Resist

by Hugh Howey

  “That’s just unfair,” I said. “I had no idea. How could I have known that kale did that? You can’t hold me responsible.”

  “It is a hard one, but when you lot may as well have been walking to the North Pole and manually applying heaters to the ice-face, a lot of people now don’t really give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  I must have looked particularly depressed as Bobb took this moment to show a little sympathy. By now it was unexpected, though not as unexpected as my considerable kale consumption leading me to be pilloried by a future society.

  “You have to understand—I am on your side. I don’t think what they want to do to you is fair. That’s why I’m in this job,” they said, “but people are angry. We’re tiny petri dishes of humans on this Satanic dish of a planet you cooked up. Many people don’t care. They just want to get back at anyone they can get hold of, and here you are.”

  “What about our leaders?” I said. “They’re worse than me. Hell, it’s their fault. They should be punished, not me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” They smiled. “We got them.”

  I could imagine the cheering from my friends and the friends of Children One, Two and oddly not Three on Twitter. I may have said something sassy myself, but at this exact moment, it was just another reason to be depressed and fearful.

  Bobb stood up, stretched, and started to head toward the near-imperceptible door. “That’ll do for now. You’re a relatively good person. Most people whose heads turn up are much richer, which normally means more complicit, and worse. Your family life will play well with the judges.”

  Good Dead Wife and Good Dead Children One, Two and Three to the rescue.

  “What are my chances?”

  “Low.”

  “How low? How many people have been found innocent?”

  “None.”

  “That does seem low. So I have no chance?”

  “Of course you have a chance. You can’t predict the future from past events. That’s basic empiricism. There’s always a chance that it can be different next time, and you can’t prove otherwise.”

  “That’s just nonsense! If clever sophism is my only hope, you can’t expect me to be optimistic.”

  “Perhaps, but it would be better for you if you were philosophical.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, and I did.

  Child Two was the philosophical one. I should have listened more.

  Bobb headed to the door, opened it, half stepped through, then looked back.

  “The thing is, John, you know the Malcomb Luther King line about ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’?”

  I nodded. Or rather, failed to nod. They got it anyway.

  “You gave justice too much time to bend.”

  I HAD MY trial. It went poorly. They sentenced me to eternal torture in a simulated Hell.

  Bobb accompanied me as I was rolled to the detention area. It was another white room, yet less luxuriant. Where before I had privacy, now I had company. It was full of heads of various ages (within a fairly broad range) and races (within a far narrower window). Wires were embedded deep in their foreheads, scabs sealed around the cabling. A technician moved lazily between each, checking and prodding. I was a little surprised at both the casual brutality and the low tech solution. All the heads who were sentenced had an entirely convincing hallucination induced in their actual brains. On the bright side, it’d feel as if I had my whole body back, with the major con that my body wouldn’t be having a particularly nice time. This was not the tech rapture my old Wired magazines had promised me.

  “I always thought they’d be uploading personalities into a computer simulation by now,” I said. “If they wanted to do this, they’d make a computer copy of me and lob it onto a computer.”

  “We did consider it. Forget about how many angels can dance on a head of a pin—let’s see how many sinners we can write to a hard-drive,” said Bobb. “The problem is that while the tech’s sort of there, people are generally against it. Especially for something like this, we prefer keeping the simulations running on wetware. As a culture, we never quite got past the philosophical question.”

  While then I dreaded more philosophy, I couldn’t help but ask for elaboration.

  “You know—all the continuity of consciousness questions,” they said. “Is a copy of you actually you? We can’t even be sure that a copy is functionally the same as you. Of course, same questions apply to your body. Every seven years every cell in your body is rejuvenated, so you’re strictly speaking not even the same person after seven years. How can we justly punish someone for something they did seven years ago? It’s the Argonaut’s ship problem—if a ship has every timber replaced, how can we say it’s the same ship?”

  “Is it?”

  “Thing is, we just do,” they said. “It’s commonly accepted, so they’d rather be punishing something everyone understands and basically agrees with rather than something some people will quibble over. At least, that’s what people claim. I think it’s nonsense. I’ve got another theory.”

  The technician pulled out a drill.

  “I think people just like sticking electrodes in the still-living heads of their ancient enemies,” said Bobb.

  Human nature, eh? What’s a guy to do?

  HERE’S A NON-COMPLETE list of my social activities in Hell. Evisceration. Obliteration. Things involving cuticles. Things involving genitals. Things involving electrodes and genitals. Being given extra decorative sets of genitals, a punishment which was immediately curtailed when they realized I was quite enjoying it. Basically, it was if I was in a poorly stocked bar whose only ingredients were genitals, electrodes and blades, and you could have anything you wanted as long as it involved lobbing at least two of the three ingredients together and mixing them enthusiastically.

  This proved many things, of which two seemed most prominent.

  Firstly, people who are into the idea of Hell are desperately unimaginative.

  Secondly, people who are into the idea of Hell are really mean.

  LUCKILY, IN THE real world, time went by, opinions changed and people agreed with me on that.

  One day, I found myself alive (which was a surprise) and also not in extreme pain (which was also a surprise) and not suffering extreme trauma from the experience (which was perhaps the biggest surprise of all). I could remember Hell, and everything that occurred, but it was less the most awful experience imaginable and more a mild annoyance, on par with that holiday to Portland when it rained every single day. I could imagine Good, Dead Wife and me chewing it over wryly at the breakfast bar.

  “Remember that time in Portland?” she’d say.

  “Oh God. Just a week sitting in a coffee bar. That sucked,” I’d say. “Did I ever tell you about the time I had my own nose pulled out via my anus?”

  “No!” she’d say, passing me the granola. “That must have sucked.”

  “Yeah, it did,” I’d say, and then I’d have thanked her for the granola and eaten it.

  Things were different this time of being alive. I was not in a white room. I was in a pastel room and a shorter person with multi-colored hair piled up on their head, like a cross between Marie Antoinette and a three-year-old’s crayon drawing of a multi-colored Spaghetti Monster.

  “Ah, welcome back, John,” they said. “Sorry to meddle with your mind without permission. Removing you from that torture simulation and leaving the negative memories would be simply inhumane. We’ve purged the memories of the negative connections so we can explain what’s happening. Do you feel better?”

  I did feel better, and was suitably grateful, and would be even more grateful to know what was going on. Having experienced the future twice, this was definitely my favorite so far.

  “We have come to understand that the torture of beings from past times is simply inhumane, especially in a marginal case like yours. We cannot entirely blame a being for the society they find themselves born into and the context they exist in. T
he act that you experienced is not justice, but revenge, and simple revenge is wrong. Justice has to be natural. All reanimates must be treated appropriately, according to the contextual justice of their own times.”

  I didn’t quite understand this, but if the logic seemed to end up with me not being in Hell, it was A-OK by me.

  “So are you reanimating people from that era that threw me into Hell?”

  “We are,” they said, “and as we believe that the only real justice is to be judged according to the moral codes of their own time, we treat them accordingly.”

  “So what are you doing to them?”

  “Oh, they did acts of unbelievable cruelty to people like you,” they said, “so we’re going to put them into a simulated Hell.”

  This seemed off to me.

  “Doesn’t that make you identical to them?” I said.

  “No, because we don’t want to do it,” they said, a little annoyed. “We’re completely different to them.”

  This seemed like an awfully big leap to make, but I didn’t want to push the question, as I had more immediate and selfish worries.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” I asked.

  “We apply the same rules,” they explained, heading toward me, “You’re a person in trouble. It seems by your admission you basically ignored people in need, so we’re going to ignore you. And as you’re only alive because of us, that means you have to die. I’m sorry.”

  “Wait! We had charities and some welfare and—”

  “No, we’ve heard this one before,” she said, cutting me off. “Bye!”

  Then I died for a while, again.

  THEN I WAS alive.

  I had been dead for a long time (according to a calendar) or not a long time (according to my own perception). By this point I was rapidly becoming a veteran at this “being dead” thing. Let me tell you this; it’s not the big deal I was worried about. It’s literally nothing. With everything that had happened to me, particularly the Hell thing, I was beginning to feel like life’s merits had been overstated, and death had a lot going for it. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

  Bobb would have been proud. I was becoming philosophical.

  Unfortunately, as I was coming to see my own death’s up side, the world had come to disagree. My life was fascinating! While I’d been away and dead, it had been decided that all humans had merit, so should be spared any artificial hells—which was good news for Bobb, and for those who tortured people like Bobb and me, I’m sure. However, to be resurrected resulted in a huge debt to the society that revived us. We needed to pay back what we owed to our saviors. I was unsure what use a decapitated accountant would be to this world, but it seems I was a font of useful information.

  I was a keyhole into the mythologized death-days of the 21st century, and the fabled golden age of television. I would earn my existence by providing invaluable primary evidence and help in reconstructing lost texts. I disagreed, but I didn’t really have a choice. I was put in a liberal arts professor’s office, trying to recall episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and occasionally plopped down in front of students to talk about my favorite memes.

  I won’t say it’s Hell. When you’ve been to even a fairly hacky Hell, you learn not to compare it to anything else—but an eternity explaining to bored undergraduates why we thought it was a big deal whether a dress was blue or gold wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for.

  Anyway, it wasn’t an eternity, and eventually they decided me being alive was a bad idea, and I was dead again.

  AND THEN I was alive, as people had changed their minds again.

  This lot agreed that I should have a body (which was good news) but unfortunately society was collapsing technologically, so they were no longer able to perform the feat (which was bad news). They were only able to revive me due to this pre-existing machinery they were experimenting with, in hope of saving the human race from the awful fate they’d brought upon themselves. While they’d got useful data from my resurrection, they didn’t really have the power to keep me on perpetually, so they’d have to turn me off. But when they sorted everything out, they’ll definitely bring me back. They seemed very apologetic. I liked them.

  “Thanks for the help,” they said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good Luck!”

  They did not have good luck.

  I WAS MADE alive a few more times along the way, by increasingly shaggy, increasingly desperate people. Civilization was not going well, but it was always good to catch up.

  And then I was dead for a really long time, and now I’m speaking to you.

  That cute bewildered look you’re sporting makes me suspect you’ve turned me on entirely by accident. Please don’t worship me as a god. That would be awful.

  What to make of you? You clearly don’t have any idea what I am. You’re not speaking a language I understand. You’re looking around and prodding things, somewhat carefully, which shows an impressive amount of sense for cave people.

  I think it’s been a long time, and you’re the humanity that crawled from the rubble. Hell, maybe it’s been long enough for the planet to clean up after us. That would mean you get as clean a start as any of us get. Destroying the planet was never going to happen. Turns out we couldn’t even destroy ourselves. The species is having a second shot. Good work. I’m rooting for you.

  I know you can’t understand me, but one day you may. After all, everything you need to make sense of me is lying around here. It’s possibly even recording, which means there’s a risk that you’ll take anything I say as holy scripture. Oh God. That would be worse than you thinking I’m a god.

  Oh.

  I’m not sure if the lights are dimming or my sight is. It’s probably both.

  Ah, I’m running on the last dregs of the future-batteries before they splutter out and I do too. For the last time, I guess. No power for the support system means this head slowly rotting on a plinth, and no further comebacks.

  Sorry. I didn’t mean to scream. It just hit me. I was so calm before about death, but it seems panic is making a last minute return. Repeated experience doesn’t make everything falling away any more pleasant. This is horrible.

  Help me take my mind away from the abyss. Dying words. I’ll give it a shot, and hope I can make them count.

  Humanity Version Two, try this:

  I have been alive, if not for a long time, certainly across a long period. I have been dead many times. I have seen this dumb species from all sorts of angles, even though most of those angles have been limited to whatever stationary position people left me in.

  Bobb told me the arc bent toward justice. I think they misunderstood.

  The only truth I’ve learned is that the arc bends whatever way we damn choose.

  Bend it! Bend it good and hard!

  That’s all I’ve got. Be careful. Look after each other. It’s getting dark now.

  THE BLAST

  HUGH HOWEY

  EVERY TIME A blast goes off, people see the truth.

  It gives Aiya chills to think about what will happen today, when her brother pulls that trigger and another blast rocks the city. That he won’t be able to see it himself is not contemplated. That this will likely be the last time she walks by his side is not contemplated. All she can think about, all that consumes her, is the maelstrom to come.

  Her brother Fariq is nineteen—three years older than her and a head taller. Aiya long ago learned how to trot by his side, in his shadow, little skipping leaps for every powerful stride from his long legs. He was their parents’ sun, their star, the eldest, the one. She was the alqamar, the moon, his nickname for her. Today was his day. But tomorrow? What is the moon without the sun?

  The capital—where she and her brother were born and raised—crackled with morning energy: the whiff of cooking meat, women with bundles of cloth and baskets of vegetables, men wrestling stubborn goats, the throaty rattle of tired cars choking on old gasoline, the bray and clop of horses as wooden cart wheels carved s
cars into desert streets. An army-green pack of the Minister’s soldiers watched Fariq and Aiya pass, frowns lurking under mustaches, every head swiveling their way with the finely honed distrust of youth. It was not misplaced, Aiya thought to herself. They were up to no good.

  “Forget them,” Fariq said. “There is nothing on us but our thoughts.”

  “Those are bad enough,” Aiya whispered.

  She recognized one of the soldiers, Ruq, a friend of her brother’s from school days. Now Ruq wore the green of the Ministry. Now Ruq saluted posters. A month ago, there had been a blast, and soldiers like these had fired into crowds. Had Ruq fired the gun he cradled now like a child? Children cradling children, Aiya thought. Oh yes, they would fill her with bullets for all that she carried silently in her head.

  “This way,” Fariq hissed. He turned into the market, where the jostling of shoppers squeezed like a fist between the alley of stalls. Here, Aiya could keep up. She twisted and turned through the crowd, keeping an eye on her brother, turning obstacles into games. She could move through a sea of people like a fish can glide upstream. She was waiting on her brother on the far side of the market, tapping her foot and crossing her arms as if she’d been waiting since dawn.

  Her brother marched by without word. No sass. No playful pop to her head. Nerves, Aiya realized. Her great brother was nervous. Of course he was. She hurried after him, admonishing herself for games, remembering what was at stake, following along at a trot as she and her brother zigged and zagged and circled back on their path, making sure they weren’t followed, before ducking into the cobbler’s house, down into the hidden basement, where all the bombs were built.

  THE COBBLER LOWERED the hatch that kept the basement hidden from soldiers. Aiya heard the flop of a heavy rug above her head, the rain of dust from old beams drifting down. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were whispers ahead, another door to fumble through, and then the glow of a single bulb swinging from its wire, shadows moving about nervously, while the cobbler’s wife bent over her latest creation.