by H. A. Swain
ORPHEUS
Smythe keeps her word. She deposits me in my father’s office then guards the door as I watch helplessly while Esther tears Zimri apart on the screen. Esther parades witness after witness from the Complex, each more scared than the last. When Calliope Bontempi comes in, I gasp along with the rest of the crowd. I can’t imagine what she’s doing there. When she runs out again, I hope and pray that she’s smart enough to tell my mother what’s going on since I can’t reach her myself.
Mostly, I sit slumped and helpless. I can’t believe I put Zimri in this position, and I need to get her out of it. Then she shouts, “Piper McLeo!”
I jump up from my chair, cheering, “Yes! Zimri, yes! You’re brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that? Piper has the song!”
Even Smythe hurries over to see what’s happening. She looks at me and smiles. “See?” she says. “Justice can prevail.”
Now Smythe and I sit together, waiting like everyone in the courtroom with Zimri, for Piper to come on screen. And when she does, she does what Piper McLeo does best—she spins the story in her favor.
“Yes, Orpheus brought Zimri along when he visited me, but I have no recording of her,” she says as if the idea is preposterous.
“Liar!” I scream at the screen.
“Did she sing for you?” Esther asks.
Piper pretends to think this over, as if her memory of Zimri is so murky. “She may have,” she says. “But it was nothing special. I pulled Orpheus aside and told him I was worried about him. Clearly he’d been beguiled by this girl. It was almost as if he had been brainwashed by her. I can’t think of another reason a person like Orpheus Chanson would give everything up to work in a warehouse. What can I say, maybe he was in love, or maybe he’d been coerced. But I told him the truth—Zimri could never be a superstar.”
I shake with fury over how she spins her words. None of them are exactly lies, but they are not the truth either.
Then Zimri shouts, “Ask Arabella!” The drones all zoom in on Zimri’s face. She stands tall, unflinching, stronger than I could ever be. “Ask her if that song is hers.”
The Arbiter sighs and thinks this over. Then she says, “It can’t hurt.” Esther begins to protest but the Arbiter overrules. “Get Arabella on the screen.”
When Arabella comes online, Zimri’s disheveled and disorganized justice broker stands up to question her. “Um, hello, Ms. Lovecraft. What a pleasure. I enjoyed your song.”
I groan aloud.
“What an idiot!” Smythe says.
“So, um, could you please tell us about the song ‘Nobody from Nowhere’?” he asks.
Arabella blinks. Her eyes say it all. There is a blankness in her stare. The ASA has changed her. She’s no longer the kind and empathetic person I grew up with. The first girl I thought I could love. She is driven now, and obsessed. Her mind is filled with music and there is no longer room for compassion.
“It’s a song about Orpheus Chanson,” she says. She’s so calm, as if lying is the most comfortable thing in the world. “I was trying to understand what he was going through. How he could leave our life behind and become a warehouse worker. When he came into the City that day with Zimri, we spent some time together and he told me all about his job. The song is my tribute to him.”
I want to shout at the screen. I can’t believe what a conniving little worm Arabella has become.
“So you didn’t steal the song from Zimri Robinson?” Fernando asks.
“Oh, heavens, no,” says Arabella with a little laugh as if the accusation is absurd. Then she cocks her head to the right, raises her eyebrows high and does a sweet tiny frown. It was an expression we’d practiced at SCEWL called CondescenPathy, the art of talking down while you seem to care. “That’s so sad that she thinks it’s her song. I guess Plebes have big dreams, too.”
Right then I know it’s over. Esther closes up her arguments. She accuses Zimri of being DJ HiJax, a willful and repeat offender. She claims she brainwashed me—how else to explain why I’d work as a picker in a warehouse, pay her grandmother’s MediPlex bills, embarrass myself in front of Piper McLeo, and attend an illegal concert that would hurt my father’s company? She claims Zimri is a dangerous criminal and a mastermind who has no regard for private property—the irony being that’s a more apt description of everyone on my father’s side.
It only takes a minute for the Arbiter to rule in favor of Chanson Industries. Then she asks Esther to name the punishment for Zimri.
“Ma’am,” Esther stands and says, “I cannot put a price on all the music that she’s likely stolen through her concerts and illegal radio broadcasts. And I can’t quantify a price for the week she stole from Orpheus Chanson’s life. All I can say is that Zimri Robinson clearly has no intention of stopping. It’s possible that she’s not even able to control herself. Like her mother, she seems compelled to steal. Her obsession is detrimental not only to herself and those around her but to the free enterprise of the music industry. Therefore, the only way to rectify this situation is to get to the root of the problem. Chanson Industries respectfully requests that as retribution for her acts of piracy, the auditory cortical regions of Zimri Robinson’s brain be scrubbed, which will result in amusia.”
Everyone in the courtroom screams when the Arbiter responds, “Punishment is granted.”
BRIDGE
Zimri shivers beneath a thin sheet, groggy and disoriented in a cold room where everything is made of clean white tile and smells of antiseptic. She wishes someone would turn off the bright light. She wants desperately to sleep. Her head pounds, like a bass drum keeping an excruciating beat inside her skull that wakes her each time she slips toward unconsciousness. In and out she goes, memories swirling like an eddy in the river, and she thinks, Maybe I’m a dragonfly. She remembers darting upriver while looking down with myriad eyes at the dark splotches of electronics graveyards and landfills between the Complex and the City.
Zimri surfaces from this strange delusion. The cold white tile and harsh bright lights clear her mind and she remembers, This is not where I belong. She knows that she is far from home, from Nonda and Brie and the warehouse where she works but she can’t recall the rest. It’s as if she can hear traces of a melody in her mind and the rhythm of words but she can’t quite sing the song. How’s it go again, she keeps asking herself. How does it go?
And there’s someone else, Zimri thinks. A boy with straight white teeth. She sees his dazzling smile as if his image has been tattooed on the inside of her eyelids. He was beautiful and kind and she thinks he may have loved her once. Or was he a lyric from the song she’s trying to sing? Because those kinds of boys don’t exist in reality.
* * *
Orpheus runs through a labyrinth of low-ceiling halls. His bare feet slap against the tile. It’s late. The facility is mostly dark and empty, but he knows that Zimri’s here, too, because Smythe didn’t turn off the Buzz when the trial was over. They watched the whole thing hand in hand, both fighting back tears as Medgers and Beauregarde pinned Zimri down in the courtroom. She kicked and screamed when the medic came at her with a tranquilizing needle. Then the drones trailed them as commentators provided a play-by-play of her transfer to a surgical facility in the City. The same one where Orpheus has been deposited by his father because only the finest surgeon will do for the Chanson heir’s ASA and this wretched girl’s induced amusia. The surgeries are scheduled one right after the other.
Orpheus turns corner after corner. Cold air wafts beneath his surgical gown. He shivers while he sweats. At any moment the nurses will realize that he’s missing and will come looking for him. Another corner, another empty corridor, but somewhere in this building is the room where they will destroy Zimri. Take away the part of her mind that is fundamental to her soul. The thing that makes her truly and uniquely herself. The part she cannot live without. So he won’t stop running, must not stop looking, until he finds her.
Around another corner, and Orpheus sees light spilling from a
window. He slams his body against the plexiglass and there she is. On a table, shrouded in a white sheet beneath a bright light. He tries the door but it’s locked. He pounds on the window. “Zimri!” he shouts. “Zimri!”
* * *
Zimri hears that boy calling her name. It echoes in the auditory recesses of her mind. “Open your eyes!” he calls and she tries, but the drugs are like a heavy blanket over her consciousness and she can’t quite remember what to do.
“Open your eyes, Zimri!” She hears it again and savors the cadence of his words and the melody of his voice. She repeats it to herself as she drifts again toward deep sleep and a dream of floating down the river. Or is she flying through the air? A dragonfly? A fish? No matter. Either way, she is leaving behind the world that she’s known and the boy who fought for her.
Orpheus collapses against the window, arms overhead, fists balled, head bowed as if in defeat as Zimri cycles out of her dream. The pounding in her head has stopped. It is quiet and cold and for a moment she thinks she is floating in the river under the sun. How did I get here, she asks. Did I take the plunge? Have I become my father, spiraling away? She thinks of Nonda—who will care for her? When her father went under, did he think of Zimri and try to fight his way back to the surface, or was death such a relief that he let himself be pulled into the abyss? She will not be her father. Swim, she tells herself, swim, and forces herself to wake up.
The light assaults her eyes. She squints and turns away to find herself inside a room with someone at the window. Her body feels heavy, as if gravity has shifted and weighs her down. She tries to sit up but her arms and legs are tethered to the bed. She tries to remember what came before. Why she’s there. Was there an accident, is she sick, did she do something wrong? She calls out to the person on the other side of the window but her voice is a dry little rasp. Nothing more than desiccated willow leaves skittering across the ground on a blustery fall day. The weeping willow by the river. Her solace and her hiding place when she was young. She sat in it for hours, talking to her father after he was gone, and then later she found someone else hiding there but she can’t remember who it was.
She swallows and tries her voice again. It’s never failed her before. “Hey,” she cries in a husky whisper. “Hey, you there!” She wiggles her arms and legs, trying to loosen the straps around her wrists and ankles. She bucks her hips, slams her body against the bed. “Hey! You! Help me! Get me out of here!”
Orpheus looks up but his breath has fogged the window. He can’t see inside. Then he hears footsteps and voices in the hall and knows they’re coming for him now. Through the foggy window, he sees Zimri’s shape struggling to get up. He throws himself against the glass but he does not yell. Footsteps and voices bounce down the corridors, obscuring their location, but they are getting closer. He motions to Zimri—his hands out straight and he lifts. He wills her body off the bed. Get up! Get up! he thinks but doesn’t dare say it out loud. She fights like a fish in a net desperate to be free. The sheet slips off and he sees that she is strapped down.
Zimri kicks until one foot comes loose. She manipulates her long, dexterous fingers—fingers suited to keyboard keys and guitar strings—to loosen the clasp at her wrist until she can slide her hand through the thick fabric loop. She uses her free hand to undo the other two tethers, then swings her legs over the edge of the bed, which sends her head spinning.
Orpheus knows he needs to move to a safer place. The voices are getting closer. He can’t tell how many people are looking for him in this maze. They seem to be coming from all directions. He hears his name echo down the hall, but he can’t take his eyes off Zimri. She hoists herself off the bed and loses her balance. Woozy and weaving, she hangs on to a metal bar as if she’s fallen overboard and feels the tide dragging her toward the darkness.
From the other side of the window, Orpheus wills her to go faster. To morph back into the fleet-footed, nimble girl he chased through warehouse aisles. The one who stomped around on stage as if indestructible. But he knows how quickly a person can go from invincible to fragile. How fast a life can plummet, like a songbird dead in flight.
He grabs the doorknob and rattles it, pointing to the handle inside, hoping she’s lucid enough to understand she must open the door. She squints at him. The light is too bright. The window is too foggy but she sees the door. She doesn’t know where it will lead, but it doesn’t matter. Any door is a way out and she forces herself in that direction.
On the other side of the room, the sound of an opening lock reverberates against the tiles like a thousand tiny doors about to open, but none of them big enough for Zimri to go through. Orpheus sees a nurse come in. He’s wearing blue operating scrubs. His head is down and he is focused on a tablet in his hands. Then he glances at the bed and does a double take as he zeroes in on Zimri.
“Hey there,” he says gently, as if talking to a mischievous child. “You’re not supposed to be up.”
Somewhere in the muddle of Zimri’s mind, she knows she must get away despite the kindness in the man’s voice, so she propels herself forward, lurching and stumbling toward the boy in the window, but when she looks again he’s not there and she wonders if she’s hallucinating and if any of this is real.
In the hallway, Orpheus crouches below the lip of the window so the nurse will not see him, but he keeps the handle in his grip. Open, open, open, he silently commands. At the far end of the corridor, three women dash by but do not turn the corner. He presses hard against the door, trying to force it open without being seen.
Zimri fumbles with the handle. Her fingers are thick and useless.
The nurse laughs. “Where are you trying to go?”
After three clumsy tries, Zimri catches hold, pushes down, and the door swings inward. The boy falls at her feet.
“What the…!” the nurse yells.
Orpheus scrambles up, clawing at Zimri who reaches down for him. For one quick second he smiles, relieved to be in her arms, and then she knows that he is real.
She takes his hand and they bolt.
The nurse panics. “Security!” he shouts, but a guard is already in the hall. He heard the commotion. Ran down to check. Now there are two kids, hand in hand, in surgical gowns, trying to run.
“You take the girl,” the guard shouts to the nurse while he lunges for Orpheus. He gets one arm around the boy’s waist as the nurse pulls the girl away.
Zimri grips Orpheus’s hand tighter. She won’t let go. But the guard is strong and rips them apart.
“No!” Zimri screams as the nurse drags her away.
“Let me go!” Orpheus demands, writhing and kicking, not willing to surrender because from the moment he first met her, he wanted to fall into her hug, singing, We belong together!
Orpheus charges backward across the hall, slamming the guard’s head into the wall. Then he shouts her name and reaches for her, dragging the guard behind him who won’t let go. “Zimri! Zimri!” The notes are urgent and full of despair. A dirge, a funeral song, a death march.
She twists so she can see him, but her body is slow and heavy as if all her muscles are waterlogged.
“No, you don’t!” The nurse yanks her away.
“Orpheus!” she screams as it all comes raging back to her mind. His smile, his kisses, his belief in her. Her frantic high-pitched scream bounces off the metal and tiles in the room. There is nothing to absorb the noise and she thinks it will echo on forever. She bends her knees deeply, sinking to the floor, pulling the nurse down with her. They tumble. Zimri smells the biting antiseptic of the nurse’s scrubs and gloves. She kicks, trying to catch a soft spot, something vulnerable to make this man leave her alone. Behind them in the hall, the guard loops one arm around Orpheus’s neck and heaves him, arching backward.
“No!” Zimri cries. She sees Orpheus’s face, red and enraged, as he grapples with the guard’s arm. He pulls down to free himself but the guard’s grip is too tight. The nurse scrambles away toward the medical supplies across the room.
Zimri tries to push herself to a stand but she is slow and off-balance, lurching as if being tossed by relentless waves.
Then she hears other voices. Someone yells, “Down there!” The sound of pounding feet comes toward them. More guards, she thinks and knows she must get to Orpheus, but she is knocked sideways into the wall. The nurse, with gritted teeth, is on her, pressing into her so Zimri cannot move. Then she sees the needle in the nurse’s hand. A bead of liquid quivers from the tip. Zimri’s arms are pinned. Her body is smashed tight and her feet slip on the tile floor so she can’t push away. The nurse jabs the needle into the flesh of Zimri’s upper arm. She gasps and winces at the pain as the cold serum quickly spreads through her veins. The room begins to spin. She wobbles and feels her legs go slack. Orpheus has given up the fight, too. He slumps in the guard’s arms as if being cradled. Zimri feels herself begin to float away. The edges of her vision become dark and blurry again.
In the hall, she sees three more bodies. Women. Tati, Elena, and Brie? No. Smythe and Beauregarde and Medgers? No, not them either, but somehow they are vaguely familiar. If only she could concentrate.
“Calliope? Mom?” Orpheus yells. “You found us, thank god! Who’s that?”
Then, from the other direction, two more people run. A man and a woman.
“Dad! Esther!” Orpheus shouts.
Calliope Bontempi shoves the other woman, the stranger who is somehow familiar, ahead of her. “Tell them!” she cries.
Zimri feels the world slipping away. Her eyes are heavy, her mind spins. Who is that at the door? A woman, hair spiraling out like tendrils reaching for the sun, long legs and arms reaching, too. Zimri wonders if she is seeing herself, years from now, when all of this is over.
“I’m DJ HiJax,” the woman says.
“DJ HiJax!” Orpheus, Harold, and Esther say together.
“But I thought you were a man?” says Orpheus.
From the ground, Zimri blinks up. “It’s you,” she whispers.