The Lightbringers, page 9
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.
