“I’m sorry, Mom. It was a stupid stupid idea. But…we just had to find out more about Ben before I signed my life away. I didn’t mean to hurt the security guard—I panicked. Is he okay?”
The cop rolled his eyes. “He’s fine. But you’re coming with me.” He got his handcuffs out and I shrank behind Mom, feeling very young and very scared.
“Wait. There has to be another option. I have two thousand dollars here.” She quickly opened a drawer in our kitchen and emptied it of utensils. It had a false bottom, which she removed. I gasped as she pulled out several small piles of cash.
“There might be another option,” the cop said agreeably as he slipped my mom’s wad of money in his shirt pocket. “We’ll just pretend this never happened. Stay out of trouble, miss. The next cop to arrest you might not have a move to the coast in mind.”
He left and my mom locked the door behind them.
“Oh my God, Mom,” I wailed. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking.” I dissolved into tears, anguished at the thought of all that money, gone. What if we needed it for something important?
She signed deeply and rubbed her eyes. “Casey, calm down. I wish you hadn’t gotten caught—”
“Mom, I’ll pay you back,” I cut her off. “All of it. Every penny. Why were you saving all that, anyway? Why weren’t we buying more water or better food this whole time?” I narrowed my eyes. Maybe if she and Dad had spent some of their stash, Ben would’ve been less desperate for Forever. Maybe I’d be less desperate.
“We were saving it because we want to get out of here. We were planning to head north, to get out of the country, and Canadian visas are very expensive.” Her eyes searched mine, pleading with me to understand. “Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe we should’ve given it to Ben so he could’ve gone on ahead of us. But he signed even though he said he wouldn’t and I’ve been in agony ever since. I don’t trust this system and I’m proud of you for doing a little critical thinking about it. I want to find a way to get him out. There has to be a lawyer out there who can figure out how to break the Forever Contract legally—there has to be some loophole. After Ben went in, we began saving for that—for a lawyer who probably doesn’t even exist.”
We hugged. I was glad my mom wasn’t angry, but I felt awful about the money. I didn’t know she and Dad had a plan to get Ben out. I only got paid twelve dollars an hour when I helped the well-digging crews. It would take me a while to get two thousand dollars together.
“They took his kidneys, Mom. He’s not—he’s not safe.”
“I know.”
*
James had been arrested as well. He was out on bail and he wouldn’t tell me where the money had come from, only that it was a loan and he had to pay it back.
“At this rate,” he said ruefully, “I’ll be digging wells until I’m thirty.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “We’ll pay off our debts together. Maybe we can open a gel stand like little kids selling lemonade on the side of the road in the olden days.”
“Very funny.” His voice turned serious. “Case—I’m relieved.”
I knew he meant about my not going in. Even though I had told him I wouldn’t he knew I’d been wavering. We were both in my kitchen. There was a sink, but we had gone over our water allotment that month, so it wouldn’t turn on again until the first.
“I’m relieved, too.”
“Happy birthday,” he kissed me and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. In his hand was a small cloth bag. He handed it to me and I opened it. It was a beautiful pendant attached to a thin leather cord. The pendant was a triangle with a series of delicate silver rings threaded through it. On some of the rings, there were pretty blue glass beads.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered. Very few people owned things this beautiful.
“It was my mother’s,” he said, his voice thick. His mother had died two years ago—untreated heat stroke that had turned into a coma. It had been his decision to take her off life support a month after it had happened. “I hope that’s not weird. It’s just…it’s so beautiful and I wanted you to have it.”
“I love it,” I said, my eyes tearing. “Help me put it on.”
James fastened the clasp at the nape of my next and turned me around. “Perfect,” he said. I threw myself into his arms, and we stood there together, thinking about the past.
“Did you see the back of the tickets?” I finally asked in a small voice. I didn’t want to think about my birthday or James’s mom anymore.
“The fine print, where they say your fine is waived if you go in? Yeah, I saw that. It’s gross. It’s like they’re slowly taking away our choice to stay out here. But the question is, why? Who are we hurting?”
“I don’t know. I have to tell Ben I’m not signing the contract today. You want to stay here while I chat with him, or should I catch up with you later?”
I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Nah, come find me at the wells when you’re done. I’m going to try to get some extra hours.”
“Okay.” We kissed, and he was gone. I turned to our kitchen screen and found Ben. He was napping in a hammock on his balcony. There were trees and leaves all around his little alcove. Some of the leaves were so big they looked like canoes. He must’ve had a party the night before, because I recognized some of his friends hanging out or napping in other parts of his apartment. There was a young woman on a chaise and Ben’s buddy Kai working on a painting at the other end of the balcony. One of the selling points of the system was that your avatar would be able to speak all languages when you went in. Kai was from Malaysia and one of Ben’s other best friends was from Guyana.
I tapped on my screen, which would sound kind of like a doorbell chime on his side. Ben woke up and grinned. “What are you doing on screen, birthday girl? It’s time!”
He got out of the hammock and did two quick yogic sun salutations.
I waited until he was done, and then explained about the visit from the police and the money James and I both owed back.
“I’m betting that little caper wasn’t your idea,” Ben countered.
“True. I just need more time,” I said.
“Okay, okay. But I’m telling you that coming here and letting go of all the fear and the pain is the best thing I’ve ever done.” His voice sounded strange, maybe because he was in his favorite yoga pose—plank.
“Wait, what?” Hadn’t he just said that the last time we’d chatted?
“What what?” Ben got out of the pose and sat on the floor of the balcony, cross-legged.
“You said that last time.”
“I say that a lot. It’s all good. All good.”
I signed off after blowing kisses to him and looked at the blank screen. My parents repeated themselves a lot—it seemed like something old people just did because they couldn’t help it. But not Ben.
I shivered.
*
“We have to go back,” I said to James when I found him at the wells. Since he was always using the screens there for non-work purposes, he never got promoted. I had a lot more responsibilities than he did when I was on shift, but fortunately it was my day off.
“Go back? To the warehouse?” He wiped his brow and signaled break time to his foreman. I gave him a gel pack, which he slugged with a grimace.
“Yeah. As soon as your shift is over.”
“Uh—I think I saw everything I needed to see. Why? What happened?”
“When I was chatting with Ben just now, he repeated himself—twice. I’m worried that, like, one of his nodes got detached and no one’s fixing it. I’m worried no one is taking care of him,” I said, my voice getting a bit louder with every word. I felt how wrong it was that I couldn’t be with my brother, really be with him in the same room. Families took care of each other and he’d done something that kept us from being able to do that.
“Whoa, okay. I get done in a half hour. Do you have bus fare? They probably changed the codes since we did t
his before. It might be harder this time.” James was thinking aloud, but his eyes were dancing. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d rather be talking about instead of trouble-shooting a fussy well switch.
“Yeah. I took it from my mom’s emergency stash. I’ll wait in the cafeteria.”
“Let me see if I can knock off now. Stu knows it’s your birthday.”
James walked over to his foreman. They both looked at me and the older man nodded.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, we reached the warehouse. It was dusk, still almost a hundred degrees outside, and quiet. There was no sign of the security guard in his cart, but we knew about the cameras this time. I’d brought black scarves to cover our hair and faces.
“Let’s see if there’s another door,” I suggested. “There’s got to be a less obvious way in.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
We circled around the giant building, which took some time. Opposite the original metal doors was a smaller single entrance. It also had a security panel, which James quickly opened. “Uh-oh,” he said right away. “Iris scanner. I don’t think I can hack this thing.”
“Stand back,” I said. I tried to sound like an action movie star, but my throat was dry. The line came out kind of hacky and uncertain.
“Stand…what?” He took a step back and looked at me, confused.
I had a gun in my hands and I fired at the door hinges in two quick shots. “This was also in my mom’s emergency stash,” I explained, making sure the safety was back on before I put it away. Mom was very big on emergency stashes. The water wars hadn’t reached us, but there had been some frightening supplies riots not far away and she was always worried we’d have to abandon our home and hit the road with whatever supplies, money, and weapons we could fit into the old truck if the unrest got bad enough. “She taught me how to use it a few years ago. I hope that worked.”
“Damn,” James said. “I’m a little worried about all the weapons you apparently own.”
“I think you’ve seen them all now.”
The door held firm. I took five more shots, but it wouldn’t budge. The vein in James’s neck appeared and my pulse began to race. If I couldn’t get us inside the warehouse quickly, we’d lose our chance. Security would appear and I definitely didn’t want to shoot anyone.
“This way!” James shouted, running for the front doors. Before we turned the corner, he crouched in the shadows and typed quickly into his screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked. It felt like an eternity since I’d used the gun and I was sure we’d be surrounded any minute.
“Getting us in. I hope. I have some contacts that might be able to grab the new code.” He looked at his screen, willing it to produce the information we needed. “Yes. Got it. Okay.”
“Contacts?” I asked. He sprinted over to the panel by the double doors. I stayed right on his heels. When I felt the magnetic door give, we were in. We raced into the creepy blue-lit building and headed for Ben’s station. He wasn’t there. “Are we in the right row?” I whispered.
“Yes,” James said. “I checked the numbers. He should be right here.”
The station where Ben had been hooked up was empty. The reclined metal chair held no one. I looked around. There were a few other vacant spots, but not many. Everything seemed the same.
“Were there empty spots last time?” I asked.
“I can’t remember,” James said.
I could feel my heart beating faster in my chest. I was just about to scream, panic, do something, when the lights in the building changed. An alarm sounded.
“RUN!” James shouted. He grabbed my hand and sprinted for the door we’d broken.
We came to the end of the corridor and ran directly into three men wearing black SWAT gear. They had us on our knees and cuffs within two seconds.
I glared at the guards. “Where is my brother?”
“We’re not authorized to give that information,” one of them said. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. They were the kind with screens around the edges, probably feeding him data about us. “This is your second infraction,” he said. “We’ll have to take you in.”
“Don’t we get one phone call?” James asked.
“You get nothing.”
*
They took us to a plain building, a detention facility. It was closer to where we lived than the warehouse had been, but still in the middle of nothing. I wanted to message my parents but there was no way to do that unless someone gave me a screen, and that didn’t seem likely.
James and I were separated. My room was white from floor to ceiling, with one cot, a toilet, one chair, and nothing else. I sat on the cot.
I didn’t remember lying down or falling asleep, but I must have, because when I woke up, there was a young woman, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, in my cell with me. She had the same straight longish hairstyle that I did, but hers was dyed bright green.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. I didn’t expect to meet anyone gentle in a detention center.
“What time is it?”
“Eight. They just put me in your cell and told me to make friends. I’ve been here all week. Ava.” She reached toward me and we shook hands.
“Casey. What are you in for?”
“Stealing. You?”
“Breaking and entering. A warehouse. Twice.”
“Twice? They didn’t kill you? Why?”
“My brother’s in one of them and I’m worried about him. His avatar seems a little…off, so I wanted to check on him. But I couldn’t find him, and then we got busted.”
“He’s dead.”
I choked on my own spit. “Dead? No he’s not!”
“Yes, he is. They all are. Or they will be soon, once the system has enough data.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you go into the system, they only keep you on life support long enough to collect a full record of your memories, thought patterns, mannerisms…all that stuff. When your avatar is a complete personality, you’re unplugged. That’s why it’s called the Forever Contract. Death is, you know, forever. Sorry, kid.”
“How do you know this?” I asked, shivering. I crossed my arms, as if I could guard myself against the truth. I didn’t believe her. She was just some crazy thief who was locked up, probably for a damn good reason.
“I helped build the system. I was in it—you learn things if you pay attention. Like who is still connected to a warm body and who isn’t.”
“How did you get out?”
“I had someone like you, once. On the outside. Someone who came for me and unplugged me before it was too late. He died. Not like your brother died—he was killed by them during my rescue, in real life.” She cleared her throat, but I could hear the agony in her voice.
“You must be angry,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. I still didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want my cell mate to hate me. Who knew how long I’d be stuck in here?
“Everyone should be angry.”
“Yeah?”
We sat in silence for a while, me on the cot and Ava on the chair.
“But why would they want me to know all of this?” I asked her finally. “Wouldn’t they be trying to keep people like you quiet?”
“They don’t care. People love the system. It doesn’t matter to anyone that I know the truth.”
I touched my throat absentmindedly and screamed. The necklace James had given me was gone. I stood up and frantically tore the one blanket off the cot trying to find it.
“What’s wrong?” Ava asked, backing away.
“My necklace is gone. They must have taken it while I slept,” I said. “It was very important to me, and to the…to my…my boyfriend.” It sounded like such an insignificant word for what James was to me, but I couldn’t think of a better one.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Ava said. “I’m sorry about everything.”
I looked down at my hands for a moment
. When I glanced back up, Ava was on the other side of the bars.
I blinked, horrified.
*
Maybe the cell walls weren’t real, I reasoned. Maybe it was some sort of hologram or something and most people in jail didn’t question it. I stood and pressed my hands against them, but they felt solid. If only I had a screen. I wanted to talk to James and to my parents.
To my surprise, I noticed one on the chair where Ina had been sitting. I snatched it and pinged my mom.
“Mom!” I practically shouted when she appeared on screen. “I’m sorry!”
She was crying. “Oh, Casey. You said you were going to wait. You said you needed to think about it.”
“That’s what I was doing, Mom. James and I had to investigate some more, but we got caught this time. I’m in jail. Can you come get me? See if they’ll release me? I’ll figure out a way to pay for a lawyer, I swear. I’m sorry.”
“Oh honey, is that what it feels like to you? Jail?” She sobbed. “I can’t fix this, baby, you know I can’t. All I can do is be there with you, I suppose. And Ben. I’ll talk it over with your father tonight. I expect we’ll sign the contract as soon as possible.”
“Wait! What are you talking about? I’m in jail! Also, Ben’s not…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I had to tell her in person, once I knew for sure. I couldn’t tell her over a screen that her only son was dead.
“I have to go, honey. I’ll ‘see’ you soon, I suppose. There are so many loose ends…” She trailed off and was gone.
I stared at the wall, super confused. What was Mom talking about? She’d sign what…?
Just as the small shape of a very scary idea formed in my mind, the entire wall of my cell turned into a screen. I saw myself, my own body, hooked up to an array of sensors and tubes in the blue-lighted warehouse. I wore James’s necklace around my neck. My hand held James’s hand. He wasn’t hooked up; his head was hanging low.
The wall screen went blank and lit up with a message in letters as big as the chair I was sitting on:
WELCOME TO FOREVER
YOU ARE NOW FREE