Darklandia (7 page)

Darla exited the darkroom and scanned her sec-band. “What are you doing out here? Was I in there longer than an hour?”

I kept my expression impassive as I wondered if she was murdering anyone inside Darklandia today—maybe me. “No. I was just thinking about some stuff,” I replied. “I’m coming back to serve my hour later, around seven. Want to come with me?”

Darla began fidgeting with her lifesaver again. “That’s awfully close to curfew. Why don’t you just serve it now?”

“I don’t want to make you wait.”

“You’re acting strange.”

I thought of all our Felicity school classes, the only education we received from age three to seven, where the
Code of Felicity
was first hammered into us. The
Code of Felicity
spoke often about the power of intention. Why? Why did you say that? Why did you do that? Why did you think that? If the answer to the question was not clearly “Felicity” then it should not be said, done, or thought.

I wanted Darla to know the real “why”, but for the first time in our fourteen-year friendship I didn’t know if I could trust her. I didn’t even know what it meant to trust someone. Part of me wanted to tell her I would come alone, part of me wanted to tell her the truth about Nyx, or Aaron, but an even greater part of me wanted to forget him, serve my hour, drink my ration, and go to bed as I was instructed.

I grabbed Darla’s arm and pulled her into an alley between two buildings once used as television studios. “Darla, I’m going to tell you something terrible, but I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone—at least not until tomorrow.”

“Something terrible?” she repeated my words with a slight gasp.

I never used filter words. Negative words were filtered out of our vocabulary. They were not forbidden, but they triggered episodes in some people and we were taught to only use them when no other word would suffice. Language filters were taught in Felicity school and they were ingrained in me by the age of six. In this instance, the word “terrible” wasn’t necessary, but my language filters didn’t seem to be working.

I glanced at the camera affixed to the corner of the building. It pointed into the alley so I leaned forward to whisper in Darla’s ear. “I’m not drinking my ration today and I’m not serving my hour. I’m meeting someone who knows what happened to my father and I want you to come with me.”

Darla’s smile twitched. “Now I know you’re joking. You shouldn’t joke like that, Sera.”

“It’s not a joke,” I said more forcefully, as the whir of the camera chafed my nerves. Now, I had to say something for the angels in the sky. “Let’s go. I have to check in with my mother before I go back to serve my hour.”

My mind was splitting into two separate identities like my old tunics when Mother unraveled the seams to repurpose the front panel into washrags and the back panel into a quilt. Two pieces of the same cloth, each with a very different purpose.

Darla did not question me the rest of the walk to the apartment. She also didn’t protest when I suggested she come inside and say hello to my mother. I wanted my mother to know I was with Darla today and I wanted her to see me leave with Darla.

Darla and I entered the apartment and were immediately greeted by the sound of my mother’s grunts as she scrubbed something in the lavatory. The clotheslines lashed the living space into segments. Damp dingy clothing hung about the room, dripped onto the sofa and carpet, drowning the apartment in a sour, earthy musk. I wanted to take a shower since this might be my last chance to shower for weeks, but I needed to get out of this apartment.

“Mother,” I called out as I approached the lavatory being careful not to slip in the glistening puddles that dotted the kitchen floor. “Mother, Darla and I are going to serve our hour. We’ll be back before curfew. Did you need help with anything before we leave?”

My mother turned her head away from the tub where folds of linen swam like mermaid ghosts in a foamy gray ocean. “How did your evaluation go?” she asked.

I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or pleased to see me, or maybe she was disappointed. “It went well, except the health specialist made a mistake and they had to cut the evaluation short.”

“A mistake?”

Stupid malfunctioning language filter.

“I mean, the specialist left without informing anyone of his whereabouts.”

“Oh,” my mother replied, as she went back to swirling the linens around the grimy bathtub that never seemed to get clean no matter how much bleach my mother poured into the cracked, moldy grout. “Be back before curfew to drink your nightly ration.”

“Of course,” I said. “Are you certain you don’t need any help with the wash?”

She shook her head without looking up. “I’ll set a few damp rags on the counter for you to wash up when you get home. They’ve already turned the water off.”

I could tell by the dirt on my mother’s elbows and knees that she hadn’t had the chance to shower today, either. My throat swelled as I thought of the injustice of it; the rationing of water and nutrients, the living in constant filth and close quarters, the lack of control over any of it.

By the time Darla and I reached the courtyard in front of the Department of Felicity I had composed myself again. The warmth of the August sunshine radiated from the concrete even as the sun tucked itself away behind the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty. The dim solar-powered street lamps cast a murky yellow glow across the courtyard and the hollow fountains. Only three people other than the angels could be seen lurking about. One of those three was engaged in a lively conversation with one of the angels. The tips of his spiky hair smoldered under the glow of the street lamps, like a crowned halo.

“That’s him,” I said to Darla, throwing a quick nod toward Aaron as we stood motionless near the corner of the South Pool.

“I want to go home,” she whispered.

“Go ahead. I won’t be upset,” I replied. “But please don’t tell anyone anything until tomorrow.”

She stared at me for a moment and I had an awful sinking feeling that this was the last time I would see Darla. I wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be all right, the way my grandmother hugged me during the change, but I saw no sign of distress in Darla’s face. No sign that she was afraid this would be our last moment spent together as best friends, as allies.

“Good evening, ladies,” Aaron said, and I fell backward against the fence surrounding the empty fountain.

“You startled me,” I said, righting myself next to Darla, forming a united front even if she didn’t seem to want any part of this frontier.

“I apologize,” Aaron replied, glancing at me before he addressed Darla. “Nice to meet you. I’m Aaron.” He turned back to me. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend.”

“We’re inseparable,” I replied.

“No, Sera, I really think I should leave,” Darla said, glancing back and forth between Aaron and the nearest angel. “I need to help my mother with the mending. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

I nodded for fear that if I spoke my voice would sound as strangled and painful as my thoughts.

She walked away without glancing back. When she was at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich Aaron finally spoke up.

“Why are you here?” he asked, and I immediately thought of today’s evaluation. The woman asked, “Do you know why you’re here?” Her question implied I was brought there against my will. Aaron’s question implied the opposite.

“I’m here because I want to know what happened to my father.”

“That’s all?”

My eyes scanned the courtyard to see if there were any angel helmets pointed in our direction. “I want to know what happened to New York. I want to know why I feel this way, why I can’t stop feeling like something is wrong.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied with my answer. “The drought changed everything,” he began, pausing to let me take in these words. “For centuries, water was needed for humanity’s favorite distraction from reality: alcohol. In 2037, to conserve water, the American government outlawed the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages. That’s when everything exploded.”

“Alcohol? What is that?”

“It’s something people used to drink. Some people drank too much of it, but the point is it was made mostly of water. The drought made it impossible to continue production of alcohol, which is why it was prohibited.”

“Did it taste like water? Did it have nutrients? Why did people like it so much?”

He appeared slightly exasperated by my many questions. “It relaxes you. It makes you feel happy.”

“So it
is
like rations?”

“Sort of, but not really. May I continue?”

“Of course. Sorry.”

I didn’t realize we were walking until we were near the opposite corner of the South Pool, approaching a Guardian Angel.

“The crime rate shot through the stratosphere,” Aaron continued. “People who normally spent their nights at home with a few drinks suddenly had nothing to do. Nothing to fill the empty hours. Nothing to kill the pain of living with hardly any water or hope.

“Then, in 2039, a wealthy entrepreneur by the name of Peter Frost saw the potential in the hostility caused by the prohibition. He built a virtual amusement park where people could go to escape reality. Darklandia was a world where people could punch their boss in the nose, cheat on their wives, rob banks, and even murder people. The dirtier the deeds, the more points you scored and the more levels you conquered. The more levels you conquered, the longer you got to stay inside the pod. People traveled from all over the world to visit Darklandia. It was the new Disneyland, without water.”

He was speaking so many filter words I didn’t want to hear: wives, murder, dirty. But I thought I was beginning to understand.

“Are you saying the end of human suffering began with an
amusement park
?”

“I’m saying the end of human suffering is a myth.”

“But everyone’s happy.”

“You think that just because a person doesn’t question the way the system works that means they agree with it? And if they do agree that must mean they’re happy? Are
you
happy?”

I suddenly had a vision of bleak little orchestras playing inside the minds of people all over New York City, all over Atraxia. Sad operas with no soprano to sing the stories behind the haunting melodies. Human beings locked in a state of complacency through the use of nutritional rations.

“What does this have to do with Darklandia? Darklandia helped everyone. It’s the rations that turned everyone into zombies. And what does this have to do with me? Yes, I made a mistake, but I can still fix it. If I drink my rations and serve my hours, eventually they’ll forget what I did. Won’t they?”

“Sera, they watched your father for over a year. I’m not saying they’re coming for you tomorrow or next week, but one of these days your sec-band is going to flash red and you’re not going to have someone to bail you out a second time because there won’t be a second evaluation.”

“I don’t understand why everyone is so afraid of being purified. If they cut out a piece of my brain to turn me into a zombie, I won’t care because I’ll be a zombie. If they rapture me, I won’t care because I won’t exist anymore.”

Aaron shook his head looking almost disgusted with my words. “That’s exactly what they taught you to think, even down to the use of the word
rapture
,” he said, glancing over my shoulder at something or someone. “There’s something you need to see.” He raised his hand and waved at someone behind me. “Hey, Hark! Nice night, isn’t it?”

I whipped my head around and found an angel waving at Aaron, as if it wasn’t almost curfew.

“How do you get away with that?” I whispered.

“I work for them,” he said. “And I’m asking you to work for me. I’m offering to save your life and in exchange you help me save hundreds, possibly thousands or even millions of lives.”

I was so tired and hungry; I couldn’t imagine I’d be able to save anyone like this. All I wanted was to sit down, but only the elderly and very young children sat down to rest in public. Everyone else roamed the streets of Manhattan possessed of an unnatural vigor that made me uneasy. Even Aaron possessed that vigor, that glow of enthusiasm, but he didn’t consume the rations. Or did he?

“How do you survive?” I asked. “Without the rations? Why aren’t you starving?”
The way I am right now.

“I’ll tell—I’ll
show
you everything once I have your answer. Are you in? Do you want to know the truth about Darklandia? Do you want to know the truth about your father, Sera?”

The way he spoke my name with such familiarity, it made me uncomfortable. Or maybe it wasn’t the way he said it. Maybe it was the way I was hearing it, without the power of the rations echoing in my ears. What else had I not perceived correctly?

I nodded my head quickly before I could change my mind. “I’m in. I want to help.”

“Why do you want to help?”

Another “why” question. Aaron was intent on knowing my intentions. My mind drew back to one of my most memorable lessons from Felicity school. “There is power in intention,” my fourth-grade teacher had said. “The power to build and the power to destroy.”

“I want to destroy them for what they did to my father,” I replied.

Aaron eyed me warily. “Your thirst for destruction may change once I’ve shown you the truth,” he said. “Drink your ration tonight and tomorrow morning, but don’t drink your noon ration. Pretend as if tomorrow is any other day, but don’t serve your hour after school. Remember your language filters. I’ll pick you up at your home tomorrow at four o’clock. Drink your afternoon ration right before I arrive. Goodnight, Sera.”

He set off across the courtyard toward Washington and Liberty, the founding father and founding principle of the former America. I was beginning to question if anything I had been taught about American and Atraxian history was true. I never questioned it before, but now it seemed all too easy to alter the past and, in effect, alter the future. If the intent were to pacify the citizens of Atraxia, it would make sense for the government to alter history to make the darklings seem inhuman.