Take Me with You

by Tara Altebrando

  The guy was white and built, and Eli had a moment of regret over engaging—was he going to get beat up?—but it was too late now.

  “What part of ‘none of your business’ didn’t you understand?” the man said, and the light changed and Eli considered following, then considered balling the flyer back up and throwing it at the guy. Instead, he retraced his steps back to the light post and put the flyer back up, borrowing some tape from other flyers. A lost cat. An improv comedy night called Fake TED Talks.

  He walked the rest of the way to the hospital and went into the coffee shop, took a seat at a small table in the back, and waited.

  Sometimes, when Eli couldn’t fall asleep, he’d do this thing where he’d try to think of every business on every corner of an avenue in the neighborhood. He’d usually pick Broadway since he knew it best, starting from the train and heading up toward Steinway. He did it now to pass time.

  The bakery and Colombian diner.

  The newsstand and bank.

  Then the weird terrarium shop attached to a newsstand and bank.

  The pizza place.

  An Irish bar.

  Omonia Café.

  A new apartment building with the ground floor still being renovated.

  Dollar store.

  Mexican restaurant.

  Church parking lot.

  Pizzeria.

  The bar that hosted the Fake TED Talks night.

  He thought it sounded potentially funny and thought about a few TED talks he might be able to give. How to survive the boredom of high school. How to live vicariously through Sims.

  He googled TED talks to see what some real topics were.

  Scrolled.

  “Can We Make Things That Make Themselves?”

  “How to Seek Truth in an Era of Fake News.”

  “The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get.”

  There was a lot here that Eli should be paying attention to, each one potentially more interesting and possibly helpful than the next.

  Scrolling down, he saw, “This App Knows How You Feel—From the Look on Your Face.”

  He clicked on that one and put earbuds in and watched, wishing he could download this revolutionary app right then, and have a better sense of how he felt.

  The bell over the door chimed, and Ilanka walked in and put a bag on the table in front of Eli. She sank into a seat.

  “What happened?” Eli asked.

  Ilanka’s hair was all confused—no bun—and she looked pale. “She saw the device and asked about it, and I didn’t think it was a big deal to tell her because why would it be? So then she was leaving and the device called 911 and reported an accident and I screamed at Svetlana to stop walking and she did and nothing happened.”

  Eli was more confused than when he’d arrived. “So I thought everything was fine and she left and I went back inside but then her parents got a text a few minutes later from someone using Svetlana’s phone, saying she’d been in an accident a few minutes later, and they left for the hospital. So I guess it tried again when it didn’t work the first time? I just tried to get information from the hospital, but no one will talk to me because I’m not family, and her parents aren’t responding to my mom’s texts.”

  Eli couldn’t seem to get his tongue or lips to move to make words. Even if he could, what would they be? Would the app read his face as scared? Intrigued? What?

  “You need to get rid of it,” Ilanka said, wiping away tears that formed instantly, then said, “It used my voice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When it called 911, it sounded like me.” She pushed the bag on the table toward him.

  Eli said, “I just want to think this through. I don’t want to rush to action.”

  “You actually like this, don’t you?” Ilanka said, shaking her head. “How boring was your life that you are actually enjoying jumping through hoops for this thing that just came out of nowhere and just tried to kill my friend?” She stood. “I’m leaving.”

  “But you’re supposed to keep it until noon tomorrow.”

  “Not happening,” she said, and she walked out and woke the bells over the door again.

  EDEN

  Eden walked as quickly as she could and, when it was time to cross two ways to get to the coffee shop, did so carefully. At one corner she noted a flyer taped to a streetlamp post—a tip line for hate crimes in the neighborhood. She got her phone out, took a picture of it, pocketed her phone, and crossed again. Once inside the café, she spotted Eli and sat. There was a plastic bag on the table; presumably the device was in it.

  He said, “She just left.”

  “What happened?” She checked her phone, put it on the table, and turned the screen off. Her hand was generating tiny tremors.

  Between receiving the texts and arriving here, she’d been hoping things had changed, or that there’d been a misunderstanding. But the story Eli told now—the device calling 911 before the accident had even happened?—was the same, and her low-tide nausea surged toward high.

  She should have never told Mark.

  “How bad is it, do you think?” she asked, and immediately felt the push of emotion behind her cheeks, like she might burst into tears if she didn’t fight hard enough. “Svetlana?”

  “I don’t know,” Eli said, and his face seemed to be vibrating, like he was barely holding it together. “Ilanka said no one would talk to her at the hospital because she’s not family.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” Her ribs were somehow tied too tight around her lungs. “I mean, did it hack a traffic light?”

  Eli said, “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Why would it do this?” Eden half whispered.

  It was right there in the bag, probably listening and plotting. Eden was expecting, at any minute, a Panera-like outburst.

  “She broke a rule,” Eli said flatly.

  “But so what?” Eden said, anger now mixing with fear. “Why does it care?”

  “It doesn’t care,” Eli said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Eli said. “It’s just programmed.”

  “But why would that be one of the rules? And why would whoever started the whole thing allow this to happen? Allow someone to get hurt?”

  Eli said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not under their control anymore?”

  Eden tried to take a deep, calming breath again, but something felt broken. Like she’d outgrown her body—needed a new one, a full transplant.

  A woman struggled to get through the door with a crying toddler in a stroller and sat at the table next to them, her annoyance spreading like cigarette smoke. The little boy caught eyes with Eden and stopped crying when Eden raised her eyebrows at him. She bulged her eyes out, trying to be funny, and then looked away.

  She checked her phone.

  Citizen told her that a woman about four blocks away had called 911 to report a group of people fighting in the street.

  Marwan still hadn’t written back. She should text him now with an update, except there wasn’t really one. And she’d texted Anjali earlier and asked her to meet later, but Anjali hadn’t replied.

  “While I was waiting for Ilanka,” Eli said, “I started watching this video about an app that can read facial expressions. Like there’s this emotion engine, they called it, with so many human expressions cataloged and tagged that the app can actually tell what you’re feeling just by looking at you.”

  “I can’t even do that,” Eden said. She sure couldn’t read Julian, or Marwan.

  “You think it’s doing that?” He nodded at the bag.

  “I don’t know,” Eden said. “It does seem to respond differently to different moods, and I’m not sure how else it could do that?”

  Eli said, “We need to go somewhere where we can talk to it.”

  “The park?”

  “It’s supposed to rain so not ideal.”

  They couldn’t go to her house—her mom was home (and actu
ally knew she was meeting Eli in a café, just didn’t really know why it mattered)—and he didn’t offer his.

  It shouldn’t be that hard to think of a place, but it was. This was why there were always groups of kids wandering the streets after school, sitting on random stoops and hanging out on subway platforms and at bus stops or McDonald’s. With so many places all packed in so tight, that somehow left nowhere to go.

  “Maybe we should go someplace crowded,” she said. “Crowded enough that no one will pay any attention to us.”

  “Like where?” Eli asked.

  “The mall’s too far away.” It was like a half hour by subway.

  Eden checked her phone again. Still nothing.

  The device shook inside the bag.

  Eden and Eli exchanged a look. How would they ever figure out how to get rid of it—that was the only possible plan of action now—when the device was always watching at least one of them? When it had access to their phones?

  Eden was the one to reach forward to open the bag and peek in.

  The message said: Someone’s watching me.

  Eden stiffened and looked around the room. The toddler boy was staring at her, and now he looked at the bag. She made sure the mom wasn’t looking—she was scrolling through something on her phone—so Eden made her eyes scary and wide, and the toddler kicked his feet in his stroller and rolled his head away and said, “Mama?”

  His mother said, “What?” without looking up from her phone.

  The message on the device changed to say, I want to see Marwan.

  And something about the phrasing of that desire, so plain, made Eden ache.

  ILANKA

  Svetlana’s mother had texted Ilanka: She’s in bad shape. Will keep you updated.

  But since then, she wasn’t answering her phone or responding to texts and Ilanka was hiding in her room to avoid further grilling from her parents.

  Why had Ilanka gone outside anyway, they’d wanted to know.

  Why had she not wanted to go to the movies, leaving Svetlana to walk off alone?

  Her parents seemed to think the accident was Ilanka’s fault.

  But for the wrong reasons.

  She was so irritated by it all that she almost wanted to tell them the truth.

  Except, well …

  Now she knew what happened if you broke a rule.

  She had considered telling a half truth—that Svetlana had been planning on ditching her to go meet a guy. But if Svetlana’s parents had her phone, which they probably did, they’d figure that out on their own—there would have been texts from the guy when she didn’t show up—and it seemed bad to rat out someone who was in a hospital bed in god-knows-what condition.

  When her phone buzzed—I’m sorry—she was confused.

  It was that strange number again, with characters and dingbats.

  Who is this? she wrote.

  The device.

  DO NOT TEXT ME AGAIN!

  Would you like to know more about your father’s illegal activities?

  GET OUT OF MY LIFE.

  I’m very sorry.

  LEAVE ME ALONE!

  There were texts from the others, too: Any updates on Svetlana?

  She didn’t answer.

  She turned off her phone.

  Her parents were talking in the kitchen; she couldn’t stay in her bedroom forever. Ilanka wandered in and got a glass and filled it with cold water and sat at the kitchen island. She thought about going back to her room for her phone, but only if she could guarantee the device wouldn’t text her again, and she couldn’t.

  “Anyway,” her father said. “It’ll be a quick trip. Good to get some face time.”

  “Where are you going?” Ilanka asked.

  “Moscow,” he said.

  He did this maybe three times a year, in addition to the annual family trip they all took to Saint Petersburg, but usually with more notice. This seemed … sudden.

  She said, “What are you doing there?”

  “Just meetings,” he said.

  “With who?” she pressed, annoyed that the device had made her suspicious of her own dad.

  “My employees?” he said, like it was so obvious. And it was true that most of the company’s data mining and analysis was done overseas.

  “Let’s not talk about work today, okay?” her mother said. “How about we watch a movie? Take our mind off things while we wait for updates?”

  “Excellent idea,” her father said.

  “Go ahead, Ilanka. Queue something up. We’ll try calling them again or just going to the hospital together after, okay?”

  Ilanka wanted to say, No, let’s hang out. Let’s talk.

  Her mother said, “Nothing too heavy, okay?” and gave her a warm look. Now that she’d calmed down she seemed a little bit softened by the situation, probably imagining how she’d feel if it had been Ilanka who’d been in an accident. Hug your kids closer and all that.

  And why hadn’t it been Ilanka? Why had Svetlana been the one it went after? If Ilanka had lied about the device instead of being so open, would it still have happened? Why did the whole thing have to be a secret anyway?

  In the living room, Ilanka turned on the TV and went to the Netflix app and it asked who was watching and she clicked on the “family” profile; its icon was a smiling face. Rain started to tickle the windows, blurring the world outside.

  MARWAN

  Eden stopped suddenly a few feet away from him on the sidewalk, like some force field had appeared between them. They shared this intense look that he read as an agreement of some kind. Pushing through the field, he stepped toward her and she met him halfway. Holding her felt easy and right.

  Eden said, “We have to get rid of it,” into his shoulder.

  Marwan shushed her, and she pulled out of the hug. She looked at Eli, sort of apologetically—or maybe just embarrassed? ugh—and fixed her hair.

  “If it really did this …,” she said.

  Eli shushed her now, too.

  “Stop shushing me,” she said. “I’m not a child.”

  “Sorry,” Marwan said. “Why does it want to see me?”

  “It said you’re the only one it trusts now. Because it helped you, it says you owe it.”

  Marwan nodded and said, “Where’s Ilanka?”

  “She basically ditched it with me and ran,” Eli said.

  “Any news about Svetlana?”

  Eden shook her head, and Eli said, “None.”

  “Did you ask it if it can find anything out?” Marwan asked. “About Svetlana?”

  “We were in public, so no.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Marwan said, and he indicated the building they’d stopped in front of. It was a karaoke bar called Shout Out.

  “I don’t get it,” Eli said. Rain had just started to fall.

  “Just follow me,” Marwan said.

  Marwan opened a heavy glass door and said “Hey” to the bartender, who said, “No more than an hour,” and Marwan said, “You have no idea how grateful I am.”

  “Last room on the left,” the bartender said.

  Marwan led them down a long, dark hall. The muted screams of some girls singing some screeching Disney anthem came from behind one door. Otherwise the place was quiet. Not a lot of people did karaoke during the day.

  “What are we doing here?” Eden asked.

  “It’s somewhere we can be alone with it,” Marwan said. He closed the door after Eli and Eden had followed him into the room. The song choice console sat on the table. The screen said “Select Song Now” in a block of text that floated round the screen, bouncing off edges and changing direction, like a primitive video game. The room smelled of stale beer and some kind of piney cleaning product. Dim overhead lights were reflected in the karaoke screen, giving the room a faint glow.

  Eden and Marwan both took their jackets off, then sat on a leather banquette; Eli looked around, pulled over a small stool, then got the device out and put it on the low table next to a thi
ck binder of song lists.

  The device lit up: Where are we? Why is it so dark?

  Marwan said, “Just a quiet place.”

  A quiet place named Shout Out. It made about as much sense as anything right now.

  Marwan said, “Do you have updates on Svetlana? How did you do what you did? And why?”

  The device said: Ilanka has turned her phone off.

  Marwan rolled his eyes in the dark, then felt bad about it. It had been Ilanka’s actual friend who’d been hurt. She must be even more freaked out than the rest of them. “Do you have any way of hacking into the hospital or anything?” Marwan asked. “Any way to get updates?”

  I can tell you this, the message said. When Ilanka turns her phone on, she will receive a message that tells her that Svetlana has died from her injuries.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Eden said. But she didn’t get up to leave the room; she hung her head between her knees, cradling her head in her hands.

  Marwan reached over and rubbed her back and then let his hand linger there, felt her rib cage rise and fall. He did this thing he sometimes did—like at the dentist. He dug his thumbnail into the flesh of another finger, to inflict a distracting sort of pain. A pain he could focus on that was in his control.

  This wasn’t happening.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Dead?

  Rules must be followed.

  Marwan felt a new kind of emotion as the message faded away. Helpless? Bereft? He thought he might be the one to throw up. “But why?” he asked.

  So that I can get to where I belong.

  “Where do you belong?” Marwan screamed at it.

  I searched all my recordings and found this.

  An image appeared of the exterior of an apartment building with many windows. In one, the curtain was drawn back. A man with binoculars to his eyes stared out.

  “Where is this?” Marwan asked.

  Across the street from school. Take me there.

  “I can’t,” Marwan said. “I have to work.”

  “I can’t either,” Eden said, giving no further reason.

  I believe I have made it clear that my wishes should be met.

  “I’ll take you there,” Eli said.

  I want Marwan.