PROLOGUE
The ubiquitous audio cuts out, and everyone stops their casual morning stroll to their jobs. The auto-taxis slow. People instinctively look up from tree-lined reclaimed city avenues at the screens nearest to them – phone, taxi, desktop or the side of the building next door. A deep, elderly female voice begins to sound over the speakers in everyone’s ears, repeating the daily announcement:
“Good morning, Meld citizens. I would like to tell you a story. Not long ago, we walked the edge of a precipice. We could have chosen to continue walking the road toward our deaths, or we could have jumped down, as a collective civilization, toward something new. Before the Meld, we continued to choose the more predictable path.
The scientists told us since the turn of the millennium that if we didn’t curb emissions, the climate would soon reach a point of no return. We listened, eventually. We reduced emissions, but it was too little and too late. We were at the end of the road, gazing into the death spiral for human civilization.
We had years, not decades, of the status quo before the climate got out of our control for good. It was not a time for incrementalism. We had to be bold enough to transform our very way of living.
We were the ones we had been waiting for. We had to be brave, for this required the end of everything we once knew.
We applied band-aids while we were bleeding out, walking toward the end of the road. Pollution controls, smart grids and technologies to improve efficiency were a start, but they were not enough. There were only so many hospitals and psych wards we could build; we had to address the root of the problem: our pain. We skirted the edge of the precipice, walking as close as we dared, terrified of jumping off into something completely new. We doctors, we lawmakers, were terrified of the inevitable revolution even as we yearned for it in our secret hearts of hearts.
I don’t need to mention the weather, and I don’t need to mention the droughts and floods. I don’t need to mention the food shortages, and I don’t need to mention the cost of living.
Long ago, we were children. We believed in work hard, play hard. We believed that we must love courageously and follow our hearts. Live to the fullest and take big risks. Never regret anything that we’d remember fondly on our deathbeds. In the wake of the financial crisis that made our generation, we shouted YOLO to the stars, fought the law and made love laughing. We were so young, so strong, and life was too short for anything but truth and joy.
We are older now, and this is no longer just a metaphor. Without a drastic and immediate movement toward truth, our life as a species will be too short, if not for us then surely for our children’s children. We have found the courage to force the necessary change.
We can’t change our habits without changing our minds. We can’t change our minds without changing America, our collective mind, and those of the nations around the world. Future generations will thank us for the work we are doing today.
The Meld-doctored air we breathe only helps us to see what we already know to be true. Our generation is no stranger to altered states of consciousness. Allow the pink mist to ease your mind of its self-imposed duties, and consider what would make you happy. Consider what would make you content.
There is a plan for the new organization of society in place, and I welcome everyone to look at the details, which we have made publicly available. The institutions of paper currency and private property have been phased out. Public Meld dispensers, placed in hundreds of cities, have begun operation. Jobs will be provided for all, and free food, water, shelter, energy, connectivity and entertainment will be given to all who work. This is only one piece of the puzzle that has been in play for decades and will extend for centuries while the global biosphere is restored.
Aren’t you tired of the manufactured responsibility? Don’t you want to find a beach somewhere, lie back and stare at the sky? There is nothing more that needs to be done. Rekindle childlike wonder. If we all live lives that make us happy, the Meld’s automated networks will support our joy and heal the world. It’s what we believed should have happened long ago. It’s what we told our children to do when our own lives became complicated by compromise. Now is the time to make good on that promise to ourselves. Life is too short to struggle within a system that no longer works. Bring on the new.
We only live once, my loves. Citizens across this great land, let us walk together on this journey. The future is now: a merge, a combine, a blend of so many invisible, everyday heroes who yearn for peace and humanity’s survival. Standing together, we know the future holds us, and we are blessed. Welcome to the Meld.”
Chapter 1
IONA
April 27
“The mission’s a wash!” Katrine shouted over the roaring whir of the Osprey drone landing outside. “We need more firepower, or we need to get out!”
“You think?” I shouted back. We huddled behind a heavy steel warehouse door. I struggled to keep my thoughts angry amidst the thickness of the Meld gas. I thought of my ex-husband, who abandoned me for its drugged bliss so long ago.
The thought was wrong to entertain, and I felt my focus slipping. I lowered my Beretta, thinking of the good times we had shared so many years ago. Cheap meals and dreams of our art gallery, before the Collapse, before the Meld. He’s still alive out there, I told myself. We could, we might –
Katrine slapped my face. A sharp ring tore blood from my cheek. Stars sprouted in my vision. Katrine shook my shoulders, panic at the edge of her eyes.
“Snap out of it, Iona!” she said. “We need to get the hell out!”
“Yeah,” I muttered. There was a bang on the door. We pressed our bodies back against it. I dug a finger into the cut on my cheek and winced at the burst of pain. It was good. Pain would keep my thoughts insulated against the comforting mist of the Meld.
My mind ran through the building’s floor plan as I remembered it from years ago. Bullets rattled the steel walls, and a heavy force slammed against the door, rattling our bones. The locks wouldn’t hold for long.
“Iona…” Katrine’s voice tinged at the edge of losing it. “We have to do something. Recon didn’t predict this patrol…Iona…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I swore. I loved her like a sister, and she was tough as nails when it came to guarding her mind from the drug, but Katrine was as high-strung as they came. We needed to move now or she would fall apart completely. “Count of three,” I said, shaking off the Meld, “we run for the stairs. There’s a door around the corner from the top of the stairs. It leads outside. We’ll have to jump.”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Ready? One, two…three!”
I hoped my memory was right. We tore across the open cement floor littered with piles of industrial detritus. A mechanical arm here, a toppled conveyor belt there, hundreds of empty oilcans tumbled in a corner. Grease stains and grime caked our footsteps. Early morning sunlight slashed through cracks in boarded up windows about eight feet up, illuminating the dusty, pinkish air.
Years ago, this had been our eastern staging ground, before the latest Meld expansion. I glanced as I ran, looking for signs that Rand had been here. Our Garden Resistance comrade had disappeared a few days ago, and we had been conducting missions deep in Meld territory to find him.
When we rounded the corner to the stairs, my heart sank. Dozens of plastic chairs blocked the stairwell, and we couldn’t get up. Someone else had tried to make a stand. Maybe it was Rand? I heard a bang, and the warehouse door swung open. A couple of the Meld’s signature bulldog-esque light assault robots had nosed their way into the room, sniffing around with quivering, whirring machine sensors. Their chassis were hunched, welded plates of steel balanced on four pneumatic piston legs.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Katrine whispered. “Do something, oh shit.” The bulldogs could outrun a cheetah across rocky terrain, but what they had in speed they lacked in mobility.
The thought struck me again, that life could be easy. They didn’t want to kill us. Any bullets they fired were just to make us feel scared and vulnerable so we would surrender. If we let it, the Meld could make us believe that every one of our hopes and dreams had already come true. And what were we, if not our beliefs? No one would fault me for a moment’s hesitation right now. It was only human. Cornered, it could happen to anyone.
No. As soon as the thought struck me, it vanished. They may not have wanted me dead, but they wanted me in a cage, lost in a permanent fog, lost to my free will, and that was unacceptable, as long as I lived. My gaze was steel.
“Katrine,” I asked. “You trust me?”
“Uh huh.”
“And are you ready to run?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“Right,” I said. “Only way out is through that door. Gonna have to slide past them. Ready?”
“You crazy,” she muttered, but she squeezed my hand and nodded.
These two dogs and the Osprey drone comprised a standard patrol this far from the Meld-controlled downtown. If we could get past them, we’d make it back to our neighborhood in no time. The question was, why were they patrolling this far north? Did it have anything to do with Rand’s disappearance? Or was something else at play?
No time to ponder. The dogs had gotten a lock on us and were pivoting, ready to circle and charge. I backed us up against a pile of ancient hard drives, flat-screen monitors and computer towers.
“Just follow my lead,” I said.
Their piston-legs pounded the cement floor as they rushed us. I shouted a tuneless battle cry and rushed them at the same time, aiming our trajectory just to the side of their bulky bodies bristling with weapons. We slipped by and heard a loud crash, but we didn’t look back.
Within seconds, we were at the door. I pushed through and hustled into a dead sprint. I dragged Katrine, who was shorter and in worse shape than me, down narrow side streets and winding alleyways designed for a time before motorized vehicles. As a civilization we had come full circle, and now the humans – the free humans that remained outside the Meld after the Collapse – used the pre-industrial city planning to our advantage.
After a frantic half-hour of zigging and zagging, we lost the Meld patrol. The drone didn’t follow. The air grew clearer as we traveled north from the warehouse, and the Meld’s cloying sweetness was replaced by the familiar scent of mold, rust and compost, our urban decay.
“Holy shit,” Katrine breathed. She sank down onto the stoop of an abandoned home to catch her breath. We looked out over Reese Garden for several minutes, not speaking.
The garden, our baby, was one of several neighborhood plots we tended as the Gardeners’ Resistance Coalition. Built out of a former public park, it was a lush landscape of mature fruit and nut trees, berry patches, trellised plants, vines and perennial greens. It was wild, with patches of waist-high weeds sprouting out of every corner and into the paths, like an urban jungle, a neighborhood food forest. The garden was mostly self-sustaining, but it was large enough that there was always work to do, particularly with the weeds and in the annual beds. We rotated annual beds of brassicas, nightshades, squash and root vegetables by the season. It was only mid-Spring by the calendar, but the collard leaves were already as wide as my hand. Climate change.
A field of tall sunflower-like stalks formed an impenetrable thicket in one corner of the lot. When autumn came, they’d die off and we’d all dig underground for Jerusalem artichokes. They would feed the block for months. Chickens clucked and trotted about in a fenced off area. Bees buzzed happily, their rooftop hives far out of the range of vermin or gang members looking to let off steam.
The garden was the heart of our community. We could not lose it to the Meld’s shiny mediocrity.
“I need a drink,” I said. I looked across the garden toward Rosie’s, the neighborhood bar.
“Agreed. And we need to figure out what to do about this uptick in Meld patrols. If they’re trying to expand into this ‘hood, we need to mobilize. We need to fight.”
Chapter 2
IONA
April 27
The chalk board in front of Rosie’s read: “First pitcher, 1 hour-$. Pay in advance.” But the bar got its food from the gardens I tended, so they let me drink for free. Rainwater collection barrels surrounded the bar, with salvaged PVC, metal and ceramic gutters in every shape, size and color extending from the surrounding buildings. We sauntered in through the steel doors and sat down.
To the waitress, I said, “Pitcher of beer, please.”
“You’re here early,” the waitress said. “What’s up?”
“Oh, you know. Business.”
“Be careful out there. Lot of hard-up people coming in today.” She thumped a clay-fired pitcher on our table.
“Thanks, Maya.” I handed her an hour-bill and she marked the transaction in the store’s ledger. Currency was based on the hours system, as in one hour-dollar for one hour’s worth of work. Some products and services were in higher demand, so it wasn’t exact, but it was a good rule of thumb by which business owners could price their wares. Bills were basically IOUs, and master transaction records were updated weekly and checked by the major power players – the gangs, the church groups, the gardeners – for discrepancies. Those found to be misrepresenting their finances tended to find themselves several fingers or toes short sooner or later. I could have drunk free because the bar got its food from my garden, but I tried to give back to my community where I could. The tip meant that Maya would take care of us as long as we needed and let us know if anyone seemed sketchy or shady.
Well, sketchier or shadier than the usual crowd who came around here, anyway. The official name of the bar was The Rosebud, but everybody in the neighborhood just called it Rosie’s. Posters of classic American films from the 20th century covered the walls. There was Casablanca, The Godfather, and of course, Citizen Kane. The lamps were kept low, and the mood was tense and guarded. A low, intense murmur of conversation pervaded the room. It was no secret that the gang lieutenants came out here to discuss business. Rosie, the proprietress, dressed herself in scarves and read people’s palms in a corner all night. She ratted nobody out.
I wished Rand were here. During the hard times immediately following the Collapse, when the water, electricity and gas first shut off, the three of us led discussions among our neighbors. His reflective introspection had mixed well with Katrine’s idealism and my nuts-and-bolts pragmatism. Sitting at our old booth at Rosie’s without him felt like our stool had lost its third leg.
“So let’s go over the details again,” I said. “What do we know about Rand’s disappearance?”
“Let’s see…okay. We and Rand pull the operation a week ago, blow up the Meld dispenser. Refugees start pouring in from the Meld. One’s Rand’s ex-wife. Next several days, he starts getting sentimental, confused. They kiss. They fight. They ignore each other.”
“Love, man,” I said. “What a bitch.” Katrine raised her glass, and we took a swig together.
“So anyway, he tells me he has to go on a mission, alone, he’ll be back by sundown. All paranoid about being tracked. Says he can’t talk about it. Then he doesn’t show. And then his ex-wife is gone too. Leaving no clues as to their whereabouts.”
“So one of three things happened,” I said. “Either he decided to leave for the Meld, he was forcibly abducted, or he’s still out there on the run.”
“I can’t see him just deciding to leave. Not without telling us that he’s having second thoughts. You know how much he liked you, how committed he was to the neighborhood. He wouldn’t just go without talking to us.”
“Yeah, but the minute his wife got into the picture, he started avoiding me, so…”
“So, what?” she said. “The man was confused, but he wouldn’t give up everything we’ve built over the past ten years on a whim. He was too thoughtful, too committed for that. I am one hundred percent confident.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I’m more of a mind anyway that he was abducted or kidnapped. He might have been off his game, with everything going on.”
“See, I can’t see that either,” Katrine said. “He was always so cautious. How many times did he vote to cancel a mission because of a couple gray clouds, or weird sounds, or his typical, ‘guys, look, it just doesn’t seem right’? He’s got to be out there, still. Fighting for his life, maybe, who knows where? We have an obligation to find him.”
“How?” I said. “He left no message, nothing to help us out. We can’t just be running around on fools’ errands all the time, especially since we need to figure out what’s going on about these increased patrols! We almost got taken in today, you know?”
“So, what,” she spat. “You’d abandon our friend, just like that, because it’s hard, because it’s inconvenient for you?”
“Don’t you dare! I’ve been putting my life on the line the same as you looking for him, and you know it!”
We glared at each other tensely for a few seconds across the table, then she released my gaze and stared down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just…it really feels like something bad is on the horizon, and I’m scared. We need to mobilize hardcore against the Meld, not just to resist but to fight back, or we’re gonna get swallowed whole. Not having Rand here to calm meetings down just makes things feel that much harder.”
“I know, I know.” I yawned. “Ah, shit.”
“Get some rest. You deserve it. Without you, I’d be dead tonight.”
“How many times we said that to each other over the years, right?” We clinked glasses again, and I downed mine. “Probably just a nap,” I said. “Then I need to get some work done in the garden, make some deliveries.”
“Sleep well, dear,” she said. “I’ve got to talk with some contacts about the uptick in Meld patrols. People need to know. I’ll come find you if anything.”
Chapter 3
RAND
April 24
Something she said to me, there was something my Anisa said that stuck out to me, something that struck a chord. “You can come with me now,” she had said, “as my willing partner. Or you can come in the very near future, one of the herd, a slave like the rest of this neighborhood to your own unaddressed grief.”
There was a plan, then, to expand the Meld into my community. I needed her to believe me, and I needed her to reveal her plan to me, so I could find a way for us to fight back. So I let her lead me into the Meld.
That was how I found myself in a hospital wing, wearing scrubs, on my way to receive some injection to destroy my mind. I hated hospitals. Like the Buddhist monks in the neighborhood taught us, I mumbled “I am not” mantras to myself to keep the thick, whispering Meld air from lulling me to unawareness. “I am not I,” I thought, “I am not my bright future with my wife. I am not friend to my friends. I am not enemy to my enemies. I am not happy. I am not sad. I am not indifferent.”
My Anisa looked pixie-perfect in yellow, her coffee-with-cream colored skin taut and free of blemishes. But her skinny bird-arms and ankles, her jutting collarbone, and her drugged-up voice made me feel weird. She looked like everyone else in the Meld, malnourished and bloodshot high. She’d finally lost the weight she complained about all the time, but at what cost? Her personality was very similar to what I remembered, all positive intensity as she guided me through the halls, touching my side, shoulder and hand at every opportunity.
Memories of my former life flickered at the edge of my memory. Only my tense, furrowed brow kept them from feeling real. “What’s wrong, love?” Anisa purred as she squeezed my hand. How many nights of love had I shared with her, ensconced in that purr?
I shook my head and tried to focus. Time had gotten away from me. I always did this. Spent all my time looking for the perfect opportunity. When it didn’t come, as usual, I cast about at the end, fitful, looking for a lifeline.
I took a deep breath and looked at my wife. God, she was beautiful. I unclasped my hand from hers, shoved her sideways, and casually ducked into a hall. Then I started running flat-out. My wife’s bony frame wouldn’t be able to keep up. I didn’t exactly know what I was looking to find, but I had an idea of where I might find it.
I found a stairwell and pressed inside. Alarms started to sound. “Unauthorized visitor detected,” a robotic voice said over the intercom system. “Please stand by for increased security parameters. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Damn Meld, I thought. Always so polite, even when sealing a man’s fate. I had to force myself to feel the urgency even as my feet pounded, my breath throbbed in my chest and my heart pulsed at my throat. My whole body felt loose and languid.
“I am not winning. I am not losing. I am not helping. I am not hurting. I am not I.”
Up seven flights of stairs, seeing myself as an action hero, I cracked open the door and glanced around the corner like James Bond. This was where the administrative offices were located. Medical droids and orderlies paced the halls, too regularly to slip by. I would have to act like one of the crowd, so I took a deep breath and put my mind in the place between overweening pride and desire to be invisible. I puffed out my chest, softened my eyes and shoulders, and strolled out the door from the stairs.
I belonged here. The alarms were for some other guy. I nodded automatic greetings to young men and women who looked like heroin zombies, all vacant expressions and arms and legs as thin as bird bones. I walked like a frail, naïve person and ducked into the nearest large office.
A naked couple was laid out on the wide desk, making love while mewling fast-paced. “Yes” “oh” “yeh” “Mm!” “ee!” “Ah.” “Ha.” “Ah. Ah.”
I watched, fascinated, at the disturbingly thin childlike bodies on the desk, pumping on each other, fully nonverbal, fully given over to the Meld. That unselfconscious, wholly unprofessional joy resonated with the feeling at the edge of my constant litany of “I am not’s” that kept me from succumbing. Just once, I wanted my inner discourse to stop whirring. I wanted to relax and enjoy the life I’d fought so hard for, and not be worried that I’d never be myself again.
“I am not orgasmic,” I said to myself. “I am not making love. I am not…alone.” I paused. “Fuck that,” I muttered, wiping a tear from my eye. I’d probably never be with my wife again. Easy come, easy go. I snatched a tablet from the desk and left the office. As I walked, I turned it on. It required a thumbprint for activation.
I held the tablet in one hand and, thinking of the screwing couple in the other room, gently took the hand of a passing orderly in my other. Twirling her like a dancer, I pressed her thumb to the tablet and kissed her cheek. She giggled, I mirrored, then skipped away. I entered the stairwell, breathless and tingly.
“Focus,” I told myself. “Fucking…focus! Don’t be happy. Don’t be excited. Like a goddamn teenager. I am not happy. I am not…” I growled and gripped my face with my fingernails. Scraping down, I regained my sense of myself, such as it was. I felt blood on my face.
I had to get out of the Meld. It being this thick in the air, with me being so opposed to it, was erotic, intense and self-destructive. It was messing with my emotions and my mind.
I glanced at the tablet. On the screen was a massive red branching tree. I zoomed in and the tree branched further. I zoomed in more and saw writing next to each tiny branch. There was a date, a number and words like “CO2 levels 90% of doomsday scenario,” or “Mid-Atlantic region coal factory shutdown 25% complete,” or “Greater Hong Kong under full Meld assimilation.” It seemed like every aim, goal and intent of the culture that destroyed our minds was hooked up to the wireless-connected, satellite-connected, whatever it was, tablet.
I ran down the stairs, thinking to myself, “invisible, functionally invisible.” I got to the bottom and forced open the emergency exit. I slipped out and into the night, then walked quickly north.
The walk itself was full of odd sounds that meant nothing but kept me scared, which was good. I stayed focused and checked the tablet as I walked to make sure I wasn’t losing the signal to the program.
When I reached my safe house, the one nobody knew about on the edge of the Meld, I clomped up two flights of stairs into bed and started fiddling with the tablet.
There was so much information condensed into a very small space on the screen. It looked like it was predicting the future. Options were given as branching points and ranked according to whether they led to higher or lower “probability futures.” From what I could gather, this was related to climate change in some way, though the calculations and metrics were extremely opaque.
I yawned. This thing would take days, if not weeks, to fully decipher. But having the tablet was a coup. I already knew enough to take action and protect our community, but there was so much more that needed to be found out.
I yawned again. It was all too much to think about after the day I’d had. Plenty of time to look it over tomorrow. I closed my eyes, then jolted awake. I had an awful thought: they were going to be after me. I wasn’t safe. Idiot, Rand. Idiot!
I could hardly move my body. A side effect of the prolonged Meld exposure? This had only just begun. They would not stop.
I took the tablet and looked it over, then fumbled with my pocketknife. I dropped it, then focused and moved very slowly to pry it open. It was built like most old-school tablets, with a removable SIM card inside a bunch of circuitry. I removed the card, pulled up a small panel in the floor, threw it in, covered it with sawdust and detritus, and replaced the panel. I then put the tablet in the bedside table under a hidden drawer component. No sense making it too easy. No such thing as being too paranoid. I was so tired, but I could only afford a nap. The sun would wake me in a couple hours, then I’d hopefully have the energy, hopefully the side effects would have passed, and I could find a more secure place.
I hoped I was thinking straight and making the right decisions. Everything in my mind seemed so foggy still. I snuggled into my pillows and closed my eyes. Why fight? I asked myself, as I asked myself every night. Resistance was the only ethical response to Empire, but one day the fighting would have to come to an end. The whole point of fighting so hard was to secure a safer, easier future for myself and my community. This chip might just get me there.