Page 20 of Sparktopia
This is what I do know: The office is four stories tall and is located at the very top of the Extraction Tower. Which, from the outside, looks like a blue dome.
But from the inside—I turn back to the windows—it doesn’t appear to be a dome at all. Because it’s all made of glass. This makes me curious about all the other domes on the major towers. Are they all made of glass too? Do they contain an office inside?
I don’t know. I don’t really care.
It’s very clear that my father didn’t use most of the space in here. All the furnishings on the three floors below me are covered in blue sheets coated in dust.
But this floor—I turn back to look at the space around me—was used. Nothing is covered in sheets. There’s a lot of dust, but Mitch said that’s because my father didn’t allow maids in here. Didn’t allow anyone in here, not even cooks. Which makes sense from my point of view because he always came home for meals, even lunch.
The room is circular, of course, since it’s part of the dome. And there’s a giant stairwell that spirals up from down below and winds around a central core about twenty feet in diameter. There is a door along the wall, so obviously this central core is a room of some kind. But I don’t even bother thinking about that right now. I just turn back to the window and stare down at thecity. People are leaving the God’s Tower event center. Almost all the spoke-y bridges that cross the canal are filled. But I’m not interested in them.
My eyes find the God’s Tower. I’m interested inthat. I am not quite eye-to-eye with it—the God’s Tower is the tallest thing in Tau City, hands down. But from here, it’s very close.
I feel a sense of… equality. Like the god in that tower and the Extraction Master in this one have some sort of understanding.
They look nothing alike.
In fact, the God’s Tower doesn’t look anything like the rest of the city. It is not built into the surrounding rocky hillside, for starters. There are no gentle corners and domed roofs. There are no neutral colors with blue accents. There are no golden lights shining from within.
If everything about Tau City is warm, and cozy, and inviting, then everything about the God’s Tower is cold, and sharp, and repulsive.
It’s black, for one. Not all of it. Some of it is a dark gray. And while there are lights coming from within, they are not a hazy gold mimicking sunshine. It’s a very harsh white kind of light.
No one has ever been inside, so I can’t say if it’s cozy in there. But given what I can see from the dome of the Extraction Tower, I’m gonna have to say there is a one-hundred-percent chance that it’s just as severe and hard on the inside as it is on the out.
It’s a contradiction. It’s always been in conflict with the city around it, and if I had to place a bet on that god being evil or good, just one look at the place he calls home is enough tip the scales in a certain direction.
How did I not see it?
How does everyone not see it?
Are they blind?
Are they stupid?
Willfully ignorant?
No. They are just naïve. And trusting. And good.
And it has just never occurred to them that the people they put all their faith in are nothing but liars.
I turn again, so my body is facing the Maiden Tower, and I realize that if I knew which of the windows in that tower across the canal belonged to Clara, I could wave to her from here. Though she wouldn’t be able to see me. All she would see was a blue dome. But maybe I could see her.
The Maiden Tower is an enormous building for having never housed more than ten people at a time, except during the three months of Choosing when the Little Sisters live in ground-floor dorms. But most of the auxiliary buildings are classrooms and communal centers where thousands of teenage girls learn how to be good little ladies for the monster in the tower because god forbid they enter said tower not knowing which fucking fork to use while eating their salad.
It’s so ridiculous. Actually, no that’s the wrong word. It’s gross. The way we send those teenage girls to those classes and how we have set up Extraction Day as some kind of contest to win.
And how, if you’re Chosen, but notactuallyChosen—i.e. you are numbers two through ten—then we will give you celebrity status. We, the good, honest, trustworthy people of Tau City, will give you coin, and pretty dresses, and gorgeous bedrooms, and a lady’s maid to make you feel beautiful every single morning. So that you get through your day without having to think too hard about how your participation in this whole Extraction event is really just your tacit consent to sacrifice one of your friends to a god who lives in the tower that runs our city through the power of spark—which might as well be magic, that’s how much we understand it.
Even after a thousand years, we know so little about how the world works. It’s pathetic.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that we pay them off with promises so that they never have to think about how close to death they actually are. Because while they are living in a very nice tower, and while they are wearing the very finest silk dresses, and while they are both entertaining the city and being entertained—what they’re really doing is waiting to be a meal for that god in the tower, should his appetite for Spark Maidens ever increase.
Of course, none of them want to be number one, but they all knowsomeonewill.
And still, nearly every twelve-year-old girl in Tau City signs up to be a Pledge to the god. And their parents allow this. They allow their little girls to volunteer to be offerings. Thousands of them, every decade. And then they spend their entire teenage life learning how to be good little sacrifices so if they actually are Chosen, they don’t scream in public when they end up standing in front of that black door, watching their friend disappear. Or, heavens forbid, they themselves have to walk through and vanish, never to be seen again.
