New Hollow Men

The flame-streaked cloud tore apart the western sky in glaring ostentation where it hung between the lingering brightness of the horizon’s edge after the sun had set and the coalescing darkness claiming the firmament’s eastern regions.

Now there is no hope left for the children’s lives. Now there is none. They are walking already to murder.

Euripides. The words cut across Nina Chen’s thoughts as violently as the cloud seemed to slash the sky as she looked up at it from the back loggia of the library. Was it Euripides? Perhaps Aeschylus? No, it was Euripides, she was sure the more she thought about it. From his tragedy Medea. Quotations from her studies often flickered through her thoughts, usually as incongruous and seemingly purposeless as the blazing cloud above her. From what recesses of her mind or soul they burst, she did not know, but they kept her sane, calm. Nina had, after all, once thought such learning important. But so much now did not matter. Like the cloud, sometimes the words had an empty beauty to them. But somehow, they also seemed unreal. Everything seemed unreal these days. Even though, things these days should seem more real than anything else, Nina thought with a grimace. She turned to walk back inside.

In the back entrance’s vestibule, she picked up the cardboard box she had been going through and brought it to her desk in the library’s main workroom. It had been discovered in a closet marked “Storage and Old Donations” and before she threw it away, Nina felt duty-bound to go through it more thoroughly. She had cursorily glanced at it’s contents already, and seen that it contained some loose papers, the penciled writings on which had faded to an almost ineligible state, several odds and ends – some old jewelry, a little statuette of the Sphinx, a writing pen or two – and some worn looking books. The books would be discarded, she had no doubt. They almost always were. The library’s main function was to help maintain the electronic databases of the VOOPs – the Virtual Online Opinioned Portfolios – of the citizens for Sectors C, H, and J.

How strange, Nina thought. Hell is incessant autobiography. No, that wasn’t exactly how it went. But it was close. Who had said that? Some literary critic, she was sure, but whose name she could not for the life of her remember at the moment. She wished she could remember things from her old schooling better. But yes, how strange. It was strange that she was even here. Nina had never known her father, and her mother had died when she was twenty-one years old, in the DAFCA crisis, the second pandemic that constituted Event 7 of the Near-End. How or why shy had been selected to work in Sector H’s main Metro-Hub was a mystery to her, but when she had been asked to report for duty as a library clerk, Nina had needed no second promptings to accept. Better than trying to survive outside the city, where those designated as Citizens Unnecessary or Citizens Workforce or were even not designated at all were left to scrounge a living under the strict supervision of the Essential Manufacturers or left to survive as best they could.

How strange that is should have come to this! It did not happen the way like they had always said it would or the way she had always imagined – a nuclear holocaust followed by the inevitable devastating fallout, or the onset of one single massive disaster or plague. True, in some countries, there had been some use of nuclear weapons, and there had been indeed two pandemics, but taken by themselves, as terrible as they were, the world would not have faced disasters from which recovery was impossible. No, what had proved ultimately fatal for the Old Way was a series of Events – all well documented and analyzed by experts before things had begun to fall apart – that had followed one upon the other in quick succession. A viral pandemic, the geographic and climate disasters known as Events 2 – 5, two border wars, the secession of those who used the upheavals to enforce the New Way, the conflicts between various regions and the subsequent division into Sectors, a second plague, and the rise of Director Victor Trope’s Sectoral Alliance: all contributed to the current state of affairs.

And for all that, some things never changed. The world had recovered. Or at least, some portion of it. Again, how strange! While half the population - whether in those sectors controlled by the adherents of the Old Way or the New - worked, or slaved, or starved to keep the Hubs of the Sectors thriving, the privileged sons and daughters of the Hubs produced their inexhaustible analyses, opinions, and talk-pieces. So much so that the library’s principal function was to maintain the archived virtual publications of these Opinion Holders using various electronic platforms. The coming of Hell had indeed not abated, but rather fueled (in the civilized parts at least), self-myth making and advertisement. And books with old, measured thought, disappeared in exile on the shelf.

Gunshots and subsequent shrieks jerked Nina’s thoughts back to reality. She walked into the office of her manager, Peter Boosku. His expressionless, lined face, carved in stone, looked up as she entered, and its blankness made Nina shiver involuntarily.

“That will be the Enforcers coming,” Boosku sighed, and stood up. “Come, we will meet them with the other staff at the entrance.”

How a group of a mere dozen Enforcers, shooting some poor rioters or malcontents who must have caught them outside the Hub gates, marched up to the library in the aura of gods, Nina Chen could not determine, but they undoubtedly succeeded in doing so. Turning around one more time to fire a last volley into the dying bodies of the few boys who must have caused the fiasco, the police group spun smartly about when the gates closed and followed their leader up to where Boosku, Nina, and the other three employees had assembled at the front doors of the library. Radiating supreme confidence, flushed with an energy that would have suited an army returning triumphant over the most redoubtable of foes rather than from a skirmish with the sons of Citizens Unnecessary or Workforce, self-bathed in an inexplicable aura of invincibility, their eyes piercing the gathering darkness with an innate fire that gave no warmth, but only viewed the world through an icy sheen of combat and aggression and monstrous efficiency, the right arm of Director Trope’s hegemony and the literal enforcers of his will moved on and finally stopped a few feet away from where the library staff stood. “Gods,” Nina said to herself. “Cruel, icy gods. Not children walking to murder, but these gods.” Though he hailed from Sector H himself, Nina had never seen Director Trope, nor even ever viewed a picture of him, but she was certain that in these men she beheld the incarnation of the inexorable and impersonal will of the man. No, not a man. Monster? Demon? Any epithet other than man.

“Your library should not be so close to the Hub gates, Boosku” the group’s leader said affably.

“Ah, yes, Commander Comez. Another small parade of rioters,” Boosku replied deferentially. “They often gather at one of the two main entrances to protest their treatment and our perceived hoarding of resources and –

“They did not anticipate meeting us,” the Commander interrupted, now more stern. “Director Trope has recently extinguished two thousand such problem citizens who are best used in our manufacturing centers rather than in the streets outside Hubs expressing their opinions. He will no doubt want to revisit Sector H personally after this.”

“When I heard Enforcers coming,” Boosku changed the subject, “I had no idea you would come yourself, Commander Comez. And by foot. I thought a regular police officer would drive…” His voice trailed off as Comez marched past him into the building.

“Usually yes, but fuel shortages necessitated we walk. The Director is interested in something that may be at this library. I think I would like to see your storage closets. You know, where you might keep old donations.”

“You can certainly see it,” Boosku answered, walking fast to catch up.

“Good! In the meantime, my men will guard the entrance and exits.”

“Of course.”

While Comez and Boosku went off to the back of the library and the Enforcers attended to their duties, Nina stood by her desk. She opened the box and looked down at its contents. Yes, nothing new was there. The writing pens, the small statue of the Sphinx, the old books, the papers. She gathered the assorted jewelry from the box’s corners and placed the odd necklace or two, a bracelet, and a slightly rusted locket together on the top of the largest book. Most of it was of poor quality, what was once called costume jewelry in the Old Days. The locket was heart-shaped and had long lost its shine, dripping still what must have always been a very common and vulgarly sentimental quality. Opening it up, she read the words, engraved in a spidery faint script:

To Melina

From Victor

2075

May we always remember our beginnings,

May we always know ourselves,

And may we always love one another.

Love is all.

“No, nothing was there,” Commander Comez’s voice came up from the hallway behind Nina and she turned around.

“Perhaps it would help if we knew what you were looking for –

“You do not need to be informed of this particular matter,” Comez cut off Boosku. “Are you certain that is the place where all the library’s old donations would have been stored?”

“Yes, that is it. My assistant Nina sometimes goes through the storage closet. Do you know of any other old donations, Nina?”

Nina had dropped the locket back into the box and closed it when she had heard the two men approach. “Yes,” she answered, looking down at the ground. “This is one which I was going through today,” and she gestured to the box on her desk.

Comez opened it up and shuffled through its contents. Turning around after a few moments, he looked calmed and pleased. “This is what we are looking for. I will be taking this with me. Have you looked into this box yet?” He looked directly at Nina.

“No, I only had just begun to clean it out, you see,” she said, her voice meek and barely above a whisper.

“Good,” Comez laughed, amiable again. “All the same, I think it might behoove us if we kept an eye on you and your staff and your library, Mr. Boosku. A library that received donations many years ago from the Director’s late mother does need to be on our radar, don’t you think, Boosku? For honorary purposes, I mean! And I think this young lady here will best find employment in the Administration District of Sector H. After questioning – I mean, an interview process! – with us. She can come with us now. Oh, and before I leave, go to your staff room and see if you can find some milk and some snacks – some food of some sort! You may not have noticed it, but I saw when we came in a cat as thin as a stick loitering around the side of your library. We should feed it. It is the humane thing to do.”

We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men.

Nina had only heard the last bit of the conversation with half of her attention, her mind more occupied with the line of verse which had just intruded upon her more immediate thoughts. How strange men were! Would all wish to appear more powerful, more unyielding, that they were born? How strange these Near-End days were! But there was hope, even if it only hung by a thread. After all, even hollow men once loved.