The Last Ceaseless

California, 2160

Theo’s eyes shifted uneasily to the body beside him. He’s not dead, he tried to reassure himself. Well, he’s not alive either, his conscience retorted. Guilt ate at him like a zombie. But how was this his fault? He never asked to be a dead man’s babysitter . . . Well, not dead.

And he’s 700 and some years older than you.

It was hard to imagine what it would be like to be frozen, asleep in a tank, even as Theo pressed his finger pads against the frosty glass. Not when the earth was burning. Dry. How bad could a prison of sleep really be? Theo would have almost been willing to go back to the factories, instead of spying for the Extinguishers, just to catch a night’s worth of rest. 

But deep down, something kept nagging him, complaining like a toddler, this isn’t right. Centuries ago, maybe it would have been called ‘inhumane,’ but nowadays, no one knew what human meant anyways.

Theo watched, like a boy at a fish tank, for movement. A motion, a wince, a bubble of life. But none ever came.

Immortal. Imagine that.

But staring at the closed eyes and lifeless limbs of what everyone else said was a soulless beast, Theo didn’t really envy him.

****

“You’re what?” Theo’s eyes bulged wider, unable to believe what they were saying. “He’s a destroyer, is what y’all told me yesterday!” Theo wiped sweat from his forehead. “Our job is to protect the world from him and you’re saying you wanna go and jump on a sleeping rhino?”

“I’m not saying I want to, I’m saying we’re going to,” the General Extinguisher, aka Locksmith, responded. “Orders came from above.”

“Why?” Theo threw his hands into the air. “What good is an out-of-control, revenge-bent super weatherman?” 

General Locksmith sighed, his patience always waning. “He’s powerful. We need Power if we are going to defeat the Upholder.”

“Has it not occurred to you that he could just kill us all and move on?” I paused, crossing my arms and looking at General Locksmith. The man who took away my everything and then saved me from nothing. “You thought of that, right?” My eyes were fixed on his annoyance, manifesting in his fidgeting, his sighing. 

“You know we die either way.”

****

No one knows what happened.

But they say years ago, at the peak of human evolution, after the beginning of time, some humans were born special, with unnatural abilities. Able to turn ice into water with a touch. Children who were capable of creating a flame with their fear. Women able to shake the earth with their screams. And men who could never die.

They were called Powers.

Priests called them possessed demons. Kings killed them as Other, until the Powers rebelled, banding together to create tribes, then kingdoms. And the Powers finally took the place of the previous rulers, until anyone without an ability was inferior. There were laws prohibiting intermarriage between a Power and a Powerless.

Some say it was an era of magic.

But people stopped seeing Powers as humans; no one could see eye to eye. And thus, the War for Power began, waging for centuries, until gradually, the Powers, being painfully fewer in number than the Powerless, began to become extinct. A truce was reached: Powers could have their own lands, communities, and even exercise their abilities provided they lived on a Block. A communal compound.

Historians wrote that a Ceaseless rose up and led a revolution, killing the monarch, destroying villages, creating a freezing cold that lasted until people begged him on their knees to provide sunshine, warmth. But they say that he showed no mercy, killing more than 1,100,000 innocent Powerless.

Theo wondered if the sleeping stranger in front of him was truly capable of that. 

****

Theo’s fingers traced designs in the fogged glass, then letters. Hello. My name is Theo. Soon, the body would be free. He’ll be awake, alive. It finally felt right. Even if this stranger had tried to wipe out humanity. He was our prophesied demise. 

Of course, he didn’t move.

Today’s the day, bud.

The Extinguishers entered the room, so Theo began to leave. After all, Theo was Intel, not a Techie. Theo wasn’t even good enough to be Surveillance. But General Locksmith pulled him aside. Again. “Listen, Theo,” his fingers dug into Theo’s arm. “You’re up.”

“What?” Theo answered, receiving glares from the Extinguisher operators. 

“I have a new job for you.”

Theo waited.

“When we wake him up, you are going to teach him our ways. You’re going to be who he thinks of as his closest ally, you hear? The more time he has to regain his power, the more we lose our advantage.”

They want a tool, not a person. 

“He’s been dormant,” the General Locksmith explained, as if Theo were four. True, Theo had never seen a Power before him. True, this stranger was the last Ceaseless left. But the only reason Theo had ever been assigned to keep an eye on his tank of glass was as punishment. For being out of order. Theo hadn’t told them everything he’d seen at the factories. And they could tell. They didn’t trust him, so why would they . . . 

Unless this is a suicide mission.

*** *

They extracted the Ceaseless from the tank, letting his body float to the surface. He looked young, with stark black hair that was tied back in a braid. A chiseled jaw, a good build, but a wounded arm. Overall, in one piece. They situated his head above the water, checking his vitals. After a green light was given, they pulled off the oxygen mask, letting the Ceaselesss breathe in the natural air.

“Tell us when he wakes up,” they told Theo.

So Theo waited. 

Finally, his lips twitched. Theo jumped up from the floor to investigate, incautiously. Then the Ceaseless’ dark brown eyes blinked open, and he began to look around. His gaze landed on Theo immediately. 

“You’re awake!” Theo exclaimed, hardly sure whether to be excited or terrified.

“Elena,” the now-awake Atmokinesis spoke. 

“Who?” Theo asked.

“Where is Elena?” The entirely wet Ceaseless staggered to his feet, freeing himself from the tank, turning the floor into a pool. “Tell me, where is she?”

“I d-dunno,” Theo stammered, entirely confused. “Who is she? What’s she look like?”

“She’s my daughter.”

Theo’s eyes widened. Was. “I don’t think you’ll find her here,” Theo tried to explain, gently. 

“Then where will I find her?” His desperation made Theo even more guilty. 

“She’s gone, man.”

“Gone?” The Ceaseless looked like he’d been shot in the heart “What do you mean?”

“You . . . well, you’ve been out of it for a while now.” 

“Out of it?’” The Ceaseless looked entirely oblivious.

How could this man have destroyed us?

Theo shook his head. “You’re in a new time, a new place; before you were in England, in 1362, give or take, but now you’re in California -- er, somewhere else -- and it’s . . . well, . . . time’s passed.”

“How much time?”

“A lot.”

“How much?”

“Seven centuries?”

The Ceaseless collapsed, sitting on the tile ground. “B-but then . . . everyone I have ever known is . . . dead?”

Theo slowly nodded.

For a moment, Theo watched this stranger’s world lose all its meaning.

“What’s your name?” Theo tried.

“Arthur.”

“Well, Arthur, I know this is a lot but —“

The Extinguisher Commander, aka, Sledgehammer, strode in. “Slingshot,” he addressed Theo. “You need to take precautions. Cuff him.”

Throwing Theo a pair of handcuffs, the Extinguisher operators surrounded the room, waiting for action. Hesitating, Theo accepted the metal chains, taking a few steps closer. Too many memories of wearing the stiff metal devices flood Theo’s mind, but he tried hard to push them aside.

“Look Arthur, we don’t want to hurt you, but we’re . . . afraid of you. You’re a Ceaseless, and we’re, well, human. So can you come with me and I’ll explain as we go?”

“You want me to be your captive?” The Ceaseless eyed the ropes.

“No, no,” Theo explained, trying his damnedest to be diplomatic. “We want you to feel at home.” Because if you don’t help us, the world will kill us all. 

****

“What is all of this?” Arthur asked, pointing to the ceiling, then the tech equipment. He’s lived here for centuries but never seen it. 

“It’s a machine,” Theo tried to explain. “To help us do things — a tool.”

“I would like to go outside, “ Arthur insisted. 

“I’m not sure we’re allowed, but we can try.” Theo scanned his pass against the buzzer and walked down the halls with Arthur. “How did you get that gash?” Theo pointed to Arthur’s wounded arm.

“I was fighting . . . someone.” Arthur paused, as if trying to remember.

“Tell me about who you were,” Theo asked.

“I was a mage, a nobleman. A father.”

“Do you remember what you did?” Theo was nervous to ask, but needed to know. “The stories don’t really show your good side.” 

“I remember being attacked for what I’d done.” His eyes narrowed at the glass doors we went through. 

“You tried to kill us all,” Theo turned to face him. You wanted to murder all Powerless.

“You wouldn’t know,” was all Arthur whispered.

Theo guided him to the fenced-off outdoor range of the Extinguisher’s Base-point. Concrete met the fake green grass with apprehension, but then, there hadn’t been real green plants growing in their natural habitat in a long time. The air was stiff, the heat exhausting.

“W-what happened?” Arthur stared at the world as he never knew it.

A vast plain of factories could be seen in the horizon, a red sun above us, unrelenting.

“There’s been no rain,” Theo explained.

****

“Who are you?” Arthur asked me as we walked, indoors to the gardens where palm trees grew, flowers in brilliant fuchsia and tangerine surrounded by large lime-green leaves.

“I’m . . .” A spy. A traitor. Powerless. “I’m just Theo,” I smiled. I’m from the slums. Trying to get water to my people.

“What happened to all the water?” Arthur inquired.

“I don’t know,” Theo shrugged. “We’ve designed the world to revolve around us. We stopped the water from coming.” We’ve burned our own home.

“What about the ocean?”

“Well, it’s . . . lower.” Theo did not know how much science someone who was in an underwater coma would understand. But that was all anyone needed to know. A ping on Theo’s phone made him glance at it. A text from General Locksmith. He didn’t bother to look at it. The screensaver was a picture of Theo’s father. Before he passed away from heatstroke.

“Do you have family?” Arthur ventured, with a quiet tone.

Theo thought of his sisters, his little half brother. His mother. His grandfather. “No.”

“Then, we’re the same,” offered Arthur. His dark eyes oddly unsuspecting, his long braid mysterious. “We’re both alone.”

I’m supposed to befriend you, when you don’t even know me. You don’t know how the story goes. We’re only strangers trying to survive.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Theo smiled. “But you know, we don’t have to be.” Theo pointed at the picture of his father. “This is a photo -- you can take it with your phone.”

Perplexity presented itself on the stranger’s face.

“Like this,” Theo gestured, showing him how to click a picture of the trickling water from the fountain, an item showing the extreme luxury of the wealthy. “Try it.”

Arthur took the small phone in his large hands, clearly suspicious of it, but pressed the white circle, snapping a photo of the green underside of the palm tree’s leaf. Then he accidentally hit the flip button -- turning the camera into his own face. Staring at his reflection, Arthur blinked, shocked.

Theo laughed.

“Okay, let me show you something --” grabbing the phone, Theo started to take a selfie. Darn. It was still set on a countdown timer. 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .

Just then, another text came in from the general. “Slingshot, if you can’t friend him, we have to kill him.”

I can’t let that happen.

Because he’s the only thing who can free me from you.

The shutter flashed.

“See? That’s us. You and me, Ceaseless.”

A smile crossed Arthur’s face, and suddenly, Theo felt a drop of rain.