“Do not tell her that,” Margot warned. The whole van was thick with tension now.
“I’m just trying to help,” he said.
“What is our real name, Norflo?” Margot demanded. “What Spanish name do you get out of Chem?”
“I don’t,” Norflo said, taken aback.
“What do we even know about Téjico?” Margot went on.
“It’s not here,” he said. “Sometimes they call it Mexico.”
“That is not much to stake our futures on and certainly no reason to tell my sister she will like it.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked her, my patience reaching an end.
She didn’t answer at once. I kept my eyes on the road. America® seemed to simply crumble away as we traveled. There were no more domes or even abandoned towns. The road was flat and cracked as we crossed from Carolina into Kennessee. Then the bleached grass and dirt of Kennessee gave way to sand that streaked the pavement from trucks that had passed this way. I found myself squinting as a strip of luminous white cloud extended to the horizon under a glowing morning sun.
Margot moved to the front of the van and stood behind me. After a good long while, she leaned in and whispered into my ear. “I do not know what to do,” she said. “I fear there is no good place for us in this world.”
She didn’t want Mira to hear the hopelessness in her voice. I wanted to pull over and reassure her, but I had to keep driving, and I couldn’t find the right words to say. The ones that would matter most to her.
We passed the old metal skin of an abandoned truck, rusted and half-buried, sideways in the sand. Then another farther out, and a third, right at the side of the road.
“The domes were built for two reasons,” Margot went on. We passed the scattered remains of homes, stores and billboards, but they had all eroded to little more than wooden bones and rusted metal beams. “To keep out the weather...and people from places like Mexico.”
Something about this idea made me sick. The Mexicans were my ancestors—she knew that. Saretha and Norflo and I all had a connection to Téjico, even if Mira and Margot didn’t.
I suddenly understood why she’d asked about the name Chem. “Margot,” I said, matching the low tone of her voice. My sister leaned in so she could hear me, too. I probably should have thought more about what I was about to say, but the words forming in my head felt right, and if I could decide one day to be silent and stick to that choice, I could follow through on this one.
I let my voice get louder. “You will always have a place with us,” I swore to her. “If you want it. No matter what.”
Bollards Between: $42.98
Far in the distance behind us, something else was on the road. I didn’t intend to let it get close enough to learn if it was someone with ill intent.
On our left, a searing, glimmering mass appeared beyond the dirt and sand. The brightness of it was overwhelming. Saretha blocked the light with her hands and scrunched up her face. Margot sank down lower in the van and told Mira not to look.
An awful thought gripped me. What if some terrible accident had happened? Wasn’t there a NanoLion™ factory near here? What if thousands or millions of those batteries detonated, chain reaction–style, like the explosion I’d caused back in Portland—but ten thousand times worse? What if it was the result of sabotage, inspired by me?
Then I caught a glint of blue. “S’the ocean,” Norflo said with wonder, holding up the Pad so everyone could see the map of it.
A strange, nervous excitement ballooned in my chest. The sun’s light sparkled against the distant water. “Look!” I cried to Saretha. From so far away, the ocean was a flat, brilliant expanse that didn’t even look like water.
“Should we take a detour?” Saretha asked, squinting at it.
“No,” Margot insisted.
“Probably shouldn’t delay,” Norflo said.
Saretha pouted. The water was too far away for us to really appreciate.
“But it’s the ocean,” I consoled her. “We’re finally seeing the ocean, like we always talked about.”
She gazed at the shimmering horizon, trying her best to appreciate it. “I don’t know if this counts,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure, either. I’d always imagined being at the water’s edge when I’d let myself dream about it.
At the end of the road before us, a dome rose up, shining above the horizon at first like it was floating, then dropping into a shining pool of water. The road appeared flooded. I wanted to slow down, but the car behind us kept coming, and I had no idea if it was chasing us or just following the same route by coincidence. Either way, there was no choice but to plunge on. At least we’d get to see the water up close.
But the closer we got, the more the water seemed to recede, like it was being siphoned away for our arrival—or, more aptly, like a special effect that didn’t quite get the physics of water correct. But this was no digital trick. My ocular implants had been deactivated by Kiely. All of ours were. Whatever I was seeing was real, or, at the very least, a trick of some other kind. As we got near, the shimmering haze evaporated, like it had never been there at all.
On either side of the dome, as far as the eye could see, a massive concrete wall rose three stories high, stretching into the distance. In front of the wall sat a smaller chain-link fence, peppered with years of debris blown from across the landscape. A few pieces of trash rolled over the ground, buffeted by heavy winds. Both barriers snaked toward the water on our left and a distant rise of hills on our right.
The dome itself had a face of smooth plastic in three equal stripes of green, white and red. A gold star was perfectly centered within it. The bottom was a band of dull gray metal, inset with four massive metal doors, all shut tight. A series of thick steel posts jutted up from the ground, bollards arranged in a semicircle to further block our entry. I slowed the van and stopped a few feet from the first of these. This was the border we had to cross. Téjico was right before us, just out of reach.
“What now?” I asked.
Saretha pulled open her door. “Maybe there is a bell or something,” she said.
“A bell?” Margot asked.
“Honk the horn!” Mira suggested.
“Please do not,” Margot said.
“I got it!” Norflo said enthusiastically. He rushed out between the metal bollards and toward the shuttered doors. He was scarcely a few feet past the posts before something small careened to a halt in front of his face—a dropter. Norflo shirked away, then righted himself and began speaking to it.
I lowered the windows to try and hear what he said, but I caught just a few stray words under the wind. Téjico, freedom, border. The response from the dropter was, unfortunately, clear enough.
“Thank you for calling on the Independent Republic of Téjico. Admission to the IRT requires proper identification, as well as a visa in compliance with the Laws of both the IRT and the United States of America® East and West. These may be obtained in most major cities and domes.”
Two other dropters appeared on either side of the van, their jewellike lenses focusing first on Saretha and then on Mira.
Norflo said something else, his arms outstretched. The response was broadcast through all three dropters.
“Due to the high administrative costs of vocal interaction demanded by the Rights Holders of the United States™, the Independent Republic of Téjico requests no further communication at this time.”
The dropters zipped off. Norflo turned back to us, deflated and stunned. I shared his disbelief. Were they really going to just turn us away? Norflo didn’t even bother returning to the van. He just leaned against a barricade pole and slumped in defeat.
“What now?” I asked. I dropped my head to the steering wheel. I was sick of this van. I was sick of this journey. I just wanted to be home—or, more accurately, I wanted to find one.
“We wait,” Margot said, her face determined in a way I hadn’t seen in a long while.
“For what?” Saretha asked.
“Until they allow us to enter or we bake to death in the sun,” Margot said fiercely. “Let our bodies weigh on their consciences.”
“I don’t want to bake in the sun,” Mira said.
“You do not,” Margot affirmed—or corrected.
“You should take the van, Margot,” I said, eyeing the rearview mirror. Whoever had been behind us was getting closer. They would arrive in minutes.
“And do what with it?” she asked, sounding a bit more like herself. “Drive back to Portland? It is too late for any of that. We have all agreed Téjico is our only option.”
I looked at the colors of the small border dome blazing in the sun. I wondered if the star was made of real gold. Gold was very expensive, but only because the Patent to print it was priced so high. Was that true on the other side of that wall, too?
“How did our parents get through?” I wondered aloud.
“Maybe they went somewhere else,” Saretha said. “Maybe they went north, to Portland, to look for us.”
The truck behind us was quite near now, and I was suddenly struck by an idea. I pulled us to the side so we could be prepared for whoever was following.
“Norflo!” I yelled, calling him back to the van.
“What are we going to do?” Saretha asked as Norflo ran doggedly toward us.
“Fight,” I said firmly, but before the word had even fully left my mouth, I saw the truck behind us was from Mandolin Inks™, not Lucretia’s people. It pulled up and rumbled to a stop, bringing a hot, oily smell with it. Despite my half second’s hope it would turn out to be a driverless vehicle, there was a man behind the wheel, staring intently ahead.
“He’s not even looking at us,” Saretha said.
The Mandolin Inks™ driver lowered his window and one of the three dropters approached him. Another hovered in front of the truck’s front license plate, and the third seemed to sniff in a low circle around the bottom of the vehicle. The driver didn’t speak. The dropters didn’t ask any questions. The whole interaction took only a minute before the metal bollards retracted into the ground.
Ahead of the Mandolin Inks™ truck, one of the four enormous metal doors growled open and the driver headed straight toward it. I didn’t wait to think about it because we might not get another chance. I knew it was probably illegal—or at least not what the people on the other side of that door wanted—but I put our van in gear and jammed on the gas to follow the truck inside.
Border Control: $43.98
We were forced out of the van at gunpoint by uniformed guards, and made to stand in a line against the far right wall. The Mandolin Inks™ driver was sent to the left side and never once looked over at what we had done.
“No digas ni una sola palabra,” the leader said in a low, intimidating voice. Behind us, the huge door closed, sealing the dome off from the sandy landscape.
The man wore a green, white and red badge that read Advik Ramírez—IRT Border Control, with a small yellow star beneath it. His skin was sun weathered and dark, though he seemed much healthier than my parents or the man we’d seen in the field. There was a pistol on his hip, but no Cuff that I could see.
“What?” I asked.
“¿Qué?” Norflo translated for me, a huge smile on his face. Despite the gravity of our circumstances, he was plainly thrilled to have made it onto Téjican soil.
Advik closed his eyes, as if that might give him more patience. Two other guards continued to point their guns at us while the rest swarmed our van and poked around inside.
“No apuntes les armas a los niños,” Advik chastised. The guards lowered their guns.
One of them looked at me and said, “La Muda.”
Advik nodded, then examined everyone else. His shoulders drooped when he got to Mira. His face scrunched up when he saw Saretha.
“¿Es usted Carol Amanda Harving?”
Saretha couldn’t suppress a proud grin. His expression was one of confusion.
“¿Quiénes son ustedes?” he asked slowly, and when it became clear we couldn’t understand him, he translated. “Who are all y’all?”
Norflo stepped up, barely able to contain himself. “Norflo Juarze,” he said.
“Juarze?” Advik asked. “Not Juarez?”
Norflo shrugged and put out his hand. “Either way, I’m glad to meet you. ¡Me da mucho gusto conocerlos!”
“You’re not afraid it’ll costcha?” Advik laughed, shaking Norflo’s hand. This normally would have cost $3.99 per second.
“We only know un poco español,” Norflo said, embarrassed, struggling to get the Spanish part out.
Several of the border guards watched me as their cohorts searched our van. One of the guards in the van called out in surprise. “It’s empty.”
“There’s no fruit in your fruit van?” Advik asked.
“We are fleeing an oppressive regime,” Margot said. “We did not stop for fruit.” Margot’s sense of humor was mostly absent these days, but her cold sarcasm remained.
“I am Mira.” Mira put her hand out, too.
Advik knelt. “Hello, Mira.” He took her hand and shook it delicately, as if she was precious.
“Is that really free?” Mira asked.
“Absolutamente,” Advik said.
“And talking?”
“Also free,” Advik said, and then a little more sadly, “until you go back.”
“I’m Speth,” I said. “Jiménez. And we’re not going back.”
Advik’s eyes widened. “La Muda,” he said in wonder. “The Silent Girl. But...you’re not silent?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
Advik tapped at his thigh and looked from me to Saretha. “What happened? Why are you talking? Why is the leader of the Silents traveling with Carol Amanda Harving?” He waved over the other agents, who were eagerly listening to our conversation.
“I’m not the leader of the Silents, and she’s not Carol Amanda Harving,” I said. Saretha let out a breath like I’d spoiled her secret. Advik scrutinized us, unsure if he believed me.
“I’ve seen all her movies,” he said, as if he might convince me that I was the one who was wrong.
“There is no Carol Amanda Harving,” I explained. This confused him. “She’s made-up,” I clarified. “A fiction.”
“A simulacrum.” Norflo grinned, pointing to Saretha.
Saretha straightened her clothes. “They stole my image, if you want to know.”
“Mmm.” Advik did not seem to believe her.
“Look, we’re just trying to find our parents,” I said.
“In Téjico?” His brow knit with confusion. “How’d y’all get separated?”
“How did we get separated?” I asked, a little thrown by such a strange question. “My parents were taken from us when we were little. You know they do that, right? They split up families. They Indenture thousands of people in America®.”
I began to worry they weren’t here.
Advik’s eyes darted over to the Mandolin Inks™ truck, which was just pulling away. “That information’s proprietary, no?” he asked, shaking his head while tracking the truck out the door.
“I’m sure it is,” I said. A frustrated breath escaped me. “How can you not know our parents are taken to work as slaves, and yet you know who Carol Amanda Harving is?” My voice rose with every word.
“They export movies, not information,” Margot reminded us.
Advik’s voice got low and very serious. “I know they make people work as Indentureds. We hear things. We see things. We’ve...” He looked around at the other guards. Was he wondering if he could trust them? “A lot of folks have turned up recently,” he continued, “but I can’t say if we let them in, because
we can’t be caught breaking any international Laws. ¿Comprende?”
“No,” I said coldly.
He swallowed and spoke even more quietly, looking around as if he was worried someone would hear. “You don’t have any idea what the Americans® did to us here, do you?” When we all looked at him blankly, a resolved expression crossed his face, and he added, “Follow me, I’ll show ya.”
No One Flies: $44.97
Advik took us into an office. There wasn’t really room for all of us, but we jammed ourselves inside, anyway. A screen ran a loop of news silently on one wall. There was a story from Dallas. Another from Guanajuato. There were images of roiling water and stormy weather in a place where people were shuttering beautifully printed homes. There was a stunning gold building and a ribbon being cut.
Advik sat and pulled his hat back on his head, like he was overwhelmed. “Help yourself to water,” he said, gesturing to a tall, clear tube of crystal clear water with a levered spigot below. I could tell he was stalling.
“What flavor?” Mira asked.
“It’s just water,” Advik said with a laugh. “Agua.” He leaned forward, plucked a paper cup from a stack and held it out to her. Mira turned to Margot.
“But what flavor?” she whispered to Margot, as though Advik wasn’t able to understand. She took the cup from Advik’s hand and looked for a logo on it. It was blank, which felt weird.
Advik returned his attention to the rest of us. His amusement faded. “Y’all know some of this used to be part of the United States™, right?” he asked, waving a hand around as if he meant just the room.
We all hesitated, but I was the first to say, “Geography is proprietary. So is most of the history they fail to teach us.”
He typed something on a membrane keyboard and pulled up a map like the one we’d seen in the truck back in Sylvania™, but these borders were different. There was no Téjico. There was the United States™, spread out from sea to sea, with Canada above it and Mexico below.
“You don’t know any about of this, do you?” he asked. I got the distinct impression he had been through this before.
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