Neither of them said anything else as they walked through the parking lot and into the building. The stairwell was silent, but Becca couldn’t think over the sound of her uneven breaths.
Becca followed her mom into the apartment. She felt like she was walking to her execution.
Her mom sat down on the couch. Becca joined her.
Was this how her mom looked when she was interrogating a dissident? That carefully-blank expression, those unreadable eyes?
Her mom spoke first. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”
That wasn’t how she had expected her interrogation to begin.
"I didn’t want to do it," her mom continued. "But you have to understand, nobody outside Internal is supposed to know about this. It’s not even well-known inside Processing. If anyone found out that you had this information… or that you got it from me…" A hint of fear crept into her too-neutral tone.
Becca kept quiet. She didn’t need her mom finding out about the conversation she’d already had with Heather.
"Dissidents have been passing around distorted versions of the truth for years," said her mom. "These things always make it back to them sooner or later. But it’s important that everyone else believes it’s just another dissident lie, if they hear about it at all; otherwise what we’re doing would be meaningless. If that weren’t so important, I would have told you the truth a long time ago. I never wanted to keep anything from you."
“It’s not about you lying to me.” Everything her mom had done, and she thought lying to Becca was the worst part? “It’s about what you’ve been doing. All the false confessions.” She had to force every word out of her mouth. Talking about this with Heather had been hard enough. To talk about it with her mom, with someone who worked for Internal, was practically unthinkable. But at the same time, something in her unclenched a little with every word she spoke. It felt good to talk to her mom again. To be able to tell her the truth.
She kept going. “I know you. You wouldn’t do something like this. The truth matters too much to you.” She met her mom’s eyes, but only for a second. It was too hard to look at her. “But you’ve been doing it all along, haven’t you?”
Her mom’s phone buzzed again. Her mom ignored it.
“You need to remember something.” Her mom got off the couch and knelt between Becca and the coffee table, so Becca had no choice but to look at her. “No matter whether these people have done what they’ve confessed to or not, they’re still dissidents. We can simply execute them, or we can go a step further and use them to strengthen society. We choose the latter.”
Becca had told herself the same thing, when she had first found out. Those people were dissidents. They deserved whatever happened to them.
Dissident.
She went cold.
No. She wasn’t like the people her mom was talking about. She hadn’t done anything that would get her arrested. Right?
But what had Anna done?
Even if Becca had been telling the truth about her, Anna would only have been guilty of passing along a rumor she might not have even believed. Hadn’t Becca given that same piece of information to Heather? Hadn’t she done something more serious than that when she had gone through her mom’s files?
“What about…” Her mouth was dry. “What about people who haven’t done anything but say the wrong thing? People like Anna?” People like me?
“In instances like that, it makes even more sense for us to try to get something useful from them,” her mom answered. “Those dissidents usually can’t even give us the names of any others. Either way, we have to remove them from society. By using them this way, we can do some good as well as eliminating the harm they cause.”
That was what she was now. That was what these thoughts made her. A dissident, no different from any other dissident in Processing. Somebody to get rid of. Somebody to use.
I’m not a dissident.
If she hated what her mom was doing, she was a dissident.
If she was a dissident, she was one of the people her mom was talking about.
“But how are you strengthening society by getting people to confess to things they haven’t done?” Please make it make sense, she pleaded silently. Please make me believe you.
Stop me from turning into a dissident.
Her mom moved back up to the couch. “The first question you asked was about people who haven’t done anything you would consider serious,” she said. “That’s exactly why what we’re doing is necessary.” She leaned toward Becca. “Most people think the way you do. If you heard someone say the country was better off under the old regime, what would you do?”
“I’d report them,” she said immediately. But was that even true anymore?
Just how far gone was she?
“Why?” asked her mom.
“Because only a dissident would think something like that.” She didn’t see how closely her words echoed Heather’s until she heard herself speak.
“But what makes that dissident dangerous?” her mom pressed.
Becca hesitated, not sure how to answer.
“Right,” said her mom. “You wouldn’t be able to say. One person, making an offhand comment about the government, doesn’t look like a threat. A conspiracy to overthrow the government—that’s the kind of threat people understand.”
“The kind of threat you create.”
Her mom nodded. “And because people believe that those conspiracies exist, they understand the danger that dissidents present, even if they understand it for the wrong reasons. It becomes automatic. When they hear someone saying the country was better off with the former government, they know that person is a danger to society, even if they don’t consciously think about why.”
“But what makes those people dangerous to begin with?” If she could find what made even the minor dissidents dangerous, maybe she could find the thing that separated her from them.
“A thousand tiny drops of poison will kill somebody as easily as a giant spoonful,” her mom answered. “But those tiny drops are harder to see. If people become complacent toward dissidents who don’t appear to pose any immediate threat, soon they’ll start ignoring them. If the dissidents are ignored instead of stopped, they’ll have a chance to gain enough power that people will stop ignoring them and start listening. And the more people listen to them, the more powerful they’ll become. Before you know it, with no conspiracy necessary, we’ll have exactly what we had before. Chaos, corruption, a world built on ignorance and fear.”
Becca wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that what Internal was doing—what her mom was doing—was right, no matter how many lies were involved, no matter what her mom had to do to get dissidents to say what she needed them to say. If she could just make herself believe it, she could have her mom back. She could have her mind back. She could have her life back.
Heather had done it. She had blocked out all her grief, blocked out everything Becca had told her. She had convinced herself that her parents had deserved to die. Why couldn’t Becca convince herself that her mom was doing the right thing?
Her mom’s neutral mask slipped a little more, revealing the fear underneath, with every second she waited for Becca’s response.
“I think I get it,” said Becca slowly. “You have to do what you’re doing, so people will understand that dissidents are dangerous. Otherwise they won’t see the danger until it’s too late.”
Her mom sagged against the back of the couch, letting all her muscles relax at once. “Exactly.”
“I think I need some time to think about this,” said Becca. “It’s a lot to absorb.” She swallowed. “Thanks for explaining. I should have asked you when I first found out.”