UnSouled

“Tell me again,” Sonia says. “Every last bit of it!”

Janson is happy to oblige, because it was the kind of meeting worth reliving. He wishes he had found a way to record it. He tells her once more of how he went into the office of the president of BioDynix Medical Instruments and presented to him what he considers to be “his life’s work”—just as he had presented it to Sonia a few days before.

“And he had vision enough to see the ramifications right away?”

“Sonia, the guy was sweating with greed. I could practically see fangs growing. He told me he needed to speak to the board and would get back to me—but even before I left the building, he called me back in to make a deal.”

Sonia claps her hands together, having not heard that part before. “How perfect! He didn’t want you to show it to his competitors.”

“Exactly. He made a preemptive bid on the spot—and he didn’t just buy the prototype; he bought the schematics, the patent—everything. BioDynix will have the exclusive rights!”

“Tell me you went straight to the bank with the check.”

Janson shakes his head. “Electronic transfer. I confirmed it’s already in our account.” Janson takes a sip of champagne; then he leans forward and whispers, “Sonia, we could buy a small island with what they paid for it!”

Sonia smiles and raises her champagne glass to her lips. “I’ll be satisfied if you just agree to take a vacation.”

They both know it’s not about the money. As it was once before, it’s about changing the world.

Finally they order, their champagne flutes are refilled, and Janson raises his glass in a toast. “To the end of unwinding. A year from now it will be nothing but an ugly memory!”

Sonia clinks her glass to his. “I see a second Nobel in your future,” she says. “One that you don’t have to share with me.”

Janson smiles. “I will anyway.”

The meal comes—the finest they’ve ever had, on the finest evening they’ve ever shared.

It isn’t until the following morning that they realize something’s wrong . . . because the building in which they work—which had been named for them—is no longer the Rheinschild Pavilion. Overnight the big brass letters above the entrance have been replaced and the building renamed for the chairman of Proactive Citizenry.

30 • Hayden

Hayden Upchurch ca

“Why am I at a harvest camp if I’m overage?” he had asked his jailers after he had been deposited there along with the rest of the holdouts from the Communications Bomber at the Graveyard.

“Would you rather be in prison?” was the camp director’s only answer. But eventually Director Menard couldn’t keep the truth to himself—the truth being so delectably sweet.

“About half the states in this country have a measure on this year’s ballot that will allow the unwinding of violent criminals,” he had told Hayden with an unpleasant yellow-toothed grin. “You were sent to a harvest camp in a state where it’s sure to pass and will go into effect most quickly—that is, the day after the election.” Then he went on to inform Hayden that he would be unwound at 12:01 a.m. on November sixth. “So set your alarm.”

“I will,” Hayden had told him brightly. “And I’ll make a special request that you get my teeth. Now that you good people have had my braces removed, they’re ready for you. Of course, my orthodontist would suggest you wear a retainer for two years.”

Menard had just grunted and left.

It boggles Hayden that he’s been labeled a violent criminal when all he tried to do was save his life and the lives of other kids. But when the Juvenile Authority has a grudge against you, it can spin things any way it wants.

A year and a half ago, when Co

Apparently, the Juvenile Authority had learned from its mistake, and for Hayden they went about things differently. With Hayden’s Unwind Manifesto still getting more hits online than a naked celebrity, they needed to damage his street cred.

Like Co

Now when he’s walked through the dining room, the kids boo and hiss, and his escort of guards—who at first were there to make sure he didn’t escape, or tell anyone the truth—now are there to protect him from the angry mob of Unwinds. It’s a masterful bit of manipulation that Hayden might appreciate were he not the butt of the joke. After all, what could be lower than a traitor to the traitors? Now, thanks to Menard, Hayden will leave this world shamed on all possible fronts.

“I won’t bother taking your teeth,” Menard had told him. “But I may put your middle finger on a key chain, to remind me of all the times you’ve flipped it at me.”

“Left or right?” Hayden had asked. “These things are important.”

But as summer pounds inexorably toward autumn and his postelection unwinding, Hayden finds it harder and harder to make light of personal impending doom. He’s begi

31 • Starkey

There’s an unwind transport truck on a winding road on a bright August day, and although it’s painted in pastel blues, pinks, and greens, nothing can hide the ugliness of its purpose.

The northern Nevada terrain is arid and rugged. There are mountains that seemed to see where they were headed and gave up before they were fully pushed forth from the earth, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. Everything in the landscape is the neutral beige of institutional furniture. Now I know why tumbleweeds roll, Starkey thinks. Because they want to be anywhere else but here.

Starkey sits shotgun beside the driver of the transport truck. Although today it should be called “riding pistol,” because that’s the weapon he has pressed to the driver’s ribs.

“You really don’t need to do this,” the driver says nervously.

“This thing is bigger than you, Bubba. Just go with it, and you might actually live.” Starkey doesn’t know the man’s name. To him all truck drivers are Bubba.

As they come down into the valley toward Cold Springs Harvest Camp, Starkey gets a good view of the facility. Like all harvest camps, its calculated attention to design is part of the crime, putting forth an illusion of tranquillity and comfort. At a harvest camp, even the building where kids go in and never come out could be as inviting as Grandma’s house. Starkey shudders at the thought.

The builders of Cold Springs Harvest Camp tried to take architectural cues from its surroundings, attempting a natural Western look—but a huge oasis of green artificial turf in the midst of stucco buildings is a glaring reminder that there is nothing natural about this place at all.