Hungry (33 page)

He pokes me in the armpit, which makes me squirm and squeal. Soon we’re wrestling, poking and jabbing one another, rolling across the soft ground, laughing until our noses are inches apart, and we’re kissing under the warm morning sun. I love breathing him in. Feeling his skin next to mine. Tasting him.

“You are better than berries,” I whisper.

When we come up for air a few minutes later, my lips sting and my whole body is warm. I roll away from him, unnerved by the yearning deep inside of me. Not just for berries but for him. I take a few shaky breaths.

“Do you think this is…” I trail off, searching for the word. “Normal? What we’re doing?” I wag my finger from him to me. “I mean, we’re not even in the Procreation Pool. Our hormones shouldn’t be surging.” My cheeks grow warm just talking about this stuff.

Basil props himself on one elbow and rests his hand where my shirt has come up over my hip. “Do you care? I mean would that stop you?”

I tug my shirt down. “My mom and Dr. Demeter would say that our brain chemistry isn’t optimized. Or that we have some kind of mutation in our genes that makes us act this way.”

“Guess that makes us mutants then,” he says with a grin.

I look at his perfect face and can’t help but smile, too. “Fish with feet, like Ana said.”

He chuckles. “So we’re the lucky ones?”

I shake my head and look around. “You call this lucky?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “If it means we can go back to the way nature intended us to be.” He puts his hand on my belly. “Like this.” He leans down to kiss me again.

“It’s a nice idea.…” I say and squirm away. “But do you think it’s really possible?”

“Why not?” He sits up and motions to the greenery. “Look at all this!”

“It’s just kudzu and berries. How much of this would you have to eat to equal one bottle of Synthamil?”

“Apple…” Basil looks at me intently. “If the soil can grow this”—he grabs a handful of vines—“then it’s good enough to farm. If you clear away all the kudzu, which by the way we can eat and make fuel from and even smoke, then you could grow more crops, different crops.”

“If you had seeds,” I point out, but he ignores me.

“Plus, bees and butterflies have to pollinate this stuff, which means there have to be animals out here somewhere. Maybe even birds and small mammals. Ana always said, ‘Life is powerful,’” Basil tells me. “This is proof that the earth is rejuvenating.”

I gaze all around us, amazed and terrified. “Birds and bees are fine,” I say. “But what else could be lurking out here? Or who? Aren’t you even a little bit worried?”

“It’s probably safer than where we came from.” He falls back into the leafy bed, beaming up at the sky as if in ecstasy. “Do you know what this could mean, Apple?” he asks but doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Never having to fight. To scrounge. Never having to ask for help. Not relying on anyone else. If I could find a way to make it work out here … if I could never go back…”

“Really?” I ask, my heart pounding in my ears. “You would never go back. Ever? But what about…”

He turns and looks at me sharply. “What do I have to go back to?”

I swallow hard. My mind is filled with images of my family. Grandma Apple standing in our doorway, her sweater held close. My father’s face smiling at me from a screen. Papa Peter imploring me to come home. Even my mom and Grandma Grace searching my face with worried eyes. I can’t tell Basil this. To him, my family is the enemy, so instead I say, “But the other Analogs. Don’t you want them to know where you are? Wouldn’t it be better if we were all together?”

Basil sighs. “I don’t know anymore, Apple. I truly don’t know.”

I decide to change tactics. “Think about Ana then. What would she want you to do?”

“She always said it wasn’t time yet.” He considers this for a few seconds. “I don’t know what she was waiting for.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to lead people into uncertainty but now you know,” I say, getting to my knees. “We have to tell people about this. And not just the Analogs. Dynasaurs and people like Yaz and even my family because if they knew…”

He scoffs. “I guarantee your parents already know about this.”

“They couldn’t possibly know,” I argue. “If they did…”

“Oh, they know, believe me.” Basil sits up and angrily plucks leaves from the vines around us. “They just don’t want anyone else to know. If everyone can go out and get their own food, it ruins One World’s little business model to control the universe.”

“Could you exaggerate any more?” I snap at him.

“I’m not exaggerating.”

I shake my head. “Maybe someone at One World knows, like Ahimsa, but not my parents. No matter what you think of them, they’re scientists first and foremost. And scientists believe in the truth. If my mom knew about this…” I hold up a berry like exhibit A in my argument for why my mother can’t possibly know. “Things would be different.”

“She’s an employee of One World, first. A scientist, second. And the truth is relative. At least as far as One World is concerned. So don’t delude yourself.”

“I’m not deluding myself!” I argue. “I’m saying we have to go back and tell people about this because it changes everything.”

Basil draws in a deep breath. “I don’t know that it changes anything, Apple.” He looks down between his knees. “And truthfully, I’m tired. Tired of living like a shadow for most of my life. And now, after all that’s happened to you and me … I just don’t know if I can fight a battle I’m not sure we can win anymore. As much as I admired Ana and as much as I’ve always wanted to avenge Arol’s death, I don’t want to end up in jail, or worse, die trying. Especially when I know this is here. We made it.” He jabs his finger in the ground. “We got out and we found food. We could just … stay.”

“Stay?” I say. “Here? In some creepy park eating berries while One World is back there making life miserable for everyone but the privies!”

Basil snorts. “Oh, so now all of the sudden you’re a champion for the common people?”

“I meant what I said at the geophag camp. We are all in prison as long as One World has control.”

Basil hops to his feet and marches angrily through the greenery. “You know, this is typical of someone like you!”

I scramble up behind him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He spins around and shouts in my face, “You finally figure out that the world isn’t this perfect little place with perfect little hologram flowers covering up the hard dry dirt beneath your feet and perfect smell-o-blasters masking the stench of rot and perfect Whisson Windmills sucking water out of thin air attached to every roof. No actually, it’s a horrible, unfair place, where mothers would rather buy drugs than Synthamil for their kids and fathers go to jail because they can’t stop raging over the hand they’ve been dealt. And, oh by the way, news flash! One World is a big fat megacorporate oppressor!”

“But…”

“So now you’re freaking out and sure that you’re the only one who can save the rest of us! Just because you finally figured it out, Apple, doesn’t mean we have to go back and get our asses kicked. We got out. We don’t have to save the world.”

“But I thought that’s what you wanted to do,” I argue. “I thought righting the wrongs and saving the world was our plan.”

“No, that was never
my
plan,” he says. “
This
has been my plan all along. To walk away. And when I found you, I thought I had finally found someone to go with me.”

I’m stunned. “Go where?”

“I don’t know. Where the others have gone.”

“What others?”

“Other people have walked away,” he tells me.

“But what if they didn’t make it? What if no one’s out here?”

“We won’t know unless we look for them. And the only thing I know for certain is that they are not in the Outer Loop or the Inner Loop or anywhere I’ve ever been before. If they made it, they’re out here and I intend to find them.”

“But Basil,” I say, imploring him. “We know something now that others don’t. Before we can truly walk away, we have to tell everyone back there about this so they have the option of leaving, too. That’s the only way One World will be forced to change.”

He puts his hands on his hips and hangs his head. “No,” he says simply.

“But we have an obligation to use our knowledge to better the world!”

He looks up. “Do you even hear yourself?” he asks me. When I stare at him blankly he shouts, “You sound just like your mother!”

I’m so angry that I can’t see. I can’t hear. I feel like a train is driving through my skull. Without even thinking, I run toward him with my arms outstretched until I smack into his chest, pushing him backward while I scream, “Don’t you dare say that about me!”

*   *   *

I storm away, limping and livid that he, of all people, would compare me to my mother. And that he, of all people, would fault me for trying to make the world a better place. So what if I’m a privy? I can’t help where I was born! I can’t help that I just found out the world sucks. And then to blame me for wanting to help? I don’t know why I ever wanted to be with him. He’s a hypocrite and a liar and an idiot. And my ankle hurts again.

I hobble along for several minutes, hopping and cursing each time something sharp pokes the soft soles of my feet. I come to what looks like the edge of the park. The exit is two more arches under a huge sign. I yank the vines away to reveal the words
YOUR FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS: WHICH WILL YOU CHOOSE
? I clear the foliage. The arch on the left says,
HEAVEN
. The one on the right says,
HELL
.

“Oh for god’s sake,” I huff. People have made up stories for thousands of years to explain what they couldn’t understand. They’d say disease was caused by evil spells before they understood genetics. Or superstorms were the work of nasty genies. Or that a woman named Eve ate forbidden fruit and learned the truth about how hard life could be. But now that everything I’ve ever thought was true has been turned upside down, I understand why people grasp for answers. I only wish it was as easy as choosing path A or path B.

I choose neither. Instead, I find a different path that leads deeper into the kudzu jungle. It’s calm and quiet out here and the ground is softer and smoother so it’s easier to walk. Soon my head stops spinning. I feel myself relax a bit under the thick canopy of vines that let in only a smattering of sunshine here and there. My stomach unclenches as the pleasant smell of the leaves warming in the sun permeates the moist air. I take a few deep breaths and try to understand what just happened. One minute I was rolling around on the ground wanting to devour Basil. The next I was so mad at him that I couldn’t see straight. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe my mom is right. Maybe we should control human hormones if this is how they make us feel.

I slow down and look around. At first, everything seems the same, but as I look more closely along the path, I begin to make out colors, shapes, and textures that I haven’t noticed yet. Tall brown trunks—that were probably once trees—with soft green fur and brown stair-step disks growing around their bases. Another cluster of raspberries sparkles in the sun. I reach down and pluck a pink-and-white flower growing up from the earth. A real flower. Not a hologram or a synth plant. It is the most beautiful, amazing thing I’ve ever seen. So delicate and intricate. I want to tell others about this so they can decide for themselves whether to stay in the Loops or walk away. But, the thing that Basil doesn’t understand is that we don’t have to go back to spread the word. I reach inside my pouch and pull out my Gizmo, hoping that it still works.

Slowly, the screen comes to life with the animated One World globe spinning while the system searches for a signal. I can hardly believe it works, but I shouldn’t be so skeptical. My father designed it after all. Astrid, still on mute, goes berserk, pinging me with dozens of messages, all of which I ignore because standing here, holding my father’s invention in my hands, makes me miss him terribly. I have the urge to call him and let him know that I’m okay. But, first things first.

I log on to the Dynasaur chat, open a video feed, and film my surroundings. “This is HectorProtector. Since One World security forces attacked the Outer Loop Synthamil distribution point last night, I’ve made it to the Hinterlands. As you can see, the world is lush with kudzu out here.” I pan the sea of green. Then I reach into the leaves and pick a few berries. I hold them close to the camera. “Ana Gignot thought arable land beyond the Loops was a possibility. I’m here to tell you that it’s a reality.”

Once my video has posted, I peruse the chats for AnonyGal. My heart leaps when I see a post from her, but it’s just two short lines.

Watch your step out there, Dynasaurs! Moles are everywhere and their holes are deep.

I puzzle over this. Why would she be warning people about the obvious? We all know One World trolls the chats—that’s why we protect our identities. Except mine was leaked. Maybe hers was, too. One last time, I reach out to her through a direct private message:

Thnk U 4 the code. R U OK? I’m worried. Pls b n touch.

I wait for a few seconds, but nothing comes back and I worry that she’s been arrested. Just as I’m about to log off, something entirely unexpected pops up—a vid of Yaz wearing a fuzzy purple jumpsuit standing in front of the green flashing 42. I sit, befuddled, wondering what’s gotten into her and why she’d be doing her PRC through the Dynasaur network! I click the feed and watch.

If you’ve logged onto my PRC before, you know that my name is Yaz, but this broadcast will be different than all the others. Thalia Apple, who some of you may know as HectorProtector, is my best friend. I was arrested for helping her escape One World security guards then they released a video of me slandering her, but that was a farce. One World has twisted the truth of Thalia’s story into an indictment against her. But I am here to tell you, she is fighting the good fight for a more just world. Thalia Apple, aka HectorProtector, is on your side. Dynasaurs, Analogs, and Privies unite. Join us and tune in to my PRC for updates on the battle.