The next day they deemed me well enough to stop being cargo, and to be fair, a good night’s sleep made me feel much better.

It also helped that today the weather was much better than yesterday afternoon. The clouds had faded away sometime over night leaving a beautiful clear day. It was the kind of day where the sun would be a blessing as it shone over the wilderness we found ourselves in. Not having anything to do, I found myself entranced by the wilderness. It was an idyllic scene. In the distance was a small wooded area which covered some hills. A peaceful and vast, rolling expanse of grass and bushes filled the rest of the world that I could see. Birds flew in the sky, and I saw some individual deer-like animals make their way through the grasslands.

There was also a herd of smaller animals which I couldn’t quite make out in the far distance.

Not knowing what to do, I stood off to one side of a packed region of tents with aged canvas all carefully regimented in straight lines. At the moment, each tent was being dismantled and boxes and sacks of cargo were being loaded on platforms. Unit Six-One was almost done. All they needed to do was to place the canvas they had used for the tents were on top.

Once done, they stood standing staring at their opposite number waiting for something to happen. They weren’t the first to finish, but were nearer the first than the last. None of them had eaten or drunk anything yet.

I was starving. After all, I hadn’t eaten in who knew how long. At least the rain yesterday quenched my thirst.

bored with looking over the wilderness and the increasingly ready platforms of the units of the Disposal Troops, and tempted by wonderful smells from behind, I turned around.

There, in the middle of a grassy field, on the top of a rise, was an impressive stone building hidden behind a large stone wall. Part of the wall sunk into the ground and through the gap came a group of people, dressed in crimson tunics. Between each group of two they carried a large pot of steaming food hanging on a pole.

Without caring about the stability of the pots, they dumped them on the ground and walked away. One pot tipped over, spilling its contents of thick dull-off-white porridge over the ground. Another pot leaned awkwardly on the ground, yet remained mostly upright.

As I watched, unit by unit, broke from standing by their platforms, reached under the canvas and pulled out simple wooden bowls. They then marched to the pots, dunked the bowl in, and scooped up the food. I watched as all the units went up to get food. In the end, they struggled to scrape the food out of the pots. Only a single unit didn’t go up.

Next up was the group of naked male and female. The males were all bald, whereas the females still had their hair—making it easy to spot who was who. A single female wore clothes, but they didn’t seem any better than that which the Disposal Troopers wore. The mass of figures all trudged up to the pots and did their best, as a roiling mass, to scrape food out of the pots with their hands. Some people even ate the food which had been spilt and then trampled underfoot. As I was naked and left alone, I guessed I was probably supposed to be with that lot. So I headed up that way too.

When I reached the mass of people all struggling to grab food, nudging and elbowing others out of the way, more than a few eyes viewed me with hostility. Personally, I really didn’t want to fight for mere scraps, but I was starving. Left with no real choice, I joined in with the mass, giving better than I got, and did my best to eat whatever sickly and burnt porridge I could grab from my hands.

En masse, all the naked people darted up and away from the pots. I hesitated a moment, taking that time to grab one more piece of burnt porridge from the bottom of the pot. A solid whack hit my lower back.

One of those crimson tunicked people stood there. They gazed down at me with an intense hatred, his pale face darkening to almost the same colour as his tunic. ‘You should know your place. And it isn’t in a pot unless we’re cooking you.’

I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not. It had to be a joke, but the seriousness of the tone and the hatred probably meant it wasn’t.

Slinking away under that intense hatred, I joined the milling mass of other naked people. There must’ve been around fifty of us. And all of them subtly shifted themselves away from me and made great pains to avoid meeting my gaze. Most of those in this group of naked people were in their early to mid teens. A few, like me, were about six years old. A scattering were in their early twenties. Only a single person was older than that. He was an elderly man who, though hunched over, had firm, wiry muscles. He, alone, met my gaze and gave me a toothless smile.

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None of the females seemed to hold any sense of beauty, and not just because of their dead eyes. They, like the males, were too skinny and seemingly malnourished. Their hair was matted and dull. More like bird nests than a sign of beauty.

Only the single female wearing clothes seemed to be any different. Though her blond hair was muddy and covered in grass, she at least was doing her best by running her fingers through it as a makeshift brush. She also had a fuller figure of someone who ate well, but not to excess. It wasn’t just me who was entranced by her relative beauty. Lots of the males, or at least those who didn’t have dull and dead eyes, kept gazing at her.

She seemed to be aware of the attention and revelled in it. Even so, she did her best to keep clear of the others. I wasn’t sure if she felt like she was too good for us; or if she felt scared, maybe even worried. But she, like me, was alone. Even the dead eyes seemed to congregate around each other.

Without warning, the naked people formed into a semi-organised column ready for marching. Not wanting to stand out, I quickly headed towards the rear of the column. Down below, all the units picked up their platforms and formed into a long column two platforms wide. At the back of the column of naked people were the three of us, the elderly man, with his toothless grin, the pretty blond-haired clothed teen. And me. Now I was closer, I guessed she was around fifteen years old.

The elderly man grunted a happy grunt to me. I nodded and turned to face forward.

‘He’s just about lost his mind, so don’t mind him.’

‘We’re allowed to talk?’ I asked, thinking back on the endless dirge the units sang yesterday as they carried me as cargo on the platform.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Goddess, I hate this. Look, not a building in sight, there isn’t even a single path.’

‘I think it’s pretty, just like you.’ My mouth blurted out the second part of the sentence without me realising. Damn, I was meant to be a six-year-old boy, not a flirt in a pub.

‘Untamed, wild, and ready to devour you?’ She said, in a mock seriously angry tone. ‘Just what hole did you crawl out of?’

‘Was a noble until…’ I looked down at my naked body. ‘Uh, this.’

‘Ah, so it wasn’t just us females you’re looking down at, but everyone. I guess change can be hard to accept. Even if you decided to sell yourself into it. Two pregnancies and I’ll be allowed to become a mother for lower-ranking families. Just two. My best friend managed that within two years. She had caught the eye of a couple of brothers.

‘Lucky woman, she’s now a mother for their family. So maybe she was aiming to be a mother. But she was sexy, unlike me. I had to take this route to get out of that forsaken new-built settlement.‘ Her smile changed slightly. It seemed somewhat fake, but I was probably imaging it. ’Too many Threes surrounding it and not enough Fives like me.’

Whatever the truth about the smile, it was her rant which surprised me. All I had meant by it was she was as pretty as the landscape I could see. And it was pretty, just like her. But her rant and then going off onto talk about becoming a mother. I wasn’t sure how she saw mothers as being treated, but I saw how my Mother had been treated.

And it wasn’t great. Maybe that was because of the Trait difference, I didn’t know.

‘Ah, we’re heading off now. I just hope all this pain will be worth it in the end. I keep praying to the goddess for that.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet, letting the sobs, which seemed much quieter today, speak for me.

Maybe the goddess was good for her people. Though, thinking back through the body’s memories, it was clear outsiders were treated with less dignity than even Three Traits.

I was a prime example of that. A true outsider, one from outside this world. Maybe as she had been brought up in the world she was indoctrinated, but I saw things differently. Why should someone be valued less just because they had fewer traits?

That really annoyed me. Especially as I should, by all rights, be a Nine Trait. Instead, I was stuck being a Three Trait just because either the goddess, or someone she appointed to the role, locked my system.

Long after my child legs grew tired, and the heat of the sun grew annoying, and my thirst grew again, I mindlessly listened to her. All the while, I was trying to convince myself that this world wasn’t all that bad and that I was happy to wait for the promised gift from Death.

But I couldn’t convince myself of either facts.