that far.”

“Great. Yeah, I’ll get them,” I lied.   

“You do want to go back to work, don’t you? To your life?”

I hesitated for a moment.

“Ah-hah!” Escher shouted.  The sound was like a gun clap, and I flinched. 

A day job wasn’t the only life I’d ever known.  Life used to be a lot different, before the Collapse.

“What does that life in the office mean to you?” Escher asked.  “What am I really destroying?”

“Fake laughter, cold coffee, and gold watches,” I mumbled.  “This isn’t the only life I’ve ever known. It’s the closest thing to normal, though.”

“Why do you think the world fell apart?” he asked.

“I don’t know for sure.  The Illuminati?  The New World Order?  Someone must be responsible for this.”

Escher laughed.  Then he looked down at the cheap linoleum checkered tiling on the floor and retreated to his half of the board, no longer threatening to strike my last few scattered pawns. 

“You should think hard before you establish in your mind that there is some terrible entity responsible for the world’s evils.  I would question the existence of such an entity like you’d question the existence of God, because you’re really elevating them both to the same place.  No, the answer must lie elsewhere.” 

Then Escher stood up and picked a long silver pistol from a nearby table. He pivoted suddenly, and the barrel was in my face.

“You should be wondering why I’m not pulling the trigger right now,” Escher said. 

I only gulped.

“The first reason is because I’d still like that footage.”  He took a moment to clear his throat and pointed the gun just an inch to the left of my ear, away from my head. “The second is because I have a good feeling about you, Frightened Boy �" and my good feelings are your reality.” 

Reviews

[Martina]

Okay, so I finally able to finish it this far X_X lol
and my opinon is that this is amazing! ^_^
I love it so far, and can't wait to read more.
well done :)

[Katseye]

Very interesting. Can't wait for the next installment.