Especially in this heat, with the sun eating through my clothes. I was like an Alaskan Husky, sled-less, trapped in an equatorial climate, in skin that was already starting to burn. Everyone who didn’t have the UVRAG gene mod, aka Sunlight 24, got burned all the time now. Melanoma and carcinoma diagnostics were getting better, so it wasn’t the end of the world. But it still hurt. It still turned you into a lobster. And the way the sun hung low and red in the sky made the whole world feel alien: the endless rows of houses, the mountains in the background jutting out from the purple haze, and goalposts on the empty soccer field worn thin with rust. If everything else is turning alien around you, at what point do you become the pariah?
I tried not to think about it, or anything else, as the sidewalk met the dirt path that went into the park, concentrating only on the sound of sneakers and the smell of the earth they kicked into the air. But the robins and the song thrushes and every other bird singing in the denser foliage were reminders. They, too, were aliens husked in the familiar. So much so that even the top ornithologists increasingly couldn’t tell the difference between them and ones that used to fly around back when I was in grade school. And while it had started with pollinators, as different species died off, it was becoming everything; the crickets and cicadas sang better songs, the spiders didn’t bite, and the rosebuds erupted with a never-before-seen kind of violence. Nature had been figured out, her life story madly scribbled down as she lay in hospice.
And so it was for Syd. While not as elegantly expressed as some of the others, the algorithms governing her were enhanced versions of those Nature had herself used for millions of years. They affected subtle nuances of movement. They programmed cells that would grow the same plush feathers and originate the same pitch-perfect chirping indistinguishable to the human ear. It was functional but not natural, while I was natural but not functional. It was now very clear to me which one of those was better.
Chapter 7
Benjamin Franklin High School rested atop Archer Hill, overlooking the tree-lined streets that made up our suburb’s easternmost residential district. Built as part of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, the building’s brick and neoclassical stone columns had enough history and weight that when you walked across the terraced parking lot and up through the knoll, you couldn’t help but feel like you were part of something important.
The first day of the year, especially, used to be electric with anticipation; imagining that there might be someone new who’d become your best friend or girlfriend or both. Sure, it was unlikely, but it was possible, and as long as things are possible, the world can be a pretty exciting place.
As I plodded through the doors for the first time this year, though, there were no butterflies—none of that feeling of wonder—because there was a cap on how great someone could be at this school now. It was simple economics; if they had enough money to Revise, they’d be at Lawrence. And no matter how hard we studied and strived, we’d still be clowns relative to any of them.
Who cared if we juggled three balls or four? Who cared if Sheila Lynne passed her Science PLACEs exam or if Rob Pontas improved his 400-meter dash time? It just didn’t matter. No one was interested if the beetle passing over your shoe was going slightly faster than your average beetle, or if the JV squad scored an extra touchdown. They weren’t even in the real game.
I slunk down the stairs of the B add-on section and through the double doors to the cafeteria, where students were strewn about in uneven gatherings and semi-circles like a large quilt. Every year there was slightly different stitching, and patches were swapped out for each other, but it was pretty much the same old quilt you’d expect. Michael, Ethan, and Christopher, who were all in the so-called “gifted” students program with me, were sitting at the little round table farthest to the right, the place we’d claimed ever since freshman year. And like stains, Tony and Spencer were there, too.
Spencer had been hanging out with us since the beginning of middle school, back when a friendship could be based on something as meager as being fans of the same sports team. We had all loved The Oakland A’s and staying up all night playing Final Avenger, but as you get older those types of skin-deep shared interests aren’t enough. You run out of things to talk about. And even though it would be better for everyone to just jump ship, you linger because it’s safer and easier, and slowly days become weeks, and weeks become months and years.
I’m not even sure how it happened with Tony. I think he’d started following Alexei around after taking the same fencing class. But then when Alexei moved we inherited Tony by some assumed will, and suddenly I was spending ten hours a week with someone I could care less if I ever saw again in my life. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was quiet, like Spencer, but Tony was obnoxious in a way that crawled inside your ear—hijacking perfectly good conversations and driving them off cliffs.
Some people do that on occasion by accident and it’s not the worst thing, but Tony was a systematic parasite. If it were only Ethan and me, we could’ve shaken him off no problem, but he instinctively knew to go after Michael. And it wasn’t like Michael was dumb or wanted to give us up, either, just that remoteness was the farthest he’d go in response, which tragically’s the kind of barrier that tone-deaf people are the most impervious to.
I had started turning when I saw the gang together, knowing I wouldn’t be able to ask Michael about Syd, but Christopher’s voice cut through the hum of the cafeteria. “Dorian! Get over here!”
Stopped in my tracks, I half-waved. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my friends—I liked Ethan, Michael, and Chris a lot. It was just that all I could think about was casing more houses and I didn’t want to be reminded of the kind of normal that I was trying to leave. It would dull my focus. It would relax me at the exact time I needed to be the most worked up. The most committed.
“I barely saw you all summer, man. Don’t think you can skate away that easy,” Christopher said as I stepped inside the circle.
“I thought you were with your cousins.”
“For two weeks; then I texted as soon as I was back,” Chris replied as I powered down the heads-up, augmented reality (AR) display on my film that was showing pop-up ads about the candy on sale in the cafeteria’s vending machines. He was right: I’d blown him off. The last time we’d really all hung out together was in June, after he’d had us all over to check out his family’s new buddy bot. It was the model before Mr. Jefferson, so it didn’t have the advanced motor and speech features, but it still could hold down a pretty decent conversation and we’d spent the whole afternoon goofing around, using it to make fun of each other. I don’t think I’d ever laughed harder in my life than when it told Chris, who prided himself on his meticulous hygiene, that his farts were 22% worse than the national average when judged by their quantity of hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan.
“So . . .” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Has Michael had his seizure yet?”
Michael had had a seizure on the first day of school for two years running now. But his face animated as Spencer put his arm around him, somehow always loving this kind of joke despite his condition’s seriousness. “I’m saving that for Mrs. Terry’s class. Going to give her some extra froth this time.”
“Thatta kid,” said Tony.
“But what was that back there?” asked Christopher, squinting a little as he looked me over.
Chris had always been athletic, but it seemed like he’d put on some serious muscle over the summer. He’d said something about going on this intensive training plan called XR17, but it was designed for people who’d already been significantly Revised, and I hadn’t taken him seriously.
I put my bag down on the table next to us. “What was what?”
“You started to turn around after you saw us.”
“Turn around?” I asked. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you totally did,” said Christopher, his face becoming serious. You normally wouldn’t think so because of ho
w good-natured he was, but sometimes he could be pretty intimidating. His blue eyes almost fierce. His square jaw and sturdiness transforming into something more elemental.
I should’ve just said, “So what?” But I had to lie so much about casing houses and for my job in Wolftac R8, that it was almost instinctive now. Like a reflex. “Oh, okay, well, yeah—I, I forgot my genetics textbook in my locker, and I was going back to get it.”
Chris shook his head, seizing upon my hesitation.
“What—you think that I didn’t forget it?”
“Open up your backpack.”
“Huh?”
“I said unzip your backpack.”
My face flushed. “Seriously?” I’d never really considered the possibility of having such a low-stakes, white lie examined.
“Yeah, seriously.” Chris grabbed the bag off the table before I could and pulled out my genetics textbook, raising it for everyone to see.
“You’re such a tampon,” I muttered. Getting humiliated was the last way I wanted to start the year. “What do you expect when you put someone on the spot like that, dickhead?”
“The truth,” Christopher shot back.
For a second, I thought he almost looked hurt, but then his face brightened as he wheeled around to the guys. “Oh, look at me, I’m Dorian. I lie all the time ’cuz I think I’m better than everyone else. The rules don’t apply to me.”
“He lies ’cuz he’s gangsta,” said Tony, flashing an awkward gang sign.
“Shut up, Tony,” said Chris.
“Yeah shut up, Tony,” I echoed. Getting backed up by a suck-up like him was actually pretty disgraceful and would give a skilled shamer like Chris that much more to work with. Now Chris was a good guy, and I got a pretty big kick out of having a boy scout like him around back when I wasn’t trying to do anything ambitious, but now I couldn’t help but see his to-the-letter moralizing as overdone and self-indulgent. As a smoke screen for his own fear of hard choices. I loved him and everything, but what a load of bullshit.
“And it does beg the question of how much you actually do this kind of thing,” said Christopher.
“It begs the question of why you don’t fuck off. Of course, I’m not going to want to come down here if I’m going to be fucking interrogated.”
“Oh, interrogated now,” said Chris, smiling. “Michael, he’s gotten word about what a savage you are with that protractor. Making the other teams spit out their problem set answers at astrophysics summer camp.”
Michael struck a faux smug, swaggering pose. “That’s right.”
“And Spencer, I heard you pistol-whipped your dealer. Said you were rollin’ wholesale now.”
Spencer looked confused, not knowing whether to play along or deny any insinuation that he was on stamps.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, still angry, but feeling the worst start to subside. Christopher wasn’t someone you could stay mad at. Despite the aforementioned qualms, he was funny and charming and probably the most heroic-ish person I’d ever met. Like freshmen year there was this really annoying obese kid, Randy, on the football team whom everyone always picked on, and one day before practice Randy had the brilliant idea of tying his keychain to the string of his shoulder pads, presumably so he wouldn’t lose them. But their jingling sound prompted kids to start mooing and prodding him with sticks, saying it was a cowbell. And Randy had started bawling and pacing around in a breaking point kind of way.
When Chris came out of the locker room, he told everybody to stop—which of course they didn’t like because it implied they were being assholes, which no one wants to be thought of as. So this prick, Dominic De’Silva, shoved him. And while Chris wasn’t bulky or anything, even then he’d had a powerful frame and just unloaded on Dom right there in front of everyone. Nearly a KO. Coach Palmer was pissed because Dom was too messed up to play in the next game, but he didn’t rat Chris out, nor did anyone else. And no one’s picked on ol’ Randy ever since.
“Alright, enough guys. Come on now,” said Michael as he got up and threw his arm around my shoulder. “That was just Chris’ way of saying he missed you.”
Christopher shook his head.
“You might not be glad to see us, but we’re sure glad to see you. You’ve been a ghost lately,” Michael continued.
“There hasn’t been much to say.”
“Did you get that job at Tethys?” asked Michael.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Seriously? You would’ve been perfect for that.”
“Nah, he’s not a friendly ghost,” said Chris.
“You haven’t seen him in action. My grandparents love him,” said Michael. “He’s always one of the first things they bring up every time we visit. ‘How’s that nice friend of yours from school doing? He’s so handsome and well-mannered.’ Blah, blah, blah.”
“That’s just ’cuz old people are easy to con,” said Ethan.
Spencer spoke up for the first time, “If you can’t get a decent job, Dorian, what hope do we have?”
He’d been hitting the stamps pretty hard lately and it showed. Shaky hands. Sniffles. Watery eyes. If you just did them once or maybe twice a week, you were golden, but most people had a hard time pricking the balloon when they were floating that high. And I guess it didn’t really matter with Spencer since it wasn’t like anyone would hire him anyway. “None at all.”
“Well, Chris finally got that job at the Maple Lodge,” announced Michael.
“He said decent,” Tony said.
Chris pretended to glare at him. “Do you know how many people I beat out to get it?”
“That just means everyone’s desperate,” said Ethan. “It’s as a janitor, right? Cleaning the spots that the robos can’t reach yet.”
He nodded.
“But what about next year when the robos can reach those, too?”
“Jesus, Eth. I don’t know. I just need to pay my car insurance.”
“Will you still have time to volunteer at St. Mark’s?” asked Michael.
“I’ll make time.”
“Make time,” I repeated sarcastically, knowing the main reason he volunteered there was because it would look good on his Community Spirit scholarship application. But that it wouldn’t matter since you needed Revision to be accepted into any school worth attending anyway. “Chris, your monthly working rate is only like 10-15% higher than our BASIC payments. It’s not worth it. Especially considering the investment in soap you’ll need to scrub off that smell.” I stepped closer and put my arm around his shoulder, before jumping back.
“Fuck you.”
“Just saying.”
“You don’t get it; it’s not about the current position—its shift supervisor and manager and everything beyond that. You have to start somewhere,” said Christopher, his voice starting to turn defensive.
“Do you really think you’ll be in the running for those?” I asked.
“I have to try.”
“Why do you have to try? The deck’s stacked.”
“They’re better than your odds, genius.” The bell rang and vibrated over his last words, seeming to stretch them out. “What’s your great plan?”
“I’m . . .” I paused. I wanted to tell him, scream at him, that I was doing more than anyone, but I couldn’t. And in that moment, I felt as lonely as I ever had before. Eons away from us all joking around outside with Chris’ buddy bot, making it calculate the odds of us getting with different girls at school, cracking up while it sang us curse-filled rap songs. A part of me wanted back there so bad. Basking in the warmth of people who cared about you. Ethan was fine company, but there was something about being with Chris and Michael and him together that made me homesick—that made the sky deeper blue and the sun somehow sublime, even as it softened the pavement and strained the sprinklers ability to keep it from scorching the grass.
We were together now, but it was a hollowed-out together. I was only half present and the half that was there was hedging and fibbi
ng and sucking the air out of things. I wanted to apologize and tell everyone there was a good reason for it. And that it wasn’t their fault, just that I couldn’t pretend to not see what was happening around us anymore. That the change was too big and too loud, and it was only going to keep growing and growing until it engulfed us in oblivion. I wanted to blurt something out to that effect, but Ethan shot me a glance and I knew I had to check myself.
“Perhaps you’re dusting off your French?”
“Not so much,” I said, feeling even more uncomfortable.
“What are you guys talking about?” asked Tony.
“You haven’t heard?” Spencer seemed genuinely puzzled. “All the Lawrence kids—well, all the fancy prep school kids—have started speaking French outside of class.”
“They want to show how smart they are,” added Michael. “And it’s a quick way for them to tell if someone’s worth talking to or not. Like a filter. You’d think if they were all as big of geniuses as they claim to be, they wouldn’t need it, though.”
“It’s just to be exclusive,” said Spencer.
“Right up your alley, Dorian. You sure you haven’t been off studying? C’mon, parler un peu,” teased Chris.
“Fuck off.” I knew he intended it to be in good fun, but I wanted to put him in a headlock.
“Ah, that’s not how a distinguished gentleman speaks, though I’m sure you’ll come around in a few months once you get jealous enough. It’s gotta be tough not being popular anymore.”
I laughed and shook my head as the second bell rang. “Don’t be naïve, Chris. I could be popular if I wanted, but there’s no one here worth impressing.”
Chapter 8
“Nanoscience is not a separate branch of science itself, but is the word given to the study of things very small.”
“You don’t say,” I muttered under my breath.
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