She sounded angry. Of course she was angry, with a fucked-up story like hers.
“But now it’s not humanity in charge anymore.” she said. “It’s the companies who control the world, operated by increasingly terrified slaves. Everything that happens on Earth now is driven and controlled by corporations, from creating life forms to recycling garbage, and they give nothing for free. You and I have nothing they want. So how are non-corporate people supposed to survive out here all on our own?”
She paused. Kel opened his eyes just enough to see her face. She was smiling, but she looked sad. “We’re not supposed to survive. We humans either kill ourselves serving them from the inside, or kill each other fighting for scraps out here.”
Kel closed his eyes again. “Never saw nobody get all nuts on plain ol’ ’teen-HC before.”
She laughed like he had said something funny. “I noticed you break things as you go by,” she said. “Not that there’s much to break around here. But I think I know why you do it. It’s like breaking down the walls that hold us in, chipping away at them little by little.”
Kel shrugged. “I break shit because then it’s like it’s mine, you know? Like, when you buy something, you get to do whatever the fuck you want with it, right? Use it, keep it, give it away, sell it … even break it for no damn reason. So there’s all this shit out there, an’ I know it won’t be mine, like, ever. But I can act like it’s mine, right? I can do one of those things. I can break it, and that means it’s like it’s mine.”
She said nothing. When he looked she was staring at him, with her eyes all narrow like someone trying to decide if she was being ripped off. She reached, pinching two fingers around the packet of paper in his hand.
“Can I read this?” she asked, pulling. “There’s still plenty of light coming up from the market.” He pulled back carefully, making sure none of the pages pulled off the string that tied them together.
“You already got my other book. Why you want this one?”
She kind of squinted at him again. Like judging. She looked down at the pack of papers in his hand, which she was still pinching. “Once you burn this, then it’s gone. I just want to read it, appreciate it for a minute before it’s lost forever. Is that all right?” She looked up. Her eyes were sparkly and deep, like a really clean glass of water.
He let go.
“Thanks, Kel.” Her voice sounded funny in his ears, like it was crawling through them with little feet. “I’m really sorry your notebook got burned.”
He shrugged. “Ah, there’s other books.”
She leaned closer. Her eyes opened wider. “More? You wrote more? Do you have them here?”
“Uh, no. I don’t have more.”
“Oh.” She lifted the packet of papers up into the light and stared at it for a long time. Then she turned a page and flipped the packet over and sat still like that again. Then she skipped over the next three pages.
“What’s wrong with those ones you skipped? You said you love to read an’ shit.”
“Kel, I do love to read, but that doesn’t mean I want to go reading old tables of numbers.” She turned her eyes on him.
“Oh, yeah. Right.” He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He knew she was still watching him. She stayed quiet for a really long time. Then she clucked her tongue and he heard the pages rustling.
“There are some pretty interesting articles here,” she said. “Even though they’re really old. The page you ripped to smoke has an article about population. Listen to this: ‘Estimates by leading statisticians say that the world’s population will top eight and one-half billion people by the middle of March. With world stocks of raw materials approaching or having already reached minimum subsistence levels, and poorer areas of even the most advanced cities regressing towards what is essentially a new Stone Age, population issues—’
She rustled the paper a little more. “Then it’s torn off.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m surprised you’re not more interested in this. This article was written when there were exactly half as many people in the world as there are now. It explains the miserable state of civilization these days. But I understand if you’re not really in the mood to discuss this stuff. You must be totally wiped out from all the fighting and walking.”
“I’m not wiped out. I’m savin’ my strength, is all. If we can get up here, then they can get up here. So maybe we gotta be resting more an’ talking less.”
She went back to reading the papers and didn’t say any more. She turned a page, then another one.
She sniffled. She breathed out in shaky breaths.
Crying?
He sat up. The paper she was looking at had a picture of sporting goods.
“Uh, listen,” he said. “I didn’ mean to sound like I didn’ want to talk to you, or that you were stupid or anything. I … I didn’ write that notebook.” She kept looking down at the paper. He cleared his throat. “I don’t really write or read too much.”
She nodded. Tears fell on the picture but his other pages stayed dry. “I know that,” she said.
“You do?”
She nodded again. There were more tears on Kel’s paper. “I figured it out.”
“Oh. Well, sorry about makin’ you cry an’ all.”
“You didn’t.”
“Oh. So what made you cry?”
She flicked her wrist, hitting the picture with the backs of her fingernails. “It’s this ad,” she said. Her voice was shaky. “It reminds me of my dad. And a really, really bad day I had once when he was still around. I’m sorry—it’s dumb.” She pushed the paper at him.
He wiped the tears on his pant leg. She was still crying. “So … your dad played sports? I thought only rich guys played sports.”
She sniffed, breathed out. “Not all sports. Just golf.”
“Really? I hearda golf. They used these sticks to hit little balls into nets or something.”
“Into holes in the ground. I think the nets were practice. They played the real game in big, open fields.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think my dad ever got to do that. He went to those places with the nets but that was all. At least when he was working at the bank, he did.”
Kel blinked. “Your dad was a banker?”
She nodded. “My dad was one of those people.” She nodded towards Lawrence and Old Fart. “Both my parents were. But then he got fired. He said something bad to his boss, or did something wrong … I don’t know. But he got fired, and then my mom had to quit the company because they held it against her.” She shook her head. “My mom and dad decided to buy a little store after they got booted from company housing. You know, one of those where you live up above the store?”
Kel nodded.
Eadie looked around, leaning closer and lowering her voice. “And it should have been at least kind of a success. Nobody in the Zone can afford a synthesizer, so they have to go to a store to get pre-synthesized stuff. My parents bought this little shop with a great synthesizer and two apartments above, so we could live in one and rent out the other. But they were Golden. And it was a neighborhood of stupid white people.”
“But I thought Gold types could go anywhere.”
“To spend money, sure. But not to live.” She held up the yellowed paper. “Back when this was printed, corporations employed people of all the different races, you know. Color didn’t matter as long as you were a valued component of the company. The corporate types all sent their kids to the same schools, because they were the best schools, and those kids grew up together to be corporate types, and they all intermarried. Racial identity had become a thing of the past in the corporate world by the time the gene splices were developed to make us all Golden.
“People who somehow ended up on the outside, without the right employer to take care of them, have gotten a tough deal. They’ve had to watch the big companies getting larger and richer and more powerful while their families have grown poorer and sicker and more desperate,
and there’s nothing they can do to improve their situation. Who could blame them for resenting the insiders, for not trusting Golden people like my parents?”
“But who cares about them, right?” Kel said. “I mean, if you got money, if you’re inside your ’lectric fence, an’ you got security an’ cops lookin’ out for you, no problem.”
“Yeah, exactly. And people like me were born in that world. My parents, too. But then it all ended for us. We ended up in the Zone—you know, the Stone Age? And you know how it is here. You fight for everything you get. So families have to take care of themselves, protect each other. Extended families, too … and when you extend it farther and farther, race is still a family tie.”
“Yeah,” Kel said. “I can imagine that. Like, this one time I went down to La Guada—you know, that part of town where all the Mexicans are? Supposed to be Little Guadalajara or some shit, but everybody just calls it La Guada?”
She nodded.
“Anyways, I was a little shit.” He held his hand about half a meter high. “Like that. I was seein’ what I could get into, right? An’ these guys came up—two big guys and three little, like me. An’ the big ones got the little ones to beat the shit outa me, teachin’ ’em how to do it, right? An’ then they threw me in a ditch.” He shook his head. “An’ for a real long time I didn’ like Mexicans, right, ’cause those ones did that. But now I figure hey, they were protectin’ their area, you know?”
She stared at him with her lips pressed together. “That’s what my neighbors thought they were doing. People threw rocks at our building and broke all the windows. They wrote nasty things with charcoal on the walls at night, about being oppressed by Golds. Once they even tried to burn the place down. Nobody shopped in the store, and nobody moved in. My parents lost all their money. Then one night a bunch of the men came, blaming my father for some incident they’d heard about on the news. He went out—” she flicked her fingers at the paper again. “With a golf club. But there were too many, and they killed him. Then they took everything.”
She sniffled. “And now I’m here.” She stood up. “Sorry. I need to be away from people for a while.” She moved to an isolated corner of the roof.
Amelix Retreat
A SUBSIDIARY OF AMELIX INTEGRATIONS
Reconditioning Feedback Form
Seeker of Understanding
INVOLUNTARY, GRADE TWO
Subject: #117B882QQ
Division: Corporate Regulations
1. Please describe today’s combat simulation exercise.
We fought to survive, like every other day. I got hit in the shoulder and dropped my weapon, struggling to stay conscious and not black out from the pain. 6T took out the one who got me, disintegrating the A-Heave’s head and shoulders with a long burst of fire. It felt nice, having someone watch out for me like that.
Seazie and CTS (“Curtis”) were the real heroes, though. They captured four prisoners without a single shot by working together to set a trap and lure the Heaves into it.
2. Please share some details of your experience in group therapy today.
It’s funny to think that I’ve never actually met any of them in person. I’ve seen each of them fighting to survive, praising and berating me and each other, and in the throes of granted pleasure, but I’ve never even been in the same room with a single one. Still, there’s no denying their influence. They define who I am here, and I need them.
Burt was leading today. He gave Seazie and Curtis an unprecedented reward: a level 7 for each of them, but not by their own hands. They got to utilize the four prisoners they had taken, who were bound and shaking with fear.
My fear of isolation has been growing, and now I’m also having terrible nightmares. In them, I know I’m in Hell. Real Hell, as in the religious kind, which is really strange, because I’ve never really cared about religion at all before. And I’m alone there, and then these scary creatures crawl out of the night and start to bite and chew the flesh from my bones. And in the nightmares I know that it is real Hell, but it is also the Horde of the Departed, and the monsters are really just the people I have known who Departed from Amelix Integrations, feeding on me.
3. Please consider other events of the day, such as religious services, mealtimes, and interactions with your Accepted advisor, and explain how these experiences helped you grow and change.
There’s this strange image I can’t get out of my mind lately … I even dream about it. It’s a vision of gears turning inside an old-fashioned clock. I wonder if it means my mind is processing my experience and counting down the time until I’m released. Funny, because when I’m conscious, I can’t imagine ever being released from here.
According to our religious service today, God selected me to work for Amelix Integrations. I heard all this stuff a thousand times growing up, but the “God’s will” idea resonates with much more meaning for me now.
If it all comes from God, the slightest disobedience is a sin.
4. Please share any additional thoughts or
comments.
At one time, God’s plan included frogs, fish, deer, raccoons, and hundreds of thousands of varieties of other animals and insects. Now every last calorie on the planet has been converted to human flesh, or at least to human interest. Why did God want all the diversity for millions of years before, if His plan is to have only humans and our genetically-modified “living” organisms now? How can something be “alive” if it was made by humans rather than by God? How can I call myself human when so much of me was manufactured?
On the roof
“You’ve been over here all alone for a couple hours, Eadie,” Dok said. “You all right?” The market had been closed and its stalls dismantled. A few windows showed slivers of lamplight but most were dark.
Eadie stared down at the street below without speaking. Two gangs, each with roughly twenty young white men, shouted insults and taunts from opposite curbs. Dok watched a while, then cleared his throat. “How long has that been going on?”
“Probably an hour.” Eadie’s voice was breathy and low.
“You sound exhausted, Eadie. You really should be resting now.”
“I told Kel my big secret—that I’m Golden. He didn’t give a shit.”
“Yeah. He’s so fiercely independent, I wouldn’t have expected him to fall into the mob mentality thing.”
She nodded. “He’s the most independent person I’ve ever known. With you and me it’s different. We have to be independent because there’s nobody to depend on. But he could have people, like these gang punks. They’d flock to someone like him, but he seems to just go his own way. I wonder how he’s still alive.”
“Sheer force of will, I’d guess.”
A few more young men joined one of the gangs below. Most carried weapons. Sticks, bricks, bottles and chains were everywhere. The shouts and taunts were getting louder.
“Eadie, I—“
She raised a palm at him, pointing down the adjacent street. There were five Hispanic kids moving cautiously up the street, straight toward the impending combat.
“What’s that? Another gang?” Dok’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Not much of a gang,” she said. They were closer now and it was clear: There were two teenagers, male and female, two younger boys that had to be eleven or twelve, and a very little girl who might have been six.
Dok pounded a fist silently against the top of the wall. “When they reach this corner they’ll be right in the middle of the fight. How did they wander this far from home? La Guada’s got to be more than thirty blocks from here.”
Eadie was focused intently on the group, as if her eyes could physically push the kids backward.
“We can’t even warn them,” Dok said. “If we shouted we’d be pointing out where they are. And the gangs would see us, too.”
The Latin kids were right below them now. The eldest male stopped to peer around the edge of the building, quickly pulling his head back and herding his group in the oth
er direction.
Another small group of men appeared, emerging from behind a corner at the end of the block. “It’s a flanking maneuver,” Dok said. “The gang on the other side of the street put those guys in position to attack from the rear.”
“Mex! Mex!” one from the flanking party yelled.
“Look at that!” Dok said. “They don’t even care about flanking the other group now!”
Eadie stood rigid, staring. “Of course not. The other gang’s at least white. Now all the white guys have a common enemy.”
The gang that had almost been flanked moved away, entirely unmolested, from the adjacent street. They hung back as the rival gang swept forward to surround the Latinos.
“They’ll settle their differences after these kids are dead,” Dok hissed.
Kel came up. “What’re you pointin’ at?” He looked down into the street for a moment. “Mmm.”
The Hispanics were directly below Eadie and Dok now, trapped with their backs to the building by the mass of white kids. The older girl grabbed the younger girl, pushing her against the wall. The three boys fanned out around them with the eldest in front.
The white kids rushed them. The eldest Hispanic dodged a club, kicking its owner in the throat. The club fell to the concrete and he picked it up, handing it to one of the younger boys. He dodged a knife, twisting the wrist that held it and raising a knee. The knife hit the ground and he scooted it back to the other boy behind him. A chain nearly missed the eldest’s face. He wrapped it around his wrist and yanked it away.
Kel stared at the fight. “Damn, that one’s good.”
Eadie’s face looked hard and tight as she watched. “You don’t actually think they’ll win, do you?” she asked.
“Naw. Neither does he. See? He’s not tryin’ to win. Just takes out a knee, an elbow. Doesn’t take ’em out for real. Leaves ’em hurt enough one of the others might handle ’em. Dude’s gotta know he’s gonna die, though.”
“Eadie?” Dok said. “Eadie, what’re you doing?”
The stick had appeared in her hands. Dok put his hand on her shoulder. “Eadie—“
The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 19