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sat there on bed dejected

burke sat next to me

looked at him said are you mad at me about the piss test

he smiled said no

asked him who was in charge of the camp

he told me that no one was

everyone at the camp was just a person taking orders

he told me to go to sleep in the morning they were going to wake us all up to eat

then to go to class

they want to reform us because we are dangerous

didnt understand anything

lay down on the bed

passed out

woke up the next day to loud sirens

every morning we wake up to loud sirens

devastating

need to get out of here

dont know why im here

im not ready for the concentration camp lifestyle

dont know what is happening

burke says he has a plan

says youre coming that he has agents collecting intel

dont know what he is talking about

dont know what is going on

miss you

miss your body next to mine

miss you the funny things you say

miss your arms legs vagina

wish i would have never gotten that job at NEOTAP

wish everything was different

doesnt matter what i wish

this is the truth of the situation

i am in a prison that calls itself a treatment center

miss you

rescue me

i love you

michael

Monica finished the email. She felt a sense of calm because she at least knew Michael was alive. But she felt angrier than ever knowing that her man was stuck in some crazy treatment center in the middle of the desert. She packed up her things and headed toward the location the CIA agent told her about.

Monica parked her car at the gas station in the Nevada desert. She had never been in the desert before. It all looked alien and strange. She stood outside her car. The sun blasted down on her, but it wasn’t hot because it was the end of October. She looked bad. Her weave hadn’t been combed in days. She hadn’t showered or put on makeup. She thought about going home but she realized she was having too much fun. She remained steadfast in her resolve to find Michael even if that meant engaging in a giant firefight and dying.

She left the keys in the ignition and threw on the heavy backpack. She said out loud, “Oh my fucking god this is heavy.” She didn’t know how she was going to carry this backpack fifty miles, but she pulled out the GPS and started walking into the desert. Before long the gas station and the road were out of sight. She was nowhere. The comforts of civilization had disappeared. Monica realized that no one could see her, no one knew where she was. The only thing that could see her was God. She imagined God looking down from Heaven at her walking through the desert by herself carrying a fifty pound backpack. She imagined God looking down knowing that His creation was powerful. God had created plants that would fight to survive in any situation, that would evolve and change if need be, God had created birds that could fly thousands of miles and fish that could live at the bottom of the ocean, and volcanoes that could destroy whole civilizations, and He had also created a species that would fight and die and murder to get its version of justice. She understood then why God had let evil into the world, why evil existed, because it gave humans a chance to show their power and worth. Monica believed in a God that required people showing their worth. She felt alone before her God for the first time in her life. She felt that God could see that she was worthy of being a human, worthy in sharing His creation, worthy of being created at all.

Monica sat on a rock and took a small drink of water and said, “So this is it, God, just me and you. Do you think I can do this? You must.”

Monica kept walking. Her feet started to blister, her legs became sore, her whole body started to feel extreme pain, but she kept walking. She had no intention of stopping.

She walked for a whole day and saw no one. The gun still sat under her coat, resting there in case she needed it.

When night came she unfolded her sleeping bag and sat on it and ate. She lit a small fire and warmed her hands. She took her shoes off, examined her blisters and rubbed her legs. In the backpack was a tube of Icy Hot. She took the tube out and rubbed the cream into her skin. She felt exhausted but couldn’t fall asleep immediately. She could hear the sounds of night around her. She could even smell the night. She looked up at the stars and could see more stars than she had ever seen in her life. She was amazed by the beauty of the desert sky. She was scared but amazed. The desert night made her smile. She thought she needed to smile because it might be her last night alive and she needed to take it seriously. She wanted to solve this problem, the problem of being without Michael, the problem of all those people being trapped in that camp. She didn’t understand the full complexity of the situation, how it stretched back to the fifties, how it involved high level officials in the government, corporations, and CIA agents, but she understood her place in the grand scheme of events. All life, all civilization, was every little human participating in their own little way, and she was just another little person doing her duty, doing what must be done. She said a prayer to the Christian God she had grown up with as she fell asleep. “I will carry this backpack, God, to Sherwood Burke. I will free those people.”

Monica woke up in the desert. She looked around and felt confused that she wasn’t in her room. She remembered her room, waking up day after day to an alarm clock, getting up, showering, then going to work. But life became different. Now she woke up in the desert, in a huge alien landscape. She kept looking around at the mountains, at the strange plants, and sometimes she even saw a lizard or some jackrabbits. All of it excited her. She promised herself that if she lived through this, she would return to the desert and explore with Michael and take some good pictures.

She walked all day, stopping only a few times. When she would get tired, she would take an Adderall, drink water and eat a little. At times she grew angry and wanted to scream, at other times she wanted to cry. But she kept walking. Her body ached, her feet hurt, her legs didn’t want to move, but she kept moving.

Monica wanted to stop and give up late in the afternoon but she refused. She didn’t understand why it had to be her, why life had given her this situation. She felt cheated, but she would endure.

As night came on, the GPS said she only had two miles to go. She walked to the top of a small mountain as the sun receded over the horizon, took out her night vision binoculars and looked down on the camp. “There it is,” she said.

She looked down on it. It was huge. Everyone was forced to sleep outside on bunk beds in open air pavilions. There was a large building where she assumed the military and employees slept. There were five guard towers. She could see the machine guns. They looked huge and terrifying. There was a tower on all four corners and a tower stationed on top of the building where the staff slept.

Still, she was alone. No one knew she was up there except the CIA agent and maybe Sherwood Burke, but even they couldn’t be sure. It was possible to assume that she had died out in the desert. It was possible to assume she had given up.

She realized that the people down there in that camp were suffering just like her. They were forced to live in a sad prison in the middle of the desert. They were suffering like her. There were millions suffering like her. She was not alone. She felt strong. She felt that she had the power of God running through her. She didn’t know what that meant, but she felt it.