She was sixteen the day she found the dead tree.
It stood in the middle of what had once been a public park, now repurposed into a food distribution center. The pavement was cracked with weeds, and plastic bins were stacked where benches used to be. But somehow, in a small square of soil near the edge, a single tree remained. Leafless. Hollowed by time.
She didn’t know what kind it was. They didn’t teach tree names anymore.
Her name was Anong, and she had never seen anything outside Zone B.
She was born in a hospital that no longer existed, conceived in a fertility clinic that had since become a storage warehouse for expired medical stock. Her mother had been assigned two children, back when the Ministry still offered direct subsidies and housing credits for multi-child families. Her brother died at four. Respiratory failure. Air filter failure. There was no investigation.
Anong didn’t remember him. Just the photograph her mother kept under a plastic sheet in the cupboard.
Today was her fertility screening.
Everyone her age had to go. They called it the Viability Assessment. It wasn’t mandatory, but not going marked you as uncooperative, and uncooperative citizens got reassigned. Smaller housing units. Less electricity. Fewer social credits. It was easier to go.
She sat in a waiting room painted grey. The chairs were metal and cold. A woman in a white coat called her name, and she followed her through a sliding door into a smaller room with softer lights.
There was no shame. No lecture. Just procedures.
Blood drawn. Hormone levels checked. Ultrasound. Uterine scan.
“How do I look?” she asked the technician, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and a face that looked like it had forgotten how to smile.
“Too early to tell,” the woman said, gently. “You’ll receive your category placement in two weeks.”
Category A meant she could try for a state-assisted pregnancy at eighteen. Category B meant she could try at twenty-one. Category C meant IVF only. Category D meant she wouldn’t be cleared to carry.
Outside, Anong wandered past the food queue lines. Mothers with two or three children sat in shaded waiting zones, chatting with neighbors, sipping from water ration cups. They had colorful tags on their wrists—green for three children, blue for two. People stepped aside for them in corridors. Shopkeepers gave them extra fishcakes. Teachers spoke to them with deference.
They were the queens of the city.
Anong’s mother was one of them—two births, one survivor. Technically a blue-tag. She walked with pride in her spine.
Anong didn’t feel pride. She felt like a question without an answer.
Back in their housing unit, her mother was cooking state-issued rice with fermented soy broth. She hummed as she stirred, the kind of song Anong knew came from a time before the Zones, before the forms and rankings and checkpoints.
“How was it?” her mother asked.
“Fine.”
“They’ll say you’re viable. You’re healthy. We have good genes.”
“Okay.”
Her mother turned to face her, bowl in hand.
“You know, when the time comes, it’s not so bad. The injections. The monitoring. It’s strange, but… there’s something powerful about it. Carrying life. People look at you differently.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it. It changes you. When you walk through the corridor with a baby, people see you. Like you're worth something.”
Anong looked down at the rice.
Later that night, she sat by the window and looked out at the city lights. They were dimmer now. Rotations had cut them back to every other building. She could see shadows moving across balconies—other girls her age, other quiet households.
She thought about the tree. Thought about what it meant for something to keep growing when nothing wanted it to.
She wondered what kind of world she was being asked to give life to.
And whether that was still an act of hope—or obligation.