“Bless, O Father, Thy gifts to our use and us to Thy service, in Jesus’s name. Amen.”
Lunch starts out without anyone talking, only the sounds of the clinking of silverware and plates and glasses breaking the silence. I think my parents have too many questions that they expect might lead to an argument. By and large, our community is nonconfrontational. They try to avoid harsh words, though, of course, they define “harsh” in their own way.
As usual, I can’t read Mila’s expression.
Eventually, my mother asks the questions she can’t help but ask. “Is James going to be all right? Do we need to call a doctor to come see him?”
“I’m seeing some improvement,” I answer. “He woke up and took water while ago, and his vital signs have been steady. If he continues to improve, and if he starts eating today or tomorrow, I don’t think we’ll need to call a doctor.”
“And you got the… Navi?… out of him so that it’s not hurting him anymore?”
Evidently, my dad has caught her up. I glance over at Mila, who answers impassively, “Yes, ma’am, we shut it down. There shouldn’t be anything causing him harm now.”
“Thank you, Jesus,” my mother whispers.
More silence passes.
Mila seems more distant than I’m used to. She rarely meets my eyes anyway, but I don’t think she’s looked right at me all day.
Our meal is nearly done when my mother asks, forcefully, as if the words are tearing themselves out of her, “What kind of trouble is this you’re in, Phebe? What’s going to happen to you? Are you going to go to jail?”
My father puts a hand on my mother’s hand and gives her the look that means Be silent, woman.
“Answer the question, Phebe Esther,” Dad orders.
I inhale sharply and put down my napkin a little too aggressively.
It’s all the years of putting up with the judgment and the institutional misogyny of this community. It makes me over-reactive to their every word and gesture. I know that. But I can’t help it.
Before I can speak, Mila answers calmly. “We’re here because we needed a safe place where we could take the time we needed to prove our innocence, and when Phoebe thought of a safe place, she thought of you.”
Damn. I couldn’t have said that better. And it’s true. I glance over. They’re both looking down, absorbing this thought.
“If we can find the right evidence,” Mila goes on, “we may be able to convince the authorities to drop the charges against us. A lot depends on the judge and how angry he is that we ran away.”
“We heard rumors from the folks in town,” my father says. “They said you were trying to get out of the country. They saw you headed to Mexico.”
“I laid a false trail,” Mila says. “Trying to lead them away from here and your family. Phoebe wanted us to be as careful as possible not to put any of you at risk.”
Also true. And, I note, she anticipated that need without my even mentioning it.
My father puts down his napkin and looks into the distance. “People have been asking us about you. We haven’t known what to say.” He looks over at us—no, he looks at Mila.
“We know you will tell them the truth,” she says. “We wouldn’t ask you to do anything else.”
He nods slowly.
I’m going to keep my mouth shut from now on. Mila’s got this. She’s on the same wavelength as my parents.
“And you want our protection,” Dad says.
“All we ask is that, if the authorities come here, you don’t give us up to them,” Mila says, her voice barely audible.
“Of course not,” my mother interjects.
“And please don’t mention us on the phone, in case your phone lines are tapped.”
“We won’t,” Mom says. “We don’t even have a phone. Only our bishop does.”
My dad gives her a look, but he doesn’t argue with her. He composes his thoughts. “There’s a Saturday-night social here tonight. We’re next in the rotation, so we’re going to have it, and you all need to attend. Word will already have spread about that car in our driveway and us carrying in James. You know how it is around here—busybody women peeking out of their windows at everybody, minding everybody’s business but their own.
“So I’ll speak to folks, ask them for their forbearance. But I can’t predict how they’ll react, and I can’t promise you that they’ll keep their peace. It’s possible that you’ll only have a few days. Maybe not even that long.”
He looks old and tired suddenly, and my heart sinks. I know Jamie and I have been a trial to him and to my mother. I know it’s affected their status in their community to have only five children and then to lose two of them to Satan. And now here we are again, making it even worse for them.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, surprising myself. But they don’t respond, and I realize I said it quietly, and maybe they didn’t even hear me. And then I don’t know what else to say, and we finish our meals in silence.
After lunch, Mila politely offers to help with the dishes, but I quickly interrupt her to ask her to go out to the living room with me to check on Jamie. Once we’re there, kneeling at his side and checking his temperature, I explain quietly that we’re not allowed to help with any of the chores. “It’s part of our being damned,” I say. “They can’t accept anything from our hands. It’s like our sin is contagious.”
It’s one of the things I hate the most about visiting my parents. The only thing I liked about my community—the only thing I took with me into my adult life—was an appreciation for the routines and demands of physical work. It’s why I became a nurse and not a Navi worker of some kind. I like doing things with my hands, and when I come back, I’m forced to sit here, useless, only a witness to those routines that speak of home to me.
At least this time I can tend to Jamie. He and I are both damned, after all.
“And that’s why we can’t sit at the same table with them?” Mila asks quietly.
“Yeah. Partly. The other part is shunning. By treating me like I’m worthless, they’re trying to pressure me to come back.”
I debate whether to tell her the story, but it slips out of me whether I mean for it to or not. “Once, on one of my early visits home, I deliberately set a place for myself at the big table while no one was paying attention. This was when my three younger siblings still lived here, including Jamie. And I sat down and started eating with them. And when they realized their mistake, they couldn’t do anything about it, because we’re pacifists, so they couldn’t force me to get up, so instead, they all got up and came into the living room to eat without me.”
And I sat at the big table in there alone and cried while I ate. But I leave that part out, because I don’t think I can tell it without crying again.
Mila doesn’t say anything.
Mom brings a cup of broth and a few dumplings and another cup of water. I offer both to Jamie. He takes some water, and he rouses at the taste of the broth. He takes several spoonfuls and one dumpling, and then he’s out again. But it’s progress.
I just don’t know if he’s ever going to be a normal person again… my brother again.
We carry Jamie upstairs and get him comfortable in his old bedroom. Then my mother continues her work in the kitchen, no doubt getting ready for the social tonight. Mila grabs her laptop and heads to her own room.
“I wish I could help,” I say. “But without my Navi…”
“I know,” she says.
Instead, I go downstairs to take care of the car.
First, I just stand there and stare at it blankly for a while. My mind has been through too much already. But I can’t leave it here. It’s a dead giveaway. In fact, I can’t safely leave it anywhere within sight.
I think about trying to get it painted tomorrow, or trying to park it in someone’s barn, but I decide that damaging it is probably the safest and fastest way to disguise it. I drive to a secluded dirt road where I get it dusty, use my keys to vigorously scratch long lines
on all of its sides, and kick in one of the mirrors.
I take it to a residential area and park it under a tree between houses. Then I walk two blocks, where I’ve arranged for Dad to pick me up in the horse and buggy, and I ride home in the back, where I can’t be seen.
It’s not among my best-laid plans, but I’m exhausted. I can only hope that no one has it towed before we need it again and that no one bothered to make note of me leaving it there and walking down the street to be picked up by Plain people. I also hope that law enforcement won’t notice it.
I figure, with the entire US population entranced by its Navis, the odds are in my favor.
When Phoebe leaves the house, Mila opens and rereads the emails from Slava Knyazev. Then she types a reply, and a series of emails go by as quickly as Mila can type and Slava can think.
Mila:
I‘m already well on my way to fixing HAD without you, so I don’t think I need this deal you’re offering me.
Slava:
Wouldn‘t it go a lot faster if you had full access to all of our code?
Mila:
You‘re offering to give me that access?
That must mean you need my help to do this.
Slava:
“Need” might be an exaggeration. But just as you can solve this a lot faster with direct access to our code, we can solve it a lot faster with the help of a genius programmer like yourself.
I believe you want HAD to go away, just as we do. This would truly be a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Mila:
You‘re really telling me that HAD was unintentional and now it’s out of your control and you can‘t fix it?
Slava:
Again, “can’t” is an exaggeration. It’s just taking us more time than we had hoped. Otherwise—as much as it pains me to say it, and as much as it’s going to annoy me when you tell me what idiots we are—yes.
Mila:
You all are idiots.
So how did you manage to “accidentally” cause an international neurological epidemic? If that wasn’t the intended function of the malware, what was? It looks purposeful, how it sends the nanobots to the amygdalae and overstimulates them.
Slava:
You’re right, that was the intended function of the program. It just wasn’t supposed to do it quite so strongly. A bug was introduced that affected the calibrations, and that resulted in the unforeseen consequences. Which we regret, I hasten to add.
Mila:
The amygdalae control visceral emotions, like fear and anger. That must mean that your original goal, before the bug was introduced, was to manipulate those feelings.
Slava:
Fear and anger, yes, but also joy.
As much as people like to pretend that they’re rational, their decisions are usually emotional. That goes double for purchasing decisions. Nudge up joy when people make certain purchases and dial up anxiety when they abstain, and suddenly, people’s behavior is a lot more profitable. And they don’t even notice. There’s no real harm.
Increased profit was the entire purpose. The rest was accidental.
Mila:
Just out of curiosity, out of all the Navi users, how many have your original program?
Slava:
Approximately 70 percent. It’s lucky for everyone that we roll out new code in stages, just in the event of some bug such as this one. We were able to stop the rollout when the first symptoms appeared.
Mila:
Why did it change so much on the third wave? Why is it suddenly so much worse?
Slava:
Had to make it look like real terrorism. The symptomology of the first two waves was too bizarre, too attention-getting. If we simply fixed it, someone would have gone looking for why it happened to begin with and maybe found our little program, as you’re doing. But if it’s clearly about destroying human lives, then when we fix it, nobody will dig any deeper. Especially when we supply them with a bad guy. We’ve already got some excellent Unabomber types picked out to choose from. Assuming the bad guy we give them isn’t you, of course.
Mila:
You keep saying that you want to “fix it.” Do you mean removing your behavior modification software? Or correcting the bug?
Slava:
The program itself is far too successful to remove, but I’m assuming that won’t bother you too much, Ms. Bremer. People are sheep, right? Someone has to tell them what to do. Does that sound familiar?
Now, I’d feel a whole lot better about spilling my guts like this if I knew that we had a deal and that we were on the same side. So, do we have a deal?
Again, you walk away from this a hero, with your pick of the best programming jobs for the rest of your life, and we both get to bring about an end to all of this quickly. Is there really any good reason you can’t say yes to this, Ms. Bremer?
I’m taking an unplanned nap on the sofa when knocking at the back door wakes me. Instantly, my system floods with adrenaline, and I’m practically falling all over myself trying to run up the stairs while my father calmly passes by to open the door.
When I recognize the voice of my oldest brother, Jonas, I sheepishly come back down the stairs.
Then I decide that perhaps I should tell Mila that folks are gathering, so I go upstairs to do that. It’s also a good way to buy some time while the warmth fades from my cheeks and my heart palpitations settle down.
When I knock and step into her room, she snaps her laptop closed and looks up with a poker face.
“It’s my brother Jonas,” I say. “We should go down.”
Something about her expression stops me. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
Her face remains blank. “Just stressed,” she says. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
With a nod, I head back down. If she needs space, I figure I should probably give it to her.
Jonas and his family are the first to arrive. The rest of my siblings and their families soon follow. They’ve even brought all the kids over. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since I left home years ago. Some of them weren’t even born yet. Normally, the kids aren’t allowed around me or Jamie—us being the dangerous, worldly ones—but I suppose it’s different since there’s a social here tonight.
At any rate, they give us cordial and curious—though not friendly—greetings, and then the women go to the kitchen and prepare food while the men set up the living room, leaving Mila and me to sit awkwardly on the steps in the living room and watch.
Although I’ve seen this routine unfold dozens of times during my childhood, the quick transformation of the room is still impressive. The room swarms with sober males in nearly identical dark slacks and white shirts and suspenders, all ages working together. They clear all the furniture into a side room and set up dozens of folding chairs. The three- to five-year-olds help by putting a hymnal in each seat.
“Is it church?” Mila asks me quietly.
“No, it’s fun,” I say, and I chuckle sarcastically. “Plain people think that getting together to sing hymns is the most fun there could possibly be. Who needs movies or nightclubs or football?”
Mila looks thoughtful. “No piano accompaniment?” she asks.
“No. Musical instruments are of the Devil.”
She nods, looking disappointed.
Knocks continue to come at the door, and people continue to flood in, the women bearing covered dishes. They look at Mila and me curiously, but they don’t speak to us, which is fine by me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m giving off an effective “don’t talk to me” vibe.
Since everyone is punctual, the room is full in about fifteen minutes, and then everyone is filling their plates from the kitchen and taking seats.
“Well, let’s get our food,” Mila says and gets up to go into the kitchen. Reluctantly, I follow. Then we take our plates back to the stairwell, and I pick at my food while I worry about everything.
My father gets everyone’s attention by tapping his plate with his fork. I struggle to
tune back in. The chairs have filled up, I realize, and people have finished their meals.
“Good evening and God bless you,” Dad says, and the group returns the greeting. “I’ll get right to what you’re all wanting to hear. As several of you no doubt know by now, we have several guests in our home. My daughter Phebe Esther and my son James are here. And my daughter’s friend Mila Bremer and her mother have joined us as well.”
As our names are given, there’s a slight stir and some horrified looks directed at us. I look down, feeling my cheeks grow warm. I’m used to being a pariah here, but this is much worse. I wish I could take Mila’s hand, but of course I can’t.
“You all have heard the rumors. It’s true that Phebe and Mila have gotten into some worldly trouble. Something to do with this aggression disorder they’re talking about out in the world and those Navis. I’ve spoken with Phebe and Mila, and I’m clear as to their innocence. They’re only here seeking a safe haven while they attempt to clear their names so that they can… go back.” I can hear that those last few words are painful for him to utter.
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