“’Cause I’m going to join the army, silly, along with the rest of this merry band of misfits.”
I laughed, a little bit relieved. “I kinda doubt it. You hate being told what to do.”
“Depends on who’s doing the telling.”
“No, it doesn’t. You wouldn’t last a day.”
“It’s a link-based ROTC program and I’ve lasted several months so far, so I guess you could say I’m off to a pretty promising start.”
I’d heard him talk about this a little with Dad, but I hadn’t thought he’d been serious. “Really, Jaden, the ROTC?”
“Really, Dorian.” He paused and squinted, cocking his head again. “I think you have this idea about what a great brother you’ve been to me and how much you’ve helped me and everything and that I really, really owe you for it. And I appreciate the thought—I do—but what have you done really? Come into my room every once in a while when you’re feeling guilty and regurgitate things you’ve skimmed from pop psych articles? You don’t understand me . . . seriously, how could you possibly even pretend to if you don’t care enough to know the simplest things about my life?”
“I know exactly what you want me to know. It’s not my fault you’re secretive.”
“A secret is something you keep hidden. Does this look like hiding?” There was a hint of glee on his face as Jaden flung his arm toward the four at the bar. “I’ve been hanging out with your friend there, Spencer, for over a month now.”
I frowned, my gaze following his. “And so what about the rest of you? Are you really joining the army?”
“We three are,” said a kid with freckles and auburn hair. “Spencer just started playing, so I don’t think he’s sure yet.”
“At least they pay for training and everything if you qualify as a special ops candidate. I mean, what else are we supposed to do with ourselves?” Spencer asked.
“Not that,” I said, returning the almond milk to the refrigerator and walking out of the room. “But I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
Chapter 15
My feet were cold and a chill slipped through the slit in the back of my hospital gown as I stared at the equipment around me. All sleek and white-matted metal—possessing a foreign, experimental quality. I wasn’t nervous, though. It was a daunting step and I’d had a few last-minute butterflies yesterday, but I’d decided that nervousness was a luxury for people who have something to lose.
Sun flaring through a tinted blue skylight was the last thing I saw as the nurse closed the staging room door behind her and led us into a hallway. I returned Ethan’s smile. We were taking off, and we both knew it. I thought of Lena in Midland Park, reading her book, and then us kissing a long, familiar kiss. Little explosions going off, warm and devastating, and I willed my mind to hold on to the moment. I belonged there. I belonged with her, and every step I took was making the dream more real.
As we walked further in, the facility became an elegant cavern of corridors that were less clinical and more like a spaceship, with metallic walls made somber by gray paneling and horizontal track lights that shone down upon the nurse and her clipboard like starlight. Monitors glimpsed through door cracks blinked like firing neurons. The air was frigid and dry, as though the moisture had been sucked out of it by a vacuum and all that remained after you breathed was the sense that something familiar had gone missing.
The nurse stopped in front of a large steel door, whispered something into an earpiece, and after a few seconds it opened. “Dr. Griswald will see you now,” she said to us, with the faintest trace of self-satisfaction, like she’d done something very clever in leading us here.
A bass voice called through the door, “Come in, boys.”
Without hesitation we walked through the doorway and saw a tanned—almost bronze-skinned—man who, in a white lab coat, looked an odd conglomeration of research scientist and Hollywood cosmetic surgeon. His lips were full and impossibly red, his jaw firm and dramatic. And his age . . . I want to say he was in his thirties, but his expression seemed much older, with the air of having everything already long figured out.
“Have a seat,” he said, his voice smooth like obsidian. And then he shook our hands with an assurance that suggested he’d done this countless times before and we had absolutely nothing to worry about. “Hello, Dorian. And you must be Ethan. Welcome to Sunlight 24.”
“I’m curious why you call it that. Isn’t S24 just a gene mod that protects you from solar radiation?” Ethan asked.
“Yes, but as with any name, it’s more about what it conveys. And Sunlight 24 conveys mastery over something as sublime and awesome as ultraviolet itself,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “The lesson of mythology isn’t that the next Icarus shouldn’t fly so close to the sun, but that he should have Sunlight 24 when he does. And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you want to fly a little closer to the sun.”
“I suppose.”
“And I trust it’s been pleasant thus far?”
I nodded, matching his calmness.
“We try to make things as comfortable as possible. Some people get unnerved about treating their condition.”
“Condition?” I repeated.
“You wouldn’t be at a clinic if you didn’t have a medical condition. Trauma, inflammation, and cancer aren’t the only things that cause harm. So can not having something.”
“You don’t die any sooner without Revision,” I said.
“No, but you die sooner compared with everyone else. And that’s the real measure. Depression. Anxiety. Un-employability. Pain. It all ends the same way. Our universe is so vast that gauging our lives in absolute terms leads only to despair. It’s only when we stand on top of each other that we can reach toward the stars.”
He paused and studied our faces for a moment and, seemingly satisfied, continued, “Fortunately, there’s a cure that helps us do just that.”
“Revision,” said Ethan.
“I prefer not to call it that. Revision refers to merely changing something that already exists. Editing. But if you’re constantly swapping the old for the new, at some point along the way the result is something new. A new mind, a new person, a new species. Of course, the powers that be can’t say that; it would be too much. But fortunately, technology obliges by keeping its skies dark and mysterious.” He chuckled. “You can lead someone anywhere you want simply by lighting up the next step. And then all it takes is a push.”
He was right; we were making something entirely new. I guess I found it odd that a place designing life would itself be so devoid of it, though. Everything was sterile—more than just clean, but like the essence had been scrubbed off and frames and containers were the only things remaining. The chairs were cold, glacial. The lighting fixtures hung overhead like distant stars distilled to the whitest, harshest spectrums.
“New is natural, and it always has been. What’s unnatural is this recent invention of welfare as virtuous. This grand lie of pretending that a pawn has the same value as a rook even after all reason, all experience, and every fiber of your being tells you otherwise. It might make you charitable in a sense, but not more just. Not a better person. If you coddle the weak, it’s not only they that will get weaker. It’s you. It’s everyone you know. It’s everyone who knows of you. Safety nets catch the genes, too, defying evolution’s sanitation system like a clogged toilet—polluting the world. But thankfully, it’s changing. A great migration’s underway, which is what always happens anytime a place gets so contaminated that it’s rendered uninhabitable. Though this time, the pilgrims are the gods and science is the armorer, outfitting them for their journey.
“So that leads me to this question: What can I make you?”
“Well, I know we’re getting the basic nano-starter from the brochure, but the rest . . . that’s all a matter of price, not want,” I said, trying to disguise how keen I was. Our gold converted to over 400,000 Benjies, but there was so much to get and the stuff worth getting the most
probably ran beyond six figures.
“They’re the same thing. That’s why you’re here. You wanted this badly enough to pay your own way.”
“It doesn’t always work like that, Doctor. The kids with rich parents just get to stroll in here,” I said.
“Yes, and then they stroll out with gifts they don’t know how to use. Circumstance’s smile is too often mistaken for a frown because it’s not in the having, but in the having overcome that greatness is formed. Muscles, like us, only grow after they tear. And how do we tear?”
“Tear? You mean, what hurts us?” asked Ethan.
“Yes. What hurts us? What hurts you?”
“Um . . . I don’t know. Not being loved. Not being good enough,” said Ethan matter-of-factly.
“And how do you know that you’re not good enough?” asked Dr. Griswald.
“When I see someone else who’s better.”
“And that makes you jealous, right?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it does. Inequality begets jealousy, and jealousy begets competition, and competition begets creation. Sport. Science. Art. Everything beautiful is born in strife. It seems that you’ve dealt with some of your own to arrive here.”
I shrugged.
“That’s the kind of patient I like to treat.”
“I thought you were treating us because we were paying with this,” I said, gesturing at my bag.
The doctor smiled grimly. “That doesn’t hurt either. Though I’m afraid I’ll have to include a markup for extra risk.”
My eyes narrowed. “Risk? What risk?”
“The risk of dealing with someone who deals in hard metal.”
When Dr. Griswald saw the look on my face, he added, “Remember: charity helps no one. It’s all pay to play now and it’s simply the price of admission. Anyway . . . in addition to the base treatment already scheduled, here’s what I can layer on top.”
A screen lit up above Ethan, the doctor, and me with prices, procedures, and associated descriptions.
“Want to be a star quarterback?”
“I’ve been one and it’s not so great,” I answered.
“You say that like you’ve transcended the notion of physical superiority, but maybe you shouldn’t be so dismissive. Since the nerds—the meek, as they say—have inherited the earth, it seems like impeccable timing for someone with a little might to come along.”
“First things first, Doc.”
“Memory?”
“No, I haven’t done anything worth remembering yet. More on the lines of raw horsepower: Speed of calculation, abstraction analysis, idea synthesis. Whatever’s most cost-effective.”
“Sure, sure, but informing every what is a why. What are your goals? What do you want to achieve?” he asked.
And so I told him.
Chapter 16
“We’ll take one of everything. I’m not even joking, bro,” Ethan said to the waiter as he sprawled out in the red leather booth. We were in Chevalier’s, this French wine and dessert bar that was probably about as upscale as we could get away with without some monitoring algorithm wondering just how we were paying. Ethan had wanted to go to Rue de Seine, but that was too close to the neighborhood where the wealthiest families from our school lived—the people who could almost afford Revision, but not quite. The kids with a sad kind of pseudo bravado. I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew—instead keeping this apart, angled away from the scrap pit we’d just dug ourselves out of.
When the waiter had gone, Ethan turned back to me, grinning, looking more carefree than I’d seen him since middle school. “So, do ya feel smarter?”
It seemed obvious now, but I’d been asking myself that same question all day, pausing after each thought and checking for novelty. Both last night and when I woke up this morning I couldn’t really tell any difference. But, as the day wore on, and little questions—like what books I needed for certain classes and what time I needed to be places—answered themselves automatically and, when I was able to solve my continuous function problem set without even touching the calculator in my film, I knew it was more than stress hormones and signaling molecules. “Dr. Griswald said it’d be fast, but fuckin’ A.”
“I was a little worried that he was . . .” Ethan made a yapping gesture with his hand, “Big hat, no cattle. But yeah . . . it’s real.”
“Real,” I repeated.
“This might sound weird, but I keep thinking this must be what it’s like being born. Everything’s bright and sharp. Things making sense even before you know what you’re making sense of,” said Ethan, his smile getting even bigger, speaking with the kind of light, ace-holding assuredness I hadn’t heard him use in years.
“I know, it’s like I’m a different person. The same, but . . .” I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. It felt like time had slowed down, but I knew in actuality that I was just faster—like I was skipping across water. On top of each moment. On to the next thing before I was done with the last. It made sense considering that the millions of nanobots that Dr. Griswald had injected us with didn’t just carry more oxygen to our brains, but they actually laid fiber. Building this plasma membrane called myelin around our axons that made electrical impulses travel quicker—speeding up our neuronal firing rate.
“Revised. ‘Cause we fucking are. We fucking did it,” said Ethan quietly. He was still smiling, but his voice was cracking and his eyes were getting glossy, looking spellbound and cathartic. “I always thought we were chasing something we’d never be able to catch. But now we have, and it’s more amazing than I even imagined. The thinking just streams out now. Not just any old thoughts, but good thoughts. Meaningful thoughts. Like . . . like . . .”
Ethan was looking up at the wall above me, but it was more like he was seeing something that was rushing past, his eyes flickering, darting to keep up. “Like let’s think about these houses we’re not hitting because we’re afraid of the alarms when . . . when all they’re doing is scanning for things as basic as heat and movement. That shit’s simple to hide. I mean, we could make suits, special suits that refract light using nanotubes, so we’d seem invisible.” His head bowed down so now he was looking at the table. “Or, better yet, we could go the other way and build something heat-conducting so we wouldn’t be picked up on infrared.” He laughed. “It makes my uncle’s piles of random junk that much more valuable now that we’re smart enough to repurpose them. Who would ever have thought in ten million years that fried old loser would be so useful?”
I rotated the piece of cheesecake the waiter had just brought on my fork, watching the cherry topping drip down the baked cream cheese. “Ethan. Ethan, my friend, my pal. Last spring—before all this started—we knew that if it worked there’d be this magnetic temptation to keep going . . . so we swore we wouldn’t, kind of like hiding the keys while we were still sober. Well, now we’re drunk.”
“That was the plan, but we didn’t know what this was going to feel like. How could we? I mean, I thought it was going to be subtle, but it’s not. I see it now. I picture a problem and then right there, there’s a solution. So why on earth would we stick with a plan conceived in its absence? ’Cause that wouldn’t make any sense.” He put his fork down and looked me straight in the eye. “This is only the beginning, Dorian. Imagine—imagine what it’ll be like after another few rounds. We’ll be geniuses, racing past everyone else, and the chances of us getting caught will actually be dropping because we’ll be that much farther ahead; each step informing the next one like nuclei smashing together in a chain reaction. Who knows, before long we could be hitting estates, maybe even small art museums.”
“Art museums?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Recognizing my wariness, he pondered for a few moments. “Yeah, I mean that way we could get money for other people to Revise, too. You know, people like Michael. Who’s a super guy, but would never have the balls to do anything like this.”
“I don’t think he wants that kind of help.”
“Not Tony.”
“Fine, forget him. But you get the idea.”
“I get that you’re getting greedy and trying to justify things.” I picked up my fork again and glanced around the plates. “Have you tried the lemon merengue yet?”
“How about we don’t question each other’s motives for a hot second here? Fair enough?”
I shrugged.
“I admit that in the old days each step you took would be riskier because there’d be more moving parts, more breadcrumbs leading back to you. But now, each step gets safer because we get smarter. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we should forget everything we know, just that not everything’s the same. And we can’t be either if we want to keep up.”
At this point he was leaning over the table looking me dead in the eye, emboldened, drunk off his own concoction of logic. “So when you think about it, it’s actually riskier not to. Especially for you. Especially with Lena.”
I had started cutting another slice of devil’s food cake but stopped. Just her name was enough to make the blood rush to my face. I pictured her ensconced in conversation with Martin and Abigail, taking the piss out of Lawrence Prep, and it all came into focus again. She made everything light up.
And Ethan was right: this was the only chance I was going to get. Next year she’d be off to an Ivy surrounded by the most elite, most Revised kids there were and I’d never see her again. Our current Revision might be good enough to get us into a decent state school and make enough money to Revise again at some point later, but—given the Lawrence kids’ huge head start—we’d never catch up. “Let me think about it.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Ethan mumbled, his mouth full of crème brûlée. “We don’t need to solve the whole puzzle, only fit the next piece in. It’s the same reason we don’t have to worry about your brother. I’m not dumb, I know him. I know he’s a wild card. But all we have to do is stall until we’re smart enough to handle him properly.”
Sunlight 24 Page 12
