When I came to Toronto, so much of my story was still a mystery. If I had known what we would discover, would I have submitted my ID code? I still can’t say.
—From the victim statement of Blake Raintree
Erica and I are standing on a corner at Bloor Street, waiting for a minibus to flag down. Part of me wants to run back to that beautiful house where we spent all day yesterday getting settled, to hide in my lovely new room with walls that can change colour and a ceiling that mimics the sky, but I take a deep breath and root myself to the spot. It’s Monday morning and we are going to the ID codes office.
“Maybe we should have called a cab. Maybe this won’t be safe. Maybe I can flag a cab down. Do you see one?” Erica is nervous too, but for other reasons.
“We went through this yesterday,” I remind her. “We’ll have to use the minibuses if you want to keep your expenses down.” But I can’t resist adding, “I’m sure a lot of your colleagues will use taxis without even thinking about it.”
Erica flushes. “That’s the point, isn’t it? If people never think about their privilege, how can we hope to change things?” She sets her mouth in a tight line. “Using minibuses will make me more interested in restoring public transportation. “
But I know she’s scared, in spite of her principles. “I’m sure it’ll be safe. It’s been months since passengers were killed by rival companies. Is this one now?” It doesn’t look like any vehicle I’ve ever seen. It’s half the size of a standard bus, painted bright green with big pink and yellow patterns stencilled all over it.
“That’s a minibus,” Erica says, and she flags it down with grim determination.
“Welcome, pretty ladies!” the driver cries as Erica hands him her script card. His skin is the colour of a cup of very fine tea without milk. His eyes are quick and clever. He has no accent, but the quaintness of his speech makes me smile. I’ve never heard anyone use the word “ladies.” “Are you visiting my fair city?” he asks as he returns Erica’s card. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“No,” Erica says. “We will be living here awhile.”
The driver is delighted by this news. “I’ll give you my disk. You can use it to coordinate your travel with my schedule. I am Hanif, your dedicated driver. Achmed’s Minibus is the finest service in Toronto. We have never lost a single passenger. Not one! No rival dares challenge us.” I don’t know whether to be amused or alarmed. Erica grabs my elbow as the vehicle lurches forward and we half fall into some seats. We’re going very fast. I look around for seatbelts. There aren’t any.
After a few minutes, we stop at a traffic light. “Where are you going, new ladies?” Hanif calls back to us.
“To the ID codes office on Grosvenor,” Erica replies.
“You can let us off at University.”
“No, no. I’ll take you there. Drop you right on the doorstep.” Erica tries to protest, but he won’t hear of it. “Special service for new regular customers,” he says. When he turns his attention back to the traffic, Erica shakes her head with a rueful smile. He is certainly dedicated.
I look around, trying to keep my mind off the reason for this trip. Erica is right about one thing: travelling like this will make it hard to forget the people who don’t have our privileges. There are young women with small children, old women with carts of groceries. A man sits talking calmly to a companion who isn’t there. Everyone has big, dark circles under their eyes. Can living in a city like this make people tired?
Sooner than I expect, the bus stops and the doors fly open. “Here you are, ladies, the ID codes building,” Hanif says with a flourish. As we get off, he adds, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“How did he know?” I ask Erica as the minibus pulls away.
“Everyone who comes here is looking for something. My, what a place.”
I look up. The building is made of smooth grey stone, with huge supporting pillars. It must be very old. Inside, there’s a big lobby with marble floors. A guard beckons us over to a security device. “Residency cards,” he says, his voice flat and bored.
I never needed a residency card in Terra Nova. I didn’t even have one until we prepared for this trip. The guard studies ours, then says, “You’re visitors. Why would you need to come here?”
“We were both born here,” Erica says in a clipped, efficient way. “We’re going to Code Tracking.” This seems to satisfy him. He scans our cards and gives us directions.
The office is large, but only a few people are working behind counters. More wait in chairs. “Your number is thirty-four,” a disembodied voice says as we enter.
“We’d better sit down,” Erica tells me.
While we wait, I pull my scribe from my bag and bring my ID code up on the screen. Looking at it reminds me how we found the micro-dot in my arm, just by accident, because it set off the kitchen scanner in Erica’s house every time I went near it. Then an old techie in Kildevil, Lem Howell, reconfigured a spare scanner so we could read the information hidden in my arm. That was just before the Uprising. The micro-dot gave us my birthdate, my name, the fact that I was born here, and the ID code. Those few clues allowed Lem to discover so much about my mother and my past. But the ID code has always been a mystery. How much more will we learn now?
I’m so lost in these thoughts, Erica has to nudge me when my number is finally called. I take a deep breath and step up to the counter. “I’d like to have the information for this ID code,” I say, passing my scribe to the woman across the counter.
She shakes her head. “You can download the forms, but we can’t work from your information. You’ll have to have your micro-chip scanned.”
I wasn’t expecting this. “But why? The code is correct.”
“We can’t assume that. If we start with wrong information, we’ll waste our time.”
“All right, you can scan the micro-dot if you want to.” I hold out my arm.
“We can’t do that here. This is Code Tracking. Code Scanning is on the third floor. They’ll provide you with an official download. We work from that.”
“So I can do that now, and bring the download back to you?”
She gives me a look of pity mixed with exasperation. “You can make an appointment with Code Scanning today. I’m not sure how long the waiting list is right now. After you’ve been scanned, file your documents with us and we’ll get started.” She takes my scribe. “I’ll load the forms and a map to show you how to get to Code Scanning.”
When she passes my scribe back to me I quickly ask, “How long will it take, after I file the documents, to get the information from my ID code?”
“A few weeks at least,” the woman says. “Number thirty-seven,” she calls over my head.
The conversation is over.
An hour later, we are back on the street. “I have to wait a week for my appointment, and then even longer for them to trace my number. Those records could be accessed in seconds. Why does it take so long?” I ask as we walk away.
“There’s a political reason, like just about everything else,” Erica says. “After the Uprising, the bureaucracy was purged of anyone who seemed too closely connected with the Protectors. Then the Transitional Council decided to reduce the bureaucracy to save money. This was detailed in reports I read over the summer. There are half as many people working in government offices now as there were before, and that’s not enough. They’ll have to hire more people before things work efficiently again.” She pats my arm. “Try not to be discouraged.
“Now, we have an appointment with Security at the headquarters of the Transitional Council to get our clearance,” she continues. “The building’s just a few blocks from here.”
I follow Erica, suddenly wishing we could just go home to Terra Nova. I hate the crowds, the noise. The city is never silent. Even at night, lying in bed, I hear it hum and throb. I long for the silent green of Kildevil, for the space that gives me room to think.
We cross the street and Erica takes me through a maze of buildings that look newer than most. Suddenly, we’re facing one of the prettiest buildings I’ve ever seen, a red stone structure, absolutely massive, with peaked roofs and domed towers, arches and round windows. But one wing is completely burnt out, the windows empty, the roof gone.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Queen’s Park. Long ago, before the Dark Times, it was the legislature building, back when there was democracy. For all of my lifetime, it was the seat of government as well.”
“The Commission, you mean?”
“What we called the Commission in Terra Nova was called Queen’s Park here. Collectively, all those dictatorships were known as the Protectors. Since Queen’s Park fell in the Uprising, these buildings have been used by the Transitional Council. That burnt-out wing was destroyed in the riots last spring because people were afraid the Transitional Council wasn’t going to hold elections. The destruction upset people, sobered things up a bit, maybe. No matter what governments do, the building is a symbol of this community. Luckily, most of it is still fine. We might be working here. I’m not sure if they’ve decided where our offices will be yet. But that’s where Security is. Let’s go.”
We pass under the huge, red sandstone arches of the main entrance. The lobby is cluttered with security guards and their equipment. Once again, we present our residency cards and Erica explains why we are here.
“We need to record some information, to create a profile for Security,” one guard says. “Step over here, one at a time.” He points to me. “You first.”
I’ve had reason to fear authority in my life. My heart pounds, but I obey. He puts my residency card in a slot, then positions me in front of a device. “Look straight ahead, don’t move, don’t blink,” he commands. The device hums. “Keep still a bit longer,” he says, as a beam of blue light scans my entire body. “You next,” the guard says to Erica. She steps forward as he hands me my card. When he’s finished, he says, “Your retinal scans are recorded now, but you won’t have access to the buildings until your security badges are ready tomorrow morning.”
“What was that about?” I whisper to Erica as we leave.
“That device recorded the patterns of the retinas in your eyes. It’s a very effective way of identifying people.”
“What about the blue light?” I ask.
Erica shrugs. “They’re always coming up with new forms of security. It could have been anything. The university is very close.” Erica points west. “Would you like to see it?”
“You mean the one where my mother worked? Where my parents met? Of course.”
She smiles. “Are you hungry?”
I hadn’t realized I was until she asked. “I’m starved.”
“Follow me,” she says. “I used to buy the best noodles from a cart in Queen’s Park.”
I look back at the building. “In there? They said we couldn’t go inside until tomorrow.”
Erica laughs. “I guess the Victorians who built this place weren’t very imaginative. Queen’s Park has been the name of all the governments who used this building, and the name of the old building itself, but it’s also the name of the park. I’ll show you.”
Behind the stone building, we find a lovely park in the shape of a large circle, dotted with trees and benches, vendors’ carts and statues. The traffic flows around us at a distance on either side, but the fuel-cell vehicles aren’t bothersome. We must have driven past here in the minibus this morning, but I was too distracted to notice.
“There’s the noodle cart I was thinking of,” Erica says, “just where it used to be.” She sounds delighted.
The smell of food makes my mouth water. A young woman with jet-black hair smiles at us from behind a rising curtain of steam. She looks too delicate to be working out here. In response to Erica’s request, she quickly ladles hot broth and noodles into two big bowls on the spotless steel counter of her cart, then adds unusual foods—steamed greens, a sprinkling of green onions, I recognize those but not much else. “Don’t eat the lemon grass or the chilies,” Erica warns. “They’re just for flavour.” Then she hands me two sticks. “Chopsticks. Eat with these.”
I search her face. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”
She laughs. “It’s easier than it looks. I’ll show you.”
When I manage to get the food into my mouth it’s delicious, hot and spicy, full of complex flavours. But I’m glad we’re outside, because more than one noodle lands on the ground. Erica handles the chopsticks with ease, chatting with the vendor. She’s delighted to discover this girl is the granddaughter of the woman she remembers.
About halfway through the meal, the chopsticks finally start to work. “It’s not a bad way to eat,” I say when I finish, quite awhile after Erica.
“If you’re ready, the university’s just over there.” Erica points west.
“Can we see the labs?”
She looks puzzled. “What labs?”
“My father had a laboratory. It could have been there. Maybe I can see it.”
A shadow passes over her face. “There were so many labs, Blake, and most of them were shut down. We don’t even know if your father worked at the university. If we had his name . . .” she trails off, defeated. My father’s name—the one piece of information my mother’s friends couldn’t give me. I only know it wasn’t the same as my mother’s or mine.
“It’s all right,” I tell her, quickly. “It was just a thought.”
Just a thought I’ve cherished ever since I knew we were coming here, but I don’t say that.
“Let’s go,” Erica says. “It’s a pretty place, you’ll love it. After, we’ll take a taxi home. We’ve had enough adventure for one day.”
Before we can leave, a little girl sidles up to us. She might be seven. Her clothes are dirty cast-offs, her brown hair is matted. Her face is marred by an angry eruption. She stands in front of us and composes herself in an oddly formal way, clasping one hand with the other. Then she starts to sing:
I am a poor, wayfaring stranger
Travelling through this world of woe,
But there’s no sorrow, no pain, no hardship
In that far land to which I go.
I’m going there to see my mother,
I’m going there, no more to roam,
I’m just a-going over Jordan
I’m just a-going over home.
Lots of street kids perform for money. For most, it’s just a way to dignify begging. But this child’s voice is sweet and true. The melody is haunting and her lyrics touch me to the core.
“Erica,” I say when the song is finished, my voice weak. “It’s all right,” she whispers quickly, and she crouches down. “Are you hungry, sweetheart?” The child nods.
Erica turns to the noodle cart, but the vendor protests.
“You shouldn’t encourage them,” she says.
“Please,” I say, “we just want to feed her.” I’ve said “please,” but I realize I’ve shouted.
The woman looks frightened for a nanosecond, then her faces goes blank. She does not want the trouble I’m causing. She quickly scoops noodles into a disposable container, covers it, and gives it to Erica, who pays. The child is gone the instant the container touches her hand.
I watch her scamper across the park. But when she stops, my heart does too. Some older kids are waiting for her. Even at this distance, their deliberately shredded clothing and elaborate hairstyles show they are Tribe members. The one with tattoos on her face is a leader. She says something to the child, who puts the bowl of noodles behind her back in response, as if trying to hide it. Older kids laugh and grab the bowl. Then the leader stands over the little girl, hands on her hips, and starts to lecture. We’re too far away to hear words, but the tone of voice carries, angry, hectoring.
Erica starts forward but I grab her shoulder. “Don’t,” I say quickly. “This is their turf. We’re outnumbered and they won’t hesitate to come at you.” Erica stops, reluctantly. She knows I’m right. “We’d better get out of here,” I say. As we leave the park, I take a quick look back, just in time to see the child take a cuff on the ear. I’m sorry we tried to help her now.