The smoking mirror

Jai-Li stopped speaking. Her eyes darted to the side as the malformed shadow of a person crawled across the wall of the tent. The zip of the tent buzzed down and you saw it was Theunis.

He poked his head inside and beckoned you out of the tent. You turned back to Jai-Li, told her you’d be back soon and that everything would be all right. She smiled in appreciation of your assurance, but it was clear you were less than convinced.

You stepped out, zipped up the tent behind you, and approached Theunis. He was pacing in circles and raking his fingers through his hair. The heat of the dying fire was losing its reach and the icy wind that edged your skin was like the breath of death. But you kept your composure to help Theunis keep calm. Something had gone wrong. His eyes were wide and wild. His skin was damp with sweat.

You asked him what it was, but he couldn’t speak. There was the rustle of some nocturnal animal flitting about the trees above you, and Theunis jerked his head up in alarm. You shook him gently and said his name twice. Theunis. Theunis, what is it?

Finally he turned to look at you.

At first, everything had gone fine, he said, but hardly a few minutes after arriving at the commune, a young boy had summoned him up to the house on the hill.

He’d told himself it was a coincidence. They didn’t know, he’d told himself; they couldn’t have known. But then he’d walked into that white room with the large window and the pale moon swimming behind those shadowy shapes and found himself wired to that machine. The Body had fired off their questions—their weird, philosophical questions. Waited for the answers he was supposed to know by heart. Dreams. Numbers. God concepts. They had not asked about Jai-Li. So maybe it had been a mere fluke he’d been called to bear witness at that precise time. The problem was, he’d been unable to conceal his nervousness from the grey machine. The machine was hardly necessary, he added; he’d perspired and fidgeted like a boy. And, of course, the more nervous he felt, the more his anxiety grew. At one point, they’d had him sit for almost five minutes without saying a word. The longer he’d sat, the hungrier that thing had seemed to get, and the longer The Body had waited. After that, they’d sent him back down to the beach.

At that point you said it was okay, that maybe they still didn’t know, but Theunis was adamant. They did. They knew he was guilty of something.

You took a moment to think about what to do next and then you said to him that the two of you could not do this alone; you needed someone else to help you. Someone you could trust.

Theunis wasn’t sure there was anyone, but you said you knew somebody. Gideon. If anyone could be trusted, it was Gideon. You would have to do it in turns, rotate your shifts, otherwise there’d be no hope of securing the secret. And besides, you added, Gideon was one of the better carpenters on the beach. He’d be able to make the oar, quicker and better than either of you.

Your responsibilities were taking on new weight, new shape almost, and you were hit with a sudden sensation. Purpose. It was a feeling both familiar and anomalous to you. Before this, such feelings had only washed up occasionally, like rare and colourful shells on the bleak shore of your existence. When one arrived, and you picked it up and put it to your ear, you could still hear within its smooth folds the oceanic echo of the person you had once been. Now the feeling filled you, strengthening you, frightening you.

Theunis and you decided that he should go back down to the beach and stay there until morning. The Body would be watching him closely after his interrogation, so you’d have to be the one to stay with Jai-Li. The next day he would come back up the mountain and you’d go down to find Gideon. Jai-Li needed to stay out of sight and at least one of you needed to be constantly in sight. So that was the plan, for now. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best you could think of. Theunis handed you the bag of food and two rolled-up blankets. He thanked you as if you had agreed to do all this for his sake only, and then he left.

You watched as he rushed away into the darkness, beyond the light of the glowing moon. Then you turned and took the bag and blankets back to the tent. Jai-Li was probably hungry; she hadn’t eaten for at least a few hours. But when you pulled up the zip of her tent, you saw that she had already fallen asleep.

You reached up and curled your hand around the rough branch of the gigantic tree. You grabbed it tightly and hoisted yourself up. You slipped your right foot onto a woody protrusion, pushed down, and pulled yourself up some more. Your breath was misfiring, in and out of your lungs like a car battling to start.Your face pressed against the bark and you closed your eyes, willing yourself into a state of physical calm.You could not give up. Not yet.You’d seen the red shoe on the ground below and were convinced you’d find Andy at the top of that tree.

You looked down. The trunk of the tree ran downwards, vanishing to a pinpoint among the green canopy below. You gripped the tree harder.You had climbed for so long and you were terrified of being so high up. The fear throbbed in your throat and chest and stomach like a fat and unearthly slug.

You looked up. The top of the tree disappeared in thick clouds. Andy would be up there. He would be waiting for you.You were sure of it. So you decided not to look down again, and continued on, controlling your breathing all the way, gripping one branch at a time. The wind danced around the trunk, mocking you for your lack of dexterity. You ignored it, held tighter, and ascended.

Soon, the colours of the world began to fade.You realised you were entering the thick blankness of a cloud and you could barely see the next branch you were supposed to grab, let alone where the top of the tree ended.You stopped and lifted yourself onto a wide branch, taking a seat. Your head tilted up and around. There was nothing but the whiteness.

Had Andy come up so far? Could he have?

You were beginning to doubt it, but wouldn’t let yourself give in to the doubt. You had felt so strongly that he’d climbed the tree, and you had come up so far in spite of the fear pounding in you. You could not lose faith now.

You called his name.Your voice barely penetrated the thick cloud. You called his name again, louder.

Andy … Andy!

Nothing came back but the haunting stillness. You arched your head up. Through the white shroud above, you could feel the sickly, dull warmth of what you thought was the sun. But the warmth did not comfort you. It was a humid thickness, the sort in which terrible, diseased things grow. You squinted at the cloud and now you could see the faint outline of a weak, glowing orb suspended somewhere far beyond. This must be the sun, you thought. The orb shone feebly, its shape barely distinguishable, like the intangible image cast on the back of your closed eyelids when you couldn’t get to sleep. It was very near and yet very remote, like a faraway planet brought close by the lens of a powerful telescope. It shouldn’t be called a sun. It was something else, an eye that could somehow see you more clearly than you could see it.

You were sitting there, still wondering what it could be, when a soft voice crept into your head. It seemed to be your voice, but it wasn’t the voice of your normal thoughts. It was clear and direct and had come into your head from somewhere outside. Above all, you were certain of this.

I’m beginning to understand, the voice said softly. I’m beginning to remember.

You did not know what the voice meant. But as it came into your mind, a new realisation dawned upon you: the voice was coming from the orb. It was speaking its mind through you, using your voice, becoming clearer and more direct as it went on:

Do you remember Jack Turning, Kayle?

Remember Jack Turning. Remember his face. Remember him. Remember his fear and his guilt. I will help you to end this, Kayle. This silly daydream of an existence. Where are you climbing? Who do you think you will find up here? You will not find Andy here, Mr. Kayle. You will not find him because he is not here. Soon, I’ll be there and I’ll show you for myself. But the alp on your chest is getting bigger, my friend. And they say it takes a human body a variable amount of time to decompose properly. It all depends on the conditions, Kayle, for there to be nothing but bone. You can understand that, surely?

So a man makes a life. He makes his choices. He lives with his choices and he paves his fate. You’ll all go back to being animals. Stupid, stupid animals …

The voice made no sense to you, although you somehow recalled each of its strange words. You had heard them before—in another place, another life, perhaps.You pushed yourself up and asked again about your son, Andy, and where you would find him.You needed to find him.

There was a hum of white noise, the echo of the Big Bang, the physical sound of beating light. And the voice of the orb again: And you’ll be animals again. Animals. Stupid, useless animals … how do you get a fifty-ton beached whale to move, Kayle? You ask it reeeally nicely …

You collapsed against the trunk of the tree. The orb wouldn’t tell you anything. The words coming from it were nonsensical, but you did understand one thing. Andy was not in the tree.You had made a mistake. You leaned over the edge of the branch and looked down. You were too high up. There was no way to climb back down. You wouldn’t make it—up or down. You had put every thing into the climb up and had nothing left for the climb back down. You closed your eyes and rested your head against the side of the enormous tree and finally, you gave up. You would never find Andy.

It was over.

And so, with the orb still filling you with its meaningless words, you slid and tipped to the side, losing your seat on the branch. You felt the gravity of the earth as it wrenched you down.You were out of the tree, your legs flailing, your arms flapping at your sides as you went plummeting. The air wrestled with you; the force and speed of the earth’s pull seemed to separate your internal organs from each other until you were no longer a person but a formless and powerless mass.Your body plunged and you forced your eyes open. The cloud above pulled away and suddenly you were in the brightness and clarity of a sunny day. The tree trunk raced up into the sky alongside you, becoming another pinpoint, this time in the cloud, as if it were growing upwards at a rapid and unnatural rate. You were calm, your mind was at rest. At peace. You surrendered to the whim of an uncompromising physical force, waiting to smash you to pieces on the ground below.

But then you saw him.

Andy.

And your body seemed to slow mid-fall. Your hair didn’t flap madly on your head, but undulated gently as if you were now under-water.You turned your head to see him. The boy you had yearned to see for so long.

Your son was climbing up the tree trunk. He had been climbing up behind you all along, looking for you. If you had waited there, up in the tree, he would have reached you.You would have been reunited. But you’d given up. The orb had said you wouldn’t find him, and you’d believed it. Now you were falling, and there was nothing that could be done.

Andy turned his face and saw you. His expression was one of surprise and horror.

Andy, is that you?

Dad!

You were now filled with a painful guilt, and the slowing of your fall gave you the time to feel the full throes of your remorse. It gave you the time to think you could do something about it—that perhaps you could grab onto the tree and save yourself—but no, there was no hope. You had only appeared to slow, and your body was still on course with the hard ground below.You could do nothing, and when you turned again, you could see that the trunk beside you was changing; the rough texture of the bark was smoothing over, losing its brown colour and beginning to glimmer with a metallic sheen. The tree formed windows—windows and linear edges—and soon, it wasn’t a tree at all. It was Jai-Li’s tower, the Huang-345. You were falling alongside a vast city-scraper of steel and glass.

Let me tell you a story, the orb said, the voice having changed neither its tone nor its tranquillising tempo. Would you indulge an old woman and her story?

You could still see Andy far above, and now he was clutching onto the side of the tower, but he was shrinking into the distance as you fell further and further from him. Your speed began to escalate, and your arms, legs and hair fluttered wildly as you raced breathlessly towards …

You blinked. Your eyes were open. At first you did not know where you were, but it came to you quickly. You were lying on the slope of the mountain beside Jai-Li’s tent, next to a smoking pile of blackened wood.

The dream. It was the same moment that had played itself over and over in your mind, night upon night, week upon week. But this time it had been clearer than ever. It had been so clear that when you awoke, you could still feel the tingle of the rushing air on your skin, still feel the nauseating warmth of the orb. It left you feeling the agony of having lost your son for the first time more clearly than ever before.

Remember Jack Turning, the voice had said again, as it had said every night. Remember his face. His fear. But still, you couldn’t. You did not know a Jack Turning, you had never known a Jack Turning. Maybe Jack Turning knew where your son was; maybe Jack Turning had taken him.

You rolled onto your back and looked up into the sky.

After your waking world steadied, you managed to clear the dream from your head. It was time to think about Jai-Li’s story about her life in the tower. Her story had been interrupted, but she’d said enough to keep your mind ticking over—her father, her mother, the robot, her prearranged child …

Did this mean her newborn was the one she had been warned about? And if so, did that have something to do with the reason she so desperately needed to escape?

But there was something else on your mind, besides all of that: both Jai-Li and Moneta had told you their stories in such great detail. You. Jai-Li couldn’t have told Theunis, and she must have trusted him, surely. And Moneta had purposely sought you to tell her story. She’d needed your help in the garden, but that was little more than an excuse.

So again, you mused, why you?

Bits of bark and leaves crackled under your weight. There was the strong fecund scent of soil and sap. You pulled the blanket Theunis had brought up to your neck and folded the end of it under your feet.

You forced your eyes shut and coiled into a foetal position and your last thought before slipping back off to sleep was what Jai-Li had said before she’d even begun her story. She’d needed to tell you. She’d believed it would “guide” you in some way. As absorbed as you had been by the tale that had proceeded, however, you could not see how it would direct you. Perhaps, if she finished her story, it would all become more obvious. But her last words, the ones that persisted, clinging delicately to the rest of your thoughts like a stubborn gossamer web, were more direct and more tenderly haunting: Find him. Never give up. Find your boy and bring him back to you.

You finally drifted off, and achieved a few more hours of sleep untroubled by dreams of any kind. In the early morning you awoke rested. The woods seemed a different place. In the light of dawn, there were new colours and textures; the world was green, brown and yellow, rough, smooth and prickly. The darkness that had constricted you the night before had broken like a fever.

Theunis was standing over you.

You rubbed your eyes and squinted up at him. He looked tired. His eyes were red. The stubble on his face was longer and darker.

The night, he said, had gone by without incident. You nodded and crossed to the tent to check on Jai-Li, but she was still asleep. You patted Theunis’s shoulder to clock out of your shift and, within a few minutes, were making your way down to the beach.

When you stepped out of the woods and into the open white light, it seemed as if you hadn’t been part of the commune in weeks. Something had changed over that time, but how? You had only been away for a night. Nothing could have changed. Perhaps it was you. You had changed.

Either way, the commune appeared even more hopeless and removed than it had before. You walked across the sand, between the fly-covered stalks of roasted brown kelp. Between and behind the tents were the usual faces, but nobody bothered to look at you. No one had missed you (the boon of a being a loner, Kayle). You headed straight for Gideon’s tent.

He was sitting on a stump of wood outside his front entrance, reading a comic book. He craned his head up as you approached and bent back the folded pages. He held up the cover of the comic for you to see.

A large and muscular man wearing a tight blue suit and red cape was grabbing two dejected-looking criminal-types by the backs of their jackets. They were flying far above a densely compacted metropolis. You knew the fictitious character fairly well, although you couldn’t recall having read a comic book in your life. He was Superman, the so-called Man of Steel.

This belonged to someone I knew, he said softly, cautiously. I don’t remember who, but it was someone close to me. I remember that.

He thumbed through the book quickly, as if hoping to have some hidden significance spray out from between the pages. Then he rolled the comic book up and tapped it against his left hand.

This super man, he’s an interesting character. Everyone else in the book is weak and helpless. But he flies around saving people from their own clumsiness—these others, these ordinary people, they’re always falling off buildings or losing control of their aeroplanes. When there’s a problem, this super man arrives and saves everyone.

It’s amusing, don’t you think, Mr. Kayle? They would rather make a story about one man with all this strength and power, and then have him go around protecting everyone, instead of a story about people learning to save and protect themselves. Is this what people want? To stay weak and blundering and have someone else do the saving and protecting? Very anti-Darwinian. But it’s a very interesting fable. Funny as well. I’ve read it a few times already.You should read it.

You huffed and took a seat on a second stump in front of him. Gideon sloped over and handed the book to you.

The expressions of the drawn men were charming and rudimentary. The one criminal was a bald man with a tattoo of a skull on his neck, the other a shaggy-haired young man in a leather jacket, evidently the more fretful of the two. Superman looked calm, collected, and unapologetically smug as he dragged them up to the clouds like bags of refuse. You handed the book back to Gideon.

Finally, he said: Something has happened, hasn’t it?

A pang of uneasiness fired through you. Gideon glanced down at the comic book again, rubbing his thumbs over the page in circles.

How is the alp on your chest these days? he asked, and looked back up. Is it getting worse or getting better?

I don’t know. Worse, I think.

He spoke again: I’ve been dreaming too, Mr. Kayle. Recently, I’ve been dreaming every night. I know we shouldn’t speak about it, but it’s true. I have not been sleeping very well.

It was the first time Gideon had spoken about his own experience on the beach.

You know, I don’t remember much about my life before the beach. Not as much as everyone else. I don’t even remember my real name. Gideon was not my name—I chose it for myself before I arrived here. Most of my memories didn’t come back to me. I remember moments and flashes. Some things seem to trigger a feeling, like this book—I seem to remember countless stories that aren’t my own, that can’t ever have been real: impossible creatures, gods, monsters, superstitions, the details of meaningless mythologies. But nothing about me, about my life. There are no names. I might have lost them along the way, perhaps even some time after Day Zero. Maybe they will still come to me. I don’t know.

There is, however, one clear thing. I need to tell you. Something tells me I am not the only one dreaming about this one thing, but there’s no one besides you I feel comfortable asking. Tell me, Mr. Kayle, in your dreams, have you seen a glowing ball in the sky?

You shuddered, but played devil’s advocate, saying, You mean the sun?

No, not the sun. Not exactly. But a ball. A sphere in the sky that sits like a planet. It is everywhere I go in my dreams. No matter where I am, it hangs in the sky above me. It is warm, this sphere, but the warmth sickens me. It makes me anxious. And it speaks, using my voice, but the voice is in my head, and it says peculiar things. It says it is coming. Coming for us. Every night this sphere grows larger and bolder in my mind and I’m starting to believe it. And fear it. Please, Mr. Kayle, I know I shouldn’t ask, but tell me—have you dreamed of this also?

You forced a slow, heavy nod. Gideon sat upright. You couldn’t tell whether he was feeling relieved or troubled by your admission.

You know, Gideon said, it reminds me of a story I do still remember. A long time ago, sometime at the start of the Age of Self, the Aztec people worshipped a god named Tazcatlipoca. It’s a mouthful to say. Tazcatlipoca. But this god, he was in charge of a great many things. The weather, the night, the universe, the earth, harmony, war, beauty … all of these things. And his name, translated from their language, meant “the smoking mirror” because of the obsidian glass he would use to see the entire cosmos at once. It was his looking glass, and through it, he could see everything that happened. He could peer into the corners of existence and change and engage with whatever he saw fit.

The reason I’m telling you this, Mr. Kayle, is because I’m beginning to think such a smoking mirror exists today, with us. I have a feeling that not only you and I are having this dream, and that is why we have been told not to speak to each other about it. I am beginning to think we have become sitting-ducks, as they say. In my opinion, I do think something is coming for us. Something from far away—an orb, a force, I don’t know—but in the meanwhile, it is observing us. Through our dreams. It’s looking into us, and it’s getting stronger. I cannot know for certain, but I believe that we have become its smoking mirror. And that is what they’re not telling us. Because The Body knows this thing, knows what it is, and fears it.

This is what I fear, Mr. Kayle. This is what these dreams feel like to me.

It was astonishing that Gideon remembered these stories about mythological characters and old gods, but could not recall the real people in his past life, or even his real name. You couldn’t help thinking perhaps those were the recollections that mattered most to him, but that didn’t feel fair—you knew how unsystematic and fractured the memories were that eventually came back. But what he’d said seemed chillingly right. Perhaps you had become, as he’d put it, the smoking mirror through which you were being watched, even studied. The orb itself was definitely getting bigger, bolder—the voice, clearer and closer—and if Gideon was seeing this same strange ball in the sky, then others were, too.

So, what about The Renascence? you asked finally. What is it then—some charade? What are we doing here? What are we really waiting for?

I don’t know, he said softly. Maybe we aren’t waiting for anything. Maybe they believe The Renascence is some kind of defence against this thing in our dreams. A way of hiding? I don’t know. As I said, it is only a feeling, but this feeling is growing in me. I’m sorry, Mr. Kayle. We shouldn’t talk about it, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore.

Gideon got up, took a few steps away from the tent and looked up at the sky. His face was bathed in the sharp morning light. The strengthening wind moved through his dreadlocks, causing them to swing a little. His square jaw was clenched tightly, his thick arms flexed and mapped in long descending loops of veins.

Gideon, does the name Jack Turning mean anything to you?

Gideon turned to you. Who?

Have you ever heard the name Jack Turning?

Jack Turning? Gideon shook his head. I can’t say that I have. Who is he?

I’m not sure exactly. Never mind. It’s probably not important.

You dusted the back of your pants and walked to Gideon’s side. You told him then that, as he had guessed, something had happened and you needed to tell him all about it. But you couldn’t do it there. Not in the middle of the commune. You insisted on going for a walk.

The two of you moved away from the commune and made your way to the water’s edge. The waves were rough and foaming white, rolling thickly and rushing up the sand. A cool mist was thrown up and against your hot skin as you walked ankle deep in the icy froth. When you were far enough away, you told Gideon about the situation. You told him about Jai-Li, the child, the escape, and the oar that was still needed. He listened intently and didn’t say a word. When you had finished, he said nothing. He stood and stared out over the ocean. His expression at that point was difficult to read; you couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then he turned to you and said Come, leading you away, back to the commune.

Gideon already had an oar that only needed to be repaired. You and he went together up the mountain to Jai-Li’s tent. On the way up you thought about what Gideon had said about the smoking mirror and wondered whether it could be true: were you being watched by that thing in your dreams? Did it really exist? Was it coming for you, for all of you, and what did it want?

You led Gideon up through the crooked trunks of trees and the thick green underbrush, carrying the oar on your shoulder. Jai-Li’s tent appeared in the clearing, beyond the rough thicket. As you and Gideon emerged into it, Theunis sprang up from the forest floor, rattled. He eyed Gideon cautiously, but all Gideon did was bow to him before making his way to the tent.

You rapped twice on the canvas, Jai-Li told you to come in, and you unzipped the tent. You introduced her to Gideon. He assured her he’d do what he could to help, and the two of you stepped out and joined Theunis.

For the two days that followed, the three of you took turns bringing food and water and keeping watch.

One time when Theunis appeared, however, he was accompanied by another person: Angerona. Theunis explained that he’d been halfway up the mountain when he’d seen her behind him. She’d followed him from the commune; there had been nothing he could do.

There were four of you now, more than had initially been intended, but you’d do what you could. And Angerona, it turned out, proved to be far more useful than you had thought she would. She was small and quiet, the perfect member of your group to slip away and return with supplies when necessary.

And all this time, none of you was called up to the white house on the hill. There were no hints that anyone had a clue what you were up to. You were getting away with it. The plan was working.

On the third day, you were finally ready to get Jai-Li and her child off the beach. Gideon had fixed the oar and a long, safe route had been mapped to the cove.

On the morning of her departure, a perfectly dense, white mist had fallen. It was difficult not to see it as a sign—the cloak of a guiding force intending to ensure safe passage. A sign was just what you needed, so you took heart from it, and set off.

You walked down the mountain, one behind the other. Ange-rona led the group, moving nimbly between the small rocks and tricky dips. Gideon and Theunis carried the boat and you had the oars on your shoulder.

The bottom of the slope disappeared into a murky white mist. A nocturnal bird hooted its last for the night. Jai-Li checked on her baby. He was fastened to her back with a towel and sleeping soundly. She peeked over her shoulder at you and slowed the pace of her walking until she was beside you.

She said: Kayle, I need to tell you the rest of my story.

You looked at Theunis behind you and Gideon ahead. Nobody reacted to her words.

Jai-Li’s face appeared older and paler, as if her blood had been drained out overnight. Her eyelids opened and closed slowly. She was exhausted, obviously. But she walked on, putting one foot in front of the other with dogged determination.

Kayle, I need to tell you what happened next.