The Forever Watch

by David Ramirez

  We each draw out a spool of line, thread it through a belt loop, and anchor the end against one surface with tape.

  Looking at his face, really seeing his eyes, I squint.

  The lines across his forehead are stark and deep, and he is looking far away, into his head. Maybe finally seeing confirmation of a vast, hidden truth underneath the placid existence of the crew is more than even he expected.

  “Now you’re the one who’s so calm,” Barrens murmurs as he folds himself around me. “Your career was figuring the limits of what’s on the ship and how much and how quickly it can be used, to keep the balance you kept talking about. You’ve just seen that there’s so much more, and you seem … unruffled?”

  Am I? Maybe I am too overwhelmed to show it. Maybe it is bone-deep in me, or rather, core-deep, at the primal center of the brain. Maybe it is just habit. I was indoctrinated all my life to think only about the mission and to abide all else, so this too I abide.

  “I don’t know why.”

  I turn, push the hood back, and tuck my head under his chin. His stubble still feels odd against my close-shaven scalp. I hear the slow beating of his heart. Something huge has come together in his mind, something he is still figuring out the words to describe.

  “And how about you? You are uncovering truths. Secrets that are vitally important.”

  He leans back from me and we watch each other for a while, through the mist of our breaths. The numbness we feel is not because of the cold. A tremble starts inside him, just long enough to set his mouth to quivering.

  “Should we stop, you think?” We don’t have to go back to the Archivists, Hana. We can just … just hide. Live out a quiet life on the fringes.

  It takes many icy breaths for me to understand what I see on his face, lit faintly by the energy from the emitter plates on our skin. My hunter, my protector, he never fears for himself. But for me, he is afraid.

  Leon, could you live with that? If we just quit?

  It’s not simple. I thought it would be. I thought we could just find out what’s what, let everyone know, and everyone would make their own decisions. I never thought before of how …

  “What is it?”

  “Never thought before of how just the knowing can hurt someone,” Barrens whispers.

  He has figured something out. And he wants what?

  “You need my permission to tell me?”

  Behind his eyes is a storm. The crackle and flicker of his red and my blue make unreal masks of our faces.

  He kisses me then, and there is something in the taste and feel, and the pressure, of his lips. Something I don’t understand. Whenever his words were not enough before, there was so much that would pass between us with just touch and gesture. In this cold, dark place, where there is no one else but us, no one else to see, or hear, the nature of my fear changes.

  Oh, but I am afraid, my knight. I am.

  In the dark, we spin slowly at the ends of our tethers. I want to think we are okay. He must sense that we are not, the way I hold on to him so tightly as we drift into sleep.

  I open my eyes, gasping. We’re tangled up. I cut us free from our lines with a small flash of psi, try to wake up all the way.

  Barrens looks down at me. His lip is bleeding. His legs are wrapped around me. My wrists are clamped in his hands, but he is just holding me still, not crushing me. We are still in one of the unpowered sections, no gravity to hold us to the floor. We drift through the frigid air.

  “I’m awake. Ah. Did I do that?”

  “Yes. Bad dreams?”

  Anyone would have nightmares, after all this. “I can’t remember.”

  His eyes search mine. I wonder what he sees. He lets me go and starts rummaging through his pack.

  “Jerky? Biscuits?” He is avoiding something.

  “What did you see just before we got away?”

  “Ah, let me see. Here we go. A real luxury. A little brick of cheese.”

  Don’t say one thing with your words and something else with your body.

  Our slight movements set us turning faster. Irksome, trying to keep our eyes on each other. There is no grid to draw on here, but it takes little power, in zero g, just to stabilize our positions and hold us in place. I choose one surface in the narrow corridor, decide that is the floor, and pull us, feetfirst, against it.

  Okay. I am asking you to tell me. No matter how bad it is.

  He does not look nearly so large now, after I’ve seen the creature in that horrible place. He starts to talk, stops. Tries again. He breaks a biscuit in half and wolfs it down, tears a big chunk of synth-meat jerky and swallows it with a long gulp of water from his canteen.

  “Do you remember our Yule together?”

  “Leon,” I warn him. I won’t let him dodge this.

  “Not trying to change the subject. It’s relevant.”

  I shake my head when he offers me the jerky. Even if it is not real meat, I want nothing to do with even artificial stuff. Not after that awful place. Those smells. I accept a stick of puffed rice.

  You saw it too. You just have to look inside the memory. You’re smarter than me. You have all the pieces.

  Can that be so?

  My concentration slips away, and we come loose from “the floor.”

  “No.”

  “Hana…”

  I do not want to know after all.

  You already know.

  Pulling in my knees, I am a ball, featureless. Nothing. A perfect memory can be a curse. There is no forgetting. I see the ID number on the plaque on the cage. I have seen it before. It was printed in Barrens’s careful, cramped scrawl, left for me after Yule.

  “What does it mean?”

  He winces. I guess I have lost control over my voice. I’m shrill. I hate losing control. But when have we ever had control over own lives on this cursed ship?

  “I could have made a mistake when I retrieved the ident code,” Barrens says softly. He does not believe it.

  “But you didn’t.”

  I fling myself away, hurtling down the shaft.

  Or I try. He was expecting it, and aglow with superhuman enhanced reflexes, his hand catches mine. Despite my maximum unamplified energy output, the addition of his mass results in only a little more than half the speed I would have gotten, on my own.

  “Let me go!” Crying. I hate how I look when I cry. I’m pounding on his arms and shoulders.

  Pulled off center, we are about to crash into a wall, but he twists, somehow, and catches us, landing feetfirst and taking the shock with his powerful legs.

  Can’t talk anymore. I can only hang on to him.

  I try to drown myself in other memories. Safe memories. A cat. Someone else’s child. Delicious meals. Everything reminds me of what I cannot escape in my own head. Children. Meat. Death.

  He is right. I knew it already subconsciously.

  My tears drift away, perfect spheres. They will freeze, eventually. For just a little while, I let it out, let go of how I feel. Barrens’s arms around me keep me from flying to pieces. His rough, deep bass rumbles through a soft, crooning nothing.

  It might have been a few minutes. Or longer. Then I stop looking away. The world has not changed. It is I who changed, in the knowing. The choice to run is long behind me.

  The place we just saw is a prison. This is certain. The monster escaped from one of the cells. And on one of the cells, I saw an ID code that matches what I learned in a better, simpler time, only months before, is the ident number of my missing child.

  My child is one of them.

  27

  The way is cold and dark and grim with just the two of us and the silent weight of the thoughts in our heads. There was fear when we were outbound on our voyage of exploration, but there was excitement too, and the camaraderie of Barrens’s tight-knit group. Now, it’s all exhaustion, confusion.

  It is cold enough that I accept Barrens’s offer of his awful cigarettes. I cough and choke, but the chemical buzz of the synthetic nicot
ine helps me forget the hunger, and holding it in my mouth and pulling and puffing is at least some distraction from the constant, bone-freezing cold. The smoke trails behind us as I push myself along and follow as he leaps from wall to wall.

  I want this long walk to be over. I am tired constantly and ache as if I have pushed my talent too far again. Yet I also want it to last forever, just the two of us, because when we arrive, decisions will have to be made and the data rattling around in our heads discussed.

  I do not want to think about it anymore, but my mind keeps going.

  There are only so many possibilities regarding that dark place filled with monsters. Why are they kept alive at all? Why are there so many? My Implant supplies me with perfect glimpses, and at a rough estimate there are as many of those creatures as there are of us. My child is one of them. Are they all children of humanity? How? Why?

  One day away from Sanctuary, two pieces align. Realization wells up from the darkest corner of my thoughts.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no!”

  Barrens stops immediately. “What?”

  He gathers me up gingerly. I pepper him with a mess of thought fragments.

  The numbers. It’s the numbers. More memories. The annual report on Breeding Duty is in my head. The ratio. I know this because City Planning needs to know this. To maintain the correct number of homes, keep up the correct production of farms, educate the right number of Keepers … And also, there is no forgetting the numbers Barrens’s people found, those hidden stores and farms and water-reclamation plants.

  Barrens winces. “Slower,”

  “Leon. You can’t tell them.” I pull back. My voice wants to twist free. I won’t yell. I won’t shriek. I try to be cold. Analytical. “Especially if I’m right. Promise you won’t.”

  He looks lost. He bites his lip and nods.

  “The birthrate in the Habitat is just enough to maintain an equivalent population of the creatures in that prison.”

  He blinks and squints and turns it round and round in his head.

  “Leon.” My voice is harsh, hoarse. “Every Breeder. Gives birth. To one of them.”

  Our flashlights, dangling from wrist straps, sometimes shine right into our faces. I glimpse the moment it hits him and every muscle goes slack.

  Again. Show it to me again. Slower.

  Mala’s voice in my ears, going over my meditation. Slow the breath. Slow the heartbeat. Think focused and tight and clear, so that the Implant can process the signals.

  I think to him, one by one, each relevant document. As I do, I explain what the numbers mean. Here is the current population of the Habitat. There is the number of women who go through Breeding Duty each year. Now, the annual Retirement rate. Then, a 2-D still image of when I first looked out upon the dark city. My best guess on the number of prison cells. I end with the plaque on the one cage that matches the ID code he retrieved for my baby. A short sequence of how wildly destructive that one escaped creature was.

  “They are all our children. And all our children are they.”

  Dizzy with the scale of it. The deceptions. The mechanisms of control.

  “How? Where … Where do the normal kids come from?” His mouth shapes, over and over, It can’t be.

  It follows. I could still be so wrong. But: “The simplest reason why they must be kept alive is that we need them. If … if we give birth to them, maybe they give birth to us.”

  It takes a whole day more of us just floating there, by turns shaking our heads, nodding, trying not to think about it and obsessing over every logical step anyway, before we get hold of ourselves.

  “You’re right,” Barrens says. “We can’t tell anyone.”

  Our supplies run out just as we taste warm air and gravity reasserts itself. Thirsty, drained in every way, we drag ourselves forward. With a metallic clatter, Barrens opens the door to the Sanctuary.

  Sleep. Food. Drink.

  My recovery from my incarceration and then almost burning out my Implant by pushing my talents during the escape must still be dragging at me. I should be supporting Barrens loudly when he argues with the others, but it is all I can do to stand at his side and offer my presence.

  The city of the dead. That is what they’re calling it. The Necropolis. Discovering what is there has set fire to the cause, and not in a good way. Most of Barrens’s own group have already left to join the mass gathering of Archivists elsewhere in the ship, on the orders of Thorn, who, after the death of Gomez, is now the most popular of the cell leaders. Only four remained to wait for Barrens’s return: Tommy, Gregory, Bullet, and Susan.

  Worse, the Archivists have already released Meena’s death out there, to the Nth Web.

  Already, fearful discussions are starting to flare up across the forums.

  In the day longer we took to return, the movement has left Barrens behind.

  He is red, smoldering, furious. “You aren’t giving people knowledge,” he hisses at the display. “It’s only spreading fear.” He paces back and forth, too upset to be still.

  Thorn still wears his fancy waistcoats and trim trousers. Under the lean, handsome face and the bright blue eyes, he projects malice and glee. “Is that you saying that, Barrens? Or is it the ISec plant at your side? What happened to your conviction?”

  Taunting now. Would he be doing that if they were speaking in person? The effect of Barrens’s looming physical presence does not extend across virtual space.

  Around us, I can hear the others shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. I already know that Barrens cannot win this argument. Nothing he says matters. He grows angrier still; it pours off him in waves. It is school all over again for him. Maneuvering and deals behind his back. He thought they all had a common goal. He tries to talk about the danger of isolated data without context. He explains his concerns about disorder. Stumbling, halting words about the greater responsibility to the mission.

  He tries to appeal to the other leaders, calls them by name. Jules, Nena, Dan—most of them, I do not know. Over the link, they refuse to meet his eyes.

  “Enough! We have already put it to a vote. Turn over your findings, your memories. We already have the data of those that returned ahead of you. Or are you becoming like them? Are we to trust you with knowing what secrets to share and what to withhold, like good little Ministry pawns? This is not just your movement! We have to stop the Mincemeat experiments!”

  It is only a twitch of the shoulders. Inside, I feel my man staggering, suddenly adrift. What can we possibly tell them we found down there? That it is not some vast set of experiments on humanity, but something worse?

  “If we get enough of them thinking, Leonard, just imagine! The crew itself will pressure the secret-keepers into revealing what is hidden. They cannot Adjust everyone!”

  In the heat of the moment, nobody notices who cuts the transmission. It probably looks as if Barrens did, seated there before the terminal. Only, it was me. How did I do that? I thought it, but did not yet direct it to the workstations, so how did Archie pick up my command?.

  Barrens sits on one of the oversize chairs made specifically for him. His whisper cuts through the air. “All of you, take some rec time. Susan, if you are up to it, someone needs to monitor the boards, the newsfeeds, keep an eye on what’s going on in the Hab.”

  Their faces are heavy with the things they want to say. In the end, only Bullet says, “We’re still with ya, boss.” And the others nod, before drifting elsewhere in a Sanctuary that is now too large for those who are left.

  Did I start this, Hana? Or did I just let other people use me? Are those idiots doing what I wanted all along? Should I try to help them? Stop them? Thorn thinks of revolution and power and politics. I just wanted to find out what happened to Cal. How did it get like this?

  Leon, what does your gut tell you about how people respond when they’re afraid?

  Barrens is a student of history. Even our cut-up, redacted, censored mess of history still has examples. Then there is his training for deal
ing with crowds. With mobs. He presses his knuckles against his eyes, asks, voice chipped and cracked, “How do we stop this?”

  Everything crashes together, picking up momentum. Events that are minor separately weave into each other and fuel inevitability.

  Information Security ignored it at first, in the feeds. They attempted to work as they always have, in the shadows, with their own resources. They blocked off access wherever the synthesized memory of Meena’s death could be found, deleted the centers from which the illicit memory propagated. But the network of the Nth Web was bequeathed to us by the Builders, a vast system beyond human design. When Thorn used Archie to plant those black seeds, it shot them far and wide through every Analytical Node, too widespread for ISec to stop.

  During those first days after the Archivists spread their weapons of information, it was only in the discussions in the shadowy frontier of the unregulated, the ghost zones of dataspace, where awareness of the awful memories of Meena’s death lived. The memory spread from one crewman to another, converted one skeptic at a time with the potency of its raw fear. Official news covered the usual mundane affairs of production quotas and efficiency and our slow progress through the deep emptiness of space, with sprinklings of the doings of Council-sponsored celebrities, Web stars, singers, dancers, their couplings and breakups and spats. There was no propaganda response to soothe the growing anxiety. By the time we reached the Sanctuary, 30 percent of the population was actively discussing Mincemeat, and there was total, 100 percent, awareness of the issue.

  Susan and I analyze the Archivists’ Web operations and, based on her smidgen of ISec knowledge, what Information Security’s responses are accomplishing. We make projections and watch our simulations unfold. One Archivist makes ten postings in as many minutes. He influences the discussion of ten online. Outside of the Nth Web, those ten talk about it to others face-to-face, and who else can that new ring of worried individuals approach to answer their questions? Like a disease, it spreads.