“We have new evidence pertaining to your guilt, 0984. It says right here that you met with a Mr. Richard Archuleta, otherwise known as 1138, on Friday, November 15, at 8:15 p.m. Mountain Time,” the man in the gray Mao suit says, pointing to a printed transcript. The transcript is obscure in the fuzzy darkness of the damp interrogation chamber. “You met in your three-bedroom home, and it clearly states here that your lovely wife, 6070, knew about the visit as well. She told us as much before she was promptly released.”
“What does that even mean?” asks Luis Noe Cuevas—that is 0984. “What does it even mean?”
“It means you’ve been lying to us, the Vanguard, the people, all along,” the man in the gray Mao suit says, grabbing Luis by the hair, and pulling his face closer to the transcript. “You’ve been involved in high crimes against the Vanguard, against the people, all along.”
“So what? So, what if I talked with Richard on Friday, November 15? It doesn’t matter anymore. It never mattered!” Luis screams at the top of his lungs, pushing away from the man in gray.
“How dare you, 0984! How dare you! The Vanguard takes these things very seriously. Very seriously, indeed. We’re talking about your crimes against the modern world, against the people, against the Vanguard.”
“I don’t care anymore! I give up! I give up!” Luis screams, this time louder than before. He feels warm tears streaming down his face and neck. His voice cracks with each exclamation. “I can’t do this anymore! Kill me! Kill me now!”
“Your fate will be a bit more painful than death, 0984. If these charges are true, and we are assuming they have not been falsified, your fate will be far more damning than mere death. Death is an easy escape for men like you. Do you know how many of your kind, the scum of the earth, I have seen scraped off blacktop or cut down from the rope they hanged themselves with? Death is the great equalizer, they say. Death is the last true judge on this earth. It is not arbitrary, it cannot be bribed, and it cannot be argued with. I disagree. I would like to think that I have been a fair judge. I must admit I was skeptical at first about your guilt. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I tried to be as neutral as one can be in these trying times, but your obstinacy has made me think otherwise. Your speech is full of half-truths, stinking lies, and circular logic that makes me believe we’ve got our man, the man who gave the old guard what they needed to try to decapitate the people’s party, THE VANGUARD, and orchestrate some of the most heinous crimes that humanity has ever seen. Too bad THE VANGUARD found out before your people could do anything. We won the war, so to speak, 0984. We will have our tomorrow, no thanks to you.”
Luis’s crumpled body is deposited in his five-by-five cell. The light from the outside world shines into the small room. Music from a nearby carnival blares; its sharp, obnoxious notes drift in through the open window, some ten feet above Luis’s head. The sounds of laughter, plodding feet, and the barking of dogs and honking of horns add to the cacophony of noise from the outside world. The world, for better or worse, has continued without Luis being a part of it.
Luis crawls from the concrete floor up to his ragged cot that smells of sweat, mildew, and piss. He steadies himself before lifting his tired and sore legs onto the cot. The slightest effort on his part brings searing pain; pain has become normal for Luis. He misses it on days when they don’t torture him. He misses it not because he is a masochist, but because it makes him feel alive, more alive than he has felt in all of his years of being in prison. It makes all the other hurts, the regrets, and the shame disappear for a few moments, even if they are indeed a few short moments.
To pass the time, Luis writes in his journal. This journal is really a large notebook he managed to sneak into the prison nearly ten years ago. The pen he writes with is worn so smooth that the labels are no longer visible and the ink, a jet black, barely comes out as Luis scribbles on the worn and yellowed pages.
> I think of you all the time. I wish I was with you. I know they have said you are no longer in the prison. I do hope you have moved on. These days I can’t help but think about better days. But these thoughts of better days are soon destroyed by the dark times, before all of this. Before I was tossed into a cell with a madman as my warden—
Luis nurses his cognac as he watches the night’s news broadcasts. Each is grimmer than the next. The political mudslinging has managed to make it to the networks. Sides are being taken and lines are being drawn. THE VANGUARD, once a radical fringe party, seems to be a serious contender against the established OLD GUARD, as they appear to be calling themselves these days.
Luis doesn’t much care for politics. He merely watches the political mudslinging to keep up to date on what the latest debates are. He’s what many would call a middle-of-the-road voter. Neither truly liberal nor truly conservative in his politics. However, he must admit that the current election has him thinking about the nation’s politics a bit more. THE VANGUARD has him scared for the future. Its antics have pushed Luis closer and closer toward the OLD GUARD—the nation’s conservative bloc.
Outside it is raining. It is a light rain, for the part of the country he lives in, a rain that some parts of the country might consider a heavy one, given their drought conditions. It is the sound of rain, the smell of it wafting through the window, the heady cognac, and the television’s noise that engulf his senses now. While his mind wanders, Helene enters the room. She says something, but Luis doesn’t catch it. She says something again. This time the sounds are punctuated by wild hand gestures.
“Luis,” Helene says. “Richard is here.”
Luis looks at Helene and nods. “Is he okay?”
“No, no he’s not. He’s got a rather nasty broken nose and black eye.”
“What?” Luis says, sitting up in his armchair. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Helene exclaims. “Come downstairs—and quick!”
Luis downs the last of his cognac and follows Helene downstairs. In the downstairs living room, Luis finds Richard Archuleta, a close friend, holding his nose with a white dishrag with red blotches as his eyes squint in pain.
“Richard,” Luis says. “Are you okay?”
Richard sighs and says, “I tried to tell Helene that it was some radicals from the Vanguard who roughed me up. I’m fine, Luis. Really, I am. It’s nothing I can’t handle. If I am going to run as MP, I’ve got to be tough about these things.”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with street thugs, though,” Luis says. “Do you want a drink?”
Richard nods. “I could use one right about now.”
Luis pours Richard his favorite, vodka, and hands it to him.
Richard downs the vodka in one gulp. Once he’s finished Richard gives Luis the glass.
“Thanks, Luis,” Richard gasps.
“What exactly were these thugs looking to do?” Luis asks, placing the empty glass on a nearby table.
“They’re trying to scare off the competition in the local elections,” Richard says. “It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before with these assholes.”
“Is it getting that bad?”
Richard nods. “Sure is. They get bolder and bolder every day. Their leader has been pushing their organization to challenge all authorities openly, even if they don’t belong to the conservative bloc.”
“What does that even mean, Richard?”
“It means they are crazy, Luis,” Richards says with a heavy sigh. “I am trying to hold things together as a moderate in Parliament, but these Vanguard, they’re just making it too hard to hold the center.”
“What happens if they take power, Richard?”
“YEAR ZERO,” Richard says. “That’s what they’re calling it. Their leader has proclaimed that YEAR ZERO will be a time of reckoning, a time when the people will have a voice once again in the Republic.”
Richard has talked about YEAR ZERO before. THE VANGUARD have promised to make a land of “milk and honey,” for the toiling masses. All of them, even their leader, wear gray Mao suits, freshly starched and ironed with machine-like precision. It is their calling card.
Their so-called “Agents of Change,” probably accosted Richard, drawing him into an unevenly matched fistfight. The Agents of Change are only the most fanatical of THE VANGUARD, willing to do anything in the name of the cause.
> When I think of you, it is during those moments when the darkness has gotten ahold of me most. I can still remember when you and I were young and in love. It was something special. Now, I worry that I am forgetting those beautiful moments. Those times we shared, HELENE—
Luis stops writing. The pain is too much. The past too much to bear, even a decade after everything transpired. He hides his notebook and pen underneath the cot’s mattress and goes to sleep.
The next day Luis is dragged out of his cell by the cyborg. The cyborg is an abnormally tall woman with grafted musculature and artificial limbs that could crush bone with minimal effort. She is unusually silent today. Usually, the cyborg talks to him. She tries to reassure him that the pain, the suffering, the endless questioning will be over soon enough. This contrasts with the damning statements of the man in the gray Mao suit—the warden of the prison.
The cyborg deposits Luis in a chair in front of the warden’s desk. They are in the warden’s spacious office. Memorabilia from THE VANGUARD decorate the walls and shelves. Pictures of his family are everywhere, something Luis despises. He doesn’t hate families or pictures, but he hates how the warden has the gall to show off his family in such a place. On the warden’s desk sits what must have been a state-of-the-art computer nearly a decade ago.
The man in the gray Mao suit, or the warden as Luis tends to call him during their little meetings, is in a fresh Mao suit. The Mao suit looks like it has been recently ironed and properly starched. Luis can even hear the suit creak as the man gestures the cyborg away.
“Luis,” the warden says. “How are you these days?”
Luis doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to talk anymore. He is done talking. He just hopes the day’s torture routine kills him, so he can finally end this miserable existence.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“Silence only damns you further, 0984.”
Luis still doesn’t respond.
“Your kind hide behind silence,” the man in the gray Mao suit says. “THE VANGUARD wants to know who else was involved in your conspiracy to overthrow the People’s Revolution. Those in THE VANGUARD are willing to commute your sentence, if you help us understand who exactly tried to commit the greatest crime in human history.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Luis says, finally speaking.
“You do,” the man in the gray Mao suit says.
“I don’t. I really don’t, warden.”
“I am not your warden, Luis,” the man in the gray Mao suit retorts. “I am the inquisitor, who has been tasked with finding out who orchestrated an attempted coup THE VANGUARD, which won legitimate elections in our fine country.”
“I still don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Of course, you do, Luis,” the man in the gray Mao suit says. “You will either divulge the information voluntarily, or we will take it from you forcibly. Your choice, 0984.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” Luis screams, before rising from his seat. The cyborg’s limb-crushing hand pushes Luis back into his seat. Luis knows that the cyborg could cause a great deal of harm to his person, so he doesn’t resist the move, although he has thought about it numerous times. Luis knows such a move will mean a quick death, but he can’t help but push away from such a death. He hopes, prays, that Helene is still out there, waiting for him.
“You do know what I am talking about, Luis,” the man in the gray Mao suit says. “WE know who orchestrated the coup, despite incredible resistance from your kind, 0984, we just want to know why you were involved. WE want to know everything, so that WE can write down the full account in the history books. WE are interested in the truth, you see. Truth is the final arbiter, not death. Truth will set you free, 0984. The truth will surely set you free.”
> I am writing tonight because I must decide. Do I tell the warden of the meeting I was privy to before everything went sideways? Do I tell him that nothing was decided, and that nothing came about of what we discussed? I feel that my time in this prison has changed my priorities. I know that I may have neglected you in the past, HELENE, but I know that I will not do that anymore. You will be my only purpose, if I get out of this hellhole. I promise you that.
Luis waits nearly three days before the cyborg comes back for him. The cyborg is quiet again—unusual to Luis. When the cyborg and Luis enter the warden’s office, the cyborg leaves before sitting Luis down.
“Come in, come in, 0984,” the man in the gray Mao suit says.
Luis obeys and walks up to the warden’s desk.
“I have some cognac—would you like some?”
Luis nods.
The man in the gray Mao suit pours Luis a small glass of cognac. He hands the glass over to Luis, who promptly downs the liquid inside and hands the glass back to the warden.
“Go easy now, Luis,” the warden says. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Where do I start?” Luis asks.
“From the beginning—ab ovo, from the egg.”
Luis straightens his tie. He hates ties. He hates suits. But all these things are necessary when meeting with the company’s shareholders. He twists the doorknob and enters the conference room. Inside he finds not the company’s shareholders, but a group of men and women in business attire. The group appears to be a mixture of people from different walks of life. He recognizes two right away—the company’s co-founders.
“Good, you’re here, Luis,” says one of the co-founders, James.
“What is going on here, James?” Luis asks.
“We’re having a meeting of the minds on important matters,” James says.
Luis sits down in an unoccupied chair, placing his briefcase on the conference table in front of him. He sits back and looks over the entire room, hoping to find more people he knows. Something doesn’t feel right about all of this.
“We are here to deal with matters of utmost importance, ladies and gentlemen,” James says. “The Vanguard is the topic for discussion tonight.”
This little speech gets the whole room talking and makes Luis nervous. The Vanguard have gotten increasingly violent as elections have gotten closer.
“The Vanguard must be stopped, at all costs,” James says. “If they are not, our way of life, our hard work, everything really, will be destroyed by this so-called Year Zero their cult leader keeps talking about.”
“What are we to do, James?” asks a woman in a black suit.
“That’s where our ace in the hole comes in,” James explains. “Our specialist, Luis Cuevas. He is our most senior analyst. His computers can run simulations that might be able to determine the best possible route. Nothing is off the table, nothing, Janine.”
Everyone starts talking again. The room is awash in a dozen conversations. The whole thing makes Luis feel uncomfortable in his own skin.
“Everyone,” James exclaims. “Everyone, please listen. We are looking at the fate of the Republic here. Everything has to be on the table.”
“What happens if the Vanguard finds out,” asks a man with a fresh crew cut in a dark blue suit. “They’ve a proven track record with violence.”
“Colonel, we are working on that as well,” James says. “Security is our utmost concern. We are not a military force and we don’t have the assets to protect ourselves.”
“That is going to complicate matters,” the colonel says. “I can look into assigning security details to our efforts, but if the Vanguard gets a whiff of what is going on, we’re going to be in for some hurt, James.”
“I know, I know,” James admits.
“What exactly is my role in all of this, James?” Luis asks.
James and everyone stop talking. It feels as if everyone’s eyes have shifted their focus to Luis.
“What am I doing here, James?” Luis asks. “I’m no politician.”
“You are our ace in the hole,” James says, repeating himself. “You are going to run as many simulations as you possibly can to see what course of action will best serve the needs of the Republic. We can’t let the Vanguard gain majority seats in Parliament. That would be disastrous to our way of life.”
“What’s not on the table?”
“What do you mean, Luis?” James asks.
“Is there anything that we are going to take off the table from the very beginning?” Luis asks.
“No,” James says.
“Even violence?”
“Even violence, Luis.”
“I don’t know if I can participate in this,” Luis says. “The Vanguard has proven they will match violence with violence. They are willing to escalate things. Are we?”
James looks over at the colonel. The colonel nods and says, “We’re surveying the military brass right now to see how deep the Vanguard’s loyalty goes within the service. From what we’ve been able to ascertain, the military will not support a change in power to the hands of the Vanguard.”
“What about those who do support the Vanguard?” Luis asks.
“They will be terminated,” the colonel responds. “The first forty-eight hours will be crucial to operations. We will have to secure the Republic’s nuclear arsenal and all military assets to prevent any kind of insurgency from forming.”
“What if we’re wrong?” Luis asks. “I’ve heard stories about the Vanguard’s support among the greater public. We could be stopping a legitimate exercise of the political will of the people of the Republic.”
“I seriously doubt that,” the colonel responds. “Our analysis indicates that the Vanguard has support in less than fifteen per cent of the overall population.”
“What if we’re wrong?” Luis asks. “It’s not the first time this has happened in the Republic’s history.”
“That’s why we’re enlisting your help, Luis,” James answers. “We don’t want to be wrong. Our associates here will provide you with all the data they have at their disposal, and you will run the simulations. We need to know what our options are.”
Luis knocks back the second cognac. It’s refreshing after drinking only the prison’s recycled water for nearly ten years.
“Be careful, friend,” the man in the gray Mao suit warns. “You don’t want to overdo it.”
Luis ignores the warden and takes a third cognac. He feels the warm fuzziness that comes with a good buzz. He can’t help but drink and talk.
“So, after the meeting,” the warden says. “You ran your simulations?”
Luis nods, holding out his glass for more cognac.
“Here’s the last of my cognac, friend,” the warden says. “Drink it and know that you will be free soon enough.”
Luis drinks the remaining cognac and hands over the glass to the warden. “I ran the damned simulations. The data came from every place imaginable. Polls. Voter registration. Government surveillance. You name it.”
“What did the simulations have to say, 0984?”
“My name is Luis,” Luis says. “Please call me by my name.”
“Sorry, 098—I mean Luis.”
“I ran the damned simulations,” Luis continues.
“You said that.”
“I know,” Luis begins. “The numbers indicated that the Vanguard could put up unimaginable resistance to anything, including a military coup that the colonel had discussed at our meeting.”
“What did you tell your superiors?”
“I told them that we needed to let things play out,” Luis responds. “I told them that was the only situation that ended well. The Vanguard’s half-life in the public with its radical social policies would only last so long.”
“Why didn’t they listen?”
“They should have,” Luis says.
“They should have. I don’t know what they did exactly.”
“You don’t?”
“I wasn’t privy to their plans,” Luis says. “I simply went home and prepared for something bad to happen.”
“And that’s where we found you,” the warden says, gesturing Luis to sit.
“Exactly,” Luis says. “You’ve had the wrong guy the whole time.”
“I doubt that,” the warden says with a smile. “We’ve had the key to the entire operation under our noses this whole time. You played an integral role in the attempted coup against the Vanguard.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Luis says, slapping his hand against his thigh.
“Of course, of course,” the warden says. “So modest, aren’t we?”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that you will never see the light of day ever again,” the warden says, again with his trademark smile. “You have helped us close the book on this—all of it.”
“You said the Vanguard would commute my sentence! You said I was going to be free!”
“Indeed, we have commuted your sentence,” the warden says. “You were going to be hooked up to the prison’s computers to have you serve a ten-thousand-year sentence in solitary confinement in the virtual world. The worst possible arrangement, given that few survive before going permanently brain dead.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Oh, but you did, 0984,” the warden responds. “You were the linchpin that held together the entire opposition. Without your deft hand, the opposition wouldn’t have reacted the way they did. They took an extreme option, something eerily reminiscent of what you ran in your precious simulations.”
“Whatever happened, I had no part in it. You must believe me.”
“Oh, I believe that you believe that you did nothing at all,” the warden says. “It is funny how things work. It’s funny how we trick ourselves into thinking that we had nothing to do with a crime. You will spend the rest of your days here, with me. You will serve your sentence like a good prisoner. And maybe, just maybe, you will have your sentence commuted again or you may be pardoned as a refined individual, repentant of your sins against humanity.”
“You can do this,” Luis says, dropping to his knees. “You can be judge and jury. This is not how the law works.”
“You, lecturing me on the law,” the warden says, standing up. “How pathetic. You and your kind had no respect for the law, and that is why the Vanguard was victorious, in the end.”
“I am to be tried without a jury of my peers?” Luis begins. “I am to be condemned by a madman?”
“I am no madman, 0984.”
“You are, too.”
“No, no I am not,” the warden says. “I am the fairest judge you will have in this lifetime, or any lifetime for that matter.”
“How can this be fair? I have been imprisoned for over ten years. I have taken each punishment, and I have told the truth every step of the way. What kind of justice is this?”
“A fool’s justice,” the warden says, laughing. “You are a fool to think that you earned some semblance of the old way’s justice. The old way of doing things is exactly how we got here. Your oligarchic colleagues tore down society. You people left millions hungry. You people left entire generations in the dust, and you speak of justice. You speak of fairness, when you were never fair to those below you.”
“I’m done with this,” Luis says. “I’m done. Kill me. Kill me now. Get this hell over with.”
Before Luis can say anything more, the cyborg comes into the warden’s office.
“I didn’t ask you in here,” the warden says.
The cyborg doesn’t say anything. She walks up to the warden and smashes in his skull with her artificial hands. The crunch of bone causes Luis to vomit. Before he can react, the warden’s dead body bleeds out onto the carpeted floor of his office.
“Do you want to see what happened to the world after you left it?” the cyborg asks, wiping the blood from its hands.
Luis nods.
The cyborg grabs his hand and leads him through a maze of hallways and doors and staircases. When the cyborg reaches a large airlock, she lets go of Luis’s hand.
“I had enough of his lies,” the cyborg says.
“What do you mean?”
“You will see.”
The cyborg swipes an access card across the card reader next to the airlock’s door. The door swings open slowly, and a bright, searing light pierces the damp darkness of the prison.
“You will see that the world has changed significantly,” the cyborg says. “You will not recognize the new world.”
“What do you mean?”
Luis and the cyborg exit the blast door and step out into the bright sunlight. A heavy gust of wind nearly knocks Luis off his feet. The cyborg sees this and offers a hand. Luis takes it to steady himself.
The world before him is a limitless desert. The skies are a deep sepia, and the sun a deep maroon. Thick, dark thunderheads sit above the horizon to the north. Buildings are no longer freestanding, but toppled over, smashed into rubble, pulverized into dust.
“What happened?” Luis asks.
“We did,” the cyborg says. “Humans are a destructive lot. I joined the Vanguard thinking we were building the future. I never knew I’d be a prison guard as the world ended.”
“What are we to do now?”
“We must rebuild, Luis,” the cyborg says. “All of us must rebuild.”