She began. She tried to keep it short, mindful of all the constituent meetings that had overrun their allotted time and how she sympathized but wished they had practiced telling their stories concisely. What mattered? Sophie getting left behind. David’s noise. David’s accident.
“Wow,” said the congressman.
“That’s just the personal part. Here’s where it gets tricky.” She told him about the pills, the studies, Sophie’s categories, Pilot on, Pilot off, including the one she had come in mistakenly suspecting.
“So that’s why you asked me if my Pilot is real? You thought I might be faking it?” He sounded angry and disappointed, but not entirely disbelieving. “You know me well enough to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I believe you’re not faking it. I’m sorry I asked that question. But—” This was it. This was her theory, new, not anyone else’s. “—I think there’s one more category. I think you think your Pilot is real, but it’s not.”
“Wait, what?” He looked genuinely surprised. “What do you mean?”
“What you said. The CEO—hers is fake, I’m sure—didn’t want to risk her project getting bad press, and didn’t think you’d be on board if she told you the risks, so she set you up with her personal doctor. And I’m guessing when you told other legislators about it, you gave them that number, so they’d get the same privacy you had?”
He nodded.
“They’d never have risked the whole project getting shut down if a member of Congress had a bad reaction like my son’s. They installed a pretty blue light in your head, and maybe something that fakes the data the rest of us see on the app, and then let the placebo effect do the rest of the work of making already smart, quick-thinking people believe they’d been made quicker. It’s not like any two of us describe the feeling in the same way. We don’t have the words, which makes comparing impossible.”
“What about my daughter? She loves hers; she wasn’t lying. And Evan?”
Julie shrugged. “I love mine, too. They aren’t all bad, but none of us knows how many people are suffering because it doesn’t work for them and nobody believes them. That’s all being swept under the rug by BNL. It’s a device, not a drug; they don’t have to report.”
He buried his face in his hands and went silent for a minute, then two, and she waited to see whether her decades of service had earned his trust.
When he met Julie’s eyes again, he looked angry. “The worst part is, I think I believe you. Where do we even start?”
“We start with getting the data. The real data. The studies. People’s stories. Hearings.”
He nodded. “I’ll probably lose my seat, you know. You’ll lose your job, and so will a lot of innocent BNL employees who don’t have anything to do with this. And if there’s too much invested in keeping this quiet, our efforts will come to nothing.”
Julie knew, but for the first time, keeping her job didn’t matter as much as the thing that needed to be done. Her family would be okay, one way or another, hopefully, but this was the only way to bring together their jagged edges. At least they’d see her trying.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
SOPHIE
Sophie’s plan had a lot of parts. She started with torturing Dominic. Physical torture would have been more fun, but she settled for letting slip in front of him that National had developed a device to decrypt any individual’s Pilot information off their implant if it was in close proximity. False information, but something to send them scrambling, and distract from the fact that both Toledo and Julie’s congressman were now digging into the real Pilot story. Dominic didn’t return.
Another facet, convincing her brother he really should run for office, was trickier. She didn’t want to manipulate him into something he didn’t want to do; she needed to convince him he’d genuinely be good at it, which she believed. He was thoughtful and caring and put other people’s concerns above his own to a fault, as was evident if you just looked at what he’d done to himself already. She made sure he stayed updated on what Representative Griffith was doing, and all the things she would do if she held public office, and one day, out of the blue, he said, “When I get out of here, maybe I’ll give that Lana Robinson a call.”
Sophie had hoped he’d try it her way, going around Lana, but she couldn’t have everything. “Just watch out for her. Make sure she doesn’t turn you into something you aren’t.”
“A fire truck? A warthog? I’m not necessarily opposed.”
She laughed.
“What if I insist you’re in the room? Would you help me do this?”
She had plans of her own, so many plans, but this was a worthy diversion. She attended their first meeting, where David came clean about the Quiet issue, and how he’d gotten stuck on the tracks, and the fact that he wouldn’t gloss over any of it. If they wanted games, he wasn’t playing. She was proud of him. She’d spent so long thinking he was a BNL tool, but he had always tried to do what he thought was right, even if he was absolutely wrong about some of it.
He was already adapting to the loss of his foot, like it was the accepted cost for everything he’d done. The bigger problem was the Quiet. His doctors hadn’t wanted to keep him on painkillers when pain wasn’t the issue. They’d suggested meditation and yoga and cognitive therapy, in the same way the BNL doctors had always told him to do more exercises, but he seemed pretty sure that nothing worked as well on the noise as retreating to his Fortress of Solitude, which no doctor would actually prescribe to him.
David had been released from the hospital by the time Toledo’s first article came out, the one connecting Pilots to off-label use of one of BNL’s drugs. It talked about David’s noise and everything, and mentioned the others Val had found with the same problem.
Toledo had texted her to say the article was posting, and she shouted everyone down to breakfast to quote her favorite parts. “‘Under increasing scrutiny, the company maintains they have done nothing wrong, and they will continue to offer their groundbreaking Pilot’—what’s wrong?” She stopped when she saw the concern on David’s face.
“If they go under, who’s going to help people like me?” he asked. “The more damage we do to BNL, the more risk they won’t be able to fix the problems they created.”
Sophie lowered her phone. “That’s no reason not to try. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“Others will fill in the gap,” Julie said. “The market abhors a vacuum.”
“And if they don’t?”
Val smiled. “You can always come running with me.”
It was clearly a joke, but he treated it as a serious suggestion. “Maybe when I’m ready I can get one of those running blade things. I remember it did used to help a little.”
The look on Val’s face said that she couldn’t imagine anything better, and for one moment, Sophie wished she could be the person to bring that joy; she’d never been able to run more than a lap without overheating and seizing. Anyway, it wasn’t necessary; she knew she made her parents proud. They still had to work on trust, but at least they were all starting to understand that was a group project.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
VAL
They were invited to the campaign launch, David’s supportive parents, with their own part in the plan. Sophie and David rode separately, Sophie as part of David’s team—she was dividing her time between the campaign and community college art classes and the new group she and Gabe had started after splitting from FreerMind. She’d made it clear she’d help as long as their goals aligned; on her own terms, as usual. That left Val and Julie to drive to the rented ballroom where their son would launch his political career.
They circled three times before finding a spot two blocks from the venue. The streets were busy, too, most people headed the same way they were. Julie grabbed Val’s hand and Val squeezed back; whatever came of this campaign, it was exciting.
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The crowd inside milled, waiting. A few danced to the music playing through the PA system, some song Val forgot the name of though she’d heard it all over school. Television cameras surrounded the stage, along with a few still photographers claiming their own space. More TV cameras scattered near the walls, where Piloted reporters tested their mics. Val and Julie walked past; David had asked them to sit onstage behind him and Sophie.
David greeted them when they reached the top of the ramp. He’d opted for a dynamic response foot over the microprocessor type, saying he’d had enough computer-controlled body parts. His gait was gradually becoming more natural. “You’re cutting it close.”
“Parking was awful.” Julie hugged him, reaching a hand toward his hair before stopping herself.
He frowned. “I hope that doesn’t keep people away.”
“Are you kidding?” Val gestured at the crowd. “This is already a terrific showing.”
“Especially for an unknown political candidate, months before the primary,” Julie added. “You’ve got people excited.”
“She’s got people excited. Half the crowd is here because she asked them to come.”
“They’re here for both of us,” Sophie said, joining them. “We were not above using my advantages or yours, Poster Boy.”
He glanced out at the cameras. A reporter noticed his attention and shouted, “Hey, David, how’s your foot? Are you thinking of getting your Pilot reconnected?”
He shook his head, less an answer than an expression of annoyance. Turning back to the family, he said, “I’m a soldier. If this is what you need from me, this is what I’ll do.”
“You said you wanted this, remember? Nobody’s making you.” Sophie looked impatient. “Is it time yet? I’m ready to get started. Hey, how do I look?”
She did a twirl like she was showing off a dress, pointing a finger to her temple. The honest answer was that seeing Sophie with a Pilot light, even a fake one, even knowing Sophie would never have gotten one for real, felt like a knife in Val’s heart.
“Like a sheep,” Val said, a joke and a truth wrapped in one. “No offense to those who have them.”
Sophie took a seat with them at the back of the stage. The lights went off. A spotlight was angled in a way that probably blinded whoever was at the podium, but from the chairs, Val saw into the darkness. Dozens of blue lights dotted the space, like fireflies on long grass. The flickers were an optical illusion, the result of people walking, nodding, talking. It made her remember the first time she’d ever seen a Pilot, back before she’d known what it was, that single pinprick in a darkened auditorium.
David approached the podium to cheers. He bent to speak into the mic so it wouldn’t have to be readjusted for Sophie.
In the first-draft speech he’d tried on them, he started with “There weren’t any celebrities available, and I’ve been told I’m the next best thing.” Sophie had vetoed it as too self-deprecating.
He used the beginning she’d written instead. “Hi. You know me from a bunch of commercials where I told you to buy a popular product, and you did.” He’d wanted to add an apology there, but Sophie had told him to wait.
“I’ve been told I have a trustworthy face.” Some people laughed.
“So I’m here to ask you to trust me on something else this time, and I’ll be back to tell you why I’m your candidate in a minute, but first—and I know this is backward—I’m here to introduce you to the smartest, most motivated, most dedicated person I know: my sister.” Val was pretty sure Sophie had left the descriptors up to him.
David waited for Sophie to join him, giving her a hug, turning with her to face the cameras. Val thought it was the strangest thing, to watch this movie of her grown kids not only getting along, but supporting each other, raising each other up. David came to sit beside them, and Sophie took his place at the microphone.
“My name is Sophie, and I’m here to tell you my brother should be your candidate. It’s going to sound like he’s a one-issue candidate for a bit, but that one issue bleeds into everything: education, health, jobs. Everything. I’ll talk about that in a minute.
“David got a Pilot early, to fit in and keep up in class, and as you maybe know, it nearly killed him. He’s one of the people—we don’t know how many yet, but we’re going to find out—whose Pilots generate something he calls ‘noise,’ and the company that makes them calls ‘abnormal sensory interference.’ And, lucky him, he was one of the thirty percent of people who tried to have their Pilots deactivated only to find out his brain had adapted to it. That’s from an actual study—the earlier you get the Pilot, the more likely your brain will adapt. And even though he’s still working at his Pilot level, nobody would hire him after he had it turned off because of the perception he didn’t have one—no light, no job. Has anyone here experienced that?” The crowd hooted.
“Our mother, Val, is a teacher.” Val gave a hesitant wave. “She never got a Pilot, either, but not because she couldn’t. She looked at the technology and decided it wasn’t something she wanted to do. I admire that about her, her willingness to stand firm when there was pressure everywhere to conform.”
Val still remembered the day she’d made that promise to Sophie. It had never been hard for her to keep, but she knew now how much it had mattered.
“This is our other mother, Julie. She got a Pilot because she wanted one. It helped her in her job, and it never gave her one moment of trouble that I know of. I know that’s true of a lot of you. Come up here a second?”
Julie had agreed to this part. She walked to Sophie, making sure to keep her Pilot-lit side to the cameras as she hugged her daughter. If Sophie’s light was a stab wound, Val didn’t know what to call Julie’s almost-there. The implant was disconnected, she’d said as much, and Val believed her, but it was hard to divorce the light from the left-behind feeling, even knowing there was nothing behind it, and there were who knew how many people walking around with lights and no Pilots. The Julie who walked back into the waiting room was the same person who had walked out, just as she had been all those years ago. The Julie who reached for her that night, after the deactivation, who recognized that she needed to touch and be touched precisely because of the Pilot and everything it had been in their lives, did not feel any different. That, too, had been trust.
“She always liked it, but she decided to get her Pilot turned off when all the trouble with David happened. You see that light on the side of her head? It means nothing. She got the Pilot deactivated, but left the light on. If I wasn’t spilling the secret right now, she could go to work every day like that and her boss would never be the wiser.”
That was the first reveal, the reason they wanted to do this while they had cameras interested in David’s celebrity. Sophie had promised not to scoop Toledo; his article on the on/off permutations was scheduled to come out simultaneously with the rally.
“So that’s our family, but we also have a larger community. Come on up here, everyone.” She waited as a group of about thirty people assembled on the stage, Piloted all. Gabe grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. “My other family is the people without Pilots, whether because of religion or health condition or choice, who have been working tirelessly for years to bring attention to the inequities of Pilots. The people who have protested and written letters to Congress and raised their voices.
“Now, you may be wondering how I could be standing here, a Pilot light glowing on my head, talking about being part of the community of people without Pilots, with all these Piloted people standing here with me, but here’s the thing—”
At that signal, the spotlight went out, leaving a sea of blue lights in the audience and on the stage, and the steady red eyes of the news cameras, watching.
And then the stage went completely dark. There was a gasp from the back as every blue light extinguished on stage. Practical magic; Val was close enough to see everyone on stage
reach up and press their glue-on LEDs, turning them off, and Julie cover hers with her hand. Only a handful of blue lights remained, mostly behind the cameras.
The spotlight came on again. Sophie stood tall, the false light gone. “Those were fake Pilots. The exact same blue light you all have to show your status, but it’s a simple LED. Did you know these things could lie? I didn’t until recently, but it turns out anyone can put a blue light in their head and pretend they have a Pilot. There’s an investigation going public tonight that can show you proof.
“So what does that mean? It means you can have a light without a Pilot, and a Pilot without a light. It means those blue bulbs mean nothing. They’re status symbols, nothing more, so maybe we can stop playing games with our brains.”
She stepped back, and David returned to the spotlight. “All of which is to say I’m running for this office to be your voice in Congress on all the issues you care about, but first we need to know what they’re putting in our heads, so we can decide for ourselves what to do about it. I’m starting with this: accountability from BNL, on everything. My name is David Geller-Bradley, and I’m running to get answers.”
The audience roared, and a dozen friends bear-hugged Sophie and David. At the room’s fringes, the reporters who had been promised a national-level story talked excitedly into their cameras. The reporters all had Pilots, the better to keep up with the pace of news. Would they even want to hear this? It made them part of the story. Val was still concerned that BNL ad dollars might affect what was said, but the information was loose in the world.
Sophie and David were going to be there for a while, hugging and shaking hands and giving interviews. Julie raised an eyebrow at Val, and Val nodded. They didn’t need to stay.
EPILOGUE
Three months after BNL closed the Installation Center where David and Julie had gotten their Pilots, a Tex-Mex chain restaurant opened in its place.
We Are Satellites Page 35
