Dollhouse AU: "Sensory [re:]Generation" (Topher, Dominic, PG-13), 3/3
Gah, so this is totally two weeks later than I wanted it to be. *facepalm* Sorry about that, guys. But late or not, here it is - the conclusion hopefully you all were waiting for.
Title: Sensory [re:]Generation (3/3)
Characters: Topher, Dominic, DeWitt, Caroline, Paul, Claire, Alpha, mention of Ivy, Echo, Whiskey, November
Pairings: Topher/Dominic, Dominic/DeWitt, Topher/DeWitt, Topher/Dominic/DeWitt, mention of Paul/November, Topher/Ivy, implications of Caroline/Paul and Caroline/Alpha
Rating: PG-13 for violence, language, dark and mature themes, sex, vampirism
Length: 12,966 words
Spoilers: none - complete alternate reality
Notes: For complete summary and more information, see part one.
(Title for this section taken from "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox 20, and "State of Emergency" by Papa Roach)
part i: we do our time like pennies in a jar (it’s the music that we choose)
part ii: there's a lot of pretty pretty ones that want to get you high (you have broken at me, broken me)
part iii: it’s gone gone baby it’s all gone (i would rather lie than let you go)
*
A long time before, Topher had had a chance to leave.
He didn’t take it, of course. It only figured the one time he had actually been given a choice, he passed it up.
His girlfriend was going away to the Orphanarium. That much was obvious, and Topher knew that, even if it was in a way where he didn’t, not really.
Because knowing meant he would’ve had to accept Ivy was leaving the city and never coming back. So he acted like nothing was happening: otherwise he would’ve had to deal with the reality. Topher had never had much use for reality.
But Ivy was going anyway, and she’d wanted him to come. Topher had kept pretending he didn’t understand what she was saying as she had asked him, pleaded with him, until she finally yelled at him to go with her.
But Topher couldn’t have. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t leave his apartment with his bed and his customized data-stack and holo-drive and his refrigerator with twelve kinds of juice all behind him, forever. The idea was confusing, impenetrable.
So Ivy left and he stayed, with his bed and his refrigerator and his system, while the only person he’d ever cared about went away and vanished. And he was lonely for a little while, but he did a good job of not thinking about it, or so he believed.
But if he’d been able to go with Ivy then, a lot of things would’ve been different.
He wouldn’t have been forced to leave his home regardless. He never would’ve gotten tangled up in a web of things he barely understood, involving Revolutionaries, the Orphanarium, and ‘suckers.
He never would have gone to the places he had. He never would’ve seen the things he’d seen, felt the things he’d felt. His world wouldn’t have been expanded; his life wouldn’t have become so much fuller in ways so strange and frightening.
He wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone who could never feel the same way about him, and he wouldn’t have run away rather than face that hurt.
But those things were what had happened. And so that was how Topher found himself stowed away in the back of a freight express heading towards an unknown destination, with none other than Caroline Farrell, one of the leaders of the Revolution, crouched down beside him.
It was cold, the exterior of a vehicle intended only to carry cargo not designed for the comfort of human passengers. The thin metal walls did little to shield them from the elements and Topher huddled in his hiding place, hugging himself. The winds howled and whistled as their ride moved at a fast speed, unhindered by the unevenness of a ground it didn’t have to touch.
Caroline didn’t speak the entire time. She didn’t look at him, either. That was fine by Topher because he didn’t want to talk. His stomach felt numb, so empty it was making him sick.
He stared straight ahead, not feeling the cold that much or anything else really at all.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be there. It was that he didn’t want to be anywhere else at the moment either, so why not. The Revolution had probably been going to find him eventually anyway.
Caroline stood up, drawing Topher’s attention away from his thoughts.
“We’re almost at our stop,” she announced, bracing herself against a metal beam with one hand. “The express is going to slow down a bit to get around a bump in the terrain. When that happens, we jump.”
Topher got to his feet, trying not to be knocked back down by the jerking motion of the vehicle. “Jump?”
Caroline nodded.
“Just remember to roll onto your feet.”
Topher did not follow her instructions so well. In fact he hesitated at the critical moment, paralyzed by uncertainty, necessitating that Caroline bodily push him from the back of the express. He did manage to roll, though that was more lack of control instead of purpose, and he ended up as a tangled lump on the ground rather than on his feet.
Caroline, who had landed perfectly, brushed herself off and impatiently hauled him up again. “Come on.”
They started walking.
The earth was wild out there, not tamed or leveled into the uniform flatness of cities or buildings. It was pockmarked and twisted by winding hills and gullies, and it made it slow going.
Topher supposed that what he was having could be called an adventure. But it didn’t feel very exciting. He was sick of walking places. He was sick of having to look at these endless barren expanses.
He tried not to think about those months he had spent journeying to the Orphanarium with Dominic, and how the weariness and the boredom hadn’t seemed to bother him quite so much then.
Topher was so busy staring blankly at the muddy ground, at his feet plodding one step after the other, that it was awhile before he glanced up and saw what was looming ahead of them. He stopped in his tracks, astonished.
It was a forest. An actual forest, with trees rising impossibly tall toward the sky. Topher’s head tilted back, his neck stretching as he gazed up far overhead at their branches spreading out into patchy, faded gray-green canopies.
They were a ways off yet but even from where he was Topher could tell the trees were huge, as wide around and as tall as some buildings, the only things of any substantial size for miles. They were clustered together in an area almost as large as a city at the bottom of a natural incline. A thin hazy mist clung to the perimeter, stealing even more color from the trees’ weak browns and grays.
“Home base.” Caroline nodded. “Just about the last place anyone would think to look.”
Topher thought she was certainly right, because who could’ve ever imagined there would be people living out here? He hadn’t even known a place like this existed.
And even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to picture it: it looked nothing like any of the woods in the virtu-sims.
Caroline gave a wry twisted smile. “They say it’s the last forest in the world, you know,” she remarked.
Topher looked at her. “Is it?”
“How should I know? I haven’t been everywhere - have you?” She shrugged. “But I guess it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Caroline turned her eyes toward the cracked bark, the barren dry leaves. She scowled, the set of her brow furrowed tightly.
“‘California redwoods’, they’re called. Except they’re not. These are just the warped, mutated descendants of the real thing, clinging to life in a world we filled with pollution. It’s a degrading sight to behold.”
She shook her head. “We’ll fix it, someday. But until then, we’ve gotta fix the people first.”
Topher didn’t have anything to say. They continued their trudging, unceasing pace, and reached the interior of the trees within a few more hours.
Paul Ballard was waiting for them; he met them at the edge of the camp. He was visibly surprised when he saw Topher but didn’t say anything to him, looking instead at Caroline.
“What was it that Echo wanted?”
“Nothing - just to help pass him along.” Caroline indicated Topher. “It seems that he’s changed his mind, decided to help us after all.”
“Right,” Topher offered quietly, nodding. Paul gave him a scrutinizing look.
“He was at the Orphanarium?” he asked Caroline, startled.
“Yeah. He wasn’t one of the ‘volunteers’, though.” The look on her face as she said the word made it clear what her opinion was of them. “He was hiding out among the masses, in plain sight.”
Paul gave a wordless kind of grunt, indicating he was impressed. Or maybe just disbelieving.
“Take care of the necessary formalities, would you?” Caroline continued, giving an absent touch to Paul’s shoulder. “I’ve gotta go see what’s up.” She nodded at what looked like the main area of the camp.
“I’ll give him the tour,” Paul acquiesced, looking at Topher. He gestured with one arm. “Come on.”
Topher followed close behind him, the gravel-strewn mud and fallen leaves crunching hard beneath their feet. He could see his breath faintly when he breathed out, and a damp sort of chill felt like it was clinging to his skin.
Paul glanced sideways at Topher after a silent minute. “Gotta say, I’m kind of surprised you were able to do that.” He elaborated: “That you made it all the way to the Orphanarium on your own, and that you were able to stay there awhile without anyone getting to you.”
Topher looked at his shoes. The toes were getting really scuffed.
“I had some help. Dominic was sort of looking after me.” Topher swallowed a little at the thought of him. “He…he kept me safe.”
Paul’s expression darkened instantly with displeasure. “I’m sure he had a reason for it, and not a selfless one. His kind always does. Probably wanted to keep you out of our hands, if nothing else.”
Topher raised his eyes, looking timidly at Paul. “Why is it that the Revolution never recruits ‘suckers? I mean, you guys are all outcasts. Don’t any of them ever want to flock to your cause?”
“We take on people. Humans,” Paul said with distaste. “‘Suckers aren’t human. They gave that up when they chose to become something else. We’re trying to save this world; they just want to exploit it. As long as everything stays messed up, they have an easier time finding weak-minded victims to give up their blood.”
Dominic wasn’t like that, Topher thought. But he said nothing aloud.
“And Topher?” Paul said, causing him to look up with a jump.
“Huh?”
“It’s our cause, now,” Paul reminded him. “You’re with us.” He smiled firmly. “Fighting the good fight. Helping to fix what’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Topher gazed at his shoes again. The laces were fraying, too. “Yeah. Right.”
*
The Revolution’s base was a sort of ramshackle settlement made out of small, weak-looking buildings that appeared to have been cobbled together with whatever was handy. Topher was shocked to find many people seemed to be living in tents.
His disbelief only grew when he was shown the equipment they intended him to be working with - it was a jury-rigged system, a mess of jumbled up wires and parts recycled (likely stolen) off of other things that were definitely not data-stacks. Topher was afraid to go near the thing, considering it sparked at every command and gave off the burnt-ozone smell of crackling electricity.
There wasn’t even a holo-drive or any attempt at resembling one. It linked in to the feed, which was considered the only necessary requirement.
“Not a lot of time for pleasure cruises out here,” Paul had said swiftly. “Or resources, for that matter. Everyone needs to pull their own weight, or bringing down the powers that be isn’t going to be our only problem.”
No kidding, Topher thought. It was explained that nothing he ate out here was going to be synthesized out of a refrigerator - the Revolutionaries ate real food, rations they managed to steal, plants and proteins they managed to wrestle out of the deprived soil and desiccated land.
“There’s nothing to monitor your glucose or iron, and nothing’s gonna be fortified with anything other than what ‘nature’ intended. You have to make sure you get a balanced diet: vegetables, grains, the works. Otherwise you can get real sick real fast.”
It was supposedly a common problem with new recruits: unused to anything other than city living, they ate too much of one thing and not enough of another, depriving their bodies of essentials. It was a tricky business, learning to regulate for yourself something that had always been handled for you.
Then there was the issue with water. There wasn’t enough of it, and it wasn’t exactly clean.
Drinking water needed to be boiled beforehand (Topher stared at the open campfires, the sight of actual burning flames). Bathing, and the washing of clothes, was something of a luxury.
It was possibly best that clothes were not washed too often though since everything had to last. Raiding trips for fresh supplies were carefully limited. Everyone wore layers of rags and frayed articles held together by patches and thread.
No one had ever said living off the grid was easy life, but he never imagined that it could be this hard. He never could’ve imagined this.
He was told he would “get used to it”. Topher found small comfort in that.
And then, after the nonexistent technology, the unclean food and water, the limited textiles, there was one other thing: the diseases.
“Come on, I’ll take you to medical,” Paul had said. “We need to take care of your shots.”
Topher quivered in disbelief, his voice high and shaking. “…Shots?”
Paul gave him a hard look. “We’re in the wild,” he snapped. “No filtered air. No radiation protection. There are germs. Kinds that people don’t get in the cities anymore, illnesses they haven’t seen in years, so your immune system has no resistance built up to them.”
Paul set his mouth, grimly.
“And out here, they’ve gotten even nastier.”
Topher choked. One hand clutched firmly over his mouth to keep out the germ-ridden air, he allowed Paul to escort him to the medical tent with weak legs and trembling arms.
Paul sat him down on a thin cot and nodded his head at a woman in a tattered white trenchcoat and galoshes, evidently the medical personnel.
“Got a new one for you, Doc. Give him the usual.”
“I’m in the midst of tending to my patients.” Her back was to them as she lined up items on a tray - even through her soft-spoken voice, her irritation was palpable. “Can’t this wait?”
“Are any of them an urgent priority?” Paul asked.
“No. But-”
“Then take care of this guy first.” Topher swallowed thickly as he took in the three prone figures lying in the cots on the other side of the tent. Two of them were pale and sweating and the third had an arm and one side of his face wrapped in bandages. But Paul seemed unbothered by the sight. “None of them are going to die in the next ten minutes.”
“Are you a doctor, then?” the woman asked dryly, but Paul had already left. With a heavy sigh she turned to a nearby cabinet - and started pulling out injection tubes.
Topher resisted the urge to bolt, somehow. He reminded himself that he didn’t want to die a horrible lingering death from Viciously Mutated Jungle Flu.
The woman turned around, and suddenly Topher’s fears vanished for a moment as he took in the sight of her face.
“Whiskey?” he exclaimed in astonished recognition. Her hair was shorter, her face more tired, but other than that she was exactly the same, right down to the scars.
The woman tensed, flinching. “What did you just say?”
Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at Topher, like she was already making up her mind not to like him.
“My name is not Whiskey,” she said in a clipped angry tone. “My name is Dr. Claire Saunders.” Glancing down, she quickly snatched up her handful of injections and moved closer, busying herself with rolling up Topher’s sleeve. “You may refer to me as Dr. Saunders.”
Topher blinked.
“Oh. Let me just guess,” he sighed. “Whiskey must be a doppel, right? Caroline made friends with you when you were both groupies at the Orphanarium, and when she copied herself over as Echo she did the same for you, because of…what, your medical expertise?”
“That’s not exactly right,” Dr. Saunders said quietly. She drew a breath. “If you could please hold still, I’m going to disinfect your arm.”
Topher watched her, puzzled, as she wiped his skin down with a cloth soaked in alcohol.
“How am I not right?” he asked her, insistently curious. “What am I missing?”
She didn’t answer him, and Topher was forced to sit there cringing as she gave him no less than five injections.
Afterward, his arm felt raw and sore. Topher rubbed it, then immediately regretted that with a wince.
“Couldn’t you have numbed me first, or something?”
“We need all the painkillers we can find for real emergencies,” Dr. Saunders intoned, slightly derisive. She turned her back on him again. “You’re done.”
“Okay.” Topher was all too happy to leave the tent, with its dead cold air and smell of sickness and medicines. He hopped down and made for the exit.
But then her voice stopped him in his tracks.
“You weren’t wrong completely.” She still had her back to him, her back straight even as her head hung down. “But Whiskey, or whoever she was once, isn’t the doppel. I am.”
Topher stared at her. “You…?”
“She’s real. I’m not.” He couldn’t see her face. But he could see her hands clench. “Claire Saunders is a…a construct. A created identity I gave myself, because I had no memories.”
“That’s, well…fascinating.” In a really freaky sort of way.
“I’m sure,” Dr. Saunders ground out. Her fists clenched even tighter. “I have patients to take care of. Get out. And my advice to you is not to come back again, unless you’re seriously ill.”
Topher quickly backed out, and walked away.
*
With some difficulty Topher fell in with the Revolutionaries’ routine.
There wasn’t really much to it. Every day they sent him to work for a couple of hours at a time, checking the feed.
Topher would do the assignments he was given and not ask any questions. Mostly it was just hacking databases, gathering data. Sometimes he used encrypted streams to send messages to their allies. That was about it.
When he wasn’t on the feed he sat around, watching the camp. People went hunting or foraging or on raiding parties for food, repaired the constant stream of things that needed fixing, or practiced their combat skills.
No one offered to teach Topher how to do any of these things. He didn’t ask.
Topher got used to being cold and dirty all the time. He got used to wearing layers of old clothing that still smelled like whoever had owned them before. He got used to sleeping in a tent on the ground. He got used to the taste of watery beef stew and burned griddlecakes, and quickly grew bored of it. He never ate much but nobody seemed to notice. There wasn’t a lot to go around.
He got used to being outside, smelling the sick ever-present trace of Atmo, his face exposed and unprotected.
No one in the Revolution ever wore a breathing mask. When Topher asked about it all he got was a cynical, “Why bother?”
Breathing masks would be hard to steal, a devotion of valuable time and manpower. Meanwhile the Revolutionaries were living where they had to deal with cold and hunger and taking in toxins from half a dozen ways on a daily basis. And if they were ever caught they were criminals, likely executed on sight. There were so many ways they could die.
A few months after Topher arrived, a fever struck. It swept rapidly through the population and before long almost a third of them were sick with it. The afflicted sweated and moaned, unable to eat, too weak to stand.
From a distance Topher eyed the quarantine tents, watching as Dr. Saunders in her patched coat went from patient to patient. More than once she drew the blanket over the face of one who’d already passed, shaking her head.
The Revolutionaries’ existence was hard and dangerous. Odds were none of them would live long enough to ever be troubled by the effects of Atmo.
Topher kept to himself. He didn’t talk to the others more than was necessary. He was uninterested in making friends.
Every week or so new faces would arrive, a minuscule but steady trickle of recruits. Some were sent by Echo from the Orphanarium. Most of them were from the cities. They tumbled into the woods and looked around with big eyes, thrilling for a misadventure.
Topher began to understand why Dominic and others he’d met had such distaste for the Revolution. Their cause and motives made some sense, but they had more fanaticism than practicality. They didn’t have the resources or the organization to accomplish much of anything besides getting their own people killed.
Topher lost all his sense of intimidation once he’d seen them up close. They were mostly gullible youths just looking for something different to do.
Caroline Farrell, however, still frightened him. She was a fierce idealist, luring others to her side as cannon fodder with talk of changing the world.
Most of the actual leaders, the very center of the group, terrified Topher in one way or another. They were strong, rugged, and they all seemed at least a little bit crazy.
There was one, a man named Alpha, who wasn’t only a little bit crazy. It showed in his eyes, his sharp jagged smiles. It seemed every time Topher saw him he was holding a knife in one hand - not that Topher ever got a good look, because every time he spotted Alpha he went the other way.
With a name like that Alpha must’ve come from the Orphanarium, but no one ever explained his past.
That was fine by Topher because he didn’t want to know. Whatever Alpha’s story was, he thought he was better off not knowing the details.
Alpha followed Caroline like a mean, looming puppy. Sometimes it looked like it annoyed Caroline but for the most part she didn’t say anything about it.
Paul hated him, though. And the feeling was clearly mutual. Alpha went out of his way to goad him.
“Did Paul ever tell you about his old girlfriend, Topher?” Alpha said one day, voice cheerful. He was speaking to Topher but with fixed eyes he was watching Paul.
“Shut up, Alpha.” Paul glowered. “I mean it.”
“It’s a pretty tragic story,” the other man continued, undeterred. “Her name was November. She was from the Orphanarium, as you could probably tell. And she loved Paul.”
“That’s enough,” Paul said, warning. But Alpha ignored him.
“She followed him all the way out here, back to nature, just because she wanted to be around him. Isn’t that romantic?”
Alpha stared at him expectantly, for long enough that Topher finally had to say it. The words were thick, his voice hoarse as he managed to push them up from his throat.
“What happened to her?”
Alpha laughed. “Well!” He made a big show of looking around, grinning. “She’s not around here anymore, is she?”
Paul lunged at him. Caroline pulled the two men apart before their scuffle could escalate.
“Knock it off!” She pressed a hand on both their arms, glaring at each of them in turn. “In case you don’t remember, we’ve got bigger problems.”
Paul mumbled something but stayed back. Alpha sauntered off, giggling.
Caroline rolled her eyes - then she fixed them on Topher. He shrunk under her gaze.
“Come here. We’ve gotta talk.”
Topher moved closer with greatest reluctance. “What about?”
“New job for you, Topher,” Caroline explained shortly. “A big one.”
“It’s a package of encrypted data we want you to send out,” Paul chimed in. “On a special feed stream, so that only our allies around the world can get to it. So that only they can even find it.”
“Sure, no big.” He’d done things like this for them before by now. “What’s in the package?”
Topher felt something in him flinch in warning when Paul and Caroline exchanged a glance before answering. Like they were silently conferring on whether they should.
It was Caroline who finally spoke.
“It’s plans for a bomb.”
“It…what?” Topher stared at her, waiting for her to say she was joking.
But she didn’t. “It’s the resolution of something we’ve been planning for a long time. And with your expertise, we can finally carry it out.”
“We’ve got teams in position, in almost every major center around the world,” Paul added. “The information we’re sending them will help them know how to build the bombs, how to activate them, where to plant them to create the biggest explosions.”
“Explosions?” Topher repeated. “This is…you guys are talking about taking down entire cities!”
“Yeah.” Caroline gave him a look. “That’s kinda the whole point.”
Topher shrunk back. She reached toward him. “It’ll send a message. Don’t you get it? With the cities damaged, people won’t be able to ignore the problems anymore. They’ll have to rebuild. A strike of this size will throw the government into chaos. It’ll be the perfect opportunity to get in there, to really make people see what’s wrong and get them to change it.”
“But won’t people get hurt?”
Caroline’s gaze was cool. “Sacrifices have to be made.”
Topher pulled away. “No.”
“Topher-”
“No!” He ran away into the nearest tent, where he sat on the floor with his back to the entrance, cowered down and tried to hide.
The sound of the footsteps informed that Paul had followed him.
“I thought you wanted to help.” Topher could tell he was frowning. “I thought you wanted to make a difference.”
Topher dared a glance. “This is crazy,” he whimpered. “There has to be a better way! Is the central government really that bad that you need to throw everything into anarchy?”
Paul eyed him. Then, folding his long legs up, he sat down beside Topher.
“You want to know a secret?”
“Not really,” Topher whispered. “No.”
Paul kept talking anyway. “The poison in our atmosphere? It’s not natural. It’s not the result of a failing environment brought on by pollution. Central put it there.”
Topher stared numbly. “No,” he said. Atmo was a byproduct of the failed ozone layer, just like the heavy levels of radiation it could no longer block out. Everyone knew that. “That isn’t true.”
“It is,” Paul insisted. “Think about it. What better way to keep the population manageable? What better way to keep people under control than limit their ability to travel, the number of places they can go?”
Topher shook his head, because he didn’t want it to make sense. He didn’t want to believe. He curled in on himself, hugging his knees.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me again?” he said in an accusatory tone, remembering their first meeting. “Like with your story about the wall.”
“That was Caroline’s lie, not mine. I might have gone along with it, but it wasn’t my idea to deceive you.” Paul’s face was grim. “Reality is messed up enough as it is. No one needs to lie to make it sound worse.”
Topher looked at the ground.
“Isn’t there anything else though? Anything that’s a little less…extreme?”
Paul was losing patience. “Don’t you get it, Topher? There’s no choice anymore. Everyone who’s alive today is…well, they’re like you.”
“Like me?” Topher said, though he didn’t really want Paul to elaborate.
“Spending their lives plugged into the feed. Or into the music, at the Orphanarium. Or something else instead. Disconnected from reality, wrapped up in a dull perfect dream that keeps them safe and unthinking. Everyone’s too content to notice nobody’s really happy. Things need to change, but no one wants to.”
Paul met his eyes intently. “That’s why it has to be this way. We have to make change happen. We have to change, or we’re never going to survive.”
Topher was unable to meet the heat of his gaze.
Paul clapped a hand to his shoulder. It felt heavy, like it would crush him.
“We both know you understand it, even if you don’t want to admit it,” Paul said with certainty. “You know what you have to do.”
He got up and walked away.
Topher sat there awhile, alone, in the cold dirt and the darkness.
Drawing a breath, he stood on uneasy legs and went outside. He looked around, at the smoky campfires and rundown settlement, at the ground and the sick trees.
Topher thought about the clean brightness of the city, everything in even lines, reassuring orderliness and simple palette of whites, silvers and soft soothing colors.
He thought about the protective darkness of the Orphanarium, everything heated and hypnotic, blackness that wrapped around lit up in moments by vibrant thrumming hues.
Unconstructed things, out in nature without anyone to plan and shape them, weren’t safe or reassuring.
They were ugly to look at and confusing and troublesome. They smelled bad, and tasted bad, and were tiring and difficult. They didn’t come with any guarantees.
But, that was because they were real.
Paul was right - Topher did know what he had to do. He went across camp to the place containing his makeshift equipment.
Within a few hours the package of code was compiled, and he’d sent it out across the feed.
*
[continued]
Title: Sensory [re:]Generation (3/3)
Characters: Topher, Dominic, DeWitt, Caroline, Paul, Claire, Alpha, mention of Ivy, Echo, Whiskey, November
Pairings: Topher/Dominic, Dominic/DeWitt, Topher/DeWitt, Topher/Dominic/DeWitt, mention of Paul/November, Topher/Ivy, implications of Caroline/Paul and Caroline/Alpha
Rating: PG-13 for violence, language, dark and mature themes, sex, vampirism
Length: 12,966 words
Spoilers: none - complete alternate reality
Notes: For complete summary and more information, see part one.
(Title for this section taken from "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox 20, and "State of Emergency" by Papa Roach)
part i: we do our time like pennies in a jar (it’s the music that we choose)
part ii: there's a lot of pretty pretty ones that want to get you high (you have broken at me, broken me)
part iii: it’s gone gone baby it’s all gone (i would rather lie than let you go)
*
A long time before, Topher had had a chance to leave.
He didn’t take it, of course. It only figured the one time he had actually been given a choice, he passed it up.
His girlfriend was going away to the Orphanarium. That much was obvious, and Topher knew that, even if it was in a way where he didn’t, not really.
Because knowing meant he would’ve had to accept Ivy was leaving the city and never coming back. So he acted like nothing was happening: otherwise he would’ve had to deal with the reality. Topher had never had much use for reality.
But Ivy was going anyway, and she’d wanted him to come. Topher had kept pretending he didn’t understand what she was saying as she had asked him, pleaded with him, until she finally yelled at him to go with her.
But Topher couldn’t have. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t leave his apartment with his bed and his customized data-stack and holo-drive and his refrigerator with twelve kinds of juice all behind him, forever. The idea was confusing, impenetrable.
So Ivy left and he stayed, with his bed and his refrigerator and his system, while the only person he’d ever cared about went away and vanished. And he was lonely for a little while, but he did a good job of not thinking about it, or so he believed.
But if he’d been able to go with Ivy then, a lot of things would’ve been different.
He wouldn’t have been forced to leave his home regardless. He never would’ve gotten tangled up in a web of things he barely understood, involving Revolutionaries, the Orphanarium, and ‘suckers.
He never would have gone to the places he had. He never would’ve seen the things he’d seen, felt the things he’d felt. His world wouldn’t have been expanded; his life wouldn’t have become so much fuller in ways so strange and frightening.
He wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone who could never feel the same way about him, and he wouldn’t have run away rather than face that hurt.
But those things were what had happened. And so that was how Topher found himself stowed away in the back of a freight express heading towards an unknown destination, with none other than Caroline Farrell, one of the leaders of the Revolution, crouched down beside him.
It was cold, the exterior of a vehicle intended only to carry cargo not designed for the comfort of human passengers. The thin metal walls did little to shield them from the elements and Topher huddled in his hiding place, hugging himself. The winds howled and whistled as their ride moved at a fast speed, unhindered by the unevenness of a ground it didn’t have to touch.
Caroline didn’t speak the entire time. She didn’t look at him, either. That was fine by Topher because he didn’t want to talk. His stomach felt numb, so empty it was making him sick.
He stared straight ahead, not feeling the cold that much or anything else really at all.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be there. It was that he didn’t want to be anywhere else at the moment either, so why not. The Revolution had probably been going to find him eventually anyway.
Caroline stood up, drawing Topher’s attention away from his thoughts.
“We’re almost at our stop,” she announced, bracing herself against a metal beam with one hand. “The express is going to slow down a bit to get around a bump in the terrain. When that happens, we jump.”
Topher got to his feet, trying not to be knocked back down by the jerking motion of the vehicle. “Jump?”
Caroline nodded.
“Just remember to roll onto your feet.”
Topher did not follow her instructions so well. In fact he hesitated at the critical moment, paralyzed by uncertainty, necessitating that Caroline bodily push him from the back of the express. He did manage to roll, though that was more lack of control instead of purpose, and he ended up as a tangled lump on the ground rather than on his feet.
Caroline, who had landed perfectly, brushed herself off and impatiently hauled him up again. “Come on.”
They started walking.
The earth was wild out there, not tamed or leveled into the uniform flatness of cities or buildings. It was pockmarked and twisted by winding hills and gullies, and it made it slow going.
Topher supposed that what he was having could be called an adventure. But it didn’t feel very exciting. He was sick of walking places. He was sick of having to look at these endless barren expanses.
He tried not to think about those months he had spent journeying to the Orphanarium with Dominic, and how the weariness and the boredom hadn’t seemed to bother him quite so much then.
Topher was so busy staring blankly at the muddy ground, at his feet plodding one step after the other, that it was awhile before he glanced up and saw what was looming ahead of them. He stopped in his tracks, astonished.
It was a forest. An actual forest, with trees rising impossibly tall toward the sky. Topher’s head tilted back, his neck stretching as he gazed up far overhead at their branches spreading out into patchy, faded gray-green canopies.
They were a ways off yet but even from where he was Topher could tell the trees were huge, as wide around and as tall as some buildings, the only things of any substantial size for miles. They were clustered together in an area almost as large as a city at the bottom of a natural incline. A thin hazy mist clung to the perimeter, stealing even more color from the trees’ weak browns and grays.
“Home base.” Caroline nodded. “Just about the last place anyone would think to look.”
Topher thought she was certainly right, because who could’ve ever imagined there would be people living out here? He hadn’t even known a place like this existed.
And even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to picture it: it looked nothing like any of the woods in the virtu-sims.
Caroline gave a wry twisted smile. “They say it’s the last forest in the world, you know,” she remarked.
Topher looked at her. “Is it?”
“How should I know? I haven’t been everywhere - have you?” She shrugged. “But I guess it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Caroline turned her eyes toward the cracked bark, the barren dry leaves. She scowled, the set of her brow furrowed tightly.
“‘California redwoods’, they’re called. Except they’re not. These are just the warped, mutated descendants of the real thing, clinging to life in a world we filled with pollution. It’s a degrading sight to behold.”
She shook her head. “We’ll fix it, someday. But until then, we’ve gotta fix the people first.”
Topher didn’t have anything to say. They continued their trudging, unceasing pace, and reached the interior of the trees within a few more hours.
Paul Ballard was waiting for them; he met them at the edge of the camp. He was visibly surprised when he saw Topher but didn’t say anything to him, looking instead at Caroline.
“What was it that Echo wanted?”
“Nothing - just to help pass him along.” Caroline indicated Topher. “It seems that he’s changed his mind, decided to help us after all.”
“Right,” Topher offered quietly, nodding. Paul gave him a scrutinizing look.
“He was at the Orphanarium?” he asked Caroline, startled.
“Yeah. He wasn’t one of the ‘volunteers’, though.” The look on her face as she said the word made it clear what her opinion was of them. “He was hiding out among the masses, in plain sight.”
Paul gave a wordless kind of grunt, indicating he was impressed. Or maybe just disbelieving.
“Take care of the necessary formalities, would you?” Caroline continued, giving an absent touch to Paul’s shoulder. “I’ve gotta go see what’s up.” She nodded at what looked like the main area of the camp.
“I’ll give him the tour,” Paul acquiesced, looking at Topher. He gestured with one arm. “Come on.”
Topher followed close behind him, the gravel-strewn mud and fallen leaves crunching hard beneath their feet. He could see his breath faintly when he breathed out, and a damp sort of chill felt like it was clinging to his skin.
Paul glanced sideways at Topher after a silent minute. “Gotta say, I’m kind of surprised you were able to do that.” He elaborated: “That you made it all the way to the Orphanarium on your own, and that you were able to stay there awhile without anyone getting to you.”
Topher looked at his shoes. The toes were getting really scuffed.
“I had some help. Dominic was sort of looking after me.” Topher swallowed a little at the thought of him. “He…he kept me safe.”
Paul’s expression darkened instantly with displeasure. “I’m sure he had a reason for it, and not a selfless one. His kind always does. Probably wanted to keep you out of our hands, if nothing else.”
Topher raised his eyes, looking timidly at Paul. “Why is it that the Revolution never recruits ‘suckers? I mean, you guys are all outcasts. Don’t any of them ever want to flock to your cause?”
“We take on people. Humans,” Paul said with distaste. “‘Suckers aren’t human. They gave that up when they chose to become something else. We’re trying to save this world; they just want to exploit it. As long as everything stays messed up, they have an easier time finding weak-minded victims to give up their blood.”
Dominic wasn’t like that, Topher thought. But he said nothing aloud.
“And Topher?” Paul said, causing him to look up with a jump.
“Huh?”
“It’s our cause, now,” Paul reminded him. “You’re with us.” He smiled firmly. “Fighting the good fight. Helping to fix what’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Topher gazed at his shoes again. The laces were fraying, too. “Yeah. Right.”
*
The Revolution’s base was a sort of ramshackle settlement made out of small, weak-looking buildings that appeared to have been cobbled together with whatever was handy. Topher was shocked to find many people seemed to be living in tents.
His disbelief only grew when he was shown the equipment they intended him to be working with - it was a jury-rigged system, a mess of jumbled up wires and parts recycled (likely stolen) off of other things that were definitely not data-stacks. Topher was afraid to go near the thing, considering it sparked at every command and gave off the burnt-ozone smell of crackling electricity.
There wasn’t even a holo-drive or any attempt at resembling one. It linked in to the feed, which was considered the only necessary requirement.
“Not a lot of time for pleasure cruises out here,” Paul had said swiftly. “Or resources, for that matter. Everyone needs to pull their own weight, or bringing down the powers that be isn’t going to be our only problem.”
No kidding, Topher thought. It was explained that nothing he ate out here was going to be synthesized out of a refrigerator - the Revolutionaries ate real food, rations they managed to steal, plants and proteins they managed to wrestle out of the deprived soil and desiccated land.
“There’s nothing to monitor your glucose or iron, and nothing’s gonna be fortified with anything other than what ‘nature’ intended. You have to make sure you get a balanced diet: vegetables, grains, the works. Otherwise you can get real sick real fast.”
It was supposedly a common problem with new recruits: unused to anything other than city living, they ate too much of one thing and not enough of another, depriving their bodies of essentials. It was a tricky business, learning to regulate for yourself something that had always been handled for you.
Then there was the issue with water. There wasn’t enough of it, and it wasn’t exactly clean.
Drinking water needed to be boiled beforehand (Topher stared at the open campfires, the sight of actual burning flames). Bathing, and the washing of clothes, was something of a luxury.
It was possibly best that clothes were not washed too often though since everything had to last. Raiding trips for fresh supplies were carefully limited. Everyone wore layers of rags and frayed articles held together by patches and thread.
No one had ever said living off the grid was easy life, but he never imagined that it could be this hard. He never could’ve imagined this.
He was told he would “get used to it”. Topher found small comfort in that.
And then, after the nonexistent technology, the unclean food and water, the limited textiles, there was one other thing: the diseases.
“Come on, I’ll take you to medical,” Paul had said. “We need to take care of your shots.”
Topher quivered in disbelief, his voice high and shaking. “…Shots?”
Paul gave him a hard look. “We’re in the wild,” he snapped. “No filtered air. No radiation protection. There are germs. Kinds that people don’t get in the cities anymore, illnesses they haven’t seen in years, so your immune system has no resistance built up to them.”
Paul set his mouth, grimly.
“And out here, they’ve gotten even nastier.”
Topher choked. One hand clutched firmly over his mouth to keep out the germ-ridden air, he allowed Paul to escort him to the medical tent with weak legs and trembling arms.
Paul sat him down on a thin cot and nodded his head at a woman in a tattered white trenchcoat and galoshes, evidently the medical personnel.
“Got a new one for you, Doc. Give him the usual.”
“I’m in the midst of tending to my patients.” Her back was to them as she lined up items on a tray - even through her soft-spoken voice, her irritation was palpable. “Can’t this wait?”
“Are any of them an urgent priority?” Paul asked.
“No. But-”
“Then take care of this guy first.” Topher swallowed thickly as he took in the three prone figures lying in the cots on the other side of the tent. Two of them were pale and sweating and the third had an arm and one side of his face wrapped in bandages. But Paul seemed unbothered by the sight. “None of them are going to die in the next ten minutes.”
“Are you a doctor, then?” the woman asked dryly, but Paul had already left. With a heavy sigh she turned to a nearby cabinet - and started pulling out injection tubes.
Topher resisted the urge to bolt, somehow. He reminded himself that he didn’t want to die a horrible lingering death from Viciously Mutated Jungle Flu.
The woman turned around, and suddenly Topher’s fears vanished for a moment as he took in the sight of her face.
“Whiskey?” he exclaimed in astonished recognition. Her hair was shorter, her face more tired, but other than that she was exactly the same, right down to the scars.
The woman tensed, flinching. “What did you just say?”
Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at Topher, like she was already making up her mind not to like him.
“My name is not Whiskey,” she said in a clipped angry tone. “My name is Dr. Claire Saunders.” Glancing down, she quickly snatched up her handful of injections and moved closer, busying herself with rolling up Topher’s sleeve. “You may refer to me as Dr. Saunders.”
Topher blinked.
“Oh. Let me just guess,” he sighed. “Whiskey must be a doppel, right? Caroline made friends with you when you were both groupies at the Orphanarium, and when she copied herself over as Echo she did the same for you, because of…what, your medical expertise?”
“That’s not exactly right,” Dr. Saunders said quietly. She drew a breath. “If you could please hold still, I’m going to disinfect your arm.”
Topher watched her, puzzled, as she wiped his skin down with a cloth soaked in alcohol.
“How am I not right?” he asked her, insistently curious. “What am I missing?”
She didn’t answer him, and Topher was forced to sit there cringing as she gave him no less than five injections.
Afterward, his arm felt raw and sore. Topher rubbed it, then immediately regretted that with a wince.
“Couldn’t you have numbed me first, or something?”
“We need all the painkillers we can find for real emergencies,” Dr. Saunders intoned, slightly derisive. She turned her back on him again. “You’re done.”
“Okay.” Topher was all too happy to leave the tent, with its dead cold air and smell of sickness and medicines. He hopped down and made for the exit.
But then her voice stopped him in his tracks.
“You weren’t wrong completely.” She still had her back to him, her back straight even as her head hung down. “But Whiskey, or whoever she was once, isn’t the doppel. I am.”
Topher stared at her. “You…?”
“She’s real. I’m not.” He couldn’t see her face. But he could see her hands clench. “Claire Saunders is a…a construct. A created identity I gave myself, because I had no memories.”
“That’s, well…fascinating.” In a really freaky sort of way.
“I’m sure,” Dr. Saunders ground out. Her fists clenched even tighter. “I have patients to take care of. Get out. And my advice to you is not to come back again, unless you’re seriously ill.”
Topher quickly backed out, and walked away.
*
With some difficulty Topher fell in with the Revolutionaries’ routine.
There wasn’t really much to it. Every day they sent him to work for a couple of hours at a time, checking the feed.
Topher would do the assignments he was given and not ask any questions. Mostly it was just hacking databases, gathering data. Sometimes he used encrypted streams to send messages to their allies. That was about it.
When he wasn’t on the feed he sat around, watching the camp. People went hunting or foraging or on raiding parties for food, repaired the constant stream of things that needed fixing, or practiced their combat skills.
No one offered to teach Topher how to do any of these things. He didn’t ask.
Topher got used to being cold and dirty all the time. He got used to wearing layers of old clothing that still smelled like whoever had owned them before. He got used to sleeping in a tent on the ground. He got used to the taste of watery beef stew and burned griddlecakes, and quickly grew bored of it. He never ate much but nobody seemed to notice. There wasn’t a lot to go around.
He got used to being outside, smelling the sick ever-present trace of Atmo, his face exposed and unprotected.
No one in the Revolution ever wore a breathing mask. When Topher asked about it all he got was a cynical, “Why bother?”
Breathing masks would be hard to steal, a devotion of valuable time and manpower. Meanwhile the Revolutionaries were living where they had to deal with cold and hunger and taking in toxins from half a dozen ways on a daily basis. And if they were ever caught they were criminals, likely executed on sight. There were so many ways they could die.
A few months after Topher arrived, a fever struck. It swept rapidly through the population and before long almost a third of them were sick with it. The afflicted sweated and moaned, unable to eat, too weak to stand.
From a distance Topher eyed the quarantine tents, watching as Dr. Saunders in her patched coat went from patient to patient. More than once she drew the blanket over the face of one who’d already passed, shaking her head.
The Revolutionaries’ existence was hard and dangerous. Odds were none of them would live long enough to ever be troubled by the effects of Atmo.
Topher kept to himself. He didn’t talk to the others more than was necessary. He was uninterested in making friends.
Every week or so new faces would arrive, a minuscule but steady trickle of recruits. Some were sent by Echo from the Orphanarium. Most of them were from the cities. They tumbled into the woods and looked around with big eyes, thrilling for a misadventure.
Topher began to understand why Dominic and others he’d met had such distaste for the Revolution. Their cause and motives made some sense, but they had more fanaticism than practicality. They didn’t have the resources or the organization to accomplish much of anything besides getting their own people killed.
Topher lost all his sense of intimidation once he’d seen them up close. They were mostly gullible youths just looking for something different to do.
Caroline Farrell, however, still frightened him. She was a fierce idealist, luring others to her side as cannon fodder with talk of changing the world.
Most of the actual leaders, the very center of the group, terrified Topher in one way or another. They were strong, rugged, and they all seemed at least a little bit crazy.
There was one, a man named Alpha, who wasn’t only a little bit crazy. It showed in his eyes, his sharp jagged smiles. It seemed every time Topher saw him he was holding a knife in one hand - not that Topher ever got a good look, because every time he spotted Alpha he went the other way.
With a name like that Alpha must’ve come from the Orphanarium, but no one ever explained his past.
That was fine by Topher because he didn’t want to know. Whatever Alpha’s story was, he thought he was better off not knowing the details.
Alpha followed Caroline like a mean, looming puppy. Sometimes it looked like it annoyed Caroline but for the most part she didn’t say anything about it.
Paul hated him, though. And the feeling was clearly mutual. Alpha went out of his way to goad him.
“Did Paul ever tell you about his old girlfriend, Topher?” Alpha said one day, voice cheerful. He was speaking to Topher but with fixed eyes he was watching Paul.
“Shut up, Alpha.” Paul glowered. “I mean it.”
“It’s a pretty tragic story,” the other man continued, undeterred. “Her name was November. She was from the Orphanarium, as you could probably tell. And she loved Paul.”
“That’s enough,” Paul said, warning. But Alpha ignored him.
“She followed him all the way out here, back to nature, just because she wanted to be around him. Isn’t that romantic?”
Alpha stared at him expectantly, for long enough that Topher finally had to say it. The words were thick, his voice hoarse as he managed to push them up from his throat.
“What happened to her?”
Alpha laughed. “Well!” He made a big show of looking around, grinning. “She’s not around here anymore, is she?”
Paul lunged at him. Caroline pulled the two men apart before their scuffle could escalate.
“Knock it off!” She pressed a hand on both their arms, glaring at each of them in turn. “In case you don’t remember, we’ve got bigger problems.”
Paul mumbled something but stayed back. Alpha sauntered off, giggling.
Caroline rolled her eyes - then she fixed them on Topher. He shrunk under her gaze.
“Come here. We’ve gotta talk.”
Topher moved closer with greatest reluctance. “What about?”
“New job for you, Topher,” Caroline explained shortly. “A big one.”
“It’s a package of encrypted data we want you to send out,” Paul chimed in. “On a special feed stream, so that only our allies around the world can get to it. So that only they can even find it.”
“Sure, no big.” He’d done things like this for them before by now. “What’s in the package?”
Topher felt something in him flinch in warning when Paul and Caroline exchanged a glance before answering. Like they were silently conferring on whether they should.
It was Caroline who finally spoke.
“It’s plans for a bomb.”
“It…what?” Topher stared at her, waiting for her to say she was joking.
But she didn’t. “It’s the resolution of something we’ve been planning for a long time. And with your expertise, we can finally carry it out.”
“We’ve got teams in position, in almost every major center around the world,” Paul added. “The information we’re sending them will help them know how to build the bombs, how to activate them, where to plant them to create the biggest explosions.”
“Explosions?” Topher repeated. “This is…you guys are talking about taking down entire cities!”
“Yeah.” Caroline gave him a look. “That’s kinda the whole point.”
Topher shrunk back. She reached toward him. “It’ll send a message. Don’t you get it? With the cities damaged, people won’t be able to ignore the problems anymore. They’ll have to rebuild. A strike of this size will throw the government into chaos. It’ll be the perfect opportunity to get in there, to really make people see what’s wrong and get them to change it.”
“But won’t people get hurt?”
Caroline’s gaze was cool. “Sacrifices have to be made.”
Topher pulled away. “No.”
“Topher-”
“No!” He ran away into the nearest tent, where he sat on the floor with his back to the entrance, cowered down and tried to hide.
The sound of the footsteps informed that Paul had followed him.
“I thought you wanted to help.” Topher could tell he was frowning. “I thought you wanted to make a difference.”
Topher dared a glance. “This is crazy,” he whimpered. “There has to be a better way! Is the central government really that bad that you need to throw everything into anarchy?”
Paul eyed him. Then, folding his long legs up, he sat down beside Topher.
“You want to know a secret?”
“Not really,” Topher whispered. “No.”
Paul kept talking anyway. “The poison in our atmosphere? It’s not natural. It’s not the result of a failing environment brought on by pollution. Central put it there.”
Topher stared numbly. “No,” he said. Atmo was a byproduct of the failed ozone layer, just like the heavy levels of radiation it could no longer block out. Everyone knew that. “That isn’t true.”
“It is,” Paul insisted. “Think about it. What better way to keep the population manageable? What better way to keep people under control than limit their ability to travel, the number of places they can go?”
Topher shook his head, because he didn’t want it to make sense. He didn’t want to believe. He curled in on himself, hugging his knees.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me again?” he said in an accusatory tone, remembering their first meeting. “Like with your story about the wall.”
“That was Caroline’s lie, not mine. I might have gone along with it, but it wasn’t my idea to deceive you.” Paul’s face was grim. “Reality is messed up enough as it is. No one needs to lie to make it sound worse.”
Topher looked at the ground.
“Isn’t there anything else though? Anything that’s a little less…extreme?”
Paul was losing patience. “Don’t you get it, Topher? There’s no choice anymore. Everyone who’s alive today is…well, they’re like you.”
“Like me?” Topher said, though he didn’t really want Paul to elaborate.
“Spending their lives plugged into the feed. Or into the music, at the Orphanarium. Or something else instead. Disconnected from reality, wrapped up in a dull perfect dream that keeps them safe and unthinking. Everyone’s too content to notice nobody’s really happy. Things need to change, but no one wants to.”
Paul met his eyes intently. “That’s why it has to be this way. We have to make change happen. We have to change, or we’re never going to survive.”
Topher was unable to meet the heat of his gaze.
Paul clapped a hand to his shoulder. It felt heavy, like it would crush him.
“We both know you understand it, even if you don’t want to admit it,” Paul said with certainty. “You know what you have to do.”
He got up and walked away.
Topher sat there awhile, alone, in the cold dirt and the darkness.
Drawing a breath, he stood on uneasy legs and went outside. He looked around, at the smoky campfires and rundown settlement, at the ground and the sick trees.
Topher thought about the clean brightness of the city, everything in even lines, reassuring orderliness and simple palette of whites, silvers and soft soothing colors.
He thought about the protective darkness of the Orphanarium, everything heated and hypnotic, blackness that wrapped around lit up in moments by vibrant thrumming hues.
Unconstructed things, out in nature without anyone to plan and shape them, weren’t safe or reassuring.
They were ugly to look at and confusing and troublesome. They smelled bad, and tasted bad, and were tiring and difficult. They didn’t come with any guarantees.
But, that was because they were real.
Paul was right - Topher did know what he had to do. He went across camp to the place containing his makeshift equipment.
Within a few hours the package of code was compiled, and he’d sent it out across the feed.
*
[continued]