"You
take tomorrow off," she saidShe raised a hand goodbye
and went down the stairs
Lina took advantage of her day off to go to the
Supply Depot to see Lizzie BiscoLizzie was quick and smartShe might have some good ideas
At the Supply Depot, crowds of shopkeepers stood
in long, disorderly lines that stretched out the doorThey pushed and jostled and snapped impatiently
at each otherLina joined them, but they seemed so
frantic that they frightened her a littleThey must be very sure now that the supplies are running out, she
thought, and they're determined to get what they can
before it's too late
When she got close to the head of the line, she
heard the same conversation
omega replica watches several times"Sorry,"
the clerk would say when a shopkeeper asked for ten
packets of sewing needles, or a dozen drinking glasses,
or twenty packages of light bulbs"There's a severe
shortage of that itemYou can have only one Or else
the clerk would say, "SorryWe're out of that entirely
"Forever?" "Forever
Lina knew that it hadn't always been this wayWhen Ember was a young city, the storerooms were
fullThey held everything the citizens could want--so
much it seemed the supplies would never run out
100
Lina's grandmother had told her that schoolchildren
were given a tour of the storerooms as part of their
educationThey took an elevator from the street level
to a long,
vintage cartier watch curving tunnel with doors on both sides and
other tunnels branching off itThe guide led the tour
down the long passages, opening one door after
another"This area," he would say, "is Canned GoodsNext we come to School SuppliesAnd around this
bend we have KitchenwareNext come Carpentry Tools At each door, the children crowded against each
other to see
"Every room had something different," Granny
told Lina"Boxes of toothpaste in one roomBottles of
cooking oilBoxes of pills--there were
twenty rooms just for vitamin pillsOne room was
stacked with hundreds of cans of fruitThere was
something called pineapple, I remember that one
especially
"What was pineapple?" asked Lina
"It was
chanel shopping bags yellow and sweet," said Granny with a
dreamy look in her eyes"I had it four times before we
ran out of it
But these tours had been discontinued long before
Lina was bornThe storerooms, people said, were no
longer a pleasure to look atTheir dusty shelves stood
mostly empty nowIt was rumored that in some rooms
nothing was left at allA child seeing the rooms where
powdered milk had been stored, or the rooms that
101
stored bandages or socks or pins or notebooks, or-- most of all--the dozens of rooms that had once held
thousands of light bulbs--would not feel, as earlier
generations of children had, that Ember was endlessly
richToday's children, if they were to tour the
replica tiffany jewelry storerooms,
would feel afraid
Thinking about all this, Lina waited in the line of
people at Lizzie's stationWhen she got to the front,
she leaned forward with her elbows on the counter and
whispered, "Lizzie, can you meet me after you're
through with work? I'll wait for you right outside the
door Lizzie nodded eagerly
At four o'clock, Lizzie came trotting out the office
doorLina said to her, "Will you come home with me
for a minute? I want to show you something
"Sure," said Lizzie, and as they walked, Lizzie
talked"My wrist is killing me from writing all day," she said"You have to write in the tiniest letters to save
paper, so I get a terrible cramp in my wrist and
omega seamaster de ville my
fingers
