THE BOY IS SITTING at a desk. He has been told the desk is a privilege reserved for high-potential individuals. It is the first time in either of his lives that someone has told him he has potential, but it fails to inspire him. He is in a room full of high-potential individuals, diverse in age, sex, and appearance, but all with a certain sameness. Whatever their natural skin tone, it has faded. Whatever their natural eye color, it has changed—most to gray, but a few with flecks of gold. It occurs to the boy that potential is a vague word. Poison has potential to kill. Flesh has potential to rot.
All of these high-potential individuals sit at desks like the boy’s, absorbing a bewildering array of inputs. Screens fill every corner, all playing different programs—sports, films, old news broadcasts with constant commercial breaks—and all at full volume, fighting for dominance with the pop song on the PA speakers, which is just the sound of women’s orgasms set to a thumping beat.
In the midst of this, two men stand at the front of the room, delivering what might be lectures of some kind, though the boy can pick out only a few snatches in the whirlwind of noise. Something about security from one of them, something about liberty from the other.
Most of the people in this room glance wildly from screen to screen, speaker to speaker. A few stare straight ahead as drool pools on their parted lips. Two or three, like the boy, look around with lucidity in their eyes, frowning in concentration as they try to understand this strange assault. One of these suddenly screams and flings out her hand, knocking over her IV stand. The tube pops out of the bag. The syrupy pink cocktail squirts out onto the floor, and a man in a lab coat rushes to reconnect it.
The boy can feel the syrup in his own veins, interacting inscrutably with his lukewarm blood. He follows the tube from his arm to the bag, and then up to the ceiling where it joins all the others, dangling like jungle vines from a central hub, which feeds from a thick hose running out of the room. The boy wonders where it goes and what is in it. He wonders what these people want him to become.
The session pauses while the lab assistant struggles with the unruly student. In the stunning void of silence, the boy can hear the groans and howls of the less privileged individuals in nearby classrooms. Individuals too deep in the plague to operate in the world as people. These do not get desks. These do not get to watch television. These have lower potential, and will be Oriented for lower functions, according to the evident order of nature.
The door opens. A woman in a lab coat pushes two children inside. The boy stares at the children and they stare at him.
One of them smiles. A girl of about seven, her dusky skin barely touched by gray, her dark eyes flecked with gold like veins of ore promising a windfall.
She runs to the boy and hugs him and he remembers that her name is Joan.
Joan’s blond brother dances around the boy’s desk, touching the boy’s cheeks and laughing. “Found you, found you!” Alex says.
It is not the first time these children have found him. In a distant age, in a distant part of the world, they found him wandering deep in an airport basement and dragged him up to daylight. His friends, Joan and Alex. Two more good people.
The woman in the lab coat grabs them by their collars and drags them to their desks, shoves them down and jabs IV tubes into their arms. The session resumes. The storm of noise buffets their eyes and ears, but Joan and Alex seem to be ignoring it. They are distracted. They smile at the boy and he finds their joy infectious. He smiles back.
The pages on our Higher shelves rustle as they fill with new words. Simple sentences polished and gleaming.
I
HERE IT IS. The busy metropolis I’ve been waiting to see. No more quiet courtyards and hollow buildings and wind howling through ghostly streets. This is New York City. I watch it rush by through the SUV’s window, and the past and present overlap. Am I a prisoner, or is this just another commute? Another limo ride home after a long day at the Atvist Building? The sidewalks churn with pedestrians and the streets are packed with rush-hour traffic. There is energy and commerce, and when obscured by the window’s heavy tint, it almost looks like the old world. But when I roll the window down for an unfiltered view, discrepancies appear. Laundry flutters from high-rise windows, turning glittering business towers into Dickensian rookeries. Every park and square has been repurposed into some form of labor site: makeshift assembly lines and meat rendering stations, the occasional fenced holding area for hopeful immigrants. The lack of traffic noise seems strange—Where is the brass orchestra? That discordant symphony of horns?—until I notice that all the vehicles on the road are marked with the Axiom logo. Construction trucks and transport vans, moving in silent unanimity.
The window rolls up, dimming the harsh detail of the scene. Blue Tie catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “For optimal safety, windows should be kept up when driving through population areas. We experience difficulties with unsalaried employees.”
“Everyone has an opportunity to advance in this company,” Yellow Tie says, turning to smile at me over the seat, “with enough hard work and personal sacrifice.”