by Sarah Govett
At one point she was gyrating against the wall and I wished Jack had been there to see it. Jack gets really embarrassed when Daisy goes all flirty. His cheeks and the bit of chest just below his neck go all red and his freckles seem to leap out at you, almost neon in their orangeness. Like that really orange drink everyone was drinking last year that got banned because it made toddlers turn orange and go hyper. If you tease him about it, he goes even redder. Daisy says he’d go scarlet and probably explode like some giant supernova if I ever properly flirted with him, but she’s just trying to stir things up (and show off that she now knows the word ‘supernova’ after flunking last week’s Physics test). Looks-wise (and it seems dance-wise) I’m no Daisy.
Boys like Daisy and Daisy likes it that boys like her. She’s kissed eight boys in total and that’s excluding kisses without tongues. She can’t believe I haven’t kissed anyone yet; won’t stop teasing me about it. Her two major bits of advice are (1) be careful not to clash teeth as it feels horrible and you look like a right amateur; and (2) make sure the boy hasn’t just eaten a piece of cheese on toast like when she kissed Rory Pike and his whole mouth tasted like slightly stale melted cheese, which was grim.
We didn’t get to dance for long though. Daisy’s stressy mum had a go at us for disturbing Logan. Which is ridiculous as it was only 9pm and what normal twenty year old would care about a bit of music? Particularly amazingly cool music. But I guess Daisy’s brother isn’t exactly a normal twenty year old. He’s a freakoid for a start.
I was really shocked when I first went back to Daisy’s at the start of Year 4 and saw that her brother had a Node; was one of them. ’Cos Daisy’s not, obviously. Daisy doesn’t like to talk about it. Apparently her parents used to be better off. Her dad was the head of some big computer company and so they could afford the procedure – could go make themselves a Childe.
Five years later, things weren’t quite so rosy. Another freakoid was out of the question. Daisy always says that she was a mistake. I always tell her she’s being a denser, but there is something about the way her mum looks at her sometimes, when she doesn’t think anyone else is looking, that is really pretty cold. Kind of scary. Like Mr Hughes with Jack’s Physics homework. And she gets so stressed about any test or exam. I guess she’s not used to the pressure. Logan naturally sailed through everything. I remember thinking he was quite hot when I first met him, but now I can’t see it all. He has Daisy’s great cheekbones and perfectly spaced eyes but whereas Daisy gives off this amazing energy, he is a personality black hole. Whenever I see him, I know he’s judging me. And by the look on his face, I’m clearly failing.
Once, when Daisy and I were having one of our late-night chats, Daisy asked me whether I thought my parents would come to the Wetlands with me if I failed.
I didn’t have to think. ‘Yes.’ I said. They can be right pains, but Mum and Dad would never let me go by myself. I know they’d do anything to protect me.
Daisy seemed to withdraw into herself a bit. ‘Mine would stay,’ she said eventually. ‘They’d choose Logan.’ I tried to reassure her and banged on about it never coming to that anyway, I mean her average test scores are kind of OK at the moment. But I know she’s right. There’s no way her mum, with her perfectly coiffed hair and diary crammed full of coffee mornings, would pack up and move to a malarial swampland. Not for her child. Well, certainly not for her daughter.
Some evenings can be boring, but this evening was the WORST.
Mum had been invited round to her boss’ for dinner and me and Dad had to go too. Which is ridiculous really – surely the only thing that matters is whether Mum is good at her job (which she is) not whether Dad and I can scrub up well and make polite conversation (which we can’t – or at least I can’t – Dad’s better at being phoney polite. He’s a lawyer, he has to be.) Anyway, we had to be there for 6pm, which is massively early, so they could have pre-dinner drinks while I hung out with their freakoid son, Charles. And you can tell by the fact that he calls himself Charles, rather than Charlie, what great fun he is.
Their house is in the Western Suburbs, pretty close to the Laboratory and to People’s Park. Not that they’d hang out there. They are far too snobby to mix with the common people. Their house is properly massive. A huge black front door that screams ‘money’ leads into an enormous hallway, with its own fan. And I thought there was supposed to be a lack of space. I know, great idea – let’s ship some fifteen-year-old Norms off to die so that the Brooks have enough space for their coats.
I remember talking to Dad about this stuff ages ago. ’Cos nearly everyone we know has a similar sort of apartment. A SMALL similar sort of apartment. Just big enough for a kitchen, separate lounge, and two bedrooms. Enough space for parents and up to two kids. Not that anyone’s going to have more than two. If they’re Norms you’re pretty lucky if one passes. Two pass – you’ve seriously lucked out. Three – no way. And if you go the freakoid route, well, they’re massively expensive to make. Anyway, I’d ranted at Dad about how unfair it was that some people have massive apartments and houses while everyone else is squashed in, and how surely it’d be better to turn the massive apartments and houses into smaller ones so that more people could live in the Territory and more lives could be saved. And then, while we’re thinking about it, why not build over all the People’s Parks (there must be at least five if each city’s got one) and come to think of it, the Woods as well? I guess we’d need to keep the Solar Fields for Energy, but we could probably shrink the Arable Lands a bit more if we just built a few more macro plants or Synthmeat factories. We could let thousands and thousands more people stay, rather than drastically cut the few millions we have.
But Dad said it was all based on research. The neeks decided that we need the Woods to suck up more CO2 and reduce winter flooding (and so Ministry bigwigs and richer people can go on holiday or for a nice stroll) and we’re only just managing to feed the population as it is.
Also, the whole Ministry is based on the idea that in order for the Territory to survive as sea levels keep going up, the greatest minds have to be motivated to work as hard as possible. To come up with new inventions, new energy resources, new ways of making food. New ways of cooling the planet.
But, I said, pretty densely I guess, surely everyone works really hard to make life better for everyone anyway, don’t they?
Dad did a sort of sad smile. Apparently, the good of the Territory isn’t concrete enough of a thing to motivate people. The studies showed that people work hardest if (1) they’ve got space to exercise and relax; and (2) they’re going to ‘gain materially’: get money and stuff. Basically they work hardest if they think that there’s a chance they’ll get to live in a bigger, better house than everyone else and go on holiday. People don’t actually care that much about improving the lives of people they don’t know. Equality doesn’t work. Humans are rubbish.
Anyway, back to the evening. As soon as we got there, I was ushered into Charles’ room. ‘Oooooh,’ Daisy would say as she so wants me to get a boyfriend, probably even a freakoid. But Charles is seriously not ‘Oooooh’; he’s ‘Urrrgghggh’. Short and stocky with a flat, piggy nose. Charles is in the same year as us at Hollets but in Mr Rice’s class. The idea was that we would both do our homework and then chat. As if we’d have anything to talk about. Mum’s boss’ wife (Jane the Pain) then looked fake-worried and said there was only one Port so we’d have to take it in turns. I said that wouldn’t be necessary as I was a Norm and she did a phoney little laugh and said, ‘Oh yes, of course, silly me. Good for you,’ as if she didn’t already know and as if I were some sort of charity case.
‘Doing homework’ with Charles made me really, really angry. We’ve got a Geography test tomorrow so had to cram the whole of the stagnant water and malaria topic – four whole weeks’ worth of notes. I was there, staring at my Scribe, making flashcards and reading and re-reading while Charles went to his Port.
This was the first time I’ve really watched so
meone upload. I mean, there are obviously Ports in the school library, but there are screens in the way, and I don’t have any freakoid friends.
Charles switched his Port on. He took the Port’s lead, drew it around his neck and quickly plugged it into his Node. He didn’t need to even look in the mirror to find the hole, he’d done it so many times.
He pressed the ‘upload’ icon. There was a pause and then his body went all limp. His eyes rolled upwards and to the right until they looked like white discs and his arms started to twitch. Slowly at first, rhythmically, and then faster until it seemed like he was having some kind of controlled fit. The whole thing only lasted about two minutes and then his eyes returned to normal, his body stiffened and he unplugged.
‘Test me on something,’ he commanded.
‘What percentage of people in the Wetlands die from malaria?’ I asked.
‘Eighty-four per cent,’ he fired back.
I nodded.
‘Great – always like to check the upload worked,’ he said smugly and then opened up a comic on his Scribe.
Jane the Pain put her head round the door at 7pm to ‘see how we were doing’. She congratulated Charles for having finished his homework (yeah right – well done for sitting still and twitching for two minutes) and looked at me with pity again, as if I were some sort of special case denser for still studying.
When I got home I shut myself in the bathroom and used Dad’s shaving mirror to look at the back of my neck. There are the bumps of the vertebrae, some downy fair hair and three moles. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have two holes there instead. Plugging a lead into your body. Would it be uncomfortable? Would it get hot when the electricity flowed? It just seems so sick. I feel ill if I do something as supposedly harmless as use my fingernail to clean inside my ears. I always visualise it getting stuck or my hand somehow slipping and it accidentally getting rammed into my brain.
One of my moles seems a bit raised. I hope it doesn’t grow a hair. Ms Jones has a hairy mole on the left side of her face, just under her ear, and it’s reek.
History is just a massive bunch of lies.
It was the twenty-third Anniversary of the Territory today so normal lessons were suspended and we just did History all day.
It kicked off, as it always does, with a ridiculously long assembly. We had to sing the anthem and listen to Mr Daniels droning on about strength in adversity and the birth of our ‘Glorious Territory’ blah de blah de blah. I’m surprised they didn’t make us wave flags or something equally malc.
I can recite the official version off by heart I’ve heard it so many times. Daisy can too. We once paraded around her bedroom wearing sheets tied round our necks reciting it in loud voices. Thinking back now I’m not sure what the sheets were for. Some kind of superhero cape? ‘Territory Man to the Rescue!’
Anyway here it goes:
‘After the Great Floods, over half of the world’s land mass, including that of Old Britain was under saltwater. The south of Old Britain was submerged and the flooded eastern areas, now known as the Wetlands, became uninhabitable. The soil was saturated with salt so no crops could grow and any remaining freshwater became a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes. Everyone in Old Britain moved to the central dry land now known as the Territory, but there wasn’t enough land to support and feed the existing population. These were the Dark Days. War and famine raged. Then came a new era of peace. The new government, the Ministry, recognised that limited space requires limited numbers. It was imperative for the survival of mankind that the best minds stay in the Territory. Therefore on 1 June 2036 the Fence was built and it was determined that all future children sit a Territorial Allocation Assessment in the summer of their fifteenth year. Those that pass may remain in the Territory, but those that fail will be detained and resettled in the Wetlands. The test is fair as it applies equally to all children regardless of colour, background or creed.’
Then the whole assembly has to join in: ‘Limited space requires limited numbers. Difficult situations require difficult decisions.’
I made sure I was sitting next to Jack and Daisy. Us Norms have to stick together on Territory Day, just to make sure none of us reacts. Which is hard. Very hard.
This is what they never say in Assembly:
It’s massively unfair that the adults didn’t have to sit the TAA. Do you really think they would have voted for it if they had? And now it’s too late. ’Cos no one gets to vote anymore. And to start with, the TAA supposedly wasn’t that hard. Now, ’cos sea levels are still rising faster than anyone thought, it’s massively hard and they’re using it to get rid of loads of us. And after the invention of the Childe procedure, how can anyone claim the TAA is fair? I mean only one freakoid has failed in the past three years. Only one! And he was a real-life denser. But thousands of Norms get shipped off every year. And they bang on as if everyone loves (or as Daisy would say luuuuurrrrrvvves) the Territory. But then why are there so many police and cameras everywhere? Why did they ban the internet and mobiles for non-Ministry people as soon as they were properly in power? They also keep pretty schtum about the Opposition that Jack’s dad belongs to. Sorry belonged to. Before they labelled him a Subversive and shot him.
Class-time was next and Ms Jones was out to provoke us. She hates us Norms more than any other teacher in the school. It’s because her sister was killed in an Opposition rally that got out of hand. The rally was supposed to be a peaceful protest against the TAA and its bias against Norms, but something went wrong. One hundred and twenty-six people were trampled to death. That’s when they banned the Opposition. I know it was a terrible thing to happen and I get why Ms Jones has anger in her, but it’s also pretty pathetic that she tries to take it out on us, just because we’re easy targets.
The whole class had to sit in a circle. A circle! I mean I haven’t sat in a circle since I was five! We had to go round and say something about the Territory that we were grateful for.
‘I’ll start,’ she chirped like some sort of evil bird. ‘I’m grateful to the Territory for providing a safe haven for humanity after the Great Flood.’
I clenched Jack’s hand to stop myself from reacting.
Freddie, a lame nobody freakoid, went next. ‘I’m grateful for the mosquito grids so we don’t all get malaria.’ Well good for you, Freddie. What about the Fish? Do you think they’re grateful too?
But most freakoids just nodded happily. That’s the most annoying thing. Most of them know there’s no way they’re going to fail in June so there’s nothing for them to worry about. For them I guess the Territory and TAA are good. Loads of other kids that they don’t mix with and won’t miss will get moved off the nice dry land so there’s more space for them.
Hugo put up his hand and Ms Jones smiled her encouragement. It was as if he’d just read my mind.
‘I’m grateful because the Territory ships off all the scummers so they can’t leach off us anymore.’
Nearly all the freakoids tittered away, Amanda’s attention-seeking giggle drowning out everyone else’s. She makes it high and bubbly as she thinks it’s sexy, but it’s not. It’s just massively annoying. But the most annoying thing was that Ms Jones sniggered too before she thought to stop herself.
That’s another problem with this place. All the teachers seem to think they’re above us Norms. But they’re not. They predate the Procedure. They don’t have Nodes. They’re Norms through and through. They just think that they’d be freakoids if they were born now. That they’re super-beings because they know things (wow – they’ve been around longer and have the answers in front of them). I bet they’d all have late upgrades if you could do it that late. But you can’t. They tried doing ones on adults at the start. All the adults died. Something about the brain still having to be growing in order to accept the wires.
Next thing I knew it was all quiet and I realised that everyone was looking at me. Waiting to hear what I was grateful for.
I tried to think of s
omething nice. ‘Think fluffy,’ is always Jack’s advice. Good advice. I ignored it.
‘I’m grateful that the TAA shows that some Norms can do as well as Childes even with a massively unfair disadvantage.’
Ms Jones looked unimpressed but there was little for her to attack. I’d been grateful. And I hadn’t said freakoid.
But she couldn’t resist being evil.
She turned to Jack and said, ‘Jack Munro, we haven’t heard from you yet, have we? What are you grateful for?’
I could see Jack struggling. She was smiling. Red lipstick stained her front teeth.
‘Are you grateful for our brave police force, chasing down and eliminating Subversives?’
Silence crackled.
Luckily the bell rang at that exact moment so Jack got to leave the room. He punched the wall as we walked to the next lesson. His knuckles bled pretty badly and he left a reddish stain on the paint. I told him to put ice on it as soon as he got home.
Another thing – I didn’t point it out to Jack ’cos I didn’t want to alarm him, but as we walked down the Art corridor to get to final period, I saw that the frame next to the window had been changed. Jack’s charcoal sketch had been removed and a scale drawing of a ruler now sat in its place.
We’re going to have a party! Well, when I say ‘we’ I mean Daisy, but Jack and I are going to help organise it. Daisy’s parents are going away in a fortnight and Logan’s doing his clinical exam in the Third City as it has THE BEST medical programme, so her house will be completely empty. Logan’s going to be a doctor. Great. He’ll have one incredible bedside manner.
Daisy’s told her parents that she’s going to stay at mine and they won’t think to check with my parents that it’s OK. They’re really self-centred like that. Just assume that if they want something to happen because it’s convenient for them, then it will.
Daisy, Jack and I met by the benches at the east corner of People’s Park to start planning. It was a hot day so we wanted to be outside. I think we were all relieved to have something to focus on after Territory Day. It might seem a bit weird throwing a party with the TAA just weeks away (ten weeks one day – not that I’m counting!) but I think people kind of need it. Freakoids, not that we’ll probably be inviting many, can go out all they want as they’re pretty certain they’ll pass so the TAA isn’t such a big deal for them. Us Norms know that we might well only have very limited time left here so, as well as revising our guts out, we need to cherish life as we know it now, before … well, you know before what.
