Tom sat up straighter, watching the screen resolve into an outdoor view of the Pentagon and the tall tower jutting from the middle—the Pentagonal Spire—and then to a newsroom where a familiar teenage boy sat with a reporter.
It was Elliot Ramirez.
Tom slumped back down in his seat. Behind him, Serge Leon actually cried out in dismay, “Not Dorkmirez!”
Elliot Ramirez was everywhere. Everyone knew him—the handsome, smiling, all-American seventeen-year-old who represented the future of Indo-American supremacy in the solar system. He was in commercials, on bulletin boards, his bright grin flashing and dark eyes twinkling on cereal boxes, on vitamin bottles, on T-shirts. Whenever a new Indo-American victory was announced on the news, Elliot was trotted out to give an interview and to talk about how America was sure to win now! And of course, Elliot was front and center in Nobridis, Inc.’s public service announcements because they sponsored him. He was one of the young trainees who controlled American machines in outer space, one of the Americans dedicated to taking down the Russo-Chinese alliance and claiming the solar system for the Indo-American allies.
“How did you get the call sign Ares?” the reporter asked Elliot. “That’s the Greek god of war, I understand. It says a lot about your battlefield prowess.”
Elliot’s chuckle flashed his white teeth. “I didn’t choose ‘Ares’ for myself, but I guess my fellow soldiers thought it should be my call sign. They pleaded with me to take it. I couldn’t refuse the appeals of my brothers-in-arms.”
Tom laughed. He couldn’t help it. Several female avatars whirled around to shush him.
The image on the screen flickered briefly to a battle in space, where a vessel digitally labeled “Ares” was flying toward a dispersed mass of ships. At the bottom of the screen, the caption read “The Battle of Titan.” The reporter’s voice carried on over the image: “. . . great deal of attention these last few years, Mr. Ramirez. How do you feel about the public’s fascination with you?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t see myself as a great hero the way so many people do. It’s the machines that do all the fighting in space. I just control them. You could say”—and here the image flipped back to Elliot just as he threw a wink at the camera—“I’m just a kid who likes to play with robots.”
Tom kept remembering the only interview of Elliot Ramirez he’d ever sat through before this one. His father was in the hotel room with him, and he’d insisted on watching the entire thing several times because he was convinced that the famed Elliot Ramirez wasn’t a real person. He refused to change the channel until Tom was convinced of it, too.
“That’s not a boy. That’s a computer simulation,” Neil had declared.
“People have seen him in person, Dad.”
“No human being acts like that! Look how he blinks every fifteen seconds on the dot. Time it. And then look at his eyebrows. He raises them to the exact same height every single time. That smile, too. Always the same width. That’s a computer-generated simulation of a human. I guarantee it.”
“Who’s the reporter talking to, then?”
“She’s in on it, too. Who owns the mainstream media? Corporations. That’s who.”
“Right. So I guess cereal companies are putting a fake kid on their boxes, and Elliot’s big sponsor, Nobridis Inc., is also parading around a guy they’ve never met? Oh, and don’t forget all those people on the internet who say they’ve gotten his autograph. . . . They’re all in on it, too, right?”
Neil’s spit began flying. “Tom, I am telling you, this Elliot kid is not a real person. This is how the corporate oligarchy works. They want a pretty face to make their agenda look good for the masses. A real human being is unpredictable. Create a computer-generated human to be the representation of your organization? Then you control everything about that representation. He’s no different from a logo, an action figure, a piece of insignia.”
“And you’re the only one in the world who’s picked up on this.”
“What, you think the American sheeple are going to question the corporatocracy? They’re too busy doing their patriotic duty, gutting their own country to fund a war over which Coalition CEO gets the biggest yacht this year. Wake up, Tom! I don’t want any son of mine buying into the establishment propaganda.”
“I don’t. I don’t,” Tom had protested.
He wanted his dad to be right. He really did. Even now, he studied Elliot and tried to see something fake and computer simulated about him, but he just saw a cheesy kid madly in love with himself who laughed at his own jokes way too much.
“What message would you like to leave viewers with tonight, Mr. Ramirez?”
“I want them to know, we kids at the Pentagonal Spire aren’t making the big sacrifice. Saving the country’s pretty fun! It’s you, the American taxpayers, who keep the fight for our nation going strong. And thanks to Nobridis, Inc., the Indo-American alliance is more—”
“Saving. The. Country.” Ms. Falmouth flipped off the video segment as Elliot launched into promoting Nobridis. “The next time you think you have too much homework, I want you to consider the burden on this young man’s shoulders. Elliot Ramirez is out there forging a future for our nation, securing the solar system’s resources for us, and you don’t hear him complaining, do you?”
The bell filled the sim. Ms. Falmouth didn’t even get a chance to dismiss them. Students began fizzling away.
Tom was normally among the first to sign off. He wasn’t this time because just as he raised his hand to yank off the VR visor, Heather spoke up. “Are you signing off already?”
She sounded disappointed about it. Tom dropped his hand again. “Not yet.”
She scooted her desk over so they were sitting right next to each other. Despite himself, Tom felt his hands grow sweaty in his wired gloves.
“Can you believe Elliot Ramirez?” Heather said, tossing her dark hair out of her eyes. “His ego almost explodes out of the screen, doesn’t it? I felt like ducking and covering.”
“I can’t believe you’re a real girl and you’re not in love with Elliot Ramirez,” Tom said appreciatively. Then it occurred to him: she might not even be a real girl. For all he knew, she was a guy with a voice modifier who’d hacked the school feed.
“Let’s just say, I feel like I know enough about Elliot not to buy the hype.” There was something coy in her voice that made him wonder if he was missing a joke.
“And you really are a girl?” Tom couldn’t resist asking.
“I am so a girl!”
“Yeah, well, I won’t believe it till I see it.”
“Is this your way of asking me to video chat?” Heather bantered.
Tom hadn’t thought to ask her to do that. He recovered from his surprise quickly. “Yes?”
Heather twirled a lock of her dark hair around her finger. “So, this is an online school,” she said coyly. “Is video chatting Rosewood’s version of a date?”
Tom opened and closed his mouth. She didn’t sound like she hated the idea. He broke into a grin. “Only if you’re gonna say yes.”
Heather smiled. “What network address will you be at tomorrow, Tom?”
HE WAS ONLY half in the moment as he gave her his network address, as he promised her he’d be right at the same network address tomorrow when they met. He didn’t care if they were meeting at an obscenely early hour of the morning. Heather said it was because of the time zone she was in. Tom decided he’d stay up all night if he had to. His brain was whirling. He had a date . . . kind of. With a real, live girl . . . he hoped.
After she logged off, his avatar remained by his desk, his real body sitting stock-still on the couch in the VR parlor, the enormity of asking a girl out for the first time and having the girl say yes beating through his brain. He’d thought this would be just another ordinary day. . . .
A throat cleared.
Tom noticed suddenly that he and Ms. Falmouth were the only ones left in the virtual classroom.
“I w
as just logging off,” Tom said quickly, and reached up in the real world to snatch off his visor.
“Not quite yet, Tom,” Ms. Falmouth said. “Stay a moment. I think we need to talk.”
Oh.
A heaviness settled in Tom’s chest, because he’d half expected this, and it wasn’t good.
“Let’s go to my office.” Ms. Falmouth twitched her fingers to alter the program, and the landscape shifted around them into a private office. She settled at one side of the imposing desk. Tom navigated himself into the seat opposite, and waited for some hint of what she needed to hear before she’d let him off the hook this time.
“Tom,” she said, folding her hands on her desk, “I am concerned about this attendance situation.”
Tom let out a breath. “I figured.”
“You were referred to this institution because your father somehow let you reach age eleven without enrolling you in school. We’ve worked to catch you up, but I don’t feel you’re making the same progress as the rest of the class. In fact, considering that you’re very rarely in class, I am finding this situation outright unmanageable.”
“Maybe I need an alternative school,” Tom suggested.
“This already is an alternative school. This is the end of the line.”
“I try.”
“No, you don’t. And what’s more, your father doesn’t try, either. Do you realize you missed two quizzes and a history paper last week?”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“Russo-Chinese hackers, right?” she said. “Or perhaps you were taken hostage by terrorists again, or washed out to sea and stranded on a desert island without internet access?”
“Not quite.” But he’d really get a kick out of using that one sometime in the future.
“Tom, you are not taking this seriously—and that’s your problem. This is not some silly game: this is your future and you are throwing it away with both hands. You promised me a month ago that you would never miss class again.” Ms. Falmouth’s avatar gazed at him with an unnatural, unblinking intensity. “We signed a learning contract, don’t you remember?”
Tom didn’t point out that she’d demanded that he promise not to miss class again. What had she expected him to tell her, the truth? Should he have outright admitted he probably wasn’t going to show up at school? She would’ve just yelled at him for “being insolent” or something.
“This is not about me,” Ms. Falmouth went on. “It’s not about your father, even: it is about you, Tom. You realize that whatever actions I take from here, they’re for your own good. I cannot sit back and allow a fourteen-year-old boy’s entire life to be sabotaged by an irresponsible parent who will not even ensure he gets a proper education.”
Tom sat up in both the sim and the VR parlor. “What does that even mean—‘whatever actions you take from here’?”
“It means you’re under court order to attend school, and you have not been attending. Last week, I reported your absences to Child Protective Services.”
Tom slouched back, feeling like he’d just been socked in the stomach. This was not going to end well. Maybe he wasn’t reaching great heights of achievement with Neil, but life in foster care wouldn’t be a land of hope and opportunity either.
And no way could he stay at his mom’s.
No way, no way.
Dalton, her boyfriend, paid for her fancy apartment in New York City. Tom had visited her once, just once, and he’d met him. Dalton Prestwick was this rich, yacht-owning executive at some big multinational company, Dominion Agra. His job was to talk to politicians or something.
Dalton had looked him over like he was something nasty smeared on the bottom of his leather shoes and said, “My attorneys have documented everything of value in this house, punk. The second something goes missing, I’ll have you in juvenile hall.”
Oh, and Dalton already had a wife. And another girlfriend. Yeah, and Tom’s mom.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go, Ms. Falmouth. I know that you think you’re doing me a favor, but you’re not. I promise you.”
“You’re fourteen, Tom. What do you expect to do with yourself in a few years when you need to make a living? Do you plan to be a roving gambler like your father?”
“No,” Tom answered at once.
“A roving gamer?”
He wasn’t quite sure how much Ms. Falmouth knew about his gaming, but he didn’t say anything. If she’d asked him what he planned to be, he might’ve said he’d make his living one day the same way he was doing it now.
Hearing it said by her made him think of living like this forever, of going nowhere in life . . . of turning into his father . . .
Suddenly Tom felt kind of fuzzy and clenched up inside like he was getting sick.
Ms. Falmouth leaned back in her seat. “You’re competing in a global economy. One out of three Americans is unemployed. You need an education to be an engineer, a programmer, or anything of use to the defense industry. You need an education to be an accountant or a lawyer, and you need connections to go into government or corporate work. Who do you think will hire a young man like you when there are so many high-achieving candidates out there who are desperate for work?”
“It’s years away.”
“Pretend it’s tomorrow. What are you going to do with yourself? What are you good for?”
“I’m good at . . .” He stopped.
“At what?”
He couldn’t come up with anything else, so he just said it. “Games.”
The word sat on the air between them, and to Tom it suddenly sounded utterly sad.
“So is your father, Tom. And where is he now?”
Chapter Two
BACK WHEN TOM was little, Neil seemed like a god to him. His dad didn’t have a boring job like other people. He was a gambler. He sipped at his martini like James Bond and bluffed his way into winning other people’s money. Tom grew up hearing stories about the way his dad used to get flown for free to tournaments for professional poker players, the way he used to get the largest hotel suites on the highest floors and then tip the maids a few thousand dollars. Women always found a reason to talk to him, but Neil waved them away like they were invisible, because he was in love with the most beautiful woman of all.
When Tom was a little kid, he’d believed in the dream. He was sure his dad’s glory days would return. Any minute, Neil was going to turn back into that winner he used to be, then they’d stay in one place and his mom would return, and she’d be so sorry she’d left them.
But now, at fourteen, Tom knew his dad didn’t even get invited to the same tournaments that used to fly him in for free, and his mother was still gone. They never stayed in the same place for more than a week or two, and they never would. He didn’t expect that to change. He was too old to believe in fairy tales.
Tom tucked the wired gloves back in the VR parlor’s storage container, his own words resounding in his mind: I’m good at games. He drove his hands into his pockets and ignored the fears until they became nothing more than an ache in his gut.
He tried to turn his thoughts toward the other thing that happened today: Heather. His brain buzzed with the memory of her words, the way she’d smiled when she thought he was asking her out. He was still thinking of her later that night when he paid for a double room at the front desk, and he was so wired up with anticipation for the next morning that he didn’t manage to fall asleep until well past midnight.
And then his father staggered in.
Neil flipped the light on, blasting the glare through Tom’s eyelids. Springs squeaked as he sagged onto the other bed. “Got our room again, Tommy? I can always count on you. You’re a real good boy. You’re a good kid.”
Tom opened his eyes a crack and squinted against the flood of light to see Neil clumsily loosening his tie. “Dad, could you turn the lights back off?”
“Gonna get out of this one day, eh, Tommy?” Neil slurred. “Next big win, s’all done. Finished.”
Tom cla
wed out of the covers and then headed across the room to turn off the lights himself.
“A hundred thou’s all I’m asking,” Neil rambled on. “Won’t squan-squan—lose it all again. Rent an apartment. Bigger than the one that chump Dalton’s got your mom living in. Maybe send you ter a real school someday. In a building, y’know?” He smiled sloppily at Tom. With his undone collar, mussed hair, and slack, unshaven face, he looked demented.
Tom flicked the light off. Neil was his family. And his dad had his back, he knew. But ever since those social workers confronted them the first time about the not-going-to-school thing, and Tom saw what the lives of other kids were like, he’d started thinking about stuff.
The truth was, he’d taken it for granted before Rosewood that living like this was normal. He thought that whole idea of houses and schools and dinners at a table were fantasies. Neil always called it “corporate propaganda manufactured to promote lifelong debt servitude.”
But it wasn’t propaganda. Not really. Sure, a lot of people had it worse. A lot. There were families on the streets, gathered in tent cities, squatting in derelict buildings and abandoned factories. But there were also guys like Serge Leon who’d lived in one place for years on end, and people who knew where they’d be sleeping tomorrow night. Tom couldn’t predict anything. All he knew was, he’d be somewhere with Neil. With this.
With this.
A nasty, dark feeling descended on him as his father’s wet snores saturated the hotel room. Even with the AC on high, the sound thundered in his ears. He shifted, turned, pressed his pillow over his head, trying to muffle it, but it was like ignoring a hurricane. The noise just grew louder and louder.
Finally Tom gave up on sleep and tore off the covers.
He needed to shoot something.
THE VR PARLOR was empty at five thirty in the morning, a lonely lounge of couches and dim screens. Tom settled on the center couch, strapped on a visor, and flipped through the game selection to Die, Zombies, Die. Two hours later, he’d blasted and slashed his way to level nine and upgraded to a bazooka. He was busy blowing a nice hole in the Queen Zombie’s torso when the game flickered and went black on him.