Untitled Scifi/Dystopian Chapter 2

67

            The next day dawned with a raging storm, the ocean pitching and rolling. Will woke up late, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling as he listened to the rain’s fingers drumming on the corrugated tin roof over the balcony. He had roused himself at the customary time just two hours ago, before realizing there was no purpose in doing so anymore. He lay still for a moment, reflecting. Then he pulled himself from bed and crossed his apartment to the opposite wall in a few easy strides. He shaded his eyes under the cap and peered down at the street.

            He felt certain nobody was down there, but it was hard to detect movement in the rushing rain, hard to spot a person’s shadow creeping up the sidewalk. He pulled instinctively away from the glass upon sighting a sudden movement, until he saw it was merely a discarded plastic bag, drifting, drifting, lazily tumbling in the wind.

            Will relaxed and sat back down on the bed. Judging from the fact that she wasn’t hammering on his door, Eyre hadn’t bothered to rise early, either. They had slept through breakfast.

            He tried to fall back to sleep again, but whenever he did, he saw the library up in cruel white flames behind the cool darkness of his eyelids. He turned restlessly, his fingers slipping over the edge of the bed. He didn’t feel remotely tired anymore, but he didn’t want to be awake, didn’t want to think or do anything at all. His jaw settled down on his teeth like a dead weight.

            After a while, he gave up, and, pulling his cap securely so that the brim hid his eyes from view, walked out into the hallway. Ten doors to the right, take a right turn, six more doors; he had made the trip so many times he didn’t even have to look up to see the bronze 29 of the door he knocked on.

            Nobody answered.

             “Eyre?” Will asked, softly. He cleared his throat and glanced around, wondering if the Administration had the interfaces’ cameras on in the hallway this morning. They claimed the interface video screens were always on, “for safety,” but Will wasn’t completely convinced that this was true. He hesitated, looking at the friendly blue glow of the interface screen, then firmly rapped on the door and said, loudly, “Are you in there, 29?”

            Eyre did not open the door.

            She’s just gone out somewhere, he told himself. While I was sleeping she went out somewhere.

            That had to be it. Eyre always wanted to go places—she never stopped moving; even when standing still her feet tapped, her fingers jerked up and down in nervous rhythm. Maybe she had gone to the fields, a place she felt a kind of affection for that Will never understood. She liked walking through the cold mud and pushing past the dry, brittle wheat. Perhaps she was looking for somewhere besides the library for them to spend their days in. That was all.

            But he wondered. He anxiously rubbed the topmost brass button of his navy blue coat, something he did so often that the design of a leaf had long since worn away.

             “Eyre.” He dared to say this name above a whisper, trying to open the door. A person wasn’t usually arrested for having a name. He could risk this.

            Again there was only the unresponsive rattle of the doorknob. After that he only felt his own pulse on the metal.

            Will’s hand fell from the knob and he shrugged, tilting the overlarge coat on his shoulders so that it fit straighter. He peered at the interface out of the corner of his peripheral vision. If Eyre wasn’t there to look at the bulletin for him, he couldn’t look directly into the interface screen, because if what the Administration team said was true, doing so would be plastering his eye color all over the video screens, and ultimately turning himself in to the Sovereign. He didn’t know whether there was some sort of eternal jail he would be taken to—he had never seen one in town—or he would be taken to see the Sovereign himself. This seemed unlikely. Perhaps they would simply burn, drown or suffocate him. It was plausible that he would be killed in some way, and as far as he was aware, those were the only three ways that could be achieved without the cell regeneration all of inhabitants of the town had.

            He realized he was rubbing the button between his fingers again. Maybe, he speculated, they stabbed Unusuals repeatedly in the heart or brain. That might work, as well, if they did it so quickly the cells had no time to grow back. A sick feeling crept over him. Don’t think about that.

            What he had wanted to do was check the bulletin and see why the library had been scheduled for demolition. There had to be some sort of reason.

             “Eyre, I’m going now,” said Will, speaking, he felt, to the unmoving door. He paused. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

            He went out. The rain came in heavy sheets slanted by gusts of wind, and there was nowhere to go, but he made the walk through the 1—100 sector as though it were any other trip to the library.

            They really had done a good job of clearing away any evidence of the place, Will thought, standing on the bare, flat square of muddy earth where the 13 building had once stood. You would never have known any building had ever stood there, save for the abrupt break in the grass, but that was something time would smooth over in due course. The building numbers, if you wanted to take the walk, now went straight from a surveillance station, 12, to a factory, 14, but this, too, would be fixed later. They might build a smaller structure there, if only to mark the correct number.

            Will kneeled for a moment, sifting through the mire, but when he came to the lunch pavilion half an hour later he had only cold, numb fingers to show for it.

            He looked for Eyre, but was too tired and drenched to think much of the fact that he didn’t see her anywhere. In their massive coats, everyone looked like the same bulky figure, and he couldn’t pick out a pair of aviator’s goggles among the crowd’s beanies, sunglasses, jacket hoods and head scarves. Eventually he gave up and seated himself between two complete strangers. He knew everyone else identified friends by the clothes they wore, and the two Usuals paused a moment, trying to recognize him. He made no movement to acknowledge them.

             “Oh, hey, 67!” one said at last. It took him a moment to realize they were speaking to him.

             “Hey, 67,” said the other, sounding relieved, “how’s it going?”

             “Fine,” said Will. “It’s going fine.” Correcting them would only make them realize that he was not a regular at the Arcade, which would lead to wearisome questions.

             “That Zombapocalypse game,” said the first. “Did you beat it yet?”

             “Nearly,” Will replied vaguely.

            His companions launched into a heated discussion about whether Zombapocalypse or Zombapocalypse II was the better game. Over the course of it, Will learned several things; their numbers: 45 and 93, and, owing to the fact that they were both from the 1—100 sector, Usuals only generally befriended people who attended the same Arcade. 45 and 93 turned occasionally to Will for opinions, to which he responded indistinctly. The two of them did not seem to notice this, or the fact that he avoided eye contact with them. They were engrossed in their conversation.

             “So, 67,” said 45, for whom Will was already harboring some annoyance and dislike, “what do you say?”

             “About what?” he answered.

            45 and 93 laughed as though this were very funny. “The library getting crushed, man, what’d you think?” 93 said.

             “I thought it was stupid,” 45 interjected. “Those guys waited out there for hours, and no one ever showed up and did nothing, did they? They wasted time they could’ve been playing that 3D Prison Escape game. They’ve got new weapons in that one with extra attack points. Dude, you can get poison blades now.”

             “Oh,” said Will. “Oh yeah.”

             “It would’ve been cool to see. I heard two morons stayed up ’til midnight just to see it.”

             “Really? Who said that?”

             “I don’t know. 30 maybe. Well, anyway, I guess they did see it after all.”

             “Did they think it was worth it? Like, the wait? I bet it wasn’t. Bet most games have better fire graphics than real fires.”

             “Yeah, bet they do, but still, like…”

            Will busied himself with eating his pizza. The food made him think a little more clearly, and he started to wonder why Eyre hadn’t come found him. Maybe she was still up in her room.

            A third Usual, a girl numbered 72, joined them in the thick of a new discussion, about pro games. Will, despite himself, was curious about what “pro games” were.

             “Once I beat Zombapocalypse III,” said 72. “Then I’ll have enough points to play the fourth one. It’ll be the tenth pro game I’ve won.”

             “Wait—hold on—so you’ve already got about….” 45 hesitated.

             “About 4,999,999,000 points,” confirmed 72 with a touch of pride. “Add 217 to that to be more specific.”

             “You’ve got serious skills,” said 93 in an awed voice.

             “She’s just better than you,” returned 45, “which isn’t hard to beat.”

             “How ’bout you, 67?” 93 said, addressing Will. “How many points you got now?”

            Will had finished both pizza and soda and couldn’t use a full mouth as an excuse not to answer. He thought a moment, then settled on, “Uh…I have around what 72 has, more or less.”

             “No way!” said 93, impressed. “Then you got, like, four thousand points since last week! What’d you do, beat Plague Survival with a perfect score like eight times? How’d you get in the hours? You been staying up way late?”

             “I’ve done that nine times,” said 45 airily. “It’s no big deal. You’ve just got to, uh…”

             “Focus on stealth and defending ranks rather than attacking ones,” said 72, nodding. The ocean-blue feather in her top hat, which was a violent shade of purple, bobbed up and down when she did.

             “That’s what I was going to say,” said 45, defensively.

             “Anyway,” said 72. “It’ll kind of suck, though, ’cause Zombapocalypse IV will cost me all five billion points I’ve been working up, but…”

            The others nodded their agreement. Will stared at her. Five billion points to play one game? He couldn’t imagine how long it would take—but then, he realized, the Usuals had all the time in the world to earn Arcade points. He shifted his eyes slightly upward. The rain kept drumming down. A tiny tear in the cover made the occasional raindrop splash onto the table. He wondered if anyone else noticed.

             “That game,” said 93, “will be totally worth it. Man, I wish I’d played more rounds of Toxic Waste while it was still out. I could’ve, too. It rocked.”

             “In fact,” answered 45, “it did not. It had lousy graphics and it was way too sensitive to movement. I, like, breathed and it would move my player seven inches.”

            93 tilted his head under the hood of his bright yellow rain slicker back and forth, considering. “I don’t think it was so bad. I liked it,” he stated mildly.

            45 rolled his eyes, evidently disappointed that 93 wasn’t going to argue, and turned to Will. “Well, then. So, 67—you seem like you’ve improved your gaming a lot since last week, to get four thousand points in seven days,” he said, smirking. “Why don’t we have a match, then?”

             “What?” Will tore his gaze from the spindly black hands ticking slowly over the face of the Clock. He wasn’t entirely sure what a match was. The Arcade must have changed in the years since he had last been there. He assumed it was when two people played against each other. His heart sank—he would be identified as 13, not 67, and he was sure he only had about six hundred points on his account. “Oh, I—I’m not going to the Arcade this afternoon.”

            At first the Usuals only looked incredulous, as though this possibility had never occurred to them. Then 45 smirked. “That’s it then, isn’t it? You were planning not to go to the Arcade, of course. It’s not like you just don’t want me to win.”

             “That’s right,” Will said, feeling it was safer to agree with 45. He could not help the sarcasm that crept into his voice, however, when he added, “I wouldn’t want to be unprepared to have a match with you.”

            93 and 72 laughed.

             “What, do you think you’re funny all of the sudden?”

            Will scraped his plastic fork against the bottom of the empty tray. 93 and 72 were looking at him expectantly. “Maybe,” he answered at last. “Why, do you think so?”

            45 scowled. Will couldn’t look him directly in the face, but he knew. He stood up to go.

             “I have something to take care of,” he murmured. “I’ll see you around.”

             “Bye,” two voices responded cheerfully, carelessly. 45 ignored him.

            Will wove his way through the tables and came halfway to the apartment buildings, when he abruptly changed direction. He went, instead, to the wheat fields.

             “Eyre!”

            His voice barely carried over the wind. The name drifted over the rustling field and died softly a few feet away. “Eyre! Are you there?” he shouted, advancing through the tall wheat. Despite his struggles, his words refused to cut through the wind. He kept walking, kept pushing through the wheat and calling. After a while, he gave up. He skipped dinner that day and stayed in his apartment, feeling vaguely nauseous.

            Eyre can’t be gone. She’s not gone. I just keep missing her. He told this lie to himself over and over. Perhaps that would make it real.

            She isn’t gone.

            He repeated this to himself for five days.

            On the sixth day he started to panic. He had visited the field several times over the week, had even used his own key on Eyre’s door—despite committing a minor infraction of the rules—and had found the room empty. He had looked everywhere in the first sector.

            He hadn’t slept, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and town sat in shadow. It was early morning, on that sixth day, when he made his decision.

            “I’ve got to go now,” he told 93 and 72, whom he had developed a kind of feeling of friendship for, despite himself. Each morning he joined them in line at the Arcade, and each morning he refused to come in with them.

            “But, dude, you’re always late showing up and then when we’re at the Arcade you act like you don’t know what you’re talking about,” 93 said, frowning. “What’s up?”

            “I…nothing,” Will said automatically. He knew he shouldn’t, but he felt slightly disappointed that they couldn’t tell the difference between him and 67. 72 had mentioned something once, had remarked, “I’d thought your hat was red, not gray,” but in the end they accepted that they were the same person. It was 67 and not Will they were friends with, he knew—or felt he should know. They were blind to any differences. They met with Will at mealtimes and 67 at the Arcade, and never raised any suspicions until now. He almost wanted them to recognize him as a different, separate friend, but that would never do.

            To his mixed relief and regret, 72 and 93 nodded, trusting him completely. They’re more robots than humans, he found himself thinking. He forced a smile. “See you in a bit.”

            “You’re missing out,” 72 called after him as he went. “If you’re the first one to play Prison Escape today, you get extra lock-pick tools. We’re gonna have a contest to see who does it. It’s gonna be really fun.”

            He didn’t turn. He just kept walking.

            He crossed the border into sector two and searched vacated buildings until lunchtime. The entire sector was empty of people, and he hesitated.

            He kept going, calling Eyre’s name.

            There were coffeehouses with yellow peeling paint. There were collapsing old skeletal buildings with wind whispering in the eaves. There were apartments, there were the factories, and there was the Arcade.

            Eyre was nowhere in any of these. Will stopped and took a breath, leaning against the railing. The sea was calm. It hadn’t rained for days. Maybe soon, he thought bitterly, it would start raining again, constantly, and the tumultuous ocean would swallow the island whole, so that it would join the rest of the silent decaying world below the water’s surface.

            The Clock chimed again. He ignored it. The second sector began to bustle with activity again, and he slipped unnoticed over the sector limits, into sector three.

            The third sector was slimmer, but with the same amount of people, busier. Luckily, the crowd thinned out gradually as Will continued his search, emptying itself of all people in sight. He visited an empty, crumbling shop that probably hadn’t been used for centuries. He went in and found cracked, empty frames slanted on the walls, and furniture draped hastily with scratchy linens. He approached the sheet-covered tables cautiously, as though a lion’s cage might be beneath the cover, but it was always just a plain wood table when he peered below. Nobody and nothing hiding in the concaves below.

            In the fourth sector he began to feel hunger gnawing at him, having skipped breakfast. It was now lunchtime. He thought briefly of going back to the first and largest sector, to the pavilion, but tried to put the idea out of his mind. Doing that wouldn’t help Eyre, wherever she was.

            What if she’s at the lunch pavilion today? Will asked himself. He knew it wasn’t true. Eyre had been missing from there for days. Why would she turn up today of all days?

            She might, and then you’ll have been wasting your time.

            Not true, not true, not true. He’d have to plow on.

            So he kept going, kept looking. He was ravenous and starting to feel faint. I’ll have to stop, he decided. Maybe she really is there.

            Feeling guilty, but too hungry to stop himself, he went as quickly as he could. The intricate iron gates barred him, and he nodded hastily at the gatekeeper, his eyes trained on the ground. “I’m late.”

            “Number?”

            “13.”

            “Okay. Go in.”

            Will grabbed a styrofoam plate with two slices of pizza and a soda can, and sprinted over to the regular table, where 93 and 72 always met him. The words were already forming in his mouth. Sorry that I’m late. I had something to take care of. So, how’d that game go?

            He loved talking to them, being friends with people other than Eyre after such a long time.

            But something stopped him dead in his tracks.

            A boy sat in his normal place at the table, a red cap similar to Will’s set on top of untidy brown hair. He was talking to them, laughing.

            “Then I got the Healing Spell—totally destroyed that gang of warlocks…”

            “That was great—”

            “Love that game!”

            “Love that game!”

            It started to rain again, lightly. Will blinked, shifting his grip on the plate. He put out his tongue briefly to taste the bitter, dull gray. Then he settled his lunch down at an unoccupied table.

            Eyre was nowhere in sight.