I suspect that most of us would agree that the year 2020 – at least in the Western world – ushered in a dystopian experiment in tyranny that shook society to its very foundation.
Now? Artificial Intelligence is expanding that dystopia to new levels thought unthinkable just a few years ago. I had a choice: I could cower in terror, or I could turn my anger and apprehension into art.
I chose the latter.
Welcome my dear readers, to one of the tales from the pages of ‘Even in Madness …’ https://geni.us/talesofloveanddeath
WARNING: Contains violent, sexual, and disturbing content
They Always Fall for Ruby
by Virginia Wallace
copyright 2023
Prologue
“I don’t know what to do,” said the tall, muscular man as he untied his loincloth.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
the sun forbear to shine
But God, who called me here below,
shall be forever mine …
“It’s okay,” said the young woman, spreading her thighs invitingly as she tried to ignore the singing outside. “I’ll help you.”
Her heart was pounding as her newfound lover dropped to his knees and leaned over her prone, naked body. She smiled at him, running a hand through his long, dark hair as she moved upward to kiss him. His nervousness helped mask her own; focusing on him took her attention away from herself.
This, she thought, is exactly how such affairs ought to go! Loving another more than oneself, focusing on another’s needs and desires before one’s own—such a mindset was the polar opposite of the philosophies that had long ago burned the world to the ground. But even in a pile of ashes there often burns a fiercely stubborn ember …
This coupling was one of those embers. “I’m not sure what to do,” repeated the man ruefully, lowering his body carefully over hers.
“That’s okay,” said the young woman. “Let me help you.”
The man trembled as she guided him slowly towards her feminine ‘holy of holies.’ Don’t think about yourself, she thought. Maybe this will hurt, and maybe it won’t. Just focus on him, and trust him to focus on you.
The young woman hugged her lover tight, pressing her bare breasts against his chest as he slowly—carefully—pierced her. She’d expected this to be a slow process, and her lover was doing his best to make it so.
But in the end, the rending of her flesh happened quite suddenly. She gasped as she hugged her lover even more tightly.
She pulled him closer as, after a while, he began moving faster. This was almost over …
She closed her eyes as he poured his seed—the concentrated essence of all that he was—into her newly opened womb. This, she thought fiercely, is something they can never take away from us! Not now, and not ever.
When it was all over, her lover flopped down at her side. He held her close, laying kisses on her sweaty forehead. The young woman let him hold her for a while, calming down. She was slowly becoming aware of the singing once again.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
coming for to carry me home …
“You have to get dressed,” she said firmly, disentangling herself from her lover. “It’s up to the groom to go out and thank the singers after … well, you know. Don’t forget to throw my tiara to the witnesses; our superstition says that the young lady who catches it will be the next to be married.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I know you will,” said the young woman warmly, patting his bare behind as he rose. “Now, go.”
Chapter One
The twentieth century saw more death, war, and brutality than any other century before it. The twenty-first century turned out even worse.
A plague kicked off ‘the beginning of the end,’ one that swept the world like wildfire. Entire populations were put under quarantine, and businesses—as well as churches—were ordered to shutter their doors. It seemed strange to many that privately owned businesses were made to close while the businesses owned by mega-corporations continued operating with utter impunity.
That en masse house arrests violated the constitutions of most states deterred their power-mad leaders not one iota. From London to Canberra to Sacramento, sadistic despotism became the order of the day.
There were those who pointed out that the ‘plague’ seemed to consist of little more than a mild cold, but such voices were quickly silenced. Doctors saw their licenses stripped away for prescribing anything except the approved ‘treatments’ concocted by the global pharmaceutical corporations.
As if all that were not enough, another plague swept the world only a few years later, killing people by the billions. Some pointed out that the second plague might not have been a real plague at all, but rather the belated fallout from the gene-mutating, blood-clotting treatments prescribed as ‘cures’ to the first plague.
Those voices, too, were silenced.
And as the world population was steadily dying off …
Aliens invaded!
Not the kind of aliens from foreign nations, but the kind from outer space.
Some said that the images on television and social media were computer-generated, and that the mass deaths were the work of murderous, satellite-mounted lasers. The endless power outages led to social chaos; some said that those were caused by ‘electromagnetic pulse weapons’ installed in major cities by their respective governments years before. The ‘alien invasion,’ some claimed, was nothing more than an elaborate hoax whose end goal was to unite all the contentious nations—for the first time—under one global government. Such comments were deemed ‘misinformation,’ and those who spoke them were punished even more harshly than those who questioned the official narrative behind the First Plague.
The ‘invasion’ was ostensibly repelled by a global alliance, and a new world order—the brainchild of the world’s most menacing economic cartel—was put into place. The remnants of the world’s population were herded into ‘sustainable communities,’ and never allowed to leave; personal transport vehicles were outlawed in the name of stopping ‘climate change,’ a ‘looming disaster’ ostensibly caused by toxic ‘carbon emissions.’
Thus, humanity lived in walled compounds like cattle, housed in small apartments that weren’t much larger than closets. Men and women were required to dress alike in drab attire, to ‘set them free’ of the ‘social construct’ of gender. They were also required to take a daily regimen of mysterious drugs, and eat food synthesized from insect protein. Breeding was strictly controlled, and never allowed to happen without the approval of the authorities.
Normally such tyranny would have led to massive rebellion, but the social-media moguls came to the rescue with the perfect piece of technology: the Stasis virtual-reality goggle. Working in tandem with mood-altering drugs, it was the ultimate crowd-control tool; it placated the masses into blind, endless compliance by keeping their senses endlessly—and addictively—over stimulated.
And it was into this dystopian world that a man labeled ‘IZC-5926’ was born.
***
You are ordered to awaken, droned the loudspeaker. You must don your lenses within sixty seconds. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …
Fumbling in the pitch-black room, IZC-5926 fumbled for his goggles. Finding them on their charging station, he held them to his face. Their edges sealed around his eyes, automatically securing them. He was grateful that he was born well past the early days of clunky, heavy goggles; the modern version was lightweight, thin, and required no head strap.
Make sure your lenses are secured. Activating lights in ten, nine, eight, seven …
IZC-5926 smiled as the lights came on. The room in which he’d been sleeping was spacious, but fairly austere. Tapping the side of his lens, he scrolled through several decors before finding one that suited him.
He smiled as the sound of a bubbling aerator filled the air, oxygenating the indoor fishpond in the middle of his room. Carp swam in merry circles, gaily flicking their tails as they chased each other about. Leaning over the edge of the rock wall surrounding the pond, Z eyed his bald, bespectacled reflection.
“Hello, you,” he smiled.
Of all the inhabitants of the compound known as ‘The Owl’s Nest,’ IZC-5926 alone had the letter ‘z’ in his designation; thus, ‘Z’ had become his nickname. He donned his cotton shift, and crossed the wooden bridge over the fishpond as he headed toward the door.
Your room will be automatically sterilized in your absence. Please remember that this room is for your occupation alone. Remember to keep six feet of distance between yourself and others for your safety and theirs.
As he opened his door, Z tapped the side of his lenses to change the appearance of his shift to that of a dapper suit. He stepped into the hallway, smiling at those passing him by.
“Hey, Z!”
“Morning, Z! How’s it hanging?”
“Good to see you, Z!”
Z greeted each of his friends in turn, heading for the kitchen. He tapped his lens as he entered, willing the large common area to appear as a medieval feast hall with a cheerfully burning fire at one end. He approached what was now a large table with an enticing array of food—bacon, eggs, and thick, juicy steaks.
“Steak and eggs, please,” he said. “And orange juice.”
“As you wish,” said the bald, bland-looking woman behind the table. She served up Z’s food with neither word nor smile, and poured his juice.
Z took his tray and sat down, careful to keep the required distance from others as he idly chatted with his fellow diners. Breakfast was delicious, and over far too soon.
It is now time to work. Be at your stations in fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …
Before the time expired, Z was seated comfortably in his chair. His cubicle was in Ward Six, one of sixty-six cubicles. He—like his peers—was tasked with the sacred duty of preventing the next climate shift. Reaching for his keyboard, Z typed in the password to access the global satellite database.
He thought of his work as a calling, and he was the best at it! His job was to constantly monitor the earth, using different types of scanners to seek out heavy pockets of carbon dioxide—Co2—emissions. It was a tricky process, aligning the lasers on the satellites precisely on the ‘problem spot,’ but Z was intimately familiar with the satellites’ programming. A few short commands and zap! The Co2 gas was dispersed.
The world hung by a thread; a global temperature shift of two degrees would bring about ‘climate change,’ destroying the world that the Masters had worked so hard to build. Z smiled at the owl figurine next to his monitor, with its silver pendant around its neck; the pendant was in the shape of a five-pointed star. This was the mascot of the Masters, the wise men who held the world eternally in perfect balance.
Z was grateful to have a role in maintaining that balance.
He worked until the early hours of the evening, and then went to the lounge to play a board game with some of his friends. They sat at a large, round table, seated six feet apart as they tapped their goggles to move their game pieces about.
Lights will go out in fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …
Z went dutifully to his room and waited for the next command: Do not remove your lenses before the lights have gone out. Doing so will lead to corrective reeducation.
Only when the room was pitch-black did Z remove his goggles. He slid them carefully into their docking station so they could recharge, and crawled into bed. He felt a quiet sense of euphoric satisfaction as he drifted off to sleep—the sleep of someone who knows that he has worked hard, and done well.
Chapter Two
You are ordered to awaken, droned the loudspeaker. You must don your lenses within sixty seconds. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …
Z quickly donned his goggles and slipped his shift over his head before the lights came on. He tapped his lenses to change the appearance of his room, and settled on an elegantly decorated, Victorian-style bedchamber.
He sallied forth to face his day, to greet all of his friends traversing the long hallway outside of his chamber. Most wore suits, although some wore casual clothing. All looked about the same; thin, with bald heads and faces. No one was different; no person was out of place.
Careful to maintain a safe distance from others, Z headed for the dining room.
He turned the corner to enter the large chamber …
And that’s when he saw it—saw her. Someone who definitely did NOT belong!
An oddly dressed young woman was facing him. Her clothes were fitted to her curvy form, and she had hair on her head! Long hair, like some kind of animal’s. It hung below her shoulders in straight red tresses. She was also marked with carbon-fouled, sun-tanned skin, like the barbarians tasked with running the outdoor ‘bug farms.’
Z just stared at her, suddenly stricken by a strange sort of curiosity.
The young woman turned and walked swiftly out of the dining room.
Z followed her into the hall. Had he frightened her? He hoped not.
“Hello?” he called.
But she was gone, as though she’d simply vanished. Z ran down the hall, barely maintaining the mandatory six-foot distance as his friends shouted at him to ‘watch it!’ He careened around the next corner, falling against the wall as he gasped for breath.
The young woman was still ahead of him, walking swiftly toward the …
The front door?
Going outside was forbidden. The world was fouled by carbon emissions. It wasn’t safe. Only the barbarians who performed certain necessary outdoor tasks went outside; everyone knew that …
Except, apparently, this woman. She tapped a code into an electronic door panel, ignoring Z’s warning shouts as she stepped into the sunlight. Z ran toward her, hoping against hope that he’d be able to pull her back inside before the door closed behind her. He couldn’t say why he knew the door would close behind her; he just did.
He lunged through the door, trying to ignore the screaming pain in his muscles.
His goggles went black as a bag was thrown over his head, and he felt himself being pulled roughly to the ground.
Cuff him, ordered a male voice.
Leg irons? asked another.
Nah, he’s too weak to run. Looks like he fell for Ruby.
Yeah … They always fall for Ruby.
***
It may have been mere days that IZC-5926 was held in complete isolation, but he would later suspect that it was much, much longer.
He was left alone in a room with brick walls, a wooden floor, and a pile of blankets in the corner. He became deathly ill almost as soon as he was brought in, and stayed that way for what seemed like forever.
Body aches, chills, and vomiting became his daily routine. His puke was always dutifully mopped up by the same bland, silent man who brought him food and drink, water for sponge baths, and buckets in which to relieve himself. He, too, had hair on his head like an animal, and possessed a barbarian’s suntan.
The food made Z deathly ill at first, but in time he got used to it. His physical recovery was marred by some rather odd changes, though. He found himself growing hair on his head, and even on his face! And he repeatedly dreamed about the woman from the dining room. During his waking hours, he wondered why she was so curvy and had such an exaggerated, pronounced chest.
Often when he awakened from such dreams, he was aghast to find that his … penis had grown hard, almost as if it had rigor mortis. Was he dying by degrees? Was his body coming undone, one appendage at a time? The hardness kept him from urinating, so Z grew ever more certain that it was an affliction, some debilitating physical condition.
Once his constant vomiting, nausea, and pain began to subside—about the same time that he noticed the hair on his head and the bulge under his shift—a lingering sense of panic took hold of him. His room consisted of four walls, and nothing else. He couldn’t tap his lenses and change its appearance, for this was all there was to it: four … brick … walls.
Whenever his inability to stimulate his senses overwhelmed him, Z would pound on the walls, screaming in terror. His cries drowned out the crushing sense of claustrophobic ennui that was tearing his mind apart, but such episodes gave him only limited relief. He would eventually collapse in exhaustion, taking solace in fevered, fractured sleep (during which he often dreamed of the young woman). Then he would repeat the whole routine within a few hours.
Only a narrow window high in the wall let the light in, giving him some sense of night and day. Night after night, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute …
Second after stifling second, the man called ‘Z’ found himself slowly going insane.
Chapter Three
“You’ve stopped screaming in your sleep. That’s a good sign.”
Z sat up, blinking. There was a man sitting across the room from him, dressed in a coarse shirt and pantaloons. He had hair on his head, and a long, red beard.
“Who are you?” asked Z.
“I’m the man who had your job long before you did, son. What our village elder once did for me, I have now done for you. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve had that job my whole life,” said Z.
“You’ve had it for about twenty-two years,” said the man flatly. “You started when you were six years old. But you don’t remember anything before then, do you?”
“Before?”
“You only remember living in the compound, with your friends and your job. Nothing else. Am I wrong?”
“What else is there to remember?” asked Z.
“What, indeed?” the man answered cryptically. “They labeled me KLB-5827. I’ve gone by ‘Caleb’ for years now. I’m sorry we didn’t extract you sooner, son, but doing so would have brought your ‘masters’ down on our heads. Simply daring to exist is risky for us, let alone meddling in the affairs of the oligarchs. But my monitoring shows that they’ve stopped following your operation on a daily basis, although I haven’t yet figured out why.”
“Impossible! The Masters care deeply for us all! About our lives, our jobs, and even the very food we eat!”
“Why do you think you’ve been so ill?” asked Caleb. “Your food was heavily processed. They once used pornography and sexual perversion to enslave the masses, but they later decided that creating a sexless society better served their interests. Your food contained chemicals that basically castrated you, but always kept your mood elevated. You look much healthier now; my wife’s cooking usually has that effect. How do you like your beard? Your ‘morning wood’? Those were the … hardest parts for me to process. Pun intended.”
“Lies!”
“Your food was also designed to keep you weak and mentally compliant. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The early survivors of the Great Reduction were held prisoner behind locked doors. They had explosive chips implanted in their heads, and tracking chips in their hands. But you have neither of those, do you? You were a slave to your own need for mental stimulation, and the stability in which to satisfy it. As long as that was provided for you, there was no need for further restraints. The door that you so boldly unlocked was meant to keep us out, not you in.”
“How did the girl get in?” demanded Z. “The barbarian with the red hair?”
“She didn’t,” smiled Caleb. “I told you I had your job once, yes? I projected her image inside. Your curiosity did the rest, my friend.”
“Why is she so … pretty?” asked Z hesitantly. “Why is she shaped the way she is? Is she deformed?”
“That’s how women develop when they aren’t being fed chemicals,” said Caleb. “Normal men actually like that about them! Their bodies are designed to give life, to bear children—and, I suppose, to provide pleasure. I wince to think of my daughter that way, but I suppose it’s natural enough.”
“Babies come from cloning labs,” said Z haughtily. “Everyone knows that!”
“Apparently you’ve never worked on their forced breeding farms,” observed Caleb, completely unruffled. “Only the oligarchs—and the Outsiders—are allowed to reproduce normally, in family groups.”
“‘Family’? Who are the ‘outsiders’?”
“That’d be us, son,” said Caleb, rising. “Those who exist outside the sanctioned order, those lucky enough to have survived ‘the Great Reduction’ without actually joining it. When our communities grow too large, we scatter into smaller groups. It’s important that we stay off the radar, lest we be exterminated.”
“Are you going to let me go back to The Owl’s Nest?” asked Z, trembling.
“I’m afraid not,” said Caleb, looking away. “You let yourself out, but there’s no way for me to get you back in. That’s why we had to trick you into leaving.”
“Do you have my goggles?” asked Z hopefully. “I might be able to connect with the mainframe and open the door.”
“No,” said Caleb flatly. “You could be traced by those goggles! They are nothing more now than a pile of crushed plastic, silicon, and wires buried in the woods.”
“What is to become of me?”
“I have no wish to free slaves only to re-enslave them myself. You may do as you wish, but I assure you that if you strike out on your own, you will perish. You’re still too weak, too accustomed to having your every physical need met by others. But if you like, I can arrange quarters for you at the House of Archives. You can work on my farm, and I will provide you an honest living for honest labor.”
“Labor? Like the barbarians do? What about the carbon emissions? Barbarians die young from being out in them. Everyone knows that!”
“Do they, now?” chuckled Caleb, sounding genuinely amused. He held out his hand. ‘Let me help you.”
“NO!” shouted Z, scooting closer to the wall. “You have to stay away from me! Do you have a mask? You can’t come within six feet of me without a mask!”
“Surrendering one’s identity to their ‘deities,’ standing six feet apart around the circle that is our world,” said Caleb, sounding suddenly grim. “A global Black Mass, the largest ever celebrated. There’s no need for that, son. You were created to commune with others. A handshake, a hug … sex. You will learn, in time, just how much has been taken from you.”
Z just looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Very well,” sighed Caleb, lowering his arm. “Will you follow me, then, if you won’t take my hand?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“It’s either that,” shrugged Caleb, “or these four walls.”
Z rose on shaky legs, still unwilling to stand too close to Caleb. He blinked as the door to his room—so long secured—was unlocked before him. He waited for his rescuer to walk away from the building before following him into the open.
The air smelled strange. It smelled … unfamiliar. Unsafe. Someone else might have described the air as smelling ‘wild,’ but Z had no frame of reference from which to define ‘wild.’ He looked curiously upward, into a celestial ocean of endless blue, dotted here and there with fluffy white clouds. He blinked from the sunlight.
The blue never ended! His environment was no longer controllable, not even a little bit. He struggled to breathe as terror overwhelmed him, as the sky smothered his strangled cries for help. He felt as if he were sucking in the clouds. And the clouds were made of cobwebs and dust, dust that choked the very breath from his lungs.
Z thrashed as Caleb grabbed him, roughly pulling his arms behind his back. He fought with all his strength, terrified of the diseases that he was surely catching from such close contact. But his resistance was all for naught; Caleb was far stronger than he.
Caleb let him go once he was safely back inside, and Z lunged for his blankets and wrapped himself in them. ‘Here’ was controllable. ‘Here’ was safe, without the Giant Blue Thing to overwhelm and terrify him.
‘Here’ was good.
Chapter Four
Days passed.
At least, thought Z, he was no longer so incoherent that he couldn’t keep track of time. He was more bored than afraid now, which struck him as a good thing.
The same nameless man who’d always cared for him continued to bring him his food and toiletries, as if nothing had changed.
Caleb came back on the fourth day. “Feeling better, son?”
“I … I’m sorry for what I did,” said Z, shamefacedly. “That wasn’t very brave of me, was it?”
“They allowed you to know the meaning of ‘brave’?” asked Caleb, suppressing a smile. “I would think that they’d call that ‘counterproductive.’”
“There were stories,” said Z, frowning as he tried to remember, “videos that we could watch, about great heroes. We were allowed to watch them in the common areas before ‘lights out.’”
“So confident are they that they no longer worry about inspiring rebellion. But that’s neither here nor there, my friend, at least not at the moment. Would you care to venture outside again?”
“I’m not sure I can,” moaned Z. “The sky is so big!”
“It’s nighttime now, and overcast,” said Caleb reassuringly. “Our little corner of the world feels insulated. Cozy, even. We’re celebrating the autumn harvest. Please, join us. My wife baked some lovely apple pies, and the other wives contributed treats as well. They would be terribly disappointed if you declined their hospitality.”
Z still shied away from Caleb’s rough-looking, calloused hand, but he followed him outside anyway.
The cool air smelled of wood smoke and dead leaves, two scents that were alien to Z. It took him a moment to figure out if he liked them or not, and then he decided that he did. Yet something about the airborne aromas nevertheless made him nervous.
“That smell,” he asked Caleb, “is it … carbon emissions?”
“Yes,” said Caleb flatly.
“WHAT? Those will kill us!”
“Will they, now?” asked Caleb with an amused smile. “Do you hear that?”
Z cocked his head, listening.
“Music,” he said at last, with a breathless sense of wonder. He’d not heard music since he’d been stripped of his lenses.
“Music, indeed,” smiled Caleb. “Come this way.”
Z followed curiously as Caleb led him between rows of old, decaying buildings. The wood smoke smell was growing stronger now, and there was an odd light in the sky. He followed Caleb around one more corner …
And came face-to-face with a roaring bonfire, in the middle of an open field covered in square hay bales. “FIRE!” shouted Z, turning to run.
“It’s safe!” snapped Caleb, grabbing him by the shoulder. “It’s safe. It’s meant to keep us warm, and give light. It won’t hurt you.”
Z eyed the fire with receding fear and budding fascination. He’d seen fire in stories, of course, and knew what it was, but he’d never actually seen it.
It took him a moment to discover the source of the music. It came not from speakers, but from strange, ancient-looking instruments played by men sitting near the fire.
“Have a seat,” invited Caleb, motioning toward a bale of hay.
Z sat down, adjusting his rear end to avoid being tickled by the rough, scratchy hay. The music played merrily as the adults clapped and the children ran about like wild things, chasing each other through the bales.
At last, one of the men abruptly stopped playing his stringed instrument, and the other musicians followed suit. They looked at each other, whispering for a moment, and then an old gentleman motioned toward the crowd with his stick. Or, at least, Z thought it was a stick; the old man had been using it to rub the strings on his instrument, which rang out in sweet, clear notes.
A hush came over the crowd as a petite, cloaked person emerged from between the bales of hay.
Z sucked in his breath, recognizing the odd figure with its curves and exaggerated chest. This was a woman, but not like the waifish, bald ones from The Owl’s Nest. This was one of the kind that Caleb called ‘natural.’
The woman turned to face the assembly as she slowly lowered her hood.
Z froze as he saw her face.
He was closer to her now than he’d been in his old compound. Her hair was as red as the fire itself, and straight like silk curtains. The freckles across the bridge of her tanned, button nose struck Z more as an adornment than a flaw, as did her sparkling green eyes. He stared at her, utterly fixated.
“That’s my daughter,” he dimly heard Caleb saying. “We call her Ruby. She’s nineteen.”
“Ruby …” breathed Z.
The man with the stick raised it to his instrument, and began playing a sweet melody. The other musicians began playing along; as they did, more young women gathered around the fire and began dancing slowly, almost hypnotically.
Ruby raised her head high, and as Z watched her with utter fascination …
She began to sing.
O, where are you going? To Scarborough fair,
Savory sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Remember me to a lad who lives there,
For once he was a true love of mine.
Z threw a hand to his eyes, wondering why they suddenly felt so strange. He wiped them as he listened to Ruby’s bewitching, dulcimer voice, confused.
Crying. He was crying.
He had seen people cry in the stories, of course, usually when someone died. Crying seemed to be a sign of sadness. So why did he do it now, while he was being swept away by a sudden, uplifting sense of the Sublime?
And tell him to make me a cambric skirt,
Savory sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Without any seam or needlework,
And then he shall be a true love of mine.
Ruby spread her cloaked arms expressively, closing her emerald eyes as she sang. Her eyebrows were prettily chiseled, noticed Z, and her lips had a pretty heart shape even though her mouth was wide open.
And tell him to wash it in yonder dry well,
Savory sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Where no water sprung, nor a drop of rain fell,
And then he shall be a true love of mine
This was a strange song. It was written from the perspective of a girl giving a young man a list of impossible tasks. Why would anyone do that? And what was a ‘true love’?
Ruby took a step back, and the other young women obscured Z’s view as they danced slowly around her. Ruby bowed her head humbly, hiding her pretty face behind her fiery red tresses; the firelight danced eerily off her shining hair as the musicians played through a sweeping interlude. The assembly seemed to be in some kind of trance, for they watched in utter silence and with rapt attention.
It seemed like an otherworldly lifetime before Ruby raised her head again. The dancers spread out a little, giving her room in which to step forward. She took a deep breath, obviously preparing to sing again—and with far more power this time.
O, where are you going? To Scarborough fair,
Savory sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Remember me to a lad who lives there,
For once he was a true love of mine.
Her sweet voice was louder and more intense with this stanza, like sonic waves white-capping across the sea of baled hay. She went silent as she finished for a moment, bowing her head as the instruments began playing in softer tones.
Remember me to a lad who lives there, Ruby sang slowly,
For once … he … was … a … true love of mine.
Z threw both hands to his eyes as the crowd broke into applause, standing one by one as they howled their approval and appreciation. Ruby curtsied prettily to her audience, and then pulled her hood back up over her head.
The other young women fell into line behind her as she walked away from the bonfire. They all sat down together, just outside the glow of firelight.
“Why do they all sit together?” asked Z of Caleb, still wiping his eyes. “They were waiting there when we arrived; I didn’t recognize Ruby then. Why do the young women not mingle?”
“That’s our way,” said Caleb. “We learned long ago that the family is the bedrock of society, and marriage is the bedrock of family. So, we protect marriage by protecting sexual purity prior to marriage. Years ago, we thought that ‘marriage’ meant anything we wanted it to mean—until it finally ceased to mean anything at all.”
“‘Marriage’?”
Caleb gave Z a long, lingering look. His expression was completely inscrutable …
“Exactly,” he said at last.
Chapter Five
The harvest celebration broke the ice for Z. Before he knew it, he was mingling with others as easily as he’d interacted with his friends in The Owl’s Nest. He still tried to keep a safe distance between himself and others, for which many gave him quizzical looks. An old man once asked him why ‘six feet’ of distance was such a magical number, and for the life of him, Z couldn’t give him an answer.
He didn’t understand the notion of ‘worship,’ or why the community ‘church’ met on Sundays. It took quite some time for Caleb to explain to him the notion of ‘God.’ Related concepts such as Heaven, Hell, sin, redemption, prayer, and baptism were utterly beyond Z’s grasp for the time being.
But he dutifully attended worship because Ruby was there. Ruby was always there. And she always sang, and she was beautiful and bewitching and …
Like ‘God,’ the notion of ‘romantic love’ was new to Z. But he was slowly figuring it out.
And so, the man called ‘Z’ spent his winter helping—in his fumbling way—to stack firewood, prepare food, and maintain the carbon-spewing fires for the elderly as his newfound ‘people’ hunkered down to survive the cold winter. Caleb sent Z about to his neighbors whenever his help was needed, but he never once asked him to work in his own home.
This bothered Z, for Ruby was there and he yearned desperately to see more of her. Caleb visited him often—and usually brought him tasty food prepared by his wife—but he never once invited Z to his home.
‘Winter’ was a new concept to Z, and also ‘cold.’ After he’d finished his daily work for whichever family Caleb had sent him to serve, he would spend his evenings alone in the House of Archives. Whenever his work overtired him, he looked forward to sitting next to his meager fire and reading books by its feeble light. ‘Books’ were also strange things to Z, but in the absence of his lenses, well …
He was grateful for the books.
Caleb saw to it that Z had food, clothing, and basic creature comforts. Z was grateful for his provision and worked with a will to earn his keep. It felt strange to work with his hands and his body, and he often came home exhausted.
But he was feeling stronger, too, and beginning to feel the sense of pride that comes with doing a man’s work with neither flinch nor complaint. And it was during this season that he slowly came to grasp what a ‘man’ really was. Not some mewling creature obsessed with comfort and visual stimulation, but a creature of action—a creature upon whom those weaker than himself can rely.
And it was in this manner that Z passed his first season among the Outsiders, the winter of his unwilling-but-appreciated reeducation.
Before he knew it, spring began to blossom.
***
Z stirred in his bed, startled.
“Wake up!” ordered Caleb excitedly, yanking off Z’s blanket. “It’s that day! It’s May Day!”
“What on earth is May Day?” groaned Z, sitting up and turning sideways to hang his hairy legs over the edge of the bed.
“It’s the day we celebrate having survived another winter,” said Caleb cheerfully, pulling Z to his feet. “And looking forward to a fruitful summer! Put on your best shirt and wash your face, my friend. Then come to the meadow south of the town, where we held the harvest celebration. Come! We haven’t a moment to lose.”
With that, Caleb was gone.
Z washed his face and donned his best outfit. His clothes looked rather homespun compared to the finery that his lenses once told him he was wearing, and little did he know they were on par with the shift he’d actually been wearing. But the memories of his former life were growing dim; perhaps he’d soon lose them altogether.
Eyeing himself in the mirror, Z thought for the thousandth time that he still looked strange. His dark hair was long and thick on his head, and he tried to keep it neat as he tied it back with a leather thong. His dark beard was down to the bottom of his rib cage now, just above his stomach. He’d thought about shaving, but mingling with the other men had taught him something: if he cut his beard short—or shaved it off—they would think him less than masculine. Effeminate, even. Now that his body was flooded with natural testosterone instead of artificial, castrating chemicals, well …
It seemed best to leave the beard where it was.
Z walked toward the meadow, watching the Outsiders milling all about. It seemed strange to him that the young women and little girls all wore white dresses, and flowers woven into wreaths upon their heads.
He stopped at the edge of the meadow. In the center was a tall tree trunk, stripped of branches and mounted upright in the dirt. It was wrapped with brightly colored ribbon, from top to bottom.
“Curious?” asked a voice from behind him.
“Caleb,” asked Z, “what is that trunk for?”
“In the old days,” replied Caleb, “it was meant to represent a penis.”
“What?”
“Where does human life come from, once God decides to grant it?” smiled Caleb. “The seed of a man blossoms in the garden that is the woman, and that’s the way of it. But for delicacy’s sake, we simply call it a ‘May Pole.’ The unmarried women and girls will dance around it, making merry under the spring sun. The dancing is meant to represent hope, the looking forward to a fruitful harvest, and to marriage and children. To the ancient pagans, it was a fertility rite; to us, it is a grateful acceptance of God’s gifts—and a looking forward to more of His blessings.”
An old man—the preacher from the church—walked slowly toward the May Pole, and stood beneath its shadow. As if on cue, the young women and girls gathered around him while the men watched from a distance.
The minister opened his Bible, cleared his throat, and read a single passage of Scripture. Just one, single passage: “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.”
Then, he closed his Bible and walked back into the crowd. And that was that.
There were no instruments, not this time. The crowd began clapping, keeping rhythm as the young women and girls broke into song after cheerful song, dancing around the May Pole. They twirled their skirts and flipped their hair, brunettes, blondes, redheads, and black-haired girls all. Sometimes they danced singly and sometimes by twos or threes, holding hands and spinning merrily around the brightly decorated May Pole.
But there was only one young woman—one redhead—for whom Z had eyes. He watched her with a crushing sense of longing, wishing with all of his heart that Ruby was his to hold, to kiss, to …
He shook away such thoughts, although doing so was difficult. He knew now where babies came from. He knew now what ‘husbands’ and ‘wives’ were, and what they did together when they were alone. And he also knew what was expected of a man when he dared to ask permission of her father to wed.
Those expectations terrified him more than a little.
Such thoughts saddened him. Z frowned, overwhelmed by despair beneath the shining springtime sun as the young ladies danced around the not-quite-a-penis May Pole. He allowed his shoulders to sag and his back to stoop …
But he never once took his eyes off Ruby.
Chapter Six
That summer was the most brutal thing that Z had ever experienced.
But then, maybe that’s because he hadn’t actually ‘experienced’ much of anything. He’d never so much as shaken a friend’s hand during his former life. His world consisted of waking up, doing a job, and going to bed. Only his goggles kept him from feeling bored, and he was beginning to suspect that Caleb’s assertion—that his masters put mood elevating drugs into his food—was probably true.
The summer was hot, mercilessly so. Z learned what it was like to work the fields, to sweat beneath the sweltering sun. His job had once been to seek out ‘carbon emissions’ and eliminate them. Now, he was slowly learning that there is more fulfillment in nurturing something than destroying it.
Sweat was new to him. Dirt was new to him. Fatigue was new to him—but then, so was strength. So was self-assurance, and the satisfaction that comes from overcoming one’s own weakness. Z flopped painfully into bed most nights, too exhausted even to dream.
But on rare nights, he would stay up late reading books from the archives. What the printed words said struck him as grim, and extremely fanciful. This was not the history of the world as he’d been taught to believe! But yet there was something about the merciless account that sounded authentic. Genuine …
True.
In the end, of course, it is difficult to monitor the ebb and flow of history whilst also breaking one’s back and sweating nearly to death. Perhaps, Z thought once, that was why so many of the great thinkers in history held slaves: because there is indeed such a thing as being too tired to think! Not that he’d want to be a slave, naturally, and he pitied those who were. But the inverse relationship between mental acuity and fatigue was something he was coming to know all too well.
The summer was passing by with grueling slowness; the next harvest festival still seemed ‘forever’ away. Z had resigned himself to slogging through the hot season with nothing but manual labor and sleep as his companions.
And then, one hot morning, Caleb woke him just before dawn …
***
That afternoon, Z stood before the wall around what had once been his ‘home.’
It seemed strange to revisit this compound after his world changed so drastically, and with such unpredictable suddenness. He almost felt as though the House of Archives had always been his home. His life had become rather quaint, as though Antiquity had slowly resurrected itself. He went to bed every night surrounded by books, each one written and stitched together by hand.
So, learning—as he had this morning—that one of the abandoned, ‘pre-reduction’ buildings had a bank of sophisticated computers in its basement came as a bit of a shock.
That was why Caleb was always so cagey about his affairs. He was not born of the Outsiders; he was like Z. Thus, it fell to him to monitor the doings of the oligarchy, keeping a watchful eye out for threats against his people.
Normally, Caleb asked for no one’s help. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, for most in his circle possessed neither his knowledge nor skills.
But today … Today was different.
Z held up his old goggles, unwilling to don them as of yet. Caleb had lied about having destroyed them; Z wasn’t sure yet how he felt about that. If he put them on, would he be sucked back into the comforting, false reality that had defined his old life? Would the pleasure of being able to control everything he saw slowly edge out everything he’d learned? Everything he’d come to believe?
He’d been offered an incentive to perform today’s task. But did he want it badly enough to do … this?
He would soon find out.
Z walked through the open gate, which squeaked as it moved in the slight breeze; Caleb had also lied about his not being able to get back in. This place had once been a warehouse, he’d learned from the archives. It had a wall around it to protect whatever merchandise had once been stored within. There were dozens of locations like this scattered all over the world, each housing a discreet ‘carbon cleaning’ operation.
He walked toward the sizable building, taking in the sight of the peeling paint and the cracked, wire-reinforced windows. Mental slavery had once kept him chained here like a monkey in a zoo, with never a thought of freeing himself—until her.
They always fall for Ruby.
Z wasn’t the only ‘carbon cleaner’ to have been freed by the Outsiders. Ruby had bravely volunteered to have her likeness digitized into a realistic, three-dimensional entity that could be broadcast into the Stasis goggle. It seemed strange that a young woman to whom he’d never spoken was nevertheless his salvation. She was often within his line of sight, but she’d never approached him—and it would be a breach of manners for him to approach her without the permission of her father. Her words came only to him in song, delivered sweetly at gatherings and in worship.
She was his muse, the innocently alluring phantom that ever haunted his dreams.
And with that one, wistful thought of his redheaded mental paramour, the man called ‘Z’ found his resolve at last. He stepped through the open door of the warehouse, looking around.
There were no rooms, no lobby or foyer. There lay his tattered mattress in the corner, and there was his rusty metal toilet. He walked toward the center of the warehouse, approaching a peeling wooden desk with an old stool in front of it.
He looked down with a sense of utter detachment. The keyboard on the desk was covered in dust. Its wire hung over the side of the desk, attached to absolutely nothing. There was no monitor, no screen; everything was an illusion, a facade created by the goggles that were ever attuned to his senses. The illusion of a ‘workstation’ existed simply to give him a sense of purpose.
He thought he’d been saving the world from ‘climate change,’ benevolently maintaining the planet’s habitability for its happy, content populace.
Caleb had told him the final, devastating truth, and Z knew in his heart that Caleb was right. He’d been taught that ‘carbon emissions’ were an unnatural thing spewed by vehicles and power plants, and that they would poison the earth.
Z held up one of his hands, eyeing it sadly. People are a carbon-based life form, Caleb had told him. You are carbon based. Make carbon an enemy from which humanity needs to be ‘saved’ and you grant yourself control over all life.
As he closed his eyes, Z was not at all surprised to feel tears falling from them. The carbon they want to eliminate, Caleb had said, is everyone that they can’t control. The carbon you directed the satellites to ‘clean’ … was people. Villages full of Outsiders that grew large enough to be seen by satellite—and destroyed by them.
He was a murderer.
He was a murderer on a massive scale, on par with the dictators of the twentieth century. That he killed in innocence made him no less guilty. Isn’t that what drove the great dictators to slaughter so wantonly: the ‘other-ization’ of others? Stripping them of their humanity and thinking of them as mere numbers—or Co2 ‘clouds’ on a screen?
He was a murderer …
And he was here to kill again.
Z walked toward the machine on the west wall of the warehouse, the only thing in the area that wasn’t rusting or decaying. The machine was made of stainless steel, dusty but otherwise pristine. Were he to don his goggles and ask for food, the machine would read his desire. It would then spit out a bland, tasteless bug-protein bar infused with sterilizing and mood-enhancing drugs, which his mind would tell him was delicious cuisine.
The drink dispenser held only water, laced with fluoride to keep him docile.
The water was piped in from an unknown source, but the food was refilled every few years. Z raised his eyes to the giant hopper over the machine, from which his hyper-processed rations had always dropped.
A hopper. They kept his food in a hopper, like an animal’s feeding trough.
The hopper was always refilled from an opening on the building’s exterior … and this by the only human who ever came near IZC-5926. His ‘friends’ were no more real than his tasty breakfast omelets.
It was time for those ‘omelets’ to be replenished …
And to kill the man who replenished them.
It was strange, thought Z, how calm he felt. Killing as an act of self-preservation seemed rather dubious to him, considering that he himself was a murderer.
But killing to protect his home—his people—struck him as righteous. It was odd to feel righteous again. The feeling was familiar, for he’d felt it before as he helped ‘save the earth.’ His righteousness was once based on a lie.
Now, it was real.
Z sat crossed-legged on the concrete floor—still holding his goggles—and waited. He’d fallen for Ruby, and now his path was set; there was no changing it, even if he wanted to.
They always fall for Ruby.
Chapter Seven
The moon was bright tonight, eerily so. It shone through the dirty windows of the old warehouse, creating alleyways of light between invisible high-rises of utter darkness. Z was wearing his goggles now, but felt no need to visually modify the creepy interior of the old warehouse.
When the Outsiders freed Z, Caleb reprogrammed his goggles to continue sending his heartbeat, brain scans, and sleep patterns to … well, wherever they had always been sent. He’d pulled the patterns from Z’s history, and re-played them on repeating loops with just enough variance in the patterns to fool the Artificial Intelligence analyzing the data.
But a little over a week ago, Caleb shut off the data stream.
The small ship heading this way—the one whose flight path showed clearly on Z’s now ‘off the grid’ goggles—could only be coming here for one reason: to ascertain whether he was dead, or simply had a malfunction in his goggles’ ability to broadcast information. Upon finding him alive, they’d change his goggles out while he slept and re-load his poisonous food supply.
Upon finding him dead, one would normally have thought that arrangements would be made for a new ‘carbon cleaning’ attendant. But no, Caleb had intercepted several communications which gave Z a newfound sense of hope: whether its keeper was dead or alive, The Owl’s Nest would soon be allowed to expire. Expanded technology had now given the oligarchs the ability to control the global population with fewer human agents.
Soon, he would be obsolete.
The only ‘x’ factor was the pilot, who could sound the alarm about Z’s escape …
Z smiled grimly, running a hand through his long beard as he watched the dot on the map moving toward the square on the map. As the dot grew closer, he could hear the hum of an aircraft engine outside.
Hunkering down behind the food machine, Z watched grimly as the side door opened. He tapped his goggles, letting it read his thoughts as his words appeared on the lenses and were transmitted immediately to Caleb: His designation is MEB-4835. Override his signal now.
Z watched as his skinny, bald visitor tapped his goggles. The lenses must have ‘hiccupped’ as Caleb overrode their programming with his own; they would now transmit Caleb’s prepared data, no matter what actually happened.
Z tapped the side of his own goggles, thinking so loudly that he could almost hear his own thoughts: Terminate my software now!
His lenses flickered as Caleb initiated the drive-wiping sequence on the lenses’ software. All that remained now was to destroy the hardware.
His visitor turned his head sharply as Z crushed his old goggles beneath his boot. The pilot was standing in a shaft of light, but it was obvious that he was having trouble seeing Z. He tapped the side of his lenses, obviously selecting a ‘night vision’ mode.
Z strode toward him, knowing he was now visible. The pilot was wearing a simple white shift, and he would not be armed; the Masters had long since moved past using armed agents to do their dirty work, since armed agents could also turn upon them. No, the oligarchs now used weapons that came from space, from the sky. And rather than targeting a single person, they simply destroyed everything within the vicinity of the perceived threat.
To kill a single adversary—targeting him, and him alone—is to show respect.
To blow up the region which he inhabits—never once looking him in the face, and killing others with him—is contempt.
Even worse, it is cowardice. But what should one expect from leaders upon whom even Satan would frown? What had the preacher said? ‘Cowards will not inherit the Kingdom.’ If he must destroy all that he had once been, Z at least felt the need to look his adversary in the eye.
The pilot took a trembling step back as Z reached for his face. “Mayday!” he whispered, as if he were too terrified to breathe. “Mayday!”
“They can’t hear you anymore,” said Z mournfully, momentarily revisiting the lovely memory of his own ‘May Day.’
“They … They will come for you!” hissed the pilot as Z pulled his goggles from his face. “You don’t belong here!”
“I did, once,” said Z, carefully tucking the stolen goggles into his pocket. “And you always will. Your ship crashed into the building; the diagnostic data has already been sent and analyzed. You are terribly injured, and almost certainly going to die from your injuries.”
“Why do you SAY these things?”
The pilot’s terrified eyes were a watery shade of gray, like they could never become accustomed to sunlight. There was nothing in his gaze but blind panic, the blank stare of a creature who has never known happiness, sorrow, or love.
It was the stare of an organic computer screen, a machine composed of viscera and arteries rather than a motherboard and circuits. But organic or not, the pilot was still a computer. A machine. The corporeal incarnation of a billion programmed ones and zeros, none of which meant anything in the end.
Every man occasionally looks into the mirror and loathes what he sees. Some even fantasize about reaching into that mirror, and choking everything they hate about themselves to absolute death.
Only when something loathsome dies can it be reborn as something new …
But, thought Z as he wrapped his hands around the pilot’s spindly neck, he himself had done things completely backwards. He’d been reborn before he died, coexisting with his past in an odd sort of limbo.
Now, it was time for his life to come full circle; now, it was time to die—if only by proxy. This is for Caleb, he told himself, and my friends.
He thought for another moment as the pilot gagged and choked, feebly—and ineffectively—thrashing about. His latest thought was powerful, one that he was surprised he’d even dared to think. But he thought it nevertheless: Above all others, Ruby, this is for you.
One cannot kill something that never truly lived, Z realized dully. The thought of any of his friends or neighbors dying was a horror to him; indeed, he’d wept his way through several funerals already. But this?
This was like tossing out a jug of soured milk. He didn’t understand why the Outsiders saved him, but yet condemned the pilot to death. In the end? Their motives made more sense than those of the oligarchs, whether he understood them or not.
Or maybe he did understand them. The village elder had freed Caleb, and Caleb had freed Z. There was a certain symmetry to the triumvirate of liberated ‘carbon cleaners’ …
But the pilot was outside of the line of succession.
He was an anomaly.
As the pilot ceased his breathing, Z lowered him gently to the floor. He felt no sorrow, and no shame; he only felt a sense of relief.
Z reached into his pocket and pulled out his victim’s goggles. He put them on, and covered the pilot’s body with a blanket as he waited for Caleb to attune the goggles to his senses. It would take a moment, for it must be done without betraying the change in biometric input.
You’re good, read Caleb’s message at last. Do it.
Headquarters, thought Z, this is MEB-4835. Do you read me?
We do, read the lenses. What is your status, and what of IZC-5926?
Z smiled grimly, knowing that he was ‘chatting’ with Artificial Intelligence. A self-teaching pattern of annoying ones and zeros in a world polluted by annoying ones and zeros. IZC-5926 is deceased, he thought clearly, watching the words appear on his lenses. I am bleeding profusely, and will lose consciousness soon. May I call for a rescue?
Z held his breath, hoping he’d been wise to count on the callousness of his old masters …
Negative. We lack the assets at the moment. You have served us well, and we thank you for your dedication. The food you were carrying as cargo has painkillers in it, if this comforts you.
Will you be sending someone else to work this outpost? asked Z, praying that Caleb’s intelligence was correct.
We will not, responded the AI model. Terminating all communications in 5 … 4 … 3 ...
Z breathed a sigh of relief as he tapped the lens yet again. It’s over, he thought to Caleb. Give me five minutes, and then do it.
Copy that.
Z crushed the pilot’s goggles under his heel and walked out of the warehouse. Then he walked through the gate in the wall beyond. He kept walking in a straight line, never looking back, knowing that Caleb was forcing major malfunctions in the aircraft docked behind the building.
He didn’t even turn around when the sky grew unnaturally bright, and an explosion rocked the still night air.
It was over.
Why don’t you just blow the aircraft when he arrives? Z had asked Caleb earlier. Program everything yourself, and execute the commands? Why do I have to be there? Why do I have to KILL a man?
Caleb’s answer had initially surprised him, but it didn’t now. Now, he understood. If you want someone to love, then you must prove your ability to protect her. A man who cannot kill when he must is nearly as useless as a man who will not work.
Z shook his head, remembering his shock at Caleb’s next question: I know you can work, Z. But can you kill?
Z walked straight to Caleb’s house. These Outsiders had been wise, he thought, to have settled so close to The Owl’s Nest. Never had it occurred to him to search so close to his own home for ‘carbon emissions.’ He had been their unwitting guardian even if he had killed others.
Z knocked boldly on Caleb’s door, noticing for the first time that his right hand was covered in blood. As the pilot had begun choking to death, he’d also sprung a rather alarming nosebleed.
Caleb opened the door, holding a candle high.
“It is finished,” said Z simply, dully quoting the dying Christ as he held up his bloodied hand.
“I know,” said Caleb, nodding.
“About your promise?”
“I promised you my consent, my friend,” said Caleb, “but there is another whose approval you also require. Please, come in. I’ll make some tea.”
“Thank you,” said Z, crossing his friend’s threshold for the very first time.
“And,” continued Caleb, smiling a little, “I’ll send her mother to wake her up, and to convey your question. Please, have a seat.”
Epilogue
Z stood beneath the summer sun, clad in a simple white shift. He’d resisted wearing it at first, but Caleb had explained to him that to the Outsiders it represented innocence instead of subservience.
Thus, Z had consented to wear it. And he was innocent, he thought nervously. He wasn’t entirely sure as to how to do … well, what he was supposed to do after this. What he so badly wanted to do. Trust Ruby, Caleb had assured him. She knows what she wants from you. She will guide you. Every woman knows her own body, and she knows where to put … you. And do NOT tell my daughter that it was I who gave you this advice! But this is what our elder—my liberator—told me when I married HIS daughter, and he spoke the truth.
Caleb stood beside Z. His beard was braided into a long, red strand that matched Z’s black one. Behind them stood all the women of the village, both young and old.
It was a queer thing, thought Z, that so many cultures had so many differing wedding ceremonies; he’d feverishly studied them in the days that followed the destruction of his old compound. So many different customs, so many varied, oft-repeated rituals …
But in the end, each and every ritual served the same purpose: to bind together a man and a woman, in the eyes of both God and man.
Caleb stood at Z’s side today to offer him to his daughter: Z was a gift from a father to his child. The women stood behind them to make sure that there was no coercion; they were there to bear witness that the young woman accepted her father’s gift of her own accord.
Ruby’s mother stood at the head of the feminine posse, their matriarch du jour. She was black-haired and dark-eyed, which Z found rather strange. Ruby’s appearance, apparently, came mostly from her father’s side of the family.
Z trembled as the door of an abandoned building opened. The building was abandoned because the roof leaked in the winter, but still useful because its brick exterior was a bulwark against the summer swelter during the fair seasons. Its interior was now decorated with rose petals, and there was a cozy bed made up in the one of the rooms …
Z shook his head, willing himself not to think of such things. He would occupy that room soon enough, but that would be ‘then.’
This was ‘now.’
Two people emerged from the building: an old man and a young woman. The young woman held the man by his shaking elbow, graciously allowing him to lead her toward Z and Caleb.
The old man was the village elder, the revered old patriarch who had once served the same role as both Caleb and Z. He was there to oversee the offering of the groom to the bride. Behind him stood many young men; strong men, they were, each one a man of industry and tough moral fiber.
The maidens watched over the groom, and the men watched over the bride. Marriage—and by extension, sex—often mimics war; this reality struck Z as he watched the bridal procession moving slowly toward his immobile entourage. Sex gives life and death takes it, and so both the modesty of the queen and the safety of the king are guarded by those in their respective circles.
The bride’s face was covered; Z could see her face only as a blur through her veil. But apparently the bride could see beyond her veil better than he could see through it, for she walked with sure steps. Above her veil, she wore a tiara of woven flower stems and petals; the flowers stubborn enough to survive the scorching summer heat had now become the crown of a newly coronet-ed queen.
That queen continued her dignified trek forward, until, at last, she stopped before the groom.
The village elder cleared his throat, subtly signaling that someone should speak.
Caleb raised his head and addressed the crowd. “My daughter,” he said clearly, “I offer you this man in my stead, as your provider and protector! I have fed you the bounty of his labor, and given you the cloth stained by the blood from his hands! Do you accept my gift?”
The voice behind the veil was steady, and calm. “I do, Father.”
“Then make your promises, both of you,” said Caleb, taking a step back from Z. “The oaths you take today are between the two of you, and you alone. But know this: this village will hold you to our laws of marriage, whether we have heard your vows or not!”
Everyone took a step back from the bride and groom, leaving Z staring longingly at the veiled young woman. The witnesses all put their fingers into their ears and began humming, signifying that everything said from here on out would be private.
“Well!” giggled the young lady. “Say something!”
Those were the first words she ever spoke to him, words that Z knew he would cherish forever, silly as they were.
“I … I promise to protect you,” said Z awkwardly. “And to work to provide for you, and … and for our children. And I promise to be faithful.”
“You’re allowed to touch me while we talk, you know,” said the bride, holding out her slender hands.
Z took them gratefully. “That’s all I have to say,” he said sincerely. “I hope that’s enough.”
“And I promise to love and support you as you provide for—and protect—our family, and to be faithful as well. Yes, I think that’s more than enough.”
“Thank you.”
“What is your name?” asked the bride.
“What do mean? It’s ‘Z.’ You know this.”
“I mean, your real name.”
Z took a deep breath …
“I was originally designated ‘IZC-5926,’” he said. “It’s not a poetic name, I know.”
“Are you joking? That’s so romantic!”
“What do you mean?”
“If your ‘designation’ is ‘IZC,’” said the bride, “then may I call you ‘Isaac’? I know now that this wedding was meant to be. That name comes from one of the best love stories of all time—my favorite.”
“I don’t understand,” said Z. “I know the name from the Bible, but I don’t understand the importance.”
“Lift my veil,” said the bride. “They’ll announce us as husband and wife—pending consummation, of course—and then I’ll explain.”
Z shook like a leaf as he lifted the bride’s veil …
He stared into Ruby’s emerald eyes, up close for the first time. He scanned her tanned face, dotted here and there with freckles, admiring how pretty her fiery bangs looked over her forehead.
“THEY HAVE AGREED!!!” shouted the ancient elder. “Now we shall sing, as they become one!”
“This is the part I’m afraid of,” moaned Z.
“Hush,” said Ruby, placing a pretty finger over his lips. “Don’t be afraid; I will help you. But do you want to know why I wish to call you ‘Isaac’? Do you want to hear about my favorite romantic story?”
“Yes …”
“My name isn’t ‘Ruby,’” said the bride, leaning in to whisper in Z’s ear. “That’s just a nickname they gave me when I was little, because of my hair. Do you want to know my real name?”
“Yes,” croaked Z, breathing in the aroma of Ruby’s scented tresses.
“It’s ‘Rebekah.’ And that is how I know we were meant to be together, for it was foretold in Scripture.”
“Foretold? How?”
Ruby stepped away, and squeezed Z’s trembling hand.
“Rebekah?” prodded Z, although the new name felt awkward on his lips. “Tell me! Which passage are you talking about?”
Ruby smiled impishly, and leaned toward Z’s ear once more.
“Isaac’s story is not unlike yours,” she whispered. “The Biblical Isaac was mourning the death of his mother, just like you had to mourn your old life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This is how Isaac and Rebekah’s story comes full circle,” whispered Ruby. “Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. Your old life is gone; your ‘mother’ is dead. Let me comfort you. Please, let me comfort you.”
“Thank you,” murmured Z gratefully.
He smiled as he half-led and half-followed his soon-to-be-crowned wife toward their bridal suite. As the witnesses began singing hymns behind them, he fondly remembered the casual comment that now seemed oh-SO-prophetic: Looks like he fell for Ruby.
Isaac gave Rebekah an awkward, heartfelt kiss on her cheek as they continued walking.
Yeah … they always fall for Ruby.
The End
