Chapter Two
Willie’s job was at a community garden in West Seattle, and she loved it. Luckily for her, not many people wanted to work outside in the dirt, so she earned some points, along with the same cash stipend everyone else received. Every job paid the same now, from dentist to plumber to lawyer to trash collector. The only difference was in the Opportunity Points you got for working different jobs. Difficult, demanding and important but unpleasant jobs got a lot of points, as did jobs that took a lot of training or education.
Willie, being older and only having a Bachelor of Education degree, wasn’t qualified for much, since many jobs were reserved for those with the highest Grievance Quotient or Diversity Quotient or both combined. The GQ and DQ, usually referred to as just Q, were calculated by an arcane and inscrutable method and were assigned at birth, then re-assessed at puberty. Parents who thought their children might be alter normal used to be allowed to ask for an earlier reassessment. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous parents tried to coach their children into believing they were same or both gender attached or other gender born to gain more Q earlier on, so now earlier assessments only happened when requested by an SJD diversity specialist.
It was understandable, Willie thought, though still abhorrent, that parents would behave this way. Q opened many doors that would otherwise remain firmly closed for life. There were only a limited number of openings to train as professionals like doctors, lawyers, and scientists, and these were very high point earning jobs. To get into the primary and secondary schools that streamed directly to the requisite universities took a lot of Q. Only so many artists, dancers, and musicians were allowed per population center as well. As these were all very popular professions, a very high Q was required.
Of course, many low or no Q people still danced, and sang, performed music, created works of art, and invented things, they just weren’t paid. They received no points at all, and had to exhibit or perform their work for free. This made it difficult, of course, but many persevered, and some of them, at least as far as Willie could tell, were not too bad at all. Willie had heard there was something of a black market for this type of thing but honestly, she doubted it, as the legitimate Q work was very heavily promoted by the SJD, and was the only official art, as far as they were concerned. Many sneered at the low and no Q art, and the artists, and low or no Q people in general were casually called “zeroes,” which was illegal, although the law was never enforced.
There were opportunities for “zeroes” to gain admittance to professional schools, but only when all the spots could not be filled otherwise. The competition for those few remaining spots was intense, and the entrance exams were brutal. Many young people committed suicide upon receiving an imperfect score. It was dreadful, Willie thought with a shudder.
Thank goodness her own children had been assigned some Q. Neither had any DQ, so they must have inherited some GQ from their father. Willie didn’t know exactly how and why, as the method of calculation was never shared with the public, and even Andy didn’t know for sure, as they did it through a genetic test and analysis of their ancestor database. Willie herself was a “zero,” though she hated the term and tried never to apply it to herself or anyone else. She preferred “no Q” or even “normal,” though there were ironically precious few “normal” people around. She had been able to share Andy’s Q while they were married, and even as a widow, but now she was neither married nor a widow, a fact which she still could not quite grasp and which occasionally made her eyes fill with tears.
Everyone, even zeroes, got a cash allowance and some Q at age 70, but she was still years from that. Before that if you had some Q, you were allowed, under certain circumstances, to trade a portion of it for cash. Willie, who had enjoyed her job as an EFC or Early Childhood Formation teacher very much, had quit work to care for Andy when he got sick. Then, after he died, she had taken up sewing, and made doll clothes and stuffed animals which she sold at craft fairs. It had been very satisfying, creating darling little things for children to love. Without Q, this door was closed to her, as zeroes could not sell at the craft fairs.
When she lost Andy’s Q, she became destitute. The ECF institute hadn’t required much Q, but Willie had none, so instead she had taken a job at the community garden, which was hard work, but at least she got to be outside, and often children came to the garden with their parents, and on field trips from the surrounding schools. She loved helping them plant seeds, pick peas, or dig up potatoes, depending on the time of year. The school children mainly came in the spring, and she helped them plant long rows of peas, corn and beans, those being the general favorites as the seeds were nice and big and easily recognizable examples of what they would eventually produce. They were also the most likely to survive being planted by 6 year olds.
Willie, now dressed in khakis and work boots, topped off by a homemade bright pink sweatshirt emblazoned with “WSCG” in large green letters, carefully locked the front door behind her and headed to work. The walk was not long, but she savored it. This had been her neighborhood for over three decades and she knew it as well as she knew her own hands, or her children’s faces. The houses were like old friends, and some of them had contained old friends for many years. Most of those were gone now. Some, like Julie, had moved away, far enough to be out of reach of the SJD.
Willie missed them all. She was one of those people who truly cherished a good thing and couldn’t shake the childish belief that it really should last forever. She couldn’t understand why people couldn’t just look on the bright side, like she did. Didn’t she have enough? It wasn’t so bad, and, like the hollos said, it’s only fair. She was walking past one of the hollos now.
Two figures played out a tableau in the empty street. A pale, slightly malevolent looking child stood holding a bright red balloon. A darker, smaller child stood behind her admiring the balloon. She tapped the taller child on the shoulder and asked for the balloon. The pale child selfishly refused. Suddenly the smaller child raised her hand and lifted up a strip of her scalp. She looked accusingly at the pale child, who hesitated a moment then smiled broadly and angelically while handing over the balloon. Both children faded as a childishly sweet voice whispered “It’s only fair.”
Willie barely glanced at the hollo. She had seen it many times and wished they would change it already. The shock effect had long ago worn off, and she felt like she had noticed absolutely everything possible to notice about it. The odd stiff looking full skirted dress worn by the pale child. The implausible shiny blue leather breeches worn by the darker child. Of course it was meant to represent what the first Takers had done to the Originals long before the Change. Willie didn’t think that she had been taught about children scalping other children in school, but Willie wasn’t sure about a lot of things, as new historical facts emerged constantly, replacing much of what she thought she knew.
Willie did know that she had supported the Change all those years ago, especially at first. It was unfair that some people, people like her, had lovely lives with plenty of nice things while others had to get by with so much less. When it started, only the Takers were targeted. The Takers were the ones who took too much out of the system by earning too much money. They were mostly business owners and bankers and other financial professionals. They were required to give back some of what they had taken to those they had injured. Of course, they weren’t allowed to give it directly, it went to the relevant agency first. Willie couldn’t quite remember what the agencies had been called, as there had only been the SJD for many years now.
Willie’s sturdy and sensible shoes carried her briskly the rest of the way to work, while her mind quietly took in the beautiful late spring day with the light falling softly and greenly through the leaves above. After about 20 minutes she approached an enormous fenced off green space. She walked along the sidewalk until she reached a gate with a piece of cardboard wired up to it marked “West Seattle Community Garden” in heavy pen strokes. Though the garden had been in existence for a good ten years, they had never been able to obtain a proper sign for it and kept periodically replacing the cardboard. It wasn’t just the sign, Willie had discovered shortly after starting work there. Most of the tools had been begged or borrowed from generous people in the neighborhood, and such decorations that they had – birdbaths, feeders, gnomes, and spinners, had all been either made by various employees over the years, or donated. Willie had made a good bit of them herself. Someone had even made a beautiful hand painted sign from some scraps of wood but the SJD soon destroyed it as it didn’t meet regulations.
The garden had been created during a Rationalization Period, Willie couldn’t remember if it was the second to last one or the one before that. Though it was never formally acknowledged, the population of Seattle, and, Willie imagined, most other places, was steadily shrinking. As before the Change, people continued to have children later in life, and many people chose not to have children at all. The SJD had remedied the situation somewhat by offering Q to women who would agree to bear children but it hadn’t made much difference. Immigration had tapered off since the Change as well, as it was deemed imperative for the SJD to maintain the values of tolerance and respect achieved during the Change, which meant vanishingly few immigrants were found to be suitable.
In each of the Rationalizations, people were relocated closer to the city center, and the outer edges of the city vacated. At the same time, others already near the center were moved into large apartment blocks and the vacated houses razed to create green space. While Willie appreciated the greenery and understood the necessity of conserving resources by living close together, she had mourned the neat rows of saltbox houses that had had to be demolished. She really couldn’t fathom why she would feel that way about wood and bricks, but there it was.
It was just before ten when Willie unlocked the gate in the chain link fence and let herself in. She wished she could start a little earlier in the day, especially on warm days, but it wasn’t allowed. A few times she had come in early on her own initiative, but she had been reprimanded by Allan, who had been the Guidance Officer at the time. Every business and organization of any kind was run by a Guidance Officer appointed by the SJD. Their job was mostly to implement the ever changing dictates of the SJD, as far as Willie could tell. Their current GO, Margaret, rarely turned up at the garden unless there was a new policy to implement.
Willie didn’t mind at all. Few of the employees of the garden turned up with any regularity, in fact, which meant she had a lot of freedom. Of the six employees, only one besides Willie was there most days, Emily, a young woman in her late twenties who Willie liked very much. Emily was the only other employee who seemed to really care for the garden, and who enjoyed the children’s visits as much as Willie did.
As usual, Emily walked in through the gate a few moments after Willie did. She waved, a slight blond woman positively glowing with health. Her blue eyes sparkled and her tanned nose, dusted with freckles, crinkled as she smiled.
“Good morning dear,” called Willie, “aren’t you just as fresh as daisy today.”
“Hey Willie. Good morning to you! How was your paddle this morning?”
“It was spectacular, as always, thank you.”
They walked past neat rows of vegetables toward a cluster of garden sheds and greenhouses. They headed toward one designated as the “Office” by a small white sign over the door.
“Do anything fun last night?”
“Well, Allan of course had a meeting but I did something kind of naughty I guess.”
“Really?” asked Willie in surprise. “Do tell.”
“Okay, so I was out for a walk, kind of bored, you know, so on a whim I went into one of those old theaters, you know the ones, that the zeroes use sometimes?”
“Oh I see. So how was it?”
“It was – weird, but that wasn’t the naughty part. It was a play by someone old, Shakespeare, I think. Do you know of him?”
Willie smiled. Of course she knew of him, but she quickly remembered that they hadn’t been teaching Shakespeare for years, or most of what used to be called English Literature. The SJD had decided it was wrong to glorify the works of such a tyrannical colonial power as England.
“Yes, I think I vaguely remember the name.”
“Well the words were very strange, and it was hard to make sense of it, but the acting was so, I don’t know, passionate. It was all so odd but somehow very moving. So I ended up contributing. God! What if Allan finds out? He’ll be furious.”
“Well, he likely won’t miss the money.”
It was true. Allan, the old GO of the garden, had risen dramatically through the ranks of the SJD. Emily and Allan had met at the garden and though Emily now had no need to work, she continued on simply because she enjoyed it.
“Did you see anyone you know?”
“Oh no, of course not, but that’s not to say there wasn’t someone there who knows Allan, and might recognize me.”
“Well try not to worry. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not as if he’ll sick the SJD on you.”
Emily smiled.
“I should hope not! Any kids on the schedule today?” she asked hopefully.
“Nope, sorry. Just a lot of lettuce to transplant.”
They spent the rest of the morning planting lettuce seedlings in raised beds near the greenhouse, chatting companionably without interruption. At lunch they walked to a nearby sandwich shop and bought a couple of cheese sandwiches and some soup and then returned to the garden to make a salad with whatever vegetables looked most ripe and tempting. They sat down to eat at a picnic table near the greenhouse.
“Ugh this cheese is pretty bad,” exclaimed Emily after biting into her sandwich and chewing for a bit.
“Mmm, it’s not very nice is it?”
“I feel so guilty sometimes. Allan somehow manages to get such lovely cheeses and real seafood, not like the little rubber bits in here,” she said, waving toward the clam chowder on the picnic table in front of them.
“How I wonder,” Willie started to ask and then quickly added, “never mind, sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry. It’s okay, really. The fact is I don’t ask him, but what I suspect, from what I’ve overheard, is that sometimes they’ll get someone, say a cheese maker, for example,” she held up her sandwich and made a wry face, “who’s really great, an artisan or whatever, and because the SJD is everywhere, they’ll hear about it, and then swoop in and buy it up for themselves. It seems a little unfair, if you ask me.” Emily shrugged slightly.
“Well, I try not to judge.” Willie smiled, a little tightly. She didn’t like to dwell on such things, especially when there was nothing she could do about it anyway. Better to enjoy the sunshine and the lovely breeze coming up from the Sound and put the SJD as far away from her thoughts as possible.
“We’re lucky too, with all this lovely fresh produce for lunch every day,” Willie reflected.
“Yes, aren’t we? It’s so odd that more people don’t come and take advantage of it.”
It was something they often wondered about. People from the neighborhood could come and pick whatever they wanted when it was ripe, but few did. Every week, Willie and Emily harvested whatever was about to become overripe or go to seed and took it to a community kitchen. There it was processed into meal rations which people could come and purchase for a nominal fee, or, as was usual, plead their case and receive for nothing.
It occurred to Willie that many people no longer cooked at home. The kitchens had started during the Change, when things were very difficult. In the dark times, there were a lot of shortages, and it was necessary for the government to commandeer the food supply and then redistribute it, already prepared, at the kitchens. Everyone received the exact same thing, which was seen as very fair and egalitarian and in line with the Change ideal. Willie supposed some people got used to it, and so the kitchens stayed running even after they were no longer necessary. Even today, no one dreamed of shutting them down.
Willie had only been to the kitchens a few times, in the early years. She tried, if at all possible, to avoid them. First, because she truly loved to cook for her family. It was a joy to be able to provide delicious meals for them, and a challenge to create them out of next to nothing. Second, because the meals from the kitchens tended to vary a great deal in terms of quality, depending on the skill and effort of those operating the kitchen. Like most places, there was no real incentive to do a good job beyond the simple satisfaction of a job well done, which sadly often didn’t prove incentive enough.
So Willie, along with the members of her church, formed a sort of loose food co-operative and shared ingredients with each other, scrounging here and there for eggs, flour, baking soda and the like, and if they were extremely lucky or determined, or both, meat. They got their hands on some laying hens and kept them in a member’s large back yard. Andy and some of the others built chicken coops for them. They even managed to get a couple of goats once, one of which produced milk for a time. The SJD, or whatever the relevant agency had been at the time, took the goats eventually, and the chickens. They searched and found some more hens, but by the third time the SJD had taken them the stores were open again and the co-operative disbanded.
“Well, I suppose we should get back to it,” Willie said, arching her back and stretching a little before standing up. They put the leftover scraps from their meal into a nearby compost bin and returned to the greenhouse to decide what to do with the rest of the day as they had planted all the lettuce seedlings before lunch.
“There’s always weeding. I’ll do the raspberries,” Willie offered.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take the strawberries, they were looking a bit dirty,” Emily replied.
As they headed back outside an elderly couple walked by.
“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Martin. How are you today,” Emily called to them.
The couple turned toward them.
“Oh, hey Emily. Willie. Gorgeous day today isn’t it,” Mrs. Martin replied. Mr. Martin nodded in their direction politely but not very warmly. The couple was dressed entirely in black. Their bare arms were covered with tattoos which had probably once been precise and artful but were now wrinkled, blurry and inscrutable. Mrs. Martin’s hair was dyed in a rainbow pattern, and Mr. Martin wore his sparse gray hair long and tied back in a ponytail. Willie and Emily watched as they walked toward a remote section of the garden.
“Crap, have you weeded their plot lately,” Willie asked. “I hate going back there – the smell, ugh.”
“Yeah I did it last Wednesday. Might be a teeny bit shaggy, but shouldn’t be too bad.”
The Martins were famous artists who had been important figures in the Change. They had done something impressive, Willie couldn’t remember exactly what. They could certainly afford fresh produce and had no need to use the community garden for food so instead grew marijuana plants on their plot. When Willie had assigned them their plot she made sure it was far away from the areas she had to frequent, something they complained bitterly about at the time, until she said that their plants might get pinched by kids if they were too close to the entrance.
“I don’t know why they insist on growing that stuff here when they can just get it from the DDS.”
Emily shrugged.
“Something about the chemicals, or the wrong varietals, I think.” She shrugged again. “They gave me a bit last month. It’s okay but doesn’t hit you as hard as the DDS stuff.”
“Well none of it does anything for me.” Willie had tried marijuana in her youth but found that it didn’t agree with her at all. She rarely felt the relaxed, giddy sense of well-being people talked about but was rather more likely to become paranoid and anxious, or feel no different, so she hadn’t bothered with it since. The other drugs at the DDS didn’t interest her much either and luckily they couldn’t mandate her to take any because her chip wasn’t capable of measuring the chemicals in her bloodstream.
“Oh yeah, you don’t have an implant do you? I always forget. Hey I heard they’re coming out with a new chip that can simulate the same chemicals in your body or something. Apparently they want to get rid of the DDS. According to Allan, that is.”
“Huh, well I guess it’s a good thing I don’t use any of it then or I’d be over there with the Martins growing my own,” Willie said with a chuckle.
They walked along toward the berry plots. Emily turned off toward the strawberries.
“See you later Willie.”
“Ok kiddo.”
Willie continued on to the raspberry patch, which was in an isolated spot at the back of the garden, behind an apple orchard. Behind it was a small stretch of forest and natural undergrowth, and beyond that a steep bluff ending at a street that ran alongside the Sound. It was extraordinarily quiet and peaceful. Willie was pulling on the gloves she had been carrying and surveying the ground under the canes when she saw something in the forest out of the corner of her eye.
A man was standing just at the edge of the forest. He was eerily still, and looked at her with an intensity she found both fascinating and unsettling. They stared at each other and Willie got the sense he knew her somehow.
“Why is he dressed like that,” Willie wondered. He wore a beautiful camel coat over a suit jacket and pants. His dress shirt was startlingly white and stiff, and his tie a soft silky pink.
“No one dresses like that anymore. Is he a ghost,” Willie wondered, forgetting she didn’t believe in ghosts. She noticed his impeccably shiny black shoes as he raised his right foot and began walking toward her. She screamed, rooted to the spot for a second, and he froze. Willie turned and started to run back toward the strawberry patch. After a few seconds she felt ridiculous and stopped, gathered her courage and turned to face the man. He was gone. Emily ran up behind her.
“Willie! I heard a scream! Are you okay?”
“Oh, Emily. I just startled myself. I thought I saw something in the trees but it was nothing. Sorry, sorry. What a goof I am sometimes!” Willie had no idea why she was lying, and in fact was surprised to hear the words coming out of her own mouth.
“Willie, this is not like you at all. Are you sure you’re okay?” Emily asked with sincere concern. “Maybe it’s too much sun?” She looked up doubtfully at the sky, then back at Willie.
“Maybe, actually. I’ll walk back to the shed and get my hat. And have a drink of water while I’m at it.” Willie said, taking advantage of Emily’s suggestion.
“I’ll come with you.”