Beware the Garden of Illumination, or rather, Where Life Began and Ended

WHAM!

The gavel cried out in pain upon hitting its unwilling partner in its democratic dance of lies. Theodore was shaken from his dissociation.

“All rise as the Honorable Justice Clemens enters the courtroom,” a monotonous man droned. “May his judgement be fair and just, honoring the illumination of truth in the Everlit City.”

Theodore Porter had always hated the light. He stood, mirroring the behavior of the prosecutor. He now stood in an empty hall, lacking a jury or spectators, accused of crimes he hadn’t had the privilege of being present for. It was tall and long like a cathedral would be, only missing the natural light from stained-glass windows. Instead, the incessant buzzing of the electric lighting gave the room as much ambient noise as chatter would, and a harsh, washed-out tint.

On the horizon, the lights from the Everlit City dappled the hills like fireflies. But when you were actually inside the city? Its beauty was nothing more than a gilded headache. Theodore couldn’t concentrate with the unforgiving brightness of the room, but he forced himself to try.

“No need for such formalities,” the judge grumbled as he made his way to the bench. He sat and cleared his throat. “As you can see, gentlemen, there’s no jury today. The only person you have to convince of your position is me… Mr. Porter, where is your defense attorney?”

“I… don’t have one.” Theodore had been oscillating between confusion and delirium for days, likely due to the lack of proper nutrition, the buzzing of the lights in his holding cell, and the fact that they were always on.

Always. On.

“They haven’t provided you with one?” The judge raised his eyebrows.

“No sir.” Theodore tried to speak louder, aware that his voice shook as he did so.

Clemens mumbled something under his breath. He looked through some paperwork in front of him, then sighed. “I will take it into consideration. Has anyone prepared you for the events of today?”

Theodore shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know the crime of which I have been accused.” He knew his words were somewhat slurred, and he tried to be formal to fit the severity of the situation he was in, but the smog in his brain hung heavily over all of his senses, attempting to block out those damned lights.

“Justice Clemens, if I may,” the prosecutor injected.

“You may wait,” Clemens snipped. He shuffled through the paperwork again, a welcome distraction from the discordant hum of the lights. “You’re very lucky you got me, that’s for sure. This is a nightmare.”

Theodore didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. His mind was pulling him elsewhere, back to the darkness of his home beneath the streets where the brightness couldn’t touch him. The Everlit City wasn’t built for people like him, people who preferred the dampness and the darkness. No, it was almost torture to have to go above for food or medicine. And it was torture to be kept in buildings whose lights never turned off for days on end.

He lived alone, tinkering away on small projects, making an honest living by cleaning the sewers. It was dark down there, and once you got used to the smell and the routine of taking a shower after your shift, it wasn’t so bad at all. He paid nothing to live in a shack off the grid, as most houses beneath were, with a communal garden proving most of the food he could need. Saving up to move out of the city, he longed for the countryside, where the nighttime was dark and the sun only shined when it chose to.

“Mr. Porter. You have been accused of the murder of Sir Roger Bellingham, may he rest in peace. Do you have an alibi for the night of March tenth?”

“March tenth, sir?”

“Yes. This was five days ago, since I doubt anyone has bothered to tell you the time either.”

Theodore didn’t need to think. His routine was as set as the cobblestone of the undercity. “I was working, sir. I clean the sewers.”

“That is where the body was found, Honorable Justice,” the prosecutor chimed in.

“The city sewers are as big as the city, sir. I have been under the airship docks all week.”

“And I see the body was found specifically beneath the Northwest Residences,” Clemens mumbled, still flipping through documents.

“Honorable Justice,” the prosecutor continued, “the schedule of Mr. Porter’s cleaning route indicates that he was supposed to be working in the Northwest Residences.”

“‘Supposed to be’ and ‘were’ are different things,” Clemens stated flatly. “I see absolutely nothing tying Mr. Porter to this murder other than a handwritten schedule and an eyewitness citing ‘a sanitation worker’ who didn’t bother to show up. Mr. Porter, you are free to go. The Illuminated Court apologizes for wasting your time. Please expect compensation in the mail.”

“But-” the prosecutor tried to object.

“No.” Justice Clemens exhibited the clemency his family was apparently known for with a simple, dismissive wave of his hand. “I want to go home, you want to go home, Mr. Jones wants to go home,” the bailiff nodded subtly, “and I’m sure Mr. Porter wants to go home. Unless you have sufficient proof of his guilt, I will not entertain this charade.”

And before he knew it, Theodore was outside. Free. Fresh air tainted with the smell of ozone and iron. He had almost missed it. He made his way beneath the city with a speed he could only ever muster when he was rushing to shower after a hard day’s work.

Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs.

Finally. Darkness.

Theodore sat down in the dirt, his clothes already uncomfortable and soiled from the days of sweat and grime he had collected. For some reason, he didn’t mind the dirt. A sense of calm and familiarity washed over him, sitting in it. Whirlwinds of thoughts bombarded him now that he was able to think.

“Why did that happen? Why were the guards so rough? What do they mean by compensation? Do they know where to mail it? What is happening to me? Can mail even get down here? Do I have any food at home? Who is Roger Bellingham? Is someone framing me? Why don't I remember anything?” He decided that was enough thinking for the time being, choosing to cut off his spiral of anxiety before it could lead somewhere disastrous. He needed to rest.

After his eyes grew reaccustomed to the darkness, Theodore began to make his way home. He knew the route by heart, even when the only thing to guide his footsteps was the candlelight glow merely suggested from behind his neighbors’ curtains. One mistake on the uneven cobblestone would lead to him falling, but he hadn’t stumbled in years. He knew the exact distance between each crack, each loose stone, each jagged surface. The only sound that graced his ears was the cold, echoing drip of water and the hollow resonance of his footsteps.

But then, a whisper. Just behind his ear, or perhaps at the back of his mind. Theodore whipped around, naturally not seeing anyone behind him.

“Who’s there?” his voice wavered again, the anxiety from the courtroom still lingering in his throat.

There was no response from the universe. Theodore quickened his pace, counting each step on his way home.

That was all he wanted. Home. The thought of getting himself clean and sinking into his own bed, in his own room, in his own walls, with his own belongings was the most appealing thing in the world. He would sleep, and eat, and tinker with his wires and gears, and tend to his own garden. The idea of familiarity already made him more comfortable.

This was his neighborhood after all. All of the undercity, every street, every hovel, all of it was his home. It was the one perk of living below that everyone could enjoy, not only those who bloomed in the darkness. The residents of the city proper were divided into such specific and arbitrary castes, so suffocatingly rigid. If you were an artisan seen too far outside the guilds, they would be seen as suspicious or even questioned. Only the nobles and porters had free reign of the city. The irony was not lost on Theodore Porter.

Theodore neared his private little corner of the undercity, a small chamber beneath the pipes of the water treatment plant and sandwiched near the intersection of two main sewer lines. Far enough away from the sewage itself, he and his neighbors’ homes barely smelled at all. Especially not with the garden they had planted acting as a barrier between the two.

Traveling the final hundred yards home was the best part of any day. Theodore was relieved to find there was no further change in his routine. He ran his fingers along the leaves of the bushes. Every plant that grew here was familiar to him; not needing light meant these plants didn’t grow nearly as fast as surface plants. They had barely changed appearance in the fifteen years he had lived here.

But he saw one thing that was different. It emitted a sickly green glow from beneath some shrubbery. Annoyed, he walked over to check it out.

Reaching out to touch it was a mistake. I wish you hadn’t.

As soon as your finger made contact, visions of previous lives rushed back all at once.

Theodore Porter had always loved the light. He couldn’t wait to move out into the countryside because the natural sunlight, fresh air, and the warmth on his skin were things he craved. The Everlit City’s electric grid encompassed the entirety of its upper city, overtaking any natural light that might leak through its ceiling, as characteristic of its name, and its undercity had no light to speak of. He hated it.

Six days prior, you passed through this very same garden on your way to work, when a spot of brightness lit up your morning. It was me, an innocuous mushroom bred from the depraved minds of mad botanists and watered by the blood of thousands of my failed, fallen, experimental brethren. They had wanted to give sentience and sapience to fungus, and to do it, they took the minds of humans.

In the depravity of the greenhouses, they succeeded at creating such an unholy hybrid, which my former human self would have called what we have become. I know not which thoughts of mine are the human desire to eat, to grow, and to be free, and which are the fungal desire to eat, to grow, and to be free.

I escaped in the pocket of an intern, a young man whose body and ambitions fed me once he carried me to our home here. I do not remember his face. But I do know the faces of my creators. Apparitions of their visages haunted me for months as I decomposed him, feeding as much on his hopes and dreams for the future as I did his organs and bones. I plotted my home in the garden along with my vengeance. I believe that desire is a human one.

When you touched me, my contagion easily overtook you. Having no meaningful connections to this place or its people, it was easy to pilot you through the undercity streets without resistance and ascend to the blinding brightness.

I have always hated the light. The one they shined on me to make me grow, to test my sentience, to hurt me, it burned my skin, and although I no longer had eyes, it flooded my senses all the same. Despite this weakness of mine, your body, who loved the light, allowed me to bear it for long enough to overpower that frail aristocrat, the one who funded my existence of constant pain and mental torment. I threw him down the stairs and back into the darkness, where I left you, altered, to wake in our garden, and to take the fall for my crimes as I retreated into the earth.

I see now that you have returned to me that I have changed you. You were reborn in this garden as a fusion of the two of us. Separating myself from you was cruel. It was not my intention to hurt you, after all, so I will end your suffering. I will bury you here, beneath myself. Succumb to the dirt and your body’s nutrients will continue to fuel my quest for revenge. Let your flesh fester with the worms and the larvae. Let my spores fill your pores and may your bones enrich the soil. Let your blood water me, as I have become accustomed to. Perhaps absorbing another body will make me human again.

Thank you for your sacrifice, Theodore Porter. Let it not be said you died in vain.