“I don’t want to talk, bitch! I want to sire an heir! Approve me now, or I swear to you, your little staffer here will never have a chance to deny another man his God given right to procreate!”
Behind me, I heard one of my colleagues say quietly into the intercom, “Security, we have a Code 2 on floor 7. Repeat: Code 2, floor 7. Situation urgent.”
We have a range of security-related emergency codes, from 1 (shots fired) through 12 (verbal threats). A Code 2 is a potentially fatal gun emergency. And, unfortunately, we encounter too many occasions to use these codes.
“What’s that?” Anselm demanded, moving his gun from his hostage to my colleague. “What did you just say? Who are you talking to?”
Faced pointblank with a (quite possibly) loaded gun in the hands of a raging denied-applicant, my colleague swayed, crumpled, and fainted. He hit the carpeted floor with a thud. I winced in sympathy.
“Security knows where you are and what you’re doing,” I said to Anselm. “So why don’t you just—”
“Who’s in charge here?” he bellowed.
“I am,” I said, “and I really think you should calm—”
“You? You’re in charge?” Anselm let go of his hostage, leaped at me, and stuck his gun in my face. I thought I felt my heart stop as I looked into the barrel, noticed it was wobbling, and realized Anselm’s hand was shaking. I uttered an involuntary little whimper when his finger seemed to tighten on the trigger.
“Don’t shoot,” I choked out.
“Approve my application!” he demanded.
“With a score of 47%? I can’t. Even if I wanted to—”
“Issue me a permit, bitch, or DIE!” Anselm screamed into my face.
“System... computerized... impossible to cheat...” My throat was so tight I was pushing out each word as a breathless grunt, unable to form coherent sentences.
“Bullshit!” Anselm shouted.
Where the hell was security? How had Anselm made it all the way to the 7th floor with a gun, a hostage, and homicidal intent? We really needed to conduct a full review of security systems and services here.
Thinking fast—imminent death focuses the mind remarkably well—I said, trying to control my fear-fueled frantic breathing, “Wait, there is a way. Manual override.”
“Huh?”
“We do this with... with paper and pen.” I took a steadying breath and gave him a reassuring half-smile. “The old-fashioned way.”
“That’ll work?” he asked with a suspicious frown.
“I’ve done it before,” I lied. “May I?”
I gestured to a clipboard I saw sitting on a nearby desk. When Anselm nodded, I walked over and picked it up. It was an order form for Girl Scout cookies; one of my colleagues has an eleven-year-old daughter. I picked up a pen and made some nonsense notations on the cookie order sheet. Then I turned to Anselm and offered him the pen and the clipboard.
“I’ll need you to enter you name here, please,” I said.
Anselm frowned suspiciously for another moment, then he lowered the gun to shift it to his other hand so he could take the pen from me.
At that moment, heavily armed security guards wearing body armor—who must have been monitoring us on closed-circuit television after hearing the Code 2 alert—came barreling around the corners on either side of us, screaming, “FREEZE! DO NOT MOVE! DO NOT MOVE! FREEZE!”
Being too foolish to have the faintest idea what he’d unleashed with his reckless behavior and lethal threats, Anselm panicked, dropped the gun, and was facedown on the floor within seconds, being restrained and handcuffed.
I backed away shakily and leaned against a desk as I pressed a hand to my pounding heart. The employee Anselm had brought here as his hostage sank to the floor and sat there in a quivering heap.
“I’m resigning,” she said. “I can’t take this job. I just can’t take it! This is the second time this has happened to me—and I’ve only been here since April! The second time! I’m going to see if I can transfer to DEA. Or maybe Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I hear those jobs are quieter.”
“Most jobs are quieter than population control,” I admitted. “But we have the most important mission on the planet. Don’t forget that.”
As Anselm was hauled to his feet, he railed at me, “I got a right to reproduce. You can’t take that away from me, no matter what your stupid laws say!”
“Mr. Anselm,” I said, “with a Level 1 score of 47%, under federal law, you don’t even have a right to own a dog, never mind sire a child. Which is a moot point,” I added, “now that your ill-advised attempt to prove your worthiness to procreate means that you’ll spend the next ten years in a federal prison.”
“I’ll reproduce anyhow,” he shouted. “You can’t stop me!”
“No, I can’t,” I agreed. “But a judge can sentence you to twenty more years for procreating without a permit.” The international protocols were very clear on the importance of penalizing non-compliance through legal sanctions.
Anselm was still bellowing threats and curses at me as he was hauled away. And to think he had come here intending to ensure that his genetic material would carry on after his death. As if this overburdened planet needed more people like him.
I shook my head in weary exasperation, helped the quivering employee off the floor, and then returned to reviewing progress reports on our L3 cases. Over-population is too urgent a problem for me to take the rest of the day off work just because of an incident like this.
So you see, like I said, despite the great benefits package, this job is no picnic. But we do important work here—work that will save the world.
***
“To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values—there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally—and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing.”
—Isaac Asimov
Introduction to “Flight of Little Bird”
An award-winning speechwriter, competitive performer and actor, Stephanie Writt studied and interned as an assistant teacher at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City. While she lived in New York, Stephanie also worked professionally in two Off-Broadway plays. Stephanie has been writing fiction professionally since 2011.
And she definitely knows of what she writes, as mentioned here: “Once upon a time, a fifteen-year-old girl with a stutter had the guts to audition for an acting part in a one-act play. On opening night, she nailed every line with a strong, articulate voice.
“I’ve performed in twenty-six plays, including the two Off-Broadway ones mentioned above. But one of my greatest successes occurred while I taught business skills through theatre to at-risk youth. One opening night, a proud and newly confident fifteen-year-old girl, fresh from her acting debut, wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug, thanking me with profound joy, a bunch of bouncing, and not a little squealing.
“That moment still shines golden in both our memories.”
Few inventions have transformed how humanity lives, works, and interacts more than the Internet. While that sounds like a simple statement, the reality is far more complex. As recent events in the Middle East have shown, the Web is a powerful tool for engineering social change…and the actions of a single person can ripple around the world, as our next story reveals.
Flight of Little Bird
Stephanie Writt
Heartfelt music swelled and crackled from dumpster-scavenged computer speakers as Tara sucked the last bit of soy sauce off her chopsticks. Forcing the bite of barbeque pork fried rice past the lump in her throat, she watched the computer screen fade to black over the giganto gap-toothed grin of a cute (of course) kid with a face that glowed like he’d just been handed the world (which he had). Tara growled at her susceptibleness to Facebook mush stories and slammed her chipped blue polish fingernail onto her keyboard. It was the fourth time she’d watched that video in as many days. But the damn kid’s
goofy grin wouldn’t leave her alone.
Suddenly, pop-up ads bombarded her screen, blinking in a mocking halo at her emotional weakness.
“Stupid, craptastic, canker rotten, filthy ad monkeys,” Tara ranted, swirling her mouse in a futile attempt to clean her screen of the viral pop-up evil. One overly aggressive jerk of her hand launched her dinner off her desk. The white box trailed a hail of greasy pork, fried rice, and bean sprouts as it bounced off the purple wall and landed upside down (of course) in a dust bunny warren behind her desk.
It hadn’t been good fried rice. But it had been her fried rice. Her Friday night treat she used as a carrot to not spend extra money all week. Not that she had much. Just enough. Barely just enough.
A slew of curses—the real tangy ones that lingered in the air like oily smoke—rose to Tara’s lips. She ducked underneath the desk, her tiny body easily fitting in the small space as she scavenged half a box of rice, letting the dust bunnies have the rest. Usually, she hated the small, worthless feeling of insignificance. But tonight she welcomed the tucked and cuddled feeling of being surrounded. Covered. Protected.
Tara hugged her knees, stuck her nose between them, and watched her toes wiggle inside her socks. One blood red with a shooting star on her ankle. The other black-and-white stripes that ringed up her calf like a raccoon tail. She focused on her toes, wiggle-wiggle.
But that smiling face, the gaping grin. That happy, proud strength…
Her stomach roiled. Jealousy.
The tears threatened.
Why had she clicked on that damn video?
She knew why. A sucker. Just like everyone else. A sucker for a good story. A happy story. A bright light of hope in a life lacking. In a self lacking.
Tara launched herself out from under her desk. She would not get all weak and blubbery over a damn happy ending story. A ten-year-old boy who had worked hard, went for his dream, and just before he lost hope—would have lost himself—someone stepped in and told him he could do it. And the boy did. The boy didn’t give up. Didn’t settle.
Didn’t live in a one bedroom leaky piece-a-crap located inside hell’s butt crack. Didn’t work at a soul-swallowing call center where she hated every second, but begged to work more hours whenever they cut her schedule. Didn’t want to be more, so much more, and had no idea how to do it.
Back up and on her feet, Tara trudged to her fridge tucked into her closet-sized kitchen. Door open, fried rice in, door closed. Tara’s hand lingered on the fridge handle.
Dirty fingerprints all over it. She should clean it.
Tara didn’t move.
Her brain spun and spun while trying to keep the boy’s happy grin at bay.
Wanted to be so much more, but didn’t know how…
Something itched and tickled in her thoughts, an idea almost formed. The fragmented bits swam between her ears. She waited—patient, tense, frozen—for the delicate pieces to come together. The idea to change her life, to give her purpose. Almost there…almost…
A car horn blared from the street below, and a rowdy patron of the restaurant downstairs answered with a belligerent string of words that made little sense.
The sounds blasted the idea pieces from Tara’s mind.
Her hand dropped from the fridge handle.
Dammit.
***
“Hey, old man,” Tara grumbled at her right hand cube wall as she swung her backpack under the desk. She let go just in time to smack the bottom of her front cube wall, her morning greeting to her other cube mate. A mountain of red curls, shiny with hairspray, rose over the cube wall in front of Tara as she booted up her snail-slow computer and the TV set they called a monitor that took up half her desk. Tara blew a giant, sugary, watermelon bubble gum bubble at the tarantula eyelashes that pulled two bright blue eyes over the cube wall to glare back at her.
“Tara,” the red-haired spider mountain said in a flat voice that threatened to sneer at any second.
“Ms. Betsy.” Tara gave the exact same back.
She hoped, prayed even (not sure to who, whoever was available, she guessed), that this once, after months of this ritual, Ms. Betsy would finally stop talking to her. To stop “forgiving” Tara for being who she was (annoying, young, obnoxious—Ms. Betsy’s list of her sad faults went on and on), and feeling the need, the compulsion, to ‘help’ Tara by telling her exactly who she should be.
Tara let the fruity air seep from the popped gum bubble as it deflated to hang in a pink drape out of her mouth. She couldn’t see it, but knew Ms. Betsy pursed her lips. Her perturbed look. Tara smiled, sucked her gum into her mouth, and chewed it with a loud smack, smack, smack.
“Good morning, Ms. Betsy.” A smooth, deep voice breathed between Tara and the scolding eyes. A salt-and-pepper head had just topped the cube wall on Tara’s right. “That is a lovely top you are wearing. Is it new?”
Tara rolled her eyes, but silently thanked her rescuer as the two of them bantered above her head. Old man with a cane he may be, but he had a voice of buttered granite and Santa’s gift bag full of charm. He swooped in and saved Tara from Ms. Betsy on many occasions. She had no idea why. Entertainment, she figured. Gave him something to do between mind-numbing calls in the cube farm of society’s rejected refuse.
“—so touching. You should really watch it. So moving.” The tarantulas were leaking. “The little boy had worked so hard.” Ms. Betsy sniffed wetly. Kinda gross. Kinda chunky.
Tara fought a gag.
“I will look that up. Thank you for your recommendation. A little hope is always a good thing.” The charm-woven dismissal sent Ms. Betsy into a flutter that submerged her behind the cube wall.
“Thank you,” Tara mouthed at Doug, her old knight on a shining walker. Well, not yet.
“And what lovely accouterments are you sporting today, little bird?” Doug asked.
Tara glanced down her own body. White boy’s t-shirt that clung to very little in the chest area, and girl’s jeans with brown glue circles where she had pried off the bedazzled glitter around the pockets. Nope, nothing to catch a man’s eye. Even if he was a generation and some change her senior. She wasn’t too butt-hurt, ‘cause he looked down at her feet. And the show she hid there.
“We-llll…” Tara drawled out as she pulled up her pant legs one at a time, “In the left corner, we have zebra stripes with googlie eyes on the toes.” She wiggled the toes she had slid out of her scuffed and holey maroon low-top tennis shoes. The black disks inside the clear, plastic bubbles on her big and pinky toes circled and spun with much googlie eye silliness.
“Distinguished,” Doug said.
“Very,” Tara replied with a final toe wiggle. “And in this corner we have polar bears. Sans sunglasses and a coke.”
Doug studied her foot like a scientist considering his latest specimen. She wanted him to rub his goatee like a villain and raise his eyebrow. It always made her laugh. But he only did that on special occasions. Like birthdays, and Tuesdays (their Friday). Since it was only Saturday (their Tuesday) she would have to wait three more days. She loved to see his eyes crinkle in the corners with laughter. Unlike the all too usual crinkles of pain there.
“The powder blue really sets off the black dots in their eyes. Emphasizes the dusky undertones of their fur. Speaks to their melancholy of the seal that got away.” Doug said with wrinkled brow seriousness.
Tara snorted.
The blare of the workday warning buzzer drowned out anything else either of them would have said. The scattered call center ants began their flutter shuffle to their assigned cubbies to await pissed off customer floodgates. Only the necessity of food and shelter drove most of them to sit down, strap in, and hang on for the ridicule ride. Though sometimes that wasn’t even enough, and someone snapped at the supervisor, at a customer, at a co-worker, at the little green men or whatever and left. And left the rest of them to another day.
Tara sighed up at Doug.
Doug winked at her with a green twinkle, then h
is head receded behind the cube wall.
After throwing away her gum, Tara turned to face her cubical, stark and empty by company policy (no personality allowed) and discovered she was smiling. Her chest sighed as a little bit of the tightness of last night eased. Breathed.
A gap-toothed grin that could light up a room shone in her memory.
Tara’s chest re-seized and her eyes stung.
What the heck and jam? The kid and his joy would not leave her alone. He had haunted her dreams, and her body still ached from the lack of sleep and all her tossing and turning. And she’d been so hungry she’d eaten her leftover fried rice cold. Barely decent warm—definitely not good cold.
The announcer’s voice, or narrator or whatever he was, repeated in her head over the image of the boy grinning. “Just when he was about to give up on his dream, one man’s small gesture of support restored Peter’s confidence. The confidence that led the boy to his own success. We expect to see great things from him. But I wonder who Peter would have become without one stranger’s random act of kindness.”
I wonder who Peter would have become…
Flashes of memory dotted Tara’s vision. Pink tights and tutus. Shiny brass balance bars sprouting from mirrored walls that reached up to the heavens. And light. So many soft, white sunbeams that warmed the caramel silk hardwood floors. A place where tiny was welcomed, embraced. A place where if you worked hard enough, you could fly one day...
“Someday I’ll be a professional ballerina, mama.”
“No you won’t!” Followed by harsh laughter.
I wonder who I would have become if one person, just one—
The phone buzzed, shattering the bubble world she was dancing in. She grunted and fumbled to shove the phone earpiece into her ear.
Fiction River: How to Save the World Page 9
