Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (30 page)

Dear, dear Reader,

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading
Assimilation
as much as I enjoyed writing it.  As a first time author, I cannot thank you enough for choosing this book out of the untold thousands of choices out there.  I am also an indie author, which means I don’t have the marketing department of a major publishing house to help spread the word about my books.

Reviews, therefore, are like gold.  In a competitive marketplace, reviews get authors noticed.  I respectfully request that if you enjoyed
Assimilation
, please take time to post a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, or any social media site.  Tell a friend about the book!

Please visit with Davinney, Strega, and Ritter again in
Genocide
, also available exclusively on Amazon.

With deepest gratitude and best wishes,

Lydia Chelsea

Turn the page for an excerpt of Concordia Series Book Two,
Genocide
…

Excerpt of
Genocide

IT IS AUGUST 25th.

Less than four months ago, I thought my world was ending because my father, an officer in the U.S. Air Force, got a promotion and announced we were moving. Again. For the thirteenth time in my (then) sixteen years. It didn’t matter to me that I was about to graduate high school or that I was going off to college in the fall. What mattered is that he broke a promise, the one where he said he wouldn’t ask me to move again.

I turned seventeen in June. I completely forgot my own birthday. In my defense, there was a lot going on.

Anyway, looking back, I think what it really was is that I didn’t want my dad to go and leave me behind, even though that’s what he’d promised to do—that he’d put me up in my own apartment before he’d ask me to pack up and leave yet another set of friends, another just-barely-familiar place. At the time, I thought that’s what it was.

Or maybe I’m practicing what he calls revisionist history…where you look back at an event and see it through eyes that have grown wiser, feel it through a heart that has been forced to withstand too much trauma and can’t take any more. And so you change what really happened into something else.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter, really, because whether I actually was being a spoiled brat or whether I was subconsciously fighting the knowledge that even if he and Mom stayed in Surprise, Arizona, in the house we’d been in for almost two years—a record for us—I was the one moving on without them. College. Dorm life. Life.

I’d pack the entire contents of our house by myself if it meant the last three months and thirteen days hadn’t happened. And if you’ve been through thirteen moves you probably understand what an incredible sacrifice that would be. Whenever I take the time to actually think about where I am, the nagging feeling persists that I am dreaming, that I’ll wake up and shake my head and holler at my mother that I’ve had another bizarre dream for her to analyze. My dreams fascinate her. She insists she never has dreams as crazy as the ones I describe, and she’s always asking me to tell her about my latest one.

I really, really wish that I could tell her about this one. Because that would mean I’d wake up in my bed with the time worn, buttery-soft yellow sheets and my dog, Shamu’s, tail thumping on the mattress.

Instead, I look over at Strega lying face down next to me on the rift in Ritter’s extra unit and feel a profound relief. It is August 25th, and I am not waking up on the Disposal.

Whether I can wrap my head around it or not, I am on Concordia. Earth, in a parallel universe. Ritter accidentally brought me here when he saved me from the path of a speeding car. 

You want to talk about crazy dreams, imagine waking up in a different universe and having someone try to explain that fact to you.

Yeah. Ritter had about as much luck at first.

Turns out that no good deed goes unpunished. On the Earth that I know, you might get written up as a hero in the local paper or even make the evening news for saving a pedestrian from an oncoming car. On Concordia, Ritter’s version of Earth, you get brought up on charges and face expulsion to the Disposal, another parallel, where there are no laws. If someone wants to make a skin suit out of you and is able to catch you, well, say your prayers. There are no police to save you. It’s just man versus man. Or woman.

I think of how wild all of this would sound to my mother, if only it were actually just a dream we could laugh off together. She would cheer when I told her that this Ritter person narrowly avoided being sentenced to the lawless planet, and I was then tasked with going through something called Assimilation. She’d roll her eyes at the explanation that it was like immigration…except instead of coming from another country, you’re coming from another version of the same planet. I can actually see her in my mind’s eye cocking her head to the side and guessing,

“I’ll bet that’s from all the talk on the news lately about immigration reform.”

She’d attribute the boot camp atmosphere of Assimilation to my anger at Dad over his promotion and the move. Maybe she’d even go on to liken all of the injuries and exhaustion that went with the rigors of those final two days with an expression of how beaten down I felt about having to move again.

The Idix would have her narrowing her eyes at me.

“No tattoos until you’re eighteen,” she’d say to shut down any discussion. And then I’d roll my eyes at her and tell her if I was going to ask for a tattoo, it wouldn’t be a worldwide ID that could track me anywhere in the multiverse.

She’s always trying to figure out where my subconscious comes up with the insane things I conjure in my sleep.  I wonder what she’d do with the fact that if I failed to assimilate, instead of being deported back to the planet I’d come from, I’d be sent to that lawless planet. Ritter, too.

She’d have a field day with the ScanX. She’d chalk that one up to the fact that I’m always complaining about the twenty extra pounds I carry and the fact that if only salads tasted as good as ice cream, we’d all be size two.  If she could see me now with those twenty pounds long gone and with muscles I don’t even recognize, myself…

Mom would grow quiet for a moment once I told her about how the ScanX and the MedQuick force healthful lifestyles on the citizens of Concordia. If I told her the mortality rate and the rate of diseases like cancer are substantially lower than even the healthiest populations on Attero, which is what they call our Earth, she’d probably say wistfully,

“I wish grandma could have lived there.”

And then she’d get that sad look in her eyes that stabs my heart. Five years hasn’t lessened her grief so much as allowed her the ability to tuck it away most of the time. She would do that now—close the grief away in favor of outrage—if I went on to tell her that the government was testing a weapon on what is Concordia’s closest equivalent to welfare recipients and the homeless.

Since the local Tribunal (Concordia’s governing body) provides housing, food, and water to all of its citizens, no one is actually homeless. Technically we are
all
on welfare, but my mother would definitely equate the murders of the low functioners to genocide of the underprivileged.

My throat closes up, my eyes stinging. This is more thought than I’ve allowed myself to give my parents, to home, since I’ve been here. Thinking of them seizes me up inside, makes me immobile. I think back to that knock-down, drag-out fight Strega and I had in the cleanse about my depression over being stuck here on Concordia. Mom would think that, too, was a manifestation of the powerlessness I felt over having to leave everything behind again. She’d roll her eyes at me for dreaming it as permanent, being unable to ever return to Attero. But then she would equate it to grief over the many places, the many friends I’ve been forced to leave behind, and she’d hug me for a long, long time, trying to soak up some of my despair.

I blink hard and decide I’m going to have to be like my mother. Feel the grief brought on by this new reality, one I didn’t choose and never would have chosen, and then shove it back into a dark corner of my mind where it will rest undisturbed until something causes a beam of light to fall on it again.

It is August 25th.

I have successfully assimilated. Ritter and I are safe. Strega’s done with his fussing. I’m bandaged and dosed and have cling packs, now spent, in all the appropriate places. Now that Assimilation is over with, there will be little need for daily medical exams.  I won’t have to suffer any more of Strega’s looks of utter dismay each time I arrive back at the keeping.

I stare up at the ceiling in my unit at Ritter’s place.  Strega wanted to keep me in holding, but he couldn’t withstand my quiet pleas to just go home. The double entendre was not lost to either of us, and I think it is the reason he caved in. He was not willing, however, to leave me unattended.

Strega.

He is the one thing that makes my desire for this whole nightmare to have been just that—a nightmare—seem traitorous. He is the one thing I wouldn’t know how to leave behind. Ritter, Melayne, Mina…friends, all of them, but I am well-versed in leaving friends behind. I know that pain, and I hate it. But it is something I have survived many times and would survive again.

Waking from a dream, finding out Strega wasn’t real…that would bring a soul-crushing sense of loss. Just imagining it gives me a small taste, every bit as real as if I had a chance to return to Attero and had to leave him behind.

Impossible. Not just because the local Tribunal coded my Idix so that it is literally impossible for me to sliv back to Attero. It is impossible because I don’t know how I would choose between my life in Surprise and Strega. To have one, I’d have to turn my back on the other.

I’m almost glad that the choice isn’t there for me to make.

Strega doesn’t snore, exactly, but his breathing is a little on the loud side. I look at him but don’t touch him. I don’t want to wake him. He refused to say a word about anything that happened while I was gone. Judging by the haggard appearance that persists even in sleep, I’d guess even the sleepbringer and moodleveler didn’t help. I ease my blanket aside, careful not to cover Strega with it, lest the added heat rouse him.

I wander out to the servette. Having dodged a bullet—two bullets really, one mine, one Ritter’s—I don’t even mind breathing into the ScanX. I order up a hearty breakfast. It agrees I deserve the treat. 

I answer logs from Mina and Melayne while I wait for the ScanX to produce my meal. Yesterday’s factoring event before the local Tribunal was closed to all but one immediate family member. Since Ritter was a subject of the Tribunal, Strega was his chosen family member.  Ritter broadcasted my success over his logger while Strega evaluated me in holding. Both Mina and Melayne sent congratulatory messages and promises that we will celebrate next Saturday. Instead of rolling my eyes, I just smile. Fine by me. I feel like celebrating. My relief, if I haven’t said it before, is profound.

I sit down in the dining room, my breakfast arranged prettily on a plate. Today, I won’t eat it right from the container. This, I’ve decided, is a day for extravagance.

Just as I’m about to take the first bite, Ritter pops his head around the corner and asks, “If I order you up the same thing from my profile, can I have that?”

I put my fork down, ignoring the protest from my stomach. “What’s the rush?”

He shrugs. “Now that the threat of Disposal is behind us, I’ve been called back to the function hall. I missed the log last night, so I’m running late.”

I give him my breakfast, then sit awkwardly with him in the dining room while he wolfs it down, waiting for the beep that will signal my replacement. Ritter apparently doesn’t want to ask me anything about Assimilation either, which is good because I don’t really want to talk about it. And I don’t want to talk about the suicides or the launch closures or the apparent search for the rebel base which has been all over the news since I entered the proving grounds.

I wonder why it is so hard to find a topic, why we can’t talk aimlessly about the weather or something silly. But I know why. When the tone sounds for my breakfast, I leap out of the chair as if it’s an ejector seat.  Ritter chuckles, fork pausing over his nearly empty plate.

“Hungry?” he calls after me.

“No more so than you,” I tease, ducking out of the room.

I grab my box from the compartment, and I see Ritter’s ordered up something to take to the function hall for lunch.  I have just set that box aside for him and grabbed another plate from the cupboard when Ritter nudges me and says,

“Scooch.”

I give him just enough room to dip into the drawer I’m blocking. He gets the knife he’s after and opens his lunch box. I’ve just finished plating my second breakfast when Ritter casually plunges the knife into the center of his wrist and slices open his right arm to the elbow.

Look for
Genocide
on Amazon.com in late September 2015!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lydia Chelsea resides in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s been a writer since the summer of her eleventh year, when she decided that spending the summer indoors with a notebook and air conditioning was preferable to doing anything outdoors in the desert heat. She started by writing fan fiction before she even knew there was a name for it. Thankfully, for oblivious celebrity crushes everywhere, this gradually led to the writing of original fiction.

Assimilation
is her first published novel. She hopes there will be many more.

You can visit her on her Facebook page at:

www.facebook.com/lydiachelsea.author