Take Me with You

by Tara Altebrando

  Authorize_reboot

  ILANKA

  The coffee grinder hummed from the kitchen. Ilanka sat up, stretched, got up, and turned off her alarm, which would ring in a minute and was annoying. She went down the hall to use the bathroom, then into the kitchen for cereal. Her mother was there at her phone, which was plugged in. The plug reserved for her father’s phone was gone. She said, “Where’s Dad?”

  “His trip got moved up,” her mother said. “Some kind of emergency. He left at the crack of dawn.” She yawned and said, “I’m getting in the shower.”

  “What kind of emergency?” Ilanka asked.

  “Some kind of hack,” her mother called back. “Apparently it’s a big deal.”

  Ilanka stood at the window.

  Something felt wrong.

  Everything felt wrong.

  Your father is engaged in illegal activities.

  When she heard the water running in the shower, Ilanka went into her father’s home office. There was a pile of bills next to the space where his laptop would normally be. Con Ed. Sprint. Some junk mail from Delta. A copy of WIRED magazine with the headline “Less Artificial, More Intelligent.” A flyer from Queens Theatre advertising a show called “Doktor Kaboom’s Look Out! Science is Coming!”

  She opened the desk drawer.

  Some stamps. Unsharpened pencils. A stack of business cards and gift cards with Post-its stuck to them with dollar amounts written on them.

  Then a few of his own business cards.

  Data Analytics Enterprises.

  It was a nothing sort of name. Forgettable. Borderline meaningless.

  She got her phone out and searched for it and nothing looked right, so she searched again with the word “Queens” added and found an article dated yesterday: “Anonymous Tip Spurs Investigation of Several U.S. Data Brokers.”

  Her eyes couldn’t focus, couldn’t read patiently.

  A number of companies, including Data Analytics Enterprises in Queens, New York, have been implicated …

  … illegal sale of data they collected through personality quizzes on various social media platforms …

  … a highly unregulated field with little government oversight …

  … often fly under the radar and use international data farms.

  … tip purportedly came in the form of a text from an untraceable number but contained legitimate sources of information.

  The water in the bathroom turned off. Ilanka went into the hall. “Mom?” she called out.

  “Yeah?” from behind the bathroom door.

  “I don’t want to be late,” she said. “I’m going to take the bus with Svetlana.”

  “You sure?” Her mother appeared in the bathroom doorway in two towels—one around her body, the other swirled up around her hair. Steam whooshed like a startled ghost behind her.

  “I’m sure,” Ilanka said.

  She quickly got dressed, then grabbed her backpack and headed out.

  ELI

  Clancy’s looked more like a haunted house than a funeral home, but Eli didn’t mind. He liked the idea that his grandfather’s soul could linger here for a while if it wanted to—maybe woo-woo ethereally through empty viewing rooms and slam the occasional door.

  Eli had mostly sat quietly beside his mom during the meeting with the funeral director, piping up just to help with some small decisions, like what design they wanted on the little laminated prayer cards they’d give out with his grandfather’s photo on it. Later, Eli’s parents were going to the church to make funeral mass arrangements, but for that, Eli was off the hook. When school got out, he’d be in charge of watching his sister, who had gone without too much fuss that morning, maybe not really understanding what was even happening. Their parents had promised her doughnuts after school if she just went today; then there would be a few days she’d have to miss.

  Eli could not bring himself to go to school, so he went home after the funeral home meeting because he could, and he sat there alone.

  Just sat.

  He couldn’t think of the last time he’d sat in one place for so long, doing nothing but watching dust dance on the light coming through his blinds. No phone, no TV. So no Sims, no nothing.

  No Aizel.

  He started to feel like he might be losing his mind doing nothing except watching those particles—looking for patterns or signs.

  It was his fault she was gone, his fault the whole thing had gone off the rails.

  He’d asked Aizel too many questions or not enough. Or not the right ones?

  He’d been too trusting or not trusting enough.

  And then he’d done nothing to stop Marwan, in the end, from destroying the one good—no, interesting—thing that had happened to him in his life, basically.

  He was being melodramatic. But if there was a time in life to be that way it was probably the day after you’ve been chased down by a sinister drone device that you suspect had a hand in killing your grandfather.

  The doorbell rang, and he half hoped it was some kind of authority, coming for him and the others. Someone who would explain everything about Aizel and maybe even punish them for how they’d handled it—or someone who could arrest the people behind it all.

  Why hadn’t they just gone to the police—or even just the principal—when the whole thing started? Why had they let it go so far?

  He opened the door, fully expecting men in black or FBI agents in bulletproof vests with their weapons drawn. But it was just a delivery. An edible arrangement—a grotesque approximation of a bouquet fashioned out of chocolate-dipped strawberries and pineapple on sticks surrounded by the baby’s breath of fruit: skewered melon cubes.

  He set it on the kitchen table and peeled back some of the clear plastic wrapping and pulled out a strawberry stick. When was the last time he’d had a piece of fruit? God, it tasted good.

  He thought about texting the others, just a quick message to tell them that his grandfather had died. But they wouldn’t care; why would they? He didn’t even want them to; didn’t want them to know that maybe he—they?—could have prevented it.

  They’d done something wrong.

  They’d done everything wrong.

  He tossed his stick in the trash after finishing the strawberry and found the notebook he’d scribbled his notes about the device in. It wasn’t up-to-date at all, so he set about fixing that. First, he updated the rules, which didn’t take long. There hadn’t been that many of them—not new ones, anyway—toward the end.

  Then he got up and paced in circles, trying to shake off the feeling that it mattered that he do this. What was the point, really?

  He ate a piece of half-dipped pineapple, then sat back down and tried to remember every other thing Aizel had said and done, day by day.

  Why hadn’t he kept better track? What if he’d missed important clues about its origin?

  When he got down to taking notes on their final moments with Aizel, he flipped back a few pages and added “drone-like abilities” and “child’s voice” to the list of abilities. Then he jotted down Aizel’s last blurts—Here we go again and I know you are but what am I.

  He sat and stared at them.

  The kitchen sink dripped. A helicopter circled on the outskirts of audible.

  He underlined here we go again.

  So this had happened before.

  There had been other Aizels? Other, what would you even call them, teams of … hosts? Caretakers?

  If it had happened before, that meant it might happen again.

  It could already be starting over.

  But it wasn’t his problem; it would choose different people next time.

  Unless he maybe did something about it? Like volunteered?

  He’d be crazy to do that. Mad as a hatter. Certifiable.

  He strained to see if he could still hear the helicopter—maybe he’d imagined it?—and felt weighted in his chair, as if being pulled by an anchor to a shipwreck realization: they’d destroyed the device but not Aizel, the d
elivery system but not the program.

  He grabbed his phone and held it for a moment.

  They should lock him up and throw away the key.

  He opened up his text window with Aizel and saw a text from last night that he hadn’t seen. Had he missed an alert in the middle of all the chaos? The time stamp put it as coming through right around when Marwan had destroyed the device.

  It was marked as read even though Eli hadn’t read it. And it was sent only to him, not the others. Was it so that he would find it only later?

  Alone?

  It was an address.

  Quickly, before he changed his mind, he texted her—Are you out there? Are you at this address?—and waited.

  MARWAN

  He’d gone through the motions of getting ready and going to school, but when he got there—late by twenty minutes, which would have meant a trip to the main office—he couldn’t bring himself to go in. So he’d headed back to Thirty-Fourth Avenue, which had a bike lane, and he took that to the waterfront, where there were still more bike lanes and where he could ride for a good long while. But that hadn’t felt right either, so when he hit the Con Ed plant, he turned around and circled back to the auto body shop.

  This was all Christos’s fault, and the temptation to retaliate was back and had gotten stronger—like it had been training in hiding in a boxing gym somewhere this whole time and was now ready to get into the ring.

  It would be so easy to walk the whole lot and use the tip of his restaurant key to leave a nice deep groove on every single car there.

  Eden wouldn’t approve.

  Eli wouldn’t approve.

  It had been dumb to go there, so he’d resisted the urge and moved on.

  He knew his father had gone to the restaurant to empty the fridge of stuff that might spoil, so he went there thinking he’d explain: about how the device had been real, and had been showing a countdown—how it hadn’t been the craziest thing for that other kid to think it was a bomb. Maybe that would shift his father’s perspective back to a more default one—the sort of partially obstructed view that could see past Islamophobia in the day-to-day at least well enough to get on with the business of living here.

  His father probably wouldn’t believe him. It sounded far-fetched even to Marwan, who’d lived it, and now the device was gone and there was no way to prove it had ever existed. He had to try anyway.

  But his father had already emptied the fridge and left, so Marwan settled in at a table with his phone and started to look for a local glass repair shop. He found a tape measure in the toolbox in the office closet and measured the broken window. Then he called a place with a good Yelp rating and asked for an estimate. The guy said they could have someone there on Friday, so Marwan scheduled it just in case that was the best he’d be able to do.

  He went back into the office and opened the filing cabinet and found a copy of the insurance policy, and he found the company’s website and initiated a claim. When his father came to his senses, he’d be grateful Marwan had already done the legwork on this.

  He checked his phone.

  Scrolled through the news.

  A school shooting.

  Another cabinet member ousted.

  A massive data breach at a large hotel chain and one at a social media company, the last one possibly with Russian involvement.

  Which was farther away, Russia or Egypt?

  He opened a window to text Eden but didn’t know what to say, and if she was at school she wouldn’t be able to answer right away anyway.

  The restaurant landline rang, scaring the crap out of him. He thought probably he shouldn’t answer so he didn’t and it eventually stopped. But then it rang again, so he picked up, half expecting it to somehow be the device.

  It was a reporter, asking for a comment on the incident with the brick.

  Marwan didn’t think he had a comment so was about to say “no comment,” but before the words reached his lips, new words presented themselves. “I think it’s clear that we need round-the-clock surveillance from undercover police if we’re ever going to stop this. We’re under attack because of our religion and culture, and it’s unacceptable in this diverse community, and anywhere, of course.”

  The reporter thanked him and hung up, and Marwan put the phone down, his hand shaky. He probably shouldn’t have done that, but what was the other option? To just sit back and quietly let his life be destroyed?

  He checked his phone. Still nothing.

  He couldn’t just sit here all day. He couldn’t go home.

  He’d go to the library and use a computer there so he didn’t blow through all his data. He’d try to find some kind of proof that the device was a thing that was real. He had new information now. Drone-like abilities, for starters. He could do a more extensive search—maybe even post on some AI community boards if that was even a thing—and if he still came up empty, he could ask the others, or at least Eden, to back up his story.

  He’d text her later, but not yet.

  He’d tell her he was maybe leaving, and that now, for the first time ever, he very much wanted to stay.

  EDEN

  She hadn’t actually intended to stay home, but when her mother woke her up and asked her if she was feeling up to going to school, Eden had taken the out. “I think I just need … a day.”

  Mom had stroked Eden’s hair once—“I’m sure it was all really scary”—and Eden had to remind herself her mom was thinking of the bomb, not the device.

  “It was,” Eden said.

  “I’ll check on you later. And just don’t go anywhere. Okay?”

  “Where would I go?” Eden asked.

  “You know exactly where you’d go, or rather with whom?” She sighed an apology almost immediately after her own snark. “I mean just please really use the day to rest, okay?”

  Eden nodded. “Okay.”

  Now she was in front of the TV with the Roku remote in her hand. She didn’t feel like watching a movie, though. She didn’t feel like doing anything.

  Anjali texted: Worried about you.

  Eden wrote back: All good. It’s over. Just taking the day off. Can tell you everything next time I c u.

  Anjali sent a GIF of Kermit the Frog waving his frog hands wildly: Yaaaaaaaaaaay.

  Eden hearted it, then went and got her laptop. The Spotify customer service page asked, “How can we help you?” in large letters.

  She typed “Lost playlists” into the search field.

  Spotify automatically backs up your deleted playlists, read the first line of the response that popped up.

  She exhaled. There was hope. She just had to log in. Except she couldn’t. So she clicked on “difficulty logging in” and then on “trouble finding accounts,” and none of the tips there helped. It said that her father’s email address was not a valid address.

  She tried to send her father an email, and it bounced.

  Had her mother … deleted him?

  She texted her mother: Did you get rid of Dad’s email account?

  While she waited for a response, she realized she was starving, and a quick tour of the kitchen revealed there was nothing worth eating in the house. She said, “Alexa, add food to the shopping list.”

  Alexa didn’t respond because she was still unplugged.

  Eden opened her text window with Marwan, then closed it—not sure what she’d even say. The day felt like a strange void without school—or maybe just without the device.

  A Citizen alert popped up: A pedestrian had been hit by a vehicle, right around the corner. Emergency services were en route.

  Eden couldn’t be sure how long it had been since her mother left, and she could have bumped into a neighbor or run to Walgreens and been delayed. What if it was her?

  Eden put on shoes and grabbed five dollars from the kitchen cabinet—she might as well get a bagel if she was out—but didn’t bother with a jacket. She ran to the corner, calves tightening in protest. At the sight of uniformed cops and a patrol car when
she rounded the corner, she slowed down—not wanting to look suspicious—then saw a body on the pavement, a man. He was missing a shoe, but he was talking to a paramedic so he wasn’t dead. A construction van sat in the intersection at a funny angle, its driver’s side door swung open.

  She walked past the scene toward the corner and crossed under the train to where the bagel shop was. She went in and picked up a prewrapped bagel with cream cheese, just to avoid having to order and wait. She paid and left.

  Someone called her name and she turned.

  He was the absolute last person she wanted to bump into—yes, even last after Julian. But he was crossing the street to her.

  “Long time no see,” Dan said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  Yes, she’d known him since she was maybe four, and, yes, he’d known her parents forever before that—god, since they were all Eden’s age now—but how she’d been was none of his business. Unless he wanted the truth.

  “Not good,” she said, like a dare.

  “Okay.” He nodded once. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “You talking to your mom about stuff, at least?”

  She tilted her head. She’d never really thought about whether he was attractive or not because … gross. She noticed now there was something disarming in his eyes, like he cared too much. More than was appropriate. But she was probably projecting that. Or maybe that was his trick? The one he’d used to get into this mess with her mother? How many other women out there was he like that with? Or was it just her mom? How was she ever reliably going to be able to tell the difference between the Julians and Marwans of the world if her mother couldn’t?

  “My mother,” Eden said slowly, “has her own garbage to deal with.”

  He tried to read her more closely now, focused his eyes differently, then he said, “She’d want to know what you’re going through.”

  “Yeah? You think?”

  “Of course,” he said. “And, I mean, if it’s stuff you want to talk about with, like, well—not me and not your mom—reach out to someone, okay?”