by S. L. Baum
“There was no life worth living before Concord was formed and The Council took hold of the reins. Starvation, death, disease… all threaten to return, if there is unrest among the Citizens. Following along the path that our founders laid out for us is the only way to ensure our continued existence. And that is why we need a Wipe. We need to start with a clean slate with all the Citizens on board. With every single member of Concord ready and willing to obey the rules without question.”
“What exactly are you proposing?” The owner of Meat Distribution in One asked the question.
“Something that hasn’t been needed in nearly seven decades – a Wipe, last performed by my father, when I was just a boy. Other than the people in this very room, all of Concord will be given a clean slate to work with. Personalities will be adjusted, memories wiped clean, behaviors modified, until every single Citizen, student, and toddler is willing to be compliant and act accordingly. It will improve your workers’ performances, make your wives,” he paused looking to the few females in the room, “and your husbands, feel settled, happy, and satisfied. The students and toddlers will be more obedient and Concord will be back on track.”
“What if we don’t agree?” Raleigh stood from her chair to ask.
Aspen whipped her head toward the woman. “Raleigh,” she hissed. “Sit down, if you know what is good for you.”
“I think everyone here will agree, or will soon agree when presented with the alternative, unpleasant, options,” Aspen’s father chuckled under his breath. “My granddaughter, Bluebell, will make an announcement about the mandatory new vitamins and required visit to the temporary Medical clinics that will be set up in every neighborhood tonight, to start the process. Within a week, Concord will be reset. Everyone here will receive a milder form of the drugs. It may affect the memory somewhat, but everything else will remain intact. You will still be the influential Business Leaders of Concord that you are today.”
There were murmurs around the tables, but no real objections. Most people wondered if they would remember where their tablet was stored, or feared they would forget where they’d hidden their favorite treat in their kitchens. The general feeling was one of acceptance.
The man who’d been masquerading as my grandfather my whole life directed me to join him at the podium. “Bluebell, this will be quite simple. Just read from the tablet and explain our concern for The Citizens’ health, in that lovely, convincing way you do.” He glanced over to someone in the back of the room. “Ready for Broadcast?”
The man nodded his head, and I stepped up to the podium.
My false grandfather stepped behind me and gestured for my father and Aspen to join him. We were the 1.15 – a glamorous and envied group, the perfectly perfect example of a Concord Family.
The man at the back of the room pointed to me. The time had come. Out of the corner of my eye I spied four men enter the room and place bars over the doorways, preventing anyone from entering or exiting the hall. I made out the forms of Thorn, Payson, Gilbert, and Denver. Denver! My heart soared with excitement to see Lily’s father standing against Concord.
Strangely, no one else had noticed. They were too focused on the goal, on me, on the twisted future, to think that there might be a united stand against Concord.
“Citizens of Concord,” I began my speech. “We have all been lied to!”
“What are you doing?” Aspen hissed.
“Step away from the podium, young woman,” her father ordered.
“I don’t think I will,” I smiled at him.
“Cut the Broadcast!” he yelled out to the man in the back.
“I can’t. It’s not responding,” the man yelled back.
Aspen’s father stepped toward me and my father blocked his way. “Don’t even think about touching my daughter,” my father warned,
The old man puffed out his chest. “She is my granddaughter.”
“She is my daughter, too!” Aspen said at the exact same time.
From a back corner of the room, Hope emerged from the shadows. Questioning whispers spread throughout the room. Aspen gasped.
“Peace Keepers!” her father boomed as loud as he could.
“They are not coming,” Gilbert called out. “The doors are barred.”
“Denver, thank goodness you are here,” the old man breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Lily’s father. “Please notify Armory at once of this egregious error in judgment on my daughter’s husband’s part. He needs Behavior Modification. But first, I need you to make sure the barriers are secure.”
“The barriers are being dismantled as we speak,” Denver responded.
“This can’t be,” Aspen’s father huffed.
“But it is,” I assured him. “And it was easier than we thought it would be. Now, if everybody can stay seated while my mother and I address the people of Concord, that would be quite lovely,” I smiled to the Business Leaders in the room.
“Who is that woman?” someone asked.
“This is Hope, my true mother, the woman who carried me within her body, gave me life, and was convinced by Aspen, her father, and yes, even my father, to keep it a secret. Aspen claimed me as her own because she didn’t want to admit to everybody that she has been lying all these years. She is not capable of having children.”
“Yes, I am,” Aspen hissed from behind me.
My father held her arm up and toward the camera, and then moved all her bracelets out of the way, exposing her Brand. “No. She is not.”
“As you can see,” I said, pointing to Aspen. “I was brought into this family by a pack of liars. This woman,” I paused to hold up my arm next to Hope’s, revealing our identical Brands, “is most definitely capable of having children. But that is not what I came here to say. What you all need to know is that the Medical staff in Concord has been working with certain members of The Council. They are not collaborating on something that would benefit the people. No. They are working together to find out which Citizens may have health problems that are deemed incurable, and then The Council makes sure that particular Citizen falls victim to some terrible and fatal accident. They are killing us! They are killing your family, your friends, and your neighbors, with planned vehicle accidents, intentional drowning, surgical mishaps, electrocution, falls… they are almost all orchestrated by Concord.”
“This is an outrage!” Mr. Meat Distribution stood up in indignation.
“Did you know that the pseudo vaccinations and memory drugs and all the other concoctions that pump into us as children are the reasons for the high rates of infertility? Do we really need to be Branded? Did you know that sometimes, if a person speaks out about an injustice, his or her child will purposefully be made Infertile as a punishment?”
I stared into the camera and implored every person in every Concord to listen to me. “Concord is not the only place with human life. You have to know that. There are electronic barriers in the sea to keep us safe. But safe from what? From whom? Or perhaps it is also to keep us in our place.”
Aspen and her father stepped closer to me, and he was holding her hand. It was something I had never seen before. “This is my beloved daughter,” he addressed the Citizens of Concord. “I would do everything within my power to keep her safe, to keep her alive and healthy, to keep her happy. The outside world is a horror. Terrible things happen to people every day. There is starvation, disease, poverty, and people are discarded like trash on the sides of the roads. Bluebell is an angry, misinformed child. She doesn’t know what she is talking about. The Council acts in everyone’s best interests.”
“Threatening the life of my mother, of me? You and your daughter did that,” I hissed at him. “How is that in my best interest?”
“There is life outside of Concord,” Hope spoke with strong confidence. “I lived outside for twelve years, after I fled. Across the sea there are many different lands, with many different people. And in most of them, the lives of the people are not completely controlled by rules and regulations a
nd threats. I came back because I want my daughter and her father, both of whom I love with all my heart, to be able to live freely. And I want the Citizens of Concord to be able to choose to live freely as well.”
Denver walked over to my father, and they signaled to the man in the back to turn the camera toward them. “When I was moved into my position at the head of Armory, I discovered that Concord trades goods with another country on a monthly bases. The electronic barriers must be turned off for a few hours each month to allow for the incoming cargo ship to enter our waters, and then again to exit and return home. Knowing that makes a man think about what he is working for, question what he is protecting, and realize what he is giving up. The more research I did, the less I was convinced that living in Concord is the only way. The people that work on those ships looked healthy, they looked relatively happy, and they came from out there. Out where we are told only atrocities exist.”
Then it was my father’s turn. “As soon as I found out that there was a large ship waiting, not far from the electronic barriers, I took a chance and revealed all I knew and suspected about Concord to Denver. He was able to disengage the barriers to allow entrance and exit through our waterways. While we are sure the rest of The Council will soon be working to get them back up with electronic pulses firing soon, Denver has assured me that they will be non-functioning for the next twenty four hours at a minimum, possibly longer. So that means you all have a choice to make. You can stay where you are and allow Concord to rule your lives and decide when and how you live or die, or you can take a chance outside of here, in another country, where your choices are your own.”
“This is no way to live,” Hope implored with the Citizens “I have lived inside and outside the borders of Concord and I would choose outside, every single time. Out there my life feels like my own.”
Thorn came to my side. “My mother was intentionally hit by a vehicle because she was sick.”
Gilbert stepped up as well. “My wife was crushed under an aging man that fell from a tall building. She was an innocent victim, but the man who fell was intentionally placed up there to die.”
“My wife’s mother had her personality erased when my wife was twelve years old. The woman had no care for, or memories of, her own child after it happened,” Denver said.
Raleigh stood up and joined us. “My partner, the man who was nearly my husband, had his personality erased as well.”
One of the Business leaders stood. “My father lived in fear of The Council his whole life. I don’t want to exist in fear.”
“I’ve had an excellent life, a comfortable life, and I think this is a bunch of ridiculousness!” another man exclaimed.
“You can choose to stay. We are choosing to leave,” I told him. “Hope, Mother, can you contact the ship? Will they sail into Concord waters?”
“I can. I’m sure they will.”
Aspen’s father’s face was steaming with anger. “If any of you leave this place and the protection of Concord, do not ever expect to return. I will have the Peace Keepers out with stun guns ready!”
“We have access to stun guns too,” Denver responded. “This doesn’t have to be violent.”
“I don’t need people that don’t want to be here. I can have a whole new shipment of Citizens arrive and I can start them off with a clean slate!” Aspen’s father stomped his foot like a petulant child.
Hope whispered something into my father’s ear, and then he walked up to the podium. “Citizens of Concord One, if you want to leave this place then you need to go back to your homes and pack one small bag. Take any jewels, and precious metals you may own, but nothing else. We have a small window of time. Go to the Training Tech and get your children!” My father implored. “The ship will arrive outside of Concord One in three hours, after that the ship will travel to Concord Two, and then on to Three. I have just been informed that under the time frame given, Concord Four is not a possible stop for the ship. But if you want to leave Concord, I urge the Citizens in Four to get in a vehicle and use the underwater tunnels to reach Three. Everyone… go to your beach cottages. Wait there for the ship. I know you will be giving up a lot, but think about what you will be gaining.”
There was banging on the outside of the doors that had been blocked before the Broadcast began. One of the Business leaders in the room ran to a door and removed the metal bar that had prevented them from being opened. Rockford, the big guy that had prevented Thorn from entering my Gala, came bursting through.
“Stop him,” Aspen yelled at Rockford, pointing to Jackson.
“Stop him?” Rockford looked at her in confusion. “I’m going with him,” he told her. “Anybody that steps near these people will get a fistful of me.” Rockford stared into the camera. “My baby son was born with a misshapen leg, but he was perfect. Do you hear me? Perfect in every way. On the day he was born, I went home from the Medical Center to get some things ready and when I returned, my wife told me that he stopped breathing when they took him back for a test and he died. He didn’t just stop breathing on his own. I always knew that was a lie. Just the way the doctor looked at him when he came out. The boy was a fighter; I knew it from the few short hours I got to spend with him. And he would have been a great kid, with a limp. He would have been amazing! I don’t want to live in a place like this.”
Chapter Thirteen
Choices Made.
In the end, there was no great fight. No enormous rebellion, just an exodus. It wasn’t even a mass one, because it seemed that people were more afraid of the freedom they didn’t understand than of the demons they knew. It was a hard choice for some, and an easy choice for others, but not the same choice for all. Families split, friends separated, and as we arrived at each Concord the numbers of evacuees decreased.
I stood on the deck of the ship with Thorn at my side. Stone and Rosebud were with us. Holly had glued herself to Weaver’s side when she saw that he had arrived at the cottages with his parents. Ash, Willow, and Lily came, but not Fisher. He thought we were being absurd to leave with so many unknowns. Lily wanted to stay with him, but she also didn’t want to leave her parents’ side. In the end, her family won out. But I think the most surprising part was that The Pets split up. I could only imagine how hard that decision was for them to make. Petunia wanted to stay with Blade, but the only way Petals could be with Hunter was if they left Concord.
In all, we loaded about seventy-five people onto the boat from Concord One. Sixty came aboard at Two. About eighty people were waiting on the beach at Three; thirty of those had come through the tunnels from Four. As the ship sailed through the waters, it was hard to imagine that we would ever see land again, but Hope assured me that we would.
Thorn looked out over the water and sighed. “Do you think we will fit in?”
“I don’t think it really matters. We will learn,” I told him.
“Are you sure we did the right thing?”
“By leaving? Absolutely. I don’t see an alternative.”
Thorn continued to stare at the waves. “But maybe it would have been better for everyone if we had forced The Council out of power and stayed to fix Concord.”
I shook my head. “All it would take was one willful loyalist to slip the populace a huge dose of drugs and we would all be zonkered again. Memory loss and personality erasures… it was too big of a risk. There were not enough people on our side. I feel sorry for them, but they made their choice.”
Thorn looked at me and smiled. “And we made ours.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “I’m so glad you are here with me.”
“Come here you two. I want to show you something.” My mother had a tablet in her hand, with maps of the world, or Earth – I’d learned they were both basically the same thing. She showed me pictures of the way things used to be, before Concord bought the islands, and pictures of the way things were now. It was confusing, but I tried to make sense of it all. “We are right here,” she told us, “and we are going over here
.”
“So we are traveling to States?” I asked.
Hope shook her head. “No. They used to be called States, now they are Territories. We are heading to the Territories of America, or just America for short. They used to be called the United States of America, but that was before the states started breaking up, leaving, or joining together. See this one up here,” she pointed toward the top of the map. “That one was the state of Alaska, but they left and formed their own separate Territory. This big one in the middle down here,” she pointed again. “This one was Texas, but the people there wanted to be outside of America. It is now called the Lone Star Union. We will visit there for certain. Then there are all these little ones in the East; many of them have joined together. Some cities have been abandoned, but many are still thriving. It is a strange, but interesting, mix of colorful people.”
“How do you know all of this?” Thorn asked.
“Information is so readily available in America. I became addicted to history and maps and other random things. My brain craves information,” she told him.
“And we came from here?” I pointed at the map, to a chain of islands in the middle of the seas.
“Yes,” she smiled at me. “Some of the local people stayed, but most were evacuated. It was a hectic time.”
I looked at the word next to the islands on the map, and I mourned for what it once was and what it had been turned into. I let the word roll off my tongue. “Hawaii.”
The End
Novels by S.L. Baum
THE IMMORTAL ONES SERIES – YA paranormal romance
A Chance for Charity (The Immortal Ones – book one)
My Link in Time (The Immortal Ones – book two)
Of Fire and Brimstone (The Immortal Ones – Elizabeth’s Novella)
Our Summer of Discontent (The Immortal Ones – book three)
The Eve of Destruction (The Immortal Ones – book four)
