He headed to his alarm station outside the Collective office. He stood and stared at the black office door, his breath slowing as the benzo kicked in. Blue-clad Watchers and black-clad Drivers came in and out the black door, then the night shift Workers walked past him, leaving their Upcycle or Solar Panels or Compost stations to go back to their rooms. The Catchment Workers were easiest to spot, with their wet hair and faces. Thio searched for Tara, since this was her shift—looked for her short frame and dark eyes, her slightly faded badge that read: Worker 5223. But she wasn’t with them.

  When a Driver came to relieve him, Thio asked them what was happening but got only silence. Before going to the canteen for breakfast, Thio made a beeline for Tara and Marcus’s room, but when he got there, he saw two Drivers in front of the door. Thio kept walking, eyes down, back to his own room. When he got there, his roommate pulled him inside.

  “Five of them! Busted out.”

  “Who?”

  “Worker 5400 for sure. Pendejo, what’s out there besides fire and a shit-ton of grief?”

  Thio’s chest seemed to squeeze in around his ribcage. He rubbed hard circles over his sternum, willing the benzo to last, to loosen the tightness.

  “You all right?” his roommate asked.

  “I just need to lie down.”

  Thio lay down on his bed, wondering, Is she gone? He blinked furiously, not wanting to cry. The last time he’d cried was after his mothers died, before he and Tara had come here. Before all of this. Crying just made him feel tired and shitty afterwards and never brought anything or anyone he loved back.

  As he lay there, the lights in their room went out, and his roommate said Shit, not again, but Thio was grateful for the sudden dark.

  Tara and her father had been friends with Thio’s family in a tiny foothill town, once green and tree-full when snowmelt from the Sierras was steady, now brown and brittle, easy tinder for the fast wildfire that killed Tara’s father. No one could locate her next of kin, so Thio’s mothers took her in. A decade later, his mothers died when the tornado of ’47 tore through the solar factory they worked in, sending him and Tara to a refugee camp full of orphans. Tara was eighteen, a depressed, insulin-dependent diabetic; Thio was nineteen with mild anxiety disorder that made it hard to breathe sometimes, though he found that staying busy and especially doing things for other people helped him stay calm, gave him something to focus on besides the tightening in his chest. After the tornado, Tara cried constantly and slept almost all the time, and kept “forgetting” to take her insulin injections, making her loopy and shaky. If she went without for more than a day, she could slip into a coma and die.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore. My Daddy’s gone, now your Moms,” Tara said between sobs.

  “You can’t, you promised,” Thio said, his heart racing as he readied the syringe. When Tara’s eyes focused and her cheeks became less pale after the shot, his heartbeat slowed to normal. Days later, when she ran out of insulin, Thio went to the medical tent to get more, but they were all out.

  “But she needs it,” Thio said, his pulse quickening again.

  “There’s this place, the Collective, eighty miles north,” the med-tech told him. “We’re driving there tomorrow.”

  “Is it a hospital or something?”

  “Sort of. You can get a job there if you want, even live there. They make all our insulin, other meds, too. It’s pretty self-contained. Solar power, bike generators, all that. Not a bad place, I’ve heard.”

  The closest Cities were closed to newcomers, and they had no family or friends who could help. So Tara and Thio got dropped off the next day. The Collective offered everything they needed: three meals, ninety minutes of outdoor Sunlight each day, two hours of Playtime once their work was done. And most important, meds for depression, anxiety, PTSD, diabetes. Tara got her insulin and SSRIs; Thio was given benzos to keep him steady.

  Most of the people there were Workers: they weeded, planted and harvested the gardens; worked in the solar panel assembly line; picked apart old electronics for salvageable copper, silicone chips, other metals; made food and cleaned the place. Watchers and Drivers were less numerous but kept things steady, safe. The Watchers used their voices and psychological training to de-escalate situations. The first time Thio saw a Watcher talk a Worker out of a crying jag without using meds, he thought, I want to do that.

  Drivers used Safety Sticks and force when necessary to keep things under control. The Collective members ran everything from behind that black office door but were rarely seen in person, only on screens. The Collective was a warm, dry, safe place where Thio and Tara could be together. They shared a room, and everyone assumed they were brother and sister. Thio made sure Tara took her insulin and ate enough, and she made him feel less alone now that his mothers were gone, and the only home he’d ever known was more than a hundred miles away.

  10 December 2050

  That afternoon, after his work shift, Thio got called into the Collective office. The last time he’d been inside had been for his Watcher interview, which was also the last time he’d been hooked up to a monitor, so they could check his heart rate and brain activity in response to various onscreen images—his final exam for Watcher training, to make sure that he could control himself, that his medication was at the right dosage. As far as Thio knew, everyone, from Drivers on down to Workers, was on some kind of medication. He wasn’t sure about the Collective members, but then again, he’d only seen one in person once or twice. The rest of the time they were onscreen, and it was possible those images hadn’t even been of real people. There was no way to know for sure.

  He sat in the Collective office facing a wall of six screens, a table with a square hole in the middle in between him and the screen wall. Only half the screens were on—no doubt due to the energy reserves being low because of the storm, since the solar couldn’t replenish them as quickly until the sky cleared—and each displayed a different video: furry calico kittens climbing over each other in a box, their cat-mother sitting nearby; orange-red flames licking black trees at night; the main gate view of an empty road, slightly hazy through the steady drizzle of rain. Every video was soundless.

  Thio’s eyes flicked back to the wildfire for a moment, then to the kittens, then back to the fire. His heartbeat quickened. Kittens, he decided. He settled his eyes on the fuzzy creatures, waiting for his pulse to smooth out. Soon, a melodic voice filled the air.

  “Watcher 302. I’m Shauna.”

  A woman’s head materialized on the kitten-screen, an oval face above bare shoulders, skin the color of pale sand. Her black hair was tied back severely, her green eyes gazed at him. She appeared to be naked, though Thio could only see from her shoulders up, but the suggestion of what was offscreen made him sit up straighter.

  “Hello,” he said, and smiled.

  A glass of water popped up from the square hole in the table. Thio picked up the glass and sipped: clean, sweet water. Usually the water at the Collective was slightly gritty and metallic tasting. Shauna smiled at him.

  “We have your favorite today, Watcher 302. Real chicken and greens.”

  A metal plate piled with food emerged from the hole, and Thio dug in without hesitation, his fingers tearing the meat from the bone and stuffing it into his mouth. When he was done, Thio pushed his plate away, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Thank you.” He took another sip of water.

  “Watcher 302, what can you tell me about Worker 5223?”

  Thio tried to keep his face blank, but Shauna’s eyebrows lifted anyway.

  “She used to be my roommate. My friend.” He didn’t know how else to describe his relationship with Tara. Sweat broke out in his armpits. Was Tara gone, dead, hurt?

  “Do you know why she would want to leave us?”

  Thio wet his lips with his tongue. “She tried to leave?” He attempted to put a surprised lift at the end of his question. If Shauna had put a monitor on him, she would know he was lying.

  “Workers 5400, 5494, 5495 and 5571 all left last night. Worker 5223 was with them but was detained.”

  “Oh,” Thio exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding his breath.

  “Anything you could tell us would be appreciated. It would help us help Worker 5223.”

  “Is she all right?” Thio asked.

  “No injuries. She’ll be fine.”

  Thio couldn’t bring himself to ask more questions, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers.

  “It’s unfortunate that she tried to leave. She may have gotten hurt. If she tries it again—” Shauna stopped, and a promise seemed to linger in the absence of her voice.

  “What will happen if she does?” Thio asked, quietly.

  “She will likely be Rehabbed.”

  Thio swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He wanted to drink more water, but something kept him from reaching for the glass.

  “I thought Rehab was just for people who are—”

  “Violent? Most of the time,” Shauna said, nodding sympathetically. “But we must keep people safe. Sometimes from themselves. You agree that Tara can’t take of herself alone?”

  Thio nodded, though part of him didn’t want to. What he wanted to say but didn’t was, I can take care of her.

  “And you don’t know why she would want to leave us, then, Watcher 302?” Shauna’s image seemed to shimmer slightly. Thio shook his head. Another lie.”

  “I see. Well, there’s one other thing I wanted to ask you. Have you ever Watched a Rehab Worker before, Watcher 302?”

  “No, not that I know of. I thought they didn’t need Watching?” Rehabs had gone through an intensive process to decrease their stressful or negative neurological responses, and it was so successful at changing their behavior that they often functioned with little supervision.

  “We have a new Rehab who needs some TLC,” Shauna said. “I’m more than confident in your ability to take care of her. Worker 6810.”

  “All right,” Thio said.

  Shauna's mouth stretched into a wide smile, her teeth white and even. Thio brought the glass of water to his mouth and drank every drop.

  During Thio and Tara’s second summer at the Collective, they got a roommate: Marcus, Worker 5400. He had a brilliant smile that made others perk up and warm brown skin that older Workers called cinnamon, though Thio didn’t know what cinnamon looked like, only how it tasted, from when it was added to the otherwise bland gruel that was their daily staple. On the other hand, Tara and Thio’s complexions were the color of eucalyptus bark, though Tara’s straight, blue-black hair made her striking while Thio’s wavy brown hair made him common, forgettable.

  At first, Thio resented how Tara ogled Marcus and giggled whenever he said something even remotely funny, though he was funny, and had a pretty, contagious laugh. He was the first person at Camp besides Tara whom Thio thought of as a friend, someone he looked forward to talking to at the end of the day. After a while, he didn’t even mind that Tara was so into him. Thio had been growing weary of her clinginess and mood swings—though her meds kept them in check most of the time—and was glad she had someone else to latch onto.

  The three of them began eating meals together, screen-sharing during Playtime, even having sex together in their off-hours. Thio relished being held by not just one but two familiar bodies, and it didn’t take long before he learned the most pleasurable ways to mold his limbs around Marcus’s rough angles and Tara’s smooth curves. Though Thio and Tara had slept with other people together before, with Marcus it felt more natural, relaxed. Thio didn’t even mind when the two of them slept in the same bed while he went back to his own. He’d never liked sharing a bed with anyone, but Tara had always craved it. Win-win for all.

  Thio wasn’t too choosy about sex and learned early on that the Collective looked the other way when people traded it for favors. Like the piece of roast chicken he found in his room after he’d blown a Driver in a hidden corner of the yard one afternoon. Or the Watcher who—after Thio had sex with him in a camera-blind hallway—gave him a backdoor login to the database that, once he became a Watcher himself, he could use to access files beyond his own Workers’, which was how he found out that Marcus hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t need and wasn’t on any meds.

  Lucky shit, Thio thought.

  11 December 2050

  During his next shift, Thio walked around his new charge, Worker 6810, newly Rehabbed and assigned to him, in the Play Room. She reminded him of one of his mothers, though her hair was all gray, and her nose less flat. He observed how she touched the small flat screen of the tablet in her hands, as if she wanted to make sure that it was real. Thio had given her a nice screen to play with: intact casing and bright light, just a few small cracks veining one corner. Onscreen, a man surrounded by an icy landscape. No sound. Her file had said she shouldn’t have audio, only moving images, light, colors.

  Thio glanced at her vitals: her pulse rose from 75 to 86, well below the 100 BPM threshold that would require action. Even though she was Rehabbed, he had to watch out for any sign of distress that would lead to destructive behavior. Some people threw screens across the room, others began weeping uncontrollably. Thio stood a few feet away, monitoring her voice through an earpiece and her vitals on the dashboard screen that floated out from plastic rods attached to his waist.

  Worker 6810 was watching a video of a mountain-climbing man, his eyebrows caked with ice. The background jolted around while the man's face stayed steady in the center.

  Yosemite? Thio wondered, though he'd heard it no longer got snow since the Long Dry. The man night be long dead. Worker 6810 touched the man’s onscreen face. She had another hour before she had to go back to her workstation, Recycle, where she was likely assigned to stacking crates or moving things from one location to another. Rehabbed Workers tended to do simple, repetitive tasks. Anything more was too challenging. Her file said that she had been Rehabbed after trying to stab her roommate, but nothing in her face or body showed any kind of tension or violence.

  Worker 6810 cradled the tablet in her hands as if it were a baby animal, and soon her shoulders started to bounce up and down slightly, her head bent forward, small crying sounds coming through his earpiece. Her heart rate dip to 75. Thio typed in her file: Showed release and relaxation signs during mountain-climbing video. He checked off crying, rated it a three on the one-to-ten scale. Three was mild. Six prompted meds. Eight, the Worker was rushed to Wellness. Her pulse smoothed out, and a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. From his Watcher training, Thio knew crying could release tension, but he hated doing it. Still, Thio liked being a Watcher. It gave him focus, a purpose. No matter what Tara said or did, Thio had made the right decision.

  At the end of her Playtime, Worker 6810 handed Thio back her screen and thanked him, though her words came out slightly slurred. Could be a side effect of the medication, or the Rehab process. But her eyes seemed brighter, clearer. Still, there was something about her that didn’t seem right to Thio, and though he smiled at her, when he watched her walk away, he noticed how she walked slowly, and had to be redirected more than once by the other Watchers. He’d never asked what Rehabbing entailed exactly. Perhaps it was better not to know.

  When his shift was over—no power outages, thank goodness, or his Workers might have pitched a fit, and it was harder to help them in the dark—Thio handed his gear to the next Watcher and walked towards the Play Room exit, past other Watchers observing other Workers, some of them sitting in pairs, screen-sharing. He used to do that, with Tara, and then Marcus and Tara together. It seemed like a long time ago. When he got to the exit, he swiped his pass to open it. But as soon as the door slid shut behind him, he saw her, standing there. Waiting.

  By the time the searing heat of summer gave way to the more tolerable fall, Marcus and Tara were spending more and more time together without Thio. They had been talking more and more about going back Outside to find Tara’s mother, and Thio was getting tired of hearing about it.

  “I can understand wanting to know her, but you don’t even have a picture,” he told her.

  “I remember what she looks like. I can describe her to people. I need to know if she’s out there.”

  “There’s road-pirates out there, too, and it’s almost wildfire season.”

  “We’ll find my mom, a place to live. Have kids,” Tara said, snuggling against Marcus on his bed, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, right,” Thio scoffed.

  “Is this what you want for the rest of your life, Thio?” Marcus said, gesturing around the sparse, blank-walled room. Tara kissed him.

  “Where? You can’t survive without your insulin, Tara.”

  “I’m the diabetic, not you. Anyway, I found a cooler in Recycle, hid it from the Drivers. We could stockpile insulin, enough for a week or more, and ration it so it lasts longer.”

  “Both of you, loco,” Thio said. “You won’t last a week Outside.”

  “You just need to find someone, Thio,” she said authoritatively, as if she knew something that he didn’t. Thio got up and left the room, suddenly wanting to escape Tara and Marcus’s wet kissing sounds, and their private laughter that excluded him.

  Not long after, Thio requested a room transfer. Not only did he receive it, but he also got an invitation to apply for Watcher training. By then he was a Solar supervisor, and the Collective said he showed leadership potential. He felt a swell of pride when he saw the invitation. Here was something he could look forward to. Tara didn’t need him now, clearly. He needed something to do, someone to take care of.

  “You don’t have to go,” Tara said tearfully the day that Thio packed his things: a few plastic-framed pictures of his mothers and of him and Tara, an old blanket, some books.

  “I’ll see you during Sunlight, and at dinner sometimes.” Thio noticed her red-rimmed eyes and trembling lower lip.

 

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