DOD
DODs were something we were all issued with the January of the year we turned 15, along with our plots for mate, career and health. It was a load of crap in my opinion, but everyone else saw it as something big; a coming of age. My once-friends who turned 15 the previous year had already splintered off into smug, lipstick-wearing cliques, leaving us babies (some of us only weeks younger than them) to fester for one more year under the control of our parents and in the oblivion of our futures.
My 14th year (known as LYU, or Last Year of the Unknown) was slow and tedious. I had no motivation for school, health, community control, mentoring; none of the stuff I was meant to be doing. It felt pointless, it was all plotted anyway and I would find out in nine months, eight months, seven months... Time crept along with me like an evil shadow. I kept looking at it but it never seemed to move, just taunted me with its existence.
“You’ve got to keep on working Phee. This last year still counts you know. It could make all the difference.” My mum spoke from the doorway while I stagnated in bed. It was probably around midday, but miserable days in a miserable November give few clues of time.
I dragged my pillow-creased face and greasy hair into a vertical position.
“But I’ve worked on everything for years mum! What can change with a few shitty months left? It’s all been logged and plotted.”
“Please darling, just a few more months, it all makes a difference. You know Jay has been plotted very highly in the Control Council. A bit more effort in your CC work and you two could be matched.”
“Fuck Jay!” I shouted at her. The camera in the corner buzzed and tilted its head at me. I stuck my finger up at it, then dropped my head beneath the duvet. “He’s been matched with some doll-face bitch from 257, plotted to be a fucking dentist. Who wants to be a fucking dentist?” I sighed in the darkness of my bed. “Fuck Jay.”
Recently mum had been ignoring my use of the word fuck, so I used it more and more and was wondering what to replace it with.
“Well primary matches don’t always happen darling. Look at me and your father.”
“I’d rather fucking not.”
“I’m just saying, a few more months work, on top of all the great achievements you’ve made till now, and you’ll have the best chance.”
I sprung from beneath the covers and enjoyed the thrill of making her jump.
“The best chance of what mum? That’s what I don’t understand – the best chance of fucking what?”
She looked at me strangely, like I was a curious animal who’d just turned up in her home. “Success, darling. Success.”
I shrugged a big pantomime shrug and shook my head in bewilderment, before thrusting it beneath the covers again.
***
At last the 1st of January arrived. Mum nagged at me all day to go to the Plotr. She would’ve gone herself but it’s under strict control; a genome skin scanner at the pod entrance meant mum had no chance of getting ahead of me and my future. Eventually she bribed me with ice cream at Pandi’s and I relented with a stubborn nod. I hadn’t had real ice cream for two years. I crawled out of bed and the house at 7pm, leaving half an hour to get to the Plotr. I arrived with minutes to spare.
I’d already decided not to be impressed in any way by the appearance of the machine, and it was easy to stick to my guns. The Plotr was situated at the end of a long hallway lit by fluorescent tubes. I guess for teenagers with a more active anticipation for their future, the tedious walk down the corridor could be a time for excitement and nerves to grow, but I was bored, bored, bored. The Plotr first appeared as a small grey bean and when I finally stood next to it, it was nothing more than a large grey bean. It was about the size of two learning pods and had probably once shone silver. Now it was scuffed and marked all over by the prying hands and feet of waiting relatives, picking and kicking to get a glimpse of the future.
“Nice of them to keep it so fucking pristine,” I mumbled as I held my hand to the scanner on the door. It beeped and turned blue, before slowly sliding to the side. I think I heard a voice say ‘good luck’. It could have been mum or it could have been the machine.
Inside, more fluorescent tubing lit the capsule. The interior was made of white plastic panels that curved under, over and around me. Once the doors closed, it was difficult to tell where the ceiling became walls and the walls became floor. There was a stool in front of a small screen and an IVI cable. I sat on the floor and reached for the connector, trying to ignore the voice that automatically started welcoming me. I plugged in and pulled reams of cable out of the wall, partly just for the sheer hell of it, and partly so I didn’t feel so chained in. I shaded my eyes from the ridiculous artificial light and at the same time attempted to shade my ears from the robot voice. It had been programmed to speak with a faux Scottish accent, supposedly the rises and falls of this voice are ‘conducive with telling bad and good news in a similar fashion’ - one of the few things I retained from school in my LYU.
I heard nothing of what the Scottish voice told me. It was a tedious drone of numbers and acronyms, told in a strange lilting voice. I knew the doors would only release after the full 30 minute download, so I lay on the floor with my arms wrapped around my head, and banged my feet against the door, to the tune of an ancient Christmas song I’d become obsessed with – some woman singing about Christmas trees and mistletoe – whatever the hell those were. The silver doors seemed to open much sooner than thirty minutes later, and when I scrambled off the concrete floor I saw mum outside. I’d never seen her look so scared. Her eyes were large black holes, like they were trying to suck everything from me, all the numbers and acronyms that had been inserted into me.
"Well, well. Tell me?” It was like her life depended on it – not mine.
I sighed. “Blah, blah, shitty blah.”
“Phee. For goodness sake, this is your future. What did they say?”
“To be honest mum. I didn’t really listen. Can we just go for ice cream? We can look at the download at home, after.”
“Well what about your DOD? You must at least know that.”
I shrugged. “Ice cream first.”
She shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes. I saw a little purple vein throb in her temple and it made me smile to know I’d made her so mad. She stormed off and I trailed after her. As we neared Pandi’s, she was walking so fast I feared she was going to go straight past but she veered inside like a speeding car taking a corner.
She hammered the buttons for vanilla and strawberry without even asking me. I wanted vanilla and chocolate, but I felt she was on the brink of a big public scene so I kept my mouth shut. I ate it slowly, far slower than I needed to, giving four or five slurpy kisses to each spoonful. Mum’s eyes never left mine, and I made sure to give her a big toothy smile every so often, to show my gratitude and to show I was in no fucking hurry to get home. After scraping my spoon noisily around the bowl for the first of many planned scrapings, she grabbed it from me.
“Time to go home Phee. You can’t put this off any longer.”
“But I’m just…” I tried to grab the spoon back but her grip was like cement. I looked up, ready for an argument, and saw Jay walking in the entrance with the bimbo one-day dentist bitch from 257.
“Let’s go,” I said racing from my seat.
I kept my head down as I left Pandi’s but I like to think I smelt a strong clinical dentist odor oozing from her, a smell that meant Jay would never be happy with her, and would hate having sex with her.
At home, dad met us at the door.
“Hello, Phee-fum,” he said giving me a pinch on the arm. I smiled at him. I always had real smiles for my dad. “Big day?”
“Not really,” I shrugged. “Just another.”
“Want to watch the game?” he asked.
“For fuck’s sake!” screamed mum.
Dad and I both stared at her open-mouthed.
“Does no-one care that your plot came out today? That your DOD was released - that your future’s been set?” She looked at dad. “This is the future of our only daughter.”
“So what? So fucking what?” I shouted at no-one in particular, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Who cares if I’m destined to be a controller or a fucking crawler? Why do we need to know? What difference will it make to me to know my plot, to know if my future’s shitty or shiny? If every day is plotted for me, what’s the point of living it? I’d rather not know.”
I turned to storm up the stairs.
“Take your boots off!” Mum bellowed.
It had been raining and I knew I would leave muddy footprints. I wondered if that was predestined – if the future of that grey carpet was to have my angry footprints embedded into it.
I stamped up the stairs.
“Take your shoes off Phee,” dad said in a voice louder than normal.
I kicked them off a few stairs from the top and stamped, as loud as my socked feet would allow, to my bedroom, where I slammed the door shut and slammed my face into the pillow. Fuck life.
I knew curiosity would get the better of me. I’d known it a year ago when I decided I would not live my life by the Plotr system, that I would rebel against it. I wanted to believe I was strong enough to be some kind of revolutionary, an individual standing up against the establishment, but deep inside I knew my curiosity would outweigh my stubbornness. I just wasn’t prepared for how quickly it would happen. I lasted 57 minutes, mummified in my covers with the download throbbing in my arm. My future, my life, my death all etched into a tiny implant under my skin. My future, my life, my death.
I got out from beneath the covers and reached for my digi-board. I stared at it blankly and bit my lip. I could still keep up the pretence of stubborn teenager with mum, she didn’t need to know. I slid open the digi-board. It had already sync’d up, and there in front of my was my plot, my future. My eyes scanned over the screen and found my love plot - I was a hormonal teenager after all. I bit my thumb and puzzled over the blank space. Where was my love plot? Then I noticed the other blank spaces. Fucking typical, I thought to myself. All my pantomime anger against the Plotr system and it had conspired against me – the fucking download had crashed and all I was left with was an empty template for life.
I sighed and went to close the screen but then I noticed something at the top of the page. My DOB was filled out correctly beneath my name, and below that was a date for my DOD. I puzzled over the dots and digits for a moment.
My heart beat loudly in my ears and my lungs started taking short intakes of air - oxygen and blood trying their hardest to help me think straight. But I couldn’t. There must be a mistake, the machine must have downloaded all wrong. It had confused today with a date way off in the future. I stood up and my knees felt weak. I had no idea what to do, but every inch of me was wrenching for someone to make it all better; to tell me that machines make mistakes, that I would be OK.
I flung open the door and shouted her name before I’d even left the room.
“Mum! Mum!”
I was just pulling in the air to continue shouting when I tripped over my boots on the stairs. The last thing I saw was a muddy footprint on the bottom step. My chin slammed into it as the full weight of my body catapulted over my head and snapped my neck.
Everything was black and the sound of footsteps rushing towards me faded away, step by step.