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‘I’ve been hearing a voice in my head.’ I said, and I could feel my cheeks start to burn.
I was sitting in our hideout in the shadows behind silo 6, at the end of the small tank room on level 4. My back was propped against some wadded plastic sheeting, my legs stretched out on some matting. Pitr, my best friend, sat next to me. I felt the sheeting move as he pushed himself away from the wall, then he turned to face me in a cross-legged sit. I couldn’t avoid looking up at him. There was enough light to see ‘excited and impressed’ fade from his face and be replaced with ‘oh come on’.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
I shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I don’t recognise it.’
‘Is it there all the time?’ Pitr asked. He sounded like he was picking his words carefully
I shook my head. ‘I only hear it at night, when everything is quiet. It always says the same thing.’
‘What does it say?’
I could see that Pitr was getting interested despite himself. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. It says my name.’
‘It knows your name?’
‘I just said, didn’t I? He uses - ’
‘He?’
‘He, it, whatever.’ I stopped and took a breath to calm down. ‘He says my full name, ‘Garret Barton Trent’, then says something about an access code for a maintenance panel down on level 6.’
He looked sharply at me. ‘Level 6?’
I mustered a grin and nodded. Childhood ghosts and mysteries lived on level 6, even though we had outgrown them long ago.
‘So what have you done about it?’ Pitr asked. ‘Who have you told?’
I fidgeted a bit. In front of the silo a glowstrip flickered for a few seconds and made a glassy ‘pinkpink’ noise before settling down. Our hideout turned from dim to dark and back again. Not far away there was a grinding noise, then the sound of fluid rushing through a pipe.
‘Nobody, yet.’ I admitted.
Pitr made an exasperated gesture with his hands. ‘You have to tell somebody,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I asked, picking at a loose fibre on the matting.
‘The medic? Or the Historyun?’
Sometimes Pitr could be a bit obvious. ‘And either of them would go straight to my dad and tell him, wouldn’t they.’ I didn’t want my father to know. He would turn it back on me and say I was making up stories. Again.
‘But it could be something important,’ said Pitr. ‘What if there’s something wrong with you?’
I’d thought about that. The first time I had heard the voice it had scared me. I knew I wasn’t dreaming, so the first thing I had thought of was I was going nuts. There was something about the voice; the gentle hiss that came with it every time it spoke that made me less worried each time I heard it. I supposed I could still be going loopy, but it didn’t feel like it.
‘That would go down real good, wouldn’t it? Chief Foreman’s son crazy with voices in the head’.’ I looked down at my nails, but they were all too far down to bite. ‘Look, forget I said anything. You’re right, I’m making it up.’
I turned round and crawled out of the hiding space, then headed off as quickly as I could so Pitr wouldn’t follow me. I didn’t need him being sensible at me right now.
I thought about heading home and going to my room, but my mum would probably have chores for me. My mother seemed to think that now I was out of school I was her slave until I got inducted. I stopped and slouched against the wall. The thought of induction made me feel sick. It was supposed to be such a good day, such a big day. The day everybody was supposed to consider you a man, and the day you were supposed to start working. The whole thing terrified me.
I heard footsteps behind me, running, and the sound of gasping.
‘Garret, wait up,’ called Pitr. I had to grin. It used to be a lot easier to shake him off. But then, I guess as we got older, everything got smaller, and maybe the places to hide got fewer too.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said when he caught up to me.
‘For what?’
‘If you thought I was poking fun. I wasn’t. But I really do think you have to tell someone, even if you don’t want to tell your dad.’
I stopped again. I didn’t need to look around to know where I was. It was almost impossible to get lost. In a community of 500 people spread across six levels, it didn’t take long to learn where everything was. I was four intersections away from my home. Too close. Too many people and too likely someone would see me and start asking me why I looked so down.
I couldn’t think of anything useful to say, so I just said ‘Whatever.’ Pitr looked a bit hurt.
‘Yeah, well. Look, if you want to talk about it, just come find me, OK?’
I nodded. He touched my arm, which was unusual. I couldn’t leave him like that.
‘Meet me at silo 6 again. Tonight, after the meal.’
Pitr looked a bit brighter, and half smiled. ‘OK. I don’t know how long I can stay though.’
Mum managed to rope me in to setting the table then I got to go to my room for a while, saying I wanted to catch up with some reading. I heard my father come home, and heard mum call for me to come and say hello. I pretended not to hear.
Our home only had four rooms; my room, my parents’ room, the bathroom, and a common area where we ate and did general family things. Much the same as everybody else, but I suppose I was lucky I didn’t have to share with a brother or sister. Mum called a second time and I went out to the family room.
We sat to the table, poured water for each other, then mum took the food cakes out of the ration box, peeled off the wrappers and put one on each plate. Each was placed dead centre, and with the words stamped in to the top of the caked neatly lined up.
Aphrodite Settlement
Emergency Ration – 1 Adult Meal
800 Calories equivalent.
We all guessed that ‘calories’ were something to do with the size of the cake, but what ‘Aphrodite’ meant nobody had a clue, and ‘settlement’ was when you repaid someone for a service. I picked up my utensil and used the sharp edge to slice off a corner before spiking it and lifting it to my mouth. I chewed, swallowed, and like every other day wondered why the only thing we ate was so boring. But cakes were cakes, and all there ever was and all there ever had been. The kids all called them ‘bricks’. I sliced, spiked and chewed another mouthful, trying to make it last.
‘So, Garret. Do anything useful today?’
Every evening meal since I had finished school three weeks ago, my dad had said the same thing. I did everything I could to stop myself rolling my eyes, or sighing, or showing anything on my face. If I did, I got a lecture.
‘Guess not, Dad,’ was to be the safest thing I could say.
‘Well, you won’t have to put up with all this boredom for long. How many days is it now?’
He meant until I got inducted. ‘Nine, Dad,’ I replied, still keeping my face under control as much as I could. Dad was digging in to his food cake with gusto, and was already half way through it. Mum was only picking at hers, and I knew he would finish hers off when I wasn’t looking. One rule for outside, and another rule for inside, I supposed. ‘Only nine days, then you can call yourself a man and start a real job. Must be looking forward to it, eh?’
I managed a weak smile. I had a horrible feeling he was going to go for the long speech tonight.
‘I know you don’t want to start off working on the big tanks, Garret, but it’s the best thing in the long run. Trust me. You have to have a taste of everything if you’re going to take over as Chief Forman after me. If you were to head straight into a more senior job, all we would hear is scandal and rumour. Can’t have it said that I’m favouring my son, now can we. Chief Foreman is a responsible position. People have to look up to me, to know I’m fair and follow the rules, eh?’
Sure, I thought, like stealing mum’s food cake if she doesn’t eat it. I forced a nod.
‘Trust me, you won’t be down with the big tanks long. My son is better than that. Just bide your time for a few months - maybe six. A year at the most. Then we can start showing them what we’re capable of, eh? Be out of there in no time, eh?’
I tried to keep the horror I felt out of my expression. The big tanks were where the raw material was delivered and broken down. ‘Collection’ and ‘Slurry’ were the names of the tanks. Sometimes you could see what came back into ‘Collection’. It was disgusting. You could almost feel it inside your mouth, like acid green bile. My father was condemning me to a year working with them before he would let me get to anything better. Pitr’s father was in distribution, so Pitr was going straight into distribution. I suddenly felt really jealous of him. My father must have picked up on something on my face, and my stomach dropped as his expression darkened.
‘I thought we had been through this, Garret. I thought you understood the importance of being seen to do the right thing. I know you feel that as my son you should be destined for higher things, and in time you will be, but ... ’
As soon as I began I regretted what I did next, but it was one of those things that once you had started it you had to go on to the bitter end. I got to my feet, and the chair I had been sitting on crashed back against the wall. My mum jumped and looked a little scared. My dad just looked up at me.
‘You don't understand anything,’ I said, my voice too loud. ‘I don’t care what job I end up doing because they all suck.’
‘Garret, we have a responsibility. We alone have been entrusted with the upkeep of these life-giving machines. The Historyuns tell us the world depends on us, and if we fail to produce enough food bricks the world will end.’ He was using his deep voice, the one he used for talking to everybody at Gatherings when he would go on and on about Duty and our great purpose and responsibility.
‘We make twenty bricks for every one we eat, dad. If we don’t make enough, you make us go hungry. Where do they go? Who else needs them?’
‘That's not for us to know, son. It’s enough that we have been chosen.'
‘To do the same miserable things with our lives forever. It doesn't make any sense.’
I slammed my open hands down on the table, turned and rushed out of our apartment. I heard mum call my name and my dad telling her to let me go. Then I was too far away to hear any more.