by K. Makansi
The first sign of the city is one of the larger compost farms. Hectares of biological waste from the city are processed on the outskirts, to be returned to the city for various uses including bioluminescent lighting and plant-based electricity generation. Robotic operating systems manage the compost, turning it into fertile soil ready to be recycled into the electrical grid of the city. To support a city of almost two million people, these farms are enormous. When I was in school, studying Environmental History, we were taught that cities in the Old World could grow up to twenty-five times the size of Okaria. They were sprawling metropolises, my professor said, with too much waste to process themselves. Large quantities of it went into the land, into the oceans, and, shortly before the Blackout, into the sky. The Sector, at least, learned how to process all its own waste so that the byproducts of life might not affect the rest of the planet. We’re not all bad, no matter what Chariya and the Outsiders may think.
And yet, I think of that polluted river and dead-brown valley, poisoned water and destroyed earth that proves that even the Sector, for all its intended good done to the world, has its own excesses. Nothing that works on a small scale translates well to large scale: one of Rhinehouse’s favorite phrases. There are always unintended consequences and no system works for everyone or works forever.
At this farm, the waste is arranged in aerated static piles sectioned off from each other by ten-foot walls. We’re walking alongside the piles, as close as we can get so we’re not so out in the open, and they reek of waste, rotten food, and grime, when Remy hisses, grabs at my pack, and pulls me down into the muck.
“Drone!” she whispers, the light on her wrist detector flashing light blue. Linnea, Soren, and Chan-Yu all drop instinctively. We all have wristbands, but Miah, who obviously wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place, doesn’t. And since he was walking just a few strides ahead of us, he is still picking his way through the compost debris as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. We’re wearing camouflage and heat-reflective gear, so as long as we’re not too obviously stalking across the field, the drones shouldn’t be able to see us. I look up, scanning the skies, but the thing is either too small for me to see or still too far away.
“Miah!” My voice is low and hoarse. “Get down, stupid,” I growl, mostly to myself, as I know he can’t hear me. I crawl a few meters toward him, praying I won’t vomit at close proximity to wastes of all kinds. I tackle him around the legs as best I can from a crouch, knocking him over. His eyes are wide and uncertain. I turn my face skyward again, checking my wrist for my own detector, but it’s not flashing. I glance backwards at Remy. She holds her hand up and shakes her head. The blue light has died.
“Clear,” she breathes.
Chan-Yu is the first one to his feet, naturally. As we all stand up and brush ourselves off, he says, “Be on guard. We’ll see many more of those as we approach the city.” He narrows his eyes at Miah. “Back of the line,” he says and passes Miah by.
We walk in silence, ready to drop at a moment’s notice. Out in the Wilds, encountering a drone isn’t a death sentence. You can shoot them down, use your Bolt’s ray setting to jam their electronics, or clear out of the area before another one is called in. But here in the city, if a single drone is alerted to our presence, a whole fleet of the damned things will be swarming over us in moments and the entire mission jeopardized. Once we’re into the population centers, we’ll be in better shape, but out here on the composters, we’re sitting—walking—ducks.
After the compost farm, we hit the Lawrence River. Someone told me that once, the river fed into a huge watershed, a lake of the same name that ultimately fed into the much larger Lake Okaria. There were even a few islands in the center of the lake, or so the rumor goes. But most of that has turned to swamp, now, and the river is a quarter of the size it used to be. Okaria sits just on the other side, though. There are only two ways across unless you float or swim, and the river’s current is too strong for us to attempt to swim.
The first way across is the Bridge of Knowledge, named by the country’s founders for the first and foremost pursuit of the Okarian elite. It’s a pedestrian bridge, and it crosses to an arboretum on the northeast side called the City of Oaks that’s a popular day-trip spot for Okarian citizens. I spent countless days there with my parents, climbing trees and hunting squirrels and birds, pretending I was an intrepid adventurer like my grandparents. But the Bridge of Knowledge is too obvious a crossing spot—we’d be spotted and identified immediately, either by a citizen who recognized us or by one of the dozens of drones that patrol that area.
So instead we’re crossing at the Bridge of Learning. It’s a commerce bridge where hovercars and trucks cross easily, and it’s the main thoroughfare in and out of the east side of Okaria. Before we left, Chan-Yu sent a hurried message to one of his correspondents inside the city via Osprey. But we have no idea whether the intended recipient actually got the message. So we wait anxiously on a back road that leads to one of the compost farms, hoping against hope that the hovertruck scheduled to meet us will arrive.
“I wonder if it’ll be the same person,” Remy says to Soren, on her other side, and despite everything, jealousy strikes me like a fist to the gut. There’s nothing there, I remind myself and try to quell it.
“Sela?” Soren asks. I wish they didn’t share a camaraderie caused by my own ignorance and stupidity; if I had never taken them hostage and brought them against their will to this very city last year, they wouldn’t have memories to recollect together.
“Yes,” Remy says. “That was her name. I didn’t remember.”
“I remember everything about those few days,” Soren says, so softly I have to prick my ears to hear his words. I grit my teeth and look away.
“Me too,” she whispers, but doesn’t say anything further, perhaps realizing how much her words hurt me, how much I would give to undo what I did to her and Soren last year. But I keep those memories close, just like Soren, to remind myself of the dangers of ignorance.
As if reading my thoughts, Remy absentmindedly puts her fingers into her pocket and pulls out the compass, turning as she does so that her back is against the walls of the ditch we’re waiting in. Muddy water trickles around our feet, ready to feed into the river soon. I’m thankful for my waterproof boots. Remy opens the broken compass and turns it aimlessly.
“I used to think we were all like this compass,” she says. “Directionless.”
I stare at her hands, unsure what to say. I watch her open and close the gold face, tilting it to look at it from a different angle.
“But my grandfather always said the real compass wasn’t in your hands but in your heart. I never knew what he meant, because how do you know which way to go without something to show you north?” She lets out a little breath and gnaws at her lip for a moment. “But now I think I know. Your internal compass never breaks. You just have to trust it to point you in the right direction.”
“And sometimes you have to recalibrate,” I add. I close my eyes and think of my mother and father, desperately in need of a change in direction. When did torture become government policy? I want to ask my father. When did murder become a solution to a problem? I can picture my mother’s pursed lips, the gathering storm in her dark brown eyes. I’m sorry, Vale, she said to me, that night at the Solstice party, but it was for the best.
“It’s here,” Chan-Yu says, and I notice it too: the low, gentle hum of a vehicle.
“What’s here?” Linnea demands, her face anxious. Chan-Yu just stares at her.
“The truck,” Soren responds in his place.
Chan-Yu slings his pack over his shoulder and hops up over the edge of the ditch. I follow him with my eyes. Sure enough, a hovertruck with a cargo hold big enough for all six of us has backed up to us. Chan-Yu opens the rear portal and swings in without waiting for the rest of us.
We follow him, staying low and looking around anxiously. A compost truck or a wayward drone could arrive at any mi
nute. I’m the last one in the rear. The last thing I see before I close the doors behind us and am swallowed by total darkness is Chan-Yu rapping on the barrier between the cargo hold and the driver’s seat.
A few seconds of silence and we start to move, gliding smoothly through the air.
“Umm,” Linnea says. “Can we get a light?”
As if by magic, a light comes on above us. Soren and Linnea blink and cover their eyes. I squint, but my eyes adjust quickly.
“Can she hear us up there?” Soren asks. “That seems dangerous, doesn’t it? We have to go through a checkpoint when we cross the bridge.”
“Yes,” Chan-Yu agrees, not answering the real question.
“So, what happens then?” Linnea demands.
“She’ll turn off the speaker,” Chan-Yu responds.
“Is it the same person it was last time?” Remy asks. “Sela?”
“No. Sela has disappeared. She might be dead. We don’t know.”
“What?!” Remy and Soren exclaim simultaneously.
“When did this happen? How? Why didn’t you tell us?” Remy demands.
“After she helped transport us to the port last year, she and everyone else who crossed that checkpoint that night was investigated. Sela’s background didn’t check out, understandably, as it had all been forged. She had never attended school in the Sector, and although an entry had been created for her in the Personhood database, it wasn’t as thorough or detailed as the one created for me and others higher in the ranks of the Sector.” Chan-Yu sighs. His displays of emotion are rare, and even when he does give some indication of his feelings, they’re minimal at best. “We don’t really know what happened after that. Her entry in the database was deleted. All trace of her vanished.”
Remy and Soren, clearly more shocked by this news than the rest of us, gape at Chan-Yu.
“Who was Sela?” Miah asks, somewhat timidly.
“She helped us escape last year,” Soren responds. “She drove a truck similar to this one. She took us through the city and to the port where we got on the ship across the lake.”
There’s a long silence as we contemplate yet another crime in the Sector’s name. I feel the truck tilt upwards and I know we’re going over the bridge. And then down. We’re in Okaria now, I realize. Home. I am thankful there are no windows to look out, to see the city full of idyllic memories of childhood, memories that mask the truth of this place. A place too perfect to be real.
I reach up to my ear, feeling at the tiny artificial fibers that have practically become a part of me. Demeter, are you there? I want to activate my C-Link, to remember one of the best things this place gave me. But Chan-Yu catches my eye and shakes his head, a tiny gesture that almost looks like an involuntary twitch. I know better. If I activate Demeter now, she’ll immediately pop up on the C-Link database. The most important people in Okaria will know immediately: Vale has returned. I can’t activate her until we’re hooked up securely, to transmit information in one direction only.
Demeter will have to wait.
We ride in silence until the truck begins to slow.
“Checkpoint?” Linnea asks, hesitation in her voice. Chan-Yu just nods.
I am silent, thinking of Sela, a woman I’ve never met, a woman who gave up everything to help save the lives of two people she had never met either. Now I wonder if we’re putting another life in danger.
We hear voices outside, but just barely. I can’t catch any of the words. I grit my teeth and hope we make it through without incident. The voices stop and the truck starts moving again. I let out a long, deep breath, and glance at Chan-Yu. Thank you.
Our destination, now that we’re past the checkpoint, is a second-floor flat in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of the area known as La Citron, where another of Chan-Yu’s inside contacts has arranged for us to stay. We tried to get a basement flat that would be better hidden from any passing drones snapping photos, but since we had to bump up our departure date, there were none available. It’s still a mystery to us how the Outsiders communicate with their contacts in the city, as it’s clear they aren’t working via electronic signals. And they won’t tell us, either. It was one of the conditions for their cooperation, that we never know how they communicate.
Chan-Yu pulls a small black pouch that reveals a wide array of what looks like paint. It’s not, though— it’s makeup. “Come here, Linnea,” he commands, and she obligingly scoots over to where he’s sitting. To my great surprise, Soren pulls a similar pouch out of his pack and turns to Miah.
“What are you doing?” I demand, staring at him. “I thought Chan-Yu was in charge of disguises.”
“Osprey’s been teaching me some of her tricks,” he says, grinning wickedly. “I’m going to make you the ugliest motherfucker on the planet, Vale. Just you wait.”
Remy laughs.
“Just as long as you don’t make me look old,” Linnea says to Chan-Yu.
For once, a glimpse of a smile.
As we glide, Chan-Yu deftly paints Linnea’s face and sprinkles a powdered dye into her hair. In five minutes, she looks nothing like what she did before: her high cheekbones have been smoothed into the rest of her face, there are gaunt hollows around her mouth, and her eyes, normally wide pools of blue, have been hooded by thick eyebrows and dark eyelids. Her pale, luminous skin completely hidden under a darker skin complexion, and her hair, normally golden blond, is now a brown chestnut color.
“It’ll wash right out,” Soren assures her, looking at her astonished face as she pulls at the tendrils of her hair.
“I can’t do anything about your eyes,” Chan-Yu says. “That’ll be your biggest giveaway, so try not to look anyone dead in the eye if you can help it.”
Miah hasn’t been done as skillfully. It’s obvious Soren doesn’t quite have Chan-Yu’s skill or experience, but he certainly doesn’t look anything like himself. His beard and hair have been dyed light brown, a color similar to Linnea’s, and he looks like he’s aged fifteen years with wrinkles around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes.
Chan-Yu pulls Remy over and in a few minutes, she’s turned a whole different color. Normally her skin is the color of rich brown soil that I always want to dig my fingers into. Now she’s almost black, the color of Jahnu’s skin, and I think she’s almost more beautiful. Soren unfortunately takes over my own makeup, and I try to ignore his snickering and not look him in the eye as he ‘accidentally’ jabs me in the face with the brush a few times.
“Oh my God, Vale,” Miah exclaims. “Soren wasn’t kidding. You look like a swamp creature.”
“What, has he given me boils? People aren’t going to think I’m sick, are they?” I ask worriedly as Soren and Miah laugh. “I don’t want to call attention to myself.” I glance at Remy, but she’s not even looking at me. Chan-Yu’s still working on her.
“Oh no,” Miah says. “They won’t think you’re sick. They won’t even think you’re human. They’ll think you’re some mutated creature spawned in one of the compost bins.”
Even Remy laughs. I wish desperately I could see what Soren’s done. Remy finally turns to look at me.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she laughs. “You do look pretty ugly, though.”
Finally, after Chan-Yu and Soren have quickly traded makeup jobs on each other, the hovercar slows and finally stops. The light above us blinks on and off. In a flash, Chan-Yu, who now looks softer and rounder and maybe even a little bloated, is on his feet.
“Wait here. When I come back, everyone get out as quickly as possible. This truck isn’t cleared for human transport. If we’re seen, we’ll be flagged immediately.” He walks gingerly past us and opens the door just wide enough for him to get out, then shuts it behind him. We wait in silence, clutching our packs, ready to move, for no more than twenty seconds before he opens the door again.
“Out.”
Wordlessly, we follow his lead. The truck has left us in a narrow back alley, right by the residential compost bins.
As soon as the door is shut behind us, the truck glides away, humming quietly.
“Remy, let’s go.”
Only two people are legally allowed to live in this flat, so we needed two of our team to represent us when we were trying to get in. As we were planning the mission, we decided Remy was the least likely of the girls to be recognized. As famous as Remy is, Linnea’s image is probably burnt into the minds of every single Okarian citizen in the Sector from all her time on television. And Miah, Soren, and I are all faces that have seen too much press coverage over the past six years. So Chan-Yu and Remy will be the first to enter the building, to register with the security desk. They’re posing as a young, lower-class married couple from a factory town, borrowing a friend’s apartment for a honeymoon in Okaria. They’ll register, tap into the security feed and temporarily disable the internal monitoring and camera system while the rest of us come in the back.
We duck into the building’s electrical mainframe housing. Although most buildings are hooked up to the central Okarian grid, each one has its own distributed generation system that taps either a combination of hydro, wind, solar, or plant-based generation. Each building is its own ecosystem. Power is generated from water flowing through toilets, showers, and hydroponics systems that make up the plant-based power gen; there are small wind turbines and arrays of solar harvesters on every roof and many of the external walls. All the power is centralized, stored, processed, and maintained in the electrical mainframe.
It’s a tense moment when Soren rigs the palm scanner to open the door for us, and it swings open. Both of us have our Bolts up and ready, in case of an unexpected visitor. Thankfully, the room is empty. Mainframes are usually monitored remotely by a centralized system in the Sector’s Infrastructure department, but sometimes they send men to do routine maintenance. We have to be prepared.