“I was going to do all the talking,” he said. I remembered. “You were going to answer with a cheap word. Termite, maybe, if you agreed.”
We had tried this with Saretha two years before, but she said it went against the spirit of the Law. Then she added, “And it would be cheaper to say Speth than termite, anyway,” which was a little cruel, and cost her $12.73 to point out.
“A termite can still read the speech,” Sam said sadly. His face scrunched up, like he couldn’t comprehend what I was doing.
I paused, straining to keep my sobs silent, keeping an eye on my Cuff for any sign I had slipped up. Crying was free unless you made a sound. I wished I could explain to him. Behind him, Saretha looked bewildered as a small, punchy man in a chartreuse Lawyer’s suit raced up to her, talking fast.
I ran on, full speed, followed by the bunnies over the bridge’s screens, hopping quickly to keep up, singing more vigorously than before. They stopped short when I made it to the bridge’s other side.
Small voices began calling to me from the dropters.
“Crane Mathers from the Murdox Posts™—will you grant an interview?”
“Will you make a statement for Kingstan Press™?”
“CNC™. Can we get you to stare in silence at our camera for just one minute?”
The Kingstan Press™ dropter made a sudden dip, colliding with the one below it. The CNC™ dropter wobbled, then came back, tilted a hard right and slammed the one from Kingstan Press™ into the Ad wall, smashing its surface so the screen sputtered to gray.
I put my arms over my head to protect myself. A media frenzy like this could easily end with a dropter knocking you out cold, or catching its small heli blades in your hair and scalping you. If that happened, dozens more would appear on scene to cover that story.
An Ad for Dropter Gyroscopics™ flashed on the next panel, then more Ads clicked on across the walls in front of me, suggesting Law Firms, running shoes and Media Image Consulting™.
I made it inside our building, slamming the glass door quickly behind me. The dropters tapped at the glass, but were unable, physically or legally, to open the door. I took the elevator upstairs to our apartment on the twelfth floor.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
Our Ad-subsidized home had just one cheaply printed room. The walls were made of slightly rough, striated layers of polymer melt. Our building had been 3-D printed, millimeter by millimeter, from a set of economy plans, and warped to the curve of the ring just inside the outer highway. There were dozens of nearly identical buildings out here, printed from the same template, with all the same sorts of rooms inside.
Our rent was kept affordable as long as we watched thirty hours of Ads each month. There was no place cheaper to live in the city. If you couldn’t afford to live here, you were sent into servitude, like my parents had been.
For years, our home had a slight scent of scalded plastic. One wall had been printed in and smoothed over when my parents were taken. Our apartment was reconfigured to the “proper” allocation for three. It was infuriating to know my parents’ space was still there, empty, a useless void withheld because the Rights Holders couldn’t stand for us to have more than the legal minimum. Mrs. Harris tried to claim it was so we wouldn’t feel sad remembering our parents.
I could still smell the burnt plastic. I could still remember when that room was there—what it looked like. I could still remember them.
Sensing my warmth, the wall-screen clicked on and began a mandated rotation of Ads. I dropped myself on our couch and buried my head in my hands. The Ads increased in volume to remind me that if I did not see them, they would not count toward our monthly required viewing total for our subsidy.
My ears were ringing. My stomach churned, both hungry and upset. If everything had gone as planned, I would have been choosing my Brand like everyone else did on their Last Day, looking over my Placements with my friends and eating pizza—real pizza, not the printed kind. Instead, I had to face what I had done alone.
In silence.
I had the chance to bring my parents back, and I ruined it. Why? So what if Silas Rog was involved? So what if Beecher’s grandmother would be jailed or indentured, or whatever it was they were planning to do? I didn’t know Mrs. Stokes. Did she even understand what I had done, or how much it had cost me?
The door slid open behind me.
“I’m glad,” Sam yelled, stomping in. He didn’t seem glad. “I hope Silas Rog’s brain explodes. I hope the whole city crumbles to bits because one girl didn’t read her stupid speech! I hope everything falls apart.”
He was pacing, talking fast, because he could afford to say whatever he liked. He didn’t have to think about his words. He could let them fly. He stopped to hug me and then went on.
“Your friends are a bunch of turd muffins, by the way.”
I wanted to say, not all of them, but he knew.
An incoming request showed up on our screen from Dayline Exclusives™. Sam flicked at the screen to refuse the call.
“How is this even a big deal? No one ever did this before? Really? Like tons of people don’t read their stupid speech and then stop talking? The Juarze brothers probably say ten words each a year!”
This was an exaggeration, but only a mild one. I hugged him back in my mind.
Our door slid open again. Saretha came through, followed quickly by the Lawyer in the chartreuse suit.
“Speth,” Saretha said, breathless. “Not too late.”
“Who is that?” Sam asked, pointing at the Lawyer.
The Lawyer waved and bent his head, hands on his knees, as he caught his breath. “Arkansas Holt,” he panted. “Attorney at Law.”
An Ad for a competing Lawyer, Dirk Fronfeld, clicked on our screen, promising better returns. A call came in from his Law Firm. Sam canceled it.
Saretha’s brows pinched upward as she looked at me for some sign I hadn’t lost all my marbles.
Arkansas Holt moved to my side of the room, still breathing hard. Arkansas was the name of a state, I think. He had only a single medal on his chest, proudly proclaiming he had won at least one case, but sadly implying it was his only win.
Sam’s head suddenly snapped toward our room’s only window. “Son of a—” He stormed over. Our window was a milky, flickering mess that was supposed to be something we could adjust, clear to opaque, at our convenience. Instead it was stuck in an ugly, jittery state in between the two. Outside the window, a pair of dropters bobbed up and down, calculating how best to film me.
“Vultures,” Sam grumbled. He pulled open his pullout couch (Saretha and I shared the other) and yanked a blanket off to block their view. We didn’t have curtains. The Patent for the concept of curtains required a $90 monthly
