The Outcast Ones

By Maya Shepherd

After World War 3, Earth is in ruins. The last surviving humans are barricaded inside safety zones to protect themselves from the radiation.They can only stay alive if they follow strict rules. No one has property of their own, and no one can make their own choices: the Legion Commanders take every decision away from people. This world has no room for emotion. People only live in order to function, so they have numbers instead of names. D518 is one of them. Born into this destroyed world, she's never known any other life than this - completely defined and controlled. But this changes in an instant when she is kidnapped by opponents of the government, and she discovers that everything she believed in is a lie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maya Shepherd
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781633395664

Book preview

01. IGNORANCE MAINTAINS THE PEACE

My proper designation is E518. I am a survivor of the fifth generation.

At precisely 0700 hours I open my eyes and look up at the grey light panels on the ceiling. They are still dimmed, but will grow lighter over the course of the day, then automatically darken and go out at 2200 hours. Nine hours are the precisely calculated sleep time for the body of a female teenager.

I sit up and throw back the white bedcover, then swing my legs over the edge of the bed so that my feet hang in the air. I begin to stretch my arms and back. During sleep, my muscles have not been used, so that in the morning they are tight and their circulation is low. Stretching mobilises them again. Especially today it is important for me to be at peak fitness. Especially today, I cannot allow a fault in my statistics. This day is one of the most important in my life, because it will determine my future.

My feet touch the grey tile floor. The cold makes me flinch back for a second, just like it does every morning. The tiles behave in the same way as the ceiling panels: they are cold in the morning, are warmed by electricity during the day so that they are pleasantly warm in the evening, then they cool off after 2200 hours. This is the circle of life.

With a slightly sticky sound, I step barefoot across my room. A morning shower is just as indispensable as stretching my muscles. I strip off the red knee-length nightshirt, pull it over my head and stick it into the laundry chute next to the shower. It disappears with a pop. Air pressure and suction will now carry it to the laundry, where it will be cleaned together with those of the entire personnel, then distributed fresh in the evening.

Sometimes I have asked myself how often I must have worn the same nightshirt without knowing it. Essentially it makes no difference, because all the nightshirts are exactly the same size, colour and material. Still, it would interest me. The thought occupied me even back when I was a Yellow. Shortly before I reached my teenage years, I once unravelled a small piece of a nightshirt hem at the corner. I had hoped in this way to be able to recognise it again. But the laundry supervisor noticed, and reported it to my teacher, who shouted at me and said I had no right to destroy things, that it was important for everything to be the same because only unity is strong. She even informed a Legion commander and forced me to repeat why I had torn the shirt. However, unlike the teacher, the commander did not reprimand me. She reacted in a way I have only rarely seen in the safety zone: she smiled. Her smile made my heart beat hard and twitched the corners of my own mouth upwards.

The look on my teacher’s face was complete gratification for me. Her eyes got so big they nearly fell out of her head. Out of my mouth came unusual sounds, like the ringing of the recess bell, but somehow more beautiful. The Legion commander, in her white jumpsuit, predicted a great future for me, because my thinking was a proof of intelligence. Even though I have forgotten the commander’s designation, I will never forget her pretty face. Like everyone else she had blue eyes, but when she smiled, little dimples appeared in her cheeks. It was the first time I ever spoke with a Legion commander. Today I want to prove to her that she was right.

Warm steam envelops my body. I run my hands over my bald head. From schooling I know that people used to use flowing water to take showers. They wasted it without even once thinking of those who would come after them. The water resources of Earth are too small to squander on showering. Steam opens the pores so that all the odour-carrying substances come out of the body. Running water isn’t necessary. After the steam comes dry air infused with a neutralising substance. It is not appropriate to tell people apart by their smell. Differences lead to discrimination.

I step naked out of the shower and walk along the smooth metal wall to the supply chute. It has two hatches: one with a fresh red jumpsuit which I pull on quickly. Shiny black boots complete the picture. It is my last day as a Red!

The other hatch is empty, but is illuminated by a ray of blue light. When I hold my arm inside, the light changes to red. Now my hand is being scanned to analyse my blood levels. It is important that every person’s nutrition is adjusted to their own requirements—everyone’s situation varies according to the type of day and physical exertion.

After about a minute the light changes to green and I pull my hand out. The hatch closes for a few seconds. When it opens again, there is a tray with cereal cubes, vitamin tablets, protein capsules and a glass of water. I lift the tray out and set it on a plastic table in the middle of my room, with its matching plastic chair. Both are anchored to the floor: everything has its place.

The cereal cubes provide satiation and deliver energy. For normal exertion, five are enough for a woman and eight for a man. Today I have been allocated exactly six cubes.

Seven minutes.

The vitamin tablets offer protection from illness and improve my health. It is only due to them that our bodies can perform fully every day, without being weakened by bacteria or viruses.

Two minutes.

The protein capsules are not for everyone and not for every day, but only before and after extreme physical exertion. Protein strengthens bones and tendons.

One minute.

I wash the tablets down with water. It is room temperature and feels gentle on my throat, dry from the night. After exactly ten minutes, I put everything back in the hatch. It closes automatically to take the tray back to the food dispensary.

I don’t need a watch to calculate the time. Our bodies learn to count the seconds continually in the background, linking them into minutes. It is important to keep to optimal times so as to guarantee an optimum order of events. Organisation and planning are our whole lives. We are lucky that the Legion commanders do both for us.

I lay my hand on the scanner at the door. The red light re-images my handprint and my DNA, before the door opens with a quiet lurch and a friendly computer voice tells me, Exit permitted.

My steps join those of the others. At exactly 0730 hours all the doors open and the Red hall fills with the fifth generation of teens. We are a unit and a unity, every one just like the others to the smallest detail. The red jumpsuits and black boots are the least of these characteristics. The light from the ceiling panels is reflected on our smooth, hairless heads. Our eyes all shine in the colour designated RAL 5012, Light Blue, while our skin is more like RAL 3012, Beige Red. Even our walking pace is identical. In the same rhythm we move our feet across the grey floor, made of steel plates. The walls are white and marked only with a red stripe.

From the Red zone we enter the Atrium. It is the centre of the safety zone—all roads and hallways lead there, no matter whether they are red, yellow, brown, blue, green or white. White stands for the Legion commanders. It is forbidden to enter their hall, although we would not be let in anyway. Even the attempt is punishable. No one has ever tried it, but I am sure whoever did would be cast out. The way to their hall is a giant staircase that winds through the entire Atrium, all the way to the ceiling which must be at least ten metres high.

The Atrium is not only the centre, but also the prettiest place in the safety zone. It is round and the walls are made of pictures covering the entire room. Some days they show woods with plants, trees, animals, and moss on the ground. They move, as if all you have to do is reach out your hand to touch a leaf or an animal’s fur. On other days they show huge cities with skyscrapers that make me quite dizzy. They can show beaches of soft sand and turquoise seas, or mountains with snow-capped peaks. These images record the most beautiful parts of Earth that are now gone forever. They remind us daily what our ancestors destroyed. The animals we see have been dead for a long time, and those trees and plants have rotted.

As well as the coloured halls, there are also grey ones. They lead to training rooms, the laundry, the food dispensary, the archive, the Arena, the Aula and the laboratories. One of these rooms will be my future workplace—the results of today’s test will decide it. Our performance test precedes our assignment to a helper task. Since we swapped the yellow jumpsuits for the red ones at the age of about ten, the test is all we have trained for. Today, about eight years later, we will receive our results.

We have formed two rows in the Aula—the men on the right and the women on the left. We are all the same height. Three Legion commanders stand on the podium. One of them is a woman, but not the same one I spoke with when I was a Yellow. I would recognise her. Their white jumpsuits stand out clearly from the black stone wall behind them.

The oldest steps forward and clears his throat. Welcome! Today is the first day of your future. The results of your tests can be predicted on the basis of your performance in recent years, but sometimes one point more or less can make the difference. No matter what job you are assigned to, you all have the essential task of safeguarding the lives of the last humans. You can be sure that we, your Legion commanders, will assign you to the job that is best suited to you. There are no errors, no deviations. Give your best, because only the best is good enough!

With a brief nod, he steps back and presses the red button behind him. Exactly 99 cubicles rise up out of the floor: fifty on the right, forty-nine on the left. The cubicles are numbered and each is assigned to one of us. Mine is number 18, like my designation E518. I step inside. The cubicle door shuts immediately behind me. The space is just big enough for me to sit on a round stool and look at a glass wall. It is slightly darker than the grey walls around me, but my reflection in it is blurred. There is just one lighting panel in the ceiling, its light so bright that it dazzles me.

I cannot see or hear the others. My universe has shrunk to this tiny cell. I expect the friendly computer voice to greet me, to assign my tasks, but it is silent. I notice something happening with my body that I cannot explain. My hands grow damp and my heart beats faster than it should. I think my heartbeat must be so loud that it echoes from the tight walls right back into my ears. My throat is suddenly dry and I begin to breathe deeply, in and out. The light seems to be flickering, the floor trembling. I stretch out my hands, but the chamber is too small even to spread out my arms completely. The metal feels cool under my fingers.

Phase one has begun, says a scratchy voice suddenly from the direction of the glass wall. Everything is all right. There is no change, no threat. Everything is going as planned. No reason to panic.

Knowledge test, crystallised intelligence.

This is easy. The first test is only to assess our knowledge. A monitor appears before me. Various questions with multiple choice answers pop up, and I touch the screen to log the correct ones. What is the name of the first Legion commander? What are the causes of war? Which country began the Third World War? What is iron for? Where is the heart located?

The answers are firmly fixed in my head, and even though I am not told that my choices are correct, I am sure of it. It is not important to understand the questions, only to know their answers. The past is the past and is not there to be analysed. Knowledge is there to be passed on. It is constant, unchangeable.

Phase Two has begun. Problem solving test, fluid intelligence.

This part is harder, because the answers are not pre-defined. There is nothing you can memorise, rather it all depends on your own intelligence. Who is able to solve problems? Who has understood the rules of the Legion? We must speak freely.

A member of the personnel decides to wear his jumpsuit with one sleeve instead of two, so that he is individualised. How do you react?

Being different leads to envy, and envy leads to war. The person should be isolated in order to keep the peace.

The question seems to be tailored for me. Maybe they want to see if I learned anything from my misbehaviour when I was a Yellow. I will never forget my teacher’s lecture. But soon the questions get trickier.

You are a helper in the Archive. While sorting books, you find a living animal—a mouse from the genus Old World mice, or Murinae in Latin. What do you do?

With intense thought, I imagine the situation in my inner view. I have never seen a living mouse in my life, never mind any other animal. All of us only know them from schooling or documentaries about Old Earth before the Third World War, before our time. Animals are carriers of sickness. I know the right answer but I hesitate to speak it. Again my hands become unpleasantly damp, a bodily reaction I do not understand.

I...I would hide it, I answer truthfully. It would be useless to lie, because the chamber is measuring my body’s sweat output and would know.

Why would you do that? It is the first time the computer responds to one of my answers. My heart begins to beat wildly again. I could be destroying all my hard work in one stroke.

It is the last of its kind. Therefore it is valuable. Uniqueness leads to disharmony and disharmony leads to war.

Do you want war, E518?

No! If I hide the mouse, no one will find out about it. Ignorance maintains the peace.

The light goes out and I sit there in the dark. Tense, I listen for any noise that is not my own breath. Was the answer so wrong? Are they going to abort my test?

But then the light comes on again and the computer continues as if nothing has happened.

Phase Three has begun: Memory and attention test.

I am surprised. They never prepared us for this part of the examination.

E518, which of today’s Legion commanders has a scar over his right eyebrow?

The question is a contradiction in terms, because we are all the same. In any case, we should be, but I know it is not true. There are tiny details if you look for them. I close my eyes and call up the image of the three Legion commanders on the podium. The oldest was in the middle. He had deeper wrinkles around his eyes than the others. On his left was the woman. She did not smile, but even if she had, she would not have dimples. I would have seen if she had a scar on her eyebrow. It must have been the man on the right. He was the only one I did not look at.

From my point of view, the man on my right, I answer, and the cubicle door slides open. Surprised, I turn around and see that the other teens’ doors are also open. All the intelligence tests end at the same time.

Phase Four has begun.

Sweat runs down my back. Tiny drops form on my skull and run into my face. They catch in my eyebrows, but the longer I run, the wetter they become, until finally the first drop comes loose and runs into my eye. It burns, but I keep running.

It began slowly and then the speed increased with every minute. The treadmill clock reads 20 minutes and 32 seconds. I cannot run any more, but I am not going to give up. Physical tests are not exactly my strength. We began with squash, but I was so afraid of the shooting electric ball that I was one of the first to fail. That will give me only a few points in defence and reaction. After endurance they will test attack ability, to discover the guards and soldiers among us. They wear blue and their designation is C. Only a few women make it into that department and I am certain I will not be one of them. So it is that much more important that I prove myself in endurance at least. Sufficient stamina is valuable.

21 minutes, 1 second. The speed increases again. I am biting my teeth so hard that they grind. The girl next to me stumbles and falls. Her crash is so heavy that I feel its shaking beneath me. I look down at her. Her face is almost as red as her jumpsuit and she is holding her arm. Pain contorts her expression. I read E523 on her badge, but she is more than the numbers and letters that will only be valid for today—The small spot of pigmentation directly under her left eye registers itself in my mind.  She will no longer be a stranger to me, I would recognise her anywhere.