Lanie and her Kin

The enormous billboard went up a day before my eleventh birthday. At first, there was only one of them, set up near the front entrance of our Districts’ biggest arcade. Then, a few more sprouted up around town. The billboard read: Wanted: Children and Citizens with Good Genes! Possible upgrade to Enclave Living! There was an all white mansion set on an autumn hillside. The colors of the leaves and grass looked nothing like the dismal browns and yellows I’d seen, even at a distance, from our Workers’ District. Perhaps the Enclaves were better than here. There wasn’t much to here. Just Work and the arcades and the bland food. Just waiting to Retire and go somewhere better.

I had a real birthday celebration! My parents somehow managed to scrounge some actual flour and sugar and along with the last of our ration of cooking oil, baked me a small cake at a neighbor’s home where they had a working oven! They put my name on it in a thin ribbon of frosting: Lanie. Short for Melanie, but no one ever called me that.

Real food was worlds better than the synth we ate at home. The synth paste was dispensed through tubes that ran from house to house. It came in a few flavors, which rotated monthly. All of them were putrid. Tasteless was the most we could hope for in the rations the government sent us through the public tubes.

Most families used whatever they could to supplement the synth. Constant shortages in sugar, flour, oils, chocolate, and any form of produce meant that families had to come up with other things to trade. We tried to be creative. My parents ran a thriving tutoring service which was meant to boost kids’ scores in the computerized school programs. They promised parents that their kids would be twice as likely to pass the exit exams and be allowed to stay in the Worker’s District, rather than failing to graduate and being shipped out to live in the slums of the Entitlement Districts.

My parent’s tutoring program also made sure my brother, Eli and I not only excelled in School, but that we had enough clothing and good enough food to live reasonably well in our District. The tutoring program was technically illegal – as it gave an unfair advantage to the more prosperous students – but the officials had yet to say anything about our home business.

Even if we Graduated, Eli and I both knew what lay ahead of us. Factory jobs made up the vast majority of employment in our District, the remainder being janitorial or construction-related jobs which were hard on the body. Eli and I both had the misfortune to have inherited a form of lung sensitivity from our father. Exercise exacerbated it to the point that we often were breathless and gasping after even a short run.

My lungs were in better shape than my brother’s. My parents attributed this to my having spent my early childhood near the Docks, where the sea air was far cleaner than the sooty winds which blew through our current neighborhood. Eli’s breathing at night was raspy and his chest rattled when he exhaled. The local nurses told us that they weren’t sure what to do with the condition, other than having us relocate further from the Factory. We’d been on the relocation roster for five years now. Perhaps next year, we’d be allowed to move. Meanwhile, Eli and I stayed indoors most of the time, breathing filtered air through cloth masks our parents sewed for us. I suspected that Eli might not make it to Graduation if we stayed.

The billboard’s promise of a possible life in the clean air of the Enclaves was doubly enticing. Not only would it give me a chance to be something other than a Factory Worker (or worse), it could let us escape our contaminated neighborhood. We might even meet a real doctor! But what exactly were “Good Genes”? What were we risking by letting the Council’s medical staff examine us?

Being nearly eleven, I knew better than to ask my parents. I searched for information on my phone and when I didn’t find anything there, I asked some of the neighborhood kids. Not too many though. I didn’t want everyone applying to go to the Enclave!

Most of the kids, as usual, didn’t know anything. That was pretty typical. They spent most of their time at the Arcade, training for their adult life in the Entitlement District. I didn’t have the heart to let them know there weren’t arcades there. My father went there from time to time, helping some of the residents repair a broken shack or carry the dead to the crematorium. There was easily twice the population the land should have held and new viruses and infections broke out regularly, culling the old and the weak. Without even the rudimentary access to sanitation, the Entitlement Districts were easily able to maintain open spaces for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t Work elsewhere.

Rebecca, a thirteen-year-old, told me quietly that her older sister, Naomi, had gone with the first group of potential Enclave recruits. She’d gotten a few notes from her – written on clean, white paper. The handwriting was awkward, but improved with each note. Naomi, like the rest of us, had always used voice input on the computer rather than writing. Paper was far too expensive to waste with on us kids! Naomi described having clean clothing and classes where they had real, not computerized, Teachers. She said they got fresh fruit and vegetables most days and that they were issued new white clothing every day. Everything there was so clean, she’d gushed to Rebecca. When was Rebecca going to join her?

I had visions of the old days: cows being washed before heading to slaughter. But what if it were true? What if Eli could get better and we could get to choose to be anything we wanted? As if I knew what that would be! What would it be like to even have a choice?

Eli and I have always had a close bond. I guess we’re tighter than the typical sister and brother. Maybe it cause he’s been sick most of his life that I’ve been a bit more aware of him. I just keep an eye on him. In case he needs, me, I have to be sure I’m there. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly awful or thinking about something that’s really important to him, I can tell. I’m not saying I can hear him thinking or anything weird like that. That would mean I was mental! If anybody thought I was like that, like that kid Jordy last year, the one who thought he could heal the old man who fell in the street…. Well, anyway, he was gone the next day and we never saw him again.

Mental. Just not a good idea to say anything to anyone about it. Other than Eli, that is. He knows about me and the one time we talked about it he told me he always feels safe since I’m there for him. “Just don’t leave me, Lanie,” he cried, that day, after he’d been house-bound for almost a month due the bad air from the Factory. “Don’t leave me here to suffocate all alone with everyone else Working and me just a mouth to feed.”

I swore to him that if I ever went anywhere, I’d be sure to take him along. And that was why I woke him up that morning and told him we were leaving for the Enclave. I suppose I should have told our parents but if they’d stopped us, we’d be stuck with rags over our mouths and noses, hiding from the skies. Or just as bad, Working in the Factory making whatever the Council wanted. Whatever the Council wanted, perhaps they wanted us to Work for them in the Enclaves. Anywhere had got to be better than here!

“Eli! Wake up!” I whispered to my kid brother. He was eight and snored like a Retiree. His chest strained under the blanket and he muttered to himself as I pulled off his thin blanket. He was sleeping in his spare coverall. Like most kids, he’d been issued one each year, but he grew slowly enough that he was able to keep wearing his old one. The new one had been fit based on his age and typical weight charts and was ridiculously baggy. He had to keep it pinned up so it didn’t drag on the floor.

Eli’s chest’s curve was pronounced, like a bird’s, due to the pressure he needed to inhale past his constant layer of sticky phlegm. My father had told us that there once was a condition called cystic fibrosis that caused terrible breathing problems in kids. We didn’t have it, since it had been cured nearly a century before. Our problems were much more like the Black Lung that miners caught from breathing coal dust. The Factory gave off all sorts of toxic dust and smoke, so it was tough to know exactly what was causing the problem. Surprisingly, most kids didn’t mind the air. Apparently, the human body can adapt to nearly anything. It was too bad we were such sensitives.

Eli pulled himself out of his cot and ran some water through his hair. We grabbed a few tubes of synth paste for the road. It wasn’t until we made it outside our Neighborhood and past the lights outlining the Factory that Eli finally turned to me. “Are we finally getting out of here?” Brave kid. Eli knew if he didn’t get away from our neighborhood that he was going to die. He heard our parents talking about it and our mother was crying when they got the latest Relocation rejection letter. “We sincerely regret,” the letter read when I pulled it up on my parents’ account, “that you have not been approved for Relocation at this time. Please apply for the following term to renew your application.”

Knowing he had an expiration date, literally, wasn’t enough to keep Eli from trying. “Maybe we’ll get to see a Doctor, Lanie,” he’d say to me hopefully, watching me type in request after request for medical attention. “Maybe this next time, they’ll write back!” He read up on lung exercises on his phone and practiced them religiously. And when he was too tired physically to exercise his body, he sat with our parents and worked with them on academics, reaching studies far beyond his age group, and eventually beyond most of the Graduation requirements.

I wasn’t such a good student as Eli, but I never enjoyed School. The computerized Teacher grated on my nerves and the lessons were often painfully obvious. I did as little as I could to keep on track for Graduation. I didn’t see the point of excelling. We’d all end up in the same jobs, regardless of our class ranks. Instead, I much preferred spending my time volunteering in the community daycare or with the disabled who were kept hidden by the Community, lest they be moved to hospitals housed in the Entitlement Districts.

The only thing worse than living in an Entitlement District, it was said, was being incarcerated in a hospital or prison in the Entitlement District. Once in, the rumors continued, the only way out was in a bodybag. I often imagined Jody in one of the psych wards of a Entitlement District hospital. But without anything else to fuel it, I was unable to imagine anything further. Somehow, though, I was sure he was still alive and unhurt. I wished I was as sure of Eli’s and my future.

There are tons of ways out of the Workers’ District, but only one official way. The Gate is set up at one of the farthest points from the Factory. It is, or it was, white. There is a large brass Seal, showing the emblems of the Tri-Districts: The Enclave, The Workers’ District, and the Entitlement District. My father said it looks a bit like a “peace” sign, with pictures in between the legs. I suppose that’s fitting as we have had our current Peace now for a long time, longer than anyone alive who isn’t already Retired and at Rest.

When we finally got to the gate, the night was nearly over. The sky was lightening to a dusty orange and I could see the sweat that had darkened Eli’s shirt during our long walk across the District. His cheeks and forehead were also shining in the faint sunlight. I handed the water bottle to him and pressed him to drink. “But we’re nearly out of water,” he protested.

“Better in than out,” I argued. “If you get dehydrated, you’ll pass out and I can’t carry you too far. Besides, you’ll look like an abandoned cat and they won’t want you.” He drank the bottle dry. I felt my own throat becoming increasing parched and did my best to hide my discomfort.

During night shift, the Gate was manned by only its guardian computer. The computer shone a beam of light on us and stared down at us through its scratched Eye. “Place your palm on the glass and state your business,” it said in its robotic male voice. So much for small talk, I thought inappropriately. I helped Eli reach the scanner and then did the same myself. “We are here to apply for Enclave citizenship.”

“Welcome Elias and Melanie Tutor.” How did it know our secret last name? It should have called us Stevens. “Please enter the holding area and help yourself to refreshment. The next Enclave guide will arrive within twenty minutes.” We walked inside the Gate to find a small door leading to a room where the air was considerably cooler than outside. The inside of the room was spotlessly white and I suddenly felt ashamed of my patched grey coverall and my brother’s greasy hair.