Office of Mercy (9781101606100)

by Djanikian, Ariel

  To Natasha’s surprise, Eric did not immediately dismiss the idea. In fact, he agreed to the plan with seemingly more conviction than what she herself felt. They spent the next hour writing their message, thinking over every aspect of the mission and refusing to leave out a single detail. They signed it Natasha Wiley and Eric Johansson, Epsilons, Office of Mercy, and on Eric’s final okay, Natasha sent the message to America-Five’s highest authority.

  • • •

  No response came, not the next day or the day after that. Probably Natasha would not have been able to hide the turmoil she felt over the message or, what was worse, the shaky agitation that gripped her at any mention of Jeffrey’s name, except that everyone in America-Five was anxious these days, and so Natasha fit right in.

  Ready or not, the Zetas were nearing their sixth month of gestation, and would soon grow too large for their current phase-two incuvats in the Office of Reproduction. The scientists wanted to transfer them soon, but construction continued to fall behind schedule in the New Wing. The parties in charge had considered transferring the Zetas before the construction had concluded, but no one liked the idea of laser drills and electron saws flashing and roaring around the developing babies. Anyway, it seemed a dark, inauspicious beginning if it did come to that. Conversations from last year were slowly cropping up again: doubts about the prudence of creating a new generation when the underground levels were already filled to capacity, and when they were forced to build a whole new wing just to make room for the phase-three incuvats. (To say nothing yet of the dormitories and schoolrooms that the Zetas would eventually require.) The Alphas had waited more than two hundred years after the Storm before creating the Betas; and, in turn, the Alphas and Betas had waited another sixty years after that before considering themselves fit to receive a generation of Gammas. Because of course, as the Ethical Code directed, no new life should ever be brought into existence without the settlement’s first proving to itself that it had triple the energy, space, and resources to sustain the new additions. With this truth in mind, a few citizens were going so far as to wonder if the Alphas would choose to destroy the Zetas. But according to Cameron Pacheco, who was heading the project, however unhappy the old ones were, the Alphas did not view the situation as dire as that.

  Meanwhile, in the Office of Mercy, the Pines continued to elude detection, and the stress was wearing away at them all. Arthur lapsed into periodic fits of faultfinding, accusing one team or another of missing a flicker of human migration over the deadzone perimeter. But he was always wrong. Nothing tripped the sensors but birds, rabbits, deer, and the occasional fluffy-tailed squirrel. The Alphas called at regular intervals now, and Natasha had learned to recognize the drawn, despondent expression that came over Arthur’s face when he spoke directly to the Mother or Father. The whole settlement felt their failure, and shared in their fear. Even Min-he began asking Natasha for updates, though she hadn’t shown much interest in the Office of Mercy before, and had once even dismissively dubbed the sweeps “janitorial work,” cleanup from the Storm.

  For most citizens, the only thing that made these setbacks bearable was the promise of the Crane Celebration, scheduled for the first week of September. The settlement held a celebration for any large sweep; and they were among the most extravagant and unique days in America-Five. According to a short section in the Ethical Code, such celebrations served to remind the citizens of their higher purpose on Earth: namely, not only to create peaceful, happy, and long lives within the settlement (as described the work of most citizens), but also to supplement this positive work with the work of negating what life was not peaceful and happy and long. The Epsilons especially were looking forward to the holiday, since they had only attended a handful of celebrations before, and most as children. Also at the Crane Celebration, the citizen whose labor had most directly contributed to the success of the sweep received a medal of service. In the case of the Crane sweep—as was announced on the maincomputer, and to no one’s surprise—that citizen was Jeffrey.

  As for Natasha, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with the preparations for the Crane Celebration. Work was bad enough, with Eric a nervous wreck and Yasmine a total dolt—always going on about how proud they should be about Jeffrey’s medal—and Claudia Kim sneering at Natasha whenever she had the chance. So far, the only real mercy (as far as Natasha’s life was concerned) was that Jeffrey seemed to be consciously staying away from the dayshifts, and steering clear of the shift changes too.

  Natasha had no desire to put an accidental end to this deliberate estrangement, and no desire, either, to put herself in the company of those citizens who still liked to ask her questions about the ill-fated mission. So in order to avoid the volunteer committees that gathered in the evenings—the Menu Committee, the Garden Committee, the Agriculture Beautification Committee, and the Committee for Music and Entertainment—Natasha took to returning to her sleeproom directly after dinner. These long evening hours would have been unbearable, she could not have endured them, except that lately Min-he had been borrowing stacks of Pre-Storm books to look over during her leisure hours. While the Ethical Code sat cold and foreboding in the table drawer, no longer holding for Natasha the promise of comfort, she would instead leaf through these strange manuscripts, printed on delicate, musty-smelling paper: stories of people living in cities and wars between nations and other strange subjects like slavery and marriage and ocean voyages. She could barely comprehend the concepts, or the finer details of the texts. But the stories sparked Natasha’s interest and allowed her, at times, to forget herself and her own situation, and made her wonder, too, at the variety of experiences possible within far-flung, individual lives of the same human species.

  One night, though, while poring over the fantastic tale of a man who fights off a fire-breathing dragon to save his home village (a place of thatched-roof houses, no less), Natasha began feeling restless. Eventually, she closed the book and returned it to the top of Min-he’s stack. She threw on a fuzzy second-skin top and, for the first time since before the mission, she headed to the Pretends.

  The gray-blue walls of the Pod curved around her, nestling her in its cocoon. On the virtual menu hovering before her eyes, the computer presented three options: Experience, Game, Free Play. On a whim, Natasha chose Free Play. The neurotranslation technology specific to Free Play still had a few glitches, being so new. Last time, when Natasha had tried to evoke the scene of a Pre-Storm, black-tie dance, it had thrown her into an aviary with ostriches and cockatoos and Natasha had ended the simulation only just in time to avoid being pecked and squawked at to oblivion. But Natasha did not really care what the computer did. All she wanted was something new, some escape from her messed-up life. She wouldn’t mind if it sent her skateboarding with baby antelope or whatever else. The Pod faded from blue to black; her eyes closed and then, a second later, the world lighted to reveal the Dome on a usual morning at 0800 hours.

  She wore her regular office clothes: a cream-colored, second-skin shirt fastened into a pair of brown prote-pants. Her hair draped over her shoulders and carried with it the faint smell of shampoo, as if she had just showered that morning. Weaving through the crowd of morningshift workers, she made her way to the doors of the Department of the Exterior and down the white hall to the Office of Mercy. In every way, the day suggested business as usual: the regular crew sat hunched over their keyboards, the coffee machine gurgled on the side table beneath the wallphone, and Natasha’s own station appeared orderly and waiting, her audioset neat in its holder and her desk chair tucked in the way she always left it. And yet. Despite all this, the air felt charged, ready to snap with a bolt of energy. She slipped into her seat and logged in, and a moment later, Jeffrey arrived, his eyes on her as he dropped a stack of binders on his desk.

  “You look very pretty today,” Jeffrey said.

  A tickle of heat came over her flesh. “Thank you.”

  His attention stayed on her and sh
e typed commands slowly, drawing up the coordinates for the Crane Tribe. Her fingers felt thick; it took her two tries to get the coordinates right. Jeffrey walked over to stand behind her, his hand on the back of her chair.

  “Are you bringing up the W13 shoreline?”

  “Yes, here it is.”

  “Oh, good, we’ve had a few disturbances in that area. Why don’t you put together a seven-day data chart and we’ll look at it together.”

  But Natasha was only half listening. While he was speaking, Jeffrey’s hand had eased its way from the chair to her shoulder, and then slipped lower, below her arm and to her side. He held her across the narrow curve of her ribs. She stiffened, but the hand did not move.

  “Shh,” he whispered. “No one can see. Draw up the visuals.”

  Natasha typed the commands, feeling the warmth of his palm through the second-skin of her shirt. Her body tingled under his touch; he wanted her, Jeffrey wanted her. His hand slipped lower and she could feel his need in the sliding, gripping movement of his fingers. The computer screen flashed and her eyes drifted to where the count glowed in the upper-right portion of the screen: 138, the Crane count. What did that number mean? Were the Cranes alive or swept? Jeffrey’s hand moved down to cradle her thigh but she couldn’t concentrate because she couldn’t remember. The number was reminding her of something, something bad. . . .

  She tried to hold on but she couldn’t. The Office was fading before her eyes and with it the pressure of Jeffrey’s hand on her body, the smell of coffee, the clicking of keys. . . .

  The world shifted.

  Bright and bland to dark with an upward bleeding of color—red.

  Red lights skimmed across the marble floor, the emergency lights. Natasha was alone, stepping quickly across the blacked-out Dome, under the watch of a streak of stars. Her clothes had changed. Now she wore a blue silk-skin dress that gathered in tight, horizontal folds over her chest and then fell gracefully down to her ankles. The heels of her shoes clicked determinedly while at the same time she realized her destination: the south-facing doors of the Department of Agriculture, the wing where the Crane Celebration would take place, the wing that she had avoided for weeks.

  The doors parted for her, she did not need to touch the reader, and then before her lay the vast Garden, the broad strip of lush grass bordered on each side by giant maple, oak, poplar, and cherry trees. Around the base of the trunks bloomed flowers of every shape and color, though Natasha could barely make them out in the dimness. Here the entire settlement would gather for the Crane Celebration, here they would acknowledge their own success and their own benevolent power, and renew their sense of shared purpose.

  Instead of continuing farther down the lawn, Natasha turned through a large archway to her right. Again she had access, only this time it was because someone had left the doors open. The ragged silhouette of this year’s wheat crop stretched expansively, black and still in the blue nightlights that replaced the bright, high-energy spectrum of the day. The ceiling hung low overhead, and a spiral staircase in the corner passed through spherical cuts in the ceiling and floor, each of which led to near-identical fields above and below. It was one of America-Five’s early feats in agricultural engineering: to stack the crops one on top of the other like reams of paper. Natasha breathed in the cool, sweet air; she ran her hand over the tips of the rough stalks. Then she took off her shoes and started down one of the footpaths, the dirt cool and pleasant and squishy under her feet. She had walked deep into the crop when a rustle of movement came from behind her and before she could turn around, Jeffrey was there, speaking hot words against her neck.

  “You couldn’t stay away, could you?”

  His arms clasped around her middle, and he held her while kissing her neck up to her ear.

  “Jeffrey,” she said.

  A shiver ran through her and she turned, her front now pressed against his and her arms thrown over his shoulders. She could not see his face in the blue shadow, but his mouth found its way to hers and he kissed her deeply. His hands crept to her waist, running smoothly over the thin, slippery skin of her dress. He grabbed the skirt, bunching it in his fists, and yanked the whole dress up and over her head so that now Natasha stood naked before him. With sudden force he lifted her into his arms, and then they were moving deeper into the high wheat, his mouth never breaking from hers.

  “Wait,” said Natasha. She pushed against him. There was something wrong with the way he was holding her. She did not like how it felt. His grip was too tight. “Wait, put me down.”

  The room flickered, and the blue deepened to the true dark of a night sky. She was losing her hold on the dream; she was remembering. Then, before she could stop it, the Tribespeople broke through.

  Natasha stood among the trees, before a raging fire. The ground pressed coldly under her feet, not the soil of crops but a drier, older, rougher ground; stiff rags and strings of beads draped over her body. She was singing—a song she both knew and did not know—she was singing with the Tribespeople who stood in a ring around the flames, all half-naked and jumbled together and dancing. Natasha felt exhilarated, triumphant. Atop her mess of hair she wore a crown of ivy leaves and red berries; she could smell the rich earth emanating from her own flesh. A man with a wrinkled, leathery face and blackened teeth threw a stream of water from a clay pot onto the fire; a pillar of thick smoke poured toward the sky with a hiss. He looked at Natasha, they all did. They were honoring her, welcoming her.

  “Is that her?”

  Yes.

  “Is that her?”

  Yes.

  “Is that her?”

  They were closing in around her, the circle constricting.

  “Is that her?”

  Yes, yes, she’s come at last—

  “Stop!”

  Natasha ripped off her helmet without properly ending the simulation. A sharp pain erupted in the front region of her brain and her vision went black. She writhed, not knowing where she was until the harness caught her halfway to the floor; the straps held her there, her body limp and suspended and trembling. She breathed jaggedly, clutching her head while the pain began to subside and her mind began to recover its orientation, her cheeks matted with sweat and tears.

  9

  On the morning of the Crane Celebration, the citizens of America-Five stepped out of the elephant to behold a crystal clear blue sky. The clouds and drizzle of the last several days had suddenly departed, and this abrupt change in the weather only further boosted their spirits. The floor of the Dome was also transformed: around the outer wall, little makeshift stands stood piled with new second-skin clothing, each stand attended by a very proud-looking member of the Office of Biotextiles. Over the course of the day, the citizens were invited to pick out five new items to wear for that night. The new clothing and accessories—all in the earthy colors of yellow, blue, green, and brown—represented (according to tradition, and as the older generations were constantly reminding the Epsilons) the human power the citizens wielded over the unethical forces of the world: their ability to excise, with the snip of a sweep, the evil that nature’s laws commanded.

  For the first time since the failed mission, people stopped to chat with their friends as they crossed the floor to their respective Departments; they gathered in clumps around the tables of second-skin dresses and shirts and other new things. Their smiles were small, but hopeful; their laughter strained, but genuine. No one spoke now of the bitter ideas that had begun to circulate after a few posts to the intergenerational boards—about the inappropriateness of any celebration given the disastrous situation with the Pines. Such denouncements felt overly self-punitive in the gentle light of day, and overly brutal amid thoughts of newly potted flowers and tables dressed with colored cloths and candles. Anyway, the Mother herself had condescended to publicly address these concerns. In the early morning, she had posted a long and eloquent letter, addressed to a
ll the generations below her, reminding them that the suffering of one group should never negate the happy salvation of another, just as the reverse would always be true.

  Of course, as was inevitable in any free human society, there was one group that did not agree: near the Department of the Exterior doors stood a huddle of silent protesters, Raj Radhakrishnan and his team of eccentrics.

  Their solemnly held signs said enough about their lunacy: SWEEPS END NOW and THE GREAT EXPANSION IS FOR ALL and, most inane of any of them, SAVE THE TRIBES.

  Save the Tribes! Isn’t that what they were trying to do?

  If anything, the protesters’ presence, by a simple logic of opposites, only furthered the other citizens’ conviction that a Crane Celebration was right and in order.

  When Jeffrey entered the Office of Mercy that morning, many people briefly abandoned their cubicles to push forward and shake his hand. For them, the Crane Celebration was a reminder of how much their work mattered both within the settlement and to humanity as a whole. To end suffering. To bring peace to the world. No one said the job would be easy, but at least it was work they could believe in. And someday soon, once they did manage to sweep the Pines, they would be able to look back at these hours of labor and know that they were all in service of a great and necessary end.

  At 2030 hours, the hallways began to crowd with people waiting to ride up to the Dome. Natasha and Min-he stood in the middle of the line on level six. Natasha wore a green, textured dress that shimmered with a silvery glow, like high grass tossing about in the wind; and Min-he had picked out a short-skirted outfit with a yellow and brown leopard print design. (Only Min-he, who had a small, compact physique, could have made it look good.) A long, lifelike snake wrapped around Min-he’s neck, and its red mouth snapped open and hissed any time a person patted its head—which Min-he convinced many of their unsuspecting hallmates to do. By the time the roommates crossed through the open doors to the Department of Agriculture, the Garden was already swarming with people gasping and admiring its beautiful transformation.