The System: 2

--3--

The Choosing. The Selection. The Recruiting.

Call it what you'd like, but it all means the same thing: the day they pick you, out of thousands of others they've been watching, to be a part of The System.

It's hard to explain my Choosing. Mostly because I don't remember it - few people often do. The main thing that has been evident in my brain, since I started The System seven years ago,

is that I was scared

and I was running.

---

"Jax, stop being a sniz-snoppler and get the bell over here."

First thing you must know about Reil: he is incapable of swearing. I cannot explain why the seventeen-year-old hates to curse, but I know that to mutter such an ungodly word in front of him would be suicide.

"Dude, can't you figure out the binary code by yourself?" I asked, maneuvering my thumb over the game controller in attempt to keep my avatar away from the black gusts of smoke threatening to envelope me.

"Um, if I could, I wouldn't be asking you for help," Reil pointed out sardonically.

I sighed, stepping up from my manly-maroon beanbag chair after pausing the game. "I figured it out in a matter of seconds."

Reil scoffed. "Sorry we can't all be geniuses like you, Pal."

I laughed and leaned over his computer, which was placed on his perfectly symmetrical glass desk. To see what he'd do, I nudged one of the pencils lying vertically on the glass. Reil immediately placed it in it's previous place.

"You know I can't help it," Reil said, as if reading my mind under the scrutiny of my stare. Then he laughed, brushing his finger over the tattoo on his wrist. It was his Project Number: 200506527.

I couldn't help but stare at the one on my wrist.

"So the code," I looked at the screen.

01101001 01100100 01101001 01101111 01110100

"Forty numbers." I counted. "Eight numbers per letter. Therefore there are..."

I waited for Reil to finish the sentence. He did not.

"... Five letters," I finished simply. Obviously.

For most people, binary code didn't come easy - heck, most people I knew hadn't even heard of the code - but there was a simplicity, a black and white, in it that made me understand it so well.

It was like I could look at the sequence, and know immediately what it said, even if there happened to be thousands of numbers.

"So you calculate the numbers," I said, pointing at the ones in the first eight-number line. "One, eight, thirty-two, and sixty-four."

Reil glanced meaninglessly at the screen. "I don't get it."

"The numbers equal 105," I informed him. "Which is the letter...?"

Crickets.

"I." We were both silent. "Reil, it says 'idiot.'"

More crickets, like a silent version of their own mocking song.

And then Reil laughed - how he took care of most of his problems.

"Which is what I feel like right now," he commented.

I laughed. "I think that's Mr. Potter's version of a joke."

---

Mr. Potter was the teacher of our Coding class. He liked to refer to himself as The God of the Codes. Reil, being the godly son of a gun that he was, didn't always look fondly on that nickname.

It was hard to explain why we had to take coding classes. I mean, the entire System was in our brains after all - allowing us access to all the information in the world. In a sense, we were computers, so shouldn't the binary code be infused in us already?

After all, that was the code of computers everywhere. It was the reason we could connect to The System.

"It doesn't matter so much that you can connect," Mr. Potter raged about in class one day. "So what? You've got computers in your brains, you lucky bastards!" Reil flinched beside me. "So what? So what?!"

He paced the front of the classroom, a hammer-type object clenched in his fingers. I sat in the long desk with Reil to the left of me, and another boy in my Sector, to my right, named Jam.

Jam, as in jelly. Jam, who spoke in a hushed voice, as if everything he said was a secret. Jam, as in the boy who answered with a lot of "yes'm" and "no'm".

"The binary code is not about the connection," Mr. Potter continued, slamming the hammer periodically against the palm of his hand. "It's about reading that connection, and the information inside."

He walked over to Jam, pointing the hammer at his face. "You there! What do you think about reading?"

Jam was quiet, surprise inked on his face.

"You take too long!" Mr. Potter exclaimed, and pointed the hammer at my face instead. It was so close that if I wanted to look at it dead on, I'd have to cross my eyes. "What do you think about reading, young Jax?"

Forcing myself not to rebuttal with 'there's nothing young about me, old man,' I asked, "As in books?"

"No, as in lips!" He drawled sarcastically. "Yes as in books!"

"Well I think it's a waste of time, sir," I answered.

Mr. Potter smiled, and turned back to Jam. "Now, am I correct to assume you've collected your thoughts enough to answer my question?" He didn't give Jam time to answer. "Do you like reading?"

Jam blinked twice - actually more of a nervous tick than anything.

"Yes'm."