“Behold,” said the blond man at the pulpit. Steve recognized him from the PCo assembly at the school. Graham, the guy in the suit, speaking now to a packed church.
Steve recognized some of the congregation from the assembly as well. The Andersons’ mom. All of her kids. Clive. Rat and Pam McCurdy from MC Estates. Even the gardener from Mrs. Hayworth’s. Steve spotted his own kids, standing over by the refreshments.
“They are one people,” Graham’s voice boomed through the speakers. “And they have all one language.” On a projection screen behind him, text speak began to appear. LOL. ROFL. People were chuckling.
“Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Because, technology? This Tether? This is our new Tower of Babel. Except this time it’s in the air, it’s intangible. This time there’s nothing to topple. And I ask you, what is so wrong with understanding one another? With being connected? What is so bad about that?”
Steve had to consciously close his jaw. He expected someone to shout out, Blasphemy! The Devil’s tongue! No one did, though. The townspeople were nodding.
“Because we here at PCo believe this is humanity’s basic downfall: we’re divided. Everyone’s autonomous, communication is flawed. But what if we could see everything, know everything about everyone instantly?”
“That’s a frightening thought,” someone said from the audience. Steve wanted to chime in with an amen, but Graham was already pouncing on it.
“Yes, we’re frightened by the idea, aren’t we? But they say if you’ve done nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?”
There were murmurs at that.
“People only desire privacy because they’re afraid of others discovering who they truly are. Their hopes, their desires. Their secrets and lies. But everyone has done something they wish to hide. Something dark. We’re all born with it, this rotten spot, this bit of dark.”
“Amen,” Hank of Hank’s Hardware said, stealing Steve’s line—but for an entirely different purpose.
Graham grabbed the podium and leaned forward, engaging them. “Yes! Hallelujah! That is exactly the reason I’m here! To tell you that you’re forgiven. For everything! The Provider forgives you. And that’s true community, isn’t it? Everyone knowing everything about everyone . . . and forgiving them anyway? That’s true communication. And that’s a tower in which we should all invest.”
Graham finally stood back again from the pulpit, looking more professionally cut in his suit. “That’s why, today, we’re giving everyone who owns a Tether, and everyone who signs up, a free wireless headset.”
A picture of the earpiece appeared on the projector screen. Steve flinched as the entire congregation cheered.
People stood, clapping. The flock got so loud, the individual voices all came together to create a different sound, a dull roar.
After the speech—sermon, Steve reminded himself—one of Mrs. Hayworth’s old bridge friends went to the piano and began to play. The song sounded familiar, but Steve couldn’t place it. He just remembered it was supposed to be faster, not as soft.
“But hurry,” Graham said, “the offer won’t last. Come now, join us, partake of what The Provider has in store for you.”
Was that . . . an altar call? Steve thought.
In front, people lined up at the communion table, which had been pushed out to receive customers. A PCo employee, a boy in Sarah’s class, sat behind the table, signing people up. Other PCo reps walked through the crowd, handing out the free headsets and pamphlets.
“Dad,” JJ said, walking over with his own headset and a plastic cup.
“Is that really Kool-Aid?” Steve asked.
“No. Grape juice.”
“Oh.”
“Can I get one of those laptop docks?” JJ gestured with his cup at another table displaying a variety of accessories for the Tether. “Or a smartwatch?”
“We’re here to get your sister’s phone,” Steve said. “Not tonight.”
“Fine.” JJ went to the accessory table anyway to browse.
The Kinks, Steve thought, focusing again on the piano music. That’s what the church lady was playing, “Party Line.”
“I think we have to wait in line,” he told Sarah, pointing. She wasn’t paying much attention, though. She was fixed on something across the church, something happening at the communion table.
The young PCo rep was attending to Sarah’s friend, that little smoker Anastasia Disney. Anastasia kept touching the boy’s arm as they laughed, and he showed her how to use her new headset, tucking it behind her ear as if it were one of her golden locks.
She’s jealous, Steve realized, catching his daughter’s look. But then he realized what that meant, and Steve’s next thought was, Him?
What did Sarah see in him? Besides the biceps and triceps bulging out the sleeves of his PCo shirt?
Gary Pervier, that was his name. Steve had taught him eighth grade English Comp. The kid was a moron, good at football and not much else. Really good. Steve had always liked going with Sarah to the games to watch Pervier play. It was like watching college ball.
Rich parents, too, Steve thought, trying to see the advantage in it, however shallow.
No, Steve recalled, Pervier had been good at one other thing. He’d been pretty good at getting his girlfriend at the time, a smart girl, to write all his papers for him.
Steve had a knack for memorizing student writing styles. He had a keen ear for voice. So he’d recognized the girlfriend’s style, even with Gary’s name at the top. But Steve hadn’t been able to prove it. It wasn’t as though he could perform a handwriting analysis on an essay written in Times New Roman.
Wait a minute, he thought. The ex-girlfriend. At the time, Pervier had been dating the new girl, Anastasia Disney. God, that was, like, four years ago.
Anastasia had been a good writer; Steve had forgotten that. In his unique memory, writing styles remained distinct, but faces tended to run together like paint, year after year of teaching the same thing and trying to keep mental yearbooks.
“Hey, buddy,” Bill said, startling Steve. The deputy held his cowboy hat to his chest.
“Oh, hey,” Steve said. He walked forward with the line as it moved. There was only one person ahead of them now. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Yeah, I just had some questions about these,” Bill said, holding up his Dragnet glasses. “The guy pretty much confirmed my fears about the background checks. All those bodies I’ve buried?”
Sarah laughed. She tucked a wing of hair behind her ear and glanced toward Gary Pervier.
“Next,” Pervier said, smiling first at Steve, then at Sarah.
“Hey, wait,” Steve said before Bill could wander off. “You see Marvin out front?”
“No, he wasn’t part of the protest. No worries, no Close Encounters tonight.”
“Actually, he was out there. Parked in a moving van.”
“Moving van?”
“Sweating bullets. Yep, Barksdale pointed him out.”
Bill’s eye twitched.
Steve saw it. “You think we should leave?”
“Leave?” Sarah said.
“Nah.” Bill clapped Steve on the shoulder. “I’ll scope him out. You just get your daughter a phone, all right?”
Bill left, and Steve sat down with Sarah and Gary Pervier, Mr. Pearly Whites and Perfect Haircut. Kid was wearing way too much of that body spray crap.
“New customers?” Pervier asked.
“She is,” Steve replied.
Sarah smiled at the dumb hunk. “Just don’t give me the pink one. Anastasia’s is pink, and it’s hideous.”
Pervier kind of ignored her. “You can save money on the family plan,” the kid said to Steve. “And since your daughter’s recruiting you, she’ll get the points. The more people she recruits, the higher she climbs on The Provider’s Top Twelve.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Steve said.
“The Provider is like who runs PCo. The more fol
lowers you recruit, the more The Provider favors you.”
“For rewards? What?”
“Sort of,” Pervier said. “Okay, we’ll just go ahead and get you signed up.”
“No, I think I’m good,” Steve said. “Just my daughter.”
“But, sir, you could save a lot of money. Calls to people on the same network don’t count toward your minutes. And after rebate, the Tether’s practically free. Just replace your old phone with a way better one.”
“He already has a Tether,” Sarah said. “I don’t know why he doesn’t use it. We could get rid of the home phone.”
“Home phone?” Pervier asked, as if he couldn’t comprehend such a contraption.
“I like having it,” Steve said. “Good in an emergency.”
Sarah arched a brow and one corner of her mouth. “But if we all have a Tether, what’s the point of paying for an extra one?”
“Who are you with?” Pervier asked.
“Skywire.”
“Dude, seriously?”
Sarah giggled.
“They suck.”
“They’ve done fine by me,” Steve said.
“But we bought their tower. I’m surprised they didn’t tell you that. Once we finish the upgrades for faster data, you’ll be roaming.”
“I didn’t know that,” Steve admitted. Pervier opened his mouth to say more, but Steve cut him off. “It was my wife’s phone.”
“Oh, is she here? Why don’t we just sign her up and give her the free phone. You and your daughter both would get on The Provider’s Top Twelve.”
“Look,” Steve said, “I’m happy with the phones I’ve got. I’m just here for Sarah.”
“All right, man, suit yourself.”
“Thanks,” Steve said.
Pervier showed Sarah the different styles of Tethers, and she picked the blue one with a matching headset.
“Just got to activate it,” Pervier said, holding up the blue phone. He scanned Sarah’s eyeball with the camera, then asked her to press her thumb against the screen. When she lifted her hand away, Steve saw her thumbprint glowing red for a second before fading.
“All done.”
“No contract?” Steve said.
Pervier offered him a blank stare. Then he laughed and clapped Steve on the arm, nearly knocking him over. “Oh, man,” he said to Sarah, “your dad’s old.”
* * *
“What’re you doing here?” Mini Mark asked.
JJ looked up from the laptop docks. They were cool. Basically just a keyboard and screen; you simply docked your Tether in a slot on the back, and the dock turned the phone into a computer.
“Just out on the town,” JJ said. “And the town’s still here.”
Mark pushed up his glasses. “You’re an idiot.”
“Whatever,” JJ said, turning back to the docks.
“It takes time, idiot. Some of the apps take time. The real world can take a while to update.”
JJ shook his head and walked off, staring into his phone.
“Stupid idiot,” Mark said, but he let JJ go.
Mark was the idiot. But it was true, what he’d said about the updates. When Mark had built the PCo data center in Buttcrack Rock, he’d finished construction in a single day. The actual building, though, took way longer to construct.
JJ wondered how long after he’d skinned Meg Disney’s Grumpier Cat that the real world would update. He knew it hadn’t happened yet because Meg had come to school that day happy and bright. She’d posted a new picture on Follow too: a shot of Grumpier Cat, refusing to play with a bit of string. JJ had nearly cried with relief. He’d been angry at the time he’d skinned the cat, but he’d regretted it later, hurting something like that. Now he had to worry about some laggy update.
Still fake, JJ thought, remembering Mini Mark’s plastic diamond. The phones weren’t magic.
He opened Drones to pretend he was blowing the towel off Mini Mark’s head instead of some rebel’s. He opened the game inventory and browsed his guns, poring over the stats.
He picked the weapon he would’ve picked in real life to kill Mini Mark: the StG 44 he’d collected from some militia his character had gunned down in the Ukraine. The StG, as the gun description explained, had been developed by Nazis.
“Here,” someone said, and a hand, like a flesh-colored spider, its legs long and delicate, slipped the phone out of JJ’s grip.
“Hey!”
Graham, stretched thin in his suit, grinned at JJ. The man’s teeth were shockingly white. “I wanted to show you an awesome app.”
“Oh,” JJ said. “All right.”
Graham took out his own Tether and bumped it against JJ’s. “There,” he said, returning the phone. The new app was already opening. “It’s called The Wand.”
“Wow,” JJ said, panning the camera phone around the room.
“Even Android has a metal detector,” Graham explained. “But ours isn’t just EMF. It’s way more sophisticated.”
JJ stopped panning his camera when he noticed something glowing in a guy’s pocket. “It’s like an X-ray,” he said, zooming in on the guy’s Swiss Army knife. Similar to the gun catalog in Drones, The Wand showed him an entire profile on the multipurpose tool, such as the fact that it wasn’t made by the Swiss Army—stuff like that.
“It will show you more than just metal weapons as well,” Graham said.
“Yeah, that lady’s carrying mace.” JJ’s grin began to fade. “Too bad it’s fake.”
“Pardon me?”
“The app. It’s fake.”
Graham held up his hands. “Point it at me, then.”
JJ scanned him with the phone, and something in the pocket of Graham’s slacks glowed. His Tether.
Graham pulled out the phone, then put it back in. The app tracked everything.
“Wow,” JJ said. So at least this one app seemed real. “Wait, I thought it only showed weapons.”
Grinning, Graham patted JJ’s shoulder. “Don’t tell your dad.”
“I’m not crazy.”
Graham laughed and walked away, leaving JJ to scan the crowd for weapons.
* * *
Bill’s boots crunched gravel once more through the lot. Moving van, he thought, scanning the back end of every car and van. He’d already scanned the plates.
He should have asked Steve where in the lot? He could’ve asked the protestors, too, but they’d left.
With a sigh, he rounded back toward his cruiser. Bill glimpsed Barksdale weaving between cars and stopped.
“Barks!” he almost shouted out. But Bill stayed quiet. His old partner was tracking something down and Bill didn’t want to interrupt. Barks sniffed his way out of the parking lot, around the back of the church.
Bill followed. He’d forgotten there was another driveway at the back, a paved road right to the cemetery. Church access, not accessible via the parking lot.
That’s where Marvin’s van was parked.
* * *
“You’d better never post that on Follow,” Sarah said when she and Steve joined JJ by the refreshments.
“Yeah, JJ, no taping people without their permission,” Steve said. “What’ve we talked about?”
“That you’d read some stupid reports,” JJ said, still scanning his sister.
“Yes,” Steve said. “So stop.”
“I’m not even taping.”
“I don’t care. Stop.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not ‘cyber-bullying,’ ” JJ said. His other hand slipped his phone into his baggy pocket, and Steve nodded his thanks.
“Did, um, Bill leave?” Sarah asked, looking around.
“Probably home by now,” Steve said. He looked around, too, then led his kids out.
In the car, Steve pulled up to the exit out of the church lot. He was looking both ways when someone’s brakes squealed behind him. In the rearview, lights ablaze, Bill skidded to a stop.
“He want something?” Steve asked, more to himself.
“
He’s pulling you over,” JJ said, aiming his phone through the rear windshield at the cruiser.
“JJ, I can’t see.”
Sarah looked back too. “Dad, move.”
“What?”
Sarah pointed.
“Move!” Bill was shouting out his window. He honked his horn, and finally Steve pulled to one side. He didn’t want to pull onto the road and accidentally go the same way Bill intended to go. Double yellow lines out there. Bill would have to illegally pass.
“Sorry, buddy!” Bill shouted as he shot past.
“Where’s he going?” Sarah asked.
“No clue.”
Steve watched for a second as his friend raced away. Not that far down the road, Bill jackknifed into the cemetery, killing his lights.
“Huh,” Steve said. Then he looked both ways for cars and started to pull out. The protestors were gone, which was probably the only reason Steve noticed the church sign.
Between its rock pillars and under its little roof, the sign used to say “Member of the Southern Baptist Convention.” Now it had been painted over and Steve realized his country had a different type of separation to worry about other than church and state.
Mountain View Church
Sponsored by PCo
The Tether on the cross flapped in the wind, and Steve pulled out.
CHAPTER 17
Lost him, Bill thought, scanning the headstones toothing the hill. Marvin must have leaked out the back of the boneyard, back where another country road circled the north base of the hill.
Catch him at home, Bill thought.
Head him off.
He pulled the cruiser around one of the loops of the cemetery. Not her favorite, Bill thought, glimpsing the new flowers on Janice’s grave. Close, but not.
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