Actuator

by Spinazzola, J.

  “What else did you notice in the file?”

  “Nothing in the file, but the sweep who worked the shift when Skip allegedly died no longer works here. The floors have grown dusty.”

  “You keep your eyes open, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and they are starting to tear.”

  “I’ll let you go, A.M.”

  “Goodnight, Emmy.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Chapter 24

  “I found Marco. Told you I’d find him.”

  “Vidalia!”

  “Dalia. Even Marco calls me Dalia now.”

  “You stay away from him.”

  “What are you worried about? I’m trying to help.”

  “Like last time?”

  “No, I’m trying to undo last time.”

  “The past can’t be undone.”

  “You don’t believe that, Emmy.”

  “I don’t know what I believe.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I believe in Marco.”

  “So do I.”

  “What do you know about it, Dalia?”

  “I know his strength. I know how much courage I felt in his presence. How little I feel now. Why can’t you share him? He belongs to all of us.”

  “He’s not some @ symbol. He’s a man.”

  “He’s abandoned the kite and the symbol since I told him your whereabouts. He can’t risk being spotted. When he should be thinking of all of us, he’s focused on you.”

  “Who are you to decide what he should be thinking?”

  “You don’t know how much I’ve uncovered about the Mod in searching for Marco, how much we all need Marco to liberate us from the rationale. The future of our generation depends on him, but he won’t focus on any of that until he sees you.”

  “What’s more important than love?”

  “Emmy, you sound like the Mod. That’s a flawed question. Many things are equally important.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the ability to travel freely without harassment, the ability to collect in groups and to demand transparency from the Mod and Privates. How can love exist without these things?”

  “Love found its way to us.”

  “And look where you are now.”

  “Our time will come.”

  “And what about the others? What about the ones who aren’t so lucky to find love when the rationale impedes them?”

  “Am I responsible to them?”

  “Are you not?”

  “Dalia, I don’t even know how to begin answering those questions while living in an institution without him.”

  “He said something similar, that he draws his strength from you.”

  “How is he?”

  “For someone who loves him, it took you long enough to ask.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s tired and hungry. He relies on the kindness of others for food and drink. Transits have built rain barrels to collect water in places the patrol doesn’t search. Once word of the water’s location spreads by word of mouth, all transits can have their fill. Everything else is hard to come by. Marco said he went days on nothing but wild berries and mushrooms growing in neglected City parks. He met a transit with a book separating the edible from poisonous one. Otherwise he has depended on people like me, inspired college students.”

  “Depended on you for what?”

  “We take food with us when we go out in case we encounter him. Patrol members are seldom young or willing to travel by foot, so he avoids those in cars. Marco knows whom to trust. So far, he can separate the good from the bad and make do on simple gifts: bread, cheese and fruit. Whatever our parents have neglected to finish from that evening’s ship.”

  “How long can he go like that?”

  “That’s the question I asked him. He should be forming a strategy for survival, for attracting followers, not worrying about a summer fling.”

  “I’m not a summer fling.”

  “I want what’s best for both of you, and what’s best for all is ushering an age when we can all live freely.”

  “Why are you always deciding what’s best for me?”

  “I’m not. I’m not going to take that chance again. Whatever I think, I’m leaving the choice up to you. Marco is coming for you. Make the right choice. Without Marco’s leadership, the rest of us will stay indoors and things will continue as usual. If the Mod catches Marco, they’ll make an example of him to make certain of it.”

  “Or not.”

  “Are you saying that just to be flip?”

  “No, the Mod has a way of making concessions to preserve the quo. To avoid turning Marco into a symbol, they may pretend not to be threatened. They may leave him alone, then see if the quo returns.”

  “Sounds like you’ve learned from them. Even abbreviating status quo for greater efficiency and less room for dissent.”

  “I’ve learned the way they think, how they talk, not their goals, but efficiency no longer seems to be their only end.”

  “What do we do, Emmy?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “You must know. You’ve known Marco. I’ve only met him once. Afterwards he left me a kite that won’t fly.”

  “You tried flying his symbol? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The wind was down. It wouldn’t fly.”

  “Serves you right, Dalia.”

  “Whatever the case, why won’t you and Marco share? Why won’t you think of the rest of us?”

  “Maybe when I get out of here Marco and I can take a list of requests. Set up a queue.”

  “You’ll go back to his brownstone and make dresses and jewelry and live a kind of life the rest of us can only dream.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen. The only way we’ll be together now is if we commit to a life as transits.”

  “The two of you are sick.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s worse than the bug. More contagious.”

  “What?”

  “He said the same thing. Love must be viral. He said he’d commit to a transitory life rather than wait any longer. He’d go transit for one chance to see your face.”

  “I don’t know that he’ll get that. The security in here is resolute. I won’t get out of my room till graduation day. They’ll hold me to the commitment.”

  “So they’re more afraid of you than Marco?”

  “No, I don’t think they’re afraid of either of us. I think they’re afraid of the both of us together.”

  “The collective.”

  “Don’t make this symbolic.”

  “Why not, the Mod has?”

  “We don’t know what they’re thinking, Dalia.”

  “Don’t we?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you discovered?”

  “Only that they’re hiding things, Emmy. Posting false information on the web. Falsity runs contrary to their stated goals of promoting logic and efficiency. How can that be achieved without transparency? Why can’t people discuss the truth without having to waste time sifting through falsities?”

  “Citizens can discuss online.”

  “Emmy, it’s not the same. Privacy is not enough to assure a good life for all.”

  “I know things, Dalia. You’re not the first one to talk about the Mod’s contradictions and omissions.”

  “Who else? Marco? Did he finally rise to the occasion?”

  “We never talked about those things, Dalia.”

  “No, he was more interested in love.”

  “Maybe that’s a beginning.”

  “Love is too selfish to spark change.”

  “It sparked us.”

  “You’re two people amongst many.”

  “How many, Dalia? How many even want change?”

  “That’s what we need Marco to find out. We need others made brave enough to go outdoors, to collect and speak openly.”

  “And ask for what? Do what?”

 
“To mark a beginning.”

  “It’s already been marked.”

  “Then you’ll help us?”

  “Stay out of our way. And we’ll figure it out.”

  Chapter 25

  “A.M.?”

  “Present.”

  “You sound like a schoolgirl from the pre-digital age.”

  “How do you know about them?”

  “I found an early digital video from a cached file. I was trying my hand at deciphering encrypted messages. Didn’t have as much luck as you.”

  “Takes years of experience. Those were some of the first files I found when I was your age.”

  “How long have you been at it?”

  “I don’t care to admit my length of years, Emmy. Try that question again another night.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am tired. Been waking up earlier than usual, trying to make sense of things.”

  “What things?”

  “More chatter than usual. The threat draws closer to us.”

  “What threat?”

  “Marco.”

  “You heard?”

  “Only suspected, Emmy.”

  “He’s coming for me?”

  “Though not a wise course, the two of you have young hearts. You’re likely to get them bruised.”

  “Does it always have to end that way?”

  “Always is tough to prove.”

  “Will he make it?”

  “In?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not without help.”

  “Who would help?”

  “I can only think of two.”

  “Us?”

  “Who else, dear?”

  “What can we do? What can I do?”

  “Only what we can. The young man is taking a big risk.”

  “What can they do to Marco other than making him commit to life as a transit? We are both prepared for that.”

  “Whatever they did to Skip.”

  “What was that?”

  “I couldn’t decipher. Everyone assumes Skip’s dead, his poor parents for starters. Maybe he is. Maybe they crossed the line this time.”

  “What line?”

  “The Mod has never promoted overt violence. They gain more strength by making concessions, preserving their legitimacy and persuading others to internalize the rationale.”

  “And those who don’t?”

  “Life as a transit is punishment enough. Call it passive aggression taken to an extreme. The Mod does its best to make sure nothing edible grows in City. In less efficient days, they paved over everything. Now solar-powered machines cut down all vegetation except grass and trees unable to produce fruit or nuts.”

  “What about all the birds?”

  “They eat insects and seeds from the wild grass.”

  “I heard Marco collects mushrooms and berries.”

  “Nature can be stubborn.”

  “So can Marco.”

  “Emmy, it’s hard to survive on nuts and berries. One can’t go that way for long.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Are you prepared to know?”

  “Yes. I want to know whatever is true.”

  “Transits need to eat, and machines controlled remotely cannot handle all jobs. Robotics did not keep pace with the digital and societal changes that followed the actuator. Some jobs are left to the transits.”

  “They are paid in food?”

  “At first the Mod gives them food. Wherever there’s work to be done, the Mod establishes a charitable center, installs an actuator and assigns the patrol to distribute free food. Once the transits have given up their alternatives, the Mod cuts off the subsidy. Then a Private arrives on the scene and offers work in exchange for food.”

  “What alternative is there for transits to give up in the first instance?”

  “Only rumors.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Rumors that transits boat food into City’s core from farms and factories. City has controlled the surrounding metro ever since the Mod established farms and factories out of what used to be communities and housing developments before people moved into the core to take advantage of the actuator. Despite City’s control, the metro of the City is vast, allowing some transits to slip undetected and provide aid for those living at the edge of the core and willing to drift near the open shore far from charitable centers and the actuator.”

  “Are the farms and factories operated by machines, as they claim, or more transits?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect a combination. Some humans must be employed or living nearby to skim the food supply to accommodate the transits.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s in exchange or as an act of true charity. When transits move away from the drop spots on the shore in search of charitable centers with superior product, they often struggle to get back to the drop spot. They worry the drops will have stopped or they will hunger on the way, so they do the work that’s asked of them. Not all transits agree to terms. The Mod never forces a hand, but enough transits capitulate to keep any project going. That’s why tower windows are tinted from the inside. People don’t want to see former citizens out there doing the physical work.”

  “Are those the only alternatives for transits?”

  “There’s another rumor, a reserve of some kind. The Mod protects that whisper more closely than the others. You would need a young set of ears to decode that one.”

  “Does Marco know about it?”

  “How would I know, Emmy?”

  “I’m sorry. Wishful thinking.”

  “We all give in to that eventually.”

  “Like self-cleaning towers: sounds fanciful to me.”

  “That one is real. I can attest to that.”

  “How?”

  “I designed the tech.”

  “You?”

  “That’s why they’ve let me stay here so long. I set a program so complex that no one else can control it. Accommodating me is a small concession in relation to the number of tower windows my program services.”

  “Why would you want to stay in here?”

  “After inter-city travel was banned, I didn’t care to leave. My love was travel, to visit cities with pretty names. A fog moved over San Francisco each morning, like a lullaby in reverse, from a baby blue ocean rolling in the distance. When I was a young girl, and don’t ask when, an orange bridge spanned those waters. Once I took a flight out of San Francisco and looked down on that bridge (suddenly smaller than a cream pop) on my way to Paris where I picnicked beneath a building erected like the lace on some woman’s nightwear.”

  “Paris? I read about that one in a cached file after we last spoke. Paris is in another country.”

  “Such travel was once possible. I still remember the smell, like the skin of a pear translucent in the sun, a Parisian perfume I dabbed on my wrist in the Marais Quarter. Now only the Mod can actuate goods from other countries when the Fed opens the channel in exchange for concessions from the Mod. The Mod never shares those luxuries with any but the richest of Privates.”

  “I thought you didn’t know about the Fed?”

  “I don’t know much. That’s a bit I’ve been trying to decrypt for years. The words perfume and Paris drew me in.”

  “What kind of concessions does the Mod give to the Fed?”

  “I don’t know. Something about a carrot and a stick.”

  “A carrot and a stick don’t sound so valuable.”

  “You have your bottle and letters. We all value something.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Skip.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not everything is a mystery, Emmy. Some things only require asking the proper questions.”