All Rights Reserved

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

  Kel made a note on her Pad.

  “Usually she waits until the trial period is complete,” Margot whispered to Henri in a voice that I could obviously hear.

  “After I show you how to use it, it will be up to you to arrive at each night’s rendezvous on your own,” Kel explained.

  “I can never find mine,” Margot pouted.

  “Where do you change?” Henri asked.

  Margot’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Henri, wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Tonight we are placing five Huntley 3-D Gold-Leaf™ Printers,” Kel announced loudly.

  Henri grimaced and placed a heavy bag on the floor. He pulled out a box.

  Affluents still loved gold, even though it could be easily synthesized with a good molecular printer. It had once been rare, but now it was just expensive because the Patent Holders set the price high—to honor tradition, they said.

  “Gold must be associated with elegance,” Henri said in a mocking voice. “Affluents.”

  The needlessness and selfishness of it made my blood boil. I tried to put it out of my mind.

  “Ninety percent of our job caters to Affluents,” Kel said. “That’s what we do. We make people with money excited about things they don’t know they want.”

  “Yeah, right,” Henri laughed.

  “Henri does not believe it works,” Margot said.

  “It’s stupid!” Henri said. “You think just because we plop a gold printer in someone’s house, that means everyone will start buying gold printers? It’s preposterous.”

  Preposterous, I thought, letting the word play in my head.

  “Henri does not know which side of his bread the butter is on,” Margot said.

  “The Agency wants to target the right people, Influents™, to make sure they have effective viral reach,” Kel said. Influent™ was the preferred term for the trendsetting wealthy. It sounded like a flu vaccine to me. “They want their money’s worth,” Kel continued, holding up her Pad. “Henri may not think it works, but the algorithms show otherwise. Companies collect and compile as much data as they can. They model consumer habits and behavior.” Kel showed us the next target. “They know how many people will be reached by each Placement and can calculate with 85 percent accuracy how many sales a Placement will generate.”

  “So they claim,” Henri said.

  “What do you care?” Margot asked. “They pay us.”

  “We don’t need to be worried about the program’s efficacy.” Kel nodded. “We need to concern ourselves with who might have an itchy temper, or insomnia, or an unhealthy abundance of curiosity. We need to focus on how we prepare, plan and execute.”

  She paused and looked at me, then pulled up a map of a building near the center of the city. “Four of tonight’s Placements will be standard. Our fifth, however, will not.”

  “That’s Lawyer territory,” Henri said, looking at the map. We would be only a few blocks from the Butchers & Rog Tower in the center of the city. Wealthy Lawyers had clustered around that building, as if they hoped some of Butchers & Rog’s power would rub off.

  “Henri.” Margot patted him on the head, but Henri shook her off and fixed his hair, looking at me. I felt my cheeks burn a little and looked at my shoes.

  “Some Influents™ don’t care about Placement. They don’t care about the status of being an influencer, and they don’t like feeling they are being used,” Kel said, tapping the edge of her Pad to focus us.

  “A few Influents™, like our first target, actively eschew Placement. Unfortunately, Huntley’s prefers exactly this sort of target, so Attorney Hugo Winfrield, Esquire, is our top priority.”

  “Wait until you see this place,” Margot said to me, wide-eyed and grinning.

  “You’ve never been there!” Henri cried.

  “I’ve been near it,” Margot said, pouting her lips like her feelings had been hurt. “He owns the whole thirtieth floor.”

  “We’ll have to disable Winfrield’s security and bypass footfalls,” Kel continued.

  “Work on wires,” Henri said to me, knowingly.

  “She doesn’t know what that means,” Margot said.

  Margot was right, though I didn’t like her pointing it out. Maybe it was for the best I didn’t pretend to know more than I did.

  “Winfrield doesn’t want us there,” Kel said. “If he spots us, we’re done—all of us. He won’t be bought off by the promise of oranges. His floor is pressure-sensitive and rigged with alarms. We’ll have to set up wires and work above the ground. I think you can handle it,” she said to me.

  I swallowed. I was glad she had confidence in me, but how was I going to do that?

  “The Huntley printers will be set up to run off a gold leaf silhouette of Winfrield when he enters the room,” Kel explained. “Speth, you’ll need to calibrate a small scanner to take a 3-D face scan, orient the resultant data into a profile, flatten it into a relief like you would see on a coin and print it out.”

  These sorts of scanners were everywhere, embedded in practically every Ad screen in America®, but I’d never programmed one before. This was the same technology they used to put people in Ads. I wondered what it would feel like to come home, be scanned and have your face printed onto a gold medallion. Then I remembered it would never happen to me.

  Kel handed the Pad to Margot, and Margot turned it to me.

  “This is the interface,” Margot said. It took me a second longer to focus than it should have. I couldn’t help remembering Carol Amanda Harving’s data was in that Pad somewhere, and it felt like I could do something with that.

  “These little icons represent the printer functions,” Margot said, unaware of my momentary lapse. “It isn’t that complicated, but the printer’s screen will be smaller than this. If we had the room’s layout, you could program it here and drop it down, but you won’t know how to orient anything until we see the room, place it and figure out his most likely approach.”

  Everything was depicted in the most obvious way possible. You could preset what or who you wanted scanned and what angle you wanted to print from. There was a little icon box of templates, and I could see the one that looked like the coin. Maybe I could handle it, but the idea of doing it while hanging from a wire didn’t fill me with confidence.

  “Are there any questions?” Kel asked the group.

  Can I practice? How am I going to hang from the wire? What are the wires attached to? What if we get caught?

  Kel watched my mind burn through all the things I could not ask.

  “I’m sorry if it is terrifying,” Kel said to me. “But this job is dangerous. I can’t mollycoddle you. You learn by doing, just like everyone else. If I didn’t think you could do it, you wouldn’t be here at all. Do you understand?”

  I think this was her version of a pep talk. I would have to get used to it. This would be how we would work. What I needed to think about was succeeding—not what would happen if I failed.

  * * *

  We entered through a window. It was sealed with locking pins, not magnets, but Henri had a tool for them and was pleased to demonstrate how quickly he could pop the window open.

  I crouched with Margot like a cat at the corner of the ornate window ledge. Intricate scrollworks of leaves and abstracted spirals curved in on each other, making it easy to wedge myself in place. The buildings had more and more ornamentation the deeper into the city you went—until you hit the center, where Rog’s building was nothing but shiny, unadorned glass.

  Margot wrestled with some kind of encryption on Kel’s Pad, trying to unscramble the code for the room’s motion sensors. She looked like she was playing a video game as her fingers danced over the Pad. It occurred to me that, even out in the open, the Pad could take input and none of it was tracked. How did that work?

  With a no
d and a drop in the tension of her shoulders, we knew Margot had succeeded in turning the system off. It was too bad she couldn’t get the floor sensors off, too, but they were set to alarm if they were disconnected, even for a moment.

  Henri quickly shot a line from a different grapple gun than I had seen before. This one fired out a sticky, suction cup–like end. It held fast to the far wall. He showed me ten fingers, then mimed the suction cup peeling away from the wall and fluttered his hands around to indicate the disaster that would follow if we weren’t finished in ten minutes. Margot held in a giggle, handed the Pad back to Kel and swung herself inside. Kel pushed in next, wasting no time.

  The three of them quickly crisscrossed more guide wires, making it possible for us to move through the room without knocking into each other. I shimmied along one wire toward a gorgeously carved mahogany table, but then stopped when I realized the scale and magnificence of the room I was in.

  The floors were scrawled with veined marble and inlaid with silver and gold patterns. There was a fireplace stocked with real wood, ready for our target to burn. The walls were crammed with paintings and photographs.

  My path across the room took me over a display case of treasures—gems and jewels, and two baseballs signed by players I assumed were famous. There was a collection of dead and dried honeybees pinned inside a glass box, as if their extinction was something to admire. My parents did their work now.

  Then there were the books.

  I did not touch them, but I was sure they were real. I suddenly understood why Kel had warned me against stealing. I could not help but think how easy it would be to take one of these treasures. A book or a jewel would be easy to conceal.

  I didn’t do it—I could barely focus on all the things I was supposed to do. Besides, as valuable as his things were, there wasn’t anything in the room worth the risk. A man like Winfrield would notice and report the theft at once.

  I put Winfrield and his possessions out of my thoughts and concentrated on how I was going to get the printer out of my pack, insert the five molecular ink cartridges and get it ready to scan our target so the device would print a noble coin with his profile.

  I wrapped my knees around the line and hung, bat-like, upside down. I couldn’t think of another way to keep both my hands free. I carefully removed my pack and placed it on the table, extracting everything I needed while the blood rushed to my head. I unsealed the inks and slid them into the reservoir slots. Then I powered up the printer and arranged the icons to do what Kel had asked. Small spots ran through my vision.

  I made a test print of Henri. He and Margot sidled over to see it. It wasn’t very interesting, since it only captured the general outline of Henri’s head in a mask. Margot was smiling. She held out her hand, like she wanted the coin. I looked for Kel, to see if this was okay, but Kel was busy monitoring the perimeter, in case Winfrield or one of his three security people were headed our way.

  Much to Margot’s displeasure, I dropped the medallion back into the printer’s reclamation reservoir. Henri feigned grabbing at it, but just for fun. Margot, on the other hand, stared sadly at the tray, where the printer would shave it down with micro-lasers into printable atoms of gold.

  My final step was to clear the printer’s cache, so we didn’t end up with an errant print of Henri’s masked face on this guy’s gold coin.

  Margot was already at the window, likely pouting under her mask. Henri pulled back each wire-line, except the one I hung on, as he backed out of the room. Kel signaled for me to go and, after a moment, followed me out.

  The last line was pulled. The small, sticky spot on the wall evaporated before my eyes. The window closed. We had succeeded.

  I felt a flush of exhilaration.

  The remaining Placements flew by; they were straightforward by comparison. I could work right side up, and I found it much easier to appraise my surroundings. None of the other Placements were in homes quite as grand, but in each of them I saw dozens of items that made me wonder, If I took that, would it be missed? Most of these homes had books. I yearned to crack one open and see what was inside.

  I held my desire back. I knew Kel would not want me slowing our work with reading, and she had been very clear that I was not to steal. But the idea of taking a book and secretly bringing it to Sam was awfully appealing. I was not able to look at the sprawling, wastefully huge homes we entered without thinking of the box my family lived in. Who would appreciate a book more? Would these people even notice if one went missing?

  I kept my head down and worked. Maybe every Placer felt like I did. Maybe the bitterness would dissipate in time. Part of me enjoyed that I could think of stealing and no one, not even Kel, would know. Having that secret inside me was sustaining, in a twisted sort of way.

  THE ONLY PRIVACY: $21.97

  When my first paycheck came, it was deposited automatically into the family account. Saretha’s Cuff buzzed at the same instant as mine. I thought she would be excited, but she only frowned and said, “Troubling.”

  Saretha Jime—word: TROUBLING: $6.99

  What did she think it meant?

  Sam rushed over from his bed by the window and bent over her readout, confused.

  “Wait, what is this?” he asked.

  Saretha shrugged. Sam studied the numbers closely.

  “Is this from a suit?” he asked. The income wasn’t labeled, which was unusual. Then he noticed that I was smiling and looked at the numbers again.

  “Speth?” he asked, drawing back. “Is this yours?”

  I kept smiling. His head tilted in confusion. He did not smile back, and that made mine evaporate. I thought there would be excitement and relief. This would keep us out of Collection. My check was three times what Saretha had been making. Even with all the suits we’d have to fight, we could survive. In a year or two, we might even be able to save enough to buy off a little debt and bring our parents home for a few weeks.

  “Where is this money from?” Sam asked. He bit his lip. It bothered him. He nudged Saretha from the couch. She looked at him, then me, and then settled back to watch a comedy called Wordy, about a girl who liked to talk beyond her means and spent a lot of time taking loans from her friends. Saretha turned up the volume, and Sam turned his attention back to me.

  “Is this where you’ve been going?”

  He was too smart. Sooner or later, he was going to remember the day on the roof and put together the hours I was keeping, but at that moment, he did not understand.

  “Can I help?” he asked. I looked away. I stared at the wall like a zombie. I was trying to say no, but I had to be careful. I couldn’t use this technique too much, or the Cuff might catch on. I felt its weight on my left arm, throwing me out of symmetry, even if it didn’t weigh much.

  I wanted him to know, but Kel said to keep it secret. I looked at him again. He was sizing me up.

  “This is good,” he said, a little flatly.

  “Maybe I’ll text Brandon Nestle,” Saretha said, suddenly, still staring at the screen.

  “Brandon Nestle?” Sam asked. Of Saretha’s many admirers, Brandon seemed an odd choice.

  Saretha held up her Cuff and shook it around. “He stayed my friend,” she said sharply. “He didn’t drop me like practically everyone else.”

  $57.32 popped up on her Cuff for her last few sentences.

  “That’s a great use of our money.” Sam shook his head.

  “Speth can tell me if she doesn’t like it,” Saretha said, tapping away at her Cuff.

  Sam slumped back to his bed, frowning.

  Saretha laughed at something—probably Brandon begging to see her—and Sam turned and looked out the window.

  Somehow, I had expected them to be happy. I waited for it, but happiness did not come. Everything was just as awful as the day before.

  My ja
w tensed in frustration, and I stalked out of the apartment. It would be hours before I had to meet Kel, Henri and Margot. I probably should have slept, but how could I?

  Out on the street, I looked up toward Nancee’s building. How many times had I wandered over when we were kids, just to hang out? It felt wrong to think she wasn’t there. Did I know for certain she was gone? I wandered over and looked at the door. Her buzzer glowed saffron, one among dozens. I could not press it. The only thing I could think to do was scale the building and look inside, but if Kel found out, that would be the end for me as a Placer.

  Instead, I walked a few blocks, and stood outside Penepoli’s building. I couldn’t press her buzzer either. The screen above her button grinned with six cartoon faces, with expressions from morose to ecstatic. I was supposed to select the one that best represented how I felt. There wasn’t one that looked infuriated, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t agree to ToS, anyway.

  I looked out across the buildings arcing along inside the ring. A sinking feeling spread from my feet to my heart as I realized how cut off I was. I could only think of one place to go.

  * * *

  Beecher’s grandmother looked surprised to see me when I arrived, but urged me inside with a tilt of her head and closed the door behind me.

  “I’d ask what I owe this pleasure to, but...” She shrugged at the futility of asking. Instead, she went over to a stack of boxes leaning against her wall and pulled out two UltraGrain Harvest™ Bars.

  “Can I offer you something to eat?” She laughed. She put one bar in my hands and opened one for herself. “Not much better than Wheatlock™, I’m afraid, but without a printer, I’m stuck with what comes my way.”

  She took a bite and frowned. “Blissberry. Their worst flavor. Never trust a product named for a fruit that doesn’t exist.”

  I laughed, but caught myself and quickly stopped. My laugh carried the sound of my voice, and my voice seemed a dangerous thing. Even though laughing was still free, it seemed wrong.