Chapter 3 – Equal Opportunity
“Don’t forget Nick Kallas! He’s hiding over there in his grandmother’s arms. He also wore the Libertines’ patch on his sleeve.”
All five foot, two inches of Mary Lopez’s figure, chiseled straight and hard by a regimen of morning and night calisthenics conducted in her crowded apartment on the thirty-seventh floor of the New Trenton housing stack, coiled like a snake as her dark eyes glared at the elderly woman who trembled while hugging her frightened grandson.
“He didn’t mean anything by it, Mary,” the grandmother pleaded.
Mary scowled. “I don’t care what he meant, Cassandra. He looked mighty proud of that Libertine patch when he and his friends wrapped stones in their foul leaflets and threw them through every apartment window their arms could reach.”
“He only wore that patch that one afternoon, and throwing rocks through windows wasn’t his idea.” Cassandra gripped her grandson closer. “It’s so hard to be young these days. The young ones have only known a spent world. They want so badly to go to the stars that the despair clutches them each time the lottery announces that another housing stack’s won the chance to travel to the stars. It’s not fair to expect those kids aren’t going to make mistakes, especially when a boy like my Nick never knew his mother and father, rest their souls.”
Mary spat upon the ground and turned towards the security forces dressed in their riot helmets.
“You all heard the woman!” Mary pointed at Nick. “She just admitted that the child joined ranks with the Libertines. What are all of you waiting for?”
Cassandra sobbed as a security officer stepped towards her grandson with a sparking riot stick.
“Please, Mary! Call them off!” Cassandra cried. “We don’t know where they’ll take him.”
“I don’t care where they take him! Just as long as he doesn’t get a ticket to my new planet!”
The boy’s legs turned limp, and his knees thumped onto the ground when the security officer touched the riot stick to the boy’s thigh and wrenched him out of Cassandra’s grasp. The grandmother wailed and vainly slapped at the helmeted officer. Desperate, she looked to the faces of her neighbors, but no one standing in New Trenton’s courtyard took a step forward to deliver any type of solace or mercy. Braving a security officer dressed in full riot gear was not an easy thing to do. Facing Mary Lopez was even harder.
John Evans, the man who those of the New Trenton housing stack regarded as an unofficial mayor, cleared his throat as a second security officer moved toward Cassandra and her grandson.
“Hold on a moment.” The second security officer paused, though he didn’t turn around to face John. “Listen, Mary. There’s going to be plenty of room on the starliner that will jump us into the stars, and everyone’s going to get a settler’s rig once we arrive at the planet. There’s no reason to wrench that young man away from Cassandra, the only family that boy’s ever known.”
Mary’s eyes simmered with fury. “I thought you were too smart to fall for such a sob show, John. It’s not my fault that boy threw in with the Libertines. He’s old enough to have known what the consequences were going to be. The way I see it, keeping that boy grounded here on Earth means there’s one less settler I’m going to have to compete against once my rigs sets down on my new world.”
Many gathered in that courtyard nodded.
Cassandra cried. “I can’t believe how cruel everyone becomes after our stack wins the lottery. I can’t believe how cruel everyone turns after we all win what we’ve spent so many years praying for. I never locked my door to any of you, and this is how you repay me? If my grandson Nick doesn’t lift into the heavens, then neither will I!”
Mary smiled. Her feet remained planted firmly upon old Earth, but she was already winning at the game. “I’m not going to cry because of your absence.”
John sighed. “The lottery’s not going to spread whatever supplies Nick and Cassandra no longer need among us Mary. There’s little to be gained by keeping Nick off of the starliner.”
“I know the lottery’s rules and procedures as well as you,” scoffed Mary.
“They’ll be more than enough room for all of us on the planet that’s waiting for us.”
“I don’t believe that,” Mary shook her head. “He wore the Libertines’ patch, and so he doesn’t get to go. The law is the law, John.”
Mary smiled as she watched the security officers escort Nick and Cassandra to the windowless bus that coughed exhaust as it idled on the narrow roadway snaking through the debris surrounding the New Trenton housing stack. Mary didn’t believe the rumors regarding where the security forces delivered those citizens suspected of involvement with the Libertines; she thought the dark rumors so many whispered regarding what happened to those Libertines shipped away from the housing stacks were only silly products created by the imaginations of neighbors with too much free time upon their hands. Some claimed that there were blocks of new housing stacks built with the sole aim of rehabilitating the populace who gravitated too far towards a Libertine’s way of thinking. Some claimed that massive penitentiaries fenced with laser wire and guard dogs were daily being built in the middle of Earth’s most toxic and unforgiving wastes to separate the dangerous Libertine philosophy from the masses. The darkest rumors even suggested that those windowless busses filled with Libertines kept appointments with giant ovens, that the smoke seen rising out of the west was nothing less than the ghosts of the Libertine dead. Mary didn’t care where the windowless busses took their cargo. What mattered most to her was that there would be two less individuals against which to compete after the lottery delivered her to the waiting, new world.
A last security officer looked back at those standing in the courtyard. “Anyone else?”
None in the crowd offered any names more as they stared at their shoes. Mary knew that to accuse anyone else threatened any advantage she had achieved, and so she slowly shook her head. Those of New Trenton held their breath and prayed that the security forces would finally leave their stack. Those men dressed in their riot gear had arrived unannounced early that morning, less than eight hours after the lottery offices had proclaimed that those of New Trenton would be granted mankind’s newest planet among the stars. Thus, they caught the stack’s inhabitants, many who still celebrated the news with bottles of homemade wine, off-guard. The men behind the dark visors of their riot helmets had sifted through every apartment searching for any hint that an individual may have colluded with the Libertines, and they had collected close to three-dozen citizens whose homes had presented ample evidence of nefarious activity to earn them a seat on a windowless bus instead of a starliner.
The number of neighbors collected by the security officers didn’t surprise Mary. She had been warning John Evans about how dangerously the Libertine influence was growing within New Trenton for months, and she had begged the man to take steps to weed out those subversive elements. No one seemed to believe her when she argued that every Libertine in their housing tower further harmed their chances to be selected by the planetary lottery, just as no one appeared motivated to clear as much debris surrounding the stack as possible to improve their odds of winning a new world. She could never encourage her neighbors to compete for the lottery office’s prize. They had remained lazy, and Mary had feared New Trenton would never have the opportunity to lift into the stars, and so she had come to resent being born within a stack filled with such unambitious people, to a community of citizens who failed to recognize how the planets were reserved for the prosperous.
Yet, miraculously, New Trenton had won a planetary lottery despite all of the faults of the housing stack’s people. Mary doubted she would ever understand the logic that drove the lottery. She didn’t think her neighbors represented a very promising batch of humanity to deliver to a new world. She didn’t believe her neighbors possessed the character that was needed to tame and civilize a new home.
The crowd in the courtyard sighed as the windowl
ess bus pulled away from New Trenton. Everyone hesitated to return to his or her apartment. Perhaps they remained numb from that morning’s surprise visit by the men dressed in riot gear.
John made his way to Mary before entering the housing tower. “You don’t think having so many of our neighbors being taken away in one of those busses hurts our chances of surviving once we arrive at our new world?”
Mary snorted. “I don’t expect to get much help from the people living in this stack. Are you going to say we’re all going to have to support one another once we arrive off world if we hope to survive? I certainly hope you’re not going to suggest that we’re going to need to pool our settler kits together on the pretense of making the most of our supplies.”
John nodded. “You think that’s foolish? Klondike. New Mount. Blue Marble. All three of those planets are thriving colonies - all of them examples where colonists share their resources and work together to make the most of their new homes.”
“You give New Trenton too much credit by putting us in such company,” Mary laughed. “Who’s to say a dozen more colonies haven’t failed with the same approach? You know as well as I that the lottery offices never report any of the failures. No thank you, John Evans. The only person I’m going to rely on when I reach the new world is myself.”
“You think you have an advantage over the rest of us?”
“I know I do.”
John shook his head. “It’s going to take more than push-ups and sit-ups, Mary. This isn’t a game. This is about survival.”
“And that isn’t a game?”
John walked away from Mary and returned to the housing stack. Mary shook her head at the foolish man. She would waste no time following John Evans. She avoided the housing stack’s elevator and instead took a little exercise by climbing the stairs leading to her home on the tower’s thirty-seventh floor. Her extra cardio would serve her well upon the waiting, new world.
The security forces hadn’t wasted their time by putting any of Mary’s belongings back into their proper places after ransacking her apartment, and much of her clothing and jewelry sprawled about the floor. The clutter made her confines appear even smaller, for her allotted space had already been monopolized by a narrow cot, microwave and radio. But Mary smiled to see that security had not rummaged through the plastic bin of components she had gathered from that wreckage surrounding New Trenton. Mary’s hands quickly assembled the pieces in that box, smiling at how each one clicked together. She had been wise in resisting her urge to finalize her weapon’s assembly. She had felt an itch since pulling its final component from the salvage to display her handiwork upon her apartment’s wall, so that her neighbors might appreciate her ingenuity and expertise. Mary had resisted that urge. Instead, she had kept those pieces separated within a box, so that security failed to recognize the whole each component served.
Mary concentrated as her hands completed the last gestures that locked the final pieces together. The tool in her hands would give her a competitive advantage. Lottery procedure would gift each resident an identical settler rig once they arrived at their new planet, a sturdy craft engineered to descend through a planet’s atmosphere before unfolding upon its landing site into a comfortable, temporary shelter. The lottery as well supplied each settler with a kit of foodstuffs, medical supplies and equipment, a cache of resources the surveying crews sent to scout the planets judged necessary to tame a wild world. Mary knew the lottery offices worked diligently to insure that each settler faced a level playing field once they stepped onto a new world. She knew how hard the lottery tried to follow their guarantee that ethic, ingenuity and work thrived on the colonized worlds, so that heritage, inheritance and name didn’t determine who flourished amid the stars.
Mary giggled to think of such naïve prattle as her hands continued to click and snap the salvaged components into place. Rules were for the timid. She was brave, and she had made herself strong. She would grab what others hesitated to own. Mary planned and prepared for her advantage, and she knew she had realized it when she heard that final part snap into position.
“It’s an intimidating weapon, especially once I load the barb,” Mary lifted the barrel to her face and smiled to see how well she had aligned the sites. “I wish it wasn’t so heavy, but nothing in those piles of ruin outside the tower is light. Hopefully, the lottery doesn’t check the weight of their settler rigs before they drop us into the descent. With a little luck, I’ll be packing something with a little more kick than the air rifles they supply us for defense.”
The harpoon gun felt solid enough in her grip. It may have not been a very elegant creation, certainly nothing like some of the necklaces and rings some of those in the housing stack crafted from the debris. Still, Mary thought it a very appropriate tool, for she would lift into the heavens to civilize a new wild, not to charm any man.
As that lottery billboard outside her apartment window proclaimed, the planets were for the prosperous.
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