Чет Уильямсон - Resist - Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against

My mom is a doctor, and so I recognize the names of the drugs he wants. Stuff to stop diarrhea, to cure an infection, to lower a fever. Antimalarials. Antibiotics.

There’s a long pause on the other side and then a voice that I’m pretty sure is Free Mind’s Mayor says, “We’ll confer. Expect our answer shortly.” Then there’s a burst of static and silence.

Lukas looks at me. “Damn,” he says. “That’s pretty cold. Maybe they don’t actually want you back.”

“How many people know?”

He gazes at me for a moment. “Well, all the loot teams, of course, and all the merchant class, since their loot teams tell them. Everyone in government, and the tech team that maintains the augmented reality field. And whoever those people tell. No one’s supposed to talk about it, but you know. People, they let stuff slip.”

“My dad is a building contractor and my mom is an OB/GYN.” I say. “Do you think — do they know?”

He shrugs. “Hard to say. But, you know, there’s a reason all the Defenders are young, and it’s not just because of the fast reflexes and all that. It’s because they know you don’t know.”

“Will they even let me back?”

“They let the pirates back in. They let me back in. Until I ditched.”

“But why? Why the whole lie?”

“Every society needs its myths, I guess. Your people, our people, they decided to be free thinkers, and that meant they were free to invent their own facts. They fled the city as it died, took everything they could. Built their own world and a reality to match.”

“My whole life I’ve been taught the City wanted to oppress us.”

“Some people find it oppressive to be asked for help.”

The radio crackles back to life. “Miami,” a disembodied, distorted voice says. “We’ve discussed your offer. Our conclusion is that we don’t negotiate with terrorists and unfortunately, we must refuse.”

I shout into the radio. “What about my parents? Do they know? They won’t let you do this!”

“They know you drowned,” the voice says. “In a moment they’ll identify your body.”

“My body is right here!”

“Not from their perspective.”

For a moment I can’t comprehend what he means. Then I remember—the scans. Every year, each resident of Free Mind gets a full body scan, the booth whirring as our spectral forms find three dimensions on some outside screen, our holographic likenesses stored permanently in the data bank. They said it was for security reasons.

They can tweak reality, and they own the contours of my face.

“That’s not a perspective,” I snap at the radio, my voice rising. “It’s a lie! It’s just a lie!”

“Just some alternative facts,” the voice says, and then the static goes still as the radio cuts off.

My kidnappers collapse with despair across the damp cushions. The other couple dozen people who appear to live in this squat are gathered around us now, wide-eyed. A cry goes up.

Lukas looks at me. I look at Lukas.

“Well,” he says. “Fuck.”

THE CITY PEOPLE aren’t happy. No meds. Ten of their own lost in the battle with Free Mind, shot and drowned for nothing. Now there’s me, another mouth to feed, and they don’t care if I live or die. Some of them want to kill me. They argue about it in the corner. They don’t care that I hear.

It’s not exactly an ideal situation for me, either. I want to go home. I want my family to know I’m alive. I want to return to the world as I thought it was. I do not want to be murdered and fed to the sharks.

In the short term, the Mudlarks decide not to kill me. Lukas is their inside man, the former Free Minder who understands the Seastead and knows its weaknesses. He assures them he’ll think of something to do with me.

I don’t know if he actually has a plan to use me or if he just feels bad about killing me, but either way I am grateful for the reprieve.

They give me a mat to sleep on in a room full of squalling toddlers. All hours of the night they’re waking up and crying with hunger and heat rashes. I try to comfort them back to sleep but nothing I do is good enough and eventually I just lie there crying too, thinking about my parents who think I’m dead.

A few days pass. I make a friend: another young woman on child-minding duty. She has never been on a boat to Free Mind and so she doesn’t understand why she should hate me. She shows me her tips and tricks for soothing small and miserable children. We commiserate. We are comrades in arms in the diaper rash trenches and this work, as grueling as it is, comforts me—because it makes me feel closer to my mother, somehow, knowing she’s doing the same things on Free Mind.

TEN DAYS LATER, Lukas pulls me aside. “I need to talk to you.”

There’s no private place here. We sit in the corner with the moldy cushions, the squat’s informal meeting place. I wait, nervous and fidgeting.

He holds a device in his hands. “We spent a lot of time and effort tracking down all the parts and pieces to build those IEDs,” he says. “We thought if we could just break through that wall… But I fucked up. It’s not the platform we need to breach. It’s their thoughts about us. It’s the filter. I should have been working on this thing instead.”

“What is it?” I look at it curiously, this odd conglomeration of circuits and coils and copper wires.

“It’s an EMP generator. I think—if I made it right—it could temporarily disable the augmented reality field. For a few minutes at least. Like being on a boat and leaving the Seastead’s range. So they would see us.”

“They could see me.” My friends could see me; my parents could see me. They would know that I’m alive and the Mayor lied. I could tell them the truth about the City and the people here. There is no mind control, no intoxicating pill. There’s just starvation and sickness.

“Right. So I need you to come with us. You and I, we’re still Free Minders, right? We need to make that gap in the filter. So they’ll listen.”

“I’m in,” I say. Not that I really have a choice. To stay alive, I must be useful. And I want to go back to Free Mind. I want my family.

We talk. He tells me how the EMP generator works. I tell him what defense platform we need to approach, the one in my sector where the Defenders will know me. He calls in the others—the raiding party. And together we make a plan.

The whole time I’m thinking that whatever happens, I’m getting free of them. As soon as I’m close, as soon as it’s safe, I’m making a break for it. I’m going home.

FOR TWO DAYS they prepare, looting more gasoline for the boat, mending their body armor built from scraps, testing the EMP generator. I’m walking lighter thinking I’m going to get out of here, it’s really going to happen, soon I’ll be free again, and safe. I sing to the babies simply because I’m happy.

But at the same time there are other thoughts running through my brain, a parallel story that doesn’t match up: I want us to be successful. Us. Miami. The City. I want us to win. I laugh with my friend in the nursery and I wait patiently in line as they divvy up the stew at night—it’s not like Free Mind, they don’t use money, they just share—and I keep forgetting I don’t belong. I want us to get that medicine because this little girl I’m rocking has a fever that won’t break and this baby boy has a rash all up and down his back and this other little boy has the runs. I think, my mom is a doctor, she could help us. I catch myself on that “us.” She could help them.