The Attachment Race Page 2

  On this particular morning, ‘woman #6’ (whoever she was) would be lowered into a mass grave already hosting her five predecessors. Like the others, she’d be sprayed down with a solution to keep bugs and animals away from her pale blue, rubbery coffin. Once Upsilon’s survivors were assigned to their extraterrestrial destinations and sent off, the hole would be filled. (So much less work for the Watchers to dig one grave for each three-week-batch of women passing through the compound.)

  Belinda wished for something that radiated life to ponder as she sought solitude on the far end of the yard. But the physical qualities of the compound were dismal at best – the facilities fabricated largely from bits and pieces of old buildings, sewn together to make new structures. The twelve-meter-high, grotesquely-fanged, barbed-wire fence enclosing the forty-acre rectangle of land reinforced the prisoner mentality officials wanted. Pale green, cheaply plastered dormitories set side by side held three women to a room. Tight quarters. Smoke and stink rose from various openings in the ugly stucco mess hall thrice daily. Only one structure remained from the location’s earlier life as a school: the gym.

  Outside the fence, remnants of a small town which had once supplied the gymnasium with students continued a process of decay years in the making. Vegetation strangled what remained of the buildings – at least, those things which could clearly be discerned as manmade structures. Other signs of civilization lay flattened, mere hills of rot. Someday, if all went according to plan, this out-of-the-way place would be populated again. New homes and buildings – the sort to last for generations – would replace the stretch of emptiness. For now, the isolation provided an ideal locale for a transition compound. The only road through the skeleton of a town which had a modern mag-strip – allowing for contemporary vehicles – passed within seventy meters of Upsilon’s gates. Belinda and the others had come in a series of dented, rattling cars which seemed barely capable of maintaining speed, what with the shitty old avenue which no one had bothered to keep up for years.

  Fortunately, the view from the west end which Belinda preferred allowed one sight that didn’t project decay and lifelessness: it was a field of forty or so space elevators. Ordinary stuff to most citizens of Earth (and dispiriting to the population of a transition compound) but Belinda could trace her childhood through the rapid expansion of technology which had replaced the inefficient launching pad. A part of her would never stop seeing the delicate threads as a crop of fairytale beanstalks come alive in the age of relentless code and common sense. Of course, she’d never been closer than ten kilometers to a space elevator field in her life. When they began to become more common and construction on big facilities – like the one outside Upsilon – started in earnest, Belinda’s father would take her out to watch the progress. Things of such immense power and reach tended to seem tame and whimsical from such a distance.

  One of the space elevator lines quivered with the slightest wiggle. A black dot ran up the glowing cable, slowly at first and then accelerating radically on its journey to the docking platform more than 60,000 km above the surface of Earth.

  When Belinda drifted into an absent-minded gaze at the lifts, the voice of ads from Sull-Strand, manufacturers of the tresanium cables that made space elevators possible, snuck into her consciousness: “Whether we’re sending you into the heavens or propelling you crosstown, Sull-Strand is always there.” Not inaccurate. Sull-Strand created mag-strip systems for ground transport, excavation tools for Earth and space alike, as well as the popular brand of ‘infinity tires’ for the general public.

  The reassuring male voice that promised constant presence without sounding as if it were an oppressive shadow was as much a part of Belinda’s childhood as Water Soopa festivals or movies on weekend nights that featured the phenomenal teen idol Petra Muncie.

  And now, in the anxiety of an Upsilon morning, she wanted desperately to float away. Back to days when the idea of being swept up in forced migration was unthinkable. If she could leave her body and travel to another time it would be as good as sleep.

  But Upsilon wouldn’t let go of her that easily.

  The sound which she hated – church, church, church – continued on even at the distance she’d created. Closer it seemed to come. She fought it.

  “Sending you into the heavens” – Church, church, church. “…into the heavens” – Church, church, church.

  Her thoughts raced and the illusion of youth’s simplicity was sullied.

  This was Belinda’s curse. When thoughts began to run amok and drag her along, Belinda was at their mercy. She had to hope that her consciousness would get tired and slow down for a breath of air. “To the heavens”, church, church, church – it was right on top of her now. She clenched her jaw and whipped around to stare down the owner of the feet which had intruded on her attempt at temporary inner peace.

  It was Grace, approaching from the dorms where the majority of women still wandered about. The expression in her roommate’s eyes told Belinda that she’d made one of those faces that scared people from time to time.

  “We just found out,” Grace said. “It was Claudia V.”

  Chapter 3

  Belinda took a moment to digest the information. The woman who, only a day earlier, had stopped halfway to the suicide note microphone and sunk back to her seat in the gymnasium had done herself in. Was there something about the resignation in Claudia V that told Belinda it would happen? She didn’t fancy herself psychic (if such a thing existed), but signals could be sent in other ways.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Spryte told us,” said Grace. “She said they found her hanging by the neck in the lav down the hall from her room.”

  Belinda turned her attention back to the sea-green threads in the distance.

  “Have they taken her out yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’m waiting here until they do.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t mind if I wait here too?”

  Belinda didn’t answer and Grace took it for permission. The pair stood in silence for several moments, facing away from the dorms.

  “You enjoy watching them?” Grace asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “The lifts. I’ve seen you out here from time to time.”

  “It’s something to look at.”

  Belinda focused on another elevator propelling its way up the tresanium cable, again with a slight wiggle.

  “I had a thought come into my head last night,” said Grace, “and it kept me up for hours.”

  “What was it?”

  “I was thinking…what if we leave here, as scheduled, end up at our assigned settlements and find out that we were the last to be sent off. You know, that forced migration stops. Upsilon is closed, along with all the others.”

  “Would it matter? We’d still be gone.”

  “Sure. Like I said, it just occurred to me and I couldn’t let it go.”

  “I know that feeling,” Belinda said, glancing at Grace with a sympathetic shrug.

  “When we were kids. They swore that it was almost over. Our parents, our teachers…they told us it would never trickle down to us. Do you think they lied?”

  “No,” Belinda said. “I think they were lied to.”

  There had never been a publicly stated number at the beginning of Balance-Driven Relocation to indicate how many would need to be moved for mankind to regain its control. Nevertheless, it had always been implied – to assuage fears – that the necessary changes would never lead to the ‘average’ man or woman. (Interpretation of the word average was left to individuals.) The planet could get by just fine with five billion souls, as it had years earlier. Hell, some people figured that there were enough ‘undesirables’ to allow for Earth’s total to be reduced as low as four billion and still leave all the good, hard-working, honest folk untouched.

  But when the easy targets for removal, the “prominently distasteful personages” were gone, statisti
cians recalculated the number of people on Earth and, sure enough, more needed to be done. Next were the hopelessly impoverished and uneducated, the “sun worshippers” and “snake charmers” of society. Creeps, cranks and minor criminals were scraped and dispatched with the ruthless efficiency not seen by men since the dark days of the 20th century.

  Still, it wasn’t quite where it needed to be.

  “Don’t forget,” one vocal proponent of B-D-R pointed out, “these people haven’t been killed. We live in a post-genocidal world. They all get new lives, with new opportunities.”

  Another elevator shimmied up a cable in the distance and both Belinda and Grace followed it as far as they could. Aboard might be men and women (even children) from another transition compound. There were several in the area.

  Then, an unusual sound distracted the women from their meditations on space elevators. Peering through the trees beyond the west fence, they could barely make out decades-old transports (the kind which predated mag-strip propulsion). The small convoy came to a stop at a clearing where a quartet of men climbed out of their respective vehicles to stretch and bullshit with one another. As they passed the time with what Belinda figured to be a can of sunflower seeds, passed from one to the other, drones emerged from each of the transports. Removal of brush in the clearing ensued and a grayish canvas – large enough for a big tent – was unfolded by the efficient choreography of machines.

  “Do you think that’s for…?” Grace said, squinting so as to see better between the trees.

  Belinda nodded, caught up in the sight outside Upsilon’s border. What else could it be? The suicide may have shifted focus in the compound for the morning, but schedules for departure marched on: the Attachment Race was just thirty-six hours away.

  Chapter 4

  Signs had been posted all over Upsilon for the better part of a week. The black background and bold white lettering stood out. The notices were screwed to the outer walls of every building at eye level. The message was simple:

  The Attachment Race is Coming!

  Rules:

  All pacts consummated in writing are final. No exceptions.

  No post-Race requests for pacts will be considered. No exceptions.

  -Verbal agreements between parties do not constitute a binding pact.

  -No fighting allowed during the Attachment Race. Punishment will be extreme, without opportunity for appeal.

  -No stimulants allowed at the Attachment Race. Punishment for all such infractions will be immediate expulsion from the Race.

  Although it was never the intent of those who created it, the AR had become something of a cultural fascination.

  The premise was simple. Take the women of a female transition compound – say, Upsilon. Gather the men from an all-male facility (Omicron was the closest) and throw them together in a neutral site for three hours of mingling, chat and some food & drink. A meeting of people who, in all likelihood, had never met before; an opportunity to meet a compatible soul on the eve of leaving Earth forever. Those willing to take a risk based on first impressions could “attach”.

  Therein lay the fascination. A lifetime commitment to someone after less than three hours of knowing them? Are these the dark ages? But for a man or woman facing what could be their last opportunity to pair up with a life partner (not all settlements were ‘coed’), rationales changed. The unthinkable became reasonable – even desirable.

  And why attach? Why take the chance that it could all go to hell?

  “Going to hell is a little more tolerable when you’ve got someone at your side on the same path,” one woman had reasoned at an early Attachment Race, asked by a reporter from the ‘real world’ who was slumming for a story. The world heard the comment in the days following and morbid curiosity was piqued.

  Did you hear? A woman killed her attachment on the way to the space elevators. She met him, fell for him and got angry enough to end his life in less than twelve hours!

  What fun.

  Belinda Q. was nowhere close to making peace with the idea of the Attachment Race. Most men would say she wasn’t beautiful until you got to know her. She wasn’t soft, but neither was she harsh. She liked conversation and people, except when she didn’t. And then, she really didn’t.

  Belinda’s father called her his “pretty little girl”, but only when she was small enough for him to come up behind her, take hold of his girl by the shoulders and plant a kiss atop her head. Belinda couldn’t recall a time when he’d said it while facing her. Pity they didn’t offer therapy sessions at Upsilon – a last chance for the “pretty little girl” to get to the bottom of that chestnut before departure to places unknown.

  “I’ll never understand why they go to the trouble,” said Grace.

  “Who?”

  “Spryte. The higher-ups. I don’t know. Whoever it is that keeps approving Attachment Races.”

  The question hung in the air because there really was no answer accessible to either woman. The Attachment Race had been around since they were both teenagers. One of the few things understood about transition compounds by people who’d never been to one. And, not surprisingly, people didn’t question the existence of the ritual.

  “Here comes Peg,” Grace said, looking back toward the main part of the compound. Belinda turned to see their roommate, Alisson, tagging behind Peg R – a curvy redhead with a comportment so profoundly assured that Belinda had yet to see anyone refuse to give ground. Peg was a force of nature.

  “So, what’s over here?” Peg asked, peering out at the bots and drones.

  “Fresh air,” said Belinda.

  “No such thing anymore.” Peg always had the proper retort. Always. It was, it seemed to Belinda, as if she’d been equipped for a smart answer to every question, comment or observation which could conceivably be expressed.

  Grace chimed in:

  “I was wondering why they bother having an Attachment Race for obvious rejects such as us.”

  Peg and Alisson caught on to what was so interesting outside the western fence. They took positions alongside Grace and Belinda, peering out at the slow construction of a garden-like space where the AR would be held.

  “They get bonuses,” Peg said. “I thought everyone knew that.”

  “Bonuses?”

  “Spryte. Some of the Watchers. The more people who double up before we leave, the more they can squeeze into a settlement. That’s worth something to the people paying to dig tunnels in planets.”

  “I thought it was to satisfy the DG’s,” Alisson said.

  “No. That’s just a myth. It’s the bonuses and crowding us in.”

  Alisson frowned a little at having Peg dismiss her contribution to the conversation so easily. There was reason to believe DG’s – short for do-gooders – held sway over decision-making at the highest levels. As part of the population which was undeniably safe from Balance-Driven Relocation, DG’s held influence that comes with wealth and powerful connections. As a rule, they weren’t necessarily opposed to forced migration, but neither were they blasé about it.

  More mercenary minds called the DG’s squeamish. But the DG’s themselves claimed to just want to make sure migration was being handled in the most humane way possible.

  Belinda knew there was more to it. It was the same reason the suicide note routine survived for years: concessions. Hardliner advocates of relocation liked the idea of weeding out those who were likely to end their lives before spending the space and money to shoot them off to another world. The Attachment Race had its own purposes. It was the same reason every person in transition compounds was given a fertility test on the first full day. The off-Earth settlements had started to produce things the home planet needed or wanted. No sense in letting a healthy set of ovaries and a high sperm count go to waste if they could repopulate the settlements that had a future.

  “I just meant that…DG’s could think it was good for us to have a chance at companionship,” said Alisson after thinking it over.

 
“You don’t have much time left here to get rid of that naïve point of view,” Peg said.

  Alisson, Grace and Belinda had bonded from day one. As roommates, it made sense. They were just “lucky” to have Peg latch onto their group and make it a quartet. She didn’t like either of her two roomies and, when one offed herself after three days at Upsilon, Peg was on the lookout for companions.

  She had virtues. Mere proximity could buck up an uncertain soul. Peg’s suicide note remained the most memorable of the lot, even as nearly all two hundred-plus had been shared. She took the stage with no qualms when her name was called, looked over the audience of Upsilonians and recited it from memory:

  “Where I’ll end up, I cannot predict. I don’t really believe in anything – so this is probably the end. I only wish I could take more of you with me. And I mean that from the bottom of my tiny heart.”

  Some laughed. Most did not.

  Peg managed to win over her three adopted pals anew just about every day. She had to. Rare was the evening when Belinda, Grace or Alisson didn’t stew over something Peg had said or done. The first conversation Belinda shared with her after arriving at Upsilon was a perfect example.

  “What did you do…before?” Peg asked over lunch.

  So subtle. Everyone else had tiptoed around the question. Nothing simple about probing pasts in a transition compound. But Peg didn’t care.

  “I worked for CRO,” Belinda told her, not knowing how to balk at the question.

  “The council? Council for Relocation Outreach?”

  There was no other CRO. Belinda had hated the job, but they were living in an age when a job was sometimes all that stood between staying on Earth and ending up in place like Upsilon.