THE TEEN

He's lanky, long-haired, awkward and uncomfortable in his own body, the way many boys his age are. On his neck, a Christian cross tattoo snakes up from beneath his shirt collar. He catches me looking at it and says, "I know, I didn't think it'd be so obvious when I got it."

He doesn't regret getting the tattoo, he insists.

It's just that he might've done it differently, if he knew what the outcome would be.

I knew I'd fucked up. The thing with the truck. Buying it with repped cash. It was dumb. It's just that I'd started to get stir crazy, sitting around that house. It was like… my uncle's family had come in with the reps and just turned everything upside down. Just because they were in hiding, all of us had to live a double life. But nobody was doing anything with the rep. We weren't taking advantage of its power. That's why I repped the cash. I was so stupid—I didn't even realize that dollar bills had unique bar codes on them.

I know, I know.

Once THE THIEVES came back with the second rep, I saw helping to distribute reps as a chance to make up for what I'd done. And, secretly, I felt excited that we'd all agreed to start trying to spread them, instead of keeping them a secret.

That feeling didn't last long. We started hearing rumors about cops showing up and asking people questions. People began shutting the door in my face. One lady, I remember, just totally broke down in tears. She said they'd already come and taken her rep. That really spooked me. It was only a couple of days later that the feds showed up at my dad's house.

I had been out all day, giving people reps. It seemed like everybody had already heard about us. Half the people didn't even need to hear my pitch—they just welcomed me in and asked how to work the machine. The other half were afraid. This one old guy pulled a gun on me and threatened to shoot if I didn't leave.

It was probably around 3:00 p.m. when I decided to head back home for the day. Along the way, I kept getting passed by cops with their sirens blaring. It got more frequent as I got closer to the house. I started getting nervous. I looked down at my phone and nearly drove off the road when I saw a text from my dad. It just said, "Home not safe."

I remember it was unusually hot that day, but my fingers felt so cold. I couldn't think straight. I knew I needed to turn around and start driving the other direction, so I managed to do that.

About that time is when THE CUSTODIAN'S DAUGHTER called me. She had THE BOY with her, and she said they were safe. They'd been out delivering reps to people too, when the cops came to the house. She said she was pretty sure that we were the only three who didn't get caught.

I was crying, asking her where she was, and she told me to shut the fuck up. She said she'd take THE BOY somewhere safe, and that I needed to turn my phone off and head east. I figured out her meaning—they could've been listening in on us, of course.

I told her to put THE BOY on, and he sounded totally unafraid. He was trying to calm me down. He told me I needed to spread the reps as far and as wide as I could, and that he'd be doing the same.

THE CUSTODIAN'S DAUGHTER yelled at me to head for the biggest city I could.

THE BOY told me he loved me, and they hung up. It was three weeks before I heard from them again.

So the mandate was just to keep spreading the reps? Nothing more specific than that?

Yeah, but it made sense to me. I mean, up until that point, we thought that it would be easy. We figured if we distributed the reps all over the Denver area, they'd spread on their own after that. But it just wasn't working out that way.

People were scared. Once they heard about the raids that were going on, most folks just bunkered down and tried to avoid being noticed. Nobody was willing to risk losing their own rep. And the feds came in pretty fast. So as far as I could figure, nobody had made it out of the state with a rep by the time the raid on our house happened. So it was almost totally dependent on me and THE CUSTODIAN'S DAUGHTER to keep it going.

At first I was thinking that I could head for the west coast and hand out reps along the way. Like some kind of fucking Jonny Appleseed of replicators. (Laughs.)

I dropped that idea pretty fast.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The same night I left town, I pulled over at a rest stop outside of Palisade, Colorado.

There was, like, a Conoco station and this little store selling fresh peaches. I approached this truck driver and showed him the rep.

He was super interested. He said he'd heard rumors about a machine like this on the radio. So I printed out parts for a new one and showed him how to assemble it. The whole thing probably took 15 minutes.

I explained to him that I was trying to spread these things far and wide, and he seemed to understand. He pointed out that what I was doing was pretty risky—by dropping the reps off along my route, I was leaving a trail that the cops could follow straight to me.

I realized he was right. Again, I was feeling pretty stupid. Beat myself up about it for a while.

But then I decided to just get in my truck and keep driving. I was just a few miles from the Utah state border when I saw blue lights go off behind me.

I near about pissed myself. Had no idea what to do. I knew I needed time to calm down and come up with a game plan, so I decided to slow down and pull over to the shoulder.

I saw the trooper get out of his car. He looked like a highway cop to me. I started trying to calm myself down. Telling myself, "He's not a fed, he doesn't know."

He came and rapped on my window, and I must have looked pretty guilty. He asked for my license and registration, and when I handed that over he asked me if everything was alright.

I stammered out a "yes sir," and he asked what I was towing in the back of my truck. I told him, "Just some equipment," and he asked whether he could go take a look.

You had the rep in the back of the truck?

Yeah, underneath some tarp. It was pretty well tied down, but thinking back now… I guess it did look pretty suspicious.

I told the officer to help himself. I guess I could have told him I didn't consent to a search, but I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

He walked around to the back of the truck and was just about to climb up in the bed when I just couldn't take it anymore.

I floored it.

Spun out, slinging rocks and mud all over the cop.

I could see him in my mirror, just hollering and trying to get shit out of his eyes as I peeled away. He must've had some trouble getting back into his car, because I got a few hundred yards worth of head start on him before he took off after me.

I was so fucking scared. I just floored it. I had no idea how I was gonna get away from this man, and I started really freaking out when I realized that the truck had a governor on the engine—it would just sort of shut off if you tried to go faster than about 105 miles per hour.

So I was cruising along like a goddamned grandma, and the blue lights were just getting bigger and bigger in my mirrors. The guy was coming up on me, fast, and I knew I was busted.

Finally my fucking brain turned on, and I realized that if I couldn't outrun this guy, I was gonna have to try to wreck him.

The cop was probably six or so car lengths away from me when I slammed on my brakes.

He tried to dodge around to my left, but he was too late.

He slammed into the back of the truck going pretty well over a hundred.

I thought he might have ejected through his windshield—and he probably would have if his airbags hadn't caught him.

I didn't wait around to see what happened to him, I just peeled off on the first exit road I could find, probably about four miles past the Utah border.

It was a little tiny road, heading straight into the desert. I knew they were gonna be calling in the cavalry soon, so I figured I needed to take the least expected route.

I fucked around with my GPS for a minute and managed to find a pass through the mountains to my North. Mostly through this little two-lane called Seep Ridge road.

That took me all the way up to U.S. Highway 191, and from there I headed west to Salt Lake City.

Why Salt Lake?

It was an idea I got during the couple of hours that it took me to travel through the mountains.

I knew I wasn't gonna make it all the way to the west coast. My truck was fucked up, and the cops were gonna be after me. The best I could hope to do would be to deliver it to a group of people who I could trust to spread the reps on their own.

So I started thinking about who you might want to enlist to help spread something.

What qualities they'd need to have.

They'd need to be the sort of people who are willing to basically do charity work, handing out something for free.

They'd need to be comfortable knocking on doors, explaining shit to people, handling rejection.

They'd need a strong sense of duty about the whole thing.

Maybe even a little religious fervor, to motivate them even in the face of pushback from the authorities.

Oh my god. Mormons.

(Laughing.) Goddamned right, the Mormons.