‘We’re done,’ Paxton reports.
‘I can’t,’ Nia says. ‘I–I can’t.’
00:11:45
‘You can. You have to. Because if you can’t, then there’s no point to any of this. To anything. We may as well all give up now, because we’ve all done shitty things in our lives.’
‘Not like this.’
00:06:19
‘Bloody hell, Nia, the fact that you are so upset means something. The Blue Fairy hurt people without caring about the consequences. You’re not like that. You told Riley that people can change. You’ve changed. This is your second chance. Help us.’
00:01:22
She can barely type, her hands are shaking so badly.
00:00:03
System override complete
<<>>>>
External feed terminated.
Nia crumples away from her display. ‘It’s done.’
She covers her face with her hands, curling away from me, from us all.
‘Good job,’ I tell her. ‘Well done.’ I put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinches away from me.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she says. ‘Don’t talk to me. Just go away.’
But I don’t go away, because another file has been decrypted.
LINK EMERGES BETWEEN YATES SCANDAL AND HIGH SCHOOL DEATH
Police have extended the investigation of the Yates espionage scandal to include the death of a student at the exclusive Westbridge Academy.
The student, Edwin Chen, was killed earlier this week, in the student carpark at Westbridge.
Acting on an anonymous tip, police raided the Yates home early Sunday morning, collecting computers and phones, as well as a filing cabinet full of documents.
Senator Yates is currently on maternity leave, but held a press conference last week denying all links between her re-election campaign, and Kozyr, a notorious Russian group known for illegally influencing political elections.
This morning, Police Commissioner Amelia Cabrera announced that Sandra Yates and her son, Paxton Yates, are being held in police custody, pending a hearing that will take place early next week. Another Westbridge student has also been arrested. No charges have been filed at this time.
Any link is between the death of Edwin Chen and the Yates scandal is unclear, but speculation is rife.
Marcus Tagiuri, editor of student newspaper the Westbridge Gazette, speculated that there is a connection between the Yates affair and the Blue Fairy, the social media phenomenon whom students ask to grant wishes. ‘The Blue Fairy is behind all of it, I bet you anything,’ Tagiuri said. ‘Someone wished for this. You’ll see.’
The arrests have sparked outrage among Westbridge parents, many of whom are influential figures in business, politics and the media. Multiple students have been withdrawn, and reports say that a series of lawsuits are mounting against the school. Westbridge principal Achiko Hanabi denies a link, calling the death of Edwin Chen a ‘tragic accident that the school is ensuring will never happen again’.
A memorial service was held for the much-loved Chen last weekend, where the cast of Westbridge’s summer musical Bang! Bang! performed in tribute to him. Guests arrived wearing a riot of sequins, feathers and bright wigs. Fellow student and teen pop sensation Jenna Ng tearfully stated that the unconventional service was ‘what Edwin would have wanted’, before performing ‘Only Cannoli’, the song that Chen himself would have sung in Bang! Bang!.
12
DAY 4
12:27
Edwin reads the article over my shoulder, his face pale. Then he turns and walks back to his seat. He reaches into his seat pocket and retrieves something, then returns to where we are all still clustered around the display.
He holds out his broken glasses.
‘I don’t need these,’ he says. ‘They’re fake. And there was no consent form for me.’ He nods. ‘It makes sense. I don’t know who I am, but I’m not Edwin Chen.’
He stares down at the sticker on his chest, then slowly, deliberately, peels it off, screws it up into a ball and flicks it away. It’s a confident move, but I can see it’s just bravado. Not-Edwin’s hands twist together in knots, and his chest rises and falls in fast, panicky breaths.
‘But why make you think you are?’ Paxton asks.
‘Maybe it’s a coincidence,’ offers Sandra. ‘A different boy called Edwin.’
Edwin shakes his head. ‘I don’t believe anything that’s happened since we woke up is a coincidence.’
Something about his words stirs something in me, and I’m suddenly sure he’s right. There have been no coincidences. Everything about this experiment has been carefully designed. Everything. Maybe even Riley’s death.
Edwin blinks rapidly, and I see him disappearing inside himself, getting swallowed by anxiety and panic. I’ve been there, and I know how terrifying it can be.
‘So what do we call you now?’ I ask quickly.
Edwin focuses on me with difficulty.
‘Your name isn’t Edwin,’ I point out. ‘You can pick a new one.’
‘That’s pretty cool, bro,’ Paxton says with false cheer. ‘You get to be whoever you want.’
‘Whoever I want …’ Edwin echoes. He ponders his for a while, staring out the window at the rushing greenery. I follow his gaze and notice the streaks of blood on the glass.
Edwin turns back to us. ‘I think I’m going to stay being Edwin, for now.’
‘Really?’
‘He – he never got to live a proper life. Maybe I can live it for him.’
There’s silence following his words. It feels a bit as if two people have died today – Edwin and Riley, although the real Edwin must have died some time ago.
Nia speaks, looking up at us from her seat as though we’re strangers. ‘How do we know that any of us are who we think we are?’ She reaches up and peels off her own name tag. ‘They could all be wrong.’
Mine isn’t. I am Cecily Cartwright. The flashbacks, the articles. I’m sure of it. But the others? Who knows. Maybe that’s what the red T-shirts mean. Are the red ones for people with fake identities?
All I know is that we are – were – definitely all connected, somehow.
The others return to their seats. Paxton hovers, waiting to see if I’ll join him, but I stay sitting with Nia.
I glance at the seatback display in front of me. There’s only one file left to decrypt.
The_Erasure_Initiative.pdf 87% decrypted
I look over at Nia. ‘So what’s next? How do we, er, jack into the mainframe?’
Nia winces, and I smile. It’s good to see an expression on her face other than terror or despair.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘The surveillance feed is cut. We either wait to see if someone comes to fix it, or to collect us, or …’
Or we escape. She doesn’t say it out loud. It would bring up too many questions, the biggest one being where we could possibly escape to.
‘Do you think that’s the first time you’ve seen someone die?’ she asks.
‘It’s got to be the first time I’ve seen someone die like that,’ I say. ‘Because … well, that’s not something you see every day.’
But as I say it, I realise that might not be true. ‘Unless this has happened before. In the other reboots.’
‘Other Rileys?’ Nia says, looking sick.
‘There were lots of other names on the consent forms. Maybe they died too.’
‘D-do you think I killed them all?’ Nia looks like she’s about to cry, or vomit, or turn into a frog.
‘I don’t think you killed any of them. I don’t think anything that’s happened here has been an accident. I think we’re being led to believe that we have more free will than we do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you think it’s all been a bit easy? Hacking into the network? Figuring out who we are? Why would they even keep all those files on these displays?’
‘They couldn’t have known about the bug in my leg,’ sh
e says. ‘Without that we wouldn’t have any of this stuff.’
‘What if they put it there?’
Nia puts a protective hand over her leg. ‘You sound like Sandra. Are you saying you don’t think I’m up to it?’
I shake my head. ‘You’re definitely up to it. I … I don’t know. I feel like we’re being manipulated more than we realise.’
‘They never would have let me break into the server,’ Nia says. ‘I have access to everything. I’ve turned off the surveillance feed. Whoever is out there, they’re flying blind right now. I don’t think they meant for that to happen.’
…
We gather up the front of the bus, the light stained pink by the smears on the windscreen, and hold a memorial service for Riley. There’s not much we can do – we have no flowers, no candles, no photos to remind us of him. We just go round and each say a few words.
‘Riley was a kind, generous soul,’ says Sandra. ‘He will be missed by all those who loved him. But we can all take comfort from knowing he’s in a better place.’
He’s demonstrably not in a better place. He’s spattered all over the bus, in sprays and chunks. It’s exactly the kind of meaningless bullshit a politician would say. Nia’s expression darkens, but she doesn’t say anything. Even she realises now isn’t the time.
‘A good dude,’ Pax offers. ‘I hope wherever he is, he has that breakfast burrito he wanted.’
‘If I’m being completely honest,’ Edwin says, ‘I was downright terrified of Riley at first. With his tattoos and his muscles and his testosterone. He was everything I’m not, and that was frightening. But he came and talked to me after I had to face the bus. He told me a joke about a goose and a boiled egg, and it … took my mind off things. He really engaged with the trolley problems, perhaps more than any of us. He was deeply concerned about issues of morality. He wanted to be a good person. To do the right thing.’
‘I misjudged him too,’ said Nia, her voice thick with emotion. ‘I wrote him off as being stupid, a thug. But he was a lot more than that. He really thought about things. He didn’t blindly obey authority.’ Her eyes flick ever so briefly to Sandra. ‘He had a strong moral compass. And … and I envy that. I hope it brought him comfort, at the end. And I’m so, so sorry if I had anything to do with his death.’
She turns her face away from us.
I try to think of something else to say, that hasn’t already been said. Then I remember the scrolls tattooed over his heart.
‘He had kids. Aydan Kaos and Brilee Jade. He really wanted to be a good person, for them.’
Sandra’s eyebrows twitch at the names, and I feel an spike of irritation, partly at Sandra for being a snob, partly at myself for having the same initial response.
‘Catherine?’ Sandra touches her gently on the arm. ‘Would you like to say a few words about Riley?’
Catherine blinks and looks around. ‘Is that the young man with the tattoos? I found him very crude. Has he gone somewhere?’
We exchange glances. There’s no point explaining it to her. Paxton leads Catherine back to her seat, and Edwin drifts after them.
‘The last file is nearly decrypted,’ Nia says. ‘It’s a big one. Hopefully it will give us some answers.’
‘Are you still really persisting with this hacking nonsense?’ Sandra looms over her, her expression stern and disapproving. ‘After what happened?’
‘If we stop now, then Riley’s death means nothing,’ Nia hisses. ‘We have to keep going.’
‘I warned you. I warned you not to mess around with the computer. It was that error message that killed Riley. You did that.’
Nia shrinks away, her anger dissolved and replaced by a kind of blank horror. I reach out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinches.
‘Don’t.’
She turns and goes back to her seat.
Sandra is still talking. ‘I have to believe that this was all a mistake. An error. I have to believe that whoever is behind this is following rules. That they have compassion.’
I look down at Riley’s wristband on the floor, sticky and dark with congealing blood. Compassion? Unlikely.
I glance around. Nobody is watching me. I bend and pick up the wristband, shoving it down the waistband of my jeans, so it’s hidden by my blue T-shirt. Maybe it can help us.
My hands are smeared with red streaks, like I’ve been finger-painting. I don’t want to wipe them on my jeans, so I crouch again and drag them across the bus’s dark carpet. I imagine bits of Riley’s DNA seeping into the polyester weave. He’s part of the bus, now. He can’t be washed away.
The wristband digs into my belly and bladder. I need to find a better hiding place for it, while I figure out how it can be useful.
‘Cato Bell.’
We all turn to Nia, who is staring at her seatback display. The last file has been decrypted, and is open in front of her.
‘The person behind this. The puppetmaster. It’s Cato Bell.’
Edwin gasps out loud.
‘The software developer that you all know about?’ I ask.
‘Cato Bell is much more than a software developer,’ Edwin says, his voice eager. ‘She’s a visionary!’
It’s the most enthusiastic I’ve ever seen him.
Nia raises an eyebrow. ‘She’s the embodiment of capitalism.’
‘She’s going to save the world.’
‘Sure,’ says Nia. ‘But she won’t let any of her employees join a union.’
Edwin looks personally offended by this.
‘I don’t care how she treats her employees,’ I say. ‘What does she have to do with us? With this?’
‘She’s the one running the experiment,’ says Nia, her gaze locked on the display. ‘The last file is a proposal. She’s presenting it to … to government, to private companies, to not-for-profits. She claims it’s going to …’ She rolls her eyes and glances witheringly at Edwin. ‘Change the world.’
‘She’s already changed the world!’ Edwin says. ‘She’s a reclusive genius, spearheading a revolution in AI.’ He turns his head to me. ‘It really is strange that you don’t know who she is. Can you remember other public figures?’
‘Like who?’
‘Mother Theresa,’ Sandra says.
‘Shakespeare,’ Paxton suggests.
‘Dolly Parton,’ says Nia.
‘I know who they all are,’ I confirm. ‘But Cato Bell is a blank.’
‘Fascinating,’ Edwin says. ‘I wonder if she is in your episodic memory – the part that got wiped. Whereas for the rest of us, she’s part of our general knowledge, so she resides in our semantic memories.’
‘Why would she be in my episodic memory?’
‘Maybe you know her. Maybe one of your parents works at Bell Industries. Or she could be your great-aunt.’
He sighs happily, as if the thought of Cato Bell being his great-aunt brings him great comfort. With all the revelations of the past few days, it’s certainly not out of the question.
‘So who was right?’ Paxton asks. ‘What’s her deal? Is it a reality TV show? Is she working for the government? Is she a psychopath?’
Nia frowns, scanning the text. ‘None of the above. It’s … a case study. For something called the Erasure Initiative. She claims that the prison system is broken, that too many people are going to prison for the wrong reasons – that their problems come from societal inequality, or untreated mental health issues. The rate of reoffending is at an all-time high – above eighty per cent in most prisons. Most of which are owned and operated by private companies.’
‘Private prisons want people to reoffend,’ Sandra says thoughtfully. ‘The more people in prison, the more money they make.’
‘Exactly. There are no prison programs to help offenders reintegrate into society. Instead many come out with worse criminal tendencies than when they went in.’
‘Makes sense,’ says Paxton. ‘If you put a bunch of criminals in a confined space with a bunch of other criminals, it seems
unlikely that they’re all going to suddenly see the error of their ways.’
Nia nods. ‘It becomes a system that feeds itself. And once someone gets out of prison, it’s on their record, which makes it hard to find any legitimate kind of work. So you end up going round and round.’
‘So where do we come into it?’
I think I already know. ‘She wants to totally overhaul the justice system,’ I guess. ‘Instead of putting someone in prison, you give them a second chance. You wipe their memory, move them to a difference city, and let them have a fresh start.’
Nia looks at me, respect in her eyes. It’s weird. ‘That’s why we’re doing trolley problems,’ she says. ‘She’s trying to figure out if our behavior changes when our memories are erased.’
I think about the choices I made. Refusing to engage with the problem, and then after that, choosing myself every time. Voting to put poor old Catherine in front of the bus just because I find old people creepy.
Am I a terrible person?
‘How many trials have there been?’ Paxton asks.
‘I think this is the fourth,’ Nia says. ‘Something must have gone wrong with the other ones, so she wiped our memories and started over.’
I think of Riley, exploding into a red haze. Why hasn’t this trial been rebooted? Why can I still see bits of his flesh, clinging to the windscreen?
And why me?
‘So why us?’ Paxton asks, as if he can read my thoughts.
‘We’re a good cross-section, I guess,’ Nia says, shrugging.
‘Young and old. Male and female. A decent mix of race and class.
And we signed consent forms, so we obviously agreed to be here.’
‘You think we’re all criminals?’
‘Of course. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’
The Erasure Initiative Page 14
