by Masha Leyfer
“Huh. Well. I’ve never been that great at storytelling, so bear with me here. I actually joined before the Eruption. Back then, it wasn’t even called the Rebellion, and we weren’t fighting against the CGB yet, of course. Nobody knew that...this would happen. I was sixteen at the time, bordering on seventeen—a little younger than you are now. But you have to remember: back then was a completely different world. It had rules and customs and actual society. Doing what you did—leaving home at seventeen to join a rebel organization—was illegal. It wasn’t really even seen as a possibility. It just wasn’t something that could happen. Survival had a different meaning, then, because none of us really knew how much we had to fall. Towns like Hopetown were unthinkable in the first world, of course. And, well, I suppose you have to understand the political climate of the time to actually understand my situation. You probably don’t remember this that much, but things were changing. It looked like it was about to be the beginning of a new age. It was a tumultuous time, especially with people of my generation. We were at the forefront of change. And we wanted change, not for any particular reason. Just change for the sake of change. Young people often do, and that’s what moves the world forward. But not everybody was happy with moving forward. The generation of our parents started regressing to balance it out. They brought back customs last used hundreds of years ago. Some of them were amusing, but some were just moving the world backwards. Regardless of what side you were on, there was no denying that things were changing and everybody had a strong opinion on it. There was this cafe downtown. It was called…” she pauses for a moment. “Goddamn, my memory is failing me. I forget. I think it was named after some flower. But we would gather there Saturday evenings—we, meaning the young people of my city—and we would debate the hell out of everything. I met…” she chuckles sadly. “Well, let’s just say, I met quite a few interesting people there.
“Anyway, by that point in time, the Eruption was in its first stages. They had a formulated plan and were collecting resources, is what I mean. This wasn’t a known fact, or anything like that. You remember: the Eruption came as a complete shock to all of us. There was no way we could have known. But there were people who did. The Kerman couple were two of them. They both worked for...It wasn’t exactly the government. It was sort of an underground shadow government that did the work that the real government couldn’t. They arose with the tides of change as well. The government was starting to lose control and it needed help. That’s the best way I can explain the shadow government. I never fully understood exactly what it was, and I doubt the Kerman couple did either.
“Anyway, I was supposed to be in school, but…” She shakes her head. “But, well, quite frankly, I was doing some questionable things in my time. And...hmm, I’m not sure how best to explain this...Let’s just say, the Kerman couple did me a favor and I did them a favor in return. I was a pretty active hacker at the time. My job was to hack into the Blaster’s databases and find out useful information. It was difficult. They had multiple layers of protection. But I did manage to find out some valuable information.”
She stops there, but she says it with such inconclusiveness and leaves me so curious, that I decide to prod further; I want to find out what happened after that.
“And?” I say.
“And what?”
“What happened next?”
“Next?” She sighs. “Next came the first of a series of tragedies. Mike and Nathan’s father was working as a spy. It was one of the most important and one of the most dangerous jobs in their shadow government. Mr. Kerman was slowly rising in the ranks of the Blasters. Their organization didn’t have a name or an identity that could be traced back to them in any way. And they communicated through these obscure paper messages. They would leave one in the park, for example, and in it, it would have the information that they were passing along and where the next message would be. By the time that I joined, he had been at it for a pretty long time. A little under two years, I think. He was working on getting into their inner circles. Several months after I joined, he just about succeeded. The last note he got said, We are accepting you. Meet us here tomorrow at 2100.” She pauses and sighs again. “That was the last time we ever saw him. We, uh..he had this fancy watch. We found it at the Kerman’s door. There was a note attached to it with the words, Next time, we won’t be fooled. We never found out what happened to him. I mean, he’s dead, but we never even got his body.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well. That was a dark time for us. It just...we were so close to preventing the Blast. Can you imagine? If things had been just a little different, if we had one more shred of information or one more clue, the Blast might never have happened.”
“You could have stopped the Blast,” I whisper, realizing, for the first time, the scale of Big Sal’s past..
“We were so close, too. We did continue working, of course. It was the only comfort Ms. Kerman had after her husband’s death. But, as you can see….” she shrugs and gestures around. “I think right after the Eruption was the most difficult time. We were all sure, or I was sure, at least, that we would all die soon. Not only that, but the weight of knowledge was beginning to be a difficult burden to carry. We knew that we could have prevented the Eruption, and we knew that we didn’t. We would see people dying, starving, suffering, and I would always blame myself. We knew that it wasn’t our fault, of course, but that wasn’t even important. We were given a chance that nobody else had. We were given the chance to change the world. And we failed.
“Those first years, there was no Rebellion. There was just survival. We damn near died of starvation. It was just the four of us: me, Ms. Kerman, and the children. Everything was poisoned. You remember how it was. It was in that first year, however, that we began to call ourselves the Rebellion. Mike coined that. He kept referring to us as the Rebels. It was a type of cruel joke at the time, because we were barely human beings. We certainly weren’t rebels. But with his juvenile hope, Mike turned us into the Rebels and we became the Rebellion. I think there was no other option for us, in all honesty. Becoming the Rebellion was our second chance, our redemption for not preventing the Blast in the first place. Our second chance to save the world we let down the first time. And that was the start of this mess,” she chuckles fondly. I lean forward. This is the first I’ve heard about the shadowy past that nobody talks about. And it’s exactly like I expected it to be.
“Two years passed,” she continues. “We found Smaller Sally at a river bend. Her parents were dead. And that’s when I became Big Sal. I used to just be Sally. To be honest, I hated the name. Too many bad associations. I was happy to take on a new name, and with it, a new beginning of sorts. The following year was a little easier. We had adapted. That was also the year the CGB first became a real threat. So we had something to be rebels against. We began to make plans, the Kerman mother and I. She had this briefcase that had a lot of advanced gear from her pre-Blast job. That was all we had in the beginning. That and my computer with its solar battery. Sometime within a year and a half, Matt and Hannah joined, after their exile. By this time, the Kerman mother wasn’t doing well. She was sick with something. In half a year, she died. She didn’t go out well. She was vividly hallucinating and in great pain. Before she died, she told Mike that she wanted him to take over. But Mike wasn’t ready, of course. You can’t expect a child to lead a revolution, but Mike wanted to respect his mother’s last wishes. I think he felt the guilt of failure that his mother and I carried around. That was another dark time for us. We were practically leaderless and we couldn’t do anything. Mike was only fourteen and he was trying so hard, bless the boy, but the six of us were still struggling to survive. But in two years, after we had settled down to some degree, Mike decided he was ready, He took on too much, of course. Sixteen is still a child, and no child should have to lead a revolution. But we didn’t really have a choice. We had Rebekah and Emily by then. That’s when we really started going on raids. Mike’s a good kid,
he organized it well. That was seven years ago. It’s kind of amazing, to have seen the Rebellion grow so much.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah, it was quite a wild ride.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever see the Rebellion in quite the same way again. I’m not sure why, but it just seems...different now.”
“It’s because stories hold power, Molly. Stories define us. You know the definition of the Rebellion now. You know what you’re fighting for. Never underestimate the power of stories. Words are much more powerful than you think, remember that.”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Mike, Nathan, and I stand talking on the edge of the clearing. We are all weary from a long day of training. The weather is miserable—the air is heavy and cold and beginning of a storm tugs at the air.
“This isn’t half bad, really,” Mike is saying in response to my bitter complaint about the damp weather. “We have something to do with our lives and that’s extremely important. Because right now, society hasn’t recovered enough to do anything but-”
“Fight?” I supply.
“No. Change.”
“Hmm. Yeah, I suppose. Doesn’t change the crappy weather though,” I add under my breath.
“Either way, I think it’ll always be worth it if you have something worth fighting for,” Nathan says, tactfully ignoring my comment.
“Yeah, that’s true,” I agree. “What are you fighting for, Nathan?”
“Me? I’m fighting for tomorrow. Because what we have now sure as hell isn’t perfect, but the future still has a chance to be better. I wanna see that better world.”
“Hmm,” I say. I note how quickly he responded. Nathan always seems to have a response ready for questions like this. “What about you, Mike? What are you fighting for?”
Mike takes a moment to think, rolling up, lighting, and taking a puff of a cigarette before answering.
“If you’re fighting for tomorrow, then I suppose I’m fighting for today. Because you’re right: this world is far from perfect. But considering we may never see a better future, it’s the only world we have, whether we like it or not.”
They both turn to me.
“And you, Molly?”
“Aside from better weather?”
“You’re really bent on hating the rain, aren’t you?”
“I have the right.”
But I think about Nathan’s question. I’m really not sure what exactly I’m fighting for. It’s not my parents—otherwise I would have stayed with them. It’s not the Rebellion, because I’ve been fighting for a lot longer than this. Myself? No, I’m just a hollow shell of what I could have been.
So maybe that’s it. I’m fighting for what could have been. I’m fighting for the what ifs, for the things that will never happen but could have, if only we lived in a different world.
“If you guys are fighting for today and tomorrow, then I suppose I’m fighting for yesterday.”
“Yesterday? Why?”
“Um, well, several reasons. Yesterday is—was—a completely different world. So much was possible. And today and tomorrow are already corrupted. Yesterday is the only world in which the Blast doesn’t exist and in which we still had a chance at something different. Something better. Yesterday feels right in a way that nothing else does, you know? Yesterday is the world of possibility, and who knows? Maybe all the things that could have happened wouldn’t have anyway, just because we didn’t know how much we had to lose, so we wouldn’t fight for them like we do now. But at least they had a chance. And that’s worth something.”
Mike examines my face as if trying to understand something. He continues smoking.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“What for?”
“Yesterday is over. And there’s nothing we can do to bring it back.”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
I stand in line for lunch, listening to Big Sal’s familiar voice chastising us for our shaky line formation.
“Keep the line together, you’re not barbarians, are you?” she shouts. I wonder if she would shout at us even if we ever did form a perfect line. I spear a piece of meat with my knife and sit down on a log. In several seconds, Anna sits down beside me. She doesn’t say anything, but smiles at me and begins eating. I smile back and watch her out of the corner of my eye. She possesses a type of quiet dignity and holds herself with immeasurable grace. All of her movements are different, almost more than human. She never makes any unnecessary movements, either. Every gesture has a meaning. She even eats differently, somehow. She chews thoughtfully before saying:
“Molly, you said yesterday that you’re fighting for the past.”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
She only shrugs.
“And Mike said that yesterday is over. I wanted to know if you believe that.”
“Oh. Um, I’m not sure. I mean, yesterday is over, but it still matters. It lives on in different forms, so yes, it’s over, and maybe we can’t bring it back, but as long as we remember it, it will always be relevant.”
She nods.
“Yes,” she says. That one syllable has so much meaning when she says it, that although I’m not sure exactly what it means, I nod in vigorous agreement.
“What about you, Anna? What are you fighting for?”
“Everything,” she replies immediately.
“Everything?” I repeat.
“Yes. I’m fighting for today, because today is reality, for tomorrow, because tomorrow is the reality we want, and for yesterday because yesterday is the only reality we will always have no matter what, and because all three are part our lives and none can exist without the other. I’m fighting for this Earth and everything it has to offer. For the natural world and all its beauty: the changes in the seasons, the blooming of wildflowers, sunsets, starlight, reflections in water. I’m fighting for all the Earth’s disasters, because what is more powerful than the ground itself shaking? I’m fighting for the culture that humankind has created. That’s thousands upon thousands of years of tiny steps that, in the end, paved an entire road. We’ve been lucky enough to walk up the road this far. Now it’s our time to pave it further.
“I’m fighting to get back home. I’m fighting for us, the Rebellion as a whole, and everything that we stand for. Everything that we’ve built together. Everyone that we are and all of the stories that lie behind us. I’m fighting for myself. I’m fighting for my legacy. There is a difference between being dead and being gone, I think. Being dead means your heart stopped beating. Being gone means you no longer matter. You can be dead but not gone, just as you can be gone but not dead. I don’t want to be gone. Even if no one remembers me, even if no one cares, I want to matter.
“I’m fighting for our cause, but I’m also fighting for the enemy, because while they may be the villains of our story, we are the villains of theirs. I’m fighting so that everyone has something to believe in.
“I’m fighting for this universe, because it is the only one I know and even so, it is unbelievably vast. I’m fighting for all the other universes, because some are stricken with war much worse than we have it and some are at peace. In some we lose, but at least in one, we have to win. At least one.
“I’m fighting for everything, because you can’t have a life without the infinitely many aspects that make it up, and you can’t separate one from the other. All of the are worth fighting for, because good or bad, they constutute everything that you are.
“I’m fighting for the sun to rise the next morning and for the Earth to keep turning. I’m fighting for the stars to shine and the wind to blow. I’m fighting for the right to be, because even when everything else is taken away, that is the one thing we will have left to hold on to: the right to exist, the right to live our lives, the right to have a meaning. And before that right is taken away, we must win all of our battles. Otherwise we may consider ourselves gone. And that is something I cannot accept.”
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Nathan and I walk to the oak tree after dinner.
“Hey, Molly,” he says, “if you could summarize your entire self in one sentence, what would you say?”
“Ooh,” I frown. “Give me a moment to think. You probably have an answer to this already, don’t you?”
“Actually, I don’t,” Nathan smiles.
“Well, then you think about it too,” I add.
I consider what Nathan has asked me. To summarize myself in just one sentence. Everything that comprises me within several words. Everything that I ever was, am, and will be, packed into the space between two periods. I need to put every truth and every lie and every inbetween that I am into something so small.
I could define myself now, maybe, or one year ago, or before the Blast, but to get all three of those and every shade of being that I ever was? Everybody is made up of a thousand different layers that we shed and pick up as the years go by and we try to become the person we were meant to be. Each of our layers are so different, that they are practically separate people, even though they all make up one human. I doubt that I can encompass every layer with one sentence.
So then what it is exactly that makes me, me? Every bit of myself, no matter how different must have something uniquely of my own. Or am I just a collage of other people? Is that all any of us are?
“I’ve decided on my sentence,” Nathan says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s, Today, the future is still open.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, if there is a today, there is a tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful.” I pause. “But I have to ask: what if there isn’t? Isn’t a tomorrow, I mean?”
“As long as there is a today, there will be a tomorrow,” Nathan repeats. “If there isn’t a tomorrow, then tomorrow must be happening already.”
“So tomorrow is the end of the world?”
“No,” Nathan laughs. “The truth is, tomorrow...tomorrow isn’t real, in the traditional sense of the word. Neither is today or yesterday. They’re just constructs that we put in place to understand our world. And while they may not be real, they are still important. They’re real in our minds and it’s real today, but tomorrow, what we call ‘tomorrow’ today will become the new today. And we can fight for it for our entire life but that won’t make it any realer than how we envision it.”