Several news stations line the hallway, their main cameramen and reporters already inside and ready for interviews. The press conference live streams on the web, and several Varga employees man a table filled with computer equipment dedicated to keeping the conference free of glitches.
There’s only one stairwell that connects the school to Varga Industries, and Jay the security guard was “nice” enough to use his eye against the retina scanner to grant me access to it, looking like he wanted to kill me the entire time. Sneaking into the school that way allows me to bypass the ID checkers at the front entrance, the ones who were probably instructed to turn me away on sight. But the guard in front of the auditorium doors doesn’t have the same orders. With more bravado than I’ve ever mustered, I march up to him. Before I even stop, he warns, “The session’s in progress. You can’t go in.”
I cross my arms, acting annoyed. “I’m Monica Varga’s daughter and I’m late for the presentation I’m supposed to give.”
The guard stands there, stone-faced.
“Go check if you must. But if I’m not on that stage in one minute, the entire press conference will be ruined. Do you want that on your shoulders?”
He purses his lips. “Let me see some ID.”
I happily show him my driver’s license and VIP pass, the one they issued to all seniors last week.
After studying them, he steps aside to let me pass. The tightness in my chest subsides as I push open the swinging doors.
“… secured the investors needed!” Leo’s voice booms from a microphone above the crowd’s cheers. “But it gets better.” He drums his palms against the podium. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. “There are several customers already lined up for the procedure. We’re going to begin saving lives tomorrow, folks!”
I scan the stage for Sebastian, but I don’t see him yet. He’s probably still concealed in the backstage wings. Mom stands next to Leo with a hand on his shoulder. Teddy stays a few feet away onstage, his face full of pain, as if he can’t quite bring himself to join them so close to the podium.
I march down the aisle, and when Mom spots me, she grabs the mic straight out of Leo’s hand.
“And now—” Mom locks her eyes on me, which gives me momentary pause. It’s almost as if she was waiting for me. Or maybe she’s just trying to get the info out to the world before I attempt to stop her. “It’s time to debut our first test subject.…”
Murmurs erupt from the crowd as a security guard pushes Sebastian onto the stage. He hesitates, his feet stuck in place, but Mom coaxes him toward her with her hand. I can see the pain of the choice rattling through him, the way his brow furrows. If he cooperates, he thinks he won’t be erased.
But he still can be.
If I choose Sebastian over Bash, the only true way to make him safe forever is to remove the copy of Theseus from the admin console bolted to the table on the stage. I’ve already deleted it from the admin console I stole from Zoey. But in removing the program from both admin consoles, not only will I erase all the memories Zoey stole, I’ll also lose Bash forever. Bash or Sebastian? I have to choose now, before the press conference ends.
Sebastian takes tentative steps toward the podium as I race down the aisle. “Don’t listen to a word she says!” I shout as I reach the stage stairs, but then someone grabs me from behind.
A security guard wrenches my wrists behind my back, and I grit my teeth to keep from crying out in pain. Muscular arms keep me from fighting back more than a wiggle of my elbows. My pulse amps, but I calm myself with a deep breath. I won’t get free by freaking out.
Sebastian’s eyes find mine, desperate, worried, pleading.
Mom smooths down her suit, her calm composure fading into an uncharacteristic smile. “You’ll have to excuse my daughter.” Her voice booms over mine. “She considers teenage rebellion more important than the news I’m about to share with you all.”
The crowd snickers at her joke. To them, the security guards are here to prevent me from ruining my mom’s big day, not keep me hostage until the private memories of every damn person in this room fall under her control, to be deleted at her whim. I slam my heel down on my captor’s foot. The guard lets out a yelp but doesn’t loosen his hold.
“Let me introduce you to Sebastian Cuomo.” Mom’s heels click along the wooden stage. The audience sits rapt with attention. I think back to something my mother said to me when she first conceived the school/distributor combo. We’re going to sell customers what they don’t need but can’t live without. And the prime currency seems to be entertainment.
“Sebastian here had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of inoperable brain cancer.” She flips to a new PowerPoint slide on the projector and illuminates a copy of Bash’s medical chart. “If you need a closer look, you’ll find copies of his chart in the packets provided at your seats.” The audience flips through their papers, reading about Bash’s personal data.
I struggle against my captor. “Mom, stop!”
Mom frowns at the audience. “As you can see, there was absolutely no way to save him.”
“Bash is dead. Please!” I elbow my security guard in the gut, my arm throbbing from the impact.
“But the good news is, we have saved him! As you just heard, Leo developed a procedure that not only eradicates every cancerous cell from the body, but also eliminates all ailments. No more autoimmune disease! No more blurry vision! No more acne.”
A few people in the audience cheer.
“And as you heard before that”—Mom waves her hand in Teddy’s general direction—“Teddy Day developed advanced 3-D bio-printing technology that can print any body part in a matter of seconds. And we do mean any. In fact, Teddy can print an entire human being.”
Leo’s eyebrows shoot way up to his forehead. Something inside me cracks with relief. He really didn’t know. I haven’t lost my entire family.
Mom flourishes her hand toward the back of the stage, where Zoey mans the admin laptop. “But it was Zoey Flint’s idea to marry the two procedures with a third I’m about to tell you about to save Bash Cuomo forever.”
Zoey beams, her eyes sparkling at finally getting the credit she believes she deserves.
“Arden’s right. It’s true that Bash Cuomo unfortunately succumbed to his cancer only a few days ago.”
“Yeah, and she hid the body!” I squirm harder now, trying to cause as much of a commotion as possible. I think of Sebastian’s mother, watching this from her couch, breaking into tears at the news that her son is dead and that no one bothered to tell her.
Gasps ring out.
Mom doesn’t even break a sweat. “I did not hide anything, as my daughter is trying to claim. I preserved him per the contract he signed when he turned eighteen last month.”
I let out an aggravated scream. Of course she’d have this all buttoned up legally. “Whatever contract he signed is meaningless. He changed his mind!”
Mom ignores that entirely. “Sebastian here”—she waves her wrist toward him—“is Bash’s lusus naturae.” On the screen, a slide appears containing the words: An organism that has characteristics resulting from chromosomal alteration. “He’s a breathing human in every sense of the definition. A cancer-free breathing human.” She replaces Bash’s medical chart with Sebastian’s and pauses to let that sink in. “Using advanced personality-transfer software called Theseus developed by my own daughter, Bash will have no pause in his old life. Once we transfer all his memories and his entire personality into Sebastian, Bash can pick up right where he left off, only this time without the threat of dying prematurely.”
“But if you overwrite Sebastian, he’ll be gone forever! And the software isn’t even safe.” My face burns from the exertion of shouting at the top of my lungs, but the commotion in the room is too great. My words die uselessly on my lips. “Not when it can be used as a weapon in the wrong hands. You can delete someone’s entire mind with a single click.”
Mom clicks to a new slide, which gives an overview of what Theseus does.
An innovative new app that enables users to copy their entire life history into a new shell.
Memories return in reverse chronological order and appear more vivid so that a user can relive memories in full sensory detail.
Immortality is possible with this breakthrough technology.
When combined with other Varga products, a user can even change their entire appearance by transferring their consciousness into a new, improved model carefully refined via our 3-D technology.
“With this software, we can save lives. We can get our loved ones back.” Her voice cracks. “I lost my husband last year. I don’t wish that kind of pain on anyone else.” She takes a moment to squeeze her eyes shut and swallow down the lump that must be blocking her airway. The entire audience goes silent. When she opens her eyes again, she locks her gaze on me. “When I found out your boyfriend had passed away before you could complete the transfer, I couldn’t bear to watch you go through what I went through. The pain. The hopelessness. The utter devastation.” She sucks in a shuddering breath.
Something inside me cracks too. I grasp on to this new revelation—that she was trying to protect me—and I clutch at her confession so desperately my hands instinctively form tight fists, knuckles turning white. There’s a part of me that wants this to be true. That she did this for me, no matter how fucked up it was. That she hasn’t been working completely against me the entire time.
But I know there’s also a part of her that cares about the revenue ahead, the fame and fortune. It had been my dad’s dream to be the next Steve Jobs, but my mother stood beside him, nodding along with his every goal and figuring out the logistics and marketing.
“Arden.” Mom swallows hard. “I did the only thing I could think of to help you get through this: I had my assistant temporarily lock away all your memories of him and store them in the data system you created to keep them safe. Just as I’d done to myself when your dad died. I thought I was helping you cope, but I realize now I went about this all wrong and I’m sorry.”
My eyes widen. She just admitted this on live TV, as if this is the most natural reaction anyone would have in this situation. But the audience seems to forgive her by the way they’re leaning forward, completely rapt. I was going for sympathy, but she’s the one who earned it with her sincerity.
Mom turns back to the audience. “With Theseus, no one has to suffer a loss ever again. I’m going to get my husband back. My daughter’s going to get her boyfriend back too. My family will be complete again.”
Her words thump in my ears, lulling like a bedtime song. I can have my dad back?
The printed bodies I saw were warped, wrong, so I didn’t think it was really possible. But of course it is. Now that they know how to do the printing right, they can re-create him. He can step back into our family and fill the black void that opened when he died.
“Let’s see it in action!” some heckler yells from the audience. Commotion rises again, but Mom settles the audience down with a simple hand gesture.
“Now, I admit, there have been some glitches in getting Theseus to work properly. And to be completely honest, we’re still resolving the final bug, so unfortunately I can’t demonstrate how it works today.”
“I can.” The words leap from my mouth, projecting across the quiet room. I straighten, every nerve ending in my body buzzing. “I figured out how to make Theseus work.”
“You—you did?” Mom squints at me, confused. She glances behind to Zoey, who shrugs.
“I used it last night on myself. Transferred back all my memories. I remember the time I broke down in tears when they lowered Dad’s casket into the ground,” I say as proof that I’ve retrieved even the memories she herself stole from me.
Her eyes widen, and I can see it in her face, the way her brows knit out of concern for me. She believes me. She trusts me again.
I have to look away from Sebastian for the next part or else I’ll crack. “I want my boyfriend back. And my dad. I—I miss them.”
Mom smooths down her suit and turns back to the audience. “Well then, perhaps you will be getting a demonstration after all.”
I meet her eyes. “I need an admin console though.”
Mom flourishes her arm toward where Zoey stands behind it. “You’re in luck. We used this earlier to demonstrate HiveMind. It’s yours to use now.” She clicks something on her controller, and the monitors switch to a view of the admin desktop so everyone can watch along with me.
My security guard releases me at Mom’s command. I wobble on shaky legs as I take the stairs, painfully aware of every eye in the audience trained on my back and the millions of people watching at home too. But it’s only one gaze that bores into me so fiercely I nearly trip: Sebastian’s. His face is stark white and terrified.
I shut my eyes, but the image of his scared face is burned on my retinas. I still don’t know what I’m going to do, but either way, I’ll have to live with this moment, this choice, embedded in my mind forever.
I focus ahead, on putting one foot in front of the other as I suck down desperate gulps of recycled air. Zoey bites her lip, studying me for way too long until she steps aside, checking for any kind of forgiveness.
I won’t give her even a glance.
Zoey’s already cued up Theseus for me, connected right into Bash’s archived mind. All I need to do is unhook Sebastian from HiveMind, hit select all on Bash’s memories, and transfer them right into Sebastian. I feel the possibility consume me. Bash, mine again. How long will it take for Sebastian to disappear and for Bash to resume his place by my side? Minutes? Seconds?
Teddy pleads with his eyes at me, silently begging me to bring back his best friend. Zoey shakes her head and then flicks her eyes toward the guy she created just for me to love. She has her credit now; she doesn’t care if I resurrect Bash.
Blinking red lights of the cameras immortalize my actions through the power of digital archives. When I glance out at the audience, I see nothing but rapt faces, everyone holding their breath. Everyone except Sebastian. The corners of his mouth are trembling, and he drops to his knees, burying his face in his hands as he prepares to be erased forever. A persistent hum trills in my chest and I brace my hands alongside the table to stop them from shaking.
My eyelashes flutter closed to prevent the tears from spilling out, but it’s futile. If I choose Sebastian, I have to accept the deaths of my father and my boyfriend to save the life of a boy I’ve come to love. But if I choose Bash, I’m choosing my mother as well and betraying that same boy in order to bring my boyfriend and my dad back from the dead.
There’s no right choice. Either one will leave me heartbroken in the end.
One of my hands slips off the table and reaches into my pocket. I cup an SSD device in the palm of my hand. It contains a script I wrote to destroy Theseus for good. I can remove it from my pocket and save Sebastian or leave it where it is and erase him instead of Theseus.
I take a deep breath and meet Sebastian’s eyes. My heart cracks in two.
I know what I have to do.
In my mind, I conjure the image of my dad on the beach that day when I was younger, his face so full of life, his heart so full of good intentions. I whisper the two words he’ll never be able to hear again: I’m sorry.
And then I shove the SSD device into the slot and click on the executable file that pops up. Within seconds, the program I wrote over six coffees and four Diet Cokes starts to eat its way through Theseus, destroying every trace of the plug-in.
“What have you done?” Mom grips my shoulders with white knuckles and shakes.
“Bash made a choice, Mom. He’s gone. And Sebastian is not just a shell!” Tears stream down my face. “He’s his own person, completely separate from Bash, and I love him!”
Mom rips her hands from my shoulders and stumbles back a step, a completely shocked expression marring her face. “You don’t. You just think you do. You’re just a teenager, you’re—”
“Smarter than you ever were.” The tears are falling faster now, my voice hysterical. “And I’m not going to help you erase him. Not him. Or me. Or anyone else. Not ever again!”
Sebastian runs toward me, nudging my mother out of the way. She doesn’t fight it. “You saved me.” He studies my face. “You chose me.”
“I chose us.” And then I cup my hand around the back of his neck and pull him toward me. The crowd erupts in cheers when his lips meet mine.