Sunlight 24

by Merritt Graves

  Just as the panic was lifting me up off the bench I heard their belts jangling behind me. And then to my right. They’d walked by. I wanted to get up with my tray anyway, fearing they’d realize their mistake and circle back, but then they stopped two tables over. Next to younger kids. Freshmen.

  I panted and breathed at the same time. There was still chatter, but the cafeteria had gotten noticeably quiet. Zooming in a little, I recognized a couple of the students they’d stopped by. Maybe I’d only seen them in the hallways, but I’d definitely seen the boy with close-cropped hair and projection art around his neck.

  “Someone’s day just got ruined,” said Christopher.

  “It’s the freshman stamp crowd, no wonder,” said Tony. “But why now? Why not three months ago when they were freaking selling to those eighth graders who couldn’t handle their shit?”

  “Sometimes it takes a while to build a case,” said Michael.

  I slumped against the table, suddenly noticing how cold and slick my hands were. How bright and blue everything was under the LEDs, giving all the faces and the table and the cans of coke a kind of varnish to them, everything glowing in a surreal, flashback kind of way. Even the food looked alien, like something you’d never think to put in your mouth.

  “Or maybe it has something to do with all those burglaries,” said Chris, causing a second round of alarms to go off inside me. “Maybe the cops think they were desperate for more stamp money.”

  “I don’t know. Ethan, is that the kind of thing you do when you’re desperate for more stamp money?” asked Tony.

  “Fuck you,” said Ethan, humorlessly, still looking aghast.

  “Easy bud,” said Tony.

  “Just shut the fuck up. You’re not funny. No one thinks you’re funny. Not even Spencer.”

  I imagined Spencer would say something here, but when I turned to him his eyes, too, were fixed on the police officers and I don’t think he even noticed. A kid had just gotten up from the table and now was walking beside them, following the same route they’d taken on the way in. I didn’t look up as they passed.

  “I bet his friends are really, really hoping he doesn’t spill the beans right about now.”

  “I said shut the fuck up, Tony,” said Ethan. He said it like he wanted to scream, but since he didn’t want anyone around us to hear, all the vowels were pinched and it came out as this high-pitched, staccato whimper.

  “Of course, that’s what they’re thinking. No need to be so goddamn touchy. It’s not like they’re arresting you or anything.”

  “You quit that stuff, didn’t you, Eth?” asked Chris.

  Ethan glared back at him.

  “See, nothing to worry about then,” said Tony.

  I took a deep breath as the police left the cafeteria. I doubted someone that young and on stamps had been robbing houses, but it didn’t matter. I was just relieved it hadn’t been Ethan or me.

  Chapter 21

  The next day I woke up with a sore throat for the first time in years. I took my temperature: 99.2 degrees. My forehead was red and splotchy. The bed sheets were streaked with sweat.

  I poured myself a bowl of cereal, but my stomach clenched every time I raised a spoonful, so I just ended up pouring it down the drain when dad was facing the other way.

  I’m doing this to myself. It’s all in my head. I took deep breaths. I balled my hand and then opened it. My thoughts are whatever I want them to be. None of the houses we’d robbed had been mentioned in police reports and no one had come to question us—not even anyone in our year. Besides, we’d hacked into the CPN and deleted all the most suspicious facial metadata.

  This line of reasoning was enough to get me showered and to school, but as soon as I was in class, trapped in a desk, listening to Mrs. Marsh telling us a long-winded anecdote about her two Pekingese, the doubts reconstituted themselves into a cold pool in my mind. I realized that I’d only been bailing them out, but they’d accumulated silently until they were back high enough to feel again. And that they’d keep pooling and I’d have to keep bailing, explaining to myself how everything was going to be alright indefinitely.

  For most of the day I was able to, but in my last section—Physics Honors—I was just sitting there, half-watching Mr. Kerrigan write out formulas on the board that no one in the class except for me understood, when I was ejected from a half-dream and shot up to my feet, my desk screeching back at least a foot or two. I was about to make for the door, but then realized what I’d done and where I was and that everyone was staring at me.

  Mr. Kerrigan stopped writing on the board and turned. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah . . .” I whispered. “I don’t know what . . . what that was.”

  “Would you like to go to the nurse’s office?”

  “No,” I replied far too loudly, knowing that this kind of outburst would be red meat for any trawling, investigative algorithm. “No, I’m fine. I really am.”

  The problem was, as soon as you were even slightly suspected of something or put on any kind of list, the sensitivity threshold of all the data being pulled from the community cams, traffic cams, ClassGlass, etc., decreased. And the scrutiny level increased—a data profiling approach known as “contextual policing.” The scary part was that it didn’t even have to be anything you did either, but what other people around you did. What your friends did. What nearby incident reports had been filed. Together it added up to a composite that had a statistical relationship with prior outcomes and when it correlated, it turned routine things like chills and clammy skin from flu symptoms into guilt markers.

  Therefore, the best I could do was lay low and pop Advil from my parents’ bathroom med cabinet as the fever came and went over the next week. Every time I left my room or entered somewhere without another exit I felt like I was taking a terrible risk. My pulse would accelerate and my breathing would get shallow. I inexplicably found myself on the balls of my feet in the house and taking light footsteps even in loud, crowded areas like the school corridors during passing periods. It felt like a cold IV was pumping through me every time my bug rang. Everything felt like a trap. Everything felt like some invisible sheet that was being pulled over me, cutting off the oxygen.

  Especially at night. No matter how hard I tried to steer it somewhere else, my brain was attracted to the greatest points of anxiety: Being seen leaving the houses we’d robbed. Being seen leaving the school early via the un-surveilled basement window. Ethan’s uncle. Syd, because her programming was suspicious. Her loitering was suspicious. Even though there was the pollinator tax credit, just the fact that I’d built her was suspicious since I’d never done anything like that before.

  Increasingly perturbed, I’d deleted her most eyebrow-raising algorithms and went so far as to queue up a complete wipe, but she was still useful to us. And I’d made her, after all. Even when I hadn’t been smart enough to have any business making something so advanced, I’d made her. So despite the risk, I opted instead for a termination program that could be initiated at the first sign of trouble.

  And then there was Jaden. He obviously hadn’t believed the science fair line—I’m not sure I ever thought he would—but besides Revising him, there really wasn’t much of an immediate play.

  Each of them alone was worrisome, but together they summed into this black, shapeless mass of fear that knotted into my dreams after several hours of semi-conscious hallucinations. Every thought led to the robberies and the police. Any hope of calm cracked the moment I thought about what it would take to get there. Even Revision, where envisioning who I’d be after the next one had long been a harbor, couldn’t exist anymore without some credible pathway toward realization. I thought again and again about doing stamps as a way to iron out the fear, but I knew they’d numb my mind during the time I needed to be the most alert, attuned to the finest detail.

  So I just tried to push through. Every hour that passed without being confronted felt like an accomplishment, and I thought if just enoug
h of them could pass then eventually I’d be on the other side of it. You always heard about the criminals who got caught, but what about all the countless ones that never did? Clues existed, but they were buried in landfills, and filed away in databanks that would never be opened or scoured. There were too many other bad things happening out there. The police only had so much time and so many resources and fortunately I’d insisted on taking so little that there was reason to believe that they wouldn’t expend them on me.

  Chapter 22

  If I’d felt like an imposter before, pulling up in the recently resurfaced Lawrence parking lot, mask-less and out in the open, felt layers deeper. Brazen and desperate in a way. I was camouflaged in the clusters of other people getting out of their cars, but there was something to being so up close with a thing that you weren’t a part of that made you feel miniscule. Like if you somehow disappeared off the face of the earth, no one would notice and just keep carrying on exactly like they had been.

  I’d always backed out before because I knew this was what it was going to feel like, but now that Lawrence was in the playoffs there might not be another game, and over the last few days—despite everything else that was happening—it had stopped being a decision anymore. I had to see Lena even if it was from across the bleachers. Even if I was going to look alone and pathetic, I’d do it. I’d do anything.

  My mouth was dry walking up to the field, my breathing short and sporadic. I tried to keep my head down, staring at the asphalt, hoping no one would recognize me. I winced as the reader scanned my BASIC card and my retinal pattern, but that couldn’t be avoided. Besides, it wasn’t suspicious in and of itself and, even if it was, it was all a house of cards at some point. Even if you were careful. Even if you died never doing anything.

  I moved toward one section with some open seats, but I recognized some juniors from Ben Franklin and walked the other way. There was a contingent at our school that followed the Lawrence kids, going to all their games. Trying to go to their parties. It was sad. At least I was here with some intention of being a peer with them someday, studying the competition. Letting myself wallow in being in love. What were they doing? What did they hope was going to happen?

  I suppose I should take that back. There were a few Ben Franklin kids—not even the most popular ones—that the Lawrence kids let hang out with them. Mostly it wasn’t even a charity thing, it was a novelty thing. It was the same kind of reason you’d have a capuchin monkey as a pet or wear the same clothes people wore a few decades ago. Or if one were inclined to be particularly cynical it was a way to show how progressive and accepting you were, while simultaneously rinsing the guilt off from ditching everyone else unable to Revise.

  I saw some more kids I knew and turned back the other way, and then just randomly went down a row into the bleachers. It would’ve been a lot easier to go to the visitor’s side, but then I wouldn’t have been able to see her as well. I had gotten 50/20 vision on my last Revision, and I had decent zoom on my film. But it wasn’t great. And it would be too much like watching her through Syd’s footage. If I was going to be there, I needed to be there, as near to the sidelines as I could be. I would’ve come earlier but I didn’t want to stand out, alone in a sea of empty bleachers. This way I could just slip in.

  Or that’s what I thought, but I felt like such a loser asking people if this or that spot was taken. There was a match of Starcraft 4 between each school’s eSports team being projected above the field in place of the coin toss and I had to repeat myself, yelling over the battle noises. Worse, they were talking in French and I was drawing unwanted attention to myself interrupting in English. The next time I tried in French, but I’d been so worried about the police lately that I hadn’t practiced much, and it came out in a jumble.

  “Excusez-moi, ce siège est-il pris?”

  The stare I got wasn’t mean or anything, it was just like “who’s-this-joker?” After a short moment of hesitation—indicating that the seat wasn’t taken but the guy was thinking about saying it was anyway—he said, “No, go ahead.” And then, realizing that answering a question someone asked you in French back in English was rude, added, “C’est tout a toi.”

  The seat was small enough that the girl on the other side had to scoot over and reach down to move her bag, making me feel even more self-conscious for imposing. I wanted to leave—everyone was looking at me now—but that would be even more conspicuous.

  “Merci,” I managed to say as I sat down.

  “De rien,” a couple of them replied.

  They were bloodhounds for posers, but they weren’t quite cold enough for me to be indignant that they were looking down on me. Just enough that I was embarrassed, which was worse. I hardly ever used to get that way. I just brushed off uncomfortable situations because I knew they’d pass. I knew I was smart. I knew I was determined. But now all I had was this vague hope that someday I might maybe be smart, if I somehow didn’t get caught first.

  But all that doubt was cancelled out when I saw Lena appear amidst a group of coaches and trainers on the sidelines, walking over to the tech pit. At first, I was bewildered by the hand motions she was making once there, as if drawing in the air, until I remembered to log into the game’s augmented reality channel where I could see the array of blue and red windows she was sizing and arranging on her workstation. I couldn’t tell exactly what was on the screens, but it looked to be some combination of formations, charts, and schematics of the different robo systems she was responsible for.

  In hybrid football, you got three aerial drones and four robo players to compliment seven human players. At first, most teams just used their robos as linemen and kickers since it was hard programming reactions to all the different circumstances the backfield encountered, like reading defenses and checking off to receivers and blocking schemes. But now they were starting to play more positions, and Lawrence had surprised everyone this year by starting a robo receiver and fullback. It spoke to how strong their tech detail was, whose job it was to perform in-game software updates, tweak learning modules, and repair any structural damage. Each team was only allowed one backup so if two went down, you’d have to play a player short the rest of the game.

  For a few moments Lena was obscured by a projected squadron of Lawrence destroyer units getting pummeled by some kind of energy weapon in Starcraft, and when she reappeared she was talking to someone who looked like a trainer. I quickly zoomed in far enough to read their lips, but then pulled back a little so I could still see what she was working on, eventually settling on a 5 x 3-foot tracking frame.

  “So this guy looked fine doing individual warmups,” said an assistant coach who appeared to be in his mid-twenties. “But as soon as we moved to blocking drills he started falling out of sync with the group. Marlan thinks it’s a connectivity issue, but—”

  Lena shook her head. “No, no, it’s worse. Rappafort did the re-install on Monday, right? But since we’ve only seen him jump cycles after dusk, I’m starting to think it’s a photosensitivity glitch,” said Lena.

  “And since practice ends at six while it’s still light out, it hasn’t shown up until . . .” The assistant coach looked up at the few stars visible.

  “Until game night. Shit. Alright, let me get in there and dig around a bit. How are we doing on time?”

  The coach shook his head. “We just lost our last forward base. I’d give’m about two minutes before the perimeter buckles.”

  “So assuming they receive, we’ll have about twelve minutes before this cat’ll need to take the field,” said Lena as she plugged a cord from her workstation into a panel under the robo’s neck. “Too easy, right?”

  “Too easy.”

  I wondered if there was anyone else watching Lena, too. Not just watching her, but really seeing her. There were film crews and it was being broadcast on the link, but they couldn’t cut to her anytime they wanted like I could. They couldn’t read her lips for an entire conversation. It felt like I was holding on to something infi
nitely rare by being right here, seeing someone so breathtaking doing something so well under pressure and having so many people care about the outcome. I wondered if she was feeling the butterflies, too, or if she’d augmented her amygdala neuronal firing so she wouldn’t.

  I got a sense watching the Lawrence players running into each other, trying to get fired up, that not everyone turned theirs down all the way. There had to be some kind of equation worked out for how much fervor versus how much calm would be optimal, or maybe they somehow had the best of both worlds by separating the good nerves from the bad ones. That had to be it because no one really looked scared the way I remembered people being. Wideouts terrified of being thrown to or backups hoping to God they wouldn’t have to go in. Here, everyone truly looked ready for war.

  I wished so badly that I could be out there with them. I loved football. Every part of it. I’d played since I was eight, joining pickup games at the park against kids twice my size back when people still went outside. And then after a pretty solid junior high career, I took over the starting varsity quarterback spot freshman year when the senior starter went down, keeping it even after he returned a few weeks later. I was the underdog then, too, not really hitting my growth spurt until sophomore year and having more of a swimmer’s body than a football player’s, but at least I was the same species. At least it was the same order of magnitude. It was just ironic that now that I had an Olympic-caliber physique, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t use it. And even if I could, it still wouldn’t have been good enough.

  After Lawrence’s VR team lost its vespene gas supply and had its main base overrun, losing the coin toss, Lawrence’s robo kicker crushed the ball off the tee. It looked like it was going to sail through the opposing uprights, but the drones from Cadmier Academy bounced it back into play where it was fielded by the human returner. He was almost tackled a couple times around the twenty yard line but then broke into the open and accelerated laterally across the thirty-five, turning the corner on one of Lawrence’s robos and racing up the sidelines. There was only the kicker bot remaining and being specifically designed to kick, the Cadmier player easily hurdled it.