Fragment 1

Filed Under: Literature, Fragments.

My steps followed smatterings of heating oil in the corridor: the knee-jerk pulse of hanging lamps lifted those smatterings’ scent to me.

This was no place I wanted to live, if this was what I believed it to be. It was but a burrow within twisted pipes and screeching gears. As I progressed forth, I reached a cavern blown out with dynamite. Was it safe to keep going? I was alone: my thoughts of the earlier day dragged me down. I felt I needed to press onto the others about her. They did not understand. They did not want to understand.

At the university I studied a prophesy, if you may, about a young woman. It was said that many many years ago she would go out into the streets of several of our cities and try to educate masses of citizens on what she referred to as simply, “the wind.”

The wind is a force; a series of developmental patterns that define the evolution of life on this planet. In essence, she claimed, those patterns were on a collision course with humanity’s own development. In her words, humanity would eventually try to outstrip the planet’s resources, but the wind (the eventualities of meta-ecosystems) would always reaffirm its flow. She predicted this flow to wring destruction from every appendage of our lives.

She most certainly was not alone. She accompanied her public relations staff in holding town meetings, distributing brochures, and circulating a newsletter speaking about her research team’s latest findings.

My most impressive finding about her story was tucked away in the cellar of a family’s home. A diary was passed down through the generations right into my hands. The author: a man to whom I owe great admiration. He noted in his diary that he vistited this woman on a near-daily basis. They would sit alongside a pier and watch the waves - a distraction for their ongoing conversations. He was in love, but I do not believe she felt the same. From this awkwardness came a friendship. This man called himself Alazanto, and after a few years, he gave the woman a name that, surprisingly, she kept. She eventually became known as Cognis.

At this pike in history, Cognis’ team released a special serum to the public. For a considerable sum people could purchase this to be injected into their bloodstream. This serum contained an unbelievable form of technology. Essentially, tiny machines would be injected into the bloodstream. They would deposit themselves in our living cells to perform regular repairs and aid the communication between one cell and another. Alazanto noted that this technology slowed the aging process, increased resistance to illness, and changed the very blueprint that defined how cells (and eventually whole people) would develop.

Interestingly, Alazanto was conducting his own research at the time. He and Cognis were intrigued by each other’s ideas, but Alazanto was only beginning his work. He had many more questions for Cognis than she had for him. She was his mentor, but his ideas differed fundamentally. Eventually this lead to a chasm in their longstanding friendship. As a result they no longer met to watch the waves. He would not write another entry in his diary for years to come.

The cavern into which I stepped spanned for a great height. Atop hung a bright white light that, with the distance, glittered faintly onto the floor. I turned a knob on my helmet to strengthen the flow of oil into my headlamp. I was afraid of what I might find ahead. I reminded myself that I was a researcher for the university, not an explorer. With improvised training I was pushed into this expedition by myself. On the other hand, the scope of these caverns was never predicted. My return was already expected. I checked my watch and surely my mother had begun dinner.

My carrier contained enough food for three days. With smaller meals I could string its utility to five. From the cavern I found another tunnel through which to press. Mother will worry.

When Alazanto had finally emerged in his writings, he noted that Cognis’s team had completed the second phase of their project. The phase was a sort of experiemental city. It was a single massive structure with what appeared to be long tentacles reaching from the curved rooftop to the soil. Portruding from the top were rows of fins that spanned the width of the structure and matched the length. The outer shell contained the same tiny machines that were found in the serum (and with it a pool of volunteers). In his journal, Alazanto explained that the shell gave an irridescent glow, but the fins were completely transparent - configured somehow differently to draw power from an element in the air.

Many hailed this city as a crowning achievement. Cities of the time drew fumes into the air and leeched toxins into the soil. Citizens paid a price for their level of material well being, but the new technologies in development by Cognis brought hope that people may have material well being in a healthy environment. Child-borne illnesses from pollution would be something of the past. Celebration, however, was warranted cautiously.

During the first trials of the serum, ambiguous deaths were reported, but quickly snuffed out by Cognis’ public relations staff. Within a year, however, many new mothers reported birth defects in their children. Fear eventually caught the public’s imagination. Governments wordwide conducted studies on the serum. Nearly all reports of death and disability surfaced in the media. It was concluded that depending on one’s body chemistry, there was a serious risk of heart failure and nervous atrophy in elders, and severe birth defects in newborns.

Cognis conducted an exaustive self study and produced the results for the public domain. She was granted the right to reintroduce the serum to a select number of children who suffered from chronic immune deficiencies. Many of these children were bed-ridden and some even requested euthinasia. Critics argued that Cognis was practicing a cruel form of human experimentation in the name of medicine. During this period one of her research staff was murdered in protest to the continued development of the serum.

The experiment persevered and the children arose from their beds.

Cognis was hailed as a bringer of miracles. Not only could the serum strengthen the children’s immune systems, but it gave them physical capabilities that outmatched their peers. Demand soared for the serum to be distributed throughout citizenships, but all governments kept tight controls on its distribution.

Carefully, the gates to this serum were opened for the new city’s capacity of ten thousand volunteers.

Interestingly, most politicians were outright hostile toward the contstruction of such a city. They felt it was an unecessary abandonment of proven values. They clamored on about the potentially negative economic impact. However, upon habitation, the city’s internal factories quickly proved these claims false. If anything this city was several times as productive as its settled counterparts. Markets from every shore purchased the transportation units, computing devices, and power generators that its citizens specialized in.

Alazanto was growing worried. People only knew of this city through its productive capacity, not its newly-found citizens. He did not deny that the demonstrations of the serum on those first children were a near-miracle, but he wanted to follow up with their long-term progression. He did not deny that the city was producing goods without seeping pollution into the immediate environment, but he wanted to know about the environment within.

Cognis emerged from the city embodied in a flowing blue robe. Millions of citizens from nearby cities traveled to see her. They grew worried of humanity’s direction and looked to her for guidance. She met with government leaders behind closed doors, but emerged after a week of talks to speak directly to the developing crowds.

She claimed that the winds were beginning a realignment and that humanity would soon be purged into hardship. She then made a promise that she would return in two centuries with a solution - a solution she called the machine.

Cognis returned to the city.

In the course of a week, the massive power-generating fins atop the city shattered. The tentacles that one lined the edge of the roof ripped themselves from the ground in an explosion of blue light. The city was never seen again.

Until, of course, a rusted mass of twisted metal surfaced near the mountains. I was confident this was the prophesy in motion. My colleagues grew impatient with my claims and dared me to explore the interior to return with clues. We surmised that a series of small rooms were beyond the doorway of this mass. However, I would have never imagined the interior to span so deep underground. Were these remnants of the lost city? Was the prophesy of Cognis to manifest?

Published: 2 years, 8 months ago