UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

More reports—those same angry kids calling for change, and when they don’t get it, they hit the streets, forming random mobs, burning cars, breaking windows, letting loose a kind of communal fury. In the midst of the Heartland War, President Moss—just a few weeks before his assassination—calls an additional state of emergency, this time ordering a curfew on everyone under the age of eighteen. “Anyone caught breaking curfew will be subject to transport to juvenile detention camps.”

There are reports of kids who have either left or been thrown out of their homes. “Ferals,” the news calls them. Like stray dogs. Then comes a shaky video of three kids swinging their hands together. A sudden white flash, and the image becomes static. “Apparently,” says the news anchor, “these feral suicide bombers have altered their blood chemistry, so that bringing their hands together triggers detonation.”

“Holy crap!” says Hayden. “The first clappers!”

“All this was going on during the Heartland War,” Connor points out. “The nation was tearing itself apart over pro-life and pro-choice but completely ignored the problems of the kids who were already here. I mean, no schools, no work, no clue if they’d even have a future. They just went nuts!”

“Tear it all down and start over.”

“Do you blame them?”

Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don’t teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn’t want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn’t want kids to know how much power they really had.

The various links lead Connor and Hayden to an image that’s much more widespread and familiar: hands being shaken at the signing of the Unwind Accord. In the background is the Admiral as a much younger man. The report talks about peace being declared between the Life Army and the Choice Brigade, giving everyone hope for domestic normalization. Nowhere are the teen uprisings mentioned—yet within weeks of the Accord, the Juvenile Authority was established, feral detention centers became harvest camps, and unwinding became . . . a way of life.

That’s when the truth hits Connor so brutally he feels light-headed. “My God! The Unwind Accord wasn’t just about ending the war—it was also a way to take down the terror generation!”

Hayden leans away from the computer like it might start clapping and blow them all up. “The Admiral must have known that.”

Connor shakes his head “When his committee proposed the Unwind Accord, he never believed people would actually go for it, but they did . . . because they were more terrified of their teenagers than their consciences.”

Connor knows that Janson Rheinschild, whoever he was, must have played into this somewhere, but Proactive Citizenry was extremely thorough in wiping him off the face of the earth.

o;I’m alive today because I ran from unwinding, and my selfishness cost these, and many others, their lives. My name is Risa Ward, AWOL Unwind, and now I must live knowing how many innocent people I’ve killed.”

—Sponsored by Citizens for AWOL Justice

38 - Hayden

Hayden stares at the computer screen, trying to believe Risa’s “public service announcement” is some kind of sick joke, but he knows it’s not. He wants to be furious at Tad, the busy little net-raker who brought it to his attention, but he knows it’s not the kid’s fault.

“What do we do now?” Tad asks.

Hayden looks around the ComBom. The eight kids on communications duty all look at him as if he can make the video go away.

“She’s a goddamn traitor!” Esme shouts.

“Shut up!” Hayden yells. “Just shut up, let me think.” He tries to come up with alternate explanations. Maybe it’s not real—just a digital image. Maybe it’s a trick designed to demoralize them . . . but the truth screams louder than any conjecture. Risa is publicly speaking in favor of unwinding. She’s gone to the other side.

“Connor can’t know about this,” Hayden says.

Tad shakes his head doubtfully. “But it’s been on TV, and trending over the net since this morning. It’s not just one, either. She made a whole bunch of public service announcements—and there’s an interview, too.”

Hayden paces the cramped space of the plane, trying to pull together a coherent thought. “Okay,” he says, forcing himself to calm down. “Okay . . . All the computers with web access are here in the ComBom and the library, right? And the Rec Jet TVs all get their feed directly from here.”

“Yeah . . .”

“So, can we route everything through facial recognition software before it goes out and scramble it every time she turns up? Do we have a program that can do that?”

No one answers for a few seconds; then Jeevan speaks up. “We have tons of old military security programs, there’s got to be facial recognition stuff in there. I’ll bet I can patch something together.”

“Do it, Jeeves.” Then he turns to Tad. “Cut the feeds to the Rec Jet and library until it’s done. No incoming broadcasts or web connections at all. We’ll tell everyone the satellite is out, or an armadillo mated with the dish, or whatever. Got it?” Agreement all around. “And if any one of you breathes a word of this to anyone, I will personally make sure you spend the next few years of your life shoveling crap out of the latrines. The Risa-bomb stays in the ComBom, comprende?”

Again total agreement—but Tad isn’t quite ready to let it go. “Hayden, there was something about it I don’t know if you noticed. Did you see how she—”

“No, I didn’t!” says Hayden, shutting him down. “I didn’t see a thing. And neither did you.”

39 - Connor