by C. J. Harper
‘What are EMDs?’ I ask.
The class laughs and the enforcer tuts.
‘On your chair,’ hisses a voice from the other side of the partition.
I look down and notice a red light flashing on the right arm of my chair. There’s a small tray set into the arm and in it is a sort of bracelet. I slide it on to my wrist; rubbery stuff on the inside ensures that it is a tight fit. A thick metal cord connects it back to the arm of my chair. There’s another one on my left side. I put that on too. I feel like a tethered chicken. This is absurd. I’m starting to despair of getting things straightened out. What if the head teacher is as unhelpful as everyone else has been?
I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose. I tell myself that everything will be fine. This madness has to end. I can’t see the other students because of the partition walls around me, but I can hear them tapping away at their computers. My neighbour to my left is so close that I can hear the quiet click-clicking of his stylus on his screen. I look at my own computer. The screen is showing a circuit board. The aim seems to be to drag components into the right position. I pick up my stylus to look as if I’m busy and start to rehearse in my head what I am going to say to convince the head teacher that I’m not crazy.
‘What’s your name?’ comes a whisper so low I barely catch it. It’s the boy in the compartment next to me.
I open my mouth and then hesitate. ‘Blake,’ I whisper. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Ilex.’
‘Ilex, what’s an impeccable?’
‘They work for the enforcers. They’re big mean and—’
I don’t get to hear what else he was going to say next because he lets out an almighty scream.
‘AHHHHHHH!’
I try to jump out of my seat to help him, but it’s so cramped in the compartment that I can’t do it without opening the door and the door seems to be locked. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ I say.
‘Silence!’ says Enforcer Tong. ‘No talking, new boy. If you talk you will be punished too.’
Punished? King Hell, how on earth did she make him scream like that without even coming near him? What kind of sick place is this? It’s like she zapped him. Surely he’d have to be wired up to some sort of electric device for that . . . Then I realise.
An electric device, like the one attached to my wrists.
Hours later a buzzer sounds. The compartment doors click open. Enforcer Tong must control the locks from her computer. The other students are already scrambling out of their seats. They swarm past my compartment, pushing and shoving. I look up at the enforcer. She’s staring down at me.
‘Wait here, the head of the Academy, Enforcer Rice, will speak to you.’ She disappears through the door in the wall at the back of her cage. I pull off the silly bracelets and step out of my compartment to stretch my legs. My body aches from sitting in the cramped box and from yesterday’s beating.
I thought everyone had gone, but a thickset boy with shaggy brown hair is stood looking at me. He gives me a half-smile.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hello.’
There’s a long pause.
‘I’m Ja— Blake,’ I say. How long is it going to be before I trip up on that one?
‘I know. I’m Ilex.’
‘Oh, I see. Sorry that you got that shock. I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to talk. Doesn’t exactly encourage free exchange of ideas does it? It’s bad enough that they keep you squeezed up in these pens. Why do they do that?’
Ilex squints at me. His eyes follow the arm that I’ve gestured to the compartments with. ‘This is the grid,’ he says.
‘Uh huh, but why are you in the grid?’
Ilex shrugs. ‘So we can’t get out.’
I can’t believe he’s so casual about it.
Before Ilex can say anything else, the door in the back of the cage at the front of the room opens and a muscular man with close-cut, grey hair appears. He looks annoyed. Ilex shoots another half-smile at me and then disappears out of the classroom door.
‘I am Enforcer Rice. I run the Academy. And you are new,’ the man says, as if I’ve done something particularly annoying. I don’t like the way they talk to you here.
‘I shouldn’t be here at all,’ I say. I’m about to launch into everything that has happened when I remember P.C. Barnes’ words about slipping through the net. Maybe I shouldn’t tell this man too much.
Enforcer Rice is staring at me. He’s waiting.
‘I was at a Learning Community,’ I say. ‘There’s been some sort of mix up. My records have been wiped . . .’
‘What’s your name?’ He’s not looking at me, but at a point past my left ear.
Something in the way he asks makes up my mind. Even though he’s a teacher, I don’t trust him. Before I can think about it any more, I say, ‘Blake Jones.’
‘Well, Blake Jones.’ He forms the name carefully like he knows it’s false. ‘Have you anything to add to this fascinating story?’
‘I . . . I was beaten up. Only yesterday. Some men attacked me and my friend. They killed him and tried to do the same to me. I think that I’ve suffered some memory loss.’
He rolls his eyes.
‘I know it sounds unlikely, but I’m sure that you can appreciate that I’m not best suited to an Academy environment,’ I say.
He purses his lips. ‘You sound more like a Learning Community brat than a Wilderness ape. I’ll give you that.’
I open my eyes wide. No wonder Academy students are so rude if this is the way their teachers talk. ‘If I sound like a Learning Community pupil then you’ve got to ask the question, how have I ended up here?’
There’s a long pause. ‘It’s not my job to ask questions,’ he says. ‘In fact, I find the fewer questions you ask the more likely you are to succeed. I don’t know why you are here, young man, and I do not care. I imagine that it is a punishment for whatever trouble you have caused.’
I open my mouth to protest that I have never caused any trouble, but he ploughs on.
‘The only thing that I care about is that you do not cause trouble here. And that means I don’t want to hear about your “Learning Community” past or anything else that you might imagine makes you different from the rest of the students here. Is that understood?’
This is like the police all over again. It’s so unfair. ‘I’m not going to just stay here!’ I say. ‘What about my education? What about—’
‘If you can’t accept your life in the Academy and follow Academy rules then you will be punished.’ He eyes my bruised cheek.
‘Are you threatening me?’ I say. ‘You can’t treat me like this—’
‘Yes I am and yes I can,’ he interrupts in a low voice.
‘This is unbelievable.’
The enforcer turns away. He grips the door handle and looks back over his shoulder. ‘Just think about this: how many things have already happened to you in the last few days that you didn’t believe were possible?’ He steps out of the door and closes it behind him.
I sink to my knees. I just can’t go on with this. It’s like someone has whipped the rug out from under me. I lean over till my forehead rests on the ground. I lie there staring at a black smudge on the floor till I go cross-eyed.
I’m starting to realise that no one is going to help me. I sit up. No one but me cares about what happened to Wilson and I’m stuck in an Academy with the head teacher threatening me with violence. But I can deal with this. I’m smart, I can deal with anything. I can pretend to toe the line if that’s what Enforcer Rice wants.
But I don’t belong in this place and I’m only playing along until I work out how to get myself out of here.
I try to focus my mind. The first thing I need if I’m going to deal with all this is food. It must be lunchtime by now. I go out into the corridor; it’s heaving. Hundreds of students all in the same grey uniform are crammed shoulder to shoulder. I try to walk in a civilised fashion, but I keep getting shoved sideways or jammed
in the back. A giant of a boy, with thick arms and slicked-back, auburn hair, steps in front of me and slaps his palm on to my cheek. King Hell, can’t they just leave me alone? Then he pushes me to the side of the corridor and turns away. Why would he do that? He doesn’t even know who I am. I wipe off the feel of his hand from my face.
‘Do you mind?’ I say.
He stops dead. The boys walking behind him crash into him.
‘Watch i—’ one of them starts to say, then he raises his head and sees who he is speaking to. He shrinks backwards. ‘I didn’t see you, Rex.’
But Rex is not looking at him. He’s looking at me.
‘What the efwurd are you saying?’ He says to me. ‘Why are you talking to me, you filthy little no-ranker?’ He looks at me – at me, with my AEP score of 98.5 – like I’m something that has dropped out of his nose. What is wrong with these idiots?
The corridor around us has frozen. They’re all staring at me.
‘Get an enforcer,’ I say to the girl next to me in a low voice.
Everyone bursts out laughing.
They’re gawping at me and howling. The girl beside me is bent double and Rex’s shoulders are heaving.
‘Get an enforcer!’ he squeaks in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m too little to fight! I want an enforcer to fight for me!’
He’s mocking me. The rest of the apes fall about laughing. How dare they? Everything I’ve heard about Academy kids is right. They’re savages. I draw myself up.
‘I can’t imagine what’s so funny,’ I say.
That makes them laugh even harder. I walk away, weaving my way between their stinking bodies.
I follow the flow of students to the dining room. Except it isn’t a room. It’s more like a vast warehouse. Beneath the high ceiling are row upon row of yet more cubicle type things. These are like narrow metal boxes with open fronts. They’re hardly big enough to stand in, but that’s what the other students are doing. The students seem eager to get to their lunch. One boy is actually running; when he gets into a cubicle he taps his fingers in agitation on the metal mesh wall.
I follow the girl in front of me down a narrow aisle. She enters one of the compartments and I step into the one next to her. It’s like standing in a locker. On three sides there are walls of metal lattice, to the left I can see the outline of the girl next to me. On the wall in front there are three metal nozzles. One of them has a brown crust. It doesn’t look very hygienic.
‘Hey!’
A hand grabs the back of my belt and I’m yanked out into the narrow alley.
‘Get out of my pod!’
I twist round to see a boy with matted hair and raised fists.
‘There’s no need to be aggressive,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know it was yours, I didn’t know they belonged to people.’
But he’s not even listening; he’s already stepped into his ‘pod’ and forgotten me.
I look up and down the aisle. Everyone is hurrying into position. Where’s my pod? I’m so hungry and I don’t know where to go. I feel like a forgotten child.
The girl I followed is staring at me. She raises her eyebrows and says, ‘What’s your number?’
‘My name’s—’
‘Not name, number,’ she says.
‘I’m not going to answer to a number. It’s dehumanising and—’
‘Where your number is. That is where you eat.’ She turns away, shaking her head.
I do remember the number the receptionist gave me. 1247. I would have remembered it even if it had been three times as long. Clearly no one in here is going to be impressed by my feats of memory, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work this out. I’m smart. I don’t need their help.
I look around. As far as I can tell, the pods aren’t numbered. I retrace my steps down the aisle and back to the door; I have to duck between the students streaming in. They take no notice of me. They’re moving with urgency, as if they’re rushing to an important event. The atmosphere is strangely charged.
Presumably the first pod in the row closest to the door is pod number one. I slip halfway down the first row, I count fifty pods, that means my pod must be in row twenty-five. I walk along the bottom of the rows. Almost all the pods are full now and I feel foolish and late, but I’m not going to run. Actually, no one is looking at me; their attention is fixed on the back of their pods. Some of them are fidgeting, twitching fingers or tapping feet. Some of them are murmuring and moaning. One boy is banging his head against the metal partition. I lose count of the rows. What are they all so desperate for?
I get to what I hope is row twenty-five and there, just where it should be, is an empty pod. I step in and lean gratefully against the metal grille of the wall. My pod. I found it all by myself. I straighten up and take a closer look at the nozzles. It seems that I’ve made it just in time, because a buzzer sounds and a red light flashes on the top of one of the nozzles. Then a thick stream of brown gloop pours out and all over my shoes.
I try to turn the nozzle off, but I can’t. The brown stuff is all over the floor. What should I do? I look round the pod, but there’s nothing to catch the flow with. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Is this slop my lunch? The brown muck just keeps coming and now there’s a disgusting lumpy pool on the floor. I look through the grille on my left at the boy in the next pod; maybe I can see what he’s doing.
‘Where do you get a bowl from?’ I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. As my eyes make out his outline in the gloom I realise he can’t.
His mouth is wrapped around a nozzle and he is sucking that brown stuff down.
My stomach heaves. It’s not even that the gloop looks and smells disgusting; it’s the undignified way he’s gulping at that nozzle. Like an animal.
And that’s when I realise that this massive warehouse is totally silent.
I turn round. In the pod opposite is a girl sucking at the metal teat in the same way. Her eyes are closed and as she gulps her rigid body begins to relax. Next to her a boy is slurping so hard that the brown liquid is running down his chin. All around me the students are sucking hard on the metal nozzles, their eyes closed in pleasure. I look away.
I won’t do it. I won’t eat like that. I’d rather starve. The brown stream stops. I hear a sigh of contentment from the pod on my left. The buzzer sounds again and the middle nozzle gushes with an orangey liquid. I can’t bear to turn back to the suckling students, so I’m forced to watch it mixing with the brown stuff. Finally, the last tap produces what looks like water. I use my hands to take a tentative sip – it is water. I have a couple more mouthfuls and then I try to rinse my shoes under it. The water thins out the puddle on the floor and it starts to run through the grille into the pod on my right. The room must be on a slight slope.
I turn around slowly. The students are lounging against the walls of their pods. Their bodies are relaxed and their faces are smooth instead of pinched and angry. I can only think of one way that the food could have calmed them so much. Now I see why everyone was so desperate to get to their lunch.
The food is drugged.
I am not eating drugged food. What kind of a place is this? No wonder the students are so weird. I need to find someone with a brain to talk to.
I step carefully over the sticky mess on the floor and bang straight into a tall boy wearing the same yellow badge as the boy who pushed me about this morning. An impeccable. Finally, someone who might be able to help.
‘Would it be possible to get something to eat?’ I say.
He stares at me without blinking.
‘I, um, missed lunch.’
He lowers his gaze to the vomit-like puddle on the floor. I swallow.
‘Yes, ah, I think maybe the tap is faulty,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t get it to turn off.’
‘No mess in the feeding pods,’ he says.
‘I didn’t mean to. I’m new—’
‘No mess in the feeding pods,’ he repeats in a monotone.
I look about for help. Why i
s it so hard to make anyone in here understand? The girl from the pod on my right is standing to the side and slightly behind the impeccable. She must have been watching the whole time. I open my mouth to ask her to help explain, but she starts to slink away. Without taking his eyes off me, the impeccable shoots out an arm to his side and grabs her, but the girl doesn’t even gasp, just purses her lips.
‘You messed your feeding pod,’ he says, looking at the floor of her pod, which is also covered in muck where it has dribbled through the grille from my pod. ‘It must be cleaned.’ He walks away to join a pack of other yellow-badged impeccables.
I’m so hungry.
The girl wheels over a cleaning trolley. She isn’t very pretty, but her hair is striking – so blonde it’s almost white. She slams the trolley into my foot, picks up a sponge and starts cleaning her pod. She isn’t glassy-eyed like the other students, who are drifting out of the dining room.
‘I was late,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know where my pod was.’
She gives me a hard stare.
‘It would be better if they numbered them,’ I say.
She wipes away a brown streak and gestures to the floor. 1248 is marked in large numbers on the base of her pod.
‘Oh. Well, maybe they should think about something to catch the mess under the nozzles.’
She reaches up and yanks out a sliding drainage tray.
I tap at the wheel of the trolley with my toe. This is one of the first conversations I’ve had with a girl that isn’t about school work. I don’t think I’m impressing her. ‘We don’t have to do this, you know. We’re not cleaners.’ I say.
She doesn’t reply.
‘It’s not like I did it on purpose. I’m sure if we explained—’
She springs to her feet, grabs me by the collar and slams the side of my face against the metal grille of the pod. It rubs against my swollen face like a cheese grater. She’s tiny, but I can’t twist out of her grip.
‘Don’t say we,’ she spits. She shoves me away from her. ‘You talk all big words, but no things you say are good. The only right thing you say is that I don’t have to do this.’ She throws the stinking sponge at my head. ‘You do it.’ And she walks off.