Parable of the Talents

In a journal entry from September 2033, Lauren describes a horrifying turn of events. On a quiet day, seven heavily armed vehicles known as “maggots” suddenly appear at Acorn. Knowing the community has no hope of fighting back against this level of force, Lauren triggers the plan for the community members to flee into the hills surrounding Acorn. This plan has been practiced before, so Lauren is hopeful that people will be able to stay safe. However, the maggots spew out a poisonous gas that paralyzes people. With the community members unable to move, men wearing uniforms emblazoned with crosses put electronic collars on all adults. They take the young children, including baby Larkin, to an unknown location and separate the men and the women into two different rooms, now used as prison cells. The captors also rename Acorn as Camp Christian.

One of the women trapped in the cell with Lauren and the others tries to escape, and they quickly realize that the slave collars are programmed to trigger unimaginable pain if anyone tries to flee or rebels in any way. The other women are terrified, but Lauren encourages them, urging them to be observant, gather information, and work together. Inside, Lauren is overwhelmed by guilt, reflecting that “they had trusted me, and now they were captives. And I could do nothing—nothing but give them galling advice and try to give them hope” (198). Eventually, Lauren and some others are forced to dig graves for individuals who have died. Lauren is stunned to realize that one of the bodies brought out for burial is Bankole. 

Over the next few months, a routine emerges for the prisoners at Camp Christian. The prisoners spend most of their time engaging in useless and backbreaking labor; they are also forced to attend religious services and religious education classes. The women are regularly raped, and all the prisoners are often tortured and punished. More and more individuals are captured, rounded up, and brought to the camp. The children have been taken away and sent to live with Christian American families. Lauren urges her community members to cooperate with their captors and wait for the right moment to rise up and kill them. She also writes secretly about her experiences because she has stored up paper and pens.

As she endures these conditions, Lauren tries to understand what is happening in the wider world. She wonders whether or not the group running the camp and holding them prisoner is officially sanctioned under Jarret’s government. She also thinks about the future of her religion and community, concluding that “Earthseed lives and will live. But Jarret’s Crusaders have strangled Acorn. Acorn is dead” (213). Lauren anthropomorphizes the community as if it were a specific individual, drawing parallels to the many individuals who are also being killed in the Camp. 

The narrative shifts to Larkin, explaining what happened to her after being taken away from Acorn. She was taken to another “reeducation camp” and prepared for adoption. Larkin was also renamed Asha Vere after a fictional character who appeared in Dreamask narratives. Dreamasks are a virtual reality experience where an individual puts a helmet on and is immersed in various scenarios and stories. Most of the stories are a form of Christian America propaganda; the character of Asha Vere is a Black woman, but she is presented as a Christian American hero fighting against “sinners.” Larkin is adopted by Madison and Kayce Alexander, a middle-class Black Christian American family living in Seattle. Larkin notes that Madison and Kayce are not enthusiastic about adopting a child but do so from a sense of duty.

The narrative shifts back to Lauren’s journal from December 2033. As more and more people come to Camp Christian, tensions arise between the newcomers and the members of the former Acorn community. Lauren also meets a newcomer named David “Day” Turner, who tells her about what is happening outside the camp. On the surface, Christian America is doing charitable work, providing meals and shelter to impoverished individuals, but it is also very quick to send anyone who steps out of line to a reeducation camp. Most people in America don’t know about the reeducation camps or don’t have a clear idea of the atrocities happening there. They are also distracted because America is at war with Alaska and Canada, and Jarret promotes messaging that loyalty and unity are necessary for success in the war. Just before the end of December, Lauren is raped for the first time. As someone with hyperempathy syndrome, she has to suffer the trauma of sharing her rapist’s pain and pleasure. Afterward, Lauren concludes that she will do whatever she can to avoid being raped again: “I have decided to stink like a corpse. I have decided that I would rather get a disease from being filthy than go on attracting the attentions of these men” (231). 

Larkin explains that Lauren has no surviving writings for the year 2034, but she is certain that her mother was writing during this time. From other sources, Larkin knows there was an uprising and escape attempt at Camp Christian in late 2034, led by David Turner. Lauren objected to the plan because she knew it would not succeed and only lead to prisoners being killed. She advised the members of the Acorn community not to participate. Lauren was correct: the escape attempt failed, and many prisoners were killed and treated even worse in the subsequent months.

Larkin also explains that imprisonment in camps was never legal but happened when many Americans were distracted by other things, including the war with Canada and Alaska. The separation of children from their families occurred within a legal loophole where more and more individuals could be arrested for “vagrancy” and have their children taken away. People of color or non-Christians were more likely to have their children taken away. Larkin laments that “Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them” (241).

The war gradually made Jarret less popular throughout 2034, and when it ended at year’s end, his influence declined. Larkin explains that her adoptive parents, Madison and Kayce, lost their biological daughter Kamaria in a missile attack during the war. Larkin had an unhappy childhood because Kayce always compared Kamaria to Larkin and clearly loved her biological child more, while Madison, her adopted father, sexually abused her from the time that she was very young.

The narrative shifts to Lauren’s journal. By February 2035, Lauren is ready to mount her escape attempt. She and the former Acorn community members have secretly fashioned and collected knives to attack the guards. They have also learned that if the central control unit is disabled, all of the collars on the prisoners will stop working, which means they cannot be shocked. By chance, at the end of February, a terrible storm causes a landslide, wiping out a cabin and several buildings. The central control unit is destroyed in the landslide, and Lauren realizes that the collars have stopped working. She and the other prisoners rush to where the guards are sleeping, and since the prisoners vastly outnumber the guards, it is easy for them to gain control as long as the collars are disabled. While some of the prisoners who were not members of Acorn descend into chaos and even manage to get themselves killed, Lauren and her followers are much more organized and disciplined. They kill all the guards, gather any supplies that will be useful, and then set fire to the camp before dispersing into the hills.