by Kevin Bliss
“I’m not giving away my secrets.”
Chapter 7
Four years before setting foot on the church, church, church of Upsilon’s compound, Belinda spent most of her days behind a desk in the offices of the Council for Relocation Outreach. It would not be inaccurate to call it a sales job.
The Council kept its branch offices inviting and comfortable, laboring to maintain a welcoming environment for every desperate soul who walked through the doors. The point was to keep them there long enough for relocation agents – of which Belinda was one – to close the deal for voluntary migration. Every person destined for relocation who didn’t need to have a Collector chase them down saved time, money and the spectacle of a man or woman being dragged off against their will to a transition compound.
On one particular afternoon, as Belinda hosted a middle-aged woman in her cubicle, however, she neared a breaking point. The woman with raw, red fingers and rashes up and down her arms sat across from Belinda in a chair which was clearly far plusher than anything to which she was accustomed. The woman smiled, looking at the piece of furniture which embraced her. It saddened Belinda to see someone take such comfort from an inanimate object. She even hesitated before triggering the switch beside the middle drawer of her desk which would release an aromatic pleasure assault on the poor woman, despite the fact it was standard operating procedure for every sales pitch.
Memories of being called out by supervisors for not initiating scent conveyors on potential ‘clients’ in the past kept Belinda onboard with company protocol. Yet it made her cringe as the woman began to inhale deeply through her nose, reaching for the engaging smell (the scent du jour was evergreen mist).
There was no need for Belinda to collect extensive personal data from the woman to see the poor thing had no one in the world on whom to lean. She’d taken pains to dress herself up in a blue print dress which may have briefly been in style years earlier, and plastic jewelry which she wore uncomfortably. Such accessories were a foreign thing to the woman and she fussed with the bracelet which was too big for her wrist and repeatedly slid down onto the bottom of her palm. Only people in this position – certain to find a Collector at their door in the near future – would willingly venture into a Council branch.
“I just thought I’d explore my options,” the woman said, biting her fingernail. “I might decide to stay on Earth…but it’s always worth knowing what the alternative has to offer.”
“Of course,” Belinda said in a sweet voice. “And I can tell you that you’ve come at an especially opportune time.”
The job was a shitty one. Belinda had known it from the start. It didn’t matter how much the orientation put on by the Council for new employees claimed to “…serve a human need…” or if it “…reached out to those with limited options…” That was nothing but a line to help people pretend they weren’t doing something bad. For Belinda, it didn’t much matter. She needed employment. Telling herself that if she hadn’t taken the job, someone else would made it easier for a while.
“Will I have my own room?” the middle-aged woman asked.
Belinda nodded.
“Really?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
False.
“What is the food like?”
“Well, as you probably know, not everything is fresh in the off-Earth settlements. But if you volunteer for relocation, you automatically qualify for a silver dining plan. That assures you of meat, fruit and vegetables at least twice each week.”
Categorically untrue.
“And do they have a job for me?”
“Oh yes,” Belinda told her. “You see, we believe full contentment comes with the opportunity to contribute. But you’re well paid for the work, and there are goods and services in plentiful supply for you to spend your money on.”
Bold-faced lie.
The woman leaned back in the plush chair and stared into space. It was as if she’d been given a full reprieve from all the things that made her life miserable.
“The way you make it sound…I wonder why anyone stays on Earth.”
Belinda nearly froze. This was the critical moment. She needed to pull up the final line in her arsenal – the closing deception:
“Yes. You’re…of course. You know, I’d be on my…way there – with my husband right now – if we didn’t have a little one at home. Just waiting for him to get a bit older.”
The woman warmed to the image Belinda created of a happy family.
“Oh…that’s wonderful.”
Signing the poor woman up for voluntary relocation was the low part of Belinda’s day. That is, until Dennis, the silver-tongued chameleon occupying the cubicle next to hers, popped his head over the shared partition and spoke:
“Ready to set up?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Belinda in what she hoped sounded upbeat enough.
Day in and day out she was subjected to the sound of Dennis weaving his tales on the other side of the half-wall. He’d do anything, say anything necessary to close a sale.
Dennis seemed to enjoy his work. Belinda didn’t know why. But partnering with him for weekly recruiting meetings cinched it: Dennis was made for the job.
Fortunately, Belinda only needed to assist Dennis as he made his weekly pitch to a room of fifty or so citizens. He gladly took the lead. The attendees had been invited to learn a little bit more about the newest developments in off-Earth settlement living. The room used for these group presentations, filled with screens on which doctored images of off-Earth settlements flashed, had been designed by Dennis as his contribution to turning the Council into an efficient, bulk-type operation.
While the two of them arranged chairs and set out a poor excuse for refreshments, Dennis stretched, smoothed his jacket and took a deep breath.
“You know what I heard the other day?” he said as Belinda put finishing touches on the meager offering of food.
“No.”
“Long time ago, it seems, people used to do almost the same thing as us. Only difference is, they were arranging pleasure trips and holidays for clients. The kind you come back from. Know what they called themselves?”
“No.”
“Travel agents. Don’t you love it? I’d suggest they let us use that title for ourselves…but you and I both know how slow stuff like that works its way through channels.”
Once the event began, the pinney crackers and imitation lemon water Belinda laid out were enthusiastically accepted, but Dennis needed to cajole and beg and prod the men and women to fill the first few rows of seats. Everyone tried very hard to sit as close to the back as possible.
“I’ve got pictures to show – amazing images,” Dennis promised. “Don’t you want to get a closer look at the new and exciting things occurring on Mars?”
Once the hour-long presentation was finished and the people left, Dennis became moody. No one had signed up for voluntary relocation. He usually managed to sway one or two.
“Maybe if you wore something…intriguing,” Dennis said to Belinda. “The men in the room might be in a more receptive frame of mind.”
Belinda got into bed as soon as she arrived home. It wasn’t unusual for her to rise in the middle of the night and go for a walk, but she always tried to sleep first. Sometimes it was the stuffiness of the apartment she’d been fortunate to share with only seven other women. Sometimes one of her roommates snored. Whatever ended up being the final straw, she would eventually get up and leave the building to ease the strain.
It wasn’t fresh air or company that Belinda sought when she took to the street and walked aimlessly about. It was a chance to find some kind of solace through distraction. If she walked far enough, it might bring such a complete exhaustion that she could return to her bed and collapse into a real sleep until she needed to be up to fight for time in the bathroom and a bite to eat before work.
The nightly rituals of such a densely-packed metropolis were unknown to many of the day-dwellers. It wasn’t fear (for
the most part) that kept them inside after their work was done for the day. They were usually searching for something which couldn’t be found, but seemed closer to their reach in the relative privacy of their residences (relative, as the average apartment housed ten to twelve). Belinda sought something similar outdoors. She wanted the constantly shifting scenery of roving goods traders, idea men, shakedown artists posing as ‘relocation defense lawyers’, bullies and babes, jobless and homeless, people on the edge and people with barely a pulse. If one didn’t help her to forget, maybe the next one she passed might make her think about something different. These denizens took cover during the day when making a dishonest living was at least three times as hard. Belinda was glad for that. The messiness of these people moving about, twitching, plotting and being entirely in the now had the potential to act as a hypnotic force on her sometimes.
On this particular evening, however, that feeling of disconnect wasn’t coming so easily. Lights blurred and pedestrians six abreast on the sidewalks made for a tangle of humanity through which she had to squeeze. Transports on the street were forced to a crawl as less patient men and women got around the crowd by jumping through traffic.
After some time, when Belinda had lost track of just how far she’d wandered from home, her walk slowed. When she found herself caroming off people and holding on for dear life to the hard exterior of a tall building while dozens and dozens brushed past her, she wept.
Chapter 8
The Upsilonians were reminded at lunch (in the midst of the ads for the men of Omicron) that the Attachment Race was only two days away. Ridiculous. How is it that anyone in that compound would lose sight of such a thing? Even if one didn’t care at all about the Attachment Race, what would occur the following morning – a final bon voyage from the home planet – couldn’t be overlooked. The number of remaining breaths these women would take on Earth were calculable now.
Belinda ignored the ads for men as much as she could. She ignored the anxiety among her fellow Upsilonians (which had grown since breakfast). She didn’t take part in the back and forth between Grace and Peg, nor did she try to bring Alisson into conversation. She simply sat and ate the most easily tolerable parts of her lunch. The only thing on her mind was what laid ahead. Not just where she would end up, but what it would feel like to live. How would she react over time when her horizons became confined to the excavated tunnels and chambers of a settlement on Mars or Callisto? She wondered if the powers-that-be would have the mercy to keep her supplied with Vroo.
Belinda’s thoughts returned to that night on the crowded city street when she’d ricocheted off strangers and come to rest against the wall of a building, reduced to tears. Eventually managing to reverse course and make slow progress toward home, the lit window of an office with the name Jobe and M.D. fronting the alley off a street she knew very well caught her attention. It sat directly above a cleaning service which was closed for the evening, so she’d need to buzz on the intercom to gain access.
“Y-y-yes?” the voice coming through the speaker asked.
Belinda tried to explain her need for an immediate appointment as succinctly as possible, but before she was finished, nearly five minutes had passed. Unnecessary details, along the way, seemed pertinent and she was so intent on fixing herself that very night she didn’t want to risk failure by leaving anything out.
Once upstairs, Belinda met the kindly white-haired physician with a persistent stutter who introduced himself as Paul Jobe – without the pretense of ‘Doctor’ to validate himself. It didn’t take any time to see he was a sweet man and it heartened Belinda when she noticed the pin on the backside of the right lapel of his lab coat with the letters F.M. crossed out with a bold red ‘x’. Only the bravest people openly rejected forced migration. Then again, thought Belinda, here was an old man in an out-of-the-way office, lightly used at best, clear of prying eyes and with a pin which he may have mistakenly believed would be inconspicuous by turning it around on the reverse side of a lapel.
That’s unkind, Belinda decided, ashamed she was seeing the least in people. Jobe was a patient and sympathetic man. He listened to Belinda’s troubles.
“Are y-y-ou asking for a m-m-medical solution?” Jobe said.
“I suppose I am.”
Jobe sighed, as if hoping she wouldn’t answer that way.
“You know about Vroo?” he asked.
“A little.”
“That’s w-w-what I have.”
The term med-head had already been coined and used derisively to characterize those who couldn’t manage their place in the world without pharmaceutical enhancement. The era of enlightenment with regard to mental illness had ended. As part of her job, Belinda was privy to certain of the conversations about people on Vroo: Why keep inferior minds around – even on corrective chemicals – when there were other places to put them?
Belinda took the meds. They made things easier.
The three years which followed were mostly tolerable for the young woman who hated her job. Every four months, Dr. Jobe would renew her supply and assure her that he’d keep it off the record. He understood the issue with her position and didn’t judge her for being a part of the mechanism sending millions off-Earth. Jobe even went so far as to ease Belinda’s disappointment in herself for needing help.
“People have never been made p-p-perfect. Even when l-l-life was easier.”
She got used to telling herself the day would come when she didn’t need the Vroo. Someday. Eventually. Down the road a bit.
But then something happened that made her planning irrelevant.
Dr. Jobe’s passing shouldn’t have taken Belinda by surprise. He was old when she’d first met him. Did she expect he’d outlast her? The physician to whom the practice was sold, Dr. Prince, was happy to see Belinda show up at his office and answer a question that had been bugging him for the month he’d occupied the offices of the late Jobe.
“So you’re B.Q.,” he said to her when she gradually made her way around to a request for Vroo off the record.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Jobe had to keep notes – even if they weren’t official. It didn’t take long to decipher his code. After all, an old man? How imaginative could he be? But I didn’t know who B.Q. was. Hoped you’d walk through the door and satisfy my curiosity. Between you and I…figured you for a man. Most men are so weak anymore.”
Dr. Prince wasn’t a complete bastard. He didn’t wear the anti-migration pin anywhere, yet agreed to continue the supply of Vroo – but on the record. Belinda’s employer would know. The powers-that-be would know. Everyone with access to databases would know.
Chapter 9
By the time lunch was finished and the women of Upsilon took to the compound, the drones and transports and men sharing sunflower seeds were gone. The fence on the west side – ignored by all but Belinda and Grace that morning – was crowded two and three deep for a chance to peek at the completed setting for the Attachment Race.
Belinda refrained from trying to squeeze in for a view and strolled lazily around the emptiest parts of the forty acres.
Had she pushed through like many of the others, she would have had a slightly obstructed angle on unlit torches arranged in a large circle around the edge of the clearing, and a platform with a monitor and microphones on it. The tent, clusters of white chairs and patches of artificial grass neatly spread out, raised the anticipation level of some of the same women who’d been hurling insults at the ads for Omicron’s men only hours before.
Lost in thought, kicking at the gravel on the ground, Belinda’s solitary walk continued peacefully until the sight of Watcher Clame in her path brought her to an abrupt stop.
“Belinda Q,” he said, “you’ve been selected for DG review.”
“Again?” Belinda asked, more than a little irritated. “You can’t find someone else?”
“But you’re so good at it.” Clame spoke the words with his not-infrequent mockery. Belinda had no choice, she knew, but it h
ad been worth a try to appeal for exclusion from the tedious exercise of meeting with visiting do-gooders.
The DG’s may have genuinely cared about the people being exiled from Earth. Belinda didn’t know. Cynical views held that DG’s were playing a role for the sake of easing their guilt. If they cared so much, critics said, why didn’t they engineer an end to Balance-Driven Relocation with the power they wielded?
Whatever the case, the thing which frustrated Belinda most about do-gooders was that there were more than a dozen independent DG groups operating as rivals because they couldn’t make opinions meet on some of the most trivial things.
Several of the do-gooder organizations claimed credit for instituting the Attachment Race. The fight over which of the groups was most responsible grew so nasty that many questioned what was more important to DG’s, the welfare of relocated souls or credit for their work.
Bottom line? Every prominent DG group was given an opportunity to visit transition compounds and meet the temporary residents in order to place their stamp of approval on the process before space elevators began further lowering Earth’s population.
This would be the seventh different set of do-gooders to visit Upsilon during the current three-week stretch. It would also be the seventh time Belinda was chosen to be among the women sent to the gymnasium to meet fine, upstanding Earthers. Much to her chagrin, Belinda Q was one of what Spryte and her people considered a ‘sure thing’.
Grace had gone a couple times. Peg? Not a chance. Alisson had also been spared the torture, and Belinda felt sure it was because Spryte didn’t want any of the visitors brought to tears by such a young soul. Belinda was old enough, dinged up enough and yet predictable enough to make for the perfect representative.
The drill was simple: the women chosen to make a good impression were expected to help the DG’s arrive at the inescapable conclusion that this horrible, horrible, inevitable thing was being done in the most humane manner possible.
