The GOD Box (9 page)

Gabe let the next little book hang in his fingertips over his leg as he started asking questions
, “So what started your search for us?”

Dane answered, “I don’t see the harm in sharing this.
My friend Darian and I were part of a convoy… sort of a… bodyguard… for a certain politician.”

A bodyguard?
Gabe wondered. That seemed to contradict the whole great peace story they were hoping for.

Dane continued, “
I ended up wandering a little that evening, mingling here and there, met May, etc. Darian and I were walking and talking one night about the politicians we’d seen and talking about the philosophies. We probably went a good two miles outside of town, and in the middle of a jungle we stepped on something very tough and unnatural. It was over-grown, but was very distinctly different. There were millions of little black pebbles, many of which were glistening in the moonlight. We followed that another good distance, but didn’t see an end and decided to turn around. Obviously we had no brilliant, nor haunting ideas then what it was – after all it wasn’t a box we put to our ear and talk into…”

T
hey all smiled and so did Gabe, surprisingly, because he had a million thoughts in his head, some more profane than others. His question and answer happened all at once. Question: How did they go far enough to find a road? Answer: last time, they didn’t have time to structure a plan and a place. A group of people were travelling when they started over and this must be where they travelled to. They had to start over right where they were, and didn’t have time to think or map out where anything was.
Ah, crap
.

“Turns out, when I talked to May the next day, she knew what I
was talking about. We wanted to know what it was, but didn’t feel a rush. I decided to stick around in the town as the party moved on back home. I’d taken schooling at home for years and wanted to learn and study from a new perspective. It seemed like May and I had considered every idea that had been available to us and one day decided to follow the road to see where it went, so we packed a few things and left.”

How did they know it was called a road? Nevermind. What other word
did they use in the twenty-second century? Path? Trail? Nope. The word road made complete sense.

“How long ago was this?”

“About two years” May said.

“And how did everyone else get involved?”

“Eventually we needed to seek civilization so we headed toward the city and made stops in other little towns along the way. We would work for money and room for a few months at a time, so we got to know people and some joined us for various reasons.” May clarified.

“In all that time, you’ve only had these two books?”
Gabe was the one skeptical of all
their
theories, now.

Miek scoffed, or “coughed” intentionally. “Yeah, right.” He said.

“We trade them in towns. We can’t carry a hundred books.” Dane interjected frankly.

Samson looked at Gabe
like he was utterly dense.

“So why not change the world, run in politics yourself?”
Gabe asked.

“Half our philosophy goes against that.” Dane said.

“Samson’s thought about it.” Miek said blandly, “Right Samson?”

There was obviously some joke Gabe didn’t get. Or maybe they just all didn’t want
it that obstinately that even Samson thought it was funny.

Samson retorted, but in the strangest way possible. He simply stayed quiet with a raise of his brow. This was probably a typical response from him and Miek continued,

“Nah, they woulda smelled you first and realized they didn’t want someone who refused to bathe.”

Samson had a rumbling voice that was naturally very slow,
“Oh, yeah, speaking of, I’m overdue to get naked and rub myself in the dirt, thanks for reminding me.”

They were all smiling.  The air relaxed… they were making jokes, being t
hemselves. What a good sign. Gabe thought his sigh was almost audible:
Ah, that feels better. Catharsis at last.

“So what do you do now,
are you still nomadic?” Gabe asked.

“Whatic?”
May replied.

“Travelers?”

“Not at the moment. For the last few months we’ve been staying at a town where another friend’s family lives. He decided not to come with us, but people know us there.” May said, “We’re gunna be heading to Dane’s city within a day or so.”

Gabe nodded, “… Good.” As they ate, Gabe drifted into oblivion, consc
iously and subconsciously weighing and measuring everything they said, then comparing his memories to that. He abruptly interrupted his musings to ask how many cities there were. With a shrug, May and Dane told him that it depended what he meant by cities. There were lots of small developments, more than fourteen. The biggest city was where May lived, and then there were two smaller cities besides that and two even smaller towns. That was a total of nineteen. How would they ever be able to kill nineteen cities worth of people? Noting the difficulty that presented, Gabe slipped away again quietly.

Dane was walking around stretching
as they discussed plans for going to his home town. Neither Gabe nor Jonathan was paying much attention until Dane finished up by saying, “Thank God, I haven’t been home in over a year. My mother will hate me.”

Accidently too dramatic, Gabe snapped his head up with panic in his eyes. Jonathan was looking at him, but Gabe didn’t want to catch his eye.
What did Dane just say?

Promising them knowledge in exchange for their lives was easy. They would have to give hardly anything to satisfy them, a
mere one-hundredth of what they really knew. Ignorant fools. Everything Jonathan knew was still his to own, to control, to plan with. They would be clueless from now until they decided to kill Jonathan and Gabe. Because they would decide to, eventually. Radical ideas and change like this weren’t well suited to even the rising generation. No one wanted what was best for them. The patience it took to experiment; to look outside of the box, was just too agonizing.

Jonathan, with some
quick
wit asked, “Thank God? What does that mean?”

Dane paused and tilted his hea
d, thinking hard about it. He shrugged and frowned. “I don’t know… Just a phrase.”

Gabe relaxed.
Although, knowing their abnormal curiosity they may try to find out what it means… but if they haven’t yet… maybe it would be okay. Hesitantly he went back to thinking, afraid if he left the conversation too quickly again he would miss some other warning word. 

The big idea
s staring him in the face, at the moment… there would be many more later, were the concept of freedom the role of women in society. May’s behavior was fascinating, not that she could by any means be a sample to generalize all the women by, but still interesting. So was their relationship – Dane and May’s relationship that is. He would be watching.

The first time they started over
Gabe remembered how horrified he was. Only twenty years into their civilization… Gabe couldn’t even think how to describe it; that was unheard of.

…

That first time of cloning, Gabe woke up, thinking that the memories were slow to arrive. To at once have no memories and then have thousands was a strange feeling – not even exhaustive as one might assume. Just there. Just suddenly knowing precisely what you were doing in existence when the moment before you were blind in a water-filled pillow. This first time and every time after, Gabe lay there for a few minutes silently to contemplate. He remembered that excitement, which he only felt once from the cloning. The excitement that felt like a kid at Christmas – something you’ve been hoping and waiting for was finally here. He smiled and bobbed his feet up and down – Jonathan was already up and ready, like an older brother who knew how this worked and was even more zealous than you. They even spoke a few friendly words to each other.

Up those stairs and into the opening, suddenly they were on a covert mission, being scuttled out of the cave without knowing if they were with friends or enemies. Assorted weapons lay at their
captor’s sides dangling to and fro against the flow of the movements being made. There must have been a dozen pairs of shuffling feet. At the edge of the cave, the men, or women (Gabe wasn’t sure which) dipped into that disgusting water, forcing Gabe and Jonathan with them. Completely not expecting this, Gabe slipped and dipped under the water for only a second before the back of his shirt was grabbed . He was practically being carried while choking against the water he inhaled and the pull of the neckline on his esophagus.

Gabe was treading the water with his feet, but not touching the bottom.
He got a look at the open sea and saw a ship a far off, a strange looking ship for an early civilization. Must have been an empty modern war ship that was drifting this direction. Who wouldn’t have been threatened by just the looks of it? Goodness knows there was nothing else to really harm them. …right? When his feet found the dry land, he was hustled along violently. All the joy he anticipated in what he would learn and the vision he would gain was flipped off like the switch of a light.
What was this?!

Jonathan in front of him was shouting questions despite that he was practically being dragged through a very rich
jungle, and in spite of their explicit threats for him to be quiet. “What year is it? Where are we going? Who’s on the ship?!”

Just shut up, Jonathan. Just shut up and do as you’re told.
Gabe thought. Jonathan was that oafish kid in class who always spoke up out of turn, out of context, and always took a long time to explain what no one cared about. The one who made everyone rolled their eyes, sighed, looked at each other and became frustrated because he was interrupting their classroom. The one that teachers give a polite nod to, but have learned not to address unless they want a long monologue about random politics regarding the water fountain. He was that kid, but more arrogant.

For once, Jonathan, shut up.
He couldn’t shut up before about their conditioned  Adams’ and Eves’ and threw everyone in a riot about bias and equal opportunity, he should shut up now.

They didn’t know how long they were moving. Gabe felt like he was going to have a heart attack. He could barely even make any observations besides the warfare and h
ow built and fit these men were; in a way that suggested they weren’t farmers. When the night came, they rested, someone stayed up as a watch. Gabe stayed awake all night for fear; eyes wide open, exhaling shaky breaths. Jonathan must have taken his medicine without them seeing somehow, because by some miracle he was sleeping like a log.

Every falling leaf and cracking twig
had aroused him with the most uncomfortable of fears. He could feel that fear now, as he remembered it because it had been so strong and his memory took that for play time. Moving on, he remembered the first time he looked in their eyes.
Blood shot.
The first time he saw them smile
. Yellowing.
Drugs and warfare? What happened in transition? Then, he found out it had only been twenty years. In twenty years?! Twenty years, and they looked like this.
And not just that, but more told Gabe why… It was a mess.

They walked into a town and at first glance it almost looked normal. Buildings of different heights lay in a relatively organized pattern, with streets wide enough for four lanes of traffic. It was as though they tried to recreate the twenty second century, but for fun had imitated vague images of fantasy worlds. Entrance into the city was a large gate which made him wonder who they were trying to keep out or what… there were no other civilizations there as far as they knew.

This protective wall they put up seemed so strange
. What was it for? Anticipating all the possibilities was overwhelming and occupied him heavily when they walked through the gate. So thoroughly was he distracted, in fact, that he almost missed the rest of the bizarre scene. Another reason it almost seemed normal was the closeness of the houses. Approximately ten feet lay between them each. What was absurd was that they all looked unfinished. Some of the distances were larger between the houses, not for spacing reasons, but because the plots were defined, the foundations laid, and clearly the houses were supposed to reach to the end of the plot, but they didn’t. Open foundations filled the space or unfinished walls showing corners of a room that might someday be. At least one room of every house was finished, some had two or three.

Knowing already that they were going to restart the society - w
hich was never planned for, but prepared for, Gabe made what seemed like the only decision. Before that, though, and what made his anticipation about the gate cease was the strange entanglement of strings going to and from the houses – not touching each other and at varying heights and lengths, one look at it gave the appearance of a giant human-eating spider’s web. He asked what they were to the man he was walking next to – a phone system of weakly made aluminum “cans”.

Gabe took the risk of sneaking out the first night to look around and take mental notes.

They were trying to imitate everything they knew before – this is why he disappeared that evening, out of curiosity to see what else they tried. Never before in his life had he felt such imminent doom as he remembered that day. A doom at his and Jonathan’s hands, thinking literally – but a necessary one – a duty to save posterity from this idiocy. Not even doom during the war felt the same as this felt.
This was supposed to be the hope.

They
considered it obvious that people would do what was necessary for survival, and even when they discovered the uselessness of their twenty second century habits, surely they would have been submissive to the circumstance, to nature. Now he saw, clearly not – this inspired his lack of faith each of the succeeding times they were cloned.

…

Memories like these were deplorable things to have – horrifyingly obtrusive to all the hope that his research wasn’t in vain.

Gabe
looked at the faces around him now. Their gaze and countenance were mostly untarnished and non-repulsed by the world. Lifted and enlightened comparatively with their predecessors, but they were still not free. Throughout his lifetime Gabe studied the bondage of cultures and individuals. It was like he could now see it; feel it in each of them.
Why were they not free?

It was every effort to be thorough and unbiased to teach the people they were leaving behind what they would need to know – they did enough background check
s for sanity and stability. Test after test could not erase habits, addictions, and desires. Even though they could test for it; it would have been useless to hold out for a person who had not given in to getting everything with immediacy; who had some miraculous way avoided unhealthy physical, emotional and mental addiction. It just wasn’t possible…

The memories still seeped through…

…

When Jonathan popped his medication
that first time of cloning, Gabe knew he was anxious – when he took a second, Gabe knew very well how his compulsion was rendering him incapable of dealing with all of this. Gabe wouldn’t claim that it made him nervous to watch Jonathan slip downward. More so, it was a verification of their expected mental dissolution. The ultimate loss of self.

His anxiety felt
like a balloon on a vacuum. Before long he would be helplessly sucked into the system. Memories became choppy, dark, and stoic. Fire lit streets. Thick fog. A prostitution house… or five... Rows and rows of cotton plants in the back ground where many people had been at work earlier that day. A large wooden cage filled with hundreds of chickens. People attending to their social life walked about him.

A girl was holding her stomach and looked wary. She gave a polite nod and wave to a friend, who took a second glance,
waved with a smile, then kept walking. Into a half-finished building she went, where a few other women were. There were no windows and only one door. The poor construction of the house left a gap between two pieces of wood. Gabe was intrigued, stopped, and crouched down to watch openly what he knew should have made him squirm.
An abortion.
A homemade concoction was drunk, leaving the ex-mother in such agony, she seemed to be paralyzed. What was in that stuff she just used? Chances are it was nearly strong enough to kill the woman. Though it wouldn’t kill her, only punish her for the rest of her life. This incident was not isolated either. Gabe and Jonathan managed to stay alive for two weeks and in that time he witnessed similar scenes, with different devices. Anyway they did it – drugs, beating, chemicals, there was no way to hurt the baby, without also hurting the mother. It made him wonder what the population was… in a world where sex wasn’t the crime, abortion wasn’t the shame, but, rather, the pregnancy was.

He
kept moving and saw a courthouse, which was actually finished and in the town center, suggesting it was one of the first buildings. Undoubtedly this meant that they still thought that law and order existed in a building. Not only that, but they assumed early on that there needed to be a third party to solve problems. And, that there would be problems to solve. Had they given no consideration to peace and prosperity?

When he got back, he shared his findings with Jonathan. Together they made a plan to start over. Youth were going to be a key in starting over. Youth that either had miraculously survived mother’s attempts
to abort, or children of the few who decided they wanted children… or were paid by the government to have them. That’s who they would need. They kept the poison to a condensed area, discovered those who might be traveling and when to anticipate their return so as to include everyone. They took only about a hundred of the original group, and thirty of their posterity (that’s all there was) to begin again. They discovered that sixty of the original group had committed suicide within the first year, and since then, another twenty or so. As Gabe had not anticipated, the population had
decreased
.

He felt cheated to realize that humans didn’t really know how to survive.

At any rate, survival was not the goal; freedom was, which was about one million steps of intellect above survival.

…

One day later they packed up and started toward Dane’s home town. As they were packing up Miek looked at them both not doing anything and inquired whether or not they had any possessions. Jonathan and Gabe looked at each other. Knowing that they had friends was key before they started disposing of their survival kit or making it visible. Be that as it may, Gabe once pulled out beef jerky at night. He did so at the risk of May seeing because she seemed to sleep less than he did, amazingly. Jonathan, he was sure, had been through several bags, not that others knew what he was taking out of his pockets. Only Jonathan’s pills made definitive appearances, and as they had explained that part, the group seemed somewhat content. Jonathan was trying his best (which was not much of an improvement) to spread his dosage further, so this morning he had not taken the medication and he snapped in reply,

“
What do you care?”

Gabe rolled his eyes and they all looked at him with wide eyes of bewilderment in silent conversation, then turned back to the
direction of their destination and moved forward. A thought struck Gabe as they were walking. What if they made them change clothes? The shoes were kind of a giveaway. Until now, every item of clothing passed as strange, but reasonable enough. The clothes this crew wears look nothing like what he and Jonathan had ever worn, or would ever want to wear. May wore a thin white cotton top and a leaf-woven bottom that wrapped around like a lava-lava. It also looked like she was using the same hemp material as a half-corset. The boys had hemp bottoms with no top.