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Citizen #WS-2552150 awoke to the blat of the dormitory morning alarm. As he bolted alert and upright, the top of his hair brushed against the upper surface of his cell. That was new, and also exciting. He must have had a growth spurt during the night, which meant he was that much closer to being able to spend his life performing purely physical labor and never again having to struggle through intelligence exercises he had no chance of succeeding at. While he would be the first to admit that he wasn't the fastest processor in the server bank, #WS-2552150 had high hopes of growing up to be one of the biggest, strongest citizens on the planet. Of course, he also really hoped he'd be transferred to a dormitory with taller cells before he got any bigger and lost the ability to sit up straight on his pallet.
Because he was in such excellent physical condition, #WS-2552150 had been assigned to one of the cells on the top row of the dormitory wall. Besides being a point of personal pride, that also meant he could get away with taking a minute or two longer than he strictly should to get up and climb out onto the ladder without having to worry about creating a hold-up for someone above him. As always, he used that time to indulge in some seated hamstring stretches.
Facing the cell opening and doing a bend over stretch, he caught sight of something unusual. The citizen in the cell below him hadn't mounted the ladder yet, nor was she making any move to. Instead, she sat motionlessly in the hexagonal aperture of her cell, staring at the opposite wall and dangling her legs over the edge so that they half-covered the aperture beneath her. #WS-2552150 watched her for a while, wondering what he should do, or whether he should do anything at all, before finally clearing his throat and calling out, "Hey, I'd better start heading down right about now, so do you want to go ahead of me or..?"
"Don't worry about it," the girl answered. "Just go."
"Is something wrong?" The stretch was starting to burn, so he sat up out of it and got on his hands and knees to look down over the edge. "I mean, are you confused about where you're supposed to go today or something?
The girl tilted her head back and looked up at him. She appeared to be about his age, maybe a year or two older, and had pale gray eyes and pretty yellow hair. "How would that happen?"
"I don't know, but it's happened to me! The best thing is to just go to the lavatory and do your morning hygiene anyway. Usually I've figured it out by the time I'm finished with that."
"That's not it." She looked back at the wall. "I'm just not going anywhere today."
"Really? How does that happen?"
"I woke up to a message."
"And it said you didn't have to go anywhere? Neat! I hope I get a message like that sometime."
"No, you don't. It was a notice of lifespan expiration."
"Oh." He took a moment to think that over. "Aren't you still supposed to report in for that, though?"
"Does it matter?"
"Well, it will be an inconvenience for the citizens who have to clean up after you if you don't," he pointed out.
"But does it matter?" the girl repeated.
#WS-2552150 could not figure out what she meant by that. He was used to being asked questions he didn't understand, though, so he didn't let it bother him too much. He just stayed quiet and waited for her to continue.
"I always got so angry at citizens who skipped out on reporting for termination," she went on. "It's just awful when you see someone drop dead in the middle of the street and disrupt everyone around them. I never understood how anyone could do that. Now I think I do. Because after today, absolutely nothing matters — nothing at all."
"Sorry, I'm kind of slow, but I don't really see how that's true."
"Well, you wouldn't. You'll still be alive." She looked up at him again. "Why are you still here? Don't you have other places to be?"
"I don't know. I guess once I started talking to you, it just never occurred to me to stop." He did have other places to be, of course, and now that she'd pointed that out to him, he really ought to get going. Somehow, though, leaving this girl all alone with her weird thoughts felt a lot more wrong than breaking schedule. "Besides, you're no one to talk about not going where you're supposed to."
"I guess I'm not." Her pale eyes looked straight into his, and he was suddenly struck with the impression that she was considering reaching up and touching him. She didn't move her arms at all, though, so he was probably just imagining things. "Why did you start talking to me, then? The first thing I said was 'go on ahead,' but instead you hung around."
"You were acting weird. When I'm acting weird, it usually means I'm confused and could use some help. So I wanted to see if I could help you." His neck felt strangely warm as he considered his next words, and he scratched at it absently. "Also, your hair's really nice, so that might have helped to get my attention too."
The girl's eyes widened. "My hair?"
"Yeah, it's yellow! I know this sounds weird, but I've always liked yellow more than other colors. Somehow, just looking at it makes me feel energized, but also sort of peaceful. It's such a strong feeling that when I'm working with anything color-coded, I tend to favor the yellow ones." He'd never told anyone that before. He probably shouldn't have told anyone that now. It just came out so easily when he was talking to this strange, yellow-haired girl, and he suspected he'd spill bigger secrets than that to keep the conversation going a little longer. "That's pretty bad, huh?"
"No," she said slowly, "actually, I feel the same way. Not about yellow, though. About green." His hand went reflexively to his own hair, and she quickly added, "Not blue-green like your hair — I mean, that's a nice color too, but I prefer pure green, like leaves or algae. Looking at things that color is soothing, somehow. I probably also let it affect me more than I should."
"Really? Wow!" He couldn't keep himself from grinning. "What are the chances that two citizens who sleep in adjacent cells would both have something as weird as a preferred color?"
"Maybe that means it's not weird," the girl mused. "Maybe lots of people have one and just never talk about it." She smiled back at him, just slightly, and absently swung her dangling legs back and forth. It was the most motion he'd seen out of her yet. "People just never talk. What we're doing right now should be really weird, but it feels normal, somehow. You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to run through the streets accosting citizens and asking them, 'Hey, what's your preferred color?' until I drop."
"That would be really disruptive," he pointed out.
"Yeah, that's sort of the idea."
"You want to be disruptive?" It probably shouldn't have surprised him, given she was already breaking schedule. She just seemed like such a good person that he had trouble believing she would want to cause harm for the sake of it.
"I want to be noticed." Her smile stretched tight across her teeth, as though bracing against a sob it was just barely holding back. "When you noticed me, it made me feel less afraid."
"You're afraid?" She nodded, though with her head tilted at such an odd angle, it took him a moment to recognize the gesture. "Why?"
"Have you ever thought about it before? What it would mean to stop existing?"
"Not really."
"Good. Don't start now."
"All right, I won't!" He dialed his grin up a couple hundred watts, hoping to inspire her to do the same. "I'm great at not thinking about things!"
To his gratification, she laughed. At least, he assumed the short, high sound and sharp exhalation of breath she made was a laugh. It almost sounded like a hiccup. "I wish I had that talent right now."
"Hey, I have an idea!" he suddenly declared. It had popped into his head without warning, and he was so excited about it that he felt compelled to blurt it out instantly. "Let's go sneak into the biofuel plant!"
"What?" The girl's eyes and mouth both went wide and round. "Why would we do that?"
"To be surrounded by all the algae tanks! Looking at green things is soothing for you, right? So let's go watch the green algae grow and keep talking just like this until your lifespan expires."
"Oh." For a moment, she smiled at him — a stronger, brighter smile than he'd seen on her or anyone else before. Then the smile crumpled and she burst into tears, turning her head down and away from him and burying her face in her hands.
"What's wrong?" he asked, alarmed.
"That just sounds so nice I can hardly stand it!" she sobbed. "You're so nice — too nice."
"That's not something to cry about! Come on, let's do it!"
"We can't. You'd get in trouble."
"I'm already going to be in trouble for breaking schedule," he pointed out.
"I know, and it's all my fault!" She wrapped her arms around her waist and doubled over, as though something inside of her were threatening to burst through her stomach.
"Hey, take it easy! I'm sure it will all work out."
"No! That's what I thought! I don't want anything bad to happen to you!"
"Nothing bad is going to happen." He supposed he didn't know that for sure, but he wanted her to stop crying, so it seemed like the right thing to say. "And — hey! Even if something bad did happen, as long as it happens after today, then it doesn't matter, right? Because you said nothing after today matters."
"I..." She went silent for a long minute and just sat taking deep breaths — shuddering ones at first, but they got steadier as time passed — before wiping her eyes and tilting her face back up toward him. "I did say that. It made perfect sense at the time: you can't care about anything after you're dead. Only... right now, just in this one moment, I think I care about you enough to last for eternity. So it does matter what happens to you. It matters a lot."
#WS-2552150 had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to say to that. "I care about you too," he settled on eventually. It sounded a little awkward, but at least it was true.
"Hey," she said, rubbing the corners of her eyes, "what's your citizen ID?"
He told her, then asked, "Why do you need it?"
"I'm going to report in for termination now," she said, getting up and climbing onto the ladder even as she spoke. "When I'm debriefed, I'll tell them that you saw me breaking schedule and convinced me to go. This way, you might not get in as much trouble as you would have for being late to wherever it is you're supposed to go this morning."
"Oh." That was probably the best possible ending to this mess he'd managed to get himself into, but somehow, it felt less than satisfying. "Thanks for that."
The girl moved a few rungs down the ladder, stopped, then switched directions and climbed up to his level. Tentatively and without a word, she reached a hand out toward him. Without even thinking about it, he reached back and pressed his palm against hers.
"What's your citizen ID?" he asked.
"Why do you need it?"
"So that I'll know who you were when I think of you."
"How about you think of me as 'the girl with yellow hair'?" she suggested, smiling softly. "That way, when you remember me, you'll feel energetic and peaceful."
"All right, I'll do that!" he said.
The girl with yellow hair pulled her hand back to the ladder. "Good bye, Citizen #WS-2552150. I'm glad I met you." She began to descend to floor level.
"Good bye," he called down after her. "I'm glad I met you too."
When she was far enough down the ladder, he followed after her. They left the dormitory in opposite directions.
—
For the next months, every morning when he woke up, and every evening when he returned to the dormitory, #WS-2552150 saw the empty cell below his and remembered the girl with yellow hair. He didn't feel peaceful or energetic at all when he thought of her. He felt like his heart was sitting stone-heavy at the bottom of his chest.
Eventually he had another growth spurt and was reassigned to an adults' dormitory. After that, he didn't think of the girl with yellow hair very often — but every time he did, he wished he could have another chance to talk to someone the way he'd gotten to talk to her.