by A. L. Davroe
I grin. “I dunno, maybe not in combination with that thing around his neck. Might stop traffic.”
As Gus laughs, a self-conscious Morden touches his neck. “What’s wrong with my ascot?”
I make a point of critically circling him before saying, “There are at least forty hexadecimal colors that shouldn’t be in combination on that thing.”
Morden sniffs, the mustache he’s grown out bristling. “You have no taste in fashion.”
I lift a brow.
“Well, there’s something I never thought I’d hear someone say to you,” Gus says, his tone serious.
Nadine comes in the next moment. She’s wearing a wig, too, one that matches her natural hair color but gives her long, pin-straight hair that reaches past her backside. And a good thing, too; I’m not sure if her skintight mini-dress could do the job of covering her rear end on its own. Her long legs are covered up to the knees in shiny white plastic boots, she’s got huge white plastic hoops in her ears, and a broad white headband in her hair.
“What do you think?” She strikes a pose.
I stare at her. “I think I’m regretting sending you to go shopping for me.”
She grins. “Oh, I didn’t get this for you. This one is mine. She bends and rummages in a shopping bag, then pulls out a white ruffled top with ribbons and a pair of what I’ve read are called jeans—only these are ponderously flared around the bottom of the leg. Finally, she pulls out a thick leather belt and a small vest. “These are yours.”
I take the vest and hold it away from me like the betassled, plague-ridden thing it is. “Nadine, you’ve just reiterated why Developers are Developers and Designers are Designers.” Turning, I hold up my new vest and give Gus a pleading look.
He grins at me. “Soon as we have those calculations, we’re out of here. Promise.”
A new fire of determination flaring up in me, I turn back to the heap of junk he has brought home to the house we’re renting. Realizing that they’re being ignored, Morden and Nadine disappear. A few seconds later I hear the television blasting the theme to the show I’ve come to learn is called Schoolhouse Rock. I stare harder at the mess, trying to see how this could possibly become what I need it to be. I let my head droop, overwhelmed.
Gus comes close to me, puts an arm around my waist, and presses his face close to my ear. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you sure these will work? I mean, can’t we at least try for something more modern? Maybe the twenty-first century?”
“I’m not sure if there is anything more modern, Elle. We could go for years and never find what we need. Besides, we’re running out of jump stones.”
Sighing, I drop into the chair—a chrome-legged thing with a vinyl orange seat. It matches the orange laminate tabletop, the yellow counter, and the black-and-white checkered floor. Oh, and the green box called the refrigerator, and the stupid cat clock with the tail and eyes that tick with the time. I don’t even want to think about the shaggy brown rug or the thick, brown-orange-green tartan-patterned upholstery on the parlor furniture, or the wood paneling. All of it has one matching quality: it’s ugly. The Designer in me is in constant crisis mode. I can’t even go outside. It’s worse out there. Row upon row of the same ugly houses…and those pink flamingos…
I shiver, dismissing the thought, then bury my face against my arm. “We’ve been in Discoland for too long. I want out.”
Gus sits next to me and puts a hand on my knee. “Look, it’s not that bad. According to what I’ve been reading about this era, this kind of technology shouldn’t exist yet. They’ve got the integrated circuit, but the PC isn’t available yet. I don’t know how this got here, but be thankful it did. I can help you rebuild it; I’ve got training as an Engineer.”
I glance at him. “You’re an Engineer?”
He makes a hesitant expression. “N-No, I’m not an Engineer. I just have some additional training.”
I give him a wry look and point a finger into his chest. “Real World you is a code I’d like to crack, Gus, I really would.”
He takes my hand, kisses it, and grinning, presses it against his heart. “You already have the most important code.”
I roll my eyes. “You are a cheese sphere.”
He cocks his head. “I think you mean cheeseball.”
“Same difference.”
He looks around the room, his face more determined than I think I’ve ever seen it. “We’ll make something out of this mess if I have to disembowel the toaster and the refrigerator to do it.”
I laugh. “It shall be our Frankenstein.”
“Franken-what?”
“Frankenstein. It’s a book about a mad scientist who created a monster out of the parts of other humans.”
“Ah, a man after my own heart,” Gus muses.
I flex my brow. “So, by Engineer you mean Genetic Engineer then?” I tease. “Besides, the person who wrote the book is a woman. Give her the credit.” I reach out and pick up a flat board with crude alphabetical buttons. “Is this thing a keyboard?”
He smirks. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Ugh, this stuff is arcane,” I whine, my eyes rolling skyward. “It’s going to take me forever to design the program without a G-Chip. Do you know how slow typing it is going to be?”
He shrugs. “As soon as we get the numbers in hand, we’ll leave.” Gus slips out of his chair and kneels in front of me, a hand grasping mine while the other escapes into his jeans pocket.
For a brief moment, my heart skips a beat, thinking he’s going to do the wonderful custom I read about—proposing with a ring. But instead of a ring, Gus pulls out a jump stone and presses it into my palm.
Confused, I look up at him. “What’s this?”
He smiles at my closed fingers. “Our last jump stone.”
I cock my head.
He closes both his hands around mine. “Elle, when this is all over, I want to stay with you. This stone is a promise that once we reach the Central Dominion and fulfill our quest, we will start a different kind of game. We’ll use this stone, go wherever you want. You can maybe design things and sell them like that lady at the shop in Canal Town. It doesn’t matter to me, where we go or what we do, as long as you’re happy, as long as we’re together.” Finally he looks up at me, expectant and shy.
I stare at him, mouth open. Perhaps this is something like the proposal and engagement ring. More than I initially thought.
He swallows. “Say we can do that? Say you’ll stay with me, continue playing with me?”
Unable to find words to describe the welling pulse of emotion in my chest and stomach, I nod.
Relieved, he smiles and pulls me into a hug.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Post-American Date: 12/29/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 9:45 a.m.
Location: Dome 5: Evanescence
“I can’t get this stupid thing to work,” I growl. Frustrated, I throw my flex-bracelet on the ground and attempt to storm away from it. My mixed emotions just cause the hover-chair to spin in a confused circle and then bump against the wall.
Meems giggles at me. “You will figure it out. You just need a break.”
“I can’t concentrate. I’m too hungry.”
I’ve been on Tasha’s gruel diet for almost a month now. I’ve lost that natural curvature I once tried so hard to hide. Now I wish I had it back. I wish I couldn’t see my bones, wish I weren’t slowly starving to death. Every day I see Guster’s smiling face, his love for me, and I’m consumed with guilt. I may not live to fulfill my promise to him, yet I can’t tell him why, and I can’t ask for help. I could never put him in danger like that.
So, every day I stare at the clock, wishing for my time in Nexis. At first, it was a need to see my father’s world, to have my legs, to be with Gus, and to feel like there was a point to my existence.
/>
Now, more than anything, I just want to escape the gnawing emptiness in my core. I want to get back into the game so I can taste real food and see my body as it should look. I want to escape my prison, not just these four walls, but Evanescence and this time of no hope. I want the world as it should be. I want possibility and the safety of Gus’s embrace.
Meems looks away, hiding her face behind a curtain of short-cropped sunny hair. “I have tried to ask Katrina to increase your portions, but she claims it’s out of her control. She says if you keep asking me to bother her, she will sell your father’s workstation.”
The chair backs up so that I’m hovering protectively before the workstation. “Over my dead body,” I hiss.
“At this rate,” Meems reflects, “you will be dead.” Her face contorts as if she’s in pain. “I feel that I am not fulfilling my duty to you.”
The chair drops a little, reacting to my low mood. “Oh Meems. It’s not your fault.”
“I would cry for you if I had tear ducts.”
I try my best to smile for her. “I’ll be okay. It’s enough that you’re here with me. If not for you, I would have gone nuts a long time ago.”
She nods but still looks depressed.
I prop my chin on my fist and glare at the bracelet on the floor. I’d like to pick it up and try working on the puzzle again. I want something else to think about, something I can control. But, it’s out of reach until Meems decides to be nice and pick it up for me. It’s little things like this that make me hate my handicap most.
“You know,” I venture, wishing I had magical powers like those I’ve read about in old stories. “There used to be these people called superheroes. They used their minds to make things move.”
“Those were stories made for entertainment.”
“I know, but it’s still a novel idea.” Then, after a moment, I add, “It might come true. Androids were once fictional.”
Meems cuts her icy eyes at me. “There is a difference between science and magic.”
My stomach chooses this moment to growl. I blush at her expression and bite my lower lip. “There was also this superhero who was a regular man. He used to steal from the rich and give to the poor.”
Meems’s brow lifts, interested despite herself.
“Gus told me about him. They called him Robin Hood.”
I’d like to do that. I’d like to steal the food right off Katrina’s plate and give it to people who need it. I wince, expecting my G-Chip to zap me for the rebellious thought. But my punishment doesn’t come. Frightened, I straighten. “Meems?” My voice comes out in a shaking whisper.
“Yes?”
“I-I just…” I pause, uncertain if I should admit it. I think of a few other illegal ideas. Changing my age in my files so that I can receive Mods. Nothing happens. Hacking into the Main Frame. Nothing. Stealing the credits out of Katrina’s account, breaking out of the house, picking up a rock and bashing someone’s brains in like the Disfavored man did.
The G-Chip doesn’t do a thing. It’s not punishing me for thinking illegal thoughts like it always has in the past.
Heart pounding in my ears, my eyes fly around the room. I can’t breathe. Is this a test? A mistake? What’s happening? I’ve never heard of someone’s G-Chip not working. No, wait. It does work—at least partially. I can still interact with Tasha and my bracelet. So, either it’s not sensing my rebellious and illegal thoughts, or the messages it’s sending me to stop thinking these things are no longer getting to where they need to be. It’s damaged. I touch the scar on my head. Was it damaged in the crash? No, it corrected me in the beginning, when I was first imprisoned and I had dark thoughts of killing Katrina to escape. Why not now? Did it…did it get turned off? Adjusted?
I turn to the desk with new urgency.
“What?” Meems demands. “What’s happening?”
“Shhh.” The screen begins blinking through the various security levels on Tasha’s system. I can’t have Tasha overhearing what’s going on and reporting my G-Chip malfunction. I need to understand what’s wrong first. Maybe I can fix it on my own.
Wait. Do I want to fix it? The screens begin to slow. Of course I do. They speed up again. Do I? Slow down. It’s for my own safety. The chips are to help maintain civil order. Stop. Civil order? Is my falsified death, my captivity, my torture civil order?
Tasha’s securities screen is in front of me, asking for the access code for the Inhabitants section. What happens if I don’t fix it? All I’d have to do to get some food is hack and reprogram Tasha’s Nutritional Allocations section. If I am able to hack the securities section, then that will mean that I am able to do something that no one else without G-Corp’s clearance is able to do. It would mean the civil controls aspect of my G-Chip are completely offline. It would mean I am lawless, that I can move without being seen.
Like a spider.
Swallowing, I begin hacking the code.
Meems sets the plate down in front of me. “Are you sure about this?” she asks, her voice unsteady. She’s worried. I’m mortified.
I did it. I hacked into Tasha. No one except an adult in a household should be able to adjust Nutritional Allocations, but I did. And the G-Chip didn’t punish me. It let me do it. I expected security droids to crash through the doors and windows. But I waited. An hour. Two. Nothing happened. Eventually my hunger drove me forward, and I couldn’t wait any longer.
I look down at the brushed steel plate. Genetically altered broccoli never looked so green, synthetic beef never looked so tender, hydroponically grown potatoes never looked so fluffy and light. I wipe the drool off my chin and begin tucking in.
“I cannot believe you did that,” Meems reflects. “It is illegal.”
I swallow and take a gulp of fructose bubbly, a sad version of what I assume used to be soda. “So is imprisoning someone and starving them to death.”
She remains quiet for a long time. The broccoli disappears, so does the steak. “How did you do it?”
I shrug. “I thought about being like Robin Hood and stealing food from that fat, horrible Katrina. Stealing is illegal, so the chip should have stopped me, but it didn’t. I hacked the security system, changed Tasha’s coding so that she wouldn’t report me and made it so that she’d feed me like normal. Still, nothing happened.”
“How?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”
She narrows her eyes. “Does this not seem suspicious to you?”
I grimace at her. “What it seems like is a blessing. I have control now, that’s all I care about.”
“You know I am required to report you, Ellani,” Meems says in her mechanical voice.
I glower at her. “Go ahead. At least they’d get me out of Katrina’s clutches.”
Meems purses her lips. “I do not want to report you.”
“Then don’t.”
“I have to. It is in my programming.”
“Funny,” I say. “You seem to be having a lot of trouble following your protocol lately. Why haven’t you reported me already, Meems?”
She seems confused by this. “I-I do not know.”
“Sometimes, I wonder how you do it. It’s supposed to be impossible for a robot to go against its programming. In fact,” I say, setting my fork down. “You shouldn’t be as humanlike as you are, either. Sometimes I really want to take a peek inside your head and see exactly what Dad did in there.”
She puts her hands on her head. “You would not dare.”
I laugh. It feels good to laugh. I haven’t done it in so long. At least, not in Real World. “I’m not going to touch your head, Meems. That would be wrong.” I respect her too much for that.
She gives me a suspicious look, but I just go back to shoveling mashed potatoes into my mouth.
After a long time she says, “You say it would be wrong to tamp
er with my brain, but what you have done is also wrong. Illegal.”
“And my captivity and torture isn’t?”
Meems frowns at me. “Those chips are put there for a reason. Our society will not operate properly if people start breaking the rules.”
“I know,” I say with a sigh and then I laugh to myself. “A society full of rules placed on rule breakers.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Look, I’m not going to do anything.” Much as I want to take what is mine, liberate myself, exact vengeance—I’m not a criminal. And I still have no idea what I’m up against. Not, for the first time, I worry that G-Corp—maybe even the President himself—is behind my captivity. I have no idea why, and perhaps that’s a paranoid thought on my part, but fighting something that large would be foolish—so would drawing attention to myself. “The food thing is the only rule I’ll break, okay?”
She doesn’t look convinced.
“Oh come on, you can’t tell me you’re honestly okay with me just lying down and accepting my death.”
A slight headshake is the only gesture she gives me before the alarm goes off, telling us that it’s time to go back into the game.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Post-American Date: 2/16/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 4:54 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Discoland; Nexis
The last sheet falls from the printer, landing in a neat stack. Guster collects the stack and taps it to smooth the edges. “So now all we have to do is collate the data, right?”
“Right.” I turn back toward Frankie—the name we’ve given the massive room-sized super computer that Gus and I had to build in order to execute this one complicated differential math equation. “Oh joy, another program.”
Guster steps close to me and steals a quick kiss. I lean in to him, wanting more. I want him all the time, but he pulls away, grinning. “You’ve done well, Elle. Don’t act like you don’t enjoy this.”
“Maybe, but—” My words are broken off by a crash in the front hall. A moment later, Nadine screams and then shots are fired.