Chapter One of No Life but Immortality
CHAPTER ONE: Excerpted from No Life but Immortality (Book 1 of Geryon's Code Cycle) by Liudmila Brus
Something catastrophic has caused a global blackout of the Earth, leaving the people living on Mars wondering what happened. Amid intrigues and political maneuverings, can they uncover the truth?
My School of Life
Geryon Lindon. 2103–2106, Vermont, USA
My boss daddy, Charles Lindon, taught me to hunt when I was a young boy. This was the passion of his life that he practiced on those rare days when he was not at his regular or home office. “Hunt or be hunted,” he used to say, but back then, he could not imagine how far I would deviate from his original business project.
On the day I turned eight, my father woke me before dawn and told me to get ready within half an hour. I had to wash, have breakfast, and put on the clothes he brought. When I finally reached the garage, he stood by the car's open trunk, stowing a sheathed gun, cartridge cases, a cooler bag, and several decoy ducks and geese, which I first took for living but sleeping birds. Hunting preparations were his sacred ritual; neither robots nor domestic staff had ever been involved.
The car he picked looked like a coffin on wheels—no graceful lines, no sleek matte black, no mysterious ultramarine sheen. I half expected bolts to fly loose the moment I climbed in—but strangely, the old dinosaur was decked out the way I was used to, with humidity controls, a built-in cooler, massage chairs (though rough-textured), and armored windows.
I asked for my VR glasses—there was an alien invasion cartoon I wanted to finish—but Father said cartoons were staying behind today.
“Learn to notice things,” he said when I shrugged. “Tell me—why would aliens with god-tier tech bother invading us?”
I told him how I used to freeze ants in the fridge so I could study them under a microscope. I wasn’t trying to rob or enslave them—I just wanted to understand what made them different.
“What if they’re hunters?” I asked. “Like you—with wolves. Bears.”
He laughed, ruffled my hair. That was rare.
“Still, there’s no reason for a genocide, boy. You wipe out all the beasts, what’s left to hunt? And besides, any alien worth his salt is probably looking for a challenge. Not Earth.”
“But what about Earth’s iron core? What if they want that?”
“Then they’ll dust us like we dust a countertop,” he answered. “Luckily, there’s no sign of sapient life in the Milky Way.”
“Except for us, humans?” I asked. He replied with a slightly bitter laugh.
The road was either twisting between hills or stretching ahead for miles. We passed the Lindon Power station, motels with twinkling lights, eateries, and the occasional gas station, most of which were closed forever. I remember my father pointing to them and chuckling. “Once, our distant ancestor, a ratlike animal, lived side by side with tyrannosaurs. And where are those tyrannosaurs now?”
“We’re tailed,” I said, proud that I had been able to use a phrase from a movie. “They want to take revenge on us, these same tyrannosaurs, right?”
We were indeed followed all the way by a “house on wheels.” And it was moving much faster than such things usually do.
“Those are our security men.”
“They were hard to recognize.”
“A small masquerade,” he explained. “For everyone else, we’re the most ordinary people. Today, it concerns them, too.”
Back then, I had a pretty vague idea of how different we and those who worked for us really were. As a fan of spy movies, I was enraptured by this game. Moreover, I had never been so far from our estate before. It was the first time I saw how my father drives a car: in the old-fashioned way, on his own.
He always said: never hand over control—not to people, not even to the smartest machines. The one who walks on their own feet has the edge over those who don't. The one who can start a fire with nothing but a shard of glass is stronger than the masses who’ve never seen flame. The one who hunts will outlast the ones who wait. I believed him then—listened like a disciple. Thought he cared about me—the kid, the person—not just the next link in the Lindon bloodline.
“We had forgotten our wild, animal essence,” Father used to preach. “But we began to lose our human features along with it.”
To answer my question about how this was possible, he promised to take me to a “regular school” and introduce me to its students, but in a couple of years, when I had grown up a little bit.
“Isn’t my school a regular one?” I asked.
“It’s regular for people like us,” Father explained with a conspiratorial wink, and I enjoyed the sound of his deep, confident voice. “But we’re not quite ordinary people. I’d like to say that we’re the last of the remaining real people.”
I didn’t understand his last phrase well, but I сhose not to ask again. I hated looking foolish.
I watched the endless shopping malls, auto repair shops, motels, and roadside fast food restaurants with the most incredible designs, like a giant pink rabbit or an equally giant golden egg. Gradually, they gave way to dull yellow cornfields with huge hangar-looking buildings in their midst. My father said that these were milk farms. But I saw no cows, no matter how far I looked.
“They don’t graze,” said Father, seeing my surprise. “They’re always penned up. Farms where you can see walking cattle can be counted on the fingers. We eat from those. And this is for the rest.”
“Why?”
“Land’s costly.”
“But there’s plenty of it!” I protested.
“The land always has an owner, son. Even if nothing grows or lives there.”
Something was wrong with such an order of things. I couldn’t say what exactly. I was afraid to blurt out something stupid and kept silent, but my head was like a wasp nest. After about half an hour, the car turned again and got swallowed by trees and bushes. I felt a tremor inside. But it wasn’t fear.
Finally, we stopped in front of a high wall in a dark forest. I jumped out of the car to admire the mighty trees resembling massive columns supporting the sky. A little bit later, our “ordinary” escort arrived.
After an incoming drone scanned our retinas, I changed clothes and shoes and put on a thick jacket, camouflage trousers, and a pair of rubber boots, quite long, like women’s stockings on advertising banners. For greater importance, my father put a dark cowboy hat on my head, thus giving me a storm of excitement. The head of Lindon Power interrupted my childlike screams by saying that hunting isn’t an occasion to run, jump, or shout. In turn, I asked him when the wolves would come. He said we’d have to start with birds, and I felt deeply disappointed. For as long as I can remember, Dad had never hunted birds; only large and dangerous animals were worthy of being his prey.
The ground beneath my feet was terribly bumpy: continuous ledges, pits, snags, stones, and moss pads. My feet sank into soft, rotten leaves, and I felt the unpleasant greasiness of mud. Nothing like the smooth paths in our park with fine gravel and shells. I felt like I was learning to walk again. It seemed like here it was much more convenient to move on four legs, not two.
The narrow sandy path we found ourselves on descended steeply, twisting among barberry bushes with oblong berries and grass of my own height. This path led us to the lake, which looked almost black on this cloudy October day. Its mirror surface shook slightly under the oncoming breeze that chilled my nose and fingertips.
Holding my breath, I watched my father choose a place for an ambush. The prey was in no hurry to jump out of the bushes or fly over our heads. We had to lure it by placing those dummies on the water’s surface, waiting in a hidden lounger, and being still. And when they appeared, only then shoot—calmly, without any fuss and haste. At that time, I didn’t understand all these enjoyments, but I was trying to imitate Charles Lindon in everything and to fake interest as much as I could. I waited for him to finally let me hold the rifle, which he often called the greatest asset of a free man, just for a few seconds.
My interest flared when our first goose, a handsome one with a long black neck, fell screaming into the thickets. I jumped up and, squishing water, rushed headlong into the reeds to grab our prey and bring it to my father. Surprise! The bird didn’t lie breathless, waiting to be picked up, but flapped its wings, opened its beak, and angrily hissed. I walked from side to side, getting bogged down in the greasy mud, and didn’t know how to approach the prey. The water around the bird was colored with blood, giving me shivers. The bird would not stop beating its wings and hissing angrily. An invisible force paralyzed my limbs.
My father solved the problem by stepping in and breaking the bird’s neck. After that, it immediately stopped fluttering and froze with its beak ajar. But for some reason, I shamefully burst into tears. The head of Lindon Power didn’t comment on it, but I physically felt the waves of his discontent. Before dusk, Dad shot another goose, and I managed to pick this one up more quickly. Fortunately, the bird was motionless, and its eyes were closed.
Father complimented me. “Oh! You’re doing great, boy! You’re not afraid anymore.” He took off his hat and hung it on a bough. “Do you want to shoot?”
We walked about thirty meters away from the tree where the hat hung, and I felt the entire weight of my father’s cold Remington in my hands.
Wow! How can I keep such a colossus straight when my hands are shaking? I thought, gathering all my strength.
“Don’t fear the kickback. Stick the buttstock in your shoulder harder. If you don’t stick it well enough, you’ll have the joint knocked out to hell. Don’t complain later,” said my father.
I pressed the buttstock till it hurt, aimed as Father taught me, took the safety off the rifle, and pulled the trigger. Either I pressed it very sharply, or my hands still trembled under the unusual weight of the weapon. A shot ran out, sending a shiver down my body. The kickback hit my shoulder, strongly pushing me back. But the hat remained hanging on the tree.
“Are you the hunter or the prey?” Charles Lindon chuckled.
My fingers were filled with cold, and the sound of my own breath was distracting me. I would give all my toys, my whole room, and the entire house away so my father wouldn’t look at me like he did. It was so intense. How can I concentrate under that heavy gaze? Shot! Missed again.
“Wanna step closer?”
“No!” I growled. Simplifying this task would humiliate me more than any ridicule.
“Then don’t twitch the trigger, but smoothly move it toward yourself.”
“It’s now or never,” I said to myself, slowing down my breathing, aiming, and doing as my father had said, slowly and smoothly pulling the trigger with a phalanx of my finger. This time, I didn’t even notice a hit to my shoulder. The pierced hat flew off onto the grass. It was hard for me to believe in such a success. I put the safety on the rifle and ran toward the hat to make sure the target was down.
“Oh, Hawkeye! Next time, you’ll try shooting a flying object.”
“What is it like?”
“Watch where the hat is flying and shoot before the target enters the scope. You can’t wait for a long time in this case. You’ll be late.”
“Let me try!”
“Not today, son,” he said. From my father’s voice, I realized that it was useless to beg him. I would have to climb the wall in anticipation of the following weekend.
A cool wind blew, which led to the rustling of the long, sharp leaves of the reeds, and little ripples appeared on the water’s surface. On our way to the car, I listened to the noise of the trees and the lonely chirps of a grasshopper among the grass. Probably, he’s saying goodbye, I thought.
That night, I made fire for the first time—no lighter, just flint. It took forever. But I did it. And when the flame came alive, I listened to it like it had a voice. The forest did too: the hoots, the chirps, the creaks. I felt like the first human—half-beast, half-boy.
The next day, he flew to Asia. A week later, we returned. I hit a flying hat on the third day. Missed six times first, but he smiled anyway. We lit a bonfire and slept in a tent. Came back with five birds.
I stopped being a child. The mansion felt like a cage. My room felt like shoes I’d outgrown. I followed my father on every hunt after that, hoping for more.
He was glad I shared his passion. But he never let the guards go. That disappointed me.
I started studying harder, and earned a spot in a shooting club. He renewed my membership every time I finished with honors. My biggest dream was a rifle of my own. But whenever I asked, he’d say: “You could try harder.”
Someone else might’ve quit. But I didn’t see any other way forward.
Just before my eleventh birthday, a long-promised surprise was finally given to me: a day at a mysterious “ordinary school.” In the morning, my father, as always, had to work, so I was taken there by the self-driving car.
We raced along the highway, switching between levels three and five, then descended into the labyrinths of narrow streets, where eternal twilight reigned in the shadow of colossal towers. I saw a high gate open in front of the car. Behind it was a building resembling a pile of colored blocks placed on top of each other in chaotic order. Boys and girls my age were lying on multicolored poufs in a yard with sickly trees. Everyone was immersed in VR and tablets, leaving my presence unnoticed.
I approached the first boy I saw. He was a tall, fat ginger guy in an untidy pink T-shirt. I patted him on the shoulder. He didn’t react at first, but then twitched as if he felt a burn.
“What the hell do you want?” he blurted.
“My name is Geryon,” I replied and stretched my hand in a greeting. It took time for the guy to respond.
“Newbie, huh?”
“Yes. Are you in fourth or fifth grade?”
“Can't remember. And… you know what? We written kinda dictation. Check it for me, huh?”
I glanced at his tablet’s screen, and it took effort to suppress a burst of laughter. The text read: “The boys neim is Peet. He has perents, and kat. Petes famili haz a nise twobedrum apartment anda car with Lindon Pawer engin…”
“It's your toddler brother’s homework, isn't it?” I chuckled.
The red-haired guy looked at me as if I were speaking Albanian. Nevertheless, I fulfilled his request. Almost immediately, a larger dude, probably a European immigrant, shoved his tablet into my hands.
“Hey, smartkille! Guess the code to open the safe box!”
“Hmm…”
His entitlement took me aback. I didn’t even realize I could’ve just told him to go to hell.
A familiar game popped into my mind—Maze of the Wise, the educational labyrinth I’d played three years back. To advance in the story, you had to crack mathematical problems and input the right code or missing number. On higher difficulty levels, it wasn’t just about simple calculations or Ohm’s law. You had to dig deep—conduct real research, notice tiny details—like a detective with a deadline.
Some bosses in the game didn’t fall to brute force but to words. A well-crafted speech could defeat them—but writing one took an hour, minimum.
But the task I had here would make a cat laugh. It was a simple linear equation with fractions, multiplication, and division. I entered a number in the field, and the dude took the virtual gold from the safe and went to school, grumbling something like “thank you” on his way.
Interesting species, I told myself and followed him.
Soon I discovered that strange guys made up the majority of the class. One of them had snot dangling from his nose and didn’t bother wiping it. Two others were drawing genitals on their tablets, grinning like madmen. The boy I solved the equation for kept nodding off like an old man—head sagging to his chest, neck bent like it was broken. I figured a double shot of French fries might wake him up. The girl to my right—red-haired, with tiny eyes—already had the vibe of an Alzheimer’s patient. She chewed gum like a machine.
I felt almost scared, like they had some contagious disease I might catch just by sitting there. Great adventure, Dad.
The teacher, Mr. Grant, was a slow, hulking man with barely any facial expression. His gestures were stiff, like his processors had been patched together with leftover code. He started talking about the Hellenic city-states but claimed he’d never heard of the Cretan civilization or the Trojan War. When I asked whether Troy really existed and how much we knew about old Homer, he replied, “That question isn’t in the program.”
The class burst into laughter, and at first, I thought they were mocking him for being such a dim bulb.
Just to be sure, I asked about the purpose of the Knossos labyrinth. Same answer—word for word, same intonation.
That’s when it clicked: Mr. Grant was an android.
His preloaded lesson plan let him respond to a few questions and ignore the rest. His menacing look? Just a deterrent so no one tried to yank out his parts. Not that this bunch could tie their own shoes. Something was very wrong with them all.
Suddenly, the room came alive. Even “Sleeping Beauty” jerked his chin off his chest. The class bombarded the android with questions—dumber and dirtier by the second. Grant just kept repeating, “That isn’t in the program,” like some deranged parrot. The kids laughed for half an hour straight. I regretted throwing a rock into this swamp.
During the next lesson, Robo-Grant tried to make us learn a poem. We chanted it like a mantra while he scanned the room to make sure no one slacked. After twenty minutes, I was done. When I stopped, the android stomped over and, in a voice straight from the crypt, ordered me to continue. But I knew how to short-circuit his brain. I asked about the number of chromosomes in a cow. That one question sent him spiraling into an avalanche of irrelevant prompts. I’d opened Pandora’s box—and the class was ready to fry the android’s processor.
Then came the principal.
Mr. Bale was bald, bony, mantis-like, with a forehead full of creases and a tendency to sputter when he spoke. Despite his stick-thin frame, he barked orders that made the entire room freeze. But he was weirdly polite to me. Asked me not to disrupt the lesson plans too much, or the “students” might go completely feral (as if they weren’t already there). Said that if I was bored, I could join him in the hallway for a coffee.
As I drank from the vending machine, he watched me like I was some circus monkey—adorable and slightly dangerous.
The classroom doors, I noticed, opened and closed with robotic precision. You could only leave mid-lesson in case of fire or a natural disaster. And the principal could walk in anytime. I figured the gates operated the same way. There was barbed wire on the fence. This wasn’t a school. It was a storage facility—for kids.
By midday, I was convinced these poor souls weren’t here to learn but to be kept out of trouble. I doubted the school staff even thought of them as human. Worse, I wasn’t sure they thought of themselves as human either. Their lives were so numbingly dull they might as well have been statues. And even with me stirring things up, they didn’t show much interest. Except for one.
Between classes, a girl with clear blue eyes and tiny freckles scattered across olive skin came up to me and introduced herself.
“Hi there. I’m Wilhelmina Heiss. Or just Wi.”
What a name. Like it stepped out of an old book. And she didn’t look like the rest. She wore a sweatshirt and faded jeans—clean ones. Her long, raven hair was combed and glossy, flowing neatly over her shoulders. She was embarrassed to smile, and she studied me with an intelligent, strangely mature gaze. I noticed a missing baby tooth.
“Geryon Lindon,” I said, offering my hand.
She shook it—briefly but firmly.
“You ask questions. Risky move in this school,” she said.
I laughed. “This isn’t a school. It’s a nursing home for the prematurely senile. You’re the only exception.”
“I thought I was the only one different,” she said. “Social workers came to inspect our house. Thought my parents weren’t giving me proper vitamins. Said I showed ‘developmental anomalies.’”
“What the hell? Why?”
“They couldn’t believe I could read and do math at my age. Said it was unnatural. I’m still under observation.”
She sighed. “If you show you're smarter than you're supposed to be, they'll come for you too.”
“Well, well. My dad would shoot them a polite warning.”
“You keep a firearm at home?” she asked, horrified. “That’s illegal. I’ll have to report you!”
The conversation took a sharp turn. I knew Wi wouldn’t actually rat me out—but it still stung.
“Go ahead,” I snapped. “But just so you know... there used to be a gun in every household.”
“Impossible!”
Her thin eyebrows—drawn as if in ink—nearly collided.
“Why do you think that?”
“No one would allow it!”
“Guess you haven’t studied history. It was normal. People owned firearms. Then a few psychos ruined it for everyone. Now you need a license that costs a fortune.”
She snorted. I grinned at her like it was a dare.
“And this ain’t a real school.”
“You claim you’ve seen the real one?”
“I study there! People teach there instead of robots. You can ask questions and get answers. There are no terrible locks on the doors. Also, there are books! Real paper books, not tablets with one single game installed! I mean… of course, we also use tablets, but there are many more interesting things!”
Wilhelmina lowered her head. “Mom and Dad used to study at that kind of school. But what’s brought you to this place?”
“I misbehaved!” I chuckled.
“I didn’t even know they could do this.” She sighed. “Did you write tests in first to third grade?”
“A hundred times.”
“I’m not talking about ordinary ones. I’m talking about tests to find out your mental potential. To understand if you’re a Smart One.”
“Sounds kinda like the Chosen One in a movie,” I said.
“The Smart Ones come up with cool ideas and invent things, create programs, control robots, and so on. These are the most extraordinary, most gifted people. I’d like to become this kind of person, but I only have ‘midlevel’ mental capacity.”
“How did you find this out?”
“The test results showed it. Machines are never judgmental.”
“But they don’t see the whole picture, believe me. I think you don’t need a lot of talent to write programs. You can learn this. That’s what I do, and there are still a lot of jobs available.”
“Really?”
“I started this summer. Cool, huh?” I said and flexed my biceps.
My new friend finally smiled, and even the gap at the place of the milk tooth seemed charming to me. She wanted to ask something else, but the imperious roar of the bell broke into our conversation.
“What lesson do we have now?” I said.
“Music,” Wi said in disgust. “The song is about Fred’s Fried Chicken.”
“Are you kidding? Who the hell sings about chickens? Let’s skip it!” I said.
“No. If I do, they’ll definitely rip me away from my family.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. “They are looking for a reason but haven’t found it yet.”
“What will happen if they finally do?”
“They will make me like everyone else in our class.” Wi’s voice quavered as if she were about to cry. “They will see that I get enough vitamins.”
“I’m sorry I got mad at you for that gun story,” she went on. “Let’s wait for another break between classes; the next one is long. Then we’ll talk.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said. Our hands joined for a moment. How could anyone harm someone so wonderful?
I didn’t want to go back to the classroom. But even more, I didn’t want to leave Wi alone among these dormant fish. How has she managed not to lose her mind? I thought. Why did her folks punish her like this? As I tried to imagine a parent who would put their child in such a flophouse, panic started to run back and forth in my head like a doomed rat. This feeling manifested itself rarely, since I had never been that scared.
I looked at Wilhelmina and wanted to hug her and take her far, far away from here, to my deep forest, where I could become a little bit like a werewolf and a beast. I would teach her to recognize the traces of animals, distinguish the voices of various birds, and bake prey right in the ground without plucking feathers. We would make a fire as high as the sky. I only had to set her free. And I was sure it would be a piece of cake.
That evening, I visited my father’s vast home office to discuss what I had seen. I told him about the presumably intoxicated morons I had met. I clearly explained that these “ordinary schools” had to be wiped from the earth as places of torture. And, of course, I told my dad about Wi, hoping to obtain his support. She needed to be removed from there before becoming zombified like her classmates. Father listened to me calmly and nodded slightly to what I was saying.
“Geryon, these people are doomed,” he preached. “This is their way of life. You ask questions—and they don’t. Nothing appeals to them but eating and hanging out in the Omniverse. They’ve never fought for anything, as I have, and they deserve no other fate. But you should always keep your ears open. Falling to their level is easy, and it happens often. Once you get soft and shield yourself from hardship or give in to any kind of addiction, then you’ll easily become a vegetable with money. And you will lose it quite soon since big money isn’t for vegetables.”
“Wilhelmina’s not a vegetable,” I insisted. “She wants to attend a real school, be a Smart One, and create something special.”
“I doubt that. These guys physically can’t come up with more complex thoughts than ‘Snack time!’”
“Wi’s different, Dad. She took a test, but must have been too stressed to succeed. Let’s take her to my school before it’s too late!”
“You want me to do that, Geryon?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s your own business. I’ve got nothing to do with this Wi of yours.”
“You could at least advise me.”
“Then I advise you to let it go. Wi either was unlucky with her folks or made a poor effort.”
“Why is she so unhappy at school?”
“You’ve told me about her developmental anomalies. I’m sure this is the reason,” Charles Lindon replied.
For a few more minutes, he told me how natural and inevitable social inequality is, but I stood my ground.
“Let’s bring her here, and you will see you’re wrong.”
“And who will pay for her studies? Don’t tell me that I am supposed to.”
“Why not? It will not cost you a lot!”
“Heh! How good it is to be kind and noble at someone else’s expense!” my father said in an unkind voice. “And what are your orders now? You want me to take home every slacker who doesn’t like to live the way he or she lives and nurse them and make them learn?”
“No. Only Wilhelmina… She’s not a slacker,” I begged. I don’t remember ever asking for something the way I did that day.
“I’m not responsible for her fate. Earn at least one dollar by yourself, son, like my friend Rajiv and I did; take out chamber pots from under the sick, as we did. Go hungry for a while. Then you’ll talk about money in a completely different way. If I treated money like you currently do, my entire family would live on a shoestring.”
His words annihilated all hope that was left in me. However, I told myself that he just needed time to make a decision. He usually said no right away, only to change his mind sometime later when he saw the problem from a different angle.
“Okay. Can I at least see her once a week?” I asked.
“If the company of losers suits you, what can I do? But keep in mind that losership is contagious,” he said.
Charles Lindon often used irony to keep me from doing something stupid (in his opinion). Earlier, this trick would have worked. But this time, I felt something like an iron rod expand inside me.
“Deal,” I murmured and left.
I couldn’t wait for a whole week. On Tuesday, shortly after the weekend spent with my father in an unsuccessful race for a caribou, I went to Wi’s school. It was at five o’clock in the evening, after I had classes at my school; no one would have allowed me to skip them. Even though the caribou turned out to be as sly as a fox and skillfully confused the trail, and even though our legs literally burned after all the adventures, the excitement of the pursuit still raged in my head. Despite the failure, I was cheerful, full of enthusiasm, and in a hurry to share the entire story with the best girl in the world.
Children stayed in their storage until the evening. As I entered the yard, I saw several boys and girls bounce heavily on the trampoline as if someone was tossing garbage bags up and down. None of them attempted a flip or a roll or jumped higher than half a meter. The other two guys sat on the treadmill and simultaneously devoured a colossal stuffed baguette from its ends.
I expected to notice Wi right away, but I didn’t find her in the yard, so I ran inside the building. The schoolchildren were sitting in the corridor on sofas and on the floor, making faces at me as if they were three years old.
“Has anyone seen Wilhelmina Heiss?” I asked.
“Ooooh! No,” said my snotty acquaintance, brushing the stringy mucus from under his nose with his sleeve. “She ain’t come today. And yesterday. But who are you, man?”
“Has she been sick?”
The snotty boy only shrugged.
I proceeded to the principal’s office. The man’s smile stuck to his face, and his eyes were like those of a naughty dog in anticipation of being thrashed.
“Mr. Lindon! What a surprise!” he said in a sugary voice.
“I told you, just Geryon,” I replied after the handshake.
“Did you like our school, Geryon?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’ve come to see someone.”
“You mean Wilhelmina Heiss?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry, but she doesn’t study here anymore. She was transferred to another school closer to her home,” Mr. Bale said.
“Where does she live? How can I contact her? You know that, don’t you?”
“I can’t tell you that,” the principal replied, stepping away from me. “This information is confidential.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it can’t be transferred to anyone without the consent of Wilhelmina, her parents, or a court order. That is the law.”
“You’re lying.”
“Don’t you believe me? I can show you. Or you may ask Mr. Lindon.”
“Then these laws have been written by some cannibals.”
“It’s better to have such laws than not to have them at all. You’ll understand this when you grow up,” Bale stammered.
“Okay,” I said coldly. “What if I ask you to call them and get permission?”
“Then I’ll contact you. Now, if you don’t mind, I will get back to my work. Whenever you want to get out, just use the retina scanner.”
With these words, the principal walked with his mantis-style gait to the office. I stood petrified, staring at my reflection. I had the impression that I had become a bit shorter. What if Bale lied and the authorities got Wilhelmina? What if the reason was her friendship with me, unacceptable behavior, or some unknown sins of her family? Once again, I remembered those shitty vitamins that she had mentioned.
Chemical analysis could provide interesting results, I thought to myself and spoke again to the principal as he was heading toward the door.
“Sir! Where can I get the vitamins that everyone is obliged to take? I'd like to test them myself.”
“Huh, I don’t think you need them,” he answered, getting pale. “But if you insist. Try Lavender Rain in the vending machine. It’s a vitamin drink, quite refreshing, huh?” he said, adding, “You know, Miss Heiss’s dad mentioned that at the new school, she would be tested for Smart abilities again. I know that she was obsessed with the idea. Maybe she will be lucky this time?”
It was too good to be true. Had I brought her luck?
“Thank you, and goodbye, Mr. Bale!” I shouted and added in a whisper, “Damn you, jackass!”
Bale was used to dealing with his “vegetables,” but I was a different person. I wouldn’t tolerate just sitting and waiting for a call, which would probably never happen.
Unfortunately, at that moment, my head was as empty as a leaky bucket in which the wind plaintively groaned. Only when I got home did I remember my birthday, and I was relieved that a big celebration with fireworks and a massive VR battle was scheduled for Saturday.
Mom’s congratulations and the Dream Player she gave me in the morning seemed to have lost all their value. More than anything on Earth, I wanted to go to bed and sleep for about ten years. But I forced myself, for pure decency, to unpack the gift and read the instructions. I had to program the device myself, and this encouraged me a little. Okay. I haven’t seen Wi today; at least I can talk to her in my dreams.
I got up to find my mother and thank her again. Suddenly, I felt that something had changed in the room. Of course, I hadn’t noticed a long black cover with a slight metallic luster hanging on a hook. Yes, it wasn’t there in the morning! Gasping excitedly, I climbed onto a stool and took off the cover. I felt a very familiar weight in my hands. With trembling fingers, I unzipped the gift, touched the cold steel of the thin barrel, and got numb with delight.
This was the legendary Crusader—one of my father’s favorite rifles, which previously belonged to my grandpa, a veteran of some ancient war in the Middle East, and weirdly religious. The old man wasn’t far from looking for devils under the bed, and my mother couldn’t stand him. The length of the rifle was fourteen and a half inches, and its weight was a little more than three kilograms. It had a coal-black body and provided soft and fast shooting. On its left side, above the gun’s magazine, a Templar cross was engraved; on the right side, a quote from the Bible: “Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.” The words in Latin were inscribed on the rifle’s safety: “Pax Pacis, Bellum” and “Deus Vult.” I didn’t know a damn thing about religion, but Latin fascinated me.
With this at his head, Mr. Bale, a keeper of other people’s secrets, will be a good boy and give up everything on Wilhelmina’s whereabouts, I thought. Why would her parents be against our friendship? Or was her life managed by someone else? I shuddered as the communicator vibrated on my wrist. Could it be Bale with a piece of news?
But another voice rang in my ear—the most beautiful one.
“Geryon! I was told you were worried about me!”
“Of course!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say you were about to change schools?”
I turned on the holographic projector, and Wi’s thin, shimmering face appeared in the half-light—tempting me to reach out and touch the soulless pixels.
“Everything happened so quickly, Geryon. We saw each other on Thursday, right? On Friday, I was invited to retake the test. Geryon, you were right! Either the computer was wrong… or I got smarter!”
“Wait a minute… you passed?”
“Yep.”
“Are you at home now?”
“No. You won’t believe it, but I’m at Tierra del Fuego!”
“Ouch. That’s the edge of the world.”
“My new school’s here, Geryon. And it’s a real school—just like the one my parents went to. The Smart Ones are in charge here! They even have an organization called the Winged Sun. Kids from all over the world come to study! We’ve got foreign languages, labs for experiments, paper books in the library—and no vitamins!”
She was thousands of kilometers away from me now—but for the first time, among her own kind. Unfortunately, I couldn’t share her joy.
“You’re so far away. Why? I was going to invite you to my birthday party this Saturday.”
“I’m so sorry. Everything happened on such short notice. Winged Sun’s Junior Academy is here, and their main base is in Antarctica. They say the environment’s in better shape down there than in the north. I’ll be staying here for years.”
“And your folks?”
“They’ll be visiting. Only close relatives are allowed. I’m really sorry, Geryon.”
“Oh… You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, feeling hollow. “If you ever come back for vacation, please call me. I’ll always be happy to see you.”
Wi sighed and lowered her eyes. She was holding back tears. The way she looked didn’t promise a happy reunion.
She wanted to say something else, but the image flickered—and disappeared. Communication sessions in Tierra del Fuego were probably time-limited.
Suddenly weak, I sank onto my bed, still hugging my new rifle.
Was there a reason to be sad? In the end, we had both gotten what we’d long dreamed of. Maybe we could even be happy for each other.
******
Liudmila Brus lives in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, with her small family and her adopted cat. She is currently a video game writer at Ghost Workshop, working on the game Marsbound.
Under the influence of her grandparents, Liudmila fell in love with reading at an early age and developed a passion for writing. She began collaborating with a city newspaper at the age of 15.
Liudmila has extensive experience in journalism, with professional interests in environmental issues and green initiatives worldwide.
She is also a fan of heavy music and a LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) enthusiast. In 2012, she co-founded the "After Us" post-apocalyptic LARP club in Moscow and organized several themed parties and festivals.
Her sci-fi book cycle Geryon's Code consists of three novels: No Life but Immortality, The Orphaned Earth, and From The Abyss, To The Abyss (currently in progress).
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