Hollow Status

By August Esen, age 13

The best part about Vanta’s shift is that you never doubt your worth. As for the worst part? I have lists.

I close my Silent Book quickly enough that I can’t read it. If I do, it’ll likely be scanned and marked as a Malphrase. Almost everything is nowadays, every little complaint and criticism about every little thing. The other day, my little brother Kas made a joke about his friend’s hair. And he lost fifteen points for it, almost getting bumped down to Yellow. It’s lucky for me I managed to get the book anyway, the one place where all my forbidden thoughts are kept. I breathe out a faint sigh, then instantly regret it when I remember the audio monitor in the room. I stare at it for a good minute, just waiting for the red flash. It doesn’t come, and I internally breathe a sigh of relief.

“Nira! Breakfast!” my mom calls from downstairs. I quickly get out of my desk chair and walk down at the stablest pace I can.

I sit down at the table and start eating the food. Not too fast, not too slow. Everything needs to be just right, or Vanta’s government will assume you have an emotional frenzy or slowdown. And who knows how many points you lose for that?

It’s not all bad, I guess. Earning points is harder, but possible, so you can up your Worth Score if you’ve been a model citizen. Losing points is easier, but at least you can appeal big losses if they were unjust. They rarely work, but on occasion it happens. We hear about it when it does, most of the time. I guess most of your Worth relies on where you were born, and what your parents are Worth. I feel terrible for the people that have made mistakes that bumped them down to Yellow, even Red. I don’t even know what the white level did to get themselves there. And the Violets are lucky, most of them made it all the way up because of their parents. But 800 points is a feat either way. Even making it to blue is incredible. At least I’m not in the lower half. Mom lost a lot of points a few months ago and dropped to Yellow. Dad’s still in green with me and Kas, but he’s closer to Yellow than we are. Kas is middle-Green, with 500 points. I’m so close to Blue, 583 points. But I’ve been as model as I can, and I haven’t gotten any points in weeks. Some people have it easy.

I hear Mom’s voice in my ear, and realize she was talking to me. “Sorry, Mom, what was that?”

“Please head up to your room and get ready for work,” she repeats in her perfectly even tone. She has to, with her limited speech as a yellow. 

“Okay, Mom.” I walk back upstairs to my bedroom and sit on the edge of my bed. I tap at the Worthband around my forearm, and it emits its usual calming mint glow. I turn it a few times and it projects my stats in the air.

CAEL, NIRA // WORTH 582 // GREEN // BEHAVIOR: NEUTRAL // SLEEP SCORE: 87 // VOCAL TONE: LEVEL // LIKEABILITY: UNCHANGED

I hold back a sigh. It’s the same as usual, no higher likeability and no higher Worth. At least it didn’t go down. I quickly change into a basic outfit, one that says to the government, “I feel confident enough in myself to wear this” while not making anyone think, “I’m too emotionally unstable to think about what I’m wearing”. No one will question me while I wear this, which is good. I reach for my speech necklace, the one that will give me Filtered Speech. It clasps around my neck easily. One more year until I don’t need to use it, until it’ll be a choice. One more year until eighteen, then I can make my own decisions. I know that if I get up to Violet, I’ll have to use Statuspeak, the polished, formal way that the high-Worth speak. Maybe Blue is enough, just enough that I don’t have to use Statuspeak, yet can still be considered a higher-Worth individual.

I pause, realizing I’m thinking too much. The brainwave monitor in my room has gone orange, signaling to me that I need to slow down before I lose points. I nod to myself, grab my bag, and head to the tram station.

I don’t dislike my job as a transport scheduler. It’s easy, predictable, and keeps me from losing points by doing my job. My coworkers are nice enough, but they’re hollow as the rest of us. I’m nowhere near an authority position, seeing as I’m only Green. But maybe one day.

I enter the tram station and walk down the all-too familiar stairwell to the underground tram lines. I look to my left at the public Worth scanner, and notice a few people using it absentmindedly. Most of them range within the Yellow to Blue zone, meaning they’re close enough to the average. I ignore them, walking forward to the scheduling room and scanning my Worthband to enter. I sit at my desk, just as usual, and make sure to keep a smile plastered on my face as I greet my coworkers. They smile back, greeting me with perpetual “Hello, Nira”s. I finally notice the empty chair in the room.

“Where’s Lyric?” I ask. “He’s supposed to be in today, isn’t he?” I take extra steps to be sure my tone doesn’t sound too concerned, and more curious, although I’m the opposite.

One of them whose name I don’t know speaks up. “Lyric… Oh, him. He dropped a few points last night, ended up dropping low enough that he can’t work here anymore.”

I frown ever so slightly. “But for that to happen, he’d have to drop to Red. Yellows can still work, and he was Green.”

The coworker shrugs. “He must have gone to Red, then. I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” I snap, instantly regretting it when I hear the beep in my ear. “I’m very sorry, I apologize for my tone.” I know instantly that it will qualify for a Malphrase, and I’ll drop points, probably even get my Vocal Tone switched to Moderately Unstable.

But my coworker doesn’t care, she only shrugs again before returning to her desk. I sit at my desk, heart racing as I futilely attempt to slow it by breathing. Finally, I can feel it slow a bit. I open the computer, watching it power on with the rotating diamond as usual. I click to open the scheduling program, breathe in and out, and shift to an absentminded state of autopilot-ness.

Work goes by quickly, normal as usual, although I can’t stop thinking about the points I must have lost when I raised my tone. As soon as I leave the little office, I walk to the public scanner to find out. I stand in the short line of three or four people, watching others scan. Nothing too unusual, which calms me. When I get to the front of the line, the tram station has been emptied, as it normally does at the end of the day. I tap my Worthband to the scanner, and look at the display in front of me. I jump in surprise when it flashes no number. Strange. But a millisecond later, it shows me 570. Not too bad, only thirteen points lost. Probably because I apologized directly after. My Vocal Tone is the same, just Level. That’s good. Just Level is good. I take my Worthband away from the scanner and watch the display go off before I leave.

Home is the hardest place to be. It has more scanners, more audio monitors, and more cameras than ever. Mostly, there’s so many because homes used to be safe. But they’re not really an issue, if you can keep your tone and stance neutral. It’s not like the feeds go straight into the government, they just get stored into an intelligent database. From there, the AI decides which ones display behavior that merits Worth adjustment. The system is normally right, but as I said, you can apply for an appeal if it’s not. It’s not a bad way to live, not that I’ve lived any other way.

I settle, perched on the side of my bed. I open my Silent Book carefully, making sure to watch the colored lights on the monitors for any change. I smile inwardly when the color stays green. The Silent Book is my favorite thing, the one place where I can write out all my forbidden thoughts in a place that’s still, for the most part, unmonitored. I’ve had it since I was about twelve, when I found it nestled deep in a tree’s roots. It’s an old-school journal, made of smooth black leather. The book itself isn’t electronic, so they can’t monitor as I write. The only way anyone would be able to read it is if the monitors notice me writing, and officials show up on our doorstep looking for it. But I’m always careful opening it, and I always turn my body so my room’s video monitor doesn’t see the book. Otherwise, the writing noises and my arm moving all seem as if I’m writing in a normal journal, an electronically monitored one.

I flip through the pages almost lovingly, scanning each line of text I’ve written and remembering what was happening at the time. There are entries from when friends lost points, early on, and I didn’t understand why. Entries from when my mom dropped to Yellow, and from more recent things, too, like when Kas lost his fifteen points after his joke. I pause, and frown to myself. A few pages have been ripped out of the book. I run my finger along the crease, where I can feel the rough edges of torn-out pages. Two pages are missing, maybe three. Odd, I don’t remember ripping any out. I quickly store the Silent Book under my bedsheet, and twist my Worthband to show my notable recent memories. I toggle it to a span of two days to a week ago, which is when the missing pages are from. I scroll, glancing at each memory for a second before dismissing it. Strange. Nothing relating to the book at all. Then I remember- I set my notable memories not to mark anything with the book in it. I go deeper into the memories until I’ve reached all my memories, and narrow the timespan until I have the closest range I can get to. I look through my memories for a few minutes before deciding I won’t find anything. I take a last glance at the ones I haven’t checked, then twist my Worthband again to close the memory projection. I frown to myself. This doesn’t seem right, not at all. I run my finger on the missing pages again, as if it will make them reappear out of thin air. It doesn’t, of course, but I suppose it was worth trying.

But then, if I clearly didn’t take these pages out, who did? It couldn’t have been my family. I know them well enough to know that if they found the book, they would have said something to me about it. Any of them would. So it must have been someone outside of the house.

I shiver. Just thinking about someone coming in and leaving everything except my Silent Book untouched creeps me out. Quickly, I take a glance at the monitor in the room to check that my shiver didn’t affect anything. It’s the same color as normal, the light minty green that represents my Worth tier. The color is therapeutic, of course. The officials wouldn’t have picked a nerve-wracking color for the Greens to see every minute of every day. Luckily, it hasn’t picked up on my unease. I’m still safe, to the furthest degree I can be.

The next day, as soon as I wake up, I hear a beep. I’ve gotten a notification from my glowing green Worthband. Typical. I sigh and open it, assuming it to be a note from my mother as she left this morning. Suddenly, my Worthband glows a bright royal blue. I jump ever so slightly. The color change only means one thing: I’ve moved up to Blue. I gasp in shock. Or, at least, I try- but the sound is muffled and my jaw is shut quicker than a shark’s as it closes on its prey. I frown slightly. What’s happening? I decide to test whatever’s going on as I start to develop a convincing theory as to what this is. 

I rush out of my room, aiming for downstairs, at the limit of my speed. Just as I had expected, my body automatically slows down and I walk at a very average, stable pace- too average, even for me. I stop and walk back to my room, this time as sluggishly as I possibly can. My body speeds up to the same average, stable pace. I plop down on my bed, fully sure I understand what’s happening now. Blues must be controlled- their Vocal Tone, speed, even word choice, probably. That’s why they rarely ever drop points, and why I automatically knew what to do, as if it was muscle memory. How do they do this? It must be embedded into the Worthbands somewhere, a tiny, unnoticeable injection or something. But where would it be? I finger my Worthband, trying to look at the underside, my mind racing like I’ve gone mad. Suddenly, my thoughts dull and my mind seems to slow down and fade into a calming but unsettling space of non-thought. I’m unable to think, as it seems, at least for the time being. I try and fail to force myself back onto my racing train of thought. I suppose this will be my life now, no longer having to actively hold myself back from showing uncontrolled emotions and mental distress, because my Worth will do it for me. But, wait a minute. How did my points rise? I was still around twenty points away from Blue when I checked, and I don’t think I did anything of note recently, and certainly not enough to gain me twenty points. I suppose it must be a malfunction in the system. I’ll have to write a notice to the officials later, about all the strange happenings lately. The Silent Book missing pages, the public scanner flashing a blank screen, Lyric disappearing- although I suppose Lyric’s disappearance wasn’t related to my case in the least. But that’ll have to wait. I glance at the time and realize I’ll be late for work, then subsequently realize I’ll be at a new work center. I’ll now be working at the High-Worth train station, instead of the nostalgic Mid-Worth one I’ve known all my life. Although, we common folk know them as the Upper Station and the Lower Station, respectively, since Low-Worth citizens like Reds and, well, Whites too, don’t have a train station and instead travel mainly on foot or by another means of sidewalk travel, like bicycle or scooter. I pause. I guess I’m not really part of the “common folk” anymore. I’m a High-Worth citizen now. Not the highest, but high. I grab my things and head out of my home in the same, controlled fashion that it seems is stuck with me now.

When I arrive at the station, there is a Blue there to greet me, no doubt a higher-Worth Blue as they carry themself with an air of forced superiority that was likely self-prescribed.

“You are Nira Cael, are you not?” the Blue inquires with a smooth yet somewhat hollow tone.

“Yes, that would be correct,” I say, mirroring their tone naturally. It must be another Blue-control thing, the tone.

“You will follow me to your post. Please keep my pace.” The Blue starts to walk away, and I follow, matching their pace in perfect, even steps. We arrive at a small, sleek booth right beside the woods at the edge of the city.

“This must be where I’m working from?” I say. I had phrased it as a question, but the Blue took it as a statement and withheld any response they may have had. They walked away briskly and professionally, and I wonder how their Worthband allows them to walk that fast. I shrug to myself and step inside of the booth. It’s nice, with a quality computer to do the scheduling. Much better than the old, cramped office I used to work in, although it feels hollow and robotic, even. It’s strange and so unnatural to me. But at least the job is familiar.

The day goes by quickly yet again. It’s fast now, not hard to do my job the way I’ve been doing it for years on end. As I start to walk out, the same Blue that greeted me stops me. 

“There has been an incident that all employees are promptly being made aware of,” they say briefly. I wait for them to elaborate, but they don’t, so I prompt them.

“What happened?” I ask.

The Blue seems to silently sigh as they explain. “One of your coworkers, a Violet, has dropped to Yellow. They are no longer working at this facility.”

“I see. Where might this Yellow’s place of residence be? I wish to extend my condolences.”

If the Blue is suspicious, they do a good job at hiding it as they write an address on a piece of paper and hand it to me. I thank them shortly and start to walk over to the house.

The house seems to have fallen from a glorious Violet mansion into a typical Yellow abode in a matter of hours. Magical, how the officials change things so fast. I rap on the door, and when no one comes to answer, realize it’s unlocked and push it open myself.

“Hello?” I call out. I hear a step in the living room and walk over to investigate. There, sitting on the couch, is a Yellow, one that was obviously a former Violet based on the way he sits.

“I’ve come to offer my condolences. I am…” I pause as he opens his mouth and starts to mumble words. I listen carefully and his diction shifts to perfect pronunciation, just as a Violet.

“Violets are at the top of society. We are one step above Blue and one step below the government.” He says, staring into space. He repeats it again, and again, the words drilling into my head.

I stand up and carefully leave, letting him repeat his phrases over and over. As I walk home, my Worthband flashes Yellow. I frown. That’s odd. I definitely will report this to the officials. It instantly goes to Green, and I sigh in relief before remembering I’m not Green anymore. It goes Blue a second later, and I look at it strangely. Suddenly, it flashes white. I gasp loudly, then realize that that will be tracked as a mood difference. But somehow, my Worth doesn’t stop me from gasping, and nothing goes off. It’s untracked. Very strange. After a few seconds of being white, it reverts to Blue.

It seems I can somewhat fly under the radar with doing things at abnormal levels of emotion. And my Worthband must be malfunctioning. It flashes a few colors again and I jump. I sigh as I walk the rest of the way home.

As I get home, I decide to break into the Vanta government database. It’s a stupid idea most times, but as I can’t be affected by mood instability, I assume it’s fine. I open my home computer- nowhere near as nice as the one at the High-Worth station, but better than nothing. I open the browser and navigate to the government website, then to the officials’ login page. I exhale, then twist my Worthband a few times. The page scrambles, then logs in for me. I breathe a sigh of relief, until I look at the database. I open the search bar, then the filters tab, and click filter by Worth. All I meant to do was to see all the Violets- but it shows me a Worth level I haven’t seen before, Observer. My name is listed in black typeface. I gasp.

My legs can’t take me faster as I run down the stairs to my mother.

“Mother- Something’s happening! There’s another Worth- Observer- what is it?” I say, gasping out the words.

She shrugs unnoticingly. My Worthband flashes. I’ve just lost 70 points. But somehow, I’m still Blue? “Mother, I just lost points. How?”

She waves her Worthband over mine and shrugs again. “Your points are the same.”

“No, they’re not!” I run back upstairs and find the browser closed and my Silent Book on my bed, open to a page I didn’t write in. But there are words there nonetheless. I grab the book and read it.

“Don’t try to climb. Just stay where they can’t see you.”

I throw the book down, caring for it no more at this moment. I run out to the street and decide to go to the government’s office. As soon as I get there, the doors eerily open, and I step inside. An official meets me at the door and leads me to a room without a word. There are a few other officials in the room, and they gesture for me to sit. I do.

“Nira Cael. We have a proposition for you,” one says, getting straight to the point.

I nod and wait for them to say more.

“We are inviting you to change jobs and work for us, at the Ministry of Image. You will run the public image of Vanta, and will keep the order of things.”

I gasp in shock. “Me? Well, I- I’ll have to think.”

They shake their head. “You need to decide now. Agree, and you’ll be at the top of society. Your Worth will be uncharted. Decline, and you’ll simply fade back into normal society. You’ll be a Green again. You’ll be average.”

I sigh. “I guess.. I guess then-” I pause, weighing my options, then I nod. “I’ll do it.”

They smile and lead me into a back room.

I close my eyes, and imagine the new future I’ve built for myself. 

My new status.