by Jamie Davis
“Good, you’re here.” Her mom pointed at the car as she lifted a small box that held Cass’s make-up under one arm. “You can get the rest of the stuff. I need to go pull some things together for you and your sister for dinner tonight before your father and I get ready for our plans.”
“Where are you going?” Cass asked.
“We have a dinner with some of the folks from Daddy’s firm.”
“Oh, well, Nick invited me over there for a cookout tonight. Maybe you won’t have to make dinner after all.”
“Really?” Her mom glanced at her husband. He grunted and took his load into the house. Cass’s mother turned back to her. “That was nice of him. I think you should go.”
“I was thinking about it. You and Dad go inside. I’ve got the rest of this stuff. Maybe Elena can come out and help me carry some of it, though?”
Her mom nodded and headed into the house.
Cass stood alone at the back of the car with the remainder of her things to take inside. She lifted a box from the trunk and turned to carry it up to her room. It was time to unpack and face life back in the enclave.
Chapter 6
Cass carried the first box in through the kitchen, heading for the stairs leading up to her room. Elena, her fourteen-year-old sister, came bouncing out of the family room. She moved so quickly, she surprised and jostled Cass and she almost dropped the box.
“Hey, Cassie. Can I help you?”
“If you promise to slow down and not drop anything. You almost made me lose this load.”
“I’m sorry. I’m excited you’re home. I’ll go grab something from the car. Is everything going up to your room?”
“Yes, but be careful.”
“I will.”
Elena disappeared outside through the kitchen door. Cass turned and went up to her room, putting the box on her bed. Her father had already brought the lone suitcase upstairs and laid it down on the floor at the foot of the bed. He was nowhere in sight, though. Cass turned and went back down to the car, passing Elena on the way there. She carried one of the clear plastic bins, this one full of clothes.
It took three trips between herself and Elena before they got everything stored away in her room. Cass couldn’t believe how much stuff she’d accumulated at college and that was after she’d left a lot in her dorm for when she returned for the next semester. Elena dug through one of the boxes with the extra clothes in it. She held out one of the University T-shirts.
“Hey, can I have this? My friends will be so jealous.”
“If you want. I have another one that similar so that’s okay.”
“Supe!” Elena flipped the shirt up and over her shoulder and went back to searching through Cass’s clothes.
It annoyed Cass how her fourteen-year-old sister pawed through her stuff. She didn’t want to turn her away, though. She missed seeing her and felt like Elena might be her only ally in the house right now. Elena had been the only one who reacted decently when learning about Shelby and her cyber human status.
As if on cue, Elena pulled out a small photographic holocube. As she held it up and thumbed the switch, it displayed a short video of Cass and Shelby in an embrace beside a swimming pool.
Cass winced when she saw it. That was right before she’d had her injuries. She barely remembered when it was taken, since the accident had damaged some of her short-term memories. The implant had salvaged most of them, but the events of the few days leading up to that Caribbean vacation were all a little foggy.
“Awww, you two look so cute. Where was this? It looks like it was fun.”
Cash shrugged. “It was. That was by the pool at the resort we went to for fall break.”
“You don’t talk about that very much. Mom and Dad remarked that they expected to hear so much more about it. I figured it was just because you didn’t want to talk about Shelby a lot, especially after Dad found out about her.”
“Yeah. It’s something like that.” Cass reached for the holocube. “Hey, put that down. I don’t want Mom and Dad to see it.”
Elena looked a little disappointed but put the holocube back in the box after shutting it off. “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” Cass asked.
“What’s it like when she touches you with her metal arm?”
“It’s part of her, just like her other arm. It’s surprisingly warm to the touch and she can sense when you touch it, just like real skin. It’s not at all cold and hard like you’d expect metal to be.”
Cass watched as what could only be described as morbid fascination played across her little sister’s face. She understood some of what Elena must be thinking. She’d had similar thoughts herself when she first met Shelby in person.
Cass grimaced as she considered the first time Shelby reached out towards her with her enhanced cybernetic arm. She’d flinched away from the hand as if it might infect her or something. It was strange how she’d become used to the caress from that arm in the time since then. Now Cass missed Shelby’s touch more than anything else.
“In the beginning, when Shelby and I first met, I felt a little strange being around her. I wondered about the arm and everything we’d learned growing up here. When we first started seeing each other that way, I had to get over the feeling I had when she touched me.”
“I’ll bet. I wish I could’ve met her in person.”
“It’s not like she’s dead or something, squirt. She just had to go home early last semester because of a death in the family. She’ll be back next semester. Maybe you can meet her when Mom and Dad take me back to school. I figure that has to happen at some point.”
“Oh…” Elena began, then stopped herself.
“What is it? You were going to say something.”
“Look, I don’t want you to hear something like this from me. Besides, Mom and Dad might’ve changed their minds.”
“Changed their minds about what?”
“Cass, I don’t want to say. You should talk to Daddy.”
“Elena, tell me. Tell me now.”
“Mom and Dad are not letting you go back to school. They’re not sending you back there where you can be with her.”
“They’re not going to let me go?”
“I overheard them talking with someone about it over a face chat in Dad’s office. I was in the other room so I couldn’t see who they were talking to. I could hear what they said loud and clear, though.”
“They can’t make me stay here like I’m a prisoner.”
“You know how Dad is. He’s worried about you, Cass, and he wants to keep you close where he can keep an eye on you.”
“I’m not a little baby. I can take care of myself.”
Elena shrugged. “I think they weren’t happy about you going away to begin with. Then, when they found out about Shelby, it just reinforced all the reasons why they didn’t want you to go. What are you going to do if Dad doesn’t pay for you to go back to college? You won’t have anywhere to stay.”
Cass shook her head. She couldn’t believe this was happening. “That’s not the point. They have to learn I’m an adult now. I have to live my life the way I want.”
Cass didn’t just worry about going back to school. She also considered how hard it would be to conceal her implant over the long term if she was kept here inside the enclave. It was bad enough she had to keep it from them for a month and a half during winter break. Considering doing that for the next year frightened her. There’d be no way to keep it from them. The synthetic skin patch would start to wear out. Frederick had told her she’d need a replacement eventually.
“Cassie, you have the most awful expression passing across your face. What’s wrong?”
Cass turned away and walked over to her bedroom window, staring outside. “Nothing. I’m just angry at Mom and Dad. That’s all.”
Elena shrugged.
Cass didn’t think her sister believed the excuse, but Elena didn’t push the issue and let the subject drop.
Elena smil
ed and announced, “I got a new computer game. Do you want to come down and play with me? It’s been scrubbed, so it has no net access for multiplayer, but all the good content is there. It’s a fantasy game with dragons and swords and stuff.”
Cass smiled. She and her sister used to enjoy playing those sorts of games on the computer together. The Sapiens Movement’s programmers would purchase rights to new games and remove all of the game programming allowing access to the Mantle and the net that came standard with all games in the mid-twenty-first century. Once they’d done that, the movement would release a sanitized version to the enclave communities for the adults and children who played such things.
“I think that might be fun but I still have to put all this stuff away. Why don’t you go down and play a little and I’ll try to catch up with you later.”
“Okay.” Elena turned to leave but stopped at the doorway. “It’s good to have you home, Cassie. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too, squirt.”
Elena left Cass alone in her room. Cass continued putting away her clothes and other stuff she’d brought home from her dorm room. When she finished, she stacked the empty boxes and the suitcase in her closet.
Cass had spent the entire time she unpacked trying to figure out how to talk to her parents about going back to school. Elena was right about one thing. If Cass’s father cut off tuition payments to the university, there was no way she could afford to go back on her own.
She hated the way that gave him control over her life and her ability to be with Shelby. It wasn’t right that he did that because of Shelby’s cybernetics. The problem was, Cass didn’t know if there was a way she could keep him from holding it over her to control what she did.
The whole thing presented a problem for which she couldn’t see a solution. The only thing she was sure of was that she couldn’t stay here long term. Eventually, her skin patch would have to be replaced and who knew how long her hacking software would last before it had to be manually updated to keep her hidden from the enclave’s firewall and security software. Cass didn’t even know where she could go close to home to get anything like that fixed or updated. She was sure there was nothing like the Bizarre out here in the suburbs.
Cass thought about Shelby and wondered if it was possible for her to reach out and contact her from inside the enclave. She hadn’t attempted to reach out to connect to the Mantle or anything outside via her implant since she’d arrived. Cass wasn’t sure how much access she’d have in getting past the firewall’s standard safeguards.
She realized right away when she opened up her connection that her access was severely limited from what she’d become used to over the recent weeks. Her implant could access fundamental parts of the old internet that still lay there hidden underneath it all, but Cass had no access to the Mantle system that gave her such freedom when she was at school. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on it in such a short time. It felt like she was missing a part of herself.
After poking around in different access systems using her implant, Cass found she was able to send texts using one of them. She snapped off a message to Shelby to let her know she’d made it home safe and sound.
Shel, I’m back home. The software patch I got from the guy Frederick referred me to is working as far as I can tell. I think I’m going to miss you even more than I figured while I’m here. I am able to talk to Elena, at least. Maybe when the time is right, I’ll tell her about me and my implants, too. Let me know how you are doing.
Love you, Cass.
Cass checked the message and mentally tapped the link to send it. As soon as she did, a message popped up with a red icon next to it. She ground her teeth.
Forbidden Address
Cass knew precisely what that meant, and it infuriated her. She stormed downstairs into her father’s office. She opened the door and entered without knocking. She didn’t know where her mother was, but she knew this had more of her father’s fingerprints on it than anyone else.
Cass’s father looked up from the tablet he was reading while working at his desk. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes?”
“You added Shelby’s email to a list of forbidden addresses? I can’t send her any messages.”
“That’s correct. Why are you surprised?”
“You can’t do that. I’m an adult and I can talk to anyone I want to.”
“Do you live in my house and inside this enclave? We have rules and those rules include not having regular contact with subs.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Why? That’s what she is.”
Cass refrained from saying something else. She wasn’t going to change her father’s mind on this. All she knew was she couldn’t reach out to Shelby via the standard messaging system. Cass had promised her girlfriend she’d tell her that she got home all right. Shelby would be worried about her.
As she thought about that, another thought entered her mind. “Elena said something to me. She told me you and Mom weren’t letting me go back to school next semester.”
“She shouldn’t have told you that.”
“You don’t deny it, then?”
Her dad shook his head as he answered. “No. Again, I ask you why you are surprised? I won’t pay for you to go to a school where you’ve clearly come under the influence of a bad crowd.”
“Shelby is not bad, Dad. She is just different.”
“Those differences mean a lot to people like me. That used to mean a lot to you, too. That’s how I know something’s wrong. You never would have spent time with someone like that, especially not in that way, before you left home.”
“You don’t know what kind of person I’d spend time with, Dad. I have my own thoughts and opinions about things. While I agree with some of what you and Mom taught me, I’ve come to question others. Shelby, and people like her, have taught me that it’s not all black and white.”
“It is black and white, Cass. Those people aren’t human. They mean to do nothing but create the downfall of humanity and they will do anything to achieve it. That includes corrupting young and impressionable minds who don’t know enough to see through their deception.”
“The only people I’ve seen so far out to harm anyone else are the people that associate with us here in the enclave.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the video, Dad. I’m talking about the Saturday Massacre.”
Her dad started to say something, then closed his mouth and stared at his daughter for a few seconds. He leaned forward, the expression in his eyes as hard as ice. “What do you know about that? As far as we can tell, that video was faked. It’s not real. Nobody died during that rally. I have it on excellent authority from people who were there.”
Cass realized she’d stepped into something here that was over her head. She couldn’t let on that she knew anything or it would identify her as a potential source for the video.
She also knew all too well the video was authentic. People had died, including people she knew, at least in passing. As she thought about her father’s reaction, Cass had the sudden realization her father knew the video was real, too. He was too highly placed in the movement for her to believe that he wasn’t made aware after the fact of what went on at that rally.
Cass refused to believe he would’ve allowed it to happen if he had known ahead of time. Her father wasn’t a monster. But he certainly would’ve been made aware of the truth, if only to help craft the follow up messaging for Sterling Noble and the rest of the Sapiens Movement leadership. That meant he was part of the cover-up to make it so people didn’t believe in what the video clearly showed.
“We talked about it at school. A lot of us have seen the video, Dad. It’s got to be real. How can you say it’s fake?”
“I can say it’s fake because I know people who were there. I know people who clearly say it never happened and will testify to that in a court of law. How come the police have been unable to
turn up anyone who will say it happened or own up to recording that video?”
“Maybe they’re afraid what happened in that video could happen to them.”
Her father smiled and the look on his face sent a chill down Cass’s spine. She needed to end this conversation before she said something she’d regret.
“Dad, we’re not going to agree on this, I guess. I don’t think it’s faked, but I’m not going to change your mind, am I?”
“No, you’re not. That is another reason you’re not going back to that place. There used to be a time when you believed me when I told you something. Now, you only believe what you think you know rather than coming to me to ask about what’s right and wrong like you used to.”
Cass saw where he was going with this. She also knew that fighting with her father was the last thing that was going to help her get her way. She’d walked into this mess when she lost her temper about not being able to reach Shelby. Now she had to get herself out of it.
“I’m not the little girl I used to be. No matter what you do, I’ll never be that girl again.” She spun around and stalked out of the room, her mind whirling through scenarios and potential solutions to deal with this latest development.
If her father was complicit, even after the fact, with the Saturday Massacre, he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. This changed more than just a little girl’s view of her parents. It might have turned her vacation at home into a prison sentence.
Chapter 7
Elena sat on the steps at the bottom of the stairs when Cass came around the corner from her father’s office.
“That didn’t go very well, did it?”
Cass jumped, surprised by Elena’s presence sitting there. “How do you know what happened?”
“I can hear everything that goes on in Dad’s office from my room. The vents in the air-conditioning go right past his office, I guess. If I sit over in the corner by the window next to the vent, I can hear him talking on the phone or with clients in person.”