Project Devilgama

Fourteen

Through the windowpanes under the bone-white ceiling, sunshine penetrated into the classroom. God's rays showered onto the rows of empty desks and chairs that had been left by the students, illuminating the floating particles. Inside the classroom, two boys of the same freakiness. Mhaz and Maykal. They remained here, trying to form a series of artistic kinesthetics on the floor they struggled on. That was a dance for a test that gradually turned into a predicament that kept them up at night.

Most of the time in the empty class had been spent on silly moves. They were addicted to the moments they had wasted time on – silly discussions. Born thinkers, Mhaz constantly remained May how useless is it teaching researchers and engineers how to dance. Wailing, wailing, and wailing, scientifically.

Mhaz's phone rang inside his pockets. He immediately answered the call but was not the first to speak. It was a call of duty. "Hey, Mhaz!" A voice of a female came out of the speakers, "Come here, the training's begun."

"The trainers have come, eh?"

"Yes, and everyone is looking for you two. You and Maykal, get yourself here ASAP!"

Mhaz completed with affirmatives. He and May quickly sprang off the classroom and headed to the training room.

"How come? I thought it was going to be an empty hour!" Mhaz spoke again, feet pounding on the grassy yard in the center of the school complex.

"Well, nobody confirms it."

"So it's my fault?!"

"Yes, sir."

"Crap."

"Watch your language."

By the time they arrived, they realized that half of the warm-up session had been missed. They barely regretted it, though. Only some awkwardness popped in and out as they strode through the spaces between students to get in position. Mhaz took a place beside a girl that now spread both of her arms out. Cold stretches, cold emotions. He was stiff as a wooden mannequin. It was Faradis that had been looking for him until the moment of nearly giving up.

He could have laughed here. How silly it was to pretend that he could not follow her anywhere only to find an end to his subtle hypocrisy.

She and Mhaz checked ahead; everything was working like the last week.

All sides of the wall were lined with palisades of clear mirrors that gave him a sight of everyone inside the room. And so, he could see anything; any movements he performed from the tip of the toe to hair. But reflecting light was not the only task the mirror could do, for it served as a stationary tutor that can show the actions every trainee could imitate. Breaking down the dance into bite-sized segments, hoping to make it easier.

He looked at the scene and moved a step.

Took another look. Something ain't right.

It gave him a poke of insecurity in his mind every time he gazed at that mirror. He knew such thing as improvement, but a striking contrast between his performance and hers was displayed on it. His friend Armbond kept telling him that the difference was between the ground and the sky.

"Felt pitiful for her."

"Why?"

"For having you."

Mhaz could be an egoist. Selfishness was his close acquaintance going through the academic years, and he accepted it. Never had once considered himself to be an improper, incapable figure of biomass that desired beauty. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine! And he devoured. Again, he tells himself how stupid it is to teach dance to everybody. The two could become something bigger in the future. The two could remain, despite the nowadays compatibility issue. I LOVE HER! He screamed in his brain.

It might be his luckiest day in school when he saw the roulette on the wall mirrors choosing her as a partner on the very first day of this class. But one thing was imminent; a growing network of feelings slowly began to encase his heart. And hormones, Mhaz couldn't help but let them flow.

--

He sprang from his laid-down position in the backseat. His hands rubbed on all the protrusions on his face, instinctively. He was aghast, a little. He knew was dreaming.

"You be dreamin'?" May asked quickly.

Mhaz nodded. It felt like a unique one, he thought that it was Devilgama by the moment he woke up. Taking a dip into the pool of contemplation, he found out it was a memory, an occurrence from his teenage, 2119. He looked down at the piece of Farad's drive that is now inside his grasp and flipped it over several times upon a sort of inspection.

Mhaz felt a subjective existence in the void inside him had just awoken by the time he re-opened his eyes. Something that had once given him spirit but ceased to burn for a long time, and it now begins to glow again. Gleaming, blinking, like a star that slowly comes closer in the twilight. It was ... a mysterious feeling of yearning.

"There we go, Mhaz. The Southpearl Street." Hannev turned his head behind, "When the wheels stop before the train tracks, then it's yours to come down. Don't worry, it's unused."

"I'll do."

The car proceeded to take a turn into an alleyway that went below a looming web of overpasses. On the side stood a tall concrete wall enclosing the major complex of Maglev train station, and on the other side something resembling a once thriving village. Going deeper into the shade of the buildings, they passed a short bridge. Then an unsymmetrical Y intersection lies ahead, May took the right turn into the smaller street.

"Creepin' folks," May said.

Now they could see people. They walked down the streets, rode bicycles, and some went out to scale the wall of the station on ladders, looking for the remnants of consumables and scraps for a living beneath the Betonized structures. It was a new sight for May and Hannev, but a return for Mhaz. Seeping among the charred pieces of destruction, the ashes of humanity. People that had lived through hell. Hidden settlements that seemed obsolete harboring human life.

"Remember what I told you before the elevator? Can we save the people in this stupid reality? A reality where corruption met corruption. And we are the ones to pay the price." Hannev uttered, "But we are rich fellows, Mhaz. We chose to do it."

From the front windshield of the now plodding car, Mhaz saw a strip of age-worn train tracks. The track rends its way through homes and cuts across the street through a pair of slits in the weathered asphalt. A part after the street led out towards the zone of lushness, with bushes and trees assorted to form a dark grotto, and another towards the white, open sky with homes lining up on the edge. But, there was not a single foot strolling through the tracks as far as he can assure.

"Steam trains used to roll through here, I guess," May said.

"Let's stop here, people." Mhaz ordered, "I'll walk down the tracks."

"Which one?"

"The bright one, the bushy one looks pretty eerie. Just park here."

The car took a halt on a paved small area inside the angle of the intersecting track and street. Mhaz opened the door and began the stride out. Touching the ground, he reminded himself about all the clues from Farad on her deathbed that he had scribed on a piece of paper. May and Hannev completed their promises to not accompany, whatever he is about to do in the unknown.

Mhaz knew well. It was perfectly safe to have some walk on the track, pleasant even. He felt grasses below his soles, and gravels and steelworks. Farad's drive was held tight in his hand he sway lightly as he stepped forth. Then Noble Man, Noble Man, Noble Man, he mumbled. On his sides, he could see several artifacts of human gadgets piled up sporadically, and pieces of undegradable junk scattering around. And the track began to crook out in the distance, Mhaz had grown an urge to keep following it to see what could be hidden in plain sight.

He accelerated a little, nearly reaching the last home on the line. Then, out in the clearance. A vortex of wind swept him through the space, intensifying the experience. His head turned right; an image of the spectacle was painted on his eye.