Episode 1 - The Beam

me, Leah. You have to follow my orders and lay low. If people found out just how ‘non-Organa’ you really are...”
    Leah bolted to her feet. “Fuck them!” she yelled again. “You want me to play down? I know the people up here don’t have enhancements, but I’ve done more for this movement than everyone else here put together. What’s more Organa — to stick to the doctrine, or to try and actually advance the cause? How dare anyone look down on me! And how dare you hide it! You know what best serves the cause, so embrace it, Leo. That’s what you could do — what you would do — if you really cared. There’s more I need! A mimic set, for one, and there’s something I’ve heard a lot about on the black market called…”
    Leo shook his head. Leah felt like she was going to either scream or cry, and couldn’t decide which. She was angry at the others for their bullshit posturing, angry at Leo for taking their side while acknowledging that she was more important, and angry at herself for getting so caught up in it all. She’d been born in an Organa commune because her mother had wanted her to live without a Beam ID and to have the freedom that came with it. Then she’d moved to the city, under the radar, and explored the other side of the coin. She’d led that dual life, half city girl and half mountain-dwelling Organa, for most of her time on the planet. She’d learned enough about the growing NAU computer network to wonder if it had become too powerful. She’d watched the rolling service blackouts of 2089 and had seen just how despondent — sometimes suicidal — District citizens became when the walls didn’t respond, when their presences weren’t acknowledged by everything they encountered, when they couldn’t find out what was going on in the world and couldn’t talk to their friends with a gesture. That was when Leah realized things had to change, that there was more to Organa than simply eschewing technology. The Beam was too big to challenge, too big to fail. Humanity, never good at asking if it should do a thing once it learned it could , was on a slippery slope. So she’d suited up to fight, and now her side of the battle resented her for her preparedness? To Leah, living stark lives as a means of facing a complicated, technological enemy was beyond stupid. How could you fight an enemy you didn’t understand? Most Organas shunned technology without so much as a thought. Leah thought it was smarter to embrace The Beam enough to find the system’s holes, and a way out.
    “No more add-ons,” said Leo.
    “So I have to pretend. To be a good hippie, rather than an effective one.”
    “You have to be part of a movement. And a community.”
    Leah rolled her eyes.
    “Something else that concerns me,” Leo said, studying her expression.
    “Something else for your pariah?”
    “It’s Crumb,” said Leo.
    That snapped her mood. Crumb was a wacko. The town oddity. There was nothing about Crumb that wasn’t a little troubling, and there was, at the same time, nothing about Crumb that was troubling at all. The old man was his own thing, neither good nor bad. He’d been around for as long as Leah had known about the Organas without meriting more than a mention as an oddity.
    “What about Crumb?”
    “He’s getting strange.”
    Leah laughed. Leo’s glance made her stop.
    “He’s been talking about West,” said Leo.
    “Yeah,” said Leah. “Noah Fucking West.”
    “I don’t think it’s just an expression with him. He keeps blabbing about West this and West that. West is here and West is there. West is everywhere. It’s like he’s trying to warn us. Remember how he used to talk about the Indians?”
    Leah did. Crumb had found a bunch of stories in a series of worthless tattered paper books that Leo had given him about old-time cowboys and so-called “Indians” native to the NAU hundreds of years ago. In the books, the Indians were always the bad guys, always coming to attack and rape and pillage. After reading the stories, Crumb had begun to spout off about Indians coming to raid their wagon train. At first it was cute, but then it got annoying. Two weeks later, when Crumb’s paranoia over the Indians reached a head, Leo sent a few men out with Crumb to scout the trails. They’d spotted no men with red skin and feathers, but they had seen six police hovers approaching. They’d rushed back to the village and had destroyed or hidden piles and piles of hard storage —