On the morning of the Winnowing the smog-smudged sun made everything look pillowy, the way it had when Mom, Valley and I had finished the last of the wine before the Inevitability. I was glad no one was out to see Mom following behind me, holding the pair of heels Valley had worn three years earlier and that she had painted with white pearl nail polish and taped gauze into so that they would fit my smaller feet. I was in the pink chiffon gown that Valley had donned and that Mom had refashioned enough to look new. Had anyone seen, they would have compared me to what Valley had looked like on this day three years earlier.
“Watch, watch, watch!” Mom said every time I approached one of the oily puddles that dappled the path out to the main road, until I finally screamed that I wasn't blind and that she couldn't see what was in front of me better than I could. The only sounds I heard after that were the rustle my gown made when I stepped into a dip in the pathway or the occasional cough, which Mom still had despite having both Valley and me teach her the lessons our coach gave us on how to suppress the hacking that was common among anyone living in Echo Ridge. In the years since Valley's victory Mom had convinced herself that she would be the first woman ever to have two daughters Winnowed.
By the time we reached the main road I was tired and when I touched my chin to my chest I could see the half-moons of sweat that had formed under my arms. As we waited at the shuttle stop Mom had me hold my arms up so she could fan out the sweat stains with the folder that contained our bus passes and my letter of acceptance. When she was done she unlaced my sneakers and slid my feet into the white pumps, tracing her finger between my feet and the inner rim of the shoes. She looked up at me with a question in her face. “Yes, they're fine,” I answered.
Someone had spray painted an “S” on the side of the road to mark the shuttle stop and Mom stood on its lower curve and told me to stand back so I didn't get dirty. Few cars were out at this hour, but Mom still worried that I would be splattered with mud by some imaginary traffic. She could never distinguish between exaggeration and love.
The shuttle came toward us. It was one of the buses that transported kids to schools before the Inevitability. It had been painted white and “Sorrell” was written above the windshield. It hit a pothole and the heads of the girls and mothers, my competitors, bobbed up and down as if they were offering a collective “yes.”
Mom got on first and showed the driver our passes. The shuttle was almost full with girls who wore satin and chiffon and taffeta gowns and had mothers who sat thermometer-straight and didn't smile sitting next to them. Mom looked over the rows of seats and when her eyes fell on one girl who wore silk gloves worry froze her face. “It's not going to matter,” I whispered to her. We sat in the back and didn't talk again.
The shuttle rolled into the circular driveway that dipped down in front of the east wing of the Sorrell Complex. Above the doors hung a banner that read “Work Crushes the Obstacle, Excellence Makes You One.” It was a Sorrellism, one that if you had a private coach you heard often.
The doors opened and two girls who were around twelve stepped out to greet us. They were pre-Winnowing volunteers. “I'm here to help,” read their tags that hung around their necks. They lead us into the complex, where we joined the girls who had been dropped off by another shuttle. We were 100 altogether, from which 14 would be chosen to go to Sorrell University. An education from Sorrell U meant a job in finance, or insurance or, if you were particularly creative, content. Why it was 14 and not 10 or 22 or some other number was a matter of speculation. Some said it was because Khensa Sorrell, the founder of the Winnowing (among other things), had faced a life-threatening illness at 14 and had committed herself not just to beating it, but to a lifetime of excellence then. Of course, others preferred a mystical explanation, claiming that in numerology the number “14” signified prosperity and good fortune.
The girls formed us into four lines and we waited to step on the slate that would activate the holoscreen. When it was my turn the holoscreen adjusted to my height and I tapped the list of names, chose “H” and scrolled to “Howling, Hillstaria.” I checked in and got my chute receipt. Mom looked at me, and I mouthed “B34.” She smiled that kind of self-satisfied grin she got when one of her superstitions had been confirmed. Valley had been “B33” and this augured well. She had framed Valley's receipt and put it up on our bedroom wall, and now she could be sure it had paid off.
Mom and I got on the moving walkway and glided toward the chutes “B34,” Mom said, grabbing my arm, as soon as the side of the chute's gaping mouth came into view. The walkway stopped and the lights in the chute went on, illuminating our way down its throat that twisted a few times before ending at the arena.
The noise surprised me. I had expected a solemn environment, every voice crushed by the weight of the event before us, but all around was chatter, the clicking of holocams, and even occasional giggling. The media circled the arena with their holocams and sound captures. “Tell us what it's like….er…Havern...” a reporter said as he glanced at the name tag of the girl in B33. “What's it like to finally be here?” The girl smiled and her mother said “Incredible. Incredible after all this hard work to finally be here.” “Let's get a holo of this. It's a beautiful dress, Havern. Did you pick it out yourself or did Mom have a hand in it?” He winked at Havern's mother. “Her choice. All her choice,” the mother said.
When he stopped at my chute, Mom said, “We're doing a little last minute prep here. When she wins you get the first interview!” “Deal,” the reporter answered and moved a few chutes down. “No need to bother with that now. Valley didn't talk to the media until after she won,” Mom said.
Our eyes locked.
“Until she was Winnowed I meant.”
We weren't supposed to talk about the Winnowing as an ordinary competition. It was a quest for excellence, in which the best would emerge through a process of reduction. The least excellent would be shaved away. I thought of the cartoon Samine had furtively let me glimpse of the gigantic girl with “Most Excellent” stamped on her forehead and all around her feet shavings in the shape of girls. A caricature of a beaming Khensa floated above her.
The judges approached the dais and the room stilled for a second before breaking into a frantic, desperate applause. When the last one took her seat a holo of Khensa's head appeared above the judges, like a collective dream. The lights dimmed so her outline and every ridge and wrinkle on her face became sharper. Khensa had aged and she made no effort to hide it. Her face was puffy and when she smiled her skin rippled out around her mouth. As always, she looked exhausted. Many considered that one of her most endearing qualities.
The arena quieted again as Khensa's head panned around the crescent of chutes, pausing slightly at each girl as if taking one final measure of our worthiness.
“I'd say our girls this year are a distinguished bunch,” she finally declared.
Mom squeezed my arm and whispered “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Girls and Moms,” Khensa began, “I want to welcome you to the 51st Winnowing. If you are a contestant or the mother of one you know you don't make it here without a lot of work, without a significant investment in yourself and to excellence. The Inevitability left of us with much to rebuild, but I say to you, it was a gift. Yes, a gift. Now, I know what you thinking. It's as if I can hear your very thoughts when I say this and you know what? They all sound the same. Here's what you're quietly saying to yourselves: How can millions of people losing their homes, their savings, even—yes—their very lives be a gift? I tell you it was a gift because it awakened something in us. It brought us from sloth and slumber to drive and—most of all—to a commitment to be our best selves, not because it felt good, but because we had learned that our lives depend on us pursuing—no, demanding—excellence. We've seen what happens when we train our gaze outward instead of at our own hearts. The girls here today have proven themselves to be among the most valuable, the most accomplished, the most striving, the most serious our country has to offer. You have glimpsed the infinite potential of yourself and chased it with an appetite that few can muster. You are the future. The future in which what is inevitable is excellence, abundance, growth; not want and collapse. So I welcome you, but more so I commend you. I commend you for putting the work into yourselves, for wringing the best self out of your being. It's a struggle, sometimes a vicious one, to not settle for ordinary, to demand excellence. You have valiantly embarked on that struggle. Today, we see who has waged it the best.”
The audience cheered and a chant of My best self; My best self began. I heard Mom's voice from behind me. She was shouting and clapping her hands. I lacked the courage to remain silent, so I struck one of those barely perceptible deals with myself and silently mouthed the words “My best self.”
Khensa held up her hands with her palms facing out toward us. “Okay, okay…this really is an exceptional crowd!” The chanting died down, except for the girl in chute 18. She continued to shriek “My best self.” We stayed silent for a few seconds, hoping that she had simply not realized that the mantra had faded. My best self; My best self, she continued. Her mother took her by the arm and pulled her deeper into the chute, but that only made her scream louder. MY BEST SELF; MY. BEST SELF. she howled into the heavy quiet that had blanketed the arena. An elbow shot out from the semi-darkness of the inner chute; then a leg kicked. In an instant her feet were on the floor, the soles facing outward. MY BEST SELF; MY BEST SELF. The feet began to disappear into the chute and the chanting grew fainter. From above, a door slowly dropped down over the opening of her chute, like an eyelid giving way to sleep, and a soft click followed.
“Oh, dear. The competition hasn't even begun and one girl has already Winnowed herself,” Khensa said.
The audience cheered again and, again, Khesa allowed it for a minute and then held up her hands to signal us to be quiet.
Now let me introduce our judges—who have a tough job ahead of them, indeed,” Khensa said.
“Razzela Taprisson,” Khensa announced. Razzela stood up. Her hair was white and she wore a red suit with a metallic sheen.
“I almost skipped this introduction, because is there anyone who doesn't know who Razzela is? Well, if you're out there, this is for you.” She paused for a beat and looked up with stony eyes. “You can explain where you've been later.” The room froze. Then Khensa smiled, and the pall was ruffled with laughter. “Razzela was Winnowed in 37 AI. She graduated from the University in two years…yes, two…and before she was even finished she had launched Skillucate. Can every Echo Ridge girl or mother of a girl who got a skillucation because of it give her a big hand?
“Our next judge is less of a familiar face, but his influence is felt every time you need a break from the stresses and strains of daily life and slip into an AlterCation. Ladies…and ladies…I give you Davin Etterson, the CEO of Future Walk, Inc., the makers of AlterCation and other proven stress relief technologies.”
“Let's move on to Brantha Sedley.”
“Brantha is President of the entire Sorrell University system. I always say that without her the whole outfit would still be one school and a lot of dreams. Since Brantha came on board Sorrell has become the leader in higher education, and where all the brightest go when it's time to move beyond Skillucate.” Brantha held up her hand and said, “Hi girls and moms.”
“Now, let me introduce Eleanor Blass. As Editor-in-Chief for the Constant Content Network Eleanor follows in a proud family tradition. Her grandmother was the renowned Hedda Bell-Grant, who embedded with the some of the first troops responsible for restructuring after the Inevitability. At CCN, Eleanor is responsible for nearly all of the programming that crosses our holodesks daily. Recently, she won the prestigious Halper Prize for her coverage of the Sledgeville Pacification.” Eleanor nodded.
“And our fifth judge is a new face. Rened Craffing is Chief Architect and CEO of King Homes, which makes securitized, yet luxurious homes for the most discerning—and deserving—consumers.” Rened stood, smiled, and then took a presumptuous bow. He had mistaken the supplication in our cheering for admiration.
“Okay Moms. It's time for you to step away and let us begin,” Khensa said.
“If Valley can do it, you can do it,” Mom whispered.
After the chatter of well wishes, the chute lights went on and the mothers retreated to the lobby.
The black glass doors were silently lowered in front of the chutes. We would not be judged numerically, but in a random order generated by holodesk. It was the second randomization of the day. Our initial chute placements were chosen blindly. This would weed out any remaining possibility of advantage. No girl would unfairly have the burden of having a longer anxiety-producing wait than any other. If she were first or last it would all be a matter of luck, not of favoritism. What would the elimination of the girl in chute 18? It was one less competitor so the competition would be easier for us than it had been in every previous year. The Winnowing was already beginning to be tainted with unfairness, and if it our chances weren't equal how could any victory be taken seriously? It would be unfair, illegitimate, a reason to forever doubt the status that would be bestowed upon the Winnowed.
My chute was so dark I had to make noise to reassure myself I hadn't fallen into an abyss or suffered some kind of brain shut-down. I shook the skirt of my gown to hear the hissing sound that the chiffon emitted and stamped my heels on the floor. Despite my training, I had already begun to panic. In the last month, Coach Cavellette had had me stand in an unlit closet to prepare for the waiting that got to so many girls and undermined their chances at success no matter how well they scored on the H-TAPs or how much coaching they had.
I took a series of deep breaths and imagined the dark air swirling through me, extinguishing the fear. “Think of your body as just a set of springs, only muscles and tissue in various degrees of contraction. You control the tension. Make yourself loose.” Coach Cavellette had said.
I lay on my back and took more deep breaths.
The chute door suddenly flew up so fast that I didn't have time to stand.
“Sorry to disturb your nap,” Khensa said. The holo of her head magnified a few times so that I could see the deep tranches under eyes. It shimmered against the dimness of the arena.
“Should we come back later?” Razzela asked.
“I was mentally preparing, not napping,” I answered.
“Kinda late, doncha think?” Davin asked.
“It was a medit—” I started to explain, but Khensa held up her hand for me to stop.
At that the judges scribbled something on the cards in front of them.
“Let's start with your H-TAP scores. Overall they were good, but you seem to have some trouble—er—actually quite a bit of trouble with computational organizing. Why?” asked Rened.
“I do fine when I'm given a project that requires it. My ability is contextual. I mean in this area…in this one area.”
The first holoknife dropped. Coach Cavellette had warned me about this. The judges would create distractions, throw us curves. They could come in the form of grating sounds or chute-specific earthquakes or visual challenges. A rain of knives made of light, with one real knife mixed in that the contestant had to dodge wasn't uncommon and Coach and I had worked up a strategy to combat it.
The holoknives began to drop furiously, shards of light that illuminated my chute with a merciless glare.
I closed my eyes and backed into a wall of my chute. I remembered Coach saying Lithe beats the scythe; slim saves the limb, and I pressed my body against the wall of my chute so that I was the wispiest target I could be for the real knife.
Lithe beats the scythe; slim saves the limb.
“Excuse me, but did you say ‘context specific,'” Razzela asked.
I opened my eyes a sliver and shielded them against the blazing light with my hand.
Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. You're going to feel like a specimen under a microscope—one that disgusts its lookers, Coach had said. Stay strong and unapologetic.
“That's right. When I did my SimCorp training and had to create my hiring rotation I had no problem with computational organizing,” I answered.
Another deluge of holoknives fell around me. When they landed on the floor they looked like dead fish in the seconds before they disappeared.
“That may be all very well, but a Winnowed girl doesn't only perform when she in the right circumstances; she's at her best no matter the setting she finds herself in,” Davin said.
“I—” was all I got out before my voice was choked by pain. The knife stuck in the reinforced satin of my pump for a second, wobbled, and then fell over. I hadn't turned out my feet out—a blunder, an idiotic oversight a girl with no coaching might have made. I squeezed my eyes shut to lock away my tears.
I kicked the knife away and a bolt of pain shot up my leg.
“Wrong context?” Khensa asked.
The judges tittered.
They paused for a moment and then Khensa began:
“As you know, creativity is critical for anyone hoping to be Winnowed. We've reviewed your creativity measures on your H-TAPs, and we see that you developed a strategy for selling a new module of Skillucate that teaches girls how to care for elderly family members. You came up with the following ideas for selling this module to Echo Ridge families, who, as you well know, are low on the conversion scale so their purchasing power is limited. 1. Start with the visceral. Show holos of their parents aged through simulation: lying across their bedroom floor (no blood, face down); searching through a garbage mound; sleeping on a dirty street with even dirtier children looking through their tattered clothes. 2. Bring in the facts. Explain that 75 percent of caregiving is conducted by the grown children of the elderly and that only 10 percent are properly trained. 3. Reveal that inadequate food, lack of hygiene, and lack of mobility have been shown to be primary drivers behind 90 percent of deaths among Echo Ridge elderly. 4. Make the connections. Tell them your mission is to end premature death of the Echo Ridge elderly and explain how they have a responsibility to play their part. 5. Introduce the credit plan.
“Well thought out, but really, not very creative. I mean anyone could have come up with it. Let's see you take another…er…stab…at it,” Razzela said.
The judges smiled.
“Let's imagine, for example, that you have to sell this module to someone who comes from a family of active octogenarians. They see no reason to spend their meager funds on training they'll never use. What do you say to them?”
For the first time since the real knife had fallen I turned my thoughts away from the pain. My mind seemed to be more fluid and an answer came to me with ease.
“My strategy in this case would be to convince them that they are living with a false sense of security that amounts to a kind of arrogance. I would convince them that they have ridden out their luck. To have even one generation of an Echo Ridge family with a competent elderly person was a fluke, a stroke of luck that—when measured against the odds—almost ensured that future generations would be enfeebled,” I answered.
“How would you go about convincing them of this bad news and why would they want to hear it?” Brantha asked.
“I would show them the stats, but I'd reverse them. I'd focus on the few families who don't need a caregiver in the home. Show them how rare it is and then explain why they need this Skillucate add-on to keep them in good shape. They had already dodged a crisis by luck, now they could dodge one by training.”
The judges looked at each other and then wrote something on the cards in front of them.
“I see here that your father died when were...” I heard the rustle of papers. “When you were only 12,” Khensa said.
“That's right,” I answered.
I could feel my confidence growing. A knife through my foot couldn't stop me. I wouldn't let it. My handicap had focused my mind and the more I impressed the judges the less pain I felt.
“Some would say that's a disadvantage, but yet here you are at the 51st Winnowing. Why?”
This was a question I could have answered in my sleep—one whose answer Coach Cavalette and I had perfected.
“I realized then how important it was to rely oneself. Although I loved my father and I was shocked when I died it was a kind of eye-opener. Almost like my own personal Inevitability. It forced me to look deep into myself and to first identify and then sharpen my strengths.”
“What strengths did you find?” Rened asked.
“Well, first I discovered that I could compartmentalize my emotions and not allow them to hijack my personal development. I also realized that I could work harder than I ever thought possible. After my father died we all needed to take on more work at home without abandoning our commitment to ourselves.”
I paused for a moment, not sure if I should mention Valley.
“I think I can speak for my sister, Valley Howling, when I say that this would-be trauma was one of the things that brought her to victory at Winnowing 48. I am here to follow in her footsteps.”
I stopped there, before I made too obvious an appeal to their affection for Valley. I had to show them that I wasn't just smart enough to exploit my sister's Winnowing, but smart enough to stop when there could still be some doubt that that's what I was doing.
The floor began heating up. I could feel the soles of my feet warming and the beginning of sweat under my arms. Then the heat started coming in scalding blasts from the walls and the ceiling, until I was in a cage of invisible fire.
“That's all for now,” Khensa said.
“Bon voyage. Looks like you're off to the tropics,” Davin said, getting a laugh from the judges.
The heat on the floor dissipated as the heat from the ceiling came down in a more concentrated shaft above me. I moved to the left and the blast followed me. I lay down on the ground hoping that the heat would stay concentrated and the now-cool of the floor would balance out the burning, but then the floor began to warm.
Sweat collected around the cinched waste of my dress. I stood up and tried to take deep breaths, but the heat burned my nose and throat. My foot started to ache again, and only a few strips of white at the heel remained on my now reddened shoe.
Then the climate turned and frigid, as cold air filled my chute. My ears began to throb. My nose ran and when I wiped it with my hand the wet streak it left nearly froze. I hugged myself tight, but the cold still transformed into pain. I ripped off the top layer of chiffon from my skirt and wrapped across my face and around my head. Then I tore off the second and third layers and wrapped it around my arms. I squatted down and squeezed my bare hands between my legs.
My back started to ache, but I stayed like that until the back door or my chute lifted and Mom appeared in a whoosh of heat.
She smiled and when I didn't smile back said, “You're not going take this personally are you? It's all part of the Winnowing, and I have the distinct feeling that I'm going to be looking at an empty house soon.” She put her arm around me and pulled me close to her. I rested my cheek on her shoulder and she tilted her head down so it lay on mine.
Mom needed to help me walk, so I leaned into her and we made our way up the chute and back into the lobby.
The shuttle was only a one-way ride, so Mom, me and the 99 other girls and their mothers made our way back to the main road. I wasn't the only one limping. A few girls were covered in powder, one had part of her hair singed off, and at least 10 had bursts of paint on their gowns.
As we left we saw the girl from Chute 18. She lay asleep on the concrete bib in front of the entrance. Her mother frantically checked her watch and paced in a small square around her. I could feel Mom's body straightening, her head lifting and her shoulder rising so that my head was forced up. She held this position until we were out of their view.