The Man With a City in His Head

by Maxwell Jameson

part 7

When the old man first entered my establishment, I’d never even considered the possibility of his being John the Leader. Nobody who entered my establishment — not even Frederick — had that kind of gravitas. I looked at him and saw only a person. He looked me directly in the eyes when he spoke. He looked the other Citizens in the eyes, even when they were unreceptive. He seemed eager for your input. There was nothing that suggested a leader.

But I remembered something Adam had told me, that the ascension of the Floating Center had occurred on the same day John the Leader vanished. During John’s years, it had been the Center of the Old City, on the same level as the Inner Districts. Perhaps in those days, Council members were more akin to Citizens such as Frederick or Adam before his dissolution: normal human beings imbued with a clear sense of themselves and their function, without the potent Sharing that they had today.

John the Leader had never been that sort of a larger than life figure, even though he’d been retroactively inserted into the same massive mosaic. But the old man did not even manage that level of conformity in his current state. There was no sense of an ego, of a rigid, consolidated self-demarcating line between itself and the world. He came off as a portal through which flowed a human essence beyond the concept of the individual.

In this state, he would never make it as a Citizen, not even in the Outer Districts. The mantle of John the Leader had been discarded decades ago, and instead the old man had dug in the opposite direction and opened a portal buried deep inside himself.

And that was where the inherent dishonesty of Marcus’ statement came out. He attempted to paint this old man and John the Leader as one and the same, when in the intervening years he’d in fact radically altered the chemistry of his consciousness. But the fact it took so much thought to come to this conclusion told me something else: the old man did not Share. It hadn’t been Marcus’ words that were so convincing; it had been the watershed of intense, vivid emotion he Shared unlike anyone I’d ever experienced. All that saved me was my experience with his son.

But other Citizens were left with no choice but to follow. Because that was how it worked in Our City; the Citizens came to their leaders. Remembering what Adam had told me and what I’d read, John the Leader’s policies — of more government openness, of allowing the Outer Districts more autonomy — could never have been thought of unless they were a response to a demand from outside. Which told me that in John’s era, the leaders did not Share, but instead were responsive to the stated needs of their constituency. They came to the people.

And until John’s time, the majority of people were not aware of their own situation, of their dependence upon a noble class that had risen in the immediate aftermath of the Annihilation and taken control of Our City, had re-enforced a lost state of order..

And when those constituents became self-aware and self-organizing, measures were necessary to maintain the status quo. Hence the secret preparation of the Floating Center, hence Sharing. They ensured that the masses would remain dependent on their leadership while believing they were as free as they could hope to be.

And when Marcus spoke of “what existed,” he spoke of this illusion, an illusion maintained for decades where Citizens were pulled towards their leaders and away from themselves. He wished to make it appear that there was no other possibility, that people could not think or organize for themselves. Which contradicted Our City’s rhetoric of personal responsibility and ingenuity. Because if that rhetoric were truly followed, it would mean a diminishment of Marcus’ power.

I didn’t realize my destination until I arrived.

A clearing in a patch of trees covering one side of one of Our City’s parks. The firepit still sat at the middle, surrounded by empty beverage containers. I even recognized the stones, the logs and the battered chairs.

But I walked past all this. Into the trees.

The hole was still there, though I barely recognized it beneath the mantle of the evening’s light. But the dirt was piled just as it had been that same morning when I climbed out, though it had been rained on. It was not deep. I was lucky.

Grass peeked out through the dirt, speckled with dandelions and shrubs.

It seemed foolish that I even still thought of it.

I sat down Indian style. I closed my eyes. I saw that night again. Him on top of me. The dirt pouring over me. Telling me to stay where I belonged.

For a few minutes I’d listened to it. Just lay there.

But then lightning crashed through my body. I said, “No.” I clawed. I squirmed. I was lucky. The dirt was loose. It gave.

I’d sat in the morning air and sobbed. Sobbed about what all my faith and innocence had gotten me: buried beneath the inert earth. Then I walked home and met the Watcher.

I was thankful that the same place could change so much beneath different light.

But I still felt tears. Tears for what I’d left behind.

But then the surface of the dirt rippled and turned over.

I couldn’t do anything but watch.

A finger emerged. It explored its surroundings, wiggling around in the coolness of the air.

It pushed out farther and became a hand. The hand became an arm.

The arm scraped around, throwing clumps of dirt. Some of it landed on me. I let it. The arms searched for a handhold. I knew what was happening on the other side of that dirt. My insides wrenched.

When I saw her hair I knew. I’d walked home that morning and cut it off. But here it was as I remembered: long, thick locks of congealed hair decorated with beads, barrettes and pearls.

The same ragged, used clothing holding a ragged, used person.

Except she did not move like one. She angrily threw dirt aside. She was vaulting an obstacle. On her way to a goal I hadn’t remembered.

Soon she was revealed and she stood in front of me. I was surprised that I remembered her: that body, those clothes, that person. Despite the fact I’d left her behind.

She didn’t look at me. She brushed the dirt off herself. She shook it out of her hair. She looked up at the sun. She looked at me. I thought she was going to say something. I wanted her to. But in her eyes I saw everything she would say, and I didn’t think I could take it.

So I was relieved when she walked past me and to the trees.

But then she turned to me.

Her expression was an order.

I followed her through the clearing, past the firepit and out onto the street. I stayed about ten paces behind her. She never looked back at me, but just kept walking through the waning sun. She kept a slow, shuffling but steady face but with her body angled forward.

That morning, I’d only drifted. She walked like a Citizen but she didn’t look like one. She had a purpose. She had a destination. She was not an empty well into which those things could be poured.

We entered the District that had housed the Takers’ City.

She knew this neighborhood well. She’d come here because she wanted to rediscover what had once made it meaningful. She resented the label “Taker.” She felt it distorted what they stood for. It allowed them to be defined in the way the Floating Center wished to define them. She carried a passion inside that she felt superseded all such categories. She thought all she had to do was find others with that same creative urge and pool that passion until it became an unstoppable force.

So she met as many people as she could. She told them of her ideas, and they told her of ideas that sounded the same. They spoke in shallow sentences about “freedom” and “change.” They lionized the Takers’ City. They lamented the failure of the Takers’ Invasion. They made plans together that sounded momentous and promising. She could feel the stone rolling down the hill.

But there came bumps. People would fail to do what they promised. They would give excuses based on personal whims. They would promise to come through next time and then let her down again. They spent most of their time doing nothing. They walked through the District with their heads down. They muttered in short sentences. They took long walks with no objective. They had large parties with fires. They sat in bars and coffee shops, playing various games and doing word puzzles.

They cared nothing for change, they cared only for futile opposition. They were hanging for dear life off the edges of what they could not manage a coherent stand against. Because deep inside they believed in it more than they believed in anything else. And nothing could convince them otherwise. So they shoved any wedge they could between the world and the selves they dared not face.

And after a time, she fell into the same habit. Seeing no productive way to expend her passion, she escaped into hedonism and dissolution. She convinced herself she was transcending the concept of struggle. That it was hackneyed. That it had failed. She drank alcohol, she ingested drugs. She believed she was over the concept of justice, that it was an illusion, that nihilism was realistic and practical, that debasement of yourself was the only truly subversive act, that the dark instincts of those around her were inherent to humanity.

But when she was buried — when it finally went too far — her reaction was different from my own. She had not run whimpering back to Our City. She allowed that other piece to do so. She waited. She healed herself. She waited patiently for me to exhaust the options out there and return to her. She didn’t emerge a victim. She emerged a survivor.

Once again, I did not realize our destination until we arrived.

She stopped before the path leading up to the dilapidated building.

My heart thundered as I came up behind her, close enough to touch.

She turned to me. Specks of dirt still covered her hair. Smudges covered her face. But she ignored them, and so did I. The look of impatience and disdain burned through it.

“I’m sorry,” I suddenly said.

She just gave me the same look. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, in a tone I hadn’t managed in years. “Just get in there.”

My face tingled as if slapped. I turned, almost running from her up the path. I made my way across the overgrown lawn dotted with vegetable patches and makeshift picnic spots.

In its time, just after Adam’s father finished it, the Takers’ City Hall must have been impressive. It was made completely of wood, huge, healthy slabs of wood decorated with intricate carving. But over the years, it had degraded and been repaired by less expert hands. Spots were plastered over clumsily, ugly, sloppily painted plywood covered holes here and there, and the walls, stairs and floors were riddled with cracks and gashes.

Across the street was a parking lot. Next to the parking lot was a bridge leading to the Inner Districts, the same bridge the Takers’ Army had marched across, and the parking lot used to be the field where they’d marshaled their forces. The history was spoken of constantly at every meeting, concert or pot luck held by the religious sects, revolutionary insurrectionists groups, and community organizing collectives that used this Center, trying to revive what had been buried beneath the mundane. A tall thicket of trees obstructed the view of the Inner Zones. People did their best to pretend they weren’t there.

The double doors were partly opened. A shaft of light shot across the porch. I paused. I felt a quaking, as if I were at the door of a once close but now estranged friend whose reaction I couldn’t predict. But I opened one of the doors and stepped into the entryway.

To be continued...