The Low-Tier Thinker

“Getting them done early, I see. Nothing breeds creativity like four hours of sleep and half an energy drink, eh?”

Tilsa, slumped at her desk, gazed out her circular window at the contrail-scarred sky, only half listening to the quip coming out of Ava’s mouth. She clasped a ball of her brown hair in one hand as another lazily circled the screen of her tablet. The keyboard spun lazily under it, dancing across the screen with relentless obedience to Tilsa’s uncertainty.

Ava, knowing that silence was nonproductive, walked over the smooth wood flooring and placed a hand on Tilsa’s shoulder. Snapping out of her trance, Tilsa instinctively covered Ava’s hand with her own and turned around to look at her.

“Ave…” Tilsa began, “The last two registered as unoriginal.”

“How many did you put in?”

“Three.”

Ava tutted and shook her head, showing off her dimples as she gently smiled and turned Tilsa’s chair until they were facing one another.

“Two unoriginal thoughts don’t mean anything. Knowing you, you’ll have ten credits more before dinner.”

“That’s not the point.” Tilsa swiveled forcefully to face the table once more. “This is the week I can’t screw up. The scholarship thesis reading is five days from now. I’ll be judged directly by the Governor of City 31, for God’s sake. Do you think the other students are bleeding their credits dry like this?”

“Nope,” Ava said, before grabbing a piece of cold toast that had been sitting in the toaster and chucking it at Tilsa. “They’re probably eating breakfast like any normal person would be at 9:00 AM.”

“9:00 AM already !?” Tilsa stood suddenly, maneuvered into her backpack, and was out the door before the toast hit the floor. Ava called after her.

“Where are you going?”

Picking up the pace, Tilsa called back.

“I’m late for a thesis interview!” Tilsa replied. “I’ll try to have an idea on the way there. Love you!”

Arriving at the train terminal with two minutes to spare, Tilsa flashed her ID to the armed guard at the turnstile, who thumbed her in. The barrel of his rifle jutted out in front of the turnstile, forcing Tilsa to hug the side of the rusty metal contraption in order to get by. As soon as she had edged past the annoying obstacle, she stood for a second, the hisses and squealing of the trains pulling into station doing little to drown out the thought that was now brewing inside her.

She whipped out her tablet, tapping madly with her fingers until she reached the submission screen. As the autonomous announcer arrived her train’s arrival over the intercom, Tilsa typed:

’Instead of wasting manpower to guard train systems, employ automated turret system after the check-in gate in order to neutralize any intrud’

Tilsa got up as the E12 train that came screeching to a halt besides them. As the group started to shuffle on board, Tilsa went to revise her idea. Neutralize was a strong word- perhaps the turret could instead act as a medium for some sort of non-lethal punishment… aha! The turret would shoot any intruder with unbearably irritating sound waves.

Tilsa started to type once more. However, the train jostled heavily as it began its departure, and a wiry man with his hands in his pockets lost his balance and came stumbling into Tilsa. The impact was brief, with the following apology sincere and abashed. Tilsa noticed the man had caused her to submit the idea prematurely.

It read:

’Instead of wasting manpower to guard train systems, employ automated turret system after the check-in gate in order to shoot any intruder’

The auto-checker went to work, the icon spinning for a few long seconds, before a message popped up on the screen.

NICELY DONE

HIGHLY ORIGINAL IDEA (54/100)

HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE

+5 CREDITS HAVE BEEN DEPOSITED

After her first interview concluded, Tilsa hailed an Instacab from her tablet and sat down on a bench outside the condo to wait. The air was beautiful and crisp. However, despite her best efforts to focus on the lovely weather, uncertainty once again bubbled into existence within her mind. She focused on the interview, on the old woman’s disdain after being told of Tilsa’s next destination, of Tilsa’s goal.

“Low-tiers can’t succeed because they are just that,” the woman had sneered, standing up with an empty wine glass. “Low-tier thinkers, with low-tier imaginations, and wholly unproductive lives. Do you know what the biggest cause for the old world’s destruction was, Tulsi? It wasn’t the bombs, no, it was the ideas. Or lack thereof. Insipid old men who figured bombing and squabbling for eternity would not reach a breaking point- feh! If you want to be nonproductive, you might as well travel back six hundred years. At least you’d fit in.”

Tilsa had nodded once more, attempting to escape through the ornate marble doorway while the woman was distracted. She was unsuccessful, and the woman had turned around to deliver a final idea:

“Tablet, dictate: A system of fans should be set up around the earth, in order to blow humid air into arid regions and provide much-needed rain.”

Sitting at the bench, Tilsa ran her hands through her hair. It was a stupid idea: cloud seeding was already being done, and the way she described it would have been wasteful and patently ineffective.

Yet the NICELY DONE had popped upon the woman’s screen nonetheless; the credits had been deposited. And the world was no better off for it.

The electric whirr of the Instacab approaching her shook her out of her daze, and she got in. The concrete bridges connecting the highways and through streets of City 31 flew above the cab as it picked up speed, the black of the asphalt contrasting the serene blue of a perfect summer day in short, sporadic bursts.

Tilsa noticed that the closer she got to her interviewee, the rougher the car was jostled, the potholes sinking deeper and deeper.

Her eyes ran up and down the buildings to her left. Somewhere in this area was the city center, where Tilsa would be interviewing a low-tier city council member. Her professor had set up the interview, stating it was unsafe to find a low-tier thinker by oneself.

Jutting out from a couple blocks away, the city council building’s white granite cornices gleamed brightly in the sunlight, a contrast from the shadowy city streets she now walked on. As she made her way towards it, however, she felt a hand gently pull her elbow back. Clutching her tablet and turning around with a start, she saw the equally startled face of a well-built, middle-aged man. His face was cracked with wrinkles and sunspots, with well-groomed stubble teasing his chin and neckline. He went to speak, but Tilsa beat him to it.

“What are you doing?” She asked, before adding “I’ll scream!”

“Sorry, sorry,” The man insisted, before raising his hands in surrender. “I just wanted to let you know, that alley you’re about to walk by isn’t safe for an out of towner all by herself.”

Tilsa narrowed her eyes. “How do you know I’m an out of towner.”

The man chuckled, before pointing to her tablet, still clutched hard in her hands.

“That’s how.” He motioned across the street. “All you guys be thinking that’s your life in that little box. Now, wherever you want to go, I’ll walk you there. Consider it my good deed for the day.”

As they walked past the city council meeting, Tilsa made a choice: she would rather spend an evening chatting with a nice man in a nice, air-conditioned café than to spend the rest of her day waiting in a stuffy queue. As the two sat down, they formally introduced themselves. The man’s name was Gerald, a father of three and a lifelong resident of the southern district.

“My ideas never go through,” he explained, fishing his cracked tablet from his jeans’ back pocket and laying it on the table. “Watch this.”

Gerald stretched his fingers out and typed clumsily on his keyboard. After a few seconds, he turned it around so Tilsa could see his idea.

‘MAKE CITY FOCUS ON FOOD PRODUCTION SO VEGETABLES AND FRUIT LESS EXPENSIVE’

“Not too shabby, right?” He shrugged and lazily hit submit. The auto-checker spun for a few moments before sounding a low buzz, relaying the message:

NOT ORIGINAL

COMMON IDEA

NONPRODUCTIVE

-5 CREDITS HAVE BEEN WITHDRAWN

Gerald flicked that message out of the way and typed another one.

‘INCREASE MINIMUM WAGE SO MORE WANT TO WORK’

BZZT. Not Original.

‘GIVE FREE TABLET INSURANCE SO PEOPLE CAN EASILY REPLACE THEM WHEN LOST OR STOLEN’

BZZT.

“Stop!” Cried Tilsa. “You don’t have to tank your credit to prove a point.” Gerald looked at her a moment, before breaking off into a fit of laughter. Grabbing his tablet, he opened his credit section, and turned it to give Tilsa a look. Tilsa’s jaw dropped.

“I’ve been in the negative since I was in middle school. Wanted to qualify for an elite high school with good credit, but I hit a losing streak.” He rubbed his temples. “I never had the mind those credit millionaires had. Couldn’t focus much on ideas when I was struggling just to get food in my belly. Moved in with my sweetheart in the middle of high school. Giving her my love, my respect… damn, that’s the only thing other than working I could put my mind to.”

He fished under the collar of his tee shirt, and came up with a heart-shaped locket gripped tenderly between two fingers. Unclasping it, he passed it to Tilsa. Inside was a picture of a vibrant young woman, smiling ear-to-ear, holding a baby.

“After that first child, hell, I knew my dreams of high-tier housing were done. Only I’m not sure I regret anything.” He drew himself up. “You know what I think, Tilsa?”

“Well, that was… it was brave, I think,” Ava said, struggling to wrap her mind around what had happened during the scholarship thesis presentation. They had been forcibly removed from the event, after an earful from the fuming Governor about respect and ‘the order of things.’

“Was it?” Tilsa asked, head in her hands as they walked down the brightly lit street, towards the train terminal. Ava smiled and took Tilsa’s hands in her own, facing her.

“Yeah. It was. What was that first bit again?”

Tilsa smiled and fished her paper from her pocket.

“I mean, I just started with what Gerald said to me…” She said shyly, before starting. “Humanity once faced the reckoning of its flaws six hundred years ago, when nuclear bombs fell over the earth and many people, full of thoughts and ideas, were annihilated all at once. Ever since then, we’ve striven forward with a system meant to encourage bold, innovative thinkers- a system meant to better our planet, our species.”

“How, then, is this system supposed to work when it won’t even give the disadvantaged the basic quality of life needed in order to think creatively, in order to become innovative. No, this system is nothing more than a distraction: a distraction from the unoriginal thoughts we need to address. The thoughts that matter, that affect the lives of those who have to face them every day. In order to truly advance ourselves, we have to first solve the most pressing matter: we must not hide, but overcome unoriginal ideas.”

Ava clapped and hugged Tilsa, pausing for a moment to lean in and give a deep kiss. Pulling back, a sudden burst of inspiration hit her, and Ava fished her tablet out. She typed out the message:

‘The City 31 Governor looks like a Walrus.’

BZZT. Unoriginal.

The street lit up with the sound of two girls laughing, before the train came once more and buried the sound with impassioned screeching.