Alice’s Order

5. The Weapon

Five

The Weapon

Alice watching her teacher slice urea polymer in half and seeing it self-heal when pushed back together was the only thing she remembered of this particular day. Alice slipped into a reverie, unable to concentrate. When Alice was seven, she often played with the wall tablet after class. She filled the wall with multiplication tables, and said each number out loud eagerly.

“She’s incredibly talented. We’ve never seen anything like it.” A teacher spoke to Dawn. They were outside the classroom as Alice played. “We’d like to put her into an assessment.”

During the assessment, the teacher tapped on the wall tablet, numbers appearing for her assessment of each with a beep: nine, one, five, four, eight, three, two, ?, seven.

“The question mark is a six,” Alice answered.

“Okay, I’ll draw a chart for you,” the teacher continued. “If Y equals log x-l-f and y equals ten, what is x?”

“It’s one.”

Dawn waited outside for Alice with a smile.

“You did good, little fly.” Dawn took her backpack when she emerged. “Let’s go home.”

As soon as they arrived home, Dawn went to shower. Alice heard her brother talking in his room. She took out her tablet and logged into his channel. He was streaming a video.

In a voice she never heard from her brother, he spoke powerfully, clearly: “Here you have social justice warriors shouting about twenty-eight genders, while Empyreans chop heads and Crisis milks The Confederation dry of our money. Tell me how I should talk to women again.”

Someone online shot back: Stop trying to derail the conversation.

Cyrus’s next target were women protesters at the local university. They stood without makeup, the rolls stuck out over their waistbands, and he emphasized their ugliness with clever zooms and close ups he had edited from the live stream. “How dare females focus on improving themselves and competing equally against their male counterparts instead of screaming oppression!”

Dawn slapped open the door behind Cyrus. She stormed into his now separate room, just out of a shower with wet hair, her nudity covered by one hand bunching the towel wrapped around her body. Cyrus minimized his editing suite almost instinctively.

“You’re a real jackass, Cyrus. Great Zombie Savior!” Dawn shouted. Dawn started to run as he chased her. “Woman hater!”

“I’m not talking about girls like you.” Cyrus held an arm up as she tried to land a couple blows on him.

Alice heard her teacher call her name, coaxing her out of her memory of her brother and sister.

“Sorry,” she said when she woke.

He looked at her empathetically, about to say but instead said, “Class is over, Alice.”

During her break, she went through statics, vibrations, fluid mechanics and dynamics. She read a page, got a cup of tea, returned, read a new page, but soon realized it was an old page she had only half read.

Late in the evening, Alice went to the workroom at the university. Alice put two electrodes in one end of a PVC pipe, ten millimeters apart from each other. The other end had the charge, where she placed an LED light to signify the power in the charge. The charge was a lithium ion cell, which was not strong enough in her mind. She added a boosting circuit. When she shocked herself, she knew it had to be stronger and added another circuit. She then lined the pipe with aircraft aluminum, making her taser a baton as well.

Though her shock baton was rudimentary when she first built it, she continued to improve upon it. She lay on her bed and her skin tingled after she tested it on herself. The pain was halting. It hurt at the entry point like a small burn. She upped the voltage and felt a hundred little knives stab her body. Her heart raced, and then darkness. When she came to, she didn’t go for another round. Her muscles felt like dead weight. She remembered Cyrus when her mind tempted her to go further. She didn’t want anyone’s attention with her own death, let alone his sadness. She held on for this reason alone but she wondered if she could one day do it without any notice.

Alice rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she walked to school the next day. Alice was passing the library when a girl stumbled in front of her. The girl panted, coughed, clearly too exhausted to run. She tripped in her flats, leaving one behind. Enforcers trailed behind her. She held one of their guns and tried to fire back at them.

“Hey!” The Enforcer shielded himself with his iron gloves.

Alice pulled her shock baton out as the girl ran up to her. Alice held the end out and shocked her. As the girl fell, she looked up helplessly at Alice. A smile crept up on Alice’s face, her body filled with a sense of heroic justice that she had never felt before. Out of the slog of her depression, she felt excitement.

“Please…n-no. My mom won’t have anyone—” the girl pleaded.

An Enforcer shot her before she could continue. Alice glanced at the red dot expanding on the girl’s forehead and looked away. She wretched, trying to keep her breakfast down.

“You.” One of the guards walked toward Alice. “Scan her.”

The drone scanned her. “Alice Winder. Civilian.”

“Come with us.”

In the transport, Alice looked at the Enforcers with impatience. She felt like she did their job for them. The transport stopped at a nondescript building: gray, long, repeating windows. The door read LIGHTHOUSE - SCHIZER CORP. They took her into a meeting room with a giant black oval table, an inactive stream at the end, and a spotlight above each of the ten seats around the table. The Enforcers closed the door. Ramsey walked in seconds later and held Alice’s baton. He had a pair of spectacles, thick white eyebrows, and he wore an attractive smile. As before, he was dressed in a white suit with a gold collar and matching gold cufflinks.

“We meet again, Miss Winder.” He grinned at her. “Did you make this?” He pointed to the baton.

Alice nodded.

Ramsey circled her. “I am one of the brothers that own Schizer Corp. We have multiple businesses, but this one specializes in Enforcer improvements. Would you be interested in working here?”

“I’m still in university, sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Impressive, my dear. Tell me, what is one thing you’d like to improve?”

“Enforcers.” She realized she was looking at the man who oversaw their outfitting and swallowed hard. Her anger still trumped her remorse saying that.

“Why do you say that?”

“When my sister died, I thought it was inefficient for the Enforcers to have to push through traffic, to get to us by foot. Wouldn’t it be better if they were not human? And if they had the ability to halt transports?” Alice explained. Ramsey nodded. Alice continued, “We could implement the technology of self-driving cars for their patrols. And even if we want the human element, we can use remote VR. I find every Cleanse a joke to watch. They’re so slow and are always unarmed easily.”

“In the wake of your tragedy, this idea would not go ignored.” Ramsey grinned a viper smile of gold. “Take this improvement project on as an internship.” Ramsey pulled out a tablet. “Let’s make this official, Alice.”

She signed—had no second thoughts.

“I’m proud to work with another Winder.” Ramsey smiled, running his fingers through the tips of her hair. “I wonder what great future lies before you.”