Ms. Strepp nodded and clicked a remote at a TV screen on the wall. It flickered to life. “I’ll show you.”
The image on the screen cleared. It was a picture of a white sand beach being gently lapped by clear turquoise water. I’d never seen anything like it, and I leaned forward slightly, my eyes wide. The image pulled back to reveal couchlike chairs sitting right on the sand. My eyebrows raised as it showed a woman with deep-tan skin, wearing a red bikini, lying on one of the chairs. She reached a hand out and someone, a man in a suit, put a fancy drink in it. The drink was three colors—red, orange, yellow—and had fruit in it. It looked amazing.
“This is a place called Florida,” said Ms. Strepp. “It’s in one of the Forbidden Zones.”
“I’ve never heard of a Forbidden Zone,” Becca said.
“Most people haven’t,” said Ms. Strepp. “But in the United, there are at least fifteen Forbidden Zones.”
“Forbidden how?” Becca asked.
“Forbidden to cellfolk,” Ms. Strepp said. “Forbidden to you. And me. And anyone you know.”
111
BECCA
WAS THIS THE SAME STREPP who had tortured us, made us fight, tested us constantly? What was she doing? This had to be a trap somehow.
“Is this a test?” I asked flatly.
“All of life is a test,” said Ms. Strepp, sounding like herself at last. “But look.”
The image on the TV screen changed. It had been taken from an airplane. It flew over a cell, an ag cell like ours. I saw the houses, the fields, the cows, the boundary fence. The plane kept flying and went over dark-green trees that lasted a long time. It flew over another fence, much taller and thicker than a boundary fence, made of brick.
Next to me, Cassie gasped.
This was a cell of some kind, but like nothing I’d ever imagined.
“Those are not government buildings,” Ms. Strepp said. “Those are houses.”
The houses were enormous, the size of the hospital or our school. They had balconies and beautiful gardens filled with flowers and trees and bushes.
“What is that place?” Cassie asked.
“It’s called Virginia. Another of the Forbidden Zones. Keep watching.”
Now the images on the screen switched back and forth: a close-up of one of those gorgeous houses, its walls made of pale-red bricks. The next shot was of a big pit of red clay, then a cell factory where the clay was being made into bricks. Filthy, sweating men and women shoveled the clay into huge molds that got pressed by a machine.
The image changed again and we peered through an open window at a table. It had a lace tablecloth and beautiful plates and glasses. On the table was a loaf of bread. Abruptly, the next image was another cell factory. Huge machines were churning wet dough. Women wearing white coats and caps hauled the machines to and fro, dumping the dough onto conveyer belts.
“I don’t understand what any of this is,” I said. They looked real. But none of it made sense.
Ms. Strepp didn’t reply, but clicked her remote again. Now the images flew by on the screen: a close-up of a rosebush, then a shot of gardeners toiling in the sun, growing rosebushes by the thousands. A view of a beautiful wooden desk, a shiny wooden floor, a stack of wood by an amazing marble fireplace—followed by a timber cell, where men using enormous saws were felling trees, and cranes loaded the trees onto long trucks.
Finally we saw some people who looked like they had never worked outside a day in their life. They were eating steak and corn on the cob. The next shot was of…
“That’s B-97-4275,” I breathed. “Oh, my God.”
The screen showed farms I knew, reaping machines like the one Pa had used, trucks full of corn and wheat and pumpkins driving out through the boundary gates.
I stared at Ms. Strepp.
“You think this is a prison?” Her voice was oddly gentle. “The prison is your home cell. That’s the prison you can’t leave. That’s the prison where people are held in slavery, making goods and products for these other people to enjoy.”
“What people?” I burst out.
“The United,” said Ms. Strepp.