When we reached the center of the book, you read the caption out loud, and asked me what it meant. I said I didn’t know, which was true. You got these two cute little creases in your forehead and thought and thought. I had the cup ready to give you, but I couldn’t open my mouth.
You saw me with the cup and asked what was in it. I said grapefruit juice. You said you liked grapefruit juice. I said I did too. You asked if you could have some. I said “No, because it was mine.” You seemed to respect that and didn’t ask again. You leafed through the rest of the book but didn’t find the sailing ship picture that I had promised. You asked me where it was. I said that I had lied. You said that I was a bad little girl and walked away from me.
I went back outside and waited until nobody was watching me and slipped through the hedge. I gave the cup to my mother and said that I couldn’t do it. She slapped my face really hard. Twice. She never forgave me. I’m supposed to be redeeming myself today.
# # # # # # # #
After I disgraced my mother by not murdering you, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Since she had become the leader of the dissidents after my father’s death, she had to visit all the camps and give inspirational messages. She carted me around with her, but I was left to fend for myself. Mostly I hid in the back of the adult meetings so that people wouldn’t point at me and whisper how I was a coward.
At some point, I don’t know exactly when, she and Doc got into a big argument. Afterwards, my mother said that since I wasn’t doing the dissident movement any good, I had to stay with Doc when she traveled. Being left with a brown man was my punishment for being a coward. He’s such a nice man that I never did think of it as punishment. I still had to go on one trip with her each year, and Doc and my mother always had an argument about how long that trip would be. She never talked to him other than to have that argument.
Our base camp had mostly adults when I was growing up. Some teenage boys were getting military training, but I was Doc’s only student. Doc started me off on some stolen IOF teaching bots.
Doc would talk with me after each lesson and ask me what I had learned. Then, he’d let me help him in the clinic – at first, just cleaning up, putting on band-aids and so on. After a while, he’d interrupt my lesson whenever someone came in and ask me to be his nurse. He was also teaching everyone woodcraft classes, so I got to go with the teenagers and adults on those. I was always paired up with Doc though. We spent a lot of that time making up riddles, telling jokes, and teasing each other. The games I taught you yesterday were the games he taught me. We also talked about my lessons and what was real and what was not. He told me how my parents had tried to make me think like them – brainwashing, he called it. And, he described all the ways that the IOF was brainwashing its citizens and especially their children. Will, we may be very different people, but both you and I have been brainwashed, so we have that in common.
Other than the clinic work and the woodcraft trips, I spent all my time on the bots. I had nothing else to do and I did enjoy learning, so that’s another thing that you and I have in common. Like you, I finished the IOF high school courses early. Doc found some old bots for something called university – it was a place you attended after high school if you wanted to learn more. Both you and I took what used to be called university courses. You did yours in math and science; mine were in military science, sociology, psychology, political science, literature, and other non-science courses. I didn’t tell you that I had those course bots with me because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I’ve put them in your pack in case you’re interested in reading them.
Other than Doc and the occasional patient, I didn’t get to be with too many other people. Especially kids my own age. That’s another thing you and I have in common. My cousin from my father’s family would come around with his friends from time to time. He was twelve years older than I was so I didn’t consider him a kid. One time, my cousin tried to get me to ditch my studies and go play Hospital in the woods with him. Doc gave me the sex lessons after I told him that. I was ten at the time. Doc must have gotten mad at my cousin because he never came around the school again, but every now and then, I’d see him following me when I was running errands for Doc. A couple of years after that, my body began to change and Doc had me do the lessons again.
I hated going on the trips to the other camps with my mother because she’d force me to be with kids my own age. She didn’t want me anywhere near her, she’d say. But, all the kids knew about me and would call me Coward whenever they had a chance. I’d try to explain that murdering people was bad, but that just made them laugh at me even more. So, I snuck into the back of the adult meetings and hid under a chair.
After a while, I’d get scared if I had to be with other kids my age. I learned to hide my fear behind a smart mouth. If I made myself really annoying, they’d eventually leave me alone. When you caught me that first day, I was frightened and that’s why you saw that side of me. I found out that there’s another side of me. I can actually be with someone else my age and not be frightened about what you might say, so thank you for that.
Because my mother dragged me around with her for a month every year, I know all the dissidents in the movement, I know where everyone lives, I know their disguises, and I know their fake names. I know everything. If I’m captured by the DPS, I won’t be able to keep that information from them. Even though I hate most of the dissidents, I don’t want to be the one who gets them killed. That’s why I always have to be doing something – listening to music, studying, playing games against the computer – anything to keep my mind from thinking about how I’ll disgrace my grandmother’s name after I’m caught.
So, when my mother gave me a chance to redeem myself with another operation against you, I agreed but only if she’d let me have a kill-me crown for one of my teeth. She was surprised that I knew so much about the movement. My mother said that I can have a fake crown if the operation against you succeeds. Will, I had to do this to you in order to save other people’s lives.
I was supposed to lure you away from the grad‘bration site with the damsel in distress ploy. I watched you spying on Gary, Rick and Abby and knew that you had caught on to them. When I saw the way that you set up the lures, I figured you would escape. But, when you took forever to pick up your second pack at the cache, it looked like you were going to make camp there. You were running out of time so I scrapped the Damsel in Distress plan and let you find me. I’ve been winging it ever since which is one of the reasons I’ve been so edgy. You are a very difficult person to deceive. You could have discovered the real me the time I scraped my leg. I knew that my white skin was exposed so I couldn’t let you see me bandaging myself.
My mother’s operation against you had only one goal: prevent the DPS from using you. However, I had two options. The first was to recruit you to work for us. My mother knew that once you found out what we really wanted from you, you’d probably resist but she’d get you to cooperate with us. She never told me how and I didn’t want to know.
My mother described what I had to do to seal the deal as she said. I told her that I didn’t want to do that, but she said that if I wanted to be the dissident leader, I’d have to make sacrifices just like she had to. She wants me to be the leader because she doesn’t want someone with the wrong skin colour to be the leader. There aren’t that many pure white woman left in Alberta, so that’s why she’s giving me another chance. That’s not why I want to be the dissident leader.
My mother said that you’d be unable to control your emotions without your brain-band and all I had to do was find an excuse to take off my clothes in front of you. Then, I was to let you do whatever you wanted to do with me. I knew my mother and my cousin would be watching from the woods. They’d know if I backed out.
That’s why I took off some of my clothes. I knew you wouldn’t peek or come down to the lake because you had promised. But I had to convince my mother that I had tried so that she’d give me the
fake crown. Will, thank you for not looking today. Thank you for not coming to the lake. I only checked on you to make you angry. I knew you wouldn’t break your promise.
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Chapter 15
From Will's journals: July 10, 2081.
I started reading Izzy's letter the morning after she told me to run. I was almost finished when I heard some copter noises and had to scuttle into some underbrush in case it flew overhead. It didn't, but I realized that I had to get further into the wilderness while I had the chance. I returned to her letter that night, after I was safely hidden up a tree on some deserted mountain side. Here's what she wrote.
# # # # # # # #
Will, if I couldn’t recruit you, my second option was to kill you. That was not my idea! It was my creepy cousin’s idea. He’s the leader of the Radical Militants and the second most influential person in the movement after my mother. He wants to kill you because when you learn new things in your woodcraft courses, you give the DPS new tactics for tracking us or invading our territory. If they ever learn about your sky-rope, that will mean our end. I had already grabbed a piece before I swore to you that I wouldn’t steal any. If you remember, I said “from this date until the moment you decide to ditch me,” so technically, that wasn’t a lie. But, I did deceive you. I feel bad about that.
I had to feed you poison because my mother and cousin didn’t think I’d have the nerve to use a weapon. They didn’t even trust me to mix the poison properly. They put it in a special dry food mix. I’m writing this letter before supper, but the poisoned food is cooking now. I’ll be able to prove that I had the meal ready as ordered. But, I’m going to pick a fight with you, and find a way to kick the pot over, and then get you to choke me unconscious before escaping. My mom and my cousin will see that I tried to poison you but you were too smart and too strong for me. That’s why you had to leave a mark on my face. That’s why I had to have your skin under my fingernails.
I didn’t agree to be part of this operation only to get my suicide crown. I had another reason too. Will, I hate the IOF. You haven’t been out in the villages of Alberta, but I have. Nobody has anything to be happy about. People do not have children that they can love. They have boring jobs because the IOF doesn’t want anyone learning anything that could be used to overthrow them. Very few people know about good literature, poetry, or theatre. They watch old flics because nobody has the emotions necessary to create new art. People’s eyes are dull; their faces are dull; their lives are dull. In time, they start inhaling more and more of the artificial brain chemicals that make life tolerable. Then, they become addicted. I hate the IOF. I hate them. I have to fight them.
But Will, the dissidents are violent, bigoted wackos who measure success by the amount of DPS blood that they spill. I couldn’t fight the IOF that way. People are more scared of the dissidents than they are of the IOF. I want to show the dissidents that there’s another way that we can fight the IOF. The second reason why I agreed to go against you was so that they’d let me have my own operation. If I succeed with that, I’ll be allowed to try other operations that don’t start and end with bloodshed.
I had two very good reasons to trap you, Will. Are you wondering why I couldn’t?
I started the operation determined to hate you. It was very important to me that I hated you. So, I thought of you as a thing – a robot that had been pre-programmed to harm not only the dissidents but also everybody else imprisoned in the IOF. Since you weren’t human, I was able to convince myself that what I was going to do to you was justified. But, I couldn’t hate you after the night you lost it. Do you remember that night? Probably not all of it. I do.
I didn’t know at the time what caused you to go crazy. It was the day after you had hidden your brain-band, backpack, clothes and other things in order to trick Rick into revealing the bugs. I knew that the bug was in the brain-band, but you obviously suspected that there was more than one bug. Smart.
You were lounging around your camp and then you became all agitated and started cursing at the IOF. You were swearing and bawling all at the same time when you started punching your pack. You punched it and kicked it and bawled and swore, but it wasn’t enough. You decided to take on a tree. You reminded me so much of me – minus the tree – that I ended up bawling too. I couldn’t let you keep hitting it. So, I slid out of my pit, tackled you from behind, and knocked you to the ground. We had our first wrestling fight that night, Will, only you don’t remember it. Your eyes were wild – you couldn’t see me, I’m sure. I know some sleeper holds, and after you wore off some of your panic, I managed to get one on you.
I knew that you were finding it difficult to cope with new emotions without your brain-band, but there was obviously something really wrong. You had been raving about your pinky computer, so I figured you thought it might be bugged. I dragged you to the creek, soaked your hands in the cold water, and managed to get if off before your pinky knuckle swelled up too much. I let you sleep for a bit, and then dragged you back into the clearing, and left it on the ground next to you. I’m sorry about scratching your face during the fight. I didn’t mean to.
Afterwards, I knew I couldn’t hate you. You were too much like me. It would be like killing or kidnapping myself. I just couldn’t do it. When I found out that you were as scared of the DPS as I am – and for exactly the same reason – I knew I had to help you escape my trap without getting shot by my cousin.
When we had our argument about being weird two days ago, I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad because two kids couldn’t be real kids without being considered weird. Then, when you said that you could have strangled me when you were mad, I realized I had a way out. I was so relieved to have found a way for you to escape my trap that I forced you to have fun with me yesterday. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted one day that I could remember you without feeling guilty.
So, now you’re safe somewhere northwest of this camp. Remember, don’t trust the dissidents, Will. They’ll have your picture. They’ll kill you on sight. You can’t trust the DPS either. They may not kill you immediately, but their efforts to erase what you’ve learned may fry your brain. Then, they’ll kill you. You may be able to get some help from people who don’t like the IOF but be careful. Paid DPS informants are in all the cities and even in the smaller towns.
Me, I’m not likely to be blamed for letting you get away. I think we put on a pretty good show. Thank you, Will. Thank you. Tomorrow night, every moderate dissident I’ve been able to recruit will break into an empty DPS offices and take every bot or scrap of paper that we can find that will give us insight into their operations. Tonight, my cousin, my mother and I will travel northeast. Tomorrow night, I’ll lead the raid on Edmonton’s DPS headquarters.
If these raids work, I’ll have credibility with the dissidents. I may be able to convince them that there are other ways to gain an advantage against a superior foe. All my military strategy course work and years of playing chess against a computer may finally pay off. I’ll have to marry my cousin, but not until I’m eighteen. My mother says that we have to join our forces together again. Doc says that my cousin and I are too closely related. My mother doesn’t care so long as my babies are white. I’ve gone along with it because my cousin will agree to me being the leader if my operation works. My grandmother made a sacrifice. I can too.
I know that I’m just buying some time. I’ll try to change things, but we don’t have many thinkers left. At some point I’ll be caught by the DPS. That’s when I’ll crunch down on my fake crown. At least I’ll die without your blood on my hands.
As you know, Rick works for a Z. The Z is persistent, powerful, and ruthless. He’s the one who invented the brain-band. He’s the one who orders people to be disappeared. Rick isn’t allowed to make you disappear because the Z wants you to invent things for him. The job offer the DPS sent you was his first attempt. It won’t be his last. If he can’t get you to work willingly, he will wipe your memories and
get you that way. Be careful. He’s as smart as you are. He doesn’t know about your sky-rope so you have to keep that a secret. I promise that I won’t tell anyone about it. Yesterday, I had us carry our packs into camp on our backs so that the dissidents wouldn’t learn about it.
I can’t tell you much more about him. Only people like Rick can identify him. He lives in a fortress in Edmonton and apparently never comes out. He is the most feared and hated person in the IOF. His official title is Director and Chief Research Officer of the DPS. His name is Zzyk.
Your friend (I hope)
Melissa
# # # # # # # #
I knew something that Izzy didn’t. I knew that Zzyk liked to have his nails manicured and that he wore fine clothes. I also knew what he looked like because he had visited me every year on my birthday.
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Chapter 16
From Will's journals: July 31, 2081.
After three weeks of aimless wandering, I settled into a secluded campsite in the mountains near a small town called Rocky Mountain House. When I wasn’t hunting or fishing, I would read Izzy’s course bots. One time, I looked up the poem that Izzy had recommended – I know why the caged bird sings.
It was about two birds. One was flying in the wind; the other was in a cage. The one flying in the wind thought about fat worms but the poet didn't mention it singing at all. It just thought about flying in different kinds of breezes. Birds sing all the time, so perhaps this one had been injured or something. Perhaps by another bird?