Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
Her parents said nothing. Nick felt trapped, painfully aware that Lexi’s parents stood between him and the door. He had decided to trust Lexi, had brought his brother and sister into this house, and now these people were standing there, blocking the exit, deciding whether to help them or hand them over to the bots. Nick rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. If they pulled out those comm devices, he’d get Cass and Kevin out that front door, no matter what he had to do.
“It’s what you always talk about,” said Lexi. “Resisting the robots, regaining our humanity.”
“Quiet, Lexi!” said her mother urgently.
“Freemen, Mom! These are three real-life, unchipped, robot-killing freemen standing here, and they need our help! For once you can finally do something other than just complain!”
“That’s enough, Lexi!” said her father. He walked up to the kids. “May I … may I feel your necks?” Nick nodded. Lexi’s father felt Nick’s neck first, then Cass’s, then Kevin’s. He walked back to his wife and took her hand. A moment of unspoken communication seemed to pass between the two, and then she gave a small smile and squeezed his hand.
“So,” Lexi’s father said, turning to the kids. “How did a bunch of freemen end up in my living room, in my underwear?”
Nick hesitated. “I’m sorry, Mister … uh …”
“Jonathan. Jonathan Tanner. And Olivia.”
“Look, Mr. Tanner,” said Nick, “I’m sorry, but can we trust you? I mean, Lexi has already threatened to turn us in.”
“Lexi!” said her mother.
“I was just making a point!” said Lexi. “About how easy it would be for anyone to turn them in. They didn’t get it.”
Mr. Tanner sat down. “Sit,” he said. “Please.” When everyone was seated, he leaned toward Nick and continued. “You need to understand the terrible risk our daughter is taking, bringing you here.”
“Dad—”
“Lexi, wait.” Mr. Tanner cut her off. “I’m not angry. I’m not criticizing. I’m proud of you.” He turned back to Nick. “But listen. We will be killed if we’re caught helping you. Or re-educated, and permanently separated from each other.” Mrs. Tanner reached over and grabbed his hand. “I should be telling you three to get the hell out of my home,” he continued. Nick tensed and began to stand. Mr. Tanner gestured for him to sit back down. “But instead, if Olivia agrees, I’m going to offer you food and shelter, and if you tell us what you’re doing, we may be able to help.”
“Why?” asked Cass.
Mrs. Tanner let go of her husband’s hand, stood, and began pacing. “We know many people who have been through re-education,” she said. “The robots spend so much time telling you how bad it was before their Great Intervention. How humans were killing each other in war after war. But now …” She paused. “I can barely get myself to say this to strangers … you don’t say this out loud very often … but now, it’s true, we’re not killing each other, but we’re like zoo animals. Do you understand?”
Cass shook her head
no
.
Mrs. Tanner sighed. “Honey, this City, the robots … this isn’t life. Life may not always be pretty, but at least it’s life. Some of us know that. We can’t say it, but we know.” She sat back down.
“We’re here to rescue our parents,” blurted Kevin. “I found something in the woods. It just seemed like a fletch piece of tech. But it signaled the bots, and they came and destroyed our Freepost.” He blinked hard and cleared his throat. “Our parents are here, because if they’re not here they’re dead, and they can’t be dead. So we’re here to rescue them.”
The room was quiet, and then Cass said, “It took us days and days to get here. Walking. We thought we’d never find it.”
“So now you know,” said Nick, leaning forward. The truth was out there, and it couldn’t be taken back. “Can you help us? Find our parents and get them out of the City?”
“How old are you?” asked Mrs. Tanner.
“I’m seventeen,” said Nick. “My sister is fifteen, and my brother is thirteen.”
“Almost fourteen,” said Kevin.
Mrs. Tanner smiled. “Almost fourteen,” she repeated. Her smile dropped away. “If your parents are in the City, they’re being re-educated. They’re being taught how to be Citizens.”
“What do you mean by ‘taught’?” asked Cass quietly.
“Usually it’s just lessons,” Mrs. Tanner said. “Lessons, over and over.” She paused. “Sometimes, it’s more.”
“More?” asked Kevin.
“They’ll be fine, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Tanner. “Most people come through just fine, or maybe they’re off for a little while afterward but then they come back to themselves. I’m sure your parents are smart, and strong, and not too stubborn. They’ll choose their battles wisely.”
“Eventually,” said Mr. Tanner, “when the robots decide they can be peaceful and productive, they’ll be chipped and given jobs and a home. And then you’ll be able to find them.”
“What if the bots decide they can’t be good Citizens?” said Nick. “What if they are too stubborn?”
Mr. Tanner said nothing.
“What happens then?” Nick insisted, even though he didn’t really want to hear the answer.
“Then they’ll be killed,” said Mr. Tanner.
The word
killed
seemed to hang in the air. Cass pulled out the notebook page she had stashed in her back pocket. She unfolded it and set it on the coffee table for everyone to see. Nick felt something twist inside of him as he squinted and realized what was on the piece of paper. It was a sketch of their parents’ faces, drawn in pencil, smudged a bit at the edges but still amazingly lifelike.
“This is my mom and dad,” she said. “The people who raised me when my birth parents were killed in the War.” She reached down and smoothed out the edges with a shaky hand. “I can’t let the bots kill my parents again.”
IN THE MORNING, DURING A BREAKFAST OF CEREAL THAT HAD KEVIN ecstatic, Nick asked Lexi to take them to the robot re-education site. Mrs. Tanner had told them they’d be out soon enough, and that new Citizens were usually given an apartment around the re-education center for a while afterward, but Nick wasn’t about to sit around patiently waiting.
“My parents wouldn’t like that, rock st—”
“Nick! It’s Nick. Enough with the ‘rock star.’”
“All right, all right, Nick,” said Lexi. “But,
Nick
, it’s not smart. My parents are right. You need to just keep your head down for a while.”
“We’re not going to do anything stupid,” said Nick. “Just take a look around. Your parents said they’d be gone for a few hours. Besides, I’ve got my stolen hat and your sunglasses, so we’re all set.”
Lexi grinned, then looked thoughtful. “We can’t get too close,” she said. “That whole zone is CP’d, of course. Too far to walk and get back before my parents, and the trans is not an option.... Neighborhood patrols shouldn’t be much of a problem during the day, unless we really get unlucky …” She pulled out her comm and started typing. “I’ll get Amanda to come. Me and Amanda on our scoots, each taking one of you, and then one of you can go alone.” She looked around the table. “Which one of you thinks you can handle a scoot?”
Kevin dropped his spoon into his bowl with a loud clank and raised his hand. “That would be me. That would
so
be me.”
“Forget it, kid,” said Nick. “The bots will definitely notice us with you crashing into them. I’ll do it.”
“Nick,” said Cass, “I don’t think, with your vision …”
Nick felt himself flush and glared at Cass. He didn’t want her talking about his bad eye in front of Lexi. “I said I’ll do it.”
However, after an evaluation in the quiet alley behind Lexi’s house, it was Cass who was the natural. Nick kept getting confused between the brake and the accelerator and almost ran Lexi over; Kevin couldn’t keep his balance or ride in a straight line. Cass listened carefully to Lexi’s instructions, hopped on, and immediately rode like a City-born Citizen.
Amanda pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, and they came out of the house to meet her. “They slept at your house?” she said to Lexi.
“Where were they supposed to sleep?” asked Lexi.
“Well, you could have told me, instead of making it a big surprise.”
“No,” said Lexi. “I wasn’t about to comm anything about them.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Amanda grudgingly. “But first things first. Apologize. And mean it.”
“Amanda, you just agreed I couldn’t say anything about them …”
“Not about that,” said Amanda.
Lexi sighed. “Amanda, I’m sorry I was mean to you at the coffee shop. It wasn’t fair.”
“Okay, forgiven,” Amanda said after a moment. “So, you said you wanted to go for a ride …”
“Yeah, you can take Kevin, I’ll get Nick, and Cass can follow on her own. Wait’ll you see her ride, Amanda—it’s like she’s been scooting forever. I mean, she’s never ridden in her life—”
Amanda cut Lexi off. “Yeah, fine, she’s a natural, she’s amazing, I get it. So where do you want to go?”
Lexi cleared her throat. “We’re thinking, you know, maybe just a quick trip to check out the area near the re-education center.”
“What?” said Amanda. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Look, Mandy, we won’t even get off our scoots. They just want to see.”
“Lexi, it’s too dangerous.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, even though there was nobody in sight. Her eyes darted up to the darkened windows of the neighbors’ houses. “They’re not chipped. What if a bot stops us?”
“Like Lexi said, we won’t get off our scoots,” said Nick. He looked back and forth between the two girls. “We’ll be careful.”
“No way,” said Amanda. “It’s just stupid.”
Lexi pulled Amanda away from the rest of the group, and they argued quietly for a few more minutes, Lexi gesturing animatedly with her hands, Amanda leaning away from her with her arms folded across her chest. Finally Amanda dropped her arms and nodded, frowning.
So they set off, keeping it slow, with strict instructions to Cass to stop at reds, go on greens, stay close, and above all not to fall off. Nick was amazed by how fast and smooth the scoots were. He tried to pay attention to the route, to keep track of how to get back, but he was preoccupied by Lexi’s slim waist in his hands. Her body was warm, and he could feel her stomach muscles tighten as she leaned into turns.
After ten minutes, they pulled over and parked. They were on the crest of a hill, in a part of the City that seemed to be mostly warehouses, with few pedestrians or traffic. “There,” said Lexi, pointing down the hill to an area about a quarter mile away. “See the brown building, taller than the rest? That’s the re-education center. And I think the buildings around it are used, too, but I don’t really know. I’ve never been in there, thankfully. There are CPs a block from it in every direction.”
“That’s where they are,” said Cass. “If they’re here.”
“Can we get closer?” said Nick. He squinted, but he couldn’t see well from a distance; he could barely make out the windowless top three floors of the re-education center. The rest of his view was cut off by the surrounding buildings.
“No,” said Amanda, climbing back on her scoot. “Come on, let’s go back.”
“Amanda’s right,” said Lexi. “Not safe.”
“Come on, just a few blocks closer,” said Nick. He knew it wasn’t smart, that he was pressing his luck, but they were here now, and he had to get a closer look. He began walking downhill. Cass and Kevin followed.
“Wait!” said Lexi, but she followed, too.
Amanda stayed with the scoots. “Forget it,” she said. “I’ll wait for you here.”
At the base of the hill, Lexi insisted that they stop. Three blocks away they could see a checkpoint, with a low metal barrier blocking the street and sidewalk, and a sphere bot hovering. Another block beyond that was the main re-education building, rising above its neighboring structures, set back from the street by an empty courtyard fenced in with chain link. Nick stood on the sidewalk, staring. If their parents were alive, they were inside that building.
“Come on, you’re looking suspicious,” said Lexi.
Nick kept staring.
“Come on!” said Lexi.
Nick sighed. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, and began to turn away, but then the front door of the re-education center opened and a sphere bot floated out, followed by six humans, and then another sphere bot bringing up the rear. The people were dressed in gray jumpsuits and were moving slowly, with their heads down. It was so hard to see their faces from a distance, but the one in the middle …
“Is that Gapper?” whispered Cass. “Do you see?”
“I can’t tell,” said Nick. “I need to get closer.” He took a step toward the checkpoint.
Lexi grabbed his arm. “No, you idiot!” she hissed.
“I need to look!” Nick said, too loudly, yanking his arm away. He took a few steps down the street, then a few more … he strained to see … he still wasn’t sure if it was Gapper.... If it was, that would mean that Freeposters had survived and been brought here. It would mean there really was a chance that their parents were alive.
Nick kept walking toward the checkpoint, but Lexi grabbed his arm again and pulled with all her strength, stopping him momentarily. “We’ve got to go,” she said urgently. “Now!” She let go of him and began walking away, back uphill.
With a few more shuffling steps, the prisoners disappeared into the building next to the re-education center. Nick stared at the now-empty courtyard a few moments longer, then tore himself away and walked back to his brother and sister.
“Was it him?” asked Kevin quietly.
“I’m not sure,” Nick said. “I think so, but I’m not positive.” He suddenly felt exhausted and shaky. Were his parents wearing gray jumpsuits, just a few blocks away from him? Were they even alive?
“LOITERING ON SIDEWALKS IS NOT PERMITTED,” said a metallic voice from just behind them. “YOU WILL RECEIVE AN INFRACTION.”
Nick kept a tight hold of his brother and sister and started walking away from the sphere bot. “No problem,” he said, without looking back. “We’re not loitering. We’re moving.”
The robot, with a graceful burst of speed, glided over the kids’ heads and then hovered in front of them on the sidewalk. “YOU WILL HALT AND RECEIVE YOUR INFRACTION, OR YOU WILL BE DETAI—” The robot cut itself off mid-word and began pulsing a bright red. “YOU ARE LACKING IDENTIFICATION IMPLANTS. REMAIN HERE AND YOU WILL BE PEACEFULLY DETAINED.”