“He made you?”
Spencer looked incredulous. “Of course. He’s not someone you say no to. Look what he just did.”
Overcome with repulsion, I turned and walked away, knowing suddenly what I had to do.
“Where are you going? You can’t just leave!” he half shouted, exactly the way I expected him to.
“Of course I can.”
“But they’ll nail your ass in a heartbeat if you don’t swap,” he whispered, using his diaphragm to scream into it.
“That would be too bad for me, wouldn’t it?”
Spencer said something else I couldn’t make out and then I heard the click of his gun’s hammer behind me.
“Really?” I asked.
“Fuck, Dorian, you know I can’t let you go.” His voice was smoother and deeper, and he’d filled out his wiry frame considerably, but it was still Spencer underneath.
“You’ll have to,” I replied, more forcefully. “If you’re too concerned about noise to shout, you can hardly fire a gun.”
There were hundreds of police and rescue workers several blocks away. They would hear the sound and we both knew it.
“Are you going to tell them about me if you get caught?” he cried out.
I stopped just before the tree line, waited a few moments, and then turned back toward him.
Chapter 51
After a week at Silent Gina’s, I hacked into Michael’s film and told Chris to meet him at his house, where I was already hiding in the basement. The last thing I wanted to do was bring them deeper into it, but the thing was they were already in it. And they’d always been in it, whether they liked it or not.
“Your arm’s looking better,” said Michael as he watched Chris come down the basement stairs after his mom had let him in the front door. “That’s a pretty cool cast. Lots of room for signatures.”
“It’s alright. But wait, so you didn’t text me? I got a message saying you had to show me something right away.”
Michael gave a confused, subdued version of his goofy, crooked smile. “No, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad, too, I’m just worried about the text. Someone could’ve—”
“It was me.”
They both looked up with surprised expressions that quickly turned intense and pained as I stepped out from behind the dry bar.
“What the fuck? How’d you get in?”
“Do you really need to ask that, Chris?”
“You’re not supposed to be here. You should be . . . you should be in . . .”
“In jail? I know. You could call the cops. We’d just have to hope that things work out better than the last time you did that.”
“You are un-fucking-believable. I’m going to fucking . . .” Chris was oscillating between fury and disbelief, clenching his fists and shaking his head. “Is that supposed to be a joke? Is that supposed to be a fucking joke?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head, too. “I don’t even . . .”
I had my guilt settings dialed down, but not enough to keep me from turning away and rubbing my face with both hands. I couldn’t bear seeing the two people I cared most about in the world not even screaming at me like they should be doing, but rather standing there alarmed, stoic, not calling the cops. Not shouting for help. Just spellbound that I’d have the gall to show my face again. “Anyway. I didn’t come here to plead my case. I would never want you to forgive me—I know I’ll never be able to forgive myself. I just need a couple minutes.”
They both kept staring.
“You see that model of the Milky Way over there?” The door to Michael’s room was open and the planets and stars hanging down from the ceiling were visible from where they were by the couch. “It’s big, but it’s awfully quiet. Do you ever wonder why that is? Why we haven’t discovered anyone else out there yet?”
“Fermi’s Paradox,” said Michael, barely above a whisper.
“Yeah. Some say it’s because aliens don’t want to interfere with our development. Or we’re not even worth bothering about. But there’s also the thought that everyone in the Universe destroys themselves once they reach a certain level of technology.” I paused for a second, dreading the next words that would come out of my mouth but knowing I had to say them—that this was my one and only chance. “Especially when there are people like me and my brother out running around.”
Chris gave me a glance that wasn’t so much skeptical as exasperated, like he’d heard me try to convince him of something a million times before and had no intention of sticking around for the millionth and one. For a second, he looked like he was going to come at me, but pulled up short, putting his hand over his mouth as he rocked in place.
“You remember when I talked about starting the villain, Mike? It was way back before school started.”
Michael nodded, hesitantly.
“I was wrong. You can’t change your later self if your earlier self is choosing the code. You’ve got to be good from the start. And if that means fighting with one hand behind your back, you’re just going to have to fight all the harder. You guys are the best people I know. The kindest, most thoughtful friends anyone could ever ask for. You care about doing the right thing more than you care about what happens to you. And that’s fucking rare. It’s so fucking rare.”
It killed me saying it because that’s how I’d always thought of myself. I was going to be a Robin Hood. I was going to set all these things right. And even now, just thinking that again made me believe that maybe I hadn’t been so wrong. It just didn’t work out. But maybe it could have—maybe it still would, if I kept going. But that was the whole fucking problem. That even now, even after all this mess, even with the Nietzsche, Plato, Bentham module turned off, I was still trying to wiggle. I was being the human justification machine Floriet was always warning about.
“And that’s who we need Revising. Not billionaires who made their fortunes quantifying our lives so they could send us targeted ads. You can’t just cede all the ground to those guys. They’re powerful not ’cause they’re the best but because they were early to the gold rush.”
“That’s great, Dorian, but what the fuck are you trying to say?” asked Christopher. “I’m getting that scholarship back—no thanks to you—but it’s not going to move the needle. It wouldn’t even get me into Lawrence.”
“No, but this would,” I said, setting a jump drive on the coffee table in front of them.
“What’s that?” asked Michael.
“It’s the neuromorphic AI Jaden used called ‘The Road to Camelot.’”
After I’d softened Spencer up by explaining how Jaden had set him up to take the fall for the robberies, in exchange for swearing secrecy if I ever got caught, he’d given me the cypher they’d been using to send each other coded files. At first he was skeptical, but it didn’t take me too long to convince him that I just wanted to get Syd, Taurus, and the rest of my drones back off Jaden’s network.
“It intertwines with an organic neural net like the brain, amplifying and porting its key architecture over to faster-running software. I think he stole it from some stealth AI company after he got good at hacking. It’s powerful. Really, really powerful. Makes the rest of Revision kind of a joke.”
“And you want us to . . .”
“Use it. Instead of his source material it’ll be starting with you guys. It’ll be the best of us.”
Michael shook his head. “Dorian . . .”
“Even if we thought that was a good idea . . .” Chris stopped and looked at Michael, his face red, his eyes glistening. “Which we don’t. No one would believe that we got that smart on our own.”
“They would if you were convincing enough—which you would be with this software. Chris, you’d be able to leverage your scholarship. And Michael . . .”
He looked up and I tossed him the tractor beam. “This should be good for a first place finish in the Science Fair tomorrow. That’ll be your cover.”
“I . . .”
“And it’s not like you have to turn into geniuses overnight. Pace yourselves. People are going to want to believe it. They want to believe that kind of thing is still possible.”
Chris shook his head. “So, you want us to do what you did?”
“Are you asking for this?” I asked, my voice getting louder, gesturing at the drive. “Did you rob anyone to get it? No, it got dropped in your lap. At some point you just have to . . . you have to . . .” I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. “If you have a better idea, by all means. But Jesus, look at the kind of people who are Revising. Look at their kids. I used to think that if someone was intelligent, they’d be intelligent about fairness and justice, too. But that’s not what gets you into Harvard. And it isn’t what gets you one of the last few jobs that machines haven’t taken yet.”
“At least they have . . .”
“Money? So having the most money gives you the right to determine what humanity evolves into? That’s so fucked up. Most rich people are cunts. They’re some of the last people who should be deciding.”
“Well, no one chose us, either,” said Michael.
“They chose themselves, Michael. Don’t you get it? They’re just taking it. And by doing nothing, you’re just giving it to them. And if you feel weird about not being peer-sanctioned then start a movement. Make it for everyone. Make it democratic. But you are going to have to make it. Or else it’s just going to be people like me rigging it for themselves. That has to be obvious by now.”
“This is crazy,” said Christopher, walking a few steps toward the couch and back.
“And I’m not saying you go all the way to escape velocity. Just far enough to convince people to vote on rules for Revision and making AI safe. International collaboration. Whatever your consciences tell you.”
“Right now, it’s saying not to take advice from you,” said Michael.
“Yeah, why don’t you just leave us alone?” snapped Christopher. “Neither of us wants your fucking blood money.”
“I know you don’t! But that’s why you gotta be the people to have it! Don’t you see?” I choked out, hot tears starting to stream down my face. “I know I fucked up! I know I didn’t go about it right. But neither are you. Next year you’ll be a fucking gorilla, and then a sheep, and then a bug. And it won’t be because everyone lapping you is better, just because they took what they could, when they could. That’s what the new order will be based on! The captains of industry who pay their workers dog shit and then fire them at the first sign of trouble. I wonder what kind of world they’re going to make. Or people who go out for two-hundred-dollar breakfasts and drive Range Rovers while the planet burns up. I wonder what kind of world they’re going to make. Or the techies who build ‘cool shit’ without even a thought about the consequences. I wonder what kind of world they’re going to make. Ethics is a fucking afterthought now, so it’ll probably be so then, too.”
I stopped and tried to catch my breath, wiping spittle off my chin, looking at them pleadingly. “We can’t just leave it up to them. Guys like you need to have enough guts to get your hands a little dirty. Not like I did. And I don’t know what the answer is. But you gotta do something. You gotta fucking do something.”
“I still don’t know what you want us to do,” said Michael.
“Just take it, okay? Please.”
Neither of them made a move to pick it up.
“I don’t trust you for a second,” said Christopher.
“You shouldn’t.” I laughed half-heartedly. “I don’t trust me either, which’s exactly why I’m not keeping it. Maybe after tomorrow you’ll see how sincere I am.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?” asked Michael.
“You’re just going to have to wait and find out.”
Chapter 52
My skin burned in the late autumn air like a letter that had been opened, read, and set into the fire. Twigs crunched under my feet. The grass was still green and somehow hot, singeing the tips of my fingers as I knelt down. Perspective bled into the hill and it was only the leaves falling like cinders that kept a straight line through space.
Robin drones flitted through the tree branches, scattering carefree notes across the lawn. The pine needles brought back flashes of backpacking with Dad and Jaden in the Yukon and playing football at Midland Park. The grass. The loam. It all made my heart heavy, planted in the depths of horror as I saw an image of my younger self running over it.
The students started noticing me when I passed the row of benches and joined the main path leading to the foyer. I registered the double takes and startled glances. By the time I passed through the doors there were open mouths and stares. I ran a hand through my hair and back down my chest. The straps of my backpack were still there, but I was having trouble feeling them. My mouth was a desert, but I didn’t stop at the drinking fountain.
Mrs. Charles, who was talking to two girls in front of the physics room, paused and tracked me as I walked by. I looked straight ahead but felt the weight of other hardened gazes pulling me in different directions, the laughter and chatter mushing into a blur, so only my own steps sounded against the tile. Lock combinations stopped spinning and lockers were abandoned one by one, while students turned to me, awestruck, as if something impossible were happening.
A tear welled in the corner of one eye and slid down my cheek. I tried to hold the rest back, but I couldn’t. At least they fell silently.
Panic crossed the faces of a group of students I was pacing toward and they retreated, disappearing into classrooms and corridors, melting into the crowd. The rest were floundering between realization and understanding, mouths gaping, too stunned to move.
I stopped and turned, and they parted for me at my locker. 25. 8. 17. My hands were so damp and weak that I thought I’d overshot two of the numbers, but I heard the familiar click and opened the door, stuffing the books for the first three periods into my backpack. They were lighter than I remembered, the boredom they represented warm and innocuous now, and even on the stairs where each step was its own precipice their pounds felt more a sail than anchor.
As I ascended the steps to the third-story hallway, I saw fingers point and conversations abruptly end. I was a demon, or a wraith, or someone who’d broken quarantine. Time had fractured and I was climbing into the crack. And everyone’s faces were distorting as a result, their expressions an ever-expanding sheet of ice I would fall through.
Mr. Kessel was writing equations on the chalkboard and didn’t see me walk down the aisle and take my seat for first period calculus. He wrote like he always did in long, dramatic movements, pressing the chalk so hard that its squeaks drowned out the whispers accompanying my entrance.
Two seats over, Chad Kreswala got up, stumbled over a chair leg, and backed up against the wall in shock. Someone behind me to the right did something similar. I ignored them both and took out the textbook, opening it to Chapter Eight.
Sinking into the chair, protected by the curved armrest jutting out in front of me, I imagined a universe where I’d kept going to school and had learned that chapter of vectors and matrices. I opened my notepad and began copying down equations from the board mechanically, the numbers slipping through my mind, which was too twisted to hold on to anything as fluid as an abstraction, even with my Revision. The whispers gradually spread so that they were coming at me from all sides, like water trickling in a cave.
I stayed seated as Mr. Kessel kept writing out the problems, but part of me seemed to disappear out the window into the upswell of autumn air. It curved around the birdsongs, filtered through the highest branches of old growth oaks, and joined a thin plume of smoke venting out of a chimney. Breath fell upon breath in the expanse beyond. The shapeless forms lobbing balls on the practice field grew blurry, faces giving way to frames, to blots, to specks, and then to nothing at all.
I saw my mom’s look of satisfaction when she saw my grade report freshman year, then my dad reading
the school paper’s article about how I’d won the starting quarterback job, the blue text projected in front of him, a cup of steaming coffee inches from his hand. I imagined myself entering Jaden’s room and him turning, gesturing me toward the row of figurines he’d hand-painted. And there was Michael, working on his NASA rocket and smirking while Tony drew lewd pictures on his screen. And Chris, accelerating into a sprint as he reached behind him to grab the baton. And Ethan, shooting pool in his basement, wisecracking as he looked up at me leaning against the wall.
Finally, the tears gushed out. Mr. Kessel slowed his writing and rested the tip of his chalk on the blackboard before resuming again with a cough and tilt of the head. I brought my hand halfway up to my face, then stopped. The more sobs fell, the more disconnected I became, light and weightless in my own body, the smeared equations looking like hieroglyphics.
Once more part of me drifted upward toward the ceiling and outward to the windows, where the sun had just broken through the clouds. I imagined myself getting higher and higher in the sky. A column of police cars, solemn and silent, wound their way up the drive toward the parking lot, but it didn’t matter because I was in the air, floating, disappearing. Unobstructed by the bell tower and the hill above the practice field, as the lead cars of a second column emerged from the cover of tree branches, glittering blue and red like a procession of Revised ants.
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And below is a description of my other book, Lakes of Mars.
Aaron Sheridan doesn’t want to live anymore. His entire family had just died in a shuttle crash and he’d been the one flying it. Unable to deal with the guilt, he signs up for the Fleet expecting a fatal deployment to the Rim War, but instead ends up at their most prestigious command school, Corinth Station.
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