Heaven Scent

We had finally reached the door - the point of no return. Even after all the mental and physical preparation, I felt a sudden doubt. I froze.

“What if we’re found out before we make it to the reactor?” I was surprised to hear my own lips betray my hesitation. Orestes turned to me, rested his large hand on my shoulder, though it felt weightless. I turned to face him.

“Don’t be afraid, Antigone. We can’t afford it now. We must remain steadfast to the plan. The Mother is relying on us.” His eyes were as blue and kind as that first night he found me, drunk and despondent, my mind racked with guilt and confusion.

“I’ll be fine, you mean. But you - “.

He cut me off. “I’ll be more than fine. I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. Help me now. Please. Cry no tears for me now or ever, I don’t want or deserve them. Cry for the Mother if the tears must come later. But right now you must perform your role as we’ve rehearsed.”

He was right, of course. We both had parts to play in this final act of the tragedy. Otherwise, the time we spent preparing was wasted - all of his research, the production of the Compound, the infusion into his blood stream. Let alone the weeks spent planning the infiltration, re-planning, running the mock drills, hoping we could pull it off when the right time came. And now that time had arrived.

I turned back to the door. A plaque riveted to its steel grey surface read: DANGER! REACTOR ZONE. ORANGE BADGES ONLY.

Under my breath, I whispered the mantra Orestes had spoken so many times during our meditation sessions: “Our lives are but a breath of the Mother’s lungs.”

As if he had heard me (how could he?) he also uttered the words in his relaxed baritone voice: “Our lives are but a breath of the Mother’s lungs.”

Taking a deep breath of my own, I lifted my badge and passed it over the plaque. The door cracked open with a buzz and click. We passed through into the corridor beyond.

The long hallway was dimly lit by an ominous red light that seemed to produce more shadows than illumination. The steel walls and grated floor echoed our footsteps as we treaded forward. Corporate posters lined the walls, all bearing the meticulously designed logo of Heaven Consumer Products. Most of the images reflected the advertising campaigns we had all seen since we were children.

I recalled the most famous TV commercial, in which a mother and child are seen baking cookies in a bright suburban kitchen. The little girl smiles mischievously as she dips her finger into the dough for a taste. The mother responds with a knowing smile that says, “you know better but I’ll let it go this time.” Cue the famous jingle with the 1950’s era choir singing the slogan, “Make the most of life! Heaven on eaaaaarrrtthhh.” I bristled at the memory. I had been intoxicated by the imagery as a child. I had bought into it so completely that I had eventually applied to the company after graduate school and had risen through the corporate ranks until I had become a Division Head of one of the most destructive organizations human society had ever assembled.

As we approached the end of the hallway, the doorway to Reactor A came into view on our left. Now it was time for a bit of acting.

A security guard dressed in a brown uniform smiled at us as we entered. “Ms. Leeman, I wasn’t expecting you. No problem, I’ll just need you and your guest to verify here.” He presented a tablet, indicating that we should pass our badges over it.

I smiled curtly at the guard. “This is Dan Halburd, Technical Specialist from the Eastern Division here on a facilities tour.” I passed my badge over the tablet. “We’ll only be a few minutes in the reactor room.”

“Ah, welcome to our side of the world, Mr. Halburd!” the guard said cheerfully.

Orestes passed his visitor badge over the tablet. The guard’s smile was replaced by a look of mild confusion.

“Hmm, this badge seems to be old. It’s from the previous rotation,” he said. He turned to me with a questioning look.

“Oh, Dan has been on site for the last few weeks, it’s been an extended tour. I forgot to get his badge updated. That’s my fault,” I lied.

“Procedure in this zone requires current badges, no exceptions.” The guard said with an apologetic expression on his face.

“Yes of course, I’ll be sure to get his badge updated this evening after our tour,” I said.

The guard passed a suspicious look at Orestes. “I’m sorry Ms. Leeman but I won’t be able to admit Mr. Halburd without a valid badge. You know how strict Mr. Clarence has been this last quarter about operational security.” He let out a nervous laugh.

A brief moment of terror came over me. We had not planned for this. The false visitor’s badge we had so carefully counterfeited was not supposed to be subject to the rotation requirements. The protocol must have been updated recently.

“Surely you won’t make us walk all the way back to the Security Center now that we’re here? This badge was perfectly valid just yesterday when I brought Mr. Halburd to tour Reactor C,” I lied again.

“That may be, Ms. Leeman, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I allowed expired badges entry to the most sensitive areas of this facility. Procedure requires me to call a detail to escort Mr. Halburn back to the Security Office where they can update his badge. In the meantime, you may wait here or return to the unrestricted zone. I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience.” The guard looked nervous. He knew I could have him dismissed from the company on a whim given my position as Division Head.

Before I could respond with a threat of dismissal, Orestes dashed at him, grabbing his neck in a choke hold, then twisted. I heard the sickening sound of the guard’s neck snapping. His body fell to the floor. A moment later, Orestes was obscuring the view of a security camera using a handkerchief he had lifted from the guard’s uniform.

“No!” I cried, rushing to the fallen body. I checked for breath, a pulse: nothing. I began to cry. “No one was supposed to get hurt! This, this…” I struggled to finish the sentence.

“We always knew this was a possibility, Antigone. Now time is even more of the essence. When the camera outage is noticed, this room will be swarmed with security. We need to act quickly,” he said. He returned to the guard’s body, taking the badge that hung on a lanyard around his neck. With another quick motion, he was at the door on the opposite side of the room, scanning the badge. He held the door open for me. “Quickly! Do you want everyone in this facility to die?”

The thought of more death made me spring to my feet. “No, no. Okay,” I managed, wiping tears from my face, streaking the thick layer of Heaven Blush I applied every morning before work.

We passed into a dark cramped room. Before us stood a large glass partition through which could be seen the mass of metal and electronics that surrounded the reactor core. Beneath the partition sat a large control panel.

“The time has come, Antigone. Initiate the evacuation order,” said Orestes. He was calm, composed.

My entire body shaking, I turned to the console. I knew the surface well based on the mock version we had used during my training. I inserted my badge into the slot, revealing a control panel with three buttons: green, yellow, and red. I pressed the yellow one. A sliding door opened along the left wall of the little room. This was to be the last door Orestes ever passed through. We both knew that.

“Antigone, you have done well,” he said. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The Mother thanks you. When I found you, I knew you were special. I knew you would help me complete my mission, and here we are after all that we’ve been through together. Now I bid you a final farewell.”

The tears came again as I hugged him. He returned the embrace. I don’t know how long we stood there. I would go over this moment many times in my memory. In my later years, it would take on a dreamlike quality of an eternal moment of oneness with Orestes, with the Mother, with all of creation.

He pulled back from the embrace and looked at me one final time with those wonderful deep eyes. Without another word, he passed through the door.

With a renewed sense of duty, I returned my attention to the panel and pressed the red button. Immediately the door through which Orestes had passed slid shut. Red lights began flashing around the reactor core. An automated female voice boomed over a loudspeaker, “Attention all personnel, this is not a drill. A reactor core leak has been detected. All personnel must evacuate to designated evacuation areas immediately. This is not a drill.”

As the voice droned on, repeating its message, I watched with awe as Orestes approached the core. I continued watching as he placed his hands on the stark metal surface. He then turned to face me once more. I could not see his features in the dim light, but I knew that he was ready. He was about to detonate the device we had implanted in his abdomen. Then, the Compound coursing through his veins would be forced into the core, setting off a complex chain reaction that could not be stopped by any living force.

“Goodbye, Orestes,” I said quietly.

A metal shield descended slowly from the ceiling, obscuring the view of the core along with the silhouette of my friend and mentor. As I ran out of the dark little room, past the dead guard, and back into the hallway, I caught glimpses of the corporate posters that flashed passed me. “Heaven Consumer Toys,” read one of them, “Heaven Consumer Electronics,” read another. Heaven Consumer Entertainment. Heaven Consumer Jewelry. Heaven Consumer Automotive. I raced past all of them, as if traveling back through time, back to a childlike state before I had been coerced by the lies of Heaven Consumer Marketing.

I saw many of my colleagues dashing for exits marked by red light. I blended into the group and was swept up in the mass. I knew we had only a short time until Orestes’ ultimate plan was carried out, but I also knew that he didn’t want anyone else to die. His way was to coerce change, not to kill, not to destroy life. There had already been enough of that.

After several minutes of walking briskly, I found myself boarding an underground tram with the other employees. Some seemed panicked, others indifferent. Once the tram car was filled with employees, the doors closed and it raced off.

From within the human mass, memories of that night when I had met Orestes filled my mind. Earlier that day, I had witnessed a testing procedure in which a new shampoo formula created by the great scientific minds at Heaven Household Products had been injected into the eyes of a rabbit, a rat, a monkey, and several other mammals. The screams of the animals as the chemicals blinded them had cut very deep, much deeper than I had anticipated. Although I maintained my composure during the testing, after leaving work for the evening, I had experienced what must have been a kind of mental breakdown. I found myself at a nearby tavern drinking by myself in a corner booth, sobbing silently. That’s when Orestes had approached me. I still remember those eyes. Such kind deep eyes.

The tram came to a stop at the evacuation area and I disembarked along with the other passengers. I turned my attention to the large viewing screens which cycled through images of the offices, factories, reactors, and other structures that made up the vast machine of which we were all little cogs.

His words from that night in the bar echoed in my ears as I waited. “Imagine if humans could smell their own stink - do you think they would ignore the environmental disaster they were causing? Babies cry when they soil themselves, and mother changes them. I have the ability to make all of humanity smell its own stink. I have concocted a Compound that, when mixed with chemicals produced at your employer’s facilities, will set off a chain reaction. This reaction will produce a smell worse than sulfur. It will saturate the entire atmosphere. As long as CO2 levels exceed those of earlier human generations, it will remain indefinitely. A few other species will be affected, but they will quickly grow accustomed to it. Humans, on the other hand, will not.”

A loud explosion shocked me back to the present. From the safety of the evacuation area, we watched in horror as the earth opened up and swallowed the entire Western Division facilities - the C Suite Tower, the rows of factories and office buildings, the chemical silos, all of it. Then the screens went completely white as the chain reaction was initiated. This continued for several more minutes until we began to make out a giant black jet of smoke that rose from the great crater and billowed into the air.

I took a few deep breaths of fresh air, knowing they would be my last before the stink became a constant reminder of humanity’s transgressions against the Mother.

I found myself thinking once again about the man who had discovered me, who had saved me. I wondered who his mother - his human mother - had been. Had she known she was rocking to sleep a child who would change the course of human history? How could she have guessed? I wondered if his cradle bore the logo of Heaven Consumer Products.

I noticed a little girl next to me. She must have been the daughter of an employee, visiting her parent’s workplace for the day. Her face contorted into a grimace as she said, “Ewww! What’s that smell?”