Reductio Ad Absurdum (Working Title First Draft)

Chapter 3: Proietti's Pain

 I storm through the office to my desk. The realisation that he's right is the most painful part. There's not enough work in this country, and it's not like anyone just walks into a job these days. But I'm not sacrificing my integrity to keep a minimum wage, zero-hour contract. I can barely feed my child as it is. My child. Shit.

I open my drawer. It's my drawer, and no one but me knows what's really in there. A pile of insignificant paper, forms and tickets. I don't need any of it. There's only one thing in this drawer that I do need.

* * * * *

The whispers of the algorithm are only too real to me. My past is the evidence. I grew up in the slum. It was a horrible place, but damn was it diverse. The adults hated each other. They stuck to their races and their religions. They kept to their echo-chambers and never left them. But the kids? They were always so pure. The kids didn't see the differences between themselves like their parents did. And even as a kid, I fell in love. A white girl, a black boy. It was destined to fail from the beginning. But nowhere was it more difficult than when I was twelve. By that age the races were split into separate classes. The muslims and the Jews were kept separate from each other and the Christians. The two Hindu students were taught separate from everyone else. And by the age of twelve, the hate began to grow.

The state sponsored protective education. That's what it was called. America had accepted refugees from all over the anarchic world. And their descendants now inhabited our country. The white Christians resented it. We were all divided for our own safety. Our own good. But I was still in love. In love with a black boy named Marc who my parents hated, and my teachers kept me apart from. But love can't be defeated by hate. Love can't be defeated at all. And the division brought us closer together. The secrecy, the immorality of it. By fifteen it was such a turn-on. Within a month of our sexual union, I was late.

Not long after I knew for certain I was pregnant, I received an Intramail from the school. Well, not just me. Every student. Marc Arran had been shot by police as he returned home from school, for refusing to let them search him. They were white, of course. You couldn't be a policeman unless you were. Marc was the happiest, gentlest boy I'd ever met. And I watched the condolences pour out at the bottom of the Intramail.

'RIP Marc. Keep smiling up there, I'll miss you. Jaycob.' was my favourite. Marc had never broken his smile. His entire life his lips curled so high that you could see his gums. And I kept watching until the demeaning posts started appearing. Free speech. You've got to love it. Then I cried. Oh, how I cried at the loss of that smile.

I didn't know what was going to happen at that point. Nobody can see the future. I didn't know that when I would tell my parents, they'd hire an abortionist. That they'd threaten me, once I started to show, with isolation from the world if I refused. But I did refuse. It was bad enough I'd never see Marc again, let alone lose the one gift he'd given me. So I was hidden away.

Six months pregnant and I got another I-mail from the school. Marc's mother campaigned for five months for an inquiry into the death of her son. The police were acquitted after five days.

My parents warned me from the start that the baby was to be confiscated. Teenage pregnancy was illegal, and they were going to bring my baby up as my sibling. I don't know why I didn't tell them there and then, but they still didn't know I was pregnant with a mixed race child. The day he was born, I was thrown unceremoniously into the street. I was abandoned. Sixteen years old.

I never looked for my parents again, after that.

* * * * *

Growing up in a children's home was awful. But the staff didn't mind about my child. The only good people I've ever met to this day, and they were volunteers, looking after the waifs and strays.

And by the age of eighteen, I interned at the Sacramento Traffic control, staying there ever since. That's my story. That's the story of Kendrick Proietti. The whitest Italian from the slum, and one of the only people to see first hand the division in our society.

So I slide open the drawer in my desk, and I move the stack of pointless papers. There's only one piece of paper in this drawer that I need, and so I peel away the picture of my son. My beautiful, mixed race son. I couldn't keep it on my desk. The judgement would have been far too great.

I packed away a conglomerate of knicknacks and I forced a brave face. Straightening up, I furored my way to the elevator, and jabbed my thumb into the button with such force that my knuckles cracked. I jabbed the button again. And again. He'd revoked my access already.

"Valerie stop staring at me like a gormless chicken, and open the fucking door."