The New Humans

Chapter 20

Ash stood up and began to explore. He punched the walls lightly: they made no noise and were as solid as granite.

He went past the cabin in the middle of the room and the doors opened automatically. The cabin resembled a spaceship with a leather seat in front of a control panel and a round hole in the center of it. Ash noted the slot was the same size as the black ball and placed it in.

A light on the ceiling came on, illuminating the keys on the control panel. The doors closed. A woman's voice announced with a terrifying calm, "Trip scheduled to depart in thirty seconds. We ask you to sit down and fasten your seatbelt."

Ash darted toward the doors to reopen them, but they were hermetically sealed. In the meantime, the voice began to count down: "Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven..."

Ash ran to sit down and after three attempts succeeded in fastening the seatbelt.

". . . Four, three, two, one."

The cabin lifted from the ground and quickly gained speed. The pressure thrust Ash against the seat as the cabin accelerated. It felt like being in an airplane at takeoff.

The speed stabilized shortly after and Ash's body soon became weightless. He felt like he was being forced upward, but the seatbelt prevented him from floating. He undid the belt and pushed off from the armrests, floating. He swam breaststroke through the shuttle; he did a somersault as if he were a child and the blood rushed to his head with a tickling sensation.

Some twenty minutes passed and then his body was pushed forward as little by little the shuttle slowed down. He grabbed the seat and managed to sit down and fasten the seatbelt. The shuttle continued to slow down and five minutes later came to a standstill.

The doors behind Ash opened just as they had closed. He undid the seatbelt and got out. He walked down a dark hallway with white marble floors and walls, rubbing his arms and shoulders to get warm. It was like standing in a refrigerator and all he was wearing was a swimsuit. He took a few steps and glimpsed a light, so he walked in that direction until he reached an archway. He passed through and found himself on a platform in the center of a gigantic spherical structure.

Ash turned around: the place was as vast as a metropolis and as high as a mountain. A funnel narrowed toward the space elevator. If he fell, he would slip into the abyss and precipitate for thousands of miles.

All at once, an infernal noise filled the place; it was like a metalwork factory with the sounds of metal clanging and sizzling, and electrical charges. He looked up: flashes like lightning broke out across the ceiling.

Beneath the platform where he stood, golden dodecahedra as big as houses, floated in the air. There was an aperture on every face of the dodecahedra, accessed by stairs of white marble that stayed still just for some minutes before flying away, each one in a different direction.

But perhaps most extraordinary of all were the transparent walls and floor. Ash felt as if he was at the center of the universe; space and stars enveloped him. On his right, the moon was huge; it had never been so close, and it seemed to be a darker gray, as if it were covered with dust. Below him the Earth shone in a black sea with all its brilliant colors: cobalt blue, green, yellow, and a scattering of white clouds. America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania—each was the size of one of his feet. A sensation he'd never felt before swept through him—it was as if something was giving energy to his body and peace to his mind. All at once the Earth and man seemed tiny compared to the vastness of creation.

Then he recalled something else his mother had said: Strange things happen in that city. A man would be dead after five minutes in there. To stay there was suicide. He ran back toward the shuttle, but the doors had already closed. He beat his fists against the metal, searched for a button or a lever somewhere, but there was no way to open the doors. He looked at the ball for help, but it gave him no sign. He turned to look for another way out but found nothing.

"Damn!"

What could he do to get out of that place? Maybe there was no way out and he'd have to meet the savants. But they didn't want anyone in their city. The only thing possible was to explain to them that he'd ended up in there by accident; perhaps they wouldn't hurt him.

He tried to call them, but his voice was drowned out by the noise of the city. He continued to call and wait for them for half an hour but soon realized it was no use to stay there; he would die of cold. Four flights of stairs branched off from the platform. Ash passed in front of each until he stood in front of the third one and the words, Go ahead, appeared on the ball. He looked up. Go ahead? It was the only staircase that didn't lead to a dodecahedron but instead stopped in mid-air. It was at least two hundred yards long, without handrails. He placed a bare foot on the first step, but the cold marble made him pull back. Did he have to go all that way like this? He felt as if he was outdoors in fall, naked. But he realized he had no choice, so he started to climb.

After a few steps, the stairs began to move. There were no railings to cling to and Ash almost fell into the abyss. The staircase rotated on itself and stopped when it met a platform where another flight of stairs began.

He started to climb up this new stairway but stopped when he saw a movement about two yards away. It was like a pink silhouette. It couldn't be possible. That pink shape was nothing other than a man in a swimsuit. Ash could see him in every detail: he was moving with a shaky gait and seemed exhausted.

Ash waved his arms and yelled, "Hey! Here! I'm here!"

Hearing the shout, the other person turned around. It was a boy who looked a little older than Ash, but . . . no, it couldn't be. Ash rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The boy on the other side caught his gaze and looked at him as if he had just seen a ghost.

"Who are you?" the boy asked.

It wasn't possible: the voice was the same too. It was Ash himself. Two hundred yards away, there was his face, his body, his hair, his facial expressions.

They stood there looking at each other for what seemed like forever, both incapable of saying a word. The boy on the other side finally repeated, "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" asked Ash in turn.

The other boy shook his head, looking like he might cry from sheer exhaustion. He shouted, "What does all this mean? Are you real? What are you?"

Ash said, almost as if to confirm it to himself, "I am Asher Mack."

"No," shouted the other. "I am Asher Mack."

Ash began to wonder if he was still alive or not.

The other boy said, "Wait there for me and I'll come and join you."

He took one stride forward, but the step onto which he put his foot disappeared and the boy fell. Ash instinctively moved forward to help him, but the stair he was on disappeared into thin air. He tripped and was about to fall but managed to grab onto the staircase just in time. His heart pounded in his throat. He hung there with his feet dangling over the chasm, and then the stairs began to move.

He jerked himself back up, but the stairs start moving again. Without even thinking, Ash began running. As he moved, the steps behind him disappeared one after the other. At the end of the staircase was a platform and he threw himself onto it. He jumped to his feet, afraid that the platform might disappear, but it didn't move. He turned: there were no more steps behind him.

Who was that? Was it a hallucination? But it had seemed so real: the tousled hair, the unsteady walk, the skin damp with sweat. Could it be a robot? No, the expression of terror he had read on the boy's face was too real. Perhaps it was an image from the future; Ash would never get out of that city and would continue to wander in that senseless world until he died. He rubbed his eyes, certain he was going crazy.