Area 52

My Grandpa Jen, who was born in 2050, is a very bitter old man.

"Back when I was your age," he says, looking up at me from his bed, in the room we share. "They were more worried about finding a cure for cancer than just weeding people out."

Cancer's some ancient disease Grandpa always talks about. We studied it for a while in History class. They found cure cure for it back in the 2030's - along with Parkinson's disease, and some others that we're learning about. Grandpa's always ranting about society today, but I think he's just a bitter hundred-and-fifty year old man.

Things were different in the twenty-first century, he says. But this is the twenty-third - those were old times, and when he goes on one of his little rants, I tend to tune him out.

"If you were sick, they tried to cure you. You lived with everyone else - they didn't just send you here, this 'Area Fifty-Two' place. And you could have kids."

"But if they didn't do this, then there would be so much more people getting sick. And it would never stop."

"But we wouldn't be locked up in here - a whole family living in one bedroom! Look at you, Nick! You're a perfectly normal kid - your pancreas is just a little out of whack - and you're stuck here, living in this tiny apartment with twelve other people. Do you think that's fair?"

I have some rare disease called diabetes - it's almost completely extinct, but a few people still get it. Me being one of them. After spending so much money and funding on finding cures for Cancer and everything else, the government decided to just not allow anyone that wasn't perfectly healthy to have kids. Then they sent us all off here, to monitor us, and to keep the sick people away from the healthy. 'Area 52', they call it, though I don't understand the name, or the significance of the number fifty-two. My Grandpa, though, is only seeing the bad things in this. There's millions of us in a small area - of course we're going to have to be sharing living spaces. There's no more room to build new ones.

"I don't like it, Gramps, but there's just not enough space. We can't help that."

"There's space in the rest of the country, Nick! The only reason there's not is because they've shoved us all in here. You don't deserve this! To grow up in here!" He holds out his palm and pounds his fist on it.

I sigh. "But, Grandpa, this way, in a few hundred years, there won't be any more diseases. Putting us here and not letting us have kids, it'll make all the viruses just die out. Like Cancer."

"They cured Cancer."

"But no one gets it anymore, and not just because they cured it. Because it's extinct." Sometimes Grandpa just doesn't get it. I watch him shake his head.

"And after this year you're going to have to go to work..."

Grandpa is here because he had some odd kind of muscle disease, and he was bound to a wheelchair for a while. He's cured with the invention of artificial muscles and tissue that they invented a hundred or so years ago, but because he's had the disease, he's still stuck here. Has been since my mom was a kid. Once you come here, you can't leave. Plus, he has to take care of me.

It's not bad here, really. We get to live here free. There's free medical care for those who need it, and they only kill you if you try to escape, or rebel, or if you're too sick. As long as you stay in line, it's all good.

There's usually two or three families living in one house - since if one person is sent here here, their whole family usually comes with them. We, as kids, go to school, and we do almost everything that normal people do. After tenth grade, though, we're forced to quit school and do manual labor, with the government keeping our paychecks. That's the only way we get to live here free. Those who are too sick to work are killed. It's a decent system. By isolating us and not allowing us to have children, just like with Cancer and the plague and the twenty-second century flu, everything will die out.

They make it so we can never leave, too - around the perimeter of the Area is an expanse of wilderness that's thirty miles wide, populated by nothing else other than wild tigers. Hungry, wild tigers. If you make it past the security, you'll either starve to death or be mauled. Which is good at keeping pepple in line, but still, there's few dozen people that get killed every year trying to get out of here. I don't know why they don't just learn.

I live with only Gramps. "Me working is necessary, Grandpa. So we don't have to pay to live here."

He shakes his head, giving me a kind of sad look as he stands up off the bed. "They've brainwashed you," he says, before he walks away.

I scrunch my face as I watch him leave. I'm not brainwashed. I'm just logical.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There's never enough food here, since they have to ration it. It's a decent amount, enough to keep you healthy, but you're always just a little bit hungry, and it keeps everyone on edge. At school, especially, they're especially stingy. I pass through the line, placing my tray on top of the counter. The lunch lady plops two rolls on my plate, a milk carton, and a glob of mashed potatoes.

"Have you met the new kid?" Alexander asks as we sit down at a table. There's not enough room, so I have to squeeze between two other kids, and he sits across from me. This school is way too small. But so is everything else. I poke tentatively at the white mountain with my plastic fork, frowning in disapproval. I don't think I'll be touching it. It might bite me. The rolls, though, they look trustworthy. I take a bite of one. It's dry, but decent. "New kid?" I ask after I swallow, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.

"Yeah. He's in my A.T. class."

"Really?"

"Yeah - oh, there he is!"

I look across the room to where my friend points. There's a boy, sitting, squished, at a table, stuck inbetween the wall and a jock. his head is tilted down, and he's holding something. Black, long hair falls in his face. Cute, is the first thing I think. "What's his name?"

"Joseph."

I push the unappetizing food away and walk over there. I squeeze into the little space next to the wall, plopping down in front of him and giving him my friendliest smile. I know he's scared. I can sense it. Angry, too. "Hey."

He looks up. "Hey."

"You're new here?"

He nods.

"New to the school, or new to the Area?"

"The Area," Joe says, so scornfully that I'm shocked. I shrug it off, though, and I don't ask why he's here - that would be extremely rude. "Oh. well, I'm Nick, and that's-" I look over my shoulder to see that Alexander hasn't followed me over here. I look back at him and smile. "Well, I'm Nick. Short for Nicholas." I smile. "You're Joseph?"

"Joe," he says, placing the thing he's holding on the table. I look down at the item. My eyes double in size. It's a novel! One of those things people used to read, before you could just pop a chip into your PADD. "Woah! Can I see that?"

"Sure."

I pick it up, almost afraid that it will crumble in my hands if I don't handle it delicately. It's a bunch of paper with words on it. Lots and lots and lots of paper! I flip through a few pages. Seeing one of these - a real one - is fascinating. Paper is rarely used anymore - not for personal use, at least.

"Where did you get this?"

He shrugs, as if it's nothing. "My family has lots of them."

"Do you know how much this is worth?? Are you actually reading it?"

"Yeah, and yeah."

"Jeez..." I slide it back to him. "I can't imagine using one of those. It's so... primitive." Joe shrugs.

"So, what class do you have next?."

"Interplanetary Associations."

"Me too!"

"Sweet."

"Yeah," I smile, as the bell rings to signal the end of lunch. "I'll take you there."

I.A. (Interplanetary Associations) is a bit more bearable when I have Joe with me. Most of the work is done on the DigiDesk, watching videos and listening through the headphones and writing on the screen with the stylus. The teacher's mainly there to supervise and ask questions, but she doesn't pay much attention, so we can whisper to each other, and it makes the painfully boring class - which could be very interesting - that much better. After that, we have twenty-first century history, which I always find interesting. We talk about Cancer - the old disease that Grandpa's always talking about.

"Back in the twenty-hundreds," the teacher says, "Millions of people were diagnosed. There were many different types, and it claimed millions of lives and millions of dollars."

I think she likes saying the word 'millions'.

"...And since some types were genetic, it just kept getting passed on and on, generation through generation."

"They were allowed to have kids?" a classmate asks, and she nods.

"They lived among everyone else, too. Like there was nothing wrong. There was no Area Fifty-Two back then."

"But then..."

"Shortly after they found a cure for cancer, Jake, they did forbid the victims of it to have children. But people still did, and cancer still took millions of lives. The cure was expensive and controversial, and it wasn't perfect. Not many people could afford to get it. Then, in twenty-ninety, they kicked everyone out of an area of Texas -"

"What's Texas?"

"This used to be a state."

"So other people lived here?"

She looks a bit stressed. My classmates can be very dense. "Yes, Demetrie. They built the world's biggest and best hospital in the world here, and around it they built little houses and shops and such - a community, so people could live here. Originally, people chose to come here. But soon, anyone who ever fell ill was forced to leave their life behind and come here for treatment. Then, they'd have to live here. The government figured, if they confined everyone who was sick, and didn't let them reproduce, that it would just die out -"

"And it did!"

"And it did. Soon, then, they needed more room. They evacuated the rest of Texas entirely, tore everything down, and built more hospitals and houses. It took almost a hundred years, but we finally got where we are now."

"We still need more space," Demetrie grumbles, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

"I know. Everyone knows that."

"Why couldn't they just find cures for everything, though?"

"Well, Demetrie, this way--"

"Because, you shithead, they don't want us living amongst them."

"Jake!"

"Why couldn't they just kill us all?"

This triggers a chorus of shouting and obscene comments. But, in truth, they do kill many of us. I roll my eyes in annoyance, actually wanting to hear about this, Miss Young sighs, leaning against the wall, waiting for everyone to shut up. Finally, when they don't settle down, she throws her hands in the air and says "Okay!! Turn on your desktops and read the document in your handout file. The next person who makes a peep is sent to security."

She sits down at her desk, and the room is immediately silent.

__________

We live above what used to be a pastry shop, before the rations were issued. Now, I haven't seen a pastry in over a year. We and three other families share a four bedroom apartment, and it's Hell, every day.

As I approach, I hear a commotion coming from the top floor. Raised voices, yelling.... and I even hear the faint, muffled sound of crying. I get a heavy feeling in my chest and I spring into action, racing to the door and fighting as usual to pull it open. (It always gets stuck, and it's heavy.) I race up the stairs and up into the apartment, and follow the sounds of the shouting to the small bedroom.

One of Grandpa's friends is sitting on his bed, head in his hands. Everyone else - two couples and three adult men - turn to look at me when I enter. The room is instantly silent. I swallow, hard.

"W-where's Grandpa?"

One of the married men, a young, scruffy man named Gregory, steps forward. He doesn't make eye contact with me, and his body's tensed. "Nick," he says softly.

"Is he dead?!"

Everyone looks away, except him. I stumble backwards, my eyes watering and my nose tingling. I get a lump in my chest that I can't swallow. Grandpa's all I have. Greg steps forward and places his hand on my shoulder. "He was killed."

I knew it, but hearing the words is like a slap in the face. He still had a good twenty years left! He was only a hundred and thirty! "No!" I cry. "No, no. no! W-w-why?!"

"He was overheard criticizing the government by a guard. They shot him. He was dead before he hit the ground, Nick."

I know that, a long time ago, people could say anything they wanted about the government. They got rid of that a century ago. Grandpa would always gripe about that, too... and now he lost his life for it. How could he be so stupid?! He knows the guards kill you for that! And he knows he's all I have!"

"No," I whisper, closing my eyes tightly. When I open them again, everyone else in the room is gone, except Greg.

"I'm so sorry, Nick," he whispers, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"Leave," I whisper. And he does. I lie down on my bed, which is across the room from Grandpa's. The room smells like him. I bury my face in my pillow.