Blood, Ink & Fire Read online

  Blood,

  Ink &

  Fire

  ASHLEY MANSOUR

  UPTURN PUBLISHING

  A DIVISION OF UPTURN PRODUCTIONS, LLC

  UPTURN PUBLISHING

  Upturn Productions, LLC

  9000 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 1250

  West Hollywood, CA 90069

  Copyright © 2015 by Ashley Mansour

  Published by Upturn Publishing, a division of Upturn Productions, LLC.

  For more information about Upturn Publishing visit upturnpublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information regarding permissions, write to [email protected] or Upturn Productions, LLC, Attention: Upturn Publishing, Permissions, 9000 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 1250, West Hollywood, CA 90069.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9962787-1-3

  e-ISBN: 978-0-9962787-2-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015949800

  First Edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  Edited and Designed by Girl Friday Productions

  Book Cover Design by Olivia Robinson and Fiona Jayde. Cover Art by Olivia Robinson.

  B.W. Powe Quotation: As first appeared in The Solitary Outlaw, published by Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1st edition 1987. Reprinted with permission from the author.

  Nicholas Carr Quotation: ©2008 The Atlantic Media Co., as first published in The Atlantic Magazine. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

  Christopher Doyle Quotation: As first appeared in Education Week March 31, 2014. Reprinted with permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to historical events, actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Poppy, who gave me the books

  Contents

  1987

  2008

  2014

  Prologue

  BLOOD

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  INK

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  FIRE

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  1987

  What is post-literacy? . . . Post-literacy occurs when the ability to comprehend the written word decays. If post-literacy is now the ground of society questions arise: What happens to the reader, the writer, and the book in post-literary environment? What happens to thinking, resistance, and dissent when the ground becomes wordless?

  —B. W. Powe, The Solitary Outlaw

  2008

  Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. . . . The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. . . . My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

  —Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

  2014

  American schools have entered the Age of Post-Literacy. Books, long idealized as foundational shapers of intellect, no longer mold young people’s minds. While continuing to tout their merits, educators marginalize books and have not come to grips with the book’s declining role in society. Over the last few years, my high school students’ facility for print culture has atrophied markedly. They also exhibit cognitive blind spots for narratives and higher meanings. Their educations even contribute to post-literacy. . . .

  I have responded by assigning more books, selected for interest.

  I coach students away from taking bulleted, fragmented notes and insist they articulate higher meanings from our subject matter. I invite authors to the classroom to discuss their work. I bring boxes of books from my home and town libraries to assist research. I challenge kids’ use of technology and sweat my own. Still, I remain unsure whether such tactics do anything even to delay a post-literate future beyond my control.

  —Christopher L. Doyle, “K–12 Education in a Post-Literate Age”

  PROLOGUE

  Winter 2056—Prospero’s Final Entry.

  Can you remember us?

  Of course you can’t. You won’t remember anything when Fell is through. And we are gone now, mostly.

  Once, our numbers were strong. We resisted. We fought against the sea of forgetting. Then we became only nine. The Nine of the Rising.

  We needed a leader. I was chosen.

  My name is Prospero now. You won’t remember this story, my story. But it doesn’t matter. Because someone who will is coming.

  BLOOD

  NOELLE

  ONE

  I wake with my eyes still shut, clinging to the last few seconds of darkness. I know that as soon as I lift my lids, I will see the stream, its penetrating light. So I linger awhile in the chirp of false birds, their stiff voices high-pitched enough to whittle holes into my eardrums. In seconds, the bioslice will complete its transition and become fully fledged day. One more cycle like this before tomorrow. Before I’m officially a year older. But we won’t celebrate this day here in the Vale. Like all other birthdays that came before it, the occasion will be a solemn one, but now more so than ever.

  I sit up and flick the air with my fingers, casting the stream to the farthest corner of my room. Kittens yawning. A beach. Sunrise over sand. These are the banal images of morning they feed us. I dress quickly in the colors for Vale 1—blue and gray—all the while staring through a haze of image and sound. Flowers blooming. Insects darting in acrobatic circles. Coffee dripping. A quick pat of my hand in midair lowers the volume just enough to make it bearable.

  Looking in the mirror, I run a brush through my shoulder-length brown hair and pin it to the side. I rub the flesh of my face, bringing color into my pale cheeks until my few freckles disappear. Clouds passing. A cake being cut. A child laughing. The wall behind me fills with images, and then I remember: today, I’m actually supposed to be watching.

  A quick come-here motion of my fingers brings the stream from the corner to the mirror. I collapse it to fit onto my wrist-plate, which I tap in order to release the stream neatly into the palm of my hand. More cake. People singing a re
petitious tune. A child blowing on all the dandelions at once, their seeds swiveling into the air and disappearing like smoke. Clouds forming a vague heart in the sky. It lasts just seconds, but the words come to me, appearing effortlessly inside my head. I flinch when I see them, a gut reaction from knowing they’re forbidden.

  Happy Birthday, Noelle Hartley! Love, JP

  It’s not an accident. I know the posts are from my friend, John Potts, and that he put them here just for me. So I’d discover his words.

  A heavy sigh escapes me. Today is not my birthday, but John didn’t get the date wrong. He’s always wished me happy birthday one day early ever since I can remember.

  “I’m preparing,” John had said once. I didn’t need to ask what he was preparing for. I already knew. All along, he was readying for the year my birthday would actually matter. For the day I would have to leave the Vale for New Down City, Fell’s capital. That day is almost here. Soon the countdown will be officially over, and I won’t be one step closer anymore. Tomorrow I’ll be seventeen, and I’m scheduled for immersion.

  There are twenty Vales in the UVF—the United Vales of Fell. Ours, Vale 1, was the first. That’s why we have a saying, a leftover from the earlier time, when people carried words around with them: “If the vessel is strong, the current will be calm.” The populace had to be strong, my grandfather says, to leave everything behind, endure the new protocol, and join Fell. I never really understood the saying, though. There’s only one current we have here under the bioslice of Vale 1. But it isn’t made of water. It’s made of light. And it has a name. It’s a she, I guess. We call her Verity. Yet no matter how strong we vessels are, we cannot calm or control her constant tide.

  The low hum of Verity’s voice breaks through the quiet. She begins my daily health scan, her face shifting blue beneath the stream, the same color as the afternoon sky over the Vale. John says the sky on the outside isn’t blue like this, that the hue is artificial, programmed into the bioslice for a calming effect.

  “Noelle Hartley. Vale 1 resident. Your health check is complete.”

  “Results, please.”

  “Your biolevels are normal. Neural scan normal. Your fluid intake is low. Hydration is advised.”

  “Thanks a bundle.”

  Verity resumes her normal color, white, and I resume my work of ignoring the stream as her usual flow commences. I hear what she’s saying but tune it out at the same time. I don’t let her in completely when I don’t have to.

  Slack. That’s the name for what I am. I’m one of the slow ones. I don’t enjoy surfing the stream like I’m supposed to. Absorbing the influx is a chore for me, like wading through muddy water in a torrential rain with anchors for boots. We don’t have rain in the Vales, but I’ve seen it on the stream many times, and that’s how I imagine the feeling to be. I cringe just thinking about it. Then my stomach turns upside down as I remember: something much worse than the stream is coming.

  Downstairs, I find my mother glued to Verity, sifting through several image inflows at once.

  “Morning.” She looks up quickly, one hand still navigating the stream. “Hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  She inclines her head to the row of nutri-trays, which contain breakfast. I pull the tray with the symbol on it for the smallest portion, then make fast work of the yellow mush my mother calls “eggs surprise.” This is meal one. All the nutrition required for a productive day right here in a little yellow slab that reminds me of something vaguely biological.

  “Verity, be a dear and show us the weekly forecast,” my mother coos.

  “Certainly, Mrs. Hartley. The weekly forecast for Vale 1 is clear skies Monday through Friday, and here are your daily temperatures.”

  “Did you hear that? Clear skies for your big day.” My mother turns halfway toward me, her chin-length hair swishing side to side. “Are you excited? For tomorrow?”

  “Slacks like me don’t get excited,” I mutter. “We get nervous.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re not a slack, darling. And besides, Verity will take good care of you. Hasn’t she always?”

  “Sure.” I try to sound convincing, but the truth is no one knows the extent of my slackishness. While everyone else is busy floating easily on the stream, I feel like I’m drowning in it. That the pictures bring me written words instead of the influx of Fell’s programmed mentation is a problem, one that I have learned to hide since it started happening. As I was growing up, I realized people didn’t like it when I talked about the meaning of the images in the stream or the words I saw. For some reason, people changed the topic, and others looked afraid, when I tried to draw connections between the images or find something meaningful in them. Around age ten, I heard the name slack for Valers like me who had difficulty adjusting to Verity. Even though my parents never said it, deep down I knew they feared the name applied to me. And that’s how I figured out something was wrong. I set about making myself at least look like I was as absorbed in Verity as everyone else—that I was a good, regular Valer, with regular thoughts that didn’t include words. Now, I don’t talk about them with anyone. Except with John. But he doesn’t count. He’s a Winnower, and they are full of things from the past.

  I first told him about it several years ago. I had seen a post about sign language, an old way people used to communicate before there was Verity. A girl had opened and closed her hands very quickly, right before the post ended. She did it as though there was something between them she was looking at intently. It happened so fast, but the image brought a word to me. I told it to John the next day.

  “You heard what?” he’d asked me.

  “Book.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I saw it. And heard it. In my mind.”

  “You shouldn’t tell anyone about this. Not even your parents.”

  “I was only going to tell you,” I said. “I just don’t understand why we never see them in the stream. The . . . books.”

  “Because Fell doesn’t want you to. They don’t want any of us to. They’re gone now.”

  That was the last time we spoke of it. The look on his face told me not to bring it up, that it could get me in trouble. I trust John. He’s my best friend, and even though he’s just a year older than me, he seems to know so much more.

  My mother looks up from the stream. “Have to run. Got a shipment of Never Blade formula going out.”

  “Never Blade?” I ask. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a new gadget to protect us from infiltrators. One nick from the blade is all it takes to deliver the toxin. Very potent.”

  A long, curved weapon appears on the stream, the razor-sharp blade glistening bright blue, the color of Fell’s signature chemical compound. My mother flicks the image from view.

  “All it takes?”

  “To kill someone. It’s poisonous. But never you mind about that. We are safe here in Fell. That’s why we have them. So we can be safe.” She grabs one of her chemical uniforms from her workbag and steps into it, then kisses the top of my head. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  After breakfast, I log another set of hours with Verity. The lessons, thick and garbled, slide by me one after another all day. Verity utters occasional congratulatory messages, which I know are designed to boost my self-confidence and help me progress to the highest level before immersion. I’m supposed to feel good, having apparently mastered physics, stream comprehension, and biology. But I don’t. I feel like I’m skidding haphazardly on the surface of an endless frozen sea, being told that despite my thrashing along, I shouldn’t worry about breaking through. I don’t believe it. Just like I don’t believe I’m mastering anything at all.

  I race through my final lessons with Verity, keeping my eyes on the clock. We get three twenty-minute outdoor recreation sessions per day. Most people spend theirs in the morning, when the bioslice’s sun is strongest and there’s nutrition to gain from the artificial rays. But not me. I save mine up for a very s
pecific time of day: the transport hour, when the trains from New Down pass through the Vales on their way to the Sovereigns on the outside. This is the time I look forward to most because I get to see John, and for a moment, I can be free from the stream.

  I’ve missed John’s train almost two straight weeks now, and I think I’m starting to forget what he looks like. I don’t want him to forget me, too. So when Verity asks whether I’d like to move on to a higher level of biology, I tell her that I’m finished for the evening and quickly make myself presentable with a comb of my hair and a splash of water on my face. I bolt downstairs, hoping I can get outside without anyone noticing. I slip out the front of our pod, and my heart races at the thought of my favorite person, my favorite time of day.

  Outside, the fake birds have stopped chirping in the trees. A gloomy purple night climbs down the bioslice from all sides, making the whole of our world seem even smaller. I walk briskly along the dry-lawn, passing rows of low pod blocks that make up our street; their soft white edges round into each other, rippling continuously, hands within hands within hands.

  When the sky is blank night, the hedges and grass start to glow under the safety lights. I follow them to the end of our street, where the road opens into a wide belt of gray stone leading to the transport station. Our Vale is closest to the outside—the areas beyond Fell, the nine Sovereigns. This transport station leads to and from Sovereign 1, the Winnow, where John lives.

  It’s a short hike up to the waiting area, where I plant myself in the row of red seats. The station’s illuminated clock shows that the train from New Down City will arrive in several minutes. In the far distance, the sapphire-lit tower in the center of New Down protrudes from the horizon with a solitary revolving eye. I’ll be there tomorrow.

  I dim the stream from my wrist-plate and settle into the shiny red plastic. This is the moment I love more than any of the others in my day. The time before the train wheezes up to the platform, when the stream is silenced by the passing noise, the steady rush of the brakes easing the train to a stop. It’s a time when I can just listen to nothing at all if I want. Nothing but my thoughts. Sometimes I envy John. Winnowers have it so much easier. They don’t have immersion there. I wish I’d been born in a Sovereign, too.