Every thing, all at once

I woke up in a tent but it wasn’t my tent. It was nicer. Bigger. Brighter. I let my head clear for a minute, then sat up. I’d been looking at this tent on my phone for months. It was one I couldn’t possibly get but fantasized about nonetheless. Why? How?

Next, I realized the cot wasn’t mine. Nor the heavy quilt, nor the battery-powered lanterns, nor the tarot-themed tapestries hanging on the far walls of this enormous waterproof structure. The rug wasn’t mine and the ultra-light backpack in the corner certainly wasn’t mine but my clothes appeared to be spilling out of it. The books, scattered about just as they’d been in my tent, were also mine, though I’d devoured each of them dozens of times over the years. A large stack of new books lay neatly in a corner. They were not mine but were definitely titles I’d been meaning to read for as long as I could remember.

Panic loomed but couldn’t quite break through. I was devastatingly tired yet thrilled to be awake. Where was I? Wasn’t I home? Weren’t the others right outside just like they were every morning? I could smell coffee and bacon but I couldn’t hear the typical beehive hum of the young women preparing rations. They were dutiful and kind to me, as I suppose you’d expect given my status as the last surviving member of our elder council.

Slowly, I sat up. Where were the dogs? They must be in the old tent, I thought. My tent. I remained unsure of how or why I was where I was. Slowly, however, I began recognizing that I was surrounded mostly by things I’d placed in an online shopping cart on my phone over the past few years. 

The cart was only an illusion, of course. The items, far out of my reach, reflected a deep, shameful desire to connect with the life I’d had before. Surely I’d not purchased any of this. There wasn’t a credit or debit card number in my world that would stand up to this tab. To any tab, for that matter. Nor did I have an address where any things could be delivered.

Slowly, carefully, I stood. Nothing hurt. Odd. Seemed like everything always hurt these days. That’s why the young women were so necessary. So appreciated. Where were they? Why the silence?

It took me a minute to find the pull of a zipper to the door leading outside. As I opened the flap to this foreign yet somehow familiar chamber, my eyes weren’t met with the woods as I expected. Just a vestibule of sorts, then another zippered exit. Again, I found the pull and more purposefully tried to make my way outdoors.

Again, no woods. No communal campsite. No young women. No dogs, pigs, chickens, or goats. And, in an increasingly irritating reality, no coffee and no bacon. My anxiety was gaining steam but was still nowhere near my norm for such an abnormal situation. I tried another zipper and then another. No woods. Just the same damn vestibule.

Finally, I returned to the main room of the tent. And there it was. Breakfast. Coffee with goat’s milk, scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried turnips. My favorites. All laid out on that heavy wool rug I’d coveted for years from an online Pakistani rug seller outside of Los Angeles. Even before the resistance, I couldn’t afford the shipping on a rug this large and this fine, let alone the rug itself. But here it was with my favorite breakfast on top, laid out on fashionable ceramic plates with cloth napkins that accentuated the two primary colors in the rug. Blue and a heavily-green turquoise. Again, my favorites.

I ate with less questioning than the situation called for. I was hungry and somehow, my brain was hungry too. I wasn’t shy about how quickly I consumed the perfectly-cooked meal. Why would I be? I was alone.

Emboldened by my lack of pain, full belly, and fat-coated neurotransmitters, I rose. This was not the time to try to escape again. This was the time to slow down and figure it all out. Where was I? What was the last thing that … ?

Oh my God. The last thing. 

Memories flooded my satiated brain. The last thing was the frantic news, broadcast over the coven’s primitive walkie-talkie system, that the coup had succeeded. Each week, we’d send one woman and two dogs in the direction of the proper trail. Her job was to monitor radio channels for any big news and report back if needed. We didn’t care about the little stuff and to us, most everything was little stuff. Stock market crashes, elections, celebrity gossip … all of those were meaningless to us now. Our radio treks, as we called them, were intended for two bits of information – extreme weather or extreme progress by the resisters. Either occurrence would send us straight to the caves, where we had stockpiled enough food and water to outlast darn near anything. 

And so we came to learn from one of Marcia’s radio treks that all those who hadn’t fled major U.S. cities had been eradicated simultaneously. According to government sources broadcast over the radio waves in emotionless tones, the resisters now planned to blanket the countryside, slowly killing off all who remained. The only ones left, it seemed, would be their ruthless army.

I guess I’d never really conceived it would come to this. I loved my coven, I loved the woods, I loved living simply off the land. I loved our rituals and our commitment to a peaceful future. I never believed the resisters would do what they’d promised as far as killing off those who disagreed with them. Most people, it seemed, disagreed with them. I, like the women around me, always believed the masses would reign supreme. Until then, we’d remain in our utopia of sorts, living far off of a relatively unbeaten portion of the Appalachian Trail in the Northeastern corner of the Alabama woods.

The government report didn’t say how they’d achieved the mass killings, though the resisters had been spreading rumors of their ability to deploy man-made magnetic storms for years. That’s why we were here, deep in the woods and caves, surviving on roots, leaves, a small herd of livestock, and hope for over a decade. All of us women, all of us leery of the government and the resisters alike, all of us willing to wait it out here, in the trees, with our tents and our sacred practices. All of the others looking to me, the lone remaining elder, to lead them in prayer and teach them the conjuring practices my own grandmother had taught to me so long ago.

One of the last things I remembered from the time before was an acute fear that the resisters were coming for us. I’d headed back to my tent after a frantic prayer circle. I left my two dogs who, like most mornings, had accompanied me to prayers. I had instructed the others to return to their tents, grab the barest of necessities, and meet back at the temple for a group trek to the hiding caves. We’d practiced this drill endlessly over the years and all of us could do it in our sleep, if we’d needed to. The way we saw it, the caves gave us the best chance of surviving resisters, mother nature, and magnetic storms.

I wasn’t feeling particularly well that morning and I informed the group as such. Some tried to stay back and assist but I instructed them to take my dogs and forge on ahead. I would meet them at the caves just as soon as I was able and they had plenty to do in the meantime to get us ready for a long-term stay. 

Something had happened when I stepped inside my tent though, hadn’t it? Something painful. A shock of sorts. Memory of that pain was the very last thing before now. When was now?

I’d always had an unshakable belief that they’d never find us. Although the resisters would certainly hate us for being conjurers, naturalists, and women, we were too small a group too far removed from society to garner much serious interest. I thought we would forever remain safe.

So, against every covenant of our tribe, I’d harbored a cellphone from the moment we moved here. The others knew I had portable solar panels but they had no idea I used them to charge a phone or that I’d left just enough money in a linked bank account to pay the meager annual service fees for decades. They thought the solar panels only kept the group’s radio and small walkie-talkies charged, and for that they were grateful.

They didn’t know I was still addicted to the old world. Feverishly, unyieldingly addicted. They didn’t know that I shopped. Or, rather, that I fantasized about shopping by placing things in an infinite online cart on my phone. Every night. Every morning. Every moment alone, I shopped.

Of course, what they didn’t know proved to be just as harmful as what I didn’t know. I was older when we came out here. Unfamiliar with technology except for using the computer in my old apartment, and later my phone, to shop for things that I didn’t need. In fairness, I’d also used technology to find these women, and they were my lifeline in a world that seemed increasingly insane.

Still, I had no idea that my cell phone would betray our location. I didn’t understand that anyone who wanted to could explore and exploit my bottomless shopping cart. I didn’t know that any of them would actually care that a group of modern-day witches were planning, as laid out in my online journal, to wait out their apocalypse among ourselves. I honestly didn’t know.

The reality of what I’d caused was just about to grab hold when the voice came. It was a man’s voice; something I’d not heard for over 12 years. It echoed through the tent and definitely came from inside, though it wasn’t projecting from one distinct location. It was, quite simply, everywhere.

“Charity,” he said, “I see you’ve awoken. Welcome. How are you feeling?”

With every word he spoke, I became more uncertain whether the voice was human or robotic.

“Where am I?” I screamed, the panic finally breaching my soul.

“Why Charity, you’re everywhere you’ve ever wanted to be.”

“No, that’s not right. I want to be with my coven, my tribe. What did you do with them? What did you do with my dogs?” I should have been sobbing but I wasn’t. My voice was frantic, but controlled as I looked around the new tent for answers, or at least the source of the male voice.

“Well, Charity, you’ve led us almost all the way to them, haven’t you? You’ve used your phone for all these years and all the while our algorithms collected your data. What you liked. What you wanted. Where you were. Frankly, none of it was that useful to us until now.”

“What? What are you talking about? Where are my friends?”

“Your friends, Charity, are in the hiding place you wrote about in that journal you typed into your phone. So, we all know there are breeding-age women nearby but only you know precisely where they are.

“The war was brutal, my dear. More brutal than you could ever imagine. Only a few men survived but we are the strong men. Smart men. Good men. Virtuous men. The right men. And now we need to repopulate this great country. Your friends, Charity, are our only hope in that regard.”

“But where am I?” It’s not that I wasn’t concerned about the young women. I just needed more context before I said anything.

“You’re in an induced coma, Charity. A coma whose dreams are fed by a chip we designed especially for you and implanted into your brain after we found you. The chip represents the years of data you’ve logged about every single thing that you’ve desired. 

“You can have it all now, Charity. Every thing, all at once. You can stay here in this beautiful mirage with all your things until your body expires naturally. You can enjoy the things you see today and the things our algorithms tell us you’ll likely desire in the future. Computerized IVs will keep you out of pain and free from anxiety. You truly can have it all.

“All you have to do is tell us about the caves. Tell us where to find your friends, who we know simply as ‘the breeders.’ Tell us, Charity, and all of this is yours.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, then we’ll take you out of your coma and plop you right back into your own tent. There’ll be no one to care for you. No one to feed you. No dogs or friends to comfort you. We won’t even give you your phone back. Your body, your mind, and your old things will continue to wither away until you die a miserable death, alone in the woods. 

"Meanwhile, we’ll be watching you. We’ve got you fully chipped, dear. We’ll know your every move and so we’ll know if you try to go to the caves on your own. We’ll follow you and we’ll take your friends anyway. So, you see Miss Charity, they will be ours no matter what you decide.”

“Decide?” I asked, indignantly.

“You have exactly 60 seconds to make up your mind, Charity. If you don’t tell us where the caves are, these treasures and all of these things will evaporate in one minute.”

For exactly 54 seconds, I was resolute. There was no way I was giving these monsters my beloved sisters.

At 55 seconds, I began to shake.

At 56 seconds, I looked around the tent, pulling in as much detail as I could.

At 57 seconds, I laid down on the Pakistani rug.

At 58 seconds, I shed a single tear out of my left eye.

At 59 seconds, the man began to speak again. “Ok, Charity, it seems you’ve chosen to give up your things and save your friends. When you wake up again, you’ll be back in your old tent.”

“Please,” I begged of him, “don’t do it.”