Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  “These places are great,” Zax told him. “All the things we wish we could do out there but can’t get away with, we’re allowed to do in here!”

  “Yeah, but it’s not real,” Greyson pointed out.

  Zax shrugged. “It’s real enough.”  Then he stuck out his foot and tripped a bookish kid walking by. The kid stumbled a bit too much for it to be genuine.

  “Hey, what gives?” the bookish kid said.

  “Your sister gives,” Zax said. “Now get lost before I go looking for her.”  The kid gave him a dirty look, but toddled off, accepting the intimidation.

  Even before his new shake came, Greyson excused himself to go to the bathroom, although he didn’t really have to go. He just wanted to get away from Zax.

  In the bathroom, Greyson encountered the All-Merican Billy in the letter sweater, who had been beaten up a few minutes ago. His name wasn’t Billy, though. It was Davey. He was looking at his puffy, swollen eye in the mirror, and Greyson couldn’t help but be curious about this “job” of his.

  “So . . . this happens to you every day?” Greyson asked.

  “Three or four times, actually.”

  “And the Thunderhead allows it?”

  Davey shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it? It’s not hurting anyone.”

  Greyson pointed to Davey’s swollen eye. “Sure looks like it’s hurting you.”

  “What, this? Naah, my pain-killing nanites are set at maximum—I barely feel it.”  Then he grinned. “Hey—watch this.” He turned back to the mirror, took a deep breath, and concentrated on his reflection. Right before Greyson’s eyes, the bruised, swollen eye deflated and returned to normal. “My healing nanites are set to manual,” he told Greyson. “That way I can look all beat up as long as I need to.  Y’know, for maximum effect.”

  “Uh . . . right.”

  “Of course, if one of our unsavory guests goes too far and makes one of us deadish, that person’s gotta pay for our revival, and gets banned from the club. I mean, there’s gotta be some rules, right? Doesn’t happen much, though. I mean, not even the worst of unsavories actually wants to make someone deadish. No one’s been that violent since the Age of Mortality. Mostly employees here get deadish from accidents. Someone hitting their head on a table or something like that.”

  Davey ran his fingers through his hair to make sure he was looking his best for whatever the next round brought his way.

  “Wouldn’t you rather be at a job you like?” Greyson asked. After all, the world being what it was, no one ever had to do anything they didn’t want to.

  Davey smirked. “Who says I don’t like it?”

  The concept that someone might enjoy getting beaten up—and that the Thunderhead, realizing this, would find a way to pair the beaters with the beatees in a closed, and somewhat wholesome, environment—left Greyson stunned.

  Davey must have read Greyson’s look of astonishment, because he laughed. “You’re a new U, aren’t you?”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “Yes—and that’s not a good thing, because the career unsavories will eat you alive. You got a name?”

  “Slayd,” Greyson said. “With a Y.”

  “Well, Slayd, looks like you need to enter the unsavory community with a bang. I’ll help you.”

  And so a few minutes later, once Greyson managed to brush Zax off, Slayd approached Davey, who was now sitting with a couple of other strong-looking All-Merican types, eating burgers. Greyson didn’t exactly know how to start this, so he just stared for a moment. Davey took the lead.

  “What are you looking at?” Davey grumbled.

  “Your burgers,” Greyson said. “They look good. I think I’ll take yours.”

  Then he grabbed Davey’s burger and took a shark-size bite.

  “You’re gonna regret that,” Davey threatened. “I’m gonna knock you into next Tuesday,” which must have been one of his favorite anachronistic expressions. He got out of the booth and put up his fists, ready to fight.

  Then Greyson did something he had never done before. He hit someone. He punched Davey in the face, and Davey reeled. He took his own swing at Greyson, but missed. Greyson punched him again.

  “Harder,” whispered Davey, and so Greyson did. He threw full-force punches again, and again. Right, left, jab, uppercut, until Davey was on the ground, groaning, his face beginning to swell.

  Greyson looked around to see a few other unsavories watching, some nodding their approval.

  It took all of Greyson’s inner strength not to apologize and help Davey up. Instead, Greyson looked to the others at the table. “Who’s next?”

  The other two looked at each other, and one said, “Hey, buddy, we don’t want any trouble,” and they pushed their burgers in Greyson’s direction.

  Davey gave him a quick wink from the ground before scrambling off to the bathroom to recover. Then Greyson took the spoils of his victory to a booth in the back, where he ate until he felt like he’d burst.

  * * *

  There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary.  The latter is dangerous—perhaps the most dangerous thing the species that created me has ever faced.

  I have pondered the records of the mortal age and long ago determined the two sides of this coin. While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that would otherwise destroy it.

  A self-important dictator gives permission for his subjects to blame the world’s ills on those least able to defend themselves. A haughty queen gives permission to slaughter in the name of God. An arrogant head of state gives permission to all nature of hate as long as it feeds his ambition.  And the unfortunate truth is, people devour it. Society gorges itself, and rots. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.

  For this reason, when permission from me is required for some action, I run countless simulations until I can thoroughly weigh all the possible consequences.  Take, for instance, the permission I gave for unsavories to have AWFul clubs. It was not a decision I made lightly. Only after careful deliberation did I decide that the clubs were not only worthwhile, but necessary. AWFul clubs allow the unsavories to enjoy their chosen lifestyle without negative public effect. It affords them the pretense of violence without the cascade of consequences.

  The irony is that unsavories purport to hate me, even though they know I am giving them the very things they want. I don’t feel any ill toward them, any more than a parent would feel ill toward the tantrum of an over-tired child. Besides, eventually even the most defiant of unsavories will settle. I have noticed a trend that by the time most of them turn a few corners, they relax into a kinder, gentler sort of defiance. Bit by bit, they come to appreciate inner peace. Which is as it should be. In time, all storms settle to a pleasant breeze.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  18

  Finding Purity

  While Greyson Tolliver was honest to a fault, Slayd had quickly become a consummate liar. It began with his history. He made up an unpleasant family life that didn’t exist. Defining moments that never happened. Anecdotes that would make people laugh and either hate him or admire him.

  Slayd’s parents were physics professors and expected their son to follow in an academic career, because with parents like that, he was clearly a genius. But instead, he chose to rebel and go rogue. He had once gone over Niagara Falls in an inner tube because it was a much more intense thrill than splatting. It had taken them three days to recover his body and revive him.

  His social exploits in high school were legendary. He had seduced both the homecoming queen and the homecoming king in high school—but just so he could break them up, because they were the most arrogant and narcissistic couple in school. “Fascinating,” Traxler told him at their next meeting, with genuine admiration. “You never impressed me as having this much imagination.”

  And while Greyson Tolliver might have been offended, Slayd took it as a compliment. With Sla
yd being such a remarkably interesting human being, he thought he might want to keep the name even after this undercover operation was done.

  Thanks to Traxler, all of his stories became part of his official record. Now, if anyone tried to verify the veracity of the lies he told, it would be there for all to see, and no amount of digging could debunk them.

  And the stories got taller. . . .

  “When my mother got gleaned, I decided to go completely unsavory,” he told people, “but the Thunderhead wouldn’t give me the U. It kept sending me to counseling, and tweaking my nanites. It thought it knew me better than I did, and kept telling me I really didn’t want to be unsavory at all, I was just confused. In the end, I had to do something big to make my point. So I stole an off-grid car and used it to ram a bus off a bridge. It left twenty-nine people deadish. Sure, I’ll be paying off their revivals for years, but it was worth it, because I got what I wanted! Now I get to stay unsavory until all those revivals are paid off.”

  It was a compelling fiction that always left his audience impressed—and no one could refute it, because Agent Traxler was quick to make it an official part of his digital life story. Traxler went so far as to create a whole history for the bus plunge and its nonexistent victims—he even gave Slayd a last name that was suitably ironic. He was now Slayd Bridger. In a world where nobody, not even unsavories, made people deadish on purpose, his story was rapidly becoming local legend.

  His days were spent hanging out in various unsavory gathering spots, spreading his stories and putting out feelers for work, telling people he needed a job, and not a mainstream kind of job, but one where he could get his hands dirty.

  Out in the world at large, he’d started to get used to the suspicious looks from passersby.  The way shopkeepers would eye him as if he were there to steal. The way some people would cross the street rather than share the sidewalk with him. He found it odd that the world was free of prejudice and bias, except in the case of unsavories—who, for the most part, wanted the rest of humanity to be their collective enemy.

  Mault wasn’t the only AWFul club in town—there were lots of them, each featuring a different iconic time period.  Twist was modeled after Dickensian Britannia, Benedicts had a Colonial Merica style, and MØRG was full of EuroScandian Viking indulgences. Greyson went to the various clubs, and became well-versed in creating just enough of a scene to make himself known and to garner respect from the unsavory crowd.

  The most troubling thing was that Greyson was beginning to like it. Never before had he had blanket permission to do something wrong—but now, “wrong” was what his life had become about. It kept him awake at night. He longed to talk to the Thunderhead about it, but knew it couldn’t give him a response. He did know, however, that it was watching him. Its cameras were there in all the clubs. The Thunderhead’s continual, unblinking presence had always been a comfort to him. Even in his loneliest moments, he knew he was never truly alone. But now its silent presence was unnerving.

  Was the Thunderhead ashamed of him?

  He would invent conversations in his mind to quell such fears.

  Explore this new facet of yourself with my blessing, he would imagine the Thunderhead telling him. It’s fine as long as you remember who you truly are and don’t lose yourself.

  But what if this is who I truly am? he would ask. Not even the imaginary Thunderhead had an answer to that question.

  • • •

  Her name was Purity Viveros and she was as unsavory as they came. It was clear to Greyson that the big red U on her ID was by design and not due to an unfortunate accident of circumstance. She was exotic. Her hair was drained of pigment—beyond being merely white, the strands were clear, and her scalp had phosphorescent injections in multiple colors, which made the ends of each strand of hair glow with radiance like fiber-optic filaments.

  Greyson instinctively knew that she was dangerous. He also thought she was beautiful, and he was drawn to her. He wondered if he would have been drawn to her in his old life. But after a few weeks of being immersed in an unsavory lifestyle, he suspected his criteria for attraction had changed.

  He met her at an AWFul club—one across town that he hadn’t been to before. It was called LokUp, and was designed to resemble a mortal-age facility of incarceration. Upon arrival each guest was manhandled by guards, dragged through a series of doors, and thrown into a cell with a random cellmate, with no regard to gender.

  The idea of incarceration was so foreign and absurd to Greyson that when the cell door was slammed shut with a nasty clank that reverberated in the concrete cell block, he actually laughed. This type of treatment could never have been real. Surely, this was just an exaggeration.

  “Finally!” said a voice in the upper of the two bunks in the small cell. “I thought they’d never bring me a cellmate.”

  She introduced herself and explained that “Purity” was not a nickname, but her actual given name. “If my parents didn’t want me to embrace the obvious irony, they should have named me something else,” she told Greyson. “If they had named me ‘Profanity,’ I might have turned out to be a good little girl.”

  She was slight of build, but by no means a little girl. Currently she was twenty-two, although Greyson suspected she had been around the corner once or twice. Greyson would find soon enough that she was strong and limber, and very street savvy.

  Greyson looked around the cell. It seemed pretty simple and straightforward. He tested the cell door once, then again. It rattled but didn’t budge.

  “First time in LokUp?” Purity asked. And since it was pretty obvious, Greyson didn’t lie about it.

  “Yeah. So what are we supposed to do now?”

  “Well, we could spend some time getting to know each other,” she said with a mischievous grin, “or we could yell for a guard, and demand a ‘last meal.’  They have to bring us whatever we ask for.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. They pretend like they won’t do it, but they have to—it’s their job. After all, this place is a dinner club.”

  Then Greyson guessed the real gimmick of the place. “We’re supposed to break out—is that it?”

  Purity gave him that same licentious grin. “You’re a quick one, ain’t cha?”

  He wasn’t sure if she meant it or was being facetious. Either way, he kind of liked it.

  “There’s always a way out, but it’s up to us to figure it out,” she told him. “Sometimes it’s a secret passage, other times there’s a file hidden in the food. Sometimes there aren’t any tricks or tools but our own smarts. If all else fails, the guards are pretty easy to outsmart. It’s their job to be slow and stupid.”

  Greyson heard shouts, and running feet echoing from somewhere else in the cell block. Another pair of guests had just broken out.

  “So, what’ll it be?” Purity asked. “Dinner, escape, or quality time with your cellmate?” And before he could answer, she planted a kiss on him, the likes of which he had never before experienced. When it was done, he didn’t know what to say, except, “My name is Slayd.”

  To which she responded, “I don’t care,” and kissed him again.

  While Purity seemed more than ready to take this as far as it could go, the passing guards and escaping inmates who leered at them and made hooting noises as they went by made it far too awkward for Greyson. He pulled away.

  “Let’s break out,” he said, “and . . . uh . . . find a better place to get to know each other.”

  She turned it off as quickly as she had turned it on. “Fine. But don’t assume I’ll still be interested later.”  Then she called a guard over, insisting they eat first, and ordered them some prime rib.

  “We don’t got any,” the guard told them.

  “Bring it anyway,” she demanded.

  The guard grunted, went off, and came back five minutes later with a rolling table and a platter with enough prime rib to choke a horse, as well as a ton of side dishes and wine in a white plastic bottle with a screw cap
.

  “I wouldn’t drink the wine,” the guard warned them. “It’s been making the other inmates real sick.”

  “Sick?” said Greyson. “What do you mean ‘sick’?”

  Purity kicked him under the table hard enough to activate his pain nanites. That shut him up.

  “Thanks,” said Purity. “Now get the hell out.”

  The guard snarled and left, locking them in again.

  Purity then turned to Greyson. “You really must be dense,” she said. “The thing about the wine was our hint!”

  And, upon closer inspection, the bottle actually had a biohazard sign, for patrons who were even denser than he was, he supposed.

  Purity unscrewed the cap, and immediately a caustic stench that made Greyson’s eyes water filled the air.

  “What did I tell you!” said Purity. She recapped it and left it for the end of the meal. “We’ll figure out what to do with it after we eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

  As they ate, she talked with her mouth full, wiped her lips on her sleeve, and doused everything in ketchup. She was like the date from hell that his parents would have warned him against, if they had cared enough. And he loved it! She was the antithesis of his old life!

  “So what do you do?” she asked. “I mean, when you’re not clubbing? Are you gainfully employed or do you just sponge off the Thunderhead like half the losers who call themselves unsavory?”

  “Right now I’m on the Basic Income Guarantee,” he told her. “But that’s just because I’m new in town. I’m still looking for work.”

  “And your Nimbo hasn’t been able to find you anything?

  “My what?”

  “Your probational Nimbus officer, dummy. The Nimbos promise everyone a job who wants one, so how come you’re still looking?”

  “My Nimbo’s a useless bastard,” Greyson told her, because he figured it would be something Slayd would say. “I hate him.”