The Way

Randomly chosen from the crowd of fairgoers, I stumbled toward the stage to chants of “Sing it!” I can’t sing to save my life, I thought wildly, but there stood the karaoke machine, 2038’s newest model. A thousand expectant listeners squirmed in tattered rows around me as the relentless sun baked us with 118-degree heat. The fair had been our Iowan July Fourth tradition for decades, but with climate change, it was now just short of torture. I was too overheated to sweat.

Two burly security guards escorted me to the right-hand staircase. They weren’t protecting me as much as propelling me, each with one hand on my back and the other held like a battering ram in front of me. Shouts assailed us on every side: “You can do it!” “What song?” “Be quick!” and “Sing a love song,” were the only ones I could make out from the wall of noise. At least some people were on my side. Or I hoped they were.

The guards pushed me up the stairs to the microphone at center stage, where Alina, dressed in a red, white, and blue gown, waited. Her broad smile belied the evil calculation in her glittering emerald eyes: she would egg the crowd on to hatred and scorn for the sake of entertainment. My failure would be her success. I didn’t stand a chance.

Alina calmed the throng with an imperious wave of her tattooed arm and closed in on me. “Are you ready, Carina?” she asked, her lips close to my ears.

“Not really,” I said in a low voice. “But I have no choice.” I stared at the two-inch scarlet nails that made Alina’s soft hands useless. Her class had servants to do the work.

Narrowing her eyes, she murmured, “You got that right.” She clipped a microphone to my jumpsuit and put both hands on my shoulders to turn me toward the audience of gaunt, exhausted women. Like me, they all had dust-colored uniforms, hair so short that it stood up straight, and sunken eyes. My sisters in pain.

I flinched; my body ached from laboring in the communal vegetable plots fifteen hours a day, digging and hoeing, planting and weeding. The contrast between Alina’s smooth skin and my wind- and sun-burned hide deepened my resistance. As a prisoner in the thought-reeducation camps for two years, I’d learned to hate the oppressors. Alina represented everyone I still hated, despite hundreds of hours of brainwashing. I accepted their dogma with my words, and I behaved like their puppet, but I had pressed the ashes of my thoughts to a hidden diamond of rebellion.

The prisoners’ release for the reward of one fair day was supposed to be the carrot to make us forget the stick of forced labor in the fields. It was just another one of the rulers’ ironic jokes. We were free to be herded from one event to the next like cattle. If we found opportunities for ridicule and hatred, so much the better, as it would siphon off our negative energy and keep the real enemy safe. The overlords’ manipulative thought control extended even to our rare holiday.

The culminating event of the fair was the karaoke sing-off. Alina read aloud a name, the contestant came to the stage and selected the music, and we all endured someone’s rendition of a song from our lives in the world before the camps. The prisoners didn’t hold back on heckling and jeers if the contestants’ voices broke or they forgot the words. I was the final contestant of six, and a panel of judges waited stage left to score my efforts. The winner would be taken to a buffet of real food, not the slop they feed us, for one fantastic meal. I hoped it would be me.

The other five contestants had failed miserably. One croaked out a song that nobody could hear over the complaints of the crowd. Another’s screechy soprano evoked a chorus of high-pitched wails. The third coughed and spat her way through a chorus; the mob wouldn’t let her finish. Then a woman attempted to croon a ballad, which met with obscene catcalls. The contestant before me fainted after two notes. I didn’t stand a chance unless fate intervened.

“What song do you choose?” Alina asked me, her face drawn into a cruel grin.

“The Way,” I said, biting back my hatred under the bland mask I contorted my face into every waking hour.

“Sounds like a dangerous song,” she warned.

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. “I choose this song because I wrote it.”

For once, the listeners paid attention, and the shouts diminished to a low hum. Alina, too shocked to react, stood with her jaw dropped.

I began to sing a capella the words I knew so well. They were precious to me because Rinamie, my love, had written them in secret before her execution. My voice soared in a desperate contralto that filled the amphitheater, strong with conviction:

There is only one way, the way to truth.

They will not allow you to find the way.

With prison, with death, they will stop you.

They will lock you up if you start on the path.

With brain-training, they will warp your thoughts.

With guns and drugs, they will control your body.

But there is a way, a way out, a way to truth.

You must be strong to find this way.

You must help each other to find it.

You must tear off the blindfolds and chains.

Their way is not the way; their way is a lie.

Freedom—

I was singing the last verse when a shot rang out, then another. I fell to the ground, blood coursing from twin holes in my chest.

Alina propped her boot on my stomach and screamed, “This is how we treat traitors! Let it be a lesson for you.” Before she could continue, the crowd, a mob now, overpowered the guards. The last thing I heard was a chant “There is only one way, the way to truth,” from hundreds of mouths. I tasted coppery blood and drew a gurgling breath. Then: nothing.

I awoke from a silent void to an insistent voice calling my name, “Carina, Carina.” As my eyes sprang open, I saw eight or ten people in a small room, standing hip against hip. I lay on a cot with a scratchy wool blanket covering my legs. I started to move, but someone—a nurse—told me to stay still.

“We removed the bullets,” she said. “You lost a lot of blood. You need to rest.” She pointed at the bandages wrapped around my torso. “One bullet missed your heart by an inch.”

The memory of my song flashed into my brain, followed by the image of Alina with her boot on my body amid chants from the crowd.

“Where am I? What time is it?”

She said, “We are at the camp. Three days have passed. Everything has changed.”

“Revolution?” I asked in a whisper.

“We took over the camp,” the nurse told me. “Tens of thousands are marching on the capital now.” She patted my shoulder gently. “You did this.”

I closed my eyes to savor the moment. Then it hit me: “How many of us have died?”

She groaned. “Too many. Thousands. But we control the telecom service, so everyone in the country knows about the uprising. We have blockaded the airports and trains. Our oppressors cannot escape us.”

How can this be? I wondered. A formless mob couldn’t attain these goals.

“Who is leading them?” I asked the nurse.

“You are,” she said. “As soon as you have healed. For now, a trio of two women and one man are coordinating our actions. Colonel Marsien came over to our side, along with a brigade of 5,000 armed fighters. He helped us take an arsenal for weapons and food depots. We even have tanks, and we hope to have bombers soon. This is big, Carina. We’ve tapped into a groundswell of rebellion.”

And so it began: the Gardeners’ Revolution. It all started with a song. Ah, Rinamie, if only you had lived to see this.