The Block

by Ben Oliver

  I lean toward the drone and say, “Apple-Moth activate.”

  Flashing lights come on and the tiny machine lifts into the air.

  “Hey, hey, hey, friend! What’s going on?” the drone says in a cartoonish voice. “My name’s Apple-Moth. Wanna hear a joke?”

  “Shut up!” I hiss, waving my arms at it.

  “Hey, it’s you again! My newest friend. I’m Apple-Moth; what’s your name?”

  “You have to shut up,” I say in a loud whisper.

  “Aw,” the drone replies, its lights dimming to show its disappointment. “I just want to be your friend.”

  “You can be my friend by being silent! Your only job is to make me look like an Alt and hide me from the Mosquitoes.”

  “Oh yeah, I see that in my programming. Hey, hey, hey, you’re not supposed to rewrite my code. That makes my warranty null and void, which makes me a sad Apple-Moth.”

  “Apple-Moth, can you speak in a quieter voice?” I ask.

  “Sure can, friend! How’s this?” Apple-Moth replies, just as loud as ever, and then—finally—it lowers its voice. “Wanna hear a joke?”

  “That’s much better,” I tell it. “Keep your voice at that volume.”

  “No problem … but, do you wanna hear a joke?”

  “No,” I say, and Apple-Moth’s lights dim once again.

  I begin to move, staying as silent as possible while trying to act as though I’m a soldier in Happy’s army, but my false confidence is completely undermined by Apple-Moth zipping along beside me, darting to the left and the right, lights blinking and changing color with its programmed emotions.

  “Hey, look at that,” Apple-Moth whispers, looking over to Old Town. “That’s the old parliament building. Did you know that the World Government chose not to demolish the derelict site, but to let it slowly crumble over time as a monument to symbolize the corruption of the old ways?”

  “Apple-Moth,” I say, stopping in the middle of the street, “do you have some sort of sleep mode where you can still scramble Mosquito signals while you’re inactive?”

  The tiny drone’s lights grow brighter and then change to slightly purple hue as it hesitates. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The drone is silent for a beat too long once again. “I’m sure.”

  “Apple-Moth, don’t lie to me.”

  “Okay, fine, yes, I have a sleep mode, but that’s no fun!”

  “This isn’t about fun; I have to save my friends.”

  “Friends are the best! Can we be friends?”

  I sigh. This must have been a young kid’s companion drone. I wonder if that kid is a Smiler right now, or dead. “I’m sorry, Apple-M—” I start, but then I hear the whine of a Mosquito high above me.

  I turn to see the surveillance drone dipping low and flying along the street, free to see all now that the scrambler is down.

  Apple-Moth’s lights change to a deep red and it moves silently until it’s hovering above my head.

  As the Mosquito comes in closer, Apple-Moth emits a low buzzing sound.

  The surveillance drone moves to within a centimeter of my face, circling slowly around my head, its camera lens scanning me over and over. I can hear the machinery bleeping and buzzing inside its tiny shell. My heart is thumping as it returns to my field of vision, so close that I can barely focus on it.

  And then it’s gone, whipping up into the air above the height of the buildings either side of me, disappearing toward the second-home villages on the edge of town.

  Apple-Moth lowers, still looking menacing with its red lights. And then, suddenly, the lights change to green and yellow and blue, and the drone begins to bounce on thin air again.

  “Wow, wow, wow!” it says, and then lowers its voice again. “Sorry! I mean, wow, wow, wow, that was scary!”

  “You did great, Apple-Moth,” I say.

  “Really?” the drone replies, lights changing to a deep pink color. “Does this mean we’re friends now?”

  I can’t help but smile. “Well …”

  “And you’re not going to put me into sleep mode?”

  “Jesus,” I mutter, “fine, but if you sense any humans coming toward us, you have to be silent and hide in the pocket behind my body armor, understand?”

  “I understand, friend!” Apple-Moth replies, spinning in short, excited circles.

  “And use that face-changer software so they think I’m an Alt.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I will! I love an adventure! Do you want to hear a joke?”

  “Not now, Apple-Moth,” I say. “Maybe later.”

  “Okay! I’m going to think of a good one!”

  I refocus my mind on the Arc, and Malachai and Woods, and the probability that I won’t make it back to Kina alive to tell her again that I love her, that I love her more than she’ll ever know.

  The safest way to the Arc is through the sewers, back to the pub where Sam and I hid, but the safest way is also the slowest way. Woods and Malachai have just over an hour left before their minds and bodies are taken over by Happy. I have to take the train straight to the center of town.

  Apple-Moth and I pass three groups of soldiers as we walk through town, and each time the tiny drone falls silent and dives into the pocket behind my chest plate before any of the Alts can see it. From its hiding place the drone projects a digital face over my own, one that must be appropriately handsome, as all the passing soldiers snap off salutes without hesitation or a second look.

  Apple-Moth waits in my pocket at the train station, projecting the attractive overlay onto my face as Alt soldiers wait for the train. All four of the awaiting soldiers salute me and I nod back, playing the part of a grumpy, overworked commanding officer.

  When the train finally pulls up, my heart skips a beat. Every single carriage is filled with soldiers.

  The doors open and the Alts, seeing my military rank, part like traffic for an ambulance. I’m offered seats by five officer cadets and choose one on the edge of the row. I can feel sweat trickling down the side of my head as I sit in the silence of the carriage. All the Alt soldiers are on their best behavior in front of me, their superior officer.

  I catch sight of my reflection in the opposite window. The face-changer app that Apple-Moth is using has transformed my big-eared, bulbous-nosed, scarred face into a chisel-jawed, blue-eyed runway model. The only problem is, the new face is white.

  “Apple-Moth, you moron,” I mutter, glancing down at the contrasting brown skin of my hands and shoving them into my pockets.

  Another batch of young soldiers boards the train, all five of them saluting me. This time—aware of Apple-Moth’s error in judgment—I do not salute back, only nod at the soldiers, who look disappointed.

  “Psst!” the quiet but panicked voice of Apple-Moth hisses from beneath my body armor.

  I feel a jolt of adrenaline and glance around, but nobody appears to have heard. I look down and see that Apple-Moth is projecting words a centimeter above its body:

  BATTERY DYING. NEED SOLAR POWER.

  No sooner have I read this short sentence when I see, in my peripheral vision, the digital mask around my face begin to flicker.

  “Fuck,” I whisper.

  I lower my head and try to cover it with a hand, as though I’m suffering from an oncoming migraine; then I remember the false face is white and hide my hands in my pockets once again.

  The train stops again and the doors whoosh open. The crowd parts and a soldier with an identical shoulder patch to mine strolls into the aisle and glances around. She notices me, grins, and saunters over.

  “Captain,” she mutters, lowering herself down onto the seat beside me.

  “Captain,” I reply.

  We sit in silence for a few seconds, and then I’m aware of the soldier trying to get a good look at me.

  “Say,” she says, ducking lower and trying to look at my face, “I don’t think we’ve met. You newly promoted?”

  “Yes, Captain,” I reply, trying to s
tay as still as possible, knowing that Apple-Moth and its dying battery will struggle to track my face and keep it disguised.

  “The name’s Captain Rooney,” she says, holding out her hand to be shaken.

  I take her hand and give it a perfunctory grab before shoving back into my pocket. “Yossarian, Captain Yossarian.”

  “Yossarian?” she says, a hint of awe in her voice. “Hell, I’ve heard of you! The legend of Midway!”

  For a second I’m silent in confusion—then I realize: The story Sam told the soldiers when we bluffed our way out of the pub must’ve spread like wildfire. I offer a polite smile, and then stand up. “This is my stop,” I mutter.

  “Hey, now, wait, you’re not heading to the Arc with the rest of us? Let me buy you a drink after the meeting.”

  “Meeting?” I repeat, turning back to the soldier.

  “The meeting, you know about the meeting? It’s mandatory, eleven hundred hours at the Arc? Galen Rye himself called it.”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, trying not to show the panic that’s settling over me. “I’ve been asked by the higher-ups to gather some troops from certain tactical points around the city first.”

  “All right, Yossarian, but I’m getting you that drink.”

  “Understood,” I reply, and then turn back to the train’s doors. Once again my mask flickers. I notice one low-ranked soldier staring at me, squinting at my imperfect face.

  Finally, the train stops and the doors open. I jump off and move quickly into the city. Getting off a stop early has left me about a mile from the pub where Sam and I hid, but there was no other choice—I couldn’t let the mask disappear in front of dozens of soldiers.

  I move quickly, recalculating my odds of survival now that Galen Rye (controlled by Happy) has called a meeting of all Alt soldiers in the Arc at the very same time I’ll be trying to break my friends out. I don’t think I stand much of a chance.

  I tell Apple-Moth to come out and get some solar charge now that we’re in a completely deserted part of the city, but the charge is slow in coming, as the big dark cloud is still hovering above us.

  “Wow, wow, wow! Captain Yossarian, I almost died back there!”

  “Yossarian is not my name,” I say, running through the streets now.

  “Oh. Then why did you tell that nice soldier that your name was—”

  “Because I was lying,” I interrupt.

  “Lying is bad!”

  “Apple-Moth,” I say, “I’ll explain later; for now you’ll just have to trust me that I did the right thing.”

  The drone seems to think about this for a second, its lights turning dark green before brightening to yellow. “Okay!”

  I move as quickly as I can, sprinting through the town, weaving my way through streets and alleyways toward the Arc. I’m aware, suddenly, of darkness falling over me, the sun dipping behind a cloud maybe, but when I steal a glance up, I realize that I’m in the shadow of the Arc. The steep dome structure rises up over the buildings of the city, the dark material it is constructed of sending a cold shade over this part of town.

  Looking to the top of the building, I see that the enormous circular storm cloud is emanating from the Arc itself. A stream of mist pours out of the tip of the dome.

  What the hell is going on? I wonder.

  I’m still about a quarter mile away from the enormous building, but already the scale of it is staggering. It’s not nearly as high as the Verticals, but at its base it must be three miles wide.

  “Apple-Moth,” I whisper.

  “Yes, friend?” the drone replies in hushed tones.

  “When did they build this?”

  “Tier Two and Three soldiers were offered shelter from Phase Three if they took part in construction of the Arc. The first three floors were built between the first of June and the twenty-first of June. The rest was built over a four-week period from July the fourteenth to August the tenth of this year.”

  I was in the Loop for the first part of construction, and the Block for the rest, I think.

  “And what exactly is Phase Three?” I ask, already knowing that Phase One was the deletion of 98 percent of humankind, and yet sure that Phases Two and Three might somehow be worse.

  Apple-Moth’s lights flicker. “I don’t know. I do not have access to that information.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Ten forty-one a.m.”

  “Fuck,” I whisper. Woods has twenty-six minutes left.

  “Hey, come on now, friend, you don’t need to use that kind of language. Find a better word!”

  “No, fuck is the appropriate word here, Apple-Moth.”

  “Okay, friend. Fuck!”

  I actually laugh as I speed up, moving quickly toward the dome. As I get closer, Apple-Moth returns to my pocket, now with enough charge to reapply the digital mask to my face.

  “Apple-Moth, do me a favor and make the mask match my skin tone this time, okay?”

  “No problem, friend!”

  We begin passing armed soldiers milling around, sentry towers with snipers, tanks idling near the foot of the Arc.

  I’m entirely in the shadow of the building now. I stop and survey the enormous Arc towers before me, matte-black blocks tapering upward to the apex of the dome, one large entrance guarded by four soldiers through which tanks periodically enter and exit.

  There’s no time to come up with an intricate plan—the seconds of my friends’ lives are ticking away.

  I walk up to a slow-moving tank and hold both hands up in a stop gesture. The tank halts and a soldier appears at the turret.

  “Sir?” he asks, after saluting me.

  “Make room inside, Officer Cadet,” I say, trying to fill my voice with the commanding confidence of a military leader.

  “S-sir,” the soldier replies, uncertainty etched in his voice, “the tank is full. Lieutenant Bransky said—”

  “Lieutenant Bransky is a grade-A piece of shit, son,” I say, and I think of Sam on the streets outside the pub, when she had tricked the lower-ranked soldiers into believing that I was a captain with just her self-assurance and confidence. “Now either step aside or tell someone else to get out. That’s an order,” I instruct as I climb to the summit of the tank.

  The young soldier’s face becomes splotchy with red and he ducks inside, telling a soldier even more junior than him to get out.

  I climb inside and we ride—in silence—into the Arc.

  * * *

  The tank comes to a halt after two minutes of slowly rolling onward into the structure. I try to steal glances at the screen that shows what’s in front of us, and see a space so vast that—if it wasn’t for the artificial lighting—I’d think must be outdoors. We all wait inside the tank for … what?

  “Sir?” one of the young soldiers intones.

  “Hmm?” I reply, staring dumbly at her. “Oh, right,” I say, realizing that they’re waiting for me, their senior officer, to exit first. I climb out of the tank, my mind flashing back to the Battle of Midway Park: Kina, Malachai, Pander, Blue, and I had ridden into the middle of the Alt’s rally in a tank identical to this one.

  The other soldiers join me on the concrete floor. The tank is parked in an enormous hangar-like space beside at least a hundred others. Around us, troops are disembarking and moving toward a checkpoint at the far end of the hangar. “My” squad is looking at me expectantly again, so I tell them to lead the way, all the while glancing around, looking for a door that might lead to a medical facility or laboratory. As the soldiers walk, we are joined by others. At first a dozen or so, then thirty, and then we are in a great wave of Alts, all dressed in black, all perfect in their features and bodies, all of them with their enhancements: mechanical lungs; robotic hearts; synthetic blood.

  I slow my pace down as we approach the checkpoint—beyond it is an enormous hall. I let the soldiers pass me by until I’m near the back of the line.

  Drones are scrutinizing the crowd for weapons, and sentries posted at th
e entrance are using handheld iris scanners to check identification.

  I hang back even more, slowing until I’m barely moving at all. The river of soldiers flows by me on each side. I spot a deserted access corridor and decide to slip down it. I glance once more through the enormous open doors of the hall—and see Galen Rye taking to the stage to rapturous applause.

  I want to stay and listen, I want to gather information about Phase Three, but I can’t.

  I run down the long, dark corridor, the vinyl floor squeaking under my rubber-soled boots, the black and red of the painted walls rushing by, and Galen’s voice echoing after me.

  “Soldiers of Earth, survivors of the end of days, warriors of destiny, you are the chosen few!”

  Galen’s words and the roar of the crowd chase me down the never-ending passageway. I scan the plaques on the doors—MESS HALL 5 FOR TIER THREE USE; TRAINING CENTER 5 FOR TIER THREE USE; BARRACK 2 FOR TIER THREE, G COMPANY—and half a dozen other barrack notices that are all useless to me. This pattern repeats from MESS HALL 6 and TRAINING CENTER 6, and on and on with no sign of the whereabouts of Malachai and Woods.

  Galen’s egomaniacal ramblings begin to fade as I increase the distance between me and the great hall, but the roar of the crowd after every declaration is a swarm of hornets filling the Arc relentlessly.

  I’m in the belly of the beast now, I think, almost deliriously, as I sprint through the enemy’s base.

  Finally, ahead, at the corner where this protracted corridor meets another, I see an elevator. I come to a skidding stop. The sign above reads, ELEVATOR: FLOORS 2–10. I see a door marked STAIRS beside it. I decide on the stairs, knowing that Happy has the capability of trapping me inside the metal box of the elevator if it becomes aware of my presence.

  Before I push the door open, I see four beams of light wavering against the corner wall, growing steadily brighter and larger. My instincts tell me to shove the door open and sprint up the stairs as fast as I can—I know that the lights belong to the eyes of host soldiers. Instead, I move quietly, pushing the door slowly open to avoid any sound, but as soon as the door opens, it becomes clear that this is unnecessary, as a thunderous roar fills the room. I turn around to see that I’m in an enormous open ground-floor space. From here, I can see all the way to the top of the Arc. Through the middle of the building, an enormous waterfall cascades down, acting as a natural air conditioner. I can see the narrowing corridors of each level going up and up until they almost disappear near the top. There is nobody else here; all the Alts and all the hosts must be at Galen’s conference. All except the two that are patrolling the corridor on the other side of this door. I stand with my ear pressed against the wood, waiting and hoping that the hosts don’t come this same way.