Prunella’s grin widens. “We’re taking you to the next best thing.”
I glance at Gemini, whose head remains bowed and resting on the back of the front seat.
“Environmental scientists have studied the Detroit Depression for years to work out a way to neutralize its hostile climate so we can expand the Great Wall to the north.”
The screen beside Prunella shows a map of what’s left of North America after the oceans swallowed up the coast. She explains that the Great Wall of Phangloria stretches two-thousand miles from what used to be the state of New York and crosses west through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where it travels south to Kansas, Oklahoma, and ends at the Texas coast.
I shake my head from side to side, waiting for her to get to the point. If we’re not going to the Detroit Depression, what could possibly be the next best thing? I can’t see through the blacked-out windows, but the vibrations of the coach floor indicate that we’re going fast.
About an hour later, Gemini reaches down to the refrigerator beneath the armrest and pulls out two bottles of water. She offers me one and opens a bag of something she calls trail mix. Inside are almonds, cashews, dried berries, coconut chips, and chunks of dark chocolate.
“Thanks.” I lean forward to find two empty bottles on Berta’s seat, along with four empty bags of trail mix. Now I know why she wanted to sit alone. “Do you have any ideas where we might be going?”
Gemini nods.
I twist around in my seat. “Where?”
“Not the botanical gardens.” She takes a long sip of water. “The Ministry of the Environment experimentation laboratories.”
“What’s that?” I eat a handful of the trail mix and nearly choke on the punch of flavors. Everything is either coated in salt or honey, and the combination is like a jolt to the tongue.
Gemini tilts her head to the side. “An artificial environment that looks and feels like different places on earth.”
“Okay.” I chew on my mouthful of trail mix, making a note never to eat several items at one time. “Is that dangerous?”
She nods and closes her eyes. Maybe she’s meditating, maybe she’s contemplating her fate, but I turn back to the trail mix and pick out a chunk of dark chocolate. If this place isn’t not real, then it can’t be as bad as she’s implying.
The short-haired girl in front, whose name is Ingrid, snipes at Rafaela van Eyck for wasting everyone’s time. I pick out the salted cashew and memorize the salient points of their arguments. Ingrid’s father is someone important and is on good terms with King Arias, while Rafaela’s mother has never been invited to the palace due to having been born an Artisan.
Gemini dozes at my side, oblivious to the revelations, but she has bigger worries than the goings-on of the Royal court.
Eventually, the stagecoach stops, and Prunella Broadleaf claps her hands. “Let’s go, ladies.”
I grab a fresh bottle of water and another pack of trail mix, then follow the two bickering Nobles to the front of the coach.
The scent of rotten eggs fills my nostrils, and an oppressive heat forces every pore in my body to sweat. This isn’t the dry heat of the Harvester Region, but something far worse. Comparing it to a steam room would suggest the existence of water. Whatever moisture is in this atmosphere comes from something distinctly rotten.
Harsh light stings my eyes and makes me squint as I descend the steps. It can’t be sunlight because I’ve seen countless cloudless days, and even they aren’t as bright as what’s outside. The Nobles in front gasp, as does Gemini, who stands at my back.
When my eyes adjust, the hostile landscape stretches out to what looks like infinity. I’m no painter, and my vocabulary doesn’t encompass enough colors to describe the fluorescent yellow salt crystals that form tiny pyramids across the ground. Steam billows off pastel-green puddles, which might be the source of the sulfurous stench.
Production assistants attach bands to our heads that beep. I touch the warm metal of mine, only for a spark of electricity to snap at my fingers.
“You can’t leave us here,” screeches Ingrid. “I didn’t consent to hostile simulations or out-of-Phangloria excursions.”
I nod along with the Noble, and the other girls voice their noisy protests.
A hundred feet away stands various methods of transportation. A covered jeep that can fit twelve, two topless jeeps, six quad bikes, twelve camels already laden with blue saddlebags, and six zebus, carrying the same bags. Zebus are horned cows with a massive hump used by the deliverers in Bos to transport dairy products to other towns within the Harvester Region.
One of the production assistants guides Berta, Gemini, and me over a wooden pathway to a cordoned-off platform. We’re the only group sectioned off like this, and all the other girls gather to our left and right. Maybe they’re going to ask the girls to throw things at us in revenge for my hurling a tomato at Prunella’s face during the audition.
Prunella spreads her arms wide. “Welcome to your first trial.” She turns to the camera with a solemn expression. “Look around, people. This is what lies beyond the desert, a hostile, toxic wasteland riddled with monsters warped beyond sanity by the evils of pollution.”
I glance at the polluted scenery, not knowing what to believe. The yellows are too vivid to have come from nature, the greens make me wince, and everything apart from the boiling puddles has dried to husks.
“Is this place real?” I whisper.
“We learned about it in Environmental Sciences,” Gemini whispers back.
I note that she doesn’t confirm that the Detroit Depression really exists. This feels like a propaganda message designed to remind the lower Echelons that the Nobles provide us with refuge from something worse than just the desert. Maybe this is why Mom is so grateful to be a Harvester, even if that means constant hunger and hard work. Maybe this is really what’s out there, and we’re
