We all sat on the train, reading books, listening to music on our ‘pods, you know, doing whatever. There was a long ride ahead of us, that’s what the Recruitment Officer had said, and most of us had brought something to make the trip go faster. I had some reading, newscast and a couple of short stories I’d downloaded from my favorite source. It was going okay so far.
I’d spent a lot of time in the beginning of the ride just sort of staring out the window, actually. It was pretty out there. There were trees and wide fields of grass and stuff, the bright colors of flowers zipping by in the fields. It was soothing in some way I can’t define. Of course we only saw grass when we weren’t seeing the walls and buildings of some city, but that’s the way it is. I’m used to the green enclaves of the middle of the city, so all the trees and stuff were new. The view was great.
That’s not to say I thought the cities were ugly. I actually kind of like the neon glow shooting by. It’s got its own prettiness that’s different from the flowers. There’s lots of people who say that abundance the cities are just more proof that we’ve messed everything up. I say, look, we still have trees, and where else are all those people gonna live?
Besides, we’re much better than we used to be. Everyone knows that. Me, I’m a responsible citizen, I am. I took my Duty early. I’m only twenty-two but I feel that it’s the mark of a decent man to do his work. Some of the other guys on that train were much older, one guy I think was at least fifty. That’s not just lack of civic conscience, that’s plain stupidity. What was he thinking, leaving it until that age? Maybe he had planned to buy out and things didn’t work out. Bad luck, if that’s what it was. Still, no excuse, right?
I even chose a Duty that has immediate impact. I was going to work in Reclamation. Three weeks I’d signed up for, three weeks of digging aluminum, steel, plastics and other stuff out of the old trash. Can you believe those people? They just threw out all that metal. And the plastics! So much of it! Enough to make thousands of cities’ worth of cloths, tools, you name it. Just sitting there in with the packets of old strange food. More valuable than anything else we Reclaim.
When I was a kid my Dad told me that people not only used to throw away their fossils, they would burn them just to move around. He told me this one night after a shift at the plant. I didn’t believe it. I was glad that we’re so much more advanced now. Got rid of the environmental problems by passing laws, the economic problems by dealing with the megacorps, the population issue with the birth licenses. The oppressive class system withered without all that stuff feeding it. The human race is all right.
The Officer had been right. The trip was really long. I read through all my things before we got there. I spent the rest of the time talking to some other people seated in my row. One was a blonde woman, mid-twenties I guess. She was called Anne and was here doing her Duty before she had her kids. Her husband was supposed to come with her, but something happened and he couldn’t. Turns out she was from the same city as me. Another was a man just a bit older than me, name of Raphael. He was on Reclamation in order to earn some classes at a school in his home city. We talked about our home cities, exchanged contact numbers. It was pretty uneventful until one man got up to use the facilities. Just as he was walking by my row, the train hit a hump and he lost it. Fell right at the woman, almost landed in her lap! For a second there we were all worried that someone was hurt, but it was okay. We all had a laugh over that, but after a couple minutes I noticed the woman looked a bit upset. Tightness around the eyes, and her fingers were plucking at the blue fabric of her pants, something she hadn’t been doing before. I tried to figure out what was wrong.
“Hey, so that was pretty funny, huh?” I chuckled and nudged Raphael. He grinned and swooped his hands through the air, making a whoosh noise. Anne smiled a bit, but there was still that tightness.
“Yeah, funny.” She looked into the aisle.
Raphael and I were silent for a bit. He spoke before I did, saying in a quiet voice, “It was an accident, of course.” Raphael had a good quiet voice.
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. Of course. Sorry, I’m just a bit nervous.” She looked back up at us, smiling a little now and tucking some of her hair behind her ears. The sun slanted through the train window for a moment and I noticed that her hair had lovely red shimmers to it. Shame about that. They’d have to cut it short for Reclamation work.
“It’s normal to be nervous before Duty. The Officer said so,” I said helpfully. Raphael nodded. “And we’re doing such important stuff. You should feel proud about it.”
“I know. It’s good we’re cleaning up previous generation’s mistakes in a constructive manner.” She said the words right out of the Recruitment Officer’s speech. Raphael and me relaxed a little. She was just nervous. Raphael started talking to her about some new book he was reading. It was something fantastical, nothing I was interested in. After a while I stopped listening and just looked out the window some more.

Three hours later we finally arrived. I’d fallen asleep for most of the last bit of the trip, so I missed Raphael and Anne talking. Turns out they had a long conversation. Good for her for making friends, I thought. She’ll be calm now. I know it’s odd to worry about someone on a train like I did, but we were going to be working together, and besides, I kind of liked her. Don’t know why.
I watched her all through orientation. Not like that, I just kept an eye out for her. She seemed real torn about them cutting her hair short. I didn’t blame her. No excuse though, right? I was glad when we both got assigned to the same section, mining and such. It was the more manual detail. Dad always did say that working with your hands was an honest thing. Anne didn’t seem too happy about it though. In fact, she looked really small and scared, her little shoulders hunched and her head ducked. She looked so much smaller without her hair, like they had cut off parts of her along with all the blonde hair. So sad. I bet it was because Raphael got put in the management section. Turns out he had some education and they decided he’d be best there. She must have been sad to see him go. They’d talked a long time.
I decided I’d be her friend instead. All through the lectures on procedure and citation, I whispered comments to her. Friendly things to get her to loosen up. When the lecturer was explaining why it was dangerous to get anywhere near the drillbit of a certain piece of equipment, I leaned over and said, “Looking at that thing, I don’t need anyone to tell me that, huh?” She laughed a little at that.
The next couple days or so we worked side by side. I asked her all sorts of stuff about her life, and she asked me about mine. I told her about growing up with Dad, about my city. She was fascinated. She didn’t tell me much about herself beyond the fact she was married and wanted kids. Well, doesn’t everyone want kids? Having them’s always the problem. Not everyone can earn a license, and they’re damned expensive to buy. It’s a good thing we have them though. I mean, I’ve read about the problems we used to have. The people who buy licenses just mess up the system, keep the population higher that anyone can cope with. I can’t imagine what it was like when just anyone had babies if they felt like it. It’s good we’ve grown beyond things like that.
After a while I got a bit annoyed that Anne was so closed, though. I tried to let it go, but I couldn’t. “Anne,” I would say, “I tell you, there’s nothing as good as a trip to the green enclave during a day off, don’t you think? The one in the north quarter’s really nice, they’ve got good lawns there.”
She would shrug and smile.
“I would have a game or two with my buddies. What kinda stuff do you do in an enclave?”
And still, that silent smile.
“I bet you’re a picnicking sort. Am I right, eh? Am I?”
“Never really picnicked much. Are you looking forward to those games once we finish?” She’d turn it back to me, and often I wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later.

It took nearly two weeks of work, but Anne did start to open up. Now, this is two weeks of peeling plastic off of old, brownish food and picking metal out of the slime. I couldn’t believe the amount of methane in there. It’s a good thing we all had air purifiers. We were slogging through a bunch of old cars, cutting off pieces of intact metal and moving them to the belt going upwards. Anne wasn’t as strong as me, but I helped. After a particularly big piece she was leaning on the guard rail of the belt and gasping. I put my hand on her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Don’t worry about me so much.” Her shoulder twitched a bit. Must have been fatigue. She stood up, turned, and leaned on the rail. I leaned next to her.
“I should worry if you’re about to collapse down here.” She made a horrible face. I laughed at that. “Like I’d leave you! We’d get you out fast.”
“You know, there should be machines doing this. It’s stupid to have people picking bits of trash out of other trash!” She kicked at a bit of gunk, scowling ferociously.
I shrugged eloquently. It has to be done. Everyone knows that. Anne fidgeted with her purifier mask before speaking again. “This is the worst two weeks I’ve ever had. I can’t believe it.”
“Well... Reclamation is one of the highest-ranked Duties because it’s so nasty. Just think, it’s only three weeks because of that.”
She didn’t say anything, just bent down and picked up a scrap of metal. Steel, it looked like. She regarded it for a good couple minutes, long enough for me to start worrying that someone up top would notice that there wasn’t anything coming up our belt. Suddenly she threw the hunk of metal savagely and started crying.  Her sobs were almost growls, and her face was screwed up in anger.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I had it all set up and now... now I’m down here! In the trash!” She sniffled, raised her hands to wipe her eyes, then stopped as she remembered that she was wearing slime-coated work gloves and goggles besides. She started crying even more fiercely.
I went over and held out my hands. What the hell was wrong with her, all of a sudden? I knew she hadn’t been too happy, but this was crazy. “Anne, what is going on? What do you mean, it was set up...?” As I spoke, I had a tiny idea. She started to speak around the crying, and my heart just sank to my feet.
“I... we were going to get pregnant, fin-finally... But he messed up the license app...application. It was too late, or he filled, he filled it out wrong, or something. I don’t know! He paid the fee and all of it. And, and now, we were planning and ever, everything was set up and the school was ready, and I only had... There was only a month until I would be ready...”
I just stood there like an idiot, my hands raised and my mouth hanging open. Anne was one of those people who bought their licenses. Sweet, nice Anne. She kept babbling.
“So, so I had to take a Duty to get a license! A Duty! And, and this was the only one that I could do and, and have the time...” Her tears withered away into quiet sniffles. When she raised her head she wasn’t even looking at me. She must have been too ashamed, admitting that she had the money to buy her way out of all of this and didn’t feel at all guilty about it. I felt sick thinking that she was such a selfish person.
I turned away and grabbed my tools, started cutting off more car pieces. She came and stood beside me, looking all helpless. When I got the piece off, I dragged it over to the belt. I couldn’t quite get it up on my own. Anne tried to grab the side, and that’s when I lost it. I slammed my edge down.
“NO! You didn’t want to work, so don’t even try! I bet you’d have bought your way out of this if you could! Too good for... Selfish, spoiled, and... No. Just go away.” I bent and grabbed the piece, hauled it onto the belt. My back started to ache. Anne just stood there, her hands hanging limp at her sides. Useless. I went back to cut more, ignored her when she tried to work with me. After a bit she got the picture and just stayed out of my way. Didn’t bother me for the rest of the Duty.
She tried to talk to me on the train out, but I just stared out my window. I didn’t want to hear about all the babies she was going to have with her rich idiot husband. So I watched the trees slide by and thought about the job I’d done. My Duty. I’d done it just like Dad taught me. Not like her and her money, buying out of it all. No, I was a proud citizen who’d done a good job.
I raised my chin a little. Yeah. I was a responsible man. I understood my purpose, not like other people then or now. It’s a good thing. Everything’s okay.