Veracity (24 page)

"So this picture is the brand?"

"Not entirely. A brand is a business identity that can be repeated by something like this character. But it could also be a song, a phrase, the colors they use in their advertising, even the font used in the company's name. Repetition is the key."

"Repetition?"

"In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief without evidence. It only works in a society where thinking for one's self is discouraged. That's how we lost our country. And why it's stayed lost for so long."

Almost none of this registers. I pick something at random. "I'm sorry. What's evidence?"

Lazarus sits back and wraps his hands behind his head. "Where to begin." He gets up and goes to the stack of books. Pulls from its top a notepad made of actual paper and a yellow pen with a strange-looking tip. "Here. Write down anything you don't understand."

I take the writing utensil in my hand. Settle it in the crook between my fingers. It's slicker than the tool I use. Slips in my sweaty grasp. It must be a pen, though the exposed end looks different. It tapers into a dark gray point.

"It's called a pencil," Lazarus says.

Those of us who aren't Managers or President or high-ranking Blue Coats use a thing called a stylus. A long piece of plastic shaped the same but with nothing at its end but a plastic tip. I turn the pencil upside down. Point at the soft pink helmet on its other end.

"What's this?"

"An eraser. If you need to change something, rub that over the part you want to get rid of and it disappears."

It sounds like magic. I open the notepad. Write the letter
A,
upend my instrument, erase. The letter is gone, replaced by particles of pink waste. Lazarus doesn't find this an occasion
for pause. I, however, am amazed. I'm examining this miracle of current science when Lazarus's hands find mine. My palms are squeezed until I look up. He's leaning over the table. Sad for the things he has yet to tell me.

"The first thing you need to know about the Pandemic you experienced as a six-year-old girl is that it never happened."

"I'm sorry?" The pencil slips in my hand. Produces a jagged line on the paper.

"There was no Pandemic. All you saw about it, all you heard about it . . . it wasn't real. It was marketing.
Spin
. A way of scaring the public into doing whatever the government wanted. And it worked."

"Marketing?"

"Yes."

"Like the honey?"

"Yes."

I let go of the pencil. Sit back in my chair. My parents died as a result of the Pandemic, which was not a plague. That was a marketing campaign. "There wasn't a virus?"

"That's what I'm saying."

"There was no Pandemic."

"It was fabrication. All of it."

I can't believe this. The whole of my life, the death of my parents, the death of so many . . .

"I have to go." I'm out of my seat. Out through Lazarus's door and down the hall.

"Harper!" I hear him call from behind me, but can't stop my feet.

They're taking me up and down halls, into rooms, through tunnels that end in locked doors. Then I'm back where I started, standing outside Lazarus's office, my back against the mud wall. I'm sitting, legs splayed, dropping tears of fear and incredulity on the dirt floor.

My breathing is out of order. I can't figure out when to inhale and when to exhale. Lilly is here now. And Noam.
Their hands are on my shoulders. Lazarus is speaking from behind them. He's telling them to leave me be. I have to deal with this on my own. But he doesn't know that I'm not strong enough. I want to stand up and grab our leader by his lovely face and tell him that I'm not the person he thinks I am. Despite the way I've been treated up top, I'm human, and flawed. And I can't stay down here with this big, huge truth in this crowded place that feels so much like a grave . . .

"Harper!"

I look up. Lilly and Noam have been pushed back behind Lazarus.

"Harper Adams!" His voice is stern.

I wipe away the sweat now pouring down my face and flick it on the floor. It makes a dotted pattern there, like a star.

"We're not done with our lesson," he says.

"Lazarus!" Lilly scolds. "She's just found out that the one event that ruined her life was a lie!"

"Yes, and she'll have time to process that later. But right now, I need her to be aware of all relevant information. And if it makes her angry . . . perhaps all the better."

No one says anything further. I wipe my face dry on the hem of my shirt and get up. When Noam goes to help me, Lazarus stays his effort with an arm.

Again, I'm sitting across from our leader, trying to listen to what he's telling me. But his voice floats in and out like a poorly tuned channel. I'm full to the brim, yet Lazarus is trying to cram more inside my aching head.

He tells me the Pandemic began as with any great shift of power. With fear. Fear of infection and the loss of security. Fear of loss. This led to a centralization of power Lazarus refers to as a Military State in which President and his Ministers were able to use the militia to control the masses. There were many members of the armed forces who wouldn't comply.
Holdouts,
Lazarus calls them. Men and women in
uniform willing to die to preserve
democracy
. These troops bombed supplies and blew up planes. Some drove rigged trucks into hangars and stores of ammunitions. President lost most airborne capabilities but still managed to take hold of the nation. When the time for rebuilding came, he and his cabinet saw no reason to resurrect an air patrol meant for monitoring. People were doing a good enough job of that themselves.

Only now, with a rebellion grown several hundred thousand strong, does President long for an aerial strike force. Thus, his development of BodySpeak and SKEYE. Satellites and Sentient Monitors to fill up the gap. Candace and I and whomever else we found during our own form of Sentient Patrol were to be President's aerial weapons.

Lazarus tells me that once the vans came down your drive, there were two choices: swear fealty to the new government and choose the slate, or die by an injection of the so-called vaccine. But by then, the Pandemic had become a series of images. Pictures of infants with their eyes bleeding. Women and men vomiting up their own entrails. So when Blue Coats came calling, there was really only one option if a person got an option at all. Those who were too old or infirm were given the amber-colored vaccine they'd been shown on television. But this serum wasn't for curing. It was for killing. For getting the less productive and the potentially troublesome out of the way.

My hands have begun to hurt. I look down and find eight half-moons cut into the flesh of my palms with my nails. "Tell me how."

"They planned it out, just like any other campaign. Members of the former government studded international news with false reports of outbreaks. They even started a few themselves in small countries in Africa and South America. Then they started pitching it here."

"Africa?"

Lazarus nods. "There are other countries out there."

I think of the Confederation website. The satellite feed showing an earth all brown and gray.

As a Sentient, I must have known this. Another truth I've spent my life ducking to make time spent in the Confederation tolerable. "How many other countries?"

"Hundreds."

I can hardly speak.

"What do you remember of the Pandemic?" Lazarus asks.

"Just a little."

I remember television and radio broadcasts. Commercials with busty, yellow-haired nurses holding syringes filled with gold liquid. Line boards telling us to go to our doctor appointments. Do as we're told.

"As I said, not everyone got a choice," Lazarus says. "Children four and under were automatically slated. The government didn't think they'd developed enough memories of the beforetime to pose a threat. If you had a specialty, if the government thought you were of value, you were given the option."

I set down the pencil. Pull my hands back into my lap.

"There was no pain," Lazarus says.

"How do you know?"

"We know what was in the injections."

I look around for a window. I need to open it wide, lean out, and inhale some fresh air.

"Harper?"

But it's all brown earth and dark sky. Everywhere I look.

"Harper!"

"Yes?" For a moment, I'd forgotten where I was.

Lazarus tries to smile but the effort fails and leaves him looking surprised. "There was nothing to be done differently. And there's a very good reason you survived. I tell you this as a friend and compatriot: guilt is something you can't afford. Not now."

I nod. He's right. "It's unimaginable."

"Yes. But only because what we can imagine is so often a
product of what we need to be true. Our past is littered with things like this."

Lazarus cites examples of neighbor turning on neighbor. He speaks of populations that have been killed en masse. Whole continents of indigenous peoples, wiped away. One and a half million. Two million. Six million. Buddhist. Muslim. Jew. Places, numbers, and rationales for hate I don't begin to understand. They are what Lazarus calls genocides. Horrors committed by humankind that have been conveniently left out of our studies.

Lazarus continues in full double-voice and immediately I'm writing out phonetic interpretations of words I've never heard and struggling to keep up. He explains the world of the beforetime. How pay cards used to be credit cards. How before credit cards, there was money--specially printed paper that could be traded for products and services and wasn't tied to a mainframe; therefore people could roam freely. Travel where they wanted. Buy what they wanted. Nobody had to know.
Paper
. I can't imagine it. Getting people to concede great worth to what was then such a ubiquitous thing. I wonder if they had to market it, put cute little bears on each bill.

Lazarus tells me of the other countries beyond our borders. He says in actuality, we represent only a small portion of the world. That the geography we were taught in school was shit and someday we'll be using Confederation maps to wipe our asses. He tells me stories about faraway lands that catch me off guard because they represent the extent to which I don't know my own world.
Australia. Asia. Mauritius. Madagascar
. Beautiful words used to represent places with other languages and other religions. Places where women can teach in church and speak during services. Places where women are leaders. Where people can choose partners of the same sex, can live as they wish. Can marry, have or adopt children as their hearts direct, and not as the government prefers.

I don't want him to stop but am utterly lost. "You used a word . . ."

Lazarus looks down at my notepad. He's been so caught up in this potent history, he hasn't seen me writing all the words I don't understand. He flips through the pages full of long, poorly written words, eyes wide. "How many have you taken down here?"

"Two hundred, maybe. What does alternative mean?"

"Two hundred?"
Lazarus blows out a breath. It takes him a moment to answer, "The word alternative is a lot like the word option. It means there are other decisions that can be made regarding some issue. Alternative routes that can be taken." He looks at me with an expression of forced calm, though I can see his thoughts. They're painted in broad strokes across his face.

I swallow so loud it fills the room.

Lazarus pats my hand. "Okay. I can see there's no point in proceeding until you've had a chance to study." With a grunt, he's up and scratching his way across the dirt floor, through the canvas, and out into the hall. "Lilly!" he shouts. Pauses for a moment, then yells again. The drape is caught on his shoulder, providing me a look at his face and the discomfort with which he waits.

Eventually, Lilly comes down the hall and stops in front of him, hands on hips. "What, Lazarus?"

"We need to cede rights to Harper, temporarily."

Lilly looks through the open canvas door. She studies my height, my hair, the width of my shoulders, as if she's measuring me for a State bridal gown. Then retreats until all I see is a pointed finger jabbing at Lazarus's chest. "Not for at least four weeks!"

"We've spent years watching Harper. We recruited her, for God's sake . . ."

Lilly steps forward. She's forgotten I'm watching or no longer cares. "I'm the current keeper and I'm telling you even a four-week watch period is too little time!"

"We're about to go to war, Lilly. We've got to cede Harper
all rights and we've got to do it now! She needs
Reading
Rights . . ."

"You're making my point for me!"

"
Copy
Rights."

"A four-week watch period is
especially
ill-advised considering the war! She could be a spy! She could take it from us! Use it like they've used everything else about
Noah
. . ."

"
International
Rights."

"As if we're going to be needing them! She might lose it, Lazarus! You've seen how panicked she gets down here! What if she leaves it lying out somewhere? Or drops it down the toilet? It's the last copy in the nation!"

"We've scanned it. We have a digital version."

"Yes, and it's sealed by your own orders! You want her to go changing definitions? We need the original! Now listen, I'm the keeper and I say no! You want the council to turn over your own law, take it up with them! But until you do, don't come to me with this nonsense again!" Lilly marches off down the hall, Lazarus yelling after her.