Here we go, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Samirah sat in front of the glass coffee table heaped high with manila folders. These weren't the main files. They were copy files. They were condensed versions of the main files held and they were the only ones that she could check out. They were the only ones that could ever be removed from any location except under specific and direct government orders. The only other time they were ever even so much as touched, as far as Samirah knew, was when they underwent a final inspection before they were destroyed. And they were only destroyed following the removal of a prisoner by the system.

The files held enough, though, for Samirah to look through them and start to get an idea of what she was working with. John Hokes had made the selections, and he'd probably done the best job of it that anyone possibly could.

"How many did you give me?" She asked, staring at the piles.

"Two hundred, like you asked," John said. "Fifty of them are from new arrivals that haven't been transferred yet. Their papers are in, but they haven't been moved. Give them—two months, maybe? Tops? They'll be at Region Thirty Three."

Samirah nodded her head.

"Those are tagged?" She asked.

John nodded, knitting his fingers together.

"Yellow tabs are the ones that haven't been moved," he said. "Everybody else? It's up to date. They're on the property."

Samirah leaned forward and picked up one of the folders. She opened it and read the first few pages that were held in there by metal tabs. When there was something new to add, whoever was in charge of updating the files would take all the pages out, add a new page, and then they'd fold the tabs over again. On the inside cover were a few pages, fastened there by nothing more than a staple, that were frequently changed and updated. Those pages were the "cliff notes" version of each and every inmate.

Their whole lives—everything they knew them to be—were summed up in two pages or less for the cliff notes version. These days? You were really little more than your "pertinent information".

Samirah read through those pages before she flipped through the others. The more detailed section gave a lot more information, but it was still cold and impersonal. The files read like medical records or the findings from science experiments.

"Reported name, number, transfer record," Samirah read out loud to John, even though he'd seen the files far more often than she had. "History. This is new..."

"What?" John asked, shifting around on the couch that he was sitting on and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

John Hokes was older than Samirah. His wife, Regina, was too. They were first wavers as well. She'd known them since she'd been in the safe zone. They'd rode the whole thing out together. When they'd met, Regina and John hadn't been married. They'd married before they left the safe zone. It was about as romantic a story as anyone had these days.

The three of them had remained friends, even though Samirah's placement in the early days of reestablishing society had sent her in one direction while it had sent John and Regina in another. These days, with the population being as small as it was, at least outside of the prisons, people kept in touch a little better than maybe they once had. When Samirah had started working in her current position, she was pleased to find that John was managing Region Thirty Three. At least, if nothing else, she had the chance to work with someone she found pleasant—even if the job wasn't quite as pleasant.

He couldn't really say much, but Samirah knew that John, too, probably found certain parts of his job distasteful. But they didn't say anything because they were all grateful for everything that had been done for them. The world, after all, was in order because of the power. And it was getting better every day. The unpleasant things? They were necessary growing pains. That was all.

"This section," Samirah said, pointing to it in the folder. She forgot that he wouldn't be able to see, across the table, what her eyes could see from where she sat. He stood and leaned over the table enough to be able to take it in.

"Oh," he mumbled.

"Oh?" She repeated. "Oh what? John—what is this? Progress points? What the hell are—progress points?"

John made an uncomfortable sort of sound and took his seat again. He fidgeted a moment, folding and unfolding his hands on his leg.

"It's not as bad as it seems," he said.

"You're skirting the issue," Samirah said.

He shook his head at her.

"It just speeds up the process, Sammi," John said.

"What process?" Samirah asked.

In her gut, she knew the answer. She knew it before she even asked. Scanning her eyes over the bulleted points that were made there told her exactly what she needed to know. She'd been dealing with government documents for years now. She'd seen how things were handled. She knew how they were written. She understood the shorthand that got used so that things that might otherwise be unspeakable appeared as something absolutely insignificant.

But even if she knew it? She wanted to hear John say it. She wanted him to confirm for her what she already believed to be true.

John kept shaking his head at her. He wasn't negating a thing. The action was something of an involuntary twitch that accompanied whatever was going on inside his mind.

"If they start from the bottom every time, Sammi? It takes forever. Sometimes? With the retaming? All it really takes is a quick jolt. They just need a quick reminder of why they're there—what they're there for. Why they're..." He broke off and got up from the couch. Samirah watched him as he walked around his living room like he'd never seen it before. His eyes scanned the paintings on his wall and they scanned across his furniture. He had a large bar that was full of various kinds of alcohol in decorative glass bottles. He took a small glass and selected a liquid to fix himself a drink. While he was doing so, and in the nature of being a good host, he turned around and waved the glass at Samirah to ask her, silently, if she'd like a beverage. She nodded at him and he held up a bottle to ask if that's what she wanted. She didn't know what was in it, but she didn't care either, so she nodded. He poured her a drink too and brought the glass to her. He stood, behind the couch she was seated on, and sipped at the liquid in his own glass before he ever decided to speak again.

"It saves time, Sammi," John said. "It saves us time and it saves them time. It's just—collecting information so that each new officer doesn't have to go through and—find it again."

Samirah tasted the burning liquid in the glass. She still didn't know what it was. Before the turn she'd never been much of a drinker. She'd had some beer. She'd liked the fruit flavored wine coolers that her friends had bought because they made them feel sophisticated. She'd drank cheap wine from the grocery store that might as well have been simply labelled "wine". But she'd never really been a drinker with a sophisticated palette. She still wasn't. She drank, these days, either because it was socially acceptable or because it helped to numb things when the feelings dared to try to come back to the surface after she'd buried them down. It didn't matter what she was drinking—just as long as it got the job done.

"How'd you get the information, John?" Samirah asked.

"Comes with the prisoners," John said. He shook his head at her. "That's not just a Region Thirty Three thing. That's everywhere now. It's standard. We get it with their file."

Samirah swallowed.

"But you collect it too," Samirah said, her words coming out between question and statement. She wanted him to deny it, but she knew that he wouldn't.

"Not personally," he said. "Not—never personally. Not since I was promoted."

Samirah closed her eyes. She closed them to shut it out entirely. She closed them because she didn't want to think less of John. She wanted to think of him as the man that she knew him to be. She wanted to think of him as the man that had been a real father figure to her in a time that she'd been terrified because there was no one left for her. She wanted to think of him as a man who offered hugs and words of encouragement and promises that everything would be OK, even if everyone knew it wouldn't be, because she couldn't think of him as the man in the small rooms that she'd toured when she'd gotten her most current position. She couldn't think of John Hokes as that man. Even if she knew he was only that man in the name of duty.

"It's torture," Samirah said quietly.

"The progress points cut down on that," John said. He drank more from his glass. "They do. They significantly cut down on it. There's no—going back through it all. And if anything needs to be added? It's updated. It cuts down on it even less. Things are really changing, Sammi. People spend less time than ever in retaming. The progress points help with that."

"It's still torture," Samirah asserted. "It's just—going right to the place where it hurts the most, John."

She could see it on his face. He knew that she was right.

"It's standard," John said blankly.

It's standard. It's government mandated. The one true power has decided that it's the best way to go and that means that it is the only way to go. There's no more reason to discuss it. It's better not to discuss it. Just table it, Samirah. Nobody knows if the walls have ears.

He didn't have to say it, Samirah could almost hear what his eyes were trying to say to her. It didn't matter anyway. He didn't have to like it, but it was part of his job. It was part of the process. It would be done, whether or not he liked it, and speaking out against it would just land them both in a place that they didn't want to be.

Samirah looked back at the file and took a moment to get control of her breathing. She focused on it, counting out the amount of time that she spent on the exhale and the inhale of each one. It was a quick and easy way to steady her feelings and she'd learned it early on from the physician that had treated her when she'd first been brought out of the camp.

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.

Samirah closed the folder and moved it back to the pile on the table. She'd have to go through and she'd have to start making decisions. She knew that. That's what she was here for. She'd tour the various facilities, spend a little time with John and Regina, and she'd make the moves to put everything into place and begin the project.

"Do you have the supplementary information I asked for?" Regina asked. "In the email?"

John hummed and walked back around to the couch he'd been sitting on earlier.

"No," he said. "You said you needed it, but you didn't say who you needed it for. Is it just for the—how many are we looking at?"

"Current space is for eighty," Samirah said. "But—give it time and there's room for more. But the supplemental information? I was expecting it to make a decision on all of them but—since it isn't here? I'll need it on at least the first—one hundred and fifty I choose?"

"When can you have me a list?" John asked.

Samirah groaned to herself.

"If I'm not rude by taking the private time?" She said, indicating that she'd be isolating herself during the visit—something John was already aware of even if she didn't say it. He shook his head at her and hummed in the negative.

"Tomorrow," Samirah said. "The next day."

"I'll make some calls tonight," John said. "As soon as you give me the list? I'll have a team already ready to go."

Samirah nodded and quietly thanked him before she drank the burning liquid again. It was for sipping, she was sure of that, but she was almost overtaken with the desire to drink it down in large gulps like she did the wine that arrived to her house in large glass jugs as a gift—a job perk of sorts.

"Eighty, huh? I thought it would be more than that," John mused out loud.

Samirah hummed.

"There's room for more," Samirah said. "But eighty to start."

"Room to grow," John said. "Always room to grow."

Samirah hummed and John got up and took her glass from her hand. He immediately carried it back to the bar to start refilling it.

"I know that you're probably not in the mood," he said. "But—some good news might help."

"Good news would be greatly appreciated," Samirah said, laughing to herself with some amusement.

"We heard about the adoption," John said.

Samirah smiled to herself. John and Regina had wanted children desperately. Regina wasn't healthy enough, though, to carry them to term—or at least that's what they feared, Samirah wasn't sure of the details. They'd been on the list to adopt for some time, but if it was a slow process before, it was an even slower process now. Even Samirah, herself, had been on the list for over a year in the hope that some years down the line—when she was actually ready to start thinking of such a thing and assuming she never found the time to actually date- she might actually get her chance.

"Congratulations are in order?" Samirah asked.

John smiled.

"Don't say anything," he said. "I want Regina to surprise you. She hasn't had anyone to tell. But—it looks like we're finally getting our chance."

Maybe there were good things, after all, to come from the government. They had, as they were so often reminded, so much to be grateful for. So very, very much.