The Unhappening of Genesis Lee

by Shallee McArthur

  “No.” Yes. “Well, maybe some people do.”

  Confusion wrinkled my forehead. I had always thought of them as less—less smart, less caring, less able. Kalan wasn’t that way at all. He was everything I never expected in a Populace boy, actually.

  “Maybe,” I said slowly, “maybe we’re more like . . . Links. We have different strengths and weaknesses, but we’re all good for something.”

  Kalan’s eyebrows puckered.

  “What?”

  “That’s not what I expected you to say, I guess. Do you really think that?”

  I studied my fingertips through the thin webbing of my gloves. Who decided the Populace were less than us, anyway, basing their level of humanity on a single biological characteristic?

  “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  He smiled. “Then I’m glad we’re partners, Gena Lee.”

  Partners. With a Populace. Mom and Dad would bury him in the backyard if they found out.

  “So what next?” he asked.

  The question spurred my brain into action. “We have to learn what the thief wants people to forget. If we find the connection between the victims, we can narrow down who has a motivation to steal Links.”

  “Could you talk to your friend, the one who lost her Link?” Kalan dipped a finger in leftover sushi sauce and sucked it dry. “Or maybe the other victims?”

  “There’s nothing they would know,” I said. “We don’t know what questions to ask, even if there was something they could tell us.”

  The faces of the victims flashed through my mind, and one was more familiar than the rest. Blaire’s mom, Miranda Jacobs.

  “We can’t ask the victims,” I said, “but I think I’ve got someone else we could talk to.”

  8

  But over all things brooding slept

  The quiet sense of something lost.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam LXXVIII

  “You’ll be late for work if you come with me,” I said. Our feet clanged up the metal of the tramstop steps, and Kalan shrugged. “My boss won’t care, as long as I get my hours in. I’m not about to leave a Mementi girl alone on this side of town.”

  It would be good to have his un-stealable memories there. Though I could do without the male chauvinism.

  The tram approached, and we boarded. This one was nearly full, and I faced more stares, some hostile and some curious. Somehow the glares didn’t bother me now. A glare was distant. Unthreatening. I’d take that over the menace of a tram full of Mementi pressed too close for comfort.

  Kalan let me have a seat at the end of the row and plopped next to me. “Who’s this girl we’re going to talk to, anyway?”

  “Blaire Jacobs. Her mom is one of the theft victims.” Miranda Jacobs seemed too sweet to be involved in anything someone would steal her memories for.

  “And you know Blaire how?”

  “She’s my sister’s best friend. She helped get Ren a job at Happenings.”

  Blaire was always the nice one, who’d let me play Barbies or go out for ice cream even when Ren didn’t want me there. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year. That time, she’d held tightly to the hand of her Populace boyfriend and hadn’t noticed me.

  “She works at Happenings?” Kalan said in surprise. “Not Ascalon?”

  I nodded stiffly. Blaire had told Ren—and Ren had given the same reasoning to Dad—that working at Happenings would give her an “alternative viewpoint” before she went to college to study neurology. That it was actually an act of devotion to the Mementi, because they were willing to go into enemy territory to learn new things. Do actual research, and take that knowledge with them to Ascalon someday.

  Obviously, Dad didn’t go for that kind of reasoning.

  Both Blaire and Ren had been more or less shunned by the entire community. Hadn’t they stopped to think what Happenings might learn from them? I knew Ren really was trying to help. But that didn’t stop the vague betrayal in my heart.

  Now, here I was, crossing lines, too. Walking right into “enemy territory” to learn new things for the benefit of the Mementi. For the first time in years, I felt like I actually understood my sister. I quivered inside at my own necessary betrayal.

  “Blaire’s not going to know much about her mom’s theft,” Kalan said. “I mean, if the thief is stealing memories so people forget something specific, Blaire would’ve had her Links stolen too.”

  I tried to shake off my dread. “Yeah. But she could at least give us some ideas. Maybe her mom had been acting strange, or seeing certain people a lot.”

  The tram slowed as we approached the stop closest to Happenings. When the door opened, the chants of a crowd sounded in the distance.

  I paused on the tramstop platform. The white X-shaped Happenings building loomed over a throng of several hundred Mementi. It looked like an ant hill—disorganized at first, until you picked out the patterns of their march. Back and forth, circling around, bouncing their little signs and chanting phrases I couldn’t hear. A huge section of the building painted with tech-paint played Happenings ads. The perma-smile of Liza Woods, CEO, beamed down on the crowd, mocking them.

  “I forgot about the protest,” I said.

  Kalan frowned. “I didn’t think it was this big. What do they think they’re going to do, close Happenings? Make all the rest of us move out?”

  Not my problem right now. Focus on the task. “Happenings won’t let us in with that crowd out there.”

  “Could you call her?” Kalan suggested. “Or call Happenings and say you want to talk to her? Maybe she could meet us somewhere.”

  Like Happenings would be fielding calls today. Thanks for calling our protest hotline. You are caller number 3,000,001. Your call will be taken in the order it was received.

  “Let me try my sister,” I said. “I don’t have Blaire’s new number, but she will.”

  I unwound my Sidewinder from my wrist and wrapped it around my ear. “Call Ren.”

  It rang for a moment before she picked up. “What?”

  “Ren? It’s me.”

  “I know it’s you, dummy. I’m at work. What do you want?”

  I stifled an impulse to growl at her. “Is Blaire around? I need to talk to her, but she changed her number.”

  There was a pause. “I haven’t seen her in a while. She moved in with her boyfriend two months back, and got some job closer to where they are.”

  “She left Happenings?” I stared at the distant building. “But Ren, it was like her dream. She’s the one who got you—”

  “I know. Sorry, Gen, but she’s all weird lately. Why do you need her?” Ren sounded agitated. I heard voices in the background. Would she get in trouble for being on the phone at work?

  “Do you at least have her number?”

  “She changed it again.”

  I glared at Happenings.

  On Ren’s end of the line, someone called to her. “Look, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Don’t bother with Blaire. Her boyfriend is really the only thing she cares about now.”

  “What’s wrong?” Kalan asked as I clicked off. He leaned against the metal railing, strong arms bracing him. His eyebrows knit in concern.

  “Blaire left Happenings and moved in with some boyfriend,” I said. “My sister hasn’t seen her in two months, and she changed her number again.”

  “So dead end.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t make sense, though. She lost everything when she went to Happenings, all her friends, everything. And it was worth it to her. She wouldn’t just leave that, not after she’d sacrificed so much.”

  “So, what? You think something happened to her?” Kalan asked. “Two months ago is around the same time the Link thefts happened. Could she have been a victim, too, and . . . I don’t know, gotten lost?”

  The possibility made me shiver despite the sun beating down on me. I unwound my Sidewinder from my wrist and twisted the flexible band over the neck of my shirt. I aimed the small projector lens at my hand to see it bett
er in the sunlight, turning on the holo screen.

  “Let me see if I can find her,” I said.

  My hand flickered into a colored map littered with numbered GPS locator dots. I dragged a finger across my gloved palm, moving the map around.

  “You know, it’s kinda creepy you guys can track each other with these phones,” Kalan said.

  “It’s totally voluntary,” I replied. “And the only people who can see your name are ones you’ve granted access. See the numbers by the dots? Those are codes for emergency services, and each one is tied to a person. The code stays constant if you change phones or numbers. Only on-duty cops are labeled with names, for emergencies.”

  “Has Blaire cleared you to see her?”

  “No. But a friend of mine hacked the system ages ago, and we all found out our numbers. We used them as code names, as a joke.” Blaire and Ren had thought Kinley was a genius. Which she basically was.

  I entered Blaire’s number into the search box. CODE NOT FOUND, blinked the words on my screen.

  “She’s not here,” I whispered. A tremor went through me. It took me a minute to realize it was an approaching tram. It whooshed past us, swirling the ends of my hair out from under my scarf.

  “She probably turned off her phone or something.” Kalan’s voice had an extra-soft tone that said he was trying to comfort me. “Or maybe she skipped town altogether.”

  Mementi didn’t “skip town.” This was the only place we belonged. The only place we weren’t feared and hated and bullied. Though I couldn’t be the only one who dreamed of the rest of the world. Maybe Blaire really had gone somewhere.

  My fingers tapped over my laser screen, and I rewound the timing on the GPS map. Her number didn’t pop onto the map until nearly two months ago. She spent a lot of time around a certain apartment.

  “There,” I said, stabbing at my palm. “That’s where she lives. Or used to live.”

  I rushed down the tramstop steps.

  “Gena,” Kalan called.

  “It’s not far,” I said.

  He jogged up next to me. “She’s obviously not there.”

  I shook my head. “I want to see what we can find. It’s too convenient. Her mom is a theft victim, and Blaire didn’t show up on the map for the last two months. Around the time the thefts started.”

  I couldn’t let Blaire go. Not without at least looking into this.

  We soon found a crumbly four-plex with Blaire’s name on the mailbox. No answer when I knocked. I tried to peer in the windows, but they were all dark. I jiggled the doorknob.

  I paused. “It’s not a DNA lock.”

  Kalan shrugged. “Not many of us have those. Lots more expensive than keys or keypads.”

  Private DNA locks were another tech Ascalon had perfected and rolled out to the world. They were only about seven years old. Before that, when we still used a key, my parents hid a spare . . .

  A potted cactus squatted next to Blaire’s door. I rotated the pot and grinned. She’d stolen Mom and Dad’s hiding trick. Nobody wanted to stick their hand into a potted cactus, but if you cut the needles off the back, you could bury a key without getting mauled.

  I rooted in the dirt and came up with Blaire’s key.

  “Wow.” Kalan’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t even want to ask how you knew about that. So now you’re breaking into her house?”

  “I’m not breaking in.” I stuck the key in the lock. “I have a key. And she’s a friend, and she could be in trouble.”

  “This might not be her place anymore. We could ask the neighbors . . .”

  The door opened. As I stepped over the threshold, Kalan said, “Wait.”

  I froze.

  “If she’s really missing, they’ll search the apartment. They’ll pick up your DNA traces.”

  I looked down at my red leggings, jean shorts, and gloves. “They’re not going to find much DNA from me. Besides, she’s my friend. It won’t be weird to find my DNA here. You, though . . .”

  He crossed his arms. “I’m supposed to stay here while you investigate?”

  “Look-out duty is important, too.”

  He scowled, but turned to watch the street.

  I stepped into the apartment and shut the door. With the outside world closed off, the place hummed with silence. Dust motes drifted in lines of light shining through closed blinds, a lazy, eerie dance. Vague shapes of furniture were all I could make out as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I coughed softly to dispel the emptiness.

  I didn’t know what to look for. No way was I pawing through Blaire’s stuff. Personal space was sacred. Somewhere you could be yourself without worrying what other Mementi would remember about you.

  General observations. I could do that.

  The place was one big room. A bed to my right, an ancient flat-panel TV and a tattered armchair across from it, a small table and two chairs in the kitchen straight ahead. A few doors—closet and bathroom, probably.

  No signs of a struggle. No overturned chairs or drawers emptied onto the floor. A holo-picture of little-girl Blaire with her parents glowed dimly in the corner, still plugged in and undisturbed. The place was immaculate. Just like her. She’d always had a neat line of stuffed animals on her bed, and tried to clean up dishes before anyone finished eating lunch.

  I walked to the bed and hit the comforter with my hand. A plume of dust puffed into the air like a mushroom cloud. Way too much for having been gone a few days. Not a good sign.

  I turned and something crackled under my feet. I picked up a piece of paper, squinting to read it in the dim light.

  Blaire,

  I thought you’d be back by now. I tried to call. My place is ready if you still want to move in when you get back. If you don’t . . . please call me.

  Love, Tucker

  The note set off a domino of connections in my head.

  Love, Tucker. The boyfriend, the one Blaire had told Ren she was moving in with.

  Thought you’d be back by now. Ren had said Blaire was with the boyfriend. Blaire seemed to have told him she was going elsewhere.

  The tidy room. Wherever Blaire had gone, she’d been prepared to leave. It wasn’t a last minute dash.

  The note drifted to the floor. Even her boyfriend was searching for her, and he had expected her by now. I opened the door to find Kalan pacing.

  “You didn’t find anything . . . bad, did you?” he asked.

  “Not bad exactly. But not good either.” I locked the door and buried the key, then shared my conclusions.

  “I don’t know what to do next.” I tried not to let the fear inside spill over into my words.

  “I hate to say it,” Kalan said, “but we’ve got to call the cops. They’ve got the resources to find out if she ditched town, or if something bad happened.”

  My body seized up. “We can’t, if Jackson is connected to the Link thief and I’m the one to report this . . .”

  Kalan pulled out his phone and wiggled it. “Nice thing about the cheap ones? Easier to stay at least semi-anonymous.”

  He punched a number into the old-fashioned keypad.

  “Yeah, hi,” he said into the phone. “I’d like to report a missing person.”

  9

  Strange friend, past, present, and to be;

  Loved deeplier, darklier understood . . .

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam CXXIX

  It was all over the news that night. By the next afternoon, the crowd in front of Happenings had swelled. No ordered, busy ants this time. People swarmed like angry bees.

  I sat cross-legged on my bed after dance, watching it on my wallscreen while waiting for Cora to call after her doctor visit.

  Happenings’ pristine X-shaped building always seemed sort of snooty to me. Behold! We can be just as architecturally creative as you. Not so much now. The pretentious façade loomed over hundreds of fists stabbing the air and feet trampling flower beds. The scene was a jarring, disjointed rave of chaos. A woman—Mrs. Harward—waved a homem
ade sign wildly. Mr. Linney yelled at the building, his face red with the strength of his shouts.

  These were my neighbors, but they weren’t my neighbors. Together, they made someone new. A single person in the form of a crowd on the edge of violence. I felt strangled by the sight, and realized I was clutching my Links tight against my throat.

  And I realized for the first time that a perfect recollection of all our memories and emotions could be dangerous. All they had were negative memories of the Populace, and so all the anger they had built up could never fade. Mementi were perfect in their hate.

  On the wallscreen, Jorge Thomas narrated the scene at Happenings. He was a local caster whose independent newsfeeds occasionally got picked up by the professional news corps.

  “. . . nearly two hundred people have gathered in front of Happenings today to protest this most recent crime. Citizens of Havendale are outraged that a missing person could have gone unnoticed for weeks, and blame it on Miranda Jacobs’ recent Link theft. I’m here with a neighbor of Mrs. Jacobs. What can you tell us?”

  Another voice came on—Joiya Lind.

  “Well, Miranda was the only one who had contact with her daughter anymore,” she said. “After Blaire started working at Happenings, she didn’t talk to her old friends anymore. And of course her dad was gone. Miranda called Blaire every week, though, until her Links were stolen. After Miranda was admitted to the hospital, the doctors left messages for Blair, but her auto-response said she was out of the country on business. The doctors didn’t want to tell Miranda she had a daughter until Blaire could actually stand in front of her, and we all thought Blaire was just being insensitive not to come home . . . really, I just feel terrible about it all.”

  That wasn’t true. Blaire had told people—her boyfriend, Ren—she was going somewhere. Different stories told to different people, like she’d orchestrated her own disappearance. Like she’d had to go into hiding.

  Jorge came on again. “We’re going to cut now to an earlier interview with Ascalon BioTech’s Drake Matthews.”

  The screen switched to a view of Drake Matthews outside Ascalon. The glass building bubbled behind him, steel supports criss-crossing over the structure like a tangled ball of yarn. Sweat beaded his pasty face, and his hair looked gray beneath his fedora, now adorned with a small feather. Had anyone ever hinted that that hat was a crime against humanity?