Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1)

by Lydia Chelsea

  The MedQuick dutifully dispenses toothwash, moodleveler, and sleepbringer. I swish the toothwash, waiting like a trained monkey for the tone before spitting it into the sink. I palm the other two tubes and close myself in my borrowed unit.

  I don’t plan to sleep tonight, and I don’t want to feel better. I just want to be alone, away from their pitying looks and feeble attempts at comfort. Their medicines are, to me, more evidence of a government in tight control of its people. Everything seems like it is for the good of the citizens, while if Ritter is right, underneath it all, there’s no actual regard for them. Just keep them quiet and happy and they won’t give a crap what is really going on. No one will suspect they might be murdering low functioners or that they are possibly building an army out of assimilated citizens. Pay no attention to the murderers behind the curtain.

  Well, I won’t live as a dutiful, cheery citizen of this pretend Utopia. I will do my sixty days. I will assimilate. I am not interested in hurting Ritter, after all. He’s just another victim. Once I successfully assimilate, Ritter will be safe. His life will no longer be tied to mine. My behavior, my actions will have no consequence for him. That is when I will figure out a way to get home. There’s got to be a way. Ritter hinted at some sort of underground means. If he won’t help me find it, I’ll find it on my own.

  Time passes quickly when you want nothing more than to avoid your future. Though I dutifully breathe into the ScanX, I seldom eat the things I choose. Everything tastes like cardboard. Sometimes salty cardboard, sometimes sweet, but still cardboard. Without that nightshade carrot I long for, everything seems pointless. I continue to use only the toothwash. I tuck the other two tubes, the sleepbringer and the moodleveler, in the middle of a stack of towels in the back of the linen cabinet. There’s quite a growing collection there.

  Ritter is back to functioning, and I’m glad for it. He’s distracted when he arrives at the keeping each evening. It’s easy to fake a smile and pretend to log Mina or Melayne or to be absorbed by the latest updates on the viewer. When either of them actually log me, urging me to catch up with them, I beg off with increasingly imaginative excuses.

  The launches are still closed, but I don’t let it stop me from searching for an exit. I spend most of the night after Ritter has gone to bed on the scape searching through screen after screen for anything that even sounds remotely like an answer to my problem, careful to be quiet and close the meld to the office. Ritter no longer receives sleepbringer. I guess with the Tribunal over with, he’s unconcerned, able to find sleep all on his own. Good for him.

  I always make sure to leave my logger lying around, loaded with the books I found listed in the Assimilation portfolio, to make it look like I am studying up on Concordian life and history. If Ritter snoops, I’m just getting a head start on my Assimilation like a good little robot, though I haven’t actually done more than open the files.

  I do watch the viewer. Quite a bit, in fact. The news channels report more and more suicides, and the local Tribunal is interviewed about the launch closures. Janat is infuriatingly emotionless as always.

  “What is happening, Janat, that is causing these launch closures?” Velert Belk, one of Ritter’s fellow heralds, asks. He’s got piercing eyes that rival Janat’s and a challenging tone to his voice.

  “The closures are due to routine maintenance. If you recall, last year’s Agreement review mandated several upgrades and changes to the launch systems for all open worlds.”

  “But Janat, the launches have never been closed for more than two days for maintenance or upgrades before,” Velert points out.

  “And that is precisely why a longer closure was deemed necessary this year. The launch system is painfully out of date, a condition which if not addressed appropriately could endanger all incoming and outgoing travelers.”

  “Rumors have been circling about tension between some of the closed worlds and some of the open ones, particularly Concordia and its allies. What—”

  Janat’s voice is just as bland with Velert as it was in the Tribunal. “There is always tension between parallels. As you already know, the Agreement review is a time for the parallels to air any grievances about the slivving process, the guidelines set in place by the Agreement, and the consequences for violating that sacred pact. It is a time when formerly open worlds can choose to close their melds and when closed worlds can throw theirs open. Tensions under such circumstances are normal and to be expected.”

  My heart leaps. Attero could chose to open itself to slivvers? If it did, could I, as a citizen of Attero, go home? Why didn’t the Tribunal mention this? Why didn’t Ritter, especially when it could sway me to stand for him?

  “The citizens are worried about what it means. Are we about to lose our ability to travel the parallels? Has Concordia decided to close itself to parallel travelers from other worlds? Is that why all slivvers were asked to depart?”

  Janat’s eyes are cold as always, giving nothing away. “All I can tell you is that during the upcoming review in September, everything is possible and nothing is off the table.”

  “Janat, it has also come to our attention that the current class of Assimilation candidates is estimated to be over three—”

  Janat has already turned away, and Millick and Danig, her silent partners, stand bodily in the way of Velert so that he cannot follow. She holds up a hand as she goes, signaling the end of the interview. The question remains unfinished and unanswered.

  After the first week passes, I quit bothering to bathe. It is a very strange thing to logically know you are depressed while still not caring enough to do anything about it. It would be easy to suck down some moodleveler. I would probably feel pretty disgusted with myself once the magical potion kicked in, too. But I can’t be bothered.

  When there are only three days left before Assimilation begins, I step on the scale plate and breathe into the ScanX. It issues a long beep and instead of the usual scrolling message, a woman’s voice speaks through the machine.

  “You are six pounds under your goal weight. Your breath chemistry indicates a serious depletion of key vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients. See your assigned caretaker, Strega Bocek, today if possible, for a comprehensive examination. Here is a list of today’s acceptable in-stock foods …”

  I choose fried eggs, a side of bacon, and a fruit platter. For the drink I choose chocolate milk, just because I can. The machine wants me to regain the lost weight.

  I actually take a few bites of each item and a few slugs of the milk before dumping the rest down the compactor. It still tastes like cardboard.

  There’s no reason for me to pretend when Ritter is functioning, so I flop back down on my rift and stare at the ceiling. I’m no closer to finding any clues to anything that might get me home, and I’m too tired and too discouraged to bother with the scape right now. My logger is dead. I haven’t bothered to charge it. There’s nothing Mina or Melayne can say or do to help, though they’ve been persistently asking me to visit with them while I still have abundant free time.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know, rough hands are hauling me off the rift. Ritter eyes me coldly from the cleanse meldway, and I realize with faint surprise that if he’s over there, it must be Strega that’s manhandling me. His arm circles my waist now, and he tugs me off of my feet as I sway.

  Ritter starts to say something, but the sound of the shower sputtering to life cuts him off.

  “Ritter, go find someplace else to be so that I can consult with my ward in private,” Strega snarls. In the next instant, Strega deposits me under the spray.

  Ward. I’m back to being his patient. I never really stopped, I guess, but I’d started to think we were becoming friends.

  I duck past him from the other end of the shower, but I don’t get far. He grabs me fiercely. I curse at him, wondering where gentle, concerned Strega went. Uncannily, as if he hears my thoughts, Strega snaps,

  “No more leaving you be, giving you time and space
to adjust. And especially no trusting you to adhere to the MedQuick’s ministrations on your own.”

  He probably expects a meek response. Instead, I meet his eyes and sneer, “You want me to just soap up in my clothes?”

  He pulls the sliding door closed on the shower stall and says, “I’ll leave you alone, but when the water goes off you’d better cover yourself, because I’ll be back.”

  After I shower, Strega orders me to dress in a clean pair of clothes. I’m just about to snark at him again when I see a set on the counter. When I step out of the cleanse, Strega seizes my arm at the elbow and practically drags me back in.

  “Why haven’t you answered your facilitator’s logs?” he demands.

  I blink at him. “What logs?”

  He stomps out of the cleanse. I stand there dumbly. I think about running, but I’m starting to feel a little light headed. Probably all those meals I haven’t been eating.

  “Not charging the logger?” he asks pointlessly. He knows the answer as well as I do. “She’s logged you six times in the last three days. When she logs, you need to respond. She’s your facilitator. Everything you do from now until Assimilation is over is going to be reported to the Tribunal. Ignoring your facilitator is begging for Disposal.”

  “Lyder said this was my grieving time. I’m not allowed to grieve in peace?” I toss back at him. I’ve never seen him like this, so agitated. His eyes are hard now. A fresh crack opens in my already ruined heart. I’ve gone too far.

  “Grieve, yes. Destroy yourself, and Ritter, too, no.”

  Of course. This isn’t about me. It’s about his brother. I should have known.

  He waits. I stare at the MedQuick. My enemy.

  “I received a very disturbing emergency alert about you today. You’re not eating. You’re not taking the prescribed solutions. You’ve lost 21.8 pounds since your first ScanX breath analysis. You’re malnourished, you’re depressed, and you haven’t been sleeping well. You were directed to come see me today, and you ignored that, too.”

  Tattletale, I think, narrowing my eyes at the machine, watching Strega summon my breathing tube.

  My dislike of both machines ratchets up another level.

  I breathe into the tube mostly because my thoughts are too slow, too murky to formulate another plan. My head feels cottony, my limbs weighted with concrete. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and the room won’t stop lazily spinning.

  Wordlessly, Strega glances at the four tubes that burp out of the MedQuick. He reads the first one and holds it out to me. When I make no move to take it, he actually lifts my hand and shoves the tube against my palm, growling, “Vitamins. Take them.”

  I shake my head.

  “Take them.”

  I don’t move.

  “If you don’t swallow them in the next three seconds, I’m going to hold you down and force them down your throat. You want that?” He meets my eyes in the mirror, glowering. He’s serious. He’ll do it.

  No. The word stubbornly persists even though I don’t say it. His jaw clenches. I smile and fold my arms across my chest.

  “I’m not kidding around, Davinney. Don’t make me prove it,” he warns.

  “And violate the abuse standard?” I smile wider at the flash of pain in his eyes. They turn to ice so quickly I might have imagined it.

  He kicks my legs out from under me with a quick swipe of his foot. His right hand cups the back of my head so that I smack my skull on his flesh rather than the floor. There’s nothing gentle about the rest of him, though, as he pins me with his body. Propping himself on his elbow, he plucks the vitamin tube out of my hand and pulls the stopper out.

  “It’s not abuse if it’s a medical intervention,” he replies. “You’ll feel so much better if you just take it. Why fight it?”

  I don’t answer. If I don’t open my mouth, he can’t dump the vitamin goop into it. I feel a stinging, though, in my arm. Strega smirks down at me with no small measure of satisfaction.

  “So busy watching that tube you didn’t notice the needle, did you?”

  Fury wells up in me at his trick. I kick him hard, pleased by the grunting sound he makes and at the fleeting look of surprise before he adjusts his body so that he’s pinning my legs now, too.

  “Ritter says you have a vendetta against the ScanX. Now the MedQuick, apparently. Why?”

  “Because maybe I don’t want to be reduced to a pile of chemicals!” I spit the words out at him. “I’m a person, Strega! Maybe I want to feel my feelings, not medicate them away!” I struggle uselessly against his hold. I wonder what else he gave me. Everything feels even slower. Heavier. That can’t be just vitamins.

  He’s uncorked the next tube, but he doesn’t try to force it past my pursed lips. His eyes are his eyes again. Gentle. Helpless, now, too.

  “Your...” he searches for a word, “personhood isn’t at stake here. No one is asking you not to feel. These solutions only exist so that you can be the best version of yourself.” He’s nearly whispering. “But always, Davinney, always still yourself.”

  And that’s the essential disconnect, the thing that neither Ritter nor Strega understands. They’ve always known these devices with their food lists and potions. They can’t understand that right or wrong, better or worse, I’d rather be one hundred percent myself. The idea that a product from outside is the only thing that can make me whole is frightening to me, because it means I can’t make myself whole without it, that I’m lacking. Deficient. Vulnerable.

  “Nothing in those tubes will get me home. What’s the point?” I ask hollowly. My eyes are dry. I’m too dehydrated to spare the moisture.

  There’s no winning this argument. Strega will not let me up off the floor until I medicate myself. He doesn’t see that I am about to give in to him, for he squeezes my jaw in one hand, the tube also clutched there. He pinches my nose shut with the other. His low growl forces my mouth open as much as his cutting off my air supply does.

  “You will not be the cause of a Disposal. Not Ritter’s, and not your own.”

  The contents of the next tube, which he hasn’t explained to me, burn like one hundred proof moonshine. I choke and gasp so pitifully that Strega lets me up. I ignore his words, but the tube must have held some super powerful stuff. Almost instantly I reel backward. Strega cups my head again. His face blurs as something sucks me down, down, and he whispers,

  “I won’t let you fail.”

  Fail, my brain echoes. Not fall.

  I wake feeling almost hungover. So much for Strega’s medical magic. Irritation and guilt clash as I discover Strega sleeping on the floor next to the rift. When I start to go out the other side, I see Ritter is blocking me in there, so I slide to the end and tiptoe out of the unit.

  I don’t want to admit Strega is right. I feel better this morning. I don’t want to. It’s like by feeling better, I’m walking away from the possibility of finding that underground passage home. But the desire for home hasn’t weakened at all. Only the apathy about my fate here on Concordia. I’m ready to try again.

  I’m afraid of the Disposal again, afraid for Ritter. I hadn’t known Lyder would log me. I thought I’d only been avoiding Mina and Melayne.

  I scoop up the charged logger and send a reply log to Lyder. Her response is nearly instantaneous.

  “You will follow up with Strega Bocek today, and his report will be added to your factors. Do not disregard a log in the future. You are on thin ice.”

  Reading those words, I feel as though I’ve fallen on my face on that ice, cold seeping into my bones. Ominous cracking sounds fill my imagination.

  I’m an idiot.

  I’m eating the hearty breakfast I should have taken more seriously yesterday when Strega wanders into the room. His eyes are wary. He’s quiet. He watches me carefully for a few minutes. I watch back, still feeling strange about the events of the night before. Indignant. Self-righteous.

  Ashamed.

  When I look up at the meldway again, he’s gon
e. I lose my appetite again. This is hard. Harder than I ever could have imagined. Before the Tribunal, there was still the delusion that the outcome wasn’t decided yet to get me through the day. Now there’s only medicine and food and the hope that I might be able to find my nightshade carrot somewhere beyond the reach of the Tribunal, if there is such a place.

  Strega eats, but I don’t miss the glances he sends my way. Or, really, my plate’s way. I try to oblige him with a forkful or two, but after not eating for so long I’m starting to feel full. And it still tastes like cardboard.

  I wonder if he’s ever going to look at me the same way again, with quiet interest, with concern that felt like more than just a functional concern. He’s not looking at me that way now. Now, it’s all caretaker.

  Because I fear his next words to me will only prove that, I speak first.

  “Lyder says I have to follow up with you today, whatever that means.”

  “It means,” he swallows and wipes his mouth, “you will come with me to holding for a more thorough examination.”

  “What more is there?” I ask, putting my fork down. “Isn’t breath analysis all there is?”

  “There are more comprehensive levels of breath analysis,” he says, “but there are other measures as well.”

  “But can’t we just do that here, on the MedQuick?”

  He shakes his head. “This is also your Assimilation onboarding examination.”

  “My what?”

  “You didn’t look through the portfolio you were given?” he huffs.

  I shrug. “I skimmed it.”

  He sighs. “All Assimilation candidates have to arrive on day one with their assessment results. You’ll be testing in many ways today, not just physically.”

  “What does a caretaker have to do with tests that aren’t just physical?”

  “I oversee the physical and mental health tests. Then you will take the slides to the proving grounds and carry out the rest of your testing there.”