All the Whys of Delilah's Demise

by Neve Maslakovic

  “Well, don’t just stand there, newbie,” Delilah addressed me just as I thought I couldn’t stand the wait another minute. “What do you have for me today?”

  I snapped to it and ran through the finalized schedule for the evening, which I had on a corkboard—not one actually made out of cork or anything solid, just a semi-transparent rectangle Cece displayed in my eye-field. “We’ve moved the prizes you’re giving out to the start of the event. There’s dinner at the Oyster for the winner of a raffle, gifts for the people who gave and received the millionth gem, and—”

  Delilah interrupted. “Who’s the millionth-gem pair?”

  “Uh—” Damn. So much for putting my best foot forward. This year we had an additional milestone to celebrate—we’d hit a million gems, counting those belonging to current residents as well as past ones. I couldn’t remember the details of the gem that took us over the threshold and didn’t have them on the corkboard. Luckily the wardrobe manager chose that moment to poke their head in to ask if Delilah preferred the brown cowboy boots or the red pair. Cece, quick, send a thought to Wayne: “The names of the millionth-gem pair?”

  Conversations with others take over the internal dialogue from Cece; in-thoughts are devoid of the sound of their creator’s voice but mood and manner do come through and Wayne’s exasperation at having to train an intern who can’t keep track of the simplest things was a thunderous grumble in my mind. “Scottie, this should be on your corkboard. Yoshi, a cafeteria cook, gave a ruby to Pearl, a fabric dyer. They’ll each get a fruit basket.”

  “Got it, thanks,” I responded.

  After the red cowboy boots had been chosen and Delilah leaned back in the chair again, I relayed the information.

  “Fruit baskets. Not a bad haul for doing nothing more than packaging an opinion and receiving that opinion. Anything else, newbie?”

  This was it. “This year’s Discovered brand. The Agency sent over a corkboard with fifty-two names,” I reminded her. “You were going to select someone.”

  She gave an exaggerated sigh. “So I was. All these fresh-faced people offering to run errands for me, tapping me on the shoulder to carry my things, attempting to flatter me left and right on the Commons…” The Commons is a town-wide cloud churning with snapshots and opinions on matters large and small; I haven’t gotten around to contributing to it yet. Delilah followed up her words with a yawn behind a manicured hand. “It’s all been so tiresome, I’m ready to skip the whole thing this year.”

  I had spent weeks hoping she’d choose me. But really, why would she even have taken notice of me? Her plate was full—there were the never-ending social events that came with being the number one, plus her two day jobs, the leadership of the town and the stage. It was a lot for one person to handle. The weekly dose of Eternal Life boosted her wellness, like one of the solar panels of the Dome storing up energy. But we did keep her busy—too busy to notice an intern.

  “What about—er—me?”

  Delilah opened an eye—making Evan, who was applying globs of mascara that seemed to double the width and extent of her eyelashes, tut-tut—and trained it in my direction. “You’d like to be chosen?”

  Hope drove away the uncomfortable sensation that had settled on my skin. Like I said, I’m not used to tooting my own horn. “Very much so.”

  “You go, girl,” Evan threw in, sounding as if he’d be happy to toss his own hat into the ring if he were a few years younger.

  Wordlessly, Delilah relaxed back in the chair, leaving me hanging. Once the door closed behind Evan, she leaned into the mirror and studied her face with the bold stage make-up on it. I was worried she’d forgotten I was there but she swiveled around to face me. I could tell she was looking at my halo, her gaze just above my scalp. “Newbie. You’ve been out of the youth center for what, twelve months?”

  “Just about,” I answered.

  “And not even half as many gems. I won’t ask about that infraction onyx, but why on earth do you have so few gems?”

  She had never asked me anything personal before. It was the first but not the last surprise the day would hold. “I don’t have a brand,” I said simply. Staring at the mirror for a couple of seconds brought up my own halo. I don’t have enough gems for the comments to stream—they just sort of hang in the air. Looming large was the onyx from the Code Enforcement Office that followed me out of the youth center and slotted me straight into the bottom thousand, the comment attached to it short and to the point: “Section F violation.” On the cheerier side of things were my two rubies, the first from Wayne (“A great addition to the Social Agency. Go Scottie!”) and the second from Lu (“PALs forever.”) My remaining gems, adding up to a grand total of five, were the welcome-to-adulthood amber everyone gets and a jade from a next-door neighbor, the comment in it—“Scott is hard to get to know”—making me think there’s nothing to know every time I look at my reflection.

  Elegant in a silk robe, Delilah went to change, calling out from behind the curtain, “No brand is nothing but an excuse.”

  “But it’s true,” I protested. “I don’t have, like, a thing. A talent. A gift. Not like you do.”

  Delilah never needed help from the Agency. Others do, or, if they can’t afford Agency prices, resort to halo-padding, which is when you trade gems under the table in an effort to boost the color of your halo. I’ve never thought of doing it, and not only because halo-padding is against the Code. Worse than not being popular would be faking it.

  “It’s not a talent. I work for it, same as anyone.” I could hear what sounded like weariness in her voice. She had more to say. “A brand is a hook, that’s all. There has to be something behind it. You have to let people see the real you—not everything necessarily, but enough… You have to give freely, every day.”

  “I tried giving. It didn’t work.”

  She emerged in twentieth-century costume—blue jeans, a button-up shirt checkered with warm orange and purple, the red cowboy boots—and opened a drawer in the vanity. Inside was a small box of chocolates. She offered me one. Chocolate is an expensive delicacy imported from far-away domes via long-distance trains. It’s heaven masquerading under a dull brown, and I’d only tasted it once a year starting with the PAL ceremony at age seven and on PAL anniversaries after that. Twelve times—this made thirteen. I quickly reached out a hand.

  Delilah took one for herself. “So you want to make a splash on New Seattle’s social scene.”

  “Even a ripple will do,” I said, trying not to smack my lips too loudly.

  “No.”

  A stone sank into my stomach, obliterating the sweet aftertaste of the chocolate. “No?”

  Delilah shook her head. “I wouldn’t be doing you a favor. An artificial brand is not the way to go. Make friends beyond your PAL group, try out hobbies, meet new people, go out and about. Then build on that.”

  Battling to keep the disappointment—and fear—out of my voice, I asked, “But what if I don’t manage to build anything at all? What if I sink all the way down to last place?”

  I knew the math: ten thousand, New Seattle’s count of adults, must remain steady. Too many people and we run out of resources. Too few and we run out of working hands. Each week the youth center—a trio of buildings on the south side of town—spits out a grad who needs a place on the List. The lowest-ranked person is sent to one of the nine greenhouses that surround New Seattle to work for room and board farming crops or tending livestock…unless the greenhouses are at capacity, which happens a couple of times a year. In that case the bottomer goes sledding.

  The old definition of sledding, according to Cece and the Knowledge Repository, was when you sat down on a wooden sled or a used mattress and slid down a snow slope, which sounds fun enough and for all I know Outsiders, who live their whole lives in the cold, still do it. Inside the Dome it means something different. The sledding you do is out a town gate. My worst fear, the stuff of nightmares, one that stops the breath in my lungs. Not because I’m scared o
f the foreign and inhospitable land on the frost side of the Dome glass—well, that too—but because it means never finding out about myself in the Birth Lab database. Who my parents were. Who I am.

  “Well, don’t sink to the bottom, newbie.”

  It was not an unkind statement, just the truth delivered with candor, unwrapped and bare.

  Delilah put the box of chocolates away and settled a leather cowgirl hat onto the braid. “For tonight, it should be someone already on their way up.” Embarrassed that I’d pushed my own name ahead of Lu’s, I offered, “One of my PALs—she graduated a month after me—just cracked the Top Thousand. Lu is kindhearted and outgoing. Everyone likes her.”

  My suggestion was met with a nod. “Have her stand by the stage and I’ll make a show of picking someone on the spot from the audience this year.” She held up a booted foot. “I’m taking a snapshot”—Delilah liked to drop little morsels of her life onto the Commons—“…and done.” Give a little of yourself daily, she’d said, though I doubted anyone would care if I had Cece share a snapshot of my sandaled foot on the Commons.

  Delilah tweaked the cowgirl hat into a more rakish angle. “Newbie, I’ll tell you what. My in-queue is backed up. I’ll send everything over—go through and see if anything needs my attention. It’ll be a good learning experience. Vicky usually does it but she’s having an infected tooth removed; she’ll be groggy.”

  Vicky was Delilah’s understudy and general assistant, a woman with an eternally pinched expression, as if life had displeased her. I’d wondered where she was, given that she usually spent her time hovering by Delilah’s side. The remaining invites sat in my pocket but Delilah was trusting me with her in-thoughts, which meant she didn’t consider me a complete loser. “How will I know what’s important?”

  “Not much of it, probably! I’ve got the Tenners and town business on a private stream. This is my open queue. Only pay attention to thoughts sent by the Top Hundred people. Wipe the rest. That’s your first social lesson right there—the higher the rank a person has, the more what they have to say matters. But you know that already, don’t you? That’s why you were hoping I’d choose you for the brand.”

  My cheeks warmed and I said nothing in response. She nodded at the invite. “Keep it. I’ve got enough of them as it is. And newbie? Sit down. We don’t want you crashing your bike because you’re wading through a bucketful of in-thoughts.”

  From the door, she added a final bit of advice. “I see something in you, you know. You have a fine voice. Use it.”

  “You mean to sing? I can’t sing,” I responded.

  “I’m talking about spreading your wings. Whatever your dreams are, they aren’t out of reach.”

  Once the door closed behind her, I sent Lu a thought with the good news, then slid into the vanity chair. Delilah’s jammed-up in-queue arrived promptly. Cece, let’s get to work. One by one, Cece fed me the individual thoughts. Most fell into the fan mail category and I felt bad each time my decision was wipe, as if every rejected thought was a moldy-green bread slice unworthy even of cafeteria mix. After forty-five minutes, I had whittled the queue down to a manageable length. Left in were a couple of Maintenance alerts about wood rot on the balcony of Delilah’s suite in Housing One. Nothing struck me as unusual about that, the alerts being a fact of life in a town well into its ninth decade of existence, though mine didn’t tend to come from the Maintenance supervisor, Smith.

  I had Cece return the now-short queue back to Delilah, then dashed off to deliver the remaining invites. Though it meant covering a larger distance, protocol dictated the order, by rank rather than by location. Number two at least was easy—the dressing room next door. Figuring that Handsome Rick was at the rehearsal, I slid the invite under his door and, turning away, bumped into someone. Vicky, back from the dentist with her mouth swollen. She winced, her hand flying to her jaw, and sent a furious thought at me. “Watch where you’re going. Why are you still here?”

  “Delilah asked me to sort through her in-thoughts,” I responded silently. “She was concerned you might be groggy.”

  “Concerned? Was she. I bet you were eager to do it.”

  Vicky’s halo, above thin, straw-textured hair, told me her rank: in the lower middle of the List, enough to afford the dentist with some penny-pinching. Her mostly amber and jade gems could be summed up simply: Vicky, you’ll get your chance one day.

  She was still eyeing me irritably and I attempted to clarify. “Don’t worry, I’m not after your job. I’m not good at acting or waiting. What I’m saying is, I’d make a terrible understudy. The assisting I could do, but—”

  “Trust me, you don’t WANT my job.”

  She switched to verbal, her voice thick with the dental swelling, the effect a comical one though her words were anything but. “You are very young, aren’th you? You know, I could thell you sthories abouth the Duchessh.”

  “You could what? Oh, tell me stories.”

  “Open your eyes. It’s an illusion, a fairy thale, her being the best of ush, loved by everyone.”

  This made me snap to Delilah’s defense. “Of course she’s loved by everyone. That’s why she’s the number one.”

  “Is ith? Did she choose you? For the brand?”

  “No,” I was forced to admit.

  “Shtill think she’s sho wonderful?” Vicky shook her head and continued on toward the side entrance to the stage.

  Outside the theater, I hopped back on the bike, pedaling fast to make up for being late and having Cece check the people-locator map in case one of the recipients wasn’t at their usual location. My legs were starting to cramp by the time I delivered the rest of the invites, my stops in order: the Dragon and the Drumstick, a tavern near Pike Place Market whose proprietor, Everyone’s Friend Bonnie—the number three, a jovial and plump bun-haired woman—took the invite with a cheery thank you; the Fill-n-Sip Cup coffeehouse in Founders Square, whose manager, Wheelin’-n-Dealin’ Chase, the number four, wordlessly accepted his; near the north gate, to Samm’s room—he and Sue, at five and six, are a comedic duo, the Jokers, and also dating—I slid both invites under the door without knocking; back to the square and the Oyster, an upscale eatery in the lobby of Housing One whose manager, Jet-Set Jada, the number seven, berated me for being late for a good five minutes; to a building near the youth center where the map pointed me to the location of Poulsbo the Handyman—I found the number eight fixing a broken door hinge; to an office near the Dome’s edge for Franz, the number nine, a conflict mediator known as the Relationship Wizard; and finally, back to my own workplace.

  New Seattle’s number ten is McKinsey, the head of the Social Agency and therefore my boss and Wayne’s too. McKinsey has a no-nonsense personality, close-cropped curly silver hair, a penchant for bold colors and patterns, and a plethora of hobbies. There’s never been one she’s said no to—from rooftop gardening to finger painting to interpretative dance—her ability to juggle them along with her job earning her the brand of Time-Management Genius. One of the first things I’d been told at my Agency orientation was that McKinsey never takes a day off—she is to be found in her fourth-floor office Monday to Sunday. In a snappy bubblegum-pink suit, rapidly instructing a couple of staff on party details, McKinsey paid little attention to the invite I set on her desk, same as Delilah, though she’d not quite reached Delilah’s knee-high stack of them.

  That done, I went to join Wayne and his crew in Founders Square. The speeches and prize-giving were to take place on the platform that stands permanently mid-square, with the rest of the party spilling over into the Edge Garden, four blocks away in all directions. The ring of green occupying the space where the Dome’s structure meets the ground had been humming with activity all week—I’d helped set up booths for carnival-style games and other activities.

  Wayne greeted me with, “Jada complained you were late delivering her invite.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” I said, trying to catch my breath as I set the bike against the platf
orm. “Delilah asked me to go through her in-thoughts.”

  “Next time say no.”

  “To Delilah?”

  “Well, say no diplomatically.”

  “As if it matters,” I griped, unaware that there would be no next time—not with Delilah. “She always gives me chills. Jada, I mean, with those dead eyes of hers. She always looks as if she’s planning your funeral.”

  “Jada, she’s just…determined.” Wayne was by a table behind the platform. He’d carried a wooden crate over. He pried open the lid to reveal wine bottles sitting in straw and passed a corkscrew to me. “Here, take over and empty these—all of them, yes—into the barrel. I need to go pick up a shipment of strawberries coming in on a greenhouse train. And Scottie… Don’t have any of the wine. Top Hundred only.”

  As if I didn’t know that already. After twisting the corkscrew in the air experimentally, I set about tackling the first of the bottles. Cece, dip me into the Commons. Topic: the party. And no visuals—don’t want to accidentally stab myself.

  The town mood was one of excitement and anticipation, the shared thoughts a loose string of colorful beads that dropped into my mind one after another. “There’ll be games and punch and hard cider, I heard! … My friend’s in a band, they’ll go on after the prizes … Gemma Bligh died when she was eighty-five, didn’t she? … I’m buying as many tickets as I can for the Oyster raffle … Lots of people die when they hit eighty-five, what’s that got to do with anything? … Haven’t you heard of Gemma Bligh’s curse? … Did someone say raffle? …”

  The cork popped successfully and I tipped the bottle and watched the golden liquid disappear into the barrel. Discovered by the Duchess—I wanted it, yes. But not because I can’t afford a fresh breakfast, or new clothes every month, or a fancy suite to live in. It was something else.

  I shook the last few drops in and set the empty bottle back in its spot in the straw. The street allowed a glimpse of a building two blocks away, sterile-gray and with tiny windows, a suitable look for a depository of secrets. Same as everyone in New Seattle, I was conceived inside, from egg and sperm manufactured from skin cells, ones plucked at random from a dusty bank from Old Seattle. Section F states Absolutely no inquiries into ancestry permitted. The F is merely a matter of topic-ordering in the Code, but in my mind it stands for family. There’s no mechanism for me to find out the names of the only people I can call flesh and blood, long gone though they are. I did try one time and succeeded only in getting caught.