Chapter 1
“Here we go again…”
With a long sigh, the scrawny young man slid his ID card through the slot and picked up the ringing receiver.
“Hi dad…”
A loud voice boomed out of the phone, forcing the young man to pull his ear back. “Hey D-dude, you never call, so I thought I’d at least get some mail or something, but no! Mr. Bigshot apparently is too cool to call his own dad? I thought we had a deal: you either write every month or you call every two weeks! It’s been over three months, and not a sign of life from you! I understand, you moving to the big city takes up a lot of your time, but…”
While his father droned on, the young man blubbered a few excuses here and there. Three months already! It somehow felt like he hadn’t lived with his father in years. He looked at his ID, still in his hand. “Dewi Whit. Birthplace: La Manche.” His picture was horrible: he had just spent a day walking with the taxi to the city, so there was dust all over his face, which looked even bonier than usual. His brown hair was completely crazy and he was sure that he could see a piece of a leaf over his left ear… His green eyes were glazed with fatigue and his whole expression seemed to say “blech.”
The receiver blared into his ear again, startling him. “Hey kid, you listening? As I was saying, I’d love to come down to see you, but life down here at the farm has just been crazy, why just last week the cows jumped the fence and ran all the way to Gaston’s place! Can you imagine?”
Dewi looked around at the room he was in, absentmindedly letting out a word here and there: “Wow dad, that’s amazing! No dad, I didn’t know… Cool.” His mind wandered with his eyes around the room, noticing the small cracks in the paint on the ceiling and the spider webs in the corner. Next to him was a line of open cubicles, each with their own receiving phone. There was no buttons, you had to pick up the receiver and tell the operator who you wanted to talk to. It usually took about a half hour before they finally connected the call, and even then the quality was poor. The room itself was an ugly white, clean but oh so boring.
A long silence on the end of the line brought his attention back to the phone. “Dad, dad are you still there?” The phone answered with static a few jumbled sounds before his father’s voice reappeared. “Dewi? Something happened with the phone, I couldn’t hear you for a long time, are you still there?” “Yeah dad, still here.” His father seemed so enthusiastic, it was almost exasperating. “Well Dewi, you didn’t answer my question, how is it in the big city? Tell me all about it, you know I’ve always wanted to go there!”
The city… Dewi didn’t know what to tell his father. When he arrived at the borderhouse, he was assigned a room on the ground floor in a building on Main Street. An old bus was waiting to bring him and a few thirty others to their respective buildings. After waiting about an hour in the smelly, sticky bus, the driver started the engine and set out. Nobody spoke, most of those in the bus were about the same age as he was: 25, the age of withdrawal. When you reached 24, you received a letter with a list of towns and cities and you had to choose one as your future home. When you reached 25, a taxi came to pick you up and bring you to your destination of choice. Dewi had picked Newerth, the big city. Apparently, the bigger the city the smaller the space, as his room only had room for the small bed and a dresser hung on the ceiling above it. It was all he could do to avoid thinking of the family farm, where he could sleep out in the fields, in the stables, or wherever he wanted to. Now his room was only a door in a hallway of more doors, each leading to the same small room. At one end of the hallway was the communal bathroom, at the other end was the living rooms. After following a series of nondescript hallways and doors, you arrived at the phone room: a remarkably dingy place, even when compared to the rest of the building. It was as if they didn’t want people calling other people.
