“When in the course of human events . . . ”
As Silk spoke, fluffy clouds formed the phrase in a Magritte sky, which was simultaneously noon and dusk. While Remeny could appreciate the control Silk had over his softtime domain, she wished he wouldn’t steer their meeting in an artsy direction. They had work to do.
“Wait,” said Botão, “what about we the people?”
“That’s the other one.” Silk shot her a (.1) anger blip fading to (.7) irritation. “The Constitution.”
“But we’re the people we’re talking about.” Botão ignored Silk’s blippage. “That’s the whole point.”
“Human events,” said Silk. “If you’d wait just a second, I’m getting to the people part.”
Botão had only been assigned to their school coop team for a month now and Remeny knew what she did not: Silk didn’t like to be challenged, especially not in his own domain. They had chosen his corner of virtuality because Silk had enough excess capacity to host them all, but his was not the ideal place to plot their pretend revolution. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence were going wispy above them.
“Get on with it then,” said Sturm. “And skip the special effects.”
“When in the course of human events,” Silk said, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . ”
“Okay,” said Botão.
“ . . . and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The four others—Remeny, Sturm, Botão and Toybox—scanned each other and then turned on Silk. They had agreed to close all private channels and keep their avatars emotionally transparent, so the air filled with blips of confusion and disapproval.
“Laws of Nature?” said Toybox. “What the hell is that about?”
“Maybe relativity.” Sturm’s scorn blip started at (.3) and climbed.
“They didn’t even have relativity back then.”
“They did, they were just too stupid to realize it.”
“Mankind? What about the other fifty-two percent?” Botão was laughing now. “And who is Nature’s God?”
“Exactly,” said Sturm. “I call bullshit. Crusty oldschool bullshit.”
Remeny kept quiet; she focused on Silk, who was waiting for them to calm down. “Agreed,” he said. “But it will mean something to the old people because Thomas Jefferson wrote this stuff.”
“Who’s he and so what?” said Toybox.
“Jefferson as in Jefferson County,” said Remeny. “As in where we live.”
“I live in softtime.” At (.9+), Toybox’s rage was nearly unreadable—but then he was always shouting. “That’s where I live.”
Silk waved a hand in front of his face, as if the blip was a bad smell. “History is important to reality snobs,” he said. “This gets their attention.”
Remeny noticed that he was keeping his temper in check. She was definitely interested in Silk; poise was something she looked for in a boyfriend.
“So will making their lights flicker,” said Toybox. This was why he had flunked one coop already. “Crashing their flix.”
“We’re not talking about anything like that,” said Botão. “We’re students, not terrorists.”
“Speak for yourself.” Sturm spread his hands and between them appeared an oldschool clock. “Revolutions don’t play by the rules.” Its face showed two minutes to midnight.
Remeny couldn’t believe Sturm, of all people, aligning himself with terrorists. She agreed with Botão; she didn’t really care about the revolution. All she wanted was to get a grade for her senior cooperative, graduate and never log on to the Jefferson County Educational Oversight Service again. The problem was that a third of her grade for coop was for contribution to the team’s cooperative culture. The senior coop was supposed to demonstrate to the EOS that students had the social skills to succeed in softtime by coming together anonymously to plan and execute a project that had hardtime outcomes.
Of course, anonymity wasn’t easy in a county like Jefferson. Students spent hours in soft and hardtime trying to figure out who was who. Botão, for example, was one of the refugees from Brazil and probably lived in Tugatown. Remeny had first met her two years ago in the EOS playgrounds, mostly ForSquare and Sanctuary. Now Botão was Sturm’s friend too—maybe even his girlfriend. Toybox defied the rules of anonymnity by dressing his avatar in clothes that pointed to hardtime identity. Everyone knew that he was the Jason Day whose body was stashed in bin 334 of the Komfort Kare body stack on Route 127 in Pikeville. Unfortunately for him, no one cared. Bad luck to have him on the team—if he was going to be such a shithead, they might all flunk. Good luck, though, to get Silk—whoever he was. The avatar was new to the senior class, but Silk didn’t act new. She thought maybe he was a duplicate of some rich kid they already knew. It cost to be in two places at once and considering how crush his domain was, Remeny guessed Silk had serious money. Probably lived in that gated community at the lake. She wondered what he looked like in hardtime. His avatar was certainly hot in his leathers and tanker boots. Sturm’s identity, obviously, was no secret to her, although she hoped that she was the only one on the team who knew that he was her twin brother.
It took them most of a prickly afternoon to rewrite the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence; they were being as cooperative as cats. Sturm and Silk took the revolution too seriously, in Remeny’s opinion, as if it might happen next Wednesday. Silk argued for making as few changes as possible to their version; Sturm said their demands should be clear.
“Unalienable?” said Sturm. “There’s no such word.”
“There was back then.”
“Well, this is now.”
Botão seemed nervous about advocating the overthrow of anything. She was probably worried about being deported. “I like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Botão was standing so close to Sturm that their avatars were practically merging. “We should keep that part. Someday I’m going to own my own domain, move in and never get real again.”
“What’s in your domain?” Sturm’s blippage went all flirty.
“You mean who?” She pushed away from him and poked a finger into his chest. “Maybe you wish it was you?” She smirked. “Not yet, Mystery Boy. Earn it.”
“Focus please,” said Silk.
Later . . .
“No, governments are supposed to serve us, not the other way around.”
Silk had created a rectangular glass conference table with himself at the head. The draft of the declaration glowed on its surface. “We can’t change ‘consent of the governed.’ ”
“What is consent, anyway?”
“Like permission, only more legal.”
“I never gave no consent for some bullshit EOS to ruin my life.”
Much later . . .
“So that means we have the right to overthrow the EOS?” Botão sounded doubtful.
Toybox was lighting his fingertips on fire. “Overthrow the oldschool and be done with all the bullshit.” The longer they talked, the higher the numbers on his boredom blip climbed. It was like watching a cartoon fuse burn.
“I don’t see how they give us an ‘A’ for overthrowing them,” said Remeny.
“If we prove they’re unjust—”
“But that’s why we have to keep ‘alter’ and ‘abolish,’ ” Silk interrupted Sturm for the hundreth time. “Means the same as overthrow, only Jefferson wrote it. So we hide behind his language.”
Much, much later . . .
Sturm had changed the conference table from rectangular to round. “If we get rid of the old government, then we need a new one,” he said.
“I’m not making up a whole new government,” said Botão. “My job starts in half an hour.”
“So then no government,” Sturm said. “Everyone for themselves. Law of the jungle.”
Before she could stop it, a (.2) shock blip flashed above Remeny’s avatar. This wasn’t like him.
Eventually, after arguments and much blippage, they persuaded Silk to yield the power of the keyboard to Remeny, since she was willing to take other people’s suggestions. While Silk brooded, they agreed on a draft of the crucial second paragraph.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all realities, hard and soft, old and new, are equal, and so are we the people who live in them, whichever reality we choose. All people, no matter whether they live in bodies or avatars, are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To guarantee our rights governments are supposed to serve we the people and not the other way around. They derive their powers from the consent of the governed. If a government goes off, it is the right of we the people to alter or to abolish it, and to make up some new government that will do the right thing.”
“Okay.” Remeny checked the time on her overlord; she too would have to get real soon. “So now what?”
“List everything the government is doing wrong.” Silk broke his grim silence.
Toybox groaned. “Not today.”
“No,” said Remeny. Save that for next time. “Anything else?”
“We need to think about making something happen in hardtime,” said Sturm. “Take the revolution to the streets.”
“Then you’re talking homework,” said Botão. “I’ve got to be at work in ten minutes.”
“What if we speed this up to double time?” said Silk.
Botão’s embarrassment shot immediately to (.4). “Umm . . . I’m not allowed.”
“Not allowed?” said Toybox. “Everybody’s supposed to get some double time. They just don’t let you have enough.”
“It’s my mother.” Now the blip was (.6). “She—”
“Makes no difference,” Sturm interrupted her. “I already used up this month’s overclocking allotment.”
Remeny knew this wasn’t true, but she approved of the lie and decided to join in. “Me too.”
“See, that’s why we need a revolution,” said Toybox, “so we can overclock whenever we want.”
“Yeah,” said Botão, “and then we can ask Santa to bring us diamond trees so we can feed the unicorns.”
Remeny ignored them. “We’re talking about getting real. You were saying, Sturm?”
“We need a message.” He considered. “What do we say to the oldschool?”
“That EOS sucks.” Toybox’s avatar got up from the table and created a door in Silk’s domain with a huge glowing red EXIT sign above it.
“That’s our complaint.” Sturm shook his head. “But what do we want?”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“How about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” said Botão.
“Sure,” said Sturm. “But those are just words until we explain what they mean.”
“No,” Silk leaned forward on his seat. “She’s right. We make that our slogan, put it out there, get people talking about it.” He poked the table top. “Posters, tee shirts . . . ”
“Graffiti.”
“Timed-erase only,” said Remeny. “Okay, there’s your homework. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—ten times each.”
“Ten?” Toybox had his hand on the knob of his door. “How am I supposed to make ten hardtime changes from a stack?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Send your friends ten letters . . . ”
“He doesn’t have ten friends.”
“ . . . print stickies.”
“Write a song and record it.” Botão warbled tunelessly. “Life for me needs liberty . . . umm . . . something something happiness.”
“That’s it,” said Remeny. “Next meeting at 1300 on Tuesday the 12th.” She saved a transcript of their meeting to her student folder. “Got to go. Out of time.”
The biggest grievance that Remeny had against the government was that her Health Oversight Manager, aka her overlord, was too bossy. It forced her to exercise and monitored her diet. It required daily minimum times for being alone and for family interaction. Worst of all, if she didn’t meet these goals, it could limit how long she could spend in softtime. Even after she turned twenty-one and could make her own decisions, it would still be watching her. It wasn’t fair. Stash like Toybox and Sturm never had to wander around smelling the damn roses.
She owed her overlord another hour and a half of family interaction and needed to burn three hundred calories exercising. It was now 1717. They had a family dinner scheduled softtime for 1930; that would kill an hour. If she jogged her five-kilometer course at a decent pace between now and then, that would take care of her workout. But she still had to squeeze in at least another half hour of family time now, because Silk had said he might stop by ForSquare around 2100. She stripped off the NeuroSky 3100 interface that Dad had given her as a pre-graduation gift. She’d only had it a week and while she definitely liked it better than her old Deveau interface, the 3100’s electrode array was sensitive to stubble. That meant she had to shave her head every other morning. Once she pulled her nose plugs and peeled off her haptic gloves, she was once again Johanna Daugherty, age 18, of 7 Forest Ridge Road. She liked herself better as Remeny. She had chosen the name because it meant hope in Hungarian, but that was a secret. Nobody she knew spoke Hungarian.
“Mom.” She stuck her head out of her bedroom door and called down the hall. “I’m home.”
“Hi, honey. I made a banana smoothie. Some for you in the blender.”
Remeny put on her headset, positioned its glass over her left eye and pressed the mic to her jaw, where it stuck. Headsets lacked cranial input so there was no softtime immersion, but at least she could monitor what was happening online. “How many calories?”
“I don’t know. Three hundred? Four? Ask the fridge.”
The fridge reported that Mom had added a tablespoon of peanut butter to her usual recipe, which boosted the smoothie to four hundred and thirty calories. She decided to save it for dinner. Instead she got an Ice Cherry Zero out of the freezer.
Mom was at her desk—wearing a glass headset. She had a Deveau interface for full immersion that she didn’t use much. She was more comfortable with the oldschool interfaces. And reality. She sat in the late-afternoon gloom, her face lit from below by the windows on her desktop. When Remeny snicked on the overhead lights, Rachel Daugherty glanced up, blinking.
“Thanks,” she said.
Mom’s office was like a museum with its antique paper books on wooden shelves and family pix that didn’t move. Hanging on the wall was an embroidered baby blanket in the Úrihímzés style that had belonged to Remeny’s Hungarian great-grandmother. A trophy case held the tennis trophies that Mom had won in high school and college. The rubber plant in the window needed dusting.
“So what’s up, Mom?”
“Work.”
Remeny leaned against the door frame and twirled the Cherry Zero in her mouth. “Work?”
Mom sighed and waved a hand over the desktop, closing half the windows. “The health budget. We’re running a surplus and I need to move some of it to building maintenance.”
“The people are in better shape than the buildings?” Remeny’s lips tingled from the cold.
“Buildings live in snow and rain and sleet and hail. People, not so much.” A window flashed blue. “Speaking of being outside,” she said, expanding it, “didn’t I get an EOS advisory a couple of days ago? Something about your Phys Ed status?”
“Took care of it.” Remeny wished Mom would stop nagging her. “I already have an overlord, Rachel. I don’t need an overmom too.”
“Sorry.” Mom frowned; she didn’t like it when her kids called her Rachel. “Look, I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’m really busy just now. You need some family time, is that it? Could you maybe go talk to your brother?”
“I just spent two hours with him in coop.”
“Good.” Mom’s attention drifted back to her budgets. “How’s that going?”
“Okay, I guess. We gave ourselves homework. We’re making it real.”
“That’s nice.”
Silence.
“Aren’t you going to ask what our project is?”
“Sure,” said Mom, but then she started shuffling windows.
“We’re writing a declaration of independence,” Remeny said.
“Really?”
Remeny dropped the empty Zero sleeve into the trash and waited. Then waited some more.
“A declaration,” she said, finally. “Of independence.”
“Umm . . . didn’t somebody already write that?”
Too bad there were no blips in real life.
“I guess I’ll talk to Robby then.”
“You’re a good sister.” Mom nodded but did not look up. “Do a favor and turn him, would you?”
Maybe it was best that Mom didn’t know about their project. Rachel Daugherty was Bedford’s Town Manager. She was part of the government they were declaring independence from.
Robert Daugherty Junior’s entire room was a deep twilight blue: walls, floor, ceiling; even the two painted-over windows that no longer looked onto Forest Ridge Road. When Remeny closed the door, shutting out the hallway light, the monotone color skewed the geometry of the space, erased the corners and curved the walls. Robby had just three glowworms and he kept them dimmed because of his photosensitivity; their slow crawl over the room’s surfaces cast a changing pattern of dreamy radiance and midnight shadows. The only thing in the room that seemed solid was the carebot, which had tucked itself into a corner. Its eyestalk tilted toward her briefly to note her arrival, then returned its gaze to monitor her brother’s naked, twitching body, suspended in its protective mesh. Robby had a state-of-the-art stash; Mom had spent a boatload of Dad’s money on her injured son after the attack. His intracranial interface was implanted directly into his cerebral cortex, which also helped relieve the worst of his dyskinetic thrashing. Robby could never have managed his avatar with an ordinary interface; his control over his movements had been so compromised by the neurotoxins in the DV gas that the True Patriots had used that he could barely feed himself. That was the carebot’s job, as was cleaning up after him. Once, before the carebot, he had worn diapers. That hadn’t worked out for anybody.
=Oh, Sturmy.= She pinged him on their private channel. =Reality calling.=
=Go away.= His reply scrolled across her glass.
“Mom sent me to check up on you.” She switched to speaking aloud and the mic on her headset reformatted for messaging. “Time for some sweet family togetherness.”
=Go online then.=
“Nope. I need some hardtime.” She queried her glass and opened his overlord account; they had each other’s access. “And so do you.”
Even though they were twins, Robby’s disabilities meant that he had different overlord quotas. He couldn’t exercise and the carebot controlled his diet. He only owed an hour of hardtime a day, all of which was currently due. Remeny had never understood how waking up in a dark room to thrash around like a fish caught in a net could be good for anyone.
“Blaaagh.” Robby never re-entered hardtime in a good mood. “Shit.”
“Hello to you, too. Mom said something about a turning. You want?”
“No.” He coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat onto the floor. The carebot whirred out of its corner to clean it up. “I don’t need . . . oh, go ahead.”
Robby’s smartsilk net was the only furniture in the room. He rarely left it, even when he logged off, because of the fibromyalgia. His skin was sensitive to the slightest touch and the mesh distributed pressure points. It was suspended from the walls and ceiling so that its shape could be thermally reconfigured to roll him from one side to another, even from his back to his belly, to prevent bedsores.
She swiped her finger halfway across the control screen and then up. Parts of the net stretched while others shrank.
“Ow, ow, oww.” His fingers caught at the net while he kicked at the air. “Okay, enough. Stop.”
“Sorry.”
He came to rest facing her, eyes slits, eyelids gummy, curled into a fetal position as if to protect his erection. Seeing his cock didn’t faze Remeny anymore. After helping to nurse him for the last couple of years, she had developed a high tolerance for brotherly ick.
“I was fine, you know,” Robby croaked at the carebot’s eyestalk; he was talking to Mom. “You just turned me this morning, Rachel.” Then he nodded at Remeny. “I’m three screens on her desktop. Can’t even fart without setting off alarms.”
“I told her she was turning into the overmom.”
A head jerk scattered his smile.
“So,” she said, “think we can carry that loser Toybox?”
“Sure.’ He sucked in a raspy breath. “Jason isn’t so bad.”
“Jason, is it? He’s a moron.”
Robby swallowed twice in rapid succession. “Ahhh.”
“Pain?” she said.
“No.”
“You want a gun?” Ever since the attack, he’d had a fascination with the old handguns in the house. As if having a real one might have saved him. Still, handling them seemed to relieve his stress, which then calmed the spasms.
“No.”
She waited for him to say something else. This was her day to be ignored by her family.
“You were getting pretty weird on me in coop,” she said at last.
“Weird?”
“Everyone for themselves. I’ve got the transcript in my folder. Revolutions don’t play by the rules.” She exaggerated a Sturm imitation, made his edges sharp enough to cut. “ ‘Speak for yourself, Botão. Maybe I am a terrorist.’ Come on, Sturm. A terrorist? You’re going to do other people like you were done?”
“Right wing scum,” he muttered. “Assholes.”
“Right wing, left wing—they’re all assholes.”
“Revolution.” He didn’t seem very interested in the conversation.
“What revolution?” She felt like he was pushing her toward a cliff. “What the hell are you talking about?” Then she noticed the edge of his overlord window in her glass. He wasn’t getting hardtime credit for their conversation. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re still running your avatar?”
“Huh?” He was confused. “What?”
“This is me,” she said. “Your sister.” Remeny was at once impressed and insulted. It took supreme concentration to run an avatar in softtime while carrying on a conversation in hardtime. “You thought I wouldn’t notice?” Then she guessed why he hadn’t logged off. “You’re with someone.”
“No.”
“I bet it’s your little Button Bright.”
He writhed and his right arm flung itself up, grazing the top of his head. “What makes you say that?”
“For one thing,” she said, “you’ve got a bone like a dinosaur.”
“A second. Give me a second.” He closed his eyes and his body went slack. Then with a shudder, he was back. The clock was ticking. She had his full attention.
“Kind of a pervy thing to say to your brother.” He gave her a grimace which she knew was a grin.
“We share the perv gene, Sturmy.” She grinned back. “So Botão is your girlfriend now?”
“No one is my girlfriend.” His voice was like sandpaper. “She’s a reality snob like the rest of them. I mean, suppose we really wanted to get together. Eventually she’d want to come over here for a visit, see me for herself. You know how that goes. Imagine her standing there, staring at this twitchy sack of meat. Romantic or what?”
Remeny wanted to say something but couldn’t think what.
“I’ll take a gun now,” Robby said. “Kent’s Glock.”
Dad kept his memorabilia in a study at the far end of the house. He had been in flat movies way back, but had made the transition to flix and adventures and sims and even some impersonations. Although he had been cast in all kinds of parts, Jeffrey Daugherty was mostly known for playing bad guys: serial killers, drug lords, CEOs, stalkers, and, yes, terrorists. He had won a Golden Globe and an Appie for playing Kent Crill on The Revenger, which was where he had acquired most of the collection of prop weapons displayed behind his desk. Kent had used the Glock to take down his arch-nemesis, the vampire Sir Koko Mawatu, in the Season Five finale. Of course, it was just a prop that didn’t really fire silver bullets, but it had the heft of a real gun.
Remeny parted the ultra-smooth strands of the mesh and offered him the pistol, grip first. He swiped at it and missed the first time but nabbed it on the second try. He settled back, rubbing the steel barrel lengthwise across his cheek. She’d seen his gun fetish many times but it was still something about her brother that she didn’t get.
“It’s not Toybox I’m worried about,” he said. “Who is this Silk?”
“I don’t know, some rich kid.” She shrugged. “I kind of like him.”
“I don’t.”
“Why? Because he wants to run the show? So do you. So does Toybox. All you boys doing your alpha male thing—it’s kind of cute in an annoying way.”
“He’s already got slogans out. A dozen floaties around town—they have to be his. No one else has the money. One keeps circling the town office.”
That was interesting. “Fast work.” She called up the satellite image on her glass and zoomed. “Hey, that’s some serious signage. Maybe he needs extra credit.”
“It was his idea. Doesn’t that seem suspicious?”
She leaned against the wall and wished once again that he would let her bring a chair when she visited. “No, it wasn’t. Botão came up with life, liberty, and . . . ”
“Just words.” He aimed the gun at the carebot and stared down the sights. “The slogan was his idea.”
“So he’s smart. So?” She jiggled the net. “Did you tell Botão who you are?”
“Nuh-uh.” He held the gun steady and Remeny could see him mouth the word bang. “But she knows I’m stashed.”
“She knows and she’s still interested?”
“She just thinks she is.”
“Then maybe you’re wrong about her. You’ve got a crush setup here, pal. What if you were stashed in a body stack, like Toybox? Think she’d go all melty over whatever is behind the doors at the Komfort Kare?”
“She’ll still want . . . ”
“What she wants is Sturm and that’s who you are, twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. Your body is just leftovers.”
His laugh was bitter. “Rah, rah, rah.” He waved the Glock in a circle. “Too bad cheerleading doesn’t kill the pain anymore.”
Robby was getting weird on her. “I’ve got to go for a run—overlord orders.” She couldn’t handle him when he was like this. “You going to stay real for a while?”
“Sure.”
“Want me to leave Kent’s gun? You never know when your arch-nemesis is going to show.”
“No, take it.” He thrust the pistol through the mesh. “I’ll find some other way to thwart Silk’s evil plan.” His hand was steady now.
“He’s not your problem.” She leaned in close and blew on his face. “See you at dinner then.” It was as close to kissing as they got.
“Something’s got to change,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Come the revolution.”
As Remeny jogged up Forest Ridge Road, the spray can of Sez in her fanny pack bounced against her back. She had queried her glass for places she could tag that would have the highest foot traffic. The list was short and most of the choices were in Bedford’s modest downtown, a couple of kilometers away. That would mean her graffiti would overlap with Silk’s floating ads, but that was okay.
She began to see bots on errands: delivery bots from Foodmaster and Amazon and Express-It, a McDonald’s dinerbot reeking of yesterday’s fries, an empty taxi idling on Little Oak. The first pedestrian she passed was an old man in a breather walking his dog. She saw Officer Shubin’s motorcycle parked at the Cocamoca but no Officer Shubin. She slowed to a stop when she spotted the floaty bobbing down Third Street toward her. The squat barrel shape floated at eye level and the slogan scrawled continually around its circumference. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Life, Liberty, and . . .
“Stop,” she commanded. Its top propeller rotated one hundred and eighty degrees until it faced in the opposite direction from its bottom propeller. “I have a question.”
“I will try to answer,” it said.
“Who paid for you?”
“I was hired by PROS, which stands for Protect the Rights of the Occupants of Softtime.” It played a short musical flourish.
“Never heard of it.”
“The organization is less than two hours old.”
Her overlord nagged that her metabolic rate was falling. She began to jog in place. “Who’s in it?”
“Membership information is confidential.”
“How long are you contracted for?”
“I will be proclaiming the new world order in this area through Tuesday.”
New world order? Silk was having delusions of grandeur. “What do you mean: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?”
“What does it mean to you?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“PROS would like to change that. If you were to google it . . . ”
Remeny stopped paying attention and pinged Silk instead. When she got no reply, she queried her glass about floaty rentals. Rates ran between two and three hundred dollars a day depending on the size of the floaty, the sophistication of the pitch and the choice of sales route. She was impressed. Rich was rich, but what teenager would spend two thousand dollars a day on a coop project?
“Do you have any other questions?” said the floaty.
On an impulse she reached into her fanny pack, grabbed the Sez can and sprayed call me on the floaty. As it tried to dodge away, it jiggled her “e” into looking like a mutant “p.”
“At 1753,” the floaty said, “I identify you as Johanna Daugherty of 7 Forest Ridge Road. Per the Defacement Clause of Bedford’s Commercial Speech Ordinance, you will now be charged the standard rate for use of this device for as long as your unauthorized commentary persists.”
Remeny wasn’t worried; the Sez had been in draft mode. “Make sure Silk gets my message.”
“What is Silk?”
Her graffiti was already fading, so she brushed by the floaty and jogged up Third Street.
“Your total charge is sixty-seven cents,” it called. “Have a nice day.”
More than half of the stores facing Memorial Square had gone out of business. To keep the downtown from looking like a mouthful of broken teeth, the town had paid to have the buildings torn down but had preserved and restored the facades. Behind these were empty lots converted to lawns, gardens, and patios with picnic tables, all tended by bots, all deserted. There were spaces downtown designated for civic tagging as long as the message conformed to font, color, and content guidelines. She sprayed slats of the benches that faced the Civil War monument, the windows on the facade of the Post Office and the abutments of the pedestrian bridge that crossed Sperry Creek. She set the Sez can to a 158 point Engravers font, which she thought looked suitably historic, and set the duration for Tuesday. Same as Silk. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness fit nicely alongside silence is golden but duct tape is silver, We are not a bot, and Think More About Working Less.
On the way home, she took the shortcut through the grounds of the Gates Early Learning Center since there were designated tagging surfaces at its playground. A handful of little kids milled about in their bulky, augmented reality helmets, pulling up grass, tripping over the balance boosters, hitting trees with sticks. One of them came up to Remeny while she was spray-painting the slide.
“What’s your name?” The girl had an annoying squeaky voice.
She didn’t have time for this—where was the teacher? “Ask your helmet to look me up.”
“Why? You could just tell me.”
Remeny glanced over and saw black curls framing a face pale as a mushroom. She was five or maybe six, wearing a Dotty Karate tee shirt. “Johanna.”
“I’m Meesha, but my real name is Amisha.” She pointed at the tag. “What does that say?”
“Read it yourself.” The kid was breaking her concentration.
“Don’t know how.”
“Your helmet does.”
She put her hand over her mouth and whispered the query as if she didn’t want Remeny to hear. “I don’t know pursuit,” she said at last.
“Your helmet could . . . ” Remeny looked around for help and saw Joan deJean headed her way. “It means to chase after.”
Meesha considered this. “Is that why you’re all sweaty? ’Cause you’re pursuiting happiness?”
“Hi, Johanna.” Ms. deJean had been Johanna’s teacher when she was a kid. “I see you’ve met Meesha.” She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Hi, Ms. deJean. Yeah, she’s not exactly shy.”
“You can say that again.” Ms. deJean turned the girl gently and aimed her back toward the other kids. “This is learning time, Meesha. Not chatting time.”
“Chatting can be learning,” the girl said.
“Scoot.” She gave her a nudge back toward the center, but Meesha squirmed and skipped away in a different direction. “So what’s this?” Ms. DeJean bent over the slide and read.
Remeny slipped the Sez into her fanny pack. “Coop.”
“Already?” Her old teacher sighed. “Seems like yesterday you were toddling around here, talking back like Meesha.” She lit up with the memory. “You and your brother. How is Robby?”
“He doesn’t get out much.”
“No.” Her light dimmed. “The Declaration of Independence? You breaking away from something?”
“I don’t know,” said Remeny, then she laughed. “Maybe the EOS.”
“Good for you.” Joan deJean laughed with her. “It’s a train wreck, if you ask me. All software and no people.”
Remeny usually walked Forest Ridge Road to cool down at the end of a run but when she saw her mother and Emily Banerjee sitting on the Banerjees’ lawn, she broke into a sprint. Her mother had her arm around Mrs. Banerjee’s shoulder and was speaking softly to her.
“Everything okay?” Remeny pulled up in front of them.
“Emily isn’t feeling well,” said Mom. “She’s confused.”
The Banerjees had been antiques when the Daughertys had moved in, crinkly and cute as Remeny and Robby grew up. Sadhir Banerjee had died in March and his wife had been lost ever since. Mom had called the son Prahlad last month when she had found Mrs. Banerjee sorting thought the Daugherty’s garbage at night.
“I am not confused,” said Mrs. Banerjee, “and I will never lie in those coffins.”
“Nobody wants you to, Emily.”
“I watched it on the teevee—just now. Those coffins are small.” She spread her palms. “This wide, maybe. And not much longer even.” The way her hands shook reminded Remeny of Robby. “They lie awake in the coffin so they can always call other people on the Internet but there is no room. Not for everyone. The Internet is too small, too, even for an old woman.”
Teevee? The Internet? Remeny didn’t want to laugh because this was sad. But talk about oldschool.
“Don’t worry, Emily,” said Mom. “Prahlad is coming soon.”
“Yeah, it’s okay, Mrs. Banerjee,” said Remeny. “You don’t have to call people if you don’t want.”
Mrs. Banerjee glanced up at Remeny. “You’re the girl. Rachel’s child. Isn’t there a brother?” She pointed a finger as if in accusation. “We never see you kids playing anymore.”
“Johanna, that’s right. We’re all grown up now.”
“You know in those coffins? The people?” Mrs. Banerjee leaned toward her. “Do you know what they call them?” Her voice was low. “Trash. I swear it; Sadhir was with me, he heard too.”
Remeny and Mom exchanged glances.
“You mean stash?” said Remeny.
“Stash?” Mrs. Banerjee rocked back and gazed up at the darkening sky for a moment. “Yes. That was it.” She nodded at them. “Stash.” Her mouth puckered as if she could taste the word.
The Daughertys gathered for their weekly family dinners in softtime because Dad was so often on location and Robby couldn’t leave his room, much less sit at the table. Besides, her brother’s two-thousand-calorie high-bulk liquid diet looked to Remeny like just-mixed cement. Not appetizing. Mom had paid for a space in the family domain that recreated the actual dining room at 7 Forest Ridge Road. A buffet with a marble top matched a china closet with glass doors. Its dining room table could seat ten comfortably but had just the four upholstered chairs gathered around one end. The furniture was all dark maple in some crazy oldschool style that featured arabesque inlays, fleur-de-lis, and Corinthian columns. The meal that nobody was going to eat was straight out of the darkest twentieth century: a platter of roast chicken—with bones—bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans with pearl onions, a basket of rolls. Remeny thought the whole show a waste of processing power; in softtime you were supposed to challenge reality, not just fake it. But this was what Mom wanted and Dad always humored her. Robby and Remeny didn’t have a vote.
“The kids were working on their coop today,” said Mom.
“They’re on the same team?” Dad liked to sit at these meals with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, even though all they did was stare at the virtual food. The kids could have made their avatars appear to eat, but their parents, Mom especially, had yet to master the tricks of full immersion. “How does that happen?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” Remeny’s dinner was the leftover smoothie and snap peas out of the bag. She ate in her room.
“So what’s it about?”
“It’s kind of boring actually.” After talking to Robby that afternoon, Remeny had been hoping coop wouldn’t come up.
“No, it isn’t.” Her brother opened their private channel with a (.4) impatience blip. =We should have this conversation now.=
=They’ll want to talk about it all night. I’m going out later.=
“Something to do with the Declaration of Independence?” Apparently Mom had been paying attention after all.
=With Silk?=
=None of your business.=
“Oh, right,” said Dad. “We the people blah blah in order to form a more perfect union of whatever.” Remeny had been hoping that Dad would take the conversation over, as he usually did. “I’ve always wondered how you get to be more perfect. I played James Madison once, you know; he was a shrimp, five feet four—what’s that in meters?”
“A hundred and sixty-two centimeters.” Even though Robby was using his parent-friendly version of Sturm—no scars, no iridescence—she could tell he was mad.
“Just about Johanna’s size.” Dad’s avatar was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a sailboat motif. As usual, he looked like his hardtime self, handsome as surgery and juv treatments could make an eighty-three-year old, but then his image was part of his actor’s brand. “No, wait. That’s not right.” He pointed his knife at Remeny, as if she were thinking of correcting him. “More perfect union is the Constitution. The Declaration was Jefferson. He was a tall one, him and Washington. Never played Washington. Wanted to, never did, even though we’re about the same size.”
“We’re declaring our independence,” said Robby.
=Sturm, no.=
That stopped Dad. “Who?” He frowned. “Teenagers?”
“Everybody who’s stashed. We’re giving up on hardtime—reality. We want to live as avatars.”
“Cool.” It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Remeny wondered if he’d been biting into a slice of pizza wherever he was and hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation.
“And how do you propose to do this?” Mom’s avatar looked like she had swallowed a brick.
“Just do it. Stay stashed.” Robby gave them a (.6) impatience blip. “Never log off.”
“No blips at the table, please.” Mom had strange ideas about manners. “Never come back—ever?”
Remeny started to say, “Only when we want . . . ” but Robby talked over her. “Never.” He pushed back his chair and stood up, which seemed to Remeny more disrespectful than a blip. “And we want to be able to overclock as much as we want. Live double time. Triple. Whatever.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense,” said Mom. “Your brain is not a computer, Robert. Overclocking causes seizures. And being stashed is hard on the body. The mortality rate for—”
“That’s why we overclock,” he shouted. “We can burn through subjective years while the meat rots.”
Mom looked shocked that he would use the m-word at the table. Remeny couldn’t believe it herself.
“Sit down, Robby.” Dad didn’t seem angry. He just scratched his chin with the fork while he waited for Robby to subside. Robby obeyed but sulked. “Funny this should come up. So I’m in Vermont with Spencer this morning . . . ”
“Jeff.” Mom sounded betrayed.
“Pirates in Vermont?” said Remeny.
=Don’t encourage him.= Robby was on Mom’s side in this one. =Let’s finish this.=
“I was done early at the Treasure Ship shoot.” Dad shook his head. “Bastards cut half of my part. So, there I am at Steve Spencer’s summer place in Vermont and he pitches me an idea about how people want to do exactly what Robby is talking about. He’s got a script ready to go and everything. Financing no problem, sixty mill starter money he says. Sixty million dollars kind of gets my attention. The idea is that there are people who want to live in virtual reality . . . ”
Remeny raised her hand to correct him. “Softtime.”
“Sure. And they never want to come out. It’s wild stuff. They’re cutting off arms and legs and whatever, body parts they claim they don’t need, and I say it sounds like horror, which isn’t what I do, but Steve says no. The script plays it straight. It’s a damned issue piece! Apparently there are people who believe this is a good thing. People who can raise sixty million no problem. Do you know about this, Rachel?”
She shook her head.
“How do we not know about this?”
“Because we’re still only some people,” said Robby. “Not enough people yet.”
“And you’re going to do it,” said Mom. Remeny wondered who she was talking to. Dad? Robby? Both of them? It almost looked as if she had calmed down except that just then her avatar went completely still. Remeny searched the house cams and found her at the real dining-room table with a plate of tortellini in front of her. She had pushed her Deveau back onto her head. She was crying.
“Sweet part for me.” Dad hadn’t noticed that Mom had logged off. “I’m a senator and I’m against it. I’ve never actually played a senator before. President, yes. Mayor. It’s only a supporting, but still Frederick Nooney is attached, Gonsalves to direct. I told Steve I’d give him an answer tomorrow, but this . . . is this some coincidence or what?”
“You should do it,” said Robby. “Absolutely. What’s it called?”
“Title on the script is Declaration, but that will never fly.”
Remeny almost choked on a snap pea. Robby started to laugh.
Then Dad did something that Remeny didn’t think that an oldschool eighty-three-year-old could. He opened a private channel to Robby in softtime.
=You there, son?=
=Maybe.=
Unfortunately he didn’t know how to close Remeny’s private channel with her brother, so she was able to eavesdrop. =Look, Robby, if this is what you want, I’m for it. I know you’re in pain and miserable.=
=Only when I’m stuck in hardtime.=
=I get that. Ever since that day, all we’ve wanted is to help.= His sympathy blip was (.8). =I know it’s hard for you but it’s hard for us, too. Your mother blames herself because she sent you . . . =
=Dad, stop. I love you but stop. You want to help me then take the damn part. It’ll be good for the cause. My cause, Dad. But what I really want is for you to come home and help me with Mom. Because reality sucks and I’m giving up on it. We need to make Mom understand. All of us, face to face. Oldschool.=
“Stop saying you’re sorry.” Sturm was trying for stern but his blippage read embarrassed.
“I just didn’t want Mom to freak,” said Remeny.
“Well, she did and nobody was killed. I call that a win for our side.”
“Think Dad can convince her?”
“He’s an actor.” Sturm scanned the crowd around the dance floor for Silk. “He’ll give a performance.”
The music twanged and couples began to take their places.
“Nine minutes after,” said Sturm. “He’s not coming.”
“There’s no schedule.” Remeny’s irritation climbed to (.3). “He’s not a train.”
“Bow to the partner, now bow to the corner, all join hands and circle to the left, please don’t step on her, now circle to the right, and we go round and round.”
Now that she was old enough to know better, Remeny was sick of square dancing. When she was twelve, ForSquare had been one of her favorite EOS playgrounds. She had loved the movement, the color and the concentration it took to remember and execute all of the calls. When she was sixteen, she had come in second in the Jefferson County Challenge. There had been more than twenty calls that day that involved changing avatars on the fly, on top of two hundred more traditional calls. A hell of a lot of remembering, but what was the point? It was all about teaching kids how to use their interfaces while they pretended to have fun.
“Promenade now, full promenade.” Crystal stalactites rose at random from the dance floor and the dancers weaved around them.
Another thing: the music was so loud that you had to shout to be heard. Okay for these kids, so young that they had nothing to say. But now that she was eighteen, Remeny preferred a quiet place like Sanctuary. It was better for flirting.
Remeny spotted Botão and waved. She skirted the dancers to join them.
“I’m here but I can’t stay. I’m babysitting my sisters.” Her avatar was wearing a Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness tee shirt.
“I like this.” Remeny brushed a hand down the sleeve.
“Yeah.” She tugged at the hem, stretching the front of the tee so she could admire it too. “My mom and I designed them and then I printed out ten on our home fab, sizes six and seven. I’ll bring them to the Gates Center tomorrow and have the teachers send them home with the kids. Cost less than ten bucks.”
“I was just there today myself.”
“Oh my god, what if we had met?” She clutched her throat in mock horror. “You ask me, I say the whole secret identity thing is dumb. The oldschool is just trying to keep us from ganging up on them.” She brushed up against Sturm. “What do you think, Sturm, or are you ignoring me on purpose?”
“You forgot the commas,” he said, “and I wasn’t ignoring you. I was looking for Silk.”
“Asshole.” She was stunned. “Be that way then.” She pushed away from him.
“What do you know about Silk?” he said.
=What are you doing?= Remeny sent Robby a private message.
=I think she’s in on it.=
=In on what?=
“Why should I tell you?” said Botão.
“Because Silk isn’t who we think he is.”
Botão’s anger blip had a sarcastic edge. “Nobody here is who I think they are.”
“Did he tell you to come up with that slogan?”
“Oh, I get it. I’m not smart enough to come up with an idea on my own. Let’s see now, is it because I’m a girl? Because I am uma Brasileira?”
“There.” Remeny pointed. Silk had entered with a couple of avatars new to her.
“All roll now, and spin those wheels, easy now and boys form a star . . . ” Some of the avatars on the dance floor morphed their shoes into roller blades; the others grew casters in their legs. “Now be our stars, and keep it rolling.” One of the boys in the star formation slipped and toppled into the boy next to him. The girl dancers clapped and giggled, but the caller didn’t pause. “That’s all right, no time for regrets, head back home and into your sets.”
Silk appeared beside Remeny. “Our meeting isn’t until Tuesday,” he said, “but as long as we’re here . . . I don’t see Toybox.”
“Leave him out of this,” said Sturm.
“Oh, and are you giving the orders now?” His amusement blip barely registered.
“I think there is some kind of conspiracy going on and you’re part of it. You’re manipulating me. Us.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Botão.
“How can it be manipulation . . . ” Silk spread his hands. “ . . . if you’re doing what you wanted to do anyway? You believe, Sturm. I know you do.”
“But I don’t,” said Botão, “and you can take your conspiracy or revolution or whatever the hell it is and shove it.” As Botão tore her tee shirt off and hurled it at Silk, she generated a replacement Seleção Brasileira soccer jersey. “I’ll find another coop. Remeny? You with me?”
With a shock, Remeny realized that she wanted to say yes, that she was actually afraid of what Silk and Sturm were trying to do to themselves. She liked being an avatar, sure, but this wasn’t how she wanted to live the rest of her life. Not if it meant getting stashed. She started toward Botão.
=Wait.= Sturm was desperate.
Silk didn’t wait. “You can’t quit,” he said. “Don’t you want to live your life in softtime? You’re the one who wanted to make your own domain and never get real again.”
“No.” Botão glared at the three of them, and Remeny was ashamed to be lumped with the boys. “I was just saying that I like the real world and VR.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the music and now people were eavesdropping. That only made her talk louder. “I don’t know about you jerkoffs, but I like sex, oldschool sex, the kind you probably can’t get; you know with touching and kissing and . . . and sweetness.” Her anger blip soared. “And I’m going to have my own kids someday.”
In her room, Remeny felt tears come. She agreed with everything Botão was saying—except maybe the part about having kids. But it would hurt Robby if she spoke up and he had been hurt so much already. Not fair, not fair, but then nothing in her life was fair. She had been so busy being Robby’s sister that she had forgotten how to be herself.
“But we’re doing your kids a favor,” said Silk. “And your grandchildren.”
The caller had stopped and the music shut down. Now the entire playground was listening to them. Remeny was pretty sure they were about to be kicked out. Or worse.
“We’ve got nine billion people crowded onto this planet,” he continued. “Most of us stashed aren’t ever going to have kids. We say that’s a good thing. And the stashed don’t burn through scarce resources like you and your kids. We’re saving the planet. All we ask is that we get to live the life we want.”
“Avatars Silk and Botão, you are disrupting this playground.” The caller’s warning pierced the argument like a fire alarm. “Stop now or there will be consequences.”
“Okay.” Botão raised her hands in surrender. “So you have some ideas. But a revolution? No. You haven’t seen what evil a revolution does. I have.” Then she brought her hands together with a sharp clap and her avatar popped.
Everyone but Silk seemed to be holding their breath. He knelt, picked up her discarded tee shirt and held it up. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he said. “Someday. That’s all. In the meantime, I apologize.”
The music started again. The crowd in the playground buzzed.
“Please.” A kid in a foolish wizard’s hat touched Sturm’s elbow. “What was that all about?”
Sturm waved him off and snatched the tee shirt out of Silk’s hands. “You and I still have something to settle.”
“We do. But what about your sister?”
Sturm froze. “What did you say?” A blip shimmered but he suppressed it.
“We don’t play by the rules, remember? That’s how revolutions work.” Was Silk smirking? “But we should really take this elsewhere. I have a place.”
“You smug bastard. Why should we trust you?”
“Because you’re smart? Because you need us?” He was ignoring Remeny. “We can leave her behind if you want.”
“I’m right here,” said Remeny, although she felt like she was in someone else’s dream. “Don’t pretend I’m not.” She poked Sturm. “Either of you.”
“Fine,” said Silk. “Now, we should go.”
Remeny was surprised that Toybox could afford a domain, although his taste in decoration was about what she would have imagined. The floor of his space was bone, the walls fire, the ceiling smoke. His temporarily abandoned avatar, dressed in garish vestments, perched at the edge of a gilt Baroque throne, obviously a copy of something. Remeny queried and it turned out to be the Chair of Saint Peter from St. Peter’s Basilica, part of some altar designed by Bernini. It didn’t seem like Toybox’s taste until she found the sublink: some people called it Satan’s Throne. In front of the throne were couches and chairs that seemed to have been made from writhing bodies. These gathered around a glass coffin, on top of which were an open bottle of absinthe, a crystal decanter of water, four matching goblets with slotted absinthe spoons, and a dish of sugar cubes. Inside the coffin was the stashed body of Jason Day, or at least what she assumed was a fairly accurate copy. It wasn’t too hard to look at: the breathing mask and feeding tube hid most of the face and the body had not degenerated as much as some of the stashed she had seen images of. He still had all his arms and legs, but then Jason Day was underage and would have to log off and leave his coffin for several hours a week. This meant he wasn’t yet eligible for an intercranial interface like Sturm’s. His Deveau had a larger array of sensors than her Neurosky 3100 and it was connected to the body sock which monitored his vital signs.
“Where is he?” Sturm flicked a finger against Toybox’s idle avatar.
“Don’t know,” said Silk. “Wobbling around hardtime? I’m sure he’ll show up before long. Meanwhile, you need to promise that you won’t rat us out.”
“Rules?” said Remeny. “Wasn’t there something about revolutions not having any?”
“Sorry, but either you promise or we’re done.”
“Sure, sure. We promise.” Sturm bent and pretended to examine the Chair of Saint Peter. “Just get on with it.”
“Johanna?”
“Remeny to you. How do you know I’ll keep my word?”
“We’ve done our homework.” He tried a smile on her. “Which means I trust you more than you trust me.” She was embarrassed that, just a few hours ago, it would have worked.
She morphed one of Toybox’s repulsive couches into a park bench and sat. “Promise.”
“Thank you. The first thing to know is that there are a lot of us. Not enough, but more all the time. Did you know that when Jefferson wrote that first declaration, only about a third of the colonists favored independence? A third were loyal to the King and another third were on the fence. The point is that we don’t need to convince everybody, okay?”
Toybox jerked on his throne and opened his eyes. “What did I miss?”
Remeny swallowed her blip of chagrin.
“We just started.” Silk seemed annoyed at the interruption.
“The contact went well?”
“About what we expected. Botão bailed.”
“But these two bit after all.” Toybox rubbed his hands together. “I wanted to be there but the damn overlord . . . well, you know. Besides, Silk says I’m not quite ready for a contact. I need to work on my issues.” He came off his throne to the coffin. “Absinthe?”
Remeny scooted away from him on her bench. She opened the private channel with Robby. =Does he have to talk?=
=Humor them. They’re taking a risk.= Sturm joined him. “I’ll have some.” He laid a sugar cube on one of the slotted spoons and set it on a glass.
“Could we please get to the point?” said Remeny. It felt good to close her hands into fists, like she had control of something at least. “What are you asking us to do?”
“Recruit,” said Silk. “What we were doing in coop—that’s what we’re doing all across the entire county. You talk to kids. Make friends. Get our point across.”
“I signed on last month,” said Toybox. “Easiest thing I ever did.”
“Okay,” said Sturm. “But we’re graduating.”
“Are we?”
Remeny and Sturm stared at one another. =Oh shit.=
“We flunk coop.” Toybox’s glee was (.7). “On purpose. Isn’t that crush?”
Remeny couldn’t help herself. “Shouldn’t be hard for you.”
Sturm drained his virtual absinthe at a gulp. “So we’re stuck in EOS hell forever.”
“There are only so many times you can repeat coop,” said Silk, “although we can help you extend your time here. We can arrange it so that most of the kids assigned to your teams are sympathetic to the stashed. Changing avatars can buy time. Eventually you will have to graduate. There will be another assignment waiting, if you want.”
Remeny was stunned by the enormity of what Silk was saying. And who was he, really? How old? Did he even live in Jefferson County?
“All of this is voluntary, understand, drop out any time. But you won’t want to. We’re busy everywhere, working in every demographic group. Lots of us are overclocked and can think rings around those who lived the majority of their lives in hardtime. And, Remeny, we’re not all stashed. There are lots of us out and about in the real world. Maybe they have brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers . . . ”
“Wait,” Remeny said. “Aren’t our parents going to get suspicious if we keep flunking coop?”
“Some do.” Silk nodded.
“My parents don’t give a shit,” said Toybox. “They’re stashed too.”
“Sometimes kids convert their parents,” continued Silk.
“Let me guess.” Robby held up a hand to stop him. “And sometimes you try for entire families at once.”
Toybox chuckled.
“Special families get special consideration.”
Remeny thought about Steve Spencer in his house in Vermont and a sixty-million-dollar Vincente Gonsalves flix and Robby’s ultimatum. Which was more important to Dad, the part or his son’s pursuit of happiness? Wondering about it made her head ache.
“So that’s pretty much the deal,” said Silk. “I’m happy to tell you more, but I’d like to hear what’s on your mind now.”
The silence stretched. Remeny couldn’t look at Robby. She closed their private channel. She felt like curling up into a ball. He had to speak first. But she knew. He was her brother. She knew.
“I’m interested.”
“Good man.” Silk came over and sat on the couch beside her. “Remeny?” What had she seen in him? “We definitely want you too.” She thought that if he tried to touch her, she would slap his hand away.
On an impulse, she pulled the Neurosky off her head and Silk, Toybox, and Sturm disappeared. It was almost midnight. She was going to owe her overlord big time for this night. She stood and stretched in the dark of her room. Her home. She didn’t bother with lights or a headset. Mom and Dad were almost certainly asleep but she opened the hall door as if it were made of glass and slunk down to Robby’s room. She was glad now that she hadn’t left ForSquare with Botão. It was important that she understood what Silk was offering Robby. The pursuit of his happiness. As Sturm.
But his happiness wasn’t hers, and that was okay. Silk had given her something, even though she couldn’t accept his offer. She would have life and her liberty from her brother’s pain.
Johanna leaned close to Robby and blew on his face.
Goodbye.
He stirred but did not wake.