Everything I knew would soon fall to pieces.
And it was all my fault.
The sun beat down on me as if it wanted me to merge with the patchy asphalt beneath my feet. My lungs could only pick up the sweltering, dry oxygen floating about and dancing around me as if I'd no other option but to die from suffocation. But I did, and I always have.
The work doors in the center of my lonely town stood erect before me, and every inch of my skin longed for the cool touch of its air-conditioned rooms and somewhat-comfy chairs as my blistering bare feet nearly gave out on me. It was a mile walk from the shack I called home with five other brothers and sisters, but it was necessary. We worked. That was the only option in this world, besides death.
I pushed the door open with all sixty pounds of my body and nearly face-planted on the floor, but I held myself up, changing my stance.
"WELCOME," the two robots at the door said in unison as I shoved the door shut. "IDENTIFICATION PLEASE."
From the ripped pocket of my best blouse, I produced my microchip, which I refused to place inside my body like many others agreed to. It wasn't mandatory, but it was highly suggested, especially with how many holes are in the average person's clothing. It could get lost so easily.
But I was always careful and always kept it in the same place. I even made a small pocket inside the pocket from a tatter of one of my dresses just to keep it safe. It was my lifeline, as it was with the rest of my family. They couldn't afford for my chip to disappear.
I forked the tiny square over, the thing the size of the nail on my index finger, and the robot to my right scanned it, the color red washing over it in haywire lines. The light turned green and the robots both stood up, staring at each other until the next worker walks through the doors. It was only ten o'clock, my shift second. The first shifts had began to stand to leave, dreading returning home. Home is where poverty lingered and tainted their lives.
"WELCOME, JANICE DAYNE RIVERA," they told me, and I began to hobble painfully into the room. The chilled floor felt like a miracle on my bloody feet as I walked down three rows and sat in the fifth seat. I was one of the lucky ones; I didn't have a physically demanding job most days.
The computer sprung to life and I taped the chip to the center of my palm as I rested my hand over the thin mouse. Immediately, the computer sprung to life. Across the screen was Welcome, Janice Dayne Rivera in plain white letters. I touched the mouse with my middle finger and the desktop came into view. The news was up to read first, as it always was, letting us know of what's been happening in our world since we've been away from work, which is only for about nine hours. It's amazing how much you can miss in the matter of minutes.
The country adjacent to ours was at war with someone else and we were being warned of radiation risks in areas with high population. Another notice alerted us of bombs erupting close to our work building because we were allies with said country. I knew neither of these things would affect me in any harmful way, so I dragged them to the trash can at the top left of my screen. The last article, which I was actually interested in because I was helping work on it, was the one I maximized the window of and read hungrily, as if my life depended on that. And, technically, it did.
If it was completed, perhaps the government wouldn't need me anymore and I'd become a war test-subject.
My heart began beating heavily. Selfishly.
I inhale.
It is finished, the title read. Over the past seven years, workers have been putting together the machine that would change life as we know it. Weather has been the number one cause of death and worker-loss for many years now, heat the main culprit of our critical decrease in population. However, this morning the devices will have the final touches applied to them via coding, and will be up-and-running at around three this afternoon. After three, please remain inside and away from all windows. We will do our first test-run of the devices here in our country. Once the test is over, the sirens will silence and all citizens can return to their normal work schedules.
My fingers were steady as I closed out of the last news article. A message popped up, assigning me to a task.
Coding.
Workers required: 1
Check codes for flaws and irregulations. This is the final step in completing your job. Congratulations.
I hesitated before closing out the assignment window. This is your final step in completing your job. I didn't know what they'd do next. When my mother completed her job, they forced her to be a test subject against radiation. To see how much she could take before she keeled over.
And she did, like a plant set on fire. We had a funeral for her, but I refused to let my siblings see her warped and discolored body. They didn't need to know how important war was to the world.
When my father became too weak to carry the heavy weapons from one building to another, they assigned him to sneak letters across the border to our allies. He'd been away four months, and I didn't believe he'd be coming back. So I had to live as if he wouldn't be.
We'd been placed in front of jobs our entire lives. Most of it was for learning purposes, like coding, which didn't take me long to figure out, and then I was placed on this job. Seven years. Started learning coding when I was five, and then at age seven the government recruited me into one of the highest paying jobs, which was twenty dollars a day, just to sit at a computer and type in commands.
I opened up the window to go over the numbers and letters and words, and scanned everything for any flaws. Luckily, what would take someone else three days, it would only take me a matter of hours before I completed reading over it all. Surely the government would find my skills useful and not throw me into the toxic wasteland just a few miles outside of the population's radius, right?
The self-learning machines would affect the environments around where they're placed, which is on every continent we have as allies. And though I wished no one would use it for warfare and instead to sustain life on planet earth, the feeling in my gut told me they would. Why wouldn't they, when this ten-year war has been raging on and destroying the planet? Why wouldn't they, if it meant having power over everyone else--anyone else? Are we made of nothing but greed?
Two o'clock rolled around and I completed reading over the last line of code. I pulled the assignment window back up and marked the box next to the word COMPLETE. My heart hammered in my chest with worry and anticipation. What would they do with me, now that I'm obsolete?
Your job has been completed. Congratulations and thank you.
I exhaled heavily. Now what?
My fingers trembled as I lifted my hands from the mouse and keyboard. The screen went black and I stared at it, as if it was a black hole, sucking all of my attention into it.
Now what?
"JANICE DAYNE RIVERA, PLEASE COME WITH US."
The robot's voices startled me, and even drew some attention from some of the workers around me. My breath was only a quiver of air as I stood, terrified of what would happen to me now. My life was pointless without a job.
I followed the two glossy white humanoid robots, the sounds of their joints sounding like metal and swooshes of air that I wasn't allowed to breathe. Their parts were worth more than my house alone. People from other countries would sell their parts on the black market to their enemies, committing treason and yet gaining some much-needed cash in this world. But I could never do that. This is where the robots originated; the security would be too challenging to break through if I even wanted to.
They led me down a winding hallway and we eventually stopped at a white door, its handle shiny. I felt like I'd contaminate it with my poverty if I laid a finger on it, and this whole place would fall into ruin. But I did it anyway, a beady-eyed man in an almost-clean suit turning around in his swivel chair and smiling at me. He was fat, something almost never seen in this world, and I realize he spends his money more on food than anything else, even though he doesn't need to. Starvation would do him good.
"Welcome, Janice Dayne Rivera," he said, standing to shake my hand. I return the gesture, dirt rubbing from my palm onto his, but he paid no mind to it, smoothing down his crisp blue shirt. It was the first I'd seen without a hole anywhere on it. "I am Dean Harl Beakant. I see you've completed the job you were assigned to seven years ago."
I nodded, unsure of what to say. "What do I do now?"
"Well, usually, we have our workers assist us with jobs inside our military," he said, lifting a few papers up and shuffling through them. "But because you've become so excellent at coding, I was able to get you a spot at working in the government. What do you say?"
In the government? "What would I be doing?"
The man is slightly taken aback by my question. "Most likely helping with the war, of course." He smiled. "Don't you want your people to be safe?"
We will never be safe, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue.
"Will I have time to think it over, or must I choose now?"
"You have until ten o'clock tomorrow to choose. Otherwise, you will be defaulted to helping the military on a physical scale."
I nodded. "I understand."
He stacked the papers on his desk and turned to set them away from his body.
"Very well then, be safe going home."
I nodded and stood, ready to make the hour walk home in the terrible, unbearable heat. I gathered my emotions and walked stiffly through the hallways of the building. The robots took me to another room and reprogrammed my chip, which took about twenty more minutes. Once complete, it was returned to me and I was given my pay for the day. Twenty dollars.
I made my way to the doors, heat hitting me like a brick wall, and I forced myself to move quickly over the hot ground. A merchant gave me a loaf of bread and three slices of meat. One dollar and thirty-two cents jingled in my hands, the metal hot from the sun. Jezabel and Rayna would love the bread. It's rye, their favorite. The other three boys, Tom, Jeremy, and Isaiah would fight over the meat. I smiled slightly through the pain crushing through my feet. They'll be so happy. The pain is worth their happiness.
The three boys would be home before I arrived, and I knew Jezabel would be about ten minutes away. Rayna would be getting off at three, but she has a longer walk. They might even keep her an hour over because of the test run.
The sirens began to wail. The test was about to start. I wasn't even close to home, but I didn't think anything could go wrong. After all, I'd been working in collaboration with others for seven years. There shouldn't be a single letter out of order.
Suddenly, the heat disappears. I stood still in shock, the sweat dripping down my body suddenly chilled by the change of weather.
The machine worked.
I smiled and hollered, excited. All those years of hard work actually paid off. Now my feet wouldn't blister or burn or rip because of what's left of the bubbling tar, even in the winter months. Happiness washed over me and I forgot all my troubles within that moment, but only for a minute as I continued home, happy I did something good for the world and nothing for the war.
There was an explosion to my left. It jerked me to the side and I hit a wall. Immediately, the machines compensated for the sudden heat and the temperature began to drop quickly. Within a matter of seconds, I could see a soft cloud forming from each of my breaths and my throat began to feel prickly with ice. I stared at the building in the distance, the one I'd just come from, hoping that my coding would work, that the self-learning machine would adjust and realize it's getting too cold.
And then another bomb slammed down just next to one of the large antennas that projected signals to each device that would take the weather into consideration and knocked it over. I began to panic.
I was on my feet, my ears ringing, running as fast as I could. I needed to get home and make sure my family was safe; that they were all home from work and none were caught outside.
Storm clouds rolled overhead and thunder echoed in the distance as another bomb took over the airways. Airplanes zoomed overhead, their engines murmuring with chaotic laughter.
The air only grew harder to breathe as my poor feet bled out onto the splotches of asphalt, careful not to step on the rocky dirt between them. My clothes did nothing to shelter me from the cold and my fragile fingers began to turn blue as snow began to fall. At first, it was light, and then a flurry built up just as my small shack came into view: four walls with three worn-out mattresses taking up almost all the space inside. I'd built it myself with long metal pieces I'd found in the junkyard and bricks and rocks from the rubble around it. It wasn't much, but it was all we had.
Through the white fuzziness, I noticed a black, tattered beanie bobbing on top of a small head, and I recognized it immediately.
"Rayna!" I called through the growing blizzard, and she turned to look at me.
"Janice!"
"Get inside," I commanded as I neared her, wrapping my arms around her to keep her body from shivering so violently. The boys grabbed us around the shoulders to keep us warm too as I looked around for Jezabel. Every inch of me wanted to go out and look for her, but I knew she'd be safe. She'd run inside if the weather got bad; there were bunkers just for that. Of course, we would only be able to use them if it was an emergency and we weren't already on our way home. I crossed my fingers that's where she was.
The shack shook with the repercussions of another bomb sent down to harm our country, a few of my siblings stifling tears. Tom, the second oldest at eleven years of age, held onto our sister and brothers for dear life, whispering to them that it would be okay and it would all be over soon, but as I stood by the door and listened to the wind turn to howls, somehow, I knew it wouldn't be okay. I knew it wouldn't get better.
The storm creeped in through the cracks of the walls, reaching its spindly fingers out to grasp us and pull us to our death, and I felt my body growing increasingly numb by the second.
And then, there was a voice.
I wrenched open the door, the snow built up to my thigh, and looked out into the distance. All I saw was white.
Except for something struggling its way through the storm.
I cried out and dived into the snow, another bomb upheaving snow a ways back, and I watched as the person went flying into the air. I recognized the red shirt immediately; not many people wore colors now. I'd spent two days worth of money on it just for her sixth birthday. Jezabel.
I rushed through the snow, barely able to move as it absorbed the life from my feet and stole the heat from my body. She landed not far from where I was shuffling, and I couldn't see her moving. Instinct took me over and I picked her up in my arms. Little puffs of air were shifting in and out of her lungs and her body was shaking like an earthquake. I started to make my way back, the muscles in my legs begging me to stop and attempt to get warm, but I couldn't. I needed to get her home.
The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air, my eardrums busted as blood trickled down my cheeks. I landed in the snow, the white powder covering both of us as if we were corpses in its way. A plane flew overhead as my body stopped processing what it needed to do to survive. Jezabel's legless body laid next to mine, saturating the snow in blood as red as roses.
I've let my family down.
Everything I know has fallen to pieces.
And it is all my fault.
And it was all my fault.
The sun beat down on me as if it wanted me to merge with the patchy asphalt beneath my feet. My lungs could only pick up the sweltering, dry oxygen floating about and dancing around me as if I'd no other option but to die from suffocation. But I did, and I always have.
The work doors in the center of my lonely town stood erect before me, and every inch of my skin longed for the cool touch of its air-conditioned rooms and somewhat-comfy chairs as my blistering bare feet nearly gave out on me. It was a mile walk from the shack I called home with five other brothers and sisters, but it was necessary. We worked. That was the only option in this world, besides death.
I pushed the door open with all sixty pounds of my body and nearly face-planted on the floor, but I held myself up, changing my stance.
"WELCOME," the two robots at the door said in unison as I shoved the door shut. "IDENTIFICATION PLEASE."
From the ripped pocket of my best blouse, I produced my microchip, which I refused to place inside my body like many others agreed to. It wasn't mandatory, but it was highly suggested, especially with how many holes are in the average person's clothing. It could get lost so easily.
But I was always careful and always kept it in the same place. I even made a small pocket inside the pocket from a tatter of one of my dresses just to keep it safe. It was my lifeline, as it was with the rest of my family. They couldn't afford for my chip to disappear.
I forked the tiny square over, the thing the size of the nail on my index finger, and the robot to my right scanned it, the color red washing over it in haywire lines. The light turned green and the robots both stood up, staring at each other until the next worker walks through the doors. It was only ten o'clock, my shift second. The first shifts had began to stand to leave, dreading returning home. Home is where poverty lingered and tainted their lives.
"WELCOME, JANICE DAYNE RIVERA," they told me, and I began to hobble painfully into the room. The chilled floor felt like a miracle on my bloody feet as I walked down three rows and sat in the fifth seat. I was one of the lucky ones; I didn't have a physically demanding job most days.
The computer sprung to life and I taped the chip to the center of my palm as I rested my hand over the thin mouse. Immediately, the computer sprung to life. Across the screen was Welcome, Janice Dayne Rivera in plain white letters. I touched the mouse with my middle finger and the desktop came into view. The news was up to read first, as it always was, letting us know of what's been happening in our world since we've been away from work, which is only for about nine hours. It's amazing how much you can miss in the matter of minutes.
The country adjacent to ours was at war with someone else and we were being warned of radiation risks in areas with high population. Another notice alerted us of bombs erupting close to our work building because we were allies with said country. I knew neither of these things would affect me in any harmful way, so I dragged them to the trash can at the top left of my screen. The last article, which I was actually interested in because I was helping work on it, was the one I maximized the window of and read hungrily, as if my life depended on that. And, technically, it did.
If it was completed, perhaps the government wouldn't need me anymore and I'd become a war test-subject.
My heart began beating heavily. Selfishly.
I inhale.
It is finished, the title read. Over the past seven years, workers have been putting together the machine that would change life as we know it. Weather has been the number one cause of death and worker-loss for many years now, heat the main culprit of our critical decrease in population. However, this morning the devices will have the final touches applied to them via coding, and will be up-and-running at around three this afternoon. After three, please remain inside and away from all windows. We will do our first test-run of the devices here in our country. Once the test is over, the sirens will silence and all citizens can return to their normal work schedules.
My fingers were steady as I closed out of the last news article. A message popped up, assigning me to a task.
Coding.
Workers required: 1
Check codes for flaws and irregulations. This is the final step in completing your job. Congratulations.
I hesitated before closing out the assignment window. This is your final step in completing your job. I didn't know what they'd do next. When my mother completed her job, they forced her to be a test subject against radiation. To see how much she could take before she keeled over.
And she did, like a plant set on fire. We had a funeral for her, but I refused to let my siblings see her warped and discolored body. They didn't need to know how important war was to the world.
When my father became too weak to carry the heavy weapons from one building to another, they assigned him to sneak letters across the border to our allies. He'd been away four months, and I didn't believe he'd be coming back. So I had to live as if he wouldn't be.
We'd been placed in front of jobs our entire lives. Most of it was for learning purposes, like coding, which didn't take me long to figure out, and then I was placed on this job. Seven years. Started learning coding when I was five, and then at age seven the government recruited me into one of the highest paying jobs, which was twenty dollars a day, just to sit at a computer and type in commands.
I opened up the window to go over the numbers and letters and words, and scanned everything for any flaws. Luckily, what would take someone else three days, it would only take me a matter of hours before I completed reading over it all. Surely the government would find my skills useful and not throw me into the toxic wasteland just a few miles outside of the population's radius, right?
The self-learning machines would affect the environments around where they're placed, which is on every continent we have as allies. And though I wished no one would use it for warfare and instead to sustain life on planet earth, the feeling in my gut told me they would. Why wouldn't they, when this ten-year war has been raging on and destroying the planet? Why wouldn't they, if it meant having power over everyone else--anyone else? Are we made of nothing but greed?
Two o'clock rolled around and I completed reading over the last line of code. I pulled the assignment window back up and marked the box next to the word COMPLETE. My heart hammered in my chest with worry and anticipation. What would they do with me, now that I'm obsolete?
Your job has been completed. Congratulations and thank you.
I exhaled heavily. Now what?
My fingers trembled as I lifted my hands from the mouse and keyboard. The screen went black and I stared at it, as if it was a black hole, sucking all of my attention into it.
Now what?
"JANICE DAYNE RIVERA, PLEASE COME WITH US."
The robot's voices startled me, and even drew some attention from some of the workers around me. My breath was only a quiver of air as I stood, terrified of what would happen to me now. My life was pointless without a job.
I followed the two glossy white humanoid robots, the sounds of their joints sounding like metal and swooshes of air that I wasn't allowed to breathe. Their parts were worth more than my house alone. People from other countries would sell their parts on the black market to their enemies, committing treason and yet gaining some much-needed cash in this world. But I could never do that. This is where the robots originated; the security would be too challenging to break through if I even wanted to.
They led me down a winding hallway and we eventually stopped at a white door, its handle shiny. I felt like I'd contaminate it with my poverty if I laid a finger on it, and this whole place would fall into ruin. But I did it anyway, a beady-eyed man in an almost-clean suit turning around in his swivel chair and smiling at me. He was fat, something almost never seen in this world, and I realize he spends his money more on food than anything else, even though he doesn't need to. Starvation would do him good.
"Welcome, Janice Dayne Rivera," he said, standing to shake my hand. I return the gesture, dirt rubbing from my palm onto his, but he paid no mind to it, smoothing down his crisp blue shirt. It was the first I'd seen without a hole anywhere on it. "I am Dean Harl Beakant. I see you've completed the job you were assigned to seven years ago."
I nodded, unsure of what to say. "What do I do now?"
"Well, usually, we have our workers assist us with jobs inside our military," he said, lifting a few papers up and shuffling through them. "But because you've become so excellent at coding, I was able to get you a spot at working in the government. What do you say?"
In the government? "What would I be doing?"
The man is slightly taken aback by my question. "Most likely helping with the war, of course." He smiled. "Don't you want your people to be safe?"
We will never be safe, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue.
"Will I have time to think it over, or must I choose now?"
"You have until ten o'clock tomorrow to choose. Otherwise, you will be defaulted to helping the military on a physical scale."
I nodded. "I understand."
He stacked the papers on his desk and turned to set them away from his body.
"Very well then, be safe going home."
I nodded and stood, ready to make the hour walk home in the terrible, unbearable heat. I gathered my emotions and walked stiffly through the hallways of the building. The robots took me to another room and reprogrammed my chip, which took about twenty more minutes. Once complete, it was returned to me and I was given my pay for the day. Twenty dollars.
I made my way to the doors, heat hitting me like a brick wall, and I forced myself to move quickly over the hot ground. A merchant gave me a loaf of bread and three slices of meat. One dollar and thirty-two cents jingled in my hands, the metal hot from the sun. Jezabel and Rayna would love the bread. It's rye, their favorite. The other three boys, Tom, Jeremy, and Isaiah would fight over the meat. I smiled slightly through the pain crushing through my feet. They'll be so happy. The pain is worth their happiness.
The three boys would be home before I arrived, and I knew Jezabel would be about ten minutes away. Rayna would be getting off at three, but she has a longer walk. They might even keep her an hour over because of the test run.
The sirens began to wail. The test was about to start. I wasn't even close to home, but I didn't think anything could go wrong. After all, I'd been working in collaboration with others for seven years. There shouldn't be a single letter out of order.
Suddenly, the heat disappears. I stood still in shock, the sweat dripping down my body suddenly chilled by the change of weather.
The machine worked.
I smiled and hollered, excited. All those years of hard work actually paid off. Now my feet wouldn't blister or burn or rip because of what's left of the bubbling tar, even in the winter months. Happiness washed over me and I forgot all my troubles within that moment, but only for a minute as I continued home, happy I did something good for the world and nothing for the war.
There was an explosion to my left. It jerked me to the side and I hit a wall. Immediately, the machines compensated for the sudden heat and the temperature began to drop quickly. Within a matter of seconds, I could see a soft cloud forming from each of my breaths and my throat began to feel prickly with ice. I stared at the building in the distance, the one I'd just come from, hoping that my coding would work, that the self-learning machine would adjust and realize it's getting too cold.
And then another bomb slammed down just next to one of the large antennas that projected signals to each device that would take the weather into consideration and knocked it over. I began to panic.
I was on my feet, my ears ringing, running as fast as I could. I needed to get home and make sure my family was safe; that they were all home from work and none were caught outside.
Storm clouds rolled overhead and thunder echoed in the distance as another bomb took over the airways. Airplanes zoomed overhead, their engines murmuring with chaotic laughter.
The air only grew harder to breathe as my poor feet bled out onto the splotches of asphalt, careful not to step on the rocky dirt between them. My clothes did nothing to shelter me from the cold and my fragile fingers began to turn blue as snow began to fall. At first, it was light, and then a flurry built up just as my small shack came into view: four walls with three worn-out mattresses taking up almost all the space inside. I'd built it myself with long metal pieces I'd found in the junkyard and bricks and rocks from the rubble around it. It wasn't much, but it was all we had.
Through the white fuzziness, I noticed a black, tattered beanie bobbing on top of a small head, and I recognized it immediately.
"Rayna!" I called through the growing blizzard, and she turned to look at me.
"Janice!"
"Get inside," I commanded as I neared her, wrapping my arms around her to keep her body from shivering so violently. The boys grabbed us around the shoulders to keep us warm too as I looked around for Jezabel. Every inch of me wanted to go out and look for her, but I knew she'd be safe. She'd run inside if the weather got bad; there were bunkers just for that. Of course, we would only be able to use them if it was an emergency and we weren't already on our way home. I crossed my fingers that's where she was.
The shack shook with the repercussions of another bomb sent down to harm our country, a few of my siblings stifling tears. Tom, the second oldest at eleven years of age, held onto our sister and brothers for dear life, whispering to them that it would be okay and it would all be over soon, but as I stood by the door and listened to the wind turn to howls, somehow, I knew it wouldn't be okay. I knew it wouldn't get better.
The storm creeped in through the cracks of the walls, reaching its spindly fingers out to grasp us and pull us to our death, and I felt my body growing increasingly numb by the second.
And then, there was a voice.
I wrenched open the door, the snow built up to my thigh, and looked out into the distance. All I saw was white.
Except for something struggling its way through the storm.
I cried out and dived into the snow, another bomb upheaving snow a ways back, and I watched as the person went flying into the air. I recognized the red shirt immediately; not many people wore colors now. I'd spent two days worth of money on it just for her sixth birthday. Jezabel.
I rushed through the snow, barely able to move as it absorbed the life from my feet and stole the heat from my body. She landed not far from where I was shuffling, and I couldn't see her moving. Instinct took me over and I picked her up in my arms. Little puffs of air were shifting in and out of her lungs and her body was shaking like an earthquake. I started to make my way back, the muscles in my legs begging me to stop and attempt to get warm, but I couldn't. I needed to get her home.
The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air, my eardrums busted as blood trickled down my cheeks. I landed in the snow, the white powder covering both of us as if we were corpses in its way. A plane flew overhead as my body stopped processing what it needed to do to survive. Jezabel's legless body laid next to mine, saturating the snow in blood as red as roses.
I've let my family down.
Everything I know has fallen to pieces.
And it is all my fault.
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