Resist

by Hugh Howey

  But it’s not that we have grown, the lap bars really did click down tighter on us, pinning us into this car, pinching us into our seats, and the voice tells us it is for our safety, as the ride is picking up speed now. With a sick feeling in our guts we understand that we are not getting out of this ride until it lets us off and that the reason we are picking up speed is that we are now on a downslope, that somewhere we did pass the high point of the ride. None of us remembers doing that, or even there being a particularly high point, and maybe the high point just wasn’t very high, but whatever the case, we are accelerating now. Whatever we built up in terms of momentum, we are now giving it back.

  The idea is, the hope is, we will be able to see everything at least once, that even in this rushed state we can experience all of the rooms, even if it is from a distance, even if it is really other riders who are seeing these things. We can see other cars moving across the country, across “America,” we see all of us on grids, on graphs. We understand ourselves to be bits of socio-economic data on the bar charts and pie charts and flowcharts running down the leftmost column of the multi-colored newspapers that get left in front of the room doors of our discount business traveler hotels. We understand ourselves to be frequent fliers, rewards club members, customer loyalty program participants. We dream publicly. We have agencies, staffed by people who storyboard our fantasies, people who plan out panel-by-panel, shot-by-shot, the public space, the collective mental environment where this ride is located. Creative agencies mapping the conceptual territory, the shared Main Street of our imaginations, where we stroll, arm in arm, down the avenue of our engineered dreams, our civic conversation now just giggles and pointing, saying to ourselves, hey look at this, look at this, and we all look at this for ten seconds until another one of us says, now hey wait a minute, have you guys seen this, look at this, look at this one now, and we all turn our heads and look at this one now, until the next thing, the next thing, our collective attention reduced to the briefest of intervals, not long enough or large enough to hold a dream. And now, no more public dreaming, just expertly conceived narrative products designed to keep us inside the car, looking out the side, murals painted in 2-D to give a 3-D illusion of movement, the sweep of history that we have purchased, that we are part owners of, murals that show us watery images of ourselves, murals with frames around them, to give off the feelings of “Nostalgia” and “Tradition” and “Affordable Luxury” and “Forward Progress” and “Special Times” and “Beer and Friends.” We have no room for dreams or even feelings anymore, our feelings themselves engineered, mood-boarded by people who know how to do such things with chemistry and music and art direction. We feel feelings designed by people who have market-researched us and have seen our private browser searches and know what’s in our darkest of hearts and in our darkest of parts, and know what we really want deep down, all of those feelings calibrated to be emotionally nutritious, or at least emotionally fattening, calorically dense psychosocial-experiential sustenance, allotted into our feed troughs, constituting our collective body, so that we are what we consume, and we consume what we are, so that we are a loop, closed and tight and perfect, so we keep our minds focused on what has been laid out before us, our eyes adjusting to the alternating light and dark periods. Moving room to room. We have kids now and they are babies and they are grown and they’ll always be babies and they grew up overnight, and occasionally we admit to ourselves that we wish we didn’t have either of them not because we don’t love them but because we love them too much. We know how incompetent we are at loving things other than ourselves and loving these kids as much as we do we are quite sure that this excess of love will ruin them. We can already see it happening.

  We have to admit, sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, we hear ourselves talking and we become terrified at the sound of our own voice, still so strange and dumb after all these years. Occasionally we wish we didn’t have these kids yet and that we could go back to the days when it was just us, and all we had to worry about was just not falling out of the ride, what kind of snacks we would eat, what souvenirs we would buy. We see ourselves on the in-ride camera, taking pictures of us that we will have the chance to purchase, for $29.95 per print, at the end of the ride, when we get off. We see ourselves on camera, at an earlier time in the ride: we are looking at our family, all sitting together, cars near, now where are they? Where have our kids gone?

  We search desperately for our daughter, search desperately for our son, the ride is coming to an end for us, and turning our heads from the side, our necks stiff from having been locked into a position of gazing for so long, we realize what we have just done. We look forward for the first time in years and see the white light ahead, the outside, as we exit this room. We look at the in-ride camera and see our son, and see our daughter, see them in their own cars, with their own sons and their own daughters, and we want to call out to them, to our children and our grandchildren, but the camera is just an image, and we understand that, but we call out to them anyway. We try to tell them about the ride, but we see the looks on their faces, the hope, and we start to understand the impossibility of this ride, how it is a kind of perpetual escalator, a physical impossibility that somehow exists. We see how our children and our grandchildren think that they are on an upslope, believe in the forward movement that they can feel. We wish we could ride the ride again that way. We see the looks on our grandkids’ faces except that they are not looking at the ride, they are looking at their parents’ faces, just as our kids looked at ours, seeing how excited their parents are, and being excited by that, and also knowing already how to give their parents what they seem to need. The kids knew all along. Our daughter is in another car, far away, on an upslope, waving to us. Our son is with his family, and gives us a sad smile. Our own kids, now adults, they know already how the ride works, but they need to show their own kids. The idea is. The hope is. And as we move toward the large exit doors into the next room, it fills us. The hope fills us.

  THE DEFENSE OF FREE MIND

  DESIRINA BOSKOVICH

  I’M AN HOUR into my shift in the greenhouse when the sirens begin to wail. The ear-splitting clang pierces the peaceful green hum of the hydroponic drip. My adrenaline spikes. I’ve been hearing these sirens since I was a baby, and the spike still hits me every time. But it’s different now, because I’m sixteen and finally old enough to defend.

  I rip off my gardening gloves and sprint to the locker near the exit, touch my thumb to the lock. My boss is too old for militia duty; she gazes as I reach into the locker and pull out a rifle. “Be careful, dear,” she says.

  The guns are always loaded, and always in the lockers, which are always by the exits. We live on Free Mind, and we’re always ready to defend it.

  “Back soon,” I shout, my heart pounding with both fear and excitement. I run through the hallway, across the bridge, up the stairs, and onto the nearest defense platform, overlooking the rolling gray sea.

  A dozen Defenders are already at the wall, guns notched in the slots, peering down their sights. I grab a spot and find my view. From here I can see the coastline, the City’s silver skyscrapers glimmering hazily against the sky.

  I can see the boat closing in. A slim trawler, cutting through the choppy sea. I count five people, standing on the narrow deck, the City’s official insignia splashed across the side. From this distance I can’t see them clearly but City people all look alike, anyway, light gray jumpsuits, shaved heads.

  They’re waving at us, shouting. They get closer and I see they’re holding guns. They’re always holding guns. But they don’t want to kill us. They want to conquer us, and take us back to land, turn us into City people, control our minds. They want to make us like them.

  “Okay, now!” shouts the platform captain, and I aim my weapon once more, closing one eye as I sight down the barrel. I hold down the trigger until the magazine is spent.

  Like all of the kids on Free Mind, I’ve been training to do this since I was
ten. All those hours at the indoor range: they prepare you for the noise, the deafening staccato cracks; they acquaint you with the burn in your shoulder, the vibration in your hands, the acrid smell of gunpowder. Those hours teach you how to aim well and shoot straight, ocular implants highlighting the kill spots on your target. But they can never prepare you for what it’s really like: the act in the wild, the bodies dropping, the ship capsizing, the smoke rising from the hull, the mix of blood and oil churning in the water.

  It’s over. The ship is sinking and the City’s soldiers are bullet-ridden and drowning, and Free Mind is safe—for now.

  Since I turned sixteen I’ve done this three times; today, the fourth. Their assaults are becoming more frequent.

  As always, the battle done, I’m wobbling and weak in the knees. The adrenaline departs my body as quickly as it arrived, and I’m suddenly sleepy and deflated. Together with the other Defenders, I’m giggling nervously, giggling with relief. We’re alive. We made it.

  Behind my eyes there’s a weird ache, a dull buzzing tension that always seems to accompany these high-adrenaline moments. Only time and space relieve it.

  WHEN I GET home my younger brother is sitting at the kitchen table in our small apartment, doing homework on his tablet and eating a bowl of shrimp. I sit across from him and help myself to a couple.

  “I heard the sirens,” he says, eyes shining. “Did you go?”

  “Yeah. I did.” My brother is fourteen, and my newly minted status as a Defender has greatly raised his estimation of my worth. Suddenly, his older sister is cool to him. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it.

  “What was it like?”

  I describe the tension as we stood on the platform, waiting for the trawler to skim closer, and the way the City people waved and shouted, as if they could scare us.

  “What were they saying?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t make out the words.”

  I don’t tell him that you never feel the same, after the first time. I can always close my eyes and see, for a moment, the scrum in the waves, the bloody bodies fall.

  “I wish I could go,” he says. “I hate sitting in class and listening to the sirens. Wondering.”

  “Log your range hours,” I say. “You’ll be sixteen before you know it.”

  “Why do they keep coming, do you think?” he asks. “What’s the point?”

  “I guess they have to,” I say slowly. “That’s just what the City demands. It’s not enough that they control the way everyone lives and looks and thinks over there. They can’t stand that we’re free over here; they won’t be content until they own us too. So they’ll keep sending people, forever.”

  “But we’ll always fight them off,” he says, almost as if he’s trying to convince himself.

  “Of course we will,” I say.

  He seems satisfied with my explanation, but I’m not quite satisfied myself. Why would they sacrifice their own lives of comfort simply for the goal of absolute control?

  THE NEXT FEW weeks are peaceful. Life in Free Mind relaxes into its steady rhythm: afternoon shifts at the greenhouse, evenings with my friends at the rec hall. My brother studies for his exams; he wants to be an engineer. My mother works long hours at the hospital, helping birth a fresh crop of babies. My father directs the Seastead’s southern expansion, building a new sector to accommodate our growing community.

  One late morning I’m sitting at Hank’s with my friends, working on a massive stack of pancakes. Hank’s is located in a surface-level sector. It’s a little bit of a trek from where I live, but it’s totally worth it for the best pancakes in Free Mind.

  Then the sirens start to wail.

  My friend Paul hasn’t passed his Defender’s test yet so he grins sheepishly as the rest of us jump up from the table. My augmented reality kicks in; I see the gun locker in the corner, flashing yellow. I dash in that general direction, tripping over a few chairs along the way. Every Defender in Hank’s is grabbing a weapon. I follow the yellow flashing route to the nearest defense platform and get swept up with the rest.

  I reach the platform—and everything is chaos.

  It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing:

  The platform is covered with smoking rubble, chunks of concrete and burnt plastic, dust and sparks. The wall at the edge of the platform has been partially destroyed, and in that jagged space the City soldiers are coming through. There are bullets flying in all directions. Blood is running along the platform.

  Something comes whistling up from beyond the wall. It explodes in a screaming bang and another part of the wall crumbles. A Free Minder falls. A City soldier is missing a leg. The pain behind my eyes is searing.

  I’m frozen in shock and can’t even move. It’s never been like this before. I don’t know what to do. I look to my friend Isabel for reassurance, but I can’t see her anywhere.

  Next thing I know someone knocks my gun right out of my hands — I’d forgotten I was holding it — and grabs me by the shoulders. It’s a City soldier. I can’t see him clearly; my vision is blurry with dust and sweat and tears. But I know it’s a soldier. He drags me across the platform. I’m kicking and screaming. “Help! Help me! Someone!” I’m trying to fight him off but I’m just a sixteen-year-old girl and he’s so much bigger than me. Another one grabs me too and then I’m immobilized, caught between them, writhing as my feet don’t touch the ground. Around me Free Minders are fighting for their lives and most of all, fighting to make sure the City soldiers don’t get beyond the platform. If they make it inside, it’s all over for us.

  Then I’m being pushed through the hole in the wall and tossed onto the deck of the boat. The men who grabbed me come tumbling after. They land on top of me, pushing me flat on my face. Rough hands grab my wrists and tie them behind my back. I can feel the boat rocking and shifting, the idle motor kicking to life. We’re moving.

  My captors sit me up. For the first time I see the Seastead from the outside. It’s a gleaming white ziggurat rising from the waters—and now, receding rapidly behind us. Two more City boats are floating just beyond the platform, where the battle continues. One of the boats is on fire. Another is sinking.

  I crane my neck and try to see behind me. There is the scrappy wisp of land. There are the skyscrapers, shimmering along the skyline. We’re going to the City.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I say, and a moment later I’m puking my half-digested pancakes all over myself.

  “She’s just a child,” one of the City soldiers says. The voice is a woman’s. I squint at her, trying to make her out; I can’t see very well. All I can see is her close-cropped hair, almost bald. Her gray jumpsuit. It should be spattered with blood, as I am, but it’s not. It’s spotless, pristine. So is the deck of the boat.

  There are six of them. Now one is coming closer to me. “I’m going to clean you up,” he says. “Don’t bite me, okay?”

  I nod mutely. He looks like all the others. Exactly like all the others. I’m crying helplessly. I can’t help myself.

  I don’t want to go to the City. I want to go home.

  With the damp cloth he wipes my face, scrubbing away the stinging slurry of blood and sweat and dust. I can see better now but I still can’t quite see him. It’s like when I try to look at him — my eyes won’t focus. There’s this fuzziness. I can see the Seastead — how small it looks from here. I can see the sky and the clouds and the wheeling, screaming gulls, mad from the bloodshed. But I can’t see him any more clearly than I could before.

  The whole time he’s talking. “You’re okay,” he says. “Stop crying. Okay?”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  I already know what they’re going to do to me. They’re going to take me to the City. Shave my head so I look like them. Give me a pill to make me calm and turn off the part of my brain that questions. Send me to one of their education centers where they teach me again and again the things they want me to believe until I do believe them, until my
mind belongs to them and I can recite their catechism without faltering.

  “We just need some things, okay?” the soldier says. “Stuff your people have. You got parents, right? You look like you do. A nice family. They’ll give us what we need, and then we’ll give you back.”

  “Need?” I say. “Like what?”

  The pain in my head, it’s impossible. I can feel a black cloud gathering in my brain.

  He’s looming in my vision, the soldier who was cleaning up my sick.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Renee.”

  I try to see him. I feel dizzy, seasick — a Seasteader, seasick? I want to grab onto him, the boat, myself, anything. I’m pitching, tossing. Then for a second I do see him and he doesn’t look like what I thought. I catch a glimpse of long matted hair, brushing his shoulders. A patchy, curly beard, and rough tan skin and a scar across his cheek. I try to hold onto that vision and then it’s gone again.

  It’s glitching in and out. I see and then I don’t.

  It makes me sicker than ever. All I can do is close my eyes, squeeze them so tight all I see is black, and rock helplessly back and forth.

  “Lukas said she’d get like that,” I hear one of the soldiers say. “Leaving the augmented reality field. They get out of range and get sick. He said it happens to the pirates every time.”

  When I open my eyes again, everything is changed.

  THE CITY PEOPLE are filthy and unkempt, their clothes tattered, a mismatch of styles I can’t place. Their faces are smeared with dirt, and heavily tanned by the equatorial sun. Their hair is not buzzed. They do not look alike.

  The boat itself is barely more than a raft with a gas-spewing motor attached. An old boat that’s been patched and repaired so many times with so many mismatched pieces that in time it’s become a wholly different boat, nothing left of the original but a shape and a memory.