In the After (23 page)

“They base some of it on your psyche-eval. . . . You had one, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Vivian sighed, relieved. “Then you won’t have another one for six months.”
She squeezed my arm. “You’ll be fine, Amy. I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything.
Just remember what I told you—no more questions.”

I returned her smile but I didn’t feel reassured. Now that I really understood what
the Ward was, I felt panicked.

What would happen to Baby if I were sent away?

• • •

Later, the door opens, hitting me on my shoulder
.

“Amy!” Dr. Thorpe yells in surprise. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“I . . .” I get up slowly. “I don’t know.” I should be more careful
.

“Let’s get you back in bed.” Dr. Thorpe helps me over to the bed. “Amy, I have to
admit, I’m a little concerned about your behavior.”

I sit down and stare at her. The word
electroshock
still rings in my ears. I have a flashback to my old house, the electric fence. The
Floraes sparking as they touch it, trying to reach me. Trying to kill me. Tears begin
to flow down my face. “I’m not going home, am I?”

“No. Not yet, Amy.” Dr. Thorpe frowns. “We haven’t decided just yet how best to help
you. But we will,” she assures me. “We will help you.”

I nod unhappily. What if this is it? What if I have to suffer under Dr. Thorpe’s idea
of help? Being drugged and tortured. Rice promised to get me out of here. Where is
he? Where are my friends? Where is my mother?

I rub my arms, trying to suppress the panic rising inside of me. If anyone is coming,
they need to be quick about it. I may not live through my treatments. I may not survive
the Ward
.

“Rice,” I whisper after Dr. Thorpe is gone. “Please hurry.”

• • •

“Amy!” Rice called. He jogged over to me, pushing up his glasses. His shaggy, blond
hair disheveled. I wanted to tell him what I discovered about the Floraes, what I’m
sure he already knew, but I decided against it. I trusted Rice just as I trusted Vivian,
but her warning had left me spooked and cautious.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a yellow jumper. “Baby!” I yelled. She rushed into
my arms. I picked her up and swung her around, relieved to see she was grinning.

How was it?
I asked, smiling.

Amy, it was sooooo fan!
We went to the farm. I saw all the animals from my farm book and I got to ride a horse,
a real one. It was big and a little scary, but I want to go back. They said I could,
but not for a while
.

What else did you do?
I asked.

I learned this
. She shoved a piece of paper in my face and I looked at it. I wanted to cry. Scrawled
across in chicken-scratch letters was B-A-B-Y.
This means my name
, she told me.

I am so proud of you
, I said. We didn’t have a word for
proud
, but
happy happy at your work
got the point across. Her face glowed with pleasure.

Here, this is for you
. She handed me a sealed envelope. My mother’s name was neatly typed on the outside,
but I ripped it open.

“Amy, should you be reading that?” Rice asked.

“Sure, why not?” I scanned the page. It was Baby’s evaluation. She scored a zero for
verbal, no surprise there, but was good at reasoning and information retention. At
the bottom was a handwritten note.
“Baby” shows a willingness to learn and gets along very well with the other children.
We hope to progress quickly with her writing and we will continue to encourage verbalization,
which we have yet to witness. She shows an aptitude for handling animals, which we
will investigate further. She will, perhaps, in the future, be most comfortable as
a farmworker or a veterinarian
.

After one day they were already discussing what Baby would do as an adult?

“Rice, where’s my evaluation?” I asked.

“Dr. Samuels gave it to me. I gave it to your mother
unopened
,” he stressed.

And Amy
, Baby waved to get my attention,
I played a game where you jump over a piece of rope and I fell on my butt. I think
I’m okay except I might have a bruise
.

“She’s excited,” Rice said.

“It was her first first day of school and she’s never been around other kids before.”
I was sick with relief. I let Baby prattle on until she ran out of steam and just
grinned happily. Her hair was disheveled so I fixed it, fastening it into a high ponytail.
Rice watched me with a scowl and reached over to undo her hair, redoing the ponytail
lower so it covered Baby’s neck.

“Rice, what are you doing?” I asked.

“It looked a little too tight,” he explained crisply.

“Um, okay.” It was strange for him to snap like that.

“Sorry, it’s just that we should head over to orientation,” Rice told me gently. “If
we start soon, you can review all the recordings before dinner.”

“Sure, sounds good,” I said, realizing I must have just annoyed him. Or maybe he was
irritated I’d opened the evaluation addressed to my mother.

I shook off my unease as we walked and explained to Baby that she was going to watch
a program, then tell me what she understood about it. Baby took my hand, but her fingers
were still as she processed her day.

We walked past several white buildings until the road narrowed and we reached a cement
path. The buildings started to look less alike, more quirky, and some were brick,
but all were badly in need of a paint job. There weren’t many people around, and after
a while I asked Rice where, exactly, we were going.

“Orientation is on the outskirts. We try to contain the post-aps until we know what
we are dealing with.”

“Have there been any problems?” I remembered how Rice and I first met, and smiled
sheepishly. “Uh, like mine?” I still felt guilty about pulling a gun on him.

“People sometimes freak. Mostly they’re just appreciative. The psyche-eval usually
weeds out the troublemakers, though not always.”

“What do you mean?”

Rice looked at me, considering carefully what to say. “Last year we found a boy with
limited mental faculties. He was about ten, which would make him six or seven when
it happened. It was amazing he’d survived so long, but he didn’t integrate well into
New Hope. He had to be expelled.”

“Like, as in, he could no longer attend school?” It didn’t seem fair to punish someone
who had a disability.

“No, he was expelled from New Hope.”

I stopped walking and turned to Rice. “He was banished?” I whispered, horrified. “
That’s
what it means to be expelled?”

“He couldn’t function here, he couldn’t even hold down a Dusty job. He was a complete
drain on our resources.”

I was stunned at his words. Baby looked up at me nervously, sensing something was
wrong. “How could you send him back out there? He was ten years old! What about old
people, do you expel them too?!”

“It’s not like that. We have a building for elderly care and we have the Ward for
people who are mentally incompetent. This boy, he was different. He used to make it
out to the farm and kill the animals.”

“Maybe he didn’t understand that he didn’t need to kill anymore, that his food was
provided. You don’t understand what it’s like out there.”

“He used to watch the toddlers, Amy. He watched them the same way he looked at the
animals on the farm.”

“Oh.” We walked in silence. When your entire world was filled with Floraes, with terror
and silence, and thinking of your own survival, how is anyone normal after that? I
squeezed Baby’s hand and tried not to think about it.

“Here we are,” Rice told us after a few minutes. We entered the short, squat building,
and Rice led us to a room with a black door.

“You all love to color code things,” I commented. “Don’t people ever get confused?”

“No. They don’t.”

I wondered what would happen if they did, what my punishment would be if certain people
found out I’d been in a restricted area. The Ward? Expulsion?

Rice led us into a room painted a pale blue. Instead of tables and chairs, desks were
placed in rows, all facing a large screen. He opened a laptop and placed it on one
of the tables.

“Have a seat,” he said. “I thought you’d like to see this first.” He typed away on
his computer and on the screen appeared a map of New Hope. We were centralized in
the “urban” district where most everyone lives. The residential buildings were numbered,
with the lowest numbers near the Quad, the higher farther away. To the east was the
dairy farm that Rice had mentioned, with more farmland to the south and west, and
a lake to the north. East of the dairy farm was a forest that the map labeled
FOR EXPANSION TBD
.

“You keep the Floraes out of this entire area?” I asked, eyeing the map.

“We’ve been aggressively expanding certain areas, like the farm. It was originally
just a few acres, with a small number of animals.” He pointed to the map. “Now it
covers this whole area, and we’ve maximized livestock breeding through advances in
animal husbandry.” He glanced at me. “It’s really pretty fascinating how much we’ve
accomplished in such a short amount of time.”

I looked at the map again. “But there isn’t a fence?” I still found it hard to believe.

“No, we don’t need a physical barrier. You won’t find the Floraes within a two-mile
radius of the emitters.”

“What about other people? People who might want to come and take all this away?” New
Hope was well protected from the Floraes, but what would they do if a guerilla force
came to take it over?

“That seems very unlikely.”

“It happened to us,” I said quietly. I thought of Amber, of what she did to us.

“What would someone gain by destroying us? We welcome all post-aps, offer a functioning
society, a way to live without constant fear of death.”

Doesn’t he know there will always be someone out there who wants to destroy good?

Rice was fiddling with his computer again and the map disappeared. “I’ll show you
all the recordings, so you can see the version for the little kids, the older children,
and the adults.”

“Fan.” I tapped the notebook I’d brought with me. Rice said my mother wanted my opinion,
so I came prepared to take notes.

Rice dimmed the lights and the screen flickered on. The video was for the younger
kids and featured small children and an adult. “The adult is called a Minder,” Rice’s
voice came loudly from across the room. Baby, who’d been enjoying the movie, glared
at him.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to narrate,” I told him. “I need to see if it’s self-explanatory.”

“Oh, right,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” I said. It slipped out—something I used to say Before. I looked at him,
suddenly wishing I’d known him back then.

The video continued to show the Minder helping the children with their daily routine.
At the end, the Minder tucked each child in, then turned on a night-light. The Minder
smiled into the camera, and the movie went dark.

Baby turned to me.
I like the lady
.

Good. I think they want you to
.

I scribbled in my notebook.
Effective images of comfort to integrate small children, show them who they can trust,
who will take care of them
.

“At this point, a Minder will come fetch any child who doesn’t have an adult with
them,” Rice said. “I’m not explaining,” he added. “It’s something you should know.
At first,” he continued, “we had a lot of small children, but now it’s not that common.
Here’s the one for older children, Class Threes and Fours.”

Baby, this one is for you. Pay attention
.

Baby nodded dutifully.

The movie started much the same way as the other film, only this time a little girl
was wearing yellow. They again take you through the child’s day, demonstrating tasks
narrated with simple words, such as
school, eat, play, work, sleep
. The children were put to bed in a dorm, only this time they were separated by gender.
Once again, a Minder tucked them in and smiled at the camera.

“I thought Minders were only for the small children,” I told Rice.

“There are a lot of kids without parents here. Some of the Minders are for the toddlers
and some are for the dorms.”

What do you think?
I asked Baby.
Did you understand?

Baby looked down at her jumpsuit.
I’m yellow, so I do things with other yellows and go to school through the yellow
door
.

Yeah, that’s about it
.

“Ready for the last one?” Rice asked.

I nodded, eager to see the grown-up version.
This is for adults
, I tell Baby.
Try to follow along, but you may not understand everything
.

This time the film began with a shot of the town while
WELCOME TO NEW HOPE
scrawled across the screen. A woman began to narrate and I realized that it was my
mother.

“You have survived much to get here and we are so very happy to have you,” she said.
“Over the next hour, we will explain all the workings of New Hope.”

The film went over everything, from the Class system, with emphasis on Class Five
and red doors, to details about the entry test that placed the adults in their jobs.
I discovered that although you may be exempt from having to perform a menial task,
that didn’t spare you from attending fitness training twice a week or from doing “acts
of community improvement.”

“Everyone works because everyone is important.” To me this sounded like a great way
to spin forced labor.

“And in order to ensure the continuation of our society,” my mother’s voice persisted,
“we must maintain genetic diversity and encourage accelerated birthrates.” This was
followed by a shot of a lab and a woman working with a test tube.

“All babies born in New Hope are the result of careful selection by the Committee
for Genetic Diversity. All adult males are required to submit their genetic material
for consideration.”