Launch - Chapter Two

The hyperloop ride back to The City had been fairly uneventful. A ride in the Outsider car was typically a silent affair. No one had any interest in attracting the attention of the Enforcers aboard the train. Most conversations were conducted at a near-whisper. Derek and Mai knew the score, and said very little to one another.

The train had made an abrupt stop halfway through the journey back, because an Unregistered had snuck into the Compliant car, and had been discovered during the scan at the city limits. He had passed fairly well, dressed and spoke like a Compliant, smiled and used all the right lingo, but his chip had not passed the scan.

Presumably his scrambler had malfunctioned, or perhaps he was clueless enough to think he could sneak into The City with an Unregistered chip. Mai had dozed off, but Derek watched the man scream and cry as the Enforcers led him away off the platform. He had reason to scream and cry. Best case scenario was mere expulsion from The City, left to fend for himself in the desert. Worst case scenario was much, much worse.

As Derek and Mai deboarded the train, the old familiar sense of dread came over Derek as they filed into line for the Travel Enforcer. They had done nothing wrong, nothing too wrong anyway, but you never knew with Enforcers. On any given day you could be the one upon whom they chose to bring down the hammer. Disappearance, expulsion, hard labor, or even vaporization, all were possibilities when dealing with Enforcers.

“Place your right arms directly in the scanner and do not speak,” said a masked man through the speaker when Derek and Mai reached the front of the line. They inserted their arms and the scanner clamped down hard, rendering both of them entirely immobile. Derek could tell Mai was a bit concerned, but of course her face showed nothing. Showing emotion was not something one did in front of Enforcers, not if you wanted to get home safely. The Travel Enforcer frowned as he read the results of the scan.

“I don’t have any arrival or departure scan for you two from the Coast Bloc,” the Travel Enforcer said robotically. “Where did you deboard?”

“Coast Bloc Station One, just as our itinerary stated,” Derek answered quickly. “Their scanner was malfunctioning. They notified Central and the response came back green, so they let us through.” It wasn’t true, but it was plausible.

“Why don’t you have a departure scan either, then?” The man was growing annoyed.

“Same problem on the way back too,” Derek said with as sincere a smile as he could produce. “We were only on the Coast for about an hour. Found what we needed and headed right back. Didn’t want to violate curfew.” Again, not true, but Derek wasn’t about to tell a Travel Enforcer that they had illegally disembarked at Mojave to watch the launch. The man stared at the two of them a moment longer, visibly irritated, but suddenly the scanners released their arms and the door in front of them turned green.

“Don’t let it happen again,” the Travel Enforcer said as threateningly as he could. Mai simply waved as Derek pulled her through the open door. Duper’s delight set in as they giddily ran down the corridor, following the smell of rain and fresh air. They had done it; they would live another day.

Through the station and back out into the streets of The City, a gentle drizzle fell upon Derek’s face. It was a good day to be alive. It was a good day because being alive was good enough. It felt good to be alive, when so many were dead.

Eluding death was the only victory most people ever knew, and even that was only temporary. The City had been built upon death, the exclusions, the incarcerations, the deportations, the sterilizations, it had all been in service of building this, The City, an immovable edifice that had immunized itself against death. The City could not be killed, because it constantly killed. To live meant never to question and always to submit. To live meant to live without a voice.

Derek sighed as his pace slowed, lost in thought as Mai sped off ahead of him. What sort of life was this, a mere survival, a life without possibility? What meaning could he derive from all this, a number among trillions, a determined future? What freedom could he attain in a world that was itself a prison? He looked around dreamily, watching his people, the people of the City, go about their lives, choosing each day to go on, to do it all again, to hope when hope was ludicrous.

Suddenly his field of vision was filled with a face, a face he knew well. Mai, her nose almost touching his, smile wide across her face, stared deeply into his eyes for a moment, in that inquisitive way she often did, and kissed him long and hard, as she always had. A smile came back to Derek’s face. He understood. They were still alive.