The Vetting
by Peggy Rockey
The artificial sun never set in Dome 14.
It hovered in a perpetual mid-afternoon glow over
manicured sand, wave-generating turbines, and a carefully diverse crowd of
families who had all passed their annual scans.
Derik Chase sat stiffly on a synthetic driftwood
bench, back rigid, eyes
constantly shifting. His hands, clenched in his lap, left sweat-marks on his
khakis.
A sharp pop of a drink can opening behind
him made him flinch hard enough to draw a few stares. Derik nearly jumped out
of his skin.
“It’s just me,” Lina said gently, returning with two
chilled bottles of lemonwater.
“You okay?” she
asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. Sorry. I thought…” He trailed off, scanning the path
behind her, the crowd, the dome’s edge. “Where’s Mae?”
Lina sat beside him, setting the drinks down with a clink. “By the shoreline
sim, with that tall boy and the girl with the purple streaks. They’re
laughing.”
He didn't respond. His gaze drifted to the security towers nestled into the
faux cliffs, their matte-black panels bristling with hidden optics. Above them,
a glint in the air caught his eye, one of the surveillance drones, floating too low, scanning too long.
Lina followed his gaze.
“You’re spiraling,” she murmured.
He took a sip. “Mae flagged on her scan last week.
Category C deviation. Patterns tied to dissonant phrases: freedom, grief, watching,
illusion.”
Lina blinked. “You didn’t report it?”
“I deleted the scan. Masked the log under a
diagnostics error. Scrubbed the backup.”
She stared at him, horror blooming in her
expression. “Derik…”
“She was confused. That’s all. A thought spiral,
not rebellion. She doesn’t even realize she’s thinking it.”
Lina dropped her voice. “And if Central finds the
deletion? You’ll be charged with interference, maybe treason. They could erase
you. Or lock you up in one of those blanked zones where you forget your name.”
“I covered it,” he said quickly. “It’s clean.”
“For now.”
They sat in silence. A gull projection dove
overhead, looping like it had been programmed to. The ocean crashed
rhythmically against sculpted shorelines designed for balanced sound
distribution.
Lina’s voice cracked. “What if she flags again
next year?”
Derik watched Mae from across the synthetic tide,
now looping her arm around a tall boy and laughing at something he whispered.
Derik rubbed the back of his neck. “Then we fix it before it gets that far.”
Lina turned slowly to look at him. “Fix it how?”
He finally met her eyes. “She trusts us. We talk.
Guide her thoughts. Help her steer away from unsafe patterns.”
“You mean teach her to suppress her instincts. Reframe
her mind.”
He hesitated. “We’d be doing it with love.”
Lina’s mouth tightened. “That’s what they say in the
institutes.”
“This is different.”
“How? Because we wouldn’t be using sedation?” she asked.
“No immersive recalibration chamber? Just the same erasure, but with bedtime
stories and herbal tea.”
Mae jogged toward them just then, cheeks flushed,
eyes bright. “Can I get a stimshake from the kiosk? Theo’s buying.”
“A small one,” Lina said.
“Make it weak,” Derik agreed.
“Okay,” said Mae, darting off quickly, in case
they changed their mind.
They watched her disappear into the color-coded
crowd.
“She’s curious and bright,” Derik said quietly.
“But she lives in a world that doesn’t reward curiosity. It punishes it.”
Lina crossed her arms. “You don’t see the irony, do you?”
He frowned.
“They would erase who she is. You’re just doing it
yourself. Gently. Quietly. With fatherly affection.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.
“She gets it from me, you know. The
questions. The way she thinks sideways.”
Derik blinked. “You?”
“I used to write essays. Back before the scans went mandatory.
Before I was vetted for childbearing. I questioned things. The watching. The
ranking. I just got good at hiding it.”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “You never told
me.”
Lina looked toward the shoreline, where Mae now stood,
half-lit in the artificial sunlight, laughing with her friends, her hair caught
in the controlled breeze.
“I don’t want to lose her either,” she said.
Derik’s throat tightened. “Then help me. Please.”
She didn’t answer for a long moment.
Finally, she reached down for the lemonwater, and took a
sip. “One thought at a time,” she said. “And we let her keep as much of herself
as we can.”
“Agreed,” Derik said, relieved.
But neither of them noticed the pale drone hovering just
above the shade tree—silent, small, its lens glinting.
Recording.
