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This ceremony had meaning - it was a baptism.  I had proved my worth to them in battle.  I was one of them.  After so many years on my own, I had finally found a home.
     

Chapter Two
     

Manhattan Protected Zone
    New York City, USA
    Western Alliance
     
    The marine corps saved me.
    I was born Erik Daniel Cain in 2232 AD in Lenox Hill-Fargus hospital.  My father, John Cain, was a project manager for Metadyne Systems Corporation, and we lived in a company-owned apartment block in the Midtown Protected Zone of Manhattan.  My family wasn’t rich, but we weren’t poor either, and we lived better than most people in 23rd century America. 
    New York was the third largest city in the country, with over a million residents, though you could tell that this was a small fraction of the number that had once lived there.  North of the Protected Zone, outside of the 77th Street gate was the semi-abandoned northern sector, and beyond that the badlands of the Bronx, a wasted area filled with centuries-old factories still producing basic goods and decrepit ancient apartments occupied by the lowest strata of workers.  The whole area was ruled at night (and day) by the Gangs, who owned the illegal narcotics trade and terrorized and preyed upon the outcasts living beyond the armed bastions of the Protected Zone. 
    Below the 10th Street gate was a forbidden buffer area and 500 meters further south, the Crater, the still radioactive pit remaining from the worst terrorist attack in human history.
    Between these two urban no-man's lands was a clean and well-ordered cityscape where law and order reigned.  The Protected Zone was the home of the educated workers who ran a modern, high tech society, and if there were some murmurs that past generations had enjoyed far higher living standards and much greater personal freedom, these were never more than hushed whispers.  Certainly such things were never taught in school, where we studied how modern America and the whole Western Alliance was the highest pinnacle yet reached in the development of the human condition.  If anyone had any doubts, all they had to do was take a look outside the gates of the Zone to appreciate what they had.  And keep their mouths shut.
    Manhattan was crowded, but there was enough food, more or less, and there were plenty of diversions to keep people busy in their free time.  Twenty-third century bread and circuses, though I never thought of it that way back then.  If laws were strict, the mail monitored, and people conditioned to accept the wisdom of their leaders without question, in  return they were fed (well enough), entertained, and protected from the harsher realities facing those unfortunate enough to live outside the walls of the Zone.
    The northeast corner of the Zone was called Sector A, and it was the home of the Political Class and their Corporate Magnate allies.  Most of the residents of Manhattan never set foot inside the inner walls that separated Sector A from the rest of the Zone.  I did, but that was years later under circumstances I could never have imagined as a child, and I can tell you that no one in America lives like the politicians and their corporate cronies.
    My parents managed something extremely rare for anyone outside the Political Class – they had three children.  Reproduction rates were strictly controlled everywhere in the USA, but they were especially restricted in crowded Manhattan where the legal limit was two – and that only for the most skilled workers. 
    My parents got around the limitations in a pragmatic way.  Three years after I was born my mother gave birth to twin girls, Beth and Jill.  A compulsory abortion would have been standard procedure, but in a bizarre turn of events the technician did not identify the second fetus at the single pre-natal exam my mother’s health care ration allowed.  So my sisters, both born alive and healthy, were something of a surprise. 
    With my father in a responsible