Rebels (3 page)

♦ Quickly place thumb tip to pulse point.

♦ Once thumbprint has been matched, DNA activation will be immediate.*

♦ The length of the simulation is dependent on the Archive accessed. Memories provide the briefest duration, while historical archives can be looped to ensure the most satisfaction with your experience.

♦ To end an Archive, within the memory or simulation tap your wrist twice to remove the access chip. Upon removal, you will immediately regain consciousness within the safety of your Archive access location.

The Archives: just another example of Indra's greatness!

The Archives: offering a wealth of knowledge, a virtual preservation of your personal history, and hours of fun!**

The Archives: a universe of delight at your fingertip!***

* Your Archive access is monitored by the High Council via thumbprint DNA matching. Your individual Archive access is restricted at their discretion.

** If you attempt to access an Archive the Indra High Council has not made available to you, you will face immediate dismissal from the Archives. This process, also referred to as “flinging,” is both shameful and illegal. Repeat offenders will face punishment as dictated by the High Council. In extreme cases, the High Council Archive Commission may choose to give the offending citizen permanent “shadow” status. Shadowed citizens are rendered voiceless and sentenced to wander the Archives for the remainder of their lives. You will know them due to their blank stares and hooded cloaks. Do not interact with them. Shadowed citizens serve as living reminders of the great gifts bestowed on the citizens of Indra, the Archives being among them, and the severe penalty for taking advantage of them.

*** Archive areas and experiences are restricted by and provided at the sole discretion of the High Council. The High Council has the power to alter, modify, and adjust archival simulations. All further matters regarding Archive operations and “shadow” status are restricted by High Council command.

There is a story that everyone in the Orphanage knows. It is not about family, hope, or love. It's about genetics. Mutations.

The ones that lurk beneath the earth, that are cloaked in shadows and hidden within the eaves of the cavernous mantle. Though I have never seen one, they have made orphans of many.

If you listen closely while nestled in your too-small sleeper, you can hear their breathing beyond the security gates. Their bloodcurdling cries, their savage grunts. Each night, at lights-out, we feel we are at their mercy.

That is why twice a year the caretakers round up orphans, no one knows how they choose, in the middle of the night while everyone is asleep. They are forced to walk outside in their bare feet, their slippers left bedside to be reused by someone else. They are taken to a junction and there they wait. How long they wait depends on how hungry the mutations are.

The mutations . . . they can look like anything. The one I imagine has fused eyes and twin mouths that feed into the same throat. Its spine arcs so much it almost breaks through the skin of its back.
Its pupils are the color of mother's milk, and its jaws are powerful enough to snap through bone.

When you're brought to the junction, you're left in the pitch-black. You cry, and every noise frightens you. You don't know yet how to be strong. When they come for you, if they don't eat you immediately, they will take you back to their tribe, far below, to be raised among them. They will put you to work, and your own body will betray you. It will become like theirs. Your legs will crack as they grow into new forms, and if you are pretty, you will lose that, too.

Twice a year the mutations take orphans, gifted to continue our sanctuary here in the bowels of the earth. At the point where the City of Indra doesn't care what goes on—we are
that
far beneath. There are greater worries.

After all, who's going to miss an orphan?

◊  ◊  ◊

All I had was my own hyper-crib at the Orphanage, and sometimes even that I had to share. A tiny box on tall legs, stuffed with two hungry babies. It was but one of a dozen in my unit, and but one unit among a dozen others.

The Independent High Council sent Recruiter to the Orphanage twice a year to inspect the new babies born without names. He wandered the rows of identical cribs, serving Indra in its “moral obligation” to its underprivileged. Recruiter came, he looked, and he left. He didn't expect to find anything worthwhile. In fact, he was pretty confident he wouldn't.

◊  ◊  ◊

If you made it past the crib stage, you were assigned to Infant Surveillance. That wasn't so bad. You're so little, you don't know any
different. If you made it a few more years, you got a cot in the Intermediate Dormitory.

Now
that
was something else entirely.

During processing, I got a way-too-big uniform. “Room to grow,” said Caretaker.

If you got the chance, that is. At the time I didn't know that not all of us do.

Caretaker leaned over and looked at me. She hated me, I could tell. All the caretakers did. Even as an infant, I didn't play by the rules. Made too much noise, used the playthings incorrectly. Led the group in building entire cities with the polyblox, then gleefully clomped the whole structure to pieces. The other kids didn't do things like that. They liked watching me do them, though. Giggled and clapped their hands.

“Destructive tendencies,” muttered the caretakers, powerless to punish me, at least not when Recruiter was hanging around.

His uniform wasn't like theirs. It was impeccably clean, his boots unsullied by grime, his collar unyellowed. I thought he was supposed to be special. He could've been my champion.

Recruiter walked the rows, inspecting the quiet babies, the ones whose parents never smiled at them, never sang or bounced them on their knee. All they got were the Caretakers, who didn't hug or kiss or hold your hand. So these babies never learned to emote, their faces completely made of stone. Orphan babies never cry. They rarely make noise at all.

When Recruiter got to me, he stared down into my hyper-crib. His face was enormous and implacable. “There's nothing here,” he said, as he had probably said on every inspection at every crib.

I reached out for him and I grabbed the rail instead. I fumbled forward as he walked away. I grabbed the rail with both hands, pulling myself up, my doughy legs barely able to support my plump weight. He didn't linger over each crib for too long. I watched him
as he worked. There are orphanages all over. I'm sure we looked like nothing more than underdeveloped meat. He finished my row and moved on to the next. Still I watched him, a string of sounds starting to fall out of my mouth. He looked up.

He looked at
me
.

He inspected more cribs. I pushed my body over the lip of the crib and let gravity do the rest. I pushed to a wobbly stand and edged around the crib, guiding myself by the rails. More sounds that this time he ignored. I slapped the rail with one hand of pudgy fingers. He looked up again, annoyed. I returned his gaze with equal force. He looked around, as if unsure that this was really happening. He cut back to my crib and stared at me standing there. Then he pushed me down. A slight touch and he sent me back on my bottom. Perhaps he expected me to cry. When I didn't, he walked away.

I fell onto my side and rolled onto my belly. As he continued his rounds, I stood again. I slapped the rail until I got his attention. He tried to ignore me, shooting glances across the room, but couldn't. He removed his cap and ran a hand through his hair. He sighed.

He came over, and just as he was about to push me again, I spoke.

“No,” I said.

And he didn't.

I've been telling people “no” ever since.

My memory's good, but not good enough to penetrate the infant haze. Something to do with underdeveloped brains prevents us from remembering those years. But I did manage to snatch my holofile off Recruiter's desk one visit—he's been cursed with a small bladder and doesn't have the influence to get it modded, so his trips to the receptacle were frequent during testing. Recruiter would have taken it with him, but how did he know I could read? I didn't even know myself.

I was only three. He hadn't administered that test yet.

The holofile seemed to be no more than a toy. A toy that burst
with sculpted light as soon as I opened it, casting forth images of me turning in circles. My tiny body, my little-kid legs. Is that what I looked like?

Watching myself during an activity unit, where I was made to hit targets with zip balls. They monitored my heartbeat with sensors all over my body and asked me questions like, “Do you enjoy pain?”

“No.”

“What do you dream about?”

“I don't know.”

“Why do you hate the polyblox?”

“I love them,” I said excitedly. “Especially the part where I smash them!”

Recruiter's assessment of me trailed beneath: “Early rebellious tendencies. Accelerated, aggressive reflexes. Correctly channeled, SUBJECT could prove Useful to Society. Unheard of development considering her status as Offspring Waste.”

Reading this, I'm surprised I hadn't been thrown out the gates to mutants.

◊  ◊  ◊

The Caretaker looked at her holofile, then back at me. “You already have a name,” she said, surprised. “How very
odd
. I've never seen one of you already having a name. Who gave it to you?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Later, I'd find out they didn't assign names until we'd assimilated from Infant Surveillance to Intermediate Dorm. Never knew how we'd react to the dorm transition. Some didn't make it through the first night, so why waste a good name on a defective orphan?

“Well, you always were . . . different,” she said, like I had an extra foot or something. “Now you are Lexie. Say it after me. Lex-ie.”

“Lex,” I said. That sounded better.

“No. Lex-
ie
. That's what it says right here.”

“Lex,” I said again.

She sighed, knew it was pointless to argue. She practically shoved me down the corridor to be issued my thermasheets. Relieved to see me go, I could tell. Now I'd be someone else's problem.

◊  ◊  ◊

Lex or Lexie, it didn't matter. No one learned names in the Intermediate Dorm. The closest you got to existing was your cot number.

My real new name? 242.

The dorm was enormous. Cots as far as you could see. Lots of kids, all bigger than us new transfers. All wearing the same gray uniforms on their skinny bodies, their skin colorless from lack of exposure.

No one noticed our arrival.

Even with all those kids, the dorm was dead quiet. We were still little, didn't know orphan rule #1:
Don't draw attention.
Not that I followed rules. But still, I could tell this place wasn't like Infant Surveillance. Not at all.

Orphan rule #2:
Don't ask questions
. I could never get that one either.

It was the first week and 241 had been right next to me at evening cot confinement. I'd heard her snoring. Come morning, every trace of her was gone, even her thermasheets. “Where'd she go?” I yelled.

No one answered me. Just looked away. “New transfer,” someone whispered.

“Where'd she go?” I said louder. Sharp stares. Pale faces pinched in worry.

That just made me want to scream. I raised my voice. “Where'd she—”

“Shhhhhhhh.” Someone placed a hand on my shoulder. An older girl was leaning over, smiling at me. I'd noticed her before because, unlike the rest of us, she had some color. Like she was glowing from the inside.

The older girl looked down at me. I shut up. Her smile was what did it. You didn't see those very often.

“I like you,” she said softly. “You say what you think. But right now, you should know when that becomes dangerous.”

“But where did—”

My stomach growled.

“You're hungry?” she asked.

I nodded. Little kids, I quickly learned, got pummeled in the rush to the ration line. As hard as I'd pushed through the crowd, the food was gone when I got there. With so few caretakers, no one seemed to notice. Or maybe they just didn't care.

Sometimes little kids starved to death. It happened once in my first year there, a little boy who didn't wake up in the morning, and caretakers just carted away the husk of his weightless body.

So that morning the older girl took my hand and led me right to the front of the line, other kids stepping aside for her. I was starving and by then completely forgot about my neighbor's empty cot. Kids are dumb like that. Easily distracted. Maybe she did it on purpose. Maybe she didn't want to tell me about 241 just yet. The older girl was eleven, a year shy of graduating. When you made it to eleven, other orphans respected you because you were a survivor. You might actually make it out. You could teach them how to do the same.

The older girl's name, she told me later, was Samantha. “But don't tell anyone I told you, Lex,” she whispered. “That'll be our secret. You call me 374 and I'll call you 242 and only we will know the truth.”

Samantha
, I'd thought, grinning. I loved having a secret, and I kept it. I never said her real name aloud, not once.

◊  ◊  ◊

374 watched out for me. I never knew why she chose me, but she did. In exchange, she got little 242 shadowing her every move. She didn't seem to mind taking care of me. Those first weeks were scary, and she'd
sneak to my cot and hold my hand and keep me from slipping away in the dark. No polyblox empires here, no other kids clapping at my antics. Without 374, I'd have disappeared. Maybe even to the mutants.

She made sure I got fed. Made sure I washed my face at grooming. Even showed me how to sleep with my sanibrush and day uniform lodged under my body so no one would steal them in the night.