Bright One

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake. I admit I was not studious about follow-through up to that point in my life, but when the stakes are life and death, a person deserves a little more credit. Biology deserves more credit.

Maybe it’s true that I wouldn’t do it again. Maybe I should have ignored my colleague and moved on. Brought my uniform cap down into my eyes and looked at my feet, as so many others do.

But when you’re standing in what used to be a bustling city center watching the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen be beaten, it’s hard to really decide who you are in that moment. You just do whatever your body tells you to do, and if that thing is “stand between girl and beating”, then, there’s really little else to do. Your biology has already decided who you are and what you’ll do. Your training as a government official is secondary.

By the time I was 17, the youngest officer inducted in the city in at least a generation, and staring at this girl, the beatings from the government had been happening for years. Without decent study, which no one did, no one knew what led to this. What had allowed it to happen? Few were around to even tell us how things were before. It just was what it was. There was little to be done. Assimilate or die. Too many of the people who could have told us that it could be better chose to die at the hands of my colleague.

But of course we didn’t really know that. We just knew everyone around us seemed assimilated. And, sure, there were the beatings for things that the officers thought violated the new laws, at a regular interval, but no one thought that was serious. No one for a second believed that anything further than that was necessary. After a beating, people either got in line with the status quo or they disappeared and you didn’t see them on the morning commute anymore. Either way, they weren’t memorable enough to know or be noticed.

Eileen was.

I know it sounds cliché to say describe this girl as a beautiful and say she had a perfectly imperfect body, freckles covering her pale cheeks, brown eyes, and dirty blonde hair. I know. But I also know that I couldn’t help it. I saw her every day. We both walked these streets, in opposite directions on the way to work and out of work. We’d see each other across the street. Maybe that’s why I noticed her. She looked up. Not down. Not at her feet, like most people walking the city. Up. She watched the buildings and the people. Her awareness gave her away before anything else could have. And she was not afraid to broadcast her difference. If you watched closely, you could see her sometimes smile, sometimes counting steps as beats. Not being caught until that day was a miracle in itself.

Everyone by then had been conditioned to be constantly at half-attention everywhere. Always something going on down on a screen, news headlines and notifications nagging at them from those screens, or, on the very rare occasion it was put down, buzzing from a pocket. But never sound other than a vibrating haptic, and not a long one at that. Morse code level haptics, and nothing that could move anyone to want to dance. So when a person was looking up, aware, and counting steps like beats…well, she was easy to notice if you had any attention left at all. The academy had drilled attention back into some of us, taking any screens small enough to fit in a pocket long enough for us to build present attention. My parents had largely resisted pocket screens and raised me, mostly unnoticed. Until they weren’t. It didn’t take me long to resist pocket screens and be aware of my surroundings. Hence, the youngest officer in a generation. It didn’t take me as long, with dead parents and no other options, to adjust to life without a pocket screen to serve a government that could decide if I lived or died.

I fell into step immediately, without much of a choice. A 15 year old with no parents and an incomplete education didn’t have many options available to him. This was it. So I did it. Without thinking. Letting my training become instinct. I blended in with the mindless. Allowed the information I was being given to guide me in watching for subversives. I tried to be the best, the fastest to identify targets.

My first two missions, I found 30 different people not on the watch list who were engaging in elicit activities. Several classes of recruits were demoted if I, as one person, could identify so many in two missions and they hadn’t identified that many in a year. I kept going. Promoted to Colonel quickly. By 16, I had made a name for myself. Spotting subversives, sometimes beating them, sometimes just reporting the actions and allowing them to disappear. I didn’t follow through. I wasn’t studious about it, remember? What happened when I did that? Above my paygrade. I have no idea. I just knew no one ever saw them again.

How? Easy. While people tended to blend in, if you knew where to look, you could find those asking around about the people they’d lost. Officially, this didn’t happen. Everyone was expected to forget immediately. Who do you think is missing? No, there’s no one registered by that name. That person doesn’t exist. Have a good day, friend. Move along. Get to work.

Unofficially, there was an underground trying to fund an uprising. Isn’t there always in these stories, though? History is full of uprisings. Few last. Even fewer make it work to overthrow whatever system they’re rising up against, so with such a docile population, it isn’t really on the official radar of problems to watch. But as someone still young and able to blend in places where people don’t know who I am, I consider it a secret mission to find these people to help eliminate the uprising. The government fed, clothed, educated, and trained me. Why should I be loyal to anyone else? And why would anyone be anything but loyal to a government that provided everything we needed and kept us safe?

I learned to eat, sleep, and breathe warning signs in other people. My every thought floating through my brain a new strategy on the same route. I could identify these people in ten seconds, report them, and continue on my shift without a thought for what happened after.

Why didn’t I do the same, even out of habit, the first time I saw Eileen?

She looked…peaceful.

Who else looked like that? I scanned the crowd, back and forth, looking for any other eyes I could see. None. Heads down, screens on. Eyebrows knitted, reading headline after headline that announced only disasters…but the government is keeping you safe from these disasters, as every lead. Hundreds of stressed faces, barely stopping a scroll to register each headline, and Eileen looked…at peace. Connected to something. And her eyes weren’t clouded by other thoughts, but clear. She knew something everyone else didn’t. I wanted to know. But she spotted me. Looked down, as though she were looking at a screen, but her eyes peeked out above the crowd, a telltale sign of subversives. Awareness. She knew I’d seen her.

All I had to do was speak. My earpiece and microphone would transmit and the team would descend in under a minute. We were all there, walking the commute like everyone else, blending in just like everyone else. Why didn’t she? It bothered me. It was new. My whole body felt the difference and I stumbled in my walk. It was not love. Please. I didn’t even know her name. It was curiosity. Huh. They were supposed to train that out of you at the Academy. Don’t be curious, just do the job. Identify the subversive, report, keep walking to find the next one. Her peace was unusual. It made me identify my own discomfort. I began to open my mouth to report her to make the discomfort go away when I realized…I’d lost her.

There weren’t many options. I rounded the next corner and cut back through an alley to get across the street going the same direction she had been. Satisfied that she’d lost me, she was again looking up, almost begging others to engage with her, talk to her. She was only ten paces or so ahead of me, so I half-jogged through a couple holes of people before arriving right beside her.

“Who are you?” I blurted. Rude, but by this point I didn’t want to lose her again.

“What’s it to you?” she was scrolling her pocket screen by then, looking fully immersed. If she could blend, why didn’t she?

“I noticed you…looking up.”

Silence. This didn’t answer her question, and as my secret way to tell that people were subversive was not broadcast to the subversives, she had no idea what that meant or why I would bring it up. Way to go, man. You’re really gonna disarm her like that.

“I just don’t see many people doing that.”

“I do a lot of things other people don’t do.”

What kind of answer was that from a person trying to avoid detection? Or was she? Why wasn’t she? Back and forth these bounced around my brain, trying to find a strategy for a species I wasn’t sure I’d ever known. Not only human female. Subversive, likely underground, human female. I felt out of my depth.

“Come on, Colonel. Are you going to report me or not?” Her eyes back up, she met my gaze and held it, making me uncomfortable. No one had held my gaze in years, since my parents were alive.

“What…who…who says I’m a Colonel?” Smooth, man. I know, you can see why I don’t get many dates.

“Not just a Colonel,” she began, putting her pocket screen into her pocket, apparently sure I wasn’t going to report her. “But the youngest I’ve ever heard of. Colonel Garrett Williams. More reports of confirmed subversives than just about anyone.”

My feet stop. I am nearly caught in a stampede.

When my brain catches up, so do my feet, and I move instead of being trampled.

“How do you…?”

“Know you?” she interrupts. “I just know things.” She shrugs and disappears down an alley I wasn’t entirely sure existed.

Of course I follow.

And follow.

And follow.

I’m lost, but she’s clearly not. Where is she leading me?

Through a series of alleys and tunnels into a building I might recognize from the outside if I hadn’t entered it through its underbelly.

And into the uprising.

I tense first, expecting an attack. When one doesn’t come, I loosen my muscles methodically, one at a time.

“We’ve been waiting for you.” A man says behind me.

“We knew Eileen would catch your eye.” Another man laughs, as I turn in a full circle, getting a glimpse of the faces that now surround me.

“I assume, because you didn’t turn me in immediately, that you’re starting to wonder if you’re on the right side?”

It’s Eileen, behind me, now, and too sure of herself.

“I was..” I can’t say what I thought. Because who actually says, “You looked so peaceful, and I had to know why?” Ugh. That was the stuff of old romantic comedies my parents used to tell me about. Still, not entirely untrue in this instance.

“Curious? You can say it, here. It’s encouraged.” She grinned at him only with the left side of her mouth and started walking. I stood for a minute, wondering if I was supposed to follow, and decided I couldn’t just stay.

“What is this place?”

“Technically, we don’t exist. It’s Nowhere.”

“But you do exist.”

“I do. We do. It does. But you knew that, already.”

“How do you know so much?”

“People like you.”

“What?”

“You’re not the only government employee who’s ever been curious, you know? People get curious. They realize that feels uncomfortable and they’re not supposed to be curious. They do either one of two things: one, go back to work terrified someone will notice they were different for a minute. Or, two, they find us. Most of the time they don’t even know they’re looking for us. But they spot us. We’ve been trying to get your attention for months. You seem to find more of us than anyone. Clearly, you were curious before, enough to be able to point us out, but you preferred to turn us in.”

“That’s my job.”

“Well, we don’t particularly like giving up people to the government on a regular basis. But that means you either have to join us as a volunteer…or be removed from the equation.

Which, is how I made the decision to help them. A decision that brought me no end of agony, I can confirm, now. But it also brought me just what Eileen had already found: peace.

Daily, I would get whatever information I could and deliver it to someone heading back to the tunnels. News of a new walking route. Possible locations of people like me looking for them.

And I got slower about reporting them. It turned out knowing what was happening after they were reported and the hole it created in the chain of information wasn’t something I could continue. So I got slower. I reported less. My supervisors started asking questions. I swore my loyalty. They believed it. They had no reason not to.

That’s when it happened.

I saw Eileen in the street. She grinned at me with just the left side of her mouth, and I couldn’t stop my smile back. But we were on the street, passing each other as usual. I spotted my colleague, Captain Beck. I could tell he’d seen her. And the panic set in.

Maybe I should have let it happen.

Maybe I should have ignored my colleague.

I didn’t.

I ran through the alley. I dove at his feet, missing the space between him and Eileen I had hoped to reached. But at his feet was enough. She disappeared down an alley.

Chaos. A cacophony of footsteps, yelling, constant sound.

No one believed in me. No one believed it would be me. An orphan couldn’t climb the ranks that fast. Couldn’t catch all those people. I had to know the whole time. Be a conspirator the whole time.

So, I was brought here.

To await whatever fate visits people who interfere. Who are subversive.

And now? That’s all I want to be.

Full of peace by refusing to blend in.