Storytime: Peas in a Pod -Part 1-

FREEPOD SUBJECT KRENLYN. MSSGE1

Att.: You. Whenever you are.

I met a guy recently… It’s a little awkward to start a pod like this but it’s the truth. But maybe that’s not where I should begin.

My name is Karen Lyn. I live in Block Three of the compound. By the time you read this there probably won’t even be a compound, so you probably don’t know what it is. Let me illustrate it for you:

I live on the fourth floor of block three, where the little red star is. The yellow buildings are the community centers where the schooling and training sections are; the blue buildings near the exits are the traditional reservoirs, and the green patch is the community forest, the crossways goes right above it, but the forest is so far beneath it you can’t hear the rumble of the vehicles.

So, as I was saying, I met a guy recently. I was using the web to browse for antique board games for an assignment when the chat cloud popped open. It was a person nicknamed JustNeto who was looking for the same thing.

I don’t know how far I should go on my story; after all you don’t really care, do you? This pod will swerve until found, and when you do find it and read “I met a guy recently” you’ll probably think I’m not worth reading. I guess all I can do is ask for your patience.

Maybe I should tell you more about me, first. I haven’t reached my twenties yet, so I’m forcibly still not wearing a uniform.

I wonder if you understand this reference… In the compound, and I guess everywhere else also, at some point in your life you start wearing a uniform. It’s a bit of a ceremony; the tailor makes seven suits for you, all in the same colors, and that’s what you will wear henceforth whenever you leave the house. People start to do that after they are twenty, but it’s not mandatory so there’s also people of all ages who dress like they are young forever. I’m happy I’m not in a hurry to choose mine. I don’t know how people dress, whenever you are, but here the ones with uniform look very clean cut and the ones without look like attention seekers.

I’m all in the middle; my best friend Leenda wore mid 1920’s Charleston dresses nearly all summer last year, before jumping to Neo Venetian carnival gowns; my other best friend Samir likes 20st century basketball costume and adds spikes in his hair. I prefer baggy blouses and tight pants. Maybe you think I’m dull, but it’s just so much trouble to make the suits, I prefer to buy them; I’ve never been good with the designing software.

My mother works in the ports, that’s on the west exit of the compound. Our apartment has a kitchen and two bedrooms. Mom likes minimalistic décor, so all I have in my room is my bed, with blue cotton linens, my pod dispenser on my bedside table and my work station, which is where I’m sitting now.

Should I tell you what I look like? It’s not even relevant to my story. I’ve never read a pod where people describe themselves, but I guess it’s not that bad if I do. Anyway, I’m normal. I’m thin, middle height, have short, straight black hair and small nose and mouth.

I wonder what you look like, what people will look like by the time you read this. Pods are not released to the dispenser for at least fifty years, and then the procedure is so random I don’t have the security to get to your dispenser for at least seventy. And even if I get there, will you read me? And, if you do, will you send me back out or will you keep me?

Generally, at least for myself and everyone I know, people in the compound wake up early and spend the day at the community center closest to our homes. In my case, I take a few subjects in the schooling section; I like history, geology, art and mechanics. During the afternoons I play sports with Leena and Samir, or go to the forest. During the weekends, mom and I go to the vacation center, which is on the east exit. Leena’s mother works there too. Samir lives on the north side of the compound, most men do, but for some reason he enjoys using the community center at the south side, which is mostly packed with girls.

According to mom it happened naturally for people to start moving into the compound. She was very young but she remembers my grandparents having the conversation, she says all parents did, and most of them decided to separate and make all girl and all boy sections, to make things easier. It’s not a rule, not everybody did it, but most of us did. My father lives on the north side with two friends of his and their kids, in an apartment twice as big as mine. Sometimes I see him during the weekends.

I told Leena about Neto. She got so mad at me I preferred to not mention the subject ever again.

“I cannot BELIEVE it!” she said, bending upon the million layers of her magenta Venetian gown. People sitting around us in the diner were staring. “Are you STUPID?! He lives in the reservoir! He’s probably a weirdo who can’t use computers! What can you possibly have in common with him?! Paulus and Emra are crazy about you, they are both GORGEOUS, and you are telling me you swoon for a faceless git who still lives in the 20th century?!”

“That’s where you get most of your clothes from, isn’t it?” I replied, feeling mad at her.

“That’s not the point” she concluded, cleaning the table with a napkin and throwing bits of food on the floor around her. “Clothes are not men, you wear clothes and sleep with men, then you let them go about their lives until you want to have children”.

“That’s VERY nice of you!” Samir snapped back. He was sitting next to me, having a soy steak bigger than his own head. “I think it’s cool she met someone. And she’ll probably stop liking him when she finds out he can’t use the electronic toilet properly”.

I did my best to change the subject after that, because they were right about one thing: he does live in the traditional reservoirs, and people there are, to us, plain weird. The reservoirs are for people who still live old school, family style: a mom, a dad, the children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, the whole package. They don’t use the community center or the vacation facilities. You can recognize them easily on the crossway because they use gas fueled cars.

End of Part 1.