The Farm

Chapter Two

The bell rang and I heard the corridor outside my room come to life as everyone filed out to head back into the lobby for orientation. I debated staying put and seeing what would happen, but figured day one was a little early to push my luck, especially as I wasn't sure yet what I planned to do with the seven days ahead of me. I didn't want to count myself out of the game just yet. As I unwrapped my hair from the brown turban I'd covered it in for the journey, I heard a soft knocking at my door and reluctantly got up to open it. Harrison was standing on the other side, looking sheepish. "Hi, Ariel," he said, looking a little more together after the time alone to compose himself, "do you want to head out?" I nodded, and he grinned. He had a nice smile, and expressive eyes, the colour I imagine a puddle in a woodland would be, reflecting golds and greens and browns. I mean, I'd never been in a wood. But I'd seen archive photographs.

We headed up the corridor together, and I couldn't help but notice that he almost had a spring in his step. "I figured you'd be sort of ginger," he said, giving me an appreciative nod, "it's nice. It suits you." It didn't make sense to me why he'd end up here, he was good-looking enough. A little sensitive perhaps, but lots of people would feel that way about being split from their family. I hadn't noticed any brothers or sisters in the pod with his parents, maybe he was an only child? In which case no wonder his mother had been so distraught. Some people were just unlucky, I guess. He didn't strike me as... you know. He just didn't. 

We weren't the last two to emerge from the dorms; a blonde-haired girl burst through her door and pelted past us, leaving a cloud of passionfruit scent behind her. She was keen to impress, I suppose. Her glossy waves were a sure sign that her family was at least fair-to-moderately-monied. That or her family had just happened to have owned a lot of beauty products before the bombs dropped. We learned in school that different families had had very different priorities in the days running up to MAD Day, when everyone who could reach a safe place had bunkered underground or in domes, or wherever they could find shelter for 40 days. Everyone had already been keeping their food and drink in covered vaults for months, as well as the supplies they thought they would need in the hopefully unlikely (but ultimately inevitable) event that we had to rebuild the world from the soil up. It was an enterprising few who started to stockpile non-essentials, like perfumes, luxury fabrics, musical instruments, even pets. I guess I was grateful I didn't have to live through those early days of recreating the planet. The losses, the sacrifices, the relentless, crippling terror. My grandfather used to tell me stories that gave me nightmares.

We followed the smell of exotic fruit up the hallway, hitting the atrium just as Gottfried was stepping up to the microphone. Hanson was nowhere to be seen, for which I was grateful. His shiny head and smart suit made me more anxious than I'd like to admit to. It wasn't a look you saw often, outside of government buildings, even the sight of a tie was enough to stir up a kind of shuddering nervousness. "Right, ladies and gentlemen," Gottfried spoke gently, but with the boost from the speakers she made a vibrating echo around the room, "today's activities are led by gender, so if you'd like to divide down the middle, the men to my left and the girls on my right." Harrison looked down at me apologetically before splitting off to join the other male prisoners. I shuffled to the other side of the room, and quickly realised that I was the shortest woman here. When I got my letter, saying that I'd have to go to the Cathedral, I'd had no clear idea of how many of us there would be. We had certainly all been led to believe, at school and via rumour, that we were an aberrant minority, that everyone else could fall into line with ease and leave a tiny failed few to be forced into place, broken in like new boots. Maybe my group was an anomaly, but we weren't few at all. I tried a quick headcount and, myself included, there were nine girls here. My class at school had only had seven. But then, I supposed, this was nine girls my age, born in the same month, from the entire country. It was difficult to really grasp what kind of a percentage that was. So much of the land was uninhabitable waste, entire towns and villages were evacuated to the Six Cities, and in the hundred years since had been left empty. How many girls were there my age? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?