Paradigm (9781909490406) by Ceri A. Lowe Read Free Book Online Page B

towards the complex chemical equations on the slate that they had been working through.
    â€˜Well unless you do well at Academy and do everything that Professor Mendoza says, you won’t even make the Contender shortlist,’ he said firmly and they returned to the Synthetics homework that Carter had so swiftly diverted them from.
    â€˜Tell me about Richard,’ Carter would ask him each night before bed, ‘about the old world. What was the difference between football and pinball? What were national anthems? And why were animals kept in zoos?’ His questions were always factual, direct.
    â€˜Football was a dangerous game played by kicking the bladder of an animal around a field for fun,’ said his grandfather. ‘It caused riots and many, many deaths. Pinball was smaller and on a table, for money by gamblers who were greedy and not happy with their lot. Anthems were chanted to tell people who you were, and I don’t remember why there were zoos. Maybe for disease research—I don’t exactly recall what he said about those. But all of these things, Carter, they were what destroyed what it really meant to be human.’
    The sound of his grandfather’s voice lopping his tongue around strange words that no longer existed gave Carter a sense of awkward nostalgia for the things he never experienced. His grandfather seemed to talk about them fondly, almost lovingly, even though the stories were all second-hand, passed down from his own grandfather decades earlier. Like most, he despised any nostalgia for the old world.
    â€˜Seems stupid to me,’ he said. ‘It makes no sense at all.’
    â€˜It was dangerous,’ said his grandfather. ‘It sounds like a frightening place to be.’
    Carter’s last question was always the same: ‘Why was everything so complicated?’ His grandfather would shrug and head downstairs, his answer also identical.
    â€˜No one exactly knows,’ would come floating up the stairs as Carter drifted off to sleep.
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    A s he sat in the coldness of the shelter, the memory of his grandfather’s voice echoed around in the wind. He wondered if he was still alive—Professor Mendoza too. She might be able to help with his Contribution. Even now, Carter felt himself chill at the thought of his old mentor, the Censomics professor and most revered teacher in the Community. It was only those with a profound level of knowledge of Censomics who could become the Controller General—except Professor Mendoza had failed to a Synthetics graduate at the final assessment.
    â€˜You could just become a professor,’ his grandfather had said as they talked through theories of population control. ‘How about that?’ Carter laughed.
    â€˜I am not going to end up like Professor Mendoza,’ he said. ‘I am the one.’
    His grandfather smiled. ‘Whatever you choose, you should listen to the professor. She may not be Controller General but she knows more than anyone else here. She will be the one to help you.’
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    C arter waited in the shelter in the near darkness as his memories caught up with themselves. Nobody had said exactly why the Model had called him back to the Community but he couldn’t imagine that it was anything other than it was his time to contend. He would be the youngest to be considered if it was. Then there was the strange girl with the bizarre message, who had disappeared. It had to be a sign. After all, life was all about signs. That was one of the first things he had learned from the professor’s lessons.

    â€˜The signs were all there in the days before the Storms,’ the professor began in the first advanced Censomics lesson. ‘It was just that nobody paid attention to them. They had the technology to be able to control and manage their populations, resources, and could have anticipated what had happened if only they had not been preoccupied with nonsense.’
    She