by Susan Juby
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Bright considered the question, trying to think up an answer that wouldn’t interfere with her promotion.
“She’s going to get her bot,” said Fon. “She’s a bot lover.”
“That’s not true,” protested Bright. “I just thought I would be more … productive at the House of It if I had my bot.”
“You’re a bot lover,” repeated Fon. Then she gave a dramatic shudder of distaste.
The PS officer did an amazing thing. He took off his dataglasses and walked toward Bright. Now that he was in the cart’s light and closer to Bright, she could see his eyes. They were very large and had a nice quality to them that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“There’s something you need to know,” said Grassly. “About what’s going on here.”
“Hello!” interrupted Fon. “We know what’s going on. The House of It has a new location and it wants us! We’re totally making it happen by acing every test. When we get promoted to the House of It, we will ROCK THAT PLACE!” She gave a loud whoop and held her hands up for someone, anyone, to smack in agreement.
Bright didn’t move. She stared into Grassly’s unexpectedly attractive eyes, waiting for his explanation.
“Sure,” he said. “That’s right. You’re doing great. Both of you. The House of It is impressed.”
“I knew it!” cried Fon.
Grassly slid his dataglasses back onto his face. His hand went to his temple and he wiggled his fingers, his head locked in place. He made a distressed noise and began to speak in a rush, the words practically bumping into one another in their hurry to get out of his mouth.
“Soon the lights will go out in every zone. The Store will be dark. At that time, I need you to go to the Headquarters and find a large switchboard. Flip switches until the lights come back on. Can you do that?”
Bright’s eyes widened. Was he crazy? No one went into the Headquarters, where the Deciders decided stuff. It was unheard of. No one had seen anyone from the Board of Deciders for a long time, and that was just fine by everyone. Why were people putting so many demands on her? Things were so much better when she just had to be an incredibly fun person with amazing style.
“I don’t think—”
“It’s time you started thinking,” said the PS officer who called himself Grassly.
Bright felt her tiny nostrils flare. “That,” she said stiffly, “is not in my job description.”
“She’s right,” said Fon. “It’s not in our contract. Or, like, our skill set or whatever.”
The officer turned his head to look at Fon. “Would you mind waiting in the cart?”
“Sure,” said Fon, agreeably. “How long should I wait?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Grassly.
Grassly led Bright away. They stood close to the rubberized membrane. A small, crescent-shaped light had appeared overhead, barely visible through the ceiling skin. It made her shiver.
“Bright,” said Grassly, “First of all, I’m not really from the House of It.”
She’d had a feeling he was going to say that. “Oh,” she said.
“And there’s something you should know about your contract.”
“Yes?”
“Releasing is not what you think.”
A pain pierced her side under her left arm, like she’d been jabbed. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“When you are released from your contract—”
“We come back better than ever,” she interrupted. “And it’s awesome. Even though it’s obviously not fun, like, at the time.”
“Bright?” Grassly’s voice was quiet. “When you are released from your contract, you die.”
So soft, his words. Like a kiss. Not that she’d ever felt a kiss. But they looked soft in the videos of the olden days that were used to demonstrate the dangers of unproductive attachments.
“We just go away for a while,” she insisted. She could hear the desperation in her voice. “Then we come back, better than ever. We’ve negotiated an excellent contract for ourselves.”
“I’m sorry, Bright,” Grassly said. “When you are released, you die. You do not come back. No one does.”
Bright nearly tripped over her own feet. A thousand questions tumbled around her brain. The pain under her arm was worse. “It’s not true,” she whispered. She’d seen hundreds of people released from their contracts. It was an essential part of corporate life. Of commerce! No one liked the idea of being released, but it was better than dying accidentally, like one of the sad, lumpy people in the warning displays of the Natural Experience.
“You are the only one in the Store who knows,” Grassly said. “But right now you’re all in danger of being released from your contracts. Forever. I want to save you. I want to save all of you. I have a ship, and I will take you all away and give you a fresh start somewhere new. But I need your help.”
Bright struggled to keep up. “What are you talking about? What do you mean you have a ship?”
“We’ll get to that later,” Grassly said.
“What about our promotions to It?”
He shook his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. “This was never about the House of It. I just said that to get you to help me.”
“You lied?” she said, aware that she sounded like Fon. “But … the helmet? It’s not from the House of It?”
Grassly shook his head. “I made it,” he said. “And when you turn the lights back on, all the lights will be like the one on the helmet.”
It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in.
“So everyone will be like Slater. And my client. Why?”
“I don’t have time to explain everything that’s happening,” he said. “There have been unintended consequences from the lights. From my efforts to help. And now we need to move quickly. Everyone in the Store is in danger. Please, just trust me.”
This was too much.
“Trust you?” she said. “Even though your ‘unintended consequences’ are the reason everything is going crazy? And now you’re changing all the lights in the Store? I don’t understand anything anymore, and your directions don’t make any sense! This is all outside my training modules, and I think you should know that I’m feeling very upset right now! Why should I trust you?”
“Because I am trying to help you.”
“Why?” asked Bright. “We were fine. We were having fun!”
“You’re just going to have to trust me,” he repeated. “When the lights go out, I need you to go to the Headquarters and turn them on. Then come straight back here to the Natural Experience. Turn left at the skinny tree. Just like you did today. Go to the round doorway. I will save as many of you as I can. That’s all I have time to explain.”
Before Bright could tell him that she didn’t trust him, not one bit, Fon’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
“I thought I heard you guys call me,” Fon said. “So, the House of It wants us to turn the lights on?”
Fon must not have heard most of what Grassly said, because she sounded just like she always did.
“That’s right,” Grassly said, as though his conversation with Bright never happened. “This is all part of the testing process. Once you have turned the lights back on, head back to the Natural Experience and it will be time for your promotion.”
Fon was nodding. “I knew it.”
Grassly turned his head to assess the membrane. “You are right to avoid the gate. But how do you propose to get the cart through the skin?”
Bright didn’t reply. She was never going to speak to him again, in case he said more upsetting things.
“I have a tool,” said Fon. “It’s got a blade and scissors. I use it to rewire my halo when it gets a short. I keep it with me all the time.”
Bright stared at her dressing-mate, who had turned on her halo so she twinkled like a sparse galaxy.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty awesome tool. But it’s really shar
p, so don’t cut yourself.” Fon lifted a long tan leg and slid the tool from a strap on her thigh.
“Oh my job,” muttered Bright.
“Here you go.” Fon waved the tool in the air.
Grassly had begun to look over his shoulder, as though he was late for an appointment. “Be careful in the Partytainment District,” he said. “It would be best to avoid it completely. I’m counting on you to turn the lights back on. It’s critically important.”
The pink twinklers on Fon’s halo were reflected in Grassly’s dataglasses, turning his eyes into stars.
“On your way to the Headquarters, try to avoid all other PS staff. Also, it might be a good idea to change.”
“You mean like our outfits? We were going to do that anyway,” said Fon.
“I mean change into a disguise. Look like another kind of person. Preferably a productive. They are still safe.”
“Eeew,” said Fon.
Grassly’s mirrored dataglasses glittered at Bright. “You can do this,” he said. “After you turn on the lights, get back here as soon as you can.”
Then Grassly turned and began to run. He ran faster than anyone Bright had ever seen. His legs were a black blur. As he disappeared into the blackness of the Natural Experience, she thought she’d never seen anyone so graceful, not even on an advermercial. Still, she was glad that she hadn’t agreed to do what he said.
22.00
Grassly found the blond boy sitting cross-legged on a surfboard at the entrance to the Sankalpa. The outline of Earth’s moon was faintly visible overhead, and it bathed the boy in a soft glow. Grassly considered stepping around the boy without speaking and just going inside. He was exhausted by the Sending. Overwhelmed by the situation, which seemed to get more out of control every time he turned around. Now that he was standing in front of the ship, with its comforting doorway waiting to iris open and take him back inside, he wished he’d never seen the ancestors. Every one of his good intentions resulted in ten unintended consequences, more than even his tremendous brain could process.
His guilty feelings were absurd, given all he was doing for the ancestors—trying to protect them from each other and to rescue them in the least invasive, most natural way possible. So his first attempts at the lights hadn’t worked that well and a few barely functioning ancestors had died sooner than they would have otherwise. So the seal between his ship and the Store was about to cause a breach in the skin. So there was some evidence that enlightenment hadn’t been the best way to achieve his goals. All that just made his mission more important than ever.
He was being too hard on himself. The idea behind enlightenment came from the ancestors themselves. He’d used their own historical documents to design their rescue! There were limits to how much responsibility one 51 should have to take.
He pulled himself together. He couldn’t leave the boy outside. After all, he’d worked hard to get the ancestors to come here willingly, and now one had. If the commander suddenly decided to send PS staff patrols to the Natural Experience and they ventured off the main path, the boy would be helpless. It wouldn’t do for the commander or any other PS staff to discover the ship’s entrance, which was not well disguised.
Before he could speak, the blond boy gave a great, heaving sigh.
“Are you okay?” Grassly asked.
“Oh,” said the boy, his rippling cords of muscle seeming to gleam in the dark. “I’m just super-glad to be here.”
“Right. That’s good. I’m going to go inside now. You may come along, but please don’t talk. I have some programming to do.”
“Seriously?” asked the boy, getting to his feet in one startlingly fast movement, like a cork popping to the surface after it had been submerged in liquid.
“It’s not difficult work, but it’s going to be time-consuming. I cannot be disturbed. Even though, to be quite honest with you, what I’d really like to do is nap.”
As he spoke, the ship’s gangway emerged and slid noiselessly to the sand. The doorway blinked open.
Grassly ignored the boy’s pained noise. He wasn’t sure how long the effect of the lights would last. He would solve that particular problem once he had the enlightened ancestors on board and the rescue flight under way.
“Hurry now,” he said. He held out a hand and the boy took it.
Grassly remembered that he had some food stored on the ship. How glorious it would be to eat something in solid form!
“Come on now,” he urged, pulling the boy into the vast expanse of the Sankalpa’s cargo bay. The lights inside flickered on, revealing the gleaming, featureless surfaces and comforting stillness.
The boy stopped dead, staring around him, confused. Well, more confused. It seemed to be the nature of favours to be permanently semi-addled.
“But …” he said.
“I know. It’s not what you’re used to. I’ll program in some music and see what I can do about getting some games and other entertainments in here. Don’t worry. You’re going to enjoy the trip. For most of it, you’ll be asleep. But right now I really must excuse myself.”
“I thought it would be different,” said the boy. “The light, I mean. More like outside.”
“Don’t worry. Soon you’ll have all the light you can handle,” said Grassly.
That seemed to satisfy the boy. He put his board on the floor, fin side up, and sat down on top of it. Grassly went to the ship’s main computer and opened the messages that had been routed to his drowned link. While he tucked into a delicious meal of dried purple jagodas, he hacked deep into what remained of the feed and began programming. It was like operating on a dangerously ill patient.
Parts of the task were simply tedious, so after a few hours he decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask the boy a few questions as he worked.
“What’s your name?” The boy’s data wasn’t registering on his dataglasses.
“Slater,” said the boy.
“And you’re from …?”
“House of Boards.”
That made sense, given the boy’s choice of seating.
“Bright used the light on you?”
Slater shook his head. “I don’t remember. I think I might have done it to myself.”
Grassly looked up from his programming. “You did?”
“I was high. I saw her bag and looked inside, and the helmet was right there. I just wanted to touch something of hers, even though I’m not normally a stuff-toucher. You know?”
To his astonishment, Grassly did know. He thought of how Bright’s face had lost its artifice when he’d told her the truth about releasing. She’d looked like a completely different person. “I see,” said Grassly.
“I know, I know—it’s not like she’s the top favour or anything. But I gotta tell you, ever since I saw the light, I have these desires, and dude, they are fierce. Like I just want to …” Slater made a low growling noise in his throat.
“Rrrrr?” repeated Grassly, simultaneously offended on Bright’s behalf and fascinated by the effect of the lights.
“Yeah, it’s like I want … something, but I’m not sure what it is. I thought I found it when Bright and Fon brought me here.” Abruptly, Slater changed the subject. “I always talked to Bright because she’s easier, you know. She’s amazing and funny and everything, but she’s no Fon. Whoa. No words to describe that one.”
Grassly thought back through the hours he’d spent watching the two favours since he’d chosen Fon to receive the light and Bright had taken the initiative to steal it. He’d chosen Fon for her credit rating, and Fon was the more immediately impressive of the two, at least in terms of her ability to create large edifices with her hair and put together complicated outfits. But as he’d watched them both, he’d seen something much more interesting in Bright. She had a certain unpredictability.
As he considered this, a sick realization swept over him. Bright had never actually agreed to do what he’d asked! All she said was that she didn’t trust him and that she was confused. That wasn’t
a yes at all!
“Snick!” he shouted, startling himself and the boy with his sudden use of a common and quite foul swear word from H51.
“Sorry, bro,” Slater said. “You just do what you’ve got to do and I’ll wait. I’ve got so much going on in my mind right now, you know? And I never really had anything in there before. Just some dance moves or whatever.”
“Exactly,” said Grassly. He had made a good start on reprogramming the lights, but now worry was slowing him down. Would Bright and Fon go to the Headquarters and turn the lights back on?
After he turned out the lights on the ancestors, all bets were off. The PS staff were running amok. The seal was failing. And here he was wasting time talking to a boy without enough brain power to communicate effectively.
“No more talking,” said Grassly.
“Dude, have you seen the new shorts for Kiteboard look?” asked Slater. “They’re choice.”
Like many favours, Slater had a limited store of adjectives. Grassly, while trying to ignore Slater and concentrate on his task, nevertheless decided that after the ship had cleared the Earth’s toxic atmosphere and he’d engaged the energy-thermo-nova drive and had a nice long sleep, he would sit down and teach the ancestors some new words. Even Sally Lancaster, who’d been a limited communicator at best, had had a more extensive vocabulary, including words such as “angelic,” “beautiful,” “powerful,” “divine,” and “holy.” Of course, none of those words was suitable for a discussion of shorts.
“I wanted to order some,” continued Slater. “But I’m like getting on, even though I’m at my total peak, muscularity-wise. So I didn’t have the credits. Brutal. Because I would have looked rad in those shorts.”
“Yes,” said Grassly. “Rad.” He reached for another flake of dried szpinak. He’d eaten three packages since arriving at the ship.
“Is that stuff good for your teeth?”
Grassly allowed himself to be distracted, yet again.
“What?”
“Chewing stuff the way you keep doing. Isn’t it a little … wearing?”
Grassly was sure that part of the reason the ancestors had a greatly reduced lifespan was their practice of not chewing anything because they worried about staining and chipping their teeth. By the age of fifteen, few of them had any real teeth left because of party impacts, but their irrational fear persisted.
