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boring, sorting itself can lead to much more interesting work positions. Perhaps I could be a Restoration supervisor, like my father. When he was my age, his work activity was information sorting, too. And so was Grandfather’s, and of course there is my great-grandmother, the one who participated in one of the greatest sortings of all when she was on the Hundred Committee.
    The people who oversee the Matching also get their start in sorting, but I’m not interested in that. I like my stories and information one step removed; I don’t want to be in charge of sorting real people.
    “Make sure you’re ready,” Norah says, but both she and I know that I already am.
     
    Yellow light slants through the windows near our stations in the sorting center. I cast a shadow across the other workers’ stations as I pass by. No one looks up.
    I slip into my tiny station, which is just wide enough for a table and a chair and a sorting screen. The thin gray walls rise up on either side of me and I can’t see anyone else. We are like the microcards in the research library at Second School—each of us neatly tucked into a slot. The government has computers that can do sorts much faster than we can, of course, but we’re still important. You never know when technology might fail.
    That’s what happened to the society before ours. Everyone had technology, too much of it, and the consequences were disastrous. Now, we have the basic technology we need—ports, readers, scribes—and our information intake is much more specific. Nutrition specialists don’t need to know how to program air trains, for example, and programmers, in turn, don’t need to know how to prepare food. Such specialization keeps people from becoming overwhelmed. We don’t need to understand everything . And, as the Society reminds us, there’s a difference between knowledge and technology. Knowledge doesn’t fail us.
    I slide my scancard and the sort begins. Even though I like word association or picture or sentence sorts the best, I’m good at the number ones, too. The screen tells me what patterns I’m supposed to find and the numbers begin to scroll up on the screen, like little white soldiers on a black field waiting for me to mow them down. I touch each one and begin to sort them out, pulling them aside into different boxes. The tapping of my fingers makes a low, soft sound, almost as silent as snow falling.
    And I create a storm. The numbers fly into their spots like flakes driven by the wind.
    Halfway through, the pattern we are looking for changes. The system tracks how soon we notice the changes and how quickly we adapt our sorts. You never know when a change will happen. Two minutes later, the pattern changes again, and once more I catch it on the very first line of numbers. I don’t know how, but I always anticipate the shift in pattern before it happens.
    When I sort, there is only time to think about what I see in front of me. So there in my little gray space, I don’t think about Xander. I don’t wish for the feel of the green dress against my skin or the taste of chocolate cake on my tongue. I don’t think of my grandfather eating his last meal tomorrow night at the Final Banquet. I don’t think of snow in June or other things that cannot be, yet somehow are. I don’t picture the sun dazzling me or the moon cooling me or the maple tree in our yard turning gold, green, red. I will think of all of those things and more later. But not when I sort.
    I sort and sort and sort until there is no data left for me. Everything is clear on my screen. I am the one who makes it go blank.
     
    When I ride the air train back to Mapletree Borough, the cottonwood seeds are gone. I want to tell my mother about them, but when I get home she and my father and Bram have already left for their leisure hours. A message for me blinks on the port: We’re sorry to have missed you, Cassia , it flashes. Have a good night .
    A beep sounds in the kitchen; my meal has