Hungry (23 page)

Basil slumps. “They’ll want to make a deal,” he says. “You come back, I turn myself in, they’ll keep Ana and let the others go.”

“No!” I say. “We can’t let One World get away with that. People would protest if they understood what’s really going on.”

“Who’s going to care?” Basil asks.

“Dynasaurs and other Analogs,” I tell him. “You said yourself that they’re out there. We just have to find them and tell them the truth. How do Analogs communicate?”

“Through non-network channels like word of mouth or paper sometimes or…” Basil says.

“You don’t have anything more sophisticated than that?” I throw my hands in the air and look at Yaz. “This is why we need a good counter-corporate PRC! To spread the word…”

She rolls her eyes. “Not this again.”

“One World controls the media,” says Basil.

“Not everything,” I say.

He shakes his head at me. “You are so naive.”

“No, you are!” I say like a three-year-old. Then I turn to Yaz. “Give me your Gizmo.” She hands it over.

“You have to stop using that!” Basil says. “You’re going to get us caught.”

“No,” I say. “I’m going to get us organized.”

I drop down on the couch and search for a private network signal. Surely there must be a few Dynasaurs out this far. Immediately, I find a strong one. I glance up at Fiyo. “Is this your VPN?”

She shrugs and raises one eyebrow. “Depends on who’s asking,” she says. Then she turns her head slightly to the right and lifts her chin so I can see the smooth skin just below her left ear. I gasp when I recognize a tattoo just like Ana’s.

I grin. “I never saw a thing,” I tell her as I log on to the Dynasaur boards. I’m so excited to be with another Dynasaur and to be back online. My fingers fly as I zip around the recent posts. First I search for AnonyGal because she’s the kind of person who can rally the troops, but she’s not online, so I post a “Call to Action” as a general message.

To: All Dynasaurs

From: HectorProtector

Calling all Dynasaurs! One World has gone too far. The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Ana Gignot and her followers, the Analogs, is an affront to personal liberty. I was at the Analog meeting in the Outer Loops when Ana was abducted by OW security. Her crime: speaking out about emotional freedom, human connection, and a vision for a better future. One World is hiding behind the Universal Nutrition Protection Act, aka No-Food Law, to muzzle Ana and her followers. They are also propagating lies. I know from a very reliable source that Thalia Apple was not kidnapped in retaliation for Ana’s arrest. She willingly fled a rehab facility her family placed her in. One World is using Thalia Apple as a pawn to manipulate public opinion against the Analog movement, whose people are the kindred spirits of Dynasaurs. They, like us, believe One World has too much power and seek ways to create a different future. If you find the arrest of Ana and her followers despicable, speak up! Spread the word. Protest the arrest!!!

And then I sign my post in a way I never have before, with the image of a sprouting seed and the word
Remember.

The last thing I do before I sign out of the Dynasaur network is send a direct message to AnonyGal, hoping that she’ll lend her skills to our cause once she’s back online.

AnonyGal: I need your help. Please read my general post and rally the troops. This is serious. If ever there was a time for the Dynasaurs to act, it is now. Due to my involvement in the Analog cause, I must go off-line for a while. I hope I can count on your support in my absence to create a groundswell of opposition to the unjust imprisonment of Ana and her followers.

I log off and hand the Gizmo back to Yaz. Then we all look at one another. Yaz is the first to break the awkward silence. “Now what?” she asks.

“We should split up,” says Basil. A pain jabs me in the chest when he says this, but then he adds, “Thalia and I should leave first. Then you. You’ll have a better chance of getting home that way.”

Yaz looks to me. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s right,” I tell her. “You’ve already risked enough.”

She looks uncertain.

“Besides,” I tell her. “We’re going to need someone to look out for us from the other side.”

She nods. “I’m your girl.”

“I know you are,” I tell her.

“But where are you going?” she asks.

“We have to get the Analogs organized then head to the prison where Ana is, I guess.” I look to Basil, but he doesn’t respond.

“I wish I could help you more,” says Fiyo.

“You’ve done so much already,” I burst out. “We have to repay you!”

Fiyo waves me away. “This one’s on the house. Anything to stick it to those corporate jerks.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much.

“What about you?” I ask Yaz. “How will you get back?”

“Don’t worry about her,” Fiyo says. “I’ll give her a couple of touch-ups to make her visit seem legit, then I’ll get her home safe,” he promises.

I throw my arms around Yaz. “I love you!” I say, squeezing her tight.

Yaz stiffens. “Wow, that’s a lot of interpersonal touching, Thal,” she says as she clutches me just as tight. “Be careful,” she whispers in my ear.

“You, too,” I say then I turn to Basil.

“Ready?” he asks.

I look into his artificially blue eyes, and although I have no idea where we’re going or what exactly we’re going to do, I nod. “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

Basil and I leave through the back door, the same way we came in. But I feel even less sure of myself when we step into the night, which seems darker and stiller since we got here. Basil stands in the empty lot, looking around, as if he has some kind of internal GPS connecting to the satellites circling overhead.

“Do you think we can get another transport if we head back toward the tollgates?” I point past the
DOMINO SUGAR
sign glowing faintly under the yellow moon.

Basil takes my hand and pulls me in the opposite direction. “We can’t take another transport,” he says quietly as we slip into the alleyway behind Fiyo’s place.

I follow closely. “Why not?”

“Eventually one of them will turn us in for the bounty,” he explains as he slows by an old garage to peer inside the dirty windows.

“How did you know that woman driver wouldn’t?”

“Just did,” he says without looking at me and moves on.

I slow down. Maybe it’s because he looks different, or because this place is so unfamiliar, but for a moment I feel cautious about following him. “There’s so much about you that I don’t know.”

Basil turns and walks back to me. When he reaches me, his eyebrows flex as he studies my face again. “It’s hard to get used to you like that.”

I touch my pink hair self-consciously. “You, too.” I look down at the crumbling asphalt beneath my feet. “Do you feel differently about me now?”

He thinks this over for a second. “When I first saw you, I did, but then I realized that it’s still you in there.”

I glance up. “You smell the same.”

He laughs. “I bet I stink by now.”

“I like it,” I tell him shyly, feeling the warmth of my emotion for him come back.

He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently squeezes. “The driver was someone I knew when I was a little kid.”

“Was she a friend of your family?”

He hesitates. “Sort of. More like a neighbor who looked out for me when my parents weren’t around.”

“Where were they?”

“Usually in some kind of trouble. For my mom, it’s drugs. And my dad’s been in and out of prison for years. As soon as he pays off one restitution, he does something stupid and goes right back in.” He looks up at the night sky. “I’d like to find him. Help him out if I could. He’s not a bad guy. Just frustrated. Like a lot of people.” He puts his hands inside the pockets of the borrowed jacket and kicks at loose rocks on the ground.

“Frustrated by what?” I ask, trying to understand this life he’s describing that’s nothing like my own.

“All our lives we’re told to be grateful to One World for their generosity and compassion. The high and mighty benevolent overlord keeping us all alive! But One World figured out a long time ago that you have to feed the masses so they can buy a lot of useless junk. The whole Universal Nutrition Protection Act is part of a profit model. We feed you, you buy more stuff. But the thing is, giving people just enough sustenance to keep them alive without letting them have real opportunities isn’t enough. There’s this myth that ingenuity and diligence are all you need to move up in the ranks, but it’s total crap. Unless you’re already in the ranks, you’re invisible to the machine. People like my mom lost hope a long time ago and started looking for ways to escape. And people like my dad end up being eaten alive by the system they’ve been told to be grateful for.”

“And people like you?” I ask.

“We get mad,” he says. “And we look for ways to circumvent the system.”

“What about people like me?”

Basil chuckles into the quiet night. “I don’t even know what to make of you, Apple. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. A privy, but it seems like you might get it.”

“Get what?” I ask.

“That what you have has been built on the backs of others.”

I feel fire rising in my cheeks as I admit, “I didn’t know that before I met you.”

“But you’re willing to listen. And you think about what you hear.”

“My mother would say I didn’t know how good I had it.”

“That’s just a different way of saying you didn’t know how bad it was for everybody else,” Basil tells me. Then he steps forward and wraps me in an embrace. I slide my arms around his waist and settle against his chest inside the warmth of his hug.

“I’m so glad I found you,” I whisper. All of my hesitation about going with him has vanished. “All my life everyone has claimed humans are more interconnected than ever, but I’ve always felt left out.” I squeeze him tighter. “Until now.”

“I feel the same way,” he says, and then for the second time beneath this same night sky, we kiss.

*   *   *

It takes almost an hour of creeping through the sparsely lit back alleys of this Outer Loop neighborhood and peering inside garages until Basil finds what he’s looking for in a rickety old shed behind a ramshackle house. When he finds it, he waves me inside and smiles broadly. “Jackpot!” he whispers, whisking away a black tarp.

“What is it?” I ask, staring at the strange two-wheeled vehicle in the dim light of the moon.

“A motorbike,” he explains as he roots around in the dark corners of the shed.

“From a bike-cart to this! We’re moving up in the world,” I say, which makes him snicker.

He brings over a metal container with a long spout and hands me a thin little wire to hold while he unscrews a cap on the back end of the bike.

“What’s that?”

“Biofuel.”

“And this?” I hold up the wire.

“A wire.”

“Thanks, genius.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

“I meant, what are we going to do with it?” I watch him for a few seconds, then it hits me. “Wait, are we stealing this?”

Basil looks up while the fuel glugs into the tank. “You’ve never stolen anything before, have you?”

I shift, uncomfortably. “Only from One World,” I say, which makes him laugh.

“Like what?” He screws the cap back on the tank and puts the canister where he found it.

“Stupid stuff. I hack into their system so they can’t track me or charge me when I play games or chat.”

He stops what he’s doing and stares at me for a moment. “You can do that?”

“When your dad is the one who designs Gizmos, you learn some things that might come in handy,” I tell him.

He shakes his head and I can see that he’s smiling. “That is so subversive.”

“Guess you’re not the only criminal, huh?”

“You’re only a criminal if you get caught.” He smirks and points to the bike. “Shall we?”

I hesitate. “I don’t know. Stealing from One World is one thing, but what if somebody comes out here tomorrow who needs to get to work?”

Basil sucks in his cheeks. “I don’t think this person is going to work, Thalia.”

“How do you know?”

He points to a table in the back of the shed, where I can just make out rows of glass bottles and beakers, burners and tubes.

“What is it?”

“Drug lab,” he says. “Just another local entrepreneur.”

I gasp. “How’d you know that?”

Basil raises an eyebrow at me.

“Oh right, your mom,” I say quietly, then I eye the bike. “What if we get caught?”

Basil steps away from the bike. “I guess we could walk all night.”

My knees go wobbly at the thought.

“Or…” He slings one leg over the seat.

While I’m hemming and hawing, a light flicks on in the house in front of the shed.

I scurry toward Basil. “What should we do?”

He reaches down into the bowels of the bike and yanks free some thin cables, then he breaks a flimsy casing that holds them together. “Give me that wire!” he says.

I fumble the little wire toward his hands, but when I hear voices, I flinch and drop it on the ground.

“Find it!” Basil whispers harshly. “Quick.”

I drop to my knees, whisking my shaking hands over the dirty floor. “Oh no, oh no,” I chant, straining my eyes to find that little sliver. A door creaks open somewhere.

“Hurry,” he hisses.

The wire pokes the side of my hand. I grab it and shove it toward Basil, who bends it into the shape of a U then shoves each end inside two tiny ports of the connector. “Get on!” he says, as he pushes a switch and the bike roars to life. I scramble to throw my leg over the seat and cling to him as we go screaming backward, spitting dirt and rocks from beneath the tires.

The back door of the house flies open. A tall woman runs down the steps, yelling and waving her arms.

Basil jams the bike forward and cuts the front wheel hard to the right, which sends me flying sideways. My butt careens off the seat as I claw at Basil’s jacket to regain my balance, my legs flying out to either side. He cuts hard the other way, which pops me upright again. Then we go forward, straight toward the woman who’s running at us full force, red in the face and screeching.