“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the workshop and introduce you to the man himself . . . if you’re sure that’s what you want.”
She nodded. “What does he do out there?”
“He’s an artist,” Jesse said, opening the back door and waving her through. “His medium is transport old and new. Electrobikes and sunboards—anything other than d-mat. He sells them as fast as he can make them, and they keep the idea of alternative transport alive in people’s minds. That’s the plan, anyway. . . . You’ve really never heard of him?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Well, don’t tell him that, whatever you do.”
[10]
* * *
THE SHED WAS larger than it had looked from the apartment. At some point, the Linwoods had absorbed the backyards of both their neighbors, creating a spacious environment for Jesse’s father to work and store materials. Jesse knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. It was dark inside. Clair’s eyes took a moment to adjust. The shed was crammed to the ceiling with tools and equipment: antique 3D printers, skeletal landsurfer frames, Air-free processor cores, and other shapes Clair couldn’t identify. Cogs and chains hung from nails everywhere she looked, as though she were inside a giant clock. If there was any order to the maelstrom of parts, it was invisible to her.
Jesse’s father occupied a relatively clear space in the center, surrounded by a cone of yellow light projecting down from the ceiling. He wore a jeweler’s glass over one eye, a red-check shirt, canvas shorts, and open-toed sandals. Through the glass he peered at an angular chip extracted from a mess of wires and circuit boards to his left.
“This is Clair Hill from school,” Jesse said, approaching via a zigzag path through the clutter.
“What does she want?” Jesse’s father glanced up at them. His magnified eye seemed impossibly blue.
“I’d like to ask you a question, Mr. Linwood,” she said, stepping gingerly for fear of knocking something over. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”
“Call me Dylan.” He reached up and took the eyepiece away. “Go on.”
“I’m worried about a friend of mine,” she said. “She’s been using Improvement.”
“She has, has she? And did it work?”
“No. . . . I mean, it wasn’t clear.”
“Well, I don’t see what I can do about that.”
“You can tell me not to worry about her. You can tell me it can’t possibly be real.”
He stood up, revealing himself to be much shorter than Jesse. Dylan Linwood was lean, with wild gray hair and deep facial lines. He too hadn’t shaved for several days. His skin was spotted with grease. He looked like an ordinary man concentrated into a much smaller space.
“The system is governed by AIs,” he said in a lecturing tone, “and the AIs are governed by protocols. Who writes the protocols? People do. So if the Improvement code causes a shift in the protocols . . . . well, a thing imagined is a thing halfway done. What’s to stop someone trying to make it work? Nothing. So the very existence of Improvement proves that someone, somewhere, at least thought about it, and that thought alone is dangerous, in the memetic sense.”
“The what sense?” asked Clair.
“You know, memes—things that reproduce ideas, like genes reproduce traits. A new idea is a mutant meme, and the idea spread by Improvement is that people deserve to be Improved by means other than hard work and merit. By just clicking their fingers and wishing. These are dangerous thoughts if sufficient people share them.”
“Memes come and go,” said Jesse. He was slouched against a bench with his arms folded, closely observing the conversation. “Won’t this one do the same?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of a seductive idea, son. Bad enough that people are using d-mat to get around. What happens if their patterns start being interfered with en masse? That’d be a monstrous crime perpetrated on the entire human race.”
“Yes, but it’s not happening, is it?”
“Libby thinks it is,” said Clair.
The way Dylan looked at her made her feel as though she was still under the magnifying stare of his eyepiece.
“Do you have a copy of this particular message?” he asked Clair.
“Give me your address and I’ll send it to you.”
“Send it to Jesse, and he can send it to me. I like to keep my connections to a minimum.”
Jesse’s father sat back in front of his 3D monitor and began typing hard on a manual keyboard.
“You were right to come here,” he told her as the message flashed up in front of him. “I’m sure the truth’s out there, but it’ll be buried under a snow job of misinformation and noise. Fortunately for you, I have colleagues who track this kind of thing. We share information in a private database. I’m looking into that right now.”
Clair wondered who exactly “we” were. Ordinary Abstainers or someone more organized and active in their opposition to d-mat?
“If there is something to Improvement,” he said, skimming through data too quickly to follow, “it’s not what it’s advertised to be. No one believes it’s making people taller or more beautiful or whatever. What I can tell you is that there are different strains of the letter, as with viruses. Some are the real thing, some are bad copies, and some are fakes. Apparently, this is one of the real ones. You can tell by the irregular number of lines in each stanza of the message: three-four-five-two.”
“What do you it mean that it’s ‘real’?” asked Jesse. “If it doesn’t do anything, what difference does that make?”
“I didn’t say it didn’t do anything. I said it didn’t work as advertised. My best theory is that someone tried to get it to work but succeeded only in interfering with the system, causing random errors to people’s patterns.”
Clair nodded. That made a scary kind of sense. “What could we do about that?”
“Well, first we need evidence of anything at all out of the ordinary, something that will prove the need to take action. Evidence of real harm, not just vague concerns.”
“Libby said she’s received some weird messages.”
“Do you have copies of them?”
Clair shook her head. “She deleted them.”
Dylan looked up at her, then back at the screen. With a flick of one fingertip, he cleared the data and turned to face Clair.
“Of course she did. So at the moment we have nothing—just a theory and a note that according to the Air and the peacekeepers doesn’t mean a thing.”
“You could ask Libby to save any other messages she gets,” Jesse suggested. “If we had them, maybe the peacekeepers would listen.”
Dylan dismissed that thought as casually as he had dismissed the data on the screen,
“The peacekeepers take VIA’s so-called safeguards for granted. They can’t afford to do otherwise. If they thought for a second that someone had made d-mat unsafe, the world would come crumbling down around them. It would take something definite, something completely undeniable, to bring that about.”
Clair studied him, beginning to suspect that his motives weren’t at all the same as hers. “When you talked about taking action—”
“I wasn’t talking about peacekeepers.”
“So—”
“People should stop using d-mat, Clair. Errors caused by this kind of interference are nothing compared to the many accidental errors that go unnoticed every day. Have you ever worried about that?”
He had taken a step closer. She backed the same distance away. “I’m not here to talk about me. I came to you for Libby’s sake.”
“What do I care about another zombie girl? Her fate was sealed the moment she first stepped through a d-mat booth. Nothing you can do now will bring her back.”
Clair didn’t know how to respond to that, short of being unspeakably rude. If Libby was dead to him, so was Clair, and no amount of arguing would change that.
“Dad—” said Jesse.
“It’s all right
,” Clair said. “I’ll go now. It’s getting late, and this . . . isn’t helping.”
She turned and headed for the garden, not caring that she knocked over a stack of cogs and gears as she went. Dylan watched her go with a cold expression.
The aroma of baking food hit her as she entered the apartment. Clair concentrated on finding her bag and getting out of there.
Jesse followed, his face a mask of anxiety.
“I’m sorry, Clair,” he said at the door.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Clair had invaded Jesse’s world in search of answers, and now her head was full of Stainers and dead mothers and d-mat conspiracies.
“You remember the way to the station? It’s a safe neighborhood, but I’m happy to walk you if you feel uncomfortable.”
“No need for that.”
“Hey,” he said as she headed for the road, “next time bring Libby along. Dad can browbeat her in person. He might even convert her. That’d look great for him at the meetings.”
Clair glanced back at him and was brought up momentarily by the stricken expression on his face. She wondered how many kids from school ever came to visit him. She might have been the first in years. How, in his mind, had he imagined it playing out?
He looked lonely.
“Miracles happen,” Clair said, not stopping, “but not that big a miracle.”
[11]
* * *
CLAIR WENT HOME, angry at Dylan Linwood and at herself for imagining that he would help her. He didn’t owe her anything. He and Jesse might as well really exist in a different world from her. By refusing to use d-mat and fabbers, Jesse Linwood existed farther away than Libby, who lived thousands of miles around the bulge of the Earth.
She could see it from their eyes now, and she was embarrassed on her own behalf. To them it must have seemed deeply patronizing, the way she had barged into their lives, seeking answers to questions that didn’t matter to them in the slightest. She lived in a world of instantaneous plenty, and she was worried about a friend’s bad mood? No wonder Dylan Linwood had responded by trying to prop himself up as someone with secret knowledge and influence far beyond her own. His theory about Improvement causing random errors was imaginary, no doubt, but it was all he had to retaliate with. That and feeding her anxieties. She had enough of those without him adding to them.
When she reached the station, she gave the booth directions and closed her eyes, grateful for her ordinary life. One moment Manteca, the next Maine. Hissing, the door opened on cooler air and a barrage of silence.
Her mother was in the living room. She nabbed Clair before she could escape to her room.
“Come sit with me awhile,” Allison said. “I feel I haven’t seen you in person for ages. How’s school? What’s the latest gossip?”
The crisis among Clair, Libby, and Zep surely counted as gossip, but Clair was loath to go into that with her mother.
“School is the same,” she said, stretching out on her back along the couch. “There’s this new clique . . . the crashlanders. Libby and I got in.”
“Well, that’s great.” Allison didn’t ask for details. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your study . . .”
“It won’t, Mom. What about you? Where have you been working this week?”
“Northern Australia. We’ve got two self-sufficient herds now, and we’re working on a third.”
“Still elephants?”
“Still elephants. The tweaks we made to the clones seem to be holding. No sign of inbreeding yet.”
Allison was a veterinarian specializing in the restoration of animals to their natural environment, or the closest available. For community service, she was employed by ERA, the Environment Reclamation Agency. For fun and popularity, she played with ancient DNA in the hope of bringing back woolly mammoths.
Clair didn’t understand every aspect of her work, but she knew one thing for certain. Allison changed the molecular coding of her animal clones using d-mat.
“How does it work?” Clair had never before had cause to ask her mother that question. “Does VIA give you permission to break the law?”
“No one can do that. VIA won’t allow any pattern changes in the global system at all—not to living things and especially not to people. We use our own private network instead. We can do whatever we want in there.”
“What would happen if someone hacked VIA . . . you know, if they wanted to make those kinds of changes in the global system . . . for whatever reason?”
“It happens every now and again,” said Allison. “Young idiots wanting to show off their skills and bad taste in body sculpting.” She flashed a quick grin. “The peacekeepers pounce on them within minutes. There’s no error too small to spot; that’s how the system works. Really, if you wanted to do something illegal like that, you wouldn’t do it in public. Like most crime, home is where the harm is.”
“So someone could do it with a private network,” Clair said.
“They would need resources that are tightly controlled, and access to the powersats as well. It’s not the sort of thing you can just fab up in your basement.” The smile lines around her eyes creased. “What’s brought this on?”
Clair shook her head, wondering how Dylan Linwood would respond to this. Would it reassure him or make him more paranoid than ever? Would he find a way to make his theory work despite everything Allison said? “Nothing. Just something going around. A meme.”
“Is it the one about how the government installs tracking devices in all of us so they can monitor our movements? I remember that from when I was your age. Somehow my generation managed to avoid being crushed under a totalitarian boot heel, and we’ll avoid whatever it is you’re worried about too, I’m sure.”
She reached out and entwined her fingers in Clair’s heavy curls. Apart from several streaks of gray at her temples, Allison had exactly the same hair as her daughter. Their brown eyes were the same too, but there the similarity ended. Allison was fortunate to have her mother’s nose, unlike her daughter.
“Oz will be back in the morning,” Allison said. “Would you like to do something together?”
Oscar Kempe—Clair’s stepfather—had been the third in their family unit since her second birthday, and he fulfilled the role of father in all but genes.
“Sure,” she said warily. “Depending on homework.”
“And the crashlanders.” Allison smiled again. “I understand. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
Her warm fingers released Clair’s hair, allowing Clair to retreat to her room.
“Good night, Mom.”
“Sleep tight.”
Clair posted a good-night caption (a house slowly overtaken by sand dunes) but was in no mood for sleeping.
She had bumped Libby on the way home, but Libby hadn’t replied. Ronnie and Tash hadn’t heard from her either. In desperation, she called Zep.
“Has she called you?” she asked, cutting through his usual chitchat.
“No, but she’s home,” he said. “I spoke to Freda. She said that Libby hasn’t left her room all day.”
Freda, originally Freedom, was Liberty’s only sibling. Often annoying and frequently in the way, she was occasionally good for dishing the dirt on her older sister.
“Has she seen a doctor?” Clair said.
“Freda didn’t know. Maybe not. She’s only been out of school for a day.”
And that, Clair told herself, was where she could leave it. Libby had a headache caused by transit lag and nothing more. Improvement had nothing to do with it. It was just a passing thing, an empty meme, a symptom of Libby’s insecurity, not the cause of anything sinister or dangerous.
Maybe, Clair thought, she just wanted Libby to be sicker than she was so Libby would be out of the picture for a while. Was Clair’s self-absorption really so profound? She hated that thought. But here she was talking to Zep and feeling the same hateful ache as ever. She could see him in a window superimposed on her ceiling as though he were floating or lying
over her. It was all too easy to imagine reaching out and touching him.
“There’ll be another ball tonight,” said Zep, as though he could read her mind. “If you go, you could take me along.”
“Your real date isn’t feeling well,” she said, forcing herself to say the words. “Do I have to remind you of that?”
“Well, exactly. She’s out of action. The night is young. What do you think?”
“I think I’ve had enough of the crashlanders for one week,” she said. “And gossip, too. We should probably take a break from hanging out until Libby is feeling better.”
He frowned. “You mean I can’t see you at all?”
“That’s for the best. Don’t you think?”
“Hell no. It’s not our fault Libby can’t or won’t talk to us. She’s the one who’s making us do this.”
“What difference would it make if she did talk? What would you tell her?”
“That we’re going to the ball without her. That’s all.”
“What about what happened? What about you and her . . . ?”
Breaking up, she wanted to say, but she wasn’t going to put the words in his mouth.
“Not yet. I mean, how could I? She’s sick. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“But it’s fair to kiss her best friend and then try to cover it up?”
He had the humanity to blush. “I feel bad about that . . . not the actual kissing part, though. I guess I could bump her, but that would be as bad as waiting, wouldn’t it? It’s not something you’d want to hear in a message. Right, Clair?”
“I guess so.”
“What about you—have you told her?”
He had a point there. She had had the chance to tell Libby, but she had shied away from doing so. It wasn’t something she was proud of.
“I don’t know what to tell her,” Clair said. “That’s why I’m not coming out tonight. I don’t want to get into something I’m not sure about. Not when it could cost me so much.”
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