Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(11)

It takes me another few minutes to climb low enough that I feel confident to jump without injury. I push away from the wall and drop lightly. Then I freeze in amazement.

My feet are on ground that’s not inside my house. For the first time in my life, I’m outside. I look down, rocking back on my heels, lifting my toes to see the novelty beneath my feet. There’s nothing special about the ground, really. It’s just the smooth, clean, shining photoreceptive surface that lines most walls and floors in this city, gathering solar energy. But it’s not like anything I’ve known before.

It’s outside! I’m free!

It’s like the very ground is sending electric sparks into my feet, ordering them to move without my volition. I take a step . . . and it isn’t toward the front door. It is away. Away from the familiar. Away from the safe prison. Toward dangerous freedom.

I take another step. My body wants to run, to revel and leap as I do at my most exuberant moments inside the courtyard. But I can’t attract any attention. A third step, and I’m on the public sidewalk. Between that and the road stand artificial trees. I know they look exactly like the real, living trees that once covered the world, thriving even in densely populated cities, before the Ecofail. But they are as false as my new identity will be. They’re just tree-shaped photosynthesis factories, making oxygen for everyone in Eden to breathe.

I touch one, and it is cold and dead.

In a daze, almost in a dream, I walk on, down the gently curving sidewalk of our street. Just three rings outside of the Center, our street is a relatively small circle. The houses are low, no more than two or three stories. Eden regulation keeps the inner buildings low so that the Center will always stand proud and tall. I glance over my shoulder at that structure, a huge emerald dome that stands like a giant faceted eye in the heart of Eden. Although I know it holds offices and high-level workers like my parents, I sometimes feel as if the Center is almost the eye of the EcoPanopticon itself, watching over Eden.

Tonight, I feel as if it is glaring at me balefully through the dark.

I turn my back on the Center, square my shoulders, and walk slowly into Eden.

It’s night, but there are a few people outside, talking to neighbors or coming home from restaurants. I recognize some of them, though I’ve only seen them at dusk or dawn when I peep from my aerie. A gentle glow illuminates them wherever they linger or walk, lighting up before them, darkening behind them once they pass. But no lights come on for me as I go. It is as if Eden is shutting its eyes to me, rejecting me.

All my life, I’ve felt like I’d be pounced on if I ever set foot outside my home. But strangely, the scant handful of people on the streets don’t seem to pay the slightest bit of attention to me. I’m relieved, of course, but there’s a sting to it, too.

Then, unexpectedly, a man emerges from his door, fumbling with his keycard as he moves. He sees my shadow, cast in the light emanating from his house, and he looks up for a fraction of a second, giving me a quick nod and smile before turning back to secure his lock. I’ve moved past his threshold before he sets out, and he goes in the opposite direction.

I’m elated and shaking. My first contact!

But if I’m not careful, someone will notice my difference. I pull my cap over my kaleidoscope eyes and wrap my pale gold jacket more snugly around my body, hunching a bit as I walk. Why isn’t the ground lighting up for me? They might not look directly in my eyes and see that I lack lenses, but eventually someone will notice I’m the only one moving in darkness. I only have two choices: get to a more populous part of Eden, where my darkness won’t be noticed among everyone else’s light, or go home.

I know I should go home. Has Mom discovered my absence yet? Maybe she thinks I’m sulking in my bed and decided to leave me to my thoughts. Maybe she knows what I’ve done, and she’s going frantic.

I should go home, but I turn my steps toward the nearest entertainment circle.

The radial streets that branch out from the Center are usually more bustling, largely business rather than residential. The one I’m walking along is pedestrian only at this point, with a canal running down the center and walking paths on the side. Many of the shops here—mostly clothes, jewelry, and home décor—are closed now, but a boatman poles a cuddling couple along the center of the canal. The waterway in front of the boat looks like mercury, silver and still, until the prow pushes through it. Then it dances like skipping minnows, and leaves an undulating snake-like wake.

Even though the businesses are closed, there are more people out and about than on my street. The traffic all moves in one direction—toward the entertainment circle. Here near the Center, where the rings are smaller, the entire street will be devoted to restaurants, clubs, bars, theaters, and the like. Farther out, in the outer circles, there are no dedicated entertainment circles. By that point, the rings are too huge. The poorer residents out there don’t have the resources to go to the theater or out to eat very often. Still, I’ve heard Mom say that there are plenty of bars out there.

I merge into the crowd, using their light so no one can see I have none of my own. I realize I’m grinning like an idiot, from excitement and from nerves. But still no one notices me. They assume I’m like them, on my way to my own fun, my own friends.

All around me, I see things I’ve only glimpsed from a distance, atop my wall. To my left is one of the towering cultivation spires. It rises high above the tallest buildings in Eden to catch the sun. Inside, I know, a liquid slurry of genetically modified algae moves through sinuous tubes, harvesting sunlight and growing into a substance that fills all of a human’s nutritional needs. It is then shunted to the factories where it is turned into synthetic food that (so I’m told) looks and tastes exactly like the real dirt-grown fruits and vegetables humans used to consume pre-fail. I have eaten strawberries, more or less, though the last true strawberry withered two hundred years ago.