by Jamie Davis
Cass had not been aware of this. Her sister had never shared that with her before.
Elena smiled and stood up from her perch on the steps. “I might be able to help you. I know someone who can get you past the firewall’s security protocol.”
Cass hesitated as she considered what her sister offered. How could she know something as sophisticated as this? Was it a trap? It was taking a big chance to trust her with something like this and if her parents found out about it somehow, they’d both be in trouble.
Cass decided to proceed slowly and see if she could find out what her sister was talking about. “How could you do that? You’ve never been one to fool with computers or coding much.”
“My friend, Cadence.”
Cass cocked her head to one side. She knew that name. “Little Cadence, with the braces?”
“She’s not so little anymore. She’s the same age as I am. Her dad took over managing the enclave’s security systems earlier this year. She’s been helping him and bragged to me the other day how she knows all his passwords and has been using them to watch some banned holovid programs that are not on the approved list.”
“How do you know she’d help me with something like this?”
“Because I know who she likes and I’m the one who can get her a date with the guy she’s been chasing since elementary school.”
“How can you do that? Have you become a little matchmaker while I’ve been gone at school?”
“Let’s just say I have my influence with some of the boys around the school. A few of them owe me a favor or two and I’m going to call those favors in to help you talk to Shelby whenever you want.”
Cass wanted to reach out and hug Elena for helping, but something she’d said earlier made her stop. Cass stared at her little sister. “We need to go up to the room and talk, squirt. I need to ask you something and I don’t think we should do it down here where Mom and Dad might walk in on us.”
Elena shrugged. “Okay.”
The two girls headed upstairs to their bedrooms. Cass opened her door and held it as Elena walked inside. Cass closed the door and tuned her enhanced auditory sensor to pay attention to any sounds coming from the hallway outside the door. That would alert her if their mother or father happened to pass by. It was nice having a computerized system in your head that could do things like that while you focused on other things.
“Why all the secrecy, Cassie?”
“You said boys owe you favors. I don’t like how that sounds, Elena. You’re not in some kind of trouble with them, are you?”
Elena laughed. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that a bunch of them have liked me for a while now and I decided to see what that meant.”
Cass bit her lip as she paused before proceeding. “Uh, squirt, you’re not having sex with them?”
“And what if I am?”
“You’re fourteen, Elena. Don’t you think that’s a little early for stuff like that? I was a lot older before Susan and I started fooling around.”
“Look, Cassie, you haven’t been here all semester. I’ve been able to handle things on my own without you looking over my shoulder the entire time. Don’t worry. I’ve been taking precautions. The last time Mom had me at the doctor’s office I talked to the nurse practitioner. She took care of giving me a shot that keeps me from getting pregnant and a vaccine to cover any kind of other problems.”
“That’s not the same as being ready for something like that emotionally. You’re just a kid, Elena.”
Cass realized she’d gone too far when Elena pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed. “I’m not too much of a kid to keep your secrets, Cassie. You’re not gonna tell Mom, are you? You wouldn’t do that to me.”
Cass knew what the right answer was. She also knew she’d never be able to contact Shelby on her own without her sister’s help. Maybe she could handle this another way. If Cass could get Elena to open up about what she was up to while simultaneously getting some sort of password through the firewall, she could solve both problems facing her.
Cass sighed. “No, I’m not going to tell Mom. But I do think we need to talk about this a little bit more in detail. I need to know what kind of things you’re up to and make sure you’re actually being safe. We need to make sure no one is taking advantage of you.”
“How are you going to help with that? You’re gay, Cass. You don’t even like boys. How are you going to know what’s right or wrong when dealing with them?”
“I know what’s right or wrong. I had boys chase after me long enough to know what sort of thing they want and expect from a girl they like. You can’t trust them, Elena. If you’ll tell me about what’s going on, I’ll know if someone’s not treating you the way they should. You shouldn’t have to promise a boy something like sex just so I can hack my way through the enclave firewall. It's not worth it, Elena. That’s for me to decide, not you.”
Elena didn’t answer right away. Then she nodded and smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna have to promise anything. The boy I have in mind is harmless. He and I’ve just fooled around a little bit at a few parties. We’ve decided we’re just friends. I think he’ll go out on a date with Cadence if I just ask.”
“All right, if that’s all that’s going to happen, then I’m all right with it, but we have to be careful. If her father finds out we’re bypassing his security system, Dad will be more than just pissed.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. I don’t think the same password will work as the one she gave me to watch the holodramas. Let me give her a call about how to bypass the messaging protocols. I should have an answer for you later this evening.”
Cass nodded. This was taking a huge chance. Cadence had always seemed like a cute kid but Cass hardly knew her. She turned and opened her bedroom door to let Elena out.
Her sister stopped on the way out of Cass’s room. “Will you tell me about what’s going on with you and Shelby? I’d really like to know more about your relationship. She seems like she’s very nice, but I’m worried about you, too, you know. She’s totally different than anything or anyone you’ve brought home before.”
Cass laughed a little. “I’ll tell you some of it, squirt. The rest of it is private. Based on what I’ve just learned about you, I think you’re old enough to understand what that means now, right?”
Elena nodded and smiled. She turned and left the room, heading towards the stairs to the first floor. Cass watched her go and then closed the door.
She sat down on the bed wondering what had happened here at home since she’d left. Her little sister had never been quite so brazen before. It was like she’d come out of her shell since Cass went away to college. Some of that was good. Cass liked seeing her sister be positive and upbeat rather than acting like the sullen fourteen-year-old she’d left behind when she went away to school.
All this talk of her experiences with boys, however, made Cass more than a little nervous. That kind of activity and acting out wasn’t healthy and she needed to make sure Elena wasn’t doing anything that could get her into trouble.
A voice called up from downstairs. It was her mother. “Cass, come down and help me bring groceries in. The delivery man is here with our weekly drop-off and I need your help.”
Cass got up and headed downstairs to help her mother. She didn’t know where her mother had disappeared to when she’d gotten home. Cass figured she had just gone back to her room to be by herself.
It was clear her mother wasn’t happy with the way things were going with Cass and Shelby. It showed in little ways with her attitude towards her daughter over the last few weeks on the few face chat calls they’d had. Cass hoped by helping some at home, she could win her mother back to her side in all of this. She used to be Cass’s biggest supporter in everything she did.
Cass called down from the top of the stairs as she left her room. “I’m on my way, Mom.”
Chapter 8
Cass helped her mom around the house all afternoon. She
put the groceries away and then offered to pick up in the living room and vacuum a little bit around the first floor.
Her mom didn’t say anything. She just nodded and pointed towards the closet where the cleaning supplies and vacuum were kept.
Cass wasn’t sure why her mother wouldn’t say anything more to her, but figured maybe it was just going to take some time for her to come around. Now that Cass was home, her mother would have to open up at some point.
As Cass started picking up and got the old upright vacuum cleaner out of the closet, she discovered she was a little annoyed. Having lived outside the enclave for the better part of three and a half months, she’d seen first-hand the benefits of robotics at work.
At the college, the dorms were kept clean by robotic sweepers and vacuums. The machines did all the dusting, vacuuming, and floor maintenance all over the dorm. Here at home, they still had a device whose design dated back more than a century.
Cass chuckled to herself as she pulled it out of the closet from its docking station where it plugged in to recharge. She’d never known anything different before she went away and never really minded vacuuming before. Now that she knew some robots did every bit as good a job as she did, she wished she had the use of one here in the house. Of course, any kind of robot, even one with a rudimentary artificial intelligence on board, was forbidden. Because of that, she was stuck vacuuming the old-fashioned way.
Cass was returning the vacuum to the closet a few hours later, when Elena came around the corner and leaned up against the wall next to the closet door. An amused grin spread across her face.
“What’s up?” Cass asked.
“Oh, nothing. I just talked to someone who shared some interesting information with me.” Elena paused and looked around as if someone was listening in on their conversation. “Maybe you’d like to come upstairs? I’ll tell you a little bit more about it in my room.”
Cass realized that Elena was enjoying all of the cloak and dagger stuff but she went along with it because she was curious about what her sister was talking about. Maybe it was the code to call Shelby. “I’ll meet you up in your room, all right?”
Elena nodded and took off upstairs.
Cass finished putting away the cleaning supplies and made sure the vacuum was fully docked in its charging station before she turned and headed up after her sister. She hoped it meant what she thought it did and Elena had found a way for her to reach out and talk with Shelby. She really needed her girlfriend right now.
Elena sat on her bed, tapping away at a game on her tablet when Cass walked in. Elena finished up what she was doing and nodded towards the door.
“Close it.”
Cass closed the door and turned around. “Did you get it from her, the code for calling Shel?”
“Uh-huh. It was as easy as cake. She didn’t even wait for me to finish the offer. She had it messaged to me before I could even give her Donny’s phone number.”
“You gave her Donny’s number? You mean Nick’s little brother?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing, I just didn’t realize it was someone I knew. I’m supposed to head over to Nick’s later this evening to hang out with some of the friends who are back in town from school.”
“Oh, you’re going to the party Mom and Nick’s mother set up for you.”
“I wondered if that might be what was going on. I figured the two moms couldn’t resist coming up with a way to try to get information about Shelby and me. I don’t know what they think I’m going to tell my school friends that they don’t already know?”
“You know how the whole mom network is. They have to be all up in our business all the time. Are you going to change your mind and stay at home?”
“No, I’m going anyway. It’ll be fun to see everybody. I’ll just make sure I don’t say anything anyone could share back with their parents that might upset Mom and Dad.”
“Be careful. I know a lot of your friends are worried about you, too.”
“I will. So, what’s the hack through the firewall? I want to reach out and get ahold of Shelby as soon as possible. I told her I’d let her know I got home safe and sound.”
“I want to talk to her,” Elena blurted out.
“Who? Shelby?”
“Yeah. That’s my condition for giving you the hacked password. I want to talk some more to your girlfriend face to face. I want to know what the connection between the two of you is. I mean, I’m helping you hook up with her via an illegal Mantle connection. I figured that would be the least you could do for me.”
“It’s not illegal, squirt. It’s just against the enclave’s rules. There are millions of people out in the rest of the world that have no problem connecting at all.”
“Fair enough, but you know what I mean. So, will you let us talk?”
“You mean like right now? You already talked with each other over face chat while I was back in college.”
Elena crossed her arms. “I’ll talk with her a little, then you can take your tablet back to your room and talk in private.”
Cass realized she wasn’t going to get out of this. Elena had made up her mind and it was probably harmless. “Fine. Give me the password and I’ll make sure to let you chat with Shelby when she picks up.”
Elena reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. There was a string of alphanumeric characters on it, twenty of them to be exact, according to her implant which had already cataloged the code to a port on the firewall as directed in the instructions. Cass glanced at it once more and put it in her pocket.
She pulled out her phone from her back pocket and opened up a connection.
Elena laughed. “You’re going to need that paper, aren’t you? Or did you develop a photographic memory while you were away at college?”
Cass stopped. She was halfway done tapping the twenty character sequence into the security system. She’d already accessed the hidden firewall port and started to open it with her implant.
“Um, yeah. I memorized it.”
“You memorized it by looking at it for like two seconds? How did you do that?”
“Just a trick I learned at school. I learned how to remember things really fast because college courses are like that. You can test it. I’ll show you what I have on my phone and you can see if it’s the right one.”
Cass pulled the folded paper out of her pocket and handed it to her sister while she finished typing in the password on the phone’s virtual keypad. Cass turned the screen so her sister could see the sequence displayed there.
Elena looked back-and-forth between the paper and the screen several times then smiled. “That’s awesome. You have to teach me that trick. It’ll help me so much in high school.”
“We’ll see,” Cass said. She was going to have to stall on that request. Short of putting an implant in her sister’s brain, there was no way the kid was going to be able to replicate what Cass could do with her implant and cybernetic eye.
Cass looked over the connection through the firewall on her phone and then double checked it using her implant’s diagnostics. Everything seemed like it would work based on what she knew about such things. She noted that the protocol one file had lit up a brighter green color in her system folder indicating a clear connection to the Mantle outside the enclave. As she checked, a notification popped up in her head.
Outbound security protocol port open. Security override engaged.
“Hey, this is pretty good, Elena. I think it worked.”
“Of course, it worked. She wouldn’t dare give me a bad password. She knows I’d make her regret it til the day she died.”
Cass didn’t like the way her sister mentioned using mean girl tactics against her friend. She didn’t want to make a big deal out of it right now, though. It was a little shocking at how mercenary Elena had become in just a few short months. Had she always been like this?
Cass tapped the send button, opening up a face chat session to the number that used to be on
the firewall’s forbidden address list. A few seconds later Shelby’s face filled the screen.
“Oh my God, Cass, it’s you. I wondered where that call was coming from. It was masked by some sort of security protocol. Is everything all right? I was worried when I didn’t hear from you earlier.”
“I’m fine, Shel.”
Beside her, Elena cleared her throat.
“Shelby, you remember my little sister, Elena. She wanted to see you again and I thought maybe it would be an opportunity for her to kind of be on our side while I’m here at home.”
Shelby’s face brightened as she glanced to Cass’s right. Elena had leaned in to make sure she was in the camera’s pick up.
“Hi, Elena. It’s good to see you again. How have you been? I assume you’re still the only one in the family that’s willing to help Cass out at home?”
“Oh, yeah, Dad is still supremely pissed. But I’m not like that. I can be open-minded like my sister.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I hope maybe we can be friends, too. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I would love that,” Elena said. “It would be cool to be friends with you while you’re dating my sister. I love being in on all the good gossip and stuff.”
Shelby laughed at Elena’s words, though they made Cass a little nervous. She figured it was worth the price to be able to talk to Shelby over the next month and a half while she figured out a way to get back to school.
“Okay Elena, you got to say hi. Now I’m going to go back to my room and talk to Shelby in private.”
“Promise me you’ll let me talk to her again sometime?”
“I promise. I’ll check in with you before I head over to Nick’s later.”
“Sounds good. Bye, Shelby.”
Shelby waved from her side of the screen. “Bye, kiddo.”
Elena lay back on her bed, picked up her tablet, and began tapping away at her game again.
Cass held her phone out in front of her as she started towards the door. “I’m going to put you in my pocket for a second until I get back to my room. I don’t want my parents knowing I’m talking to you.”