Lovers of Babel (22 page)

But maybe she had it right the whole time. Maybe it was
Chad and I who were the idiot vigilantes living off the thrill of the chase. Mia just wanted to be normal and fit in with the rest of the law-abiding citizens of the Equinox. The truth is Chad and I weren’t being rebellious just for the sake of it. There were too many things that were difficult for us to understand about the statutes of our society.

Our doubtfulness
started one day when Chad came to visit me at my house in the city. It was during summer break and we were home from school. We sat in my room for hours reading through the handful of books I managed to collect throughout the years – mostly from my grandfather who kept a stash hidden for rainy days. It was forbidden to take books from the libraries in Power School.

One of the books we read that night was on the history of the world. We read about the Greeks and Romans and Conquistadors of ancient times. We even read about Egyptian civilizations. The one thing we came to realize i
n our readings was that all those civilizations had something in common and that was the desire to become more powerful and the willingness to stop at nothing to do so. We couldn’t imagine our civilization in ruins just for the sake of greed. Then again, every civilization before us ruined in the exact same way. What made us different was our way of life. After centuries of living like savages, pulling each other down on the way to the top, we had designed a way where everyone could have a piece of happiness with no one left behind. In our world no one starved and everyone was treated equal. Everyone, except for one man, my father.

If this system that my father fine-tuned was so fair then why was he the only one who was immune to punishment? Why was he the only one without a chip? I’ve seen people get chipped and in all of its barbarity
, it is still praised as being the biggest advancement in currency exchange since the dollar. If this society is so fair then why is it that all of its inhabitants must be cut open like cadavers to be considered citizens?

These are the questions that
Chad and I discussed that night. It sent a chill down my spine to question my father’s intentions and to suspect him of being anything other than a loyal leader, but things were starting to look less innocent in our eyes. We wanted to go on this journey to find the Book of Wisdom, because we were looking for the truth. The Book of Wisdom was one piece of the puzzle that we were looking for.

After our meeting in the annex
, we went into our separate rooms to sleep.

I
lay in bed that night looking up at the constellations hex hovering above my bed wondering if we were all being deceived. Why weren’t we being taught about our history in school? Why all this emphasis on powers? There wasn’t a clear meaning to our existence other than to serve the system and to die quietly so as not to disrupt the flow.

My eyes grew heavy with the silence of a sleeping world.

The next day was the weekend, school was out and my parents went on a getaway to Jetson Skytower Resort.  My mom had been begging my father to take her for months.

Mia was with her family on a camping trip, so all I had was
Chad to hang out with for the weekend. Not that I was disappointed or anything. I mean, Chad was my best friend. He was the only one who didn’t judge me because I was the king’s daughter. While everyone else was calling me ‘Princess Sage’, Chad was making fun of my freckles. He treated me like I was a person. I admired him for his bravery and enjoyed his company more than anybody. With Chad I could be myself. I wasn’t trying to fit in with the image that society projected upon me, because of my status. When I was around him, I was just a 16-year-old brown girl who was curious about the world.

As soon as I opened the door to my house
, Chad was standing there with the Portal of Antiquity in his hand.

“What’s that?”

“We’re going to use this today. It’s the only chance we have to see who stole the Book of Wisdom. Everyone’s away this weekend. We can use this, find out who took the book and create a game plan for how to get it back.”

“Come in. Did you eat lunch?” I asked.

“Yeah, I had a tofu burger earlier.”

“Well
, I’m going to make a sandwich.”

“Okay
, while you do that let me tell you how this thing works,” Chad said while he sat down on our red sofa. He propped his arm around the back of it and leaned toward the kitchen where I was smearing a generous amount of mayonnaise on my turkey sandwich.

“Go for it.”

“Okay. The portal works in a similar way to teleporting. In order to travel where you need to go in the past you have to know exactly where you’re going. You must envision it in your mind.”

“Okay
, so seeing is believing. Got it.”

“No
believing
is seeing. Believe first, then it will take us where we want to go.”

“I guess that makes
sense,” I said as I bit into my sandwich. I walked over to the couch and sat next to Chad.

“So what happens when the portal takes us to the past? Will we just be observing the situation or will it put us inside the scene and drop us off?” I ask.

Chad pushed back his blond hair that was starting to fall in front of his eyes.

“I don’t know. I’ve never used it before, and the only other person I know who has used it is dead. I do remember your dad saying something to me about being careful when I use it.
Something about discovering the future before getting stuck in the past.”

“And you didn’t ask him what he meant by that?”

“No, I was too nervous to say anything, but ‘yes, your majesty’.”

I shook my head.

“I wonder why he hasn’t used the portal himself. You’d think that if he was so intent on finding that book he would’ve used the portal a long time ago,” I said.

“Maybe it has to do with the ‘getting stuck in the past’ thing.”

There was a long pause.

“What if the portal does drop us off in the past? How would we ever get back to the present?”
Chad asked.

“Maybe you could teleport.”

“Teleporting can only take you to different places, not different times.”

“Well
, is it worth risking it? I mean, I’m seriously all out of ideas.”

Chad
inspected the wooden portal. There were strange carvings on it that looked to be ancient symbols.

             
“Maybe this thing can do more than just go back in time. Maybe it can go forward too.”

             
“Well, let’s hope so. Getting stuck in the past would ruin my day,” I said.

             
Chad gave me a smirk.

             
“Hey, it might not be that bad. At least we’ll be stuck there together.”

             
I looked away from his gaze.

             
“Spending years trying to catch up to the present sounds grueling. Even if we are together.”

             
There was an awkward pause.

Chad
dropped his head and was picking at his fingernails. He always picked at his fingernails when he was upset about something.

“So, uh, do you want to go to Mammoth Forest? We could go swimming in the aurora lake,” I said trying to lighten the mood.

“Let’s just prepare to use this thing while we still can. Time may not be on our side.”

I sensed a little frustration in his voice.

“Haha! Literally! That’s hilarious! Time may
literally
not be on our side. Man, Chad you are a funny guy.”

He sensed my mood-
lightning strategy.

“I don’t think you know the meaning of the word
literally.
”

He wasn’t helping.

“Whatever. I just thought it was kind of ironic that’s all.”

There was a long silence that was too uncomfortable to bear.

“So what are we looking for again?”

“We’re going to the night that the Book of Wisdom was stolen from the Power Society Library. According to your father, no one saw who took it. We need to look for any suspicious  character that is inside the library. At the time of the theft the library was closed and locked from the outside. No one should’ve been able to break in, but they did.” 

“And once we find the culprit should we try and catch him?”

“I doubt we can rewrite history, Sage. If the thief got away then we can’t do anything about that. What we’ll need to do is follow him to the place he took the book. Once we make it back from the past, we’ll know where to go to find it.”

“What if we get seen?”

“Try not to. If the portal drops us off in the past maintain a low profile. We might even have to disguise ourselves. Hopefully the portal works like a crystal ball and all we’ll have to do is watch where the thief goes,” Chad said.

“That would be ideal, but just in case it doesn’t work like that I’ll need to change.”

I went off to my room to change into clothes that were less conspicuous.

I emerge
d wearing all black with my hair wrapped in a black scarf.

“What on earth are you wearing?”

“I blend in with the darkness with this on. I figured no one would suspect me.”

“
You look like a ninja.”

“
A ninja can never be seen, Chad. And you should change your clothes too. Those blue jeans are your trademark,” I said.

“It’ll be fine. We need to get going anyway.”

We moved to the center of the living room and held out the portal in between the two of us.

“
Remember, think hard about where we’re going: The Power Society Library.”

I closed my eyes and imagined. The society library was vast with high ceilings. It was meant only for the society members, but occasionally a teacher would allow their class to use it. I had been there once and was astonished by the architecture. There
were pillars framing every doorway that looked like pillars from ancient Greece. There were murals on the walls of old people in togas. I heard they were painted to replicate famous art from the old world.

In seconds
, we would be there and so would the thief.

The portal began to shake as we held it with both hands. Suddenly the
little wooden door flapped open and a bright light shot out from within it that went through the roof of my house. I wondered if the neighbors would notice.

Suddenly the ceiling s
eemed to open exposing the sky. The beam of light got stronger and stronger until the living room was filled with a white light, and we were blinded.

Then it felt like my body was being pulled up fast towards the opening in the ceiling. Once we made it
above my house everything went black for a split second and then we were standing inside the Power Society Library.

“Crap, it dropped us off,”
Chad said.

“Do you still have the portal?”

“Yes it’s here. Let’s whisper just in case the thief is here.”

It was
dark.  So dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

“I can’t see a thing.
How are we going to find the thief if we can’t see?” Chad asked.

I thought for a second and then had an idea.

“I can do a light hex. I learned this last year in Mr. Clerick’s class.”

I raised my hand in front of me and pointed my index finger to the ceiling.

Suddenly, a dim light appeared on the tip of it. I closed my eyes and the light grew brighter and brighter until I could see a few feet in front of me.

“That’s awesome Sage! You look like that alien from the old age that
the naturals are always talking about; E.P., or is it E.D….something with an ‘E’. Anyway his finger would light up like yours. It’s funny how history repeats itself.”

“I’m sure that was a fictitious character,
Chad.  Aliens never existed.”

“And what makes you so sure of that? This thief could be an alien for all we know!”
Chad said.

“
Ssh! Be quiet!”

I looked around us and we were in between two tall bookshelves in some corner of the library.

“We’ve got to figure out where the Book of Wisdom is,” I whispered.

“I think they put it in a glass case in the front entrance of the library.”

“Let’s go.”

We crept through shelf after shelf and finally just about ten feet ahead of us was a sort of podium that emitted a blue light from the top. The Book of Wisdom would be underneath the glass of that podium.

“What should we do now? The thief hasn’t even shown up yet. We could just take the book now and get out of here,” I said.

“No, we need to wait. If there’s anything I’ve learned about time travel it’s that you never under any circumstances interrupt a course of events that have already transpired. It’ll destroy the world.”