By Popular Demand: Ten Thousand Lines

I’ve been asked to share a little more of my writing with all of you from my current project, Ten Thousand Lines.  I suppose I can do that without giving too much away!  I’m not going to set the scene or offer any context; just consider it a sample of my work.  And know this: the speakers use stark language and proper grammar.  That is how they were trained.

Are you ready?  This part is a little intense.  (Part 2 of the chapter “Snow on Dead Neighborhoods”)

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The vent above our heads is bothering AVI.  She looks at it more and more frequently when we visit the glass building.  “If the air can go out, RYE-212,” she says, “so can we.”

“Do not count on that, AVI-143,” I say.  “Even if you can get through the vent, you’ll have to get off the dome somehow.  It’s a long way down.  How do you think you will make it to the ground?”

“There has to be a way, RYE.  There has to be.”

Sometimes, her eyes fill with tears and I change the subject.  I never get used to seeing her this way.  I can barely handle my own emotions, let alone hers.  I am not used to dealing with such things.  It makes me knot up inside.

“AVI,” I say, quickly wracking my brain for something to distract her, “remember those tiny creatures we saw crawling at the base of the trees the other night?  Let’s go see if they are still there.  They were so small and funny to watch.  Come on, AVI.  Let’s go.”  I look at her with pleading eyes, but tonight she will not be distracted.

“No, RYE-212,” AVI says.  “I don’t feel much like playing tonight.  I need to make a plan.  I need to figure out how to reach the vents.”

“AVI, please,” I beg.  “The vents will still be there tomorrow.  You can plan our escape during working hours.  It is nighttime now.  It is time to be happy and free.”

“Free, RYE-212?” AVI says, raising an eyebrow.  “Who is free?  You are not free.  I am not free.  Look at us right now.  We are inside a glass building, under a gigantic dome.  A cage within a cage.  We are forced to work.  We are forced to join up with thousands of mindless, aimless Workers every day and march with them to that terrible, gray factory.  Well, you know something, RYE?  I am not going any more.  I am staying here and I will not be moved.”

AVI crosses her arms and glares at me.  A chill runs through my bones.  I know she is not playing.  I know that look in her eye—that serious, stubborn look that means she has made up her mind.  She used to have that look when she was searching for the air.  Now she wears it again.  I start to panic.

“No, AVI!” I protest.  “You can’t stay up here.  That will end things.  We will be caught.  Who knows what they’ll do to us when they catch us.  Please, AVI!  Be reasonable.  You have to come down before the sun rises.”  I shake her shoulder and look straight into her gray eyes.  “You have to.”

She turns away.  “No, RYE,” she says.  “I do not.  I do not and I will not.  You can go if you’d like, but I am staying right here.  I have had enough.”

“AVI, no!” I scream.  “Listen!  You are not going to make it through the vents.  You have not thought this through.  We will have our chance to escape; we just have to take our time.”

“When RYE?!  When will we have our chance?  This place sucks all the hope from your bones.  That,” she points to the vents overhead, “is all I have.”

I shake my head.  “No it is not, AVI,” I say quietly.  My heart is stinging.  “That is not all you have.”  I look up at the vents to distract the tears that want to form in my eyes.  I have never cried before; I do not want to try it now.  I study the vents.  The whole system breathes like a giant beast and we are standing in its lungs.  Some of the air cycles in and out of Hive 14—this is what AVI has been staring at.  These are the hopeless vents, the ones that linger far above our heads and tantalize us with snatches of outside oxygen.  But some of the air does not escape Hive 14.  Some of it gets pushed down ventilation shafts—great clear tubes that run along the top of the Hive and dump its oxygen into the factory or the train station or the power plant.  “What if we find a way into one of these air ducts?” I think for a moment, studying the clear ventilation shafts that jut away from the glass building in three directions.  “We could crawl along the ducts and somehow get to the big vents that lead outside.”  I examine the ventilation system for a while longer, but quickly shrug off my thoughts.  “No,” I think.  “There are the fans.  They would put a quick end to our mission.”  I squint my eyes at the clear ventilation shafts and see the huge fan blades whirring, long and menacing, slicing easily through the air.  “No, that’s not it.”  I rub my hand against my shaved scalp.  I can’t think of escaping right now.  It seems too daunting.  It makes me depressed.  Instead, I turn to AVI.  She is sitting on the soil and digging violently at the skin on her arm with a small tree branch.

“AVI!  Oh, AVI!  What on earth are you doing?  Are you crazy!?”

A thick river of blood is oozing from a fissure in her right arm.  It is dark red—almost purple in the dim moonlight—and it shows no sign of stopping.  I dash to her side and knock the offending hand away.  The tree branch is forced out of her grip and it hits the ground with a light thud, staring up at us innocently from the damp soil.  I grab AVI’s arm with my hand; blood seeps through the cracks between my fingers.

“Oh, AVI, AVI.  What did you do?  Why would you do such a thing?”

AVI looks at me, wide-eyed, a small, mocking smile on her face.  “Why not, RYE-212?  Why would I not do these things?  In fact,” she says, a glint passing through her eyes, “you should try it too!”

“What?  Try what, AVI?  Have you lost your mind?”

“Try it, RYE!  Try it!” she screams, scrambling to her feet.  “Dig out the feeding tubes!  Dig out the dosage tubes!  Pluck all the wires from your skin and toss them to the wind!  Come on, RYE.  Do it!  Pluck them out!  Toss them!  Toss them!”

“AVI!” I yell.  My heart is beating like it has never beaten before.  It feels like it is ready to burst through my body and land next to the tiny tree branch on the soil.  I hold my chest.  “AVI, please!” I cry.  “Be rational.  Don’t hurt yourself.  Remember how you want to escape?  How will you be able to escape if you’re injured?  Hmm?  Think about it, AVI.  Please!  Please!”

AVI is silent for a few seconds.  I am not sure she has heard me.  Her eyes seem distant and pale.  “But RYE-212,” she says eventually, “you said it yourself.  There is no escape.  It is too difficult.  Too many complications.  Isn’t that what you said?”

I swallow.  Pangs of guilt shoot through my body.  Damn it.  She’s right.  I was being pessimistic.  I was being a naysayer.  All she wanted to do was believe and I took that away from her.  “AVI,” I say, coaxing her to the ground once again and wrapping my hand around her torn-up arm, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, RYE-212?  You did not try to pull my tubes out.  That was me.  I did that.”

“I know, AVI.  I know,” I say, rocking her back and forth, one arm around her shoulder, the other gripping her forearm.

“I still say you should try it, RYE,” AVI says.  She reaches towards my arm, rolls up my jumpsuit sleeve, and starts playing with the ends of my feeding tubes.  She runs her fingers over them—one, two three.  I never think about the tubes in my arms.  Or the wires in my body.  The tubes for nutrients and dosages.  The wires for recharging my body—relaxing my muscles with their tiny impulses.  Sometimes I miss the recharge beds.  They always made me feel wonderful.  They made me feel calm and rested—ready to work another day on the factory floor.  These days I am tense and tight.  I could use a night with my recharge bed.  But I will not do it.  Not ever again.  Yes, the bed massages and the wires relax, but the dosage also flows.  I will not touch the dosage again.  Despite all the misery and pain I face in the factory every day, I refuse to go to sleep again.  I am awake.  As long as there is breath in my lungs, I will live my life awake.  They cannot take that from me.  I will not let them.  I will not…

“RYYYYE,” AVI says, still tickling my forearm, “you’re thinking heavy thoughts right now.”

I sigh.  “Yes, AVI,” I say.  “I am thinking about some serious things right now.  Sometimes I wonder if you can read my thoughts.”

AVI giggles.  “Maybe I can, RYE.  Maybe I can.”  She takes her hand off my forearm and places it across my chest, over my heart.  “It’s heavy, RYE,” she whispers.  “Very heavy.  How can you walk around with a rock in your chest?”

“I’m not sure, AVI,” I say, “but I think yours is heavy too.”

“Not right now,” AVI says.  She giggles again.  I cringe.  My AVI does not giggle.  The sound of it is unsettling.

“RYYYYE,” AVI says again.  I hate how she is saying my name right now, prolonging it, playing with it like a silly child.  She traces her finger up and down my jumpsuit over my heart.  “Come on, RYE,” she says mischievously.  “Open your chest and let me in.  I’ll help you mend.”

“AVI, you’re talking nonsense.  Now, come on.  I have to get you back down to the Worker dorms.  We can stage something to convince the Aides that you got hurt this morning.  Maybe you can pretend to fall out of bed.  Yes, that should work.  We’ll have you roll around on the floor and pretend you fell out and snagged yourself on a bedpost and—AVI?  AVI, what are you doing?”

AVI grabbed the tree branch from the ground and is scraping it along my jumpsuit—up and down, up and down, over my poor heart, which is beating crazily once again.  “AVI, what is going on?  Stop it now.  I need to take you back down to the dorms.  AVI!”

“RYE!” AVI shouts back.  “RYE, RYE!  Open your chest and let me in!  The world is terrible out here!  I want to be in there.  I want to be in there!  I want to be safe; I want to be warm.  I won’t take up much room.  I promise!  And I’ll help you mend, RYE!  I’ll help you mend!”  She is crying now, lips trembling, eyes gushing with tears.  “RYE!  RYE!  I can’t stay out here!  I can’t stay in this world.  I need to go somewhere!  I need to go somewhere!  RYE!”

AVI collapses into my arms, chest heaving with sobs.  I carry her to the short staircase near the tool shed.  I can still see smudges of red lipstick caked to the rail.  I can’t look at it for long.  It reminds me of the AVI I like to picture in my head—the carefree AVI, the ballsy AVI, the AVI who is always teaching me new things.

I set AVI down on the staircase and rock her and rock her.  I tear off part of my jumpsuit and wrap it around her arm.  I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this before.  But then again, I have never had to stem a river of blood before.  That is something new for me.  Something new.  I suppose AVI has been teaching me new things today, after all.

I look down at the crumpled bundle of flesh that I hold in my arms.  This is not AVI.  This is her shell.  This is her shivering, sobbing, shaking, manic, giggling, panicked, gray shell.  I rock it anyway.  I comfort the shell.  I take care of it because I hope AVI will come back to it.  I hope AVI is still in there somewhere, hiding away while her shell causes trouble.  “Where are you, AVI?” I whisper, stoking her buzzed scalp.  “Where are you?”

I sit and rock and beg my friend to come back to me.  My back is to the sun when it tiptoes over the horizon.

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Interested in reading more?
You can find other excerpts from Ten Thousand Lines HERE and HERE.