Inner City Read online

  Inner City

  Title Page

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26 - Epilogue.

  Inner City

  Scott Norton

  Copyright Scott Norton 2011

  Published at Smashwords

  Discover other titles by Scott Norton at smashwords.com

  http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/scottnorton

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  Chapter 1.

  Callen sat on a moulded plastic bench positioned at the far end of a long corridor. It was a cold, empty corridor in the centre of the Family Administration Agency. He watched his feet swing back and forth, but his mind was riveted on what was going on behind the large double doors in front of him.

  Leona and Jonathan Carrus were on trial as parents of Callen, their seven year old boy. They had spent the morning trying to convince the Judge they were close to developing a new compound that would help reverse their business fortunes.

  “I don’t understand why I’m looking at all this technical data,” the Judge said, his frustration towards the speed of the trial starting to show.

  Leona and Jonathan’s Lawyer stubbornly continued his argument.

  “We are demonstrating, Your Honour, the potential for a breakthrough. Every person in this city carries a crystal containing their personal scan. Every person,” he emphasised. “That’s almost ninety million potential clients.”

  The judge was losing patience.

  “We are dealing with a very simple question of wealth. The defendants no longer meet the requirements and their son is not yet nine years old, so he’s eligible for reassignment. Is there anything else I should be considering?”

  The Judge’s duty was a grave one. But his decision was delivered for the greater good of the community. Within the city the average life expectancy was one hundred and thirty years and the longevity of life had caused overcrowding. New lives were at a premium. Each one had to be carefully assigned to those best suited to provide and raise a child. Countless couples were waiting for a child of their own, and their businesses were flourishing, not going backwards.

  While the Judge knew of the pain his decision would cause in the short term, he remained convinced he was working for the greater good of all those who lived within the city’s walls.

  “Callen Carrus is to be taken from his parents and reassigned immediately to a new eligible couple who meet the financial requirements.” The hammer fell. The decision was final.

  Leona wept uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face. Jonathan sat beside her. For the first time in his life he did nothing to comfort his wife when she needed comfort. They had just lost their son. When they were granted the right to have Callen their business was going from success to success. Now, here they were, less than a decade later, listening to a judge destroy their lives - their family.

  As a guard came and stood behind Leona and Jonathan, the Judge looked to them.

  “Your son is to be escorted from this building. You are to have no further contact with him and no record of his existence with you is to remain. If you try to contact the boy in any way, you will be charged and face a sentence of fifteen years incarcerated public service. Do you understand?”

  Leona sobbed as she nodded. Jonathan hardly moved.

  “Yes”, he said without ever taking his eyes off the Judge. They had no choice but to accept that Callen was no longer their son.

  A neat woman with a painted smile entered the far end of the corridor. She walked directly towards Callen. Her conservative skirt and button down blouse sung of her position within the government and try as Callen might to ignore her approach, he couldn’t.

  “Callen”, she said from about half way down the hall. “Come with me, please”.

  “I’m waiting for my parents. They’re in there”, he said pointing to the door in front of him.

  “No, they’re not sweetheart. Come on, I’ll explain everything”.

  Callen looked to the women. She was trying her best to look like a friend. She held out a hand, her delicate fingers extended. Callen jumped up from his seat and ran at the large doors to the courtroom. He pulled hard on the handles but hardly managed to move them. The doors were locked. Callen cried out.

  “Mummy! Daddy!”

  In the courtroom Leona and Jonathan tensed to the sound of Callen’s cries. They reached for each other’s hands and squeezed tight. Legally their son was now someone else’s concern.

  Callen was led away down the long corridor. He struggled hard, but the dissenting seven year old proved little problem to his practised escort. At the end of the corridor a door swung shut behind them. The ensuing silence made a mockery of the extreme drama that had played out along the hard polished floor.

  Chapter 2.

  Callen sat in an empty room, the third room he’d been asked to wait in already this day, not including the corridor where his nightmare began. Every now and then someone would come and talk through legal protocol, but Callen’s head was swimming with information and he’d rather pretend he agreed than try to fully understand what was happening. The wheels of administration wrapped the red tape around him and his seven years of experience were hardly adequate to keep up with the many stages the law seemed to be guiding him through. All he knew for sure was that his parents were not with him and he was expected to accept they would never be with him again.

  His mind protested the fact. He remembered the lessons about families at school. The icy cold fear of every child surrounded him. He wasn’t going to let it happen. He wouldn’t submit himself to being reassigned and he didn’t care who his new parents were, he’d never accept them.

  Finally, late in the day, Callen was collected by a young man who took him to a dormitory. He was assigned a bed within a plastic moulded room. Here he’d wait until tomorrow, when his new parents would arrive to take him home. Callen said nothing. He didn’t want anyone knowing the thoughts he was having. When the reassignment was finalised, he’d go with his new parents and play at being a dutiful son. At the first opportunity he’d be away to find his old home and his real parents.

  Callen took a long time to fall asleep. As he lay in darkness his mind drifted and fell upon the memory of a holiday taken beyond the city walls, to a sister city by the beach. He’d watched the in flight viewer showing magnified images of the barren land they were passing over. He watched riveted with his family as they saw movement far below. One of the ‘outlocked’ living a poor excuse for a life in the exiled wastelands, far removed from the modern privileged lives being lead within the City’s walls.

  As Callen lay in his bed trying desperately not to think of his reassignment, this memory helped ease his mind and induce sleep. At the time
the sight of that one outlocked scavenger, so far below, terrified him and made it impossible to enjoy any part of his holiday. Callen recalled the hotel where they stayed and that first night when his dreams wouldn’t let go of that scavenger. His parents came to him to help ease the many frightening thoughts he was having: What if they were cut off while on holiday? What if they were overrun by the Outlocked? He woke up his parents with these alarming thoughts. They took him in their arms and held him tight, assuring him such things could never happen. That memory, of being nursed in his parent's arms almost four years before, finally gave Callen the peace he needed to fall asleep.

  Come morning, he was woken early and taken to a shower where he was rudely scrubbed by a woman wearing rubber gloves and an apron. The task left him humiliated, but more was to follow. He was taken, still naked into a doctor’s surgery. There was no colour at all in any of the rooms. Not the room he slept in, not the shower room, not this new room. A doctor entered, she too was dressed in white to match the room. Callen stood shivering, not from cold, but nerves. The doctor was a young woman and she went about her business with great routine. Measurements and checks were made of Callen without a word of explanation. At the end of the examination the doctor sat behind a desk and scribbled on a file.

  “You’re a very fit young boy. You’re going to make some lucky parents a wonderful son.” The doctor closed the file and left the room.

  The door to the room remained open and Callen hid behind it peering out. Had everyone forgotten he was naked?

  The women, who had scrubbed him down, re-entered and took him by the hand. Callen had had enough.

  “Can I have some clothes?!”

  The woman looked at him in astonishment, almost as if the request was a strange one.

  “You’re about to get a whole new wardrobe if you’d just be a little patient.”

  Callen gave in and walked with the large women as she navigated the hallway. There was no-one else walking by to see him, something he was extremely grateful about. Another room waited; another white room. He sat on a cold plastic bench moulded into the wall. His hands stayed fast to his lap. The women in white left him alone. Callen looked around the room. It was unremarkable. His nerves were frayed, his emotions frantic. The door reopened and Callen tensed up. Who now? The women in white re-entered. She wheeled in a plastic cage. Callen stared at it. All he could think of was that he was to be placed in this cage and wheeled around on parade.

  “What’s that for?” he asked nervously.

  “For you,” she said.

  The women swung open a door and revealed clothes. The cage was a wardrobe now displaying, shoes, socks, underpants, pants, shirts and jumpers.

  “These are all yours. Paid for by the Helfners.”

  Callen had never heard of this organisation.

  “Your parents.” She explained.

  Callen stared motionless. In one day his entire life had been turned upside down and shaken. The women left the room and Callen quickly went to the cage to dress. He searched for his favourite labels and finished looking like a mannequin in a department store, displaying the unmistakable creases that new clothes hold.

  The door to the room was still open and the moment Callen was happy with his appearance, he walked through it. One step into the adjoining white corridor he came face to face with the women in white.

  “Good, you’re finished,” she said. “We’ll get all the other clothes sent around to your home some time later today. Your Mum and Dad are waiting for you. I think they’re a little excited.”

  Callen had been doing his best to remain brave, but the mention of two strangers now being called his ‘mum and dad’ was too much to handle and he broke down in tears. Within seconds, Callen was a sniffling, snorting, hyperventilating mess. His need for air produced a louder cry when he breathed in than when he was actually crying. The women in white showed compassion; it was hard to tell if she was responding to the harshness of Callen’s experience, or simply because the tears of a seven year old reached her heart.

  She hugged him close until his tears stopped.

  “You have to be brave about this. The Helfners are going to love you very much. You’re a lucky young man.”

  “I don’t want new parents. I want to go home to my real mum and dad.”

  This statement threw the woman. She didn’t know how to react.

  “You’re seven years old, aren’t you?”

  Callen nodded.

  “Surely you’ve been taught about families at school? You must know how people have children?”

  Callen went silent. He did know. He’d been remembering those lessons he’d been taught since this nightmare began. He could virtually recite every word he’d ever been told about the subject, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. After a moment he reluctantly nodded that he understood. The woman showed relief. Had he not known, for whatever reason, she could have been facing quite an awkward situation. She moved quickly, brushing a few stray fibres from Callen’s new clothes as she tried to encourage his recovery.

  “See if you can’t cheer yourself up a little. Your new parents don’t want their first sight of you to be in tears.”

  Callen ran the back of his hand across his eyes.

  “Good, boy. Now let’s put a smile on that face and go and meet your new mummy and daddy.”

  Callen was led away through another door into a room of colour. A room of synthetic seats and viewer screens. A room of sound and activity. Raegher and Annie Helfner sprang to their feet as their number was called. They threw their arms open and hugged Callen as if he was a long lost son, which, in a way, he was. Callen suffered the smothering without a word. There was little else he could do.

  The trip home was uneventful. Both Raegher and Annie were nervous and couldn’t stop telling him all their plans. They could have been talking about revolution for all Callen knew. He kept nodding and changing his focus from one to the other, all the time watching the passing streets. He was desperately trying to map the direction of his old neighbourhood. The Helfner’s unit was almost two hours drive from the administration buildings. By the time they arrived Callen’s head was spinning with landmarks and turns taken and all the while the incessant chatter continued.

  On their arrival at the Helfner’s home Callen was shown straight to his new room. The walls were bright yellow. A bright blue bed with bright red cupboards set them off. A mobile of the solar system hung from the light and as the planets rotated, so did the coloured lights they gave off. Callen was overcome with the vibrant room. He sat on the bed and the Helfners retreated to prepare for their first dinner together. Callen began planning when and how to leave this new and unfamiliar family behind.

  Dinner was a feast. Everything any seven year old could want. Largely synthetic, but far more nourishing than anything natural. The ham and vegetables were a forerunner to the sweets. An ice cream pie with a crust of chocolate biscuit all covered in fudge so thick it stopped running as it cooled. Callen’s appetite had not suffered at all during the past twenty four hours and he happily had a third helping of desert to the delight of his new parents.

  In bed, he was visited and kissed on the forehead no less than three times, before Annie and Raegher finally turned in for the night. Callen waited a good hour, desperately keeping his focus so as not to fall asleep. When he thought the time was right, he silently inched down the hall to find his new parents, they were sound asleep. Back to his room, he rummaged quietly in his wardrobe. He located a back pack perfect for what he had in mind. He loaded the bag with all the clothes he thought he might need, which really wasn’t much, and he left the room.

  Quietly he navigated the stairs, stopping only at the kitchen to add some easily carried food to his load. He walked to the door and opened it. He rode the lift to the ground floor and slid out into the night. He was away, on a journey to find the parents he loved and refused to leave. Everything was going perfectly. He’d have the whole night to get a head start
on those looking for him.

  The building’s alarm wailed to life. A flashing light above the door lit the surrounding buildings with its intermittent piercing blue light. Callen couldn’t believe he’d missed something so obvious – the alarm! He turned and ran. His plan would remain the same - the only thing altered by the oversight was his head start.

  Chapter 3.

  Callen ran and ran. Past the prefabricated buildings that stretched as far as the eye could see. Past the communal park designated to the area. He headed for the transport stations. If he could just make it to an underground carriageway, he’d be whisked out of the neighbourhood and could relax. The streets were all clean, the buildings were all similar. It was hard to keep his bearings as he ran. As he rounded another corner he came to an abrupt halt, worried that he’d travelled the road before. He hadn’t. A solitary splash of colour on a nearby wall, gave the street an unknown identity, again he started to run.

  Beads of sweat formed on his brow. By his reckoning, the whole world was after him and he had to keep moving as fast as he could. He also knew the stories from the playground that a reassigned child was never treated the same again after they’d made an attempt to escape back to their previous life. Callen was determined to make this attempt successful. He knew he wouldn’t have another opportunity any time soon.

  He was unaware of how little danger he was actually in. While the Helfners may have alerted the authorities, only those with the specific brief to track him down would ever pose any threat to him. Youth had become a symbol of prosperity. Children had become the new elite, an aristocratic class; revered and powerful in their own right by nothing more than association. The city housed many millions and less than ten percent would ever rise to be successful enough to be allowed a single child in their lifetime. The criteria to qualify were wealth and power, so any child had to be associated with a family of considerable standing. To cause distress to a child, to impede, to interfere in any way, was to ask for someone with power to step in and take an interest. Given Callen’s age, the crowds literally parted in front of him. Few gave him more interest than a stare of curiosity. He was obviously heading somewhere and no one wanted to slow him down in any way.