Dissidence

by Jamie Canosa

  “Are you deaf, Newbie?”

  I shake my head, which is difficult with his hand still fisted in my hair.

  “Good. Let’s go then. It’s time for your welcoming ceremony.”

  I’m half dragged, half shoved to the rear corner of the pavilion where two other guards are waiting. A swift kick to the back of my knees sends me crashing to the floor, the only thing holding me up at all is bulbous nose’s fist in my hair.

  A small fire pit warms this corner of the pavilion, banishing the morning chill. I watch as one of the other guards pokes at the embers with a long metal rod, trying to figure out what exactly a ‘welcoming ceremony’ might involve. When the guard removes the rod from the fire, I catch a glimpse of a series of glowing red numbers and letters. Now I wish I didn’t know.

  My scalp screams in protest as I wrench my head away from the guard. He bends lower to reclaim me, and I manage, somehow in my flailing, to connect with his face. He jumps back with a yelp as blood starts pouring down his chin. I try to get to my feet, but the other two guards are on me too fast. I wrestle against them, but they keep me restrained while bulbous nose recovers, and then I feel his hand on the back of my head again. It’s so large that the heel touches one of my ears while his fingertips brush the other. My neck is sore from the pressure as he forces my face downward and pulls my hair to the side.

  Clutching the material of my pants, I grit my teeth and try to prepare for whatever is coming. Nothing could have prepared me though. The agonizing pain sears through my body and I gag on the scent of my own burning flesh. A scream escapes my lips before I can stop it, and the guards snicker down at me. They release my arms, and I slump to the floor, tears streaming down my cheeks.

  “Welcome to the camps,” one of them scoffs. “Get up. It’s time for work.”

  I angrily swipe the tears from my face and stumble to my feet. I’m sure as hell not going to give them anything else to laugh about. The rest of the room is getting up as well and making their way towards the door. I join the queue and shift from one foot to the other anxiously waiting to see where we go from here. The adrenaline coursing through my system is almost enough to mask the blazing pain radiating down my neck every time my hair brushes against it.

  We’re herded like cattle toward a smooth expanse of mountainside not far from the dorms. A huge opening has been carved into it, and without delay we’re driven inside. It’s cold, and damp, and dark, and, admittedly, fascinating. That is, until I try to figure out just what we’re doing in here. Then it mostly becomes terrifying. I’m inside a mountain with a few thousand other people, and absolutely no idea why.

  Slowly my eyes adjust, but between the barely-there light seeping in from outside and the massive amount of bodies around me, it’s nearly impossible to make out my surroundings. From somewhere near the front of the herd comes a high pitched squeal. Elevator shafts, a whole bank of them line one side of the massive cavern we’re in. As soon as the gates are opened, people begin shuffling forward. I have zero desire to get anywhere near them, but being so tightly packed together, it’s impossible not to move with the crowd. The next thing I know, I’m stuffed into one of the elevator cars along with a couple dozen others.

  Before we begin our descent into hell, I catch a glimpse of a faded sign hanging precariously above the elevator banks. It reads ‘Permatech’. What the hell is Permatech? I squint to try and get a better look, but the faded paint and low lighting make it impossible.

  With a sudden lurch the elevator begins its slow plummet into darkness. Squealing cables lower us deep into the ground encased in nothing more than a rusted metal box. Each time I start to think we couldn’t possibly go any further, we do. My ears pop, and the complete lack of sensory perception is disconcerting. There’s no light here at all, making it impossible to see. The only sounds are that of our mixed breathing and my pounding heart. Finally, a trace of light appears below us and grows increasingly brighter as we draw nearer. The lift grinds to a halt, and the door swings open with a high pitched groan that echoes all around us.

  I’m pressed forward by the others and find more guards awaiting us just outside the lift. The light is coming from the glow of lanterns hung intermittently from the roof of a long tunnel stretching out before us. It’s a mine. We’re in a freaking mine. As soon as the thought occurs to me, a pick is slapped into my hands by one of the guards. I suddenly find myself wishing for a barred cell or even that damn train car again. What exactly do they expect me to do with this thing? I’m not exactly in peak physical condition. I’m a baker for crying out loud.

  “Ya better keep movin’,” a mountain of a man behind me whispers, giving me a little nudge forward.

  He’s easily over a foot taller than me and he looks like a solid mass of muscle. Glad I didn’t steal his bed last night. My eyes slowly adjust to the lighting as we file down the tunnel. All at once, we come to a stop, and I nearly crash into the woman just in front of me. Everyone turns to face the wall simultaneously like some kind of macabre choreographed dance and I’m left stumbling to keep up. A guard roars for the work to begin and immediately I’m overwhelmed by the sound of picks colliding with rock. It’s deafening and my head is already beginning to throb to the heinous beat.

  I lift the pick over my head and notice the same word ‘Permatech’ scorched on the handle. I pull it down as hard as I can into the wall in front of me. Pathetic. Truly pathetic. It barely makes a dent. Rocks and shiny bits of metal are flying everywhere. The big guy beside me is making excellent progress, and even the petite woman to the other side is getting the job done. Well, if she can do it . . . I take another swing at it, literally, and the second attempt is just as useless as the first.

  I take a moment to study my neighbors. Tilting my body slightly, and adjusting my grip on the pick, I lift it again and try to mimic their movements, but I’m distracted by a commotion further down the tunnel. A guard is shouting at an older man with thin arms and graying hair about his work progress. That doesn’t bode well for me. Instead of focusing on my work and not becoming the next poor sap on the guards hit list like I should, I continue to gawk as the guard yanks the old man away from the line, with a well-placed fist to his face that sends him crashing to the ground. My brain, which seems to have abandoned me completely, isn’t fast enough to stop the gasp from escaping my lips and, just as I knew it would, it draws the guard’s attention.

  Chapter 7

  “What are you looking at?” So much for not being a sap. I try to look away, but it’s already too late. “Who told you to stop working?”

  “Nothing . . . No one . . .” I stammer over my words as he comes up behind me.

  “Looks like you’re having some productivity problems yourself.” He sounds a little too happy about that fact. “Maybe you could benefit from a lesson in efficiency as well.”

  My shoulders hunch up around my ears as I prepare myself for the blow I can only assume is headed my way.

  “It’s her first day.” My neighbor’s voice is much softer than I would have expected from someone his size. He continues to swing his pick, never moving his gaze from the wall in front of him.

  “Well then, let this be your lesson. If that entire section is not mined by quitting time, then you’ll pay the price for your incompetence.”

  I don’t want to think about what kind of price that may be. Even as the guard moves off further down the tunnel, a deeper fear takes root. This entire section? I’m supposed to hack up this entire section of wall today? I’d be lucky if I could accomplish that in my lifetime.

  I’m adjusting my grip once again in an effort to do better, when another pick collides with my section of wall, and a huge chunk of rock drops away. Mountain Man to the rescue. I shoot him a quick glance that I hope says everything I can’t say out loud, ‘Thank you. I owe you. Please don’t let my pathetic excuse for muscles get me killed.’

  He must get the message loud and clear because for the rest of the day, every other swing he takes
, when we’re not being supervised, falls onto my section of wall. Somehow, with our combined efforts—okay, mostly just his effort, really—we manage to finish both sections and on time. The final hour of the day is spent collecting the loose debris and piling it into small, gray carts. By the time we begin our trudge back to the surface, my entire body aches, and I’m astounded that my feet haven’t fallen off.

  Dinner consists of small chunks of meat covered in a thin, filmy layer of some kind of gravy. It doesn’t really matter. Anything would taste great at this point. Apparently, they don’t believe in lunch breaks in this place, and I haven’t had anything to eat since my half bowl of oatmeal at breakfast. Add that to the physical toll of the day, and I’m completely famished.

  I glance around the pavilion for somewhere to go with my meal and spot the guy I’ve been working beside all day—he’s kind of hard to miss. In the brighter light of the dining pavilion, I’m surprised to see that he isn’t much older than me at all. A year or two at most. He looks like he could have been carved from the mine himself, with his rock hard muscles showing through his thin shirt, and chiseled features. His sandy hair flops into his eyes as his broad shoulders lean over his dinner bowl, elbows planted on the table in front of him.

  When I collapse into the seat beside him, he glances over at me, and I notice his eyes are a bright green unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

  “Hey, Girlie.” He nods at me with a slightly crooked grin.

  Nicknames. Great, I love those.

  “Hey.” I nod back, and fidget with my fork. “Thanks . . . for your help today.”

  His shoulders bounce with silent laughter as he turns his attention back to his own food. “You’re gonna have to build up those muscles fast, Girlie. I can’t keep doing my work and yours forever, ya know.”

  “Why don’t you cut the kid some slack?” The woman who’s been my other neighbor all day takes the seat across from us.

  She must be in her late thirties, with lank blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She’s petite, bordering on scrawny, even. How does she manage this work?

  “My name is actually Kaleigh,” I tell them, just in case they were looking for something else to call me.

  “Lori,” the woman says, extending a slender hand, “and that’s Connor.”

  “Nice to meet ya, Girlie.” Apparently having a name isn’t of much use.

  “What is this place?” I ask, abandoning any pretense of having the slightest clue what I’ve gotten myself into.

  “It’s a work camp.” Apparently Connor doesn’t believe in wasting time talking or eating when they can be done simultaneously.

  “Eat your dinner.” Lori smacks him lightly on the arm and shakes her head in feigned disgust.

  “Work camp?”

  Connor forces the bite down his throat and shifts to face us. “Yeah, what’s the use of just locking us up when they can use us for free labor?” The sarcastic tone in his voice makes me like him just a little bit more.

  “So, everyone here is a prisoner?” I’m suddenly wondering what exactly it was that got them all sent here.

  “I guess so, since having an opinion is against the law.” Lori shakes her head again, and this time, the disgust is genuine.

  So, they’re all guilty of having a big mouth and not enough brains to keep it shut, just like me, or what did they call it… dissidence? At least I know my new best friends aren’t some kind of axe murderers or anything.

  “Did you have a trial then?” I blurt out the first question I think of, knowing there are about a million more piled up behind it just waiting to rush out. I need to get as much information out of these two as I can while they’re talking to me.

  “A trial,” Connor scoffs, “yeah, I had one of those. Everyone did. You can’t just lock people up and throw away the key without a trial. That would be unjustified.” The sarcasm’s back, but this time it’s tinged with anger.

  “But how do they do it? I’m still not even sure what happened.” I’m shaking my head, hoping to shake all of the confusion from the past few days right out of it like some kind of mental etch-a-sketch. It doesn’t work.

  “It’s all in your mind, kind of like virtual reality. They run ya through a series of pre-established simulations, anything that’s likely to make you react against the norm, and monitor your actions without ever having to let you leave the room.”

  “And, of course, they know just which buttons to push,” Lori chimes in, her anger no less palpable than Connor’s.

  She’s right. They did hit on all of my hotspots: pressing career assignments, pairings, and of course . . . Peter. The thought causes a lancing pain to tear through me, so I push it aside and focus instead on, “How do they know?”

  “Because they see everything.”

  “Who’s sees? . . . What?” Now, she’s really lost me. I feel like I’m trying to keep up with the plot of a story, but it’s in another language.

  “They do. Security, the government, the ubiquitous ‘they.’” Lori twirls her hand in the air as she speaks. “Who knows, but they’re always watching, Kiddo. You really didn’t know? No, of course you didn’t,” she corrects herself. “I forgot, it isn’t common knowledge until after you’re already locked up. Otherwise, none of us would be here, would we?”

  The question seems rhetorical, so I leave it alone, pondering instead what else this could mean. “How do they watch us?”

  “Cameras. They’re everywhere as far as any of us can tell. Jobs, homes, on every street, and in every building. It’s the only way to explain some of the things they know about us. Things no one else could know unless they were watching . . . listening.”

  Cameras? Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Of course they have cameras. Of course they’ve been spying on us our entire lives. Why not? It’s hardly like they’re too moral to do such a thing. Instead, I chose to think the worst of the one person who has always been there for me my entire life. I search through my memory banks for any mention anyone may’ve made of Peter, but no one said a single thing about him. I jumped to that awful conclusion all on my own. Some friend I turned out to be. A weight I didn’t realize I’ve been carrying suddenly lifts, and I feel light, like I can finally breathe again.

  “It feels real though, doesn’t it?” Connor draws my focus back to the present and my slightly less than happy circumstances.

  “Yeah, it felt like I was really there.”

  “It’s some pretty advanced technology. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it’s fascinating. I used to be into that kind of stuff before I ended up here. They recreate everything they can as an exact replica, but there are always some flaws.” Connor stares longingly into his now empty bowl. My food has grown thoroughly cold, and the thought of taking another bite turns my stomach, so I slide my bowl in front of him. “You sure? You should eat, Girlie, build up that muscle mass.”

  “Definitely. I’m done.” Connor gauges me for another moment before digging into my cold meat concoction. “What do you mean ‘flaws’?”

  “It’s easy enough to make imitations of people, public spaces, and anything else they have records of, but the more private details have to be filled in, and sometimes they’re . . . off.”

  “Like my alarm clock.”

  . . . And my duckie curtain, but I’m not about to say that one out loud. Bathrooms and bedrooms, evidently they do have limits.

  “Exactly. Small, personal details that they don’t know are just guessed at, but they’re so insignificant that our minds don’t pay them much attention anyway.”

  It’s true. I had brushed off the discrepancies pretty easily.

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “Some I figured out on my own, some I’ve heard from others. There’s not much to talk about around here.”

  I guess it’s either that or pick swinging techniques. Actually, I could probably benefit from that conversation.

  “Are there other camps like this one?”

  �
�Lots.” Lori reaches for the two empty bowls in front of Connor and stacks them in her own. “It’s strange talking to a newbie. I’ve been a worker for over twenty years now.”

  Holy crap. My heart stutters at just the thought of being here that long, but what did I expect? That they would just let me go back home again after a while?

  “You know that saying ‘ignorance is bliss?’ It may be true, but it no longer applies to any of us. It doesn’t take long for people to learn the whole ugly truth after they get here. Transfers aren’t that uncommon. Apparently they keep us fresh and productive.” Distain oozes from Lori’s words, and I scramble for a moment to catch back up with the conversation. “I’ve personally worked at X, L, and K myself, and known others who have been to B, J, U, E, and O.” She ticks them off her fingers as she goes, and I can’t believe we’re up to eight already, plus this place makes at least nine work camps.

  “Are they all mines like this one?”

  “No, Kiddo.” Seriously, why did my parents even bother naming me? “The first place I worked was a vineyard, then a wheat farm. There are other farms, too, that grow different crops, a fishing camp, one where they cut lumber, and I’ve heard rumors of one where they raise different kinds of animals and butcher them for meat.”

  If there’s anything I can be thankful for, it’s that I didn’t get sent there.

  “I think there’s at least one other mine,” Connor adds, “but they mine coal instead of iron.”

  “Could be.” Lori shrugs and gets to her feet, taking the dirty dishes with her. “We’ll probably get to see them all eventually.”