Outside, cold rain fell without ceasing. The sky seemed close enough to touch, and gray clouds hung low, no more than one hundred meters off the ground. With each gust of wind, the rain fell harder.
The light metal roof was brown in places and spotted, and the rain leaked through. Fragments of reinforced glass covered the floor, where the rainwater formed rivulets soaking down into the ground. Not a single spot remained dry. The cold rain penetrated through Siddhārtha’s clothes to his body.
Beneath the slanted roof, several figures huddled beneath carbonic-vinyl tarps. The frigid rain splashed, rattling as it sprinkled onto the spread vinyl. Empty, desperate eyes looked out from underneath, following Siddhārtha.
As far as he could see, there was not a single home here worthy of the name. The rooms were warped, the walls half fallen, the streets were rivers that lacked even proper drainage ditches. What’s going on here?
Siddhārtha stopped, feeling six pairs of eyes from six round heads staring at him.
“I would not imagine this city to be so poor that its residents could not afford to build homes for themselves,” Siddhārtha muttered to himself.
He looked back toward the giant cylindrical obelisk that towered behind him. This was the center of the city, this was everything.
“Do you know what that is?” asked a voice from the shelter, and a thin arm extended from beneath the vinyl sheet to point toward the giant cylinder.
“I do indeed.”
“More than three thousand years it’s been since they locked themselves up in there. What were we who were left behind supposed to do? We would rebuild our city, if anyone knew how.”
Siddhārtha wondered what use a people unable to build with their own hands would have of a city in the first place, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
“Why did only they move into the cylinder?” he asked at length.
Another of the round heads answered him. “They say that was the n-n-nah er . . . natural progression of development.”
“Natural progression?”
Do they mean to suggest that turning their society into a giant hive was a natural, necessary progression for a city?
“Why did you not follow them in?”
Beneath the vinyl sheets, the people exchanged glances before one of them responded, “Because they are human.”
As one, the round heads nodded in agreement.
The rain blew sideways between the posts holding up their ramshackle roof. An orphaned panel of lightweight siding came tumbling along, driven by the wind. It fell into a puddle and sent up a fine spray of water like smoke. Beyond the falling rain, the giant cylinder stood like a cutout silhouette against a screen in a shadow play.
✦ ✦ ✦
“As our natural environment worsened, humanity adapted by developing into a new communal body, with individual compartments for shells to house each individual. The simple act of forming the communal body was an excellent strategy for ensuring our survival. However, an environment that necessitates such an act will ultimately fall to ruin. In order to stay that destruction, a more high-level strategy becomes necessary. Thus were all citizens reduced to simple code, protected from all change.”
“But that is neither evolution nor development.”
“Where do these things lead? Only to destruction.”
Siddhārtha nodded. “Who are you, really?”
The hoist above his head was quiet for a time, then it spoke, spitting out the words.
“I am God. More precisely, I am what the inhabitants of the city used to call God.”
Siddhārtha thought he detected a hint of lament in the crab’s voice.
“I see. For a god, you have a very peculiar shape.”
The god on the sliding rail seemed to laugh at that. “Is there a preordained shape or role for a god? No, for it is a fact that depending on the world in which they manifest, gods take on many forms. They may be benevolent beings, made of kindness and mercy, or a high-tech machine or an incubator. They can even take the form of a financial organization.”
“Are all ses-beta developments performed by gods, or indirectly via their influence?”
“Pardon?”
“Did a man named Jesus of Nazareth come here?”
“Beats me. What is this ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ of whom you speak?”
Siddhārtha shrugged. “He was the coordinator of the ses-beta development on Earth. I want to know who put him in that position, who gives him his orders,” Siddhārtha said, feeling with some certainty that this director was none other than the god hanging over his head. “What is your name?”
“ZEN-ZEN.”
Siddhārtha muttered the word to himself, feeling its shape in his mouth. “I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is hiding somewhere on Astarta 50,” he said, realizing that he had yet to find a single trace of his enemy here.
“Could it be that this man whom you seek belongs to the Planetary Development Committee? If that is the case, then leave the city and go north. I have heard that the building of the Planetary Development Committee lies upon a small plain surrounded by hills.”
Siddhārtha turned and walked back down the long dark hallway, hearing the words at his back. All ways in this city were barred to him, but one of them must lead to Shi.