Pearls and Blackness

a story of the future

Secrets and Madness

I closed always tired eyes

and traveled through time

and through sacred places in my heart,

my soul raveled and unraveled.

Were they mysteries, or dark secrets,

or just madnesses that claimed me,

exchanging innocence for pain,

happiness for genius?

I had to live in uncertainty,

walking always unformed ground,

and, only later, would I open tired eyes.

from the diary of Elke Salo

I wake all confused and tired and overheeted, my whole body vibraytin all over.

I always dream about Mama. I’m six now so it’s been a year since the world changed, since she got sick and is in bed alla the time, since she left me sad and lonely with just Father to talk to.

I dream other things, too. Couldn’t sleep all night, just dreamed rolling round in my little bed. It was crazy dreams of trees and mountains and rivers, numbers, shapes, pictures, and chemicals… and Mama, of course.

It was realy like not sleeping at all, so when I wake, I keep my eyes closed tryin to sleep, and when I finally open my eyes, I remember where I am. Who I am.

But my head is full of ideas and pictures and messages and movies of scary things. Father says it’s cuz I’m a geenyus. I sit up and breethe and wipe away my teers.

Then I breethe again, deep this time. And I pray to God and the Angels and Yeshua and Mother Mary, like I do every mornin. Just prayin for my Mama.

My little room is cold from aycee, and water drops drip down my windows on the outside, the part I can see between the curtains. I can already tell it’s a sleepless endless kinda morning, and the sun’s already up and hot in a pale sky. But even with the inside cold, I’m all icky swetty and hot anyways… like times I been sick with flu. I’m cold and wet, and my brain is all twisty, and my heart hurts so I wanna cry some more. But I won’t.

I change into some light pants and a animal picture shirt from my dresser and just sit on the floor to put on my sox and tennies. I know I gotta get up evenshully or Father will be mad. And I realy wanna go to the labratories when nobody’s there. My dreams want me to make something with Father’s machines.

I’ll do it alone, cuz Father and the engineers wouldn’t understand anything. Not like I do.

I spend a few minits with my notebook, writing and layin in my bed, peekin out the window once in a while and scribbling my dream pictures. I just look, watch, the park below. Just waiting to have it change some, or for me to change some, to go back the way things were, maybe.

The morning sun climbs higher in a sky stripey with chemical trails. It shines way too hot, making Barnett Park kinda too brown, like a big dirty toad, kinda ugly and mean.

I don’t mean it.

I realy like ugly toads, but I don’t like the river no more, so small and muddy and too few critters. Or maybe I don’t like the river because my Mama’s so sick now and can’t go there with me.

I’m so stupid sometimes. I just sit here and keep hoping I’ll see Mama there sitting….

all pretty by the water,

or waiting for me.

But she’s sleeping now. She sleeps. It’s mostly what she does.

I realy wish I could sleep more, because I look tired, reflected in the glass with the river running cross my eyes. Maybe if I slept better I’d stop thinking bout toads and bout being stupid and tired and stuff.

There’s nobody out there round the park, out the window. Not just because a lotta people been sick the last hunnerd years since the Last War, nuh-uh.

It’s the lock-downs that’ve been going on longer than I been alive, nobody allowed to ever travel more than 20 minits away from their houses … to protek the environment somehow. But that’s why there’s never many folks out here.

Nothing bad is happening tho, Father says. Even if it’s being hot now… it’s just the way it is once in a while. Gets plenny cold in the winter, too.

Most weather changes right now are from the scientists playing a powerful magnetic harp up into the sky. That’s what Father tells me anyways.

But he also winks at me and laughs and says “we know bad changes will be coming, we just need people worried a little early.”

Father comes to my room to check on me because it’s kinda late and I ushully don’t sleep so much on a Saturday.

He smiles and kisses me on my fourhead, sayin, “Get up and out, grumpy girl. Go see your friends. They’ve been up an hour now.”

He opens all my curtins, wide, wide, and it’s sooper bright and hurts my eyes. He just laughs and leaves, closing the door kinda loud.

Father wants me to soshullize more, to hang out with the other kids, so I walk toward the cafeteria.

There are no classes or brain traning sessions…. Thank you, God, for Saturdays….

and I’m tired of reading and writing anyway…

and I’m not realy hungry,

but I should eat.

I take my time, walking the endless hallways that’re kinda dark and cold. Makes me wear shoes a lot and I hardly ever see my toes no more.

The place is ginormous now, takes me forever to get to the main stairs and down past the dormatorries and to the big ol’ cafeteria. It’s dark in there cept for the little bit of window light thru the curtins and the bright movie screen.

“Elke!” Lizzie calls to me as I walk in. “We’re watchin’ Alice in Wonderland . . . the old Disney one.” She waves to me and I sigh and walk over. I pick up a veggie breakfast samwich from the table and press the heat-tab on the wrapper. I’m hungry and it taysts good, like eggs and spinitch.

She hands me a little note that says, “dont talk bout Sofie’s eyes.”

Jomes and Katny are layin on the cold tiles, and Lizzie drops back down batween them, while the rest, 11 of them, sit in a bunch of cafeteria chairs. It’s like they’re in a trance, just watching, because they like it so much. Kinda like what happens when we’re hooked with Father’s Great Machine for brain traning.

They’re not even on the RiseUp or NewFace apps on their microtablets, for talking to the world, like they ushully are. We’re all popular there already.

Sometimes I think it don’t make sense that we’re the ones that are sposed to save everybody. We’re just kids watching Disney movies and going to special school here and getting torchured by machines and helping engineers invent things and new technolojees.

Genius kids, but just kids who been chosen by God, I guess. That’s what the people say, anyways.

I sit next to little Sofie, who has two big ol’ black eyes and Leidan has his arm in a sling. They don’t notice me, just keep watching the movie. Sofie doesn’t even know she’s cryin big tears. None of us realy thinks about other kids having injuries, kinda normal for us all, I guess. We seem to get hurt easy. Even thinking about it seems to slide right outa my head. I never even remember how I get hurt, ushully.

I sit there in my chair and stare at the giant catterpiller who’s puffin smoke outa some funny thing. I might as well be in Omaha insted of watching this again. I can’t stop thinking bout the lab and my dreams.

I know I’m only 6, but I have ways for using the fabricators that supprise the old expert engineers. My ideas created the first plastic and steel alloy when I was just 5.

I say “sorry” to Yeshua for being a little too pridefull.

“Sofie,” I tap her shoulder and she jumps, so scared. “You wanna come to the lab with me?” She shakes her head and goes back to watching the movie and crying.

I gettup and walk into the dark halls.

I pass the Main Entrance on the way down to the basement Lab, but I hafta hide myself inside a doorway round the corner when the Gray Man comes in, wearing his gray suit and boaler hat. I don’t like him. He makes me nervus. But he spends a lot of time with Father, so I hope he’s OK. Everyone calls him Mr. Winter.

He comes downstairs instead of going up, and I think he don’t see me in the gloomy dark hall and crouched in a doorway outta sight. But he gets to the door where we aren’t allowed ta go, where the Great Machine is, in that old tunnel Father found. He opens it… and he turns suddenly to look at me, smiling. I gasp and clutch my big note box tighter.

He says something, I think, as he disappears through the door…. then my eyes see all black like its night….

I find myself back in the cafeteria, and the movie is almost over. There are a lot more kids there than before, dozens more that I don’t know… but I do. They’ve been here a while, maybe a year, and I know them all.

The world changed again.

I take Lizzie’s note outa my pocket, and it’s blank now. Shoulda put it in my magic note box. Wouldn’t have changed then. Again, I’m the only one who seems to notice anything strange.

I go through all my dubble memories. Maybe Mama is better now, but no, she’s not. And it’s still today and still not lunchtime yet. Somehow I know there’s two new dormatorries for the new kids to separate boys and girls. Our house is even bigger now.

I whisper quiet to Sofie, “Are these kids new?” Her black eyes are normal now, and she’s not crying. She laughs at me, thinking I’m being silly, and I nearly cry.

I feel like I’m dreaming again as I sneak down the halls in my socks, with my note box and tennies in my hands.

Don’t wanna see the Gray Man again.

The lab is empty, as I expected, quiet and dark. I keep the lights off soze nobody else comes in all nosey and kicks me out.

The robots here watch me all curious, and two walk over to talk to me, to ask me what I need. They are tall and skinny, with sooper-hard ceramic bodies and hands for picking up hot stuff. Very robotty-looking, they are.

I call them Rodney and Rupert… I name them all with R names because they’re robots.

They call me Miss Salo.

Rodney and Rupert know most everything about running the Fabricaters. Don’t talk much, tho. I ask them to turn off the two closest vid-eyes, lock the doors, and pull the shades down on the small windows at the entrance, while I put on my little white coat and goggles.

They also bring me my step stool because I’m so small and can’t see inta the machines so well.

The Fabricaters are real quiet, left on resting mode, but the matter hoppers need some filling. Somehow I know everything I need to do and what materials I need to put into the hoppers…

lotsa particular rair earth metals

and aluminum, scandium, titanium,

eodymium, and most important … strontium ruthenate.

I find all the things I need in the cold storidge room. The strontyum ruthenate is only a dinky amount, but it’s enough. Nobody hardly ever uses it, so they won’t care if it’s gone.

My dreams tell me everything, but I’ve also been here before, working on these machines with the engineers. They teach us, and sometimes … more and more offen … we kids teach them things, too. We know stuff.

The other kids get ideas from their Great Machine connexion, and I get them from from my dreams, maybe Angels. I dunno. But nobody else knows that. Father stopped hooking me up to the Machine cause I was getting red icky painfull scars. The Machine didn’t like me much, I think.

The pearl fabricater is what I need, and it’s right in the middle of the room, sooper big and tall with scope ports to see inside with sooper small detales.

The pozzatronic pearl is the brain of Father’s robots, though my pearls will be different, I think. This fabricater is a microwave smelter, but I have the ginormous magnetic coils rolled over to the pearl fabricator, to guide the formation of a really crazy crystal metal alloys with speshul ossalating magnetic feelds. So much of my dreams was about how to program that.

After I splain everything, the robot staff does all the start-up work for me.

While the pearl materials are cooking, I go to the robot body fabricaters and edit the builded-in plans for the metals and ceramic used as well as the making of silver/copper/ceramic alloy nanowires for the nervis sistum.

I remember to change the overoll design of the robot, to a girl… well, woman …. shape, and I make her like Versenni, even using her face in the desine. The body will be more friendly looking and 10-times as strong and fast as Father’s robots. And pretty, too, I think.

After an hour, I go back to making the pearls because the metals are all ready and melty, and I use the micro-finger controls to mix the right metals and add them to the right places, moving along the sooper powerful magnetic fields as well as some loud sound freqwencies to create a realy small, mycroskopic crystal pattern all thru it.

The robots keep working on the body inner parts and I tell them which of Father’s electronic stuff to use that are OK and which ones need to be made better. I’ll take seven of the best processors and only the largest and the smallest servos.

I’m so tired, staring into the scope port, and the heat from the Fabricater is makin me swetty, but I weeve criss-crossy fine coils of coated strontyum ruthenate that’ll cause a speshul magnetic field in the pearls. There will be a small inner pearl tight within a larger hollow pearl. They’ll be able to spin in diffrent directions when it’s done. I make a second one without ruthenate, but I already finished one other, cooled down already, with ruthenate. In the third one, I used my own idea of layered perovskite alloys layed out in a speshul magnetic patturn in the two pearl layers. It’s all so easy peasy. I have my robots erase the records of the first 2.

I watch the three pearls cool in the Fabricaters, the magnetic fields from the coils making the inner and outer parts of each pearl spin in diffrent directions, making their own magnetic field and power to keep their spins going. It causes beautiful pearly glows round them. Two are goldy-white and the other one glows kinda red like the speshul dahlia flowers Mama used to like.

I ask the robots to clean up and to bring everything to my room late tonight, real secret. I know I should give Rodney and Rupert my special box to put the two ruthenate pearls in. They can bring everything, the pearls and the body parts, to hide in my closet later. I’ll take the pervskite pearl with me.

I need to hurry to dinner, because I already missed lunch. Don’t want everyone to know the strange stuff I’m doing. Maybe my dreams are just all crazy.

As I leave, I say, “Forget. All but the body and the white pearl.” I let the vid-eye recordings from the only active vid-eye stay. It’s on the far side of the room and didn’t see too much. I don’t know why, but it’s importunt.

When I get to the cafeteria, I put the white glowy pearl in my pocket.

Father isn’t at dinner. Maybe down in the tunnel with the Gray Man and the Great Machine. In my memories, Father has a beard now and is even more seerius. I miss when he used to be my Daddy and I didn’t have to call him Father.

I feel like I’m not really there, at dinner. Seems like I speak without thinking, without knowing, without listening. I’m kinda speaking and thinking with another voice and brain, not mine. And I am barely awake, cept for thinking about visiting my beautiful Mama.

I call this voice in my head Sarah, the one that can laugh and have fun, can talk to others without getting nervous, the voice that stop’s thinking of other things, like the sad things.

You’re welcome, Sarah says to me in the quiet of my brain.

Sarah “smiles” my face, and causes smiles on everybody else’s faces, too. I sit with my group, the twelve, but now there are maybe 40 more younger kids too. Fills our little cafeteria. The littler ones are not new, but they still look confuzed a little. They seem to like me tho.

Jomes and Leidan both wanna sit next to me at our dining table, one of four long tables that fill the whole room. And Katny looks a little jellous. But when the server robots (Ron and Rick) bring the trays out on carts, all attention is on the food.

I never seen steak before, or smelled it before, and it makes me sick to my stomak. I feel bad for the steak animals, the cows. But the other kids are excited. Don’t see much steak now, I guess, cuzza the disease from the Last War that kilt alotta cows dead.

Thankfully, Sarah decides we’re just gonna eat the smashed potatos and the zukini, making more friends by giving away pieces cut off our steak.

I worry maybe Sarah’s the only reason I have any friends at all. And Maybe the dreams are the only reason I have a brain. Maybe little Elke’s not so fun or smart as she’d like to be. Maybe Elke’s crazy.

I can’t cry while Sarah’s in control, tho I feel so lonely and useless. I just wanna see Mama, and it seems forever forever forever until I can scuse myself and go to see her.

Mama’s awake and eating when I visit her room. She’s sitting at her little table nexta the big window. I’m so happy she’s awake, and I run to her to give her a kiss and a big hug.

She holds me tight and gives me a big kiss back. She’s very weak, but we talk a lot, for almost an hour … and she even laughs. I tell her about my days, all lies (sorry Yeshua), about how nice everything is, and how many friends I have, and how I spend lotsa time with Father, and stuff. I want her to be happy as I am right now.

But she gets tired quick.

“Elke…,” is all she says, kinda soft. “I’m sorry, I’m like this.” I help her back to her bed and kick off my tennies to climb in with her, just to snuggle a little bit. I pray quietly to the Angels.

“I love you, Mama.”

“I miss you, Elke.” She kisses me on my head, which is leaned on her shoulder. “I miss me, too,” she says real quiet.

When Father comes in, Mama’s already asleep, but he kisses her cheek so sweet and wishes her, quiet-like, a good sleep. He looks strange with a thick dark red beard he didn’t have yesterday.

He knows I was in the lab today, and wants to know what I did, but he knows I made a pearl. He seems kinda proud, I think, but a little mad too. I’m not sposed to work there without the engineers.

I pull the lone pearl outa my pocket, still glowing pearly bright, humming and spinning inside. I tell him it’s made with insilated strontyum pervskite patterned layers and not copper-silver wire coils. But he’s kinda excited. He can see the coiling is different, too.

Father kisses me goodbye on my head and goes in the hall. I hear him talking to the Gray Man (I think), quiet but I also hear him in my head a little. “Go back there,” he says. “It’s OK, but go back and fix what you need to. Learn what you can.”

I get back in bed with Mama, but suddenly it goes all black again, like I’m blind.

And now I’m sitting in the chair nexta Mama’s bed.

The world changes again. Again it goes black.

I’m in my own room. Alone.

Then I’m in the hallway

and then back in Mama’s room.

Again

and again

and again

I’m in many different places, until I’m scared and crying and wondering what’s happening and if I’m gonna die.

When it’s all over, I’m in my little room laying on the floor. I have so many memories on toppa each other. In the last one, three engineers were waiting for me in the lab and they helped me make the pearls.

I look in my closet and find the body parts of my robot in the closet. She’s pretty, even in parts and with no hair on her head yet.

My magic protection box is there, too, in the closet. When I open it, I find the two pearls, one glowy dahlia red and one pearly-white next to my papers and notebook. Its just like I remembar first. The box realy protects against changes.

I’m gonna call my new robot “Dahlia” for the mysterious robot that Versenni met in the Last War…. and for the color of the pearl I’m gonna use.

I look in my memories to see how Mama is now, after the changes. I see Mama got very sick when eating her dinner and had to go to the firmary for medicul help. I couldn’t see her at all today.

I pray to Yeshua and the Angels to make her be OK, but I still worry so much.

I shake and cry and then sit huddled on the floor, then I go into my tiny bathroom and get up on the stool, lookin in the mirrer. I splash my face with cold water and just let it drip all over my shirt.

I see that somebody put a rose in a glass on my sink. Maybe the cleaning robots, Reggie and Rob, told to by the house lady, Mrs. Janus. I smile under my tears ’cause it’s a pretty white rose,

and when I touch it I feel like ….

I’m someplace else. I’m like someone else. I cry til I can hardly see, but it’s happy teers now because the world is beautiful, underneath everything I see, under the brown and dust, cool green under the hot sun, no chemical stripes in the sky. I’m the pretty girl in green. I’m all the other students. I’m everybody. I’m Elke… I’m Gaia.

I see Great Gramma Versenni, but young, in the mirrer where I should be, I think, but no … it’s not Versenni from before, she’s Versenni from another time that maybe ain’t happened yet.

The future Versenni sees me in the mirrer too, looks me in the eyes a little supprised. She’s happy and I cry even more. I love her so much. I can see she’s so wise.

It passes. It passes. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. But I cry anyways, happy tears. Maybe it’s all gonna be good, but then I cry more sad tears for Mama.

I decide I will try not to cry anymore. Not ever again. I need to help save the world.

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Original draft published at https://vocal.media but was removed.

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