Sinner

• When living becomes a sin, how many will remain faithful?

His fingers nervously turned the card over and over, the painted image rotating between upright and reversed. Jeff examined the colorful picture framed by his hand. The Magician, the card of discovery and power. He turned it, the image reversed again. Hidden knowledge, seeking to be found. Was it just coincidence that had caused him to pick this card out of a pile of waste about to be recycled? Maybe.

Jeff looked up from the colorful illustration, seeing that dawn had broken. He had only another hour or so before they would want to take him to the Center for his Release Ceremony. They knew he didn’t want to go and had tried to shame him into accepting his fate but it hadn’t worked. Was it gluttony to want to live more than his two score and five allotted years? Was it vain to believe that he had worth even though the blush of youth was off his cheeks? If so he was indeed a sinner and reveled in his sin.

He glanced at the card, reversed again in his palm. Hidden knowledge. Yes, that had been the key. Like most, he was not a student of history. The past was not a subject of any real study, having been deemed too primitive to be relevant in this age of youth. It was something vaguely obscene to even mention it, let alone refer to it for wisdom. Another sin, finding a way to access the old records stored on primitive silicon microcircuits. Sin, perhaps, but not deadly. Rather, a possible path to continued life.

Jeff took the next minutes to complete his preparations. By the time he was finished the sun was fully up and figures could be seen coming up the street. Out the back door, vaulting lightly over the fence that separated his space from public lands, and then a steady jog through the well-manicured woods took him to where better transport waited.

He’d stolen the flyer from a museum, knowing that it had no GPS system they could use to find him. Another sin. He removed the brush he’d used to conceal it, strapped his pack onto the cargo pad, and stepped onto the operator’s platform. Strapped in, he switched on the power to the motors that silently drove the ducted fans on either side of the platform. A quick test of the controls and a twist of the old-fashioned manual throttle took him aloft.

The batteries were almost depleted by the time he arrived. It didn’t look like much, just a squat, simulated stone building with an oddly rounded roof and a metal door set firmly into the only opening. It rose out of the ground like a half-buried boulder. The pack came off of his shoulders, a small, thin rectangle extracted, and an ancient memory module inserted. The screen came to life and he tapped it a few times. He studied the image that was displayed and walked up to the door.

“Alpha Sunrise, Omega Eclipse”

The heavy door slid soundlessly aside, still in good repair after all this time. Yes, hidden knowledge, the migration project, the war that decimated the adult population, the twisted “Plan” to repopulate that had covered it all up and left it buried for what it assumed was all time. Jeff stepped inside with his pack, repeated the phrase and watched the door close. Across the hard floor was a control panel and a platform, a gateway to somewhere else.

Consulting the pad he once more repeated what felt like random words. The system activated, indicators flashing silently until they all lit, telling him that the door had found another. Jeff took a small, heavy object from his pack and laid it atop the control panel. Hefting his pack, he swallowed hard and stepped onto the platform. He didn’t know if what lay on the other side was Paradise, Perdition, or something in between. He just knew that nothing lay
here.

When they finally found the missing flyer they found only wreckage and the singed but still brightly colored card with The Magician looking knowingly out at them.