THERE ARE A few more rooms. There is more art, and more artifacts that look like they could have many functions, none of which are fathomable from looking at them. But the message is clear enough. This is human development. I see more stylized representations of human forms. This place is showing me our tendency to evolve and discover and create.
I don’t know if these have been collected from different planets or if they’re just theoretical or just a story being told in a universal language. But I’m left with the feeling that whoever put them here expected people to come from places other than Earth. I think of the seed again, the real one, and how the thought of it being one of many sent to bring the right person here seems more likely.
It makes me pause. Suh was the one it called here. Not me. Should I progress even though I’m not much more than a stowaway in this scheme?
The light and the path fade. My concentration has drifted and the doubts are creeping in.
“It’s not for me to decide,” I say. “If I’m able to progress, I will.”
The path is restored with my resolve. I have faith, not in God but in this city and the fail-safes put into place here. Suh hacked this system even though she was the one called here. She said she understood when we were in that topmost room, but I’m not sure she could have. This city is changing me, preparing me in ways I don’t understand. I can’t see how she could have changed enough without contact.
I’m climbing all the time now and feeling lighter than I have in so long. I think back to my house, to the things I stuffed between its walls and how much energy I wasted keeping it all hidden. It seems so strange to me now, so long ago. I was a different person then. Who I am now . . . I can’t tell.
Through another valve and I’m in a narrow tunnel. Is this the last one? The one we all squeezed through exhausted and despairing?
The room is unchanged. I look at the place Suh died and can almost see her there in front of me. Mack and Winston, Lois and Hak-Kun, all dead now. Only I remain, the one least likely to survive.
There is no path marked on the floor to guide me. It’s of no concern to me as I want to pause here and see if the markings mean anything to me now.
I walk along the walls, not caring if they are lit or if I can see myself anymore. I let myself trace the shapes and the colors, sometimes trying to find meaning, sometimes stepping back and waiting. Neither yields results.
Thinking of Suh before she went through the wall, I stand in the same place and try to read the symbols the way she did, moving from the bottom to the top at speed.
They are still unfathomable.
She said that she knew what it all means. Was she even telling the truth? Or is my poor, normal brain simply incapable of interpreting all of this without the seed’s influence?
But I got here. I passed the city’s tests. I turn and look at the central wall. There is a sense of someone waiting. Is it me or someone else?
“If you think I’m ready, I’m here,” I say to it. Then I shake my head. “I know I’m ready.”
The wall fades and I walk through.
• • •
I have no expectations. I feel empty but not hollow. As I cross through the translucent wall I become aware of my body again. I feel blisters on my feet and tongue, the pain in my shoulder and a gnawing hunger. My head is aching, and my clothes are uncomfortably damp and have chafed my skin in places.
It’s the most human I’ve felt since I left the first tunnel.
At first I think the room is open to the sky, but then I see a slight distortion in the air suggesting a barrier of some kind. It’s a full circle, rather than the other half of the pod, and even though I don’t understand it, I don’t try to work it out. It’s not important.
There is nothing else in the room except a slab of stone and on it lies a body. Not obviously male or female but most definitely human. The limbs are long and delicate, the hair gray and hanging down to the floor in soft curls, the jawline square but not heavy. The skin is painted with symbols and artwork I recognize from the rooms below and the one on the other side of the wall that’s now solid behind me. Blues and greens and golds and black.
The chest isn’t moving.
“Are you the one who made all this?” I ask but there’s no response.
Did Suh think this was God?
The floor is pale gray and bright in the morning sunshine. Through the haze of the barrier I see Diamond Peak and the clouds scudding across the flawless sky. I look down at my hands and see liver spots and wrinkles and strength and potential.
That person isn’t God.
This isn’t the last room.
I don’t know why I think that—no—why I know that.
I go to the slab and kneel beside it. There’s a decorative edge carved into the stone so delicate that it’s easy to miss. In the center of the length I’m looking at there’s a tiny spike of stone. I press my forefinger against it without thinking and watch as a bead of blood rolls down it to collect at a groove around its base. I suck at the little wound as the blood thins and begins to run along the carved grooves as if the slab were on a slope.
Soon it’s as thin as cotton threads and they reveal something I can understand. First an image of Diamond Peak. Then something that looks like lots of people. Then only one figure, alone, throwing something depicted as tiny dots upward.
I crawl around the edge, following the pictures as they’re revealed, interpreting a story that is so simple anyone could understand it. After the others left, the lone figure sent the seeds out into the stars and then a long time passed. The sender created the city and then people came from lots of different places to enter it, all much smaller than the sender. A segment shows the tiny people inside stylized tunnels and pods, each one showing the person getting bigger until there’s one of the topmost pod with a symbol that has to be the sun above it. The sender is above the city now and the little people who have grown during their passage through the city are reaching up. The next shows this room, seen from above, the visitor lying on it and then—
The body on the slab begins to crumble as if it has been formed from powder all along. The dust left behind is repelled by the material the slab is made from and slips off to plume in the air briefly, leaving it pristine.
I haven’t decorated my body. My clothes are filthy. It doesn’t matter. I lie down on the slab.
It feels soft beneath me, like I’m lying on a cushion of air. I feel all the tightness in my muscles flow out of me. I look up at the sky and I know that I’m ready and that it’s time to go. I’ve worn this body long enough.
And as I lie there I think of those I’ve loved and those I’ve hurt. Sometimes they were one and the same. I think of the ones who have hurt me and see them as I see myself. We were all just little broken things, trying so hard to protect ourselves when all we were doing was keeping ourselves blind and alone.
There is something beautiful happening above and below me. My body is between and will be left behind when I go on. I know that soon I’ll be with the one who built the city to prepare those who make it this far, so they too can reach that higher place.
And in time another will come and will trust the city and will find my body. And if they are ready, they’ll know what to do.