Dating : The Cult of the Sleeping Elders

They moved fast after Alicia explained that someone else was looking for them — someone even more powerful. It was midnight when they reached their destination. The entrance was ingeniously disguised — a hatch at the base of a tree, nestled in its roots and covered with a thick layer of creeping thyme. If you didn’t know it was there, you could stand right on it and not suspect a thing.

They funnelled into the bunker — an awesome space. Large enough to play a game of basketball in, thought Alicia. She wondered if these people knew what basketball was. The woman was speaking again. There was a lot of shouting and questions, but Alicia was looking for Artie.

The broad-shouldered woman who had carried Artie through the forest was walking out of an interior door with something in a bag. Alicia watched her. Yes! She was going towards Artie, who was crumpled up in one of the bunks along the wall. He was starting to stir.

Alicia ran to him, holding him in her arms. The bag was filled with ice and the woman was icing a big bump on his forehead. Artie was awake but dispondant.

“You okay?” Alicia asked him. He mumbled in reply. She was happy that he could at least acknowledge her. That was something.

Alicia noticed that the woman was looking at her strangely. She looked back at her defiantly, and she blushed. “Sorry for staring,” the woman muttered. “It’s just that you were always my favourite story growing up. Seeing you — it’s like…” Her voice trailed off. She bit her lower lip and appeared distant and dreamy.

“Like what?” Alicia snapped. Hearing this woman state that she had some kind of knowledge of her sent chills down her spine. There were some one hundred-odd heavily armed people down in the bunker with them. Many of them were staring at their captives, but most not in an aggressive way, but in a voyeuristic, consuming way. The sharp black-haired woman who seemed to be in charge was barking orders at others as they distributed food and drink. Evan was seated on the floor with the others glowering at her.

The woman beside Alicia snapped out of her daze and continued. “I was raised believing in the cult you know. Most of us were. I mean… sorry…of course you don’t know about the cult, which is ironic”.

“Spit it out!” Alicia was growing impatient. The woman looked hurt. Alicia then noted that she was very young. Maybe even a teenager. She was large — likely over six feet tall and broad, but her face was childlike — round and youthful. She tugged at her hair nervously.

“So the cult… it’s about you. You are the Sleeping Elders. You are the only people who survived the nuclear winter on earth. The radiation and the cold killed everyone else, even in the bunkers. The rest of us, we come from the people who survived in space.” Alicia listened intently.

“They couldn’t stay up there forever, and when they came back, it was still cold and life hard and short. People died young and painfully for a long time. There was feudalism for thousands of years. And then, when the sensor detected that it was warm enough and the radiation levels low enough, King Ellis emerged from the vault like a god and raised his castle from the ground.”

Ellis was the head engineer, who had designed the workings of the vault. They were supposed to wake up consecutively — one per day, when conditions were right. If something was wrong there was a manual override. But Omar and Cassira were not next, and they were also missing.

Evan had told Alicia about the fortress too. Ellis had designed and built it in secret deep underground on his property in the Laurentians. It was designed to raise out of the ground and serve as a base of operations post-war. Ellis, Evan had said, was an eccentric.

“King Ellis changed everything in his lifetime. People worshiped him and worshiped you too. He wrote down all your stories. You were my favourite. The love story between you and Evan is the most romantic story of all time. I used to pretend-play as a child that I was you.”

Alicia did a double-take. Ellis certainly had embellished that love story quite a bit. There was nothing of note: a hurried confession of unrequited love. Alicia couldn’t look at him that way.

“Omar? Cassira?” Alicia asked.

“King Ellis founded the Cult of the Sleeping Elders. Most people, they didn’t really know how it all works. Cryogenics that is. They thought it was magic. Even now, we know it’s tech, but the cult of personality is so strong. You’re people, but you’re not. You’re gods too, to us. You have to have your eyes open to walk away from the cult, and once your eyes are open, there is no going back. But the story goes that the elders will wake just when the world needs them.

About five hundred year years into the dynasty that King Ellis founded, the King — King Alexander III at that time faced resistance. There was a faction that did not believe in the Cult and was challenging the right of rule. Cassira, well she was young and beautiful and well-loved. He woke her and married her, parading her around to tell stories of the old earth. Her children were gods too to the people, and her eldest was kept from her and raised to be king. He was cruel.”

“Oh, Cassira!” Alicia cried, tears collecting in her eyes. She remembered her from a party she had attended with Evan. She was bubbly and entertaining. Sweet and a bit saucy if you tested her. And yes, she was uncommonly beautiful. Her hair was a gorgeous halo of tight brown curls, and her eyes large, round and piercing.

“Omar was woken up only last year. They have him. They’ve made a priest of him or at least robed him as such. They parade his holo image in the cities, but he never speaks. He’s written volumes of testimony and instruction, or so they say. They’re scared again. Because a lot of people aren’t buying it now. They are tired of this unending regime.”