by Schow, Ryan
“For what?”
“For whatever. Peruse the internet at will, beat the bishop, take a nap, pick your nose, your teeth or your ass. It’s your time. Your thirty minutes of freedom.”
“When you say, beat the bishop…”
Rolling his eyes, he made the classic jerking off movement, then stopped so as not to draw attention to himself and said, “Whatever you want, man. You’re welcome.”
Han was born in Hong Kong to a wealthy family. When the city was bastardized in 2019 by China and taken by force, Han and his family fled to America, never thinking that nearly ten years later they would be subjected to the oppressive regime once more.
Han’s father killed himself in early 2028. He said he wouldn’t go through that again. Han found his mother a month later with a needle hanging out of her arm, her head flopped over sideways, her mouth a bit foamy. She didn’t have a pulse.
Like his father, she found a way to escape the Communist Chinese regime, a.k.a. the Chicoms.
Han did not possess the courage of his parents, so like Logan, he toed the party line, finding what few comforts he could, staying off the radar at all costs.
The clock on Logan’s computer said eleven-thirty. His stomach growled and he had to pee. Ms. Yeung was eating now, and soon Harper would leave for lunch. Logan would follow her, hoping to find something through external observation, perhaps a social hack, if he found her interacting with anyone. Ms. Yeung had offered this as a possibility for him, should he need it. He didn’t think he would, but now he knew he did. As stern as the woman could be, at least she’d given Logan free reign over his actions.
The woman’s words were burned into his head at this point: “Harper Whitaker is a high-priority target until I tell you otherwise. Do what you must to find her betrayal.”
Han informed him that Ms. Yeung said this to all the security engineers. He also said he knew for a fact that everyone would eventually go under surveillance. Byron Chance ruined that for SocioSphere. If someone as squeaky clean looking as Byron could betray the organization, and the state by proxy, then in their harsh authoritative minds, anyone could betray anyone. This meant no one was safe. He put Byron out of his mind, focused on his task.
As he watched Harper through the built-in camera in her computer, Logan saw a woman working diligently, writing code pursuant to her duties. It was the same thing day in and day out. He stretched, yawned, thought of his maybe-girlfriend Skylar.
Today was their two month anniversary. That morning he’d asked if she wanted him to do anything special for the evening. She looked at him funny and he made no more mention of the subject after that. He was still unclear on whether or not they were even dating. He was lost in thought about this perplexing subject when the door to his closet opened up and light flooded in. He sat up straight, shielding his eyes from the bright lights. Standing before him was the ocular nightmare in a bad pantsuit and a wrinkled satin button up shirt.
She should be eating!
Containing his panic, he said, “Yes, Ms. Yeung?”
“You are failing me,” she hissed. He gulped, said nothing. “Stop failing me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She slammed the door shut, putting an exclamation point on her assessment and her thinly veiled threat. Logan needed a good two minutes to get his heart rate back to normal. His mind refused to settle down, though. For a second there, he thought this was his last chance. That’s what they called it when you were sure you were a goner: being Last Chanced.
Byron Chance had his brains blown out at work late last year, on the third Thursday of November, the day America used to have Thanksgiving. Instead of seeing turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, everyone in SocioSphere watched the back of Byron’s skull eat a bullet. Maintenance was picking his teeth out of his monitor for a good thirty minutes after that.
That was 2029, last year.
Like everyone else, Logan was terrified of being Last Chanced.
Doubling down on his efforts, he vowed to find something on the elusive Harper Whitaker. He just had to! Should he ask for surveillance authorization of her cell phone, or her home network? Could he access the digital files for the last week?
Dear God, he couldn’t believe he was thinking like that! Then again, fear was the new climate. The new governing forces of the west coast, specifically California, ruled with an unsympathetic fist. The Chicoms gave no warning. They gave one no quarter.
Killing Byron Chance last year was like the scared-straight program for SocioSphere. Now that California had capitulated with the Chicoms—their influence burrowing deeper and deeper into everyone’s lives via the Social Credit Score System—it was vital to steer clear of suspicion lest one be Last Chanced.
After Byron died, he realized there would always be an example under such a totalitarian regime. Continued obedience required such penalties. Subservience through fear. That was the communist rule. That was why he agreed to be a snitch in the first place.
That was how Logan hid.
His philosophy—the best way to move out of the spotlight was by becoming the spotlight—had served him well so far, but he was failing now. He could feel it.
“Do you hate it?” Han asked him a few weeks after he took “the promotion” to security engineer. Han was twenty-seven years old, a funny kind of happyish guy for the times, but Logan felt that being a snitch bothered him as much as it did Logan.
“Yes,” he said.
Han shook his head, relieved, then he said, “I freaking hate these people. Not the Chinese people. Most of my friends are Chinese. Their rulers. The damn Chicoms.”
“They’re our rulers now, too,” Logan said.
“Don’t remind me.”
Logan knew his friend was referring to Ms. Yeung on one level, but he was also thinking of their oppressors as a whole. These tyrants found ways to be cruel on an entirely different level.
“I hate it, too,” Logan confided in his friend. “Being a snitch, I mean. I was right next to him, you know. Byron Chance.”
“You were?”
“My ears rang for about eight hours after that,” he said, referring to the gun that fired the bullet that killed Byron Chance. “Plus there was blood in my cubicle. And a small broken tooth.”
After that day, Logan vowed to steer clear of the Resistance, even if he wasn’t directly involved. He wasn’t. But that’s what the Chicoms told everyone. They said Byron was part of the Resistance. Everyone nodded unquestioningly, like good little slaves. The Chicoms were clear. Doing anything against Chicom policy was seen as dissidence, therefore, resistance.
Resistance got you death.
Before he was elevated to Security Engineer, Logan was one of the key programmers at SocioSphere. He was in charge of writing the new censorship algorithms—a task of monumental importance. If the coding was not precise, the algorithms would produce false data that would be used in a person’s trial. He wanted it to be precise, since he still cared for accuracy when a person’s life and freedom was on the line. He became a master coder. He thought this would give him job security. He never imagined this would be the reason Ming Yeung would have him monitoring coders like Harper. These were his people. He’d know exactly what to look for and she knew this.
Dear God, he hated that woman.
It was approaching noon. He was sweating badly, the air stale, stripped of oxygen. That’s when he saw it. With his heart still racing in his chest from Ms. Yeung bursting into his closet, he saw it. The incongruity in Harper’s code had him sitting up in his seat, running his hands over his face, taking a deep breath. He would have expected to see just about anything, but he didn’t expect this. He rewound the video, looked again. Damn.
Blue Lark.
Chapter Two
Logan extracted the code, saw what Harper buried in the otherwise normal string. A warning? Some kind of identifier?
This is why she’d been flagged, he thought, half thrilled at finding something, but half mortified
because there was going to be another Byron Chance and her name was Harper Whitaker.
He thought about going to Ms. Yeung right then, but he calmed himself first. He had a traitor in his midst. Another member of the Resistance.
A frown found its way forward, the perspiration gathering along his temples leaking down the side of his face. He wiped his skin, swiped the moisture on the thighs of his pants and leaned back in his chair. Massaging his fingertips into the bald skin of his head, he had a sudden spasm of reason. If he told on her, she would die.
Just think…
He could report her after lunch, maybe tomorrow.
Flashbacks of Byron’s head exploding outward, half his face coating his computer and the surrounding cubicle, invaded his thoughts. His stomach rolled, then tried to settle. He wasn’t anxious to see another employee killed, but he was less enthused at the prospect that he was the one who found her.
She’s a traitor to the state, he reminded himself. The proof was in the code. The code he could not take his eyes off of.
That’s when everything hit him.
Blue Lark.
Sitting up straight, panic setting in, he started poring over her work line by line. The sweat of consternation—the joy of completing his task mixed with horror for what was to come—quickly turned bad. He knew what this meant.
It can’t be. It could very well be. Oh, no…it was.
There was no way Logan could turn Harper in. Not now. Not when he saw those two words smashed together. Not after he made the connection.
This revelation thickened the already stifling air in his coffin sized workspace making it hotter, more hostile to his lungs. He tried to breathe, struggled for a moment.
Leaning away from the monitor in his chair, he tried to stop the sound of a million buzzing bees in his head. The possibilities terrified him. If he was right, as he feared he may be, he was only two people removed from this treachery.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he muttered.
Wiping the sweat from his face with his shirt, he continued to watch her. Harper was going about her day the same as every other day. Yet she was committing treason before his very eyes. What she was doing would most certainly get her killed, yet there she was, doing it.
He leaned forward, so close to the monitor that the image of her felt burned into his brain. From there, he studied her every nuance. He looked for the tell.
“Who the hell are you?” he whispered under his breath.
Up close, her dry skin looked extra dry, for there was not a hint of perspiration. Switching to her eyes, he saw neither concern nor deception. They were just flat and lifeless, like robot eyes, slightly shifting as she worked through the code, her fingers moving in fiery bursts.
She was good. Too good.
The woman was a member of the Resistance, for sure. That’s why Ms. Yeung needed him to watch her, to see what she was doing. The Cantonese nightmare was right. Still, he couldn’t concentrate. Not with those two words rolling around in his head. Those two words jammed together in between a string of code was what tore him out of the doldrums of the day.
Blue Lark, written as bluelark.
Now he was thinking of Skylar again. His girlfriend. Well, his maybe-girlfriend. As much as he was looking for signs of scandal in Harper’s life, he was also looking for confirmation of a formal relationship with Skylar. He was her boyfriend, right? Am I? After two months together, one would think there would be some clarity with this, but Logan was just as confused as ever. The truth was, maybe he was dating her and maybe he wasn’t.
Drifting off, he tried putting that equation together.
They lived together, but did they really live together? They had their own bedrooms, but he made a significant amount of money, so she didn’t pay for her room. And the one time she let him have her…well, that was a revealing moment. That’s when he’d seen the blue lark tattooed on the front of her thigh.
“What’s that?” he’d asked as they stood close in the shower for the first time.
“It’s a blue lark,” she said, her head under the water, her naked body on full display.
He was staring at her tattooed thigh, the water beading on her skin. This was the only mark on her otherwise lean body. Well, there were the bruises and the scars, but those were a sign of the times. It was easier to hit someone with a stick than demand compliance. Like Byron whose teeth had been blown out of his mouth and into the shattered computer screen. That death sentence, in itself, demanded a greater adherence to the rules. This was before Ms. Yeung. Still, she knew about this and called it what it was: learned compliance.
Or more formally, being Last Chanced.
About the blue lark on her leg, Logan said, “I didn’t know there was such a thing. I thought larks were brown.”
“What’s real anymore?” she asked, turning around, letting him see her bare back and her butt. “It’s only real if they tell us it’s real.”
“True,” he said, intimately familiar with their oppressor’s ways. The lie is the truth and the truth is a lie, unless they say otherwise.
She rinsed the soap off her body, then turned back around. “My grandmother loved larks,” she said, looking at him with the hint of a smile. “They were her favorite bird. She used to tell me how their little bodies were like sparrows, but their beaks were like finches. When the Chicoms killed her, she had been birdwatching. They accused her of spying.”
Standing before him, displaying not a hint of her usual modesty, her face was a look of complete seriousness, a look he hadn’t seen before.
“They just shot her?” he asked.
Wiping the water from her face, smoothing her wet hair back over her shoulders, she said, “I ran in the room where she’d hit the wall and I crumpled before her. Cradling her, watching her cling to that last hint of life, I turned her head to mine. She was still alive, her small binoculars still hanging around her neck.”
“Where was she hit?” he asked.
“Here,” she said, touching his chest, just below the clavicle. “But from behind.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t shoot you,” he said.
The look on her face changed. She was going back to that moment, and for the first time, Logan was sure he was seeing the real Skylar. All measure of pretense was gone from her expression. She was now laid bare before him.
“As she sat crumpled against the wall, my grandmother craned her head to look back up into the sky,” she said, her eyes lost in that faraway look. “She said the lark was so beautiful, as beautiful as the deep blue sky. That’s when they shot her again. The second round shook her head, her blood hitting my face like…like getting spritzed with mist from a spray bottle.”
Watching her, Logan wasn’t sure if that was water from the shower or tears leaking down her cheeks. Skylar was as tough as they came, certainly not one to shed a tear. Even over such a torturous memory.
Perhaps he’d overestimated her. Everyone has feelings. Some people just bury them deeper than others.
“The last thing I heard before they hauled my mother out of the back room and interrogated her were the words ‘blue’ and ‘lark,’” she said. Skylar turned back around, and in the muted shower light, Logan traced his finger over several faint lines of scar tissue
The touch was electric. But the reasons for the touch unnerved him.
He pulled his fingers back, not wanting this to be their first physical interaction. He could not stop seeing the evidence of a hard life streaked all over her back. Instead, he let his gaze wander about her body, looking less now at her butt and more at the other marks. He wondered if she knew where each and every one of her scars came from, the same way he could look at all the bruises on his body and know where each of them came from.
“They beat you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“How old were you?”
“This happened eight years ago.”
“That’s when they first assumed control,” he sa
id.
They were extremely harsh back then, but they did it in secret. Now it was out in the open. Thinking of her, of her dead grandmother, it drew so much hate from his heart.
“I was sixteen,” she said.
He was a bit taken aback by her age. They never discussed it, but he assumed she was closer to his age. He was twenty-nine.
“My God,” he replied. “You were a child.”
“After they finished with us, I didn’t know my own name for three weeks. My mother thought she lost me. And afterwards…after what they did to me…I couldn’t…I can’t have children.”
“They won’t let us anyway, if it’s any consolation,” he said.
“It isn’t, but thanks for trying.”
“So why the blue lark?”
“It’s all I could remember of her back then. After the coma. When I was trying to find my way back, my mother said the strain on me was monumental. I thought I was talking to her, but she told me that all I kept saying were those two words. Blue lark.”
“You tattooed this as a reminder,” he said.
“Yes. But it’s also a war cry. A reminder of both her and my need to avenge her.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
She started to put her hands on him for the first time. He didn’t have a great body, wasn’t great looking. He was as plain as Harper. Even he knew this.
“I’m going to burrow in like a tick and kill them from the inside,” she replied.
Skylar said these terrible things as she let her hands wander down south, catching him off guard, turning the moment from sadness into exhilaration.
Now that he was thinking of it, now that he saw those words buried in Harper’s code, he realized Skylar was simply using that time in the shower to pull herself out of that moment, that she’d been using Logan all along. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. He was merely a means to an end.
“Aren’t we all?” he mumbled quietly in the dark as he watched Harper type.
Chapter Three