The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(2)
I knock twice on the smooth wall, and it instantly slides open, unveiling our pristine living room. The wall sealing into place behind me, I race into the house and move for the front door. In my distracted haste, I plow unexpectedly into my father standing in the entrance hall. He holds my sleek lunch pail in his hands, a stern look in his eyes.
My own eyes go wide with shock. “It’s six forty-five . . . Why aren’t you at your office?”
He narrows his lids into thin slits. I carefully grab my lunch from his grasp and stuff it into my bag. The fridge is stocked with premade lunches for each day of the week; everything about our lives is diligently regimented to the point of extreme annoyance.
My father’s continued silence pressures me to add, “We won’t do it again, I promise.”
“No. I promise. That was the last time. You cannot spend the night together—it is simply too dangerous.”
Father isn’t the sort of man whose glare you want aimed in your direction. A high-ranking government official—Director of the Texas Family Planning Division—he exudes authority and breathes schedules. In his sharp military uniform, he cuts a dignified figure, but there’s a slight bend in his shoulders this morning that I recognize as the heavy weight of responsibility.
I try to lighten the load by breaking into a grin.
“We’re learning a new song in choir today. Mira and I could sing it for you tonight after dinner,” I say.
His furrowed brow finally smooths over. “I would like that,” he says, straightening. He kisses my forehead lightly. “Keep your guard up, and always stay alert.”
“You have a good day too, Father,” I say over my shoulder as I head out the door.
Time to play the game.
I practice aloud softly for our Spanish oral exam as I walk through our densely populated neighborhood lined with neat sustainable homes. In the distance, muted behind the careful order of rock yards and community gardens, lies the bloated metropolis of Dallas. The mighty capital of Texas.
Our father’s status allows us to live in the city’s outer ring, designed for the privileged class. This grants us the luxury of slightly better air quality and the rare advantage of being able to call a piece of land our own. Most of the populace live crammed on top of one another in gigantic billboard-laden skyscrapers, the incessant advertisements from neighboring towers flashing into their windows day and night. Their lives are spent fighting each other for more space, more resources, more everything. Neighbor will kill neighbor over a new pair of shoes. There’s never enough of anything to go around.
A mass of cyclists whips past me, weaving through the commuters that crowd the broad avenue leading downtown. Mira and I rarely, if ever, leave the Trinity Heights district; the university is a safe mile up the road from our house. Every day one of us spends an hour walking to and from school, eight hours in the classroom, and the rest of the evening completing coursework and relaying the details of another repetitive day to each other before we separate and go to bed. One of us in the basement, one of us in the upstairs bedroom we call “Ava’s room.” Wake up and the other repeats. Our days are miserably reliable and monotonous.
I stare at my feet, studying the faded lines on the pavement that was once solely utilized for vehicle traffic. To stimulate my mind I try to imagine the noises and smells of what a fifty-car traffic jam used to be like, when a loud honk blares on a connecting road ahead. It’s as if my imagination—minus the forty-nine other cars, but still worth my attention—manifests itself right in front of me for my own entertainment. No one takes note of the lone car hopelessly attempting to cross through the endless mob but me.
The army of walkers pushes me closer to the car, and I peer through the tinted windshield to see a richly dressed businesswoman talking loudly to herself, presumably leading some meeting she is late for. The air-conditioning blasts her hair around her face like she’s caught in a picturesque windstorm. It’s old-fashioned and perfectly psychotic to commute to work in a private vehicle. The only reason anyone uses a car in the pedestrian-congested city is to wave their prosperity flag pompously to the masses.
I hate inefficiency. Traffic jams must have been an infuriating waste of time. I shake my head, wipe my sweating brow, and continue my own short commute to school by foot. My preferred method of travel.
As I penetrate another half mile into the city, it’s hard to see the sky at all, with tower after looming tower dominating the horizon. A sign of progress, the government says. A sign of power. The sky is not enough—we will have to keep building up, up, up and conquer space itself before we will ever be satisfied.
I reach campus five minutes behind schedule and take a shortcut through the Great Lawn, passing the statue of Stephen F. Austin holding a massive Texas flag high above his head. The air is dead and windless, but the Father of Texas would never be allowed to wave a limp flag, especially in his adoptive capital. Hidden air currents blow underneath the lone-starred cloth, producing elegant red, white, and blue ripples that welcome students onto campus.
Strake University is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges; great things are expected of you if you walk its hallowed halls. When the Family Planning Policy—known to the public for what it really is, the Rule of One—passed into law, the ideology of American society shifted dramatically. No more living for oneself; the American independent spirit is dead. We live now for the family. There’s just one chance for parents to make their only child a success, to carry on their name with pride and accumulate an income large enough to provide for the aging generations who will rely on their support. Because of this, adolescence has become a cutthroat competition, and Strake offers the appropriate training to compete in an overpopulated world where the weak do not last long.