“After they took him away, they said the family couldn’t be trusted to have any kind of printer.” She wiped the idea away with a disgusted hand. “Who needs that garbage?”
How was she able to afford all these words? Then I realized that I hadn’t heard her Cuff buzz at all. Did those thick sleeves muffle the sound?
“You know why Beecher jumped?” she asked, smoothing out the scratchy cloth on her legs. Her voice dropped to a sadder tone.
Was she really asking, or was she going to tell me? If she knew, I wished she would just come out and say so.
“Butchers & Rog bought him. Full Indenture. Said he could finish school and then be placed in servitude, or he could quit school right away, and Rog would take him.”
What kind of choice was that? Quitting school made even less sense now that I knew what had been troubling him. My heart ached for the burden he’d carried, unable to tell me. Had their debt suddenly gotten worse? Is that why he had been Indentured?
“That poor boy.” Mrs. Stokes shook her head sadly. “Boys his age need to eat, but you saw how skinny he was. We could never afford enough food, and we just couldn’t keep our debt rate steady, no matter how hard we tried.”
She shrugged helplessly. “He signed a contract. Rog made him use paper and ink. Ink on his fingers. I should’ve asked about that. I didn’t find out ’til later that Beecher agreed to go right away to keep me out of servitude.”
She shook her head pitifully. “That was the choice they gave him. He agreed to go early to protect me. He barely wanted to say that. You know what he was like after his fifteenth.” She sighed. “He knew what would happen if they found out my secret.”
She put her hand on her thick sleeve and pulled the coarse fabric up. Underneath, the skin of her hand and arm was a shiny, red, mottled mess. Her Cuff was black, charred around the edges. The glossy screen was warped and eddied with a purplish iridescence.
“It happened years ago,” she said. “Long before Randall and the printer. I went in to get my overlays—I got mine late in life, because they didn’t have them when I was fifteen—and when they presented me with Terms of Service, I clicked DECLINE. The administrator was shocked.”
My eyes must have gone wide, because Beecher’s grandmother laughed at me. “She looked a little like that! Dear, you always have the legal right to decline. Did you know that?”
Could I have refused my overlays? Her advice did me little good now, but still...
“The transition specialist didn’t know what to do. Apparently neither did the Cuff, because it started to get warm. I thought it was a feedback loop. Randall wondered if it was purposeful—the government’s punishment for not agreeing to the ToS. Whatever caused it, the Cuff got hotter and hotter. It probably would have gone molten, like most do, but once we got home, Randall hacked it. That boy was clever, and was he ever mad. Burned his fingers some. My arm didn’t fare too well, either. But all the inputs were fried.”
She held the Cuff a little higher, as if I could see what had gone wrong.
“It still puts out a signal, telling them I’m here. That’s about it. It can’t record a thing. I can say anything I like,” she sighed. She looked sad. I would have expected her to be happy about it. “Beecher thought I could do more good than him because of this.” She held the Cuff higher. “As if I had something useful to say. Truth is, I talked too much already. I complained about the Rights Holders, and look where that got us. I got Randall so fired up with my talk, he got too bold. Now my son and his wife are out tending crops so rich people don’t have to eat printed food, and my grandson...” Her voice broke off, and she wiped her eyes.
“As far as those Rights Holders know, I haven’t spoken in years. Doesn’t attract any attention, though. I’m sure lots of old ladies give up on talking, so I don’t show up as special or strange. You, though—silence at your age is awful conspicuous.”
Her story, and the reminder of Beecher’s fate, was almost too much to bear. I clenched my jaw to hold back the tears, but they still came.
“All you kids without your parents—it’s tragic—so much worse than it used to be,” she said, wiping my cheek. “Seems like they wait until you kids are just old enough to stick you with a Custodian, and then they yank your parents away.”
She tussled my pixie cut, and I hurriedly smoothed it back into place. She was right, of course. How many friends did I have who still had their parents? It had somehow seemed normal—just the way things were—even if the idea of it twisted a knot in my chest.
“Sorry,” she said. “I should be careful not to tussle you into a Copyrighted do.”
She paused and closed her eyes for a brief moment. I felt my hair again. I’d have to cut it soon, hacking it back with the dull pair of scissors Sam and I used for trimming hair. It was weird to think her Cuff wasn’t watching, recording, scanning her haircut and mine and comparing the scans against what little was free.
“They just keep taking all they can, right up to the breaking point. It’s odd how everyone seems to end up right at the edge of Collection, don’t you think? You can’t do any little thing to protest it, or they’ll sue you right into servitude. I suppose that is why I like your tactic so much. Technically, you aren’t doing anything. I hope you realize how clever that is.”
I didn’t. I hadn’t. Another tear fell. I felt like a complete fraud. Did she really believe I’d worked this out—that I’d planned for all this to happen?
“I hope you know I’m proud you did it,” she said. The wrinkles on her face crinkled up.
I realized I was still standing, looming above her, my posture still full of anger and frustration. My heart was a different matter. I could feel the sadness and regret in her. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault. Whatever she’d stirred up in Beecher, that was no cause for him to take his own life. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t take her hand. I didn’t know how to bring her any comfort, and that need welled inside me. One more tear slid down my cheek.
She took my hand instead. Then she stood and hugged me, and I did not move, because I could not hug her back. I just let myself soak it in.
ASSAULT: $14.99
With each day that passed, our prospects dwindled, and without a paycheck, we would be in Collection before the month was out. My silence and notoriety made me impossible to employ. I couldn’t even try to earn pennies in a Free-to-Play game because I couldn’t agree to Terms of Service.