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***
“Charlie?” Once I hear Nick whisper my name, I duck out of the corner that I’m hiding in. His eyes land on me immediately, making his shoulders relax. “Char? What is this about?”
“I don’t have much time to explain, just trust me, okay?”
Nick smiles dopily at me. “Always.”
I take Nick’s hand, leading him further into the back of the building. I know that I’m inherently putting Nick in danger, but I also know he cares as much as I do. Once I reach a simple, unmarked door, I pause before I push it open. Once Nick sees what is waiting for him inside, his mouth goes wide and he gasps.
***
I’m not even sure how it began, that’s how it always happens, right? When something like this happens, it’s hard to point to any one moment and say: that was it. I know that there were other instances of oppression, but the first one I really knew about was with Tao. Of course it was, right? Tao, always outspoken; never afraid to speak his mind. Management told him that what he was saying in his film was bad. It was harmful. Tao’s response was, “Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.” When he got pushback, Tao doubled down, insisting that what he was saying wasn’t harmful. No, the way it was being interpreted, the way that his words were being twisted to fit a narrative - that was harmful.
The community bylaws stated that people would get warnings. I only knew of one instance where this wasn’t the case, where someone was exiled in an instant for a public display of hate. So when Tao was pressed to change, Tao’s final answer was, “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” For that, he was stricken from our community.
***
“You made it!” My best friend’s gangly arms are wrapped around me, with Nick surrounding us. Here, in this moment, it feels like not all hope is lost.
“Tao, of course we came! Did you think we wouldn’t?” I scoff.
“To be fair, Charlie kept this a secret from me.”
Tao frowns. “Would you not have come, if you knew?”
Nick looks offended. “Of course I would’ve!”
I roll my eyes at both of them. “Please, you two. I only hid it from Nick because I knew he’d be all nervous on the way here, which would probably give him away.”
Tao nods solemnly. “True.”
At that moment, the door opens again. My heart leaps into my chest until Michael walks through the door, with my sister right behind him.
***
After Tao’s exile, my friends and I found ourselves in a weird position. Nothing was ever announced about him being cast out, and Tao himself felt so awful about it that he was reluctant to tell people what had happened. Maybe that was Management’s intent all along; if no one knows the truth, no one will see what really happened.
We kept our heads down for a time, wondering who would be the next to incur the wrath of Management. I never would’ve thought that it would be Michael, my sister’s Emotional Support Friend, who is easily one of the weirdest and sweetest people I’ve ever met. I think he even told me once that he hoped my “sex sleepover went well”, which horrified Tori to no end. But it turns out that beneath his calm, happy exterior, a ball of rage is simmering.
It was an ordinary evening when Nick and I walked into the marketplace. We heard a lot of commotion, and when we went to see what was happening, Michael was in the middle of a crowd, shouting, “Freedom means the freedom to think for oneself.” Management swiftly stepped in, but before Michael could be exiled, he left of his own accord, with Tori following closely behind him. I always assumed he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of kicking him out. On his way out, in one final act of defiance, Michael shouted, “Where there is equality, there can be sanity.”
That was the thing, right? With all of the cracks showing… was there equality? Was there something going on that Michael saw before the rest of us? We knew that what had happened to Tao was awful, and unjust. But did it speak to a greater problem forming?
***
“Tori, oh my God!” I rush over to hug my sister. “How are you guys?”
“Oh, just peachy,” she mutters. “Living on the outskirts of society is lovely.”
Michael chuckles. “You’d never believe it; it’s so desolate that even she’s gotten lonely.”
Tori elbows him in the gut, which promptly shuts him up. I just shake my head and laugh softly at the pair of them.
“We’ve missed you,” Nick says, coming up behind me, his arm wrapping around my waist automatically.
Once Michael has hugged the air out of my husband, he focuses those mismatched coloured eyes on us. “How are you, really?”
I bite my lip before answering. “Once I can see Isaac, I’ll be better.”
***
Isaac was the next of us to leave. It took some time after what happened with Tao and Michael, but he kept shoving books in our faces, insisting that this had happened before, muttering, “the best books are those that tell you what you know already.”
“What do you mean, Isaac?” I’d asked at the time.
Isaac turned to me, a fire in his eyes. “Charlie, once a group of people is told how to think by those in charge, everything else starts to crumble.”
Isaac didn’t even tell any of us he was going to do it; I don’t know if he thought we’d try to stop him. But one evening, a piece of paper was shoved under our door.
Dear Comrades,
It’s high time I speak up about the corruption that is taking hold in our community. Slowly but surely, Management is taking away our freedom of expression, our freedom of speech. They are telling us what to think, but they are doing it so slowly, most of you probably haven’t even noticed. Did you notice Tao Xu was gone? How about Michael Holden and Victoria Spring? Perhaps if I never sent this out, you may not even have noticed I was gone too.
I have no doubt that if I did not leave of my own accord, that Management would come to my home and forcibly remove me. Just like Michael, I refuse to give them the satisfaction. There are others I hold near and dear to my heart in this community. To those people, I have one thing to say: stand strong. And to everyone here, know this: “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”
In time, we discovered that Isaac had ensured everyone in the community would receive a copy of his manifesto, including Management. The funny thing was… Management never even acknowledged that it happened.
***
“Speak of the devil,” Michael says brightly.
I turn around quickly, and sure enough, Isaac is standing there, waiting for me to notice him. “Isaac!” I shout as I throw myself into his arms.
He hugs me back just as tightly. “Charmander, I’ve missed you,” he whispers into my ear. “How have you been?”
I snort with laughter, and stepping back, recount what’s happened to me since he left.
***
I was coming home from the market on a day like any other, thinking back on something that had happened a few days prior. I’d discovered Darcy being harassed by someone outside of their workplace, simply for being different. Unable to tolerate what was happening, I stepped in with some harsh words. We weren’t sure exactly who the perpetrator was – a mask and cloak can hide a lot! – but we were suspicious that it was someone from Management.
Going over the facts again in my head, I shook off the negative thoughts before reaching my door; I didn’t want to bring that energy into the home that I shared with Nick. But before I could enter my domain, I was grabbed by hooded figures and hauled into a van. No one would answer my pleas for what was happening, and when I was ultimately chucked out of the van beyond the walls of the community, I was simply told: you know what you did.
As I wandered and tried to survive, Nick and my friends that were remaining tried to piece together what had happened. They were given small bites of information from Management, but nothing concrete. Other people who had been cast out had been told why; the reasoning didn’t always match the exile, but at least they were told. But all Management would say is that I had said harassing things to people.
This did not fit in with what my friends knew of me, and Nick certainly did not believe it. He made sure I knew that, “love was the one thing they could not destroy.” No matter what they did, Management couldn’t take away how he, or my friends, felt about me. Nick wanted to join me in my exile, but he also wanted to get to the bottom of this. After some digging, they all discovered that Management had been going around asking citizens if I had ever wronged them. It is as if they were looking for a reason to cast me out.
This solidified the theory for Nick and those remaining that Management had been behind the verbal assault on Darcy, and that the claims against me were bogus. A true corruption of power. That perhaps the person behind the attack was the person who held the deed to the land our community was built on. We already knew that that member of Management was quick to anger.
But no one knew how far they’d go.
***
On a cool, crisp day, Darcy snapped. I would’ve thought it’d be Elle first, given that Tao’s exile was what initially kicked this all off, but no. They confronted Management about things they deemed to be untruths that were being spread about members of the community. In an instant, Darcy was cast out of our community. It turns out that snark and sarcasm were considered as much of a crime as harassment and disrespect. As if simply being sarcastic was an unkind or mean action in and of itself.
There has always been talk that when someone is exiled, this must be agreed upon by all members of Management; the speed at which Darcy was forcibly removed casts doubt upon that being a fact. As the dust settled and more information came out, everyone started walking on eggshells. Not just the remaining friends of ours in the community; everyone .
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched. The smallest flicker of your eyes could give you away. A gesture, an expression, a whispered word, could be detected. Can you imagine a world in which rolling your eyes gets you banished? Every sound you made was overheard; every movement scrutinized. That’s the new reality.
More and more people came forward, but Management gave vague explanations, weak platitudes. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Nothing was actually done about the corruption that was being revealed for all to see. In the dead of night, rules and bylines would be altered, with no trace left behind of what was changed. Effectively, the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth. Many discovered that Management is conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, and it did not sit right with them.
***
Soon enough, the rest of our friends join us in the room, along with people that I’ve only seen in the crowds here and there. James, Becky, Otis, Christian, Sai; hell, even Harry joins us. “Figured I could put my homophobic prick of a father’s money to good use,” he jokes with me as I look at him with bewilderment.
Looking around, I see people of like minds, who are sick of being censored. Who are sick of being told what to think. We’ve all learned that the rules that we are expected to follow do not apply to Management. There can be no justice without truth, and if they won’t tell the truth, well, then there is no justice.
“What if we form our own community?” Michael suggests, earning him a glare from Tori.
Isaac speaks up. “That’s actually a great idea. Look at us now, all scattered in various parts of the area.”
Michael grins, clearly pleased that someone is liking his idea “Right. So why not band together?”
“Yeah, I mean, nothing is stopping us,” Elle says.
“I wouldn’t put it past Management to send in spies. They’d probably want to keep track of anyone from their community visiting us,” Tori points out.
With a dry laugh, I say, “Oh, they definitely will. But so what? If they take action against those people, we’ll just welcome them into our community.”
Darcy gleefully exclaims, “Let’s do this!”
With a plan, we leave the room. It might be difficult, and it won’t be perfect, but at least this community will be our own. Hopefully, in time, people in our old community will figure out what is happening. Maybe if enough people stand up, or enough people leave, they’ll be forced to address the corruption within.
Probably not though.
***
We wondered what would come in the days that followed. Would the most corrupt member of Management be cast out, be made into a scapegoat for all of the wrongs committed against their citizens? Even if that happens, they are all the ones who made it a crime to speak against injustice. It’s become a crime to say something that a member of Management doesn’t like. I can only hope that, in time, things will get better. Go back to how they were before. But until the other members of Management address how things got so out of control, and take accountability for their part in it, for their complicity, I won’t hold my breath.