Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“You can’t make me rule a society that has all the—the passion taken out of it!” I roar, racing to the door. “I’m Elder! I rule after you! I won’t control the people as you do. You can’t make me control them like that!”

I punch the door hard, denting the metal. But it doesn’t zip open.

Rule Three: No individual thought .

“Are you scared?” the Eldest asked the young Elder, more boy than man. The older Elder stood off to one side, allowing the old man a chance to speak directly to the boy before facing the crowd gathered in the garden.

Elder shakes his head, but it’s a lie. He is. He doesn’t know what to expect.

Eldest cinches the robe around his shoulders.

“This is the changing ceremony. I will step down. You will step up. This has all happened many times before.” He arranges the cloth over him so the embroidery lies flat. In his palm is a black med patch.

“How many Eldests have there been?” Elder asks.

“Countless.” Eldest takes a deep breath. The patch feels cold in his hand, the med side up. He imagines how it will feel when he presses it against his neck.

“You’re going to see a series of vids today, after the ceremony. Watch them carefully. You will need to figure out what they mean. Sometimes… sometimes it’s hard to know what is right and what is wrong. But you are Elder. You will one day be Eldest. And you will know what is right by watching the vids and seeing the price we pay for the ship to live.”

Elder plays with the red stitching at the hem of his tunic. “Did you know what was right?”

Eldest straightens his spine, throws back his shoulders, feels the tension stiffening his neck. “I didn’t at first,” he says. “But… I came to see the truth.” His eyes pierce Elder’s. “You will too. And the Elder after you. And the Elder after him.”

“Forever,” whispers Elder.

Eldest nods. He remembers the wild-haired woman, the way her eyes flashed red with blood and love. He wonders how many Elders protested their first day of training…how many—if any—never stopped protesting, were like the woman who didn’t give up until her blood splashed the walls, and would rather die than become the man who took away violence at the cost of passion. It’s true there had been… aberrations in the past. He did not find this out until after he had accepted his role; only a generation ago, an Elder had protested the system and had been quickly and quietly replaced.

But he also knows—now that time has passed and the memory of that first day has faded, that he had been right to wrap the robe around himself, just as the black patch felt right in his hand, now, and would feel right later this day, when he pressed it against his neck.

“Forever.”

THE CREEPY PLAYING SECOND BASE IS A HELL OF A FIELDER but his arm’s for shit, so they can forget about the double play. My sister Jenna swings a doughnutted bat in the on-deck circle, chewing strawberry gum we found in the drawer of a wrecked house, her Mets cap turned around backward, her yellow hair flowing in the constant breeze. Seeing her like this makes me happy. She shouts at the Ken up at bat, “You’d better hit the goddamned ball, loser!” Mom wouldn’t ever let that language fly. Jenna’s only ten. But I let it slide. Lately, I let everything slide.

The Creepies’ pitcher looks like a seven-foot-tall furless cat with giant yellow eyes that glow no matter what angle you look at them, and rows and rows of toothpick teeth longer than my fingers. But her arm’s the real killer. She’s struck out four batters already, and it’s only the third inning. (These Creepies learn fast.) Bottom of the third inning, actually, and the last. Three innings was all we could coax from these creatures who seem to be more interested in the strange stars spinning wildly above the field than the game. Its Jenna, me, the Kens and Barbies vs. the Creepies, and we’re down 1–0.

The Ken at bat just stands there as the pitch whizzes by. “Strike three!” calls the ump, a three-foot scaly fish with batlike wings. His voice is like frogs dying. Two outs. Jenna throws her bat to the ground. Its clank echoes from the home-run walls. “You idiot! You stupid jerk! You goddamned jerk! Why couldn’t you hit the ball?”

I cautiously approach my sister. Last week, she swung at me, got me right in the balls. But I’ve forgiven her. I forgive everything now. “Hey, hey. It’s all right. We still have a chance,” I say. My hand falls on her shoulder, but she shoves it away.

“No! He should have hit the ball, Russell! Three pitches right down the middle and he just stood there! He’s so stupid!”

The Kens and Barbies are more than stupid, they’re empty. Literally. They look like ordinary people, except at certain angles you can see right through them, and they glow like streetlights in fog. And they also do whatever you ask them, because there’s nothing much left inside to tell them otherwise. (It was easy herding a bunch of them to play this game.) I turn Jenna around, lean in to face her. “You’re up. You can do this.”

“She’s too fast. I’ll strike out.”

“I’ve seen you hit the ball. You’re amazing. Show them what we are.”

“That was before . I’m nothing now.” She falls to her knees, runs her hand through the dirt.

A green monster like a seven-legged Incredible Hulk runs across the field and leaps over the home-run fence into the starry abyss. A moment later, a huge flying hairless ferret-thing arcs over the field, snatches up the monster, and flaps away into the stars. The monster screams, trailing a rain of golden blood. Jenna doesn’t look up.

I squat down and lift her chin. Her eyes are as red as stoplights. “You’re not nothing, Jenna. You’re everything to me.”

She frowns, points a shaking finger up. “ He says I’m nothing. He says we’re all nothing, doesn’t he?”

I look at a sky filled with too-bright stars (even though the sun is up and shining) at the giant pieces of earth that drift lazily overhead—entire towns and cities uprooted and tossed into space, never to fall back down. What can I say to comfort her?

Ten weeks earlier, the afternoon of my first day of ninth grade, I lined up my bike behind a dozen other kids, waiting my turn to trick out on the Track. That was our name for the curvy, jump-laden BMX bike course some kids had built years back, with shovels and dirt in the wooded preserve. Each year, some parent inevitably got wind of it, had the town bulldoze it flat. And each year, some industrious kids rebuilt it, with improvements on the original design. Far from the eyes of parents or cops, the Track had become a sacred place, where kids could shred without helmets or pads, smoke cigarettes, and make out behind the trees.

Everyone who was anyone was here, decked out in their new threads. It seemed as if every kid had remade himself for the new year. I felt like anything was possible, that I too could make myself into whatever I wanted.

My friend Vinny (new Adidas pants and sneakers, Lakers cap) leaned in close on his bike and excitedly showed me a picture of what was supposed to be Pamela Huston’s cleavage. With careful pinches, Vinny vigorously zoomed in and out on the screen of his cell phone, as if there were some cosmic secret hidden in the pixels. All I saw was a blotch of color.