Ethos Page 8

  Malcolm broke into a toothy grin and a guffaw escaped his throat. His laughter began to build until his shoulders were shaking and tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

  “Dad,” he gasped between spasms of laughter, “you are not Bereft. Of course you’re not Bereft—you can’t be.”

  “I look a lot more like the Bereft than I do like the Immortals,” David said, feeling almost defensive, recalling the warmth with which Nev had first spoken the word to him: Bereft. Not as if he were lacking anything, but as if it were a mark of pride. “After all, Malcolm, I’m forty-eight years old.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Malcolm said, still chuckling. “People can find their ethos and turn Immortal at any time during their lives. Granted, it’s pretty rare at your age. Most of the Immortals you see look like they’re my age because that’s when people naturally start to find themselves—in young adulthood. But there’s no natural law that says you can’t become Immortal now, and I have no doubt you will. I mean, you just got to Ethos. Go back a few more times, and you’ll see—”

  “But wait a minute,” David said, suddenly confused—and choosing to ignore for the moment that Malcolm was talking as if it were a given that David would return to 2524. “You’re forgetting I was born in 1976. More than two hundred years before the Great Genetic War ended and the genetic variation that causes immortality first started appearing. So I can’t become Immortal. Even if I found an ethos, I don’t have the gene.”

  Malcolm shrugged dismissively. “Sure you can, Dad. I was born in 2006—the same rule should apply to me. But it didn’t. Something about being transported to Ethos changed me—changed my genetic makeup.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I found my ethos and became Immortal.” Malcolm was once again taking on that adolescent tone of impatience he loved to use with his father.

  “But do you really know? I mean, how can you test that you’re Immortal?”

  “I told you, Dad. I literally felt it happen. I felt something change in my body when I found my ethos. And you will, too.”

  David felt a slow creep of anxiety. It would be tremendously dangerous for Malcolm if he had convinced himself that he had somehow gained entrance to this elite genetic tribe, that he literally couldn’t die, only for it to prove untrue. But, then again, at this point Malcolm knew far more about Ethos than David did. And Malcolm was absolutely convinced that he had felt the immortality take hold—that it was real.

  “Listen, Dad,” Malcolm said, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his thighs. “This is the point of all of this. I think I can help you find your ethos and become Immortal. And, not only that, in the process, we can beat the Warped Immortals once and for all. We can help Ethos become the beautiful, peaceful world it is destined to be. You and I, together, can literally end war for humankind forever.”

  David was listening intently to what Malcolm was saying. These were lofty words, and he was taken by the passion with which Malcolm spoke. But, more than that, he felt a thrill building in him to hear his son say that he wanted his help, that he needed him, that there was something important, something that really mattered, that they could do together.

  “In Ethos,” Malcolm said, his voice dropping as he began to unveil his plan, “Bereft can come and go much more freely than Immortals because they aren’t a threat. They don’t have any political or military power, and they are physically vulnerable, so Immortals don’t pay them much attention. They aren’t involved in our affairs. That means that you—with the help of Nev’s squadron of Rebels that we’ve just captured—can infiltrate Detroit far more easily than any Immortal unit. You can do it without violence. They’ll actually welcome you in because they’ll never suspect you. And once you’re in, you can dismantle Detroit’s defenses, and then I’ll launch an attack and take out the Warped Immortals for good. This is what I was planning to propose to Commander Nev when she was captured—I just wasn’t expecting, in a million years, to find you with her. But now I see that this is perfect. This is probably destiny. I know you can do this better than anyone else.”

  “Me?” David fairly croaked. “What makes you think I can do it?”

  Malcolm stared at him as if he didn’t understand the question. And then his expression changed and softened. For the first time in years, David saw the face of his little boy, Malcolm, when he was five or seven or ten. The boy whom he had taught to ride a bike, to shoot hoops, to read. Malcolm’s face was filled with nothing but admiration, even awe, for his father.

  “Of course you can, Dad,” Malcolm said simply.

  This was all the convincing David needed. He nodded once, solemnly.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  uch!” David yelped. “I can’t see a goddamn thing.”

  “Shhh!” Malcolm hissed. “You’ll wake up Mom.”

  The two of them were creeping like criminals down Lila’s basement stairs in the dark. It was almost 3 a.m. on the night after Malcolm’s epic retelling of the story of Ethos. Things had happened fast. Once David understood how urgently Malcolm needed his help, one thing led precipitously to the next with the inevitability of falling dominoes, and now here they were preparing to travel through the VR portal back to the future.

  David couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was making him do this. He was keenly aware that as a father, this was about the least responsible course of action he could take. Not only had he given Malcolm a tacit endorsement of his life’s ethos of “leading in righteous battle,” he had then agreed to become an active participant in that battle.

  “Surely,” David thought to himself, “a sane father would have put the kibosh on this long ago.”

  But was that actually true?

  If everything that Malcolm had explained to him about the conflict between the Immortals and the Warped Immortals was true, then his son was leading a struggle for the future of humanity. The world had survived one near-apocalyptic cataclysm in the Great Genetic War, but it seemed to David that this was a small-time struggle when compared to an army of age-and death-defying people who were, by definition, single-mindedly driven to cause destruction and harm. Malcolm wasn’t exaggerating at all when he said that nothing could be more important to him. The survival of mankind was at stake.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that had convinced David to return with Malcolm to Ethos. He felt a little chagrined to admit it even to himself, but . . . well, Nev was back there, preparing to face the Immortal Council alone. He couldn’t let her think that he had abandoned her to her fate, not after she had saved his life and publicly defended him. No matter what Malcolm had said about her and her Bereft colleagues, David felt an affinity for her—for all of them.

  These people whom Malcolm had accused of aimlessness and irresponsibility struck him as his kind of people. There was something in him that couldn’t quite relate to the idea of finding an ethos. When his son talked with certainty about his life’s single purpose, David felt admiration, but he couldn’t fully understand. He had never lived that way; he couldn’t even imagine what it was like to live that way. But to live as Nev did, open to the world’s myriad possibilities, with ample attention and passion to devote to any number of pursuits? In discovering the existence of the Bereft, David had begun to feel for the first time in his life that what he had always thought of as his own lack of ambition and drive might actually be an asset.

  But then again, maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe he was just making excuses for his failures. After all, he hadn’t been able to keep his marriage with Lila together. And he had never found work that felt meaningful to him; being an accountant certainly wasn’t changing the world, it was just paying the bills. His eighteen-year-old son had more sense of purpose in his little finger than David did in his whole body.

  And that, ultimately, was why David was here now, stumbling into Lila’s dark basement, preparing to return to an unknown and perilous world. He couldn’t bear the thought of disappointin
g Malcolm. He needed this opportunity to connect with his son—to make his son proud.

  As he felt along the basement wall, trying to keep up with Malcolm despite his near-sightedness and the almost pitch-black night, David wrestled with competing emotions. On the one hand, every cell in his body was screaming for caution, for circumspection, for maturity. It was insane to put himself and Malcolm in harm’s way like this. And for what? For some future time and place that had no bearing on his life today?

  And the other half of David shouted back, “Do this!” He had been careful his whole life. He had followed every rule in the book. And what had it gotten him? An unfulfilling career and a lonely divorcé’s condo. His lifetime’s highlights reel was all Malcolm.

  “Aw, hell,” David muttered out loud. If he was careering wildly toward his own death, at least he would finally be doing something. At least Malcolm would finally know what his father was made of.

  “What, Dad?” Malcolm asked. “Did you say something?”

  “Huh?” David said, coming back to reality. They were standing in the center of the basement, the VR system in a shadowy heap between them.

  “All right, remember the plan,” Malcolm said, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Lila.

  The two of them had decided together that they would travel back through the VR portal in the middle of the night. They didn’t want the hassle of explaining to Lila that the two of them would be spending some time gaming in her basement when it was supposed to be David’s weekend with his son. If they could just avoid a confrontation with her altogether, things would be much simpler.

  Malcolm had explained to David that time seemed to bend for him on either end of the VR portal. When Malcolm was in Ethos, very little time elapsed in present-day Flint. And the inverse was also true. When Malcolm was at home in 2024, very little time went by in Ethos. He hadn’t been able to pin down a precise ratio to calculate the elapsed time, but he had gone back and forth enough to know that it was never more than a handful of minutes. He assured David that when the two of them got back to Ethos, the Immortal Councilors would not even have noticed their absence.

  Better still, the VR portal always returned time travelers to the exact place they had been when they spoke the safe word to escape. In that respect, the portal did function like a gaming system, returning “players” to their last saved location—except that that location wasn’t in a game. It was an entirely real place and time, five hundred years in the future.

  This meant that David and Malcolm could simply resume their “interrogation” right where they had left off, in the small meeting room in Flint City Hall, where Malcolm’s Immortal Councilors were no doubt still waiting dutifully in the corridor. They would tell the councilors that the meeting was a success, that David had agreed to join the struggle against the Warped Immortals of Detroit and work undercover on behalf of Malcolm and the Immortals of Flint. They would enlist Nev in the cause, and she would use her clout with the Bereft Rebels to assemble a unit of Bereft to infiltrate Detroit.

  “You ready, Dad?” Malcolm said.

  David’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he watched as Malcolm stepped onto the treadpad and began slipping his hands into the VR gloves. They had agreed that Malcolm would go first, and David would follow immediately after.

  Malcolm turned to David and gave him a solemn look.

  “See you in Ethos,” he said.

  David allowed himself a half-smile and one short nod. “See you in Ethos,” he repeated.

  Malcolm lifted the VR headset to his face and secured it in place. An instant later, he was gone.

  David was standing alone in the basement, surrounded by deafening silence, blinking like a stunned cow. He exhaled long and low.

  “Well, David,” he said out loud to the empty room, “there’s your proof.”

  A piece of him had still been clinging to a sliver of disbelief. Even after all the evidence he’d seen—the experience of his own eyes and ears—he still had been unprepared to yield completely to the idea that everything he knew about the physical world, about time, about possibility and impossibility . . . was mistaken.

  A piece of him, even now, had expected to see Malcolm’s physical body remain in the basement with him, under the influence of the VR system, proving that Ethos was a mere illusion. A fabrication of wires and electricity.

  He could no longer entertain this hope. Malcolm was gone. He had traveled through the portal, as surely as David was living and breathing.

  And now he was waiting in Ethos for his father.

  David shook himself. It was time. Whether he had asked for this or not, he had been thrust into a mechanism far greater than himself, and he would be damned if he didn’t rise to the occasion. For once in his life, he was not going to hang back, waiting for circumstances to decide for him. He would plunge in headfirst.

  David stepped onto the treadpad and picked up the VR gloves where they had fallen when Malcolm vanished. He slipped them over his hands, then cast about for the VR headset. It was lying at his feet, cold and inanimate. It seemed entirely powerless, silhouetted against the treadpad in the darkness of the basement, and yet David knew now that it was imbued with a mysterious power.

  He bent, picked it up, and without hesitation, slipped the goggles over his eyes.

  David found himself face to face with Malcolm. Just like that, simply by putting on the VR headset, he was back in Ethos, in the meeting room in City Hall.

  He had no time to acclimate himself. There was a pounding on the door of the meeting room, and someone was calling, “Chancellor! Chancellor!”

  Malcolm gave David a pointed look. Without breaking eye contact, he called simply, “Enter.”

  The door swung open and a young man, in the standard dark gray suit of an Immortal Councilor, put his head and shoulders into the room.

  “Is everything all right, Chancellor?” The young man asked, his brow furrowed with concern. He was very fair-skinned, almost wan, with a constellation of red-brown freckles radiating out from his nose across his cheekbones. His face was completely smooth. He looked like he was about seventeen years old, but David realized with a start that this Immortal could easily be older than he was.

  “Your genesignal cut out. Like you just . . . disappeared from the room,” the councilor said, bewildered. “But—here you are. Probably just a glitch in the system.”

  Malcolm nodded curtly, exuding an air of impatience. He had slipped seamlessly out of the easy-going teenage persona David recognized and back into the role of no-nonsense chancellor.

  “Everything’s fine,” Malcolm said. “Just a glitch in the system. Have the systems analysts run a thorough diagnostic.”

  “Yes, Chancellor,” the councilor said, beginning to withdraw from the room.

  “And, Councilor Floyd?” Malcolm stopped him. “Send in Rebel Commander Nev, please.”

  “Yes, Chancellor,” Councilor Floyd said again, and closed the door.

  “Genesignal?” David asked when the youthful looking Immortal was gone. “What does that mean?”

  “We all have a unique genome—a unique genetic code,” Malcolm explained, speaking quickly because it would only be a matter of time before Nev joined them. “In Ethos, scientists have developed a means of scanning human bodies to recognize their genetic code. All public spaces are monitored for these codes, so that at any given time, we know exactly who is in, for example, Flint City Hall or Flint Central Hospital. And since I’m a political leader, top Immortal Councilors have access to my genesignal at all times through a device they wear on their wrists. It lets them know my whereabouts, but also my vitals. They’ll know immediately if I’ve been compromised by a wound. When we traveled back to 2024, my genesignal flickered out.”

  David nodded, not sure if this struck him as a good idea for protecting the leader of Flint, or a gross burden on his son’s shoulders.

  Malcolm continued, “It’s this technology that will allow you to infiltrate Detroit. W
e don’t bother monitoring or even keeping a record of Bereft genesignals—the Bereft, even the Bereft Rebels, just aren’t involved in anything important enough to warrant monitoring. And besides, the Bereft die off all the time. What would be the point of all the administrative work of tracking them if they’re constantly disappearing from the world?”

  David once again felt a pang at hearing his son speak so dismissively of the Bereft whom he had come to identify with. He brushed aside his qualms so that he could focus.

  Malcolm continued, “All Immortal strongholds—Flint, Atlanta, and, yes, Detroit—maintain a detection system around their perimeters, recording the genesignals of anyone who enters or exits. It’s virtually impossible for Immortals to pass through undetected, which is why our offensives against Detroit have failed. We can’t enter the city without triggering a warning, and they always know how many of us are coming. Whether we enter by land or air, we always pass within range of Warped Immortal wireless that immediately registers our genesignals. But you and a group of Bereft can enter Detroit without your presence being logged or even noticed. And once inside, you can dismantle the detection system.”

  “Wait,” David said, getting hung up on something Malcolm had just said. “You’ve tried to enter by air?”

  “Sure,” Malcolm replied. “We mounted a Dactyl offensive a few weeks ago. By the time we were in range, a Warped Immortal Dactyl squadron was already taking flight to counterstrike.”

  David felt like kicking himself. Of all the many questions he had asked Malcolm in the last twenty-four hours, he had neglected perhaps his most nagging one: what the hell was going on with the flying dinosaurs?

  “Dactyls?” David repeated. “What are you talking about? Why are there dinosaurs in the future?”

  Malcolm’s eyebrows shot up. Clearly, he too was dumbfounded that he hadn’t yet explained this to David.

  “Right,” he said hurriedly. “Of course. It’s one of the many completely unanticipated and bizarre consequences of the Great Genetic War. While for human beings, rogue mutation triggered rapid e-volution, there are some species for which it set off de-volution.”