by H. A. Swain
“You okay?” Basil asks quietly as if he’s afraid his voice could send the car rolling over another precipice. We’ve landed at a tilt and I’m pressed against the door. I brush the powder from my skin and clothes and grope my limbs to make sure everything is still intact.
“I think so. You?”
“I guess I am.” Then he laughs. A weak, uncertain burble of bewilderment. He unbuckles his seat belt and carefully slides down toward me.
“We shouldn’t be.” I wrap my arms around his shoulders to stop myself from shaking. “We should be smashed to pieces.”
He hugs me tight. We rock back and forth, breathing together, perfectly synchronized, like two parts of a machine made to fit. We linger in our embrace, each of us reluctant to let go.
“Maybe we’re dead,” he jokes.
I snicker, equally uncertain, then nuzzle my face against his neck. I smell the musk of his fear and press my lips against his skin, which tastes salty like tears. “That would make this the afterlife.”
“Do you think One World owns that, too?”
I laugh a little harder. “They bought it from god.”
“Sell out,” he says, and we both crack up, but then Basil turns serious and asks me, “Do you believe in all that? The afterlife and god and stuff?”
“Not really,” I admit. “Do you?”
“I’d like to think there could be something better. Like a place where everybody has enough, you know? Not too much, not too little. Just enough, and we could all be happy with that.”
“I think you hit your head,” I say.
He sighs long and loud as if letting go of everything that’s happened to us in the past few hours. “It was Ana’s vision.”
“It’s a lovely vision,” I say, even though I’m not sure I believe it could ever happen.
He looks out the front window, searching the dark. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t believe I’m never going to see her again.”
I’m not sure how to console him, so instead I point through the windshield and say, “Look, stars!” The clouds have trundled past, leaving an open swath of black sky dotted with thousands of tiny pinpricks of light, but the moon stays hidden. “Come on. Let’s get out.”
I jiggle the handle on my smashed-up door, but it won’t budge so Basil shoulders the driver-side door until it swings open with a sad groan. He climbs out and drops to the ground. I follow him and he helps me down gingerly.
“Wow,” I whisper as I look up. “I’ve never seen a real sky like this with no giant lights in the way. It’s even more beautiful than the planetarium.”
Despite the starlight, it’s still too dark to make out much of what’s around us because we seem to have fallen into a shallow chasm. The air is moist, not dry like usual, and the smell is a bit musty, as if we’ve walked into a bathing room that hasn’t been aired out. Even weirder, the ground beneath our feet is soft, almost spongy, as if we’re standing on a wet rug. We grope along until we find something solid and smooth and cool to the touch, a large flat rock maybe, and we both sit down. I lean over and rest my head on Basil’s shoulder to contemplate what’s above us.
“Did you know that all the elements on Earth came from ancient exploding stars?” I tell him.
“For real?” He lies back and cradles his head in his hands so he’s looking straight up into the night sky.
“Yeah. The dust swirled around and around for millions of years. Then heat from a supernova and the force of gravity gradually pulled all that dust together, spinning it into bigger and bigger spheres, which became the planets.”
I blink up at the stars, some long dead, but their light just now reaching my eyes. “Think about it,” I say. “Millions of years went by while the Earth twirled out here in the expanding universe. Bacteria wriggled around. Genes mutated and new stuff started popping up. Amoebas, algae, plants, little critters. And then one day, there were my great-grandparents standing in the middle of their farm, which could have been around here somewhere.” I imagine Grandma Apple’s mom and dad digging their hands into the soil, rich with nutrients left over from the primordial stew of early Earth before humans bled it dry. “They looked up at this same sky.”
“Do you ever wish you’d been alive back then?” Basil asks.
“Kind of.” I lie down with my head on his chest. “I’d like to know what food and animals and plants were like. But then I’d have to live through the wars and from what my Grandma Apple says, it was horrible.”
We both gaze above us again. “Doesn’t it make you feel small?” Basil asks.
“We’re just specks of stardust in the cosmos,” I say with a laugh. “But, you know, that also makes me feel good, like I’m part of something bigger than myself, and just maybe all the people who came before me, like my great-grandparents and my grandpa Hector are still here in a way.”
Basil takes a long slow breath. I listen to his heartbeat. “I think the same thing about my brother sometimes. Like maybe he’s watching over me. Keeping me safe. I know it’s silly but…”
“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” I tell him. Then I gather my courage and ask, “How did he die?”
Basil’s quiet for a while, then out of the silence he says, “In the Svalbard Rebellion.”
“Svalbard!” I pop upright. “Were you there?” I reach out and touch his hip, where the tattoo of the seed sits beneath his shirt.
“I was only five.”
“But Arol?”
He nods.
“Was he killed in the riots?”
“That’s what One World would like everyone to believe, but it’s not true.” Basil sits up and hugs his knees. “It all started out peaceful, you know? At first, everyone who wanted answers about the seed vault just sat outside the OW headquarters for weeks, trying to peacefully force the execs into a dialogue. People like Ana understood what OW’s ownership meant in the long run, especially if they had destroyed all the seeds, because that would mean the only food source left on Earth would be Synthamil.”
“Do you think they destroyed the vault?”
He shrugs. “What’s it matter? One World has complete control over the food supply whether the vault is there or not.”
“And Ana and your brother were both part of the protest?”
He nods. “She was one of the organizers. She believed in nonviolent confrontation because she knew they’d lose a battle of force. But One World wouldn’t talk. They just dismissed what was going on. Walked right past the protesters like they didn’t exist. Some of the protesters got more serious. People went on hunger strikes and stopped drinking Synthamil.”
“Is that what Arol did?”
Basil shakes his head. “Arol never did anything but sit there, occupying One World land, making some noise. It wasn’t really about the seed vault for him.”
“What was it then?” I ask.
He works his mouth as if gathering words that won’t come out. Finally, he says, “It was me. He wanted things to change so that One World would have to feed kids like me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I reach out and wrap one arm around his shoulders while he continues.
“He was a cog in a machine trying to get One World to take notice of how screwed up their policies were. Only what did they care? Everyone out there was expendable. Just another mouth to feed. Then one day, one of the execs, a guy named Walter Bennigan, got sick of walking through the crowds of people, some of them chained to the lampposts, starving themselves. So he goes up to an office, opens the window, and starts chucking out cases of Synthamil at the crowd. One of the cases hit Arol. Got him right on the temple. He died instantly.
“That’s all it took to spark the riots. People went nuts. They’d been waiting for a moment, an excuse, something to light the fire, and they found it when Bennigan killed my brother. They stormed One World. And One World retaliated. Sent out security agents full force. Dozens of people died.”
“That’s awful! I can’t believe I never knew t
he whole story. Why hadn’t I heard about Arol before?”
“Because it’s a footnote,” Basil spits with a bitter laugh. “A tiny part of the story that most people have forgotten. But not Ana. She always remembered Arol. After he died, she helped look out for me. Like Betta, she was a guardian angel. She told me to look at my hunger as a blessing.”
I think back to Ana spreading her arms in the meeting and telling us to embrace the changes in our midst and soar. Was she talking about a genetic mutation that makes people like Basil and me and all the other freaks in rehab and the geophag campers feel hunger? I wrap my arms tighter around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “And now you’ve lost her, too.”
“Yeah. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t see One World as the provider of good things,” he says sarcastically.
I sigh with frustration. “What ever happened to Walter Bennigan?”
“Nothing much,” Basil tells me. “The security agents who killed the other protesters weren’t even arrested. The court said they were acting in self-defense, even though they were the only ones with guns, so nobody was prosecuted. My family sued, of course. But the judge was in the pocket of One World. The company paid Bennigan’s fine, confiscated all video footage, and let him retire quietly. The protests stopped. Everybody went home. It was all for nothing.”
We sit quietly. He’s caught in memories while I try to make sense of a world in which reality has shifted once again.
Then out of the silence, Basil says, “That’s when my family fell apart. Not that it was ever all that good in the first place, but at least before Arol died, my parents tried to feed me. After it happened, my mom started with the drugs and my dad was so angry he got arrested and thrown in jail, so I was pretty much on my own.”
I shake my head in disbelief as I imagine that curly-haired little-boy version of Basil learning to fend for himself in the Outer Loop while I was playing Pesky Petey with my social-time buddies at the EntertainArena “I wish I knew what else to say…”
Basil pulls away from me. “There’s nothing to say.” He stands up and stretches. “We should probably rest here for the night.” He heads toward the car. “In the morning we can get our bearings.” It’s clear he’s done talking about the past.
I try to pull myself together and focus on what’s happening now. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“I don’t think anyone knows where we are.”
“Including us?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. I get up and hobble behind him. He helps me climb into the car. We shut the door and get into the backseat, where we can lie on our sides, nestled together like the spoons I once saw in a drawer at the Relics. He drapes one hand across my hip, and within seconds he’s snoring but I can’t fall asleep.
There’s too much to think about. Mostly I wonder what my parents know about life beyond the Inner Loop. They say that everything they’ve done has been to give me a better life, but would they feel their work had been worth it if they knew what Basil’s family has gone through as a result? Can any one person’s life be truly good if it’s at another person’s expense?
I poke Basil gently. When he doesn’t stir, I slowly move his hand off my body and lean into the front seat where I take out my Gizmo. I mute the sound and hunch over the screen, making sure the light won’t disturb him.
I’m surprised that I can still get a weak signal out this far, but those waves must travel well over fallow land. The first thing I do is look for newsfeeds about the protests, but the only new footage I can find is what’s been added to our “crime spree” montage. In addition to running from the authorities at the Analog meeting, busting out of rehab, wreaking havoc at the EA and wrecking a car, kidnapping Yaz and stiffing Fiyo, stealing a motorbike, and running off with biofuel after beating up the station owners, we’re now accused of not paying for services at a private medical clinic, beating up ordinary citizens (Ribald and Garvy), and single-handedly looting an Outer Loop Synthamil distribution point before stealing a security vehicle. Even without the sound, I have no trouble understanding the story Ahimsa’s PR team is spinning.
Obviously, I’m not going to get any real information from the usual channels, so I head over to the Dynasaur chats to see what I can learn. I’m half afraid to log on. What if everyone believes the smear campaign against me? Or worse, what if knowing my real identity—that I’m Max Apple and Lily Nguyen’s privy daughter who’s run off with an Outer Loop boy—is even more damning than Ahimsa’s lies? I decide I’d rather know what I’m up against than keep my head in the sand. Now that my identity as HectorProtector has been revealed, I don’t have to worry about finding a VPN, so I log on using some network signal that’s found it’s way out this far and start perusing the chats. What I find brings tears to my eyes.
My video of the geophags looting the Synthamil supply has not only been uploaded to the site, but it has thousands of hits. Even better, the best Dynasaur programmers are working nonstop to hack One World security so my video is the first thing people will see when they enter ordinary One World sites in the morning. Every time One World patches a hole in the security, the Dynasaurs look for a new way in. I find messages from Dynasaurs organizing other Synthamil distribution takeovers, inspired by the geophags. And more and more people have gathered at the prison, demanding the release of the other imprisoned Analogs. The only person missing from all the chatter is AnonyGal. This makes no sense to me. She’s exactly the kind of person who would be involved, but she’s nowhere on the chats. However, someone new has showed up and strangely, he or she is going by the name YAZ.
Can’t be, I think. But just in case, I ping her to ask. She doesn’t answer. So I send a quick, quiet vid to her message center, but it immediately bounces back. My heart sinks. One World probably knocked her off-line and confiscated her Gizmo when they arrested her. I read through some of YAZ’s comments on the threads, and I have to admit, it sounds like my Yaz, so I direct message her through the Dynasaur chat.
YAZ is that you?
Within seconds, I have an answer.
Can u believe it? Me, a Dynasaur!
I press my hand over my mouth to stop from laughing out loud.
How?
Long story, deets later, but short version is, yr dad got me out of OW custody then set me up with a jalopy (sp?) some crazy thing he built & showed me how to get online without being traced—seriously awesome. still got my hovercam tho:)
My dad?
Yep. Yr dad = amazing. Yr fam is soooo worried ab U.
Really?
YES!!!! We all R. Where R U
I hesitate. The truth is I don’t know where I am, but also I can’t be sure this is really Yaz or if it is that I can trust her. Behind me, Basil stirs. “Apple?” he says.
“I’m here,” I whisper then quickly send off one last text.
I’m ok more soon.
I cloak the Gizmo before I pocket it and climb over the seat to nestle up against Basil again. He hugs me close and presses his nose into my hair. “I thought you were gone,” he says sleepily.
“I wouldn’t leave,” I tell him.
We lie twisted up together, our breath synchronized, as I gaze out the window at the stars above me again. When I was little, if I woke up from a bad dream, Grandma Apple would take me outside, and we’d look at the one lone star bright enough to shine through the haze that covers the Loops. Make a wish, she’d say. Now I wish I knew who to trust, who’s really on my side. But it seems childish to expect help from some cosmic light, a mere projection of the past onto the present. I close my eyes and drift into a heavy sleep with Basil’s arms wrapped snugly around me.
PART 3
THE HINTERLANDS
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”
—Che Guevara
All night, I dream of war—flashes of artillery, earthshaking explosions from bombs, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire overhead, but I’m too exhausted to wake myself up fully, until a
familiar gnawing in my belly rouses me. I struggle to open my eyes and see shimmering patterns on the ceiling above me. Basil’s at my side. We bob and spin. The growling in my stomach turns into the roar of rushing water, and I force myself to sit up.
“What the hell?” I shout when I put my feet into a cold puddle on the floorboards.
Basil jerks awake. “Where are we? What’s happening?” He presses himself against the window. Water swirls, frothy and brown, on all sides of us as the world rushes by, but I can’t make sense of what I see. We’re in a car, but we’re not driving. We’re in the water, but this isn’t a boat. Then Basil shouts, “Flash flood!” He bashes his shoulder against the door but the pressure from the water outside is too strong. “Give me your crutch!”
I scramble to find it in the rising water, which has filled the wheel wells and reaches the seat. “Can you swim?” he asks as he smashes the crutch against the window until the glass shatters.
“Of course I can! Can you?” I yell back, but I don’t hear his answer because water pours in through the opening, tilting the car hard to the left then back up to the right. The last thing I hear before getting a face full of water is Basil screaming, “Kick! Kick!”
I lift my head and take a final deep breath then push off the seat. Ahead of me, Basil slips through the window then he turns, hair swirling in the current, cheeks puffy with air, to look for me underwater. I fight against the torrent filling the car and grab the edge of the window to haul myself through. The car slips behind me like a lost shoe and sinks into the murky swirl, pulling me down with it. I swim as hard as I can but I’m disoriented. I somersault and twist, trying to find Basil, but I can’t see anything. The roiling water bullies me forward. My lungs scream for air and I start to go limp. I feel as if I’m on a cloud, watching myself struggle in the water when a voice inside of me says, Fight! I see light above my head, so I kick as hard as I can and pop up above the surface, gasping and flailing.
