Chapter 4

2272

Name three literary themes found in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Lydia typed up a somewhat lazy and hurried answer on her terminal. She didn't really see the point of homework. They wouldn't hold you back unless you failed the tests, and everything that mattered was decided by the GOAT, anyway. But it made her father happy when she did well, and it wasn't hard. She'd read every textbook in the vault by now.

The screen flickered, and she worried it might shut itself off. It did that sometimes, and she had to start over. They'd used paper and pens when they were younger and learning how to write, but they'd switched to computers soon after. There wasn't much paper left now, and they rationed it conservatively. The notebook she'd used for school several years ago had already been half filled by someone in 2095. She wrote on the backs of the pages.

There came a knock on her door: tap tap-tap tap-tap. It was Amata. Lydia went to open it.

Amata was smiling when the door opened. Lydia was immediately on her guard. She smiled that way when she was going to say something she thought Lydia wouldn't like.

"Hey," Lydia said.

"Hi! Are you doing anything? I was wondering if you wanted to come down to the diner with me."

"Why?"

"Just some kids were going to start hanging out there after school. It'll be fun, come on."

Nobody in class really liked Lydia. They liked Amata even less. Lydia had given up, but Amata sure hadn't. But she still wouldn't go by herself. She needed support. "What kids?" Lydia asked warily.

"Christine and some others. She invited me." She wrung her hands lightly in front of her. "Will you come?"

Lydia grimaced inwardly. "I'm kinda doing some homework..."

"But we just got out of class! You can do it later. Come on."

Lydia looked back at her terminal, then at Amata. Christine was alright, she supposed. She sighed, and stepped out into the hall, locking the door behind her.

Amata grinned. "Great! Let's go."

When the door to the diner slid open, the first thing Lydia saw was the tunnel worms sitting at the table in the middle of the room. The group glanced up as they came in, but were too busy talking about something else to say anything. Lydia shot Amata an irritated glance. Amata sent back an apolagetic look and went to sit next to Christine, who was at the next table with a cola in front of her.

"Hi guys," Amata said cheerfully.

"Hey Amata," Christine said, with what seemed to Lydia to be a very artificial smile. But then, she usually looked like that. Susie, who sat next to her, barely looked up. "We were thinking," Christine continued, "wouldn't it be cool if we could get the atrium for a night and have a big party?"

Lydia guessed where this conversation was going. She tried to listen to the radio instead.

"Oh, yeah," Amata nodded. "But you know there's a waiting list, and I don't think..."

"Yeah, but, you know, your dad is the Overseer. Maybe if you asked him."

Amata's face fell the tiniest bit. "Oh. Yeah."

Christine tapped her chin, as though thinking. "And don't you think the under-18 curfew is really unfair? We thought you could tell him to think about changing the time to eleven instead of ten.

"Yeah," said Amata. "Sure."

There was a quiet moment, and music poured from the radio. They'd turned it up louder than it usually was. It wasn't a real radio, of course—there were no signals to pick up. But someone in the early days of the vault had set it up so that the PA broadcasts would come through the pre-war radio. Setting it to any frequency but that one would only give you static, but it had apparently been good enough for whatever homesick radio fan had set it up.

Noticing Susie sipping her Nuka-Cola, Christine took a drink of her own. She made a regretful face. "I wish they had diet sodas. It's like they're trying to make us fat. How do you stay so skinny, Lydia?"

She looked up at the sound of her name. "Oh. I don't know," she replied absently.

Susie looked over for the first time, wrinkling her nose. "She spends all her food coupons on cakes. I've seen it. That's totally not healthy." She looked down at her and Amata with distaste. It was as though, now that disdain had breached the surface, she was unable to stop it from spilling forth. "Your dad is a doctor. Doesn't he teach you not to be that gross?"

"Susie," Christine hissed, glancing at Amata. But Lydia's always-ready temper had already flared.

"Doesn't your dad teach you not to be such a snooty bitch all the time?" she said before she could think better of it.

Susie gasped and stood, shoving her seat out behind her, but whatever she'd been about to do was interrupted by a hiss of static from the radio. It buzzed for a moment, then softened into a distant, lilting voice.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and slowly turned to stare at the radio.

The song was intermixed with static and hard to make out, but it was clearly there, and it was clearly one that they had never heard before. It faded in and out eerily, but the song was beautiful and new. At first everyone was too shocked to do anything.

It was Susie who broke the silence. "What is this?" she asked quietly. Everyone exchanged nervous glances. "It's creeping me out. Someone turn it off."

"Yeah," Amata said after a moment. "This is weird."

Paul got up and went to the radio.

"No, wait!" Lydia cried, and leapt to swat his hand away from the dials, tripping over her chair in the process. She stood in front of it in case anyone else tried to touch it, but the song was ending. As it faded out, another voice began speaking energetically in its place.

"...and you're listening...galaxy...the capital wasteland today...beautiful...steel...to have...enclave says..."

What little of the voice could be made out grew more distorted until it was only a garbled jumble of sounds. The static grew louder, then suddenly disappeared, and the PA system music was back. Lydia stared, open mouthed, at the radio.

Everyone was quiet. Then Wally spoke up. "You're such a spaz, Lyd," he said under his breath.

"I am not a spaz." Lydia slowly turned to look at him. "That came from outside! There's somebody out there broadcasting that, and we just picked it up! This has probably never happened before...It probably never will again. This might be the only contact we ever have with the outside world!"

She looked around at all of them. They looked at each other.

"Whatever," Wally said with a snort. "Nerd."

All the others smiled and laughed, too, and the spell was broken. The tense air in the room disappeared. Paul and Susie sat down. Lydia looked to Amata, who shrugged.

The only other person in the room who wasn't laughing, to her surprise, was Butch. She met his eyes for a moment before he looked away and his usual sneer appeared again.

Scowling, she hit the door release and stalked out into the corridor and back to her room.