Resist

by Hugh Howey

  Now, as we round the peninsula, the City looms before me. It is a drowned city, the skyscrapers rising ghostlike from the waters, their glass windows all blown out like gaping black eyes, their frames rusting and disintegrating as the lesser structures collapse beneath the weight of rabid vines.

  One of my captors laughs at my stunned expression. “Welcome to Miami,” he says.

  “I don’t understand.”

  I WATCH IN sick silence as they maneuver the boat among the wreckage. The gently lapping water is dark and tainted, viscous with algae and oil slicks. We edge up next to one of the tall buildings. They tie the boat off and then I see there is a narrow metal staircase, laden with salt crust and rust, zigzagging up the side of the building.

  “We’re going to untie you now,” one of the women says. “So you can climb without hurting yourself. You’ll be good, right? You know there’s nowhere for you to go.”

  I nod silently; she’s right. This world is so much different than I was taught and I don’t understand it at all. My survival depends on my captors.

  I climb with them up the rickety stairs, several levels above the hungry water’s reach, and we enter a large space. There’s a blast of noise, laughing, shouting, music, and I think I hear a rooster crowing. As my eyes adjust to the dim I see there’s a crowd gathered. They fall silent when they see me. A baby cries. Everyone stares.

  I start coughing at the smoky air; cooking fires smolder by the busted-out windows. A heavy stench hangs close, smelling of dirty fuel, unwashed bodies, stale urine, fried fish.

  A man comes forward. He’s wearing suspenders and no shirt, his dark wavy hair tied back with a navy patterned bandana. He eyes me for a moment, then looks to my captors.

  “We lost too many,” he says. Then I remember the two boats they abandoned at Free Mind, one on fire, the other capsizing, and all the bodies on the platform.

  Why am I here?

  LUKAS PULLS ME by the arm back to a corner of the space, where some dank cushions on the ground form a seating area.

  “It’s not what you expected, is it?” he asks. His blue eyes are piercing, his dark eyebrows bushy. He has a long scar running up his left arm. I think he’s about thirty but his face is dirty and his dark beard is full of gray so it’s hard to tell.

  I don’t say anything, and he continues. “I know. I come from Free Mind. I used to be one of your pirates. Oh, I know that’s not what you call them. You call them traders. We were pirates and looters, though. Setting sail from Free Mind, coming back with the stuff that keeps the Seastead’s whole economy afloat, so to speak. The first time I sailed beyond the field it was a real mindfuck.”

  “But … why?” I don’t even know what I’m asking. Why the lie? Why is he here? Why am I here?

  The second question is the one he answers. “Most of ‘em are happy to keep the story going because it pays so well. Not me though. Never liked Free Mind much anyway. Ran into some of these Mudlarks on a trip round the Gulf and just figured, what the hell.”

  “Okay,” I say. Not sure what else there is to say, actually.

  “Anyway, you look like the kind of girl who belongs on Free Mind, nice and safe and clean there, so I guess you’ll want to be heading back pretty soon, and that’s fine, long as your people don’t mind giving us some medicine. That seems like a fair trade, right? They get their girl back, we get some drugs so our babies don’t die.”

  “Yes. That seems fair,” I say. My mind is whirling in a million different directions. How many people know the truth — that the City is a ruin? That Free Mind is the best place left? Did my teachers know? Do my parents know?

  Then all at once it hits me. I’ve shot these people. I’ve killed them. The way they always waved their arms. Were they saying, “Don’t shoot?” Were they refugees, begging for medicine and food? Everyone around me is coughing and emaciated. The children are wailing. The smell of diarrhea hangs in the air. I killed them. I killed their parents.

  The shudder that rips through my entire body leaves me nauseated and trembling. I want to be sick again, but there’s nothing left.

  Lukas holds a radio. He’s thumbing through the static, calling out to Free Mind.

  He finds our channel. Voices answer, and I want to think I recognize them, but I’m not sure I do. I listen, numb, as he offers his terms. Me. For the meds.

  My mom is a doctor, and so I recognize the names of the drugs he wants. Stuff to stop diarrhea, to cure an infection, to lower a fever. Antimalarials. Antibiotics.

  There’s a long pause on the other side and then a voice that I’m pretty sure is Free Mind’s Mayor says, “We’ll confer. Expect our answer shortly.” Then there’s a burst of static and silence.

  Lukas looks at me. “Damn,” he says. “That’s pretty cold. Maybe they don’t actually want you back.”

  “How many people know?”

  He gazes at me for a moment. “Well, all the loot teams, of course, and all the merchant class, since their loot teams tell them. Everyone in government, and the tech team that maintains the augmented reality field. And whoever those people tell. No one’s supposed to talk about it, but you know. People, they let stuff slip.”

  “My dad is a building contractor and my mom is an OB/GYN.” I say. “Do you think — do they know?”

  He shrugs. “Hard to say. But, you know, there’s a reason all the Defenders are young, and it’s not just because of the fast reflexes and all that. It’s because they know you don’t know.”

  “Will they even let me back?”

  “They let the pirates back in. They let me back in. Until I ditched.”

  “But why? Why the whole lie?”

  “Every society needs its myths, I guess. Your people, our people, they decided to be free thinkers, and that meant they were free to invent their own facts. They fled the city as it died, took everything they could. Built their own world and a reality to match.”

  “My whole life I’ve been taught the City wanted to oppress us.”

  “Some people find it oppressive to be asked for help.”

  The radio crackles back to life. “Miami,” a disembodied, distorted voice says. “We’ve discussed your offer. Our conclusion is that we don’t negotiate with terrorists and unfortunately, we must refuse.”

  I shout into the radio. “What about my parents? Do they know? They won’t let you do this!”

  “They know you drowned,” the voice says. “In a moment they’ll identify your body.”

  “My body is right here!”

  “Not from their perspective.”

  For a moment I can’t comprehend what he means. Then I remember—the scans. Every year, each resident of Free Mind gets a full body scan, the booth whirring as our spectral forms find three dimensions on some outside screen, our holographic likenesses stored permanently in the data bank. They said it was for security reasons.

  They can tweak reality, and they own the contours of my face.

  “That’s not a perspective,” I snap at the radio, my voice rising. “It’s a lie! It’s just a lie!”

  “Just some alternative facts,” the voice says, and then the static goes still as the radio cuts off.

  My kidnappers collapse with despair across the damp cushions. The other couple dozen people who appear to live in this squat are gathered around us now, wide-eyed. A cry goes up.

  Lukas looks at me. I look at Lukas.

  “Well,” he says. “Fuck.”

  THE CITY PEOPLE aren’t happy. No meds. Ten of their own lost in the battle with Free Mind, shot and drowned for nothing. Now there’s me, another mouth to feed, and they don’t care if I live or die. Some of them want to kill me. They argue about it in the corner. They don’t care that I hear.

  It’s not exactly an ideal situation for me, either. I want to go home. I want my family to know I’m alive. I want to return to the world as I thought it was. I do not want to be murdered and fed to the sharks.

  In the short term, the Mudlarks decide not to kill me.
Lukas is their inside man, the former Free Minder who understands the Seastead and knows its weaknesses. He assures them he’ll think of something to do with me.

  I don’t know if he actually has a plan to use me or if he just feels bad about killing me, but either way I am grateful for the reprieve.

  They give me a mat to sleep on in a room full of squalling toddlers. All hours of the night they’re waking up and crying with hunger and heat rashes. I try to comfort them back to sleep but nothing I do is good enough and eventually I just lie there crying too, thinking about my parents who think I’m dead.

  A few days pass. I make a friend: another young woman on child-minding duty. She has never been on a boat to Free Mind and so she doesn’t understand why she should hate me. She shows me her tips and tricks for soothing small and miserable children. We commiserate. We are comrades in arms in the diaper rash trenches and this work, as grueling as it is, comforts me—because it makes me feel closer to my mother, somehow, knowing she’s doing the same things on Free Mind.

  TEN DAYS LATER, Lukas pulls me aside. “I need to talk to you.”

  There’s no private place here. We sit in the corner with the moldy cushions, the squat’s informal meeting place. I wait, nervous and fidgeting.

  He holds a device in his hands. “We spent a lot of time and effort tracking down all the parts and pieces to build those IEDs,” he says. “We thought if we could just break through that wall … But I fucked up. It’s not the platform we need to breach. It’s their thoughts about us. It’s the filter. I should have been working on this thing instead.”

  “What is it?” I look at it curiously, this odd conglomeration of circuits and coils and copper wires.

  “It’s an EMP generator. I think—if I made it right—it could temporarily disable the augmented reality field. For a few minutes at least. Like being on a boat and leaving the Seastead’s range. So they would see us.”

  “They could see me.” My friends could see me; my parents could see me. They would know that I’m alive and the Mayor lied. I could tell them the truth about the City and the people here. There is no mind control, no intoxicating pill. There’s just starvation and sickness.

  “Right. So I need you to come with us. You and I, we’re still Free Minders, right? We need to make that gap in the filter. So they’ll listen.”

  “I’m in,” I say. Not that I really have a choice. To stay alive, I must be useful. And I want to go back to Free Mind. I want my family.

  We talk. He tells me how the EMP generator works. I tell him what defense platform we need to approach, the one in my sector where the Defenders will know me. He calls in the others—the raiding party. And together we make a plan.

  The whole time I’m thinking that whatever happens, I’m getting free of them. As soon as I’m close, as soon as it’s safe, I’m making a break for it. I’m going home.

  FOR TWO DAYS they prepare, looting more gasoline for the boat, mending their body armor built from scraps, testing the EMP generator. I’m walking lighter thinking I’m going to get out of here, it’s really going to happen, soon I’ll be free again, and safe. I sing to the babies simply because I’m happy.

  But at the same time there are other thoughts running through my brain, a parallel story that doesn’t match up: I want us to be successful. Us. Miami. The City. I want us to win. I laugh with my friend in the nursery and I wait patiently in line as they divvy up the stew at night—it’s not like Free Mind, they don’t use money, they just share—and I keep forgetting I don’t belong. I want us to get that medicine because this little girl I’m rocking has a fever that won’t break and this baby boy has a rash all up and down his back and this other little boy has the runs. I think, my mom is a doctor, she could help us. I catch myself on that “us.” She could help them.

  I hold that thought and I also hold the thought that I’ll run from them as soon as I can. Two thoughts at once.

  THE BOAT ROCKS precariously in the waves and I see it now for what it really is, a barely seaworthy vessel ravaged by rot and rust.

  We’re approaching Free Mind: Lukas, me, three others. The Seastead emerges from the waters, a floating ziggurat, adorned with cantilevered terraces and platforms, the Free Mind flag waving proudly in the breeze. My breath catches. I do want to go home.

  My stomach is flip-flopping. Afraid, nervous, hopeful. Let this work.

  Lukas and I discussed whether we’d feel anything when he sets off the device. We still have the ocular implants, but they’re no longer connected; they’re dead hardware. We’ve been deleted from Free Mind’s augmented reality field, like so much else. What we see won’t change. But we might get a headache, he says. He isn’t sure.

  We get closer. Soon the alarms will be going off in my sector. Someone else is working in the greenhouse where I used to fertilize the plants and thin the seedlings. They will hear the clang of the sirens and feel that adrenaline spike.

  While I’m here on the boat with the City people, and now I know there is no adrenaline spike like the one you feel when you’re the one in the snipers’ scopes.

  “Now,” I say. “We’re close enough. They’re going to start shooting soon. Now.”

  “Not yet,” says Tom, peering through binoculars at the platform. “They’re not at the wall yet. Just a little closer.”

  “Now.”

  “Now!”

  “Now,” says Lukas.

  The blast spreads outwards, invisible but powerful. I feel it, a twinge that fades immediately into a dull ache, and I blink. I see the same.

  “They’re puking,” Tom says, still looking through the binoculars. “I think it worked.”

  But a minute later the guns are still coming through the notches, the sights trained on us. The first shot rings out. The bullet pierces the hull, above the water line, flowering metal.

  I jump up and down and wave my arms, screaming so loud my throat immediately goes hoarse. “Stop! Don’t shoot! It’s me, Renee! I’m from Free Mind! It’s me!”

  THEY SEE ME. My fellow Defenders—I recognize them, and they recognize me. They’re reeling, dizzy, confused from the shift, but the filter is down. I see it in their eyes. They know me.

  “But you’re dead,” Jason says. He won’t let me board the platform. The rest glare at me suspiciously, their weapons still trained on me, on us, on the boat. I know that with the filter down, it will be harder for them to aim, but we’re still at pretty close range. “Who are those people?”

  “They’re from the City,” I say. “But it’s not like how we thought. Look at them. There is no City. It’s just a ruin. Flooded out. They need help.”

  “Of course there’s a City.”

  I keep trying to explain but the words don’t help. My friends are looking straight at me and they don’t believe I’m alive; they’re staring at the dilapidated boat but they still imagine the City insignia that doesn’t exist. The filter is down but they still have their own.

  Fuck it; I don’t know how long we have until the filter goes back up. I know I don’t have time for this. I lie because it’s easier for them to understand.

  “I didn’t die, the City kidnapped me, but I escaped. We all did. From their mind control camps. We’ve been trying to get to Free Mind. Now can we board?”

  “You can,” Jason says, still suspicious. “The rest stay down there until our backup arrives.”

  I clamber up the ladder. The minute my feet hit the platform, I’m making a break for it—pushing past the Defenders, knocking their weapons aside, running toward the doors. I sprint down a hallway and then another; I’m heading toward the hospital and my feet know the way. Behind me I hear shouts but I don’t pay attention. I have to reach my mom.

  I FIND HER in the maternity ward, as I knew I would. The usually busy hospital is quiet, the machinery down from the EMP blast.

  She sees me.

  A dozen expressions flit across her face: grief, rage, hope, despair, confusion, longing.

  “I didn’t drown
,” I say, and I throw myself into her arms. She hugs me back so hard and in that moment, I really do believe that everything is going to be okay. I’m stupid. I hope.

  She pushes me back so she can look at me. “But we saw—”

  “They lied. They made it look like that—”

  “Of course,” she says, shaking her head, and in the corners of her mouth I see a flood of emotion I can’t yet unpack. “The filter. I knew it felt off. When we saw you. But— I was crying so hard—”

  “You know about the filter.” The words fall from my mouth flat and dead. “That it’s not just maps and reminders and emergency exits. Did you know about the City, too? That it drowned?”

  “It’s for the kids,” she says. “The filter. It’s for you. It makes it easier. Didn’t it?”

  “But it’s all a lie!”

  “No, it’s not,” she says. She’s flustered and defensive the way she used to get when my brother asked too many questions, but maybe it’s only because her daughter has just risen from the dead. “It’s true, basically. They do want to control our minds. They want to make us feel responsible for them, and make us feel guilty for not giving up what we have, just because our parents had the foresight to leave before things got so bad. They want to force us to feel sorry for them and if we don’t, they attack us. For not thinking what they want us to think.”

  That’s when I make a split decision. Like Lukas. I know what Free Mind means now and I can’t go back.

  There’s a chug and hum in the background. The systems returning online. The grid springing back to life. The filter going up.

  My mom is still watching me. Her face is different. I don’t know what she sees but it isn’t me; I’m still deleted. She knows it’s me but she also trusts the filter. I understand. She is holding two ideas in her head, two parallel thoughts that don’t agree. Perhaps it gets easier with time.