“Brandon Nestle?” Sam asked. Of Saretha’s many admirers, Brandon seemed an odd choice.
Saretha held up her Cuff and shook it around. “He stayed my friend,” she said sharply. “He didn’t drop me like practically everyone else.”
$57.32 popped up on her Cuff for her last few sentences.
“That’s a great use of our money.” Sam shook his head.
“Speth can tell me if she doesn’t like it,” Saretha said, tapping away at her Cuff.
Sam slumped back to his bed, frowning.
Saretha laughed at something—probably Brandon begging to see her—and Sam turned and looked out the window.
Somehow, I had expected them to be happy. I waited for it, but happiness did not come. Everything was just as awful as the day before.
My jaw tensed in frustration, and I stalked out of the apartment. It would be hours before I had to meet Kel, Henri and Margot. I probably should have slept, but how could I?
Out on the street, I looked up toward Nancee’s building. How many times had I wandered over when we were kids, just to hang out? It felt wrong to think she wasn’t there. Did I know for certain she was gone? I wandered over and looked at the door. Her buzzer glowed saffron, one among dozens. I could not press it. The only thing I could think to do was scale the building and look inside, but if Kel found out, that would be the end for me as a Placer.
Instead, I walked a few blocks, and stood outside Penepoli’s building. I couldn’t press her buzzer either. The screen above her button grinned with six cartoon faces, with expressions from morose to ecstatic. I was supposed to select the one that best represented how I felt. There wasn’t one that looked infuriated, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t agree to ToS, anyway.
I looked out across the buildings arcing along inside the ring. A sinking feeling spread from my feet to my heart as I realized how cut off I was. I could only think of one place to go.
*
Beecher’s grandmother looked surprised to see me when I arrived, but urged me inside with a tilt of her head and closed the door behind me.
“I’d ask what I owe this pleasure to, but...” She shrugged at the futility of asking. Instead, she went over to a stack of boxes leaning against her wall and pulled out two UltraGrain Harvest? Bars.
“Can I offer you something to eat?” She laughed. She put one bar in my hands and opened one for herself. “Not much better than Wheatlock?, I’m afraid, but without a printer, I’m stuck with what comes my way.”
She took a bite and frowned. “Blissberry. Their worst flavor. Never trust a product named for a fruit that doesn’t exist.”
I laughed, but caught myself and quickly stopped. My laugh carried the sound of my voice, and my voice seemed a dangerous thing. Even though laughing was still free, it seemed wrong.
Mrs. Stokes waved her hand at me like I was being ridiculous.
“It’s fine! Don’t stop yourself. Thank goodness a few things are still free, though what they pick and choose is absurd. Burps over fifty-eight decibels are intentional? Shrugs under two centimeters are free? Please. All of it is nonsense. There’s no system, just a matter of who sued first, for what, and who had the shrewdest, most expensive Lawyer.”
She sat, wearily. She seemed more tired than when I saw her before. She patted the couch, a silent request for me to sit beside her.
“Would you talk in a FiDo?” she asked me. Her voice was as light as if she was asking me whether I liked the color blue. “I expect not. Can’t know when the WiFi might pop on, and it wouldn’t be just a small expense for you, would it?”
She sighed.
She didn’t know the full truth. She didn’t know about the Squelches that peppered the city. I wouldn’t even speak there, which was far more controlled than a FiDo. Though, in truth, in the back of my mind, I worried that the door might open at any moment while I was in those Squelches—and, if I spoke, a word might fly out and ruin me.
“But imagine if the whole thing went down,” Mrs. Stokes said, extending her arms wide and letting them fall. “Randall said it would ruin us. Said we’d starve if the power ever ran out. Those inks we have? Ever look at them? They’re all labeled poison.”
I had. We all knew that messing around with molecular inks could be dangerous. They teach that early in school. The inks have to be combined in exact molecular patterns to make it all something you can safely eat.
“Truth is, some inks are just bad for digestion, some have good nutritional value and some, just to keep us on our toes, are poisonous. They would rather kill us than let us eat an ink for the nutrition. Randall couldn’t stand it. Said the WiFi would take years to fix if it went out, and we’d all starve long before that. Made it sound like doomsday.” She shook her head, like she didn’t believe it. I wondered, a little unfairly, if everyone in Beecher’s family might be crazy. But then I really thought about it.
If the WiFi was broken, how could you fix it? You couldn’t print new cables or nodes, because printers won’t work without WiFi. The cables, the nodes, the wires and the configurations were all Intellectual Property. You can’t just make something. You couldn’t create blueprints or plans. Technicians are legally bound to agree to Terms of Service before they even begin to work. No one could enter our city without agreeing to our ToS, either. Each Dome has its own set of Laws. Lawyers wouldn’t be able to sue, because even they can’t legally speak in a FiDo.
“Randall cracked open our food printer and scared the heck out of me. Everything inside was pockmarked with little ?s and ?s and those dreadful Patent marks. I’d have preferred cockroaches. But he said he’d figured out how to tell which ink was which. That’s what they took him for. Said he’d ruin the whole economy.”
She shook her head, a little disgusted, sighed and went back to her original point.
“But if it did go out,” Mrs. Stokes went on, leaning in toward me, “if the WiFi was gone forever, would you speak?”
Maybe, I thought, with a long, slow breath out. I had imagined things changing in different ways. I thought Laws would eventually change. What made me think those changes would be for the better? No one was working toward that—not for us.
Beecher’s grandmother squinted at me. “It’s hard to know if you’re thinking yes or no, but I wish you wouldn’t look so sad,” she said, patting my knee. “Silence is the only privacy.”
She sighed.
“Did you know Rossi & Speight tried to Patent walking?” She paused, thinking. “They called it ‘intentional placement of one foot in front of the other in a series for purpose of ambulation and travel.’ I thought people were finally going to riot on that one. It really could have pushed us over the brink. But then Silas Rog stepped in—Silas Rog!”
She burst out laughing so loud, it scared me. “Oh! Hoo. That face!” She turned to have a better look at me. “Worth a thousand words! If they charged for looks, you would be finished!”