by Ben Oliver
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.
The great glass tube lowers from the ceiling. The harvest begins at 5:30 p.m.
It starts quickly.
Adrenaline dumps into my system; my heart goes from its resting rate to racing in one second, and every muscle in my body begins to tense, knotting and hardening until I’m sure they’re all going to tear at once. I fall forward, unable to control my spasming fibers, and my face slams against the glass of the tube. I want to cry out in pain, but my throat has locked. Next, microscopic nanobots are released into the tube. They push themselves through my skin and into the veins at my temples, riding the blood flow until they are in my brain, where they replicate and access fear centers in the neocortex and amygdala. They make me believe my life is in great danger, and I’m sure that I’m going to die. No matter how hard I try to assure myself that this is just the energy harvest, that this is just how they get the power they need to operate the Loop without the Alts having to pay more taxes for our imprisonment, I cannot shake off the certainty that this is the end of my life. I twist and convulse and claw at the glass, frantic for a way out.
I fall to the floor, find my voice, and scream.
The harvest goes on for six hours, but it feels like days.
When it finally does end, I’m physically and emotionally drained. I lie on the concrete, wet with the sweat that is pouring off my body, and then the water comes, acrid and infused with delousing agents, triglyceride, and a form of bleach.
Then the hot air blasts in, drying the water and the sweat to a grainy residue, and finally the tube lifts away.
I lie there, and after a few minutes I smile because tomorrow I will run again—I will run and run and drain myself of all my energy so they can’t have it.
I crawl to my bed and look at the clock. I count down the minutes until midnight.
When it comes, I stand at the window and watch the government-issue rain, which comes at midnight and lasts for thirty minutes, calculated to be just the right amount for the crops and the trees before tomorrow’s perfect amount of cloud cover to allow the perfect amount of sunlight to keep the inhabitants of this quadrant of Earth perfectly happy and healthy.
Half an hour later the rain ends, and I can sleep.
I lie in my bed, the moon casting shadows of my hands on the wall as I practice the sign language my mother taught me when I was a kid. I spell out my sister’s name—Molly; I spell out my old address—Door 44. 177th Floor. Black Road Vertical; I spell out Wren’s name; I run through the alphabet.
Tomorrow I will do all this again, and the next day and the next day and on and on until I turn eighteen and I’m taken to the Block, or I get unlucky with a Delay, or I drop dead of some new kind of sickness out of the Red Zones.
And this is how it goes. This is life in the Loop.
I wake up before my alarm, eat my breakfast, and begin my workout.
At 9 a.m., Galen’s address comes on.
I read until 11:30 a.m., when the back wall of my cell silently opens for exercise hour.
I run from my cell to the pillar and back, over and over again, pushing myself as hard as I can for forty-five minutes, then rest, enjoying the warm sun, listening to Pander sing and Tyco threaten me for fifteen minutes before I return to my cell.
I read again, almost finishing my book, until Wren arrives.
We talk for ten minutes. Today my lunch is a salad bowl. Wren leaves, and I’m left in the silence and sadness for over three hours until the energy harvest begins.
For six hours, I suffer the fear and the pain of the harvest.
Finally, it ends, and I crawl to the window to watch the rain before collapsing into bed and falling into a restless sleep.
I wake before my alarm.
Choose cereal for breakfast.
Work out.
Watch Galen’s address.
Read.
Run.
Wren brings me lunch, a vegetable wrap.
I sit in silence.
I choose dinner.
The energy harvest comes.
I watch the rain.
I sleep.
The same routine …
Day after day …
It never ends.
I wake up before my alarm and smile.
Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesday the routine is broken.
The day is the same as always—the only difference is that it seems to take forever. Each minute feels like an hour, and the hours feel like days.
After exercise I can’t help but glance at the clock over and over again, hoping each time that a great chunk of this endless day will have magically disappeared, but the numbers are stubborn and refuse to change.
Wren comes at her usual time, and we chat, only this time it’s more muted, more cautious. There’s a secret between us, something that we know but can’t talk about, not yet, not until 2 a.m.
She says goodbye and winks at me before closing the hatch. I smile back and feel a burst of excitement in my stomach.
I face the energy harvest with a smile. The smile quickly disappears as the harvest begins, but I can handle it tonight, I can get through it.
The rain comes and goes, and I lie on my bed, feeling my energy levels beginning to replenish bit by bit. Tonight I don’t sleep, though; tonight I wait.
I watch the numbers switch from 1:59 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and for the briefest of moments the screen flickers.
I reach under my pillow for my hat and pull the black knit material low over my Panoptic camera. This is just a precaution—the footage from the Panoptic cameras can only be accessed by the government if they are given permission by the citizen or if the person is suspected to be actively involved in a crime or missing-persons case.
I sit up on my bed, stare fervently at the thick steel door, and wait.
I hear the snap of the lock followed by a rolling, metal-on-metal sound as the spin handle is loosened from the outside. The door swings open.
“Ready?” Wren asks, smiling and beautiful in the frame of my cell’s doorway.
I nod and get to my feet, stopping at the threshold and taking a deep breath before stepping out into the expanse of the Loop’s corridor.
I can hear Wren moving from cell to cell, unlocking the doors of a few selected inmates for three hours of freedom, or, the closest we can ever get to freedom.
I follow the curvature of the corridor until I can see Wren. I watch her unlocking Juno’s cell, and I can’t help but marvel at her bravery, her selflessness. To risk her job, her freedom, her life to exploit the only flaw in the Loop’s security: a three-hour system diagnostic-and-analysis period when the in-cell scanners are down. There is not another Alt in this world who would do something so amazing for lowly Regulars, let alone convicted Regulars.
“Keep staring,” Woods says, appearing beside me, grinning his gap-toothed grin, his broad shoulders brushing past me. “That ain’t creepy at all.”
“I was just …” I stutter. “I wasn’t staring.”
“Sure,” Woods replies, his stocky frame shaking as he laughs. He makes his way around the corridor toward the cell of his boyfriend and fellow planner, Winchester.
The corridor begins to fill up with freed inmates—they dance and sing and skip along the wide corridor, meeting in groups of twos and threes and fours to talk and to hold one another and to be human for three short hours.
There is no gift in the world, no experience or feeling, that can compare to these hours where we can look into one another’s eyes and talk without walls between us, or microphones listening to us.
Wren frees the last of the lucky few: those of us who are deemed trustworthy, level-headed, and resolute enough both to pose no threat to the lives of the others and keep the secret that would result in Wren’s incarceration if it was ever found out.
I watch as Malachai swaggers out of his cell. Malachai is a Regular who just happened to be born tall and handsome. To be honest, he’s beautiful. Alts refer to this kind of
Regular as a Natural. He’s not perfect like the Alts, but somehow that just makes him more attractive; his slightly crooked nose and almost-beady eyes do nothing to detract from his stupid Natural allure. I can’t help but look away as his charming grin is reciprocated by Wren. I try to focus on anything else, and my eyes fall on a small crack in the wall. I stare at it, attempting to counter the tremors of jealousy that wrench at my heart.
Wren laughs, the sound breaks my resolve, and then she turns to the group, holding two hands above her head. She, like everyone else in the 2 a.m. club, wears a hat to cover the camera in her head.
“Guys, listen, please,” she calls, and the corridor falls silent. “Just a quick reminder of the rules: You are all back in your cells by 4:59, no later or we’re all caught. You do not cross the detonation threshold … for obvious reasons.”
This gets a laugh. My eyes dart toward the exit from this prison, an opening between two cells that leads to the Dark Train platform.
Wren continues, “If you have requests for items you want brought in, nonelectronic, of course, then please talk to me. I can’t make contact with anyone in the outside world, the risks are too high, I’m sorry. If you have—”
“Winchester? Hey, where is he? What’s going on? Where is he?”
Wren’s speech is interrupted by Woods’s voice booming along the hallway.
All heads turn in the direction of the commotion as Woods pushes past Pander, Akimi, and Juno and charges toward Wren.
“Open his cell, Wren,” he demands.
“Woods, listen,” Wren replies, shaking her head slowly. “He’s not back from the Facility yet.”
I observe the hope whoosh out of Woods’s body, even though all I can see from here is his back. He seems to deflate, to crumble.
“He didn’t even tell me … I thought he just slept through exercise … When did he … how long has he been gone?”
“His Delay was at ten a.m.,” she replies. “It doesn’t mean he’s not coming back, Woods. People sometimes come back after days, you know that.”
“Yeah, but mostly they don’t come back at all.”
He’s right. We all know what has happened; we don’t need it explained to us. As Woods storms back to his cell and slams the door behind him, we all share a look that says that any one of us might face a surgery in our next Delay, any one of us might go the way of Winchester.
“Anyway,” Wren says, addressing the group, “enjoy your three hours.”
Slowly the noise levels rise back to their former volume as we put Winchester’s fate to the back of our minds and enjoy the time we have left. Aside from Wren’s rules, there are a few unwritten ones among the inmates: You don’t complain during the 2 a.m. club, you don’t talk about your past life, and you never ask why anyone is locked up in here. None of us want to think about that stuff.
Juno takes this opportunity to approach Wren. I watch her skeletal frame—which is barely substantial enough to keep her white jumpsuit from sliding off her shoulders—as she sidles up to the warden. She speaks in hushed tones, but from where I am, I catch every word.
“Did you think about what I said?” Juno whispers. “Last week? Did you manage to get hold of anything?”
“Juno, you know I can’t bring Ebb in here. They put you on the program, didn’t they? You’re off the stuff; why go back?”
Juno’s dull gray eyes bore into Wren’s bright green ones. She smiles cynically and shakes her head, her lank sand-colored hair falling across her face. “Do you know why people get clean, Wren? They get clean for the promise of a future. I’m going to die in here, that’s a fact, you know it is. There’s no future for me. Please?”
Wren’s eyes scan the emaciated face of the girl in front of her. “I’m sorry, Juno, I just can’t.”
Juno bites her bottom lip, trying to fight off the tears that well into her eyes. “All right,” she whispers.
“Do you need more paper? A new pencil? Your drawings are amazing, Juno; focus on that …”
But Juno is no longer listening. She turns and walks away, collapsing into a cross-legged position on the floor next to Pod and Igby, who sit opposite each other as they roll their dice and battle imaginary creatures. When Pod rolls, he counts the numbers by running his fingers over the indents in the face of each die, his blind eyes drifting up, seeing nothing. Pod, unlike Juno, is huge and broad-shouldered. Igby is shorter and slimmer. He is intelligent and quick-witted and swears like no one else. He’s from Region 19, formerly known as South Korea. He also has the worst receding hairline of any fifteen-year-old boy I’ve ever seen.
Pander starts singing again, one of the old songs from our great-great-grandfathers’ era. She’s only thirteen and doesn’t talk much, but she loves to sing. Pander’s eyes are big and brown, magnified further by her thick glasses. She has hearing aids in both ears and a scar on her neck, but these things that the Alts would call flaws seem to disappear when she sings. She also has tattoos under both eyes, needled into her with white ink to show up more clearly against her dark brown skin. These are gang tattoos that no one ever asks her about.
Chirrak and Catherine run past me, two young inmates who obviously have a crush on each other but—despite the constant threat of death—haven’t yet told each other. Instead they chase each other, playing playground games in the hopes they might stumble into intimacy.
Akimi goes through her usual 2 a.m. club routine; Wren hands her a paper bag full of clothes, and she disappears into her cell to change. When she comes out—now wearing a red summer dress with bright white sneakers—she swirls the fabric around her knees and begins to dance to Pander’s singing. Akimi has an accent, Region 70, what would have been known in the past as an Eastern European accent, but it only really comes out when she’s scared or mad, and when she’s mad, her sweet, sharp features become intimidating and scary.
Adam and Fulton could almost be twins, both short with black hair and pale skin. Usually they are joined by Winchester and Woods, but today it’s just the two of them, standing close together and discussing their latest plan of escape.
Reena Ito runs and skips around and around the wide corridor, laughing as she goes, her freedom countering the effects of the harvest, one outstretched hand running along the wall, her curly bright red hair bouncing from beneath her hat and falling into her eyes.
“You read the book yet?” Wren’s voice breaks me out of my observations.
“Hi,” I say, turning and smiling at her. “Nearly finished, and you’re right, it’s incredible.”
“It gets even better,” she says, smile widening. “Book three is my favorite.”
“I can’t wait.”
“So, any requests? Nonelectronic, remember.”
“I guess books two and three,” I tell her.
“Already got them,” she says. “I put them in your room.” She touches my arm and walks away.
“Hey, wait,” I say, and she turns back. I realize that I hadn’t planned to say anything, I just didn’t want her to go.
“Yeah?” she asks.
The silence grows, and I grasp at the first thing that pops into my head. “Are there rumors of a war coming?”
Wren’s luminous eyes narrow, and her smile broadens. “What?”
“You know, on the outside, is anyone talking about a war?”
She laughs. “No, Luka, who would we be going to war with? We’re one nation, one planet under one rule and all that stuff. War? That’s mad.”
“What about the Missing?” I ask. “Any news on them?”
“I mean, it’s still happening, in fact it’s happening more often, at least four a month, but …” She laughs again. “Luka, what’s this about?”
I laugh too. “Ah, it’s nothing, it’s just, you go a little stir-crazy in this place, and you hear things.”
“Well, rest assured there’s no war.”
“Great, and you know … thanks for all this. It’s crazy—you risk everything to give us this little bit of freedom
and it means the world, you know?”
“It’s worth the risk,” she replies, pushing her golden hair behind her ear. “The way they treat you in here, it’s … I didn’t vote for it. I don’t care what Happy says, I don’t care how logical it is, I would never … It’s worth the risk.”
“Well, thanks is all I wanted to say.”
Not true. What I wanted to say was: I love you. I wish I could blow this place to a million pieces and run away with you. But even in my own head, it sounds impossibly stupid.
“No problem,” Wren says, and then wanders over to Malachai, punching him playfully on the arm and laughing gleefully as he makes some pithy comment.
I turn from the scene, block it from my mind.
I see Alistair and Emery locked against the wall of the hallway, arms wrapped around each other, lips pressed together as their heads move rhythmically with the kiss. Alistair’s bleached shock of hair almost glows in the dim light. I consider talking to them, asking them about the rumor they spoke of in the exercise yard, where they got their information from, but I decide not to interrupt their tryst.
“Want to play hide-and-seek again?” a voice comes from beside me. I turn and see Harvey, his old-fashioned steel crutches under both arms. The boy has cerebral palsy, a disease that shouldn’t exist anymore, but Harvey was born poor.
“Remember what happened last time? Malachai yelled at you for hiding in his room.”
“Fuck Malachai.” Harvey smiles. “I’ll hit him with the business end of one of these if he starts his shit again.” Harvey brandishes one of his crutches and grins.
I laugh. “Maybe next time?”
“Fine, loser. As One,” Harvey says as he limps away to find someone else to play with him.
This region of Earth’s last election was won in a landslide by the current Overseer, Galen Rye, whose slogan was As One. He became a cult hero among both the richest members of society and the poorest. He has a knack of appealing to the extreme ends of politics. He promised to tighten migration control when the rest of the world was eliminating borders, he promised to eradicate homelessness by reinstating compulsory conscription into the emergency services, and he promised to vote against the algorithms of the machines when he felt human logic and the will of the people were at stake. He won the poor vote by convincing them he would fight for them, promising free training in virtual architecture, human thorium reactor engineers, and more teaching positions for low- and no-income households.