by Melissa Faye
It didn’t work like that in a community. People always socialized with their own color groups with very few exceptions. I knew other people made the same promises I made to Abe, but I was sure it would be different.
I ended up with a Gold career assignment: medicine. Abe ended up in Bronze: factory work. He was assigned before me alphabetically, and I saw his face drop when the Chancellor read his assignment aloud. A council member attached his insignia to his shirt, and Abe’s shoulders hunched over to cover it as he slowly walked to join the other Bronzes in the audience. I tried to catch his eye but couldn’t.
After the ceremony, Abe avoided me and met up with some other guys who’d been assigned Bronze. I caught up with him the next day before we moved to our new color assignment dorms.
“Factory workers do ok,” I said. I smiled broadly, hoping to get him caught up in any kind of enthusiasm. “Really! I think someone’s mentor worked in the factory in town. He got really fit. Muscular. He had all the girls after him.” I grinned again, but Abe just stared back at me.
“I don’t want to be friends anymore,” he said. He squared his shoulders and crossed his arms. We were standing right outside our dorm rooms where we had hung out so often over the last several years. “I think...we’re not going to see each other anymore. It’s not worth trying.”
He turned to go into his room and I went after him. “That’s stupid!” I cried. I squeezed my mouth shut; that’s what people said about Bronze and Grays. That they were less intelligent than the rest of us. “We can still –“
“You’re right. It is stupid. I guess I’m not as smart as a Gold.” Abe’s eyes glanced down at my insignia for just a second. “Why don’t you go hang out with your own?”
He pushed me out of his room and slammed the door in my face.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Yami and I sharing a tent could have been strange, but given the scarcity of resources, it was hard to avoid. I liked it a lot, and though she liked to complain, I knew Yami enjoyed it too. After meeting the second Etta, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. In our tent, I could talk more openly. Privacy was hard to come by in the camp. There weren’t that many people, but all the tents were huddled too close to one another.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I asked Yami while I tried to straighten out the blankets and pillows that were taking over the tent’s small floor space. She’d just finished messaging with Vonna and was the happiest I’d seen her since Hope was born. “Two Ettas. Both with kids. I can’t get over it. Are there more? Is there some Etta out there who’s sixty who has a kid who’s...I don’t know, thirty?”
“Maybe,” Yami said. She watched me try to fix up the space without bothering to help. I was making a mess, trying to smooth wrinkles that wouldn’t be smoothed. I couldn’t see Yami as she knelt behind me, but it was like I could almost hear her smirking. When I finished, we lay down on our backs and stared at the nylon ceiling.
“And there could be other Brecks out there with kids,” I said. “Who knows?”
“Yeah,” said Yami. “I’ve been wondering that, too. If Etta and Etta 2 are fertile, maybe Breck’s clones are too.”
“Etta 2?” I teased. I sat up on my elbow to look at Yami better. “I don’t think she’d like that name. If she’s like our Etta, she isn’t going to let you get away with that.”
Yami laughed. “It’s what I’ve been calling her in my head! What did you call her?”
“I called her Etta,” I said. “I like Etta 2, actually. Maybe there’s an Etta 3. And a Breck 2. All with kids.”
“But we don’t know,” Yami said. She sat up and folded her legs in front of herself. “Teo’s dad is someone else. Which means Etta can have kids, and Breck can, and another clone can. Does it always work by clone line, or is it something else? Can Breck have kids if he wasn’t with Etta?”
“Wouldn’t it have to work by clone line?” I said. “I’m not sure about Breck, but it can’t be a coincidence that both Ettas have kids.”
“Maybe...” Yami’s wheels were turning, but we didn’t know as much about cloning or fertility research as the others. We didn’t have the training to work this through. “It could still be an external factor. Etta and Etta 2 could be predisposed to...I don’t know, spending more time in the sun...than other clones are.”
I opened up my TekCast to look at my latest messages. Omer and I had started talking more since I left. After our escape from Young Woods, the community was riled up, and Omer was planning the Underground’s next move. We told him about Etta 2 right after we met her, and he seemed interested, though not as excited as any of us. I sent a message asking about the progress, if there was any, in the F-Lab. After the Underground told the entire community that the work of the F-Lab was a hoax, I was curious to see if they had found a way to get it working again.
“Omer isn’t that interested in fertility,” Yami said as she read over my shoulder. “But he should be. It’s all related, isn’t it? Communities, color assignments, cloning, solving the fertility crisis. It’s all one big mess of a problem.”
I waited for Omer’s response. “Yeah, it’s all the same. Omer wants to change the way the communities are set up, but he can’t ignore the fertility issue. Have you seen how Teo and Etta acted around each other? I mean, Etta 2? I’ve never seen anything like that. You and Vonna were close, but –“
I closed my mouth tightly and held my breath for a moment. Yami had only just heard back from Vonna, but she still felt guilty about getting her mentee involved in all of this. I didn’t mean to bring it up.
Yami played with one of her black curls and looked away. “Yeah, we were close,” she said, her voice wobbling, “but this was different. It would have been nice to have that, I think. We all missed out on having parents.”
Omer responded and I held up the TekCast so Yami could read along on the holoscreen. Its pink glow lit up the tent, dark now in the starlight. “Keep me posted. Gathering support over here. Something drastic.”
Yami groaned and collapsed backwards onto the blanket. “Drastic? What’s he going to do that’s drastic?”
“Not something he would message me about,” I said. “Hey, look where I am with the messaging workaround.”
I’d been working for several days straight on a program that would make our messages untraceable. There were a few other programmers at the camp who helped out. None of us knew enough, but together I thought we were almost there. I wanted to close a few more holes in the code that could let someone hack in. I couldn’t make it perfect, but we could at least get close.
“It’ll work with a log in,” I said. Yami watched as I opened up the program and entered the dummy password we made. “Once you log in, you can see your contacts. You can use any TekCast to send a message from your log-in as long as you enter a few lines of code in the TekCast’s...well, I’ll show you. The only problem is that if someone doesn’t have the program, we can’t contact them through it.”
Yami was silent. Her face was unreadable. I realized what was wrong. She wouldn’t be able to message Vonna safely.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said quickly. I popped my TekCast closed, eyeing the glowing gold border that framed the white device. Yami glanced at her own, which had a gray border since she was fired from her medical internship. It was something else I avoided talking about. “We have to stay in touch with Omer still, right? I won’t let the program shut out everyone completely. I’ll make it work.”
I COULDN’T ALWAYS MAKE it work. I couldn’t convince Abe to be my friend anymore. I was mostly in classes with other Golds, and all of us were struggling to maintain old relationships. One by one, they gave in. It just couldn’t happen. I had to give up too. Abe wouldn’t look at me when we passed in the school building or dorms. The divisions between kids in different color assignments grew over time. By our second year in high class, I only talked with other Golds. We all looked away when a group of
our former friends walked by. Some of my classmates started teasing kids who weren’t Gold. They’d say mean things when no one else was around about how the others weren’t as smart as us, or as worthy as us. It made me feel a little sick, but I didn’t push back. I laughed along with them.
There were stereotypes about Golds too. About how we were arrogant or boring. One time I was walking home from a park by myself when a few older kids, Bronzes, walked past. “Look,” one of them said as he nodded in my direction. “A Gold, all by himself. I guess he wasn’t smart enough to find any friends.”
The other guys laughed. “Maybe he’s too busy studying to learn how to interact with other human beings.”
The last time I tried to talk to Abe was the day he somehow ended up in the Gold dorm’s common room one evening. I wasn’t sure why he came. Sometimes kids would dare each other to visit other color assignment’s buildings, but no one ever went through with it. I knew Abe was brave, but not that brave.
“Who let the Bronze in?” one of my friends said, leaning over the table where our TekCasts and papers were laid out.
“Probably got lost,” one of the others said. I grinned but kept my head low.
“Hey! Bronze!” the first kid yelled loudly. Everyone looked up. Abe stood a few feet from the door. I could see how miserable he must have felt. He froze in place, one hand out as if he was too nervous to reach back for the door and run. “Who let you in here?”
Everyone at my table laughed, so I laughed too.
“Look at him!” someone shouted from another table. “He’s scared of us!” The kid stood up. His name was Hollis; he was in cloning research. “Abe, right? Abe, what are you doing here? You don’t get to just walk into a Gold building without permission.” Laughter spread across the room. “Why do you think they bother cloning Bronzes, Abe? Do you think it’s worth it anymore?”
Abe finally noticed me. We made eye contact from across the room. I looked around at my classmates. They had a mixture of amusement and embarrassment written on their faces. I stood and walked slowly towards my former best friend, keeping to the sides of the room to avoid attention.
“Abe, wait –“ I picked up my pace when he turned away. He walked out, letting the door shut on my face. I turned around and returned to my table. The guys stared at me; I had gone against the herd.
“Just thought I’d see if he needed help getting home,” I said with a smile. I felt another wave of nausea pass through me, but the guys laughed.
I GOT TO SPEND MORE time with the two Ettas. We listened to them compare their life stories and tried to convince them to let us run tests. The camp didn’t have much laboratory equipment, but Breck and I were at least temporarily entertained when the women let us take hair samples and look at them under a poorly functioning microscope. The only thing it showed us was that, as we knew, they were clones.
“If we had access to real equipment, and could run actual tests...” Breck thought aloud. We were alone in the medical tent. Yami had left with the Ettas to show Teo around the camp and encourage him to make friends with the adults. The camp members would love him.
Hope lay resting in Breck’s lap, sucking on a corner of a blanket. We pushed aside the test samples. I pulled open my TekCast so we could look at the message program prototype I was working on.
“This is great,” Breck said. “We can talk to Omer, but also talk to other Underground members around the region. Maybe the country. If only we had better methods of transportation. It would be best to show this sort of thing to people in person.”
“And get more supplies,” I said. “I’d like better equipment to compare Etta and Hope’s genetic materials.”
“We could probably get into a community that has what we need,” Breck said thoughtfully. He scratched his chin. His stubble was growing more pronounced. “We’ve done it before. We could do it again.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “I think Yami would sooner murder us herself before she would let us take the risk of going to a nearby community again. At least not for about...ten years.”
Chapter 4 – Yami
It was only a few days before Teo became something like the camp mascot. He was talkative and energetic. He had dozens of questions about the camp and about Etta. He was desperate to see Hope as much as possible, and doted on her.
“He brought her this,” Etta showed me one afternoon after Etta 2 and Teo had been at the camp for about a week. She held out a little dream catcher made from twigs and string. I turned it over in my hand. He had done a good job with it. The strings were all different colors and the twigs were attached securely. It was a nice decoration for a dull looking camp.
In Young Woods, we’d been surrounded by children. They ran amok after school hours, back and forth through different neighborhoods and parks, and occasionally were scolded by adults. I didn’t realize how different this felt until I saw Teo’s work.
“Where are you going to put it?” I asked, handing it back. Etta and Breck took over a corner of the hospital tent. We didn’t have the space to spare, but there weren’t better ideas for how to house Hope. For now, Etta and Breck could sleep on one of the medical beds and Hope slept on a little cart someone had turned into a crib. Etta 2 was a big help; she shared the things that worked and didn’t work when Teo was first born.
Etta hung the dream catcher on the wall of tent right above Hope’s crib using a piece of medical tape. It was the only piece of artwork I’d seen since we left Young Woods.
“We should ask him to make other things to hang around the camp,” I said. “It looks nice.”
“Maybe more dream catchers,” Etta said. “Maybe the adults should make some too. I can’t remember the last time I...drew a picture. Or read a book that wasn’t about childbirth, actually.”
Etta needed a lot of rest after the pregnancy so she was officially off work duty until Matana and I decided it would be ok. She never complained about any discomfort, though, and always wanted to help more. She decided she would walk around camp one day with paper and pencils and make everyone draw something. I thought it was a waste of time, but I wasn’t going to stop her.
“Why would you stop her?” Charlie asked that night in our tent. “People will like that. It’s like adult elementary school. It’s different.”
I snorted. “Different, yes.” I rearranged some of the blankets to get more comfortable before lying down next to Charlie. “Can you imagine Sven drawing a picture of...his old community? Where his wife was killed? Or the time he was assigned to a Bronze career and a poor salary with a lower life expectancy...”
Charlie leaned in and kissed me long and hard. His soft, hungry lips pressed against mine until I gave in and kissed him back. He wrapped one hand around my back and held my cheek with the other.
I tried to lean back. “But if Etta’s going to –“
Charlie leaned in again. My chest fluttered as he pressed himself against me. He smelled like the garden, where he’d been working all day. I breathed him in deeply. His skin felt smooth and warm, and he held me now in both of his arms. His lips reached for mine and his fingertips cradled my head. My hand drifted behind him, where I pushed his shirt out of the way to grip his lower back. My lips finally parted.
I couldn’t get a sense for my own feelings when Charlie finally pulled away. Being with him was nothing like being with my ex-boyfriend Ben. Ben was intelligent, more than anyone else I knew, and ambitious. He was also boring and rude. Being with him felt inevitable: he invited me to a dance and I said yes. Then we just kept seeing each other. I didn’t enjoy it very much, but I still did it. My memories were overshadowed, though, by his betrayal when he told Chancellor Lorenzo the location of where we were hiding with Etta and Breck.
But with Charlie, it was almost like the opposite was true. I had to be with him because we shared a tent, but every day I chose to live with him and be with him in a much deeper way than I’d ever been with Ben. Choosing Charlie every day meant choosing a life that wa
s less serious and more fun. He had chipped away all those pieces of me that kept me from caring about others outside of my few friends. I cared about him, and he made me a better person. I couldn’t imagine being at the camp without him.
We wordlessly decided to go to sleep. The night air was chilly, so I got under the covers. Charlie packed me in tightly, tucking the blankets in around me until I was one long bundle with a mass of black curls coming out of the top. He put his arms around me and pressed himself into my back. We fell asleep.
ETTA SPENT THE NEXT day just as she planned, collecting “art” from as many campers as she could convince. Etta was easy to get along with, and easy to fall for, so she ended up with many more samples than I expected. She showed them to me at lunch.
“I asked people to make anything, but that wasn’t working,” she said. She spread out all the papers on the table. Charlie came to sit with us and grinned at the sight of the camp artwork. Breck was watching Hope in the medical tent. “So then I asked them to draw something from their old home that they really loved.”
“I bet that went over well...” I mumbled. Etta ignored me.
“Someone made a good point, that people came here to escape their old communities,” she continued. “So I started asking people to draw something here at the camp that they love. There’s a lot of good stuff here!”
I inspected the artwork. Etta had found colored pencils in the Resource Tent, so the pictures were bright and cheerful. Most of the images were recognizable. There were several pictures of the landscape – the trees and mountains we could see from the camp with fluffy clouds and a bright sun. There were pictures of the gardens, or pictures of groups of tents decorated with colorful fabrics and the owl symbol everyone knew. There were drawings of people in the camp smiling and laughing.
