Blood, Ink & Fire

by Ashley Mansour

  When we turn seventeen, Valers visit New Down to be immersed. It is not optional, not for anyone wanting to stay in the UVF. My father says immersion is like an inhalation through the eyes, and though relatively uncomfortable, it doesn’t last long. I don’t believe him. All the Learning is in preparation for a successful, clean immersion, they say. A good preparation has the best likelihood of success, they tell us. It’s hard to imagine what success looks like, though, or how to measure it. As far as I can tell, it means getting a role that offers sanction, the ability to come and go from Vale to Vale, and sometimes beyond, as your job requires. Both my parents have sanction. My father is a terrain scout and spends most of his time on a transport. My mother is a chemical inspector, which she says means looking after most of the Fellmaceutical shipments. My parents are the lucky ones, and, because of them, I’ll have a chance at getting sanction, too.

  A second passes before I hear the oncoming train. The low rumble of its approach sends a shiver of anticipation through me. It stops at the platform with a powerful whoosh of air. I close my eyes, enjoying the momentary quiet inside me. When I open them, the middle of my gut hums, electric. I wait, counting seconds. The doors of the train fall away. A line of white steps peels out, connecting imperceptibly to the platform.

  John appears, clutching the sides of the train doors. The big brown-and-yellow snout of Page, John’s golden retriever, arcs into the air for a sniff. She sees me and leaps forward as John pulls back on her bright-green leash. “Whoa, Page!”

  Page greets me with a nuzzle and a soft brush of her tongue on the back of my hand. Her golden coat leaves flecks of fur along my trousers, but I don’t mind in the least. Not for Page. I kneel down to stroke her ears.

  “You made it,” John says, smiling. He’s taller than the last time I saw him. Sure, his sand-colored hair is parted, as it always is, too neatly to the side, in striking contrast to his sloppily laced shoes, but something else is different, too. He stops, opens his arms to me, and wraps me in a firm hug. I lean into him as he lifts me a little off the platform. So that’s what’s different—he’s gotten stronger.

  “Hi to you, too,” I say when he sets me down.

  “No time for pleasantries. Train comes in nine minutes.”

  “That’s all we have?” I say, unable to conceal my disappointment.

  “They keep us ideators on a short leash.” He shrugs. “But it’s better than nothing.” Page helps John find the red seats. He sits staring straight ahead. I can tell he wants to say something. I don’t let him.

  “I saw your posts today on the stream. They were amazing. Thank you.”

  “It was nothing.” His eyes strain as if he’s trying to look far into the distance. But he can’t, of course. John has been blind since age four.

  “How was work?” I ask, trying to draw him back to me.

  “They ask questions. I answer them. I dream it up, and they push it into the stream to fill the gaps. All the usual.” John pauses, looking for something far away again. “Except for today . . .”

  “Today, what?”

  He turns to me, his face excited. “You know how they give me words sometimes, to, like, generate thought? I told you that, right?”

  I nod, and then quickly add, “Yes.”

  “Well, today they gave me a new word. A word I didn’t like.”

  “What was it?”

  John opens his mouth, then closes it. He starts again. “Probably not a good idea. You know the rules.”

  I do. We’ve played this game before. Many times, actually. John will give me clues to the things the people of Fell Intel give him for this process they call “ideation.” I try to guess the words behind them. Except today I can tell he doesn’t feel like playing.

  “All right. Then just tell me how it felt.”

  “It felt like I was a creature. A bird, to be specific. A bird that could fly, but only a tiny bit before it had to circle back again and land. I was the bird. I had to keep circling and coming back to this single perch whenever they called me. I could go no farther than that circle, as if I were attached to an invisible string or something. I did what they demanded of me.”

  “Compliance.”

  John flinches when I say it. I know I’ve guessed correctly. “Remind me to stop telling you about my day, NH.”

  “Sorry. Consider yourself reminded.” I nudge his arm a little to show I’m joking.

  John fidgets in his seat. Usually he allows his eyes to stay slightly open around me. I told him once that they were a wonderful color, like a sharp blue gem. Tonight, though, he keeps them closed, which tells me he’s feeling self-conscious.

  “So when do you want your present, NH?”

  “Hmmm, that depends, JP. What is it?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a surprise. Also, I don’t have it yet.”

  “You don’t have it yet, but you want to give it to me?”

  “Correction.” John holds up one finger. “I want us to get it. Together. Well, half of it, anyway. I have the other half right here.” He twists toward me, slides up his shirtsleeve, and unclasps something from his arm. Then, as though he’s practiced the movement a hundred times, John brings my arm into his lap. He finds my wrist and loops the gift around it, hooking the ends together. I hold up my forearm, admiring the beautiful, soft leather cuff that’s still warm from him, the careful black stitching framing the edges. A strange design has been sewed into the center. Tiny circles overlap in one corner, then stretch to a square-shaped design in the other. Between them are little flecks of stitching that seem accidental. I smile, knowing John made this himself.

  I stare at him, speechless. My surprise would be evident if John could see my face.

  His expression grows tentative, unsure. “Do you like it?” he asks.

  “It’s perfect. What is it?”

  John relaxes. “It’s a place marker.”

  “A what?”

  “A place marker,” John says, unclasping it again. He uncurls the leather, making it perfectly straight, then presses it between his palms. “It holds your place. So you remember where you are.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s okay,” John says, smiling. “You will.”

  The station clock flickers above us. John’s transport to the Winnow will arrive any second now.

  “When?”

  “When I give you the second part of your present.”

  “When will that be?”

  “When it’s safe.”

  “Safe?”

  The familiar splash of air hits us. Page barks at the oncoming train as it speeds close to the platform. I’m alive with possibility in these nine minutes, where I meet John between worlds. We’re the last stop at the edge of the bioslice, the farthest you can go without being on the outside. So close, and yet whenever John leaves, his world feels impossibly far from mine.

  “Can’t you stay a little?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  John shakes his head. “Not a good idea.” He waves to the stream broadcasting above our heads. “They’re always with us. But I don’t have to tell you that.”

  I shield the dim light of the stream emanating from my wrist-plate. Page nudges him toward the transport. I’m never good at saying good-bye, but this time I feel I have to be. The doors pull apart, waiting to take John and Page inside.

  “Wait!”

  John turns.

  “I’m leaving in the morning. For immersion. I won’t see you for a while.”

  He smiles easily, a knowing expression taking over. “I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”

  “You have?”

  “Uh-huh. You didn’t think I’d let you head to that big eye in the sky without a proper Winnower good-bye, did you?”

  I step up to the train. John leans toward me, resisting Page’s pull. He reaches out, finds a strand of my hair, and tucks it behind my ear. His fingers hover a moment next to my face.
For a second I think he actually might do something more. Then he lets them fall as he inclines his head to my ear. His whisper floods me like water. “Follow it. Come find me, NH. Before they change you.” He pulls back, his expression a mixture of sadness and hope. The white steps collapse as John boards the train. A sense of panic overcomes me. This is it, the last moment I will see him before immersion.

  “John!” I call to him. “Wait, I don’t understand!”

  “Keep watching the stream,” he calls back through the closing doors. “You never know what you might see.”

  *

  When I get home, I head upstairs and cast the stream as far away from me as possible. The lights of New Down City sparkle in the backdrop as Peloria Devoure, the plasticized PR hound of Fell, delivers her evening confab.

  And for our Verity enthusiasts who just can’t get enough of the stream, we’re talking to you tonight about Verity Dream™—a new low-intensity program that immerses you in the stream while you sleep! That’s right, with Verity Dream™, you’ll never have to miss another post!

  I sift through several channels until I land on one that appears to be nature only. False birds tweeting, the yawn of digital lions, rolling hills and butterflies that probably once existed in the physical world. Downstairs, I hear the mechanized rattle of the delivery system bringing in our evening nutri-trays, and silently I wonder what John might be eating in the Winnow. If the place is anything like John himself, then it is full of free will and possibility. The exact opposite of life here in the Vale, where everything is chosen for us, directed, controlled.

  I hardly remember a time before the stream. As soon as Valers are old enough to walk, we begin the Learning. Verity, the white stream of information, is our only teacher. She is everything, and yet she is also nothing. Just a presence inside. A voice running through our brains, a whisper of knowing, like a thread unspooling through the ears. For the next sixteen years of our lives, we absorb the stream like the good, strong vessels we are. We learn the facts. The happenings of our past. We learn about the wars that raged when my grandfather was young and the great upheaval out of which Fell arose, the power that protects us, the power that offers us a life of security in exchange for our obedience.

  Still, despite the Learning, I am curious. For instance, what was here before Fell and the Sovereigns? Had the objects that are now forbidden to us once been allowed? What did they contain that made them so dangerous? Who made them? Would I have been one of the ones who made them, had I been born on the other side of time?

  As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that the mysterious objects that had made our wars so great are now gone. We are the heirs of a new form of peace. We are inheritors of progress, of a technological rebirth that had only ever been imagined before now. We don’t talk about it, but at some point, it became clear to me: I am the child of a bookless age.

  Still, sometimes when I think about the earlier time, I get this aching in my gut, like a hunger pang no amount of food can ever satisfy. I’ve learned to suppress it, my father being a proponent of gratitude for our way of life, for living in a time and place that is so easy, so peaceful.

  “It wasn’t always this way,” he liked to remind me. “Your grandfather can remember a time when the world was a mess with war and fire. Aren’t you thankful that time isn’t your own?”

  “Much of the outside world is still that way,” my mother would add. “They don’t have Verity.”

  I’ve spent all my life hearing the warning tales. I understand it. I really do. We have a good life here in the United Vales of Fell. And all of it is possible because we abide by three laws:

  No Valer may leave the UVF without being sanctioned for transfer.

  Every Valer must absorb Verity’s stream and undergo immersion.

  Any Valer found to be in possession of the printed material of the past, who is deemed to have procured, shared, transmitted, or otherwise disseminated or been exposed to the written word will be considered a traitor.

  There is a fourth, unstated law, one all Valers know but don’t like to discuss: treason against Fell is punishable by extreme, unspeakable measures.

  Fell is in control of us, just as much as our history. One thing has always been made clear: whatever came before Fell, the earlier time, is just ash in the wind now.

  My parents don’t understand. How could they? When they were growing up, Verity was just a fetus. A tiny, silent fetus that hardly had any effect outside the womb of Fell. Now Verity is this noisy, walking, talking child who never stops screaming at you. There’s never any refuge from her noise and constant flood of information. Twenty-four hours a day, she’s there. But the thing that keeps me lying awake until the fake birds start chirping, is that no matter how much of it you take in, it never feels complete. It’s as if the stream itself is just sea foam hiding a deep ocean we never see. The thought of that ocean, the unbearably black and fathomless water, bothers me. It’s the unknowing that frightens me about Verity. The thought that below her bright and perfect face lies something much darker, something much more flawed, which we’re never supposed to see.

  The nature stream quivers across Verity’s face before collapsing inward. Peloria Devoure is roaring like a lion. She’s exploding into a butterfly. A stampede of hundreds of animals breaks apart her features, one at a time. An eye lands on my mirror. Her mouth is still interviewing someone from Vale 2 on my wrist. Her smooth voice distorts into a low-pitched bellow that makes my skin crawl. The particles of her burst apart and scatter until Verity cuts in.

  “Valers, please remain calm. This is Verity, streaming to you live twenty-four/seven. All facts. All Fell. All the—”

  Verity’s voice crackles unintelligibly. This, I know, is not normal. No post or broadcast begins this way. There should be no screaming static like this.

  I spring from my room and race downstairs into the living room, where Verity streams from our wide display. The same broken static hits me. My mother, father, and grandfather stand motionless, watching.

  “That’s two,” my grandfather says.

  My father takes a step toward Verity. He reaches out, as if to touch her. “How are they doing it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Stop it,” my mother whispers. “You’re making it sound purposeful. Clearly something is wrong with Verity.”

  “Clearly somebody’s found a way in,” grandfather says. “Hacked it.”

  “Who?” my mother asks.

  “We’ll never know,” my father says. “They are not going to tell us who is responsible for this.”

  “Maybe so,” my grandfather agrees. “But they might not have to. Look.” He points to Verity’s face, shattered into pieces. In between them, an eerie red light seeps through as if someone is cutting her from the inside. A symbol appears behind it. It pushes through the pieces of her, breaking to the surface. I recognize its forbidden form. We all do. It’s a letter.

  “Well, would you look at that,” Grandpa says.

  “Noelle, go upstairs,” my mother tells me without turning. “This is not good to see. It will be over soon.”

  “I’ve already seen it. Has this happened before?”

  “Only once,” my father says. “A long time ago.”

  The letter glows and enlarges on the display before shattering into dozens of other letters. They skitter like insects along the surface looking for somewhere to land. Verity’s face twitches and shudders. “She knows they’re inside her,” my mother whimpers. “I can’t watch this. Loden, make this stop.”

  “There is no stopping it,” my father says.

  A voice—a human voice! It flits up from the letters as they form, emerging from shapes and lines. My ears perk. The letters pulse softly. Beneath them, a voice we’ve never heard speaks to us. I hold my breath and listen. I don’t want to miss a single word.

  NOELLE

  TWO

  One. Two. Three.

  Transmitting.

 
; Beware the lull of silence. Those who do not speak listen with sharpened ears. Blood runs quietly when all is still. Beware the lull of silence . . .

  The voice repeats the message over and over.

  Those who do not speak listen with sharpened ears . . .

  “What does it mean?” asks my mother.

  Blood runs quietly when all is still.

  The stream flickers on my wrist-plate. Verity’s flesh bleeds red around the words. I stare at the letters as they develop, trying to understand why the words I see are different from what the voice in the stream is saying. They don’t match. I know this. I can tell. Maybe they’re not supposed to. I navigate along, letter by letter. I sense my mouth moving, finding sounds. I must be saying something, because when I stop and pull away from the words, my entire family is staring at me.

  “What is she doing, Loden?” My mother tugs on my father’s arm. “What is happening?”

  My father’s face hardens. His low brow pinches. “Stop it, Noelle,” he says. “Not another sound from you.”

  “But the words—they’re all wrong.”

  The stream flickers, as if at any second, it will change again and the message will be lost. The letters dance along the screen, begging me to put them together. I can’t help myself. The words are drawing me in. And I let them.

  “Dearest, Imagined.” The words enlarge as I read them, becoming still and permanent.

  “If this message finds you, you must find us.”

  My father lunges at me. “Stop this!”

  “We are the letter.”

  It’s over now. The screen falls dark as I let the last words fall out of me.

  “Post tenebras spero lucem.”

  By the look in my father’s eyes, by the strange fear holding my mother perfectly still, I know I’ve done something terrible. I’ve gone too far. My father grabs my wrist-plate and looks from the stream to me and back again. “What was that?”