by Lionel Law
“The Enterprise is designed to be able to carry five thousand colonists from our Solar System to Iðavöllr and allow them to set up the first human colony on another Earth like planet. While the ship’s crew will be made up of mostly Qualified individuals in order to ensure those with sufficient levels of skill and education are present on this adventure, they make up only one hundred members of the total crew. The rest of the crew will be colonists, composed of both Qualified and Unqualified members alike.
“At the behest of the Party for an Equal Society, I have agreed that the colonial crew will reflect human society, with two thirds of the remaining colonists coming from the Unqualified. With that in mind, I am announcing the Great Colonial Lottery. All Unqualified citizens of the Solar System who wish will be eligible to enter a random lottery for slots on the Enterprise, and for later consideration upon her sister ship to launch later, the Columbia Ascendant. Upon reaching Iðavöllr, the potential and possibilities of a new world await anyone who can seize it in their own two hands.
“With that however, there are certain rules that must apply. Only those who are citizens of the Solar System are eligible for the Lottery. As such, those of you who are rioting, or are convicted of a felony, will be stripped of your eligibility for the Lottery. So I advise all of you who are rioting now, go home. Put down your rocks and your firebombs, and rebuild. Enter the Lottery, and take control of your own future. I thank you, and wish everyone the best of luck.”
The few members of the assembled press corps called out questions, but the President ignored them, going inside Buckingham Palace without another word. By the end of the news day however, the details had emerged, released by his press office. There wasn’t much that wasn’t already known.
Any citizen with voting rights (Qualified or Unqualified) had the opportunity to enter for one of the slots available to their particular group. Officially, that meant of the 5000 colonists (the crew would be separate), one thousand would be for Qualified colonists, while another 4000 would be set aside for Unqualified colonists. The only requirements were to be healthy, and between the ages of fifteen and forty five. If you wished to enter, you only had to go to a governmental health facility to get a checkup and enter your name. Two thousand Quals and five thousand Unquals would be picked, with the leftovers being backups and offered first slot on the Columbia.
The results were just as those in power anticipated. Within twenty four hours, those in the most severely affected areas of rioting quieted down, while those in the areas where tension was high but nothing had broken out yet were flooding their local health facilities in order to sign up for the trip. Of course, few if any of the potential colonists noticed the fact that by accepting a berth upon the Glorious Enterprise, they were rescinding all claims to land or property within the Terran solar system.
Just as the powers that be intended.
Chapter 2
Her hands ached, and her lower back was on fire. Even with the padding and assistance of the atmospheric suit, clearing rocks for expansion of Luna City wasn’t easy. The idea that having only 1/6th gravity helped was moot after a while, when you added in the bulkiness of the suit, lack of mobility, and constant adjustment due to lack of physics. It’s difficult and tiring to use a jackhammer when the hammer was as likely to send the user flying as it was to crack the rock.
Walking into the dingy, dirty locker room and pulling off her helmet, Katrina Cole sighed. Shaking her sweaty, matted hair loose from the ponytail she had yanked it into, she took a moment to adjust as she let the artificial gravity slowly bring her back up to her Earth weight of a hundred and twenty five pounds. Living in the Dirt areas though, the gravity fields were never perfect, and she knew she could fluctuate between a hundred and a hundred and forty pounds in the space of just a few steps.
“Did you hear about the President’s announcement?” the man next to her, another Dirt named Gauis Roberts said. He rubbed his hands through his tightly cropped kinky black hair, grinning. “Man, what an opportunity!”
“To do what? Work for the Quals a thousand light years away from Earth instead of here on the moon?” she asked, rolling her neck. The company had cut corners when they bought their suits, and she was stuck between choosing one that was supposed to only be for people under five foot six, or take the jump to the suit meant for people five foot ten. At five seven, she preferred to wedge herself into the smaller suit, despite it kinking her neck horribly. As least she could move in it. “Sorry Gaius. It was a tough shift today.”
Before Gaius could reply, a voice came over the intercom. “Cole. Report to the foreman’s office when you are changed. Acknowledge.”
“Understood,” Katrina said, thumbing the button by the speaker. Sighing, she looked at Gaius, who shook his head commiseratingly. “Well, we both know what that means.”
“Damn Katrina, sorry about that,” Gaius said. “You’ve been pretty good to work with these past two weeks.”
“You know I’ll see you picking up garbage next week, Gaius, or something similar. Hell, if we’re lucky, we’ll get an hourly job in the Qual domes.” Katrina went back to her locker and turned her back to Gaius. Dirt changing rooms were always unisex in order to save money for the Quals, and she knew that Gaius had turned his back as well. They may be treated like Dirt, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do what they could to try and have some self-respect. “You ever work in the Qual domes?”
“I had a one night gig once, working as wait staff at a Qual cocktail party,” Gaius replied as Katrina pulled her sweat stained undershirt off and wiped down with the chemical cloth that would have to substitute for a shower until her next rationed shower in three days. “I’ll be honest, I felt weird wearing that old style tuxedo with tails. Although the white coat did look pretty impressive against me.”
Katrina chuckled. Gaius did have one of the darker shades of brown skin she had seen on the moon, a deep mahogany she knew came from his background. While most of humanity had merged into a hodgepodge of racial characteristics (it was not that uncommon to see blue eyes with so called Asiatic hair, or dark brown skin with natural blonde hair) Gaius Roberts was still as West Indies as you could find. “Better than me. I got hired for two weeks to take care of a Qual baby. Fired when the father told me what part of my duties included, at least when his wife wasn’t around.”
Katrina pulled her off-work jumpsuit on, and ran a quick ion brush through her hair. Fastening the collar, she glanced over her shoulder quickly to see if Gaius was decent. While he hadn’t finished pulling on his boots, he had his pants and undershirt on at least, Gaius favoring the older style of clothing, claiming it let him use the toilet easier. “Take care, Gaius,” she said, offering her hand. “I’ll see you around.”
They bumped fists, and Katrina left the small locker room to walk over to the foreman’s office. She knew she couldn’t be too mad at the foreman, he was a Dirt just like almost everyone in the company. Still, he had a fixed contract, and took home enough at the end of each month to be able to actually afford having a family. At least for a Dirt, the foreman lived like a king.
She knocked on the door frame, missing the sound of knocking on real wood. She had grown up in Australia, and the constant use of plastics and metals on Luna grated at her nerves. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah Katrina. Come in.” The foreman thumbed a button on his desk, and the door closed shut automatically after she stepped through and sat down. “I guess you know what I’m going to say.”
“That I’m out of a job,” she sighed, rubbing at her temples. “Did they give you any reason at all?”
“No,” he said, reaching into his desk and pulling out an envelope. She knew what was inside: a form letter thanking her for her labor, printed on the thinnest recyclable plastic ‘paper’ available, and a note stating her final pay amount, which would be deposited in her Luna City Bank account at the first of the following month. She was supposed to recycle the paper, but she had started coll
ecting them since moving to Luna. So far, in two years, the pile had grown to almost an inch high. “Can I offer you some advice?”
“Go ahead,” Karina said, tucking the unopened envelope in her pocket.
“You’re still young and pretty, Cole. I’ve seen your test scores when you were hired, you were pretty close to making the Qual scores, even though you didn’t have any of the prep. Your PQ scores are more than high enough, at least. Why not try and use what you’ve got, and find a low level Qual to work for?”
“And become a whore, more or less?” she asked, more heat in her voice than she had intended. “Would you tell your wife that, or your daughter?”
The foreman bit his lip, stifling his first reply before shaking his head. “No, I guess I wouldn’t. Although if you’ve ever met my wife, you’d know why. Wonderful woman, great wife and mother, but she’d never get considered for a job like that.”
“Let’s face it man, that Cinderella fantasy crap is just that, a fairy tale told to Dirt girls like me to try and get us to spread our legs for Qual men who just want to walk on the wild side,” she said, standing up. “But I’ve never heard of the servant becoming the princess in real life. Tell me one thing, before I go?”
“Sure.”
“If it were up to you, would you re-hire me?” It was the only question Katrina ever asked any of the companies who let her go. She felt like it was the only accurate measurement of her utility as a worker.
“In a heartbeat,” the foreman said honestly. “Although if it were up to me, I’d get you a suit meant for five-eight as well.”
“Thanks. I mean that. Well, I better get going, I don’t have the cash for a bus ride back to my room. Take care.” She didn’t use the foreman’s name, she honestly couldn’t remember it anyway. He was just one in a long line of foremen, managers, and bosses she had worked for since turning eighteen and leaving formal education.
“Take care of yourself, Cole.”
The streets of the industrial portion of Luna City were wider than those in the residential area, in order to allow for the larger industrial transport hovercraft that were sometimes used. Still, the lighting was dim, and Katrina hurried as she made her way towards the Dirt residential district. Crime wasn’t as bad in the industrial areas as it was in what the residents called the Dirt-Light district, but she still didn’t want to dally.
As she walked, her mind went back to what the foreman had said about her Qual tests, the comment triggering a memory of her high school history class. Her teacher, a Qual woman (all schools, by law, had to have at least 25% Qual teachers) named Mrs. Alaya, had been one of her favorite teachers not only for making class interesting, but also by being willing to set aside the bullshit of the approved textbooks in order to tell the hard truth sometimes.
“As the twenty first century wore on, the major powers in the world saw the re-emergence of a pattern that had led to two world wars, a Cold War, and numerous other conflicts,” Mrs. Alaya said, closing her text book. Most of the students, knowing they had no chance of ever passing the Qual test, tolerated the lecture quietly. Some slept, some played on their desk tablets. But seventeen year old Katrina Cole listened intently. There was still a chance for her. “China and the United States, were becoming the two new poles for the twenty first century powers. Russia additionally, with its high levels of petroleum resources, was a minor third pole that could throw things into chaos as well.
“Unfortunately for all of the major powers, they all faced a similar problem, as age and public debts threatened to not only crush their economies, but also to push both sides closer to war as politicians who were far too old to actually pick up a rifle, and had a nostalgic view of their own youth, rattled their sabers. This was added to by the fact that growth and labor were now in other countries, and all of the major powers had hollowed out domestic economies.
“When China and Japan got into a shooting war over a disputed set of islands, much of the world held their breath in fear that it would be the spark that would set off another cascade effect similar to what led to World War I. However, the United States, in what some thought was defiance of the security treaties they had signed with the Japanese, instead acted as mediators instead of co-combatants. Negotiating a peace led to the formation of a Greater Asia, which when combined with the already existing European Union, triggered the formation of first the regional super-nations, before a true Earth-wide government emerged early in the twenty second century.
“One of the unique cultural institutions that grew out of this convergence of nations is the Qual test. Combining unique aspects of the Asian systems which drew inspiration from Confucian philosophy, and Western European egalitarianism, the Qual test is meant to ensure that only those who are mentally and morally prepared were to take leadership positions within the new Earth-wide society. All young adults have two chances to take the Qual test, once at eighteen and another at twenty. Those who pass the test, in addition to the opportunities afforded them in terms of job placement and training, also have certain rights and privileges that those who do not pass the test don’t have.”
At the mention of rights and privileges, one of the students, a young boy named Ivan, chuckled. “Yeah, us Dirts have to bust our ass to put potatoes on the table, while Quals eat steak every day.”
“Actually Ivan, I only eat steak once a week,” Mrs. Alaya rejoindered. “And you know what I do with my other money. According to your text books, as additional incentive to passing the Qual test, the government also deemed that only those who Qualified can write their own wills and pass on an inheritance, and that in terms of elections, Qualified votes count for more than Unqualified votes. The amount of that difference has varied over time.”
As Katrina walked, she reflected bitterly on Mrs. Alaya’s lesson, and what the history books hadn’t told her. In order to try and ensure that only those who were already Qual would have their children also become Qual, the government had adjusted the test as time went on. What had begun as a simple IQ test had become a two day marathon of rote memorization and problem solving, many of the questions phrased or formed in such a way that only those who could afford very expensive test preparation courses would even have a chance to pass them. Since only Qualified families could work jobs that made enough money to pay for the courses, or the private schools that actually taught what was on the test, over 99.5% of the people who passed the Qual test each year came from already existing Qual families. The other .5% were either extreme geniuses, or those whose parents curried favor from their Qual employers. The result was a calcified, caste based society of two groups, the Quals who could dominate politically, economically, but were only twenty percent of the population (and whose votes in the so-called democracy counted for seven times the Unqualified vote), and the Unqualified “Dirts” who scrabbled for any job they could get, and whose lives were not much better than what their grandparents had been. Katrina reflected as she walked, she had never seen a Qual child with uneven teeth, or even pimples. Meanwhile, even with the genetic advantages of her quickly healing skin, she had a few scars, and had to take pills for two years, treating an impacted wisdom tooth until she had paid a friend five hard earned dollars to punch her jaw hard enough to break it, and get it treated by the emergency room where the tooth was removed as part of setting the bone.
A buzzing sound caught Katrina’s attention, and she looked up, realizing she had already left the industrial district and was approaching the Dirt residential areas. The buzzing was created by a flashing light outside the health clinic, the very same one where her wisdom tooth had been pulled in fact. The light was part of a display, advertising the Colonial Lottery. On a whim, Katrina walked over, figuring it couldn’t hurt. If the line was too long, she’d just go home any way. There was some reprocessed protein supplement she could eat there at least.
The line was short however, and she was sitting in a diagnostic machine within minutes, waiting as it hummed and scanned her body carefully. There were o
nly a few beeps, each of them when the scanner was over areas where she had previously had medical treatments, so nothing she didn’t expect. After about three minutes, the machine stopped, and she waited patiently for someone to come into the room. She didn’t have to wait long, as a doctor (all doctors were, by law, Qual) came in carrying a tablet with her results. He looked young, fresh out of medical school, maybe even her age. “Miss Cole?”
“Yes Doctor,” she said, falling into the loathed habit of addressing all Quals by their title or by name and title. It wasn’t law, but if she wanted to maintain a halfway decent reputation for day labor offices, she observed the rule. “How was my test?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Your broken jaw shows no signs of further injury, and the tendon repair on your right bicep seems stronger than even normal baseline. Whoever your surgeon was, he is very good.”
Katrina didn’t want to mention the fact that the reason her arm was stronger than baseline was because baseline was determined from a Qual set of standards, and her body overall was stronger from years of physical labor. “Thank you, Doctor. But you seem concerned?”
“Just a few readings that seem a bit off. You have some neck pain?”
“I just got off work, Doctor. Rock clearing on the surface for the new dome. The suit I had didn’t fit very well. It’ll be gone by morning.”
“I understand,” the doctor replied, even though he clearly didn’t. “Well, it is nothing to disqualify you anyway. All I need is for you to put your code and thumbprint on this tablet, and you’ll be entered.”
