by Ramona Finn
I felt a weight at the end of my bed and, when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t surprised to see that it was Kupier. He visited me a lot these days.
As usual, he made himself comfortable, stretching himself out beside me with one hand behind his head.
“You’re the best, huh?” he asked me.
I nodded. “I have to know the truth. This is the only way.”
“I told you the truth, Glade. You know I told you the truth.”
“I don’t know anything anymore. Why would I trust you, Kupier? You only wanted one thing, for me to help the Ferrymen bring down the Authority. You would have said or done anything to get me to trust you.”
Kupier laughed. The way he always did. “You’re funny, Glade. So smart and so dumb at the same time.”
He held up one hand and there was his marble. Blue and dark all at once. Such a different shade than the slice of his eyes I could see. He held the marble up in the air, and when he took his hand away, it floated there before us. We both watched it as it expanded out from a marble and into a blue sort of cloud. It pulsed into a shape that I recognized. That had been burned into my brain. It was in the shape of the brainwaves of a person who needed to be culled. I tried. I reached out with my tech and tried to cull it. Over and over again, I tried.
And when I woke up, for real this time, I was alone. As always.
I also wasn’t surprised when Haven came to me. It had been a long time since our conversation in his office. Truth be told, I’d lost track of time. It held no meaning for me anymore. The only thing that meant anything was practice. Success. Understanding.
I’d learned a lot about the Authority Database. With each simulated Culling and each syncing and there had been hundreds in the last month – I’d learned more. I was understanding the culling program as a user. Every in and out. Every refiling of information it had to do, every hesitation. I wanted nothing more than to understand the program as a coder. But I’d take what I could get.
Throwing myself into excelling as a Datapoint had vastly changed my life on the Station. I barely saw Cast anymore. And Sullia had been moved to a different wing so that we wouldn’t run into one another. We rarely did. But things were mostly different with Dahn.
I knew it both pained and thrilled him when I slashed through his records one by one. I wasn’t trying to beat him. But the success was a side effect of my attempting to learn the Database. It annoyed me that everything I’d ever want to know about the Database was right there, inside his head, but I couldn’t get to it.
He’d get suspicious, the more questions I asked about it. He’d already told me that the Database wasn’t the point. Culling was the point.
Humans weren’t computers. I couldn’t code the answers out of him. So I kept going the only way I knew how. I interfaced with the Database every chance I got. Searching for any sign of a virus.
When I’d stepped out of my bunk that morning, Haven had been waiting for me. Hands clasped behind his back, his silvery hair almost transparent underneath the florescent lights.
Having mostly expected him to show up like this, at some point, didn’t mean that I wasn’t incredibly nervous. Either he was here because he was impressed with how much I’d improved, or he was here because he knew I was trying to puzzle out the Database from the outside in. One of those options sent me straight back to interrogations. Or to the executioner.
Suddenly, fifty/fifty odds didn’t look so good.
I swallowed my words and my doubts as I followed him down the hall toward his quarters. Half of me wanted to ask if my mentor should be present for whatever we were going to discuss. I wanted Dahn’s steely presence next to me. Steady. Reliable. But the other half of me wanted Dahn as far away from this as possible. He’d done nothing wrong. I would never want him to be connected to this.
“Well,” Haven crooned when the second the door was closed behind us. “I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, Datapoint. I’ve been extremely pleased with your progress over the last few months.”
My knees buckled, but it only appeared that I was sinking into the blue armchair. “Ah. I’m pleased that you’re pleased. Sir.”
He nodded, crossing his legs. “I always knew that we’d have to deal with questions from you. Questions that other Datapoints push aside in order to do their jobs. You’ve struggled with that, in the past.”
“You – you mean my questions about the Database?”
“Among others. You remember that I told you I was there? The day your father was culled? I saw you. Observed you.”
My mind skittered around like bare feet on unexpected ice. Haven had been there in my colony on the day of the Culling. Right. Hadn’t Dahn said that he’d traveled with Haven during the last Culling? Had Dahn been there, as well?
“You had questions then. Even as a child of six. You didn’t accept the Culling. Even as every citizen who remained did. Your mother told you to stop questioning it. I imagine she was fearful of you one day being culled. Especially considering your resemblance to your father.”
Murderous.
Rogue.
I bit my tongue.
“She must have been so relieved when you tested into the Datapoint program,” Haven mused. “It meant that you’d never be culled.”
Relieved? My mother had wept for me. Becoming a Datapoint, torn from my home, put through the training, and learning to cull? It had been a fate almost worse than death to my mother. Hide in plain sight. They can’t find you if they can’t see you. She’d have been horrified to learn about my current strategy of standing out.
Again, I bit my tongue.
“Glade,” Haven said as he came to stand up. “You must have noticed the Authority’s interest in you. Even when you were a subpar Datapoint, we still had high hopes. You still had our attentions.”
I nodded. I’d more than noticed it. I’d resented it.
He wandered over to the large blank screen that sat on one of his walls. It was black, yet he looked at it as if he were gazing out a window. “It’s time to tell you what we’ve been watching for in you. What we’ve finally seen proof of over the last months.”
He turned. “The Culling is a pillar on which our society stands. It keeps our citizens safe, it keeps our government strong, and above all, it is a tool for peace.”
My time in the historical archives on Charon zipped through my head then, and I was infinitely grateful that Haven couldn’t read my thoughts. Because I realized now that he could have said these exact same things – safe citizens, strong government, tool for peace – if he’d been talking about a completely different Culling program. One that culled the rogues and not just the violent.
I swallowed hard. Was I finding evidence, or was I just searching for it?
“But it’s also a double-edged sword. It’s made each of the cols a safer place. A happier place. This means that they’ve grown in population faster than we’d have expected. Originally, Culling every ten years was sufficient, when Din Io conceived of the model. But unfortunately, we’ve seen a rise in the occurrences of violence in the cols. Unhappiness, unrest, disobedience to local governments, murders.” He sighed. “It’s become very clear in the last decade that the Authority has been failing its citizens by not changing the model.” He turned back to me now, and it was almost as if he was lit from behind. He seemed to glow.
“Starting with this year’s Culling, we’re going to cull annually.”
I reeled back. A Culling every single year? I thought of Europa. The boots on the street. My stomach gave one quick heave. Would that mean even more people would be culled? Would it mean that we’d start to cull the young? It was such a huge upheaval to the system that there was no telling what kind of repercussions it might have. I thought of the boots on the street again. How many pairs of boots would there be? How many dead feet? Dead bodies? Dead people? Every year? God.
His eyes were tight on my face and I suddenly got the distinct impression that I was being tested for something. I had no idea what. I cas
t about for an appropriate response. What would a Datapoint say? I inwardly scoffed. That was a ridiculous question. I was a Datapoint. I just didn’t exactly feel like one in this particular second. Every year.
“But, sir, you’d have to have thousands of Datapoints trained and at the ready to be able to cull every year. The existing group could never handle a workload that large. Are there even enough available candidates in the population?” I knew that, to be a Datapoint, you had to have an extremely specific psychological profile. We were rare. Very rare.
When I focused on Haven again, he was smiling. And the sight of it made me want to recoil from him.
“No. There aren’t enough Datapoints to be able to handle that workload. But there is one who could handle it by herself.”
Ah. So, this was what it felt like to have your life sucked away down a blackhole.
“Me?” My thoughts had come to such a standstill, I was kind of surprised I could even remember language.
His smile grew. “You, Glade Io. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for. The safety of our solar system might rest on your shoulders.”
I thought of the boots in the street. The woman with the scarf. Dead. Not murdered, but dead all the same. Alive one second and just a body, an object, the next second. The man in front of me didn’t know about the experience I’d had there. He didn’t know how badly I’d failed the one and only Culling I’d been a part of. He didn’t know that it was only the simulations where I’d thrived. And then, it had only been because of the answers that I sought.
His smile grew even further, as if he were elated, like a child the night before his birthday party. “And we’re not going to cull in portions anymore, either. You’ll cull the entire solar system at once.”
The universe buzzed to a standstill all around me. I swear, the sun stopped burning, blackholes stopped imploding, oxygen froze in the lungs of every living creature. “What?”
“We’re changing the system, Glade. Because we found you. We’ve been waiting for you to reach your potential. And now I want you to show us what you can really do. The Culling is vulnerable. You see, every Datapoint has a different style, a different level of skill. And sending them all over the galaxy to cull here and there leaves them open for attack from the Ferrymen, or even, in some cases, unwelcoming cols. We simply can’t risk it anymore. Which is where you come in. A Datapoint who can cull all at once, once a year, from a protected location. Thereby strengthening the weaknesses of the system.”
I sucked in a breath, realizing that I simply hadn’t been breathing. There was no way that he was serious. How could I possibly take this sort of proposal seriously? He was asking me to cull alone, by myself, and everyone at once? That was damn near a hundred thousand people. I wouldn’t even be able to sort that many, let alone cull the cullables.
“There is a chance,” he continued, “that you're not capable of what we ask. So, we’ll need you to do something for us.”
I almost laughed. Just right in his face. A chance I wasn’t capable? The man was asking me to cull an entire solar system at once. I couldn’t even do twenty people on Europa. Of course I wasn’t capable. Furthermore, no one was capable of this. This was an impossible task. A gross deviation from the system that I’d come to understand. To trust. A little worm of a thought wiggled its way through me. How the hell had Haven talked the rest of the Authority into this? And why? His reasons about weaknesses in the system seemed suspiciously thin to me. I searched his eyes and wished, recklessly, that Kupier were here. I wanted Kupier, with his huge, beating heart, to look at this man in front of me and tell me what he saw. Suddenly, I didn’t want the logic of this situation. I didn’t want the facts. I wanted intuition. Empathy. I didn’t understand this. And I feared it.
“What sort of thing would I need to do?” My voice was steady. None of my suspicion, or fear, or reticence bled through, and I marveled at that. I felt, almost, like an android on the surface. A plastic covering over a human heart.
“You’ll have to prove you can do it in a simulation.”
The thought made my mouth go dry. But I supposed it wasn’t any more ridiculous than anything else he’d just said. He wanted to change the entire Culling system. He wanted me to cull thousands of people at once, from a centralized location, and he wanted me to do it every year. “I – Sir Haven.”
“Glade, I have seen your level of improvement in the last weeks alone. I’ll be anxious to see what you can do in a simulation like this.”
His words finally filtered down to me. What he was asking me to do. He was asking me to get in the simulator and try. To hook my tech and my brain and myself into that simulator and attempt to cull the solar system.
This simulation would kill me. I knew it would. And maybe that was his goal? I looked up at the man who’d come to be so familiar to me over the years. So familiar, and yet, such a stranger, as well. I had no idea what he saw when he looked at me. Was this his way of destroying me since I’d been abducted by the Ferrymen? Did he not trust me still? Or was this the ultimate show of trust? Putting the entire program in my hands.
“And if I can’t do it?”
He sighed. “Glade, I don’t think I need to make it clear that to succeed at this would put you on a level below only the Authority. You would answer to no one. You’d be the most powerful citizen in the solar system.” Those silver eyes snared mine and I could have sworn my heart skipped. “A person of that stature would have everything she wanted. She’d have the answer to every question she’d ever asked.”
I stumbled out of Haven’s office ten minutes later. He’d said more. I think I’d said more, as well. But I hadn’t been able to stop replaying his words in my head. I didn’t understand them. Every question I’d ever asked. Was he offering me the truth? Was he admitting that there was something hidden within the program? Was he threatening me? Did he know that I was questioning the Database? Had he guessed?
I knew I didn’t have a choice about whether or not I walked into that simulator. I was sure I’d be deemed a traitor if I didn’t.
I sat down on my bunk later that night, completely unsure of whether I was walking into a trap or not. I didn’t understand Haven. I had the strange feeling that we were playing a game with one another, but he was the only one who knew the rules. I wished so badly I had someone to talk this through with.
Kupier flashed through my head and I pushed him away. He was on the other end of the galaxy, and I knew exactly what he would have said to me. Dahn was next to come to mind, and I pushed him away, too. I couldn’t drag him into this.
So, there I sat. Alone again.
Chapter Eighteen
News about my upcoming simulation was spreading. There were more whispers and stares than ever before. Even more than after I’d come back from the Ferrymen.
“How the hell does everyone know already?” I griped, slamming my food bowl down next to Dahn. “I haven’t told anyone but you!”
He shrugged. “I didn’t tell anyone. But I bet the simulator technicians told people. They had to reconfigure the entire operating system to handle that much data at once.”
His voice was strangely blank, the same way that it had been ever since I’d told him what Haven was asking me to do.
A table of Datapoints whispered about me while glancing over their shoulders and I glared at them. Just what I needed. More rumors to follow me around. “It’s not like I asked for this.”
“Oh, don’t act like you don’t want it.” The biting voice had come from behind me, and I didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“You’re not supposed to eat at the same time as us, Sullia,” Dahn replied to her in a bored voice. “In fact, you’re not even supposed to be on this side of the Station right now.”
“I couldn’t resist the chance to come and congratulate our little chosen one, here, now could I?” She shoved herself into the seat across from us, and I could have sworn that the dining hall went quiet.
“I’m not a chosen
one,” I said, scowling at her. “They don’t even know if I can do it. That’s why they’re putting me in the simulator first.”
She eyed me. “If you don’t want to do it, then tell them. Make it open auditions. Someone else can step up to the plate.”
I scoffed. “You? Don’t make me laugh. I don’t think they want psychopathic traitors gaining access to every single person in the solar system.”
Her eyes went glassy and hard. “I’m not the traitor between the two of us.” Her eyes skittered to Dahn. “There’s a reason Kupier didn’t come for me that night, Glade. That night you went away with him.”
I felt Dahn shift beside me. “That’s enough, Sullia. You’re going to get the both of you thrown back into interrogations with talk like that.”
A muscle in her cheek twitched at the word ‘interrogations’ – but she otherwise ignored him. I’d never quite seen her like this. A little wild, a little out of control. When Sullia raged, it was always calculated, for a greater end. But this? With her eyes sparking and color on her cheeks, this was something different. I wondered what the last round of interrogations had really done to her, whether it had moved something that shouldn’t have been moved. I wondered what another round of interrogations would do to me.
Sullia went on, seeming not even to hear Dahn. “You’re not like us, Glade. That’s why he chose you to be his little spy. You’re not like any other Datapoint. And you’re certainly not like me and Dahn. We may have motives, but at least they’re visible.” She was full-on sneering now, her eyes bright with disdain. “You don’t care about being the best. You don’t even care about surviving. You want something else. You’re getting into that simulator for some other reason. Ask yourself if that makes you a traitor. Ask yourself that.”
We didn’t have to tell her to go. She got up and left.
I turned immediately to Dahn. “She’s lying.”
He seemed to soften a little bit, turning to me, his knee brushing mine.
“You’re not anything like Sullia. She’s lying about that. She just wants to get under your skin and pit us against one another,” I told him.
