by Ann Christy
Again Zara scanned the faces and pointed again, "Some will be working on your suit and all the extras on it should you win the right to wear it." She tugged the arm of another woman next to her and said, "And others will be working with you on whatever your tasking will be outside if you win. All of them will be doing any preliminary work they need to do with you, but most of all they will be observing you and figuring out the best way to use your specific talents should you win. You ready to get started?"
She tried to contain herself and say some simple and adult thing, like a plain yes or please or thank you, but a tiny squeal of delight slipped out and brought a round of laughter from the assembled people. She felt herself redden from scalp to neck almost immediately.
Rusty stepped out from between the people and said, "I think that means yes. We'll just go find her room and get her started on the circuit in a few minutes, okay?”
Zara gave a throaty laugh and nodded, stepping back to give the pair room to pass. As Rusty walked her through the door at the far end of the large room, Lillian heard Zara clap her hands and say, "Alright people, let's get to work."
Her room was a tiny cubicle divided down from a larger room. The wall on one side was made of concrete blocks and painted white with a vivid blue and red stripe running diagonally down its face. The bed was a standard single but it was the only one in the room. Finally, there was a locker with drawers and a small desk and chair to go with it.
It was small, but very nice, and Lillian was surprised to find little touches added for her comfort. Folded on the foot of the bed lay a blanket made from neatly sewn squares of rabbit fur, a luxury she would not have anticipated. On the desk lay a writing brush, obviously newly made and unstained by ink, plus a new pen and nib. Next to it sat a small inkpot along with a few sheets of paper. She ran a finger across the top sheet and felt the smoothness of a better quality paper, not virgin but not recycled so much that the fibers were frayed. A lamp and a small book of the Ten Tenets also lay on the surface. She opened the book to find well-thumbed pages.
Rusty remained silent for the few moments it took her to look around her new home. She turned to find him standing, hands clasped behind his back and an amused look on his face. She smirked and asked, "What?"
"Nothing," he replied. "It's just funny to watch when new racers come here for the first time. You went for the desk. Most open the drawers."
Lillian glanced at the drawers in the free standing locker and asked, "Anything in the drawers I should look for?"
Rusty shook his head and said, "Nope. Not yet. You have to get fitted first."
"Is that what we're doing today?" she asked.
"Yep. Want to get started?"
Lillian thought she might be yepped and noped to death by Rusty before this was all done. Could he say nothing else? Her mother had always impressed upon her that one should say a proper yes or no except to close peers. Apparently, Rusty’s mother hadn't done that. He was giving her a crooked smile, one side of his mouth just a tad higher than the other, as he looked at her. It made her self-conscious and she smoothed her coverall over her belly.
She took a deep breath, her nerves alight and her stomach fluttering as she remembered Leo. "Did Leo make it? Is he here?"
Rusty looked a bit surprised by the question. He asked, "Didn't they tell you?"
When she shook her head, he shook his own. "Yep, you're both finalists. The third hasn't been notified yet so I can't tell you his name."
"Ah, so the third racer is a boy, too, huh?"
Rusty grinned and said, "Got me!"
They left her new room and returned the way they had come. On the way, he pointed out the bathroom and shower facilities and showed her the placard she was to use to indicate that it was in use by a female. He slipped the card back into the pocket so that only the blank placard showed and said, "Don't forget to take it down when you leave so people don't wind up peeing in the sinks."
He said it with such a straight face that Lillian wasn't sure that didn't actually happen so she merely nodded and assured him, very seriously, that she would. He laughed at her and said he was just kidding. He told her there was another set of bathrooms off their little cafeteria if she was ever in need. She scowled at him, but only a little, for teasing her.
At race administration, a tiny room with two desks crammed inside, she met Bedie and was told that anything having to do with the race that didn't fall into the category of physical training, medical or food probably got handled by her.
Bedie, a short woman with the curliest hair Lillian had ever seen and cheeks so round her eyes almost disappeared when she smiled, patted her hand and assured her that anything she needed, she would help her with. It took just a few minutes to get her set up with a check-in card.
The card was a sheet of rigid plastic, much marred by previous use. On it was a grid already marked in more permanent black stripes. Each line represented a task and had headings for clothing sizes, shoe sizes, various physical measurements, diet restrictions, family and compartment information and then ended with the ubiquitous catch all line marked ‘Miscellaneous’.
"Bring this back to me when you're done checking in, honey bee, and I'll make sure your stipend gets started, your supplies get to your room and all the other things that need to happen get done. You don't worry about a thing. We'll also make your schedule here so if you see something you don't like or need to change, you come to me. Okay?"
Lillian accepted the card and thanked the woman as Rusty shuffled her out of the room. As he closed the office door behind them, he said, "She's awesome. Bedie's been working the race for something like thirty years so she knows everyone and everything. If you have a problem, she is the one to go to."
She filed this useful bit of knowledge away and followed Rusty as they went from room to room along the hallway. She was measured for her race and training gear, her shoes and then her height and weight were confirmed once more. After that came a meeting with the nutrition expert, who also happened to be the cook. Finally, she was asked a whole host of embarrassing personal questions at the small medical bay. Rusty, at least, had not come inside with her at this stop or else her humiliation would have been complete. At each stop she got her card marked and by the time they returned to Bedie, Lillian was tired, and tired of being poked at.
Since it would be a day before all her training gear was ready, she would do no physical work that day, but Rusty took her to the main training rooms for a tour and a brief rundown of what she would be doing for the next month. When she stepped through the big doors of the section, she was amazed to find an aquaculture tank taking up a corner of the room. She looked at Rusty, puzzled by the piece of equipment, and he laughed at her expression.
"I did the same thing when I first saw it. Come on, I'll show you." He strode across the room, his footsteps loud in the mostly open space.
Lillian trailed a few steps behind him, eyeing the water tank suspiciously. Like every child in the silo, she had been on her tours of the dirt farms, the orchards and hydroponics as well as the aquaculture centers, but they had only viewed the tanks from a platform a little distance away. The fish were vulnerable to excessive disturbance and children were apt to toss things into the tanks or try to reach over and play with the water. So, kids were kept a bit distant for safety.
It was a tank just like those that housed the fish for silo’s food. Nothing more than a transparent box a little taller than she was—and just as wide and long as it was tall—the tanks were used to grow the fish in a way that allowed them to be contained and monitored. As they approached, Lillian saw that the water level would probably reach her upper chest if she were to stand beside it. The water was clear, clean and she was relieved to find that it was also without fish.
Rusty climbed a few steps on a platform set to one side of the tank and motioned for her to join him. He pointed over the side, inside the tank. She gripped the rail on the platform tightly as she leaned over and looked down.
"See that thing on the bottom?" he asked. When she nodded, he continued. "That's a treadmill. Those little slats—I'm not sure you can see them well, but they are little slats—are set on a belt that moves when you push against it with your feet. You can run on it and it will just keep you in place."
She looked at him with disbelief and asked, "You can run and stay in place? Why would you want to? And why would you do it in water?"
He reached over the side of the tank and swished the surface, making a pleasant splashing sound. It was like the sound she made while washing dishes at home but bigger. He said, "Trust me. This works. And the reason we do it is to build up strength. It is hard to move forward through water and it builds muscle and improves endurance."
Lillian considered the water while he spoke. Speed was important, but endurance was the key when running outside. Between the suit, the gear and the whole situation, runners wore out quickly. Getting into that much water would be strange but she certainly liked showers so how bad could it be? "Okay. If you say so," she said finally, trying to sound agreeable and not at all nervous.
"Ah, don't worry. It's really nice once you get used to it. And when you run after being in there a while, it will feel like you're running on air. I promise you that."
"Hmm," she hummed doubtfully.
After that, the rest of the facility was a little anticlimactic. The equipment consisted of slightly less used versions of the same pull up bars and strength stations one found on the public Raceway on Level 72 outside the Memoriam. Lillian and Leo had been running and competing on those since before they were physically large enough to reach the bars. Back then it had been a way to practice being a racer but also to look at the portrait of her father, proudly displayed along with every other racer to win the yearly competition.
The black frame around his portrait told viewers that he had been lost on his trip outside. His was almost alone in this distinction on the section of the wall that carried the portraits from racers during her lifetime. Most of the rest of the frames were simple white ones indicating a live return.
As one moved further down the wall and back further in history, more of the frames were black until the very beginning when the very first frame on the wall was white. That portrait was of Henry, the first racer 89 years ago. Historians say before that return, they still had people going outside but none had survived for long and no one competed for the privilege. Back then it had always been only those who were dying that could go outside.
But that was long ago and the risk, though still very real as her father's loss showed, was much less. The last loss had been ten years ago and that had been a foolish loss. The racer hadn't been running that year, only doing experiments. He had fallen down on part of his experiment and ripped the back right out of his suit.
Her father's form could not, thankfully, be seen on the screens. The view showed only one quarter of their surroundings. The other views had been lost in times long past, though they did have a set of drawings that showed the whole view on the wall in the Memoriam. Lillian had no memory of her father since he died when she was still just a toddler, but she still longed to see him, even in whatever state he might be in.
She wanted to go outside and show him how good a racer she was. Lillian didn't know if some part of a person survived death or not— it was a topic of debate in the silo and always had been— but if there was something that remained, then her father's shade was outside. The only way she would ever see him or let whatever was left of him see her was to go outside. Her mother thought that morbid and she hadn't brought it up during her finalist evaluation, just in case.
She touched each of the stations as she passed and listened to Rusty outline her training. Nothing stood out as too different from what she already did, save the replacement of her mad dashes through the silo with long periods of slogging along in the water tank. At the end of the room there was a rack stacked with a few white vests, bulging cylinders attached to the back.
She looked at him quizzically and he said, "Those are weight packs. Each one has weight about equal to your air tank once you're in water." He grabbed one and separated one of the bulges with the great ripping sound of velcro pulling free and held it out to her. She took it and grunted at the weight. It was much heavier than it looked.
He held up the vest for her to see and pointed out velcro patches all over it at different locations. "Your tank will go on the part of your body least likely to diminish your run. For a lot of women it is a slightly different level on the back than men. Most men have it put here, at this high center of the back." He took the weighted cylinder back and stuck it back to the vest, then returned it to the rack.
"And I'm going to wear one to get used to it, I assume."
"You assume correctly. You'll wear it fairly often so they can see that it doesn't interfere and they have it in the right spot. Also, you’ll wear it in the water tank."
She grimaced and that earned another laugh from Rusty.
“So, are you going to be my trainer?” she asked him.
He shook his head and said, “Nope, I’m afraid not. I’m getting you checked in but my job this year is to design the route and some of the mechanics of that. So, mostly I’ll be watching all of you so we can work out what we’ll do this year based on each of your individual strengths. Depending on who wins, of course.”
“Hmm. So you basically design three whole runs each year and then the winner does the one designed for them?”
“Yep.” He grinned at her expression. “You’re wondering who your trainer is, right? Maybe hoping it will be Zara?”
Lillian didn’t think she was that transparent, but that was exactly what she was thinking. She shrugged.
“Sorry, kiddo. You’ve got Greg. He’s out letting down all those who didn’t make it at the moment.”
“Hmm.” She tried to picture Greg. She knew he was the winner from the year she was born, Race Year 71, but she couldn’t picture him. She didn’t know if she’d ever seen him before. She shrugged again and asked, “When will I meet him?”
“When you start training.” He nudged her arm and started walking again. “Let’s get moving so we can get you out of here.”
As they were leaving the training room and moving back the way they had come, she heard a familiar voice up ahead and saw Leo standing outside Bedie's office, talking with Zara. She hurried her steps a little, though not so much as to be rude to Rusty.
Leo turned when he heard her familiar footsteps. The smile that lit up his face when he saw her was mirrored by her own. He swooped her up in a hug that lifted her feet from the ground and they congratulated each other with such enthusiasm that the three onlookers laughed.
When they separated and stood next to each other, Zara whistled and said, "Wow, you two really do look alike. That's weird."
Lillian didn't see it the same way. To her Leo just looked like Leo and she was very different from him. She supposed they must look similar though, because everyone said the same thing when they first saw the pair together.
Leo, ever the flirt, said, "But I'm better looking."
Lillian snorted and Bedie tsked at him from her station by the office door. Zara just raised an eyebrow.
Rusty asked, "Why didn't one of you wait till next year? I mean, you're competing against each other. Only one can win and go outside."
Lillian and Leo both started to speak at the same time and then both stopped and told the other to go ahead. Leo finally just clapped a hand over his mouth and Lillian answered. "We've been running together since we could run. We wanted to see which of us would win." She paused a tick and added, "It will be me, of course."
Leo dropped his hand and countered, "No. It will be me."
Rusty and Zara smiled as the two nudged each other. Their competitive natures were obvious but also good spirited and loving.
Lillian shoved Leo's arm aside once more and said, "Seriously. We both do better at different things. Leo here would beat me on any rout
e that has a lot of straight runs, no question. I, on the other hand, would leave him in the deep on any route that has agility requirements."
Zara nodded as she caught on to their strategy. "So, basically, no matter what the course, one of you will win. There is a third, you know. He might beat both of you."
"It has to be either Toby or Jack," Leo said confidently. "They had the best times that I can figure in the semi-finals. They're good, both of them, but we're faster." He smiled his most winning smile in Bedie's direction and the older woman's cheeks went pink. Lillian thought his flirting was out of control. He couldn't seem to help himself. She gave him a shove.
"Well, we'll see about that," Rusty said. "Zara, do you have anything else for him? If not, we can let them both go once we get Lillian's card turned in."
"No, I think he's pretty much done," Zara replied and then turned back to the two runners. "Once you're released, you have a pass until breakfast on the day after tomorrow. I know it's only supposed to be the one day, but your training doesn't start till after breakfast."
She gave them a stern look and continued, "Don't take this as permission to spend all night awake. Your training will begin promptly and if you're tired, you'll be very sorry indeed."
Lillian and Leo both assured her that they would be on time and rested. Then Bedie squeezed between Zara and Leo and held out a hand for Lillian's card. She glanced over it and then nodded to Rusty, saying, "I've got this. No need to go over it. Let them go and have some fun."
Four
The cousins were released straight away and only made one wrong turn before finding the exit back toward the public areas of IT. They passed the information and customer service desk, waving to the attendant and giving her a thumbs-up to show they’d been chosen as racers. She mimed applause their way and then turned back to her customer. The young people crossed to the landing and grabbed a cookie from the platter that was always filled at the entrance and tapped the doorway, which no longer held doors, with exactly two knocks for luck. Some of the older people had a saying about forgiveness, but hardly anyone did that anymore.
