by Sara Grant
“We were young and didn’t appreciate our elders.” Dad frowns and I notice the deep lines around his mouth and eyes, as if he’s painted an expression on his face.
“We all grow up.” Mom sighs. Her eyes focus on something beyond my dad.
“That’s right. Neva is an adult now. She has responsibilities to this family and to Homeland.” He stands and heads into the hall. He returns with a manila envelope and lays it by my plate.
“What’s this?” I ask, spooning mashed potatoes in my mouth.
“Your orientation packet. I got you a job.” He settles into his seat and smiles at Mom.
The potatoes congeal in my mouth. I can’t spit them out, and I can’t swallow. “What?” I managed to lob the word around the lump of potato. I force myself to swallow.
“Your orientation packet.” He takes a sip of water. “You’ll be working for me.”
Mom seems to be concentrating on excavating something foreign from her potatoes with her fork.
“What?” I repeat, because he can’t be saying what I think he’s saying.
“It wasn’t easy. Most people have to pass an entrance exam and wait for a complete background check. But I placed a couple of calls and called in a few favors.” He picks up his knife and fork. “You start the day after tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dad, but no thanks.” I can’t imagine a worse scenario. Not only would I be doing the most boring job under the Protectosphere, but my dad and his government cronies would watch my every move. “I’m starting my nursing program in a few weeks. That was my assigned job, remember?”
“Not anymore.” He’s eating his dinner again.
“So you’re ordering me to take this job?” I drop my utensils and they clatter on my plate. My fork tumbles onto the floor.
“You need discipline and direction. This job will give you both.”
I kick back from the table and rise to my feet. “I’m so sorry that I’m such a disappointment to you.”
My mom jumps in. “That’s not what he said, Neva.” She’s crawling on the floor, picking up my silverware.
“That’s what he meant.” I glare at him.
“Stop with the dramatics, Neva, and sit down and finish your dinner.” He doesn’t even look up. “We’ll go through the packet later.”
My mind pulses with all the things I want to say to him. This is why I got off with a warning; I’m being sent to Dad prison. “I will not.” I stomp my foot like a little child. I wish I hadn’t done that.
“Is this the thanks I get for trying to help my daughter?” He’s asking the top of Mom’s head.
“I didn’t ask for your help.” I restrain each word. “I am so tired of my life being planned for me.”
“Then start making good decisions about your future.” He leans back in his chair.
“What future? We don’t have a future.”
His face flames red. His knuckles grow white from gripping the arms of his chair. “Never talk to me that way again.” He doesn’t shout. He lowers his tone of voice and calmly selects each word. “Don’t ever blaspheme Homeland.”
I have so much anger and so much to say that I stand there, nostrils flared, mouth open but stunned silent.
My mom jumps up and clamps her arm around my shoulders. “Neva, your father is trying to help,” she says in this high-pitched voice. “Maybe it’s the best thing for now. He’s gone to a lot of trouble.”
I storm to my bedroom and slam the door behind me. I throw myself on my bed, bury my face in my pillow, and scream. My day has gone from nightmare to disaster. The government has stripped me of my privacy, and my dad has stolen the little freedom I had left. This must be what a caged animal feels like.
CHAPTER
NINE
It’s my first day of work and the first time my dad and I have been alone together in any meaningful way in years. He grips the steering wheel. He’s making me nervous. The electric hum of the car mimics the buzz of my nerves. He keeps opening his mouth like a goldfish gulping tank water, as if he is about to say something but thinks better of it. I wipe my sweaty palms on my faded black skirt. I tug at the hem. My legs feel naked. Dad demanded I wear a skirt or dress to work. Mom altered a few of hers. It’s another way he’s trying to turn me into something I’m not.
I can’t believe this is the life I get. I want to ask Dad what it’s like not to question your every thought and action. To make a decision and not wonder if the other option is better, to be so sure. Maybe Mom can teach me how to settle, to accept my fate and move on.
We stare out the windshield in a loud, awkward silence. The City looks like a movie set waiting to come to life. People seem to lurk around the edges. Dad hesitates at each intersection even though we rarely encounter a car. Dad has said this is the last car he’ll salvage. I wanted him to teach me to drive. I liked the idea of controlling the vehicle rather than always being a passenger. But he said there was no point because total mass transit is the way of the future. More government propaganda to make us believe there’s progress.
We head into the heart of the old city. Almost every building seems propped up by scaffolding, except for the mammoth government structures. Dad beeps his horn a few times to clear a path in the road, now dotted with people not differentiating between sidewalk and street.
“Where do I go first?” I ask with an exasperated sigh. This is really happening. I can’t fight it anymore. “The letter in my packet said something about orientation.” The tufts of hair on his head and his wiry eyebrows quiver in the breeze from the cracked window.
“You’ll need to go to administration first. They will give you your name badge. They will bring you to my office, and Effie will get you started on a few projects.”
Effie is part pitbull and part old-maid schoolteacher. I can hear her nasally voice when I used to call my dad’s office: “Ancient History Department, Minister George W. Adams’s office. Effie speaking. How can I help?” She said exactly the same thing in exactly the same way every time I called. When I’d visit Dad’s office when I was a little kid, before Grandma left and everything changed, Effie would put a bottle of antibacterial hand gel on the corner of her desk. I was instructed to use some every time I passed her desk as well as after I ate, drank, sneezed, coughed, or sniffed.
Dad used to carry me into his office piggyback. He’d introduce me to everyone we passed as his “little girl, Neva.” I would curl up on the leather couch in his office, the one with all the buttons that created diamond shapes, which I would trace with my finger. He’d tell me stories and end each day with a cliffhanger so that I would come back to work with him. He told of heroes and inventors and geniuses. “Dr. Ben polished each panel. Would it be ready in time? He had discovered a way to make see-through panels that could act as a barrier and a filter. He had to create a puzzle to cover the sky. The sky was so huge. Dr. Ben worked day and night. He knew that the future of Homeland rested on his shoulders.”
“What happened, Dad?” I’d asked.
“Tomorrow, Neva.”
“How can he create a puzzle in the sky? Does he save everyone?”
“Patience, my darling girl.” He’d pat me on the head and make me wait for the happy ending.
I found out later that he had tricked me. Those tales weren’t concocted from his imagination. These stories weren’t fiction at all; they were history lessons. He wouldn’t merely recount dates and facts; he’d bring the stories to life. I’d fall asleep and he’d pat my hair every time he passed. Sometimes I’d only pretend to be asleep, so I could feel the warmth of his hand on my head and hear him murmur how much he loved me.
“Neva.” He clears his throat. “You are working for the government now. You are working in my department.” He says the latter as if it’s more important. “You need to behave yourself and live above reproach.”
My blood feels like it is clotting and bumping through my veins faster and faster.
“Yes, sir.”
He slows down the car a
nd breaks for a cluster of men in gray business suits. He studies me. He knows about my party and the graffiti. I don’t know how he knows, but he does. He’s even robbed me of my secrets.
I have to watch a video about patriotism and my role as a member of the Central Government. A young woman about my age—Jessica, according to her name badge—hands me a five-page, single-spaced contract and tells me to sign on the dotted line. “I’d like to read it first,” I say. She huffs. The contract states that I am first and foremost a government employee and everything else comes second. Jessica keeps glaring at me from her desk.
“Can you hurry it up…?” She glances at my paperwork. “Neva. I have a schedule to keep.”
I nod. She rolls her eyes and then begins typing on her computer keyboard. I read the contract again. The type is so small that I have to hold it an inch away from my nose to read it. I feel as if I’m making a deal with the devil. I ask her about the confidentiality clause, and she doesn’t even look up from her computer screen when she says, “That means keep your mouth shut, sweetie.”
I must sign my name on the contract. It’s odd that I feel a twinge of guilt for signing my name, signifying that I understand and accept all the terms and conditions outlined above. I understand all too well, and I one-hundred percent do not accept them. Why do I care if I lie to a government that has lied to me my whole life?
“You going to sign or what, honey?” she asks, hovering above me now.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, and let the pen’s point touch the paper. I move the pen before the ink can pool on the page. I don’t think of what I’m writing as my name. I think of it as linking lines and loops in a predetermined pattern. That way it doesn’t mean anything.
Now I have a name badge and an employee number. Jessica takes me on a tour of the building. She points at each department and recites facts from some government propaganda handbook. “Resource Management takes up the top two floors of the building. They are responsible for salvage and reallocation as well as natural resource management,” she says with a swing of her ponytail. “Hi, Bill,” she calls to a short, fat bald man. “He’s the head of Research and Development,” she says to me, giving Bill her best toothy smile. “And that woman over there”—she nods toward a woman in a yellow suit—“she runs the collection and redistribution centers. She’s a good person to know.” She waves at the woman in yellow. “Hi, Joann!” She leans in closer. “She found me a replacement part for my dad’s old television and brought me a leather handbag that only needed the lining replaced.”
Each floor looks pretty much the same. Every available inch of space is occupied. It’s as if someone opened the top of the building and poured furniture in. One man has an old, hand-carved wooden desk with what looks like a plastic kitchen chair. Two people share a desk constructed of two filing cabinets with a slab of wood on top. A few desks have old computers. We weave our way though the building and end up in the Information Services wing—I know it well.
She drops me off at Effie’s desk. The women exchange nods but neither speak. The last time I saw Effie was ten years ago, a few weeks before my grandma disappeared. Effie hasn’t changed. She still wears those stubbly wool suits. Her glasses have brown, almond-shape frames and her hair is slicked back in a bun so tightly that her eyes almost squint. Her lips are drawn into a thin red line.
Effie has an old wooden desk that’s been worn smooth and a metal folding chair, which is positioned just outside my dad’s office. Mismatched desks and chairs are lined up as far as the eye can see up and down the hall. Men and women tap on keyboards and chat with one another without ever taking their eyes off their computer screens. Maybe the history department is called ancient because of the average age of its employees. I am the youngest person by at least thirty years.
According to Dad, Effie has been sick, and I’m supposed to help her with a major reprint of our history book. The history book is the only document that gets printed and mass produced anymore. What a waste of resources. Effie stations me at the far end of her desk. I’ve got the history book’s master proof and, literally, a two-foot stack of edits from other Council members and Dad’s key department heads. People have gone thesaurus happy. Someone crossed out the word demanded and replaced it with requested. For example: The government requested that every citizen sign the Pledge of Allegiance before the Protectosphere was sealed. It seems like a slight change at first, but there’s a big difference between a request and a demand. The government changes everything in tiny shades of gray until what was white is now black.
I reread the opening chapter about The Terror. Someone—probably my dad—has even altered the first chapter, going a bit adjective crazy with his red pen. Massive explosion. Extreme panic. Necessary measures. A superior race. But not one word about what was outside. It’s as if the slate was wiped clean that day. When we’d studied history at school, I’d asked Dad about what came before The Terror. He’d closed his eyes and taken a deep breath. “Everything has a beginning, Neva,” he’d said, and patted the top of my head.
Someone has crossed out two paragraphs on someone called James Washington. I remove the text from the master proof. A chill threads through me. I’m helping the government erase people from history. Future generations will never know that James Washington stabilized the rubble of the Capitol Complex and helped create a memorial to those who perished in The Terror. One tiny gesture and he vanishes from the pages of history.
I’m not sure if I can do this. But I don’t have a choice, do I? I become a good, little government employee or disappear like James Washington. Is this why our country is spiraling slowly downward? People like me do what they’re told. No one questions. If I do this, then I’m no better than the police or my dad.
“Why are people editing ancient history?” I ask Effie as my pen is posed to erase Maria Hamilton.
She stops typing. Her hands hover above the keyboard. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“What?”
“Your job is not to ask questions, young lady.” She resumes typing.
I may have to do this job for now, but I still have a voice and I can question. “What are you doing?” I scoot a little closer to her. My skirt twists, so I rise from my chair an inch and untangle myself.
She turns her back to me, trying to block my view of her computer. It only makes me more curious. “If you must know, I’m managing the day’s news,” she says begrudgingly.
“What?” I knew my dad was responsible for information management, but now I understand that it’s more about censorship than dissemination.
She takes a breath that rattles in her chest before it is expelled. “Information Services reviews all the news and sends me any stories that need attention.”
I peek over her shoulder. “What does that mean? ‘Need attention.’ ”
Effie tuts and gives me a disapproving look over the upper rim of her glasses. “None of your business.”
I concentrate on my editing for a while. I consider making a few additions and deletions of my own. If Sanna were here, she’d see how many times she could fit the word wacky into a sentence or something like that. I want to disregard their rewriting of history altogether. I intentionally leave out a few of the smaller edits—an adjective here, a sentence there. It’s a small rebellion, but it eases the growing outrage I feel for how the government, which I’m now a part of, manipulates information.
Effie’s fingers fly over the keys rat-a-tat-tapping. Even her fingers seem agitated that I’m here. She only pauses to cough. I half stand and read over her shoulder. “Um, Effie,” I say, but it’s as if she’s in some sort of trance. I try again. “Effie, why does that—” I point to an article that she immediately clicks closed. “Why did you code that ‘action required’? Wasn’t that an obituary?”
She clears her throat. “Newspapers are no longer to report on deaths by natural causes.”
“But that guy was my dad’s age.”
She continues working without answer
ing my question. I settle back in my chair and try to resume my editing duties, but I can’t.
I realize that Effie has stopped typing. Her face is pale. I shift in my seat so I can get a better look at the screen; my skirt is constricting me again. Effie tilts her head to block my view.
“What is it, Effie? What’s wrong?” I ask, standing behind her. The article is from a small town up North. It’s one of those places that refuses to allow the government to relocate its residents to population hubs. They have fewer government resources, like power, water, and police, but more freedom. The headline notes: FIVE GIRLS MISSING. I gasp. More Missing.
Effie closes the article and highlights the entry in red. She picks up the phone and punches in numbers without even looking.
“Yes, another code eleven; I’m sending you the article now,” she barks, and hangs up. She punches in more numbers and repeats her cryptic message. She pounds on the keyboard and the red entry disappears. She taps another icon. I think it’s titled GovNet. She types and clicks so fast I have no idea what she’s doing. She rises and smoothes her hair. She knocks on my dad’s office door.
“Enter,” my dad bellows.
Effie steps inside. “Dr. Adams. Sorry to disturb you. Another code eleven.” She pauses. “Yes, it will be handled. I’ll search the system and purge any necessary data.”
What does that mean? She blathers on to my dad. I inch closer and closer to Effie’s computer. I study her computer screen. There are two search boxes: one titled ACTIVE, the other INACTIVE. I scan the headings on the screen. I check to make sure Effie isn’t watching. I quickly select ABOUT GOVNET. A small box appears in the middle of the screen:
About GOVNET
GovNet was established in 0010 to more efficiently catalog citizens.
Each citizen has a central file. To review a specific file, type the citizen’s name in the appropriate field.
I look over my shoulder. Effie’s back is still to me. I can hear she’s wrapping up. I click the box closed and go back to my chair. This database knows everything about everybody. Why didn’t I think of it before? It will be much easier to find answers working inside the government. Maybe I can find out the truth about the Protectosphere. Maybe I can find my grandma and all my Missing.