For most, a world with no crime, sickness, or arguing sounds fabulous.
Not for me.
I laid in my bed and stared at the ceiling, but the room got no darker when I closed my eyes. I wanted to get up and walk down to the kitchen, ring the bell and wait for a server to get out of bed to get me a snack. Talk to the server for a while. But there were many reasons I couldn't do that. First of all, I couldn't get up. Literally. To keep rebels from being rebels, the Inventors had created jings, which are basically just soft handcuffs that connect to your bed. They keep you there until the morning, and then they release you. Second, the servers did not sleep in the same building as the upper-class men. Everyone in the lower class slept in the working quarters, which is basically the same as the House except less nice. Third of all, talking to servers is not permitted. When I said "Thank you," to a cossy driver earlier, I had been totally breaking the rules. He could have reported me, but of course, who would report someone for being nice to them? Being kind to the lower class was the only rule you could break without getting caught or hurt. But most didn't try. Most people didn't want to be polite to the lower class. They didn't realize that they could have been in the lower class just as easily if they had been born with a slightly less strong immune system.
"Where to, miss?" I closed my eyes and blocked the sound of the alarm system from my brain. "The working quarters," I said before I realized what I had said. The man driving the cossy sounded surprised as he said, "Only lower-class men can go there, miss." I nodded my head and briskly lied. "I was sent by a Watcher. Its inside business that I'm afraid I can not share with you," I said in an official tone. He sounded in shock as he said, "We will arrive at the working quarters in fifteen minutes, at most." My eyebrows raised. I didn't know the working quarters were so far from the House. "Good," I said as I pressed the button to send a message to the front. I almost pressed it again to say thank you, but then I remembered that representatives of Watchers would absolutely NEVER break a rule, even a simple rule like this one. I looked out the window in the contept and watched as we drove through the town. A few people were walking along the roads. Cossies drove up and down the roads, stopping to pick up and drop off people. People walked out of the bank with their daily payment, walked out of grocery stores with extra food they wanted to keep in their rooms for the day, and people walked into and out of entertainment complexes. The hospital was quiet. Not one cossy stopped by it as we drove past. Eventually, we took a turn down a long street with nothing on it. Nothing at all. At the end of the street there was a large black gate that said "Lower Class Only". The cossy driver stuck his hand out of the car and pressed his thumb on the scanner. He pulled up so that I too, could scan my thumb, but I reminded him that I was a representative and not an actual lower class man. He reminded ME that there was a thumb scanner for representatives, too. I closed my eyes. I determined whether to get out and run or just tell the cossy driver the truth. Cossy drivers rarely ever turned anyone in for anything. It didn't matter to them. Instead I just put my thumb to the scanner. To my surprise, the screen did not flash red and scream "Access Denied". Instead it faded to green and the large black gates opened. My eyes widened. But wait a minute. I wasn't a representative. Was I?
© 2009
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