Life, as it is…
The siren blares. It is six o'clock in the morning. No one should have to wake up to the scream of a siren at this hour. But it's Tuesday, and they always go off at this time on Tuesday. I groan and roll to my side, pulling my pillow over my ears. As if I could forget what Tuesday means. As if anyone in this town could. I sigh after the noise stops and flop onto my back. There is no use trying to get any more sleep. I need to get up in thirty minutes anyway.
Tuesday. Tuesday means no water in my community of Prineville, in the Pacific Northwest Basin. No flushing toilet. No washing hands or hair or anything, for that matter. It means standard-issue antibacterial lotion that chaps my skin and gives me a rash. It means that I have to brush my teeth with a dry toothbrush and let the spit sit in the sink alongside Mom and Dad's. It means piles of dirty dishes because we can't wash plates and silverware. I better use my leftover water ration wisely.
The relentless sun is already beginning to shine through the cracks in the shades, causing the temperature to begin its daily climb to a point where light films of sweat will pool on my skin, triggering my body to lose water that it can't afford. I pull out a pair of standard-issue, threadbare shorts and a shirt with only a few stains from my metal dresser. Then, sit on the edge of the bed to plait my hair—it's the best style when my dirty blond locks aren't quite as clean as they should be.
In the bathroom, I lean into the mirror. I look sallow under the blinking of the harsh bulb that has never quite worked right. Checking for any pimples or gunk stuck in the corners of my eyes, I brush my teeth with a dry toothbrush, then rub my hands over my narrow face. Grumbling, I shuffle out, my bare feet scraping along the hard floor.
Our modular always feels claustrophobic in the morning. Like my bedroom, the shades are closed as often as possible to block the sun and keep the house cool, though, by late afternoon, it feels stifling regardless. My father is sitting at the table, the only seating area in the home, cradling a mug of stale, synthetic coffee while his mind is elsewhere. Like all adults I know, his skin is thin and wrinkled from too much sun and insufficient moisture. I stare at the painfully dry and cracked skin along his knuckles where he grips the mug. Once a dark blond like mine, his hair is peppered with gray and thinning on the top so that I can see the pink of his scalp through the sparseness. I wave my hand in front of his face.
"Hey, Dad. You in there?"
I often find my parents in this state. It's gotten worse as I've grown older, and at times, I worry that their eyes won't flicker back to life one day.
"I'm sorry, sweetie, I was wool-gathering. Want some?" he asks as he holds up his cure for morning fatigue.
I shake my head. I've tried the stuff, but it tastes like crap and doesn't give me any energy anyway. So instead, I go to the pantry, grab the last breakfast ration, heat it in the microwave, and join my dad at the table. We sit in silence for a few minutes, the scrape of my fork the only sound, until he seems to shake off his stupor.
"Only a few weeks left, right, Enora?" He's referring to my graduation from high school.
"Yeah, just a few weeks."
I don't bother adding anything more to the conversation. Graduation is not something I like to think about. Yet, this inevitable milestone is coming closer to becoming a reality that I am afraid to face. Dad doesn't seem to notice my lack of response. He is back wherever he had been when I found him.
Soon my mom pads in, her feet making a sound like sandpaper rubbing against a plank of wood. She's dressed in a uniform of slacks and a matching, unflattering shirt that balloons from her body like a sack. Both are pale blue as opposed to the darker shade of my dad's clothing. Like my father, my mom's age is evident in every line etched into her sour face. I think that she must have been pretty once. Perhaps her blue eyes sparkled with youth years ago, or maybe she smiled often. Now though, she is dried up and resentful. She mumbles a hello, grabs a mug, pours a cup of the lukewarm sludge, and plunks herself down at the table, which tilts precariously on its uneven legs before I grab the edge and right it. Mornings are quiet in my house.
I am an only child. That is all that is allowed. Couples that wish to have a child must apply for a license and, after passing a series of genetic tests, are permitted to become parents. You hear rumors of those people who have bucked the system and had a second child every now and then. Those stories never end well.
We sit in silence until a low rumbling permeates the house as a shuttle pulls up to the end of our street. This is followed by a message that flashes on the wall screen, alerting my parents that it is time to board the shuttle. At this point, my parents lift themselves from their chairs, give me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and head to work. Knowing they'll be working gives me some relief. At least they'll earn some credits and, looking at the nearly empty cupboard. We need all the credits they can earn today.
My parents are paid in water. Not literally, of course. Rather, they are paid in water credits. It's not just us either. The entire country uses water credits as currency. It is highly regulated and portioned throughout all eighteen states, and there never seems to be enough. Honestly, though, I can't imagine what my life would be like if water wasn't controlled. People don't always make the best choices, and if it were up to us, letting that faucet run unchecked wouldn't seem like a big deal. We'd likely suffer severe dehydration if our supply weren't shut off when we met our quota. It's all about control for us, from the wall screen to the water credits. Everything is regulated, and nothing goes unnoticed.
As I sit alone in the kitchen, I stare down at a slightly raised lump, barely visible under my skin. This is their form of regulation in its strictest sense. Inserted into my arm at birth is my key to survival in the community. Everyone has a microchip on the inside of his or her left wrist. It is our permanent identification and so much more. Anytime we need to buy something, we slide our arm into the reader, which scans our code, and credits are debited from our family account. The opposite happens when my parents work. For each day of work, credits are put into the account. Our microchip isn't only used for our water credits, though. I'm scanned when I get on the school shuttle, arrive at the school, or even pick up my lunch portion in the cafeteria.
The Company's database regulates everything as we're tracked throughout the day. That's what we call them, the Company. It's really the Drought Mitigation Corporation or DMC. They have been in charge since before I was born. No one knew about them back in the early days of the drought, or so Dad once told me. People found out later, and by then, the DMC had control of all of the water in the country, but their power was much greater than that. Now they have stations outside every town and systems that regulate water rations, usage, and credits.
My parents don't particularly like the DMC. While Dad's views of the Company are relatively moderate, he sees some of their controls as invasive. He can often be found mumbling about this or that but is generally apathetic. Mom is much worse. She is constantly berating the Company and refuses to see the essentials of their actions. I've stopped engaging in debates with her. It's a pointless effort. I may not like the DMC, but I understand their role. If it weren't for the rampant waste of previous generations, things would be different. But this is the world I inherited.
Everyone is on water rationing in addition to our water credits. To regulate water usage, each housing unit is monitored, and when the threshold is reached, the water is shut off remotely so that even when we have enough credits, we have to wait. Everybody has rainwater drums outside their homes on the off chance that rain will come. But those days are so rare that the drums are dry as a bone most of the year. Inside we conserve as much water as possible. We even have a small pan under the bathroom and kitchen faucet to catch any drips that may fall because, you never know, there may be enough for something as mundane as rinsing your hands.
On Tuesdays, there's no water. Every town has a day when the Company shuts off the water to help conserve it. This has always been the way. Clearly, that doesn't make it any easier. I feel bad for families with young children. It must be hard to listen to the cries when the water runs dry, and the ration is used up. In my housing section, it's not so bad. I think we have all gone to each other at one time or another for a bit of water. I can't say the same for different housing sections or other towns.
Like most people, we can rarely afford to buy our total water ration, always enough to sustain our bodies but never enough for the many other uses that require it. Most of our credits go toward food, although the credits don't go far. Meat is the most expensive, which means we rarely eat it. I've seen pictures and videos of cows, but the amount of water and resources it takes to raise one means it's a luxury families like mine can't afford. Instead, we usually buy the DMC meat substitute. I'm not entirely sure what it's made of, and, honestly, I don't really want to know.
In addition to control over the water, the DMC grows and supplies all of the food. They have farms, specially designed greenhouses, and processing plants across the country, which produce everything we eat. Their greenhouses are enormous buildings with the typical solar panels that we all have, lots of glass windows, and intricate water recycling systems that minimize water waste. They have stockyards and fields of crops too. As expected, these compounds are heavily guarded. My parents told me stories of earlier years when these locations were raided, and food was stolen. That doesn't happen much anymore, thankfully. In school, I've only had to watch one broadcast of the execution of one of these traitors, and I have no desire to ever see another.
I sit on the ground just outside my empty house, waiting for the electric sound of my shuttle, and once again contemplate how we got to this point. Not just me. Everyone. The whole world is affected by a drought that should be called something different because it has been going on globally for about a hundred years.
I feel the heat on my skin and look up, hoping to see a bank of dark clouds rolling in, but the sky is clear as usual—no rain for me. In school, they tell us that during the wet cycle of the earth, this part of the country is a lush landscape of green where the trees are healthy and a clear day is a rarity. I wish I could see that. I can't imagine a world of green.
In history and science classes, we're taught about the past's reckless fossil fuel and water usage and how the DMC stepped in to protect our future. If not for the Company putting a stop to the drilling and then investing in renewable energy sources, the sky would be a blackened, sickly thing. As for water, wasting water is not something we do in my time. It's too precious. To waste it is a crime for which, even my parents, would want consequences. Of course, the DMC control goes far beyond water, but things would be even worse without their intervention.
In Prineville, the forests hardly resemble anything even remotely green. With the drought, most of the trees dried up long ago, and then bugs moved in to finish them off. The only trees left are scraggly, drought-resistant things that dot the land around town in small clusters. In the footprint of the old forest just inside the town's perimeter, there is now just a graveyard of trees lying on the ground, like dead soldiers in a war with no enemy.
I don't like to visit what remains of the forest. It's too quiet. I find myself wondering where the animals went. Did they die too? Are their bones buried deep within the cracked earth?
I find it hard to breathe sometimes. Everyone does. It's like the air is somehow depleted or has gone so bad that my body tries to reject it. Most days, it doesn't bother me, but there are times when I begin to wonder if my lungs are working too hard and will up and quit. It must be the lack of trees or the dust in the air or maybe something noxious they don't tell us about.
Local history class taught me that this area was a large lumber community a century ago, which I find hard to fathom. I know that the town was much larger and sprawling than it is now. You can see the proof of that beyond the fence where the old buildings sit vacantly. Those parts of Prineville look like a ghost town, eerie in their emptiness. I just find it hard to imagine this place as some thriving environment where the forests were so lush that trees could be culled and sold for wood. It's so different now.
Due to the loss of the timber industry, wood is unaffordable, and, as a result, the few remaining original houses in Prineville are worn down, old things with sagging roofs and peeling paint. No one can even live in them anymore, and I wonder why they don't tear them down. Nearly all of us live in modular homes. They look like cubes when viewed from the outside. Square windows with rounded edges are the only things that break up the bland structure aside from the front door. Each residence is made out of a synthetic material that wears better under the blistering heat than an organic material ever would. Still, most of our homes look like they have seen better days, having become faded and covered with dust over years of living.
Every neighborhood is set in an organized grid with a specific type of dwelling. There are eight neighborhoods in my town, Sections A-H. Most families are located in sections E-H, mine being section G. A family unit has two bedrooms while single or childless housing has only one. The only part of Prineville that could be considered nice is near the town square where you'd find the families of the Sentinels living in sections A and B. These modulars are larger and newer with the latest interactive screen systems and furniture made with cloth rather than the hard, artificial material the rest of us are stuck with. But I'd rather live in my section. The Company may be great and all, but at least here I can be myself.
A few streets over, I hear the faint whining of my parent's shuttle as it picks up more passengers. It always makes me shudder when I hear it. Like most families, my parents work just outside Prineville's border in the textile mill. Many of the residents of Prineville end up working in the mill, as jobs are scarce in town. Kids get such glamorous choices as working one of the menial jobs in public utilities, working at the textile mill, getting shipped off to a larger manufacturing facility with housing, or getting recruited. The scarcity of employment options means most of us end up slogging through life in jobs that will never extend beyond the tedious. With the DMC bringing in all of the goods we need, local craftsmen are obsolete.
This is one of those things that get under my father’s skin, forcing his turtlehead to emerge from his hunched shoulders as he fumes about how things could be better without the DMC controlling all facets of production. I guess he has a point about how the Company has made innovation among the populace a thing of the past. He often refers to my grandfather's time during these rants, reminiscing about the old days when local craftsmen and independent businessmen were common. My grandfather was one of those successful businessmen, owning a company that employed hundreds of workers. Apparently, he was one of the elites when things got bad. People with money always seem to do better. Even now, that's true. Yet his money only took the family so far and now we are just like the bulk of the population in my town.
When Dad rants about how things in the past were better, I find it hard to bite my tongue. I want to just yell and say that if the ways of the past were so great, then why did grandpa's business go belly up? I mean, I wonder if my dad even realizes that he's lucky to have a job from the Company. If he works, then it means we're not left to someone else's mercy. His job at the mill may not be much in terms of personal fulfillment, but it keeps our family from homelessness.
Our mill produces the synthetic cloth used for DMC uniforms and is the primary employer. I don't want to end up at the mill. I don't want to come home with an aching back, chapped hands, and the dull look that I see so often in my parents' eyes. Geez, now I sound like my father. It's hard to look toward the uncertain future.
If I had lived in the past, I could have moved to a different town or even a different country, but not now. The drought caused so many mass migrations that all states closed their borders. When that wasn't enough, cities barricaded their populations behind cement walls, and larger towns absorbed the smaller ones putting up fences to build their borders. The populations in these refuges were untenable, and viruses and scarcity took their toll. Now we are stuck. The only time you can leave is for work at the mill or if the DMC recruits you.
The barbed wire fence surrounding my town is patrolled twenty-four hours a day. I have been close to the fence a couple of times with my friends, when we've talked jokingly about running away, about sneaking through the border and getting out, finding a place where water flows, clean and free. But the guards carry large guns, and besides, it's just talk anyway. We all know it's nothing but desert out there.
It could be worse. The evening announcements always show how awful it is in big cities, like Brigford, all of the violence and food shortages, viral outbreaks, and choking air. We're told it's like this in every large city across the country, though it must be beyond imagining in places like Chicago, where overcrowding is the norm and violence is rampant. My parents say that it is better we live in a small town. For once, I have to agree with them.