Beat

by Jared Garrett

  Rojer took the tool and nodded.

  I followed Fil to Dev 2.

  “You have to check in.” Fil leaned on his work station.

  I flashed my wrist at the sensor embedded in the side of the table. “Nik Granjer. Transition to Dev 2. Mentor Fil Kline.”

  And it was official. But no, the lady’s voice wasn’t done. “Four minutes late to shift. Released at 18:24.”

  “You could try getting here on time,” Fil said. “You know how the whole arrive late more than once, stay even later thing works, right?” He smirked.

  People said Fil tried to find reasons to irritate people. True story.

  I made a face at the tall man, irritated that I had to practically break my neck to look him in the eyes. So instead I quickly took in the work station. Two AktualizR printing machines with scanning portals and several reader attachments. Configuration consoles—I assumed that was how you fine-tuned the prototypes and components that Dev 2 built.

  Fil lectured at me for a few minutes, and then we got to work. At first, using the AktualizR machines was a blast. Once you loaded the design the people in Dev 1 sent, you had to set parameters and then you could watch the machines build the components, molecular layer by molecular layer.

  But that wasn’t designing or building, and it got old fast. And so did Fil’s general bugginess.

  “I hear you’re late a lot. How come?” Fil turned back to the larger of the two AktualizRs at our station. “cycle break down? Or maybe it was a girl?”

  He could stuff it. “Spam.” I felt my heart rate slowing. “Let’s just do the work.”

  “You’re the boss.” Fil snorted. “No, wait, that’s me.”

  I glared at his profile. Even if I wasn’t faster than the Enforsers, I knew I’d beat Fil in a race. He was obviously like way too many of the people in New Frisko who took the “Better calm than dead” and scary Bug statistics as total truth, keeping their heart rates under 100 all the time. They let their Papas lead them by the wrist everywhere, making all their choices about where to be at what time, and whether they should walk or ride their cycles, and how much time they should spend playing Bounce-a-Walk. Add to that the fact that all the kids my age, had to sit in boring classes, take the track we were told to, and walk around the School Dome at the exact same pace as everyone else . Even when I was done with school I’d still have to eat exactly what the central computer told me to eat, wear the exact same gray clothes and—

  I pushed the thoughts away. Nothing ever changed. And all because of the total drek that the Admins spewed: “The Bug is still in the air.” “If your heart rate goes over 140, you’re in the danger zone.” “Better safe than sorry, better calm than dead.”

  But after everything I’d found, I knew it couldn’t be possible anymore. A killer biotoxin couldn’t still be in the air after a hundred years. No matter what the Admins said. The question was why the Admins and the Prime Administrator kept saying the Bug was still around. And why people believed them.

  Unless it somehow was possible . . . My stomach flipped again. No. I’m right. I’m positive.

  Frag it. I needed to concentrate or I’d end up having to stay in my station even longer. I didn’t have time for that.

  At 18:40, I emerged from the Enjineering Dome, imagining my hands around Fil’s scrawny, irritating neck. The guy obviously had it in for me. Every time I got part way through a job, he poked his pointy chin in front of me and told me my parameters were off.

  Meaning I’d had to spend extra time finishing the last prototype—even after Foolish Fil was gone.

  I glanced around. A few people made their way down the sidewalk toward the center of town while two other guys pedaled their cycles the other direction, toward the residential districts. It all made sense, the way New Frisko was laid out, but it sometimes felt—empty. Everybody knew that pre-Infektion cities were laid out with businesses and jobs in the middle and living areas jumbled together. That’s why those people back in the old days had had to drive so much. Driving. I wondered what that would be like. The handles of those old cars were circles, not like my cycle’s handlebars.

  Unless something changed drastically, I’d never know what life had been like back then.

  A future of flat, powerless boredom stretched in front of me like the plain beige sidewalk material that surrounded me. This was living? I scanned the domes that made up so much of this district of New Frisko. Their unique colors glowed softly in the setting sun. Glancing around me, I walked to the right, toward my cycle and into the blind spot of the cameras on the Enjineering Dome and other buildings. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled the extending wire out of the ancient file reader, quickly threading it under the flap of my zip and yanking it up through my collar. An Enforser turned the corner on patrol, walking right toward me.

  I nearly swallowed my tongue; my right hand was still at the top of my collar, gripping the wire. I walked toward my cycle, scratching my neck with my right hand. Should I yawn? Whistle? I was an idiot. My heart thudded loud enough for people in the buildings nearby to hear it.

  I bent and flashed my Papa at the rack; my cycle unlocked. The Enforser walked by, not paying me any attention. The tension in my chest eased up, and I quickly fitted the tiny plug at the end of the wire into the slot I’d customized into my EarCom. I tapped my pocket and got on my cycle. The exposed wire between my collar and ear was skinny enough that nobody should notice it if I kept moving.

  After a moment of pedaling, the illegal sound of a woman singing filled my ear. Along with the voice was some kind of music produced by electrical instruments. The woman’s voice filled me with some kind of longing I only felt when I listened to this file. It seemed like she was singing about frustration, a wished-for happiness, and everything that should have been better about the world. I had no idea what the words meant; they were in a language I’d never heard.

  I made my way up the first hill on my way home, which ran along the northwest edge of Purple Rez. I pedaled quickly, needing to get home and get my homework done before dinner so I could keep my evening free.

  “Nik, you’re a fragging bug-eater.”

  I laughed and tapped the file reader lightly, stopping the music. “Well, Bren, you’re a tek-challenged spam bot who cries when the knockout hits.” I imagined the mic in my earbud sucking the words out of my throat. I didn’t even have to speak very loud for it to pick up my voice; the thing was so sensitive it captured the sound directly from my vocal cords.

  “At least I know how to win a cycle race.” Bren’s voice came through my earbud, automatically softened so it wasn’t loud enough to do damage.

  “Because you cheat.”

  “I don’t cheat. I’ll show you ton—”

  “Whatever, spam-boy.” I cut him off. He couldn’t mention tonight. Everyone knew the frequencies were monitored.

  A moment of silence passed. Bren got it. “Like I was saying, I’ll show you tomorrow. I’ll even give you a head start.”

  “I don’t need it.” I pedaled my cycle down the road toward my house.

  “Yeah, we’ll see. I’ll come by later?”

  “Yup.” I let the silence draw out for a moment before tapping my music back on.

  I let the music wash over me. I’d never understood why this kind of thing was illegal; there was nothing destructive about the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard. All that spam about the decadence of the pre-Infektion world, how all the media was depraved and how music and art were simply outlets for “man’s baser nature”—how could that be true of this music?

  I still couldn’t believe it had already been two years since I’d found the reader. I had left Hope Park on a dare from Bren. I stepped out into the grassy hills beyond New Frisko, knowing that the cameras and my Papa would send an Enforser after me. But I only had to stay out for 85 seconds and I would break the record held by Bren.

  Even though I knew other kids did it, at first, I thought I would be terrified and that some animal
would attack me within seconds, but all that had happened was that I smelled real grass, not the oxi-grass that covered yards all over New Frisko.

  I wandered for just over a minute, loving the feel of the shrubs and trees and grass, loving the smell of the dirt I kicked up. I was kicking at the dirt under a tall tree root when I caught sight of a small, blue case. I grabbed the case, knowing right away that I’d be in huge trouble if I didn’t turn it in. But something in it rattled, so I pried it open. An old plastic pen and the wafer-thin reader were all it held.

  Of course, I didn’t known it was a reader at the time. I stowed the case in my zip pocket and ran back to Bren and our families. That had been the first of many times that I’d left Hope Park and explored the world outside New Frisko. Those explorations usually lasted only two or so minutes since I didn’t want to get in trouble, but I had found I could cover a lot of ground if I moved fast. I’d only found one other interesting thing in my brief explorations. I was jogging slowly, pushing my heart rate to around 130. I wanted to go past a tall, tree-covered hill that was maybe two hundred meters away from the park’s edge. On the other side of the hill, in a deep, rocky impression in the earth surrounded by tall, powerful-looking trees, I found a big dark splotch. On closer investigation, I discovered it was the remnants of a huge, ancient fire that had been built in a deep pit. I dug through it with a stick I found nearby and surprised myself by finding a tight bundle of papers. When I poked at it, the bundle fell apart and a flash of white caught my eye.

  It took some doing, but I finally got the white paper and realized I had found a few pages from a pre-Infektion magazine of some kind. Images caked the pages, computer illustrations so realistic they somehow looked like photographs of actual, alien-looking humans. I stuffed the few somewhat shiny pages under my zip and ran back to the park, certain I’d meet a group of Enforsers, but when I got back, my Papa told me I’d been gone for only three minutes.

  Months passed of carefully cleaning the reader and poring through the ancient magazine pages, during which I felt like I was immersed in the old world. I considered asking my friends if they’d ever gone out and found something, but too many of them seemed too eager to follow the rules. They’d probably turn me in.

  But I was sure there were others, maybe even some adults, who had been able to slip out of the city for a couple of minutes and found things. Not that it mattered. I’d never find out who those others might be. Enforsers took their name seriously when it came to enforsing the rules of the New Chapter.

  After hitting a dead end at home, I snuck the ancient reader to the Enjineering Dome to dissect it a little when nobody was watching. It was there that I discovered the processor in the reader, analyzed the contents of the hard drive, and found some media files.

  It had taken more months to rig up an analog connection between my EarCom and the reader; I didn’t want a wireless connection, not in the always-monitored world of New Frisko.

  One night, in my room, maybe four months ago, I finally heard the one uncorrupted sound file on the reader. That night, my room felt small, my bed uncomfortable. I worried the Enforsers were going to somehow find out and come and take my new treasure. Perhaps they would even take me and I would disappear like Teacher Harris and others we sometimes heard about in quiet whispers.

  So I never told anyone about the song or the magazine pages. Or anything else. I wasn’t going to become a quiet whisper.

  I coasted along the road that marked the border between the downtown district and the residential areas.

  Nope. Tonight I would make sure of that. I might even become a shout.

  CHAPTER 3

  “We’ve been hearing about your work in the Enjineering Dome.” My dad spooned some fruit soup into his mouth; a small drop ended up on his chin. He didn’t notice. Mom’s hand appeared, dabbing at the spot with her gray napkin. He gave her a smile. She gave the same smile back.

  Ugh. Even the napkins were gray. It occurred to me that life in New Frisko was pretty gray, too. Boring, easy to keep clean, totally practical.

  “They say your ability with new tek is precocious,” Mom said. She swallowed a bite of protein paste. The paste was gray, too.

  I snorted. “Isn’t ‘precocious’ a word you use with little kids? Like babies?” Sometimes I wondered if Mom and Dad ever actually came home from their jobs at the Nursery.

  “Teknically,” Mom said. “But you’ll always be my baby.” She made a ridiculous face at me. She and Dad looked at each other, my dad offering Mom a small smile. I knew they were thinking about four years ago. That night I’d tried to forget.

  But they were good in the Nursery, caring for the little kids too young to be exposed to a world with a bio-toxin in the air. A bio-toxin that attacked hearts that were beating really fast. Of course I knew they worked in the Nursery, giving so much to the babies there, because they had wanted my sister so badly. I’d been excited about having a sibling too, even though a sister wasn’t as cool as a brother. Mom had gotten pregnant despite the doctors telling her that some condition she’d developed would keep her from having her second child. Everything had gone amazingly until six months into the pregnancy.

  I would never forget Dad’s face when he showed up late that night. He looked like his entire world had broken. He’d spent all of five minutes at home before riding his cycle back to the hospital.

  Mom had tried to put on a strong face when I saw her at the hospital the next day, but I could see her broken heart through her eyes when she cried. I was still ashamed of how much I cried that day.

  “In any case,” Dad said. “Looks like the algorithms are placing you in the Enjineering Track for Level 8.”

  I poked at the gray paste on my partitioned tray, fighting the excitement that boiled in me. I loved tek but it would be a lot better if I could choose my track instead of a computer. I used my spoon to cut a canal in the paste. What was this stuff, anyway? They didn’t talk about food much in school except to rag on the old fast food and Rest-Ronts that used to be everywhere.

  “Enjineering’s a good track, Nik,” Dad said. “The selection algorithms never go wrong.”

  “They got us right,” Mom said.

  I swallowed my protests about not being able to choose the job I would do for the rest of my life; my mom and dad loved what they did and I’d never heard them complain about anything related to their job or life. And it wasn’t as if I had my eye on a girl or anything, but everybody knew that pre-Infektion couples chose who they would marry out of love.

  I watched my mom and dad, seeing how calm and satisfied they seemed. I remembered their faces during that awful time when we lost my sister. Somehow they’d found peace. Now, Dad was always easy-going. He smiled easily, and listened to me when I complained. Today when I got home he noticed my frustration right away. Even from the living room, he could still tell when I left my shoes on the floor and didn’t put them away, a habit I’d picked up from Bren.

  “Rough day shadowing?” He and Mom were playing some kind of game with holocards. They’d tried to explain Jin to me before, but I’d gotten bored after they’d talked about how many cards you held in your “hand.”

  “Yeah. I guess I finished my work with Rojer today. Got transferred to Dev 2.” I plopped onto one of the soft couches in the living room.

  Dad turned his head around. “This is bad?”

  “The project with Rojer was awesome, Dad. That cycle was going to be pretty fast.” I leaned back. “But Fil’s stuff is boring. And too easy.”

  “There’s always something to learn. Just take a load off, then get back to it.” Dad turned back to his game.

  “You hungry, Nik?” Mom asked, tapping a holocard.

  “Not really.” I got up and went to my room, chatting with Bren, Koner, and Melisa about school and tek stuff through the EarComs before getting to my homework.

  Now at dinner, watching Mom and Dad eating the protein paste and other nutritives, I wondered how my life would have been differ
ent a hundred years ago. The New Chapter was all about efficiency, even down to the new spelling rules. The stuff I’d seen about the pre-Infektion times painted a world that was a lot more complicated, that allowed people to do what they wanted. It might not have been efficient, but I thought it would have been a great time to live. And die, of course; the Bug had killed a lot of happy, inefficient people.

  Ninety percent of all humans had died, and that was followed by a couple years of radical change, which led to the New Chapter and the Papa with its knockout, the savior of humanity.

  “You’ll enjoy enjineering.” Dad wiped his gray napkin across his face, dropping it onto his tray. “You got these?” He used his chin to point at the food trays and stood to go to the living room. Mom followed him.

  “Yeah.” The truth was that I liked working with tek, and I was good at it. Really good at it. But it burned to not be able to choose anything. Who knew? Maybe I’d been placed in a class with people that some algorithm had said I would become friends with. “Hey, Bren’s coming over in a bit.”

  Mom called over her shoulder. “That’s fine. Don’t forget curfew.”

  Like I could.

  As I grabbed the trays and took them to the Food-Jeni, the machine that delivered all of our meals, I heard the skreen on the living room wall come to life. Speekers’ voices discussed the news and business of the day while I scraped the tiny remnants of dinner off the trays into the tube that carried away leftover food and recycled it. I waited, hoping the computerized system wouldn’t make a note of too much food being left uneaten, as it had in the past when I hadn’t been able to bring myself to choke down the paste.

  “Optimal heart health requires all proteins and other nutrients to be consumed,” the stupid thing had said. I’d had to get another helping of the bland paste from the Jeni.

  I wished I had lived a hundred or more years ago, when I could have tasted those hamburger things. And French fries. I wasn’t sure what “French” meant. I knew that frying was an old way to cook things, but I’d never heard the word “French” outside of one of the ancient magazine pages.