Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © 2018 by The Ontario Review, Inc.

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cover illustration inspired by Getty Images / Klaus Vedfelt

Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008295448

Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008295462

Version: 2019-10-04

Dedication

For Stig Björkman,

and for

Charlie Gross

Epigraph

A self is simply a device for representing a functionally unified system of responses.

B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

I: Valedictorian

The Instructions

Deletion

The Warrant

“Good News!”

The Arrest

“Disciplinary Measure”

Exile: Zone 9

II: Zone 9 – The Happy Place

Typewriter

The Lost One

Coed

Lost Friends

He, Him

Wolfman

Lonely

Possibly

Dean’s List

The Spell

Orphan

Suddenly

The Denial

The Wall

The Museum of Natural History

Shelter

The Sacrifice

Adoration

The Searchers

The Test

The Exam

The Failing Grade

Wolfman My Love: Selected Memories

Sane

The Lonely Girl I

The Lonely Girl II

April

“Terminated”

Elopement

The Bat

III: Wainscotia Falls

Saved

The Miracle

Grief

Visitors

“Uncle”

Heron Creek Farm

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Novels by Joyce Carol Oates

About the Publisher

They would not have come for me, naïvely I drew their attention to me. Willingly I dared what I should not have dared.

Of my own free will misjudging. Or rather, not judging—not thinking. In vanity and stupidity and now I am lost.

Sometimes on my knees in a posture of prayer I am able to break through the “censor barrier”—to remember …

But my brain hurts so! It is a terrible effort like struggling against the gravity of Jupiter.

My Exile-status forbids me to speak to anyone here of my sentence or of my life before Exile and so I am doubly lonely.

Though rarely alone in this strange place I am very lonely and am not sure that I can persevere.

My sentence is “only” four years. It might have been “life.”

Or, it might have been Deletion.

On my knees each night straining to remember, to recall my old, lost self, I try to be grateful, my sentence was not Deletion.

And I try to be grateful, no one in my family was arrested as a collaborator/facilitator of Treason, with me.

I

DELETION

DI—“Deleted Individual.”

If you are Deleted, you cease to exist. You are “vaporized.”

And if you are Deleted, all memories of you are Deleted also.

Your personal property/estate becomes the possession of the NAS (North American States).

Your family, even your children, if you have children, will be forbidden to speak of you or in any way remember you, once you cease to exist.

Because it is taboo, Deletion is not spoken of. Yet, it is understood that Deletion, the cruelest of punishments, is always imminent.

To be Deleted is not equivalent to being Executed.

Execution is a public-lesson matter: Execution is not a state secret.

A certain percentage of executions under the auspices of the Federal Execution Education Program (FEEP) are broadcast via TV to the populace, for purposes of moral education.

(In a prison execution chamber made to resemble a hospital surgery, the CI [Condemned Individual] is strapped to a gurney by prison guards; then, in the clinical-white uniforms of “medics,” prison staffers administer the lethal dose of poison into the CI’s veins as tens of millions of home TV viewers watch.)

(Except us. Though Dad was already of MI [Marked Individual] status, and his Caste Rank [CR] vulnerable, neither Dad nor Mom allowed our TV to be turned on at Execution Hours which were often several times a week. My older brother Roderick objected to this “censorship” when he was still in school on the grounds that, if his teachers discussed the educational aspect of an execution in class, he would not be able to participate and would stand out as “suspicious”—but this plea did not persuade our parents to turn on the TV at these times.)

Deletion is a different status altogether, for while Execution is intended to be openly discussed, even to allude to Deletion is a federal offense punishable as Treason-Speech.

My father Eric Strohl had been MI since a time before I was born. As a young resident M.D. in the Pennsboro Medical Center he’d been under observation as a scientifically-minded individual, for such individuals were assumed to be “thinking for themselves”—not a reputation anyone would have wished to have. In addition, Dad was charged with associating with a targeted SI—(Subversive Individual)—who was later arrested and tried for Treason; Dad hadn’t done more than sympathetically listen to this man address a small gathering in a public park when he and the others were caught in a Homeland Security “sweep”—and Dad’s life was changed forever.

He was demoted from his residency in the medical center. Though he had an M.D., with special training in pediatric oncology, he could find work only as a lowly-paid medical attendant in the center, where there had to be maintained a bias against him, that he might never be allowed to “practice” medicine again. Yet, Dad never (publicly) complained—he was lucky, he often (publicly) said, not to be imprisoned, and to be alive.

From time to time MIs were obliged to restate the terms of their crimes and punishments, and to (publicly) express gratitude for their exoneration and current employment. On such occasions Dad took a deep breath and, as he said, bartered his soul another time.

Poor Dad! He was so good-natured in our household, I don’t think I realized how terrible he must have felt. How broken.

Within the family it was understood that we didn’t discuss Dad’s status per se, but we seemed to be allowed—that is, we were not expressly forbidden—to allude to his MI status in the way you might allude to a chronic condition in a family member like multiple sclerosis, or Tourette’s, or a predilection for freak accidents. Being MI was something shameful, embarrassing, potentially dangerous—but since MI was a (relatively) minor criminal category compared with more serious criminal categories, it wasn’t a treasonable offense to acknowledge it. But Dad took risks, even so.

For one of the memories that comes to me, strangely clear and self-contained, like a disturbing dream suddenly recalled in daylight, was how one day when no one was home except us Dad took me upstairs to an attic room that had been shut up for as long as I could remember, with a padlock; and in that room Dad retrieved from beneath a loose floorboard, beneath a worn carpet, a packet of photographs of a man who looked teasingly familiar to me, but whom I could not recall—“This is your uncle Tobias, who was Deleted when you were two years old.”

At this time I was ten years old. My two-year-old self was lost and irretrievable. In a quavering voice Dad explained that his “beloved, reckless” younger brother Tobias had lived with us while going to medical school and that he’d drawn the attention of the F.B.E./F.B.I. (Federal Bureau of Examiners, Federal Bureau of Inquisitors) after helping organize a May Day free-speech demonstration. At the age of twenty-three “your uncle Toby” had been arrested in this very house, taken away, allegedly tried—and Deleted.

That is, “vaporized.”

What is that, Daddy?—“vaporized.” Though I knew the answer would be sad I had to ask.

“Just—gone, sweetie. Like a flame when it’s been blown out.”

I was too young to register the depth of loss in my father’s eyes.

For Dad had often that look of loss in his face. Exhausted from his hospital job, and his skin ashy, and a limp in his right leg from some accident after which a bone had not mended correctly. Yet, Dad had a way of smiling that made everything seem all right.

Just us, kids! We’re hanging in here.

Except right now Dad wasn’t smiling. Turned a little from me so (maybe) I wouldn’t notice him wiping tears from his eyes.

“We aren’t supposed to ‘recall’ Tobias. Certainly not provide information to a child. Or look at pictures! I could be arrested if—anyone heard.”

By anyone Dad meant the Government. Though you would not say that word—“Government.” You would not say the words “State”—“Federal Leaders.” It was forbidden to say such words and so, as Dad did, you spoke in a vague way, with a furtive look—if anyone heard.

Or, you might say They.

You could think of anyone, or they, as a glowering sky. A low-ceiling sky of those large dirigible clouds rumored to be surveillance devices, sculpted shapes like great ships, often bruised colored and iridescent from pollution, moving unpredictably but always there.

Downstairs, in the vicinity of our electronic devices, Dad would never speak so openly. Of course you would never trust your computer no matter how friendly and throaty-seductive its voice, or your cell phone or dicta-stylus, but also thermostats, dishwashers, microwaves, car keys and (self-driving) cars.

“But I miss Toby. All the time. Seeing medical students his age … I miss how he’d be a wonderful uncle to you, and to Rod.”

It was confusing to me. I’d forgotten what Dad had said—Vaporized? Deleted?

But I knew not to ask Dad more questions right now, and make him sadder.

Exciting to see photographs of my lost “Uncle Toby” who looked like a younger version of my father. Uncle Toby had had a frowning-squinting kind of smile, like Dad. And his nose was long and thin like Dad’s with a tiny bump in the bone. And his eyes!—dark brown with a glisten, like my own.

“Uncle Toby looks like he’d be fun.”

Was this a stupid thing to say? Right away I regretted it but Dad only just smiled sadly.

“Yes. Toby was fun.”

He’d tried to warn his brother about being involved in any sort of free speech or May Day demonstrations, Dad said. Even during what had appeared to be a season of (relative) relaxation on the part of the Homeland Security Public Dissemination Bureau; during such seasons, the Government eased up on public-security enforcement, yet, as Dad believed, continued to monitor and file away information about dissenters and potential SIs (Subversive Individuals), for future use. Nothing is ever forgotten—Dad warned.

At such times rumors would be circulated of a “thaw”—a “new era”—for always, as Dad said, people are eager to believe good news, and to forget bad news; people wish to be “optimists” and not “pessimists”; but “thaws” are factored into cycles and soon come to an end leaving incautious persons, especially the young and naïve, vulnerable to exposure and arrest and—what comes after arrest.

After Uncle Toby’s disappearance (as it was called) law enforcement officers had raided the house and appropriated his medical textbooks, lab notebooks, personal computer and electronic devices, etc., and all pictures of him either digital or hard copy that they could find; but Dad had managed to hide away a few items, at great risk to his own safety.

Saying, “I’m not proud of myself, honey. But I knew it would be wisest to ‘repudiate’ my brother—formally. By that time he’d been Deleted, so there was no point in defending him, or protecting him. I guess I was pretty convincing—and your mother, too—swearing how we didn’t realize we were harboring an SI—a ‘traitor’—so they let us off with just a fine.”

Dad drew his sleeve across his face. Wiping his face.

“A devastating fine, actually. But we had to be grateful the house wasn’t razed, which sometimes happens when there’s treason involved.”

“Does Mom know?”

“‘Know’—what?”

“About Uncle Toby’s things here.”

“No.”

Dad explained: “Mom ‘knows’ that my brother was Deleted. She never speaks of him of course. She might have ‘known’ that I’d kept back a few personal items of Toby’s at the time but she’s certainly forgotten by now, as she has probably forgotten what Toby looked like. If you work hard enough to not think of something, and wall off your mind against it, and others around you are doing the same, you can ‘forget’—to a degree.”

Brashly I was thinking Not me! I will not forget.

Touching one of my lost uncle’s sweaters, soft dark-wool riddled with moth holes. And there was a yellowed-white T-shirt with a stretched neck. And a biology lab notebook with half the pages empty. And a wristwatch with a stretch band and a blank dead face forever halted at 2:20 P.M. that Daddy tried to revive without success.

“Now you must promise, Adriane, never to speak of your lost uncle to anyone.”

I nodded yes, Daddy.

“Not to Mommy, and not to Roddy. You must not speak of ‘Uncle Toby.’ You must not—even to me.”

Seeing the perplexed look in my face Dad kissed me wetly on the nose.

Gathering up the outlawed things and returning them beneath the floorboards and the worn carpet.

“Our secret, Adriane. Promise?”

“Yes, Daddy. Promise!”

SO YES, I knew what Deletion was. I know what Deletion is.

I am not likely to emulate my uncle Toby. I am no longer interested in being “different”—in drawing attention to myself.

As I have sworn numerous times I determined to serve out my Exile without violating the Instructions. I am determined to be returned to my family one day.

I am determined not to be “vaporized”—and forgotten.

Wondering if beneath the floorboards in the attic there’s a pathetic little cache of things of mine, gnarled toothbrush, kitten socks, math homework with red grade 91, my parents hastily managed to hide away.

THE WARRANT

Hereby, entered on this 19th day June NAS-23 in the 16th Federal District, Eastern-Atlantic States, a warrant for the arrest, detention, reassignment and sentencing of STROHL, ADRIANE S., 17, daughter of ERIC and MADELEINE STROHL, 3911 N. 17th St., Pennsboro, N.J., on seven counts of Treason-Speech and Questioning of Authority in violation of Federal Statutes 2 and 7. Signed by order of Chief Justice H. R. Sedgwick, 16th Federal District.

“GOOD NEWS!”

Or so at first it seemed.

I’d been named valedictorian of my class at Pennsboro High School. And I’d been the only one at our school, of five students nominated, to be awarded a federally funded Patriot Democracy Scholarship.

My mother came running to hug me, and congratulate me. And my father, though more warily.

“That’s our girl! We are so proud of you.”

The principal of our high school had telephoned my parents with the good news. It was rare for a phone to ring in our house, for most messages came electronically and there was no choice about receiving them.

And my brother, Roderick, came to greet me with a strange expression on his face. He’d heard of Patriot Democracy Scholarships, Roddy said, but had never known anyone who’d gotten one. While he’d been at Pennsboro High he was sure that no one had ever been named a Patriot Scholar.

“Well. Congratulations, Addie.”

“Thanks! I guess.”

Roddy, who’d graduated from Pennsboro High three years before, and was now working as a barely paid intern in the Pennsboro branch of the NAS Media Dissemination Bureau (MDB), was grudgingly admiring. I thought—He’s jealous. He can’t go to a real university.

I never knew if I felt sorry for my hulking-tall brother who’d cultivated a wispy little sand-colored beard and mustache, and always wore the same dull-brown clothes, that were a sort of uniform for lower-division workers at MDB, or if—actually—I was afraid of him. Inside Roddy’s smile there was a secret little smirk just for me.

When we were younger Roddy had often tormented me—“teasing” it was called (by Roddy). Both our parents worked ten-hour shifts and Roddy and I were home alone together much of the time. As Roddy was the older, it had been Roddy’s task to take care of your little sister. What a joke! But a cruel joke, that doesn’t make me smile.

Now we were older, and I was tall myself (for a girl of my age: five feet eight), Roddy didn’t torment me quite as much. Mostly it was his expression—a sort of shifting, frowning, smirk-smiling, meant to convey that Roddy was thinking certain thoughts best kept secret.

That smirking little smile just for me—like an ice-sliver in the heart.

My parents had explained: it was difficult for Roddy, who hadn’t done well enough in high school to merit a scholarship even to the local NAS state college, to see that I was doing much better than he’d done in the same school. Embarrassing to him to know that his younger sister earned higher grades than he had, from the very teachers he’d had at Pennsboro High. And Roddy had little chance of ever being admitted to a federally mandated four-year university, even if he took community college courses, and our parents could afford to send him.

Something had gone wrong during Roddy’s last two years of high school. He’d become scared about things—maybe with reason. He’d never confided in me.

At Pennsboro High—as everywhere in our nation, I suppose—there was a fear of seeming “smart”—(which might be interpreted as “too smart”)—which would result in calling unwanted attention to you. In a True Democracy all individuals are equal—no one is better than anyone else. It was OK to get B’s, and an occasional A−; but A’s were risky, and A+ was very risky. In his effort not to get A’s on exams, though he was intelligent enough, and had done well in middle school, Roddy seriously missed, and wound up with D’s.

Dad had explained: it’s like you’re a champion archer. And you have to shoot to miss the bull’s-eye. And something willful in you assures that you don’t just miss the bull’s-eye but the entire damned target.

Dad had laughed, shaking his head. Something like this had happened to my brother.

Poor Roddy. And poor Adriane, since Roddy took out his disappointment on me.

It wasn’t talked about openly at school. But we all knew. Many of the smartest kids held back in order not to call attention to themselves. HSPSO (Home Security Public Safety Oversight) was reputed to keep lists of potential dissenters/ MIs/ SIs, and these were said to contain the names of students with high grades and high I.Q. scores. Especially suspicious were students who were good at science—these were believed to be too “questioning” and “skeptic” about the guidelines for curriculum at the school, so experiments were no longer part of our science courses, only just “science facts” to be memorized (“gravity causes objects to fall,” “water boils at 212 degrees F.,” “cancer is caused by negative thoughts,” “the average female I.Q. is 7.55 points lower than the average male I.Q., adjusting for ST status”).

Of course it was just as much of a mistake to wind up with C’s and D’s—that meant that you were dull-normal, or it might mean that you’d deliberately sabotaged your high school career. Too obviously “holding back” was sometimes dangerous. After graduation you might wind up at a community college hoping to better yourself by taking courses and trying to transfer to a state school, but the fact was, once you entered the workforce in a low-level category, like Roddy at MDB, you were there forever.

Nothing is ever forgotten, no one is going anywhere they aren’t already at. This was a saying no one was supposed to say aloud.

So, Dad was stuck forever as an ME2—medical technician, second rank—at the district medical clinic where staff physicians routinely consulted him on medical matters, especially pediatric oncology—physicians whose salaries were five times Dad’s salary.

Dad’s health benefits, like Mom’s, were so poor Dad couldn’t even get treatment at the clinic he worked in. We didn’t want to think what it would mean if and when they needed serious medical treatment.

I hadn’t been nearly as cautious in school as Roddy. I enjoyed school where I had (girl) friends close as sisters. I liked quizzes and tests—they were like games which, if you studied hard, and memorized what your teachers told you, you could do well.

But then, sometimes I tried harder than I needed to try.

Maybe it was risky. Some little spark of defiance provoked me.

But maybe also (some of us thought) school wasn’t so risky for girls. There had been only a few DASTADs—Disciplinary Actions Securing Threats Against Democracy—taken against Pennsboro students in recent years, and these students had all been boys in category ST3 or below.

(The highest ST—SkinTone—category was 1: “Caucasian.” Most residents of Pennsboro were ST1 or ST2 with a scattering of ST3’s. There were ST4’s in a neighboring district and of course dark-complected ST workers in all the districts. We knew they existed but most of us had never seen an actual ST10.)

It seems like the most pathetic vanity now, and foolishly naïve, but at our school I was one of those students who’d displayed some talent for writing, and for art; I was a “fast study” (my teachers said, not entirely approvingly), and could memorize passages of prose easily. I did not believe that I was the “outstanding” student in my class. That could not be possible! I had to work hard to understand math and science, I had to read and reread my homework assignments, and to rehearse quizzes and tests, while to certain of my classmates these subjects came naturally. (ST2’s and 3’s were likely to be Asians, a minority in our district, and these girls and boys were very smart, yet not aggressive in putting themselves forward, that’s to say at risk.) Yet somehow it happened that Adriane Strohl wound up with the highest grade-point average in the Class of ’23—4.3 out of 5.

My close friend Paige Connor had been warned by her parents to hold back—so Paige’s average was only 4.1, well inside the safe range. And one of the obviously smartest boys, whose father was MI, like my Dad, a former math professor, had definitely held back—or maybe exams so traumatized him, Jonny had not done well without trying, and his average was a modest/safe 3.9.

Better to be a safe coward than a sorry hero. Why I’d thought such remarks were just stupid jokes kids made, I don’t know.

Fact is, I had just not been thinking. Later in my life, or rather in my next life, as a university student, when I would be studying psychology, at least a primitive form of cognitive psychology, I would learn about the phenomenon of “attention”—“attentiveness”—that is within consciousness but is the pointed, purposeful, focused aspect of consciousness. Just to have your eyes open is to be conscious only minimally; to pay attention is something further. In my schoolgirl life I was conscious, but I was not paying attention. Focused on tasks like homework, exams, friends to sit with in cafeteria and hang out with in gym class, I did not pick up more than a fraction of what hovered in the air about me, the warnings of teachers that were non-verbal, glances that should have alerted me to—something …

I would realize, in my later life, that virtually all of my life beforehand had been minimally conscious. I had questioned virtually nothing, I had scarcely tried to decipher the precise nature of what my parents were actually trying to communicate to me, apart from their words. For my dear parents were accursed with attentiveness. I had taken them for granted—I had taken my own bubble-life for granted …

So it happened, Adriane Strohl was named valedictorian of her graduating class. Good news! Congratulations!

Now I assume that no one else who might’ve been qualified wanted this “honor”—just as no one else wanted a Patriot Democracy Scholarship. Except there’d been some controversy, the school administration was said to favor another student for the honor of giving the valedictory address, not Adriane Strohl but a boy with a 4.2 average and also a varsity letter in football and a Good Democratic Citizenship Award, whose parents were allegedly of a higher caste than mine, and whose father was not MI but EE (a special distinction granted to Exiled persons who had served their terms of Exile and had been what was called 110 percent rehabilitated—Exile Elite).

I’d known about the controversy vaguely, as a school rumor. The EE father’s son had not such high grades as I did, but it was believed that he would give a smoother and more entertaining valedictory address, since his course of study was TV Public Relations and not the mainstream curriculum. And maybe administrators were concerned that Adriane Strohl would not be entertaining but would say “unacceptable” things in her speech?

Somehow without realizing, over a period of years, I’d acquired a reputation among my teachers and classmates for saying “surprising” things—“unexpected” things—that other students would not have said. Impulsively I’d raised my hands and asked questions. I was not doubtful exactly—just curious, and wanting to know. For instance was a “science fact” always and inevitably a fact? Did water always boil at 212 degrees F., or did it depend upon how pure the water was? And were boy-students always smarter than girl students, judging from actual tests and grades in our school?

Some of the teachers (male) made jokes about me, so that the class laughed at my silly queries; other (female) teachers were annoyed, or maybe frightened. My voice was usually quiet and courteous but I might’ve come across as willful.

Sometimes the quizzical look in my face disconcerted my teachers, who took care always to compose their expressions when they stood in front of a classroom. There were approved ways of showing interest, surprise, (mild) disapproval, severity. (Our classrooms, like all public spaces and many private spaces, were “monitored for quality assurance” but adults were more keenly aware of surveillance than teenagers.)

Each class had its spies. We didn’t know who they were, of course—it was said that if you thought you knew, you were surely mistaken, since the DCVSB (Democratic Citizens Volunteer Surveillance Bureau) chose spies so carefully, it was analogous to the camouflage wings of a certain species of moth that blends in seamlessly with the bark of a certain tree. As Dad said, Your teachers can’t help it. They can’t deviate from the curriculum. The ideal is lockstep—each teacher in each classroom performing like a robot and never deviating from script under penalty of—you know what.

Was this true? For years in our class—the Class of NAS-23—there’d been vague talk of a teacher—how long ago, we didn’t know—maybe when we were in middle school?—who’d “deviated” from the script one day, began talking wildly, and laughing, and shaking his/her fist at the “eye” (in fact, there were probably numerous “eyes” in any classroom, and all invisible), and was arrested, and overnight Deleted—so a new teacher was hired to take his/her place; and soon no one remembered the teacher-who’d-been-Deleted. And after a while we couldn’t even remember clearly that one of our teachers had been Deleted. (Or had there been more than one? Were certain classrooms in our school haunted?) In our brains where the memory of———should have been, there was just a blank.

Definitely, I was not aggressive in class. I don’t think so. But compared with my mostly meek classmates, some of whom sat small in their desks like partially folded-up papier-mâché dolls, it is possible that Adriane Strohl stood out—in an unfortunate way.

In Patriot Democracy History, for instance, I’d questioned “facts” of history, sometimes. I’d asked questions about the subject no one ever questioned—the Great Terrorist Attacks of 9/11/01. But not in an arrogant way, really—just out of curiosity! I certainly didn’t want to get any of my teachers in trouble with the EOB (Education Oversight Bureau) which could result in them being demoted or fired or—“vaporized.”

I’d thought that, well—people liked me, mostly. I was the spiky-haired girl with the big glistening dark-brown eyes and a voice with a little catch in it and a habit of asking questions. Like a really young child with too much energy in kindergarten, you hope will run in circles and tire herself out. With a kind of naïve obliviousness I earned good grades so it was assumed that, despite my father being of MI caste, I would qualify for a federally mandated State Democracy University.

(That is, I was eligible for admission to one of the massive state universities. At these, a thousand students might attend a lecture, and many courses were online.)

Restricted universities were far smaller, prestigious and inaccessible to all but a fraction of the population; though not listed online or in any public directory, these universities were housed on “traditional” campuses in Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, etc., in restricted districts. Not only did we not know precisely where these centers of learning were, but we also had not ever met anyone with degrees from them.

When in class I raised my hand to answer a teacher’s question I often did notice classmates glancing at me—my friends, even—sort of uneasy, apprehensive—What will Adriane say now? What is wrong with Adriane?

There was nothing wrong with me! I was sure.

In fact, I was secretly proud of myself. Maybe just a little vain. Wanting to think I am Eric Strohl’s daughter.

THE ARREST

The words were brisk, impersonal: “Strohl, Adriane. Hands behind your back.”

It happened so fast. At graduation rehearsal.

So fast! I was too surprised—too scared—to think of resisting.

Except I guess that I did—try to “resist”—in childish desperation tried to duck and cringe away from the officers’ rough hands on me—wrenching my arms behind my back with such force, I had to bite my lips to keep from screaming.

What was happening? I could not believe it—I was being arrested.

Yet even in my shock thinking I will not scream. I will not beg for mercy.

My wrists were handcuffed behind my back. Within seconds I was a captive of the Homeland Security.

I’d only just given my valedictorian’s speech and had stepped away from the podium, to come down from the auditorium stage, when there came our principal Mr. Mackay with a peculiar expression on his face—muted anger, righteousness, but fear also—to point at me, as if the arresting officers needed him to point me out at close range.

“That is she—‘Adriane Strohl.’ That is the treasonous girl you seek.”

Mr. Mackay’s words were strangely stilted. He seemed very angry with me—but why? Because of my valedictorian’s speech? But the speech had consisted entirely of questions—not answers, or accusations.

I’d known that Mr. Mackay didn’t like me—didn’t know me very well but knew of me from my teachers. But it was shocking to see in an adult’s face a look of genuine hatred.

“She was warned. They are all warned. We did our best to educate her as a patriot, but—the girl is a born provocateur.”

Provocateur! I knew what the term meant, but I’d never heard such a charge before, applied to me.

Later I would realize that the Arrest Warrant must have been drawn up for me before the rehearsal—of course. Mr. Mackay and his faculty advisers must have reported me to Youth Disciplinary before they’d even heard my valedictory speech—they’d guessed that it would be “treasonous” and that I couldn’t be allowed to give it at the graduation ceremony. And the Patriot Democracy Scholarship—that must have been a cruel trick, as well.

As others stood staring at the front of the brightly lighted auditorium the Arrest Warrant was read to me by the female Arresting Officer. I was too stunned to hear most of it—only the accusing words arrest, detention, reassignment, sentencing—Treason-Speech and Questioning of Authority.

QUICKLY THEN, Mr. Mackay called for an “emergency assembly” of the senior class.

Murmuring and excited my classmates settled into the auditorium. There were 322 students in the class, and like wildfire news of my arrest had spread among them within minutes.

Gravely Mr. Mackay announced from a podium that Adriane Strohl, “formerly” valedictorian of the class, had been arrested by the State on charges of Treason and Questioning of Authority; and what was required now was a “vote of confidence” from her peers regarding this action.

That is, all members of the senior class (excepting Adriane Strohl) were to vote on whether to confirm the arrest, or to challenge it. “We will ask for a show of hands,” Mr. Mackay said, voice quavering with the solemnity of the occasion, “in a full, fair, and unbiased demonstration of democracy.”

At this time I was positioned, handcuffed, with a wet, streaked/guilty face, at the very edge of the stage. As if my classmates needed to be reminded who the arrestee Adriane Strohl was.

Gripping my upper arms were two husky Youth Disciplinary Officers from the Youth Disciplinary Division of Homeland Security. They were one man and one woman and they wore dark blue uniforms and were equipped with billy clubs, Tasers, Mace, and revolvers in heavy holsters around their waists. My classmates stared wide-eyed, both intimidated and thrilled. An arrest! At school! And a show-of-hands vote which was not a novelty in itself except on this exciting occasion.

“Boys and girls! Attention! All those in favor of Adriane Strohl being stripped of the honor of class valedictorian as a consequence of having committed treason and questioned authority, raise your hands—yes?” There was a brief stunned pause. Brief.

Hesitantly, a few hands were lifted. Then, a few more.

No doubt the presence of the uniformed Youth Disciplinary Officers glaring at them roused my classmates to action. Entire rows lifted their hands—Yes!

Here and there were individuals who shifted uneasily in their seats. They were not voting, yet. I caught the eye of my friend Carla whose face too appeared to be wet with tears. And there was Paige all but signaling to me—I’m sorry, Adriane. I have no choice.

As in a nightmare, at last a sea of hands were raised against me. If there were some not voting, clasping their hands in their laps, I could not see them.

“And all opposed—no?” Mr. Mackay’s voice hovered dramatically as if he were counting raised hands; in fact, there was not a single hand, of all the rows of seniors, to be seen.

“I think, then, we have a stunning example of democracy in action, boys and girls. ‘Majority rule—the truth is in the numbers.’”

The second vote was hardly more than a repeat of the first: “We, the Senior Class of Pennsboro High, confirm and support the arrest of the former valedictorian, Adriane Strohl, on charges of Treason and Questioning of Authority. All those in favor …”

By this time the arrestee had shut her teary eyes in shame, revulsion, dread. No need to see the show of hands another time.

The officers hauled me out of the school by a rear exit, paying absolutely no heed to my protests of being in pain from the tight handcuffs and their grip on my upper arms. Immediately I was forced into an unmarked police vehicle resembling a small tank with plow-like gratings that might be used to ram against and to flatten protesters.

Roughly I was thrown into the rear of the van. The door was shut and locked. Though I pleaded with the officers, who were seated in the front of the vehicle, on the other side of a barred, Plexiglas barrier, no one paid the slightest attention to me, as if I did not exist.

The officers appeared to be ST4 and ST5. It was possible that they were “foreign”-born/ indoctrinated NAS citizens who had not been allowed to learn English.

I thought—Will anyone tell my parents where I am? Will they let me go home?

Panicked I thought—Will they “vaporize” me?

Heralded by a blaring siren I was taken to a fortresslike building in the city center of Pennsboro, the local headquarters of Homeland Security Interrogation. This was a building with blank bricked-up windows that was said to have once been a post office, before the Reconstitution of the United States into the North American States and the privatizing and gradual extinction of the postal service. (Many buildings from the old States remained, now utilized for very different purposes. The building to which my mother had gone for grade school had been converted to a Children’s Diagnostic and Surgical Repair Facility, for instance; the residence hall in which my father had lived, as a young medical student, in the years before he’d been reclassified as MI, was now a Youth Detention and Re-education Facility. The Media Dissemination Bureau, where my brother Roddy worked, was in an old brownstone building formerly the Pennsboro Public Library, in the days when “books” existed to be held in the hand—and read!) In this drafty place I was brought to an interrogation room in the Youth Disciplinary Division, forcibly seated in an uncomfortable chair with a blinding light shining in my face, and a camera aimed at me, and interrogated by strangers whom I could barely see.

Repeatedly I was asked—“Who wrote that speech for you?”

No one, I said. No one wrote my speech, or helped me write it—I’d written it myself.

“Did your father Eric Strohl write that speech for you?”

No! My father did not.

“Did your father tell you what to write? Influence you? Are these questions your father’s questions?”

No! My own questions.

“Did either of your parents help you write your speech? Influence you? Are these questions their questions?”

No, no, no.

“Are these treasonous thoughts their thoughts?”

I was terrified that my father, or both my parents, had been arrested, and were being interrogated too, somewhere else in this awful place. I was terrified that my father would be reclassified no longer MI but SI (Subversive Individual) or AT (Active Traitor)—that he might meet the same fate as Uncle Tobias.

My valedictorian speech was examined line by line, word by word, by the interrogators—though it was just two printed double-spaced sheets of paper with a few scrawled annotations. My computer had been seized from my locker and was being examined as well.

And all my belongings from my locker—laptop, sketchbook, backpack, cell phone, granola bars, a soiled school sweatshirt, wadded tissues—were confiscated.

The interrogators were brisk and impersonal as machines. Almost, you’d have thought they might be robot-interrogators—until you saw one of them blink, or swallow, or glare at me in pity or disgust, or scratch at his nose.

(Even then, as Dad might have said, these figures could have been robots; for the most recent AI devices were being programmed to emulate idiosyncratic, “spontaneous” human mannerisms.)

Sometimes an interrogator would shift in his seat, away from the blinding light, and I would have a fleeting but clear view of a face—what was shocking was, the face appeared to be so ordinary, the face of someone you’d see on a bus, or a neighbor of ours.

My valedictorian address had been timed to be no more than eight minutes long. That was the tradition at our school—a short valedictorian address, and an even shorter salutatorian address. My English teacher Mrs. Dewson had been assigned to “advise” me—but I hadn’t shown her what I’d been writing. (I hadn’t shown Dad, or Mom, or any of my friends—I’d wanted to surprise them at graduation.) After a half-dozen failed starts I’d gotten desperate and had the bright idea of asking numbered questions—twelve, in all—of the kind my classmates might have asked if they’d had the nerve—(some of these the very questions I’d asked my teachers, who had never given satisfactory answers)—like What came before the beginning of Time?

And What came before the Great Terrorist Attacks of 9/11?

Our RNAS calendar dates from the time of that attack, which was before my birth, but not my parents’ births, and so my parents could remember a pre-NAS time when the calendar was different—time wasn’t measured in just a two-digit figure but a four-digit figure! (Under the old, now-outlawed calendar, my mother and father had been born in what had been called the twentieth century. It was against the law to compute birth dates under the old calendar, but Daddy had told me—I’d been born in what would have been called the twenty-first century if the calendar had not been reformed.)

NAS means North American States—more formally known as RNAS—Reconstituted North American States, which came into being some years after the Great Terrorist Attacks, as a direct consequence of the Attacks, as we were taught.

Following the Attacks there was an Interlude of Indecisiveness during which time issues of “rights”—(the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Civil Rights law, etc.)—vs. the need for Patriot Vigilance in the War Against Terror were contested, with a victory, after the suspension of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by executive order, for PVIWAT, or Patriot Vigilance. (Yes, it is hard to comprehend. As soon as you come to the end of such a sentence, you have forgotten the beginning!)

How strange it was to think there’d been a time when the regions known as (Reconstituted) Mexico and (Reconstituted) Canada had been separate political entities—separate from the States! On a map it seems clear, for instance, that the large state of Alaska should be connected with the mainland United States, and not separated by what was formerly “Canada.” This too was hard to grasp and had never been clearly explained in any of our Patriot Democracy History classes, perhaps because our teachers were not certain of the facts.

The old, “outdated” (that is, “unpatriotic”) history books had all been destroyed, my father said. Hunted down in the most remote outposts—obscure rural libraries in the Dakotas, below-ground stacks in great university libraries, microfilm in what had been the Library of Congress. “Outdated”/“unpatriotic” information was deleted from all computers and from all accessible memory—only reconstituted history and information were allowed, just as only the reconstituted calendar was allowed.

This was only logical, we were taught. There was no purpose to learning useless things, that would only clutter our brains like debris stuffed to overflowing in a trash bin.

But there must have been a time before that time—before the Reconstitution, and before the Attacks. That was what I was asking. Patriot Democracy History—which we’d had every year since fifth grade, an unchanging core of First Principles with ever-more detailed information—was only concerned with post-Terrorist events, mostly the relations of the NAS with its numerous Terrorist Enemies in other parts of the world, and an account of the “triumphs” of the NAS in numerous wars. So many wars! They were fought now at long-distance, and did not involve living soldiers, for the most part; robot-missiles were employed, and powerful bombs said to be nuclear, chemical, and biological. In our senior year of high school we were required to take a course titled “Wars of Freedom”—these included long-ago wars like the Revolutionary War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the more recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars—all of which our country had won—“decisively.” We were not required to learn the dates or causes of these wars, if there were actual causes, but battle-places and names of high-ranking generals, political leaders, and presidents; these were provided in columns to be memorized for exams. The question of Why? was never asked—and so I’d asked it in class, and in my valedictory address. It had not occurred to me that this was Treason-Speech, or that I was Questioning Authority.

The harsh voices were taking a new approach: Was it one of my teachers who’d written the speech for me? One of my teachers who’d “influenced” me?

The thought came to me—Mr. Mackay! I could blame him, he would be arrested …

But I would never do such a thing, I thought. Even if the man hated me, and had me arrested for treason, I could not lie about him.

AFTER TWO HOURS of interrogation it was decided that I was an “uncooperative subject.” In handcuffs I was taken by YD officers to another floor of Home Security which exuded the distressing air of a medical unit; there I was strapped down onto a movable platform and slid inside a cylindrical machine that made clanging and whirring noises close against my head; the cylinder was so small, the surface only an inch or so from my face, I had to shut my eyes tight to keep from panicking. The interrogators’ voices, sounding distorted and inhuman, were channeled into the machine. This was a BIM (Brain-Image Maker)—I’d only heard of these—that would determine if I was telling the truth, or lying.

Did your father—or any adult—write your speech for you?

Did your father—or any adult—influence your speech for you?

Did your father—or any adult—infiltrate your mind with treasonous thoughts?

Barely I could answer, through parched lips—No. No, no!

Again and again these questions were repeated. No matter what answers I gave, the questions were repeated.

Yet more insidious were variants of these questions.

Your father Eric Strohl has just confessed to us, to “influencing” you—so you may as well confess, too. In what ways did he influence you?

This had to be a trick, I thought. I stammered—In no ways. Not ever. Daddy did not.

More harshly the voice continued.

Your mother Madeleine Strohl has confessed to us, both she and your father “influenced” you. In what ways did they influence you?

I was sobbing, protesting—They didn’t! They did not influence me …

(Of course, this wasn’t true. How could any parents fail to “influence” their children? My parents had influenced me through my entire life—not so much in their speech as in their personalities. They were good, loving parents. They had taught Roddy and me: There is a soul within. There is “free will” within. If—without—the State is lacking a soul, and there is no “free will” that you can see. Trust the inner, not the outer. Trust the soul, not the State. But I would not betray my parents by repeating these defiant words.)

At some point in the interrogation I must have passed out—for I was awakened by deafening noises, in a state of panic. Was this a form of torture? Noise-torture? Powerful enough to burst eardrums? To drive the subject insane? We’d all heard rumors of such torture-interrogations—though no one would speak openly about them. Shaken and excited Roddy would come home from his work at Media Dissemination to tell us about certain “experimental techniques” Homeland Security was developing, using laboratory primates—until Mom clamped her hands over her ears and asked him to please stop.

The deafening noises stopped abruptly. The interrogation resumed.

But it was soon decided then that I was too upset—my brain waves were too “agitated”—to accurately register truth or falsity, so I was removed from the cylindrical imaging machine, and an IV needle was jabbed into a vein in my arm, to inject me with a powerful “truth-serum” drug. And again the same several questions were asked, and I gave the same answers. Even in my exhausted and demoralized state I would not tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear: that my father, or maybe both my parents, had “influenced” me in my treasonous ways.

Or any of my teachers. Or even Mr. Mackay, my enemy.

I’d been taken out of the hateful BIM, and strapped to a chair. It was a thick squat “wired” chair—a kind of electric chair—that sent currents of shock through my body, painful as knife-stabs. Now I was crying, and lost control of my bladder.

The interrogation continued. Essentially it was the same question, always the same question, with a variant now and then to throw me off stride.

Who wrote your speech for you? Who “influenced” you? Who is your collaborator in Treason?

It was your brother Roderick who reported you. As a Treason-Monger and a Questioner of Authority, you have been denounced by your brother.

I began to cry harder. I had lost all hope. Of all the things the interrogators had told me, or wanted me to believe, it was only this—that Roddy had reported me—that seemed to me possible, and not so very surprising.

I could remember how, squeezing my hand when he’d congratulated me about my good news, Roddy had smiled—his special smirking-smile just for me.

Congratulations, Addie!

“DISCIPLINARY MEASURE”

Next morning I was taken from my cell and returned to Youth Interrogation.

Half-carried from my cell, handcuffed and my ankles shackled, I was very very tired, very sick, scarcely conscious.

It was my hope that my parents would be waiting for me—that they’d been summoned to come get me, and take me home. I would accept it that I’d be forbidden to attend graduation—forbidden even to graduate from high school; I would accept it that I might be sent to a Youth Rehabilitation camp, as it had been rumored the boys at Pennsboro High had been, who’d been arrested by Youth Disciplinary. All I wanted was to see my parents—to rush at them, and throw myself into their arms …

Some months ago my parents had celebrated my seventeenth birthday with me. It had been a happy time!—but seemed now a lost, childish time. I had not felt like seventeen and now, desperate for my parents, I scarcely felt like a teenager at all.

Of course my parents were nowhere near. Probably they did not know what had happened to me. And I did not dare ask about them.

Instead I was being sternly informed: several Patriot Scholars had been arrested yesterday afternoon, simultaneous with my arrest, in a Youth Disciplinary “sweep.” After a season or more of relatively few such sweeps and seizes, YDDHS was “cracking down” on “potential subversives.”

These Patriot Scholars were graduating seniors from other high schools in the area. Their names, too, had been handed over to YDDHS by the principals of their schools. The question was put bluntly to me: Was I, Adriane Strohl, a collaborator with these students? Was I a co-conspirator?

Their names were told to me: I’d never heard of any one of them.

Their faces appeared on three overhead TV screens: I’d never seen any one of them before.

A camera was turned on me, in a blaze of blinding light. I had to assume that my frightened face was being beamed into other interrogation rooms, where the arrested Patriot Scholars were being held.

Repeatedly I was asked: Was I a collaborator with any one, or more, of these individuals? Was I a co-conspirator?

All I could answer was No.

Weakly, hopelessly—No.

CHEN, MICHAEL was a very young-looking Asian-American boy with sleek black hair worn to his collar and widened, very dark and alarmed eyes. He, too, had been named valedictorian of his graduating class, at Roebuck High School. A glance at CHEN, MICHAEL and you knew that this was a smart boy, probably ST3.

PADURA, LAUREN was a thick-bodied girl with a strong-boned if rather ashen face and damp eyes, probably ST2. She was sitting as upright as possible, though handcuffed and shackled at the ankles; she was a student at East Lawrence High. A glance at PARUDA, LAUREN, and you knew that this was a girl who thought for herself and very likely, in her classes, asked questions as I had.

ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY was a tall lanky dark-blond boy with a blemished face, thick glasses, and a small mustache on his upper lip, ST1 like me. He had been named salutatorian of his class at Rumsfeld High and looked like a math/computer whiz—one glance at ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY and you knew that here was a boy you wanted for your friend, whose kindness, patience, and computer expertise would be invaluable.

The four of us, on the TV monitors, were not looking great. Our eyes were bloodshot. Our mouths were trembling. Whatever we’d done, we regretted it. We didn’t look innocent. We didn’t any longer resemble high school seniors—we looked much younger. Just kids. Scared kids. Kids needing their mom and dad. Kids without a clue what was happening to them.

A panicked thought came to me—what if one of the Patriot Scholars suddenly confessed to “collaborating” with the rest of us? Would we all be executed?

A brisk voice informed us that we had thirty seconds to compose our confessions. At the end of these thirty seconds, if no one had confessed, one Patriot Scholar would be suitably “disciplined” with a Domestic Drone Strike (DDS)—on camera.

We were terrified—paralyzed. No one spoke.

Sleek-black-haired CHEN, MICHAEL opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no words came out.

There were tears, and agitation, in PADURA, LAUREN’S face—but no words issued from her mouth.

Then, I heard myself pleading, in a thin wavering voice, that we were not “collaborators”—we didn’t know one another, we’d never seen one another before, we didn’t know one another’s names …

Indifferently the off-screen voice was counting: eleven, sixteen, twenty-one … Twenty-seven, twenty-eight …

My heart was pounding so violently, I thought that it would burst. My eyes darted from one TV monitor to the others—as the Patriot Scholars trembled and cringed in their chairs, narrowing their eyes, yet unable to shut their eyes entirely.

On one of the screens there was a blinding flash. The boy with the mustache on his upper lip—ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY—was slammed sideways as if he’d been struck with a laser ray, that entered the side of his head like liquid fire, exploded and devoured his head, and then his torso and lower body, in less than three seconds.

What was left of ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY fell to the floor, slithering and phosphorescent, and by quick degrees this, too, vanished … I had a glimpse of the other Patriot Scholars staring in horror at their TV screens before all four screens went dark and a roaring in my ears became deafening.

When I woke from a sick, dead faint, I was being lifted from my chair. Yet so terrified still, I didn’t dare to open my eyes.

EXILE: ZONE 9

“Adriane. I am your Youth Disciplinary Counsel.”

She was a woman of about Mom’s age. Her face was shiny and glaring, so that I could barely look at her. Or maybe my vision had become oversensitive from the previous day’s interrogations in blazing light.

Her name was S. Platz. Her manner was almost jovial, as if she and I shared a joke.

“Try to lift your head and look at me, dear. As if you have nothing to hide. We are being ‘surveyed’ and videotaped—you must know.”

After the terror I’d been feeling, and the hopelessness, S. Platz was so astonishing to me, I couldn’t at first believe her; I was sure that she must be another torturer. Each time I closed my eyes I saw ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY struck down like an animal—or an “enemy” figure in a video game.

I would never forget that horrific sight, I thought.

I would never want to forget, for the executed boy’s sake.

S. Platz, unlike the other interrogators, did not continue to ask me the same questions, and she did not speak in a brisk impersonal voice.

She asked one of the uniformed officers to unshackle me—both my wrists and my ankles. She asked if my wrists and ankles hurt, and if I was “very tired” and would like to “sleep an uninterrupted sleep” in a real bed—to help with “healing.”

Almost inaudibly I said Yes.

(Wondering if “uninterrupted sleep” meant something terrible?)

But S. Platz seemed so kindly! Tears flooded my eyes, I was so grateful for her sympathy.

Yes thank you. Oh yes—I would like to sleep …

“I have good news for you, Adriane. Youth Disciplinary has ruled that the discipline for your violation of the federal statutes is—Exile.”

Exile! I had heard of Exile—of course. This form of discipline was often confused with Deletion because, so far as anyone knew, including the families of Exiled Individuals, the Exiled Individual simply—vanished.

It was said to be highly experimental, and dangerous. Exiled Individuals were teletransported—every molecule in their bodies dissolved, to be reconstituted elsewhere. (No one who was left behind knew where. A colony on another planet? This was a prevailing rumor, according to Roddy. But which planet? If any had been colonized by the Government, ordinary citizens knew nothing about it.) But often, the teletransportation failed, and individuals were injured, incapacitated, killed, or, in effect, “vaporized”—and no one ever saw them again.

Only if the Exiled Individual reappeared, years later, after having served out his sentence, could it be assumed that he had been alive all the while, but in a remote place. EIs were generally allowed to live but had to submit to a process of “Re-education” and “Reconstitution.”

Exile was considered to be the “humane”—“liberal”—disciplinary measure, appropriate for younger people who had not committed the most serious crimes—yet.

In our Patriot Social Studies class we were taught that the “Re-educated” and “Reconstituted” individual, successfully having completed his sentence of Exile and returned to the present time, designated EI1, was often an outstanding Citizen-Patriot; several notable EI1’s had been named to federal posts in Homeland Security Public Safety Oversight and Epidemic Control; and the most renowned of EI1’s had risen to a high-ranking executive post in the Capitol, as an assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Interrogation.

There were rumors that the president was himself an EI1—a former “traitor”-genius now totally converted to NAS and its democratic tradition.

S. Platz was saying: “Your case was carefully adjudicated, Adriane, after several of your teachers entered pleas for you. Their claim was that you are ‘naïve’—‘very young’—‘not subversive’—and ‘not radical’—and that, if you are separated from the influence of your MI-father and are allowed to Re-educate yourself, you would be of value to society. Therefore, we are transporting you to Zone Nine. There, you will attend an excellent four-year university to train yourself in a socially useful profession. Teaching is strongly suggested. Or, if your science grades are good, you would be allowed to apply to medical school. Zone Nine is not so ‘urban’ as our Eastern zones, nor is it so ‘rural’ as most of our North-Midwest zones. It is not on any NAS map—it is a place that ‘exists’ only by way of special access, for, in our present time, in the North-Midwest States that now encompass what was known as ‘Wisconsin’ in the era of Zone Nine, things are very different.” Seeing that I was looking confused and frightened, S. Platz said, “You need not concern yourself with any of this, Adriane—you will simply be transported to the university in Zone Nine, where you will be a ‘freshman.’ You will be given a new, abbreviated identity. You will be, as you are, seventeen years old. And your name will be ‘Mary Ellen Enright.’ If necessary, when you return to us your training can be brought up-to-date. Everything that you need to know is explained in The Instructions, which I will give you now.”

Though S. Platz spoke clearly I was having difficulty understanding. Badly wanting to ask But can I see my parents again? Just once before I am sent away …

S. Platz handed me a sheet of paper stiff as parchment. When I tried to read it, however, my eyes filled with moisture, and lost focus.

“So there is really no need to ask me questions—is there?”

S. Platz paused, smiling at me.

And now I saw that the counsel’s steel-colored eyes were not smiling, but only just staring, and assessing.

The realization came to me—If I don’t react properly, I will be vaporized on the spot. The woman has this power.

With a numb smile I managed to murmur Thank you!

And not a word about my parents. Or the life I would be leaving—the life to which I would be “lost.”

II
ZONE 9

THE HAPPY PLACE

She was a strange girl. At first, we didn’t like her.

She never smiled at us. Her face was like a mask. She prayed on her knees—we’d seen her! She cried herself to sleep every night like us, only worse.

We were all homesick, our first semester at Wainscotia. Missed our parents and our families so! But this girl was sad in a way we weren’t—like her heart was broken. And she would not be comforted—which does not seem natural.

We were Christian girls, mostly Protestant. We attended chapel on Sundays. (She never did—we noticed that.) We believed in prayer—seriously!

We believed in helping one another. We believed in smiling-through-tears. You cried, and then you laughed—you opened a box of brownies your mom had sent to you, to share with your roommates, or anyone who showed up in the room.

You cried, and wiped away your tears—and you were yourself again.

She was the girl who scorned our mothers’ brownies, and scorned the opportunity to walk with us to class on the steep-hilly sidewalks leading into the campus, who almost never came with us to the dining hall and sat with us. She’d gone to freshman orientation alone, and slipped away alone. The only girl in Acrady Cottage who didn’t participate in Vesper Song.

Probably the only person in the freshman class who claimed she’d “lost” her green-and-purple freshman beanie. Who paid no heed to upperclassmen ordering her to “step out of the way, frosh”—stared through them as if she didn’t see them and kept walking in her stiff-hunched way like a sleepwalker you pitied and would not want to waken.

The girl-with-no-name we called her. For if you called out a cheery Hi there, Mary Ellen!—she didn’t seem to hear, or to register the name, even as she quickened her pace hurrying away.

We knew little about her. But we knew that she was a scholarship girl, like us.

Acrady Cottage was a residence for freshman scholarship girls—meaning that most of us couldn’t have afforded Wainscotia State except for financial aid and part-time jobs on campus.

(She had a part-time job in the geology library.)

Scholarship girls were thrifty girls! Most of our textbooks were used—some of them pretty badly battered.

We wore hand-me-down clothes and clothes sewn by our mothers or grandmothers—or by us.

Quite a few of us were 4-H girls. We were three Wisconsin State Fair blue-ribbon winners, in Acrady Cottage.

Acrady wasn’t a residence hall like the ivy-covered stone buildings elsewhere on campus—it was just a house, plain weathered-gray shingle board, where freshman girls lived who could not afford to live anywhere else.

But Acrady Cottage had spirit!

At Vesper Song, Acrady excelled though we were one of the smaller residences on campus—twenty-two girls.

Twenty-two girls including “Mary Ellen”—the girl who kept to herself like someone in quarantine.

First week at Wainscotia we were all homesick. But trying to be cheerful—“friendly.”

Not her—“Mary Ellen Enright.”

She’d avoid us if she could. Her own roommates!—that isn’t easy.

Four of us in the third-floor room. Cramped space and just two (dormer) windows.

She’d taken the bed that was farthest, in a corner. And her desk jutted out from the wall, to partially hide the bed from the rest of the room. No window in that corner.

She’d shrink from us. Trying to smile—a weird bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

And then, when she thought we were asleep and wouldn’t see her, on her knees in the corner, praying.

And crying herself to sleep.

She looked like someone who has traveled a long journey and has not fully recovered.

We’d wondered—Is she foreign?

But what kind of foreign?

Even the way she spoke was strange. If you cornered her to say hello and ask how she was and she couldn’t escape or avoid answering she would stammer a reply that was almost—but not quite—intelligible. We could recognize in her speech the rhythms and vowel-sounds of English, so if we didn’t exactly know what she was saying, we could guess.

And she spoke so fast and nervous! Like none of the other girls of Acrady Cottage.

Of course, we were all from the Midwest. Most of us from Wisconsin. Where Mary Ellen was from was—one of the eastern states, we’d been told. Evidently people talked faster there.

Our part of the U.S., it’s generally known as the Happy Place. (Midwest!) And Wainscotia is a very special university at the heart of the Happy Place.

This girl Mary Ellen, we had to wonder: Was she a Christian?

Was she—Jewish?

None of us from Wisconsin had ever seen a Jewish person, before coming to Wainscotia. But there were Jewish people here—professors, it was said, as well as students. A few.

There was even a Jewish fraternity, and there was a Jewish sorority. So they could live with their own kind. This was amazing to us!

In large cities in Wisconsin, like Milwaukee, and Madison, there were Jewish people—we knew that. But we were mostly from upstate Wisconsin, or rural counties. German, Scandinavian, Scots and Irish backgrounds—and English of course.

Also, “Mary Ellen” did not look like us. This was difficult to explain, but we all agreed. Her hair was darkish blond, spiky like it hadn’t been combed or brushed properly; never curled or waved, and not washed often enough. It needed cutting, and trimming. And she went to bed without hairpins or rollers. Ever.

Didn’t do anything for her hair. Didn’t even seem to recognize what rollers were!

(Like she didn’t seem to know how a phone worked—the way you dial with your forefinger. Of all of us in Acrady Cottage, only Mary Ellen would shrink from answering the phone when it rang near her, so we had to wonder—was it possible her family didn’t own a telephone?)

(And she didn’t smoke! And was forever coughing from our cigarette smoke—coughing in fits, until her eyes watered—though she never complained as you’d have expected a nonsmoker to complain. You could see the misery in her face but it was what you’d call long-suffering misery.)

She might have been pretty—almost—except she never wore lipstick. A guy looking at her would look right past her, there was so little to catch the male eye. (We all wore red—very red—lipstick!) She didn’t even pluck her eyebrows which is about the least a girl can do, to make herself attractive.

She looked like a convalescent. Some wasting disease that left her skinny, and her skin ashy-pale and sort of grainy as if it would be rough to the touch like sandpaper. Her eyes would have been beautiful eyes—they were dark-brown, like liquid chocolate—with thick lashes—but they were likely to be narrowed and squinting as if she were looking into a bright, blinding light. And she did not look you in the eye—like a guilty person.

Along with not smoking, she also didn’t eat potato chips, glazed doughnuts, Cheez-bits, M&M’s, and those little cellophane bags of Planters peanuts that were our favorite snacks while we were studying, that left salt all over our fingers. She didn’t eat any kind of chewy meat like beef or pork or even chicken, sometimes. She’d eat fish casseroles.

Which was why she was so skinny. Flat-chested, and her hips flat, like a guy’s, she didn’t have to struggle into girdles like the rest of us.

Didn’t even know what a “girdle” was—just stared at Trishie’s when she was getting dressed for a frat party, like she’d never seen anything so scary!

Scholarship girls in Acrady Cottage studied, hard. We worked long hours at our desks for we had to retain B averages or lose our scholarships. But Mary Ellen Enright worked harder, and longer than any of us—so far as we knew, Mary Ellen did almost nothing else except her schoolwork, and her part-time job in the geology library!

At her desk with her back to the room, and to her roommates, she was unnaturally still, concentrated upon her work motionless as a mannequin but so tense, you could see the tension in her neck and shoulders.

As if she was holding back a scream, or a sob.

Yet she remained at her desk, with the crook-necked lamp shining a halo of light onto the desktop, for as long as she could endure it—if none of her roommates objected to the light.

(At first we did not object. We had no trouble sleeping with a single light on in the room. But as time passed, and we grew less patient with our misfit-roommate, we did object, and Mary Ellen took her work downstairs to the work-study lounge where she would disturb no one, and no one would disturb her. And sometimes she slept there, on a couch. And we did not have to hear her sob herself to sleep!)

It was hard to say what was wrong with Mary Ellen. The way she’d stare at us, and look away—like she’d seen something scary—made us think there was something wrong with us.

We hoped (sort of) that she would drop out of school. Or transfer. This was cruel of us, and not very Christian—we were not proud of such thoughts. But we were girls who’d only just graduated from high school a few months before and maybe Mary Ellen scared us, so close to the edge. Close to mental and physical collapse as we’d sometimes felt ourselves away from home for the first time and at the University of Wisconsin–Wainscotia where 9,400 students were enrolled.

A certain percentage of freshmen dropped out in the first several weeks of their first semester at Wainscotia. You’d hear of someone—mostly girls, but there were boys, too—who just “broke down”—“couldn’t sleep”—“cried all the time”—“felt lost.”

But Mary Ellen seemed determined not to be one of these. She was deeply unhappy and seemed to us—(to some of us, at least)—on the verge of a nervous collapse but there was something willful about her—like a cripple who doesn’t seem to know she’s a cripple, or a stutterer who doesn’t seem to know that she’s a stutterer.

Another strange thing: alone among the girls of Acrady Cottage Mary Ellen Enright received no mail.

And yet stranger: Mary Ellen Enright seemed to expect no mail, for she walked by the mailboxes without glancing at her own.

We asked our resident adviser Miss Steadman what she thought we could do to make Mary Ellen less lonely and Miss Steadman suggested leaving her alone for the time being, for “Mary Ellen” had traveled a long distance—from one of the eastern states like New York, New Jersey or Massachusetts—and was feeling a more acute homesickness than we were feeling, whose families lived in the state and whom we could visit on weekends by bus.

Is “Mary Ellen” Jewish? we asked.

Miss Steadman said she did not think so. For “Enright” was not known to be a Jewish name.

But she seems like she’s from—somewhere else. Like she’s not an American—sort of.

Miss Steadman frowned at this remark which clearly she did not like.

Miss Steadman would tell us only that Mary Ellen Enright was the sole resident of Acrady Cottage whose complete file hadn’t been made available to her, as our resident adviser. She’d received a file from the office of the dean of women for Mary Ellen but it was very short, and some of it had been blotted out with black ink.

Hilda McIntosh described how in the first week of classes she’d come into her room on the third floor one afternoon—and there was her roommate Mary Ellen Enright standing in front of Hilda’s desk staring at her typewriter.

This was Hilda’s portable Remington typewriter, one of her proudest possessions which she’d brought to college. Not everyone in Acrady Cottage had a typewriter, and those who didn’t were envious of Hilda!

And there was Mary Ellen staring at the typewriter with some look, Hilda said, “way beyond envy.”

Like the girl had never seen a typewriter before! Like it was some new invention.

So Hilda said, speaking softly not wanting to startle Mary Ellen—(but startling her anyway, so that she jumped, and quivered, and her eyelids fluttered)—You can try it, Mary Ellen, if you want to. Here’s a piece of paper!

Hilda inserted the paper into the typewriter. Hilda indicated to the girl how she should type—striking several keys in rapid succession.

The girl just stared blank-faced.

Like this, see? Of course, you have to memorize the keyboard. That comes with practice. I learned in high school—it isn’t hard.

The girl touched one of the keys, lightly. Like she hadn’t strength to press it down.

In a faint voice she said, It doesn’t w-work …

Hilda laughed. Of course it works!

The girl peered at the back of the typewriter, as if searching for something missing.

In a faint voice saying, But—there’s nothing connecting it to—to …

Hilda laughed. This was like introducing a rural relative to, well, an indoor toilet! Funny.

Look here, Hilda said.

Hilda sat down at her desk and the keys clattered away like machine-gun fire:

SEPTEMBER 23, 1959

ACRADY COTTAGE

WAINSCOTIA STATE UNIVERSITY

WAINSCOTIA FALLS, WISCONSIN

USA

UNIVERSE

The new girl Mary Ellen stared at this display of magic—the flying keys, the typed letters that became words and sentences—and could not seem to speak. As if her throat had shut up. As if the clattering typewriter frightened her. As if she couldn’t bear the sight of—well, what was it? Hilda couldn’t imagine.

Hilda encouraged Mary Ellen to try the typewriter again but Mary Ellen backed away as if it was all too much for her. And suddenly then, her eyes rolled back in her head, her skin went chalky-white—and she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

TYPEWRITER

“Mary Ellen?”

One of them was speaking to me. She’d come up behind me.

I was very frightened. I knew there were informers like my brother Roddy—of course. But I could not comprehend if I was behaving like a guilty person or whether, in my EI status, I was behaving in a manner appropriate to my circumstances.

The girl was the one called “Hilda McIntosh.” She had a round bland moon-face and a very friendly smile. Her hair was a chestnut-colored “pageboy.” I could not bring myself to look her in the face, still less in the eyes, for fear of what I would see.

The empty gaze. The iris in the eye the size of a seed.

I wondered: Was this person an informer? Did she know who Mary Ellen Enright really was? Had she followed me?

It was often the case, here in Zone 9, that individuals followed me. Yet in such practiced ways, I could not be certain that they were following me by design or by coincidence.

I’d had to escape from—wherever it was—the lecture hall in the building near the chapel—Hendrick Hall—as oxygen was being sucked from the room by the others—(I’d counted sixty-six student-figures seated in steep-banked rows)—and the professor-figure at the podium continued lecturing on the rudiments of logic. Some Y is X. X is M. What is the relationship of M to Y?

I did not cross the green. The open, vulnerable expanse of the green. Making my way like a wounded wild creature close beside buildings and through narrow passageways in order not to attract attention.

Not daring to glance up, to see who was “seeing” me.

The EI will be monitored at any and all times during his/her exile.

Violations of these Instructions will insure that the EI will be immediately Deleted.

In a sequence of hills, mostly downhill, approximately one mile to Acrady Cottage where I would hide in the third-floor room assigned to “Mary Ellen Enright.”

It was the epicenter of the Restricted Zone 9. It was my imprisonment. Yet, I felt safe there.

I entered the cottage by a side door. Made my way up the back stairs hoping not to be detected by any girl-figures and I avoided the resident adviser’s suite on the first floor where the door was always flung open in a way to suggest Welcome! but which I worried might be an informer’s trick.

It had been a blade twisted in my heart, that my brother Roddy had informed on me. I could not recall much of those terrible hours of interrogation at YDDHS but I did recall this revelation and my shock and yet my unsurprise for Of course, Roddy always hated me. He would wish me Exiled—or worse.

I wanted to think that one day I would see Roddy again—and I would forgive Roddy. Tears stung my eyes for I could not bear to think that Roddy did not want my forgiveness.

But if I confronted Roddy, it would mean that I would see my parents again. Desperately I wanted to think this!

It was a time, early afternoon, when the freshman residents of Acrady Cottage were mostly out.

I was counting on being invisible. I could not breathe normally, if I knew myself visible.

In these early days in Zone 9 I did not think of those others who might be in Exile here—for surely there were others like myself. Like one trapped in a small cage who has no awareness of others similarly trapped, and in her desperation no sympathy to spare, I could only think of my own situation.

Hurrying up the stairs. Panting, and sweating. For it was a hot dry September in this place, and Acrady Cottage was not air-conditioned.

In Zone 9 very few buildings were air-conditioned. Evidently in this era air-conditioning was rare. And what air there was, to my dismay and disgust, was often polluted by cigarette smoke.

Astonishing to me, my roommates smoked! Each one of them. As if they knew nothing about cigarettes causing cancer, or did not care. Worse, I saw their annoyed expressions when I coughed and choked and yet—how could I help myself? Smoking had been banished in NAS-23 for as long as I’d been alive. (Intravenous nicotine was promoted in its place.)

Thinking Is this my punishment? Secondary smoke inhalation.

Had to wonder who my roommates really were. Why I’d been assigned to room 3C of Acrady Cottage, with these individuals. In NAS-23 it was said—“No accidents, only algorithms.” I could not think that there were coincidences in the stratagems of Homeland Security. I could not think that at least one and perhaps all of my roommates were informants assigned to Enright, Mary Ellen.

Possibly, one of them was a robot. But which one?

SUCH RELIEF, when I was alone in our room.

(But was I ever “alone” in our room?)

That prevailing odor of cigarette smoke like body odor made my nostrils pinch.

Here was my opportunity to examine a clumsy black machine with a keyboard on the desk of one of my roommates—a “typewriter.”

I’d heard of typewriters of course. I’d seen photographs of typewriters and my parents had spoken of owning a typewriter, I think. (Or had it been my grandparents?) But I had never seen an actual typewriter, from an era before computers.

In a kind of trance I stared at the strange machine. Something about it that made me uneasy.

So badly I missed my laptop computer, I felt almost faint. I missed my cell phone, that fitted so comfortably in the palm of my hand it was like a growth there, a rectangular luminous eye.

Could not comprehend the logic of this machine. Could it be so crude, only just—typing?

No Internet? No e-mail? No texting? Only just—typing?

There was nowhere to look in or about the typewriter! There was no screen.

Profound to think that this clumsy machine connected with no reality beyond itself. Just—a machine.

You were trapped in yourself, at a typewriter. You could not escape into cyberspace. In Zone 9, you could not access cyberspace.

Hard to comprehend: in 1959 cyberspace did not exist.

And yet, that was not possible—was it? For one of the great accomplishments of the twenty-first century—we’d been told and retold—was the establishment of cyberspace as an entity separate and distinct and (presumably) independent of human beings, thus independent of constraints of time and space.

Not that I’d ever understood this. To truly understand you’d have to know math, physics, astrophysics, the most advanced computer science that was in fact, in NAS-23, classified information …

“Mary Ellen?”—the voice was close behind me.

The smiling girl had crept up silently behind me—“Hilda” was her name. She’d scared me so, my heart leapt in my chest like a shot bird.

Hilda was very friendly of course. They were all very friendly.

Their eyes eating at me, like hungry ants. Memorizing, assessing. Planning the words they would use in their reports to Homeland Security.

In her flat midwestern voice that seemed mocking to my ears Hilda was saying that the machine was her “almost-new Remington,” of which she seemed to be proud.

“You can try it, if you want to. Here’s a piece of paper!”

Hilda inserted a sheet of paper and rolled it into position. She indicated to me how I should type, striking several keys in succession—random keys, with her deft fingers.

But I just stared. I was feeling light-headed.

I would have tried to speak but my tongue felt like cotton batting too big for my mouth.

Hilda said, “Like this, see? Of course, you have to memorize the keyboard. So that your fingers type without you having to think. That comes with practice. I learned in high school—it isn’t hard.”

I touched one of the keys. Nothing happened.

“It doesn’t w-work …”

Hilda laughed at me. Not maliciously but as an older sister might laugh at a naïve younger sister.

“Of course it works, Mary Ellen! Like this.”

Mary Ellen. Was this name uttered in a friendly way, or in a mocking way?

I wanted to think that the girl-figure “Hilda” was actually a girl like myself, who was being sincerely friendly. I did not want to think that the girl-figure was a registered agent of Homeland Security or (possibly) a virtual representation of an undergraduate girl manipulated on a screen by a (distant) Homeland Security agent teasing me in my Exile in Zone 9.

It was distracting to me, that Hilda stood so close. Many of the girls of Acrady Cottage stood close to me, and caused me to back away. Our way of behaving with one another in NAS-23 was noticeably different: the unspoken rule was do not come close. Since the arrest, and the terrible sight on the TV monitor of the boy executed, I was in dread of strangers coming too close. My skin prickled with the danger.

Hilda was so very friendly, so nice, she seemed entirely oblivious of my wariness. It would be said of Hilda that she was a “pretty” girl—(as it would be said of me, I was sure, that I was a “plain” girl). Shorter than I was by at least two inches, and plumper. Where my body was lean almost like a boy’s her body was shapely as a mature woman’s. Like the other girls Hilda wore a sturdy brassiere—a “bra”—that might have stood by itself, made of firm, metallic-threaded fabric; beneath her clothes, this “bra” asserted itself like an extra appendage. Half-consciously I shrank away hoping that Hilda would not, seemingly unconsciously, brush against me with her sharp-pointed breasts.

Hilda sat at her desk with an exaggerated sort of perfect posture like a young woman in an advertisement and typed, rapidly and flawlessly, to demonstrate to me how easy “typing” was:

SEPTEMBER 23, 1959

ACRADY COTTAGE

WAINSCOTIA STATE UNIVERSITY

WAINSCOTIA FALLS, WISCONSIN

USA

UNIVERSE

“See? Now you try it, Mary Ellen.”

September 23, 1959! It could not be true—could it?

This was Zone 9—of course. This was my Exile. I must accept my Exile, and I must adjust. Yet—

The horror swept over me: this was eighty years into the past, and more. I had not yet been born. My parents had not yet been born. There was no one in this world who loved me, no one who even knew me. No one who would claim me. I was utterly alone.

“Mary Ellen? What’s wrong?”

With a look of genuine—sisterly—concern, Hilda reached out for me, even as I shrank away.

“Don’t t-touch me! No …”

I was terrified, nauseated. Yet too weak to escape—a black pit opened at my feet, and sucked me down.

THE LOST ONE

Help me! Help me—Mom, Daddy …

I miss you so much …

It was a ravenous hunger in me, to return home. A yearning so strong, it seemed almost that a hand gripped the nape of my neck, urging me forward as in a desperate swooning plunge.

I am all alone here. I will die here.

THEY’D STRAPPED ME DOWN. Wrists, ankles, head—to prevent “self-injury.”

A painful shunt in the soft flesh at the inside of my elbow, through which a chill liquid coursed into my vein. It was a mechanical procedure they’d done many times before.

In a flat voice the pronouncement: subject going down.

I saw myself as a diminishing light. A swirl of light, turning in upon itself and becoming ever smaller, more transparent.

Abruptly then—I was gone.

Dematerialization of the subject. Teletransportation of the subject’s molecular components. Reconstitution in Zone 9.

“‘MARY ELLEN ENRIGHT.’ This is she?”

The question was put to someone not-me. Yet I could observe the lifeless body from a slightly elevated position and felt pity for it.

Like a zombie. Exiled.

I would wonder—Does a zombie know that it is a zombie? How would a zombie comprehend.

This was funny! But laughter caught in my throat like a clot of phlegm.

In this very cold place. Where blood coursed slow as liquid mercury.

I was very confused. I could not clear my head. My brain had been injured. I had heard them joking.

NSS it was called—Neurosurgical Security Services. Rumors had circulated in high school. The subject was taboo.

Before teletransportation they’d inserted a microchip into a particular part of my brain called the hippocampus, where memory is processed before being stored elsewhere in the brain. At least, I thought this must have happened. I did not think it had been a dream.

Part of my scalp had been shaved, a pie-shaped wedge of skull removed, the microchip installed. (Evidently) I felt no pain. A zombie does not feel pain. Even the sawed-out portion of the skull and the lacerated scalp were cold-numb and remote to me. And yet I felt such a powerful wave of gratitude, I could have wept—They did not remove my parents from me. They left me my parents at least.

For that part of my brain might have been removed, which contained all memory of my parents.

In Exile you cling to what you have, that has not (yet) been taken from you.

From this cold place I was carried, with others who’d been teletransported, in a vehicle resembling an emergency medical van.

The vehicle did not move rapidly. There was no siren.

This was not an emergency but routine.

The vehicle made stops at several destinations, before mine. In my semiconscious state I had little awareness of what was happening. I was trying to speak to my parents whose faces were vivid to me in their concern for me. I was trying to say In four years I will see you again. Don’t forget me!

I could not have said if I was seventeen years old, or seven years old.

I could not have said which year this was. I had no idea where I was.

We had left the lights of a city and were traveling now in a vast rural night. It was astonishing to me, stars in the night sky overhead were large and luminous as I had never seen stars before in my old, lost life.

The air was purer here, in Zone 9. So sharp to inhale! The night sky was not obscured by the scrim of pollution to which we were all accustomed in the old, lost life.

We who were being carried in the van in the night were strapped to stretchers and could not turn our heads to regard one another. We were very tired, for we’d come a long distance.

It might have been the case, not all of the teletransported had made the journey fully alive. It was not clear to me initially whether I was fully alive.

One of the other teletransported was hyperventilating in panic. Something must have gone wrong with his medication. I could not turn my head to see. Or, my head was strapped in place. I held myself very still and breathed calmly as Dad would instruct me in the presence of the Enemy. I thought—They will vaporize him. It was a desperate thought—They will vaporize him, and not me.

At the next stop, I was taken from the van.

Unstrapped from the stretcher, and made to stand.

“Use your legs, miss. There is nothing wrong with your legs. Your brain sends the signal—left leg, right leg. And your head—lift your head.”

I was able to walk a few yards, before I collapsed.

In the morning I woke beneath a thin blanket, on a lumpy cot. The bandages were gone from my head. The straps were gone from my wrists and ankles. Most of the grogginess had faded.

It would be explained to me: I was a freshman student at Wainscotia State University in Wainscotia Falls, Wisconsin. I had arrived late the previous night, feverish. I had been brought to the university infirmary and not to my residence. And now, in the morning, since my fever had disappeared, I was to be discharged.

“Your things have been delivered to your residence, Miss Enright.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Your residence is Acrady Cottage, on South University Avenue.”

“Thank you.”

Acrady Cottage. South University Avenue. It was up to me to find this place, and I would do so.

I was feeling hopeful! Small gulping waves of wonder would rush over me from time to time, amid even the paralysis of fear.

For the crucial matter was: my parents were living, and I would return to them, in four years. My parents had not been “vaporized” even in my memory.

And the crucial matter was: “Mary Ellen Enright” was evidently a healthy specimen. She had not died in teletransportation. If her brain had been injured, it was not a major injury.

If it was a minor injury, maybe it would heal.

When I tried to rise from the cot, however, I felt faint, and would have lost my balance—but the strong-muscled young woman in the white nurse’s uniform reached out to catch me.

“There you go, ‘Mary Ellen’! On your way.”

She laughed. Our eyes locked, for a fleeting second.

She had pinned-back blond hair, so pale it was almost white. Above her left breast, a little plastic name tag—IRMA KRAZINSKI.

She knows who I am. Yet, she is not an Enemy.

Later I would think—Maybe she is one like me and will pity me.

AT THE RESIDENCE a large cardboard box awaited M. E. ENRIGHT in the front foyer.

“You are—‘Mary Ellen’? This just arrived.”

The box measured approximately three by four feet. It was so crammed, one of its sides was nearly bursting.

And the box was badly battered, as if it had come a long distance, in rainy weather. Transparent tape covered it in intricate layers crisscrossing like a deranged cobweb. Even with a pair of shears provided by the resident adviser of Acrady Cottage it was very difficult to open.

“My! Someone took care that this box would not rip open in delivery!”

Inside were clothes: several skirts, blouses, sweaters, a pair of slacks, a navy-blue wool jumper, a fleece-lined jacket, flannel pajamas, white cotton underwear, white cotton socks, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of brown shoes identified by the resident adviser as “penny loafers.” There were also “Bermuda shorts” and a “blazer”—clothes of a kind I had never seen before. And sheer, long “stockings”—I’d never seen before. All these items were secondhand, rumpled, and smelled musty.

I was staring inside the box. I felt dazed, dizzy. I thought—These are castoff clothes of the dead.

“Shall I help you carry these upstairs? It might be more practical just to leave the box here and take your things up in our arms …”

“No. I can take them by myself. Thank you.”

The resident adviser, Miss Steadman, was being very kind. But I did not want even to look at her. I did not want to speak with the woman more than necessary and I did not want to be alone with her in the room to which I was assigned for even a few minutes.

I did not want her to see these clothes close up. I did not feel comfortable with her registering that, to me, some of these things were unfamiliar. Nor did I want her to smell the sour, stale odor that lifted from them, any more than she already had.

I did not want her to feel sorry for me. That poor girl!—indeed, she is poor.

Also, Miss Steadman’s words, her manner of speech, were strange to me. It was clear that she was speaking English yet so slowly, with such odd nasal vowels, it made me anxious to listen to her.

At the bottom of the box was an envelope with M. E. ENRIGHT stamped on it. I would not open this envelope until I was alone in room 3C when I would discover that it contained five twenty-dollar bills that were crisp as if freshly printed, and a stiff sheet of paper headed THE INSTRUCTIONS.

There was no personal note. I felt a small stab of disappointment for I had thought—I mean, I’d wanted to think—that S. Platz had taken a personal liking to me.

In my arms I carried my new belongings upstairs to room 3C. I grew short of breath quickly for I had not recovered from my long journey. Miss Steadman watched me with concerned eyes but did not attempt to help me another time.

Freshmen would be arriving on the Wainscotia campus the next day. I’d been sent into Exile at the perfect time and I did think that S. Platz must have had something to do with this timing.

Room 3C was at the rear of the cottage. A large room with two dormer windows and a slanted ceiling. Bare floorboards, bare walls with scattered holes for picture hanging and small nails.

Four beds, four desks: four roommates!

It was surprising to me, I would be rooming with three other girls and not alone.

But a relief, the room was ordinary. Except for the slanting ceiling that, if I wasn’t alert, would bump against my head.

Quickly my eyes glanced about. It would be an involuntary reaction in Zone 9: establishing that a new space held no (evident) danger. Nothing in it (that I could see) to frighten, threaten, or disorient.

Nothing unique to Zone 9. Rather, a room that could be anywhere.

I took the bed in the farthest corner, beneath the slanted ceiling. I would leave the windows, the better-positioned beds, and the largest closets for my roommates for I did not want them to dislike me.

“‘Mary Ellen’! Are you sure, you want that bed way off in a corner?”—so my roommates asked when they arrived, with evident sincerity.

These were nice girls. (Were they?) Staring at me with curious eyes but they were not rude, or did not mean to be rude.

Though they were enough alike to be three sisters they were strangers to one another. “White” girls—ST1. All were from rural Wisconsin and had gone to Wisconsin high schools. Their broad flat northern-midwestern accents were identical. Their names were immediately confused in my head like a buzzing of insects.

I thought—One of them may be my executioner.

“When did you arrive, Mary Ellen? Last night?”

“Where’re you from, Mary Ellen?”

“Did your parents bring you? Are they still here?”

“Sorry, Mary Ellen! We’re taking up a lot of room, I guess …”

Much of the day the room was crowded with parents, relatives, young children, helping my roommates move in.

I went away to hide. The sounds of strangers’ voices, loud, assured, happy-seeming, those broad flat vowels, were oppressive to me. But I did not cry.

At evening I returned to the room at the top of the stairs for I had nowhere else to go. Acrady Cottage was my home now.

EVENTUALLY, WHEN I BEGAN to wear the clothes that had come in the box, I would discover that only a few items fitted me.

Some things were too small, too short, too tight—most were too large.

Faint half-moons of stains beneath the armpits of sweaters. Loose buttons, missing buttons. Broken zippers. Dark-smeared something, possibly food, I hoped not blood, on a skirt.

The girls of Acrady Cottage would whisper among themselves, to see me so badly dressed—like a pauper, with clothes from Goodwill—but I never minded for I was grateful for what had been given to me.

My favorites were a pleated Black Watch plaid skirt (as it was identified for me by a roommate) with an oversized ornamental brass safety pin holding the skirt together—ingeniously; a dark-rose turtleneck sweater that reminded me of a sweater back home, though this sweater was much larger; a long-sleeved white blouse with a “lace” collar that fitted me, and gave me a serious, somber look, that I particularly liked because it seemed to suggest This is a good girl, a nice girl, a shy girl, a girl who would never, ever be subversive or raise her voice. Please be kind to this girl thank you!

In my old, lost life I had never worn blouses. I had never worn “lace”—or known anyone who had.

I had never worn skirts, dresses. I had worn only jeans. In fact, just two or three pairs of jeans, that had not cost much and that I wore all the time without needing to think.

In Zone 9 girls wore skirts to classes, sometimes dresses. They wore “sweater sets”—cardigans over matching short-sleeved sweaters. Sometimes they encased their legs in nylon stockings which I did not think I could manage without tearing, though I would try.

How my friends would laugh, to see me in a lacy blouse. In nylon stockings. In the Black Watch plaid skirt with the big brass safety pin holding the pleated material together—Oh God what has happened to Addie. Is that even her?

NOT A PLEASANT SIGHT. Electrodes in my roommates’ heads.

Well, not electrodes. I knew better.

“Like this, Mary Ellen. I can’t believe you’ve never ‘set’ your hair!”

Laughing at me. Not unkindly. (I wanted to think.)

But I could not manage it: putting my hair in plastic “rollers” before going to bed.

First, you wetted your hair with some special smelly setting-solution. Brushed and combed your hair. Separated your hair into numerous strands, and rolled these strands onto “rollers” (three sizes: largest pink, medium blue, smallest mint green) which were secured to the scalp as tightly as possible with bobby pins.

Yes, your scalp might hurt from the pins and from having to lie with your head on a pillow, on rollers.

You might even get a little headache! But it was worth it, for the effect of the smooth glossy pageboy the next day.

Tried just once. Awake half the night. Drifting off to sleep and waking in a nightmare sweat of electrodes in my brain. And in the morning most of the rollers had come out, and when I brushed out my hair it was as limp and straggling as ever, or almost.

Hilda said, “Next time, Mary Ellen, I’ll set your hair in rollers. Don’t you dare say no.”

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