The Surge Trilogy (Book 3): We, The Final Few

by P. S. Lurie

  I lie on my back and lift my head up to the sun and then I stretch my arms out and float. There’s no lack of space to spread out, no wardrobe or bath cramping me. There’re no dead bodies floating towards me and there’s no need for me to listen to Melissa’s frustrated instructions as I practise strengthening my legs.

  I tilt my head back so that my ears are submerged and I hear nothing but the dull sound of the ocean, and I know that I can stay here until I’m ready to join the others back on the beach.

  For now, I’m content in being free.

  Theia

  I have lost many people I loved but today I am surrounded by so many that I care for. For that, I’m grateful.

  Tess, who agreed to come for me, risking her life and losing her partner in the process.

  Maddie, who surprises me even now with her kindness and humility, who knows how to joke with me about the past on the days I feel glum and wonder whether we could have done anything differently. She always knows what to say but I worry that not enough attention is given to her; she still lives a mostly solitary life and I don’t know when I’ll see her next after today.

  Jack and Ruskin, who never gave up on one another despite their differences in opinions of how to rescue me. I clasp the envelope with Henry’s writing, knowing that I’ll sit down tonight after my brother and sister fall asleep, and pore over the pages. If tears come, I’ll welcome them.

  Selene, who looks more and more like Selma every day. There is so much unsaid between us that never needs explaining. From what Jack told me, she and Melissa bonded when they returned to the Middlelands; I’m glad they had one another. Selene deserves happiness more than anyone I know. She’s fought harder than anyone.

  And Ronan and Leda, who are playing happily in the sand, with Leda burying Ronan’s feet. I never found out how much contact they had in the fortress but if there’s anything that brightens him it’s being around Leda; for all the confusion he still has about loyalty to President Callister, Leda is the reminder of pure good in our family.

  Before we left the Middlelands and travelled south to settle here I went into the attic and removed a box marked electronics that my father had put up there a long time ago. Once the Surges were consigned to a problem of the past and we were able to maintain a steady flow of electricity here I opened the box. Inside were consoles and cartridges that supported games. Driving, puzzle, adventure, all sorts of games. My father kept quite the collection; I think it was always his plan to one day play them with us but a number of obstacles prevented that from coming to fruition. I held back the shooting games but Ronan wasn’t interested anyway; slowly he’s come around to them and I worry that he enjoys it too much but he tells me he knows the difference. We all experienced things that no one ever should but he and the other soldiers will need so much time to make sense of what their childhoods became. It will take more time for him to be happy, to put everything behind him, but time is one thing we now have.

  I sometimes hear my mother, mostly as I’m falling asleep or akin to an alarm clock that brings me out of my slumber. I’m pleased to say her words are positive, that she’s grateful Ronan, Leda and I are all together. I bring the bracelet to my necklace and hold them tight; I hope both she and Henry are proud of me. I wish they could be here.

  Sometimes I hear President Callister’s voice but her words are a jumble. The one thing she did teach me was that I am determined and I agree with her: I beat her at her game back then and I will never let the world become the cruel place it was under her rule.

  I take in the beach, focusing my attention on enjoying our getaway. Some way back, Selene floats in the sea and there’s an almighty splash as Ruskin and Jack capsize the boat on purpose and thrash around with one another in the water.

  “Theia,” Ronan says to me. “I’m going to take Leda for a paddle.”

  “Come with,” Leda says. “It’ll be fun.”

  “I’m going to watch you. It’s the best birthday present I could ask for. Have fun.”

  I watch on as Ronan and Leda wade out up to her middle, Ronan never letting go of her hand. Behind me, Maddie sits with Tess and Melissa and lifts up her hand to me. I wave back. Selene has joined Ruskin and Jack in playing some sort of diving game in the sea, no longer having to learn to swim for fear of the world flooding but rather for pleasure.

  I put the envelope in my bag for safe-keeping, next to a pack of three fireworks that I found in the Upperlands a few months ago on my last return voyage. I’ll light them tonight. It’s about time I let some off with the exclusive purpose of celebrating. Maybe Selene will understand because she was there the first time I used fireworks as a distraction for her to escape but no one else needs to know their significance. I cross the sand that burns under the soles of my feet and cool them at the water’s edge.

  I close my eyes and lift my head up to bask in the sun. I hear a voice, neither my mother’s nor President Callister’s, instead Henry’s. “I love you,” he says, his voice as calm and beautiful as it always was.

  I thrust my eyes open, expecting to find him, but the sun dazzles my vision so that when I look around I’m bleary-eyed and he’s not there.

  “I love you too,” I say, hoping that somehow he can hear me. “I wish you were here to share this.”

  The water rushes in over my toes and submerges my feet until it reaches up to my ankles. It holds its place for a while so I wait in case it surges any higher but, after a few seconds, the swell recedes to its rightful place.

  EPILOGUE

  Much time has passed since the rule of President Callister and the world is barely recognisable. That children of children who weren’t alive during the culls now fill my neighbourhoods is nothing but astonishing to my aged mind. You are privileged to live in a peaceful world. The Middlelands, Upperlands and fortress still exist as places of dark tourism but that is all that remains of the ways of government back then.

  Over the past six decades I have been fortunate enough to have read many of the books that were removed from the library in the fortress; saving a copy of each print is one of the few things that the Upperlanders did right. As technology improved and our world settled into its new ways, our society created digital copies, first for keepsake and then we developed devices to read them with ease on electronic screens but I never became accustomed to anything but paperbacks. I don’t know what you’re reading this series of books on; all I’m concerned with is that it remains on the school curriculum.

  Never forgetting the cruelty of humans is the obvious message, but I was allowed a few pages as a sort of addendum to everything that comes before to explain a few details and I am grateful for you reading on. I asked if Ruskin, Jack, Selene, Maddie, Ronan or anyone else involved in these events would like to add some words but they unanimously agreed to let me have the honour.

  Everything you read within this series (‘The Surge Trilogy’ as my editors finally named it on publishing Book 2) did happen, although possibly there were some anomalies and extrapolations; my friends and I wrote the books soon after Ruskin first gave me Henry’s papers, but time is not only a great healer but an enemy to memory. Of course, there were some parts we can never know: Henry’s last thoughts were entirely fabricated but hopefully there was some truth to it, and Melissa’s experiences too because she never shared what happened in the great cull with anyone alive, neither me, Maddie or Selene, or Jack and Ruskin for that matter. I hope her parts of the story ring true as we decided it was important to include Melissa’s voice in the third book because she was integral to the free world, giving up her life for me to obtain the communication device that ended President Callister’s rule. Tess’s child really was given the same name as her, and the baby became friends with both Leda and Travis and Claire’s baby as they matured through their school years.

  Likewise, Ruskin and Jack’s voices in the third book became purposefully hard to distinguish at times, if you will, two viewpoints blended into one. To this day, they remain an ever-lovi
ng couple and two of my greatest friends.

  Accordingly, the events of these books were real and there is no benefit of tying up loose ends that can be found in fiction. We never found Jason’s body but I am adamant that the last I saw him he was dead; it will be a mystery unsolved.

  On some days, President Callister’s motives make more sense to me than others, and I know through feedback that some of you will understand her logic better than your peers; it may have been how I wrote about it and I leave it to your interpretation as to what her plans were should she have been successful in creating her own Utopia.

  I barely knew Zeke but he too allowed you to live freely. What I’ve written about him is from my limited time spent with the brave boy as well as interviews with some of those closest to him in the fortress. I hope I have painted enough of a picture. His face has never faded from my memory. He didn’t deserve to die. I battled with the others to give him prominence in We, The Final Few because I know it is important to give the Upperlanders a voice. It would be too easy to blame them and hate them for their ignorance or wickedness but human nature is more complex. This book, if anything, is on your curriculum to serve as a reminder of challenging an authority that demands gratitude and loyalty through threat. That is no Utopia, free world or democracy.

  This explains why The Surge Trilogy was written as a thriller, exciting even if uncomfortable reading; for example, I continue to hear that one of the most cruel passages was the death of Ruskin’s parents. Your ancestors were alive during the time of the culls so let us never forget even when the final few of us from those times die in living history. War and oppression have faced us many times since: more floods, dictators threatening walls, the uprising of new words to masquerade racism – ‘nativism’ being the most successful, legitimised through its pretence of justification – as well as threats to the animal kingdom, and refugees borne through both man-made and natural disasters. There is space and resource on this planet for everyone if we work together and plan ahead, using compassion as a baseline for any decision.

  Finally, this book series is mandatory to young adults in schools who, by their nature, are not yet given a legal vote but hold the maturity, wisdom and kindness to question authority and make change. You have power if you stand strong and don’t let any adult shout you down. Ruskin, Jack, Selene and everyone else that joined me within those terrible years were just children not unlike you; there was nothing special about us, we weren’t chosen to be destined to save the world but instead we found ourselves in a situation where we had no choice but to surrender or rise to the occasion. You have this within you too, although I hope fights in the future remain purely in political climates and never collapse into physical warfare.

  I hope you have enjoyed these three books as much as they have been challenging and in spite of being compulsory – I do sympathise that no book can be fully enjoyed if it is mandatory to read – because drama is the method of engaging the student; a pure historical textbook would make little inroads in challenging your thinking around what happened and what could happen again.

  At the time of this edition going to press, every student takes an exam based on textual analysis of this series. The examining boards have permitted me to list the focus your test will have: a combination of questions on grammar and the decision to write in present tense, multiple viewpoints and real-time narration. There will also be a focus on themes. Areas that come up every few years in rotation include the definition of family, political styles of government, and the blurring of fiction and non-fiction in a dystopian world, as well as questions demanding two longer answers; regardless of the ever-changing question that you will be asked one always remains the same, which you will be aware of before entering that exam hall: “Using examples from the text in conjunction with your politico-historical studies and any personal reflections, what has this book series taught you about human nature?” My advice, if I may be so bold, is to answer both questions from the heart and forgive any mistakes we may have made, remembering that we were real people in unthinkable situations.

  Extraneous to your studies, a question I hear played around family dinners, especially now enough time has passed to not feel uncomfortable is “What would you do in the great cull?” if given the choice to live over your family or not. I hope you do not judge anyone for the decisions they made that night, although I am aware that by our nature we do judge, but I also implore you to think empathically too. I wish you all the best of luck and success with your exams, your careers and your happiness, and that no matter how much time passes between the days of the Middlelands and the new world you have been brought up in, you never take for granted your freedom.

  Theia Silverdale