Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars and other short stories by Terri Kouba
Marla had taken us down to the Library of Metals and returned to her lab to check on the latest tests she was running. She trusted us enough to leave us down there alone, sure that we would not try to sneak through any of the locked doors. If we had known what was behind them, her confidence would have been misplaced, but ignorant as we were, we followed their rules. After three hours of reading, our stomachs grumbling, we wandered upstairs to find Marla before seeking out lunch. We had missed the main lunch serving and would have to make our own lunches, which suited my father fine because he thought Marla was the best cook in the world.
We passed Jacob, her apprentice, in the hallway and he said Marla was in her lab. He asked us to tell her he would return after a quick game of ball. We entered her lab and didn’t see her there. A flash of light caught my eye out a small port window. I grabbed my father’s arm and ran to the window. Through the tiny window I could see Marla standing on her balcony, Slicers swarming around her.
“Marla,” my father shouted. He yanked the door open and entered an alcove no more than four feet across. He ran to the door on the other side of the small room and pulled at the handle, calling her name.
“No, Father!” I shouted to be heard over his strong voice. I was riveted to the place where I stood, in the first doorway. I could see the Slicers swarming around Marla, their metal wings transforming between wings and knives, wings and knives. They swirled around her naked body. She was clothed but I say naked because everyone knew that to go outside without multiple layers of metal armor was walking naked and meant certain death. Only those who wanted to end their lives went outside without protection. I thought of the grief in her voice and felt I should have realized she would eventually want to end it all. I didn’t realize then that she did want to end it, just not through suicide. She wanted to end it by killing the Slicers.
Father seemed oblivious to the fact that he, also, was not wearing any armor. He tugged at the door handle but by the grace of the gods it did not open. If it had, a swarm of Slicers would have entered Plato’s Cave and would have killed everyone before a minute had passed.
Father pounded at the door, shouting Marla’s name. I have to assume she could not hear him through the thick steel door for she remained standing with her back to us. Her black hair was bound in a tight braid that reached her waist. Her hands and feet were bare and her shirt flapped gently in the sea breeze. She stood with her face upturned toward the noon sun. She raised her hands and waved them slowly, as if trying to reach for a Slicer in the air. The Slicers moved away from her touch. They didn’t attack her, they didn’t slice her, they didn’t kill her. They moved away from her.
I wondered then if the Slicers knew she wanted to die and wouldn’t grant her wish. Or maybe they, too, felt how special she was and were reluctant to kill the most perfect thing remaining on the planet. I know now that it was neither of these foolish things, but such are our thoughts when fear has turned our bowels to water and our fingers to ice.
Our shouting caught the attention of Derrick, our military commander, who was passing by. He hobbled into the room, pushed past me and grabbed my father’s arms. He pulled my father away from the door.
“Donny. Get a hold of yourself.” Derrick’s voice was loud, louder than either mine or my father’s.
My father looked into Derrick’s eyes and pleaded his objection. “They’ll kill her.”
“If you open that door, you’ll kill us all.”
We looked out the port window and our initial panic subsided slightly. The Slicers hadn’t killed her. We couldn’t understand it, but we had to accept what our eyes were telling us.
Marla was able to stand, unarmored, in the sunlight, unscathed, with Slicers swarming around her. It was an incredible moment. You, my children, of course, know about the invisible force-field she wore, but picture in your minds, if you can, that moment without that knowledge. For twenty years the Slicers had killed everyone they encountered. Everyone. And there stood Marla in the midst of a swarm and they ignored her.
I was sure she was protected by the gods. I wasn’t sure whether she was a goddess herself, though I would have easily believed it at that moment. She was doing what no one else had done before and I was a witness to it.
Marla turned around and saw our faces through the port window. She smiled. I couldn’t hear her sad voice, I could only see her smile and she made the Aegean Sea sparkle behind her. At that moment she truly looked like a goddess.
She walked toward the outer door and motioned for us to move back into the lab and shut the inner door. We did and we saw the light above the outer door turn green. She opened the door and the Slicers flew into the room before her. She closed the door behind her. Even in that small enclosed space the Slicers were careful not to get close to her. I could hear their metal wings glancing off the metal walls, sounding like metal fingernails clipping against a shale blackboard. Marla pulled a pair of black goggles off the wall and put them over her eyes. She pressed a button and the room was flooded with a violet, almost gray light. In mid-flight the Slicers fell, their metal bodies clanking against the floor. I looked down and saw the inert metal pieces disintegrate, leaving behind small mounds of silver ash.
Marla released the button and the violet light faded. She removed the goggles and looked around the room, checking for any errant Slicer that might have escaped. She pulled at her clothing and ran her fingers through her hair and along her braid. No Slicer survived her chamber of violet light. She pushed another button which unlocked the inner door.
My father pulled the door open and enveloped her in his arms. “Marla! Thank the gods you’re safe.” Relief was heavy in his voice.
She hugged him back.
“Did you see it? It worked. It worked!” Her heavy voice was as light with excitement as I would ever hear it; it sounded like sandpaper against tree bark.
My father was reluctant to let her go but she pulled herself out of his arms, looking at the three of us.
“Did you see? It works.” She held out her arms to inspect them. “Not even a scratch.” She ran her fingers down her legs, feeling for fabric tears. “They never touched me. Not once.”
Jacob entered the lab and she ran to the young man. “It works, Jacob. It works.”
Jacob’s eyes grew large. “You tested it? Yourself?”
She jumped up and down lightly on her toes. “Yes,” she giggled like a child and it sounded like pebbles falling on a pile of autumn leaves.
Jacob’s face turned ashen. “We are in so much trouble.”
She ruffled his hair. “Ah, Robert will be fine. It worked!”
Derrick touched her wrists gently to calm her. “That was amazing. Now can you tell us what it was that we just saw?”
She took a few deep breaths and motioned to the stools. She removed a broach from her belt. It looked like a purple stone, about the size of a large olive. She tossed it to Derrick who easily caught it.
“That…” she winked at Jacob, “…is your new armor.”
Derrick held it up between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it suspiciously.
She leaned forward and pushed a button on the broach. Derrick’s image shimmered before my eyes and then he returned to normal.
Jacob turned off the lab light and turned on another, special light.
A diaphanous violet light enveloped Derrick and the stool he sat on, casting him in a grayish purple glow. It was practically invisible in regular light but was distinct, if not dense, in the darker light.
“This particular wavelength, the Eigengrau, in the indigo/violet spectrum, is fatal to the Slicers,” Marla said simply, as if it wasn’t the most important discovery of all of humanity.
“Eigengrau?” my father asked.
“Intrinsic gray light,” she replied. “You know. When you sit in a completely dark room, but you can still see things? When you close your eyes but you still see brain gray. Dark light.”
Derrick dropped the broach from
“What does this do?” Derrick’s voice shook.
My father handed it to me and I played with it, switching the light off and on again. The field enveloped me, disappeared, enveloped me again. I waved my arms wildly and the violet light outlined my body where ever I moved it.
“You saw what happened when I turned on the Eigengrau light in the sequestering chamber. It kills the Slicers.”
Derrick rose to his feet. She couldn’t hear it but his voice was full of warning, like the soft hiss of a caged cougar. “You can kill Slicers?”
We had never been able to kill Slicers. We’d shoot them but their liquid metal would just reform and mend itself. Burning them didn’t work, liquids, chemicals, acids, crushing them, nothing could kill a Slicer. The only dead Slicers we had seen were after they had implanted their clones in our friends’ mutilated bodies. Only then did the Slicers shrivel up and die.
Marla shook her head. “No. Well, yes, but no.” She tried to explain. “We discovered a wavelength of light that kills them, but we don’t have the means of distribution. Right now, it’s like killing a swarm of house flies with a dart, one fly at a time. We can lure them into the chamber, but we can only kill a couple dozen at a time. That’s nothing compared to the number of Slicers flying around out there.”
Marla took the device from me and Jacob turned the regular lights back on. “But this. This will allow us to walk outside without fear.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you could kill the Slicers?” Derrick asked. His tone did not hide his accusation.
Marla looked at his quizzically. “We’ve theorized about the Eigengrau for four years.” She shrugged. “I’ve been working to stabilize it so it can protect us as we move about, protect our vehicles, our boats, our animals.”
She grabbed my father’s hand. “We’ll be able to put this on collars on our cows and they’ll be able to wander the meadows again.”
“We didn’t know anything could kill a Slicer,” my father said gently.
Marla stopped moving and cocked her head. “Oh.”
My father blinked back tears. “If they can die….”
“It means we can win,” Derrick finished.
Marla shook her head apologetically. “I didn’t know you didn’t know.”
Derrick jumped off his stool and let out whoop. Derrick had a very loud voice. “Wait until I tell my men.” Derrick started to leave the room. He turned back, grabbed Marla’s head in his large, calloused hands and kissed her on the forehead.
He released her and pointed to my father and me. “Learn how this works.” He left the room. The way he walked with his injured back made it look like he was skipping.
Jacob took the device and put it in a box on the table. “When they find out, half the people here are going to love you and the other half are going to be as mad as hell.”
“Only Robert,” Marla corrected him.
Jacob looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “But he gets fifty-one percent of the vote.” Jacob turned and looked at me. “Make sure Robert knows that I was not here when she did this.” Jacob turned to leave. “And I’m not going to be around when he finds out, either.”
“What was that about?” my father asked, turning to Marla.
Marla waved her hand. “Ah, nothing. Just a long-standing disagreement between Robert and me.” Marla pulled a sheaf of paper onto her lap and started scribbling. “If we can boost the power source, we could build a dome of Eigengrau light around Plato’s Cave.”
I picked up a pencil off the table and drew on her diagram. “You don’t need to increase one power source,” I said. “All you need to do is place four of five power sources in strategic locations, like here, here, here and here. You saw how the light meshes. The light from each beacon will combine with the others to create a completely sealed dome.”
She looked at me with sparkling eyes. “You are so right.”
I felt proud. Proud to have been a witness to her accomplishment. Proud that she said I was correct. But her voice, as always, also made me feel sad, made me remember that so many had died before we got to this point. I don’t think there is a moment for any of us who lived through the Slicer Wars when we are completely happy. We carry this loss with us where ever we go, every day, with every breath. My only hope, my children, is that you, and if not you, then your children, will be able to experience pure joy one day. Joy without sorrow. Only joy. Only happiness.