Resist

by Hugh Howey

  A wry smile plays over my lips as I consider that long-ago desire. I toss the baton, catch it. Twirl, twirl, twirl. Wonder some more about what else is out there. Are other people still alive? Is Dad still alive? I miss him so much …

  I have to find out what else—if anything—is out there. We’ve been trapped in this never-ending Groundhog Day loop of a pageant for a year now. We only know this cavernous auditorium with its creaky old stage, the threadbare dressing rooms that have become our sleeping quarters, the endless diet of energy bars.

  And we’re all too familiar with the invisible force field the Invaders have erected around the stage area, the one that kills anyone who tries to escape. The one that’s controlled by Glorg II’s voice—and only Glorg II’s voice, the other Invaders don’t seem to have this power—issuing a specific command that turns it on and off: “Force field up, force field down.” Though it is very rarely down.

  The control panel by the door …

  I close my eyes and visualize it as the baton continues to twirl through my fingers. My plan will work. It has to.

  Because trying to escape isn’t the only way girls have died. Whenever the pageant hasn’t gone the way the Invaders want it to—someone messes up the wave in the opening parade or someone fucks up their talent routine or whatever—they’ve sacrificed whomever they deem lacking.

  Now there are only two of us left. And Tess wins every day.

  The next time they decide to kill someone, it sure as shit won’t be her.

  3. TESS

  NOT TO BRAG, but I’ve got the talent portion of my routine down to an exact science. I actually have several different talents ready to be deployed at any given second—Auntie Irene said multiple talents were a necessity for true pageant queens—but for Miss Sweet Potato Pie, I’ve always done the same thing. Because for the Invaders, the same thing fucking works.

  Speed painting.

  Oh, that’s right—I see you cocking an eyebrow, like, What the fuck, Tess? But speed painting is totally a thing in Pageantlandia and I am one of its pioneers. Basically, you set up a big canvas on the stage and then paint some cool image while maybe doing a balletic sort of dance routine. And it all happens in the span of minutes. I always paint the same thing—my idol, former pageant queen Vanessa Williams, in a sultry pose from the cover of her hit album The Comfort Zone. It goes over super, super well. The Invaders love it so much that big-ass canvases and paints are the two things they’ve actually kept us well stocked with.

  I roll my neck and adjust my winner’s sash, preparing to go onstage. My paintbrush gets all sweaty in my palm and I shift it to my other hand and sneak a peek from behind the curtain at the judges’ podium. There’s an empty space where Glorg II usually sits. We heard whisperings yesterday that he wasn’t feeling well. I guess even murderous space aliens need sick days.

  That’s why Priya wants to do her stupid plan today. I don’t understand why she needs to … upset things. As long as I keep winning, as long as I keep being awesome, we stay alive. This is what I was born to do, what I was meant for. She only needs to be mediocre and not fuck up too much. I need a competitor in order to win, so they can’t really get rid of either of us. And hopefully someone will come save us. I don’t know why she doesn’t understand this? I’m guessing she might try to go through with her plan anyway, even though she has no chance in hell of succeeding. She’s hard-headed, Priya.

  I draw myself up tall and tighten my grip on my paintbrush. I can’t worry about her. As Zinnia Richards taught me all those years ago, the whole “pageant sisters” concept is bullshit.

  Sorry, Auntie Irene.

  4. PRIYA

  I’VE DECIDED TO go through with my plan anyway. Even though I have no chance in hell of succeeding. I’m hard-headed, okay?

  Before she died, Becky Lauren Kellerman—an engineering major whose talent was yodeling the periodic table—had almost cracked the code on how to pass through the force field without disintegrating, or so she thought. It involved covering your body with foil, which I never got a really clear explanation on. But I’m just desperate enough to try it. Luckily, we have plenty of foil, because that’s what the energy bars are wrapped in. I gather all the remaining bars in my dressing room, divest them of their wrappers, and carefully form the wrappers into a sort of weird spacesuit around my body, taping them into place as best I can. I move around experimentally. I crackle with every step, but the makeshift suit stays put.

  Okay. Now or never.

  I’ll make my move as soon as Tess goes on for her talent demonstration. Maybe the Invaders will be so enthralled, it will buy me a few precious minutes. I pick up my baton and shuffle awkwardly toward my dressing room door, crackling all the way …when all of a sudden, I notice something lying next to my shiny, foil-covered feet. A single energy bar, still in its wrapper. I bend over, moving with great care, working hard not to mess up my spacesuit. One more tiny patch of foil couldn’t hurt …

  Then I see what’s written on the wrapper.

  Blueberry Surprise.

  Tess had just been lamenting the fact that we were all out. This must be the last one. And she must’ve missed it somehow.

  I feel a little pang. But a pang of … what?

  I stand there for a full minute, staring at the wrapper, trying to figure it out.

  5. TESS

  I’M JUST ABOUT to head out onstage, waiting for the Invaders to call my name, when I hear a weird crackling sound behind me and feel a tap on my shoulder. I whip around and see … well. I think it’s Priya, but she’s dressed herself in a weird silver foil unitard, like she’s getting ready to do some hardcore interpretive dance. Or maybe extreme Pilates. Everything is covered in foil except for her eyes, which stare at me in a steady, unnerving way. She thrusts a foiled hand at me.

  “Here,” she says, her voice muffled by her shiny mask. “Take it. I know it’s your favorite and I … I … well. Just take it.”

  I’m so weirded the fuck out, I do. And I see it’s an energy bar: Blueberry Surprise.

  “I thought we were out!” I exclaim, my voice spiraling into a squeak.

  “It’s the last one,” Priya says. “I want you to have it. I’m … um. Leaving.”

  I goggle at her. So she’s really trying this. But … but … she’ll die. She’ll die. Fuck. She’s about to go on a fucking suicide mission and she’s making a fucking pit stop to give me my fucking Blueberry Surprise …

  “And now, in talent, please welcome the reigning Miss Sweet Potato Pie, Tess Nakamura!” Glorg IV’s announcement cuts into my runaway train of thought.

  I see Priya shuffling off, heading for the long ladder that leads to the metal catwalk above the stage. I stare down at the Blueberry Surprise in my hand and feel my grip tighten around it.

  Oh, God. Oh, Priya…

  “Tess! Nakamura!” Glorg IV says again, sounding a bit impatient.

  I feel my legs move forward, carrying me out to the stage, on autopilot. I stand in front of the Invaders, their endless mosaic of eyes staring back at me, the lights suddenly too bright and too hot, the giant canvas in front of me too big and too blank.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright flash of metallic silver descending from the rafters.

  A million images flash through my head.

  Priya laughing hysterically at my Jean-Luc Picard impersonation.

  Priya shaking me, trying to get me to escape with her, desperately wanting me to see reason.

  Priya handing me my favorite energy bar as if it’s the most important thing in our currently extremely fucked up world.

  I look out at the Invaders again, at their mean little eyes staring back at me expectantly. Monsters. Wanting me to perform. Not caring that Priya is plunging to her death. Brave, kind, stubborn, wonderful Priya. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the silver flash getting closer and closer to where I know the force field is.

  Time slows way down and I feel that all-consuming rage descend again, that crimso
n veil over my eyes.

  I open my mouth and imitate Glorg II’s voice perfectly—because of course I fucking do.

  And I say: “Force field down.”

  6. PRIYA

  EVEN THOUGH THERE’S foil covering my ears, I hear Tess’s Glorg II voice ring out through the auditorium milliseconds after I leap from the catwalk and it brings tears to my eyes. That’s what I’d wanted her to do, what I’ve been trying to convince her to do … and it had to be today, because Glorg II isn’t here to immediately order the force field back up.

  I plunge into the mass of Invaders and land on my feet, then immediately go into my baton routine, spinning and twirling and thwacking them as hard as I fucking can. They go down like the weak gelatinous blobs they are, making sad little croaking sounds. I’m vaguely aware of Tess joining me in the fray, stabbing them with her paintbrush, doing an extremely violent version of the balletic dance that accompanies her speed painting. Wrapping her Miss Sweet Potato Pie winner’s sash around one of their blobby monster necks and pulling with all her might, like she’s Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. Showing all that grit and determination I admire so much. We take them all down and it feels … So. Fucking. Good.

  I race over to the control panel, punch in the code I’ve memorized after watching Glorg IV punch it in every day for a year. The massive auditorium door slides open. And Tess and I are finally free.

  I rip the foil from my body as we stumble out into the daylight, breathing in fresh air, feeling the sun on my face. Everything is so … quiet. Eerie. Like maybe we really are the last two people on Earth. I feel something in my hand and turn to see Tess slipping me half of her Blueberry Surprise.

  “Pageant sisters are forever sisters,” she says earnestly, her mouth full of energy bar.

  I look down at the disgusting crumbs in my hand. I think about all my unanswered questions, how I still don’t know what else is out there, how I don’t know what’s happening on the rest of the planet or if anyone else is still alive.

  How, despite all this, for maybe the first time in my life, I don’t feel alone. And my eyes fill with tears once again.

  “Back atcha,” I say.

  MOREL AND UPWRIGHT

  DAVID WELLINGTON

  FRANZ MOREL WOKE early that particular morning, in a bed that could comfortably have parked a fleet of staff cars. He stretched his arms above his head and smacked his lips, imagining the glorious day to come.

  He descended to his third most opulent bathroom—the one done up in rose-colored marble, which had the best acoustics—and sang an old campaigner’s song as he cleaned his teeth and had a very thorough shave, taking time to carefully trim his glorious handlebar mustache and tiny, devilishly pointed beard. In the Breakfast Wing of the Presidential Palace, he took three eggs, each in an individual diamond-encrusted egg cup, and a pot of coffee scented with rose and saffron. The delicate saffron, of course, failed to impart any flavor to the coffee, but Morel had always been of the opinion that when a chance for true decadence came the way of a hard-working dictator, it was his duty to himself—as the living embodiment of the state—to take it, and thereby signal the great wealth and power of the Nation.

  There was, of course, no newspaper to read while he ate. He could have simply decreed one to be printed, but then he would have had to edit and censor it himself, and he just didn’t have the time. So instead he stared out a window while he sipped his coffee, gazing out upon all that land that was his to sport with as he pleased. Admittedly there wasn’t very much of it. Just a low line of hills on the horizon. And it was a given that the horizon was rather closer than he would have liked.

  One finds ways to cope with adversity, of course. “Martin-8,” he barked, and the robot who was his Major Domo, Chief of Staff, Aide-de-Camp, Seneschal, and Valet rolled up to a neat stop by his elbow. “My best set of medals, today,” Morel ordered. When speaking to the robot it was crucial, always, to maintain the air of command. “And once I’m finished dressing, I believe we shall have a parade.”

  “Of courze, zir,” the robot buzzed. It reached its many-jointed arms across the table to refill his coffee, then withdrew.

  When Morel had finished dressing, he found he could not so much walk down to the parade stand as shuffle, really. The weight of all the gold braid on his shoulders was the main problem, though the twelve kilograms of bronze and silver pinned to his chest probably didn’t help. The chief culprit, however, had to be the pair of ivory pommel sabers he wore on either hip, which kept getting tangled with his legs as he attempted to stride with pomp and dignity across the public square. He managed, however, to struggle up into the place of honor, a chair of red velvet and so much gilt wooden decorative fussiness that even Morel found it a bit de trop.

  In all things, though, it was essential to project an air of confidence and might, and Morel was happy to make such sacrifices for his adopted homeland.

  Once he was properly seated the parade could begin.

  An observer, if any had been present, might have noticed that the long reviewing stand set up in the main square of Morelograd was a bit thinly populated. In point of fact, said hypothetical witness might have remarked that it seemed Morel was the only person who had come to watch the parade happen. There was a reason for this.

  It was the same reason why, as the parade filed past, it was made up entirely of Martin-8 the robot dragging a rose-covered float past the stands, then zooming around the corner to fetch a wooden mockup of a missile carrier, followed by Martin-8, again, running quickly out of sight only to drag in a pipe organ on wheels, on which he played the national anthem (“All Glory to our Beautifully Mustachioed Leader,”) with one telescoping arm while steering the vehicle with his other hand.

  Martin-8 had to play all the parts required of a properly vigorous parade, because there was no one else to take part.

  Franz Morel, undisputed and eternal leader of the planet VZ-61a, was also its sole human inhabitant. Unconquerable ruler of all he surveyed, Morel was also his own—and only—subject.

  One might have suggested that Martin-8 the robot was an exception to this, that the mechanical man was under Morel’s command. And it was true that Martin-8 performed the duties of a subject rather well—he was always perfectly happy to put on another parade (Morel commanded these to occur at least three times a week) or make another rasher of bacon, or build a new wing onto the Presidential Palace as Morel desired. Yet in another sense, Martin-8 could not be considered a subject at all. In addition to his roles as Major Domo, Aide-de-Camp, Secretary of the Navy, Chief Strategic Advisor and Vice President-for-life, Martin-8 had two other jobs. One was to be Franz Morel’s jailer. The other, should worse come to worst, was to serve as The Great Leader’s executioner.

  PLANET VZ-61A LACKED any more sonorous name, largely because the astronomer who discovered it had found it so underwhelming that she never bothered actually looking at it again after it was catalogued. It possessed no resources worth exploiting, nor was it big enough to be worth colonizing. Barely five hundred kilometers across, it possessed something like gravity and something like air, but not enough of either to make it a pleasant vacation spot. Furthermore, it was a great deal of distance from anywhere people bothered to go, and its evening sky lacked any particular beauty.

  Even Franz Morel, who had once been the paramount leader of a very large nation on the next world over—a man possessed of imperialist tendencies that would make a Napoleon blush—had never bothered to plant a flag on the place, or even to threaten to blow it up for being so irritatingly useless.

  When the time came and the people decided that Franz Morel had to go, they faced a dilemma. Morel was a butcher, a ruthless murdering reptile of a leader. His death squads and purges had made him the most hated man in the galaxy. Yet those who replaced him couldn’t simply kill him. That would have been sinking to his level. Everyone wanted him dead, but no one wanted to get their hands dirty by strangling him. In the end they hit upon a plan that would all
ow them to remain blameless, but almost certainly result in the desired end. They would exile Morel to VZ-61a. They would provide for his every need and allow him to rule the place as he chose. The only condition of his retirement (as it was always described) was that he would never be allowed to leave VZ-61a, nor make any contact with another world. If he did so, his robot butler was to enact Protocol Zeta Four Cobalt—that is, to shoot him in the back of the head. It would be his own fault, and he would pay the price for his own perfidy, and everyone could get a good night’s sleep for a change.

  His usurpers assumed that within days, the hated man would summon up some cadre of loyal army officers to fly to VZ-61a in a heavily armed raid to free him from his confinement. Or he would, through sheer cunning, manage to build some sort of rocket that would allow him to escape into hiding, from which he would slowly rebuild his power base like a patient spider in a secluded web. In these cases the robot would be fully justified in its pre-programmed act of regicide. The third possibility was that the isolation of VZ-61a would very quickly drive Morel as mad as a toad in a stock pot, and that in a fit of despair he would take his own life.

  None of those things happened. For seven and one half years, Franz Morel ruled VZ-61a with an iron fist; but always he kept punctiliously within the bounds of his new estate.

  Each of his deposers’ assumptions was based on a flawed postulate. The first: there was no loyal cadre. Morel’s reign had been so brutal, and so corrupt, that he had lost every last friend he ever might have had. The second: that Morel had the intelligence to build a rocket. He had ruled a technically advanced society, but had never actually bothered to learn anything about technology himself in his forty-seven years. Had he wished to nail a self-portrait to the wall of his palace he would have been hard-pressed to know which end of the hammer one grasped and which was the business end.