Lovers of Babel (16 page)

I never saw
the sun in person. I read about it in books and have seen pictures of it, but the sun drifted away from us after the apocalypse. Some even think it was destroyed and the only reason why we weren’t frozen was because of the proximity of the other planets and stars. I tend to think that the sun is still here, but that it moved away to some better place. Somewhere we aren’t allowed to go.

I use
d the hair-tie on my wrist to pull my hair up into a frizzy ponytail that looked like a gigantic ball of fuzz.  My freckles and curly hair gave my fellow classmates a reason to make fun of me. I couldn’t have cared less.

“Sage, are you really going to try to create the sun? You know what the law says about that. Do you honestly think
we won’t get caught? Do you
realize
how bright the sun is!?” Mia nagged.

“Yes
, I know, Mia. Don’t worry, I’ll be quick,” I said.

Mia crossed her arms in disapproval.

I stood with my arms to my side and palms out to take in as much energy as possible. I closed my eyes and imagined the fiery sun ablaze. Suddenly, a small ball of fire appeared floating before me. My friends gasped at the sight.

“She’s really doing it,”
Chad said under his breath.

I continued to concentrate on that ball of fire and it began to grow bigger and brighter. It got to be so bright that I had to
squint my eyes just to see it. It grew to the size of a basketball then suddenly the light went out and it fell to the ground.

“Crap! I almost had it!”

“It was probably meant to happen that way anyway,” Mia said flipping her black hair.

“Wait,”
Chad said. “I have something that might inspire you.”

He reached into the hip pocket of his denim jeans that I created for him as a birthday gift.
Chad was always interested in old fashion trends. He despised the boring pastel colors and nanotech fabric used to create our clothes, which ended up leaving little room for individuality.

Chad
pulled out a small wooden box from his pocket.

“That’s the Portal of Antiquity!” I said in shock.

“A couple of years after I won the Tourney, your father gave it to me. I’ve never used it though…until now,” Chad smiled at us.

“Let’s use t
his to see the sun. And I mean the
real
sun.”

“I thought you could only use the Portal of Antiquity when you absolutely needed it. Right now we’re fooling around. I doubt the portal will even open,” Mia said.

“Whenever you want to look into the past the portal will open. There’s got to be a reason to look into the past. Can either of you think of something you’ve been needing to see?” I asked.

There was a long pause.

“I have something,” Chad said while he put his hands in his pockets.

“What is it?”

Chad began to pace around in a circle. We could tell something was bothering him.

“There’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you guys. It’s so strange and I don’t even know what to make of it.” He stopped pacing and looked at us.

“Remember that year I won the Tourney? I was, what, thirteen?”

“Yes
, that was our first time watching the Tourney,” Mia answered.

“And remember when I finally found the Portal of Antiquity
, after going through hell, they announce that I would be presented with the portal by your father?”

“You
never told us how that went,” Mia said curiously.

“
A few months ago I was in my quarters taking a nap after trekking with the guys and suddenly Nirva, my teleporting teacher, appeared in my room. She told me that Mr. Riley wanted to meet with me immediately and she would bring me to him.”

Mia and I sat down for the rest of the story.

“She brought me to the headmaster’s suite and it was a lot dustier than I imagined. Anyway, your father told me that the power society members are always scouting for potential ‘champions of the cause’. I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that, but he told me that my performance in the Tourney was so impressive that he wanted to offer me an opportunity to help him.”

“To help him with what?”
I asked impatiently.

“With finding a book,”
Chad answered scantly.

“Do I need to ask what book?” I scoffed.

“Yes, you do.”

“WHAT BOOK
?!”

Chad
was very amused by my impatience.

I wanted to
wring his neck.

“It’s an ancient text called, The Book of Wisdom. It was stolen from the Power Society Library years ago. Your father has been trying to find it ever since.”

I remembered as a child my father being obsessed about a book that had been stolen. It seemed like he spent the majority of my pre-adolescence looking for it. I couldn’t understand why, after all those years, he hadn’t found it yet.

I looked down at the fluorescent blades of grass in between my fingers
in silent thought.  

“So he asks you, a scrawny junior, to go find it for him?” Mia asked.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at how true that was. Sure, Chad won the Tourney against George, the fifteen-year-old barbarian, but to us he was still Chad, the stringy-haired blonde nerd whose fashion sense was stuck in the 1900s.

“Hey! He said I was a warrior! I fought hard to find that portal.”

“Okay, okay you did. You won fair and square. Happy now?”

He folded his arms
with a pout.

“So what does he want you to do specifically?”
I asked.

“That book could be anywhere on earth so he wants me to use the portal to pinpoint the moment it was stolen and to find out where it was taken. Once I find this information, he wants me to bring
one person with me on my journey to find the Book of Wisdom and bring it back to him.”

We all sat there meditating on his last words. My father was a very mysterious man. He became leader of the new world at an early age and spent years building up Equinox into the developed society it is today. In his years of reign he had managed to create a new system of government where he was
the chief and under him the Authorities who were in charge of policing the citizens. He created an economic structure where everyone worked for the advancement of the system and all jobs were created for that purpose. He even developed a currency of credits that were stored inside a chip that was implanted into the eye of every citizen of the Equinox. That way, he could keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. In order to enter a public building everyone’s eye had to be scanned. This was the way my father wanted the new world to be. He then spent a lot of his time managing the Power Schools in order to insure that the next generation of superior humans would use their powers the way he mandated. This was the perfect society, according to my father. To me, it was a prison.

“So did you accept his offer?” I asked.

“I did. Of course I did. How would anybody say ‘no’ to Mr. Riley? I didn’t even hesitate.”

“So who are you going to bring with you?” Mia asked.

“Well I know
you
would never go. Heck, you won’t even take a dump without asking your mom first,” Chad said trying to hold back laughter.

Mia’s face turned bright red.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“Ha! No way. Your father would
never
let you go with me.”

“What makes you think he’ll care?” I ask.

“Because you’re his daughter and you must stay in perfect condition to rule once he steps down as leader.”

“I don’t want to take his place, ever. Besides, I’m one of the best creators in s
chool. I could really help you.”

“How on earth are you going to be able to leave without anyone finding out? I know we’ve done a lot of sneaking around before, but
this
will be next to impossible.”

That’s when I look at Mia.

She sat there for a moment confused. Then her face turned serious.

“Oh no!
No, no, no, no, no! Absolutely not! Are you crazy!? No!” Mia got up from her seat on the forest floor and began to walk away. I ran to catch her.

“C’mon,
Mia, it’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

“That was for fun. We were fooling around.
This
would get me sent to prison! Do you want me to go to prison!?”

“E
ven if my father finds out, he won’t do anything to you because he’ll need you to tell him where I am. Please, just once in your life take a risk. Please Mia.”

She paused for a while and surveyed the night sky that was dotted with the constellations. 

“If I do this for you guys, what’s in it for me?” Mia asked.

Chad
walked over to her and put both of his hands on her shoulders.

“
You’ll get to be the daughter of Amias Riley.”

             
My father’s proposition to Chad made me wonder why he was in such frenzy over a book. I knew my father was always interested in the ways of the old world, but I never knew that he owned a piece of it. What was so important about that book that would cause someone to steal it? Stealing in itself hardly ever happened in Power School. Everyone in school was already deemed more privileged than the rest of society. It was a privilege to be a part of that school and all students had access to the best supplies credits could buy. For someone to steal something belonging to the Power Society – and a measly book for that matter – was extremely suspicious. And what was more suspicious was the fact that my father had yet to find the culprit.

             
One night when my parents were out, I decided to do some snooping in my father’s office to find more information about the Book of Wisdom. My father was a minimalist when it came to decorating. His philosophy was the least decorations as possible, the better. His office was no different. There was only a large wooden desk with a matching chair and a bookshelf that circled the entire room. There wasn’t even a chair for someone else to sit just in case he had a visitor. The only redeeming quality of that dull room was the huge jutting window behind my father’s desk that took up the majority of the wall. The window jutted out from the house allowing a person to step inside giving them the allusion of walking on air. My father once told me that he liked looking out his window because it made him feel like a real king.

             
I started looking in his desk for anything relating to the mysterious book. Then I came across a leather bound journal tucked away in the back of his desk drawer. The journal was fairly thick and had a lock on the front. I began to inspect the office for a key. There was no sign of one in his desk; only documents and scraps of paper. I looked inside the bookshelves and found nothing. I started opening certain books that I thought he would hide a key; nothing. Then, I looked up toward the top of the bookshelves. I grabbed his desk chair, pulled it toward the shelves and climbed on top of it. I reached my hand over the top of the shelf and felt for a key to my father’s journal. I continued this process for each section of the bookshelf until I had circled almost all around the room. Finally, near the far left corner of his office, there it was. I picked up the small golden key and inspected it.

             
One turn to the right and my father’s journal was open. A part of me wondered how I could’ve done this so easily. I thought my father was better at hiding things; then again, no one would have a reason to search for Mr. Riley’s personal journal. Nobody, but me.

             
I opened it to the first page. The paper was yellow and appeared to be a bit aged. My father hadn’t written in that thing for years. I began to read about his journey to find what he called, “the ancient storybook,” but what is known as the Book of Wisdom.

Chapter 3: Amias Riley’s Journal and the Book of Wisdom

              March 16, 2134.
Underground Washington.
– I know the human mind better than any of my colleagues. My experiments are too successful for my name to be dumped in a pile with other neuroscientists. I spend days at a time studying the works and theories of psychologists and neurologists of the old age, but I’ve come to a point where I need to push my strengths further.

My sudden desire to push the boundaries of my knowledge didn’t happen without cause. Today, I
came across a poster on a kiosk in a park. The poster was black with bold white letters that asked: WHERE IS THE BOOK OF WISDOM? I didn’t know the meaning of this. What is this Book of Wisdom? After the apocalypse, many books were destroyed and burned in the fire. The Underground had only a few thousand books, most of which were charred in the flames from the apocalypse. My father was able to salvage a few literary works from the old world.
Moby Dick
,
Brave New World
,
The Tempest
,
and
Gulliver’s Travels
were among the few he was able to save. I remember my father telling me he read
The Catcher and the Rye
so much as a kid that he could quote it word for word. But the Book of Wisdom was one he never spoke of. I was so interested in knowing more about this book because of the title.
The Book of Wisdom
. How could a simple book spout such arrogance within its title? I had never come across a book that I wanted to read so badly by just knowing the title and nothing more.