The Park Service 01: The Park Service

by Ryan Winfield

  He lifts a glass of water and sips before going on.

  “I’m sure by the time you see this, you will all know what Eden is. Eden is a virtual heaven on Earth, an invented reality based on our once lush planet. Only it is better because nothing is ever used up in Eden. And not only does Eden provide us with an eternal human experience, it frees precious resources for Holocene II by reducing costly later-life medical treatments and consumption during non-productive years. You now need never die because when you each reach 35, you’ll be rendered into retirement and live on in Eden, a thinking, lucid-dreaming consciousness forever. Your brain living beyond your flesh.”

  Blink, blink, blink.

  “And it is this pact we make with one another here today, this dedication of our productive years to the community good before moving on, that ensures the survival of this great and enduring species we call humankind. We work for our ancestors as they have worked for us. We work for posterity as posterity will work for us. And so, this morning, you and your fellow fifteens will take the test you’ve been preparing for. Your blood has been drawn and tested, your genomes sequenced, your health and natural ability determined. And combined with the results of today’s knowledge and aptitude assessments, this data will help us assign you to your most appropriate career.

  “Many of you will engineer our foods; others will maintain our mechanical systems; some, with special skills, will be called on to design parts for the latest exploration drones. And, on rare occasions, a few exceptionally gifted among you may even be called up to a career at the Foundation here on Level 1.”

  He pauses to blink three times.

  I watch the heads of my peers turning from side to side, calculating, predicting, wondering if they or any other will be called up to Level 1—something that hasn’t happened, ever.

  “Of course,” he goes on, “we continue to build unmanned exploration crafts and send them topside with the hope of discovering habitable changes on the Earth’s surface. And if we do discover a new home, our founding documents provide that every retired citizen will be reassigned a physical form.”

  Dr. Radcliffe pauses, consulting his notes. I look around at my test mates, their heads now frozen straight ahead, their eyes entranced. I wonder, as they must be wondering, what physical form each would receive if we ever discover a habitable zone. Mechanical hosts? Cloned bodies? Maybe I will be two meters tall and made of pure muscle, while Red, behind me and surely still seething, will be placed in the body of a pygmy. Why not?

  “Here we are then,” Dr. Radcliffe continues, with a flurry of fresh blinks, “embarking on the next phase of this puzzling life together. Please know that myself and many other men and women, generations of us by now, have gone before you and there is nothing at all to fear, not even fear itself. So, heads down, and do your very best for your sake, and for the sake of science.” A subtle hint of a frown plays with the corners of his mouth, as if he’s already seen our results and knows the score. “Thank you, and I’ll see you all someday soon in Eden.”

  He disappears; the screen fades to black. The lights snap on and our desks slide open, exposing personal touchscreens glowing with the Foundation crest. Then Mrs. Hightower steps to the front of the class, sets a timer on the table, and says:

  “You have eight hours to answer as many questions as you can. You must attempt an answer for each question to move on to the next. The system will not allow you to skip forward or go back. Don’t even worry about finishing; no fifteen ever does. You may take up to four five-minute bathroom breaks and twenty minutes for lunch.” She presses the timer, and the bright-red clock begins counting down. “You may begin.”

  I look down at my desk.

  The Foundation crest disappears from my touchscreen and an outline of a hand appears. I lay my palm on the cool glass.

  NOW TESTING, AUBREY VAN HOUTEN scrolls across the screen and then the questions begin …

  They come easy at first, almost in the same order as my early slate lessons. Simple, fill-in-the-blank language questions. Word definitions. Sentence comprehension. Short essays. Then moving on to history. The Big Bang. Humankind’s rise. Our ever increasing population. Our overconsumption of resources, our rape of the rain forests. The agricultural revolution. The industrial revolution. The military revolution. War.

  My eyes ache, and I pause to close them for a minute …

  Images flash in my mind—explosions, fire, destruction. I see earth crumbling, passageways sealing never to be opened again. I rub the images away, open my eyes and power on.

  Questions moving quickly now into science, the field where I’m most comfortable. Medical science. Germ theory. Bacteria and antibiotics. Mapping the genome. Understanding the brain. Algebra, calculus, trigonometry. A multitude of math equations with a graphing calculator on the screen—so easy. Incomplete chemistry formulas—multiple choice, simple.

  Then the hard subjects begin to come. Screen after screen of geophysics questions. Difficult questions about our planet’s internal systems, plate tectonics, atmosphere. Questions about the interrupted hydro cycles, about our frozen oceans, about the mile of radioactive ice choking our old surface home.

  Faster now, more questions—

  Trick questions about the Earth’s electromagnetic waves that we harness for power. Timed multiple choice—pick the right growing soil produced from carbon extracted from oil. Surprise quizzes about the subsurface flow of water—how do we trap it, how do we treat it for potable use?

  I move through them fast, almost without pause. Lessons learned and long forgotten now present themselves in my mind with vivid recall and perfect timing. I tap out a blur of answers, calculate enumerable equations, type a string of long essays, and then a strange question comes up and stops me cold. Not a science question, not language, not math—an ethical question, a moral dilemma. I read the hypothetical question again:

  You’ve been placed in command of Holocene II and entrusted with protecting it. The basement level bio-testing lab has uncovered an airborne parasitic pathogen that kills almost every person it infects, and all or most of its citizens are infected. There is currently no cure for this infectious agent and you face an impossible choice—you can seal off the level, imprisoning its people to a terrible fate but saving the other levels from infection, or, you can continue to support the infected level in hopes that a cure might be discovered before it spreads into a pandemic that will destroy all of Holocene II and with it, our species. Please select your answer below.

  A. Seal off the infected level and save Holocene II.

  B. Render aid to those infected and risk total destruction.

  I reread the question a third time. I’ve never seen an ethics lesson on my slate, and I’m unsure how to answer. These are the only options? Imprison and kill an entire level to save the rest of us, or take no action and possibly destroy humanity?

  Not able to decide, I look to skip it. It won’t let me. Then I remember Mrs. Hightower saying we must attempt an answer for each question. I shut my eyes, making a blind choice. When I open them again, the question is gone—replaced with bold red lettering that reads: TEST COMPLETE.

  The desktop slides shut.

  I lift my head and look past my calculating classmates at the timer—two hours and nineteen minutes left. And I’m already done? Can that be? I listen to the other testers sighing with confusion as the clock ticks off another minute.

  I went too fast. Didn’t take enough time. I begin second guessing my answers, thinking of other possibilities for each question. Whole sections of the test parade across my mind and now I’m sure I messed it up with overconfidence. And why is everyone else still tapping away at screen calculators, working out math problems from the first half of the exam? Did I miss an entire section? Did I miss two?

  I grip the desktop, pull hard to open it again—it won’t budge. I jerk it harder, grunting without realizing it.

  “Is there a problem?” Mrs. Hightower asks.

  Everyone st
ops working and turns in their seats, curious eyes looking at me, waiting for a response.

  “I finished early,” I say, “but I think I missed a few.”

  Red grunts behind me. Someone chuckles.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hightower says, “but your answers, right or wrong, are final. You’re excused.”

  “I’m excused?”

  “You may leave,” she says. “You’re disturbing the others.”

  As I get up and walk to the elevator, my legs are shaking, so I breathe good energy in and bad energy out. The door opens, I step on, and look back. Everyone’s heads are bent over their tests again, except Red who’s glaring at me.

  CHAPTER 3

  What Did I Do?

  When I arrive at our living quarters, my father isn’t there.

  He’s probably still at his lab.

  With my lesson slate abandoned in Mrs. Hightower’s bin, waiting to be rebooted and reassigned, I’m bored, with nothing to do. I head out, walking to the east side of the Valley where our social buildings cluster around the open square.

  As I pass the public house, I hear the men and women laughing, and it hits me that I’m fifteen now and old enough to finally go inside, but the smell of the algae ethanol wafting out from the pub’s open windows turns my stomach sour.

  A few buildings farther down, I spot the green light above our theater door, signaling that an educational is about to begin. Stepping inside the lobby, I pass by the checkin kiosk without scanning my palm, and slip into the dark screening room unaccounted for. I’d rather not be on the grid tonight.

  As soon as I plunk into my seat, I notice a mother and her daughter sitting in the front row, the only other people here. I watch as the mother plays with her daughter’s hair, coiling it lightly in her fingers. I recognize the girl from the education annex where I think she’s a couple of years behind me.

  “Your hair is getting so thick,” the mother says. “It must be the new oil rations you’re taking.”

  They don’t appear to have noticed my entrance, and I feel guilty eavesdropping on their conversation. I consider coughing to alert them, but before I do, the mother continues:

  “Have you met any boys in your class yet?” she asks, still stroking her daughter’s hair. “Anyone you like?”

  The girl shrugs but says nothing.

  Her mother continues: “I met a boy when I was your age.”

  “Daddy?” the girl asks.

  “No, I met your father later. This was a different boy, a boy who sat next to me in main group.”

  “What kind of boy?”

  “A handsome boy. Sometimes it was hard to focus because I kept wanting to sneak glances at him. He was very attractive. Thinking about him made me feel things in my body I hadn’t felt before. Things, well, you know … down there.”

  “Ooh, gross, Mom,” the girl says, turning her head away. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m telling you because you’re at the age where things are changing fast. Too fast. And that’s why I wanted you to see this educational. I want you to know those feelings are okay. That they’re normal. Sex is as human as any other impulse is.”

  “But I already know all this, Mom,” the girl says, huffing. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “Then you know that it’s against regulation for you to date before you test, right?”

  “I said I know.”

  “You have to wait for your test card,” the mother says, her voice now filled with authority. “And even then, when you do meet someone, you have to check in with the health office to avoid genetic conflicts. Are you hearing me? Molly? I asked you a question. Are you hearing me?”

  The girl folds her arms.

  Her mother gives up.

  They sit in their seats, both of them looking straight ahead, staring at the blank screen. A quiet eternity seems to pass. I’m aware of my own breathing, and I make an effort to be quiet, wanting to remain undiscovered. At last, the screen hums to life, glowing a dull silver, the mother and daughter silhouetted against its bottom edge.

  Without taking her eyes off the screen, the daughter says:

  “What happened to him?”

  “What happened to who, darling?”

  “The boy.”

  “Oh, him …,” she says, her response quiet and delayed, as if maybe traveling to her lips from the distant past. “He didn’t test well. They sent him down to Level 6.”

  The educational begins with an image of a cell suspended like a Mylar balloon in a black sky. Music fades in. The cell divides into two daughter cells that grow and then themselves divide, making four. The tempo quickens. The cells divide again. Four into eight, eight into sixteen, and soon the entire screen is filled with thousands of cells nestled together like algae muffins on a baking sheet. The camera pulls back, revealing the cluster to be an egg. A hundred thousand sperm swim at it from every angle, bashing themselves against its outer walls.

  Symbols clang.

  Again and again the sperm push against the egg until one slips through and slithers into its center, coming to rest.

  Quiet now.

  Violins.

  The black background changes to a deep red that gradually lightens. A drum roll. The triumphant sperm combines with the egg, becoming a zygote, then the zygote dividing and folding and growing into an embryo. As the drums fade to silence, the embryo develops into an alien fetus floating in a soft pink sea.

  Cut to: Ancient footage of gorillas in a zoo, before the War, before they were extinct. A silverback sitting on a rock, a female circling him, her behind pumping high in the air—one, two, three revolutions around his rock she turns, taunting, tempting. The silverback surrenders to the dance and rises from his rock as the female shrinks away, subservient, waiting. When he mounts her, she closes her eyes. He pumps fast, his head turned to gaze idly at something off screen. Almost before he’s begun, the silverback is finished. He returns to his rock and sits while the female rolls away to lie on her back, cradling her hairy belly as if already expecting something there.

  My eyes droop, the picture fades …

  No longer in a theater five miles underground, I’m tucked away in my mother’s arms. I see her face, the face I imagine from my father’s descriptions, her hair brown and soft and straight. She smiles down at me and rocks me, and for the first time I feel safe.

  I look up and watch her fade away.

  When I wake from my dream, the theatre is dark. Nothing on the screen, no lights except the soft LED glow of the aisle markers. The mother and daughter are gone.

  Stepping from the theater into the dark square, it appears to be long after curfew because nobody is out. Even the public house is shuttered and dark. Now I’m in trouble. Not from the police—we have very few, and they don’t enforce curfew—but from my dad. The last time I came in this late he grounded me. There seems no point in hurrying back to my punishment, so I take my time walking through the dim Valley.

  In the breezeways between dark buildings, I catch glimpses of lit doorways, seeing something strange that I’ve only seen once before when I was young: neighbors visiting neighbors.

  I stop and lean against a building to watch. On every floor, people are coming from their housing units onto the walks and knocking on doors to either side, passing some news. The last time I saw this happen was when Joel Limpkin tested so poorly that he was sent down to Level 6, despite his parents’ protests.

  Suddenly, my father’s waiting punishment seems silly.

  What if it’s me this time? What if I flunked?

  The visiting slows, moving away like a wave, and by the time I reach our unit, only a few distant doors bang shut on the other side of the Valley.

  I breathe good energy in, breathe bad energy out, pull back my shoulders, and prepare for my father’s anger.

  When I open the door, my heart skips a beat—

  A dozen different voices scream: “Congratulations!”

  They’re all crowded into our smal
l room—our neighbors and a few of my father’s coworkers and friends.

  My father steps to the front of the crowd, his posture tall and proud, and instead of sending me upstairs and grounding me, he wraps me in his arms and lifts me into the air.

  “You did it, son.”

  “What did I do?” I squeak, my feet dangling, my breath caught in my father’s embrace.

  “You’ve made us all proud.”

  “But what did I do?”

  “Perfect score, son—an absolutely perfect score,” he says, setting me down again and gripping my shoulders.

  I look up at him, confused. “You’re not mad?”

  “Mad? Why would I be mad?”

  “Because I missed curfew.”

  “Didn’t you just hear me, son?” He gives me a little shake. “You’re going up. Up! You’ve been selected as a fellow at the Foundation. Nobody’s gone up before. You’re the first, son. You’ll be making a real difference now. You’ll be helping the best and the brightest up there figure out a way to get us back above ground someday. Free men again. I knew it would be you. Maybe you’ll make a discovery to reverse the ice age, eh? Return our atmosphere? Maybe even terraform Mars?”

  Someone clears their throat. Everyone’s staring.

  Still gripping my shoulders, he stops and looks around the room, caught off guard and embarrassed by his outburst of enthusiasm. His posture wilts slightly. Releasing my shoulders, he brushes them off as if clearing away some invisible lint.

  “Sorry. I get a little excited sometimes,” he says, looking at me but talking to them. “Of course, we’ll all be retired by the time you get your fellowship anyway.”

  After several quiet, uncomfortable seconds, someone says:

  “Let’s have a toast. To Aubrey.”

  “Yes,” someone else says. “After all, he is a fifteen now.”

  Smiling with relief at the suggestion, he leaves me standing before the group to go retrieve his ration of algae ethanol. Now the visitors stare at me with a mix of pride and something else that might be envy, or even pity covered up.