Technocracy: Epiphany, Part 7

He could barely stand Marin practically skipping through the halls after History was done. She bounded into the cafeteria, with him hot on her heels,

Hot and blazing, burning, and he felt it in his chest,

Snarling, and a line of smoke came wafting from his mouth.

Marin had slipped through the food line before him. It was once again burrito day, a fact which brought him a certain amount of pleasure; the school cafeteria actually made pretty good burritos. He grabbed his standard spicy pork and wended through the crowds of students, many of whom he knew were talking amongst themselves about his strange red hair. He, Marin, and Saera had been the talk of the school, students marveling at how they could seemingly flaunt the dress code so easily, could display an ever-increasing amount of unnatural hair color.

He went to their usual table. There were many fewer students at the tables around it than had been there in the Fall semester. The strangeness of their hair seemed to have cleared out the surrounding space. But Marin was sitting in her usual place, and Ardo was rather happy to see both Terry and Saera emerge from the throng and approach the table roughly at the same time he did. He pumped his legs. He increased his pace. And he hit the table before the other two, so he slammed his lunch tray onto it and said, “Okay, fatass, talk!”

“Ask nicely!” said Marin, grinning.

“Marin,” said Saera, a note of gentle warning in her voice as she sat down.

“Marin, you mentioned that you had figured out what was happening to us,” said Terry, sitting down beside Saera. “So, I’m really eager to hear this. Give us what you’ve learned.”

“Oh, well,” said Marin. She took a big bite of her burrito. She chewed. She swallowed. “Oh, I had a half-crazy theory about the four of us, but then I proved the most important part right, which was the part involving me. So the rest of it must be right, too.” She took a big gulp of the glass of water she had gotten with her burrito.

She ate more of her fish burrito as the other three sat there, staring at her. “Well?” snapped Ardo, ruby red eyes blazing.

“Oh, right,” said Marin, setting her half-eaten burrito down. “Well, I am pretty sure the four of us can control the Four Elements.”

“Oh,” said Saera, silver eyes flickering.

“The what?” asked Terry.

“It’s in a book!” said Marin. She reached down for her backpack where it lay at the bottom of the table, towards her chair. She ripped it open, and fished the book from it. Saera had seen it before, but Ardo and Terry had not. It had a weathered, brown leather cover. And upon its front it had glimmering silver letters which spelled out the title: FROM THE OLD WORLD.

“The old world,” Terry read. “Like… before the Ravaging?”

“Yeah. Yeah!” said Marin, excitedly flipping the book open. “I’ve had this book since I was a kid! My mom gave it to me for my birthday a long time ago. It’s a collection of stuff we’ve been able to find out about the world before the Ravaging, a collection of, like, philosophy, ancient science, poetry stuff, that sort of thing. And here!” she slammed the open book down on the table. “Saera, you read. You have a great reading voice, and you’ve seen this before.”

“All right,” said Saera. She had indeed seen these pages before; these particular pages had always been fascinating to Marin, and to her, as well. So she could read them with practiced ease and regular cadence:

In the ancient times, the far, far past, science was not developed, and was not well known. The Periodic Table of the Elements, as we know it today, was discovered much later in Pre-Ravaging history. For a very long time, the ancient folk of the deep past believed that the world was composed of only four elements, only four things that together constructed all of the world: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. The ancient humans believed that these four elements, in different types of combinations, made up all that existed in the universe.

Saera finished reading. Terry frowned. “But that’s silly.”

“No it isn’t,” said Marin. “It’s ancient belief.”

“Yeah, but it’s not substantiated by modern science,” said Terry. “We’ve recovered a lot of the more advanced science from before the Ravaging. We know about these things. States of matter, the Periodic Table, alloys, all this stuff about matter and chemistry. There are no four elements. We’ve all taken science classes.”

“But this isn’t… it isn’t just about, like, science and stuff!” said Marin. “This is myth, and music, and poetry, and… and it makes sense!” she surged forward, leaning onto the table, putting her index finger down firmly as she pointed into the book. “And it fits. It fits. Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. That fits. There’s four elements. There’s four of us. We match. And if our hair is changing color, it’s changing color to make us match better.”

“You sound like a crazy person, fatass,” said Ardo, who then took a massive bite of his burrito.

Marin glared at him as she watched him chew. “It’s time to be crazy. It’s time to be crazy, Ardo! All of you! What about any of this makes sense, according to what other people have told us! We all get sick at the same time. We all get better at the same time. Our hair all starts changing color at the same time. Our eyes all start glowing at the same time! It all makes so much sense! We need a way to organize it, and this organizes it. The four elements organize it!”

“How?” asked Terry.

“Color,” said Marin. “You said you liked color, huh, Ardo? Our colors match up with the four elements. Saera, oh, Seara,” she smiled at her best friend. “White! White like the clouds in the sky. White, for the Air. For the Wind. And me! Me, blue. Blue like the Ocean. So Saera is Air and I’m Water.” She flicked her wrist at Ardo. “And you, Ardo, you shitter, turning red. Red like flames! Like an inferno! You’re obviously Fire. Which, Terry, leaves Earth for you. And so you’re brown. You’ve always been brown, but now you’re turning shiny brown, metal brown. So you’re like the dirt, the dust, the rock, but also like all the metals they dig out of the Earth. Earth. That’s yours, Terry.”

“Bullshit,” said Ardo. “That’s fucking crazy. You are not some insane witch earth mother who can control all the waters you come across.”

“Oh, really?” said Marin, and now her smirk became extremely infuriating to Ardo.

“Yes, really!” snapped Ardo, and he leaned forward, and his ruby eyes snarled and blazed. “You are probably going to show me some fucking video you took, where it looks like a little dribble of some faucet in your sink at home moves just a little, just a push. Like a little dribble, here and there, barely

Matters,” Ardo finished, and then Marin grinned at him,

And she suddenly reared back and then she rocked her arm,

Swiping up her left arm hard and fast, and then at once

The big cup of water that she’d gotten with her food

Burst open! Erupted! Its lid came all the way off,

And the water shot straight upward in a mighty jet,

Showering them all with spray as it shot to the sky,

Spattering them all with water droplets as it fell,

As the water fell back to the table, spattering,

Splattering on all of them, while Marin sat and grinned.

“Whoa!” cried Terry, copper eyes bulging, doing that shift into bronze they always did when strong feelings gripped him.

“No way!” roared Ardo. Heat, anger, boiling somethings festered in his chest. “That’s not—no no, fuck you, you aren’t right, fatass, you’re crazy and insane, it can’t,

You can’t be right!” Ardo growled, and as he said this he

Blazed with heat, and once again his eyes glowed neon red,

And a corner of his eyebrow turned from black to red,

At its edges it became a deep, rich crimson red.

Ardo then began to cough, to cough hard suddenly,

As he felt a heat well up, a heat like he had not

Ever felt before—and it was burning, blazing hot,

Welling up inside his chest, and suddenly he gasped,

And he coughed, and from his mouth there came a gout of flame:

FLAME! Of FIRE, orange and red, a burst of burning flames,

That hung in the air a moment, then it vanished fast.

All four of them just stared, gaped, at where the fireball had been, for that brief moment it had hung in the air. They would have all assumed they were hallucinating, were it not for the remnants of the heat that still could be felt on their skin.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” mumbled Ardo, eyes bulging, putting his head in his hands.

“Was that fire?” said Terry, staring hard at Ardo, bronze eyes wide.

“Holy shit,” said Saera softly.

“I knew it,” said Marin. “I knew it! I was right again.”

“Fuck fuck fuck,” said Ardo. “Son of a bitch!”

“Don’t shout,” said Terry. He glanced this way and that, and saw students beginning to stare in their direction. “Don’t draw attention. Keep this quiet.”

“I just coughed up a fucking fireball, man,” said Ardo, voice soft and nasal-sounding. “I am kind of freaking out right now.”

“I’m right,” said Marin, standing forward, putting, slamming her index finger down onto the water-soaked cafeteria table. “I am right. The four elements. They’re ours. They belong to us. We can control them. That’s why our hair is changing color. That’s the reason for all this. I don’t know how… or why… but I’m right.” Her long hair billowed about her somewhat dramatically in the air conditioning. “Water is mine. Saera gets Air. Terry gets Earth. And you, Ardo, get Fire.”

“Shit shit shiiitttt,” whined Ardo, pulling his legs up into the chair and wrapping his arms around the tops of his knees.

“Pull yourself together, asshole,” said Marin. “Now’s not the time to be afraid.”

“Calm down, Marin,” said Saera. “Do not be cruel.”

“I want him to realize what’s happening!” shouted Marin, and Terry again looked around, wincing at eyes turning in their direction. “This is—” Marin saw Terry motioning to her to keep her voice down, so she lowered her volume, “This is a big deal. This is massive. I don’t know how or why this is happening, but it is happening. I know I’m right.”

Marin turned her wrist then, and her fingers waggled some,

And as all the other three watched, all the water moved,

All the water on the table caught up in a stream,

In a swirl that saw all of it dumped into the cup,

Back into the white styrofoam cup, from whence it came,

So the table was fully dried off, all in a rush,

And no trace of water remained on its surface flat:

It became completely dry, as if no wet had been.

Marin picked up her cup, newly refilled with water, and sipped from the straw. “So, we need to do more.”

“Yes,” said Terry. “Yeah, yeah, we need more data. And more evidence. If this is…” he barked a breath and shook his throbbing head, “If Marin is really, legitimately correct about all this, then we need to test things more. We need more data.”

“We need to see just what, precisely, we are capable of doing,” said Saera, silver eyes twitching as she was deep in thought.

“That I agree with,” said Marin. “Let’s test more. Let’s do more. Let’s figure out just how much we can do, how much of the Four Elements we can control.” She sipped from her straw again, and smirked, her sapphire blue eyes sparkling. “And let’s take turns. One at a time. And since I seem to be further along than the rest of you three, I’ll go first.”