22-04-2004 07:09									#1
	Hallway Tired of ads?

Hive, MY 2140

“Momma, where are we going?” Liz asked as she looked over to a large matronly woman in a work smock. The woman didn’t answer and tried her best to give her a smile.

The young woman knew better than to ask again.

They walked down a corridor together, hand in hand. The floor was relatively even, but the left wall and the ceiling still bore the rough cuts workers almost 40 years ago had made to scrape this passage out of the raw rock. There were chisel marks, since that was all many had, and occasionally marks of a pneumatic hammer, all evidence of hard toil and sweat. Many of those miners, banished to hard and unremitting labor in the early years of The Hive, were on longer among the living. The casualty rate among those condemned to hard labor by the People’s Representatives for indiscretions or errors in ideology had been high. Many years later the walls and ceiling were still rough-hewn. There were other more important tasks that demanded the labor of the Citizens of The Hive.

Always there was evidence of people. Down the corridor the right was Communal Bay Three, and just down from that the Feeding Den. On the level just below this were the Secondary Manufacturing Center and the recycling tanks. It was efficient to shunt the newly dead and other refuse into the tanks so they could be recycled to feed the living and the engines of industry. Citizen Yang had said that it was every Citizens final duty to go into the tanks, a last service to The Hive.

The woman and her daughter continued down the corridor. A police brigade stepped in behind them, and the woman took no notice. The little girl tried not to, but it was hard not to notice them. Their boots echoed with series of sallow booms as they tramped through the hall. Ever so slightly they picked up the pace, forcing the woman and her charge to pace ever faster. It was subtle, and indirect, but inevitable. They hardly even noticed the change, but they did know that they were uncomfortable. A shiver of fear grew. The woman said nothing.

At last they came to a door, a wide double door. It was blue and had emblazoned on the front People’s Security. The police stepped into place directly behind them and brandished their stun sticks in front, forming a cordon that encircled them.

Wide eyes looked up at the matronly woman. “Momma?” she breathed.

The door opened. It was dark inside.

The woman disengaged her hand from her daughter and stepped to the side. The men behind her descended on the girl, clamping their gloved hands on her shoulders. They gave her an inexorable push.

A moment later the woman stood alone in the hallway. She dared not breathe. She dared not the even let a tear well in her eyes.

That would not become a Citizen of The Hive.