by C. A. Gray
Alex gave a short, humorless laugh. “I’ll bet you do.”
I searched her flawless profile. “You like Francis,” I pointed out, and then added under my breath, “which takes some doing. You don’t seem to mind Nilesh or Andy or Jake, or—really, any the men here, I guess. What have you got against me?”
She leveled her gaze at me. “Really?”
“Really, what?”
“You can’t think of any reason why men might be more palatable to me than women?”
I blinked. Could she mean what I thought she meant? I was liking her less and less.
“Besides, you’re Karen’s daughter,” she went on, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“So?”
She shot me a look of disgust. “Someone said you were supposed to be smart.”
I gritted my teeth. “Humor me.”
“Wow.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, well, she framed me for something Francis did, and nearly got me killed. She did get me sent to prison and turned into an experimental cyborg. And now that I’m here, she’s treating me like I’m some sort of criminal. Are those enough clues for you?”
“You are a criminal,” was what slipped out before I could stop it. “Embezzlement, extortion…”
“But I never committed treason! Your mother framed me for that! It’s her fault they made me what I am!”
“Which is exactly why she doesn’t trust you now,” I pointed out. “You have every reason to hate us. You also have every reason to hate them, though, so I’m hoping that will eventually tip the scales in our favor. Look, I know my mom. She didn’t want to hurt an innocent person. She just didn’t have time to create an entirely new identity as a culprit when the loci got shut down, so she had to choose someone whose history and skills made it seem believable, and someone who was likely to get picked up for their own crimes anyway. It was nothing personal.”
“It was nothing personal!” Alex fluttered a hand to her chest. “Oh, that makes me feel so much better!”
“But she didn’t just let you sit there to be executed, either. She did risk blowing her cover in order to warn you,” I added defensively. “That’s why you were on the run, wasn’t it? When they caught you?”
“Yes, but they caught me anyway. And turned me into this.” She gestured at her enviable body as if it were a thing of loathing to her. “I have only myself to thank that I managed to escape. And Francis.”
“And Larissa,” I pointed out.
Alex rolled her eyes. “Larissa was a hindrance. We made it out in spite of her, not because of her.”
I sighed. “Look, I know what you’ve been through was horrible, and we are to blame for it. Did Francis tell you that rescuing you was originally my idea?”
She glared at me. “What am I supposed to be grateful to you now?” she spat.
“Well, it would go a long way toward getting us to trust you if you would cooperate with my experiments.”
“And what is it you’re hoping to accomplish with these experiments of yours? Why is it so important that you study me, specifically?”
“I… can’t tell you that,” I finished lamely, remembering Mom’s injunction.
Her eyes narrowed. “So let me get this straight. You framed me for something I didn’t do. I got captured and turned into an experiment because of it. And now that I’m here, you want to experiment on me too—but you won’t tell me why. Nobody here is allowed to tell me anything, because you don’t trust me?” She laughed coldly. “You know when I’ll sit for your little experiments? When hell freezes over.”
I just sat there for a moment after that, trying to think of a new tack, but came up dry. Hard to follow up ‘when hell freezes over’ with any further appeals. Deflated and a little rankled, I went back inside to find Mom. I passed Francis in the hallway.
“Will you at least let me do imaging studies on you today?” I asked him with a heavy sigh.
“Hm. I assume you just got rejected,” he observed, his eyes sliding past me to the sun room where I’d left Alex. Then he said with his usual serious air, “Yes, after breakfast will be fine. I must admit, I am curious to see how my brain differs from those of the ordinary individual. Faster connections, greater cerebral cortex volume, perhaps all of the above…”
I suppressed a smile. “Undoubtedly we’ll discover any number of explanations for your obvious superiority.”
He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at me. “You seem to think that if you state a positive truth in a sarcastic tone, it becomes an insult. But since we both know it’s the truth, I’m not sure what you think you’re accomplishing.”
I patted him on the shoulder as I slid past him. “I’ll let you go ahead and ponder that.”
I searched the rest of the compound for Mom to report on my conversation with Alex. I finally found her upstairs, sitting hand-in-hand with Mack. He smiled at me, a little uncertainly. I still had hardly spoken to Mack alone since we’d arrived. At this point it wasn’t because I resented him anymore—I’d just had so many other things to think about.
“I think you’re right about Alex. Not to trust her,” I told Mom. Then I summarized the conversation we’d just had, and added, “But at this point I think it’s only because she has good reason to hate us. And she doesn’t seem to be the type to forgive, either.”
“Then again, we’re not exactly making overtures toward mending that relationship,” Mack observed, glancing at Mom pointedly. “Until one of us bends, we might be at a stalemate.”
“Well, what do you suggest I do?” Mom sighed. “We can’t kick her out, and inviting her into all our plans when she has ‘good reason to hate us,’ as Rebecca points out, seems foolish in the extreme.”
“Maybe if we just treat her with a bit more kindness,” Mack suggested gently. “Even if she is haughty and has a chip on her shoulder—if we can thaw her enough, we might discover that we can trust her. We just need to win her over first.”
Mom gave him a droll look. “Is that so. I think the men in this establishment are doing a fine job of that already.”
“That’s different,” Mack asserted, raising one finger. “It’s self-interested on their parts, not real kindness. She’s a smart girl. She can tell the difference.”
Mom sighed. “So, act like I’m not suspicious. Got it.”
“Act like you’re not only suspicious,” Mack clarified, “Like you’re primarily interested in her comfort and adjustment, rather than primarily in keeping her out of our business. I’m not saying be fake—she’ll know if you’re doing that.”
“No she won’t!”
Mack lowered his chin, leveling Mom with his gaze. “Trust me,” he said with a teasing smile. “She’ll know.”
An answering smile tugged at the corners of Mom’s mouth, and she laughed ruefully. “Fine. I’ll be nice.”
Mack kissed her forehead. “Good girl.”
It was the first time I’d ever really seen Mom and Mack interact like this. It was sweet. At the same time, it made me a little sad, in a wistful sort of way. I wasn’t sure if I was missing my dad, or wishing I had someone like that myself.
I cleared my throat, realizing I’d become a third wheel. “I’ll go help with breakfast,” I announced, and stood up.
But I didn’t get very far—Nilesh met me halfway up the stairs and passed me by, apparently in search of Mom. I lingered in the vestibule to hear what he had to say. He looked flushed and excited.
“M!” he called. “Mack! I just talked to my buddy Tyler from Dublin on the Commune. You know that Celebration of Equality thing that the Silver Six sponsored?”
“Rebecca told me about it this morning,” Mom said, glancing at me with a furrowed brow.
“Well, it’s getting more aggressive, and it’s not just the schools anymore. There are parades in the streets, special holographs almost daily—even all the on-demand film and music platforms are heavily promoting only the art that pushes H
alpert’s world vision. It’s hard to even find anything else. There was this film award show the other day that was basically just a big ‘ra-ra’ political platform. All they talk about is Halpert and his agenda, and ‘oh yeah, there was this film,’ every now and again. Every ‘talking head’ raves about how in future years, we should start celebrating the anniversary of the De Vries prototype like it’s Christmas, and the second anybody says anything against the prototype or Halpert or the Silver Six or any of it, they get some kind of disparaging label slapped on them and they basically vanish from the public space. Tyler said he assumed from this that everyone agreed with what the media was saying… but when he started actually listening, he said most people are finally noticing how heavy-handed it is. It’s too much, and it’s making them start to question why dissenting voices are always silenced with insults rather than facts, and then marginalized.
“So Larissa and I started messaging Commune members in different cities around the world, and they’re all saying the same thing! Your buddy Roy, from Casa Linda, even conducted a door-to-door survey to see how many people were buying the hype! He said it was as low as ten percent, at least in his small sample!”
Mom shook her head. “Roy is going to get himself killed,” she muttered, running her free hand down her face as she absorbed this.
“But that means their big indoctrination push is having the opposite effect! That’s great news, right?”
“It is good news,” Mom agreed, glancing at me. “Maybe they are ripe for your ‘counter-indoctrination’ plan after all, Rebecca.” Nilesh and Mack glanced at me quizzically, but I didn’t have a chance to explain before Mom added to Nilesh, “Ask someone on the Commune to send us some examples of their latest film and music propaganda. If you’re going to create your own, you need to see some examples, right?” she added to me.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Mack asked me.
I shrugged, almost embarrassed. “I figured if we—mostly Jake and me, but we’ll pull in anyone who wants to help—can make alternate film and music options to spread our message, those will have way more emotional pull, and will ‘stick’ with people better than just direct arguments might. I’ve seen Abraham Chiefton’s propaganda all my life,” I added to Mom, “but he’s always just slipped it in here and there, though it’s gotten increasingly bold over the years. I’ve never seen anything as heavy-handed as what you’re describing, though,” I glanced at Nilesh, and then back at Mom, “so yeah, that would probably be helpful. We can use their benchmark for overtness and match them.”
“Ha!” Nilesh laughed, and clapped, eyes wide as he looked from Mom to me. “That is awesome! Can I be in your movies?”
“You can,” I grinned back at him.
“I hope you’re singing. Are you singing?” he asked me, then turned to Mom and Mack, pointing at me. “This girl has a set of pipes. But of course you know that,” he gestured at Mom. Mom gave me a knowing smile, which implied that she still thought creating an opportunity for myself to perform had been my real motive all along.
And I mean… maybe.
I laughed to Nilesh, pleased. “One of them will probably be animated, and targeted at kids… so at least for that one, I will. We might have you sing for it too, you’re not bad either!”
“Yes!” Nilesh fist-pumped the air.
“Wait a minute,” Mack held up a hand, “what makes you think this will ever see the light of day? The Silver Six will just shut it down the second you release.”
I shrugged and gestured at Nilesh. “Yeah, that’s a tech problem. But since messages from us to the Commune get routed from different servers all over the world, there’s gotta be a way, right?”
“There’s got to be,” Nilesh agreed, enthusiastic. “I’ll ask Larissa and Liam to help, since you’re studying Francis today, right?”
I nodded, but before I could reply, Mack said, “Second problem. Even if you did manage to overcome the broadcasting issue, every media outlet in the world will immediately denounce you as stupid, elitist, evil, or what have you…”
“Of course they will,” I agreed, “but it sounds like people are already seeing through that. I’m hoping the Silver Six will take it a step further and straight up forbid anyone from watching or sharing our stuff, though. People are automatically intrigued by anything forbidden, right? That’s psychology 101!”
Mack nodded at me, approving. “Sounds like this has potential.”
I grinned at him and at Mom, who shook her head at me like I was a precocious child. I winked back, unfazed.
“I’ll go talk to Larissa about the routing problem right now!” Nilesh volunteered, half-running back down the stairs.
“I’ll go help with breakfast,” I told Mom and Mack again, almost skipping after him.
In the back of my mind, I think I expected that Liam would have joined Val and Andy by then. But no, when I wandered in, Andy still waxed poetic about The End Game, encouraged by Val’s polite questions. He was not helping her cook, though. Andy didn’t multitask.
I cleared my throat, since it was the only way to get a word in edgewise, and Val turned. A hard look settled over her features when she saw that it was me.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“No, thank you,” she said coolly.
I blinked, taken aback. “Oh. Okay.” Unsure what to do now, I hesitated for a moment, and then backed out of the kitchen.
I could only think of one explanation for her sudden coldness, remembering the intense way she and Liam had been talking that had so deflated me when I left the cave last night. But if that conversation had been anything like what I’d feared, she’d be all smiles and graciousness now. I felt a little spark of hope.
What had he actually said to her?
Chapter 20
“Okay. Sit,” I commanded as if Francis were a dog, pointing at the seat beneath the helmet.
Francis arched an eyebrow at me, but obeyed. The two of us were alone in the basement together, Dr. Yin and Giovanni having decided that I was capable of running the entire experiment myself now. Before Mom had dragged Liam upstairs to help with his new assignment, he’d helped me rearrange the setup so that I could both queue up trigger videos and capture VMI images at the same time. I hadn’t had a chance to probe him about the conversation with Val the night before.
“Earbuds in,” I commanded Francis, thrusting them in his direction, and then handed him the A.E. goggles as well. “Goggles on.”
“Is this giving you a power trip?” Francis muttered.
“Yes, I rather like ordering you around.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he smirked, sliding the goggles over his face.
I walked over to the netscreen to queue up my baseline images which should evoke no emotional reaction: a bench, a tree, a pencil. I didn’t pay much attention to the images, other than to see that they were what I’d expected. Francis’s prefrontal cortex was always active—as much so with neutral images as it was for normal people during periods of intense focus. That was apparently his baseline.
“Okay, Matt chose some random videos of people on the labyrinth,” I said. “I want you to analyze them, the way you do with the rest of us.” First was a holograph of some voyeuristic teenage kid, just filming people as they walked by on a university campus. I watched the same video on my netscreen with the sound off, so that I could see what Francis was seeing.
“The girl sitting at the picnic table under the tree,” said Francis. “Zoom in on her.” I did, and he said, “Eighteen or nineteen. Science major of some kind, probably biology, but she’s failing at least one of her classes and she’s been taking stimulants so she can stay up late to try to study more. But now she’s addicted, and sleeps maybe two or three hours a night. She’s not telling anybody about it, it’s her little secret, but everybody knows anyway, and her family and friends and roommate are all organizing an intervention. Maybe they’ve already tried once before, but she denied everyt
hing, of course.”
“How in the world can you possibly…?” I started, and then stopped myself. “No, nevermind, not the point.” I snapped a VMI image of his brain, and saw what I expected to see again: extreme activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortices, as well as in the nucleus accumbens, the brain’s pleasure center. I’d figured Francis got some kind of neurochemical reward from calling out people’s deepest secrets. He did it with such relish, after all.
We repeated this process with several other holographic images of strangers, with exactly the same pattern. I noticed that the particular area of the prefrontal cortex with the highest activity was the orbitofrontal area, and the histology analysis of the image told me these were spindle cells, involved in snap judgments.
“Wow,” I murmured. “I guess I’d have to look at everyone else’s images side by side, since I wasn’t looking for this before, but you have way more spindle cells in your orbitofrontal cortex than I think is normal.”
Francis opened and closed his mouth, finally settling on a grunt. I couldn’t suppress a smile: he didn’t know what that meant, so he didn’t know whether to gloat or retort something snide. For once, I knew something he didn’t. I wasn’t going to volunteer an explanation either—just to torture him.
Next, I wanted to see an expected pattern for emotional attachment. I started with an image of his pub, and stared at the VMI image it produced. It looked exactly the same as it had looked when I showed him the pictures of the bench and the tree.
“Really?” I pressed. “No emotional attachment to your pub at all, huh? Even though it’s yours?”
He shrugged. “It runs. It’s there. I’m sure Kyle has it under control without me.”
“Oh-kay…”
I showed him a picture of a large pile of cash next. Nothing. No reaction. I’d never seen this before. “No pleasure response to money either?” I gawked.
“Money is merely a tool constructed by society to measure value. Inherently, it’s worthless.”