was overcome with an urge to hug her, but I had to squelch it. I had to be strong. I gritted my teeth and looked down enviously at her bare forearm. I wondered how she would feel when they put the Cuff on her thin, pale arm.
Behind her, Mandett Kresh was milling around. He was a little younger than us both. The moment our eyes met, he also pulled his fingers across his lips.
“Please come,” Nancee said, squeezing my hand before she turned and left with him.
An uneasy feeling welled up in me. Would I be blamed? But I couldn’t let myself think that way: just about myself. It was selfish. If Nancee went silent like me, she wouldn’t be protected like I had been. There would be no ambiguity in her motive. I couldn’t let her do it, but how could I stop her?
I walked home in a fog. The dome was dark above me. The sky was heavy with clouds beyond—I could tell from the deep gray. I tried to think of what I could do to stop Nancee, but I’d made that impossible. My head went in circles trying to work it out, but when I arrived in our apartment, something was waiting that made me forget all about Nancee and the trouble she was headed toward.
A bright yellow letter had been slipped into our apartment. It was a physical, paper letter in a thick envelope, delivered right into our home by Placers. The word DESIST was stamped on the front in thick black ink. The return address was in the form of a logo: a black, yet rainbowlike holographic foil, like oil in three dimensions. It came from Butchers & Rog.
A chill ran down my spine.
The yellow letter was exactly like the one that had taken my father away. As soon as I picked it up, my Cuff fired a small vibration, and I was startled. I wasn’t used to the vibration yet. Somewhere at Butchers & Rog, they’d just received confirmation of delivery. There was no charge: just verification.
I didn’t open the letter. It wasn’t for me. It was addressed to Saretha.
A gnawing pit grew in my stomach. This was no coincidence. Whatever they were trying to do was meant to punish me—why had they dragged her into it?
DESIST. I ran my fingers over the raised ink.
This was a message so important, they put paper in our hands. Did they dig up another download from the RIA® Agency? No. This was different. It said DESIST. They wanted her to stop doing something, but what? Protecting me? Being my sister? Letting me be silent?
I dropped the letter on our table. It seemed to glow like a patch of sunlight. I had once seen sunlight, years ago, when a hexagon in the dome came loose. The thick Aeroluminum® panel fell softly into the road, too light to be more than a nuisance on the ground. Sun streaked down in a long, shimmering shaft. The public was warned away, not from the panel, but from the light. They said direct sunlight did strange things to your skin, but the way it lit the buildings was beautiful.
The Ad screen on our wall suddenly screamed to life.
“Looking to change legal counsel? Look no further than Bates & Bruthers! We will defend you with vigor, with gusto, with the maximum litigiousness allowed by Law!”
Three oily men in perfect Crumpfry, Banyard & Liepshin™ suits stood with arms folded, looking somewhere offscreen—toward their next case, I suppose. The words Bates & Bruthers flew off the screen in 3-D, except our screen wasn’t 3-D, so the effect was diminished. I crossed the room and hit CANCEL.
More effective than Arkansas Holt scrolled across the bottom of our screen as the Ad faded away. Who wasn’t? I wondered to myself. Was he really doing us any good?
I paced the room. I looked out the murky window, agonizing that I couldn’t tell anyone what had arrived. If I had completed the ceremony, I could have just used my Cuff to call or text Saretha at work. But I couldn’t warn Saretha. I couldn’t warn Sam. I had to wait and see the horror on their faces when they saw the letter in person.
When Sam arrived, he dropped his backpack on the floor and went straight to it. Behind him, his friend Nep stopped cold in the hall.
“What did you guys do?” Nep clenched the sides of the doorway, his thin body dwarfed by oversized clothes. His wide, dark-ringed eyes darted around, looking for some evidence of our heinousness. Or maybe he was looking for Saretha.
“DESIST?” Sam looked at me. I could see the wheels turning in his head. He wanted to say something funny, but even his mischievous mind couldn’t think of anything amusing to say.
“You got a Placement,” Nep said in a weak voice, pointing from the doorway to our counter. His oversized shirt slipped to one side, and he adjusted it, embarrassed.
I hadn’t noticed the Placement. I had been too preoccupied. A beautiful, glistening bottle of Rock™ Cola was sweating on a cooling pad under a bright, crisp light. It was a Product Placement, all right. These were rare for us. Law Firms often contracted with Placers when they wanted a quick, efficient delivery. The Placers must have slipped the soda in with the envelope delivery. Sometimes they took pity on you. They once set up our whole building with double protein inks for our food printers. Some people said it was a marketing ploy. Others thought it was an off-contract act of kindness. They had managed it all without a single sighting.
“Whelp,” Nep said, bravely clutching himself in the doorway a second longer. Pushing backward, his oversized clothes flapped around him like a bird taking off as he disappeared down the hall.
“What are we going to do?” Sam dropped the letter back onto the table. “What do they want?” He began pacing around the room, scratching at his arm. “Can we open it?”
He knew we couldn’t. It was a federal crime to open someone else’s mail, even your sister’s, unless she was demonstrably incapacitated or dead. My stomach was in knots. Sam turned on the screen to distract us, and we sat, catching up on viewing our Ad quota, until Saretha finally came home.
The door slid open, and Saretha spotted the letter at once. The yellow stood out in the dreary light of our room. Her smile pulled back into a weird contortion. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wasn’t a frown. It was like her lips and teeth were used to smiling, but they didn’t know what to do with bad news. Sam ran up and gave her a hug. She stroked his hair unconsciously as she stared at the envelope. Her Cuff buzzed, startling her into stillness. I stood behind him, paralyzed by fear and my inability to communicate anything. Saretha remembered better than either of us what the last letter like this had meant.
She sighed and recomposed herself. I could see her pretending this wouldn’t be bad. Maybe she thought to herself, Be positive. She picked the envelope up and opened it, careful not to let any paper fall. It read:
To Miss Saretha Jime:
Unauthorized use of a person’s likeness constitutes violation of International Copyright Law Section 17A, and Federal restrictions prohibiting the use of a person’s likeness without legal consent. Effective immediately, you are hereby ordered to cease and desist using the likeness of our client, Miss Carol Amanda Harving, or risk being found responsible for civil, criminal and financial penalties.
Sincerely, on behalf of Miss Carol Amanda Harving,
Silas Rog, Esq.,
Butchers & Rog Attorneys at Law,
