Chapter 7 ~ Noah
In the metal locker with Anna’s name on it, she found exercise shorts and a loose-fitting top, both in a white absorbent material she’d never seen before. They were very comfortable, and she would have been content to wear the outfit all day, every day. The exercises were led by citizens who were graduates of the GTF program. Everything about them was the picture of health, starting with their unstreaked hair and continuing through unwrinkled faces to curvaceous bodies. They were the female equivalents of Vass, the young man who’d administered one of Anna’s Import tests: a Burban boy who’d been through the Defenders program and was now a Dome citizen, third class.
We’re going to keep seeing examples of what happens to successful grads. But, hey, I wouldn’t mind looking like that in a few years. Or right now.
Anna thought about Noah for a moment, about how he’d look wearing gym shorts and nothing else, and nearly tripped over her feet. They were doing jumping jacks.
Cram it. He’s out of your league.
She had no trouble keeping up with the exercises. In the weeks to come, they’d probably get more strenuous, but for the time being, her mind had plenty of time to wander.
It wandered back to Noah, this time without his gym shorts.
Oh, why not? Fantasy is just fantasy.
Anna finished the exercise period in a happy daze. The shower she took was an abrupt return to reality, as was the fact that her next activity was a group tour with the others who’d come in on the same skimmer as she had—lead by Noah.
Her cheeks were burning, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice. Or if he did, he’d put it down to the exertion of exercise followed by a hot shower.
Lila, a friend on the skimmer, came up to Anna and whispered, “He is so handsome. I wouldn’t mind if he was the father of my program babies.”
“Lila, that is gross. We’re not supposed to know the donors.”
“I’d make an exception for him, wouldn’t you?”
“Shh, we’re starting the tour,” Anna said.
“Ladies,” Noah said, “just a reminder, my name is Noah Parson. The first place we’re going to visit is the café. I know most of you have been there already, but there are some features you need to learn about. Any questions before we get started?”
Lila had one. “Why were you a Defender the last time we saw you and a tour guide now?”
Noah was wearing a red uniform that Anna had heard designated a public service citizen.
“I, uh, am being trained for a management role in the GTF program. You’ll see me around in several roles as I learn different parts of the program.”
“Does that mean you’re an Admin?” Lila asked.
Noah nodded. Whispers broke out among the group of girls.
Anna rolled her eyes. Oh, great. I’ve been fantasizing about a nude Admin. Talk about out of my league!
Admins were the top-ranking citizens in the Dome. There weren’t very many of them, and everyone in the Dome reported through a chain of command to an Admin. The positions were hereditary, so one or both of Noah’s parents were Admins.
Beth had a question too. “Where does all the clean laundry come from, and the clean towels in the gym?”
“That’s all done by menials,” Noah said. “Imported from the Burbs at the age of twelve. You all know about that, may have known someone who became a menial. They have the privilege of living in the Dome but don’t have citizenship. They can’t even acquire citizenship by marrying a citizen, so there isn’t much motivation for a citizen to marry a menial.”
“Except love,” Anna said.
“Of course, except love.”
“Are the menials slaves?” Beth persisted.
“No. Nobody owns them. They’re more like volunteers.”
“Can they leave?”
“They don’t want to. They work hard here—thirty hours a week—but they like living in the comfort and safety of the Dome. They live longer than they do outside, and when they’re injured or too old to work, we take care of them. Let’s move on.”
Was Noah uncomfortable talking about the menials, or just on a tight schedule?
The tour was very useful. Getting around using the tubes was a wild ride. After stepping onto a disk floating in air at a boarding station, Anna felt her body wrapped by a curtain of air to keep her upright. She spoke her destination—Noah had given them each three places to visit—and her disk moved silently away down a transparent tube toward a merge station. She could move her arms and legs a little, but couldn’t fall off. At the merge station, she was smoothly inserted into faster moving traffic in a larger tube. She didn’t know if all the tubes were transparent, but the ones Noah had sent her through offered a clear view of the surroundings she passed through. She traveled up, down, and sideways, never feeling any worry or instability. Outside she saw parks, office and residence buildings, what she assumed was a zoo though she’d never seen one, children playing on platforms floating hundreds of feet in the air. People dressed in the colorful, silky clothing she wore or jumpsuits of a single color: green for Defenders, red for public servants as Noah currently was, light blue for menials, other colors she didn’t recognize yet. Anna was crazy about tubing and reluctant to end her exploration of the Dome when she arrived back at the starting point where Noah was counting to make sure he hadn’t lost anyone.
Beth wasn’t impressed with tubing and in fact had lost some color from her cheeks.
“That was great! How do I explore on my own without knowing more than three stations?” Anna asked Noah.
“You can call up a tube map on your computer in your room,” he said. “You can also get on and say, ‘Next Station.’ You can see a lot of interesting places that way. You won’t be taken anywhere dangerous or off-limits. You need a pass for those areas. When you’re done, just say, ‘GTF Block 28,’ and you’ll go home.”
No wonder we have an exercise program to stay fit. We don’t have to do much walking or running here!
Not only did they learn their way around the block, they got to meet some of the girls who were over sixteen and in various stages of pregnancy. Noah disappeared at lunch, leaving a large group to chat in the café, technically named the Starlite Café. There were a lot more girls in the room than the last time Anna had been in the café. She felt as if she were floating in a pink sea, with all the GTF uniforms around her. The pink uniform was for everyday use on program business, and like the exercise outfit, was more comfortable than anything she’d worn in Nampa.
Anna and Beth sat with a very pregnant young woman named Teress whose fourth child was due in two weeks.
“I’m only twenty years old,” Teress said. “Drop this one”—she patted her enormous belly—“and I’ll be a citizen. Then Davide and I are getting married.” She extended her left hand and waggled her fingers. On her fourth finger was a silver ring with a small red gemstone surrounded by clear crystals.
Beth was all ears. “You are? I thought the program girls weren’t allowed to associate with boys, and you’re engaged!”
“Oh, we can associate with boys. We just can’t do the deed. The boys all know it and they’re really careful because there’s a terrible penalty for doing it with a program girl.”
“Penalty?”
Teress made her fingers into scissors and snipped across the air.
Beth looked puzzled. Anna nudged her.
“Oh! They cut off their . . . ”
Teress nodded. “Off with their swingers. A boy has to be seriously in love and willing to wait for a program girl. Besides, the boys get to see us big and pregnant. It has to be love to last through that. Although I have to say I’m gonna miss having these big milkers.”
“Let me get this straight,” Anna said. “What exactly is the limit before snip, snip? Kissing? Touching? Anything but joining of parts?”
“I like the way you think, girl,” Teress said. “Anything that could possibly, even remotely, get a program girl pregnan
t gets the snip treatment. Believe me, the boys set their own limits—on the cautious side. And they always seem to know if you’re seeing a boy, no matter how hard you try to hide it.”
Teress was radiating friendly emotions. Anna found herself really liking her, and a bit sad that Teress was so far along in the program that she’d be leaving before Anna really got started.
Beth and I would have made a good trio with her. Too bad.
“That’s a neat trick,” Anna said. “So they snoop on us?”
Teress reached out and patted her hand. “Poor, naïve cub. Of course they do. But as far as I know, not in our rooms. In public areas only.” She wiggled her eyebrows upward toward the ceiling, where Anna suddenly became aware of camouflaged cameras.
“So now they know I wanted to find out about the limits,” Anna said with a laugh. “Who’s they, anyway?”
Teress wrote something on her napkin, folded it, and passed it to Anna. Anna opened it carefully, hiding it with her hand. Inside was written the sex police.
Anna kept her face neutral. “You’re kidding, right?”
Teress shook her head. “It’s broader than that. Play by the rules, girls. See you soon.”
Anna fell quiet after that, probably thinking it was a good idea in more than one way that Logan hadn’t qualified for the Defenders. Burban boys weren’t known for keeping their virginity beyond their teen years, and Beth and Logan were both impetuous. If Logan was in the Dome with her for four or five long years….
“Still missing Logan quite as much?” Anna said.
“Of course I am,” Beth snapped back. Then she sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about him, but maybe it’s better this way. We did want to have children, after I took a long break from baby making in this program! We want to have fun on our own while we’re young before we settle down. Anna, what if he finds someone else in Nampa while I’m stuck in here?”
Anna could feel the intensity of the emotions from her friend. She reached out for Beth’s hand, as Teress had held Anna’s.
“I know my twin. He’ll be loyal to you. The time will go fast,” Anna said. “You’ll see. You two will get back together.”