Ultraviolet

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Outhouse?”

  He laughed quietly. “Yeah, it’ll be interesting.”

  “I wasn’t kidding, you know. I’m going back. I’m going to fix this.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know. I just… I liked the idea of building something new, away from all that mess.”

  “I do too. And maybe I will. Or we will. But first, we have to help everyone. Our families, our friends, all those people working in the recycling plants and the mines and the scrap heaps.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I say we upload the specs on the recycler to as many boards as we can, and we keep uploading it. Torrents, file drops, open mail accounts. I assume Cygnus keeps an eye out for these sorts of things and pulls them off, so we’ll just keep at it, and keep telling people, all day, every day. If enough people download the specs and actually make the recyclers at home, that could be enough, that could be the beginning of the end for the company.”

  “Okay. We’ll start there.”

  After half an hour on the road I started looking for anything that we could use. A nice house, a store, a car that might actually work. From the outside, the houses all looked pretty busted up, and the cars all looked rusted out. But the stores were a little less scary.

  I pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping center. The parking lot was mostly intact, a huge empty expanse of asphalt and concrete with only a little grass coming up around the edges. And the stores themselves, dingy and faded as they were, looked okay too. There was no open dirt anywhere near them, so there were no trees or roots or vines wrapping their tendrils around the signs or the doors or covering up the windows.

  I stopped in front of the largest store and I could see some of the signs inside, faded by years of sunlight. Signs for fruits and vegetables, signs for nuts and cheeses.

  “Grocery store. Let’s see if there’s anything decent left.”

  The front was locked and gated, and I wondered if the person who locked it up all those years ago knew that they were never coming back, that the store would never open again. How did it end? Temporary layoffs that weren’t so temporary? A worker strike? Or maybe the manager was fired and he threw away the keys to spite the store, and then the workers couldn’t get in, and then… who knows?

  My holo-sword sliced the lock open and we went inside.

  To the left we saw bins, mostly empty, but with a few shriveled brown things that I guess used to be fruits.

  “Mind the floor. Rats or something.” Felix pointed at the droppings all over the place.

  I winced and stepped carefully. As we walked up and down the aisles, we saw more signs that rats and squirrels, and maybe even something bigger had been feasting in the store for the last few years. Almost everything that had been shelved in a plastic bag or a cardboard box had been gnawed into and emptied out long ago. And the end of the store with the freezer units was just too scary to go near. As soon as we saw the big black mounds in the fridges covered in thick white spider webs, we turned right around.

  But it wasn’t a wasted trip. There were hundreds of metal cans of beans and fruit still intact, and some heavy-duty plastic bins of rice that hadn’t been breached by rodents. So we gathered up everything that looked edible, along with some pots and utensils, loaded up a rusty shopping cart, and went looking for a place to spend the night.

  We found a house just a few hundred yards from the store. The doors were intact, the floor was solid, and most of the windows weren’t broken, so we went in and made ourselves at home on the living room floor. We built a fire in the middle of the driveway and I lit it with the edge of my holo-knife, and we cooked some beans and rice, and carefully taste-tested the various cans. And while none of the canned fruit was very tasty, it hadn’t gone bad either. So we ate as much as we wanted while the sun set and the stars began to peek out.

  After supper I spent about an hour posting the specs for the recycler to all of the usual file drops and boards. Sometimes I left a very critical, technical note with the file to make it sound more legit, and sometimes I left a stream of excited babble to catch the eye of people who like capital letters and exclamation points.

  I glanced over at Felix, who was staring up at the darkening sky. “Tomorrow I’ll make a run by myself. I’ll get us a printer and some feedstock to get us started, and then we can make a recycler, okay?”

  “Okay.” He sighed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I… It’s just that yesterday when you asked me to leave the city with you, and I said yes, I had this picture in my mind that we were really leaving, that we were going to… start a new life out here somewhere, you and me. It was sort of crazy, but it felt right.” He glanced at me and looked back up again. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just that… I didn’t think we were going to turn around and head back again after just one day.”

  “Neither did I.” I shrugged. “But things change.”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked at him, wondering exactly what he had pictured in his head. I mean, we had only known each other a few days. A few very intense days, yeah, but still, did he think we were going to just live alone like a husband and wife in a log cabin for the rest of our lives? I admit, I didn’t really know what we were going to do outside the city. My priority was just to get away from the city, and figure out the rest later.

  I guess he wasn’t crazy to think we would stay together, like that. And maybe we would have, in the end. But things happen.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think about all that right now. “Things could change again. They probably will. Listen, Felix, I have no idea where I’m going or where I’ll end up. I can only be as honest as possible, day by day, and right now, I’m going to try to help people. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. Maybe we’ll end up on the run, out in the woods, or living in Dean’s weird little village, or in jail. Who knows?”

  He smiled a little. “Yeah, maybe.”

  That night we slept next to each other, sharing the blanket, but not really touching. It was awkward, and I didn’t want it to be awkward. In another world, I wanted to just talk to him like we were regular people with regular problems, but we weren’t in another world. We were in this world. And it was awkward. So I just shut my eyes and went to sleep.

  The next day I left early. I had a lot of rough miles to cover before I would reach the good highways, so I had plenty of time to myself to think about everything.

  What am I doing?

  What’s the plan?

  What’s the point?

  The ideas were too big to really grasp. The recycler would change everything, it would set everyone free when people could turn anything into anything else with the push of a button. There wouldn’t even be any trash anymore, it would all be recycled, right there at home. A whole world, always shiny and new, clean and sturdy, always the best things, the best tools, the best clothes that anyone in the world could design.

  The best computers in the world designed by a mother in Mozambique, the best jeans in the world designed by an old man in Scotland, the best bicycles in the world designed by a teenage girl in Chile.

  Everyone would have the best of everything, instantly, for free.

  The best medical equipment.

  The best safety gear.

  The best…

  I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself, way ahead. The people at Cygnus, and Susquehanna, and everywhere else, they weren’t idiots. They knew there were people like me and Felix and Dean out there somewhere, inventing ways to make things better, so they must have a lot of people and resources dedicated just to keeping those ideas from getting out, just to make sure that the people in power stay in power.

  I gripped the holographic throttle harder and clenched my teeth.

  Stay in power?

  When all the rest of the world is enjoying the freedom of this technology, our own country, the supposedly best country in the world, was wallowing in serfdom and poverty, just so a handful of rich assholes could feel
superior, could feel special.

  I screamed into the wind.

  Chapter 14

  Blowback

  It was nearly noon when I finally pulled up in front of the Cygnus delivery center, the same one where Frost tried to catch me by drenching my suit with the sprinklers. Sure, I could have looked up another one, or some other shipping service, or maybe even tried to catch a delivery truck in the middle of its route, but I was too tired and too angry to be clever anymore. I just wanted to get the printer and go. So I went there.

  “Lux, bike off.” I walked quietly across the lot from the fence toward the building. There were three trucks at the end of the loading dock, but no people. No signs of life.

  Maybe they’re all at lunch?

  I jogged up the steps and walked along the platform where they carry the boxes into the trucks. There were plenty of boxes, plenty of printers and standard feedstock packages all lined up and ready to be loaded, but no one to load them.

  Another trap?

  I glanced nervously up and down the street as I pulled out my phone to check the news.

  Maybe it’s a holiday or something.

  My feeds lit up and started streaming down the screen so fast I could barely read the posts, there were so many and they were coming in so fast. I grabbed the scroll with my fingertips and started reading.

  School closings.

  Arrests at Lexington Market.

  Tourists detained at the National Aquarium.

  A shooting at Johns Hopkins.

  Fires on North Duncan Street.

  A riot in the streets in Little Italy.

  It went on and on, report after report of random violence all over the city. It looked like it had been going on all morning, no, all night, since yesterday evening.

  A huge banner erupted across the feeds, an emergency broadcast from the Mayor’s office. I muted the video and just read the transcript.

  “…due to the series of attacks against Cygnus employees and the destruction of Cygnus property by the terrorist known as Ultraviolet, AKA Carmen Reyes Zhao, all persons suspected of aiding and supporting the attacks will be detained for questioning. All witnesses to these attacks will also be detained. Relatives of detainees are strongly discouraged from leaving their homes to avoid…”

  This can’t be happening.

  I kept reading the posts and the comments, and the truth was inescapable. Cygnus was going after everyone, everyone who had commented on my videos or posted on the Ultraviolet site, every username was being tracked to a real person, and those real people were being rounded up in black trucks and taken away.

  My hands shook as I called Felix.

  “Hey, Carmen.”

  “They’re taking everyone!” I paced down the length of the loading dock as I tried to stay calm. “Have you seen the news? Cygnus is arresting everyone who ever helped me, or who offered to, or liked me, or faved the posts, or anything. They’re all being detained!”

  “What! They can’t… Oh my God… that’s got to be hundreds, maybe thousands of people.”

  We both fell silent. There was nothing to say. It had all gotten so far out of hand that there was no wrapping our heads around it. There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do, except fight back. And people were definitely fighting back, shooting at cars, beating people in suits, and not bothering to ask whether those people actually worked for Cygnus.

  “People are getting hurt,” I whispered. “Right now. Right this second. Because of what I did.”

  “No, people are getting hurt because of what Cygnus is, not because of you,” he said. “But there has to be something we can do to help them.”

  “There is. I’ll call you later.”

  “Wait, Carmen!”

  “What?”

  “Just… be careful.”

  I smiled a little. “I will.”

  I put away the phone and grabbed a box containing a large printer and the basic feedstock package for home electronics and appliances. I carried them across the street and hid them in an alley under a tarp behind some rotting palettes, and then I went back to the street.

  “Lux, bike.”

  I tore off down the road as fast as I could go. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted to do something, anything, to keep my mind off of what was happening, and why it was happening.

  I got to the Inner Harbor in about six minutes.

  When I got there, all I could see were people. The roads, sidewalks, shops, and elevated walkways were all choked with people, and they were angry. It was easy to spot the black Cygnus trucks in the street, and the private security guys in the black suits were just as obvious as they struggled through the crowd, most of them wrestling people toward the trucks and fending off the angry bystanders with shock-clubs.

  Smoke was pouring upward from the open doorway of a seafood restaurant off to my right. And a handful of police cars had their red-and-blue lights flashing off to my left. I could see the cops spread out in the crowd, trying to get people out of the street, trying to get people to go home. But the cops didn’t seem to be trying very hard and I took that as a good sign.

  Right then I wished my holographic motorcycle had a real engine so I could rev it up nice and loud to get everyone’s attention, but the bike was whisper quiet at any speed, so I had to hope the sight of it and of me would be enough.

  It was.

  I was still a fair distance from the crowd when people started to look up and notice me. I saw them pointing and waving, and then I heard them cheering my name.

  “Ultraviolet! Ultraviolet!”

  Nice to know I still have some fans.

  The Cygnus security guys all started talking furiously on their phones, and some pulled out guns, so more people in the crowd yelled and tried to get back from them. It was all going to get very out of hand very quickly.

  “Lux, bike off, armor two, sword two, shield one.”

  The motorcycle vanished, only to be replaced by a huge suit of black holographic armor. Fortunately, I could run just as fast covered in photonic plate mail as I could wearing nothing at all, so I reached the crowd just a moment later.

  Just as the security guys leveled their guns at me.

  They fired a few times, and I winced at every one of them, but the bullets thumped dully against my armor and clattered the ground. No ricochets, no high-pitching twang noises. Just thunk-tinkle, thunk-tinkle.

  I stormed toward them and brought my sword down on the front of the truck, slicing straight through the engine and then hacking through the front tires. One of the men in black tried to tackle me from behind, but he only managed to smash his nose against the armor and then went stumbling aside. The rest of the security goons had the good sense to back off then, so I could chop the side of the truck off, leaving a gaping hole for all the detainees inside to get out.

  With the crowd cheering wildly, I stalked through the Cygnus ranks and mangled all of their cars and let all of their prisoners go free. Some of them I thought I recognized from school or from my job, but only vaguely.

  They really are just rounding up anyone and everyone. They’re that desperate.

  With everyone free, the crowd seemed to just get angrier and wilder. They started throwing bottles and cans, and then every random thing in their pockets. Pens and phones and lipstick and pocket knives all went hurling through the air, falling like hail stones on the Cygnus security team.

  For a second, the goons looked like they were going to charge the crowd using their shock-clubs, but I pointed my sword at them and they stopped, and then they turned and started jogging back down Pratt Street toward the Cygnus building where I gave myself up to Frost that one night last week.

  It felt like months ago.

  Suddenly the crowd was all around me, yelling and cheering, and I realized they were all trying to touch me, so I switched down to the regular military armor with the rounded corners so no one would get a finger burned off. I tried to shake some hands and say
hello, but I couldn’t hear anything over the shouting and all I could see was this sea of faces and hands lunging at me.

  My heart started racing as I backed away, but they were all around me now, all grabbing at me and thumping me on the back and calling my name. And only half of them looked happy to see me. The other half… they scared me. They were angry, probably just as angry at me as they were at Cygnus. And they looked scared.

  And so was I.

  I shoved through the crowd, letting the armor knock a few people aside so I could get free and as soon as I had some space I called up my bike and raced away again. As soon as I was out on the empty city streets, I turned east going the wrong way on a one-way road and headed for Little Italy, and Fells Point, and Canton.

  Every time I saw a Cygnus logo, I pulled over and smashed a van and made sure the people inside got away. And every time, a man in a black suit would point a gun at me, and fire, and I would flinch, but nothing ever touched me.

  I kept moving.

  Everywhere I went, I told people to go home and keep their families safe and I told the men in black to go back to Cygnus. Most of them listened. But some of them stayed out, picking fights, smashing windows. As I rode through the streets, I felt like I was in a dream or another universe, a universe gone crazy. Everyone was so angry.

  I rode over broken glass and half-eaten food dropped in the road. I went into a burning house, only to discover that my armor did nothing to protect me from smoke or heat and I had to make a quick exit once I was sure no one was inside the house.

  All afternoon I rode through the city, from the east side all the way back around the harbor to the south side. I didn’t see any more black vans or armed men, or even police, but I saw plenty of people standing outside their homes, most of them carrying baseball bats and pipes and knives. I told them all to stay in their homes, to not answer the doors, to not talk to Cygnus or the police. I promised them I would handle it. I said I would fix it.

  And many of them actually listened, and went inside.

  By the time the sun was going down, the city was quiet again. I checked the news feeds on my phone and saw things were mostly back to normal. It seemed that, at least for the moment, Cygnus had retreated. So I guess I won.