EXCERPT

BUT THEN BAYSON CAME, and the city, the nation, got reorganized. The media outlets went bankrupt, and only one radio station reported on the news. Of course, the radio station, BAY 95.7, was owned by Bayson Corporation and reported every day that it was restoring stability to the economy and civil life. Bayson was headed by a charismatic talker named Guy Bayson whose speeches cut through the meaningless drivel of the government types. He didn’t waste time proposing policy; he spoke in plain language so that people said, “Oh, that Guy is a regular guy who knows how to set things right.” He gave them infrastructure, a plan, an organization. It didn’t matter that he was a billionaire and probably wasn’t so regular. Someone had to do something, and Guy stepped up.

Even Pauline, in her hermetic life, was aware that Bayson had in a very 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. It had happened so rapidly, and now almost everybody worked for Bayson in some capacity. The Bayson Farms, where Mei said she was working, were supposed to be part of the solution to bring the supply chain back into balance. The Farms were many things, including giant greenhouses and manufacturing plants meant to distribute food and goods domestically, now that the availability of imports was at a standstill due to the trade wars.

Bayson also built 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 had moved there. They were called Bayson Gardens or Bayson Springs or some other word that evoked tranquility. These places became their own villages and social ecosystems, leaving the cities to rot.

Pauline knew these things because Jacko told her. Pauline only ever spoke to one person, and it was Jacko, who owned the corner store that she frequented for her canned beans. Canned beans were her main sustenance now, and Jacko 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 because the news of the world came to him through his customers. After she got the letter from Mei, Pauline asked Jacko what one did to work on the Farms, and Jacko explained that you didn’t need experience to work there, but you had to be strong enough to withstand eight-to-ten-hour shifts doing physical labour.

When they were growing up, Ma had always made Pauline do all the grunt work in the bakery while Mei studied upstairs in their apartment. Mei’s hands would remain soft and the only tool they would hold would be a pen. Also, Mei was the clumsiest person she had ever seen, so she was glad Mei was not in the kitchen. Her sister was gangly and uncoordinated, wore glasses with coke-bottle lenses, and often tripped on her own feet. Pauline was the one with the worker hands, stretched and hardened before she even hit high school. Her hands were the ones that knew how to knead dough, retrieve things from scorching ovens, push a heavy mop across the floor. How strange then to think of Mei now with dirt under her nails, her palms calloused like Pauline’s once were.