Z 2134

turning away two men trying to leave.
    “They’re gonna question all of us,” the man said, clearly frustrated. “I suggest you stick to what happened and try to stay calm. Don’t mention your father unless they mention him first. Of course, once they get your name from your chip, they’ll know who you are and link you to Jonah. So, whatever you do, don’t lie. They’ve got scanners in their helmets to see if you’re telling the truth.” He cleared his throat as though it add a layer of importance to his words. “You have to tell them the truth.”
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Just do what I say. Go sit and wait for them to come to you. I’ll catch up with you, soon as I can.” The man turned, walked toward the bathrooms, then disappeared into the men’s room.
    Ana looked around, noticing one of the men at the bar talking to a Watcher and pointing at her.
    She returned to her table and sat, sipping her sugar water and dreading her looming interrogation.
    On the wall, a ubiquitous City Watch poster, just like those that lined the city streets, the factories, and shops asked, “Do you REALLY know your neighbor? Watch. Listen. Report.”

    “What happened?” The Watcher asked from behind his mask.
    Ana spoke to the guard, thinking of the man whose name she didn’t know and the advice she couldn’t ignore: tell the truth.
    Ana did, though she couldn’t shake the feeling that everything she said was being monitored for honesty and would probably be fed to someone in a room somewhere, or maybe recorded and added to her existing data log, to somehow, in some unknown way, be used against her someday. She remembered, as a child, taking a tour of The City Watch Tower and seeing room after room filled with computers and monitors, with Watchers observing camera feeds from the streets, from the woods, from the sky orbs, and even from within people’s homes. No doubt there were also rooms devoted to watching the feeds from The Watchers’ helmets.
    “Did Liam say why he thinks your father is innocent?” The Watcher asked.
    Ana was frozen under the question’s weight, wondering if telling the truth would lead to trouble for Liam. If he were part of The Underground, which she only suspected but didn’t know , he could be held and tried as a traitor. She had to be careful not to get him into more trouble than his mouth had already managed to get him into.
    “Hell if I know,” she said, allowing her anger to surface just enough to shift the conversation. “He was drunk. He’s always been a drunk since he could buy alcohol. He’s always trying to antagonize me. I’d say he’s trying to get in my pants, but again, you’d have to ask him why he’s such a prick.”
    She’d hoped to elicit a laugh from behind the helmet’s dark glass, but nothing but silence surfaced from behind the keeper’s visor.
    “OK,” he said, finally standing. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions. You’re at Chimney Rock, correct?”
    “Yes,” Ana said. “Except when I’m working at the shirt factory, six in the morning to six in the evening, all days but Sunday.”
    “OK then,” The Watcher said, then turned from the table and walked away, leaving Ana alone with a bottomless sigh.
    She hoped nobody would smell her deception and return to the table. She couldn’t go to jail. If Ana went to jail, who would care for Adam? She continued sipping her sugar water until the last of The Watchers finally left.
    The Social went back to normal, with people drinking to forget, to celebrate, and a few, she suspected, just to get through the day so they could wake up tomorrow, start over, and pretend their way through the same shit again.
    Though she was of drinking age, Ana had never touched alcohol. But as she sat alone at the table, wondering whether Michael was OK and worrying she might have gotten Liam into worse trouble, she started to see its appeal. She looked at Michael’s half-full drink; red, like her sugar water, but alcoholic. She forgot what he’d called it when he ordered — a Red Bomb, she thought. She looked around the bar still feeling every eye on her, although not a single one was. Most of the people were watching the replay of Darwin Games highlights before the network went back to a live stream.
    She reached across the table, grabbed the glass, then lifted Michael’s drink to her lips, resting it just under her nose and wincing at the strong blend of fruity and