The Day Earth Died

11. Day Shift

My watch read 5:08 PM as I sat down at a table. Dinner was early for us because we only had breakfast and because we had to "adapt" to eating here. Amell was in front of me, babbling about everything he saw as if I didn't see it too.

"You're aware I was there too, no?" I said.

He laughed. I took a bite of the roasted veggies.

"I wouldn't still be talking if you minded."

Damn right. I snorted at him.

"Well keep going then." The corners of my mouth tugged up.

"How about we go to the gym later? To try it out," Amell suggested.

"Didn't Haile say we were way too weak and fragile to do that," I mocked.

His smile flattened into a line.

"The other guide said that he was wrong."

"The whole guy is wrong."

"He's not that bad," Amell said as he scooped some chicken fried rice with his spoon and dumped it in his mouth.

"He is. You trust too much."

"And you should trust a bit more."

I sipped my water, not in the mood to argue. As we finished our meal, an officer gave our table a pile of plastic cards and conveyed us some vague instructions. Pick a card, scan it, work, scan it again.

"Minimum 7 hours of work a day?" Amell repeated the officer.

I nodded, inspecting a card. It was of a fiery red with black and white stripes along the side of it: a unique bar code. Its upper left area was punched with a 9-digit number, ; another unique code. Once my meal was done and my plate on the cleaning rack, I looked around the cafeteria again. The red machines scattered here and there stood out. Their colour matched the card's. I walked up to one, curious. Words streamed in a continuous motion on its screen. I touched the braille lit up on the side of it. Insert the card, it wrote. I did.

"This card is blank. State your full name," the machine flatly voiced out.

"Mal Keïta," I barked at it, trying to bury the chatter of hundreds of officers.

The machine chimed.

"Hello, Mal Keïta. What can I do for you today?"

Three squares popped up on the screen with words on them. The two first from the left were gray while the other was green. This time, there wasn't any braille. Instead, I pressed a blue button with an ear symbol.

"First option: Start a shift (unavailable because a supervisor is required). Second option: End a shift (unavailable because no shift was started). Third option: Select a supervisor."

I touched the green icon. A list of officers with their pictures, a 9-digit code, and what I assumed to be their names appeared on the screen. I scrolled down. Unfamiliar faces on and on. I could hardly gauge the importance of this choice. What was a supervisor meant to do? How much authority would he have on me? Clearly, I couldn't start working without one. I finally found an officer I could vaguely recognize: the veteran from the convoy. I ordered the machine to read his file.

"Earl Bailey. Senior officer. Supervisor of over 300 officers."

"Earl..." I said.

I pressed the green button that said, from the braille on its side, select.

"Your profile is incomplete. Please take your official portrait."

The screen displayed the live image of me in the cafeteria. It replayed my movements with a slight delay. I watched numbers from 3 to 1 flash quickly, one after the other. The screen froze into a blurry picture.