Spirit drifter, that’s what I am. But before that, and many years ago, I was Harlan Kushner: husband, father, brother, and one to be mourned from a premature heart attack at the relatively young age of fifty-seven. Drifting. Watching. Longing. And now, impatient for my chance.

Many weeks have passed since I made my decision to join with life again. And how my metropolis gleams glorious in the pinkbloom of twilight, a seamless transition of day into night.

What a skyline! I think, as though I’d not seen it thousands of times before; part of the intrigue: pretending it was my first time. Crystalline cloudscrapers spiral into the skies, constructed of some fantastic substance I was not familiar with, remembering a time when buildings were built of concrete and glass, and only a fraction so lofty. The world back then a kinder, more simplistic place. In my time we invaded the stars by rocket ships, not edifices in which we lived and worked.

But everything has its purpose, and to live in the skies is to no longer be a ground dweller. It means to be distanced from the contamination and grimefestered streets far below. Those who live above have their own roadways and parks and sidewalks high above the stinkpoor; all the better to forget those shoddy folk exist. I was no better in this regard. Indeed it is my intent to live as a sky dweller even if I must be born into a family below.

I walked among the groundlings that night, my last before the spring equinox that would bring about my change. I looked upon the people in a different light. I’d declined rebirth thus far twice a year for two centuries. The gamble, I reasoned, was too great. What if I were to be born into the lowliest gutters of Calcutta or Sri Lanka: potbellied and stickthin, diseased and pleading for the scrappiest piece of bread or a few drops of tainted water. But after so many years, I’ve come to realize the need to feel something other than the air coursing through me. I want emotions instead of impressions of emotions left over and fading from the ghost-images of the past.

Drifting aimlessly, I gaze into filthy cracked windows at the people on display, plying their alcohol and drugs and existing whichever way they can. Nomadic kids huddle on street corners under fizzling yellow light, alternating between whispers, giggles and shouts; blasphemies sent upwards to the sky carried by hate and rude hand gestures.

I secretly hoped to not join them but it’s a caste system with little choice for me.

***

That magical time: The Equinox; it comes on schedule, merging the Sun’s path with the equator and I follow a few others through the dawn where everything is equal and balanced. Through the portal of stained-glass-sun, the haze of fog thick and robust; but the smells of earth were heavier too, and rained down on our straining noses and gaping mouths as we clutched one another in delight. Each vaporous thought: To live again!

***

First memories came at four years old. And truth be told, I was born into a ground dweller’s home of too many mouths to feed. Yet I survived. My goals have been ingrained and I train my eyes to the never-ending height of the city above.

Mother was a morose creature given to bouts of anguish disguised by the sleeping pills, which cloaked her in apathy. She had worked as a seamstress in recent years, when there was money to be made and the lawlessness had not been so pervading. Papa was almost never home and in between his whirlwind visits I forget his face. My siblings, two others older than I, quarrel relentlessly. It is my older sister who gave me the name "Teddy". They call one another "Brother" and "Sister", but I remain "Teddy". There is little use for names down here on the surface where families govern themselves.

Slow days go by with little to amuse myself as I play along the broken sidewalks with strangers stepping over me, sometimes kicking me to the side. Feet smear the crude chalk drawings of the towering city that shadows me, pinning me to the asphalt. Days combine to make years and in the breathless whirl of childhood I stand, a gawky tanned eight year old.

On one of these sultry days, Sister comes out into the street and takes my hand pulling me to my feet. I follow quietly, obediently, liking the way she pats my hand as we walk up the stoop and into our tiny apartment.

On the ratty sofa she sits, patting the frayed cushions for me to follow. She still holds my hand as she looks off toward the window, lost somewhere in that beyond.

"Teddy," she says to me. "Papa will be home soon. You’ll be going away with him."

Sister doesn’t look at me, just smoothes my babyflesh hands between her own.

"Why?" I ask, not terrified—just curious.

"Mother has been sick. Very sick."

"I could help her get better," I say, more to please Sister than tribute to the woman whose apathy bred apathy when she gave birth to me.

Sister shook her head slowly and sighed. "Mother is gone, Teddy," she said. "She won’t be waking up. Father is going to take you to some people who will take care of you," she paused and considered me for a second. "Do you know what adoption means?"

I nod eagerly.

Sister smiles, murmurs: "so very smart", swipes the limp blond hair from her eyes and tucks it behind her ears. "The people you’re going to live with are up there," and she pointed to the ceiling, wistful look in her eyes eliminating the apartment above us.

I must’ve remained immobile for an eternity as it took a moment or two to thaw the shock of what Sister was saying. She was making an effort to remain cheerless while bristling with excitement for me. For that I loved her most of all, and promised myself I would try to find a way to rescue Sister one day. And I let go of my excitement in a shoulder-squeezing hug, Sister’s frail ribcage reminding me of her thinness and fragility.

"You’ll come to visit Sister!"

Sister hugged me to her and I swayed in happiness. "Oh Teddy, you precious, precious child; sweet as a little lamb."

She helped me pack my few belongings in a moldy cardboard box and when Papa came I was ready. We left, Papa and I, walking down the root heaved sidewalk, as I waved to Sister who clutched the concrete pillar with her arms and fluttered her hand back at me, and Brother shouted the same mean words as always.

Just out of site, papa makes me put my box down. "You’ll not be needing that worthless stuff." And I smile thinking not of the newest styles that boys up top doubtlessly wore—but the cleanliness of those new clothes, and that they wouldn’t be holey and unraveled. My mind was skipping and jumping with the dawning of possibilities; I looked down at my bare feet and imagined new shoes there. Oh—but first socks! Socks that fit all my toes and hadn’t been darned to death. And toys! I gasped as this fully told hold in my mind. I’d only played with fragments of toys; bits and pieces of cars and trucks that my imagination had to build around and make whole. Glory Be, what would Christmas be like! I quivered in my excitement and papa jerked at my hand mistaking my excitement for nervousness. "Straighten up boy, you’re nearly a man. Got to start actin’ like one."

After long stretches and endless detours around broken sidewalks and sinkholes that engulfed whole sections of streets, we stopped before a scraper that took my breath. Surely this was not it. Not the Pellanandreau, home to the political and celebrity crust. What odds did I roll for this?

It rose from the pavement like a gleaming sword, all edges and sparkle, iridescent in the last vestiges of twilight. Nothing was more magical than the Pellanandreau at twilight. Nothing. Its apex could not be seen from the ground, no matter how you craned your neck and squinted. Stately and proud it hovered above me, and although Papa fidgeted and glanced about, I stood captivated in its presence.

Papa drew me to the side of the towering spire where darkened steps led down to heavy metal doors that stood at least eight feet in height. My hands sought the only feature of the building that wasn’t the mysterious luminosity of mother of pearl. Cool to the touch, this sphincter of the building was a secret scar I’d known nothing about, well hidden behind the dilapidated peeling and pressed billboards of yesteryear.

Papa grew tired of my sluggish behavior and urged me over to the call box as he pressed several buttons in code. I was astonished that Papa knew how to communicate with sky dwellers; it’s a privilege that must bring many to his table at the taverns and a beer or two for the sheer entertainment.

The doors hummed and screeched apart gradually. Men in immaculate red uniforms greeted us suspiciously braced, all holding disabling devices in their hands. I held the memory of this defensive guard patrol from the days of Harlan Kushner: Those strange wandering days when I would watch from outside the transparency of the transport helixes. The helixes coiled and snaked in and around all the massive scrapers and their platforms.

Papa’s hands flew into the air. "Five-eight-two-twelve-nine! Five-eight-two-twelve-nine!" he squeaked showing the dirty creases of his palms to the squad.

"Step back!" growled the squad leader at the forefront, and Papa hastened to scuttle backwards almost colliding into me and onto the cement floor.

"Send the material forward," the squad leader further directed Papa. And Papa grasped my arm tightly and flung me through the gaping doors. In return, the sharp-faced leader took an envelope from his coat pocket and threw it to the cement floor so that Papa had to bend to retrieve it, further adding to his humiliation. But what of mine? I’d been sold the envelope shouted. Even now I could see it contained precious notes of dead political monsters, easy trade for the flesh and innocence of a child. It accused in its clean, bland yellow-orange attire and still Papa hugged it to his breast before slipping it into his dingy coat pocket next to his heart.

I stood there in the threshold of the two worlds, the childish body I had obtained and the memoirs of hundreds of years dueling with one another. Once again I found myself in the balance of need and subjectivity. I shivered from loathing and resolved to never see this man I called Papa, again.

Separating the child from the man, I walked barefooted and resigned to the red-clad men, gazing up into hard faces and eager to put the past eight years behind me.

If this affected Papa in the least he never showed it, he turned his back on the men and on me, finality clicking his heals in the beaded pavement as he disappeared on the other side of those metal doors that closed the sunlight off.

The leader of the squad broke away from the rest as he gestured with the gun for me to walk. I followed his long strides as best I could while enthralled with the imagery of the towers. My eyes were lost in the shimmering ivory of the walls almost too dazzling to stare upon for too long. Pillars of iridescent pale and statues of men looked down upon us, studying us from pedestal heights as the stern guardsman stomped on and made a sudden left turn to an elevator resplendent in soft lights.

Once the elevator started movement, I realized something was all wrong… We were descending. How could that be? And the vulnerable child slipped back into his role: "Sister told me I was going up," I insisted to the man. And when he said nothing, I grew more insistent. "Sister told me I was going up—to live in the sky. That’s where I’m going right?" though I knew very well at the moment I was not.

The man just stared ahead, uncompromising set of a lantern jaw and whispers of frown lines troubling his eyes and mouth.

The elevator doors part and the dimness of the cavern brings a stench that makes me gag…worse than rotten eggs on the hottest of days at ground level; worse than the long- dead dog that decayed on the curb outside of our apartment, worse than smelly shoes on Brother’s putrid feet.

The guard pushed me out of the elevator; choking and frantically pushing the buttons to ascend from this rank, awful place. I rushed forward trying to reenter the elevator only to be pushed more forcefully to the dirt-packed floor of the basement. Machinery droning in the background and stitches of coughs and moans could be heard behind me.

Watching as the doors slid to meet in the center and I screamed with all the torridity inside me: "I’m not in the right place!"

"But you are…" a firm, mild voice said from behind me, and I turned at once to see a young boy about Brother’s age of twelve, yet he seemed older than the rogue-spirit who was fighting to have his way inside me. Oil and dirt stained every fiber of his oversized clothing and where there were rips, the grime stained his skin to dark ash.

Smiling through blackened and crumbling teeth the boy pointed to the center of the immense room where large cisterns grumbled and churned their insides about with systematic rendering of roll and push through and through: complicated grind and chisel, punctuated by a smooth silent hum until all you heard was the milling sound every thirty seconds or so. I didn’t want to look but felt the sharp pang of curiosity playfully urge me forward—what could make such a sound? What could make such a smell?

I stopped at the double railing, bending not so far over as to give the one at my back opportunity. My trust long evaporated concerning sky or ground people.

"What’s in there?" I asked, my voice contorted by lips barely apart, the smell pervaded with so close proximity to the evident source.

The boy shifted closer, scuffling bare feet against the loose floor, and I turned halfway toward him presenting him with my profile instead of my vulnerable backside.

"The next floor, that’s what," the boy volunteered, portentous now with his knowledge, "and the next suite and probably the new transport garage."

"This is where they make the ‘scrapers?" I asked innocently.

And the boy just huffed and kicked his heels at the mound of dirt at his feet, sending some of the grains careening down into the machinery. "You don’t want to know much about this place," his eyes narrowed into gashes, "and I don’t want to know much about you neither. You’re just a kid, five-eight-two-twelve-nine, which will get his turn sooner or later—probably later, the way things go ‘round here."

"My name’s Teddy and my turn for what?"

He pointed at his stomach, "I’m two-zero-zero-four- three, my name used to be Jessup. Come on," he motioned to me, "I gotta get you signed in. That’s my job you know, signing you in and making sure you got what you need."

I followed his lead all the while trying to get my questions answered. "Will I have to live down here? Won’t they let me live with my new family up top?"

And the boy just snickered; perfunctory snicker as though he’d heard this question a hundred times before. "…No going to the top before your time."

Through dirty corridors he led me, past rooms with tables and benches lined with other kids, red cheeked faces oil-smeared and swollen with exerted labor; hair matted and greasy-black, filling their gaping mouths with clumpy gruel and not looking at what they ingested—never looking to see what they poked into their mouths. Some barely gave me eye contact, most did not, and as I walked by silent despair commanded all their weary movements filling me with the same hopelessness and gloom.

I was lingering too long in my pace, and the boy grasped my arm and pulled me along to a claustrophobic room where a young girl, a year or two older than the boy, sat behind a tortured and battered desk.

Not as filthy as the boy, her clothing was patched and sewn nevertheless and just as dismal was her manner. She was stamping plates methodically, her stringy-sparse hair dangling before her eyes as she hammered away, giving no outward notice of us.

"Classification?" she asked.

"Five-eight-two-twelve-nine," the boy said.

And the girl reached for another small sheet of metal, punching each number into the thinness of the sheet with a grunt of exertion and handing the plate to the boy without so much as looking at the face behind the number.

I was led from the girl back into the tunnel where the blast of heat and the constant of keeping up with the boy’s pace were causing me to become thirsty.

"Can I have some water?" I asked.

"When we’re through," he said irritably, as if the simple request for water was a nuisance.

And I was led to a room which frightened me most of all. Something hateful in the very air as I was pushed into the rounded walls as the boy stayed behind, closing the door behind me. Crude instruments on crude tables, smears of black on every surface of those tables—not the oily grime I’d seen on the children but dried and jellied fingerprints and handprints and footprints.

A door on the other side of the circular room whined open and two large youths step through, as the door shrieks closed—end of introduction. All muscle and sinew protruding from black tunics and generic faces below unwashed spiky hair, they moved about as if I wasn’t there, dragging the cot from the curved wall and moving the table with its hideous accompaniments to the cot’s side—filling my small body with gigantic terror so that I looked frantically around the room for the slightest escape route.

And they come for me, those with void faces and blank empty eyes. I garble words that even I can’t discern and through my haze that this couldn’t be happening—that it was a hideous dream that I’d yet to wake from—they fastened my limbs to the cot pulling tightly on the cords that bit into my ankles and wrists. Not bothering to muffle my screams or my curses that rang out and bounced from the walls over and over. I think of Sister—nothing else for my mind to find purchase on—in the pale yellow dress that was threadbare and faded but her best…and how her eyes shone kindness at me and how she was so proud, so very proud, that I was going to the skydwellers; a chance for a better life…a chance for a young man to make something of his self and extend his name to future skydwellers…Sweet hugs and kisses and protection against Brother’s wicked intent.

Sister…Sister…but the word ceases to contain any meaning as it reverberates off the stony walls…screaming my talisman as the pain annilates any memory, replacing it only with panic and blood pumping madly through my ears as my belly burns with a thousand flames…I whisper coarsely, no longer with voice…Sister… as darkness rushes from the edges to engulf me—.

—Sorely I gaze on the sagging and lumpy ceiling. Heavy with tragedy I know now that this is not a dream I will wake from. I gambled and lost. I wanted to feel something besides the air flowing through my spirit. I grew restless from wanting to feel emotion and smell and touch the things of this earth, but I have yet to find any humanity—anything worth feeling in this place and, I know now I will never find it—the man I once was speaks out at last; refusing to allow the child he’s born into false hope where none exists.

Dank and dusky, the cell that I belong to now is small with dirt walls the same as the portal tunnels that snake through this underground hell. A collar of metal and glass fits itself to my throat; I have to see it with my fingers: strange shapes and bundled wires at the back. Another enigmatic device in this bizarre prison. And then a voice coming closer, rattling of metal against the walls outside. "Announcement, Announcement," the voice yells. "Ready yourselves for Announcement!"

The familiar boy from earlier arrives at the caged door of bars peering through and at last unlocking it to come inside.

"We have Announcement tonight," he tells me with no sign of pity at my state of discomfort and burning bare stomach. "Come. We have to assemble," he says to me as if scripted.

"I can’t get up," I said, "hurts to move."

"You’ll have to get up. It is required of you."

And he launches me from the cot as a wave of nausea climbs my throat, burning the raw insides. The cauterized flesh of my belly trickles and spreads its ooze as I wobble on my feet, dizzying pain and the red fevered numbers raised upon my skin, just above my navel: five-eight-two-twelve-nine. How much did they pay for me Papa? How much pain will I suffer so that you may drink yourself into oblivion and forget the torment of selling one of your own? But it will find you, in every child’s eyes you look upon—you will see only me… Oh, how I wished.

The assembly for announcement took place in the central room where the elevators portals stood. There a couple of adults paraded in finery and masks with slits beyond the filters where the nose and mouth were, as the denizens of the underground filed through the tunnels surrounding them and sitting wherever a place could be found on the floor.

Not dallying, the adults quickly quieted the children. Once the strange hush of the machinery stopped and the children waited, fidgeting stillness with hands folded politely in front of them, the adults placed the mini-wheel upon the table before them and drawing heavily on the spinner let it fly clockwise, rotating around the numbers that ranged from zero to twenty. This they did five times, until a kid to my right and almost pinned to the very back, stood, and shouted and waved his hand ecstatically about. "That’s me! I am the lucky one to go topside!" He made his way to the table and the adults pulled his coarse shirt up to expose the numbers on his belly at the bottom of his ribcage. The adults shifted anxiously as they checked the wheel’s numbers against the ones living upon the child’s flesh.

"Yes! We have one winner," the woman with the gray-black hair announced with distain. The man to her side nodded his approval, and the child, beaming with his obvious luck sat cross-legged on one of the "X’s" drawn upon the black soiled floor.

To my back, whispers: "I know that one! He’s been here for quite a while—longer than I even—it is good he finally will be freed."

And then silence once more as the man jerked the wheel once again sending it flying round in a blur, all eyes upon its promise. The arrow stopped on five as murmurs lifted in disappointment. I held my breath—not daring to hope.

The next number was eight, but that is where my luck ended as the remaining numbers bore no match to my scorched wound. Across the ocean of heads a girl stood and I recognized her as the girl who had stamped the plate that was used to affix my own numbers. She seemed in shock, standing there until others nudged her forward and the crowd parted to allow her to go to the front. There she showed the adults her puckered pink scars and sat down upon the remaining "X" as the announcements were concluded and everyone followed the winners to the elevator calling good wishes and reaching out to touch the lucky couple.

Trampled under foot of the mob, a wad of yellow absorbed the black of the oily soil and footprints of those who stepped upon it, catching my eye and holding it in stark curiosity until I slid between the crush of the parade and retrieved it from the ground. Laughter eased around me as I unfurled the paper ball and read the numbers of the two pre-chosen winners. I slid the paper deep into my pocket as the doors to the elevator hesitated and the iron-haired woman looked frantically about. She whispered to the man with wild eyes and he too became agitated. Closing the door to the elevator they made their way around the perimeter of the table searching… "It probably fell into the pit," the man called over the din.

Excitement was still in the air as the crowd dispersed back to their cells. Perhaps the system would work for them the next announcement and they would join the skydwellers having completed their duty and proven to be fortunate at last. What the announcements proved was that all was not lost…even after long years the girl who was fourteen or fifteen years of age had at last won her chance to leave…it was a system that all looked upon with the last vestiges of their childhood and the only time when the children behaved/resembled children in a meager light-hearted fashion.

I asked Jessup as he escorted me back to my cell how often announcements occurred and he told me that a delicate balance was maintained where as when new workers arrived an announcement would follow to set two free.

"And are the winners usually the older kids?" I asked.

Usually, he told me, although sometimes a younger kid’s numbers were called. And sometimes God interfered and a sick child’s numbers were called.

How gallant, I thought. And upon the Jessup’s departure down the long tunnel I hid the crushed slip of paper under the thin mattress of my cot.

It took around a week for the excitement of the announcement to wear off. Then everything returned to its glum and gloomy afterglow. I found my niche as Jessup called it in the north tunnel where I, along with five other children of various ages, oiled the gears of axel wheels. Easy work, grubby, but easy.

Six weeks after the Announcements, I returned to my chamber for the night and found the paper I’d hidden away missing. I should’ve destroyed it! I berated myself. But most importantly—most deadly—was they knew that I knew their heinous little secret. How long would it be before my numbers were called?

That evening Jessup made the chamber checks, looking in on everyone before turning in for the night. I called to him from my cot as he poked his dirty face through the bars.

He opened up the door and shuffled in looking at me and checking my forehead for fever.

"I’m not sick, Jessup, but I do have a question; a serious question."

"What?" he asked, plainfaced and weary.

"I have a sister on the outside, an older sister. Will they let me get a message to her?" I asked knowing it was forbidden. "You know, just to let her know everything’s all right?"

Jessup shook his head emphatically. "Your sister thinks the same thing every one else does: You’ve been adopted into some hoity-poity family of skydwellers. And one day it’ll be true and you won’t have to worry about it none; just got to earn your keep first."

"Is that what they tell you to say, Jessup? Or do they tell you the same lies?"

"Lies?" Jessup flared. "You’ve seen how it works down here; you’ve seen your first Announcement. You wear the same stinkin’ collar and identification numbers as we all do… Sure we have to give up a little of ourselves," he touched the collar at his own throat, "but if we get a new future…can’t you see it’s worth it?"

"They get rid of the older kids to make room for the little ones who come in. And somehow I don’t think they are going topside. I believe it’s more sinister, more like disposed of so that their little secret doesn’t get out. Don’t you see that?" I raged. "You ain’t getting any younger Jessup…"

And I knew Jessup didn’t know from the way his eyes died just a little more. I had to disclose my theory, tell Jessup about the faux Announcements.

"I had the proof until yesterday. I found a scrap of paper with the numbers of the winners—pre-selected on it. It’s all rigged. And they searched and found that piece of paper in here. They’ve been searching everybody’s room while they’re out.

Can’t you see something’s going on here?"

Sick look in Jessup’s eyes now, and I could tell he believed me. Maybe Jessup noticed that his room had been searched too. Something a fraction out of place or a wrinkle or two more in the bedclothes…

He held his head in his hands and tottered back and forth on his skinny legs before walking over and looking up and down the tunnel for prying eyes and ears.

"They use our energy here; these collars feed that machine out in the Centrum. They can’t live so high and fancy without us. When we get older, when our energy isn’t so pure and ivory, then we are freed. So it ain’t as democratic and fair as a drawing of the wheel, we still are rewarded. Better than living out a life of no hope out there." He paused, considering what was asked of him. "Even if it’s true—what you say—your sister can’t do nothing about it. Nobody can. This is where all the big-shot politicians live and work. They got to know about all this.

"We’ve got to try. I don’t think either one of us has much time," I said. "The next announcement will be ours."

If Jessup’s thoughts reflected my own, he never said so as he walked with sloping shoulders to the iron door. He looked at me for a fleeting moment, taking in my eight year-old body with its strange precocious mind, and then turned, thudding down the tunnel.

Two days later, as I sat hunched over some greasy cog, cleaning the ancient bolts for effective non-productivity, Jessup slid to the bench next to me. He was wearily quiet for a moment before he spoke in hushed tones.

"You just had to be nosey didn’t you kid? Bones, that’s what’s grinding out there. Saw it for myself yesterday. God, you were right. They were feeding that machine Tyra and James’ bodies. And I believed the scumbags, Teddy. I believed their lies!

Have your letter to your sister ready tonight. He has agreed to deliver for us. Too late for us, but there’s a chance to save others, I think. I hope."

Too late for us recycled through my head repeatedly. Oh God, wasn’t that the truth! I’d been led like some modern Moses into the hell of Egypt. I’d coveted the palace when all along it was my purpose to tear it down.

I wouldn’t disillusion myself to pray for last minute saviors like some death row inmate looking for a twelfth hour pardon.

Although—.

"What day is it Jessup? Do you know?"

Jessup squinted, "I believe it’s the nineteenth of September. Why?"

"A consolation prize; if you’d just trust me."

Jessup nodded.

"Try and find out when the next announcement is going to be."

Shaking his head, Jessup stared at the dirty wheel I held within my hands. "That’s nearly impossible since they don’t know themselves."

"We stage our own announcement then. We decide when we go."

He looked at me as if I’d surely lost my mind and he was placing his trust in a nutcase. "Sure, what do I have to loose? Besides a few days in this hellhole."

"September Twenty-third. We have plans to make."

"You’re a strange kid, Teddy."

I half-grinned, "We have three days to stage our own ending to this metropolis."

Jessup met with me as often as possible over the next two days. The weirdness of staging one’s own noose and rope was surreal to the point of disembodiment. Although we simulated a matter of fact manner, perhaps it was this very attitude that made it so distant and non-effectual.

On the eve of September Twenty-second, a new recruit was brought down to our abode. Intimidated and hopeful, the child was close to my own age with close cropped russet hair and vividly startling eyes that grew perpetually large in her slim face and pointed chin.

It would soon be time for another announcement—but we wouldn’t wait. Our plan was for this midnight. Imperative was the time and planning for this vigil.

At twenty-five after eleven, Jessup crept to my quarters, trying in vain to keep the massive key chains he held in both hands from clinking. Handing two of the rings to me, he paled in the shadowy light of the tunnels. "This is it."

"This is it," I agreed.

Jessup and I quietly unlocked the doors in our sector. Groggy cellmates filed anxiously into the tunnels as we whispered "Quiet! Quiet!" for as long as we could obtain their cooperation. The North and South tunnels were impossible to contain silence and we quickly unlocked the doors and they herded into the central atrium.

I haven’t any idea how many we’d freed into the Centrum to await Announcement, but there were a hundred at least, I’m quite sure.

And as I stood at the podium, where iron-hair and grim-face had spun the pseudo-wheel and called predestined numbers out, I did not allow myself to think of anything other than what was planned.

THIS IS ANNOUNCEMENT! I yelled as loudly as possible. All traces of Teddy the eight year-old disappeared, replaced by the automatism of Harlan Kushner coming to life. And the childish clamor of the children silenced, and eyes fastened to me in wonder.

Then the voices picked up again, murmur against murmur until I raised my hands and spoke again.

I told of the paper I’d found on the floor and I told of their deceit in searching everyone’s chambers for the missing piece of proof that would proclaim them the monsters that they were.

We cannot go on trading our energy for our death.

The elevators slid open and twenty or so red uniforms packed around iron-hair. Our time had run out.

Iron-hair gave orders to round the children up. I glanced at Jessup who was inciting others to riot with his battle cry of: We will not fall to the wicked! No more Announcements!

"No more Announcements!" the unison voices proclaim.

The children took up the cry pummeling the Red Guard with fists and feet, teeth and nails, anger fueling the disparity of lost innocence.

Iron-hair, fighting off several of the children who flung themselves upon her, suddenly pointed to the podium where I stood and barked orders to the guardsmen, who made their way through the masses.

I shouted to Jessup as the first guard burst himself upon me, the dangling arms and legs of a child upon this back and then the squeal of pain as sharp little teeth embedded into his shoulder. I grabbed his wrist and tore the crystal watch from it. I hoped the time was precise. We had scarcely three minutes.

Again I shouted to Jessup and motioned for him. It was time.

I slipped through the maddening crowd and climbed onto the concrete basin where the bottom seemed endlessly away, with the wristwatch still clutched in my hand. One minute.

Jessup parted the crowd and was almost to the basin when a guard grabbed his arm and he stood yelling up to me trying mightily to drag the guard with him, just reaching out with his eyes and hand encumbered arm.

I knelt to the concrete extending my hand as his fell away, pushed to the grimy floor and piled with ten or more other children who heaped themselves onto the guard’s back. And then something quite remarkable happened. Something I would not have expected in a dozen millennia.

The guard who crouched over him was flung away, by a face I recognized as being the fellow who delivered me to my doomed underworld. And Jessup and others were helped to their feet. I wavered there on the concrete ledge knowing I had precious few seconds left. Jessup’s hands gripped the edge of the wall and I immediately helped him up and kept grasping hands and arms until scores of children stood on the ledge amongst us, and still more poured to the sides of the wall clinging and flopping to the concrete shelf.

Five seconds.

And with bodies pressed to our sides and backs, I linked hands with Jessup and we fell forward into the great swirling basin. To our backs, screams mingled with laughter as others took our lead and plunged into the murky depths of the basin.

****

It is here, on this disjointed sidewalk that I finally meet the one called Jessup once again, only now his name is Teddy. Of course we are of the same age, perhaps mere days apart. His bony hand is caught up in a woman’s protective one, but I recognize the twinkle in his eyes, just as I recognize the faded gold of the young woman’s hair and the sweet heather gray of her eyes. Such a sweet, sweet lamb, she coos. I push up from the island of ruptured asphalt and take her other waiting hand. Mother is away at work, clearing debris. She will find it a relief that I’ve gone…wandered off. Behind us children, uniform in age, follow meekly and then grow still. Our eyes turn upward to the spires that stand empty and crumbling—not so grand any longer, but allowed to remain to attest to our endurance as so not to forget our struggles. It is a monument of courage signaling a new beginning for us here, on the ground, where we will rebuild—and stay.

The End

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