The Genesis Covenant

Friend

Wednesday 22nd April 2022 - 15.15

St Judes, Middle School and Orphanage - London

The Residence

I call Ami's phone, no answer, no surprise.

She considers her phone a device for her to communicate with the world, not the other way around.

She won't even answer it if it springs to life when she's using it, not even for me. I leave a message anyway.

Economics was the last class of the day and it's clearly been abandoned. The most obvious place for Ami to go is the residence. That's the on-site living quarters where myself and the other kids with no families live.

I'm so desperate to talk to Ami I start to jog as soon as I'm out of the school building.

I run the 100 meters to the opposite end of the playground and go through the chain link gate that leads to the residence.

The residence is a separate building, but it is sort of connected to the playground via a chain link tunnel which leads to a side door which is paired up with my phone and unlocks when I'm in the vicinity. All the locks in the residence work this way.

There is actually a main gate in the playground, but it's locked except in the mornings, lunchtimes and leaving time.

The residence is basically a four-floor cinder block building. Girls on the bottom two floors boys on the top two.

Each floor has 6 single rooms with shared bathrooms. Everyone gets a coffin-shaped room just big enough for a single bed, a desk and a wardrobe. To be honest it's pretty decent considering otherwise we'd have nothing. At least we get some private space. I've never complained.

There is a recreation area on the ground floor, where we can watch TV, play computer games, board games, make food, and eat. All the usual stuff.

Boys in the girl's area and vice a versa is strictly forbidden and severely punished, often with expulsion. However, it's poorly monitored and often ignored, still, I always tried to avoid trouble.

The place actually wasn't too busy, there was only 5 of us in total. It had been built 20 years ago to make schooling for orphans more effective and efficient apparently.

However, the government had gotten really good at placing kids with families. As a result, the place was pretty under utilised but there were still a few of us here.

I took the side door and back corridor to the rec room.

It was a big space with a kitchen area. All the usual amenities, cooker, fridge, freezer. There was also a bank of 24 lockable cupboards. This was to allow us to have our own food supplies. We were given a weekly allowance which we could spend online for food deliveries. It was a pretty good system and it worked well. The kitchen area included a generous white plastic table with eight chairs.

This led to a lounge area which had had a huge three-sided sofa covered in fake black leather for durability. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter and slippy all year through with enough space for 10 people. It was a truly hideous piece of furniture. A large flatscreen TV, various boxes, gubbins and various games consoles completed the entertainment dream.

No sign of Ami, she wasn't a big rec roomer, outside of when we would watch geek movies together and play some video games. Still, it had been worth a shot.

Thankfully, Salfy was there.

Salfy is Ami's floor mate, she's always hogging the rec room watching one garbage teen soap or another.