Contribute (Holo, #2)

by Kristy Acevedo

  Professor Marciani takes the floor next. “Unfortunately, the DQD, our first cryo wave-particle weapon, exploded during testing. We believe the next model will be viable. We have not been able to create a stable vertex on our own. Now that we have travel privileges, I sent a team to the closest vertex guidepost to see if we can reverse engineer them.”

  The professor nods to Benji, and my brother addresses the group.

  “Some of us need to offer to contribute. Otherwise, we’ll have to work, giving us less time to build Umbra intelligence and plan a rebellion. If all goes well, we’ll be in control before it matters.”

  I interrupt. “You seriously want us to contribute our deaths? Are you nuts? It matters. It’s permanent.” I try not to make eye contact with Dominick.

  “If we don’t, I have a feeling we’ll be targeted. You heard what the meritocracy said; they expect 100% participation. If none of us contribute, it might raise suspicion.”

  “That’s like mandatory volunteerism,” Doctor A. says from the opposite corner of the open space near the boarded window. My stomach drops, my limbs getting pins and needles at the memory of almost falling.

  A twenty-something guy who I’ve never seen before speaks up. “He’s just telling you like it is. If you support the Umbra cause, you might also have to save face and pretend to support theirs.”

  “But the whole point of life is to contribute when you’re alive. To make meaning through work,” Doctor A. says. “Do the vances expect us to just sit around all day and play? It’s so hedonistic.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised how lazy people can be,” Benji says. “The concept appeals to people. They are tired of struggling.”

  Dominick clears his throat and rubs my back. I can’t believe he already contributed.

  Doctor A. adds, “People leading frivolous lives is just as dangerous as people leading menial ones.”

  “We’ll see,” Benji says. “I think you underestimate the human capacity for leisure. If the vances don’t get 100% participation, I’m afraid there might be consequences.”

  Doctor A. holds his beard. I can’t believe they’re not listening to him. I clear my throat. “But what about the consequences of contributing. Maybe that’s why they lied about the comet. To turn us all into hologram slaves.”

  A slow murmur spreads through the group of Umbra members.

  Someone snickers and mutters, “Oh, she’s the one.”

  Benji mouths, “Not now” to me.

  Another stranger says, “Earth is gone, kid.”

  I look around the room at new Umbra members, their eyes full of pity. The old Umbra members won’t look at me.

  Jackson steps in. “We aren’t here to discuss that today.”

  “Why not?” Kendra asks her grandfather. “Isn’t that our main goal? To get back to Earth?”

  At least I have one ally in the room.

  “Not at this time,” Jackson says. “Our priority is to secure the Umbra foothold in this region and on this planet.”

  Kendra folds her arms over her chest. I grit my teeth together.

  Dominick whispers to me, “I thought they were on your side?”

  “They were.”

  After the Umbra meeting, Dominick and I walk back to the LU community before it gets dark. On the way, we talk about the food in the LUs, the PSF, anything and everything other than the meeting.

  Finally, I blurt out, “I can’t believe the new members don’t believe me. Do you believe me? About Earth?”

  He takes a few steps of silence before responding. “It was a lot to take in. Give me time.”

  I can accept that. Sort of. “How much time? Like an hour?”

  “Stop it,” he laughs, and then he stops short. “Wait, let me get something straight. If it’s true, and the comet was a hologram, why did you run through the vertex?”

  “What?” I stall.

  “Why did you run through? Didn’t you think if the whole thing was a setup, it could lead to instant death?”

  “No, I knew it didn’t. And you needed to know the truth.”

  “How could you know?” His voice cracks.

  I know it’s going to mess up the truth and make me look insane, but I have to tell someone the whole story. I take a deep breath, and in the middle of a strange forest, on another planet, in the year 2359, I let it all out.

  “Do you remember the crazy lady from the hospital? From the news? The day you left, I ran into her at the vertex. She was on the ground, dying, and she handed me a note, something I had written in my journal about heroes. It was bizarre.”

  “What does that have to do with the vertex?”

  I lean against a pale tree trunk. “When the fake comet disintegrated, I realized in that moment that there was no way she could have known about it, unless maybe I had given it to her. In the future.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It is, but it’s true. Katherine is the crazy lady. Only here she’s coherent, and she doesn’t know anything about it.”

  As the words flow from my mouth to his ears, his face looks like Han Solo frozen in carbonite. Maybe telling him was a bad idea.

  “Say something.” I prod him with my hand.

  “What can I say? That’s ridiculous.” His eyes shine with curiosity, so I know his statement is not a criticism.

  “Right?”

  “And she doesn’t know anything about it?”

  “Katherine, you mean? No, and I don’t want her to know. I don’t want to her to travel back in time and end up dying. I’m here, so that’s all that matters.”

  “That’s not how time travel through parallel universes works. I read about it back on Earth on the holograms’ question and answer website, if you trust anything they say. If she was in the past, then she leaves in the future. It’s a closed circuit. Done deal.”

  “No, I don’t believe that. I can stop her. She doesn’t have to know.”

  “Alex, I hate to tell you this, but you have no power to stop this.”

  “Why not? If the holograms can time travel, so can we. Go back like she did and stop people from coming.”

  “That’s not how they explained it. It’s like . . . you know in quantum physics how a photon can act as either a particle or a wave, but once it’s observed, its actions remain consistent?”

  “You lost me.”

  “Schrodinger’s Cat?”

  “The cat in the box thing? Not getting how that connects to time travel.”

  We continue to walk through the forest, and I collect a skeleton tree twig from the ground.

  “Basically, it means if you were successful at going into the past to stop everything, you’d automatically be part of that past and present and it would’ve happened already. The event is observed so it remains a constant. So if you weren’t there, it didn’t happen. It’s like when people ask ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg?’ In terms of time travel, it would be both. They both exist simultaneously. Classic paradox. She was there, so it did happen, and it will happen. Am I making sense?”

  Dominick’s words cement something that I was trying to avoid. I refuse to believe that I can’t stop her. That she has no freedom to choose not to go.

  “I’m going by what the holograms said, so I could be wrong.” He shrugs. “I still can’t believe you came all the way here if the Earth was safe. That was reckless. Selfless, but reckless.”

  “Oh, and laying your body over mine during the riot at Stop & Shop wasn’t?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My dad. He said to thank you for protecting me.”

  He kicks at a fallen branch in the dark. “You’re welcome. But it wasn’t close to traveling through space and time to find me.”

  “Let’s call it even.” I pull him close to me and kiss him as the sun sets in the distance.

  “I have a feeling we will never be even.” He tickles me on my side, reducing me to tears of laughter despite the circumstances. Only the best people have that power
.

  By the time Dominick and I return to my LU community, the Skylucent flashes in the sky. We decide to stay and watch it. He knows I need a distraction after the Rita showdown.

  The shifting stars fade as the holographic show steals the sky. Tonight’s feature is Beauty and the Beast. More Earth films to make us feel at home. I wonder when they will shift to future films displaying their holoculture instead of ours. I wonder if the changeover will be so seamless, we won’t notice the difference. The golden glow of contributed bandwidths around us look like candles to lost souls at a memorial. Almost like the death of humanity gone to a type of fake heaven. I will not be joining them, no matter what the Umbra says. I know what I saw.

  Even so, I can feel myself slipping into complacency. My muscles beg permission to relax after being stressed out for so long. There’s no real stress here other than the stress I’m giving myself. I wouldn’t need to keep throwing myself in the PSF if I wasn’t thinking about the holograms and what they’ve done. If Rita didn’t hate me and my parents were here and we hadn’t been tricked to leave Earth, this place would seriously be paradise. That’s how other people are seeing it.

  “Why is Rita living with the Geotroupes anyway?” I whisper to Dominick as the movie plays above us.

  “Dobby was confiscated.”

  I prop up on my elbows in the soft grass. “What happened to him?”

  “The holograms wouldn’t tell her. They kept repeating that no pets are allowed. Perfect storm for Rita. She loved that damn cat. The Geotroupes were forming an anti-tech, open religion, naturalist group, and even with her religious hang-ups, the group appealed to her after Dobby was taken.”

  I try not to imagine Dobby being cremated alive by holograms, his fur singeing in a horrific ball of flame. Don’t get tricked by a thought. Don’t get tricked by a thought.

  “The Geotroupes sound like a cult,” I say to trick my mind to drop the image.

  “Nah, I thought the same thing, so I checked them out. They’re harmless. It’s like summer camp.”

  I stare up at the Skylucent, and Dobby’s burnt body interrupts my thoughts. I try to focus on home.

  “Remember going to Sea Lab during the summers in middle school?”

  “How could I forget? You and Rita crashed the sailboat into the jetty.”

  “We told the instructor the rocks were close. He kept ignoring us with his back turned.”

  “Those were fun times. You two were always together.”

  “Yeah.” I attempt to chip at nail polish in the dark, forgetting they no longer have polish.

  “She’ll be back.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you’re family. Chosen family. Even stronger than biological.”

  I choke back the feelings of tears in my throat and stare up at the remarkable sky. Chosen family. How many movies have Rita and I watched together in our lifetimes so far? How many text messages gossiping over nonsense? How many times I will reminisce about my life before the holograms came and stole my world? If I stop reminiscing, is that when I’m truly defeated? When I can’t remember how good and simple it was because the new world has taken over my consciousness?

  Watching the holographic display above us, I lay my head on Dominick’s chest in the dark. He wraps his arms around me. If I could freeze time, I would.

  I look up at his face. “Benji and Marcus are sleeping at Umbra Headquarters.” It takes a moment for my statement to sink in. His dimples show through the darkness.

  “Was that a sleepover invitation?”

  “Maybe. Do you believe that the Earth still exists and the comet was a holographic hoax?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then I guess we’re at a stalemate.”

  “I think I can be convinced,” Dominick says, still grinning.

  “I knew I liked you.”

  DESPITE THE CIRCUMSTANCES, Dominick and I reconnect like we were before everything changed. In that moment I am home again, back on Earth, back with him, back as me.

  “Do you have a condom?” he asks from my holobed. “I didn’t think to bring any.”

  “Not necessary. The HME sterilized everyone during processing.”

  “What?” He sits up.

  “Yep. Supposedly, it’s reversible. When you want a kid, you ask the meritocracy for approval. Doctor A. is looking into it.”

  “So they control procreation to control population with forced medical procedures? That’s a quick way to destroy the natural biology of a species. If something goes wrong with their procedure, complete extinction of our people. And do they not have STDs here?”

  “You’re catching on. I told you we can’t trust them.”

  He takes a minute to process the information. “I believe you. Umbra all the way.”

  “That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Stop it. I can do better than that.”

  We make up for lost time, lost worlds. Being with him makes me forget the holoworld of fantasy and remember what it’s like to love and be loved.

  Afterward, Dominick sleeps while I lay next to him. I try to clear my mind, but I can’t stop thinking about my parents, and Earth, and everything that has gone wrong. The tremendous guilt that follows overwhelms my reason. How can I have sex when my parents are technically in a dead past? How can I have sex when we are on the brink of war with the future?

  Dominick wakes and kisses me again in the darkness, and I learn to forget. Just for a few minutes. Just for the night. Maybe even in times of great stress and despair, we need a break to remember our humanity. Remember why love is worth running through vertexes for. Remember to hold on to what’s real in our lives.

  CHAPTER 16

  DAY 24: 196 HOURS TO DECIDE

  THE THREE-YEAR MERITOCRACY CYCLE ENDS IN 4,320 HOURS. TESTING FOR EACH OF THE 1001 VOTING SEATS WILL BEGIN IN 2,160 HOURS.

  EQUAL ACCOMMODATIONS WILL BE PROVIDED TO ALL, REGARDLESS OF LIFE STATUS ON EARTH.

  AS OF TODAY, 76% OF EARTH REFUGEES HAVE CONTRIBUTED

  I DREAM ABOUT my parents.

  Mom holds a shovel with both hands. She’s digging a hole in the backyard near her garden. Dominick and I sit on the warped tan-and-peach-striped patio furniture, watching her.

  The hole breaks into a chasm, then ignites into a technological, electric, metallic-blue cavity.

  A vertex.

  She cries and pulls at something on the ground, dragging it forward. Right as she’s about the pitch it into the hole, the automatic light in the yard catches her movements. I recognize the shape.

  It’s my dad.

  She throws his body into the vertex and begins shoveling dirt into the space. Her face contorts with emotion and slowly becomes unrecognizable. As she works and weeps, her features continue to morph until she becomes someone else.

  Crazy lady.

  I wake up sweating. I can sense it coming on in my bowels and fluttering in my chest.

  Full blown mode.

  No pills.

  And Dominick sleeping beside me.

  I let myself relax for the night and I didn’t write in my journal to decompress and now I’m getting penalized. I try to fight it, pretend I’m not about to look like a psychopath in front of him. He’s never seen me have a full panic attack, and now is not a good time to start.

  No, no, no, I beg.

  Oh yes. You are not in control. My body keeps performing inner gymnastics on my heart, lungs, stomach, and muscles. I’d rather be shot in front of him than temporarily lose control of my mind and body. It would be easier for him to understand, and I wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that he’s seen me at my absolute worst.

  But here she comes, and I can’t stop her. I run to the PSF. The light and humming noise wakes him. He talks to me through the darkness like I’m listening, and I murmur back “Uh huh” like I can focus on what he’s saying. All I can focus on is my full physical and emotion demise about to unfold before him.

  Don’t do it.
Don’t do it.

  I have to do it. It’s like a scuba diving tank running out of oxygen. You must swim wildly to the surface. Survival instinct.

  I must fight to the surface. I must lose myself to save myself. I exit the PSF since it’s making me overheat, and plop cross-legged onto the floor. Me, naked, rocking and shaking, holding my head and stomach. Don’t run to the water fountain. Don’t run to the water fountain.

  He says nothing at first, or nothing that I can make out. He crouches down beside me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just go.”

  “Did I say something wrong? Wait—why is your skin all red? You’re breaking out in hives.”

  It’s like he suddenly realized I’m a reptile after shedding my old skin, and we are different species who don’t belong together. Despite the heat, I throw on my uniform shirt to hide.

  “Is this your anxiety? Oh, man, it is, isn’t it? Just try to calm down.”

  He backs up when I look at him. Shooting daggers at him isn’t even close. More like blow torch. I can’t find the words to explain. I rock and rock. If Rita were here, she would understand. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me how to feel. Just wait. Distract me. Give me a whole lot of fucking space. Don’t breathe my oxygen. Don’t stare at me like I’m ill.

  “I had no idea it was this bad. Should I call the HME?”

  “No, get Doctor A.”

  He nods and runs for help.

  He runs. That was my biggest worry. That when he saw the truth, how bad it can be, he would run. He could’ve easily used his bandwidth and stayed with me.

  I wanted him to see me as Alexandra Lucas, kick ass future defense lawyer. Girl of the Galaxy. Not Anxiety Girl. Never Anxiety Girl. And now he knows that we don’t match. He can fly. I’m stuck on the ground never able to quite pull myself together.