by K. M. Szpara
On the second floor, a Latina woman with warm skin and a bob of shiny black hair takes my new card and scans it. Age lines frame her smile and eyes. “Confirm your name, age, and gender, please.”
“Elisha—” I stop with the Wilder “W” formed on my lips.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Everyone does it. I promise to forget your personal information.”
I return her smile. “Elisha, twenty-one, male.”
“You passed the quiz. My name’s Carol; I’ll be your case manager.” She pulls up one of my documents on the flimsy little card. “Says here you’re trying to pay off three million.”
I bite my lip to stop myself from making excuses. Not all the debt’s ours, personally. According to Dad, everyone in our family used to attend college, graduate school—for generations they became doctors and artists, professors and architects.
But when the Next of Kin laws went into effect, all their debt passed down to their kids after they died, and to their kids, accumulating over decades before people got smart about that kind of thing and stopped getting married. Combine that with credit card debts, student loans, utilities, mortgages, and healthcare, and suddenly you’re living in the outer counties of Maryland, four million under. It’s taken us years to get even this far—to fend off debt collectors and the threat of debtors’ prison. Took Mom ten years and she only sold off one million. Look what that got her.
But Carol doesn’t react like the man downstairs. “It’ll take the right Patron, but we might be able to make that happen. Come on.” She takes my hand like I’m a small child.
I hold tighter than I mean to.
“First, a shower. Changing room’s over there; you can drop your clothes in the donation bin and put on a pair of scrubs when you finish. Place your Docile card and personal item in this resealable bag for safekeeping.” She holds it open.
I hesitate.
“You’ll get them back after you’re cleaned up, I promise. Fourth Right.”
I breathe deeply and forfeit my belongings. After Carol closes the curtain, I do the same with my clothes. I wince as I pull my shoes off, exposing my blistered feet to the air. They go into the donation bin first. Each item of clothing, one at a time, another part of myself gone.
Only the crocheted blanket remains, still on the bench where I tossed it. It’s going to be donated. Someone cold will feel my family’s warmth. I hug it tight against me one final time, breathing in the scent of the wood stove in Dylan’s house and the cat her mother, Nora, refuses to kick out during winter.
I drop it into the bin and force myself to get in the shower. From now on, all my needs will be provided for. That’s exactly what Dad was clinging to when he suggested Abby. But what good is a comfortable house and new clothes when you’re drugged out on Dociline?
“Scrub everything real good in there!” Carol shouts over the rush of water. “Rinse and repeat. And use conditioner; I don’t care how short your hair is.”
I haven’t used a conventional shower in years, much less all these products. Seaweed and saltwater shampoo? I could have jumped in the reservoir before trekking down here.
I step out smelling like minerals and chemicals, an imitation of the beach. The scrubs I put on are loose and comfortable; still, I glance at the donation bin. What’s left of my life is in there.
“There you go, much better.” Carol squats down to examine my blistered and bleeding feet. “Grab your personal item and Docile card and follow me.”
There aren’t any licensed doctors in my town, just people who know what to administer for a broken bone, or burns. I’ve had to drag my family into the city for regular checkups—Mom for blood tests—every year, despite Dad’s objections. What’s the extra medical debt when you’re millions under? But this ODR doctor applies medicine and real bandages for free. He draws blood and injects vaccines. By nightfall, I feel like one of the farm animals.
“I’ll be back for you in the morning.” Carol leaves me in a room full of metal-frame bunk beds.
A few men look up when I enter. Some look freshly scrubbed like me, others tired and rumpled from a long day of interviews. I discard any notions of solidarity or conversation and settle into an empty bed. In a few days, they’ll all be loaded up on Dociline, happily serving out their terms.
* * *
“There,” Carol says, smoothing my hair into place. “Who knew you had a face under that shag?”
I never cut it in the winter. Warmer that way. But I smile for her in the mirror.
I’ve spent all morning imagining home. No one’s called to report me; Dylan must’ve told them, but, if not, Dad will find out when the ODR sends him notice of all debts cleared.
“Please let him make it,” I whisper.
“What was that?” Carol finishes scrubbing the calluses down on my hands.
“Nothing, sorry.”
She puts down the pumice, rinses away the dead skin, and rubs thick lotion into my palms.
“Today, someone is going to inspect every inch of you to determine if you’re worth the price you’re asking for. They’re going to ask you a bunch of personal questions you aren’t prepared for, and if they decide to take you home with them—” She holds my chin and forces my eyes onto hers. “—you will spend the rest of your life speaking when spoken to. So, for god’s sake, son, if you have something to say, say it now.”
A thin layer of tears seals my lashes together. When I open them, her face runs like rain before my eyes. She called me son. Her voice didn’t sound much different than Mom’s in that moment.
“I’m scared.”
“It’s okay. The Dociline makes it easier.” She touches her wrist like so many debtors do. “Seventh Right.”
“Can I tell you a secret? You won’t tell the Patrons or write it down in my file?”
She nods and holds my hands, still tender from her cleaning.
“I’m going to refuse.”
“Refuse what?”
“Dociline.”
Carol flinches, then laughs. “No.”
“Yes.”
Her smile fades, lips thin to a line. “You shouldn’t tell anyone that.”
“You’re not going to—”
“No, and neither should you.” She nudges me onto my feet. “It’s for everyone’s good, you know. They want a happily obedient drone, and you don’t want to be too aware of what’s happening. Trust me.”
She pushes me into a room full of clothes and starts throwing them at me. “Put these on. Hurry up.”
I duck behind a curtain, too shocked to move.
“No one’s going to buy a sluggish Docile.”
“I don’t have any underwear here.” I sift through the pile.
“You won’t need any. Go on.”
I hike up the jeans. I’ve never worn a pair so tight before. The shirt hugs the lines of my arms and chest in ways that would make farmwork uncomfortable.
“I’ve seen a lot of Dociles, Elisha; I know how to sell them.” Carol yanks the curtain aside. “You have a nice body. Let the Patrons touch you. Don’t aim for three million; aim for five. Don’t speak unless spoken to, or do anything unless you’re told. Don’t lie, but definitely don’t tell them you’re going to refuse Dociline. Got it?”
I barely nod. The clothes are only the first chip off any notion of dignity I’d brought with me.
Carol checks her watch. “The Patrons should be arriving. You ready?”
“Yes.”
She pinches my cheeks until they burn. “You look like a ghost.”
* * *
The slam of the heavy metal door still echoes in my brain. Carol’s left me in a room with two chairs across a small table. I step toward the closer chair, then stop.
Don’t do anything unless you’re told. Aim for five million.
I clasp my hands behind my back to still them.
A loud buzzer signals the door. I straighten to my full—though unimpressive—height. My heartbeat radiates through every inch of me
.
The door bursts open and a white woman with an unnatural-looking tan saunters in, still eyeing a tablet. My file, probably. She sits across from me and looks up, lips pursed, eyes darting everywhere.
“Turn around,” she says.
I move slowly, dropping my hands to my sides. Feels more like I’m trying on clothes in a fancy boutique than selling myself.
“You’re twenty-one?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She swipes to a new page on the tablet, her inch-long fingernails scraping the glass surface. “My daughter’s going to the University of Maryland. I don’t want her getting involved with anyone she shouldn’t. You know how college is.” She waves her hand like my answer is “yes.” It isn’t. “Take your shirt off; let me see your muscles.”
I comply, draping it over the free chair.
“Yeah.” She smiles. “Not bad. We’ll bulk you up. But my daughter, she’s into those punk skinny boys anyway, so whatever. You know how to handle a girl, right?”
“Handle, ma’am?”
“You know, in bed.”
Does she want me to have sex with her daughter? “No, ma’am.”
“Eh.” She winks. “We can fix that, too.”
I picture myself smashed between this woman and her daughter, in bed at some fancy university. I realize then that I might cave. I might take the drug.
She walks over and squeezes my arms. Then my crotch. I tense under her touch, trying my hardest not to recoil.
“Three mil, huh?” She plays with a strand of my hair.
A buzzer sounds and the attendant opens the door. After the woman leaves, I let out a sigh so big I think I might pass out.
The next Patron has salt-and-pepper hair and looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in a decade. He wears a vest and pressed slacks. He doesn’t sit; he walks right over to me. I haven’t even put my shirt back on.
You have a nice body. Let the Patrons touch you.
“How much can you lift? From the ground.”
We don’t have weights, at home, so I hope my answer doesn’t sound off. “Around two hundred pounds, sir.”
“Any experience with manual labor?”
I nod.
“Well?”
“I’ve worked on a community farm most of my life, sir.”
“That’ll do,” he says, and walks out, not waiting for the buzzer. Him I could live with. It would be like back home, except without my family or friends, or hope for a future.
Three others interview me, but I immediately dismiss them as options: a young woman who silently measures various parts of my body; a couple, who ask if I have experience raising children, because they’ve just had screaming triplets; and an older man who asks about my threshold for pain.
After him, I wait—five minutes, ten, fifteen. Cold air tickles my skin. I want to put my shirt on and sit down, but that would probably cost me three million dollars.
Finally, the door opens. This man is younger than the others, white, probably late twenties or early thirties, and dressed in colors as bright as the flowers outside.
He sits opposite me and casually unbuttons the top of his shirt, the fluorescent light glinting off a ring on each of his fingers. “Put that shirt back on and have a seat.” He brushes his blonde hair out of his face, but it falls across his tan forehead, like the model on the shampoo bottle I used this morning.
It’s inevitable that I’ll hate anyone on the other side of this table—anyone who could make my family’s debt vanish with a single paycheck. Yet I relax in his presence. It’s the way he treats me—like I’m an equal part of this interview. Then, I imagine him fucking me. If he’s a trillionaire, like I suspect, it’s inevitable. Despite his money, he is attractive. And I realize, out of everyone I’ve interviewed with today, I want him to pick me.
3
ALEX
I arrive at the boardroom before everyone else. Our meeting isn’t until 8:00, but the sunrise looks even better through the SmartGlass that surrounds the space than it does outside. Nanotech enhances the burnt-orange and red-wine sky against the gray-blue ripples of the harbor. Sensors warm the room slowly and strategically so that the brisk transition from Baltimore winter to climate-controlled office doesn’t shock my body. I only really notice that I’ve warmed up when I remove my jacket.
A Docile takes it, disappearing into an alcove and returning with a petal-pink porcelain cup and saucer. I take it, the coffee already doctored to my taste with cream and sugar, cooled to a temperature that won’t burn my tongue. He silently returns his attentions to the plants that decorate the hallway.
Though most of Bishop Laboratories is underground, the boardroom is situated on top of the Maryland Science Center. The institution was nearly bankrupt when my family stepped in to save it, several generations ago. Dr. Alexandra Bishop I, my grandmother, all this is her legacy. I sit in the warm leather chair where she first declared her intentions for Dociline. Where my father, Dr. Alexander Bishop II, developed Formula 2.0, and where I will soon begin work on Formula 3.0.
I breathe the coffee so deep I’d swear the caffeine absorbs directly into my bloodstream through my lungs. One perfect cup, every morning. With a few taps of my fingers, my SmartRings bring up monitors where the sunrise once was. Fifty-three minutes, I note, then review my presentation.
Board members trickle in at the top of the hour. They shed their jackets, exposing colorful sweaters and scarves and pocket squares. Sitting in brown leather chairs, they look like rows of neatly planted flowers. I smooth down my tie, slide my fingers over the engraving on the white-gold clip my grandmother gave me. Legatum nostrum futurum est.
To be a Bishop means to shape society—the future. That’s the charge I received from my grandmother, along with my name. It would be hard to expand our fortune by marrying into a wealthier family—few exist—and yet the pressure remains, not only to preserve our legacy but to enrich it.
My friends Dutch and Mariah enter together with only a wink in my direction. The two of them stayed up all night, listening to me practice, helping me refine my points, until we’d gone through half a dozen bottles of champagne and as many rewrites of my plans for Dociline. It doesn’t hurt having the support of the CFO and a shareholder who also happens to control most of the country’s media.
My father arrives last—on purpose. When he enters the room, it falls silent, the meeting begins. And, for once, I’m nervous. He sits opposite me, each of us crowning one end of the table. Out of habit, I trace a groove in its underside that’s grown slowly smoother and deeper over the years.
“Welcome, everyone,” I say, “and thank you for joining me so early. I am excited to share my vision for—”
Dad raises his hand. My presentation vanishes from the surrounding monitors. “There’s something we need to discuss before you begin, Alex. If you don’t mind me interrupting.”
My smile contracts, nerves hum with anxiety. “Of course, my apologies.” I sit and adjust my tie again for want of something to do. If I settle my hands, I’m afraid someone will see them trembling.
With a tap, my father draws up a file and slides it into the middle of the table. Though I can’t read the font from where I sit, I recognize the form: Termination of Intent to Propose. I clasp my hands under the table. I know where this is going.
“You broke things off with Dr. Madera?” Dad leans on the table and stares directly across it, at me.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I glimpse the horror frozen on Dutch and Mariah’s faces. I have to fight to keep the same off of mine. I’m dizzy and cold and warm and light-headed, suddenly and simultaneously. I clear my throat and breathe deep, sit up straighter.
“Is this something we need to talk about here? I don’t want to take up any more of the Board’s time than necessary.” I smile for good measure.
“Yes, Alex, I’m afraid it is. As I and others have explained many times, who you partner with affects not only our company’s reputation, b
ut also its finances. The stability of your personal life has direct bearing on your potential as CEO. Now, we are all allowed to figure ourselves out, determine the kind of person we want to partner with.”
“Dad, please,” I say more sternly than I should in front of others. But for goodness’ sake, he’s embarrassing me. Dutch and Mariah avoid my eyes when I look to them. Did they know about this? If there was discussion—no, they wouldn’t have.
“You’re turning thirty, this month, Alex. You’ve worked at Bishop Laboratories all your life and will see it into the future. From that seat, you will influence the lives of billions of Americans. They will look to you to make responsible decisions, both for the company and your private life.”
“I am aware,” I say, stiffly. “There are plenty of other options that we can discuss later—”
“Our lawyers don’t see as many options as you’d think. Fortunes are fragile. The wrong match could easily topple everything we’ve worked for.” Dad folds his hands and looks thoughtfully at them. “Given that, we are willing to give you more time—the public will understand that recovery is necessary after a breakup—but meanwhile, we, the Board, would like you to invest in a personal Docile as a symbol of your commitment to this company.”
As if my work doesn’t follow me home enough—and I do like my work, but a man needs a break. That’s one of the reasons I terminated my relationship with Javier. He was always over or out with me. Always around and never engaging enough that I wouldn’t rather have spent the time alone. So what if he was perfect on paper? I’m the one who would’ve had to live with him for the rest of my life.
“I don’t need a personal Docile. I work with thousands of them, every day.”
“Then,” Dad continues, “you’re welcome to review the remaining, eligible partners—”
“No.”
“Appearances matter, Alex. You know that. The CEO of Bishop Laboratories will be perceived as incompetent—naked—without a partner or a Docile on his arm.” Dad stands, pushes his chair back, and motions for the waiting Docile to bring his jacket. “If you cannot handle dating, and you cannot handle a Docile, then you cannot handle Bishop Laboratories.” He adjusts his scarf and dons his hat. “For now, I suggest you think about what this company, and your place within it, means to you.”
