She’s a known rank-climber. A thin blue sash cuts across her uniform, and I know all she wants is to turn her blue blood purple. Not by earning better grades, but through marriage. Halton is her ladder.
Aggravated at being forced into the middle of their romantic theatrics, I place my hand over my forehead, hoping to shield myself from view.
In a sprawling public square outside campus, two bustling paths filled with evening commuters split in opposite directions.
Fa?ades of the surrounding skyscrapers project a simulated sunset on massive screens, the artificial light casting spectacular oranges and pinks across the broad walkway. My heart instantly lightens. Although I know the images are deliberately designed to manufacture powerful feelings of well-being, they’re still beautiful.
As I continue my walk home, the calming sunset is replaced with a PSA of a smiling couple and their single daughter. Huge flashing text screams at the crowd, “One Child, One Nation.”
I ignore the propaganda by looking at my feet. I try to visualize the exact positions of every surveillance camera stationed in the area. There’s a camera inside the watchful eyes of the longhorn statue in the square’s center, and two in the bank tower on my right.
A sudden flurry of motion distracts me, and I snap my head up as a fair-haired woman wrenches a bottle of water from an unsuspecting student’s hands.
“Thief!” the young man screams at the top of his lungs.
The woman rushes through the alarmed mass of people, coming straight at me, but I can’t seem to move.
A loud, crushing boom, and the woman drops to the ground, convulsing. Three more violent spasms and her body goes limp.
The water bottle lies forgotten a few feet away, its precious contents pooling wastefully on the hot concrete. A man emerges unnoticed from the crowd, quickly grabs the stolen plunder, and disappears safely into the herd of pedestrians.
Holding his twelve-gauge shotgun taser, a robust Texas State Guard approaches the woman and stops, the point of his boots stepping on the tips of her fingers.
Half the evening commuters have stopped to watch the scene play out. Some of them linger for pure entertainment, but others look on with barely concealed rage.
I go against all my conditioning and remain in this suddenly charged moment. I should be removing myself calmly from the situation, careful to not draw the Guard’s attention, but instead I stand immobile next to the woman sprawled out motionless on the ground.
I feel the energy of the crowd burn hot and angry. A shout rings out, loud and clear.
“Enough!”
Three voices pick up the rallying cry, creating a fiery echo.
A handful of protesters try to push their way to the Guard holding the taser, causing a small skirmish to ripple across the square. An entire unit of State Guards immediately floods the area.
“Disperse immediately, or you will be arrested!”
One of the soldiers lifts a sonic weapon into the air and fires without hesitation. Everyone in a hundred-yard radius collapses incapacitated to the ground, hands pressed desperately to their ears.
I fall hard on the pavement and clamp my palms tight against my head. The overwhelming sound ruthlessly invades my brain, and I can’t make it stop. I curl into a fetal position and stare at the arrested woman next to me. The look she sends me is desperate and wild, but all I can do is stare at her in my own helplessness.
The Guard, spared from the auditory assault by his earplugs, roughly pulls out the woman’s twisted wrist from underneath her body and scans it with a small device. Microchips not only monitor food rations but also contain everything about you: arrest records, blood type, social security number, addresses, credit card information, insurance. Everything. It took several generations for the public to accept being microchipped, but it happened.
It’s not control, they say; it’s for our own safety. Microchips save lives. We’ve all been conditioned to believe this. But I don’t believe it. Microchips led to my mother’s death.
“On your feet!” the Guard screams. “Move!”
I struggle to comply, the painful pounding in my ears throwing off my balance, making me feel sick.
“Do you have a problem, young lady?” The Guard scrutinizes me from above, singling me out.
“No sir,” I manage.
“If you continue to loiter on my walkway, I will arrest you next,” he threatens. He holsters his taser before bending down to zip-tie the woman’s hands behind her back.
The protesters swiftly subdued, orderly lines are already reforming on the street. In a daze I stand and join them.
It’s impossible to fight back; the government made sure of that long ago. Civilians are not allowed to own weapons—only the Guard has that authority. The people can fight solely with their raised voices, and I’ve only ever heard them silenced.
The ones with the guns always win.
MIRA
I must keep active. Spending twenty-four unbroken hours confined in an eighteen-by-fifteen basement four days a week feels like a prison. Ava and I exercise regularly to keep our endorphins high and our depression low. We both favor jumping jacks. I’m up to twenty minutes straight.
My heart still beats like drumfire in my chest as I recharge on the floor, my back against the foot of our bed.
“E-book database,” I say to the empty room. A hologram pops up before me, and I cross my legs, settling in. I raise my forefinger in the air and swipe through the long list of nonfiction e-books Ava and I have purchased over the years. We both share a childlike fascination for the landscapes and cultures of the outside world. Places that seem to only exist in the three-dimensional images in front of me. Or in my imagination.
We’ve never met someone from outside the United States, of course. And it’s as unaffordable as it is unthinkable for an American citizen to travel to the few countries that still allow foreign visitors. The threat of death—or worse, of being taken captive for a ransom the US government simply can’t afford to pay—is a risk not many take. It’s funny. Just when technology shrank the world, making everywhere and everyone accessible, it’s all never felt more out of reach.
4:43 p.m. Ava’s late.
“Hologram off,” I say as I head up the stairs. I pace the polished concrete floor, my gaze fixed on the security camera projections in the corner of the room. Eight turns around the landing later, my heart rate picks back up when I see Ava appear on the monitors.
She lowers her umbrella and swipes her fingerprint to unlock the front door. My eyes shift to the second monitor to follow her progress through the living room. Her lips move in a quick, silent command, and the clear glass wall behind her darkens to gray, sealing the room in privacy. She approaches the false wall and knocks twice.
I wait the ten seconds it takes for her to move through the passageway, then the wall slides open and Ava stands before me.
“Why are you so late?” I know from the haunted look in her eyes that something happened.
As she moves past me down the steps, I see the stain on her right lower leg. The scuffs and small tears on her right elbow. It’s difficult to keep a white uniform white in a polluted, bustling city. We’ve always achieved it, of course, because it is expected of us. But Ava seems calm. So I keep calm.
“Did something happen?” I say, as tranquil as I can manage.
Ava plops down hard on the bed, sliding off her shoes with her toes. “Just let me appreciate the AC for a moment.”
I join Ava on the bed and catch the sharp scents of sweat and sunlight. The lingering traces of being in the open air. I scoot closer to her, feeling nearer to the sun by proximity. Five hours and sixteen minutes until it’s my turn above ground.
“I finished our English paper,” I finally say.
“I saw. Why do you insist on correcting my drafts in red? It makes it look like our assignments are covered in blood.”
I smile, amused.
“I’m just going to get this out of the way,” Ava says, sighing heavily. “I got an A minus on our Spanish oral.”