Sanctuary, page 1
Grace J. Agnew
Woodhall Press
Norwalk, CT
Woodhall Press, 81 Old Saugatuck Road, Norwalk, CT 06855
WoodhallPress.com
Copyright © 2021 Grace Agnew
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages for review.
Cover design: Asha Hossain
Layout artist: LJ Mucci
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN 978-1-949116-50-2 (paper: alk paper)
ISBN 978-1-949116-61-8 (electronic)
First Edition
Distributed by Independent Publishers Group
(800) 888-4741
Printed in the United States of America
For Teal, Luke, Harrison and Channing.
Your generation will fix the mistakes
that my generation made.
PROLOGUE
Was this the right place? She hadn’t visited this street in three years. Everything looked different, sadder, more decrepit. Like Miranda herself. She was probably imagining things. She shook herself, and as she did, she woke the tiny package, wrapped in a used scaleskin and tucked against her chest. It had been shivering nonstop, like something electric, but now it stirred and extended its claws out of the cloth. Miranda tried to tuck the arms back in. The waving arms froze and then attacked. Miranda saw dots of blood well on her arm. It had been a while since she saw blood, but this blood was nothing compared to—
She stopped herself from thinking about the past. It was enough that she dreamed about it every night. Time to finish her errand and go home, or what was left of home, without—
She was doing it again. She pressed a communications button, intentionally choosing an unknown flat. She didn’t want to face anyone who knew her, who would ask inconvenient questions. She turned her head to one side when an unknown woman answered, sounding put-upon.
“Yes, what is it?”
Miranda mentioned a name in response.
“You have the wrong flat. Turn your head, please, I can’t hear you.”
Miranda shook her head, but she repeated the name and what she needed more clearly. It didn’t do to face people. She had seen the end of the world, and the horror was reflected in her eyes.
When she knew her message had been reluctantly received, she put her bundle down and watched it scurry away. It wouldn’t go far. It was fitting that the story ended as it had begun. With a cat.
CHAPTER ONE
Designing the dog was easy. The cat took a lot of work. But here it stood, pretzeled into Zen calligraphy, purring with pleasure as Miranda stroked its thick fur. She worked her fingers down to the spine, feeling each knob as the cat arched its back and leaned against her arm. Density, that’s what she was feeling, richness. Which was perfect, because of course the fur was holo. Real fur would catch every passing microbe, clog the venting systems, and produce allergies in people who hadn’t seen a pet in thirty years. Microscopic jets of forced air created the tension of fur that was brushed against the grain. And totally self-sustaining. Each time the cat moved, it created and stored its own energy.
As a final test, she grabbed a clump of fur and pulled. Resistance. Perfect. The cat narrowed its eyes and hissed. A paw came up, claws curved to attack. Miranda pulled back, even though the claws, gleaming like enamel, were also holo and couldn’t actually draw blood. But the immediate reaction—the hissing, the indignant look in eyes that had been half lidded with drowsy contentment—this was practically perfection after months of disappointment. New behavior, new appearance, new color. A tiny triumph, maybe, but the design had been a struggle. Not like the dog, tucked away in a cupboard. She looked around, unbalanced, as if she could hear the dog scratching to get out. It wasn’t trapped, for God’s sake; it was turned off.
The flat alarm, a pleasant tinkling during the day. Alex was home. She felt his eyes on her from the doorway. “Look,” she said, “the latest model.”
He stood there, leaning against the narrow frame; tall, skinny—too skinny for a sixteen-year-old, according to the health charts. She made a mental note to check his diet stats from his DP. She narrowed her eyes and peered around him. Where was his DP? Turned off again. She pursed her lips. This was the sort of thing that got you noticed.
Alex watched her in turn. She was sitting on the flat sofa, so basic and colorless it was hard to distinguish from the floor. Everyone they knew had lots of holo decor because it was so easy to design and project from the story cube. You could change it on a whim or when company came over. He admired his mother for keeping it simple and basic, although he knew a lot of that was probably in response to his complaining about the phoniness of projected junk. He watched her lips moving. In, out, in, out. Miranda’s features were finely drawn, her mouth thin like a pencil line across her face. She had told him how kids teased her when she was little. The lip pursing was a nervous habit to plump them out. Something she did when she was angry or uncomfortable. Angry . . . with him?
She looked up from the cat, directly at him. Those eyes. Even though she was his mother and he saw her almost every day—unless he could avoid it, and frequently he could—those eyes never ceased to amaze. Large and blue, like the best sky she had ever designed. You forgot everything else about her when she turned those eyes, gleaming like grow lights, on you.
“What do you think?” she asked. She stroked the cat again.
“Is that the final version? Nice.” He tried to put some enthusiasm in his voice. He hated how he had to fake everything with his mother. Otherwise, he was just a total disappointment. He avoided her now because everything about him that was real she disliked.
He turned to head into the kitchen for a packfruit.
“Is that it?” Her voice stopped him. Five minutes in the house, and he had already done it. Made his mother mad. He had to make a friend or two, just to have another place to stay sometimes.
“You know how long I’ve worked on this. How important it is to me. Is that all I get? ‘Nice’?”
He sighed. “I said it was nice, and I meant it. It’s what you do. Build things. You always have something new. Do I have to get excited every time?”
Her lips tightened. “I build things—”
“For the good of the city,” he finished her thought. “I know, Mom. I just don’t get all the effort you’ve spent on building animals. You hate animals.”
Miranda was pushed back, as from a physical blow, by his judgment of her. When did all this start? Twelve? Thirteen? She knew it had been growing, but she hadn’t realized how much it had solidified. The distance between them wasn’t air any longer, it was concrete. She took a deep breath. They were not going to fight every time she saw him.
“First of all, I don’t design for myself. I design for Sanctuary. People love animals. Loved animals,” she corrected herself. “And I don’t hate animals. When I was a little girl, I had a pet. A dog, Fred”
“Your DP,” he said, without much interest.
“No, a real dog,” she said. “A flesh-and-blood, scratchy nailed, drooling dog.”
Alex looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since he’d walked in. “I can’t picture you with a dog,” he said. “You’re afraid of animals. You see an animal and your first thought is ‘Call animal management.’”
“Maybe because I remember animals the way they used to be,” she said. “Not the way they are now. Fred was my best friend. He did everything with me, slept with me at night.”
“I thought Tara was your best friend . . .” His sarcastic voice trailed off as he left the room. She heard him rummaging around in the kitchen.
“I got a loaf today,” she called to him. “And some melt.” Loaves of bread were created from the hydroponic rice in the Sanctuary gardens. Packfruits—luscious, concentrated sweetness, loaded with every nutrient you needed—were the daily meals, supplemented by treats like loaves and long stalks of celery, to maintain dentition and digestion. She actually got two loaves because they were small, but when she set the bakery bag down, a ferrat was on it in an instant, stealing a loaf and disappearing in a quick streak of brown around the corner. She disinfected the remaining loaf. They would eat it tonight; you didn’t waste bread.
Alex brought in the loaf, coated in melt, and two plates. He broke the loaf in two and pushed a plate toward her, carefully avoiding the cat, which leaned over to sniff the bread.
“I thought you would be interested in pets. You had a blue rabbit for your DP for the longest time.”
“When I was four,” he said. “And you’re talking about digits. We exterminate anything that’s real, like ferrats, and make more things that are unreal, to keep all the human animals happy in their zoo. Listen, we have animals now. Real animals. Ferrats are actually pretty cool; they stay together as families even when they’re grown.” Ferrats, colonies of smart, agile rats that had somehow invaded from the outside, were one of the banes of Sanctuary life. Alex, of course, liked them.
“Adapted to hunt, to take precious food and water resources,” Miranda said.
“If you hate animals so much, I don’t see how you are going to design something cuddly that everyone wants,” he said. “Ferrats aren’t the only animals. There are coyotes and w
“More that get in,” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Mom! You know there are holes in the city wall. You can shut your eyes to the big, bad world out there, but you can’t shut Sanctuary. Not completely.”
“Have you seen those holes, Alex? Have you been . . . through any of them?”
He looked at her. “You can’t live out there,” he answered. “You know that. That’s why animals are sneaking in. To enjoy the survival we’ve created for ourselves. Nothing lives outside.”
“You’re being sarcastic, but it’s true. I know. I lived outside, when I was—”
“Younger than me. I know, Mom. Nobody can live outside anymore, except . . .” He stopped.
She busied herself with melt. She knew what was coming.
“Except maybe my dad.”
“How do you know this?”
He paused. “I didn’t learn it from you. You never tell me anything about my dad. You always make it sound like he didn’t exist at all. Like maybe I was something you created in your lab. Maybe I was your first android.”
She whirled to face him. “Alex, you can’t believe that! I never talk about him because he left. He abandoned you when you were just a toddler. In all these years, he has never once tried to see you. If he even survived, because he—”
“Because he went outside. Where no one can survive,” he finished.
“That’s right. And not for any noble reason, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not from any desire to save mankind. Sanctuary is what saves mankind. No, he went outside because he never cared about his role; just drifted about, claimed the city made him claustrophobic, viewed one too many stories about cowboys riding across the prairies into the sunset. But there are no prairies, no sunsets; just howling winds and dust poisoning the air so you can hardly breathe. The outside sounds so romantic when you are sixteen, Alex, but it has nothing.”
“Except my dad.”
“Not likely,” she said, before she could stop herself.
“What do you mean?”
She paused, measuring her words. “Alex, it wasn’t good when I lived outside. It hasn’t gotten any better, only worse. Nothing could survive out there for long.”
“There’s City of the South,” Alex argued. “And Asia City. And probably others.”
He named the cities within a week’s travel from Sanctuary. Both cities had begun well. Asia City controlled its environment and the people who could live and mate there. People with genetic issues were ruthlessly forced outside the city walls. And yet, before Alex was born, the city had fallen to rampant drug abuse and disease and now was a largely abandoned shell.
City of the South, depending on what story you believed, was either a tragedy or a joke. It was ruled by lazy and venal rulers. The people who lived there were either serfs or outlaws. There was no in-between. The city was falling apart, besides, barely providing shelter from the rains, the dust, and the wind. People who survived didn’t live very long. Some people romanticized it. Easy enough to do if you never had to live there. Miranda had seen refugees from City of the South, quarantined in a special section of the city for the outside diseases they carried. They all looked old, even the children. She had no idea what became of them, but they didn’t mingle with the citizens of Sanctuary. And after a while, refugees stopped banging on the wall.
She didn’t bother to reply.
Alex changed course. “People like you don’t care about anything but Sanctuary. You suck what is left from the outside to keep your precious city alive. Sanctuary sits like a tumor on the world, depending on the world to survive. You can call everything else ‘outside’ like it is something else, like it doesn’t matter. But the outside is everything real. And sooner or later, it’s coming in.”
He sounded like a pamphlet from the 2084 protest group. Miranda took a breath, trying to salvage the evening.
“That’s not true,” she said. “In fact, there’s a special role, perhaps the most important, that is focused on developing a mutual relationship with outside, harvesting and reusing what is good. Healing what is not.”
Alex snorted. “If believing that makes you happy.”
“You could be part of that, Alex. You could have the role of outside integrator.” It was a demanding role, hard to get into, but Miranda could pull some strings, and Tara could pull even more.
He shrugged. “I’ve already decided, with the role counselor. I’m going to be a story maker.” His voice was flat, uninterested.
“A story maker?” Miranda was amazed at her own disappointment. She knew that stories made life more interesting and worthwhile for many people. Some people lived the best part of their lives in story. Still . . .
“C’mon, Mom, do you think what you do is so different? What is Sanctuary but a giant story? A great big ball of make-believe.”
“You don’t mean that, Alex.” She forced her voice to be steady and even. “You’re sixteen. It’s natural to push against boundaries. But people ultimately want to thrive, and Sanctuary is the only place left where we can do that. What else is there? You may not see it this way, but Sanctuary is our best hope for tomorrow. Not just your tomorrow, but the tomorrow of the children you will have.”
He stared at the bread, getting soggy under the rapidly cooling melt. “How old was my dad when he left?” he asked.
“Twenty-eight.” She’d known one day they would be having this conversation, after she’d discovered his secret DP when he was ten: a six-foot-tall version of Alex. He couldn’t possibly remember his dad, but the result was so close it took her breath away. Alex had quickly turned it back into the fuzzy ball he normally used, and they both pretended she hadn’t seen the other DP.
She had always deflected questions about his father, dismissing him as someone she barely recalled. As Alex got older, he quit asking. She hoped he had only a few memories. But she couldn’t forget the night terrors, when he woke crying hysterically, for years after Peter left.
“And how old was I?”
“Four.”
He rolled the spongy bread into inedible marbles. Almost a week of her salary.
“Why did he leave, anyway? Didn’t he want anything more to do with us?” With me, he meant.
Miranda sighed and decided on the truth. “I don’t know. He was too big for the city, taller and broader than any other man I knew. I used to see him on his rounds and wonder how he fit into a magcart.”
“What was his role?”
Miranda hesitated before answering. “Disposal,” she said reluctantly. She was sorry to destroy whatever romantic vision Alex had of his dad.
Alex just laughed, surprising her. “Good for him!” he said. “Maybe I could do that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m not,” he answered. “It’s an important role. Gotta throw things away that people no longer need, or else the city gets cluttered. Anyway, I’d like to know where the stuff goes that we throw away. Is it just heaped in piles outside Sanctuary’s walls?”
Miranda had seen the immense towers of garbage a short magtrain ride from Sanctuary. When the city managers wanted everyone focused on building things that could be recycled, they were taken to see the slag heaps as incentive. Now, 90 percent of the city’s matter was recycled, from packfruit skins to magcarts. Even human waste was filtered and reused. She tried not to think about the 10 percent.
“Disposal man,” Alex said. “Clever, Dad.”
She couldn’t tell if he was admiring or sarcastic. Maybe both.
“So how do you know he isn’t alive?” he asked. “If he was in disposal, he went outside; he probably figured out a thing or two. Unless he was really stupid.” He gave a short laugh, but Miranda could tell by his eyes, the eyes of four-year-old abandoned Alex, how carefully she had to tread with her answer.
