Plutonians

Chapter 3

There is a brief moment of silence. The door of the cabin opens and the bot walks towards us with our food platters and drinks. Zed pounces on his plate as if he had been starving for months. We gulp few bites and quench our thirst. Zed blabbers with his mouth stuffed with food and we giggle making fun of him.

All of a sudden, in a much serious tone, he says, "It's better to see you both laughing than getting into serious radical issues. Tomorrow is a day off and the day after is our recruitment day. I know you barely remember this. After which we will be parted to different vocations, maybe Eva you could have finer days then."

Many a times Zed astonishes us by speaking mindfully. I was so daubed with my own problems that I forgot it was our last day together as students. But as Zed says, I'm never going to have unobjectionable days after recruitment.

"I had completely forgotten about the recruitment", Lara says sipping the drink left in her glass. The bots come up once we finished munching, to clear our table. We walk out of the cafe and Zed puts his arm across my shoulder.

I stare at him for a second and he gazes at me narrowing his eyes putting his other arm on Lara's shoulder. "The luckiest girls on earth", Zed says flashing his teeth. Lara and I look at him and laugh.

The next class in this society is partitioned on the basis of status, so Lara will diverge from here to her class, the one belonging to the middle class. We bid adieu to her and walk to our class. Zed still has his arm around my shoulder that makes me feel a bit awkward.

"Can you please take away your arm?" "Sorry", Zed says taking away his hand bashfully.

This class is even more mind-numbing than the others where I have to encounter the old louts. But no more pestering, for I walk with the topper of workers community! We enter the class and sit next to each other. The society has classes each having glass tables. I take out the pendant from my pocket – they call it the 'Seventh Sense', satirically considering common sense as the sixth sense! – and switch it on. Once we enter the password into it, a signal appears with the help of which we can boot a computer anywhere. In the class we use the pendant to turn the glass table into a pc.

"Eva. You have knowledge about the efel programming, right? " Zed asks booting his pc.

Efel language is one of those dynamic programs which can guarantee you a direct selection to the high-class community on recruitment day. Because of my family's scholarly milieu, I was able to learn basics of programming as a child, way before it was taught in our advanced schools. So when Anna, as a 17 year old, was learning the basics of efel program, it was unchallenging for me to grasp the language.

"Yeah just the basics and all", I reply lowly. Though I am not just capable of the ground work but have learnt much advanced languages, I never feel the urge to brag that 'hey, I am a pro at this'

"Can you teach me some of the basics? Please don't deny."

"High-class community aspirations, I see. Well we have a day off tomorrow....so at West Garden?" I say hooked to his curious eyes. It's our common place of meeting on holidays.

He flashes his famed bright smile stating approval.

_________________________________________________________

After the classes end we plod back to our community apartment and part ways to our rooms. When we entered this society we were allotted our own rooms to dwell autonomously but communal divisions still prevailed. My room was on the fifth floor while Zed lived on the ground floor and Lara resided in her community apartment.

As soon as I enter the room, I find a text message on the door dropped by Anna, a remainder of preparation for the recruitment day. I am glad to know that there is someone in my family who is apprised that I am alive and that the supposed big day of mine is approaching. I close the tab and the door opens, "Welcome back, Eva Cole".

Such domotics are inbuilt in every household of the society, like automatic internet connection once the door is unlocked and vice-versa or messaging or video conferencing or browsing or programming on any opaque object like on the front door or on walls or on glass tables as in classrooms or assigning domestic bots for household activities.

Fortunately, these automation systems are at everyone's fingertips without any discrimination. But cooking is the painful chore that humans have to carry out themselves, especially the workers' wards. The justification given by the administrators is that they cannot fritter away resources merely for the contentment of 'human gluttony'- and by 'humans' they mean the workers community pupils. The statement itself is pointless and a fatuous defense.

Yet these are the only things in this society that amuses me to a great extent and is the reason why I don't desire for selection to any other community but instead to my own community. On recruitment day those who will get picked for the upper class community will be assigned professions like administrators or scientists or researchers. 

While those who will be selected to the middle class community will be delegated to vocations like that of professors or government secretariats or programmers of AI doctors.

Those apparent dimwits who will get selected to the lower class community are relegated to jobs like programming, mending malfunctioned bots, creating domotics, patrolling and controlling military droids and drones and many more. 

It is the only class where one can choose among the options available contrasting to other communities where one is consigned an occupation on the basis of a person's versatility.

Protean thinkers are mostly sought after, for designation to upper class communities. In order to get allocation in either of higher communities, one ought to be prolific in every subject-matter. I could never comprehend how versatility could be the touchstone for recruitment since at the end a person has to handle a single niche. 

This is why I have a prejudiced attitude towards the norms over here. Astonishingly, no one has ever opposed such systems or rebuked against this.

Anna was impressively recruited to the middle class community and according to her merits she became a government secretariat. She was eligible of getting into the upper community, but the recruiters could not place a worker lass in a superior class, so straightforwardly. It does not go well with their spirits.

But still this recruitment or transmutation of community exists so as to muster the best of all and always keep us geared up for warfare. Ma and Pa remained in the lower class, even though they were so brilliant. But they have never answered me, what made them choose monotonous vocations like patrolling nation borders and controlling the military droids.

I have not talked with them since long; neither do they ever call me. I feel I should call them myself instead of waiting for a miracle to happen. Besides tomorrow I will be wrapped up with many tasks –to teach Zed the basics of efel program, discuss with Lara and spend our last day together. Switching on the pendant and turning a portion of wall into a pc, I try to connect them for a video conference. Pick up.

The ringing sound ceases and a face appears on the screen with brown eyes and blonde hair drawn into a taut bun. Below the picture comes her name – Kylie Cole. Ma.