by Kyle Andrews
This was the weight of those documents. This was the burden of knowing what her rights were. Questions that demanded answers.
There was a knock on her door. It was a soft and steady knock that repeated over and over again, rather than the standard two or three knocks that a person generally used.
“Come in,” she called to whoever was outside.
The knocking continued.
“It's open!” she yelled, a little bit louder.
The knocking continued.
Libby put her pages aside and got to her feet. She went to the door, opening it as she barked, “I said, it's open...”
There weren't any people standing outside her door. Instead, she found Ammo standing there, wagging his tail, which had been knocking against her door over and over again.
She was sure that he couldn't have intended to knock on her door. He was just standing there, excited. But that didn't stop him from getting what he wanted. She brought him inside and crouched down beside him as he stood, waiting to be cuddled.
“Hey, buddy,” she said to him as she rubbed his ears and he narrowed his eyes, taking in every ounce of affection.
Why Ammo sought out Libby, rather than one of the countless other people that he must have known for much longer, she didn't know. Maybe he sensed that she needed someone to hold onto. Someone who would never question her or doubt her. Or maybe he just knew that she would always find time for him, while everyone else was busy doing other things.
Whatever the reason, Libby was just happy to have him around, with his big brown eyes and goofy grin that couldn't have actually been a grin, but which definitely looked like one anyway.
Ammo leaned close to Libby and sniffed her face, as though he was going to give her a kiss. She put her nose against his and looked him in the eyes.
Then he coughed in her face.
She jumped back and fell on her butt as Ammo continued to cough and hack, and she couldn't help but laugh at him because of it.
There was another knock on the door, and Rose walked into the room. She looked down at Libby, who was still laughing on the floor, and then put her hands on her hips.
“Oh my God, your mouth is on upside down!” she said, pretending to be shocked and disgusted.
Libby had no idea what she was talking about. She put a hand to her mouth, but quickly realized that what Rose said made absolutely no sense.
“Have I ever seen you laugh before?” Rose asked Libby. “I always thought you had some sort of moping disorder or something.”
“I laugh.”
“Really?”
“I... have laughed,” Libby told her. “I think. At some point in my life.”
“If you say so.”
Libby pulled herself off of the floor so that she could talk to Rose without looking up at her. As she stood, Ammo nudged his nose under her hand, demanding attention.
“So,” Rose started, walking to the papers that Libby had set aside and glancing through them, “I go to work, just like every other day. Nothing new. Nothing exciting. Then I get back here and it's the 4th of July.”
Libby was confused. After thinking about it for a second, she said, “No it isn't. July was months ago.”
“Independence Day,” Rose explained, and then waved a hand through the air, telling Libby to forget it. “My point is that people are excited. There's a new energy in this place.”
Rose picked up some of the papers and started to read through them. She said, “I mean, it's cool. We have these documents with fancy words which say a bunch of things that we kinda already knew. More or less...” Rose dropped the papers on the bed and looked at Libby. She seemed exasperated when she said, “What am I missing here? I thought there'd be... more.”
“There is more. We just don't have it all yet.”
“No. I mean, I thought there'd be some sort of ancient wisdom. But these things just tell me what I already believed.”
Libby wasn't sure how to respond. On the surface, Rose was right. The words used in those documents were different, but most of their meanings—with the possible exception of one or two Amendments—were the same.
She moved across the room, trying to figure out a way to explain what Rose wasn't seeing, but she was having a hard time finding the right words. It took her a few moments before she finally said, “Faith.”
“Come again?”
“Faith. You were working on faith before. You knew what you believed in and you didn't need anything else. But to see these words, officially sanctioned, passed down from the founders of the country... The center of American freedom for two hundred and some-odd years... It's validation. It's taking some of the question marks out of the process. It's...”
“Okay. I get it,” Rose nodded. “All those people out there needed to see what they were fighting for with their own eyes. The way things were.”
“Exactly.”
“I never needed that.”
“I did,” Libby admitted. “I need it all. I need to see everything that the authorities don't want me to see. I need to look at these words, and all the others, and decide for myself what I believe in. I mean, I kinda understood the gist of what was going on before, but this is so much more tangible. This isn't just an idea. It could actually exist. It did exist.”
Rose nodded, “Before people threw it all away.”
“I keep asking myself how they let it happen. How could anyone swoop in and just take it out of their hands without a fight.”
“Any conclusions?”
“I think it had to have started long before we think it did. I think people started making exceptions and bending rules before they even realized that they were doing it.”
“Deep,” Rose said, sarcastically.
Libby smiled and pulled herself out of her philosophical daze. She'd never been challenged to think for herself before. She'd only ever been asked to memorize the thoughts and opinions of other people.
The strange thing was that even as she flew high on the new ideas that were racing through her head, there was a voice inside of Libby which doubted them. The idea of freedom was enthralling and the ability to examine those texts without the fear of being shot dead right then and there was certainly appreciated, but even as she took them in, she wondered what was wrong with them. They had to be flawed, or there would be no reason for people to abandon those ideas so readily.
Libby had been raised to be loyal to the authorities. Never question. Never doubt. Now those gates were open. What did that even mean?
Circles and contradictions danced through her head. Logic and feeling. Hope and doubt. She was changing into something that she never could have expected. A thinker. A fighter. A person who dared to dream of something better than what she had.
25
When Justin walked into the Garden, it was like walking into someplace he'd never seen before. People who normally went about their business calmly and quietly were now rushing every which way, and the place was humming with conversation.
Something had happened. In his experience, something bad was far more likely than something good. Maybe it had something to do with Libby's trip to the hospital. He meant to have words with Aaron about that as soon as he could, but that would have to come after he asked for a rather large and important favor.
It wasn't every day that someone went into the Garden and requested to bring in a complete outsider who had no ties to Freedom, and who served no greater purpose. Bringing Libby into the place did not go over well with everyone, and she was already in the process of coming around—against her will perhaps, but still coming around.
Amanda was different. She showed no signs of sympathy for Freedom. She held nothing of importance within her blood. She was not being hunted by the authorities. She was just a friend who was sick, and he wanted to help her.
As he walked through the Garden, Justin looked for Aaron, still trying to figure out how he would approach this request. But he didn't see Aaron. At least, not right away. What he saw
were computer screens, displaying text. There were people crowding around those screens, scribbling notes on paper, or typing into computers and tablets.
Justin walked closer and read what was on the screen. When he realized that he was reading the Bill of Rights, his breath caught in his throat and he took a step backward, nearly falling over.
He picked up bits and pieces of conversations that were taking place around him as he stared at the screen. This was what Uly was talking about just before he died. This was in his blood. After a month of searching for meaning and purpose in Uly's death, Justin finally understood why it happened. He now knew what Uly knew in those last moments. He knew that as scared as Uly may have been, he would have loved this.
A smile formed on his face, and for the first time since he joined Freedom, he felt like progress had been made. They had won a battle. They reclaimed something which they were never intended to have, and there was nothing that the authorities could do about it. It felt like the beginning of something, if only they could figure out a way of putting those words to good use.
Justin's eyes locked onto the Sixth Amendment. The right to a speedy, public trial before an impartial jury. How often did that happen anymore? It was more common for people to just disappear, never to be heard from again. To have their disappearance written off as a relocation, or to have the news report their death as a Hate attack. Uly never got a trial. He never had his chance to speak to the public about who he was or what he believed. And Collin Powers... Nobody even knew what happened to him after he was taken.
If there were juries anymore, they were far from impartial. They were not made up of the common citizens. They were panels of government officials, whose mission in life was to protect the current system. To keep it safe from harm and to make sure that anyone who dared to threaten that system was eliminated.
Justin turned toward the people around him and realized that things were changing, and there was no going back. The jury was being selected and the authorities were about to be put on trial.
When he saw Aaron walking across the Garden, flipping through pages of printed documents, Justin nearly forgot what he was there to do. It took him a moment to remember Amanda and to rush toward Aaron before some other urgent business came up.
When Aaron saw him approaching, he only glanced up. Justin wasn't a high ranking or important member of Freedom. He was just one face in the crowd.
“You've come to join the party?” Aaron said politely as Justin approached.
“It's great, but no. I've come... Umm...” Justin started, before realizing that he hadn't planned exactly how he was going to make this request.
“Is something wrong?” Aaron asked him, looking up from his papers.
“Yes. I need help. Medical help. For a friend of mine.”
“Who is it?”
“Her name is Amanda.”
“There are a lot of Amandas...”
“You don't know her, sir. She's... Well, she's not a member.”
Aaron narrowed his eyes, as though he was silently trying to figure out why Justin would be asking for help for someone who wasn't a member of the cause. Finally, he said, “You know that we can't take in every person who needs help. We don't have the resources, and the risk of exposing ourselves to outside—”
Justin cut him off, saying, “I know. And normally I wouldn't even ask. But she doesn't pose a threat to the group.”
“I know you'd like to believe that she can be trusted, but we can't afford that risk.”
“She can be trusted sir. She won't tell anyone. She won't be able to, because she's dying.”
Those last words caught Justin off guard. He always knew Amanda's situation, of course. He never fooled himself into believing that he would be able to work miracles for her. But he had never fully realized until that moment that he was bringing Amanda to the Garden to die.
Aaron took a moment to gather his thoughts. Even before he spoke, it was obvious to Justin that Aaron was searching for a nice way to say no.
Justin didn't want to give him that chance. He said, “She's Libby's mother.”
Why he hadn't opened with that fact, he didn't know. Maybe he didn't want to remind Aaron of the risk that was taken when they brought Libby into the Garden, and he didn't want to pile a favor on top of another favor. But things had changed.
“You owe her this,” Justin told Aaron, in a firm tone.
Justin's eyes moved down to the documents in Aaron's hands. All of the things that had been gathered from Libby's blood. What she had to offer the cause was worth more than one hospital bed and a little bit of medication.
Aaron considered the facts for a few moments. He started to walk again, and Justin kept pace with him.
“Simon tells me that there are scans of the original documents,” Aaron told Justin, still thinking. “Can you imagine that? Pictures stored inside her DNA?” He smiled at the thought. “There were books and images, and who even knows what else? Simon only saw a fraction of what was inside that girl. Do you believe in miracles, Justin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don't,” Aaron shook his head. “I don't. I don't. I just have to keep telling myself that.”
“Sir?” Justin said, in a tone that pushed for an answer in as gentle a way as possible.
“Yeah. We owe her. And we'll help her,” Aaron finally told him.
Giving Aaron his address was the last part that Justin was allowed to play in the process. He was told to standby and wait for information while other men and women figured out how to get Amanda out of his apartment and into the Garden without being seen or followed.
He shouldn't have been surprised by his being left out, but he was. After all that work and effort, after all of the worry that went into finding Amanda and bringing her to safety, he was suddenly as helpless as she was in the matter.
The one thing left for him to do now was find Libby and tell her that Amanda was coming in. As he headed toward her room, he found that his pace was growing faster and faster, until he was jogging through the Garden.
In his head, he could see her face and he imagined her smiling at the news. For some reason, the thought made him nervous and anxious, yet he was excited at the same time. He wanted to see her smile.
26
Libby was sitting on the floor in her room, while Ammo was spread across her bed, sleeping on top of the pages that she'd been reading earlier. He was snoring. As he slept, his feet twitched and his tail wagged, and she wondered if he was running through wide open field in his dreams. Did he even know what a field was? She'd never seen one in person, so it wasn't likely that he had either. But was there some instinctual knowledge of that field, hidden somewhere in his mind? The need to run free and chase rabbits?
Rose was sitting in a nearby chair, humming some old song that Libby didn't recognize, while she played with a toy that one of Libby's roommates had left in the room. It was a plastic maze that had a tiny metal ball in it, which Rose was trying to roll all the way to the end.
“Tell me about your boyfriend,” Rose said to Libby, still staring at the game.
“No,” Libby replied, bluntly.
Rose smiled and said, “C'mon. What's he like? What does he believe?”
“He believes the same thing everyone believes.”
“So, he'd probably flip his lid if he knew where you were.”
Libby was quiet. At first, her eyes went to the ground, but then they wandered up to where Rose was sitting. Rose only glanced at Libby for half a second before she realized that Libby wasn't telling her something and she put her game down.
“What?” Rose asked, with half a smile on her face.
Libby shook her head and said, “It's nothing.”
“It's not nothing. I asked what he would do if he knew where you were and you—Oh crap,” Rose's eyes went wide. She pointed at Libby as though accusing her of being a witch.
Libby closed her eyes and turned away from Rose, back to Ammo. When she opened her e
yes, she saw the dog staring at her. He couldn't have possibly known what they were talking about, but it seemed as if he were questioning her. Accusing her.
“Okay!” Libby relented. She turned to Rose and said, “Last night, at the hospital... I saw him.”
“You saw him?” Rose replied, not quite sure what to make of the comment. “Or... he saw you?”
“I think he might have.”
“So he knows where you are?” Rose asked. “Who you're with?”
“It's not that bad.”
“I haven't decided how bad it is yet. I'm still thinking.”
“It's not like HAND doesn't know who I'm with, right? They knew I was there.”
“True,” Rose replied, nodding slightly. She picked up her maze game and went back to playing as she said, “You're right. Not a big deal.”
“Except, it is. He didn't know anything about this, and I can't even explain it to him.”
“No, you really can't.”
“I know I can't.”
“I mean, you really friggin' can't. You can't track him down. You can't call him. You can't see him.”
“I know.”
“I'm reiterating for emphasis on just how much you cannot do these things.”
“I get it,” Libby insisted. “I just hate that I can't.”
“You love him?”
Libby was about to answer that question when there was a knock on the door. Rather than answer Rose, Libby went to the door. When she opened it, she found Justin waiting on the other side.
“Oh. Wow. Look at the time,” Rose said, with absolutely no subtlety in her voice at all. “I have to go and read those things that people are reading and pretend it's changing my world.”
She pushed past Libby and Justin, and rushed out of the room, leaving them alone. Libby wasn't sure why she thought the two of them would want to be alone, but it made her feel awkward. She smiled politely to Justin and said, “Come in.”
As he walked into the room and she closed the door, she said, “We weren't talking about you. I know it might have seemed like we were because Rose was... But we weren't.”