zale volt d3 | fin

zale volt
seventeen. district three. male

Circuitry lies beneath his oil-stained fingers, wires and capacitors like a miniature city splayed out on the table of the dimly lit shack. Piles of electronics grace the musty room, courtesy of his twin sister Zoe that... liberates... them from... various sources. He'd leave that part to her. She was far better at playing the innocent card, at getting into places she shouldn't, at being - somehow - above suspicion.

He used to be a star student. First place, top of the class - they said he could have gotten into any prestigious school in the district. They put him through the entrance exams, clucked their tongues and talked of what a shame it was the school officials couldn't recognize his talent. They reassured themselves that all the geniuses in history had been difficult to understand.

And sure, the examiner had been baffled at his logical leaps and his lack of explanations. He just didn't mention to them that he'd thrown an eraser at the examiner's head for that.

He'll be dead before he's twenty, they warn, if he doesn't tame that firebrand temper of his, and learn to think maturely. Think wisely. Quit denouncing the Games and the Capitol and stabbing the petals of white roses because one day he'll act that way to the wrong person, and then who knows what'll happen?

He thinks they're all shallow people leading shallow lives and doing boring work. He has great ideas, he's sure of it, but of course incompetent bureaucrats wouldn't bother to listen to him. So he spends his time in the shack, tinkering, creating little electronic trinkets from the scraps. The quality of his schoolwork drops, and they are led to believe that it's because he's bored - or perhaps, because of a girl. (He privately thinks the romance hypothesis is ridiculous, but there's really no point in objecting.)

If you need certain things, however, and know the right people, you might be led to a run-down shack in the slums of District Three. You might assume the shack is uninhabited, and you'd be right - no one lives there, after all. But you would see the piles of equipment, and realize that though uninhabited, it is far from abandoned. You would see a wiry boy with short black hair peering at you behind thin glasses - or more likely, peering at his work and oblivious to your presence. You would see thin fingers deftly twisting two wires together before removing the glasses and wiping them on his T-shirt.

You won't be asked too many questions, not if you don't look like a Peacekeeper plant - he wants to make his skills available to anyone willing to ask. Perhaps you need an intricate piece of machinery made or repaired, and are unwilling to bring it to the scrutiny of official channels. Perhaps you cannot afford the extortionate prices that regulations force you to pay. Or perhaps you have more sinister, greedy ambitions - it's not up to him to judge. He'll take a look and name a price, and you'll come back in a few weeks to find everything ready - this young man always keeps his promises, after all.

In a district where intelligence defines people's livelihoods, Zale knows that above all, knowledge is power. They can take away money, food, homes, but they can't discern the education stored in one's mind - sanctioned, or otherwise. The Capitol may recruit the finest minds to work on surveillance, to work on Hunger Games technology, to build sprawling software systems so large that no one person can understand all of it and thus become a weak point - but the less loyal in the district are learning and building, too, and only with knowledge can they fight back, little by little, against the tyranny. However hard the Capitol tries to pretend, information isn't something they - or anyone - has rightful ownership of.

Secrecy divides us, so sharing is solidarity.

That's not what they teach, though, growing up in Three. They teach you that the Capitol, and only the Capitol, will ever value you like you deserve, for your intelligence. They teach you to look down on others with lower scores, to shun them since there's nothing you can learn being around them anyways. They teach you to shame your siblings into studying, and to keep a cool distance from your friends, because more often than not jealousy over a scholarship or a ranking will tear those friendships apart.

So much unconscious brainwashing starting from the first 1+1=2 in preschool, and thinking back he almost feels guilty for the years he kept his head down and turned in perfect assignments and parroted his parents and teachers whenever his siblings asked him the purpose of all they were learning. But even then he had been curious for more, wondering and poking at gaps of forbidden knowledge - until Zoe showed up one day with stolen goods that they promptly began tinkering with.

Since then, the two have been an inseparable duo. The thief, the tinkerer, and their little black-market repair shack that their family is none the wiser about. Subtle hints and words through the right mouths bring the occasional visitors and, well, he hopes they walk away not just with a piece of functional technology, but also a little more understanding, a little more subversive, a little more aware. And that one day, their collective knowledge will be enough to start a revolution.