Minders

by Michele Jaffe

Sadie couldn’t see or hear anything. Her head spun and nausea swept through her. She felt like she’d been pushed out of a carnival ride, only there was no ground beneath her stumbling feet. She hung there like that for a moment, suspended.

  Then all at once her body became incredibly heavy and she was plummeting, being dragged down into a freezing cold void.

  Where was Ford’s heartbeat?

  Fear gripped her. She recalled him running, eyes only on Lulu. Heard the horn, the brakes—

  She groped desperately around her mind, looking for any sign, any trace of him.

  Why can’t I hear your heartbeat?

  He was gone.

  Don’t you dare be dead, Ford Winter, she thought desperately. She fumbled for the panic button. Do not let go. You’re not alone. I’ll fight for you. Don’t you dare give up, where the hell is your heartbeat, come on, Ford, come—

  White light flooded her eyelids and she heard the long, thin, solid beep of a monitor flatlining.

  CHAPTER 11

  Minder Seventeen out of stasis.”

  Sadie opened her eyes and saw Catrina’s face silhouetted against the dome of the Stasis Center.

  “Thank god. We have to get help to—” Sadie tried to sit up, but her head was jerked back by the sensors attached to it.

  Catrina put a hand on her chest, gently pushing her down. “Relax.”

  Sadie started ripping sensors off. “There was a terrible accident. Is Ford dead?”

  Catrina’s lips pursed slightly. “It’s more correct to call him Subject Nine. For anonymity.”

  “Yes, fine, Subject Nine.” Sadie struggled with the sensors on her arms. God, there were so many. “Did he die? What’s beeping? How did I get here?”

  Catrina frowned. “Calm down. Your Subject is fine. That was us pausing Syncopy to take you out of stasis.”

  Sadie realized the beep of the monitor had stopped. “What? Why?”

  “Everyone gets reviewed after a week,” Catrina said. “I’m sure Curtis went over that.”

  “It’s two days early,” Sadie objected, plucking off the wires she could reach. “Never mind, we need to help. I think Fo—Subject Nine was hit by a car.”

  Catrina pulled the computer attached to Sadie’s Stas-Case toward her. “Your Subject’s monitors are all reading normal.”

  “No,” Sadie breathed, her hand going to her mouth. “Lulu.”

  Catrina tapped the keys. Across the side of the Stas-Case, Sadie was able to see a monitor with an overhead view of the area around Ford—Subject 9’s—house. “There are no ambulances dispatched to your Subject’s present location,” Catrina reported.

  Sadie closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Thank you, she said silently. Thank you for being alive. There were tears pricking her eyes, but she was sure they were just from coming out of stasis.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the screen again. She was surprised by how neat and organized it appeared from above compared to how chaotic the neighborhood felt on the street. “How did you know where to find him?”

  “Each neuronano relay has a serial number,” Catrina explained, reaching over to pull the relays from Sadie’s back. “It transmits the Subject’s location coordinates to our systems as a safety measure so we can find them if we have to.”

  “You can find anyone by serial number?” Sadie asked, fascinated.

  “Anyone with a neuronano relay,” Catrina said. “There are legal limitations, of course. We’re only allowed to track individuals who are Subjects in our studies, and only for scientific purposes. We can’t just go looking up serial numbers randomly.”

  Sadie was still focused on the satellite image, but she felt Catrina watching her closely. “There were security cars all around his house. I only see one now. Is there any way to know why they were there?”

  “5-29. Noise complaint from a neighbor about a dog barking,” Catrina said. Then, speaking to someone over Sadie’s shoulder, she said, “Sadie was concerned that something might have happened to her Subject.”

  “By all means put her mind to rest,” Curtis answered, coming around to smile at Sadie.

  In a slightly too bright voice Catrina said, “Apparently the dog wouldn’t stop barking. It was because a cigarette had started a small fire in one of the bedrooms.”

  It has happened, Sadie thought, forgetting about everything else. Ford’s worst fear. His mother had lit the house on fire, and Copernicus had saved them. Would Ford be angry or relieved?

  Relieved first, Sadie concluded. After, he would slip back into anger and somehow turn it against himself, deciding that he should have been there, it was his fault.

  Curtis gave her a hand to help her out of the Stas-Case, and Sadie wobbled against him. “Sorry.”

  “Totally normal,” he assured Sadie.

  Sadie felt Catrina’s eyes boring into her. Her legs felt jittery, like someone had replaced her knees with uncalibrated gyroscopes. “What happens now?”

  Catrina looked up quickly from the monitor at Curtis, then back down. Curtis said, “Now you rest. And later we’ll do your debrief.”

  “How long does that last?” Sadie suddenly felt tense. What did the glance Catrina had given Curtis mean? Why were the lights so bright? Why was everyone looking at her?

  Curtis gave her a bland, pleasant smile. “They’ll ask you some questions and then make their recommendation. Strictly routine.”

  “You mean about whether I continue,” Sadie said, remembering what he’d said about only half of the Minders making it past the first week. It had seemed hypothetical then, no big deal, but now—

  She looked frantically from Catrina to Curtis. Catrina was busy on the computer, but Curtis said, “I’m on the Committee myself. Don’t worry.”

  Was there something off about his smile? Sadie wondered. Was it… condescending? Nervous? As the adrenaline from her return faded, everything was becoming hard to read and opaque. Even when she didn’t know what a sensation meant in Ford’s mind, at least it was real, raw. From the outside people seemed so carefully processed and bland.

  Catrina cupped her chin in her hand. “Interesting. This wasn’t the first 5-29 at your Subject’s residence. There was a similar fire before, the dog barked, and a complaint was filed. Under the Domestic Animal Security and Safety Code, if there is another incident the dog will be terminated.”

  Sadie had learned through Ford’s collection of mental images that Copernicus had been James’s dog—their last living connection to the golden boy. “It would be a real blow to the family if they lost him.”

  Catrina’s eyes lit up. “You could get lucky then.”

  Sadie steadied herself against the edge of the Stas-Case. “What?”

  “If termination is ordered. The removal of a pet from a family is a perfect catalyst for mild to low trauma.”

  Sadie’s mind stumbled over that. “I’m not sure I would wish that on someone.”

  “This isn’t someone, it’s your Subject,” Catrina reminded her coolly. “That’s why we don’t personalize them.”

  Sadie felt like she was at sea, floating somewhere out of her body.

  “What Catrina is referring to is the tendency of trauma to work like a crucible.” Curtis made a cup with his hand. “It concentrates underlying family dynamics, burning off the extraneous elements so you can blow them out of the way.” He gave a puff and his pretend cup vanished.

  Catrina looked at Sadie, critically. “Progress comes from being unafraid to make hard choices. Science is brutal.”

  Her words chimed within Sadie’s memory, but it was only when she was walking to her assigned guest room that she realized what it was: They reminded her of her own words in her Mind Corps interview.

  • • •

  The debrief the next day was scheduled for eleven in the morning on the garden terrace of the manor house. Sadie rode alone in the elevator to the surface, still disoriented by her removal from stasis. It wasn’t just the change in viewpoint without Ford’s addition
al four inches. Getting out of the shower she’d looked in the mirror and almost screamed at seeing a stranger in the bathroom before realizing she was looking at her own reflection.

  A man in a dark suit escorted Sadie through a set of French doors onto a flagstone terrace bordered by a rolling lawn that sloped down to the lake. After the uniform, sterile atmosphere of stasis and subbasement fourteen, being outside was like waking up with new senses. She felt the air on her skin and experienced a touch of vertigo at so much empty space, so much green. It was amazing how quickly your perspective could shift. Sadie couldn’t see City Center from where she stood, but she felt it.

  It was a pleasant Saturday morning, little clouds whipping across the sky above the bend in the river where it met the lake. A table with a white cloth was set with a gilt-edged teapot and cups for five, but she was the first one there. She was hovering awkwardly near the table when a voice from the French doors said, “Sadie Ames,” and she turned and saw Miranda Roque.

  Miranda was dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit with a large gold necklace. She wore a mammoth sapphire on her second finger, easily an inch in diameter, but no other jewelry. Her face was tanned and lined and beautiful, Sadie thought, from years of actually using it, without relying on the fillers that Sadie’s mother and her friends all used.

  “Come chat,” Miranda said, sitting down in one of the seats around the table. “If the others can’t be on time, that’s their problem.”

  “Hello, Ms. Roque.” Sadie took a seat near her, catching the scent of roses and wood smoke.

  “Miranda,” she corrected, pouring tea. She pushed a cup toward Sadie. “So, are you enjoying it?”

  There was no reason to ask what “it” was, but Sadie had to think a little before answering. “Yes, although I’m not sure if enjoy is the right word. Syncopy is amazing, though. I’m anxious to get back.”

  Miranda gave a little cackle. “Don’t try to butter me up, Ames. Not good for my arteries.”

  Sadie felt herself blushing. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, yes you did. Don’t do it again.” Miranda put a plate of butter cookies between her and Sadie. “Tell me about your Subject.”

  Sadie plunged in. “He’s impulsive, which can be maddening. And—”

  “Be specific, Ames,” Miranda barked. “What do you mean by impulsive? He speaks without thinking? He’s spontaneous? Those are not the same.”

  Sadie had never thought about that before. “I suppose both.”

  Miranda nodded. “Often go hand in hand, a continuum. It’s the sign of a consciousness that’s still growing. He must be passionate.”

  Sadie was sorry to see the others arrive then. Miranda was the only person she’d encountered since she’d been back she felt comfortable talking to.

  The rest of the Committee came together in a single elevator load: Curtis, a woman with auburn hair and olive skin named Naomi from Neurotraction, and a guy with short curly dark hair and tawny skin named Johann from Paracartography. Miranda tapped the table impatiently while they were introduced and then jumped back into her questions.

  “What was the first emotion you identified from your Subject?” she asked.

  “Anger,” Sadie answered without needing to think. “He’s very angry.”

  Miranda stopped drumming her fingers, and her eyes sparked with interest. “Anger. So potent. I once funded a project about creating fuel out of anger. Never came to anything, but the premise was sound. Biggest untapped energy resource in the world.”

  Sadie tried to imagine that. “How would you harvest it?”

  Miranda laughed. “Getting the anger was the easy part. You can do that on a street corner for free. No”—she leaned closer to Sadie—“the challenge was converting it once you had it. Anger is like oil, it bubbles up from the subconscious and is available to be collected at a fairly superficial level. It may feel like it’s the basis of all your subject’s actions now, but anger is just a sign of much richer and more complex veins below.”

  “Like what?” Sadie asked, riveted.

  Miranda shrugged. “Most common is probably guilt. Very, very rich source because it’s directed inward. A good vein of guilt will produce forever, providing no one messes with it.” She rolled her eyes upward, thinking. “Thwarted wishes and hopes are good too, but those weaken over time.” Her eyes came back to Sadie. “In general it’s the damage we do to ourselves that lasts the longest. We love to take responsibility for things outside our control and then blame ourselves when they fail.”

  “Do you think people do that because it confirms some sense of inadequacy in them?” Sadie asked, thinking of Ford.

  “Absolutely,” Naomi said, and Sadie sensed she was more interested in impressing Miranda than doing any debriefing.

  “That’s a bit clichéd,” Miranda countered. Naomi looked chastened. “I’d say it’s because taking blame is more comfortable than admitting we might be powerless. That’s our flaw: our fear of not knowing. As I get older, though, I find the unknown much more interesting. Nice to have surprises sometimes.” She leaned back. “Of course, he could actually be guilty of something.”

  Sadie felt like her mind was bending in new directions. “If my Subject’s anger is the result of a guilty conscience, should I help him get past it?”

  “You can’t,” Johann said. “That’s not what you are there to do, and you’d need to get into the subconscious. No one can do that.”

  “That’s B.S., Johann,” Naomi snapped. “It’s rare, but it’s been done.”

  “Only a handful of very gifted Minders have ever seen a subconscious, let alone gotten in,” Curtis explained. “It’s hard to find the door and even trickier to get past it. You need to thoroughly understand the Subject’s defense mechanisms.”

  “What about dreams?” Sadie asked, wondering if she should admit that she hadn’t yet been able to access Ford’s. “Couldn’t you get in that way?”

  “It’s not possible to enter dreams while in Syncopy,” Johann said, and Sadie was flooded with relief. “The dreaming mind is the closest to stasis state, so it doesn’t trigger the relay the same way.”

  Naomi rushed to add, “But every Minder who’s gotten into the subconscious has done it when their Subject is asleep. Maybe minds are structured that way on purpose.”

  Sadie took that in. “Are there big differences between minds?”

  That made everyone at the table laugh. “Vast differences,” Miranda said. “I’ve been in minds that use sounds to generate holograms, minds like prisms, minds where there was only scent.”

  “I had one that was like rocks, heavy and hard to get through,” Naomi said.

  “That’s what I always imagined my ex-husband’s mind was like,” Miranda said drily, giving Naomi a nod of approval.

  Johann said, “Once I was in the mind of a boy who went blind when he was twelve. It was like a picnic on a huge green lawn. Groups of people all around in clusters, talking. Some of them were real people, and some of them represented projects he was working on. There was a band, and it played songs that went with his emotions. And there was a tent, because when he got upset or angry it rained.”

  “Wow,” Sadie breathed. She looked at Curtis. “What about you?”

  He shook his head. “My claustrophobia prevents me from entering Syncopy.”

  There was one of the threadbare silences around the table that you get when someone asks after the health of an aunt who died years earlier. “I’m sorry,” Sadie said, “I had no idea.”

  “That’s okay. Our technology is always changing, and I’m still hoping for a shot one day.” He gave her a nice smile, then shifted back to the interview. “Let’s get back to your Subject. Would you say his life is stable or unstable?”

  Sadie thought about it. “Stable. For the most part it has just been going to work and going home.”

  “For the most part?” Curtis repeated, cocking his head.

  “One afternoon he got a file anonymously. It was the Se
renity Services file about his brother’s murder.”

  Naomi said, “It came in the mail? We can trace that.”

  Sadie shook her head. “He has a makeshift workshop in an abandoned building, and one day it just appeared there, in his desk.”

  Naomi asked, “Did he know who it was from?”

  “He suspected someone named Bucky, a friend who disappeared a few years ago, but he doesn’t even know where Bucky is.”

  Curtis looked at Johann. “Check your Off Grid files for a Bucky when you get downstairs.” He turned to Sadie. “How did he react to the file?”

  “He was glad to get it.” Sadie thought about the havoc he wreaked afterward. “But disappointed by its content.”

  Naomi started typing on a tablet. “His brother’s name was James Winter?”

  Sadie nodded, and within a minute Naomi had downloaded the file to her computer and circulated it to the others. Sadie was struck by how easy it was for her, and yet how hard for Ford, whose requests for the file had been repeatedly denied.

  Everyone but Miranda scanned it. She sat looking into the distance like she was bored.

  Naomi set her tablet back on the table. “There doesn’t seem to be anything suggestive here. What was the issue?”

  “He was struggling with the idea of his brother as a drug addict,” Sadie explained.

  “The coroner’s report seems to be pretty definitive,” Johann said.

  Sadie said, “His brother’s girlfriend made it sound like he didn’t use drugs at all. I know there were drugs in his system, but what if they were forced on him? Or introduced after he was killed to make it look—”

  Every pair of eyes at the table was wide, staring at her, and she realized she’d made a mistake. Trying to solve your Subject’s brother’s murder was probably a little more objectionable than objective. “Sorry, I think maybe spending so much time in my head has made my imagination…” She let that taper off as it dawned on her that “imagination” wasn’t much better.

  Miranda’s fingers tapped the tabletop again. “So he is undertaking a private inquiry of his own.” Her eyes made a circuit of the others. “I’ve heard enough. I think we can—”