World-Mart (4 page)
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 eighty percent of the rich people in the district 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, knowing there was nothing she could do about the strike or the damaged communication lines. 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 occurred. 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 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 apples. Virginia found that 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.”
SHELLEY stuck close to her small group of friends as they moved on foot from the shuttle garage to the beach. Her parents had taken her and Kurt to the beach a few times, but because of the expense, the weather, and the long hike out, the family had only gone a couple of times. Going to a place like the beach with her friends, where the air felt clean and there was nothing looming beyond but sand dunes and a vast, grey ocean, somehow enabled her to breathe a little easier than she usually did. The fact that she was going without her parents’ knowledge made the trip both worrisome and exhilarating.
The clouds lumbered overhead, threatening. It had not rained all day, but the ground was still wet and soft from last night’s deluge. Shelley realized early into the hike that the thick mud was destroying her sneakers. Everyone in the group seemed to be sharing her tough luck, and she was thankful that she had opted not to wear her dress flats. She had considered it in a brief, clouded moment of vanity, but luckily, she had come to her senses when she considered the length of the hike. She noticed that her friend Charlotte had not.
Charlotte had flaming red hair and a thick distribution of freckles on her pale face. Her green eyes had a recklessness to them that depicted a past about which she talked very little. She carried her short heels in one hand, moving barefoot through the cold mud. Her face showed a combination of disgust and determination as she struggled to lead the small group.
Three other teenagers, two boys and a girl, followed close behind. Shelley was not very close with any of them, although she did see them often at school. Charlotte didn’t seem to like them much either, but she did like the attention they gave her. The girl was short, with green eyes, a black bob, and painfully crooked teeth. The two boys were both tall, one of them towering over the other. Both had dark eyes and sandy blond hair.
The group moved cautiously through the sand, and still a pair of police associates riding mountain bikes from the opposing direction caught them off-guard. A loud whistle caused the group to stop where they were, and the police associates rolled to a stop beside them.
“ID cards!” one of the associates barked, and the kids scrambled to find their cards.
Shelley found her ID card and handed it to the police associate. “We’re just headed to the beach.”
“You know beach property is closed after sunset?” the officer asked while scanning Shelley’s card in a small, hand-held computer. He glanced at the sun, which now barely hovered over the mountains.
Shelley nodded.
With his computer showing no warrants on Shelley, the police associate handed her card back to her. “Don’t let me catch you out here after hours.”
Shelley pocketed the ID. “You won’t.”
“There is a new shantytown of deviants living in the district right above us,” the police associate continued. “There have been reports that they’re spreading down closer to us, even roaming our beaches at night. You don’t want to get mugged, do you?”
Shelley shook her head.
The officers checked the rest of the group’s ID cards and then, after giving the group one last warning about the deviants and beach policies, they continued on their way.
There was a biting chill to the windy beach air, and yet everyone in the group abandoned their shoes as they approached the soft, fine sand. Shelley looked around. “I don’t know if this was such a good idea,” she said, noticing a new front of clouds prematurely darkening the horizon.
“We must be a little early,” Charlotte said, unsure of what else to say. All eyes were suddenly on her. She cleared her throat, getting visibly nervous. “They’ll be here.”
Shelley felt herself grow increasingly nervous as the minutes passed. She had never met Charlotte’s new friends, but she knew some of their reputations. They had a steady source of bootleg liquor, however, and Shelley’s curiosity over the intoxicant temporarily outweighed all reason in her decision-making skills. Still, she knew she was there to break the law, and she knew the potential repercussions. She gave an impatient huff. “They’re not coming. We should get out of here.”
“They’ll be here,” Charlotte insisted.
Shelley crossed her arms. “I really think—”
She fell silent as the sound of fuel-powered motors swept in from the distance.
Everyone watched in silence as a dust cloud from the north slowly grew to become three sand-cruisers. The loud and clumsy machines carried three young men in their late teens to early twenties swiftly across the beach. The motors were loud and smelly, putting out huge amounts of exhaust, and the propulsion systems polluted the air with the jets of sand the vehicles left in their wake. They had been outlawed after the Automotive Unit for Transportation-Corp was shut down, and so their use clearly defined their riders as outlaws. In patches where the sand was dry, the sand-cruisers kicked up tall clouds of dust, giving the appearance of smoke plumes from a shoreline fire.
The three young men came to a halt in front of the group and turned off their engines.
“Change of plans. We’re meeting in District 89148 tonight. Hop on,” one of them said. He patted the back seat of his sand-cruiser. He had multiple piercings and visible tattoos, and his hair was multiple shades of red and orange.
“Where are we going?” Shelley asked, afraid to move.
“To a party,” the young man said with a chilling smile. “There’ll be plenty of cigarettes and alcohol, and maybe even some food.”
Charlotte sprang over to vehicle and sat down behind the young man. The rest of the group looked among one another, not sure what to do. The girl and the taller of the boys joined Charlotte and her friends, but Shelley and the second boy remained uncertain.