“I never thought this woman would choose me over all the little babies,” she said. “They tried to give her a teenager, and then a younger teenager, but no, she said, she wanted a nine-year-old girl and only a nine-year-old girl. I was the only nine-year-old girl.”
Young Rose was worried when the woman told her matter-of-factly, over the popping motor of her dirty bike, that she was a replacement for Esther, a daughter who’d died of cancer just after her ninth birthday. But when the woman asked Rose what she wanted to be called, Rose thought everything would be wonderful, after all. Someone who didn’t plan to care about her surely would never have cared enough to ask, she reasoned.
Gabriella, Rose had said without hesitating. Gabriella. It was the name of a movie star.
“Gabriella Fernandez.” Gabriella said. “Always a character of deep love and great strength. Do you know, she never went without a flower—on her wrist, in her hair…anywhere a woman might wear a flower. It was the first thing I would look for the moment she arrived on the screen.”
Gabriella’s vision was romantic. Her future wasn’t. Because Esther’s cancer treatments had put her mother deep into debt, Gabriella was forced to work two jobs—one as a forged infertile on the dark fuck database, the other as a cannabis farmhand alongside her adoptive mother. There were apologies before the bedside light went out, and there were promises that it would be “just a little while longer,” but for three years she sweated in the fields. For three years she shut her eyes to heavy, hairy chests and anesthetized herself by becoming Gabriella Fernandez on a beach, Gabriella Fernandez on a balcony, Gabriella Fernandez on a rainforest riverboat being overtaken by jungle snakes.
She was allowed to quit both jobs only when, at twelve, she was assigned to marry the farm’s owner.
“Ah, but!” Gabriella pushed up her sleeves and fanned herself. “Eight short years later, thanks to my husband’s advanced age and timely death, I now own everyth—Doggie!” She slipped her knees out of her robe and patted the cushion. Jenny jumped on the sofa and licked her face.
Andy came down next, followed by one of the cats.
Floyd was the only other person with the entry code to the house, and he’d never show up unannounced unless he was alone, but Lenny still didn’t like that she’d left the door open. It was impossible to be too careful.
“Do you have oxygen cleaner?”
Lenny looked over her shoulder at Gabriella.
Gabriella pointed with her eyebrows, and Lenny touched a finger to the center seam of her pants.
“To be so fortunate!” Gabriella fought off a paw swiping at her face. “I finally sleep with a man for pleasure after a lifetime of not impregnating, and this,” she jabbed a thumb at her pregnancy, “is what happens to someone like me.” She rubbed Jenny’s face with both hands, flapping the dog’s ears up and down. “Please do let the animals stay while you clean up?”
THIRTY ONE
The house across the street, unimaginatively called Hack House Five, was a white Cape Cod stained green with mold, the exposed facade a twenty-foot journey from sidewalk to stoop. Millie had been instructed not to sneak around to the back, however tempting it might be. She was to walk straight to the front door and ring the bell. “Trust us,” the woman had said. “No one knows how to find us unless we want them to.”
She looked back at the car, the only memen…remem…thing her mother had left her, sitting alone in the cemetery parking lot. The house seemed so far away. There was still time to leave and to approve the hack by phone as she had for Lenny.
No. The sole reason she was here was that she’d already determined that hacking by telephone only worked for an outwardly targeted manipula-tion. Had Lenny reported activity on her chip and Millie were discovered—unlikely, because police rarely wasted time tracking down pranksters, and even if they did take the time, to find Millie they’d have had to previously placed a trace on the hackers’ line that would miraculously lead them to the gas station telephone she’d used—the punishment would be nominal. The remote possibility of a traced line and the direct connection to her own hormone, however, wasn’t remote enough considering the not-so-nominal punishment for self-hacking.
Millie stood straight, extending her spine and the back of her neck until she felt tall. She reminded herself that what she was doing was one of the more impressively illegal things a person could do. “Noble.” That was what they called carriers. She didn’t require a license to be noble, to be self-sacrificing. Why, she was actively courting her own exile.
Had Floyd impregnated Lenny (and Millie knew from what she’d found in Lenny’s trash that he hadn’t), Millie would have been standing here just the same. She’d learned a few days prior to discovering Lenny’s blood that no one—not even a licensed, carrying Lenny—could have offered a recommendation so persuasive the board would have overlooked Millie’s final evaluation results. (She’d called, just to be certain. “Sorry. No more than two failed sections may be expunged regardless of recommendation.”)
Sweat pulled Millie’s t-shirt against her stomach as she waited in the fine dirt of the shoulder for cars to pass. She was uneasy in spite of the fact that AV occupants were too distracted by reading, sleeping, watching their dashboard monitors, or talking to pay much attention to the road, never mind to the woman standing at the edge of it.
To calm her anxiety, she concentrated on a row of miniature pumpkins propped on top of the Hack House door frame. They were uncarved despite the impending holiday. Millie didn’t like the mess of carving, herself, so she never bought seasonal pumpkins. Hugh had bought them, once they’d started living together, but he’d also been the one to carve them. He’d not been an accomplished carver. Millie could rarely tell what his sculpted shapes were until he told h—
The road cleared. Millie sprinted across, slowing at the sidewalk and strolling as casually as she could to the front door. She knocked five times, as instructed.
“Who’s there, please?” said a male voice on the other side.
“Millicent Oxford.”
“Pass phrase?”
“It’s…It’s a great day for a granola bar, said the rabbit to the thief.”
The door opened.
In the partially finished basement beneath the convincing “home” level—couches, plants, Oriental rugs, and rotating holoframes filled with family images—a team of five hackers sat at private stations separated by folding screens. There were no introductions. The man who’d led Millie to the basement had also not given his name before returning upstairs.
“Move your hair,” a girl of sixteen or seventeen said before applying a scanning wand to Millie’s neck. It issued a rapid series of beeps. “Wait over there,” she said, pointing to a plush, red chair in the corner. Millie did as she was told and watched the girl’s fingers flick over her keypad.
“Before you advance beyond a critical point,” Millie said, “I’d like to make sure you’re aware this has to appear as if the command originated from an outside source.”
“You failed empathy, decision-making, and the dog?” the girl said.
“Not officially.”
“It says here, ‘Fail.’ It’s in your official file.”
“Yes. ‘Officially,’ I did fail empathy and decision-making. However, the dog was defective, and that should be reflected somewhere in the notes.—But, as I was saying, please, this must look like a prank hack. There can be no evidence of a scan. I’d like you to tell me you understand. Please. For my own peace of mind.”
“Nuh-uh. It says right here you failed two stages…that was on September seventh…and then you failed the dog trial on September fourteenth.” She raised her eyebrows at Millie. “I can’t believe they still gave you the dog. Did you hurt it?”
Millie said no, she didn’t hurt the dog, and the girl said that was good, because too many people used to hurt the dogs.
“‘Used to’ when?” Millie had never heard about any of this at the Fact, which bothered her only because
this obnoxious girl did know about it. “Which dogs?”
Typing and watching her monitor, the girl explained in halved, distracted sentences that the bureau had placed surveillance equipment in a random sampling of applicants’ homes during the early dog trials. The objective, she said (in her vexing teenage vernacular), had been to evaluate their trial animals and make any necessary adjustments to training methods or breed selection. When they discovered the level of abuse being inflicted on some of the dogs, Tyrone the Dog Trainer had personally removed each animal from the applicants’ residences (including personal pets, but this had of course required the approval of state animal control services). All dog trials were suspended until one hundred percent in-home surveillance was implemented.
“One guy loved his dog,” the girl said, leaning in to examine something on her screen. “You know. Loved his dog? It was this really pretty greyhound.”
“Too pretty in the right way,” said the back of the chair at the desk neighboring the girl’s.
“Yeah. Or the wrong way, Henry. Don’t be disgusting. And this lady—remember that lady, Henry? Her dog was Jasper?—She was so bugged out about not wanting to hurt Jasper’s feelings. Or neglect him, or whatever. She was on him day and night, constantly hugging him, feeding him, petting him. Touching him all the time. He couldn’t hide under the bed without…Why is that there?” She pressed a key. “Yeah, poor dog couldn’t even hide under the bed without her following him under there. He finally nipped her on the face and she had a nervous breakdown. Anyway, that’s why the bureau got all camera-happy.” The girl swiped at her monitor and tapped on her keypad. “So, what do you want a kid for, anyway?” She spun in her chair to face Millie, accidentally knocking over the flimsy divider.
Henry, a long, narrow twenty-something with dyed white hair, groaned “Aiyanaaaah” and caught it before it fell on top of him.
Aiyana swung her feet, touching the toes of her bright orange shoes one at a time to the chair rail. “So?” She twirled her hair. “I mean, if you want me to help you…”
Millie hadn’t expected to be tested by an impertinent hacker, but she did need her. “Being a carrier,” she said brightly, “is one of the more exceptional things a person can do in a lifetime.”
“Huh.” Aiyana blew at her hair. “I bet there’re a lot more carriers than hackers.”
“Hm,” Millie said. “Yes. Perhaps. But there’s more to consider than numbers. How many actually pursue hacking versus those who aspire to be carriers? How difficult is the barrier to entry for each? My point,” Millie said, “is that any—any one can learn clever computer tricks. Not just anyone can be a carrier.”
“I guess that’s true.” Aiyana shook the offending strand of straight black hair out of her eyes. “Lots of people can’t even pass the first part of their eval.”
Millie crossed her limbs tighter. The girl relaxed in her chair, her arms open and hanging over the sides. She smiled at Millie.
Millie said, “How much longer, please?”
Aiyana rolled her eyes, sighed, and spun back to her screen. “The hormone’s blocked, so you can impregnate in the next five minutes, if you want. All I have to do is check this little box right here in the bureau’s system saying you were approved. You know. In case the wrong person sees you and gets curious?”
“I can’t even begin to imagine why you would think anyone would look at me and question my—”
“Ugh, never mind.” The girl held her finger just short of the screen, waving it tauntingly where Millie assumed the checkmark was supposed to go. Aiyana turned slowly and peered at Millie through her long hair. She frowned at her, then jabbed the screen. “Done!” she said with a wide smile.
It took the car thirty minutes to drive Millie from Hack House Five to Hugh’s new apartment. She hadn’t visited before, but she knew he lived among many single Daily Fact reporters in red-brick efficiency complex built early in the twentieth century. A quaint, rustic courtyard offered a pleasant enough view to the thirteen apartments fortunate enough to face it, but the others looked over a sloped parking lot and garbage bins on one side, and on the other, a vacant lot crowded with struggling saplings and arching, tangled vines. (A toddler had been found there the previous fall, sitting under the vines and wrapped in an adult’s lightweight jacket. Were the drop rate what it used to be, Millie suspected the lot’s shade and seclusion would make it the newest prime location.)
She didn’t know what direction Hugh’s windows faced. She knew only that he was in 3B, which she assumed was the third floor. And she was in possession of the precise number not because he’d wanted her to have it, but because he’d forgotten one of his work bags in the coat closet the day he’d moved out.
Millie found it the following weekend in the midst of a complete rearrangement of everything in the house combined with a thorough search for any reminders of his rejection. She called him at work.
“Can’t I just come by and get it?” he said.
“I prefer not to see you.”
“Drop it at the paper, then. I’m out half the time, anyway.”
“Your address, please, Hugh. I have bread toasting.”
Cynical newsroom laughter floated in the background. He said, “I miss you.”
It was the voice of his first “I love you,” of his warm (but unnecessary) murmurs at her mother’s funeral. She rubbed the contracted, sensitive flesh on her arms.
“—Hello? You there?”
“You miss me?” She looked at the briefcase they’d shopped for together and that he’d used every day for three years before retiring it to the office closet. When his small desk drawer at work filled up with story and interview notes, he would gather them and store them in the closet briefcase until he needed them for something or could safely throw them away. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” He laughed.
Millie used a fingernail to gouge a long scrape into the leather.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Come on. Mill? Hey, if you were the one who wanted to see me, I’d let you. It’s how you treat someone you care about.”
She said, “I imagine it is.”
The line had stayed quiet with both of them listening until Hugh hung up, and when Millie called back for his address, he’d given it to her. She’d mailed the bag the following day.
Hugh’s parking lot was full, which the car had determined before reaching it. It found a legal spot on the side of the road and eased to a stop. Millie scanned the resident spaces until she found Hugh’s car, then pressed the button to lock all of her doors manually before turning off the power and waiting for someone to happen by.
She hadn’t expected it to take longer than a minute or two, but after fifteen minutes she was getting warm and had to turn on the engine for air conditioning. Five minutes later a woman exited the building, and Millie poked the OFF button. She banged at her windows and screamed, “Help!” until the woman came close enough to hear Millie ask her to please tell the man from 3B to come outside, that it was an emergency.
Hugh rushed out in a red tie knotted at the neck of a gray business shirt hanging just to the fly of his boxer shorts. His feet were bare. “What are you doing here?” he shouted at the window. “What are you doing in there?”
Millie showed him the towel she’d brought—a towel he could easily have left behind, since it looked like all of the other towels they’d shared—and yelled, slowly and with exaggerated enunciation, “The controls aren’t working.”
“Did it charge?”
She rolled her eyes.
He instructed her to try to open the door. She pretended to pull the lever. He mimed turning on the car. She leaned just far enough to hide her actions and pretended to press the button. She wiped her forehead and fanned her neck, then used the towel to dry her face.
“I don’t have the other key,” he yelled. “I left it at the house, in the bowl. Are you okay in there? Pretty hot today, isn’t it?—Wait, okay? Wait here. I’ll go call the
fire department or a locksmith, or something. I’ll be right back.” He turned to go.
Millie honked the horn. She pointed at the hood and pulled the lever under the steering wheel.
He yelled, “I only know basic…I don’t know—”
Millie pointed again, and he lifted the hood. It really was hot. She wished she’d have thought to lower a window a crack.
“Try turning it on,” he shouted.
Millie faked the motion.
He peered over the hood and she shook her head. He disappeared again and a moment later held up a hand. She pressed the button and the car started. Hugh ran beaming to her door, bouncing penis poking out of his fly.
Millie lowered her window, reached out, and pushed him inside his shorts.
“Hey!” He jumped back. “What th—”
“It’s so hot,” she said. “Do you have water? I’ll trade your towel for a glass with ice.”
Apartment 3B was a dark, second-floor single bedroom overlooking the lot of cluttered vegetation. Hugh’s six framed Reporter of the Month awards made an arc on the wall behind his desk, where he’d arranged a micro-camera on a wire tripod. A blue sheet he’d draped over a rolling clothes rack created a backdrop behind the chair.
“Interesting,” Millie said, taking off her shirt.
“Why shouldn’t I? So I can stay loyal to the Fact and enjoy this hole until I retire?”
“Channel?”
“Does it matter?”
Millie couldn’t help noticing that even though her shirt was off, his boxer shorts weren’t stretched around an erection.
Hugh said, “Do you want to know how well I know you?”
“Is that important right now?”
“You’re hacked. Right?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“What’s your plan? Where’re you going to hide? They almost always find out eventually, Millie. You know that.”
She said, “I always enjoyed having sex with you.”
The Age of the Child Page 26