Hollow World

Chapter Eleven Quality Time

Ellis had tried several times to contact Pax but failed. By all accounts Pax had disappeared. As part of his agreement to go on tour, Ellis insisted Pol do everything possible to locate Pax, including daily messages to Pax’s home, where even Vin had no clue where the arbitrator had gone. Ellis was struck by the irony that by cutting out Pax’s chip, he was the architect of his own misery. This sense of guilt plagued him as Ellis finally submitted to the grand tour.

Pol had been relentless with the schedule. Each day Ellis traveled to some new corner of the world or another planet altogether. There weren’t nearly as many inhabitants in Hollow World as Ellis had expected. Just over 123 million, the majority of mankind having died during the Great Tempest. They all resided inside a honeycombed earth, scattered across the fifty-two tectonic plates, but with portals they could travel anywhere in an instant.

Mars looked nothing like Ellis had expected. After spending most of his youth dreaming of being the first person to walk on its surface, the ease of the trip removed that mystique. For the most part it was no different from Hollow World except for the ubiquitous Mars logo placed everywhere. This was because the vast majority of the Martian resort destination was below the surface. The little bit of the planet he was able to see from the viewing domes looked like Nevada under a hazy pink sky.

He did get to see the Mars rovers. They were still out there, preserved as part of Odyssey Historic Park. The rovers were the Red Planet’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Olympus Mons, the largest Martian volcano and the tallest mountain on any planet in the solar system. The one highlight of Mars was that Ellis got to see robots. He’d wondered where they were. Buck Rogers and The Jetsons had promised flying cars, jet packs, and robot maids. Once again Ellis was disappointed. Previously used to safely explore the landscape of the planet, they’d become a novelty for tourists. Robots were remote-controlled machines sent out to transmit 3-D visuals and fetch rocks as souvenirs. Mars had become like Niagara Falls, a cheesy tourist trap. And like vacationers to a Mexican resort, where tourists preferred the sand-free hotel pools to the ocean, most Mars visitors preferred walking around the virtual holo than suiting up to experience the real thing. Ellis did indeed don the suit and join the mechanical delivery bots, but after a lifetime of waiting, the experience was anticlimactic.

New planets had been discovered, like Trinity, which was outside the galaxy, but no colonies had been established. The East Indian Tea Company didn’t exist anymore. Everyone had plenty of room, and nothing beyond novelty remained to drive humanity to the frontier.

While travel everywhere was instantaneous, the outings were taxing. He felt good. He was, in fact, incredibly fit for a fifty-eight-year-old man who’d just died and had his organs replaced. His energy wasn’t perfect, but he figured that was more a result of thirty years of reduced exercise than the surgery. What drained him were the crowds. Everywhere they went, hundreds of people waited. As far as the public was concerned, Ellis was bigger than Olympus Mons. Unlike the gathering in the ISP’s Grand Cathedral, these were filled with people wearing clothes and sporting tattoos. By the time they were visiting Challenger Deep, the lowest point on Planet Earth, Ellis began to see his first imitators.

“Pattern designers are working ’round the clock to create Ellis Rogers wear,” Pol explained, seeing Ellis staring back at a gawker who wore an identical flannel shirt and jeans.

Pol had enormous amounts of energy, finding time to report to Warren each night even after a long day of appearances. Apparently it was important to keep the technology-deficient farm informed on Ellis’s global impact.

That day, he and Pol had stood under the illuminated dome of Challenger Deep, and looked up at a dead, dark world of empty water. They were too deep for fish. Ellis had preferred the city of Atlantis, an artificial coral reef surrounding a thousand-story-tall see-through city, also known as The Aquarium. The Deep was just scary. The knowledge of all that water above left Ellis haunted by the thought of a crack in the glass.

“It’s wonderful. The whole world is going Ellis Rogers crazy,” Pol said. “People are sharing your speeches. Ellis Rogers masks are big, and a hyper-realistic interactive holo featuring an interview with you is the most popular in the world for the second straight day.”

“I’m surprised people aren’t having plastic surgery done,” Ellis said.

“Plastic surgery?” Pol asked.

Ellis gestured at his face. “You know, it’s where doctors alter your features surgically. With all this desire for individuality, I’d think more people would have done it.”

“There are limits to self-expression,” Pol said. “People want to be individuals—not different.”

“How’s that?” Ellis spotted another Ellis Rogers wannabe entering the sea-dome, this one with the same JanSport pack slung over one shoulder.

“Putting on clothes, even applying a tattoo, just adds a layer of identity. It doesn’t fundamentally change a person. People don’t want to be something different—they aren’t dogs longing to be cats or even horses wanting to be zebras, although they might paint on stripes to look different. You’re fascinating to all of us. Not only because of your divergence from the norm, but your complete acceptance of it. You honestly don’t mind being separate, being alone in your singularity. This courage is what so many of us admire when we see you. We’d like to think we’d be just as comfortable standing out, being a real individual, but actually doing it—that’s a bravery beyond most of us.”

The backpacker offered Ellis a shy smile. He smiled back, embarrassed for staring. Ellis casually looked up at the dome where the illuminated ocean was filled with vents and motes. While what he saw was real, it looked more artificial than anything he’d seen in Hollow World.

“You see, there’s a comfort in belonging to a whole. Humans are social animals,” Pol explained. “But people don’t live together in groups like in your day. Once it became possible to survive separately, those traditional groups like families and tribes dissolved. In Hollow World they maintain a sense of community by being the same—exactly the same. They live any way they like, keep what hours they choose, follow such pursuits as they find interesting, while believing they’re always part of a greater whole. They don’t really want to be different so much as noticed—recognized.” Pol held up his maimed hand. “Those of us at the farm are different. Permanent alteration will be part of our future. And you’re a big part of that future.”

“What sort of future is that exactly?”

“I suppose that will be up to us, now, won’t it?”

Ellis’s growing popularity was putting pressure on the ISP, and Pol had him make speeches at most of the places they visited. He got better at speaking, although most of what he said at each stop was identical. He talked about how different the world was now, thanked the ISP for saving his life, and expressed his appreciation to all of Hollow World for their warm welcome. Pol had him follow this with a plea for help in convincing the ISP to release the original female pattern so he didn’t have to be so isolated. Pol insisted he repeat the one is the loneliest number line from the first speech. When Ellis admitted it came from a song, Pol dug it out of the Wegener Archives and blared the recording before and after each speech, making it the Ellis Rogers theme. Occasionally he heard people singing it, usually the ones in the flannel shirts. At his speeches, the crowd, hundreds of identical voices, would sing the song together.

In addition to tourist attractions, Pol took him to a sporting event and an art exhibit, but Ellis found the historic sites and museums to be the most interesting. He was delighted by the chance to visit Egypt’s pyramids—which looked a little worse for wear but were still hanging in there. He also had the chance to walk through the South African Museum of Prejudice and Segregation, the ruins of New York, and the Forbidden City of China. The most interesting by far, however, were the famed Museum of War and Museum of Religion, both located in the historic city of Jerusalem.

Pol arranged for Ellis to have special access to the vaults in the Museum of War, where he got to see the stockpiles of weapons—those items they didn’t have room for on the official floor display—weapons still considered dangerous. They had preserved everything from Greek bronze-era swords, to British ship cannons, to American thermonuclear bombs. What shocked Ellis the most was that the themes of the two neighboring museums were similar: the tragic mistakes of humanity. While Ellis believed in God, he recognized the contributions in terror and bloodshed such beliefs had generated over the long history of mankind. One exhibit redefined the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as greed, pride, fear, and religion—the leading causes of war.

While riding on a moving walkway through a tunnel, various scenes from history were played out on either side by lifelike, but fully digital, constructs. A narrator said, “The errors in judgment were unfortunate but necessary roads taken on the long journey from the barbarity of the past to the enlightened peace of today.”

Behind him, Ellis heard someone explain how at one time roads were physical things rather than mere metaphors.

The crowds were significantly smaller in Jerusalem—the museums were less popular than the Mars simulators or see-through Atlantis—but Ellis was captivated as he walked the timeline of humanity’s religious history from prehistoric burial mounds containing personal items that suggested a belief in an afterlife, to the last active church in El Grullo, Mexico—eventually destroyed by the Great Tempest. Ellis entered holos where he could stand in churches, temples, and mosques and listen to sermons about the growing apathy toward God or experience virtual battlefields so realistic that he jumped out to avoid being sick. The Three Miracles and the ISP were responsible for the final eradication of war, but religion had disappeared much sooner, and the cause was far less definitive. Organized belief wasn’t outlawed. There had been no discovery refuting the faithful’s claims, no great atheistic crusade. Religion, it seemed, had just been forgotten.

Each night Ellis returned to Wegener with Pol, to a room as spartan as the home of Geo-24. Ellis didn’t care; he just wanted a place to be alone. The grueling schedule kept him joined with Pol like a newlywed couple on their honeymoon, and Ellis was growing weary of both Pol and the tour. He’d recovered from his surgery, but told Pol he was still suffering from fatigue just to get a break.

He spilled the contents of his backpack on the bed and sat like a kid on Halloween night, looking through his haul. The flashlight, his compass, water purifier, first-aid kit, matches, rain gear—still in the bag with the Target store label. This was all he had left. Spotting a bag of peanut M&M’S, he tore it open and popped a red one in his mouth, savoring the taste of the twenty-first century like never before.

In the last few days, Ellis had seen marvels. He’d traveled to the depths of the ocean and outside the solar system such that he could spit in the eye of the meager accomplishments of the Mercury Seven. He’d gained what he’d come for—a cure, a new lease on life. Looking at the cheap assortment of sporting-goods-store junk, Ellis could only think about what he’d lost. He longed for a good cheeseburger, a normal toilet, and the sound of traffic or his computer booting. Even the things he used to hate he missed: endless commercials, driving in traffic, the sound of his cellphone, even the vicious fighting between Republicans and Democrats. What movies had he missed? What achievements? What disasters?

He popped another candy in his mouth, closed his eyes, and saw himself helping Isley with his math homework. Then he was shopping with Peggy for a television, then just raking leaves on a Sunday afternoon. Memories—perfection in an airtight glass—frozen in untarnished beauty.

He spotted the glint of gold under the raincoat—Peggy’s rings. He reached into his pocket. Ellis still carried his wallet and phone, though he didn’t know why. He just couldn’t bring himself to discard anything. He flipped past his license to the photos of Peggy and Isley. Fuzzy, pocket-scarred—he should have brought more pictures. Why didn’t he bring pictures?

He missed Peggy.

He pressed the power button on his phone. Lights came on. He checked his messages. Peggy’s call was still in his voicemail. He pressed play.

“El? Oh goddammit, El, pick up! Please pick up.” Her voice still quivered, still frightened. “I need to talk to you. I need to know what you’re thinking…I’m sorry, okay? Seriously, I am, and that was years ago. I don’t even know why I kept the letters. Just stupid is what it was. I’d honestly forgotten about them.

“I know I should have told you. Jesus, I wish you’d just pick up. Listen, are you still at Brady’s? I’m driving over. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. We can talk then, okay? Please don’t be mad. It wasn’t Warren’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. It just happened, and I know we should have told you, but…well…If you get this before I get there, don’t go anywhere or do anything crazy, okay?”

Ellis was crying when he pressed the return call button.

He listened.

Silence.

Her name was Sol.

She wasn’t really a female, but Ellis thought she was close enough. The voice and mannerisms were there, even though Sol had been born years after the sexes were being phased out. Sol was a first-generation standard pattern and had no number designation after her name because Sol was the oldest living human in existence—or had been until Ellis challenged her for the title.

Pol had obviously thought their meeting would make for a good promotional stunt, and was probably right, but Pol hadn’t stuck around to see the performance through. The Chief Councilor had other matters that day and, after introducing them, left Ellis and Sol alone. Although the visit was advertised, the crowds stayed away. Ellis wasn’t certain if Pol had anything to do with that, or if Sol herself commanded the sort of respect that meant unwanted guests would refrain from intruding on her privacy.

They were in Sol’s home, a strange and cluttered collection of memorabilia from her long life, and Ellis felt it was the most normal home he’d visited so far. For one thing, there were books—actual paper books—and an old tablet computer. She had hats, and sunglasses, and pens. A dresser, a closet, a clock, and a coatrack with coats. Sol’s most beloved possession was mounted on the wall above a faux fireplace and was a photo of a real woman. Asian eyes wreathed in short black hair looked out from the silver frame.

“That’s Network Azo,” Sol told him. “Savior of the world. People were always waiting on God back then. My mother was very religious and told me not to put stock in Azo, that she was just another person and would eventually break my heart. People always felt that way then. No faith at all in people, just in old stories and books.”

A whistle erupted from the kitchen, and Sol held up a finger. “Tea!” she shouted and rushed off.

Ellis watched her scurry out of the room in her flower-print dress, thinking how much like an old woman she acted and yet she still looked like she was twenty-five. Sol was in fact beautiful. Different from the others, with facial features not quite to the final stage, the real difference was that Sol had hair—hair she kept short and black.

“How do you like your tea?” Sol called.

“Really more of a coffee guy.”

“Cream and honey it is then.”

She returned with an old-fashioned silver tray and dainty porcelain cups that steamed. “Don’t you just love authentic tea? I mean steeped, not made. I shouldn’t say that in front of her, though.” Sol pointed at the portrait above the fireplace. “But I think even Azo would still appreciate the effort it takes to run hot water through leaves. She believed in hard work.”

Sol took a sip and smacked her lips in a most undignified manner. “Ah…that’s the stuff.”

She waited until Ellis tried his. The color of caramel, it tasted almost like a mocha latte.

“Good, right?”

He smiled.

Sol looked back up at the picture. “She never did, you know. Net Azo never did disappoint me. My mother was wrong. My mother was always trying to find fault with others. Everyone used to do that. They hated the idea of heroes for some reason. Used to say they wanted them, but always sought to destroy any who tried. They hated the future too—which is what accounted for everyone being so disappointed, I think. When you expect tomorrow to be concrete, even if it isn’t, you feel it is because that’s somehow better than being wrong. But I never did. I knew Azo was a true hero. She was perfect. Abraham Lincoln freed the American slaves, but Network Azo freed everyone.”

“You had a mother?” Ellis asked.

He was looking down at the little beige cocker spaniel sleeping on the floor, its big ears splayed out like Dumbo. The animal showed gray around its muzzle and hadn’t moved during the entire visit. It only opened its eyes briefly when they had arrived. Perhaps Sol had the oldest dog too.

“Uh-huh. Back when I was born we still had surrogate parents. The ISP provided the DNA pattern, but I was raised by Arvice Chen in the affluent Predat Sector. She wanted a daughter, but got me instead.”

“No father?”

Sol shook her head. “Marriage was an oddity by that time. People were all moving underground. It was a whole new world.”

She took another sip, then set the cup back on the saucer, where it made a petite click. “Lots of changes were happening at the time. No one who has it good ever appreciates change, you know. Like my mother—she hated change. Hated having to leave the sky and go to an early grave, as she called it. I honestly don’t know why she volunteered to raise me. She certainly wasn’t a forward-thinking woman. Maybe she thought she could influence the future through me. She imagined the future would be worse than the past, some awful disaster. Most people did. And just to be fair—it did look that way. The Great Tempest had come, and millions of people were swept away. The Apocalypse, my mother had called it—ever heard of that?”

Ellis nodded. “People said the same things in my day.”

Sol smiled. “I like you, Mr. Rogers. You like my tea?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got good taste too.” She winked. “So, what’s it like traveling through time?”

“Disorienting.”

“I can believe that.” Sol bobbed her head.

“The whole trip was really just a blur for me. Kinda felt sick afterward. I wouldn’t suggest it.”

Sol smiled at him. No wrinkles at all, but Ellis thought she had old eyes. After his visit to the ISP he imagined they weren’t original, but maybe there was truth to the adage about eyes being windows to the soul.

“Is the future everything you’d hoped for?”

Ellis laughed, and she laughed with him. “No,” he said. “I can honestly say I never expected this.”

All the windows of Sol’s home were covered by sheer curtains. That might have added to the homey feel. Ellis’s mother had done the same thing. What caught his eye was how they moved. The curtains rippled and billowed as if in an intermittent breeze wafting past an open sash. Occasionally they split apart, and Ellis could see flowers in a window box: violets, azalea, and chrysanthemums—old-fashioned flowers.

“I’ll bet you didn’t. I heard about your campaign to get a woman, and it sounds like you’re getting your wish granted.”

“Really?”

“That’s the rumor. I’d advise against it, but I suppose you know more about women than I do. Were you married?”

“Yeah. Almost thirty-five years.”

“Not very long. Did something happen?”

Ellis was surprised, until he remembered whom he was talking to. “How old are you?”

“See, if you were to ask a woman that, legend has it you’d get slapped.” Sol remained silent, showing a little coy smile. Just when he was certain she wouldn’t answer, she asked, “When were you born?”

“May 5th, 1956.”

“Let’s put it this way…” Sol tapped her lower lip. “You’re four hundred and four years older than me.”

Ellis started working it out. Sol was 1,718 years old—nearly two thousand years herself—only she hadn’t skipped any of it. She was a Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner comedy routine come to life.

“You look shocked. You come in here with this crazy story of flying through time on a set of plastic boxes, and you’re looking at me funny because I can still remember when people had sex? How you making out with that, anyway? I’m guessing you might be experiencing some withdrawal.” Sol gestured at the books. “I read, you know. So few do these days. I like the old paper books, as you can tell. Hard to get. Most of the things I have were antiques when I was born. The books I created from patterns I put together myself and based on the few genuine relics. So little survived the Great Tempest. Everyone relies on holos and grams. That’s the one thing my mother gave me that I appreciate. She taught me to read. Sex is in almost all the books. Men especially have a need for it—a failing sometimes. A lot of the books call it a natural drive. I don’t know if I buy that. Can it be a natural drive if you can choose not to? Eating is a natural drive, but I can’t abstain from it.”

Sol scanned her bookshelves, and so did Ellis. She had a fine collection. Plenty of history books, which must be like photo albums for her. One was titled The Age of Storms, another The Empty Holo. Most of the titles and authors he didn’t know and guessed the books had been written in the intervening millennia, but he did spot Dickens, Poe, Dante, Cervantes, Austen, Hemingway, and Kafka. Ellis smiled when he saw Orwell, Jules Verne, and Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. He also noted King, Patterson, Steel, Roberts, and was particularly pleased to see Michael Connelly—a title he’d never seen before. And there were at least twelve books with the name of Sol as the author. These appeared to be a variety of fiction, memoirs, and history texts. “In books it seems as though men need a woman, physically. Is that true? Are you dying?”

Ellis smiled. “We’ve already determined that I was married for over thirty years. I’m used to it.”

He didn’t think she’d get the jest, but Sol burst out laughing so hard she nearly spilled her tea.

“Oh, I do like you, Mr. Rogers.”

“I like you too, Sol. Sol…” He repeated the name thoughtfully.

“It’s another word for sun,” she said.

“And a Martian day,” he added.

“And an abbreviation for solution.”

“And an acronym for shit outta luck.”

This made Sol laugh. “I never heard that one. It’s nice to talk to someone more my age.”

“People in Hollow World pick their names, don’t they?”

“Yes. Everyone takes the Gaunt Winslow Evaluation Nascence, a sort of aptitude test developed by Wacine Gaunt and Albert Winslow that seeks to predict which endeavors will provide a person maximum happiness. Many people denounce the GWEN as ineffective, but everyone takes it, even if only out of curiosity. At that age most people pick a direction and choose a name that reflects their decision. In the early days, the test produced a printout that provided the answers in a series of three letters, and people adopted these abbreviations as their names. The tradition stuck. Silly, I suppose—as most traditions tend to be—but no different from when people were called Carpenter, Miller, Taylor, Potter, or Smith—and it helps skip the obligatory: So what do you do?”

“Thought so. I noticed a few. Pol seems short for politician, and Geo is obvious, but a few, like Cha, are baffling.”

“Physician, right?”

“Yes.”

“Usually it’s Hip, Par, Doc, or Wat, but some pick Cha, which is short for Charaka, a famous Indian physician born around 300 BC and referred to as the Father of Medicine.”

“And Sol?”

She smiled. “I’ll leave that for you to decide, but I can tell you this…they retired the name. I’m the only Sol.”

He smiled back. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.” He sipped his tea, and a question popped into his head, a question that had circled him the night before as he fell asleep amid the M&M’S and camping gear. “What’s the point?”

“The point?” Sol gazed at him, not so much confused as intrigued. She didn’t look any older than a college coed, but he wondered if Sol’s age isolated her just the same. Did her way of thinking, her interest in books and old things, make others shun her? Think of her as cute but out of touch? Did she appreciate company as much as a homebound grandmother?

Ellis nodded. “What’s the point to life? I never really thought of it too much before I traveled through time. I did it not only to look for a cure to a terminal illness, but also to escape my life, which as it turned out, didn’t work. But now that I’m here I think about it. Do you know what a parallax is? It’s an astronomy term. You can’t tell much about something looking at it from one point. You have no depth, no reference. If you move and look at it from a different angle, you can determine distance and such. Traveling through time is like that. I saw how things were, and, after shifting ahead, I see how they are and…I don’t know. I thought I’d be able to understand more about the why part of life, but I don’t. You’ve lived through it all, had a lot more time to reflect.”

Sol looked empathetic, soft eyes blinking at him. “I think that’s one of those questions everyone has to find the answer to for themselves.”

“Had a feeling you were going to say that. Everyone always does.”

“But…”

“There’s a but?”

She nodded and looked down at her cup. “I can tell you what I found for myself. When you’ve lived through as much as I have, you understand that the old Buddhists were right in a way. Everything comes and goes. Nothing is forever. Not even God. My mother called Him eternal, but Jesus and His dad turned out to be a fad like all the others. At least that’s how I saw it when I was just a girl of one thousand—my rebellious stage.” She winked at him. “God was just a superstitious holdover from when we thought fire was magic. But it’s been centuries, and still people seek something. I can see it in their eyes, hear it when they talk. They don’t call it God anymore, but I think it’s the same thing. A natural drive like wanting food, water, and sex.” She smiled.

“Even after all the tinkering, the ISP got rid of sex, but we still have a natural longing to feel a connection with others. We’ve outgrown the concepts of magic and demons, but there remains a longing for something. The problem is, we can’t define it because the word God has become meaningless. It has the wrong definition. It means some all-powerful man who knows all and judges everyone, and I don’t think that God ever really was that, any more than lightning and thunder was Thor. We can still sense it, still feel it acting in our lives, and we yearn for it, knowing that somehow it has the answers we’ve always sought.”

“So what is God then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really? All that and you are going to leave me hanging? C’mon. You don’t strike me as the type to have lived this long and not have a theory, at least.”

Sol smiled. “I do have a theory.”

“Can you tell me?”

Sol shifted in her seat, straightening up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. “It’s not a currently popular idea.”

“Why do I get the impression that isn’t a problem for you?”

Sol grinned. “Did I mention I like you, Mr. Rogers?” She drained the last of her tea. “It isn’t a problem. That’s the benefit of being this old. You get very lonely, and are bored a lot, but you also really don’t give a sonic bleez what anyone else thinks about you.”

“So, tell me. What is God?”

“The future.”

Ellis gave a puzzled face.

“Humans have longed for many things, and when we put our heads together we have usually found them. Weak as mice we tamed a planet and traveled to others. We satisfied our needs for food and shelter easily enough. Then we fulfilled our dream for peace and defeated death. But one aspiration remains. We’ve never satisfied one of our most primal desires: our lust for God, our need for a spiritual side. We’ve never really gotten close. But what if that’s because it hasn’t been possible—until now? What if we were caterpillars having precognitive dreams of flying? What if we were seeing our own future—and that desperate longing manifested itself in this ethereal hunger, this unfathomable lust for more out of life? My mother always said that we each had a little bit of God inside. It’s the part that guides us and tells us to treat others well. I think that’s true. I think we are all protective containers keeping precious treasures inside, but we are also holding them prisoner, isolating them from each other.” Sol leaned forward over her teacup. “What if God is simply humanity joined?”

“You’re talking about the Hive Project.”

Sol didn’t reply; she only smiled and ran a finger around the lip of her empty cup.

“My mother believed that heaven wasn’t really a place. It was merely the act of being one with God, and if you were, then you would know everything and never be frightened or angry or frustrated. You would experience eternal love. Everyone has an innate desire to be part of something greater than themselves, Mr. Rogers, and that’s what I think God is.”

“Good news,” Pol said after stealing him from Sol’s home.

Pol had popped into the middle of Sol’s living room. From the way Sol nearly dropped her cup, and the vicious look on her face, Ellis guessed forming unannounced portals in other people’s homes was considered impolite at best. Without so much as a hello to either of them, Pol waved him over, saying it was time to go.

Normally Ellis was happy for the go sign from Pol. Despite the low-gravity floors in the art shows and museums, he was always exhausted by the end of a visit. Part of it was physical—the standing for hours felt more taxing than swinging a pickax—but what really took a toll was the need to be “up.” The feeling that he had to entertain the mobs that followed him was grueling. When Pol entered this time, though, it was different. Ellis was genuinely enjoying his visit with Sol. The tea was good, he liked the homeyness of the room, and he liked Sol. Each time she answered a question, five flooded in to replace it. More than that, she was comfortable—like Pax.

“Dex and I were just at the ISP.” Pol spoke quickly once they were both back in Ellis’s room in Wegener. “Dex has the pattern and the processing equipment. Everything we need. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Pol was all grins, and Ellis wanted to join in, to be a part of the celebration, but his heart wasn’t there. Part of him was still back with Sol, still thinking about God. His deflated backpack was on the floor, empty. He’d never refilled it. Pol blathered on about the details of how he finagled the deal. While Pol talked, Ellis noticed one of the cans of Dinty Moore stew. The battered container sat upside down on the illuminated table next to the bed. He must have put it there the night before. He’d brought four, but had only put two in his pack when he’d left the time machine. Didn’t think he’d need more. Looking back, Ellis had only expected to be gone a few hours, but that can had been in his pack for more than five weeks. It looked just like its sister can and probably tasted the same.

“I want to go see Pax,” Ellis said.

Pol looked annoyed at having such a wonderful victory monologue interrupted. “We don’t know where Pax is.”

“I want to go to Pax’s home. If Pax isn’t there, I’ll speak with Alva or Vin.”

“Fine, but we still have one more appointment to make.”

“Why?” Ellis found himself annoyed. “I’ve spent the last week blindly going wherever you wanted because Warren needed the pattern, but you have that now. I think I’ve earned a vacation.”

“And you can start it tomorrow,” Pol said. “But right now we have an invitation to tour Subduction Zone 540 as the honored guests of the Geomancy Institute.”

“But we have the pattern, right? So why—”

“I worked very hard to get this invitation. GI is notorious for its secrecy. No one who isn’t an initiate is ever granted access to the low zones. They keep the coords a secret. It’s easier to explore space than penetrate the low zones where the geomancers do their magic. It would be a terrible insult to turn them down and horribly embarrassing to me as Chief Councilor.”

Ellis looked longingly at the can of stew.

“Listen, we won’t stay long. I’m sure the geomancers don’t want us around anyway. We’ll pop in, look around, and then say our goodbyes. After that, I’ll help you look for Pax—okay?”

“Right afterward?”

“Absolutely.”

Ellis frowned but nodded.

“Wonderful.” Pol drew out the Port-a-Call. “This should be most interesting. I’ve never been to the low zones—like I mentioned, no one outside the Faith of Astheno really has—and Sub Zone 540 I’m told is the center of everything. I’m also told it’s warm. Ready?”

The Geomancy Institute looked nothing like the rest of Hollow World. In one week Ellis had seen Olympus Mons, stood on the surface of Mars, looked up from the greatest depths of the ocean, visited the oldest remaining ruins of humanity, and traveled to a planet in another galaxy. All of it paled when compared with Subduction Zone 540. The best way Ellis could describe it was like walking into a Wagnerian epic vision of Nidavelir—the steel mill of the gods—beautiful in its hellish horror of spraying molten stone whose spiderweb entrails formed erratic patterns. These infant rock entanglements became the girders and smokestack-silhouettes of an organic industry built on the bank of a volcanic River Styx. Lava falls spilled into glowing seas from which gas blew bubbles and choked Ellis’s new lungs, making him nauseous. The hair on his arms recoiled from the bristling heat as if he’d just stepped into a preheated oven. His ears were attacked by chest-thumping booms of what could only be a giant hammer beating on the anvil of the world.

Strong hands hauled him inside an illuminated walkway.

The pounding became muffled, but more important Ellis could breathe, although his eyes continued to tear too badly to see much except blurry lights.

“Welcome to the Geomancy Institute,” someone shouted over the pounding. “I’m Geo-12, your tour guide. You’ll have to bear with me. I’ve never done this before. We’ve never had visitors.”

Ellis felt a gloved hand take his and shake—the first firm grip he’d felt.

“You must be Ellis Rogers, then—honored to meet you.”

“Why did you give me such exposed coords?” He heard Pol ask, his tone angry.

“Everyone ports in on the rail their first time here. Initiates are required to use the rail port for their first year, and to find their way to the tunnels on their own. It fosters respect, and serves as a reminder of the very real dangers of working the sublevels. Up in the litho you use terms like core or astheno as if they are mythical things, like dragons or Hades, but down here they’re our noisy neighbors.”

Ellis wiped his eyes for the fourth time and was starting to see again, although he still winced as if he were cutting a bushel of onions. Almost everything was a smear of brilliant and fluid yellow light.

“Follow me,” Geo-12 told them.

“Can’t see too well,” Ellis said.

“Don’t need to. Just walk forward. I’ll let you know if you’re about to fall into a pool of liquid peridotite. Almost never happens anymore.”

“Almost?”

He heard a chuckle.

Ellis moved forward, his feet landing on a smooth glassy surface. As they walked, the pounding grew softer and the air fresher.

“The real danger down here is the gas—as you already noticed. Using portal-technology, we can create worm-tunnels to move around. Really the only way to do it. Nothing can stop the heat down here. But being in the tunnel you aren’t really here anymore. You’re in an alternate here, looking through the opening at the churning, beating heart of the world.”

Ellis opened his eyes and froze.

They were standing within a hellscape on a transom of light. All around them was lava.

“Better than coffee, huh?” Geo-12 grinned at him. “Been working down here for centuries, and this walk through the Sea of Gehenna is always an eye opener. Don’t worry. We haven’t had a tunnel failure yet. Everything down at this level runs off the Big D, and nothing’s going to interrupt her.”

“Her?” Ellis asked, surprised at hearing a gender-based pronoun.

“The big lady herself.” Geo-12 gestured around them. “The planet—Mother Earth. She’s one mammoth, naturally occurring Dynamo generating forty-four terawatts of energy. These tunnels, which are just a series of elongated portals, are permanently dedicated. Haven’t been shut off in more than a thousand years.” Geo-12 stopped to face them, giving Ellis a good look at the geomancer.

Geo-12 wasn’t like everyone else. The lines were subtle, but there was a variation. Just as Sol had appeared more feminine, Geo-12 appeared a tad more masculine. Ellis wondered if it was the result of twelve being an earlier model, or if they made different patterns for geomancers, suggesting they were bred for this. Their guide wore a long gray coat of a thick material that might have been leather or even rubber. What looked to be safety glasses rested idly on Geo-12’s head.

“This is the infrastructure of Hollow World. It’s what keeps all those people above us alive. Old Gaia, she’s a living thing, you know—not a tame lion, if you get my meaning. And she don’t much care about us at all. She does her own thing: percolating, blowing bubbles, rolling over. She’s moody—has her quiet moments and gets irritable, like anyone. We’re all the little pixies that whisper in her ear and try to calm the old lady down when she gets riled.”

“And how do you manage that?” Pol asked.

“The earth is a giant pressure cooker that needs to release her heat. We aim to predict where the pressure will build and then relieve it before it goes pop. Another way of thinking about it is, we help the old lady fart so she doesn’t have a bowel movement that erases Hollow World or at least rearranges it beyond recognition.”

“That can happen?” Ellis was shocked.

“It can—but it hasn’t. Been well over a thousand years since the last recorded mishap. I think we’re doing a pretty good job. Was worse for you, right?” Geo-12 looked at Ellis. “Back in the days of weather? All of us study ancient meteorology—lots of corollaries there. Every year you had multiple hurricanes, numerous tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, fires. We have the same sort of things down here—much more manageable and preventable, but with a greater potential for catastrophic disaster. So we don’t like making mistakes.”

They continued down the self-illuminated tunnel to a central hub, like the spokes of a wagon wheel except the tunnels branched out in all directions. There they found a large room filled with wall and ceiling screens displaying images in various colors. Filling the chamber, a hundred other geomancers, dressed in similar mad-scientist garb, watched the changing colors on the screens.

“This is the brain—the center of our system,” Geo-12 explained, leading them to a balcony railing so they could look down at the activity. “From here we monitor the core, asthenosphere, and lithosphere, the convection and conduction. Most can be handled remotely, but often teams need to go out off the standard lines. That’s when it’s dangerous. Gas can build up. Any breach in a tunnel can cause instant incineration.”

“Why would they—why do you do this?” Pol asked, stunned.

Ellis could tell that Pol didn’t understand why anyone would live down there. He imagined the conditions were similar to coal mines and steel mills around 1900, but those workers didn’t have a choice. They needed the money to feed their families.

“It needs to be done,” Geo-12 said with a taciturn quality that reminded Ellis of Gary Cooper. “Really the only thing that still does.”

That was the answer. Why didn’t Superman live on a Caribbean island playing Xbox games? Why did firemen run into buildings everyone else was running out of? Why did people risk their lives by volunteering for combat duty, and why did that guy in Lost keep pressing that stupid button? In a world where little else seemed to—this mattered.

Pol paused and looked out through the transparency at the frothing world of liquid rock that swirled and spouted around them. “You stop earthquakes here?”

“And cause them,” Geo-12 replied. “Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—there are 540 volcanoes in the world. We use most of them as vents. Small regulated spews avoid the big nasty explosions.”

“And what would happen if this facility failed?”

Geo-12’s eyes widened, then displayed a sour look. “A temporary malfunction or shutdown wouldn’t cause much—”

“What about a prolonged failure?” Pol asked.

Geo-12 shifted uneasily, as Ellis imagined the geomancer was envisioning it.

“Well, plates would snap. We’ve been regulating things so long, a sudden halt would be catastrophic. What happened to the surface of the planet during the Great Tempest would be nothing compared to the destruction in Hollow World.”

“What about on the surface?”

Geo-12 shrugged. “Be some earthquakes there, too, and a few major volcanic eruptions until the pressure bled off, but nothing too devastating—there’s nothing up there to be damaged, really. Plus there’s open sky above, unlike in Hollow World where there’s a ceiling, which would crash. And there are some areas of Hollow World where natural lava chutes have been blocked or diverted that would be free to flow again. It’d be a world-altering event. Luckily, that can’t happen. Almost everything is automated now. We have our own vox, if you will, that functions as a safety net and even double-checks our actions. If everyone disappeared tomorrow, the institute would still monitor and clear most of the issues. There might be a shock here and an unscheduled eruption there, but nothing too horrible. For the unthinkable to happen, this whole facility would have to disappear, along with all the people who run it.”

Then Ellis then gave his usual speech. By then he’d polished it to a disappointing monotone. The geomancers didn’t appear to notice and asked questions mostly about weather and the forecasters of the past. One of them actually knew the name Willard Scott, who was thought to be something of a hero. They were disappointed to discover he had not experienced the Great Tempest. Ellis was not at all disappointed at having skipped that portion of history, particularly when one geomancer asked, “Is it true that people resorted to cannibalism even before the sun disappeared?”

“Welcome back, Ellis Rogers!” Alva sounded like a schoolgirl with a crush.

Ellis stood in the same familiar dining room, but everything felt different. The Gothic décor was darker, heavier, and some classical fugue played oppressively through the same unseen speakers that Alva spoke through. If he hadn’t been there before, Ellis could have concluded that Pol had dropped him off in Dracula’s castle. The one thing he could be certain of—Vin was there.

Ellis turned back and saw Pol, still standing in the Councilor’s office. Pol waved goodbye and closed the portal. Since leaving the Geomancy Institute, Pol had seemed anxious, the promise to help find Pax forgotten. Ellis was annoyed at the breaking of the bargain, but also happy to be free of Pol. They’d just spent too much time together. Pol pretended, and might have even believed it, but their shared company hadn’t been wonderful.

Ellis called out, “Anyone home?”

“I just told Pol that Vin is here, didn’t I?” Alva replied.

“I suppose, but—”

“But that’s not what you want to know.” The words were spoken with a hint of sadness, and Ellis realized that Alva would have easily passed the AI Turing Test—the ability to fool humans into thinking they were communicating not with a machine but with another thinking, feeling person. Even though Alva had admitted to being some sort of computer, his mind refused to accept that. He imagined her as a curmudgeonly, but lovable, woman in her fifties always speaking to him from the next room. Alva was Pax’s mother.

“Is Pax here?”

“No. I’m afraid—”

“So you’ve returned,” Vin said, entering the dining room still in his Phantom of the Opera costume, which was augmented this time with a cape. Vin didn’t look happy to see him—or that might have just been Vin’s normal frown. Ellis had yet to see another expression to judge by. “Back to cause more mischief, I presume? Hate to disappoint you, but Pax isn’t here.”

“Do you know where—”

“How could I know that? How could anyone after you ripped the PICA from Pax’s shoulder? Nice bit of butchering, by the way.”

Definitely not happy to see me. “Are you saying that Pax never came back?”

“Briefly. In tears. With your murderous weapon in hand.” Vin stood before Ellis, arms folded, glaring out from behind that porcelain half-mask. “I tried talking. I tried to…but you had Pax wound tight, didn’t you? Couldn’t hear me anymore. Instead, all I saw was despair—that’s what you created. And that gun. After driving the poor thing to the brink, you put such a tool in Pax’s hands—like handing a red-label illusion to a fantasy-deprived holoholic. Isn’t that right?”

“What are you saying?” Ellis felt his stomach tighten. “You’re not—did Pax do something? Are you saying Pax—that Pax did something with my gun?”

Ellis’s heart began to pound, his hands shaking. That’s not it—please, God, don’t let that be it!

Vin walked away, three hard steps, fists clenched as if holding back a desire to kill. “Were all people in your day so stupid? That’s why you had wars, isn’t it? Wars, murders, rapes, and torture. All of you self-centered and as sensitive as the concrete you choked the planet with. A pack of cave-dwelling Neanderthals killing for food and recreation.” Vin’s voice was growing shrill, sounding more feminine, nearing hysteria. “Since you hadn’t noticed, let me explain—Pax isn’t a strong person. That’s why I live here. That’s why I put up with all this misery.”

The lights flickered.

“Don’t mess with me now, Alva!” Vin shouted, and took a step toward Ellis. The Phantom still held clenched fists.

Vin wants to hit me. You want to see insensitive? You want to see Neanderthal? Go ahead and take a swing.

“Pax has a history—a history of being weak.” Vin looked down at the dining table, opened a hand, and brushed fingertips across the surface. “Wonderful person. You don’t know—Pax would never mention it—but Pax has helped thousands of people, people beyond desperate, people who’d given up. We don’t have the violence that you did, but people still get angry. We keep it locked up, sealed inside, only it’s a poison that the mind needs to expel to save itself. With no way to purge ourselves of the hate, frustration, and anger, the result is depression and self-loathing. The ISP has been ineffectual at addressing the problem. Emotions are tricky, they say—like nerves. If nicked, a person can lose all sensation, and you could kill the desire to live altogether or create a psychopath. No one could help the really bad cases. Some of the arbitrators even came to think the condition might be contagious. Emotional diseases can be. They took to calling severe depression the New Black Plague.”

Vin looked back up into Ellis’s eyes. “Can you imagine? Living in an immortal body, faced with an eternity of pain and misery? This was the great fear of all of us. Spiraling depression on a grand and infinite scale. At least with the medieval plague there was release.”

Vin placed a second hand on the table, making small, invisible designs on glossy wood. “There was an artist. The plague was known to afflict the creative minds to a disproportionate degree, and this artist—a genius, everyone said—suffered horribly for years—suffered in secret. The problem only became known after the creative genius couldn’t take it anymore. Used a spoon to gouge out the eyes.” Vin’s hands stopped moving. “Didn’t deserve to see beauty, you see. Wasn’t worthy of the gifts bestowed. Went through six sets of eyes—the ISP just kept putting in new ones. Didn’t matter. The loss of sight didn’t alleviate the pain. Nothing did. Nothing could, because no one could ever understand the misery or the source. The isolation, the helplessness, it all fed upon itself, the well always growing deeper and darker.

“People felt sorry for the artist—pitied and avoided the poor wretch. The situation was simply hopeless, you understand. Then there was Pax—incredible, amazing Pax. When no one else could understand, could see, Pax did. Pax could enter the darkness, stand there alongside, feel it, and face it. Pax clawed out patches of light. No one else could ever understand, truly understand, but Pax did. And just knowing someone else understood—not being alone anymore—made all the difference. It took time, but that artist recovered, and Pax has done that for so many.”

Vin took a deep breath and, reaching up, lifted the mask briefly to wipe away tears. Ellis noticed small white scars.

“But such profound empathy comes at a price. Pax feels more deeply and powerfully than the rest of us. This gift is also a curse, I think. Maybe some of the plague Pax draws from people lingers. I don’t know. But Pax is so very fragile—and so sensitive—has to be—like your fingertips.” Vin lifted a hand and stared at it, fingers flexing. “If they weren’t sensitive, they couldn’t do their job, but being sensitive they’re more susceptible to pain. Pax is like that.”

Vin turned away, moved to the nearest chair, sat, and looked toward the pipe organ, eyes unfocused.

“What happened?” Ellis asked. “Why did Pax—why did you have to start living here?”

“I don’t know. Pax has never told me. I learned about it through mutual friends. Pax was in an emergency room under observation. No one knew what to do. What Pax needed was Pax—someone who could look inside and understand the demons. But there is only one Pax. Still, I couldn’t let…I volunteered to move in, to watch and protect Pax. I’d do anything, you understand—anything, only I’m not Pax. I can’t do the magic, and I watched the depression creep in. And then you came.” Vin looked up, that same frown returning. “I knew you were trouble. I could see hope in Pax and knew that was like raising an egg over hard ground. The fall would come, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t help. Pax is a treasure of untold worth…and you destroyed that.”

“Are you saying Pax is dead?” Ellis felt sick, his brand-new heart on the verge of breaking. Not again. I can’t have done it again.

“Probably.”

“Probably? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Pax was in quite a state after seeing you last, and pistols don’t have safety features. They don’t have auto-locks that prevent damage to living tissue when placed against a person’s head, do they? And there aren’t any voxes on the surface to call for help. Thanks to you, the only means of locating Pax is floating somewhere near Neptune.” Vin’s lips quivered. “I haven’t seen or heard from Pax in over five weeks.”

“Listen, I just came here to see if Pax was back, to see if Pax was okay. I wanted to talk—wanted to say I was sorry. I would have come sooner, but I died. I just woke up a week ago. Pol said Pax wasn’t here and had me doing—” Ellis let his shoulders slump as a crushing weight settled. “It doesn’t matter. Have people searched for Pax?”

“Of course.” Vin was visibly crying. Tears slipped down from under the mask, leaving tracks that glistened in the light. No sound, though, just a quivering lip. “I mobilized every close friend Pax has—and that’s a big army. If Pax ever wanted to seize control of the planet, it wouldn’t be hard. But no—we’ve been looking for weeks and still nothing. I’m all but convinced Pax is lying in some out-of-the-way place on the surface with that gun of yours in a cold hand.”

“There’s no way at all to find Pax?”

“It’s a big planet. I just hope wherever Pax is, it’s raining. Pax loved the rain, you know?”