by Forbes West
You pass them with barely a glance, rushing inside, and see a glass elevator that carries you to the fourteenth floor of the building.
Waiting outside Christopher Lee’s office takes two hours; you have to stand in line with other prospective settlers and candidates for direct employment with the Off-World Network. It’s a very motley group, mostly women ranging from your age to their fifties.
You made the mistake of getting a free cup of coffee earlier and now you have to pee. You’ll have to hold it until the interview is finished since the recruiter is asking you inside, holding a manila folder in his hand. “No, there is no relation between myself and the other Christopher Lee,” he says, after he shakes hands with you. Mr. Lee states this in a delightfully British accent as you step inside his large, almost football field wide office that looks over the Long Beach Harbor. He is a slightly bucktooth man, middle-aged, no wedding ring on his finger. He sits behind his desk, his gut slightly extending over the smooth mahogany desktop. A new Macintosh is perched on top of his desk. He wears, to your non-surprise, the blue jumpsuit uniform of the Network. It’s that goofy NASA flight suit wannabe outfit that apparently all the Network employees off-world dress in. On his left breast are the two overlapping circles of the Network, and on his right shoulder is a British flag patch.
There is a female employee in his office, click-clacking away on what looks like a courtroom stenographer’s machine. She’s Japanese; you can tell by her round features and the rising sun flag on her right shoulder. She never speaks to you once or interjects in any way.
“I…I’m sorry?” you say, not understanding what Mr. Lee is talking about, not understanding what being related to “Christopher Lee” means. You nervously pat your damp head, shifting in your seat, with your plastic-covered resume held uncertainly in your hand. The Japanese stenographer click-clacks away on the machine every time someone speaks.
“Christopher Lee? Dracula? The Man with the Golden Gun? The Wicker Man? Saruman? Count Dooku?”
You swallow nervously. “The Shit…I mean Sith Lord?” you ask, vaguely remembering something.
Christopher Lee shakes his head. “No. If popular culture was something to be graded on, Miss, you really would’ve been docked a few points there. Never heard of Lord of the Rings? Really? The Hobbit?”
You start to freak a little bit, thinking to yourself that you should have. “I don’t know anything about Dracula or uh, a Syrup-man. I’m sorry!”
Christopher Lee shakes his head and says without emotion, “I’m teasing you. That's what we call an “icebreaker” in the corporate world. Something to liven up the mood.” He looks at you again, and brings a pen out and starts marking something on your file.
Your heart beats faster and faster, and your hands shake a little. “Huh.”
Christopher Lee clicks a few things on his keyboard, and checks out the application you submitted online before you went to bed last night.
He keeps speaking, looking over your file. “Now, where it asks for your job objective statement, you’ve put down, and this is a very interesting quote for me. “Livin' in fear ain't livin' to me. I'm armed with a gun defending the free. They blew it in 'Nam, shot up my friends. I'm back in the street, the fight never ends. I was born with a gun in my hand. I'll die for my country but I'll die like a man”.”
A moment of dead silence. The recruiter stares at you, looking straight into your eyes.
Your jaw drops. “Oh shi…I mean, shoot, that’s, heh, heh. I was copying and pasting lyrics to a Manowar song for my friend online as this, well, well, it's a funny story. It’s not a funny story, really, well, I guess it’s funny...I actually wanted to use my SSR position so I can gain that free slot into Solomon’s House University, and then maybe into xenoarchaeology. Like my sister.”
“That’s a shame, really. We don’t have many twenty-year-old, female, Vietnam veteran/ vigilantes prowling the streets,” Christopher Lee says without batting a single eyelash. A slight curl on his lips suggests that he wishes he could laugh but can’t.
You slowly raise your hand and start to speak. Mr. Lee informs you that this isn’t a classroom and that you can put your hand down.
“While that objective statement was—original—to say the least, you left out your hobbies. We like to know everything about our settler candidates, within reason and within the law, so please, enlighten me.”
You have to think, and then you make the mistake of being too honest. You look to the mahogany ceiling. “I like to do LARP,” you squeak out.
Massive silence. You can even hear the slight hum of the computer booting up an application.
“You think doing a drug would be an acceptable hobby?” Mr. Lee says.
“It’s…it’s not a drug, it’s…”
“Ah, a sick, sexual deviant thing? You’re just a young woman barely out of your teens, I mean, what is this country coming to?” the recruiter continues, his face turning red. Mr. Lee bites down on his lip openly, as if he wants to say something but can’t.
“No! No, please, it’s about role playing,” you almost yell.
“Role playing?” Mr. Lee looks more disturbed, his eyes half-lidded.
“Wait, it’s like, like D-Dungeons and Dragons, except we go outside and act it out live. Well, actually, what I like the most is Dagorhir—you use foam swords, foam javelins, and you have to be in character. You make your own uniform; it’s like theater but with sports mixed in, but you have to stay in character. I was Queen of the Realm for one day. Tyler and everyone used to make fun of me, but...”
After a moment, Mr. Lee clears his throat. “Continuing on, then.” He writes something down with his red pen this time. Your stomach feels upset.
“There are three hundred and seventy-six different people looking to get official settler status in The Oberon, and that’s just today. We ask that those who wish to settle with us directly and work for us be of the highest caliber and highest character. The Oberon is a place unlike anything of this Earth, indeed it is not of this Earth, hence the common name “off-world”. The Oberon is a very different place, a golden land of opportunity and advancement. We accept only the best there, and those who are the most open-minded, to be a part of our Network system.”
“You’re serious that The Oberon is that great? Because I only wanted to go to a dangerous and unstable place myself...” You chuckle nervously, trying to retrieve the situation. You blurt out something else that you hope makes some sort of sense in the long term, taking a leap into the dark to see if you can land on the other side. A moment passes and you feel this horrible need to rush out and use the toilet. Your gambit works.
Christopher Lee laughs after a moment, seeing you are joking. “That’s good. That is good.” He turns serious. “But no more joking, Miss Sarah. Laughing time is over, as the Simpsons would say. You have an associate’s degree from Long Beach City College but you are single, which barely qualifies you to even have this meeting for possible settling. Now, based on your age, prior work experience, which is, ah, Papa John’s Pizza for three months due to what you term “wrongful termination”, currently at Subway, and your associate’s degree, the only position I can guarantee you as a probationary settler is to be a Settler Service Representative, or SSR, at one of our Missions, one of our tower settlements. Your job there would to be help maintain the tower’s settlers and see to their needs, and to attract other human settlers to live inside the settlement so we can expand. Immigration is still open to everyone who can charter a boat out to Point Nemo, so there are many settlers still outside the Network system. Your job would be to help attract the undocumented into The Oberon for their own safety and protection. We are looking to fill our homes at Mission Friendship, Mission Hazelden, Mission Passages, and Mission Wonderland.”
“Oh, I see, you mean, like, like renting them houses inside the settlement? I heard about this on Discovery. The Network is basically like a human housing authority.”
“We do more than that,” C
hristopher Lee says. “We do a lot more than that. We are not some simple property management company. The Network...”
He launches into a five-minute monologue on what the Network does exactly, but since you are so nervous and have to pee, you barely pay attention to what he is saying.
“...chartered by the mandate of the Witch-Lord and the United States Government to fund and run all human police, all human settlements, and all large mines and salvage operations. We work closely with the natives. There is no colonization here. We are under the Witch-Lord’s law.”
“Of what?” you ask, fidgeting a little. You really need to pee.
“Miss Orange, what did I just say?” He taps the capped end of his pen against his teeth for a moment.
“Well, that the Network has to do what it has to do and there’s a lot of ins and outs and complications to the situation, but that you need all the help you can get,” you reply, praying that you’ve hit it on the head, or near enough.
“Indeed,” Christopher Lee says, slowly nodding. “Indeed. Well put.” You don't know if he is joking or not. “Let us run over a few situations and see how you would handle them...”
After a few scenarios are given to you about how to rent a place, how to deal with a fire emergency, or how to deal with an attack by Ni-Perchta; you think your answers, in comparison to what has gone on before, are correct and sound. Then again, you’re not sure.
Christopher Lee sits back in his leather chair. “Well, we are making settler assignments and choices by 4:00 pm today. We will give you a call back by five. If you do not receive a call, it is because we have found a better-suited candidate on the list.”
You look around to see if you should stand up. You do, slowly. Mr. Lee shakes your hand deliberately. “Be seeing you,” he says, smiling.
* * *
You are sitting alone at the In-N-Out next to Pacific Coast Highway in Seal Beach, watching new drops of rain splatter against the window—another day of the orichalcum-produced maintenance storm. You are downing a Double Double (hold the lettuce) and sipping on a Coke with too much ice, staring at your Mickey Mouse watch. You’ve just paid out your last eight dollars for this meal.
A cheesy container and a box of dwindling fries sit in front of you. If Christopher Lee was telling the truth, it will be around 5:00 pm that you’ll find out if you’re going to The Oberon.
It is now 1:30. The lunch hour rush has passed so you are virtually alone, except for the anonymous attendants working the drive-through window. Time will drag out. Every hour will not be quick enough. You stare out the window, thinking of Tyler, your mother, and your future here on Earth disappearing.
The window faces Pacific Coast Highway turning into Main Street, and you watch the cars splash and stop their way through the downfall. Cheap-looking old Buicks, brand new Fords, and little curvy Toyotas swing by; a limousine drives by as well. A bus discharges its already soggy patrons onto the street. They rush across the long crosswalk towards a once-white, now gray, office building next door, ignoring the old, homeless man soaked to the bone holding a Will Work For Anything sign.
There is a very long line of people waiting to get into that gray government-style building across the street; they’re mostly young, some older, with umbrellas out or hooded sweatshirts covering their heads as they shuffle forward, one sneakered or flat shoe at a time. The blocky office monument on the small green lawn outside the government building reads: California Unemployment Services.
You think for a long while about your sister. She is—was—a smart woman who thought a lot about the world and what it meant to be alive in it. She was philosophical without pretension. She won scholarship after scholarship in school, was always athletic, driven, always focused, and different—in a word: scary. She graduated UCLA, then Yale; already mentioned in a small article in the New York Times about the up and coming women of the Ivy League by the time she was just eighteen. And then she got married to that Ian Zur and had been in The Oberon for the last ten years, doing God knows what. She never called and never wrote past your thirteenth birthday. It was as if she had moved to the dark side of the moon, which you guess The Oberon really is.
If they say no to you joining, if you don’t get the Network job, where could you go? Back to your mother and her bullshit? You aren’t going to college next year—you and your mother are broke—and you’ve finished City College. Tyler had talked loosely of marriage, maybe, in the summer, and somehow you’d read more into that than you should have, making no real, decent, future plans. Besides, college is bullshit for a bachelor’s degree in this economy—four years and $40,000 later to find out you’re qualified to work at Starbucks.
You watch as a young, fresh-faced couple step out of the rain and into the restaurant—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, about your age. They are smiling and laughing, shaking off the rain, enjoying each other’s company. They make their order, choose a table, and the boy brings the girl her soda fountain drink. They look at each other, touch each other’s arms, laugh at what you are sure is nothing.
You pick up your food and toss it out, not hungry anymore, and leave the restaurant to step out into a gust of rain, umbrella in hand.
You put it up and try to avoid looking at all those poor faces queuing in the unemployment line, each face full of dull despair mingled with dying hope. You wait for the bus going in the opposite direction and then head back towards home.
With a jerk of your key, you open your apartment door and walk into your bedroom. It is empty and dark; the blinds are drawn, and there is only the slightest drumming of rain against the window. A bed unmade, a low-volume TV left on an Evangelist station, and a chair with your cat, Slinks, perched on top of it.
Slinks blinks twice, looks at you, and falls back to sleep, a curled-up classic tabby. You look at your watch as you close the door. It’s 2:05 pm, according to Mickey Mouse.
“Hello,” you say. Slinks looks up, blinks again, meows something, and goes back to sleep. “Good to see you.”
You lock the door behind you and crawl into bed, your wet coat still on, though you do manage to kick your heels off. You pull the covers up to your head and try to sleep.
You look at the red digital alarm clock: 2:07 pm.
You start to cry a little, a sort of mild sob. Think of Tyler and his cheating. It has made you finally look at where your life is going—your precious life, your one life, and you are here, in miserable Southern California, going nowhere, getting nowhere, feeling nothing, doing nothing, with an unfeeling, unloving mother. What should you do?
You don’t sleep but you aren’t fully conscious either. The cat decides to get up, stretch, and then perch himself near the top of your head. He purrs the day away.
“Thanks for that,” you say sarcastically, as you feel his furry body brush your head.
2:15 pm.
You start to think too much. Your dead father wouldn’t mind you joining him in Heaven, would he? You think not. Why are you thinking this?
Slinks abandons his position.
2:38 pm.
You turn over and stare at your cellphone. They will call at 5:00 pm, you remind yourself. If they don’t call, you’ll go to Heaven; a place of eternal whiteness and warmth, where the trees always give cool shade, the water is fresh, and there is no work to go to, only sweet music to listen to. The days never end and all the people you have ever known sit together in perfect understanding and harmony...
2:52pm.
If you don’t get this “job”, what will you be?
An eternal nothing; a young woman with no future worth mentioning, nor past worth studying. Why are you making this job into something bigger than it is? It’s a CSR job—customer service—a rental agent job. But there is a feeling just at the back of your skull, a feeling that by getting to The Oberon, somewhere so different than anywhere on Earth, that maybe just getting your foot in the door will lead to something very, very great. This is not a rational thou
ght but a feeling that is tugging at you.
You drift off to sleep and wake to find that some time has passed.
4:57 pm.
Three minutes until their phone call. Time moves oh so very slowly forward. You grow more scared and rationality leaks away from you. You think strange thoughts. When it is night and perhaps storming outside, you will take off all your clothes, let the cool rain wash over your skin. You will walk out into the waves; you will start to swim ever forward. When it gets too cold, you will fall asleep in that mother ocean...and you will let the sea take you. You will only see the moon before you slip under...
4:59 pm.
They should be calling. One minute from now, you will know how the entire rest of your life will play out.
5:04 pm.
You sit upright in bed, your fists clenching and unclenching over and over again. You mutter under your breath. “Call...call...call, you bastards, call...Call...”
5:05pm.
A ring. You grab the phone. “This is Sarah Orange.”
“Hello, Sarah, this is Christopher Lee. You are hired...” His voice seems a million miles away. You fake your way through the rest of the conversation, saying everything appropriately, then thanking him. Shaking, you hang up the phone and lay it back down, pulling the covers up tighter.
Later there is a knock at the door. It’s Jaime, looking frantic and in need of something. “Pachinko, Pachinko is out.”
“Pachinko is out?” you ask, confused at first and then remembering exactly who Pachinko is. “Oh, Pachinko. Are you sure you’re pronouncing her name right?
Jaime ignores your enquiry. “Pachinko is out, Sarah. She attacked someone at the Math Lab with a pair of scissors. I need to get married to get out there.” He lowers himself onto one knee.
“Sarah Orange, will you marry me?” For a moment you almost forget it is Jaime—you look at that face, that kind face with bright blue eyes, and slide into a different reality where it’s actually Tyler asking you for marriage. That charming Tyler is asking you and you say…