The Veritas Project

by C. F. E. Black

“So, you’re in?”

  “Whoa now. You haven’t told me anything yet.” He pats the seat of a chair next to him, but I decline.

  “Well, we’ll have only until Sunday night to make it happen, because that’s when the Director will read my thoughts and see everything. Exactly one week. But here’s what I’d like to do, or you to do, rather.”

  He waits, puppy-eyed, for the next words, the words I savor as they leave my mouth.

  “I want you to turn off my sensors.”

  Seven

  “Valeria, I see you have had an unusual level of stress lately.”

  Mr. Cunningham, one of our domus nurses and psych evaluators, pulls at a perfectly trimmed eyebrow like he’d rather be anywhere but here. His office is attached to our domus and smells like lavender. The smell is supposed to have a calming effect on us. Always trying to control us! Even through smell.

  My crossed arms probably add to my overall look of defiance, so I loosen them. “New labs and all.” Not to mention a plan and an accomplice that will render this man obsolete.

  Julius said he could do it. But today is Wednesday. Time is ticking.

  The tilt of Mr. Cunningham’s head and his long brown hair annoy me.

  “Which is typical. A lot of Order members go through the excitement phase of labs at sixteen. But your charts are indicating a definite spike in heart rate here,” he points through his translucent t-screen at a red mountain in my heart rate that, I notice with a flick of my gaze, occurred the day the Director followed me into the gardens, “and here,” his finger drags over to the day I outlined my plan to Julius.

  His pursed lips indicate he’s waiting for an answer.

  I stare back at him, the embers of anger kindling.

  “Valeria,” he snips as he leans back. “You were not in the Rat either time. We can always check the record, you know.”

  He means the record of our thoughts. The “book” the Director reads each week. Stored on our ultra-bit underground quantum computer. The only computer large enough and strong enough to map our every neuron and their every firing, our emotions and our fears and our thoughts, and store that data.

  He checks his notes. “Frequent visits to the box, unexplained bouts of tension”—his yellow eyes come back to me—“You’re headed down a dangerous path, Five.”

  Calling me by only my number is a slap in the face.

  “What would you like me to say? I have nothing to hide,” a lie, “which you clearly know from your empty threat. Read my thoughts.” Or don’t. “Go for it. Have fun.” I shrug my shoulders. “Or put me back in the box. But I know you won’t do that because I was just in the box, and you can see from your notes that I don’t handle it well, the recovery.” I’m leaning forward in my chair now. “And how would you handle it? Open up the floodgates of fifteen other minds and wash your own consciousness down the drain. I bet you’d wake up and be just fine. Get up and walk right out.”

  I know I’ve gone too far, but something tells me I dug my own grave the moment I ran from the Director in the gardens.

  He blinks his darkened eyes a few times, clearly unaccustomed to this kind of retort from an Order member. “Well, well. I think a few more hours in the Rat will do you well. And we’ll put you on restricted meals, too, just to make the Rat more fun. You will learn your lesson, Five, whether it’s the easy way or the hard way.”

  Yeah, and the hard way will leave me just like the first Marcus V.

  “Now, please recite from the Codex, Article 4, Section 1, for the record.” He taps the screen to indicate he’s recording now.

  I stand, ready to be done with this, and call up the words that have been carved into us since birth. The Codex. “I am my Order. My thoughts are the thoughts of my Order. I will not jeopardize my entire Order’s effectiveness with dangerous thoughts. Dangerous thoughts include the following: 1. Thoughts of discontent, 2. Thoughts of inappropriate emotional response toward another human being, 3. Thoughts of laziness, 4. Thoughts of inferiority toward another human being, 5. Thoughts of anger.”

  He nods, taps the audio recording off, and inhales, ready to dismiss me. “For to whom much is given.”

  “Much is expected,” I finish so reflexively I don’t even hear myself. I turn and march out of the office, aware that the words I just recited mean nothing to me anymore. Rebellion has taken over my brain like a virus.

  That evening, grouchy to the point of nearly breaking Codex with my discontent, I swipe my screens away and log my lab hours.

  “It’s not going to happen today,” I tell myself, angry that I haven’t solved the problem of everlasting youth yet.

  As I make my way out of the lab, I tap my wristband, hoping to catch a glimpse of Marcus. We can see where everyone is with the tap of a button. An amusing feature that, as kids, gave us the opportunity to pull pranks on people when we saw they were in the facilities. Marcus’ white dot shows up on the roof. A smile curls the edges of my lips. I haven’t sat with him on the roof in ages, not since we got our lab assignments. And I need a distraction. Waiting on Julius is like diamond-slicing every second the way people used to dice up brain cells for microscope slides. I head for the elevators to ride up to the top.

  To my surprise, Pru joins me at level six. Her lab is on level eleven.

  Her greeting: a lift of her nose.

  “Abusing the Sixes?” I ask, knowing that she was probably just using a free library pod on this floor.

  She sniffs. “Meeting with Prudentius VI,” she says as if this were obvious. From her streams, I’ve seen her already trying to groom her younger namesake to join her in the microtech lab in three years.

  I nod. “Right.” I haven’t checked on Valeruis VI in a couple of weeks. But he’s no geneticist, I can tell already. Maybe he’ll work in the bin lab like Julius, or the q lab tinkering with quantum particles. He’s a smart kid. Of course.

  “You are planning something,” she says suddenly, too suddenly for me to attempt to cover my surprised reaction. It’s a giveaway, and Pru smiles at her successful affirmation. “You funneled a lot of strange emotion into the stream on Sunday. At least, until now, I only assumed it was you. Now I know.” She nods her thanks.

  Snarling, I snap at her, “What are you going to do? You can’t know what I’m planning. Not till Sunday’s stream anyway.”

  She tilts her stilt-like neck. “Perhaps.”

  “And why would you care anyway?” The elevator dings open as it pauses at her lab level.

  She steps between the doors, looking back at me. “In a chain, one weak link threatens the whole.” She lets the doors close.

  She means our chain brain, as the outside world calls it. What a nice little metaphor.

  The rooftop. Oh, the air! The stars, hidden behind the city’s haze, pale in comparison to the blinking lights of Atlanta—each light a testament to human ingenuity and the desire to push harder, further, against the night. Marcus sits on the concrete, back facing me. He looks over at the sound of the door announcing my arrival. His smile flips into a frown in less than a second.

  A week and a half have passed since they cut off our paired streaming. In almost eight months, a week hasn’t gone by without an exhilarating dose of Marcus’ emotions and the grounding feeling that I mean something to him. Until now.

  “Hey.”

  His word lifts my insides and carries them away with the breeze. I turn, aware of the camera positioned by the door. Thankfully, they can’t put a camera in the moon.

  “Hey.”

  I sit down beside him, skin close enough to warm mine. The March night and my regulation attire don’t do enough to keep the chill bumps off my limbs. In the bright beam shining from the floodlight behind me, I can see all the little specs in his eyes that keep them from being perfectly azure globes. I wait for him to speak.

  “V,” he begins and stops. I hear that name only from him, and much less of late. “I want to tell you all of it, everything I’ve been doing, but …”

 
“We can’t, I know.” Anger wells inside, like vomit. I rub my hand over my fuzzy head. “Marcus, we’ll forget all this, I think.” I look back out across the trees toward the distant rise of buildings. “I think that is their plan. I’ll eventually forget that I used to stream with you.”

  His nostrils pump hot air. “Yes.”

  We sit, silent.

  “How’s your research?” I ask. We haven’t had to talk about these things in months.

  “Fine.” Bats and drones flutter by. “You don’t want to hear about the vac lab.”

  “No, but tell me anyway.”

  “Just working with Laelia III on our vac for the superflu this year.” He’s struggling.

  “Laelia III is beautiful and arguably as smart as we are. How do you feel about her?” No point dancing around the topic. A breeze raises every hair on my neck and arms. I still never told him about looking through his eyes at Laelia in the lab after our last stream.

  A pop of laughter escapes his mouth. “Feel about her? V, I respect her as my superior and my lead. I trust her judgment in the lab. I admire her research.” He looks at me with raised eyebrows. “What else?” He turns back to watch an outgoing drone. “I don’t want to stream with her. I don’t want her to know the things you know about me. I’m not sure how much clearer I can be.”

  I have his eyes again, clear and blue and bursting. “That is very clear.” A flood of heat spreads up my face as I stare at the cement, then at the peaks and reaches of the faraway high-rises. No accurate words exist to explain everything going on inside of me: explosions, yanking, gravity, a pipe about to burst. I swallow a gulp of air. “I miss streaming with you.”

  He puffs through his nostrils. “I miss it too, but only because I miss you.”

  His last word comes out round and full, and I think of everything that is wrapped up in that small word, but I’m not sure I even know.

  “Streams with you were my only way to sort out what is in here.” I tap my head. “I can’t stand funneling it all into full-Order streams. With you, it was easy. It helped me cope.” Building courage, I face his cold, awful eyes. “It’s the truth, Marcus. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He snorts. “What are you up to, V? You’ve hardly spoken to me all week. And Julius?” One corner of his lip rises. “What’s up?”

  The breath I’m holding stays trapped in my lungs for a few moments.

  “If I tell you, you’ll just get boxed, too.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m going to get Julius to shut off my sensors.”

  He blinks, but says nothing. Propping his elbows on his knees, he looks out at the city. Finally, he says, “How do you know it’s even—?”

  “He can do it. He just needs to access my sensors’ signal and then he can jam it. That’s the plan.”

  “How’s he going to—?”

  “He’ll just look for me in the brain files,” I cut him off again. “It’s pretty easy, actually. I pulled yours up the other day.” Before I can backtrack, the words are out and my confession feels like acid on my tongue.

  “Oh, you did?” The length in his vowels and the tilt of his head burn me. “Nice of you to pop in, you know, have a look around.”

  Jumping up, I start biting the insides of my lips into little shreds. “I’m sorry! We can’t stream anymore; you said it yourself! I just … wanted … I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Fine for you to peek in on my brain, but heaven forbid anyone do it to you.”

  His words expose me like an electron microscope. He’s right.

  He rests his forehead in his palms, staring at the concrete, then suddenly hops up beside me, his hollow cheeks red in anger.

  “You’re going to end up like him! Brain through the meat grinder, V. You’ve got to stop sneaking and prying and …” He exhales. “The Director reads your thoughts on Sundays. Isn’t that what you said? Then we have four days.” He looks at me. “Four days till you’re gone.”

  Like I’m outrunning a crushing boulder, I go stand by the edge, wrapping my arms around my chest. The edge exhilarates me, like it is daring me.

  After a moment of feeling the freezing updraft ripple my clothing, Marcus comes to stand beside me, placing one foot up on the lip. We stand there as the wind freezes our eyes and noses and ears. It feels good sometimes to be handled directly by nature, even if it causes some discomfort. All too often I feel like nothing more than the rats and chickens on Level Two. Out here, when I’m breathing air that wasn’t piped and filtered for me, I feel like I could just jump and they would have one less rat. But then there is Marcus beside me and my research to consider and I know my feet don’t really want to jump.

  Feeling a little courage from the cold, I pick up my argument. “The first Marcus cracked up because he was too shy, too closed off. They put him through so many sims and mods to make him open up that he just kind of exploded.”

  “My point exactly.”

  My fists harden by my sides. “He was obviously messed up from the beginning though. His genes were poorly written, like the people who wrote him used bad grammar.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  His disapproving remark bulldozes me. “What?”

  “You’re not thinking about the end result here. If you break this many rules, you’re done.”

  “Hey! Don’t talk like it’s beneath you to break the rules! We’re talking about freedom. Free thought. Don’t you want that?” I’m not cold at all now, even though his arms are covered in chill bumps.

  “Of course I’d love that, but you’ll have your moment of freedom, assuming it works, and then what? They’ll erase you and bring in some new Valeria, and I’ll be forced to think she’s the only Valeria who’s ever been.”

  “Just stop.”

  A moment of silence passes before he says, “I guess there’s a reason we’re not supposed to get attached to anyone.” My breath catches at the word attached. “I haven’t been much good in the lab this week, and now you’re telling me you don’t care if you get erased.” He holds up a hand to stop my response. “No, it’s all right. I can’t blame you for how you feel.”

  Words, words, words. How inefficient! I swallow, searching for what is true. “Marcus, I—” But there is nothing else to say. I place my palm over my stomach, trying to press away the suction feeling inside. Say something. “They won’t erase me. But they will try to box me. To get rid of all this rule-breaking. To get you out of my head too.”

  Oh, a smile!

  “But they can’t take everything. You know that,” he says. This is a secret only Marcus and I know. They weren’t able to fully erase his memories from before the Center. They’ve somehow filtered them out of full-Order streams, but not out of his mind.

  “Yeah, but they can try. It works for everyone else. I imagine it’ll work for us now, too. Maybe it was our streaming that kept us from forgetting.”

  He considers this, then shakes his head. “I don’t believe it. They can’t erase you from my head. Not possible. If somewhere in there”—he brushes a hand over my head—“you feel the same way, then it’ll be all right. They won’t win.”

  His touch makes me jerk away, though inside I’m lapping after it like a thirsty dog. “I feel something with you that I don’t feel with anyone else, if that’s what you mean. But—”

  Another pop of laughter. He’s full of things today: air and words and spite. “But what?”

  I want to savor this moment, to let these words solder the scattered emotions I’ve felt for months now, but the reality is closer to pouring water over a circuit board. “But, as you so adamantly pointed out, it’s against the rules; and you seem like you want me to follow the rules.”

  Marcus spits a little in shock. “Yeah, but it’s because I’m worried about you.”

  “Then stop worrying! You want me to follow the rules, but you aren’t even following them by telling me this! Why should I?”

  He turns to me so violently that I fear he will
fall. “So I don’t lose you, V.” His hands grip my shoulders. “Tell me, Valeria, do you want to get deleted? Because I’m starting to think you do.”

  As I stare, unblinking, at his perfect face, feeling the air rush over me, I try to fix this moment into my mind, somewhere deep enough that the streams and the box won’t rip it out of me. But he is lost to you now. Just admit it. “I don’t know.” The truth is the worst part. If I can’t have Marcus to help me see who I am, I will break as many rules as necessary to see for myself who I am. I will lose him. I will not lose myself, too.

  For a second longer, he holds me in a vice grip, drilling into me with his cold blue eyes. Then, without a word, he drops his hands and walks away. At the rooftop door, he looks at me over his shoulder. I feel it, that gnawing pull behind my navel. Say something, Marcus. I want to hear him say he understands and that I am right for wanting this freedom.

  Nothing. The roof door bangs shut.

  At breakfast in the Caf, Julius sits down beside me with a heavy landing. The sleek chair moves his frame slightly as it adjusts to his body shape.

  “Top of the morning, my dear.”

  Marcus, who breakfasts a few feet away across the table, looks up at Julius’ comment. His blue eyes seem darker to me. I quickly glance down at my piece of toast.

  “Geb what?” Julius says while cramming his face full of oatmeal.

  Yamaguchi takes her seat at the head of our table, her black hair pulled into a ponytail today.

  A glance at Yamaguchi serves as a warning to Julius. “What?”

  He pulls his tablet out of his pocket under the table and flattens it in his lap. The screen is glowing but blank.

  “And?” I can feel Marcus’ gaze on me every now and then, but I force my eyes to stay down.

  “Thab’s me.” Julius’ words are masked by half-chewed food.

  At the head of the table, Yamaguchi is engaged in conversation with Pru about her work in the microtech lab. I can hear Pru’s comments about her nanobots; Yamaguchi isn’t listening to Julius just now.

  “I don’t get it,” I say to Julius, still glancing at his tablet, waiting for him to show me something.