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Worship
Brin grasped his seat tightly as the van thundered down the road, Joe driving at a break-neck speed as soon as they made it out of the city. Faces crowded him from every direction, people talking and laughing, playing with their masks and wondering what the mean temperature of the day was. The van had three rows, each full with three people, and Joe sat alone in the front. It was time to announce, and everyone settled down, the rumble of the van the only noise in the sudden quiet. They started in the back. "Henderson, pupil, thirty-one months." Joe nodded in the rear-view mirror. "Gladys, pupil, twenty-four months." Gladys had her hair pulled back into a tight pony-tail that bounced around with every bump the van took. Brin had gravitated towards her back in the warehouse but she wouldn't even look at him. Two more people went, and then it was Brin's turn. "Brin, uh, beginner. I'm only five months," he said, and he could feel the people on both sides of him stiffen. Someone sucked in their breath. Joe held up his hand, shaking his head without losing his smile. "Five months is but the minimum time, my brothers," Joe said, his voice ringing out loudly from the front seat. "Everyone starts proving themselves somewhere. Brin, come up here." Brin shuffled forward to the empty passenger seat and Joe put his hand on Brin's shoulder. Joe was a big man, his large frame barely fitting behind the driver's wheel, both his knees shoved up underneath the dash. "Do you believe in Him, son?" Brin smiled nervously. "I do," he said quietly. Joe spoke louder. "Do you worship at His Chemical Feet?" "I do," Brin replied, glancing back at the rest of the van and smiling. "Your five months of worship are not but for a lifetime of his Chemical Goodness?" "They are!" Brin shouted, trembling under Joe's grasp. "I do!" Joe leaned out of the driver's seat and put his arm around Brin's shoulder, steering the van with the other. "Everyone starts somewhere," he said quietly. "Our Chemical God has taken this one. Do not be alarmed at a beginner." Brin crept back to his seat, and everyone else announced in turn. Nobody came close to Brin's newness. After the last man spoke, Joe clapped his hands and adjusted the rear-view mirror again. "Per the writ, we all have announced. Oh, wait, excuse me." Joe smiled meekly, his eyes darting quickly to the mirror and back. "Joe, preacher, seventy-three months. Now, we have all announced. Take the safety of this knowledge that we are all dedicated, we are all proven, even someone just starting out like young Brin here." Joe reached under his seat and pulled out an envelope and handed it to the man directly behind him. "Tom, please distribute these lists." Tom passed out sheets with a line drawing of a building and a list of what they were looking for. "Each map has three numbers, each group being responsible for their number." Tom spoke in a monotone and avoided eye-contact, never raising his eyes above the chest level. Brin took the sheet from him and scanned the list: pyrazine, lithium in any form, plain old HCl. Other chemicals he had never heard of nor could pronounce. Tom leaned forward in his seat and mumbled something to Joe but Joe just shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he replied, and Tom sat back, his long and skinny build pressing down into the seat like a stone statue. Brin looked up and saw Joe watching him in the rear-view mirror. He looked away, down at his seat, and listened to the subdued chatter in the van for the rest of the trip. The barren landscape was interrupted by a complex of smokey gray buildings in the distance. Joe yanked the van off the road and drove over a downed fence, squealing the tires as he swung the van next to a loading dock at the rear of the largest building. "Alright, grab a container from the back of the van and stick with your team. You can combine everything but the lithium, but I don't expect we'll find much of that here." Brin started to get up but Tom reached over and jiggled Brin's mask, which was still hanging around his neck. "You'll want this on, kid," he intoned. Brin pulled it up, and Tom threw the door open, and everyone shuffled out. Joe handed out the containers and swung a metal dolly over his shoulder and pointed at Brin's team. "Brin, go with Tom. The rest of you, come with me." Brin didn't remember the names of the other two people and Tom's eyes floated in the space behind the mask's faceplate when Brin asked him what was up. Tom turned away wordlessly and trudged into the building. The one guy dropped back and introduced himself: "Charlie." Brin shook his hand and Charlie gave him a flashlight to illuminate the map. Tom led the way down the narrow corridor, his hands never moving from his side. Brin guessed that the building used to be a school or an academy, and old desks and boxes filled every hallway. The other guy dropped back as well. "I heard this used to be occupied by Mechies." "Yeah?" replied Charlie. "You saw their poles on the way in, we're definitely in Mechanical territory." "You know, we raided this building years ago." "Yeah?" "The list is so shit now, they'll send us out for anything." Brin opened his mouth to ask about the list but Tom shouted for them to keep up. He disappeared into a doorway ahead of them, and Brin hurried after Charlie and his friend as they followed. The room appeared to be an old lab of some sort, and Tom pointed at several bottles along the back wall. He started rifling through old desks, pulling the drawers out and throwing them to the ground. He knocked over an old autoclave, spreading a cloud of ancient dust throughout the room. Charlie produced a crowbar and helped Brin jimmy open a lock to reveal a series of marked and sealed vials. Brin compared them to the list, and broke open his container and started pouring everything in. "You sure this is safe?" he asked Charlie. "Joe said so." Tom appeared next to them, holding a jagged piece of wood, a broken leg from one of the desks. "Move," he said in his flat voice, and Brin barely had enough time to jump back before Tom smashed open a locked storage cabinet sitting in front of them. He sifted through the contents but didn't find anything. He dropped the leg and walked away. Brin looked over at Charlie but he just raised his eyebrows and turned aside. Brin collected the rest of the chemicals and searched around but found nothing more. He followed Charlie back into the hallway and they came upon a closed door with a strange looking device sitting over the frame. It had a dull grey housing from which several tubes extended, and an accentuated arm that dangled limply from its side. Charlie's friend pointed at it. "See, Mechanical. They definitely were all over this place." "What does it do?" Brin asked. "Who knows? Vaporize you if you tried to break in? They're a bunch of tyrants." Charlie spoke up. "I heard that if you even just walked into a Mechanical town, you're turned into a drooling slave. That they take over your mind with their machinery." Charlie got up on a chair and stared at the device. He gingerly poked at it with one finger. "I don't know, it looks all broken up here. Covered in dust and spider webs." He got down and tried to open the door but found it locked. "Must be something important in there," Brin said. Tom came over and tried the door and shrugged. They heard noise from down the corridor and Joe and his team appeared, Joe rolling a large metal drum on his dolly. He examined the door and the device in turn. "Open it," he told Tom. Tom threw his shoulder into the door but only managed to dislodge more dust. He backed up a few feet and heaved his body but the door would not budge. He slammed himself into it again and again until Charlie offered the crowbar. Tom snatched it from Charlie's hands and jammed it into the frame and worked it back and forth until finally there was a loud, satisfying crack. Joe pushed Tom aside and gave the door a solid kick, slamming it backwards and opening the room. Joe grinned. "Children, this is what I was hoping we would find. Our Chemical Lord has blessed us today, he has led us to a secret grail of much value. Behold, the building's ventilation room. Protected all these years by a pagan artifact from a false god." Joe led them into the room and pointed at the large machines standing along the wall. Brin recognized them as the typical apparatus needed to filter the toxic air. In the far corner was a large, spherical tank. Joe laid his hands upon the tank's rusty surface. "What's in here, the chemicals contained within, they'll make for a bountiful harvest indeed."
Joe lifted the last metal drum into the back of the van and called for everyone to gather around. Brin felt something brush his shoulder and saw Tom standing directly behind him, quiet and stiff and way too close. Joe cleared his throat. "I was a lonely man, once. I was married, but I could not hold it together. Peace-of-mind, happiness, these things escaped me. What was normal for others, was not normal for me." People nodded at this, Brin nodded as well. Joe flashed his meek, little smile. "There are no answers out there, my children. This is known, this is fact. But that's not all there is to the story, is it?" Joe took Gladys by the hands, and leaned down so they were eye-to-eye. "Because knowing that, knowing that there are no answers, isn't that an answer in itself?" Gladys nodded vehemently. "The world requires your acceptance, but it also wants to challenge you. How can we find peace if we do not grasp this?" Joe bowed his head and everyone stood silently together. "Now, let us finish our job. Our van departed to this place with just our faith, but returns with the elements that He wants and He needs. We did very well today, children." "There is only one Lord and his name is not Jesus," Joe said, and everyone laughed. Brin watched the van drive off and didn't notice the cask tipping to one side until Tom reached out and steadied it. "Be careful, I don't want my feet to melt off," he said flatly, and looked away. "Uh, thanks," Brin replied. He repositioned the container and held it tightly for the rest of the drive. At the processing facility, everyone handed in their findings while Joe wheeled over three large drums on his dolly. Men and women in white shirts and skinny ties took note of everything, asking people to sign off on their individual deliveries. Brin stared at the large poster on the far wall that read: "From Chemicals Comes Life". Joe summoned the group together. "Brothers, sisters, this might be a little unorthodox but I have been informed of a great opportunity. A wondrous opportunity, in fact." Brin resisted a smile as he pictured the charismatic Joe pulling everyone together in a massive hug, his arms swelling to embrace the entire group at one time. Instead, Joe just put his arms around Gladys and Tom, the giant smile never leaving his face. "The day is late but we have one more trip to make. If you are willing, if you are able, please take five minutes and meet me at the van." When Brin arrived, everyone else was already there and Joe thanked them all for deciding to come along. In the van, Joe talked about the chemicals they found today. The quantities of tetracycline. The combined molecular weight of all that HCl. The benefit every run gave to the Cause. "After all, isn't this a Mechanical device?" "Even Electrical?" someone else piped in. "Those are excellent questions." Joe adjusted the rear view mirror to see everyone in the back. "You're probably expecting me to say something about the engine being nothing without fuel, and therefore is truly Chemically driven. Or maybe you're expecting me to say that this van is old and therefore grandfathered in, but that's not the case either." He smiled. "Well, this van is old. It would announce well beyond any of us. It's a trooper that never tires, never stops, and deserves our respect through and through. "But let me answer in another way: I submit to you that any old idiot can blindly follow scripture. I dare any one of you to walk through the city and not bump into the scores of preachers yelling endlessly about the Chemical God, or even any one of the countless pagan gods out there. The key to following scripture successfully is understanding the core, the essence. Don't just read the words, read between the words." Joe's smile grew even larger in the tiny rear view mirror. "The faith is hard, my children. But the world is hard too. So let us focus on that, and not the fact that we use an old rusting van to drive us from place to place." The van went silent, and Brin could see Charlie's friend turn red out of the corner of his eye. Brin cleared his throat. "Joe?" "Yes, young Brin, what is on your mind?" "People say that good things have come about from the country splintering. But I never understood that. Why do you think people say this?" Joe was silent for a moment, and Brin began to worry that he said something wrong, that perhaps he asked the wrong question. But Joe answered: "When 'people' talk, they usually just regurgitate hollow wisdom or empty claims. But in this case, I think they are correct. What good has come about from the Great Break? The quick answer is freedom. Take personal freedom: no longer is there a government to profile every thought, read every message, analyze every memory of the people. Power corrupts, never forget that. But there can be no corruption when there is no one to corrupt." Gladys raised her hand. "What about religious freedom? I always thought there would have been no way to follow the Cause if we had to pledge our allegiance elsewhere." Joe nodded. "Exactly, Gladys. I think the Last President knew this in his final days, and he took some vital steps to send us down this path. He did not pick the future for all his people, but instead, he set in motion a plan that would allow the True Path to emerge from all the chaos. He knew that the chaos would be the lesser price to pay. "Everyday, we see evidence of this struggle. We know about the Chemical Way, but not everyone sees the same light. The territory we drive through right now used to belong to the followers of Mechanical,ousted by our own Chemical Righteousness. In fact, you can still see their leftover implements, their devices, dotting the landscape." Joe slowed down and pointed in the distance, his finger following a tall metal pole sitting next to the highway. The upper half of the mast was charred and jagged, whatever machinery there long since destroyed. "Let that destruction be a reminder of how this land was taken back from the Mechanical God." Brin watched the passing poles, the next one appearing on the horizon just as the last one vanished behind them. The van was quiet, and Brin presumed everyone was mulling over Joe's discourse. But Brin's reverie was interrupted as Joe pulled the van off the road and drove down a dirt hillside, the bumpy ride forcing Brin to hold onto his seat tightly. For many minutes they continued downwards, the landscape curving away out of the front of the van, and eventually they stopped at the bottom of the deep depression. "Masks on," Joe said and threw open the door, stepping out into the arid, dusty exterior. Brin slid out of the van onto broken pavement, the skeleton foundations of a few destroyed buildings the only other feature of their destination. Dirt collected around the leftover bricks, and the wind gave a quiet but persistent whistle in everybody's ears. Joe waited for everyone to collect around him. "My children, thank you for coming." His voice boomed out across the barren landscape. "Today started like any other but will end with liberation. "I submit this to you: mankind did not make it this far by magic. Our civilizations did not spring up out of nothing. Our cities didn't grow from seeds." Joe reached in his pocket and pulled out something small but Brin could not tell what it was. "No, these things were made by people, individuals like you and me and all our hard work. Our backbreaking labor. And when that wasn't enough, we put our minds to the task, and created technology to help us. Who among you would disagree with these statements?" A slight murmur ran through the crowd, but people looked back blankly. He held up his hand with the device but paused and brought it back down. "After this, you might think that all I have taught you up until now was false. I want you to remember that it was but merely a stepping stone to the True Path. "And now it is time to take that step." Brin looked around and saw confusion on everybody's faces. "Joe?" asked Gladys. "What you're saying... it doesn't sound very Chemical." "It isn't," he replied. Charlie stepped forward. "So what is this all about?" "Don't you feel it?" Joe said. "Can't you feel it taking you over, welcoming you, drawing you in?" Joe smiled. "Don't you feel your new God?" Brin watched Charlie, watched his face as he processed Joe's words. "It feels … nice." A quiet ripple of agreement spread through the crowd. Joe took a step back. "Behold, my children! I present you to the Mechanical Lord!" Joe held up a small remote control and pushed a button on it. The ground rumbled and then erupted all around them as huge metallic poles pushed their way up, each rising out of the earth to a height many meters above everybody's heads. Brin stared at the mechanical dance of equipment unfolding and deploying on the top of every pole, antennas and dishes and other protrusions springing forth to greet the world, spinning around and emitting a low keening sound. "Bow!" Joe bellowed. "Bow before Him and His Implements!" One by one everybody standing lowered themselves, pressing their knees into the dirt. One by one everybody obeyed Joe's command, until only two remained standing. Joe walked up to Brin and smiled. He pointed at Tom, who stood there blankly. "I didn't expect that over-baked husk to obey, but what about you? Why aren't you listening to the Mechanical God?" Brin snorted, glancing sideways at everybody cowering behind them, showing Joe the tiny filters snug within his ears. Joe laughed. "And how did you resist the Chemical God?" "You mean, how did I resist all that shit you guys put into the water? Fight fire with fire, Joe. What was one more additive in my system to keep my mind clear?" "Brin!" Charlie hissed. "Just give yourself over! It's not that bad." Joe's smile grew even bigger. "He's right, you know. With each passing year, the Chemical God grows weaker, desperately collecting any chemical He can find to control His people. Do you really want to resist the Mechanical God for that?" "I don't want either," Brin replied. Joe's smiled wavered, and he went for his pocket but Brin was quicker, pulling out a handgun from beneath his shirt. Joe froze mid-motion, staring at the weapon, and slowly raised his hands into the air. "An apostle of the Ammunition Goddess!" someone whispered but Brin shook his head. "I am no such thing." "But it appears you do worship something, young Brin," Joe said, glancing down at the gun. "No more than you do, Joe. You seem to only be in love with labels: Chemical one day, Mechanical the next. Are you off to join the Nukes later?" "What would it matter to you?" "Because it all needs to stop, Joe. Humanity isn't headed down the one True Path, it's clumping together into these isolated cults and starving itself to death." Brin pointed at the nearest pole. "Turn these things off." "It is the Will of the Mechanical God that they be on. He wants these children, and His machines must run again." "Free like you?" Joe sneered. "The Mechanical God could flatten you in a second. Do you think Tom over there will ever be free again?" Still holding his hands up, Joe slowly walked over to Tom. "You see, Tom was my most loyal soldier only because he had one too many chemical treatments." Joe waved his hands in front of Tom's eyes. "Hello in there!" he shouted and then pulled back and struck Tom in the face before Brin could react. Tom fell to his knees and Joe hit him again, smashing his fist down into Tom's cheekbones, almost dislodging his mask, knocking him flat to the ground. Joe turned to Brin and put his hands back up in the air. "There is no freedom. It's one God or another. One master or another. Mine surrounds us, yours is in your hands." Joe started moving in the direction of Charlie. "Stop, Joe," Brin said, waving his gun. "Don't take another step!" But Joe walked right up to Charlie and punched him with a left hook. Charlie screamed and covered himself with his hands but didn't attempt to move away. "STOP!" Brin yelled but Joe knocked Charlie's hands aside and punched him again. He grabbed Charlie's hair and brought up his knee, slamming Charlie in the face and Brin yelled again for Joe to stop but Joe kept striking Charlie and Brin kept yelling and the gun went off. Still smiling, Joe crumpled to the ground. Charlie fell backwards, covering his face but not moving. Everybody remained silent in the kneeling position. Brin went up to Joe and took the remote off of him. He pressed several buttons until the machinery shut off. The poles remained standing, staring down at the group, but they no longer made a sound. Charlie's friend got up and ran over to Charlie, helping him to his feet. Gladys slowly stood up and walked over to Brin, a little shaky on her feet. "Joe was wrong," Brin said. "We don't need gods to survive. Our servitude isn't inevitable." Charlie looked up from the ground where he was nursing his swollen face. "I hope you're right." But Brin looked over at Tom who just stared back silently, blood streaming down his own battered face. In the van, Brin told everyone it was time to announce. "I'll go first. "Brin, free-agent. I've been doing this for twenty-two months now." He looked back at Gladys. "Gladys," she said hesitantly. "Zero days... and counting."
Jefferson writes speculative fiction when he can and has been previously published in The Harrow, Nanobison, and Yellow Mama. |
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