For months, the plan had just been a whisper in the back of his mind, a daydream to get him through the sterile, monitored hours of his shift at the processing plant. They called it the Great Realignment, but Charlie called it what it was: a cage. Every move logged, every credit monitored, every citizen a node in a vast, unfeeling network.
The border was nothing more than a rusted chain-link fence swallowed by cheatgrass and the fierce, indifferent silence of the high desert. To anyone else, it was a line on a map. To Charlie Wright, it was the edge of the world. Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright (...
He hadn't told anyone. There was no one left to tell. His sister had moved to the coast years ago, swallowed by the same system he was running from. His friends were too tired or too scared to look up from their screens. For months, the plan had just been a
He walked back to the truck, shifted it into gear, and drove slowly through the gap in the fence. The bottom of the truck scraped against a rock, a harsh metallic screech that sounded like a lock turning. The border was nothing more than a rusted