Risa sighs. “Yes, I suppose I did. And I created a monster.”
She realizes that both of them have been profoundly changed in the wake of the Happy Jack Harvest Camp revolt. Risa likes to think that their spirits have been galvanized like iron in a furnace, but sometimes it feels like they’ve only been damaged by those harsh flames. Still, she’s glad she had survived to see the far-reaching effects of that day. Like Cap-17.
Even before Happy Jack, there had been a bill in Congress calling for the lowering of the legal limit of unwinding by a whole year, to one’s seventeenth birthday instead of eighteenth. The “Cap-17” bill had never been expected to pass—in fact, most people didn’t even know about it until Happy Jack made the news—and until poor Lev Calder’s face became plastered on the cover of every major magazine: the innocent boy clothed all in white. A bright-eyed, clean-cut kid smiling out from a school picture. How the perfect child became a clapper was a question that made parents everywhere stop and take notice . . . because if it could happen to Lev, who’s to say that their own child might not turn their blood explosive someday and detonate themselves in a burst of rage? And the fact that Lev chose not to detonate himself troubled people even more, because they couldn’t just file him away as a bad seed. They had to accept that he had a soul—a conscience—which meant that maybe society had a hand in making him a clapper. And then suddenly—as if to assuage everyone’s feelings of cultural guilt—the Cap-17 bill became law. No one could be unwound after their seventeenth birthday.
“You’re thinking about Lev again, aren’t you?” Connor asks.
“How do you know?”
“Because whenever you do, time stops, and your eyes go to the dark side of the moon.”
She reaches down to touch his hands, which have stopped massaging, and he gets back to coaxing her troubled circulation.
“It’s because of him that the Cap-17 law passed, you know,” Risa says. “I wonder how he feels about that.”
“I’ll bet it gives him nightmares.”
“Or,” suggests Risa, “maybe he sees the bright side of it.”
“Do you?” Connor asks.
Risa sighs. “Sometimes.”
Cap-17 should have been a good thing, but in time, it became clear that it was not. Sure it was a victorious morning that next day, when the news showed thousands of seventeen-year-olds being released from harvest camps. It was a triumph of human compassion, and a great victory for those against unwinding, but that same feeling of victory allowed people to turn a blind eye again to the whole problem. Unwinding was still there, but people could now look the other way, believing their consciences were clean.
And then came the media blitz, a flood of advertisements designed to “remind” people how much “better” things were since the Unwind Accord. “Unwinding: the natural solution,” the ads said, or “Troubled teen? Love them enough to let them go,” and, of course, Risa’s favorite, “Experience a world outside of yourself: Embrace the divided state.”
The sad truth about humanity, Risa was quick to realize, is that people believe what they’re told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.
Which brings her back to Connor’s question. With a major shortage of Unwinds in the system after Cap-17, and a public accustomed to getting all the parts they want whenever they want them, why hasn’t the Graveyard been raided? Why are they still here?
“We’re here,” Risa tells him, “because we are. And we should just be thankful for that while it lasts.” Then she gently touches his shoulder, signaling it’s time to end the massage. “I’d better get back to the infirmary jet. I’m sure there are plenty of scrapes, black eyes, and fevers to take care of. Thank you, Connor.” As many times as he does this for her, she’s always embarrassed that she needs it.
He rolls down the loose-fitting legs of her khaki pants and puts her feet back on the wheelchair’s footrests. “Never thank a guy for putting his hands all over you.”
“Not all over,” Risa says coyly.
Connor throws her a sly little grin, letting it carry the weight of anything he might have said to that.
“I think I’d like our times together even more,” she tells him, “if you were actually here.”
Connor reaches up to touch her face—but he stops himself, switches hands, and touches her with the left instead of the right. The one he was born with. “I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“—your brain making up for lost time. I know. But I do look forward to a day we can be together and not be filled with all these dark thoughts. Then we’ll know we’ve won.”
Then she pushes off toward the infirmary jet, maneuvering over the rugged ground on her own, as always, refusing to be pushed by anyone, ever.
7 - Connor
A representative from the Anti-Divisional Resistance shows up the next afternoon—three days late for his scheduled meeting with Connor. He’s disheveled, paunchy, and drenched in sweat.
“And it’s not even summer,” Connor says—hoping to make the point that the sweltering Arizona summer is just a few months away. The ADR had better get their act together, or there are going to be a lot of angry AWOLs. That is, the ones who survive the heat.
They meet in the retired Air Force One, which used to be the Admiral’s personal quarters but now serves only as a conference room. The man introduces himself as Joe Rincon, “But call me Joe. No formalities in the ADR.” He sits at the conference table and pulls out a pad and pen to take notes. He’s already glancing at his watch, as if there’s somewhere else he would rather be.
Connor has a whole list of gripes from every corner of the Graveyard. Why are the food shipments so few and far between? Where are the medical supplies they requested? How about air conditioner and generator parts? Why are they not being warned when planes show up with new arrivals—and for that matter, why are the numbers coming in so light? Five or ten at a time, when the planes used to come in with fifty or more. With food supply being a constant issue, Connor doesn’t mind the low numbers, but it troubles him. If fewer AWOLs are being found by the resistance, that means the Juvies—or worse, the so-called parts pirates—must be finding them first.
“What’s wrong with you people? Why does the ADR keep ignoring all our requests?”