“No problem,” Wren says, and then wanders over to Malachai, punching him playfully on the arm and laughing gleefully as he makes some pithy comment.
I turn from the scene, block it from my mind.
I see Alistair and Emery locked against the wall of the hallway, arms wrapped around each other, lips pressed together as their heads move rhythmically with the kiss. Alistair’s bleached shock of hair almost glows in the dim light. I consider talking to them, asking them about the rumor they spoke of in the exercise yard, where they got their information from, but I decide not to interrupt their tryst.
“Want to play hide-and-seek again?” a voice comes from beside me. I turn and see Harvey, his old-fashioned steel crutches under both arms. The boy has cerebral palsy, a disease that shouldn’t exist anymore, but Harvey was born poor.
“Remember what happened last time? Malachai yelled at you for hiding in his room.”
“Fuck Malachai.” Harvey smiles. “I’ll hit him with the business end of one of these if he starts his shit again.” Harvey brandishes one of his crutches and grins.
I laugh. “Maybe next time?”
“Fine, loser. As One,” Harvey says as he limps away to find someone else to play with him.
This region of Earth’s last election was won in a landslide by the current Overseer, Galen Rye, whose slogan was As One. He became a cult hero among both the richest members of society and the poorest. He has a knack of appealing to the extreme ends of politics. He promised to tighten migration control when the rest of the world was eliminating borders, he promised to eradicate homelessness by reinstating compulsory conscription into the emergency services, and he promised to vote against the algorithms of the machines when he felt human logic and the will of the people were at stake. He won the poor vote by convincing them he would fight for them, promising free training in virtual architecture, human thorium reactor engineers, and more teaching positions for low- and no-income households.
Galen Rye was predicted to lose by a landslide. I remember my dad telling me to listen carefully to what he was saying—he told me that this was not what hate sounded like, this was not what fascism sounded like, this was the voice of pure manipulation. A man who knew how to unite foes against a new common enemy and use it to his own advantage.
Rye won by a record margin. His supporters are adamant that he is a force for good. I’m not so sure.
I watch Harvey use one of his crutches to trip Chirrak. They both laugh. It breaks my heart watching these kids burn away their childhoods in a pit like this. I was one of them not so long ago—in a lot of ways I still am.
I put these thoughts aside; this is a time for happiness, brief as it may be. I walk over to Akimi, who is still dancing away in her temporary dress. She grabs my hands, and we dance together, smiling and laughing and enjoying these fleeting minutes that will be gone so swiftly.
Tomorrow is just another day inside the Loop.
It’s 5:32 in the morning, and a rumbling sound thrums through the walls.
I’m alert immediately. Anything that breaks the routine is likely to provoke a fight-or-flight response in me.
I realize this is not so much a sound but a feeling; it’s a vibration, like a minor earthquake shaking the ground beneath the gigantic prison. I know what this is—this is the Dark Train. A new inmate is arriving.
I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep, but it quickly becomes evident that it’s not going to happen. Despite the depleting effects of the harvest on my body, my brain is wide-awake.
I get up and walk to the door, pressing my ear against it, as if I’ll somehow be able to hear the new inmate taking that long walk around the Loop to their cell, but I can’t; all I hear is the deep and constant silence that I live with every day.
I’m loath to start my morning at this time—two additional hours can feel like a lifetime in this place—so I lie down on top of my sheets and stare up at the ceiling in the dim light.
I return to the world I have created, the story I’m writing in my head; this is a technique I developed to keep me from losing my mind in the endless hours of silence. I can get lost in another world for a while, like I can with books. This story is set far in the past, long before the machines controlled everything, before pre-life cosmetic improvements for the rich, before the ascension of the Altered and their dominion over the Regulars, and long, long before Galen Rye. A time that my dad used to talk about, a very brief period in human history when we almost got it right, not everyone, not all the time, but we were close.
I walk through this world, far away from the Loop, I’m free to go wherever I want, and I always end up at the same place: the riverside. This place is where my favorite memories live; this is where we used to go as a family on long summer days, where we’d forget about everything for four or five hours and just relax. My sister and my father are with me in this place now, and there are no such things as Alts and Regulars or war or hate. There isn’t much to this story—no conflict, no danger, no twists and turns—but it’s a world where I can be happy. And yes, Wren exists in this world too, and yes, sometimes when I walk along the riverside in this world, I’m holding her hand, and sometimes she smiles at me, and sometimes, for a while, I even forget that it’s not real. I can see how easy it would be to lose myself in here, and I don’t blame all of those in the outside world who are addicted to Ebb.
Before I know it, hours have passed—it’s 7:30 a.m., and Happy’s voice comes through the speakers.
“Inmate 9-70-981. Today is Thursday, the ninth of June. Day 744 in the Loop. The temperature inside your cell is 66 degrees Fahrenheit. Please select your breakfast option.”
And the routine begins again: I eat my tasteless breakfast, I watch Galen’s daily address, I complete my workout, then I open the second book in the trilogy—The Two Towers—and read.
I’m so lost in the fantastical world of Middle-earth that I’m almost unaware of the sound of birdsong and the slight breeze as 11:30 comes and the back wall opens up for exercise, but I mark my page and quickly stretch my legs before sprinting out into the sunlight.
Again I hear the mixture of sound coming from all sides of the Loop—the conversations picked up from the day before as though no time has passed, the mad ramblings, Pander singing, and, of course, repetitive threats from across the yard: “Luka Kane, I’m going to kill you. Luka Kane, I’m going to kill you.”
I’ve gotten so good at blocking out the unfulfillable threat that I almost miss the sound of crying on the other side of the wall to my left.
The new inmate, I think as I complete my first lap and turn to spring back to the pillar.
I feel like it’s my responsibility, as it was Maddox’s before mine, to help my new neighbor, to tell them that it’s going to be all right, to tell them that the fear goes away, but not now—now I have to complete my sprints. Forty-three more minutes.
The sun feels hotter today, which is impossible—the machines keep the temperature of this part of the world at a constant 66 degrees from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., at which point it slowly lowers throughout the night to 41 degrees. It must be the thought of a new inmate, possibly a new friend, and that makes me feel more exhausted than usual today. Every time I complete a lap and glance at the screen, it seems like no time has passed at all.