We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  “Not like a mustache and a trench coat. Something subtle.”

  Val settled for trading ball caps with a rival coach at the Thursday-night track meet. With a new sweatshirt and her ponytail tucked under a cap in Grover High purple, she didn’t think Sophie would spot her.

  She stood on the fringe, trying to blend in. At least there was one way she fit in here better than she had anywhere else of late: this was the first place she’d been in two years where no blue Pilots glowed on the heads around her. She had started searching crowds for the others without. Only last week she’d noticed a teenager eyeing her as she ran. It looked to her like the guy was trying to figure out her damage.

  “Personal choice!” she’d shouted, and then increased her pace, immediately ashamed. Personal choice couldn’t be a mark of pride. It kicked Sophie into the gutter of “other,” something she never meant to do.

  She should be one of these people. They believed the same thing she believed, that Pilots were a slippery slope to a quarry whose depths had not yet been plumbed, where anything could be lurking. Everything seemed so rushed, fast-tracked for a future she wanted time to get used to, at the very least. Slow down, she wanted to say to the schools and the Army and the news outlets. What’s the end result of all this? Maybe these things would usher in a new age of humanity; until they did, it looked premature to her eyes.

  “Our young people are being used as guinea pigs!” shouted an orator with the cadence of an experienced preacher. “We are letting them cut open our children, and put machinery in their heads, and sew them up again as if they are the same, but they are not the same.”

  “No!” shouted someone in the crowd.

  “They are not the same, nor are they better. Nor should it matter. Who are we to mess with these beautiful creations, these beautiful children? Who are we to corrupt? To ‘improve’ in the name of ‘progress’? Why do we trust this company with our children’s perfect brains?” He gestured at the building behind him, and the crowd erupted in boos.

  “This experiment is being conducted in our schools, on children whose parents think they have no choice. They do have a choice. My son is in public school. He’s a bright boy, but they put him in special classes now. He understands. He understands he’s better off in a classroom of struggling children, learning at their own pace, than being mocked by teachers who have already forgotten they are there to teach, not to enable.”

  Val craned to see, and confirmed what she’d just realized. The boy he gestured to, standing near the front and off to the side of his father, was Gabe. Sophie was at his side. Val couldn’t read her daughter’s expression from so far away, but judging from her posture, the studious tilt of her head, Sophie was entranced.

  The speaker motioned with both hands for the crowd to settle. “We won’t change their minds today, but we’ll come back, again and again. We’ll speak out, and we’ll reach people one at a time.”

  Gabe’s father stepped aside, and a beatboxer began to perform. Val knew she should leave, but she lingered, thinking about what she’d heard. It could have come from inside her own head. She wished she had said it sooner, much sooner, before David had ever convinced them he needed to fit in with his class. They should have said no, should have said wait.

  She started to run. Away from the Balkenhol compound, away from the preacher speaking her own truths, away from the sudden realization that she had failed David. A parent protects a child. A parent doesn’t give in just because the child wants something, just because everyone else has one. A parent doesn’t take a teacher’s word above her own common sense. They had failed him.

  She sprinted until her lungs burned and the sweatshirt disguise was soaked in sweat. Head bowed, hands on knees, she heaved. When she had her breath again, she headed back to her car.

  She saw the three figures by her car from a long way off, and groaned. Of course if Gabe’s father was a speaker he probably stayed until the end. Of course Sophie would notice her mother’s car in the nearly empty parking lot. She steeled herself for confrontation, but Sophie didn’t look upset.

  “Were you here for the rally?” she asked when Val neared.

  “I was running.”

  “I see that. In those clothes?” Sophie waved a finger at Val’s attire. “And a Grover cap?”

  Val shifted from one foot to the other. How strange for the roles to reverse like this, with Sophie playing interrogator and her playing the child caught out.

  It didn’t need to be that way. Not if she told the truth. “I checked out the rally first.”

  “What did you think?”

  Truth. “I only heard part, but I thought it raised some good points. I thought you raised some good points.” She directed the second sentence to Gabe’s father, who looked amused at the whole conversation.

  She held out her hand. “I’m Val Bradley, one of Sophie’s mothers.”

  “Tony Clary. Gabe’s father.” His handshake was firm.

  “You’re an excellent speaker, Tony. I hope your group here appreciates that they have such a good leader.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not the leader, but they know I can deliver a good speech when they need it.”

  “It’s a people’s movement,” said Gabe. Sophie nodded in agreement with her friend, leaving Val to wonder when her daughter had learned what a people’s movement was.

  “I should get going. I told Julie I’d be back ages ago. Do you want a ride home, Soph?”

  “Can I go with Gabe? We were going to stop for dinner.” Sophie’s eyes were full of pleading, though she tried to keep her tone casual. Full of something else, too, something Val couldn’t recognize.

  Val shrugged. “Sure. You have money?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know the rules?”

  “No cola, no sulfites, no fun. Check.” Sophie finished with an eye roll that Val knew she’d been working on for some time, but Val was satisfied.

  She looked to Mr. Clary, who nodded. “Your wife gave me the rundown the first time Sophie came over.”

  Sophie slumped at that news, and Val’s heart went out to her. She wished her daughter could visit friends without parental intervention. Someday soon they’d have to let go and trust her; not yet.

  “See you later, Soph.”

  She watched Sophie’s body language in her rearview mirror, the way she straightened up again as her mother drove away. No matter how much she wanted to be the good guy in the scenario, it looked like she was cast in the role of suffocating parent.

  Or maybe it wasn’t about her. Maybe that something else she’d seen in Sophie’s eyes wasn’t about her mother. The more she thought about it, the more she realized it was likely that Sophie wasn’t just excited about a meal away from prying parental eyes: she wanted to talk about what she had just taken part in. Val had just watched her daughter transform into an activist, and she was still concerned about French fries.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SOPHIE

  Sophie attended three more Saturday rallies with Gabe and his father before the school year ended. They all went more or less the same. Mr. Clary spoke, sometimes followed by others, mostly people who had decided not to get Pilots or not to let their kids; a few claimed to have seen Pilots go wrong. The second group made her think of David and Julie: her mom had never complained, but she’d heard David mention noise. One of these people said his kid had committed suicide, but he didn’t know why.

  Some speakers were even scientists or doctors. “Look at all the mental health diagnoses that begin in puberty and young adulthood,” one said. “Should we be putting this additional stress on underdeveloped brains?”

  That one scared her, too. She understood. She wasn’t allowed to have a Pilot—even if she wanted one, which she didn’t—because the company didn’t recommend them for people with certain disorders. What happened to people who got Pilots and the
n got diagnosed?

  She and Gabe watched from near the fence. She learned a lot watching Mr. Clary and the way he organized things. She would never have realized that something so chaotic-looking was actually carefully orchestrated, with every speaker chosen for maximum impact. Nobody got the mic until he vetted them.

  “He learned that one the hard way,” Gabe confided. “At the end of the first rally he did an open-mic thing to let anyone who wanted have a chance to speak. One lady stood to talk about her son’s Pilot, but started talking about his drug problem instead, and then we kinda realized she had a drug problem, too. She went on for twenty minutes before Dad got the megaphone away from her.”

  Sophie considered. “How come he let me speak my first time?”

  “I told him you’d be great; I had a good feeling about you.”

  Mr. Clary seemed to like her. He’d trusted her to speak, even if it was only a few words, and he’d given her the mic a few more times since then. Sometimes, when he spoke, he pointed at her and Gabe and called them “The Future of the Movement.” She liked that part. He followed it with: “But I hope this movement doesn’t need a future. I hope Pilots are a fad, and the fad ends, and these young people get to go on to the adult lives they deserve, adult lives where they are not second-class citizens.” She practiced his timing and phrasing in her mirror at home, booming some words and stretching others out.

  One night, eating baked chicken with the Clarys, she worked up the nerve to ask the question that had been bothering her. Mr. Clary was talking about upcoming rallies, about speakers and schedules. Gabe argued with him about whether a guy who had spoken the week before was worth having back.

  Sophie loved to listen to them argue, loved the way Mr. Clary treated Gabe like an adult with an opinion worth considering. It reminded her of her own family, back when David was around and their dinners were loud and boisterous, though she knew that memory probably wore rose-colored glasses. If she thought about it too hard, she started remembering people laughing at her, not with her. She was always the youngest, always left out of conversations.

  “Is anybody listening?” She surprised herself with the question. Both Clarys paused in their conversation, a rare lull.

  “To you?” Gabe asked. “We are now.”

  “No. To the protests. I mean, I think everything that’s being said is really important, but isn’t it being said to the wrong people? The ones who come are the ones who believe you already. It’s the same faces every time. It’s a good crowd, and I love being around people who don’t have Pilots, but . . . what if everybody else just thinks we’re crazy? How is anything ever going to change?”

  Mr. Clary gave her a long, thoughtful look. Sophie felt her face flush. Ice clunked in the freezer, but she willed herself not to look away or get distracted.

  “You’re not wrong, Sophie,” he said at last. “We’re preaching to the choir, and maybe we’re protesting too often, and maybe nobody’s listening anymore. How do you propose we fix the situation?”

  Nobody had ever asked her that question before. She loved her parents, but she couldn’t think of one time when they’d ever asked her to solve a problem outside of homework.

  She bit her lip, thinking. “We need to show them we’re worth listening to, but I don’t know how we show that. Maybe we’re in the wrong place. We’re not going to get them to stop making Pilots, so why are we protesting at the headquarters?”

  “Where would we go?” Gabe asked.

  “Everywhere. Places on public transit, so people who can’t drive out to a factory in the suburbs can come to the protests, too. I don’t know. Places people can see us. Schools? Government buildings? Balkenhol makes the Pilot, but they’re making it because schools buy into it and the military buys into it and the government encourages it and bosses pressure their staff to get it. They all need to hear us, too.”

  Gabe and his father both stared at Sophie.

  “What?” Sophie asked after a second. “Never mind. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  Mr. Clary frowned. “Have you been saving all that up to say?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Why?”

  Sophie lowered her eyes. “Sorry. I thought it might help.”

  “No, silly!” Gabe grinned. “Why save it up when you could have been helping this whole time?”

  “You don’t think it’s stupid?”

  Mr. Clary tilted his water glass in her direction. “Stupid? Those were great observations. Your opinions are welcome anytime.”

  Sophie felt herself flush again, but this time it was pride. She could get used to this.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SOPHIE

  The key to storming out, in Sophie’s opinion, was to put all the information into the closing door. Nineteen years of life had taught her that entire wars had been lost and won in this precise and undiplomatic language. How much time passed between the final exchange and the walkout? How long did the door linger open? Did it swing shut or was it pulled? Did the walker pause on the stoop or stride off with purpose?

  She slammed the door behind herself, making sure her mothers knew she was leaving and they had caused it. She’d grabbed her boots without putting them on, and she took each step faster than the last, to put as much space as possible between herself and the house.

  Once around the corner, she paused to pull her boots over now-muddy socks and peek back. It didn’t look like either mom had followed; her slam had done its job. They didn’t have the power to ground her at this point, but they could still make her life miserable. Nineteen was a crap age. Old enough to make decisions for yourself, but not old enough to be trusted or taken seriously.

  The neighborhood smelled like fresh laundry. There were still more leaves on the trees than on the ground, but here and there a maple or an oak leaf had left its shadow on the pavement. She didn’t know how they did that. David would know, she thought, as she always did when a question came to mind. He was due home soon, at last, maybe.

  She refused to let anyone tell her exactly when he was expected. Counting led to bad things. She had seen war movies: the tearful wife, the confused children. He only had two more weeks. I can’t believe he’s gone. Call her superstitious; she didn’t care. She’d arrive for dinner one night to find him sitting at the table and she’d be surprised and overjoyed. She’d believe it when she saw him.

  Her bus idled at the red light, giving her time to get down the hill. A couple of late-shift commuters stood at the corner and she lined up behind them, balancing her pack with one hand as she dug in her pocket. She could ride for half price if she swiped her disability ID card, but when the bus pulled over she deposited the full fare in change. That much harder to track her. That much harder, also, for the people staring at her to vindicate their stares.

  She knew she made them uncomfortable. First there was her clothing: the torn jeans, one of David’s old Army jackets restitched to say y arm? Bright blue hair, shaved close on the sides to make sure nobody missed that she wasn’t Piloted. Their eyes always strayed to her hair, then her jacket, and only then did they notice she didn’t have a Pilot. They inched away. Who didn’t have a Pilot? Nobody normal.

  Javon drove the four forty-five bus, as usual. He gave Sophie a long-suffering look as the coins jammed his fare box then sorted themselves. She saluted him with the crisp gesture she’d learned from David. It always surprised people more than if she gave them the finger. She liked to confound expectations.

  The bus lurched and Sophie shuffled toward the back. She was heading downtown at the end of the day, the opposite of most people, so there were more than enough seats. She shrugged her bag off and rested it on her feet, one arm looped through the strap to keep it steady, then glanced at the other passengers, most of whom studiously ignored her. One little boy, on his mother’s lap, stared. She smiled at him an
d waved. His eyes widened and he ducked his head into his mother’s armpit.

  A few more seats filled at the next stops. Not enough to crowd the bus, but the riders no longer enjoyed the luxury of sitting in every other seat. Sophie scooted over to accommodate two elderly women who were clearly traveling together. The one closer to her thanked her. She didn’t even shift toward her companion, the way so many people did when they saw Sophie. Score one for cool grannies.

  “My goodness, it’s hot in here,” one of the old women said. Sophie hadn’t noticed, but now that it had been pointed out, she realized the woman was right. Even her seat felt heated. Others fanned themselves and tried to force the windows open. The cool autumn air would be welcome, but only one window actually slid the way it was supposed to.

  “Driver, you got the heat on or something?” somebody called from behind Sophie.

  “It’s September, you can turn off the seat warmers!” shouted the mother with the little boy.

  A block later, Javon pulled to the curb.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the PA crackled. “The engine is overheating. I’ve called my supervisor and we’ll get on our way again as soon as we can.”

  “Just once I’d like to get to work on time,” a man in scrubs muttered.

  “Just once I’d like to get anywhere on time,” another person agreed, “but that ain’t going to happen on a city bus.” Everybody laughed.

  Sophie wasn’t in any hurry, but she didn’t like the heat. She fanned herself with her hand, feeling her face flush. A familiar anxiety crept over her. Not now, please, she willed herself. Not now, not now not

  A woman beside her was holding Sophie’s arm, and Sophie shoved her hand away, inching the other way in her seat.

  “Whoa!” said somebody on that side.

  Three people were picking something up off the floor.

  “You dropped these,” said a man in scrubs, placing some coins in her hand. “Threw them, actually.”