*****
“Are you ever coming out of there?” Anna wasn’t in the mood for Logan’s hogging of the fresher this morning. She pounded on the door. “I have to get ready too.”
“Be out in a minute,” her brother’s voice called back. He sounded distracted. He never used to spend so much time in the fresher, but now that he had a good dozen hairs to shave and a girlfriend to impress, his morning routine had become drawn out.
Just as she was about to knock again, the door slid open in front of her, releasing a cloud of pleasant scent and Logan. Anna’s nose wrinkled.
“Too strong?” he said.
“If you were working the fields today, you’d attract every fumefly for miles around.” Fumeflies, short for perfume flies, were pesky biting insects attracted to pleasant scents rather than the usual human sweat.
“Cratch,” he said.
“Sporn.” She believed in answering insult with insult.
He fingered the silver pin in the shape of a dome attached to the new white one-piece suit he wore—his Candidate pin that had been delivered the night before, along with Anna’s.
Messengers from the skimmers had been sent to visit the Burban homes and notify Candidates for the Defenders and the Growing the Future programs. These were sixteen-year-old males and females who had already passed basic qualifications. Burban health and medical records were available to the Import Team. Boys and girls whose DNA was considered substandard by whatever mysterious rules the Domers used, or whose physical health had been damaged in some way, or who hadn’t applied themselves in school to make top grades, were all bypassed. Kids and their parents throughout the Burb were disappointed when no messenger came to their door. Those two programs were the only way that Burbans could qualify for Dome citizenship, after they’d fulfilled the duties of the programs.
The standards weren’t as high for the Menials program for twelve-year-olds. It wasn’t a flattering name, but a truthful one. Parents could apply to have their younger children considered to become servants to the Domer citizens. Menials would never have the rights of citizens, but they did live in the climate-controlled comfort of the Dome all their lives rather than in the inhospitable surrounding lands.
Burban history—nearly legend—said that things never used to be that way, that division between the comfort of the Domes and the raw conditions outside. The planet Silva used to be covered with lush, green forests and continent-wide swaths of fertile farmland, but that was before Doom arrived.
No sense dwelling on a past that was never to be again.
Anna slipped into the fresher and locked the door. Their home wasn’t large, but there were two freshers and they both had sonics, courtesy of an exceptional harvest a few years ago that had provided bartering goods. She stepped into the clear tube in the corner and pressed the controls for a long cleanse. Ultrasonic waves gently scrubbed her body, leaving a tingling sensation. She ran her fingers through her hair to make sure oil, dirt, and all the windborne dust of the fields was removed, leaving her hair full and fresh. The sonic couldn’t do anything about the white-blonde streaks in her dark brown hair; they were put there by UV exposure under the glare of Silva’s pitiless sun through its damaged atmosphere.
She pulled on her white Import uniform, feeling the smooth texture of the fabric under her fingers and pleased with the way it draped across her body, showing off her curves. Homespun Burban clothes were no match for this finery, yet the uniforms were freely handed out just for testing day.
She sighed. To wear this every day . . .
She fastened her Candidate pin above her left breast and stepped out. Logan was already at the door, waiting for her. So were her parents. There were quick embraces, whispered “good luck” wishes, and Anna and Logan were on their way. As she walked away, Anna’s empathy picked up a mix of love and sadness pulling on her heart.
She turned back for one of her last looks at her childhood: her parents and the home she’d grown up in, stamped with her little red handprint. Her mother had tears streaming down her face, not meant to be revealed except for Anna’s unexpected look back. Her father’s eyes were damp. They weren’t a clingy family, and now Anna felt she was prying into emotions her parents kept between themselves. She couldn’t take back her revealing glance, so she blew them a kiss. They both smiled, their faces brightening. Fortunately, Logan continued on, unaware.
Dung! I have to learn not to respond to some empathic pulls. People deserve their privacy.
“Think we’ll make it?” Logan asked as they paused outside the skimmers. There was a short line at one of them, so they took that to be the entry point and headed there.
“Don’t know. Don’t you want to? Want to leave all this?” Anna gestured around at the streets of Nampa, heat waves already shimmering at 0900, dust clouds hanging over the Wasteland at the horizon. She thought of her parents’ emotions, and suddenly knew leaving wasn’t as simple a process as she’d thought it was. Just because she’d grown up with the tradition of Dome Importation, was it a good thing?
But if I’m Chosen, I have to go. It’s been that way for hundreds of years…
“Sure I want to go, but only if Beth goes too.” Logan looked around anxiously. “Where is she, anyway?”
“I’m not her forning keeper, Logan. She’ll show up. Probably spent too much time in the fresher like someone I know.”
“Hey.”
“Hey you. Come on, the line’s moving up.”
Beth hadn’t shown up by the time they entered the portal skimmer. It was air-conditioned, something they’d heard about but never experienced.
Wonderful. I wish I could stay here and not move. Ever.
“Move forward, please,” a voice from an overhead speaker said. Burbans who stopped to savor the cool moment were blocking the line near the door.
Anna moved quickly forward and gave her name to a man behind a desk. He wore a green Defenders uniform, something she had seen before. She caught Logan, who was there to apply for the Defenders, staring at the man and nudged him.
“Don’t gawk.”
He didn’t give her a smart answer, so she let it drop. He straightened up and gave his name to the man, and Anna noticed that her brother looked very grown up, in spite of the fumefly scent. The man at the desk took no notice of it.
He probably thinks we all smell odd. We smell like non-Domers.
A door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out. “Hart. Anna Hart.”
Anna’s stomach did a somersault. This is it.
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Aftermath: Yesterday, Episode 1 Page 4
