[Click here for Part III. Click here to start at the beginning.]
Evan followed the focused messenger down the hallway accompanied by hushed stridulation. When he found himself arriving, it was just in time to watch the mahogany door swing shut with a satisfying click. Since he had pulled that lever on the cold runway he had not been anywhere near the hulking machine that was Akara. Here was the closest one could get to its heart without breaking Evan’s own strict rules. He opened the door to the bustle of messengers and frantic machinery. Evan ambled over to the sorting machine to watch it at work.
Four sheets of paper came spitting out of one of the many slots in the wall. They slid gently down a short slide into the open arms of a manila folder. A thin flap slammed shut, compelled by a plate to press the four sheets together. Where they were quickly grabbed by device riding dual cables and delivered promptly to a small cubby in a shorting shelf wall. On the other side of sorting shelves, a woman examined the label visible on the first page of the freshly printed document and handed it to Evan. Evan politely took the folder and stood examining his work. He hadn’t thought of it as such at the time, but the staff had taken to calling his printer room “the mail room”. He supposed the pass through sorting shelves reminded people of a post office. The letter printer at the other end of the room probably didn’t help deter this nickname either.
Evan opened the folder addressed only to by his first name. The timing was impeccable, though given Akara had eyes everywhere it was probably too much to chalk it up to fate. Past the cover page was a notice addressed to himself. Which began with:
“Evan,
I would like to invite you to attend the Awakening Ball. This event has been drafted to celebrate your accomplishments in realm of governance. I have invited many of your colleges so that they may finally admire your work. The ball will be held in the main mess hall. I will making the necessary preparations including your presentations on myself. If you like to make any additions or alterations to the prepared material I will be taking suggestions through secretary@culture.gov…”
The rest of the document contained an outline for the proceedings of the ball. Despite the great news, Evan could not help but read the sixth sentence over again. He had come to the mail room to watch his creation at work, or at least some aspect of it. Yet here was an open invitation to communicate with Akara. Perhaps an opportunity. If they worked together on the presentation maybe Evan could grasp some aspect of what it was thinking? Another freshly printed folder, this one much thicker. Evan looked it over. It was the presentation for the ball. Determined he rushed out and back into his study.
Trucks came in from the south driven by men in seemingly freshly pressed jumpsuits. Blue uniforms, unlike the typical hodgepodge of eclectic rags. Not one truck sported the pastel color or frills typical of the southern regions. The blue jumpsuits unloaded the trucks moving lights, curtains and lavish carpets from the cavernous vehicles. Evan saw three jumpsuits unloading a chandelier. He felt it was in poor taste and decided to talk with the Duma planner. Evan found the old man standing in the snow examining the mess hall. “Sir?”
“Yes, Mr.?”
“Bruckner, Evan Bruckner.”
“Mr. Bruckner how can I help you?”
“I apologize if this may seem like strange question but did you happen to bring all necessary parts to affix the chandelier?”
The old man laughed looking out at the four men bringing yet another chandelier. “Yes, I get that question a lot. Do not worry we have everything we need.”
A few of the staff gathered to watch as their plain mess hall was transformed into a grand ball room. For certain, the event planners normally beholden to the Duma seemed eager to have something to do after most of their clients had disappeared. Evan found the old man again decided to see what he knew from the old days.
“How long have you worked with the Duma?”
“Oh probably 20 years now.”
“And before that?”
“I used to work in a fabric factory until one of my order was stolen on its way to a Duma event. Turns out the event planner was stupid enough to try and sell the curtains on the black market. The Duma decided to go straight to the source and hired me to deliver the fabric and well, I never really left.”
The old man paused for a second. “So where are they buried?”
Evan was taken aback by this question. The transition had supposed have been announced, but Akara had made it clear that there was to be no talk of the former Duma. Evan knew at this point that the was no fooling the old man. The old man had been too close to the Duma to be fooled like some credulous student patrol.
“They are buried over there.” Pointing to the ditch on the far side of the airstrip. “They had traditional death. I’m only telling you this so you will keep quiet. You understand right?”
“I didn’t become an old man by being indiscreet. I won’t speak ill of the dead but I do hope that the leadership is up to the task.” The old man satisfied with his answer wandered off to manage the ball.
Evan stood ready presiding over the podium with an energy that could barely be contained in the constrained motions of his presentation. Akara had chosen to reply to his suggested changes with a long email. Unfortunately it had arrived just before the presentation. As Evan’s words described his life’s vision he could not help but feel removed from the scene, ready and waiting to engage with his creation. The audience felt his excitement. Their eyes wide with wonder at the future. Evan was not a politician, nor a salesmen, but neither were these people possessed of ordinary interests. The details of his work finally bared before them drew them in as if Evan was the greatest of orators. The word “purity” fell off his tongue. It rang sour, but he let that word again drop on the audience. Akara would realize the purity of our vision. No mistranslation, or human faults, and end to the petty issues which besieged the best of us.
Evan paused to admire his vision, something he had not bothered to consider. He had never been a political person, yet here in this room it seemed almost unconscionable that he had never considered this a political project. He had merely been solving a technical problem, here too it seemed like the positive vision, the unleashing of reason had infected the crowd. Akara had a special message to these long neglected souls. They had been venerated and yet ignored, respected and yet voiceless, advised only to be pantomimed. Evan had rewritten much of the speech, mostly to give it a more academic flair. Here now though he spoke with the real voice of Akara. Under the glittering light of a chandelier the ballroom, well mess hall, seemed to fill with as much optimism as light.
In what had been an era of despair, Evan saw hope again. Of course it had never left him. His bubble had been nothing but research and the occasional jaunt in the cold. In increasingly ill advised fits of insanity he had even read the news. It was lonely out on his frozen reservation. While there was camaraderie there was nothing freeing about being trapped on an island complex. Even if Evan had never cared before knowing what was going on outside felt like a momentary escape. As the years had gone by there had been a less and less optimism. His handlers had in occasional hushed tones made it clear that this project was the only hope in an increasingly frustrating future. At the time this had only felt like praise, now though as his pause infected the audience he felt it had the shadow of fate.
Evan’s voice spoke the words that Akara never could:
“Today I have unveiled to you our future. A future promised hundreds of years ago. We have gotten in the way of ourselves, tripped and stumbled. Now let us get out of the way of science. Let reason reign and maturity follow. Our state has failed the people and many have sacrificed themselves in atonement. Let those present here today never forget lest we follow the same path. Let us live up to the principles that we so promised. Let us be better, smarter, more glorious than our predecessors. In Akara we will find our place. You will have a seat at the table. Not at the table of politics which has brought us down this road, but at the seat of Science! Long may she reign. “
Evan presented his palm to the crowd and the crowd roared back “Long may she reign!“
Evan wandered through the crowd accepting praise and toasts. Even at the apogee of his career he could not help but think of that response sitting undisturbed in his inbox. The temptation was unbearable. It was one of the reasons he had never built a direct interface with Akara. One may want to tamper or tweak or even usurp. If Akara could be tampered with then it would no longer be in charge. He didn’t care about that right now, his creation had been born and he had yet to actually speak to it.
He was brought out of his thoughts by a familiar face approaching him from the crowd. Evan had met Rayna before he came to this compound. He couldn’t remember where though. It must have been at the Academy. Her face was so familiar though. His austere decade had robbed him of a few years of graces. Rayna squeezed through the gaps in elbows and drinks. Evan glimpsed the orchestra in the background and for the first time this night heard them. Rayna spoke: “Evan, how did you manage on those values for the production optimization?”
Evan had answered a number of these sorts of questions tonight, but he thought he would give a little more detail to a familiar face.
“I was inspired by the Duma charter of course. It was the only way to go. This project was to be the continuation of their vision. I spent nearly a year, off and on you know, trying to codify and translate that charter into logic. Prosperity was a difficult one. I went over this in my presentation, but really it was something that I prioritized. It was, is the thing most lacking in our times. We have had limited success but we needed something robust. The next thing that really was difficult to codify were the values of impartiality and parity. I mean one would assume that a construct would be impartial but I didn’t want to work on assumptions. You want this thing to be a boon not a curse…”
Rayna listened intently to his ramble. She interceded when he began to stumble. “Did you ever worry about getting it wrong?”
Evan spurted out: “Of course, but what else was there? This was the back-up plan I didn’t choose it. I certainly didn’t have any insights into how to fix the political situation. I just knew that might help.”
They began walking towards the banquet table. Rayna made use of a pause in the conversation: “That makes sense. Now that this is out in the open what are you going to do?”
The email again came into Evan’s mind: “Stay here. I suppose that I want to be of use and if I’m not useful I want to watch this unfold. Have you signed up for one of the Akara Foundation programs?”
“Yes of course.” Rayna delivered.
The PEF had made certain the atmosphere of the mess hall normally approached the decorum of a beer hall. Tonight though, it had a different feeling altogether. The Awakening Ball may have lacked the devil-may-care abandon of the Duma’s last night, but it made up for that with the triumphant libations to the future. This felt like liberation. The thumb of the conscience of politics no longer weighed on their shoulders. A trip west was no longer in the back of their minds. For if Akara stood for Science then didn’t it stand for them? Evan acquired a flock of hangers on as he unleashed a flood of stories, scars and minutia about his lost decade. Caught in the rush of ado, Evan felt the weight of attention. Even that email fell over the sides as his pride filled the room. Accompanied by a host of bottles Evan found himself in the tunnels from the mess hall to the main complex. The tunnels had been built per Akara’s design. They had a character unique to the post-Duma period. Unlike the spartan and brutalist designs of the rest of the complex, the tunnels felt as if humans were meant occupy them. The vertical fluorescent lights inset in the walls gave a warm glow to the tunnel as did the steam pipes which accented the wall with a striped rather than functional pattern. Trailed by a small group of stumbling scientists he wondered what the future would look like. For certain, the waters around his island had begun to recede he could only wonder what they would reveal.
[Click here for Part V.]
