The Rebel Code

Chapter Eleven

One week in the mall turns into two, and before I know it, May turns to June.

John still hasn't found a job. He spends most days exploring the mall, hunting for freeboot codes that might point him to a freeboot-owned business, but almost everything is full for the winter. The shipping warehouse above us is at maximum capacity.

Natcha is understanding. She continues to let us live rent-free, despite John's protests. She even gives us loans to pay off whenever we can, and it's thanks to her that we eat.

In our fifth week, Natcha invites us to her apartment for dinner, and John gets on her computer setup to see if there's news from Shandi. Natcha's father is a small, turtle-faced man with a white beard, and he doesn't speak much English, but he cooks incredibly. Her brother talks non-stop about his work as a nurse at one of the mall's many medical centers. It's funny, imagining a hospital in a mall, but I guess it's essential. Some people don't get out of here much, if at all.

To make up for our lost schooling, John takes to homeschooling us in the apartment. He quizzes me on equations and science during the day, and we read from digital scans of freeboot vault literature on Natcha's computer in the evenings. John lets me read almost everything I like, except 1984. When I ask him why, he simply says that it's not good for morale right now. John has never liked books that don't end happily.

With the rainy season passed, we start seeing fewer and fewer tourists in the shops, gone, no doubt, to Cape Town or somewhere pleasant to enjoy the sun. With fewer rowdy visitors comes less security, and John starts letting us go out, even without ProtoBands. Mo and I explore lower floors, taking in everything the mall has to offer. For a while, it seems like things will be this way forever. We study. We explore. We sit in on Natcha's dance classes and watch them practice. We have a jar on the kitchen counter with slips of paper that have the names of restaurants on them, and we draw at random for dinner every night. We find structure. But eventually, something has to change, because the structure we find never seems to last.

On the first day of July, Mo and I go to the movies.

On the far end of level ninety-seven, there's a big, blue theater that does "immersive action" movies. I've heard about this type of theater—I think they had one in Cape Town—but I've never been to one. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie in theaters at all. John makes us take Atticus for safety, but I don't mind the company. He'll probably go into power-saving mode anyway.

"Do you want popcorn?" asks Mo as we stand in line.

"Of course." I scoff, as if that's even a question. "Can we get slush drinks too?"

"Why not?"

It's a beautiful theater, even more so in the evening glow of the dimmed mall lights. The boards over the snack bar glow with colorful advertisements for soda, hot dogs, and chips. The ceiling over our heads is decorated to look like a night sky, with little glowing purple stars and planets. I suddenly remember the glowing stars on my bedroom ceiling in Port Carina and feel a tightness in my throat. I should have brought them, but I forgot to take them down.

Mo buys the tickets at the kiosk for some movie called Energy Eternal. It's an adventure thriller about a guy who tries to reprogram his service android, only he messes up and it starts attacking him. The digital virus spreads, until there's a full-on robot zombie apocalypse. Then, the guy has to go all the way to a science lab in the Business Province to get the cure: a microchip that will fix the androids. There's an epic fight sequence, three good car chases, and even a scene on top of a skyscraper, all of which we feel through the immersive action seats that vibrate and move with every crash and turn. There's also a romance with one of the scientists which, frankly, has a little too much kissing for my taste. Just when things are looking dark, the hero pulls through, cures the android, kisses the scientist again, and the world is saved.