Taemi was dressed in her finest. Her finest wasn't much by anyone's standards, but she had to be satisfied with it. She was in line waiting for her turn to come. She was waiting for her Worth Test. The line almost always consisted of the same people and as rules stated, the highest worth holders were allowed to be examined first. However, rules also stated that everyone must appear and check into the building at seven A.M, promptly. Taemi had the unfortunate luck of having to spend an entire day in the examination sub due to this.

She had fallen asleep several times but she was, without fail, awoken every time another person walked out of the exam room. It was hard to not wake up when there was a loud party cheer that announced the resulting worth. Ironic and even mean in some cases, like her's, when the score was so low, but it was doubly appropriate for the high scorers at the beginning.

Taemi bit her lower lip when her name was stuttered from the room. The building was entirely automated, controlled completely by the computer. It prevented possible bias. Officials have tried to integrate themselves into the system before, but it never ended well. Every time the officials failed in something related to the computer, theories sprang up speaking of how powerless they truly were. Of course, these ridiculous conspiracies were put down quickly.

She got up from her chair and took a quick look around the sub before entering. It was white--eerily white--and empty, as she was the last one there. The white plastic chairs were slightly askew from everyone sitting and moving in them but otherwise, the room was still a snapshot of the computer's perfection. There was, for some reason, a reception desk in the middle of the two doors; Taemi assumed it was for appearances. 

This test had seemed like all the others. Taemi was sure she would stay 48.

When she exited the room, the standard cheer went off. A sleek stand that printed out her worth was already working, but it seemed unusually stalled. Taemi had to stand and wait a couple of moments before it finally spat out an equally sleek slip of paper with her worth. The worth number wasn't the only item on the slip, however, but the rest of the information was a bore: the entire preamble of The 2104 Proposition (in ridiculously tiny font), a list of all council members and their positions (in equally tiny font), and a message of congratulations (in ridiculously large font). 

Taemi didn't bother looking at the slip in the slightest. She knew all the information on it and she knew she was still a low 48. Taemi left the examination bulding and headed to the dock. One of the nice aspects about the Worth Test was that the system provided transportation to and from. She got into the first one she saw and tiredly mumbled, "Take me home," after letting it scam her palm. She dozed off right after.

An impaitient beep continued to go off as the capsule waited for its passenger to leave. Taemi woke up with a start after a bit of the noise and stumbled out of the capsule gracelessly. It promptly closed and departed before waiting for her wake up some more. Taemi rubbed her eyes and carelessly wandered away from the dock in the general direction of her subset. 

She quickly awakened when her face was attacked by some foreign door. For the first time, Taemi looked around at her surroundings and realized that this was not zone 48 and it was not sub 3. It was polished land with no cracks or smudges. It was a larger, grander reflection of the examination building, or any official building.

She was sure she had told the capsule to take her home--not here. This was not home. It was not the zone 48 she had accepted and grown accostumed to. This was a palace. A sleek, white, inviolate palace. She didn't belong here. But when she took a look at the slip she had before ignored, it told her that she did.

But that was impossible, because the slip of paper told her that her worth was now 101. Everyone knew that the absolute highest worth was one hundred, no more. However, everyone also knew the system didn't make mistakes. It was a true enigma that Taemi didn't want to figure out alone. She retraced her steps and ended up in a capsule going to zone 87.

Zone 87 was Dongwoon's zone. Taemi very rarely visited him, even in emergencies; she would more often wait until he came by or could call him over. It was more than step up from what she was used to--it was a staircase and it made her feel wrong. Zone 87 consisted of luxury condos. There were rows upon rows of six story clean modern buildings; the architecture outside and inside was sleek and fine. The sidewalks in zone 87 appeared untouched since they were built and the grass and trees bordering them were a picture of perfection. Zone 87's weather was always nice: sunny, but not too sunny, with a light breeze and clouds that were spaced just right.

As Taemi walked down the sidewalk to Dongwoon's sub, her old shoes did not scar the cement with their years of grit and dirt. If anything, her shoes were cleansed by the white pavement. She moved much faster than she would have if she were in her own sub, clinging to her jacket and not looking up. By the time Taemi reached the entrance to Dongwoon's building, she was lightly panting and jabbing at buzzer. After a few moments, they felt like hours, Dongwoon answered her calls.

"This is Dongwoon," his voice traveled from the fourth floor flawlessly, "Who is there?"

"Me!" Taemi yelled into the air. There wasn't a physical communication device for her to answer to because zones higher than 85 included highly specialized particles in the air that could carry sound smoothly. It was disorienting the first time she visited him because when he replied to the buzzer, it was as if Dongwoon was standing behind her. 

Almost immediately, the door clicked open for her. Taemi rushed through and found herself already in Dongwoon's foyer. The entrance to buildings in zone 87 weren't really entrances to the building, but the condos in it; they used teleportation technology. She slipped her shoes off in the process of running to Dongwoon's room; she assumed that was where he was. However, he unexpectedly greeted her in the hallway.

"Dongwoon! This is no time for hugging!"

He grinned and held her at an arms length. "I didn't want to hug you. I was just stretching in my house and then you interrupted it by running into my arms like a mad woman. I simply caught you out of instinct because otherwise, who knows, you could have rammed right into an invaluable piece of art." He finished his dramatic defense by pointing to an expensive looking vase at the end of the hall.

Taemi rolled her eyes and replied, "But you're an invaluable piece of art, right?"

Dongwoon put one hand over his chest and pretended to swoon. "You flatter me, Taemi." He led her out to the living room and she sat down on the couch while he went to get them drinks. Once Dongwoon sat down and both of them took a sip of their drinks, orange juice, the conversation started.

"What brings you over, anyway?" Taemi's look told him it was something serious and kind of spooky.

"I think the worth test," she searched for the right words and settled for something that would do, "messed up."

"What? That's impossible," Dongwoon scoffed and bumped her shoulder, "How would that happen?"

Taemi sighed and thought about how she would explain it for a few seconds. "I'm a 48. You know I'm 48. Just like how everyone knows you're 87 or that their worth number is, well, their worth number, no questions."

Dongwoon nodded.

"But today, something went wrong. I'm not 48 anymore, Dongwoon. I went up." She knew he wasn't going to interrupt but paused as if to give him a chance to.

"My worth number that got assigned today was," Taemi's sentence fell short and she stared at the contrast of her feet against his brightly colored carpet. Dongwoon took her hand in his and squeezed it to encourage her to continue.

Taemi looked up at him and spoke softly, "It was a hundred and one."

Dongwoon let go of her hand and started laughing immediately after she finished. Dongwoon clutched his stomach and fell onto the ground. Taemi sat there dumbly as she watched her best friend rolling on the floor and occasionally hitting the coffee table with his head from his laughter. After a minute or two, Dongwoon managed to stiffle the laughter a bit to climb back onto the couch and slap Taemi on the back.

"Oh, that was good! You almost got me! Did you really come here just to play that prank?"

Taemi stared at him with slightly agape. "I'm serious!"

"I'm sure you are," Dongwoon rolled his eyes and drank some orange juice, "You know you're a bad liar. Why try?"

"I'm not a bad liar and I'm not even lying. I'm serious, Dongwoon," she insisted.

"You can't be serious. We both know one hundred is the highest. How can you be a step up?" he reasoned with her.

Taemi sat there defeated and thinking of a way to convince Dongwoon that this had actually happened. After a few minutes of chuckling to himself, Dongwoon the massive television and started flipping through the channels casually.

Finally, Taemi realized she had proof.

"Wait. Just"--she fumbled with her pockets--"look at this!" Taemi threw the crumpled worth paper at him. It hit him square on the nose and he rolled his head to  mock glare at her. 

"I didn't mean to throw it at your face!"

Dongwoon nodded sarcastically before bending down to pick up the paper on the floor. He unraveled it and began reading before realizing what it was and skipped straight to the only important part, the worth number, which proudly declared '101'. Dongwoon read and re-read the number again and again and then thought things would make more sense if he read the entire piece of paper. He was halfway through the list of officials when Taemi took the paper, folded it, and stuffed it back in her pocket.

"You're freaking me out, Dongwoon." However, Dongwoon only stared at her in response. The television was static in the background in their staring contest.

"That's a joke, right?" he asked finally. Taemi knew what he meant but responded incorrectly anyway.

"No. You're seriously weirding me out."

"You know what I meant," he rolled his eyes. He sounded less shocked now that he was a bit annoyed but it didn't make it any easier for him to comprehend the big number on the paper. Dongwoon was experiencing the same emotions Taemi felt when she hit her head on a door and woke up in zone 101.

"So do you finally believe me?" she asked instead of answering his question. Dongwoon hesitated and then nodded. He knew when she was lying and finally accepted that this wasn't a prank on him. Of course, if cameras came out and Taemi started laughing because of how well she had gotten at tricking him, Dongwoon wouldn't talk to Taemi for a month.

"Now what?"