TERMS: $3.99
Moon Mints™ has defriended you, my Cuff warned me with a chime. Chills ran down my back.
“Speth,” Saretha pleaded with a single word.
My eyes ached. My left arm felt heavy from the Cuff. Mrs. Harris, red-faced, ran into the crowd and retrieved my ruined speech.
My Cuff chimed again:
Keene Inc. reminds you that you have agreed to Terms of Service requiring you to read the speech agreed upon by both parties. Failure to do so as your first adult communication will result in fines and levies of no less than $278,291.42.
I could feel my orange dress stained with sweat under my arms. A slick trickle dripped down my back. That was more than enough to destroy us.
Finster’s docile expression never changed. He looked from me to Saretha, pleased, if not satisfied, and turned to walk back to his Ebony Meiboch™ Triumph. Other, lesser Lawyers, who had been waiting in the wings for Butchers & Rog to proceed, broke for the crowd.
I swallowed hard. The world blurred from my tears. I turned away from the podium and dismounted the stage.
“Everyone reads their speech!” Mrs. Harris screamed. Her tightly coiled blond updo, a Vivian Metro™ original, had sprung undone. I think she had to pay a fine for that.
Sam ran after me. I wanted to hug him or take his hand, but I could not. My silence—my lack of communication—had to be complete.
Sera Croate is no longer following you, my Cuff informed me.
Sera tapped at her wrist, a Lawyer standing at her side, bouncing on his heels. A moment later, I had an InstaSuit™.
Failure to provide reasonable value for time. $1,250.
I don’t know why it surprised me. Sera always was a pathetic, petty opportunist.
Phlip and Vitgo, two ill-named boys from my class, elbowed each other and then did the same. They were saving up to buy a nude data-scan speculation of Litsa Dox, a girl Saretha worked with. I hadn’t even invited them to the party.
Franklin Tea™ has defriended you, my Cuff buzzed. Keene’s Kelp Gum™ is no longer following you.
Nancee stared at me, frozen, wide-eyed, from the middle of the fleeing crowd, holding an ice-cold bottle of Rock™ Cola limp in her hand. Tears streamed down her face, like I’d betrayed her. Mrs. Harris stomped over to her, burning with frustration, and made her turn the label inward because Nancee was no Facer.
“What are you doing?” Penepoli Graethe begged me from the crowd, her long face contorted in horror, like what I had done was worse than Beecher’s leap. “What are you doing?” she repeated. She stepped closer. She was taller than me, but younger and hunched, like her height embarrassed her. She still had almost a year before it would be her up on stage. I had promised her we wouldn’t stop talking. Now that promise made my heart ache.
News dropters spiraled in a frenzy, looking for interviews with my friends, dramatic angles from the bridge or shots of me up close. I covered my face with my hands and blindly made a run for it.
Sam called after me. My heart sank further. He’d never understand.
Penepoli called, too, running a little—she was an awkward runner—then stopped, as if it was too much.
In their excitement to follow me, the dropters banged against each other, ruining the smooth and steady shots each network desired.
Norflo Juarze called after me, “Smatta, Jimenez?” Even after his fifteenth, when he worked hard to shorten everything he had to say, he insisted on lengthening our last name from Jime to Jimenez. He said, “What it was, ’fore ’twas shorted, like all Latino names ’round here.” He’d spent $138.85 that day.
What was the matter? Everything, I wanted to scream, but I said nothing, because I had to keep silent. If I never spoke, I wouldn’t have to read the speech. I wouldn’t have to worry about being economical with words or who was making money when I spoke. I would not have to AGREE to Butchers & Rog, and they couldn’t claim I had refused them. This was my only way out.
My throat felt so tight, I was amazed I could breathe. I pushed through the crowd and raced up the bridge, past Mrs. Stokes, who watched me go, wordless and unblinking. I wanted to tell her I did this for her, but that wasn’t really the reason. I didn’t fully understand what I had done, or why I was doing it—except I finally had control over something. The whole system of paying for words seemed so normal—until it was on me, like a wave crashing over me.
Beecher hadn’t seen a way out, but I had to take another path.
“Speth,” Sam called out a second time. I hated the worry in his voice. I had never done something like this to him before. I felt like I was abandoning him.
“We had plan,” he said, despairing. My heart sunk. I looked at him. He tried to smile.
“I was going to do all the talking,” he said. I remembered. “You were going to answer with a cheap word. Termite, maybe, if you agreed.”
We had tried this with Saretha two years before, but she said it went against the spirit of the Law. Then she added, “And it would be cheaper to say Speth than termite, anyway,” which was a little cruel, and cost her $12.73 to point out.
“A termite can still read the speech,” Sam said sadly. His face scrunched up, like he couldn’t comprehend what I was doing.
I paused, straining to keep my sobs silent, keeping an eye on my Cuff for any sign I had slipped up. Crying was free unless you made a sound. I wished I could explain to him. Behind him, Saretha looked bewildered as a small, punchy man in a chartreuse Lawyer’s suit raced up to her, talking fast.
I ran on, full speed, followed by the bunnies over the bridge’s screens, hopping quickly to keep up, singing more vigorously than before. They stopped short when I made it to the bridge’s other side.
Small voices began calling to me from the dropters.
“Crane Mathers from the Murdox Posts™—will you grant an interview?”
“Will you make a statement for Kingstan Press™?”
“CNC™. Can we get you to stare in silence at our camera for just one minute?”
The Kingstan Press™ dropter made a sudden dip, colliding with the one below it. The CNC™ dropter wobbled, then came back, tilted a hard right and slammed the one from Kingstan Press™ into the Ad wall, smashing its surface so the screen sputtered to gray.
I put my arms over my head to protect myself. A media frenzy like this could easily end with a dropter knocking you out cold, or catching its small heli blades in your hair and scalping you. If that happened, dozens more would appear on scene to cover that story.
An Ad for Dropter Gyroscopics™ flashed on the next panel, then more Ads clicked on across the walls in front of me, suggesting Law Firms, running shoes and Media Image Consulting™.
I made it inside our building, slamming the glass door quickly behind me. The dropters tapped at the glass, but were unable, physically or legally, to open the door. I took the elevator upstairs to our apartment on the twelfth floor.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
Our Ad-subsidized home had just one cheaply printed room. The walls were made of slightly rough, striated layers of polymer melt. Our building had been 3-D printed, millimeter by millimeter, from a set of economy plans, and warped to the curve of the ring just inside the outer highway. There were dozens of nearly identical buildings out here, printed from the same template, with all the same sorts of rooms inside.
Our rent was kept affordable as long as we watched thirty hours of Ads each month. There was no place cheaper to live in the city. If you couldn’t afford to live here, you were sent into servitude, like my parents had been.
For years, our home had a slight scent of scalded plastic. One wall had been printed in and smoothed over when my parents were taken. Our apartment was reconfigured to the “proper” allocation for three. It was infuriating to know my parents’ space was still there, empty, a useless void withheld because the Rights Holders couldn’t stand for us to have more than the legal minimum. Mrs. Harris tried to claim it was so we wouldn’t feel sad remembering our parents.
I could still smell the burnt plastic. I could still remember when that room was there—what it looked like. I could still remember them.
Sensing my warmth, the wall-screen clicked on and began a mandated rotation of Ads. I dropped myself on our couch and buried my head in my hands. The Ads increased in volume to remind me that if I did not see them, they would not count toward our monthly required viewing total for our subsidy.
My ears were ringing. My stomach churned, both hungry and upset. If everything had gone as planned, I would have been choosing my Brand like everyone else did on their Last Day, looking over my Placements with my friends and eating pizza—real pizza, not the printed kind. Instead, I had to face what I had done alone.
In silence.