Out of Reach

"Welcome to paradise." Her first introduction to the city: brief and-- though she didn't realize at the time --deeply sarcastic, on the tail end of the bird that shipped her from starvation (and thrust her into poverty). They landed in Yellow and, like any fool, she was awestruck by its shining facade. That is, until she got the king's treatment: an escort straight to Red. From time to time she'd hop the hourly shuttle through Orange, and tears welled in her eyes at the beauty of it; at the thought that, one day, she'd be pulling deliveries there, too. She was a stupid kid.

Way, way back-- before history was reliably recorded --it's said that laborers would use canaries to assess the air quality in coal mines. If the CO clouded thick in the tunnels, the birds would choke out and die, and the miners would retreat.

It worked with water, too. Only certain organisms could tolerate soluble pollutants, so the people could judge the quality of a stream by the presence of insectoid larvae.

Now they had the light system: delicate sensors lined the sectors, detecting any and all pollutants, microorganisms, and the like. The sectors were named for the color of their lights (except for the Star Sector; reserved for the corps and their golden children), which, in the case of Green, indicated the strict purity of its water and air. If at any time the filtration faltered or the dome shield overhead began to splinter, the lights would flash and alarms blare to announce the failure. It was a fine enough system, and no birds needed to die for it-- just people. Well, Reds, so it didn't really count. But her people learned to lean into the dysfunction and despair, like grass through the concrete's cracks. Sophie was Red by birth, but human by choice, or so she was fond of saying.

See, the Yellow, Orange, and Red Sectors-- not as racist as they sound, although minorities had a funny way of winding up Red --had increasingly degraded Essentials quality; air, water, food. Housing was considered Non-Essential, but that was falling apart, too.

Naturally, the costs of upkeeping such an elaborate system were multitudinous; living and working there by nature could not be cheap, or the system itself would, heavens forbid, crumble.

The Green Sector housed the lovely bourgeoisie; white-collar employees and governmental bodies; CEOs and CFOs; executives and high-class managers; vertical hydroponics farmers; synthfood and IVM lab workers, and the chefs and manufacturers that made use of their product; among many others. The sectors were large, indeed.

The Yellow Sector housed traders and debt collectors; sprawling markets of sterilized goods-- textiles, tech, AI, animals, food; anything you could imagine --the delivery persons who dropped to individuals and small companies; stock brokers and bookies; private and commercial ships; landing pads; and the majority of large-scale public transit.

Orange Sector was for deliveries, construction, manufacturing, bulk commercial traffic, and undocumented housing for those who couldn't afford a Yellow or Green Pass. Not that Sophie was good enough for that.

Good ol' Red Sector was for laborers, migrants, the destitute and homeless, and those awaiting a visa to enter the "city proper." But, in fact, this was the largest of the city's sectors, populated by all manner of people. Those who could afford them wore gas masks. Those who could not wore cloth, or worse. Coughing could be heard from all corners, though the corps swore the pollutants were well under an acceptable level of PPM. Sometimes, blood accompanied the cough. When that happened, the others politely averted their gaze-- they all knew what it entailed.

Sophie could swear she was days away from the Red Cough. She expected it daily, really, and each night she was surprised.

She lived in Red, sure, but thankfully she worked in Yellow, where her brother, Lee, resided. Eighteen months prior he'd applied for a cohab license in the hopes that she'd be allowed to join him in his modest suite, but since she hailed from Red, matters were more… complex.

Sophie was working hard at saving up the thousands of bits necessary for the "migration tax" that would see her out of Red. Lee was attempting to navigate the system through more traditional-- and far less efficacious --means.

Lee buzzed in on her comms. "Hey there little sis! Got a delivery for ya, raw materials bound for Orange, then some chipsets up to Yellow. And then we can visit for lunch, on me!"

"Leee," she drawled, pitching her tone high and shifting foot to foot, clasped hands crossed behind her back even though he couldn't see, "I'm booored."

He laughed. "That's what the deliveries are for!"

She chuckled. "Yeah, yeah. Sounds great: thanks, bro. You know I need all the deliveries I can get. Just keep it quiet; I don't want you getting fined, or worse." A citizen could be sent to Red for far less than smuggling. Or maybe there was something worse than Red; Sophie didn't rightly know.

"No worries kid. I'm always quiet," he whispered, about as loud as possible. She hoped he was joking.

Lunch amounted to two massive protein tabs and a shared bowl of shoyu ramen, no bigger than her palm. It was far more than she ever got in Red, and it was delicious.

"I'll have more for you tomorrow," Lee said by way of apology, alluding to the sparse work.

"Thanks. I'm grateful for anything I can get," she answered truthfully, while still slurping up the wavy noodles.

The shōji afforded little in the way of privacy: they would have to address more delicate matters later. Matters like Passes, bribes, and legit work visas. And that was just the tip of the extremely metaphorical iceberg; those weren't too common in any literal sense, anymore.

Sophie had her social advocacy and her Resistance work (about which she wouldn't even whisper to Lee, for fear of implicating him). She was slowly and subversively working with a small team on true-gender parity and applied transhumanism for the masses. Very slowly. Her close-knit group thought of themselves as Redpunk, and the term was catching on round the sector. One of these days, the sentiment would hop the lines to Orange. Or so she hoped. And one day, they'd reach the point of addressing Sector Equity. But that was more of a daydream.

The next day, Sophie woke in her verminous, lousy cot to the sound of alarms blaring from all directions. She rushed outside, thoughts buzzing with fears about her work-- her people --when she finally looked up. The dome-- typically thin and fizzing with pixelated static on the best of days --was completely gone. The red lights were fritzing, on and off. People were stampeding; trampling each other in their panic to get somewhere, anywhere else. Sophie slammed herself back against the wall, donned her gas mask, and called up Lee on the comms. He had contacts. He'd know something.

"Soph!" he cried, wind rushing in the background like he was running somewhere, and fast, "stay calm! I'm trying to fast-track you inside, I--"

"What's going on, Lee?" she was nearly begging, struggling against tears.

He sighed, deep and gravelly. "My contact just told me the gens are dropping offline. Probably ecoterrorists from Eden. They--" he hesitated, swallowing loudly, "they cut the power to Red, Soph."

Her eyes blew wide as saucers. She knew exactly who they meant. "No. They wou--" who was she kidding, of course they would --"How could they!"

"Stay focused, Soph. Got your mask on?

"Yeah. Yeah."

People were swarming at the gates to Orange, now, to the sound of more warning sirens. Sophie heard the hum of charging lasers.

"Wait!" she screamed, top of her lungs, but she may as well have been silent beneath the cacophony. "Get back!" she was begging again, but no one listened.

Electricity started whirring up at the gate, and lightning-like beams chained between the Reds like tethers. They fell in order, blackened and well-and-truly red. Massive, two-person laser beams cut through the crowd at thick angles until the remaining people dispersed, screaming, crying, running in all directions.

Sophie collapsed against the wall, sitting on her haunches. Tears welled behind her fogging mask.

"Remember when we were kids out in the Reaches?" she asked, sudden and soft.

"Soph, now isn't the time…"

"Remember what you told me when the raiders came?"

He sighed. "True power is in love, in community. They're showing us their weakness. Their desperation. Their fear."

"I'm not afraid anymore, Lee."

"Sophie, no--" he was crying, loud and ugly and beautiful.

"I love you." She shut off the comm unit, pulled up a burner, and dialed in on her team. If she was lucky, most of them would have the wisdom and fortune to still be standing.

Sophie sniffled for the last time. She steeled herself. "It's time, y'all."

"It's too early--" one person began.

"It has to be time. We've got no choice now."

"Alright. Yeah."

They pulled up on Orange Gate A, just out of range, and Sophie pressed the little black button she held in her polka-dot blue-nailed hand. The gate came crashing down and, with it, the rampart guards. Emergency power rerouted to cut off the gate and surrounding regions from the filtration network, as expected. The rest of Orange remained domed.

The guards scrambled for masks they weren't prepared to find. Sophie took three of them out with a quick blast from her smuggled grav gun. She led the charge.

There were maybe twenty of them left, give or take. And my, how the guards took. By the time they were inside, there were twelve remaining. They wouldn't make it, she'd known all along, they all had, but maybe-- maybe they'd make a difference. Maybe they'd inspire a new resistance.

A squad of sentries and drones approached, seemingly from Star. They were gunmetal gray and perfectly smooth.

"Drop your weapons. On your knees, hands in the air."

She looked at her haggard comrades. "Resistance is not futile," she ground out, proud.

"We won't warn you again," came the voice over the loudspeaker.

Sophie smiled, thinking of the way the long wheat grew in the poisoned heat of the Reaches, of the way her hand felt in Lee's when they first intertwined, of the way their blood mixed, all viscous, when they declared themselves blood siblings-- and she raised her weapon, one last time.