The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “He already has all that,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if it were artistic? My sister’s was being able to draw anything she sees. You know, visual replication? It’s pretty cool, actually. Once I nail my ollie, I’m going to have her draw me doing it. Better than a holopic.”

  That type of artistic ability was one of the earliest latencies unleashed. Baba had gotten the idea after she met a man who could draw whole cityscapes after flying over the city just once. I thought that would be pretty useful in terms of drawing all the plants and animals around Old Harmonie, but with my eye, I didn’t think my testing would recommend any of the artistic latencies.

  “Theo’s mom would never let him do something so impractical, though,” Benji went on. “I really thought she would try to get him to do something political. Like people skills.”

  “It has to exist in there somewhere for them to pull it out,” Julia said. “They can’t magically make it appear. Like, remember the time he told Dr. Kellerman that the fourth-grade curriculum made him want to eat his shorts?”

  “I thought that was pretty funny, actually,” I said. “It was just that he said it to Dr. Kellerman that was the problem—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him crack a smile. That was Theo’s mistake.”

  Julia laughed and said, “I thought Dr. Kellerman was going to spontaneously combust.”

  “Still,” I said. “Maybe he does have that kind of diplomacy in him. Deep down.”

  “Like bottom of an ocean cavern down,” Julia said.

  “Diplomacy would really be more like a dampening, don’t you think?” Benji asked. “Like dampening saying the first thing that comes to your mind.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But that wasn’t really what I was getting at. When Baba first developed the latency, people couldn’t pick. Whatever the skill was remained a mystery until after the procedure. Then the scientists figured out how to predict the skill with testing. And after that they developed a way to use testing to determine the most likely skills, and then target that very specific part of the brain. It seemed a lot less magical that way. “Sometimes I wish it were still like the old days. You know, when it was all a big surprise and you had no idea what might be hidden inside of you.”

  “No way,” Benji said. “I mean, what if it was something totally worthless? Like that remembering the dates thing? Who cares if it rained on Tuesday, August fourth, 2015? Now we don’t get any of those boring latencies, and we can have useful ones.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I guess.”

  Across the street, one of the gardeners let out a string of words that would have had any of us grounded for weeks. The roots of the rhododendron reached down so far and were so tangled that the two gardeners ended up pulling out axes and hacking away at them.

  “You’d think a laser cutter could do it,” Benji said. “Just zap right through it. I bet I could design something that could scoop it right out of the earth. Or just vaporize it. Or maybe turn it into instant compost?” I could see the wheels turning in his brain. “Compost would be best, of course, but vaporizing it would be sick.”

  They were a crew from outside of Old Harmonie, not Krita employees. Their truck said “Somerville,” a name that sounded as sweet and beautiful as an August peach. “I wonder what it’s like in Somerville,” I said. “You know, I bet Somerville would be just about the nicest place you could go outside of Old Harmonie. I bet it’s not as bad as some of the other places out there.”

  “Summer-what?” Benji asked.

  “Somerville,” I said, and pointed at the white work pickup. It was an old truck, with a steering wheel and everything. I’d even noticed the man who drove it drop keys in his pocket when he got out. So strange. Out there they waste a lot of energy with single-user vehicles—not like the smart technology of our solar-powered KritaCars that monitor their own efficiency so they generate more power than they use.

  “We are not going to try to hitch a ride to Somerville or anywhere else,” Julia said. “I swear, I will throw my body down in front of that truck and let it drive right over me before I would let you do that, Mori.”

  “Well, of course I don’t really mean it,” I said. I pulled off my glasses to clean them. They’d been acting funny, like the retina cam wasn’t transmitting quite right, which would mean another trip to the ophthalmologist for me.

  “You’d have to go through the decontamination showers when you came back in,” Julia reminded me. Those showers were our shared nightmare: you had to take off all your clothes and walk through and allegedly no one could see you, but still—you never knew.

  “And you’d feel guilty out there,” Benji said. “You’d give people all your money and your snacks and probably even your shoes.”

  “I’m not saying I actually want to go—I mean, of course not. We all know what it’s like out there. I’m just saying that the town has a pretty name.”

  But Julia still put herself in between me and the truck as if there were actually a danger of me running and climbing in, as if I were doing anything more than just talking. She shifted the band of her watchu around her wrist.

  We were so focused on Mr. Merton’s old house that we almost missed the KritaCar as it putted up the road. It drove along the straight part of Firefly Lane, right between us and the gardeners, then pulled into Theo’s driveway, which was at the top of the circular part of our street. Theo’s mom got out, followed by his nanny. Together they helped Theo from the car. He wore his regular clothes—basketball shorts and a T-shirt—but he also had a cotton cap on his head, the kind babies wear in the hospital. Was it covering up a bandage? I shivered, and goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs even though we were still sitting in full sun.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Julia asked.

  The KritaCar backed out of the driveway, then wound its way past us, empty as a ghost ship.

  “Theo!” Benji called.

  Theo turned his head, but it was like he didn’t even see us. His mom waved to us, and his nanny led him inside and shut the door.

  5

  When I was born, the retina on my right eye hadn’t formed correctly: it was missing a lot of the rods and cones that let people see, so they gave me an artificial one. It took up a big chunk of my 30 percent enhancements allotment, the amount a person can be changed from how they are born. A retina is a tiny thing, obviously not a huge portion of my body by mass or area or volume or any of those measurements. But its complexity and its necessity—that’s what makes it count more in my allotment. I’m not entirely sure how they figure it all out, but there are formulas and equations designed in the ethics department.

  Now I wear glasses with a tiny camera that transmits information to a receptor cell in my brain, and that sends a signal to my optic nerve. Without them on, I get a headache, since my left eye can’t figure out why my right eye isn’t working anymore. Once I’m fully grown, I can get a different system, one that’s all internal and I won’t need to wear the glasses, but really, they aren’t so bad. In earlier versions, they were huge and covered your whole face like a visor on a helmet.

  With my glasses acting up, I needed to go to my doctor, so Mom and I got on the bus with Dad and rode into Center Harmonie. It left Firefly Lane and passed through Nashoba Village, past the library, guarded over by two stone owls with steely looks, and past the museum in the old common house. From Nashoba, we took a twisting road through some woods, and then the bus eased onto the main road in line with the other buses so we became a train snaking our way through to Center Harmonie.

  Center Harmonie was different from our village. The buildings were tall and made of metal and glass, with shiny surfaces that bent and tilted at dramatic angles. To me it looked like a bad dream, and I always felt my chest tighten when we got in the city, something that didn’t help with my checkups.

  The bus stopped in front of headquarters, and pretty much everyone got out except Mom and me. Dad gave us kisses on our cheeks and said we should stop by for lunch in
the cafeteria when we were done. That was one thing I liked about the city: at the cafeteria you could get whatever you wanted to eat. They even made this sorbet out of coconuts and mint and raspberries that tasted just like summer.

  The doors of the bus shut themselves, and it pulled back out onto Main Street. There were people walking together, holding meetings in coffee shops. Everyone had an office, but not everyone used theirs. Mom always did, since she liked the calm and order of her fertility lab. Dad was an epidemiologist, but he sometimes liked to work outside on the village green, as long as he wasn’t working with specimens, of course.

  Dr. Cartwright’s office was a few blocks away from the main Krita building. She was the one who had fixed my eye in the first place, and she’d been the one to check on me ever since. I liked her. She always dressed very fashionably with pointy-toed shoes and perfectly applied lipstick.

  In the exam room, a helper bot buzzed to life on the counter in front of me. “Good morning, Mori! Good morning, Dr. Bloom.” Mom nodded at it, and the black eyes on its white orb of a face blinked in response. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine,” I replied. A green light flashed where its ear would be as it scanned me. “Your blood pressure is good, though your heart rate is slightly elevated. Are you feeling nervous?”

  “A little, I guess.”

  “I’ll let Dr. Cartwright know.”

  “Okay,” I said. I twisted my watchu on my wrist. It was still loose enough that I wouldn’t get fitted for a new one for another year at least. Why had I chosen that pink band? Julia had chosen a sophisticated deep purple for hers.

  “Good. Our records indicate that you are here for a check of your prosthetic?”

  “It’s not a prosthetic,” Mom said. “It’s an integrated system.”

  The helper bot swiveled to face Mom. “I hear your concern.”

  Mom rolled her eyes.

  “Things are just a little fuzzy sometimes,” I said.

  “Noted. I will alert Dr. Cartwright that you are ready to see her.”

  And with a hum, the helper bot powered down.

  “I can’t get used to those,” Mom said with a shudder.

  The door opened then, and in came Dr. Cartwright wearing a slim polka-dotted skirt and a blouse with a flouncy bow. All I could think about was how that bow would be a disaster if you were eating soup. Dr. Cartwright took the glasses off my face and placed them in a special box lined with a soft cloth. “We can replace those lenses while you’re here. Dodo picked up a slight weakening in your left eye, so we can also add a prescription there.”

  “A weakening?” Mom’s body leaned toward mine.

  “Nothing to be concerned about. Totally normal. If it gets worse we can laser it, and it’s not even a measurable adjustment.”

  I felt Mom’s body relax. She was always worried about my using up all of my 30 percent. It’s one of the oldest rules in Old Harmonie: everyone in Krita is allowed enhancements of their baseline talents up to 30 percent, but not more. There are two different kinds: therapies and enhancements. Therapies are medical: they fix a deficiency. Like my retina. Enhancements make something stronger, whether it needs to be or not. Like sometimes people will get enhancements to make them taller, or to have better lung capacity. It’s all physical, not like the latency, which is more mental and isn’t a part of the 30 percent calculation.

  Even though there are two categories, the line between a therapy and an enhancement is pretty blurry. When my retina surgery is finally done I’ll have better than 20/20 vision, so is that a therapy or an enhancement? “It’s not to put a limit on anyone,” Baba had said about her 30 percent rule. “Humans grow and change through struggle. If we solve all of our problems, how can we ever evolve? How will we ever know our own humanity?” I knew my mom agreed with that, too, but she says it’s different when it’s your own child who needs help. I think that we have rules for a reason, and they should be the same for everyone. Still, I didn’t like the way she wrung her hands whenever we came to Dr. Cartwright’s, so it was good news that a prescription, or even the laser surgery, didn’t count in the computation.

  “Now just lie back and relax while I run some tests.”

  The tests consisted of her running different images through the system, first just sparks of light, then an apple on a table or an old-fashioned eye chart that I had to read, but then more complicated things, like a dog running across a field at sunset. I had to tell her what I saw, and Dodo, the helper bot, recorded it all. It always made me feel a little queasy, but when Dr. Cartwright said, “All done; not so bad, right?” I nodded in agreement.

  “She’s looking good. We can probably go a year before we check her, but we’re definitely going to want to check her after her latency release,” Dr. Cartwright said. “Sometimes those functions interfere with the eye work, especially if it’s artistic.”

  “Mori’s latency isn’t artistic, that’s for sure.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” My artwork wasn’t terrible. I mean, she had my drawings up all over the house, didn’t she? She took my best plant drawings and put them in simple white frames.

  Dr. Cartwright lowered her tablet. “Do you know what it’s going to be?”

  “Mori’s testing has shown—and of course we noticed, too—that she’s got a real knack for details, for history, and for planning, so we’re looking at the logic-based latencies, though we haven’t ruled out any of the puzzles, especially spatial skills.”

  “The retina is definitely connected to the spatial understanding, so let’s be sure to check her, okay?”

  “Do we need to talk about this now? It’s almost a year away,” I said.

  Dr. Cartwright grinned. “Of course, Mori. And as for now, you are looking great. Remember, this adjustment might give you a headache for a couple days, so take it easy.” I held out my hand and she pressed a button on my watchu to upload her report onto my data set. Our watchus act as mini-repositories for us, storing our files and checking our basic body functions once a day. Plus they tell time. “Any questions?” she asked.

  I shook my head. She was right. The change was enough of a difference that it made me a little shaky, like being on the merry-go-round in the park. “Can we go see Dad now?” I asked. “I really want some of that sorbet.”

  Dr. Cartwright and Mom both smiled. Adults have this way of smiling at kids like we are all glowing gold. It’s weird, but I guess it does feel pretty good.

  6

  There was a vase of flowers waiting for me when we got home. I hope your eye appointment went well was written on the card. It wasn’t signed, but I recognized the shaky cursive as Theo’s. I glanced at my mom. She shrugged, then leaned in. “Boys are weird.”

  “Really weird,” I replied.

  “You should put them up in your room,” she told me.

  “Maybe,” I said. But I left them on the counter and raced to Julia’s. She was out back in her pool. I sat on the edge, my feet hanging down into the water. “Theo sent me flowers.”

  She splashed over to me. “This morning he came over and asked me to play tennis with him. It was like something out of an old movie. He was so polite and asked me, ‘Would you care for lemonade or water, Julia?’ ”

  “You don’t think—” I began.

  Julia grabbed on to the edge of the pool. “It was only yesterday that he got it—”

  “It couldn’t be a coincidence.”

  Our words tumbled over each other’s. “Maybe he’s just feeling tired.”

  “Or maybe they gave him a mood enhancer or something.”

  “Maybe it’s permanent?”

  “Maybe they released the wrong thing? I mean, like, maybe he really did have this polite guy hiding out inside of him and—”

  “They didn’t release the wrong thing. That just doesn’t happen.” Julia dunked underwater, then popped back up. “His mom came and found him and told him he needed to go home to rest.”

  “His mom took two days off work?”
r />   “I know, right? And then a KritaCar came and got them.”

  My stomach started twisting. “Do you think he’s okay?”

  “Oh, Mori, he’s fine. It’s just his latency. It’s no big deal.”

  I wished Benji were there so we could ask him how it had been with his sister.

  “Come on,” Julia said. “Change into your suit. The water feels great.”

  “I need to check on my trees,” I told her.

  “The whole point of trees is that you don’t need to check on them.”

  “I don’t think that’s the whole point of them.”

  “Whatever,” Julia said. Then a teasing smile flashed across her lips. “What kind of flowers did he send you?”

  “Gerber daisies,” I said. “You know, the big kind.”

  “You sure they weren’t roses?”

  I blushed. “They were Gerber daisies. Red and pink and—”

  “Red and pink, huh? Theo’s got a crush,” she sang. “Theo’s got a crush!”

  “Watch out, Julia. I just might send those flowers on to DeShawn. I can copy your handwriting exactly, remember.”

  Her smile faltered. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Mori!”

  I crouched down next to the pool and held out my pinkie. “I pinkie-swear I will never, ever reveal your undying love of DeShawn Harris, not even if I am kidnapped and tortured by pirates.”

  She hooked her pinkie through mine. “Cool. Come back after you check on those trees.”

  I grabbed my bike from her driveway and rode out onto Firefly Lane. The gardeners were back at the house across the street. They’d put a thick hedge all around the property and now were planting two rosebushes at the end of the front walk, the flowers still in tight buds but visibly bright red at the tips. The gardeners were sweating. I thought for a moment that I ought to offer them a glass of water or something. That’s what a nice person would do, and my friends were always telling me I was the nicest. But that would mean talking to them up close, passing a glass to them. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make the words come out of my mouth. And anyway, it wouldn’t be entirely safe, I didn’t think. They’d been through the decontamination process, of course, but the problem with out there is that nothing was regulated or monitored. A whole new disease might have cropped up and no one would even know it, or a new bacteria, or a new type of insect—anything, really. And our decontamination system wouldn’t even know to look for it or how to destroy it.