A Trick of Light

by Stan Lee

  I wish I had more friends like you IRL. People I can be real with.

  Nia’s response is teasing: Doesn’t IRL stand for “in real life”? How can you be realer here than there?

  He shoots back a scowling emoji. You know what I mean. I can be myself with you. I can’t do that with most people. That’s why high school is such bullshit: you can’t just be who you are and have people be okay with it. You’ve gotta put on this show, only emphasize the publicly acceptable parts, like some kind of human highlight reel. And now I know it’s not just me. Everyone puts on this performance of whoever they think they’re supposed to be, and all the performances are friends with each other. I don’t think I really know anyone.

  You know me, Nia says. I’m not a performance.

  You could be. People lie online even more than they do in real life. You could be pretending too.

  There’s a long delay before she writes back, long enough for Cameron to start worrying that he’s offended her. But Nia doesn’t seem angry. It’s one of the things he likes best about her: even when he kind of puts his foot in his mouth, she never pounces on him. Her reply is direct, and disarmingly vulnerable.

  I’m not very good at pretending.

  * * *

  It’s early morning in the city now, cool and grim and quiet. A damp gray mist rolls off the lake, chased by a raw wind that shakes loose the last petals of a late-blossoming cherry tree and sends them tumbling through the streets. On Walker Row, the houses are shut up tight, their windows dark and shaded. The sun won’t rise for another hour, and everyone is asleep—or at least everyone is supposed to be. But in one house—number 32, the brick house with the yellow door—a telltale rectangle of light glows from the perimeter of the basement window, as it has every night for the past three weeks.

  Cameron is bursting with ideas now; every time he completes a project, there are a half-dozen more lined up behind it, impatiently waiting their turn. He’s tweaked the design of all his favorite games, lacing trapdoors and Easter eggs into the code so that he can play them all again with new, fresh results. He’s got a whole lineup in mind of technical fitness gear that interfaces with the user’s own bio-data and provides ventilation, or compression, or even calls the paramedics if it senses dangerous arrhythmia or dehydration. He has a tiny robot, the size of a quarter, that crawls back and forth over his shoulders on little synthetic spider legs, analyzes the topography of his skin, and gently squeezes the gunk out of his pores. He knows that any one of these designs would fetch thousands from investors, but he doesn’t crave that kind of validation anymore. Every night, he sleeps less and works more, his brain running on equal parts inspiration and caffeine. This is a gift he’s been given—he knows that now. He just had to stop resisting it, to understand its uses instead of its downfalls. He sailed into the storm an ordinary boy and came out . . . well, something more. So much more. The power of his own mind would be terrifying if it weren’t so dazzling, so exciting. Sometimes it feels like the lightning is still inside him, energy crackling from neuron to neuron like a series of fires igniting, guiding his hands from one project to the next.

  An upgrade, he thinks. I’m Human 2.0.

  It’s the best way he can describe what’s happened inside his head, how every ability he ever came by naturally has been cranked up, augmented, enhanced. Cameron was always a gamer, a tinkerer, a programmer, marrying stray components and software to create his own Frankensteined tech. But this is a whole other level. His brain is alive with the flow of data, sending and receiving and processing and solving. There is so much to do.

  He got busy fixing himself, first. After an official daytime tour with his surgeon through the hospital’s prosthetics lab, and a few illicit late-night cyber-romps through the information network of a top biotech firm, he knew exactly what he wanted—and how to get his new buddies, the machines, to build it. He’d felt a little bit like a spy, hiding in the bushes outside a robotics lab just after dawn, mentally interfacing with the 3D printer inside, and then knocking on the door to pick up what he’d made from a bewildered scientist who’d arrived early to work just as the printer was finishing its job. Cameron had donned a disguise of sorts—a black baseball cap and polo shirt emblazoned with the logo of his dad’s former tech company, Whiz—but it ended up being unnecessary. The man barely even looked at him; he was too busy glancing nervously over his shoulder like he thought the lab might be haunted. And if he happened to tell anyone that a young guy with a pronounced limp had come by to retrieve a mysterious thing from the premises, well, they’d be looking for that guy forever.

  Because Cameron doesn’t limp, not anymore. The prosthetic fits perfectly over the hole in his foot and is laced with an AI neural net that senses what his dead nerves can’t. A processor inside analyzes each movement and feeds the data to an app, also his own design, that interprets it and identifies the misalignments in his steps. With the device, the app, and his own cyberkinetic brain in constant conversation, relearning to walk was a breeze. A week later, he left his cane out on the curb for the garbage truck. And with the right resources, he’s sure that an organic version of the prosthetic is possible: artificial nerve endings that sync seamlessly with his body’s own circuitry, sending signals to his brain with no translation required. He can code that. He can code anything.

  And that was only the beginning. He’s already hacked every system in the house and synced them with both the local weather report and his mother’s fitness tracker—which he also hacked, so that it analyzes everything from her heart rate to her calendar and disseminates the data throughout the house. The coffeemaker clicks on every morning as soon as Mom gets out of bed, whether it’s earlier than usual or later. If she falls asleep on the couch, the lights dim and the TV volume dials down to ensure a quality nap. If she spends all day on her feet at work, the refrigerator calibrates itself to optimal wine-chilling temperature at the same time as she gets in her car to come home—or if she’s coming back from Zumba class at the Y, the thermostat ticks to a more comfortable post-workout setting. It was a revelation when he realized that he could not only talk to the software inside the machines that surrounded him, but get them to talk to each other, and work together, making him a sort of digital diplomat. And he knows his mom appreciates what he’s done, even if she doesn’t understand it. To Cameron, she said, “I’m just so happy to see you busy and passionate about your hobbies again.”

  To her boyfriend, she texted: Oh my God, our house is SMART. I feel like I’m living in a penthouse suite on the starship fucking Enterprise!

  Most of all, though, Cameron has been pleasantly surprised to realize that as much as his abilities have complicated his life, they’re also fun. This morning, he’s putting the finishing touches on a new piece of wearable tech based on the AR navigation visor he once used to go adventuring on the Sunfish. If he ever goes sailing again, he won’t need the dorky headset; once he got deep enough into the program, he realized how easy it would be to shrink the tech and map it onto something much, much smaller. When it’s done, he’ll have a pair of contact lenses that project images directly into his eye, with a corresponding earpiece for audio—and a gaming system that he can take anywhere he goes.

  The calendar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen shows May 17. Today will be his first day back at school since the accident, just in time for Senior Week. But he’s not dreading it anymore. Actually, he’s looking forward to it. Sitting through commencement rehearsals and scholarship luncheons will be way more fun when he can discreetly mow down digital zombies with a virtual flamethrower instead of paying attention, and he’s going to ace his finals without any studying at all. After what he’s been through, using his abilities and the nearest networked device to fill in any knowledge gaps seems like a fair trade.

  It doesn’t even feel like cheating, not really. It’s so much more organic than that, like code has become his native language—one he speaks fluently and intuitively. And the more he talks to the machi
nes around him, the more he prefers this kind of conversation to the human version. People are complicated, difficult, frustrating: they bring their biases and blind spots to every interaction, they misinterpret and misconstrue. He never realized before how much the internet, that grand experiment that was supposed to unite the world, has made every single person on earth more divided and tribal than ever. Everyone in their bubbles, lashing out without understanding or empathy, hungry for an enemy to hate.

  The software never does that. It always says just what it means, and as long as Cameron does the same, there’s never any misunderstanding. The more time he spends communicating with the machines, the more he prefers their company . . . unless Nia is online, of course.

  * * *

  The sun is just coming up as he grabs his phone, snapping a photo as his new 3D printer—top of the line, an early graduation gift courtesy of the Real Housewife slush fund—begins to whir. It spools out the contact lens, interweaving the silicone with slender filaments that hold everything from a perfect miniature antenna to a processor the size of a piece of glitter to a tiny solar charging cell. Nia will be excited to see that part; it was her idea. Any time he shares plans for a project with his new friend, she always has an idea of how he could push it further, make it even cooler. And if she has questions about how he got so good, how he’s able to program so fluently and intuitively, she keeps them to herself. He attaches the photo and fires off a message. She won’t be awake yet—Nia’s dad is strict about schedules along with everything else—but it’ll be waiting for her whenever she signs on.

  AR lenses nearly done! Time for a test drive.

  * * *

  Cameron is giddy as he takes his seat in French first period, letting his gaze drift around the room at the same time as he lets his mind scan it. The smart lens is irritating his eye, but his mind is refreshingly clear, which is both a relief and unexpected. The onslaught of data as he arrived at school nearly knocked him over, compounded by the effects of his newfound fame. He could sense his own grainy image circulating through the network, and he knows he’s being videoed as he walks through the hallways; there’s a little psychic tickle every time someone points their phone in his direction. But he also didn’t need cyberkinetic ESP to know that his presence was causing a stir. People, especially girls, kept smiling at him in the hallways and then erupting in giggles and whispers after he passed. There was a lot of obvious staring, and the people who weren’t obviously staring were being even more obvious about trying not to. When he finally agreed to pose for a selfie, he sensed the impact immediately as it hit the internet and began to rack up likes and reposts—and even if he didn’t, the pinging of his phone as the pic goes viral would have reminded him of how much has changed. Cameron Ackerson, the Kid Who Got Struck by Lightning, is kind of a big deal.

  But somewhere between signing in at the front office and finding his way to his desk, something amazing happened: in addition to enhancing the world in front of him with an AR overlay, his lenses started working to organize and focus the stream of information coming at him from the devices inside everyone’s pockets and bags. The clamor inside his head is almost completely gone now, and what’s left is completely manageable. But the craziest part is he didn’t even do it. Not on purpose. Instead, somehow, his brain and the wearable figured out how to interface with each other in the background, a sync between mind and machine as easy and unconscious as breathing.

  A spectrum of information scrolls across the lenses as the other kids stroll in, everyone’s digital lives hanging over and around their heads like a fog made of code. With their high school lives nearly at an end, his classmates are busier online than ever—posting nostalgic photos, sharing college plans, madly texting about the rolling wave of year-end parties that’ll start this week and continue all through summer. They parade past him like walking data clouds, appearing in Cameron’s view like the world’s most brutally honest social feed. Here’s Bethany Cross, who took sixty selfies this morning before she liked one of them enough to post. Here’s Alex Anderson, who posts so many idiotic, easily debunked hoax news stories on a daily basis that his own mom has him muted on Facebook. Jesse Young is sexting with his best friend’s girlfriend, who unbeknownst to him has forwarded his latest pic to fifteen of her friends—that’s not gonna end well. Malik Kowalski spent all morning googling “what should a bellybutton smell like,” which makes Cameron snicker before it occurs to him that it’s actually a pretty good question. And Katrina Jackson, one of the prettiest girls in school, is on an anonymous question site, sending a note that says “why are u such a disgusting whore” to . . . herself.

  Okay, I did not see that one coming, Cameron thinks, shaking his head. But he should have; Katrina isn’t just pretty, but a master attention-seeker. Once she posts a screenshot of the “bullying” message, she can ride the resulting wave of sympathy all summer long.

  Humans, he thinks, blinking hard, and the display goes dark—which is good, because when he looks up, his teacher Mr. Breton is right in his field of view, smiling and waving, his laptop bag slung over one shoulder. Cameron smiles back, and wills his brain to avoid focusing on the bag. He’s always liked Mr. Breton. If there’s something weird or gross on the guy’s computer, he’d really prefer not to know about it.

  “Bienvenue, Monsieur Ackerson. Nous sommes tous très heureuses de vous voir. Vous allez bien, j’espère?”

  “Très bien, monsieur,” Cameron says. “Merci.”

  As class begins, he shoots Nia another text, even though she hasn’t replied to his first one.

  Lens is amazing so far. What are you up to?

  * * *

  By the time he enters his last class of the day, with his brain running interference in the background and the noise in his head at a minimum, Cameron is more than ready to go home. He feels tired in a way he hasn’t in weeks, all those late nights and early mornings catching up to him, his brain exhausted from managing the digital traffic of a building full of tech-savvy kids. The vibrating of the phone in his pocket is more annoying than exciting. The only person he really wants to hear from is Nia, and she’s still not answering.

  The afternoon is warm and Cameron’s eyelids are beginning to droop, the voice of his history teacher delivering the last lecture of the day fading to a dull drone in the background, when the harsh growl of an angry voice erupts in his ear.

  AND IT’S ALL SO THEY CAN TAKE YOUR JOBS! YOUR RIGHTS! YOUR RESOURCES!

  It’s so loud that Cameron jumps, his knees striking the underside of his desk. People whip around to stare, but he hardly notices; people have been staring all day. It’s the voice he’s focused on, so full of frothing hate that he can barely concentrate. Nobody else seems to hear it, and Cameron wonders briefly if he’s losing his mind—only to realize that his mind is where the voice is coming from. The display on the lenses is blinking, indicating low power.

  Of course, he thinks. He’s been indoors all day; the solar cell needs sunlight to charge. And in the meantime, it can’t handle the volume of data passing through his mind—especially not the podcast someone in the room is streaming in real time. That’s the source of the voice, which is still shouting:

  AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE DYING—THEY HAVE DIED, SCORES OF THEM, INNOCENT LITTLE KIDS—AND THE GOVERNMENT SAYS IT’S JUST A BAD FLU SEASON?! ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE BRINGING PATHOGENS OVER OUR BORDERS THAT THESE PRECIOUS BABIES CAN’T FIGHT OFF.

  Cameron rolls his eyes. Ugh. This guy. He knows the voice; it belongs to Daggett Smith, a.k.a. the Truthinator. Once upon a time, he was a shock jock who got kicked off the airwaves for making sexually explicit threats against a politician’s thirteen-year-old daughter. But what ordinary networks refused to tolerate, the internet welcomed with open arms; for the past two years, Smith had made his name as a YouTube commentator, self-published author, and commander in chief of a rabid army of internet conspiracy theorists. The guy had no shame, and he wasn’t shy about sending his hordes after innocent people, even kids
, as several of Cameron’s classmates had found out in the worst possible way only a few months earlier. The Center City High drama club’s gender-swapped fall production of West Side Story was totally harmless fun—a couple of Cameron’s female friends from the Robotics Club had even auditioned and been perfectly cast as the knife-toting rival gang leaders—until someone, probably a disgruntled parent, had alerted Smith to its existence. Seemingly overnight, every kid involved in the show became a target for the Truthinator’s army of trolls, while the school’s voicemail boxes blew up with vitriolic messages accusing the staff of trying to indoctrinate innocent children into the First Reformed Church of the Genderfluid Social Justice Warrior. It was only a matter of time before someone called in a series of bomb threats—and Daggett Smith hailed the cancelation of the show as a victory for truth, justice, and the American way. Meanwhile, the school had been closed for two days while local law enforcement searched for explosive devices, and Cameron’s devastated classmates were still waking up every day to new, hateful messages from Smith’s devoted fans.

  Cameron used to wonder what kind of person would willingly listen to anything that asshole had to say. It’s unnerving to realize he’s sitting in a room with one of them, up close and personal.

  YOU’VE HEARD OF A SMALLPOX IN THE BLANKETS? WELL THIS IS SMALLPOX IN THE BURKA. THEY CARRY IT IN AND THEY SPREAD IT AROUND. I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE TELLING YOU THIS. I’M RISKING MY OWN LIFE TO TELL YOU THIS. THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH, BUT THE EVIDENCE IS OUT THERE!