“Welcome to Horizon,” the voice began again as Asa emerged into the station. “Enjoy your time here, and always report any suspicious activity. Remember, we are all in this together.”
“… in this together,” Asa said under his breath along with the recording, saying the words like touching a talisman.
The rail station was bright and open. The high ceiling was made of irregularly shaped glass panels, and the sun streamed in unobstructed. Asa stared upward until someone bumped into him, almost knocking him off his feet. Asa stumbled, then recovered his footing to find himself facing a thin, dark-haired man a little older than him.
“Are you all right?” the other man said. “Sorry, I should have noticed you.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have been standing in the middle of a crowd, staring up at the sky,” Asa said sheepishly.
The young man grinned. “Don’t worry, everyone does it the first time they pass through this place. Look.” He pointed discreetly across the station, where an elegant-looking woman was gazing upward, exactly the way Asa had been. As they watched, a man hurrying for the door pulled up short, barely avoiding a collision.
Asa laughed. “I guess it’s not just me.”
“Not at all. By the way, welcome to Horizon!”
“Thanks, I’m—” Before Asa could finish introducing himself, the man was gone, vanishing into the crowd with a final wave. “I’m Asa,” Asa said quietly.
He tightened his grip on his bag and followed the largest section of the crowd out the main door and onto a sprawling plaza. It was reminiscent of the town square in Rosewood, writ large, but it was so much more.
To begin with, it was thronged with people—more people than Asa had ever seen in one place. Some were crossing the flat, pale stones purposefully, on their way to something important, and others were sitting in the sun or playing games that Asa could not recognize from a distance. There were stone benches and clusters of tables, but what made Asa stare were the spots, scattered across the plaza, where lush plants grew boldly as if in the wild.
He went to inspect one. In a circle about ten feet in diameter, meadow grass and wildflowers rippled in the wind. Asa glanced around; the air in the plaza was still. He walked around the circle until he came to a plaque, which read “Microclimate: Meadow.” Asa reached forward, about to pick a blade of grass, and his hand went suddenly numb, a buzzing sensation striking all the way up to the elbow. Asa grabbed his wrist, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one was looking at him.
He looked at the plaque again. In the bottom corner, small script read “Do not touch: microclimate protected by electrified air barrier.”
“Probably should have read that,” Asa mumbled to himself, flexing his hand as the feeling slowly returned to it.
Despite the shock, he went to another one. It was the same size, a large circular space, and this one was mostly sand and rock, with strange flowers scattered thinly on the ground.
“Microclimate: Desert,” Asa read aloud.
He looked on for a moment, then was startled as a small animal darted from behind a rock, vanishing under another too fast for Asa to see what it was.
Leaving the desert, Asa made his way to another one of the spots, labeled “Microclimate: Forest.” This one looked as if it could have come straight from Rosewood, with shady trees, maybe fifteen feet high, with heavy leaves. Asa sat down on a nearby bench, feeling a little more at ease with trees standing beside him. He took off his backpack and sighed.
Now what?
He had considered everything up to this moment, directed all his thoughts and plans toward getting to Horizon. Now that he was here, the future was a vast open space. He didn’t know what to do; he didn’t even know what he could do.
Asa squinted up at the sky. The sun was falling; it was late afternoon. I should probably find a place to stay, he thought.
He got up and started out of the plaza, picking a direction at random. The first large building he saw had a sign that read “Bank” above a row of doors, each leading into an individual booth. He picked one and went inside.
“Good afternoon, Asa Isaac Rosewood,” said an automated voice as he entered.
“Um, hello. How did you know my name?”
“Your name is Asa Isaac Rosewood,” the voice replied pleasantly.
“Right …”
“How can I help you, Asa Isaac—”
“Please, just call me Asa.”
There was a brief pause.
“How can I help you, Asa?”
“Yeah.” Asa took out his phone and held it up. “Can I check my account, I guess?”
“You have 199,988 credits available.” As the autom spoke, the number appeared on his phone’s screen. Below the total, in smaller print, a deduction was listed: twelve creds for his train ticket.
“Oh. I can just use them, right?” he asked awkwardly.
“You have 199,988 credits available. They are valid for all transactions except those in violation of your Social Contract.”
“Right.” Asa hesitated.
The bank autom wasn’t really equipped to answer his real questions. I can really go where I want, do what I want? I don’t have to ask anyone because I’m not a kid anymore?
“Would you like to view the bank’s official financial planning advice video, covering such topics as budgeting, spending priorities, and saving for a secure future?”
“Not now,” Asa said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Asa?” The autom’s voice didn’t change, but Asa felt a little like he was being asked to move along.
“Not now, thank you,” he said.
Asa looked down at the phone in his hand. Financial planning. Two hundred thousand credits, deposited every year on his birthday, seemed like more than he could ever need, but he had heard stories about people who lost everything, getting sent to Work for their foolishness.
I don’t know how much it costs to live in an apartment, he thought. I don’t know how much food costs in Horizon. He wavered at the door, feeling briefly guilty for skipping the bank’s video. I can watch it another time. It’s not like the bank’s going anywhere, he decided.
The sun was close to setting when Asa emerged from the bank. He looked up and down the street with rising excitement. Even though the bank autom was just an autom, the interaction had lifted him up; now he wanted to talk to someone else. But no one magically stopped to chat, so once again, Asa picked a random direction and started walking.
He tried not to gawk, but the city was everything he had hoped for: it was nothing like Rosewood. The main streets were straight and wide, crossing regularly in a slightly off-kilter grid, and the buildings varied widely: some were simple—square and concrete, and a little ugly—while others looked like pieces of art, daring structures with jutting curves and colorful patterns. He paced back and forth beneath a strange tower whose height seemed to shift depending on which angle he saw it from.
Asa kept walking, gazing up at the strange buildings until his neck began to cramp. As it grew dark, he began to notice lights coming from the narrow alleys. They were not dead ends, as he had assumed. He hesitated a moment, then quickly slipped between a square concrete block of one building and another that appeared to be an enormous fountain, water running continuously down its walls and into an invisible gutter.