Kat’s eyes dreamily squinted open into narrow wedges and perceived her alley shrouded in darkness. A hollow boom sounded right next to her but she didn’t stir. An undented replica of Rat’s fire barrel had been knocked over and was rolling slowly down the alley. Loud grunts and the sounds of a scuffle pulled her eyes from the barrel.
Two meters away, Rat fought for his life. He was locked in a grappling embrace with another vagrant. The pair appeared to dance as they shuffled from side to side. They crashed into a blue tarp that hung on a cord tied between two refuse piles. The cord snapped and the men tumbled to the ground.
Rat rolled on top of his opponent and tore viciously at the other man’s eyes. The pinned man appeared to be much older than Rat but had wedged an arm between them and was pushing Rat away. Rat pulled one hand from the man’s face and desperately groped the dirt near his knees. A cloud of dust hid his objective from Kat’s view but a moment later, she saw him raise his hand high and plunge it down to the chest of the stranger.
The second man shrieked horrifically but Rat stabbed again and again, raising and lowering his hand with a speed Kat had never seen her alleymate display. Blood sprayed across the blue tarp. The knife continued to rise and fall long after the prone man was still. When Rat finally stopped, he was wheezing for breath. His whole body heaved and it took him several attempts to stand to his feet.
He looked down at his lifeless victim while gasping to refill his lungs. “Dammit,” he rasped, “you should’ve just given it to me, you old fool.”
A cane nudged Kat’s side and her eyes popped open. It was mid-morning and light already filtered into the alley. She looked up to see Rat standing over her, bemused and unbloodied. What a horrible dream! Kat thought, sucking in air to clear her head. The violent dream was replaced by the memories of the last evening’s assault and made her shudder.
“It’s Saturday,” Rat proclaimed. “You got just two days paid until I get more tonic from you.”
Kat wiped at her eyes. She had slept soundly for nearly ten uninterrupted hours and felt energized. Even her back no longer ached despite sleeping on the hard, dusty ground. She promised to buy herself a blanket this weekend with some of the money earned yesterday. “I remember, Rat. I’ll pay next week’s rent on Monday. I have the money for it.”
Rat grunted and hobbled back to his side of the alley. He propped his walking stick against the wall and slowly knelt by the blue tarp reservoir. Cupped hands brought water to his grimy lips.
Kat found her appetite had returned with a vengeance, her body craving calories. She stretched over to a small pile of trash lining the wall of the brick building and slid her long arm deep into the pile. Her fingertips comfortingly brushed against the handle of one of the hunting knives she had stashed last evening, laying atop her folded pressboard carton. She looked over her shoulder toward Rat. He was staggering around his living space and focused on his own world. She withdrew the second hunting knife from her waistband and secreted it into the same hole in the refuse. I shouldn’t take a weapon into Porter Mining, she told herself.
She stood and moved to the reservoir, washing her face with the mucky water. In its current state, there was no way she would drink from the two centimeters of liquid remaining, even after boiling it. She would stop by the Beggar’s Market after applying for the mining job to quench her thirst and to refill her plastic bottle there. Combing her hair with her fingers, she looked at her hazy reflection on the water’s surface. Her skin was becoming darker as she tanned. The burns on the right side of her face had nearly disappeared. Her hair looked less like a result from injury and more like an unfashionable style choice.
Although her pants had never stretched out, the weight she had lost over the week made them form-fitting but no longer obscene. She dabbed at some of the dark brown stains on her shirt and pants. Her clothes needed a thorough cleaning but, for now, her appearance was as good as it was going to get.
“Duty calls,” Kat said, bidding Rat a farewell.
The man grunted as he pulled out the last strip of murine from the night before but then looked at her. “What do you do all day?”
“Scavenge,” she lied.
Rat nodded knowingly. “Yup.” He returned to his feast.
Kat left the alley and started toward the Strip. Mornings were the safest times in Shantytown and even though she had left her knives at home, she walked through the dirty streets with a growing confidence. No more dark alleys, she promised herself. Ever. She still cautiously assessed every individual that walked near her but more by habit than out of real fear. It was only when her mind strayed to the intimidating morning ahead of her that she felt truly nervous. She was walking into an environment she had no business being in and asking for a job she had no idea how to perform, or even what it entailed. Strangers would evaluate her and probably not kindly. Further, these people would be citizens, not beggars, thieves or degenerates, but professionals that would rate her value as a human. What if they laugh me out of the office? She shivered at the thought of rejection and questioned why she cared what her faceless evaluators would think. What would Sadler think if he looked over my application? His opinion was what mattered and seemed to have a disproportional weight considering the brief time she had shared with him.
She shuddered again. Her application was going to look terrible. She had no meaningful skills that she could think of, no education that she could list, not even a past. The form would be as blank as her memory. It would be worse because it would expose her as a nothing. No accomplishments. No contributions. She couldn’t even write the truth because she didn’t know it.
Doubts preyed on her during the trip to Eastpoint. The night before, she had traveled under the large gate with an optimistic, almost carefree attitude. Today, the gate looked like giant jaws ready to devour her. It was late morning and the line trailing away from the checkpoint was small. She waited less than fifteen minutes before a corp-sec guard directed her under a security arch and to a border agent’s empty service window. Kat nervously approached the man.
“Your visa.”
“I don’t have one but there should be authorization in your computer.”
“Name?”
“Kat Smith.”
The attendant tapped at his keyboard. “Your business in Waytown?”
“Applying for employment with Porter Mining.”
The man’s eyes darted between his screen and Kat’s face. He typed furiously again before pausing to detach a visa stick from a row plugged into a tray beside his computer. He placed the visa onto the counter and stated, “Standard allotment for employment application is five hours. This visa will self-frag at fifteen twenty-two hours. You’re required to present this visa to any Waytown citizen that asks to see it. The penalty for squatting on an expired visa varies from fines to imprisonment. Do you understand?”
Kat nodded. “Yes.”
She snatched the visa off the countertop and moved quickly through the gate. The instant transformation of her surroundings was jarring. These streets were clean. Waytown’s pedestrians, other than those coming from Shantytown, were well-clothed and walked without the paranoid shuffle common in the slums behind her. The interior side of the tall wall separating the two worlds displayed a crystal clear, real-time picture of the landscape past Shantytown, as if the wall’s illusion could erase the vagrant town’s existence.
The imagery echoed loudly in Kat’s mind. That’s exactly it, she considered. They wish we didn’t exist. We’re something to be looked past. The realization was insulting but at her core, she shamefully admitted that any person from Shantytown would eagerly join these citizens, herself included.
She walked down the unpolluted sidewalks toward Porter Mining’s headquarters. When she reached the business district, her reflection walked in silent companionship in the shining first floor windows of the buildings she passed. She turned the corner to the Porter building and tripped to a stop.
Ahead of her were dozens of corporate security officers in full riot gear. Some carried stun batons; most carried rifles. Not just rifles, Kat identified, large caliber battle rifles. Two corp-sec aircars hovered in place over the street, positioned high in the sky to monitor the foot traffic below. Well over three hundred shabbily dressed men and women stood in unmoving lines like cattle. The back of the daunting lines almost reached Kat’s corner and extended forward down the length of the block, leading to the front doors of Porter Mining Enterprises.
Kat’s heart sank as she recognized her ignorance. You idiot! Did you really think you’d just walk into an empty office and ask for a job application? Just fill it out at the counter and be on your merry way? Her shoulders slumped and her stomach twisted into a knot as she remembered her visa would expire in four and a half hours. It will take me ten minutes to get back to Eastpoint, even if I sprint. She hurriedly took her place in a line.
Kat started counting the people ahead of her and saw Porter representatives carrying slim computer pads walking down each of the lines. She shifted her weight impatiently as she stood in the seemingly immobile line. Many aspiring applicants were sitting on the sidewalk. As time passed, more people queued behind her.
A representative worked her way to Kat’s portion of the line twenty minutes later. The woman was smartly dressed in a fresh, white shirt bearing the Porter logo and a smooth, black pencil skirt. She asked questions to each person ahead of Kat in turn. When she finally stood in front of Kat, she began her recitation anew.
“Are you here to apply for employment?”
“Yes,” Kat answered forlornly.
“Were you recommended by a current Porter employee?”
“Yes!” Kat blurted. “Mr. Sadler Wess.”
The woman consulted her handheld’s screen. Her fingers swept up the surface as she searched. “What’s your name?”
“Kat Smith.”
The representative nodded. “Okay, please come with me.” She turned quickly and began to walk up the line and toward the headquarters.
Kat enviously watched the lithe woman from behind. She had smelled like desert flowers. Her clothes were clean and the tailored cut of her blouse and narrow skirt accentuated her femininity and made her look beautiful. As Kat chased after her, she looked down at her own attire. Her oversized shirt hid much of her gender but she shamefully thought her tight pants implied she was a prostitute.
Kat followed her tailored savior, gliding past the sea of people while pretending not to hear the grumbles of resentment emanating from the line she was jumping. Roving corp-secs tapped menacingly with stun batons to ensure the resentment didn’t explode into violence.
The woman brought Kat near the front of the line. Stanchions with sturdy ropes cordoned off an area leading to the doors into Porter Mining. Additional corporate security guards monitored the entrance as a company representative signaled when applicants at the front of the lines could approach and enter the building. The representative guiding Kat pointed at a position that would place her third in a line and stated, “Please wait there, Ms. Smith. Follow the instructions of the rep by the door.”
“Okay,” Kat replied while guiltily cutting in front of a man as directed.
The woman walked away, heading back toward the end of the line she had been working.
“Second person who’s knocked me back in the queue,” the man behind Kat groused.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
The man’s voice raised several decibels. “Tell that to my three kids.”
A corp-sec officer sidled toward the commotion lifting his assault rifle that had been hanging freely from a harness. “We got a problem here?”
Kat felt a familiar dread before she realized the officer was ignoring her.
“No, sir,” the man behind her answered stiffly.
“Let me see your pass,” the officer demanded. The man handed over his visa stick.
The corp-sec squeezed the ends of the stick and compared the image it displayed to the man in front of him. He shoved the stick onto the man’s chest with a gloved hand and threatened, “If I hear another peep out of you, I’ll frag your visa on the spot.”
The man gulped and nodded docilely.
The remainder of Kat’s wait was in absolute silence. In sequence, the leaders of each of the ten lines were invited into the building as a group. Eventually, Kat took her place at the front of her line and after a twenty-minute wait, the representative by the door beckoned her group inside.