by DeVere, Taya
Hannah sits down next to him. From his pockets, Benny digs out a handful of different-shaped pills and tablets. With his index finger, he goes through his stash. Then he shrugs and looks at Hannah, twisting his face like he’s in sudden pain. “No dotties, Teddy. All I have is this 3D -printed bullshit.”
Hannah sighs. “Whatever. I’ll just order some.” She taps the watch until an icon of a rosebud appears, brings Pingy to her mouth, and says, “LSD. Greater London.” A short tone tells her the app is searching her keywords on three different sites on the dark web.
Benny stretches his legs in their self-made nook. “Just let me pay this time. You always pay.”
Hannah keeps her eyes on the search results on Pingy’s screen but murmurs, “I make way more with my online business than you do working for the hospital.”
He grunts at Hannah’s words. “Speaking of, are you finally going to tell me what it is you’re selling?”
Hannah doesn’t answer. She fingers the folded photo in the pocket of her hoodie. Why does this happen to her? Why does he make her so nervous? None of the others do, her customers. Tongue-tied and nervous, Hannah shakes her head for no.
“Just say the word,” Benny says. “I’ll get you something in the hospital. And not some entry-level shit. A good job.
She doesn’t mean the pfff sound escaping her mouth to be so demeaning, but it loosens her tongue. “And be stuck inside staring at numbers and code for four days a week? Surrounded by old farts and mad scientists, lusting for my brain? Thanks, but no thanks.”
“It would boost your rank on the waitlist.”
“Like I said, I’m good.” Still staring at her wrist, waiting for the order to finalize, Hannah reaches for her pocket and begins to pull out the piece of photo paper. When Benny nudges her playfully, she quickly shoves it back into her pocket. It’s not a change of heart. It’s nerves. What if he laughs at her? What if he finds her disgusting?
“Whatever you say, Teddy.” Benny nods up to the sky, visible through the open shed door. “I’ll be damned. Doesn’t it seem the deliveries are getting quicker each time?”
The low hum of a black drone surrounds them. As the small machine hovers above the red glowing circle in the middle of the roof and drops a small black plastic bag in the middle, Benny chuckles. “Who knew that the first augmented reality delivery the hospital would ever get is crystal tea in a biodegradable shit bag?”
When Pingy beeps twice, she gets up and leaves the cozy shed. She walks into the middle of the circle. The red light reflects against her clothing and her fair skin, turning her wild curls from brown to red. The light emits warmth and something else Hannah can’t put her finger on. Once she’s picked up the delivery, she spreads her arms and spins around. Benny laughs but doesn’t come out of the shed.
“Come on, Teddy. I only have an hour before the graveyard shift begins.”
Reluctant to leave the satisfaction she gets from dancing in the neon-red glow, she steps away from the light. Back inside the shed, she sits down next to Benny. He opens the poop bag, takes out two stickers with a rosebud on them. Before he hands the other sticker to Hannah, he leans back to investigate her face.
“Understand that you’re way too young for this crap. You know this, right?”
Hannah reaches for the LSD sticker, but Benny moves it and the bag behind his back. “You’re only fifteen. I looked you up today.”
Anger boils up under Hannah’s skin. In her pocket, she crumples the picture into a small paper ball in her fist. “Yeah, well,” she says, unsure how to finish that thought. Tears burn her eyes. She’s not sure if they’re tears of disappointment or anger. Benny would never touch her. Not that way.
Hannah leans against the drones. “Doesn’t matter. It looks like my mom’s sending me away for a while, anyway. It’s unlikely the drones will deliver where I’m going. I’ll need to quit this stuff cold turkey.”
“Why is she sending you away?”
“Something about it not being safe in the city for those who aren’t chipped.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. She said there’s too many people or something like that.”
“Too many?”
“Like, overpopulation.”
“Oh. And what does that have to do with the chipping and AR?”
“Beats me.”
“And do you believe that?”
“What?”
“That there’s something fishy going on with the chipping? I mean, your mother would know about it. Maybe you should listen to her. What else did she say?”
Hannah dodges Benny’s gaze. The last thing she wants is to talk about her mother. By her pink-gray sneaker, a small spider zigzags over, around, and under the hospital drones. As she reaches for the spider, it sprints and disappears into the pile of flickering machines. Shouldn’t their batteries run out at some point? She wants to ask Benny but is afraid he’ll think she wants to change the subject of their conversation. Which she does.
Hannah picks up a white drone. Her thumbs play with the metal propeller.
“I don’t believe her.” She tosses the white drone on top of a dozen others just like it. “Besides, I’m not going anywhere for a while. Might not happen at all. Mom’s all bark but no bite.”
“And the city being in danger?”
“She’s overreacting, as usual. If those people in her precious new reality told her that Tom Thumb is a real-life boy, Tricia would rush to shop for a dollhouse and Barbie clothes.”
“Which one was Tom Thumb again? A sin eater?”
“Who the fuck knows, Benny,” Hannah says. Her tone of voice is too harsh, but she doesn’t care. This is not how this meeting was supposed to go. Not what they’re supposed to be talking about right now. Doing, right now.
Flustered and suddenly famished, she nods at Benny’s hostage—the poop bag full of goodies. “Let’s just get on with it. I still paid for it, so it’s technically mine.”
Benny sighs and mumbles something about jailbait. Hannah pretends she didn’t hear it and keeps her eyes on her order. While Benny opens the black bag, he says, “Just out of curiosity. If you don’t believe in your mother, and you don’t believe in sin or fairy tales… What do you believe in?” His long fingers pick out two stickers. He places one of them on Hannah’s tongue, one on his own.
Hannah closes her eyes and lets go. She gives up on all of it. Her hopes of getting Benny to lust after her. Her mother ever treating her as anything other than an afterthought. Screw them both. Screw this town. She stands up in the low shed.
“I believe I need to make things happen for myself. That no one else is ever going to have my back. Not my mother. Not some midget, giant, the devil, or God.” Hannah snatches the bag from Benny and stumbles out of the shed. “That’s what I believe in.”
***
Waiting to come down from her trip, Hannah wanders the city streets. Old technology and buildings mix in with the new, neon-red scenery. It’s hard for her to know what is a product of the sticker and what’s a new addition to the ever-changing city landscape.
Billboards and AR-signs cast long shadows on the concrete streets next to the snaking tile road meant for the Chipped only. Hannah might walk on it one day, or she may not. Right now, small drones in all the colors of the rainbow march on the tiles’ shiny surface. They stop near one another, and lift a small antenna, as if to greet their fellow drones. When two drones with spidery legs crash into each other, one humping the other, Hannah knows the little creatures are part of her feel-good trip. She chuckles and kneels down next to the tiles. High-fiving imaginary, fucking drone spiders is a first. She can’t wait to tell Benny all about it tomorrow.
As she continues her stroll next to the red tiles, she stops in front of one of the 3D hologram displays that line up everywhere around the tiled road. They will soon reflect previously unknown AR-creations that hundreds of London’s graphic designers have drawn over the past year. Digital pets, playgrounds, flash-ficti
on on billboards, 3D printed food, and goods. That’s all her mother talks about whenever she’s willing to put aside her new reality and focus on the old, boring one. The one Hannah and her absent father still live in.
The sun has nearly set. Hovering just outside the street where she lives, Hannah turns around and gazes toward downtown. If the streetlights, now reflecting glitter, were just the slightest bit brighter, she would be able to see a slice of the hospital’s rooftop from here. The outlines of new buildings and old buildings, some blinking red, some standing dead in their gray frames, waver and change shape. A clutter of orange spiders slides across the neon-blue sky. They’re all heading toward the green and yellow smoke that rises from a small shed on top of the city’s largest hospital. Benny’s hospital.
She’s not ready to go home yet.
Hannah sits down on a fluffy pile of hospital pillows. They appear conveniently out of nowhere on the side of the two roads that circle around the endless row of houses. As she grazes her hand against the ground, the green grass turns into boiling water. She laughs at the bubbles as they burst one by one, leaving behind a glimmering puddle. In the middle, hundreds of ants carry around chips that are ten times the size of their little bodies. Hannah leans down, hoping to help them get the chips from one side of the puddle ocean to another. But as she reaches for the chip, it turns into a tiny puff of smoke, along with the worker ant carrying it.
She looks back up and searches for the yellow-green smoke. For the hospital. For Benny. But the sun has set, and darkness surrounds the blinking city lights.
The sound of car tires reaches her ears. Around the corner, a black van speeds down the road. It heads toward her street, toward the house where her mother will be working late, a set of AR-glasses glued onto her tired face.
Hannah gets up from the ground. As she takes a step away from her temporary resting place, the pillows and ants and chips all fade away. She looks up, and the city rises red and gray, new and old, make-believe and real. Hannah closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She wants to get home. Tricia won’t notice her state of mind. She hardly notices her existence at all.
She walks by the red tiles, wondering what their surface would feel like under her sneakers. Though it’s not forbidden to walk on the tiled road, it’s created for those integrated with the operating system—the Happiness-Program. Hannah hasn’t seen anyone walk on the road yet. Not even her mother, who’s now able to see the adverts, the holograms, and the promises of a better tomorrow.
But that’s because her mother barely leaves the house these days. The 3D printer she got from the city as her chipping gift turned out to be the only thing she still needed to become a total hermit. All the contacts, all the information she needs are in the augmented reality she’s now a part of.
Hannah walks on a small sidewalk in the middle of the glowing tile road. The narrow pass way made with old fashioned red bricks is there for those who aren’t integrated with the augmented reality. Tricia says the road will soon have “unwanted side effects” for those without the chip. That it could zap them, drain them. Hurt them. But her mother says a lot of things. Most of them she forgets as soon as the black-and-red AR-glasses go back on, covering the dark bags under her eyes.
As Hannah gets closer to home, she sees the black van again. It’s parked in the driveway of her house. There shouldn’t be any deliveries coming tonight. The food printer was filled just the other day, and the cleaning crew won’t come for another five. No one needs new clothes or has scheduled medical checkups. All of Tricia’s work files transfer through the operating system. Her whole life happens there. She wouldn’t leave the house for anything.
As half of the van morphs into a familiar-looking shed and then back into its vehicle shape, Hannah curses the drugs in her system. Something tells her she should stay sharp. That something’s about to happen.
She grabs onto her wrist. “What’s the time?” she says and waits for Pingy to reply.
TWENTY-ONE-HUNDRED
Nine o’clock at night. Why would anyone visit the house at this hour?
She makes her way to the van. As she runs her fingers along the sliding door, a narrow, neon-blue line runs around the handle. Before she can think about what she’s doing, Hannah pulls the handle and lets the door slide open with a whoosh. Leaning in, she closes her eyes and forces her brain to function right. No time for blinking spiders or brain-implant carrying ants now. She needs to find out what’s going on.
She opens her eyes. The dim light inside the back of the van makes it hard to see. She leans deeper in. At the front of the space, there is a set of leather seats that look like they belong in a gaming room, not a van. Beside the seats, a low-set gurney. Beside the gurney, a pile of AR-glasses blinking neon-blue light instead of the usual red. On the wall, an electric pad shows a folder marked “Hannah D.” She places her palms against the van's flooring and leans closer to read the smaller print.
“Hannah D. Unsuitable for H.P.” She holds her breath, watching as the letters turn into a stream of red blood. They fall against the pad’s cracked screen and down the van’s wall. On the floor, a white drone with a miniature mop cleans the puddle of blood.
She shakes her head, giving herself a small chuckle. “Get it together, Teddy,” she tells herself.
Just as she’s about to turn around and go find Tricia, the ground disappears from underneath her sneakers. Her body is now horizontal, supported by warm hands that hold her shoulders and her ankles, something cold pressed against the small of her back. Hannah moves her head from side to side, trying to see the force that has captured her—that now pushes her into the van.
An unnatural fog appears out of nowhere. A row of small spiders, ants, teddy bears, and tiny Bennys sit in the front yard, staring at her with big, wide cartoon eyes. One of the Bennys cocks his head and lifts a hand. A greeting. A small drone hovers above his head. The tiny cargo hatch opens and releases a dog turd that lands and squashes mini-Benny underneath its weight. Hannah chuckles and waves back.
“She’s not going under. Sometimes other chemicals in the system may reduce the sedatives’ effectiveness. Is your daughter under the influence of some substance we should know about?”
Now lying on top of the gurney, Hannah turns her head toward the unfamiliar voice. Tricia rubs the back of her neck, staring at the van, then back at the old woman dressed in red prison-guard coveralls. The hems of her trouser legs are too short, revealing a pair of swollen ankles.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she had taken something. At this point, I hardly know her at all.”
“And you’re sure she can’t be integrated with the program? Doctor Solomon is said to be a miracle worker.” Chubby-Ankles steps closer to Tricia. Lowing her voice, she adds, “And there’s always the Chip-Center.”
Tricia shakes her head. Her palms raised, she says, “That’s not an option. Hannah may be a lost cause, but I won’t turn her into a prisoner. No. Take her to Kinship Care. Maybe the discipline will do her more good than predicted.” She lowers her hands and shrugs. “Not that I’m holding my breath.”
The older woman nods at Tricia. She winces as she puts on AR-glasses with red blinking lights and makes a call. Tricia turns around and makes a beeline back into the house. Without looking back, she clicks open the front door and goes inside. The door whooshes shut behind her.
Hannah blinks, trying to tell if her mother abandoning her happened in this reality or her own reality. Which one is this?
She relaxes her head against the small pillow set on the gurney. White and flat. Just like the ones Benny brought to the shed, one by one. Stealing from those who won’t be needing them any longer. The chipping is supposed to cure everyone’s sickness. No more patients, no more viruses, bacteria, or unnecessary deaths. Are the Chipped capable of dying at all?
Before the van door closes, the little creatures hop on board. One by one. Like bleeding, blinking stars on a rooftop. Red coveralls lean over her. A cold sensation spreads
around Hannah’s back. When the van’s motor purrs to life, the woman with big ankles moves toward the leather seats. On the first seat, just by Hannah’s head, the little spiders, ants, teddies, and dog shit-covered Bennys dance around, hopping and sprinting. Her index finger pointing at the seat, she murmurs, “Not there. That seat. Is taken.”
The woman stops and turns to see what Hannah is pointing at. Then she sits down on the next seat over and sets a box of something on a briefcase under the seats. Hannah moves her head and stares at the ceiling. Hundreds of rosebuds open into flowers. In all the colors of the rainbow, they form a glowing, neon field. The little creatures climb the walls of the van. One by one, they hop onto the field. There they continue their happy-dance, upside down but not falling.
“Just like. Tom Thumb…”
“What’s that? You believe in fairy tales like that? At the age of fifteen?”
Eyelids heavy as a million drones, Hannah gives into the fog that has followed them from the front of the house she grew up in. “I don’t believe… in… anything.”
“Well, you’re in luck, my child,” the woman says and bangs on the wall. As the van backs out into traffic, the gurney seems to Hannah to swing side to side like a lopsided drone. “We’ll fix that in no time.”
***
3
ENYD
January 2089
East-Land, City of England
CHAPTER 1 — THE CLOSET
The beeping sound is muffled and distant, but she can hear it easily in midnight’s silence. Fingers. Tapping. On a digital keyboard, something no one in this house should have access to. The rubber bottoms of her slippers thump against the wall-to-wall carpeting of the children’s home.
Enyd looks up and stares at a camera on the wall, the one above the staircase.
“Come on, you piece of turd…”
But the AI refuses to talk. Instead, the camera turns silently on its axle until its lens points at a closed closet door at the end of the upstairs hallway.
