by Kyle Andrews
Five seconds had passed a long time ago, and Justin hadn't gotten up to leave. He just stared at that poster, with the HAND officer watching over the sleeping child. He was looking into the eyes of that officer and searching for the villain within. Of course, he couldn't find it. The officer was a model, chosen because he conveyed exactly what the authorities wanted him to convey. Strength and beauty, or whatever. It's possible that that model never even suspected the true nature of HAND. He was probably feeling lucky to be assigned such a cushy career, where he would be kept fed and pretty for as long as he served a purpose.
Then what? They couldn't cast their poster boy out onto the street to freeze and starve with the rest of the citizens. So what happened to him? Did they keep him fat and warm so that he wouldn't talk to anyone, or did they just kill him? It would probably be easier that way.
Five minutes passed and still he sat there, waiting for Willa.
Next, he turned his eyes to the little girl in the poster, blindly trusting the man who was watching over her. He didn't think about that child model, as he did with the adult. He thought about the character she played. Eyes closed. Covers pulled tightly around her. Not a fear in the world. Why? Because the man beside her bed told her not to worry? Because she put all her faith and trust into something that promised to keep her safe, when the truth was that the little girl in that poster was completely expendable to her protector? At any minute, that HAND officer could send that little girl out onto the streets and force her to fend for herself, all in the name of the 'greater good' or whatever they wanted to call it.
Libby trusted the people in the Garden because Justin told her to. Was the faith that she had in him—and the faith that he had in Freedom—the same type of blind following that allowed the little girl in that poster to fall asleep with a HAND officer in the room?
Fifteen minutes of staring at that poster and building up rage toward Aaron came to an abrupt end when Justin heard the office door closing behind him.
Willa walked around him and sat behind her desk, with a big warm smile on her face.
“I stare at that poster all the time too. Wondering what the little girl is dreaming about. Wondering if that officer had an officer watching over him when he was just a little boy,” she said to Justin, looking at the same poster that he'd been staring at, and seeing an entirely different picture in it.
Willa leaned back in her chair and looked at Justin. She said, “I'm sorry that I'm late. I had to deal with a small crisis in the science lab. One of the students broke into tears and refused to dissect a pig embryo.”
“What did you do?” Justin asked.
“I told her that there comes a time in one's life when you have to choose your priorities and your loyalties. I asked her if she would side with the pig embryo, which was already a dead and hopeless cause, or if she would cut into it and learn what made it work, in the hopes of making its sacrifice mean something.”
“What did she do?”
Willa's smile grew somehow more genuine for just a moment as she said, “She dissected the pig. In the end, there really was no choice to make.”
Willa's eyes went to her tablet, which was resting on the desk in front of her. She turned it on and pulled up Justin's file. She skimmed through it, nodding and making little sounds which could have meant anything, while Justin watched her and waited for the meeting to begin.
Willa turned the tablet toward Justin. On it, there was a picture. It had been taken just after the school's football team won the city championship, about a year earlier. In the picture, Justin stood with his arm around Uly. Both looked happy and proud.
“What do you feel when you look at this picture?” she asked Justin.
Justin studied his own face in the picture, trying not to look at Uly. Despite his efforts not to look, he could still see Uly's face in his head. He could remember that night as though it had happened only a day earlier. He could hear the crowd cheering. He could hear Uly cheering right along with them.
Even if their games were never really just games, Uly always enjoyed them. He enjoyed the competition and the challenge of winning. He also enjoyed having an excuse to knock a bunch of loyalists to the ground. His cheers were genuine, even if nothing else about his life in that school was.
“I think that it's like looking at a stranger,” Justin said, still looking at only himself.
“How so?”
“He was naïve. He was weak.”
“Weak? Why do you say that?”
Justin turned his attention from the picture to Willa and said, “Weak-minded. Weak-willed. He wasn't good enough. He wasn't worth it.”
“Worth what?”
“Life.”
“An interesting perspective.”
“Do you have a different one?”
Willa put the tablet down on her desk and said, “I didn't know Ulysses Jacobs. I can't really speak to his personality or his manner of thinking.”
Justin looked down to his hands, which were folded in his lap, and replied, “I guess I didn't really know him either.”
No eye contact was an important part of selling that line. If he had been looking at Willa as he said it, he might have somehow allowed her to see through his act. Looking down the wrong way was like telling her that he was lying. Looking down the right way turned his body language into a part of the lie.
Justin didn't enjoy lying, though he seemed to do it more often than not. He didn't enjoy putting on an act for people and having to keep track of who thought what about him. But he didn't have a choice. He was a liar. He just hoped that God would forgive him for those lies when the time came.
“I have to believe that someone in Ulysses' position would have a great deal of pressure on them,” Willa offered. “To be the star of every team. To have everyone watching you. Looking up to you. Following you. It's a delicate position to be in, because the fall from that pedestal is that much farther. Maybe Uly was just... scared.”
Justin looked back to Willa, confused. He didn't know what to make of that comment or how to respond to it. What was he supposed to say? What did she want to hear? He didn't know which lie to tell next.
“I'm not excusing his behavior by any means,” Willa explained, putting her hands up as though to distance herself from those last words. “I just think that fear and worry can make people do strange things.”
“I guess you would know better than I would.”
“What do you feel when you think about him now? About your friendship? I mean, you knew him for years, didn't you?”
“I think...” Justin started, before shaking his head and stopping himself. He thought for a moment before finishing, “I think that most of those years were full of lies. The Uly that he showed the world was nothing like the person he really was.”
“Do you miss your friend?”
Justin turned his eyes back to that HAND officer on the poster as he said, “I miss the person I knew.”
There was a long pause. Justin imagined that Willa was trying to figure out what to do with that last comment. He had to keep himself from smiling at the thought.
“I knew Libby,” Willa told him, in what must have been the world's worst segue ever. She tried to smooth it out by adding, “She's his cousin, right?”
“Yes.”
Images of Libby in the Garden, in the hospital, and dead on the street flashed through Justin's mind, but he pushed them back.
“Did you know her?”
“When we were younger. Not anymore.”
“Have you seen her since... Well, since Ulysses died?”
Justin shrugged, looked Willa in the eyes and said, “Last I heard on TV, HAND was questioning her. I haven't seen her, but I haven't really looked either.”
“You don't think that the two of you might have something in common?”
“What's that?”
“Ulysses' death.”
“That didn't happen to us. It happened to him.”
“I would think that
the two of you would feel differently about it than the rest of us.”
“How so?”
Willa looked down at her desk and tapped her finger on it as she searched for her words. She then said, “You were his family.”
Justin stood up and walked around the room, looking at the different posters and knickknacks that Willa had scattered around.
He said, “I've lived on my own for a while now. Fed myself. Watched out for myself. My parents are gone. I have no siblings. Do you know what I've learned from all of that?”
Willa shook her head and listened.
Justin continued, “I've learned that everything that I thought I needed them for when I was younger was a mistake. I was wrong. I have food. I have shelter. I have school. I'm fine. And family is just an outdated concept that people used to cling to, back in the days when horses pulled carriages and their lives depended on creating this imaginary bond. There's no such thing as family.”
A chill ran through Justin. He had to use every ounce of strength in his body to keep that chill from showing to Willa, who was staring at him, seeming to be waiting for that moment when he would slip up.
Justin turned back to her and said, “I don't care where Libby is. I haven't even thought about her since that day, except maybe to wonder whether or not she knew about him. Wondering if I was the only fool in the group.”
“What about his girlfriend, Marti?”
“You'd have to ask her. She was his girlfriend, not mine. I barely knew her.”
“Do you think she would care where Libby is? Do you think she'd want to see Libby again?”
Justin smiled and said, “As far as I knew, the two of them hated each other. But then, what did I know, really? Maybe they were best friends, just putting on an act. Maybe everyone in this place is putting on an act, and I'm the only one who didn't realize it until now.”
“I'm not acting, Justin.”
“There's only one person in this room that I have faith in.”
“Yourself?”
“Nope,” Justin grinned. He then pointed to the poster of the HAND officer and said, “That guy. He's been watching that same kid for longer than I've been alive. Just about the only reliable thing in this world.”
Good thing he didn't eat too much at lunch. Otherwise, he'd be revisiting that meal.
Willa took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She looked at Justin as though she was about to say something to him, but she chose not to say it. Instead she stood up and walked around her desk, sitting on it in a casual and approachable manner. Then she said, “Thank you for coming, Justin. I want you to know that my door is always open.”
“I can go?”
She nodded to him. Justin didn't waste any time before heading for the door. As he opened it, he expected her to say something else to him, but she didn't. He walked out of the room and that was it.
As he closed the door behind him, Justin turned to walk down the hall. He stopped short when he saw a janitor quickly painting a row of lockers.
Though Justin couldn't see all of what the janitor was covering up on those lockers, he did see five very large letters, spray painted in bright red, at the end of the freshly painted row. All that remained of the original message was: VAILS
21
The Garden seemed to be back to normal. People were going about their work, just as they always did. The waiting and anticipation were over for most of them, but Libby couldn't bring herself to move away from the TVs. She stood there, watching the various broadcasts, looking for anything that might explain what happened to Simon. She saw nothing.
For a while, Aaron seemed to hold out the same amount of hope as she did. He clenched his jaw and stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for Simon to return. He and Libby were the last two to move on with their lives. After he left, she was alone.
Paul had been back for hours. Before returning, he had driven miles out of his way, ditched the truck, lost the HAND officers who were chasing him, and waited for daylight before walking back to the the Garden. People were right when they assumed that it should have taken Simon less time to return, if he was going to come home at all. But Libby wouldn't believe that he was dead. Her conscience couldn't take it.
She could feel the eyes of the people on her once again. She didn't hear whispers, but she knew what they were saying. They were saying that it was convenient how many people died to save her, and what did they have to show for it now? Nothing. Even though they now knew what HAND wanted to keep from them, they didn't have access to it. It was useless to them. Maybe if she'd been more competent, they'd be reading their documents right now, with Simon and Leo right there and everyone having a good time.
Libby didn't take her eyes off of the screens in front of her, because she didn't want to confirm that people really were watching her, and quietly wishing that they could exchange her life for one of the others.
“It doesn't matter how long you stare. The facts will still be the facts,” Aaron told her, approaching her from behind. He held out a cup of coffee for her as he approached. It was the real thing too, not the Coffite that she was used to drinking. He asked her, “Have you taken a break? Eaten?”
“I'm not hungry.”
“If I only ate when I was hungry, I'd starve to death. This isn't an easy job.”
“I should have been able to do something. I should have been able to help.”
“How?”
“I don't know.”
“If you're anything like me, you've probably been replaying the whole night in your head. So, what do you do differently in hindsight?”
“I fight back.”
“Do you know how to fight?”
“No.”
“What could you have done, realistically?”
Libby was hesitant to tell Aaron what she was thinking. She wasn't one to open up to people or confide in them. She wasn't one to whine about her life to people she hardly knew.
But he pushed, “You've thought about it. So, tell me.”
“I don't know,” she said. Then she gave in and said, “I could have distracted the HAND officers. I could have told them who I was and they would have come after me instead of killing him.”
“So, they were targeting Leo and not you?”
“No. They came for us both. He told me to go on without him.”
“So Leo decided to stay behind and distract the officers?”
“I guess.”
“And if he'd lived and you died, he would be standing where you are, tearing himself apart. Only your death would have been meaningless, because you would have taken the library with you. Everything that you set out to do, and everything that Uly died for would have been lost.”
“The library?”
“It's what people are calling it. The data inside of you.”
“You have my blood in about a hundred different vials by now. The library is safe.”
Aaron smiled a halfhearted smile and said, “I guess it is.”
“I wasn't worth his life.”
“Why are you any less valuable?”
“Because he was more capable. He contributed more. He meant something.”
“Did you see any of the documents stored in your blood?”
“Some.”
“Did you read any?”
“I skimmed a couple.”
“Did you see one called the 'Declaration of Independence?'”
Libby shook her head. She knew what he was talking about because she had seen the document, but she didn't want to hear it.
“I don't know the exact quote,” Aaron told her, “but if I'm not mistaken, the document talks about people being equal. It talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's what we're fighting for in Freedom. That's what we think this world is entitled to.”
“I can't help you with that,” Libby told him.
“Your life is as important as the next guy's. Your worth is not determined by your workload.”
“Tell that to Le
o. Ask him if I was worth dying for. Ask him if I was worth the pain they put him through. Oh. That's right. You can't ask him anything, because he's dead. This whole thing is meaningless. His death was meaningless. This fight. If we just accepted the world for what it is...”
“He chose,” Aaron said, a little bit more firmly than before. “He believed in something and he was willing to die for it. It's not your place to decide that it wasn't worth it. It's not your place to declare his death meaningless.”
Aaron was genuinely upset as he spoke. He was angry at Libby. She didn't know him well, but for some reason, seeing him upset with her felt horrible.
“If I could put you back on your supplements and ship you back to the real world, would you go?” he asked her. “I can make you some fake Civvies. I can crack their database and pull your genetic scans before they implement the new system. You can be a new person, in a new city. All it will cost you is what we have here. Living an honest life, in an honest place. Living for what you believe in, instead of what they tell you to believe in. Do you want that, Libby?”
She swallowed hard, hesitant to answer. Not because she didn't know what she wanted to say, but because it came so easily that it scared her.
Finally, she told him, “No.”
“Then shut your damn mouth about this not being worth it.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, feeling tears forming in her eyes, and she hated it. “I just can't stand being so... I can't stand by and watch people die for me. I can't keep doing it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know how to fight back.”
“Do you know how to fight? What were your extracurriculars?”
“Gardening. Meteorology...”
“You could be a gardener.”
“I don't want to be a gardener! I kill everything that I touch. Plants. People,” she said, perhaps a bit too loudly. “Now I want to learn how to do it on purpose. Maybe even save a life for a change.”