Reality School In The Entropy Zone Part 2

I nearly collapsed with relief, my heart pounding. Where was Lisa? She hadn't seen this; I had to go tell her. I ran from the room, looking for her.

She wasn't in the cafeteria, or in the dorm. I finally found her outside behind the main building, huddled on the gra.s.s under some trees. Not alone. With Danny Hutton. I ran up, yelling, "Lisa! Danny! You won't believe what--" before I saw what they were doing. They were kissing. No, more than kissing. They were groping. Frantically.

I staggered to a halt, the words still tumbling out of my mouth. Lisa shrank, glaring at me with murderous fury. "Would you get the h.e.l.l out of here?" she snapped.

I stood there, dumbfounded and humiliated. "But--" I choked, not knowing what to say next. I was appalled--but was it because she was doing this when the whole world was at stake, or because I was jealous? And who was I jealous of--Lisa or Danny?

Lisa seemed unable to say anything else; she just glared. Danny looked away from both of us, in acute embarra.s.sment. In the end, I fled back to our room, hardly remembering why I'd been looking for her in the first place.

That night, a loud concussion woke us all up and sent us running to the TV. It took a few minutes for the backup generator to come on.

Someone had managed to blow up the power lines, after all.

The lava parts like the Red Sea, a river of fire on either side. I watch, stunned, as walls of glowing earth rise around me. Can my own belief have such power? I descend into the earth, flaming magma coc.o.o.ning me.

Volcanic heat rages against my skin. I feel chaos plucking at me, magnetic fields streaming through me. I am floating in a firestorm of magma, like a spirit swimming in the fires of creation. It all begins to blur, then comes back into focus. It is not the Earth I am floating in, but a lake of luminous red, with a flame burning brightly at its center. It is an enormous candle, a sunken lake of wax, the light of the flame glowing through its translucent walls. It seems impossible.

But not as impossible as the voices.

The human voices, all around me.

"Alexandri!"

I heard my name called, and didn't want to answer. I was holed up in my room, weeping into my blanket.

I was no longer six years old, but--what? Thirteen? Thirty? My b.r.e.a.s.t.s hurt, and I'd gotten my period-- just after the miserable cold breakfast we'd all had together, after the loss of the continuum-bubble, after a nighttime vigil waiting for protesters to invade us, protesters who never came. I'd complained to Lisa about my cramps--we'd sort of made up, because with the whole world falling apart, what was the point of staying mad?--and she'd grunted, "Well, about time it happened to you, too! I don't know how much more time we'll have! Enjoy it while you can."

I'd stared at her, bewildered. I wasn't even sure exactly what she meant. After seeing her with Danny, I figured she meant s.e.x. But it was all so alien to me, so unreal. It wasn't bad enough what was happening to the world--did we have to grow old in these great, uneven jags?

We were just kids, d.a.m.n it!

I heard my name called again. But I didn't want to talk to anyone. If there'd been any counselors left in this place, I wouldn't have talked to them, either. I especially didn't want to hear about Lisa and Danny Hutton.

"Alexandri, come see what's happened outside!" It was Lottie Gern, and she was frantic. She ran back out of my room, and on to Roberta's room, shouting.

I cursed and went outside. I found Lisa and Danny and most of the kids, plus Mr. Playstead and Miss Jennings, standing on the front lawn. We'd kept sentries there all night, ready to call out at the first sign of intruders.

The forest had rolled up like an army, right to the front of the administration building. All the desert- gra.s.s-covered mountain slopes, across the little valley from the school property, were thick with dense woods.

There was no sign of any of the picket lines, or of any human life out there at all.

Faces begin appearing in the candle rim...faces like luminous gla.s.s, to match the voices. Danny...?

Roberta...?

Later that day, Harvey Snowden came running in yelling that the woods were dying. That was the first we knew that a total ecological catastrophe had set in.

"What do you mean, dying?" I yelled back from the rec room/battle center. A group of us had been trying to will reality back to normal, without effect. We'd just been listening to the TV for any mention at all of protesters, or of us. But all of our opponents, including Reverend Patwell, seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth.

"Dying!" He glared at me as if I were an idiot. "Don't you know what that means?"

"I know, and you don't have to yell!" I shouted. But his wild, reddened face scared me. Clearly something had scared him, and badly. "What did you see?" I asked, as the others gathered around.

"Dead trees--a lot of them--all dried out, like it was winter or something."

"It's not winter. It's May. Or June, maybe," said Lottie Gerns, sneezing for the hundredth time that hour.

Poor kid had come down with allergies, bad, and the infirmary had no more medicine.

"No foolin'," said Harvey. "But look down in the valley, and you'll see a lot of trees that don't know that."

He waved his delicate feminine hands in the air. "It's weird. Way down in the valley, it looks like fall-- everything's all red and yellow and brown. But closer up to us, everything's just dead. Shriveled."

"What's it mean?" asked Lottie.

"How the h.e.l.l do I know what it means? But it isn't right. And whatever it is, it's coming from here." He looked at each one of us in turn. "And it's spreading out into the rest of the world."

We learned more about it on the one staticky channel that remained on the television. The forests were indeed dying, and the effect was spreading rapidly. A wave of forest and plant death was rippling outward from our location. The trees first turned fall colors--and then, instead of going into hibernation, they died.

It had something to do with their chloroplasts. Plants everywhere were losing their ability to photosynthesize. It was spreading like a virus, or a plague, but much faster. No one knew what was causing it or how to stop it; but if it wasn't stopped, it would spread over the whole planet. And if photosynthesis stopped, well, that was it. Not just for humanity, but for everything that lived on the Earth.

Except maybe for some bacteria that lived on the bottom of the ocean and lived off nothing but chemicals from volcanic vents. Except for them, nothing. Not even the c.o.c.kroaches would survive.

Our world was fast disappearing. We could no longer reach anyone by telephone, because the phone lines were gone. I'd last talked to my parents two days before, and I felt a terrible emptiness inside; I wondered if they were even still alive in this reality. Mr. Tea and Mrs. Randolph took a car to venture down the mountain into town, to try to buy food and learn what was happening. They didn't return.

The rest of us met to decide what to do.

Mr. Playstead suggested, and we all finally agreed, that we had no choice but to go out into it, straight into the heart of the entropic fold. The disturbance seemed to emanate from a bank of fog that kept advancing and retreating within the woods flanking the school. We had been afraid to venture near it, wary of its unpredictable effects, fearful of dying for nothing. Without the shaping amplifiers, we had only our own powers, and those not fully developed. But everything we'd tried from outside the entropy zone had been futile. Perhaps from within, we could do more.

It was a terrifying prospect--but as Ashok pointed out in his quiet voice, if we didn't take the risk now, while the world was still recognizable, then our own reality-thread would just move farther and farther away. Soon it would be too late for us to have any chance at all of regaining it. Whatever the risks, this was our only hope.

Mr. Playstead stood before us, tugging at the frizzy grey beard he'd sprouted in the last three days. "For what it's worth, I'm going to go with you. I don't have your skills, but I can't just stay out here waiting for you to return. Perhaps...my experience will be useful, somehow." He hesitated and glanced at Miss Jennings, who nodded silently and stepped up beside him. She was not about to be left behind, either.

Mr. Playstead cleared his throat. "I want to emphasize one thing to you all. When the shapers were lost, we think it was because of a conflict with the other shaper teams. That must not happen again. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

There were some murmurs of a.s.sent, and some of impatience.

"I'm saying, we have to work in harmony. Whatever we find in there--and I don't know what it will be, but people--" and his voice was strained as he searched for words "--if we're going to defeat this thing, we have to do it together. Any one of you alone might not be strong. But the combined strength of a dozen shapers, in the fold--" He paused for breath, but then he seemed to run out of words, and he shrugged. He looked very old to me, and tired.

I turned to look at Lisa, and her eyes met mine for just a moment. She was scared, but soberly so. I was stunned by the maturity I saw there in her gaze, and wondered what was wrong with me that I wasn't so grown up myself. I was still petrified at the thought of not being a kid anymore. And terrified of what we had to do. I felt an impulse to grab her hand and hold it, the way we had that first time we'd seen the graduate shapers at work. But almost as if something in her had sensed my urge, I saw her reach out and find Danny's hand, on the other side of her. I saw Danny squeeze back. Stung, I looked away.

The decision to go was unanimous. We began joining up to go out in pairs. We would fan out in force, but each of us would have one primary buddy to watch out for. I looked at Lisa, and saw her eyes searching Danny's, their hands gripping each other's tightly. Humiliated all over again, I turned to see who else needed a partner.

Roberta, eyes full of fear behind her gla.s.ses, looked at me questioningly. I took a breath and nodded back.

We all walked into the dying forest together, abreast in a line. There was very little talk, just the rustle of leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath our feet. When we came to the wall of fog that marked the boundary, Roberta and I exchanged final glances.

Mr. Playstead raised his hand, surveying our lineup. "G.o.dspeed," he said.

As one, we stepped through...

And I stepped, alone, into the steaming jungle.

We are gathered in the circle of the candle now...like swimmers facing inward from the edge of a pool.

Some of my cla.s.smates look like fire elementals, rising from the molten lake, while others are extrusions of the walls, their waxen faces bulging. Danny, Roberta, Judy...(isn't Judy dead? I wonder)... Dzaou, Ashok...not everyone has made it here, but a lot of them have. I don't see Lisa. Or Harvey, or Mr.

Playstead, or Miss Jennings. Those who are here look human, but clearly all have been through wrenching changes. Some look like children, still; others like adults tempered by experience; and a few look...indescribable. Children's faces with ancient eyes... or eyes bright with youth surrounded by wrinkled and weary skin. I wonder what I look like.

It is a strange reunion: all of us gazing across the glowing lake at each other, but no one speaking. My feelings are indescribable. I know, without asking, that each of them has been through a terrifying journey--nine faces, nine harrowing trips through the corridors of chaos, struggling against...what? A dark master, on the throne of entropy? Or the meaninglessness of random decay? I know that we all meant to do something, but I'm not sure what. I wonder if any of the others know.

Someone begins singing, softly. It's Judy, I think. She's alive, and I wonder if it's because she never really died, or because we somehow brought her back to life. I don't quite recognize the song, but it has the sound of a lullaby. Then someone else, Danny, starts humming a hymn from church--a familiar tune, though I don't know the name. It's beautiful, and moving in a way it never was for me before. On the far side of the circle, half-hidden by the flame, I see the movements of someone dancing. I think it's Ellie, but can't be sure. But I imagine that Ellie, who thought Judy into death, has more reason than anyone to rejoice at her being alive and among us now.

The flame begins flickering brighter, hissing. It seems to be gathering power from the songs and the dance. The flame, I suddenly realize, is our expression, not entropy's. It is a kind of shaping, a way of reaffirming who we are--of saying, yes, we are still here, still human. I'm not sure what to do, but I feel memories bubbling up within me.

A bunny named Maxine appears in the air before me, and a donkey named Eeyore, and a bear named Berlioz. These are my friends who played with me in my first days at the reality school, when I was just a child. But there are other memories that want to come up, too--painful memories that ring with disharmony in my mind. My selfishness with a shaping...my rejection by Lisa...my cowardice... I don't want to let them come, don't want my failures and shame brought into the light. I struggle to hold them in, but I cannot. My shame begins to bubble out.

The faces of my friends are turning transparent. They take no notice of my shame. They begin moving about the circle, pa.s.sing through one another; three or four of them are singing, their song swelling the flame. I see other people's memories taking form like ghostly photographs in the air, and I realize that I am not the only one who has experienced failure. It comforts me a little.

But now everyone seems to be looking up.

New faces, overhead, gaze down from the haze of the outer nothingness...faces peering like ghosts of haunted pasts.

It takes me a moment to recognize those faces...even Lisa's. She is trapped, they are all trapped, in a nothingness outside the warmth of the candle flame. They seem to be prisoners of the devouring entropy, while we somehow are regenerating our reality here in the shelter of the candle. There is a gulf dividing us, and they cannot cross it. They cannot join us.

"Lisa?" I whisper.

Her eyes turn slowly to meet mine.

Help me--!

I can hear the plea, unspoken. And I cannot answer it. If they cannot cross that gulf, how can I help?

I want to call out to her, to tell her to do it herself, to come to this place where we are gathered, singing. I want to tell her to come out of the darkness into the fire.

Help me--!

Lisa's eyes, pale and frightened in the sky, will not release mine. But I don't know how to escape from that darkness any more than she does.

Or do I?

My mind reverberates with memories: of our play together at the school, the excitement and fear we shared, learning to be shapers. Shapers. The memories flash in my mind, fiery with the flux of entropy.

Something in that entropy does not wish me to remember. We are shapers. I remember her choosing Danny over me; and even now, I tremble with anger and hurt. So much time has pa.s.sed. Must I still be angry? I tremble with the memory of my aloneness, of the times I sensed her presence across the infinity of s.p.a.ce and time, and could not speak to her.

Was it that I could not, or would not?

We are human. We are shapers.

Out there in the darkness beyond the fire, my friend is trapped. Perhaps she could come here, into the light of the fire, if there were a s.p.a.ce for her. I am aware of Danny gazing up at her in desire and anguish, and I wonder, Can he not help her? And without quite knowing why, I know he cannot. It is not his anger that keeps her out. A s.p.a.ce must be made in the circle for her, and it is not Danny who must make it.

The flame of the candle beats hot with the singing, with cries of, We are shapers! We are! coming from the others here with me...and I almost imagine that I hear the voice of G.o.d Himself saying, I am who I am! from the flame.

I am suddenly certain that there is no room for any other here, unless I make it myself. And how can I possibly make room, unless I take Lisa's place out there, in the void and the darkness, in the chaos?

The songs quicken with urgency. A hundred memories s.h.i.+mmer and dance in the air. I am not alone in my anguish. The others face similar choices. But only I face my choice.

A memory looms before me: a monstrous-looking being dying in the depths of the sea, because I was afraid to save it. Because I was afraid.

I am a shaper.

Help me! whispers a gaze from across the gulf of darkness. Last time, you let me die.

Electrified with fear, I make the decision. I begin to move away from the light...rising to challenge the hissing chaos. To trade places with Lisa.

The transformation takes forever, hurting hurting hurting. The candlelight recedes in the darkness, but not quietly. I feel the darkness and light shuddering, clas.h.i.+ng; and I am caught between them, the dark fires of entropy flas.h.i.+ng around me, charging me with despair. Will I die here? Or live in the darkness forever?

I feel Lisa's presence pa.s.sing me, on its way into the light. My anger burns all over again. Why have I given my life, when it was Danny she wanted? Why?

The chaos swirls around me. I am being swallowed by the anger. I have tried again to forgive, and failed.