It had been second grade when the teacher asked us what we wanted to do when we grew up.
It had been a frosty winter's day, and the wind had been whistling a shrill tune outside, but the heater was on full blast, and it had been warm and toasty inside the wooden walls of the one-room schoolhouse. We had sat down in a circle, on the big yellow rug in the centre of the classroom.
We had gone around clockwise. Most of the answers had been positions in the pack. Pack sentry. Hunter. Tutor. Guardian.
Then they got to me. I had cleared my throat.
"I want to be an astronaut," I had said, matter-of-factly. "I want to visit the International Space Station and orbit the earth."
***
Eleven years later, I still don't like to talk about what happened next. Let's just say it wasn't a very pleasant experience.
Watching the yellow-and-green Stone River Post van as it drove away, I reached into the pack mailbox. There was something from the Organisation of Pan-Lycan Unity. Several of the fluff magazines the other pack members seemed to love. And at the very bottom, an envelope emblazoned with the familiar crest with the crow perched on top of it. The insignia of the University of Canterbury.
My heart gave a small leap at the sight of the last item. Making sure that nobody was around, I carefully separated it from the other envelopes and tucked it into my coat pocket.
***
I trudged discreetly through the pack village. People snuck looks at me and whispered amongst themselves, but they didn't dare say anything aloud, or do anything physical. They tolerated me, as I was the only one who knew how to fix things.
Having put the mail in its rightful place in the pack house and checked on the robots, I walked around to the back entrance. The Omega entrance. I was relieved that the tenon saw and pencil I had left on the back porch remained untouched. Nearby lay some lengths of pine I had saved from the pack woodpile when nobody was looking. The bottom member of one of the window frames had completely rotted through and needed to be replaced urgently.
The top of the window frame had a little bit of rot too. I had already dug out the rotten parts and filled them in the day before. I was still waiting for the filler to set so I could sand and paint them.
I entered my room. The floral wallpaper was peeling at the edges. The floor was covered in clutter. Beta Roman's TV lay on the floor, half-disassembled. He wanted it back by Thursday as the next episode of The Real Lunas of Canterbury was airing.
Another TV stood on top of a chest of drawers at the far end of the cramped room. A 42-inch flatscreen, my pride and joy. The Alpha's son had thrown it out. It had taken me ninety seconds to get it going again.
The alternator of Iota Catriona's car lay next to Roman's TV, completely dismantled. It needed to be rebuilt by the day after, as she needed to drive into the Industrial Zone for a conference on bandaging techniques.
A small desk sat next to a single bed, covered mostly by thick instruction manuals. There was the day's homework at the very left corner, already completed. I'd done the pack tutor course so many times I'd memorised all the answers. They always used the same worksheets over and over again, with minor changes.
On the wall, the choosing ceremony invitation was pinned. This was a completely pointless exercise, as everyone in the pack knew exactly where and when it would be – tomorrow at the amphitheatre, as it had been since time immemorial, but one of the schoolteachers had still spent the better part of a fortnight painstakingly typesetting and printing copies for all the pack members.
No other pack used our system anymore. I guess Alpha Landon had hung onto it for the sake of tradition, like an raggedy teddy bear from one's childhood. I'd heard of a pack far away in Namibia that did the same thing, but the book where I'd read that was so old that it still referred to Namibia as South-West Africa. Most other packs had long chosen to send their pups to the OPLU-run schools in the Special Industrial Zone, with the option of applying for university when they matriculated.
Taped above the ceremony invitation were the blueprints for the first robot I had made, a floor-mopping machine for the pack house. I had built it in a week using parts of a washing machine and old car parts. It had given a year of good service, long enough that Alpha Landon had commissioned another one.
Now I had a fleet of robots mopping all floors of the pack house, cooking all three meals, and doing the dishes – all the Omega duties apart from the mail collection, which I preferred to do myself. I just had to check in on them every few hours to see if everything was going alright.
Stepping through the mess, I loosened one of the floorboards under the bed, revealing a small cedar-lined space underneath.
***
Despite the attitude of my fellow pack members, I had never wavered from my dream. Slowly and painstakingly, I had built up a sizeable collection of textbooks and classic literature in my little cubbyhole, reading and studying for final exams in my spare time. Books had always been hard to get. It had taken almost a decade to build up the collection I had today.
It was my uncle who had kept me going. He had a job as an aerospace engineer with the Zirconian Air Force, testing fighter jets.
Uncle Ian had been banished from our pack many years ago for reasons nobody seemed willing to talk about. I would have never even found out I had an uncle called Ian, had it not been for his efforts to keep in touch over the years, mostly in the form of postcards. The only reason I had been able to keep them was from my duty collecting post from the pack mailbox.
The postcards were kept in a neat pile in one corner of the secret space. The one on top of the pile had the slogan CANTERBURY, CAPITAL OF ZIRCONIA – GREATEST WEREWOLF CITY IN THE WORLD emblazoned on it. I traced the skyline of Canterbury: the skyscrapers, the Zirconia Tower, the Parliament building, the old pack house.
The one underneath it had a picture of a tram, and the message CANTERBURY TRANSPORT – MOVING ZIRCONIANS SINCE 1934. I recognised the tram as a double-ended Super PCC, one of fifty built in 1981-1983 for interurban workings.
I'd never ridden a tram before. I'd read about them, about hypoid gears and rubber chevrons and the Combino fiasco, but that was no substitute for first-hand experience – something that I was sorely lacking in. In Canterbury, I'd be able to ride the tram to university every day. I felt my heartbeat quicken at the thought.
There were postcards from other places too; from Paraguay; from Burkina Faso; from all manner of exotic locations around the world. Places I'd probably never get to visit.
***
I opened the envelope, careful not to crease the paper as I unfurled its contents.
I had applied for the Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Canterbury. I'd applied to several human universities as well, but they wouldn't get back to me until early next year.
Dear Tim,
On behalf of the Admissions Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to the University of Canterbury class of 2022. You were selected from one of the most talented applicant pools in our history. Your invaluable contributions to your community, and the ingenuity with which you have applied yourself to adverse situations make you stand out as someone who will thrive in our tight-knit community...
The letter drifted off into administrivia about orientation and admission deposits. But my head was swimming. I was in.
I remembered back to the things I had done to get this far. All days I'd woken up at 5:00 AM to catch the only Industrial Zone-bound bus service of the day, under the pretense of getting spare parts for a project, to get free tutoring from a Zirconian charity. All the time I'd spent using the computers and the colour printers at the single public library in the Special Industrial Zone to draft my uni applications. The countless afternoons I'd spent searching the dumpsters outside the Pine Hollow pack publishing house and scouring seedy flea markets for books. The hours I'd spent commuting on Interpack buses.
I looked up again at the pack roles printed on the ceremony invitation, the strokes of the cursive text seemingly taunting me.
If the next day went as I reckoned it would, it would be all for nothing. I was going to be a lowly pack tutor for the rest of my life. I was going to be a Sigma.
Still, may as well try to beat the crappy system.
I looked back at the mess on the floor. That alternator wasn't going to rebuild itself.
I set to work.
***
The amphitheatre was adjacent to our little schoolhouse, a grassy earthen bowl in the middle of the pack village.
It was a blustery day. The entire pack had turned out, dressed in their best clothes. It was one of the most important days in the calendar, after all.
Alpha Landon was giving his customary speech. It was exactly the same speech he had given last year, with some minor rewordings.
"...you will have to adjust to life without your parents. It will be hard at first. But do not be fazed. You will get used to it..."
I tuned out after a while. It wasn't like I was missing anything important.
After Landon had finished his speech, the ceremony proper began. One by one my fellow wolves stepped up to the podium to choose their position and swear an oath of loyalty to the pack.
Delta. Iota. Phi. The usual.
Then it was my turn. I breathed in and steeled myself as I stepped onto the podium.
"I request to leave the pack," I said. My voice felt strange. "I have been accepted into the Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Canterbury."
The crowd fell deathly silent. I heard some sniggers. Alpha Landon was looking at me with a mixture of pity and amusement. "And how will you get to Zirconia?"
"I'll find a job in the Special Industrial Zone while I apply for asylum." More sniggers in the crowd.
"Life's pretty tough for a young rogue in the Special Industrial Zone," Alpha Landon retorted imperiously, sneering very gently. All of us knew what he was implying.
"He's coming with me," a voice suddenly piped up in the back of the crowd. A collective gasp Mexican-waved through the throng of people.
I'd only ever seen Uncle Ian's face in old photographs I'd found in the pack house attic, but here he was, standing like a mirage, the crowd parted around him.
Within seconds Alpha Landon had crossed over to my uncle. "I thought I had banished you forever, Ian," he boomed in his Alpha voice."What in the name of the Moon Goddess are you doing here?"
Uncle Ian didn't flinch, staring Alpha Landon straight in the eye. "I have come to claim my nephew," He stated, matter-of-factly. "He's coming to stay with me in Canterbury while he finishes his studies."
"He is not coming with you. He is going to make a great pack tutor. Now get lost."
Uncle Ian's face was expressionless. "He has a great future ahead of him. You're not going to ruin that, are you, Landon? You're a better man that that."
Nobody dared to speak a word. The tension in the air was almost visible. Nobody ever disrespected the Alpha, not even visitors.
Alpha Landon's face reddened dangerously. His eyes flashed with golden flecks. "You're not going to get away with this," he growled, his voice just loud enough for the crowd to hear.
He was just about to take a step towards Ian when the chief warrior stepped up.
Chief Warrior Walter, a wiry man with a moustache, leaned close and whispered something into Alpha Landon's ear.
Landon relaxed somewhat. The red colour drained from his face and his eyes lost their golden lustre. He seemed almost resigned, something I had never seen before. "Very well. Your wishes are granted. You have ten minutes to get out of here." He almost spat the words out.
I rushed towards the back of the pack house. Opening the secret space, I quickly stuffed my book collection into an old duffel bag I used for carting tools around. I stacked the blueprints for the robots on my desk. Hopefully they'd be able to work out how to fix them.
***
Ian and I walked in silence to his car, which he had said was parked just beyond the pack territory.
We passed the pack border. The guards just stood there silently, eyeing us silently as we walked past.
I glimpsed a flash of mint green through the trees, then stifled a gasp as the entire car was revealed.
I had read about them and seen the pictures, but all the pictures in the world could not do justice to experiencing one in the flesh. It was the most radical thing I had ever seen. It was like a spaceship.
"Citroën DS," He said. "Greatest car ever made. I think there's an Alpha out in these parts who has one of these. Whatshisname. Jim or something. The bus guy."
"Jim Denborough?"
"That's the guy."
"I met him once. Cool guy. We talked about our cars."
We got into the car. The sofa-like seat I sank into was a world away from the hard bus seats I was used to. Behind us, figures in grey fatigues were emerging from the late afternoon shadows and filing into a pair of black Chevrolet Suburbans.
"Don't worry," Ian reassured me, noticing my wary stare. "Just my colleagues."
I knew from countless bus and bicycle journeys that the road was bumpy and not in the best condition. But in the DS it felt as if the bumps and potholes were barely there. The Suburbans followed at a safe distance behind us.
We sped up as we left behind the pack I had called home for the last eighteen years, heading for my new life in Zirconia. Outside, dusk was falling.
Ian turned on the stereo. I recognised the tune as I.G.Y from Donald Fagen's The Nightfly.
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free...