Guardian

by Alex London

  “We remember,” they said in unison.

  Gianna continued. “We waited, of course, many of us, but nothing happened. Some tried to look up the outage on their datastreams . . . but they couldn’t. In minutes, there was grumbling. No one could figure out why they couldn’t look up why. Then the malfunctioning transports ran into each other in the streets. There were crashes; the sky fell onto the city. The hospitals were glitched . . . they couldn’t access records or treatments, couldn’t activate the patches or identify their patients. The medibots fell silent. They couldn’t treat even the simplest conditions. Our biodata was cut off. My father . . .” The girl shook her head. “By the time I walked home from school, an old case of malaria had laid him low. He died within days. Anyone with an old condition relapsed. Do you remember?”

  “We remember.”

  Gianna locked eyes with Marie. “And then the Reconciliation came.”

  Someone in the crowd cursed. Someone else spat.

  “They swarmed up from the Lower City, from the Valve and its rotted slums and they overran our beautiful neighborhoods. Our schools and businesses. Our homes. They had no uniforms then, but they came and they looted. They told us we were criminals even as they burned executives in the streets. Our parents. Our families. There were no Guardians to stop them and the personal protection bots no longer functioned.”

  “My father was burned alive,” the guy with the broken bot said flatly.

  “My mother was beaten in front of me,” a girl in a flame-orange gown said. “They left her lying in the street. They told me if I wanted to live, I would put her out of her misery. I did.” She wept into her hands.

  Syd bit his lip. This was his Jubilee too, the side of it he hadn’t seen, wasn’t ever supposed to see. It wasn’t all rallies and farms. This was done in his name.

  Marie’s face was frozen, impossibly still. Inside her stillness, there was a hurricane swirling. She had come from this group; if it weren’t for Syd, her parents would have met the same fate as theirs. She could have been one of these lost kids, playing pretend corporation in the ruins of her own home. Syd slid his hand across the mildewy carpet where they sat and rested his fingers on hers. He understood.

  “I saw my own proxy on the restricted speedway that first week,” said Gianna. “She, of course, didn’t know me, but I had seen her on holos a few times, when I broke my curfew. The punishments she received for those things were never too harsh and my offenses were never too severe. She only had two years of debt left before she wouldn’t be a proxy any longer. She was part of a mob tearing apart a Xelon transmitter. A group of managers had come out to protect it, in case the network came back online . . . it wouldn’t work without transmitters. She kicked the teeth out of one of the men, after he was on the ground. The proxies wanted revenge, and they took it. Many of us hid, in the parks, in the offices. Anywhere we could hide, we hid. Do you remember?”

  “We remember.”

  “Then the Purifiers came in uniforms. The white masks,” Gianna said. “They established order. They stacked the bodies of the executives and of the criminals in the windows of empty shops, like new shirts on display. To the Reconciliation”—another curse, a splatter of spit—“they were all the same.

  “The Purifiers told us all debts had been erased, and all wealth too. Our possessions were no longer ours. Our tech was banned. We could submit to evacuation, go to learn work and be productive, or be killed. They went door to door, searching, gathering our families, splitting them up, sending everyone away. But we stayed hidden. Some were found. Some were not. For a month, we hid, half starved, full frightened. No one knew what to do. The Guardians, who we thought would protect us, had become useless. They wandered aimlessly. They turned into monsters. We kept our distance. We fought amongst ourselves for scraps, even to eat the zoo animals. We made the polar bear extinct again. Some gave up, surrendered to the white masks and vanished. The gangs returned, like swamp gas rising from the sewage. They hoarded supplies, bribed the Purifiers, enslaved those of us they could catch, and made the children of the city into their pleasure dolls. I had a sister . . .” Gianna shook her head. “We would not have made it much longer, but then, one night, we took shelter in a club, a place I had danced before, Arcadia, it was called. There were others there; they had made it a home. And they had a leader. She told us the truth, the saving truth that turned us on to the righteous path. The Machine. Do you remember?”

  “We remember.”

  Syd remembered too.

  Arcadia.

  That was where he had found Knox and Knox’s friends. That was where he’d kidnapped Knox and gone with him back here, to this house.

  Arcadia.

  That was where all this began.

  Gianna smiled. “Chey is her name.” Liam made eye contact with the Syd. The scratchiti. Chey is watching.

  “Chey taught us that the network went down because we did not serve it well,” Gianna said. “She taught us that there was a Machine that could bring it back, but only if we committed ourselves to serve it. We organized, we rebuilt the corporations our mothers and fathers had failed to preserve, and she made a deal with the Maes gang to retake our city. Together, we rose up against the Purifiers. We drove them away and we gathered all the tech that remained, that had not been destroyed, and now, we prepare. We prepare for the Machine. When all will be restored.”

  Liam, Syd, and Marie looked over the room, the crazy outfits, the imitation holo projectors, the fragments of this or that device or bot the kids pretended to make work. The devotional tattoos honored a programming language surely none of them understood.

  Again, Syd had that feeling, the past as an echo, repeating itself as it faded. The poor had longed for Jubilee to save them from the powerful, and now the one-time patrons longed for the Machine to do the same. Every revolution believes it can return something that had been lost, but nothing is ever the same. The only thing that endures are people. Syd saw that clearly now, and perhaps so too did Marie. You could serve a revolution, an idea that ended up an echo of itself, or you could serve people, with all their maddening contradictions. You couldn’t serve both. You had to choose.

  “We are not insane,” Gianna said, seeing herself through their eyes. “We know the tech is broken. We know the network is not back yet. But we must be ready. We use what we have so that we’re ready. Chey will build the Machine and everything will come back.” She glared at Liam. “And those who stand in the way will be destroyed.”

  “So there is a Machine? It’s real?” Marie asked.

  “Of course it’s real!” Gianna said. “Chey has showed it to me herself!”

  Syd had an idea. By the look on her face, Marie had the same one. Liam still clutched his EMD stick. His only idea was to get out this place, fast. All things considered, it was as good a backup plan as any. But first, Syd had to try something.

  “We cannot sell Yovel to you,” he said.

  The room grew quiet. Gianna’s eyes narrowed. “You are backing out of our deal? Or you are beginning negotiation from an aggressive position?”

  “Call it negotiation,” said Syd, leaning closer. “It is in your interest that we do not sell Yovel to you. You cannot kill him.”

  “We can do what we please with him once he is our property,” she replied. “And if we cannot reach an agreement on the terms of this sale, we’ll simply kill all of you.”

  “That’s not very good business,” said Marie.

  “We’re in a challenging economy,” Gianna said back.

  “But wouldn’t it be better if you had to spend none of your own resources on this transaction?” said Syd. “He would still die. And you could still get paid.”

  “Explain yourself,” Gianna said.

  “Yeah,” Liam added. “Explain.”

  “We’ll sell him to Chey. Think how it will please the Machine to have the blood of Y
ovel spilled directly before it.”

  Gianna suppressed a smile. Syd had her. She liked the idea.

  “And you would get a finder’s fee for bringing Yovel to it,” Marie added.

  “What is in this deal for you?” Gianna asked, suddenly skeptical. She was wise to mistrust any idea that was not her own, but Syd knew he had to convince her. They would get to the Machine. Once they were there . . . well, then Liam could do what he did best. They would seize control of the Machine by any means necessary.

  “Chey is wealthy, right?” said Syd. “Wealthier than Xelon?”

  Gianna nodded. “She runs the Benevolent Society. Every corporation makes donations.”

  “We’re businesspeople like you,” Syd told her. “We want the best price for Yovel we can get, and we didn’t bring him all the way from the headquarters of the Reconciliation to sell him at a discount.”

  “We do not buy on discount!” He’d offended Gianna. Good.

  “You could be a broker or you could be a buyer,” said Syd. “I guess it’s up to you.”

  “Strangers don’t go to see Chey,” said Gianna.

  “We would be in your debt,” Syd added, sweetening their offer. “Indebted to you.”

  The crowd murmured.

  “We would be your patrons?” Gianna asked. “You, our proxies?”

  Syd took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  Gianna broke into a broad grin. She stood and urged Syd, Marie, and Liam to stand.

  “Contracts!” she called out, and another girl stood. She held a plate of plexi and the same small boy shined a light through it so it glowed on the wall. It was filled with tiny scratched-out writing, edge to edge.

  “These are your terms, a standard proxy agreement,” Gianna said. “You will each sign and become our proxies for a term equal to the cost of your food and your admittance fee to our district and the processing costs for the Xelon Corporation. Yovel”—she pointed at Liam—“will remain in your possession, but serve as collateral until such a time as we broker his sale.”

  “Uh—” Liam hadn’t understood a word Gianna had just said. He stared at the shadows on the wall, knew them to be words, and was amazed at the effort it must have taken to make such a thing and the impossibility of reading it even if he knew how.

  “Everything will be spelled out in the Xelon actuarial tables available from your local sales representative.” Gianna rolled her eyes.

  Local sales representative. Actuarial tables. These were the old words of an old system. They were all playing make-believe.

  “How do I sign?” Syd asked. He would play too, if that’s what it took.

  “Biodata,” Gianna said, and someone handed him a small knife. Gianna gestured to the wall and Syd stepped forward. He looked back at Marie, pricked his finger with the blade, and dabbed a dot of blood into the projection on the wall. He stepped back, looking solemn. He never imagined he’d agree to become a proxy again, even if it was make-believe.

  Marie stepped forward and went through the same motions, leaving a drop of her blood on the wall of the abandoned mansion. She wondered what her father would think if he could see her now.

  Liam stepped up to do the same. But Gianna stopped him. “You are not a proxy,” she said. “You are the product.”

  Liam stepped back beside Syd.

  A product. He understood this was a ploy to find the Machine, but still, it made him uncomfortable. People lived and died—he knew that well enough. Products, on the other hand, were used and disposed of. He wondered if Syd saw him that way too: useful for now, but disposable when he’d been used up.

  “Excellent.” Gianna clapped. The light snapped off and the shadow of the contract vanished. Only the two dots of blood remained. “We will have to determine a system by which you serve as proxies to each of us for an appointed time . . .” She tapped her finger on her chin, thinking. “Of course, you’re not actually supposed to know your patrons . . . We’ll have to form a working group, conduct meetings on the best way to allocate your debt and maximize efficiency. Also, the method of enforcement for infractions . . . So much to consider.”

  The room was abuzz in chatter now. Syd overheard words like “synergy” and “cost-benefit analysis” thrown around. Watching them perform their faith so convincingly, he had a momentary fear that he really had made himself a proxy again.

  “Can you explain to me what’s going on?” Liam whispered.

  “You made them think you’re me,” said Syd. “So we are selling you in order to gain access to the Machine, and until the sale is final, Marie and I are in their debt.”

  “This is crazy.”

  Syd didn’t disagree. “It will get us where we need to go.”

  “Now.” Gianna turned back to them. “What do you charge for a drive in your hovercraft?”

  Marie had to laugh. “They respect private property, I’ll grant them that.”

  “Yeah,” Syd replied. “But we’re their private property now too.”

  He turned to go to the hovercraft and stopped. A tingle raced through his limbs, up his neck, like he’d suddenly been swarmed with spiders. He scratched his arm where it itched, which only amplified the itch. He looked at the palm of his hand where the skin was palest. His legs wobbled.

  In a flash, Liam was at his side, holding him up. “You okay?”

  Syd nodded. “Yeah. Just something I ate. I’ll be fine.”

  He closed his hand, hiding the little blue lines, visible for the first time against his skin.

  He looked at Marie, and then at Gianna, at all the kids around their age. On the paler ones it was the most obvious, a web of lines, their blood vessels showing through. Some of them were already scratching at their skin.

  It had begun.

  The blood of the young was turning.

  [27]

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE squat warehouse building on the edge of what had been an industrial district, Syd settled the hovercraft down in front of a barricade the Machinists constructed. It was a wall of old transports, robotic parts, and scraps of furniture. The place bore little resemblance to the club as he remembered it. The glamour was gone.

  A line of guards, all of them teenagers, stood along the top of the barricade. A large piece of etched plexi had been mounted in the ground in front of a bonfire to cast a large shadow along the width of the barricade. The flickering projection read BENEVOLENT SOCIETY. PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS EXECUTED.

  The guards wielded EMD sticks like clubs. Others held crossbows and bolt guns and blades of various sizes. They may have been playing businessmen, but their invented economy didn’t yet have the illusion of civility. They understood what had really held the market together before. Violence. After all, what good was a debt if the creditor couldn’t compel it to be paid?

  The guards along the barricade were dressed in a mixture of styles—some just like the Xelon kids, others in white jumpsuits, some in casual robes and sandals. Each so-called corporation, it seemed, had their own dress code, and each had their own people standing guard on the wall.

  Syd saw the veins on some of their faces, saw others scratching at phantom itches on their skin. If he was going to save them, it would have to happen soon. He had no idea how fast this sickness moved. Knox’s father said it affected people differently . . . He wondered how long he had before it took him down.

  Liam looked at Syd. He could tell something was wrong. The web of veins didn’t show as easily through his dark skin, but they were there, just faintly, and they would get worse. Liam wished he could mitigate that terror for Syd, erase the knowledge that with every heartbeat he got closer and closer to dying.

  Then again, wasn’t that true for everyone? It was just a question of timing.

  Gianna left the hovercraft first and spoke with the guards. A select group of her people followed, and she told Liam, Syd, and Marie to
follow.

  As he came down the ramp of the hovercraft, Liam tore open his shirt so that his tattoo was more visible. A few people cast wary glances at Marie’s green uniform, but they were mostly fixated on Liam and on the word across his chest. None of them paid Syd any attention, which was exactly what Liam had wanted. As long as they looked at Liam, no one would notice the word behind Syd’s ear, or think to question who was who.

  Inside the old club, the air was thick with sour body odor, mixed with rusting metal and the chemical stench of burning plastic. Syd was amazed how the place looked like a demented nightmare of the club he’d seen the last time had been there, when it was still a playground for the rich patrons of Mountain City.

  Old cars were crammed up against each other, side by side and bumper to bumper, filling the entire space from the back wall forward, with just a small ring around them creating a path along the edges toward the doors in and out. Before, these cars had made up the dance floor. Now, they had turned into a kind of encampment. Figures huddled in the open cabins of old convertibles, while fires simmered inside other vehicles, casting shadowy light throughout the room, silhouetting the forms standing on the hoods.

  The holos that had been projected all over the walls the night of the original party were gone, but the cultists living here had painted some on, still images in mysterious pigments substituting for the once vibrant—and loud—holo projections that were timed with the pulsing music. Some had been scratched onto windshields and projected onto the walls by the flames inside the vehicles. The crude shadow logos flickered and shifted unevenly.

  The music itself had been reproduced too, a sad simulacrum of the party that had been. Half a dozen forms on a metal catwalk above the dance floor banged and pounded on improvised drums and tubes, making a syncopated beat while a chorus of voices tried to reproduce digital sounds with their mouths. Most of them didn’t have a talent for it, but they all had enthusiasm. The effect was not something a person would be tempted to dance to, and yet, throughout the space, small groups danced in jerky, writhing motions.