Ripples 19 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

19 Zoning

M/D/1
Infinite arrivals, limited service: M/D/1

Along with the many others, she waited her turn in the in The System. Nothing new had changed. The M/D/1 queue, defined in the 1900s, worked the same way then and the same way now. The math might look intimidating but the essence was simple:

The milkmaid can only milk one cow at a time.

The Wait gave everyone a chance to zone out. Sometimes when the TV functioned, it would display vapid programs as dull and senseless as the colors selected for the walls. Its only function: distraction and perhaps a chance to sleep under a roof, however temporary.

She looked around the room. Rather she stared.

She smiled to herself at the admonitions against staring.

Don't stare! It's impolite.

But if I don't stare, how will I notice anything?

Don't ask questions!

Why not?

Because I said SO!!

The was something to be said about staring. It all depended on the context. "Because I said SO!" wasn't very helpful. Staring is more complicated and often dangerous.

Staring at a lion is like inviting it to lunch ...
on you, as the hors-d'oeuvre.

She stared anyway. So much to see.

People tried to hide or pretend but if you looked, you could see. It was there on their faces. The way they talked or didn't. The way they stood and moved.

The slow slide into invisibility

Stripped until you became a ghost. No longer a person. No longer a citizen. Like an orca stolen from their family pod, recognizing the calls of relatives but no longer acknowledged as a member.

You might still have a paper declaiming your citizenship and birthright, but its value declined with fortune. You might try to exert your claims but no others will tolerate you. You become less and less of a citizen, a person, a life, a being until you are nothing: an untouchable.

Money made it. Money defined it. Money removed it.

Along the downward passage was fear.

• They might be like you
• They could be like you
• They will be like you

They were so close;

she was so close;

she could taste the fear.

A prick and done.

It took less time to traverse the corridors on the way out, or at least it seemed that way.

A curious function of memory-time.

Such as thou art, sometime was I. Such as I am, such shalt thou be. Epitaph of the Black Prince