by J B Cantwell
“Move along, miss.”
The voice surprised me, and I jumped at suddenly being torn from my fantasy.
A man stood a few feet away, one hand on a long, black baton tied to his waist.
I pushed away from the building.
“But I’m just standing,” I argued, my breath still not completely caught.
“Can’t stay here,” he said. His eyes were kind.
I looked back the way I had come. The street was really very wide, but it was dark, like some nightmare or another waited within, a nightmare I had just emerged from.
I turned away from the dim, creeping main artery of the city and made my way up Park Avenue.
I flicked the ration cards in my pocket with my thumbnail as I walked.
The money had been easy enough to collect; one credit on a card equaled one dollar, with each weekly card worth five hundred credits. Just enough for a week’s nutrition squares and liquor for Mom. There was almost always a little extra, though, a credit here or there. I was the one who did the weekly shopping; I’d been in charge of it from the time I was old enough to carry a grocery bag. After a while, I’d started saving the cards and taking the extra money, even once when they had chocolate. And I never told a soul. Not even Alex.
I had counted the money the night before; it totaled just under a thousand. My heart surged. I should have enough money to make it to Philadelphia, maybe even D.C., places where the water had not yet ruined all.
But then what? The train ride alone would eat up most of my reserves. And when I got there I would have no place to stay and little to eat. And I knew Alex didn’t have enough to go, too. I would be on my own.
But if I joined the Service, I might have a chance at a new life, far away from Mom and her liquor. Away from Brooklyn and its dingy streets and dead ends.
Fifty percent. Those were my chances of surviving year one. Thirty percent, year two. And just twenty percent of the troops would make it through the entire tour. Four out of five would die on the battlefield when all was said and done.
It was this fact that made starving in Philadelphia look like it wasn’t such a bad idea.
There were rewards, though, for those who did survive. Big rewards. Five times the average income for each year served and a cushy office job on the other side.
I stopped in front of a store with a slick, black facade, images of flowing gowns gliding across the viewscreens in the window. I stood in front of the mirror, and the computer in the viewscreen read my lens.
“Welcome, Riley Taylor,” the system said in a floaty woman’s voice.
Immediately, the mirror changed, offering several choices. I moved my eyes up to the first box, automatically connected through the lens system in my left eye. I blinked to make my selection. Instantly a black gown was fitted to my tiny frame, as realistic in the mirror as if I were wearing it now in the street. I turned, examining the skirt from all sides, wondering what it would to feel like to have the five thousand dollar asking price. I scrolled through the other dresses, pretending I was a wealthy woman, able to afford all of these and more, if anything were to catch my fancy. The last on the list was bubblegum pink. My hair was colored just a shade darker than the dress, and as I spun in the early morning light, tiny crystals in the skirt caught the first glimmers of sunlight as the sun rose above the street.
Alex had mocked me when I had shown up the morning after my inexpert dye job.
“You look like some sort of … I don’t know what,” he’d said. “Like if I had a little sister she could braid your hair and stick bows on you.”
“Shut up,” I said, shoving him.
We were walking down Bridge Street on our way to school. The acidic stench of the burning plants hung low on the streets, making my eyes water. I rubbed them and my lens jogged inside my vision.
“So,” he said, “just four more weeks.”
I shrugged.
“You still going to try for it?”
Talking to Alex about recruitment was tricky. We both knew he was going. His birthday had been weeks ago. He was just waiting for me now to see if he could talk me out of joining, too. He wanted me to stay out of trouble, even trouble that could land me nearly ten million credits if I made it through the entire tour. But the truth was that we both knew how many made it out of the first year. Not many. I had seen once when a father received notice of his daughter’s death. He barely spoke at all, just went back into his cramped apartment and closed the door. I’ll never forget the look on his face, the sadness combined with the understanding that of course this would happen. Eventually.
Everywhere the stories were the same. So few were able to make it home.
But I would. And I would find a new home.
“Yeah, I’m going to try,” I said.
My left leg gave a slight wobble, and I corrected it, hoping he hadn’t seen. If I was ever going to make it through recruitment I had to control all signs of weakness from day one.
He raised an eyebrow. He had seen my leg bother me before, but he didn’t mention it.
“They’ll haze you on the first day with that hair,” he said, appraising.
“Yeah, well, I won’t be keeping it for very long, will I?” I said.
Of course I wouldn’t keep the hair. They would shave it all off when I joined. I had just colored it for fun, anyway. Mom hadn’t even thought to ask where I’d gotten the money for the dye.
And the other kids hadn’t batted an eye when I’d shown up at school with it. With their eyebrow rings and branded skin, they were playing on a whole different level.
I knew why those kids hurt themselves. I felt the same way, too, only I was too squeamish to go under the iron.
“You could stay, too, you know,” I said quietly.
He didn’t answer. Instead, we walked the remaining two blocks in near silence. I looked up at him a couple times as we moved through the dirty streets. He had a new bruise swelling on his left cheek.
For both of us, there was nowhere else to go. Home was not an option. It was either the Stilts or the Service. Or, if you were willing to risk it, a job at the burning plants. But those jobs didn’t have a much better rating of survivability than the Service, and they only paid marginally more than being on credit assistance. Sure, you might last a couple years longer than a three-year tour, but the chemicals would seep into your eyes in the end. I’d seen more people near blind than I could count. They could try to hang on with the government money that came after they could no longer work, but it was barely enough to survive on.
There were other jobs to be had in the city, too. But with a lack of pedigree or college, which almost no one could afford, there was no breaking into that crowd. I could have tried. I might have found a loophole that would let me study and make it out of the slums. But the truth was that the government relied on the poor to fill their war rosters. We all knew it, and our conditions at home were so bad that many of us took the opportunity to get away. Even if death might be waiting on the other side.
I pushed Alex from my mind and swiped my lens left, watching as the dress faded away, leaving just me to look at in the mirrored viewscreen. Worn out jeans. Imitation military boots. Ratty t-shirt. You’d never guess a dingy girl like me dreamt of riches and gowns.
But then, you’d never guess that of a lot of girls.
Chapter Three
Slowly I walked toward Grand Central Station. I knew better. I had done the math. There was no escape for me there. But I had to try. I knew it was a long shot. I had my true destination clearly in my head, the destination I had counted on to break me out of my reality for years. A trade of poverty for a dangerous life behind a gun. I knew there was only one true option for me to start over again, to leave my old life behind.
But here I was anyway. If I could just scrounge enough money, I might be able to get somewhere. I might be saved from entering the Service at all. When I saw the enormous statues carved into the sides of the building, I stopped and stared, mout
h open.
Soon, I was sucked in with the rest of the crowd and found myself surrounded by the opulence of centuries. Everyone hurried to make their trains as I stood there, dumbstruck within the enormous building. My fear of joining the other recruits in the Service seemed to evaporate as I watched the suited men, the women in their high, clicking heels. I wanted to go where these people were going. Of course I didn’t want to join the Service. The idea was terrifying. I didn’t want to be part of the fifty percent who’d be dead in a year. Who did? I wanted whatever it was that these people had, but I was lost as to how to find it.
I got lost. I turned around and around, feeling more confused with every blink.
I stopped spinning and forced myself to walk to a bank of viewscreens. I could buy a ticket there. A ticket to anywhere. If I wanted. If I had enough.
The viewscreens were raised on platforms and stretched along one wall. I looked at the time table above the screens as I approached, and there it was.
Philadelphia. One of the few cities still spared from the rising sea.
I squeezed the stack of cards inside my pocket again. They were slippery now from the sweat on my hands. I could combine the value of the cards at one of the kiosks to the right of the screens. I could insert a hundred cards, one at a time, for a single card to make my ticket purchase.
But I didn’t need to combine the cards. Because I saw now that every single train ride out of Manhattan cost more than a thousand credits to buy. And I only had nine hundred left after my journey this morning.
Suddenly, the reality of my situation hit me hard in the chest. It had been a long shot, I knew. To get on any of these trains with no plans and almost no credits would have been a disaster. But I had hoped that something might work out. That some other option for my escape would present itself, a temporary reduction in fare, maybe.
But no other option did. All I was was a girl standing alone, three hundred credits short of a ride to anywhere.
I should have done more. I could have planned for more than just joining the Service, going to war. I could have found someone on the outside, anyone, to help me get out. I had been stupid.
My body buckled, no longer able to stand upright against its own weight. And I sat, right there on the polished floor, unable to move another step in any direction. This was the end of the line. I may as well lay down and die right here, because there was nothing for me, never would be, anywhere else.
“You’re a stupid girl,” I remembered Mom saying, her words slurring, a glass of liquor in her hand. “If it weren’t for you I coulda got somewhere.” She took a long swig from the glass.
I wanted to stay silent, and I really tried to. Years of standing up for myself had only ever produced a slap across the face. But I took the bait.
“I’m not stupid,” I said, my voice quiet.
She approached me, a frown clouding her features. She might have been pretty once, but years of drink and misery had left her skin like leather, her eyes bloodshot and angry.
“Oh, but you are,” she said. “You got that from your father’s side.”
She stuck out one finger and poked me in the chest.
“I’m the one who’s taken care of you all these years. You would’ve been nothing if it weren’t for me. But you, ungrateful and disloyal—”
I saw her right arm go back, ready to strike. I pushed her away, and in her drunkenness she lost her footing and fell to the floor. I was taller than her now, and my frame larger when compared with the skin and bones she had let herself become.
“And you would have been poor all this time, even poorer than we are now, if it weren’t for me,” I said. “If it weren’t for the extra rations I bring in every week. You need me more than I need you. So hands off.”
I turned to leave, trying to remain composed. I walked quickly through the building and down to the street. It was mid-afternoon, and enough people were out that I could hide among them. I didn’t cry about the encounter so much; I wasn’t scared that she could hurt me, not anymore. But, just like most of my interactions with her, the conversation had been another reminder that I was without a mother, that she had chosen drink and misery for the past ten years instead of me. She had left me all alone to survive in a world that seemed to be growing more dangerous by the day.
So I had no one. No one except Alex. Without him I would have left long ago, would probably be a street kid right now, begging for food, maybe sleeping in one of the untended stilts, setting fire to yesterday’s merchandise to stay warm.
But no. Here I was. Finally. My birthday. Seventeen. My day of redemption, of freedom, had come.
I raised my eyes and took in the hundreds of people who stepped around me in the train station. These people were going somewhere.
And so was I.
Somewhere. Anywhere but back to her garbled words and stinging slaps.
Two men in black uniforms with huge guns slung over their shoulders approached me. They didn’t bother speaking at all. Instead, they each took one of my arms and hoisted me to my feet. They steered me toward the main exit, but my feet barely touched the ground as my body was propelled along by their thick, muscular hands. I was deposited just outside the doors onto Lexington Avenue. When I didn’t move, they gave me a little push. I looked back at the man on my right, but his face was stone.
“Off you go,” he said.
I shuffled away. When the men went back inside, I slunk to the ground against the building.
I looked up hopefully at the people whizzing by, wondering if any of them had an answer for me.
I could beg, I thought.
But I knew it wouldn’t get me far to do that. Sure, I might be able to afford a ticket after a week or two, but then what? Where would I sleep? What would I eat?
I stared blankly at the building across the street. The citizens raced up and down the sidewalk, blurring in front of my vision. In the upper right corner of my lens, an icon blinked. I gazed at it just long enough for the contents to open. It was a film I had seen before, many times. But I pulled it up anyway and muttered, “Play.”
White, fluffy clouds appeared before my eyes, blocking all but a small section of my vision. The clouds gradually parted to reveal a tall tower shining in bright sunlight.
“The future you want is out there,” a voice whispered.
I sat up, suddenly interested, entranced by the images as if it were the first time I’d seen them. The world around me faded as I listened to the familiar notes and watched the woman on the screen strut down the clean, white street. She was the picture of fashion. Lime green shirt. Tight white pants. Hair the color of lemon meringue bounced about her slim shoulders as she casually handed a shopping bag to her attendant.
For a moment, I forgot the mess I was in. I wanted to be that woman. Clean. Powerful.
“The world awaits you,” said the voice.
A shiver of excitement rushed down my spine.
Numbers flashed on the screen, the current reward for three years of completed service. Ten million credits. Enough for a Manhattan apartment, a small one, at least. Enough to start a new life in any of the cities left standing.
The image cut to the woman reclining on a deep, soft couch, a glass of white wine held delicately in her manicured fingers. Nearby, a servant approached with a bottle, refreshing her glass. She closed her eyes, a gentle smile playing on her full, rose lips.
“Today at the Central Service Building, join other brave young recruits to fight for your country. And your future.”
The video clip ended. The word future hovered over the center of the screen for several seconds before finally dissolving away, leaving only the sidewalk in front of me in my view.
I looked down at my own hands. The nails were ratty, broken, nothing at all like the woman’s in the video.
Of course not. Not yet.
I could do it. I could be her. I imagined myself on that couch, high up in one of these towers, so high I could see the tops of the clouds. I
looked up at the shining buildings hovering over my head, the tops not even visible from down on the street where I sat.
The people in the boroughs always talked about the dangers, about their lost children, killed for wars that never seemed to benefit anybody. I had known some of the boys who had disappeared over the years, though, and they had been idiots all. They had probably stormed right in, eager to show their prowess.
You’re smarter than that.
The voice was small, but certain. It was possible.
I stood up and started walking away from the station again, my destination, my last option, resolved firmly in my mind. I would go to the center. I would not get sidetracked again. I had tried to make a go of it at the station, but it just wasn’t meant to be. At the recruitment center, it would be just one day where the scrutiny would be intense. Once I was in, I was just another body. And I would be free.
Suddenly, I was walking with purpose. I stepped off the sidewalk and darted across the busy street.
All it would take was getting through the exam. I could do it. I had practiced for years, strengthening my muscles to the point where I could hide my limp almost entirely. Now, it only surfaced when it became too cold for me to mask it. Or if I lost concentration.
I paused, staring down at my feet. I silently willed them to obey. To not betray my secret.
I stepped up on the sidewalk, and my left leg gave that same, familiar wobble.
I scowled and pushed on.
All I had to do was survive.
Chapter Four
At 50th and Madison, huge viewscreens posted along the outside of the recruitment building flashed with advertisements. The images were of dreams, the things each one of us standing in that line might wish for. Money. Luxury. A free life. A blue sky.
ORANGE.
My lens flashed in multiple directions as I moved to the end of the line of recruits.