Icons

We still can’t be sure how the Icons work. We know, when the Lords came, thirteen Icons fell from the sky, one landing in each of the Earth’s mega-cities. To this day, we still can’t get close enough to examine them. Our best guess is that the Icons generate an immensely powerful electromagnetic field that can halt electrical activity within a certain radius. We believe it is this field that enables the Icons to disrupt or disable all modern technology. It appears the Icons can also shut down any and all chemical processes or reactions within the field.

Note: We call this the “shutdown effect.”

The Day itself proved the ultimate demonstration of this capability, when, as we all know, the Lords activated the Icons and ended all hope of resistance by making an example of Goldengate, São Paulo, Köln-Bonn, Cairo, Mumbai, and Greater Beijing … the so-called Silent Cities.

By the end of The Day, the newly arrived colonists gained complete control of all major population centers on the Seven Continents. An estimated one billion lives ended in an instant, the greatest tragedy in history.

May silence bring them peace.

2

PRESENTS

By the time we reach the top of the hillside, the sky has turned dark as the eggplants in the Mission garden.

Ro pulls me up the last slide of rocks. “Now. Close your eyes.”

“Ro. What have you done?”

“Nothing bad. Nothing that bad.” He looks at me and sighs. “Not this time, anyway. Come on, trust me.”

I don’t close my eyes. Instead, I look into the shadows beneath the scraggly trees in front of me, where someone has built a shack out of scraps of old signboard and rusting tin. The hood of an ancient tractor is lashed to the legs on a faded poster advertising what looks like running shoes.

DO IT.

That’s what the bodiless legs say, in bright white words spilling over the photograph.

“Don’t you trust me?” Ro repeats, keeping his eyes on the shack as if he was showing me his most precious possession.

There is no one I trust more. Ro knows that. He also knows I hate surprises.

I close my eyes.

“Careful. Now, duck.”

Even with my eyes shut, I know when I am inside the shack. I feel the palmetto roof brush against my hair, and I nearly tumble over the roots of the trees surrounding us.

“Wait a second.” He lets go of me. “One. Two. Three. Happy birthday, Dol!”

I open my eyes. I am now holding one end of a string of tiny colored lights that shine in front of me as if they were stars pulled down from the sky itself. The lights weave from my fingers all across the room, in a kind of sparkling circle that begins with me and ends with Ro.

I clap my hands together, lights and all. “Ro! How—? Is that—electric?”

He nods. “Do you like it?” His eyes are twinkling, same as the lights. “Are you surprised?”

“Never in a thousand years would I have guessed it.”

“There’s more.”

He moves to one side. Next to him is a strange-looking contraption with two rusty metal circles connected by a metal bar and a peeling leather seat.

“A bicycle?”

“Sort of. It’s a pedal generator. I saw it in a book that the Padre had, at least the plans for it. Took me about three months to find all the parts. Twenty digits, just for the old bike. And look there—”

He points to two objects sitting on a plank. He takes the string of lights from my hand, and I move to touch a smooth metal artifact.

“Pan-a-sonic?” I sound out the faded type on the side of the first object. It’s some sort of box, and I pick it up, turning it over in my hands.

He answers proudly. “That’s a radio.”

I realize what it is as soon as he says the words, and it’s all I can do not to drop it. Ro doesn’t notice. “People used them to listen to music. I’m not sure it works, though. I haven’t tried it yet.”

I put it down. I know what a radio is. My mother had one. I remember because it dies every time in the dream. When The Day comes. I touch my tangled brown curls self-consciously.

It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know. I’ve never told anyone about the dream, not even the Padre. That’s how badly I don’t want to remember it.

I change the subject. “And this?” I pick up a tiny silver rectangle, not much bigger than my palm. There is a picture of a lone piece of fruit scratched on one side.

Ro smiles. “It’s some kind of memory cell. It plays old songs, right into your ears.” He pulls the rectangle out of my hand. “It’s unbelievable, like listening to the past. But it only works when it has power.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s your present. Power. See? I push the pedals like this, and the friction creates energy.”

He stands on the bike pedals, then drops onto the seat, pushing furiously. The string of colored lights glows in the room, all around me. I can’t help but laugh, it’s so magical—and Ro looks so funny and sweaty.

Ro climbs off the bicycle and kneels in front of a small black box. I see that the string of lights attaches neatly to one side. “That’s the battery. It stores the power.”

“Right here?” The enormous ramifications of what Ro has done begin to hit me. “Ro, we’re not supposed to be messing with this stuff. You know using electricity outside the cities is forbidden. What if someone finds out?”

“Who’s going to find us? In the middle of a Grass Mission? Up a goat hill, in view of a pig farm? You always say you wish you knew more about what it was like, before The Day. Now you can.”

Ro looks earnest, standing there in front of the pile of junk and wires and time.

“Ro,” I say, trying to find the words. “I—”

“What?” He sounds defensive.

“It’s the best present ever.” It’s all I can say, but the words don’t seem like enough. He did this, for me. He’d rebuild every radio and every bicycle and every memory cell in the world for me, if he could. And if he couldn’t, he’d still try if he thought I wanted him to.

That’s who Ro is.

“Really? You like it?” He softens, relieved.

I love it like I love you.

That’s what I want to tell him. But he’s Ro, and he’s my best friend. And he’d rather have the mud scrubbed out of his ears than mushy words whispered in them, so I don’t say anything at all. Instead, I sink down onto the floor and examine the rest of my presents. Ro’s made a frame, out of twisted wire, for my favorite photograph of my mother—the one with dark eyes and a tiny gold cross at her neck.