Eoin Colfer - The Supernaturalist

Satellite City, Northern Hemisphere. Soon

SATELLITE CITY: THE CITY Of the FUTURE, proclaimed the billboards. A metropolis completely controlled by the Myishi 9 Satellite hovering overhead like a floating man-of-war. An entire city custom constructed for the third millennium. Everything the body wanted, and nothing the soul needed. Three hundred square miles of gray steel and automobiles.

Satellite City. A supercity of twenty-five million souls, each one with a story more heartbreaking than the last. If its happy-ever-afters you want, stay away from the city of the future.

Take Cosmo Hill, for example, a nice-enough boy who had never done anything wrong in his short existence. Unfortunately, this was not enough to guarantee him a happy life, because Cosmo Hill did not have a sponsor. And in Satellite City, if you didnt have a sponsor and they couldnt trace your natural parents through public-record DNA files, then you were sent to an orphanage until you reached adulthood. And by that time you were either dead, or the orphanage had fabricated a criminal record for you so you could be sold to one of the private labor prisons.

Fourteen years before we take up the thread of this story, baby Cosmo was discovered swaddled in an insulated Cheery Pizza envelope on Cosmonaut Hill in Moscowtown. The state police swabbed him for DNA, searched for a match in the Satellite mainframe, and came up blank. Nothing unusual about thatorphans turn up every day in the city. So the newly christened Cosmo Hill was dipped in a vaccine vat and sent on a tube to the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. Freight class.

Satellite City was not part of any welfare state, so its institutions had to raise funds in any way they could. Clarissa Fraynes speciality was product testing. Whenever a new modified food or untested pharmaceutical product was being developed, the orphanage volunteered its no-sponsor charges as guinea pigs. It made perfect financial sense. The orphans got fed and cleaned, and the Frayne Institute got paid for the privilege.

Cosmo received his schooling from education software, his teeth were whiter than white, and his hair was lustrous and flake-free; but his insides felt like they were being scoured with a radioactive wire brush. Eventually, Cosmo realized that the orphanage was slowly killing him. It was time to get out.

There were only three ways out of Clarissa Frayne: adoption, death, or escape. There was zero chance that hed actually be adoptednot at his age. Truculent teenagers were not very popular with the childless middle classes. For years, he had cherished the dream that someone would want him; now it was time to face facts. Death was much easier to achieve. All he had to do was keep on doing what he was told, and his body would give up in a matter of years. The average life expectancy of an institutionalized orphan was fifteen years. Cosmo was fourteen. That left him with less than twelve months before the statistics said his time was up. Twelve months to plan for the final option. There was only one way he would get out of Clarissa Frayne alive: escape.

At the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, every day was basically the same. Toil by day, fitful sleep by night. There were no days off, no juvenile rights. Every day was a work day. The marshals worked the orphans so hard that by eight P.M. most of the boys were asleep standing up, dreaming of their beds.

Cosmo Hill was the exception. He spent every moment of his waking life watching for that one chance. That split second when his freedom would beckon to him from outside an unlocked door or an unguarded fence. He must be ready to seize that moment and run with it.

It wasnt likely that his chance would come on this particular day. And even if it did, Cosmo didnt think he would have the energy to run anywhere.

The no-sponsors had spent the afternoon testing a new series of antiperspirants. Their legs had been shaved and sectioned with rings of tape. The flesh between the bands was sprayed with five varieties of antiperspirant, and then the boys were set on treadmills and told to run. Sensors attached to their legs monitored their sweat glands, determining which spray was most effective. By the end of the day, Cosmo had run ten miles, and the pores on his legs were inflamed and scalded. He was almost glad to be cuffed to a moving partner and begin the long walk back to the dormitory.

Marshal Redwood ushered the boys into the dorm. Redwood resembled a waxed gorilla, with the exception of a red cowlick, which he toyed with constantly.

Now, boys, said Redwood, unlocking one pair of cuffs at a time. Theres a game on tonight that I am very interested in seeing. As a matter of fact, I bet a few dinars on the outcome. So if you know whats good for you...

Redwood didnt have to finish his threat. The boys knew that the marshal had a hundred legal ways of making a nosponsors life miserable. And a thousand illegal ones.

Sleep well, young princes, said the marshal, grinning, keying his code into the dorm door. Tomorrow, as usual, is a busy day. Jam-packed full of fun.

The no-sponsors relaxed once Redwood had gone, and the silence of discipline was replaced by the groans and sobs of boys in pain. Cosmo touched his leg gingerly where a particularly acidic spray had actually burned the skin.

Five minutes to lights-out, said Redwoods voice over a network of speakers. Climb the ladders, boys.

Three hundred orphans turned immediately to the dozen or so steel ladders, and began climbing. Nobody wanted to be stranded on the dorm floor once the ladders were retracted. If the marshals caught a no-sponsor on the ground after lights out, a ten-mile run would seem like a Sunday stroll compared to the punishment they would dish out.

Each boy had an assigned space in the dorm, where he ate, slept, and passed whatever leisure time the no-sponsors had. These rooms were actually sections of cardboard utility pipe that had been sawed into six-foot lengths. The pipes were suspended from a network of wires almost fifty feet off the ground. Once the pipes were occupied by orphans, the entire contraption swayed like an ocean liner.

Cosmo climbed quickly, ignoring the pain in his leg muscles. His pipe was near the top. If the lights went out before he reached it, he could be stranded on the ladder. Each step brought fresh stabs of pain to his tendons, but he climbed on, pressing against the boy ahead with his head, feeling the boy behind closing in.

After a few minutes of feverish climbing, Cosmo reached his level. A narrow walkway, barely the width of his hand, serviced each pipe. Cosmo slid across carefully, gripping a rail on the underside of the walkway above him. His pipe was four columns across. Cosmo swung inside, landing on the foam-rubber mattress. Ten seconds later, the lights went out.