Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  “If you are sure I have participated in subterfuge, then you know I will not comply with any of your requests,” I.C.C. said.

  “I do, which is why I don’t need you to show this to the convoy. It’ll get done without you.”

  Throughout the conversation, Rail couldn’t force his gaze away from Diego’s face. It wasn’t like looking into a mirror—it was like looking into an alternate reality. If Rail had been born on the convoy proper, would his skin have had the same healthy glow (minus the new bruises and fat lip)? Would he have stood tall and straight in the face of a man like the Master Warden? Would his eyes blaze with the same defiance?

  Didn’t matter—he’d been born a Pit rat, and would die a Pit rat.

  The sudden smack of an uncharged baton at the back of his knees startled him, sending him sprawling into the hot sand. Diego fell concurrently. Lying in the red dust, almost nose to nose, the two of them made eye contact for the first time.

  “Hi,” Diego said sadly.

  “Hello,” Rail replied.

  The Warden hefted them both up by their jumpsuit collars, setting them on their knees.

  “Take a good look,” the Warden yelled. “Because where there’s one roach, there’s always a hundred more.”

  As the Warden rattled on about I.C.C.’s obvious compliance, Margarita gripped Vega’s shoulders.

  “Me,” Vega said. “If he thinks the AI’s been compromised, I’m the prime suspect.”

  “Doesn’t matter right now,” Margarita whispered. “He doesn’t know you’re Diego’s mother.”

  A pounding on the server room door made them all jump.

  “Who is it?” Vega asked I.C.C.

  “Three from Mira Security. Be careful.”

  “Ma’am, are you all right in there? Is your apprentice with you?”

  Vega hurried to the door. “We’re fine. I don’t know where my ap—”

  She was cut off as the three men pushed their way inside, knocking her into the wall. All of their batons were live and poised. “Everyone hit the deck, now!” one ordered. “Hands over your heads, faces to the floorboards.”

  Rich erupted into tears again. Cooing in his ear, Thomas helped his brother to comply.

  The last man through the door clutched Vega by the elbow and led her to her workstation. “We need you to manually override the security feeds on Eden,” he directed, pushing her down into her chair. He eyeballed the monitor already tapped into the feed. “And it looks like you know why.”

  “That’s not going to help us, I.C.C. knows what it’s doing.”

  “I.C.C.’s been compromised, ma’am.”

  “Look, my wife and I are members of the board, we—”

  He slammed a hand over her mouth, cutting her off. “The board has done a piss-poor job of protecting us. The Warden is going to pick up where you lot left off. He’s actually going to clean out the system. We have goddamned terrorists aboard and the board would have done jack-shit while they ran us into the nearest star. So, pardon me if I don’t care that you’re on the board. We’re going to set things right so that you can get back to your bureaucracy in peace. Now, override I.C.C.”

  She jerked away from him. “No.”

  He nodded to one of the other security men, who immediately wound a fist through Margarita’s curly hair and dragged her up off the floor.

  Vega tried to scramble out of her seat. “Leave her alone!”

  A steady hand pushed her back down. “Do what I say and she’ll be fine. We don’t want legitimate crew injured.”

  “This is mutiny,” she spat at him.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but this is war.”

  Vega looked at Margarita, her face an open question. “Vega . . .” Margarita warned.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Vega chanted to herself before saying, “I’m so sorry. I.C.C., I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” the AI replied. “I’ve already released the feed. Better the compromised computer do it.”

  Vega turned to her keyboard and quickly searched for all active monitors. Every last screen on board was live, and every speaker.

  There was no hiding now.

  The Warden’s voice rang throughout the ship: “Take a look. Take a good look. I have no doubt there are more among you. Right now, my men are uploading pictures of every last one of my prisoners for you. Look at them—remember them—and tell me if you’ve ever seen those faces before. If they’re out there—and they are out there—then it’s up to you to find them and contain them.”

  “I will not release those files,” I.C.C. told the security men. “And Vega can do nothing about it. I’ve stopped the upload.”

  On screen, the Master Warden whipped off his mirrored glasses, revealing his eyes. They were surprisingly . . . normal. They didn’t look like the eyes of an evil man. If anything, they were sad. Tired.

  The security camera zoomed in. His expression was pained. “We have to protect this family,” he declared. “From whatever threats—internal and external. Hiding these people—these sleeper agents—protects no one. I await your compliance.”

  With the sunglasses gone, Margarita and Vega made the connection simultaneously, but Thomas stood before either could signal to the other.

  “Get down,” one of the men shouted. “Back down!”

  “That guy . . .” Thomas said. “The Master Warden, he’s . . .” The boy ran a palm over his chin and up his jawline.

  “I said, get down!”

  “Look at him!” Thomas yelled back. “Look at him and tell me I’m wrong.”

  Vega glanced between the monitor and the boy and felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, I.C.C., tell me you didn’t.”

  A Pit guard strode up beside the Master Warden. “Sir, we have one shuttle incoming. Piloted by one of ours. Says they’ve caught one of the infiltrators.”

  “Might as well add them to the display. Let them on.”

  Minutes later, when the hall seal unlocked—looking for all the world like a black hole opening in the mountainous horizon—Diego had to stop himself from crying out “Madre!”

  She was accompanied by a full deployment of convoy security men and a teenaged boy. Diego recognized him as the future shuttle pilot he’d passed in the halls. The boy with the faraway look. Tom.

  But as he drew closer, Diego realized there was something else frighteningly familiar about him.

  “Ah, Pavon,” the Warden addressed Margarita. “Do you represent the board? Have they come to see my side of things?”

  “The board doesn’t know I’m here. Well, they probably do now.” She looked toward the invisible cameras in the sky. “I’m here to plead for the children. For my son.”

  The Warden eyed the boy she’d brought with her. The young man looked up into the eyes of the Master Warden with the kind of empathetic remorse normally reserved for much older individuals. Diego could tell that Tom had volunteered to come to Eden; he was here by choice.

  “This your son?” the Warden asked.

  “No, he is.” She nodded at Diego. “This—” her hands settled on the other boy’s shoulders “—is Thomas. They are two of ten. Only ten. And they are all children. Not operatives, not spies, not terrorists. Children.”

  “Restrain her,” the Warden ordered. “She’s just admitted to conspiracy against the crew.”

  Margarita didn’t struggle when the Mira security men grabbed her. With a deep breath, she caught Diego’s eye and mouthed, It’ll be okay.

  “As you can see,” Margarita continued. “Thomas is of your line. Warden, he is of your line and he is one of the ten Discontinueds you’ve demanded ‘contained.’”

  Tom stepped forward, closer, invading the Warden’s space. The Master Warden did what he always did when advanced upon; he drew his baton. It zinged to life, poised at Thomas’ belly. He didn’t say anything.

  “The fact is, you are not a convoy member,” she went on. “You were never going to be captain. We needed someone who could do the job. Who
could protect us from . . . from all the rest. But we were wrong. It was wrong. And these ten children are I.C.C.’s gift to us, to show us what we’ve done.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. Look at him. Look at him.”

  He did, face awash with disgust and disbelief and deep hurt.

  The wind picked up as the day grew dimmer—the hot desert-breath shifting into evening chill. The Master Warden’s typically slicked-back hair fell out of place, flopping in the breeze. He bowed his head. Despite the oncoming night, he replaced his glasses, hand less than steady. The baton stayed firm, keeping Thomas at arm’s length.

  Forced calm enveloped the Warden’s face—the kind of stoicism that could easily crumble, that scarcely contained whatever shadowy thoughts raged behind it. “I have bled for this convoy.”

  Diego could barely hear the words. He shivered. The temperature of the air hadn’t yet dropped, but the Warden radiated ice. Somehow, this man, who Diego knew full well intended to kill him, had become more dangerous. Madre, what have you done?

  “I gave up my life. I have no wife, no children, no command. No safe place to sleep at night. All to protect you.” His free arm rose in an accusatory point, right at Margarita’s heart.

  Calmly, the Warden unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled up his undershirt, revealing a series of burns and scars. “Most of these are from the early days. When I tried to go solely by the board’s orders. And you told me it would pass. That they would settle down. They. Them. The refuse you wanted to shove away.”

  Each clipped statement bit at Diego with steely teeth. His gaze swapped between Jamal and the Warden as he truly understood, for the first time, what kind of world existed just a few thousand kilometers from where he lived and worked and laughed.

  “It did pass. Because I made it pass. I put the fear of all that is holy into those animals. You didn’t want to educate them, didn’t want to tell them what crimes their genes had committed. Thought they’d lie down and take it? What was I supposed to do?” He inched forward, and Thomas jumped back from the electrified weapon. “And now you tell me this? That you’ve lied, that you’ve tricked me? What are you expecting? You want me to thank you for pretending I’m one of you?”

  Margarita shook her head, eyes wide—the bluntness of her mistake smacking her across the face.

  The façade of control cracked, and the fire of betrayal burnt through. Everything the Warden believed about his place in the world had been spat upon.

  A knot of worms roiled in Diego’s insides. Miscloned hadn’t meant what he’d thought. He’d thought it a sort of limbo—a denial of his birthright, a fugue state where he was forced to forget who he really was and substitute someone else’s personality for his own.

  But that wasn’t right at all. What a stupid, childish outlook.

  Being miscloned meant he’d been loved. By I.C.C., by Kexin . . .

  To be Discontinued—really part of the interrupted lines—was something else entirely. Diego studied the terror and trauma and hardship etched into Jamal’s dark face—into the Warden’s face. These men had been battered, cornered, cowed, denied—treated here, in space, like people on Earth treated cattle.

  And the convoy members ignored it. They were happy as long as the materials kept flowing, as long as Bottomless was on its way to recovery.

  No thought had been given to this man. To any of them. They were just fleshy pieces of equipment.

  A tremor ran up the Warden’s jaw. He put both hands on the hilt of his weapon, gripping and regripping. “You want me to roll over now?” he asked. “Be a good boy and take my beating? Put my tail between my legs because you’ve shown me a child? There are children his age in the mines, or hadn’t you bothered to take note? You board members—you are the cancer. You are the blight, worse than any Discontinued.”

  The baton rose, high and swift, but it did not aim for Thomas.

  Diego sprinted, moving before he could think. He put himself between the Warden and his madre. The jolt that rattled through his skull was twofold—blunt and heavy, sharp and tingly.

  Points of white light scattered across the dark hole of his vision. The world turned. He felt the ground before he saw it.

  “Diego, Diego!” Margarita’s cries sounded far away. Near his head, a shoe—a woman’s shoe—scrabbled against the dirt, kicking up dust, trying to gain purchase. But someone lifted her up and away.

  “You did this,” the Warden said stoically.

  “No!” came a firm declaration. A voice Diego couldn’t quite place. But it was so familiar. So familiar . . .

  “You did it,” Rail yelled. He felt like he’d left his body. He was floating, up in the false sky, while his mouth flapped freely below. There was no stopping the words; they fell like stones.

  The Master Warden pivoted in his direction, still holding the baton high, clearly surprised. Rail hadn’t deigned to say two words without provocation the entire time they’d held him.

  “You. You hanged them. You killed Sweetcheeks right in front of me. Did you even know he had a name? Do you care that I have a name?

  “It’s your hands on that thing. Your hands on the levers and the triggers and the buttons. Your hands on the prisoners. ‘For every convoy citizen injured, I will choose one of your kind—randomly—for the gallows,’ you said. Remember? But what did I ever do? I dug. In the dirt, in the dust with the radiation and the scrubbers and the heat. That’s all I’ve ever done: drilled like I was told. Taken a shower like I was told. Gone to bed like I was told. Said, yes ma’am and yes sir when expected. Tell me what I ever did to get me standing here right now in this shit.”

  Warm tears blurred his vision, but he didn’t care. The Warden could spew on and on about all he’d gone through for his troubles, but what about Rail? He hadn’t done anything to anyone. Ever. “What did my genetic line even do? And did I do it? Did I do it like you lashed out at that boy? I am not him.” He nodded to the prone Diego. “Do you want to punish me for him getting in the way? Am I responsible for everything my genetic yesterday has ever done? Not just the clones, but the nature-borns? Was my original’s grandfather a good man? Was he a criminal? Maybe you should beat me for his wrongs too!” His throat ached with the effort, felt raw. But before he died he was going to let his killer know exactly how he felt. Because what difference did it make?

  They all stood there, dumbfounded, like they’d really thought him mute all along. Well, they were going to learn. They were going to understand. He would scream until he didn’t have any breath left.

  “Will the next Master Warden punish your genetic tomorrow for what you do here today? Lifetimes winding around each other and eating their own tails. Are you the man they discontinued? Or are you you? Do you make your own mistakes, your own strikes? Of course you do. Your victims are yours. If you kill me, I’ll know it’s you. Only you. And I’ll remember, in whatever hell comes after this one, I’ll tell the warden there about you.”

  As Rail’s ranting died down, Diego’s mother spoke softly. “Look around you, John. This is not protection. This is not going to make a single one of those hundred thousand people watching feel safe. Are you going to let fear tear us apart the way Bottomless was torn apart? It’s because of fear that we’ve stagnated. Fear of each other, fear of turning on the SD drive, fear of losing control. But the more you try to bend a thing to your will, the more likely you are to break it. Fear begets fear, violence begets violence. The best way to deal with something you fear is to try and understand it. You can’t understand it if you destroy it. You have to trust first. Trust first that a person is good and let them prove you right.

  “I was wrong,” she admitted openly. “You’re right. I did this. I helped make you into this.”

  The sky flickered. No longer a deep reflection of desert night sky, it had changed, been revealed for the giant projection screen that it was. A square image, ten stories high, poised itself at a fair viewing angle.

  A face—fresh, though not
young—appeared. One Rail was sure hadn’t been seen in the convoy proper for a long time. Mostly because he knew that face.

  Sweetcheeks.

  The man fidgeted slightly, uncertain with the camera on him. “I have something to say. Right.” He straightened his jacket and plucked a hair from his lap. Then he ran a hand through his late twenty-first-century haircut. A label at the bottom of the feed read Dr. Reggie Straifer. It was a clip of the man who’d pushed them to the stars. “H-hi, Convoy Seven. No matter what you find out there, I want you to remember the journey, and the inception of your society. Look back and remember what a monumental step this is. The Planet United deep-space missions were created for the betterment and wonderment of all humankind.

  “The most breathtaking thing about the vastness of the universe has thus far been its ability to continuously amaze us. Every discovery we make, every question we answer and problem we solve has led to more questions. The universe may never run out of ways to baffle and excite us.”

  The clip wound forward, then slowed again. “Be good to each other, yeah? I mean, you’re all you’ve got up there. You can break the pattern. While you’re gone, we’ll probably fight wars and start new religions and find new prejudices. But you can be free of that, if you try. We probably all could, if we’d try.”

  The recording cut out and the entire dome went black. No stars, no ambient light of any kind. Only the live batons shone through an occasional spark in the darkness.

  A deep stillness seemed to suck the breath out of everything.

  Yellow and red erupted around the door. An explosion rocked the sands, causing the closest thing to an earthquake Eden could experience.

  Rail lost his balance and fell to the ground with a tuck and roll, hands still secured behind his back, haplessly crushing twiggy shrubs and wisps of grass. Lights—spotlights and flashlight beams—fluttered over the dunes and rocks, pushing through the wound in the wall like ants from a flooded hill.