THE ONLY PRIVACY: $21.97
When my first paycheck came, it was deposited automatically into the family account. Saretha’s Cuff buzzed at the same instant as mine. I thought she would be excited, but she only frowned and said, “Troubling.”
Saretha Jime—word: TROUBLING: $6.99
What did she think it meant?
Sam rushed over from his bed by the window and bent over her readout, confused.
“Wait, what is this?” he asked.
Saretha shrugged. Sam studied the numbers closely.
“Is this from a suit?” he asked. The income wasn’t labeled, which was unusual. Then he noticed that I was smiling and looked at the numbers again.
“Speth?” he asked, drawing back. “Is this yours?”
I kept smiling. His head tilted in confusion. He did not smile back, and that made mine evaporate. I thought there would be excitement and relief. This would keep us out of Collection. My check was three times what Saretha had been making. Even with all the suits we’d have to fight, we could survive. In a year or two, we might even be able to save enough to buy off a little debt and bring our parents home for a few weeks.
“Where is this money from?” Sam asked. He bit his lip. It bothered him. He nudged Saretha from the couch. She looked at him, then me, and then settled back to watch a comedy called Wordy, about a girl who liked to talk beyond her means and spent a lot of time taking loans from her friends. Saretha turned up the volume, and Sam turned his attention back to me.
“Is this where you’ve been going?”
He was too smart. Sooner or later, he was going to remember the day on the roof and put together the hours I was keeping, but at that moment, he did not understand.
“Can I help?” he asked. I looked away. I stared at the wall like a zombie. I was trying to say no, but I had to be careful. I couldn’t use this technique too much, or the Cuff might catch on. I felt its weight on my left arm, throwing me out of symmetry, even if it didn’t weigh much.
I wanted him to know, but Kel said to keep it secret. I looked at him again. He was sizing me up.
“This is good,” he said, a little flatly.
“Maybe I’ll text Brandon Nestle,” Saretha said, suddenly, still staring at the screen.
“Brandon Nestle?” Sam asked. Of Saretha’s many admirers, Brandon seemed an odd choice.
Saretha held up her Cuff and shook it around. “He stayed my friend,” she said sharply. “He didn’t drop me like practically everyone else.”
$57.32 popped up on her Cuff for her last few sentences.
“That’s a great use of our money.” Sam shook his head.
“Speth can tell me if she doesn’t like it,” Saretha said, tapping away at her Cuff.
Sam slumped back to his bed, frowning.
Saretha laughed at something—probably Brandon begging to see her—and Sam turned and looked out the window.
Somehow, I had expected them to be happy. I waited for it, but happiness did not come. Everything was just as awful as the day before.
My jaw tensed in frustration, and I stalked out of the apartment. It would be hours before I had to meet Kel, Henri and Margot. I probably should have slept, but how could I?
Out on the street, I looked up toward Nancee’s building. How many times had I wandered over when we were kids, just to hang out? It felt wrong to think she wasn’t there. Did I know for certain she was gone? I wandered over and looked at the door. Her buzzer glowed saffron, one among dozens. I could not press it. The only thing I could think to do was scale the building and look inside, but if Kel found out, that would be the end for me as a Placer.
Instead, I walked a few blocks, and stood outside Penepoli’s building. I couldn’t press her buzzer either. The screen above her button grinned with six cartoon faces, with expressions from morose to ecstatic. I was supposed to select the one that best represented how I felt. There wasn’t one that looked infuriated, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t agree to ToS, anyway.
I looked out across the buildings arcing along inside the ring. A sinking feeling spread from my feet to my heart as I realized how cut off I was. I could only think of one place to go.
* * *
Beecher’s grandmother looked surprised to see me when I arrived, but urged me inside with a tilt of her head and closed the door behind me.
“I’d ask what I owe this pleasure to, but...” She shrugged at the futility of asking. Instead, she went over to a stack of boxes leaning against her wall and pulled out two UltraGrain Harvest™ Bars.
“Can I offer you something to eat?” She laughed. She put one bar in my hands and opened one for herself. “Not much better than Wheatlock™, I’m afraid, but without a printer, I’m stuck with what comes my way.”
She took a bite and frowned. “Blissberry. Their worst flavor. Never trust a product named for a fruit that doesn’t exist.”
I laughed, but caught myself and quickly stopped. My laugh carried the sound of my voice, and my voice seemed a dangerous thing. Even though laughing was still free, it seemed wrong.
Mrs. Stokes waved her hand at me like I was being ridiculous.
“It’s fine! Don’t stop yourself. Thank goodness a few things are still free, though what they pick and choose is absurd. Burps over fifty-eight decibels are intentional? Shrugs under two centimeters are free? Please. All of it is nonsense. There’s no system, just a matter of who sued first, for what, and who had the shrewdest, most expensive Lawyer.”
She sat, wearily. She seemed more tired than when I saw her before. She patted the couch, a silent request for me to sit beside her.
“Would you talk in a FiDo?” she asked me. Her voice was as light as if she was asking me whether I liked the color blue. “I expect not. Can’t know when the WiFi might pop on, and it wouldn’t be just a small expense for you, would it?”
She sighed.
She didn’t know the full truth. She didn’t know about the Squelches that peppered the city. I wouldn’t even speak there, which was far more controlled than a FiDo. Though, in truth, in the back of my mind, I worried that the door might open at any moment while I was in those Squelches—and, if I spoke, a word might fly out and ruin me.
“But imagine if the whole thing went down,” Mrs. Stokes said, extending her arms wide and letting them fall. “Randall said it would ruin us. Said we’d starve if the power ever ran out. Those inks we have? Ever look at them? They’re all labeled poison.”
I had. We all knew that messing around with molecular inks could be dangerous. They teach that early in school. The inks have to be combined in exact molecular patterns to make it all something you can safely eat.
“Truth is, some inks are just bad for digestion, some have good nutritional value and some, just to keep us on our toes, are poisonous. They would rather kill us than let us eat an ink for the nutrition. Randall couldn’t stand it. Said the WiFi would take years to fix if it went out, and we’d all starve long before that. Made it sound like doomsday.” She shook her head, like she didn’t believe it. I wondered, a little unfairly, if everyone in Beecher’s family might be crazy. But then I really thought about it.
If the WiFi was broken, how could you fix it? You couldn’t print new cables or nodes, because printers won’t work without WiFi. The cables, the nodes, the wires and the configurations were all Intellectual Property. You can’t just make something. You couldn’t create blueprints or plans. Technicians are legally bound to agree to Terms of Service before they even begin to work. No one could enter our city without agreeing to our ToS, either. Each Dome has its own set of Laws. Lawyers wouldn’t be able to sue, because even they can’t legally speak in a FiDo.
“Randall cracked open our food printer and scared the heck out of me. Everything inside was pockmarked with little ©s and ®s and those dreadful Patent marks. I’d have preferred cockroaches. But he said he’d figured out how to tell which ink was which. That’s what they took him for. Said he’d ruin the whole economy.”
She shook her head, a little disgusted, sighed and went back to her original point.
“But if it did go out,” Mrs. Stokes went on, leaning in toward me, “if the WiFi was gone forever, would you speak?”
Maybe, I thought, with a long, slow breath out. I had imagined things changing in different ways. I thought Laws would eventually change. What made me think those changes would be for the better? No one was working toward that—not for us.
Beecher’s grandmother squinted at me. “It’s hard to know if you’re thinking yes or no, but I wish you wouldn’t look so sad,” she said, patting my knee. “Silence is the only privacy.”
She sighed.
“Did you know Rossi & Speight tried to Patent walking?” She paused, thinking. “They called it ‘intentional placement of one foot in front of the other in a series for purpose of ambulation and travel.’ I thought people were finally going to riot on that one. It really could have pushed us over the brink. But then Silas Rog stepped in—Silas Rog!”
She burst out laughing so loud, it scared me. “Oh! Hoo. That face!” She turned to have a better look at me. “Worth a thousand words! If they charged for looks, you would be finished!”
What did I look like? I put a hand to my face, and she laughed again.
“You must hate Rog something fierce,” she said, patting my hand. “I can read that in you. Don’t blame you one bit. What a turd that man is. You and I can both hate him all we like inside, eh?”
She nudged me.
“Anyway, Rog fought for what he called the peoples’ basic liberties. Said the next thing Rossi & Speight would Copyright was breathing. The news said Rog was a hero. Put the American® flag right behind his pixeled head and talked about how he defended all of us. Rog probably set the whole thing up. I heard a rumor Rossi & Speight was a fake Law Firm he dreamed up just to do it. Of course, Rog got the Commander-in-Chief Justice to officially rule that words only have meaning because they are assigned a connotation in the database. He claimed that without the Word$ Market™, words are actually meaningless—like our brains would stop understanding them!”
She finished eating her bar and crumpled the wrapper up.
“Rog doesn’t give two figs about freedom. He wants to write the rules himself. That man knows just how far to push without causing...” her voice dropped, and she looked a little sick “...revolt.”
The word came out like she’d retched it. She looked sorry, or embarrassed, and held her hand to her mouth.
“I shouldn’t say such things,” she whispered. “I put too many ideas into Beecher’s head that way. I don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s what comes from having freedom.” Her eyes went glossy with tears.
Or maybe that’s what comes from not being able to share it, I thought. I considered taking hold of her hand. I was sure our serotonin levels were low enough that my Cuff wouldn’t charge. But I worried about what might happen if the Cuff made a mistake or tripped some alarm looking for hers.
“You should go,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Please.”
I did as she asked and left by her roof. I found the nearly invisible spot where the Agency had printed my locker, just a building away—one quick leap. I didn’t need to tap or thumbprint it. Kel had made it work using a small slip of metal with uneven teeth. I just put it in a slit on the door and turned. Kel said it was a key, which struck me as funny, because I didn’t know a key could be a physical thing.
I changed inside the locker and headed off to the Irons™ Warehouse roof to wait for the others. When I arrived, I laid my body flat, settling against the hard plastic, and looked up at the dome. I felt awful for Mrs. Stokes. A soft, wet lump formed in my throat. I told myself I was overtired.
I had been instructed in many things over the past weeks, but Kel never said a word about how to manage sleep, work and school. Locker or no, until I was assured of this job, I was not going to drop out like Beecher. I had to fit in sleep when I could, with naps after school and again after Placement, before school began. I also had not been instructed on how to manage Sam’s and Saretha’s suspicions, which were growing by the day.
I closed my eyes. My mind drifted. I thought about how great it would be if I could just tell Sam and Saretha what I was doing. I fantasized about convincing Kel to recruit Saretha, and then, a bit later, recruiting Sam. I imagined all of us doing Placements together—my own team. It might not change the way of things, but at least it could save us.
It was foolish and childish, but the dream lulled me to sleep.
* * *
When I awoke, Henri was standing over me. He appraised me as I yawned, his broad grin welcoming me back to consciousness. Margot made a sharp tsk sound behind him. Kel took off, and Henri and Margot broke after her. I collected myself and followed them, darting from rooftop to rooftop, swinging across wide gaps. The thrill brought me back to life.
It was a simple Placement that night. Sounds™ Bars. They could be placed in any room, so long as the location was prominent and a single spotlight lit them. We worked in quick rhythm, in part because we had to—the simplicity of the job meant we had sixteen Placements to make that night. Henri seemed to stick closer to me, but I could not figure out why.
We made it halfway through our target before 3:00 a.m. Below us, the bars were letting out under a Law that was centuries old. We were used to this, and traveled with extra care as the drunks staggered their way home.
I would not have stopped if the light beneath us hadn’t suddenly grown so bright, but the white flare-up was distinct and unmistakable. Someone’s Cuff had failed.
I’d only seen this happen twice before, not counting Beecher’s Cuff and the one Henri threw from the roof the night he found me. The howling below was inhuman and made me want to flee.
We were several stories up. I peered out over the roof’s edge, though even from the height of the rooftop, the sight made me sick. A man writhed in pain, his clothes charred on one side and, beneath his Cuff, a flash of bright red skin.
A crowd had gathered, but no one dared touch him. No one wanted to get burned or sued. They shielded their eyes, but looked all the same. The only hope for him was to move his arm out, so the Cuff and the white-hot, failing battery inside it were as far from his body as possible. He would lose the arm, but he might, at least, survive if someone did something.
Kel pulled me back from the edge, to spare me, perhaps. Were we really going to leave him down there to die? I could not ignore the screaming. It seemed to pierce right through me. I pulled off my mask and black jacket and dropped my bag. Kel’s eyes went wide. She held up her hands, signaling me to stop. She did not want us involved.
Henri tugged on Kel’s arm and gestured to the trouble. He probably thought Kel did not understand. Margot peeked back over the building’s side. Her lips curled. Henri pulled off his mask, too.
Kel shook her head, no. What if she had said no when Henri asked to save me? What would my life have been like after the attack in the alley? Would I have been alive at all? Would I have given up and screamed?
There wasn’t time to debate. I had to do something. I rushed for the rooftop stairs and pulled at the door. It was locked.
Kel stomped over, her eyes flashing fury. But something in my gaze must have changed her mind. She unlocked the door and turned away.
I broke into a run, down eight flights of stairs, taking them two at a time. By the time I reached the bottom and emerged onto the street, the screams had stopped. The battery burned more brightly. I couldn’t see the man through the light—only his legs, which did not move. I moved toward him, trying to cover my eyes, as everyone else in the crowd moved back. My heart bottomed out. I looked down, stunned and sickened. I was too late.
A siren sounded in the distance. Henri put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. I slowly turned away.
* * *
“You can’t just...” Kel half scolded me once when we were safely in a Squelch. “There were too many people around. I know it was awful to see, but there was nothing you could do.”
That wasn’t true. If I had been faster, I might have been able to save him. I’d seen it done before. The horrible truth is that the flailing is what most often kills people. The urge to get away from the pain is too much.
“Why did you let us go, then?” Henri asked, his voice breaking.
I watched Kel, eager for some sign she shared my feelings. She dropped her eyes, let out a heavy breath and shook her head. She had no words to admonish me, and I assumed she understood.
Margot shrugged. “Maybe he was a Lawyer,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. It did not work. Kel was not pleased at all.