We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  “So all students are required to get them under this law?”

  “No. The government will pay for them for those who can’t afford them. They’re not mandatory, but it’s easy to see how we’d get there from here. Yes?”

  “Dominic, he/him,” said the new boy, identifying himself as Sophie had said to do. “It’s not a law yet, though, right? You said ‘passed the House,’ but it still has to pass the Senate, too, right?”

  “Right. That’s where the next mobilization is going to come in,” said Gabe. “Sophie, do you want to talk about that?”

  She stood. “Okay, as always, we’ll do it their way and our way. Before we leave tonight, everyone willing is going to write a letter to our senators. On paper, old-fashioned style, so they can see we exist and we have good penmanship. I’ll mail them tomorrow. I’ll also encourage you to post your letter online, send it to all your friends, and tell them to reach out to their own senators. Bonus if you can tell them those two names, in case your friends aren’t as smart as you.

  “You’re welcome to try to make appointments with the senators personally as well, but don’t be surprised if they won’t see you. They’re pretty locked down right now, and they consider us a fringe group. And yes, John”—she raised a hand to silence an older white man who had opened his mouth—“I know some of you are fully anti-tech and will not be sending e-mails or any of that. We respect your perspective and your beliefs.” They’d long ago learned to control the various factions within their group, including both the anti-tech and the techies who thought Pilots were a step too far.

  “There should be new protest flyers to distribute shortly. Again, tell your friends, get people involved. Last, FreerMind has lawyers already working on a challenge to the law if it passes the Senate. Any questions?”

  As expected, they all wanted to know when the protests would be. That was what these folks were best at: showing up. She had to force them to write letters and do the other small-seeming stuff. Those things mattered at least as much as marching to the school board or the state house and getting arrested again. Still, the trick with a group like this was to play to their strengths, to encourage them and let them feel their burgeoning strength.

  The power movers at the national office didn’t come to local meetings, making Gabe and Sophie their sergeants, carrying out the orders of generals. As far as the foot soldiers were concerned, the two of them were giving the orders. This was Sophie and Gabe’s group to command as they saw fit. She loved the authority; it was still new to her, but she knew she wore it well. She wished her parents understood how she thrived when given some trust and control.

  That had been the fight this afternoon. How could Julie still tell her to be home by midnight? She was nineteen. Her friends spanned decades older than her, some were older than her parents, and every one of them assumed her more capable than her parents did. She and Gabe were the only two people with keys to this building, for starters.

  She knew the moms’ fears, the old bogeymen they trotted out of seizures around people who might take advantage of her. Add in that a FreerMind chapter in California had been bombed three days before and they were ready to lock her in the house and close all her connections. They said they loved her political involvement, and that she had found something she believed in and excelled at, but couldn’t she work on it from home, where she would be safe?

  She knew Val understood, at least on some level, why she did this. Val had even come to one protest, years before, and maybe gotten into it, even if she wasn’t going to take action while Julie and David had Pilots.

  Gabe was talking about the arrests, giving the rundown of who had been taken in and why. Most protests didn’t end in arrests, he stressed. Some people liked to go further than FreerMind encouraged. “I beg you to talk to me or Sophie before taking extreme action. One, so we don’t sound like an incompetent body that doesn’t know what our left arms are doing if the media comes calling for quotes. Two, so we have money and lawyers arranged in advance. Three, so we can talk you out of it if we think it will be harmful to the cause.”

  The meeting wrapped, and Sophie pulled out her supplies: paper, pens, envelopes. She was always prepared. In a million years, she doubted if anyone in her family would have guessed she could be this good at something. David had never done anything like this. He’d gone off to be a different kind of leader, in a different kind of war, but he’d always been expected to do great things.

  Oh, her parents had told her she could be anything she wanted to be, do anything she wanted, but reality hadn’t been as kind. High school had been agony. She had been teased and bullied by students, berated by teachers. Even if she’d finished high school instead of dropping out and getting her GED, she wasn’t sure she would’ve gotten into college, or gone. She wasn’t stupid, but she’d had enough of being left behind when she couldn’t learn what they wanted her to learn at the speed they wanted her to learn it.

  It hadn’t been until Gabe introduced her to the movement that she felt truly at home. A growing community of the Pilot-less, people who thought for themselves and acted for themselves and looked you fully in the eye when they talked to you. She had jumped in and they had embraced her.

  They didn’t even care about her seizures. Some of them had seizures too, or autism, or other neurodiversities that rendered them somehow unfit for society’s new standard. Others had simply rejected the concept, either out of political or personal or religious belief. They didn’t judge.

  She wished her mothers understood how much it meant to her. They said they did, but they didn’t. Julie especially, now that she was one of the zombies. She still couldn’t believe her own mother had betrayed her like that. At least Val would never get one, even if she didn’t speak out against them, either.

  Maybe if they saw the way Sophie was treated here, the deference she was given, the responsibility; maybe then Sophie’s family would treat her like an adult. She could handle herself. She had handled herself on the bus today, she’d gotten through the seizure and the daze afterward without doing anything too regrettable. They had to trust her sooner or later, so they might as well get used to it now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JULIE

  Three days passed before Sophie came home, during which time Julie cleaned the house and completed four work projects early. She puttered on the military mom site and the Pilot action site and was relieved to find her daughter hard at work on several new calls to arms, proof she was alive and safe. GNM chatted up a storm with her fearless leader.

  I wish just one person in Congress seemed willing to stick their neck out for non-Piloted people, Sophie wrote. If we had someone with power to ask our questions, we wouldn’t have to waste so much time on trying to get their attention.

  What about Griffith? Julie wrote, then erased before hitting send. Too risky, especially if her fake persona wasn’t American, and anyway, was it even true? Her job was to follow up on constituent issues, but she wasn’t sure what he’d say if she came to him with this one, given the district jobs BNL brought.

  Instead, she wrote, It figures that they all finally find common ground on something and it’s this. Here in Canada, too.

  Blame Canada, some rando responded. It wasn’t a private conversation, but Julie still got annoyed at the interruption. Sophie didn’t get the movie reference, and went off on how it wasn’t Canada’s fault the US was exporting bad ideas, and the conversation moved on without her.

  On the third night, Julie got irredeemably, irrefutably hammered, finishing an entire bottle of sauvignon blanc on her own, to Val’s single IPA. She tended not to sleep on nights that Sophie was out, and the more nights Sophie strung together, the more strung out Julie became. The drinks had been Val’s idea, and Julie approved all through the pleasant stages, the exuberance and the expansiveness and the warmth. She went to bed before her body discovered her betrayal.

  Th
e next morning, said body informed her it was fully aware, and what’s more, it did not appreciate her effort. Her head pounded to a beat that pulsed behind her right eyeball. Her Pilot was a megaphone pointed her way, sound and light churning her organs. She put her pillow over her face to block the sun.

  “Oh Lord, Mom, are you hungover?” The words were dipped in an elegant combination of teenage indignation and disgust. Julie lifted one corner of her pillow to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Sophie stood over the bed, hands on her hips. She was so damn pointy, from her elbows to her words, but she was home. Julie struggled to a seated position, swinging her legs out of bed. Mistake. Her stomach took a moment to catch up with the movement and protested having been left behind. Sophie would never forgive her if Julie puked on her shoes.

  “I can’t believe you lecture me on responsibility.”

  Julie groaned and staggered to the bathroom. She closed the door and found her voice. “It’s not irresponsible for an adult to get drunk in her own home. Regrettable, but not irresponsible.”

  She practically heard the eye roll through the door. Don’t leave again, she prayed. I’m not lecturing. You started it. She opened the toilet and vomited.

  Once she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face and tried to make peace with the world, Julie stepped back out into the bedroom. Sophie had disappeared—who would want to hang around listening to her mother puke?—but the door hadn’t slammed, and she was hopeful.

  She located her daughter in the kitchen scrambling eggs, and resisted offering to help; Sophie would accuse her of being controlling. Instead, she poured coffee from the pot Val had started before her run, then pulled three whole-grain English muffins from the breadbox. If Sophie didn’t want one she’d eat them all herself, or Val would eat one or two depending on how far she had run.

  She didn’t trust herself to say anything, lest Sophie misconstrue it. She was happy to be in the same room with the girl again, even if she’d never seen anybody scramble eggs with so much attitude, and the odor was making her queasy. Six broken eggshells lay strewn across the counter beside the range. Funny the signals Sophie sent: I am home, I am making breakfast for everyone of my own volition, but I refuse to enjoy it. You will see no remorse except for my effort. At least that was Julie’s best guess, and who knew if it was anywhere close to accurate.

  The front door opened and closed. “Cooking again?” Val called from the front hall.

  “Sophie!” She crossed the kitchen and threw her arms around the girl at the stove, who didn’t have time to ward off the hug. Julie wished she had done something similar: unabashed joy was one thing Sophie couldn’t defend against. If only she could rewind twenty minutes.

  Granted, it wasn’t her fault they had started off yet another morning on the wrong foot. Sophie had gone after her, not the other way around. Still, jealousy; no, turn it off. Be grateful she still allowed Val to hug her. Enjoy it vicariously. Eat eggs and toast with her as if nothing were broken, as if none of this had ever been any way else. Don’t let her catch you missing any other iteration of her. They were all difficult. You might as well sit with this one while she allows herself to be present.

  Julie arranged the toasted muffins on a plate on the kitchen table. She opened the cabinet to take out three plates, then got knives and forks from the drawer. Every movement was careful, both for her throbbing head and the fear that any word or action on her part might send Sophie running again. Sophie couldn’t object to cutlery. Sophie turned from the stove with her pan and shoveled eggs onto each plate. They all sat.

  “Thanks for breakfast, Soph,” Julie tried tentatively. Sophie, mouth full, nodded at her; that was positive acknowledgement, at least.

  Val spread peanut butter on her toast. “How did your meeting go?”

  “Meetings,” Sophie said, emphasizing the plural. “There’s so much going on right now we’ve been having them every night. It’s the only way to keep on top of everything.”

  “What’s going on right now?” Julie tried to keep the question light and innocent, as if she hadn’t spent two nights online trolling action after action.

  Sophie gave her a withering look, but deigned to answer. “Congress is working with BNL to subsidize Pilots for all ninth graders below the poverty level. That’s practically making them mandatory! Can you imagine the pressure on those kids? How can anyone refuse?”

  It startled Julie to hear Sophie refer to those five years her junior as kids. She was still a kid herself, as far as Julie was concerned, though she knew better than to say as much.

  Val frowned. “I see how that would have your group concerned, Soph. What are you doing about it?”

  As always, Julie was impressed with Val’s ability to ask questions that came across as genuine interest. Or maybe it was that Sophie assumed Val’s interest to be genuine and Julie’s suspect. Or maybe it was all in Julie’s head. Or maybe this was guilt for having snooped so much online that nothing she asked could truly be an innocent question; she knew the answers already.

  “For that one we’re teaching students how to do organized walkouts. We’ve got an education campaign going aimed at the kids—that one’s going all the time, but we’re ramping it up—to let them know the risks, and let them know they can refuse. Another for teachers and administrators, and another for parents.”

  “Who is ‘we,’ Soph?” Julie asked, though she knew the answer. “Is that just locally?”

  “Not just local. Local chapters are handling the on-the-ground stuff, but it’s a national campaign.” She paused, then added, “I wrote one of the handouts myself, though,” with more than a touch of pride.

  “Which one?” Julie asked, then panicked. Had she implied she was familiar with the materials?

  “It’s aimed at students. ‘Sometimes a Free Update Isn’t Free.’ Ads on all the social networks, and we have somebody who hacks into school computer systems to distribute mass e-mails through a fake student account. Then paper copies at the schools and in the neighborhoods.”

  A quick frown passed over Julie’s face. She tried to disguise it, but it was too late.

  Sophie glared at her. “What’s the matter? Oh. You didn’t like the hacking bit? Too illegal for you? You don’t have to worry, Mother. I did not personally hack anything. I don’t know how to do that. You can go another night without having to worry about bailing me out of federal prison and save your concern for Central Booking downtown. I’m not doing anything Fed-worthy.”

  That had been exactly Julie’s concern. She hadn’t read anything about systems hacking, and she thought she was privy to most of what went on in the local chapter. There must be other places where the leaders gathered that she wasn’t welcome. That made sense; at least they were smart enough not to broadcast the illegal parts of their actions.

  Sophie was still talking, and Julie’s Pilot had allowed her to track both the conversation and her own diverging train of thought. Not that she needed much attention to follow Sophie as she worked up a head of steam on the protection thing again.

  “. . . I can’t believe you’re more concerned for my safety than you are for the thousands of kids who are about to get Pilots forced on them before they know the ramifications, or that they have a choice. If their parents and schools won’t protect him, it’s on us to inform them.” Her spiky hair bobbed and weaved as she spoke, like it was fighting its own boxing match.

  Julie homed in on something in Sophie’s rant. “If their parents won’t protect him?” she repeated. “Is that a dig at us?”

  “I meant them. Parents won’t protect them.” Sophie flushed, then pulled herself back to righteous anger. “But you do know how I feel about David’s Pilot: the same as I feel about all of them. Yours is maybe worse, since you saw David struggle, and you decided to do it anyway. You made a fully informed stupid choice.”

  Julie resisted the urge to send her daughter to her room over
“stupid choice.” Instead, she threw her plate in the dishwasher and left the room. The food had helped her hangover a bit. She went back to the bedroom and climbed into the unmade bed.

  Cool autumn sun filtered through the open blinds. Funny how the quality of sunlight changed from summer to fall. You would think sunlight would be sunlight no matter what, but it wasn’t so. The level of intensity, the angle, everything changed. You were more grateful for it in autumn, too. In summer, it burned your skin and heated everything to the point of unbearable. By mid-October you just wished it would play across your face a little longer. She heard Val’s chair scrape the kitchen floor, then her steps on the stairs.

  Julie knew her apology long before Val entered the bedroom. “Sorry about that. It was her or me, and I thought it was better for everybody if I left.”

  “I think that’s true.” Val threw herself on the bed. “I told her I’d go to the meeting with her tonight.”

  Julie propped herself on an elbow. “She said you could? For real? How did you convince her?”

  “I didn’t convince her. She asked me.”

  “I’m guessing I’m not invited?”

  “No way,” Val said. “You’re the enemy, Jules. Sorry about that.” She sat on the bedspread and took Julie’s hands. “At least I get to see what goes on. Also, I think she’ll let me drive her, so that’s one night we don’t have to worry about her on the bus.”

  Better than nothing. One night of less worry was definitely a good thing, a night where her worry might still force her to look at the military sites, but not Sophie’s. She’d grown up with a sheepdog-crossed mutt, a herding dog. He had tried to gather her and her parents in the same room every night and wasn’t satisfied until everybody was watching TV or scrolling phones or reading in the same space. She hadn’t realized how much she’d become like Max. At least tonight she’d have tabs on everyone but David, even if she couldn’t be there herself. Max hadn’t been able to delegate, so she had that on sheepdogs.