Natasha stood rooted in place as the shower room door banged shut. Could this mean what she thought it meant? Had Jeffrey done it? Had he actually done this for her? The Alphas held him in such high esteem, and if he had fought for her, he may have been able to get her through. Her body, damp and steaming from the heat, tingled with excitement. Out of love, he would have made it happen, a quieter voice within her said, because Jeffrey understood her, because her happiness brought him happiness too. Several seconds had passed now, enough to ensure that Claudia would be gone from the hall, and Natasha burst out of the shower room and rushed to her sleeproom, the tie of her robe dragging behind her and her feet sloshing in her shoes.
Min-he was dressed for work; she was hurriedly making her bed and stuffing papers into a file.
“There you are,” said Min-he. “I didn’t think you’d gone up to the Dome already. You missed Eric. He came around looking for you.”
“Did he seem upset?”
“Actually, he seemed kind of giddy. Smug too, but that’s just Eric.”
“You didn’t see a message come in for me, did you?”
“I hadn’t noticed—”
But at that moment, Natasha’s wallcomputer began to flash blue. Only once had it done that before: when Natasha had received her assignment in the Office of Mercy.
“Natasha,” Min-he whispered, her eyes widening with alarm. “A personal message from the Alphas.”
“I know.” Natasha quickly entered her password. The text filled the screen, overriding the usual arrangement of icons. Min-he rushed to her side, reading over her shoulder.
Natasha Wiley,
You have been selected to serve as one of the six members of the Crane Recovery team. The object of your mission is to (1) ensure the cleanliness and efficiency of the Crane sweep, (2) replace the sensors destroyed by the blast, and (3) document the site of the sweep for the Archives. As you know, a Recovery team would usually deploy within a week of the sweep. However, given the presence of the Pine Tribe in the field, this is impossible. The team will therefore await deployment until after the Pines have left the area, either by the Tribe’s own volition or, we hope, by the force of a sweep.
Beginning tomorrow morning, you will stop your regular shifts in the Office of Mercy and report instead to Pod G11 in the Pretends for group training, both morning and afternoon-shifts.
The members of the team are: Jeffrey Montague, Office of Mercy; Eric Johansson, Office of Mercy; Natasha Wiley, Office of Mercy; Alejandra Rodriguez, Extra-Settlement Engineering; Nolan al-Rashid, Extra-Settlement Engineering; and Douglas Truman, Office of Land and Water Management.
Eternally Yours, Alphas/deptofgov
“I’m going Outside,” said Natasha.
“I can’t believe it,” said Min-he. “You and Eric too. You’re only Epsilons.”
“I wonder if it posted to the maincomputer yet.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Natasha had just pinched the last fastening of her shirt when a knock thudded at the door.
“Finally!” Eric said, with a grin that threatened to leap from his face. “You saw the message then? Alpha believe it, I don’t regret the day we got assigned to Jeffrey’s team. Poor Yasmine, though, she always seems to get the short end of the deal. It’s her fault, I think. She doesn’t show the same dedication as you and me. Remember the time Jeffrey caught her playing Monkey-Go-Huntin’ during the nightshift?”
“So I guess we’re friends again,” Natasha said. She laughed, genuinely happy that she and Eric had made the team together, and not only because it meant that she was spared his indignation.
“When weren’t we friends?” Eric asked. “Come on, I think I hear the elephant. They’re going to post upstairs any minute.”
A small crowd had gathered in the Dome, drawn there by the rumor of an Alpha announcement. “I hear they’re upping the meat serving to three times a week,” Maria Chávez was telling a suspicious-looking Tom Doncaster, who headed the Farms. A huddled group of doctors were shooting meaningful looks at one another, as if they suspected the announcement indubitably had to do with their Department. The clock switched to 0730 and the morning bulletins came up on the screen. For a moment it was quiet while the citizens read an abbreviated version of what had appeared on Natasha’s wallcomputer—and then Natasha and Eric were being jostled from every direction; a swarm of their fellow Epsilons having converged upon them.
“It’s about time they gave us important assignments!” someone was saying near Natasha’s ear.
“Not the babies anymore, are we? What with the Zetas coming—”
“You deserve it,” said Min-he, her round, friendly face flushed with excitement. She squeezed Natasha’s arm, and Natasha gave her a grateful smile.
The anxious and jubilant faces parted to let someone through: Jeffrey. He looked both happy and complacent and Natasha beamed at him. He was the one to thank for all of this. For one wild moment, Natasha imagined taking a running step forward and throwing herself into his arms and telling him, really telling him, how it meant everything to her that he had brought this dream to life.
“Good luck,” Jeffrey said, shaking Eric’s hand first. “The Alphas are behind you.”
“Thanks, Jeffrey,” Eric said. “Thanks a lot.”
Jeffrey turned next to Natasha. He took her hand and she stepped as close to him as she dared, with so many people watching. As their touch loosened, though, Natasha noticed that his smile was a little strained.
“Don’t tell me you regret this,” she said quietly. “It’s too late for that.”
“Not at all, not at all. Who am I to argue with the choice of our superiors? You should be proud of yourself, Natasha,” he added in a more serious tone. “The Alphas do not take these matters lightly, and neither do I. You would not be on this mission if anyone doubted your potential in the field.”
“I don’t know, I bet I can name a few,” said Eric, nudging Natasha in the ribs.
Natasha looked, expecting to see Claudia Kim. But instead, she followed Eric’s gaze to a tight group of Deltas standing to the side of the elephant doors. At the center of the group was Raj Radhakrishnan, a lean man with deeply set eyes and caramel skin so smooth that it seemed untouched by bioreplacement. Natasha had never spoken to Raj in any meaningful way, but she did know a little about him. Raj had served as Min-he’s director in the Archives until the Alphas had abruptly transferred him to level nine—to the Electricity and Piping crews. His name came up now and then in the Office of Mercy, though never in a very friendly light. Raj was one of the only citizens in America-Five who openly objected to the existence of sweeps. Natasha did not know the details of his views, only that he had called for the abolition of the Office of Mercy on several occasions. She had heard similar rumors about the Delta men and women surrounding him now, though nothing so extreme. From across the room, Natasha picked out their faces: Mercedes Laplace, Eduardo Castilla, Benjamin Rook, and Sarah O’Keefe. She thought that Mercedes and Sarah both worked in Health. Eduardo’s winning smile she recognized from one of the current construction teams, and also from when he’d had a long-standing romantic relationship with her favorite childhood doctor, a man named Malcolm Finn. Ben Rook was a nervous, small-boned man who tended the beehives and vegetable gardens in the Department of Agriculture, and who rarely spoke more than five words together. He and Sarah were a couple, Natasha did know that for sure, one of the eccentric few who had a sleeproom together.
As Raj finished speaking, he rubbed his hand slowly over his mouth, a sad, serious gesture strikingly at odds with the mirthful crowd around him. Raj was a distinctive man, most people agreed, even outside his views on the Office of Mercy. He had a quiet, appraising way about him that made him seem too intelligent to laugh at, yet too reserved to merit much in the way of kindness or general cordiality.
“Try not to worry about
them,” Jeffrey told Eric and Natasha, shaking his head. “There’s always going to be dissent in a free society. But they’ll get over their petty selfishness soon enough. A couple of nights looking over the Ethical Code wouldn’t harm them either. Be conscious of the universe and let it overwhelm the personal and the particular,” he added, quoting from the final chapter.
The tide of people was moving toward the Dining Hall, and Natasha, Eric, and Jeffrey moved with it. The new team had converged at one of the tables, their trays of biscuits and gravy and coffee growing cold as they stood at their seats shaking hands all around. Natasha did not know Douglas Truman or Nolan Al-Rashid very well, but she liked them both immediately. Alejandra was an outspoken, gregarious woman and, true to her reputation, within minutes she was laughing loudly and cracking jokes with Eric.
“And what about our precocious Epsilons, eh?” Douglas said, giving Natasha’s shoulder a hearty pat. “Makes me reevaluate the successes of my own youth, I’ll tell you that. If I remember right, at age twenty-four, my greatest responsibility was tallying chicken-to-egg ratios in Agriculture at the end of each month.”
“Maybe Eric and Natasha work harder than you did,” Nolan suggested.
“Not like we have a choice,” said Eric good-naturedly, piping up from across the table, “working for Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey, who had been standing off to the side, gave a quick retort, though not before Natasha had noticed again the concern weighing down the lines of his face, and his hand rubbing the crisp sleeve of his opposite arm.
4
The training took place in the Pretends, in the third of the three great spaces that made up the Department of Living, just behind the Dining Hall and below the Archives, where Min-he worked. Developed by Alpha engineers in the first century after the Storm, the early Pretends had originally served to supplement the education of the Beta generation: to show them the world and grant them the experiences that reading and study alone could not re-create in so visceral a way. Soon, though, only a few years into their use, the young Betas had also found in the Pretends an alternate and much superior means of entertainment and exercise as compared with the Alpha-built baseball diamond, soccer field, and basketball court that shared the great room with the Pretends today. (Those games had long gone out of style, though the courts, synthetic grass fields, and equipment remained in pristine condition, ready for use.)
The basic experience that defined the Pretends, that of complete and artificial sensory immersion, had been present in the Pre-Storm times. However, the technology was very new then, and had never gotten past its early limitations before scientific work in such matters ceased. The America-Five engineers had managed to pick up where history had left off. They perfected and mastered the technique of using highly accurate nanomagnetic fields to alternately activate and suppress trigger regions in the brain, ultimately gaining control over the sensations of touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste to a degree never achieved before. What was more, the technology in the Pretends, like the technology in every field, was always advancing. The Betas had improved on the Alphas’ model and, since then, younger generations had implemented their own new ideas. Just in the last decades, for instance, the engineers had discovered how, instead of allowing only for prewritten or prescripted experiences, the computer could essentially read the imagination of the player and, by working one nanosecond behind the player’s thoughts and desires, simulate in “real life” the fantasies of the mind. This type of simulation was called “Free Play,” but it was only just emerging into general use.
Natasha herself, like every citizen, had spent countless hours in the small Pods where these experiences took place. It was no secret to anyone that the confined space of the settlement could not accommodate every human need. And the Epsilons had been encouraged all their lives to run and play and act out violently or in any way they felt inclined within the private world of the Pretends. The simulations served more straightforward, educational purposes as well. During school, for example, all their exams were held here. And Natasha could remember with crisp feeling acting out virtual lab experiments and very basic bioreplacement tasks, translating by sight Latin, Chinese, and Spanish from a scrolling screen, and pontificating on computer-selected passages of the Ethical Code before a simulated audience of her teachers and hooded Alpha elders.
Natasha and Eric passed together through the back doors of the Dining Hall promptly at 0754 on Monday morning and walked across the bare expanse of the soccer field, baseball diamond, and parquet basketball court. Five levels of identical white doors, accessible by a metal scaffold of stairs and wraparound balconies, rose up on all four walls. Beside each door was an occupancy light, so that the entire room was dotted with little pricks of green and red. The vast majority of Pods held only single players, but there was also a row of group training rooms on the ground level. The two Epsilons found Pod G11; the light at the door glowed green.
“You ready for this?” Eric asked.
“They wouldn’t have picked us if we couldn’t handle it,” answered Natasha.
He raised his eyebrows, no more convinced of her fearlessness than she was of his.
“Too late to turn back now,” he said. And with a last little pang of trepidation, Natasha followed Eric inside.
Jeffrey was already there, strapping himself into the center harness, and the others arrived within minutes. Jeffrey greeted them and directed each person to one of the stations. He was all business; there were no special glances for Natasha today—a relief to Natasha. She had enough pressure on her already.
Like the individual Pods, Pod G11 had an interior of gray-blue rug that rose up the walls and onto the ceiling, and a very sedate blue light that glowed upward from a panel near the floor. The team members strapped elaborate harnesses around their middles; the apparatus would keep them safely in place while their bodies acted out in whatever world they would soon find themselves. They pulled down their helmets, which also hung from the ceiling, and fastened them over their heads—the helmet flaps making them blind to the “actual” world around them.
“All right,” Jeffrey said, “as long as everyone’s feeling good, I’m going to throw us right into our first simulation. In this one, we walk straight to the Crane sweep site. I want you to look for identifying landmarks as we go, start familiarizing yourself with the route.”
The effect came gradually, as the simulators touching Natasha’s head began to warm. At first, Natasha saw only the black helmet flap. But then she allowed her eyes to flutter closed and, as she did, the sensation of the harness where it crossed her legs and torso disappeared; the weight of the helmet dissolved. She opened her eyes—whether she had opened her eyes in the real world as well as in the Pretend world, Natasha could not say. She sensed the presence of a cool, light, stretchy material just grazing her skin. She ran her hands down her thighs, touching through thin gloves the biosuit that covered her body. The air tasted cool and clean, and she became aware of the lightweight airfilter strapped to her back.
Darkness gave way to looming forms, and these forms steadily coalesced into a forest of thick trees, about thirty paces away. The other members of her team were standing beside her, in the same arrangement as they had stood in the Pod: Douglas, Nolan, and Jeffrey to her right, and Eric and Alejandra to her left. They too were testing the feel of their biosuits, stretching their limbs and feeling over their shoulders for their airfilters. The biosuits were light gray in color, with bright red stitching. Stiff, protective helmets covered their heads, and clear visors covered their faces.
Natasha turned in a circle and recognized their location immediately. They stood on the green, the large circle of lawn that surrounded America-Five. Two steel wings branched out on either side of them: each wing a series of massive rectangular structures sunk into the earth. The nearer one had the long, thin configuration of the Department of the Exterior. That would make the adjacent, shorter wing the
Department of Government. Each of the steel structures connected back to the high Dome, its concrete base stained in yellowish ribbons from dampness and weather, and the honeycomb windows opaque in the noontime sun.
“Welcome to your first training session,” said Jeffrey’s voice in her ear. “As I said, the purpose of this exercise is to familiarize yourself with the route to the Crane sweep site. Douglas has our navigation tools. I’ve kept the obstacles to a minimum for now.”
“What, no lion attacks?” Eric asked.
“Don’t expect this kind of treatment to continue,” Jeffrey responded. The air shimmered once and then was still. “Douglas, we’ll go on your word.”
• • •
When the Alphas had first announced the team, Natasha had only felt excited—the fear had not set in until that night. Then she had realized what she was up against: that, immersed in simulations of the Outside, her feelings of Misplaced Empathy might break through the Wall—as they had on the night of the Crane sweep—only this time, her lapse would be visible to more minds than her own. Natasha need not have worried at all, though. From the very first training session, Natasha surpassed herself in the Pretends. In an odd way, she actually found it easier to maintain the Wall, knowing that her efforts were all in service of getting to see the Outside. She had a goal—an end result strong enough to focus her thoughts. In fact, during some of the simulations, Natasha almost felt like she was seventeen again, training for the Office of Mercy entrance exams. She had a knack for mental geography and for orienting herself in the field. She was alert to her surroundings, the first to catch an animal sneaking up on them, especially when their tracking devices had failed. Douglas, the most senior member of the team except for Jeffrey, took to calling her “quick-draw” in deference to her speedy reflexes. Even Eric acknowledged Natasha’s skill a few days into their training, if only with a grudging regard. And more—what was of a much higher importance to Natasha—she could not detect in Jeffrey any of the anxiety that he had tried to hide from her just after the Alphas’ announcement. He complimented her only sparingly, but each compliment was sincere; he seemed genuinely impressed with her performance. Natasha was glad about that. The last thing she wanted was for Jeffrey to regret recommending her for the team.
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