Dwindle

  ***

  I learned to know that knowledge was a quick thing when friendless – for that was truly what I was. Ollie, who had spoken barely two words to me after we left, was not my friend. Even Paige, though kinder than the rest, made it known that I was simply an ally – I was an asset for them and meant nothing to her personally. I was a risk, she always told me. It was during the night, and it was in a way that infuriated me. It was bad enough to be told that I was to keep watch each night to ensure their safety, but to receive news that I was fake, that I meant nothing, that I didn’t really feel…it drove me to the brink of insanity.

  They made me feel, though I held my own, said nothing, and helped out only, that I was being watched like a baby and that it was somehow my fault. It was as if they were doing me a huge favor, kidnapping me. I went to sleep every night I could wishing and wondering what the hell I was doing with them. I knew, beyond anything, that I would be the Outlander of the story in mere weeks. It did not please me.

  The information I learned did, however. If I was to be a stranger in their lands, I knew I would need all the information they would allow me.

  The world outside was led by Council. The Council, as it was called. The Council and that was it. The people of the outside were awfully boring with their titles, and it did not matter what you wanted to name it, it kept the name of which it was. A gun was a gun. It was not necessarily named. A town was a town. They had names, but they only defined where they were. They were not interesting for this.

  Their world was quite war-hardened. There were two cities that were left, one in Canada, Progress, and another in a faraway land called Russia. Other than there, there was the abyss, the Verge, as they called it, and it lacked in the way of being mapped and explored. It was difficult to get from one place to another in their world as their locations were absolutely secret, to hide from these murderous Deviant types. The outsiders, the Forsaken, hemmed themselves into such safe havens. I found it odd to move about from place to place, but I accepted it that it was probably just another freedom that they could enjoy.

  The biggest and most popular agency in the world seemed to be Probe, as – by the sound of it – it was the only place where humans could emerge as incredibly intelligent, super-soldiers and maintain a doctorate, as it was called, in another secondary area. Probe did this, apparently, by picking up survivors, uprooting them after they had been saved, and forcing them into lessons at a crucial stage.

  Ollie was the most weathered among them, even more than Pierce, which I found surprising. Ollie thought of himself as lesser, but they often counted their violences with me and Ollie always came up with more. He was more of a soldier to me than he was a scientist, and I figured that was how it had always been.

  Dwindle was a place named Washington D.C. (District of Columbia, it stood for.) It was the capitol of the free world until the bombings exceeded their limits – I had figured this. The government then suffered a coup, which was sort of like a riot for people who didn’t like the way their lives went, Ali said.

  The new government of the now was terrible, sloppy, and neared a dictatorship, which was ruled by a very powerful person who liked to kill everyone, by the sounds of it. His name seemed to be Master. They all spoke of him with reverence and respect, but I genuinely saw not the wellness of his character. He killed everything for seemingly no reason, over and over again. There was no point to it.

  They always diverted me from this topic, as if I shouldn’t say the things I thought for fear he would strike me down, so we always spoke of different things.

  Kingdom, they said, was called Earth. There was no paradise as was described, which – in a way – disappointed me. But there was more land than I could possibly ever see with oceans and mountains and valleys and hills. These waters were more wonderful and large and endless than I could have possibly imagined, they said. There were animals, too, or more than in Dwindle, apparently. I only know of two. Wolves and birds – black ones we called crows. There were more birds, and hundreds of thousands of animals crawled about to the extent of the Verge, most changed from the radiation.

  The thing Ollie spoke most enthusiastically about was a placed named Progress. It was the first “re-established” city after the Final Hour, and it had set the path for cities like it everywhere. Progress was a beautiful city with massive buildings, as Ollie had described. He seemed to light up while talking about it, and I thought that if he could be that happy about it, then I could be too.

  But when they spoke of Progress, they spoke of Probe, and the thought of it made them all darken as they looked at me.

  My existence, they told me, was inconvenient. I found it difficult to apologize for existing, and I refused to do it openly to Ollie or to anyone, not even to myself. I was proud of what I was instead of who, and I knew, suddenly, that if all humans were as the humans that I travelled with, I was not going to pretend to call myself human any time soon.

  Paige often attacked me with these facts, these numbers, and I found myself often overwhelmed by her knowledge of “my kind.” Ollie told Paige to be quiet for my benefit, which I appreciated, but I did not thank him. If defending me was the only way for him to reach out and be my “friend” (whatever that meant to him,) then I was not going to acknowledge it.