The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

My eyes caught the number 150 as it slid past and I turned, a trill of excitement interrupting my bleak thoughts. I waited patiently until, like dawn breaking, I was greeted with a section of glass paneling. Here, the elevator shaft was now exposed to the inside of the Tower behind a glass tube that ran up and along the walls.

The walls of the Tower were actually a shell—one that was, by design, for defensive purposes. It contained two layers—the outermost layer holding the hatches into and out of the Tower, with a grand set of stairs inside, wrapping around the Tower, and seemingly endless. The innermost layer contained hundreds of floors that held a collection of things—service tunnels and quarters mostly—but the floors of its lowest section housed the machines that kept us alive. The lowest floors were also the densest floors, as they bore the weight of the entire structure.

As a result, not all of the elevators connected with the floors at the top; they typically stopped at the highest available level, meaning the citizen inside would have to walk to the next elevator if they needed to go any higher. The lift I was in, however, and a few just like it, ran all the way up the interior walls.

My eyes soaked up one of the more beautiful sights in our Tower (beautiful sights were few and far between, after all): the artificial light emitting from the walls was set to ‘morning’ and rays of bright light were beginning to cut into the shadows of the dim nighttime lighting, revealing three structures dangling from the ceiling. Their bases were massive at this height, and from this angle I had a full view of all three of them, gleaming in the artificial morning light. The glowing white walls of the Medica’s smooth-sided cylindrical structure were closest on this side, the white almost too bright to look at directly. Circular walkways girdled the giant cylinder—one for each of its sixty floors. The walkways were thin and white, interrupted only by steps that ran up and down between floors, and the bridges that connected the structure to the rest of the Tower. Opposite the Medica was the Citadel, with its black-and-crimson-lit arches, dark steel edifices, and stylized walls, borrowing heavily from Gothic architecture to distinguish its cylindrical shape. Between them dangled the luminescent blue-and-black cone-shaped structure of the Core. Its circular levels were stacked, the widest level connected to the roof. Each level below was slightly smaller than the one above it, making the whole thing appear like coins of different values stacked together from largest to smallest. The Core was the heart of the Tower and the heart of Scipio… Our benevolent computer overlord.

The net in my head buzzed, warning me that it was detecting a strong spike of negativity, and I quickly broke the thought apart and shut it away. “Stupid,” I muttered, catching a flash of my scornful amber eyes in the glass as I spun away from the view to face the wall. I glanced down at my wrist.

The band wrapped around my bronze skin was made of black microthread, a smooth material that was thin but practically unbreakable. Mounted atop it, the digital display that showed my number was glowing a soft, irritated orange—our overlord’s little reminder that I wasn’t good enough. Scipio, the great computer that monitored the nets in our heads and used the readings to determine our worth, had never liked me. Supposedly he didn’t have emotions, but I had long suspected that he took some perverse pleasure in my failings. He’d never had any faith in me. Then again, neither did my parents. Or my teachers. Or anyone really, except for my friends and my brother Alex.

Alex had explained that the number was a representation of the concentration of positive versus negative thoughts in your brain. The net couldn’t exactly read direct thoughts but it read the feelings associated with them and, through some sort of complex algorithm, could perform an ongoing risk assessment on the citizen in question, to determine the likelihood of dissidents. The thing was, I didn’t consider myself dissident. In fact, the most aggravating thing about my existence was the number itself, which seemed self-defeating.

The elevator slowed as it approached Level 173, where Gerome and Dalton were waiting. It halted at a cut-out section of wall, and I stepped out quickly. The elevator hovered for a moment behind me, awaiting new orders, and then sank back into a slot in the wall to await its next rider. I was halfway down the ramp connecting the elevator to the floor when the tip of my boot caught on something—my other foot, of course!—and I pitched forward, starting to fall. Gerome moved quickly to steady me. Being a confident man, he used his right hand, which meant I caught sight of the number there: a cool blue-colored ‘ten’ shimmered against his pale skin as he grabbed my upper arm. A perfect citizen. Gerome was a prime example of how being perfect could make a person boring.

I straightened and shot a glance at Dalton. He was standing a few feet behind Gerome; he tilted his chin away from me, refusing to meet my eyes.

I clenched my jaw. It was beyond unfair. Dalton’s ranking of seven was so average that the typical citizen of the Tower wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Since we had met, however, he had looked down on me. The way he was acting, you’d think we were here on a secret mission sent straight from Scipio, not to fix malfunctioning solar panels, and that I (the lowly four) was his lone obstacle, rather than his escort. The worst thing was, he could get away with it; he obviously knew from experience that the odd spike of righteous superiority on his decent track record wouldn’t lower his number. It made my blood boil.

“Peace, Squire,” Gerome said, clapping a massive hand on my shoulder. “Cogs have never been the most social of our departments.”

I grunted in response.

Gerome looked at me. His face resembled the holographs we had of the ancient Greeks: chiseled, each feature designed as if by an artist. His thin, distinct eyebrows rose up under hair that had just begun to go silver at the temples, and his cleft chin jutted toward me like an accusation.

“We don’t want you slipping any lower,” he said, his voice devoid of empathy. “Your number is low as it is. Have you considered—”

“Medica treatment?” I muttered, looking at the metal flooring so Gerome wouldn’t see me rolling my eyes. Dalton moved down the service hall ahead of us, and I moved quickly to follow, hoping that walking would keep Gerome’s lecture brief. “Yes. My parents have been talking about it quite a bit.”

Gerome caught up to me with one swift step. Up ahead, Dalton had begun climbing a steep set of narrow stairs toward a rectangular access hatch. As he pushed it open, I saw the black outer walls of the shell waiting beyond.

“Your parents are good citizens,” Gerome said. “Strong. Capable. Champion Devon made them Knight Commanders for a reason.”

I grimaced, looking away. “They’re very perfect."

They had wanted me to be, too. They’d been disappointed.