SHELLEY AND KURT SAT at the kitchen table eating peanut butter sandwiches. Virginia set a sandwich in front of George, along with a cup of stale coffee, before she sat down at the far end of the table with her own cold breakfast.
Fifteen-year-old Shelley was tall and thin, a natural blonde with dark blue eyes. Human blue was far different from deviant blue, and luckily hers fell on the darker end of the scale. If they were dark, there was no question. Shelley fit in well at school, excelling both academically and socially, but between her friends and her schoolwork, she had little time to herself.
Seven-year-old Kurt, a lanky boy sporting glasses and freckles, squirmed in his chair, displeased that George had left his jacket along the back of it the night before. Kurt was smart, and he often played the entire family with his dark brown eyes, as everyone knew that brown-eyed boys had the most potential. Watching for a reaction, Kurt tugged at the back of George's jacket and sent the entire thing to the floor in a bulky mass.
When George failed to react, Virginia shot up from her seat and picked up the jacket. "Is it that hard to pick up after yourselves?" she scolded as she left the room with the jacket folded over her arm. She noticed something hitting against her from the front outside pocket as she went for the closet, and she dug her hand in to find an unusual business card.
A light dusting of blue glitter came off onto her fingertips as Virginia tried to discern what appeared to be a coded message on one side. Unable to read it, she hung up the jacket and returned to the kitchen.
George had scarfed down his sandwich and was finishing his coffee as Virginia came back. He noticed the sparkling card in her hand. "What's that?"
"You don't recognize it? I found it in your jacket pocket."
George got up, eyeing the card as he passed her. "Probably some kind of promotional or movement act advertisement. Go ahead and toss it."
She nodded. "Meet you in the shower."
He hurried down the hall with a smile, closing the bathroom door behind him as he entered, shedding his nightclothes as he waited for the water to heat up. As he entered, he realized that he had set the water hotter than he should have, but then decided that he would wait and cool it off in a minute or two. The hot water felt good against his back. Hot water used a great deal of energy, regardless of whether or not the water recycler was on, and so George turned down the heat before steam could accumulate on the mirror. Virginia always had a comment for him if she saw steam. He washed and rinsed quickly, then waited for Virginia with the water recycler on at full power. After several minutes, he called out, "Virginia, are you coming?"
Virginia finally entered, throwing off her bathrobe and hurrying from the cold, tile bathroom to the lukewarm shower. She turned off the water recycler. "I can't get this damn glitter off," she said with great frustration as she motioned for George to vacate the shower.
He took the hint and grabbed his towel, slipping out as she hurried beneath the hot water. He watched from aside as she rinsed and scrubbed her hands, only spreading the glitter up her arms and onto the soap.
"What a mess!" she said. "Guess I know what I'm doing when I get off work this afternoon."
George dried off and got dressed as Kurt began to knock persistently at the door.
"Shelley hit me!"
"Did not!"
George slid out of the room, slamming the door behind him as the two children stared back. "Can't you two get along for one morning?"
"But she—"
"I don't want to hear it! Both of you, finish getting ready!"
Both showed a look of protest, but neither said another word as they retreated to their rooms. George returned to the bathroom to comb his hair, surprised to find Virginia still scrubbing her glittery, powder blue hands. "You're going to miss your shuttle," he said.
She nodded, too preoccupied respond any further.
"I'm walking Kurt to his shuttle station now. I'll see you tonight." He blew her a kiss.
She nodded again as he left her to her shower.
Virginia took the Line 210 shuttle every morning, which delivered her right to the doorstep at Communications-Corp. The weather delayed the shuttle over a half hour just before her stop, and yet she still received a demerit for her late arrival to work. The garage was unusually crowded when her shuttle came in. She didn't have the time to get a closer look, but it seemed as though a group of Mart-level employees was having another demonstration. Security associates were everywhere, and so far, the event looked peaceful. Virginia knew that once the horn blew, matters would get ugly, however, as it was a corporate offense to miss one's shift intentionally. She hurried to the Communications Building, not wanting to become caught in the crowd.
Virginia worked in residential telephone communications, which was mostly restricted to workers in the Corp Segregate. There were phones in Mart housing districts, but generally they were only used for emergencies because of their cost. Cell phones had long ago been abandoned throughout the region because of constant blackouts from the weather, but landline communications had also suffered a significant blow. The cost of maintenance was substantial, and so it was kept to a minimum. At any given time, lines were down somewhere in the district. As with transportation, communication between even nearby districts was well beyond the scope of most people's incomes and thus almost nonexistent.
Virginia made her way to the call room, the building so cold that she opted to keep her jacket tightly wrapped around her and her gloves and hat on. She sat down at her station, trying to get comfortable in her headset. As a call center associate, Virginia had only a switchboard, a policy manual, and an electronic pen and notepad. All complaints she could not handle went to the call center manager, a fat, grumpy old man named Robert who often raised his voice loud enough for the associates to be able to hear him through the wall to his office. Robert didn't seem to mind dealing with one irate customer after another. In fact, he seemed to thrive on the conflict. Virginia couldn't stand the man.
The bulk of today's complaints came from people who lived in the upper west end of the district, all calling from their corner-office telephones because they had gone without their personal communication lines since yesterday. Yesterday's storm had destroyed a couple of main circuits that fed the lines, and it seemed that the repair associates were the low level employees organizing that strike out in the garage. They contended that they weren't making enough money to compensate for the elements they faced each day, and unless they were paid more and were given Housing upgrades, they would be making no more communications repairs.
Virginia forwarded every complaint to Robert. One could only hope that a sufficient number of repair associates would be cut a big enough deal to be back at work and have the lines up and running soon. That would be the best-case scenario; the worst-case scenario would involve people dying in the garage. Virginia hoped she wouldn't have to see any bodies. The workers did have a valid complaint, but their means of complaining was illegal and the law did not allow for excuses, no matter how valid they were.
Zelda, a thin woman with dark features sitting two chairs down from Virginia, put a man on hold and threw her headset onto the desk. She turned to Jane, a plump woman sitting between her and Virginia, as she put her hand to her forehead in a melodramatic display, and feigned, "I can't take it anymore!" She chuckled, her head nudging toward an empty seat on the other side of the room.
Jane giggled with her.
The seat across the room had been vacant for a few days now, after Carolyn, a young woman who had been hired fresh out of school just shy of a year ago, experienced a mental breakdown. She threw her headset down onto the desk, clearly after having transferred an especially difficult call to Robert, and then screamed about how unbearable the system was until the security associates came. It took three of them to drag her, hysterical and screaming, out of the building. She had been a sweet girl up until then. What became of her, no one knew. What all the women did know, however, was that Corporate held her seat unfilled for a reason. It was there to remind them of what became of those who could not handle their simple jobs.
Virginia was old enough to remember life just when Corporate America was beginning to take hold. A free market system was still in place, although privately owned shops and other small businesses slowly fell to the wayside as superstores and giant corporations smothered them all, one by one. The free market system dissolved as monopolies took over. Those in power took advantage of what they could, knowing there was no stopping the monster, and soon the delineation between the monopolies and the government became close to indistinguishable.
Shortly after free trade disappeared internationally, the Big Climate Change reached critical mass. For roughly a decade, the oceans rushed in on their shores, creating all new shorelines across the globe, and hurricanes and tornadoes tore across several states at a time. While the bulk of Europe turned into swamp and marshland, most of Asia became arid and hot. Like Africa, both Americas became a mishmash of unpredictable weather patterns. The weather decimated those three continents, knocking out their communications with the rest of the world and forcing them to rebuild all of their countries from the ground-up.
In the United States, for the sake of efficiency and economy, communities were rebuilt into underground districts. Roughly the size of small cities, districts were grouped into quadroplexes that could be self-contained, should neighboring areas suffer structural or socioeconomic hardship. Which district in a quadroplex one lived in was determined by where one worked, and where one worked depended upon where one's family worked: typically, Corps begot Corps and Marts begot Marts.
Core governments still had small amounts of communication between them, but the Internet no longer existed. Even the closest of family living in different regions eventually lost touch. Further destruction ensured that communications among most districts dissolved as well, and the people slowly learned to accept their isolation.
Livestock became increasingly difficult to keep, and before long, large grazers like cattle completely disappeared. Many species of fish went extinct, and the price of pork and chicken nearly tripled. Fresh food was rare. The variety of available fruits and vegetables became limited by region, although the majority of farms now grew genetically modified crops beneath enormous Plexiglas domes.
Virginia remembered when houses sat on open lots, when people were allowed to have pets, and when a person could take a long, hot shower without receiving a hefty fine. Much had changed throughout her lifetime, and not for the better. When she was a child, life seemed to be all about getting ahead while shamelessly living beyond one's means. Most Americans consumed excessively, were spoiled by outrageous advances in technology, and left countless landfills with what should have been renewable resources. Now, life was a matter of survival. Everything was expensive. Everything had to be recycled. Waste was just an old American pipe dream.
The system was depressing, but there was not much one could do about it beyond showing up for work every day and doing one's job. What kept Virginia going was the knowledge that her children would have the opportunity, should they do well enough in school, to find themselves in ruts just a little less monotonous than hers.
By the time the lunch chimes sounded, no one in the call center was paying much attention to their calls and Robert's switchboard was flooded.
Dozens of box lunches came out, and the women in the call center moved around leisurely as they ate sandwiches and canned fruits. Virginia found peanut butter was not appetizing enough today, and she closed her lunch box and set it aside for later.
Jane moved to her desk and leaned against it, sipping cold coffee. "You okay?"
Virginia nodded, although she was feeling a little tired.
"You look kind of pale," Jane said.
Virginia smiled. "I'm fine . . . really."