Skinned

  Then I sat on the edge of my bed, waiting, wondering what I’d been thinking, and whether he would come and what good it would do if he did, and whether I should voice him again and tell him to forget it. And I tried not to think about how my entire life had been deleted.

  Psycho Susskind nudged his head against my thigh, then started licking my hand. He rolled over, and I rubbed my fingers along his belly, knowing he would pretend to enjoy it for a minute, then twist around and snap at me, tiny fangs closing down on the heel of my hand. He did, and I let him. “Think I liked it better when you hated me, Sussie.” But I scratched him behind his ears, and I let him curl up on my lap.

  Auden showed up. Zo let him in, which was lucky, because it meant no explaining. She didn’t talk to me any more than she had to, which worked for me. So Auden was alone when he stepped into my room, hesitantly, with that look on his face that guys get when they think you’re going to cry.

  Even though he knew I couldn’t cry.

  “It’s all gone,” I said, even though I’d already told him. “They wiped me.”

  “It’s just your zone.” He stayed in the doorway, his eyes darting around the room, like he was trying to memorize everything in case the lights suddenly failed—or in case he never got to come back.

  “It’s my life. And you know it.”

  If I could cry, that’s when I would have done it. But instead I hunched over and covered my face with my hands. He sat down next to me, his hands clasped in his lap, like he was afraid of touching me. He’d done it before, but maybe that was why he didn’t want to do it again. Who wanted to touch the dead girl?

  “It could be worse, Lia.”

  “Is that supposed to be helpful?”

  “No, I just mean…” He turned red. “I meant that this is bigger than just losing your zone, and maybe you’re lucky that’s all it was. Connexion’s not the only corp that’s trying this. I read there was this one guy who almost lost all his credit when—”

  “I don’t give a shit about some guy!” I exploded. “This is about me!”

  Even I knew how hateful that sounded. But I couldn’t take it back.

  “What’s going on?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m pretty sure I just told you.”

  “There’s something else, right? More than just the zone?”

  “Like that’s not enough?”

  And here’s the thing. That was enough. Maybe it was a little shallow to feel like my whole life was wrapped up in my zone, but that’s how I felt. The network was the only place where I could pretend I was normal. Hidden behind my av, no one would guess what I really was. Losing it all like that, without warning? It was enough to be upset about.

  Except that maybe he was right. There was more.

  “Come on,” he said. “What?”

  “It’s just…They said they terminated the account because I was dead. I mean, because Lia Kahn was dead, and I was…something else.” I held my hand up in front of my face. It was so strange, the way I could hold it like that, without trembling, for hours. And I knew I could: We’d done an experiment. “I didn’t tell you”—I hadn’t told anyone—“but this guy was here. A while ago. This guy named Rai Savona.”

  “Such an asshole.”

  I should have known Auden would recognize the name. He knew everyone in politics; he actually cared. Yet another weirdness.

  “He was here to—Well, it doesn’t matter. But he said…” I didn’t know why it was so hard to talk about. Maybe because the guy had made a pretty good argument. And maybe once Auden heard it, he wouldn’t disagree.

  “Everything that guy says is a joke,” Auden said. “You should ignore it on principle.”

  “Is that what your mother would have done?” As soon as it was out I wanted to take it back.

  “She believed, but she wasn’t a Faither,” he said in a monotone. “And I’m not her.”

  “He said I wasn’t human, okay? He said I was just programmed to think I was human, but humans had free will, and all I had was programming.” It sounded even worse out loud than it had echoing in my head.

  Auden raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, like, Is that all? “So what?”

  “So…what if he’s right?”

  “Do you feel like you’re programmed to act in a certain way?”

  “Well…no,” I admitted. “But he said that didn’t matter. That I could be fooled into thinking I was free, but really I’m not.”

  “He’s right.”

  I’d thought I had prepared myself for the worst, but when it happened, I knew I’d been wrong. Auden kept going.

  “But it’s true for him too. And for me. How do you know that I have free will? How do I know that I have it? Yeah, I feel like I make my own decisions, but who knows? He’s the one who thinks God is in charge. How does he know God isn’t jerking him around like a puppet? How does he know we aren’t all just machines made out of blood and guts and stuff?”

  “It’s not the same.” I knocked the side of my head. “There’s no blood in here. No guts. Just a computer. It’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not the same,” Auden agreed. “But maybe it’s better.”

  “Yeah, how?”

  “You mean aside from the whole immortality thing?”

  “Aside from that.” Why did no one seem to get that living forever was only a good thing if life didn’t suck?

  Except you uploaded last night, an annoying voice in my head pointed out. And the night before that. No matter how crappy my life got, it was still my life. And sometime in the last couple weeks—sometime after meeting Auden, I tried not to think—life had become worth preserving again. Maybe even worth living. Too bad I still wasn’t sure I could call it that.

  If even I wasn’t sure this counted as life, how could I expect anyone else to be?

  “All that stuff you complain about,” he said slowly. “Not feeling things the same way? Maybe it’s a good thing. You don’t have to get so screwed up by how you feel, like the rest of us do.”

  “‘Us’ humans, you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe it’s not a bad thing to have some control over your emotions. To be able to think once in a while instead of just act on animal instinct.”

  Human instinct, I thought but didn’t say. Computers think; humans feel.

  But he was trying to help.

  “You think I don’t get it,” he said. When I was actually thinking how weird it was that he got me so well. “So maybe you should talk to someone who does.”

  “I am not going back to that so-called support group.” I’d told him all about Sascha and her little losers club. “No way.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the support group. Not the official one, at least.”

  “Oh.” I’d told him about the rest of it too. The girl with the blue hair and the boy with the orange eyes. The silver skin. The house filled with living machines who wanted me to be just like them. But I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him about the knife. “Not there, either.”

  “You have to go back sometime,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay.” But I could tell he knew I was lying. “But I don’t think that’s why you’re staying away.”

  “Tell me you’re not shrinking me again.”

  “I think you’re scared.”

  “Am not,” I said like a little kid.

  “Are so,” he said, playing along.

  “Am not.”

  “If you say so.” He shrugged, and then turned to the screen. “You want to get started?”

  “What?”

  “Signing up for a new account with a different corp. Creating a new zone. Building a new av. Isn’t that why I’m here?”

  I flopped back on the bed. “What’s the point? They’ll probably just come up with some excuse to take it away from me again.”

  “You know what av stands for?” Auden asked weirdly.
/>
  “Avatar. I’m not stupid.”

  “Yes, but do you know why it’s called that?”

  “I’m guessing you’re going to tell me,” I said. More old stuff. Like the past ever helped anyone make it in the future.

  “It’s Sanskrit for—”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “A dead language,” he said. “Really, really old. And ‘avatar’ is Sanskrit for ‘God’s embodiment on Earth.’”

  “So?”

  “So maybe, if you think about it, you’re kind of like an avatar,” he stammered. “Like, the ultimate avatar. You know? This incredible body that’s been created as a vessel for Lia Kahn. Your embodiment on Earth.”

  “So you think my body’s incredible?” I asked, smirking. Sometimes I went on autoflirt. Force of habit.

  He blushed so hard I thought his blood vessels might actually burst. “That’s not—”

  “I know,” I said quickly. “It was just…” Tempting to imagine that someone could still think of me that way. Even if it was only Auden. “Let’s do it,” I said. “New zone. New av. New everything.”

  JUMP

  “You’ll never be the same.”

  I’ll go with you,” Auden offered the next time we had what I soon began to think of as the Conversation.

  “No, you won’t,” I said, “because I’m not going.”

  “Stop saying I’m scared!” I insisted for the hundredth time the following week. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  But all that got me was a smug smile. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  “It’s not like I need more friends,” I tried later. “I’ve got you, don’t I? That’s enough.”

  “Your flattery is embarrassingly transparent,” he said. “Don’t think it’s going to work.” But I could tell by the pink glow on his cheeks that it had.

  “Why do you care so much?” I finally asked after one Conversation too many.

  “Because I know, deep down, you want to go.”

  “Except I don’t,” I pointed out. “So try again.”

  “Okay…Maybe, deep down, I want to go.”

  That was a new one. “Why?”

  “Aren’t I allowed to be curious?” he asked. “You keep telling me I can never understand what it’s like to be a mech-head without actually being one. Fine. But maybe this is the next best thing.”

  “You’re serious?”

  He crossed his arms and nodded firmly.

  “You really want me to go, just so that you can go?”

  He nodded again. “Consider it a personal favor.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or if this was just his way of letting me change my mind without admitting that, deep down, I couldn’t stop wondering about the house of freaks and their fearless freak leader.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go. But only because you asked nicely. And because I’m sick of you asking at all.”

  Auden grinned. “Whatever you say.”

  We took Auden’s car. The coordinates Quinn gave me led us to a deserted stretch of road about an hour from his house, just a strip of concrete bounded on each side by a dark and desolate stretch of trees.

  “You sure about this?” Auden asked as we parked the car on the shoulder and set out into the woods.

  “Now you want to turn back?” Say yes, I thought.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  We disappeared into the trees.

  The night was black. Auden led the way, silhouetted against the beam of the flashlight. We followed the GPS prompts, hurrying along the narrow, bumpy path, twisting through the trees, ducking under branches, Auden shivering despite his thermo-reg coat. I couldn’t feel the cold.

  “You sure we’re not lost?” I asked.

  He peered down at his dimly lit ViM. “According to the GPS, we’re almost—” He froze as the trees gave way to a riverbank dotted with people.

  No, not people.

  Skinners.

  Although, in the dark it was harder to tell the difference.

  They were lying in the grass, their flashlight beams playing against the trees, the water, the dark canopy of the sky. Beyond the treeline the night glowed with a pale, reddish light, just bright enough to cast flickering shadows on the fringes of my vision. As if, while watching, we were being watched.

  Auden was still shivering. “Maybe we should—”

  “Let’s do this,” I said, and started toward the group. He followed, careful to stay a few steps behind.

  Most of them ignored us, but a few figures climbed off the ground as we arrived.

  “No way,” one of them said, a tall, slim guy I didn’t recognize. “You can stay, but he goes.”

  “Lia, you shouldn’t have.” Quinn appeared at my side and leaned in, her lips brushing my ear. “He’s not supposed to be here,” she whispered.

  “This place is just for us,” a girl’s voice said. I thought it was Ani—especially when she threaded her arm through Quinn’s—although it was too dark to see whether or not her hair was blue. “It’s all we’ve got.” She jerked her head toward Auden. “They get everywhere else.”

  Jude stood in the middle of the pack, silent. Watching.

  Auden inched closer to me. “Maybe I should get out of here, let you—”

  “You’re staying,” I said. “He’s staying. And he’s not a they.” Just like I wasn’t an us.

  “He’s an org,” the first guy said. “He doesn’t belong here. And if you can’t get that, neither do you.”

  “He goes, I go.”

  The guy shrugged. “Fine.”

  “She stays,” Jude said suddenly. His voice was deeper than I remembered. “They both do.”

  There was no more argument.

  After his pronouncement Jude wandered away. We were good enough to stay, but apparently not good enough to talk to. They all ignored us, except for Quinn and Ani, who sat down again, tangling their legs together. We joined them.

  This is it? I thought. Some lame, food-free picnic in the woods?

  Quinn did most of the talking, at least at first. Everything was new to her; everything was exciting. Life was amazing. Wonderful. She couldn’t get enough. I wanted to dig up a couple clumps of grass and cram them in my ears. Or, better yet, in her mouth.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. “So, Ani, what about you?” I asked. “What’s your story?”

  She looked uncomfortable. “I…I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Why the download?” I asked. “What happened to you?”

  “I…uh…”

  “We don’t ask those questions here.” Jude loomed over us, his face hidden in shadow. “The past is irrelevant.”

  “Typical,” Auden muttered.

  “What?”

  “I said, typical,” Auden said, louder. “That you would think the past doesn’t matter. It’s a common mistake.”

  Jude sat down; Ani and Quinn leaped aside to make room for him. It should have made him less intimidating, down on our level. But somehow it had the opposite effect. Maybe it was those glowing eyes. “The past is irrelevant to us,” he said, stretching his legs out and resting back on his elbows. “What we were has nothing to do with what we are. Not that I’d expect an org to understand that.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m the same person I was.”

  Jude laughed.

  “I think what Jude’s trying to say is that the sooner you forget about your org life, the sooner you can realize the full potential of being a mech,” Quinn said, darting a glance at Jude. He gave her a small smile. She beamed.

  “This is why I didn’t want to come,” I murmured to Auden.

  Jude leaned forward. “Then why did you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Maybe you got bored pretending you still fit in to your tiny, claustrophobic org life,” he suggested. “You’re looking for a better way.”

  “Better?” I sneered. “If this is so much
better, if you’re all so superior, then why doesn’t everyone want to be a skinner?”

  Ani gasped.

  “We don’t use that word here,” Jude said quietly. “We’re mechs. And proud of it.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Sorry,” I said, only because I felt like I had to.

  “As for your question, I don’t care whether your rich bitch friends recognize my superiority. Some of us can make judgments for ourselves, without just valuing whatever the masses decide is cool that minute.”

  “I don’t—”

  “But don’t worry,” he said. “Even the rich bitches will catch on. Sooner than you think.”

  I stood up. “This rich bitch is leaving.”

  “So soon? Such a shame.”

  “All that crap about embracing potential, and this is what you come up with? A supersecret society that meets at midnight to—What? Sit around in the mud, gossiping? Lucky, lucky me to get a membership. I’ll pass.”

  Jude shook his head. “You really don’t understand anything, do you? This is just the staging ground. You can go if you want, but you’ll be missing the main event.” He stood up too. We stared at each other, and for a moment it felt like we were alone in the night. Then he shouted. “Ready?”

  As one, the skinners—mechs—stood up and began walking along the riverbank. I looked at Auden, who shrugged. “We’ve come this far,” he pointed out.

  We hung back, but followed the group along the river, tramping through the mud for a little over a mile, a rumbling in the distance swelling to a roar, until we finally rounded a bend in the river—and stopped short at the edge of a cliff. The river tumbled over the side, thundering down the rocks into an explosion of whitewater below. Far, far below.

  “It’s a forty-foot drop,” Jude said. He peered down the falls. “Eighty thousand gallons of water per second. Welcome to your new life.”

  The other mechs—there were seven of them—lined up along the edge.

  “What are they doing?” I shouted, over the roar of the water. “Are you all insane?”

  “It’s incredible, Lia!” Quinn shouted back. “You’ll love it.”

  I shook my head. “They’re going to kill themselves.”