“A very long time ago.” The Crone pauses. “I see you are curious about time. One thing you must realize is that time is the least relevant aspect of your existence.”
Aris’s hand goes to her wrist and feels the absence of her watch. For someone accustomed to tracking her life through time, it feels unnatural to deny its importance. But she decides on another question. “How did you come to be in this form?”
“I don’t know for sure. When I woke up, I was in this form. It took me a while to realize I was still alive. Well, not alive. My heart no longer beats. My lungs no longer breathe oxygen. Conscious is a more fitting word. Only now my mind lives in a different vessel.”
She eyes the book next to Metis. “And in a different delivery method.”
The old woman turns her gaze back outside. “But there’s only one person who could have made it happen, who was powerful enough, and who would have wanted to.”
“The Planner?” Aris says, “But why?”
“Sentimental reasons, I suspect,” the Crone says.
Aris detects sadness in her voice.
“You knew him?” she asks.
“Before he was the Planner, he was Eli. My Eli. You know him from living in his vision. The paradise he created because of the Last War.”
The Crone lays her wispy fingers on the dirty pane. Her eyes are on a spot outside the window.
“We watched the world burn from above. There’s nothing to prepare you for it. The certainty of knowing that your home as you know it is no more. Black clouds enveloped the earth, and land fell into the ocean, changing its face. The people you loved, the ones you could not save, dissipated with the dust.”
Aris has the sudden urge to wrap her arms around the old woman, except she is just an image.
The Crone continues, “And what we were also not prepared for was the feeling of gut-wrenching guilt. We had survived, while many good people died. The depression accompanying the loss and the guilt was too much to bear.
“We shuttered the windows. We couldn’t stand witnessing the destruction. Eli believed we would be next. So we waited for death to come. For a week we survived on nothing in the nest of our despair.
“But one day I opened the window and saw an image that had a powerful and immediate effect on my heart. The world below was blue and clear, beautiful again, even after the atrocity it had endured. We knew there would be survivors, like us. So, we set out to repair what we could. We saved as many as we could and brought them to the Four Cities.”
“Thank you. You saved humanity,” Aris says.
“That’s like thanking me for breathing. It’s something anyone would have done in our shoes. Humans cannot survive without each other. It’s not possible,” the Crone says.
She continues, “Over time, however, Eli was not content in solely saving. He wanted to make humanity thrive. And become better. He was quite a reader and an appreciator of music. A simple thought came to him. It bred the ideology of Tabula Rasa. He believed if people truly knew, not just in theory but by living the consequences, that life is short, they would be kinder to each other.”
“The best way to rid society of the evils of human nature is to periodically wipe each person’s mind of the prejudices learned through life experience. With the mind a blank slate, everyone has the freedom to author their own soul.” Aris recites a passage from the Manual of the Four Cities.
“Eli gave that speech to the Councils before enacting Tabula Rasa,” says the Crone. “It was a revolution. It changed everything about how we view our lives in the puzzle of this universe. Attachment is the seat of need and greed. No memory means no attachment.”
She sighs. “But he was hesitant to impose such a radical idea until . . .”
“Until what?” Aris asks, leaning forward.
“What’s not in the historical record is that it was I who gave him the reason to move forward.”
“What happened?”
“I had an affair. It was with someone who meant nothing to me. Eli and I had grown apart over the years and under the pressure of carrying the Four Cities on our shoulders. And I guess I just—It’s not an excuse for breaking my marriage vow. There’s a truth I didn’t know . . . Some things, once broken, cannot be fixed.”
Aris looks over at Metis’s peaceful face. He told her he had forgiven her for not remembering. For having moved on in life. But has he really forgiven her?
“Eli moved forward with Tabula Rasa as a gift for me,” the Crone says. “He thought he had chained me with marriage and his love. Tabula Rasa would allow me to author my own life every four years, so I would be free to take life in at its fullest. No attachment means no jealousy, no betrayal. Each person, if they so choose, can experience falling in love repeatedly with as many people as they want.”
“But that’s not enough?” Aris says.
The Crone looks at her with her downcast eyes. “Even with the decades I had with Eli, it still wasn’t enough.”
She still loves him.
“Eli couldn’t comprehend what I did as just a mistake.” The Crone wipes her eyes. “His gift was a curse. Now I only see him in dreams.”
Aris realizes that even as a consciousness with no body, the mind still perceives the physical as it did in flesh. Like a person who can still feel pain in their phantom limb. Like knowing something is missing and living it out in dreams.
“After Tabula Rasa, he left Earth. He moved back to the space station and never returned. He left me here. Alone,” the Crone says. “But he always knew where I was, keeping track of me. That’s how I woke up as this, after what was supposed to be my death. He couldn’t just
