The Other Earth (15 page)

The guy nodded, "Yes, you are already my second batch today. Okay, so do you two have a specialty?" he asked as we all turned and started to walk back toward the area he had come from.

"Science" Brandon said without hesitation.

The man nodded, "Great. I'm James by the way.
Nice to meet you two. Welcome to sector 1" he said.

Brandon smiled at him, "Nice to meet you. I am Brandon and this is Randi" he said, pointing to me.

"Hello" I managed to squeak out.

"Okay, so I only have one job available in the actually scientific building, working with the marriage programmer, and that job is only available to a woman, so we will put Randi there." James said
, handing me a package that was stamped with a symbol of the planet with a large number one imposed over it.

"Brandon, there is one job we have available in the code enforcement building, do you think that would work?' James asked Brandon.

Brandon nodded, "I think I can make that work" he said, taking his package from James.

I looked up as we turned, and noticed that we were walking toward a large stone wall that looked as though it went on for miles.

"How exactly are we getting in?" I asked, pointing toward the long wall.

James smiled at me and I no
ticed for the first time that he was actually quite attractive. He had dirty blond hair that fell just to his collar, high cheek bones and striking green eyes.

"There is a secret back entrance that was created by someone in the coalition years ago to get
us in and out easier than having to smuggle through the entrance with code enforcers there to stop us." He said.

My head was starting to spin as I tried to fathom a reason that they would need a code enforcer to keep people from getting into a city, or how
bad life was that they had a steady stream of coalition people there.

"Okay here we are" James said, pointing to a blank wall that was only marked by a small v in the stone. He walked forward and slowly pushed it open, looking inside for a few seconds bef
ore looking back at us.

He handed Brandon a rolled up paper and two patches, "Here is a map of the entire sector with important buildings marked. Take note in your paperwork of the building you will be working at and learn the map before heading out. Using
the map to walk the streets will look too suspicious." He said.

Brandon handed her one of the patches and following Brandon's lead attached it to the left side of her shirt on her chest.

"When will we begin working and what is our cover?" Brandon asked him.

James nodded, "You will begin work promptly tomorrow morning. In your paperwork you will see your transfer papers from Sector five, which houses the university. The house you will be living in is on the map, and located just a few feet from this entranc
e. There you will find Flora. She will be your cover and your roommate in the house. Once you arrive she will take your pictures that she will attach to the documents I gave you, making them official. There will be plenty of clothes that are specific to this sector in the house for you as well." He said.

I tried to keep up with what he was saying, but was still trying to look at the map that Brandon had handed to me to see where we were going to be living.

"Thank you very much" Brandon said, taking his hand for another hand shake.

"Good luck here at Sector One, I'm sure I will be seeing you around" James said, waving to them as he walked back to the hills, obviously waiting for the next set of coalition people to get there.

I looked at Brandon who was already moving toward the open stone and looking through, "Are you ready?" he asked.

I shook my head, "Do you know where we are supposed to go?" I asked.

He nodded, "I took a quick look at the map and our house should be three houses down on the left once we walk through this wall." He said, pulling me behind him.

I took a deep breath as he disappeared into the hole and quickly followed behind him, pushing the large stone door shut behind me.

"Okay, I'm following you" I said quietly.

He nodded and started to his left. We were directly behind a group of houses that were all exactly the same. They were decent size two story, square houses, with gray siding and white slated roofs. They each had a small backyard with a low wall around them
for a fence. I looked around as we walked and saw that the front yards were the same, and from what I could see, the houses across the small cobblestone street were the exact same as well.

"This should be us" he said, pointing to a house that looked just
like the others ahead of her.

"Do we go around front?" I asked.

He shook his head, "No the map said back on it, so I'm assuming that means to go in through the back."

I nodded as we walked up to the back door and knocked. The door immediately flew open and
an older woman with dark brown hair and large coke bottle glasses that magnetized her dark brown eyes to make them seem much too large for her small head stood in front of us.

"Yes?" she asked.

"We are looking for Flora. We were sent by James" Brandon said simply.

The woman nodded and stepped aside, letting us walk around her and into the dark house.

Chapter Fifteen

I stepped into the house and noticed that we were standing in a medium sized kitchen. It didn't look to be too fancy, just very plain but efficient. It was an open kitchen with gray granite counter tops and a large silver refrigerator. I sighed in relief that it at least looked somewhat like what I was used to seeing back home.

"Hello. I am Flora. It's nice to meet you" the woman said.

"Hello Flora. I am Brandon and this is Randi" Brandon said, introducing us.

Flora nodded and pointed to the doorway out of
the kitchen, "Follow me" she said.

We followed her out of the kitchen and through a large dining room with a table that was big enough to seat six people. It was a simple wooden table and I actually smiled as I had almost expected everything to be gray, as
it seemed to be the color that was everywhere.

"Through that door is the shared living area where many coalition meetings will take place.
Down this hallway here." She said, pointing to the left. "Is a guest bathroom and large pantry that houses our food. Once you start your jobs they will provide you with food cards. You can give them to me, and every Friday, I shop for food. If you would like anything out of the ordinary, just let me know and I will pick it up for you at that time." She said, now pointing in the other direction.

We then followed her up a narrow set of stairs that were not surprisingly covered in gray carpeting. At the top of the stairs it opened up to show three doors. She pointed to the right door and looked back at us.

"This right door will be one of your bedrooms. You can choose which one you would like, it does not matter as they are the exact same room. Through the middle door here is a bathroom with a shower that will be shared between the two of you. There is also an entrance to the bathroom in each bedroom." She said before pointing back at the left hand door.

"The left door is the other bedroom. This is your living space and will remain as such. My living area is a suite that is just off of the living room. I will not come into you
r living area and you will also respect mine in the same way. Go ahead and settle your things in and freshen up if you like, meet me in the living area in one hour and we will take your pictures for your documents." She said, turning and walking back down the stairs.

I looked over at Brandon and he motioned with his head to the right door and I followed him through it. We stepped inside and saw a basic room. It had what she would consider a full sized bed that was in the middle of the room in front of a win
dow, a bedside table on either side of the bed, and a small desk with a chair against the opposite wall.

I walked over and set my bag down onto the bed which was covered in a shockingly gray blanket. I laughed to myself as I thought this.

"What's so funny" Brandon asked, looking around the room.

"Oh, I was just thinking how this place really loves the color gray." I said.

He nodded, "Yeah I noticed that too. Come on let's check out the bathroom and the other room. You can take this room, I'll take the other one." He said.

I left my bag on the bed and followed him through the door on the left hand wall and we walked into a decent sized bathroom. It had a shower with a large glass door, a toilet that had its own small room with a half door that would close. T
here were two sinks on either side of the door to the hallway, and plenty of storage spaces between the two.

"Not bad" I said, looking around.

"Not bad at all. I think it's actually bigger than my bathroom back home" he said.

I laughed, "Well, you did have
an awfully small apartment" I said, following him through the last door that would lead them to the last bedroom.

I looked around as we walked in and nodded and it was exactly like the room before, just as Flora had said it would be.

"This is going better than I hoped it would" Brandon said, throwing his bag onto the bed and sitting down next to it.

"It is going surprisingly smooth" I said.

"I honestly didn't think we would find a way in and would have to retreat back to the ship and try again tomorrow. It's almost lucky that these coalition people are basically doing the same thing we are right now and so being an outsider has helped us to fit in more. That's so odd" he said.

I sighed, "It was almost a little too easy. But I have a goo
d feeling about things. We are going to have jobs and everything and being in the main sector as James said, we should be able to get a lot of intelligence and understanding of how the planet works and learn their history" I said.

He nodded, "Yes, I think
it will be good." He said as he stood up and walked over to the large cabinet and opened it up.

I looked over as he laughed and saw when he stepped to the side that it was full of gray clothes. I shook my head as he pulled a few things out and looked them
over.

"Why gray I wonder?" I asked him.

He shrugged, "Maybe they don't want anyone to stand out. It's like they just want everyone to be equal or something" he said as he looked at some of the clothes. "That's odd."

"What is?" I asked him.

"They are all the exact same color. There isn't one grade of difference in the shade. It's almost as though they only have one gray shade to work with. The thing is though that there are multiple styles of clothes." He said.

"Like how?"
I asked confused.

He pulled out a
few things and moving his bag to the side, laid out some of them onto the bed. "You see here. This shirt is more like a polo shirt, while this one is a t-shirt. Then you have these pants that are like slacks, but then you have some other ones in here that are almost an identical fabric as jeans. Only, everything is the exact same shade of gray."

I looked over the clothes, "That is odd. It's like
its okay to be different enough to mix and match the style of clothes, but not the colors" I said.

"Yes.
Exactly my confusion too. So look, let's go ahead and unpack our bags, and change into some of these clothes. That will give us time to write down what we are thinking in our journals while it's still fresh before we have to meet Flora downstairs for the pictures." Brandon said.

I nodded and turned
around, walking through the shared bathroom and into what would now be my bedroom. I opened my bag up and dug out my journal, eager to write down all of the gray I was seeing.

***

I walked into the hallway and saw that Brandon was already there waiting for me. We nodded at each other and walked down the stairs, going to the small sitting area. As we turned the corner I saw Flora sitting on the couch flipping through a stack of papers as though she was looking for something. I looked over at Brandon and he shrugged, not knowing what she was doing either.

"We are ready" I said, trying to give her a warning that we were standing there.

She looked up quickly, "Great, did you bring your packets?" she asked.

"Yes" I said, handin
g her my package.

She reached out and took Brandon's package too, setting it down on the table as she opened mine. She pulled the papers out and read the top page for a few seconds. She looked back up at looked at me for a few seconds before turning her he
ad and looking at Brandon again, and then she looked back to me.

"Are you two related?" she asked.

I shook my head, "No we are not" I answered.

She sighed, "Well you see here is the thing. I don't know your history, and I don't care, but with you working w
ith the marriage programmer, you will have to be unmatched. The only way you can validate your living in the same house as a member of the opposite sex would be if you are related. Seeing as how you two look to be about the same age, my suggestion would be siblings" she said, still looking back and forth between the two of us.

I looked over at Brandon for a few seconds before looking back at Flora, "What do you mean marriage programmer?" I asked.

Flora tilted her head and looked at me with an odd expression on her face. My heart started to pound as I worried that I had said something that should be universally known and therefore giving away that I am not from here.

"How long have you been undergro
und?" she asked.

I looked at Brandon for an answer, "I was born there" I said quickly looking back to her.

She nodded, "Yes you do seem unaware. Well, while I get this document ready for the photo I will tell you a story." She said.

She pointed over to the
smaller sofa that she was not sitting on and I walked over sitting on the farthest end, giving Brandon room to sit next to me. He sat down, making sure to keep enough distance to not arouse suspicion of our true relationship.

"About one hundred years ago,
people were running wild, having sex with anyone and everyone, having way too many babies that had disabilities due to inbreeding when a war broke out. There was a group of people that wanted things to be of a more orderly state and so there was war" she said, as she slid the first of the documents into a machine that resembled a scanner.

"So I would assume that they won that war" Brandon stated.

Flora nodded as she pointed to an area in front of her that had a small stretch of gray wall. I walked over to the spot she was pointing at and saw a small x painted onto the floor that I had never noticed before.

"Just stand with your toes on the x and look straight ahead to the camera without smiling dear" she said, going behind the camera. I looked right at her
until she pulled her head back out from behind it.

"So, once they won the war, they created the government. They have full control over everyone. They created these sectors for people to live in. Most of the sectors are just normal everyday people, working
ordinary everyday jobs. Only sector one and sector five are specific." She said, pulling out another document and placing it in the scanner like device as she pulled out the previous one and set it on the table next to her.

"James told us that sector five
is for the university and that this sector is the scientific center" I said, trying to contribute to the story.

Flora nodded, "Yes that's exactly right. This sector also houses the government itself. They are on the other side in a large building. There a
re a section of houses right around that building where they all live."

I looked over at Brandon and saw that he was frowning, "So what exactly is the relationship programmer and why would that force us to pretend to be siblings?" he asked.

Flora held her finger up, "I was getting there. You see, with all of the unnatural births, as they put it, they decided that they needed to fix our race. So they created a machine that will match people together, depending on a few things. The first is looks, the two people have to be matched in attractiveness. The second is a determination of their fertility." She put another of the documents into the scanner as she pulled the second back out and inspected it.

Deeming it good she nodded and set it down on top of the ot
her one, "When you hit a certain age, you are examined to see if you are capable of pro-creating. If you are shown to be unable to conceive in some way you are sent to an area with other infertile people. The third and final thing they check for is a determination of what your children would be like. They try to create a race that is beautiful but strong and only allow people to marry who would create these types of children."

I shook my head, "So it doesn't matter if you are in love with someone?" I asked.

Flora smiled, "Love is only something that someone in the underground would ever consider. You marry who your government tells you to marry and have at least one child with that person. If you do not, the punishment is death" she said, pulling out the last document and inspecting it.

"That still doesn't answer the question of why we have to pretend to be siblings. Can we not pose as an already matched married couple?" Brandon asked.

Flora smiled at us as she shook her head, "No, you see Randi here is going to be working with the main relationship programmer. She is basically the person who runs the data through the machines and matches couples. Anyone that works in this area is ineligible for marriage. They would not allow someone to be able to choose their own partner, and as they don't want to mess with the machine, they appoint someone who is unable to have children to the job most of the time and are told they cannot marry." She said.

I shook my head, "Okay. I don't really understand, but I will tell any
one that asks that Brandon is my brother" I said.

Flora smiled, "Good girl, just act the part until your mission is completed, and then you can go back underground with the inside information for the coalition to finally take down the government and bring
the planet back to the people of Terra."