Empty Streets (15 page)

She laughed. "Agreed. At least other people don't know what they're missing."

They stood in silence. Eri took a deep breath and tried to relax. Bodhi released her hands and motioned to the room around them.

"This," he spun in a slow circle as he spoke, "is Ben's house. This is where he used to read books and write stories and grade papers. Ben used to be a teacher, back when teachers were real people in real classrooms and public school was somewhere most of the population went. And that," he said, pointing to the kerosene lamp, "is a mini fire within a glass vessel. I had to light it with real matches."

Eri turned in a circle, taking in the room. Made of red brick on the outside, with oak floors and plaster walls on the inside, this house looked like nowhere she had ever been. There were lamps that had weird looking bulbs, and electrical outlets all over the place. A thick, flowered rug was under her feet, and the walls were lined with shelves that held notebooks and boxes and real, paper books. Eri leaned out and touched one, grabbing it off the shelf and flipping through the pages. A familiar smell touched her nose, and she shut her eyes, trying to remember where it came from.

"I love it here," she said. And she did. Something about this space felt real and lived in and happy. Picture frames sat askew on a desk, with strange people smiling at her. For some reason this made her sad. She had never seen a real picture of people smiling. "Who, um, is Ben?"

Bodhi put his hands on her shoulders. As she became used to her surroundings, she could smell something else, on top of the wood and leather and paper; she could smell dust and decay. She could smell the passage of time.

"Ben is my only friend left on the outside. He's a truck driver. Ben's family owns this house, but he works too far from here to actually live here. It isn't practical anymore…and he said it makes him sad to be here. He said, though, that before he left he covered all the windows and doors in a material that cannot transmit heat. He made sure he could hide here, if he ever needed to. He might be the smartest person I know."

Bodhi paused, thinking about how to tell her everything in a way that made the most sense. He took a deep breath.

"Look, I need to tell you as much as I can as quickly as I can."

She nodded. "Let's sit."

He looked relieved. She always handled everything so well. Eri avoided the dust covered couch and sat on the carpet at their feet, with the lamp to her left. He sat facing her.

"Specific to your house, they have yet to find an efficient way to monitor a house in pitch blackness without posting people there all the time, which is really conspicuous. They have cameras trained on the building from across the street, but they are not able to pick up enough light at night to see anything, so they're mostly using those to monitor the daytime. For nighttime, they have put in sound surveillance, but it is weak and tripped all the time by wind or street cleaners, so they mostly ignore it. For the last three days they were using heat readers on your house, but since there wasn't any action or real evidence that there would be, they stopped. There are bigger fish to fry…and they think it was your brother leaving, so they think the 'problem' has been solved."

Eri looked down, blinking hard. Her brother. She missed him.

Bodhi continued. "My dad is a rule follower and is really careful about sharing things with me, but my mom…she is a bit of a rebel. She is the one who makes sure I have the breathing treatments and the sunscreen to go outside. I signed on to her computer as her, looking at public logs of information. Nothing with serious security clearance, but enough information to put pieces together, information that she has put together, but can't confirm."

"Finding you wasn't as accidental as I implied at first. I knew your name and where you lived due to the databases my mom has access to. I hope you don't think that is weird, but you know my theory that there are people like us, people that want out of the system, but can't find a way off the grid? I think if I really can identify them by the way their persona looks-that is, if it looks more and more like them before they age out of the Sims-I could look them up in this directory and find out where they live."

She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"I watched you for a while, seeing subtle changes in your persona, and when I saw you outside, my hunch was confirmed. For you anyways. I hope you understand, I wasn't trying to stalk you, I just had a hunch and needed to see for sure…" He trailed off, looking at the floor, his cheeks getting a little pink.

"Bodhi, it's fine. What else?"

He cleared his throat. "Over the years, there have been people I ran into outside, the ones I mentioned before, but there have actually been more who've been outside that I didn't know about. When I needed to know what was happening with you and your house, my mom could tell me some stuff. But when I need to know what is happening outside of our bubble, I find Ben.

"As a truck driver, Ben moves goods from the farms and warehouses outside the city. He speaks to almost no one, but listens constantly. He moves food from the country to the city and then north to the suburbs. He gets more puzzle pieces than any one person should have access to."

"How did you happen to talk to Ben?" Eri interrupted.

"I had seen Ben dropping food off to the townhouses once, when I was with Zare. Ben looked directly at us, seeing our eyes through the thick grass, and then he 'dropped' a loaf of bread, looking at us again before driving away. He just knew we were there, and the bread was his peace offering. We were just kids. He told me later that he missed kids more than he could ever say, that teaching had been an amazing profession once, one that had fulfilled him and made him happy. He said when he saw us and our curious eyes, it reminded him for a second of who he had been.

"I don't know how, but Zare made friends with him, traveling to the outskirts of town to talk to him. They would meet in the evenings to talk, Ben telling Zare about how things used to be. Then Zare disappeared…so I have traveled out there, but it is really difficult and there is more and more security all the time. Ben thinks that before long, they'll shut down the city, creating locked gates to keep us in permanently."

Bodhi stopped long enough to take a breath and rub his tired eyes. Eri's mind spun with information, trying to link everything together.

"You haven't slept," Eri stated matter-of-factly.

"Nope. Would you have?" Bodhi countered.

She shook her head. "So, what does Ben have to do with us? With all of this?"

Bodhi shrugged. "I have these people in my head: Zare, my mom, Ben, you…and I feel like everyone has something to contribute to our…goal…or mission, I guess. I just can't figure it out. But Ben knows everything, how we transitioned to the Sims machines, how it changed the way our community ran, how we lost the desire for real human relationships. It makes him sad, but he's oddly hopeful we can change it all. I don't even know what he means by that. But, for now, we can use his house for a hideout." Bodhi grinned at her.

"I guess everyone needs a hideout. I think we both have a desire to change a lot about this world we live in, but, yeah, it is pretty overwhelming. It would almost be easier to just start over. Did you, um, find out anything about Taya?" Eri rubbed her thumb over the top of Bodhi's calloused hand.

Bodhi shook his head. "There isn't anything in the system. Has she been back in class?"

"No," Eri replied. A heavy silence hung on her, laced with guilt. "I feel like I should be doing something, for Taya, for Ezra. Something. But how do we start if we don't know where we're going?"

"That's the other thing. We only have a couple more weeks before the snow will come, and then we'll be stuck inside. Going outside in the winter is almost impossible. If there's snow, it will be easy to track us. And I highly doubt you have winter boots and a coat." He smiled at her from under his eyelashes.

"So you don't go outside in the winter?" A sinking feeling descended into the pit of her stomach-how long and lonely the winter might be.

"It depends. If it gets really cold, the snow freezes and then they can't see tracks. Or if there is a thaw and I can stay on the roads, I might go out, but it's difficult to do any information gathering. I certainly couldn't get to Ben." He leaned his head on one hand, resting his elbow on his knee. Dark smudges lounged under his tired eyes.

"What do you do when you're information gathering?" she asked.

"I thought you might ask about that." He stood up, grabbing a large piece of paper, setting it on the floor between them. The paper was yellowed, but thick and strong, covered with grey lines. She curiously touched a line and it blurred under her finger. Bodhi laughed.

"Have you never seen a pencil?" He tilted his head at her with curiosity.

"I know what a pencil is, in the Sims world. I didn't know it smeared like that. Or looked fuzzy around the edges." She was so interested in the pencil's texture that she didn't notice the drawing itself. Finally, her vision panned out and she saw that it was a map.

"It's a map of the city. Here is my town house, and the factories, and the lake." She looked up at him in awe. "Did you draw this?"

"Yes. See these X marks? These are hiding spots you need to know about. They're places where you can get away from the heat seekers the street cleaners and the helicopters use. These roads, lined in dark, are the best ones to travel by if you need access to safe zones. You should memorize this map as soon as you can. Starting tomorrow night, for the next seven nights, I want to go to different spots and I want you to meet me there."

She sucked in a sharp breath. "In the dark? How will I know where to go?"

"You will never learn how to get anywhere if I'm helping you. If I can do it, you can do it. You're small, fast, and hiding seems to come very naturally to you." He smiled. "If we get separated, you need to know how to get home. And… if anything ever happens to me, you need to know where these spots are," he pointed to areas circled on the map. "These are spots where I keep a paper copy of names of people I think are…like us. As well as names of people I suspect are orchestrating and maintaining the system we currently operate under. It is also where I keep notes, a brief history kind of, of the Sims and the laws regarding our freedoms and all that…kind of like a research brief. I will get to all of it at some point, with you, but for now, you need to know where it all is."

"Bodhi, there are seven circles on this map. You have that much information spread out over the city?" She looked at him incredulously.

"Yeah…there is a lot to know. We get such fragmented information at school, and I have to ask questions as cryptically as I can when I talk to my mom and Ben, so it is hard to figure out what part of everything is intentional and what part just happened. I don't know how to change things that just happened naturally, but I think we might have a chance against manufactured changes." He looked at the map as he spoke, thinking through the information he had in each location.

"You're like a friggin' database. Can we go back to this whole winter thing? You're saying I might not see the real you all winter? That makes me feel nauseous." Eri wrinkled her nose.

"Right," he sighed. "So our date the other night? You picked up on my very visible Sims-style interest in you. I realized I might not get to see you much this winter and we might as well start dating on the Sims because there is no way I'm going to be able to fake the "just friends" thing for the next four or five months. Also, I was thinking about, you know, after the Achievement Exam. What will happen to both of us?" He looked at her levelly.

She looked down at the map again, this time feeling blindsided by her naivety. Of course, next year. "You mean after the spring achievement test, when we can put in for married housing. You interested in going into the pool?"

He nodded. Eri wasn't sure how the marriage pool worked, but knew that she had a year after the achievement test to live with her parents before she had to put in for married housing or single housing. She could apply for married housing anytime down the road, if she met someone at work or elsewhere.

She cleared her throat. "I mean, I wasn't sure…we attend the same Sims sessions but you might, technically, be a different class than me, and if you are going to go to college, um, I am not going, so I don't know if they would let us, I mean, if that is what you are getting at." Eri ended abruptly, her face turning red.

"Wait…what? You aren't going to college?" Bodhi looked confused. "You're, like, one of the smartest people I've ever met."

Eri snorted. "Um, well… going to a real college is expensive and my parents can't afford to buy the extra software for me to attend Sims classes after high school. I just planned on getting placed." Eri shrugged.

Bodhi shook his head. "No, it doesn't work like that. If you score high enough on the Achievement Exam, you go to college."

She smiled at his optimism. "If you say so. I just have a feeling that no matter how well I do, I won't be going to college."

Silence hung in the air between them. Bodhi turned over the thought of a rigged college access system while Eri contemplated the very real possibility that they may not see each other again after graduation, even if they put in for the marriage pool together.

"Yes," Bodhi said in the silence.

"Yes what?" Eri focused on studying the map, rather than perseverating on an unknown future. She was trying to determine the best route between certain locations in order to memorize those first. He had identified every camera and sound surveillance in the city. This must have taken him forever, she thought.

"Yes, we should apply for married housing after the Achievement Exam." Bodhi didn't make eye contact with her.

"Well, you don't have to seem so excited about it. Living with me isn't that great." Eri rolled her eyes at his generally calm exterior. He always looked as if he was calculating and rationalizing; even his emotions seemed careful.