Want (Numbered Book 1)

by Magus Tor

  Her father snorted. “Gods, no,” he said. “What I meant was before, when families could stay together. That's all.”

  “But they sometimes stay together now,” Aurelia countered. It was unusual for children to be posted outside of their home city. “And during migrations, many children left their families in the past.”

  “I know.” Aurelia's father stared out at the white skins of the passing buildings. “I know. But things were different. Families were different. That's all I meant, I guess.”

  She knew what he meant. She'd read books - approved books, certainly, but also classic ones from before the Earth Empire. Family units had been closer before, though that sometimes meant whole families starving together. And she knew that she'd been lucky. She'd been brought up by parents who had loved her, rather than parents who had bred as a requirement. Requesting a 3 meant getting an extra bedroom pod, larger food quotas, and salary raises, things that many people saw as inducement to have a child they may not have otherwise wanted. Plus, having a 3 meant a certain kind of respect, providing more Workers for the Empire, sacrificing your time to help produce skilled adults who would one day take your place. Aurelia's parents had genuinely wanted to have a child, though, and Aurelia had genuinely enjoyed spending time with them. That was why leaving was more of a strain than it would have been for most children.

  Children. She kept thinking of herself as a child, but she wasn't. She might still be a 3, but since her last Tracker injection she was very much an adult, responsible for her own actions, with a posting to fill and a duty to do.

  “Your father, my...” she struggled to find the unfamiliar word, one she'd read but never heard, “my, er, grandfather?”

  Her father nodded.

  “Did he remember the way things were before?”

  Her father grinned. “He wasn't that old,” he teased.

  “C'mon, Dad, I'm just curious.”

  “Your grandfather was very young during the war years; he didn't remember anything,” her father said. “But he did sometimes tell me stories that he'd been told by his father.”

  “Who would be my...?” Genealogy was not important in a society where, for the most part, even children and parents didn't have close ties.

  “Your great-grandfather,” Aurelia's father said. “And they were generally horrible stories that gave me nightmares and meant that my mother, your grandmother,” he added, for Aurelia's benefit, “forbade him to tell me them before bed.”

  Aurelia smiled. “Like when you told me those fairy tales about Clones and Mum yelled at you?”

  Her father laughed at the memory. “Something like that.”

  The city was beginning to change slightly now, the housing blocks becoming further apart, interspersed with hydroponic farming pods. Aurelia gazed out of the transport pod windows with interest. She'd seen such pods in books but had never seen them before in real life.

  “It's hard to believe that we can support the city with just those pods,” she said.

  “Hah, I can remember before we could,” her father said. “When I was a kid, at least three times a week we had to eat some awful synthetic slop. Cabbage and potatoes once a week might not be nice, but trust me, it's better than Synth-Porridge.”

  Aurelia smiled, watching the farming pods slide by. The shuttle bay was on the edge of the city and was one of four that serviced City 01. Aurelia had seen pictures, but this was going to be her first look at a bay in real life, so she was anxiously surveying the view to get a glimpse. As they moved further away from the centre of the city, the skies became darker and Aurelia could see the grey sheen of pollution on the skins of buildings. In the conditioned environment of the transport pod she couldn't smell the air, but in these districts the smog could get bad enough to require automated breathing masks that filtered the air before it hit the lungs.

  “Who lives out here?” she asked.

  “Low-level workers, mostly,” her father replied, regarding the view with equal interest. “Cleaners, public transport workers, that sort of thing.”

  “Hmm.” Just the sort of people who wouldn't be able to afford an automated breathing mask, Aurelia thought.

  In City 01, as in all Earth cities, Workers were graded by the kind of job that they did. As medical personnel, Aurelia had achieved top grading, which her father, a tech Worker, also had. Other professions with top grading included Trainers and Trackers. Aurelia's mother had second grading, as she was a chem Worker, spending her time synthesising foodstuffs. Her job was considered important but no longer as indispensable as it had been before the farming pods took over the strain of feeding the city.

  With top grading came increased privileges, which were seen as the rightful rewards for working hard and educating yourself. Privileges were usually given in the form of monetary compensation. Though money wasn't required to live in the city (Workers didn't have to pay rent for their accommodation, and they received food quotas, for example) it did make life a little easier. There were luxuries, things like additional food or candies, as well as spare clothing outside of what was issued to you, and even seriously luxurious things like alcohol and home decorations. However, privileges also came in other forms. Aurelia knew that in a trauma situation, for example, it would be her job to attend first to those injured who had high Worker ratings, since these were considered to be the patients who were most valuable and hardest to replace. She didn't question this as right because she knew it was. Earth Empire could least afford to lose those Workers who had most to give; that just made sense. Still, though, she knew that she would strive to save everyone under her care, no matter what their rating was.

  The transport pod dropped down a level as it turned onto a new block.

  “Sorry,” Aurelia's father said, noting the surprise in her eyes at the brief falling feeling. “Roads are getting busier now; we're getting closer to the shuttle bay, so we needed to drop a level to get a clear route.”

  Aurelia scanned the block even more carefully. As the familiar white-skinned buildings parted to one side of her, she saw a darker-coloured building loom between them. Unlike the spiral forms of the white buildings, this one was firmly cubic.

  “What's that?” she asked her father, pointing towards the dark hulk.

  Her father shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe a manufacturing plant.”

  He could be right. But Aurelia's geography marks were as good as all of her other grades, and she didn't remember any manufacturing centres in this district. Still, with the rate that the Empire was growing, it should be no surprise that even her information could be so soon out of date.

  “You should see the shuttle bay in a second,” her father said.

  Aurelia looked at him. “Have you been here before?” She hadn't thought to ask him until now. She definitely couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been at home with her and her mother, though.

  “Once - well, twice if you count going out and coming home,” her father said. “I was sent to Lunar City for a consultation about a project I was working on.”

  Now Aurelia was eager for information. “What was it like?”

  “Couldn't tell you. Sorry.” Her father grimaced. “I was only there for a couple of hours to make my presentation and then leave. All I saw was the transport pod and the conference room. All that way for two hours.” He sighed at the memory of it.

  “Oh.”

  “It's going to be great, though,” he continued. “Don't you worry. And don't forget to grab some holo-vid when you have time and send it down to us. Your mom has never been up there, so she'd like to see it.”

  Just at that moment, the pod again switched directions, though it kept to its own level this time. Buildings fell away to each side, and stretched wide in front of the pod’s viewing screen was the largest open space that Aurelia had ever seen.

  “That's it,” she breathed.

  “That's it,” her father agreed. Once more he bent down to check that the route planner was functioning correctly and was
going to take them around the edge of the launch pads, then he sat back, satisfied.

  “It's so empty,” said Aurelia.

  “It has to be,” her father explained. “When the shuttles launch, there's an expulsion of gases that are poisonous, so habitation pods can't be built around the launch pads.”

  “But all that space,” Aurelia said in wonder. “All that space and nothing in it.”

  Her father laughed at her awe. “I know. Makes you feel a bit weird in your stomach, doesn't it?”

  She nodded, not taking her eyes off the shuttle bay.

  “We'll go around the outside of the launch pads and then to the terminal on the far end. Do you see it?”

  Aurelia looked to her right and saw a towering white building with arms sticking out of it like some kind of demented space creature.

  “Those are the transport arms,” her father said. “When a craft lands, the arms connect onto the hull, letting you get on and off a shuttle without touching the ground and delivering you safely into the terminal.”

  As they watched, one of the arms began to move around preparing for a shuttle landing. Automatically, Aurelia looked up into the sky and saw a large object descending towards the shuttle bay. Silver skin reflected the thin sunlight that pierced through the smog, and the tapered cylinder sank gracefully to the ground, hovering for a moment before settling itself firmly pointing back towards the Moon.

  “Gods,” said Aurelia, unable to believe that in just a few hours she'd be on board one of these shuttles.

  “Gods, indeed,” her father said. “Pretty amazing, aren't they?”

  Aurelia looked at him, her face shining with excitement. “I can't wait to go up!”

  “Well, it won't be long.”

  As he said the words, their transport pod began to slow. Its humming became more high-pitched as the braking mechanism worked to smoothly bring it in to its destination.

  “Ready?” said Aurelia's father as the pod finally stopped.

  “Ready,” she said, fumbling to undo her security belt.

  “Hold up there, tiger,” said her father, gesturing to her door where an automated walkway was swinging around to meet the vehicle. “You can't open up until the walkway docks.”

  Impatiently, Aurelia waited for the familiar click of a docking mechanism, then, with a deep breath, she unhooked the clasp on her safety belt and opened her door.

  Chapter Two

  The entrance hall of the shuttle bay was enormous. With shuttles easily being a hundred floors tall and the shuttle bay needing to be able to access all areas of a shuttle, the immense hall was as tall as any building Aurelia had ever seen. The echoing space above her made her stomach feel watery so that she clutched her father's arm.

  “It's not as empty as it looks,” her father said, noting her discomfort. “Look more closely.”

  Gazing into the height of the hall, Aurelia could just make out the movement of semi-transparent drones flitting around. “What are they for?”

  “Most of the ones in here are simple message drones,” her father said. “They're programmed with messages from Lunar City to the Ruling Class in Earth Empire cities. They're good messengers because they can be programmed with a message and then programmed to destruct if they're messed with, as well as sending back an alert to whoever programmed them saying that a message was safely delivered or that the drone was forced to destroy itself. They'll ride on the shuttles too.”

  “Aha,” said Aurelia, taking in the information and filing it away in case it became useful later.

  “Most of the ones in there,” said her father, pointing towards a large gate that marked the entrance to the terminal waiting rooms, “are security drones. They're there to make sure that no one gets on a shuttle who shouldn't be on one, though mostly they redirect lost passengers to their allocated shuttles.”

  Aurelia glanced over at the gate. “I guess...” she began.

  Her father nodded, looking at the time reader on his wrist. “I guess so,” he said.

  Aurelia swallowed. “You can't?”

  “No, I can't go past the security gate. You need travel coding to get past,” he said. “But you need to go on through. If you're not through in time, your reservation will automatically be cancelled.”

  “Okay.” She hesitated for a moment, then hugged her father.

  People milling around the entrance hall looked over at them. Such displays of public affection weren't common in the city, at least between parents and children.

  “You're gonna do great, Aurelia. Don't worry.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said, into his shoulder.

  “Go on then,” he said, pushing her away. “Off you get. And don't forget to intercom.”

  “Right.”

  He turned quickly, but not quite fast enough that Aurelia couldn't see a glint in his eyes. Tears. She swallowed again and sniffed, willing herself into control as she watched her father in his grey-and-blue tech Worker uniform fade back towards the entrance doors and the walkway that would take him to the transport pod.

  After several seconds Aurelia took a breath and squared her shoulders. Let's do this thing, she told herself, and she started walking towards the security gate.

  There was a line of passengers waiting to go through the gate, and Aurelia joined them. As she waited she passed the time watching the elegant fluttering of the messenger drones circling inside the hall. About halfway through the line, the one queue split up into several different channels, and Aurelia waited for an orange indicator light to tell her which channel to join, then resumed waiting.

  At the front of the line was a Worker dressed in a drab uniform coloured light grey and dark grey, marking him as a transport Worker.

  “Number,” barked the Worker.

  “1-3358-7-43-22-3,” said Aurelia without thinking. She'd repeated the number so many times in her life that it was as familiar to her as her name.

  Suddenly, a buzz sounded and a red light began flashing over the head of the Worker she was speaking to.

  “Incorrect,” the Worker said. “You lack the appropriate travel coding.”

  Aurelia was so shocked she didn't know what to do. “But that's impossible!” she said. “I know I have the coding.”

  There was a gentle cough from behind her. Aurelia turned to see a young military Clone standing there.

  “Sorry,” he said, in a gentle voice. “Couldn't help but overhear. Are you on your way to your first posting, by any chance?”

  Aurelia nodded dumbly.

  “Ah, and have you already been given an accommodation number?” he inquired.

  Again she nodded.

  “That'll be the problem, then.” He grinned at her, his deep blue eyes twinkling. “You've just given him your old accommodation number, and your travel coding will be under your new number.”

  Gods, she'd forgotten all about that. Of course, since she was moving her number was going to change. Her old number reflected her old address. The only problem was that she couldn't remember her new number. She was sure she'd committed it to memory, but in all the excitement it had escaped her. This fact she admitted to the military officer who had come to join her at the desk.

  “No problemo,” he said. Turning to the Worker, he asked for a Tracker to be sent over.

  The Worker sighed in irritation, but he pressed a button on his desk. “Wait over there,” he said to Aurelia, pointing towards a small table directly behind his desk.

  The military officer gave his number to the Worker and then came to join her.

  “I'm Nicholas,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Aurelia,” she said, shaking it. “And I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Don't worry, I'm sure it happens all the time; must be the excitement.”

  “Bet it's never happened to you.” She smiled, then could have bitten off her own tongue. Of course it had never happened to him. He was military, which meant he was a Human Clone. Clones’ numbers not only never changed but were al
so ingrained onto every single part of them in a microscopic pattern of dots.

  Nicholas smiled at her, knowing that she hadn't meant to insult him. “Well,” he observed, shooting his cuffs to hold out his wrists with their raised dot numbers, “these do come in handy from time to time, like when I'm too excited to remember who I am.”

  Aurelia laughed. “Sorry,” she said, meaning it.

  “It's fine. And I think I see your Tracker.”

  The Tracker in his white uniform bustled over to the table. Without a word he produced a small device from his top pocket, and Aurelia rolled up her sleeve and presented him with the crook of her elbow. She felt a slight pressure as the Tracker pressed the device onto her skin. Her new number, including her new accommodation number, had been coded into her with her last injection, so all the Tracker had to do was take a reading. Aurelia rolled her sleeve back down and pulled a wry face at Nicholas as she followed the Tracker back to the Worker's desk. Taking the device, the Worker read off her new number.

  “Fine,” he said. “You're cleared to pass through. Try and remember your number next time.”

  Aurelia rejoined Nicholas, and together the pair made their way down a corridor and into the waiting areas.

  “What now?” Aurelia asked.

  “Never flown before, huh?”

  Aurelia shook her head.

  “Well, now there's an agonisingly long wait until the shuttle is ready for boarding, during which time you may avail yourself of the many facilities in the pre boarding area.” He spoke solemnly, gesturing to the small snack bar that was in a corner of the hall.

  “You make it sound so glamorous,” Aurelia said.

  “Oh, travel is very glamorous. You get to meet all kinds of people. Like me, for instance.” He grinned again, and Aurelia saw how his sandy hair was styled to fall just so over his forehead, making him look younger than he probably was.

  “Treat you to a coffee?” she asked. “As thanks for your help,” she added, not wanting him to think that she was asking him for a more personal reason.

  “Sure,” he said, and they began walking towards the snack bar.