FREE
“Words matter,” I said. “Words make ideas. They preserve truths and history. They express freedom, and they shape it.”
The feel of letters on my tongue quenched me, like water on parched lips. I could hardly believe I was speaking. It seemed like a lifetime has passed. I was a different person now.
“Words,” I went on, “mold our thoughts. That gives them value and power. The Rights Holders keep them not just for profit, but to control us, and to put us in their service. Rights Holders create nothing. They jealously protect the copies of copies of copies of things created by others. They get away with owning our right to speak because they have the money and power to do it.”
My mind was crafting sentences like they were shaped in a forge. I’d seen that once in a movie, where glowing steel sparked as it was hammered into shape.
“Our only recourse has been a deeper, more painful silence. Rights Holders like Silas Rog squeezed our speech down to a trickling stream, but kept that small stream flowing to make us pay for every word—to make us think we could speak. But that was an illusion. We fought them with silence, and now we are freed to fight them with our voices.”
“Yeah!” Mandett Kresh called out. People around him nodded. Vitgo looked confused, and Phlip had disappeared. Some of the Silents puzzled over my words.
“The time of our silence is over!” I cried out.
Most of the Silents hooted and hollered and cheered at this, but a few faces narrowed and frowned, their lips shut tight. A thrill ran through me, and then a cold fear. They all looked to me for what came next, and that was terrifying.
“No printer will function now,” I explained, working to steady my voice. “The WiFi is destroyed. Without the tether, every pattern, every wall, every design is locked down. Without the ‘legally required,’ always-on connection, there is no way for Rog and his Legal team, or anyone else, to take over this city again. No one can legally speak here, or call for help. No one can enter or leave the city, because no one can legally agree to the Terms of Service to cross, or pay the tolls and tax to come and go. No one can legally enforce the Law. No one who is Indentured can be commanded.”
I thought of Nancee, wherever she was. There were no news dropters to record me, but I prayed my words would reach her somehow.
Rog scowled and smirked beneath his gag, his face twisted with the fuming smugness of a man who had never been denied anything. He did not believe me. He thought the problem would be solved in a matter of days. He was so sure he could not lose that even now, he could not recognize he had lost everything.
“The tether isn’t coming back,” I said, to everyone, but especially to him. “It will not return in a day, or a week, or a year. The Law has written itself into a corner. If we follow the Law, we will all die. We cannot print food. Food can’t be brought in from the outside. We can’t leave to find it.
“The Rights Holders will leave us for dead because the Law is pitiless and inflexible. Silas Rog himself will die by his own hand, starving with the rest of us while insisting we must not make food without the proper license.”
I saw fear now on faces in the crowd. Rog kept his smirk, but it was beginning to weaken. I reached into my bag.
“But the dome itself now shelters us from those Laws that would kill us.”
My voice faltered here as a worry overtook me. Not every Law was madness. If what little I had read was true, many were born out of logic and then twisted over time. Freedom of Speech was a Law that had been lost. There was a path—a history I did not know. A new ember kindled in my brain. I pulled out one book, and then the other.
“Silas Rog would have us believe there is a single book to save us—to prove Freedom of Speech is a right. I’ve been to his library and searched for the book, but what I found instead was a trap, built on the myth Rog himself created.”
I held one book up higher.
“This book shows how the molecular inks work. It has a key and the codes that will let us know which will kill us, which can feed us and how we can make food on our own. But this is not the book.”
I held up the other.
“Neither is this. The myth of that book is a lie, cooked up by Silas Rog to offer a simple, enticing solution. But there is something Rog missed.”
Rog’s face crumpled a little more. He tried to shake off the officers while the crowd cheered me on.
“No single book shows the way, but all of them, together, do. Our history is recorded there—right and wrong, every step and misstep, all the things Rog and his kind have scrupulously hidden. They are just waiting to be discovered.”
I thought of my name, Jimenez, and knew it was no accident it had been shortened. I wondered what other names might have been changed, and what purpose it served.
“They made us forget who we are, took our names and stole our culture.”
I looked to the center of the city, where Rog’s library rested above the dome. For all I knew, it was burning now—but even if it was destroyed, I felt certain our history could still be found.
“Freedom of Speech was our right.” I spoke loud and clear and shook the pages of the book I held. “And no matter what the Law now says, it is still our right.”
Henri took the stage and stood behind me. Margot followed, and Kel moved to my side, hardened with resolve. I put the books on the podium and reached back to find Margot’s hand.
“The simple act of charging us for every word and gesture allowed the Rights Holders to control far more than a small piece of property: they held our rights, our freedoms and our very lives.”
Penepoli raced up onto the stage, her eyes bright and desperate. Mandett stayed on the ground, soaking everything in. Kel took my other hand and squeezed, and I squeezed back, unafraid of charges or shocks to my eyes. My whole body glowed with pride in what we had accomplished.
“Every book warns us at the beginning: All Rights Reserved. But I don’t believe it. Every right will not be reserved. Our rights will not be reserved. We will be free.”
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