The room was suddenly filled with a piercing alarm, blaring every few seconds. The students all stood, hands over their ears, and began rushing toward the door.
“Single line!” said the teacher. He pushed to the front of the students. Farryn opened the door, and the kids filed into the hallway, which was rapidly filling with students from all the classrooms. The alarm continued to blare.
“Window,” said Farryn, pointing at the back windows that looked out over a concrete courtyard. “Quick, before the bot makes it through the crowd.”
CHAPTER 26
NICK AWOKE. HIS BODY WAS BRUISED ALL OVER, HE HAD A TERRIBLE headache, and he felt nauseous. He tried to sit up, but he was strapped down, and then as he woke more fully he saw the rows of empty benches and realized he was on the execution table. He thrashed against the restraints but couldn’t move.
A Lecturer leaned close over Nick’s face. “Student 3054, are you too intransigent to be educated?”
Nick stared at the bot’s dead eyes, just a foot from his own, and said nothing. He fought to control his breathing; he could feel himself panting. The Lecturer gazed down at Nick, then straightened up. “You are still considered a potentially viable Citizen,” it said. “You will be punished, but you will continue to be granted the privilege of our education. Remember today’s lesson. You will be executed if you fail to learn.”
They took him back to his cell and left him there. In the windowless room, he wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed without food or water, but the room lights cycled off for one long period, which meant sleeptime, so it must have been almost two days. He paced, stretched, and did a few pushups—all his battered body could manage—tried in vain to sleep; he sang every song he could think of; he tried to meditate; he even pounded on the door and screamed for the bots to come and let him out. The four walls of the small cell kept closing in on him. They weren’t leaving him to die, he told himself, over and over. The door would open.
He grew so thirsty that he drank from the toilet, cupping his hands into the bowl.
Finally they came for him, the door sliding open and waking him from where he had fallen into a fitful half-sleep on the floor. He struggled to his feet, weak and feverish, feeling relief at the sight of the open door and the Lecturer standing in the doorway, and disgust at his weakness.
The bot set a tray of food on the table. “Eat. Drink. Your education will resume shortly.”
The Lecturer returned ten minutes later and led Nick to the classroom, where one of the girls from his first lecture was already waiting quietly. The Lecturer left them alone for a few moments when it went back out into the hallway. She leaned toward him, and without looking at him, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Nick looked at her in surprise. She wouldn’t look at him; she kept her eyes facing the front. “For what?” he whispered back.
“For trying. At the execution. You tried. I just watched.”
The door slid open and the Lecturer returned, and that ended the conversation, but she had given Nick a jolt of hope, something to take back with him to his tiny cell, to keep him warm as he tried to fall asleep that night on the cold metal table.
CHAPTER 27
CASS, KEVIN, FARRYN, AND LEXI MADE IT OUT OF THE SCHOOL AND began hurrying down the street, leaving behind the earsplitting alarm and the large clump of students and teachers waiting, confused, in the street. They decided against hopping a trans; it seemed too easy for them to be trapped. Cass’s heart was still pounding hard, more from the stress than the actual running. What if Kevin hadn’t been right there when they needed to run, and Farryn hadn’t stuck with them and been able to trigger the fire alarms.... And Ms. Hawken … she had helped. Would they re-educate her, too, now?
After a few blocks they slowed down to a walk. Cass started to calm down, and then two men in red shirts came out of a doorway a block ahead and began walking toward them.
“Rust!” said Lexi. “What are they doing out in the middle of the day?”
The men, both tall, one with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, the other bald but with a goatee, were both on their comms as they walked. Cass hoped that they would just pass on by, but as they got closer the bald man noticed them and frowned and whispered something to the other man. They stopped and spread out, blocking the sidewalk, and the bald man held his hand up. “Kids, why aren’t you in school? Cutting class?”
“No,” said Lexi. “We got out early. Optional study hall for our last class today, so we decided to work on our group project together at home.”
The ponytailed man took a step forward and looked directly at Farryn. “Walter Mitchell’s son, right?”
Farryn nodded.
The man turned to Cass. “So what is this so-called group project?”
“Report on the administrative structure of the City,” said Cass, surprising herself with how calm her voice sounded. “Focusing on the partnership between robotic and biological intelligence, and how it’s evolved since the beginning of the Intervention.”
The man studied Cass, then shrugged. “Sounds plausible,” he said. He turned back to Farryn and smiled grimly. “But I still think you’re just a group of kids skipping school. Looks like we’ll need to check in with the school admins. What school do you go to?”
Farryn cleared his throat. “Two cases of homebrew,” he said quietly. “One for each of you.”
Nobody spoke. Cass shifted from foot to foot, ready to run.
Finally the bald man nodded. “Good luck with the report, kids.”
They headed for Farryn’s, on the off chance Lexi’s parents might stop home for lunch. The mess in his house hadn’t improved—clothes and dishes lay everywhere. Farryn tossed his coat on the couch and went to the garage to dig up the 3D screens he had promised Kevin.
Cass cleared a section of the couch, tossing a T-shirt and pair of pants onto the living room floor. First the bot in the school, then the red shirts on the street … She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. They couldn’t stay in the City much longer, she knew. They were already pushing their luck.
Lexi remained standing. “Well, I guess that pretty much ends your schooling,” she said.
“Breaks my heart,” said Kevin. “Although your parents won’t be happy about it, Lexi.”
Lexi shook her head. “They don’t need to know. My father would kick you out if he found out what happened today.”
“We shouldn’t stay at your place much longer, anyway,” said Cass. “It’s not safe.”
“You’ll stay as long as you need to,” said Lexi angrily. “We’ll find somewhere for you to go during school.”
Kevin pushed a dirty plate out of the way and rested his feet on the coffee table. “So what’s the deal with Farryn?” he said to Lexi, gesturing at the mess. “Doesn’t his father care?”
Lexi began to speak but stopped as Farryn walked into the room, holding two vid screens in one hand and a toolbox in the other. He cleared the rest of the clutter off the coffee table, set the screens and tools down, and then sat down next to Cass on the couch. Cass shifted a bit, to create more space between them. Farryn didn’t notice or at least pretended not to. He opened the toolbox and began taking out a few tools—a small soldering iron, screwdriver, circuit tracker—and without looking up from his tools, he said, “No, he doesn’t care. He hasn’t really cared about much of anything since my mother died.”
The room was silent, and then Cass said, quietly, “What happened?”
“Re-education, ten years ago,” he said, looking up and meeting Cass’s eyes. “We were good Citizens, doing nothing wrong, and then my father got in an argument with a true believer at his work, and a few days later the bots took us in.” Farryn hesitated, then continued, “The bots killed her in re-education. My father and I made it through. She didn’t.”
Cass wondered what Farryn remembered of re-education, but the look on his face kept her from asking. She had to look away from the anger and hurt in his e
yes. She felt a sudden rush of horrible fear for Nick and her parents. Killed in re-education. What were they going through? God, would the bots kill them, too?
“We’re just sitting here thinking we could go to school like normal kids and doing nothing to help,” Kevin said, pulling his feet off the table and standing up. “And Mom and Dad and Nick are probably dead already.”
“They’re not dead,” said Cass weakly. “They’re not dead!” she said again, loudly, standing up and punching Kevin on the shoulder.
“Ow!” said Kevin, falling back a step and rubbing his shoulder. “Okay, fine. You’re right, they’re not dead!”
“Come on now,” said Farryn, flashing a weak approximation of his usual cocky grin. “No fighting in the house. You might mess up the place.”
“Sorry,” said Cass.
“Here,” Farryn said to Kevin, holding up a vid screen. “I’ve got one screen where I’ve hacked in a heat sensor—the idea is so you can control the screen without actually touching it. Sensor’s not very good, though—you have to either run your hands under hot water or rub them together for a while, and that still only gives you about ten seconds of control.” He held the screen out toward Kevin. “Maybe you can come up with some ideas for boosting the sensitivity.”
Cass appreciated Farryn’s attempt to distract her brother, but it was hard to forget what had just happened. Farryn and Kevin poked halfheartedly at the circuitry of the vid screens, while Lexi focused on her comm and Cass closed her eyes and tried to take a quick nap. She couldn’t stop her brain from mulling over the horrible possibilities of what Nick and her parents might be facing.
“Wait a minute!” said Kevin, startling Cass, who sat up. “Repeat what you just said.”
“I was just saying,” said Farryn, raising his eyebrows in surprise, “that I crashed out the vid screens once when I tried to use a homemade boosted magnetic field to run my no-hands mod. So?”
Kevin didn’t answer, instead digging into the vid screen with a screwdriver. He popped out a thin disk, about the size of a quarter, and held it up. “Power supply and battery, right?” he said.
“Yeah, right—and again, so?” said Farryn.
“Encased in a conductive mag field to store power and juice the motherboard, right?”
“Yeah, that’s obvious …” said Farryn.
“And that’s why your boosted magnetic field crashed the screen—it fritzed out the power supply.”
“Yeah, of course,” said Farryn. “It was stupid for me to even try, but I thought the power supply would be shielded enough.... I still don’t see what you’re getting so excited about, though.”
“Scoot power supplies are the same idea, just scaled up,” said Kevin. “If we re-create your boosted mag field, adjust it, I bet we could fry out a scoot just like you did the vid screen.”
Farryn raised his hands in confusion. “Probably, yeah, I guess. But why would you want to fry a scoot?”
Kevin began pacing back and forth. “So a lot of the tech power supply around here uses shielded conductive mag fields …” He paused dramatically. “How about the bots themselves? They’re tech, they’ve got power supplies … and I bet they’re just souped-up versions of scoot engines.”
Farryn sat up straight, and his eyes opened wide. “You’re just guessing, though, and it’s not like we could just ask a bot to lend us its power supply so we could tweak our mag field properly …”
“Boys,” said Lexi. “Back it up. What are you talking about?”
“Killing a bot,” said Kevin. “Frying its power supply with a modified version of Farryn’s mag field mistake.” He looked at Cass. “We’re talking about fighting back.”
CHAPTER 28
THE LECTURER LED NICK PAST HIS USUAL CLASSROOM AND INTO AN elevator, and Nick thought with dread that perhaps he was heading for another execution. But when they eventually came to a stop in front of a doorway and the door slid open, Nick blinked hard and took a step back, shocked by the flood of natural sunlight that hit his eyes. He felt a tickle of cool air on his face and hands. He could see a patch of green bushes and a fenced-in courtyard. Outdoors.
“You are being granted a privilege today,” said the Lecturer. “Students are graduating to Citizenship, and you will be allowed to witness. Study well, learn, cooperate fully at all times, and you may join them eventually.” The bot entered the courtyard, and Nick followed. He shaded his eyes from the sunlight and took a deep lungful of air.
The courtyard was small, about twenty feet square, concrete, with a few scrawny bushes in the corner. A chain-link fence surrounded the perimeter, with a gate in the fence at the far end of the yard. Another Lecturer and sphere bot were beside the gate. The yard held three picnic tables, and two people sat at each table. Gapper was one of them, and instead of a jumpsuit he wore regular street clothes. The others were in jumpsuits like Nick’s. There were two kids, probably Cass’s age, who Nick didn’t recognize, and the other three were adults.
The Lecturer moved into the middle of the yard and began to speak. “Students, today three of you will graduate and join the City as productive Citizens. These three among you have studied hard and set aside your mistakes and failings—the mistakes and failings that all humanity face, and which necessitated the Great Intervention. Learn from these three. Be inspired to emulate them. One day, when all of humanity has joined them, the Great Intervention will be complete, and Peace and Prosperity will have been attained.” The Lecturer pointed at Gapper. “Student 3026, stand.” Gapper stood. “Congratulations. Be proud of your achievement. Today you will be rejoining society. The City is a stronger community with your inclusion. You will now be known as Citizen Michael Cooper. Come to the gate.” Gapper walked to the gate, moving gingerly, as if weak or afraid of doing something wrong. The jumpsuited prisoners at the picnic tables looked at him silently.
Nick watched Gapper with mixed emotions. He was happy that Gapper was getting out, that the bots wouldn’t be damaging him anymore, but still, it was too little, too late. The poor kid was basically gone. Whatever empty shell was making his way carefully to the gate, it wasn’t Gapper.
Gapper stopped at the gate. The sphere bot bobbed closer to Gapper, sent a quick beam of red light across his face, then floated back into its original position.
“And today we have two more graduates,” continued the Lecturer. It pointed back at the doorway. Students 3010 and 3011, come forward.”
Nick’s mother and father stepped into the courtyard.
Nick surged to his feet. He opened his mouth to yell, but no sound came out; it was as if his throat had frozen. His mom and dad looked weak and tired. His father wore denim pants and a white shirt, and it looked like he was swimming in his clothes. His mother wore a simple blue dress. His dad’s hair was buzzed almost to the scalp, and his mom’s hair had been cut to a shoulder-length jagged bob. They were both pale, with dark shadows under their eyes.
But they were alive. His parents were alive, they had survived re-education, and they were standing fifteen feet away from him. After all this time, he had finally found his parents. Nick put his hand down on the table for balance; he felt dizzy and flushed.
“Students 3010 and 3011, you entered our re-education center as radical agitators from Revolution 19. You leave as productive Citizens able to contribute to the grand City community. Be proud of your achievement.”
Nick took a step toward his parents, then stopped himself. Who knew what the bots would do if he ran up and hugged his parents, like he so desperately wanted to? He had almost got himself killed when he’d blindly rushed Tom’s execution table—and didn’t do any good anyway. He couldn’t do anything stupid again, now that his parents were just moments away from getting out.
Nick’s mother glanced in his direction, and Nick met her eyes and silently mouthed the word Mom. She looked past him like he wasn’t even there and turned back to the gate. His father turned his head briefly in Nick’s direction, and his eyes seemed to brush past Nic
k without lingering.
Nick felt numb. He couldn’t breathe. He stood stiffly, frozen like he had been injected by a bot. His parents hadn’t recognized him. They were gone, just like Gapper. He had lost them to re-education. He had lost them to the bots.
The gate opened outward, silent on its hinges. Nick’s mother and father, and Gapper, walked out of the re-education center courtyard without looking back.
“Come,” said the Lecturer to Nick. “We return now to our studies.”
The gate remained open, and part of Nick thought, Make a run for it, but instead he followed the bot in a daze. He knew he was just walking like a cow into a slaughterhouse, meekly heading back for more sleep deprivation, lectures, injections, electric shocks—but he needed time to think, to regroup. He didn’t know what else to do.
They reached the doorway, and the Lecturer paused and turned to face Nick. “Your parents resisted our education at first, as you resisted. Our hope is that you will continue along the proper path of behavior, and eventually gain your Citizenship as your parents have. And when your siblings are brought in for education, they will face the same challenge, and we hope they will succeed as well.”
They know about my brother and sister, he realized, stunned. His parents must have told the bots about them; they had been broken, and no doubt they spoke of their three children. The bots have just been toying with me all this time. As quickly as it had come, his shock gave way to a hot rage. They’re going after Cass and Kevin.
Nick screamed, “Damn you!” and slammed his fist into the Lecturer’s face. The bot’s skin was soft, but it had a hard surface underneath. The bot staggered back, and a small part of Nick’s brain calmly thought, I may have just broken my hand, but he didn’t feel any pain, didn’t even slow down for an instant as he lunged forward.
The bot raised its arm to shock Nick, but he ducked under the Lecturer’s hand and slammed into its chest, sending them both to the ground. They rolled to the edge of a table, and the bot somehow still didn’t manage to shock Nick. He ended up on top of the bot and planted his knees on its forearms, grabbed it around its slim neck, and began slamming its head against the concrete floor of the courtyard. “This will not be tolerated,” said the Lecturer, in its same dead calm voice. “You will be subdued and severely reprimanded.” It struggled to raise its arms, pinned at its sides by Nick’s knees. If one of those arms got loose and shocked him, he’d be done.
Revolution 19 Page 14
