by AJ Steiger
“Yes, actually.”
He smiles thinly, without humor. “Well, they’re right. If you want to change your mind, now’s the time.”
My palms are damp with sweat. Is this really the right thing to do? I can tell myself that I’m saving his life, but if I become a full-fledged Mindwalker, I’ll have the chance to save many more lives. If I’m caught, it all ends. Am I really being selfless, or just reckless?
Slowly, I set down my cup. “May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you really get expelled from your last school for biting a piece of skin from another boy’s face?”
His eyes turn cold. “Yeah. I did.”
“Why did you do that?”
He holds my gaze. “Because he raped someone. Someone I cared about.”
My pulse quickens. “Is that why they put the collar on you?”
“That’s why.”
A school of silvery holographic fish flits by us, leaving a trail of bubbles that fade to nothing. Above our heads, a huge sea turtle glides slowly past.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why wasn’t he collared? After what he did—”
“Who was going to listen to me?” His hands curl into fists, knuckles whitening. “He was the superintendent’s son—good grades, star athlete, all that crap. And me? I was already a Three when it happened. People were just going to dismiss whatever I said about him, and he knew it. He bragged about what he’d done, right to my face. That’s when I lost it.”
“What about his victim? Did she tell anyone?”
He shakes his head. “She was scared.”
“I see,” I say quietly.
He studies my expression. His own is cautious—a look I’ve come to recognize, like that of a wild animal alert for threats. “So, are you afraid of me?”
“Why would I be?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I just told you that I attacked someone.”
I hesitate. Maybe I should be scared. I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth. But I feel, deep in my bones, that Steven isn’t a violent person. Not in his core. “You did it for someone else’s sake,” I say. “Often, people who’ve been victimized early in life become victimizers themselves; they take on the role of the person who hurt them, in order to avoid feeling helpless. But in your case, your trauma seems to have given you empathy for other victims and a desire to defend them. I find that quite admirable, actually.”
He blinks a few times. The corners of his mouth twitch in the faintest shadow of a smile. “Well, you’re the first person I’ve met who feels that way.”
I wind a tendril of hair around one finger, then catch myself and interlace my hands in my lap.
He turns his head, and the silver crescent of the collar glints in the dim light. I have an impulse to touch it, to slide my fingers over it.
Aside from monitoring a person’s stress levels, the collar is also capable of controlling violent behavior. If a Four starts acting aggressively, it delivers a pulse of energy to the base of the brain, rendering the person unconscious. It’s not instantaneous—there’s usually a lag, anywhere from a few seconds to a minute, while the computer analyzes patterns of brain activity—but it’s good enough for stopping most crimes in progress. It can also be activated manually. If a guard is watching a security camera and sees a Four about to do something violent, he can activate the collar with the push of a button. There are monitoring stations for that very purpose in every IFEN facility.
All in all, it’s an extremely effective way of preventing violence without hindering someone’s freedom to move about. But of course, the collar has no capacity for moral judgment. It can’t sense whether its wearer is hurting an innocent person or acting in self-defense. It just looks for the neural red flags associated with intent to harm.
Advocates are quick to point out that the collar is a better, more humane option than locking dangerous people in a treatment facility for life, and they have a point. If I were forced to choose, I’d take the collar over imprisonment. Still, I can’t deny that its existence makes me uneasy at times.
My chai is cooling. Suddenly, I don’t want it. “Is there any way to get rid of it?”
“The collar? They replace it every few years, but there’s no way to take it off yourself. It’s wired into your brain. People have fucked themselves up really bad trying to yank it out.”
“No, I mean … legal recourse. If you’ve been collared unjustly, there should be a way …” He’s looking at me with an odd expression—part amusement, part weariness—that makes me feel silly for asking. But surely, there must be a way to fight back.
We leave the restaurant and linger outside, under a sky blanketed with ash-white clouds. A monorail slithers along the curving track overhead, like a silver snake.
I turn toward him. “Can I ask another personal question?”
“Ask away. Can’t promise to answer, though.”
“Have you really gone through Conditioning twelve times?”
He smiles. “Thirteen.”
All that, and it still didn’t affect his Type. But then, it’s rare for a Four to recover. Something happens once a person crosses that line. It’s difficult to go back. “You must be pretty accustomed to it by now.”
“Doesn’t make me like it any more.” He stands, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched. “You know what I hate most about it? You can’t think. When they’ve got you strapped into that machine, you’ll believe anything that anyone says.”
“It does make people more open, more suggestible. The treatment wouldn’t work otherwise.”
“Suggestible? It’s brainwashing. If someone told me that I was the All-Powerful Princess Petticoats from Planet Zoot and that I could fly using the power of moonbeams, I’d have jumped right out a window.”
I open my mouth to say that there are precautions preventing that sort of thing, then close it. Now isn’t the time for a debate on the merits and drawbacks of Conditioning.
“Anyway, they can’t do it to me again,” he says. “Thirteen times is the limit. After that, if you cause any more trouble, they give you a total mindwipe.”
The words send a chill rippling through me. “That’s not true,” I say firmly. “I don’t know who told you that, but IFEN doesn’t mindwipe people.”
His eyes harden. “Maybe not officially. But I’ve heard about it happening. And I’d rather die than end up a drooling, pants-crapping zombie, locked in some godforsaken institution while some smarmy nurse teaches me to color inside the lines.”
“Well, that will never happen,” I say. “I can promise you that.”
“Nice to know,” he mutters, sounding utterly unconvinced.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you believe what you’re saying,” he says. “As for the system, I trust it about as much as I’d trust a half-starved panther with rabies. Maybe less. At least while the panther gnawed your brains out, he wouldn’t tell you it was for your own good.”
I don’t really know how to respond to that.
We walk toward my car. Steven pulls a handful of tiny pills from his pocket. I start to tense, but none of the pills are pink. Just white. He tosses them into his mouth and swallows. “It’s medicine,” he says, in answer to my unspoken question. “Keeps my nerves steady.”
“Is it safe to take that many?”
He shrugs. “Probably not, but what the hell. Everyone needs a vice or two.”
I stop in front of the car, my hand on the door handle. “People don’t need vices.”
“Oh yeah?” He smirks. “What about you?”
I shift my weight. “Well, I do like chocolate. But something doesn’t become a vice until you need it. I don’t wake up in a cold sweat at three in the morning craving brownies.”
He chuckles. The sound has a throaty roughness, like a fingernail scratching over rusted metal. “I’ll bet there’s something, though. Something that gets all the neurons in your pleasure centers fir
ing.” His pale eyes are sharp, penetrating. “So, what’s your drug of choice, Doc? What do you need?”
I freeze. I feel like he’s looking straight into my head, like there’s nothing I can hide from him. A flush rises into my face, and I gulp, resisting the urge to drop my gaze.
He’s testing me. Pushing me. I have to be careful.
Mindwalkers follow a strict ethical code. One of the most important rules is that, outside the sessions, we must never become emotionally involved with our clients. It only leads to trouble. The voice of my old psych-ethics professor, from my training at IFEN, echoes in my head: While a Mindwalker may disclose truths about herself to make the client more comfortable, there are certain lines she must never cross, or she ceases to be an objective figure. For those clients who ask intrusive questions, I’ve found that the best way to respond is with a joke or a very general remark—then gently steer the conversation back toward the client.
Steven is watching me with shielded, alert, wary eyes, like a wild animal. Waiting to see if I’ll give him a real answer or a fake one. If I evade this question, I will lose a little of his trust. “I need this,” I say.
He blinks. A tiny crease appears between his eyebrows. “This?”
My cheeks burn hotter. “I need to help people. People like you, who are in pain.”
He frowns, looking baffled. “That’s your drug? Saving people?”
I toy with a button on my coat, mouth dry. My heart thunders in my ears. “Something like that.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, isn’t that your job? How is that a vice?”
“I don’t know how to explain it, exactly,” I murmur. I shouldn’t even be talking about this. But suddenly, I want him to understand. I want him to see me for who I am. “When I’m helping someone, easing their pain, I feel … useful. Needed.” I stand, hands clasped together in front of me, heart pounding. “People tell me that I must be very strong-willed or motivated or ambitious, to keep doing what I do. But … sometimes, I think it’s just that I can’t stop. I don’t know how. I’m afraid that without this, there’d be nothing of me left.”
There’s a long silence. I can’t guess what he might be thinking, but I can feel his gaze on me, like a steady pressure against my skin. Oh God. I shouldn’t have told him all that. Now he’s going to think I’m weird. Or just pitiful. But when I glance at his face, I don’t see pity or distaste.
“You said we can get started tonight?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“So let’s go.”
As the car drives us back to my house, Steven stares out the window. In the dimness of the vehicle, his large blue eyes are pools of shadow sunken deep into his too-pale, too-thin face. I want to see that face well and smiling.
I want that very much.
I park in my driveway and lead Steven to the front door. He looks warily around my yard, as if expecting a goblin to pop out from behind the bushes. “Who else lives here?”
“I live alone,” I say. “Well, mostly. There’s Greta—my housekeeper—but she’s not here today.” I unlock the door, which is so old that it has an actual key lock, not a code pad or a biometric scanner. Steven steps slowly inside, eyeing the hardwood floors and brown leather furniture. I tug open the curtains, and light spills in through the picture window, illuminating the living room. A pair of ceramic squirrels—matching salt and pepper shakers from an antiques shop—stand on the coffee table, looking at each other inquisitively.
I sit on the couch and give him a self-conscious smile. “Make yourself at home.”
He plops into an armchair across from me, and the leather creaks in complaint. “So, uh. What about your parents? I mean, are they okay with you having your own place?”
“My father died a few years ago. I’ve been here by myself ever since.”
Steven opens his mouth, as if to ask something else, then closes it. He glances at the picture on the coffee table, and I feel suddenly exposed. I can’t remember the last time I’ve actually had a visitor.
Steven picks up the ceramic squirrel saltshaker and turns it over in his hands. “So, this mind-reading machine of yours is in some kind of secret underground room?”
“Yes.” I told him about the Mindgate on the way over. “Before we start, though, how are you feeling?”
He wrinkles his nose. “You really need to ask that?”
“Of course. You’re my client. It’s important for me to know.”
His fingers tighten on the ceramic squirrel. “Okay. I’m scared. Is that what you want to hear? I’m scared stiff.”
“Why?” I ask gently.
He gives me a dry smile. “You’re about to go into my head. If you don’t know why that’s scary, you need to retake your psychology classes.”
I ignore the barb. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head. “I suck at that touchy-feely stuff. Back in the nuthouse, they tried to make me do talk therapy a few times. I hated it.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s kind of like puking your guts out on the floor and letting some creep poke around in the bloody mess and take notes.”
“You don’t like psychologists, do you?”
“Gee, what clued you in?”
“I’m just curious about your reasons. I’m a psychologist, after all.”
He rolls the squirrel saltshaker across his palm. “I get tired of all these rich people in white coats pretending they understand my pain.”
“But that’s what they’re trained for. To understand.”
He unscrews the squirrel’s head and peers into its hollow ceramic skull. “Dissecting something isn’t the same as understanding it. You can cut open a rat and pick its brain apart and label every little piece. But that doesn’t tell you what it’s like to be that rat.” He sets the squirrel’s head on the coffee table and places its body next to it.
“Do I make you feel like you’re being dissected?”
There’s a pause. “No.” He looks away. “I haven’t figured you out yet. But I don’t think you’re one of them.”
“I’m glad.” I catch myself twirling a pigtail around one finger, a habit I’ve tried hard to break. Pigtail twirling doesn’t inspire confidence when you’re about to rewire someone’s brain. I drop my hands to my lap and interlace my fingers. My pulse drums in my wrists. Don’t think of him as a boy, I remind myself. Think of him as a client. This is just another Mindwalking session. I keep telling myself that, but the nervous flutter in my stomach won’t subside. “Is there anything else you want to discuss, or …”
His fingers clench on the chair’s arms, the skin around his nails whitening. “Let’s just do it. Before I lose my nerve.”
I screw the squirrel’s head back onto its body, stand, and walk over to the bookshelf. It’s filled with thick, leather-bound volumes. I trail my fingers over the books’ spines until I find the familiar copy of Thomas More’s Utopia. When I pull it out, the massive piece of furniture slides to one side with a low rumble, exposing a door.
Steven raises his eyebrows. “A hidden passage. Have to admit, I’m impressed.”
I smile over one shoulder, then open the door and lead him down a set of cement stairs. There’s another door at the bottom, a heavy, solid metal one with a keypad. I pause, fingers hovering over the keys. I remember the code, of course. My father used to see clients here, in his home. But since his death, I haven’t been inside this room even once. I’m afraid that if I step through that door, the memories will hit me like a roaring wind. My throat knots. I swallow, trying to loosen it.
I key in the code, and the door slides open. A light comes on, revealing a large room with white walls and a white-tiled floor. Two black-padded reclining chairs stand side by side, and between them is the Mindgate. The Gate, for short. For all its sophistication and power, it looks rather ordinary—a sleek black hard drive, about the size of a briefcase, atop a metal counter. Next to the hard drive sit two white plastic helmets. They’re similar to bicyc
le helmets, rounded and smooth, with black visors. There are no wires, nothing visibly connecting them to the computer.
The rush of grief is less overwhelming than I expected. There’s a brief prickle in my sinuses, then it passes, leaving me aching but stable. I exhale softly.
Steven watches me from the corner of his eye, and I wonder if he noticed. Then he turns his attention to the Gate, squinting. “This is it?”
I nod. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s one of the most sophisticated computers on the planet.”
He makes a noncommittal sound. “So how’s it work?”
“We’ll sit in those chairs and put on those helmets. The Gate will read the activity in your brain and translate it into electronic signals, which will be sent to mine. I’ll be able to share your thoughts and memories, as well as any physical sensations you’re experiencing.”
His eyes are shielded, but I can see the clouds of tension swirling just beneath the surface. “Will I be able to read your thoughts, too?”
“No. That would only be a distraction.” I take a few steps toward the Gate and rest a hand on the hard drive. At my touch, it powers up automatically, humming softly. A green light blinks on. I run a hand over the smooth plastic. It feels like greeting a pet I haven’t seen in years. “The initial phase is called mapping. It will help me create a system to navigate your memories so that later I’ll know exactly what to delete. Many clients are concerned that good memories will be accidentally destroyed along with the bad ones. I’ll do everything in my power to avoid that, but you should know there’s still a risk.”
“I don’t have any good memories, so I guess I’m safe,” he mutters. “Lucky me.”
“None at all?”
“Well, I guess I’ve had a few decent lunches.” He flops down in the chair on the left and props his shoes up on the footrest.
I wonder what his life was like before the kidnapping. What sort of childhood did he have? But now is not the time to ask.
I settle myself into the other chair and pick up my helmet. It’s marked with a silver dot on the back to differentiate it from the client’s. The inside is lined with malleable white foam designed to conform to the contours of a person’s skull. Hundreds of sensors are embedded within that foam: shiny black circles, like tiny eyes capable of peering through scalp and blood and bone.
