“We can speed the whole car crash up,” she interrupted. “If my school’s any indication, that is.”
“Do you go to Lawrence?”
“Is it that obvious?”
I laughed nervously as a squadron of monarch butterflies flew overhead, not stopping at the daffodils and tulips behind Lena. They were probably finally heading south somewhere—the ones that weren’t drones that is . . . which made me think of T and Syd, who should’ve been surveilling for police but were instead lying in a yard somewhere. That, in turn, made me think of Jaden and the shipping container. “No, no, no. I get that it’s your reputation and everything, but aren’t reputations just grandfathered in? There are always going to be bad eggs, right?”
“Especially when there are bad chickens. The problem is when your parents pick your genes down to the nucleic acids they think they created you and it’s only natural that they feel a sense of ownership. Of course, parents always felt that way to a certain extent, though at least when there was random genetic variation they knew it wasn’t all them. Now it’s like, when you make a mistake, they made the mistake and people always like to correct their mistakes. But when others always correct your mistakes for you, you never learn yourself. You never form a self. You just become another limb of your parents.”
She crossed her legs and flipped her hair over her shoulder again. “I used to think it was inexplicable how insecure kids were at Lawrence, but then I realized it’s not so much the having that makes you secure, but the having grown. And Lawrence kids don’t grow naturally; they’re like these corporate subsidiaries that just keep gobbling up new assets they barely understand at the behest of their parent companies.”
She laughed a disaffected, listless laugh. “So no wonder people are confused trying to do that accounting.”
“You don’t seem to be,” I said, feeling even more drawn toward her. You just become another limb of your parents.’ God, that was thoughtful as fuck. So true, too. There I’d been, freaked out about my Mom’s vicarious living, but I could only imagine what it must be like for her. Sculpted. Textured. A model that had come alive.
“That’s because this subsidiary has one hell of a PR department. And you’re not from Lawrence, which certainly helps. In fact, where are you from?”
“Alaska,” I said, not knowing where it had come from, but trusting the boost that Dr. Griswald had given to my intuition.
“Alaska,” she repeated. “But haven’t I seen you before?”
“Have you?”
“I thought you looked familiar, but then again I haven’t Revised my memory as much as my parents would’ve liked. It helps on exams, sure, but sometimes you don’t want to dwell on every little thing you’ve done before.”
The thought made me wonder if it went further, if there was some way I’d be able to actually wipe out what I’d already done and just start fresh if it ever came to that. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said, regretting instantly that I’d let my voice break.
Lena looked up at me, clearly picking up on it, “Oh yeah?”
Stay cool, I thought. This wasn’t the time to get too honest. Keep it light. Keep it fun. You’re not Revised enough to let go of yourself yet. “Yeah. The trick would be getting everyone else to forget, too. Or else you’d just look crazy.”
“But then again with the number of times history repeats itself already, do you really want to start erasing it?”
“I think it’s actually the other way around,” I said, starting to feel more and more comfortable channeling Floriet. “The problem isn’t so much not learning enough from history, but history not being relevant. Our genes not being relevant. We evolved to live in small groups, but not nations, and definitely not in the cloud. But here we are, thinking we’re hot shit.”
She nodded. “And even though we’re designing new brains, we’re still the ones who are designing them. We’re the parents—we’re the chickens, so you can expect our progeny to look quite a bit like us.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know. Probably slow down a bit until we figure out who we really want to be.”
It occurred to me then that I was only Revising because everyone else had. And if they stopped, then I could stop. Maybe all of this could stop. The thought made me happy, but just as sad a second later when it was obvious just how impossible it was. How it was already too late. Jesus Christ, Dorian. Hold it together. The cops haven’t caught you yet, and they’re not going to, either. You’re only getting smarter. This is just the beginning, so start acting like it. “That’s coming from someone who’s on her what . . . Revision now?”
“I know, again I’m a freaking hypocrite just like everyone else . . .” She took a deep breath. “And it’s not like you can tell someone not as Revised to slow down, either. It’d be pretty self-serving.”
No kidding.
“At least I can play a pretty mean Bach concerto now without having to practice two hours a day.”
“Amen.”
“You play?”
“Since I was six, though I’m more of a Handel man myself.”
She glanced over at my splint. “You don’t seem the type.”
“Not with my broken arm, obviously.”
“In general.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, mock offended—before starting again more seriously, “No, no I didn’t think so either, but my mom forced me into it. And even though I ended up loving it, for the longest time I told her I was quitting since I didn’t want her thinking she was right.”
“That’s very mature of you.”
“I know. But with parents you have to put your foot down early.”
“You should try that with my mom. See how well it goes.”
“Oh, so you’ve got one of those?”
“She’s not that bad. And the thing is, she knew I was going to like piano because she and Dad made sure I had the gene AVPR1A, associated with music perception and pitch. It’s hard not to like something when you’re wired for it.”
“But doesn’t that make you want to fight it in a way? Prove to yourself that you can go against your predispositions?”
She made a face. “All the time. But then you’re like, ‘Who’s this really serving if I’m miserable denying all the stuff that I’m programmed to like?’”
“Especially if you’re programmed to like what you’re programmed to like.”
She snorted. “Yeah, exactly. Finally, I just went up to my parents and was like, ‘You’ve got to show me my genome and all the BCI software code. You’ve just got to.’ And they were like, ‘No, honey, the doctors say it would affect your development.’ And it’s like, you’ve got to be shitting me. Affect my development. What does that even mean anymore?”
“So did they?” I asked.
“I made a big enough stink, so yeah. It’s just funny, though.” And then she looked right in my eyes and it was the weirdest thing ever because I was so used to it working the other way around. It being a one-way mirror. “Did your parents show you yours?”
This was the last person I wanted to lie to, but just by the nature of the encounter there really wasn’t any way around it. Fortunately, I’d lied so much in Wolftac R8 that lying in real life was easy. Almost second nature. “Not knowingly. But my mom was cleaning out the basement and there was an AR file drive right on the table with ‘Carter’ written on it. So I turned it on and there I was, my attribution matrixes floating across the room.” I blew a rush of air through my mouth and looked up at a blue jay drone perched in an overhead tree. “But I’m still a big believer in free will.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nodded vigorously. “You’ve got to be. Even if there’s just a shred. A shred.” I made the ‘no space’ gesture with my thumb and index finger. “That shred is everything. So might as well fight for it, since we’re already here.”
And this was proving it. Slowly, things were starting to seem not so bad. The polic
e. The drones. Even Jaden. The anxiety being blotted out by the idea that everything was still possible. That by just being with her I’d be able to figure things out and do whatever needed to be done. I just needed to keep it going.
“I like that.” She paused, looking up again, seemingly troubled by something she just thought of. “It’s good to ponder if it’s really you who wants that next Revision, though. And if you get it, will it change the one you get after it?”
“Who is you anymore, anyway? I know what you mean,” I said, remembering the modules I’d downloaded yesterday. “Have you Revised a lot?”
“More than most, not as much as some. It’s hard to really say at Lawrence, because people have started concealing how much they do, so you lower your guard and don’t Revise so much yourself. It’s become quite the little game. Even the people you wouldn’t expect can be the biggest players of them all.” She looked at the ground.
“But you seem like an exception.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “And I bet you’ve got some friends who are, too, right?”
She lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”
“I mean Lawrence can’t be that bad,” I said after a short pause.
“Why don’t you just judge for yourself? There’s a masquerade ball tonight at my place to celebrate winning state and there’ll be a ton of us there. In the wild, so to speak. My parents are out of town at this conference and I couldn’t let an opportunity like that slip away.”
It was perfect, just how I’d always pictured it—the sky and the trees and the field compressing into just the space between us. Feeling safe from all the stuff that was haunting me, yet simultaneously like I should be risking everything.
“Tonight? I might be . . .”
“No, no, you’ve got to come,” she said. “I’ll even show you the robo QB, Icarus. It’s in my mom’s workshop over the holidays, so you can scope out the competition.”
“Well . . . in that case: what time?”
“Nine.”
Lena closed her book and put it in her bag. Rising to her feet, she asked, “What’s your name again?”
I tried to remember the name I’d used a couple minutes ago when recounting the story. “Carter.”
“I’m Lena. I’ll see you tonight, Carter.”
“Where’s your house?”
“I bet you’re smart enough to find it.”
Chapter 42
Before it had all started, Ethan and I had made a contingency plan; if there was trouble and we got separated, we’d meet up at Silent Gina’s Motor Inn, since it took cash and never IDed. I was hesitant to go, though, because if Ethan had been arrested there was a chance he’d made a deal and told the cops where I’d be. And he hadn’t answered when I’d tried calling him, which was disconcerting—but that could be because he thought I’d been arrested, too, or no longer trusted the goose-chase encryption program that sent our voice packets around the world and back before reaching each other. He was scared, I knew that for sure, but for some reason I didn’t think he’d been caught. And besides, he had all of our remaining money.
After about ten minutes of walking through the park, I made my way up an embankment and into the motel parking lot. Five cars were huddled against a flickering streetlight, while another two were parked under a neon sign a few feet away from the entrance. Most of its fluorescence was caught by a balcony so oxidized and fire-damaged that I was surprised that the whole building hadn’t been condemned.
I heard a hideous shriek and a green bottle shattered on the cement, landing a couple feet shy of the dumpster. A few seconds later there was another, this one accompanied by a quartet of baritone chuckles—my chest seizing up at the sight of five or six patrons on the far side of the balcony.
A third smashed against the pavement, farther away from the dumpster and much closer to me. I wanted to lay into them but knew that this was no time to start something and kept my head down, avoiding the glass shards as I passed under the flashing sign. I hated to generalize, but it was these kinds of folks who made society reject the idea of handing out Revision credits. You could stipulate the kind of Revision that was included in the program, but no one wanted to risk having souped-up, super-addicts out walking around, loitering in public places.
The door to the front office opened and a short, heavyset woman came out, flailing her arms. “You gotta go—you gotta go! You can’t be doing this. You can’t be—”
“I tried calling down, hun, but the phone just rang and rang and rang and rang and rang!” boomed a crackling voice in between bouts of laughter. “So, what’s a guy to do? How else am I gonna see your pretty face? Huh?”
“The police are on their way,” she called back to him.
“Sure they are, sweet thing.”
“Stick around if you don’t believe me, Drake.”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty of sticking . . . sticking, sticking, sticking. You’ll hear that all day through these here walls,” the man continued, slurring his words and pounding on the wood behind him with a closed fist. “The thing is, Gina, if you run a shithole, you’re gonna attract some shit!” His sawdust voice boomed again with laughter. “And if a little gets on the rim then you best come out and wipe ’er on down. Sure ain’t the police’s job to come do that. They’re not so wise about most things, but they’re tack sharp about gettin’ out of work. And they know what a call from you means. It means comin’ out here and wipin’ down some shit.”
I thought about reversing course, but decided instead to wait behind the sign.
“No, you’ll have to tell’em there’s grisly, bloody murder. The problem with that game is you only get to play once. Police’ll come, sure, but they don’t look kindly upon those that disrup’ their serenity.” His voice trailed off.
The man standing next to him picked up on the scent, his skeletal face grinning. “Nothin’ but petty crime here.”
“So why don’t you go get your pail and broom and I’ll watch that nice big ass of yours bob while ya tidy up.”
“They’re coming, Drake. I swear to God they’re coming.”
“Yeah, mmmkay. You stick to that story and I’ll stick to mine.
“But honey, if you don’t want me here, why are you renting a room to my stinkin’ dealer?!” Again, his voice shook with laughter. “You cr-ay-ay-zee girl, you must really need the scratch.”
“If you needed scratchin’ so bad, Gina, why didn’t ya just say so?” someone else bellowed.
The voices dissipated once I’d turned the corner. I waited an hour to see if the police would come and, when they didn’t, I went to the desk and got a room.
Chapter 43
My right eye strained to see Ethan’s face through the peephole. I opened the door an inch so I could survey the parking lot. It was just him. I opened it a little wider. “How good of a deal did you make?”
“Oh, it’s a good one,” he said softly, pushing his way through and sitting down on the bed.
“Serious misdemeanor?”
“Better than that.”
I closed the door and slid the chain lock across the crack, feeling too queasy to keep up any more banter. “It’s bad, isn’t it?
Ethan’s expression was ghastly and bloodless. “They’re at both our houses. Kind of non-obvious, like they’re trying to catch us there. But I could see them zoomed-in with the new lenses all the way from Midland Park.”
“You’re sure? One hundred percent? Or you just think?”
His right hand traveled up the side of his body and plunged through his hair. “It’s the fucking cops, man. Unequivocally. Unmarked cars parked all sneaky a block away, with guys sitting inside and suspicious birds swooping around all over the place—drones, I’m sure. The ones they ‘don’t have.’ He tugged on his chin. “These masks. These masks we’re wearing—I hope to God they work. I kept a few hundred meters away, and was careful to check for tails, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I
mean, you never know.”
His eyes flitted around. He looked like a cornered animal as he stood up and started walking in circles by the foot of one of the queen beds. “We’re so fucked, man. We’re so fucked,” he stammered, almost hyperventilating. His entire body was trembling in odd rhythms, jerking from side to side like there was something cocooned inside of him, trying to get out.
“Shit,” I said, starting to shake a little, too. It felt like the temperature had dropped thirty degrees. Dusk was falling and strands of red were seeping through the window, like the sky had cracked its head open.
“Everything . . . everything, man . . . it’s over. All the stuff we could’ve done. That whole world . . .”
“Why didn’t you tell me the cop was outside?” I asked tonelessly. “You had to have seen him.”
Ethan followed my eyes outside to the sun’s point of impact through the clouds. It had just started raining and the droplets were making spidery veins on the dirty window.
“You did see him, right?” I asked.
“I saw him.”
“But you didn’t radio.”
“I thought . . . he was probably scanning the bands.” His voice broke a little. “And he’d have me on voice match if I said anything.”
“He was just responding to the routine kind of call he gets all day, some nosy fuckhead neighbor with nothing better to do. Why the hell did you think he’d be scanning the bands?”
“I don’t know, I just figured.”
“And you were just going to let me blab away, weren’t you? Just blab, blab away. Did you ever think for a second that maybe a warning was in order? Or were you so fucking concerned about having your own voice rec’d that you just . . .”
The cracks in his composure widened, first to slivers, then faults, and then slowly but surely the tears started seeping through.
Usually when someone starts crying, I just to want to get away from them, get away from the weakness. But this time, with Ethan, I didn’t feel anything. No embarrassment, resentment, nothing. I was already past the point of no return myself, already feeling everything I possibly could, and anything that happened on top of that just slid off the side.
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