EXCERPT

AFTER YEARS OF INSTABILITY, the Bayson Farms were supposed to be part of the solution to bring things back into balance. Pauline had watched the city go through the downward spiral. The sudden shortage of food, housing, everything. There were conversations in the news about wars close and far – civil wars, military coups, global trade contestations. These subjects were echoed on the streets as explanations to why people were houseless, why sushi was no longer a thing, why the summers were scorching, why businesses tumbled one by one and more people became jobless and then, sushi wasn’t even a subject anymore. There were marches on the street, a couple of riots resulting on people storming grocery stores and department stores. Pauline watched on TV the reports of people running in the streets, running so fast that shoes flew off their feet, their arms were ladened with bags of chocolate chip cookies or special edition sneakers. They grabbed whatever was there, so there wouldn’t be the terrifying emptiness that was coming for all of them.

But now, there was only radio station remaining, and it was the only way to get news. The DJs only had one thing to report. Bayson Corporation was now the world and god and everything. Even as Pauline’s life was lived in seclusion, she was aware that Bayson, a conglomerate, had in a short time grown to be an enormous force, consolidating agribusinesses and housing and pretty much whatever the government had allowed to be privatized in the last few years. Everybody now worked for Baysons in some capacity. Either in the Farms which referred to the enormous greenhouses and hydroponic factories or the Domes, the planned communities in more bucolic settings, away from the downtown pollution and growing unrest where everybody wanted to live if they could afford it. Many of Pauline’s neighbours from her posh condo did go.

Pauline got her news from Jacko who owned the corner store that she frequented for her canned beans. Canned beans were her main sustenance now, and Jack would save her favourite chickpeas under the counter for her. At the twice-weekly visits to the store, Pauline got the gist of the changing world from Jacko who didn’t have to move at all from his counter, but received the news of the world because it came to him.

When she got the letter from Mei, Pauline asked Jacko about the Farms, and Jacko explained that you didn’t need experience to work at the Farms, but you had to be strong enough to withstand eight-to-ten-hour shifts doing physical labour. Her sister was gangly and uncoordinated, wore glasses with coke-bottle lenses and tripped on her own feet often. Pauline was the one with the worker hands, stretched and hardened by work before she even hit high school. How strange then to think of Mei now with dirt under her nails, her palms calloused like Pauline’s once were.