Wilders
Page 5
“You’re still allowed to have free speech.”
“As an orphan? It doesn’t feel like it. One of my teachers complained about me to the principal when I told them that they were being too hard on a girl in class.”
“That might have been self-defense on the part of your teacher. The city listens—it has to. But it won’t interfere until talk turns to action.”
Julianna sounded very sure of that. “Did you make that rule?”
The older woman’s laughter peeled in her ears. “The founding fathers ensured freedom of speech. Practical law enforcement means you don’t always have the right for that speech to be private, and neither does anyone in power.”
Julianna would probably know about that. “Is the city listening to us now? On this private VR channel?”
Julianna didn’t seem to have heard the question. To be fair, the noise of a virtual corner band playing loud jazz drowned out their conversation for a moment, and Coryn let it happen rather than turn the AR overlay down.
After they left the corner and the sound in the background, Julianna asked, “Are you happy?”
She hadn’t expected such a simple question. “When I run. Now I’m happy. This moment. But otherwise, it’s hard. But after what happened to my mom, I try to be happy.”
“What about angry? Do you ever get angry?”
“Yes.” The question bothered her, although she couldn’t say why.
When Coryn didn’t say anything else, Julianna prodded her. “What makes you angry?”
She thought about it for almost two miles before she answered. “I shouldn’t be. I have everything I need, or at least everything the city says I need.” She touched her AR glasses. They were Lucity Lenses, which was one of the better mass-produced brands. “I even saved enough for these. I have Paula, and no one else at the orphanage has a companion. She helps me all the time. But I’m angry about Mom and Dad, and I’m angry that Lou left, and I’m angry that . . . that I’m on the absolute bottom.” Three virtual runners and one real runner passed them, all in a close bunch. Coryn ran a little harder. “I was supposed to have a normal life and go to college and live someplace in the middle tiers. That’s what they taught me would happen, and then they took my future.”
“Who is they? Who are you mad at?”
She’d been through close to a hundred group therapy sessions in her years at the orphanage and knew better than to give an easy answer to that. They passed another screaming AR crowd and then a bunch of kids playing a game in the same channel they were on. For a few moments, virtual bats fluttered over their shoulders. Since they weren’t playing, the bats simply flew around them and then through them. Idiot kids should know how to manage their privacy settings. “The city, I guess, but really that’s too diffuse. I mean, I can’t change it.”
“What have you heard from people you know? Are they mad at the city?”
“You mean in the orphanage, or at school? That’s really all the people I know. I think we’re too busy to do much. We have to earn the ability to make the choices we want.”
“Are you a good student?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Everything I think of or test into feels wrong. The best is gardening—I used to like to weed. I have to choose soon, or go Outside, like Lou.”
“I don’t think many students get to go Outside. Your sister was lucky.”
“It wasn’t lucky for me. Anyway, anyone can just leave.”
“And risk not being able to come back? That would be . . . quite daring.”
Coryn hadn’t actually said it that way to herself yet—told herself that she might just leave. She fell silent. Julianna didn’t say anything as they recrossed the Cut at just above ground level, hundreds of feet below where they had stopped to look around. The race had finished, and the small pleasure boats crowded the narrow waterway. Everyone in Seattle seemed to want to be in the water on a fresh, hot day like this. There hadn’t been any days so pretty since just after New Year’s, and those had been so cold she’d had to wear long-sleeved running gear and full-length pants. Today felt like a gift, like the city sparkled and greened and flowered all around her. She felt good in spite of her fears about Lou and about the future, happy to be with Julianna and to be here in glittering, green Seacouver.
Surely she wouldn’t actually just leave. What would she do without traffic control and AR overlays and beautiful new paths to run on? “There’s no AR out there. I really need AR for my runs.”
Julianna laughed. “AR will get you killed Outside. You need to pay attention to that world. There’s no safe gates to keep the bad things out.”
Coryn almost stumbled. “My sister’s out there. Is it really that bad?”
“Yes.” Julianna waved at two women running past them from the opposite direction. “So, can I ask some more questions? I’m sorry to be intrusive. You see, I get a lot of reports about the hard things here, but I mostly only talk to rich people. That’s like living inside half a truth.”
Was that why Julianna was interested in her? She didn’t like it. “Go ahead.”
“What about the people you do know? The other people you live with? Are they going to make it?”
At least she was calling them people instead of kids or orphans. They started up the hill into the Arboretum, and Coryn waited until they’d crested. She stopped at a lovely spot, where the view opened out onto the Seattle skyline: tall buildings and arched bridges and bright colors, and almost all of it green with summer crops. “No.”
“None of them?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll make it, but I have Paula, and somewhere I have Lou. The others? I hope they do okay, but I don’t see how. There’s six seniors, including me, in the orphanage. Two are addicted to actual drugs—that designer crap that’s supposed to make you brilliant and does for about a week. They’re both losers. They can only finish their homework if they’re high. Two more are addicted to Survival!—you know, the game?”
“I’ve heard about it. I don’t play.”
“Of course you don’t. I don’t either. Survival! is for idiots. Well, no,” she amended the thought. “One of them is a high-functioning Autie. He’s probably the reason they’re still okay.”
“I’ve never even seen the login screen. Can you tell me more?”
“You go through pretend-scary situations, like getting attacked, or almost getting into an accident. If you get out, you go to the next level. If you lose, you die, and you have to wait a week to play again. If you get to the middle levels, the game uses real landmarks and mixes them with AR, and I think it even uses actors. If you pay.”
“Actors?”
“People who you pay to pretend to be the bad guy. Anyway, these two can’t afford that. It’s not supposed to do you any real harm, but two people died last year, in the real world. They were playing together, and the game told them to jump off a building. They did.”
“A friend’s grandson died in that game.”
“These two—I can see them doing that. They almost never have to take a week off.”
“Is that everyone?”
“There’s one more. Mary Susan. She might make it. At least she’s got social skills. She’ll probably choose more education. I heard a rumor she inherited funding for it.” A small note of jealousy stung her, but she ran it out while she waited for Julianna’s next question.
“So that’s two out of six that will probably achieve full adulthood. You know the odds are more like seven hundred to one—in the opposite direction—in the places we’re running through, in the kind of places where I live.”
Coryn smiled at the implication that Julianna expected her to make it. “Yeah, but you’re rich.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You didn’t tell anyone about me, so I decided to trust you. I can still trust you, can’t I?”
“Who would I tell?”
“Newsies, for one.”
Coryn snorted. “I
don’t need money that bad. I’d rather run with you again.” She glanced over in time to see a smile crossing on Julianna’s face.
“Maybe we can do that. So you will keep my secrets?”
“I don’t have anyone to tell them to anyway.” After Julianna fell quiet for a while, she added, “I won’t tell anyone about you. I promise.”
They finished the next four miles in companionable silence. They ran over the industrial areas on the right side of the old West Seattle Bridge, which had been reclaimed for peds and bikes, but which ran under the new rail and car bridge, so the view was flattened and the air smelled of salt and oil. This was one of the few parts of the new track that was actually open and old, and Coryn felt crowded enough that she turned the AR volume down so far it was all a very light overlay on her real senses. She kept glancing over at Julianna, verifying that she was really there, and that she’d really come to find her.
The course finished with a trip up and along the entire Bridge of Stars, starting from the West Seattle side. The run up was long and beautiful, and Coryn kept looking for whales. She spotted boats and windsurfers and a small plane. When they made it to the top, Julianna suggested they pause almost exactly where Coryn and Paula has stopped that one day. Coryn’s breath was so sharp she had to force out the word, “Please.”
At least ten other people stood on top, enjoying the view, so she turned to Julianna, using their secret channel so her whisper would be words in Julianna’s ears. “What about you? Are you angry? Is that why you found me?”
“No. I wanted company. I mean, no, anger is not why I found you. I do have anger.” She paused. “Don’t we all, these days? It’s like the whole city is running on the fast button and no one can get off.”
Julianna actually sounded a little defensive, which surprised Coryn. She had always seemed so in control. “I never thought the super-rich were angry.”
“Why not?”
“Well, they have everything.”
“No one is hungry anymore. In some ways we’re similar.”
“I only have a few choices. You can do anything.” She stared down at the building below them, where the rich lived on the top floors. They had walkways between buildings so they didn’t have to touch the ground unless they wanted to. That was where Julianna had joined her today, on one of those walkways that had been incorporated into a training plan. For all she knew, Julianna lived like that. She probably did.
Julianna also stared down at the buildings. She didn’t respond to Coryn other than to look severe and contemplative. But then, she had never answered questions about herself easily. She liked her secrets.
Still, Coryn was sad to be almost done with her run. She’d be back in school in a few days, and after that she’d have to choose. Whatever she chose, it probably wouldn’t earn her much more than basic-basic, at least not for years. She thought briefly of asking Julianna for a job, but that felt so wrong she rejected it. She wanted more from Julianna than that, although she couldn’t have said what. She didn’t need a mother. Besides, she had Paula for that.
She watched Julianna look down at the city rather than across the water, the anger and confusion now gone from her face, replaced with a simple, thoughtful look. Her body appeared calm, her chest barely heaving, even after the long run up. Wrinkles spread out from her eyes and puckered her lips, but she looked vital in spite of the signs of aging. Coryn tried again. “So what are the rich angry about?”
Julianna shook her head. “Maybe I’ll tell you some day.”
“Have you ever seen a whale?”
Julianna raised an eyebrow at the change of subject. “Of course I have.”
“I haven’t. Do you think we could see one from up here?”
Julianna turned around and looked out over the water. “It would be pretty small.”
“Still . . .” Coryn squinted at the shiny water, wondering if so much sun would make it harder.
“Is that one?” Julianna pointed a little to the north. “Maybe a whole pod?”
Coryn tried to follow her finger. Black and white half-circles seemed to rise and fall, and she was pretty sure she spotted a tail. “I think so.”
“Maybe someday I’ll show you some up close.”
“That’s not allowed anymore.”
“Not by whale watching. You can see them pretty well from a small seaplane, and as long as you’re high enough it doesn’t bother them at all.”
Coryn stood watching until she couldn’t see the whales at all anymore.
Julianna whispered, “We should go.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I can leave you here.”
“No.”
At the end of the bridge, she turned one way and the older runner turned another, but not until they’d waved at each other and traded smiles.
CHAPTER SIX
Coryn stared at the fifth note she’d gotten from Lou that school year. Less than one a month. This was the shortest, too, easy to see on her wristlet screen.
Everything is going great. We’ve been working on taking down old farms, which makes the land clean again. Pulling out fences and pulling out barns. I hope you are doing well.
She hadn’t even mentioned Coryn’s choice. Surely she’d kept track enough to know it was coming. It had only been two years!
And now she only had a few days.
The final semester of school had gone by in a brutal blur. One of the addicted twosome had managed to die in an immersive VR just before Coryn got back. He had been so high he forgot to eat or drink. While she wasn’t going to miss him—or any of these people—it made her angry that no one had cared enough to check on him. She’d been out running with Julianna and Paula, the other two—including Ghit—were still making it through levels of Survival!, and Mary Sue had been on college visits.
The old keeper robot had been replaced by a far nastier version, one that she couldn’t tease or sneak out past. As a city-registered amateur athlete, the new robot had to allow Coryn out three times a week to exercise. At least she let her take Paula, but three days wasn’t enough to keep the walls from closing in.
And then there was Marilyn, the real person who checked in on the orphanage’s residents every day; tall and thin with a face like a lemon and the most outdated wardrobe Coryn had ever seen. She often asked the kids to tell her their secrets, which meant no one would say the sky was blue. At least Marilyn turned everyone in the orphanage against herself, creating an awkward truce among the residents, which kept Coryn from being targeted too much.
She reread the letter from Lou. It told her nothing useful. Was Lou happy? Was she safe?
Lou only told her good things. It was one thing to hide stuff that shouldn’t be talked about. Coryn hadn’t told Lou a thing about Julianna, but she had written about the dotty old minder robot’s evil replacement, and the idiots who played games when they should be studying. Lou’s letters were too good to be true, like marketing posters or something. In one letter, she’d written that she was working on a fishery. The next letter said that she was still doing that, but now they were wrecking a dam, and the one after that described the winter and the wonder of fresh snow.
Lou’s letters and Julianna’s words about Outside clashed.
Coryn leaned back in her seat, scowling as she glanced back and forth between the tiny screen on her wrist and the much larger one on the desk before her. She’d recently started getting up before dawn to do research, and what she found mystified her. So far, most of it sounded like just what Lou had been writing. Except that if she pushed hard enough, read enough different articles from different sources, and drew out timelines and lists of data, little things disagreed with one another. Place names seemed to vary. There wasn’t very much video—Coryn could pull a video of anyplace in the city for almost any time in the last year and see what had happened. If she discounted pure marketing material, she’d only found about twenty videos of Outside so far. There should have been far more, shouldn’t there?
It wasn’t enough. Almost none of the videos were of people.
She hit another link on the screen and found what looked like another news story but turned out to be one she’d read before, except reworded and posted by another source. She closed it and opened another link that turned out to be a list of poems inspired by Outside. Interesting, but not very helpful.
People clearly did work out there. There were news stories. Someone had written the poems. Lou was there; she didn’t doubt that.
Coryn sighed and considered logging off. And do what? She wanted to talk to Julianna, but the older woman had been invisible, even in the news.
She talked about her choices with Paula, which led to logic arguments that Coryn hated and lost.
She stared at the notes again. She would never know what happened to Lou unless she went Outside to find out. There had been no choices like Lou’s to go Outside right from high school this year, and even if there had been, she probably wouldn’t have won a spot. Coryn was smart and got good grades, but Lou tested brilliantly.
Maybe none of the available choices seemed acceptable because none of them were acceptable. She had family, and that mattered to her. It had to. Every other path seemed to end in the same kind of unhappiness that had killed her parents.
There.
That was the central thing that had been dancing with her, being elusive. Her parents had abandoned her. Lou had abandoned her. She wasn’t going to abandon Lou.
CHAPTER SEVEN
On a cool, rainless early-summer day right after she graduated, Coryn toiled up Cherry Valley Road with Paula beside her. They were already far to the west of the main Seattle skyline and near the inside edge of the dome. Partway up, she turned and looked west, toward the glowing megacity she had chosen to leave behind. The sun had fallen past the skyline so she no longer had to squint. Red-gold skies reflected through the windows of tall, silvered buildings, which rose like swords from rivers of green streets.