Veracity

by Laura Bynum

  "The first thing you need to know about the Pandemic you experienced as a six-year-old girl is that it never happened."

  "I'm sorry?" The pencil slips in my hand. Produces a jagged line on the paper.

  "There was no Pandemic. All you saw about it, all you heard about it . . . it wasn't real. It was marketing. Spin. A way of scaring the public into doing whatever the government wanted. And it worked."

  "Marketing?"

  "Yes."

  "Like the honey?"

  "Yes."

  I let go of the pencil. Sit back in my chair. My parents died as a result of the Pandemic, which was not a plague. That was a marketing campaign. "There wasn't a virus?"

  "That's what I'm saying."

  "There was no Pandemic."

  "It was fabrication. All of it."

  I can't believe this. The whole of my life, the death of my parents, the death of so many . . .

  "I have to go." I'm out of my seat. Out through Lazarus's door and down the hall.

  "Harper!" I hear him call from behind me, but can't stop my feet.

  They're taking me up and down halls, into rooms, through tunnels that end in locked doors. Then I'm back where I started, standing outside Lazarus's office, my back against the mud wall. I'm sitting, legs splayed, dropping tears of fear and incredulity on the dirt floor.

  I can't stay down here with this big truth. It will crush me.

  My breathing is out of order. I can't figure out when to inhale and when to exhale. Lilly is here now. And Noam. Their hands are on my shoulders. Lazarus is speaking from behind them. He's telling them to leave me be. I have to deal with this on my own. But he doesn't know that I'm not strong enough. I want to stand up and grab our leader by his lovely face and tell him that I'm not the person he thinks I am. Despite the way I've been treated up top, I'm human, and flawed. And I can't stay down here with this big, huge truth in this crowded place that feels so much like a grave . . .

  "Harper!"

  I look up. Lilly and Noam have been pushed back behind Lazarus.

  "Harper Adams!" His voice is stern.

  I wipe away the sweat now pouring down my face and flick it on the floor. It makes a dotted pattern there, like a star.

  "We're not done with our lesson," he says.

  "Lazarus!" Lilly scolds. "She's just found out that the one event that ruined her life was a lie!"

  "Yes, and she'll have time to process that later. But right now, I need her to be aware of all relevant information. And if it makes her angry . . . perhaps all the better."

  No one says anything further. I wipe my face dry on the hem of my shirt and get up. When Noam goes to help me, Lazarus stays his effort with an arm.

  Again, I'm sitting across from our leader, trying to listen to what he's telling me. But his voice floats in and out like a poorly tuned channel. I'm full to the brim, yet Lazarus is trying to cram more inside my aching head.

  He tells me the Pandemic began as with any great shift of power. With fear. Fear of infection and the loss of security. Fear of loss. This led to a centralization of power Lazarus refers to as a Military State in which President and his Ministers were able to use the militia to control the masses. There were many members of the armed forces who wouldn't comply. Holdouts, Lazarus calls them. Men and women in uniform willing to die to preserve democracy. These troops bombed supplies and blew up planes. Some drove rigged trucks into hangars and stores of ammunitions. President lost most airborne capabilities but still managed to take hold of the nation. When the time for rebuilding came, he and his cabinet saw no reason to resurrect an air patrol meant for monitoring. People were doing a good enough job of that themselves.

  Only now, with a rebellion grown several hundred thousand strong, does President long for an aerial strike force. Thus, his development of BodySpeak and SKEYE. Satellites and Sentient Monitors to fill up the gap. Candace and I and whomever else we found during our own form of Sentient Patrol were to be President's aerial weapons.

  Lazarus tells me that once the vans came down your drive, there were two choices: swear fealty to the new government and choose the slate, or die by an injection of the so-called vaccine. But by then, the Pandemic had become a series of images. Pictures of infants with their eyes bleeding. Women and men vomiting up their own entrails. So when Blue Coats came calling, there was really only one option if a person got an option at all. Those who were too old or infirm were given the amber-colored vaccine they'd been shown on television. But this serum wasn't for curing. It was for killing. For getting the less productive and the potentially troublesome out of the way.

  My hands have begun to hurt. I look down and find eight half-moons cut into the flesh of my palms with my nails. "Tell me how."

  "They planned it out, just like any other campaign. Members of the former government studded international news with false reports of outbreaks. They even started a few themselves in small countries in Africa and South America. Then they started pitching it here."

  "Africa?"

  Lazarus nods. "There are other countries out there."

  I think of the Confederation website. The satellite feed showing an earth all brown and gray.

  As a Sentient, I must have known this. Another truth I've spent my life ducking to make time spent in the Confederation tolerable. "How many other countries?"

  "Hundreds."

  I can hardly speak.

  "What do you remember of the Pandemic?" Lazarus asks.

  "Just a little."

  I remember television and radio broadcasts. Commercials with busty, yellow-haired nurses holding syringes filled with gold liquid. Line boards telling us to go to our doctor appointments. Do as we're told.

  "As I said, not everyone got a choice," Lazarus says. "Children four and under were automatically slated. The government didn't think they'd developed enough memories of the beforetime to pose a threat. If you had a specialty, if the government thought you were of value, you were given the option."

  I set down the pencil. Pull my hands back into my lap.

  "There was no pain," Lazarus says.

  "How do you know?"

  "We know what was in the injections."

  I look around for a window. I need to open it wide, lean out, and inhale some fresh air.

  "Harper?"

  But it's all brown earth and dark sky. Everywhere I look.

  "Harper!"

  "Yes?" For a moment, I'd forgotten where I was.

  Lazarus tries to smile but the effort fails and leaves him looking surprised. "There was nothing to be done differently. And there's a very good reason you survived. I tell you this as a friend and compatriot: guilt is something you can't afford. Not now."

  I nod. He's right. "It's unimaginable."

  "Yes. But only because what we can imagine is so often a product of what we need to be true. Our past is littered with things like this."

  Lazarus cites examples of neighbor turning on neighbor. He speaks of populations that have been killed en masse. Whole continents of indigenous peoples, wiped away. One and a half million. Two million. Six million. Buddhist. Muslim. Jew. Places, numbers, and rationales for hate I don't begin to understand. They are what Lazarus calls genocides. Horrors committed by humankind that have been conveniently left out of our studies.

  Lazarus continues in full double-voice and immediately I'm writing out phonetic interpretations of words I've never heard and struggling to keep up. He explains the world of the beforetime. How pay cards used to be credit cards. How before credit cards, there was money--specially printed paper that could be traded for products and services and wasn't tied to a mainframe; therefore people could roam freely. Travel where they wanted. Buy what they wanted. Nobody had to know. Paper. I can't imagine it. Getting people to concede great worth to what was then such a ubiquitous thing. I wonder if they had to market it, put cute little bears on each bill.

  Lazarus tells me of the other countries beyond our borders. He says in actuality, we represent only a sma
ll portion of the world. That the geography we were taught in school was shit and someday we'll be using Confederation maps to wipe our asses. He tells me stories about faraway lands that catch me off guard because they represent the extent to which I don't know my own world. Australia. Asia. Mauritius. Madagascar. Beautiful words used to represent places with other languages and other religions. Places where women can teach in church and speak during services. Places where women are leaders. Where people can choose partners of the same sex, can live as they wish. Can marry, have or adopt children as their hearts direct, and not as the government prefers.

  I don't want him to stop but am utterly lost. "You used a word . . ."

  Lazarus looks down at my notepad. He's been so caught up in this potent history, he hasn't seen me writing all the words I don't understand. He flips through the pages full of long, poorly written words, eyes wide. "How many have you taken down here?"

  "Two hundred, maybe. What does alternative mean?"

  "Two hundred?" Lazarus blows out a breath. It takes him a moment to answer, "The word alternative is a lot like the word option. It means there are other decisions that can be made regarding some issue. Alternative routes that can be taken." He looks at me with an expression of forced calm, though I can see his thoughts. They're painted in broad strokes across his face.

  Lilly was right. This training can't be done in a month.

  I swallow so loud it fills the room.

  Lazarus pats my hand. "Okay. I can see there's no point in proceeding until you've had a chance to study." With a grunt, he's up and scratching his way across the dirt floor, through the canvas, and out into the hall. "Lilly!" he shouts. Pauses for a moment, then yells again. The drape is caught on his shoulder, providing me a look at his face and the discomfort with which he waits.

  Eventually, Lilly comes down the hall and stops in front of him, hands on hips. "What, Lazarus?"

  "We need to cede rights to Harper, temporarily."

  Lilly looks through the open canvas door. She studies my height, my hair, the width of my shoulders, as if she's measuring me for a State bridal gown. Then retreats until all I see is a pointed finger jabbing at Lazarus's chest. "Not for at least four weeks!"

  "We've spent years watching Harper. We recruited her, for God's sake . . ."

  Lilly steps forward. She's forgotten I'm watching or no longer cares. "I'm the current keeper and I'm telling you even a four-week watch period is too little time!"

  "We're about to go to war, Lilly. We've got to cede Harper all rights and we've got to do it now! She needs Reading Rights . . ."

  "You're making my point for me!"

  "Copy Rights."

  "A four-week watch period is especially ill-advised considering the war! She could be a spy! She could take it from us! Use it like they've used everything else about Noah . . ."

  "International Rights."

  "As if we're going to be needing them! She might lose it, Lazarus! You've seen how panicked she gets down here! What if she leaves it lying out somewhere? Or drops it down the toilet? It's the last copy in the nation!"

  "We've scanned it. We have a digital version."

  "Yes, and it's sealed by your own orders! You want her to go changing definitions? We need the original! Now listen, I'm the keeper and I say no! You want the council to turn over your own law, take it up with them! But until you do, don't come to me with this nonsense again!" Lilly marches off down the hall, Lazarus yelling after her.

  "What do I do in the meantime? How am I supposed to train her?"

  Lilly's voice comes back softened by distance. "You see now? I told you there wasn't time!"

  Lazarus comes back into the room and sits gently down at the table. But his mind is elsewhere. Maybe on how I'm to be trained while he's strategizing a war. "I need to end today's session early. We'll work on history and tackle your language skills tomorrow. Do you have any questions before I go?"

  I pause. "What am I here to do? Please, just tell me that much."

  "The answers I have for you will just leave you with more questions. Why don't you just process this much for now--"

  "Please," I interrupt.

  Lazarus sighs. "You're here to give us hope. To help us on media watch. To oversee the deconstruction of Tracking and Data when we're in office."

  "Do you know how people are looking at me?" I ask. "They're looking at me like I'm supposed to save the world. Please tell me what I'm supposed to do, Lazarus. Please."

  Lazarus clasps together his large, knobbed hands. Looks thoughtfully down into the cross-hatched digits, steepled like a church. "You know the Geddard Building."

  "Yes, but what's that got to do with this?"

  "At any given time there are thousands of Blue Coats sitting at their desks, doing whatever it is they do when they're not out on patrol. Their real duty is to watch what's in the basement. You know what's in the basement, yes?"

  "The redactors."

  "Fifty thousand of them, all set up on a docking tree and slaved to one master. We turn off a slave and we take out a hundred thousand slates at odd places throughout the Confederation. If we turn off the master, we take them all down at once."

  "So I'm supposed to find the master."

  "Yes."

  "And if I identify the wrong redactor, a slave instead of the master, an alarm goes off?"

  Lazarus nods. "Yes."

  "And?"

  "And Blue Coats will rush in and our man will be gunned down."

  "And who is our man?"

  Lazarus sighs. He doesn't want to tell me what I, somehow, already know. "John Gage."

  "How long do I have to find it?"

  "How long do you need?"

  I blink. "I'm serious. How long do I have?"

  Lazarus puts a hand on my cheek. "I know you want me to give you a date. But that's not how your gift works, is it? I could tell you exactly when we plan to go to war if I, in fact, had that information, which I do not. But what good would that do, Harper? You know what we need and you know that we'd like to have it before wartime, so just . . . find it as you're able."

  I'm frustrated. Even though, if I were Lazarus, it's the same answer I'd be giving me, too. "What if I can't do it, Lazarus?"

  "What if, nothing. What you can't do is start thinking like that."

  "People won't join us if their slates aren't turned off."

  "They'll join us. It'll take longer, and cost more, but they'll stand with us. We don't plan on leaving the other guys an option."

  Lazarus is trying to diminish the impact. Lives is what it will cost if I can't produce the redactor. "People will get killed trying to follow us. Just trying to speak like us." People like my daughter.

  "Harper, stop this." Lazarus has his hands over his face, fingers drumming against his forehead. He slides them down slowly. I'm expecting worry and disappointment. Instead, he's smiling. "You're going to find the master. I'm sure of it."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "The same way I know the sun's going to rise in the morning. When you know a thing, you just know it. You don't need evidence." He nods over to the door, where Lilly is waiting. "Now, Lilly's going to show you latrine duties. We each take a turn and today just happens to be yours."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MAY 29, 2045. AFTERNOON.

  Mr. Weigland is rushing me. Sweaty palms on my back, he pushes me without knowing, his mind elsewhere.

  "You ready for this?" he asks.

  I nod. "Sure." But I'm nauseated and sweating. Praying I won't lose my cool or pass out.

  Every few years, it's another go. Another test to see if we're ready. If we've been able to put aside our emotions, like computers, and read a scene properly, without the filter of compassion. With our eyes as well as our ears, in real time, and without the crutch of playback. Last time, a Sentient Monitor named Martha was chosen to take this test program out for a drive. She came back a wreck. Took a seat at her desk and didn't move for twelve straight hours. Not to go home
. Not to go to the bathroom. We never knew what happened. She was there the next day. The day after, gone.

  And now it's my turn up to bat for the Monitoring team. Management and the Executive Elite want me to knock it out of the park. They'll be bringing the suspect into an interrogation room so I can watch through a mirrored window as the Blue Coats do their thing. If I perform well, we'll be doing this kind of Monitoring from now on. Really, it's a prelude to the BodySpeak program. A way to see how viable it will be to turn Sentient Monitors into investigative police.

  "You doing okay?" Mr. Weigland asks from next to me. He's looking at our reflection in the closed elevator doors. Watching the floor buttons blink as we move down. 97, 93, 89, 86 . . .

  "Fine."

  We get off at the Murdon Building's basement level and trek through a tunnel that stretches for blocks beneath the city streets. We walk until the bright lights of an underground foyer come into view and, behind them, a different set of elevator doors. This is a hidden entrance to the Geddard Building. Somewhere beyond are all the redactors in the Confederation of the Willing. I can feel the heat of them from here.

  Mr. Weigland nods at the Security Guard. "Good afternoon."

  "Good afternoon, sir." The young man runs a mobile scanner over our necks. Opens the elevator doors and pokes in his arm. He hits the button marked 88 without looking. "Have a good day, sir."

  The room to which we're directed is medium-size. Large enough to comfortably hold Mr. Weigland, myself, and the two men in black suits who crowd us toward a long table. Their hands are odd-looking. Long and thin, the knuckles too large. Their faces are white and have slipped some over the bones. They don't look human, and not just because they're the oldest men I've seen aside from President and his Ministers. It's their colors. Red-brown through their centers. Charred black around the edges. The clouds wrapped around these two men look like fallout from a bomb.

  "She the Alpha?" one asks. He's frowning at my dove blue tunic with mother-of-pearl buttons. The shoes Mr. Weigland gave me for Christmas.