4.100: A Matter of Time

“One hundred and fifty years,” Max repeated. “Perhaps two hundred.”

“Two hundred – and you guys didn’t think to mention this before? I thought we were working with, like, months! A couple of years at most!”

“You’re working with two weeks, I’m given to understand,” Max reminded me. “You won’t have access to the Heart from Fionnrath.”

“That’s not what – Max, our entire country is barely two hundred years old!”

“It’s seventy five thousand years, coloniser,” Kylie said.

“You know what I mean! You guys, and Fionnrath’s Destiny, and that stupid spellthing… everyone treats this like some big impending threat that’s going to destroy everything, that we have to throw our lives away for, and now you’re telling us this? Now?!”

“It is a big impending threat that’s going to destroy everything,” Max said. “I’m not sure why you’re upset. Isn’t it good to have more time?”

“You don’t understand why I’m upset? Our lives are going to be over after this. And now you’re telling us that no, we’d never actually have to worry about this thing hurting anyone, and neither will our children, and neither will our great grandchildren. This is some vague maybe-threat in the future that people have two hundred years to find a neat, safe solution to, one that doesn’t involve committing terrorism and probably getting a bunch of people killed in a wave of political unrest, but apparently tricking a couple of teenage patsies into throwing their lives away on a quick and dirty solution is, what, more convenient for everyone?”

“Kayden, nobody here is attempting to manipulate or deceive – ”

“Your buddies have been manipulating us since one of you lead me to the Lake of Inquisition on our first day here!”

“Nobody’s attempting to deceive you, then. I simply didn’t realise that the specific timeline was relevant information to you.”

“Of course you fucking didn’t. You never – this is exactly like our inititation semester, with the whole cu -- ugh, fucking geas! -- with not knowing anything, except you don’t have magical brainwashing as an excuse this time.”

“Kayden, I have no idea what that means.”

“I know you don’t. Because you’re not him. He… our friend died for this, do you understand?! He sacrificed his life for your stupid little scheme, believing it was necessary, believing we had to hurry, believing this was even our problem – ”

“I didn’t kill Maximillian Acanthos.”

“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t exist yet. But your friends did. You understand? Between them and Fionnrath’s Destiny, and whatever stupid fucked up prophecies were in that thing that decided to play head games with me in the Pit, they all put him on the chopping block for something that it turns out, oh, society at large has plenty of time to find a solution for, and now he’s dead, and you don’t understand why I’m upset. You guys get to sit around in your back tunnels and play with the lives of others because, oh, it doesn’t affect you, you’re not involved – ”

The janitor pulled his hood down to bare his face. “Look at me.”

I scowled at him. “I am. And you’re not gaining any sympathy points with that face today.”

“Not what I meant. Look at me.” He traced some gloved fingers down the blue magic that covered an extensive part of his face, over his temple, over his replaced eye, around his cheek and down to his throat. “Look at me and think. Do you have any plan for keeping the kuracar’s host alive, after you destroy its locus?”

“No, and that’s another sacrifice that – oh. How… how long will you have?”

He shrugged. “Some replaced tissues stick around longer than others. The oldest among us, the original tunnel diggers with almost no flesh left at all, barely survived the hour it took to gain a new host after Malas’ previous master died. Those with much less extensive damage… perhaps up to a day. Of course, with the magic of the kuracar, a janitor can survive indefinitely, destroyed flesh being replaced over time. We could very easily let mages sort out mage problems, let humanity perish due to humanity’s own missteps, and live perfectly happily for another hundred and fifty to two hundred years. Or, you can save the world. And we can all die in about two weeks. We work from the sidelines because that is what we need to do to get this job done. Do not mistake our invisibility for a lack of investment.”

“I… I didn’t mean...”

“I need to go. I have work to do, and the longer I’m here, the higher a chance I’ll be found. I’m sorry if this timeline is a shock, although I’m still not sure why you’re shocked, but believe me when I say that nobody’s tried to deceive you. It didn’t come up because it isn’t important, and you still have a job to do. Humanity is at risk. Humanity will die out, or we will prevent that dying out directly, even at the cost of the world’s biggest war. The only way to avoid this choice is to destroy the heart of this abomination in a less destructive manner, and you are the only person capable of doing that. If you don’t, the chances that anybody else will be able to are vanishingly small. These are the facts, and they have not changed. I wish you both the best of luck.”

He left. I stared after him.

It wasn’t until he was long gone that I realised that I’d probably never see him again.

“Do not tell me,” Kylie said scathingly, “that after all the progress we’ve made, you’re thinking of turning your back on saving the world because you want to save the life of that thing.”

“The situation’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.

“Oh my god! Kayden, it’s not our friend. You know that, you just said so – ”

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“I don’t hate anyone, I just – you’ve been okay with the consequences of this whole thing so far, with throwing the lives of all of our friends here into dangerous chaos, with hoe we’re going to kill your master, but this – ?”

“That’s the point, you see? We don’t have to do any of that!”

“Kayden. You know we do.”

“No. We don’t. Listen to yourself. I’m not going to kill Malas to maybe prevent some vague problem that won’t happen for two hundred years – ”

“One hundred and fifty to two hundred.”

“Whatever! We’ve been operating under the assumption that we need to save our loved ones from the end of the world. But that’s not true. They’re not in any danger. Nobody alive is in any danger. We’re being asked to hurt them for a problem that doesn’t exist.”

“So we just kick the can down the road and make this the next generation’s problem?”

“It shouldn’t be our problem in the first place! Kylie, we’ve just learned that this thing has nothing to do with us. Do you understand that? This system isn’t our problem and it isn’t our responsibility to solve. This stupid system was made by people who are long dead and it’s going to collapse on people who won’t be born for ages. They have centuries to find a proper solution. A better, less dangerous, less destructive solution.”

“We were just told that we’re probably the only chance to – ”

“Says who? Huh? Humans are clever. Humans built this place. Humans can find solutions to any problem, given time. The janitors’ current plan only works right now? Who cares? They have centuries to come up with a new one. Or for Refujeyo to collapse on its own. Or for someone to invent some new scientific advancement that solves the problem. This isn’t our problem, and it isn’t our responsibility.”

“It’s our responsibility because we’re part of this society, part of this system.”

“That’s bullshit! You know that’s bullshit. We were trapped. Conned. We’re not citizens here, we’re indentured servants. You realise that, right? The school student contracts, the apprenticeship contracts, that’s all they are. Indenturement laws. And you and I? We didn’t even choose this, not really, not properly. Most of the students here are from legacy families and are actually part of this society, or they’re from other rich families and had the tenacity and desire to become part of this society. You and I were shanghaied. We were manipulated with minimal information, bribed and coerced, because we were a commodity that they wanted, or at least our magic was. We don’t owe this society anything. We don’t owe the messes it’s made anything. This isn’t, in any way, shape or form, our problem, and it isn’t a present danger.”

“So your plan is to, what? Run away? Move to Fionnrath, turn our backs on this whole place, and pretend this isn’t happening?”

“Don’t try to make my decision not to kill my master, wipe out who knows how many janitors, and probably ruin and endanger the lives of all of my friends, out to be a cowardly one. I’m telling you we shouldn’t cause actually harm to the world for no reason. We can walk away and actually live our lives, make what lives we can in Fionnrath, and let everyone here do the same.”

“This problem isn’t going away, Kayden.”

“Of course it is! It has one and a half to two centuries to go away! Once we’re safely in Fionnrath, we can write whatever letters we want to whoever we want. The politicians can get on this, the scientists can get on this; people will have time to formulate – ”

“Do you honestly think, for one second, that that would work?’

“It’s worth a try!”

“We can’t implicate the janitors in anything. Meaning all we would have to tell people about is a handful of vague prophecies and the theorising of a dead teenaged mapmaker. Do you think that anybody would take us remotely seriously? Even if it goes against their political interests?”

“You think people would put their political interests above the fate of the world?”

“I think that people will do what they always do with long-term cumulative problems. They’ll do exactly what you’re doing right now. They’ll decide it’s the next generation’s problem. And the next generation will push it onto the next. And they’ll do that until it’s an imminent crisis that needs to be dealt with in a drastic, messy fashion, and thousands or hundreds of thousands of people will die. Because you won’t take responsibility.”

“This isn’t our responsibility.”

“We live here. Talk about being coerced if you want, but you knew the deal by the end of your initiation semester and you decided to take the Initiation anyway. You knew the deal with your apprenticeship contract and you took it anyway. This is our society.”

“Not any more, it isn’t. Fionnrath is.”

Kylie sat heavily on her bed and rubbed her temples. “You know, once I took this really boring English class with a friend. And we had to read this one short story, called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Do you remember it?”

“Um. Vaguely?”

“Right. Well. The story is about this utopian city of Omelas, where everyone is happy and prosperous, but the fate of the city depends on the misery of a single, isolated child.”

“Oh, yeah! That one.”

“In the story, see if that child is ever shown a speck of kindness, the city’s prosperity will fail, and everyone will be miserable.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“And when an Omelan citizen is of age, they’re taken to see the child.”

“Right, yeah, and most of them – ”

“And most of them justify this situation to themselves. They say that the prosperity of many is more important than the suffering of one. Or that it’s terrible that such a thing happened but to reverse course now would do more harm than good when the child is already so mentally destroyed, and they go on with their lives.”

“I know the story, Kylie.”

“But some, you see – ”

“I remember the story!”

“Some, they just walk away from Omelas, and never return. They just decide not to be part of this corrupt system, even if it makes their own lives harder.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But my friend, who can be quite wise when he’s not being a fucking idiot, didn’t think that was a noble choice at all. He said that anyone who walks away from Omelas is a coward.”

“That’s not the same as this, though.”

“He said that the choice here is simple – to help the child, or not. Nobody helps the child, in the story. The stayers and the walkers are the same, but at least the stayers are owning their responsibility in the situation. The walkers are choosing to suffer minor hardship instead of suffer guilt, to pretend that walking away somehow absolves them of responsibility, but it doesn’t meaningfully change anything. It just makes them feel better.”

I sighed. “Kylie, that’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, it’s… life’s complicated, okay?”

“Of course it is! Everything is complicated! But let’s make this simple – I can’t save the world without you. You’re balking, now, because you just learned that the consequences for failure won’t hurt anyone you personally know, and you’re trying to come up with gentler strategies that other people can use in the future, make this their problem, but we both know that that’s not going to work. Because it never works. The people in power will ignore a problem until it’s a crisis, and long after if they can. If there was any chance of that working, Fionnrath’s Destiny wouldn’t have escaped and come here, and those prophecies you met in the Pit wouldn’t be so antsy, and the janitors would be making sure it was happening. Moving to Fionnrath and trying to save the world via letter campaigns or whatever might make us feel better, feel like we’re doing something, but we both know that our only realistic chance is to head down to the heart of the Labyrinth of Dreams in twelve days and fulfill this cursed prophecy. And you know as well as I do that if we chicken out now, if we miss that deadline, if we don’t even try, then no number of letter campaigns and dire warnings and lying to ourselves that this will solve the problem after we’re dead will ever be enough to make us not hate ourselves for dooming the world over a matter of cold feet.”

She was right. Of course she was right. “Yeah,” I said. “We… we need to go. I know. I just.” I swallowed. “I’m scared.”

“Me too, Kayden. Me too.”