Atlas of Arcadia Read online

  Thank you for choosing my book

  Incalculable thanks to my friends and family including but not limited to Helen; John; Evie and Emily. I love you all.

  Letter from the fruit seller:

  Dear Reader

  Do you ever contemplate infinity? There is a website that lets you accomplish just this. The Library of Babel. It is a book generated by formulae with infinite pages. With enough time you could click through every page and learn the secret of time travel, discover who Jack the Ripper was, and find out how to make the perfect egg. It would of course also contain every possible incorrect fact, plus instructions for a time machine that liquefies you and spreads the resulting goo onto toast. But this website’s formulae also contain every conceivable reality, every story and all the information in the universe. Every story exists in this realm, so really the challenge of writing isn’t the creation of the story; all the stories are simply there to be found. It’s plucking them from where they grow and finding the people who wish to read them. There is an infinity of stories and a finite number of people with time to read them. I am hoping you do.

  When you read the ‘About the author’ you are normally confronted with a bland list disguised as a paragraph about which fine fruits they picked in the past, how many of them they sold at market and how many awards they received. This is effectively a review of all past work. So the reader can judge if the material in question will be time well spent reading or the publisher’s money well spent selling. I have none of those accolades. This being my first novel, all I can offer is my promise that I worked very hard to produce a story I myself enjoy. The fact I greatly enjoyed building it should give you some hope that I care to have made it something worth sharing. My last promise is that I will ensure it will not waste your time.

  Now the real challenge begins. The best authors are not always the greatest writers but they are often the most persistent salesmen.

  I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did writing it.

  The Author:

  Nick is a young author from Bristol, England. Trained as an engineer, he is a keen rower and avid dog walker. His passion for writing started in 2006 and to date he has written a multitude of unpublished works. Losing his job motivated him to complete his dream of publishing his first written work. He is very proud to offer his first promotional novel to the public free of charge and funded by fan donations.

  patreon.com/atlasarcadia

  nickreednovels.co.uk

  [email protected]

  Nick Reed

  Atlas of Arcadia

  I

  Peni Mode waited nervously in the surgery. The surgery itself was very warm and sleepily quiet; the humming of the genome scanner only came as a mild, distant annoyance. Adverts danced around the room offering loans to pay off the hundreds of thousands of credits required for even basic services. The humming scanner was placed near the door and consisted of a barrel shape and an intersecting diagonal panel with an embedded screen. Out of curiosity Peni walked towards it and placed her arm into the equipment. An icon popped up into her vision asking if she would care to accept the charge for a scan, to which she hesitantly agreed. A pad pressed onto her arm, now lit in a low shade of blue. An icon told her nought point one credits had been removed from her account and a feeble seventy-nine point seven credits remained. Into her vision appeared an image as she had appeared when she was eighteen; she had brown hair in the image, unlike her current blonde and an un-weathered face. Next to the face she could read the percentages of diseases which were all far below dangerous levels, and beside that it recommended a gene therapy which would help to reduce addictive or compulsive qualities. However, she knew about the weakness already, and had never felt the need to correct it. Peni was called into the shadowy doctor’s office and sat down opposite a withdrawn figure hidden behind a floating projection of an adult man.

  “Now, Peni, I have looked at your child’s DNA and have come to the conclusion that you may wish to alter it further to the original specifications.” Dr Bishop’s bald head and black goatee loomed through the floating image of her child at age eighteen as he spoke, and then he creaked back with his excessive weight into his exhausted chair. “Is this something you might consider?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” Peni muttered.

  “Might I offer a few options for you to look at?”

  Into Peni’s vision came a long list of text with boxes you could tick, and a hefty price next to each. She scrolled through by looking towards the bottom of the list, and ticked the ones she thought appeared wise to tick by merely accepting the choice in her mind. Nanos biological switches attached to every brain cell within her directly mimicked her mind and discovered through a biological processor located in the ear which boxes’ she had imagined ticking. One choice was left unchecked among the hundreds of options such as ‘reduced heart failure’ and cancer eradication gene. The option she left unchecked, consciously or not, was ‘reduced surrendering personality qualities’.

  “Dr Bishop, when is the due date for my child?”

  “I believe, depending on the new licensing, your baby will be ready for collection within two years.” Dr Bishop said ‘two years’ with an upbeat tempo and a delicious smile.

  “Two years? My friend Tula Gammon had hers within four months,” Peni pleaded.

  “Ah, I remember Tula. I think I see the urgency here then, you are keen to start your job, you should have said.” Dr Bishop again sat through the image of her son and looked into her pleading eyes with a deep resentment. “I won’t need to discuss payment plans, as this procedure is already thoroughly covered. I hope you know what you are getting into with this job, Peni Mode. I’ve heard a few unpleasant stories, to say the least. You also look like you haven’t eaten in a while, maybe I can treat you to lunch?” Mr Bishop’s hand grasped hers, uninvited.

  *

  Four months and four days at four in the morning, an icon awoke Peni to the news her child was ready for collection. She dressed, grabbed a nearly empty bag of food from the cupboard and rushed through the house owned by employers, to the garage. The car door opened as she approached and the engine switched on expectantly. She selected the drive icon, and within thirty seconds an elevator took the car from the basement level to the level of the road. She peeled away and drove the ten miles to Kemin city. A nurse was waiting at the door of the Nacido Clinic, holding her silent bundle.

  *

  Atlas Mode was a strange child. The world was full of strange children, billions of them filling the internet with endless videos of amusing exploits and baffling observations that only a child can make, but Atlas was strange because he didn’t. He wouldn’t explore every nook and cranny of a room like a toddler should, he wouldn’t try to struggle to produce words vastly in contrast to your typical screeching child. He would instead stare for hours at the wall or ceiling seemingly in meditation; he might look at the pictures of a tablet book or draw bizarre neat shapes on electronic paper. He lived with his mother in the Chong-Kemin mountains, surrounded by a percentage of the continent’s industrialists, artists, renowned investors and the occasional lively squirrel which Atlas might watch through the window if he was feeling particularly stimulated.

  “It’s almost as though he is waiting for something,” Tula sneered over her green leaf tea, as Atlas played quietly with his paper notebook behind a pot plant, while the visiting child was rushing around the room loudly pretending to be an aeroplane.

  “He’s very intelligent,” Peni said happily.

  “Hmm, are you so sure? He seems so simple.” Tula Gammon was a staved thin woman, she would be attractive if she ever smiled, with bright blonde hair, almost white. She had brought her child, Aiyan, who was the same age as Atlas, to visit. A
iyan ran up to Atlas and asked for his pen and when Atlas obliged, Aiyan promptly snapped the pen in two and gave Atlas an unceremonious kick to the shoulder and continued to charge around the room in glee, occasionally returning to give Atlas more abuse. The unconcerned Tula leaned back and brought a biscuit over her teacup.

  “He’s been tested,” said Peni. “And he has an incredible memory, verging on child wonder, and he can remember what the weather was every day last year.” Peni beamed happily and unfazed at the chaos in the room.

  “But can he talk?” Tula accused.

  “No, he has to choose the answer by pointing,” said Peni

  “But he’s ten years old! Can he read and write and count? And what do they think about all this?” Tula was enjoying her bantering exchange with Peni.

  “They don’t know yet. I have been telling him he’s doing well and sending the videos to him. I really hope Atlas learns to talk before his father visits next.”

  “I would be more concerned about that.” Tula pointed towards Aiyan punching Atlas in the temple. “He’s not even trying to fight back.” Tula laughed. Peni was embarrassed.

  After Tula and her daughter had left, Peni sat with Atlas behind the plant pot. “What are you drawing, honey? Is that a house?” The drawing was of interesting squares which filled every inch of the page and couldn’t resemble a house less. Atlas shook his head. “Why don’t you draw mummy a house?” Atlas nodded, cleared the screen and drew their house in almost photographic detail. Peni nodded and then shuffled off to her bedroom and tried to deal with the situation she had got herself into. She opened her wardrobe to a display of expensive shoes; her debts still barely paid after all this time.

  *

  The house lay quietly pressed into the mountainside of Chong-Kemin with an overhanging wall of rock and a large panel of glass instead of a front wall. The front door was entered by approaching a pond at the front of the glass window which the water would suddenly disperse by means of a glass tray tipping back and pouring the centimetre or so layer of water into a canal. Visitors would then descend the steps and walk into a large lounge with grey and black furniture, black wood panelling on the walls, and an oversized fireplace at one end with bright recessed lighting. For the area it was not particularly opulent.

  Peni was an excellent teacher. Inside the house, she had a large study filled with paper books and the walls lined with telepaint displaying cartoonish characters or the alphabet and numbers. Before she had Atlas she was one of the best teachers in the local civics, she had several expensive degrees in child psychology, and the natural ability for parenthood. Sadly, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t get Atlas to speak. Tomorrow was the day of the fathers visit. After she’d read Atlas a bedtime story the blinds were drawn automatically and she retreated to her bedroom and watched 4Ds, trying not to think about the next visit from her employer. A sleepless night passed and she got Atlas washed and dressed ready to meet him. The ten-year-old Atlas was reading a book quietly; the book was a paper copy of a digital book written in the time of darkness. Using excerpts from an interview, it followed the life of the Senior Tunnel Engineer, Isaac Mode, who was his distant ancestor.

  “What happened on the infamous, January eighth, Mr Mode?”

  “Ah, I had an interesting visitor that day in my office at Tau Tona mine, the great Francisco Arcadia and his five sons. They trundled the poor guy in on his wheelchair, being bounced all over the place on the gravel path; the old boy was ninety years old at the time, still as lively as a cat. He told me all about the disaster that was going to befall the earth. I couldn’t believe my ears, the CEO of Arcadia Space Tech was telling me about the end of the world, and that the only way to save humanity was to bury ourselves underground and try to hang on until the sun shone again. How he could tell the future like that was beyond me. He told me they were building a house for him on the hill so he could watch the work, and I told him that it’s his facility so he can do what he pleases with it.

  He wanted me to tunnel three miles directly downwards and to plant an antimatter bomb and blow up the whole thing, which would destroy all the gold in the mine. I had heard of his legend the last time he started blowing things up during the second great depression, so I wasn’t entirely pleased.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “He talked about his future world, ‘after the slate had been cleaned’ as he put it, when humanity gained its footing again and he was going to wipe poverty from the earth. He told me in his future he was going to eradicate taxes, disease, unemployment, restricted trade, big government and God.”

  “Did you attend his funeral?”

  “No, I couldn’t because that was the day we planted the bomb. We lowered it down the shaft and hoped it wouldn’t become stuck on anything on the way down, but of course it did. So I volunteered a chap to put on the breathing equipment and plunge into the hole and release the bomb, and of course he got stuck as well, so we sent a second guy down to free the first. The first guy, Baruti, had died of suffocation because his air pipe had gotten stuck to the cable by friction and his weight had pulled out the pipe from his mask. The second guy, Hendricks, worked his way past the body of Baruti and found the bomb was in fact stuck on a large diamond cutting tool. He chipped the diamond loose and came back up with the body of Baruti, so we had a second funeral that day. We all voted to give the diamond to Baruti’s family, but as it was the property of Arcadia we weren’t allowed.”

  “What was the detonation like?”

  “Like Zeus’s wrath. We all moved back to the control tower, young Henry Arcadia pulled the switch, and bright light shone directly out of the windows of the mine tower and the place caught fire. Some estimates put the temperature at the hole near to three thousand centigrade, quite impressive. Of course deep in the newly created Arcadia was a gigantic spherical void with a one point one mile radius from the creation point; it had seared the limits of the cavern into the black glass you can see today.”

  “So where were you on the day of darkness?”

  “I was in my bunk, I barely felt a thing. I didn’t want to think about what was going on up there.”

  “What is a forest like?” the reporter enquired.

  “Put that book down, Atlas. Now!” Peni looked more agitated than normal. Atlas complied, walked into the lounge and saw a man sitting in the shadow of the large armchair. Athletic, muscular, with a thin black moustache, he beckoned Atlas over to him.

  “Come here, chip. What’s your name then?” The man looked stern and impatient, like someone test driving a new car, but unable to change the gears. “Come on, answer me.” His glare was piercing. Atlas stared back equally as intently.

  “He’s shy,” whimpered Peni.

  “He doesn’t look shy, how are his studies?” The man was looking directly at Peni then stood up suddenly and pinned her in the corner of the room with his stare. “Well?”

  “He’s doing fine, sir, he can read.” Peni couldn’t look him in the eye.

  “I asked you to video tape him reading, and all you have sent me are videos of that boy looking at the pictures in books. I have had this house bugged, he’s never said one word; he’s damn retarded.” The man was accusing. “Dr Bishop tells me I have wasted my money on this one and on you. He let me look at the options you selected for Atlas. You didn’t tick reduced weakling personality traits or whatever they call it what the fuck do you think you’re playing at? That little bastard cost me a lot of money. I’ve seized that money back, and I want you and your weakling out of my house.” The moustached man got very close to her face and motioned to grab her around the neck, stopping centimetres away.

  With the man hot on her heels, Peni grabbed Atlas and rushed him down the stairs towards the garage, threw him into the back seat of the car and they ascended to road level. Atlas looked down as the gap of the pit closed, two shining cold eyes glared back at him from the darkness. Peni shot past the grey guards at the front gate of the community before
they could react and close it. Racing through the mountains at a maddening pace, Atlas was sliding violently in the back seat.

  “I should never have taken this job, I was warned.” Peni sobbed into the air. “Look what you've done to us, Atlas! Look what you have done,” She thumped her palms onto the wheel. “You can’t even understand what I am saying; you have never said a word in your whole life, have you? Why were you born wrong? Why can’t the doctors do things right anymore?”

  Atlas said nothing.

  “He’s disappointed in me too, you know, deeply disappointed. He’s going to send debt collectors, and not only will I never see my friends again, he will probably kill you like the other ones, Atlas.”

  Atlas stared out the window placidly.

  The rest of the journey was silent, as Peni drove into the local town and recharged the car. She stole one packet of food, which she scoffed and offered none to Atlas.

  “You weren’t supposed to be imperfect, Atlas; you were designed to grow up in the image of your father, you’re his little secret, and my job was to make sure you grew up correctly. That’s why he hired me to make you, and I could live out my life free of debt. I do love you, Atlas, and I am sorry it has come to this.” The car beeped at her to pay, but she didn’t have any money to pay it with. She aggressively opened the door and briskly walked down the road.

  Atlas watched until she was out of sight, and then he sat quietly in the car and waited.

  “Hello, are you alright? What’s your name?” A man with a grey jacket had opened the door and clicked in his HUD display to request an ID.

  Atlas watched his eyes flitter down the page and blink to try and click an icon.

  “How old are you then?”

  No reply other than a saddened look rose from Atlas.

  “Where are your parents?”

  Atlas didn’t reply.