Chapter Eight

In which our heroine freaks out.

“Fuck!” she yelled again as she realized she was bleeding all over the picture. She found an old pair of socks in a drawer, wrapped one of them around her bleeding finger, and sunk onto the bed.

How can they do this to me? she thought. Oh, she could probably proceed with the training for her new managerial post, and even put a month or two into the job. But soon enough, her pregnancy would be noticeable, and there would be no way anyone — not at the PumpJack’s where she worked, and certainly no one farther up the corporate ladder — would want to groom her for responsibilities she would be unable to fulfill. The demands of late-stage pregnancy (not to mention motherhood itself) would act as a lead weight, tethering her ballooning ambitions to the earth. She’d have to take weeks, if not months, off, and there’d be no assurance she’d even be welcomed back to PumpJack’s if, somehow, she could find childcare.

All of this was immediately self-evident to Lorinda because she was a loyal, educated citizen of the Confederation of Conservative States of America. She appreciated — indeed, she treasured — her country’s dedication to freedom, and to liberty, and to self-determination and self-sufficiency. Those virtues were what separated the CCSA from the socialist, nanny-state USA; that’s why The Split happened in the first place. Lorinda had been taught this history, both at home and in school, from the day her family arrived in Texas, fifteen years before.

It wasn’t that conservatives believed people shouldn’t help each other, as she’d been taught foolish liberals claimed. It was, rather, that helping others was a private thing, a church thing, a family thing. When you tried to institutionalize help, and assign it to the government, something always went wrong — starting, of course, with the theft-like imposition of taxes to fund that overreaching, meddling government. And so, in exchange for the blessing of living in this paradise of individualism, her country asked only two things of its adult citizens over the age of 16: First, that each one carry a firearm, in order to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their property from every other person carrying a firearm to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their property. And second, that everyone be “pro-life.”

This, she had been taught in eleventh grade social studies class, did not mean an unquestioning sentimental reverence for all life forms, or even all human beings. After all, people created their own fate, for better or for worse, and usually deserved what they got. No, being pro-life meant respecting, revering, and protecting womb-bound zygotes and fetuses. Whether or not they were actually “people” — whether or not they were actually conscious — who could say? But one thing could be said: They were souls, bundles of pure innocence sent by God Who, for whatever reason, was unable to protect them Himself. Once they were born, of course, they were subject, like all people, to the unquestionable rigors and justice of the marketplace, and one hoped they were assisted in that struggle by their parents, relatives, and kindly strangers. But up to the moment of birth, it was every citizen’s duty to protect them. Life, in the CCSA, began at conception and ended at birth. Then began living, which was an entirely different matter.

This, Lorinda knew, was not only what Jesus believed (and the CCSA was nothing if not a Christian nation), it was also a fine way to Maintain the Population. This was the sense of obligation that came crashing down onto Lorinda like a giant wave, washing away the dream of her career.

“Fuck that shit!” she screamed.

“Fuck that shit!” Zeke yelled from his bed.

“Shut the fuck up!” Lorinda yelled back.

Still in her schlumpy sleep clothes, sniffling, puffy-eyed, a bed-headed mess, she looked down. On the floor, amid the glass shards, was the box the pregnancy test had come in. She picked it up and looked at the back. In bold blue letters it said “Proudly Made in Philadelphia, USA.” The package was nice. Shiny cardboard, good colors, interesting graphics, including a few simple, cartoony pictures that explained how to administer and read the test. She flipped to a side panel, where she saw a similarly cartoony figure — a “girl” in a triangular “skirt” — dropping the box into a bin with a triangle composed of arrows, and the caption “PLEASE DISPOSE OF THOUGHTFULLY.”

Staring at it, she thought: That’s weird.

First, what on earth did it mean? Be kind and polite when tossing this thing in the trash? She had never seen any product from the CCSA display that kind of message. “Please be nice”? And what did that triangle-of-arrows mean? Then she read the fine print: “Remember, our beautiful Planet Earth belongs to all of us. We trust that you will do your part to protect and preserve its beauty. This package and its contents are Universally Recyclable and may be deposited in Group 1, Group 2, or Group 3 Recycling Bins. We thank you and the Earth thanks you.” The word “recycling” rang a bell, but she might not have heard it since before her family immigrated to Perfecton.

Lorinda’s eyes filled with a different kind of tears. She turned again to the package back and studied it. She knew that Philadelphia was one of the major cities of the USA, not too far from where she grew up. And now here, in her hand, was an artifact from that faraway place, that place derided and criticized and dismissed and warned against by every teacher she had ever had since her parents brought her here. It was like a meteorite from another planet — a planet where, she had been taught, everyone was both lazy and hysterical, brashly un-Christian and perennially fearful, where the men were all gay and the women were all lesbians, where “African-Americans” routinely committed crimes or rioted over nothing, and whites were too cowardly or too absurdly guilty to stop them.

Suddenly it didn’t add up.

She couldn’t square the notion of a sick, weak, collapsing society with this useful, pleasant, friendly object (no doubt more trustworthy than its CCSA counterpart, if there even was a CCSA counterpart), considerately asking its users to be considerate. For the first time she thought that maybe she had been wrong about the USA.

It took exactly one second for her to have the next thought: What else could she be wrong about?

And the answer to that was obvious. If Emmie was right — and the evidence pointed to exactly that — then Lorinda had been wrong in her thinking about her country and her government. She had come of age accepting the stern but properly conservative principle that the CCSA was not responsible for her welfare, but it was — and it boasted about this — responsible for protecting her freedom.

But it had lied. Her freedom was now completely and absolutely compromised — destroyed! — by this pregnancy. And this pregnancy was not her fault. (It was not even the fault of that jerk Brad.) It had come about through deception and trickery on the part of the CCSA itself.

This instantly gave rise to another question: Why should she remain loyal to a system that had betrayed her in such a fashion? Why should she be forced to have a baby for the benefit of a system that deliberately subverted her ability to live as she chose? Individual liberty was the one thing everyone bragged about! And urged everyone else to be thankful for! It was, supposedly, what the country was invented for and founded upon. It was what made the CCSA superior to the Old Country.

But here was that very nation deliberately derailing the lives of women (and a lot of men) just to manufacture more bodies.

She thought about tearing the box into tiny pieces, to prevent anyone in her family from finding it, but decided to wait a while: It was too nice. Anyway, she ought to show the result to Emmie for confirmation. She found the piece of cardboard with the test result, slipped it into the little box, slid the box under her pillow, picked up her phone from the floor, and hit Emmie with a message: “See U soon?”

Emmie got back immediately: “You OK?”

Lorinda: “Just need to see U.”

Emmie: “Bar tomorrow? I have stuff today.”

Lorinda: “Sure. Early if U can.”

Emmie: “OK. Seeya.”

Then Lorinda carefully crossed her room, avoiding the broken glass, and went down to the kitchen to get the broom and dustpan.

NEXT: Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

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