Ky doesn’t look to see if I’ve gotten off, too. I study his back and his hands to see if I can find any of the tension running through him that runs through me. But his muscles are relaxed and his stride even as he walks around to the side of the building where the employees enter. Many of the other workers wearing blue plainclothes go through the same door. Ky’s hands are loose at his sides, open. Empty.
As Ky disappears into the building, the blond Official leads me around to the front, to a kind of antechamber. The other Officials hand her datatags and she places them behind my ear, at my pulse points on my wrists, under the neck of my shirt. She’s quick and efficient about it; now that I’m being monitored, I try even harder to relax. I don’t want to seem unusual y nervous. I breathe deep and I change the words of the poem. I tel myself to go gentle, just for now.
“This is the food distribution block of the City,” the Official informs me. “As we mentioned before, the goal of the real-life sort is to see if you can sort real people and situations within certain parameters. We want to see if you can help the Government improve function and efficiency.”
“I understand,” I say, although I’m not sure I do.
“Then let’s get started.” She pushes open the doors and another Official comes to greet us. He’s apparently the Official in charge of this building, and the orange and yel ow bars on his shirt mean he’s involved in one of the most important Departments of al , the Nutrition Department. “How many do you have today?” he asks, and I realize that I’m not the only one taking the test and completing real-life sorts here. The thought makes me relax a little.
“One,” she says, “but this is our high scorer.”
“Excel ent,” he says. “Let me know when you finish.” He strides away and I stand stil , overwhelmed by the sights and smel s around me. And by the heat.
We stand in a gaping space, a chamber larger than the gymnasium at Second School. This room looks like a steel box: metal floors dotted with drains, gray-painted concrete wal s, and stainless-steel appliances lining the sides and bisecting the middle of the room in rows. Steam mists and writhes around the room. Vents at the top and sides of the building open to the outside, but there are no windows. The appliances, the foilware trays, the steaming hot water coming out of the faucets: Everything is gray.
Except for the dark-blue workers and their burned-red hands.
A whistle blows and a new stream of workers comes in from the left while the other workers exit on the right. Their bodies sag, tired, weighted.
They al wipe their brows and leave their work without a backward glance.
“The new workers have been in a sterilization chamber to remove al outside contaminants,” the Official tel s me conversational y. “That’s where they pick up their numbers and adhere them to their uniforms. This new shift is the one you’l be concerned with.” She gestures up and I notice several outlook points throughout the room: smal metal towers with Officials standing at the top. There are three towers; the one in the middle of the floor is empty. “We’l be up there.”
I fol ow her up the metal stairs, the kind that we have at air-train stops. But these stairs end on a smal platform with barely enough space for the four of us to stand. Already the gray-haired Official perspires heavily and his face is red. My hair sticks to the back of my neck. And al we have to do is stand and watch. We don’t even have to work.
I knew Ky’s job was hard but I had no idea.
Tubs and tubs of dirty containers stand next to smal stations with sinks and recycling tubes. Through a large opening at the end of the building, the soiled foilware arrives in a never-ending stream, flowing from the recycling bins in our residences and meal hal s. The workers wear clear protective gloves, but I don’t see how the plastic or latex doesn’t melt into their skin as they spray off the foilware containers with hot water. Then they put the clean foilware down into the recycling tubes.
It goes on and on and on, a steady flow of steam and scalding water and foilware. My mind threatens to glaze over and shut down as it does when I’m confronted with a particularly difficult sort on the screen and I feel overwhelmed. But these aren’t numbers on the screen. These are people.
This is Ky.
So I force myself to stay clear and focused. I force myself to watch those bent backs and those burning hands and the vastness of al the refuse sliding silver along the tracks.
One of the workers raises his hand, and an Official comes down from his perch to confer with the worker. He gives a foilware container to the Official, who scans the bar code on the side of the container with his datapod. After a moment, he takes the foilware container with him and disappears into an office at the edge of the large open room. The worker is already back at work.
The Official looks at me as if she’s waiting for something. “What do you think?” she asks.
I’m not sure what she wants, so I hedge. “Of course, the most efficient thing to do would be to get machines.”
“That is not an option,” the Official says pleasantly. “Food preparation and distribution needs to be handled by personnel. Live personnel. It’s a rule. But we would like to free up more of the workers for other projects and vocations.”
“I don’t see how to make it any more efficient,” I say. “There’s the other obvious answer . . . to make them work more hours . . . but they look exhausted as it is ...” My voice trails off, a wisp of steam too smal to matter.
“We’re not asking you to come up with a solution.” The Official sounds amused. “Those who are higher up than you have already done that. Hours wil be extended. Leisure hours wil cease. Then some of the personnel from this area can be spared for another vocation.” I’m beginning to understand and I wish I weren’t. “So if you don’t want me to sort the other variables in the work situation, you want me to—”
“Sort the people,” she says.
I feel sick.
She holds out a datapod. “You have three hours to watch. Enter the numbers of the workers you think are the most efficient, those who should be sent to work on an alternative project.”
I look at the numbers on the back of the workers’ shirts. This is like a sort on the screen; I’m supposed to watch for the faster patterns among the workers. They want to see if my mind wil automatical y register the workers who move the most quickly. Computers could do this job and probably have. But now they want to see if I can do it, too.