“Wait. Jess. You’re joking, right?” Jay says with a laugh that’s on the edge of anger.
“I’m sorry.” I do my best pleading cringe. “I’m a little distracted.”
The early assessment and whatever that was with Blake last night are the distractions. I can’t quite believe I punched him, broke his nose by the look of it. He’s probably going to have two black eyes. But more than that punch, as surprising as it was, is the way time seemed to slow down around me. I want to say it was shock, or some kind of temporary fugue state, but that’s not what it was. Something happened.
“My mother’s thing, remember?” Jay practically yells at me.
“Oh, that,” I say with relief. Jay’s mother is hosting a party to celebrate his seventeenth birthday. That’s what the thing is. It’s going to be awful.
“We met up, what? Five minutes ago? And you’re already trying to drive me crazy?” He pinches my butt. Hard. He’s pretty worked up about this party.
I yelp and dance around. “No way. You are not blaming your crazy on me.” I give him a solid punch in the gut. “You had years of exposure to your mother before we even met.”
I go rock climbing, so my arms are strong. I’ve never needed to go to the gym to work out and “stay in shape” like some of the other girls do. I’m five feet ten and a half inches and the coach at school said I have an athletic body; he tried to get me to go out for track and field. I don’t like the idea of people watching me like that.
But hitting Jay is like hitting concrete. He doesn’t even notice my punch.
“And of course I’m coming, I already told you. That’s why I didn’t know what thing you were talking about. I thought you meant some other thing.”
“You didn’t actually confirm with my mother,” he complains, “and I know how you feel about people, in general.”
“I don’t have a problem with people, in general. Just the idiots,” I say. “And your mother.”
It’s kind of a toss-up, I suppose. A mother like mine, who actively avoids you and has already decided you’re not worth the effort, or one who pays too much attention and has too many expectations.
Jay nudges me as an unfamiliar dark-haired boy, a bit younger than we are, walks toward us. He doesn’t look right at us, but he flashes us two crossed fingers with his right hand.
I look up ahead and see them coming our way. Three Devotees. Jay and I mumble the greeting in unison, “Blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul,” and we look down as they brush past us in their crisp white lab coats. It’s best not to be noticed.
The Devotees work for the Department of Evolution —everyone just calls it Devo— and they do the work of Creation in partnership with God. The Department of Evolution is under the direction of Secretary Galton. Basically, she’s God’s voice here on Earth. In the midst of the genetic revolution a hundred years ago, when the Genetic Integrity Act closed America’s borders, strict protocols for border biosecurity were instituted to stop genetic contamination. But we were still in danger of being overrun by the Deviants on the other side. Galton took control, ordered the fortification of our borders and gave the military the authority to do what they needed to do. Most people agree; she did what was necessary for our survival by relinquishing certain powers to the military to ensure our protection. Including the ability to create proprietary, genetically enhanced soldiers. The G-men. Since then, Galton has been leading us through the current stage of evolution, Regenesis, removing unwanted traits and improving and enhancing our best traits with the guidance of God.
In Social Biology class, Devotee Theresa taught us that we must all work for the common good, whether we like it or not. The less intelligent are more fertile and must be discouraged from breeding. Only those with desirable traits are allowed to produce the next generation.
There’s this section, practically a whole semester of tenth grade, where we studied pedigree charts, and DNA, RNA, proteins, and ribosomes. DNA is a double helix that carries the genetic information for all life. If only one part of one gene is wrong, it can create a whole generation of imbeciles, and that is not in God’s plan. Or in Devo’s plan. All Devotees have that DNA double helix tattooed on their forearm, as a constant reminder of their purpose in life.
That’s what the crossed fingers warning represents, the double helix tattoo.
We come up to the old Palace Theater. It’s been shut down for a long time, and the large sign that hangs out front lost its first A, so it says PLACE. Someone found a way in down the side alley, and now kids hang out there. They say, “Meet me at the place.” If they’re overheard or an adult sees a message, it only says “the place.” So far it’s stayed secret. I’ve heard they have illegal sim-seats in there, ones that can scramble the biometrics and mask what you’re doing.
“Jess,” Jay says as he slows right down, “something’s wrong.”
“It’s time to wake up!” a skinny boy with curly red hair yells. He’s standing on a wooden crate, and people are hesitantly milling about. “People are dying! Out there, children are starving, and you send them poison. People are sick, and you send them plagues. The blood of our blood is on your hands!”
There are gasps at his blasphemy, but a few people cautiously move toward him in morbid fascination. His eyes are wild, there’s spittle on his lips. Jay grabs my arm to tug me backward.
When the bullet enters the boy’s left temple, it’s as if he doesn’t know it’s there for a moment.
He’s about to yell, his mouth opens, his lips form a word he will never say. Then he topples backward, and I hear the terrible thud as his head hits the ground. The people closest to him quickly step back. No one screams, no one looks up to see the Guardian with the rifle on the roof across the street. Everyone wants to blend in.
Another Guardian comes toward the Palace. The Guardians work for Devo and protect us from Deviants. The stiff collar somehow makes his slightly rumpled, brown uniform shirt look crisp. The yellow double helix is on the front of his cap, and above his left shirt pocket.
“Move along,” he says. “It was just a Deviant.”
We all know that the plain fact of his yelling out crazy stuff in the street like that is proof of his deviance. It’s what happens sometimes, but it’s most prevalent during adolescence. The deviance manifests and people become dangerous, psychotic Deviants, intent on our destruction.
The Guardian rests his hand on the butt of the holstered pistol hanging from his belt and waits for the brown panel truck with the whooping siren we can hear approaching.
Jay swears at him under his breath and keeps hold of my arm. We hurry off with the rest of the crowd, wanting to move as far away as possible. I look back in time to see somebody dart in behind the Guardian, dip a hand in the boy’s blood, and leave an angry red handprint on the front of the Palace Theater. A red hand. I’ve heard the whispers but never thought it was true. As I stare at it, I bumble into Mrs. Yamoto, one of my neighbors. She walks fast, gripping her daughter’s hand tightly. Last year, I saw the brown truck with the double helix on the side parked in front of her house. The Guardians had come to take her son.
Wes.
That was his name.
2
No one is home when we get to my house. Jay and I like to hang out here a lot. When my mother is here she’s always in immersive simulated reality or simmersion as it’s called. From her sim-seat she can enter her simbody and experience her personal programming as if she is right there, in it. Although they don’t see her, she can sit in at another family’s table and engross herself in the drama of someone else’s life. And if the real people aren’t exciting enough there’s always orchestrated reality to go visit, where she doesn’t just watch, she participates.
Every night you can immerse yourself in the news broadcast as it updates us on the Deviants and the security of our borders, sometimes you catch glimpses of the abominations on the other side. You can even sit in when a Traitor to Humanity is paraded out. I don’t
like watching that, when they strap the traitor down and give them the injection. But a lot of people like to be up close and personal, want to really see the traitor’s eyes as they die.
My dad only comes home on weekends because he works in Minneapolis, for Cortano. They do lots of things, but my dad works in the agriculture division. Cortano, with Davenport Technology, provides elite seeds for all the food crops. Their slogan is Breeding, Biotechnology and Agronomics. Cortano keeps America on the right path. The Devotees control Davenport Tech. They are the only ones allowed to be trained in biotechnology, which means they actually control everything.
My Dad has a pretty big job in distribution, making sure all the seeds are delivered where they need to go. He’s responsible for the big four—corn, soybean, cotton, canola. He’s been working most weekends for a while now. I think he wants to avoid my mother and I can’t say I blame him. Maybe he’s avoiding me, too.
I think I’ve mostly figured out the arcane algorithms that govern our personal programming, but they’re always changing, adapting, monitoring. I make sure I subscribe to the right realities, even the occasional teenage rebellion program because that’s what is expected. If you’re too squeaky-clean and dull or too outside the norm, they’ll pick up on it.
I make sure Jay is subscribed to the correct realities too.
“That boy…” I start, finally finding the courage to say it out loud.
People think that every single thing we do or say is monitored, watched for signs of deviance. There can’t be hidden cameras in every single room of every single house and on every single square inch of sidewalk. There’s a lot of surveillance for sure, but even that can’t be reviewed in any detail, there would need to be one person watching for each person being watched. And then who’s watching the watchers when they go home at night?
Our sim-seats are a two way feed, collecting information and adapting our personal programming and purchase profile. Wherever there is a sim-seat there is routine surveillance. I’ve conducted a few innocent experiments, watching the reactions, the subtle changes to my personal programming. Key words can increase the level of surveillance. And even when it’s triggered, it’s the complex algorithms that determine the reaction. It’s got to be a pretty sizeable reaction or a singular, specific trigger before an actual person is watching and the real tracking begins. All the biometric data collected through the sim-seat means that even without retinal scans, fingerprints or DNA, you can be tracked anywhere by how you look, how you walk and by the sound of your voice. So caution is necessary, and certain words are to be avoided without eliminating all key words. The absence of those words is just as noticeable as their use.
“What about him?” Jay asks.
“His hair was an unusual color, did you notice?” I say, asking him if he saw the red hand. I suspect that those words together, red and hand, are one of those singular triggers that automatically bring close surveillance.
“Very unusual, but becoming more popular I think. I’ve heard other people say they’ve seen similar coloring, appearing all over the place,” Jay replies, telling me that he saw, and that the hand has appeared elsewhere.
“Do you think the boy got the idea for his hair from someone else or did he do it on a whim?” I ask, because I want to know if Jay thinks the boy was part of the Red Hand or not.
Jay shrugs. “He probably saw it on someone else,” he says. “But it was a strange way to show it off, he must have known what the reaction would be.”
I nod in agreement. There was only one possible ending to the drama in front of the Palace. If it was some misguided suicide attack, it seemed to serve no purpose, so maybe he really was a crazed Deviant. But then again, I have no idea what the Red Hand wants.
There have only been whispers about the Red Hand, a secret, underground group whose goals are murky at best, and seem in opposition to Devo. There are escalating rumors of suicide bombers and other outrageous tactics. But only near the border, never here, right where I live. And we’re always told it’s crazed random Deviants that are attacking, but what if it’s organized, what if it’s the Red Hand? It’s extremely exciting and frightening at the same time.
I march to my sim-seat and pull up the list of possibilities for my future. It hovers in the air in front of us.
THE LIST
Devo – Get called to be a Devotee and dedicate my life to the work of Creation.
Settle Down – Find my match and produce the next generation.
A Career – Become a career girl, move to Minneapolis and work for Cortano.
The Military –The opportunity to serve my country and defend our borders from Deviant attacks.
And that’s the list. It’s a pretty short list.
I made the list yesterday, with Jay, before I knew about my early assessment. Number Four seems like the path in life most likely to get me killed. Just after you turn seventeen is when Devo normally schedules your assessment. At the interview, the Devotees ask some questions, there are tests and measures, and they take the blood sample for the epigenetic scan. This way they can make the right choices for your Good Match list if you’re going to settle down, or they can figure out what your career is going to be, based on your aptitude. A few weeks later, once they’ve decided, you find out your path in life. I guess I’ve always assumed I’d be put on a career path, Jay thinks so too.
If you settle down, then you have one or two children. We can’t overpopulate, so no one has more than two. Once the Devotees have approved the genetic partnership of a couple, then it’s left in the hands of God. From conception to birth, human interference is not allowed. When a baby is born, a Devotee examines it before it is even held by its mother. If it shows any sign of deviation, then it is God’s will, and the Devotees take it, as a kindness to the mother. This is what happened to my mother’s second baby. It’s not a subject I have ever discussed with her. But if you had a sibling that was a Deviant, it increased your chances of being a Deviant too. That’s one reason you could get an early assessment notice, if they think something might be wrong with you.
Jay’s mother is practically a Devotee, the way she acts. She already has her own list of girls for Jay to settle down with, and hopes a few of them will be on his official Good Match list. They are all invited to his party, except Jay isn’t interested in girls. We have a bet on who will kiss a boy first. Jay will win. But Jay’d rather go along with his mother for now than deal with any histrionics about him not settling down and producing the next generation. I’ve been over to meet his mom, and I’m Jay’s “date” whenever he needs one. Which makes it easier for me, too. But we never hang out at his place with her around. She doesn’t approve of me. And I don’t suppose I approve of her, either.
Jay is properly horrified when I tell him about my assessment. We can be less circumspect now because this is all any seventeen year old is talking about right now, so it’s expected.
“What if they want you to be a Devotee?” Jay asks as he paces, jumping to the most obvious explanation.
“Don’t even think it,” I moan as my finger traces nervous circles in my quilt. “What am I going to do? I need some sort of a plan.”
Besides having a deviant sibling, you can also get an early assessment if someone recommends that you become a Devotee. If the looks she gave me in class count for anything, Devotee Theresa did not put me on her list. If you do get called to be a Devotee it’s an honor, and not the kind of thing you can politely decline.
Jay throws his shoulders back and crosses his arms as he considers my situation. But he knows there isn’t anything I can do, and there is no plan B.
“It’ll be fine,” Jay decides, and waves a hand to dismiss my concern. “Maybe they don’t want you to be a Devotee, maybe they only want to check you out because of your sibling, and it’ll be nothing.”
Jay’s not convincing me, though. Plus, I haven’t told him about Blake yet. Or that strange thing that appeared on my skin. This morning, as I was getting dre
ssed, I spotted a brown mark just below my ribcage, on the left side. It’s like a freckle, but not. It’s small, about the size of a flake of oatmeal with the same kind of rough edges. It’s nothing. It won’t wash off. It will probably go away. I’m not even thinking about it. At all.
There are deviations that don’t manifest until the teenage years, like that boy earlier today. That’s why they double-check you at seventeen with the epigenetic scan, to detect any unexpected alterations in gene expression. That brown mark I’m not thinking about, at all, has got me worried. Plus, there’s what happened with Blake and the slow-time thing. If the mark is still there when I get to the assessment, I’ll have a different kind of problem than having to join the Devotees.
Jay just turned seventeen, so his assessment will be soon, too. He brings up the last possibility from the list, the military. He says that instead of the Devotees making him into something, he can make something of himself. He tells me again about the Special Forces. If you have the right skills you can enlist as soon as you turn seventeen, before the Devotees get to you. The only thing Jay has ever seriously wanted to be is a pilot, and the only way he can do that is in the military. He’s been prepping for it, doing a lot of physical training and practicing in the sim-seat.
If he qualified and passed the evaluation, then he could join the Special Forces Airborne. They are the elite, and it’s extremely difficult to qualify. The military is also the only path that isn’t controlled by the Devotees.
There’s a recruitment center near school. We always walk by real slow, to catch a glimpse of what’s going on inside. I can see the longing in Jay’s face whenever we pass by. Some kids have even talked to the soldiers. There’s been several thirteen year olds that were recruited, and I’ve seen them disappear inside after their parents sign them up for the Genetic Enhancement program. There is a substantial signing bonus.
Around here, no one ever wants to stand out or look different, but with the soldiers it’s as if they don’t even care. Sure, they’re all neat in their uniforms when they’re on duty. But when they’re not, when they’re hanging out in the yard between the recruitment building and their small housing unit, they do whatever they want and the Guardians can’t interfere. They talk loud, and they cuss even louder when they’re wrestling each other or betting on their frequent competitions. They have wild outfits and haircuts, and some even have tattoos that we can glimpse when they walk around all shirtless like nobody’s business. You’re only supposed to make improvements to the body you were born with. Why would they want to look as if they might be Deviant?
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