My eardrums popped as the rejection pod shot upwards through the earth, the sudden noise interrupting the sound of hissing air.
It was a white sound, with silver edges – I remember it clearly.
Out of habit, I reached down to my cartridge to record it, capturing the ‘fsssss’ of the pod squeezing the air of the tunnel ahead as it brought me closer to the surface. Closer to whatever lay ahead.
Probably anyone else who had heard the sound was long since dead, since nobody who left ever returned. I felt a pang of sadness then, a kind of weight in my gut, but then I remembered that I finally had some new sounds to listen to and that cheered me up.
I’d already recorded everything I could find in the colony. The sound of induction plates humming as they heated the cook tubs. The sound of a thousand mouths chewing, spoons scraping gently, with no conversation.
The sound of the monitors humming overhead. The occasional bright clink of metal reverberating along the handrails – flashing out of nowhere.
The heavy sigh of the rice-jars shaking, the swish of steam through the heating pipes, and the dark stains of footsteps echoing down long, long hallways to where I was hiding.
My name is Taal. I’m one of the last yumins, from the last family. I like to record noise. It’s my job. Except no one asks me to do it, and I don’t really do it for anyone else.
When I was young, they told me the colony had a job for everyone, each person in their place, giving what they could for the good of each other. And I loved that idea. Growing up, I couldn’t wait to find how I could help my family.
But they don’t tell you how to fit in. They just expect it. All they do is give you a cartridge to carry around, code it to match your I.D. and then run you through all sorts of tests until they figure out where you belong.
I wasn’t good with remembering numbers, so I didn’t join the Coders. I wasn’t good with my hands, so I didn’t join the Engineers.
I don’t really get other people, so I didn’t join the Psymeas, or the Medicas. I’d always steal food from the Nutrios, and I’m really sensitive to smells and sounds, so I didn’t belong with the Compostors in Waste-Management.
There wasn’t really any place that felt like me.
They said it was okay if I didn’t fit in right away. I just needed a bit more time to have my edges smoothed out, so I could find what suited me best. A lot of Fledglings went through it, apparently.
So I’d knit my bushy eyebrows together, twitch my ears, stick my tongue out and roll around to make my fellow Fledglings laugh – that could be a job! – and it would always work, until the teaching servitor would stare me down with a glare.
‘Not that,’ they said. ‘It’s unproductive.’
The other Fledglings moved on, found their spots, and I was put into the cohort behind me. And then again. And then again – and soon I was too old to join the others and was left to myself.
My only job: ‘Find a Job.’