We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  She tried to balance her desire to make sure her kids had everything they wanted and needed with practicality. They had more than either she or Val had growing up, but had never arrived at a point where they couldn’t be derailed by an emergency. A point where the argument revolved solely around whether it was a good idea to get the implant, not whether they could afford it.

  The lights had already been off for several minutes when Julie called Val back from the edge of sleep.

  “I understand why this is a big deal for you,” she said.

  “Which?” Val grasped for the subject. Julie realized there had been several big deals over the course of the day, starting with the discussion of whether to replace Val’s tires or repair the sagging gutter and continuing after dinner with Sophie’s first seizure in four months, breaking through yet another medication, the giggly ten-year-old from dinner replaced by her own zombie doppelgänger. They should have known control was an illusion too good to last. Still, that was a big deal for everyone, not only Val.

  “The Pilot?” Val asked, sounding more awake. “How could it not be a big deal?”

  “Maybe it would help him in school. He’s having a rough time—it sucks to feel different.”

  “And the answer to a rough time is this? How could a kid whose sister has epilepsy ask his mothers for voluntary brain surgery?”

  “It’s just an outpatient procedure. I’ve read the risks. No more dangerous than a piercing or a tattoo, and a lot more benefits.” She wasn’t ready to admit how much research she’d done on the subject already.

  “Piercings and tattoos get infected, and they aren’t in your brain when it happens.” Val rolled over to look at her in the dark. “Are you serious? You’re on board?”

  “I’m open to it. The people in my office who have it say it’s safe. Almost nobody gets infections from piercings or tattoos anymore. It wouldn’t break the bank; we’ll just have to wait a little longer on your tires.”

  “And the gutter?”

  “And the gutter,” Julie said, wrapping herself around Val. “Small price to buy our kid’s happiness.”

  “Voluntary brain surgery. I’d be crazy to agree to this, and you’re crazy to ask.”

  “Mmhmmm.” She lay awake listening to Val’s breathing, waiting for her to fall asleep, for the sign that she wasn’t following the branching worst-case scenarios through her head. Maybe Val was right that it should bother her more, but it simply didn’t. There was a difference between what David needed and what Sophie needed. Comparing them did no good.

  She’d been waiting for this, really. Val had been complaining about Pilots for a few weeks when Julie spotted her first one at work, on Representative Griffith himself. He’d stopped into the district office to introduce his new chief of staff, Evan Manfredi, and “put our goals into alignment,” in his words.

  The meeting had been tense. Manfredi had come from a position as a senator’s press secretary and appeared to have no clue what Julie’s office actually did; he just wanted it to look prettier for the cameras. Julie knew from research—online creeping, really—that he was at least ten years younger than her, even though his hairline made him look ten years older. Yes, they were supposed to work together, but his every “we” and “our” came across as an attack on how she ran things. His predecessor had understood that it was okay if her district services and his DC concerns didn’t always align.

  She’d worked for Representative Griffith for twenty-one years now, almost the entire time he’d been in Congress. Every time he hired a new chief of staff she wondered why it wasn’t her, his longtime district office director. Then she remembered it was because she had a family who didn’t want to relocate to Washington or to lose her for seasons at a time. Leroy Griffith had always supported her and championed her; she was the one who held herself back, not the rep, and not the new guy, even if she didn’t think much of the latter.

  She was so busy hating Manfredi, she didn’t clock to the blue light on Griffith’s head until he was packing his briefcase to leave. The second she saw it, she knew it was the implant Val had been talking about.

  “That’s one of those Pilots, right? ‘Step into the light?’” If she got out ahead of it, maybe she’d get points for being observant.

  He did sound impressed. “It is! Have you been thinking of getting one?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, though it hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment. It had been a kid thing, something for Val’s students. What did adults gain from it? She’d have to look. She didn’t know the right question to ask. “What’s it like?”

  He smiled. “So far, so good! It’s got my brain racing, but I think I’ll find a balance soon. If it’s as handy as I think it’ll be, I’m going to look into grants to give them to all the staffers who want one.”

  “Are there grants like that?”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath, but you never know. Maybe it’ll wind up covered by our insurance. It would benefit everyone in the end. And they’re in district, you know, so their success means jobs, jobs, jobs for us.”

  She gave up feigning knowledge. “In district? Ours?”

  “Yeah—the manufacturer is a company called Balkenhol Neural Labs. Pharmaceuticals and devices. They built their headquarters inside our northern border.”

  “I guess you don’t get out there much,” said Manfredi, intruding on the conversation.

  His dig wasn’t fair. Either she hadn’t driven past or she hadn’t noticed, but that didn’t mean she didn’t get out there to town hall meetings and the like.

  “People first, then businesses,” Representative Griffith said. “Right, Jules?”

  “Right.” She could have hugged him for his support. “Or at least, not until businesses start talking about moving their jobs elsewhere, in which case I start hearing from people.”

  “So in other words, we’ll all work on keeping this lovely new company in our backyard.” He walked out whistling, Manfredi trailing in his wake.

  Not long after, the twentysomethings in the office had started getting Pilots. Both summer interns, too, and the campaign volunteers. It figured that after the Pilot spread among rich teenagers whose parents wanted to give them a leg up, offices like Julie’s would be the next demographic. Twentysomethings in high-pressure, detail-oriented jobs. Twentysomethings making too little for any hope of living without roommates, but too much not to be tempted by exciting new things. Sure, she had a house, but their clothes were nicer than hers, and they bought their lunches every day while she boxed and bagged leftovers from whatever dinner Val had made the night before.

  In truth, Julie had been just like her younger colleagues what seemed like a minute ago. There had never been a point in her adult life when she hadn’t wanted the latest everything. The newest phone, reader, tablet. If it was a choice between clothes or restaurants or vacations or a new gadget, she picked the gadget every time. These kids didn’t know that about her; they probably assumed she was just another middle-aged mom. Which she was, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own wants and desires. She tried not to feel left behind, but when David had asked tonight, she had to admit she knew how he felt.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  VAL

  Val tried to sort it out for herself with a run the morning after David finally asked what she’d been waiting for him to ask. Running had always helped her think; her legs and her mind felt intimately connected. The rhythm of footfalls, the rise of the road. On the days she needed clarity she left her music behind and ran alone with her own thoughts.

  She’d marked all the family milestones, good and bad, with actual miles. The decision to have children, Julie’s terrifyingly difficult pregnancy, Sophie’s adoption, Sophie’s first seizure, the endless treatment discussions. Most of those were things she and Julie went through together, and still there were conversations Val had alone with herself on the road; conv
ersations regarding which concerns to share aloud and which to swallow. She was sure Julie did the same, though she couldn’t say when or where or how.

  That was why she’d encouraged David to run, though he had never taken her up on it. Despite her lack of biological contribution, he was built like her, tall and lanky. Moreover, he thought like her, or so it seemed. He got concerned and retreated into his head and holed up there, unable to see his way around the obstacles presented. In her opinion, his video games just added to his stress. They implied there was always an external solution if you looked hard enough. She’d often thought if he tried running in addition to gaming he’d discover that sometimes the solution existed in making peace with your own mind.

  She broke into a jog, then an easy run. As her muscles warmed up, she pushed herself a little, trying to reach the place where each step generated the next, and it was easier to keep going than to stop. She thought about her serious children and then ran away from that concern. She thought about brains and their intricacies and vulnerabilities and how one person might perfectly harness body and mind, for sport or science or craft, while others couldn’t even walk across a room without pain or exertion. And then she was just running, and all was quiet in her head, and in the quiet she found her own answers. And then she was just running.

  When she got back to the house, drenched in sweat, she found her family eating breakfast around the kitchen table. She gave each of them a kiss on the head, met with various degrees of acceptance and revulsion and a general agreement that she should shower.

  * * *

  • • •

  On David’s parent-teacher night, Julie stayed home with Sophie. The doctors had upped her dosage again, hoping this time it would do what it was supposed to do. Otherwise they’d be starting over again with another medication, another round of trial and error. How could David want his brain messed with when the best neurologists in the country still played trial-and-error games? How could recreational surgery be so precise when there was still no surgery to help Sophie? There was no logic to any of it.

  Val hadn’t expected to fight his teachers over it as well, but they spouted the same lines as David and Julie.

  “He really is getting left behind without a Pilot,” said his math teacher, Ms. Sloan. She was young, closer to David’s age than Val’s, with a fading sunburn on her nose and cheeks. At one point Val had known all the teachers at both schools, but she hadn’t kept up with the new hires, and Ms. Sloan was a stranger to her.

  “Getting left behind how?” Val had spoken with other teachers who had observed as much, but she wanted to hear specifically how it pertained to her kid.

  “His peers with Pilots are using their time more efficiently. It gives them more time to study, and it lets them keep working things out while they’re doing other tasks.”

  “It’s a fad.” That was what she hoped, though it looked less and less like that was the case.

  Ms. Sloan walked around the front of her desk and sat on it. It came across like a move she rehearsed in her spare time. “It’s not a fad. It’s an optimizer. They get more out of their brains. Multitasking. The kids with Pilots have more time to study and more time for extracurriculars and fun—like gaming—because it lets them do it all at once. With upside-down learning I’m recording lectures for them to watch at home anyway, so we can focus on problem sets in class. This way they can do something fun while they listen, and I can help where they’re having trouble. They’re using their brains and time better.”

  She swept her brown hair into a knot and cocked her head. A blue light gleamed above her right ear. She smiled like a zealot, Val thought, even as she knew it wasn’t fair. At least now she had an idea how Ms. Sloan found the time to practice dramatic desk-sitting.

  The teacher reached for a tablet and swiped through a few pages with only a glance down. “Right now I’m talking to you and I’m thinking about my lesson plan for tomorrow and I’m reviewing David’s quiz grades. I could be doing three or four more things as well—listening to music, messaging my boyfriend, reading an article.”

  Val pictured a cartoon octopus messaging and reading and grading and rocking out all at once, then tried to refocus. What Ms. Sloan said was true; Val would have sworn she had the teacher’s full attention. “How do you, um, access it all? How do you know you’re paying enough attention to each thing?”

  “Practice, for starters. I’ve trained my brain, the same as you’ve trained yours. It helps me use my time better. I know David got seventy-two percent on our last quiz, for example.”

  Val sighed. She was willing to be the parent who didn’t let her kid get the latest toy, but she didn’t want to disadvantage him in school. Maybe Julie was right and she was being overcautious; that was her default state. She’d try to consider it with an open mind, even if she didn’t like it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JULIE

  Julie kept thinking about David’s request, long after he’d let it drop, more because she wanted a Pilot than because he did. How cool would it be to divide her attention and yet still be fully present? That was what the literature said it did: “Boost your brain and approximate functional multitasking!”

  She thought of a million uses. She could get work done for the congressman while still spending time with her family, so she didn’t have to choose one or the other. She could get work done while getting other work done; she was never sure if she was doing enough. Did she have time to take on one more constituent request? What would suffer? Would she lose her job if she refused to take on more?

  Best of all, she could concentrate while keeping an eye on Sophie. As it was, whenever Sophie was in the house, Julie couldn’t help being distracted. Was she playing quietly or seizing? Were her medications’ side effects altering her personality again? Julie tried her best not to hover, but it was hard not to. With a Pilot, she could pretend she wasn’t watching constantly, but still fulfill her need to watch constantly.

  Those were all justifications; beneath those reasons, that blue light exuded cool. There was a strange sexiness to it; an embrace of something corporate but beyond corporate, with no commercial use, no add-ons, no in-app purchases. She watched her Piloted officemates with actual jealousy.

  She knew how much it would bother Val if she got one. Val worried in infinite permutations; the little insecurities would grow. Val would wonder if Julie was thinking about other things when they were together. She would resent the split attention on family nights, even if Julie did it to help the family. It wouldn’t be worth the stress on their relationship.

  But did you wait until everyone had one? Until you were left hopelessly behind? She wouldn’t have signed up for the first year of a product like this, the same as she never bought a car from a model’s first year of manufacture. Val’s mechanic father, even more careful than his daughter, had taught Julie that one before he died.

  This wasn’t the first year, though. According to the pamphlets David had left around the house, the company had done years of trials on rats and adolescent chimps. This was the fifth year for the earliest human adopters, and the third for teenagers, though Val had seen it for the first time in her school only the previous spring.

  Julie went so far as to call some of those early adopters’ parents. She asked David for names from his own school, rather than rely on referrals provided by the company. Nobody spoke badly of it. One parent said her son had gone from Cs and Ds to As and Bs. Julie was glad the B grades were mentioned; she would have been less likely to believe a mother who said her child’s mediocre grades had been replaced by perfection. The B implied the Pilot was a booster, not a panacea. It couldn’t entirely replace natural ability and study skills and applying oneself. It couldn’t replace her child.

  * * *

  • • •

  Julie and Val decided Julie would take David to the consultation appointment without Val. Balkenhol Neural Labs’ Pilo
t Installation Center was a sleek and modern stand-alone building in an upscale mall’s parking lot. If they put the same money and thought into the devices as the architecture, Julie thought, David would be in good hands.

  They were met at the door by an efficient-looking redheaded white woman whose entire job appeared to be tech store–style triage. She found their appointment on her tablet and led them down a spotless hallway, gray walled, lights echoing the one on the redhead’s temple. They were brought to a cozy room with four chairs around a glass table and a window onto a central greenhouse, lush and bright.

  “Impressions, kiddo?”

  David stroked his single chin whisker reverently, a move that had been amusing both his parents since they’d noticed it. “It doesn’t feel like a doctor’s office. It’s more comfortable.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Hi, I’m Dr. Jordaan. You’re David and Julie?”

  The doctor shook hands with them and indicated the chairs she wanted them to sit in. She had tight, springy curls on top of her head, the sides shaved to let her Pilot stand out against her dark skin. Her white coat was tailored and immaculate, and she exuded confidence. Julie appreciated that she’d greeted David, the potential patient, first; they’d met so many doctors who talked past little Sophie as if she weren’t in the room.

  “So, David, I hear you’re interested in a Pilot.” Dr. Jordaan had a slight accent Julie couldn’t place. “I’ve looked over the health records your doctor sent over, and I think you’re a good candidate, but first I want to tell you what the Pilot can and can’t do for you.”