Mariam Desta.

  Lennox had mentioned her during the lunch yesterday, but it was only when the affair was concluding that he had explicitly made the suggestion.

  “Oh. And Alex?” Lennox had suddenly said as he got up. It was the first words spoken since we received our mains. “You should meet Mariam. I’ll put it into her schedule tomorrow.”

  “Mariam?” I had asked.

  “You’ll love her.”

  After I had my morning shower, I returned to find a message left for me in my handheld.

  Irene: Be there in 20

  As I cooked the scrambled eggs, I ruminated on the fact that—assuming Lennox and everyone else hadn’t been lying—I would only have a day left in Sanctuary. My decision was to be issued to Lennox tomorrow. To leave this subterranean world and return home, or stay and help the Receiverists with their research. I hadn’t particularly entertained the decision, because my perspective up until now had always been that it was no real choice at all. I wasn’t here of my own volition, and so in order to right this wrong, I simply must leave when the first available opportunity presented itself. A reversion to some previous state, one in which the offer to visit this place could be posed to me in the way it should have been. Whether that question would ever materialise once I return to the surface was neither here nor there. It was the principle that mattered. A statement needed to be made, one that rightfully captured my indignation of having this situation thrusted upon me. And so my so-called decision that I needed to make tomorrow had been predetermined. Well before I had even stepped foot into this city. I would choose to leave.

  But was that really a decision? If the decision to the question of whether I wanted to stay here was already determined by my lack of choice on a previous matter, on a decision that was made for me by Receiverists, then was I truly expressing my own will? Could it be the case that my dogged need to make a statement on behalf of some abstract principle was actually a barrier to my agency? Perhaps there was an argument that the right way to go about the choice such that it would truly be a choice, would to make it without the baggage of the context in which the choice had been produced as in the first place. But if I momentarily forgot about the brutal way in which I had been taken into this city, what would I decide on? Was I afraid of the possibility that—

  “Shit!” I cursed as I frantically turned off the stove and brought the pan over to the sink. After running it with cold water, I scraped the bits of burnt egg into the waste drawer. Serves me right for being so abstracted while cooking, I thought grumpily. Lacking the time and patience to try again, I decided to just eat toast with nothing else but my invaluable company.

  The tones played just as I finished cleaning the dishes. “Morning,” I said as I opened the door.

  Irene’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. For a moment, I was confused. “Morning,” she said. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” I said before stepping out onto the corridor. As the door closed, Irene took the lead and I followed.

  “Only a day left, huh?” Irene remarked. She sounded like she could have been talking about the weather.

  The image of burnt eggs flashed before me. “I suppose so.”

  “Well. Do me a favour and don’t talk about us when you get back,” Irene said flatly. “Or I may need to pay you a little visit.”

  I ignored her joke—at least I hoped it was. “You seem to be pretty sure of what I’m going to choose.”

  “I thought we’d already established that you’re a pretty obstinate person,” Irene said as she pressed the button for the elevator. “Aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  She turned to look at me for a moment, as if searching for something in my eyes. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I tried to study her expression to see if she found it. By the time the elevator doors opened, I still couldn’t tell.

  “You don’t seem terribly worried by the fact that I’m going to choose to leave,” I said after the elevator doors closed.

  “Why would I be?” Irene asked. It seemed like an honest question.

  “But doesn’t your promotion ride on this?” I asked, gesturing at my body as I did so.

  Irene tilted her head, as if I had said something peculiar. “No, not really. I think you’re misunderstanding how this works.”

  “I am?”

  “The outcome doesn’t matter,” Irene said as the elevator doors opened. “The only thing that matters is that I’ve done all I can to facilitate the possibility.”

  I followed her as she left the elevator. “I’m confused. How can the outcome not matter to your boss? Surely that’s the only thing that matters in the end. I mean, I can try my best at making a shoe, but I don’t know anything about shoemaking, so I’d most likely fail. In what world would that land me a promotion as a shoemaker?”

  “That analogy doesn’t work, because you haven’t gone to shoemaking school,” Irene said. “Whereas I’ve done everything I can to provide you the context, which you asked for, to convince you to help us with research. I can’t force you to do it. You ultimately decide to stay or leave. That’s up to you. Or the universe, really. It’s beyond me. If you stay, then that’s just the way that things are supposed to happen. If you go, same thing. This assignment will be considered a success either way.”

  I thought about this for a moment as we walked down the street, passing other preoccupied Receiverists. “So you’re not at all invested in whether I stay or not?”

  Irene was contemplative for a moment. “I guess I can understand why you would think that. If there’s anything I would regret about you leaving, it’d probably be for you.”

  “For me?”

  “I hate to say it, but you’re interesting,” Irene said. “Mostly in the worst ways possible, so don’t flatter yourself. But at first, you were just a name, a picture, pages of information, and a career stepping stone.”

  “And now?” I was almost afraid of her answer.

  “A complicated person,” Irene said with a smile. It seemed almost pitying. “It’s none of my business. Professionally or personally. But I think you’re happier here.”

  We fell to silence as we walked. I had no response to that. I could deny it, but truthfully, it would only be petty. I didn’t know the truth to Irene’s assessment, because that would entail that I knew what happiness meant. I didn’t. Perhaps I had it once, but its absence in so long had all but erased any traces of its very existence in my being. The way ashes dispersed from the top of a mountain. Was I happy? It was a question I didn’t think I could answer, nor did it really occupy any space in my mind. Instead, all I could feel was my surprise from hearing Irene’s words. And seeing her momentary expression. In that moment, I saw a glimpse of an Irene that I didn’t know existed. Someone who was more than just her job. A person with their own complications and depth, who recognised aspects of me that I and the rest of the world preferred to ignore. And maybe even things I couldn’t see myself.

  “Thanks,” I said after minutes of silence as we walked from building to building. The only acknowledgement from Irene was a fleeting look.

  The walk was longer than I expected, passing through no less than five buildings before we stopped in front of another elevator. Irene scanned her handheld before pressing level two. The elevator doors opened to what looked like an office floor, except not quite. As we walked down the labyrinthine corridors, we passed by large rooms of people gathered around screens on the wall that appeared to fulfil the role of blackboards. On the blackboards were diagrams, formulas, matrices, and other notes drawn up by hand. There was one blackboard that two people stared at in silence, with postures that suggested they had been doing so for hours. I get that, I thought. As we ventured deeper into the floor, we passed by both open and closed offices. We stopped at a door that had a screen displaying “Mariam Desta”. Irene opened it with her handheld.

  “Mariam,” Irene said as she nodded towards the dark skinned woman sitting behind the desk.

  Mariam looked up from her tablet, her curls bouncing as she did. The white streaks in her hair made me guess that she was in her early fifties. Her voice was low and raspy. “The fabled Dr Young. Come in.”

  As I stepped onto the floor of her office, she nodded at Irene before gesturing me to the empty chair in front of her desk. The door closed, leaving the two of us separated by a silver surface that held various screens and tablets. My eyes were drawn to the single incongruity on the desk; a glass case holding up a stringed golden pendant that looked like the sun.

  “A family heirloom,” Mariam said. “It was the most treasured possession of my late grandmother. And it was the only thing that I had with me when I arrived in Sanctuary.”

  “So you weren’t born here?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she answered. “Like you, I was contacted by Receiverists many, many years ago. Long enough for me to sit in this symbolic chair in front of you. My name is Mariam Desta. I am the Head of the Science Division. This is probably nothing new to you, but I appreciate the formality.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Alex Young. I haven’t signed up to do anything.”

  “I think that’s silly,” Mariam said.

  I was taken aback by her terseness, punctuated by the firm look in the dark eyes that locked onto mine. I suddenly felt the urge to defend myself. “I disagree,” I said, mustering up as much resoluteness as I could. “I was taken here forcibly. It’s insulting to expect me to voluntarily choose to align myself with my captors.”

  “Are you a man of science? A man of progress?” Mariam asked. “Or a man of hubris?”

  “Certainly the former, I hope,” I said. “But surely you’re not suggesting that technology is sufficient to convince me to stay?”

  “Of course I am,” Mariam said. “You’ve been here nearly a week now. The rate of our technological progress is not merely evident, but overwhelming. We are not at the forefront of progress. We are progress itself. Doing research out there is pointless. This is simply the only place to be. That is, if you’re even remotely serious about doing research that’s meaningful.”

  “I understand that I’m in no position to dispute any of that,” I said. “But that’s not the only factor here. There’s a lot of other aspects to this society that I haven’t made up my mind about yet. And my introduction to it was a kidnapping. So forgive me if I seem hesitant, but I think I have the right.”

  “Of course you do,” Mariam said. “Everyone has the right to make terrible decisions.”

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  Her audacity—

  “But frankly,” she continued, “as a woman of science, the only thing I care about is the pursuit of knowledge and application. I’m surprised that as a fellow victim to the academic world above, you’re not on your knees begging for a permanent position right now.”

  “I’m not that shameless,” I said indignantly.

  “I’m not saying that to rouse you,” Mariam said as she leaned towards me. “I’m saying that because it’s what I would have done. It’s what I did. Tell me, what are you going to do after you leave? Crawl back to the entrenched, incestuous circle jerk of academia? Where disillusioned researchers are all but forced to shamelessly publish meaningless papers? Where your entire career depends on satisfying a publishing culture that discourages the genuine pursuit of knowledge?”

  I didn’t want to lie or bruise my own ego by suggesting that yes, indeed that was my plan. “Well, I could always go to industry,” I said sheepishly.

  Mariam leaned back into her chair. “Then I’d tell you to stop wasting my time and get the fuck out of my office. I’d see to it personally that your offer to stay is revoked.”

  There was a silence. I wanted her to think that I was considering her words as a real opportunity. But as the seconds passed, there was a confident smirk forming on Mariam’s lips. I hate to say it, but I respect her, I thought.

  “Can you tell me about the problem that you want me to solve?” I asked, breaking the moment. “All I’ve been told so far is that it has something to do with a physics model.”

  “Yes. The mathematical problems we want you to solve are related to a new model of particle physics that we need,” Mariam said.

  “You need?” I asked.

  “Our current understanding of physics fails to account for certain results in our measurements,” she explained. “Simply put, these observations contradict our current theory of physics and should therefore be impossible.”

  “But reality cannot be changed while theory can, so it must be the theory that’s wrong,” I said.

  Mariam nodded. “Well said. And we believe a new theory of particle physics will have key applications towards the Preparation Project. We’ve translated these observations into mathematical conditions, described by the document we’ve sent you. Unfortunately, our brightest minds have so far failed to formalise a consistent model that satisfies those conditions.”

  “And this is why you’ve sought outside help.”

  “Yes,” Mariam said. “This is where you come in.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why did you choose me among the tens of thousands of other mathematicians out there?”

  “I had no hand in that,” she said. “It was a non-negotiable suggestion from the Reception Division.”

  “Non-negotiable?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, that’s how the Reception Division works most of the time,” Mariam lamented with a sigh.

  “So their analyses or algorithms or whatever figured out that I’m the only person who can solve this problem?” I asked.

  Mariam chuckled. “I don’t think you’re the only person who can solve this problem. In fact, I don’t actually care if you help us or not.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I snarked.

  “Try not to take it personally,” she said. “The way it works is that the problem will inevitably be solved someday. By someone, somehow, at some point in time. Yes, that could be you. I suppose your admittedly creative work on stochastic models in finance ticks the boxes, since we already know that the required physics model must be probabilistic, and there’s often an analogy between physics and finance. But if you can’t or won’t do the maths, then someone else will. And I’m more than okay with this.”

  I had always known that for the sake of my career, I needed the research more than it needed me. But to hear it spoken out loud, when everything that had happened had almost fooled me into believing that I was destined for it, still had an impact. It made me aware just how insecure I was. If Lennox honoured his word and I was sent back home tomorrow, then I would be back at square one. No. It would not just be square zero, but square negative ten. From the perspective of the faculty, I had abandoned my duties as a lecturer and researcher and reappeared some time later with nothing to show for it. Of course, that seemed trivial when this entire experience had a life or death element to it. Hypothetically, if any Receiverist wanted me to disappear off the surface—volume of the Earth for whatever reason, then that could happen. I wasn’t truly safe until this was over and I was back on the surface. That alone should be enough. But a part of me wanted more. Now that I had another dimension down here, it gave rise to possibilities. I could still return with a win. To pick myself back up. But Mariam’s words reminded me that I could still return empty-handed.

  “Is this how they recruited you?” I asked. “They found you when you needed something, kidnapped you down here, and you decided to stay?”

  “Not exactly.” She paused for a moment. Her eyes looked distant. “It’s quite startling, isn’t it? The magnitude of the impact a single decision made over twenty years ago can have on your life.”

  “That’s a long time to be living underground,” I remarked. “What about your friends and family?”

  “Well, most Receiverists were born here,” Mariam said. “But I didn’t have any friends back then. Nor did I have any family. They all died.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Mariam waved off the sentiment. “Don’t be. It couldn’t be helped. One might say it was always meant to be. There was a famine caused by the war. I was no older than ten. It was brutal.”

  I can’t even imagine the horrors this woman had seen as a child, I thought solemnly. “If I may, how did you go from there to here?”

  “I will tell you, because I am proud of my roots,” Mariam said as she leaned further into her chair. “My family sold our tools and trinkets at first. But soon, we realised they weren’t enough. And so we gradually sold our valuables. Our heirlooms. Until there was nothing left. Nothing except this.” Mariam gestured towards the glass casing that housed the pendant in the shape of the sun. “ My mother refused to even discuss it. This is the only reminder I have of my heritage now. The only evidence that my family had ever existed, aside from myself.”

  “By the time we reached the smugglers, it was just my mother and I,” Mariam said. “We gave them a bracelet and a ring. My mother hid the pendant with me. We were one of the few survivors who survived the trip, but my mother died after reaching the embassy. She contracted a disease. I’m sure it was from giving me what little food there was. The refugee camp was a nightmare, but a couple of years later I was resettled into Sweden with another refugee family. It wasn’t that I didn’t get along with them, but they weren’t my real family, so I studied hard and landed a scholarship for science.”

  “I went on to become a postdoc researcher in theoretical physics. But I was too driven. The papers I published made a lot of noise, but I refused to participate in the showy academic dance that I was expected to do. For that, I was punished with not having enough collaborators, which in turn meant not enough publication output, which led to difficulties with procuring research grants, and so forth. One day, at the teetering edge of my career, I was approached by a man who promised me a utopia. Where I can truly pursue science in itself at an accelerated rate. Where hunger doesn’t exist. Where my work will go towards human prosperity. That utopia was Sanctuary.”

  “And that man’s name was Lennox,” I said.

  Mariam nodded. “He prefers Lenny.”

  As I walked the streets of Sanctuary, it was a shock to me that I would even consider the decision as a real decision. That there was even a possibility that I might provide any answer that wasn’t “get me the fuck out of here” seemed impossible several days ago. I supposed I was playing into the hands of Lennox’s machinations. He had known that this city would be persuasive. Perhaps he had even ran his oh so powerful algorithms and saw that the odds of swaying me was favourable. Maybe that was why he felt confident about taking me into this clandestine society—no, why he had chosen me for this research task from the very start. The operation to put me here was months in the making. Maybe even years. I didn’t know the distance of the Receiverists’ foresight, but I was beginning to believe it was a horizon that no one under the real horizon could see.

  Perhaps this was the so-called determinism principle. That, if I thought about it for too long, I would start to believe my path was fixed. That, because someone somewhere had seen my predicted decisions, my role had gone from being the agent who made choices to a slave who merely fulfilled prophecies. And so the decision I needed to give wouldn’t be a decision at all. I was destined to accept their offer to stay and assist with their research, and therefore I will. But this sense of determinism wasn’t new in itself. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that I readily accepted the idea that my decision was fixed; I would doggedly choose to leave, as preordained by the fact that I had been robbed of the choice to come here in the first place.

  I arrived at the square of some building. As it often was the case, Irene had only led me to whichever destination I was scheduled to be at, then left me to find my own way back. I supposed this made sense. She only needed me to be on time. Timeliness was probably good for her performance review, whereas I didn’t need to be back home at a fixed time, so she didn’t bother. By my estimation, I was about halfway between Mariam’s office and my apartment. My apartment, I caught myself thinking. Looking around, I saw a barista working at the window of a cafe. There were only two other people in line.

  “What would you like?” the barista asked after she had finished serving the middle-aged woman in front of me.

  “A flat white,” I said, before adding, “with soy milk, thanks.” I didn’t usually ask for soy milk in my coffee, but I suddenly remembered that they grew their own soybeans here. I was curious what it tasted like.

  The barista looked at me funny, before smirking. “If you were from here, you’d know soy milk is the default,” she said. “Sugar?”

  “No sugar.” In hindsight, I should have guessed. “Oh, can I also have one of those bagels?” It was almost lunch hour, anyway.

  “Sure,” she said. She tapped away at her tablet, before, “Scan here.”

  I made my way over to a vacant bench in the square. My first sip of the flat white made me realise the soy milk here tasted better than what I remembered it was like on the surface. I watched as the waves of passersby walked through the square. People of all shapes, sizes and colours, all unified by their cloth and purpose. And yet, each with their own personhood. Some were clearly students. Others looked like they worked in manufacturing. A man and a woman looked like they had just come out of a gym. The crowds became a river of grey under my distant stare.

  Regardless of the choice I would make, I could tie it back to reasons that would make the choice seem like a predetermined inevitability. But it was nothing more than a fallacy. Two mutually exclusive outcomes couldn’t both be predestined. It was pointless to speculate. In order to truly decide, I would need to detach the decision from both inescapable contexts; the predictive arsenal that Lennox has access to, and the fact that I was taken here involuntarily. Stripping away those, what was left?

  My career needed the research. My life needed the research. The looming walls were closing in and I was running out of solutions. I had believed that the work I had received from the Receiverist research group was a lifeline. And I still do, I realised. I needed a win, and perhaps I could still get it here. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back.

  As I finished the bagel, I wondered if it would be so bad to stay here. Not just for the immediate research, but more permanently. After all, Mariam had done it. And if I could prove my aptitude as a researcher by completing this work, then surely that would be justification enough. The material benefits were obvious; they were flaunted at me. But what about the society? Did I wish to become a Receiverist? Did I want to don the grey uniform and become a part of the monolithic mass living in a monolithic forest? To share the ideals of building a sanctuary for humanity? I admired what they were trying to do. Whether they could do it, I wasn’t so sure. I appreciated the utility of their society. Harmonic. Selfless. Pragmatic. Yet, I couldn’t help but wince at the way they achieved it. Unfettered surveillance. Predictions underpinning every aspect of life, so powerful that they gave Receiverists a sense of determinism. This was very much a “the end justifies the means” kind of place. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Sitting at my desk, I stared at the mathematical document in front of me. It was closed. Nothing but a thin stack of papers. They looked so trivial. And yet, they were everything. Or so I had been told. I had bashed my head against it before. And a part of me knew that I was willing to try it once more. To persist in the face of impossibility. For that was what research truly was. Are you satisfied with your impact on the world? That question had echoed through the crevices of my mind ever since. Every now and then I would wonder about what mark I would leave on this earth after I perish. Who didn’t? But I had accepted that impact was a luxury. I chose the field of financial mathematics not because it would make the world a better place. In fact, I didn’t think my research would have any material effect at all. Working in that field was merely a convenience. Perhaps a part of me was afraid of the idea that I might have any influence on the world. After all, it was already so fragile. I didn’t want to be the pebble that shattered it. It took courage to take up the mantle of wanting to deliver a change for the good. It also took the ability to envision a better, brighter future. I had neither. But this opportunity presented itself. Beckoning, screaming at me towards contributing to something much greater, much more meaningful than anything I had ever done. But was I willing to leave my comforting familiarity to take the hilt of responsibility?

  In the end, none of that mattered. Irene had been right. What truly mattered were the feelings. The perspectives. That, despite the way I viewed the world, I felt the rejuvenating glimmer of hope at the way Receiverists worked faithfully and in synchrony towards something greater than themselves. Nothing could compare to this on the surface. Nothing up there could inspire me to become a better person. A person who was worthy of saving.

  I picked up my handheld.

  “Alex?” Irene asked after the connection was established. She knew what this was about, but I found what I needed in her grey eyes. She didn’t know what I was going to say.

  “I’d like to stay,” I said resolutely. A smile formed on Irene’s lips.