Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series)

by Peter R Stone

  “Thank you, Romy. Answer your question, Chelsea?” Mr. Cho asked.

  “Thank you, Sir, it does.” I ignored the sneer Romy aimed at me, wondering why I had never heard of the town’s founding in such detail before. At the Solidarity festivals each year, they only talked about the goodness and generosity of the Founders, not how they came here. This was also the first time I heard of the submarine’s origins. For a hundred years, it had been moored to a pier in the Maribyrnong River just outside the town, where even now, its nuclear reactor provided all of the town’s electricity.

  Mr. Cho began the lesson and I opened the textbook. I frowned, puzzled, when I saw a slip of green paper wedged into the spine of the title page. I started to tease it out, but quickly covered with my hand when I saw what it said.

  Do you remember who you were, Chelsea?

  I glanced surreptitiously at Jess, wondering if she put the note there. I guessed not, though, since her attention was focused wholly on Mr. Cho as he wrote Korean letters on the whiteboard. As I folded the note into my palm and slipped it into my pocket, I looked around the room, checking to see if anyone was watching me. I figured that whoever put it there would want to gage my reaction. But alas, no one was looking in my direction.

  I flicked casually through the rest of the textbook, but there were no more green notes. Mindful of what I was supposed to be doing, I returned to the first chapter and started memorizing the twenty-four characters of the Chosongul Korean alphabet. I found it hard going, though, because my mind kept returning to the slip of paper burning a hole in my pocket.

  Who gave it to me? What were they trying to achieve by asking me if I remembered who I was? It was an absurd question. Of course I knew who I was. Chelsea Thomas, daughter of Malcolm and Abigail, twin of Brandon – deceased – and elder sister of Karen – possibly deceased. Such thoughts triggered a myriad of feelings – of loss, guilt, and self–hatred. Things I was trying hard to forget.

  Forcing my thoughts back to the note, I suddenly recalled the message I saw scribbled in the dust on the floor of the Round Room. Remember who you are. Surely this was no coincidence. Someone here wanted me to remember myself, my beliefs, and convictions before the Round Room reconditioned my mind. But why? Were they hoping the questions would help me return to the person I was before the deprogramming? For a moment, I seriously considered showing the note to Suyin, but after debating it for a moment, decided to keep it hidden for now. If I said nothing, the mystery person could slip me more notes, revealing their intentions, and hopefully, their identity as well.

  * * *

  After an hour of Korean, we adjourned to the gym. While the rest of the girls went to the changing room to shed their restrictive ankle-length dresses and change into their taekwondo uniforms, Madison took me to the supplies cupboard and gave me a brand new uniform.

  “Guess you’re used to wearing trousers,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Get changed quickly and I’ll show you how to put on your belt.”

  “How do the belt colours work?” I asked when I rejoined her. My belt was white, of course. Madison, on the other hand, had a black belt with four white stripes.

  “The belt colours indicate a student’s experience and accomplishments in taekwondo. Once you have mastered your belt’s syllabus, you do a grading. If you pass, you are awarded the next belt colour. After white is yellow, then blue, and red. Probationary black belt comes next, followed by a full black belt, called 1st dan.”

  “What does ‘dan’ mean exactly?”

  “It means ‘degree.’ Each white stripe on a black belt indicates a higher degree.”

  “So Mr. Cho is pretty high up, then, having an 8th dan – 8th degree – black belt?” I asked.

  “He’s the highest ranking taekwondo martial artist in Newhome, a grandmaster.”

  “Can anyone learn taekwondo in Newhome?”

  “Of course not.” She frowned, as though I should have known better. “Only the Specialists and Korean males. Now enough with the questions. We need to get to class.”

  Returning to the gym, I joined my “sisters” doing stretching exercises on the padded blue mat. Not surprisingly, they all had black belts, though none were 4th dans like Madison. Romy and Suyin ranked next with three stripes on their belts.

  Mr. Cho approached me and appraised me with a knowing eye. “You’ve worked out,” he said.

  “Yes, Sir.” Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I decided to try giving away as little information as possible.

  “Explain.”

  So much for that idea. I risked a glance at Romy before replying – a mistake. She was watching me with a critical eye. “I’ve, uh, been doing body-weight exercises since I was seventeen, Sir.” Some of the girls gasped in surprise. This was not normal behaviour for Newhome women for whom walking was the only sanctioned form of exercise.

  “Why?”

  “So I would have a better chance of surviving when I ran away, Sir.” More gasps.

  “And where did you learn about body-weight exercises?”

  “My brother, Sir.”

  Aware of our growing audience, Mr. Cho turned to Madison. “Begin the class, Instructor Madison.”

  “As you wish, Sir.” She moved to the front of the training floor and after a few curt words, had all the girls lined up according to rank. They bowed to the flag at the front of the room, to Mr. Cho, and began a strenuous, aerobic warm up.

  Mr. Cho returned his attention to me. “I think, young lady, that your brother had a somewhat negative influence on your life, turning your feet from the path they should have followed.”

  “We were equally to blame, Sir. Lost in our own world, we looked at all we thought was wrong with the town, and in our ignorance, scoffed at the authorities and Founders’ wisdom,” I replied. It would have been easy to pass the blame onto Brandon, since he could no longer defend himself, but that would have been a lie. And I refused to dishonour his memory, regardless of the cost to myself. I also had to be careful I didn’t mention the root cause of our disregard for the Founders’ teachings – our father.

  I recalled one of the many sessions where Mother tried to teach us to honour and revere the Founders’ teachings. She had been instructing us in their stance on multiculturalism. My brother already knew it by heart from school, of course, as had I, from my midnight sessions reading his textbooks.

  “Multiculturalism leads to division, division leads to conflict, conflict leads to violence, violence leads to war, war leads to extinction,” we parroted in unison. We were only nine at the time.

  “Very good!” Mother clapped her hands, though more to Brandon than me. “Always remember that the elimination of multiculturalism is one of the primary reasons our town has experienced peace for over one hundred years.”

  “I don’t think it has been eliminated, Mother,” Brandon replied.

  “What do you mean?” She looked at Brandon with alarm.

  “The Custodians tried to make us all one people by banning the cultural traditions of the different races in the town, but they failed,” he said.

  “What are you saying, Son? Who told you this nonsense? It was your father, wasn’t it? I’ll be having a word with him when he gets home.”

  “He didn’t have to, Mother. Surely you’ve noticed that no one marries outside their own race? Anglo-Saxon Aussies marry Anglo-Saxon Aussies, Greeks marry Greeks, Chinese marry Chinese. This is against the Founders’ teachings, but everyone does it. No one wants to forget where they came from.”

  “Maybe for some that’s true, but all have abandoned their cultural traditions. Everyone in Newhome lives as dictated by the Founders.”

  Brandon shook his head. “I was speaking to my mate Cheng the other day, and he said his family celebrates the Chinese New Year in secret every year.”

  Mother’s eyes just about popped out of her head. “That’s enough! I will not listen to such seditious talk, and especially not from my own children! Be more car
eful what you say, too. If your teachers or the Custodians hear you talk like that, you’ll be in a world of trouble! And so will your father and I. They’ll accuse us of failing in our duty to raise you as you ought to have been raised. The shame would be unbearable. I can just imagine what the other mothers would whisper behind my back every time they saw me.”

  “Chelsea!”

  Mr. Cho’s insistent voice snapped me back to the present.

  “Sorry, Sir.” I noticed the girls were running laps around the room now, some of them glancing at us as they ran past, others keeping their eyes fixed straight ahead.

  “I said you need to divorce yourself from all of the foolish notions you entertained with your brother. Meditate on A Better Way and absorb its teachings, take them to heart and write them on the walls of your mind until they become part of you.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Now join the class.”

  “Ah, Sir, on the topic of my brother, if you find any more biologically engineered boys, please don’t euthanize them.”

  Mr. Cho narrowed his eyes and when he answered, he stressed each work like hammering nails into a coffin. “That decision was made by the chancellor, and as harsh as it may seem, it was the correct decision to make.”

  “I understand the risks the boys pose, Sir. But why they can’t they be put in solitary confinement or exiled?” With my brother dead, I couldn’t bear the thought of any others facing the fate he would have faced if the Custodians had caught him. I also recalled what Dr. Zhao said to Brandon and me when we were five – that we had to hide our abilities or we would be captured and dissected. Clearly, he had been wrong about the threat of dissection, the presence of my sisters here proved that. But what if he had been right about the boys, what if they had been euthanized and then dissected? The thought made me shudder.

  “The town does not have the resources to put anyone into solitary confinement, Chelsea. We are struggling to provide for the ten-thousand who live here now as it is. And exile? Can’t you see the danger posed if we banished male echolocators into the ruins?”

  “Sorry, Sir, no.”

  “Bearing in mind that they will most likely resent if not outright despise the chancellor, the Custodians, and our culture? Come on, Chelsea, you’re intelligent and educated, think.”

  “They’ll come back for revenge.”

  “Correct. In what format could that revenge take?”

  “They could attack the foraging teams, or worse, try to subvert them into their way of thinking in order to manipulate them into staging a revolution,” I said.

  “Correct, and that’s why we can’t exile them. Now, if you wish to discuss this matter further, come and see me in my office after hours. For now, join the class.”

  I nodded and took my place at the back of the class. The girls had lined up in three rows according to rank and were doing push-ups. I dropped down and joined them, but by the time they reached forty reps – without taking a break – my arms, shoulders and chest were burning with pain, and still they kept going. My breath was also coming in gasps. When I trained at home and in prison, it was always at a much more leisurely pace.

  “Take a breather when you need it, Chelsea,” Madison called out. “If you push yourself too hard you won’t be able to walk or lift your arms tomorrow.”

  I nodded and collapsed to the mat in an unceremonious heap.

  “Weakling,” Romy whispered from where she continued to pump out push-ups in the front row next to Suyin.

  “Not so tough now, is she?” said Claire.

  “Enough!” Madison snapped. The girls fell silent.

  When they reached a hundred push-ups, they flipped onto their backs and started sit-ups. I didn’t make it past thirty-five.

  Chapter Seven

  Madison’s warning wasn’t far off the mark. By the end of the class, during which I learned basic taekwondo kicks, blocks and punches, I was sore from head to foot. I found the hot shower afterwards to be pure bliss until I recalled the photos Mr. Cho showed me in the Round Room. My spirits sank and I went through the motions of getting dressed and eating a healthy dinner of chicken and vegies.

  After that, we adjourned to a lounge room, complete with reclining chairs, TV, and bookshelves stacked with books approved by the council. This was our only sanctioned free time, apparently.

  Most of the girls sat together in the corner near the TV, some on the sofas, the rest on the floor, lost in idle conversation. It was clear I was not invited.

  Suyin, Jess and Liz, however, gestured for me to join them. However, I held up my copy of A Better Way and told them I had better get stuck into it.

  Two hours later, the girls headed off to their sleeping quarters. I followed at the rear with Suyin by my side, wondering how many girls slept per room. I hoped I wouldn’t be stuck with Romy or the heavy-set Aussie girl – Claire – who kept making disparaging remarks.

  My spirits sank when I followed the others into a large dormitory with eight double-bunk beds in two rows of four, interspersed with wardrobes for our possessions and clothes. Great, so much for hoping I wouldn’t be stuck with Romy.

  Suyin took me to a double-bunk at the end of the room. “You get to chose top or bottom, being the odd number and all.”

  “Bottom will do,” I said.

  She pointed to the adjacent wardrobe. “Your clothes are already in here – dresses, uniform, clean taekwondo dobok, and nightgowns.”

  I opened the door and was slightly impressed to see several sets of clothes hanging there, just as she said. I pulled out a drawer at the bottom in which to put the Founders’ tome, and saw that it contained a toiletry bag. With my name on it! They ran an efficient ship here.

  Pulling open the bag, I saw that it had a toothbrush, toothpaste, hair ties, sanitary pads, liners, deodorant, brush, and...a green slip of paper.

  A quick glance at Suyin showed that she couldn’t possibly see inside the bag from where she stood, so I took a quick look at it before scrunching it up and pushing beneath the other items.

  I stood and tried to give my attention to Suyin, but I couldn’t get the message out of my mind.

  Do you think they just euthanized the boys?

  I stared into my friend’s eyes, trying to gage if she was watching me for a reaction, but I got nothing. She was chattering on about where to put our dirty clothes and where to collect them the next day when washed.

  I thanked her when she finished her instructions and she went off to her bed at the front of the room. Seeing the other girls slipping into their nightclothes, I shed my long blue dress and did the same, but watched them all carefully while doing so.

  Romy and Claire were sending dark looks in my direction, as were some of the others. Bhagya was already on her bed, lying on her back with her eyes closed. Liz and a girl with Greek lineage, Anna, were in the bunk next to mine. They were chatting away, but Liz flashed a glance in my direction, smiling awkwardly when our eyes met. Madison, who bunked with Bhagya, was flicking through a book.

  I had no idea who slipped me the note, but it had to be one of them, surely.

  You think they only euthanized the boys?

  That caused me to ponder yet again the warning given to my brother and me by Dr. Zhao that we’d be dissected if discovered. Was the note saying the boys were actually dissected? If so, did they do it to find out everything they could about our genetic modification? And if so, why?

  Frustrated, and willing to give my right arm to find out who was slipping me these notes because it meant one of the girls was a traitor, I knelt down in front of the wardrobe. While pretending to flick through the pages of A Better Way I discreetly removed the slip of paper from where it nestled near the spine, and then palmed the one from the toiletry bag. That done, I threaded both pieces through the narrow gap at the back of the drawer. That should make them impossible to find.

  I heard familiar footsteps and a shadow loomed over me.

  “You know, for all your preening and posturin
g, I think dim-witted would be a better label for you,” Romy said.

  “What are you talking about?” I didn’t rise or turn to look at her.

  “You organised the breakout, you were there when it went down, but then stayed behind? I mean, how dumb is that?”

  Several of the girls sniggered.

  I turned my head to one side so I could see her from the corner of my eye. “One of the Custodians had been shot. He would have bled out if I left.”

  “All the same, you’re glad you stayed behind, aren’t you. Otherwise you’d be dead too.”

  I glared at her, refusing to dignify the slur with a response.

  Romy ploughed on. “We have been led to believe that we girls have significantly higher IQs than the normals out there. You seem to be the exception, though – you’re as dense as a log. How could you not have foreseen that outcome, huh? The ruins are infested with Skel.”

  “That’s not true,” I snapped, letting anger seep into my tone. “They’re rarely seen outside the eastern suburbs, and even then, very rarely. Otherwise we’d have no foragers left.”

  “Really? I seem to recall Seon Saeng Nim Cho mentioning your foraging team encountered some.”

  “So?”

  “Weren’t exactly in the eastern suburbs, were they?”

  “I didn’t say they’re never seen outside the eastern suburbs, just rarely. Still, all the members of my foraging team were surprised when they ambushed us.”

  “Huh.” Romy pouted, seeming to concede the point. She wasn’t finished, though. “Going back to what you said before about a Custodian being shot – that was Lieutenant Ryan Hill, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah – so what?”