“But you are aware of the phenomenon?”
“I have heard rumors.”
“Have you taken any provisions against it?”
“Not specifically.”
“So you admit that you allow your students to fend for themselves as an insidious threat spreads among them.”
“Please. We’re not talking about some deadly new virus—”
“In a very real sense, we might be. Improvement spreads in exactly the same fashion as a virulent disease. Outbreaks flare up and fade away, apparently at random. Each time, it disappears, only to reappear later and wreak further havoc.”
Clair reached the street and hurried for a d-mat booth.
“We’re talking about a meme much more sinister than any mere disease,” Dylan was saying, “and I’m not leaving until I am certain that this institution is capable of providing its students with the protection they deserve.”
Clair was at the booth. She dived in and called out the name of her usual station. The video feed died as the lights in the booth flared. She forced herself to stand still and not fidget too much—not that it made any difference to her or the way d-mat worked. The flight of a bullet fired across the booth at the exact moment of transit would have been unaltered in any way. That was the VIA guarantee.
The doors opened in Manteca and Clair began to run.
“Mr. Linwood,” Principal Gordon was saying over the video stream, “I completely agree with you that Manteca New Campus is obliged to protect its students to the fullest extent possible, but we cannot protect them from imaginary threats. I thought I had made this absolutely clear the last time you—”
“If there were evidence of harm, would you act?”
“Of course we would.”
From under his jacket, Dylan pulled a slim document folder.
“I have here pathology reports on the deaths of nine girls who, according to family testimonies, all used Improvement within six months of one another.” He proffered the folder to Principal Gordon. “Go on, take a look.”
The principal took the folder, opened it, and flipped through the pages with a tightening frown.
Clair wished she could see what the folder contained—a wish that was almost immediately answered. Appended to the video feed was a second stream of images and data that she glanced at but couldn’t interpret.
“When you’re done,” Dylan said, “we can discuss what measures you will introduce to protect the students of this school from the malevolent influences they have been exposed to via d-mat.”
The school gates were in view. Anger and the first hint of anxiety made Clair run faster. Was this really pure bluff on Dylan’s part, or was there something truly to worry about?
The principal abruptly closed the folder and placed it in her lap.
“I fail to see how these cases are related, to each other or to Improvement,” she said. “These poor young women committed suicide.”
“The manner of their deaths is irrelevant,” Dylan insisted. “Look at the brain scans. There’s clear evidence of damage to the prefrontal cortex, temporal lobes, and hippocampus. Such damage is not related to their medical histories.”
“So?”
“The only thing these poor girls had in common was Improvement. The connection cannot be disputed.”
“Where did you obtain these records, Mr. Linwood?” the principal asked. “If this data is real, why has it not come to light before now?”
“It’s very real,” he said, “and readily available to anyone who looks hard enough. Buried in the Air under a mountain of irrelevant information, as all important things are. Nothing is hidden, and everything is ignored. The surveillance state doesn’t need violence to perpetrate injustice. All it needs is our indifference.”
“Mr. Linwood, please, can we stick to the topic?”
Clair was on campus. A crowd had gathered in front of the principal’s office, watched over by a UFO-shaped eye-in-the-sky drone. Students in turn were staring at a two-wheeled silver electrobike parked on the slate quadrangle, all sweeping planes and fragile-looking lines. It listed slightly from vertical, supported by a kickstand protruding from its left-hand side. The engine was ticking like an old-fashioned clock. “I think that’s a Linwood,” Clair heard someone breathe in awe. “One of a kind—I mean literally!”
She hurried through the crowd, grateful for all the jogging Libby had made her do that summer. Her lungs were burning, but she would be able to talk when she got inside.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Dylan was saying.
“Nothing of the sort. Misled by your prejudices, possibly. I can’t conclude anything until you tell us more.”
“The onus is on you to ensure the safety of your students. I’ve given you cause to look deeper. Now I expect you to do it.”
“I see no cause at all. Just rumors and pictures.” Principal Gordon tossed the folder lightly in her hand as though to demonstrate how little it weighed, physically and symbolically. “These documents could easily have been falsified.”
Outside the office, the principal’s assistant, a slender young man with flickering lenses, tried to stop Clair from going inside.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but Principal Gordon is engaged at the moment.”
“I know,” she said. “The world knows it. Get out of my way.”
She feinted left and slipped past him to the right, driven by a mixture of indignation and fear.
Both Dylan Linwood and Principal Gordon stood as she burst into the room. Clair came to a halt between them, struck by the sudden vertigo of seeing herself in the streaming video. Her skin was shining and sweaty. Her hair was wild. She looked as crazy as Dylan did.
“What are you doing here, Clair?”
The principal’s eyes were very hard. All Clair’s personal information had probably been uploaded into her lenses the moment Clair entered the room.
“I’m the one who told him about Improvement,” she said, choosing her words with care. Only now did it occur to her to wonder what she was going to do to make Dylan shut up and go home. “I went to Mr. Linwood for advice. I didn’t want him to do anything like this . . . not at all.”
“Did you really think I’d sit back and do nothing?” Jesse’s father asked her.
The principal waved him silent.
“Clair, do you know someone who has used Improvement?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Do I have to say who she is?”
“Not unless you want to or you think she is in any danger. Do you think she would submit to a physical examination to see if she has suffered any ill effects?”
Clair thought about Libby’s headache and mood swings. These weren’t certain evidence of anything—although she was sure Dylan would claim they were. Clair might have been willing to put the suggestion to Libby but for one critical detail.
No one apart from Zep and her knew about the drugs Libby had taken the night before. Whatever they were, they obviously weren’t legal, or else she could have fabbed them herself. An examination would undoubtedly include a drug test.
“No,” she said, afraid now of damaging more than just Libby’s reputation. “It’s no one’s business but her own.”
She glanced at Jesse’s father. He was glaring at her. What had he expected—that she would sit back while he destroyed her best friend’s life?
“This speaks volumes to me, Mr. Linwood,” said the principal. “Clair’s friend could come forward if she wanted to, but she hasn’t. Surely she would if there was something wrong with her. Improvement is a meaningless prank. Unless I have hard evidence to back up your allegations, Mr. Linwood, I can only, once again, follow the health and safety guidelines issued by the appropriate authorities—”
“That’s not good enough,” said Dylan, stepping forward. “This is about more than just Improvement, and you know it. The whole deadly system is what we should be railing against. How many students of yours come to campus by d-mat every day? Do you know or care what d
angers they’re exposing themselves to each time they use this technology? Don’t you think it’s irresponsible to encourage them to take such risks when telepresence alternatives exist?”
Gordon the Gorgon didn’t back down. “Every class is already posted to the Air for anyone who wants to use their lenses. How my students choose to engage with the educational resources we offer is entirely up to them.”
“That’s a coward’s answer, Principal Gordon.” Dylan’s face was red, his voice too loud. “You sit here in your comfortable chair while your students are fried up and scrambled and scattered in pieces across the planet. How many deaths would it take to spur you into action? How many kids could you bear to lose? Perhaps you’re so jaded already, so inured to this cult of disintegration, that you would cheerfully herd your wards into a slaughterhouse without losing a minute’s sleep. You monster, you murderer—”
The door to the office burst in behind them again, revealing Jesse and the principal’s flustered assistant.
“Stop it, Dad. You’re embarrassing yourself!”
“I’m embarrassing you, you mean.” His father rounded on him. “Why does it matter what these people think?” He waved an arm in front of him, as though sweeping the entire world away. “Let them burn. Let them die if they want to. What do I care?”
He pushed past Jesse into the antechamber and stalked off through the crowd.
[17]
* * *
JESSE CHASED AFTER his father. With a screech of tires, Dylan Linwood sped away on the electrobike, leaving his son behind.
“Is that all, Ms. Hill?” asked the principal, dragging Clair’s attention back to the office.
Clair hesitated. The video stream had ended with Dylan Linwood’s departure. There were no public eyes on her now.
“What if I said that I had used Improvement and was willing to take the test?”
“Then I’d say you’ve wasted time and energy better spent doing your homework. You look perfectly fine to me. And if you’re thinking of killing yourself, I strongly urge you to talk to a counselor. That’s why we provide them.”
Principal Gordon opened the folder Dylan Linwood had given her, removed the pages, and ripped them in half.
“I have better ways to spend my mornings than with scaremongering students and difficult parents. It’s time for class, Clair. Go.”
Clair did as she was told, her face burning. The principal’s assistant ushered her outside, and she was happy enough to go. That scene couldn’t have gone much worse for her.
The crowd was dispersing, staring at but not talking to her. Jesse was standing, looking lost, next to his own bicycle—a human-powered one, with pedals at the front and a horizontal seating position. He was wearing the same jeans as yesterday but with an orange T-shirt this time. Maybe the yellow one was in the wash, Clair thought, distantly wondering how that worked.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “This is his way of helping, believe it or not.”
“Well, he’s not. Was any of that real, or did he fake the whole thing?”
“He thinks it’s real, for what that’s worth.”
Clair didn’t know what to do. She didn’t really think that Improvement was causing anyone brain damage, but the thought was out there now. Who knew how Libby would react? She was bound to get wind of it. Would she understand that Clair had been trying to protect her? Would she see that Clair had put her own reputation at risk in order to undo the damage she had already done to their friendship?
“I want to talk to him again,” she said, coming to an instant decision. “I want your father to tell me everything he thinks he knows.”
“Uh . . . I don’t think he’s going to like that idea—”
“I don’t care. Can you call him?”
“I tried. He’s not responding.”
“Try again. If he’s lying, he needs to take it back. And if he’s right, against all the odds, Libby might be in real danger.”
“I know,” said Jesse, “Libby and everyone else who used Improvement, but what can I do? What can you do? It was her choice to do it. Whether it works the way it’s supposed to or not, it’s on her, right?”
Clair was about to deny that she would ever abandon Libby like that when it truly struck her that she, too, was one of Improvement’s potential victims. If Dylan Linwood was right, she and Libby were in exactly the same boat.
“You look like hell, Clarabelle,” said Zep from behind her. “And no wonder.”
She turned, wondering if he was reading her mind. “What?”
“The video. I saw all of it except for when I was in transit. Fifty people have sent me the link since then. That’s the most popular Gordon the Gorgon has ever been. You too. It’s popping in the wake of the crashlander thing.”
“Oh, great,” said Clair.
“Soon you’ll be famouser than famous—until some cat meme takes your place, anyway.” He actually looked jealous.
“Don’t. It’s not helping.” She pressed her palms hard into her temples, wishing she could squeeze out a solution. Her infield was full of bumps, distracting her.
“Do you think it’s real?” Zep asked in quieter tones. “Nine girls in six months?”
“It can’t be, can it?” said Jesse. “There’d be no missing that kind of correlation.”
“Not if no one’s looking. . . . Hey, you’re the Stainer kid. Son of the lunatic himself.”
Zep held out his hand, and Jesse warily shook it.
“Nice entrance back there, by the way,” Zep said. “Bet you’re looking forward to going home and facing the music.”
“I’m going there now,” said Jesse. He was speaking more to Clair than Zep. “I’m really sorry it went like this.”
“It’s not over yet,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
“What?” Zep looked from Clair to Jesse and back again. “Are you crazy?”
“Maybe, and maybe he is too. But I can’t leave it here.” Fury and frustration were making her hands shake. “He’s going to talk to me properly, and I’m not leaving until he does.”
“All right,” said Jesse, looking resigned to an awkward replay of the previous night’s confrontation. “I’ll leave the bike here. We’ll walk together.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Clair.
“Don’t worry about the bike,” he said, misunderstanding her concern. “I’ve got a spare if this is stolen. That’s the trouble with Dad’s plan to reeducate the world. He can only make so many things, which makes them valuable, which makes people copy and fab them so anyone can have their own. It’s stupid. He’s stupid.”
Jesse stopped himself. He had wrapped a chain through the front wheel and fastened it to a water fountain.
“Screw school,” said Zep. “I’m going too. This is for Libby, right?”
Relieved, Clair could only nod.
[18]
* * *
SHE SCANNED HER infield as they headed for the school gate. The small crowd had completely dispersed, and the drone had gone with it. There was no physical sign that anything untoward had happened at school that day. The aftershocks were all semantic, with Clair’s lenses still full of strangers bumping her, her news grabs filling up with related topics and caption updates, and nags from both of her parents. They had seen the video, like everyone else. She expected another nag the moment they noticed her leaving school.
She sent them a quick note telling them she was all right and would explain later. She said the same thing to Ronnie and Tash and deleted everything else, including the blinking call path from her string-of-q’s stalker. She concentrated on matching Jesse long pace for long pace as they left school and headed up Woodward. His head was down, so she couldn’t see his eyes through his hair, just his mouth and the unhappy shape it made.
“You think Dad is some kind of mad bigot,” Jesse said, “but he wasn’t always that way. Mom used d-mat, and they were married for ages before they had me. She came from Australia. Her family still
lives there, but we don’t have anything to do with them now.”
“So he used to be cool,” said Zep. “That doesn’t help us now, does it?”
“I just mean there’s a reason why he’s the way he is. One night when I was very young, there was an outage all down the west coast, as far inland as Utah. It was the tail end of a run of errors that stretched from the superconductor grid right back to a particular powersat, where some astronaut had messed up the routine maintenance a week earlier. There are safeguards against this kind of thing, of course, buffers, backups, blah-blah, but in this case they all failed. Tens of thousands of transits were interrupted. I have the exact number somewhere. The outage lasted less than a second, but that was long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” asked Zep.
“Nineteen people died that night,” Jesse said. “My mother was one of them.”
“Dude, that sucks.”
“It does,” Clair agreed, feeling a modicum of understanding, then, perhaps even sympathy for Jesse’s father. But the bulk of her feelings were for Jesse. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to lose her mother that way, literally in the blink of an eye.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to be sorry.” Jesse was emerging from his shell of hair as he talked, first his nose, then his eyes, which gleamed in the afternoon light. “You just have to understand. VIA was keen to pin the blame on someone else. It was a terrorist action, they said. WHOLE, specifically. They never revealed how WHOLE had done it—for fear of copycats, they said. It didn’t change what happened, and that’s why Dad would say that d-mat can never be trusted. Because you can’t trust the people who are supposed to make it safe.
“You might think he’s nothing but an asshole,” Jesse concluded, “but Mom’s death is at the heart of everything he does. All he really wants is for everyone to be safe. He wants to protect me like he couldn’t protect her.”
“You make him sound like a saint,” said Zep.
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