It began with a broken window. In Roman’s neighborhood, that window would have been patched—and then the patch would be painted with designs to call attention to itself. But no one cared enough about this window to board it up, let alone decorate the repair. Then an aluminum storm door, which had clearly been kicked in. It hung crookedly from its frame, as if in pain. And eventually, it wasn’t just doors and windows, railings and stairs missing, but entire walls. There’d been fire here, too, but no one had built a playground in the burnt buildings. No one, in fact, had bothered finishing the demolition at all.
Lee checked the address on the business card. It led to the husk of a building. Not recently fallen, but long ago. It was possible he’d gotten the address wrong, but unlikely. Maybe he should have found a newer card. Maybe whoever hung it had moved on long ago.
It was at the moment that Lee began to suspect something wasn’t quite right when someone shoved him from behind and, when he was sprawled face-down on the crumbling pavement, kicked him sharply, once, in the side of the head.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AMMONIA. LEE GAGGED from the stab to his sinuses, then turned his head and vomited.
A gray-haired woman in medical scrubs was holding the basin. Once she determined he was done heaving, she called out, “He’s awake,” in a thick District accent.
His vision swam. Where was he? Fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead in the narrow hallway. It was old construction, linoleum floors and plaster walls, which meant he was still in the District. He lay on a cart pushed up against the wall, and he wasn’t the only one in such a condition. At his head, an old man ranted about needing his medicine, while at his feet, a young woman was quite possibly going into labor.
A man in a greenish lab coat strode up the hallway. He’d been tall once, but now he was stooped and wrinkled. Hard to tell if he was frowning or his face had just settled that way. “What’s this one?” he asked. His accent was thicker than the woman’s.
“Some kids found ’im over near the old box factory.”
“The one out by Plymouth?”
“No…the other one, down by the Flats. Head injury, probably concussion. Came in unconscious, smelling salts brought him around. Looks like he got rolled. No wallet…but going by his shoes, he can probably afford treatment.”
The man leaned over him. “Got a name, son?”
“Lee Kennedy.” He did his best to quell his panic. “What time is it? How long have I been out?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not from around here…are you?”
Lee tried to shake his head, but the ceiling tilted, and he began to dry-heave.
“Call the border monitor,” the man in the lab coat told the woman. “The sooner we get him to a Sector hospital, the better.”
“Dumbass Boomers.” The woman backed away from Lee as if he had the plague. “Come down here sniffing ’round for drugs and don’t even have the common sense to steer clear of the Flats.”
“I wasn’t looking for drugs,” Lee said weakly.
But the woman probably hadn’t heard. She was walking away, briskly, complaining all the while. “Taking up time and resources we need for our own. And what do we get in return? Nothing. Except maybe a fine, if we don’t get him transferred quick enough for their liking.”
The old man waiting in the hallway grabbed her as she passed and said, “C’mon, Sandy, I need my medicine.”
“I told you to taper off, you old coot, but did you listen? We’re out of morphine now, probably ’til next week. I’ll get you some pills for the nausea, but that’s the best I can do.”
It was an agonizing wait in the dingy hallway for the Sector ambulance to show up. The woman in labor was eventually wheeled somewhere more private. The old man moaning about his medication, however, was left right where he was.
Lee wondered: had the waitress set him up to be rolled? He sorely hoped not—she’d seemed so sweet. And all those hundreds of business cards, surely not all of them were scams waiting to be triggered by ignorant Boomers out of their element. He closed his eyes and did his best to put the doubts out of his mind, without much success. He was still ruminating on the matter when the ambulance arrived.
The difference in the medical staff between the Tax District and the Benefit Sector was as pronounced as the catering waiters. Boomer medics were calm and professional, like their hospitality counterparts. And just as impersonal.
Lee’s mother was waiting for him at the Sector emergency room. “What happened?” she demanded. “Are you all right?” Before Lee could answer, she turned to a medic and snapped, “Is he all right?”
“He’s in good hands,” the medic said blandly.
Lee imagined the nurse, Sandy, would’ve answered with something significantly more direct.
A neurologist soon came to conduct an examination, and Lee had to answer some simple questions and follow a pen with his eyes. The scan would take longer, though, and the wait for it felt interminable with Mom sitting there beside him, fidgeting angrily.
“I’m sorry you had to leave work,” Lee said.
Mom looked at him as if she’d like to add another bruise to his head. “Don’t be an ass. I don’t give a damn about missing a few hours of work. Whatever this is…” she gestured vaguely at Lee. “You got off lucky. What if it had been worse? Wandering around the most dangerous part of the District—honestly, what if they’d caved that thick head of yours in?”
Lee could hardly argue when he totally agreed. He stared down at the pulse monitor clipped to his forefinger and wished a bland, impersonal nurse would wheel him off for his scan. But he supposed he’d need to go to the hospital in Emma’s new neighborhood if he wanted that kind of service. And then he thought of the old man in morphine withdrawal and felt petty for even harboring the notion.
More quietly, Mom asked, “What is it you’re looking for out there?”
Was she referring to the apartment hunting, or the years of sneaking off to Cat and Canary, or the night he’d spent in Roman’s bed? Hard to say. That was the thing about Mom. She somehow had a knack for knowing far more than she let on.
Mom closed her eyes and sat back in resignation, and settled her hand over his, and together, they waited. Eventually Lee was carted off for scans that showed his skull was thankfully intact, given some medication to dull the pain and prevent his brain from swelling, and sent home with a caution to come back in if he experienced any further symptoms from a long and alarming list.
Mom didn’t press him as to what he’d been doing in the District, but maybe it didn’t matter. The main thing was, she knew.
On the doctor’s recommendation, Lee stayed home the next day, and though he tried to work on his thesis, he couldn’t focus. His headache was distracting, but more than that, he kept circling back to the fact that maintaining the status quo was impossible, and yet there seemed no other option. He couldn’t afford tuition or housing on his own, and his family would be penalized if he stayed put and stayed single. The only way to move forward was to trigger the Algorithm and get married.
He almost wished his skull had been caved in. A morbid thought, to be sure, but the more he considered it, the more he realized…there must be some concessions for people who were too damaged to trigger their Algorithms.
Against medical advice, he shuttled to the campus library to embark on this new line of research, and somehow his nagging headache receded to mere background noise while his focus sharpened.
The brain was a mysterious organ. How difficult would it be to simply answer some of the neurologist’s questions incorrectly? And at home, he could feign memory loss easily enough by asking when his sister would be home.
Simple, maybe. But the potential ramifications were profound. The subject of disability was fascinating. Lee would have loved to sign up for some classes next semester…if graduation hadn’t become, at long last, unavoidable.
According to the texts, a disabled Benefit Boomer became a ward of the state. Th
ey’d live out their life in residential facilities where trained staff would keep them safe and entertained.
How bad would that really be?
Lee closed the book decisively. How low had he sunk, to seriously consider faking permanent brain injury as a viable alternative to marriage?
His head really did hurt, he realized, and he’d studied well into the evening. He stopped by the student health center on his way back to the shuttle to see if there was anything they could give him for the pain.
Like most residents of the Benefit Sectors, Lee was, overall, in good health. Other than the time he nearly lost a finger to a paper cutter, he only visited the health center for the annual cheek-swab that monitored his exposure to any potentially mutated bacteria.
Staff was sparse this late at night, and the waiting room looked deserted. He rang a bell, and a nurse came out to greet him. Actually, “greet” was putting it kindly. More like she gave him a leery look and pulled on a surgical mask. She eyed him warily over the top of the fabric. “Have you experienced any of the following symptoms in the last forty-eight hours,” she asked, in her clipped Boomer accent. “Shortness of breath? Nasal discharge? Nausea? Vomiting? Fever? Chills? Headache—?”
“Yes, I’m here for a headache.”
The nurse’s eyes went wide with alarm. “I’ll need you to step into the hermetic chamber—”
“I’m not ill, I’ve had an injury. You can see that, can’t you?” Of course she could. The bruising was quite vivid.
“It’s procedure, sir. Step into the chamber and you’ll be seen to shortly.”
Lee was tempted to turn around and leave, but at this point, he was concerned that his leaving would trigger some sort of wellness alarm. The quarantined chamber was small and dark, a plain room the size of Roman’s closet, with a minimally padded bench to sit on, and numerous sensors and gauges on the walls. At eye level, a monitor set flush in the paneling displayed the helpful hint: Did you know…the human oral microbiome is home to over 6 billion bacteria.
Lee folded his hands in his lap and pressed his lips firmly together.
It had been a bad idea to stop at the health center. He could have been halfway home by now, but instead he was stuck in a dim, pedantic box. While the various sensors scanned and re-scanned him to ensure he wasn’t a plague-carrier, he shut his eyes and tried to figure out his next move. He might as well trigger the Algorithm. No doubt his future spouse had activated hers years ago.
His head throbbed harder. Beneath the whoosh of the filtered ventilation, the sound of distant conversation flowed as the Boomer night nurses gossiped.
“Is that a professor in there?”
“Grad student. You should see the shiner on him. Someone’s husband must’ve shown him the door. Handsome guy like him, still single…they’re always trouble.”
“Better than all those pampered brats looking for speed. Hello, you don’t all have ADHD. If you want to lose weight that bad, get some exercise and skip dessert.”
“Or the ones who haven’t figured out that booze and mid-terms don’t mix.”
The HEPA filter gently wheezed as the nurses moved out of range. Lee strained to hear them. A few moments later, they were back.
“What about that transfer you applied for?” one of them asked as the voices grew closer again.
“I don’t know, I don’t think I can go through with it.”
“I thought it was a huge pay bump, and no more night shifts.”
“Yes, but the taxes would be really messy. Plus, I’d be working in the District.” Lee could practically hear the shudder in her voice from merely entertaining the notion. His reaction was just as visceral. Not disgust, and not fear, but a queasy, anxiety-laden excitement.
As she opened the quarantine chamber door and light flooded in, Lee shielded his eyes. “All right, Mr. Kennedy. Scans are clear.”
He stumbled out of the chamber and followed her into the treatment room, but he hardly heard her.
“I’ve pulled your medical records and got you authorized for an anti-inflammatory.”
He nodded dumbly, having forgotten about his headache, since he was in the midst of a great epiphany. Maybe the university was unwilling to hire him if he wasn’t married….
But the Taxable District had its own schools.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BY THE TIME Lee scored an interview at District Polytechnic Sixty-Two, his bruising had faded to a sickly yellow corona around his eye socket, flecked with cloudy patches of brownish gray. When Mom asked why he was wearing a tie, he said he was meeting with the head of the department, though he neglected to clarify that it wasn’t the department in which he was currently studying. As he made his way out the front door, she caught him by the sleeve, pulled him into a brief hug, and told him, “Good luck.”
He wasn’t sure whether he felt unsettled, or reassured.
The District college couldn’t have looked more different from the Sector university. While Lee’s university was all efficient composite, pleasingly engineered to harmonize with the landscape, the Polytechnic was in a vast, rambling series of structures centuries old. Like everything in the Taxable District, it was patched over many times, with fieldstone cemented into brick, and sheet metal covering fiberglass, patch upon patch in an undulating play of texture and shape. Colors were subdued here, compared to the residential neighborhoods, where bright paint ran riot. And there were no stickers at the bursar’s window. Roman had told him school wasn’t cheap. Apparently, an education couldn’t be funded with water filters or sugar.
If the interviews he’d had in the Sector were anything to go by, Lee expected to meet with a single person. Instead, he was greeted by a team. A young woman from human resources, a woman his parents’ age who was the Provost, and much older man who was the head of Language.
It was the sort of attention Lee would expect at a second interview.
Or the sort of regard one might receive with a Boomer degree.
The HR woman introduced Lee to the group, and the Provost asked him some questions about his transcript. He’d needed to explain himself so many times, to dodge the subject of matriculating by waxing eloquent about the various avenues into which he’d focused his studies, that it was easy enough to fall into the rhythm of his academic narrative. It came so naturally, in fact, that as he spoke, the interviewers might have even forgotten about that horrible yellow-gray bruise. For a little while, at least.
“And you are on track to graduate at the end of this semester?” Professor Clark asked. It was difficult to tell if the head of the department was teasing. First, there was the accent. And then the twinkle in his eye.
Lee chose to answer as if the old man was laughing with him, and not at him. “I only need to finish my thesis.” The creases around the professor’s eyes deepened as his smiled, and Lee added, “If knowing that I had a teaching position waiting for me wasn’t the best incentive, I don’t know what could possibly top it.”
“Of course you’ll finish your thesis,” the Provost said. She had a brisk, no-nonsense manner about her that reminded Lee of his mother. “Even if you didn’t, your transfer credits would earn you the proper credentials here. Unless you’re made of money, we would have given you that degree…” she checked Lee’s transcript. “Two years ago. And if I’m to be honest, I think you’re overqualified.”
Lee’s heartbeat stuttered. He could not afford to blow this interview. “I think my broad study base is a perfect fit for Polytechnic Sixty-Two—”
The old professor cut him off. “Many of your studies were highly theoretical. We focus on practical knowledge here.”
“And the salary,” the HR woman piped in. “It might look good on paper. But even though you’re a resident of the Benefit Sector, you’ll need to pay income tax if you work here.”
“Yes, of course,” Lee said. “Otherwise Boomers would just roll in and take all the jobs.” He spoke so candidly without thinking—scrambling to salvage yet another tanking in
terview—but it was when he acknowledged the politics of being a Boomer that the energy in the room shifted.
The Provost said, “When we hire, we’re not just looking for someone to convey the subject matter. We want a professor who’s an inspiration. A mentor. Someone willing to build a long-term relationship with students, beyond what you can achieve in a single semester.
“Listen,” Lee said, “I know you think I’m just looking to round out my teaching credentials to land a better job in the Sector, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m at a major turning point in my life, a crossroads, and I’m tired of playing it safe. I want to be myself, I want to live my life, and teaching here is the best way to do it.”
Too personal for a job interview, to be sure. The Provost and HR woman frowned, but the canny professor leaned in and said, “And what does your wife think of this career path?”
“I’m not married.”
Understanding dawned on all three academics. The particulars? Maybe, maybe not. But it was plain that giving Lee a professorship was about so much more than a paycheck, and whatever the reason, he yearned for the intrinsic right for which the first Tax Rats had traded their benefits generations ago.
Freedom.
The professor said, “I think Mr. Kennedy’s expertise would greatly expand our Language Arts department.”
The Provost considered. “A provisional agreement on both sides, then. After the first semester, check in and see if we really are a good fit for each other. And if so, a long-term contract.”
The HR woman shook her head. “I can’t stress enough that once you take out taxes, the pay here is nothing like what you’d earn in the Benefit Sector. Many of our faculty get more value from the family tuition discount than their paycheck.”
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