Breeder

by Honni van Rijswijk

  Praise for Breeder

  “Proxy meets Handmaid’s Tale, Breeder will force readers to ask how far they would go to decide their own fate.”

  —Joelle Charbonneau, New York Times bestselling author of the Testing Trilogy

  “By taking us inside a dark nightmare that offers its protagonists no easy answers, Honni Van Rijswijk holds a fearless and ferocious mirror to our own lives. Written with gleaming prose, these characters are fully formed, and their triumphs and betrayals are as harrowing as they are heartfelt. A brilliant debut novel filled with heart-in-your-throat tension as it races toward a stunning finale.”

  —Poppy Gee, author of Bay of Fires and Vanishing Falls

  “Van Rijswijk’s beautiful writing paints a vivid picture of a dystopian future where oceans are acid and the air itself is poisonous. As brutal as the world itself is, it’s nothing compared to the people who inhabit it. Poignant and eerily timely, Breeder is a fast-paced sci-fi that reminds us a value can’t be placed on our humanity.”

  —Lani Forbes, award-winning author of the Age of the Seventh Sun series

  “A thrilling ride through a not-too-distant future…If there is hope for us, it derives from the queer and trans strategies of self-making and unmaking that van Rijswijk’s characters devise…It’s thrilling, sexy, and gorgeously paced.”

  —Grace Lavery, author of Please Miss

  “This short, fast-paced novel set in a futuristic yet terrifyingly familiar world is perfect for fans of Marie Lu’s Legend series. Readers will find themselves fully immersed in the bleak Corporation landscape and the lives and fates of those struggling to survive…An absorbing tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic future.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Copyright © 2021 by Honni van Rijswijk

  E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover and book design by Kathryn Galloway English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-9982-8

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-9981-1

  Young Adult Fiction / Science Fiction / General

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  For Laura and Anika,

  Mum and Dad,

  Chris and Matt and Ness,

  Pat and Jenny,

  Beth,

  Jo and Rachael and Sophie,

  with all my love.

  My name is Will. Naming me was the last thing my mother did before she died. Sometimes I tell myself a story for comfort. In this story, my mother wanted to give me a name that was a secret message, the only one she would get through to me. I imagine that my mother looked back over her short and crappy life and thought about all the hell that lay ahead for me, and the message she wanted to pass on was Have strength, be resilient. Will. I give you Will. Sometimes I even imagine that she wanted to say something more—I’m happy you were born, Will. I love you and want you to survive. But I don’t think she actually loved me, and I know she wasn’t happy that I was born. She killed herself a couple of hours after I came into this world. I don’t blame her—she was only thirteen years old.

  The note she left behind just said: “Baby Name Will.” She couldn’t write that well—she was a Breeder, after all, so she’d never been to school. My ma never, ever talks about her, or about what happened, and mostly, I don’t dare ask.

  My name is Will. I’m a Westie. I live in Zone F. My Corporation account is in credit. These are the things I say clearly and quickly to any CSO—Corporation Security Officer—who asks. These are the facts that flash on a screen whenever I push my wrist against a security scanner: when I get on the bus, when I log on at school or work, and when I go through my front door in the evening. Twenty times a day—at least.

  “Will?”

  I look up. Sir is frowning at me. “We’re waiting,” he says. I nod, staring at the icons on my screen. I’m nauseated—

  everyone is. It’s Evaluation Day. But for me, it’s also because of the Crystal 8 withdrawals.

  I click on the first icon, profile, and everyone watches my screen projection at the front of the classroom.

  Name: Meadows, Will

  Sex: Male

  Type: Westie

  Age: 15

  Guardian: Meadows, Jessica

  Siblings: 0

  Academics: Average

  Physical: Below Average

  Psychology: Average

  Employment: Desalination Plant—Technical

  Long-Term Track: Desalination Plant—Technical

  “Next screen, please, Will,” Sir says. He’s alright, Sir: he suffers almost as much as we do each Evaluation Day, and you can feel him wishing us all to pass. Not like our teacher last year—that bastard looked ecstatic whenever there was a Corp alert, and he loved it when Craig Jacobsen’s screen flashed unsatisfactory and we went into lockdown until the CSOs arrived and took Craig to the Rator. They didn’t even send Craig to the Circle for retraining—just straight to the fucking Rator.

  The tension rises as I hover over the second icon: units. Our units are aggregated daily and reported every month on Evaluation Day. But the Corp changes the algorithm each month, so you can never tell for certain whether you’re going to measure up.

  “Will?” Sir says again; his tone is anxious.

  I click, and quickly scan to the bottom of the screen.

  units invested in will meadows

  by the corporation to date:

  Social: 42,687

  Material: 54,679

  Education: 19,677

  units returned to the corporation

  by will meadows to date:

  Work output: 33,543

  Education output: 0 (N/A—Westie, Zone F)

  Genetic output: 0 (N/A—Westie, Zone F)

  Projected genetic output: 0 (N/A—Westie, Zone F)

  Projected lifetime debt owed to the Corporation: 480,000

  Projected rate of pay-off: 12,000/year

  Projected time to pay off: 40 years

  Projected rate of pay-off: Satisfactory

  overall result: satisfactory

  Satisfactory. Everyone claps. My mind buzzes as Sir smiles at me and then moves on to Sandeep Michaels. I breathe out, relieved. I wasn’t really that worried, since each month I hustle extra units on the side through the Gray Corps. Hustling Gray units isn’t a problem—as Ma says, the Corp usually looks the other way at the Gray economy, because the Corp benefits from it. But you never know if someone has been secretly reporting on you for working too slowly during a shift or cracking a joke about the Corp to the wrong person, which is what happened to Craig.

  As Westies, we are allowed to be in a state of increasing debt to the Corp until we turn twelve—then we’re expected to return units. Our class started out with half days at the desalination plant and now we all do four and a half days per week. Our half day of “school” is timetabled for different days each week—it depends on when we’re most needed at the plant. On high-demand weeks, they just skip timetabling our school session altogether, which is fine with me. It’s not like we’re actually getting an education. All we do is go through our history and discuss ways to m
aximize the units we can give back to our generous Corporation, which has so selflessly protected us.

  We’ve been evaluated every month since we were toddlers. If you’re a Westie male, you get sent to a training center as soon as you’re toilet trained. The center matches you to a school and future workplace, based on your zone and test metrics, as well as any units your family is able to give you. If you’re very lucky, your parents and grandparents have earned a lot of Legacy units from the Corp to pass down to you. If that happens, you may get sent to a proper school in Zone E; we sure don’t have any in Zone F.

  For Zone F Westie guys like me, with zero Legacy units, there’s nowhere to go. I’m of average intelligence and slightly below average in physical health. If I’m lucky, and I work hard and keep up my side hustles, I’ll get to keep working at the desal plant. Hopefully, in twenty years or so, I’ll have saved up enough units to buy a Shadow from the Incubator. Maybe she and I will be one of the 5 percent who have live births, and we’ll work our asses off to give a surplus of units to our son. Maybe I could give that kid a chance at a Zone E life in plant management, or even, dare to dream, a semiprofessional job in Zone D.

  If I’m unlucky, I’ll screw up my units and get sent to the Rator.

  For Breeders, of course, things are much worse. They’re born into debt that they’re not allowed to pay off themselves. But that’s another story.

  After evaluation, it’s time for history. Sir puts on The Horrors of the End Times. All our history lessons are based on this two-hour Corp documentary, and we’ve watched it about six hundred times. The documentary stars and is narrated by Jock Hordern, the Corp film star. The Horrors of the End Times is the biggest-budget film ever made by the Corp. It re-creates our country’s apocalyptic period with detailed CGI: the global warming that caused the rise of the oceans, the giant walls of fire and the droughts that decimated the land, and the chemical rains that poisoned the rivers. Then the Fourth World Depression came, and the world wars followed. The Horrors of the End Times portrays the resilience of the original survivors, a group of just ten thousand people, huddled in a northeastern town, now Zone A. These scenes were actually filmed in the original settlement. It hadn’t always been a coastal city, of course—before the global warming events, it was inland a few miles, with a very famous college that educated the richest people in our country, and from all over the world. But after the oceans rose, it became coastal—bordered by the chemical ocean to the east and the badlands to the west. Even here, in the relative safety of the settlement, people collapsed in the street from starvation. Babies died from minor infections because there was little medicine, and plagues tore through the weakened population. Fertility plummeted and has never recovered. Only 5 percent of humans are now capable of having their own children. The Corp decided that the mass fertilization of Breeders would be the only way to maximize reproductive output and prevent humanity dying out. So unless they’re part of that 5 percent, the Breeders are surrogates, impregnated with the genes of the fertile.

  The Corp also decided that kind of poverty and starvation and war was never going to happen again. It wasn’t possible to look after everyone, so they drew a line around the settlement. The people inside had to sign up to new laws. First—once the borders were set, nobody could go in or out. Second, no government—the World Depressions were caused by government interference, and the best thing was to let the market take care of itself. Third—all decisions were to be based on the principle of what benefits the economy. “Some troublemakers wanted a bill of rights,” Jock Hordern pontificates, “but rights were part of the degeneracy, part of the End Times. There are now over five million people inside the Wall. We’re the lucky ones.”

  I honestly couldn’t give a shit about the End Times. I mean, I get it—hundreds of years of violence and famine, disease and horror. It was terrible, and it’s great that it’s over. I’m glad I live in the Corporation. Thank you, dearest overlords. But reciting the same history, over and over, does my head in. I bet my classmates feel the same way, but nobody would ever say that out loud. Like I said before, you never really know who’s in contact with the Corp, trying to get extra units by snitching.

  I pinch my leg to stay awake.

  When the documentary is over, Sir gets us to take turns retelling our understanding of the history. Mathew Anderson begins, repeating the opening of the documentary word for word:

  “After the global environmental disaster came the Fourth World Financial Depression, over a billion people starved to death, which led to a vicious war over the meager resources that remained. Then came the pandemics.”

  The Corp doesn’t say how many years have passed since the initial settlement. I tried to track it through Ma’s stories, counting the generations. Her grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother was a child then. That girl only survived because she was taken in as a Breeder. The rest of her family was turned away at the border and died of starvation because the Corp already had too many workers. The stages of development, from initial settlement to incorporation to full zoning, must have taken years.

  The Crystal withdrawal makes me feel nauseated and sleepy. My stomach lurches, and I pinch my leg again to stay alert.

  Mathew Anderson then recalls the Cannibalism of the Innocents—the Corp’s way of dealing with a bad harvest one year—which is everyone’s favorite scene in The Horrors of the End Times, and that makes us all sit up in our seats.

  But before Mathew can really get into it, our screens go blank. Sir reads out in a flat voice, “Could everyone turn their attention to the front of the room, and recite the following points, please.” It’s a mission statement. Our personal computer screens stay blank and the text appears on the big screen at the front of the room.

  All over the Corporation, Westies from Zone B to Zone F are stopping what they are doing at this exact moment and are reciting in unison. Only Zone A is exempt, because Zone A is exclusive to the Corp. Reciting our mission statement is meant to help us Westies focus on our goals, make us feel united, and improve our productivity for the Corp. It reminds us where we, as Westies, have come from, and why we do what we do. I don’t look at anyone. I just start reading along with everyone else, in as quiet a voice as I can manage without being cited:

  “After the End Times, the country’s population was decimated. My people of the West found themselves in fire-burned land, unable to live.

  “The people of the East pooled their resources and formed a Corporation to survive. My people of the West began their Final Migration to the East. The Corporation generously opened the walls of their settlement to my people of the West.

  “My people of the West owe a great debt to the Corporation. As a person of the West, I am eternally grateful to the Corporation. I promise to maximize my units, in order to at least partially repay the Corporation’s generosity in hosting me. In good faith, the people of the West will repay the Corp through either work or breeding.

  “I promise to uphold the Breeder Laws.”

  The room is very quiet. Everyone has just said Breeder out loud, and it’s not a word that you’re used to having in your mouth. It’s not a word you say in public. Lately, the Corp has stepped up its Breeder campaign; I’ve noticed the ads on the buses. They only started sending twelve-year-olds to the Incubator last year, and it’s still a bit controversial.

  Sir is about to say something when the big screen shuts down: it’s the end of our school half day and time for us to catch the bus to the desalination plant. I put my mask on and head out the door.

  •

  “Do I need to light a fire under your ass this evening?” Ma yells from the kitchen. She is a Westie to the core and speaks plainly. Ma is actually my grandmother; nobody except me knows that. Jessica Meadows is not her real name, and Will Meadows is not my real name, either—they’re the names someone put on the fake documents Ma bought the last time we had to move. I don’t know Ma’s real na
me, or my mother’s; whenever I ask Ma, she says, “What’s the point of going into all that? What’s past is past.” I know that Ma was a Breeder, just like my own mother was.

  Ma’s at the stove cooking, and it smells awful. Most food now smells awful to me, because of the Crystal 8 withdrawals, but Ma is also a terrible cook.

  “Will!” she yells. She wants me to feed our goat, Cranky. Yes, we have a goat. Yes, he is highly illegal, and yet he’s only one of the many things in our home that are highly illegal.

  “Will!”

  I’m sitting at the little fold-up table reading a novel—

  illegal!—and that’s what is really pissing Ma off and is the reason she wants me outside with the goat. Today Ma looks about a hundred years old. No offense. Normally, I think she looks very good for her age; even beautiful for forty-five years old. She’s not angry at me because reading novels is illegal—as I said, there are many illegal things going on in our home. Ma can’t read or write much, like most Westies, but that isn’t the problem either. The problem is that Ma is an extremely practical person, and she thinks reading novels is a massive waste of time, and that I’m too daydreamy and impractical as it is, without “getting lost way up my own ass with a huge bloody book of lies.”

  Now Ma sighs and gets that deep wrinkle down her forehead. When I see that wrinkle, I get up and put my mask on and go outside without a word.

  Cranky bleats at me as he hears the back door and his bell is ringing—he shakes his head from side to side to really make it bang around. He clangs it when he’s irate or happy. I love that sound, and it feels good to be out of the house—even though the chemical fumes in the air hurt my lungs and make my eyes tear up.

  Cranky’s giving me the evil-goat-eye. “Sorry I’m so late,” I say, but he just glares back. He’s wearing one of my old raincoats, which Ma cut up when the last heat wave started. She was scared he’d get sunburnt. I told Ma he didn’t need it, that a bit of sun wouldn’t bother him. He looks undignified in it, tied around his back with a strange knot sticking up, and this makes me smile as I fill his little pail with bread. I scratch his ears as he eats, and feel his body relax, from the food and the touch. On the way back to the house, I see our tomato plants are blooming. Our garden’s illegal too, but it feels good to eat something you’ve grown yourself, and besides, we need the calories. Like all Westies, we are actually starving, and like everyone else, each day, Ma and I make hard decisions based on units: do we eat a little more, or do we buy extra gas for heating, or, in my case, do we buy my Crystal? Our fruit and veggies are probably full of carcinogens from all the radiation and pollutants, just as the Corp ads warn—so what? Everything’s carcinogenic.