by A. L. Davroe
Reaching between her bosom, she pulls out a grizzled key then crouches over the lock. “I’ve been waiting for a very long time to give this to someone who is worthy, and if it isn’t you, young lady, then I don’t know who is,” she whispers, her voice urgent.
I can’t resist glancing around the cellar in search of someone from whom she might need to hide her voice. I can hear carriages rumbling through the covered bridge below, but I can’t imagine anyone could hear us down there.
She opens the box and rummages down to the very bottom. When she comes back up her perfect coiffed hair is mussed, and there’s dust all over the front of her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she sits back and unwraps the package she rescued with deft, certain movements.
When the paper falls away and I see what’s inside I don’t know what it is or how to react. It’s a patched-together bit of cloth made with rough-spuns and crude, faded fabric, not at all something I’d expect from a woman selling such fine cloth. “Uh,” I breathe as she presses the musty, water-stained thing into my hands. “What is it?”
She looks up at me, her eyes bright despite the dimness. “It’s a freedom quilt.”
“Freedom quilt?” I repeat. I hold it up, trying to see what sort of properties a freedom quilt carries, but all I can see are the rough patches, tattered threads, and uneven decoration. “What does it do?”
She pushes my hands out of the way and smoothes the fabric over my lap. I can feel the rough seams and mistakes even through my cutoffs. Whoever made it was a terrible seamstress and had no eye for color. It’s as if a child created it, the images crude and blocky, the stitches large and irregular, the beading and designs asymmetrical. “It’s a map,” she whispers and points at the quilt between us. “This will take you to the Central Dominion.”
A few minutes later, I’m hustled back upstairs, my “map” carefully folded and encased in a swath of fine red-and-white striped cloth with a fleur-de-lis pattern along the white strips.
Guster straightens from where he was leaning, looking casual and sexy, by the bank of windows. “Find something you liked?”
I give him a wide-eyed expression that doesn’t even begin to convey my feelings in this moment and glance back at the woman who smiles conspiratorially and pats down a strand of dusty hair. I turn back to him and nod.
He loops his hand under my elbow and, grinning, turns me around. “Excellent. Let’s go make that marriage happen.”
When we get a couple of blocks away from the shop, Guster powers down the vivacycle and turns into a grassy area under a tree.
“Why did we stop?” I ask as he dismounts and moves toward a wrought iron bench under the tree.
He sits down, settling his elbows on his knees, and then gives me a long, heavy look. Finally he smirks. “You gonna sit there and stare at me all day, Elle, or are you going to come sit with me and tell me all about that thing you’re carrying?”
I glance at the striped fabric I’d tucked under my body for the ride. “Fabric?”
He props his chin on a fist and puts on theatrical airs. “Oh really? Never would have guessed that one.” He sobers. “What’s inside the fabric?”
Catching the playful note, I lift a brow and try to look like I have no idea what he’s talking about. “What makes you think there’s something inside?”
“Because you’d never pick out that fabric. Besides the fact that it’s just not sensible for what you need, you wouldn’t wear stripes if your life depended on it. At least, not willingly.”
I cock my head. He’s right. I hate stripes, but how does he know that? I glance down at my skirt, which is striped. I had said it was ugly…hadn’t I? Had I mentioned it was ugly because it was striped? I must have.
“We also both know you’re an Aristocrat and can’t sew for shit. So? What is it?”
Sighing, I get off the vivacycle and move to sit beside him. I don’t put distance between us. I can’t, because I don’t want to, and I’m not certain that any distance between us wouldn’t get hastily closed anyway. Personal boundaries all but evaporate when riding with someone on a vivacycle, and it feels like I’m used to his large body beside mine. I hand him the package, and he unravels the fabric and squints at the quilt. “Wow, it’s uh, it’s great. You’ll look amazing in it,” he says, voice strained.
I slap his arm, offended. “I didn’t pick it out, you ass. She gave it to me.”
As if he can see the use of it, Guster nods. Then he gets to his feet and opens it. Holding both ends, he cocks his head one way and then the next. “I guess it will be an okay disguise. They’d definitely take you as a beggar if you wear this.”
I give him a flat look. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.”
He spins it around and puts it over his head, cloaking himself like the acolytes in the Oracle’s temple had been. “No? It’s a cracked burial shroud, don’t you think? It’s so ugly I don’t think I’d even have to rot much to scare the pulse out of someone.”
Crossing my arms, I look away, trying not to laugh. “Hell wouldn’t even want you.”
He leans in close. “You would, though.”
Holding back a grin, I push him away. “You stink like a corpse.”
He pulls the fabric off his head and wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, could use a good scrub.”
“Could use an incinerator, more like.”
Guster yanks it off his shoulders, spreads it over the grass, and stares at it for a long minute. He moves to a corner, then to another, examining.
I try to ignore him, watching the beautiful people ride and walk by in the street beyond, but his lean form moving back and forth and his dark eyes tracing invisible shapes on the ground becomes more engrossing. I could stare at him for hours. And maybe I do, because I don’t come back to my senses until a large clock tower to my left starts chiming. Shaking myself out of my Guster-induced trance, I pretend to have been staring elsewhere and say, “Have you found the meaning of life yet?”
Out of the corner of my eye he sits down on the grass. “Well, this part here is Canal Town.”
My eyes snap back to him. He has his elbow propped on his knee and his chin propped on the respective fist, his dark eyes intent on the corner piece. “What?”
He points to the corner square with his free hand. At the center is a jumble of blue strings crisscrossing one another in a geometric pattern. I move off the bench and sit beside him. Closer, I can see that colorful beads have been strung along the blue thread. In one area there is a gold disk and in another a pair of black arrows that have been sewn in opposing directions, one shorter, one longer.
I glance up at the city around us. Blue canals frequented by colorful fish and people. A golden dome. A clock tower.
He lowers his hand and grunts to himself. “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“I don’t understand how to read it.”
I scrunch my brow. “Read it?”
“Yeah,” he reasons. “I mean, this is obviously a map. Here’s Canal Town and that square over there…” He points at a sandy yellow square with tiny Xs clustered along one edge, “is Garibal.”
“Garibal?”
“Yeah, can’t you see the wind turbines on the ridges?”
“All I see are black Xs on a yellow square.” I give him a strained expression. “I think maybe you need to recalibrate or something, Gus.”
He shakes his head, his eyes never leaving the blanket of squares and shapes. “It’s a map,” he insists. He reaches out and puts his hand on the center square, covering the silver and gold threads. “And it leads to the Central Dominion.”
I feel my face fall in surprise. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s exactly what she said. How can you tell?”
Guster’s forehead scrunches. “But it doesn’t make sense. Everything I know about Nexis indicates that Nexis is an orb, p
laying fields overlapping playing fields, like a…” He pauses, looking for a good analogy.
“Onion?” I offer, annoyed that he’s brushing off my question and hoping I can stump his uncanny intelligence by using some of my own.
He nods once. “Onion.” Then he shifts and indicates the quilt. “These are squares, organized in a rectangular pattern, not a circle. So, I don’t understand the arrangement. If I did, if I could see how the fields are lain on top of one another then we might be able to see what order to go in to get to the center.”
I reach out and touch the fabric, marveling at the sudden tiny details of each of the patches. There are hundreds of squares. The fact that Guster found Canal Town and Garibal so quickly—plus the fact that he knows what an onion is—are key indicators that he’s smarter than I originally gave him credit for. I think about how he talked to that woman in the shop. It’s like he knew exactly what to say to get what he wanted out of her.
What had he wanted out of her? Did he know she had this map? I lift my eyes and narrow them at him.
He glances up and smiles, confused. “What?”
“You’re completely unreal.”
“What?”
“How’d you know she’d give me this? How do you know it’s a freedom quilt?”
He glances back down at the quilt. “Is that what she called it?”
“Don’t dodge the question. How’d you know what to say to get her to give this up?” I demand.
He levels his eyes at me, the tightness in them saying he doesn’t like my tone. “I didn’t know.”
I frown at him. “I don’t believe that. You knew exactly what to say to get her to gush, just like you know exactly what to say to me. It’s like you’ve got some kind of cheat code to see what you shouldn’t see and say what you shouldn’t be intelligent enough to say.”
His brow lifts again, amusement clear on his face. “A cheat code?”
I blush a little. “Well, yeah.”
“That’s brilliant,” he exclaims with a laugh. “You’re such a Programmer.”
I feel my jaw drop. “How do you know I’m a Programmer?”
He smirks. “Eugenics, Elle. It’s hard not to be yourself when you’ve been bred to be that way. You’re Programming stock; it’s obvious by the way you interpret the world. You see the patterns, and you see what’s wrong, but you can’t see the true anomalies for what they are.” He points at the quilt to make his point.
I don’t understand a word coming out of his mouth, but he continues talking, relieving me of responding.
“And I’m no different. I know how to read people, know how to say things in just a way to get what I want. I manipulate, I manage, I lead. It’s not something to be especially proud of, but it’s useful. Wouldn’t you agree?”
There’s only one kind of Aristocrat with those kinds of traits. He’s a Manager. And Managers are Elite. All of them. I suddenly want to run away from Guster, because he’s so big and I’m so little. Loving a Manager is just as impossible as loving someone like Quentin Cyr. I try to shrug it off. “So, you’re a thief and a liar.”
He shrugs. “I’ve already admitted these things, but I’m charismatic and loveable, nonetheless.” He grins at me, trying to ease me. He’s aware that he’s just spooked me. If he’s as good at reading people as he claims to be, then he has to realize it. When my expression doesn’t change, his becomes serious. “Are you going to be afraid of me now? Because you can leave if you want. I haven’t chained you to my side, have I?”
I bite my lip. In some ways he has. Not physical chains, but if not chains that keep me thinking of him throughout the day, then what? “No.”
“Good. Then stop with the drama, Elle. Either decide you’re going to trust me, or go off on your own. I don’t want to do this every time you learn that I’m a little more like every other human being and not as perfect as you think I should be.”
I look away, feeling ashamed. He’s right. I’m judging him for something he hasn’t even done yet. And what girl wouldn’t be interested in a man who can read someone as well as he can? Someone like that can understand you, is aware of how to help you.
“Fine,” I huff, crossing my arms. “I’ll try.”
Unconvinced that I’m being sincere, he narrows his eyes at me. “It’s kind of sick how mistrusting being Aristocrats has made us.”
I blink. I’ve never considered myself to be a mistrusting person. But…I look down, thoughtful. Maybe I should have been. Just look at what happened with Katrina. “The Aristocracy is a backstabbing lot of social climbers. Their only concerns in life are that of themselves and their advancements.” He knows it, I know it. “So,” I say, looking back up. “If eugenics are to prevail, then we will be just like the society that made us.”
The skin under Guster’s eyes tightens as he tips his head to one side. “Do you ever wonder why our ancestors destroyed Real World?”
I furrow my brow. “The Bio-Nuclear War was an accident.”
He looks away, his eyes trailing a boat on the canal. “That’s what they tell us. They say it was terrorists who started it, and maybe it was. But there were a lot of other factors that were working against humanity even before the war. Economic downturn, environmental degradation, political strife, globalization, the growing reliance on technology, allowing the wrong people to take positions of power, and allowing these things to continue to spiral out of control because people were too selfish to give up the convenience it offered.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Seems strange that our ancestors—out of so many millions—were allowed in the dome. Why them and not someone else?”
“G-Corp chose the best and the brightest; we all know that.”
“Who decided they were the best?” he demands. “Back then cities were being leveled, pandemics were running rampant, neighbors turned against neighbors, infrastructures were crumbling. Society was imploding. Who took the time to conduct these tests? How were they funded and controlled? Where was the data stored? How did they reach out from coast to blacked-out coast in search of humanity’s best hope?” He shakes his head, his expression weary. “It was those with the power, those with the wealth and the right connections who lived through the terror of nuclear winter, radiation poisoning, and the drift of biological weaponry. The same people who caused it in the first place are the ones who rose out of it, barely scathed.”
A long moment of silence passes in which the horrible reality of my existence becomes clear. The original inhabitants of the dome weren’t the best and brightest at all. They were the most ruthless and cunning—the ones who were most willing to sacrifice others so that they might live. And I am a part of them, part of a mass eugenics program where society strives to produce “the best”…from a base stock of cheats and liars.
As I realize just how horrible the thought of being like those in the dome is, inexplicable tears sting my eyes. “I don’t want to be like that.” I whip my head back and forth, rejecting his words. I’ve seen the world. This game has shown me what we once had. I can’t bear knowing the blood in my veins is the blood of someone so heartless—that the likelihood of those living around me doing it all over again is beyond inevitable. “I don’t want to be like them.”
He shifts in the grass beside me, coming close and putting an arm around me. I shrug him off. I don’t want his intoxicating closeness. I don’t want his wild scent and tempting lips beckoning and making me forget what’s important. This is a time for me and my own thoughts.
Seeming to understand my need for control, he resigns himself to just sitting close by, offering his presence and comfort should I need it.
A long time later, I lie with Guster on the quilt, waiting for the game to pull us out. Now that the fresh air and sunshine and grass have touched the squares of the map, it no longer smells so foul or looks so ugly. I trace the squares with
my sore, bloodshot eyes, searching for something to connect everything, and frown to myself. Guster is right. I have a Programmer’s brain. I’m looking for the coded pattern, searching for the algorithm to crack this mystery. Trying to find the logic in all the chaos.
The knowledge that these traits are probably so keen within me because I have the mind of a criminal sours the glory of the chase, and I grimace. Tricksters. We’re all tricksters.
Guster rolls onto his stomach and brushes his fingers against my forearm. “You okay?”
I shrug and look up at him. “I’m sorry I freaked out. I didn’t mean to be cold with you.”
He smiles, gentle, and instead of speaking he says I know by leaning in and kissing me softly. I roll back a little, beckoning him closer, because right now all I want is to lose myself in the goodness of what exists between the two of us.
He follows willingly, pulling his weight halfway over me and caging me in with his arms. After a few seconds the soft kiss becomes more intense and, squirming, I run my hands along his sides and back. Wanting more of him, I slip them under his jacket, allowing myself to finally touch the muscles under his tight shirt. I feel him groan against my lips and, smiling, he speaks in a teasing whisper. “Elle, have you forgotten we’re in public?”
I had, and the embarrassment of it is enough to break the kiss and have me rolling back onto my stomach in mortification.
He touches my spine, a warm reminder of no hard feelings between either of us. “What do you see?”
I don’t bother hiding what he already knows I’ve been doing. Trying not to look ashamed of myself, I say, “We can assume that all of these squares represent an actual playing field in Nexis. These can’t be all the fields, so this sample must represent some key relationship to getting to Central Dominion. That in mind, we have to think about what makes each one unique to the map. All the squares are exactly alike in size and shape. But,” I emphasize, “each square has a shape inside of it—some have a circle, some have a geometric shape, some have an irregular shape. To top that off, the shapes inside the squares have pieces taken out of them.”
