Ximena is not a frequent consumer of commercial dreamsensos, so she must make a conscious effort to see with her own eyes what her mind is psych-linked to: a teenage girl, wearing a dark tunic that makes her virtually invisible. Her dark skin and short, wild hair melt seamlessly with the night. She moves with determination towards a window covered with exquisite stained-glass motifs.
The girl smashes the glass with a rock, and stays put, looking around for a few seconds, until silence returns.
“Don’t worry,” Miyagi says. “Edda’s accomplice is faking a wound to distract and lure the guard away. Edda has a few minutes for herself.”
As the psych-link strengthens, Ximena feels a surge of adrenaline and a simple thought—hurry!—that isn’t her own.
The girl—Edda—climbs through the ruined window. It’s dark, and there is an unpleasant smell in the air, like too many perspiring people without ventilation. She fetches a bulky, metallic flashlight from within her tunic’s folds. It feels heavy in her hand, as she turns it on and slides the weak light beam across the room: a mix between a laboratory and a morgue.
I’m in! The thought flashes through Ximena’s mind as intimately as a lover’s whisper. She lets the stream of thoughts drown her own. She is finally in the forbidden backroom of the Joyousday House! The proof has to be here, somewhere! Goah, she has but a minute, perhaps two if Aline is really convincing with her bogus injury. But better hurry—Aline’s such a terrible liar.
Edda waves the beam of light across the four bed-sized platforms that take up the better part of the room, the light reflecting off their shiny metallic surface. They look like dissecting platforms, Ximena thinks—a thought of her own. As Edda inspects the last platform, the light beam reveals a body.
A breathing body. A naked man in his mid-twenties. Eyes open. Silent.
Ximena jumps from fright. Edda doesn’t. She just stares at the man for a long moment, waiting for a reaction that never comes.
“Hello?” she finally says. The words rumble in the silence.
No reaction.
She approaches the man, who keeps staring at the ceiling like she wasn’t there. Then she recognizes him.
“Elder Meerman! Are you okay?” Edda waves a hand across his line of sight.
No reaction.
“This is Edda. Your evening-school Juf two years ago?”
Nothing.
Edda inspects the platform which seems inhumanly cold under the exposed body. There are traces of feces around his buttocks. Somebody is taking care of him, but not thoroughly enough.
Edda waves the beam of light at his green eyes. The irises dutifully contract.
What have they done to you? Edda gulps and gathers her thoughts. She was there, like most in the colony, to bid Elder Meerman farewell in his Joyousday. That was, er, ten days ago? Two weeks max? And he was the happiest and liveliest man in the party. Look at you now.
Ximena can feel Edda’s pity and anger rising up her own guts.
There’s only one explanation, Edda thinks.
Poison.
So simple.
She knew it all along, and by Goah she is going to uncover the truth. Dem is not a disease. Dem doesn’t really exist. Never did. Just a myth, drilled down for generations by Quaestors and the rest of the hierarchy of aws Head. Just a lie to keep people compliant. Yes, good old hunger for power. It is so simple, isn’t it? Administer dumb-making poison to every adult when reaching twenty-seven years of age. Adorn with an involved ritual—the Joyousday—to give it a shell of religious legitimacy. And the result? A compliant population, forever young and, crucially, too ignorant to ask the hard questions. Well, she sure as Dem is going to ask them! But she needs evidence. She needs—
“Who’s there?!”
Edda—and Ximena—jump at the sudden shout. There is a man behind the only door to the room. The guard. Fuck, Aline. Too early!
“I know you’re there,” the guard says. His steps are closing in. “Don’t move!”
Quick, she needs proof, or it will all be for nothing. Goah’s Mercy, where would they keep the…? She frantically turns the beam of light towards the other platforms. Nothing, they are empty.
The guard pushes the door, but it doesn’t budge. Thank Goah, it’s locked. The guard begins to fumble with a set of keys. No time!
Edda turns her flashlight to the white laboratory cupboards lining the walls. Are those…? She runs toward the nearest shelves, where a neat line of transparent vials hold some sort of thick-looking liquid.
The door blasts open. The guard stands there, panting, dumbfounded, staring at her flashlight not five meters away.
No, no, no. She must have the evidence!
“Freeze! Who are you?!”
With a swift, almost instinctive move, Edda aims the beam of light squarely at the guard’s eyes.
“What?!” He flinches his head away.
It’s just an instant. That’s all she needs. Edda reaches to the shelf, precise and quick like a reflex. Before her conscious mind even realizes it, she is pulling a vial into the inner folds of her tunic.
“Juf Edda?” The guard stares at her, gobsmacked. “Is that you?”
“Man Kamphuijs,” Edda meets his gaze matter-of-factly. “Now I see why you never have time to finish your homework.”
The floating dreamsenso scene changes abruptly.
Right there, floating above the students, Edda is sitting, elbows on knees, inside a small windowless cell. The cell is mostly empty, except for the bed she is sitting on, a toilet in the corner and a dim electrical bulb hanging from the ceiling. She is wearing the same dark tunic, gaze lost in some point on the wall.
“This is a few hours afterwards, in the morning,” Miyagi says, unnecessarily, since Ximena knows it already as the psych-link to Edda is still active. She can feel her boredom. And her impatience. “Edda has been put in jail, of course.” Miyagi’s voice rises from where Ximena knows he is standing on the amphitheater stage, but she cannot see him in the darkness beneath the floating scene.
