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Recorder

By Cathy McCrumb

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Prologue
Personal Record: Recorder Zeta4542910-95451E
Consortium Training Center Alpha, Northern Hemisphere, New Triton
Standard Year 464, First Quarter

I did not have a name—none of us did—but once when I was young, I had a friend.

Early in my tenth year I slipped away from the other girls of my cohort. Their approved games did not interest me, and since I had fulfilled my physical activity requirements, I took refuge at my favorite place near the artificial brook.

Light sparkled on water rippling over smooth brown stones. Either the brook’s engineers or its gentle flow had sculpted rounded banks in the loam, and lavender and thyme grew between orange lilies. The self-pollinating plants bobbed and dipped in the breeze created by the giant fans in the lofty, domed ceiling. It was a close approximation of a real brook, from what I had read, and its murmur muted the subdued noise of the other children.

Without regard to whether my action might stain my grey uniform, I sank onto a bed of moss and breathed in the lavender-scented air, concentrating on the water’s burble until footsteps interrupted my solitude. Shoulders tensed, I closed my eyes briefly and inhaled before turning toward the sound.

A child from an older cohort threaded his way through the lavender and rocks. Though taller than I, his face was still rounded, so perhaps he had not yet reached puberty. Thick black lashes curled around silvery eyes that glanced from me to the brook. He sighed, then lowered himself onto the moss. We sat together and watched water ripple over rocks.

At length, I said, “The brook is quiet.”

“Yes. I prefer quiet.” He picked up a pebble and turned it over and over in his hands before tossing it into the water. “Did you—have you ever made a boat?”

I shook my head. He plucked several long, wide lily leaves and showed me how to weave them into shapes. For nearly forty-seven minutes, we made boats, affixing lavender stems for masts and setting them free on the water. I had never been so content. The bell tolled twice, and he left the way he came. I returned to my own cohort.

The boy and his boats occupied my mind the following day. During free reading time, I skimmed through old texts until I found the correct word. After mathematics, I slipped away to the brook again, where he sat, apparently awaiting my appearance. He inclined his head once in my direction, and I nodded back before kneeling beside him. We plucked lily leaves, carefully selecting them from different plants to avoid weakening any one in particular, and he sorted them by size. We sat side by side and wordlessly resumed building boats.

It was almost time to return before I summoned the courage to ask, “Have you read about friends?”

“Yes.” His silver-grey eyes met mine, but the bells rang, and we separated to rejoin our cohorts.

The next day was a Tour Day. I disliked Tour Days. The citizens who came through stared at us as if we were laboratory specimens and spoke in poorly constructed sentences. Our Recorder had explained that most citizens believed their tightly fitted, brightly colored clothing expressed individuality, though I did not understand their reasoning. They had names and chose their own destinies. Surely, such distinctions of personality should have sufficed. Hair covered their heads, and their eyebrows waggled up and down when they talked, like matching caterpillars crawling across their faces.

While studying life cycles in biology, we had raised real caterpillars. One Recorder had disciplined me when I refused to touch them. Recorders and Elders discouraged imagination, but the similarity between those woolly creatures and citizens’ eyebrows made me shudder. How could citizens think with all that hair coming out of their heads? It disturbed me not to see the clean, natural shape of their skulls.

That day, the dark man with angled eyebrows and long, thick cords of black hair returned. He had missed only three Tour Days since I first noticed him. Despite his hair, he dressed respectfully, though his charcoal tunic was darker than the grey we wore. The man did not prattle and point, as others did, but watched the cohorts carefully while we played or exercised quietly on the turf near the botanical gardens.

This time, however, his nut-brown eyes met mine, and his mouth tipped upward. I cocked my head, trying to remember the appropriate response, then forced my lips up in return. His smile grew, but his eyes held steady and did not crinkle around the corners.

“Hello.” His voice was so deep it startled me.

I glanced back. No Elder intervened, so I assumed I had permission to speak.

“Hello,” I said.

The man searched my face but did not appear to find what he sought. “Are you . . . happy?”

“‘Happiness is irrelevant,’” I quoted.

An Elder stepped to my side, placing a hand on my shoulder and motioning back at his drones, which hovered behind him, long tendrils moving slowly beneath their bellies. I peered at the tall, dark man, to study his face, to memorize it. The man stared at the Elder’s hand, and his eyebrows pulled together over his nose. A muscle ticced in his jaw. The Elder positioned himself between us, though I peeked under his arm to watch the man, whose long cords of hair swung out when he turned around.

The tour moved along. The man was leaving. Suddenly, the need to speak outpaced the need for permission. I stepped in front of the Elder, ignoring the way his grey, pupilless eyes were shifting from the man to me.

Though the man did not see me, I raised my hand. “Goodbye!”

He spun around. The Elder’s grip tightened, and his three drones whirred behind us. The man walked backward to keep his eyes on mine while he and the rest of the citizens passed into the Consortium’s low, grey buildings squatting under the faded blue of the riveted ceiling high above.

I wanted to tell him something, but there was nothing to tell.

Once the solid doors slid shut behind the tour group, the Elder released me. Still, I watched the building.

“You did not have leave to speak to the citizen.” The Elder’s tone was gentle. “You knew not to do so.”

I turned to face him, the protest rising to my lips without forethought. “But, Elder, you said nothing. I could not have known when no one told me to remain silent.”

The Elder’s eyebrowless forehead furrowed, and his mouth pinched into a tight line. For five seconds, his eyelids dropped to hide nanodevice-covered corneas. His eyes moved as if he read, or perhaps as if he dreamed. Perhaps he consulted other Elders over the Consortium network. I did not know.

Behind him, the children from my cohort stared at us, wide-eyed, and Recorders attempted to redirect their attention.

The Elder exhaled slowly. “I have consulted records and two other Elders. While what you say contains an element of truth, our consensus is that you did indeed know. Falsehood is not tolerated. There is no place for untruth in the Consortium. Dishonesty and infidelity are abominations.”

The spherical body of his larger slave drone descended silently, and I braced myself. One of its long, narrow appendages slithered around my shoulders, the end resting lightly on my throat. I gritted my teeth, and my mouth went dry in anticipation.

Pain shot through me, and my fingers went numb.

The reprimand was the worst I had ever received.

When I had wiped the moisture from my cheeks, the other children were filing away, only one or two risking a peek in our direction. The Elder knelt in front of me, one hand at his side, the other fisted tightly over his abdomen.

“You must learn,” he murmured softly, and it was difficult to hear him over the ringing in my ears. “You show promise. Perhaps, with greater focus . . .” His fingers flexed, and he sighed before blinking once. The grey nanodevices spiraled back from his eyes, revealing irises as dark brown as my own, darker than the sandy loam by the brook.

My breath caught. I had never seen an Elder’s eyes.

“You must take care, little one. I, myself, do not wish to reprimand you again.” The corner of his mouth drooped briefly. “On subsequent Tour Days, you will work in the Scriptorium. You will not interact with citizens.”

His slave drone released me, and I fell back a pace. Nanodevices once more shrouded the Elder’s irises, and after he dismissed me, I returned to our dormitory, my thoughts shifting from the man to the Elder and his drones, and then to the boy and his boats.

That night, in the deepest dark, while the other children slept, I allowed myself to cry.

Throughout the next day, my inattention merited several mild reprimands before I escaped the Elders and my cohort. I again sought the brook’s solitude, and its peacefulness quieted me.

I was pleased when the boy arrived.

Before we built anything, I spoke. “Yesterday was a Tour Day.”

He inclined his head once. “Yes. I am sent to the Scriptorium on Tour Days.”

“Have you seen them?” I asked. “The citizens?”

“No, I have not, though I have seen documentaries.”

I shuddered. “They have hair.”

He waited. The Elders taught waiting allowed reluctant communicators time to complete their thoughts.

“I saw a man.”

“Oh.” He was not questioning, merely making an appropriate conversational response. I appreciated his courtesy.

“He has toured before, but this time, he spoke to me.”

“Why?” The boy’s eyes remained on mine while he plucked the lilies’ wide leaves. Their faint pops momentarily distracted me.

“I do not know. He appeared sad.”

The boy was losing interest. I should have known my story would interest no one but myself. Still, I needed to clarify. “He smiled at me.”

“But . . . smiles indicate happiness.”

“He asked if I am happy, but happiness is irrelevant. Then, an Elder noticed our conversation. I said goodbye.”

“Oh,” he said again, but I knew he understood what had followed.

“He did not issue a reprimand immediately.”

The boy did not comment on the delay in discipline. A shadow, as if from a cloud, crossed his face, but the council had not added clouds to the programming. Emotion. It must have been an emotion.

“I wish I were not reprimanded so often. I wish you were not, either.” His mouth turned down. “I dislike reprimands.”

“I also dislike them.”

We gathered materials in silence and built more boats.

When the bells sounded, the boy placed his last boat on the water. It traveled past the low rocks and rich brown loam of the bend, and we stood side by side, watching it disappear.

“I have read about friends.” He faced me. “Having one could prove beneficial.”

“I confess a secret.” My words spilled out as I wiped my palms dry on my leggings.

His eyes widened at the audacity of my statement.

“I want to have a friend. Someday.”

A smile crept across his face, crinkling the edges of his silvery eyes. “Having a friend is a good plan.”

At every opportunity over the next ten-day, I waited by the brook. I made no boats, since the boy never came. An unfamiliar listlessness slowed my steps and drew consequences when I once again lost focus on my lessons.

The last day I went to the brook, I saw him on the paths winding through the botanical gardens and understood at once that he would no longer build boats.
A personal shadow drone—his shadow drone—hovered a meter behind him, one long tentacle extending from under its jellyfish-like form, resting around his neck to establish a proper connection with his neural implant. He started toward me, but the drone issued a reprimand. The boy stiffened with pain.

I stared, eyes wide.

He mouthed the word, “Friends.”

To spare him further discipline, I said nothing. Instead, I offered a smile.

I understood sad smiles, then, and I did not return to the brook.

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