Viral Nation Read Online Free PDF

date.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    The old man’s sharp blue eyes darted back to the work West had interrupted with his question.
    The short form asked for West’s vital statistics and had a statement for him to sign that notified him that his name would be run through the Company database. If it came up attached to any violent crime that would happen in the next two years, he’d be punished swiftly and justly. He filled the page out quickly, signed it, and brought it back to the officer.
    The old man made him wait several minutes before taking the page and asking, “And what date are you available to begin training?”
    West took a deep breath.
This is it.
“September seventh.” The day after his sister started classes at the Academy.
    “Okay. You’ll come for your interview on the—” The man tapped the eraser end of a pencil against his desk as he flipped through the pages of a calendar. “Third at one thirty in the afternoon, and bring your full and complete application anytime on or before the first. We will run your name through the database during your interview, do you understand?”
    “Yes, sir. Thank you.” West turned to leave and nearly plowed into Isaiah standing behind him.
    “A late start,” Isaiah said as they exited the elevator a few minutes later. “But you’re finally becoming a man, my friend.”
    After they’d made their way out of the building, they stopped at the median, in the center of four lanes of blacktop, to let a group of little kids on bicycles and their teacher pass. “What’s the training like?”
    “The hardest thing you’ve ever done,” Isaiah said. “You’ll want to die before it’s over.”
    Isaiah entered training at sixteen, directly out of primary school. West was nearly twenty and had been working a farm for three years. “I think I’ll survive.”
    “Remember that when you’re running ten miles on an empty stomach at four in the morning after two hours’ sleep.”
    “In my bare feet, through the snow?”
    Isaiah laughed.
    They made their way to the Bazaar’s entrance and West pushed the dark glass door open. Carnival music, full of organs and horns, blared loud enough to compete with the noise of thousands of gamblers. The machines whirred and clanked, and when someone won a leg of lamb or a pair of wool socks, bells and sirens went off.
    This was why he’d given up the Academy. Clover would never be able to walk through the door to the Bazaar to pick up her own rations.
    Primary school classrooms had overstimulated his sister to the point of catatonia some days. On a good day, he’d come home to find her curled in a corner of the couch, humming frantically to herself with her face buried in a book. Other days, he’d find her rocking and banging the heel of her hand into her forehead.
    The noise, the crush of people, the smells of the Bazaar would incapacitate her. He didn’t have to worry about that now. For the next four years, all of Clover’s needs would be taken care of.
    West and Isaiah passed by glassy-eyed people frantically yanking on the slot machine arms and went to stand in line at the cage to turn their extra tickets in for gambling tokens.
    “Let’s play craps,” Isaiah said.
    “It takes too long.”
    “Clover got you on a curfew?” Isaiah bumped him with his shoulder, and West pushed him away.
    He did feel lucky today. “Fine. One game. But then I’m already late.”
    Isaiah walked to the cage window when the man in front of them left with his handful of tokens. “We both know your sister could spend the rest of her life in the library and be perfectly happy.”
    “In the library, yes. Sitting outside waiting for me? Not so much.” West cashed in the six tickets he’d received the day before. Three earned, three for his day off. As a general rule, he played his tokens as he got them. He was trying to feed himself, Clover, and a large dog on what amounted to about enough to feed one person. If he won a loaf of bread or a