Contribute (Holo, #2)

by Kristy Acevedo

  SIDEKICK blinks. “Yes, we recorded your conversations with friends and Umbra leaders and designed the perfect speech using your language and a holographic image.”

  I cannot believe they tricked me. I should be angrier, but I’m relieved to not have to make the speech myself.

  “And gee, I wonder where they got the holographic image of me from? Dominick, any idea?”

  He chuckles and shrugs. Rita cracks up laughing.

  “Payback’s coming,” I say to them. “You, too, SIDEKICK.”

  “We do not understand.”

  On the VID, Doctor A. speaks next, and I wonder if it’s him or a hologram of him. “It worries me that a president could be assassinated and replaced with a hologram and we’d be none the wiser. Or that an artist or actor could live on agelessly into infinity. Where does that leave future generations? What role will they fill if generations past live on through holograms? A life of leisure without meaningful work is no life at all. They are taking away our right to live and our right to die, our right to matter. Life isn’t as glorious and precious once it can be artificially replicated. We cannot let them continue to destroy human cultures throughout time to support their own ideology. It’s wrong.”

  He nods to Professor Marciani, who then speaks into his bandwidth. “The only way to stop them is to create a holographic force against them. We’ve discovered a way to unlock the stored emotions of some bioholograms and allow them to join us in the fight against the meritocracy. They’ve been asleep for far too long, dealing with a century of servitude, unaware that their sacrifice was in vain, their people forgotten. With their united tech power along with all of you behind the alliance, the meritocracy will crumble. And we will be able to return to Earth.”

  Hannah raises her hand in the front, reminding me of me when I spoke to the holograms on Earth near the train. How time changes things.

  “How can we help?” she asks.

  Beruk answers her.

  “When the hologuides wake up, they are not the enemy. They are not the ones who brought us here. We need to fight the source, and they will be our new allies. Remember that they were humans once, too, who for the first time will find out that they were not rescued from their own dying planets, but were victims like us, their Earths destroyed. We have to work with them in order to return to Earth. We need you to extend your trust to them to make the plan work. We need as many troops as possible.”

  The hologram of me lifts my bandwidth into the air, making a fist. “Make it count.”

  The crowd responds, bandwidth arms in the air, fists ready to fight for freedom.

  I glance at my two best friends sitting with me in an LU during the beginning of a rebellion.

  Books and movies always make it seem like there’s one hero during revolutions. Like out of everyone out there, one special person makes the difference. It’s not true. It may start with one person’s action, but out of that one moment, many heroes are born.

  DAYS PASS. SLOWLY, people report biohologuides getting emotional and angry at the truth, and joining the Umbra. SIDEKICK doesn’t seem to be experiencing the same emotional breakdown of everyone else. Perhaps Katherine and the professor designed the four main carriers to exhibit more control over their emotions. Seems odd to me. At least Benji died before his mind could be uploaded as a biohologram. Since his contribution was rescinded, he wasn’t tethered to this horrible world. Will my parents be proud, or will they wish they could at least have a hologram of him?

  Dominick, Rita, and I sit by a firepit in the Geotroupes’ camp, admiring the Skylucent light show from a distance. SIDEKICK stands like an idle, high tech lamppost off to the side.

  “What do you think happens next?” Rita asks.

  “Beruk is prepping a special ops team for battle with the meritocracy, hologuides included,” Dominick says.

  “I heard a group of Umbra testing the real DQDs. Sounded intense all at once,” Rita says. “You’re stressing me out,” I say, “All I want to do is stare at the moving stars and dream of home.”

  Dominick moves closer to me and wraps his arms around me. “Done.”

  The three of us watch the fire and the sky, and I hope for the best.

  “When we get back to Earth,” he asks, “what’s the first thing you are going to do?”

  “I like this game,” I say. “Eat a giant bowl of ice cream.”

  He laughs. “I figured you’d want to walk the beach.”

  “Ooh, that too. Rita?”

  “Not sure. Depends if my parents let me off my leash after leaving them.”

  “I want to go to college,” Dominick says, “Well, after I finish senior year.”

  “Are you still on that again? College? After all we’ve been through?” I ask.

  “I decided that I want to go to college for pre-med. I want to be a doctor. Doctor A. said he’d help me make connections in Boston.”

  “Here I am picking ice cream, and you want to be a doctor. Way to upstage me.”

  He tickles the sides of my stomach, and my legs flail in response.

  “Doctor, huh? I can see that,” Rita says.

  “Thanks.” He stops tickling me, and I catch my breath. “So what’s your plan?” he asks me.

  “If I can follow you to another planet, I guess I can move to Boston.”

  “Deal.” He kisses me under a canopy of foreign stars, and I almost feel like myself again.

  A strange, piercing beep comes from SIDEKICK. Great, she’s malfunctioning even more than before. Now she’s a fire alarm with a dying battery.

  I break away from the kiss. “SIDEKICK, do you mind?”

  “You might have the most annoying hologuide ever,” Rita says. “What is with that sound?”

  My bandwidth suddenly lights up, and my uniform holofies.

  SIDEKICK moves to my side and yanks me up by the arm. “Run, Alexandra Lucas.”

  “What? Why?”

  “They’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming?” Rita asks.

  Dominick stands. “How is my bandwidth activated?”

  “And our outfits?” Rita points to her holofied, leopard print uniform, complete with miniature leopards leaping out from behind the spots.

  SIDEKICK doesn’t respond. Within seconds, Kendra and Hannah come running. “The Umbra headquarters has been attacked. By holograms.”

  “But there are no nanoholocoms at headquarters,” Rita says. “Did the rogue ones turn on us?”

  “Was my mom and Austin there?” Dominick asks.

  “Run, Alexandra Lucas,” SIDEKICK repeats.

  It’s question overload. I look into SIDEKICK’s blank stare and know something is terribly wrong.

  A high swooshing sound overhead makes my ears pop. Dark, dart-shaped shadows loom high in the clouds over us.

  I know that shape.

  Spaceships.

  And if they can make a fake comet on Earth, they can create holograms anywhere.

  Even a holographic army.

  Before we get a chance to run, a generic hologram in a gray uniform materializes in front of us.

  It reaches out and grabs Rita, its hand passing through her skin and into her body. Her face turns purple, and my throat caves in.

  I look around for something, anything to help. I grab one of the Geotroupes’ cast iron pans near the firepit and throw it. It passes right through the hologram’s body.

  “Go,” she manages to whisper. Nolan, Benji, and Katherine . I can’t lose her, too.

  Dominick lights a stick in the turquoise fire. He runs it through the back of the hologram. Nothing happens at first. Then the hologram turns into balls of light and dissipates.

  Rita collapses to the ground.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She nods, but I see the tears. I know that fear.

  Five more holograms materialize, including one in the same spot where Dominick melted one.

  “Run, Alexandra Lucas,” SIDEKICK repeats once again,

  Domini
ck and I pull Rita to her feet. We scramble out of the area along with Hannah, Kendra, and other Geotroupes, who are grabbing whatever supplies they can salvage. Marie, their leader, yells at them to grab food supplies. I glance behind us and see a hologram use the flame from the firepit to set the Geotroupes’ camp ablaze. There isn’t time. I hear the screams of people engulfed in flames, and I watch as the hologram destroys itself in the fire.

  They don’t experience self- preservation. They are expendable and replaceable.

  They can touch us when they want, but we can’t touch them when we want. We can’t stop them. We can’t fight them.

  We flee through the forest area, each pounding footstep matching the rhythm in my chest as my body remembers the fear of being blindfolded in the same area. My hearing dulls as more holograms appear in the distance before us. They line the forest around us. SIDEKICK remains at my side. I check to see if she’s joined the hologram army and turned traitor.

  In the distance, I watch as another hologram breaks someone’s neck.

  “SIDEKICK, how do we escape?” I ask.

  “Computing. There is no mathematical escape.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  Some people climb the pale trees to hide under the huge leaves. I almost follow until I see holograms defy gravity, walk up the trees horizontally, and pull them off the limbs. I turn away before the first person hits the ground, but the sound punches my heart.

  “Alex,” I hear the tone in Dominick’s voice. I turn to see him on the ground, holding Rita in his arms. Her eyes stare blankly into the sky.

  NO.

  I collapse on the ground beside her and check her pulse, her breath. I tap her bandwidth. “HME!”

  No response. The lights blink aimlessly.

  I start doing chest compressions and breathing into her mouth. Dominick takes over the compressions.

  “Alex, they’re coming,” Marie says. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving her!” I scream. Dominick rechecks her vitals. Nothing.

  I start the process again.

  “I think the hologram damaged her organs,” Dominick whispers.

  I stop and stare at her perfect, lifeless body. My best friend in the universe. My hermana.

  “Run, Alexandra Lucas,” SIDEKICK repeats at my side, clueless and emotionless.

  I want to shake SIDEKICK to wake her up and realize the threat is real and she was real once and now she’s nothing.

  I was real once. But grieving isn’t something you do, it’s something you become.

  “Stay here,” Marie says.

  Marie moves forward with other Geotroupe members. They create a wide circle around us, a sea of human bodies for the holograms to plow down first.

  No, no, I can’t stay back and have them die for me.

  But when I struggle to run forward, to die fighting, people pull me back, lining up in front of me, and it grows dark as they camouflage us with the forest floor.

  I lay on the ground holding on to Dominick and Rita’s body and wait for the inevitable. The holograms must have a way to seek us out, detect our heartbeats or heat. This isn’t going to work.

  I think about my parents, Benji, Katherine, Nolan, Earth. Singing in my backyard with Rita, and listening to her beautiful voice hit notes I could never reach.

  The crunch of footsteps gets louder, the symmetry like rhythmic poetry. Our deaths should be more than huddling in a circle.

  A eerie metallic scraping echoes through the woods, and a louder explosion in the sky rocks the area and hurts my eardrums and chest.

  “A ship went down,” Dominick says. “Look.”

  Smoke fills in the skyline, the stars an afterthought.

  Then familiar sounds, like the hum of microwave, followed by crackling explosions. The Umbra DQD weapons.

  We watch as the Umbra troops fire and fall to protect us. They tap their bandwidths and activate the rogue holograms. I recognize DOT, PIXEL, and GALILEO among them. They even have weapons ready and race to the front lines to protect the Umbra. SIDEKICK shadows me, useless.

  Dominick races to his feet and runs forward with the Umbra before I can’t stop him. He grabs a discarded DQD from the ground from a wounded Umbra soldier. He pulls the him behind a tree for cover.

  I don’t want to leave Rita, but I have to help Dominick and the others. I run toward him, and on the way I see another hologram send its fist through an Umbra soldier and back out again The Umbra member drops to the ground, lifeless.

  The hologram turns to me next, but Dominick fires on it twice. I kneel beside the fallen soldier. He reminds me of Benji. I put his DQD strap around my head before pulling him by his feet behind a tree. The DQD fire around me turns the noise into muffled, slow motion actions.

  A hologram appears behind Dominick. I fire twice automatically in a three-second interval, the way we were trained. Benji is with me, encouraging me inside my head to take this seriously, holding me to high standards. My hands shake against the heavy double trigger.

  I see Dominick’s hands shake too as we stand back to back with weapons ready.

  We were not made for this. We are lovers, pacifists, not fighters. They did this to us. Always remember that they did this to us.

  The never ending battle ensues, and I am someone I never wanted to be.

  I am my father’s daughter. My brother’s sister. I understand war and its ugly truth. I understand their pain and their pride. I understand the human cost of freedom.

  Rita will be another casualty among casualties, a number among numbers. To me, they will never be casualties. They will always be family. Friends. Neighbors. Allies. My people.

  Suddenly, dead silence. Their holographic forces vanish simultaneously.

  Dominick and I creep forward, along with the remaining Umbra and Geotroupes. The silence of the DQD double fire is like the death of sound itself. The troops fall back.

  “Did they surrender?” Jackson asks. Some of the group raises their weapons above their heads in victory. I clutch my DQD close to my hip.

  “We need teams to spread out and survey the damage,” Beruk commands. “Has anyone seen Doctor A.?”

  “He and Penelope stayed at Umbra headquarters,” Kendra says. She takes one look at me and says, “They were safe when I left them.”

  Beruk uses the COM on his bandwidth, and Doctor A.’s answers. He’s alive, Penelope’s alive. Dominick’s mom and brother are alive. Doctor A. promises to arrive soon to help the injured and collect the dead.

  Collect the dead.

  I walk over and sit on the ground near Rita’s body where the Geotroupes moved her. I remove the DQD strap from my body, place the gun next to me. Tears fall, and I feel like a shell of a person. I rake my fingers through her swirling, dark, silky hair, pulling leaves and twigs out of it. I straighten her moving leopard print uniform top with a leopard leaping across it every few minutes, and notice her flashing bandwidth.

  Wait a minute, why are our uniforms still activated? Why are our bandwidths still functioning?

  I jump from the ground, throw my weapon back on. “It’s not over. The ships are still over us somewhere.” I point to my bandwidth. “Still activated.”

  Everyone goes back into battle mode, gearing up and waiting for the next wave of attack.

  Time passes and nothing.

  “Maybe they forgot to turn off the signal—”

  Right then, another horde of holograms reappear, with DQD weapons of their own. They target and fire on the rogue holograms immediately. Our holographic forces vanish in quick, devastating numbers.

  “Run!” Beruk yells.

  I flee even though I know there’s no way we can win if the holograms use our weapons against us. It’s over, and I know it’s over, but I run anyway, because that is what we do. I think about my parents and know that I will see them soon. And Rita and Benji and Katherine.

  As rogue holograms numbers dwindle, more Umbra troops die fighting to save us. More than I can coun
t. I have to step over some to survive as I run and shoot, and the human part of me that wants to stay and help them fights with my fading will to survive.

  As my lungs begin to heave, I can’t stop my body from surrendering to the moment. I slow down. Everything slows down. It’s like running for the vertex to bring the truth, but this time there’s nowhere to go.

  Dominick takes my hand.

  We say nothing. We already know.

  CHAPTER 29

  DAY 64

  IS SURVIVING WORTH losing your identity? Your dignity?

  Perhaps. I’m not sure anymore.

  Rita would know the answer.

  I am not proud of who I am.

  I wonder where she is in the universe now. Is she with the stars? In heaven with God? She believed in those things.

  She even believed in me. She had faith like that. She believed my voice could help the greater good.

  I stop running. I cannot watch more people die. I know what to will stop the violence. I hit the CVBE on my bandwidth and publicly record a call to the meritocracy so everyone can witness it.

  “I am Alexandra Lucas, also known as the River to the vances. I want to contribute live for the planet to watch. Solbiluna-8 has so much to offer us, and we should all contribute as a sign of respect and gratitude for saving us. Please accept this truce.”

  Silence. They know where to find me now even though Katherine scrambled my identity.

  The gray hologram army ceases fire. Dominick puts his arms around me. There are no longer words. I’ll take defeat and sacrifice over watching the slaughter any further.

  Bandwidths light up with meritocracy approval. My CVBE message repeats on everyone’s wrists.

  A green vertex materializes before me. It has always been about my sacrifice. Sometimes it’s the only way.

  I kiss Dominick one last time. As I say goodbye to others around me, I whisper something quickly to Beruk. He nods.

  As I step through the vertex, I take one last look behind me. Dominick runs forward and tries to follow, but Beruk holds him back for me.

  We have to separate in order for him to stay whole.

  IN THE NEXT second, I come through the other side of the vertex.

  In the center of the room is a huge holoscreen made up of mini-holoscreens. Gray holograms swipe and tap and modify midair data streams from the nanoholocom network. Beyond them, a floor to ceiling window, and Solbiluna-8 sparkles far below us. I’m in space again. This is how they watch over the planet, a sort of control center.