Meritropolis

by Joel Ohman

  Charley turned his gaze to the forest beyond the gates. He wondered exactly who, or rather what, lay outside? He had heard horrific stories of animal combinations that roamed the woods and tried to scale the gates if they became hungry enough. The forest didn’t look sinister at all in the daytime: vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows tinged the falling leaves—a big oak not more than 50 paces from the gate looked almost as cozy and inviting as Charley’s favorite book-reading nook in the underground dormitories he’d called home until recently. But regardless of how inviting the forest looked at that moment, Charley knew that more than just the wind rustled through those fallen leaves, especially at night.

  Charley and Sven’s official arrival in the above-ground “adult” population of Meritropolis, just two weeks ago upon their graduation, had only served to set the questions scurrying more frantically in Charley’s mind. Sven’s happy-go-lucky attitude kept him in good graces with all who saw him in public, but even he had expressed his loathing of the System to Charley in private. Many of their fellow classmates from the below-ground dormitories accepted what they saw as a matter of course, just like most of the adults around them. But those who had experienced a loved one ripped from their lives held quite different opinions, at least inwardly.

  Charley remembered the day his brother, Alec, had been taken. Charley was eight, Alec ten.

  “Diseased,” they said.

  “Incurable—it’s Down syndrome—nothing we can do.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  Charley remembered that statement well.

  But who were these large, blue-jacketed men to decide what was best for an eight-year-old boy? How could it be “for the best” to have his older brother—and only family member left in the world—snatched from him with no other explanation than “the System says so”?

  And Alec certainly hadn’t looked diseased. Sure, he had always been a little slow to understand what was going on around him, and Charley had secretly done his calculations and other homework to keep him out of trouble, but Alec just hadn’t been all that great at book learning. With both of their parents killed in the Event, Charley and Alec had been inseparable; Charley couldn’t even remember their parents, try as he might to retrieve even a single memory. All the brothers had were each other.

  But then the System was implemented in Meritropolis, and everything changed.

  Alec had been so fun to be around, always smiling joyously at even the smallest thing, regardless of what happened around him. That was the worst part: he had gone away with the blue-coated guards happily, the sunny smile still on his face, as the guards’ rough hands grabbed and pulled, taking him out and up to the gates, where the guards had held him until Alec had been zeroed at a gate ceremony that night—all while little Charley had been forced to remain in the underground dorms—bedtime as usual.

  But even at eight, Charley had known it wasn’t right. That day had planted a dark little seed in Charley. And that seed had been tended carefully and quietly over the past nine years. Now, just as Charley had grown from a below-ground student to an above-ground adult, it too had sprouted into something both awful and magnificent, raging outward and upward, preparing for its time to be noticed.

  In cruel contrast to Alec’s disability, Charley himself had come to have the highest Score of all of the below-ground students: 118. Each year he grew older, his Score grew too; the chasm between his Score and those of his peers widening exponentially. This position on a pedestal, coupled with his explosive temper, ensured that Charley had become experienced in the art of getting beaten up. Or, more accurately, in the art of getting pounded, hammered, thrashed, pulverized—you name it. Then, slowly, bloody nose after bloody nose, cracked rib after broken knuckles, that experience grew and developed into formidable athletic abilities, until eventually Charley was the one beating up on others whenever anyone was dumb enough to start something with him. Now, he was that guy. The guy people turned on their heels to avoid whenever they saw him coming. He was the guy that not only looked like he could beat the living daylights out of anyone that crossed his path, but actually wanted to. Truth be told, he usually just wanted to read a good book, but in Meritropolis it was certainly useful to cultivate his reputation as that guy.

  Charley was not concerned with fighting other teenagers. Now that he was above-ground, he had other plans. The Meritropolis System of Societal Merit was an unfeeling, unthinking beast without a neck to wring. But it was carried out by living, breathing people, like Commander Orson and the Blue Coats who had taken Alec. And soon it would be time for someone to hold them all to account for their actions. They would pay, and pay dearly.

  It would be for the best.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Gates

  Sitting watching her little sister sleep, Elena reflected that all great traumas throughout a person’s life must be linked together in some way. To experience a new one, or even the possibility of a new one, was to immediately revert back to experiencing the pain of past events all over again. Rather than lessening the blow of new traumas by lessons learned, new pain only serves to dredge up the long-dormant hurt of the past.

  Bree’s flaxen hair wreathed the top of her head in a bouquet of curls, adding to the calm and trusting manner of sleep unique to small children. In Elena’s opinion, her own hair was too dirty blonde to ever compare with the “nice blonde” that her sister was praised for. As was force of habit, Elena unconsciously tucked a strand of her own hair behind her ear. Elena watched and prepared to wake her incomparable little sister for the very last time. Every peaceful breath Bree took felt like a piercing stab in Elena’s heart.

  Losing parents is truly horrible, yet in some ways, it is expected. Parents are supposed to die before their children. The old die before the young; that’s the natural way of things. Of course, the System changed all of that—neither age nor youth was a safeguard against the System’s unfeeling, uncaring judgments.

  The only thing Elena could do the day her parents were zeroed was to promise that she would keep Bree safe. Now that promise would be revealed for what it truly was, only empty words from a little girl, desperately wanting something to be true. But wanting something to be true isn’t the same as actually making it happen.

  The worst possible thing Elena could imagine happening to her was going to take place later that day. And she couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  When Bree’s legs had first gone numb and it became difficult for her to walk, Elena helped her try to disguise her ailment: standard procedure for anyone with a serious condition living under the System. But it wasn’t enough. The severity of the problem had become too much. Some people could elude detection for an extended amount of time, the scoring system itself didn’t have many weak links, save for the weakest link of any manmade system—the people in it—but bribing a guard to look the other way was only ever a short-term solution. They had done what they could, but as two young girls all alone, they were powerless. Bree’s Score had dropped like a rock and with it had gone Elena’s last hope of keeping her family together.

  But to give in to the panic was to give up on Bree, and that wasn’t something Elena could do. The last thing Bree needed was to see her big sister showing that she was scared. So Elena sealed off that corner of her mind and instead prepared to wake her sister and instruct her on how to extend the last day of her young life for as long as possible.

  * * *

  “I heard someone is being put outside of the gates tonight,” Sven said in a hushed tone to Charley. Even though they were standing somewhat out of sight of passersby, tucked away at the bottom of the creaky wooden steps beside the courtyard, it was still necessary to be careful. “It’s a little girl too,” Sven added even more quietly.

  “I know,” Charley said.

  “It’s horrible. Really, it is. But we can’t do anything to stop it. Right?” Sven asked his friend. “We’ve talked about this exact type of thing in the dorms—how we would handle seeing someone z
eroed for the first time. Of course, it’s different now that we’re above-ground and it’s actually going to happen right in front of our eyes. It’s … I don’t know.” Sven ducked his head for a moment and then spoke softly, “It’s kind of like we are a part of it now, if we just watch it and don’t do anything, you know?” He hurried on. “But we talked about this, right?” It was clear Sven was worried; at those times, he had a tendency to talk a lot, even more than usual. “Right, Charley?”

  Charley narrowed his eyes and emitted a grunt. To Charley, that grunt allowed time for a slowly passing woman to move out of hearing range—but Sven understood it as Charley agreeing with everything he was saying. It was another one of Sven’s idiosyncrasies: to keep talking and assume that Charley, or anyone else who was listening, was in agreement with him. When he was with Sven, Charley never felt like he had to speak up to keep a discussion from stalling. Sven was a one-man conversation, whether people were listening or not.

  The woman continued to stroll along the courtyard. Sven continued. “Okay, good. I mean, not good that this is happening, of course, but good, we wouldn’t be helping anyone by doing something foolish and getting ourselves zeroed right along with that poor little girl …” Sven trailed off and looked uncertainly at Charley.

  “It appears that way,” Charley said slowly, watching the woman move out of earshot. He looked over his shoulder for a moment to be sure, then, leaning in closer to Sven, he said forcefully under his breath, “The question everyone debated while we were underground was always something like, ‘What does it say about the System if it sanctions the killing of innocent life?’ but I think the real question is, ‘What does it say about us, if we see it and do nothing?’”

  Sven shifted uncomfortably and was uncharacteristically quiet for a moment.

  Charley paused, letting his point sink in, and then looked Sven in the eyes. “Let me ask you this. How could we live with ourselves if we did nothing? If we just watched? What kind of people are we? How can we pretend to call ourselves men or warriors or Hunters someday if we just watch?” He felt his voice rising. “This is our first time to watch someone being put out of the gates, and it’s a little girl. We know what happens to her, but what happens to us? What happens to us if we just watch?”

  Sven lowered his gaze and looked off into the distance beyond Charley, beyond the courtyard, beyond the gates, and toward the unknown horizon. “I’m sure it gets easier,” he muttered quietly.

  “I don’t want it to get easier,” Charley said, his jaw clenching.

  “All of these people above-ground have submitted to the System, Charley. You know what they told us before we came up here. The System is for our own protection. It must be obeyed. I’m not saying I like it, of course, but it will keep us alive at least.”

  “For now it will,” Charley retorted, “but what about when we become old and feeble and no good to anyone anymore? Will the System keep us alive then? And even if it could promise me that, I would rather die young than watch an innocent little kid being quietly shuffled outside of the gates to her death. It will happen right in front of us, don’t you see? If we stand by and watch, then we are as much to blame as those guards and Commander Orson himself. We are part of the System.”

  Sven’s eyes darted around the courtyard. “If there was a way to change it, then I would. You know I would.” Sven paused. “And, listen, Charley.” He leaned in and said the name that only Charley’s one true friend could say without facing instant reprisal: “Alec would want you to stay alive. We don’t want to do anything rash and be thrown out of the gates after seeing our very first gate ceremony. It’s not what he would want for you, Charley.”

  The fire in Charley’s eyes flickered brightly. The briefest pause ensued before Charley’s mouth curled up into a smile. “Of course. We should do what Alec would want.”

  Sven hesitated, then smiled in relief.

  Charley reached down to wrap his friend in an uncharacteristic bear hug. “I’ll catch up with you later on. If not, I’ll see you at the gate ceremony tonight.”

  “Oh, okay.” Sven was surprised at the sudden change in his friend’s emotions after his mention of Alec.

  It would only be later on that Sven would come to regret saying Alec’s name to Charley.

  * * *

  Elena sat next to her sister on the wooden stoop in front of their house. Rather, it was their uncle’s house, but he was long gone, and given that the house was little more than a hovel, it was unlikely anyone would be challenging their rights of ownership anytime soon. It wasn’t that big but there was plenty of room for two—and more than enough room for just one. Just one. All alone.

  Elena’s uncle and parents had all been zeroed within a year of Elena graduating from the below-ground dormitories. Now, she had Bree with her each night when Bree wasn’t below-ground in classes. At 20 years old, Elena was an adult in the eyes of the law, and she had gone through a lot. Some called her wise beyond her years, but most days she felt more like she was just role-playing at being a responsible adult. More than anything, she just wanted her parents back.

  Keeping the worry from her face, Elena’s mind raced. What would she do without Bree? No one got out of a low Score alive. At least, not without the ability to wield an enormous display of force, either financially or physically.

  Elena had heard the same rumors as everyone else: how the “merchant” crime lord Chappy used behind-the-scenes manipulation of the System to keep his nephew from the possibility of gates. But even Chappy probably couldn’t save someone already sentenced to an impending gate ceremony, as this would make the System look weak in public. And even if Chappy could save Bree, what reason would he have to want to? People threw themselves at his mercy every day, and far more were turned away than ever got an audience with him, let alone had something worth exchanging for his help.

  Elena had an average Score herself: 82, and the only real thing that she had of value was her uncanny talent for fixing almost anything. Old pre-Event machinery, broken furniture, a wooden yo-yo split in half by a careless child. She wasn’t what one of her teachers below-ground had called “natural smart,” but she was what another teacher called “practical smart.”

  The boys—and men, even—on her block had long given up resenting her natural skill for repair work. She didn’t really know how she did it. She just liked to puzzle things out, her long slender fingers quickly and carefully turning, probing, and rotating each broken thing that people brought her way. And, somehow, she always managed to fix it.

  But she couldn’t fix Bree.

  They had tried all the usual things. They had waited as long as possible to have Bree assessed with her newly decreased Score. They had attempted to appeal to the mercy of a Blue Coat on an Assessment Day, as some of them were known to take pity on small children and look the other way for a few weeks when their Score dropped below 50; after all, many of the Blue Coats had youngsters of their own. But each of their attempts only delayed the inevitable. For someone like Bree, with such a low Score, and likely a chronic reason for it, there were no other options available. She was due to be zeroed, plain and simple.

  Elena watched her sister from the corner of her eye, marveling at her composure. One thing Elena had always admired about her eight-year-old sister, and hated in herself for her lack of it, was Bree’s amazing ability to know exactly how to act, exactly what to say.

  True to form, Bree felt Elena’s gaze and turned toward her with a small smile. “I know there is nothing we can really do. I’m not afraid. We did our best to keep my legs a secret, didn’t we?”

  “Bree …” Elena’s voice trailed off. She tried again—she had to get this out and finally say it right. “Listen, Bree. I want you to know how much I love you. Just because your legs—the stupid System doesn’t know anything.”

  “I know. I love you, too.” Bree smiled and turned back to face the western horizon.

  Elena turned her gaze toward the gates. Their house was set
on a slight incline, so they could see out and over the gates quite clearly. The willows rustled along the hayfield just outside of the gates—pleasant, almost beckoning. The forest beyond seemed full of adventure, almost dreamy, wanting to be enjoyed and explored. But this was in daylight.

  Things changed at night.

  * * *

  Charley walked the dusty cobblestoned streets of Meritropolis, thinking. Every little girl that he saw, he imagined as the little girl due to be zeroed in a few short hours. He needed answers. In a city of 50,000 people, it would seem there would be plenty of sources to turn to, but Charley was only recently a full “above-grounder.” Apart from Sven and the other new entrants to the adult population, Charley hardly knew anyone. Only below-grounders with living parents were allowed to roam above-ground, presumably under the supervision of their parents. Charley had been above-ground quite a bit before, but it was rarely without some form of teacher who usually insisted on a strict schedule of activities.

  The freedom to roam the streets at will, even just short days into his official “adulthood,” was exhilarating, but still limited. But right now he was short on the one thing he needed most: a gossip. Specifically, a gossip who knew anything worth knowing about gate ceremonies, the System, Commander Orson, and other aspects of above-ground life.

  Charley padded down the stone-slab main street, hardly more than a pathway running diagonally from the courtyard inside of the gates, the site of the ceremony later in the evening. Charley had managed to figure that much out from chatting to an elderly lady with a bag of bread—surprisingly old for Meritropolis. She had answered the question about her age that he couldn’t keep himself from blurting out: “I make the best bread in Meritropolis. That’s why I’ll never be zeroed. Here, try some of this.” After trying just a small crust, he had to agree. But he was in search of more than just the ceremony location and bread, delicious as it was.