by Kevin Bliss
“Then you’re a bitch,” the redhead said evenly across the table, loud enough for women beside them to hear. Belinda didn’t know how to respond to such a shot between the eyes.
“I sold fake relocation insurance in South America,” Peg then said, shoveling creamed, synthetic potatoes into her mouth. “So, I’m a bitch too.”
Relocation insurance was one of the cruelest scams run on at-risk populations. Negative points to Peg for being part of such a thing, positive regard for judging herself harshly for it. Zero sum game. Peg fell in with Belinda, Grace and Alisson.
Peg moved to the fence and wrapped her fingers around wire squares that held the women of Upsilon within the compound. Her gaze, fixed on the clearing, studied what was quickly coming together as a pleasant little spot – as pleasant as things got in the region.
“None of you are gaining interest in the Race, are you?” Peg asked.
“Why?” Belinda said.
“I just don’t expect any poaching. I’ll let you know the ones I’m going after. There’ll be plenty left over to choose from if you get the urge.”
Peg had made no secret to the others about her expectations when it came to the Attachment Race. She liked the well-promoted benefits promised to couples and swore that no man could rule her. He’d be like a dog she led around on a leash.
“What was her name again? The one they’re taking out?” Peg asked, still gazing at the grounds for the Attachment Race as drones drove decorative torches into the ground circling the area.
“Peg, you honestly don’t remember?” Grace said.
“No.”
“Her name was Claudia. Claudia V,” said Belinda.
“Does anyone know if she was a med-head?”
Peg was in rare form. If the other three didn’t understand she really had a heart somewhere in that bravado, they’d have banned her permanently from their group.
“Emma C – with the short hair – said she saw Clame crowding Claudia lately,” Grace said in a slightly hushed voice. There was no one else within earshot, but the women of Upsilon had become accustomed to talking about the most unsettling Watcher, Clame, in cautious whispers.
Belinda glanced across the way to where the majority of Upsilonians were still gathered and spotted Clame hovering on the edge of the group, pacing slowly with hands clasped behind his back. He was the only Watcher not to carry a Pitzer on duty.
The other male Watcher at Upsilon, Parsons, came across as somewhere between sixty and seventy. He was fundamentally kind in his manner and the suspicion was that he might not be able to hold his own in one of the male compounds. Perhaps he knew someone in a position of influence to still have his place on Earth. Old age was suspected to be a justification for forced migration.
Clame, on the other hand, in his thirties had the semi-good looks of a man carved out of plastic. Features in correct proportion, but unreal in a way, as if a machine spit him out into the world. A smile or look of warning from Clame would incorporate very few facial muscles so as to make him seem less capable of emotion than any other Watcher.
“It’s a bright and exciting morning, ladies,” Clame would say when approaching a pack of Upsilonians (who had learned to travel in groups with Clame around). Stories had circulated about lewd comments, propositions and leering glances from the most anxiety-causing Watcher. If it weren’t for the sense that Spryte had an eye on the man, Belinda would have worried more.
“So Clame took a liking to her,” Peg said. “Still doesn’t get to the real question: did she get meds?”
“What does it matter now if she was a med-head?” Alisson asked.
“What does it matter?” Peg said. “If she was a med-head, there’s pills to be had. They help me sleep.”
“Are you saying you’ve gotten your hands on meds in here?” Grace asked.
“I’m telling you…” Peg replied, “they help me sleep. That’s all. And I know that information dies here. Why?”
“Because, Peg,” said Belinda, a touch of sarcasm layered on, “we’re friends.” Peg smiled and flicked Belinda on the ear with her index finger, baring her teeth for show.
“Too bad you’re not a med-head, Belinda. Since you understand friendship so well, you’d surely share your pills with me.”
Belinda hated the term. Med-head. Everyone used it. Even Alisson did – without the cynicism of Peg, but she used it nevertheless. They had ended cancer in this advanced world. Diabetes, multiple sclerosis and dozens of other maladies – all obliterated with a single injection in the first two years of life. But they – that is, the ‘innovators’ – still didn’t know how to fix a broken brain. What’s more, forced migration had given society an excuse to stop trying.
The person who works next to you struggles under anxiety? Let someone know. You’ve got a cousin who’s been depressed for years? Get a good mark next to your name: turn them in. It’ll be better for everyone involved in the end.
Sure, chemicals could help the afflicted. The right sort of drugs in correct proportions could mask depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and the like. Hidden, but not cured. Yet, there was no reason to mask it. No reason to allow it to ruin the improved society that was dawning with Balance-Driven Relocation. Peg’s comment had come a little too close for comfort for Belinda. Unbeknownst to any of her fellow Upsilonians, Belinda Q was a med-head.
Chapter 5
A typical morning at Upsilon (when there was no suicide victim to be removed) always began the same way: every woman received a small, pre-printed envelope bearing their name. Each envelope contained two pills, both of them pink and oval. Although it appeared the pills distributed to the entire population of the compound were identical, they were absolutely not.
One envelope might contain vitamin supplements or salt tablets. Another could hold allergy remedies. Whatever each woman “required” based on their pre-Upsilon screenings. The only sure thing was that the women in each room had no idea what their roommates were receiving; some didn’t know for sure what they were getting themselves.
Belinda knew. She understood precisely what came in the envelope she was handed each morning and the second she received just before lights out: Vroo.
Biochemists had been doing their thing for years. Fixing the minds of those afflicted with worry, depression and suicidal thoughts. Decades of cures. Cures that predated Belinda’s birth. But Vroo was the best yet. All of the sunshine, none of the side effects (assuming you didn’t count the physical and psychological dependence for nearly everyone who took it).
Swallow a dose of Vroo and what did you have? A new world! A new life! Opportunity and possibility galore. All would be beautiful and tranquil, make perfect sense and fit together in harmony as the very fabric of the universe did with no loose ends and no rough edges.
And even if it didn’t deliver quite such a utopian mirage, Vroo could at least keep the head straight and the nerves calm. Such was Belinda’s benefit from the drug. It made life somewhat bearable at Upsilon.
Yet the fear of losing her supply of Vroo constantly plagued Belinda. She had no control, no sense of whether the doses would continue once she was sent off to her assigned settlement. It would be simple enough for the powers-that-be to cut her off and leave Belinda to her own devices.
Her solution to the dilemma was one of desperation and very difficult to execute. Each morning, she took her Vroo as expected. In the evening, when the Watchers paid slightly less attention, she palmed the pills, pretended to chase them down with horrible Upsilon water and slipped them into a small hole she’d made in the hem of one sleeve on her gray uniform. Once in bed, she’d remove the pills, stretch her left arm to the small table beside her bunk, quietly take the toothbrush holder she’d been issued and stash the pills there. Once that filled up, she took to waiting for her roommates to fall asleep, sliding off her mattress when she was sure they wouldn’t hear and prying the plug off one leg of her bunk to stash the pills into the hollow metal frame. The latter was incredibly tricky and wouldn’t hav
e been worth the trouble if it weren’t for Belinda’s fear of being without an emergency stash.
Peg’s revelation in the compound that Vroo helped her sleep raised the obvious questions: how did she figure out who had it? How had she managed to get it from them? This was the sort of problem the secrecy and pre-packaging of pills was supposed to prevent. Each time a trio of roommates received their envelopes, it would be natural enough for them to all wonder what the others were getting. Could it be they were sharing their room with a med-head? And if someone was aware they were receiving Vroo twice a day, as Belinda did, would they be edgy as they awaited their next dose? Could they hide it? Nobody in their right mind would want anyone else to know (regardless of how chummy they’d become) that Vroo was handed over to them for coping purposes. It could only lead to trouble. Every strange look their way would be a new reason to worry. Besides, the private entreaties to share with others who wanted a little of the Vroo action could become overwhelming in no time, assuming word spread. And word always spread at Upsilon.
Once the ‘dumping’ of Claudia V was complete, the dorms reopened. Watchers gathered the women and urged them back inside for the morning’s pill drop. The itch in Belinda – more than twenty-four hours removed from her last dose of the wonder drug – had been growing since she first took up a spot at the west gate. She had little tricks to keep it in check for a time. Breathing, counting backward by nines from 10,000. Whatever it took. But it had taken so long for the normal schedule to resume that even coping mechanisms were proving worthless.
This was the risk in stashing her nighttime dose. If anything derailed the morning’s drop, she’d be climbing the walls before long. Even when the a.m. pill drop took place on schedule, she generally found herself awake an hour or two before anyone else, waiting in bed for the beep that designated ‘pill time’. It could be sheer torture.
Once or twice, the feelings had been too intense and Belinda pried some relief from the toothbrush holder. Trying to get the pill down her throat without the benefit of Upsilon’s horrible water was difficult. Grace awakened on one of those occasions, finding Belinda coughing, trying to swallow the pill with a dry mouth and tossing in her bunk as if she were having a seizure.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Grace had asked.
Belinda shook her head, waving off any attempts at help, turning away from her roommate and settling in with a grimace that came from having the feeling that the pill would be permanently lodged halfway between mouth and stomach.
On this morning – the day of Claudia V’s removal – Belinda had no choice but to gut it out. She avoided Peg’s eye. Who could say? It might be that the obnoxious redhead had a sense about these things, and Belinda had no intention of being preyed upon. The quartet began making its way back toward the dorm, leaving the west end and drone activity behind. Belinda began to move at a faster pace. It wouldn’t bring the Watchers to her room any sooner, but it gave her something to do. Something within her control.
Anxiety that Peg had somehow read the signs and knew she was a med-head strangled Belinda’s line of thought. Peg would blackmail her. Squeeze pills from her stash until nothing was left. Who else might find out? The faster she walked, the faster her ‘friend’ became increasingly depraved in the fevered imagination of Belinda.
Once in her room, Belinda was spared having to look at Peg – or avoid her gaze. She sat on her bunk flexing the calmest expressions she could muster and idly answered questions from Grace about the Attachment Race. She contemplated telling Grace what she was going through just to stop the conversation that made her nauseated. But it was too much of a risk. When the Watcher for their floor arrived with the meds, Belinda uncharacteristically pushed forward, took her envelope, sent the pills down inside her and sat back on her bunk to await the first signs that some control of her mind was being returned to her.
Chapter 6
Breakfast was easier than it had been in days. Belinda didn’t mind the spotty food rife with suspicious lumps and general grittiness. She allowed Peg (no longer a preying fiend in her consciousness) to sit beside her while she casually watched the ‘ads’ which played in a loop on the four large screens of the mess. These were not the typical ads with which everyone had grown up – ubiquitous and skilled at wheedling into one’s consciousness – these were on a slightly less aggressive scale. The promotional spots had been going on during each meal session since Belinda and her peers arrived at Upsilon:
“Ladies,” began an even, comforting voice, “Mr. Adam Z is over six feet tall and has sandy- blond hair. Most of his family is remaining on Earth, and you know what that means: he comes from damn good stock.”
Images of ‘Mr. Z’ appeared on the screen to accompany the sales pitch. Mr. Z, admittedly, looked good to many of the women in the mess, despite the fact that every shot featured him in slate-gray clothing.
“Keep an eye out for Adam Z. at the Race,” the voice urged, “he just may be your attachment!”
Women in the mess took turns mocking the ads. Not in the sort of rambunctious way that would elicit disciplinary action from a Watcher – just enough to let it be known that they weren’t being ‘taken in’. Controlled bravado among the internees of a transition compound bordered on psychological necessity. Doubtlessly, the Watchers had seen it before, in three-week installments which began with a world-weary cynicism toward nearly everything and ended with desperate last gasps of genuine Earth air on their way to the space elevators and points beyond. But, Belinda thought, she could recognize sneaky looks of true appraisal from many of her fellow Upsilonians. They wouldn’t want the others to know, but a quick bit of homework to see if their ideal attachment might not be present on one of the ads kept options open.
“Turns out,” Peg said, “Carla V was not a med-head – as far as anyone can tell.”
“Claudia,” Belinda corrected her.
“Yeah. Claudia. She could have used the Vroo, turns out.”
No one said anything for a moment. But it was inevitable: someone had to speak if the tenor of the conversation was going to change. Ultimately, it was Alisson.
“Why do you act like her life doesn’t matter?”
“I’m not saying it didn’t matter. But things are different here. I say, if you get caught up in every tragedy that happens…you’ll become a mental case.”
“I don’t think any of us are in danger of being mental cases, Peg.” Grace gestured to Belinda, Alisson and then herself. Belinda didn’t say a word. She lowered her head and took a full spoon of syntho-rice.
“Okay,” said Peg, “you want to hear something that I’ve been keeping to myself?”
“Probably not,” Grace replied.
“You just don’t repeat it.”
“So what else is new?” Belinda had let the rice fall from her spoon and she looked over one shoulder at the other women in the mess, wondering if they were having the same sort of conversations.
“Listen: last week, my roommate — ”
“The only roommate you have left?” Grace said.
“My roommate…” Peg continued, stressing each syllable, “…tells me that the precious brigade sees me as a threat. A threat once the Attachment Race starts.”
The precious brigade. Peg had been calling the ten or so women who ran together (in a seemingly united front with their good looks and noses held high) by that name since their first days at Upsilon.
“What kind of threat?” Alisson asked.
“The kind that could keep her from getting the man she wants. So she works a deal with one of the brutes. That tall one with frizzy hair and bad teeth.”
As traditionally feminine as Peg may have been, Upsilon also hosted its share of women who didn’t fit the societal standard. Collectively known as brutes, they could be physically dominant and force their will on others if they chose. Most did not.
“So she was going to pick a fight with me. Get us both kicked out of the Race before it starts. At the very least, rough me up �
�� leave me bruised and undesirable for the big night. And what do the broods care? They all know they’re going someplace terrible with manual labor all day long. Besides, the broods are dykes. They’re not going to find their match at the Race.”
“Well, you look fine to me, Peg.”
“That’s right. I got to the brood first. Made a better deal. You haven’t seen miss button-nose/tiny ears around in the last day or so, have you?”
“You mean…that was the fight? That was the one they broke up night before last?” Belinda asked.
“Yeah. They’re both in confinement. Now, do you think I would have been better off if I’d cared so deeply for my ‘sisters’ of Upsilon? I didn’t start that crap, but I damn well finished it.”
Belinda thought she saw a hint of shame on Peg’s face. During such moments – and they were on the rare side – Belinda actually pitied the ginger-haired woman with ‘big personality’. She’d probably been kicked around. She likely had become hard out of necessity in life before Upsilon and now didn’t know how to do things in small doses. Belinda figured her for the most scared of their quartet, and wondered if Peg realized it too.
Another ad started, this one promoting Rupert L. Unlike the close-ups of Mr. Z, all the photos of Rupert L were at a distance. Impossible to tell what he really looked like. The accompanying narrative wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. Some of the women began to boo. One called out:
“Stay away from Mr. L – he must be hideous!”
Belinda nearly laughed – a long time since she had last found something funny – but it dawned on her that pictures of Upsilonians were probably filling the screens of Omicron’s mess hall at that very moment. Some of them were probably being called hideous as well.
“Tell me, Peg,” Grace said, “what did you have to offer that made a better deal for the brood to do your dirty work?”
An irritated tsk escaped Peg’s lips and she tilted her head to one side.
