What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  Alessa calmly turned her notebook to a new page and began taking notes on her professor’s lecture. But inside, her mind was racing and her emotions swelled. She teetered between biting fear and the blackest despair.

  If Alessa had had any doubts that what Janie had said was true, her jarring discoveries since leaving the security closet had quelled them completely. How much time had Alessa lost to the producers’ games?

  ESU was most definitely not the idyllic collegiate environment she thought she’d been inhabiting. Far from it.

  Yes, it appeared that Alessa had stumbled upon some fantastically twisted kind of hell.

  24. RECOLLECTION

  Alessa slid her tray onto the long table in front of her and squeezed onto the bench, smiling at the handsome young man across from her. He flashed his bright blue eyes and returned her grin.

  “Hey, Joe.” Tossing her hair behind her shoulders, she threw back a long sip of milk and released a satisfied sigh. “How’s your day going?”

  Joe swallowed a bite of his apple. “Not so bad. I’m on landscaping duty, so I’ve been enjoying this weather.”

  Alessa wished she’d been assigned landscaping as well. Butterflies wheeled in her stomach at the thought of being able to spend the day side by side with Joe, not to mention that it was a gorgeous summer day, sunny and warm but blessed with unusually low humidity. As it was, she was stuck inside on kitchen cleanup.

  Joe took a tentative look around and leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. “So, have you given any thought to joining me tonight?”

  Alarmed by Joe’s indiscretion, Alessa glanced up and down the long bench checking to see if anyone else was looking. They were all clad in the same dull cotton jumpsuit as Alessa and Joe, slowly eating their lunch and making idle chitchat. Alessa noticed with envy that the hot food today was fettuccini alfredo. She was tempted to steal a bite, but then she noticed the glazed look on her neighbor’s face as the drugs in the food took hold. Scowling at her undressed salad, sometimes Alessa wished she could just forget what she knew about the colony.

  Ever since the day she’d gotten ill a few weeks ago, Alessa had been careful not to eat anything rich which could hide the bitter taste of the drugs. She still wasn’t sure exactly when – or why – Paragon had started drugging the food, but when she’d recovered from her sickness, her mind had felt clear and sharp for the first time in months. After 24 hours of not being able to keep anything down, her system had finally cleared the drugs and she’d been determined to keep it that way ever since.

  Alessa’s alarm had grown when she returned to her work shifts and noticed the zombie-like behavior of her younger sister, Janie, and her best friend, Joe. Being under the influence of the drugs herself, she hadn’t discerned the change in her loved ones until she could think with some clarity. Once she realized what was going on, Alessa had covertly steered them away from the items she suspected contained drugs, and after a few days, they’d begun to return to their normal selves.

  Since then, they’d been subsisting mainly on produce and nuts, which was difficult since the colony’s communal dining halls served only a limited supply of fresh fruits and veggies. Mercifully, it seemed that the milk was left untainted, so that had provided them with a consistent and nutritious source of calories. But even so, Alessa and her friends were quickly dropping weight.

  It still wasn’t clear to Alessa what exactly the point of the drugs might be. As far as she could tell, Paragon was an orderly and peaceful society, everyone contributing to their share of the work and, in turn, provided with everything they needed to live a comfortable life. It had certainly been a relief from the chaos they’d been plunged into before the colony – after the constant threat of nuclear war and then the pandemic that had killed almost everyone she knew, including her and Janie’s parents and kid brother, Paragon had been a sanctuary.

  Alessa still wasn’t sure how she and Janie had survived the devastating outbreak, some mutated strain of a fast-acting plague that seemed to viciously chew up its victims from the inside out. No one even knew how it had all started – whether it was a biological attack from one of their enemies in the Eastern Allies, or just some sort of horrible mistake at a lab. But regardless, the disease had spread rapidly and it had been merciless.

  Alessa’s family had spent weeks barricaded in their home, watching friends and neighbors fall sick one by one. When the government finally announced a safe quarantine area, they had carefully traveled there together, only to be separated at the gate. Coughing and wheezing, the condition of Alessa’s parents and brother betrayed to the guards that they had contracted the virus en route. As a result, only Alessa and Janie would be allowed inside. The sisters despaired at leaving their loved ones behind, but their parents had insisted that they continue on to safety, promising to find them once their ailments were cured. They never saw their family again.

  Alessa had been only 17 at the time, Janie 14, and the two of them clung together in their new home as the outbreak continued to ravage the population beyond the quarantine zone. Eventually communication with the outside world was lost – as far as they knew inside the quarantine area, no one outside was spared and it probably wouldn’t be safe to leave within their lifetime. A temporary government was established to keep order and they named their new home Paragon. Paragon was supposed to have been a beacon of equality, a community where everyone shared the labor and cared for each other and worked together towards a common goal: survival.

  At first the idea seemed to have been working. Yes, there were sacrifices – limited food, the bland but functional government-issue jumpsuits, grueling menial labor assignments that everyone had to endure. But in return, they were safe. And Alessa and Janie at least had each other.

  Being in the same age group, Alessa, Janie, Joe, and Joe’s brother Isaac were all assigned to the same “efficiency unit” – the complex where they slept, worked, ate and socialized. As orphaned teenagers looking after their younger siblings, Alessa and Joe had become fast friends, bonding over the burden they shared and prodding each other with amusing banter to lighten the load. Before long, Alessa very much hoped that they would someday become more than friends, but she hadn’t yet had the courage to express those feelings.

  And so despite everything that had happened, Alessa had been doing okay. After a few years in Paragon, she had adjusted to her new life and had fallen into a comfortable routine. Each day she received her work assignment, reported for meals when they were served, and spent her free time with Janie and Joe, watching the engrossing TV dramas that aired in the evenings. She had even been happy. And then she’d discovered the drugs.

  Now Alessa was more scared than anything. She suspected she was breaking some sort of protocol by not ingesting the mind-altering substances, but at the same time, she wasn’t even sure who she should be hiding from. As an egalitarian society, there were no clear authority figures in Paragon. Obviously someone was in charge, making the decisions about who lives where and does what jobs, and also apparently what drugs go in the food. But Alessa didn’t know who that was, and some instinct told her it would be a bad idea to start asking too many questions.

  Worse, Alessa wasn’t even sure when the drugging had begun. Her sense of time was skewed, one day running into the next with only the passing of the seasons to break up the year. It was easier now that her mind was free, and she knew it’d only been a month or so since she’d stopped taking the drugs. But she wasn’t sure how much time had passed before then. It could have been months, or it could have been years.

  After weaning Janie and Joe off the drugs, Joe had been the first to notice that there were a handful of other people eating a similar diet in the cafeterias, dishing the hot entrée onto their plate and pushing it around to make it look like they’d eaten it, but never taking a bite. He’d cautiously mentioned his observation to one of them, and shortly after he’d received a covert invitation to a secret meeting with some sort of underground organization. He was t
o meet with them for the first time that night, and he’d been urging Alessa to join him.

  “Alessa.”

  Joe’s voice snapped Alessa back to the present.

  “What do you think? Are you going to come with me?”

  She looked down at her plate. “I don’t know… It just seems kind of risky.” Joe had always been the more daring of the two – it was something Alessa found appealing about him, since boldness was a quality she lacked. She couldn’t even work up the nerve to tell Joe how she felt about him, let alone sneak out of her bunk in the middle of the night.

  “Don’t you want to know why this –” Joe motioned at their dazed dining hall companions “– is happening?”

  “Of course I do,” Alessa hissed. She continued under her breath. “But you don’t even know who these people are. How do you know you can trust them? You’re putting yourself in danger.”

  Joe sat back, resigned. “Fine. I understand your concerns, but if I don’t take this opportunity, we may never know what’s going on. I’ve got to try.”

  Alessa sighed and shoveled a forkful of dry lettuce into her mouth. At the very least, maybe these rebels might have more insight into exactly which food was drugged so that she could resume eating something other than salad.

  “All right,” she groaned through her teeth. “I’m in.”

  Later that evening, Alessa was lying in bed in the pitch dark, the soft sounds of her dozing bunkmates wafting around her. Alessa glanced in the direction of her sister, but couldn’t make out her face in the dim light. She hadn’t told Janie what she was planning for fear that she would want to come along, so she’d waited until Janie had fallen asleep then pulled out the clothes hidden under the bed and dressed silently in the dark. Now she was just waiting for Joe to show up.

  A quiet tap on the open window signaled his arrival. Luckily, Alessa was bunked on the ground floor and the windows were all propped open due to the heat, so sneaking out wasn’t as complicated as she had anticipated. She simply slipped out the window and followed Joe across the compound’s dark courtyard to an unmarked door in the alley between two buildings.

  Inside, Alessa and Joe found a group of six people scattered about a supply room, some perched on boxes while others leaned against the dusty walls. The man Joe had reached out to in the cafeteria was present, along with a few other individuals that Alessa recognized from around the compound, plus one tall striking blond about Alessa’s age whom she’d never seen before. All of them seemed to be waiting for a signal from a middle-aged woman with cropped dark blond hair who sat rigidly in the sole chair in the room. Alessa thought she looked familiar as well.

  Alessa and Joe awkwardly shifted their weight and looked around, afraid to be the first to speak. Then finally, the woman stood up from her chair and addressed the group, “Thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening. Carlos, would you put out a seat for our newcomers?”

  A sturdy Latino man in his thirties who’d been standing near the door crossed the room to pluck a storage container from a shelf and gently placed it beside Alessa and Joe. When Alessa tried to adjust the angle of the box with her foot, she was surprised to find that it was so heavy that she couldn’t get it to budge. She left it alone and sat down, but Joe remained standing.

  The woman continued. “Before we can go any further, we need to know who you are and how you found out about us.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “I’m Joe and this is Alessa.” Alessa waved tentatively, feeling intimidated. “A few weeks ago, Alessa came down with a mild virus which left her unable to eat for about 24 hours. In that time, the effects of the drugs in the food wore off, and she realized what was going on. She got her sister and me off the drugs, then I did the same for my brother. Since then we’ve been eating a restricted diet, and when I noticed him –” he pointed at the man he had approached in the cafeteria “– doing the same, I mentioned it to him and well, here we are.”

  Studying Alessa with a slightly alarmed expression on her face, the woman demanded, “Did you go to the infirmary when you were sick?”

  The atmosphere turned tense as they waited for Alessa to answer. “N-no,” she stuttered. “I –” she looked down at her hands, ashamed. “I was afraid it might be, you know, the virus, so I just hid out in the bunk. I was too scared to tell anyone.”

  There was a collective release in the room. “I apologize for the interrogation. I was worried you might have attracted notice during your illness, in which case they might still be following you – we can’t be too safe, you understand.”

  The thought of being tailed for the past month sent shivers down Alessa’s spine. She didn’t think that kind of thing happened in Paragon.

  Joe took half a step forward. “Listen, we just want to understand what’s going on. Why are they putting stuff in the food and when did it start? Who is doing it? And how did this whole secret organization come about?”

  “All in good time. First, I believe introductions are in order. We are the inner circle of the Rebel Alliance. My name is Regina Green.”

  No wonder she looked familiar – before the outbreak, Regina Green was the CEO of one of the largest media companies in the world. Alessa had seen her face on television and magazine covers, but certainly never expected to meet the woman herself. In person she looked much older than Alessa remembered, with more gray hair than she had first noticed; maybe Paragon just had that effect on people.

  “This is my daughter, Elizabeth.” The voluptuous young blond stepped forward, the shapeless standard-issue jumpsuit somehow perfectly hugging her svelte body.

  “Call me Lizzie,” she said. Alessa noted with a pang of envy that she addressed her remark to Joe, who hadn’t been able to peel his eyes off her.

  Regina briskly continued. “You’ve already met Carlos. He’s a former police commander and head of our underground militia.” Carlos nodded.

  Militia? Alessa had assumed that the entire rebel movement was in this room. Apparently there were more people involved in this than she had thought.

  “Alicia and Sato lead our medical and mechanical teams, respectively.” Regina gestured at two women perched side by side on a storage container. The first, Alicia, was a lean dark-skinned woman with a genial smile, her narrow face framed by a halo of natural kinky hair. The second, Sato, was a tough-looking Asian woman, her sleeves rolled up to reveal a bevy of tattoos on her forearms. Sato nodded almost imperceptibly, her expression impassive.

  “And finally, I believe you already know Michael.” The portly middle-aged man Joe had approached in the cafeteria stepped forward to shake Alessa’s and Joe’s hands.

  “I’m a social psychologist. Nice to officially meet you both.”

  “Likewise,” Alessa replied.

  As Michael took his seat, Joe addressed Regina. “I didn’t know there was an organized rebel movement. How did this all come about? And who exactly are you rebelling against? Is there something more going on than just the drugs?”

  Regina nodded. “It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the short version.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I first learned of the Ruling Class when my daughter, Lizzie here, showed up on my doorstep about 18 months ago.” She looked at Lizzie, tears welling in her eyes. “I’d thought Lizzie had died in the outbreak, since we were separated at the gate when she tested positive for the disease. It turns out the test was a lie. They were keeping her for something worse.”

  Alessa caught her breath. She and Janie had been separated from their family at the gate as well. Was it possible that her parents and brother were still alive? Her heart fluttered madly as she considered the possibility, but she dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had occurred. With some measure of relief, Alessa remembered that her family members had all begun showing symptoms of the disease well before reaching Paragon. As much as she wished them to be alive, she had an ominous feeling that whatever Regina was about to reveal would make her glad they were gone.

  Regina continued. �
�Paragon is not the perfect society we’ve been led to believe it is. We’re all being exploited for our labor, in the service of an upper class of bureaucrats who are running everything behind the scenes. And beyond wasting resources and lying to us about pretty much everything, they’re also exploiting us in… other ways.”

  Lizzie took her mother’s hand and picked up the story. “I wasn’t sick. On the contrary, I was young and healthy and somehow unlucky enough to have caught the eye of one of the bureaucrats. They…” she looked down and took a deep breath, fighting back tears. “They sterilized me and then they forced me to serve as a concubine. For two and a half years, I endured their abuse day in and day out…”

  Alessa felt physically sick as Lizzie continued her hideous tale. She’d had no idea such atrocities were taking place. “… until one day I finally had enough. I attacked one of my… patrons…”

  Regina took over, pained but proud. “The Ruling Class likes their women compliant, and my Lizzie is anything but.”

  His face pale, Joe whispered, “How did you get away?”

  Regina held out her hand to signal that she would get there. “I have an old friend on the inside. As you might know, before all of this I used to head a media empire. One of my old producers was recruited into the Ruling Class and assigned to lead production on the dramas. When Lizzie was jailed for her insurrection, she was cast in one of the shows.