Undivided

“You may feel unsettled by a sudden inability to breathe. Do not be alarmed; the need for you to breathe is no longer required.”

Perhaps it’s the anesthesia, but a sense of calm begins to come over him. Instead of the despair of things slipping away, Co

“We will soon be ending the audiovisual portion of your experience. Let me take this opportunity to say what a pleasure it has been to serve you, Connor Lassiter, on your special day.”

He stops imagining the parts of himself that he can no longer feel, and focuses on what he still can, living within each moment until the moment is gone. Until the beat of his heart is a memory. Until the memory is a memory. Until the core of all that he is, is split like an atom, releasing its energy into a waiting universe.

56 • REM.

Do the Unwound dream? There, in the chill twilight between being, and being part of another, does an Unwind’s fragmented mind struggle to bridge the distance? To the Unwound, that distance must be greater than the space between stars.

Still, if they live, as the law insists they do, they must dream just like everyone else. Many of the “traditional living” insist they don’t dream, but that’s only because they refuse to remember their own surreal worlds of rewound hopes, fears, and memories.

•  •  •

For Risa, the night that follows Co

“They’ve unwound him,” she tells Sonia between tremors. “They’ve unwound Co

“I know, dear, I know.” Sonia’s voice is sympathetic and comforting, but all of that comfort is swallowed by the pit of Risa’s distress.

“Sometimes,” says Sonia, “the random events I spoke of work against us, and there’s nothing to be done.”

“I have to get the printer!” Risa insists over the din of clocks and crashes. “It’s what he would want.”

“Not your concern anymore,” Sonia tells her, “but rest assured, dear, I’ll fight the good fight as long as I have air left in these lungs.”

And Risa finds herself filled with an even deeper anguish, for she suddenly realizes that there is no air left in Sonia’s lungs. She’s already dead. Their attacker was not the kind of man to leave witnesses.

“Don’t forget that Co

The ground shakes again. Chandeliers overhead tinkle, threatening to plunge, and suddenly something else in the antique shop comes into focus. The eighty-eight faces of Divan’s dread instrument now loom behind Sonia.

“Something the matter, dear?”

But before Risa can speak, all the eyes open in unison, to stare her down in mute accusation.

She bolts awake unable to catch her breath, finding herself alone in a dark airborne night, rife with turbulence.

•  •  •

Cam’s dreams, usually more disjointed than the dreams of others, coalesce tonight out of the meaningless memory snippets of his internal community, into something almost tangible. Before him is a marble staircase that seems to have no end. He climbs it until reaching a temple, a gleaming white Parthenon, its pillars evenly spaced and perfectly carved. The whole structure seems to be of one piece, as if it were hewn right out of the stone of the mountain. Inside, larger than life, are golden statues to the gods of Proactive Citizenry, and there, at the far end, is a statue of Roberta.

“Lay yourself on my altar,” she commands. “The blood of many must be spilled, and you, Cam, hold the blood of many.” Her voice is so compelling, Cam doesn’t know how much longer he can resist it.

•  •  •

Grace dreams that she’s on the diving platform again—the one she refused to leap from as a child. Only this time, it’s so high, she’s at cruising altitude. Argent is down below, urging her to jump, but she can’t because she has a baby in her arms. Someone storked her a baby. Why would someone do that to her? She nears the edge of the platform, and as she does, she realizes it’s not a baby in her arms at all. She’s holding the organ printer.

“Jump, Gracie,” yells Argent, too far away to be seen. “You’re ruining it for everybody.”

And so, holding on to the printer, she leaps toward a pool so far below, it seems the size of a postage stamp.

•  •  •

Lev’s dream is far simpler than any of the others on this night. He finds himself in the yellowing treetops of an urban park, above the park bench on which he actually sleeps. In his dream, he leaps weightless from limb to limb until there’s nowhere left to go, because the trees give way to an expanse of water. So he holds tightly to the last tree, watching the light of the moon dance on the waters, his eyes drawn to the statue on its own little island in the harbor, knowing that dawn will come all too soon.

57 • Broadcast

“Friends, it is with deep, deep regret that I inform you that the Parental Override bill has just been passed by the House of Representatives, and is now on its way to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass. For those of you living under, hiding beneath, or being smashed in the head by a rock, this means that the Juvenile Authority is one step closer to being able to go into a home—any home—and round up anyone between their thirteenth and seventeenth birthdays, and have them unwound without parental consent. All they’ll need to do is prove ‘incorrigibility,’ by a loose legal definition.

“The good news here—if any of this can be called good news—is that Parental Override is still just a bill. It still needs to pass in the Senate, and be signed into law by the president. But I assure you it will become the law of the land if we don’t do something to stop it.

“Today I don’t speak to the supporters of Parental Override. I don’t speak to its opponents, either. I’m talking to those of you out there who are sitting silently, allowing this to happen. All of you out there who know it’s wrong, but are too terrified of clappers, and the angry kids on your corner, and maybe even your own kids to speak out against it. You think it’s out of your hands, but that’s not true! These things aren’t happening because of some government conspiracy. I mean, sure, big-money interests are trying to push it through, but there’s always big money lobbying for influence in Washington. That’s nothing surprising, and nothing new. No, if this happens, we made it happen. We chose fear over hope. We chose to beat our children into submission. Is that the world you want to live in?

“The bill won’t worm its way to a Senate vote until November, which means we will get a chance to have our say. Now, more than ever, we need to rally. Remember—we meet at dawn on Monday, November first—All Saints’ Day—on the National Mall, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. Whether we have ten in our uprising, or ten thousand, we need to make our voices heard. Or the next time someone hears your voice, it might be in someone else’s throat.”

58 • Jersey Girl

The ferry to Liberty Island has not changed much in a hundred years. Newer boats, perhaps, but even the new ones look like something from a bygone era. There was talk about building a subway line underneath the bay that co