As a minor, my punishment should have been an in-house matter.
Maybe this was a criminal trial.
“Let’s make a bet, Amichai,” said Gumdrool in his best let’s-be-reasonable tone. “If your parents show up, I’ll give you a fine reference to the LifeGuard. Assuming you’re still employable when this is over.”
He looked grim. Even I had to admit that if there was one thing Gumdrool hated, it was seeing a citizen void themselves.
“And if they don’t show up?” I asked.
“You must finally admit your parents don’t love you. They love the Upterlife.”
I wanted to punch that sympathetic smile… But Gumdrool’s arms were like banded cables. I’d watched him twist kids into pretzels.
I glared at the monitors as though I could will my parents into attending.
“They’ll be here, Gumdrool.”
“That’s Drumgoole.” He elbowed me in the back of the head, a Gumdrool special; quick enough to be overlooked by the camera, on the scalp where it hurt the most, under the hair where the bruise wouldn’t show. “Ian Montgomery Drumgoole. Show some respect, Amichai. I’m trying to be your friend.”
“Real friends don’t hurt you.”
“Real friends question you,” he whispered. “Why is it you only seek out people who’ll encourage your self-destruction?”
He straightened. “I mark the time as 3:00. This means Amichai’s parents have waived their right to appear, has it not?”
“It does,” Dr Greywoode agreed from her videoscreen, clucking her tongue. “A shame. When a boy’s Upterlife is at stake, you’d think his parents would at least send an email.”
“Correction, Doctor,” Beldon said, cheerfully. “His Upterlife is not at stake.”
“It is if I can help it. That’s why I called a full hearing. I want him blacklisted from Career Day.”
I broke out in a cold sweat. How could I help Izzy without a job?
“A case could be made to expel him,” Beldon agreed, polishing his virtual pince-nez glasses. “But the truth is, society is better served by healing this poor boy’s ills. Amichai is a textbook case of incoherent rebellion, one we see all too often – in the absence of a firm parental hand, he seeks attention through increasingly outrageous antics. It’s merely a stage of growth. Note how all his friends are online – scattered dysfunctionals like himself. Once he’s been convinced of the uselessness of his rebellious shenanigans, he’ll mature into a productive citizen.”
Fun fact: when you’re in trouble, everyone has a pet theory as to why you’re such a screw-up. They trade theories like baseball cards.
“I’m not going through a stage,” I protested. “I just don’t like what you’re offering.”
“Amichai, Amichai.” Beldon’s chuckle was like a newspaper whapped lovingly upon a puppy’s nose. “You think you’re so unique. Have you ever wondered why I haven’t expelled you? Despite the pigs set loose in the school, the endless flashmobs, the paintbombs in the sprinklers…”
“You never proved that was me.”
“Point is, Amichai, I used to hate the dead, before I transitioned. I remember the things I did to my poor orphanage…”
“You never had a rebellious thought in your life, Frankie.”
“My supervisors could tell you the legend of Fraggin’ Frank Beldon.” He smoothed back his combover. “The point is, Amichai, no matter how we rage, eventually we must earn our living. So we settle down.”
“I won’t.”
“Then we take everything away. Until you learn that rebelling against society means you die a meat-death.”
He flashed a photograph of mangled bodies from a Criminal enclave. I broke into a panicked sweat.
“That’s not fair!”
“It’s more than fair, Amichai,” he replied. “If you keep headed down this path, you’ll never reach the Upterlife. You don’t want to leave your sister alone the way your parents did, do you?”
It was a cheap shot. But could I leave Izzy behind with no one to help her? Leaving her feeling that she was just some handicapped waste of flesh?
“See?” Beldon exchanged a knowing glance with Dr Greywoode. “He’ll cave. They all do.”
“Excellent work, Doctor Beldon,” said Greywoode. “Before we deal with the errant equine, let us first attend to the matter of this unauthorized video jamming device – which, as far as our analysis of the remains can discern, had no traces of newly written code, making it technically legal. I believe you implied Mr Damrosch’s technical skills might be rewarded, Dr Beldon?”
“If he’d cooperated,” Beldon replied.
“A shame.”
“A shame. Now let’s dispense the punishment.”
7: UNDER THE HOOD OF A SHRIVE MACHINE
* * *
Beldon told me that my first Shrive after the hearing would determine my punishment – and I didn’t want to Shrive alone. So I slouched down the paint-spattered hallways to Dare’s room.
President Wickliffe was an orphan himself, so the state orphanages were always well-funded. The 82nd Street Orphanage had rows of featureless gray doors leading to identical gray rooms, where each ward of the state was given a government-supplied bed surrounded by government-supplied eye-cameras, a government-supplied Shrive Point, and a government-supplied earputer loaded with spyware. (I’d jailbroken it as soon as possible – which wasn’t illegal, just tricky.)
The orphanage was still recovering from the Bubbler. The influx of kids six years back meant they’d had to split normal rooms into twos and threes, sometimes replacing beds with sleeping bags and stuffing kids into supply closets. We made do.
The one human touch – my touch, I thought proudly – was that all those once-gray walls were now splattered with watery dayglo paint. But nobody had done anything to add to my art.
My earputer sent out social broadcasts mentioning I was in the area, in case anyone wanted to come out and say hello. The doors stayed shut. The social maps showed me people clustered in their rooms, playing videogames together, ignoring me.
I had fans. But as Beldon had said, my friends were online, scattered across the city. I only got to be a real-life star when I showed up at the Blackout Parties. Here in the orphanage, I was an outcast.
An outcast who hadn’t Shrived in two days. Nobody went that long without making a backup copy of their brain. And if this Shrive went Criminal, well, I might never Shrive again.
I needed to be with a friend when I got the news.
Dare’s room had a heavy-duty computerized lock on the door. Dare had been heartbroken when Gumdrool’s thugs kept breaking in to “confiscate” his stuff. They said his luxuries created a distraction from the Upterlife’s goals.
So he’d bought the lock. I’d installed it. Ever since then, Dare’s room had been our safe haven. It raised some eyebrows, since we spent hours together alone – but let ’em talk.
Dare was checked in as “alone and available.”
Yet I heard him having an argument with someone.
Confused, I leaned in to speak a passphrase into the lock’s microphone: “The burly broccoli strides across the blasted heath,” I replied. A brief buzz of complaint: Incorrect.
“Someone’s said that?” I muttered in disbelief.
“Look, I have to answer this!” Dare yelled, then: “Sorry, Chai, the readout says three people have used that phrase. But I can’t–”
I drew a deep breath, determined to make this impressive. “How about… My coral skyscraper flies on wings of soystrami?”
A chime rang, and a tired Dare let me in.
“Ooo, good one.” His exhausted grin sagged at the edges. “‘Wings of soystrami.’ It rolls off the tongue.”
“Thank you. But it’s getting harder, man.” The passphrase wasn’t really a phrase, of course; I’d rigged the lock so it was connected to a public search of every written word over the past three centuries. It only opened if you spoke an eight-word sentence that had never before
been expressed by a human being. Gumdrool’s thuglets weren’t that creative.
“But you shouldn’t be here,” Dare said. “My relatives, they’re–”
“You’re still talking to that deadbeat?” a grandmotherly voice shrieked.
“That’s the Amichai scum you betrayed us for?” an outraged old man shouted loud enough that I had to clap my hands over my ears.
Great. I’d been hoping maybe Dare could get me a job if my Shrive failed, but that idea just flew out the window.
“He’s bad publicity!” yelled a gruff woman. “A criminal and a malingerer! And you aided him!”
“Dr Greywoode’s a client of ours! Did your addled brain forget that, Dare? Do you know what she’d do if she discovered you bought that pony for this hooligan?”
“She’d–” Dare said.
“She’d tell our customers our physical employees had become unreliable! And that would be the end of us all!” a fifth voice barked, followed by a hue and cry of agreement from generations of Khan-Tiens.
“It wouldn’t be the end,” Dare protested weakly. “It’d hurt the business a little…”
“Our business is our existence, you stupid boy!” a cacophony of voices shouted through the speakers, so many they struggled to be heard. “We’ve had no new customers for centuries! The Khan-Tien Mortuaries cannot afford to lose a single client! How selfish you are, risking our business for a boy who’s not even family! Why can’t you be like your sister Peaches?”
Dare had stuffed a pillow over the wall-monitor in a vain attempt to muffle his relatives. I tapped a few commands into the control panel on the walls, activating the temporary mute; you couldn’t shut the dead out forever, but you could get a two-hour privacy respite. Dare’s great-great-great-great-great-grandparents protested as the speakers hissed into silence.
“Thanks, man,” Dare said. His hands trembled. He shivered for hours after a visit from his greats; they knew all his vulnerabilities, and always went for the sucker punch.
“I could teach you. It’s not programming. It’s just reading manuals.”
“Too close for my comfort.”
I squeezed myself into a corner. Dare’s place was cramped with stuff. As a ward of the state, I arrived with next to nothing, all my possessions reclaimed. But Dare had disowned his family voluntarily, paying rent to live here, and so had brought unthinkable luxuries with him – down quilts, nylon jackets, a refrigerator. Even the orphanage’s kitchen didn’t have a fridge – the “Live Local, Die Global” taxes had made them ridiculously expensive.
“I guess the friggin’ ghosts are getting everyone down today…”
“I told you, Amichai, don’t call them ‘ghosts’. It’s a slur, and…” Then he noticed the look on my face. “Oh, crap – your hearing! How’d it go?”
“I won’t know until I Shrive.” I glanced at his Shrive Point’s scarred alloy hood. “If I Shrive Mortal, Dr Greywoode will throw me in jail. And then what the void happens to Izzy?”
I sniffled, trying not to cry. Dare, bless his soul, gave me a thumpy man-hug. “My Shrive Point’s your Shrive Point, man.”
I blushed. “So if you see tears, you’ll realize it’s not terror, but rather that I’m so full of testosterone it leaks from my eyes?”
“Stop it.” He waved me off. “I grew up with fourteen generations of Khan-Tiens watching whenever I took a dump… And then they’d yell at me for not wiping properly. Trust me, there is no way to embarrass me.”
“Did they really yell at you for…?”
“Toilet training is a group event in the Khan-Tien family,” he said, stonefaced. “Point is, if you need to Shrive out, Shrive out. And if you need to cry, you go right the void ahead.”
I felt a deep gratitude. “Thanks, man.”
He gestured; his earputer projected a beautiful spiral staircase of golden wires onto the wall. “I’ll just work on The Recursive Staircase while you Shrive…”
Dare was working in Earth environments now – since the Upterlife was computer-generated, the laws of physics could be changed at will. Many of the dead resided in low-gravity environments or places with even odder rules. After an experimental period of alternate-physics mansions, Dare’d begun working in the Earth zones again.
I should have Shrived, but I loved watching him create.
Dare frowned and shifted some cables in that effortless way he always did. He always added things in real time; if he’d misjudged the physics, the entire thing would have collapsed in a tangled heap. But no. The structure swayed precariously for a minute – and then reshaped itself into a spiraling funnel that somehow looped in on itself like a mobius strip. A beautiful, shell-like stairway.
Dare had a unique vision: he saw not just what was there, but what could be. Dare was always quietly pondering ways to improve things – a talent most of the living had forgotten.
“Is that your Career Day application?” I admired the way light glittered off the cables.
“This or the oakwood mansion.” He shifted the light to sunset, and the whole thing glimmered like a fiery spiderweb. “This one’s more technical, but it’s… you know… unusual.”
“Pretty as void, though.”
He sighed and closed the project window. “I gotta go with what people want.”
And by “people,” he meant “dead people.” The dead had their own ideas about virtual architecture – finicky rules about what constituted grace and a pleasing form. A good home consisted of a subtle mutation of something they’d seen a thousand times before.
“What if you could make them appreciate the unusual, though?” I leaned over to pull the project back onscreen. “You could make something so unique, even those gummed-up stiffminds have to acknowledge how great it is.”
“I’m not that good.” His shy grin told me he thought he might be.
“You do great work. You ever notice how Gumdrool never docks your Upterlife time?”
“…really?”
“Even he doesn’t wanna mess with your talent.”
“Oh.” Dare considered this. “That’s nice of him, I guess. He’s… got issues, but he’s trying to get us to the right place.”
I frowned. I hadn’t wanted to make Gumdrool out to be a good guy.
“I dunno, man,” I said. “It’s like Gumdrools thinks it’s a privilege to work. If he got a job breaking rocks in a mine, Gumdrool would spend his free time thinking up more efficient sledgehammers.”
“It’s not the worst way of looking at things, Amichai. Put in the effort, you’ll get rewarded. That’s the way things work.”
Easy for you to say, I thought bitterly. Dare’d been gifted with a natural talent for architecture. And even if Dare didn’t get an architecture career slot, his family would still hand him a job at the Khan-Tien Mortuaries. Not one, but two lucrative careers – an easy life for Dare.
Whereas my whole life rested on this next Shrive.
I lay down on his bed and picked up his Shrive Point.
He crossed his fingers. “I’ll bet you’re still Venal.”
I looked at the five glowing icons that ringed the Shrive Point in a halo – the five rankings the dead’s collective unconscious could give you. Then I pulled the Shrive Point’s battered hood over my head.
Shriving served two purposes: first, it took a full scan reading of your brain to save a copy of your consciousness into storage. When your meat-body died, your last brain-snapshot would be uploaded into the Upterlife, where you could run and frolic with all the other deadbeat parents.
The second purpose of Shriving was to determine if you were worthy of the Upterlife.
The Shrive Point hummed as a gentle female voice started asking questions, each designed to highlight a new section of your brain to be scanned:
“What is your favorite pavement?” it asked. “When were you burned? What is colorful clothing?”
Ultrasound beams poked through my brain to prod the answers into full-blown memories. In real life, I was twit
ching on the bed – but in my mind I was touching Broadway’s cracked pavement, I was yanking my hand off a gas burner as blisters puffed up on my finger, I was wrapped in Mom’s woolen dresses as she hugged me. All those feelings were sucked up and catalogued, along with a thousand related memories.
Fifteen minutes later, it was time for the dead to vote. I stared at the five icons. Dare sat behind me, squeezing my shoulder reassuringly.
See, once you’ve stored your memories, every Upterlife inhabitant gets a subconscious vote as to whether your memories say you’re the sort of person who deserves entrance to the Upterlife. They don’t know they’re doing it, but I’m told a happy side-effect is that everyone in the Upterlife feels like they know the new arrivals already. No wonder they’re all so chummy.
If the vote fails, you die forever.
Fortunately, the dead’s standards were pretty loose. As President Wickliffe hammered home during every election campaign: “Black or white, rich or poor, zealot or atheist; all should pass through, but for the lowliest of criminals.”
But those lowliest criminals got filtered out. When folks judge you based on what you know you’ve done, there’s no escaping your punishment.
Technically speaking, the dead’s vote only mattered when you died. But with each backup copy you made of your consciousness, they sifted through your memories to tell you how likely you were to make it into the Upterlife if you died that day. That was your Shrive ranking.
Dare encouragingly placed his finger on the darkened Venal icon, second over from the right. Venal was represented by a cartoon icon of an angel with clipped wings. Venal meant you had done a few things the dead didn’t care for, but who’s perfect?
Next to it, on the far right, indicating the best possible reading, was a stick-figure angel, complete with halo. That icon represented Liminal: the perfect state between living and dead, a guaranteed Upterlife admittance.
…I hadn’t Shrived Liminal since my parents died.
Resting in the center of the five icons, deceptively average-looking, was a stick figure of a man. That was Mortal. By the time you got to Mortal, the dead were split 50/50 on your entrance.
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