Firebreak

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Weird to think how we used to live here with families like normal city people, before our families died in the war, one way or another, and we were relocated from camp to camp until we washed up in old town. I haven’t seen my family since I was eight. That’s twelve years ago. Of course, I’m not supposed to think sad things about the war dead. I’m supposed to think about how they died for free trade and liberty and American values, like they stood on the front line themselves and laid down suppressive fire on the enemy.

ONCE UPON A time I guess there was a government that did things. Once upon a time it had its own military, took care of the country’s infrastructure, education, that kind of thing. I wonder if the government would have fought the war the way the corporations do. I wonder if it would have been more careful.

“Three-plus years?” I sputter. “What’d you do?” “Domestic terrorism,” she says. “I was collecting rainwater on my roof and purifying it. Giving the extra away in the camps.

The answer is obvious enough but hits hard all the same. It’s not a reader. It’s a motion sensor. The water here is free.

Mentally I hold up the words proprietary biotech, the words machine consciousness, and try to take 22’s measure against them. But I can’t get them to stick. If B is right, I’m looking at the product of alteration, not creation. Intense alteration, with years of combat training and brainwashing and supersoldier drugs and mystery procedures I can’t even conceptualize outside of shit I’ve seen in movies. How would the end result differ?

You can’t go where you want if you don’t have rights. Which you don’t if you’re not human. Or if someone has convinced the rest of the world that you aren’t.

Say the war ends and they walk out of those glass doors free. Are they going to move into old town just to work four jobs and live in a room with eight people and end up in the rehydration clinics with the rest of us? Is there an answer here? Or has this, all of this, gone on too long for anyone to even be able to conceptualize an alternative?

We’ve been background extras in one another’s lives at best. Side-quest NPCs. And yet here they are, walking shoulder to shoulder with me. Putting their asses on the line for me. Or no. That’s not even right. Not for me. With me.

They’re famous because a corporation that controls everything wanted to sell its customer-citizens a war. Even the swords, I realize belatedly. They weren’t taught to fight with blades because it’s efficient. They were taught to fight with blades because it looks appallingly fucking cool. Weird kind of strategy to win a war, but goddamn if the image hasn’t moved billions worth of merchandise.

Writing this book felt like letting out a scream I’d been holding in for years,

I wrote this book in solidarity with all who struggle against oppression, corruption, fuckery, and greed, whatever face it wears. Let’s never stop fighting for a better world.