Chapter 4

I’ve interacted with mod screens my whole life but this is different. I marvel at the exotic text on the screen, the foreign feel of the molded metal in my hands. I’m holding hundred year old technology and it works. The enormity of reaching that far back makes me breathless. Like I’m zipping through a time portal where I’ll arrive in a world before the collision and meet the people who built this thing. When the wonder of this fades, I tuck my illuminator away and start experimenting with the device.

The home screen is a series of icons – Clock, Maps, Messages, Calendar, Browser and settings. I touch Clock and a new screen opens up.

No data connection. Please try again later.

Ok, I try something else. Maps.

No data connection. Please try again later.

I cycle through all the options and get the same message. Even the settings section is indecipherable. Airplane mode, bluetooth?

I stare at the device for a second and then swipe my fingers to the left. A new screen pops open with another series of icons - Photos, Remote, Reminders and Contacts. I immediately touch Photos and a new window opens a gallery of thumbnail sized images. I tap on one to enlarge it. It’s a photo of a young woman and a man, smiling directly at the camera. I can tell she’s the one taking the photo by the way her arm reaches out of the frame. Behind them I can see buildings and the blur of a moving vehicle. Maybe a car? Of course there’s no need for them in Osiris but I’ve read about the proliferation of these vehicles in old world times.

I flick to the next photo and gasp. This shot shows a wide expanse of sand and ocean. A wave is cresting, about to crash into its foamy descent. The woman is alone in this picture, her arms outstretched. She’s half laughing, as if caught in the middle of a joke. I peer down at her face and realize she looks familiar. This is the dead woman from the apartment, only much younger. I do the calculation in my head. If she’s in her twenties in this image, she lived for more than a hundred and thirty years. Not an unexpected age for Osiris, but still impressive. And she was an Original.

I’m about to swipe to the next image when the device beeps and the screen fades out. It powers down. I barely siphoned enough electricity for four and a half minutes of use and I don’t have time to sit here while it charges again. I’ll have to risk leaving it connected overnight so the battery pack has a full cycle before I start hacking into the system.

I tuck the tablet as far behind the transformer as it will go without detaching the wire and hope it’s far enough out of sight. No one’s going to wander into this room but I still like to take precautions.

I’m sitting at a mod-desk watching Egelhard Sauer Senior recite his daily message of benevolence. Osiris’ leader of the Conservationist party holds himself stiffly in front of the camera. He’s one hundred and forty-six years old, but his face is tan and smooth, rather than creased. His grey hair is cut short, city guard style and his straight nose gives him a regal look. I’ve watched four thousand and fifteen of these messages. I stopped paying attention at the one thousand mark. He rarely says anything original these days.

“-share the common goods of Osiris,” he says. “We survive by working together, uprooting all evil and seeking the truth.”

I look up from my desk. There are fourteen of us in this classroom, all tuned to our own mod-desk, our personalized learning stations. The other thirty-two students are in two identical rooms, plugged into their own mod-desks. They group the welfare children into three age categories - one to five, six to ten and eleven to fifteen. At fifteen we graduate and community assimilation begins. Rosalin and I are in the last category. I turned fifteen at the beginning of the year and Rosalin turns fifteen the day before graduation.

I look back down at my screen. I’m half way through my ethics course, a topic I struggle with. I’ve aced the math and science and general knowledge, but the code defeats me. I keep procrastinating and the first level test is still pending in my system. I swipe away the announcer and open the blinking icon. The code flashes onto the screen and I scan the well-known list.

1. Be steadfast
2. Abhor all evil
3. Love thy neighbor without hypocrisy
4. Show benevolence, even during disagreement
5. Stand for truth and righteousness
6. Always do that which is right
7. Respect your leaders and submit to their governing

I’ve been memorizing these seven tenets since I can remember, but I still struggle applying them to practical situations.

Test question: If the leader of your allotment instructs you to complete a task that you know will injure a fellow worker, what do you do?

And now I’m stuck. I don’t know if I should apply tenet number two, abhor all evil, or number seven, respect my leader. Am I being steadfast by confronting my superior or violating tenet four with my lack of benevolence toward my neighbor? These ethical quandaries frustrate me and I inevitably fail the test before I’m halfway through. I flick my ear buds out and watch them skitter across the desk. I should have finished this module a week ago but I’m too restless to finish it now.

Instead I navigate to the mods root structure and tap down to a folder I’ve buried at the bottom of the file tree. I glance around to make sure the proctor isn’t standing over my shoulder and open an executable file I’ve been working on for months. I scan the lines of code, my eyes darting from line to line, comparing the syntax I’ve learnt from the books in the library. As far as I can tell, it’s perfect. But I won’t know until I put it to use.

I get the sense some one is approaching so I tap out of the document and lean back in my chair.

“How are you progressing?” The proctor, a woman in her seventies, leans over my desk and peers at my screen. “You haven’t completed the module?”

“Just about!” I say with false cheerfulness.

The woman looks at my blank screen and back at me.

“I think you’d better apply yourself a little harder,” she says and stands back up. “Or you won’t finish at all.”

Rosalin and I are sitting on my bunk, our feet dangling over the edge. Mouse is exploring the surface of the bed spread for stray crumbs. He’s just finished the collection of crumbs we brought back from dinner.

When we were younger, we’d sneak out together and ride the monorail and visit Square One. Then when we were twelve, we were picked up by the city guards and reprimanded by Judiciary. Rosalin was so terrified she sobbed the entire time and clung to my arm. I was frightened but more curious about the entire experience. It was the first time I’d encountered men in official uniforms with weapons belted at their sides. I was accustomed to seeing people in the workday green, their boots dusty and worn. The two men that escorted us to the reprimand center were tall and stiff shouldered, their hair clipped close to their ears. They held their jaws tightly, like they were biting down on something hard. They never touched us, but Rosalin shook and crumpled to the floor when they presented us before the Justice. He was equally stern, shouting about rule breaking and responsibility and threatening us with exile. They delivered us back to TWOC and Head whipped us for insubordination. Physical punishment is forbidden in Osiris but Head disregarded that rule. I gritted my teeth against the ten lashes, but Rosalin screamed like her skin was on fire. She never really recovered after that. She certainly wouldn’t accompany me on a forbidden jaunt through the city now. She’s happy to wait for graduation until she wanders Osiris’ streets again.

Tonight, however, she’s less reticent.

“Tell me about the device,” she says. “What does it do?”

“Nothing really,” I say. “I thought turning it on would be the hard part. I didn’t think about what came next.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Unless I connect it to the network, it won’t be much use,” I say. “I don’t even know if the wifi antenna still works. I didn’t have time to test it.”

I consider telling her about the photos and then change my mind. I decide it’s better to show her the images in person. I smile a little at the thought of her surprise, seeing a real life artifact from before.

Rosalin sighs. “I don’t know why you find that stuff so fascinating. It’s just bits on a screen. It doesn’t do anything.”

“Of course it does something,” I protest. “It’s information, access to the network. They run all of Osiris from the network. Imagine if we tap into that. I could find out what our allotments are. I could change them in our favor.”

Rosalin looks dubious. “I don’t think I want to know how you’re planning to do that.”

“It’s not hard, I just need to hack the system, locate the allocation directory and assign us both to horticulture. Actually on second thought, I’ll allocate you to horticulture and I’ll take building maintenance.”

Rosalin laughs. “You’d select maintenance?”

I laugh with her. “I’d only do it to get access to the buildings. You’ve no idea how much stuff they’ve left behind. All the old equipment and technology. It’s incredible.” I don’t tell her I already have access to all these buildings.

“Oh yes, fascinating.” She raises her eyebrows at me.

“And it’s not just that. If I hack the network, I can access all kinds of information. Imagine if I could find the records of what happened to my parents, or yours. Don’t you want to know?”

The corners of Rosalin’s mouth turn down and she looks away. I know some of what happened to her parents.

According to news reports, they joined the Resolutionist Party in 96 a group that fought the Conservationists on social and economic issues. The protests went from ideological, to verbal to physical. I’ve seen the print outs of the riots that happened across Osiris. Ranks of men and women lined up in opposition, shouting and postulating. If the protests hadn’t turned violent things might have been different, but Rosalin’s parents led an attack on the Conservationist quarters, throwing glass jar firebombs and defacing the building with graffiti. Her parents might have been arrested and exiled but there’s no record of a legal battle or of an exile ceremony. They disappeared as mysteriously as my parents. The only other item in the system is Rosalin’s entry into TWOC in 98, two years before me. I’ve scoured the records but there’s very little to find. I get the sense the evidence has been removed. Part of me knows there’s more to the story and the details of each missing parent will lead me closer to the truth.

“Maybe we’re better off not knowing,” Rosalin says. “The world has moved on and it’s our life now. We’ve only got one, you know.”

I don’t know what to say to her. My life, our life is so intrinsically tied to our parents’ history I can’t imagine one without the other. There’s no us, without our parents.

“I have to find out what happened to them,” I say. “The truth matters. It matters to me.”

Rosalin shakes her head. “I know you do,” she says. “But I don’t have to.”

She slips off the bunk and retrieves her toothbrush from her nightstand. She looks up at me. “You’ll do what you need to. In the meantime I’m going to wash up.”

I’m sitting on a cushioned bench, my legs sticking out straight in front of me. I’m wearing a green dress made of a soft feathery material. A satin ribbon dangles from the waistband and I’m running my fingers along its silky surface. I’m not sure what I’m doing in this room. It’s full of adults dressed in tight suits and long dresses. The women have their hair arranged in elaborate styles on top of their heads, their high collars brushing their ears. They look impossibly elegant, like a fluttering swarm of butterflies. They move about the room in a slow dance, coming together and pulling apart. The jewels in their ears catch the light of the chandeliers, casting a glitter across the gathering.

There’s a disturbance at the far end and a hush falls over the room. People crane their necks to see what’s happening. I hear shouting, a single scream and fear leaps into my throat. I know I’m about to cry. I want to get off the bench but it’s too high for me to reach the ground without falling.

The shouting turns into a commotion. People are moving past me, pushing and shoving and I’m afraid one of them will fall on me. I’m really crying now, sobbing so hard my vision is blurry. I’m sure I’ve been sobbing for eternity when a tall man leans down and lifts me from under my arms. He folds me into his chest and starts walking away from the noise. I can hear him shouting to someone but my head is buried in the wool of his jacket and I can’t make out what he’s saying. I know something is terribly wrong but I don’t know what and I can’t stop crying. I want the noise and light to stop. I just want to go home and-

I awake, my heart pounding. I sit up in the dark, my eyes wide, as if I can see further into my dream. Discover just one more detail. I’ve been having this dream for years and it’s always the same. It feels so real it’s like a memory, but the details don’t make sense. The fabric of the dress is wrong - the ribbon, the soft fabric. Osiris clothing is made from the same stiff cotton and feels more like cardboard. It’s like a fantasy scene from a storybook, from one of the picture books in my abandoned library.

I push the covers away and swing my legs over the side of the bunk. I’m not going to sleep again tonight. I drop to the floor and tiptoe from the room, careful not to wake Rosalin. I sneak along the dark corridors and slip into the girl’s bathroom. I activate the tap and splash cold water on my face. It feels frigid against my burning skin.

There are no towels in here, we keep all of our personals in our rooms, but leaving the wet drops on my face is refreshing. It helps soothe the restless drumming in my chest. I head back to the dorm rooms thinking I might fall asleep after all, when I hear the slam of a distant door. I stop and listen. TWOC is dark and silent at night. Only the glow of the emergency strips illuminates the floor to guide nighttime wanderers. The rest of the system is powered down, the doors and windows locked. I turn toward the sound, taking the corridor to the back of the building. I’m about to enter the receiving dock when a light clicks on and I see Head disappearing into the office space tucked in the corner of the room. I step back so I’m pressed against the wall and blending perfectly with the darkness. I see his shadow move back and forth a few times and I hear the snap of a lock. Head emerges from the room with a briefcase in his hand and a sharp look in his eyes. It makes me shiver and I shrink away from him. He waves the light off and starts heading directly toward me. I panic for a second thinking he’s seen me. A surge of adrenaline makes my fingers tingle. I slide around the corner, willing him not to see me moving and run toward my room. I don’t want to bump into Head in the middle of the night in a dark corridor. I’m not afraid of many things but there’s something ominous lurking behind Head’s eyes and I’m only brave enough to confront it under full fluro lighting.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5