Just then, Rog’s Ebony Meiboch™ Triumph IV roared up over the bridge, and the crowd moved back, like a herd. His car could pass no farther than the bridge’s apex, near the split in the mesh that turned my stomach. There were too many people.
The Triumph™’s doors opened, and Rog’s voice cut through the quiet.
“Cease and desist!” he bellowed. “Cease and desist!”
I could not see him. The crowd was too thick around me and seemed to close in.
“Keep moving,” Kel whispered, but I stopped.
I motioned for her and the others to move farther on; I would catch up. With the WiFi down, Rog’s face would be unpixelated. I wanted to see it—I wanted to know who this man was. I felt bolstered by the presence of all these allies. What was Rog going to do? Would he dare shoot me in front of everyone, even the police?
I wasn’t afraid to die. And I didn’t want to live in a world where he could get away with such a thing.
The crowd parted before me, giving me space. I let Rog come. The gold brother emerged beside him, and the two of them came hulking toward me, taking one furious stride after another.
“By every legal authority known and herefore ever imagined,” Rog growled, frothing at the mouth, “I hereby swear that you will suffer to the fullest and harshest extent of the Law, exceeding every imaginable dire consequence for your heinous acts against economic growth and Intellectual Property.”
His face was, as I’d expected, unpixelated, though it was so distorted by his fury that, for a moment, I couldn’t really see what he looked like. Veins popped from his forehead. Flecks of spit rimmed his mouth. I was shaken by a desire to flee rather than attack.
His words may have been litigious fearmongering, but they seemed to cut to my very bones. I still feared him. I still feared how he wielded Legalese like a weapon to frighten me. I still feared all that he could do. I stepped back despite myself, and I hated that weakness.
Then he stopped screaming, and I could see him at last. My fear had delighted him. He was white, though his face was mottled pink from his settling rage. He looked to be about fifty or so, with salt-and-pepper hair trimmed to perfection, like the male lead in any Carol Amanda Harving film. He was handsome—surprisingly so, despite his anger and his unfocused, shark-like eyes.
Rog raised his Cuff at me, the gun muzzle pointed straight at my heart. The gold brother grudgingly gave way to allow Rog to kill me. Rog’s hands clenched and released, like he was imagining the pleasure of killing me with his hands, not his gun. I gritted my teeth against my instinctive fear and hoped my face showed him the same kind of hate in return.
But Rog’s anger had melted away into a murderous gleam. His eyes crinkled with joy, and his face turned pleasant, almost charming.
“They will see that you are nothing more than flesh, blood and bone,” Rog explained. Phlip nudged Vitgo, as if he thought this would be good. I forced myself to reclaim the ground I’d lost to fear, because now I knew: Rog was afraid of me. He wanted to show everyone I was merely human, but only because he knew in his heart that I was more. I had become a symbol, and that terrified him.
I took a step toward Rog, my heart thumping hard in my chest. If I had to die, I wanted witnesses. I wanted everyone to see I was silence. I was hope. I was the insurrection. He could not end this revolution by killing me, though I hoped I did not have to die for it.
I tried to look brave as Rog clenched his hand with cruel pleasure, pulling the trigger. But there was no sound, no flash and no impact. Phlip’s eyes went wide, and Vitgo looked away.
Rog fired again. The Cuff failed him; it would not follow his command without the tether. It obeyed the rules he had made. Rog’s eyes bulged with confusion and despair, and his failure was a joy to behold.
My face broke into a wide smile. I don’t know if it was as beautiful as Saretha’s, but it felt good.
I took another step closer to Rog.
Shalk pushed his way out of the mass of people. Three officers trailed behind.
Rog shook his Cuff, trying to get it to work. When it failed, he shouted, “Arrest her. I will prosecute her myself!”
The officers moved in around me. Shalk drew his plastic restraints and turned to Rog, as if looking for further instruction.
“Now!” Rog commanded, like Shalk was his servant. “Her crimes are multitudinous. I want—”
Shalk pressed a button on his modified Cuff.
“Under criminal code 7129-A, you are prohibited from all forms of Copyrighted and Trademarked communication, including speech, while WiFi and tether services are unavailable.”
“I wrote code 7129-A!” Rog screeched.
Shalk frowned and put his thumb and forefinger to his mouth. He zipped in a hard, quick gesture. Rog stared at him, momentarily stunned. Shalk forced him to turn and bound Rog’s hands behind his back.
“Have you lost your mind?” Rog screamed. “She murdered Leeland Butchers!”
Had we?
Shalk played the recording again.
“Under criminal code 7129...”
“Kill her!” Rog thundered at the gold brother nearby.
The gold brother broke forward like a bull. Phlip took a step, but Vitgo held him back. The crowd stirred. I coiled, ready to hit him in the throat or eyes to slow him, but before I could strike, a blur crossed my vision. It was Henri. He slammed into the gold brother’s beefy side and knocked him off course, into the crowd of Silents. Margot rushed in behind. The gold brother shook them off and tried to stand, but hands shot out from the crowd. Bodies overwhelmed him. Two more officers moved in and brought him down.
I turned back to see Kel and Saretha only a yard behind me. Henri and Margot stood near Rog, dusting themselves off, and Mandett was making his way toward us.
“Do you have any idea what will happen to you once I am free?” Rog hissed.
Shalk tapped again on his Cuff. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be charged against your account, with a 20 percent surcharge to cover processing fees. Anything this officer or any other Law enforcement official says in the course of the investigation will be charged to you, and billed at such time as your case is adjudicated. You have the right to an Attorney. If you cannot afford an Attorney, one will be assigned to seize your assets, and you will be turned over to Debt Collection. Do you understand these rights?”
“When the WiFi returns, you will regret this,” Rog warned. “Everything will be rebuilt. It will all be reprinted, and I will destroy you! I will snake this city with so much cable and wire that it will strangle every one of you sluks!” he screeched wildly, whirling around at the crowd. His voice bounced across the plastic melt of the faux French buildings and vanished.
Shalk began to pull him away, but I raised a hand. I wanted Rog to be here for what came next.
“That’s speech!” He laughed with wild eyes. “You cannot trust her! She will destroy our city, and with it, all of you!”
I looked from Mandett and Henri to Silas Rog’s smirking, sneering face. Margot tore a strip of fabric out of the supplies in her bag. She, Mandett and Henri gagged the struggling Rog while Shalk looked on, as if all of this was normal.
Everything stopped then. The screens around the park glowed faintly, still powered, but blank. The noise and wind of the cars on the ring had ceased. A breeze of a different sort wafted across the park—cold air from the outside that smelled crisp and sweet and salty.
I pushed through the crowd and mounted the stage. My body ached from all I had been through. Kel, Margot, Henri and Saretha all watched, wide-eyed. My eyes searched for Sam in the crowd, though I knew I would not find him. Speaking now would not betray him, though I felt his absence acutely. He would have relished what was to come.
I put a shaking thumb and finger to the corner of my mouth,
and drew it slowly across my lips. I made the sign of the zippered lips, only this time I was unzipping them. I cleared my throat, letting sound escape, and the feeling was exquisite.
It was time for my speech.
FREE
“Words matter,” I said. “Words make ideas. They preserve truths and history. They express freedom, and they shape it.”
The feel of letters on my tongue quenched me, like water on parched lips. I could hardly believe I was speaking. It seemed like a lifetime has passed. I was a different person now.
“Words,” I went on, “mold our thoughts. That gives them value and power. The Rights Holders keep them not just for profit, but to control us, and to put us in their service. Rights Holders create nothing. They jealously protect the copies of copies of copies of things created by others. They get away with owning our right to speak because they have the money and power to do it.”
My mind was crafting sentences like they were shaped in a forge. I’d seen that once in a movie, where glowing steel sparked as it was hammered into shape.
“Our only recourse has been a deeper, more painful silence. Rights Holders like Silas Rog squeezed our speech down to a trickling stream, but kept that small stream flowing to make us pay for every word—to make us think we could speak. But that was an illusion. We fought them with silence, and now we are freed to fight them with our voices.”
“Yeah!” Mandett Kresh called out. People around him nodded. Vitgo looked confused, and Phlip had disappeared. Some of the Silents puzzled over my words.
“The time of our silence is over!” I cried out.
Most of the Silents hooted and hollered and cheered at this, but a few faces narrowed and frowned, their lips shut tight. A thrill ran through me, and then a cold fear. They all looked to me for what came next, and that was terrifying.
“No printer will function now,” I explained, working to steady my voice. “The WiFi is destroyed. Without the tether, every pattern, every wall, every design is locked down. Without the ‘legally required,’ always-on connection, there is no way for Rog and his Legal team, or anyone else, to take over this city again. No one can legally speak here, or call for help. No one can enter or leave the city, because no one can legally agree to the Terms of Service to cross, or pay the tolls and tax to come and go. No one can legally enforce the Law. No one who is Indentured can be commanded.”
I thought of Nancee, wherever she was. There were no news dropters to record me, but I prayed my words would reach her somehow.
Rog scowled and smirked beneath his gag, his face twisted with the fuming smugness of a man who had never been denied anything. He did not believe me. He thought the problem would be solved in a matter of days. He was so sure he could not lose that even now, he could not recognize he had lost everything.
“The tether isn’t coming back,” I said, to everyone, but especially to him. “It will not return in a day, or a week, or a year. The Law has written itself into a corner. If we follow the Law, we will all die. We cannot print food. Food can’t be brought in from the outside. We can’t leave to find it.
“The Rights Holders will leave us for dead because the Law is pitiless and inflexible. Silas Rog himself will die by his own hand, starving with the rest of us while insisting we must not make food without the proper license.”
I saw fear now on faces in the crowd. Rog kept his smirk, but it was beginning to weaken. I reached into my bag.
“But the dome itself now shelters us from those Laws that would kill us.”
My voice faltered here as a worry overtook me. Not every Law was madness. If what little I had read was true, many were born out of logic and then twisted over time. Freedom of Speech was a Law that had been lost. There was a path—a history I did not know. A new ember kindled in my brain. I pulled out one book, and then the other.
“Silas Rog would have us believe there is a single book to save us—to prove Freedom of Speech is a right. I’ve been to his library and searched for the book, but what I found instead was a trap, built on the myth Rog himself created.”
I held one book up higher.
“This book shows how the molecular inks work. It has a key and the codes that will let us know which will kill us, which can feed us and how we can make food on our own. But this is not the book.”
I held up the other.
“Neither is this. The myth of that book is a lie, cooked up by Silas Rog to offer a simple, enticing solution. But there is something Rog missed.”
Rog’s face crumpled a little more. He tried to shake off the officers while the crowd cheered me on.
“No single book shows the way, but all of them, together, do. Our history is recorded there—right and wrong, every step and misstep, all the things Rog and his kind have scrupulously hidden. They are just waiting to be discovered.”
I thought of my name, Jimenez, and knew it was no accident it had been shortened. I wondered what other names might have been changed, and what purpose it served.
“They made us forget who we are, took our names and stole our culture.”
I looked to the center of the city, where Rog’s library rested above the dome. For all I knew, it was burning now—but even if it was destroyed, I felt certain our history could still be found.
“Freedom of Speech was our right.” I spoke loud and clear and shook the pages of the book I held. “And no matter what the Law now says, it is still our right.”
Henri took the stage and stood behind me. Margot followed, and Kel moved to my side, hardened with resolve. I put the books on the podium and reached back to find Margot’s hand.
“The simple act of charging us for every word and gesture allowed the Rights Holders to control far more than a small piece of property: they held our rights, our freedoms and our very lives.”
Penepoli raced up onto the stage, her eyes bright and desperate. Mandett stayed on the ground, soaking everything in. Kel took my other hand and squeezed, and I squeezed back, unafraid of charges or shocks to my eyes. My whole body glowed with pride in what we had accomplished.
“Every book warns us at the beginning: All Rights Reserved. But I don’t believe it. Every right will not be reserved. Our rights will not be reserved. We will be free.”
* * * * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story has had nearly as many lives as a cat, which is to say one, but also, something like nine. A lot of people helped me in a myriad of ways, and while it sounds trite to say I couldn’t have done this without them, I truly couldn’t have done this without them.
There is Val Gintis, and Jill Carrigan, who long ago suffered through a story I once wrote—kind of like this one, but so very much worse. There is Lee Gjertsen Malone, who helped critique and refine my writing, and guided me down the path of being an Author.
There is my agent, Lisa Rodgers, and the whole JABberwocky team, whose excitement and enthusiasm for this book brought us all on an epic journey to find it the right home.
There is my editor, Lauren Smulski, who improved my writing with her keen eye and her ability to lightly suggest a brilliant change—and everyone at Harlequin TEEN who, like wizards, took the words I wrote and have somehow transformed them into this book in your hands.
There is Connie Biewald and Jen Kay.Goodman and the Fayerweather Street School, who helped me put this book in front of readers about Speth’s age. (I’m very sorry, Ollie, about Sam.)
There is Sean Hill and Daniel Sroka who, at very different times, helped provide feedback and fresh eyes. (Delicious, fresh eyes.)
There is Cory Doctorow, who fired me up on the topic of Copyfight more than anyone I can think of, and M.T. Anderson, who made a path for this story before it was written.
There is John Luther Adams, whose music is the only thing I can listen to while writing these days.
&n
bsp; And then there is my family, who have supported me through everything—especially Evia, who inspired me to warn the world away from the one depicted in this book. And, most of all, my wife, Jenn, who knows too well the many ways she made it possible for me to write, and stay grounded, and move forward until I had something good.
From #1 New York Times bestselling authors
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Intergalactic adventures.
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A galaxy-wide war to devour worlds.
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JANUARY 16, 2018
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Two Realms. One Choice. No Second Chance.
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All Rights Reserved Page 31
