A week later, I am sitting in my science class when I hear a message over the loudspeaker and through my headphones.
“Enora Byrnes, report to the recruitment office.”
My heart drops. I can feel a sea of faces staring at me with expressions of shock, pity, and even envy. Mr. Frink hurries me along, and I find myself in the hallway walking toward the recruitment office. I can hear my every footfall echo off the walls. The clop, clop sound of my shoes reverberates through my body like the ominous toll of a bell. I reach the office door much too soon and, with shaking hands, open it to my future.
I enter the room quietly and give the secretary my name. She is expecting me. I am told to have a seat while she informs the recruitment officer that I am here. I lower myself into an orange, plastic chair in the waiting area and begin to take slow, deep breaths to calm my racing heart. For the first time, in so long that I can hardly remember, I feel cold. Not the type of cold that can be fixed with a jacket or warm blanket, the type of cold that seeps into your bones, radiating throughout your body until your muscles shudder. I feel sick.
Being recruited by the Company is not something I would have envisioned for myself. I am not strong or smart like the drones I have seen handpicked over the years. Nothing about me stands out as one who would make a good candidate for Sentinel or whatever role they see me filling. But no one refuses a recruitment assignment. So when I see the shiny black boots peeking out beneath the hem of a black and gray uniform, I raise my eyes and know that there is no choice. But, for whatever reason, I have been selected, and this will be my future.
The recruitment officer has a nice smile and warm brown eyes. He doesn’t look much older than me, but I can’t remember seeing his face on the school grounds before. He is not the one who makes the recruitment decisions, but he is the first step in my transition. Inside my head, I am begging that I haven’t been slated to become a Sentinel. I don’t want to become one of the uniformed guards who patrol the streets, borders, transportation lines, food processing facilities, or repositories.
“Enora,” the man reaches out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Chad, and I will be your first contact in the exciting journey you are about to begin. Won’t you come this way?”
I follow Chad into a small office and sit as he shuts the door. “I’m sure that you are eager to learn all there is about joining the DMC team. Let’s start with your placement exam.”
He shuffles through a small stack of papers in a file, looking them over. I can see various graphs and numbers but cannot make out what they refer to. “I see that you scored very high in a couple of areas. Your visual acuity is phenomenal, as is your software aptitude. Those skills could lead to an interesting career in the field. Have you thought about what branches of the DMC you would like to pursue?”
“Um, I’d like to see the world a bit and would enjoy working in a food production facility or something like that.” I sound so lame but am unprepared with a specific job title.
“Hm. Those are great options and are important aspects of the support the DMC provides to citizens, but I think you might find that your particular skills lend themselves to a more rigorous assignment. You could likely become a Sentinel. You could even find yourself in a large city, thereby seeing more of the world.” He smiles at his assertion while I cringe a little inside.
“For the time being,” he continues. “We are going to place you with the other recruits who show a strong propensity for traits we look for in Sentinels. These students will be familiar to you, I’m sure.”
Of course, they’ll be familiar. I’ve always made it a point to be aware of the drones. It helps me avoid them. “Yes, sir. I am sure that I will see some faces I recognize.”
“Excellent!” Chad replies. “Over the remaining weeks of the school year, you will begin your journey with the DMC by attending specialized classes during and after the school day. In addition to this…”
His voice becomes a murmuring in my ears, and I find myself incapable of grasping what he is telling me. I look around the room, unable to fathom why I am sitting here listening to my potential future as a Sentinel being laid out before me. This is not me, but how do I tell this man who sits before me explaining the honor and benefits of working in this capacity? I bite the inside of my cheek to refocus and listen to what he’s saying.
Chad begins to explain the first step in the recruitment process. And then he is standing, holding out his hand for me to shake.
“It is a pleasure to invite you into our ranks, Enora.”
My hand is cold and clammy as I take his. “Thank you, sir.”
In the waiting room, the secretary stops me and gives me a stack of papers to take home. A couple of them are colorful brochures. One shows a group of smiling Sentinels and citizens greeting each other at a checkpoint. Another contains images of food and water being distributed into the hands of children and young mothers. I look again at the grin of the Sentinel and try to imagine myself in that role. But he looks like every other drone I’ve come across, making the picture seem fake. My parents should be happy. For them, working as a Sentinel means more credits. These employees earn more than those who work at the mill. It isn’t fair, but that’s how it is. To my folks, it’ll mean a better life. But for me, it means something different.
Two years ago, my closest friend, Bram, was recruited. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school and was at the top of the class. I remember his face so clearly, though it has been so long since I have seen him. Before the recruitment, I could look into his brown eyes and know that he truly saw me, understood who I was under the layers of indifference. He had a rugged profile, chiseled and handsome, though boyish at the same time. I used to crane my head to look into his face and scold him for ignoring me or laugh at his stupid jokes. I miss that.
Many of my fondest childhood memories are of the two of us, just playing around and having fun. Bram and I spent many evenings together, sitting on a hill behind the old library. It was our favorite spot. We weren’t supposed to go up there after curfew, but if you knew the hidden paths through the dry shrubs and buildings, it was pretty easy to sneak on up without being spotted by the Sentinels. And considering the number of ears that could potentially listen to conversations at school or in town, it was the best place to be able to really talk. Safa would join us every now and then, but most nights, it was just Bram and me.
From the bald spot at the top of the hill, you could see the whole town spread out before you, and in the dark, it almost looked beautiful. At least with only the pale light of the moon, you couldn’t see the scarred landscape and dilapidated buildings that are so evident under the harsh rays of the sun. We always kept to the edge of the clearing, out of range of those that might scan our location. Many nights were spent dreaming of a different future, imagining things that we could only read about or hear of. Every dream we wove into the canvas of our minds had us together and living lives away from this place and the hardships that it represented. Truth be told, each fantasy also included bodies of clean, clear water and torrents of rain that would wash over us, wiping away the worry along with the dirt.
Not all conversations were of an unattainable future, though. Many were candid dialogues about our realities. The looming threat of graduation was the central focus of our last few encounters because that future was getting steadily closer for Bram. I remember the look in his eyes when Bram talked about the recruitment he feared was an unavoidable conclusion to his eighteenth year. They didn’t look scared, just…empty. Like the spark for life was gone from them already, though no decision had actually been made.
I recall him looking into the dark horizon, saying, “I feel it in my bones, Enora. Like at any moment, I’ll get called down and told that I’ve been recruited.”
The conviction in his voice hit me like a hammer, shocking me so that I blinked slowly, trying to dispel what he said and the future it represented. Bram just looked at me and waited for me to process what he’d said.
“You’re going to be one of them? A Sentinel? You’re sure?”
I tried to temper the accusation in my tone, but the flicker of anger I saw on his face let me know that I wasn’t successful. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I’m just…it’s just…”
“I know. It’s not the future we imagined, is it?” I shake my head. He didn’t really need to say anything more. He simply opened his arms and let me slide into his embrace.
As he held me, I remember thinking how unfair it was. Bram shouldn’t have to suffer worry over recruitment. He shouldn’t have to be taken away from me to the training center to be instructed as a Sentinel. It’s a place I can’t and don’t want to imagine. To me, the center is the last stop before you are turned into a soldier for the DMC. The graduates from this program have always been a part of my life, and they represent one thing about the Company that I have never been able to fully support. Too many times, I’ve witnessed these chosen few push others around and use their strength and weaponry to intimidate. That’s why only the drones are supposed to be chosen. They are the ones who seem to thrive on keeping others down. Bram can’t become one of them.
We had such grand plans once, or at least we talked about such grand plans. He was the only person who understood me; it was kismet with Bram and me. And now he’s telling me that he thinks he’ll be taken away, to become something we both abhor.
I shook my head against his chest, refusing to accept this prediction. “No, you can’t be recruited. You’re not gonna be a Sentinel. It’s not who you are. I mean, you’re not some drone or something. You’re going to end up like me, a pleb cleaning out toilets and scrubbing floors.”
He chuckled. “Toilets, huh? I don’t think so. I think I’ll let you take care of the crap, and I’ll take care of the floors.”
I elbowed him, glad that the seriousness of the conversation was derailed. “Fine, have it your way. But at least make sure we’re on the same shift, would ya?”
Nothing else was said about his misgivings that night, nor the next few that followed, and I chose to ignore the potential truth of his fears. It was easier to pretend we had all the time in the world. But Bram wasn’t able to push away his worry so completely.
In the following weeks, I saw him less often. Our secret meetings on the hill became infrequent, as though he were preparing himself. It was like he began to cut me out of his life that night and slowly removed me from his heart until I disappeared from it completely. After graduation, Bram was taken to a training center outside of town. He was carrying a gun the last time I saw him, and the boy I knew was gone.
I don’t know what happens in training. No one who has been through it ever talks about it, at least not to me. Bram was the only recruit I had been friends with who was chosen because most of those selected ran with a different crowd. They are brawny soldier types, perfect Company material. But not Bram. He was different. He and I used to talk about escaping all of this and finding life beyond the border. We had such dreams. But it was just talking, and now it’s not even that.
The rest of the school day passes in a haze. I don’t recall walking back to class. After school, I see Safa waiting for me to walk home together, but I sneak past her and hop onto the shuttle. When my parents arrive, I am sitting in the dark at the kitchen table with the papers from the DMC scattered before me. When my mom’s eyes fall onto the table, she gasps, turns to embrace my father, and falls into his arms sobbing. I get up and shut myself in my room.