What's Next?

I had figured that there was information and research that we didn’t have access to as Ergasia, just things that there was no need for us to know. But I had no idea exactly how much it was. The more I read and watched as I did Carter’s menial tasks for him, the more I was taken aback at how much we truly didn’t know, even those of us that were living in the Metropolis working so close to the Arbiters. Most of the Inveilgers didn’t have a Lens, so I sent articles to the printer so I could share what I had found.

“Whatchya printing?” Carter had asked when he came to check up on me.

I had printed materials on how the Lens was made as well and showed him those papers, “Just wanted some of this in print to take notes on, I still like pencil and paper sometimes.”

He hummed in agreement, slowly nodding his head, “I understand, nothing’s quite like it sometimes. Say, have you ever tried drawing?”

His sudden question caught me off guard, making me stop my sorting and look at him instead, “Drawing?”

“Drawing, you know, like pictures and stuff.”

“I don’t think I ever have.”

“Well, if you like writing with pencil and paper over using our Lens, then you might like drawing.”

“Does that correlate?”

He shrugged, “Kind of. Anyway, sorry for the distraction. I needed a quick break and there’s another human I can talk to now when I take one!”

He laughed to himself before leaving me alone again in my puzzled state. He certainly was energetic, perhaps due to all the coffee I had seen him consume. I thought myself a good judge of character and found myself willing to trust not only Dolion, but now even Carter despite their status above me. It felt a bit painful to think that I had been deceived, especially by Carter and people like him who seemed so friendly and kind.

I compiled my stack of papers and left the moment I was given permission. Carter bid me farewell with the same smile that had been etched on his face the entire time. However, I could only assume it was the same smile. At this point, my vision had worsened to the point that his features were hard to make out. Thankfully, even though my vision seemed to be growing more impaired, I could use my Lens even better, even using it to navigate since it had grown dark and hard to see the road in front of me.

“Look at all this, and in one day too.” Cain patted my back so hard it made me stumble. The moment I had walked back into the doors of the old house the Inveiglers called their base, Cain had run up to me, tail wagging, just like a puppy excited to see his owner.

“I tried to get as much as possible. Now what?” I asked, expecting to hear a plan of how to distribute our new information.

Cain shuffled through the papers, “With this… Oh, with this we can do more than we hoped. I bet people will go insane over this. Living forever? Really? Because they deserve to?”

It was a rather twisted way of thinking when you put it into perspective. Was there a reason why Ergasia shouldn’t live forever? Were we defective in some way that I was unaware of? Or perhaps it was just that we were made to think that way.

“How could they look down on us that way?” One person yelled.

“Are we not human, too?” Another added in.

After just two outbursts, the whole room erupted into chaos. Shouts of disbelief and anger quickly filled the room. The yells grew louder and louder, with Cain seeming to be only feeding the chaos. Lumen sat on the stairs, a small frown on his face as he watched his comrades grow more unsettled.

I shuffled my way through the crowd to join him away from the noise and join Lumen, “Why the frown?”

He shook his head, “I can feel that they’re getting carried away. It’s a bit concerning, but with Cain leading it, it’ll be hard to put an end to it.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“I wanted them to know so that we can work towards change, not so we can riot.”

I sat down next to him, “I don’t know how you would work towards change without a riot.”

“You’re young, but when you have lived as long as I have, you can see other options.”

“Other options?” I initially asked, but added on, “Wait, lived as long as you have?”

Lumen chuckled, “You’ve read about extending our lives through medicine. And I’m an Arbiter. You can put two and two together.” He sighed, “Though I wish many days that I hadn’t decided to do that, I can’t undo it now.”

“How long has this medicine been around?”

“What did your articles say that you had access to?”

I scanned back through them, using my Lens to sort them by date of publication, “The oldest seems to be from seventy years ago. Has it really been around for that long?”

Lumen hummed, “Has it been seventy years? I suppose it has. I was there that day when they first tested it, you know.”

I examined the man in front of me, wrinkle-free and still full of life. “How old were you when they first tested these kinds of medicines?”

“How old do you think I look?”

“Perhaps mid-thirties.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“You stopped aging at thirty-seven?”

He tilted his head slightly, “Stopped aging? I don’t think I‘d word it that way. I stopped showing my aging. My brain is still aging, just not as quickly. Give it another fifty to seventy-five years and I think I won’t be able to remember much anymore.”

These medicines that were developed already added so many extra years to lives in the experimental stage. Yet, Stephen couldn’t even survive a disease. “Can I ask a different question before we talk about what could happen next?”

“Of course.”

“Do Arbiter’s ever get sick? Like, the illnesses that cures haven’t been discovered for?”

Lumen’s frown returned, “Never. Cures aren’t even needed anymore, they’re now prevented from birth.”

I felt physically ill as soon as the words came from his mouth. I should’ve known that to be the case after learning all I had, but hearing it confirmed made my stomach churn. It made me want to join the shouting and chaos that Cain had provoked. I swallowed down the rush of feelings and forced my attention back on Lumen, “So, what’s next?”

“What I want next or what I think will happen next?”

“Both.”

“What I want to happen next is a slow and steady reforming of our structure. It would take a lot of time and patience, but if we were to simply kill off leaders without trying to change minds, then it would only result in more corrupt or ignorant leaders, right? We need to educate, we need to change minds.”

I nodded slowly, waiting for him to continue.

“However, what do I think will happen? I think that this group will try to completely overthrow the current structure.”

Looking at the crowd, only growing in their disbelief as they continued to read through the information I had brought, I could see that happening as well. It seemed like a very plausible outcome. However, would Lumen’s idea even work? Wouldn’t it be too slow?

Lumen put a hand on my shoulder, “I can see you thinking through this, take your time. I’ll keep Cain on a leash so he doesn’t get us all in trouble, at least not yet.”

“They don’t deserve this technology, what did they ever do that we didn’t do?” A man close to me said.

The woman next to him agreed, “We work harder than them, don’t we? Everything that we do is to provide them with their lifestyle.”

“Watch your words.” Cain had warned, “We don’t want them to catch on to the fact that we know.” When Cain spoke, everyone would turn to listen. He continued, “We can plan and discuss, but limit your words.”

“You don’t think they know yet, do you?” Someone asked with a shaky voice.

Cain shook his head, “I can’t say. We can hope not, but stay vigilant. Maybe we should separate and communicate through a messenger until we’re ready to act.”

People voiced their agreement.

“Good. We can’t keep letting them get away with this. We will stop it. If anyone deserves this kind of technology, it would be us. What did they do that we didn’t?”

Deserve. Having done something or have something or some quality that is worthy of a punishment or reward; in this case, a reward. It felt wrong. Something was scratching at the back of my mind that no one deserved such a thing. Who deserved to live forever? Who deserved to transfer their consciousness into a perfect, unchanging body? It may be fair to say that no one did.

The words that fell out of the mouths around me made me almost as sick as the information I had learned today did. They were all round about insults and slurs against people that looked just like us, that dreamed just like us. Were they really acting any better? Even though we had answers, it only resulted in more questions.

“Lumen, why would we be treated so differently?”

He sighed, “It’s an old history. I can tell you, but not here. After everyone goes home, we can have a chat upstairs.”