by H. A. Swain
“No,” I whisper and take his hand.
“Good,” he says as he intertwines his fingers in mine like he did at the Analog meeting. I feel like I never want to let go. “I was afraid…” He stops.
“Of what?”
“Nothing,” he says and brings my knuckles to his lips then kisses them gently.
Fiyo turns to me. “You ready?”
I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. “Yes, I am.”
* * *
Fiyo moves Basil to a small recovery room with a bed and soft music. Within seconds we hear loud snores, which makes Fiyo chuckle. “Poor guy, he’s exhausted.” She leads me to the black reclining chair. “Then again, it’s hard work running from the Man.”
“You should know,” says Yaz.
Fiyo gives her a sidelong glance then grins.
“Really?” I ask. “Are they after you, too?”
“One World can’t stand true competition.” Fiyo flips through a rotating caddy of different serums then holds up a little vial, squints at me, and puts it back. “They try to claim I’m poaching from them, but I make all my own juice. I even hold a few patents. They’re the ones always snooping around here. Sending in their researchers posing as customers, trying to see what I’m doing. But I can spot those nanobrains a mile away with their cruddy One World dewrinklers and slightly off skin tones. Ugh.” She shakes her head in disgust. “If anything I should be suing their asses for making people look so damn fugly.” She looks from Yaz to me and grins. “But who has that kind of money?” She goes back to her search then holds a vial up to the light and smiles. “Ah, perfect.”
* * *
“Thalia, Thalia, wake up. Hey, wakey wakey.” Yaz shakes me gently. I blink a few times and open my eyes, confused for a moment about where I am. Then I recognize Fiyo’s treatment room, even though the lights are turned low.
“Oh, sorry,” I say through a yawn and rustle under the soft blanket someone has put over me. “Did I fall asleep?”
Yaz stares at me and smiles. “For, like, an hour.”
“An hour! Oh, no. We need to go,” I say, sitting up so quickly my head spins.
“It’s okay,” Yaz says, putting a hand on my shoulder, and staring at me. “We’re done.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Is Sleeping Beauty up?” Fiyo calls from the other room.
“Yes,” Yaz calls back, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“What?” I demand.
“You are not going to believe it.” She laughs.
Fiyo strides into the room and raises the lights. “Hmm,” she says circling me. “Color’s even.” She runs her fingers through my hair. “Skin looks natural,” she touches my cheek. “Eyes are balanced.” She stands back and nods. “You may now officially call me a genius!”
“What? Let me see,” I insist anxiously.
Fiyo helps me from the chair and leads me to the center of the room. “Stand here while I get Romeo. Cover her eyes,” she tells Yaz.
“Oh, come on,” I protest when Yaz wraps her hands around my face. “This is silly!” But I have to admit it’s kind of exciting. I have no idea what to expect. “Do I look totally bizarre?”
“Amazing,” is all Yaz says.
I hear Fiyo in the other room waking Basil and leading him toward me.
“Is this necessary?” Basil asks.
“No, only possible. Now, on the count of three,” says Fiyo. “One … two … three!”
Yaz pulls her hand away.
The person across from me and I stare at one another, our mouths agape. If it weren’t for the clothing, I would have no idea who that blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale boy is.
“Do I look ridiculous?” the boy with Basil’s voice asks.
“Do I?” I ask him back because of the way he’s staring at me.
“Mirrors!” Fiyo shouts happily, and the screen behind Basil shifts from its continuous channel surfing to our reflection.
Basil turns. We stand side by side, staring at the mirror, trying to find ourselves in the strange boy and the girl in my clothes but with darker skin, short pink hair, and emerald green irises, who stares back.
“You look like a Klub Kid,” Yaz says with a laugh.
“And he looks like a Scando boy,” Fiyo says. “I might have to go for that look soon.”
Basil and I glance shyly at one another, but suddenly I’m filled with doubt. Is this the same person who captivated me that first night at Flav-O-Rite when we sat with our thighs nearly pressed together, inhaling the scents of food? The one who held my hand at the Analog meeting and kissed me under the stars? I close my eyes because I can’t look at that boy beside me without apprehension filling my belly, but then Basil begins to talk. I keep my eyes closed and I listen.
“How bizarre,” he says. “To walk in here one person and walk out another.” His voice sends a little chill of recognition up my spine. With my eyes still closed, I inch closer to him and breathe deeply, trying to pull in his smell. “It’s like starting over.” He grabs my hand. “But with you.”
His skin on my skin sends a warm rush over me. I open my eyes and see Basil staring at me through that other boy’s eyes. Then he shakes his hair away from his face and smiles that familiar smile, which starts my heart pounding. My mother says my feelings aren’t real. Nothing more than chemicals surging through my brain. She sees it all as a giant chemistry equation meant to regulate some primal urge that physically attracts one person to another. But she doesn’t understand that I don’t need to be in the Procreation Pool to fall in love. What’s clear to me tonight is that what I feel for Basil is something so much stronger and deeper than her inocs can control.
* * *
To make sure we’re completely disguised, Basil and I decide to change our clothes. Yaz and I trade my soft denim jeans and worn-in boots for her slick orange minidress and clunky trainers with their springy soles. Fiyo lends me a pair of silver Teflon leggings and a fuzzy green sweater to keep me warm. The only thing of mine that’s left on me is the red knit pouch on my hip holding my cloaked Gizmo. Fiyo has leant Basil a pair of black trousers and a red padded jacket from her closet of men’s clothing.
When we emerge from the changing areas, we find Fiyo busily cleaning up empty vials, spent syringes, and clippings of our hair as the screen continues to flip through channels. PRCs, historical docudramas, archived nature shows, and fifteen-second comedy blasts blip past. A newsfeed with the headline “Breaking News!” catches my eye. Just before it switches to a personal transformation story, I think I see my parents.
“Go back!” I command.
On the screen, my parents and Ahimsa stand beneath hologram magnolia blossoms in front of our house. Mom and Dad look worn and worried with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. Then my picture, pre-Fiyo, fills the wall with the words, “$10,000 Reward for any Information Leading to the Return of Thalia Apple” scrolling across the bottom.
“Sound on!” I command.
“… she was targeted by corporate resisters in retaliation for the arrest of Ana Gignot,” Ahimsa says.
“Liar!” I mutter.
Next, a blurry photo of Basil, taken either from the footage at the Analog meeting or the EA comes on-screen. “The man who abducted her is a leader in the underground corporate-resistance movement and could be armed and is definitely dangerous,” she adds.
“We just want our daughter back,” my mother says. “Please, if you have any information…” She trails off and wipes a nonexistent tear from her eye.
The picture switches to old footage of Spinach putting Ana in the One World security van as the reporter explains, “Ms. Gignon and nearly one hundred of her followers are being held at a South Loop security facility.” A shot of a prison fills the screen.
I turn to Basil. Despite his light eyes and pale skin, he still smolders when he’s furious. “Those bastards!” he spits. “They arrested every single one of them.”
&n
bsp; I look back to the screen, but the two minutes of news has been replaced by a Hedgy promo with the words “Escape into Another World” floating over images of automatonic animals hopping through a verdant hedgerow. “Well, that’s ironic,” Yaz mumbles.
“What are we going do?” I ask Basil.
He’s too furious to talk.
“We have to do something,” I say. “One World is lying about me, and they’re holding innocent people. I can’t believe they’d go to this much trouble just to shut Ana up!”
Basil slumps. “They’ll want to make a deal,” he says. “You come back, I turn myself in, they’ll keep Ana and let the others go.”
“No!” I say. “We can’t let One World get away with that. People would protest if they understood what’s really going on.”
“Who’s going to care?” Basil asks.
“Dynasaurs and other Analogs,” I tell him. “You said yourself that they’re out there. We just have to find them and tell them the truth. How do Analogs communicate?”
“Through non-network channels like word of mouth or paper sometimes or…” Basil says.
“You don’t have anything more sophisticated than that?” I throw my hands in the air and look at Yaz. “This is why we need a good counter-corporate PRC! To spread the word…”
She rolls her eyes. “Not this again.”
“One World controls the media,” says Basil.
“Not everything,” I say.
He shakes his head at me. “You are so naive.”
“No, you are!” I say like a three-year-old. Then I turn to Yaz. “Give me your Gizmo.” She hands it over.
“You have to stop using that!” Basil says. “You’re going to get us caught.”
“No,” I say. “I’m going to get us organized.”
I drop down on the couch and search for a private network signal. Surely there must be a few Dynasaurs out this far. Immediately, I find a strong one. I glance up at Fiyo. “Is this your VPN?”
She shrugs and raises one eyebrow. “Depends on who’s asking,” she says. Then she turns her head slightly to the right and lifts her chin so I can see the smooth skin just below her left ear. I gasp when I recognize a tattoo just like Ana’s.
I grin. “I never saw a thing,” I tell her as I log on to the Dynasaur boards. I’m so excited to be with another Dynasaur and to be back online. My fingers fly as I zip around the recent posts. First I search for AnonyGal because she’s the kind of person who can rally the troops, but she’s not online, so I post a “Call to Action” as a general message.
To: All Dynasaurs
From: HectorProtector
Calling all Dynasaurs! One World has gone too far. The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Ana Gignot and her followers, the Analogs, is an affront to personal liberty. I was at the Analog meeting in the Outer Loops when Ana was abducted by OW security. Her crime: speaking out about emotional freedom, human connection, and a vision for a better future. One World is hiding behind the Universal Nutrition Protection Act, aka No-Food Law, to muzzle Ana and her followers. They are also propagating lies. I know from a very reliable source that Thalia Apple was not kidnapped in retaliation for Ana’s arrest. She willingly fled a rehab facility her family placed her in. One World is using Thalia Apple as a pawn to manipulate public opinion against the Analog movement, whose people are the kindred spirits of Dynasaurs. They, like us, believe One World has too much power and seek ways to create a different future. If you find the arrest of Ana and her followers despicable, speak up! Spread the word. Protest the arrest!!!
And then I sign my post in a way I never have before, with the image of a sprouting seed and the word Remember.
The last thing I do before I sign out of the Dynasaur network is send a direct message to AnonyGal, hoping that she’ll lend her skills to our cause once she’s back online.
AnonyGal: I need your help. Please read my general post and rally the troops. This is serious. If ever there was a time for the Dynasaurs to act, it is now. Due to my involvement in the Analog cause, I must go off-line for a while. I hope I can count on your support in my absence to create a groundswell of opposition to the unjust imprisonment of Ana and her followers.
I log off and hand the Gizmo back to Yaz. Then we all look at one another. Yaz is the first to break the awkward silence. “Now what?” she asks.
“We should split up,” says Basil. A pain jabs me in the chest when he says this, but then he adds, “Thalia and I should leave first. Then you. You’ll have a better chance of getting home that way.”
Yaz looks to me. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s right,” I tell her. “You’ve already risked enough.”
She looks uncertain.
“Besides,” I tell her. “We’re going to need someone to look out for us from the other side.”
She nods. “I’m your girl.”
“I know you are,” I tell her.
“But where are you going?” she asks.
“We have to get the Analogs organized then head to the prison where Ana is, I guess.” I look to Basil, but he doesn’t respond.
“I wish I could help you more,” says Fiyo.
“You’ve done so much already,” I burst out. “We have to repay you!”
Fiyo waves me away. “This one’s on the house. Anything to stick it to those corporate jerks.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much.
“What about you?” I ask Yaz. “How will you get back?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Fiyo says. “I’ll give her a couple of touch-ups to make her visit seem legit, then I’ll get her home safe,” he promises.
I throw my arms around Yaz. “I love you!” I say, squeezing her tight.
Yaz stiffens. “Wow, that’s a lot of interpersonal touching, Thal,” she says as she clutches me just as tight. “Be careful,” she whispers in my ear.
“You, too,” I say then I turn to Basil.
“Ready?” he asks.
I look into his artificially blue eyes, and although I have no idea where we’re going or what exactly we’re going to do, I nod. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Basil and I leave through the back door, the same way we came in. But I feel even less sure of myself when we step into the night, which seems darker and stiller since we got here. Basil stands in the empty lot, looking around, as if he has some kind of internal GPS connecting to the satellites circling overhead.
“Do you think we can get another transport if we head back toward the tollgates?” I point past the DOMINO SUGAR sign glowing faintly under the yellow moon.
Basil takes my hand and pulls me in the opposite direction. “We can’t take another transport,” he says quietly as we slip into the alleyway behind Fiyo’s place.
I follow closely. “Why not?”
“Eventually one of them will turn us in for the bounty,” he explains as he slows by an old garage to peer inside the dirty windows.
“How did you know that woman driver wouldn’t?”
“Just did,” he says without looking at me and moves on.
I slow down. Maybe it’s because he looks different, or because this place is so unfamiliar, but for a moment I feel cautious about following him. “There’s so much about you that I don’t know.”
Basil turns and walks back to me. When he reaches me, his eyebrows flex as he studies my face again. “It’s hard to get used to you like that.”
I touch my pink hair self-consciously. “You, too.” I look down at the crumbling asphalt beneath my feet. “Do you feel differently about me now?”
He thinks this over for a second. “When I first saw you, I did, but then I realized that it’s still you in there.”
I glance up. “You smell the same.”
He laughs. “I bet I stink by now.”
“I like it,” I tell him shyly, feeling the warmth of my emotion for him come back.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently squeezes. “The driver
was someone I knew when I was a little kid.”
“Was she a friend of your family?”
He hesitates. “Sort of. More like a neighbor who looked out for me when my parents weren’t around.”
“Where were they?”
“Usually in some kind of trouble. For my mom, it’s drugs. And my dad’s been in and out of prison for years. As soon as he pays off one restitution, he does something stupid and goes right back in.” He looks up at the night sky. “I’d like to find him. Help him out if I could. He’s not a bad guy. Just frustrated. Like a lot of people.” He puts his hands inside the pockets of the borrowed jacket and kicks at loose rocks on the ground.
“Frustrated by what?” I ask, trying to understand this life he’s describing that’s nothing like my own.
“All our lives we’re told to be grateful to One World for their generosity and compassion. The high and mighty benevolent overlord keeping us all alive! But One World figured out a long time ago that you have to feed the masses so they can buy a lot of useless junk. The whole Universal Nutrition Protection Act is part of a profit model. We feed you, you buy more stuff. But the thing is, giving people just enough sustenance to keep them alive without letting them have real opportunities isn’t enough. There’s this myth that ingenuity and diligence are all you need to move up in the ranks, but it’s total crap. Unless you’re already in the ranks, you’re invisible to the machine. People like my mom lost hope a long time ago and started looking for ways to escape. And people like my dad end up being eaten alive by the system they’ve been told to be grateful for.”
“And people like you?” I ask.
“We get mad,” he says. “And we look for ways to circumvent the system.”
“What about people like me?”
Basil chuckles into the quiet night. “I don’t even know what to make of you, Apple. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. A privy, but it seems like you might get it.”
“Get what?” I ask.