Breeder

by Honni van Rijswijk

  One day, I would love to have a family, even though Ma says that’s a dangerous and impossible plan for me. For most Westies it’s impossible—95 percent of people are infertile. So even those Westies who manage to save enough units to buy a Shadow from the Incubator have a very small chance of a living child. It’s strange, though—even though it’s so impossible, I can guarantee that if you ask any Westie, they’ll tell you that this is the dream that keeps them going. This is the dream that keeps them grinding through every hour of back-breaking, mind-crushing work: the dream of something better for another generation, for some future person who is connected to you, even if it’s just in your imagination. Otherwise, how would we get through each day? I always thought of Ma as the least sentimental person I ever met, but once she came home from work and I watched as she emptied her bag onto the kitchen table, like she did every day. She pointed to a certificate she’d received—some sad prize for cleanest factory drone of the month, or something, which came with a ten-unit bonus—and rolled her eyes. I picked it up to chuck it into the trash bin when I noticed some loose, crumpled pages stuck behind the certificate—several kid’s drawings, done in crayon and colored pencil. She snatched them from me and clutched them to her chest.

  “What are they?” I asked her.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Ma!”

  “Okay, fine. They’re drawings you and your mother did when each of you were small.”

  “And you carry them around with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She sniffs.

  “Ma. Why?”

  “I look at them sometimes. To cheer myself up. Now go and feed that goat.”

  •

  I raise my wrist to the security scanner and get beeped inside, then ride the elevator to the Admin Center at the top of Desal Tower 4 to get my work allocation. When the elevator doors open, I see other guys with flowers, standing around and chatting. Behind them are enormous ceiling-to-floor windows—to the east, I can see the vast, dead ocean. Today, the chemical fires flaring across the surface of the water are bigger than usual because of the dry-season winds.

  The thing to do on Wednesday mornings is to bring a bunch of flowers to the office Shadows. Melissa, who’s around thirty, has only recently been bought out of the Incubator, and Belinda, who’s Ma’s age. On the whole, I much prefer Belinda. Both of them have curling Breeder scars on their cheeks underneath their Shadow tattoos. Belinda’s partner, Simon, is a Westie who works high up in the desalination plant and they’re both saving units to pass on to Belinda’s nephew. Belinda and Simon can’t have any live births themselves.

  Melissa has a number of serious admirers. A lot of guys my age down at the plant have a crush on Melissa, which is mental because there’s no way that Melissa would even look at us seriously. After all, she is with a senior Westie at our plant who has a house, a car, and a lifetime of units to give her. But Melissa accepts our offerings anyway.

  There’s already a garden of flowers on Melissa’s desk: mostly pink geraniums from the flower man who sells them at the front gates, the stems wrapped in foil. I feel pretty happy to have proper roses with me. Behind the flowers, Melissa is beaming. “Are those for me, beanpole?”

  I smile. “Morning, Melissa. Yep!” I quickly give one of the bunches to her, and then cross the room to Belinda’s desk.

  Belinda waves at me. “Hello, handsome. Am I going to have to put out for those flowers?”

  “Maybe,” I tell her. “But first, could you tell me which section I’m working in today?”

  “Hmmm,” she says and starts tapping at her keyboard. “Where do you want to work?” she asks, pretending that I have a choice.

  I sigh. “Oh, I don’t care. Just not somewhere butt-ugly.”

  She stops typing and looks at me above her spectacles. “Oh, honey. Every section here is butt-ugly.”

  She’s so right. Belinda is awesome because, when she can, she gives me a temporary job above my station. I’m great with electronics and systems, so sometimes she gets me to help with that—setting things up, or troubleshooting—rather than doing another boring shift watching a desal machine run. My work clearance is officially for the lowest rung of plant work—it’s so dull, I wish I could be anesthetized for eight hours a day, that the Corp would just use my mind and body without me being aware of it.

  “Also,” Belinda says, “did you hear there’s a supervisory role going up? You should definitely apply. I’ll put an app in your mailbox, okay?”

  I nod, my face red with happiness.

  “By the way, you’ve got a medical assessment today, sucker!” Melissa calls from the other side of the room, pissed off that she’s missing out on the attention.

  Ah, shit.

  Belinda nods at me. “The medical is waiting for you in the infirmary,” she says. “But you’ll be fine,” she lies.

  •

  I go down to the ground floor and flick my wrist against the security scanner and enter the infirmary. As I walk in, I can see my data flash up on the large screen. There’s a tall, thin medical who looks up at the SATISFACTORY on the screen and then turns and smiles at me.

  “Full physical today, Will,” he says.

  •

  I’m standing in front of the mirror for my medical assessment, dressed only in my old gray underpants. I hate this part the most. I hate people looking at my body. It’s unreasonably thin and weird—my ribs stick out, there’s no hair on my chest, there are bruises from the Crystal, and my stomach is hollow. My head looks huge above my skinny neck. My hair is shaved close to the skin—they make all Westie males do it. I’ve never managed the slightest shadow of a mustache, let alone a beard, so my cheekbones jut out, and so do my ears and chin. Then there’s the new softness around my hips, stomach and chest—the Crystal will take a couple of days to kick in. Is it just me who can see it? I watch the medical closely, waiting for his face to change, but he’s completely deadpan.

  The medical presses down my spine, making notes, then presses the muscles along my inner thighs. I suck in my breath as he gets close to my underpants. I’ve heard they sometimes make you take your pants off so they can examine everything, but this has never happened to me. I’ve also heard that some medicals are straight-out pervs. Sometimes they’re even Gray Corps affiliates who might recognize you from the Gray Zone and know that they can do whatever they want because you’re scared they’ll rat you out. His hands are cold.

  “Okay, you can get dressed,” he says, and I grab my clothes.

  He’s clicking through my data on the screen. Medicals have the same powers as CSOs—they can stick you in the Circle for rehab or send you to the Rator.

  “You’re still very underweight, Will,” he says. “Have you been sticking to that meal plan you were assigned at your last medical?”

  “Yes, sir,” I lie. The truth is that Ma and I can’t afford any of the food on that list. Besides, it’d be a waste—either the Crystal or the withdrawal makes me throw up most days.

  “And you bought the vitamins the medical recommended last time?”

  “Yes, sir,” I lie.

  “Are you taking any medication other than the vitamins we assigned you?”

  “No, sir,” I lie.

  He looks up then. It’s the first time he’s really looked at me. His eyes are bright. He obviously isn’t a moron. Does he know? I feel a spike of nausea. I’m paranoid everyone knows. It’s exhausting. If he knows, then anything could happen—he could code me directly from his computer. And that would be it—the Rator van would be on its way. He sits there and watches me carefully. Then he says, “Physically, Will, you’re barely hovering on satisfactory—you’re well below average. I see from your motion studies report that you’re maintaining a good output at the plant, but you’re not going to be able to keep up long-term unless you build yourself up.�
��

  “I understand, sir.” I’m trying to read his expression. I still can’t tell whether he knows or not. I still can’t tell what’s going to happen.

  He looks at me a long time. His eyes, I realize, are kind. Then he nods, “Okay, Will. You can go.”

  I nod and leave the room as slowly as I can force myself to. As soon as I’m outside in the break yard, I kneel on the ground and vomit violently onto the concrete.

  •

  I begin to stand up, still dizzy, and am about to put my mask on when the door bangs open and a CSO runs out and yells, “Lockdown!”

  Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  I throw myself on the floor. The medical’s worked it out—he’s sent the CSOs after me. My heart slams against my chest as I wait for the Taser to pierce my side.

  Nothing happens. I look around. When I first came outside, I clocked a group of guys smoking and laughing on the other side of the yard, and they’re all flat on the ground too. They’re quiet and still, and I can feel their panic from where I’m lying. I mean, who here isn’t doing something a bit illegal? Or very illegal, as the case may be. My heart banging, I slowly turn my head toward the CSO and see that he’s walking away from me—away from the other guys as well—and that his focus is beyond the barbed wire fence that surrounds the plant.

  It’s got nothing to do with us.

  The CSO walks back to us and adjusts his crotch. God, I hate CSOs. Then he tells us to get up—stand in place, hands behind our backs. “Afternoon, guys. I’m Corporate Security Officer H. This is a Code twelve-oh-five and you’re all instructed to stay here until I tell you otherwise. At ease.”

  Everyone relaxes and starts to chat again as they realize he’s not going to search us.

  I look beyond the wire fence that surrounds the desal plant. There’s a line of small girls on the other side of the street, wearing long, white dresses and blue sun hats, which match their blue face masks. One of them turns and looks at us. She’s twelve or thirteen years old. She has a little puffy face and washed-out, creepy eyes—and I can see the dark curling brand down her cheek above the top of her mask. Breeder. It must be the hormones they give them, because when they’re breeding, they all look the same—their faces get bloated and sleepy. This kid is heavily pregnant—seven, eight months—and she’s holding her hands protectively across her hard, ballooning abdomen.

  She sees me watching. I wave at her, and she screws up her face and gives me the finger. Then she turns to the kid next to her and whispers something, and the second kid looks at me too, and they laugh. Now their faces seem old—much, much older than the kids they are. There are around twenty Breeders, and they’re all at late stages of pregnancy. They’ve just gotten out of a bright-red bus and are lining up at the end of a canal that opens out to the ocean. Even though the ocean is beyond the wall, there’s a strip of dirty sand inside the zone, and from there you can see the gray waves through the electrified fencing. The Breeders are carrying lunch boxes and there’s an old Shadow at the front of the line handing out plastic buckets and spades and balls—the kinds of toys you’d give much younger kids. It’s a field trip. They’ve been brought here so they can take a look at the sea, chemical fires and all, then play on the petrol-licked sand, like real little kids—or as their Watchers imagine real little kids did, or would, in some theoretical and faraway world.

  Then the whining starts. “Why do we have to look at Breeders? We pay our units like everyone else,” a guy next to me says. His face is covered in zits—and his face is twisted in disgust. This sets off everyone else.

  “It’s gross.”

  “Foul.”

  “They shouldn’t be allowed out in daylight.”

  I think of Alex then and I feel a knot in my stomach, but I don’t say anything. And I especially don’t point out that every guy here has a mother who was once a Breeder. Every Westie has to pay their dues to the Corp and for Breeders, there’s only one way to do that.

  I get these images in my head of Alex, pregnant. I try to stop them—it makes me want to vom just thinking about it—but they come anyway. To get that scar on her face, Alex must have been in the Incubator, and that means she’s probably had at least one Corporation kid. Say Alex is fifteen—she could have had two or three kids already. After all, she doesn’t have a Med tattoo, so she wasn’t discharged for infertility.

  Then there’s the sound of shouting and banging. And sirens. Another CSO runs out into the break yard, a bleeding scratch down his face. “We need you out there!” he calls out to Officer H. “Those fucking Shadow bitches are coming up the street and they’ve gone crazy!”

  “Shit,” Officer H says, and follows him, and we wait about ten seconds until we run over to the perimeter fence to take a look. Five riot vans pull up in front of the plant and CSOs pour out in riot gear, carrying shields, masks, and batons. One group directs the little Breeders back onto the red bus. The other riot groups—shields up, batons ready—surge toward a large crowd coming from the other direction.

  It’s a crowd of Shadows, the red tattoo bright over the curling embryo brand on their cheeks. They’re carrying placards and chanting.

  “Down with the Breeder Laws! Down with the Corp!”

  “Long Live the Response!”

  I can’t stop myself glancing at the other guys, who are looking at each other as well. The Response. You’re not allowed to say the name aloud. I’ve heard all the stories about this underground resistance movement, of course. But nobody knows whether it really exists. And to be honest, it never occurred to me it could involve Shadows.

  A Shadow at the front screams, “The Breeder Laws breach our human rights!” She’s older than the others—maybe fifty years old, and she’s wearing a knitted rainbow hat. She has sharp, intelligent eyes.

  Human rights? Human rights are illegal.

  The CSO phalanx reaches her, along with the tear gas. An officer smashes her to the ground and kicks her. Then he breaks her sign over his knee and grinds it into the asphalt. His face is red and full of rage and disgust. Her face is bleeding but her expression is impassive; her eyes stare out calmly.

  The other CSOs rush forward on foot and start attacking the crowd, beating them hard with their batons, and tasing the Shadows once they hit the ground. The Shadows are all unarmed—their faces pale and still—but the officers are now firing rubber bullets as well as tear gas at them. They kick and punch the Shadows, smash their placards, turn their handbags and satchels upside down and scatter the contents.

  We all go very quiet as we watch the older Shadow being cuffed and dragged into one of the vans, now unconscious, her right eye purple and half-shut, her knitted rainbow hat still on her head. Another, much younger Shadow is dragged behind her. She’s got the red tattoo on her face and she’s screaming, “The Response will get retribution from you all!” The officer who’s dragging her away is tight-mouthed, his eyes glazed; he couldn’t give a shit.

  We watch the young Shadow being pushed into the back of the riot van. She’s still screaming, “Don’t you ever leave a person alone? When will you leave me alone?” and then the door is slammed and the siren starts and the van drives off.

  The red bus starts to slowly back away from the canal, the little Breeders’ faces pushed against the windows. I see the one who gave me the finger: she’s watching a Shadow on the ground who’s being kicked, again and again, even though it’s clear she’s been knocked unconscious. The Shadow’s backpack has split open and bright red pamphlets are blowing down the street.

  Officer H. is dragging a Shadow with long brown hair into another van. She’s fighting him, punching his legs, and when she twists around to bite his hand, he hits her, right in the face. When her head falls backward, I see it’s the Book Shadow. She’s out cold, and he lifts her onto the floor of the van, and then shoves her feet in so hard it looks like he must be breaking them, and then he slams the door and s
pits on the ground.

  Some of the Shadows are running away, their signs abandoned on the street. The CSOs go after them—some on foot, some slowly in their vans, jeering at them to run harder. I watch as every single Shadow is caught, cuffed, and thrown in the back of the windowless vans.

  Then the vans pull out and drive away in a convoy. Behind them are the bags, signs, and pamphlets. Pools of blood and clumps of hair. One of the vans stops and an officer gets out, picks up each bag and takes wallets, purses, and IDs, then dumps the bags back onto the ground.

  Then they’re gone. The street’s quiet, the clouds of tear gas are clearing. We are all still standing there. One of the guys, the one with the zits, starts to speak; changes his mind.

  “Come on,” someone says, and it’s like we’ve come out of a long sleep. Then a few of us—me included—remember our need to smoke. We huddle together and someone takes out a pack of cigarettes. I light up. Then Lewis, a guy I’ve known for a couple of years, blurts out, “Well. It’s good that they’re cleaning up the streets—hopefully those vans will head straight to the Rator.”

  I feel a chill down my spine. “That’s a bit harsh, Lewis.”

  He shrugs. “C’mon. You’re not going to stick up for Shadow trash, are you? How are we meant to claw our way out of Zone F with them breaking the Laws, dragging us down?”

  I see the Book Shadow, and Alex, in my mind. Before I can stop myself, I lurch forward and throw a punch at Lewis, and then they’re all on me.

  The CSOs are on top of us, dragging us apart. We’re lined up, wrists out, screens up, and two officers go up and down the line, inspecting us. The biggest one stops when he gets to me and roughly grabs my hand, then swipes my chip with his scanner. I see on the little screen sewn into my wrist that he’s taken eighty units. Then he takes forty units from Lewis, who’s shaking.

  Security make us stand there for another thirty minutes, holding our hands out until our arms ache, knowing full well that we’ll be deducted further lateness units when we go back to our workstations. Sadistic assholes.