by Anne Tibbets
“As much as we can in an hour. Think you can manage that?”
He smiled, which brightened his face and made him look even younger. “I guess so.”
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“Marc.”
“Well, Marc,” I said to him. “Show me everything.”
* * *
By daylight, Flora City took on a whole new glow. Where in the night the buildings had looked dark, tall and slightly ominous, by day they were bright, shining and slick.
And exactly the same.
Just outside on the sidewalk, I stood and stared, blocking the flow of people as I took it in. The streets were pristine, almost glossy. The stone pavers shone without a single fleck of car grease, trash or even a leaf, for that matter.
Boxy vans, like the one we’d arrived in, flowed through evenly timed traffic and without the constant honking and shouting that was customary in Central. The pedestrians walked down the sidewalks with an easy pace and the comfort of safety, without the presence of security guards or the bumping and crowding of excessive bodies and garbage.
Or, at least, that was the way it looked to me as I stood there, slightly awestruck.
It smelled of hot plastic, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
I debated asking Marc for advice on where I should go. Instead, I turned and walked ahead, watching the crowd, gazing at the buildings.
They looked artificial to me. Too perfect to be real. At one point I almost laughed aloud. Did any of these people understand how ridiculous this was?
Absurd.
Marc followed behind me, slightly to the side, which I appreciated. I suspected he was attempting to give me my space as I absorbed everything. I caught him watching me and those around me with serious attention. We were getting noticed by the pedestrians. It must not have been every day when they saw a girl being followed by a soldier, but no one stopped us. They simply noticed and then moved aside, giving me room to wander, then going about their business.
I caught myself staring back at them. They were so...
Clean.
They had really nice teeth too.
People walked down the sidewalks in pairs, carrying black shiny packs on their backs or over their shoulders. Their hair was perfectly styled and flat, no frizz, but sleek, as if it had been pressed with an iron. Their clothes were crisp too. They talked. Laughed. They looked busy, as if they were on their way to someplace important. Or maybe not.
What did I know? I was a stranger and I felt it. I almost missed the chaos of Auberge. Flora City was practically boring.
Two blocks down I came up behind a pair of women wearing straight black skirts and white flowing tops, each lugging a disgruntled child behind them.
I couldn’t help but eavesdrop.
“Eight o’clock he rolls in. No, ‘how was your day?’ No, ‘need help getting Ral to bed?’ Nothing. Do you know what he said? For the love of Flora, I could have killed him.”
“What?” the other woman gasped. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘What’s for dinner?’”
The other woman gasped and clutched at her mouth with her free hand, her eyes wide in agitation.
“I know,” the first woman said.
“What did you say?” The second woman put a hand on her hip and popped it to one side.
“I pointed him toward the food replicator and told him to make himself a shit sandwich.”
“You did not!”
“Mama!” cried the little boy she pulled behind her. “That word is restricted!”
I blinked at that. Restricted by whom? What the hell did that mean?
“Keep up, Ral,” she said to her child, then turned back to her friend. “And after I spent all day at work and had just walked four blocks to pick up Ral from day care. What is this, the twentieth century? Make your own damned dinner.”
“You didn’t actually say that?” the second woman huffed. “Did you?”
The first woman sighed, stopping at the corner and waving her hand across a sensor on a lamppost. “No,” she confessed. “But I should have.”
I followed them as we assimilated into a group of pedestrians that crossed the street between two painted lines on the pavement. On the other side and just to the right, there was a large open area with strange metal structures. A number of children played on the pieces, giggling and screaming, and chasing each other in circles.
The two women in front of me released their children’s hands and the little ones both took off, racing toward a spinning pole and narrowly missing getting clocked in the head by another child who was sliding down a sheet of metal into a pile of soft artificial grass below.
I stood on the sidewalk just beside the area and gawked, unable to move and unable to comprehend the purpose of a space like this.
Why were the children running around these structures? What were they for?
“What is this?” I asked Marc, who was behind me, saying nothing.
“Excuse me?”
“What is this area? What’s it for?”
I turned to look at him while he answered and the expression on his face was perplexing. “It’s a playground,” he said, his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned.
“It’s for the children, to play? And that’s it?”
“Yes. What else would it be for?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t the faintest idea. “And what’s that building behind it? The big one that’s wider than all the others?”
Marc stared at me again, only this time he looked grieved.
I wondered if I’d asked something tasteless when he said, “That’s the school.”
Having never attended school myself, or even knowing of any in Central, I was at a loss as to how one was supposed to look. I knew Auberge had Institutions up in North sector where secondary education took place for those who’d completed their apprenticeships, but I’d never been there. I’d only heard about them from Ric when we’d discussed the possibility of my attending culinary school. But that was before we were discovered by Auberge and captured.
“Don’t they have schools in Auberge?” Marc asked.
I nodded. “They do. But I’ve never seen one.”
Marc’s mouth dropped open.
“Didn’t they tell you whom you were babysitting?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Just that you and the guy were escaped Auberge citizens.”
I laughed awkwardly at this, feeling ridiculous. He must have thought me primitive. I turned back to watching the kids on the playground and tried to imagine Clea and Adena toddling around, playing in the grass and slipping down the arched metal structure.
The kids looked so happy.
Joyful.
I’d only ever seen mine like that when they played pat-a-cake with Shirel.
If we lived in Flora City, could I take my kids to this playground and watch them laugh? The idea brought tears to my eyes. I wanted that very much. I wanted them to laugh, and run, and play and attend school every day.
That wasn’t attainable inside Auberge. I simply had to get them out. There was no other option—even if we were trapped and under armed guard here in Flora City, it was still better than Auberge. I knew I might have been trading one prison for another, but this one had a better illusion of freedom.
I spoke my next words aloud, more to myself than to Marc. “I was sold into slavery when I was five, and I worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant until I was thirteen. Then I was sold to the Line. I was a sex slave until about a year and a half ago. So, no. I’ve never been to a school.”
I waited for Marc’s revulsion. Disgust would be the next look on his face. It was how everyone I’d ever met, save a handful, stared at me when my dirty past was revealed. As though they’d just stepped in something rancid.
But to my surprise, Marc didn’t look disgusted at all. He looked impressed, which completely confused me. “Well, no wonder,” he said.
“Huh?”
He nodded. “Slavery is illegal here in Flora. Did you know?”
I blinked at him, lost for a moment.
He hadn’t taken a step back, away from me. In fact, he actually inched closer to me. “I mean, no wonder the people inside Auberge blew up the wall. Sounds like they had it coming.” He stuck his palm out toward me and I shook it. “Welcome to Flora,” he added.
“Uh, thanks.” My mouth had gone dry.
Slavery was illegal? How was that even possible? How did people pay off their debts? How could businesses run without free labor? The idea of no slavery filled me with hope, but my skepticism ran deeply. I just couldn’t see a territory without slaves. I’d never known anything different.
“You must be pretty tough to have gone through all that,” Marc said.
Tough?
I felt so out of sorts that I just stood there, blinking.
Was he messing with me? Was this for real?
I wasn’t tough. I was blistered.
Didn’t he hear me? I was a slave. A dirty, unwanted slave. Why wasn’t he disgusted by me?
“Can I ask you something?” He crossed his arms across his chest and jostled the rifle on his hip as if it wasn’t even there. “Is there a lot of slavery in Auberge?”
“Yes.”
“Do all the restaurants have slaves?”
“Most of them. Yes.”
A sly grin crossed Marc’s face. “Then come with me. I want to show you something.”
We crossed town in a van that picked up people from booths on various street corners and arrived after a few minutes at another part of Flora City that, of course, looked almost exactly the same as the downtown area. The buildings themselves, however, were shorter, with fewer floors above, but were still made of that shiny black metal.
Several blocks away from the drop-off booth, Marc turned into a building, and as we waited for the sanitation process, I noticed him shine the top of his boots against the legs of his pants. He also smoothed his eyebrows and brushed his bangs out of his eyes.
The double door at the end of the chamber then popped open, and we walked into what looked like a restaurant. But it couldn’t have been.
Against the back wall were long tables, stacked high and steaming with stainless steel containers, piled with food. There was also a person on each end of the long table with a hunk of meat on a wooden cutting board, slicing off portions of the meat and putting them on the plates of people as they walked by.
In front of the table, people were lined up, filling their plates with scoops of mashed potatoes, green vegetables, lettuce with dressings, muffins, and rolls and butter.
There weren’t any servers at the sitting tables at all. But the customers took their bursting plates, sat at one of the tables in the center of the room, then got up and got their own drinks, napkins, forks and knives. The sitting tables were long and draped in fabric, with no individual seating. People all sat together, side by side, eating, talking. When they finished their food, they got up, cleared their own dishes and paid a cashier in the corner by the door by slashing a card in front of a monitor.
The staff wore white aprons and entered from a swinging door in the back of the room, carrying more containers of food and removing the empty ones. The supply seemed endless.
“This is a restaurant?” I asked.
Marc nodded. “My parents own it. Been in our family for generations.”
“Not Flora?”
He looked confused at this question. “Why would Flora own a restaurant?”
“But how can this be? There aren’t any servers. The customers are getting it themselves!”
There was a proud look on Marc’s face as he fanned his arm out and across the crowd. “It’s called banquet style. None of the fine restaurants have menus and waitresses anymore. It’s all self-serve.”
“What about the kitchen staff?”
Marc turned from admiring the room of controlled chaos and looked me square in the eyes. “All paid employees.”
My mouth gaped open. “Really?” It sounded too ideal to be true.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“And what if they want to leave?”
He looked at me with the strangest expression. It was almost as if he didn’t quite believe me. “What do you mean? If they want to quit?”
“Yes. Do they have to work here? Or can they get a different job?”
He sighed softly. “They can quit anytime they like. They work here because they like the job and they like the money. Mom and Dad have always done a profit share, so if the restaurant does well, the staff gets bonuses. And when one of them wants to go do something else? Or gets offered a better job? They can quit. No problem. My folks will just hire someone else. It’s a free society. You can do anything you want. Well,” he scoffed, “almost.”
“I don’t get it.”
He shrugged. “You can’t rob a bank, mind you. But there’s always work to be had.”
I stood, watching the restaurant, truly baffled. “But how did you end up a security guard if your family owns a restaurant? Didn’t you have to apprentice?”
“To what? Oh, no. I like eating food more than preparing and serving it. Dad wasn’t that upset I wanted to work with the military. He hired a manager to run the day-to-day, and that’s worked out fine. And I’m not a security guard. I’m actually a corporal in Military Command.”
“Oh, sorry.”
He shrugged.
Just then, from across the room, an older woman carrying a large platter of steaming baked rolls came out of the door from the kitchen and saw us. “Marc!” she bellowed, beaming.
“Hi, Ma!” he answered.
The woman set the tray on the end of the banquet table and ambled around the customers, straight for her son, her arms extended. “Marc, my boy. What are you doing here? I thought you were on duty!” She eyed me with mild interest but kept her attention on her son.
“I am on duty,” he corrected her. “Ma, this is Naya. She’s from Auberge.”
His mother’s smile collapsed and she turned on me, her eyes wide with amazement. “No,” she breathed. “Impossible.”
“No, truly, Ma,” Marc corrected her, since I found myself unable to speak under the weight of his mother’s astonishment. “They breached the wall yesterday.”
I swallowed. Truth was, I wasn’t very happy he’d told her where I was from. It had not only caught her attention, but also the attention of several other people in the restaurant. Word was spreading. People whispered to one another, looking at me. A lady at the banquet table gasped and almost dropped her plate of food.
My heart quickened and I prepared myself to run. Any moment now, their curious eyes would twist into angry glares, and then they would glower at me. Maybe come after me. I was an invader.
I wished I’d waited for Ric before venturing outside, but it was too late now.
“My dear,” Marc’s mother said, gripping one of my sweaty palms in both her hands. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“It is? Oh, I— Thank you.”
“She was a slave, Ma. In a restaurant. Then she was sold into the trade.”
I wanted to slap Marc for telling her this, but his mother’s expression shifted again. This time, her eyes filled with compassion and she dropped my hand, then gripped me in a tight embrace.
“Oh, you poor dear,” she whispered, squeezing me.
I was so much in shock, it was getting harder and harder to breathe. What was this woman doing, hugging me like that? As if she meant it.
“Such a brave girl,” she said. “Good on you, my dear
. Good on you.” She patted me lightly on the back.
Over her shoulder, the people seated at the tables watched us. A couple of them must have overheard the entire conversation because one woman nodded and grinned at me shyly. A man beside her clasped his hands together, eyes glistening, as he watched me with a touched expression.
My throat closed and my eyes filled. In every instance of my life, I had never been accepted by anyone like that, save maybe Ric and my kids, and perhaps Shirel. But instead of lifting me up, the weight of these strangers’ support became my burden. I suddenly felt a responsibility to not let them down.
“Ma,” Marc said softly. “You’re squishing her.”
“Oh, of course,” she said, releasing me. She stepped back but kept her hands on my shoulders. “You must stay for lunch. What would you like? How about a nice roast chicken breast? You look like you could use some meat. And nothing here is replicated! We cook everything fresh.”
“No, we can’t stay,” Marc said.
“Lunch?” I gasped. “What time is it?”
Ma dug in her pocket and produced a handheld tablet. “A little before eleven.”
“I have to get back,” I said, prying loose from Marc’s mother. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back another time. But I have to get back. Thank you!” I turned and bolted toward the door.
Over my shoulder I heard Marc say goodbye to his mother. Just as I was exiting, an older man with silver hair, wearing a long black coat, touched my shoulder and said something about being welcome in Flora. I swallowed the lump in my throat and thanked him quickly, making my way back to the transportation pickup booth. Marc followed closely behind.
I had to get Ric.
He had to see this for himself.
He might not believe me otherwise.
* * *
Back at the apartment, I flung open the door. “Ric?” I called, but there was no need to shout. He was standing in the kitchen. His face was flushed and he clenched his jaw so tightly I thought his skull might crack.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
“You should see it out there. It’s incredible!”
“You went out there alone?”
“No. Marc was with me.” His eyes shot wide, so I hastily added, “One of the soldiers. Well, more like a babysitter. I hadn’t meant to be gone for more than an hour.”
