“Did you get the questions right where you have to use the ruler to measure how far away the galaxies are on the picture and plug them into the formula to get their real distance?” Nate asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said.
“And how far away were they?” Nate asked.
“Like fifteen thousand light years—”
“So how long did it take that light to get here?” Nate asked.
“And how old do your parents believe the universe is?” Riley added.
Jake stared down at the slip of paper.
“If they don’t go looking at the test questions, you’re probably okay. If they do, and you haven’t already used it, try the ‘lucky guessing’ excuse,” Erin said. “That won’t work too many times, though.”
“Oh,” Jake said, and couldn’t help but think, but I got an A.
Dinner was quiet. Too quiet, even though Jake had not brought up his grade. He ate his chicken and peas, indecision roiling in his mind. Was it suspicious that he didn’t mention it, and did that make him look guilty? Or was bringing it up only drawing attention to something that might otherwise go unnoticed?
Later, as he was sitting at his desk in his room doing his homework, he could hear his parents talking in the front hall. “The diagnostics say it’s okay,” his mother was saying. “He’d tell us if it didn’t seem to be working right.”
“Would he?” his father asked. “Remember what he said to you the other morning? This is supposed to protect him, not turn him defiant.”
“All young men are defiant,” his mother said. “You were. Oh, were you a troublemaker when I first met you. You’re lucky I believe in second chances.”
“I was, and that’s how I know I was wrong. Maybe we should look into our finances again, see if we can scrape together enough to transfer him to Angel Valley after all.”
There was silence for a few minutes, and the muffled beep of the minder station as it finished charging his unit. He heard his mother let out a long sigh. “I don’t think Angel Valley would be a good place for Jake,” she said at last. “I don’t like how exclusionary those families become.”
“The Ducettes sent their boy there. He and Jake were best friends, and we get together with them regularly.”
“We used to,” his mother corrected.
“We’ve all been busy—”
“I invited them over for dinner. Abigail laughed at me, told me not to bother them again, and hung up.”
“What?” his father sounded genuinely surprised. “I’ll talk to Robert after church this Sunday, find out what that was about. There must just be some misunderstanding.”
“Sure,” his mother said. “Let me know how that goes. In the meantime, let’s not talk about Angel Valley. Not yet.”
“Anyone else see the news last night?” Nate asked.
Riley snorted. “Like any of us are allowed to watch the news. Since when are you?”
“Since my mom fell asleep on the couch with the remote unlocked,” Nate said. He tapped the side of his minder, next to the magnet. “Did you know these are now illegal in sixteen states? North Carolina just outlawed them too. In seven it’s considered child abuse.”
“Too bad we don’t live in North Carolina,” Erin said. “You know that’s never going to happen here.”
“Maybe if enough states do it, it’ll become a national law,” Jake said. He remembered the right word. “You know, federal.”
“Not soon enough for us, though,” Kitt said.
“We could get lucky and it could be soon,” Nate added.
“You think so?” Riley asked. “You know they don’t even have any good studies on the long-term effects of frying kids’ hippocampuses—”
“Hippowhat?” Jonathan asked.
“Part of your fucking brain,” Riley said, and Jake found himself flinching reflexively at the swear, even though it couldn’t currently trigger his subverted minder. “That’s how it works, right? You’ve got a little wire stuck right into your brain so this piece-of-shit tech can disrupt your damned memories and keep things it doesn’t like from getting converted from short to long term, as if modifying our very thoughts inside our heads somehow keeps us purer than accidentally remembering a few random syllables.”
“I thought it just made it so you don’t hear it,” Erin said.
“It’s worse. You hear it perfectly fine, and then it takes that away from you. Like someone breaking into your room and stealing your favorite thing but as soon as it’s out of the room you can’t even remember you ever had it to start with, only you just know something is missing you can’t identify,” Riley said. “It should be criminal, except who gets to decide that? The goddamned thieves themselves.”
“You okay, Ri?” Jonathan asked.
“No!” she said. “How can I be? How can any of us be? It’s not enough to get around their mind control. We should be fighting it.”
“And how do we do that?” Nate asked. “We don’t have any power.”
“My father would ship me off to Angel Valley,” Jake said. “There’s no getting around that. That would be the end. I don’t want to lose what freedom I have, even if it’s not much.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t go off to Angel Valley anyhow,” Erin said. “My sister Lynne has a crush on you for saving her from the cafeteria bullies. You’re her personal hero.”
Riley stood up and threw her magnet down on a lab bench. It landed with a sharp bang like that of a gunshot. Everyone went dead silent. “This is all just a waste of time,” she said, and left the classroom.
Other than the door banging closed again behind her, the silence lasted long after she was gone.
It was Nate who broke it, with a small cough. “Things are really bad in her house,” he said. “I mean, really bad even compared to the rest of us. At least I think for most of us we can say our parents are trying to do what they think is best for us, even if we don’t agree. Riley’s folks—”
“It’s about absolute control,” Kitt added. “She doesn’t even have a door on her bedroom.”
Jake whistled. “Okay, that definitely sucks,” he said.
Erin closed her textbook and got up, grabbing the bench wipes. “They don’t like that she’s smart,” she said. “It’s a threat. So she has to pretend she’s not.”
“She’s smarter than any of us,” Jonathan said. “But her folks talk about sending her off to one of the church work farms when she flunks out of high school. You know, one of those places surrounded by barbed wire? Ain’t there to protect the corn.”
“Shit,” Jake said, the swear weird in his own voice, powerful and shameful.
He glanced up at the clock to cover his sudden embarrassment. “Oh hey, time’s almost up,” he said. He double-checked that he’d made it through the section of the science chapter blacked out in his own textbook, then closed the unabridged copy and handed it back to Jonathan.
Together they finished up the last of the lab cleanup and reluctantly left their magnets behind.
While he was walking down the hall toward the school’s front entrance, Jake’s minder beeped. “Jake, your mother has requested that you stop at the corner store on your way home to pick up some green leaf lettuce and a small carton of half and half. Do you wish to hear these items repeated?”
“No,” Jake said.
“Do you wish your agreement to be communicated to your mother?”
“Yes,” Jake answered. His minder hadn’t spoken to him in several days, and it was a jolt to be reminded that his brief escapes from it were only that.
He was still lost in thought about Riley and the minders and hippocampuses when he turned down an aisle in the corner mart and nearly collided with someone coming the other way. “Connor,” he said.
“Jake,” Connor said, taking a half-step back as if even being near him was distasteful. He was wearing his Angel Valley school uniform.
The last conversation they’d had, Jake had strongly considered punching him. He’d grown t
hough, right? He had other friends now, better ones. He could be the bigger person. “How’ve you been?” he asked.
“On the higher path,” Connor answered. “We’re the future of the new America. There will be no room for the tainted trash of humanity then, and I have no time for you now.”
Whatever Jake said in reply, his minder stole the moment from him, but there was at least some satisfaction in seeing the suddenly pale kid hurrying away as if he’d been bitten.
He regretted, just a tiny bit more, not punching him. Either way it was worth whatever trouble he was going to be in when he got home and his minder reported the encounter.
Jake’s mom came into his room just as he was about to turn out his light. She sat on the edge of his bed and patted his knee. “You know you were wrong to use that word?” she asked.
“I’m not even sure what word I said, but yes,” Jake said. “I was wrong. But he used to be my very best friend and we did everything together and he called me trash.”
“Your father and I expect you to make better decisions,” she said. “But we know you have a good heart, and as wrong as you were to speak to anyone that way, Connor was also in the wrong for what he said to you. We want you to be the best Jake you can be, and if you are, only God can judge you.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jake said.
“I know,” she answered, and kissed him on the head before turning off his light. She left his door cracked partway open, and as he lay there overwhelmed by guilt and lingering anger, his father’s shouting still ringing in his ears from earlier, she reappeared in the doorway.
“That’s a word you shouldn’t know, and I trust that you won’t ever speak it again,” she said, “but if you absolutely had to use it, you chose the right occasion.”
That gentle understanding pushed the remainder of the anger out of his system and left him trying to find sleep while wallowing in his own shame and regret.
•••
“Jake!” Kitt called out in unfeigned happiness when she saw him walk in the door of the science lab, and handed him his magnet. “Where you been?”
“Grounded for two weeks,” he said.
“For the A?” Nate asked.
“No, for calling someone a bad word I can’t remember,” Jake answered. “But knowing how angry I was when I said it, I’m pretty sure the grounding was justified.”
“I was worried you got caught and sent off to Angel Valley,” Erin said. “Then we’d be stuck trying to teach Jonathan math.”
“Lucky for you I’m still here,” he said. He had been unsure whether he should come back, but that uncertainty disappeared.
“Angel Valley isn’t the worst,” Riley spoke up from where she was sitting on a lab bench with a science book on her lap. “You know they’re working on glasses, to also censor what we can see?”
“No one would—,” Erin started to say.
“My parents would, if it were available,” Riley said. “And minders aren’t just used to censor out science, or things that disagree with faith—any faith, or even all faith. You know there are some where you can’t hear anything at all spoken by people of a certain gender? Or race?”
“What?” Nate said. “That’s not cool.”
“I’m just saying, for every person out there working on a way to get around, or get rid of, minders, there’s someone working on making them worse. And some of the things they’re trying . . . Angel Valley wouldn’t be so terrible in comparison.”
“How do you know all this?” Kitt asked.
“I have connections,” Riley said. “You all might be looking for a way through, but I’m looking for a way out.”
“What happens when you find it?” Kitt asked.
“Then I’m gone.”
“And what about us?” Erin asked.
“You gotta make your own choices,” Riley said. “I—Oh shit.”
She was staring at the classroom door. Everyone else followed her gaze, to find that Erin’s sister was standing there in the open doorway. “Lynne!” Erin shouted.
“I thought maybe I could help,” Lynne said. She was blushing, and studiously not looking at Jake.
“How long have you been standing there?” Erin asked, pulling open a drawer to find another magnet.
“A few minutes,” Lynne said. “Since you were talking about some kind of new glasses.”
Erin had found an extra magnet, and ran toward her alarmed sister. “It’s too late,” Riley said. “Her minder heard everything. Get her out in the hall. Plan B.”
Erin nodded, a jerky, panicked gesture, and pulled Lynne out of the classroom.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Jake turned to the others, his heart thudding in his chest. “Plan B?”
“Plan A was if one of us was caught. Plan B is all of us,” Kitt said. “As soon as her minder gets downloaded, the shit is going to hit the fan. They’ll know we’ve circumvented the minders, if not how.”
“Can we just, somehow, erase the record in Lynne’s minder?” Nate asked.
“Not without pulling it off her head, which without properly unlocking and disconnecting it could cause brain damage,” Riley said. “Trust me, if there was a way, I’d have found it by now.”
Erin stuck her head back in the door. “I’m going to take Lynne for milkshakes on the way home. That will buy us an extra hour or so. Good luck everyone.”
“Are you safe,” Riley asked Jake, “if you go home?”
“I think so,” he answered. Safe with his mother, sure, but his father . . . “I’m not sure.”
“If you’re not safe, get to Jonathan’s house. That’s our safe point. Don’t tell anyone where you are going.”
Jonathan nodded. “The only danger at my place is my mom’s cooking,” he said.
“And then what?”
“Like I said earlier, everyone has to make their own choices. I didn’t think it was going to be anything more than rhetorical this soon, though,” Riley said. “And Jake, if you don’t come? It was good knowing you. Try not to let anyone steal who you are, or who you want to become, away from you.”
Jake left the school with his magnet still on his minder, his hoodie pulled up over it so no one would spot it; part of him wanted to broadcast to the world how to get around having your brain under external control, but Riley had convinced him that as soon as the hack was publicly known, the minder manufacturers would find a way to prevent it from working. Better to pass it on, whisper by whisper, friend to friend.
He started walking toward home almost as many times as he started walking toward Jonathan’s house, and ended up mostly doing irregular loops around town, until he found himself near the elementary school playground and took a seat on one of the swings. The sun had set and the sky was shifting quickly toward night when he took his magnet off.
“You are late for dinner and should immediately return home. It will take you twenty-one minutes to walk from this location,” his minder immediately said. “You have fourteen messages from your mother and six from your father. Would you like to hear them?”
“No,” Jake said. “Send a message to my father and give him my current location—”
“Your current location has already been provided to your parents,” his minder said.
Of course, Jake thought. “Tell him to meet me here, just him, and if he calls the police or brings anyone else along he will never see me again. You got that?”
“The message has been sent,” his minder said.
“Good,” Jake said. “Now shut up.” He put his magnet back on, then relocated from the playground across the street to a small park. Feeling both foolish and paranoid, he sat on the ground behind a bench, where he could see through the slats but not be easily seen.
His father arrived twenty-nine minutes later and stood by the slide, looking around.
It took Jake a few minutes of watching his father to rally his courage; then he walked toward him, hoodie still up, hands in his pockets to hide their shaking. His fathe
r spotted him as he crossed the street and stood straight and unmoving until they were face to face.
“Jacob,” his father said.
“Dad,” he answered.
They regarded each other for several minutes, before his father spoke again. “I don’t expect I need to tell you how angry and disappointed I am,” he said.
“No, I think I got that,” Jake said. “How’s Mom doing?”
“She’s hurt and scared. What do you think?” his father snapped. “She made me agree to come out here and meet you on your terms despite that. So this is your play: what now?”
What now? Jake asked himself. He had no idea what his “play” was, except to be honest.
“You know, Connor used to be my best friend. I didn’t need other friends, because we had done everything together since kindergarten. Then his parents sent him off to Angel Valley, and not only is he no longer my friend, he’s no longer Connor,” Jake said. “And I just want to keep being Jake, because I think I’m a good kid, but I can’t know who I am and what I am while my entire reality is being decided by someone else. Even if that’s you.”
“The job of a parent is to protect—,” his father started to say.
“The job of a parent is to guide their children,” Jake interrupted. He’d never interrupted his father before in his life, and didn’t know how he dared to do so now. “This minder isn’t guidance, it’s locking me in a tiny little box. And maybe, yeah, there are some pretty rotten things out there in the world, but this feels like you’re assuming just knowing about them would make me want them, and that’s not fair. I can learn about something without accepting it unconditionally, I can talk it through with you to understand why you have different opinions, and I can form my own judgment, but I can’t know if I agree or disagree with anything if I can’t know about it at all.”
“Why me? Why aren’t you throwing this sales pitch at your mother?” his father asked.
“Because Mom would get it. I don’t know if you can. And as much as I love you, if you can’t understand then I can’t come home,” Jake said. “I’m giving you the chance to think and decide for yourself, because if I’m going to demand that right, I owe it to you.”
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