Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (18 page)

He ducks out of the room. The metal cuffs pop open with a hissing sound.  I glance at my still useless but now tattooed arm and burst into tears.

Strega and Ritter, both having cleared function for the day, are waiting for me when I return to the keeping. Ritter is the first to see me.

“It’s only day one!” he cries, grabbing my chin none too gently to check out my black eye, the result of Kate’s surprising left hook. My arm, with the fresh Idix, hurts more than my eye, but I don’t try to explain that to him.  “Wait,” he says, noticing my arm for the first time. “Is that your Idix? Before you’ve even assimilated?”

He exchanges a puzzled look with Strega.

“Relax, Ritter,” I grumble, pushing past him into the living room. All I want is to flop down on the sofa and let my aching muscles sink in.

But neither of them cares what I want. Strega leads me into the cleanse so he can have a better look at me, his large palm at the center of Ritter’s chest, shoving him out of the room when he tries to tag along.  I’d still rather be left alone, but it is a small relief. At least Strega is not so easily riled. 

Strega I can handle. Maybe that’s because he’s not on the line like Ritter and me. There’s no consequence for him if I fail to assimilate. Well. Other than the fact that his brother would be disposed of, of course.

“This isn’t the Assimilation process I’ve known,” Strega murmurs in between directions to look left, right, up, down.

“So I’ve been told,” I answer.  “What do you know about Assimilation, anyway? You were born here.”

Strega’s mouth hitches upward at the corners. “I’ve run into quite a few assimilated persons in my time, though. And my cousin’s wife is from Ivardia, one of the open worlds.”

“How long ago did she go through it?”  I dutifully take the anti-inflammatory liquid the MedQuick doles out. He presses a weird adhesive cooling pad to my eye.

“Six years ago,” he replies. He watches me finger the cooling pad for a moment. “When that falls off on its own, you can send it back through the MedQuick for recycling.”

He turns his attention to my Idix, removing the loose bandage for a look, but he doesn’t touch it. “Hurts?”

It does. Once in a while a muted version of the fiery pain licks along the silvery lines like a sizzling aftershock. It makes my arm twitch uncontrollably.

“Yeah,” I admit.

“I’ll set up another dose of painkiller for you to take before bed.”

I nod as Strega leads the way out of the cleanse. Because they won’t leave me alone about it, I tell them about the reaction center and about the first round of hand-to-hand combat training that followed.

I can see Ritter puzzling over it as we sit down in the living room, Strega and I on the sofa, Ritter in a side chair. “Assimilation is supposed to be about learning Concordia history, customs, and technology, not about fighting strategies.”

“Are the launches still closed?” I ask. I have no idea how to reply to his expectations of Assimilation. This is all I know, not what came before.

Ritter nods. It is another clue, a sinister one.  What if Concordia is closing its borders for less benign reasons than maintenance and upgrades?

“Strega,” Ritter says carefully, “I need you to do me a favor.”

Strega looks at him evenly, but I feel a subtle shift beside me. He says nothing, just waits for the favor.

“I want you to test Wilti Berg for the suicide gene mutations.”

Wilti. The woman who stepped in front of the slide, ending herself.

Strega looks sharply at me. “How do you know about her?”

Ritter glances my way, puzzled by the accusing look Strega’s giving me. “Just because I wasn’t functioning before Tribunal doesn’t mean I didn’t keep up with the heralds.”

Strega’s eyes flick to mine again, this time guiltily. It’s quickly replaced with exasperation, however, as he regards Ritter, whose theory about the suicides being murders doesn’t sit well with Strega.

Strega sighs. “Ritter, we’ve been over this.”

Strega rolls his eyes and folds his arms stubbornly across his chest. Ritter holds up a hand. “Hear me out.”

Ritter retrieves the messenger bag with the tablet full of suicide research. I look up at him with some surprise. Strega is seeing these for the first time?  I listen to the explanation again, and I watch Strega’s brows knit together as he impatiently glances over the data.

Strega seems to consider his next words carefully, looking down at the screen. “Okay,” he admits, his voice still skeptical, “I can see you’ve found an intriguing commonality amongst the suicides, but—”

“Strega, you—”

Strega holds up his own hand now. “No, Ritter, I heard you out, so it’s your turn to listen.” Although he looks none too happy about the reprimand, Ritter sighs and watches Strega expectantly.  “What you’ve got here is definitely a link. I can see very clearly what you see. But what you’re not seeing is there are other possible explanations for that link.  This could be something environmental. It could be some sort of issue with the living quarters assigned to low functioners.  Perhaps something in the building materials is giving off fumes. Or perhaps ventilation issues have resulted in mold or other contaminants.”

“Oh, come on, Strega!” Ritter shouts, rising. “What sort of chemicals in building materials make people want to kill themselves? And anyway, if it were environmental, why don’t all the suicides occur in their keepings? Wilti’s function level was two, Strega. Two.”

Strega shakes his head. “Remember your story on the link between poor indoor air quality and health?”

Ritter rolls his eyes. “Various allergies and respiratory illnesses, yes. Suicide? No. You’re reaching, Strega.”

“Who would want to kill low functioners, Ritter?” Strega counters. “Why?”

Ritter shrugs. “I don’t know. The Tribunal? They’re the ones that have to foot the bill for housing and food and luxury allotments.”

“They provide those things for everyone, Ritter. Us, too. We cost them more than the low functioners. Why not murder the highest functioning first, then?”

Ritter snorts. “C’mon. You’re the smart one in this family. You know why. Because you, Strega, especially you, provide value. Quality output. And it’s not like caretakers exist in the same numbers as cleaners and maintenance crews. But the function doesn’t matter. It’s the low function. The poor producers are targets, not the function types. Wouldn’t the low functioners be the obvious choice?”

Strega doesn’t answer. Ritter takes that as a yes.

“What’s the big deal, Strega? Why can’t you just test that woman’s blood to see whether she has the mutations?”  When Strega doesn’t answer, Ritter asks quietly, “If not Wilti, why not test Davinney’s blood?”

“Well, for one thing, all genetic testing on live subjects is supposed to be reported to the Tribunal. If I test her blood and don’t report the test as well as my findings, I could be in a lot of trouble.”

“So, test Wilti’s.”

“I can’t,” Strega says. “She was already cremated.”

“What standard would it violate, testing Davinney’s blood?”

“You know as well as I do that an intentional failure to provide required documentation to the Tribunal is a violation of the theft standard. Theft of records.”

Ritter can’t argue with that.  But he does. “Can’t you justify the test somehow?”

Strega actually laughs, something I have seldom heard. None of us have had much reason to laugh. “How? What could I possibly need her genetic profile for?”

Ritter’s mouth works as he searches for a plausible answer.

“Nothing,” Strega says. “There is nothing to justify it. Certainly not while she’s assimilating.”

“What about after?”

Strega shakes his head. “Nothing I can think of.”

“What about Linney?” I ask, looking from Ritter to Strega.

Strega gives me a wounded look. I get the feeling he was hoping I’d be on his side about this. 

Ritter shakes his head glumly. “Since the Reformation, all bodies are cremated on Concordia. We don’t bury our ended.”

When Strega leaves a few minutes later, he tries to placate Ritter. “Let me think about this for a little while, see if I can come up with any other way to verify whether the victims had the mutations.”

Ritter nods curtly. “Thanks.”

Strega pauses at the front meld. “Don’t dig around too much on this, Ritter. If it is as you say—though I’m not saying it is—it might not be a good idea. You never know who’s watching.”

A chill races through me at his words, not only because of what they imply, but because I’m pretty sure Ritter has no intention whatsoever of leaving the subject alone.

14

MORE THAN FIVE
hundred years ago, Concordia was very similar to Attero, as best as I can tell…riddled with illness, crime, wars, various injustices, and heavily polluted.

Concordia’s leaders began to discuss potential remedies, but none could agree on the right steps to take to better the planet. Political tensions increased. Partitions bombed other partitions. Oddly, though they had nuclear technology, no one pulled that trigger.  But the bombing and the fighting took their toll until most of the planet was nothing more than smoke and rubble.

The pastkeepers are divided on what happened next, but after all the top leaders of Concordia were killed in explosions or gun battles, the second and third tier leaders took a good look around at the devastation and declared a cease fire. They sat in the rubble and painstakingly recorded for all posterity a document now called simply, “The Reformation”. 

They started with nothing and, over time, built the Concordia that exists today. A world with just three zones, labeled only 1, 2, and 3. Right before parallel travel was discovered, they formed a body of government consisting of one leader per zone, known as the local Tribunal.

It seems pointless to learn these things, really, when most of my time in Assimilation is spent in physical training, combat, or the reaction center. We don’t need to know any of this history to know how to fight someone.

Still, Assimilation becomes a streamlined routine of sorts: two hours at the onboard learning the history and customs of Concordia, four hours of various types of physical training, and two to three hours spent in the reaction center, each time with a new scenario.

Lyder was right. Our group of ten quickly becomes a tight little family. We bicker with one another, we cheer, and we console each other, whether the pain is emotional or physical.

Kate and I are particularly friendly. I don’t hold it against her that she was the one to blacken my eye that first day. If I held every bruise or cut against someone, I’d be forced to hate my entire group…and they me.

“How many more days of this?” Kate asks, flopping down on her back on the grass in the onboard courtyard.

Today we’re taking our classes at the end of the day instead of the beginning, which is unusual but is what I like best. On these days we can put the viciousness of the morning behind us and feel almost like we’re getting a treat in the afternoon. Like now, during the last break of the day. And this last break is made even sweeter because Lyder told us earlier that we will not meet for any Assimilation activities tomorrow due to some unforeseen facilitator meetings. Unfortunately, this will add a day to the end of the schedule, because Assimilation lasts for sixty active days, but I can’t be bothered to worry about that now. What matters is tomorrow, and tomorrow, I am free.

Fifteen minutes goes by quickly, though, when you ache everywhere in your body. Anticipating Strega’s displeasure when I arrive at Ritter’s keeping with another day’s battle wounds keeps me from fully enjoying the sunny, mild afternoon.

I stretch out beside her and yawn. “Thirty-eight.”

“You’re kidding,” Kate groans. “It’s only been twenty-two days?”

“Yep. But think of it this way…we’re almost half way through.” I sigh, absently rubbing my ribs where Randy kicked them earlier.  My shoulder protests the movement. I try to remember what’s making it hurt.

Right. Now I remember. I slipped in the reaction center.  They closed the roof over it today and created a very rainy combat scenario, complete with obstacles to climb over, duck under, and wade across. About half way through I stopped to help June, who’d become tangled in netting coming down off a wall. If she’d dangled upside down any longer, her already twisted ankle might have broken.  My boots got so muddy that I slipped crawling over the next wall and fell hard on my shoulder.

“You awake?” Kate asks.

I chuckle. Strange how I’ve been able to do that lately. We’ve all shown each other in subtle ways that this is not what we signed up for. Granted, some of us didn’t sign up at all, like me, but even those of us who came to Concordia willingly were not expecting Assimilation to be like this. But I have still been able to laugh, even if only sarcastically. It feels like a small rebellion. Maybe that’s why I keep finding reasons to.

“Yeah. Just thinking,” I answer.

Kate rolls to face me. Her eyes, those big dark eyes that everyone mistakes for naïve and innocent, are clouded.  “Seriously, Davinney, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

I sit up, ignoring the many little protests my body offers. She does, too. “Yeah, well, it’s not like we have a choice,” I say. She winces a little. Like me, she’s from a closed world. If she fails to assimilate, she’ll be disposed.

She stares into the distance. “I’ve been doing some reading,” she says hesitantly. “Did you know there are people here on Concordia who’ve altered their Idixes so they can’t be tracked? There’s this whole underground movement of people called Erasers who do the altering in exchange for various luxury allotment items.”

I search the courtyard for Lyder. She’s talking with two other facilitators.  I don’t look at Kate. “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” I say, rising. When I do look back, her eyes are bright. Part of me wants to ask her what she means, what she’s talking about, but whatever it is sounds too good to be true.

Kate jumps to her feet and grabs my wrist. “Look, I’m sorry. Please don’t tell anyone I mentioned it.” She shifts from foot to foot. I’ve seen her do that in the reaction center just before the “go” buzzer.

“I won’t,” I tell her. “It’s a nice idea, but if I were you, I wouldn’t do any more reading about that stuff. Never know who’s watching,” I say, feeling a chill as I recognize Strega’s words to Ritter rolling off my tongue.

Despite my warning to Kate, I use my Assimilation free day at a library.  I’m sort of surprised they actually exist since almost everything on Concordia is computerized. But there are actual paper books, though they’re limited to reference volumes. Everything else exists in the form of either a chip you can insert into a logger (early post-Reformation stuff) or a time sensitive download. The computers in the library don’t require any sort of logon. Other than the meld keeping tabs on my entry, I don’t see any program utilities on the computer that indicate my usage is being tracked.  Somehow, though, I don’t think the research I plan to do is something I should be doing on Ritter’s home computer.

Four hours later, I have a headache and eyestrain and little else.  Kate might be right about the existence of Erasers, but what I’ve read frightens me more than it lends any sort of hope.

I log her at once, telling her to come to the library. When she arrives, I lead her into a sunny but deserted corner of the second floor.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,” I tell her.  I don’t speak the actual word. I’m a little afraid to say it out loud. 

“About Erasers?” she asks, either not noticing or not caring that I wince at her use of the word.

I nod. “I found a lot of articles by the heralds about Concordia’s ‘underground society’, the Erased.”  I look around before saying the word aloud, and I make silly quote marks with my fingers. “None of it sounds very promising. For one thing, if you erase and stay on Concordia, you pretty much have to fend for yourself in the wild.  No electricity, no running water, no food, shelter or clothing except whatever you can rig for yourself.”

This information in particular dashes my hopes. I’ve been camping with my parents enough to know that I hate roughing it. I hate toileting in the bushes, building fires, and I especially dislike hunting and cleaning my own kills. I’ve done all of it before. Never willingly. To think of doing it every day for the rest of my life or until something changes in terms of the Agreement, well, no. Just…no.

Kate, too, looks hesitant now. Disappointed. She asks, “What about slivving to another world? Can you do that if you’re erased?”

“Yeah.” My head bobs as my eyes rove the room, looking for people, cameras, or anything that looks like a speaker or a microphone.  “Most of the articles mentioned that with nothing to trigger the melds, an Erased could theoretically sliv
if
they knew the correct codes to operate a given launch plate and the correct codes for their destination. When a person slivs with permission, the information is pre-loaded on their Idix. But with the Erased, they somehow have to find the right codes, which change daily.”

“Sounds tricky,” Kate frowns.  “I don’t think launch codes would be all that available, do you?”

“Probably not,” I agree. “And you’d also have to get past countless infrared and regular cameras. The bad thing is that the meld readers track Idix information. If someone is watching the feed from a particular infrared and notices that it’s picking up a heat signature—a person—but the nearest meld reader doesn’t show a corresponding Idix, guardians are dispatched to track and capture them using images from the regular cameras.”

“So, basically,” Kate snorts, “if you can reach a launch plate and punch in the right codes before the guardians catch up to you, you’re home free.”

“Yep,” I laugh sarcastically. “The articles gave some pretty crappy statistics, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like, the only way to figure how many people erase is to track the number of mysterious disappearances—people who suddenly don’t turn up for function, aren’t discovered dead somewhere, and whose Idixes show no slivving activity.” I sigh.  “During a ten year period there were only forty-two possible erasures. Only five cases might have been successful slivs.  Something like twenty-seven people were captured at launch sites by guardians and disposed of, and only ten disappearances were never solved.”

“Yikes,” Kate replies glumly, shaking her head. “Fifteen people in ten years. Those don’t strike me as great odds.”

“Me, neither. And what’s even worse is a lot of the articles give even higher numbers of botched erasures. Most of the people claiming to be Erasers are just frauds,” I shrug, “low functioners who want to up their standard of living.  They can’t do anything about their housing level, but they can get luxuries they can’t afford on their own allotments by claiming to be Erasers. They extort huge amounts of valuable stuff, stuff that resells well, and then they leave the victims fully or partially traceable. The damage to their Idix can’t be repaired, and the second they pass a reader, they’re caught. If you try to get erased and you choose the wrong person to do it, the next thing you know, a guardian’s at your meld. And it’s not like you can go to the guardians first to report the Eraser. You’re just as guilty of violating the standards as they are.”

“Oh, man,” Kate looks like she lost her last friend. “And then you get disposed of, right?”

I nod glumly. “Yeah.  I mean, you’re not exactly innocent since you were trying to erase. The only thing I really don’t understand after reading all of this is what standard it violates.”

“Theft?” Kate asks, eyebrows raised.

“Theft of what?” I counter.  “And yet you’ll be disposed without the benefit of Tribunal. The only thing that will be done is they’ll check your Idix. If it is messed up in any way and they can’t verify that it’s some kind of natural wear and tear, poof! Disposal!” I snap my fingers.

Kate sighs. “I guess Assimilation it is,” she says.

As much as I hate it, I agree.  Disposal is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place, after all.

The next day, after Assimilation, Strega logs me before I make it back to Ritter’s. He forgot about a caretaker’s seminar he’d signed up to attend months ago. He’s almost done for the day, but he’s six hours away by slide.  When he gets back into our area, it will be very late. He asks whether I have any new injuries he should know about.

I sigh. I always have some new injury, and even if it’s similar to an injury he’s already treated, he insists on addressing it as if it’s never happened before. Since he’ll be back before the latest round will heal, I can’t feed him any of the white lies I consider. 

In his eyes, with my split lip, the bruise on my cheek, and the tenderness in my abdomen where Marco’s foot landed today, I am not fine. Not by Strega’s standards.

I reply with the truth, and he logs back,

I’ve authorized cling packs for your cheek and abdomen, antiseptic for your lip, and a mild painkiller for bedtime. Please take care of yourself. I’ll check on you tomorrow.

I can’t help but smile. He says that all the time…please take care of yourself. Usually he means to stay out of trouble at Assimilation, but tonight there’s a double meaning. He literally needs me to take care of myself. Fine by me. I’m a little relieved, actually. His concern, at times, is more exhausting than the day itself.

I try so hard to avoid injury, given how dismayed he is each evening when I reach the keeping. I almost wish he could spend a day with me at Assimilation just so he could see how many injuries I avoid compared to the ones I take. He only gets to see my failures, not my triumphs.

I’m surprised by the fact that the keeping is quiet when I arrive. Empty. After my showdown with Strega over ignoring the MedQuick and the ScanX, Ritter’s kept close watch on me.  During my downward spiral, he’d been functioning late, leaving me on my own quite a bit.  Strega must have reamed him out, because he’s always here when I finish Assimilation for the day.