by J. P. Smythe
I walk around the diorama and on the other side there’s a model of the city as it is now: surrounded by the sweltering wasteland where once there were suburbs, the borders between city and wasteland extreme and enforced, the Wall—the Bastion—so large and encompassing. An explanation of how it works: chilled air generated in turbines along its length is pumped into the city. And finally, the semi-permeable roof (A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL! the plaque says) mounted atop the Wall, which blocks UV rays to stop burned skin and cancers, things I never worried about on Australia. Things I never even knew about.
Around me, holos of people walk and interact with the exhibits, leaning in and speaking, giving me more information. They’re so close that I could touch them, but they’re silent until I’m in front of them, until I’m in their eyeline—then they speak. It’s scary, like ghosts that only I can hear. I listen as they talk.
“We were selfish,” a woman says, leaning in to peer at the city as it was, “and we didn’t think about what was really important. We didn’t protect ourselves. That’s a hard lesson to have to learn.”
“We were complacent and we assumed we were safe,” a man says, pointing at the outside of the city, sweeping his hand to show what he’s talking about, indicating the countryside and greenery and the water. “We built and built and we never worried about the future. It was easier to ignore it. Then the land started falling into the sea.” The holo sweeps his hand across the diorama and a projection of water spills out from the aquarium, reenacting the history—water pouring across the green, flooding it, swallowing it. The waves overwhelm the city, and when they’re gone, Washington is left bordering a new coastline of cliffs and scree, a beach of land that never used to line the sea, that used to be towns and farms.
It isn’t what I imagined this world would be like. But then, I don’t remember what exactly it was I thought we would find down here beyond a fantasy about grass, about the sky. All I really remember is that we found the button that brought us home, discovered that we had been lied to, and then landed. Somewhere in the middle of that I killed Rex. Somewhere in the middle of that Jonah died. Agatha died. Mae was taken.
And at the end of it all, I was alone.
I move to the next exhibit. It was here that I first met Ziegler when we were both watching this holo diorama play out: him for the hundredth time, me—slack-jawed with awe—for the very first. I stand in front of it now: THE PRISON SHIPS AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH AFRICA—the first two countries who volunteered to build ships and send people into orbit around the planet, because the heat was overwhelming and the portion of their landmass that was actually habitable was growing smaller and smaller. When the program began, every country had plans for ships. They were built in shipyards and the first that went up—the only ones that went up—took prisoners initially, as a test. The irony: Then they needed the newly empty prisons, places that had housed the people who weren’t deemed fit for living with the rest of the population. The prisons were sheltered, often cold. Many were underground, by that point.
If the ships were successful, maybe others could live off-planet. Maybe that could be our real future. But only those two ever launched. After that, the program was aborted. So many people died, overpopulation stopped being an issue. So they found a new way. Walls were built up around key cities, and the people who had survived it all lived on as before.
But the story they told about the prison ships, after all was said and done, was a lie. The governments and scientists said that the original prisoners died up there. A brave, noble accident—volunteer convicts who had been willing to pioneer our escape from the tyranny of Earth, from the climate that wanted to swamp them, the ground that insisted on tearing itself apart, the water that constantly tried to rise up against them. When Ziegler saw me watching the lie being told, when he saw the tears running down my face, he introduced himself. I didn’t hear him at first, so he tapped my arm. It made me flinch, pull myself into a defensive posture, ready to tear his eyes out. I was more scared of this new world back then. He said four words to me—I distinctly remember them: Don’t worry, you’re safe. Then he went straight into his spiel about the prison ships. He told me that he didn’t know how they could get away with it, lying to people the way that they did.
I listened to him as he spoke. He told me that something had crash-landed in the city recently, a pod. That almost nobody saw it land, and those who did were brushed off: told that it was a helicopter, something secret they should just ignore. They were told, so of course they followed instructions. But not Ziegler. He saw it come down and he understood. Or at least he suspected.
He asked me where I came from. I didn’t look like I lived in the city, he said. Was I from New York?
I told him that I wasn’t, and he nodded and smiled. I wonder if he knew, even then. When I came back, a week later, he was there again. The third time I came back was when I told him who I was. I told him about Mae.
He didn’t really seem surprised.
We parted, Ziegler writing down his contact details on the skin of my hand because we couldn’t find any real paper (he seemed so bemused that I didn’t have a contact chip, his face scrunching into a quizzical parcel when I told him). I spent the rest of the day there, trying again to catch up on a history that never meant anything to me. It wasn’t my past. Even the stuff from before Australia had left wasn’t mine because everything I knew had become twisted and gnarled with time and storytelling. Some facts stayed, between the lies from Australia and the presented truths from the museum: that the Earth was in trouble, that ships were sent into space, that those ships were a failure. But beneath that was the great lie: Earth didn’t tear itself apart. It stabilized—broken and hurting—but was still here, still working.
On Australia, we told ourselves that it was gone, a blackened shell of a planet cindering in the void. I’ll never know if that lie came from the people who sent my ancestors away—telling them falsehoods to placate them for what they were doing, where they were going—or from my ancestors themselves—ashamed of who they were, wanting some other narrative to tell, something that might have allowed them to sleep easier at night. I think deep down I know the truth. My ancestors were not good people. It’s hardly a stretch to think that they’d lie about their pasts.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe they were ashamed of who they used to be and of what they had done, so they lied—not only to themselves but to their children and their children’s children. They lied and their lies became my truths, until they were exposed.
And the world here is so different from what I knew. The streets are clean. The buildings are new, bigger and better, space efficient; and there are always shops, cafés, restaurants. Everybody’s happy here. The happiest they’ve ever been—that’s what the statistics say. Contentment levels are at an all-time historical high. The new infrastructure is perfect, unified. But then, as Ziegler told me, the poverty divide is so extreme. You’re rich or you’re homeless; you’re inside the walls of one of the existing cities or you’re in the wilderness. There’s very little in-between.
“So why don’t the powerful help the people who need help?” I asked. It seemed obvious to me—that they would give them money, help them get food, houses, whatever.
“Just because you’ve got power doesn’t mean you know what to do with it,” he told me. “They’re scared of losing it, or of the people who want it. Everybody’s scared.” He shrugged. Such an ineffectual little shrug. But you look at them now and you can see that. Everybody acts comfortable, but they’re not inside. What if this is all there is? they wonder. And it is. I know, because I’ve seen what’s outside of here, and it’s so much worse.
I watch the holo of Australia’s launch. I recognize that it’s an old video—before the technology was as impressive as it is now, but still it’s jaw-dropping to me, to see these people from hundreds of years ago, in their clothes that I don’t recognize. People that are long dead, watching Australia get assembled before being sent up to space
. After that, the uniformed men and women being led up gantries toward the smaller loading ships that look just the same as the one that I came down to Earth in. I can see their faces turning to the cameras. Sad faces, worried faces, not sure if this is a punishment or an opportunity. Matching uniforms in a violent shade of orange; fragments of a fabric that I recognize from the ship as I knew it, somehow outlasting the people who wore it. These are the ship’s ancestors—my ancestors—and they are both criminals and victims at the same time. There’s no mention of the cruelty of their abandonment in the display. The holo woman who stands next to me tells me that all contact was one day lost with both ships and the program was abandoned. She shrugs as if that’s the end of the story, a punctuation mark.
“What are you doing?” I hear a voice ask, and I turn, ready to run because that’s my instinct. But it’s Ziegler. He puts his hands up in the air as I turn toward him and steps back. “You think I don’t have a tracker in the car?” He doesn’t look disappointed though. He expected this. “I don’t have to ask why you’re here.”
“I wanted to see the museum again,” I say.
“You wanted the Archives.” He shakes his head, like he’s disappointed. “You can’t get in, I told you. It’s too dangerous.”
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” I say, and I go past him, down toward the section signposted HOW WE USED TO LIVE. He follows me, walking quickly to catch up.
“You took my car. I have a right to know where it was going. Besides, somebody needs to stop you getting yourself into trouble.”
“I would have been fine.”
“No,” he says, “you wouldn’t.” He grabs my arm and stops me right in front of a map of the world as it once was. I spent an hour here once: I pressed a button and it showed me holo overlays for every conceivable variant between the world of the year 2000 and the world today. Population growth, urban sprawl, deforestation, animal extinctions, rising sea levels. The country at the bottom right of the map is where I focused before. AUSTRALIA, just as the ship was called. That’s where I once came from, where I was condemned. I press the button to bring up the census hologram, to show me the bright shining light that signifies how dense the population was. The country used to be bright pinpricks of settlements, of light shining through. Then the holo updates and one by one, those lights go out. The country collapses. Come the end of the holo, there are barely any lights left.
Ziegler pushes his hand out and through the hologram, scattering the image. It tries to reassemble around his wrist, the pixels not quite working, not quite lining up. “If you tried anything, you would get caught and you’d be thrown in prison. Where would I be then?”
“You don’t need me,” I tell him.
“Of course I need you. You’re my evidence. You know the truth. Do you know the hardest thing to find in the world? Actual proof of atrocities we’ve committed. You get taken and I lose the chance to make things right.” He starts to walk away from me, back toward the entrance, and I follow him. Then, quiet as anything, so quiet I barely hear him saying it: “Besides, I’ve grown fond of you.” I remind him of her, of his daughter. I’m a surrogate, that’s what it is.
“You told me that you’d help me find Mae,” I reply. That’s all I can manage. I don’t say, Also, thanks for all the help you’ve given me, the food and clothes and bed when I needed it. I don’t thank him. I’m not sure I have ever. But then, I’m not sure that he’d ever expect me to.
And I don’t say that I’m fond of him, too.
“And I’m doing my best. But these things take time.” He sounds exasperated, which is fair enough, really. I’ve asked for nothing but Mae, over and over. I’m nothing if not stubborn.
“So help me now. We’re here.” I grab his arm, stop him from walking. We’re in the lobby. There are people everywhere. A security guard at the front stares at us over the heads of the group of kids in front of him, each of them with a parent for protection. “We go outside, we walk to the Archives, we walk around while I look at it. That’s all. I’m not going to ask you to help me break in or anything.”
“Jesus, Chan,” he hisses. I don’t want the security guard to scan us. He hasn’t yet: His headset is around his neck, red sores on his temples from wearing it as much as he does, from the cheap tech that they give them. No way the company’s paying for augments, because why would they? Soon enough, the guards’ll be swapped for bots or terminals, that’s what everybody says. This guard looks tired. Barely awake. But still, his eyes track us. We do anything interesting and he’ll scan us—scan me—and that’ll be it. Backup will swarm in here in seconds. I look down and away from him, try and move out of his line of sight.
“Chan, listen to me. You can’t get in there,” Zeigler spits.
“I just want you to help me look.” I pull Ziegler toward the exit. I keep my voice soft. “Or I go by myself. Whatever happens, happens.”
He sighs. Resigned to it. “Fine,” he says, “let’s go.” And he walks off through the doors and down the steps, away from the museum and toward the manicured grass and white concrete of the sidewalk. I tread next to him, out of step. Anybody sees us, they’ll just think I’m his daughter, that I’m following him somewhere. He looks like he fits in. Because of him, it doesn’t matter what I look like.
The Archives are on a computer, but not one like all of the others. Everything else is networked, plugged into each other. Data moves around wirelessly and you can access pretty much anything from anywhere provided you know the logins—provided you’re the right person. Not the Archives. There’s a logic that anything on a network is hackable, and everything is fallible. When the chaos happened before and the cities all collapsed, they lost a lot. Data was stored in the ether, and then suddenly that ether didn’t exist anymore and they had to start again. Now you would never know it to look at the cities, but there was a Dark Age that Ziegler has told me about—and I’ve seen it written about, in Ziegler’s articles, capital D, capital A. A time without information, without computers or networking—and it lasted decades. They had to rebuild, had to put things in place to keep everybody safe and stop another collapse from happening. People died, Ziegler said, billions of people. Lucky that my ancestors missed it or I might not have been born. He said that like some joke almost. I wanted to tell him that there was nothing lucky about being born on Australia. I’m not sure he gets even now just how bad it actually was. I could show him my scars, I suppose. But not yet.
So they built the new infrastructure and now all information is protected, worried about. The Archives are on a computer that isn’t on a network, isn’t accessible unless you’re next to it, unless you’re actually there. It’s underground. The whole place is quakeproof, waterproof, fireproof—and hackproof, like it’s the most precious thing in the world.
Maybe it is. Maybe the knowledge of who people are, where people come from, what people do—maybe that stuff is what we should hold above everything else.
The Smithsonian used to be nothing but museums: a row of them with hundreds of thousands of visitors a day, apparently. At one end, there’s the building that once housed the government of the entire country. Ziegler had to explain that to me: that it was the most important building in the country way back when, and that the people who passed laws—who kept the people under control—they worked here. This was where they did everything. It was the most secure building, Ziegler said, with underground space that was basically impenetrable. That’s why they picked it when they needed somewhere safe for the Archives. It isn’t as fancy as some of the others—it’s cleaner, more straight lines, less in the way of extravagant architecture. Pretty, though . . . but that’s ruined a bit by the perimeter wall that’s all around it.
Ziegler stands back when he reaches the perimeter, proud somehow that I can see as little as he said I would. The darkened plexi-walls all around it, unscalable. Electric mesh at the top. One gate with one panel next to it, for access, next to a raised vehicle ramp. It’s a small gate. Through
the dark transparency of the wall I can see the building itself. Stone, white concrete, insets. Windows. Clean.
“Used to be the home of democracy,” he says. I don’t ask him what that is because he’s told me before. When I told him about Rex, that she was the Lows’ ruler, he told me the meaning of her name. “Rex means king,” he said, “a word from some ancient language that refuses to die, clinging onto the remnants of the world like a louse. Your ship was an aristocracy, which is when royalty rule. Here, now, on Earth? It used to be a democracy, where we vote for everything we want to happen. Now it’s a bureaucracy.” He seemed proud of that, like it was a joke. So I asked him who rules in a bureaucracy and he said, “Red tape.” I didn’t know what that meant either, so I didn’t ask.
Now Ziegler looks almost smug. “They chose it because of how secure it was before there was anything really important kept in there.”
“Okay,” I say.
“They hollowed it out after the riots and fires. They lost pretty much everything inside. Amazing to think of what was gone—so much of our history.” He turns and puts his hand on the glass, leaning forward, peering in. “You used to be able to take tours, apparently. It won’t look like this on the inside. It’ll be servers, I’d imagine. Miles and miles of them.” He smiles at me, and a guard comes rushing toward us. One of the usual police: black outfit, white re-breather, red eyepiece. No striker, but he’s got his hands held out. He runs right up to the wall and just as Ziegler’s turning back to look at him, he slams his hand onto it, palm open. He’s probably talking, but we can’t hear him through the wall.