Episode 10 -- And Study War No More
The Power Team discovers a hidden city called Haven that seems safe from Dread's forces. However, appearances are deceiving when they learn that the inhabitants are working with Dread on the Project Styx portion of his New Order Project.
~*~*~*~*~
Human speech was full of cliches and sayings from books, mythology and old movies. Perhaps it was inevitable that a few words strung together in a certain way would capture people's attention, permeate the collective consciousness and become part of the vernacular.
For example, there was an old saying -- the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
There was also another saying -- if you lay down with dogs, you're going to get fleas.
Miles Williamson learned both those sayings were true in a way he never imagined. Maybe he had intended to protect his people at Haven but he made a deal with the devil to do it. He went down the road that good intentions paved into the Machine's 'definition of Hell' when that new biodread digitized him.
Jennifer had some experience dealing with collaborators when she was with the Dread Youth. At the time, she couldn't understand why anyone would want to fight the Machine. Once she knew the truth, she couldn't understand why anyone would want to help Dread. Project Styx... the River Styx was a river in the underworld which Charon ferried the souls of the dead across for a price. The gods would swear oaths by the River, making them unbreakable. What solemn oath did Williamson make to help Dread in his pursuit of ferrying souls into digitization or worse? She doubted if they'd ever really find out the truth.
How could anyone fool themselves into believing that Dread would spare them if they helped him? Why would anyone risk the lives of everyone in an entire town on a known lie? Dread wasn't going to spare any human from his new world order, and no litany, speech, or saying was going to change the truth of that.
To Jennifer, moments from their latest mission were a bit frustrating, but she knew that she still had a lot to learn about the human condition. Subterfuge, she understood. Lying, she understood. Utter duplicity was something she wished she didn't understand. No, the frustration she was feeling came from not knowing what a certain book was and how the phrase on the plaque became a saying worth repeating.
Late at night was a good time to talk to Mentor without interruptions so she volunteered for a lot of night shift duty. No one was around to overhear them, and they could talk about things that sometimes made the rest of the team somewhat uncomfortable or speechless. She could only explain their discomfort in one way: what the others took for granted, Jennifer didn't know existed. It was another by-product of being trained by the Dread Youth.
"Hello, Mentor," she said as she activated the hologram.
"Good evening, Corporal Chase, " the image answered. "How are you this evening?"
"A bit tired but fine. We ran into the new biodread, blew up a city and delivered the refugees to the Passages, " she told him with a smile. "It was a long day, and we had to leave the Passages rather quickly. "
"Was there trouble in the Passages?"
Jennifer almost laughed. "Actually, Scout was trying to avoid trouble which is why we left so quickly, " she answered cryptically.
"You have the night duty again tonight?" he asked.
"I volunteered. I knew I wasn't going to sleep. Too many questions are running through my mind. "
The image smiled and nodded its head. "What kinds of questions? Maybe I can help find the answers. "
Jennifer showed the image the plaque they'd found at Haven. "This saying -- They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation and study war no more -- Tank said it came from something called the Good Book. What can you tell me about them?"
The image closed its eyes for a moment. Then, looking directly at her, he said, "The Good Book was a collection of certain religious texts written by various authors over millennia. There have been many translations and interpretations of the book over that time. "
Mentor paused. Sometimes, that was how he and Jennifer discussed concepts. He'd begin with an answer that might not be explicit or detailed, and Jennifer could determine what concepts she wished to know more about. Religion was one topic they hadn't discussed in depth. It wasn't that Jennifer had no interest in the topic -- in fact, she had a great interest in almost anything she could learn, but her indoctrination into Dread's "the Machine is superior " belief system was a part of her past she was still unusually angry about. It was a rather touchy subject for her and one in which she had not asked many questions.
Then, something he said caught her attention. "Millennia?"
"Indeed. "
Paper didn't last thousands of years. It degraded and fell apart. "How did it survive that long?"
"By various means. For instance, if we use early A.D. Europe as a point of reference, texts and books were in the possession of monasteries or the very wealthy at one time. Before there was a printing press or movable type, scribes and monks painstakingly copied the pages by hand, both the words and artwork. Even if the original book was lost due to accident or time or some other means, the copies would still be in existence. "
Ingenious. "That must have been a lot of work, " Jennifer mused.
"It could take a great deal of time to copy a single book. The labor involved, the materials used -- to put it in perspective, if a family owned as few as ten books, they were considered quite wealthy. "
That brought a smile to Jennifer's face. "I guess we'd be considered wealthy by those standards. We have maybe forty intact books in our library. The rest are just bits and pieces of books we've found along the way. "
"I understand that you found some books in readable condition in the San Francisco bookstore you and Captain Power went to in order to meet Athena Samuels, " Mentor said conversationally.
"We found a few, but not many. When we opened most of them, the bindings fell apart and the pages were in tatters. The captain was very disappointed. "
"I understand. Morgana and Stuart Power had a great love of books and had amassed quite a collection. "
"Really?" Jennifer asked. "That must be why the captain loves to read so much. "
"I'm certain that had a profound influence on the captain. He was a very well-read young man. "
That brought up a new idea that Jennifer had never considered. "Parents influence their children?"
"Parents can often be the chief influence on children during their early years," Mentor explained. "The captain's parents placed a great deal of importance on learning as much as possible. They encouraged him in school and supported his extracurricular activities. They also taught him themselves. They took their job as parents quite seriously, and developing a love of books was part of that."
Parents. "I wonder what my parents were like, " she whispered to herself. Lately, she'd been talking more about her past with Jon, thinking more about her childhood, trying to remember anything from before. What was it like to have a family? What was her home like? Where was her home? She had no memory of parents or siblings, aunts or uncles. What she did remember was vague, like old pictures taken with a camera that was out of focus.
Hawk spoke of his wife and children occasionally. Scout mentioned his mother a few times. Tank had a brother, but he never knew what happened to him. Jon talked about his father, but he rarely spoke of his mother. Each of them had a very different family structure that they would discuss, but Jennifer couldn't guess anything about her parents. She couldn't picture a face or imagine a voice. She didn't know if she had been loved or wanted. Until she had joined the team, she had never known what it was like to be cared about or cared for. She tried to imagine having that kind of feeling when she was a child, but it just wasn't in her memory. The only family she had was the team, but how long would that feeling last? What would happen if they won the war, and they could disband and go their separate ways?
She owed the guys so much. They had taught her what it was like to be human, Jon especially. When she first joined the team, she was always so curious, always asking questions, and they showed so much patience in answering. Yet, there was still much she believed she needed to learn, even about herself.
Something was changing in her. More than that, something was changing between her and the captain. Jon's words, his actions of late... the way he looked at her... she was beginning to believe that he cared for her differently than he once did. She knew her feelings had changed -- new to her as they were -- but she refused to ask anyone other than Mentor to explain anything. She couldn't. Emotions were confusing enough, and she honestly didn't know how to ask any of the guys about them. Then there were the military rules they lived by -- sort of. She was a corporal, Jon was a captain and they had a war to fight. She wasn't going to do anything to complicate or disrupt their friendship or the team balance. She just wished she better understood how to deal with what she was feeling.
"Corporal Chase?" Mentor 's voice broke into her thoughts.
Jennifer glanced up, then glanced around the room. They were still alone, still free to speak without being overheard. "So the captain had a large library to read from. What happened to the books?" she asked.
"Most of their library was housed in their home which, unfortunately, was destroyed during the Metal Wars. Very few found their way to this base. However, Stuart Power did download some of the texts into my database that you and I use in our discussions. Others have been added over the years. "
Again, that made Jennifer smile. "I wish we had more books. I'd never seen one until I came here. We used computer monitors in the Dread Youth to study the lessons. There's a special feeling when you hold a book in your hands and can feel the pages yourself. You can hear that soft crinkle of the paper when you turn it. You can sometimes smell the ink. "
"There is a profound tactile sensation when holding a book that can't be duplicated by a monitor. Are there any books in particular you'd wish to have?" Mentor asked.
That question took her by surprise. Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I've read all the books we've got. Several times. I've read a lot of the ones you've got stored in your database -- "
"But if you could have additional books of your own to read?"
Jennifer thought for a moment. "I've heard Scout mention someone called Sherlock Holmes and pretend to be answering a question while holding a pipe. He said that Holmes was a famous fictional detective. Hawk said something once about chasing a great white whale and said that idea came from a story called Moby Dick. Tank once said his favorite pirate was one named Long John Silver, and he was in Treasure Island. I think I'd like to read those first."
Mentor did a quick inventory of his files. "Unfortunately, I do not have those texts in my database, " he lamented. "Doctor Power's focus was on primarily preserving the sciences and world history before downloading any classics. Given all the knowledge that has been lost and not taught as evidenced by the Dread Youth curriculum, I'm not sure it was a wise move. "
Mentor was questioning Stuart Power? That was new. Essentially, Mentor was designed and programmed to 'think' like Stuart Power. "Why wasn't it a wise move?" she asked.
"Literature has been known to yield a better understanding of the context of history than the study of history alone. "
"The context of history?" Jennifer asked. "What do you mean?"
"Simply that knowing a fact and understanding a fact can be very different concepts. Using historical data in a story can give an added depth and promote a greater comprehension of events by allowing a reader to view how such moments affected the lives of the fictional characters. Using known places, words, phrases in a story give them a new context and an added three-dimensional quality that surpass being mere words on a page. " He paused for a moment, then continued. "Take the names Dread is using for the various sections of his project -- Project Charon and Project Styx. The words themselves would mean nothing if you didn't know who Charon was and what the River Styx represented in ancient cultures. The mere mention of the words can create a mental image that, when added to the facts of the project, give the scenario an added depth and understanding. "
Jennifer thought for a moment, grasping the idea of understanding history in literature form... and she realized that Mentor was making a point. "How does this connect to what we were talking about?" she asked.
If the image were alive, he would have laughed. "Literature can express history without being historically focused. Ideas and concepts can be expressed with words like the saying on the plaque. Sometimes, it is not what is said that is as important as how it is said and when it is said to convey an idea. For instance, a sentence spoken by a character in one part of a story can be repeated later on with an entirely different meaning depending on the situation."
Jennifer thought for a moment. "I'd never thought of it in those terms before." She looked back down at the plaque. Mentor had brought them back to the topic at hand. He was very good at letting Jennifer ask questions and then bringing them full circle so they could discuss all the nuances of the topic possible. Yet, there was more to this particular phrase than he'd explained so far. That meant there was far more to discuss. She thought over what he'd said, then stated, "So this phrase on the plaque may be more than just a singular concept. The words can mean something else entirely depending on how it's used. "
"Correct. " Again, Mentor considered his answer.
All of this sounded somewhat familiar. "We discussed something like this with Shakespeare's stories as well, didn't we?" Jennifer asked.
"There are certain parallels. " Mentor counted off several Shakespearean sayings and cliches. "A tower of strength, all the world's a stage, an eye-sore, cold comfort, come full circle, dead as a doornail, elbow room, for goodness sake, in my mind's eye, knock-knock-who's there, laughing stock, love is blind, star-crossed lovers, working day world -- as to whether he coined all the phrases himself or if he heard them and incorporated them into his plays, there is some speculation to that. However, these phrases are in his works and can be read by people for as long as words can be preserved. Regardless of how these phrases are used in his stories, these words can be and have been adapted to later times."
Jennifer sensed that they had reached the point where all the discussion could come together to explain her original question. "And the saying on the plaque?"
"It is found in the book of Isaiah. He was writing about what he saw concerning the people in the city of Judah . One interpretation is that those who did not follow the religious teachings were doomed; those who did would find peace and would beat their swords into plowshares -- "
"And their spears into pruning hooks, " Jennifer finished.
"There has been debate as to the interpretation of the passage. Some believed it to be figurative, others literal. "
"So this particular phrase is part of a story, not the story itself?"
"That is one of the valid arguments that can be made. The phrase has a certain meaning to the story, yet taken by itself, it can convey something somewhat different. "
Jennifer looked down at the plaque. "So if I were to use this saying, I could be talking about our current war with Dread, not using it in the same way the original writer did. We want this war to be over so we no longer had to use weapons. Our energies could be put to other uses. "
"Exactly, " Mentor smiled. "This is one of the many phrases found in books that have become a cliche."
"Still so much to learn, " she muttered to herself.
~*~*~*~*~
Biodreads were a nightmare.
Going up against that new biodread in Haven gave Jon nightmares.
The control room was dark and silent. Jon could see into the room but he couldn't enter. The biodread was standing in front of him, facing the opposite direction. There was someone in the room, standing in the shadows. The biodread blocked Jon's view. He could almost see the biodread raise his arm to digitize whoever was there... or was it to shoot whoever was there? There was a blast of light --
Jon woke up in a cold sweat, the nightmare uppermost in his mind. It was about something he didn't like to think about, but he was an experienced soldier who knew the nightmare could come true. Not thinking about it wouldn't mean it wouldn't happen.
Jon had a bad feeling that not making sure that biodread was destroyed was going to come back to haunt him. The feeling settled into his gut and wouldn't go away. He didn't know how or when, but he knew that something bad was going to happen.
But destroying Haven... a city that could grow its own food! -- that had hurt. One could only imagine the amounts of food that could be distributed among the towns in the area. Food, energy, a completely self-sustaining city -- and they had to blow the geothermals on it and destroy it to stop Project Styx and the new biodread. There wasn't much choice, no matter how regrettable, but it was getting harder and harder to find good nutrient-filled soil to grow food. Some towns were on the brink of starvation, and nutritional supplements weren't enough to sustain a population.
Dread could destroy the human race by starvation instead of digitization if he waited.
Every time Jon thought Dread's murderous tendencies couldn't get any worse, he would do something like invent Project New Order or create a destructive biodread to wreak havoc on humanity.
When would it all end?
How would it all end?
If it did end, then what?
Thoughts like that rarely kept Jon awake, but they were bouncing around his thoughts, keeping sleep away that night. What would happen to the human race if the Resistance were to defeat Dread tomorrow? How long would it take to reclaim the land and grow crops? How long would it take the human race to rebuild cities, roads, waterways, electrical plants, communication lines? Reconstruction could take years. How would the human race fare on a post-Dread, war-ravaged planet? How long would it take to repopulate the planet? What information had been lost? How much knowledge?
Cities like Haven -- were there more of them? Could Eden II truly exist? Were there resources available to people that were still unknown?
When the thoughts kept coming one after the other, Jon knew it was time to take a walk around the base. He needed to work off some excess energy. Maybe then, he could get some sleep.
He passed by the other sleeping quarters. He could almost make out Tank's snoring -- good thing the walls were thick, he thought to himself. Hawk and Scout's rooms were silent. Pilot had the night duty. Maybe she'd be happy to see her chess opponent. There was no more sleep in him, not after that nightmare, and the chess games helped relax him as well as let him spend time with Jennifer.
Lately, Jon had noticed that there was something on Jennifer's mind. Something about her was changing. She was able to talk more about her past in the Dread Youth, open up more about things the rest of them had no idea about. Her past couldn't be summed up merely as ';a member of the Dread Youth.' It was far more complex than that, and it was a complexity Jon had not known existed. He wanted to know more, but he didn't want to ask questions she wasn't ready to answer yet.
Also, there had been something on his mind, and Jennifer was the focus. So much had happened to them lately that had Jon seeing Jennifer in a much different light. The problem was that he had to keep that light under wraps. If he let his feelings get the best of him... no, he couldn't do that. There had been times lately when his behavior had slipped, when he became more familiar than a commanding officer should. Besides, he had no idea how she felt about him, so it was best to keep things between them professional, right? He had a war to fight and a team to take care of. Going beyond friendship... now was not the time. Someday though...
He rounded the corner and heard some tapping in the distance. He followed the echo to the control room and discovered that more was going on than just simple night shift duty. Jennifer was nailing the plaque that Tank had given her to the wall. It was a nice touch. The control room was mostly computers and monitors. A plaque like that was a pleasant distraction.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation and study war no more.
He watched her carefully straighten the plaque, making it level on the wall. He noticed that she never did anything half-way. If she repaired a device, she worked until it was completely finished. If she built a device, she didn't stop until it was done. She didn't try to make anything perfect -- she whole-heartedly disagreed with the idea of perfection in any form -- but she wanted what she worked on to work correctly.
He glanced at the last few words on the plaque. Study war no more. It was a nice thought and a lofty goal, but could the human race ever reach that point where war was a thing of the past? Could this be one adage that could come true?
Jennifer looked around and saw him standing there. "Hi. " She stepped back and pointed at the plaque. "What do you think? I wanted it where we could all see it. At least for a little while. I'll move it later. "
"I like the view from here, " he commented as he walked around Mentor 's console to get a better look. Jennifer stood in front of it, not blocking his view but improving it. He noticed that her hair was down, not pulled back in a ponytail. He was noticing little things like that more and more lately. "Those are good words to live by. "
"Tank said it's from The Good Book. Mentor was telling me about it. "
"It is, " he told her. "There are a lot of sayings that came from that book. We still use them every now and then and don't even realize it. "
"We were just talking about that, among other things. "
Jon sat down at the console. Sometimes, he was a bit jealous of Mentor. He could talk to Jennifer about things no one else could. Jon wished he could answer her questions even half as well as the computer did.
"What kinds of things?" he asked, hoping that he wasn't asking her to answer a question she didn't want to.
"Cliches, sayings, old books, how the meanings can change -- things like that. "
Ah, a literary discussion. "Sounds like something my mom would have loved to talk about, " he reminisced.
" Mentor told me that your parents had a big book collection. "
Jon nodded his head. "They did. My mom loved to get first editions. Collected as many as she could. Dad read everything he could get his hands on. They had this huge library. Mahogany shelves, leather chairs, a big bay window that let in a lot of light... I loved that room. My dad and I would talk in there for hours when I was a kid. I had a lot of questions. "
"What did you talk about?"
He could see the interest in her eyes. It was the look she'd get when she learned something new. She never knew her parents. She never knew what it was like to sit on her father's lap and listen to him read a story. She never knew what it was like to hear her mother's voice. She had to experience such things vicariously through stories.
"Everything. Anything. Uh, Dad would take complex scientific theories and tell them to me in a way a child could understand. Chaos theory, string theory, the Big Bang -- he'd tell it all in stories. And before I learned to read, he'd sit me in the chair beside him and read to me. He'd point to the words as he read them, so that helped me recognize words when I went to school. " He thought about those moments, those times when he felt like everything was right with the world and he was safe, comfortably sitting next to his dad reading a book. "One day, I'd love to have a library like that again. "
He hadn't felt that safe or that comfortable since he was a child.
He noticed as Jennifer glanced up at the computer console and smiled.
"What?"
"I never thought about it, but your dad was your mentor when you were a boy. Maybe that's why he gave Mentor that name, so he could always be here in some way to help you."
Nice thought. Comforting thought. "Knowing dad, I wouldn't doubt it. " He felt his emotions starting to well up at the thought of his father.
Time to change the subject. There were times when he had problems talking about his dad.
He looked at the plaque again. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
"I wonder if we'll ever get a chance to put up our weapons and not fight anymore, " he mused out loud. "Turn them into farming tools and start growing vegetables... "
Jennifer nodded her head and sat down as well. "Absolutely," she said confidently. "Almost all the stories tell of the good guys beating the bad guys, right?"
Jon laughed. "And since we're the good guys and Dread is the bad guy, we have to win? Wouldn't that be a bit of a cliche?"
"Of course. What kind of story would it be if the bad guys won?" she asked him with a smile. "Have you ever noticed that all those stories seem the same? The good guys beat the bad guys -- "
"The hero gets the girl at the end -- "
"And then the story's over. Well, what happens the next day? The stories never touch on that. "
Jon shook his head. "No, you don't hear about what the good guys do after they put down their guns. Kind of makes you wonder what they do when there's no one to fight anymore. "
"Well, " she thought for a moment, "maybe we'll have to face the same situation one day. What are we going to do when the war is over?"
Now that was a thought that Jon hadn't considered in a long time, and the thought of 'we' was one that had not crossed his mind. Before. The idea of 'we' gave him a new perspective that he mentally pushed to the side. Now was not the time to ponder 'the hero gets the girl' cliche. "We'd have to find new jobs, I guess. I wonder what out-of-work Resistance captains do, " he joked.
The question itself brought up a particular difference in their backgrounds. Jon had known peace as a boy and a young teen. He'd known the world before Dread. Jennifer had never known anything but war and battle training. The idea that nations would beat their swords into plowshares and study war no more had to be as foreign to her as a dead language. Peace was probably a word she'd never heard growing up, and the idea that there were professions available to people in peacetime was a thought she'd never had to consider. "I don't think I'd make it as a farmer even if I did turn my sword into a plow share. I was never very good at making gardens grow. I wasn't born with a green thumb."
"Green thumb?" she asked.
"Someone who's good at gardening, " he explained. "If the war were over tomorrow, what's something you'd like to do?"
Jennifer's brow furrowed in thought. "I'm a pilot, so I guess there would be jobs I could find doing that. "
Right. A pilot. Only a pilot? "What else? Anything in particular you might like to try?"
Jennifer put the hammer down and sat down at the console. She thought for a moment, considering her next words. "I'd like to find out where I came from and what my real name is. I want to know who my parents were and what they were like. I might have relatives out there somewhere. The information may still be in Volcania's databanks somewhere. "
"Maybe we can find it someday. "
Jennifer shook her head. "I don't think we'll get an opportunity like that. I've never questioned where I came from before, but I've been wondering about all that lately. I don't know why it seems so important now. "
Jon considered the statement. What could he say to that? "Maybe now that you know the truth, you're ready to know the facts?"
"Maybe. "
Jon had never heard her mention wanting to learn about her past in quite that way. He'd only recently learned that she didn't know her given name -- none of the Dread Youth did. That was part of what Dread took from them. Perhaps this was a good time to learn what she knew of her past.
"Do you know how you ended up in the Dread Youth?"
Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. "I can't be certain if what I think I remember is real or just a nightmare. I was maybe three years old, I think. I remember I was outside chasing a butterfly. I remember looking in the distance and seeing the soldiers running toward me. Everyone was running, and there was yelling. Someone grabbed me, picked me up and ran. A woman -- I don't know who it was. We ran into a dark room, and that's where the soldiers came. The next thing I can recall is being marched down a long hallway with a lot of other children, and Dread was there telling us that we were special. We were going to make the world perfect. I don't really remember much else before I was at Volcania, but when I was a little girl, after I was taken, I had this dream about statues and a painting of a bird on a white background, a staircase with an intricate banister with a half moon and a stuffed animal shoved into a hole. I never knew if it was a dream or a memory. It's not much to go on, but maybe if I could find the statues, I might find a clue about where I came from. "
"What did the statues look like?" Jon asked, very interested in her answer.
Jennifer thought for a moment as if trying to find the right words. "They seemed tall. Metal, I think. One was a man on a horse, but there are thousands of statues like that still standing. One was a man holding some type of weapon. I have this vague feeling that some of the statues themselves were famous, not just heroes being honored with a statue. "
She was right. It wasn't much to go on. "It's a place to start, " he said.
Jennifer quickly changed the subject. "You're up late. You couldn't sleep?"
Jon shook his head. "No. I had a nightmare about that biodread. We should have made sure it was destroyed. It was vulnerable after being buried. "
"Maybe the explosion finished it, " Jennifer suggested.
"I don't think so. It might take more than an explosion to finish him off, " Jon mused. "He just kept coming. It's like he's stronger than Soaron."
"That's a scary thought, " she told him. "It's a good thing he was the only one Dread was able to make. I'd hate to think of an army of them running around. "
Running around? Oh, wait -- "Speaking of running, what happened at the Passages when we dropped off the people from Haven? I've never seen Scout so eager to leave as he was today. He usually likes to visit. "
Jennifer just nodded her head and smiled again. "Apparently, Chelsea Chandler is something of an amateur botanist, and she was assigned to work in hydroponics in the Passages. There's a scientist named Patricia who works in hydroponics, Scout is rather interested in both women so... "
Jon laughed. "He's in for a world of trouble. "
"Tank said Scout was stuck between a rock and a hard place. "
"I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, " Jon commented.
No, but then Jon didn't see himself in a similar situation. Two women didn't have his attention. There was only one, and she was on his mind now more than ever before.
"Well, there is something I'd like to know, " Jennifer said quickly.
"What's that?"
She pointed back toward the plaque. "What's a plowshare and a pruning hook?"
The End