Their Solitary Way (20 page)

“No, sir,” muttered Terry.

The man behind the desk started chuckling. “So you don’t know how long you’re here for?”

“No, sir.”

Colonel Bishop set the pad in his hand down. “Son, you’re here for the next ten years.”

A sudden rush swelled up in Terry’s chest and face. What was Bishop talking about? Of course Terry was going home. He couldn’t stay here. “But I promised my sister I’d be home today,” he said. “I have to go back.”

“Too bad,” said the colonel. “Your Mother really did you a disservice by not telling you. But don’t worry. We just have to get you started.” He tapped the pad on his desk, and the door opened. A cluster of footsteps filled the hall before two large men appeared, each wearing the same brown coats as the rest. “Well, that was fast,” he said.

One of the men saluted. “Yes, sir. No crying with the last one. Took her right to her room without incident.”

Terry wanted to ask who
the last one
was, and why it should be a good thing that she didn’t cry. Did other kids cry when they came to this school? What kind of place
was
this?

“Well, hopefully Terrence here will do the same,” said Bishop. He looked at Terry. “Right? You’re not going to give us any trouble, are you?”

Terry didn’t know what to do or what to say. All he could think about was getting far away from here. He didn’t want to go with the men. He didn’t want to behave. All he wanted to do was go home.

But he couldn’t, not anymore. He was here in this place with nowhere to go. No way out. He wanted to scream, to yell at the man behind the desk and his two friends, and tell them about how stupid it was for them to do what they were doing.

He opened his mouth to explain, to scream as loud as he could that he wouldn’t go. But in that moment, the memory of the doorman came back to him, and instead of yelling, he repeated the words he’d been told before. “No, sir,” he said softly.

Bishop smiled, nodding at the two men in the doorway. “Exactly what I like to hear.”

April 14, 2339

The Academy, Central

“Stick out your arm,” said the nurse.

The needle pierced Terry’s skin, and he flinched. The nurse filled a small vial of his blood. “What’s it for?” he asked.

“Tests,” the nurse said, detaching the vial and replacing it with another. Once it was full, she handed the vials to a young man. “Mark, hurry and label these. Put them with the rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Mark. He picked up the vials, and disappeared into the back room.

“What kind of tests?” Terry asked.

“Easy, honey,” she said. “We do it for every new student.”

“But why?” he asked.

“Because we just
do
,” the nurse said plainly. “Now why don’t you go tell the boys in the hall that you’re ready, okay? We’re all done here.”

Terry nodded and went to the door. He opened it to find the same two men who brought him here still standing in silence. Had they been waiting for him this entire time?

“Finished?” one of them asked.

“I think so,” Terry said.

When it was time for sleep, they led him to a room with two beds. “This is your room,” one of the men said.

“When can I go home?” Terry asked.

But there was no answer, only a closed door. They had left him alone. All alone for the first time since he awoke that morning and saw his sister and—

Janice. She must be so confused right now, wondering where he was, why he never came home.
She’ll cry
, he thought.
Cry and plead with Mother until she falls asleep or passes out because that’s how she is. She’s so little, and now she’s alone. Sure, she’s got Mother, but when was that ever enough?

Suddenly there was a loud flushing sound. It came from the other side of the room, behind a wall with an open door where a light shone. Terry walked to the door, staring at the knob, waiting. After a moment, the knob turned and another boy stepped through.

He was taller than Terry, his chin a little thicker. He had short black hair and looked as surprised as Terry to find another person on the other side of the door. “Uh, hi,” he muttered. “What are you doing in my room?”

Terry looked around at the two beds. He felt like an idiot for not seeing them both before. One had a bag at the end of it, with the sheets and blanket already laid out. Of course somebody was already there. How could he not have noticed? “They told me this was my room.”

“Oh, I thought it was all for me.”

“Sorry,” said Terry.

“That’s okay,” said the boy as he walked to the side of his bed and sat. “To be honest, I was getting kind of bored. All the other kids got roommates, but they stuck me in here all by myself with nothing to do.”

“What other kids?” asked Terry.

“You know, the other students. Didn’t you see them?”

Terry sat on his bed directly across the room from John’s. “No, you’re the first kid I’ve seen all day.”

“Really?” asked John. “There’s about twenty of us, I think. Most got here early this morning. You’re kinda late.”

“Am I the last one?” asked Terry. He didn’t like being late.

“Dunno,” said the boy, shrugging. “They stuck me in here hours ago, and sent the rest to their own rooms. Anyway, I’m John.”

“I’m Terry,” he said. “How long do we have to stay here? They told me it was ten years. Is it for real?”

John nodded. “Until you’re seventeen.”

Terry stared at the floor.

“How long did you think it was?”

“I thought I’d be back by the end of the day.”

John didn’t say anything.

“Why didn’t my mother tell me?”

“Maybe she didn’t want to,” John said.

Terry gripped the edge of his bed with his hand, squeezing it. “Well, she should’ve said something. Now my sister thinks I’m coming back, and I’m not. She’s going to think I left her alone.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yeah,” nodded Terry. “Janice. She’s four.”

“I never had a sister,” said John. “Just an older brother. He graduated from the academy last year. When he came home, I got to meet him for the first time, and he told me all about this place.”

“You’re lucky,” muttered Terry.

“Lucky?”

“Yeah, you knew before you got here.”

“I guess,” said John, his voice a little softer. “But I only got to know my brother for a year. I won’t see him again until I’m seventeen. You got to spend four whole years with your sister. That’s lucky.”

“Sorry,” said Terry. Of course John didn’t think he was lucky. He was probably hurting as much as Terry.

“It’s okay,” said John. “And happy birthday, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said Terry. “Is it yours today, too?”

“Sure is. Me, you, and everyone else in our class.”

“Really?” asked Terry. “Seems like a lot of birthdays.”

John paused for a moment. “Actually, yeah, it kind of is.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother told me before I got here everyone starts school on their birthday. But he also said when you get here, your class is already going on, because different kids are born at different times. The classes are based on what time of the year you’re born in.”

“So?”

“So if all of us have birthdays today, isn’t it kind of weird?”

Terry shrugged. “All my mother said about birthdays was you went to school on them.”

“It’s weird, though,” insisted John. “My brother said kids get here at different times, not all at once. It doesn’t make any sense if we’re all on the same day, does it?”

Terry thought about this for a moment. “Maybe a lot of mothers just had babies all at the same time. Maybe our class is smaller than the other ones.”

“So many maybes.”

Terry sighed and leaned back against the wall. His feet dangled off the side of the bed. “What happens tomorrow?”

“Orientation,” John said. “And we start our classes. That’s what they told me earlier.”

“Nobody told me anything,” said Terry.

“Probably because you were late,” said John. “When we got here, they lined us all up and explained it. Tomorrow’s orientation, then our first class.”

“Anything else?” asked Terry.

“Dinner,” said John, pointing to a clock next to his bed. “Ten more minutes until we eat.”

Chapter 2

Documents of Historical, Scientific, and Cultural Significance

Play Audio File 109

Subtitled: Re: Cheer Up

To: SE_Pepper

Recorded February 20, 2174

CARTWRIGHT
: I wish I shared your optimism, Sasha. I really do. But the sad truth of the matter is that there is no going back. We’ve spent the last two decades trying to figure out a way to fix what’s happened, to pull ourselves out of this tomb, but we still have nothing to show for it.

We need to accept our fate. We’re never leaving this city. It’s been decades since the gas came, but nothing’s changed. There’s still no word from the outside, no responses to the hundreds of transmissions I’ve sent out into the void. The six hundred surviving humans in this cave of a city are all that’s left. No one else is out there. No one here is leaving. As far as our species goes, this is it. We’re at the end of the line. The planet’s dead and rotting, and the rest of us are waiting in the grave.

End Audio File

April 14, 2339

Central

Mara boarded the platform and waited for the train to arrive. Now that Terrance had been dropped off, it was on to the mothers’ lounge. A few minutes on the A line and she’d be there.
Can’t be fast enough
, she thought.

Metal clanked against the rails, echoing through the station, followed by a veil of dust that seemed to cover everything. It was coming from a set of vents nestled high above the train line. A group of contractors dangled nearby like puppets on strings, shouting and laughing as they worked. One of them kept hitting the side of the vent with his wrench, scattering wave after wave of dust with each loud smack.

Everyone called it the purifying season, though it was hardly a season at all—more like a month of air purification coupled with manual routine maintenance on several of the major systems. The whole process used to only take a week or two, but thanks to recent problems in other parts of the city, including an ongoing quarantine over in the slums, the contractors were spread pretty thin.

Still, the purifying season had its silver lining. Most of the mothers rarely had a chance to meet any men, especially when it came to the contractors and soldiers, who spent the bulk of their time in Central. But with the annual repairs came potential contracts. The season didn’t last very long, so if a mother didn’t pick a sponsor now, it meant she’d have to file for one later through the official channels, and nobody wanted to do that. It might take anywhere from three to six months, all with the possibility of a rejection letter. If a mother met a sponsor in person, it became much easier to persuade him to sign his seed away.

If a mother got lucky enough to land one of the level-9 contractors, a high ranking soldier, or (God-willing) a council member, it could change everything. A contract like that meant prestige and higher living, but more importantly, it meant a seed with a future, not just some other worker in the factories.

Mara always had a knack for the job, picking and choosing the right sponsor for the best contract. All of her children came from the highest quality donors—officers, scientists, and even a council member or two—something many of the other, more inexperienced mothers aspired toward.

But then, everyone had always called her special.

When she was still new to motherhood, the doctors told her about a new birthing standard called
Archer’s Genetic Profile
. The AGP worked like a points system, ranking genetic traits and compiling them into an overall score. This score not only determined the candidate’s eligibility to become a mother, but also how many children they were allowed to produce. Depending on a woman’s genes, the AGP could give them everything—decent pay and housing, access to Central, and above all, respect. The system functioned solely to keep humanity alive, and the mothers were its lifeblood. They were the only ones allowed to reproduce—a harsh but necessary rule, given the need for genetic diversity.

Mara became a mother when she was fifteen. She still remembered her first time with a sponsor, before she had a grasp on the fundamentals—the expressions of sex and the grinding rhythm of warmth and flesh. The instructors simply told her to lie there because the veteran sponsor would know exactly how it needed to be done. It was his job, after all.

She remembered pain, forceful and unpleasant—nothing like it is now. And there were people watching—scientists with clipboards who claimed it was for the betterment of mankind, rather than what she suspected all along: they wanted a show to re-imagine later when the lights went out.

But now she and the world were both a bit older, and the circumstances had changed for each of them. That scared little girl on the table had since vanished, replaced by someone else—a veteran mother who raised twelve children.

Most of Mara’s boys had gone on to be contractors, while a few others were selected for the medical field. After graduating the academy, the boys underwent an additional four years of schooling, covering anything from engineering, medicine, agriculture, military science, and construction. Afterwards, they were placed into positions that reflected their personal abilities and aptitudes. Each of Mara’s males had displayed impressive results. Her daughters, on the other hand, had all become mothers—the cost of having such wonderful genes.