The Barrens (NaNoWriMo Day 2)

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo! You can check out Day 1 here.

Day 2 Word Count: 1662
Total Word Count: 3279
Goal: 50,000
Remaining: 46,721

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I never knew my father, my mother was a bookkeeper. I never knew my father, my mother was a bookkeeper.

The therapist’s interest in his mother had thrown him. As Rasul walked home, the practiced lies played over and over again in his head. The first part actually wasn’t a lie. His mother never did say anything to him of his father. For Rasul's part, he never asked. As far as he could tell, the man had never existed, and he didn’t bother concerning himself with him.

The second part wasn't true at all, but even if the therapist had pressed him, he wouldn't have been able to say too much. He knew that she was a phrenologist, first for the administration and then for the university. For the first four years of his life, he had lived almost exclusively in her quarters at the university. With the hindsight brought by age, Rasul had come to realize that she had hidden him away from the world. She had never let him speak to others, and he had rarely left her quarters. She had been his only friend, companion, and teacher.

When the administration officials had first come to the university to interrogate her, she had sent him away to stay with one of her colleagues. A few days later, she killed herself. Her mother’s colleague had made Rasul promise not to tell anybody who his mother was. He had never fully understood why, and he had long since bothered trying to understand why any of it had ever happened.

People would ask about her in passing polite conversation, and he had always stuck to his lie. Maybe she did have something to do with why he had passed out. Maybe it was just the aether.

Finally, Rasul reached his apartment building. It stood towering in the sky at the end of the street, one of five identical behemoths circling the southern half of a reservoir that helped cool the various factories and workshops that gave the Forges their name. He scanned his wrist at the top of the steps, and the door opened.

The cavernous foyer was empty. Like the rest of the building, it was sterile and gray. Rasul called the elevator and waited for it to arrive. When it came, he walked in and punched the button for floor eighty-two. The elevator hummed gently. Rasul leaned back and rested his head against the wall. He closed his eyes. Even standing up, he felt the impulse to sleep.

His apartment was little more than a hallway, a fifteen-foot corridor longer than it was wide. The room was dark, with the only light coming in through the window from the other buildings outside. Near the door, there was a kitchenette, and his bed took up most of the rest of the room. A small door next to his bed led to the tiny bathroom, and he went inside and flipped the light on.

Gingerly, he peeled the bandages off his head. He was supposed to keep them on until the doctor changed them the next time he saw him, but he was overtaken with curiosity at what the wound looked like. The cut was smaller than it felt, and it was neatly stitched up. The area around it was bruised and swollen. He examined the wound for a moment. It was strange to him that he could remember getting dizzy at the foundry, but had no memory of the following seconds when he hit his head. With his curiosity satisfied, Rasul threw the bandages away and flipped the bathroom lights off.

Without even bothering to undress, he collapsed onto his bed. The tint on the window next to the bed was dialed down. He looked down at the reservoir. Heights made him dizzy, but he always enjoyed the view from a high vantage point. The stars in the firmament shone down.

The thought of going back to work the next day exhausted him even more. He wondered where he would be sent. Hopefully somewhere in the foundry itself, not a desk job.

Rasul reached for the control panel near the window and rolled the dial that turned the tint up. The world outside was replaced by a black wall. With the room dark, he closed his eyes. He was asleep within minutes.

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Leah waited at the door of Father Michael’s classroom, a bag slung over her shoulder. The vicarage novices were lined up in their desks in neat rows, all attentively listening to their morning lesson. The Lily of Saint Aloysius was stitched onto their vestments, marking them as vicars-in-training. Father Michael stood at the front of the room near his desk. One by one, he would ask them questions, and in catechismal fashion, they would respond with the proper answer.

“What are the four elements?” Father Michael asked. He had a small book open in his hand, but he wasn’t reading from it.

“Fire, water, earth, and air,” said the first boy in the row.

Father Michael nodded. The boy beamed with pride.

“What do the four elements compose?”

“All of creation that is not life,” said the next boy.

“What are the four humors?”

“Yellow bile from fire, phlegm from water, black bile from earth, and blood from air,” said another.

Down the line they went, each answering correctly and receiving a nod from the vicar in reward. Leah waited patiently, answering the questions in her mind along with the novices. She received a similar training in her childhood, before branching from general education into medicine.

What do the four humors compose? All of creation that is life. What is the quintessence? Aether. What is aether’s role? To degrade the four humors.

The sun was shining clear and strong outside the classroom, and the trees outside were turning red and yellow. Everything was on cue, as always. Before Avalon, the seasons could be volatile and unpredictable, and in the end, they had disappeared entirely. This was generations ago, and nobody alive could remember anything except for the city’s perfectly patterned seasons.

Leah was always happy when the seasons changed. She felt a pang of nostalgia as she watched the novices. If she had been allowed to do so, she would have pursued ordination. As interesting as medicine could be, nothing excited her like theology. Whenever she could manage a bit of spare time, she would be in the church library studying the vast universe of saints, angels, and demons. She was proud to support Ecclesia Vera in any way she could, but vicarage therapy wasn’t the most exciting field.

When the questions and answers had ended, Father Michael dismissed the novices. They filed out in perfect, uniform fashion. Leah smiled as they passed by her. When the room was clear, Father Michael set his book down and waved her in.

“You have news for me about the foundry worker?” he asked. His tone was as crisp as it had been when he was questioning the novices. He adjusted his glasses on his beaklike nose. Leah handed him a folded piece of paper from her bag.

“His answers were standard,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary. A brief spike when discussing his upbringing, but that’s not at all out of the ordinary. The results from the neurograph, on the other hand, were quite interesting."

Father Michael unfolded the paper and looked it up and down. Leah thought he looked like a bird, perched near his desk. He was thin and long, with dark, deep set eyes.

“The instruments we have here are limited in their capacity,” she continued. “I can follow general patterns, but it’s impossible to look at the details to confirm if it’s an exact match. At first glance, though, his brain waves do seem to match the signal from Elysium. The equipment at St. Pius should be able to close the gap.”

“So it seems probable?” Father Michael said.

“Yes, father,” Leah said. “The overall patterns do follow the same structure as the signal intercepted from Elysium yesterday. But I would caution that there’s very little about his life that seems remarkable. I wouldn’t peg him as involved in whatever might be happening.”

The vicar folded the paper back up and set it on his desk.

“Thank you, doctor,” he said. “I’ll pass this information along to St. Pius. They can make the correct decision.”

He sat down at his desk and opened the little book. Leah knew that was her cue to leave, but it might also be an opportunity to do something a little bigger than serve her district church.

“I would gladly do that for you,” she said. “I even wouldn’t mind helping the doctors there continue the analysis. Besides, they’ll need to bring the subject in for more sessions, and he already knows me.”

The vicar pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked directly at her.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, doctor, but let’s leave this to the experts at the cathedral,” he said. "You’ve done well here. Be content with the part you have to play.”

Leah nodded. She hadn't really expected any other answer. Ecclesia Vera was very strict about its hierarchy. It was the heart of the church’s operational ability. What is the church? The church is the Body of Christ, and each member has a part to play.

“Yes, father,” she said.

Back in the hallway, another class was filing in. These students were older, still novices, but they looked to be close to receiving their ordination. When they saw her, they turned their eyes away. Vicars took a vow of celibacy, and most older novices were discouraged from spending too much time associating with women.

Leah followed the hallway to her office. She didn’t have any appointments today. Other than the factory worker yesterday, she didn’t have any appointments all week. She sat down at her desk and sighed, staring at the empty room.

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