The Forge: Fire and Ice

ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD JX Plant

‘Oh… the children are in the machine…’ – pause – ‘… or the furnace.’

Suliman hears the words, softly breathed though they are, and well out of his range. The emotion he used to call panic twitches muscles at the sides of his mouth without evoking any tangible feeling. If he were to make a noise, not that he has for many years, it will be the noise he used to call laughter.

She speaks. He knows that already. He’s known for almost as long as he’s known her.

And she reasons. The twitch of muscles relaxes into the ghost of something real; the emotion he used to call surprise. So she reasons after all. Yet he thought he already knew that, too. The surprise is that he didn’t, that he’d given up on her a long time ago. For all his clear head and quick thinking, which is pretty much all he has left, he’d missed that one. It doesn’t matter. He has all the time in the world. It might be seconds, it might be centuries. He doesn’t care. It’s his.

Tendrils reach through the pathways of his brain. Will anger spark in the wake of surprise?

No. Anger is spent. It would be appropriate but he has none to give. Cee-Gee reasons, but has waited for this moment to show her ability. A day earlier and they could have been far away. Just an hour earlier, he’d have worked with it. Sixty seconds even. If Cee-Gee could have given him just sixty seconds he’d have stoked the embers he knows he’s kept hidden deep within: ingenuity, spontaneity. Just sixty seconds. He’d have made something of it.

Too late now.

Cee-Gee has spoken just as a Broster is hurrying by and hears her. It’s too prosaic, too ordinary; that all these years of planning should crash on the chance of a Broster rushing by. To have waited this long, to have planned this well, to have grabbed the breaks and worked the system… and at the last moment when Cee-Gee shows that she’s been capable all along, it has to be now.

The crisis is unmistakeable. He’s seen it coming, but they haven’t. This is the reason that the Broster is rushing. He, along with the rest of them, is only just becoming aware that it is bigger than they know what to do with.

He’d have liked to get away in these final moments. The official plan, the one he had made himself believe in, had been to get away and live, but now he knows it was just to breathe the air of Spring from outside the confining walls, to die with the sky above him.

‘Uh… what’s that, CG-7? What are you doing?’ The Broster’s voice is impatient, but he can’t ignore what Cee-Gee said, despite the need to rush.

Suliman wonders about working muscles into a smile. It’s worth a smile to hear that puzzled tone. Stymied mid emergency, the Broster is flummoxed by Cee-Gee’s words. The very fact they are words is enough on its own, but to have the import of them seep into that slow brain, to have realisation dawn; that’s worth a smile. Not that anyone will ever know that it’s his doing. Not entirely his. He must credit Cee-Gee too. He’s old enough – by far – to have left behind the need for self-aggrandisement.

He holds back. No smile. No anything.

The Broster speaks again. ‘Quite right. Now climb in after them. Yes, there. Go on, girl. I don’t have all day.’

Another unfamiliar feeling. Is this one sadness? It’s such a stranger, he can barely recognise it. The Broster is telling Cee-Gee to climb into the furnace.

‘The children are inside. Go and find them.’

The Broster is going for the quickest solution to this inexplicable problem. And Cee-Gee will follow the orders of one of her sacred guardians. Why would she not? The Broster is sending her after the children. She can’t help but go.

It’ll be the end of Cee-Gee; the end of him. But in any case it’s the end of them all. Such a shame. Just sixty seconds.

He takes the energy that he didn’t use on a self-indulgent smile and turns it to vocal cords that have not felt vibration in decades.

‘I have the children,’ he shouts. He actually shouts and the words bounce off the silvered surfaces.

There’s a hush. He feels it.

Then the Broster’s voice, startled, panicked. ‘Get inside, CG-7. Do as you are told!’

Don’t climb in the furnace, Cee-Gee, Suliman thinks. No point vocalising that even if he could summon the energy for more words. Cee-Gee won’t understand fire or pain until the heavy door slams behind her but it doesn’t matter. Despite all his work over the years, he never had the means to teach Cee-Gee to disobey.

There’s a stifled gasp, the slam of a heavy door, the rush of hot air.

Footsteps.

After so long wielding the ultimate power of not caring for a single thing, suddenly Suliman cares. This close to the end, he wants desperately not to breathe his last inside the red heat of the furnace, what’s left of his body fusing with whatever’s left of Cee-Gee.

One spark of hope. How would the Broster know it’s him? He’s never heard him speak, none of them have. There’s nothing to show that he’s moved a muscle. At a time of crisis it could have been anyone. He’ll check the logs and they’ll show no one else is here, but then the logs are going haywire. He’s been hearing the whine of alarms all day.

A shadow falls across the doorway. Now it’s shock. Now he must get a grip, remember the lessons of so many decades, before this surge of emotions shuts him down all on its own.

It’s Cee-Gee.

Where…? He barely mouths the word. That’s all that’s needed between him and Cee-Gee.

‘The children.’ She’s looking all around the cubicle. ‘Where are the children?’

She hasn’t answered him. She doesn’t need to. The Broster is in the furnace. He gave her the means to see the Broster’s lie; he’s as responsible as her for the Broster’s immolation.

It’s her bond to the children. All these years, he’d had no idea the bond was strong enough to breach her calibration. Now Cee-Gee has broken free more comprehensively than he ever thought she could, than he ever wanted her to, truth be told. He wanted her free of the Brosters and the System, not of him. Now she’s free of everything. And all she wants of him is the children.

He told her, I have the children. That’s her motivator. It’s the only one left. But if she could see the Broster’s lie, can she see his?

He can only try.

Free me… what we practised…

His lips scarcely move, not words at all, just thoughts. She doesn’t need more to understand him. But how far will her reasoning take her… take him…? How literally will she understand, I have the children? Will it turn out that if he’d only said, I can take you to the children, he would still have a chance of that last breath of Spring air?

Illogically, the furnace holds fewer fears if he’s to end up there from Cee-Gee’s hand.

But no, she’s moving quickly, efficiency itself, disconnecting tubes, removing electronic tethers, bypassing alarms – though who’s to come running when the System itself is in meltdown? She’s even remembered that they can’t take the smooth-running bed, that it must be the lowtech but more robust caricouch. She moves him from his stacker to the harder surface. He’ll have to get used to that now. No matter. He has all the time in the world, even if that might only be minutes.

They’re racing down corridors. This is not discreet, but then no one’s being discreet. Everyone is rushing and running, shouting and panicking. They pass a few sectors of calm where the alarms are silent, where voices are muted, words bounce back from the mirrored surfaces. He notes a swift movement that shuts a securiscreen against them as they rumble past.

He’s not the only one to have been preparing, of course he isn’t. Others have seen it, created their own safe havens, their safety zones. Looks like some of them will actually work. He can’t blame them for shutting out those who are scurrying blindly begging the System to restore order. It’s interesting because it means the Facility will survive. If he’d known this, he might have planned differently, planned to survive within its boundaries, but how was he ever to know? He’d been on his own before Cee-Gee, and pretty much on his own in all material senses since Cee-Gee.

Then they’re away from the System’s smooth surface. The caricouch bumps over uneven flooring. The light dims. This is the basement that Cee-Gee knows about. From here it’s just guesswork, wings and prayers. He’s always thought there must be a way out, but now he’s remembering the concept of wishful thinking.

It gets darker, danker… the air itself begins to smell bad. Sounds of water dripping. For decades he’s seen nothing but the pristine smooth walls and ceilings of the Facility with their right-angled joins. This is chaotic. It’s dirty, ragged… joins that fail to join… that leak dust and debris.

Then they are outside. There’s no warning, no gradually increasing light. No transition. They were there underground, now they’re here outside.

It has been so long that outside has become an abstract concept. Elation weaves panic with exhilaration, real emotion flurries so close to the surface, he isn’t sure he can remember how to breathe. But he can. Air is all around him, carried on a breeze, uncontrolled, currents that swirl without thermostatic manipulation, that pick up dust and debris without filter, that make him cough and gasp. A voice that has said four words aloud in half a century is liberated into a whoop of pure delight.

He is outside, breathing air, under the sky. Alive. He closes his eyes for a moment to allow the rush to settle. He wants to laugh until tears run down his face.

Everything from before crowds him. Suliman who has never cared is overwhelmed by a desperate urge to live.

Cee-Gee is his only lifeline now. He knows what motivates her. Even now when she’s broken free, when she’s bundled one of her sacred guardians into the heart of a furnace, he holds the key to controlling her. All he needs is a clear head and some quick thinking; how to use the motivator and hide the lie?

He laughs because he can, though the urge has gone. The air and the outside, the sky and this thing called being alive have fogged his brain. Quick thinking will return… given time. He’s grown too used to having all the time in the world, too used to being a step ahead.

The caricouch slows and stops. Cee-Gee says, ‘Show me the children.’

The outside world assaults his senses. He has to savour it to the exclusion of all else. There’s a lie there to mollify Cee-Gee. He just needs time to work out what it is. Cee-Gee will wait. Cee-Gee is programmed to wait. There’s all the time in the world.

‘Show me the children! Now!’

the end