3. Alexander #3
Bios exhales a tense breath. “Zeno, meet Alexander. He was just pulled up from the countryside.”
“A big change, huh?” Zeno shoots him a sympathetic smile not unlike the one Bios has been giving him all day.
Then, to the Councilman, he asks, “So, am I giving him a tour? You didn’t need to be so mysterious about it.
I give tours all the time.” He twists his head around to Alexander.
“I’m an expert at them, really. Safest hands and all that,” he says with a wink.
Bios was right. Alexander already likes this guy.
“Yes. You’ll tour him and then…” He pauses, looking between Alexander and Zeno. “Then he’ll help you move your stuff to your new room,” Bios finishes hesitantly.
Zeno’s easy demeanor drops. “What?”
“You’re moving to a double room. And Alexander’s your new roommate.”
“What? I thought— I mean…” Zeno waves his hands around in an attempted pantomime that is entirely unintelligible.
Bios seems to understand it, though, because he sighs and says, “I know.”
“Why?” Zeno asks.
Alexander would be offended that this fun, silly guy is so appalled at the idea of living with him, but he’s observant enough to know that this isn’t about him.
“We’ll talk later, bud. I’ll send for you tonight, okay?” Bios says.
“Sure.”
Then Zeno turns to Alexander with a more subdued but still genuine smile.
Alexander grins back. “Don’t worry, dude. You won’t even notice I’m there.”
“Something tells me you’re not one to blend into the background,” Zeno says with a laugh.
“Awww. Are you saying I’m handsome?” Alexander jokes.
“Maybe. You should shower and then we’ll see,” Zeno teases back.
“Do I smell that bad?”
“Nah. You’re just a little disheveled.”
“I did walk up a billion stairs today.”
“Excuses, excuses.” Zeno shakes his head.
“Alright, go give him a tour,” Bios says, his eyes crinkled with amusement. He physically grabs Zeno—who gasps dramatically at the manhandling—and turns him to face Alexander.
“And remember to take him to the office, please, to get him all checked in and set up,” he calls as Zeno slings a friendly arm around Alexander’s shoulders and they start down the long hallway. “And make sure you don’t miss dinner, please.”
“Goodbye, Councilman,” Zeno yells. Then he shakes his head fondly. “What a guy.”
“Quite the mother hen, isn’t he?” Alexander says.
“Oh, more than that. He’s the mother hen, the father rooster, the baby brother. The whole chicken family, really.”
There’s so much familiarity in his tone, Alexander can’t help but ask, “Are you guys related?”
Zeno’s eyes go wide and he stops walking so abruptly Alexander gets whiplash.
“No,” he replies, then he pauses like he’s choosing his words carefully. “And even if we were,” he says slowly, “which we’re not, at the Academy we renounce all blood and family ties.”
Alexander feels his brows skyrocket. This place is more than the university it looks like at first glance. Renouncing family makes it a bit like… a cult.
“Didn’t you know that?” Zeno asks.
When Alexander doesn’t respond right away, Zeno continues anxiously, “Alexander, you do know that by coming here you don’t get to see your family again. You don’t get to keep your last name. You become part of the whole. You devote yourself to order. To Justice.”
“Yes, right, of course,” Alexander recovers. “You think I’d come here without knowing that? You just look alike is all.”
Zeno laughs in relief. “We do, I know. But I wasn’t raised with a family, just with the Auxiliaries. Everyone born here is the same.”
“So you weren’t pulled up?” Alexander asks as they start walking again.
“No. Most of us weren’t,” he explains, but quickly amends, “I don’t think any less of people who are pulled up, obviously. But the Leadership Classes stay pretty insular. It’s the only way to ensure devotion and expel corruption.”
Ah, classic dystopian brainwashing.
They continue on and Zeno points things out along the way (“That’s the outdoor sparring grounds,” “That’s where our cohort has classes,” “Everyone says that amphitheater is haunted”), until he stops Alexander to show him a boulder standing alone, probably a mile or two away.
“That’s where they held the Third Trial decades ago. I’m sure you’ve watched some past Trials, right?”
Alexander doesn’t flounder. “We don’t really watch stuff in the countryside. Too much work to do.”
“Oh, well, the Trials are normally televised. Everyone wants to know who the new members of the Council of Kings and the Educator will be, you know? That’s the boulder where they tied the forty-five remaining Auxiliaries and let them get picked at by birds like Prometheus.
The goal of the Trial was to escape, and once you did you had the option to help others.
First one out was the Educator. Next twenty, the Council members.
The rest, irrelevant Guardians like everyone else,” Zeno explains.
“No one helped after they got free of the chains. I guess some people really believe in every man for themselves.”
Alexander nods despite how gruesome that sounds. Caeneus said he’d have to participate in the Trials. Does that mean he’s going to have to do that?
A few minutes of walking later, they finally pass by an arch with the curtains open. His suspicions of a courtyard were correct, but it’s far more than that.
The ceiling is glass, and plants sprout from everywhere, bathed in the glow of sunset.
The walls are highly decorated—busts, carvings, frescoes, you name it—and a fountain, outdoor tables, and sitting spaces are spread all around the tiled floor.
Balconies and windows cover the inner walls, and glass bridges connect upper floors of the building.
“Wow,” Alexander whispers.
“I know,” Zeno says. “When we’re Guardians we’ll get to be in there every day keeping order.
And if we make it to the Council we’ll get our own offices with balconies and plants and…
” Zeno trails off. “Best not to get too excited about that, though. The Trials are competitive. There can only be twenty Councilmen. And there’s one Educator, of course, but I don’t have the constitution to lead the whole country. ”
This place is a bureaucratic puzzle. Of course there’s order. It’s a classist, capitalist, communist, religious, military dictatorship. That’s every tactic of a controlling government all meshed into one.
Impressive. Obscene and terrifying, but impressive.
They turn one of the corners of the triangle building, and the next side’s columns are covered with pink roses instead of oranges. There must be a significance to that, but Alexander’s afraid he’ll look too clueless if he asks about it.
“Alright, quick tour and then to the office and then to the showers. And then we move my stuff. And then dinner. And then… actually, no that’s it.”
“Sure,” Alexander agrees.
But when he fully processes the statement, horror washes over him anew. Did Zeno just say showers, plural? Like more than one shower in one place? Like shared showers?
What a spectacular final nail in his coffin.