“A Harsh Reality”

Chapter 3 – Acceptance

Amber shielded her eyes against the fading glare of the setting sun and looked out onto the sprawling city from her vantage point top atop the Mall. She drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees with a small sigh, letting her tension go. The gentle breeze felt good against her cheek and the silence of the rooftop was soothing.

It was easier outside, where she could see the world spread out in front of her. Somehow it put things into perspective. The enormous blue expanse of sky like a blanket above her, the city, and the distant ocean made her feel tiny and insignificant. Oddly, that was a comfort. What was she compared to all the rest; what was the weight of her problems in the balance of things? She could pretend that everything might one day be alright. That when the sun set and the lights went out and the darkness fell like a stone inside the walls of the Mall, she wouldn’t be haunted by visions of a life that had never happened and memories that she couldn’t forget.

It was slowly getting easier.

At first, she’d withdrawn totally from the people and the world around her. She’d spent days in bed, refusing to talk to anyone or eat anything. Trudy, Salene, and the others had tried to get through the wall she’d put up, but Amber would simply turn her face away from them and refuse to respond. Trudy had asked her at one point if she had decided to die, and she honestly didn’t know the answer to that. It had started her thinking though, the first clear thoughts in days.

Jack had been the one to truly spark her return to life, completely by accident. He’d taken his turn at her bedside, but being Jack, didn’t exactly know what to say. He’d started by talking about what had been going on at the Mall in her absence, but had obviously been told to censor his information for fear something would shock her and make her condition worse. He’d started rambling about random things like computer circuitry after that, increasingly uncomfortable and desperate for a subject. It had actually made a small smile appear on her mouth, though he couldn’t see it.

The rambling eventually began to run down and Jack stopped altogether. He grew quiet and shyly said he was glad she was back, whatever had happened to her, and that he had missed her. If she’d had any tears left, she might have shed one then. Having risen to leave her room, his shift presumably up, he’d turned back for a moment and said, quite spontaneously, “I wonder why? I wonder why they let you go?” And then he was gone.

She’d tried to ignore it, as she had ignored everything else since they’d told her the truth. She curled up into the tightest ball possible and tried to lose herself in memories. But the question wouldn’t go away.

That was the important question, wasn’t it: Why? She’d been so devastated by the changes in her life, both before and after being taken, that she hadn’t even begun to process the details of it or the reasons behind it. And Jack’s question began that process. What had been done to her by the Technos? She had probably been taken randomly, like everyone else, for use in their experiments. But why had she been let go? Why had she been left in an alley? An alley, the more she recalled, that had been well-concealed and protected. There had been blankets underneath her as well. Someone seemed to have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure she would survive relatively unharmed until she woke up.

She had been let go. And there had to be a reason behind it, if only that she wasn’t meant to give up just yet. Maybe she had more things to do in her life than lay in a bed and let bitterness and despair overtake her. Whether they were real to others or not, Amber had loved a child. She’d loved her friends, Bray, and Jay. She’d fought for good reasons and to preserve worthy principles. Was all of that just lost? Hadn’t that meant something, regardless?

Even the thought of caring again was painful, but the alternative suddenly didn’t seem any more attractive. There were two options left to her. She could either give up completely, which she was now able to admit had never been her nature, or she could figure out a new place for herself in this reality and figure out exactly what the hell had happened to her and why. And maybe, make the events she remembered mean something.

That night, Trudy came in to check on her and Amber gave her a tentative smile, the first in days. She’d given a faltering apology for her reactions and withdrawal, but Trudy wouldn’t let her finish it. Everything was forgiven and they would start from there. Later though, she’d apologized to the others for resenting them unfairly. They’d broken the truth because they had to, and she had blamed them for it.

Then had come the slow recovery. She regained her strength with regular meals and short walks around the Mall, she ventured up to the roof for fresh air, and she got reacquainted with her tribemates. It amazed her how different everything was to what her memories had been but the adjustment process, though not painless, was easier than she expected. It helped that though many things had changed, the people were still her family. With some additions.

Lex and Zandra were still together and the proud parents of a two and a half year old daughter named Olivia, otherwise known as Livvie. She was a darling, precocious little girl with Lex’s black hair and her mother’s effervescent smile. The changes Livvie had wrought in Lex were obvious. He still seemed to hold himself back from the tribe in small ways, but he wasn’t the same out of control person she remembered. Lex was more settled, less easily riled by what went on around him, and completely devoted to his daughter and to his wife.

Salene and Ryan too had a child, a small boy named Ben who was a little over a year old. He was a quiet, sweet baby who already seemed to take so much after his father. Ryan doted on his child as much as Lex, and it was funny to see the old friends talking about childcare with their heads together looking as much as they ever had while plotting schemes.

It was difficult for Amber to be around Ben at first; his chubby little body and sweet smile reminded her so much of her own child, forever out of her reach. But it wasn’t fair to Ben or his parents to make that connection and she tried her best to put it past her and just to enjoy his endearing presence.

Trudy, and her daughter Brady, were as inseparable as Amber remembered. And as supportive. Trudy listened to her tell the story about Bray and their child, about Jay, and held her while she cried and said her goodbyes. In her memories, Trudy had loved both of them as well, but she didn’t remember any of it. The irony of it didn’t escape Amber’s notice, but Trudy just found the whole concept fascinating.

As did all of the Mallrats. Once Amber was able to talk about her version of events, they all wanted to hear about this alternate “history” from Amber’s point of view. She could understand their curiosity. They’d all had very different lives in her memories. Zandra was the only one who didn’t want to hear the stories, something else Amber could understand.

They were completely enthralled by the return of the virus, the Eco Tribe, the battles with the Chosen, defeating the Technos, and the virus mark 2 that had driven them from the city. It was like listening to the plotline of a movie from their perspective, with the Mallrats as the heroes. They had become the leaders of the city and had led the tribes through each challenge they faced. To hear it told was exciting and ego-boosting. The reality had been much different.

The Mallrats, like most of the tribes in the City, had simply kept to itself. They typically stayed inside the Mall, protecting each other and their home from the tribes, like the Demon Dogz and the Jackals, which preyed on the weak. They had only ventured outside the city to the farm, where they met Alice and Ellie, in order to secure a more reliable food source. They weren’t much like their adventurous counterparts in Amber’s memory.

To their knowledge, no one had ever tried to unite the tribes in the city. Some of them were known to form tenuous connections for protection or food, but it was rare and usually short-lived. Most fended for themselves. The weaker tribes were destroyed or absorbed by the stronger ones. Life was too harsh and tenuous and they were all too focused on their own survival.

And then the Technos had arrived. They came in force and seized complete control of the City in a matter of hours. No one tribe was strong enough to oppose them, and there was no possibility of the disparate tribes suddenly joining forces and organizing an effective defense against such an enemy. There was no way to be sure, but perhaps hundreds of children had been taken those first few days. The Technos had felt no need to give explanations but the rumors had described work camps that needed able bodies and experiments that needed subjects.

The Mallrats believed that KC, Patsy, and Tai-San had been taken. KC and Patsy had gone, against the urging of their tribemates, to see if they could find out more about the new arrivals to the city. They never returned. Tai-San was less certain. She regularly left and returned to the Mall whenever the mood struck her. She’d been gone when the Technos showed up and they hadn’t heard from her in over a year. Chances were good she’d been taken too.

And, of course, there was Alice and Amber, who had been visiting the farm. They had been visiting Dal.

This was the one revelation about the new reality that Amber was overjoyed to hear. Dal was alive and well. He’d left the Mall a couple of years ago and moved out to the farm. He’d taken over and allowed Alice to accompany Ellie to the City. His dream of a piece of land where he could make something grow had come true and she was truly happy for him. His death had been the hardest thing she had ever had to face before this and she’d never gotten over it. She could let that guilt go now.

There were some among the Mallrats that had their own kind of survivor’s guilt to deal with now.

Cloe’s last words with Patsy had been harsh ones. The two girls had been competing for KC’s attention in the last couple of months before the occupation. Patsy tended to be the more daring of the two and KC was attracted to that. They’d both wanted to get closer to the Technos and they ignored the danger involved. In her anger at them both, Cloe stayed behind in the Mall with the others and saved herself their fate. Now she had to live with the knowledge that her best friend was likely a prisoner and that she hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Patsy how sorry she was.

Ellie had no words to regret, but the guilt was still there. Alice was the only family she had left and the sisters had been extraordinarily close. It was very difficult for Ellie to know that Alice was in danger and there was nothing she could do about it. She’d spent weeks in the city trying to find information about where the missing had been taken but had been unable to find out anything. Her relationship with Jack had become increasingly strained as her obsession grew. He had tried to be supportive but Ellie couldn’t let it go. She accused Jack of not understanding what she was going through and began spending more and more time with a boy from the Orphans Tribe whose sister had also gone missing. Ellie still came back to the Mall, but she spent less and less time there.

The Technos’ hold on the city was total. From the beginning, there had been no one to oppose them and no one to set limits on them. Those who might have rebelled against a violent occupation were lulled by the benefits the Technos offered. They had restored power and water access as they promised. They had created CityNet and the games. They promoted themselves as benevolent overseers that wanted only the best for the population. Whether the tribes believed that or not was unclear. Certainly there were unmistakable signs that the benevolence only went so far.

A couple of months after their arrival, the Technos had required that everyone in the city be scanned for the games. Like all the tribes, the Mallrats had received a notice that they had to report for scanning at a nearby Techno Center. If they failed to report, the Technos would ensure their cooperation. The Mallrats complied; others did not and paid the price for it. One way or another, every kid in the city was scanned within six months.

By the time Amber woke in an alley with no idea of the past months’ events, the city was relatively quiet. The tribes watched and waited to see what the Technos would do, but there seemed to be a cautious optimism. Kids played the games and were entertained; they watched CityNet and the announcements of new Techno programs. Announcements like the recent one of a soon-to-be-introduced, next generation, virtual-reality simulation game, called Paradise. The new headsets would hit the streets soon.

The rumors suggesting that the Technos were conducting horrifying experiments and using forced labor seemed to be just that, rumors, and were ignored as such by almost everyone. Everyone except Amber and the Mallrats.

From the Mall roof, Amber watched the sun give a last flare and sink beneath the horizon, leaving behind streaks of pink and orange in the darkening sky. Behind her she heard the access door open and someone approaching.

“What a beautiful sunset. Is that why you come up here every night?” Trudy asked cheerfully.

Amber smiled and turned to watch Trudy lower herself to the ground and get comfortable next to her. “Not the only reason. But I do like to watch it.”

“I suppose you’re saying that you come up here to be alone and that I should take the hint,” she said with a grin. “Well I’m not going to. You’ve been brooding up here forever.”

Amber laughed and spoke in a mock-haughty voice with her nose in the air, “I do not brood, thank you.”

“Ha! Of course you brood. You’ve always been a brooder. It’s part of your charm. But, a person can brood too much, and you’ve reached that point. And so, to take your mind off it, we’ve got a distraction for you!” She bumped her shoulder against Amber’s and watched her expectantly.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the distraction?”

“Dal!” She watched Amber’s reaction with a smile, pleased to see a bit of happiness in her eyes. “Jack went to the farm to get him. We figured it might be good for you to see him again,” she said gently.

“He’s here, really?” Her smile was, for once, unfettered and free. She got to her feet and pulled Trudy up after her, giving her a quick hug. “Thank you.”

The roof’s access panel opened again and there stood Dal, a radiant smile on his face as he saw his oldest friend again. He crossed the distance between them quickly and embraced Amber in a hard hug. She returned it with enthusiasm and neither of them noticed Trudy quietly slip away to leave them their reunion in privacy.

Amber pulled back and got a good look at him, amazed to see that the boy she remembered was now taller than her and had become lean and strong since she last saw him. He would never be as tall as Jack or as broad-chested as Bray, but he looked like a young man. He would be about 16 now, she realized, and she had a fleeting, unwanted thought that she didn’t really know him anymore.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” Amber said seriously, squeezing his shoulders.

Dal grinned at her and gave her a return squeeze. He too noticed the changes that had occurred in her since they last saw each other. He noticed the faint shadows beneath her eyes and the thinness of her body, but he didn’t mention either of those things. “Oh, I don’t know. I bet I have some idea.”

“You look good, Dal, really good. You look happy.” She liked what she saw in him. He seemed more sure of himself and comfortable in his own skin. He had always been older than his years, but the disparity between his inner maturity and his outward appearance seemed to have lessened somewhat. “Being a farmer seems to agree with you,” she teased.

“Oh, it does. You have no idea.” His smile faded as he realized what he’d said and an apology glinted in his eyes. She shook her head, stopping him before he could utter it.

“No, don’t. It’s alright.” She pulled him over to sit on a short, raised ledge nearby and took his hands comfortably in her own. “Tell me about the farm. Tell me everything.”

His eyes, she noticed, lit up when he talked about it, and his love for the land shone through in every word. “It’s hard work; more than I ever expected, even though Alice warned me. But it’s good work, worthwhile, you know?” He spoke so earnestly about the role the farm played in supplying food for some of the tribes and groups outside the City. He had always been so earnest; probably what made him seem older than his years. He laughed self-consciously. “I’m sorry. I could go on about this for days.”

“And I could listen for days. I’m glad to know that you’re content, Dal. You spoke about doing something like this a long time ago, but you stayed in the City instead. I’m happy you finally found what you were searching for.” She gazed out over the rooftops of the surrounding buildings and imagined the chaos the Technos might be causing right now. Dal was well away from it, hopefully. “And that you’re safe on the farm and out of the City.” She turned back to search his features. “You are safe aren’t you? Have the Technos been out to the farm?”

“Yeah, they have.” His shoulders tensed slightly and he too looked out on the City. “They showed up about a month after they first appeared in the City. They were just fact-finding they said. Looking to see what was in the surrounding areas. They came back about six months ago and wanted to set up a contract with us to provide food for the City.”

“What did you say?”

“I agreed; what else could I say?” His frustration and anger were evident in that statement, and the ones that followed. “They were very polite and respectful, but underneath their words was a threat. I’d have to be stupid not to recognize that. And it was backed up by the goons prowling around the farm with zappers strapped to their wrists.”

“They haven’t actually done anything to you though, have they?” she asked anxiously.

“Not yet. But it’s coming, Amber, I can feel it. They’re getting more demanding about how much we send to them and how much we give to others. The food isn’t going to the City; we all know that. Eventually they’re going to stop demanding and just try to take it. And…I don’t know what I’ll do then.”

“When they get to that point, they won’t accept any resistance. If you try, they’ll simply take you along with the food. You’ll be a slave, or worse.” The words dropped like stones from her lips.

“But if I don’t resist it, the food supply to the City will be completely under their control!” His grip on her hands tightened, but she barely noticed. Her emotions were churning and she had a sick, heavy feeling in her stomach. “There are other people growing things out there, but the Technos know who they are. I won’t be the only one they target. And if they have control over all the food…” his voice trailed off.

“But you can’t help anyone if you’re dead!” she cried. She drew a deep breath and looked down at their joined hands, trying to slow the pounding of her heart. She didn’t know if she could get perspective on this subject. She was afraid for Dal, for all of her friends. And she was afraid for herself if she was being honest. She hated to admit it because it made her feel like a coward, but it was fear that burned in her stomach. Fear of what the Technos would do to them all. “I’m worried for you, Dal.”

“I know you are,” he sighed. “It’s not me I’m worried about though. I’m not alone on the farm. The Farm Girls stayed to help me when Alice left. And…there’s someone I care about there too. She came to the farm after you…disappeared.” He blushed slightly. “Her name is Belle, Isabelle actually. I…I love her, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same.” He looked at Amber shyly and the anxiety disappeared for a moment as he smiled. But it was quick to return. “I want to protect her, Amber; I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. But I also can’t imagine just handing everything over to the Technos without a fight.”

Lights suddenly came on, illuminating the darkening rooftop and Dal’s fearful face. Someone, Trudy probably, must have hit the switch inside the Mall. One of the Technos promised benefits: electricity. What kind of price would they have to pay for it, she wondered.

Amber got to her feet and walked a few steps away, sighing. She wrapped her arms around herself, for warmth against the coming chill of night, and for comfort.

“How much did Jack tell you? About what happened to me.” Jack wouldn’t have been able to keep her story to himself for very long and would have shared some of it with Dal, if not all of it. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to know what had happened to him in the world she remembered. His death had been horrible. She could still close her eyes and remember the vivid splash of red that had seemed so stark against his pale lips. She had to remind herself that it hadn’t been real.

“He…told me most of it.” Dal stayed where he was and watched her restless pacing with a compassionate expression on his face.

That meant Jack had told him everything. She turned to look out over the city, watching as lights slowly began to come on in buildings here and there. She wondered if they would ever be completely comfortable with electricity again. Most of them seemed to either leave the lights on all the time or avoid using them at all. It was hard to count on it being there when you had been so long without it.

Dal spoke tentatively from behind her and interrupted her reverie. “Amber, we didn’t know for sure what had happened to you.” She didn’t respond or turn around and he continued. “I wanted to look for you, I really did, but we didn’t even know where to start.” She turned back to see him looking at her pleadingly, guilt on his face.

“Dal, I absolutely don’t blame you, or any of the tribe, for what happened. The City was in chaos after they arrived and so many people were disappearing. You had enough to worry about with protecting the farm and the people there.” She smiled reassuringly at him.

“Do you…want to talk about it?” he asked. “You don’t have to, but if you wanted to, I’d listen.” He gazed back at her intently, like he was trying to see inside her. Dal had always been the most perceptive person in the tribe. He had an uncanny ability to see through the facades that most people wore to protect themselves. With anyone else she would have tried to hide, but Dal was different.

She stared back at him, but didn’t really see him. In his place she could see the Dal she remembered. The one who had come to the Eco Camp and found an old friend he’d believed to be dead. The one who had bravely fought the Chosen for the sake of his tribe and had died for it. She heard the last conversation they’d had about little acorns and oak trees. Her eyes refocused and she saw him again, the real Dal. But it was hard to separate the two in her mind.

“It’s…hard, Dal. Nothing is as I remember it. The Technos really messed with my mind.” She laughed shakily. “I remember an entirely different version of events. It’s like waking from a particularly vivid dream, and that moment when your mind is still in the dream and hasn’t yet realized that’s what it was. Only I feel like that every minute of every day. I remember people that no one else does. People that meant a lot to me.”

She sat down next to him again, not touching him, not wanting to be touched. “I had a baby, Dal.” Tears came to her eyes as she met Dal’s gaze. “And now I’m the only one who remembers him. We spent so much time fighting. Fighting to survive against enemies that have never really existed except in my mind.”

She looked down at her hands clenched in her lap and shuddered with the breath she drew in. “I just feel so lost.”

He started to speak, then cleared his throat. “Do you- Do you remember anything from before the Technos took you?”

She didn’t respond for awhile and he wondered if she was going to at all. Her eyes strayed to the view of the city again. At night the City seemed strangely peaceful. It was during the day that the truth of the Techno presence became apparent.

“No, I don’t. I don’t remember anything from the last four years. They completely erased the truth, Dal. And then they replaced it with false memories. But you guys were all there. You weren’t the same exactly, but you were there. I know everyone in the City was scanned so that could explain some of it. But you weren’t scanned. And there were other people there, people only I seem to know.”

“And I don’t know why. That’s the worst part you know,” she said, turning to look at him fully. “I don’t know why they did this to me. They could have taken me somewhere and put me to work as a slave, and I could have understood that. But why this? Why give me memories of things that never happened. Why give me memories of defeating them? It doesn’t make any sense.”

He shrugged helplessly, wanting to offer something that would comfort her and answer her questions, but unable to. “I don’t know, Amber. I really wish I did.”

She sighed again. “I do too, Dal. But I do know this: whatever the Technos are up to, this is just beginning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Behind everything they’ve said, everything they’ve done out in the open, there’ve been things like what happened to me going on behind the scenes. And I don’t think I was an isolated case. If they can erase years of memories, what else can they do? What else have they already done?”

She got to her feet again and walked toward the roof’s edge. The wind was picking up, stronger up here. It was cold and harsh against her skin and she wrapped her arms around her body again in a futile attempt for warmth.

“Something big is coming, Dal. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. And I’m very much afraid that if we don’t find out what it is and stop it, it’ll be the end of all of us.”

“Amber, I know you’re worried, we all are. But you don’t think that maybe some of that feeling is from the memories they gave you?” He said it as gently as possible, but it was still hard to hear. He rose from the wall and joined her, taking her arm and turning her to face him. “They did terrible things to you, and you have a right to be upset about it. And I’ll be the last one to argue that the Technos have everyone’s best interests at heart, but we shouldn’t panic either.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “You don’t understand. How can you? But I’m telling you, there’s more going on than anyone knows, and we’re all in danger. Go back to the farm, Dal. Protect it and Belle. And promise me that you’ll make preparations, just…in case. Promise me, okay?”

“But I wasn’t going to go back so soon! I wanted to spend more time with you.”

She smiled at last, determinedly. “Thank you, Dal. I appreciate it, really. But you need to get out of the City. I want you safe more than I want you here. You should leave in the morning.”

He opened his mouth to protest more, but paused, searching helplessly for what to say next. Amber beat him to it.

“Belle needs you to keep her safe.”

He closed his mouth, bowing his head. “Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll go back to the farm. But, what will you do now?”

She hugged him hard, startling him. When she pulled back, she smiled again, sadly this time. She looked lonelier than he’d ever seen her, and he wanted more than anything at that moment to be able to say something that would ease her mind. But he knew there was nothing he could say.

“I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’ll figure something out.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “I always do, Dal. I always do.”