Duality

The smell of disinfectant clung to her nostrils.

The place was as beautiful as terrifying. Clean and cold like a clinic. People weren't cold, but there was a distant air of superiority coming from those that walked by her.

A woman walked by smelling of perfume.

She smelled rich.

Rosa schooled her expression into a mask of deference. The woman reminded her of when she’d presented her first project; a tiny mollusk community study.

She had delivered a poor speech, sweating through the entire panel when the panelist made a list of all her mistakes and read it to her.

Constructive criticism, they had called it, but it had only made her feel smaller than a particle and decidedly less important than one.

It will make you improve dear.

And they were right. Of course, it had made her improve, but it had stopped her from public speaking for a long while.

In a way, that moment had prepared her for this. Her residency status didn’t fit the application: she was too exotic to be an Analyzer. The new type of scientist these days had to be able to blend in easily and she had only earned her Visa through a series of jobs that ranged from cooking to tutoring. Nothing about it was exemplary.

She wasn’t the smartest applicant nor the most experienced, but her idea was meant to be revolutionary.

Although the mere thought of uttering that word in any combination was…disturbing. It had been used against her and her people in a proud attempt to hide the sheer abuse committed against them.

Blood, red, revolution. It all had the same meaning in her mind, although she knew of ethical people that believed in them.

Then it was the matter of her family ties. She had a Visa that had brought her from the South, but Northern still demanded her to pay an extra fee for taking items to the Southern lands.  She was parentless and childless and worked as an Analyzer, but her few friends back in their land weren’t doing fine. They had to suffer through hunger, illness, and poverty there. People suffered whilst the rich took their time vacationing to the North.

The same North they were at War with.

In short, Southerners feared her—she was always a bit too much of a dreamer, an outsider—and Northerners dismissed her as soon as they took a look at her appearance.

It seemed that she was never enough.

An automatized voice welcomed her coldly.

“Place credentials and ID please.”

She handed them both.

The door opened.

She took a hand wipe and cleaned her hands, as it was customary now. Everyone in the room was wearing high-end masks.

“Good evening,” she said.

Only a few responded.

She presented only a clear picture of what her idea could solve. It required a little bit of logic and some research, but it was entirely too easy to do.

“Not too bad,” the Examiner said. She kept circling the poster with her fingers. He had a small smile on his face he did it.

“Can you tell us something about this proposal?” she said.

“It’s a renewable technology. The brief explanation would be that changing to biofuels would be a better path for climate solutions that adhering to current policies. A start of sorts, but something has to be done about food to cushion the blow of the raise of the food prizes,” Rosa said. "That would entail changing some social policies or adding new ones."

Rosa did her best not to feel pressured under the glance of the Examiner.

“Mmm,” the woman said.

“What about you? How are you finding life in here?” the Examiner asked. She assessed her look. Her posture.

Rosa knew bringing a project across the border would be difficult.

“I am quite fine. Staying in an old friend’s house.”

The woman laughed daintily.

“I know how that is, we did it too, back in the day.”

It was clear what she was implying but Rosa let it slip for her project’s sake.

Rosa's poster fell. The juries looked unimpressed of her performance.

A tall, bald man gushed something along the lines of “poor girl”.

A woman said, “she’s not prepared”.

She collected her poster and placed it against the wall again.

Her heart thumped.

It was no designed slide and it didn’t have the prestige of some of the other posters presented, but she cared about it. It was done by hand, with renewable material.

“How are you planning to do this?”

“I have researched for five possible paths. The first would be a major one: we could change the social policies to make sure human status isn’t tied in with food access.”

“An idea like this would mean getting people to help, and people won’t,” Richard said.

Sighing, she opened the suitcase she had carried. It was old and a little moldy when she’d found it, something that Algae had seemed to love.

She couldn’t understand why, but there they were, prospering even with the threat of a fungal infection.

It said a lot about her that her chosen field involved ancient beings as Algae.

“Here’s a chart of how much we’d need to produce fuel and other products.”

The man grabbed it. One of his eyebrows arched slightly as he read the graphs.

It is easier to address certain things from a quantitative point of view, she thought.

“It does look efficient.”

“Sir, it is the most efficient way to tackle this problem,” she assured him.

And it was the best way to lesser the things happening back home... Hunger, illnesses, poverty.

Scattered memories came to her mind in flashes. A tear-strained boy, and a crushed factory worker that had thrown themselves out a cliff.

The duality of the South: dreams and nightmares all in one place.

The proud smile of a young man going to the North to send food to his family, only to never return. Her family grieving his disappearance just as she had, on an empty altar without a body to mourn.

They were a part of her history. They were normal, everyday people that had molded her path to where she was.

She was representing all of them.

Feeling drained she asked, “well, what’s the verdict?”

“We must start voting,” the Examiner said. “You sit there while we do that.”

Thus, she sat on the corner and waited for the voting to end. It was the same wherever she went. Time was highly valued yet humans chose to lose time in systems like this.

It was a risk. In all the history of humanity, no one had attempted to bring something to the country they were at war with. It was a one-sided War, but it still managed to bar her from many places inside it.

A man spoke, “but, it seems like a matter of social sciences to discuss this.”

The Examiner gave the man the worst glare she’d ever seen, that didn’t come from a soldier or a policeman.

“Sir, this is the Human Research project. We do our best to remember what human society needs to improve. You might like to change to another board if it bothers you.”

The man blanched.

A woman spoke, “Charles can leave if he wishes so. It’d give this organization more space for brilliant people.”

Everyone seemed to agree.

“You see,” the woman repeated, her words turning steely. “No one seems to be bothered about it.”

The man lowered his glance in shame.

Everyone handed the ballots.

The woman said only one thing, “congratulations, your project has been chosen.”

End