by Rob Hart
Zinnia went temporarily speechless. She hadn’t expected this feeling, of wanting to put her arm around the girl and pull her close and stroke her head and tell her everything was going to be all right. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that way with anyone, which made it all the more appalling. She tried to think of Hadley as a toy doll that said things when you pulled its string but otherwise was a lump of plastic.
Zinnia brushed her hand against the little case in her pocket. “I have something that might help.”
Hadley looked up, eyes wide, expectant. Zinnia knelt down next to her, held the oblivion container in her outstretched palm.
“Is that—” Hadley said, cutting herself off, like she couldn’t say the word.
“You’ll sleep like a baby,” Zinnia said.
“I have to work. After the ceremony.”
“You need to sleep. Punch out sick.”
“But my rating—”
“Fuck your rating,” Zinnia said. “It’s a number. It’ll go down a little and then you’ll work hard and it’ll go back up. You’ll be fine. You need some mindless, empty sleep. Trust me. You look like you’re about to come apart at the seams.”
Hadley stared at the container for a long time. Zinnia was worried she’d have to hold the girl down and shove it in her mouth, but then Hadley nodded her head. “How do you take it?”
Zinnia opened the little plastic case and regarded the thin strips of film. She told herself: The girl needs this. She needs to detach her brain stem and float for a little while.
Zinnia said it to herself in such a way that she almost believed it.
“You just put it on your tongue,” she said.
“Okay,” Hadley said. “Okay.”
She stuck out her tongue, then sheepishly tucked it back in, like she was embarrassed to assume that Zinnia would feed it to her. Zinnia knew a girl her size, never having taken the drug before, would get knocked for a loop by one. She thumbed out four tabs, held them together, and nodded toward her mouth. Hadley opened it and Zinnia placed the green-tinted squares on her tongue. The girl closed her eyes, as if she were deep in thought. Zinnia eased her back onto the futon.
Hadley’s breathing faded, her muscles went slack. Her head rolled to the side. Zinnia pressed her fingers to the girl’s carotid artery, just to make sure she was still alive. Her pulse felt like it was taking deep, purposeful breaths.
Then she got to work. Stripped out of her shirt, picked up Hadley’s brown polo. It was snug but manageable. She considered swapping out the straps on the CloudBand but realized they were similar enough—Zinnia’s fuchsia band was close enough to Hadley’s pink. She rooted through the rest of Hadley’s clothes and found an old, beaten baseball cap. She fought her hair into a ponytail, put on the hat. Looked in the mirror hanging from the rear of the door. She strapped on Hadley’s watch and it prompted her for a fingerprint, so Zinnia took Hadley’s hand and pressed her thumb to the screen. The smiley face appeared.
Good to go.
PAXTON
The crowd was impossible to count. A rainbow of colors stretched around the entirety of Incoming. There were wide tracks of empty floor space: from outside, leading to behind the stage, where Gibson’s bus would travel, and then leading down the stage and snaking around to the tram line, where he’d take his ride to Live-Play.
Paxton walked across the stage. Eyes peeled, like Dakota said. Blues were worming their way through the crowd, but it was good to have landscape eyes, too. Paxton wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for. Everyone was all smiles and jittery anticipation.
Cloud videos blared on the mammoth screen behind him. The video that showed during orientation mixed with customer testimonials. An ethnically diverse group talking about how much easier their lives had been made by the people watching them. This close to the speakers, the dialogue crackled.
Thank you, Cloud.
We love you, Cloud.
You saved my life, Cloud.
Every few minutes he glanced toward the gaping maw of the entranceway, a rectangle of blinding white light, where the bus would enter. It was due soon. It would pull up behind the stage and Gibson Wells, the man himself, would get out and walk up the stairs. Paxton would be among a dozen people surrounding him. So close they could touch.
Paxton’s stomach twisted on itself, pushing in both directions. He thought again of confronting the man. He would surely lose his job, on the spot, but that raw feeling of walking through that broken town to his interview, that feeling of applying for a job that felt so far below where he had climbed, it made him want, even if not an answer or an apology, recognition. For Gibson to see him, to know it happened.
“You ready?” Dakota asked, suddenly at his side, yelling over the speakers.
Paxton nodded, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what the nod meant.
“Good,” Dakota said, clapping him on the back. “Because here he comes.”
The bus entered, first a dark spot in the white light, then pulling into the facility, rolling slowly through the crowd. People stacked twenty deep on either side of the barricades, shouting and cheering and waving.
The bus was big and maroon with gold trim. Blacked-out windows, so you couldn’t see what was inside. It looked like it had just been polished. Even inside it seemed to gleam with eternally reflected sunlight. Paxton watched it pull slowly to the designated spot behind the stage, among a dozen tans and two dozen blues, and his head felt like it was filled with helium and might come off his shoulders.
ZINNIA
Zinnia pushed her way through the swinging doors at the back of CloudBurger. There were a few workers in green, buzzing about, even though no one was out front eating, everyone gone for the ceremonies. The greens worked the immaculate stainless-steel machinery in a choreographed dance of clacking tools and fryer oil, prepping for the rush that would come later. A few of them glanced at her but didn’t budge beyond that.
It was always funny to her, how people thought this line of work was all gadgets and shit. The most basic rule of subterfuge was to pretend like you belonged, and it was exceedingly rare that anyone would challenge you.
That didn’t mean she could linger. She slid her eyes over every surface, not sure what she was looking for but hoping she would find it. The kitchen was larger than she would have imagined, with a few twists and turns that eventually led her to a heavy sliding door. Which looked more out of place than anything in the kitchen, which meant that was where she needed to be.
There was a camera here. She caught it too late, just visible from under the brim of her hat. She didn’t look up, so as not to give it too clear a look at her face. There was an entry pad next to the door and she swiped the CloudBand, whispering a silent prayer in her head.
That ding. The disc turned green. She pushed the door to the side. It was big and heavy and she had to put a good bit of muscle into it. It opened onto a small subway station with a tram car, maybe about half the size of a regular car.
And it had a smell. Bleach, and under that, the sweet smell of rot. Like someone had tried to beat it back but couldn’t win. On the tram were uncoupled nylon straps. These were for shipping pallets, not people. She slid the door closed behind her, walked to the front of the tram car, found the controls. She didn’t even need to examine the panel. There were a couple of buttons, one of them marked Go. They really did like to make things simple around here.
She hit the button and the tram moved forward, slowly at first, but then faster, whizzing through dark corridors, rattling like a service elevator. She grabbed a handle on the wall, to keep from getting thrown from her feet. The nylon straps whipped around and a few times she had to dodge a stray buckle threatening to slap her in the leg. It wasn’t a maglev track. It was older. Metal on metal, the squeal piercing her eardrums in the dark tunnel.
; The ride took about five minutes, during which she went over the endgame. Even with the confusion of the train crash there would still be trucks moving in and out. There had to be. They couldn’t shut down deliveries for too long. And the delivery trucks were automated, so all she had to do was stow away on one and there would be a pretty low chance of someone stumbling across her.
But she felt like she was forgetting something.
Then she realized: Hadley. She wanted to make sure Hadley was okay.
Maybe she could text Paxton. Tell him to go to her room.
But it was risky to keep an open line of communication. And what would she say then?
Bye! See ya never!
“C’mon, asshole,” she said to herself. “Don’t get soft now.”
When the car stopped, before the door opened, Zinnia’s skin grew tight and her breath bloomed in front of her. She exited into a refrigerated room full of boxes stacked on wooden pallets, the walls smooth metal and covered with layers of frost, thick in the corners like snow. She wished she was wearing something thicker.
No cameras in here. She wandered among the pallets, looking for a way out, and saw a door at the far end. On the way there, she opened a box. Inside were round balls of ground beef laid out on wax paper. CloudBurgers.
Which was strange. Everything, including food, came in through Incoming. Paxton had said something about that. If she was in the processing facilities, why were they storing the ground beef here? Her understanding was Cloud owned the means of production, which was why the beef was affordable. Maybe they had grazing land beyond the campus. Something where cows could still eat and roam safely, and this was the closest access point. She hadn’t seen it on the satellite images, but she hadn’t been looking for it either.
Not important. Zinnia made for the door, opened it, found an empty hallway. At the far end was another large sliding door.
She made for that, swiped her wrist. It turned green and she opened it, and a stench hit her like an ocean wave. It filled her nose, clawed down her throat, overcame her, like she’d been shoved headfirst into a clogged toilet.
PAXTON
The bus sat, the engine off. The crowd, which was pushed back and didn’t have a good vantage point, began to chant, slow at first, scattered, but growing in strength. It grew until Paxton could feel the vibration of it in his chest.
Gib-son.
Gib-son.
GIB-SON!
Signs dotted the crowd—hand-lettered in thick black marker.
We love you, Gibson!
Thank you for everything!
Don’t leave us!
Paxton stood at his post, at the top of the stage, watching behind him, to make sure the space was clear. From where he was standing, the door of the bus was on the other side, facing away from him, but there seemed to be movement and activity. People disappearing and reappearing. Moving back and forth.
Paxton had to look down to make sure his feet were still on the floor. That he hadn’t floated away.
They were planted. He was still there. Right there.
He looked up and saw the face of the person he’d been waiting for.
Gibson Wells.
The man was flanked by a thick entourage. People who walked with their hands out like they might need to catch him. He was smaller than Paxton would have imagined. A man who had changed so much, who had shaped the world as much as he had, ought to have been bigger.
An image of Gibson appeared on the video screen above them, from the orientation video, and he barely looked like the same person, looked as though the cancer had cored him out. His hair had been thinning, but now it was nearly gone, his bald head shiny under the lights. Skin collected around his neck; lines dug across his face. He walked with shuffle steps. He smiled and waved to the people around him and it seemed to take a titanic amount of effort. Like at any moment he might disintegrate into dust, and the only thing keeping him together was sheer force of will.
Behind him was a handful of people. A tall, muscled Latino man who hovered close. Claire, whom Paxton recognized from the video, though her hair wasn’t the same brilliant shade of crimson, it was more of a washed-out red. And the man he suspected was Ray Carson. Dakota had told him to look out for the linebacker. It was an apt description. Carson had a thick brow scrunched under a bald head. Wide shoulders and the beginnings of a gut. He wasn’t currently happy, but also seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t be happy anywhere.
Gibson Wells, the richest and most powerful man in the world, reached the bottom of the stairs, placed his hand on the railing for support, and looked up, locking eyes with Paxton.
ZINNIA
Zinnia heaved, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the grated metal floor; it fell in clumps to the ductwork underneath. She forced herself to stand. When she got to her feet, she threw up again. She saw a series of oxygen masks hanging from hooks on the wall, snatched one off, placed it on, breathed in deep. The inside of the mask smelled like shit and rubber and her own vomit, but also candy canes. Which made it worse. She hated candy canes.
The eyepieces of the mask warped her vision a little but she found another doorway at the end of the corridor. As she neared it, a skinny woman in a pink polo came through. Zinnia paused for a moment but then pressed on, not wanting to look like she’d been caught at something. They passed in the hallway, Zinnia stepping to the side a little bit to give her some clearance. The woman nodded at her and kept on walking.
Pink. She’d never seen a pink shirt before.
She made it through a few more corridors, and it felt like she was traveling through the bowels of a ship. Circular hallways, no windows, bundles of pipes running along the walls. She found another door and figured if it led to another hallway, she would double back and look for a better entry point, but on the other side of the door she found a large laboratory. Workstations, buzzing machines, lights. Lights everywhere. There was a second level within the room—a large glass box, a staircase leading up to it. Inside the box were tables, where men and woman in lab coats and oxygen masks fussed with tubes and containers of liquid.
Down on the floor, where Zinnia was, the few workers milling about weren’t wearing masks, so she took off hers, hung it on an empty peg on the wall. Her mouth still tasted like vomit but it smelled sweet in here. Artificial, like the air was filtered and treated. She made her way through the room. A few people—some whites but mostly pinks—glanced at her briefly, some of them lingering for a moment on her face, wondering if they recognized it, but then quickly returned to whatever it was they were working on.
The eyes made her nervous. She spied a doorway and hoped it would take her into another hallway, but it didn’t. Instead, it opened into a small room where a slight Asian man with jet-black parted hair leaned over a microscope. He looked up, registered the color of her polo, and shook his head. “I didn’t call tech.” After a moment he turned to her. “You know, you’re not even supposed to be in here.”
Zinnia didn’t like his tone. Like he wanted to report this. Instinct took over and she leapt forward and pushed him down onto the table, knocking the microscope to the side. She looked around to make sure they were alone, that there were no cameras in the room.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man asked, his voice shaking.
Zinnia didn’t know how to respond. She was still sick from the hallway. The man struggled beneath her but she had both leverage and strength, so after a few moments he gave up.
“Where is here?” Zinnia asked. “What is this?”
The man twisted his neck, to look up at her. “You…you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just a…this is processing. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Processing. Processing what?”
&n
bsp; The man paused, so Zinnia applied a little pressure to his throat. He croaked out, “Waste.”
She thought of the first room. The burger patties. Her mind went blank, then filled with a silent scream. “What?”
“Listen, they swore to us, okay? They swore to us you’d never be able to taste it. They’re perfectly safe.”
An image was coming together in Zinnia’s mind. “Taste what?”
“We extract the protein,” he said, rambling, like maybe that might save him. “Bacteria make protein, and we just pull that out and treat it with ammonia to sterilize it. It gets reconstituted with wheat and soy and beets for coloring. I swear, it’s low-fat protein. Totally clean.”
She knew the answer but she asked it anyway. “What is low-fat protein?”
Silence. Then, in a whisper, “The CloudBurgers.”
Zinnia had thought she had emptied the entirety of her stomach, but she found more, turned to the side and puked a thin stream of bile on the floor. She thought of the countless CloudBurgers she had shoved down her throat since she got here, and she wanted to puke until there was nothing left in her stomach. Until she didn’t have a stomach.
“You mean to tell me the beef is just repurposed human shit?” she asked.
“When you get into the science of it, it’s not that bad,” he said. “I…I eat them myself. I swear.”
He was lying about the last part. Zinnia, meanwhile, was trying to breathe through her nose, not think about the sizzling brown meat. How often did she eat there? Twice a week? Three times? She wanted to throw her fist into the back of the man’s head but didn’t. It wasn’t his fault.
Or was it? He was facilitating.
She pushed the thought away. “The pink shirts. What is that? I’ve never seen pink shirts in the dorms.”