by Martha Adele
He releases my hand and returns to his upright position. He folds his hands and sets them into his lap in a way that makes his arm muscles look bigger than they really are. Obviously flexing, he smirks at me.
Janice rises to her feet. “Okay. Sam, Mavis, Mandy, let’s go get breakfast and let these two chat.” The others rise and follow her, leaving John and me at the table, sizing each other up.
“So.” John takes a breath and crosses his arms. “Mrs. Ludley tells me you would make a great addition to the Taai. What do you think?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know what your standards are. I guess I could do it if I trained a bit.”
“What’s ‘it’?” John puts his crossed arms onto the table in front of him and stares me down. “What do you mean you ‘could do it’? Do what?”
For a moment, I have trouble coming up with an answer. I don’t really know a lot about the Taai. I stammer, “I mean I … I can help. I want to help fight.”
“So you want to be part of the Taai so that you can fight?”
I shrug.
John looks unconvinced and rises to his feet. “Come on.” I follow him over to one of the service lines, and we stand. John sighs. “What’s the real reason you want to be a part of the Taai?”
I take a moment to think. I recall everything that Janice has told me about the Taai, about how important they are to the cause, about how the whole defense division would be nothing without them, and about the real reason I want to join. “It is a great honor to be a part of the Taai, right? And I have been selected for a trial, and isn’t that a great honor?”
John shakes his head as we move farther up the line. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” John confirms, “that isn’t the reason.” He freezes and holds up the line. “Tell me the real reason.”
Our eyes lock. Someone bumps into me from behind, and I scoot past John to keep the line moving.
“Well?”
I hesitate at first. Why should I tell John? I don’t know him. I don’t know if I can trust him. Then again, it’s not like telling him what happened can hurt me or anyone else. If I just tell him, it will be fine, right?
“Well?” John repeats.
I take a breath and a moment to gather my story but am rushed to spit it out by John’s expression.
“When I was younger, I loved playing in the trees about half a mile out from my house. My friends and I would race through them and hang out there all day to try to escape our daily lives. Before we could get to the woods, we would have to dodge any and all officials to make sure that we remained unseen. If we ever got caught in the woods, we would get a public lashing for ‘trespassing.’” I pause. John and I grab a tray, and he nods for me to continue.
“One day, I decided to go off on my own and play in the trees. I was nine.” John and I step forward in line, and the man serving the food takes our trays and plops two patties and one scoop of some sort of mash onto our trays. John looks to me to continue. “I guess I didn’t take all the precautions I should have. An official caught me.” I think back to that day, back to the fear I felt when I was climbing one of my favorite trees, only to have my leg grabbed by something … by someone. The official yanked me off one of the low-hanging branches I had just started to climb, and I fell right to the ground. The thin grass did little to soothe my fall. I landed on some sort of hard mulch, which cut up my back and arms.
Before I could do anything, the official started screaming at me about how I was disobeying the law and how I should be killed for such a thing. I felt in that moment that he would be the death of me. I crawled backward as he followed me, screaming his lungs out. Tears began to stream down my face as I saw my life flash before my eyes.
Right as the official grabbed my arm and yanked me to a standing position, my mother swooped in. I guess my mother had followed me that day when she realized I had gone outside without any of my friends. Mom pleaded for the man to show mercy. She told him that I would never go back out there again and that I had learned my lesson, but the official refused to listen.
“My mom was killed after an official pistol-whipped her for defending me.” I pause, thinking back to her grunt as the metal made contact with her head in one sweeping motion. Mom fell backward with blood dripping out of the side of her head. Her eyes stared out with an empty expression that I have seen in my nightmares many nights since.
“All she did was ask for mercy.” My voice cracks. “And the guard killed her.” After Mom died, the official told me to go home and to never return to the woods. We never even got to give her a funeral. After that day, she just disappeared, and the officials acted like it had never happened.
John nods to me as we walk back to our table with our full trays. After a few moments of silence, John speaks up. “Logan Forge.” We stop and face each other. John extends one of his hands out to me while balancing his tray in one hand. “I have a few tests for you to take. Some physical. Some mental. After that, you can be admitted into the Taai.”
“Thank you, sir.”
We walk over to the woman at the computer, tell her our names, and bid her adieu. After checking in with her, we head to our table in silence to find Sam and the ladies all eating happily. Mandy is blabbing something excitedly to the others while Sam stares at her with some sort of annoyance. The closer we get to the group, the more I realize that John has his eyes fixed on something specific at the table.
As I sit back by Mavis, Janice smiles. She swallows the clump of food in her mouth and looks from John to me with wide eyes filled with hope. “So have you guys talked about it?”
John nods. “Training can start today.”
“Perfect,” Janice confirms. “Speaking of schedules, I have yours.” The three white laminated pieces of paper she pulls out blind me with a flash reflected from the lights on the ceiling. After she finishes passing them out, she retracts mine almost as quickly as she administered it. “Wait! I printed off another one for you just in case John said yes.”
The new schedule she hands me is the same as the one she handed Sam and Mavis. The only difference is that where their schedule says “Culinary Aid,” mine says “Taai Training.”
“So between breakfast and your first class of the day, you guys get to come with me, and we can catch you all up. You guys have the rest of your classes with me and your physical education with me. But after that, Sam and Mavis, you guys come in here and help prepare the food for dinner for the night and breakfast and lunch for the next day. Logan, you will go to the gym, and a worker will take you back to the Taai’s training rooms.”
Sam shovels a large chunk of food into his mouth just as Janice finishes her statement. “Okay …” He throws up one finger to let everyone know he wants to say something and then chews violently, trying to get the food down as quickly as possible. “Classes? As in multiple?”
Janice chuckles. “Yes. I teach a class on politics and a class on history, both of which you three will be needing to learn first. After you have the basics down, we can move onto more advanced courses and different subjects, like math and science.”
Sam lowers his spoon. “Those are courses?”
The three of us shoot Janice a baffled look. Never before have I ever thought that we would need to know math. Yes, two plus two equals four. That seems necessary. How much money will I need to buy three pieces of fruit? That seems necessary. But a whole class on it?
This should be easy.
I shift my focus from Janice as she explains the classes and what we will learn in them to John. He eats his food slowly and watches Mavis beside me in a way that makes me uncomfortable.
The group of girls behind us all giggle at once and spook Mavis. She jumps a little, then looks back to Janice, trying to pretend she wasn’t affected by the girls’ joy. Mavis’s eyes flicker over to John and Mandy before they fall back on Ja
nice. When Mavis realizes John is watching her, she does a subtle double take and meets his eyes.
John gives her a small smile. Mavis returns with a shy smile, then averts her eyes back to Janice. I watch as she tries her best to keep her focus on Janice while John continues to stare at her with a smug smile on his face and fiddles with the food in front of him. Why he stares at Mavis, I don’t know.
Why should he stop staring at her? I can think of a few reasons.
Sam
The screen changes to show us pictures of men and women in different uniforms matching their given positions. Janice walks to one side of the screen and points to the woman on the top-right corner, the same woman whom we met when we first came in.
“Who can tell me who this is?” Janice asks the class.
Many of the kids’ hands shoot up, but a girl in the back of the classroom calls out, “Emily Hash!”
Janice shakes her head and lowers her finger. “Sarah, you have to wait to be called on, but that’s correct. James …” She points to one of the boys who didn’t raise his hand in the very front of the room. “What is her official position?”
Everyone lowers their hands as the boy answers, “She runs the … um … uh … I don’t know.”
“Ah.” Janice smiles. “You would have known if you were paying attention instead of dozing off.” The rest of the class giggle as she calls on Henry.
He pushes his glasses back up his face and corrects his posture. “Executive Emily Hash is the leading official who coordinates education and assists in the coordination of newcomers.”
As the rest of the class moans at his extremely detailed answer, Janice nods to Henry. “Thank you for your clarity. That is correct, though I would have settled for ‘education.’”
I catch a glimpse of a few of the kids in the back of the classroom whispering to one another and looking back and forth at Henry. Though Henry doesn’t seem to mind, I do. These kids need to mind their own business and quit talking badly about a little boy just because he is smarter than they are.
Janice continues and points at another person on the board. We go through a whole list of officials in hopes to clarify who runs what and why it works.
Executive Emily Hash runs education with the assistance of her secretary, Janice Ludley. Major Cole Mason handles rescue with Private Yate Groves. General Luke Wilson runs the military with the help of many different majors and officials. Kaitlyn Arms runs the section of Bergland that utilizes natural resources such as the wind power, waterpower, agricultural needs, etc. Half of the class zones out as Janice continues to run through the different aspects and sectors that Bergland has under the rule of certain officials.
As half zones out, a few of the others get on my nerves. I sit behind Mavis, who sits behind Logan. Logan sits beside Henry, who is completely oblivious to the kids behind him, talking trash.
“Yeah, it’s like every time he speaks, he has to adjust his glasses. What a poser.”
“Why would he spike his hair up like that? It’s not like it will change our opinion of him.”
“Dude, I bet he isn’t even that smart. He probably just got put into our class because everyone else his age died.”
I can’t stand listening to them. It irritates me beyond my own understanding, but I take deep breaths and try to tune them out.
“All right.” Janice grabs my attention, along with everyone else’s in the room. “Next question. Very easy. What kind of economic system does Bestellen have?”
“Geven,” Henry answers.
Janice smiles and nods. “Does it work?” She clicks a button on a controller she holds in her hand and changes the screen to pictures of Metropolis. The fancy gardens, water fountains, buildings, parties, and people and their absurd fashion all consisting of different shades of gray, purple, and gold.
“No,” the whole class, other than us three, answers in unison.
Janice nods in agreement and changes the screen to a picture of Bloot. Mavis in front of me tenses up a bit as the picture appears. Almost everyone in the picture looks like they are being starved even though, in the picture, there are food stands lining the street. I can even see a kid in the background walking a sheep that looks as if it has never even seen food before.
“Listen guys, the definition of ‘geven’ is where the government owns everything and redistributes it evenly to all. The idea behind geven is to keep everyone equally rich, but that sadly doesn’t work.” Janice changes the screen to another picture of Bloot. “It sounds like a great system, but in reality, it is flawed. Every system has a flaw, and geven’s flaw happens to be the fact that not everyone will work. This system works well for small groups mostly, but with large crowds, people can fall through the cracks. And no one will do anything about it, leaving other people having to do more work.”
Janice changes the screen to a picture of Metropolis side by side with Bloot. “If you look at this picture of Bestellen’s capital compared with Bestellen’s least favorite state, you can see how much favoritism affects Bestellen’s citizen.” She changes it to a picture of Metropolis, followed by Verwend, which was the first state made after the war between the Amiables and Diligent. The Vends are walking around their brick buildings, perfectly paved roads, and colorful markets in their perfect clothing like nothing is wrong with the world. Janice explains that Verwend is the state that manufactures Bestellen’s weapons and trains their troops and that it is Metropolis’s favorite state.
She changes the screen to the next picture, a picture of Hout, which was the second state added to Bestellen and the state that is responsible for our main supply of lumber. The picture is of one of their major cities. The only reason I recognize it is because at least once a month, on my town’s show box, we would get updates about how much each state was flourishing. Hout always used this town to show how well they were doing. It isn’t as nice of a town as Verwend’s town of choice, but it is a bit better looking than Meer, our aquaculture state.
When Meer’s picture comes up on the screen, we see a bunch of pastel-painted lake buildings, docks, water mills, power plants, and fishermen. The docks, houses, and buildings shown in the news every month look beautiful and perfect; but the ones in the photograph that Janice is showing are slightly broken-down and need repairs.
The next state shown is Bouw, my home state. Janice shows a picture of a large plot of farmland being worked by a few people in torn and ratty clothing. The picture the news shows is one of my precinct’s town hall and the large mansion that our governor and his family lives in. The large light-pink building with white-lined roofs and columns down the road from an even larger columned white building is shown in our news at home to make our state look better than it really is. Our precinct is the most cared-for precinct of Bouw, but overall, that doesn’t change what it is.
It’s the fanciest part of a poor state.
Bouw is the second-most-hated state of Bestellen, right behind Bloot. Whenever the news comes on for all of the state updates, Bloot always sends one representative over to Bouw, and our representatives present together in the best parts of Bouw. I guess there is no picture-worthy bit of Bloot.
After Bouw was added to Bestellen, Minje followed. Minje is much bigger than Bouw and better treated, but only slightly. The picture of Minje that Janice shows is one of people going in and out of the mines, covered in soot, which is nothing like the picture that our news showed us. We always got the impression that it was nice and clean in the mines, and all of their neighborhoods were decent. The pictures Janice clicks through prove us wrong.
Bloot is the last state shown by Janice. Every image that flashes before us is of people that look to be starving or one of the well-fed and muscular officials. There are people in the pictures begging at street corners, like back in Bouw, but worse because there is a beggar on every street corner.
Every house has some sort of hole or crack in
it. Every building is made of stone, with a chunk or two broken off it and replaced with a tarp or blanket. Half of the buildings aren’t even buildings, but tents made out of ratty cloth that looks like they will tear any second.
“This is not the form of geven that Bestellen claims it uses. True geven provides for everyone evenly so that they wouldn’t have certain states suffer in destitute, while letting others thrive without a worry or care.” Janice changes the screen to a picture of Meir giving a speech at his famous steel and golden podium, which happens to be the only place he gives speeches aside from his signature desk. “Meir tries to make sure the citizens are completely convinced that everything is distributed according to the amount each state works and that if you or your neighbor are in any sort of state of destitute, it is your fault for not working hard enough.”
Janice explains that Meir and his regime want to keep his people dependent on the government as much as they can so that there is no threat of rebellion. That is another reason that Bestellen doesn’t have a good education system; they are afraid that if they encouraged people to think for themselves to solve issues or to be more observant, we would have rebelled a long time ago.
“Man, I can’t wait for us to take over,” a kid a few seats over from me yawns out. “Then we’ll be able to get out of this mountain and institute druppelen.” All the kids in the room nod and murmur in agreement.
“Well,” Janice interrupts the murmuring and tries to get everyone’s attention again, “that sounds great and all, but you do realize that in one way or another, we too will have a flawed system.”
I raise my hand and attract attention from everyone in the room. Half of the kids look at me in shock, while the other half freeze in surprise. Janice acknowledges my raised hand, and I ask her what “druppelen” is.
