Resurrect the Forebears!

“Aim it far from you – and from me.”

“And press the big green button on the side?”

“Slowly.” The Chronicler tried to keep the nervous edge from her voice. The new Searcher was diligent but overeager. His eyes danced. He handled Artefacts with youthful recklessness. In time they would teach him patience, one way or another.

He held the box dutifully at arm’s length. He pointed what they’d agreed was the front at a pile of debris on the far side of the room. When he had turned to it, the Chronicler took a step back and held a hand in front of her eyes. She’d seem similar Artefacts – but not similar enough for a warning, she felt – that could blind for days.

The Searcher took a cleansing breath, a moment of whispered prayer to the Forebears, and pressed the big green button. At first there was nothing, then a keen whistle accompanied a cone of heat haze issuing from the metal box. It extended to the pile of debris, which shuddered and sprang to life.

As scrap and dust spilled off, a metal beam revealed itself, caught in the cone of contorting air, and lifted effortlessly in line with the barrel of the Artefact.

The Chronicler let her hand drop and her breath go. Not dangerous. Charming but common.

The Searcher laughed, called out ‘Forebears be praised!’ and turned back to her for agreement. But he was still holding the button.

The metal beam sliced effortlessly in an arc as he turned, crashing through piles of decomposing chairs and rusted out cabinets.

The Chronicler, still spry for her age, dropped to a crouch as it sang a predatory ‘whoosh’ just over her head and embedded itself in a wall.

The whistle of the Artefact stopped. She rose slowly. The Searcher had his hands up, his face white, his eyes fearful. She let him sit in it for a moment.

“What are the Stations of the Artefact?” she finally asked, neutral.

“Examine. Hold. Engage. Observe. Disengage. Decide.” Mechanical. Reflexive.

“Disengage” she repeated. He bowed his head.

“This is your first Inquisition,” She continued, “you get to search a collapsed starscraper as your first Inquisition. You are blessed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me.”

“Forebears forgive me” he said reverently.

“Do you truly give all of yourself to search for that which may resurrect them?”

“It is my only purpose.”

“…then try not to kill me.” She said, breaking the tension. His rigid stance relaxed a little. He let his hands, and the Artefact, drop to his sides as he mouthed the Stations.

“Decide.” He said. “Is it a Relic?”

She smiled as she opened the codex. It landed on the correct page almost automatically it was so well-worn. A – for Antigravity. A brief description and a lot of tic marks. “The form is somewhat novel” she said, scratching one more tic into the page, “The function is decidedly not. Leave it.”

He made a little show of how delicately he placed it on the ground. “Shall we?” He asked, moving to the next pile. “Oh, look at these.”

He held up five black marbles. Her expression made him freeze again. “What?” he asked fearfully.

“Not here” she said quickly. “Put those in your belt, carefully. It’s alright, they won’t hurt you. They need to be tested outside when we have more room.”

“What are they?”

“When they’re thrown, they suck everything around them in and crush it to a ball not much bigger than themselves. The trick is it’s hard to estimate the radius. So better to test them where you have room to throw.”

His hands were shaking a little as he tucked the marbles into his belt. He smiled bravely up at her. Her own hands were still processing little tremors from the beam’s near-miss.

“Tell you what” she said, “are you hungry yet?”

They climbed at a sharp angle out a long-shattered window. What used to be a small exterior ledge let them prop themselves and lean back, half sitting and half laying on the building’s outside face which was now at a shallow upward angle.

Before he settled, the Searcher stared at the gradual rise of the building into the distance and atmospheric haze.

“How long will it take to Search and Chronicle the whole thing?” he asked.

“Years” she said happily, taking out two bowls and a pot. She ladled out thick soup and handed a bowl to him. They slurped it contentedly. The air was crisp but the sun was warm. Schools of tiny yellow birds flitted in and out of the windows above them, or joined great flocks that wheeled and dove through the surrounding maze of overgrown, skeletal structures, all that was left of what must have been a mighty city. It let through a pleasant breeze.

The sun still shone from between vines and struts. Theirs was the only starscraper in sight not decayed to its bones. Below them, a river snaked through the streets, its banks full with reeds and grass and bushes and a few grazing animals.

The Searcher took a gulp of soup. “Divine work and full bellies.” He said. She nodded back with a smile. He tapped the bowl. “This is really good.”

“My last Searcher found the Artefact that makes it.” She said, not intending anything, but the mention made him go quiet for a minute.

“Have you ever seen anything that’s come close?” he finally asked. “To the Resurrection of the Forebears? I mean you’ve already had quite the crusade.”

She gave him a long and inscrutable look before answering. “No.” she said. “Never.”

“Eliza – she was my best friend at seminary – she always thought it would be a… tank? A big metal tank and when you engaged it, a Forebear would come forth from it.”

The Chronicler nodded evenly. “And what do you think?”

“I don’t think so. The Forebears’ world died with them. True resurrection means bringing both back, don’t you think?”

“Far be it from me.”

They ate the rest of their lunch in silence. When they were finished she held a hand out for his bowl. He seemed to linger on it for a moment before handing it back. “You can ask” she said as she packed back up.

“What happened to her?”

“T for Transmutation” she said. “We’d both agreed what the front of the Artefact was but we were wrong, she was aiming it at herself and she got hit at point blank range.”

“And then what?” he asked haltingly.

“She was gone, the Artefact dropped to the ground, but a little yellow bird circled the room to an open window and disappeared into the sky. There are worse things.”

They continued their work. I for Invisibility. H for Hearing, subsection L - Low Frequencies… S for Seeing, subsection F – Further…

Already the Searcher was internalizing the routine. His Stations were becoming more practiced. She began to feel safer around him, like she had with the last one. They’d cleared ten floors by the time the sun started to dip. They hadn’t found anything surprising. The building was certainly a confluence but the utility of each individual Artefact was nothing previous generations hadn’t catalogued. The Chronicler considered calling it quits but the ride home was short and tomorrow was the Day of Prayer so they could sleep in. She motioned for the Searcher to follow her up the next collapsed stairwell.

She emerged into a space dramatically different than the preceding floors. The walls were curved, polish-smooth and bone white. The curve of them rounded to the ceiling and then back down in the centre, making the whole thing a big donut.

In the centre where the curve would have met was a thrumming pillar – transparent and filled with something volatile and viscous, churning. Not quite gas. Not quite liquid.

The dust still lay thick but there was none of the debris, the rust, the obvious decay. It seemed meticulously preserved and sealed. Cables, pipes and wires spilled from the bottom of the pillar and into holes in the floor.

The Chronicler turned back to the stairwell and called “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s leave it here for today.”

It was no good. Her voice betrayed something that had the opposite effect. The Searcher took the last flight of crumbling stairs two at a time. He leaned past her to look into the strange space slack-jawed.

“Oh wow. What is this?”

“It looks complicated” she said. “It looks like something to be Observed with fresh eyes after a good night’s sleep.” But she couldn’t keep him from sidling past her.

“Well, let me try” he said. “I have been trained for unknowns, you know.” He began pacing the room in awe at its strange noise and churning pillar, in how comparatively untouched it all seemed. Everything from the Forebears’ world had to be coaxed to life but this room breathed.

Don’t find it, don’t find it, don’t find it the Chronicler willed silently, but he had been trained.

“Oh! Oh, right here. This is easy. This is obvious. Big green button.”

“Yes, but let’s not-“

“We’ve Examined it. I’ve Held it, as much as I can. I’d like to Engage.” He paused. “Unless you know something I don’t?”

“No” she said immediately. “But-“

The sound of the room activating nullified any further argument. The thrum became a roar and the viscous matter in the pillar churned faster. It glowed, and the glow became a front, a sort of bubble edge of something crept forward from the pillar inch by inch. As it travelled it revealed inside it… the same room. But cleaner. No dust. The cables a little shifted.

She wasn’t even sure he had noticed until one of the people started forming. It happened in the same direction as the expanding edge, which was a stomach-turning visual. It was like watching slices of a CAT scan. The brain and bone and muscle and skin grew in cross section out of nothing, back-to-front, until the tip of the nose coalesced and she blinked a few times and looked around, confusion quickly shifting to amazement. Around her, two others were forming.

The Chronicler glanced at the Searcher, who was frozen bug-eyed. The noise was diminishing as the expansion of the bubble slowed. She shouted ‘Searcher!’ at him while she still could, and got his attention, though he still looked shell-shocked. She waved him over aggressively and he shuffled across the room to her as the bubble found its limit fifteen feet or so from the centre of the room. Inside still appeared as a cleaner, shinier but otherwise identical copy of the same room. It had three people in it, two men and a woman, all dressed in lab coats.

They looked at each other. At themselves. They laughed and leapt at each other, embracing. Finally, the woman turned to see the two in the doorway. “Look!” she said to the others. “There they are!”

The men stayed back as she stepped to the edge of the bubble closest to the stairwell.

“Hello?” She said. “You can hear me?” The Searcher’s shock confirmed it.

“My name is Dr. Helena Brix” she continued. “And if I had to guess, I would say you are a Chronicler and a Searcher.”

The Chronicler stayed still. The Searcher nodded emphatically.

“Incredible.” Dr. Brix continued. “Just incredible. In that case, well, I guess I am what you would refer to as a Forebear.”

An almost reflexive half-laugh, half-gasp came from the Searcher. He stepped forward and dropped reverently to his knees. Dr. Brix smiled warmly at him.

“Oh my goodness, no, there is no need for that. If anything we should be thanking you! Now all we need you to do is pull the big lever next to that green button, OK?”

The Searcher wad clearly overwhelmed. His head darted between the panel he’d been at and her, at the rest of them, at the inscrutable expression of the Chronicler.

“Oh dear, you’re confused.” Dr. Brix said. “I’m sorry, it’s disorienting for us as well. I guess you don’t know what any of this is.”

The Searcher shook his head. The two men stepped up behind Dr. Brix.

“Right, well, toward the end, when we knew it was all over, we – that is, a whole collective of us – we created two things, to give us a second chance. First we made these rooms, all over. And we switched them on in our time and what they do is they...” she turned to her colleagues. “How do I explain this to one of them?”

“They store time?” One of the men offered. Dr. Brix cocked her head at it.

“Mmm, well… no. Well… sort of. Good enough for him, at least. They store time. Our time. Our world, they snapshot it and hold it in place here, keep it tight and held in for the moment that big green button gets pushed. For us, it’s like we just turned this thing on, like no time at all has passed.”

The others nodded their assent. “And it worked! It actually worked! This is phase one” she continued. “It just opens us up this far so we can make a determination.  Then we need to initiate phase two. In phase two, the battery kicks the solar kicks the geothermal… never mind. The important thing is this bubble expands, and it sends out a signal to all the other rooms to start expanding, and together they overwrite this ruined world you live in with our world, before it all went to hell, and it’ll give us a second chance to make sure it doesn’t happen this way. And here we are! And more importantly here you are.”

“Overwrite?” The Searcher asked.

“Oh, see, you were the other thing. I said we created two things. We needed agents programmed to seek out and activate these rooms should the worst come to pass, and clearly it has. So in case none of us survived what was about to happen, we designed you, Searchers and Chroniclers, your life’s purpose to seek out the ‘Forebears’ with a religious fervor.

“Overwrite?” The Searcher repeated.

“He’s still confused. You know what, we’re just going to give him the phrase. John, do you have it?”

The man to her left flipped open a small notebook and scanned down a page.

“Ah, yes” he said. “Do you truly give all of yourself to search for that which may resurrect the Forebears?”

“It is my only purpose.” The Searcher shot back automatically.

“Well then get up and prove it.” Dr. Brix said. “There’s a big lever next to the button you pressed. That starts phase two.”

The Searcher was still frozen, still on his knees, eyes darting around the room, mouth trembling like he wanted to say something but was at a complete loss.

“Hey!” Dr. Brix snapped her fingers. “Come on! It’s not often one gets the opportunity to objectively fulfill their life’s purpose. I know this is a religious experience or whatever but we’re very eager to get things moving.”

The Searcher stood haltingly. He looked over at the panel. The three Forebears folded their arms almost in unison. He started over to the panel; but stopped halfway to turn to the Chronicler.

“Oh my god, are we being rescued by a faulty unit? John, say the phrase again” Dr. Brix said.

The Chronicler smiled at the Searcher. “Divine work and full bellies” she said softly to him.

He started walking back toward her.

“Hey, Searcher!” Dr. Brix nearly shouted.

“Do you truly give all of yourself to search for that which may resurrect the Forebears?” John tried again. This time the Searcher didn’t respond.

The Searcher reached the Chronicler at the doorway. He still looked plaintive. He pressed a hand to his belt. She nodded.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Dr. Brix cried. “Pull the lever! This is what you’re for!”

In a smooth motion the Searcher turned and threw two of the marbles into the bubble. They cracked with a burst of light. The screams of the Forebears were mercifully short. Their bodies were sucked down into the space of a pea. Most of the room followed, the white curved walls and snaking wires and panels all compressing into a baseball-sized lump that dropped unceremoniously through the now gutted floor.

The Searcher and the Chronicler had ducked away into the stairwell, but the effect had ebbed a few feet from the edges of the room. All traces of its uniqueness had been stripped away. What was left was the usual mess, the floor and ceiling showing through to girders and insulation and decay.

They said nothing as they descended back to ground level, slowly, carefully, as the dying light already made clambering over the detritus more difficult. At last they crossed the lobby to the lopsided doors and out into the last rays of a beautiful sunset.

The birds were still flocking overhead, chittering and chirping. The air was fresh, clean and cool. They could almost smell the hot meal wafting from the monastery miles away. Feel the pleasure of slipping into their beds after a full and honest day’s work. With many many more ahead.

As they approached their cart, the Searcher stopped. He patted his belt again and brought out the three remaining marbles, holding them up to the Chronicler questioningly.

“Hold onto them” she said, hoisting herself up into her seat. “You’d be surprised how often you need them.”