by Carol Riggs
May 24.
He’s amazingly awesome! After we sang together (oh my GOSH, we blended outrageously well) the voice director said we sounded excellent, and turned around to make notes on her e-screen. That’s when Gavin leaned over, KISSED the side of my face, and whispered that I sang better than anyone he’d ever—
As fast as I can, I haul my mind back to the walk-in closet where I crouch on my knees, breathing fast. No, no, no!
Flipping realms of schizophrenia. Not only do I know what’s in Jodine’s personal diary, I know her actual thoughts about this memory—I heard them in my mind. I shiver as I slip the case back under the sweater. There are way too many residual memories left inside this body.
Can I last five more months of this without going crazy?
I replace the box on the shelf and rush downstairs for a much-needed sanity break. Music. I need music to drown out the echoes of Jodine’s mental voice. While I work the resistance machines, I crank the tunes in my streamer to crashingly loud and let it blast through my mind. Once I’m finished and back in my room, I force myself to read a section of mind-numbing Reducer contract info. My eyes blur after a short time.
I glance at the closet. Unbelievable. Jodine has a boyfriend, and I assumed she didn’t. What does that say about me? I shouldn’t be surprised she has one, but I am.
Jodine’s residual revealed something about myself, not just her.
It must’ve been difficult for her to decide to become a Loaner, and leave Gavin to wait for her for six long months.
Okay, obviously I can’t stop thinking about this. No sense fighting it.
Time to take action.
I bring up the ERT science site and click around. There must be a reason why brainmapping would miss these residual memories. Are they stronger and therefore harder to dislodge when the synapses are chemically activated during mapping? The visions I saw were tied to important events in Jodine’s life, linked to powerful emotions. The nervous excitement of painting the sad fruit picture. That forlorn but stirring song she sang at the karaoke machine. The glorious high of evading the evil Cyberverse dragon. Her unexpected kiss from Gavin.
Although it’s fascinating research, I find no answers. In fact, I find no mention of residual memories at all. There’s also no data on things like personalities blurring or Doritos cravings being passed on. Though frustrating, it makes sense. Most Reducers stay in the Clinic where memories aren’t dredged up, so it doesn’t happen often, plus the Institute wouldn’t publicize them. If word got out the ERT procedure wasn’t as controlled or accurate as it’s supposed to be—like the WHA protesters were ranting about—it would be really bad publicity.
I drum my fingers on the desk. The WHA. It’s hard to believe they might be right about their claims. Some of their wilder accusations have already been debunked. But what if the WHA is correct about this one single thing? It’s a disturbing thought.
Somehow, I need to get concrete and accurate information about all this. There’s more going on with the Institute than I realized. What’s the truth? I don’t think I can count on Leo to give me an honest rundown. Even though he insists the residuals aren’t a problem, I hope someone is directing Institute scientists behind the scenes to fix the sloppy gaps of ERT.
Just as I’m pushing away from the deskscreen, my Institute phone sends out a message alert from Granddad. The text reels out fast and furious across the screen, like it’s on warp-speed.
What on God’s green earth are you trying to pull, Morgan Renita Dey? If you were younger and here at home, I’d take you over my knee and paddle you. Gramma would be having a conniption if she were still alive. She wouldn’t approve, believe me!
I grip the phone, frowning as I speak my text.
Wait, WAIT, Granddad. Slow down. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You don’t, do you? Well, give a good long think about what you did with the earnings of your last Reducer job—and what you plan to do with this job’s earnings.
Oh, haze it all. Somehow he’s found out that I’m helping pay off his bills.
Please don’t be upset. They’re my credits, and I want to help.
It’s not your responsibility. You have tech school to save up for, to use for your own life. Blast this whole confounded situation. It’s bad enough your mom and dad are having to bail me out of the bills. You can’t use your money for this. I won’t let you.
I should just tell him I won’t, then slip credits toward the debt behind his back. But I’d like to keep things more honest between us than that.
It’s either I help pay, or we get sent to The Commons. I don’t think you want that.
Of course not.
The words stop scrolling for a handful of tense seconds.
Doggone it, I don’t know what to do. At the very least, I’m going to pay you back.
No, please don’t worry about doing that. We’ll figure out something.
Meanwhile—all because of me—your real self is a vegetable, and a copy of your brain waves is stuck inside someone else’s body.
I don’t know what to say to ease his guilt. I really wish he hadn’t found out.
I’ll be all right, Granddad.
You’d better be. Bye, sweetie. I’m going to go nuke some popcorn so I don’t nab another blasted cigarette. Already had my quota for today.
His screen goes blank.
Swinging my arms, I blow out a monstrous sigh. Well, that was uncomfortable, not to mention intense. More pressure about this job is not what I need right now. I know Granddad doesn’t like me helping pay the bills, but doesn’t he see that I think he’s worth it? Even with all that’s been going on lately—the residuals, the bottle bombs, and the numerous attacks—I have to keep this job. For him. For our whole family.
There are so many expectations and complications with this assignment. I’m trying to hold it together, but I can feel the strain, the cracks starting to form on my psyche.
Even slabs of concrete can be broken up after repeated and incessant slams of a jackhammer.
Shaking the tension from my arms and fingers, I drift into the living room and command the TV on. A talk show about recycling materializes. After a few minutes, an ad for a new model of car zooms over the platform, flaunting its holographic stuff as Dr. K. strolls into the room wearing workout sweats.
“There’s an ingeniously designed vehicle,” he says. “Nice aerodynamic lines. That same manufacturer pioneered the analyzing system to prevent drunk driving. No voice-activation if the driver’s breath count is too high.”
“That’s cool.”
“It’s technology, protecting us from ourselves.”
The car ad vanishes and is replaced by the image of an overweight blonde, her face glum. A lively narrator speaks of ERT while the image melts into Shelby Johnson’s smiling, thinner self, like the vid I saw in Leo’s office. The transformation looks fabulous.
“The Institute has great ads,” I say. Pity I can’t tell Dr. K. that I created Shelby’s slim new look.
Dr. K. sits on the other end of the sofa. “I’m glad they extended the program to include younger teens, so Jodine could join up sooner.”
“Maybe being thinner will make her happier.” I order the TV off, dematerializing a bunch of skiers.
“I have no idea.” Dr. K. rakes a hand over his close-cropped hair, hair that might be as curly as Jodine’s if it were longer. “I know Janeth and I haven’t spent much time with her the past few years, due to work responsibilities. We certainly appreciate your efforts to help her. I just wish the WHA would reign in its members and switch to more peaceful ways of protesting.”
“Yeah, what’s their problem? The Reducer program improves people’s lives. That ought to count for something.”
“Partly, the WHA doesn’t want the government to make regulations. They want the people to have the right to decide things like how much to weigh and whether or not to smoke.”
Put an end to “goverment” control. Yeah, I remember that sign,
the one Mr. Fringe-of-Stringy-Gray-Hair carried. “But people are turning themselves into walking time bombs by overeating and smoking. Congress is just protecting people from their own bad choices. Just like the car with the breathalyzer system.”
Dr. K. gives a somewhat weary smile. “I guess it’s a balancing act of how much control and regulations we should have, versus total freedom and choice. No one wants to compromise.” He stands. “On that cheery note, I’m going to work out. I’ll talk to you another time.”
The living room seems doubly empty after Dr. K. leaves. His words bounce around in my head. I don’t know why anyone would want to join the WHA. I saw Walter Herry’s vid, with him ranting about “taking rights back” and “using force if necessary.”
Yeah. Like attacking teenage girls and tossing bottle bombs onto Institute property help get people’s rights back.
I sigh. There’s about an hour until it’s time for dinner leftovers. I’ll give Dr. K. privacy in the gym, and I don’t feel like doing HoloSports, especially since I’ve already showered. Maybe I’ll do karaoke instead. That sounds more fun.
It shouldn’t be a problem if I take the rest of the day off for the holiday. I’ll invent something for my log entry to keep Leo happy, and say I forgot to turn on my exercise app. One evening won’t make a difference in my overall assignment.
The next day dawns as a fresh month to chase away the bleakness of Halloween. Or at least that’s my goal. It’s time to exercise hard and purge any remaining evidence of Doritos and candy bars from my hips. I’ll keep dogpaddling in the stormy sea that working for the Institute has become. When I get back to the house, I can do some more online searches and try to unearth what’s really going on—even if I have to sort through the conspiracy hype of the WHA site.
I meet Vonn at the park for our usual morning laps before he goes to work.
“Who triumphed, zombie-cyborgs or the aliens?” I ask him as we’re puffing along.
He throws me a mischievous look. “Can’t tell you. I don’t believe in spoilers.”
“Who said I’ll ever watch that movie?” I ask with a return smirk.
“You have to. It’s a classic, perfect for a Halloween shriek-fest. Maybe next year we won’t be Reducers, and we can watch it together.”
I marvel at him, with his nut-brown hair and the impish glint in his eyes. He hopes we’ll still be hanging out next October? Surprising, but I like the idea. A lot. “We still haven’t figured out a way to let our real selves know about each other,” I say. “It’s not like we can text one of our friends to tell us to get together.”
“Not with Leo and the auto-system screening our every word. He’d delete our messages, and we’d get immediately axed.”
Yeah. If Leo knew how much we were hanging out, meeting every day for walks and going to cafés and holding hands, our contracts would be erased in one single, terrible instant. Faster than we could say, “I’ve just lost all my hard-earned credits.” I’m extra careful when I dictate my daily logs. I never mention I’ve changed parks so Leo can’t tell my location is identical to Vonn’s.
I always thought it was an overblown scare tactic that Leo screened our communication. Maybe I was mistaken, like I’m discovering I’m wrong about a lot of other things about the Institute. Not a pleasant thought.
“I could leave myself a note in my school locker,” I say. “Or tell my friends in person. The problem would be getting to the Yellow Zone to talk to them. I’m not supposed to ride the MT that far, or let anyone see who I’m Reducing for.”
“We have a few months left to figure it out.”
I slip my hand in his. He’s level-headed, and as warming to my soul as a bowl of Nettie’s turkey-celery soup. Familiar and welcome. Even his appearance…but that’s crazy. Months from now he’ll be the same personality, but I can’t get used to him looking like he does now. In August he’ll animate his own body again, not Matt’s. How weird will that be?
“Hey.” I halt on the path. “Do you have a photo of your real self that I can see on your phone, so it’s not suspicious I’m checking it out? I don’t care if it’s against the rules to share. I’m really curious.”
Vonn pulls his Institute phone from his sweatshirt pocket and accesses his CyberFace profile. “It shouldn’t be prohibited. I think we just have to keep quiet about our Loaner info.”
I lean in to see what he’s got. Photo One: a close-up of a smirky dark-haired guy with a slightly hawkish nose and dimples at the edges of his smile. Photo Two: a distant shot of his lanky figure doing a handstand next to a few right-side-up guy friends. Photo Three: a crooked shot of him fiddling with his phone and giving the photographer a jovial thumbs-up.
I grin. “You’re freaking cute in real life. Kind of a joker, though, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” Vonn says in mock outrage.
Wait a minute. I look at the first photo again, and my mouth falls open. Those dimples look seriously familiar. Is he the hot guy from Leo’s waiting room—Superguy? A wave of dizzy joy hits me.
“We’ve already met in real life,” I say. “Back in June at the admin building.”
He cocks one brown eyebrow. “No way. Let’s see your pics. Cough ’em up.”
Heart thumping like mad, I bring up my photos on CyberFace. Smiling with Blair and Krista at a science expo that I dragged them to. Standing at home with Granddad’s arm curled around me. Cracking up with my old boyfriend at the Flash Point. Oops, I forgot to delete that last one.
“It’s you!” Vonn says. “You’re @geektastic! You were wearing black jeans and a bright red T-shirt. Your eyes are big and dark brown, like a gazelle’s. So adorable.”
“Impressive you remember my outfit.” I fight a blush that creeps onto my face. His whole description of me is flattering, to tell the truth. “Wow, crazy how we’ve been messaging each other all this time and didn’t know we were the same people.”
“I’m officially blown out of the water.” He looks it, too. His eyes blink, unfocused, and he fumbles his phone as he pockets it. “Who’s the lucky guy? I can’t believe you left a boyfriend behind to do this job.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I’m quick to say. “It’s been over since February. And I had a blast with our TeenDom chats.” It was a frustrating kind of “blast” at times, but that’s beside the point.
Vonn clears his throat. “So…if your thing with your ex is totally over, why didn’t you ever want to get together with me? I kept asking, real polite and all, and you never answered.”
I stare into his eyes so long and stony, it’s a wonder he doesn’t flinch. “Excuse me? I didn’t answer you? I must’ve asked at least a dozen times in a dozen different ways if you wanted to meet up. I asked what your name was, where you lived. If you wanted to set up a time when we could text longer. You totally blew me off. Never answered me once.”
“No way.” He grabs my hand. His grip is intense, almost frantic. “If you sent things like that, Morgan, I didn’t get them. I asked you about your name, too. I told you I’d take you out for your first taste of sushi. I said I’d hop an MT and hang out in the Yellow Zone with you anytime you wanted. After a while I just stopped asking, since I never got a response.”
“I didn’t get anything like that from you. It can’t be a site malfunction either, not with just parts of our texts missing.” The words drag from my mouth, thick and heavy. Something ugly is going on. I don’t know what, unless…a single, bitter thought spears me. “Oh, man. I think I know what happened. When we first started texting, you were doing your summer Reducer job, using your Institute phone. Then I started this job as Jodine, using an Institute phone. That’s what happened. I bet Leo deleted those lines.”
“What the haze for? We weren’t violating privacy restrictions.” Vonn’s voice is a growl, a rumble of dark thunder. “Our personal relationship is none of his business. It has nothing to do with being a Reducer and having a forbidden real-time relationship on the job, like we’re doing now.”
> “He didn’t want us to meet for some reason.” I try to think back to what I said, how I said it. “I do remember texting that it’d be way more exciting than Clinic exercising to go dancing or paintballing or hover-skating. Maybe he thought we’d start hanging out so much, we wouldn’t want to be Reducers anymore. He really needs dedicated workers.”
“Selfish son of a—” Vonn’s eyes glint with a white-hot heat. He starts walking off down the path at full speed, and I scramble to catch up with him.
We remain wordless for a few minutes. I let him cool off, and try to process what Leo’s done. Even as director, he had no right to delete parts of our personal messages. It’s one more thing added to my growing list of complaints against him. I can’t trust him about anything, it seems. I wonder if he installed tracking software on Jodine’s home computer…maybe it’s not a smart idea to scour the WHA sites while I’m on the job. I’d probably get flagged.
Crimp it all. Roadblocks everywhere.
I’m too limited with what I can do as a Reducer.
Although wow, Vonn is Superguy, the guy I met in Leo’s waiting room, and he really does care. He wasn’t ignoring me all those times I asked to get together with him.
Vonn slows his stride as his infuriated energy winds down. “We could’ve arranged to meet before you started your current assignment, if it weren’t for Leo’s meddling.”
“We only had one free day. At least now we’ve met, even if we are in different bodies. That thwarts Leo, big time.” Gee. I’m so practical, I’m annoying myself.
“I guess.” He blasts out a sigh, and throws me a sideways look. “You know, your real body is top-notch awesome, Geekling, but your Loaner’s pretty cute, too.”
“Not with this hair and freckles.”
“Nothing wrong with curly hair and freckles.” Vonn flips a coiled strand across my shoulder.
I roll my eyes, and he cracks a more relaxed smile. We link arms during our final lap.
“Same time tomorrow, same place,” I say as we finish.
“You got it, Slave Driver.” Vonn salutes and sets off for work.