‘It’s because I’m good at music,’ she explained. ‘My mummy chose that.’
‘My mummy wanted me to be a scientist,’ I said. ‘With plants. But in the end they chose something different.’
I waited for Lark to ask me what it was but she didn’t. Her breathing was deeper and her eyes closed.
I got up and tiptoed to the window. Outside, the light from the full moon spilt across the gardens, cutting a silvery swathe through the night darkness. It was beautiful, I thought. The most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
In the morning Miss Margaret told us that it was time to begin our real work. ‘But it’s fun work, of course,’ she said. ‘We want to help you make the most of your extraordinary blessings. Each of you is so very talented, and it is our job to help you reach your full potential.’
She had written down lesson plans. There were classes we did together and then intensive units that we had on our own, geared towards our particular leanings. Lark was musical and beautiful. Tall and slender with long blonde hair that fell to her waist, she had large grave eyes that shone when she was happy. Wren was supposedly a leader. She was wiry, energetic, boisterous and bossy. Ivy and I were less readily defined. I was an analytical thinker and a clear communicator with a strong visual narrative bent. It was an unusual combination, I’d been told, and one that was meant to put me on the path to a career in communications. I could discern a problem and then find a creative solution. The classes I had were in storytelling, both visual and aural, and navigating communication channels. Ivy was a mathematical thinker, a problem-solver, designed to work in a field such as engineering.
Miss Margaret gave us mobies, which she said were pre-programmed with reminders and navigation tools to help us find our classes. I switched mine on immediately, easily finding my way around the screen as I hummed to the tune that welcomed me to Halston.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘There’s a river in that direction. And greenhouses and stables.’
‘Are there horses?’ Wren asked.
Miss Margaret said there were. ‘Next to the sporting fields.’
‘And music rooms.’ Lark ran her finger along the row of rooms, her eyes wide with the promise of a place to practise.
Next to us, Ivy just stared into the distance, her breakfast and her mobie untouched.
Miss Margaret patted the seat next to her, and Ivy drew in close. ‘Do you understand where you are going today?’ she asked.
Ivy shook her head, sniffing loudly.
‘Here.’ Miss Margaret turned on the mobie for her, and Lark and I both hummed in tune to the song while Wren inched a little closer, trying to shift Ivy so that there was space for her too.
Miss Margaret tapped the class list and both girls leant in, their heads bent over the screen. Ivy looked up first. I could tell she didn’t understand.
Miss Margaret studied her. Then she gave Ivy a kiss on the top of her head and told her not to worry. ‘I’ve asked four of our older girls to take you to class today, to help you find your way. Soon it will all make sense. You won’t even have to think about it.’
I was assigned to Rani, who at twelve years old seemed extraordinarily grown-up. Long-limbed with glossy black hair and startling blue eyes, she looked as though she were the lucky recipient of an exquisite design, and I took her hand in awe.
‘The day is divided into three parts,’ she told me. ‘We have accelerated schooling before lunch and then there is an hour’s leisure in the gardens. After lunch it’s time for our creative program: art, music, writing, media-making. We have afternoon tea with Miss Margaret at four and then intensive lessons in a chosen speciality. Miss Margaret says yours is narrative media?’ She looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded nervously. No one had ever spoken to me in such an adult way before, not even the tutor that BioPerfect had sent to our house before I came here.
‘Dinner is at seven, followed by Discussion Hour – you’ll understand this when you get there, but basically Miss Margaret picks a topic and we are meant to have a debate that explores the issues. It’s not formal, though.’
I nodded again even though I didn’t know what a debate was.
We had stopped outside a door. I could see the others walking towards us, and behind them was another group of children around my age.
‘That’s this year’s intake,’ Rani explained.
I watched them. They weren’t Lotto Girls. They were the children whose parents had bought their design.
Rani could see my anxiety. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Being here is what matters, not where you come from. We all work together. We help and learn from one another.’ And then she leant down and smiled at me. ‘I’m a Lotto Girl too.’ She squeezed my hand and told me she’d be back to take me to my next class.
In those first few weeks it soon became clear that we were at very different levels. The non-Lotto Girls, whose parents would have been able to afford the most rigorous preschool education, were far ahead in all the basics. Lark and I struggled to keep up. She was stronger with questions of numeracy, I was quicker with literacy. At first we were careful to conceal the fact that we were showing each other our work and comparing answers, but we soon stopped hiding. It seemed that Rani was right; we were meant to help each other learn.
Ivy and Wren, who shared a room, also tried to work together. Wren would occasionally look across at us, eyebrows raised in frustration. At the end of the first week, they were both taken out for intensive tutoring to help them catch up. When they returned to classes, Ivy seemed no better than before, frequently failing to understand even the most simple of principles.
‘She just doesn’t seem to get anything,’ Wren told us.
The three of us were in one of the study rooms, working on our messages home. Lark always spent hours on hers, telling her parents everything she had done and felt. Wren was more matter-of-fact, providing a brief account of her successes. My messages said little. I liked to send images of the trees, close-ups of the light dancing through a pane of glass, a pattern I made with flower petals. They must have been intensely frustrating to my parents, but I wanted to be the artist, the narrator of images that I was meant to be, to dazzle them – and, perhaps more importantly, my friends and the teachers – with my creativity.
‘She keeps saying she hates it here,’ Wren continued, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the sentiment. ‘She says it’s boring.’
‘Do you think she’ll catch up?’ Lark asked.
‘Of course she will,’ I said, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that Ivy shouldn’t be here. How could I? I mightn’t have liked it, but she was one of us, which meant that she had to be special.
But Ivy continued to lag behind.
It didn’t take long before the rumours began. Apparently, Ivy couldn’t count past ten. She couldn’t do a simple addition. People began to say that she couldn’t even read.
The first whispers came from girls in our year, started by those who looked down on the Lotto Girls. Despite what Rani said, not everyone thought we were a community of equals. But perhaps it wasn’t just because of that. Perhaps everyone at Halston was relieved that the failure in their midst was someone other than themselves.
The kinder teachers made excuses for Ivy, telling her that she mustn’t worry, that sometimes it took a little longer for our strengths to blossom. They made sure they spoke loud enough for all the class to hear and they were quick to silence any criticism from others. But as that first year passed and Ivy failed to improve, the rumours grew. She was a failure; her genetic design had been an attempt at something new, something that hadn’t worked. Would she be asked to leave? It rarely happened but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
There was a certain delight in the talk, in the prospect of something so awful happening, and although I, too, found it secretly thrilling, I hated it. What if someone was whispering about me?
We were juniors, Miss Margaret told me when I became anxious about whe
ther I was doing well enough. It would take time before we would become the young women we were meant to be, sometimes a longer time than expected. I knew she was referring to Ivy but still I worried that the reference was also to me, that I was failing too.
In those first two years Miss Margaret regularly asked the three of us to look out for Ivy, to be particularly kind to her, to have faith that she would soon put her difficulties behind her. Miss Margaret took special care of her too, always making sure Ivy had a seat next to her at meals and that there was a space on the sofa where she could curl up during Discussion Hour. Ivy often fell asleep, her dark curls falling across her face, her slightly chubby cheeks pink with exhaustion.
Wren whispered to us that Ivy still cried most nights and that she often had to take her in to Miss Margaret, who would tuck her into a bed next to her own, one that she began to keep out permanently in expectation of Ivy’s midnight arrival.
When I look back, knowing what I now know, I feel for her. We were so young. I see her, glancing out shyly from behind her long fringe, thumb in mouth, completely ill-equipped for that place. She often tried to play games – games of mothers and fathers and babies, games that I found embarrassing.
In class she would either stare out the window, making little attempt to participate, or she would disrupt, seizing my mobie and wiping her hands all over my answers, or taking my clay and breaking it up with her fist, smearing my oil colours into an ugly brown, which she would then try to wipe on my clothes. When no one was looking, I would sometimes pinch her, taking her skin between my fingers and squeezing until she howled, then pretend to comfort her, receiving praise from the teachers for my kindness.
I was not a nice child, but I suppose, like Ivy, I was overwhelmed by the place. I spent my junior years just doing my best to swim with the others – even if that meant pushing another underwater.
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I sit at my window in the hope that there’ll be a breath of cool sweetness in the evening air. There never is. This is not BioPerfect territory with a perfectly controlled micro-climate, clear skies and silky breezes. This is a ReCorp sorting facility, home to the bottom of the pile, where people queue every morning for a shift that will earn them just enough data to last until the next day – if they’re lucky.
A ReCorp executive occasionally visits our facility, travelling in a sealed autocarrier from an estate, a place where people pay for BioPerfect to create an environment not dissimilar to Halston. He or she is always suited up, protected from the searing heat and smog.
I envy them, being able to leave this place. Some days I stand at the conveyor belt, sorting rubbish, the grind of the machines loud, the sour smell impossible to ignore, and I try to take myself back to the Halston gardens. I want to remember them so vividly that this place disappears. I want to be there again.
From the front verandah you could see several acres of playing fields and kitchen garden plots and, weaving through this, a river of pure, clear water. This was a sight I had only ever been treated to in mediastreams, in promotions for a better world that did exist, we were told, and that could be ours. It was the place where our food came from, BioPerfect told us; the source of our water, PureAqua said; the home we could retire to if we just worked that little bit harder and that little bit longer. I had seen it so often, a backdrop to our lives, a projection running behind everything we did, constant but flimsy, though I guess I had never really believed it existed until I saw it for myself.
I became friendly with Marcus, a gardener Miss Margaret took me to see in response to my endless questions about the flowerbeds, the trees, the greenhouses and the lawns. I know just the person you should be talking to, she’d said, after I’d asked her once again how a plant grew from seed and why, if this was the case, BioPerfect manufactured so much of our environment and most of the food we ate.
Marcus told me that everything began with nature.
‘All that BioPerfect does has been learnt from this.’ He held out a few seeds for me to inspect. His sleeves were rolled up and his skin was deeply tanned.
‘Unfortunately, we did so much damage to the world that we’ve had to rely on science more than we used to.’ He took off his gloves and sat for a moment. ‘There are many who would say that science has improved the real thing, and it’s certainly been essential for our survival, but look at this.’ He held up a small seedling. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? Grown from one of those unmodified seeds. Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without this environment, so it’s foolish to say science hasn’t helped. But the taste of the tomato – it’s something else.’ He smacked his lips in appreciation and winked at me. ‘Not that I’d go repeating my views in your lessons. I’m just a gardener, remember.’
I held the tiny plant in my hands, its one leaf unfurling.
‘What can I do?’ I asked, instantly wanting to be part of this strange and fascinating world he inhabited.
Marcus told me I’d have to get my hands dirty, and he showed me his own palms. Each crevice of his skin was lined with the richness of the soil; it smelt like caramel. My skin looked pale and unused next to his. ‘Let’s start with the cucumbers,’ he said, handing me my own trowel.
It felt heavy in my hand as I began to dig, pressing down into the dirt as I transferred those fragile plants, watching what he did, asking questions, eager to learn.
‘Can I come again?’ I asked him at the end of the day.
He smiled. ‘Of course. Whenever you want.’
That day I was the happiest I’d been since I arrived at Halston, and I hummed softly to myself on the walk back up the hill, the sky a soft mauve overhead.
Getting to know Marcus increased my appreciation of each detail of that environment. I remember the way the lawn looked in the first morning light, and how I would often stop on my way to class and, after checking that no one was looking, sit on the edge of the verandah and reach down to feel the grass, alive beneath my fingers. I would pick a few blades and rub them in my hands, breathing in the sweetness before putting them in my pocket, mine to hold for the entire day.
Lark caught me once and we giggled as we both confessed how much we loved the smell.
‘I can’t say I’ve ever carried it around with me,’ Lark said, bending down to pick some of the grass herself. ‘But I just might from now on.’
She was always kind, never one to make you feel judged or lacking in any way, and I breathed easier in her company.
I always chose my extra-curricular classes to be with her, even if they weren’t really where my interests lay. She liked dancing and moved with a light grace that I never had. I suffered through terms of it, both of us laughing at my clumsiness, Lark often trying to convince me that I wasn’t quite as bad as I thought I was.
Wren never did those classes with us. I think she found her escape through hard physical activity. She ran marathons, boxed and rode horses, her body compact and steel-taut. With her hair cut in a tight crop, she looked more like an athletic boy than a girl.
‘Put ’em up,’ she’d say to me over and over again, bouncing on the balls of her feet. It irritated me so much that I think we would have fought if Lark hadn’t always been there to roll her eyes and laugh at us.
On Sundays we had several hours to ourselves – time that we were encouraged to while away, because nothing sharpens the mind like emptiness, Miss Margaret once said during a Discussion Hour.
The three of us would go down to where the sandy banks of the river were shaded by pepper trees. Ivy rarely joined us, preferring to stay inside with Miss Margaret, but Wren, Lark and I loved this time.
When we were in our junior years, we used pebbles and wet sand to build houses, all interconnected by sticks. This was where we were going to live, somewhere on a BioPerfect pastoral lease, where I would work as a media content producer. Lark would be a musician performing for BioPerfect executives, and Wren would be a manager with an important leadership role in one of the corporations.
Even thou
gh we slowly grew out of creating those miniature dream homes, we never tired of talking of our futures, our conversation often drifting to falling in love.
‘We will have handsome husbands.’ Lark smiled and twirled on the tips of her toes, one hand tracing an arc through the air. ‘They will be smart, kind and highly entertaining. I like a cheeky sense of humour.’
‘Do we want BioPerfect executives?’ I asked. ‘Or do you think they should just stay at home and care for us while we lead fascinating lives?’
Wren grimaced. ‘I don’t want a husband,’ she said.
‘What about children?’ Lark asked.
‘I’ll adopt them from the poor ReCorp parents,’ she said. Wren’s parents were wealthier than ours – she had boasted that they were, in fact, middle management at DataMap. ‘But I’ll have nannies to look after them – nannies as kind as Miss Margaret – and I won’t have to do a thing. Besides, I’ll be too busy making sure my company is the most successful in the BioPerfect group.’
She considered her future for a moment.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I don’t want those dirty ReCorp children. They’ll just mess up my house and they won’t know how to behave. I’m going to be on my own.’ She nodded. ‘Completely on my own.’
Lark glared at her. ‘You’re selfish,’ she said. ‘The whole point of having gifts is to better the world.’ We’d had a similar conversation during Discussion Hour only a few days earlier, with talk branching into whether improving oneself was sufficient to improve the lives of others. Lark had been particularly vocal that night, her altruism heartfelt. ‘It’s not to look down on people.’
I knew that Lark’s family was from NewMatter, a company only marginally better than ReCorp. They took the sorted refuse and recycled it. Her parents would have lived under sky a little like the smear of grey above me now. Although I came from PureAqua, the lowly work my parents did meant that we both came from a similar place. But, unlike me, Lark was not ashamed of her past. She tilted her chin proudly.
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