The Empty Space

“I’m leaving, 3C2. I’ll see you at 20 hours.” My mother calls to me from the front of the house.

“Bye, 3CM,” I answer, as I hear her leave. I lean back in my chair to look out of the widow. It’s the only one we have. I want to make sure that she’s leaving. I see her join the line in front of our house, locking step with them, like products on an assembly line, as they head towards the Deck. I can’t tell which one is my mother anymore. She has the same bald head and slender figure as everyone else. That’s what the Collective requires of us. They say it promotes equality. I say, people always find a way to separate themselves.

As soon as I’m sure she’s not coming back, I run to my bedroom to change clothes. I don’t have many options. Everything is gray, but that’s okay. I don’t mind blending in today. It can only help. I pick my standard gray pants and a gray jacket with a large hood. I need it to cover my eyes. My father gave it to me before he left to go. It belonged to him. It belongs to me now.

Before I put up my hood, I look in the mirror. Not everyone has a mirror. Just me. My father found it for me in the empty space. He smuggled it back into our sector. He called it a compact. It has a green and gold covering on the outside, with a gold clasp. The inside has a reflective glass, a mirror, he called it. He said women used to carry them in pretty bags, so they could paint their face with something called makeup. I wanted to ask what paint was. What was makeup? But I didn’t. I just sat and listened. He told me to look at myself. I had never seen my face before that day. I was 10. My father said I was beautiful, like my mother. I don’t look anything like my mother. I didn’t say that though, because that might imply that I don't like how my mother looks. She’s not. I just don’t look like her.

I notice my hair. I need to cut it again. It’s grown longer than Collective Regulation. I can tell that, if it were longer, it would be bouncy and curly and brown. I look myself in the eyes. They’re different. They’re what make me different. They’re green with some brown in them. I really like my eyes. Right now, they’re glowing with adrenaline. Exactly what I need today.

I glance at my gray dresser. There’s a letter from my father in there buried deep in the top drawer. I haven’t read it since he left to go. Too dangerous. I’m tempted to read it now. Every time I see my face in my mirror I miss him. And my brother. I better not read it now. It’s still too dangerous. My father always told me to be careful what I do or say because the walls have eyes and ears.

I pull up my hood, and walk towards our door. The Collective says we only need one. I put my thumb to the scanpad, and the door opens.

“Goodbye, 3C2,” the door announces, reminding me that it knows who I am. It doesn’t need to remind me, I already know. We all know. Even though we all look the same, the Collective knows us by designation.

My father told me in the past people had names. The Collective says our designations help to keep order. Less confusing. Confusion is divisive. My designation is 3C2, because I am the second child born to house C in the third sector. I do have a name, though. My father gave it to me before he left to go. He called me Jane. I was 12. He said he read it once somewhere and he thought it was pretty just like me. He was smart enough to read the books of the past. He wasn’t supposed to read them. The Collective says knowledge is divisive. We all learn the same basic information. It is unnecessary to understand and learn things that don’t pertain to you, that don’t affect your life. My father says that’s why they destroyed something called fiction books. Words written, telling big lies that help us understand little truths. My father loved fiction books. I want to love them too, but he never brought them home. Too dangerous. He said that he would bring one back one day, but then he left to go, and I haven’t seen him since.

Anyway, the Collective only allows us to know so much. We spend thirteen years of our lives learning. During our fifteenth year of life, we stop school and start work. Sometimes the Collective picks young people with ‘special skills’ to have higher learning. No one knows what the ‘special skills’ are. Some say its wit, others intuition. Others say its grade marks, some others athletic prowess. I say it’s stupid. We’re not supposed to use that word, though. It’s divisive.

As I walk down the near empty streets, I try to lock step with the person a few blocks ahead of me. If I stay here, I will need to learn how to walk as a group, in unison. This is my last year of school before I start work. I’ll either be pulled because of my special skills, or I’ll work in processing like my parents…parent. I don’t want to do either, but I have no choice. Except…to leave.

As I approach the gate, I sneak to the tall, brown grass surrounding it. My eyes were covered, so I wasn’t registered at any of the checkpoints. The gate doesn’t know I’m here. I wait here for the morning truck to leave through it. The gate is made of some kind of metal, solid, and smooth as my father’s bald head, and gray, like everything else here. There’s only one way in or out of the gate, and that’s through the mouth. I call it the mouth because that’s what it looks like. Two guard posts up top like eyes, one facing us, the other facing them, a sign that says “SECTOR 3” like a nose, then the door, the mouth. It’s not like other doors, though. It doesn’t have a scanpad. It only opens for trucks, big ones. I don’t know what’s in the trucks. They’re made like the gate, no openings but one, the driver’s side.
Its 8 hours, and I can see the truck coming now. Right on time. I’m hidden in the brown grass opposite of the eye facing us. When the truck pulls up, I carefully walk to the side, opposite the driver, and wait for the gate to open. No one ever gets out of the truck, ever. The guards above don’t even flinch. The gate simply knows to open. When the gate opens, I walk next to the truck as it accelerates. When the back is directly beneath the thick gate, I walk behind it, and slip into the grass on the other side. The driver never sees me. Neither does the other eye.

The empty space is a lot different than Sector 3. Other than the paved road to Sector 4, it’s wild. The trees are tall, and the grass is long. There are rivers and bugs that fly all around. Everything is a strange mixture of brown and green and blue and black sometimes, white other times. The Collective says that the empty space is dangerous because there are wild animals and diseases. I believe the part about diseases. There was a boy who got out, and caught a disease. He was crying red. His lips were purple and spilling white onto the ground. When they brought him back to the sector, he was almost dead. They brought him back to life before they killed him. I don’t believe the animal part. I’ve never seen any dangerous animals in our empty space, just squirrels, and foxes, and other small things. My father said there weren’t many dangerous animals in our empty space. He didn’t say the same about the others.

The truck returns to the mouth in four hours, so I have to hurry. I crouch low to the ground as I run. The grass is taller than I am standing, so I’m easily hidden amongst the green and brown surrounding me. The Collective tells us that any movement outside of our gate is immediately destroyed, but I’ve never heard any destroying.

I’m swift as I run. I always have been. In fitness class, back when I was 5, we ran every day. I was the fastest in my lot. I run for an hour before I reach my fist stop: a river. All the water outside of the sectors is poisoned, but my father taught me how to make it drinkable. He says it’s called salt water. I wanted to ask what salt was, but I didn’t. I just listened. I figure it’s another name for poison.

I mark the sky for time, and I keep going. I would mark my wrist, but the Collective would find out about it. They never said they could see the times we mark on our wrist, but I think they can. Computers are like that. They are all connected. Nothing is secret.

My father said there used to be things called watches. He said now they are put into our skin.

I run over to the bridge that the truck uses to cross the river and climb underneath it. My brother taught me how to climb under the bridge. He said when you climb, you have to use whatever your feet and hands will hold onto. The first time, I climbed very slowly. I didn’t know how to swim at the time. I told my brother I should learn that first, but he told me I would climb too fast if there weren’t real danger lurking below. I was 8. My brother had a name too. His name was Dumas. My father said that my brother was adventurous and had an active imagination. He did things that reminded my father of his favorite book: The Three Musketeers. A man named Dumas wrote that fiction book.

After I cross the bridge, which took me 15 minutes to do, I run for another half an hour before I reach my final destination: another gate. I’ve been told that this is Sector 4. My father says that the people here look different than us. I was 11. I still don’t believe him. The Collective says that we have to be skinny and bald so that we look the same. Physical differences are divisive. They said in the past people would even argue about their skin. Doesn’t matter now, all our skin is brown. Some have lighter skin than others, but it’s all brown.

I need something physical to mark this checkpoint. It’s a good hiding place: lots of tall, green trees and a dirty, blue pond. I could survive here for days. Then I see a small red piece of cloth. I didn’t think they still made cloth in different colors. I wonder how they turned it from gray to red. I don’t have time to think about it for more than a second. I grab the cloth and head for the tallest tree.

I know this tree. Sometimes Dumas and I would race here from the river. I never won. I think I would win now.

Trees are harder to climb than the bridge. Trees have something called moss, so it’s slippery. BUT trees have branches, so once I’m high enough, I always have something to hold on to. I climb high until I reach a branch that snaps when I grab it. I thought I was falling until I realized I had been sitting on the branch below it. I curse at myself for climbing mindlessly. I turn my body over on my branch and start to climb outward. I can feel the branch bending under my weight, but I want to tie the cloth as far our as possible so I can see it from the ground.

Then I see him. A boy, about my age, staring at me from the other side of the gate. I didn’t realize that the tree I was climbing would be tall enough to see inside Sector 4. I’ve never climbed this high before. Even when I was with my father and Dumas, I never climbed this high. They were too heavy, and I never climbed where they didn’t. The streets in Sector 4 are empty, and it looks the same as my sector, save the boy. His hair is as long as mine, but its red, not brown. And his skin is white, like the snow we get in the cold months. He doesn’t wear gray like I do, but brown which makes him look paler. Then I notice his eyes that stare. They’re green like mine.

I pull back my hood and put my finger to my mouth. He nods and runs away. I don’t know where he’s going and I don’t want to wait and find out. I move a little more outward and tie the cloth to the branch. I swing down, and hang by my arms when I see him come back. He’s holding something up to me, and pointing it at my eyes. It’s a scanner! It’s old, but still functional. I curse as I try to free a hand to put my hood back over my head, but it’s too late. He pulls down the scanner and waves goodbye to me. I curse again and kick the air. I shouldn’t have. The kick yanks me from the branch, and I fall towards the ground. I grab for branches, but they bend my fingers as I fall. When I hit the ground I can’t breathe and I feel like I might vomit if I did. I don’t have time to be injured right now; I only have two hours to run back to my gate. I get up slowly and jog away. I hope the Collective doesn’t find out.