Redux

by A. L. Davroe

  And then I break myself down. I let my body dissolve, flow down the different strands, up and in. The line between Nexis and Real World blurs, everything inverts, and suddenly I know I’m inside of Main Frame. From everywhere and nowhere at once, my mother’s song—the one that started to play after the virus hit—is still playing on repeat. Main Frame is stuck on her final moments, stuck in a computer’s version of a dream.

  I see the image of my mother singing me the song, demonstrating the hand game. I see images of her staring furiously at a holo-screen as she works on Nexis. The image of my father finding her slumped over her workstation, a steaming laser-hole in her head. I see his resolute face as he sits down at the station and takes up her mantle. I see my face, over and over again as I walk into his workroom and see him tirelessly toiling away. I get older and older and my face never changes.

  I reach beyond myself to the Aristocrats. The ones I’m connected to, the ones stored in Main Frame’s memory.

  I see more. Thousands of images from thousands of households. Strangers eating, laughing, bathing, arguing, working, sleeping. The excitement of waking up to a new Mod. The frustration of a Medical protocol not being successful. The angst of trying to satisfy demanding parents. The yearning for another you can’t have. The disappointment of not being accepted by the other Elite. All ages from all over the city and all different time periods. It’s a hodgepodge, in no particular order.

  I reach farther still, beyond the formless and through the city, trailing the streets and the different floors of all the buildings. I reach up and into the bodies of the Disfavored standing around staring at the screens—at the web being built in the heart of the city.

  I see images from outside.

  Droids on the wall looking down with featureless faces.

  Cameras flying down, staring with glass eyes.

  The city of Kairos rising up, falling, rising up again.

  A gang beating a man to death for a sack of gruel meal.

  A woman brutally raped in an alley.

  That same woman selling herself into servitude to feed that child born of violation and degradation.

  The child taking up a gun and killing his mother’s enslavers.

  I feel the empty bellies. The dry tongues. The needling of acid rain, the asphyxiation of scratch-lung, the tight burn of radiation exposure.

  It goes on and on. I see a hundred thousand sunsets and sunrises on a world that blazes and dissolves in Post-Apocalyptic heat. One sparkling world of white towers, cool mornings, and glistening streets. One world of blackened shanties, sweaty mornings, and bloody streets.

  Evanescence sees everything I see through the eyes of the habitat systems, the eyes of her citizens, the eyes of her robots, the G-Chips, the games she houses. She sees us and she sees them, Aristocrat and Disfavored alike. She sees both worlds rise and fall. She sees both persevere.

  In the back of my mind, I’m jumping thread to thread to thread. There are countless numbers of them now, each representing a life. I’m connecting one life to another through similarities. We’re all the same in a million little ways. Love. Hate. Happiness. Sadness. Desire. Common language of the tongue and heart make it easy to do so. And in the end, we’re not so different. And when I’m done, Evanescence can’t see the difference, either.

  In the end, she can’t see what makes Aristocrats different from Disfavored. She can’t discern physical body from virtual body. We’re all humans and we are inside of her.

  I sense her programming coming to a few rapid conclusions, her artificial intelligence taking a few more vital steps toward true consciousness. And like a great behemoth of a creature long asleep, feel her get slowly to her feet and shake her great mane. I feel her wake up.

  chapter thirty-two

  Post-American Date: 7/10/232

  Longitudinal Timestamp: 7:07 p.m.

  Location: Dome 5: Evanescence

  I watch from the roof of Bella Adona as the Aristocrats are escorted into the city. Each has at least one armed Disfavored with them, but the security is unnecessary. The Disfavored within Evanescence are lined up along Citizen’s Way, cheering and throwing what they deem as valuables into the street like flower petals.

  Leaning forward in the hover chair Sid found for me, I prop my elbows on the rooftop and sigh. Beside me, a small holo-glass screen has materialized, showing me a rolling flicker of the spectacle from different angles. The Broadcast cameras are back in action and Zane has them covering everything. Along with the flickering of images, Evanescence is displaying her progress with her reboot. Habitat systems are 32 percent online, dome cleanup initiative is 10 percent complete, nano-net retrieval is in full effect.

  I don’t need to know most of these things. The gray smog of miasma rises up from Kairos—the nanite swarms waking up and heading back into the air. The machines under the city hum back to life, churning out new robotic units to clean and repair.

  Beside me, Delia frowns at the screen. “I don’t see them.”

  “Don’t,” I whisper. I can’t have her point it out. I can’t get that close.

  “Ella,” she whimpers, not listening to me.

  I close my eyes. I’ve already scanned all the faces that came through the gate. The gate that, even as the procession moves forward and the Disfavored close in around the last stragglers from the outside, is closing. It has to close. The cameras have picked up the impending threat—the massive dust cloud of oncoming vehicles. Without the droids, something I didn’t allow for when I woke her up, the city is defenseless. Eventually, the citizens will learn to use the weapons the droids have dropped, but until then, the best defense is offense.

  Evanescence knows my fear of leaving anyone behind, and she has calculated the distance and has allowed for the largest margin of error. The gates will shut fully just in time, only allowing for anyone who needs to get into the city before Taurus gets here.

  One camera stays trained on the closing gate.

  The bodies of Disfavored, Aristocrat, and droid alike have been moved out of the way and there’s a clear view all the way out to the small army of oncoming cannibals.

  “Is it going to close in time?” Stormy demands, nervous.

  “You act as though you don’t want your father to come rescue you,” Cam says.

  She turns away. “Of course I do.”

  Cam grins at her back. “If you wanted to stay here, you could.”

  “No,” I say quietly. “Stormy has to go back out. I need her to deliver a message.”

  “You do?” she asks.

  I request my chair spin around and when it doesn’t, I’m momentarily confused. Oh right, no G-Chip. I grasp the side of the wall and turn myself toward her. “I have a deal I’d like to offer your father. Something I hope he’ll accept, but we can talk about that later. Right now, why don’t you go join the festivities?”

  She gives me a skeptical brow crimp but turns and gets into the aerovator. “Clairen, make sure she doesn’t get into trouble, would you? I’m sure you’d like to go see the others anyway.” Nodding, she trots after Stormy. “And Clairen?” She turns on her heel, gives me a questioning look. “Can you send Bastian to see me when you find him? I’d like to know what he found out from Uncle Simon.”

  Of all the things we still haven’t learned, it’s why he tampered with the virus in the first place—his true intent. I need to know, because if he really intended to cause ill to these people, then I’m going to have to hunt down his cyber-self on the Main Frame and contain him somehow. Because free? He’s still a threat. Clairen’s mouth turns grave as she continues her pursuit of Stormy. Her Disfavored follow, leaving the Dolls, Delia, and me on the roof.

  “You should go with them, see your friends,” I say to Sid and Cam.

  Sid frowns at me. “We’re here for the same reason as you.”

  Biting my lip, I nod and look away.

  The gate is more than half closed now. Delia grasps my hand, shudders. I hold my breath, heart hammering. It
feels like it did when the boys closed the door to the Undertunnel. An end, a beginning. And I don’t want this door to close because I want hope to still be there. I feel myself shaking, and Delia squeezing my fingers does nothing to stop it.

  The door closes and closes. The trucks get closer and closer.

  I’m not scared of them getting in. I’m scared of someone getting locked out.

  “Come on,” I whisper. And then I yell it. “Come on, Quentin, move your ass!”

  But I’m cheering for no one. Because there’s no one there to cheer.

  And the door shuts. Boom. And I feel myself shatter, my muscles turn to liquid. I’d collapse if I wasn’t sitting. Delia’s grasp fades out of mine. She pools to the roof beside me, starts sobbing into her hands.

  I don’t register much after that. I just stare and stare and stare. A holo-screen flits in front of me at one point, trying to show me footage of the cannibals throwing a fit outside the gate. Evanescence apparently thinks this is funny. But I don’t care. I swat at the screen and it ducks away.

  Evanescence tries to cheer me up, she plays Mom’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider” recording for me.

  “Stop,” I growl at her. “Just leave me alone.”

  The holo-screen drifts away and I’m left in relative silence. The larger screens flicker on and it catches my attention. There’s a line flashing across. The Savior has returned. I roll my eyes at it. Yes, I’ve done what needed doing. I’ve saved the survivors, I’ve saved the Disfavored. I’ve rebooted the city and even managed to somehow fulfill an underlying desire to bring peace between the Aristocrats and the Disfavored.

  But, the victory feels hollow.

  There’s movement in the streets, congealing around Bella Adona like a clot. Clogging the streets and the hover-ways as far as I can see are thousands of people. The dark clothing and faces mark them as Disfavored. Little ants milling around pods and bodies. An army of them. People start yelling, and the yelling moves like wildfire. They begin cheering in a unified mass that sends a chill to my bones.

  The longer I listen, the longer their cheers start to make sense to me, forming into a single word they’re chanting over and over and over again.

  Drexel.

  Drexel.

  Drexel.

  And it just seems like they’re screaming. Empty. Empty. Empty. Because despite all these people, despite a bright future, despite everything I’ve managed to do, it all feels pointless. Bitter tears come as I stare down at the people. I hate that they’re so happy and have so much potential when I have sacrificed everything to give them this. It feels like I should get something, too, but I don’t.

  Part of me just wants to throw myself off the side of Bella Adona. But I still have to be something to these people. Eventually, I’ll have to go back inside and be a Leader to them. But right now I’m alone and I can break down and be weak, so I let myself sob.

  “You know,” a voice says from behind me, making me tense. “I never did like it when you cried.”

  I gasp, despite myself, and more tears come. “Then maybe you should stop dying on me.”

  “Oh come on, Elle, I was going for the dramatic entrance thing.”

  I look over my shoulder, take in Quent’s beaten, bloody body, and I know he just went through hell to keep his promise to me. “How?” I whisper.

  He beams. “We came back through the Undertunnel.”

  “We?”

  “Gus, too.”

  I try not to grin too hard, because I’m also furious with him. It’s a strange feeling being both happy and angry. “You scared me half to death.”

  He saunters closer, examines me. “Hmm, half a person, maybe, but not half dead.” I open my mouth to yell at him, but he dips down and kisses me, stealing all the anger and grief, all the gray and broken. I kiss him back, because things are finally upright.

  Somewhere, there’s another pair of prosthetic legs that fit me. Even now, Clairen’s men are searching for them. When they find them, we’ll reattach them. And then I’ll go out and I’ll walk among the new citizens of Neo-Evanescence. And together, we’ll start our renaissance.

  Quent draws back. “What do you want to do about Taurus?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” If he doesn’t accept my offer, things could get ugly. Especially if he manages to get another dome interested in what we have to offer here. A Disfavored wouldn’t take interest in Evanescence unless he thought there was something uniquely special about it. The people who came from Adagio were smart, yes, but they didn’t seem to have some of the technology we have here. It’s possible that the other domed cities aren’t like this one. It’s possible that other cities may want what we have and will come and try to take it now that they sense we’re weak.

  But they’re out there. And we’re in here. We are many and, with a little effort, we’ll soon be one. And when people act as one, they can do almost anything. I have faith in that. Because I am Ella the Savior.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m going to be ridiculously candid right now.

  Being a creative person is nearly as terrible as it is wonderful. I’m convinced of that.

  To me, creativity is a way to interpret and understand what’s inside and what’s outside. This is what I call the muse. She’s not a person, music, or a place like she is for many other people. She’s an interpretive force. And through her, a creative person is able to express things via whatever medium they’re best suited for.

  For me that medium is words.

  Sometimes your muse is kind, she gives you a million ways to express yourself and it’s nearly overwhelming how creative you are. Other times she gives you dry spells and taunts you with a complete inability to understand or articulate the tempest within.

  And because you can’t figure out or express things, you get really lost.

  The creation of this book was a lesson in the fickle behavior of the muse.

  Writing Redux was not like writing Nexis.

  While Nexis was a voluntary stream that flowed, constant and strong—lending me a near perfect manuscript in just a few months; Redux was something I really had to dig deep for and coax out under what felt like a reign of bullets.

  I wrote Redux 1.0 in the summer of 2015. It was very difficult and when I completed it, I knew something was wrong. I could not—for the life of me—figure out what.

  I gave it to my beta-readers who gave me fabulous feedback and helped to improve it, but we still couldn’t quite get it where it needed to be.

  So, I handed it in with a plea for assistance from my editor, Liz Pelletier. We were in the midst of the release of Nexis, so it got shelved and my focus was drawn to touring for quite a few months. By the time that was over, my patience with the writing world was shot. I was frustrated with my inability to create new content, with how hard it was just to organize and keep in touch with all the balls that were up in the air, with how difficult it had been to write Redux 1.0 and my dissatisfaction with it, and I was jaded by Nexis not becoming the next NYT bestseller that I dreamed it would be—despite the amount of work I put into it.

  On top of that, I was in the middle of a personal crisis. Every avenue of my life seemed like a dead end that would not make me happy. I wanted to drop everything, move to some place new, and start over as a completely new person. I was deeply considering walking away from my path as a writer. I couldn’t eat, I hardly slept, I started having chest pains. I dropped nearly 20 pounds in less than three weeks.

  Clearly, I wasn’t in a good spot.

  It was at this time that my agent, Louise Fury, organized a phone call between me and Liz. We talked about Redux. We talked about a few of my other projects. Liz wanted more of my work and I started to feel a little bit of hope...

  It was also at this time that Liz introduced me to Robin Haseltine—my new editor. I was a little nervous to work with a new editor. I love working with Liz—we make a good team—and I wasn’t all that keen on the change. However, Robin and I hit it off from the
start. I’m beyond thankful for Robin who, out of everyone, was able to empathize with my feeling that something was off and able to really work with me to isolate what plagued me.

  The biggest problem? Ella wasn’t herself. She wasn’t shining like she had in Nexis. Sound familiar?

  So, Ella and I were in the same boat. I’m not saying Ella is, in any way, a Mary-Sue character (we don’t have much in common and I wrote her to be like that, and of my existing characters, I think Jeanette from For Your Heart is the most like me); however, the trials I put her through are universal and we just happened to be going through the same ones.

  Knowing this, I decided that the best thing to do was gut and do a full rewrite of Redux. Perhaps I was living vicariously —gutting and revamping her story like I wished I could my own. A character’s story is much easier to rewrite than one’s own. I had just a few months to do this, wasn’t wholly sure what I needed to do, and I was clearly overwhelmed.

  I met with my best friend, Christen, for dinner and I explained to her what I needed to do, but that I didn’t know what, exactly, to change the story to. She helped me reconnect with some long lost thoughts I’d once shared with her and that pushed me in the right direction.

  I came up with a solution, sent it to Robin, and got approval.

  Then, I disappeared into the writing cave—hunkering down in my small corner at my local Panera Bread every evening, every weekend. I toiled and toiled.

  My friends and family, though they missed me, were blessedly patient with me despite having to cancel a number of cons, girl’s weekends, dinner outings, and dates. Letting down my friends—the one area that hadn’t been suffering—wasn’t helping ease my anxiety.

  Despite now knowing what to do, it wasn’t easy to write Redux 2.0. Every other aspect of my life was still a shambles —directionless and clambering for my attention. I kept getting distracted and the days slid by.