Afterland (23 page)

The first choice was a sacrifice, and it was also a sin, but it was necessary.

What if, all of a sudden, Eden wasn’t enough? What if they saw an entire world outside their walls and for the first time, they knew that they deserved it? What if they saw the secrets of the universe just beyond their grasp and they yearned to know the truth? Or maybe it was the opposite: Eden was too much. They needed to understand infinite suffering before deserving infinite happiness.

What if Eden was just an illusion created by their ignorance? Maybe they returned to the spot where Eden once once and found emptiness. And maybe they prefered it that way. Maybe
I
prefer it this way.

Just like Adam and Eve found themselves in a strange world outside of Eden, I find myself in a strange world after paradise.

And just like the first woman asked herself if her sin was worth it, so do I.

I wonder what my life would have been without the sin of existing in this time. I wonder what life would have been like if Eve had never torn the apple off of the Tree of Knowledge. I wonder if I would be strong enough to break the glass ceiling that was Eden. And I wonder, and I wonder, and I wonder, but how much does it matter?

From the first sin to the last sin, people will always be wondering whether it was worth it, whether what they gave away was a good price for what they received. Whether self awareness was something that that we really want

But any way, whether or not my life is good, now it means something. I squeeze the little bunny and whisper in its nearly severed purple ear.

“Because look how far we’ve come.”

CHAPTER 15

Several days after the raid, I sit on one of the logs as Big Sal makes breakfast. I watch her flip the eggs and remember what Mike said about her skills with a computer, and I find myself wondering about her past. I have so many questions. Where did she learn to hack? What was her life like before the Blast? Why does she never mention her hidden talents?

I decide to start with a simpler question.

“Hey, Big Sal,” I venture cautiously, “How did you join the Rebellion?”

              “Me? Well, that’s kind of a long story,” she chuckles in remembrance and some other emotion that seems closer to regret than anything else.

“That’s okay. That’s good. I’d want to hear it. If you don’t mind, of course.”

“Huh. Well. I’ve never been that great at storytelling, so bear with me here. I actually joined before the Eruption. Back then, it wasn’t even called the Rebellion, and we weren’t fighting against the CGB yet, of course. Nobody knew that...this would happen. I was sixteen at the time, bordering on seventeen
—
a little younger than you are now. But you have to remember: back then was a completely different world. It had rules and customs and actual society. Doing what you did
—
leaving home at seventeen to join a rebel organization
—
was illegal. It wasn’t really even seen as a possibility. It just wasn’t something that could happen. Survival had a different meaning, then, because none of us really knew how much we had to fall. Towns like Hopetown were unthinkable in the first world, of course. And, well, I suppose you have to understand the political climate of the time to actually understand my situation. You probably don’t remember this that much, but things were changing. It looked like it was about to be the beginning of a new age. It was a tumultuous time, especially with people of my generation. We were at the forefront of change. And we wanted change, not for any particular reason. Just change for the sake of change. Young people often do, and that’s what moves the world forward. But not everybody was happy with moving forward. The generation of our parents started regressing to balance it out. They brought back customs last used hundreds of years ago. Some of them were amusing, but some were just moving the world backwards. Regardless of what side you were on, there was no denying that things were changing and everybody had a strong opinion on it. There was this cafe downtown. It was called…” she pauses for a moment. “Goddamn, my memory is failing me. I forget. I think it was named after some flower. But we would gather there Saturday evenings
—
we, meaning the young people of my city
—
and we would debate the hell out of everything. I met…” she chuckles sadly. “Well, let’s just say, I met quite a few interesting people there.

“Anyway, by that point in time, the Eruption was in its first stages. They had a formulated plan and were collecting resources, is what I mean. This wasn’t a known fact, or anything like that. You remember: the Eruption came as a complete shock to all of us. There was no way we could have known. But there were people who did. The Kerman couple were two of them. They both worked for...It wasn’t exactly the government. It was sort of an underground shadow government that did the work that the real government couldn’t. They arose with the tides of change as well. The government was starting to lose control and it needed help. That’s the best way I can explain the shadow government. I never fully understood exactly what it was, and I doubt the Kerman couple did either.

“Anyway, I was supposed to be in school, but…” She shakes her head. “But, well, quite frankly, I was doing some questionable things in my time. And...hmm, I’m not sure how best to explain this...Let’s just say, the Kerman couple did me a favor and I did them a favor in return. I was a pretty active hacker at the time. My job was to hack into the Blaster’s databases and find out useful information. It was difficult. They had multiple layers of protection. But I did manage to find out some valuable information.”

She stops there, but she says it with such inconclusiveness and leaves me so curious, that I decide to prod further; I want to find out what happened after that.

“And?” I say.

“And what?”

“What happened next?”

“Next?” She sighs. “Next came the first of a series of tragedies. Mike and Nathan’s father was working as a spy. It was one of the most important and one of the most dangerous jobs in their shadow government. Mr. Kerman was slowly rising in the ranks of the Blasters. Their organization didn’t have a name or an identity that could be traced back to them in any way. And they communicated through these obscure paper messages. They would leave one in the park, for example, and in it, it would have the information that they were passing along and where the next message would be. By the time that I joined, he had been at it for a pretty long time. A little under two years, I think. He was working on getting into their inner circles. Several months after I joined, he just about succeeded. The last note he got said,
We are accepting you. Meet us here tomorrow at 2100
.” She pauses and sighs again. “That was the last time we ever saw him. We, uh..he had this fancy watch. We found it at the Kerman’s door. There was a note attached to it with the words,
Next time, we won’t be fooled
. We never found out what happened to him. I mean, he’s dead, but we never even got his body.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well. That was a dark time for us. It just...we were so close to preventing the Blast. Can you imagine? If things had been just a little different, if we had one more shred of information or one more clue, the Blast might never have happened.”

“You could have stopped the Blast,” I whisper, realizing, for the first time, the scale of Big Sal’s past..

“We were so close, too. We did continue working, of course. It was the only comfort Ms. Kerman had after her husband’s death. But, as you can see….” she shrugs and gestures around. “I think right after the Eruption was the most difficult time. We were all sure, or I was sure, at least, that we would all die soon. Not only that, but the weight of knowledge was beginning to be a difficult burden to carry. We knew that we could have prevented the Eruption, and we knew that we didn’t. We would see people dying, starving, suffering, and I would always blame myself. We knew that it wasn’t our fault, of course, but that wasn’t even important. We were given a chance that nobody else had. We were given the chance to change the world. And we failed.

“Those first years, there was no Rebellion. There was just survival. We damn near died of starvation. It was just the four of us: me, Ms. Kerman, and the children. Everything was poisoned. You remember how it was. It was in that first year, however, that we began to call ourselves the Rebellion. Mike coined that. He kept referring to us as the Rebels. It was a type of cruel joke at the time, because we were barely human beings. We certainly weren’t rebels. But with his juvenile hope, Mike turned us into the Rebels and we became the Rebellion. I think there was no other option for us, in all honesty. Becoming the Rebellion was our second chance, our redemption for not preventing the Blast in the first place. Our second chance to save the world we let down the first time. And that was the start of this mess,” she chuckles fondly.
I lean forward. This is the first I’ve heard about the shadowy past that nobody talks about. And it’s exactly like I expected it to be.

“Two years passed,” she continues. “We found Smaller Sally at a river bend. Her parents were dead. And that’s when I became Big Sal. I used to just be Sally. To be honest, I hated the name. Too many bad associations. I was happy to take on a new name, and with it, a new beginning of sorts. The following year was a little easier. We had adapted. That was also the year the CGB first became a real threat. So we had something to be rebels against. We began to make plans, the Kerman mother and I. She had this briefcase that had a lot of advanced gear from her pre-Blast job. That was all we had in the beginning. That and my computer with its solar battery. Sometime within a year and a half, Matt and Hannah joined, after their exile. By this time, the Kerman mother wasn’t doing well. She was sick with something. In half a year, she died. She didn’t go out well. She was vividly hallucinating and in great pain. Before she died, she told Mike that she wanted him to take over. But Mike wasn’t ready, of course. You can’t expect a child to lead a revolution, but Mike wanted to respect his mother’s last wishes. I think he felt the guilt of failure that his mother and I carried around. That was another dark time for us. We were practically leaderless and we couldn’t do anything. Mike was only fourteen and he was trying so hard, bless the boy, but the six of us were still struggling to survive. But in two years, after we had settled down to some degree, Mike decided he was ready, He took on too much, of course. Sixteen is still a child, and no child should have to lead a revolution. But we didn’t really have a choice. We had Rebekah and Emily by then. That’s when we really started going on raids. Mike’s a good kid, he organized it well. That was seven years ago. It’s kind of amazing, to have seen the Rebellion grow so much.”

“Wow,” I say.

“Yeah, it was quite a wild ride.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever see the Rebellion in quite the same way again. I’m not sure why, but it just seems...different now.”

“It’s because stories hold power, Molly. Stories define us. You know the definition of the Rebellion now. You know what you’re fighting for. Never underestimate the power of stories. Words are much more powerful than you think, remember that.”

__              __              __              __              __              __              __              __              __              __

              Mike, Nathan, and I stand talking on the edge of the clearing. We are all weary from a long day of training. The weather is miserable
—
the air is heavy and cold and beginning of a storm tugs at the air.

              “This isn’t half bad, really,” Mike is saying in response to my bitter complaint about the damp weather. “We have something to do with our lives and that’s extremely important. Because right now, society hasn’t recovered enough to do anything but-”

              “Fight?” I supply.

              “No. Change.”

              “Hmm. Yeah, I suppose. Doesn’t change the crappy weather though,” I add under my breath.

              “Either way, I think it’ll always be worth it if you have something worth fighting for,” Nathan says, tactfully ignoring my comment.

              “Yeah, that’s true,” I agree. “What are you fighting for, Nathan?”

              “Me? I’m fighting for tomorrow. Because what we have now sure as hell isn’t perfect, but the future still has a chance to be better. I wanna see that better world.”

“Hmm,” I say. I note how quickly he responded. Nathan always seems to have a response ready for questions like this. “What about you, Mike? What are you fighting for?”

Mike takes a moment to think, rolling up, lighting, and taking a puff of a cigarette before answering.

“If you’re fighting for tomorrow, then I suppose I’m fighting for today. Because you’re right: this world is far from perfect. But considering we may never see a better future, it’s the only world we have, whether we like it or not.”