His father had told him the night before as an almost afterthought and it was in a way that Daniel felt he was told after the decision had already been made. He would never put a request in as a question but as information that just had to passed on at a certain point towards you.
Tomorrow you're coming with me.
His father's eyes had never left the tablet when he said this while one finger was moving across it with purpose. He was already thinking about what he could do next and what after that.
Daniel just responded with a simple okay and went back to his room and lay on his bed and just stared at the ceiling.
Something warm moved through chest and he didn't want to focus on it that much.
If I look too closely, it'll shrink. he thought as threw his hands on his forehead.
Daniel was already dressed before his father, and he waited for him in the kitchen. He wore his best attire and was drinking water while watching the dome's morning cycle push light through the window.
Alexander finally came down the hall with his perfect uniform and his collar straightened collar with the insignia catching the light. Daniel felt the familiar pull of looking at him, this was the same pull that had been there his whole life.
He makes it look so easy to be, and I admire that so much about it him. He's someone I have to be one day.
They left the house without saying much, but the silence between them had always been full rather than empty. They both go on the back of the vehicle after the chauffeur held the door open for them.
Daniel sat right next his father as they drove through the mid-tier streets in the early regulated warmth, and for Daniel it felt like the world was the right size at that moment.
He noticed the way the light shifted with each tier as usual. It was the way the streets widened and how the buildings were smooth in deliberate shapes.
It's so strange how that sunlight is shaped like a food, He thought as looked at light in awe and amazement.
But he quickly disposed of those thoughts and focused on being with his father inside the car, and he didn't want to spend it on things that made him look childish.
The Syndicate complex announced itself in brightness before it was visible. The solar calibration was sharper and more concentrated; it was falling into the pale face of the building with precision that made the light itself was holding it up. Daniel stood in front of it and felt something move through him, which was neither good nor bad, but it was just something.
This place is so much more impressive from up close. He let out a smirk as he looked across the building.
Inside was cooler and quiet with an engineered silence, the conversations were sealed inside their own meter of air. Daniel couldn't help but feel the compression of all those minds pressing against him.
He tried to calm himself by taking a breath and by keeping a neutral face.
Alexandre moved through it all with ease, it was as if he was water that knew the shape of what it was moving through. Everyone acknowledged him as he walked pass with nods and names, some shifting their eyes towards him in acknowledgement.
This is what it looks like when you've actually done something with your life. He looked at his own hands briefly before looking back up.
They finally stopped at a junction and Alexandre gestured something with ease. Daniel couldn't help but just absorb everything that's happening around him as the structure arranged itself in him.
That doesn't look so complicated, He thought, not realizing most people would have needed twice the time and would still leave with half the picture.
''Father, do you think the people from the lower tiers know about all of this?'' he asked and immediately thought the question was too simple to ask someone like his father.
''The know about the Syndicate and that it governs.'' his father responded subtly. ''And that's how things work.''
''Right...'' Daniel said and decided to leave it right there because he knew that his father would never reveal much about what he knew, and that was the end of the road for him.
The atrium finally opened and the dome's apex was visible through the skylight; it was regulated sun falling in a column so precise it had edges. Daniel stood in it and he could feel it do exactly what it was meant to do.
It made him feel certain and held, it was as if he was part of something larger than himself and he allowed it to do that. After a while he noticed how he was letting it and the feeling felt a bit strange to him.
Two men came across the atrium and suddenly Alexandre's posture shifted slightly, and it was almost imperceptibly. Daniel noticed this as the men were approaching them with a warm smile, while the were speaking about an upcoming review, their eye briefly flickered to Daniel for brief moment as they were measuring him.
And suddenly there was a thing underneath the warmth, this registered something within Daniel before he could identify it.
Why are there so many people here? I never liked being around a crowd. He thought as he looked at the floor.
By the time he looked up, his father was laughing with the two men as the moment was already passing.
Later through the corridor windows, Daniel saw a man on the corner in clothes washed until the color had left them. He was standing alone in a stillness that wasn't calm. A Syndicate patrol moved toward him with the unhurried ease of someone who already knew where the situation ended before it started.
An exchange barely happened between the two of them as the man was walking away with the gait of someone who chose to go, with the knowledge of choosing something that didn't change anything.
Daniel felt its arrival in him heavily and more specific and he knew it wasn't entirely his. Before it could settle, he looked away.
''As you can see, the Syndicate tends to keep things from falling apart here, and it won't always be clean.'' Alexander said with a stern voice.
''Right.'' Daniel acknowledged it with meaning, even though something I him was still sitting with the man on the corner.
There's probably a reason I don't see yet. He thought as he just filed it under the things he didn't have enough information on for him to form his own opinion on.
His father put his hand briefly on his shoulder and Daniel felt the weight of it on his shoulder, and for him it felt warmer than he could admit.
He looked up at the dome's interior shell as the afternoon cycle shifted the light. Thought about nothing in particular. Just walked beside Alexandre Ceaser III through the tiered streets with the dome breathing its regulated breath around them.
For now, this was the shape of things. His father solid and present beside him. The world held together. Making sense. Or close enough to sense that the difference didn't show yet.
Things leave impressions sometimes and that's probably all that was.
And he believed it because he had no reason not to. Because he was still who he'd always been. He was driving home alongside Alexander the Great. And the story of the world, as far as he knew it, was still going the way it was supposed to go.