CHAPTER 2

The Engineer? Who was he? And why did the council and Carmichael seem afraid of him?

"I don't think there's anything else I want to know, Mayor," the chancellor said.

"Oh, no, I've got to get out of here," Caleb muttered.

He quietly left the door and headed to the stairs at a rapid pace. He thought he would manage to get there without being noticed, but he was wrong.

Shortly after checking on his back whether anyone had seen him, he collided with a person. Everyone else but she would have been fine, but as he separated from the mysterious person, he felt all his muscles paralyzed when he realized that he had just stepped into Ariadne Carmichael.

"What are you doing here?" She asked him, arms crossed.

"Uhm," Caleb was frozen. What could he say to free himself? Why did fate trick him like that?

"Well?" Ariadne slowly grew impatient.

"For your information, Ms. Shepherd asked me to correct some tests." He basically told her the truth. "Can I go now?

Caleb tried to walk past Ariadne, but she held him up with one hand.

"And that's why you're so nervous? Come on, Caleb, I wasn't born yesterday."

If she hadn't said it, he wouldn't have believed it.

"Look, Ariadne. It's late and I just want to go home. Besides, I'm too tired to pretend to like you even a bit, so please move over."

She stared at him perplexed at how brutal his words were, and did not try to stop Caleb as he walked back to her side again. A few more steps and he was out of school. He sighed in the entrance, relieved.

Once he got his breath back, Caleb ran home and decided he had enough adrenaline for the day.

He fell on his bed, exhausted and confused. Since the least, he wanted to check his notifications, he took off his glasses and earphones and left them on his dresser. Then he decided to clear his head and do his homework for the next day.

Hours passed, but Caleb was still a little distracted. The conversation he'd heard before was still circling his head like a pesky fly. There were so many questions he had, and he needed answers.

"Caleb?" his mother asked him over dinner. "Is everything ok?

"What?" he replied, the question had surprised him. "Oh, yes. Why"?

"You are quieter than usual and have hardly touched your synthetic food."

Since almost all known animal and plant species had either disappeared or become extinct, laboratories produced synthetic food to replace meat and some vegetables. It was not disgusting; he did not know what real food tasted like anyway.

For the water, the city extracted it from the ocean and ran an A.I.-controlled purification system to make it drinkable for everyone.

"I'm fine, I promise," Caleb said with a smile.

"You know you can tell us anything, son," his father assured him.

He was an only child, and his parents were also exceptionally clever: his father was a chief scientist, and his mother worked as a diplomat for the city government.

"Do you happen to know someone called The Engineer?" he asked them.

His parents looked at each other awkwardly, not as if they didn't know the answer, but rather as if they didn't want to say it out loud.

"There are a lot of engineers in Genesis, Caleb," his father explained after clearing up his throat.

"I know, but this isn't a normal engineer. This is The Engineer."

"A bit presumptuous when someone calls themselves" the "before their name, don't you think?" His mother claimed. "Why the sudden interest in this person, honey?"

"For nothing, mom. Just something I heard, and I was wondering if you knew this mysterious man."

"Well, we don't."

"Ok."

He finished the meal and went straight to sleep.

Are you familiar with the feeling of being tired, but unable to sleep? That is precisely what Caleb experienced that night. Every time he closed his eyes, his mind led him back into the hall, where he listened to the conversation between the mayor and the chancellor, and that name kept echoing in his head: The Engineer.

"We cannot risk losing our power because of some environmentalist rebel."

"He hasn't been seen in 18 years."

He was no longer in the school lobby. Now he was standing in the middle of complete darkness.

"Hello? Is anyone out there?" he asked, receiving an answer from his echo. His legs began to shake, threatening to throw him to the ground, and he felt his pulse begin to accelerate.

Suddenly a white light appeared in front of him. It was so bright that it temporarily dazzled the boy.

"Caleb," it called him in a deep voice. "Caleb."

"Who are you?" asked Caleb, unable to see.

"Find me, find me, find me," was the only thing the voice said and repeated over and over again.

Caleb woke up, sweating and panting. Had he just had a nightmare?

Whatever it was, he knew exactly what he had to do: he needed to find the one called The Engineer.

Over the next few days, Caleb spent hours and hours in the city library, using computers, reading old news, and looking at old yearbooks. Still, nothing about the mysterious person. According to the city archives, The Engineer had never existed.

Asking adults was also unhelpful, as each individual reacted in the same way as his parents, denying the existence of such a person and asking him why he cared.

Since this particular person seemed to alarm Carmichael, Caleb tried to hide his research from government officials. It was not on his bucket list to end up in prison.

On one occasion, he nearly got caught when Councilwoman Eudora Radcliffe approached him in the library.

"Caleb, how are you?" she asked him.

"Councilwoman Radcliffe, I'm very good, and you?"

"I'm fine. What are you reading? Old yearbooks?"

"Oh, yes. I just wanted to look at old pictures of the city. You now, when it was still called Boston."

"I see. Any reason why?"

"Simple curiosity. You know what they say, a mind full of knowledge is never bored."

"Well said, young man. Let me know if you want to expand your learning; I lived here then."

"I will, thank you so much, Councilwoman."

Councilwoman Radcliffe was a tall woman with short dark hair. Like Mayor Carmichael, she was in her 40s, but unlike him, she didn't look her age. She was actually the only politician Caleb liked, and she had always been nice to him.

Caleb would even trust her, but the fact that she worked directly with Carmichael prevented him from doing so.

On his fourth day in the library, Caleb saw a different person, but this one was more unpleasant than the councilwoman.

"Hey, Caleb. What are you doing?" Asked Ariadne standing in front of the table where he was sitting.

He barely looked up before turning his gaze back to the book he was inspecting.

"You absolutely don't understand when someone doesn't like to be around you, do you?" he replied to her.

"You're hilarious," she giggled, "but you can stop being so rude just to hide what you're doing because I have already found out."

"Oh, yes? And what am I doing, Ariadne?"

"You're searching for someone called The Engineer."

Caleb put the book down and his gaze met Ariadne's.

"You…"

"Don't know what I'm talking about? Don't even try that old trick with me, Smart. You have asked at least ten people for that person's identity in the last four days, haven't you?"

"How did you…?"

"When your father is the mayor, people tend to tell you what you want."

He was so screwed. Among all the citizens, Ariadne Carmichael discovered his plan. What was he going to do now? For a start, he just kept staring Ariadne with an open mouth, speechless.

"Look, I know what you're thinking, but I haven't told my dad, and I won't. I just came to tell you that I want to help you."

What?

"What?"

"Let's face it, you don't like me, and I don't like you either, but I did my own research and this guy never seems to have existed, which is impossible, because just mentioning his name triggers a strange reaction from people. Also, you heard that name from my father–he came from the same place as you did the other day at school. I just connected the dots–, so the man exists."

Caleb still didn't know what to say or think.

"Please, just let me help you," insisted Ariadne. "I want to find the guy as much as you do."

Fortunately, he didn't have to answer Ariadne, because a young man in a white uniform approached them.

"Caleb Smart?" he asked him.

"Yes, that's me," he responded.

"Councilwoman Radcliffe requests your presence. Please come with me."

"Sure."

He put his backpack on his back, looked at Ariadne one last time, and followed the guy.

"Think about it!" Ariadne screamed from behind.

Caleb didn't turn around to see her, he just kept going.

The messenger put him in a car that dropped them at the entrance of a twenty-story building after ten minutes. They got in and headed directly to the elevator, and the man pushed the button that would take them to the penthouse: Radcliffe's apartment.

A few seconds later, Caleb stood in front of a large living room filled with expensive items such as vases and paintings. Councilwoman Radcliffe got up from the couch and went to meet him.

"Councilwoman, I've brought Mr. Smart as you wished," informed the man to his apparent boss.

"Thank you, Adam. You can leave us alone now."

"Councilwoman," Adam saluted her before he got back into the elevator and left the apartment.

Caleb faced the councilwoman, who seemed awkwardly nervous.

"Come to my office, Caleb," she indicated.

Without wasting any thought on interrogating her, he followed the councilwoman down a corridor until they reached a door at the end. Her office the size of her living room, with white walls and a black table in front of a huge window from which he could see the rest of the city.

"Take a seat, Caleb," Radcliffe invited him.

He sat in one of the chairs opposite the table, and Radcliffe sat in the one next to the window.

"Do you trust me?"

He hesitated before answering. Why did she ask him to her home? Why would she care if he trusted her?

"Yes, I do," he said, nonetheless.

"Then, tell me, why are you looking for The Engineer?"

Of course, she figured it out, he was in trouble.

"One of the things I have always admired about you, Caleb, is that you are intellectually curious," she kept talking, "but you don't know how to keep a low profile or to lie. Now, would you mind answering my question?"

"I heard Mayor Carmichael mention him, and it sounded like he was an important person. However, no one knows anything about him, or at least they pretend they don't."

"We are safe here, no one is listening, so I can be one hundred percent honest with you. You are right, they're pretending, everyone who lived here 20 years ago knew him."

The councilwoman took a deep breath and continued.

"His name is Icarus Abbott, and he's the smartest person I've ever met. He's responsible for essentially every technology you see around you: the self-driving cars, the communicating earphones, the smart glasses, the drones, the A.I., he even designed the footprint for the purifiers and the dome. He's really a genius."

"It seems to me that you were close to him."

"I was his student."

"What happened to him?"

"People. Icarus tried to repair the world, to stop the pollution, but no one listened to him. Then, things began to get really bad.

"Eighteen years ago, he showed up at my door at night. He looked sad, defeated, hurried to get somewhere. He said he couldn't hold on any longer, that he had to go and never return. I tried to convince him otherwise, I begged him to stay, and lied that things would get better. Whom was I trying to deceive?

He said that his mind was made up and left me an object before saying goodbye… and leaving. The next day, video footage showed him sneaking out of the city, and that was the last time the world saw Icarus Abbott. Afterward, authorities made him a criminal and started a hunt against him. Since then, it is prohibited to talk about him."

Councilwoman Radcliffe stopped talking and wiped a tear from her eye, it was clear that the memory of Icarus still hurt her. Then, she opened a drawer, grabbed something, and put it on the table. It was a silver ball full of black strange symbols that Caleb had never seen before.

"This, Caleb, is a voyager. Icarus said that it transports people to other places and that I should give it to the right person. This is what he left me, but I have never been able to use it. These characters you see are some kind of secret code. He loved to create these strange languages and use ciphers to protect his secrets."

Radcliffe handed him the voyager, and he carefully accepted it.

"Why?" asked her Caleb. "Why me?"

"As I mentioned, I never deciphered the message, but you are smarter than me, so you have a chance to break it. Maybe, you are the right person he was talking about. After all, you remind me of him."

"What… what should I do?"

"Work with it. I don't know if Icarus is still alive, or where he is, but if you crack the code and find him, please tell him to come back. If there is anyone that can help the world, who can bring things back to normal, that's him. Please, promise me that you will try."

"I promise," he said.

"Good. Now you should go. Outside, a car is waiting for you, it will take you to your house."

Caleb understood that this was the end of their meeting, so he saved the voyager inside his backpack, said goodbye to the councilwoman, and made his way to the exit.

"Caleb!" The councilwoman called him before he left the office. He stopped and turned to face her again.

"Do not discuss this with anyone."