Chapter 3: Chat

Like every other unusual occurrence in 329’s life, his uninvited guest’s night visit gradually fades into the distance. Life must continue.

He holds three jobs, eats, sleeps, exercises in his limited free time. Omega Exiles enjoy another piece of social welfare: a free physical examination every quarter. If the examination shows an omega to be intentionally self-harming or incapable of taking care of themselves, the government will “provide aid,” sending them into a public Omega Welfare Center to receive the best of care.

Omegas in the Welfare Center receive the most nutritious food, the best medical care, and most comfortable work-life balance. They don’t have to do any work—all they have to do is become either a “Mother” or a “Lover”. The two roles are divided up according to physical condition; the doctors put a stamp in your wristcom, marking out the better genes for reproduction. The omega spends the next decades popping out citizens, or, alternately, spends the next decades soothing the restless hearts and bodies of unmated alphas. It’s all for the public good. What can you do when artificial wombs are cost-ineffective, and prostitution is illegal?

For the time being, 329’s in no danger of receiving aid—he does his best to stay in shape. If he works hard enough, he’ll be able to remove his collar in thirty years’ time, pay off his sentence, retiring at about the same age as a normal person. As for what he’ll do in thirty years’ time without savings or a pension, that’s a concern for later.

It’s been a normal day. Nothing out of the usual.

In the morning, one of the guys bumps into 329, nearly shoving him under the wheels of a cart. By the time 329 gets up, he’s gotten away. He also wears a collar—an alpha Exile. He gives 329 a dirty look before running off, looking not at all sorry for knocking him over. Exiles aren’t allowed to socialize with each other; 329 hasn’t met many others like him in the last year. The few times he’s interacted with them, it hasn’t been particularly friendly. If an Alpha or Beta Exile is unable to work, they’re abandoned to a lonely death, but Omegas have a way out. It’s impossible not to garner resentment.

The new guy on 329’s team messed up and broke the separating machine, so at noon, his workplace confiscates the entire team’s lunch. 329 goes to guzzle down some water; when he comes back, he finds the new guy lying on the ground. They hadn’t held back, beating him up. 329 reaches out a hand to help him up, only for it to be slapped aside. The guy clambers up and hurriedly walks away, his head down the entire time.

As for the afternoon, the factory boss is a hardcore supporter of the Consul, and as usual, during the news broadcast, he orders the workers to stop and applaud at the screen. The Lord Consul waves onscreen, his son standing two paces behind him. There’s no title for a Consul’s son, but everyone calls him the Crown Prince on the down-low. After all, the highest office in the Protected Area has been passed down within the same family for generations. The Lord Consul held an audience with some dignitary or another; the dignitary indicated that the situation in the borderlands is certain to improve, the mobs are certain to be put down, so on and so forth. No important news; it’s all the same talking points as usual.

With his afternoon shift over, 329 can finally eat his first meal of the day.

He gnaws on the compressed biscuit. This stuff is cheap, and ensures he gets basically the nutrients of a meal, but it tastes like wood shavings, hard and dry. You have to hold it in your mouth for a while before it gets soft enough to chew. 329 heads for his rented room as he eats. There’s a little over half an hour before his night job, long enough for him to change clothes.

When he opens the door, there’s already someone inside his home.

The young alpha sits on the bed, since this place is too cheap and cramped to have tables or chairs. This time, Yasha is awake. The moment 329 walks in, she bounds to her feet and greets him with a smile. “Good evening!”

“…Good evening,” says 329.

“I’m terribly sorry for leaving unannounced last time. I had to get home, or my parents would worry,” says Yasha, her face the picture of contrition. “You were so soundly asleep that I couldn’t bear to wake you. Did you sleep well last time? You look much better than you did before. It’s wonderful to see.”

“I still have work tonight—” says 329.

“The traffic light on 6th Street malfunctioned. There was an accident not long ago. I’m afraid the store you work at won’t be able to open tonight,” says Yasha. “Do you need me to show you the related news report?”

329 doesn’t say anything. She brings up the news anyway, projecting the report on the dirty wall of the room. It’s as she says.

She can cut off power and water to a street. She can “announce” a traffic accident. Naturally, then, she can leave an Exile half-dead and short a couple of limbs. 329 might not know why she’s expending this much energy on someone like him, but the warning reaches him loud and clear.

His mouth has become very dry. Suddenly, he’s lost his appetite. There’s no place in his room to set down a half-eaten biscuit, so he stuffs the entire rest of of the compressed biscuit into his mouth, then forcefully chews and swallows. The hard biscuit fragments scrape at his throat. 329 gulps some water, shoving it all down.

“Ah, there’s no hurry, don’t choke!” Yasha says hurriedly. “I have plenty of time this time around.”

“You’re not ‘engaging in sexual relations’ with me?” says 329.

“I didn’t say that…” The girl rubs her nose, giving him a bashful smile. “But since we have so much time this time, we can do something else first?”

Her gaze makes a full circuit of the room, without spotting anything they can do.

“For example, er, we can have a chat?” she says, full of expectation, sitting down on the bed.

Have a chat. How novel.

Even if it were between regular people, few would start by earnestly saying “let’s have a chat.” Would regular people? 329 isn’t sure. He can’t remember. Ordinary life seems like something from a past life. He finds it absurd, but not distasteful. Sometimes, when he’s not so tired that he falls asleep immediately, he talks to the pillow. Sometimes you… just need to talk, no matter to whom.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

“Anything!” Yasha beams. “I want to learn about you.”

329 is an Exile, a first degree felon, thirty-something, holds three jobs. His schedule is stuffed full, very full. Aside from work, there’s nothing he can actually discuss. And if Yasha can use water and power and traffic systems to adjust his schedule, she no doubt knows the ins and outs of his work already.

“There’s nothing much to say.” 329 gives it some thought, but says, in the end, “You probably know all of it already.”

“Knowing it is different from hearing it from you,” says Yasha. “You can talk about…the past?”

“I don’t remember,” 329 says immediately.

He doesn’t remember much, really, honestly. There’s barely anything left. He compresses his lips, crossing his arms defensively, backing away. His back bumps against the door. The room is tiny, no room for retreat. Yasha hurriedly flaps a hand and shakes her head. “Then we won’t talk about it! I never wanted to make you uncomfortable!”

“I honestly don’t remember,” 329 repeats. “I underwent surgery. The surgery was a success.”

If you weren’t going to toss first degree felons out of the Protected Area, how do you ensure that they won’t cause any more harm?

The collar contains a control system to prevent all criminal behavior. And before putting on the collar, a small procedure is performed on the felons. Some people are born bad; the surgery can fix them. Some people were simply led astray by others; the surgery can wipe out those memories, restoring a contaminated soul to a pristine state.

It’s nothing like the lobotomies of old. Patients don’t become drooling idiots; they don’t even get the sort of major memory discontinuities that would affect daily life. They just lose the bad stuff. They’re fixed, saved. The surgery destroys the person who committed the crime; crime won’t even cross the mind of the person that remains.

“I’ll talk about myself, then!” Yasha suddenly changes the topic. “A few days ago I shot down a ‘full load’ in one of those new unmanned planes. Mama praised me.”

“Oh…” says 329, uncomprehending. “That’s great.”

“I’ve been learning since I was eight.” Yasha smiles proudly. “To be honest, I’d rather fly a real plane, but they won’t let me. They say it’s too dangerous. As if! In all my years, I’ve never crashed an unmanned plane once, not even the time I ran into a flock of raptor mutants.”

Only then does 329 realize what she’s talking about. Yasha’s ‘full load’ isn’t referring to some combat simulation game. She means she piloted an unmanned plane outside the Protected Area to hunt mutants. A ‘full load’ means a full cargo load, a full unmanned plane’s worth of game.

Unlike the commoners who must hunt to make a living, unmanned planes are the extravagant pastime of the rich and powerful.

“It really is too dangerous,” says 329.

“It’s not that dangerous, if the pilot’s good enough,” says Yasha. “I’m awesome!”

“Accidents happen, no matter how awesome you are. You only have one life,” says 329.

“But there are plenty of people who aren’t afraid of accidents!” Yasha argues. “Charging in and out of mutant swarms and dense gunfire, smashing the statue of the Consul, and escaping successfully afterward. His plane even had a damaged engine due to an accident!”

Something like that had happened; 329 has a vague impression. The statue of the Consul was hundreds of meters tall. They’d wanted it to become the symbol of the Protected Area. But one plane, one civilian-modified plane, had rammed the face off the statue. In the end, it had never been installed.

“I didn’t know you supported the revolution,” says 329, facetiously.

“I don’t,” Yasha laughs. “But the pilot was really good-looking, and it was so cool, the plane dodging and weaving between the laser beams. Besides, that statue was stupid anyway. Who’d make themselves that big and put it on a road?”

329 laughs, speechless. Even if he only has the vaguest bit of memory, he remembers it as an event that had shaken the entire Protected Area. Yasha talks about the smashed statue of the Consul like it’s some ugly portrait painting that had gotten damaged, her tone light and airy, as if it weren’t even as worthy of attention as the attractive pilot.

“They executed him in the end, that pilot.” 329’s eyes narrow as he tries to dredge up memory, but can’t recall much. “Otherwise, he’d still be on the news.”

“Yeah.” Yasha’s head droops, but then it immediately perks back up. “But a fallen eagle can still make a beautiful specimen.”

“Or a lump of smashed, rotting meat,” says 329, undermining her words.

“It won’t! You just have to take care of it properly,” says Yasha, full of certainty. “Even if it’s smashed up, restoration technology can make a lump of rotting meat as beautiful as it was in life—they might not be able to now, but the research institute will figure it out sooner or later, if they put their minds to it.”

She's so self-assured, as if chance and the laws of nature have to make way for her if she wished it. In a different person, that pride, the pride of someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth, should by all rights arouse disgust. But Yasha voices it so boldly, while at the same time seeming to seek validation, the same way as she’d said “I’m awesome.” It’s strange, like showing off, and like making nice, aloof and fervent at once. Like a child arranging all her toys in front of you, head held high, waiting with anticipation for your praise and exclamations.

She really is too young.

Yasha sits on the bed. It’s too high for her to rest her feet on the ground; her heels dangle, swaying back and forth. Her face is tipped up; wherever 329 walks, her head turns, like a sunflower. It’s already evening, and the last light of the setting sun seeps through the crevices between buildings, falling on her, making her red hair blaze even brighter, like a fiery-pelted fox. Her green fox eyes are fixed on 329, as if she can’t get enough of him.

329 thinks of a cow commercial.

In the ad, a cow sings the praises of a certain steakhouse, declaring that it hopes to be prepared by this restaurant and no other, because the chefs here are highly skilled and passionate about cooking. When 329 first saw the ad, he’d thought it was the stupidest thing, full of humanity’s arrogant assumptions. To a cow about to be butchered, did it matter whether its meat was lovingly cooked or thrown straight into a dumpster?

Right now, incredibly, he thinks he understands how that fictional cow had felt.

“Shall we begin?” he asks.

Yasha blinks, then eagerly nods her head.