Room 1786

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Peter Zendahl was excited. He had been Selected. God, it felt good. It felt really good.

It had been 15 months since his last Selection. He could live with that. Everybody else did. But, as everyone knew, one needed these occasional rewards, these intermittent and meaningful bouquets of recognition. Not token gestures. Real gestures. Gestures with the guts left intact, with the challenge unspoiled.

It was the thing that he really liked about his teaching job—this chance to be Selected.

Every morning for four years, 300 days a year—since buying his condo in Pickering in 2052—he boarded the Transit, and with appropriate via-transfers arrived at the William Davis Metro Toronto Educational Centre. The hawk-like concrete structure guarded the Toronto waterfront. Rising in the elevator to the 17th floor, he strode out into the Communications Division: row upon row of metal desks, computer consoles, videotape facilities, surrounded by studio rooms, vast tape-filled wall units, illumined by soft recessed lighting which brightened the industrial tan broadloom.

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