Eugenia part 43

Read part 42 here!

After I’d showered, dressed, and eaten, I was invited to a conference in the dining room with some of the conspirators that had been making the big decisions.

“We’ve got a whole underground movement on our hands, Miss Carroway.” A man called Amberly told me.

I wrinkled my nose at the formality, and Decklan winked at me from across the room. “Meg, please.” I told him kindly. “Is the movement contained to New Diego? Because one city won’t do us much good.”

Amberly looked particularly excited at this question, as if he’d been preparing for it all night. “Well, not exactly. The movement is the most cemented here, but we’ve managed to get chapters, if you will, in ten other major cities. Your parents have been especially helpful in that regard.”

I looked to my father, who shrugged with a sheepish smile on his face. “Your mother and I have had many close collaborators over the years, and we’re well respected. It doesn’t take much to convince people, once we show them the pictures and videos that you all have been collecting.”

There was suddenly a strange urge in my arms to hug this man who I’d written off as an emotionless robot so many years ago, but I controlled the urge. That was my new goal, to keep myself under control. To try and remain calm. A random burst of affection in the middle of a revolution meeting wouldn’t fit.

“Where are these cities? Concentrated on the west coast?”

“No, they’re fairly well spaced. Two on the east coast, four on the west coast, including New Diego, and the rest are dotted throughout the country.”

“Is it enough?”

“Well, that depends on what they will need to do. We were hoping you would come up with something.” Amberly looked down at the table, probably afraid I’d have another breakdown. The problem with being so well known amongst my fellow revolutionaries is that I had no secrets.

“Actually, I have an idea about that.” I told him with a smile, trying to put him at ease. “Our resident artists and musicians gave me the idea. What if we staged a sort of giant concert/protest?”

“A concert/protest?” My father looked at me questioningly.

“Yeah. We have enough musicians for a full live concert, enough artists to sell their pieces and decorate the area, and enough of everyone else to do… whatever. Poetry readings. Slideshows of our pictures from the gas chamber and the… medical experimentation lab. We could make a giant event of it. We could get our sister city revolutionaries to put on similar events on the same day.”

People were starting to nod, including my father, but Amberly wasn’t convinced yet. “I can see the potential in this idea, but I’m not sure how we would pull it off. How can we get people to attend without alerting Bluff? We can’t exactly broadcast the location.”

“We won’t have to. We’ll advertise the day and the time, but not the location. My parents can rent out the stadium downtown for a science convention or something, and once the rally starts up, it’ll be obvious who’s running it. We can feed Bluff some false information to throw him off, but in the end, I think it might be good to draw him in. He can’t arrest people for going to a concert, not the people who aren’t Outliers. It’ll be our chance to show people what’s going on at a large scale. Do we have contacts at any of the TV news stations?”

Amberly nodded. “The four biggest, plus a couple smaller scale ones.”

“Fantastic. We’ll let them know as well. We should pick a date and start getting posters printed up soon. Bluff will try to take them down, but the mysteriousness and the borderline illegality of it will draw people in. Everything’s more fun when it’s forbidden. We should also send Bluff some flyers.”

“We’ve been sending him art pieces and mix tapes almost every day.” Decklan told me. “I even designed him an end table.” I laughed. “So that should be easy.”

“Could we buy an ad in the local paper?” I asked the room. There were several excited nods. “Great. Now, let’s set a date.”

“Do it on the fifteenth of next month. That’s when the kids born in October have to take their tests.” Julie said. I hadn’t even seen her, sitting in a far corner of the room and sketching.

There was silence in the room, but we all knew she was right.

“That gives us just over a month to plan.” My father said.

“We can do it.” I said confidently, making eye contact with Decklan. He smiled at me.

“Then let’s do it.” Decklan agreed.

Continued in part 44!