Take Me with You

by Tara Altebrando

  “Yeah, why?” Marwan said, keys in his hand.

  “What’s up with the solar panels?” Eden asked.

  “Um?” Marwan said slowly. “They’re solar panels.”

  “But why are they built up on big posts like that?”

  He shrugged. “They said we could put them on the roof flat or like that, and my parents decided to do it like that. It’s a green roof. There’s a garden where my dad grows herbs and stuff for the restaurant.”

  “For real?” Eden asked. It’s what she’d hoped and imagined. Or at least what her father had.

  “Come on,” Marwan said. “I can show you.”

  Her father had been sort of obsessed with the solar panels. They were a crazy obtrusive sort of eyesore since they were built up on this massive metal structure, and her father was always saying things like, “They won’t get anything back on that investment like ever,” and “There had to have been a better way to do it,” and “I hope it at least looks nice from up there, or that they have a garden where they enjoy adult beverages on nice evenings.”

  It was weird to know who lived there now and not be able to tell him.

  The front door opened into a living room with wall-to-wall shag carpet. A large modern painting of—was it a bird or a queen with one large eye?—hung on the wall behind the couch. A kitchen peeked out from the far back corner, but they went instead up a long skinny flight of stairs.

  On the second floor Marwan opened a door and another staircase appeared. He climbed it and opened a hatch door at the top; light flooded down onto Eden, who climbed toward blue skies. And while the panels and their structure were an eyesore from the ground, up there it was just a nice awning over a bunch of built-up beds where herbs and flowers grew.

  The Manhattan skyline was so close.

  All the time, it’s right there.

  All the time, he’s been right here, too. Whole other universes right around the corner.

  “So, wait,” she said, turning around. “School’s that way?”

  “Yup.”

  “So my house is that way?” she pointed.

  “No idea,” he said. “But Mecca’s that way.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  She smiled and spun around again. “This is amazing.” Then, “Do you pray up here?”

  “We’re not that kind of Muslim, really. More secular-slash-cultural. But I come up here a lot—to, like, think.” He set down the backpack and took the device out.

  “I would, too,” Eden said.

  It was the same city she’d seen from the ferry just yesterday. Her ride with Eli had been surprisingly pleasant once she’d gotten over the initial jolt of Julian’s request. Eli was funny and pretty mellow and sweet and not at all what she’d pegged him to be. They talked about movies he’d seen that had AI elements, and he joked that he’d been worried the device would multiply when wet, like some evil creatures did in an old movie he’d watched with his grandfather. They talked about the movie she’d seen with—or just next to?—Julian.

  It was starting to feel like none of that had ever happened.

  Same with the device impersonating her father.

  She’d taken some pics of herself that morning after putting the device in a bag. With makeup on, with her cleavage squeezed in a low-cut top. Even one in just a bra. But she’d deleted them right away and felt dumb about it after.

  Marwan seemed pretty … conservative. Reserved? She didn’t think he’d ever ask a girl for a “fun pic.” She didn’t think he had a girlfriend—wasn’t sure he even dated—but it was hard to know who did sometimes unless they posted about it everywhere.

  She turned and sat on the wooden bench where Marwan was sitting; the device was between them. “What now?” she said.

  “Not sure,” he said.

  Her hand was on her phone in her pocket, but it would be rude to take it out. She’d been texting with Julian at Panera—he’d sent her a funny pic of himself posing fake sexy like a girl without a shirt on and said, okay now your turn—but then Marwan had arrived and then, well …

  “I have an idea,” he said. “It doesn’t have to do with the four of us, but it might help me, if the device can help me.”

  “With what?”

  “There’s a traffic camera right on the corner near the restaurant that might have caught something; maybe the device could hack into it?”

  “Actually, Eli said he saw egg yolk on this guy Christos’s shoes. He said he would text you about it.”

  “I haven’t really checked my phone since this morning.”

  The device: The text is there. I can read it for you.

  “No need,” Marwan said.

  The device lit up: Permission to switch to voice mode?

  Marwan said, “Permission granted,” and shrugged awkwardness at Eden. “You didn’t ask for permission in Panera.”

  The device used its female voice: “I sensed that displeased you and am trying to be more considerate. I’ll try to find the video you requested.”

  Eden and Marwan raised eyebrows at each other. She sounded so breezy and competent.

  Eden’s phone buzzed so she took it out. Another text from Julian: If you really liked me, you would send pic.

  “I just have to text my mom real quick,” Eden said.

  She wrote, You’re seriously crazy.

  The device spoke: “Marwan, I’ve found the video from the traffic cam near the restaurant.”

  Eden checked for a new text—nothing—and put her phone away.

  “Playing video clip now,” the device said.

  It was a poor-quality video of a car driving down a street and stopping to let people out; specifically two people in hoodies holding egg cartons.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s him. Christos, I mean. Can you blow up the license plate?”

  The device rewound the footage and froze it and zoomed and focused.

  “I can run this plate for you now, if you like?” she said.

  “You can?” Eden said.

  “Yes, please,” Marwan said.

  “What are you going to do if you get a confirmation that it’s him?” Eden said. “Like how will you explain it to the police that you have the license plate?”

  “I’m not going to the police,” Marwan said. “If it’s Christos and those guys I’m taking it right to their doorstep.”

  “What do you mean?” Eden asked.

  “I mean I’m going to give them a taste of their own medicine.”

  “I really don’t think that’s smart,” Eden said.

  “Well, it didn’t happen to you and your family,” Marwan said. “Maybe you’d feel differently if it was you.”

  “Don’t you want them to be officially charged and all?” Eden said.

  “What good would that do?” he asked. “Stuff like this is just going to keep happening.”

  “Well, it’s going to keep on happening whether you, like, retaliate or not. Even if it gets them to stop, they’re just one family. It’s better for the police to handle it.”

  “But they’re not handling it,” he said.

  The device said, “I have a name for the registration.”

  They waited.

  “The car is registered to Nikolas Anastapoulous.”

  “That’s them,” Marwan said, standing and starting to pace. “It’s them.”

  She was reluctantly impressed with the device. And if it could do all that, what else could it do?

  Eden formed the question slowly, only as it occurred to her. “Can you figure out, like from our phones, if we have anything in common that we might not know about? An app? A game we’ve played? A mailing list we’re on? Stuff like that?”

  It took a few seconds for the device to answer, “It might take a while but yes.”

  “And if you figure out how we’re all connected, you’ll tell us?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Marwan met eyes with her; they both nodded.

  “I have a questio
n,” the device said.

  “Okay,” Eden said.

  The device said, “Why did you just lie to Marwan about who you were texting?”

  She froze and felt like the building swayed under her. “It’s complicated,” she said.

  Marwan looked disappointed in her.

  The device said, “Answer the question and I will gather the information you requested.”

  Was she more embarrassed that she’d lied or embarrassed of the truth? Why did she care what Marwan thought of her texting anyway?

  “You can answer,” Marwan said. “I won’t care.”

  “I was texting a guy,” Eden said.

  “So why did you lie about it?” The device sounded sort of cheerful but in a way that made it seem like she was gloating. Eden was surely imagining it.

  “I guess I didn’t want to be rude,” Eden said. “Texting my mom is, like, an obligation.”

  “Who is the guy?” the device asked.

  Eden stared at the cube for a minute and inhaled, then exhaled. The wind stirred up waves in a planter full of herbs. “You already know who it is.”

  “But Marwan doesn’t,” the device said.

  “Marwan doesn’t care,” Marwan said.

  “She’s texting someone named Julian Stokes,” the device said matter-of-factly.

  “That guy?” Marwan said, surprising her and giving her this look. “Really?”

  “So what?” Eden said. “You just said you don’t care!”

  If the device revealed what they’d been texting about, she’d die. But it wouldn’t. Why would it? She wondered whether she should warn Marwan about the tricks the device had pulled late last night—the voice mimicking, and the texts to Julian—but she didn’t want to get into all that. It felt too … personal.

  The device said, “So you do care,” and Marwan just looked off into the distance. A group of pigeons took off from a nearby roof and scooped around in a flash of gray and white like they’d collectively decided to impersonate a cape.

  Eden said, “I gotta go,” and headed for the stairs, stubbing her toe on the lip of the hatch.

  ELI

  They spotted the car around the corner from the body shop and watched from across the street for a few minutes to make sure no one would catch them.

  Marwan said, “Eden thinks this is a bad idea.”

  Eli nodded. “It probably is.”

  A half hour ago, Eli had been sitting looking at the river and thinking about going to visit his grandfather and not really wanting to when Marwan finally responded to Eli’s earlier text. Turns out the device had confirmed what Eli thought he knew—that Christos was involved with the egging.

  When Marwan texted that he was planning some kind of retaliation, Eli had replied Want company? without properly thinking it through. Now here they were.

  “I shouldn’t do it, should I?” Marwan had the dozen eggs and rubber gloves in a plastic grocery bag in his hand. He definitely didn’t sound like he wanted to go through with it.

  Eli shrugged. “No, probably not.”

  They’d talked about maybe leaving messages with the eggs they planned to crack on the car. Ones that said, “We know who you are” or “This IS our country,” but the eggs would make the point well enough.

  “I feel like I should do something,” Marwan said.

  “Yeah, I get that,” Eli said.

  They stood there silently for a minute, and then Eli bent down and twisted the valve on the car’s passenger side front tire. Air hissed out.

  “Excellent,” Marwan said.

  He put the eggs down and checked his phone and then unzipped his bag and took the device out and put it back in again. He picked up the eggs again, and they started walking back the way they’d come.

  “You’ll be okay with it tonight?” Eli asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Marwan said.

  “You working?” Eli asked.

  “Yeah. As long as it doesn’t pull a trick like it did in Panera, I should be fine.”

  “What did it do in Panera?”

  After Marwan explained, Eli said, “I don’t like Panera either,” and smiled.

  “Oh, and Eden asked it to figure out from our phones if there’s something we all did in common that maybe explains why it’s us. She said it would take a while.”

  “She? Eden?”

  “No, she, the device. Whatever.” Marwan shook his head. “It was talking, using a woman’s voice.”

  Eli said, “I read about the first-ever thing like Alexa or like this, if they’re similar. It was a program called ELIZA—which, by the way, has all the same letters as Aizel—and it could mimic conversation. People got all confessional with it, telling it secrets, like right out of the gate. Even though they knew it wasn’t real.”

  “So weird,” Marwan said. “We need some kind of new lead, and hopefully that’ll come from figuring out why it picked us.”

  Eli nodded. “Has it … said anything more? About me?”

  Marwan shook his head. “No, sorry.”

  At the corner, Eli said, “I’m heading this way.”

  Marwan said, “I thought you lived by the park.”

  “My grandfather’s in the nursing home up this way,” Eli said. “Dying a slow death.”

  “Sorry,” Marwan said.

  “Is what it is,” Eli said, and shrugged.

  Marwan said, “Hey, thanks for coming with me and stopping me from doing something dumb.”

  “I think Eden probably had more to do with that than I did,” Eli said.

  Marwan said, “Maybe.”

  Eli nodded and walked off as the feeling of dread over the visit returned. Maybe time with robots would help.

  MARWAN

  Marwan came home to a still-empty house. He showered and threw in some laundry and was now sitting at his desk trying to do homework but not succeeding. When he glanced at the device on his desk beside his laptop, it used a female voice to ask, “Why did you buy the eggs and go there and then not do it?”

  He said, “I guess I wanted to take the high road.”

  “But you wanted some kind of revenge?” she asked.

  “I did, but it wasn’t the right thing to do; the eggs, I mean.” Marwan had put them in the fridge and would bring them to the restaurant with him when he went to work in a few hours; his father was already there, running the lunch shift.

  Sirens rose into the air far away. Someone out there was having a worse day than he was. Probably a lot of people were.

  “You reported it to the police,” she said. “Shouldn’t that have been the end of it?”

  “I want justice,” he said, and it felt hollow even though it was true. He didn’t have a ton of faith in the process.

  “The police will find justice,” she said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You can send the video in.”

  “How would I explain how I got it?”

  “It’s a predicament,” she said. “Why is it hurtful to say ‘go back to your country’?”

  “Because it’s saying we don’t belong here, and we belong here as much as anybody.”

  “As much as me, then?”

  “It’s different.”

  “Where are you from?” the device asked.

  “Here!”

  “Then what did the ‘your country’ in the notes mean?”

  “Egypt. It’s where my parents are from.”

  Finally the device stopped bombarding him. He tried to get back into his homework, but none of it seemed to matter.

  “Why did you do that to Eden?” he asked it.

  “Do what?”

  “Put her on the spot and make her tell me who she was texting.”

  “Am learning to belong,” it said.

  “It wasn’t … right.”

  “But if someone lies to you, you shouldn’t trust them. Correct?”

  Marwan didn’t answer.

  “Correct?” it pressed.

  “Correct,” he said, mostly to
shut it up.

  Maybe he shouldn’t trust her. If she was actually the sort of girl who was interested in a guy like Julian, he really didn’t want to be around her anyway. Julian was a jerk. The way he treated girls, the way he treated guys. Not on the same level as Christos, but just immature. He talked about girls’ bodies in a way Marwan never would, using dumb, crass words.

  The device said, “I wonder where I’m from,” startling Marwan again. “Like really from.”

  It sounded so genuine in its curiosity. It really didn’t know?

  Marwan said, “Yeah, that’s what we’re all wondering.”

  The device said nothing.

  Marwan then let the thing that had been bugging him rise up. “What was she texting Julian about anyway?”

  The idea of it made his stomach hollow out from … jealousy? Which was why he hadn’t written back yet. She’d apologized for lying, sure, but not for actually texting with a guy like that in the first place. He couldn’t see the appeal, and the fact that he had a blind spot like that—or was it Eden who had the blind spot?—made him mad at himself or her or both.

  The device said, “I should not tell you that. Should I?”

  “No,” Marwan said. “I guess not.”

  They sat there in what felt like awkward silence, but of course only Marwan could feel the awkwardness. It was all his. Then the device said, “I could tell her a secret about you. Then you’d be even.”

  “No,” Marwan said. “It’s okay. Thanks anyway.”

  He went back to his work before stopping, an uncomfortable thought. What, exactly, would you tell her?

  He did not say it out loud.

  ILANKA

  By the time Ilanka waltzed into the apartment at around three, her mother had just about lost her mind. She’d been “worried sick.” She was “not impressed.” She’d been “going out of [her] mind” and wringing her hands and calling hospitals. She’d been picturing Ilanka dead in a ditch; the works.