ACQUISITIONS
The last part was a love story.
This one is a cautionary tale.
The first time Atlas Blakely sees his mother again is hours after the completion of his fellowship. Later he makes a habit of it, going to see her. A ritual performed on perhaps a monthly basis, so long as he never strays too long from the philosophical burden the archives have rendered his. At times, these instances hold little meaning for either of them, as she is incapable of carrying a conversation and he is unsure of his obligations beyond the filial.
Eventually, the visits start to blur.
“His name is Dalton,” Atlas says, “and if I’m right, he can do something extraordinary. If I’m wrong—” He contemplates voicing it aloud. “Well, if I’m wrong, it’s no less extraordinary. It just becomes slightly more dangerous, too.”
His mother says nothing, silently chewing the steamed pudding Atlas is feeding her mindlessly with a silicone spoon, as if she were a toddler.
“Do you remember Clamence? Camus. The Fall?” No response. “He doesn’t save a girl from drowning, remember? So as not to risk himself, and then everything that follows is the fall. ‘Throw yourself into the water, that I might have a second chance to save the two of us’?” Nothing. “Never mind. I suppose that’s an overestimation of myself anyway. Nobody technically called for me to save them.
“Still,” Atlas goes on. “What is magic if not the chance to supersede the laws of nature? The rules of the universe do not have to contain us. Just because it has not yet been imagined doesn’t have to make it less than real.”
“You look the same,” says his mother. (She isn’t talking to Atlas. Later, an older, barely wiser version of Atlas will wish he had shared this part of himself with Parisa, if only because doing so might save her from replicating his flaws, repeating his mistakes. She is the only member of her cohort whose inclusion he cannot defend; she is not marked for elimination, nor, arguably, is she necessary for the enormity of his debt. She is, however, the single member of her cohort who might have even a sliver of a chance at understanding what it is to recognize yourself as nothing more than the symbol of something in someone else’s mind. To realize that you are only the burden of another person’s ghosts.)
Atlas nods, absently, and dabs gently at his mother’s mouth. “The thing is,” he continues to himself, albeit ostensibly to her, “I suppose I can’t help thinking that all of this has to have been for something. Is it really a coincidence for this sort of magical capability to fall into my lap? Or does it mean something that only I can see what could be done with it?” (Atlas will ask himself the same question when Ezra discovers the existence of Nico and Libby; when later, he will have a similarly profitable hunch about Reina.) “It has to have been for something, the pieces falling into place this way. If it’s not, then what was any of this for?”
His mother doesn’t answer, and Atlas sighs.
“I was only trying to do the right thing,” he says, feeling quite sorry for himself in that moment. “I really thought it was the right thing.”
His mother lifts her tired eyes and stares at him. For a moment, it’s nearly lucid, her thoughts a rosy blur of past and present things, and he thinks she might be about to touch his face. Something she hasn’t done in years, perhaps decades.
But then, abruptly, she slaps him. Inadequately warned, Atlas feels his hands slip, and the pudding crashes to the floor. The bowl shatters at his mother’s feet, jagged shards of porcelain haloing the lumps in her thick woolen socks. There’s a hole in the toes. He wonders how long it’s been since she last bathed.
“You made a liar of me,” she says. “What am I supposed to tell Atlas?”
The moment extinguished, her attention drifts elsewhere, to the television in the corner. Atlas rises silently to his feet and thinks a sponge bath will do. He hired a nurse but she’s on holiday. Other arrangements will have to be made, fail-safes of a certain kind. He’d like to go places, travel the world, be surgically extricated from his thoughts. He’d like to tell Ezra that if he ever steps off this path he’ll almost certainly die. But wouldn’t telling Ezra be placing the ethical dilemma in Ezra’s hands? Wouldn’t robbing Ezra of his freedom be its own kind of death sentence?
(“You’re not that French guy from your mum’s book, okay?” Alexis says to Atlas. “You have a tendency to overly mythologize yourself. It’s not your sexiest quality.”
“What’s my sexiest quality?” asks Atlas.
“Your moral turpitude,” she says.)
Atlas fingers the spines on his mother’s broken shelves. One of them is out of place, probably the nurse’s doing. He pauses to trace the golden filigree on the pages of her King James Bible, glancing at the familiar photograph of a young man on the shelf. A man who so uncannily resembles him; like looking in a mirror, almost, including all the youthful capacity for pain.
“Mum,” Atlas says without looking away. “If I do as Dalton asked and seal away the parts of himself he doesn’t want the archives to see, then maybe he’s right. Maybe the archives will give him what he wants, and then someday, with the right medeians, I can use his powers to find a way to save them.” He pauses. “Or maybe I’ll have ignored some very legitimate warnings and destroyed absolutely everything just to save five people’s lives.”
“Trolley problem,” she mumbles, or at least he’s pretty sure she does.
Regardless, Atlas smiles and turns away from the bookcase, leaving the photograph behind. As rituals go, he’ll mark this one down as a victory. He’ll tell Ezra their plan is working, and that his mum is doing fine. He’ll find someone else to keep an eye on her, just in case. And suddenly, he thinks he knows just the person for the job.
“Yes, something like that.” He stops again, contemplating everything. “You’re the one with the philosophy background, Mum. Do you think there’s such a thing as too much power?”
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
Atlas Blakely already knows.