Sempiternal - Chapter One

The first man through the Rift corrupted himself. The second was executed. The

third was imprisoned. Any following were killed quietly and quickly, deep beneath the

city in what was known as the Pipes. Whole batches of caught time-jumpers were

apprehended by the Harbor 14 Troupe, and brought to their knees in the dark of the

tunnels underneath Home and buried in the sewage to rot. Good intentions or twisted,

they were tortured till they bled dry under the white-grey pavement.

His name was Collin Lindsey. He took the title ‘Father.’ He slipped a knife

between the ribs of the Harborman and pawned the crime off on a guard. Lauded as

hero for bringing to his knees such a corrupt leader, the people adopted him as Father.

The Father. Trusted with civilians’ every concern, problem, thought, he held his rightful

place over the people, tightening his fist imperceptibly. The date was celebrated every

year as Liberation Day. March the twenty-fifth, 2149. A marked day. The day the solar

tiles on Home switched to 2150. They day they celebrated.

Fourmonths of preparation were underway.

Home brand liquor was procured and sold on street-corners for a Euro. Carried

over by ‘modern medicine,’ the elderly residents of Home praised the Father for

reintroducing the currency that had been made moot in 2125 by the Harborman. And at

a better exchange rate than they had been for fifty years. People stocked up. Their

crumbling cupboards bore the weight of the synthetic-glass bottles with astounding

dedication. Almost twenty-five years old, and they refused to detach themselves from

cracked plaster walls.

All around town, people sat in their twenty-five-year-old, partially repaired

furniture and toasted to the Father. And what a good Father! Long live the Father!

Children’s ears rung with the toasts, from January until March every year. But this year

it was different. They were spoken louder, as if to cover up the doubts they all kept

locked away in their chests. To drown out and replace phrases like, hen do you think

the Father will pay to have the stack-buildings updated? hen, do you suppose, will the

school system be patched-up? Do you think man-made grain prices will ever go down like

they did in 2126?

These were left unspoken.

And children played in the streets alongside soldiers wrapped in black cloaks.

Rifles propped in their elbows. Boots thumping rhythmically on the concrete and to the

sky. Underneath the wire crews who crawled like spindly grey spiders across power

lines and construction wires, to the sky. Most of the boys, destined to be recruited and

militarized by fourteen. The scrawny ones, to be sent three hundred feet above the

unforgiving ground to bite wire-cutters between their teeth until they splayed.

Repairing and re-repairing the faulty, twenty-five-year-old wiring. Until then, they

kicked government-issue inflatable balls down the sidewalk with their grey,

government-issue sneakers and stayed out of dark alleys.

New recruits were shuttled in every year from the just-out-of-town sectors. The

Hills. They were the boys with the long, bow legs and mops of yellow hair and beak

noses. They were the boys their mothers sent off to the Force, as something to make them proud. Each morning, they laced their boots a little tighter. Wrote their letters a

little shorter. Told everyone that they were enjoying their training. Enjoying the

privilege of protecting the Father. Long live the Father. And they left their ink pots open,

tossed their capes on, and slipped out between the cracks.

Each day up and down the narrow, winding streets and into alleys they poked

their rifles. Each day searching for some sign of the Dragons, before they could get a

grip on anything important. Vigilance was key, the Father said. If you’re always

watching, they’re always doing something. You only have to know where to look.

Dragons, cloaked in white, with swords on their hips and hoods on their heads.

They vaulted from rooftop to rooftop, silent like a prayer. They were drawn up as a

stereotype on posters. Propaganda for the father. “Don’t become a useless lizard—long

live the Father!” Their black hair hung over their eyes. Hoods draping over to hide

features. A sword drawn, to the right. And flashed across screens that hung two stories

up. Day in and day out. A five minute loop of propaganda. A five minute loop of “long

live the Father.”

The Father himself was not a very imposing or impressive man. Bent-over with

age and failing medical treatments, he sat by his window and absorbed what little sun

he could. Five months earlier, and the physician had ordered all buildings in the nearby

city blocks to direct their mirrored sides at his window. Besides painstakingly frying

him the inside, it reduced the amount of shadows present around the Father’s tower.

Reduced the probability of Dragons planning an assassination attempt.

Every day, the Sons paced in and out of the monumental glass doors, their cloaks

buttoned up to their chins, and a stiff, frozen-over air pervading. Folders and binders of

files on civilians passed through the doors each day. Some packed full of details, from

the tiniest scar to body type. And others, skimming over as if the person mattered no

more than howmuch they ate per month.

Trained in professional data-filing, they were of little use anywhere but where

they were employed. The rest born into their station were recruited just like the Hill

boys, and sent off to mass army-camps. Trained in tactical. Armed to the earlobes. They

were reduced to the same office as any of their inferiors. And all because the Father

appreciated the benefits of a mind. Of having one, and of using it. And using it not for

emotional satisfaction, but logic. Thinking-ability. Strategy.

Anyone thought to be under the standard level of logic and emotion suppression

at the end of their final year in school seemed to vanish. No word of how or why was

given, and none was asked for. “The Father knows what is right.” “The Father will take

good care of them.” “Long live the Father.”

For ten years, no one had heard of a time-jumper surviving the fall, for one thing.

Or, for that matter, living long enough to tell his harrowing tale of time-warp. But

February the twelfth, 2149, Garret Lockley fell through his bathroom mirror.