I lifted my eyes and looked at Julia. Her nose was perfectly straight between her two perfectly shaped and evenly shaded brown eyes. Had her parents chosen that precise shade of brown? Had they planned a girl with long hair that they could put into two braids each day? And her strength? Her early latency? “If she’s a thing, so are you.”
“Well, that’s just perfect.”
I pushed my glasses back up my nose. “And so am I. All of us. It’s a matter of degree.”
Julia tightened her towel around herself. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Think about it. Our parents can dampen us and we have our latencies. And the enhancements. We can say it’s okay to alter up to thirty percent of a person, but why thirty? Why not ten? Or nothing? Or ninety-nine point nine nine nine. It’s arbitrary.”
“It’s not arbitrary,” Julia said.
The phone rang inside Julia’s house, and a moment later, her father’s heavy laugh drifted down to us.
“But Ilana wasn’t changed,” Theo said. “She was created from the ground up. That’s different.”
“Why? Our parents have been fiddling with us since before we were born, trying to get us just the way they want us to be. And when we don’t measure up, they bring us in to get fixed.”
“I think they’re just looking out for us, Mori,” Benji said. Which was easy for him to say, considering his parents had never lied to him like mine had to me.
“I’m supposed to be braver. Don’t you remember? I used to be brave. Remember how we used to fly off the swings, Julia? I was brave and it scared my parents, so they dampened it so I wouldn’t get hurt. ‘Just curious enough,’ that’s what they always said, like they were so proud of me. But it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t my choice.”
“Your parents were trying to protect you,” Julia said.
“And so are Ilana’s. Or they were.”
Julia didn’t have a response to that. So all we could do was try to look anywhere but at each other as the truth settled in: every single one of us was a creation.
“I bet out there the parents don’t mess around with kids like that,” I said.
“That’s because they don’t know how,” Julia said.
“Maybe they don’t know how because they didn’t want to figure it out. Because they know it’s wrong,” I said, speaking into my towel. “Our parents and all the adults here say they’re improving us—keeping us healthy and safe and making sure we reach our full potential. But what are they really doing?”
Julia bit her lip and shook her head. “You’re not making any sense, Mori. I know you’re upset—like, really, really upset—and I get it, but you need to take a step back.”
“I understand what you mean,” Theo said.
“Really, Theo? Not helping,” Julia said.
“All that stuff you’ve said about my mom, you were right,” he said to Julia. “She has controlled and manipulated the system in order to get me to what she considers my rightful position. She has this vision of who I should be, and she’s doing whatever she can to make it happen.”
“Because she loves you,” Julia said.
“Maybe,” Theo said with a shrug. “What I’m trying to say is, I could always see it. I knew what she was doing. But Mori’s right—all of your parents have been doing it, too. They’ve just been keeping it under wraps.”
Benji pulled on a loose string from his towel. He’d been quiet a good long time while we talked. “I just can’t believe that this is happening. This isn’t— I mean, we have these rules in place to protect us. Old Harmonie is about discovery, not secrets. Are you sure you heard right? Do they really want to scuttle her?” Benji asked.
“Yes! And that’s why we have to help her. I would help you, Julia. I would. If your parents wanted to make you more competitive, so they dampened your kindness—I would help you.”
Julia tugged on her towel. Her eyes went soft, but then she looked away from me. “I can’t help you,” she said. “But I won’t tell.”
I looked at her, at the way her eyelashes were still wet, and the thin set of her lips, and I knew that was about the best I could hope for.
30
It was a straight shot across the street to Ilana’s from Julia’s, but I might as well have been running up a mountain in a hurricane. My feet dragged and the walk seemed to take forever, her house looming large in front of me. My finger even hesitated on her doorbell, like it couldn’t quite be convinced to ring it.
Her mother answered, and I let the breath from my lungs like a balloon deflating. She stood in the half-open doorway. “Why, hello, Mori. You haven’t been around much lately.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Is Ilana home?”
“She’s resting.” Meryl stepped outside and shut the door behind her.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s just fine.” Her grace unnerved me. She put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for your help with Ilana.”
“Help?”
“The other day, that little moment in the pool.”
It had been more than a moment. It had felt like an eternity. I looked down at the cement stairs and twisted my foot back and forth. “She helped me when I was in trouble.”
“She did, didn’t she?” Her voice sounded like she was floating on one of those puffy clouds, far, far away, the clouds that were just stories in our minds.
“That’s what friends do,” I continued. “They help each other. No matter what.” I bit my lip.
She let her hand drop off of my shoulder. “Sometimes problems are too big for children to solve on their own, wouldn’t you say?”
“Krita doesn’t think so.”
I looked up at her and she looked back at me with eyebrows raised.
“Krita says that kids are the community’s most important asset,” I said.
“The children are our future—”
“No, I mean, well, yes, but when we visited the Idea Box, the people working there said that the thing that set them apart is that they still thought like kids. Without limits.”
“That’s what they tell you, dear. It’s one of the things I’ve never agreed with about the Kritopias. Always telling the kids that they are so precious and so rare. In the end it’s only setting you up for disappointment.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t all be precious, can you? How is it rare if there are so many of you perfect little children running around?” She clasped her hands in front of her chest. “I’m sorry, Mori, I shouldn’t have said that.” Then she kind of laughed to herself. “It’s been a trying week, wouldn’t you say? I’m feeling a bit raw.”
“Oh,” I said. And then because I could think of nothing else to say, I added, “Well.”
“Well indeed.”
“When she wakes up, maybe you could send her over?”
“If she’s up to it.”
I wanted to ask her more questions. I wanted to know how much they had known, how much they had done—and how much they could control about what happened to Ilana. But I kept my mouth shut.
I turned to go and saw Julia standing outside her house just staring at me. I waved, but she didn’t wave back. Then her mom came out, put her arm around Julia’s shoulder, and guided Julia back into the house. And I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“If we have any chance of making this work, we have to do some planning,” Benji said when he arrived on my doorstep later that afternoon. Theo stood beyond him on my driveway. “Let’s go over to the playground.”
We sat underneath the climbing structure, and Theo took out a map that was starting to tear at the creases. “Mr. Quist keeps these old things. I kind of liberated it from his garage.”
“You stole it?” I asked.
“I guess I didn’t think he would mind,” Theo said. He spread it out on the woodchips. “So this is where we are,” he said, pointing to a green swath of land. “And this is where we need to go.” He pointed with his other index finge
r. It seemed a huge distance to cross. “This here,” he said, running his finger along a hashed line, “is an old train line from when people used to commute into the city. The trains don’t run anymore, but we can walk along it. It’s a little bit more out in the open than I would like, but it will take us directly into Cambridge.” He moved his finger again to a place shaded yellow.
“Where is MIT compared to that?”
“It’s on the opposite side of town, but I think . . .” He paused and rubbed his nose. “I think that once we get to Cambridge, things might get a little easier. We can ask for directions or take a bus or something.”
“Just four out-of-town kids all alone in a city?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’m still working some things out.”
One of the Collins twins came racing across the playground, right past us, and leapt into the sandbox. His mother was right behind, dragging the other twin. When they passed, I said, “Remember she had that doctor’s appointment? She was scared. She couldn’t tell me why. She was just scared. And I think they did something to her. I think that’s why she hurt me.”
“Why would they send Ilana out to hurt you?” Benji asked.
“I don’t think it’s like that. I’m not sure they know what they’re doing.”
“We don’t even know who ‘they’ are.”
“Her parents,” Theo said flatly.
“No—” I said, thinking of how kind Meryl and Greg had been to me. But then, her dad worked in materials and her mom in AI, two of the departments that would be essential for this type of project. I thought of how strangely her mother had acted that afternoon. They might not just be two people chosen to be her surrogate parents: they were both probably on the team that developed her.
“It’s not just them, though,” Theo said. “They would need more people, whole teams of people with all different kinds of skills. That’s a whole lot of people with a whole lot at stake.”
Benji dug a notebook out of his tote bag. “Here’s the thing. We can’t just walk out of here with her. She’ll be tracked.”
“What?” I asked. “How?”
“It could be something as simple as RFID, you know, a radio frequency ID. Or it could be something more. And then we have these.” He held up his wrist to show his watchu. It fit him precisely with its blue rubberized band, just like my pink one and Theo’s green one.
“Our watchus?” I asked.
“You sure are naive,” Theo said, shaking his head, and I wondered if he was thinking of backing out, too.
“What are you talking about?”
“They have tracking devices,” Theo said. “In case anyone tries to kidnap us or something. That’s why you can’t take them off.”
I looked over at Benji. He said, “I think I can deactivate them and then we can take them off. If Ilana only has the one in her watchu, then great. But if she has something else, something implanted—well, that will be harder, because we don’t know where it is on her body. But if I can get a phone, I can hack an app to scan for it.”
I put my hands over my face. “This is crazy. We can’t—”
“We can’t, but we have to,” Benji said.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“If I can’t deactivate it, I’m going to have to cut it out,” Benji said, as if I hadn’t spoken. During Benji’s sixth-grade internship in the animal lab, they’d taught him how to slice mice open to insert tiny computers. I’d never really been clear on what they were testing. Mostly I’d felt bad for the mice, but now I was glad for the skill he had learned there. Maybe a few mice dying so that Ilana could be free—well, it didn’t seem like there was any real arithmetic to measure such trade-offs, but it felt like perhaps things had balanced out.
“No. I mean, it’s clear we need your help to get out of here, but once that’s done, you can stay. Both of you. I’ll take her.”
“I’m going,” Theo said. I looked over at him. He didn’t look too happy about this statement, but he also didn’t look like he’d be dissuaded. As if he could sense my hesitation, he said, “I’ve already charted the most likely obstacles and plotted alternate routes should they arise.” He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He’d drawn a grid on it, and then filled it in with notes in handwriting too small for me to read. Arrows connected boxes, and there was a big question mark in the lower right-hand corner. “I mean, think about my latency, Mori—all of this is one big puzzle. I’ve practically been designed for this mission.”
“Fine. But no one else.”
“Oh, we’re all going,” Benji said. “Theo may be the puzzle master, but I’m the tech genius. The all-around genius, actually. You need me.”
“Benji—” I began.
He held up his hands. “We’re the Firefly Five, aren’t we?”
“Minus one,” I said.
“Listen, Mori,” Benji said, still writing notes to himself on his pad of paper, “Julia’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
He sighed. “She’s practical. Things are either good or not good.”
“And this is not good?”
“This is in between. I think that’s hard for her.”
“Do you think she’ll change her mind and come?”
“I’m more worried she’s going to change her mind and tell someone,” Theo said.
Benji shook his head. “No, she’s good. She’ll keep her word.” But then, after a moment, he added, “At least I think she will.”
I convinced my parents to let Ilana and me have a sleepover in the tent. When I asked, they did a lot of their eye talking, and at this point I could practically hear their words: One last time before they take Ilana away. One last time.
The sleepover not only provided cover, it also meant we’d have the tent and sleeping bags. I told Theo about the fence out beyond the tennis court, and how the tree that had fallen on it would be easy to climb over. That was going to be our meeting place, at midnight.
In the meantime, Ilana and I sat scrunched up in our sleeping bags in the tent. It was my job to tell her, but I didn’t know how. She had a comic book, a thick one, that she was bent over, her headlamp shining on the pages.
“Have you ever, you know, thought you were different from everyone else?” I asked.
“Everyone thinks they are different from everyone else.”
I shifted and my sleeping bag rustled loudly. “No, I mean really different.”
She put the comic book down and looked straight at me. I thought maybe she did know, and was about to confess. But then she said, “Just because you’re not super sporty like Julia and Theo and me, that doesn’t mean you’re totally different.”
My cheeks grew hot. “That’s not what I mean. It’s more like—well, I used to think that the more perfect something was, the more natural it was, because nature has had time to work things out and nature doesn’t make mistakes. But I guess nature does make mistakes, and that’s how things change. It learns from its mistakes.”
“Nature isn’t something that can learn.”
“But our genes can, and the systems can—anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, I was wrong about you. I thought you were natural, but you’re not.”
“So I’m designed. Big whoop.”
“I think you may be more than designed.”
She put the book down, then sunk deeper into the sleeping bag. Her headlight shone up onto the roof of the tent. It seemed like she was going to just go right to sleep, but then she said, “Yes, I’m different.”
“You know?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just feel. And sometimes I don’t feel. And sometimes I remember. And sometimes I don’t. And then sometimes memories and feelings just appear, like an app loading on a device, and . . .” She shook her head again. “My mom calls it an existential crisis.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s stupid. She says it’s the human condition.”
“I don’t thi
nk you’re human.” The words burst out of me like a bubble popping.
“Sometimes I think that, too.”
“I mean, not entirely,” I added. “Something in between. Something else.”
“Something,” she echoed.
Her usual perpetual motion had stilled. She had no ball to bounce, nowhere to run, no pool to swim through.
“We have to go,” I told her.
“I have to go. You don’t.” She reached out and put her hand on my arm. I didn’t mean to flinch, but I did, so she let her fingers slip off my skin. “This is your home. You have your friends here, and your family and your trees. You have Oakedge. This is your place.”
“Oakedge doesn’t mean anything without you.”
“Mori—”
I shook my head to stop her from talking. “Agatha thought this was her place, too. But then things changed. I think she started to see it differently.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m leaving because we’re the Firefly Five. You’re one of us and I want to help you. But I’m also leaving because I’m not sure Old Harmonie is the place I thought it was.”
Ilana looked down at her lap. I reached over and slipped my hand into hers, and she turned to face me. “If you’re sure—”
“I’m sure.”
We waited as the dark crept deeper over us. Clouds were blowing in from the west, and they covered the moon. I checked my watchu over and over and over again. At 11:45, I said, “Now.”
31
The moon was nearly full, like a drawing done by a little child who walked away with a few crayon strokes remaining. Its bright light made the night seem safer, like it wasn’t night at all, but early in the morning. This is what I told myself as we edged around the cul-de-sac.
As we made our way toward the tennis courts, I let her know our plan. We were going to leave Old Harmonie by the fence, then walk to the train tracks. The tracks would lead us into Cambridge, where we would have to navigate to the MIT neighborhood. From there, it was fuzzier. Somehow we would find Agatha. She would help Ilana.
“That last bit is a little rough,” Ilana said.
The Firefly Code Page 22