She resolved to pay attention, to notice details. She resolved that when and if she had children, they would have siblings. She resolved never to keep anything big from her own family, when she had one of her own, and to make it clear they didn’t need to keep anything from her, either.
Julie waited for Val to tell her what had happened, though she’d already figured part of it out. The video was everywhere online: teacher in narwhal costume loses her cool at a recruiter. The student who had posted the video hadn’t been Val’s, Julie guessed, since they hadn’t named her in the video description. One tried in the comments section, but spelled her name wrong. It probably helped, too, that Val was practically the only person left in the world with no social media presence, so nobody could find her to tag her.
It was possible Val didn’t know the video had been uploaded, but the fact she hadn’t mentioned the incident to Julie meant either it hadn’t been as big a commotion as the clip implied, or it had shaken her so much she couldn’t find a way to talk about it yet. If that were the case, she would be running. Before school, after school. She’d be running to cope, to give herself a release valve. And yet her shoes stood by the door every morning, and she was spending twice as much time as usual on her geography lesson plans.
Val usually left for work an hour before Julie. She was more of a morning person in any case, but it always worked out well to have one spouse showered and ready while the other dragged herself out of bed. It also meant that on the occasions when Julie opened the fridge and discovered Val’s lunch still standing beside hers, she dropped it off at the school.
There was a whole procedure for dropping off stray lunches, for teachers and students alike, implemented when the school was evacuated and a bomb squad called in over a bag lunch a parent had innocently left for his son. Now you had to be rung into the building, then into the office, where the lunch recipient would be called to meet you for a person-to-person exchange.
Julie’s name was permanently on the entry list, so she only had to flash her ID and smile for the camera in order to be let in. She went straight to the office, per protocol; the easier thing would be to go directly to the gym, but the last thing she wanted was to instigate a lockdown.
“Hi, Julie,” said Dinah Magness, the receptionist. “What can I do for you?”
“Val forgot her lunch. I’m dropping it off.” She waved the purple lunch bag.
Dinah frowned. She looked uncomfortable. “You know Val’s not here this week, right?”
Julie didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like looking foolish. She slapped her forehead. “How could I forget? Everything’s so hectic these days. Sorry to bother you!”
One of the great things about a Pilot: you could pay attention to the person with whom you were conversing and also catch the reactions of anyone else in your line of sight. There were two others in the room, the principal’s assistant and a vice principal, both of whom she caught staring. She kept herself from glancing back as she left the office; she didn’t want to see them snickering or talking about her.
She made it all the way back to the car before she let herself think about what she’d been told. “Val’s not here this week” could mean any number of things, and she’d pretended she knew, saved face, which meant she’d failed to get any real information. Maybe there was a training or a meet off campus that she’d forgotten about? Unlikely. More likely that she’d been put on some kind of probation: benched, or penalty-boxed, or whatever sports metaphor worked for this situation.
The next question—where Val actually was if she wasn’t at school—Julie suspected she knew the answer to. If she wasn’t running before or after school, she must be running during. Val was lacing her shoes in some park or neighborhood and running the whole day away. It was as good a reaction as any, except that she’d flat-out denied it. That was the likely truth Julie was left holding, alongside a purple lunch bag full of—she checked—two packets of that disgusting runner’s gel, two protein bars, and a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich. Her wife had chosen to pretend to go to her job every day rather than admit what had happened. It was a lie, or a lie of omission, and they weren’t supposed to do that to each other, at least not on things that mattered.
And now she had to get to work, too. Staff meeting this morning, all hands on deck, which would provide ample time to think about how to broach the subject with Val while Evan talked at them for an hour.
* * *
• • •
Julie left work early with some files she could work on remotely; she wanted to beat Val to the house. Sophie had asked if she could have dinner at her friend Gabe’s, which Julie had maybe said yes to a little too readily, but it made what Julie wanted to do easier.
She set the table with their good plates, on each of which she carefully arranged one protein bar, half a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, and an artful drizzle of chartreuse energy gel. It was the most elegantly composed plate she’d ever created, even if it lacked some important food groups. She lit candles and ironed the napkins. What wine paired with peanut butter? The Internet said Lambrusco, which she’d never heard of, so she went for a cabernet they’d had in the cupboard for a while.
Val returned at exactly the time she usually came home from coaching.
“Hi!” she called. It wasn’t unusual for Julie to bring work home in the afternoon in order to be there when Sophie got in. Julie heard a bag drop to the ground, then shoes being tossed toward the shoe pile.
“How was your—crap.” Val’s response to the table was everything Julie had hoped for, so she didn’t respond. The white-tablecloth, bag-lunch spread said that Julie knew what Val had done, and exactly how Julie had found out.
“I’m sorry, Jules. I should have told you right away.”
“That’s for sure. Wine? I was told to pair a sparkling red, but we didn’t have any of those, so I had to fire Jeeves.”
Val sat in the chair opposite Julie and eyed her glass. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to hide it.”
“Agreed.”
“I was embarrassed, and I thought it would fix itself without you ever finding out.”
“Do you still have your job? What are the terms of this leave?” Julie didn’t need to say they couldn’t afford for either of them to be unemployed.
“They said I had two weeks of vacation banked, and I should use those and then they should be able to bring me back.”
“Should?”
“Yeah. I mean, I caused a scene, but I didn’t hurt anyone or use any language I shouldn’t have. It’s ‘conduct unbecoming,’ not a fireable offense, I’m pretty sure. I just got loud.”
“You got really loud.”
Val frowned. “What did they say?”
“Only that you were out this week.”
“So how do you know how loud I got?”
Julie pulled her phone out of her pocket. “You do remember these things exist, right?”
“Ugh. So you saw?”
“Where did you get that costume? Your narwhal tusk needed starch or something.”
Val’s shoulders relaxed at the joke and she risked a sip of wine. “So . . . how mad are you?”
“Still pretty mad about the lie. I don’t begrudge you reaming out the recruiters.”
“And this is dinner?”
“This is dinner.”
No point in holding a grudge. She could be furious and stay furious, or she could invent a situation so absurd that Val recognized the absurdity of her own choices. Val would feel guilty over it, as she should, and Julie could let it go. Win-win.
Julie bit into her sandwich, dry after a day in the fridge, and washed it down with wine. The pairing worked surprisingly well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SOPHIE
The first surprise on the drive to Balkenhol headquarters came long before they reached
the building: a highway billboard advertising Pilots, with a dirty-faced soldier in a tan helmet staring intensely into the camera. David was the soldier. The words above his helmet said pilots keep us safe and below his head, the faces project.
Sophie stared back at him, locking eyes with the poster. “That’s my brother!”
“Where?” Gabe asked, looking in the wrong direction.
“On the billboard we just passed. Weird.” She made a mental note to tell her parents later.
Balkenhol Neural Labs’ national headquarters were practically in the country. The ride went houses, houses, horses, houses, Balkenhol. Sophie had been out this way only once, for a corn maze with her family. She kept slipping away between the stalks, hoping they wouldn’t notice; she wanted to reach out and grab their legs and scare them. Every time she started to sneak, somebody would put a hand on her shoulder and draw her back, like a puppy that needed reminding she was on a leash.
Mr. Clary left the highway and drove past a suburb with identical houses and no sidewalks. Then a field with white fences and horses grazing, then suddenly an enormous parking lot. Beyond the parking lot stood a high fence with razor wire, and a guardhouse. Inside the fence, it looked like more parking, and then a giant building.
“How come some parking is inside the gate and some is outside?” she asked as Mr. Clary pulled into a spot along the fence. She didn’t want to sound stupid, but that seemed like an innocuous question.
“This is visitor parking,” Gabe explained. “Inside is where the employees park. They don’t call the cops so long as we don’t block the gate.”
“So Balkenhol lets the protests happen?”
“As long as we don’t block the gate,” Gabe repeated.
Sophie wanted to ask more, but decided against it. The first question she didn’t ask was Are we the only ones here? It was a nice day outside, so they lowered their windows and sat in the car. Waiting for something. Sophie checked the time on her phone: one thirty. Normally on a Saturday afternoon she’d be at home reading. She was glad for the opportunity to do something else, but wished she’d brought a book.
Ten minutes passed before a minivan pulled up beside them. Someone in the passenger seat lowered their window to talk with Mr. Clary.
“Want to play war?” Gabe asked, pulling a deck of cards from the seat-back pocket.
The next time Sophie looked, five minutes and half a deck later—she was winning, she thought—the lot was almost full. More cars jockeyed for position, dodging people who had begun to assemble near the gate.
“Come on, guys,” Mr. Clary said. Gabe scooped up the cards as if it didn’t matter who won.
The crowd pressed around Sophie as she followed Gabe toward the front, letting him push people out of the way for both of them. Sophie’s palms began to sweat. It wasn’t that she was afraid of crowds; she was afraid of herself. Her fear in a group like this was that she would have a seizure and nobody would recognize it; that she would fall, or be trampled, or wander off and be separated. Really, it was her mom’s fear, not hers, but it had lately started to rub off on her.
“Come on, Sophie,” Gabe said. He offered his hand; Sophie wiped her palm on her jeans, then took it.
Gabe pulled her to a spot near the fence. Mr. Clary had beaten them there. The crowd formed a half circle around him, but didn’t press against the wire. Sophie couldn’t tell how many people were here from this perspective—fifty, maybe? Fewer than it had seemed from inside the crowd, but still a good number.
She realized she’d been expecting a protest like she’d seen in movies or in her history textbooks, with cops in riot gear and flaming torches. These people seemed pretty tame in comparison to what she’d imagined. Some carried homemade signs. Most looked old enough to be parents or grandparents, dressed in what she considered normal clothes: jeans or leggings and light jackets. Black and white and brown people. No riot cops. She let go of other expectations.
Her nervousness faded as Mr. Clary began to speak. He had acted like an ordinary parent in the car, but he sounded different now. Commanding. Inspiring. It dawned on her for the first time where she was. Forget the ages and the crowd size and who was here and who wasn’t: nobody here had a Pilot. When was the last time she had been anywhere like that? Even in her special classroom the teachers had them. Even in her family, her mom and brother.
These people were old enough that they’d gotten to grow up without Pilots being the only option. They had a right to be nervous about the future, afraid for their kids or whatever else. For the first time, Sophie didn’t just feel resigned about it; she was angry. She glanced at Gabe, and Gabe grinned. His father must have given this speech before. Like a mind reader, he mouthed, in concert with Mr. Clary, “So what are we going to do about it?”
Sophie grinned back, and the smile turned her anger into power. For a second, she wished her ma were here to see this. She would appreciate it, too; all these people with the same fears she had. All these people who faced the same problems at work and at school, whose kids faced the same prejudices she faced.
Sophie worked hard to not let anyone bully her. Usually she felt like it was a losing battle, which maybe it was, but the rebel army had more allies than she had realized. Maybe they had a chance to do something on a bigger scale, against bigger bullies.
She realized Gabe was staring at her. Mr. Clary beckoned her to join him. She took a few steps forward. “This brave young woman is here for the first time.”
“Welcome!” people shouted, along with a scattering of applause.
He held out his megaphone. “Do you want to say anything?”
“Go on,” whispered Gabe. “Say whatever you want. It’s better if it isn’t a speech. Say something quick, from the heart.”
“You do it first.”
Gabe shook his head. “I hate public speaking. Not my thing. Besides, I’m not new.”
Sophie had never spoken in front of anybody, so she didn’t know if she hated it or not. David used to complain about it in high school, but nobody ever asked kids in her class to do stuff like that; they didn’t even bother to invite them to run for student council. She hesitated, took a deep breath, then took Mr. Clary’s megaphone. One way to find out.
“Um, hi.” Her voice shook. She expected someone to laugh, but nobody did. They all looked friendly, expectant. It gave her courage.
“Hi, this is my first time here, but, um, you knew that ’cause Mr. Clary just said it.” They laughed this time, but not at her. “One of my moms has a Pilot, and my brother, but I can’t get one. And I don’t want to! Is it smart for everybody to go changing their brains without knowing everything about it? Brains are complicated, and um, we only get one. Maybe we shouldn’t mess with them.”
That felt like a good place to stop. She walked back to Gabe without looking at the crowd. She didn’t need to look to hear them cheering for her. It was a pretty awesome feeling, like a reward mixed with invitation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
VAL
From the scant television coverage of anti-Pilot rallies, Val had expected a handful of ragged old hippies. She should have known the same stations that had sold the idea of Pilots in schools would also have a stake in making the protests look feeble and pointless. Not that this didn’t feel pointless; despite the crowd outside their gates, nobody from Balkenhol looked in the least bit concerned, if they were even there on a Saturday.
If the protesters were tilting at windmills, at least there were a lot of Don Quixotes: the aforementioned ragged old hippies, but also businesspeople in suits, professor types and punks, parents and grandparents. She counted at least sixty from where she stood at the back. The group tightened toward the center, but it wasn’t a mob. Nobody mentioned plans to storm the gate or do anything other than peacefully demonstrate. That made Val relax a bit. She and Julie had argued over this one.
“Why should
she protest Balkenhol?” Julie had asked. “Nobody’s making her get a Pilot.”
“Maybe she thinks it’s the right thing to do.”
Julie shook her head. “She doesn’t care about a cause. She’s going because she has a cool new friend she wants to impress.”
“Is that true? And even if it is, maybe she should have the experience? Just because we’ve never been the marching type doesn’t mean she isn’t.”
“What about David? Is it right for her to be protesting the company that makes a device that’s keeping him safe?”
“False argument, Jules. This protest won’t put him in any more danger than he’s already in. Don’t you dare use that on her.”
“Sorry.” Julie sighed. “I thought we’d agree on this one. I don’t get why you want her to go to an event with that much excitement. I don’t even like it when she does that weird thing where she sits on the street corner on her own before coming into the house.”
“She wants a little freedom.” If that was how Sophie tested her limits, Val was all for it.
“Okay, fine. I just don’t think picketing Balkenhol for some silly movement is the freedom she’s looking for.”
“Silly movement?”
“You know what I mean. Ineffectual.”
“Just because it’s ineffectual doesn’t mean it’s silly. They’re fighting for something they believe in.”
“No. They’re fighting against something they don’t believe in. There’s a difference. It’s a perfectly good technology.”
“And kids like Sophie are getting left behind.”
“Should they stop making them, then? Hold everyone back?”
“Not hold back—anyway, I’ll tell you what: What if I go, too? I can stay out of sight. She won’t know I’m there.”
Julie looked skeptical. “A disguise?”
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