The Line

No matter what you try

"You're from the South Side. Well, technically, it's the East. I'm guessing they call it the South due to its climate--not its actual geographical location."

The voice made everything sound like a question.

Juan turned away from the forcefield and saw a disturbingly pale, freckled young man with an outstretched hand. The stranger was dressed in a grey jumpsuit--that jumpsuit was stained with patches of green--and seemed to buzz even in stillness, radiating energy. The boy's smile was wide and dirty, his weird flaming hair dishevelled and uneven, his nose long and crooked--an undeniably hideous combination.

Juan realized he wore the same nondescript jumpsuit as the redhead--though his was clean for the moment--with a start.

What was going on? Did the strange boy work for the court? And what was that talk about the Line? Was that where they were now?

He hated every part of this.

"I'm not shaking your hand," Juan said. He couldn't be certain whether or not the boy was in cahoots with the pale man. And there was something else: the boy was dirty.

The redhead just nodded--a slow, sympathetic nod--as if he'd been expecting this rebuff. Dropping his hand, he waited in silence for one... two... three minutes...

Then Juan's resolve broke. "How do you know I'm from the South Side?"

The boy smiled wider and spoke faster. "Your skin. It's dark. You're used to the sun. And that hair. It's popular for boys on the South Side to dye their hair bleach blonde. Also," he said, staring at the filmy, opaque barrier in front of him, "this is the southern side of the barrier. Where the court drops off offenders from the South Side." Again with the questions.

"I can't remember how I got here," Juan said. "On this beach." He sat, cross-legged, on sand. Seawater licked at his feet. It was sunset, too. He'd never seen sunset before in his life. It kind of looked like... blood, smearing the sky, mixed with some orange and splashed with yellow. Like a work of art, the kind his father would buy for the estate.

It was beautiful.

Or rather it should have been.

"Where am I?"

"The Line. The vertical equator. The middle. Whatever you want to call it. We're what separates East and West, South Side from North Side. This is the only place in the world you'll find people from both Sides, I think." The strange boy paused. "I'm from the North Side." Perpetual night and snow everywhere, Juan thought. Those were the leading South Sider theories as to what life on the North Side might consist of. "I'm here because I tried to steal something valuable. I know I have an accent, being from the North and all. I'm talking too much. My name is Zachary Flynn. Just call me Flynn. I'm in charge of safely transporting flashies to the main island. You should get on the boat before we're hit by a storm. And--oh, yeah. That"--Flynn pointed toward the cold, fuzzy forcefield--"is our cage. It's impervious to pretty much everything. So I guess that makes it a very good cage."

Incapable of assimilating the words Flynn had uttered--Flynn had spoken incredibly fast--let alone think, Juan just stared at the sunset, replaying his misty memories of the judge and the gavel and the sentencing. He was in the Line after all. That meant the court had been real.

He was never going home.

Something sunk and died in his chest, maybe his heart, and he suddenly needed to look away. After awhile, he said, "I'm Juan Solo." His voice sounded like his vocal chords needed oiling.

But Flynn didn't seem to notice the mood shift. "Huh. Like Han Solo? Your parents were Star Wars fans?"

"Kind of." Juan was staring Flynn in the eye. Very few people made the connection. "They were always into old, classic movies." Old was an understatement, of course. Juan's great-grandparents hadn't been born when the films had come out. The Solo family's copies had been nearly impossible to find.

"Huh," Flynn said again. "I guess I'm into old movies too. At least, I used to watch them all the time on the North Side. We had this old television set in my mother's house... It picked up static most of the time, but when it didn't... Only two-dimensional films, obviously... Not much to do with the cold and all..." He trailed off, chuckling softly. "We should go."

Once they'd boarded the boat, he started talking about his ideas.

"They're going to slip up eventually. Someone's going to show up with a shred of memory about who controls the court and how the forcefield opens," he said. The engine revved. They moved. Water kept splashing up over the sides of the boat and Juan secretly feared he'd fall off. What was that smell, anyway? It was overpowering and... salty.

"People have tried staking out a side of the forcefield to watch it open," Flynn went on. "The court just didn't make any deliveries there until everything was clear.

"I have these theories, you know. The court always mentions a prosecution, but no one's been awake to see one. I think that when you're brought into the court, you're guilty--no matter what you try."