1st 5 Pages January Workshop - Ho

Name: Melanie Ho
Genre: Young Adult speculative
Title: The Recruits

As Lily hugged her parents goodbye, she couldn’t help but feel a little peeved: shouldn’t they be more upset about the fact that they would never see her again? She pretended to brush a strand of hair off her face, suspecting the gesture wasn’t quite smooth enough to mask its true purpose of derailing her tears. Shouldn’t one of her parents hand her a tissue? Or, better yet, a sleeve they would happily toss into the wash later if it meant the chance to comfort their daughter this one last time?

But then, in the next instant, Lily remembered her training in the virtues of empathy. According to The Corporate Application Guidebook, “A good recruit predicts the needs and perspectives of others. This skill is essential to knowing what products customers want and what advertising will appeal to them.” Lily realized it was ironic that she had forgotten this lesson, since it was precisely her high score in the empathy category that had clinched her spot as a First Corporation recruit.

Taking a deep breath, she chided herself for not considering the situation from her mom and dad’s point of view. They had always known their only daughter would be recruited into a company—and therefore leave home—at age sixteen. Lily reminded herself that her parents had invested more than they could afford to send her to a private Learning Center, instead of taking advantage of the free education she could have received from their work. Not to mention so much of their own free time spent drilling her endlessly, and foregoing outings with co-workers or easier family activities like movie nights or simulation games. How many times had they lectured her on what they had given up for their daughter? All to ensure her success in the Corporate Application Process—and, ultimately, her acceptance into First Corporation, unrivaled as the highest-ranked and most profitable company in the nation. Lily Chen was living every teenager’s dream.

Sixteen years preparing for this very moment. Parents weren’t supposed to be upset on their child’s Commencement Day.

If anything, Lily realized, her parents in particular were supposed to be ecstatic. Mino and Camsui Chen were employees of Twelfth Corporation, and it was considered the greatest honor for offspring to be placed at a higher-ranked company than their parents’. When Lily got into First Corporation, the Chens had an uncharacteristically extravagant celebration with all her favorite foods: strawberry-and-peach ice cream, bacon mashed potatoes, shrimp fried rice. Her parents even made a big to-do of having her acceptance email printed on non-digital parchment, placed in a mahogany frame that Lily’s father treated to a generous wood polishing each evening. The hands of any guests who picked up the rarity gleamed with lemon-scented oil for hours after.

Sure, Lily’s acceptance into First Corporation meant they would never see their daughter again, since the United Corporations of America (U.C.A.) Constitution stated that once you were recruited to a company, you would work there for the rest of your life—and you were forbidden from socializing with all other companies’ employees, including family members. This was arguably one of the U.C.A.’s most important rules, one of a handful of laws punishable by banishment to the Outer Planets if disobeyed.

Lily shuddered at the thought of the Outer Planets, but she knew she didn’t have anything to worry about. None of the Chens were rule-breakers. Anyway, they had known for a long time that this day would come. They’d been getting used to the idea that Lily would likely gain acceptance to a “Top Three” corporation since she was five years old, when her first Learning Center assessment reported that she had “uniquely high potential.” It was then—even back then—when she still played with dolls and thought ghosts whispered under her bed at night—that Mino started reading Lily the official U.C.A. Corporate Application Guidebook instead of bedtime stories, and downloaded titles like How to Get into a Top Corporation and Which Company Is Right for Me?—books that children didn’t usually start reading until they were at least ten—onto her pink tablet computer.

So when Lily’s dad interrupted her thoughts and said, “I’m so proud of my girl,” she knew that he meant it.

Meanwhile, her mom seemed distracted by Lily’s suitcase, a purple metallic rectangle about the size of a twin-bed pillow, with First Corporation’s logo—a star with the outline of an eagle in the center—embossed in gold on one side. The suitcase seemed out of place on their gray concrete driveway, where the Chens waited for the car that would arrive to take her away.

“I wish they allowed you to bring more than this,” her mom said absently, unlatching and latching the suitcase handle over and again as if she weren’t sure it would remain shut. Then she looked up abruptly, as if she suddenly remembered something she was supposed to do, and added, “Being at the Work Home really is wonderful, Lily.”

Lily nodded. At age sixteen, all corporate recruits moved into their company’s Work Homes, where they lived and trained for four years before receiving their permanent assignment at one of their company’s main locations. Adults often referred to the Work Home as the best years of their lives. Once, her parents hosted a reunion for a few dozen of their Work Home friends, and Lily had never seen a group of adults so jubilant, staying late into the night, drinking more wine than they probably should have, and reminiscing over the photos posted on a Twelfth Corporation intra-company website labeled “Memories from the Class of 2120.”

“You know, Lily,” her dad said, and she knew what was coming next, “the Work Home is where your mother and I met. I spotted Camsui across the room on our first day at the spirit rally where we learned Twelfth Corporation’s official hymn for the first time. Remember that, Cam? You had that blue barrette in your hair.”

Lily felt her shoulders relax just a little at the familiar image: a blue jeweled barrette pinning back her mother’s—well, a younger version of her mother—straight black bangs. Although Lily’s hair, usually in a low ponytail, fell to her waist, and Camsui’s was shoulder length, they both wore their bangs the same way: a little too long, perilously close to completely covering their deep brown eyes. Lily had heard the story so many times she could almost picture the moment as if she had been there. On a million occasions, her dad had described glimpsing his future wife across a crowded auditorium: “I barely heard the company hymn, even though it was blaring across the loudspeakers,” he always said. “I couldn’t stop looking at her.”

The tale was inevitably followed by her parents singing their silly company jingle in unison: “We are emp-loy-ees of Twelfth Corp-or-a-tion. Bring-ing comp-ooooo-ter chips, fi-ber op-tic netttttt-works, and other tech-no-log-eeeees to the world.” The words were boring, but the melody was catchy and usually accompanied by her dad bouncing around in a sporadic dance that Lily suspected wasn’t really part of Twelfth Corporation’s official repertoire.

And then, predictably, her parents launched into their standard reminiscing about their four years at the Twelfth Corporation Work Home: dances, athletic events, spring break vacations, the sheer fun of living with hundreds of other teenagers your age for four years.