Beneath the Shine

by Sarah Fine

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477823279

  ISBN-10: 1477823271

  Cover design by M. S. Corley

  To my mother, Julie, and my sisters, Cathryn and Robin, the ones who understand my love for Percy best, I simply must say: I had a devil of a time finding a suitable basket.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  Marguerite

  Have you stopped to consider what you’ve become? You might have started with good intentions and some actual ideals, but now? You’re just a pretty mouthpiece.

  The moment the words appear on the screen of my comband, heat blooms across my chest and I feel my pulse rising. I raise my head and stare out the windshield, swallowing the urge to fire back immediately. This troll is trying to bait me. Nothing would make him happier than a public tantrum.

  “Marguerite, your biostats have exceeded certain parameters. Are you in distress?” asks the car, Jenny. Back in Houston they didn’t have names—or talk. “Shall I lower the environmental temperature to increase your comfort?”

  “No, I’m fine.” The internal rotors whir as we rise into the sky. I yawn, and my ears pop. “Just . . . tired from everything yesterday,” I add, talking more to myself than to Jenny. And it’s true. Not only did I speak at the president’s inauguration—I got to go to the ball. That’s where I made the vid that’s now being trolled, while I was still wearing a designer dress downloaded directly from Hyra Urgon’s winter 2069 collection.

  The troll—Fragflwr is the loser’s handle—is right about one thing. I looked good.

  I glance out the rear window and see three black Secret Service cars glide into formation behind us. Apparently we’ve been assigned a special altitude that’s reserved for the presidential fleet. A smile finds its way onto my face. Pretty or not, I’m a lot more than a mouthpiece, and I shouldn’t let that idiot’s comment get to me.

  “There are beverages and light snacks in the cooling reservoir between my rear seats,” the car informs me. “Renata analyzed your consumption and has stocked me according to your preferences.”

  “That was . . . nice of her.” It, really. Not her, but that’s a battle not worth fighting today, especially not with another it who also thinks it’s a her. I didn’t want a canny in the house, but Mom said it would be nice to have the help, what with all her new responsibilities, and besides, Renata came along with the apartment and was linked to its central system. When I took in the circles under Mom’s eyes and the slump of her shoulders, no way was I going to complain.

  Besides, Renata brought me coffee and a croissant this morning as soon as the actigraph in my comband signaled to the house system that I was awake. That part wasn’t so bad. But then she asked me if I was nervous about my first day of school, as if she were my mom or a friend or an actual person or something. All I gave her was a quick shake of my head, using a mouth full of croissant as an excuse not to talk. I don’t share my feelings with robots or other types of AI. I get that cannies are useful, but they’re not people, no matter what AI rights organizations say. They’re not our families. They’re not our friends. And they shouldn’t take jobs from actual human beings.

  I’ve seen what happens to the humans in that scenario.

  “Incoming communication,” Jenny announces. “Elwood Seidel, chief of staff to the president of the United States.”

  “You don’t have to read off his full title—” I begin, but then a three-dimensional projection of El’s face fills the space above Jenny’s control panel, as if he’d risen up out of her wiring. “Oh. Hey.”

  “So, don’t be angry, but I tapped into Jenny’s biostat monitors, and, well, you seem stressed.”

  “Yow. That’s not intrusive at all.”

  He rewards my sarcasm with a wry grin that dimples the cheeks of his narrow, pale face. It makes him seem younger than his gray-streaked hair suggests. “I guess I felt guilty for stealing your mom from you on your first day of school.”

  “She’s your primary aide, El. It’s an awesome job, and we’re both grateful you gave it to her. She needs—”

  El clears his throat loudly, and his eyes flicker with anxiety. “Um, yes—so, we thought we’d surprise you.”

  He shifts to the side, and I realize Mom is right there with him. Her thick, curly black hair is pulled back, and she’s wearing some makeup to cover the ever-present dark circles and to even out her skin. “Hi, babe,” she says. She sounds slightly more upbeat than she usually does, but there’s no smile. There’s never a smile. I’ve been waiting a year to see if it would come back. “You got off on time?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re feeling okay about school?”

  “More like grimly resigned.”

  El chuckles. He inclines his head so his cheek is just a little closer to Mom’s. Like they’re a couple or something. I don’t know if she realizes how he looks at her, and I don’t think he realizes I’ve noticed. “Can’t blame you,” he says. “But I know you understand how important the optics are here. You’re the voice of our youth, Marguerite! We can’t have you hiding away at home with a private tutor, not after we pushed so hard on the education plank. You have to be seen in a classroom. That’s how we spur enthusiasm for the changes we’re going to bring to the system.”

  “You can spare me the lecture, El. Going to school was my idea, remember?” I’d actually told him I wanted to go to public school, but then I found out that the entire educational system in the District is private. Figures. “So you think about the optics. I’m going to focus on learning—and speaking out when it’s called for.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” he says solemnly. “And you’ve got security there just in case things get rough.”

  “Can I . . . not? If you’re so concerned with optics, how’s it going to look if I walk into my new school with armed canny bodyguards? You know the technocrats are looking for a way to paint us as hypocrites.”

  El holds up his hands. “Just wanted you to feel safe as you walk into the lion’s den, but if you’re sure you can handle it—”

  “El, I spoke to half a million people yesterday from the steps of the Capitol. I think I can hold my own with a few snooty technocrat rich kids.”

  El murmurs something soft and reassuring into my mother’s ear. Her brow furrows but she nods. He smiles at her fondly. “I’ll change their orders, then,” he tells me. “They’ll stay outside, and the school’s cannies will look out for you. We had the school’s bots scanned for malware over the weekend, so we know they’re clean.”

  “Yay,” I say faintly. “Go help Uncle Wynn make life better for the American people, guys. I’m sure I can manage a few hours of high school on my own.”

  “You can manage anything, Mar,” El says. “Without you, we might not have won the election. We might not even be here.”

  “That’s crazy, and you know it.” But I’m smiling now, in spite of myself.


  “It’s true, and you know it. So, have a good day—can’t wait to hear how it goes,” El says cheerfully. The screen goes black before Mom can even say good-bye.

  I sit back and sigh. I know I can handle this. It might be like walking into a buzz saw, but I know what I stand for. I’ll always have that.

  I glance down at the comband wrapped over the sleeve of my tunic, which was downloaded and genned just this morning. You’re just a pretty mouthpiece.

  I scoff and lean over so the screen registers my retinas. “And I’m guessing you’re just an unfulfilled, privileged technocrat with way too much time on your hands and no concern for the 99 percent.”

  The words appear on the screen. “Send,” I mutter. I really shouldn’t indulge this troll. At this point, each new vid I post gets over a million views a day along with thousands of comments, and not all of them are friendly. I’ve become a pro at letting them slide off me. But Fragflwr has gotten under my skin, and not for the first time. I wish I knew why so I could start to ignore him—her?—like I do all the others.

  The reply comes only a second later.

  Well, you’re right about one of those things. Maybe two. Okay, three! Brava. Sadly, it doesn’t change my opinion of you. Was that your goal?

  I read the comment twice and roll my eyes. I freaking hate technocrats. “That’s the same smug, condescending crap that made the election such a landslide. You can’t even pretend you care about normal people or even have normal feelings.”

  Thanks to your self-righteous babble, I’m laughing right now. Is that normal?

  “Oh my god, you are so annoying and stupid. No, don’t send! Log out.” Ugh. I turn to look out the window. I hate giving a troll the last word, but I can’t afford to lose it on my channel. Even if I have no official position in the administration, my words still reflect on Uncle Wynn—I mean, President Sallese. Optics, right? “How much longer?”

  “Are you speaking to me, Marguerite?”

  “Um, yeah? Who else would I be speaking to?”

  “If you use my name at the end of any question, I will be able to respond to your requests without verifying.”

  “How much longer, Jenny?”

  “We will arrive at Clinton Comprehensive Education Academy at 8:03 a.m.”

  “Class doesn’t start until half past!”

  “If you prefer, you may sit inside me until you feel comfortable disembarking. I can inform your security detail.”

  “No, that’s all right. Jenny.” I press my knees together and draw my arms around my middle, trying to be as small as possible. It’s weird when cars talk about themselves like that. Sit inside me. Like I’m in their guts, like they’ve swallowed me whole. Where I come from, back in Houston, cars just go where you tell them without trying to make conversation, and they roll down the streets instead of soaring hundreds of feet above them. Of course, they also crash all the time because of operating systems and infrastructure that haven’t been updated in two decades, and they’re regular targets for armed gangs and hackers.

  It’s going to take some time to get used to this new environment. DC is a world apart from the rest of the country, save for a few other technocrat enclaves. This place is all shine, all sparkle, floating on a constructed cloud of seamless technology and unimaginable wealth. But if I have anything to do with it, someday soon that kind of prosperity is going to be within reach for the ones who live beneath the shine, the ones who have been held down by a greedy, corrupt system for way too long. It’s why we came to Washington. It’s why I fought so hard to help get Uncle Wynn elected. I chuckle to myself—we’re not actually related, but it’s pretty cool that the new president of the United States asked me to call him that.

  I keep that in mind as Jenny drops smoothly from the sky and lands with a soft thump in front of my new school. I peer at its smooth, curved facade—it looks like an ocean wave viewed from above—the glass reflecting the weak January sunlight. Students are rolling in on wheelboards, and a few are landing in the queue behind the Secret Service vehicles that now offer us cover on three sides.

  The stares have started. No one can see me yet—the windows are tinted—but I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew it was me. Uncle Wynn doesn’t have any kids, so who else would show up at high school with a Secret Service detail?

  The girl who helped convince the American people that it was time to knock these kids’ technocrat parents out of power, and for some of them, out of a job.

  “Please tell me when you are ready to disembark, Marguerite,” says Jenny. “Your security team is assembling.”

  Sure enough, four cannies have gotten out of the Secret Service vehicles. They wear suits complete with black collar bands, all formal, but I would never mistake them for human. Their movements are too clean and purposeful, no fidgeting, no faltering, no plucking at their clothes or scratching a random itch. And their eyes scan the horizon smoothly instead of skimming the surroundings in short, nimble bursts like humans’ do.

  Brian Zao, our failed president of the last eight years, whittled the number of government employees down by 70 percent, replacing people with these walking, talking, thinking automatons. The way I heard it, it was about reducing government debt and waste, something my parents’ generation cared a lot about. The savings were supposed to go to people like my friend Orianna’s parents, a nurse and a lab technician whose jobs had been replaced by machines. Orianna’s family is still waiting, along with millions of other unemployed Americans, to see increases to the meager subsidies the government pays to people like them. But Zao’s plan didn’t work, because it was never about them in the first place—it was about his friends the tech moguls. He did a hard push to strip regulations that controlled and limited the use of cannies and other AI and then gave sweet deals to the tech companies that create them, so the number of people knocked out of jobs increased faster than the budget to retrain them or even keep them from starving.

  I would think there would be families like that in DC, since Zao gutted the federal employee ranks, but I haven’t seen poverty like we had back home since I left the campaign trail. Maybe those folks were forced to move somewhere cheaper than this luxurious technocrat enclave. But the Secret Service in particular is chock full of cannies, as I’ve come to realize in the last few months. They’re perfect for bodyguard work. They’re bulletproof. They don’t sleep. They operate to perfection according to their protocols. Emotion never clouds their judgment.

  And now they’ve arrayed themselves on either side of Jenny’s door, which slides up and reveals me like a yolk in an egg. I’m sure my new pals here at the Clinton Academy would love to stab me and see if I burst. With that happy thought in mind, I plaster on the smile that has carried me through at least a hundred rallies, a thousand speeches, and a historic election night. In the last year, I’ve learned to smile while lights are glaring and people are screaming. I can even smile when they’re throwing things, if I have to. My smile breaks only when I think it will help me get my message across, when minds can be changed.

  These people don’t get to see me break. I climb out of the car and smooth my hands over my new clothes. As my body heat rises, they give off the floral odor infused into the genned fabric. It’s nice, but it’s not really me. I hold my head high as I nod politely at the Secret Service machinemen. “Thank you. I’ll be fine from here.”

  One of them, with a blond scrub of hair and blue eyes, steps forward. “We received the updated protocols from the chief of staff. We will remain outside the building, but we will be monitoring via the academy’s central surveillance system.”

  I glance up at him. He’ll see it all in his head, like cannies do, silent and still until it’s time to move. “Okay. I’ll see you guys this afternoon.”

  I take a calming breath. I miss my dad, who always used to walk me to school. I miss my mom, the way she was before he died. I miss home. Even though we were poor, and despite the hopelessness when one more parent lost a job, the city crumblin
g around us, our simmering rage at knowing we had been forgotten, I had real friends in Houston, and I could use one now. But I can’t lose my temper. I can’t say the wrong things. This is bigger than me—it’s about my generation and fighting for each person to have a place at the table. Stay focused, Mar. Be your best self.

  The Secret Service canny inclines his head, precise and smooth, then he steps aside, revealing a clear path to the security check at the front entrance of my new school.

  That path turns out to be more of a gauntlet.

  Chapter Two

  Marguerite

  As I walk, students gather on either side of the path, standing in crunchy brown grass. Every single one of them seems to have a Cerepin, the premier tech of the 1 percent, made right here in DC by Fortin Technology. These $10 million devices hit the market a few years ago—a breakthrough in intracranial computers. Small black nodules gleam on everyone’s right temple, and each of them wears special implanted lenses that allow streaming visual data and vid capture. Sensors thread into the user’s ear to manage audio. Chips implanted in their fingertips allow them to project or record themselves. A microscopically thin filament actually slides into the brain stem to enable health screening and the monitoring of vitals. All of it is tailored to the user’s biological profile and powered by the body’s own bioelectricity, so there’s no need to worry about parts degrading or a drained battery. Users are automatically sent emergency help when their biostats warrant it. They can be located when lost. They are never alone, never in the dark, constantly updated.

  The whole world is at their fingertips.

  The first Cerepins came out when I was ten. I remember my dad was so enthused—he did all sorts of research to try to figure out if he could get one.

  If he’d been able to afford one, it might have saved his job—and his life.

  I walk with purpose toward the entrance. I’m going to get a Cerepin soon—Uncle Wynn promised. That is, if he can get Fortin Tech to cooperate. Their CEO, Gia Fortin, donated a billion dollars to the campaign of Uncle Wynn’s opponent and spent countless millions on a smear campaign against Uncle Wynn himself. It was in full swing when I joined the campaign during the primary, and only got worse in the general election.