The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “I don’t doubt that,” Miner said, not even cracking a smile. “Speaking of real or not, is Munna dead or alive?”

  Another contingent of drones flew close by.

  “Munna is still breathing last I heard.”

  “And Cope Lipton?” Miner watched Blaise carefully.

  Blaise seemed genuinely taken aback. “Cope Lipton?”

  Miner wasn’t sure if the response meant he was surprised that Miner knew about Cope, or it was because Blaise didn’t know himself.

  “Yes, is Cope still living?” Miner repeated and watched more closely as Blaise discreetly moved VMs and piled data and images into digitally layered heaps around him. He suspected that meant Blaise had not known about Cope, but he could just be scrambling to find out how Miner had obtained such priceless information. “You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “There’s a time to discuss this, and it isn’t now,” Blaise said, sounding nervous, something Miner had never known him to be. “I have an urgent matter to attend to, so we’ll have to continue this later. My humblest apologies and all that.”

  Miner nodded, still trying to read Blaise’s response. “Okay, but I need Grandyn. A twenty-one-year-old punk cannot be allowed to bring down the greatest society in the history of the world.” Miner slapped the side of a Flo-wing which was parked next to him. “And I want Munna too. She can’t be allowed to live any longer. One-hundred-and-thirty-three is too long even for me, but for a meddling, pre-Banoff, living-in-the-wood-like-Robin-Hood revolutionary, it’s a torgon century too long!”

  Blaise nodded, still looking shaken, and then disappeared. As Miner stood on his roof with Buenos Aires stretched out to the ocean below him, it suddenly hit him.

  Munna was the living, breathing embodiment of the prophecies. She knew Cope, had probably known Booker, and had found some secret fountain of youth. Grandyn might be able to figure it out, find some treasure map concealed in the books, but if anyone already had the keys to finding the prophecies and could decode and apply the actual meaning of the predictions they contained, it was Munna.

  Chapter 22 - Book 2

  Grandyn remembered the day he’d met Fye. It had been at the end of a three-month saga, which had begun with helping his father and Nelson get the books out of the library. After being captured by the AOI, Grandyn found himself magically released into the custody of Fye, a woman he immediately felt comfortable with, a woman who would change his life in many ways, a woman who was actually the only reason he’d lived this long, and a woman he loved more than anyone or anything else.

  As devoted as Fye was to the revolution and Grandyn’s shared dream of the destruction of the AOI, if it came down to it, they would both give up the cause for each other. But that was a fantasy world, because if they ever walked away from the cause, the only thing protecting them would be the wind, and that changed directions every day. They knew they’d never last an hour out there alone. Grandyn and Fye shared a complicated fate made simple by the realization that if they didn’t continue to risk their lives to change the world, they would die, and the world’s weight would crush the soft progress they’d made.

  Fye had taught him what she was allowed about the List Keepers. In a time of secret organizations, there was none more so than them. The List Keepers had the keys to all information, and through painstaking methods few knew and even less understood, they could manipulate it so that almost any intangible thing could be changed, or even made to disappear completely. But their real talent, what made them such a threat to the Aylantik, was their ability to use those results, combined with other tactics, to affect tangible things, including people.

  Grandyn remembered back to the time after Drast had arranged his release. When she’d finally told him her name, hours after getting him out of custody, he thought it was some sort of code-name, not something parents would actually burden a kid with.

  She glared. “Fye,” she had repeated. “As in ‘fight’ or ‘fire.’”

  “As in ‘fine.’” He shrugged, with the lightest laugh.

  She laughed back.

  “I like you, Grandyn Happerman,” she had said. “I like you so much so that I’ll never call you that again.”

  He’d looked at her, puzzled.

  “The AOI is going to hunt you, and you’d be amazed how much of a trail a name leaves. By changing your name, we cut eighty-eight percent of your footprints out of the system.”

  “I thought it was illegal to change your name.”

  “It is. Now you know why.”

  “Then how will you do it?”

  “We’ll break the law . . . don’t worry.” She smiled. “We do it all the time.”

  “But you said Fye is your real name.”

  “It is. No one has ever heard of me.”

  “How come?”

  “I was born outside the system. My parents are List Keepers, as were theirs.” Her expression had seemed proud. “We’ll start with giving you nine different names, complete with identities and histories you’ll need to memorize.”

  “Why so many?”

  “Because most of them will wind up dead,” she said, pointing to the names.

  “Fye, what exactly do the List Keepers do?”

  “Ever since the Banoff, we’ve been trying to fix things . . . one bit of data at a time.” She doodled on a pad, he’d seen her do it a lot. She didn’t draw pictures though, instead it was always numbers and letters and he couldn’t make sense out of it.

  “How do you fix things?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later, but it’s hard to comprehend. It’s really big,” she said, making the word “really” last for four seconds.

  “That pad is paper, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s a pencil,” Grandyn said. “I guess you like antiques.”

  She just smiled.

  They spent a lot of time together over the next few months, and in the stress of their situation of trying to survive as revolutionaries in a world set against them, their passions swelled in the drama of the cause.

  Fye was a bit of a mystery, an important member of an organization that seemed to exist only in whispers and shadows, but he’d been captivated by her from the beginning. Whenever she looked at him her expression hid things, things he wanted to know, as if her every glance said, “I have stories to tell you when you’re ready.” She was different from Vida, his girlfriend the AOI had killed at the start of the Doneharvest. All his girlfriends had always been dark-skinned, passionate brunettes. Fye, light in every sense – sandy blond hair, soft green eyes, pale complexion – had a gentle spirit. Her plain appearance and simple prettiness belied the real source of her power: Fye had a brilliant mind. She never told him her age, but he guessed her to be around twenty-five. He couldn’t reconcile her youth with her genius. He once asked her how she’d gotten so smart. Fye blew it off.

  “All List Keepers are smart, I’m nothing special.” And he could tell she meant it. Fye had no false modesty. In fact, he’d never known anyone as confident. That must come with being so smart, he thought. People like that believe they can handle any situation.

  Fye also had a way of looking at people as if she could see all their pain. Even people Grandyn thought were jerks, Fye saw something good in them, something maybe long-lost or buried deep, but she saw it. He always had the feeling that she would do anything to help anybody, but sometimes being a List Keeper prevented her from going out there and actually helping.

  In the years that he’d known her, the List Keepers had seen to his safety, and in all that time he still hadn’t learned what they did, who they were, and how many existed. He had met a few others, but they were even more secretive than Fye. It often bothered him because he trusted her completely. She had his life in her hands, but she didn’t seem to trust him. Still, he believed her, believed in her goodness so totally that he let it go. One day, if we all live long enough, she’ll tell me the rest. She’ll show me everything, he thought.

 
But that was a fairy tale hope, because as the war grew closer, their different missions meant they were almost always apart. The risks were constant, as every day someone they knew was arrested or killed. In the tension of the unraveling situation, she was the calm that kept him from going on a suicide mission just to kill AOI agents. He would surely have been long dead without her. She had made him lost to the world, but just as important was what she had taught him.

  Grandyn recalled the last night they had together. She’d showed him three things that had weighed heavy on his mind ever since.

  “What is it?” he’d asked as they walked into a large dark room in an underground data center located deep below the forests outside the Yosemite Earth Park.

  She pushed a rare physical button, almost everything now virtual. The room came alive with VMs, and he realized it was the largest room he’d ever been in, probably one hundred by two hundred meters. “Who are all these people?” he asked as the air around them filled with faces, images, names.

  “They are the victims.”

  He looked around as the images flashed hundreds of thousands at a time, as if he were on a crowded city street. “Victims of the AOI?”

  “No, that’s much smaller, and we have that too. These,” she paused, “these are the victims of the Banoff.”

  He stood silent, his words stolen by the spectacle. They surrounded him, millions and millions now, threatening to smother him. Children, so many children and people, beautiful, smiling people, just living life. Stills and film, color bits of life sliding all around. Faces, millions of eyes, some looking into his as they passed.

  “How?” he gasped.

  “Are you okay?” She held his arm. “I know I should have warned you, but it seems more fair to let them tell you, not one of us descendents of the survivors. But I know. I’ve seen them fourteen times now and it’s still unbearable. Most people don’t even survive as long as you their first time. Most people don’t come back again.”

  “How?” he repeated.

  “How did they compile all this?”

  “No, how could they destroy all this on purpose?”

  “It is a cold evil that did this, and the worst part is they knew before they did it.” Fye looked at Grandyn. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  “They didn’t just create the Banoff. The killing didn’t stop seventy-five years ago.”

  “I know the AOI kills people all the time. They killed my parents, remember?”

  “I’m not talking about the AOI and their enforcement executions.”

  “Then what?”

  “The AHC.”

  “The Health Circle?”

  “Yes. The inoculations, their treatments, the booster shots, everything they do is part of the system.”

  “What system?”

  “The system.” She opened her arms wide. “The system that they use to keep everyone in check, to get the birth and death rates where they want them, the way they quietly eliminate troublemakers, how they soften thinking. It’s all planned.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “Don’t you get it? Grandyn, no one dies from natural causes.”

  The terror of the revelation washed over him like a toxic wave. He didn’t think any innocence remained in him, yet somewhere in a previously untouchable place within the last remaining purity of trust in his species, his innocence was shattered, and in that instant, Grandyn thought he might pass out. A sick feeling came with that toxic wave and it crippled him.

  “They’re still killing us,” he whispered in a strained voice filled with agony and grief.

  “Yes,” she said, freshly devastated at seeing the effect the revelation had had on him. Fye had grown so used to the knowledge that she’d forgotten its brutality, its soul-crushing impact. But now she remembered and she realized it had been slowly robbing her peace.

  “Why!?” Grandyn cried. “Why do they do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Fye said quietly. She knew all the intellectual reasons for their continued atrocities – greed, power, control – but her heart was unable to understand how they justified any of the mere existence of their so-called Eden. “Even if they’d succeeded in creating paradise, even if that was their initial aim‒‒”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “I know, but even if it was, there can be no paradise if half the people are killed at the entrance gates.”

  “And if they keep killing to make it perfect for the rest of us. Torgon, I just don’t know how they think it’s okay, and I sure as hell don’t know how to process that information into my own psyche.” Part of him wanted to unlearn it. He knew it was impossible, and the strong part of him, the brave and true part, savored the information even while it choked and suffocated him.

  Chapter 23 - Book 2

  The long-anticipated meeting had been hastily arranged. All parties involved were anxious to leave as small a digital footprint as to the where and when of a gathering so important. They were also anxious for another reason. They all wanted the same thing, yet followed completely different paths to get there. Perhaps even more important was the resolve each had that they were the most correct, while the others were making a terrible mistake. And so began the first meeting of the top allied rebels in three years.

  Grandyn, the last to arrive, found Munna, Chelle, and Nelson waiting in a brilliantly camouflaged cabin. The combination of natural foliage, nano-camo, and other Tekfabrik made it impossible to see the structure until less than a meter away from the all but invisible front door. Inside, antique, overstuffed leather sofas and chairs fit the location, but they were artifacts in the modern world of tru-chairs and over-holds. The handmade plank tables were neither wired for electronics, nor adjustable at the touch of a screen. The cabin was one of Nelson’s favorite hideouts. Rustic and comfortable, the place exuded the same feeling Grandyn had about the inhabitants.

  “The prodigal son returns,” Nelson said, putting down his glass of wine and starting toward Grandyn.

  “Nelson, you look great!” Grandyn said with a hug.

  “Shoot, you’ve learned to lie well, haven’t you?” Nelson patted him on the back.

  “Nelson, you do look great compared to how you looked this morning,” Chelle said, then pushed her brother playfully out of the way. “Let me get a good look at you Grandyn. It’s really you. Three years we – and half the AOI – have been looking for you, and here you are. You look so much like your father.”

  “Hi ya Chelle,” he said, smiling while giving her a lighter embrace then his “uncle” had received.

  “I’m good enough,” Chelle said. “Better now seeing you really are alive.”

  “TreeRunner,” a strong, gravely voice Grandyn would have known anywhere called out. Chelle stood aside, and Grandyn saw Munna sitting in a straight, ladder back chair, looking a bit smaller than he remembered. “Could I have a word, TreeRunner?”

  “Of course Munna.” Grandyn strode across the room and knelt on one knee next to her.

  Munna took both his hands. “It is true that the world has been searching for the lost TreeRunner for more than one thousand days and nights. And it is true you have done many terrible things to remain unfound, things you never would have thought, and you’re ever so troubled.” She stared into his eyes until they filled. The soft, crinkly skin of her hands felt warm, her grip firm and strong. “You’ve done what you had to. You’re young. You must let go of the guilt. If you carry it around, you’ll never grow as old as me.”

  She was like a grandmother he’d never known. Wise and able to keep him safe, able to teach him things, and something else. She could forgive him. Munna was no ordinary person, anyone in her presence could sense it, even if they didn’t know her age.

  Munna had a way of looking at a person, as if she could see their every thought, and not just the current ones, but everything. The whole history of their thoughts. Her ancient eyes looked like mythical battlefields covered with fl
ames and blood, exploded earth and loss. Her touch conveyed the better part of a century and a half of wanderings. She knew parts of the world that didn’t exist in books anymore. She remembered things that others might never know, and in her deep-rooted connection to the past, even without the prophecies, Munna could sense the future as if she had already lived it.

  “Forgive yourself,” she whispered to Grandyn while squeezing his hands almost painfully.

  He gasped involuntarily at the release she’d somehow granted him. Munna smiled and let go of him.

  “We have to talk about the Exchange,” Chelle broke in. “There isn’t a lot of time here. The agreement was for no more than three hours.”

  “I didn’t agree to the time limit,” Nelson said. “And if we couldn’t find common ground on the length of our little get-together here, I certainly don’t think we’re gong to reach an accord on something as frightful and magnificent as a revolution.”

  Chelle shot her brother an annoyed who-asked-you look.

  “I don’t know what you think I can add about the Exchange,” Grandyn said.

  “You’re a TreeRunner, and, I suspect, a List Keeper. We cannot win without the support and participation of both groups.”

  “Well, I can speak for neither party,” Grandyn said as Nelson handed him an apple. “Parker is in charge of the TreeRunners and I’m not her favorite. I’m not even close to the leadership. As far as the List Keepers, I’m not remotely smart enough to be one, and even if I could acknowledge my connection, it would have no influence.”

  “Are you really going to stand here and pretend you aren’t aware of your influence?” Chelle asked. “By the way, the apples are from me. They’re organic.”

  “Thanks,” Grandyn said, biting into it. “Influence is something one earns. I’ve been on the run for three years. Some might call me a coward . . . hardly worthy of being considered in a monumental decision such as this. What did Nelson say? ‘Frightful and magnificent.’ That does sum it up.”