Exchange Program

Part I. The Village

Welcome to the Village, home to a steady population of 15,000 people within the Tower walls. Everything here was perfect: the food and water was always perfectly rationed, the labor was always guaranteed, and the access to information was kept scarce to allow villagers to focus on their life’s purpose, productivity. According to the state’s calculations, there had been no starvation or workplace incidents in hundreds of years thanks to careful planning and good citizens coming together to act as one unit in service of their state. Everyone has what they need, theoretically, and not a drop more. The villagers were conditioned to be eternally grateful to — and passively resentful of — the upper-class in the soaring Towers who they were told so carefully created this system.

Each new year that the state successfully continues executing the Solution is another year that the villagers should thank the gods for their riches. After all, there was once a time when people were not guaranteed a place to rest and eat between shifts. People must have lived like barbarians back then, either balancing dozens of priorities and bills in their heads or losing their homes and jobs. The unemployment rate was and has always been 0%.

Carlo was a simple man who appreciated the simple life that had been built for him. He never had to face any difficult decisions or questions, no existential crises thanks to the state laying out his path for him. He worked as a mechanic in the food processing factories while his wife, Rhea, worked in the labeling line. They had changing, opposite shifts so Carlo would get home from work just in time to kiss his wife good morning before she left for her shift — and vice versa. This was far from unusual, as every pairing was assigned differing shifts to “even out the distribution of labor” and, more importantly, to keep the villagers in a constant state of disorientation and disconnection. Limiting rest and leisure time to only what is strictly necessary to support life was an excellent way to keep the wheels of society turning.

Rhea was expecting their first of the mandatory two-child quota and had been awarded a temporary allowance of daily breaks as a result. Carlo saved part of his daily meal ration, a dry nutrient biscuit, to give to his wife each day. No matter how much she protested, he insisted on sneaking it into her pocket and she stopped arguing after seeing her thinning hair and protruding bones in the mirror. When the hut’s roof started leaking and they were denied maintenance resources for the year, Carlo was forced to instead save his biscuits to barter with the neighbor, who was placed in construction. The neighbor arrived at night to patch their roof with a piece of factory scrap metal so that the Enforcement wouldn’t cite Carlo for an unauthorized repair or the neighbor for theft of state property.

Despite all this, Carlo and Rhea were happy, or at least as happy as they knew they could be. However, they heard bits and pieces making the rounds in the Village’s gossip circles about the lottery, which gave one villager each year the opportunity to experience the life of the Tower elite. The lottery hinted to them that there was a chance to be even happier. All able-bodied villagers currently assigned to a job were eligible for selection, which the state proudly marketed as a chance for renewal and self-development. Carlo desperately needed the chance to catch up on years of sleep debt, and he was intrigued by this opportunity to become an even better worker — not that he had any choice in the matter, as participation was mandatory.

They had heard that the people in the Towers lived in fully glass-walled homes that touched the sky and they ate a different meal every single day. Carlo dreamed of walking into one of the fancy stores and trading polished silver coins for an entire bar of chocolate. Rhea’s favorite thing in the world was enjoying the small, foil-wrapped chocolate square that the state distributed on people’s birthdays. He never had much of a taste for sweet foods and always gave Rhea his square on his birthday. Rhea dreamed of walking into the shop and buying her husband an entire block of the sharp cheese he liked so much from the weekly rations so he could finally enjoy a treat on his birthday.

Together, they dreamed of an opulent life in the Towers, looking down at the little people zipping around in the sand like ants. They dreamed of looking out at the other side and seeing green pastures filled with plump livestock and blooming flowers. The Solution that built this society promised that in just a couple more generations of committed compliance, the Village and the Towers would unite and take their talents back outside to a hopefully renewed land. The Ancient War gave them this utopia, razing cities around the world to the ground to eventually result in nothing but the glass-walled dust bowl they called home.

One day, a hand tapped Carlo on the shoulder while he was fixing machinery at the factory. He was handed a piece of paper with a gold star on it by an Enforcer with a grin almost as wide as his generous waistline. The Enforcer slowly explained that his identification number had been selected in the lottery, and he would be sent to the Towers very shortly. He had just a few minutes to run home and hug his wife, his head swirling with excitement. He managed to give Rhea a quick peck on the lips, but he was so distracted by the news that it didn’t hit him until then that he might actually miss his child’s birth. His heart sank, but it stayed afloat with the thought of bringing back legendary stories to tell his son and unimaginable wealth to support his new family.

Part II. The Towers

The Towers themselves are essentially a massive, circular building rising above and around the Village, similar to what one may have called a skyscraper — or in this case, more similar to an entire block of them — hundreds of years ago. A total of 5,000 people lived and worked their whole lives in the Towers, able to see only through the glass walls comprising the exterior of the circular Towers at the barren fields below. The bleak sight contrasted with the convenience and artificial sense of purpose was enough to keep them in line.

The Enforcement occupied only the bottom and top floors of the Towers, and those on the top floor were fortunate enough to be able to look down and out at the whole system in action. Those on the bottom floor worked throughout the system to keep it secure and compliant with the Solution, those on the top floor only ever deigned the Lower Floors with their presence for occasional entertainment.

Theo and his wife lived on the twenty-fifth floor of the fifty-story structure. They both worked in the Resource Operations service line, Theo in the finance department and Hera in the packaging design department. Like most people in the Towers, they each worked the standard shift, commuting separately to their respective departments on different floors and returning home just in time to share a quiet meal and go to sleep in their adjacent sleeper pods. They rose and fell asleep together under the dim light of the tinted exterior windows, feeling every day vaguely foggy and discontent from the lack of vitamin D and natural light.

Theo would occasionally stop by the store on his way home from work to pick up the chocolate biscuits his wife loved. He hadn’t done so lately. He didn’t mean to stop, it just slipped his mind for a week and then a week turned to months. Hera had started taking the long way home from work to go to the store and get ingredients for dinner, with a pack of chocolate biscuits snuck in below the loaf of bread. She missed the gesture from Theo, but she was too busy wrapping her mind around the deep pain that would sit heavily in her chest most days to even think about the biscuits. It was a crushing and cold weight inside her, dense nothingness and a feeling of being totally directionless in this pre-set life. She longed for warmth and change, and that small change to her routine felt like an act of rebellion.

The people in the Tower had heard stories about the ruling class that lived in the village. They heard that the inner walls of the Towers were not just tinted safety glass but actually one-way mirrors that the state used to keep tabs on all of the residents from their comfortable mansions below. They had food just handed to them, and everyone was guaranteed a home. The stories lacked detail on the quality of the food and the home, however. Enforcement did nothing to quell the rumors because they kept the worker bees buzzing along under fluorescent lights, foolishly dreaming about a future where they had everything they needed. The villagers dreamed about the same fantasy.

Like the villagers, the people in the Towers also had an annual lottery to look forward to during the daily grind. Their eligibility was automatic upon passing the yearly physical exam that confirmed their capacity to contribute to the success of the Towers. Their consent was implied and their participation, if selected, was mandatory. The winner got to experience life in the Village, which the people in the Towers gossipped about in hushed whispers.

One person told Theo that the Village got its name from the villas that its residents lounged around in all day. Another person told Hera that the Village had gilded roads and gold-trimmed residents who ate as many exotic fruits as they desired. Hera wanted to win so she could feel the sunshine on her face and the grass beneath her toes. Theo wanted to win just so he could feel something after a mind-numbing lifetime as a good drone for the state. He didn’t care if he had adventure, or riches, he just wanted a day where he had no tasks in his inbox or predetermined itinerary to follow.

One dull day, Theo was hunched over the stack of papers on his desk with a limp sandwich in one hand and his red pen in the other. He didn’t know what came over him, but he suddenly felt the urge to introduce a little chaos. He just wanted to do something, anything, to break the chain and release the restless energy that was rising within him. He dug the tip of his pen into his notepad, pushing harder onto the page as his uneasiness grew until the pen was stabbing through layers of paper. Theo threw the pen down and caught his breath.

His electronic inbox beeped and startled him. His heart dropped in dread at the next pending request which would be just as boring as the last, then bounced back up when he saw the subject line: “Congratulations.” The message had the same word on a gold banner followed by a line announcing his selection as the lucky winner who beat out the rest of the Towers for a coveted role in the Exchange Program.

The beige room seemed to melt away all around him. All he saw was himself walking on the fabled golden road and drinking from the flowing fountains of wine that he had heard stories about. Then he remembered that he wouldn’t be alone and snapped back to reality. Rage was building inside him from the thought of the upper-class in the Village that he had been raised from birth to resent. Theo spent the rest of his workday fantasizing about climbing to the top of the tallest villa he could find and hurling golden coins at the elite class below.

Theo didn’t even bother staying past the end of his shift like he did every day. He had wanted to get noticed for the promotion he was up for in five years that came with a more comfortable office chair to support even longer hours in the office. Now, none of that seemed to matter. He printed out the message with the golden banner and ran home to show his wife. He burst through the door to their flat and made a beeline for Hera, who was in the kitchen unpacking groceries.

Hera had noticed that Theo was feeling extra low lately and had brought back extra food from the shop to help cheer him up. Before he could say anything, she proudly presented him with the extra-large bag of spiced potato crisps that used to make him smile. She kissed him and told him that she had carefully planned out all of these larger portions so neither of them would have to stop by the store for another month.

Theo grinned for a moment before his face fell. He pulled the crumpled print-out from his pocket, handed it to his wife, and replied with a tremble in his voice that he didn’t think she would need the extra-large crisps after all. Her brow furrowed in confusion and then shot up in excitement for her husband once she read the page. She wrapped him in her arms and cried, but couldn’t tell if it was out of joy for him or out of sadness that she wasn’t going to be the one to feel the warm sunshine on her face.

Neither one of them had read the electronic message too closely. The gold banner had an asterisk leading to fine print at the bottom of the printed page that warned that the Exchange would begin at the end of the shift. They finally realized what was happening when the Enforcement came barging through the door to collect Theo. Hera gave her husband a quick but passionate kiss as he was whisked away to an unknown land.

Theo had snuck his pen in his pocket before he was taken away. He didn’t give it much thought, clearly, since he would’ve brought something more useful or sentimental if he had more time to think. His base instinct subconsciously told him that he would need something to write down his thoughts. Writing things down always helped him sort out his thoughts, and he figured he was going to have a lot of confusing ones racing through his head very soon.

Part III. The Exchange

The time had come after a day in the Subject Stabilization capsules, which were intentionally kept painted all-white and completely bare to neutralize subjects’ thoughts before the Exchange. The men had been brought into the Corridor, a series of passageways and lifts that only the Enforcement could access, and led to a thick metal gate. Though largely ill-prepared, both men had more than enough time to sit with their thoughts in the brief time between the announcements and the arrivals. They both thought in detail about what the gold would feel like in their hands and their pockets, each expecting the other to be dripping in luxury. It was hard to tell who was more surprised when the gate rose.

Theo took in the sight of Carlo. Carlo wore denim pants stained with grease and covered in years of patchwork. His hands were covered in calluses, not gold rings. When Theo met his gaze, he flashed a smile that reached all the way to the corners of his eyes. Carlo was amused at the clothes his Tower counterpart wore and wondered if perhaps the upper-class had sent out this poor man on laundry day. Theo wore a clean but crumpled linen shirt and beige slacks with a red stain seeping out from his left pocket. He hadn’t even noticed the stain until he saw Carlo staring at it. Hopefully the Enforcers would think it was just an old stain and wouldn’t find his hidden treasure.

Theo realized then that he hadn’t read much information or asked any questions about the details of the Exchange. He turned to the Enforcer by his side and asked him when he would get to come home. The Enforcer kept his eyes forward and simply replied that he was not at liberty to discuss the details of the Exchange Program. Carlo’s eyes welled up with tears. He hadn’t given any thought to how long he would be up there in the Towers. His wife was only around a few weeks away from giving birth, he thought. He hoped that he would return in time.

An alarm announced the order given from nearly 150 meters up. The Enforcers on each side pushed their respective Exchange assignments past the thick red line painted at the edge of the Towers and the gate slammed closed.

Carlo’s bare feet stepped onto the cool steel floor. Theo’s scuffed loafers tumbled onto the sand. The men were brought to their new workstations, each adjacent to a small room with a cot, the essence of a bathroom, and a food storage unit. They didn’t know it, but they would be in the same service line that their counterparts had previously been assigned to. This was established in the Solution to ensure an equal balance of labor throughout the system.

In a separate quadrant of the Towers, Hera was visited by an Enforcer while she was sketching a new label. Rhea was approached by another one at her point in the assembly line. They were both told to resume their daily lives while their husbands spent their time on the other side. They were not to speak about the Exchange Program, and they would be reunited with their husbands soon enough once Enforcers came to collect them for the return. No congratulations, no condolences.

Months passed with no news. Rhea had her child, a son with his father’s goofy smile, while her husband was in the Towers fixing a paper jam in his department. He was the only person in the entire service line who could so much as identify a wrench. Carlo, like the rest of the villagers thanks to the Solution, lacked a strong comprehension of time beyond the next 24 hours. He knew it had been a while since he had left home, but couldn’t have answered if it had been weeks, months, or even years.

One day, an Enforcer appeared by Carlo’s side. He told him very matter-of-factly that he was now a father. The happy bubble of ignorance he occupied was broken. Despite all his anguish, Carlo was doing significantly better than Theo.

Unlike Carlo, Theo had a good grasp on the concept of time that drove him to insanity with each passing day. He felt like he had been banished to and sentenced to die in this dust bowl. Every day was exactly the same here: wake up, prepare for work, work, go home to recharge for work, and repeat. There were no days off, no more simple pleasures to take solace in like occasionally sleeping in or even having a warm, non-beige meal. He missed Hera terribly and had no way of so much as sending her a message. He wished he could trip over her shoes at the door or watch one of her silly picture shows. He wished he could fast forward to the day he was allowed to go back to his life.

This was not the luxurious adventure he had signed up for — not that he had ever signed up for this. He cursed himself for never even questioning the stories that turned the Village into an impossible fantasy of a world draped in the finest silks and jewels. He longed for the relative luxury that living in the Towers afforded him, even if it was utterly and mind-numbingly predictable.

He had held onto his red pen, the cheap one with the broken cap, because it gave him something to hold onto in the absence of hope. He was glad he had kept it hidden when they came to take his Tower clothes on the first day. Something about the dark nothingness in the Enforcer’s eyes told him that he was meant to be quiet about the other world.

The loudspeaker in the makeshift home started blaring just minutes after Theo got back to his unit after his shift. It roared that due to an unforeseen illness, he must report to his station in just an hour. His jaw clenched and his fist trembled. He raised his hand to take out his frustrations on the wall but realized it was made of some sort of hard concrete made from the same coarse sand that lay beneath him at all times here. He lowered his fist and laughed. He could not escape the sandy Village even in this supposed refuge between shifts.

In the Towers, Carlo was running through his list of tasks like the good worker bee he had become. The Enforcer had dropped the news and quickly left about an hour ago. The air was cool here, just like he had dreamed. He felt a pang of melancholy that he couldn’t explain. It was for his own good and by design that he did not hold onto thoughts or memories long enough to let them hurt him.

He was collecting the mail that had accumulated for sorting and delivered a stack of golden envelopes to the Resource Director’s office. The light was off but the door was cracked open, so he stepped inside only to find an empty room. He set the envelopes down in the incoming task tray and was turning to walk back out when the speaker buzzed on.

“This is an announcement for all in the Management service line. Thank you for your dedication to ensuring the success of the Exchange Program. We will be making this year’s placements permanent due to your excellent selections and training. As a reward, we will toast to your efforts at tonight’s dinner party.”

Carlo dropped his mailbag as his knees shook. He understood enough of the message. The word “permanent” echoed in his mind. He felt too numb to move. He heard the dying gasp of an old printer in the next room and shuffled over, seemingly on autopilot. His bubble had completely shattered.

He entered the room and found a printer that had been abandoned in frustration and had now erupted in flames — one last act of defiance. He looked at the bright red lever with a painted flame symbol on it in the corner of the room, then looked at the fire that began to consume the room around him. What was the point anymore? He could never go back. He let the flames take the table, the surrounding walls, and finally the floor beneath him. He was born from the dust and would die in ashes.

That evening, Hera heard her neighbors discussing a fire that had broken out at her husband’s department. Thankfully, it had been reported that there had been no casualties. She was glad her husband was away on Exchange so he was safe and sound. She longed for his arrival and his warm embrace. She missed her husband and the days when he would bring her those silly chocolate biscuits she loved. Soon, she told herself.