Chapter Six

Wayne Webster Watts, from his underground book, 9 Lives:

Sleepers are afraid. That’s what it comes down to. They’re afraid to see what they’re really made of, what humans are really capable of. Being a true denizen, well, that means you don’t look away. But you don’t just look. You dive in until you really understand what it’s all about. Because it’s all part of being alive. You want to be alive, there’s nothing you reject.

John Oldman’s mother lay unmoving in the bathtub. Rich, dark-red blood surrounded her. Her long blond hair and iridescent blue dress were sodden with it. Eleven-year-old John noticed that she had put in the plug; blood pooled around her feet and covered her ankles and elbows and hands.

Her pale face was fixed in the remnants of a sob. Her glassy eyes were turned toward the two of them standing together at the door, as if her last thought had been how they would find her there. On the floor by the tub were two empty bottles of vodka.

John’s father still held the doorknob. He just looked, silent, his face impassive.

It was only a year after the closing of the borders of New America. The wallscreens had not yet become mandatory. John’s father could still telephone the police, and that is what he did.

In the real world, young John stayed in the bathroom and observed every detail of his mother’s corpse with dread fascination while his father made the call.

But in the dream, John sobbed while he watched his father pull out his phone. He screamed at his father, and then began punching him. “How could you let her do this? How could you? I hate you!”

His father ignored him, and John hit him harder and sobbed louder.

Just as the sobbing became both deafening and heart-wrenching, John came back to the waking world. He looked around to discover that he had fallen asleep sitting up against the wall in a little nook outside a clothes store in the underground. He touched his face, but it was dry. The sobbing in the dream was always so vivid, he always thought that he had started crying in real life, too.

He tried to shake off the memories. He was supposed to be watching the store for Chloe to come out.

If President Martha’s system had been fully in place when his mother had died, the ART would have taken the two of them away for rehabilitation. The negative thoughts spawned by such an event were uncontrollable by the average will. Thus the DAA’s mission statement: “Protect the people while they perfect their minds.”

It was true enough. John and his father had been unable to control their responses. His father had spiraled into depression. For about three years, he’d done little except watch the new wallscreen programming and sleep. Then, for the next two years, he’d added binge eating to the list. Then, when John was sixteen years old and just starting to pick up his drinking habit, his father had decided to move to Florida.

At least, that’s what the postcard had said.

Some years later, John learned that the DAA sent out forged postcards when they imprisoned people.

Whenever those two facts came too close to colliding in his mind, John thought about something else.

Now, John tried to refocus on his mission. It was early afternoon on Sunday. John had been following Chloe for a full twenty-four hours. So far, she had not gone anywhere that looked like a terrorist cell’s safe house. She’d gone out dancing, gotten drunk, and stayed overnight with a girlfriend; the rest of the time, she’d been shopping, eating out, and listening to music.

John found it confounding. Had she been shopping for approved items, listening to approved music, and keeping her appearance up to approved standards, she could have had the exact same lifestyle topside, except for not getting quite as drunk. What was the allure of the underground life, anyway?

As he had watched the girl with the purple dreadlocks and the eyebrow piercing go about her day, he had found himself thinking about his own daughter. Suzy would be twenty-five years old now—not much different from Chloe, he suspected. Though they all still lived in D.C., he’d been out of touch with his ex-wife and their children since the kids were teenagers. They had grown aloof and resentful, he had run out of things to say, and his ex-wife had hinted that his presence in their lives had become superfluous.

He’d loved Rebecca. He really had. He still smiled at the thought of her round, cheerful face and auburn curls. Jack and Suzy, their kids, had meant everything to him. He just hadn’t been able to stop drinking when he needed to, after the new head of the DAA, Gau Bidarte, had busted him down the ranks just for being a feeler and he’d started his long, useless work against FPU.

He should have remarried—everyone had told him so—but he had quailed at the thought, and no one had seemed interested in him, anyway.

It was ancient history. It was all long behind him now. Now he had nothing but his work and the constant, haunting presence of failure.

He tried to shake off the desire to find an underground bar and drown his misery.

Just then, he saw Chloe leave the store. Good, he hadn’t missed her. He decided it was time to approach her again. It was partially an attempt to distract himself from the dream and from his thoughts—and especially the urge to drink.

He hastened to catch up to her. Right as she turned to see who was behind her, he said her name.

Her body stiffened, and she stopped walking, her face tense.

John had expected to alarm her, and he was quick to respond. He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I wasn’t following you, I swear. I was surprised when I saw you in front of me. But I’m glad. I—I wanted to talk to you again. Will you please just hear me out?”

Chloe half-turned away, but she stayed put.

So far, so good. He appealed to her sympathy. “You’re the only person I’ve met who can get me into the Lightbringers. And I can’t explain why, but I think it’s… I think it might be… my only hope.” His shoulders drooped even more than usual. He was playing it heavy-handed, but the intelligence he had gathered so far suggested that the Lightbringers would be receptive to emotional disclosure. It was in these moments that he regretted his mask. It tended to obscure his best acting.

She still said nothing, but she put one end of a purple dreadlock in her mouth and chewed on it.

John pressed, “I know your buddy said you’re not recruiting… please tell me that isn’t really true.”

Chloe hesitated.

John waited, tense. This moment could make or break their connection. He let the silence draw out while he fought back the nervous urge to speak again.

Chloe said, “Not exactly. I mean, we might be recruiting. I don’t really know.” She shifted her posture toward him.

“How can I get an interview?”

Chloe shrugged. “It’s not like that, exactly. I mean, I don’t think we interview, exactly.” She bit down on her dreadlock again. She glanced around, as if to see if anyone else was nearby.

He let a moment of silence go by, to keep the pressure off. He said, “Then what do I do?” He spread his hands and stared at her with the most pleading, puppy-dog look he could muster.

The girl dropped her head for an instant. It was a small gesture of sympathy. “I don’t know if Drew is taking anyone right now. She has another new recruit right now, and we have a big mission coming up… I don’t know if she has time.”

John nodded and tried not to get ahead of himself. “She only trains one new recruit at a time? How long does that take, then?”

Chloe shrugged and looked around again. Her movements became agitated. “I dunno. Look, I really shouldn’t be talking to you. I should go.”

John cursed to himself. He’d lost her, for some reason, and it would be counterproductive to push her. “I understand. But—can I talk to you again later?”

Chloe looked reluctant, but apparently she was too nice to tell him no. “Sure,” she said, and backed away from him.

“My number is 202-GFINGER,” John said. He hated giving out this ridiculous number, but it was memorable, and that was the important thing. “For Goldfinger, like James Bond.” He pointed at his mask.

She grinned and nodded and kept going.

John sighed as she moved out of sight. He waited a few seconds, then tailed her again. He still hoped that she would eventually lead him back to the cell’s safe house.

She walked down two hallways and around two corners before she glanced back with a frown. John saw her slow down and her head start to turn, and he dodged behind the corner just in time.

He waited a long count of three before chancing another look. A flash of purple dreads disappeared around the next corner. He hurried to catch up, although he second-guessed himself the whole way.

He peeked around the next corner. She was just turning away from another backward glance, and walking faster now.

Then, while John watched from the corner, she stopped and brought her hands together in front of her where John couldn’t see them. An instant later, a swath of shimmers enveloped her from head to toe, and then both the shimmers and Chloe were gone.

John blinked.

She was definitely gone. The hallway was well lit here; there were no shadows, and there were no doorways anywhere near her. She should be—had to be—standing right there halfway down the hallway. But she had vanished.

John stared intently and strained his ears, but he saw and heard nothing. He stepped out and walked to where she had stood. He waved his hands through the air, half-expecting to touch her, but nothing was there.

He stared into the emptiness for a long time.

Only a few hours after the DAA sting in the underground—it was in the early hours of Monday morning, now—Gaylen sat in another bare and ugly room with his rescuer, this time inside a house. This room had once had a wallscreen, but it was shattered. It was the only broken wallscreen Gaylen had ever seen.

They’d come in through underground tunnels, including one long, dark, damp tunnel that Drew said was taking them under the river, and ultimately up through a trap door into what turned out to be the laundry room in this empty house.

Two men had met them as they’d entered. They’d hugged the girl and given her a warm welcome, which is how he had learned that her name was Drew. They had given Gaylen a brief and distant, though cordial, welcome.

Gaylen wondered why they weren’t more friendly. Perhaps they knew that he had nearly fallen into Nick’s underground. Even worse, perhaps they thought he was a regular there already, engaging in the kinds of activities that Nick did.

Yet, oddly—or perhaps it wasn’t odd at all—a part of him rebelled as he sat on the wood floor next to Drew and stared at the broken wallscreen. He had just yesterday come to accept that there was something wrong with the society he’d known all his life and begun the difficult process of embracing a new reality, and now they’d come and pulled the rug out from under him again. How many groups like this were there? People who thought they knew all the answers, who would try to tell him what he needed to do and who he needed to be? Earlier today, he’d had a job and a home and a place in society, whether it made him happy or not. Now what did he have?

After they’d met the two men, Drew had gone into the back of the house and come back out with a backpack that she had tossed to him. “Your recruit’s kit,” she’d said as he’d opened it and looked through it. He’d found a set of nondescript men’s clothes and a toiletries kit.

“And don’t worry,” she’d said reassuringly, “you’ll always have enough to eat and a safe place to sleep.”

Gaylen had just stared at her. It had never occurred to him—not once in his life—that he might ever go without these things. No one ever went without them. But at this moment, it seemed like she had lied to him, because he was hungry and had nothing to eat.

Now she sat next to him, cross-legged, her hands on her knees and her eyes closed. Her face was beautiful and serene. She had been that way for a long time. Gaylen was mystified by it. Had she learned to sleep that way?

He tapped her on the shoulder.

Without moving or opening her eyes, she said, “What?”

“What’s going to happen to me now?”

A moment passed before she answered, again without moving. “You have to be trained. And you’ll help us on assignments. Now be quiet. I’m meditating.”

“You’re what?”

“Meditating.”

“What’s that?”

A moment passed, and the corners of her lips twitched in a little smile. She responded lightly, “Where I sit still with my eyes closed and don’t talk to anyone. I’ll teach you how sometime.”

Gaylen rolled his eyes and got up and went into the kitchen, hoping to find some food, or at least something else to see or do.

The kitchen was bare, though the pleasant aroma of coffee came from the coffeepot. The cupboards were mostly empty. The wallscreens in here were broken too.

He imagined that all of the screens in the house were broken. He hated it. He didn’t have anything to look at.

A girl with her hair in purple dreadlocks and a ring in one of her eyebrows walked in with a coffee cup. She caught him glowering at the broken screens. With a smile and a shrug, she said, “You get used to it,” and reached out her hand. “Hi, I’m Chloe.”

“I’m Gaylen,” he said and shook her hand.

“Oh, I know. Everyone’s heard.” She went to the coffeepot and poured herself a fresh cup.

“Heard what?”

“About you. Drew’s new pet,” she said. She smiled over her shoulder.

“I’m not anyone’s pet.”

“Well, of course you are. It’s OK. I was Drew’s pet once, too. It’s not so bad.” She opened the cupboard and pulled out creamer and sugar. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” It might help fill his empty stomach.

She poured him a cup while he looked at the floor. At least this one was being friendly to him—even speaking to him.

He cast about for something to talk about to prolong the moment. “What is Drew’s story? How’d she get to be… who she is?” Despite his general frustration, he couldn’t find adequate words to describe how impressive he found her.

“That’s a long story,” Chloe said as she handed him his coffee. “She was in the underground from when she was a teenager. Then Don found her. Don was the head of this cell of the Lightbringers back then. But really, she should tell you the story, not me.” She took a cautious sip of her coffee, suddenly looking shy. She pulled the tail of one of her dreadlocks to her mouth and chewed on it.

“She’s so… tough,” Gaylen said. “For someone so small. It’s… weird.”

Chloe tossed the dreadlock over her shoulder and lowered her voice conspiratorially, grinning. “Wait till you see her mad. She’s like a rabid Chihuahua.”

Gaylen laughed. Then he took a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re being nice to me.”

Chloe looked at him for a long moment. “I remember what it’s like to be you right now. I even miss my old life sometimes.” She took another sip of her coffee, her eyes downcast.

“Did Drew save you from the underground, too?” Gaylen asked. He leaned against one of the counters and tried to adopt some sort of nonchalance.

She looked away. “Sort of, I guess. I didn’t think I needed saving, though. I liked the drugs I was on. I liked the parties I went to. Drew says I’m avoidant. I have to keep choosing to stay here, where reality is.” She looked at him awkwardly, as if she was uncertain what his reaction might be, and chewed on her dreadlock again.

He wasn’t sure what his reaction was, either. He wasn’t accustomed to emotional disclosures.

Drugs were a routine part of New American lifestyle, so long as the Bureau of Entertainment carefully chose and administered them to provide a minimal, yet pleasant, effect. He was sure, though, that Chloe’s drug use hadn’t been monitored in the usual way. He happened to glance at her arms and saw small round scars and dark patches on the insides of them, near her elbows. He remembered the frighteningly thin girl he had seen in the underground his first time—the girl pulling a needle from her arm. He shuddered at the memory.

Chloe saw where his gaze was, and she folded her arms and turned away.

“Sorry,” Gaylen said. “I’ve just never…”

“Yeah, I know. Sleeper.” She said it gently enough, but she left the kitchen.

Gaylen sighed and drank some more of his coffee. Then he went back to the room where Drew meditated. He sat down in front of her and mirrored her cross-legged posture and looked at her closed eyes in a silent plea for some company.

He guessed that Drew could feel his gaze, because she soon opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were kind. “Ready for training?”

He spread his hands to show confusion. “I don’t know what training is, but sure, I guess so.”

Drew relaxed her posture and rested her hands in her lap. “OK. What do you know so far?”

“About what?”

“About the underground and the true nature of our society.”

Gaylen hesitated. “Only what Nick told me.”

Drew frowned. “Nick Aglaeca?”

“I don’t know his last name.”

“Older man who wears black, smokes, overweight?… Sadist?”

Gaylen didn’t know the last word, but the rest of the description was close enough. He cringed on the inside, but he said, “Yes.”

“Ah.” Drew pondered that for a moment. “How did you meet him?”

“Um—that’s—isn’t that where I was? Nick’s area?”

“You were close to it, but not in it.”

Gaylen had wandered for quite a while with the mob. And there weren’t any signs saying which boss owned a given area. Maybe Nick’s area was smaller than he’d imagined. He kicked himself mentally. He had only followed that mob to prove something to Nick, and maybe it wouldn’t even have counted.

“So what did Nick tell you?” Drew asked.

Gaylen took a deep breath. He hated thinking about Nick at all. “Only that no one else is happy, either. Is that really true?”

Drew tilted her head. “For the most part, yes, that’s true.” She closed her eyes thoughtfully for a moment. Then she launched into what seemed to be a well-practiced lecture. “What you must understand first is that New Americans are like children, despite our physical ages, and most of us stay that way all our lives. We’re rarely tested, and when we are, we inevitably fail, because we haven’t been taught how to be strong and healthy adults. Our society tells us that we must be happy, but it doesn’t teach us how to be happy. That’s its chief failing.”

Gaylen remembered what had happened when he had called the ART about his grief. For the first time, he considered the possibility that the ART had let him down, rather than the other way around. It was a bizarre thought. But he remembered something else, too. “Nick said that the failing of our society is in trying to ignore… Well, he called it ‘the wolf inside.’ I’m not completely sure what that meant. Something that wants bad things, I guess.”

“Here, we call it ‘darkness.’ Others throughout history have called it ‘evil.’ And it’s true that trying to ignore it doesn’t work. That’s the single greatest problem with Martha’s perfect society. But what Nick doesn’t know, or what he refuses to recognize, is that the darkness strengthens when it’s indulged. Darkness must never be indulged. It must be faced, it must be accepted, and it must be renounced over and over again.”

Gaylen looked away. He regretted anew how he had participated in the mob that had tried to hang Laura.

Drew scrutinized him. “It’s time for you to renounce some of your darkness, Gaylen, but you have to start by facing it, which I’m now going to teach you how to do.”

Gaylen’s heart beat faster. “What do I have to do?”

“Close your eyes. Find the worst feeling that you’re having right now. I know you don’t know the words for negative emotions yet, but just try to catch it and feel what it feels like.”

Gaylen dropped his head a little. He knew that a part of him wanted to scream and throw things right now. He tried to grasp the feeling. Trying to do so went directly against everything he had ever been taught about positive thinking.

Drew said, “The part of you that feels this feeling, and that wants you to keep feeling it, is a real and valid part of you. It’s your shadow. It wants to feed on it, to grow stronger from it. And that’s natural.”

She paused for a moment, then said, “Dwell on the feeling. Let it get stronger. Encourage it. Don’t worry, it can’t harm you.”

Gaylen opened his eyes. “I thought… you said we couldn’t indulge it.”

Drew shook her head. “This isn’t indulging it. Indulging darkness is when you let it act out in your words and deeds. You’re doing this meditation in order to bring it to the light. When it’s fully exposed, it will disappear, and it will no longer reveal itself in either word or deed. Darkness is always destroyed by light.”

Gaylen was mystified by all this, but he trusted her certainty. He closed his eyes again and tried to obey her instructions. He had never delved into his own mind in this way before. He didn’t know how to make his mind do things the way she was suggesting. It was like trying to build a structure out of soap bubbles that kept evaporating.

Besides, echoes of President Martha’s teachings rang in his ears—”Never entertain a thought that is not a happy one; it will only cause it to strengthen and multiply.”

But he kept reaching into this intangible space and directing his feelings, and somehow they began to move as he directed. The violent feeling drew nearer. His face and shoulders tensed.

“Do you feel it?” Drew asked, her voice low.

He nodded, his eyes still closed. The feeling set off an adrenaline rush. His skin began to prickle as the small hairs on his arms lifted. The tingling moved up his spine.

“Draw it closer. Let it become bigger than you until it envelops you. I know it feels threatening, but it can’t harm you.”

He did so, even though the better it worked, the more his heart pounded. His brow furrowed as he tried harder.

“Relax,” she said. “Take a deep breath. Don’t try so hard. Just let it come.”

He took a deep breath, still obedient.

He teased the darkness out again, remembering how it wanted to do violence. It latched onto the memory of Laura’s hanging, and it liked it. It hungered for more of the same. He let it grow stronger and stronger. The image came to mind of him lashing out now, smashing Drew in the face—a wrong and perverse image.

And yet, the more he coaxed the feeling out, the more it seemed to dissolve, as if a part of him that was entirely new to him calmly recognized its foolishness. Unlike how he usually pushed away and fought against his “bad” feelings with President Martha’s advice, he simply saw the emotion for what it was.

Yes, he was rightfully upset about everything that had happened, and some part of him wanted to lash out. But the rest of him knew that he didn’t want to lash out. He knew better. And with that realization, the upset feelings simply dissipated, evaporating into nothing, but leaving peace instead of emptiness.

He opened his eyes, eager to share what he had just experienced.

Drew waited, her face kind. Her luminescent green eyes played across his face.

“That’s amazing,” he said. Could it have been that easy all along, if only he had known how to do this?

“Good. Very good. Now, resolve that whenever you’re feeling this way, you’ll bring it to the light. Say this now, in your mind.”

He closed his eyes and repeated her words to himself. A lightness opened within him, expansive, clear. A deep breath freed itself and released the remaining tension in his chest.

He opened his eyes again. He met Drew’s gaze for a moment, and then he felt awkward, and he had to look away. It was as if she had been looking into his mind the whole time and now she knew him too well.

She squeezed his shoulder again. “And now you’re uncomfortable. That’s to be expected, because now you’re in a place of vulnerability that you’re not accustomed to, and that can be difficult. This will be easier, because it’s only an after-effect. So bring it to the light, and let it be dissolved.”

Gaylen teased out the feelings of discomfort. He let them grow larger and stronger, while his face grew hot and he wished he could disappear from Drew’s sight. Quickly this time, the bubble burst. The truth was that Drew was a safe person to do this with—possibly the only safe person he had ever known. He looked at her again. Those green eyes held no judgment.

Drew smiled at him, her face radiant. “Good,” she said. “Remember that technique. It will serve you well as time passes. Now, I have orders to go collect.”

She surprised him by leaning forward and embracing him. Then she got up and left him alone in the empty room.

She really was beautiful.

Monday morning, Gaylen awoke late, or so he judged from the amount of light peeking in around the bed sheets that were taped up on the windows. He was alone in the bunk room. Other Lightbringers had been there, already asleep, when he had turned in, and now they were gone.

He’d slept fitfully. He had returned again and again to the meditation Drew had taught him, and at four in the morning, he had awoken from a fitful doze with sudden clarity about something that had been haunting him: fear for Serena and Sierra.

Instinctively, he felt that Serena was innocent of the truth—that the law of attraction failed so many people. Surely Serena had never visited the underground. But she might someday go there. Worse yet, his daughter might someday go there.

Somehow, someday—before it was too late—he needed to warn Serena. He needed to tell his family the truth.

This was the first and only substantial goal he’d ever had in his life. Everything else had simply fallen into place without much thought. Standardized tests had identified his basic personality traits, skills, and interests, and funneled him into a suitable career. The Love Today kiosks had supplied him with well-matched dating partners until he found one he wanted to settle down with. Everyone always had everything they needed, and the Bureau of Entertainment provided safe, enjoyable recreation for all. Life was simple.

Now he had to figure out how to make something important happen, something that he had never encountered or even thought of before, and he had to do it with real actions and not just optimistic thoughts. But how?

He stared with increasing agitation at the empty walls. With no wallscreens to distract him, he could only take in the slight odor of mildew, the cracks in the plaster, the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, the blankets on the floor, and the backpacks and bundles of personal possessions piled around the room. His eyes went around to everything again and again while his thoughts went in similarly useless circles.

Finally, he could bear the unchanging quiet no longer and got up. He went out through the hallway into the kitchen, which was empty. Despite knowing it was sure to be useless, he checked the cupboards again, and again found nothing to eat, and no chocolate. At least someone had made fresh coffee. He poured himself a cup.

He still didn’t see anyone around, so he peeked out of the back door to see what he could find.

Chloe sat on a bench in the back yard. She was staring at nothing in particular, as far as he could tell.

He stepped out cautiously. When she looked toward him, he said, “Am I allowed to be out here? I mean, I guess I am, if you are…”

She smiled. “Yeah. You can be out here. Don’t go out the front, though.” She scooted over and touched the space on the bench next to her.

Gaylen sat down, pleased by her welcome, though once he’d sat down, she just stared down at the ground and chewed on the tip of a purple dreadlock.

He took a cautious sip of his coffee, and, finding it cool enough, drank half of it. The sugar and caffeine would do him good.

The backyard was badly overgrown. Once, there had been a swingset, now a twisted wreck of rust. There had been a sandpit, now mostly full of grass. Through the partially collapsed fence, he saw other yards that were equally unkempt. Trees reached up to the sky. There were no taller buildings, so there were no wallscreens to break the quiet. The only sound was birdsong. The air was clear and sweet and the sun was warm.

Chloe remained silent and stared at the ground while she fidgeted.

Gaylen turned toward her. “How can I warn my family? I mean, my… ex-wife… and my daughter? About the underground?”

She looked thoughtful. “Um… well… I mean, you can just tell them. Do you know where they live?”

He shook his head. “I tried to let them go. Like I was supposed to.”

“So you would have to find them first, I guess.”

“Is that something that you all can help me with?”

“I can’t speak for Drew. She’s in charge of our cell. So, you would need to ask her if we can do that.”

Gaylen looked down. “But… is it possible? If she agrees?”

“I think so. I don’t see why not.” But her tone of voice was uncertain. “You should probably just ask her about it.”

Gaylen nodded and tried to relax his shoulders. The overgrown backyard and rusted swingset caught his attention again. “How can this even be here? Why is it here? These houses are empty. I’ve never seen empty houses.”

Chloe’s face brightened. She seemed happy to have an answer this time. “This area used to be military housing. We’re close to Fort Myer.”

“Oh.” That made sense. The bases had been abandoned long ago, when New America’s borders had been closed and the military permanently retired. Naturally, no one would want to live here.

Thinking about the nation’s history set off a chain reaction of questions. If positive thinking was a lie and the nation had an entire secret underground he hadn’t even known about, then what else was a lie?

Thoughtfully, he asked, “If positive thinking isn’t true, then how did New America get to be perfect?” He looked at Chloe, who laughed, and heat came to his cheeks. Things weren’t perfect at all. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, sounding apologetic for laughing. “The original President Martha just made everything look perfect, that’s all. Nothing actually changed.”

“Well, where did she put the imperfect things? How did she make them go away?”

“That’s why most people live in city centers. Anyway, that’s what Drew told me. Martha took all of the people who used to work in the military or medicine or law enforcement or whatever and had them start cleaning things up. But keeping everything all shiny and new all the time takes a lot of work. So people were encouraged to move into the cities, where they can keep everything nice.” After this speech—the longest Gaylen had heard from her—she lowered her gaze self-consciously.

Gaylen drank some more of his coffee while he absorbed this. The Martha whom Chloe was talking about was the first Martha. She had turned over her office to her younger replacement when Gaylen was a teenager. No one actually knew whether Martha I had ever died, but logically, she had to have—otherwise, she would be over a hundred twenty years old now. But the transition had been seamless. The two Marthas had been nearly identical, and everything continued just the same as it had, as if Martha had simply been rejuvenated and made decades younger.

“How did she get rid of sickness and old age?” he asked.

“She didn’t. She just took away the people who were sick or old. I mean, she tried to get them to learn how to think positively enough to get healthy or stay young, but when it didn’t work…”

She let her voice trail off, but Gaylen didn’t know how to complete the sentence. “When it didn’t work… then what?”

“Well… maybe I shouldn’t be the one to explain this.” Chloe chewed on a dreadlock.

A new voice said, “Explain what?” The back door of the house had just opened, and a stocky Hispanic man stepped out and approached. Tattoos covered both arms. He had a goatee and a mustache, and his head was partially shaved—just a short, round shock of black hair came from the top.

Chloe answered, “You know, the usual stuff. He’s a sleeper.”

The guy pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, along with a lighter, and lit up. He looked at Chloe and gestured at Gaylen, asking, “Who is he?”

“Sorry. This is Gaylen,” she said. “And that’s Kevin.”

Kevin extended a hand. Gaylen stood up to shake it and then sat back down.

Kevin said, “So what needs explaining?”

“I was just trying to tell him about what happens to NCPs.” Chloe glanced at Gaylen and clarified, “Non-Compliant Persons. The ones who get old or sick or depressed.”

“Oh, they kill them,” Kevin said, sounding cheery and helpful in a dry sort of way. “Dead as doornails.”

Chloe’s shoulders dropped, and she cast a mild glare at Kevin. “I was trying to break it to him easy,” she said.

“Sorry,” Kevin answered with a grin. He didn’t sound sorry, but he didn’t sound unpleasant about it, either.

Now Gaylen was trying to accept the idea that President Martha killed people. He couldn’t believe it.

Every person in the nation knew President Martha’s face and voice by heart. The perfectly calm, perfectly coiffed brunette now in her fifties addressed the country via wallscreen multiple times every day. She relayed good news, made announcements of fun events, taught lessons about positive thinking, and continually reassured and reminded all of her citizens that they lived in the wealthiest, happiest, and safest country in the world. And she did it all without ever having a hair out of place.

After a moment, still not able to believe it, he asked again, “President Martha kills people?”

“No, not her,” Kevin said. “The DAA. President Martha doesn’t even know about it. It’s the DAA you have to worry about.”

Gaylen remembered that term from when Drew had rescued him the previous night. “What does ‘DAA’ stand for?”

Again, Kevin answered. “The Domestic Awareness Agency. Also known as Douchebags and Assholes Anonymous.”

Chloe grinned and shook her head a little, but Gaylen didn’t get the joke. He was noticing that Kevin always had a dry but humorous tone of voice.

Kevin went on, “They’re the secret police. Like the Gestapo back in Germany or the Oprichniki in Russia.”

Chloe recognized Gaylen’s blank look and said, “Never mind. The point is, they’re the part of the government that does all the dirty work.”

Gaylen said, “But how could President Martha not know about them? That doesn’t make any sense. She’s the president.”

Chloe looked at Kevin, but he gestured toward her, inviting her to answer, while he took a drag off his cigarette.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and folded her arms around them. She spoke hesitantly and kept her eyes down most of the time. “So, supposedly, the way it happened—I mean, this is what Don told us—is that President Martha—the original one—was teaching everyone to think positively, but of course there was still crime and sickness and accidents and all of that. And at first, Martha taught everyone to just look away from anything that was ‘bad.’ Like homeless people, fat people, sick people, accidents, or whatever. And also to think something positive to undo what they’d seen. So, if you saw a disabled person, you were supposed to immediately think about people who are ‘normal.’ But that’s actually pretty hard to do. And also, incredibly offensive. But, anyway.”

She paused and ducked her head and wrapped her arms around her legs even more tightly, as if to make herself seem smaller. “The point is, it’s harder to think positively when you’re seeing things that are negative, and Martha wanted to help people with that. So she wanted to make everything look really perfect. Plus, the people who had these problems—well, obviously, they weren’t thinking right or they wouldn’t be that way, so she wanted to help them. That’s really all it was, I think. The people she took away, she really was trying to fix them.

“Don is older than us—he’s the leader of all of the Lightbringers—he lives in Atlanta—and a long time ago he talked to some of the old-timers who were the first ones who went in and out of treatment because they were sick or overweight or whatever. He said that they were really trying. And it was really… upsetting for them, actually, when they couldn’t fix it by thinking right. Which is why New America’s suicide rate is really, really high.”

Gaylen asked, “What’s suicide?”

Kevin cheerfully supplied the answer. “Self-killing. Like when somebody throws himself in front of a subway train. Or cuts his wrists open to bleed out. Or deliberately takes a drug overdose. Or hangs herself from—”

“Kevin, shut up.” It was Chloe, her face stormy.

Kevin winced. “Sorry. I forgot.” This time, he sounded like he meant it. He looked away and focused on his cigarette.

The two men waited in uncomfortable silence while Chloe drew a deep breath in and let it back out. Then she went on. “So, like I was saying, when it still wasn’t working… I mean, she had to do something, right? Because everyone who keeps on thinking wrong is attracting the bad stuff. So, sedating the NCPs was the first step, so that it was impossible for them to think anything bad anymore. Putting them in stasis. The plan was that when she figured out how to fix everyone, then she would wake them up and… well, fix them.”

Kevin interjected again, but more soberly. “The problem is the numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people still getting sick or old or depressed or having accidents.” He tapped ash off his cigarette. “The nerve of them.”

“It’s kind of creepy, if you think about it,” Chloe said. “All those people in stasis in stacked-up caskets—skyrises full of them.”

Kevin went on, “Martha knew they had to do something. But you can’t kill off a bunch of people and think positively at the same time. So that’s when Gau got involved.”

Gaylen looked to Chloe for the explanation. She said, “Gau Bidarte is the head of the DAA. He’s the one who suggested creating the DAA and making only socios work there.”

Gaylen shook his head. This was all coming too quickly. “Socios?”

Kevin answered, “Sociopaths. People who are born wrong. They don’t feel bad about doing things that are wrong. The rest of us feel at least a little bad.” With a glance at Chloe, the comment became an apology for whatever he’d said wrong a moment ago.

Chloe grinned at Kevin and went on, “So, Martha told Gau to just… take care of it. Hire socios and take care of it. She didn’t want to know. Because it would affect her thinking, and since she’s the president, her thoughts are more important than anyone else’s. Or so she thinks, anyway.”

“So President Martha… OK, so President Martha really does believe in positive thinking?” Gaylen felt more confused than ever.

“Yes,” Kevin and Chloe said in emphatic unison. Chloe continued, “Now, keep in mind, all of that was the old Martha. The new Martha didn’t have anything to do with the DAA or Gau Bidarte. She doesn’t even know any of it—not in any detail, anyway. I mean, that’s all we’ve ever heard.

“The old Martha really thought that when we all started thinking right, everything really would be perfect. She thought it was just a matter of time. If the new Martha does know anything about the underground and the crime rate, she probably believes the same thing.”

Gaylen rubbed his hands over his face and left one hand covering his eyes. His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. “Well, could it be true? That it’s just a matter of time?” he asked hesitantly. When he got no answer, he dropped his hands and looked up.

Chloe was just looking at him sympathetically. Kevin was taking another drag from his cigarette. After he blew out the smoke, he said, “No.”

Chloe said, “That’s kind of the problem with all of this. Because if… if things aren’t perfect yet, then you just aren’t doing it right, right? So, until things are perfect, you can never know whether it’s not true or whether you’re still just… not doing it right.”

“That’s why it’s fucking evil,” Kevin said flatly. “If anything is wrong, it’s always your fault.”

Chloe shrugged a little. “Anyway, no one outside of New America believes in the law of attraction, and the fact that we have this underground is pretty much proof to them that it doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t work,” Kevin said. “It’s total stupidity.”

“Wait a minute,” Gaylen said. “‘No one outside of New America’? How would you know?”

Chloe touched his shoulder gently for a second. “The borders aren’t really sealed. We get books and news and tech from the outside world. I mean, not directly, but through some of the other groups.”

Gaylen didn’t say anything. This was all too much.

“Maybe we shouldn’t tell you everything all at once?” she offered weakly.

Kevin laughed again. “Oh, just give him the red pill,” he said.

As usual, Gaylen had no idea what he was talking about.

Chloe waved at the tattooed man in a shushing motion. “You’re not helping,” she said. “This is always hard for them.”

Kevin grinned and went on, “It’s not that bad outside the walls, Gaylen. It’s actually pretty decent. I mean, it was rocky for everybody else when the United States just closed its doors. But they figured out how to function without us. They were able to put their economies back together. Mostly because of the New Republic.”

“The New Republic?”

“Yeah. We used to have states called Texas and California, plus a couple of others I forget the names of, and there used to be a country called Mexico to the south. It’s all the New Republic now. They have almost all of the oil and technology that the United States used to have. We should have fought to keep them, but President Martha just let them walk.

“These days, the whole rest of the world pretty much hates us and doesn’t give a crap what we do with ourselves. They’re just watching and waiting for us to self-destruct. The Lightbringers, though, are descended from a group of people who chose to stay inside to try to save America from itself.

“A lot of other people fled this country in the beginning—not just Texas and California. People are still leaving. You can even leave, if you want. We smuggle people out sometimes.”

Gaylen couldn’t even process it. The firmly secured borders of New America and the barbarism and chaos of the outside world were just facts to him. Facts he had known all his life. He rubbed his face with his hands again.

“OK,” he said weakly, “so, the DAA kills the NCPs, who are anybody who still gets sick or old or whatever, which is—a lot of people. And President Martha doesn’t know because… what was his name? The head of the… socios?”

“Gau Bidarte,” Kevin supplied.

“Because Gau Bidarte runs the DAA in secret with socios who don’t think killing people is a bad thing.” He looked at the two Lightbringers, his eyebrows raised in question.

Chloe nodded, the end of a purple dreadlock in her mouth again. “That’s pretty much it.”

“So then how can there be this huge underground? Why haven’t they all been killed by now?”

Chloe shrugged.

Kevin said, “I don’t think they have the manpower to keep up with us. They’ve done mass exterminations down here before, with chemical weapons and nanotech. But there are a whole lot of people who just disappear when they do that, and it’s a bitch to cover that up. So they don’t do it very often. Just when there get to be too many of us. Like sewer rats.”

They sat quietly for a while again. Gaylen’s mind was mostly blank. Eventually, he found himself saying, “I can still see how it could be true, though. I mean, that President Martha could be right. If all these people in the underground are thinking wrong, that’s got to—” He caught Chloe’s gaze and stopped. She was looking at him with sympathy again. He sighed.