Chapter 3: Seattle Rejects Camp
The train car was mostly empty, just me and a couple of matching admins down at the other end. They looked my way as the doors slid shut behind me, sealing me in. I wiped sweaty palms on the legs of my pants and nervously ran my fingers through the short, shaggy hair on the back of my neck. I might be dressed the same as them but would my hair mark me as a factory worker? I could feel them staring at me, boring holes in my skull as I hunched my shoulders, looking pointedly in the opposite direction. This was no good. They worked for the government. Probably had ROs over for dinner. I would have to find a way to fit in or they’d report me for sure.
I remembered what Michelle had said at dinner the night before. She had ludicrously thought that there was a world in which I could be one of them. An image of Michelle flashed through my mind, tall and proud, and composed. I straightened my posture, trying to make myself as tall as I could. Why was it that admins always seemed taller than everyone else? The pair at the end were both almost 2 meters. Attempting my best Michelle impression, I clasped my shaking hands in front of me and raised my chin so high I was almost staring at the ceiling. I lifted my hand to brush nonexistent curls over my shoulder then immediately dropped it back down, trying my best to keep acting like I wasn’t the most self-conscious I’d ever been in my life. What would Michelle do? I thought.
I took a deep breath, turned towards the two men at the far end of the car, made eye contact with the one on the right and gave what I desperately hoped was a polite but uninviting smile. I must have pulled it off because he returned the expression I had been aiming for. The look said ‘I acknowledge your presence but I don’t want to talk to you, have a nice day’. I wanted to sigh in relief but that would be breaking character.
When the train finally pulled in at the first station of the energy neighborhood I was the first to get off. I was instantly lost. The streets looked exactly the same as the ones in Textiles, down to the tiny, wilting excuses for trees. The only perceptible difference between this neighborhood and mine was a subtle change in the exact type of industrial smell it had. It could have been the absence of dye smells, or the presence of whatever they used to manufacture solar panels and batteries. It smelled all the more strange for its almost-similarity.
Judging by the height of the buildings around me, I was in the working section of Energy. That was a stroke of luck at least. The residential buildings didn’t have ground floor entrances so they’d be a lot harder to sneak into. I had to find a screen somewhere, and it had to be somewhere people wouldn’t be watching too closely. I started to feel suspicious, standing in one place like I didn’t know where I was going. The clouds were just starting to part. I chose the direction that would take me along the edge of Energy without going further into the neighborhood and set off. The last thing I needed was to be stranded outside my neighborhood in the sun with a migraine flare-up and no access to drugs.
I walked with purpose like I knew where I was going, all the while scanning every doorway I walked past for a likely building. They were all full to bursting with people, wiring relays and assembling thousands upon thousands of solar windows, batteries and less recognizable electrical components. There were at least 10 times as many workers in the Energy neighborhood as there were in Textiles. Just when I was about to give up I found what I was looking for. I stopped at an old, decrepit building with dormant construction machines standing sentinel in the doorway. It might be perfect: old but, by the looks of the windows, not old enough to predate the System. I turned my head to either side to make sure no one was looking. The street was empty apart from me. I stepped inside.
At one time it must have been a factory. I spotted broken conveyors, belts snapped in half, robotic limbs with their appendages dangling from thin wires, where they weren’t torn off altogether, and on the far side, a wall largely open to a loading dock long since empty of trucks. In some places the ceiling had collapsed in large chunks of concrete, and nearly every window was smashed to pieces. Looks like they already started on the demolition, I thought. I made my way carefully around the edge of the room, straining my weak eyes for any light that might signal an intact, usable screen. All I saw were dim flickers as the grey light reflected off the glass shards littering the stone floor and filtered through copious dust clouding the air.
As I approached the nearest corner I came face to face with a steel door that looked like it might fall off its hinges at any moment. I realized what it was right away. There was an identical room in my own factory. For once I was glad of the System’s irritating insistence on universal floorplans. I carefully pulled the door open just enough to slip through into the factory’s office. The offices were there for Admins on the rare occasion they actually bothered to spend a day checking up on their factories in person. They could hardly be expected to slum it with the rest of us on the factory floor. They needed their own room, their own desk, their own air conditioner. I’d never seen more than a brief glimpse inside one before.
I looked around me. In this stage of ruin it didn’t look much different than the rest of the factory; old, broken, empty. But there, on the wall to my left, there was a screen. It was bigger than an RCU but not by much. I felt a skip in my step as I navigated the rubble-strewn floor to stand in front of it. I held my breath and touched the screen. It glowed weakly to life. Flickering every few seconds, and covered in dead pixels, but still working. And hopefully still connected to the System’s databases. The screen showed a text box with a prompt to Enter Individual Identification Code. I carefully input Michelle’s IIC and waited. For several seconds nothing happened, and I thought I might have entered the number wrong. Or maybe I’d accidentally used mine by mistake. But then the screen changed to read Welcome Level 5 Administrator.
I knew exactly what I was looking for this time. I navigated the screens confidently: info, to Extra-Urban Projects, to Seattle Rejects Camp, having to wait impatiently for several seconds between each one. When I finally found the information I had been looking so hard for, I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It was a concentration camp. They never used those words, but that was what it was. We’d learned about concentration camps in school. The United States locked up their own citizens in them just for being descendants of some country they were at war with. This evolved, advanced, superior, post-capitalist System was no better. There were so many entries to choose from, each one painting a more vividly fracked-up picture than the last. They had categories for people imprisoned for having too many children, for “inciting riotous or insurrectionist behavior”, for people with mental illnesses who couldn’t handle the conformity of city life. And the purpose of all the slave labor and abuse… was to produce excess electricity to trade on the world market. I could not believe what I was reading. It felt like the floor had been ripped out from under me and I was falling into a vast unknowable chasm. Was everything I’d ever been told a lie? I had never had much love for the System, but I’d always believed that it was at worst overly harsh, and at best neglectful. This was something entirely different. This was cruel.
There was a file entry of pictures. They showed beaten-down shells of people, breaking their backs doing excruciating tasks that, in a city, would be largely machine-assisted. Laying bricks by hand for enormous hydroelectric dams, or breaking their backs mining rare minerals. The System was expelling all the people it didn’t consider worthy of living in it’s so-called perfect city and exploiting them for free labor, all while working them so hard they couldn’t fight back even if they wanted to. ‘Seattle Rejects’ indeed. I felt sick. What else had they lied about?
I kept looking through the files with a kind of morbid curiosity. I couldn’t pull my eyes away, even when the flickering of the screen made them flare with pain like someone was holding lighters to them. I tapped on a folder marked ‘defectives’. Inside was a long list of names and… diagnoses: Maria-Fibromyalgia, Jose-Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Collin-Lymphoma, Ayla-Retinitis Pigmentosa, Lamar-Multiple Sclerosis; the list went on and on. These were all people like me. People with chronic illnesses or handicaps. The only difference was that I could function in the strict confines of what the System considered acceptable for its official citizens, and they couldn’t. If I had been just a little bit sicker that could easily have been me.
And that’s what medical care in the System has always been, I thought with spite. All they ever really care about is whether you can work, your productivity. They couldn’t give a shit that I was still in constant pain, as long as I could do my job they were happy. Hell, if I hadn’t qualified as a mechanic, if I’d been just a regular factory worker they might well have decided that they had enough of those and shipped me off as a reject to the local concentration camp to spend my days toiling away in even more agony until I eventually died of disease or exhaustion. And it wasn’t just Seattle. I remembered the list of all ‘Extra-Urban Projects’. There were at least as many as there were cities. The whole System was corrupt, I realized, as my reality crumbled around me. I was shaking with rage. I heard a rustle to my left and turned sharply around, suddenly terrified that someone had walked in on me.
There was no one there. The rustling had been from Mark’s note still nestled in my pocket. I pulled it out and stared at the bold red letters. These were the same directions I’d read the night before, to a meeting of dissidents, yet somehow they seemed completely different to me in the grey light of day. What real reason did I have to distrust Mark? Because the System told me that I should? Because he and his friends didn’t fit in? Maybe I didn’t either. What evidence had I ever actually seen of dissenters being violent? None! The only video clips the System ever showed were of them being either arrested or attacked by drones. What if they weren’t the chaos-loving terrorists that I’d always seen them as. Above the directions on the paper were 3 sentences of expressive handwriting.
If you’re reading this, you’ve already taken your first step towards freedom. When you’re ready for the next; remove your tracker, follow these directions, and you will be among friends who will help you. You are not alone.
It was like the author of the note was reading my mind and could see the transformation that had just taken place in my thoughts. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was more like I had become the person the note was written for. Maybe I always had been, I just hadn’t realized it. How could I go back to my same miserable life now, knowing what I knew. It had been killing me, so slowly I hadn’t noticed. My face fell as the more rational part of my mind broke in. I can’t leave Seattle and become a rebel I thought. How would I get my medicine? I can’t function without it. I was paralyzed by the battle raging inside my head. The fact remained that I could never unknow what I knew. And what if my condition got worse at some point? The minute I couldn’t work anymore I’d be shipped off to the Seattle Rejects Camp like a defective part. Except that there would be no one there to fix me. If I stayed, one way or the other, the System would kill me eventually.
I would go to that meeting tonight, I decided. I looked around for a clock to check the time but for perhaps the first time in my life there were no large, glowing red numerals. Just the tiny white ones in the top left corner of the ancient screen. It was almost 2 o clock.
I would have to get back soon or Aiden would worry. Then it hit me: Aiden and Michelle! I couldn’t leave them behind. I would take the train back to Textiles and tell them both the truth. Then they could come with me to the meeting and we could all escape the city together. But I would need to hurry. I had no idea how many trains a day ran out to Textiles from the city center but I was willing to guess it wasn’t very many.
I picked my way back out across the rubble strewn floor into the main factory and then out past the construction machines to the street. I made my way back to the train stop where I’d come in after making a few wrong turns, and found myself the only one there. I wasn’t too worried. The trains were automated; they ran regardless of whether there was demand for them that day or not. Sure enough after about half an hour of nervously waiting and avoiding eye contact with every passing stranger, a train arrived to take me back to textiles. When I stepped on, the compartment was blissfully empty.
I felt my shoulders relax back into their usual slouched posture. Acting like Michelle for the whole day had given me a backache. As I massaged a knot out of my already migraine-tense shoulder, I looked out the window in time to see that the train was passing over the ruins. Of course it was, you had to to get from Energy to Textiles, but I realized I hadn’t noticed it on the way there. I imagined Mark down there somewhere, surrounded by indistinct figures, smiling and laughing; perhaps he was waiting for me. We’re coming, I thought. When the train slid into the platform in front of me and Aiden’s Factory I stepped off quickly. My heart was racing. I couldn’t wait to tell my best friend what I had just discovered and recruit him the way that Mark had recruited me… only much less cryptically. This would be so perfect; once I convinced him, we would sneak Michelle out of her work, remove both their trackers, and we would all escape together.
I peeked around the edge of the wide open doorway to make sure no one was looking my way, then ducked down and slunk in. I made a beeline for the ‘Broken’ bench, picked up a stitch counter, and stood up to my full height, walking casually back to where Aiden was seated at the same table where I’d left him. He jolted in his seat at my sudden return, probably screwing up whatever he was working on in the process.
“Erin!” He exclaimed under his breath. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, shit!” He continued his work pointedly and I did the same, letting my fingers do most of the repair on autopilot.
“Sorry,” I hissed back. I leaned even further forward to be sure that only Aiden could possibly hear me. “Aiden, I found it. The info about the Seattle Rejects Camp. You’ll never believe it.” I paused for emphasis and he looked up from his work to make eye contact with me. “It’s a concentration camp!” Aiden looked back at me with what I would have almost described as apathy. “Like the ones we learned about in school; from the world war. At least as bad as that, maybe worse!” I scanned his face for any reaction and waited impatiently for his response. He sighed heavily.
“Erin…” he responded slowly, his voice ancient and weary, “…I know.” I think my mouth actually fell open. My head had started up hurting in earnest again but I did my best to ignore it.
“What the frack, Aiden?” I shot back across the table a little too loudly. Our closest neighbor glanced our way and we both made a show of doing our work until she looked away again. “How long have you known? How did you find out? How could you not tell me?! I could have gotten in deep shit if I’d gotten caught in Energy!” The questions and accusations all spilled out at once, so quickly they bypassed any filters my brain still had and I said them the instant I thought them. Aiden quickly placed his hands over mine in a calming gesture, not wanting me to cause a scene. It was difficult not to.
“Listen, Erin,” he explained hurriedly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I really am; but you have to believe me, I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to tell you, I did! I tried to talk you out of going, but you were adamant.” He paused, checking I wasn’t going to interrupt to whisper-shout at him again. I held my tongue and let him go. “I know about the Seattle Rejects Camp because…” he took a deep breath and I gave our still-joined hands a squeeze. “…because I grew up there.” I stared at him in disbelief. He continued, trying to get it all out at once. “And I couldn’t tell you because my younger sister, Ayla, is still there, and if the System found out I told anyone about it, they’d take it out on her. I’ve seen them do it before.” His eyes darkened at the thought and I gave him what I hoped came off as a reassuring look but was probably more like shock. A sister? No one had siblings in Seattle! This was a System city with a strict one child policy. Although I thought, I guess that explains what landed his family there in the first place. It really could have been me.
“Aiden I had no idea, I’m sorry.” My reply felt inadequate after everything he’d just shared. I glanced up at the time on the wall. It was 3:00 already. What time had Mark said the meeting was? 8:00? it was at 8:00. We’d have to get going soon if we wanted to have any hope of finding the place in time. “Listen,” I started, abruptly changing the subject, “You know that guy I met yesterday, Mark?” Aiden narrowed his aqua eyes, taken aback, but nodded. “He gave me instructions to a secret meeting of rebels. They want to help people like us, people who know the truth. I’m pretty sure they smuggle people out of Seattle.” Aiden’s mouth fell open but before he had time to question me I pressed on. “The meeting is tonight, and I’m going. You have to come with me.” He looked back down at his work and just shook his head and started soldering again.
“Erin, I’m not going with you.” The words felt like a physical blow. How was I supposed to face this terrifying unknown without my best friend? His words sounded final but I had to try.
“What do you mean you’re not coming?” I shot back, almost forgetting to keep my voice to a whisper. My headache was flaring and my emotions with it. “We could be free, together!” Aiden just shook his head again. He looked into my eyes.
“As long as they have my sister I’ll never be free. I’m sorry.” I felt angry at him for the first time in 8 years of friendship.
“So what, you’re just going to stay here, work in this fucking factory until it eventually kills you?” I whisper-shouted. My head was pounding.
“For the sake of my family, yes I will.” I was still processing the fact that he had a sister at all. A living one. But Aiden’s words had a finality to them. I could tell by the way he spoke that nothing I could say could possibly change his mind. All at once my anger turned to sadness as I realized that I may never see my friend again.
“Well then I guess this is goodbye,” I said shakily.
“Yes I suppose it is,” Aiden said, and a single tear ran down my cheek. “Good luck, Erin.” He gave me a look so full of sadness and resignation I knew he’d come to the same conclusion I had. This was the fork in the paths of our lives and try as we might neither one of us could pull the other back across the gap. A hug would be too conspicuous, so we clasped each other’s forearms tightly for several seconds. “I’ll cover for you,” he said, picking up a small flashing electrical component which I recognized as the guts of my tracker. I smiled sadly and nodded at him once in thanks before I glanced around, then swiftly rose and walked out of the factory for the last time.
Standing on the platform outside I stopped short, unable to choose which way to go. If I walked left I would be on the most direct path to the ruins and an easy chance at a new life. If I walked right, deeper into the neighborhood, I would eventually make it to Michelle’s building. I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out and turn left. I took a few steps in that direction. What are the chances that Michelle, of all people, would say yes and come with me when Aiden just rejected my plan? I thought. But it didn’t take more than a few steps for me to realize that I couldn’t leave my lifelong friend behind without even telling her she had another option.
I turned sharply around and began following the train tracks away from the ruins and towards Michelle. After about 20 minutes I found myself staring up at the sleek glass building. It was a perk of Michelle’s job that her and her coworkers got off a few hours early every other day. I found a shadowed corner, out of sight of the surveillance net surrounding the building, and waited for her to come out. It shouldn’t be more than 15 minutes, I reasoned.
I grew more tense each minute I had to wait for Michelle. When she eventually emerged, laughing genially at a joke the person next to her had just told as they strolled casually towards the train platform, she was completely free of the intensity I was feeling. I gulped down my stress and the pain that came with it and took a few quick steps towards her. When I was within reach I wrapped my fingers around her right wrist, my nails scraping at her tracker, and pulled her back into the shadows.
“What the—Erin?” Michelle cried, pulling her arm out of my grip. “Erin, what the hell are you doing here? You should be at work right now! You’ll get flagged!” She stuck her head out from the dark alley where we stood and looked frantically in both directions, probably expecting ROs to swarm in any moment. I put my hands on her upper arms in a calming gesture.
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured her. “The System doesn’t even know I’m gone.” I grinned at my own deception. Aiden would maintain the illusion long enough for me to get out of the city.
“What—” she said. “How?”
“Listen,” I said, giving her a small shake to get her attention. “How’s not important now. There’s something I need to tell you. Just listen.” And I told Michelle everything. The truth about Mark, my trip to energy, the Seattle rejects camp. I finished by telling her all about the meeting and nearly begging her to come with me. She let me speak for several minutes uninterrupted. It might have been the longest exchange we’d ever had without her saying anything. Throughout, her facial expressions ranged wildly, from disapproving, hurt that I’d lied to her, to horrified, to worried, to skeptical, then back to worried again. When I ran out of words, my cheeks flushed and my head stabbing, I took a deep breath and waited for her to say something.
“Erin,” she began hesitantly. Her swirling green-brown eyes bored into mine. I noticed my hands still clutched at her upper arms. She brushed them off and replaced several copper strands my grip had mussed. “You sound like a dissenter.” That was it? I had just told her something earth-shattering and she was still playing the good little Admin? Michelle was my oldest friend and it felt like she hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“Yeah?” I shot back hotly. “Maybe I am!” I almost shouted. “How could I not be knowing what I know?” The shocked look on her face mirrored my indignation. “What, are you going to report me, Michelle?” I knew she wouldn’t but I couldn’t help but notice there was a button less than 3 meters away from where we were standing. They were practically part of the design scheme of the admin buildings, dotting their walls like decorations.
“Of course not, Erin,” Michelle replied, struggling to keep her voice composed. She tossed her bright hair over her shoulders. “But clearly those pills you take have been messing with your head!” My mouth fell open in outrage but she cut me off before I could form a retort. “Breaking your tracker? Trespassing in Energy? What in the System has gotten into you? And now you mean to tell me you’re actually planning on leaving the city arm in arm with a bunch of criminals? Have you thought this out at all? How will you get your medicine?” My head burned at the thought, but I wasn’t deterred. “And you want me to come with you?! What am I supposed to think?” She tugged at her hair and looked back at me, for once at a loss for words.
“Did you not here anything I just told you?” I said, incredulous. “There’s a concentration camp less than 50 kilometers from here! People are dying!” She shook her head like she didn’t want to hear what I was saying. But she had to. “And all to allow the System to compete in the global economy! You know, that thing that nearly destroyed the world in the first place! Do you really have no reaction to that?” I shook my head. Michelle wrapped her arms around herself looking unusually vulnerable. “The people I’m going to meet are offering us a chance at a better life. How can you not take it?”
“Erin,” she said sadly, all anger gone from her voice. “My life is here. I’m sorry.” When her eyes met mine again they were glistening with unshed tears. “But I won’t stop you from going.” Stop me? My eyes strayed to the purple REPORT button again. She wouldn’t. She would never. Michelle then turned abruptly and walked away from me, back towards the broad staircase that led into her office, her coworkers long since dispersed. For a split second, I thought her hand strayed towards the button, but then she walked past like she hadn’t noticed it and disappeared into the shiny glass face of Administration. I was left standing on the perfectly tidy street alone, unsure if, or when, she would come back out.
I looked around myself, hugging my body uncomfortably. Now that the adrenaline of our argument was fading, I realized my lunchtime pills had all but worn off. My head began to pound like someone was hitting it with a hammer in time with my heartbeat. The stress of the day had taken its toll and I felt it in the form of my migraine. I swayed slightly in place, and off to my left, lights started to flash. I squeezed my eyes tight shut. The next thing I knew Michelle was at my side. I flinched when she put her hand on my shoulder, but relaxed when I saw her other hand held my evening dose of pills. I grabbed them from her and swallowed all 3 at once. I realized afterwards that there had been 2 white pills where there was usually 1.
“3?” I asked. “That’s more than my usual dose of opiates, Michelle.” The expression on her face was hard to read. Was she concerned? Proud?
“Yeah well,” she responded, head up. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it this evening.” She looked straight ahead, the same confusing look on her face. “You’ll probably need to get going if you’re going to make it in time. Clearly I can’t convince you to stay.” She smiled down at me sadly, putting her other arm around me. I hugged her back fiercely. A tear ran down my face. This is the last time I’ll ever hug my best friend, I thought sadly. My heart was breaking and I felt like both her and Aiden’s rejections were hitting me full-force simultaneously. I let out a sob and Michelle just hugged me tighter, silently. After some time, her arms vanished and she stepped back. A train was pulling in to the platform. Michelle leaned down, kissed my cheek, and then she was gone, striding off gracefully towards the train, head held high, red hair streaming behind her.
I wanted to fall to the ground in defeat. How was I supposed to do this alone? Michelle was my last hope for a companion and her train had already vanished around a bend in the tracks as quickly as it had arrived. I let my head fall into my hands but locked my knees. I wouldn’t fall to the ground. I could feel the double dose of medicine already starting to take effect. Michelle’s last gift to me. And I felt the light touch of the empty metal band on my wrist, barely perceptible without the weight of its technological components. Aiden’s last gift to me. There was no going back. I had to move forward, even if it was without my two best friends.
I started along the tracks that would eventually lead me out of Textiles, and into the uncertain ruins. I couldn’t tell how long it took me to get there. My pace quickened gradually as I walked along and the caffeine replenished my spent energy. Before I knew it I had walked clear past my factory and was approaching the boundary between the old neighborhood and the new.
Feeling energized, silver cloud light bathing my skin, I walked along the tracks away from my apartment, and my factory, and my friends, and towards the edge of my world. It was a rush greater than caffeine. All of my fear disappeared and was replaced by 23 years of pent-up excitement, as though I had always known this day would come and had saved my enthusiasm for when it did.
In what seemed like no time, I could see it up ahead of me: the seemingly arbitrary line where the immaculate streets and buildings dropped off and the derelict ruins of Queen Anne began. As I approached the dividing line it occurred to me to wonder who had decided where one stopped and the other started. The thought was pushed from my mind as the anticipation of whatever was waiting for me on the other side coursed through me like an electrical current. With my heart beating in my throat, I stepped across the line.
