John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

Still staring at the acoustic tiles above her, Tillie responded, “I know! Why me, too? I don’t deserve it. I’m nasty, surly, rude, judgmental. I hate most people…hell, I mean heck, I’ve killed people. That can’t exactly be the ideal specimen for starting a new world.”

“Tillie,” he said softly, “what happened with your brother was an accident. You didn’t kill….”

“I don’t mean that. I’m talking about Eric. When he had his gun on you, Elias, and he was going to pull the trigger, I took the head shot. I could’ve hit him in the shoulder, the leg…but I didn’t.”

Leah turned in her chair to face Tillie. Gently, she reached out and touched her arm. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

Tillie, reacting to the contact, twisted her head around to look at Leah. “Yeah, I think I do. Why?”

“One of the basic tenets of the philosophy is that we keep coming back here until we’ve learned our lessons. Whether there’s a God, or whether all of the minds on Earth are interconnected, like the cells in our head, to form a giant brain, whatever has staged this series of impossible events to create this outcome, I think, is a lot more interested in whether we’ve learned the right lessons, than whether we ever made the mistakes in the first place.”

Tillie dropped her feet loudly to the floor and spun to face Leah. “You think?”

“Of course I do. Who is less likely to do a bad thing…someone who did it before and had to suffer through the horrible consequences of it, or someone who has never experienced that?”

She turned to her husband. “And this applies to you, too. In your life, in the positions you’ve held, you’ve seen it all. You have witnessed the results of almost every action a person can take. You’ve watched individuals, as well as entire countries, make mistakes, and many times it’s been up to you to clean up the mess afterward. Who better to know what choices to avoid than you?”

Elias thought back over his life and his career. Her words made sense.

“Elias, baby, in the coming months and years ahead, you are going to be a big part of it, an integral cog in the process that forms this reborn society. There will be hundreds of times you will be in some meeting, listening as someone proposes an idea which, to that person, is a brand-new concept, but to you will be déjà vu all over again. It’s going to be your job to make certain we avoid as many of those pitfalls, the ones which will lead us to disaster, as possible. In a sense, it’ll be as if we are all going to be on a safari and you are the guide. You’ll be the one who knows where the bad places are that we need to avoid.”

“What you’re saying makes sense as far as Elias is concerned, but what do I have to offer? I’m just broken. I’m not going to help anybody make the right decisions.”

Before Leah could respond to Tillie, Elias said, “You’re right.”

His wife whirled around to stare at him, shocked. Tillie, stunned by his bluntness, had nothing to say as he continued, “You’re an angry, bitter fool with nothing to offer anyone.”

“Elias!” Leah exclaimed.

But he was not finished. “Your brother died and you decided that it was your fault, which, by the way, it was. You couldn’t handle it, so you split. You ran away to Aegis. But you found out that Aegis was just another community…just another society…just like the one you ran away from, only smaller. So, instead of trying to fit in, you did what you do best; you hid in the ductwork, like a rat.”

Tillie was staring at Elias, her face frozen.

“What a bitter irony this must now be for you. The society, which you thought you weren’t good enough to live in, is dying. And the place where you came to hide, to commit a metaphorical suicide because you didn’t have the guts to do it for real, has turned out to be the Ark. You keep trying to punish yourself, and God or fate, or whatever, keeps cheating you out of the punishment you know you deserve. Tillie, you were a worthless screw-up when you first came in here and you’re still a worthless screw-up!”

Her hand flashed forward, slapping him hard across the face.

“How dare you call me that? I saved your ass! If it hadn’t been for me, everybody in this place would be….”

She stopped. The furor on her face dissolved, softened. A single tear welled up at the corner of her eye.

“Dead?” Elias finished the sentence for her.

The tear broke loose and trailed down her cheek as she moved her head in a single nod. A second tear followed, then a third, until the dam burst and she was racked with sobs. She flew out of her chair, and throwing her arms around Elias, she broke down, holding him tightly. He put his arms around her, and Leah placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

“Hey!” someone shouted from the doorway before he noticed the scene that was being played out. “Oh, sorry.”

Elias was able to turn his head enough to see that it was Crabill. “What is it, Jay?”

“We’ve… the radio’s working. Uh, you should probably come and hear this.”

Elias nodded. “We’ll be right there.”

Crabill left and Tillie loosened her grip on Elias, backing away and letting him go. Her eyes a bright red, her nose running, she dragged her sleeve across her face and sniffled loudly. After a few swallows, she said, “We should go listen.”

“Anytime you’re ready.”

With another loud sniff, she stood up. “I’m ready. We can go.”

Elias and Leah stood, and as they all walked toward the door, Tillie stopped abruptly. “I know you’re expecting a ‘thank you’ or some other soppy thing….”

Elias began to deny that he was, when he was interrupted.

“But I’m gonna kick your butt for that.” She finished the threat with a weak smile.

He broke into a relieved grin. “Better bring your lunch.”

A twelve-volt power supply and some speakers had been located. The makeshift radio was on a small folding table which had been placed atop the elevated platform Pierce and Wilson had spoken from earlier. The group, scattered throughout the hall, edged forward, closer to the radio, many of the people sitting down on the floor at the base of the platform.

Crabill scanned the channels looking for a station. Finding one, he turned the volume up, moved to the edge of the platform, and sat down.

“…that is all we know at this time. We have been completely unable to contact any authorities for a report or an update on the epidemic. Broadcast stations in our nation’s capital are off the air. Cellular systems are so overwhelmed with people attempting calls that it has proved useless to try them. We have made repeated attempts to contact our sister station in Washington, D.C. using land lines. When we were able to get through, there was no answer other than voice mail.

“There has also been no contact with other major cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Charlotte…the list is growing by the minute. We have not heard anything from Atlanta, the home city of the Center for Disease Control.

“Some functionality still remains on the Internet, and we have been able to receive word that martial law has been declared by the governors of all states not yet affected by the epidemic, or pandemic, I guess. We have also been able to find out from the Internet that cases have been reported overseas. Illness, fatalities, and widespread panic are reported in France, England, Germany, and the rest of Europe. At this time, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and Australia have not reported any outbreaks of the epidemic.”

Elias looked around the room and watched the faces of the crowd. Everyone was listening silently, and he was certain that each was thinking about friends, family, and acquaintances on the outside, visualizing the horror that was spreading like a wildfire around the country and the entire Earth. He knew that all of them must be as dumbstruck as he, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the events.