I follow the light on the horizon for hours, pushing on late into the night. When I finally crest the top of the ridge and look down into the valley, what I see shakes me, surprises me enough that I forget years of experience, years of care and caution. I stand there, the tallest thing for miles around, and stare down on the first living, breathing city I’ve seen since we went under the mountain. Despite myself, despite the horror and death of the wasteland, the fear and mistrust start to fade away as I look down upon this first new city, amazed: they have lights. They have water. They have life.
And I’m not the only one. I see other travelers looking down from other ridges, as spellbound as me. I see them picking their way down the mountains of rubble, descending on the city from all directions, crossing the great dusty plain before the it, casting shadows miles long. Men and women, the women traveling in the open, all of us driven to carelessness by the ecstasy of hope on the horizon: that nameless city, that beacon of humanity’s finest aspirations, greater even than that which came before the bombs, tried and tested by the fires of annihilation and murder. Here, in this city with no name, in this city with The Church, here we will find salvation.
I make my way down along a long-dry arroyo, and climb up to the long plain before the city, baked hard by the sun and then vitrified by atomic fire, dust billowing up with every footfall to be carried up and away by the tugging breeze, betraying my path to any and every interested party for miles around. But there are no interested parties, none to mark my passing, as we all trudge forward, drawn across the continent to this light of humanity, the flame of hope carried far and wide by travelers and traders, thought by so many to be a myth, or worse, and yet here it stands, this beacon in the wastes.
We march on, oblivious to each other, drawing closer to strangers than any of us have been in years. I can’t remember the last time I saw this many people this close together without chains around their necks. But there are no slavers here. No bandits, or cannibals. Only the faithful, completing their great pilgrimage.
We enter through a great gate, left open even in the middle of the night to welcome the weary travelers who were drawn like moths to the flame of the city’s lights just over the horizon, those who abandoned caution and braved the terrors of the night to arrive even hours earlier. The amazed looks on the faces of the stupefied wanderers match, I’m sure, my own. We pass tents, then shacks, then honest to God buildings. And everywhere there are the faithful, praying and holding services anywhere they can stand: in pig sties, on waste heaps, right in the middle of the road. The stink and the press of the crowd is foreign, but welcoming. Truly, this city stands as a testament to something vast and beautiful, something we’d forgotten, something we had to be brought to the brink of destruction to be reminded of: this is our natural state. We are good and pure. We need each other and we need to be near each other, and in the face of this truth we indeed become the divine that we seek, that we trekked across the wasteland hoping against hope to catch even a glimpse of.
I feel a great joy swell up within me, unfamiliar at first, a feeling so long suppressed as to be forgotten, but there it is, filling me with its glow as I bump and jostle through the throng, hearing voices raised in praise and adulation, not crying out in pain or screaming, begging for mercy. No hushed whispers of the hiding, fearful even to breathe lest they be discovered and taken. As I weave through the streets towards the center of the city, towards The Church, I feel my throat start to loosen, and my breath presses past my voice box, my tentative voice uncertainly joining the great din of the crowd, growing stronger and louder with every step, the fear and dust and silence of the years falling away as I join in unfamiliar chants, the light in my heart guiding my voice and my thoughts, delivering me to the same revelation that the studied faithful have discovered, my soul crying out in the universal tongue of hope and aspiration, climbing to match the soaring ambition of this place, this first new great city, this place where it will all begin anew, better and grander than ever before in our lost history, made stronger and purified through the purgation, tempered and cleansed by nuclear fires wrought by our own hands.
I think of my wife and our children, long buried under the mountain, and I think on their faces, no longer twisted in hunger and fear, but aglow with the same vibrancy and hope that threatens to overwhelm me as I draw closer to The Church, the crowd thicker now, joyful hands clasping anyone they can reach, a frenzy of fraternity overtaking the masses, sweeping me along with it as I smile widely, looking into the eyes of the ecstatics around me, my own hope reflected in their perfect faces.
Then the crowd parts and we surround The Church, and I finally see it, the great darkened structure that this city has built itself up around. It seems to writhe against the night sky, the undulating voices of the great press of humanity echoing, seeming to alter reality as I find myself reeling, my mind trying to make sense of the structure before me: the faces, the walls, the great jabberwocky construction seeming organic and grown, rather than built. Something I can almost see, something moving in The Church...
But then one great voice rises above the din, and calls the newcomers forward, calls forth the families, the core of this new city, of this new pure and ambitious humanity. They bring their children forward, presenting them to the priest, and he welcomes them, placing his hands on their heads, each in turn. His men step forward and take the children, their parents falling to their knees in joyous, rapturous prayer, as the voice of the crowd rises as one. Somewhere a great lever is thrown, and ancient floodlights hum to life, blinding me for a moment as they bathe The Church in light, and the chanting of the crowd rises, nearing frenzy, loud enough to drown out the screams of the children as they are added to The Church, living sacrifices to this grand new humanity, long spikes and ropes marrying them to the structure, the mass of bones and flesh and mad ambition, and I recoil in horror, finally realizing that I was right: this is who we are, and this is where we belong: monsters and butchers scurrying in the shadow of The Church of Children.
25 September 2017
