In the After

stressed.

And Amy, Baby waved to get my attention, I played a game where you jump over a piece of rope and I fell on my butt. I think I’m okay except I might have a bruise.

“She’s excited,” Rice said.

“It was her first first day of school and she’s never been around other kids before.” I was sick with relief. I let Baby prattle on until she ran out of steam and just grinned happily. Her hair was disheveled so I fixed it, fastening it into a high ponytail. Rice watched me with a scowl and reached over to undo her hair, redoing the ponytail lower so it covered Baby’s neck.

“Rice, what are you doing?” I asked.

“It looked a little too tight,” he explained crisply.

“Um, okay.” It was strange for him to snap like that.

“Sorry, it’s just that we should head over to orientation,” Rice told me gently. “If we start soon, you can review all the recordings before dinner.”

“Sure, sounds good,” I said, realizing I must have just annoyed him. Or maybe he was irritated I’d opened the evaluation addressed to my mother.

I shook off my unease as we walked and explained to Baby that she was going to watch a program, then tell me what she understood about it. Baby took my hand, but her fingers were still as she processed her day.

We walked past several white buildings until the road narrowed and we reached a cement path. The buildings started to look less alike, more quirky, and some were brick, but all were badly in need of a paint job. There weren’t many people around, and after a while I asked Rice where, exactly, we were going.

“Orientation is on the outskirts. We try to contain the post-aps until we know what we are dealing with.”

“Have there been any problems?” I remembered how Rice and I first met, and smiled sheepishly. “Uh, like mine?” I still felt guilty about pulling a gun on him.

“People sometimes freak. Mostly they’re just appreciative. The psyche-eval usually weeds out the troublemakers, though not always.”

“What do you mean?”

Rice looked at me, considering carefully what to say. “Last year we found a boy with limited mental faculties. He was about ten, which would make him six or seven when it happened. It was amazing he’d survived so long, but he didn’t integrate well into New Hope. He had to be expelled.”

“Like, as in, he could no longer attend school?” It didn’t seem fair to punish someone who had a disability.

“No, he was expelled from New Hope.”

I stopped walking and turned to Rice. “He was banished?” I whispered, horrified. “That’s what it means to be expelled?”

“He couldn’t function here, he couldn’t even hold down a Dusty job. He was a complete drain on our resources.”

I was stunned at his words. Baby looked up at me nervously, sensing something was wrong. “How could you send him back out there? He was ten years old! What about old people, do you expel them too?!”

“It’s not like that. We have a building for elderly care and we have the Ward for people who are mentally incompetent. This boy, he was different. He used to make it out to the farm and kill the animals.”

“Maybe he didn’t understand that he didn’t need to kill anymore, that his food was provided. You don’t understand what it’s like out there.”

“He used to watch the toddlers, Amy. He watched them the same way he looked at the animals on the farm.”

“Oh.” We walked in silence. When your entire world was filled with Floraes, with terror and silence, and thinking of your own survival, how is anyone normal after that? I squeezed Baby’s hand and tried not to think about it.

“Here we are,” Rice told us after a few minutes. We entered the short, squat building, and Rice led us to a room with a black door.

“You all love to color code things,” I commented. “Don’t people ever get confused?”

“No. They don’t.”

I wondered what would happen if they did, what my punishment would be if certain people found out I’d been in a restricted area. The Ward? Expulsion?

Rice led us into a room painted a pale blue. Instead of tables and chairs, desks were placed in rows, all facing a large screen. He opened a laptop and placed it on one of the tables.

“Have a seat,” he said. “I thought you’d like to see this first.” He typed away on his computer and on the screen appeared a map of New Hope. We were centralized in the “urban” district where most everyone lives. The residential buildings were numbered, with the lowest numbers near the Quad, the higher farther away. To the east was the dairy farm that Rice had mentioned, with more farmland to the south and west, and a lake to the north. East of the dairy farm was a forest that the map labeled FOR EXPANSION TBD.

“You keep the Floraes out of this entire area?” I asked, eyeing the map.

“We’ve been aggressively expanding certain areas, like the farm. It was originally just a few acres, with a small number of animals.” He pointed to the map. “Now it covers this whole area, and we’ve maximized livestock breeding through advances in animal husbandry.” He glanced at me. “It’s really pretty fascinating how much we’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time.”

I looked at the map again. “But there isn’t a fence?” I still found it hard to believe.

“No, we don’t need a physical barrier. You won’t find the Floraes within a two-mile radius of the emitters.”

“What about other people? People who might want to come and take all this away?” New Hope was well protected from the Floraes, but what would they do if a guerilla force came to take it over?

“That seems very unlikely.”

“It happened to us,” I said quietly. I thought of Amber, of what she did to us.

“What would someone gain by destroying us? We welcome all post-aps, offer a functioning society, a way to live without constant fear of death.”

Doesn’t he know there will always be someone out there who wants to destroy good?

Rice was fiddling with his computer again and the map disappeared. “I’ll show you all the recordings, so you can see the version for the little kids, the older children, and the adults.”

“Fan.” I tapped the notebook I’d brought with me. Rice said my mother wanted my opinion, so I came prepared to take notes.

Rice dimmed the lights and the screen flickered on. The video was for the younger kids and featured small children and an adult. “The adult is called a Minder,” Rice’s voice came loudly from across the room. Baby, who’d been enjoying the movie, glared at him.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to narrate,” I told him. “I need to see if it’s self-explanatory.”

“Oh, right,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” I said. It slipped out—something I used to say Before. I looked at him, suddenly wishing I’d known him back then.

The video continued to show the Minder helping the children with their daily routine. At the end, the Minder tucked each child in, then turned on a night-light. The Minder smiled into the camera, and the movie went dark.

Baby turned to me. I like the lady.

Good. I think they want you to.

I scribbled in my notebook. Effective images of comfort to integrate small children, show them who they can trust, who will take care of them.

“At this point, a Minder will come fetch any child who doesn’t have an adult with them,” Rice said. “I’m not explaining,” he added. “It’s something you should know. At first,” he continued, “we had a lot of small children, but now it’s not that common. Here’s the one for older children, Class Threes and Fours.”