immu-visitation (dot) bat

The boy squinted into the darkness of the tunnel that swallowed the road leading out of Rest Area. Pot-holes dotted the road, bad enough to break an ankle if you stepped the wrong way. The boy was far enough from his house today that he felt lightheaded and weak. Some days, he stayed within a safe distance of home, avoiding the waves of sickness. Other days, like today, he ventured close enough to the tunnel to pass out completely. Sometimes, the grownups had to come get him and carry him back home.

The boy held his breath, had been holding it for at least a minute. He calmed himself, preparing to throw the smooth stone in his left hand into the blank mouth of the tunnel. No matter how long he stared into that darkness, he couldn’t make out a single detail. What was in there? Where did it go? It just kept eating up as many rocks as he threw into it.

Soon as he couldn't hold his breath any longer, he let the rock fly across the asphalt, bouncing four, five, six times before disappearing. It echoed throughout the tunnel. He listened to the sound fade away as he bent for the small pile of smooth stones at his feet. That was five. This would be six throws. Six of ten. Ten throws every day.

He twisted around to look toward the few houses a few hundred feet behind him. The road led from the tunnel, bent slightly, and ended all of a sudden in the grass outside the nearest house. There were three houses in all, and the larger barn. Those four buildings were surrounded by grass, some of it ankle high and some coming up to the boy's knees.

The other kids in Rest Area called him weird for going all the way out to the tunnel. They called him a lot of things, actually - Travis was one of them. He’d never exactly understood the meaning of names. Why did every single person need a word that only belonged to them? He guessed he’d never talked enough to truly need to understand it.

Truthfully, Travis didn’t understand a lot of things. The one thing he did understand was his pile of ten rocks arranged neatly on the ugly road. He enjoyed calmly throwing them into the tunnel full of old rotting snake corpses. He’d often wondered if the snake thing was true. It’s what Gale Percy, one of the grownups in Rest Area, told him some time ago. Travis suspected it was only meant to scare him from walking into the tunnel. Which was something he wanted to do every day.

But he'd just get sick and pass out before he could reach it.

He threw another stone and exhaled another held breath. A rush of wind blew all around him and whipped up the trees throughout Rest Area. Eyes closed, Travis turned in a small circle to listen to the noise. Mountains towered around Travis and the small community on all sides, completely closing them in, apart from the tunnel and road. These wind gusts made the trees so loud that it was hard to think.

Travis liked standing near the tunnel when the wind blew because he had to steady himself to avoid getting pulled toward its darkened jaws. It was like a game. Don't get eaten by the tunnel monster.

Kneeling for another stone, he wiped a sweaty hand on his slacks. One of the grownups would scold him for getting them dirty. He straightened to make his throw, breath held. But Travis stopped when he saw — for the very first time — someone standing at the mouth of the tunnel. A man, tall and skinny, wearing clothes that looked as worn as the road he stood on.

The man waved. Travis, still frozen in place and trying to keep the wind from blowing him over, waved back with the hand holding the stone. He felt it slip out and clatter to the street but couldn’t take his eyes off the stranger. Travis glanced down for a second to look for the stone, and when he looked up again, the man was about ten steps away from him.

Travis blinked. Something in his stomach urged him to run, but a tickle in the back of his head told him not to. He couldn’t help but notice the half-grin on the man’s face as he strutted forward, stringy hair swinging back and forth on either side of his face with each step.

Stopping now just a few feet from Travis, the man looked like a tower. “Hey, kid. You don’t look so good.”

His voice was gravelly, like Travis's pile of rocks clattering across the road. But somehow still kinder than the grownups in Rest Area? Travis just stared in silence. He should go get the others, tell them that a stranger was here.

“You gotta name?”

The man’s shadow blanketed Travis, but the boy still couldn’t help squinting. The man leaned ever slightly and tapped a finger on Travis’s forehead. He laughed. It sounded way too loud against the usual quietness of Rest Area. There was no need to get the others anymore. They would've heard that.

The man sighed. “You’re somethin’ else, kid. I like it. Help me out, though. Where am I right now?”

Travis struggled to swallow because his mouth was so dry. "Rest Area."

"He does speak!" The man laughed again, this time even louder. "More like restop portapot, am I right, kid?"

Travis just looked up at him, not sure what to say.

The stranger stretched his back in a backward arch, then twisted side-to-side. It sounded like his bones were cracking in half. "Not the laughing type, then. Let's see what's going on in old Rest Area, kid." He strutted past Travis, aiming for the cluster of houses. Stepping off the road, his boots crunched on the grass.

Travis was not at all surprised to turn and see Dylan Micah emerge from one of the houses looking concerned, visible even at this distance.

This newcomer was the first person from the outside Travis had ever seen, and for some reason, he couldn’t make his heart stop beating too fast.

<><><>

Clyde used his fingernail to pick at something in his teeth as he walked toward the houses of Freakville. Population, who even knew? He pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket with his other hand and checked his coordinates one more time. There wasn’t supposed to be anything here. No registrations had been submitted in years, at least. Didn't show up on live feed maps. It shouldn’t exist.

But here it was.

Clyde's supervisor was going to stroke. She'd been hoping for Clyde to meander out here, confirm the rumors weren't true, and make all their lives easier. Woulda been nice... Now, anything could happen. And guaranteed mountains of reporting when he got back.

Clyde glanced back at the kid. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that a group of potential freaks were involving kids in whatever they were doing out here. He'd been picturing walking into a bunch of anti-tech, middle-aged isolationists, though. Not a kid.

The man approaching him with the poorly hidden scowl was much more in line with his expectations. The balding hair, the lines under the eyes, the overly pressed clothing. He had all the presentation of an anti-tech, middle-aged isolationist. His scowl did a terrible job morphing into a sincere smile.

“Sir,” balding said, "I must ask you to stop where you are and tell me who you are." His voice carried the slightest hint of charismatic rhythm.

“Hey there. The name's Clyde.” He stopped a good ten feet from balding, feeling brown grass crinkle under his feet. "And you?"

"What are you doing here, Mr. Clyde?" Clyde couldn't help noticing the man glance at the phone still clutched in Clyde's hand.

“Seems to me I asked you the first question.”

“Please tell me why you are here, sir.”

Clyde slipped the phone into his jacket pocket and tapped his foot on the ground. “Just passing through, my man, so don’t get all freaky on me. You could say it's my job to pass through little places like these.”

“And what is your job exactly?”

Clyde chuckled. Balding was as greasy as the hair on his head. Clyde noted the sheen of sweat on the man's forehead. “Now that's a whole lot of questions about me when you won’t even tell me your name. That don't seem right, does it?”

The man shifted his feet. “I apologize. We simply do not get many travelers come through here.”

“Something about that doesn't surprise me one bit,” Clyde said. “You gotta pretty hidden-away place here.” Clyde narrowed his eyes, studying the handful of buildings. Three houses and a larger building.

“Indeed. We prefer distance. I apologize again for my hostility. My name is Dylan Micah.”

“That wasn't so hard, right? I take it you're the town leader, given you stepped up to gab with me, and everyone else is watching from windows and porches.”

“I function in a community leadership role, yes.”

“Whatever you said, bossman. I just need to ask you some questions about lil Rest Area here. Community, as you put it. For my job and such. Mind if we go somewhere a little more private?”

Dylan Micah paused, eying Clyde. Probably wondering how Clyde knew the name of this little treasure trove. Got mysteries of my own, friend.

“It’s just questions, man. Won’t take but a few minutes.”

Sweat still pooling on his brow, Dylan Micah motioned for Clyde to follow and angled for the nearest house. From the front steps, Clyde noticed a few more children running around the area between all the buildings. So it wasn't just the one boy at the tunnel.

“Got any more grown-ups living here, or is it just you and a bunch of kids? Do I wanna know the answer, D.M.?”

“There are four other adults besides myself,” Dylan Micah said, sounding defensive. “We take care of a total of ten children.”

“Including the boy that nearly pelted me good with the rock in the tunnel?”

“That would be Travis. Yes, he is in our charge as well.”

“Looked to me like he wants to leave. Any reason he might want outta here?”

Dylan Micah shot a glance over his shoulder as he mounted the steps. “If you want to question me extensively, Mr. Clyde, please wait until we are seated inside.” The man entered the simple wooden door.

Clyde paused and looked at the tree line surrounding the commune. A bit more distance that he’d thought from up above. Looking down from his air rover, it hadn’t looked like he could land safely, which was why he'd opted to walk through the mountain pass. These unregistered folks were quite barricaded, successfully cut off from everything else.

Inside, Clyde unzipped his jacket. Dylan Micah waited for him at a table on the other side of a small living area. As Clyde crossed the room, the man looked him up and down.

Clyde’s job was to confront people who refused to register with the prime city of the region. You could live out here all by yourself, fine, but you just needed to tell somebody. Since America's Dispersal a decade ago, it was rare to find pockets like this where the hidden inhabitants weren’t doing something suspicious. There was usually a reason they didn't want to tell anybody where they were.

So the question remained: what was Dylan Micah doing here, and why was this little blip on Clyde's map not registered?

Clyde would find out.

<><><>

When Travis tried to go inside the house to listen to Dylan Micah talk to the stranger, Anna May wouldn't let him in. She told him that it was his turn to tend the flower garden, which needed doing immediately. Travis knew it was not his turn in the garden and that she just didn't want him interacting with the stranger. Just like they didn't want him going into the tunnel.

Like always, Travis obeyed.

The flower garden grew in the center of Rest Area, surrounded by four buildings. Usually, the other children liked to play beside the garden, but they now were huddled around one of the windows to the house where Dylan Michael and the other adults were talking to the stranger.

Of course, the adults didn't tell the other children to get away from the house. Just Travis.

He walked from row to row stripping off dead leaves and shriveled petals to the ground. The one good part about working in the garden was that it gave him the most energy he felt throughout the day. Even though sitting near the tunnel was his favorite thing to do, it did tire him out immensely. Taking care of the flowers felt the complete opposite.

There were some nights where Travis felt the urge to tend the garden, but he was never allowed. None of the kids were allowed out of the house at night due to the dangerous animals that came out of the deeper parts of the surrounding forest.

“Travis, did the man say anything to you?” Logan asked from behind. Travis had not heard her approach.

“No.”

“So he just came out of the tunnel and walked right past you?”

“He said he liked me.”

Logan circled in front of him as Travis clipped big plump and fresh flower buds into a basket at his feet. “What an odd thing to say. I wonder where he comes from.”

“Outside.”

“What an astute observation, Travis.” She laughed and walked back around him. “Bomani Kin hates when you trim them that short. He told me.” She skipped away.

Travis tossed the clippers in the basket on top of the perfectly bloomed flower clippings. They smelled good to Travis.

He turned in a slow circle, taking in the golden air of almost-sunset. The nearby tree line already felt colder as the night crept closer. He wondered if the stranger would stay overnight and if that would disrupt the children’s meditation. With the way the others crowded around Dylan Micah’s window right now, he doubted any of them would be able to sit still for that long without trying to find out more about the outsider.

Travis quietly crossed to the other side of the garden where the adults’ working barn stood. Every day, the children tended to the garden and dumped the day’s clippings into the holding bin attached to the side of the wood building. He turned the basket over, realizing with a loud clang that he’d forgotten to take the clippers out of the basket.

The stranger bothered Travis.

Travis blinked several times, surprised by the thought. He was surprised by the fact he’d thought it, and he was surprised by the fact it felt wrong to think such a thing. And the truth was the stranger himself didn’t trouble Travis. It was the fact he’d come from the outside.

Travis had always thought there were people on the outside of the tunnel. How could the grown-ups get to Rest Area without other people outside? The world had to be bigger than what he could see from inside the small ring of mountains and trees. He’d wanted to say it for years, but the adults made him feel like he couldn’t say it. That he couldn’t think it.

Watching the man walk through the darkness, seeing Dylan Micah’s upset face, watching the adults squirm at the appearance of the man all made Travis angry that they’d kept him from the truth for so long.

There were all these rules to living in Rest Area. Travis couldn’t go into the woods because of the dangerous animals. He couldn’t go into the barn because of the dangerous tools the adults used. He couldn’t go into the tunnel because of the sick snake corpses. He had to stay nearby the houses and tend the garden. Why? Because the adults told him to. But why? What was the reason? He’d never stopped to ask that.

Until he saw the stranger walk through the tunnel. From the moment the man stepped foot into Rest Area, Travis had been full of questions. It was agonizing not having any of the answers. Something in his chest told Travis that the newcomer might, though. He quite possibly carry all the answers.

Travis needed to speak to the newcomer. Another strange thought. Travis so rarely spoke. He so rarely wanted to. But right now, all Travis wanted was to talk to the man from the outside.

<><><>

The conversation had begun just how Clyde anticipated: “What you must understand, sir, is that we prefer our privacy here in Rest Area.”

All these anti-tech communes were the same. The connected world had failed them, and the bigger sprawls of cities had crumbled and dispersed. The response by these kinds of people was to congregate alone in these tiny pockets, refusing to join back with greater society. It had an edge of romance to it, Clyde admitted. He was a loner, preferred to work alone. But he did it legally, at least. Laws did still exist despite the crumbling infrastructure of their world.

“Where’d y’all come from? Before the Dispersal?”

Silence.

“Atlanta? Nashville? Somewhere smaller?”

One of the women shifted in her seat. “We came from various areas.”

Clyde sighed. The woman, Gale something, was choosing her words more carefully than somebody choosing their steps in an active minefield. “You all think I’m being a bit nosy. I get that. But it’s my job to make sure everyone’s registered and abiding by the laws of the land, see? Y'all can get right back to whatever you were doing as long as we know somebody's out here.”

He felt several of them glance at the door every time he mentioned anything outside their precious commune. Could these be one of those groups he'd heard about that pretended like nothing else was out there? Surely the kids remembered life before the Dispersal ten years ago. He tried picturing their ages. That kid, Travis, out front. How old would he be? Clyde was terrible with knowing that stuff. He sucked air sharply through his teeth. Maybe they weren't born yet or old enough to remember. Interesting.

“We aren’t doing anything illegal here, Mr. Stranger.” Dylan Micah’s ever-present smile made Clyde want to smack him across the face. Back of the hand. Solid, just to straighten out the crazy behind those eyes.

Clyde grinned back at him. “I’m sure you’re not.” He leaned far back in his chair, lifting its front legs into the air. “What’s with the kids? Who belongs to who? Or is it whom? I can never remember.”

They looked confused. “No person belongs to another person,” one of the other men said.

“‘Course not. Don’t twist my words, my guy. Which one, or several of you, are the parents?”

“We are all the children’s caretakers,” Gale Percy said.

“For griefsakes.” Clyde always tried to keep his cool with his questionnaires, but this lot…

“Mister, I think you have said enough.” Dylan Micah was standing now and no longer smiling. “You explained why you are here, and I cannot see us coming to any sort of agreement or understanding. I see no reason for you to stay any longer.”

Clyde let his chair’s legs hit the floor. Hard.

“But for the record, Rest Area, while isolated, is not at all as you expect. If anything, we believe the world is far beyond those old constructs of strict family structure. We are as it should be. As it hopefully will be one day. We take care of the children within our charge, and we hope to protect them until they can protect themselves.”

Clyde blew a weak whistle through his teeth. “I think we could all use a breather. I know I could.” He stood, the two men and three women looking at him with varied expressions. From confusion to pity to rage. “Would one of you point me to a toilet?”

The blank stares persisted.

Clyde cleared his throat. “No one?”

“We don’t have one.”

“You don’t...have one.” He’d seen some extreme anti-techs in his day, but good grief they always had at least some form of plumbing. He let his eyes pass over each of them. “I guess I’ll hafta make do then.”

<><><>

Travis watched the other kids running in unison toward the house they all shared, and he thought the stranger had gone. But he saw the man standing near a tree at the edge of the yard with his back turned toward the houses. That was closer to the edge of the woods than Travis was normally allowed to go. As Travis slowly walked back to join the other kids within the house, he decided he’d wait for the man to turn around.

It took a minute, but he finally turned and made eye contact with Travis as if he’d known the precise moment the boy started waiting on him. There was this grin on the man’s face like he knew something. Knew something that all the grownups in Rest Area didn’t know.

When he got close enough for Travis to see the stains and tiny rips all over his jacket, he stopped and narrowed his eyes. “The two of us somehow started on the wrong foot, kiddo. You didn’t want to say one thing to me when I showed up a little bit ago. But I’ve a bunch of questions, and you seem to be the only soul in this place not trying to throw a blanket over my eyes to hide something. Get what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Good, good, I won't have to twist no arms today.” The man's eyes shot in the direction of Dylan Micah’s house. “Listen, kid, I’ve got a simple job. I go around the district -- or I think they're calling them regions now, which is not important... -- and I look for unlawful settlements. Or even if they are lawful, settlements that aren’t registered. None of that makes sense to you, does it?”

“Not really, no.” The words the man used to describe the outside world sounded big and mysterious.

“Lemme say this. I could leave right now, go report this town here to my bosses, and they’d come arrest every one of them clowns in that house.” He pointed to where the grownups were, his voice lowered now and speaking fast. “I could do that in a snap. And I have done dozens of times before. But what’s stopping me this time?”

The man took a few steps forward, making Travis turn on his heels to keep an eye on him. “Something smells off about this whole shiznario. Pardon my mouth, boy. Old habit.”

“Did Dylan Micah say something wrong when you were talking to him?”

The man shot him a look and chuckled. “He didn’t. Said exactly what I expected him to say. Still, I got this feeling.” He let out a long breath, and big puffs of smoke floated from his mouth. How’d he do that? “You cold, boy?”

Travis bunched his nose up as if it itched. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“See my jacket? It’s keeping me warm. Where’s yours? I know that shirt ain’t thick enough. Fact is, you are cold. I tapped you on the forehead, and you’re almost painful to the touch. Which is odd, because you’re not shivering or nothing.”

The man’s words sounded foreign and strange again. “These are the clothes Gale Percy gave me. I don’t--”

“Don’t worry about that, Travis. Tell me this. I saw them other kids running into that house over there. Are they gettin' ready to sleep? Suns goin' dark.”

“You mean getting ready to meditate?”

The man was silent for a moment. “I mean close your eyes, go unconscious and probably dream freak-crazy dreams, and wake up when the sun comes up.”

“We...don’t do that,” Travis said slowly. He tried to imagine it, but he didn’t remember ever doing anything like that. Their meditation was more of sitting still for several hours while their energy charged back up.

“And this meditation, you and the other kids all share a house. Everybody else gets their own house?”

Travis began pointing out each of the houses and telling the man who lived where. Dylan Micah in the one he’d entered, Gale Percy, Bomani Kin, Anna May, and Nora Sybil in the last house.

“And who shacks up in that big house up there?” The man nodded toward the workshop.

“Only the adults go in there. It’s not a house. It’s where they work.”

“What’s their job, kid? Looks like they got you taking care of the weed bed, right? I saw you clipping this stuff. What do the grownups do?”

“None of the children are allowed in there. It stays locked throughout the day, and Dylan Micah is the only one with a key.”

“I told you this mess stank. Didn’t I say that?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me this: what does all this look like to you?” He motioned around them.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t overthink it. What you see when you look around?”

Travis turned in a circle looking around Rest Area. “The houses, the workshop, the garden.”

“What else?”

“The trees all around, and the mountains, and the grass.”

The man turned and spit, then took a step toward Dylan Micah’s house. “Don’t follow me, boy. I don’t want you to see what’s about to happen.”

“What are you doing?”

He looked back at Travis, his hand now holding something he’d gotten from a pouch on his belt under his jacket. “About to get that key from my new best friend, D.M. One last thing--” He took a deep breath, held it for a second, and then blew out in another cloud of smoke from his mouth. This one big. "Do that for me."

Travis had never seen anyone do that before. Would he know how? He took the deepest breath he could, held it, then let is out in a rush. He couldn't make any smoke of his own.

The man stomped toward Dylan Micah's house without another word.

<><><>

Clyde’s ears still rang from the last gunshot as Dylan Micah’s body hit the living room floor of his shack. Clyde let the room go still and took a deep breath. When he’d been in here a few minutes before, he’d been so focused on getting answers, there were aspects about the room he hadn’t noticed.

Like the fact there was not a single thing in the house. There were table chairs, but that was it. Everything else looked like contractors had come in and built half a home but left before the job was done. What before had appeared to be a cozy living room adjoined to a small kitchen was nothing but a bare room next to a smaller bare room with doorless cabinets and a sink without a faucet. Nothing about it was usable.

Clyde took a step toward the hallway that led to the back part of the house. He imagined maybe one or two bedrooms and a bathroom. Even when they told him they didn’t have a toilet, he imagined they might still have a room to wash in. But now, a feeling in his gut told him he would find no such thing.

At first, the stark absence of things bothered him. He’d thought of these people as anti-tech but not to have a single possession -- he’d never seen anything like it. But it did add up with what the boy had been explaining. Things were stuff that people collected. People attracted and kept things.

Clyde pushed the first door in the hallway open. It was empty, bare wooden floor and walls. A quick check into the other rooms revealed the same thing.

As he returned to the bodies heaped on the floor, Clyde felt clarity. The whole time, he’d seen them as anti-techs, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

He reached into Dylan Micah’s pocket and retrieved a small wallet. The only thing in the wallet was a metal card that fell into Clyde’s hand. Despite the fact this barren town lacked any evidence of tech, he knew he’d find all he could handle and more inside that “barn.”

One more look over the bodies. No blood anywhere. No mess. They’d not put up a resistance when Clyde started shoving them around. How could they? They’d not been designed to.

Holstering his gun under his jacket, Clyde stepped back out into the frigid desert, darkening beneath the setting sun. The red and dark brown sand and dead grass crunched under his boots, and he looked over the square of blackened weeds the boy had called a garden.

As he neared the barn where the boy waited for him, he looked over the remains of the dead forest that had once filled this mountain nook with a leafy canopy. Those days were long gone. Now, it just created interconnected, gnarled arms like the nest of messy cables under Clyde's office desk.

Finally, he looked at the boy. The boy that was more an elaborate walking, talking camera than he was a boy.

In a way, Clyde felt bad for what he was about to show him.

<><><>

The barn opened into chaos that hurt Travis’s brain to even look at. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at or how to begin thinking about it. The newcomer stepped inside and Travis followed.

“A few of the other Scanners in my unit have talked about stuff like this before, kiddo, but I’ve never seen it myself. Didn’t know what I was looking at until it all landed on me at once. Kinda like when a bird...well, y'know.”

Travis stepped up to a small window where someone lay. There were a handful of windows, each one with a different person behind it. Something felt familiar about the scene. He looked closely at the person behind the first window and gasped. He took a quick step back, bumping into the stranger.

“You, the other kids, Dylan Micah and the others -- you’re all just shells.” The stranger paused. “Well, Dylan Micah and the others were shells. These right here are the actual people.”

Travis walked down the row of windows and recognized all the faces of the grownups. Their eyes were open and staring back at him with an intensity that made him want to back up from the glass. Their bodies didn’t move, but their eyes looked like they wanted to jump against the window and scream at him. He quickly moved further down the row to look at the bodies of the children he’d been living with for as long as he could remember. There they all were, the only difference between them and the grownups being that their eyes were closed. They all looked peaceful, still.

There was one face he didn’t recognize.

“There you are, boy. The one who’s always been different, yeah? You’ve known for a while that something was rank about this place.”

The man knelt beside him. Travis looked between his reflection in the glass and the motionless body behind the window. He couldn’t deny the resemblance. His head hurt.

“I saw it the moment I stepped foot out of that tunnel. You wanted to leave this place. You knew it was phony. But you couldn’t, could you? Most likely, your ability to function is tied to this lab like a dog on a leash. It’s sorta like a battery and keeps you running, as long as you stay close to it.”

Travis slapped a hand on the glass. “How am I in there if I’m out here?”

“Weird thought, ain’t it?”

“The grownups knew I wasn’t real?”

“Looks like it to me, boy. But let me set you straight on one thing.” The man put a hand on his shoulder and turned Travis to face him. “You are real. Those wires and hoses right there're connecting you to that boy. His thoughts are your thoughts, and he’s moving and seeing and breathing every time you do. It’s just, you’re doing it for him. The only thing that hasn’t been real is the world you’re living in. Dylan Micah and the others changed that a little bit for you.”

“Why?”

“Some real bad stuff happened to the world a few years ago, kid. You might not remember it, but it was real bad. It's actually why I’m a Scanner now. Everyone kinda had to split up and fend for themselves. D.M. said it was his job to protect you until you were old enough to protect yourself. I suppose this was his way of protecting you from how loopy the weather and the world is out there.”

“Are you going to leave me with them?” Travis looked back at the five grownups still staring straight through him. He had to look at the floor.

“Nah, can’t do that. Doesn’t look like any of you can get out of these pods without someone from the outside doing it, and I shut down the adult drones. I’ll have to report this to my unit, and they’ll come collect y’all. You’ll live with the rest of us out there.”

Travis looked up to meet the newcomer’s eyes. “I’ll get to go outside the tunnel.”

“Well yeah, kid, you’ll get to go a lot further than that tunnel. Promise.”

The man stepped toward the door, continuing to say a bunch of stuff Travis didn’t understand. Travis just stood beside the window that held the real him. For as far back as he could remember, he’d never had the urge to say anything. Every word he’d spoken had been because someone else had spoken to him and expected a reply. Now, he felt different.

“Let me go with you.” It came out all in a jumble, and Travis wasn’t even sure the man heard him.

But the newcomer stopped talking and turned around. He locked eyes with Travis for a moment, then looked at the row of windows. He shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

Travis followed the man out of the workshop and out into Rest Area. The sun had just finished passing over the mountains, but there was still enough gray light to see the path down to the road. The other children were running up to the barn, barely paying them attention since its doors were open to them for the first time. Travis didn’t watch them sprint past him. He was too focused on the Rest Area he was seeing for the first time. Trees without leaves. Ground mostly without grass, and the grass that was there looked sick. A garden without flowers.

To his right, a pair of old and dirty clippers lay forgotten in a holding bin of crumbling, dead weeds where he thought he’d emptied healthy plant clippings not long before.

This was the world -- the real world.

The closer to the tunnel they walked, the more lightheaded Travis felt. At some point, he felt himself sink to the ground before being picked up and carried. Darkness filled the corner of his vision like it did when he pushed himself to get closer to the tunnel. His entire life, he’d hated that darkness because of what it prevented him from seeing.

Now, he let it take him. He knew that very soon, he would open his eyes again, his real eyes, and see an entire world he’d never seen before.

The newcomer carried Travis into the tunnel.

Travis exhaled a breath he'd been holding, slowly and steadily, and fewer than ten steps later, everything went black.