One thing Quinn did know about was the Pods. She had spent many evenings in them, and she found herself now making her way toward a building that was labeled “Government Pod CA-03-1.” A simple enough system, the “CA” meant it was located in the state formerly known as California, the “03” indicated that it was the third one to be built there, and the “1” was to designate that this Pod was only meant for a Class One Citizen. She said a silent wish she could get in with no problems.
August 18, 2056 – Davis
Davis exited the transport bus and walked home to the Pod she went to every day after work. Suddenly, she felt herself starting to rise in the air and becoming immobilized by a soft blue beam of light. Nothing to worry about, she thought as the pale blue light beam surrounded her. Relaxing was easy, just floating in the hazy glow. In reality, it was quite pretty, thought Davis. It was no trouble clearing her mind and thinking of nothing. She knew she had nothing to fear as the Drone Scanner checked her. As it lowered her and the blue light turned to green, indicating she could go, she heard the alarms go off a few feet away and saw a man caught in red light. Oh, no, someone didn’t pass scanning, she thought with concern. Well, she felt matter-of-factly, we have ways to take care of that, and he’ll be better off for it in the end.
She smoothed down her simple brown tunic that went down to mid-thigh when she saw a patch of dust on the jodhpurs underneath. A simple but comfortable outfit, she thought. And she took pride in the jodhpurs she wore. Only workers of the Everett Center could wear those. She didn’t like them getting dusty, though, and there was a large patch of dust on her right leg almost down to her foot. It must have happened when she was in the scanning drone beam. The beams tended to swirl up a little dust around you when they had you immobilized. Davis always wanted to be presentable and clean. She took out the dust cloths she purposely carried in her brown canvas knapsack for such an occasion. She rubbed at the dust until it disappeared, and the jodhpurs became spotless again.
Davis worked her way past the Security Patrol outside and then through the large steel doors marked for that area: “CA-03-1.” She was proud to be approaching this Pod. It was a Pod only meant for Class One Citizens who had complied with the land’s rules and regulations and the President’s decrees. She had the credentials to enter, and she was delighted by it. But it did bother her a little bit that she could not enter a “HE” Pod—a Pod for people who had attained the highest enlightenment. As stated in the constitution scribed by President Everett, the names of highly enlightened citizens would come to the President in a dream; only he could speak directly to God and was the messenger for God here on earth. President Everett rarely ever named someone, but when he did, there was great fanfare and celebration. Davis had not yet come to President Everett in his dreams, but she knew one day she would. She applied all her efforts at being a great citizen, and she loved her country. Everything was orderly, including her. Neat; clean. And of course, she was proud knowing the fact she was the first baby ever to survive the Lombardi Plague thanks to President Everett’s Marigold vaccine.
She often wondered if the reason she wasn’t a HE yet was maybe, and this was a big maybe in her head, was that President Everett had some kind of higher purpose planned for her. At the age of twenty-nine, the fact she’d not been married yet was odd. Davis hadn’t even had any Inquiries of Interest, not one. Not even a farmer on the outskirts, and now she was the only one of her friends that had not been married and had children. She never asked why; she simply trusted it would work out for her. After all, her job worked out for her. She had been assigned a job, a very high-ranking job, without the benefit of having a spouse yet. Davis worked at the Everett Center, the rehabilitation center for those who had strayed off the path of good citizenship. She mostly filed reports but spoke to President Everett on the phone once, when he called to check the center’s condition. He cared so much, just another thing she loved about him. She silently laughed at herself now, after her thoughts of husbands and children when she knew better than to wonder about her place in the world. The government not only took care of everything that she would ever need but also all the needs anyone might have: shelter, food, medicine, entertainment. She neither questioned nor challenged anything. Sure, Davis knew some people wondered things. She saw it first hand at The Everett Center. She had even heard a story once that some people didn’t believe in the caste system they had, that they didn’t think the President was talking to God and getting names for the HEs. “Ridiculous,” Davis meant to say to herself, but a delicate whisper escaped her lips and betrayed her inner thought. She quickly looked around, glad to see nobody had noticed her.
When she got to the door of the Pod, she presented her ID Card and greeted the Security Patrol, “We are the people, and the people are we.” The patrol guard repeated it back to her and scanned her ID Card.
“Approved,” he said. “Also, you are coming up for vaccination in two days. Please report to med bay by 0900 hours on Thursday.” Davis didn’t love vaccination day. It didn’t hurt, and of course, it saved her from all sorts of diseases and viruses. It was an advanced version of the Marigold Injection. Not only did it provide lasting protection from the Lombardi Plague but also the flu and other illnesses. However, like everyone else, after she received it, her skin turned a sickly gold-yellow for about a week. That is never a good look for anyone, she thought. This time she was able to keep the thought in her head and not verbally spill out her feelings.
August 18, 2056 – Quinn
Quinn caught a glance at Davis as they were both making their way into the Pod at the same time. Quinn would not have time to talk to her, but she hoped she could trail her after they entered. Quinn handed her ID Card to a Security Guard, and he scanned it. He scowled as they were wont to do. “It looks like you haven’t checked into any Pods for a few days now…four days to be exact?” He made a quiet humph sound and then added, “Nor have you checked into work. What’s going on?”
Another Security Patrol guard worked his way over, getting his gun at the ready. “What seems the problem? Trouble maker?”
“Not sure yet, checking.”
Come on, Ringo, thought Quinn. Do your magic. Ringo had told her that once Clark’s card got scanned, he would need a few minutes. He already had access to the ID Card files, but he had to receive Quinn’s initial scan to alter the information and quickly swap Clark’s photo with Quinn’s. She lightly cleared her throat. “I’m sorry for the trouble. I dropped my ID Card on my way here, and it landed in some mud. I tried cleaning it off, but maybe it is not reading correctly now? Can I go to the ID Station and have them rerun it? Maybe type it in manually?”
The first guard handed her the card back, and the second guard roughly took her by the shoulder and said, “This way.”
He shrugged his shoulders, indicating Quinn should follow him over to a table; she barely remembered to say, “We are the people, and the people are we” when she approached the guard behind the desk. She realized she had forgotten to say it when she had encountered the first guards. She hoped that saying it now would not raise suspicions.
Quinn handed her card to the guard station at the ID Station, and he grabbed it and scanned it. Another red light. She could barely breathe. She somehow got out the explanation again about dropping the card and asked the guard if they would be so kind as to either clean the ID Card for her or enter the information manually. She figured they would clean it; she knew they were a bunch of clean freaks around here. The guard took out a little spray bottle of cleaning solution and cleaned the entire card, not just the mag strip. Then he took a lint cloth out and ran that over the ID. Finally, he ran it through an ultralight blue light and rescanned it. All the while, never smiling or saying anything to Quinn.
The light finally turned green, and she said a silent prayer of thanks and then walked deeper into the building as the guards waved her on.
Damn, she thought. Sinc
e she had taken so long to get cleared, Davis was gone. She scanned the foyer of the Pod several times to no avail.
Quinn decided to focus on the positive. She was thankful she had stumbled upon that corpse a few days ago and pilfered her ID Card, showing her new name of “Clark” and “Class One.” She felt terrible for Clark, whoever she was, but it wasn’t as if Quinn could do anything for her. She might as well use her ID to benefit the cause. Clark unknowingly set the plan in motion that they had been working so hard on. Part of that plan included Quinn passing herself off as a Class One Citizen. Besides that, she already had two misconduct alerts on her personal ID Card. It was now sitting in a steel case underground. The IDs were pretty indestructible and had GPS locator devices, but between the steel and depth underground, it would not be located. However, if she didn’t pass herself off as Clark and they found out who she was, not only could it jeopardize the others, but one more misconduct, and she was toast.
You were only allowed two misconduct alerts. Each time, you went through lengthy and painful “reprogramming.” Her first misconduct was sheer stupidity. She was dumb enough to say within earshot of a burly Security Patrol that she wished President Everett would burn in hell since he’d put them all in hell. That got her two months in the reprogramming center—better known as the Everett Center—and knocked her down to a Class Two Citizen—a “Potential Troublemaker” citizen. One of the worst things about being Class Two was the Pods. Much dirtier and more crowded than Class One, and a limited supply of food and water. It was quite common to miss a meal or two and not get a bed for the night when you had to live in the Class Two Pods.
Quinn’s second misconduct alert was about a year after she got out of the reprogramming center the first time. A drone scanned her, and Quinn had not yet learned to rid her thoughts of negativity toward the government. She had not yet learned to hide her mistrust for the President. She didn’t even remember her specific feeling of disgruntlement that day, but it got her a red light and held her immobilized until a security caravan came and collected her. That got her three months in the Everett Center and demoted to a Class Three Citizen—“Trouble Maker” citizen. Those Pods were even worse. You were lucky to get a blanket in a dirty corner, much less food. Overcrowded with sick people, sometimes with mental illness, which the government always claimed to have eliminated. But mental illness and sickness still existed, all right. It was just hidden in odd corners of the country, where there was less overall population and more security. Being Class Three also came with a strict reprimand: One more misconduct, and it was a death sentence. No lawyers. No trial. No judge or jury. Just an automatic firing squad in your immediate future.
Quinn had heard stories from her friends in the bunker, all the terrible tales. She even heard that just getting sick was enough to get you misconduct alerts because they assumed you didn’t get your vaccination when you were supposed to. Ana, one of her friends, told Quinn about her parents, Camila, her mom, and Jose, her father. Jose had some kind of terminal illness—cancer, from what Ana could deduce from the books she had read. It didn’t take long for him to become a Class Three Citizen once he got ill. Camila did not want to leave him, especially since she knew the end was near for him. They ran into the woods to try and fend for themselves while Camila attempted to find a way to care for Jose. Because Camila and Ana repeatedly did not check into any Pods, they were automatically knocked down to Class Two and then Three themselves. They had to take the utmost care not to get caught, but they were starving, so one night, Camila tried to break into a storage unit holding nutrition biscuits. Camila was caught and dragged into the city square and shot right through the head. Ana saw the whole thing; she was only ten at the time. Ana never knew what became of her dad; he probably starved to death, she assumed. Since, typically, they did not execute children, Ana got dragged off to the Everett Center for Children. She received, in her words, “all the pro-Everett programming one could want” until she met Namaguchi at a Courting Dance. Ana became his fourth wife at the age of sixteen.
Quinn supposed it was kismet when she and Ana met. She loved that word, “kismet.” Almost like they kissed when they met. She knew her forbidden love for Ana would never come to fruition. The Everettisim Church taught against same-sex relationships. Although, one of her friends in the bunker, Audrey, once told her they were not precisely a puritanical country like they had been, many, many years ago. Now, everything was all sort of a mishmash of what struck President Everett’s fancy. However, not everything the President decreed was necessarily enforced. Because of the reduced population, there were not enough Security Patrol Guards to go around and watch people get intimate. So really, you could do almost what you pleased with another person of age as long as you did it quietly and discreetly. But the minute it reached the public eye, as it indeed would if one of the people involved was the wife of a Chief Officer, kiss that kiss goodbye, Quinn thought to herself. She just wished it was easier to do than say. Her heart was always arguing with her brain on this one, each piece of her like fighters, trying to knock out the other with reason or emotion, whatever the case may be. She wasn’t even sure why she felt this way about Ana, another woman. It was not something that was ever shown to her or discussed, so it caused her some confusion and angst. Quinn admired Ana’s beauty, who wore her dark brown hair long in defiance of the law about having it in a bob cut. Ana also had smooth brown skin that reminded Quinn of milk chocolate, which Quinn had only tasted once. Namaguchi had brought some chocolates as a gift to Ana when they married. It was contraband, but since he was a top official, it was easy for him to get away with breaking the law. Ana kept the box and ate only one sweet at a time, slowly dwindling the box to the last piece, which she kindly gave to Quinn. It was time to shake that off, though, and forget about that. But one thing Quinn could not forget was the warmth of her hands when she had them around Ana’s slim waist. Just once, a hug that lasted a little longer than other hugs, Quinn’s hands resting on the curvy divots above Ana’s hip bones that Quinn thought were so lovely and inviting. She also could remember her heart pounding so fast against her chest that Quinn was sure Ana could feel it as much as she could feel Ana’s heart beating in sync with her own.
Quinn had to remind herself to get back in the game. She was not here to reminisce about warm hugs. She went up to an Information Kiosk and swiped Clark’s ID Card. She quickly checked the stats, the most important one being her next vaccination day for Clark’s pre-prescribed dose of the Marigold Injection. She had two weeks. Perfect, that was more than enough time. Her next stop was the restroom, and she quickly scurried in. A woman she passed on the way in gave her a sideways glance and a quick mumble of “We are the people, and the people are we.” Quinn forgot to say it back, and the lady was out of earshot before she could reply. She took a pause; she could not make mistakes, even if they were simple ones. She used the bathroom, then washed her hands as the guard watched and timed her. However, she surmised it was pointless because she had to enter and exit the bathroom under a wave of blue ultraviolet light that killed all bacteria on those entering and exiting.
Her next stop was the Commissary for her dinner nutrition biscuit and glass of pure distilled and filtered water; her tray also ran under a blue UV light before being handed to her. She ate her meal in silence. While not tasty in any sense of the word, the biscuit would enlarge in her stomach, making her feel full and give her a dose of vitamins and minerals. All a growing girl needs, she joked to herself as she bit into the dusty, dry brown biscuit. They were formulated for dietary requirements, not taste, and kept the population at a “healthy weight.”
As soon as Quinn finished up, she started up to the eighth floor, the floor for single people. The first and second were for families with more than two children, the third and fourth floors were for families with one or two children, the fifth and sixth for couples with no children, and the seventh and eighth for single people. Children without parents that were under
the age of sixteen stayed in separate facilities at The Everett Center. As she climbed the stairs, she took in the clean gray steel all around her. She almost felt as if she could get lost, with everything looking the same. The only time it varied was when she reached a door to a new floor. A red two, three, or four, and on up marked each entrance on the inside and outside. Quinn noted she didn’t see any dust or dirt, no trash or paint chips. Just stark, clean walls, stairs, and doors. They were nothing like the lesser class Pods.
Quinn got to her red-lettered door with “Eighth Floor” on it and opened it up. She hoped she could find an empty bed. She hadn’t stayed in this particular Pod in the past, and she knew most people tried to get the same Pod and room every night—call it familiarity. But it didn’t matter if you slept in one that had an occupant before you. At least in the Pods for Class One Citizens, every Pod and bed was cleaned, sanitized, and then probably cleaned again. Bed mats that were already bacteria resistant got atomized with antibacterial spray. Sanitized sheets and bedding got replaced daily. They didn’t leave any room for bacteria or viruses to thrive in the bedrooms. Overhead lighting was an ultraviolet blue light meant to eliminate germs, and although there was a dimmer “night mode,” it was on at all times, so it could keep one awake at night. She kept walking down the hallway, passing thin brown painted plywood doors with a red light on overhead, indicating the room already had an occupant. Finally, about two-thirds of the way down, she saw a door with a green light on above.
Marigold Page 3
