by Laura Bynum
Mr. Weigland is watching me from behind his desk. His small brown eyes are wrinkled and worried. "You taking your Occlusia?"
"No, sir. Most Monitors do."
"Harper . . ." He drops off, but I know what this is about anyway.
"Should I . . ." To my surprise, my voice breaks. I clear my throat and look up at the ceiling. I'm afraid to cry in Mr. Weigland's office. He wouldn't know what to do. "Should I send some flowers to the family?"
"What?" Mr. Weigland repositions in his chair.
I look at the pictures on his desk. At his wife, who's too pretty for him. His dog, Mabel. A vase with some dirty water growing mold.
"The Alberty case. Should I send the family flowers?" My report was late. I'd cracked a tooth, gone to a dentist whose office was all the way across Wernthal. It took me all day.
"God, no!" Mr. Weigland laughs. "Are you talking about the man? The husband?"
"Yes."
"There wasn't anything to be done differently." He laughs again. I want to jump over his desk and make him drink that poison mold water.
"My Disparity Report was late," I say, my voice chilly. As a result, the man died. Was killed. By what means, I don't yet know. It will filter through the grapevine sooner or later.
"You think that's why I called you in? To talk about the Alberty file? We can't save everyone, Harper. You want to stay around the clock? That's what it would take. Don't beat yourself up about this! We do what we can do."
Something in Mr. Weigland's tone makes me nervous. He's placating me and he never does that.
I look up at his red, freckled face. "What did you want to talk to me about, sir?" This meeting is for a purpose he's trying to keep hidden. He's so bad at this. Putting up a thin screen of deception anyone, even a non-Sentient, could see.
Mr. Weigland adjusts his tie. "It's nothing big, really. Not in the scheme of things. Nothing bad." Which means it's exactly that. Bad. Hard for him to say and harder for me to hear.
I shift my focus. Relax the muscles of my eyes until I can see each grain of air zipping by. Mr. Weigland is an open manual. This way to hopes and dreams. This way to secrets. Information gleaned from people like this arrives in my head independent of their colors, a sudden and intimate knowledge delivered without visible transport. I focus on whatever truth Mr. Weigland is trying to hide with his courtesies, but all that comes back is the image of a tall brick wall.
"Stop it, Harper." Mr. Weigland has noticed my drifting eyes.
"I'm sorry, sir."
Mr. Weigland leans back and puts his hands together, just the tips so they make an arch. He sits quietly debating what to say next as the ever-present scroll of Confederation news rolls across the television behind me. It shines off his forehead. I can read the temperature off his skull: eighty-seven degrees. Above that is a floating nimbus of yellow worry.
"We're going to start your field training for BodySpeak this week," he says. "You've met Manager Rumney, yes?"
I nod. "Sure."
Manager Rumney's first meeting with me and Candace was all questions and no introductions. How has the Pandemic impacted our lives? How often do we dream? Were we like this before the Pandemic? These things are in our files, if she'd take the time to look them up. We know she won't, so we never tell her the whole truth.
"Sir?" I ask.
Mr. Weigland doesn't move his eyes from the screen. "Yes?"
"What do you need to talk to me about, sir? It's not about Helen Rumney."
Mr. Weigland gets up, brown eyes swinging from the screen to my own. He walks around his desk and turns my chair so I'm facing the television and the addition of new words to the Red List appearing on the screen. "Watch."
"What am I looking for?"
"Just watch." One of Mr. Weigland's feet taps against the floor. "You watching?"
It's a ridiculous question. "Yes." Of course I'm watching. It's required.
Citizens have twenty-four hours to commit each word to memory. I pull out my electronic notepad and steady the tip of my stylus over the blank screen, one eye on the monitor. This is another thing that adds to my misery. To me, each lost word is a small death.
The announcement reads, "Please note for future purposes the following Red Listed words: Apostasy . . ."
Apostasy is a word, like many words, I don't recognize. Probably something a high-ranking government official blurted out in the company of slated people.
". . . Discriminate . . . Ego . . . Fossil . . ."
"You getting all this?" Mr. Weigland is looking at the computer in my lap. I haven't written anything down yet.
"Yeah." I hold the stylus over my electronic notepad and write out cursive words that appear on the screen in size 12 Courier font. Writing anywhere but on your electronic notepad, a computer the length and width of a piece of paper and not that much thicker, is a violation of law that can get you a 550. It's how they keep people from scribbling down notes the Confederation can't review.
The list continues. Heresy . . . Kindred . . .
It's short this time. Usually, we get eight or ten words before we're all the way to the K's. I'm wondering what Mr. Weigland is so worried about when the last few words come rolling out the left side of the monitor.
Obstreperous.
Offline.
I freeze. Blink. Watch the next word cross the screen, then disappear.
Veracity.
I don't know how long Mr. Weigland has been speaking. Eventually, I hear him.
"Harper, are you okay?"
I look up at the man who's been my boss in Monitoring for more than half my lifetime and don't answer.
Mr. Weigland clears his throat. "Is this going to be any kind of problem?"
This is why he's brought me in for this meeting. He's judging my response to this new list. To the one word that's so profoundly personal. Veracity.
I set my face in stone, the way he likes it. Flex my calves. "No problem at all, sir."
Mr. Weigland clears his throat and the small wattle above his slate shakes. "If you'd like to take an hour or two, go talk to your daughter . . ."
"Yes, sir."
My daughter is in school. The same news screen here is also there in her classroom. She already knows. "May I have the rest of the day, sir?" So quickly, I'm ready to forget poor Mr. Alberty and take off a whole afternoon. But it's the way of things when you're a parent. You are cleaved in two the moment your child is born.
Mr. Weigland nods and walks back around his desk. He rifles through his drawers and produces a piece of paper marked with an authorization. He removes a tool from his top drawer, a pen containing real blue ink, and writes out an excuse that reminds me of the ones my mother sometimes gave me for first grade. For chicken pox. The death of my paternal grandfather. A deceased dog.
"Here." His handwriting is sloppy, worse than mine when I was a child.
I take the note as if it were sacred, gently between my thumb and forefinger. I've only seen handwriting a few times, mostly behind glass in the Government Archives wing of the Confederation museum. It's his gift to me, this artifact of freedom. Something to keep me in line now that my child has just lost her name.
"And something else!" Happy, Mr. Weigland raises his eyebrows and opens another drawer. Another gift! He smiles, wiggling another piece of paper in the air. More handwriting! "Here you go."
It isn't a whole sheet, just a half piece of paper that he probably tore over the hard edge of his desk like I've seen him do a thousand times. Trees haven't done well in the heated climes. We conserve everything we can. "Thank you." It's a list of names. Suggestions.
"You're welcome." Mr. Weigland reaches across the desk and taps my arm, keeping his nail-bitten fingertips on my skin. "It's a good list, Harper. They'll accept one of these at your daughter's name hearing."
Ruth. Mary. Rebekkah. Sarah. And so on. All taken from the Confederation Bible, as are most names anymore.
On the day of Veracity's hearing, I ask for another name. One not
provided as a suggestion. Victoria. Maybe it won't be such a drastic shift. They each have four syllables, each starts with a V. The judge tells me he's a senior member on the Board of Words Ministry and he knows radical when he sees it, intimating that radical is me. A crazy mother not content with a biblical name, too high on her own delusions for something from the Good Book. And while we're at it, he says, where'd you come up with Veracity in the first place? He asks where I could possibly have seen such a preposterous word. A word that means absolutely nothing of note and should have been Red Listed years back.
I tell him. I'd seen it under glass. In an Antique Handwriting exhibit in the Confederation Museum, at the bottom of some old postcard. It had meant something to me when I'd read it. I couldn't discern the word's meaning from the context, so it became for me a feeling instead. I don't tell this part to the judge, who doesn't care and doesn't let me continue anyway. He's on to other threats.
"Should we turn this hearing into a custody trial?" he asks, leaning forward. His hair is gray, the flesh of his face heavy. It falls beneath his eyes, around his jowls, beneath his chin. Makes him look wiser than he really is. "Are you even a Christian, ma'am? I see we've allowed you a divorce?" He rolls his eyes. Doesn't agree with the splitting up of those whom the Confederation has brought together. Especially considering my ex-husband is also a district judge, now serving in Hollister on the West Coast.
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir to what? Yes, sir, you're a Christian or yes, sir, you're divorced?"
"Yes to both. Sir." Veracity is in tears next to me. She has both hands up to her face, not looking, afraid of this man and his power. I turn back to the judge. Goddamn you, I think as hard as I can. As if it will mark him.
"Are you a good Christian?" he asks.
"Yes, sir."
"And yet, you feel that a non-Christian name would better reflect the nature of your daughter? As the record already shows this to have been your sole purpose in requesting the name Victoria . . ." he says, wobbling his voice, ". . . then I must draw the only logical conclusion left to me and assume you do not intend to raise her in the Christian faith. Should I also gather from your request that maybe, just maybe, you will be teaching her something other than the one true religion behind closed doors?"
"I am a good Christian." I don't add "sir" or "Your Honor" and continue on before he stops me. This is the one question I'm capable of answering without a lie. "I believe with all my heart and all my soul that we're supposed to love one another and stop judging and hating one another. And I would have it no other way for my daughter. I will teach her Christianity. Sir." My kind, not yours.
The judge goes sour. His whole face turns inside out. "I know who you are, Monitor Adams. And let me tell you something, your status will have no bearing on this court's decision. Your daughter's name will be Sarah. Sarah Adams. Pick up your new registry on the way out." He bangs his gavel and we're pushed away, through the turnstile gates and into the next government line.
This is how my daughter's name was stolen. In a courtroom wired to broadcast such goings-on via a program on channel 4. In the light of day with millions of people watching.
apostasy
discriminate
ego
fossil
heresy
kindred
obstreperous
offline
veracity
ego: The "I" or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others.
CHAPTER TEN
AUGUST 5, 2045. EARLY EVENING.
The walk nearly kills me. Just three miles, as Ezra put it. Three miles with no water left in my skin and my tongue swollen inside my mouth. By the time I get to the green sign announcing Bond, Pop. 356, I feel dizzy. My face is as white as my blouse. I know from the few passing people who turn to watch me walk by.
I see no houses, only a handful of businesses surrounding the town square: a small convenience store, a bar, and a funeral home. The rest have signs posted in their windows that read Redistributed by the Confederation. Smack in the center of this square is a flat cement slab just one step up from the surrounding grass. It's a dozen feet wide by the same long and cracked in a few places with weeds peeking through. It has the same bronze flagpole growing up from its center that every small town has. The kind posted since forever, most of it turned copper-green. The Confederation flag hangs limply from its top. There is no breeze to wake it up. The white middle sleeps, sunk back into its blue folds.
I pause to let a few kids walk in front of me. They cross right to left, from the chalky sidewalk to the street, daring me with their slow, speculative gaits to look at them, or talk to them. They're teenagers trying as best they can to be teenagers in such a tightly controlled environment. Their tops are worn inside out. Pants low on their hips. Some have found extra material and tied it around their heads. One, the boy who comes closest, has an earring in one ear. It's a bold move. Mixing gender-appropriate anything is an on-the-spot 488. I envy him. To be so deliciously unaware of one's own mortality. So true to one's self, damn the consequences.
I nod. "Hello."
He doesn't acknowledge me until he's crossed to the square and is seated on a rotting bench that faces the street. "You looking for something?" he asks.
His young cheeks are stubbled with pimples, his chin with sparse bits of facial hair. He's structured himself to look angry, this boy barely sixteen years old and not as big around as my thigh. It's an attempt that leaves me feeling sad.
"You know where I can get some water?" My lips are cracked and my pants are torn. I've shown my hand, so I add, "Fruit? . . . Bread? Groceries?"
The boy squints into the setting sun. "Store's right behind you."
I turn. The sign on the window says Produce/Bond, the way all places of business announce their product or service. First by what they sell, then by their location.
"Thanks."
As the front door opens, I catch my appearance in the reflective surface. I look like I'm about to fall down, so I stand taller. Square my shoulders. Pretend I have the energy for good posture. The door closes and I see the boy on the bench get up. He bolts back across the square, skinny legs kicking up grass.
Shit. I put my hand on the door again, ready to run back to the farm, to the creek, to the bottom of the old concrete grain bin I saw on the perimeter where I could hide. But a voice stops me.
"You okay there, miss?"
I turn. An old man is standing just behind me, holding out a pint of strawberries. They're pink, more round than heart-shaped. Too young. "Picked these this morning off some pots I keep in the greenhouse. They're a little early off the vine but still good. Just set 'em out on your counter for a day or two." He smiles a little too big. As if we were discussing something tawdry, something other than strawberries.
I have to walk around him to get farther into the store. "No, thank you." Long windowed coolers are humming in the back. It's an effort to conceal my thirst.
The man follows me to the blue bottles of cold filtered water that line the whole of the first door. I turn left, walk past them, stop at the third one down. At the amber bottles of beer.
The man stops next to me. I can see his slate beneath the stays of his collar, flesh bagging around it like cooling lava. "Not used to us old folks, huh?"
I don't answer. Edge past him back to the appropriate cooler, where I retrieve two sodas and, casually, not even looking, one bottle of water.
I live in Wernthal, the seat of our government. I see old folks every day. In rich black suits striding between rows of Blue Coats. In red robes making speeches from their front lawn.
"Well, I probably wouldn't know what to say, either." It's false, his deprecation of self. It comes out with a low barking laugh, the result of too many cigarettes.
The shop keep has been sent out here as some form of punishment. He was once a Manager in some bigger city. I can tell by his haughty air and jaunty shoes
. They were expensive once. Made of the best leather and cut just so. There's a buildup of polish around the heel. Too many sweeps of the brush have dulled the leather's roundest parts. I bet he wears them every day, these vestiges of his life elsewhere.
I walk to the checkout, ignoring the droplets of condensation the bottles leave in my hands. But he's in no hurry to help me.
"What happened to you?" The old man is looking at my torn trousers.
"Gardening."
"Gardening?"
"Pulling weeds." I wave my pay card.
"Must have been some weeds!" the old man says loudly, drawing the attention of the other shoppers. They wander over slowly to look at my pants.
I put the bottles on the counter. "Can I check out now? Please?" It was a mistake, coming here. The thought makes me dizzy. I have to steady myself on the counter.
"No need to get all riled up, sweetheart--" he begins.
Ezra's voice stops him. "Ed!" she shouts, storming through the front door on platform shoes. "Back off!"
The shop keep looks from Ezra to me, his countenance now a little less desultory, a lot more unsavory. "You two friends? You in the business, honey?" He leans down. Wiggles his eyebrows. Turns back to Ezra. "You teaching her some special tricks?"
Ezra's green eyes swing over to me as she proceeds down the main aisle. "Next time, tell me when you need something, yes?" She retrieves a bottle of water from the cooler, unscrews the plastic top, and takes a long, thirsty drink, some of the liquid running down her chin. It's everything I can do not to rip the bottle from her hand.
Ezra turns back to the shop keep. "What she does for a living isn't any of your business."
"It's business, right? Could be mine."
"Forget it."
The remnants of any kind-old-man features dissolve. Ed throws back his shoulders and heads for the register. "You don't make the rules, Ezra."