The Price of Admission

The sliding glass door had been painted with the word “Welcome,” but it didn’t open for me. My heart leapt to my throat with the sudden conviction that THF had rejected my application after all. Then I noticed the palm scanner to the right of the door, and the complementary hand washing station beside it. I washed my hands, scanned my right palm, and sighed audibly at the little green light over the scanner.

“Welcome.” This time, the door slid aside. I stepped into the narrow antechamber and the door whooshed shut behind me.

My legs planted me in place as my lungs greedily gulped down the rich air. Was this the internal atmosphere of the vaunted THF Compounds? Was this what breathing was like, when Grammy Ashleigh was a little girl?

I regained my bearings. The wall five feet ahead of me featured the THF logo and a vertical garden. A little podium held a tablet about four feet off the ground, swiveled for accessibility. It angled up for me with the text, “Welcome, Clyde Sutton. When you’re ready, please proceed to the left.”

The door to the right was closed, with a sign for authorized personnel and another palm scanner.

The door to the left had been propped open. It lead to a little waiting room. I could see the edge of the check-in counter.

I moved to the left.

“Clyde Sutton?” The woman who had addressed me wore a crisp suit and a patient, welcoming expression. “Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning. Yes, I am Clyde Sutton. I can go by Clyde, or Sutton, or Sutty.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” The woman offered her hand. “I'm your case manager, Melinda Matherson. Melinda or Mel.”

Her skin felt smooth, but her handshake was firm.

She led me behind the counter and into a short corridor. The third door on the left brought us into a small but comfortable room. The wall opposite the door had a strange textured pattern, beige and golden with large dark dots.

Melinda’s armchair sat with the patterned wall to its back, with a tablet on a stand at the right side. She gestured for me to take a seat in an arm chair facing hers. She wheeled over a little cart with a pitcher of a clear liquid, mugs, and a platter of small red lumps.

“Please help yourself to water and strawberries,” she said.

I stared at the things on offer.

She sat in her chair and unlocked her tablet with a thumb print. “This isn’t some sort of test you can fail,” she said. “The number-one Core Value here at Technology for Humanity’s Future is, ‘Honor the inherent worth of every person.’ Some people wind up with the understandable but mistaken impression that case managers like me decide if people are ‘good enough’ to join us. That isn’t the case.”

Some of my tension did seep away. How could I remain on-edge in a comfortable chair, talking with a pleasant person, tempted by the sweet scent of fresh fruit, and lulled by the thrum of a deep, pleasant white noise?

I returned Melinda’s smile. “If you aren’t judging whether I’m good enough…?”

“You and I will work together to see if you living in a THF Compound would be mutually beneficial. I’ll interview you , and you’ll interview me right back.”

She poured the clear liquid into two mugs, then held one and sipped.
“Clean water,” I marveled, reaching for the other mug. “No need to boil it to kill parasites. No blue tint from added enzymes to break down petro-plastics. Just water?”

She nodded.

I sipped.

I blinked my eyes rapidly to dispel the welling moisture. I didn’t need to cry with ecstasy over the comparison between my neighborhood well and THF water.

I realized this may be my only opportunity to taste a strawberry. I resisted the primal impulse to shove the biggest one into my mouth like a child with Christmas Fructose Chews. Instead, I casually picked up a mid-sized strawberry and bit off half.

At that moment, I knew that I would either join a THF Compound, or auto-terminate.

I laughed.

Melinda grinned and tilted her head. “What’s funny?”

“When I was growing up, my dad was very cynical. You might know this already. I remember signing a release to include all my medical records, including notes from therapy sessions, in my THF application. Well, I have worked very hard—and continue to work hard—to examine which lessons from Dad were helpful, and which do more harm than good.”

Melinda gave me one of those little half-nods that encourage a person to keep talking.

I held the other half of my strawberry between my thumb and forefinger. “Jeffrey Sutton would have insisted that this is not hospitality. Fresh fruit, pure water, clean air: it’s incentive. Stepping out of all that—” I waved vaguely behind me— “To all this?” I gestured at the pitcher and platter. “It could drive a person to desperation.”

Melinda asked, “That’s what you think Jeffrey Sutton would say. What does Clyde Sutton say?”

“I think I wouldn’t get any valuable insight from obsessing over the motivations that brought me to this moment. I can only have so much impact on how you view this meeting, or the criteria THF uses for its applicants. But right now? Thanks for the strawberries.”

My next exhale released more tense energy than I had realized I’d been holding. I ate the other half of my divine snack.

Melinda asked, “Do you think you deserve admission more than other applicants?”

“Deserve? No. I think my temperament is a decent fit for the application process. Maybe that means that what I want to offer aligns with what THF wants in their Compounds.”

She beamed at me.

“What are THF’s other Core Values?” I asked.

“Honor the inherent worth of every person,” Melinda recited, “Manage our planet with accountability and respect. Embrace the pursuit of improvement.”

Behind her, the dark dots on the textured wall squirmed. Each dot moved individually, as if it had its own task or destination.

“Do you mind if I…?” I had already stood and taken a few steps towards the strange wall. That comforting hum of white noise intensified. As I drew closer, I realized that the appearance of texture had come from a pattern of tiny hexagons. The buzzing wall produced gentle heat.

Each dark dot revealed itself to be a little creature. They had six legs, clear wings, and relatively large rear ends with black and yellow stripes. Their middles and heads seemed oddly fuzzy.

“Are they wasps?” I asked.

“Bees,” Melinda answered.

I’d heard the word before. I placed my hand to the glass and felt the warmth and vibration of the bee home. “Hive,” I said aloud. “They’re making that syrup stuff?”

Melinda joined me at the window, smiling affectionately at the hive. “The golden brown cells have honey. They make it by pollinating the Compound’s crops. Every single bee plays an important role in the hive. They tend to the cells, their young, their Queen, and their dead. They search for, collect, and process everything the hive needs. Look, these ones are just beating their wings for the sake of air flow. Through all this, each bee’s needs are met—food, safety, rest.”

A smirk tugged at the side of my mouth. “We aren’t just talking about insects, are we?”

Melinda tilted her head with an expression that told me I’d understood her perfectly. “It’s my own comparison, not the official sales pitch for THF Compounds. Every compound member works to benefit themselves and everyone else, but the type of work and the amount of time they spend doing it depends on their abilities. In return, we live in paradise. There’s plenty of time to enjoy our comfortable private rooms or our enriching community spaces. We protect more of our planet’s biodiversity than any other system on Earth, and as a result, we get the best possible…. Everything. Best air quality. Best diet.”

My next question sprang out of my mouth with the reckless speed of a seagull stealing a sandwich. “What’s the catch?”

I don’t know what I expected next. Maybe denial and corporate jargon. Maybe empty words about making Earth better. It doesn’t matter. Melinda's reply shredded my half-formed expectations.

“It costs an applicant two things to become a THF Compound member. The first is reproductive autonomy. The resources a compound produces belong to THF, so the people inside must plan each family communally. Adult members can choose permanent sterilization at any time. Anyone who wants to have a baby must prevent pregnancy until the community decides together they can take on the new member.”

I shrugged. “I was caught up in the Eastern Seaboard Population Stabilization Measures, back when I was twelve.”

“I’m so sorry.” Melinda’s eyes widened with sincere sympathy.

“It’s fine,” I told her. “I grew up knowing I wouldn’t become a parent.”

“It is not fine,” she insisted. “You were too young to consent to a vasectomy.”

She was right, or course, but my feelings on the matter were nowhere near as intense as hers. “Well, I definitely prefer THF’s approach. Though I’m surprised you didn’t already know about my infertility. Don’t you have a file on me detailing every illness?”

“Fertility isn’t one of our criteria for acceptance,” Melinda explained. “‘Honor the inherent worth of every person,’ not every fertile person.”

“All right, so the price of admission is accepting an asterisk beside members’ reproductive choices, and…?”

“In order to join, applicants must give up vengeance.”

I laughed.

She remained perfectly serious.

I said, “Revenge can’t really be that big an issue. Can it? This isn’t some New Jersey mafia movie. It’s real life.”

“It is real life,” Melinda agreed. “It isn’t practicable for us to hold on to fictional ideas like, ‘People who have caused hurt deserve to be hurt.’”

I quoted Ghandi: “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

She responded with, “The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

I asked, “N. K. Jemisin?”

“Oscar Wilde,” she answered. “These aren’t just nice, breezy sayings. THF has been running compounds for almost a century. We have decades of data indicating which factors make a community inside a Compound happy and healthy, and which ones are counterproductive. It comes down to a word you used a few minutes ago: temperament.”

It dawned on me: “That’s why applicants participate in so much therapy. You—THF, I mean—they aren’t just teaching us how to cope with trauma, loneliness, despair, etc. They’re seeing if our personalities align well enough with this no-vengeance-temperament-thing.”

“You got it,” Melinda said. “Legally speaking, membership in a THF Compound counts towards prison sentences. Philosophically speaking, membership wipes a record clean. It doesn’t matter if someone used to shoplift bread or traffic tobacco. To enter, a person has to be able to let go of every motivation they ever had to cause harm, and commit to a peaceful life with everyone else in the community.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“This also means that membership provides a fresh start to any interpersonal relationships that may have caused harm in the past,” Melinda said firmly.

“So, if I’m in the same compound as the neighbor who stole my bike when I was six, I just act like I’m meeting her for the first time?”

“For example, yes,” Melinda said. “If THF extends an invitation of membership to you, it’s because we know you can handle joining a community . By accepting membership, you’re accepting that everyone else who has ever done so has set their harm-causing past behind them.”

I nodded.

She continued. “You can’t carry the hurt with you. You can’t wait for the other person to apologize, because they have already committed to doing better. Any closure you need, you have to create within yourself. Any wish you have for karma or justice to punish wrongs, you have to let go.”

I could feel the strange mass of a partially-understood concept weighing down the front of my head. I returned to my chair. I sipped the water. I ate another strawberry.

Melinda resumed her seat across from me.

I asked, “Are there murderers inside the compounds?”

“There hasn’t been a murder inside since THC adopted this admission process.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Isn’t it?’ she pressed. “Out there, resources are scarce. People behave in desperate ways, just to survive. Inside, all their needs are met. No desperation. No crime.”

“What about school shooters or rapists?” I asked. “Some people are just evil.”

“Some acts are indeed evil,” Melinda said. “While criminal record is not one of THF’s determining factors, we have noticed a correlation between two crimes and an incompatibility with Compound-beneficial temperament. Not a single sexual predator or arsonist has ever become a member.”

First, I felt a sweep of relief. Then, I realized how much sense Melinda’s words made. “Rape and arson are violent acts driven by control,” I said. “Someone who chooses to do those things wouldn’t want to let go of anything, especially not the idea that they had the right to ‘punish’ others.”

Melinda nodded. She tapped something on her tablet.

“Murderers, though?” I asked.

“You were suspended from high school three times,” Melinda said. “Twice for the use of slurs. Once for ‘racially motivated battery.’”

Shame clenched my chest. My eyes dropped to the tiled floor.

“Do you still feel the slurs and attack were justified?”

I shook my head. “Even at the time, some part of me knew it wasn’t right. But, yeah, since then I definitely learned how very wrong I was.”

Melinda sat in patient silence as I processed our conversation.

The eleven years between now and my bigoted past stretched behind me like centuries. It was if learning better and growing wiser had turned me into a different person. Well, I was still Clyde Sutton. I was just a better version of Clyde Sutton than before. “Oh.”

Melinda shifted to a more attentive position.

I said, “I wasn’t a racist little P.O.S. in a vacuum. I was a poor kid with unmet needs, and learned how to feel a tiny little bit of superiority by doing something that hurt others. I wasn’t ready to learn better until my circumstances changed.

“The application process includes extensive individual talk therapy and group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. THF provides the best possible circumstances for introspection and personal growth, to help candidates grow towards compatibility.”

“That’s right.” She tapped her tablet again. “So, let’s say you make it inside. You find yourself watering the strawberries with someone who, before coming here, definitely caused harm. Maybe the ex-fiancée who broke your heart. Maybe the retired CEO of a health insurance company. Maybe a former violent gang member. Can you become their friend?”

I squirmed.

I looked at the strawberries.

I squirmed.