Rebels of Eden

by Joey Graceffa

  “EcoPan brought the desert back!” one of the second childrn shrieks, and she and several of the others start to run back the way we came.

  “No, press forward!” Lachlan cries. “It’s almost as far either way, and if we make it, better to succeed than fail!”

  Oh, great Earth! My skin is burning already. This must be hotter than any natural desert. My eyes feel parched, my skin breaks out in a sweat that evaporates instantly in the dry heat. Three of the second children have taken off back toward Eden. We can’t go after them. If we did, we’d doom ourselves.

  Together we run, helping each other when we stumble but never ceasing our momentum. My feet feel like they are on fire, there seems to be no moisture left in my body . . .

  Then, as suddenly as it came back on, the desert shuts down. In the space of a few seconds the heat dissipates and we are just under a pleasantly warm summer sky.

  We look at each other and giggle nervously. EcoPan must be really overextending itself.

  Nice to see a godlike omniscient computer goof up, Yarrow says.

  We don’t waste this opportunity, but hurry toward the growing patch of green.

  “Trees!” one of the second children gasps. “It really is real!”

  They came out here with hope, not faith, and their hope has been rewarded.

  Finally we come to where we can make out the trees clearly, see the expanse of flowery meadow before them. Even if the desert comes back on, we can make it from this point—a little scorched, maybe, but alive.

  It comes back on. But it isn’t the heat that gets us.

  The second the heat reactivates, a patch of nanosand materializes under our feet. It swallows four of the second children, and traps another who tries to help. I run toward them, too, but Lachlan pulls me back. “You can’t help them. You’ll only get trapped yourself.”

  I shout to him and the others that the nanosand isn’t lethal, it just takes them to a holding cell where they’ll be retrieved. If we succeed, then they’ll be set free. If we fail, they will be imprisoned, but at least alive. I shout that we’ll try to rescue them, if we can.

  The mission goes on, even with casualties. The losses only make us more determined.

  Lachlan, Carnelian, and I run the rest of the way and collapse the moment we escape the terrible heat. Ah, how cool the grass feels against my cheek! How I missed the rich smell of the earth, the pure and natural colors of the living world. I hear the exclamations and signs of the second children as they behold the glory and wonder of the natural world.

  “It might be easier now,” Carnelian says when he finally pulls himself to his feet. “With no technology, maybe EcoPan . . .”

  We’re far enough from the edge of the desert that it doesn’t scorch our skin, but close enough that I can feel instantly when the heat shuts off again.

  “At least EcoPan is having problems,” I say, standing to look back over the desert. I see a dark line on the horizon, separating itself from the rows of giant bean trees. For a moment I stare, uncomprehending.

  Then I realize. “It shut the desert off on purpose this time,” I say as I stare.

  Lachlan shades his eyes to look. “It’s letting them across.”

  Marching from the edge of Eden come thousands of people. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Maybe everyone.

  “EcoPan is setting them free?” Carnelian asks, confused.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. He’s sending them all after us.”

  An army of our friends, our families, our enemies and our allies, all marching inexorably across the cooling sands to stop us from destroying EcoPan.

  Lachlan looks at me in concern. “What are you smiling for, Rowan?”

  My smile only gets broader. “This means EcoPan is scared. It’s sending absolutely everything it has against us.”

  Lachlan catches my meaning. “It means EcoPan thinks we can actually succeed.”

  Buoyed with hope, I look out over the meadow to the tree line I remember so well from when I was first released from Eden. I check the sun, remembering Elder Night’s lessons, and calculate in which direction Harmonia lies, and where the nearest hypertube access is. It should be no more than a mile away. We can travel through the meadow.

  “They can’t catch us,” I tell them with confidence. “Look, they still have all that to cross, and we’ll have reached the hypertubes long before that. They won’t have any idea where we went.”

  “But EcoPan can tell them,” Carnelian says. “Or stop the hypertubes, or . . .”

  “EcoPan has its limits,” I tell him. “We just don’t know what they are. If it could stop the hypertubes, why would it send an army after us? Come on, we have a head start but we don’t want to squander it.”

  I lead them into the meadow, confident that we have time to escape the citizen army behind us.

  Until the army in front of us steps out of the forest.

  There are three or four dozen people, a pitiful number compared to the army of Eden. But they are close. They carry spears and clubs. They are made up of people I got to know and love in my three months of freedom.

  Standing at their head, a knobbed club in his hand, is Zander.

  He’s raised a militia.

  His two brothers are at his side, of course—the ones who held me down while he broke my fingers. But joining him are other people who never showed any signs of hate or violence. Morgan the potter is there, looking dour. Several gardeners are in the group, clutching shovels and hoes in their callused hands. There’s a mother of seven children, her bare arms painted with ocher. Just ordinary people, now the small army of Harmonia.

  I skid to a halt, trapped between these two forces. Some of the second children are armed, but they’re more refugees than an army. We outnumber Zander’s militia, but I don’t want to fight them. But fight or surrender, if we have to face the militia it will give the Eden army ample time to catch up to us.

  “Stop right there,” Zander shouts, and Yarrow pipes up in my head, Idiot, we already stopped. Just to show him, I take another two steps toward him. “You and that filthy city scum with you aren’t wanted here.”

  “Zander, you have to listen to me,” I begin. By the way he is focused on us, I can tell he hasn’t noticed the people of Eden crossing the desert.

  “I won’t hear any of your lies!” he shouts at me. “Are you going to tell me how you heroically chased down that Eden scum after he escaped? That he’s your prisoner? I know the truth. You and your traitorous mother freed him. After you escaped in the hypertube, we tracked you to the edge of Eden. We saw that you went into the desert, and I hoped we were done with you forever. But you Eden people are like rats. We’ve dealt with your kind before. My father still tells tales of how his parents were slaughtered by the outsider. I vowed I’d never let that happen again.”

  He slaps the club against his palm. “We posted guards at the border in case anyone else managed to sneak over. As soon as they spotted you they signaled the village, and we’ve come to make sure you and your kind can’t corrupt our peaceful world.”

  “Peaceful?” I ask. “Who’s the one holding a club?” We have guns, but they’re in our packs right now. When Lachlan moves to draw his weapon, I stop him. We can’t shoot the people of Harmonia. There has to be another way.

  “I suffered you, at first, because EcoPan chose you. But that man from Eden was doomed from the moment he crossed the desert. And now you and Carnelian are traitors to your people. You’ll die, with no trial but the trial of history. We’ve seen what people from Eden are capable of. I’ll do anything to keep my village safe.”

  We could kill a lot of them—and I can’t say that it wouldn’t give me some satisfaction to shoot Zander—but there would be heavy casualties on both sides.

  “We’re not the threat,” Carnelian says.

  “They’re a disease,” Zander yells. “Now you’ve been infected, too. Get them!”

  He charges at us, swinging his bat, and his two brothers follo
w. But to my surprise the others in the militia hang back. They aren’t prepared for overt violence. They want to protect, but not attack. Cruelty isn’t in their nature.

  Zander attacks so quickly that none of us have time to draw our guns. I duck under his first swing, which would have caved in my head, and grab the club before he can swing it again. For a moment we struggle, four hands vying for control. But my grip is stronger from climbing, even if the rest of me is weaker, and I twist the club out of his grasp. Then I reverse it to jab at his face. He blocks it with his hands, sparing his nose, but I hear the satisfying crunch of finger bones snapping. Nearby, Lachlan and Carnelian are tussling with Zander’s brothers, but I can’t see how that’s going, because my infuriated opponent dives for my legs.

  I go down, and try to hit him again with the club, but with no room to swing it isn’t effective. He doesn’t even seem to feel the blow on his shoulders. I kick at him, but he pins both legs and straddles me. All I can do is use the club as a brace to try to keep him away. I hold it at arm’s length, and he can’t quite punch my face . . . for the moment.

  “I’m not your enemy!” I growl at him between teeth clenched with effort. “You might hate me, but at least I’m human. I know how you hate technology. Do you want to be controlled by a machine?”

  “Stop talking nonsense,” he spits as he swings, and curses when his fist hits the dirt instead of my face.

  “It’s not people who are the danger. It’s EcoPan. It controls the minds of everyone in Eden. It can take you over whenever it likes.”

  “EcoPan is a tool, created by humans, to keep diseases like you contained.” He wrenches the club away and flings it aside. For a moment he gloats, sitting on top of me. “EcoPan is no threat to us. We will always live in harmony with nature. We will always destroy threats like you.” With that he manages to get his hands on my throat.

  “EcoPan isn’t keeping them contained!” I gasp, just as someone in the militia shouts.

  “Look!”

  Confident in his victory over me, Zander pauses, barely squeezing, and looks first to the militia member pointing, then follows his gesture out to the desert.

  He looks down at me in shocked hatred. “What have you done to us? So many . . . Don’t you know what they’ll do to this beautiful, wild place? There will be nothing left but ashes!”

  “They’re not coming for you,” I gasp out. “They’re not here to destroy Harmonia.” I can hear the others fighting nearby, but can’t turn my head to see them. “They’re coming for me.”

  “For you?” He sits back on his heels. “Even your own people think you’re a criminal?”

  “EcoPan has taken over the mind of everyone in Eden. Think of it—humans, controlled by a machine. You love nature, believe that humans have a place in it. Will you stand by and let a machine invade your very mind? Take away everything you are in your very soul?”

  I have no idea whether EcoPan will—or even can—take over the people of Harmonia. But I can tell the idea shocks Zander to his core. I play it up. Anything to get to the hypertubes.

  “I know how to destroy it forever!” I go on. “Do you want a computer running your lives? Do you want this place overrun with bots? You rely on technology to some extent, but you still control it. If I don’t stop EcoPan, the technology will control you!”

  “I don’t believe you!” he shouts. “You brought those people to destroy our way of life, to kill the Earth . . . Oh, great Earth!” He’s looking over the desert again. The Eden army is closer now, and I can hear their shouts, hear a sort of grinding sound, of thousands of feet on sand. There’s still time to get to the hypertubes before them, if we run right now.

  “Trust me now! For the sake of humanity! We have to get to the hypertubes!” I cry. “If we can get to HarmoniaI can stop this!”

  “How?” he shouts back.

  “EcoPan’s main programming is in a secret spot there. I can stop this forever, but you have to help me! If I can destroy it, EcoPan can never enter a human’s mind. Humanity can finally live at one with nature, without any technology to interfere.”

  I know he’s confused, and scared. He wants time to think. But there simply isn’t any time left.

  The Eden army is almost here, preparing to attack.

  “You can’t fight them yourself,” I say. “You need me.”

  He curls his lip in a snarl as he considers. “Remember the Fire Trial,” I tell him. “You let your hatred of me overwhelm you so much you couldn’t see what else was at stake. Will you let that happen again, when the test is real?”

  “Come on,” he says at last. “I’ll get you to the hypertube, and the rest of us will try to draw their fire.”

  “No, you have to get the civilians to safety! There are kids!” He might be a bully and a brute, but this sways him, and he shouts for some of his militia to get the second children into the relative safety of the deep woods. Meanwhile, he leads us to the hypertube entrance.

  “Don’t think I like you, city trash,” he hisses at me as I pass through the door. “We just have a common enemy. I’m helping you now to keep mechanical monsters like that out of Harmonia, to keep our minds free. But I’ll die before I let that army of Eden scum befoul my world. When this is done, you pick a side. Those people belong in Eden. You know what they’ll do to our world out here if they stay. There’s nothing to control them. They’ll tear down forests for fuel. They’ll pollute the water. They’ll start wars, they’ll kill for no good reason. It’s what most people do. You know it.”

  I do . . . or at least I know it is a possibility. We humans have terrible potential. But wonderful potential, too. I have no idea which will ever win.

  I’m a little perplexed by his reasoning, though. “But you’re helping me stop EcoPan. That’s the thing that kept them contained inside Eden for so long.”

  “You don’t understand me, do you, Rowan?” he asks.

  “Er, no?”

  “Harmonia isn’t perfect,” he says. “I know that. But humans aren’t perfect. We’re just doing the best we can. I hate those unnatural, plastic people from the city, those dirty, corrupt, lazy people . . . but I’m not such a fool that I don’t know what made them that way. Machines. Reliance on a bot or an algorithm instead of thought or hard work. We have too much technology in Harmonia. We should be free of that, but the elders . . . I want to change that one day, return us to the way we’re meant to be. Glass houses and electric lights? Crops shipped in from who knows where? It’s unnatural. We’re still separated from nature. With no EcoPan, the Elders won’t have a choice. We’ll have to be purely natural beings.”

  He sighs and rubs his temples. “I don’t hate you, Rowan. Not really. I’m sorry for . . .” He glances at Lachlan. “For what I did before. But I know humans should return to a primitive, pure state—and I won’t let anything stop me. You were a threat. Now you might be the only chance to stop a bigger threat. I never thought escaping EcoPan and its long technological reach was possible. But if this works . . .”

  “If this works, all of humanity will return to a primitive state, like it or not. You’ll have everyone in Eden to deal with. Not to fight, but to help. They’ll be scared, as clueless about surviving in the wilderness as I was. They’ll be relying on people from Harmonia to help them.”

  “Even people from Harmonia will be afraid if we pull this off,” Carnelian says. “They think they’re living so close to nature, but what will they do without the comfort and ease that electricity brings? How will they grow crops without crystal resonance to keep the pests away? Life will be different, and a lot harder. Have you all even thought of that?”

  I bite my lip and look at my knees. Lachlan takes my hand. “What if you were a slave in a rich household, Rowan? They treated you well, gave you delicious food, you played with their children, and read their books. Your chores were light, maybe cooking, or childcare. Something you enjoyed doing. Your life was easy and comfortable . . . but you were still a slave. If you went to you
r master and told him you wanted to move out, or try a new career, he’d laugh at you and tell you to get back to work.”

  Lachlan looks at Zander. “You and I have had it easy in many ways. I was hunted, persecuted—sure. But I was never cold or hungry. You have to work harder than us, but when you want a light, you still just flick a switch, just like I did. But we’re both slaves—slaves to technology. We think it serves us, but we would be almost helpless without it. You’ve kept it in check better than we have. Eden does a better job than our Prefail ancestors. But we are all at its mercy. We are all its minions. That was bad, but now that we know EcoPan is in our heads, how can we call ourselves fully human anymore?”

  Zander nods. “Destroying EcoPan is the right thing. It will lead to hardship, to suffering even. It will take humanity a long time to learn to live without EcoPan’s help. People will starve, they’ll freeze in winter, they’ll fight over scarce resources. But I think you’re right—with the help of the people of Harmonia, all humans can eventually learn to live as one with nature, without any technology whatsoever.”

  He bids me good luck, and goes back to try and slow the onslaught that EcoPan is sending after us.

  Carnelian gently sets Mira’s body down and programs in the code that will take us to Harmonia, where we will hike to Mira’s secret garden. We will lay her to rest there at the same time we try to destroy EcoPan once and for all.

  Carnelian frowns. “Something’s wrong. I think EcoPan is trying to take control.”

  “Can we still use the hypertube?’ I ask.

  “I think so, but . . .” He swallows hard. “I’m going to have to stay behind. I can’t access the controls from inside the transport, and if EcoPan manages to take over we’ll just be trapped underground.

  He looks down at Mira’s body, and I know what he is thinking.

  “She belongs there,” I tell him. “If you have to stay behind, we’ll take her. I’ll lay her to rest with love and dignity, and when this is all over, you can visit her in the most lovely garden on Earth.”