We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  Except it was part of the problem, too, or at least it contributed to his feeling that a problem existed. David used part of his new attention to watch Milo. The game had him tense, of course, leaning forward from the waist, both feet on the ground. His left foot tapped an awful nonrhythm, no beat David could count, different from the music on the screen. Now that he’d noticed it, it joined the long list of things he couldn’t unnotice.

  Even with that foot going, Milo exuded control. Focused on the game, not on David or their surroundings. He didn’t look like he knew there was a fly in the room with them, or that David was watching him; if he knew, he didn’t care.

  “What are you seeing?” David asked. They were in this clichéd laser-alarmed room, the same level they’d lost a few times already. You had to track all the laser beams, and there were mirrors throwing everything off, and a steady stream of changing access codes and a guard, and speed metal that you couldn’t turn down blasted from the guard’s earphones, and even though the guard was an NPC and there was no real person to think about, you couldn’t help wondering how he wasn’t completely deaf with his music playing that loud into the room.

  All of which was the point, overstimulation to get you to focus on the things that mattered: the guard’s patterns of alertness, the lasers, the jewel case at the room’s center, your own steady progress. Except. Except David couldn’t shake the nagging feeling he was doing it wrong.

  This was the first time he’d had the guts to ask Milo.

  “Ssh,” said Milo. “I’m almost to the jewels. Get to the access panel.”

  “I’m at the access panel. Waiting on you. We have two minutes before the guard’s wife calls and wakes him.” It had happened like clockwork the four previous times they’d been caught here.

  “I can’t go any faster.”

  “I know, but go faster.”

  “Fuck you. Argh! Dammit.” Milo must have miscounted. He hit a laser with his trailing foot. An alarm sounded, the guard woke and jammed a button, and shutters caged the room, trapping them. try again appeared in block letters.

  Last time, David had been the one to wake the guard, so he was happy Milo had screwed up this go-round. “We were close.”

  “We weren’t even as close as last time. Back to pig organs?”

  “Yeah, but my question . . . What were you seeing in that room?”

  “The same thing I’m going to see when I fall asleep tonight: laser beams coming from every angle, making me do controller gymnastics I don’t know how to do.”

  “And what are you hearing? What else is going on?”

  “There are the codes, but I’m trusting you to deal with those, unless you want to switch. And, um, the dude’s music, I guess? Why?”

  He could say it now, or shut up. If he couldn’t explain it to his best friend, though, whom could he tell? “When I’m in there, the whole room is shouting. Every one of those beams hums at a different frequency. Between that and the music and the podcast and the video, it’s like torture.”

  “The video?”

  “Yeah, the guard watches some warrior race thing on his phone, and even if I don’t look at the screen, I hear the announcer shouting in Spanish like it’s a soccer match, and the volume is almost as high as the music.”

  “Are you saying you think it means something? A clue we’ve missed for how to get through the room?”

  “No! I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s noise we’re supposed to tune out, only it sounds like you have and I can’t.” He didn’t add the other things: the faint sounds of the museum crowd beyond the guarded room, the whisper of air in ducts, the rattle of the one loose screw still attached to the panel they’d removed to enter, the guard’s soft snore. Beyond that, David’s actual bedroom: the gurgling radiator, the fly trapped between the blinds and the window, the scent of whatever his ma was cooking, chili maybe, news television chatterboxes keeping her company.

  “Huh.”

  Now was the time. “It’s always like this. Is yours?”

  “Like what?”

  “Loud. Noisy. Like everything needs your attention at once, but not like a wash—like every single thing is individually and specifically trying to get your attention?”

  “Huh,” Milo repeated, and he didn’t need to say more for David to know he didn’t understand. “Have you told anybody? That doesn’t sound right. I pay attention to the things I need to pay attention to. I haven’t noticed all that other stuff.”

  “I’m telling you. I thought maybe this is how it’s supposed to be, and I’m just bad at it.”

  “I dunno. Either mine is defective or yours is, I guess, or you’re getting used to it slower. Are you doing your exercises like they told us to?”

  “Yes! But I don’t feel like exercises make the difference. Maybe you’re right that I’m getting used to it slower.”

  “I dunno. You wanna try that room again or quiz each other on pig parts?”

  “Once more, then back to the pig?”

  “Deal.”

  David surrendered. He’d tried, but the thing felt indescribable. Like, how did you know if you were seeing colors the same as someone else? How would you ever know if your blue sky was someone else’s pink? Maybe he was oversensitive to a thing everyone else had dealt with. He’d do the exercises and learn how to tune it out, the same as they had. The important thing was that he had a Pilot, and nobody could tease him anymore, and he could catch up again. The rest was just noise.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  VAL

  December exams rolled around, and David got respectable B grades across the board. They celebrated with another ice cream cake, season be damned. Val cut Sophie the smallest slice she could get away with without protest. The ketogenic diet hadn’t worked for her, but Val was still convinced they might be able to control the seizures better if they controlled her sugar intake. And her stress. And her sleep. And her temperature. Poor kid; wait until she hit her teens and they broke the news about alcohol and caffeine.

  And what if Sophie’s class was soon full of Pilots, too? Surely it was a matter of time. They had managed to keep her just a year behind her age level and working well despite the brain-addling medications, but her head could never host that enhancement. She’d fall further behind. Maybe there would be special classes for all the kids who couldn’t get Pilots for one reason or another. Val let that train of thought chug into the logical future before recalling it to the present. They would deal with it when the time came.

  In January, David asked Val if he could start running with her before school, so he could be in better shape to try cross-country when the season started. She agreed casually, though she was secretly overjoyed. She took him to buy new running shoes, since he’d grown out of his last pair over winter break. His feet were like snowshoes; she teased him that he could walk barefoot after a storm and someone would think a yeti had passed.

  For their first run, she allowed him to set their pace, slightly slower than her usual; she didn’t think he was pushing himself as they set out through the neighborhood. Val debated whether to talk or run in silence. She didn’t want running with her to become connected with invasive conversations, but it seemed like a good opportunity.

  She settled on the topic at hand. “So, you’re going to try out for cross-country?”

  “It’s not a tryout. Anybody can join and run with the practices. They only have to make decisions when there’s a race with limited entries, and I’m not really into racing.”

  “No?”

  “Nah. I just want to run with my friends. And”—he paused to navigate some roots pushing through the sidewalk, then stayed quiet a little longer than she expected—“you know how you used to tell me you wanted me to run because it helped you think? I was hoping it would work for me, too. You said it helped you think, and it helped you stop overthinking. That’s what I want.”


  “Is the Pilot bothering you? Is something wrong?”

  “No! I mean, I know I need it, and I’m doing way better in school, and it can be fun. It’s just . . . loud.”

  “Is there a way to adjust the volume?”

  He looked at her weirdly. She shut up again. “No, not volume loud . . . how can I say this? Busy. My head is always busy.”

  “Mine is like that, too, sometimes, so I can’t imagine what yours must be like.” She stole a glance at him. He ran with his head neutral and his shoulders back, easily, naturally perfect. She wondered what else he was doing in his head while they ran. Math problems? Spanish conjugations?

  “Yeah . . . I thought maybe if I ran I’d shut it up for a minute.”

  “I hope so, too.” She increased the pace, and he matched her stride for stride.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DAVID

  David had never felt more adult than when he called the Installation Center on his own. The brochures had said that follow-up appointments were free. He was proud of himself for having read that, and for remembering it all these months later, and for finding his patient number in the user app, and for making the appointment to talk with a doctor, all without asking for help or telling anyone he’d done it.

  It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have accepted his parents’ assistance; he was just ashamed to ask. Asking meant admitting something was wrong, admitting it beyond what he’d said to Val while running, or what he’d asked Milo about. And which mom to ask? Val worked hard not to judge and hadn’t pressed him when he’d mentioned it to her, but she’d been opposed to the whole Pilot thing to begin with. She’d tell him to get it removed and call it a failed experiment. Julie had clearly been more into the idea, had pressed him more than once about what it felt like and how effective it actually was. She also loved talking about how BNL had brought jobs to her boss’s district and boosted his popularity. Admitting a problem to her felt like a betrayal.

  Or more than a betrayal; a personal failure. Failure to adapt, failure to thrive, failure to use a device that was supposed to be too straightforward for user error, so that he felt like a fool. Failure to do easily what everyone else did easily. Story of high school so far: run twice as fast to keep up. Now he had to face that if nothing was wrong with his implant, something must be wrong with him.

  All of which was why he took a bus to the Installation Center rather than tell anyone he was going. He only had to skip last period and track practice to make his four p.m. appointment. The schools shared their athletic facilities and Val would be there coaching her girls, but his own coach liked to send them out to run in the neighborhood; she would assume she’d missed him, not that he wasn’t there.

  He’d researched the route and how to pay, but the bus presented a challenge beyond the fact that he’d never taken city transit on his own. The challenge was part of why he needed his implant checked out. He sat at the back, and the engine rattled the seat, and there was a window open even though it was still pretty chilly outside, and it was midafternoon, so students hadn’t started filling the bus, but there were enough people to make him dizzy.

  Dizzy because his Pilot thought every detail deserved attention, like a photo where everything is in focus, so you don’t know where the photographer meant for you to look. The mother singing to a crying baby, the man muttering to himself, the person with a protesting cat hidden in their bag, the skinny-necked man with the greasy mustache wearing an enormous trench coat stuffed with grocery bags in every pocket and who smelled like the worst body odor David had ever smelled, and the kid with music spilling out of his enormous headphones, and the stop-start of the bus, and the traffic streaming by outside, and the litany of upcoming stops through the unintelligible PA. Nobody else on the bus seemed bothered, and he didn’t notice any other Pilots; sometimes he forgot his rich-kid school wasn’t like the rest of the city.

  The noise was a good reminder of why he’d made the appointment; when the bus finally reached his destination, he was relieved to escape onto the hilltop above the fancy mall. He had to dodge a few cars that cut across parking lot rows at angles, the drivers glaring at him like it was his fault they almost hit him just because he was on foot. All the stores had names that sounded too expensive for his family; the wealth was in the ampersands. Or in the syllables, like Balkenhol, spelled across the stand-alone building in tastefully futuristic–brand font.

  It felt strange to walk into the place alone. Adult. He’d have to learn to do all this stuff on his own sooner or later, so he might as well start. If he took over booking his real doctor appointments, too, maybe he could show his moms a new level of responsibility, to reward their investment in the Pilot, to show them he was doing okay. One less thing for them to worry about.

  He expected the greeter to give him a hard time, but she took his name and device registration and led him straight back without asking for his insurance or his age or where his parents were or anything. This room didn’t look like a doctor’s office any more than the consult room had. No sharps containers, no posters of kittens telling him to hang in there, no diplomas. Instead, framed fine art prints on soothing beige walls, two leather armchairs, a wheeled office chair, and a reclining exam chair with paper over it. He sat in an armchair, since he didn’t know yet whether they wanted to poke at his head or ask him questions.

  There was a courtesy knock on the door and a doctor entered with no pause. The doctor was in the range of older than him but not as old as David’s moms. He was white and fit-looking, with a white coat hanging open over khakis and a green plaid button-down shirt and a navy tie. His tie was tucked into his shirt, but David didn’t know if that was accidental or on purpose. His left shoe squeaked with every step.

  “David, right? I’m Dr. Cohen. What brings you in?” His expression looked as carefully curated as the walls, welcoming but neutral.

  Most doctors were preceded by nurses who weighed you and checked your height and asked you questions, so this straight-to-the-point question made David stumble for the explanation he’d crafted in planning the visit.

  “I’m—uh—I can’t tell if maybe something’s wrong with my Pilot.”

  The doctor didn’t change his expression. “Oh, I hope that’s not the case. Let’s get to the bottom of this. What’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s . . . the best way I can describe it is noise. It’s, like, everything from outside is coming inside at once, but then it’s all fuzzy around the edges, too, like I’m supposed to be paying attention to certain things, but each of those things has sub-things that want attention. Like petting a dog and becoming aware you’re petting every single individual hair, and every flea. And also it’s snowing, so there’s snow on the dog, and every single snowflake is different and wants to show me how different it is.”

  “Whoa.”

  “‘Whoa’ isn’t a thing you want a doctor to say.”

  “Yeah, sorry, David. That sounds like a lot, and you described it well. Let me check the diagnostics on your implant.” He pulled a small tablet from his coat pocket.

  It was cool they could read his Pilot without poking him. David peered over at the screen. “You’re getting that from my head?”

  “The data’s encrypted, of course. We’re the only ones who can see it other than you.”

  That hadn’t been David’s question. “It looks different from my app, is all.”

  “Oh! Yeah, the user interface has a different purpose. I’m looking at your implant’s readouts, but it looks like everything falls inside the accepted parameters. No error codes, no misfirings, nothing out of the ordinary. Tell me, have you ever been diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder?”

  “What? No. Are you saying it might be me, not the Pilot?” That was what David had feared most in coming here: that they would say something was wrong with him.

  The doctor raised placating hands. “Sorry—processing di
sorders aren’t my area, so I don’t want to imply I’m making a diagnosis. Obviously, you know what you’re describing is not the typical Pilot experience, or you wouldn’t have come in today. That leaves me thinking either you should ask your parents to help you get tested for a processing disorder, or maybe you haven’t done the exercises enough. Did you practice the things we told you to? And play the game?”

  David had made this appointment on his own, so a doctor telling him to ask his parents to make another appointment somewhere else implied the doctor was treating him like a kid. He tried not to let his annoyance reach his voice. “I’ve done all my exercises and played the game. I never had any problem processing my senses before this. Could the Pilot have broken them?”

  “It doesn’t work like that.” Dr. Cohen laughed, and just like that, David was done with him. His question had been serious, even if it came out silly. A doctor shouldn’t laugh.

  He must have noticed he’d offended David, because his tone changed again. “Look, David, I’m glad you came here with your concerns and gave me the opportunity to check that everything was okay with your Pilot so I could reassure you it’s working fine. Sometimes it takes a while to get the hang of it.”

  “How long a while?”

  “As long as a year, in some cases.” The doctor shrugged, further dismissal. A year! He’d be impossibly behind by then. “—Otherwise, if it’s working the same as everyone else’s, maybe your noise is everyone else’s normal and you just need to get used to it. I’d suggest starting the exercises over and maybe doing them once or twice more per day, to get you where you should be. Did you have anything else you needed to ask while I’m here?”

  “Yeah,” said David. “Why don’t you have a Pilot yourself? Isn’t it kind of weird to be telling me what normal feels like when you don’t know yourself?”

  The doctor smiled. “I’m Orthodox Jewish, so it’s against my religion to get one myself, but trust me when I say I’ve talked with enough people with Pilots to have a sense of normal. I was involved with the research from the beginning. Very observant, David. Anyway, I’ve got to get to my next patient, and I’m sure you’ve got places to go. Come back if none of those solutions gets you feeling your Pilot is doing what it’s supposed to do.”