—————

This book is dedicated to it’s first and greatest fan, my mom.

Chapter 1: Mark

            On the last day of my life in Seattle, I woke up at exactly 7:13 am. I squeezed my eyes shut tight against the incessant sunlight screaming through the entire wall of curtainless windows right next to the bed, wishing I could close my ears the same way. I rolled hastily out of bed, letting my bones prop up my still exhausted body, not bothering to disable the alarm blaring through my small apartment as it had no off switch. Every harsh tone of the alarm sent a sympathetic thud of pain through the nerves in my head; the loud noise and sunlight further exacerbating the agony of my ever-present migraine. As I hurried from the bedroom through to the combination kitchen/living/dining room, eyes squinted almost shut, the pressure pads in the floor registered my weight and the blaring alarm finally shut up.

         I had only one focus: the nook in the wall to my left. There, under the small touchscreen, waiting for me was a glass of water and 2 pills, one white, the other yellow. I grabbed the pills off the tray and swallowed them both dry. I relaxed slightly, knowing that the strong painkiller and caffeine would start working quickly to ease the pain that was my constant companion. I took a large gulp of the water. At a touch, the dormant screen on the wall lit up, displaying my three options for breakfast; a small protein bar, a medium protein bar, or a large protein bar. All formulated to contain maximal nutritional value with minimal empty calories. 20% protein, 20% fat, 60% carbohydrates, 0% taste. My stomach turned at the thought, my nausea rearing up for the first time that day. I selected the small option along with another caffeine pill and another glass of water. Most workers could only have one pill per day. I was allowed extra caffeine because it made me more functional. I was special.

         “Order received,” said the pleasant but monotonous voice of my Residential Computerized Unit. “Your meal will be ready in approximately seven minutes.”

         I dragged myself back across the bedroom into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Red luminescent numbers appeared on the wall counting down the five minutes of warm water allotted daily. Yawning, I stripped off my gray night clothes and, as directed by the immaculately painted instructions on the bathroom wall, deposited them into a chute so that they could be cleaned, checked for damage, and then redistributed to some other mindless drone who happened to wear the same size clothes as me. Hurray for sustainability. I stepped into the shower, ignoring the soap and shampoo and simply standing under the jets. As usual, the water was not quite warm enough, but it would still probably be the best part of my day. The pressure and warmth did little to loosen the tightness in my neck and shoulders but it dulled the ache, at least temporarily.

         The jets shut off automatically at the end of the five minutes. I stepped reluctantly out of the shower and dried myself on the thin towel which had been placed on the small counter, as it always was, before I woke up. I left my hair dripping wet, unable to stand the pressure on my head and pulling on my hair it would take to towel it dry.  I stared at the blank wall above the sink as I brushed the overnight film from my teeth carelessly, missing several spots. Walking back into my bedroom, I saw my outfit for the day sitting in a small nook in the otherwise uniform gray wall. A pair of gray pants, a white shirt, and a blue jacket. It was September, after all and the AI couldn’t very well have its humans catching colds. This was the System, after all, where no one starved, or froze, or was homeless, or got to make any choices for themselves ever. I put on the clothes which, as always, fit well enough but wouldn’t have been flattering on anyone. The elastic waistband on the gray pants hitched halfway up as I yanked them over the hard bulge of the implant in my right thigh. It might have been my imagination but it almost seemed like they were designed that way, to remind me of the purpose of the small metal capsule I’d carried around under my skin since puberty, and the consequences for tampering with it.

As the pills started to take effect, the glare from the windows seemed to grow slightly dimmer, though I still avoided looking in that direction if at all possible.  I wondered idly what I looked like this morning, picturing bags under my eyes and the pallid skin that came from avoiding what sun there was in the dreariness of Seattle.

         By the time I was dressed, the RCU was informing me that my breakfast was ready and reminding me that my train to work would be leaving in 15 minutes. I picked up the tray out of the kitchen nook and a panel closed back over it so it blended seamlessly with the wall around it. I sat down at the table and immediately swallowed my second caffeine pill dry before taking a bite out of the colorless brick on the tray. It tasted exactly the way it had yesterday and the day before, and the day before that: dry and bland. I took small bites accompanied by large gulps of water. With my nausea I could barely stomach the bar but I had to eat with my pills or it would only be worse. I might possibly have been given a third morning pill for the nausea but seeing as it never actually made me vomit, the medical supervisor deemed it “functionally unnecessary.” By the time I finished most of the bar and all of the water, the RCU was reminding me that my train would be arriving in 6 minutes and that I should exit my apartment and wait for it on the platform.

         I got up, welcoming the familiar rush as the second caffeine pill took effect, it took 2 pills for me to relly feel it, and deposited my tray back in the nook in the wall to be cleaned and reused. As I pulled on the black socks and boots waiting on a retractable floor panel near the door, I resigned myself to another long day of work made all the longer by the dullness of my job. I stepped through the open apartment door and clashed my right wrist against the sensor panel beside the doorway. The door of my apartment slid out of its recess in the wall and sealed itself shut with a soft, pneumatic hiss. Today, I thought, will be exactly the same as yesterday. except for maybe the weather.

Thankfully, I was dead wrong.

         I walked out into the hallway and saw my best friend Michelle down the hall shutting her apartment door. She shook her own wrist elegantly as though the ring of metal there was some decorative bangle she wanted to show off. I shook my head, the pain seeming to shake with it. I had known Michelle since we were both kids. Our parents had worked on the same shift at their factory; near the factory I now worked in, so we had been neighbors our whole lives. Her clothes were the same as mine yet somehow they looked slightly better on her. Maybe it was the way she carried herself, so confident and self-assured; or maybe it was her unique, long auburn hair, cascading over her shoulders like the red light of sunset on open water. She was one of only 3 people I had ever met with red hair, although our teacher once told us that it used to be common. He had probably been joking, like when he talked about people having solid green eyes.

         “Hey Erin!” Michelle called with a smile, waving me over. “Come on, you’ll miss the train.”

         “Coming,” I replied, slowly shuffling towards her. Maybe I should miss the train, I thought. At least that might make my day slightly more interesting. But I knew I wouldn’t. If I missed my train, another would come in 30 minutes and I would have to work 30 extra minutes at the end of my shift and nothing would really be any different. I had tried it before. I had tried everything before.

         We walked down the hallway in familiar silence and out into the harsh sunlight of the train platform. It resembled a large balcony about 5×5 meters jutting out from the side of the building to the train tracks suspended in midair 8 stories high. There were already several blue and gray-clad people waiting on the platform and I could see other platforms both on my own building and on the identical ones surrounding it. They looked like the mistakes a child makes building a house of cards. As if the builders had accidentally extended the floor of a few sections too far and not bothered to correct the mistake. Undoubtedly, some of them were headed to the same factory as me. Possibly I saw them every day but their faces were so lost in the crowd of identically clad workers that they were unrecognizable to me.

         “Nice weather today,” said Michelle next to me, drawing my attention away from my depressing thoughts to the even more depressing weather. It seemed so inconceivable to me that anyone could actually enjoy cloudless days despite the logical part of my brain reminding me that I had too, once. Michelle’s smile was as bright and seemed just as falsely cheery as the sky she gazed up at.

         “I guess so,” I replied.

         “Oh right, you prefer it overcast, huh…” She filled in for me. “Well maybe we’ll get some clouds later. You never know what the weather will do. Some clouds later on would be nice wouldn’t they?”

         “Yeah, that would be nice,” my voice was flat and monotonous. Not that I would really be able to enjoy it if there were. I turned my gaze south and east towards the distant mountains. I had dreamed of exploring those mountains for as long as I could remember. Every time I’d brought it up to Michelle, she’d scoffed and quoted almost verbatim the facts that we’d all been told countless times, her voice seeming to change pitch slightly to sound eerily like the chipper voice of the System. She would remind me that those mountains were at best empty and at worst filled with dangerous dissenters. Somehow, though, none of it had ever stopped me from wanting to see for myself…

         “You want to come over after work and play some cards?” She asked enthusiastically, as though this was a new idea and not something we did almost every day, snapping me back to the present.

         “Yeah sure sounds good.”

         “Finally!” She exclaimed as the train glided up swiftly and whisper silent on its magnetic rails. I looked at the clock inset in the floor of the platform. The red numerals changed from 7:34 to 7:35 at the exact moment the door of the train aligned with the newly-appeared gap in the railing on the far side of the platform. As always, the train arrived at precisely the time it was supposed to. We filed into the train car and I grasped one of the hand holds, bracing myself for the lapse in balance I knew I would feel while the train was in motion.

As the train slid smoothly out, too-bright screens flickered to life all along the length of it. I averted my eyes, but I knew what the screens were showing. They depicted an aerial view of Seattle I had seen countless times. A massive sprawling techtropolis composed of 21 different neighborhoods, each with its own ‘equally’ important role in society. I wished I could block out the sound too, my head throbbed with every raise in pitch. According to the recorded voice in the video, everyone contributed happily to the greater good by working their 12 hours a day in interesting and dynamic workplaces. As if any of us have a choice in the matter I thought bitterly. Interesting and dynamic my ass; I worked in the same factory block as my parents and my grandparents before them. And what if, System forbid, I wanted to live in a different neighborhood? What if I didn’t want to spend my days repairing weaving machines? I knew I should count myself lucky. I had shown an aptitude for mechanical work at an early age. There were much worse jobs to have. But that knowledge didn’t stop me from wanting anything different, something more. If I hadn’t needed my hands free to brace myself I would have covered my ears.

         The screen jumped to a different video, this one about how the System began. I had been seeing videos like this for as long as I could remember. About how when they ran out of oil to burn, the governments of the world lost all control and the countries of North America descended into chaos. Fracking idiots, I thought. They got to enjoy the “Golden Age of Capitalism” and left the next 5 generations to clean up the colossal mess they made of basically the entire planet. Forcing everyone into these shit stack cities–

         “And out of that chaos emerged the System. A revolutionary new regime founded on complete equality, powered by technology, directed by artificial intelligence, and dedicated to protecting its citizens by producing endless, renewable electricity…” Recited the chipper narrator of the video. Sure it’s safe, I thought, as long as you do exactly as you’re told and never leave your neighborhood without permission. The video went on about the solar windows which covered the outside of all the buildings, collecting sunlight even as they flooded it into enter every residence and work site in the city. I glanced briefly out the train window at those same buildings, each one identical to the one next to it, and all I could think of were the thousands of miserable, overworked laborers it must have taken to construct them.

         Seeking darkness, my eyes spotted a group of strange figures at the front of the train, three or four of them clothed head to toe in bright red, ringed by dark shadows dressed all in black, standing out against the wash of blue and gray everywhere else. The ones in black were obviously Resolution Officers, their clothing dotted with plates of poorly disguised body armor on their torsos and limbs, with stun guns slung across their backs. Unconsciously I took a few wobbly steps towards the back of the train, sure I’d seen a bolt of electricity spark between the barbed prongs of one of their weapons. A chill ran down my spine, and I made an effort to distract myself from the painful memories that were surely forthcoming. I focused on the red strangers they were escorting instead. They all looked relatively young, around my age, and nervous, understandably considering their formidable escorts. In spite of myself, my curiosity was peaked. They were clearly too old to be a school group but too young to be senior administrators. I couldn’t think of anyone else who might be visiting the most boring neighborhood in Seattle. We didn’t get many strangers.

         Shortly after the video changed again, the train wound its way into the warehouse sector and descended to street level to deposit its first load of workers.

         “See you later Erin,” said Michelle brightly, as if she hadn’t noticed my reaction to the ROs. She stepped off the train and walked, red hair billowing behind her, towards an immaculate 2 story building covered, like all the others, in windows. Michelle was one of the very few people who held an administrative job. She spent her day in a climate-controlled office organizing shift schedules for people like me who worked in the factories. I waved goodbye to her halfheartedly and retreated back into my own thoughts as the opiate finally took full effect, like sinking into a pool of cotton balls. The pain in my head had dulled from sharp screaming agony to a low hum, like white noise compared to what it felt like without the medicine. I made up stories about the strangers to pass the time. The one with the long hair was a scientist, I decided. Here to introduce a new weaver she’d designed. One I’d soon have to fix, no doubt. They were always breaking, these machines of the System. As much as it preached efficiency, me and my coworkers never ran out of repair work to do.

I looked suddenly at the ROs then, fear prickling down my spine, as though they could read my thoughts and were about to arrest me as a dissenter, but not one of them so much as glanced in my direction. As though it could hear what I was thinking, the screen in front of me changed to a video all about the violent dissidents who, without the ROs to protect our cities, would burn them to the ground in the name of chaos and anarchy. Say what you will about their tactics, I thought, but you can’t argue that the ROs aren’t necessary to protect us from violent extremists. The train made an unexpected stop, at the school I hadn’t attended in years. Only the door to the very frontmost car opened when the train stopped. The ROs hustled their charges out ahead of them and the doors closed quickly behind them as the train resumed its regularly scheduled route.

Aren’t they a little old to be going to school? I thought. And if they are going to school in Textiles, why are they wearing the wrong clothes? I watched them let themselves be herded through the double doors of the large school building, still mostly empty at this hour, until the train rounded a corner, seamlessly, at top speed and they disappeared from view. My thoughts drifted, concocting all manner of entertaining explanations for the group of strangers, each one wilder and more improbable than the last. What if they’re rebels? I thought with a start, looking around me to be sure they’d all left the train, sighing, relieved when I saw only gray and blue and white around me. That couldn’t possibly be, I thought, reassuring myself. If they were that dangerous, the ROs would have taken them to re–well they wouldn’t have brought them here anyways.

In no time the train was pulling in at my stop. I stepped off it into more brightness than there should have been in front of my warehouse, only to realize that having been lost in thought, I had missed my stop and gone several blocks too far. It seemed my day would be different after all.

         The street where I was standing was both familiar and foreign to me. Apart from the buildings it was nearly identical to the one where I worked. The same immaculate pavement, the same sad little trees dotted every 4 meters or so, none of them more than about 2 meters tall, the same sunlight glaring everywhere. I turned around and started walking back the way the train had come, figuring that if I followed the tracks I would get back to my factory.

         Just as I was wondering for the millionth time whose brilliant idea it was to make all the streets identical—-BAM!—I ran right into him. The paper he’d been holding fluttered to the ground as he tripped.

         “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” I asked offering him a hand up. He accepted and I pulled him back to his feet, picking up the piece of paperhe’d dropped. A quick look showed me it was a map.

         “I’m fine,” he replied tensely. “Give that back!” he snapped, seeing the map in my hands. He snatched it back and made to walk past me but I side-stepped so I was standing in his way.

         “Where did you get a paper map?” I asked, curiosity sparking to life within me like a fire, a welcome distraction. It was none of my business really but I had only ever seen digital maps in school and, while I knew it used to be commonplace, paper these days was only used rarely. From my initial glance it looked like a map of Seattle, but covered in handwritten annotations.

         “What’s it to you?” he replied. Then, unconvincingly, “I found it—on the ground.”

         “What would you need a map for? Don’t you know where you work?” At that point I paused to examine him more closely. He looked to be quite a bit older than me, maybe in his mid-30s, with tanned skin, brown hair and eyes and… a beard? Men in this neighborhood didn’t grow facial hair in case it got caught in the machinery they worked with. Come to think of it, I had only met a few men with beards in my life and none nearly as long as his. Not only that but his coat was black, not blue and his features were contorted with anxiety. Whoever he was, he was definitely not from my neighborhood; maybe not even from my city. His hair was damp, the occasional drop falling onto the paler skin on his neck. Maybe he had, somehow, slept through his alarm and missed his train. But he didn’t seem overly rushed. It seemed today was ‘Mysterious Stranger Day’ here in Textiles. I must have missed the memo.

         “I get lost sometimes. The map helps me find the right building,” he spoke too quickly and even he didn’t seem convinced of what he was saying. He was obviously lying, but why? The flame of curiosity in my mind gathered strength as my heartbeat quickened with excitement.

         “If you want I can help you find where you’re trying to go,” I interjected hastily as he tried to walk away again. My curiosity had overtaken me and I was determined that he shouldn’t get away before I figured him out. Besides, something on that map had caught my attention, and I wanted a second look. He was a puzzle my bored mind was desperate to solve. And this one, at least, wasn’t surrounded my armed guards. “My name is Erin.” That seemed to catch him off guard, somehow.  He narrowed his eyes.

“Wha—How did,” He scanned my face, and, seeing my confusion, seemed to collect himself. “I’m Mark.” Adding cryptically “and I doubt you’ve ever been where I’m going.”

         “Maybe not… but you’re obviously not from around here. Whoever designed the new layout of Seattle was an idiot to make all these streets identical.” As soon as the words left my lips, I wished I could take them back. My eyes darted immediately to the purple REPORT button on the side of the closest building. Any anti-government statement was immediate grounds for arrest and transportation to one of the resolution centers dispersed throughout the city.

         I was paralyzed with fear. I raised one hand to my mouth to contain the words that had already escaped, and the other to my forehead to shield my now-burning eyes from the relentless sun. Surely Mark would rush to report me for fear of receiving a similar punishment himself. But he didn’t. He just stared at me with a look that contained, not accusation or shock, but rather appraisal.

“Yeah you would think there would have been an alternative way of arranging things,” he placed strange emphasis on his words and I got the feeling he was testing me in some way.         I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and whatever he was hinting at was lost on me.

“Yeah I suppose,” I replied blankly. He studied me carefully, although whatever he was looking for I don’t think he found it.

         “Maybe you can help me after all. I’m trying to get here,” he said pointing at an area on the map southeast of my neighborhood. The label on the map read “Queen Anne.” A similar label identified the textile neighborhood as “Magnolia,” however one of the nearly illegible handwritten notes showed the correct name. No new handwritten label had written over Queen Anne and I knew why. We usually just called it ‘the Ruins’. I took a couple steps back into the shadow of the nearest building so I could take a break from squinting and actually read the damn thing. Mark looked at me with that same odd expression before following me into the shade, looking over my shoulder as I read.

Of more interest than Seattle itself was the large, penned-in rectangle at the very bottom right corner of the map. The lines forming its borders crossed and intersected the faded, multicolored ones the mapmakers had originally printed in seemingly arbitrary places. Tiny, grey printed letters labeled inside the rectangle names a number of different places including “Cedar Falls Hydr—ject” the middle of the name scrawled over with much larger red letters which read “Seattle Rejects Camp” in the same bold, expressive writing as all the other additions to the map. What in the System did that mean? Rejects? Did they mean rebels? Was it a prison for dissenters? If so, why wouldn’t I know about it? The System had always seemed very eager to tell about the efforts it took to prevent crime. No, it couldn’t be a prison. So what then?

         Mark cleared his throat, looking down at me with an unreadable expression on his face. I remembered what I was supposed to be doing and wrenched my eyes reluctantly back up to the Ruins and turned back to address him. Without realizing, I had turned my back to him, as though to protect the precious information he’d handed me from his snatching hands.

         “That area was abandoned when the new city was built because it can’t support the weight of modern buildings. It’s not too far from here; but there’s not much left of it. Most of the structures have fallen into disrepair or collapsed completely. The landfill the original designers used to build that part of the city slid into the lake. No one’s lived there in decades.” What did he want with the ruins?

         “All the better,” Mark whispered under his breath. “Can you show me how to get there?” He asked in a normal tone of voice.

         “I think so,” I responded, my thoughts still spiraling. “ I’m pretty sure this train runs roughly southeast. Walk down this street as far as it goes then turn right. If you hit the lake you’ve gone too far and you’ll need to turn back south. I can’t really be more specific than that since unfortunately I’ve never been there.” He reached out his hand for the map and I made myself hand it back to him. His eyes bored into mine and his hand lingered on the map as mine did.

         “Unfortunately?” Mark asked seemingly in spite of himself.

         “At least it would be something different,” I answered half under my breath. Why was I telling him these things when I risked being arrested with every word? I had just met him! And yet for some inexplicable reason, I trusted him. Maybe because whatever it was he was up to was probably just as illegal as my treasonous statements. “What is this?” I asked suddenly, too impatient to work it naturally into the conversation and desperate for answers. I pointed to the red rectangle in the bottom of the map.

         “I don’t know,” he replied. And then, at my look of disbelief. “Honestly, I have no idea what that is. This isn’t actually my map I’m… borrowing it from a friend.”

         “I suppose if it was your map you might actually know how to read it,” I teased, my eyes still drawn to the southeast corner. We both laughed but I got the sense he was just as preoccupied as I was.

         “Why do you avoid the sunlight,” he asked out of nowhere. I was taken aback. I wasn’t sure I could ever remember being asked that by anyone other than a doctor.

         “I’m photophobic,” I responded at last, mechanically. “Bright lights make my headaches worse.” I didn’t bother watching for his reaction, too wrapped up in the mystery of whatever ‘Seattle Rejects Camp’ was.

         He hesitated and then pulled a second piece of paper from his coat pocket. After a moment he seemed to come to a decision and held it out to me. I took it from him. It was a little worn and folded over many times. I made to unfold it but he grabbed my hand.

         “Not here,” he said. “If you really want things to be different, follow these directions after you’re in Queen Anne. Go there tomorrow at 9:00pm for the change I think you’ve been looking for. I hope to see you there. Good luck; Erin.” He seemed to linger on my name as he said it, a sad, almost pained expression crossing his face. And with that he turned and walked off in the direction I had indicated, leaving me alone staring, dumbstruck at the note which, if he was to be believed, might change everything. I put it in my pocket and started walking.

I knew what this was. I’d been warned my whole life about the insidious recruitment tactics of dissenter groups. How they preyed on the weak and vulnerable. Was that what Mark thought I was? Weak? He wasn’t wrong. I could never leave Seattle. I wasn’t healthy, I couldn’t survive without my medication. He was lucky I wouldn’t report him. The glowing purple button on the building next to me seemed to pulse ominously. I wouldn’t report him, of course I wouldn’t. Unbidden, my mother’s face flashed to the forefront of my mind. I had almost made it all the way to work… stupid Mark! I brushed the image aside and started back in the opposite direction of that fake-ass recruiter. With his false hope and his sad smiles. Probably all carefully acted to make him seem sympathetic and trustworthy.

Well I would show him. No way was I going to that meeting. I couldn’t. I stomped angrily down the sidewalk, my head pounding. What did he take me for? I wasn’t some violent extremist! Even the thought sent shivers down my spine. I looked back over my shoulder, Mark’s retreating figure now only a small black and gray dot in the distance.

         I followed the tracks away from Mark and Queen Anne and within 5 minutes I was at my factory. I timed in and the computer informed me that I was 12 minutes late for my shift and that I would be required to work an extra 12 minutes at the end of my shift to compensate. I couldn’t have cared less. My thoughts returned to that large red rectangle on the map. I wanted to know what it was. It gnawed at me, consuming my thoughts. Maybe I could find out somehow. I was suddenly very aware of the hard metal shackle enclosing my right wrist, relaying my location back to the central processor every 10 seconds. Multiple times I reassembled the weaving machines I was fixing incorrectly and had to spend extra time putting them together correctly. By the end of the day one thing was clear: whatever the Seattle Rejects Camp was, most likely something boring, I had to know.

Pages: 1 2 3