Seneca Rebel (The Seneca Society Book 1) (19 page)

The woman next to the interviewer typed feverishly on an identical tablet. She didn't even look up. They both had their hair in buns. They could have been twins, except that only one of them wore glasses.

The interviewer cocked her head and spoke in a warm, relaxed tone. "Dorothy can you tell us where you are now?"

"The infirmary at the Smithsonian."

"Good."

Gregory looked to Reba.

Reba's whole body was tight like he was under a dentist's drill. He blinked about a mile a minute. "Affirmative."

This was unreal. They used
Reba
to determine truth in exit interviews for exiled Senecans.

Gregory nodded to the interviewer.

"Dorothy, can you tell us the last person you saw?"

I squinted and rubbed my forehead as if trying to think through the pain of my fall at the Smithsonian. "Well, before my cousins, it would have been my mom and my dog."

Gregory waited on Reba. "Affirmative."

Reba knew that the brainwashing was not working on me, but he provided an "affirmative" for every answer I gave. For two hours we went through a list of things that I’d supposedly done. The interviewer planted in my mind bits and pieces of facts from my alleged travels with my second cousins. The twisted part was, they knew all about my second cousins. Even more than I ever did. The woman next to the interviewer worked the tablet like a stenographer. I knew exactly what she thought she was doing. She
thought
she was re-calibrating my neurological processes via the mainframe to which I was supposedly entangled. They were attempting to implant false memories.

Reba was so focused on keeping his gaze locked on the floor, he could have burned a hole in it with his eyes.

Gregory approached me and patted my shoulder, just as he had when he and Ellen had stopped by to see me with the Dominic warning. "The gentlemen and I are going to be going now. This nice woman will help you get dressed in the clothes we found you in. You go ahead and make yourself comfortable here, sweetie. Later this morning, these two nice Smithsonian liaisons will be accompanying you on a flight back to Los Angeles."

Smithsonian liaisons!
Gregory was proving himself to be quite a piece of work.

"You'll be home with your mom by dinnertime."

"Thank you." I purred pathetically, like an injured kitty to a pro-bono veterinarian. And, voila, my work here was done.

36

W
EDGED
BETWEEN
TWO
civilian dressed S.O.I.L. officers on my flight back to LA, I sweated buckets and fidgeted the whole time, unable to find any sort of comfort as the searing heat in my feet radiated up my legs. People think I'm a chill person. I do a good job of radiating that vibe on the outside, but I have the tendency to be high strung. They, on the other hand, were as static as a dial tone the whole time.

We landed at LAX. As we made our way into baggage claim, we were welcomed by a chauffeur holding a "Dorothy Campbell" sign. He was a middle-aged, Iranian gentleman with a thinning hairline and deep wrinkles in his weathered skin. He quietly offered to get my bags, but I had nothing and was unsure of what had happened to the case of belongings I’d had at Seneca. I just kept the hope alive that one day, some way, somehow, my vinyl and I would come back together.

As we moved with the crowd across the dull cream and gray speckled tile, I soaked in the airport arrival atmosphere: people calling out to one another, kids on the loose, business travelers looking distracted, elderly folks being pushed in wheelchairs, lovers hugging, laughter, tears, sneezes, teases, happiness, frustration, tattered and bourgeois luggage side by side on squeaky conveyer belts, the buzz of outdated, unflattering lights, the faint smell of cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes wafting in from outside the automated sliding glass doors.

Ah, the airport. On this late afternoon at LAX, it all made me feel somber. Saddened by the naïveté of everyone around me. My heart palpitated, conflicted. Joyous and excited to see my mom and Killer, troubled in the realization that all these people who surrounded me would not be afforded the same opportunities as those in Seneca. I saw a man in a wheelchair missing his leg from the knee down. Shouldn't everyone have access to regenerative medicine? A Senecan education? Clean air? The duality disgusted me. I felt helpless. I hated that feeling.

It was a relief to be back in a car. I hadn't been in one since I had left LA, months before. Traffic on the 405 had never felt so good. Northbound, amidst an ocean of road-raged Los Angelenos, I finally felt content. The setting sun bathed my left cheek from the west. No matter how chill I tried to be, there was a hint of nervousness underneath, but dang, it felt good to be back in my city– The City of Angels.
 

A twenty-minute ride and we pulled up to my building. Everything felt right. S.O.I.L. shadowed me up to my apartment. When we got to the front door, there it was, music to my ears. Killer's yappy bark. I crouched down in anticipation of his welcome. The muffled sound of the 405 and my mom's hurried footsteps. What a precious symphony. And then she opened the door. Like a jack-in-the-box, Killer sprang into my arms. His tiny, wet tongue pelted my arm like a cyclone as he squealed with happiness.

"Killer! My baby, my love, I missed you so much. I'm so sorry I left you for so long." Finally. I squeezed him against my heart. My hands disappeared into his soft black fur.

Tears of happiness streamed down my mom's cheekbones. I stood up, cradling Killer with one arm, and threw the other around her, burying my face into the nook between her shoulder and neck. She held the back of my head. "Doro," she whispered. I never wanted to let go, never again. Neither did she. I clenched my eyes shut, letting the aroma of roasted coffee in her hair bring me back. There's no place like home. But it didn't matter where we were. It was all about
how
we were. Together. The S.O.I.L. officers stood silently by, erect like metal flagpoles, but it didn't matter to us. Nobody else was there.

We stayed like that for a long time before they interrupted us.

"Ma'am, we're going to need you to sign here, acknowledging your daughter's arrival, and then we’ll be on our way."

My mom didn’t want to let go of me, but she did, reluctantly, when they handed her a tablet. She glanced at it, signed with her finger, and with that, S.O.I.L. was gone.
 

I was back in the Aboves with my mother. When you live in Seneca's idyllic halls it’s easy to think of the Aboves as a disease-ridden, dismal place. In that moment, though, it was everything I wanted and more, and it won the applause of my heart.

Sadly, that bliss didn’t last long. The pressures of reality tiptoed back in. Dom was in a different world, my mom and I were destined to a life on a planet devoid of hope, while a wicked bunch known as S.O.I.L. destroyed the great hope of the Seneca Society and would alter human history with the ultimate manipulation of all time. I was seeing things more clear than ever as I slowed to the end of this roller coaster ride. One minute I felt trapped and manipulated in Seneca, the next I was fueled by the opportunity there. I realized that it was S.O.I.L. that kept me on that wicked ride. But the truth is that what Seneca has to offer is mine for the taking and not S.O.I.L.'s to take away from me. The pressure for me to turn things around loomed as ominously as an offshore hurricane.

37

M
Y
MOM
HAD
take-out waiting from my favorite neighborhood taqueria. Carne asada tacos, a cheese quesadilla and the best salsa verde in America. I vacuumed it. Barely chewed. It was too good. She updated me on her regular patients that I’d grown close to and all the people from Café Firenze, but mostly we just enjoyed the heavenly food and each other's company. She loved watching me. She knew how much it meant to me. Even though I was in the dire Aboves, I felt safe again. There was nothing quite like being with my mom, who loved me unconditionally and did things for me out of the goodness of her heart. I’d really missed that. And then I wondered... "Aren't you going to ask me about my trip?"

"There will be time for that. I know all of this took a lot out of you, and I just want you to have a breather. Relax on your first night back and don't think about any of that."

There was something slightly off. My mom was being so vague— with no mentions of reform school, Seneca, Ellen Malone, or anything about where I supposedly was... at all.

"Okay." I wanted to tell her everything, but I also knew that they could be listening. Let's not be naive, they were
definitely
listening. My mom's flexer wasn't safe. She was right. There would be time for that, but right now I had some important stuff to do. First things first, I had to find Dom.

"Crazy long day, Mom. I'm beat."

"Of course you are. Why don't you get some sleep, and when you wake up, come by Firenze for a mocha?"

Even thinking about that brought the comfort of a long, warm hug. For a split second I could smell that Café Firenze mocha. Then I thought about Ellen Malone. I wondered how much she knew about what had happened to me. If only she had the chance to reunite with her little boy, Connor, just like my mom and I were doing now. It didn't make sense to keep people who loved each other apart. There had to be a way to make space for that, even in a place like Seneca.
Especially
in a place like Seneca.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love
you
, Doro. You have no idea how happy I am that you're home."

"Me, too." I wanted to tell her my plan to take us to Seneca. That this wouldn't be our home much longer. But for now, I stayed mum on logistics. All we needed was love.

"Sweet dreams and I'll see you in the morning... or afternoon."

Man, was my room a sight for sore eyes. My mom hadn't touched a thing. Everything was exactly how I had left it. Killer was on my feet like socks. He wasn't going to let me out of his sight. My eyes lit up when I saw the seat at my desk.
My seat.
I'd spent many a late night planted right there. I ran my finger along the smooth plastic arm, and shoved it just enough for it’s wheels to roll a few inches. This had been my dad's office chair when I was a little girl. I used to go bug him in his office, beg him to push me around in it. Nostalgia always took me away to another place, no matter what was going on.
 

It was already nine o'clock, midnight on the east coast. I took a seat. I hadn’t lied to my mom— I was beat. But sleep is for the weak, and my night was just getting started. I had to stay strong. S.O.I.L. had confiscated my flexer. Even if they had tracked my Veil and tried to take the whole freaking thing down, they would have had their hands full. I had location scramblers out the wazoo on that thing. Good luck to whomever would have been given that challenge.

I powered up my computer, while simultaneously counting my blessings that the F.B.I. hadn’t confiscated it. The sound of electronics coming to life set off a familiar excitement in me and pumped energy into my veins. Like a fan in the stands at a packed stadium, the rush of what was to come surged through me. The darkness of my room soon shifted to my favorite brilliant blue glow. I was in my element and ready to rock out. One thing was missing. I scooted across the room in my seat and flipped through some vinyl. I was in the mood for something that screamed victory with beats. Heart pounding, deep bass beats. Slipping my headphones over my head, I hit spin and lightly dropped the needle on the Endless Horizon record.

A few minutes short of a couple hours later, I’d done what I’d set out to do. I’d located Dom in a neighborhood in Manhattan, set up a nice little virus on the Seneca mainframe that would trigger on my command, and checked on my Cayman Islands accounts.

I was tickled green. While I was away, I had become a billionaire– a 2.3 billionaire, to be exact. It didn't fully register. How could it? It wasn't like I could use this money in Seneca. They were on a completely different system that wasn't exactly monetary like America per se. They’d described the economic structure of Seneca in my Seneca Civics and Ethics session. The opportunity to live safely in the lap of luxury with everything your heart could desire was not granted free of charge. Scientists, doctors, business people, inventors, you name it, signed over patents, licenses... entire companies to Seneca's corporate wing, Senecanomics, in order to be granted citizenship. For example, B3's Julian Hollenbeck had provided libraries of media content dating back well into the last millennium, and signed over all of his licensing revenues from the Aboves. This cash flow made it possible to do everything in Seneca from maintaining agricultural productivity to providing citizens with toiletries.

Even with this unique economic structure in place, something else was the source of power in Seneca. Something bigger. I knew it wasn't a system of pure equality, no matter how much certain people wanted us to believe that. It was true that we all had access to the best of everything. The best food, the best entertainment, the best health care, you name it... but at what expense? There had to be a trail back to a motivation beyond living the good life.

I wanted to hit the sheets before I hit the streets, but my mind was too far out of frame. No time for R.E.M. For a moment I wondered if the trinity of my mind, body and soul would ever be in sync, or if I was destined to a lifetime of serving one at a time, but never together. If I looked at my dad as an example of what was to come, my path would be the latter.

38

I
HEARD
MY
mom tiptoeing around to leave for work at five in the morning. I waited patiently, and when the door shut behind her, that was my cue. I loaded my backpack with the essentials: toothbrush, a few pairs of underwear, some Mexican cacao and alkaline water. I paused to make sure I had everything. Oh, yeah, I needed a Vitamin E melt for the flight. No more split lower lip for this girl. Killer watched me like a hawk. I avoided eye contact because I didn't want to feel or feed his anxiety. I knew what I had to do so that we could be together again soon.