Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(39)

I don’t stop. If I’m going to die, at least I’ll die on my own terms.

I move through what feels like a maze of ruined civilization, wondering how this devastation came to be in our perfect society. Does everyone know about this, and I’m only surprised because I’ve lived a sheltered life? I’d think Ash would have told me about this if he knew. How many other truths have I missed out on for one reason or another?

I push and shove and wiggle and twist my way through, getting scraped by rough concrete and poked by shards of plastic. At the very least, why hasn’t all this stuff been recycled? There are tons of reusable material making up this wall. It stretches as far as I can see on either side, and so far I’ve crawled through at least thirty feet of tangled mess with no end in sight.

In my weary, near-hallucinatory state I wonder if it will go on forever. I’ve had dreams like that, where I try to walk through a door that seems only across the room, and yet somehow I can never get through. What if this isn’t just a wall but the world? What if Eden is surrounded by all the refuse and waste of humans’ dead civilizations, pollution and garbage stacked up to our very borders and filling all the rest of the world?

I feel as if I’ve been crawling forever when the way finally opens up. I crawl over some archaic piece of machinery, through a tip-tilted pipe . . . and emerge in a monstrous fairyland.

Mom, who has access to all of the old pre-fail records, used to tell me the stories she discovered in dusty, crumbling books made from dead trees in the times before datablocks. There was one story that was such a favorite I made her tell it over and over—“Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s the tale of a boy who seems to make a foolish trade, giving up the security of a milk cow for the allure of magical beans. His mother is furious, but his gamble pays off when his beans grow a giant beanstalk that leads him to fortune and—more important in my childish eyes—adventure.

I think of that story as I look up . . . and up . . . and up. They stretch into the sky, leviathan plants, a green so dark it is almost black. No, not plants, I realize as I look closer. Synthetic stalks and technological tendrils and mechanical leaves that turn on whispering gears to follow the sunlight. These are like the artificial photosynthesis “plants” that decorate Eden, but on a massive scale. Each trunk is ten feet across; the leaves are as broad as houses. They are three times as tall as the algae spires, the tallest structures in Eden.

There are thousands of them.

They are so tall that they could probably be seen from the Center. And yet, when I sat on my wall, or on the abandoned spire with Lark, I never saw anything like this. Just the city, blurring into the distance, and a faint shimmer at my eyes’ farthest reach that I assumed was heat rising from the blistering desert wasteland.

But even if I’m wrong, and you can’t see them from the Center, surely I would have noticed them later, when out with Lark, or driving with Mom, or running from the Greenshirts. I definitely would have seen them loom over the wall of debris. They would have blocked out the sun! Had I been too blinded by excitement or anxiety to notice?

I look up at the gently undulating field of giant beanstalks. No, there’s no way I could have missed these.

In the bean forest, I can only see the trees, so I decide to forge my way through. It feels unnaturally still. It shouldn’t be like this, I think. In the faux-forests I’ve visited—the Rain Forest Club and the exciting laser tag arena—there were birds and bugs and the rustling of paws that step, and are still. There was life in those places, even if it was artificial.

Here, in this vast constructed forest, there is nothing but me.

I wander for hours, losing track of direction. The sun is mostly blocked by the canopy, and when it reaches the ground it is in confused angles, splitting shadows. Twice I find myself back at the debris pile, a wall that reaches to the artificial roots of the bean trees where they embed in the concrete. Finally, abruptly, the beanstalks stop in a uniform rigid wall and the desert stretches golden before me.

Heat hits my face like a slap, and I stagger back, turning my face away from the glare. I look into the cool shade of the bean trees to give my eyes time to adjust . . . and suddenly I think I know why I couldn’t see the beanstalks from Eden. Why no one can see them.

They’re camouflaged.

Not in a broken-pattern kind of way. When I look at the bean trees nearest to me, I can see them very clearly. But as I look down the row of them, they gradually vanish from my sight. Only the slightest imperfection lets me realize that the trees aren’t just in this one patch. A bit out and the trees look a little fuzzy. Past that, there is a slight metallic shimmer. Then a little farther, and I can see a strange double vision—both the bean trees and the sky beyond them.

I have to stare and pace, move backward and forward across the burning sands to realize that each individual leaf, each stalk, is projecting an almost seamless image of the landscape behind it, as it would look if the trees weren’t there. Like each tree is a datablock showing me an image.

When I was in the forest there was no illusion. Out here, I can just tell it exists. If I was only a little bit farther away, I wouldn’t have any idea the bean trees were here at all.

How can all of Eden not know that these beanstalks are out here? All my life, I thought I was the only secret Eden was hiding. Now I don’t know what to think about my perfect city.

But now what? I can’t go back, at least not for a while. Maybe after dark I can creep back and make my way to the breadline.