Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  “Sounds kind of fun to me,” says Yaz. “The whole world was created to be ten times bigger than you are with super-lifelike plants and giant automaton animals so you feel like a little creature running around in nature. I’ll probably camp out the night before it opens so I can be one of the first people inside.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?” I feel woozy and empty again, and everything is beginning to annoy me.

  “I might get a full sponsorship out of it if enough people hit my PRC feed. And today Mika told me that if I can get enough sponsorships and product placements, I could have a shot at a spokesperson internship with One World Fashion.”

  I lean against the wall on wobbly legs. “Is that really what you want to do with your life?”

  “Obviously, I should be a fashion designer.” Yaz lifts her arms as if to say, ta-da! “My employment algorithm proves that. But there are only a few positions open, so I have to get my foot in the door, and Mika says—”

  “What does Mika know?” I grouch.

  “More than you give her credit for,” Yaz says. “Besides, I could use her help. Not everybody can post the best grades and have a mom and dad like yours and call the OW CEO Auntie Ahimsa. I need all the connections I can get.”

  I frown at her. “I don’t use my parents’ connections to get special treatment.”

  “I know you don’t, but you don’t need to. And I know you think it’s all fun and games how the Dynasaurs try to mess with One World all the time, but most of us can’t afford to do that.”

  “That’s why we stay anonymous,” I tell her.

  “That’s not the point,” she says. “You’ll be able to have any job you want because you’re crazy smart and talented and, like it or not, well-connected, but people like me can’t bite the hand that feeds us.” I start to protest, but Yaz shakes her head and says, “That’s just the way the world works.”

  I cross my arms like a petulant child. “Well, it shouldn’t work that way!”

  “No kidding,” Yaz says with a laugh. “And humans should still eat food and have unlimited numbers of babies. But the world doesn’t work that way anymore either.”

  “If you ask me, the whole thing is stupid!” I press my fingertips into my temples to try to stop the pounding inside my head.

  “Are you okay?” Yaz asks me. “You look weird.”

  “You mean weirder than usual,” I snap. I meant it to come out funny, but I sounded mean. “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “No for real.” Yaz studies my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Isn’t there anyplace less crowded and noisy in here?”

  “You’re at an EntertainArena.”

  “I realize that,” I say with a tired sigh.

  “I know what you need.” Yaz grabs my arm and tugs. She looks right then left, and when she’s sure no one is watching, she slides along the wall between the entrances to Hedgy’s World and Rugged Racers to slip through an unmarked door camouflaged between the two cyberworlds. I stand there like an idiot with my mouth hanging open until she reaches out and yanks me through the door, too.

  * * *

  “What is this?” I whisper when we’re on the other side in a pristine and nearly silent white hall.

  “Shortcut,” she whispers excitedly. “You hack. I sneak.” She winks and hurries down the hallway with me following closely behind.

  Again, I stand and stare at her, amazed by secret Yaz who’s come out to play. “How come you never showed me this before?”

  “You never come to the EA with me.”

  “If I’d known about this … wow, look!” I stop and point to the data-access panels positioned by the back entrances for each cyberworld we pass. “Dynasaurs would flip out if they knew about these. You should put this on your PRC!”

  She rolls her eyes and yanks me past the panels. “Do you know how much trouble that would cause?”

  “Yeah,” I say with a huge grin.

  We traipse down some stairs and through another hall then pop out a hidden back door into an empty cyberworld. “Guess where we are?” Yaz says, almost triumphant.

  I look at a huge open pit painted black, which looks vaguely familiar, but in my addled state, I can’t quite place it. Even Jilly seems befuddled because she’s got nothing to say.

  Then an automated voice with an old-world southern accent starts up. “Welcome back, ya’ll! Haven’t seen ya in a long spell. Come on in and make yerself at home.”

  “No way!” I half groan and half laugh. “Is this Pesky Petey?”

  Yaz cracks up. “This is the only place in the entire EntertainArena that’s quiet because nobody comes here anymore. I heard they’re going to tear it down and put in something new.”

  A hologram possum in an old-fashioned bowler hat and bow tie appears at the edge of the pit and dances his little jig, singing, “Catch-catch-catch me if you can. I’m a little ol’ possum dressed like a man. I hide in trees. I hang by my tail. Bonk me with a hammer or you fail!”

  “I haven’t played this since I was ten,” I say. Bright lights flood the all-black terrain inside the pit. The surface rises and falls in a series of hills and valleys with tall spires poking up, as if we’ve stumbled on the burned-out remains of an old forest fire. After a second or two, the animators blink on and transform the pit into a virtual field with grassy rolling hills, leafy trees, and a clear babbling brook under a dusky pink sky.

  I laugh. “It looks so … so … so…”

  “Retro? I know! And look at that.” She points to the ugly pointy-faced hologranimal zipping across the field in front of us singing, “Catch-catch-catch me if you can!” over the twangy music. “Might as well be two-D.”

  I remember running myself to exhaustion with all my social-time buddies, chasing Petey who seemed so real to me back then. It was the newest thing when we were little, and we loved it. I almost hate seeing it again because now it seems so rinky-dink.

  From a rack by the pit, Yaz grabs two comically oversize hammers that light up and buzz as if they are thrilled that someone is here to play with them. “Let’s go sit by the pond,” Yaz says.

  I follow her on heavy legs up a hill, past some shimmering shrubs, and down to the edge of the water that never splashes. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the opossum zip by us, taunting us to try to catch him, but neither of us can be bothered to give chase.

  I cradle my head in my hands then lie back on the grass that isn’t there, which makes me think of the video I uploaded at the PlugIn the other day. “This would be better if there was some kind of animal grazing,” I say to Yaz. “And if they used smell generators to re-create the scent of fresh grass. Or, I know!” I sit up too quickly and my head spins. “Someone should make a game where you could hunt or farm your own virtual food!”

  Yaz wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound fun at all.”

  “But you could harvest everything and cook it and smell it!” I wonder if Basil’s device could generate the aroma of roasted lamb or fresh vegetables just dug from the ground. As I’m trying to imagine the smell of roasting meat, my stomach shrieks. I double over, hugging my knees to my chest.

  “Oh my god!” says Yaz. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I stay curled in a ball, avoiding her eyes, wishing the whole thing would go away.

  “No, really,” Yaz says softly. “Are you okay?”

  I peer up at her. “It keeps happening,” I whisper while clutching my belly. My heart races because I’m afraid Yaz will scoot away, but she does the opposite. She moves closer. “Mom tried giving me more Synthamil the past couple of days, but it’s not helping.” I sigh because it’s almost a relief to admit the truth. “But I can’t tell her because if she finds out, she says I have to see a specialist.”

  Yaz blinks at me, then she says quietly, “My cousin Enid had to see a specialist.”

  I stare at her. “Why?”

  “She got all obsessed with food. That’s all she’d talk about. Then it got so bad she started
eating weird things like dirt and lint.” She shudders. “My aunt and uncle took her from one specialist to another, but nothing worked. She ended up on so many different drugs, she was like a zombie.”

  Yaz must see the look of horror on my face because she quickly adds, “But Enid had a lot of other problems.…”

  “Like what?”

  “Mental problems, I guess. She’s older than me and this was a few years ago, so I don’t remember that much about it. My mom told me she would make up stories about how One World is really evil and how no one knew the truth but her.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Yaz chews on her bottom lip as if she’s reluctant to tell me, but then says, “She disappeared. Vanished. They heard from her a few times. Last they knew she was in the Outer Loop. Then she stopped using her Gizmo. They think she joined some kind of cult or resistance group and just sort of fell off the face of the planet. It broke my aunt’s heart. But that’s not going to happen to you! Your mom will figure out what’s wrong. She’s the smartest person in the world.”

  “She certainly thinks so,” I mutter.

  “I don’t think you should worry,” says Yaz, then she chuckles and points at Petey rowing by us in a boat. “Look at that stupid possum.”

  I draw in a breath and sit up straight. “You know, if you wait long enough, the program sends him closer and closer to you,” I tell her as he slinks around the edge of the pond toward us. I figured that out by standing back and watching the game over and over when I was a kid. I memorized Petey’s patterns and found the weaknesses in his programming then talked to my dad about ways to improve the game. If he was more unpredictable, the game would be more fun, I remember saying. My dad said, There’s a word for that. Verisimilitude. The more a game feels like real life, the more intense it is to play. “The thing is, he’s programmed to get clobbered. Like it’s in his DNA.”

  “Poor Petey,” says Yaz, bouncing her hammer off the ground. “Never stood a chance.”

  “Do you ever think it’s the same for people?” I ask.

  “What? That your DNA decides your future?”

  “No,” I say. “Because DNA isn’t deterministic. There are so many other things, like epigenetics, that come into play. I was thinking more esoteric. Like whether our fate is written in some cosmic code that we have no control over.”

  “You mean like your death has already been decided and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

  “I guess so.” I stare up at the fake pink sky. “But other things, too. Like, were you and I destined to be friends or…” I stop, not sure how to phrase what I want to say.

  “Or what?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. Do you think two people could be destined to meet and fall in love?” As soon as I say it, we both laugh out loud.

  “Sounds like a movie!”

  My body tingles as thoughts of Basil crowd my mind. “You don’t think that can happen in real life, though?”

  Yaz starts to answer, but then she stops and studies me. She’s always had what our personality testers call Above Average Empathy. It’s like she can read your mind sometimes just by looking at you and really listening to what you say or how you say it. “Did something happen?” She leans closer. “Did you meet someone? Is this about the guy you thought you saw earlier?”

  Slowly, I nod. Then a smile spreads over my face, and before I know it, words are pouring out of me as I tell her every detail of how I met Basil at Flav-O-Rite, his scent machine, everything we talked about, and how he invited me to a meeting. Finally I say, “I can’t explain why, but I think about him all the time, and I have this feeling.…” I sit up and press my hand over my breastbone.

  “What feeling?” Yaz looks leery.

  “This kind of dull, heavy ache in my chest. It doesn’t hurt. Almost feels good. And my stomach gets all loopy. And my heart races and my palms sweat, and I think I see him everywhere. And I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  Yaz stares at me perplexed and slightly amused. “You should tell your mom about that! Maybe that’s why your stomach’s making all those weird noises.”

  “The growling started before I met him, but do you want to hear the weirdest part?”

  “It gets weirder?”

  I hesitate.

  “Tell me,” she demands.

  “Okay,” I say, “but you have to promise not to freak out.”

  “What?” she leans in closer.

  “The same thing happens to him.”

  Yaz pulls back and shakes her head. “That is not normal.”

  Disappointment crawls over me like a shadow, and I fling myself backward to the ground. “I don’t care!” I holler to the phony heavens above me. “Maybe we were destined to meet.”

  “Ha!” Yaz laughs and snatches up her hammer. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Petey creeping toward us. She crouches, then in one quick motion she lunges and bonks Petey on the head. “Just like my hammer was destined to meet his skull!”

  I laugh as we watch poor Petey spin in circles, lurching from foot to foot while little hologram blue jays orbit his head. “Ah, ya got me!” he exclaims and falls to the grass where he disappears, replaced by a bouquet of wilting yellow flowers.

  “Let’s just hope my destiny ends better than that,” I say.

  * * *

  After the EntertainArena, I chug another blue Synthamil so my stomach will stay quiet while I’m around my mother. When I walk into the living room, I find my entire family gathered with my parents’ best friend, Ahimsa DuBoise.

  “Finally!” my dad shouts. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Why, what’s going on?” I ask, half afraid they know what I’ve been up to. But Dad is beaming, and then it hits me. “Is your product launching?”

  My dad never looks happier than when he’s got some new invention to share. I swear his green eyes are brighter and his sandy curls bouncier, like they’re buoyed on top of his head by all his brainpower. Ahimsa, on the other hand, absorbs every kilowatt of his excitement into her deep calm like a black hole soaking up light. As always, she is poised and elegant, with long graceful arms, a beaky nose, and huge gray-green eyes edged in kohl that take in every detail of her surroundings. Ever since I can remember, her thick black hair has been cut in the same short, swept-back style that looks as if she’s flying. Grandma Apple calls her the Bird Woman. Like my parents, she started out in science. They all studied at university together, but she quickly moved up the ranks of One World, pulling my parents along with her, until she was named CEO two years ago and she made my parents project leaders in their fields.

  “I had to see our first test group,” Ahimsa says as she gives me a cool, dry peck on the cheek. “How are your classes?” she asks, standing back and surveying me with arms crossed.

  “Fine,” I tell her with a shrug.

  “And your ICM?”

  I roll my eyes, which makes her laugh.

  “Yes, I know,” she says. “A necessary evil for the least common denominator among us. We really should have an exception for gifted children like Thalia,” she says to my mom.

  “It’s good for her to interact with kids her age,” Mom says glancing from me to Grandma Apple.

  “Enough chitter-chatter!” Dad is like an eager kid dying to show off his new favorite toy. “Come see what I have.”

  We all gather around the low table in the living room. I feel like we’re at a birthday party, watching a little kid open a present as my dad pulls out a small gray box and cradles it on his lap. “This,” he says ceremonially lifting the lid, “is the latest generation One World Gizmo.” He reaches in and takes out a small black device about the size of his palm and the thickness of his finger. I glance at Ahimsa. Her dark eyes shine with pride.

  “Looks just like the last generation,” says Grandma Grace.

  “Yes, it does,” my dad says. “But this one can do something no other Gizmo has ever done.”

  “It can do something that no othe
r working device on Earth has ever been able to do outside of a lab,” Ahimsa adds.

  “Cure male-pattern baldness?” Papa Peter jokes, patting his shiny scalp. We all laugh, even Grandma Grace.

  “Nope, still can’t do that,” Dad admits, but his enthusiasm isn’t the least bit diminished by our teasing. He turns the new Gizmo over and over in his fingers.

  “What’s the most annoying thing about your Gizmo?” Dad asks.

  “We only get to name one?” I say. Papa, Grandma Apple, and I look at each other and laugh with our eyes.

  “Yes!” Dad eggs me on. “The thing that most burns your butt!”

  I think for a few seconds then say, “That I have to have one at all.”

  “Exactly!” says Dad. “That’s why you, my darling, were the inspiration for this.” He holds the Gizmo flat on his palm for us to see, then he rubs his hand over the surface and it disappears. Everyone stares, flabbergasted.

  “What? Where’d it go? Where is it?” we ask each other.

  Dad laughs. “Still right here.” He rubs his hand back over the surface and the Gizmo reappears.

  We ooh and aah. Ahimsa claps her hands, delighted by our reaction. I lean forward to get a closer look because even I’m impressed.

  Dad smiles big at me. “We finally mastered the nanotechnology of invisibility cloaking!”

  “And it works the same, whether you can see it or not?” Mom takes it from Dad and practices making it disappear and reappear in her hand.

  “All the same functions,” Ahimsa says.

  “Does the cloaking mode scramble the locator?” I ask.

  “Excellent question!” says Dad, clearly proud. “Most of the work in cloaking up until now was to scramble radar signals so objects couldn’t be detected by other machines, but we did something different. We embedded tiny crystal molecules like hinged shingles across the surface. On one side they absorb light and microwaves so you see the object, but when you flip them those nanoparticles cancel the electron scattering. In other words, it bends the light around the object so your brain thinks it’s not there.”

  “Say what now?” Papa asks with a laugh. Then he waves his hands and admits, “Aw forget it. I’ll never understand, but it sure is amazing.” He takes the Gizmo from Mom and plays with it before giving it to Grandma Grace, who is equally impressed.