Pure by Brian Udall

We rejected the teachings of our fathers. Cast off the sickness of the past. It was our greatest achievement and a seed I would water until I took a bite of its fruit. I am sure you’re all anxious to know where I’ve been, what we’ve done; particularly now. And so I will keep my thoughts brief.

My neighbor, Ens, had c’eyes for as long as I can remember. When technology was savage, he would’ve worn glasses. I remember he’d stared at the sky in wonder when it set ablaze eight years ago this summer. He didn’t know better, being so young then. Even younger than me.

His parents were the same as mine. They had both wanted kids, so they’d waited before planning on emigrating to the colonies on Mars or Europa elsewhere. The same way you all did before flying back from Mars to save us. They were good purists; our parents had taken on the blood at the age of eight, like everyone else. I knew it was incredible, what the blood could do for us, but I didn’t really understand its full power.

A cybernetic fluid filled with nanobots which cleansed the system of illness completely, was capable of reversing old age, could maintain internal body temperature in even the bitterest cold, and provide oxygen for hours both under water and in the vacuum of space. The list goes on; I need not repeat it. It was the blood which allowed humanity to finally venture out to the stars relatively risk free. There was a cost, though. The blood wouldn’t let them speak of it, but I suspect my father knew before he died. Even now, I feel I am unable to continue this line of thought. The blood protests against it.

If we’d known, then, how it’d all pan out, I don’t know what we’d’ve done different. Maybe kiss them goodbye, maybe run away to hide. Instead, we just stood there on Ens’ grassy front lawn, hunched over our toys on a Saturday. 

When the solar flare hit, it scrambled their blood. I remember Mrs. Landsley came crashing through her window out onto her rose bush, screaming as she melted inside. There were a few others that did something similar, bursting from doorways and running from the sun. There was no getting away. They smelled of plastic milk jugs tossed onto a bonfire.

I turned to look at Ens, clawing screaming at his face. I helped him rip them out, his c’eyes, but it was harder to stop them from bleeding than it was to remove them. I don’t know how he survived, but he did. We never did find him a replacement, just stuck a bandage on his head and gave him a stick to tap with. We weren’t doctors.

Before the flare, everyone on the planet would take in the pure blood at the age of eight. Which meant the only human beings left alive on the planet were children. Perhaps you know better than I how it happened, but the solar flare did something to the blood. Scrambled its sensors, sending its temperature control into overdrive and effectively cooking them from the inside out. Only us children were spared such cruelty.

After I’d helped Ens, I left him curled up in the grass and stumbled dazed to the driveway. I swear I could see the souls of my parents rise up through the roof and ascend to heaven. I know I imagined it, but I didn’t step inside. Maybe I should have. Maybe they were suffering. Could be they never even died, I don’t know. I didn’t look.

The next eight years dragged and rushed in equal measure. There was always something to do, and no one who knew how to do it. I was older than the others, having only been a day away from my baptism when all of this happened. My age gave me an edge over them. They listened to me.
I knew in the back of my mind it was wrong, the things I told them to believe; but I believed in it, too. Those first few years were full of passion. Always arguing, always trying to stay ahead. It would’ve been easier if any of us had been smart. As it was, it was anybody’s guess if we’d make it through the winter. Somehow, we always found a way.

You have to understand. It felt like a lie, the things our parents taught us. Of purity, and the salvation in blood. Their deaths had been a betrayal. How could the ones who cared for us, loved us, want us to become vulnerable like them? It seemed madness to take on the blood in light of what happened.

I realize now it doesn’t make sense, our rejection of pure tradition. After all, what kind of betrayal ends in their deaths and not ours? If anything, they sacrificed themselves for us. God rest their souls. Let it not be in vain.

I tell you honestly, I cursed the Second Coming in my ignorance. I spit on William Roe’s name. But now I message God for the coming of the Third. In his own time and his own ways, not mine. My ways are wicked. But I digress.

We rallied around my sordid banner, headstrong and unyielding. I eventually moved the group to an outpost. We’d stumbled across it while searching for food in the spring. All the food we’d had from before had dried up, run out. We began to scavenge.

Instead of taking longer and longer treks out from a central base, we became nomadic. It was our second year after leaving Jacksonville that we found it. I curse the day it rang its wretched clarion. I curse my ears for being tainted enough to listen. Forgive me.

We dragged it out from the ground. I was enthralled by the beast. Visions flashed across my eyes in the night, a glorious future I never could’ve imagined alone. Ens didn’t approve. He was still by my side, still blind as a dog. We stuck through thick and thin. I should’ve listened to him, but I didn’t. You would’ve done the same.

They helped me bring it back to life, the clan. What did they know of these things? What did I, for that matter? In any case, we positioned it outside the outpost we were living in, a testament to our dominion. While we were fixing it up, we discovered the base’s kitchen. There were enough rations to feed an actual army. It would’ve lasted us two decades or more.

So we stayed, having no reason to leave except predators and unknown clans. We bested them when forced to. We never sought it out. But we’d never have survived if we hadn’t defended ourselves.

I don’t want to paint myself out to be more than I was. It wasn’t always so tense, we fought a handful of times. More often than not, we left bikes and buckets outside on the grass, and nobody took them.

Pretty soon people came knocking, more friendly than before. Said they wanted to join us. Those who showed respect were allowed, mostly. Our clan grew and grew. At first, it was no problem. But as we grew, my power grew in kind. How could I have known it would change me? I became demanding, stubborn, uncaring.

I tried making this ascent palatable for myself. Figured if I strung enough words together whatever I wanted to believe about why I should be in charge would eventually be true. Didn’t know how to write, so I’d tell it to the group in speeches late at night over a fire.

My new worldview grew brittle with rage. I tortured the boys, constantly giving them work that served no purpose. Some began to resent me. It wasn’t long before one stood up and said no. Alexander was his name.

There was only one way out, to turn the clan against him. Eventually, it dawned on me that the only thing any of us collectively hated together was the blood. The pure blood, not the red blood we carried then.

So I used it against them. It was honestly easy. I told them Alex wanted to take us back to the old ways, where weakness was rampant. Think of what happened to our parents, I told them. Think of how far they did fall.

Alex denied it, of course, but nobody cared, least of all me. I knew it weren’t true. Truth had nothing to do with it. Everyone knew that. Problem was, once he’d died in the pit, I had no one to prop myself up against. The world needs a wall, you know, to hold itself together. With no wall, there’s nothing to push against, no structure to speak of. It’s anarchy. So I used you. Not you, specifically, but the colonists. The remaining pure who had avoided the flare through sheer luck. It could’ve been you, boiling alive on a crisp August morning. Such is life.

I didn’t manage to pit them against you all at once. I wasn’t that smart. Couldn’t conjure an enemy from whole cloth. But we’d found some old monitors and coaxed them to life. By tinkering around through those long, boring nights, we discovered your message and realized you were coming. I told them you’d destroy us or break us apart, removing me from my pitiful throne. I wasn’t exactly wrong.

So I rallied once more, and we marched to the place where you’d said your spaceship would land, our mechanical beast allowing us to travel far and wide. But instead of greeting you when you finally arrived, we rejected you. I was the one riding the beast when it shot down your second ship, mine was the finger on the trigger. 

In my defense, I didn’t know the beast’s full power. It had sat dumb and stupid all that time, standing guard like a scarecrow staring down imaginary birds. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, though. In all honesty, I probably would have shot them down anyway, even if I did know its power, given the wretch I’d become. 

Those visions I’d had turned out to be false. There was no glory in the ending of so much pure life, no prophecy to be gleaned from their pain. But I didn’t know that at the time. I can’t explain it, but I felt that, somehow, shooting down your ship was in the service of the Third. It was a false knowledge, it turned out, the kind only someone as gullible as me could have fell for. I’m barely sixteen. What do I know of the world?

I damned those pure people to an unfitting end and my atonement for this atrocity will consume me the rest of my days. I want to thank you for showing me the way. Your generosity speaks truly to the purity in your hearts, allowing me to be baptized at a time when I wallowed in the worst kind of sin.

I feel I am cleansed, forgiven of my past. All of it, washed away by the glorious truth that William Roe has gifted our people. When Roe invented pure blood, he did not think of saving me, yet that is the power of his truth. A complete baptism, not of water without, but of blood within. The literal emptying of my body of all that is impure, blood as red as hate.

Now that my veins have been emptied of filth, I have died to this world as every single one of you has before. How can it be any other way? How could anyone understand being full if they have never known hunger? Without death, our immortality is wasted. By accepting the pure blood, perfect white and milk chrome, I am born again anew.

There is such power in us; we are as gods compared to those that came before: wretched and vile apes. The blood keeps us warm in the darkest of nights, keeps us safe in the deepest of oceans. It mends our bodies in perfect knowledge, all the way down to the DNA. It can communicate with us, alter our desires, guide us along the pure path only it knows the way.

But even if the blood can do all this and more, it is far from all-powerful. It could not save my parents. Neither could it save those whom I struck down in fury. I knew no better. And for that, I am truly sorry.

Perhaps you can understand my confusion, then. The blood has chosen me to lead its crusade after only three weeks in its service. It is not a discredit to any of your names. In fact, it is the faults in myself, born of conflict and pain, that make me well suited to the task. I accept this responsibility, and I will give all of myself to be the pure’s hammer and the blood’s sword.

I believe in the goodness of our cause. I believe in the power of redemption. The blood lifts us up, holds us over abomination, and does not let us fall. With this power, we can span the skies. I truly believe in our cause.

I know in my mind that I believe all these things because the pure blood is making me, but I don’t care. I know we are more vulnerable with this cybernetic fluid pumping through all of our veins, but nothing comes without sacrifice. I know my parents died because the pure blood was destroyed in that cursed solar flare, and I know it can happen to me. 

None of it matters because purity is the way. Blood is the way. Impurities are obstacles to the way. And I will not rest until the walls of time itself have been bathed in the blood of the baptized.

Purity for all!