We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  “Thanks,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m just stressed.”

  She gave him a hug. He sat in her desk chair, swiveling side to side, and she was standing, so it was a shoulder hug, hard and brief. She tried to think of what to say to sound supportive instead of accusatory. “What are you stressed about?”

  He smashed the snotty sock into the side of his head. “I’m done. I want it turned off, taken out, whatever they can do to make it stop.”

  She hadn’t expected that, either. “You? The poster boy?”

  “I wish people would stop calling me that! I’m sick of it, Soph. It was one thing when it was supposed to save my life, but now it’s making me miserable. I know there’s something wrong with it, even if they tell me there isn’t. There has to be. I need it out of my head. Please.”

  The “please” convinced her. It was a broken please, a child’s please, a please she hadn’t heard from him for years and couldn’t remember when she’d ever heard it. Not the night he’d asked for his Pilot. She still remembered that one; it was an everybody’s doing it please, the whine of someone willing to do anything to keep up with his friends, slightly desperate, but not out of options. This sounded different, like he needed real help.

  She hesitated, weighing what to tell him. “There’s a place. It’s not like the BNL clinics. They do body mod stuff.”

  “Body mod stuff? Not the same.”

  “You don’t get to be suspicious if you’re asking for off-the-books surgery. I’ve gone there with people. They’re fully licensed for all kinds of things, and they do stuff most doctors won’t, including Pilot stuff, though most doctors would say it’s proprietary and they don’t want to get near it.” She didn’t say she’d gone with someone from the group who had gotten this weird new anti-facial-recognition thing put under her skin. She’d seen Pilot disconnection on the list of things they did, and had wondered at the time who would go there instead of to BNL. Answer: her brother, maybe.

  “Would you go with me?”

  He kept surprising her. “Davey, are you sure you’re doing the right thing? I’m the last person to talk someone out of this, but why not do it through the BNL clinic, where they know you and know their product?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to go back to that clinic. Will you come with me or not?”

  Sophie examined her brother’s face. His gaze was steady, his expression hopeful. For all that he’d been through, his emotions still showed so clearly. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a position to do him any favor before, or at least no favor bigger than unloading the dishwasher on a night he wanted to go out, or grabbing him a Popsicle when she grabbed one for herself.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I’ll go with you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “It doesn’t smell like cookies,” David said.

  “Is it supposed to?” They sat in a small waiting room in a ramshackle two-story house turned body-mod parlor. They’d taken two buses to get there. It smelled like antiseptic, like hospital, scents Sophie tolerated only because her brother had asked her to do this thing with him. She hated hospitals, but at least this visit wasn’t for her, and it wasn’t a hospital, not exactly.

  “The BNL clinics always smell like fresh-baked cookies. I think it’s supposed to make you relax? I always found it forced. Like, hand me a cookie if there are cookies, or don’t make me think about them.”

  “Maybe it works better on people whose parents bake? Hmm . . . now I’m thinking about cookies, so thanks a lot.”

  They both went back to examining the room and presumably thinking about cookies. David browsed the articles and licenses on the walls. He’d been surprised to find this wasn’t some clandestine operation. Maybe even disappointed? She couldn’t tell. If she were in his shoes, she would want to know that the person working in her head had every available certificate, diploma, license, and credential. The law that had allowed BNL to open minor brain surgery clinics outside the traditional hospital setting had paved the way for places like this to legitimize as well.

  “David?” A pink-wigged, blue-scrubbed woman with a Star Trek–style series of bumps embedded in her forehead stood in the doorway to the back room. “You missed a question on the intake form. Do you want the light deactivated as well as the implant?”

  Sophie shot the nurse a narrow look; she wished the woman didn’t have a Pilot. “Wait—you can turn off a Pilot without turning off the light?”

  The nurse nodded. “A lot of people like that option. The light is superfluous. Branding. Leaving it on gives the impression they still have Pilots, so they don’t face the pressure and questions. We don’t take them out here in either case—that’s a far more invasive surgery than just snipping the leads, with way higher risks.”

  A strangled noise died in Sophie’s throat. She looked at David, daring him to keep it. He had already taken advantage of every benefit the stupid implants had to offer; it would be just like him to keep the social cachet that came with the Pilot while deactivating the Pilot itself.

  He sat silent for a long minute. Sophie could tell he’d made his decision when his chin lifted right before he spoke. “Turn it off. I don’t need it anymore.”

  The nurse made a notation on the form, then held it out to David to initial. “Do you want your friend to come with you?”

  “My sister.” He stood, looked at Sophie, gave a shaky smile. “Nah. I’m okay knowing she’s out here. Let’s do this.”

  Sophie gave him a thumbs-up, but he’d already turned to follow the nurse, so she grabbed a scrapbook off a corner table and started paging through different mods Dr. Pessoa and her staff had performed, ranging from the subtle to the freaky. She wondered what her moms would think if she came home with a septum piercing or a unicorn horn. She was old enough that it was her choice, and she’d always had a high tolerance for pain, but none of that felt like her thing. Maybe a tattoo someday; that reminded her of the art she used to hide under her bed. She went through the book categorizing mods into “maybe,” “no,” “hell no,” and “whoa.” Some categories overlapped.

  She’d never have imagined she would be in a place like this with David. David was the most by-the-book person she knew: a follower of orders, a follower of order in general. She didn’t know if he’d changed and she hadn’t noticed, or if this circumstance was extreme. It felt like the latter.

  David returned in less time than she’d expected, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. She studied his face. “How do you feel?”

  He shrugged. “Massive headache. It was just a local anesthetic, so I’m not too out of it.”

  She didn’t push him to say more. He was quiet on the ride home, too, and followed her as they switched buses, like he was trusting her rather than paying attention for himself. He took out his phone and stared at his Pilot app a couple of times. At one point, he reached out and squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have a brother who wasn’t the poster boy for the company she spent her life fighting. Would they be friends? Neither of her moms had siblings, and neither did Gabe, so she didn’t have any models for it other than books and television and movies.

  On the second bus, she looked up to see a picture of him in his uniform staring back at them. Real David had his cap pulled low, but at least one person was pretty sure it was him, was poking her friend and whispering. How fast would BNL pick a new spokes-shill? Sophie tried to catch David’s eye, but he had his shut tight.

  David sagged into the couch the second they walked in the door. No military bearing; a heap on the couch, hands over his face. His cap fell off his head, and he didn’t bother to retrieve it. He had an adhesive bandage over his shaved temple, but a blue light still shone through it.

  Sophie yelped. “You didn’t do it. Why did you make me think you did?”

  He dropped
his hands to his cheeks and opened one eye. “I did it. This headache tells me so. Look, if you don’t believe me, I can show you the app.” He unlocked his phone and showed her a screen reading: error—make an appointment at your local installation center immediately.

  “You told the nurse to turn the light off. I heard you.”

  “I changed my mind when I got inside. It makes sense for my job to leave it on. I like my job.”

  Rage coursed through her. “What kind of chicken human being hides something like this? If you don’t need it, stand behind that decision. And you’re keeping that job? You got it taken out because you hate it, because it breaks something in your head, but you’re still going to sell it to other people? Do I have that right?”

  “I’ve told you before. I don’t hate it. I think it’s good for other people, but it’s not good for me. If turning it off makes my head better, it’s a health thing, right? Why should I lose a good job over that?”

  “Never mind. If you don’t get it, I don’t think I can explain it to you.”

  She didn’t bother to pull her boots off. She tried not to stomp back to her room. People always accused her of walking off in a huff when all she wanted was to get away from whatever or whoever was frustrating her. Put stairs and a door in between and she could exorcise it without losing her cool completely.

  Maybe she’d been hasty in envisioning him joining her cause, coming to meetings, making them a family affair, or near enough, but it truly baffled her how he was still willing to work for them. Even if she accepted his premise that his implant was bad, that the experience was worse for him than for other people, she still didn’t understand how he could make the distinction. He was a mystery to her. Not an enemy, still not a friend. She’d been silly to think otherwise.

  Also, she really, really wanted a chocolate chip cookie, but she was not going back downstairs to forage in the kitchen if it meant passing the traitor on the couch.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  DAVID

  It was just as well he’d left the false blue light on; the headache went away, but the noise didn’t. David ran through the exercises, telling himself he felt a little less focused, a little quieter, a little less able to process. He wanted so badly to believe it had worked that he was willing to deceive himself. For a while.

  A week passed, two. He woke every morning and immediately assessed the situation. Loud bird? Check. Loud head? No need to ask.

  “Most people who want this go to BNL, so I don’t have statistics to report,” Dr. Pessoa had said. “From what we’ve seen, it could take an hour or a day or a week.”

  The thing was, he hadn’t noticed any change at all. He found himself irritated with everyone. Tash had asked what was wrong and he’d snapped, and now Tash was avoiding him. He wouldn’t have minded telling them, telling someone, but he knew better than to say anything about this at work. It was his stupid secret.

  He went to his “consultation” with Dr. Morton in a stranger predicament than he’d been in at their first meeting.

  “David, good to see you,” the shrink said. “Have you tried the things we talked about at the last meeting? Longer down-cycles? Meditation?”

  All crap that had never worked for him. He chose the one truth he had to tell. “I’ve been doing the exercises like I did when I first got it.”

  “Good, good, good. And has there been any improvement with the, ah, issue?”

  That was trickier. If he said no, if he convinced them to believe him, they might send him for tests and discover his Pilot had been deactivated. If he said yes, it would be a flat-out lie and a betrayal of anyone else who might be in the same position as he was. There had to be other people like him. He chose his words carefully.

  “I’m working on it.” A vague, useless statement. A doctor who actually cared would call him out on the nonanswer.

  This guy was so focused on the result he wanted to achieve, he didn’t notice. “That’s great, David! Glad to have you back on board with the program.”

  David lied through the rest of the appointment and then went back to his desk to stew. On some level, he was embarrassed. What if Dr. Pessoa was a quack who had taken his money and claimed to deactivate his Pilot without actually doing anything? She’d offered a persuasive reason not to bother turning off the light, but what if that was something she did to everyone who came to her?

  In the end, feeling stupid, he knocked on his sister’s door again.

  “What do you want?” She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d seen his light was still on.

  “I need to talk to you. Please.”

  “Anything you have to say, you can say through the door.”

  “I can’t. I need your help, Soph.” He didn’t call her Softserve. He hoped she noticed.

  “Fine.”

  He opened the door. As usual, she sat on her bed, doing whatever it was she did that involved online organizing. He’d never asked.

  “You’ve got two minutes.” She fixed him with a withering gaze. “Don’t bother sitting.”

  He closed the door and leaned against it. “Soph, how well do you know that doctor we went to?”

  “I told you. I went there once with a friend, but she has a good reputation.”

  “I know, but . . . do you know anyone who got their Pilot deactivated there?”

  “One person came to our group once, I think? Most people get theirs done at BNL.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  He looked at his feet. He had a mosquito bite on top of the right one that he hadn’t noticed, but now that he saw it, it itched. He felt suddenly ashamed to tell Sophie, like this was a personal failing, like the stupid psychologist was right and he was doing something wrong and that was why he was like this.

  “Why, David?”

  He shrugged, still looking anywhere but at her. “It’s not working. I mean, it’s still working. It doesn’t feel like it was turned off.”

  “Did Dr. Pessoa tell you how long it would take?”

  “She didn’t know exactly, but I got the impression this isn’t normal. If it’s not on anymore, it shouldn’t act like it is, right?”

  “Hmm.”

  “And I can’t tell anyone. Like, I can’t tell BNL I got it turned off, and I feel funny going back to a doctor who made me sign a form saying I understood she hadn’t done many of these procedures. I thought maybe she lied and didn’t turn it off, but she came across as ethical. I don’t think she lied. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Wow,” his sister said. “It’s still exactly the same?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sophie tossed her tablet facedown on her bed and studied his face. He looked back at her, daring her to make fun of him. When had she gotten old enough that her opinion mattered to him? He hadn’t caught up with the times; in his absence, she’d become a whole person instead of an annoying kid sister. He remembered occasionally treating her like an adult, but mostly at times when he’d been dispensing the wisdom of his years, not listening to her. Now he found himself wanting her advice more than anyone else’s.

  “I don’t know if this is relevant, but a woman came to our meeting recently who’d been in the original trial—she had her Pilot even longer than you’ve had yours. And they’re—BNL—they’re contacting some of the original people with some new questions. They paid her a bunch of money to get hers out entirely, not just off like yours, but, um, when she had it out, she said her brain still thought she had it. She said—what was the word she used?—neuroplasticity. She said her brain had learned to fire like that on its own. That the younger you were when you got it, apparently, the more likely it was to teach your brain to do the work itself.”

  He slid down the door to the floor. Sophie didn’t tell him to stand. “Did she say anything about noise?”

  “No. She said she’d liked hers, but they gave her enough money to co
nsider it.”

  “And nothing changed when she got it out?”

  Sophie shook her head, and David groaned and covered his face in his hands.

  He thought of something else. “You said this was a few weeks ago? Before I had mine turned off?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was a few weeks before that, and I forgot until you said that just now.” She cocked her head, thinking. “She got hers out entirely, not turned off, and it was your company that did it, and hers wasn’t a problem for her like yours, so I guess it slipped my mind. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Not your fault. Like you said, it didn’t seem related.”

  They sat in silence. David’s noisy brain spun up all the hits at once. He’d trapped himself. If he’d gone through with having BNL deactivate his Pilot, they’d be on the hook for whatever was happening to him. Now if he went to them, it wouldn’t look like coincidence that it was off, if it even was. On top of that, he had no idea if there was any sign marking Dr. Pessoa’s intrusion, or if the reversal was reversible. He’d probably voided his own warranty.

  He had so many questions. Why was BNL asking people to remove their Pilots, and what was wrong with his head, and did anybody else feel like him or was he a weak link, and he had nobody to blame but himself, he had chosen this, what if this was as turned off as it would ever be, and this was him forever, his ongoing status, a permanent deployment, noise forever and ever amen.

  He struggled to convince himself to stand, but couldn’t do it. Sophie didn’t make him go anywhere, just lifted her tablet and refocused on whatever she’d been working on when he interrupted, and the room got dark around them until the only light was the tablet bathing her face in a glow, and, in the closet door mirror, the blue pinprick meant to mark him as part of the Piloted masses.

  He extricated his phone from his pocket and scrolled back through his message history with Milo until he found Alyssa’s number. Hi, this is Milo’s friend David from Karina’s birthday party. Sorry if I asked weird questions. I wasn’t in a great space that night, but it doesn’t excuse being rude. Hopefully that struck the right note of genuine apology and urgency. He hadn’t meant to be so intense with his questions. Sometimes he forgot the body he inhabited, the space he inhabited, the way he came across. He’d say that, too, given the chance. He left the actual question he wanted to ask for a follow-up conversation.