Morgan Abrams
~13 hours until Lockdown
The lighting is washed out, because these kinds of videos always have terrible lighting. The person filming on their phone can’t keep the camera steady to save their life, turning the scene into a disorienting, blurry mess. Still, enough is clear that it’s a sports stadium. Fenway Park is hard to mistake for anything else. One of the few remaining ‘golden age’ baseball arenas left, to hear Riley tell it. The stands are half-full of cheering, yelling fans.
There’s a crack, a pop, and the camera whips around the field looking for the ball while a scattering of cheers collapse into confused silence. The phone redirects to home plate where the batter is sprawled out on the ground, one hand over their face, the other their stomach. Medics are racing onto the field while a referee blows their whistle. Then the injured batter’s body jerks violently. Someone in front of the camera jumps up from their seat, blocking the view as people start screaming.
“Damn, nothing there either,” Riley hisses. She stops the video, minimizes it, and goes back to searching the Chattrnet.
“Is th-th-this really necessary?” you ask, looking away. Exhaustion and caffeine war against each other, jittery hands that tap tap tap against the metallic rim of your coffee cup. You swing your legs into the abyss, the heels of your shoes kicking back against the concrete ledge. The open air of the mall yawns below you. Tiered-back balconies lined with stores and services all overlook the park far, far below.
“I need to know what happened to Hernandez, dude. He’s been carrying the Mystics for five years and the team hasn’t said shit.” Riley sits next to you, hunched over her phone, her own coffee in hand. Watches another video, earbuds in. Black hair trimmed short, tucked behind the ears. White v-neck, jeans. Face pinched tight in concentration. The exposed skin of her shoulder reflects the glare of the light from above. You aren’t staring at the visible edge of her bra strap. That would be weird. Don’t be weird. Don’t be ‘that guy.’ You’re friends. Best friends, still, somehow. And best friends don’t leer at each other. Get a grip.
Your breakfast bagel sits in your lap, untouched. You only got it at Riley’s insistence. Eating this early in the day always leaves you sick to your stomach later. You force down one mouthful, then a second, so you can at least say you tried.
She takes a sip from her coffee, attention fixed on the next video she brings up. Taps the screen to play it. The tiny image makes it hard to follow along from this angle. Everything you know about baseball is second-hand through Riley anyway. The man at home plate in a Mystics jersey – must be Hernandez – raises his bat to bunt. With the video slowed down, though, you can see that the angle of the incoming ball is all wrong. It crashes into the bat with enough force to snap it backwards out of his hands. The ball bounces up at an odd angle and hits the player in the face with enough force to make him crumple. There’s a brief spray of red before dust and movement obscure everything. The video ends as the medics rush the field.
Ugh. You cringe. Can’t keep watching with her. Something about this last year, you’ve lost the stomach for it. You used to watch the public videos of all those Imago fights too. Now you’d rather look at anything else. Your legs kick back against the ledge as you lean forward, looking out over the tiered balconies below. None of the other arcology towers have an open-air central mall like this one does. How far down is it to the park from here? Not exactly ground floor, more like fifth? Or sixth? And this is floor 58, so… You try to do the conversion into feet in your head but can’t remember the ratio.
The ‘park’ – if you can even call it that – is a small cluster of trees, with a crystal-blue line of water running straight across the center. The trees reach back up through the open space, Redwoods that were imported from across the country and specially engineered for this. The one spot of green in the spinal void that defines the Epsilon tower of the Praxis arcology.
The profound disappointment you felt at not being allowed to climb on anything during that third grade field trip still stings. Supposedly, one day the grove will grow tall enough to stretch the entire height of the spire. For now, the top branches just barely brush past your current vantage point, the leaves angled to catch the light from the sun lamps set into the distant ceiling. A scattering of birds of various species roost among the branches, ever evading capture from Animal Control and making their living off insufficiently-covered trash cans.
Metal wires cross the open air from every floor and anchor into the trunks, holding them upright while doubling as additional space to hang adverts – “Eat at Joe’s!!!” scrolls across one LED marquee bordered by pixelated dancing monkeys. The retro aesthetic comes across as beyond dated. A fad several years past its prime when turn-of-the-millennium style aesthetics were briefly in vogue.
It’s six in the morning and it’s loud out here. All the sounds echoing upward. Music playing, live and recorded melodies running into each other. People talking, birds singing, humming wires, buzz of lights, the distant echo of the running water, thrum of footsteps, the press of static.
Back when you were a little kid, just being in the proximity of this many people was to risk a complete shutdown. An utterly overwhelming onslaught of noise and color and smells. Now it ranks as just above bothersome. Even without your headphones on to brace against the worst of it, it’ll only be a headache by the end of day.
Whether that’s because you’ve gotten better at handling the static mess of it all, the latest set of medications, or simply another on the list of pains that’s been dulled by overexposure, you’ve no idea – it’s no wonder that the archetypical telepath is someone that lives alone in the woods.
Well. The ‘good’ stereotype, anyway. Not so sure you count as that.
According to Rivka, you should feel lucky that your glitch is weak enough that you ‘just’ have the migraines, nosebleeds, and constant mental static. Never mind your poor performance in school where you struggled to follow along with what the instructors were saying, or running into the edges of furniture (once it was a shut door), or the other kids (sometimes the adults joined in) making fun of your stutter.
Even when you finally started to get a handle on things, you still kept that reputation right up until ‘violent psycho’ replaced it last year.
But no, no, she’s right, you’re ‘lucky’ to be like this.
So. Lucky.
Riley runs the playback on the baseball video two more times before pulling out her earbuds. There’s a glint of silver in her hair behind them – her cochlear implant. You don’t want to seem like you’re staring at that either so you settle for looking at her legs, hanging over the edge next to yours.
“What a way to go.” Riley flinches, running the video through the moment of impact one more time. Unable to look away. “They better be throwing the book at that pitcher. No one’s gonna buy that that was, like, natural arm strength, you know?”
You chew the inside of your cheek and nod. Riley has been fascinated with the incident all morning, speculating over every detail. The official broadcast had gotten censored but with that many people in the stadium there wasn’t any shortage of not-so-official recordings floating around if someone really wants to see a baseball caving in a man’s face.
Could have really done without seeing that the first time.
By the third loop it’s starting to feel like a little much. “If– if-if-if um…” You wait for Riley to turn and look at you. Take a sip of your coffee before holding it between your knees so you can have your hands free to switch to signing. So much easier to get across what you want that way without having to suffer through every sentence or rely on your phone speaking for you. One of Riley’s better ideas.
“Wouldn’t a prosthetic arm be hard to hide? Especially an altered one. They have like, scanners and stuff.”
“Well, yeah.” Riley rolls her eyes as she signs back, not appreciating the hole being poked in her theory. “So either someone got paid off or like, you know, what if it’s some new glitch? Watch them try to cover that one up.” Her face lights up, excited by this new avenue of speculation. It’s been like this all morning, ever since she blew up your phone demanding to know if you’d seen the videos.
“I guess. But–” You fidget with your foot, uncomfortable at the implication. “You can’t force a glitch to happen. That’s why they’re glitches, Riley.”
“Hey, you’re the one that told me about that family that stole like, twenty thousand dollars in nanites to try and force it.”
“Everyone in that story died though.” You regret ever mentioning that post. You saw it late at night in a discussion thread and freaked out when it was deleted by morning.
Riley waves a hand, dismissing the idea like so much smoke. “It was just the kid went crazy afterwards or something, right? I mean, I would too if my parents tried to dump a gallon of robots into me.”
You’re not going to roll your eyes or get irritated. You’re not. “He didn’t ‘go crazy.’ He got sick with Imago because they bought a bunch of unsterilized back-alley nanites.”
“Yeah, that.”
“We were just talking about this with your implant, didn’t you read what I sent you?” You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to keep a lid on your frustration.
Last week, when she came to you demanding everything you knew about nanites and cybercell therapy after her parents raised it as an option for replacing her cochlear implant, you went to all that effort of typing everything up and sourcing it and she still hasn’t thanked you.
“Huh? Oh! Ooooooh yeah.” Riley’s smile turns anxious as she glances away. One hand pulling at her hair. “I did get the essay you sent me, yeah.”
“And…?”
“Still haven’t read it yet. Soooorry!”
You flick the side of her head. “Read it!”
“Hey, ouch!” She flails her hand, warding you off. “Can’t you just tell me? Why do I have to do homework, school’s bad enough!”
You give her the short version.
Partly as an act of mercy.
But mostly because you still want to win the larger argument.
Cybercell therapies, whatever the end goal is, have to be tailored on an individual basis depending on the needs of the patient. You can’t just chug raw nanites and hope for the best – it won’t do anything. And thanks to things like Imago freaking everyone out, if you don’t work for the government or a major company like Praxis, the cost and number of licenses needed to get any such therapy is astronomical. Then you have to do injections on a regular basis for the rest of your life since the human body can’t just make its own nanites.
Even so, the odds of that whole process glitching out? Exceedingly rare. And if it does glitch, it’s not like you can control what happens. Someone who glitches is just as likely to end up with something useless – if not actively debilitating in some brand new way (like your particular crappy brand of telepathy) – as they are to get something cool like whatever sort of electrokinetic power Boston’s own self-proclaimed vigilante superhero, Crow, has been throwing around.
Compare that to a sure thing like a cybernetic implant and the odds don’t look great if all you are after is some sort of super-human ability.
“Besides,” you conclude, “why would anyone risk their life just to cheat at a baseball game?”
Riley doesn’t reply, just raises her eyebrows as if the answer should be obvious.
And it is. In her mind.
“…Sports betting?”
That gets a grin. She winks as she signs back, “It’s all about that dollar bill, baby. All the markets blew up last night even more than Hernandez’s face.”
“That’s gross.” You make a face and look away, Riley’s laughter echoing in your ear. The people on the balconies below you flow along the open pathways, moving between buildings. Thoughts of work, of food, snatches of body pains, early morning inebriations – It all blends together. Indistinct. Sometimes echoing with burst of headache-inducing feedback. There must be another telepath out there in all this.
You could try to figure out who it might be but it would take serious effort to strain out any one person from the rest of the noise, like trying to pick out a singular instrument in an orchestra. Something bumps your shoulder and it takes a second to catch up with what’s happening. Right. Body. Singular. Ledge. Drinking coffee in the morning. Riley snickers at your reaction.
“Earth to Morgan, you ready to go?” she asks aloud.
You nod.
“Great. Follow me, my loyal minion.”
You make a face at her. She grins back.
Riley stands up and drains the last of her coffee before tossing the can over the edge. It lands on the roof of the shop directly below, joining a collection of other coffee cans and plastic bottles rolling about. Just shy of the center.
“Damn, no points,” she hisses.
“N-next, um, next time.”
With a grunt of agreement, she twists around on the narrow ledge to climb back over the barricade. Part of you wants to hold out a hand, try to steady her, but you can’t figure out a socially acceptable place to put your hand in time and then the moment’s gone. From the other side of the barrier, Riley leans back over, offering to help you up.
You gather your coffee and bagel into one overfull hand and accept the offer,
when did his arm get so boney? Shit
and you’re quick to let go as soon as you safely can. The disorientation of doubled vision, combined with the intensity that comes with direct contact is enough to bring its own brief wave of nausea as your brain struggles to make sense of it all.
Speaking of nausea – the increasing size difference between the two of you. The reminder that every passing day turns you further into some sort of lumbering monster, towering over her.
With Riley’s leverage, you manage to scramble back over the barrier without your coffee spilling. You drain the rest of your can and line up the shot with one eye shut, imitating the archery videos you wasted last night on. You pull your arm back to throw. Is this pose cool or are you just going to make yourself look like a clown?
You toss and the can goes flying, overshoots the goal completely and rolls off the edge of the roof. A man just out of sight gets the surprise of an empty can falling out of the sky onto his pizza. Oops. Sorry. You wince.
From behind, you can hear Riley laugh. “Nice throwing arm, Babe Ruth.”
“Hey!” A woman with her hair in a tie-dye bandana and wearing an apron pokes her head out from the coffee shop. “What do you punks think you’re doing? You can’t throw things off the balcony!”
Riley cackles, grabbing your sleeve. “Run for it!”
***
The two of you duck through a department store, rack upon rack of clothes with big yellow sale signs turning what would otherwise be an open floor plan into something of a labyrinth. Plenty of space to hunker down and hide out.
Riley immediately goes for the table of neatly folded graphic tees, going through them with a single-minded efficiency. Holds up a black and red one to her chest emblazoned with a silver hexagram and the words “OFFICE LIFE” in bold print. “What do you think?”
“Tacky.”
“I know, right?” she cackles. Folds it up and hangs it over her arm and goes back to the table for more. “What’s your size again?”
“Uh–”
“Medium, yeah? Ehhhh, I bet you’d get away with a small. You’re like, skin and bones, dude.”
“Riley–” you start, glancing around. Right, there’s two cameras, inset with the ceiling, made to look like fire extinguishers. No one else close by. Fuck, fine. “Any with-with-with fish on them?”
She stops, turns to look at you. Raises an eyebrow. “You’re still on the fish thing?”
You look at her, face blank, letting the silence answer for you.
She goes back to the table. “Okay. Still on the fish thing. Uuuuuh, let’s see, let’s see.” Whatever employee spent hours neatly organizing this table, Riley reduces it to chaos in the span of a minute, tossing through shirts one by one. “Oh! Shit yeah, check this.” She holds up an olive green t-shirt. Across the chest is a picture of a fish-shaped tackle with fishing hooks hanging off it. Directly above in white letters are the words ‘Bite Me.’
“Eh? Eh?” Riley holds the shirt up by the sleeves, making it dance.
Your composure breaks. Have to cover your mouth to keep from laughing too hard. “Terrible,” you sign. “I hate it.”
“Bullshit, you love it.” Triumphant, she folds the shirt over her arm with the other and runs a hand through her hair to get it out of her face before switching to signing. “Is the coast clear? I’m gonna be late if we don’t get moving soon.”
Closing your eyes, you try your best to sift through the static. Most of it is Riley’s. A mishmash of physical sensations and sensory input. Ghost feelings that tingle across the body. No signs of the angry coffee shop employee. Or any shop employee here for that matter. One or two moms, maybe. One on the other side of the floor in the toddler section, going through onesies.
You shake your head as you open your eyes again. Biting into your cheek to reground yourself. “Clear. Just two cameras,” you sign.
She gives a thumbs up in return. Gestures for you to lead the way.
You pick a corner where a bunch of business casual suits and dresses have been placed up against each other on either side of the Man–Woman divide. Riley hands over the shirts and you tuck them into your backpack.
On your way out, Riley stops to look at the display trees of jewelry, making appreciative (and over-acted in your opinion) noises of admiration as she picks through them.
“You’re g-g-gonna be late,” you urge.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Riley steps through the security gate first, and you follow close behind. The alarm buzzes, lights flashing red. You both jump; don’t have to playact that part.
“W-w-what did you do?” you demand, folding your hands over your chest.
From out of the backrooms an employee comes running. A young woman, blond hair and red-faced. You keep quiet as she and Riley talk. Riley makes a show of searching through her pockets. Pulls out a charm bracelet and puts on a perfect act of embarrassed contrition. It takes all of two minutes at the self-checkout for Riley to pay (under the distrustful eye of the employee) and the two of you are out of there. Walking at speed down the hallway and out of the mall, trying not to laugh.
Two junctions away, you stop to hand over Riley’s new shirt, which she immediately puts on over her old one.
“We’re getting good at this.” She grins, flush-faced and extremely pleased with herself.
You could argue. You could lay into her for taking such a wild and unnecessary risk and for dragging you into it. Yet again. And for what? Some stupid t-shirts? Is that really worth it?
You don’t say any of that. Instead, you look at her and say, “Aren’t you g-g-gonna be um, hot in th-that?”
“Why yes, I am hot, thank you.” She winks.
You roll your eyes at her preening. Exuding a self-confidence you’d be jealous of if you didn’t know it was as much of an act as her playing innocent back at the department store.
“Walk with me to school?” Riley asks, slipping her new charm bracelet on.
“Um–”
“Come on, Morgan,” she grabs your arm, pulling you off balance, “we barely get to see each other now. Look. It’ll be fine, no one’s gonna care, okay?”
There’s no point arguing with Riley when she wants something. “Okay.”
“Awesome. Oh! This is yours.” She slips her hand back into the pocket of her shorts, pulls out an identical twin to the charm bracelet she just put on. She holds it out, jingling it in the air.
“Bribery.”
“No, bribery would be if I offered it before I asked. This–” she jingles the bracelet again, “–is a reward.”
You put on the damn bracelet. It has three charms, with spaces to attach more. A butterfly, a pair of crossed swords, and a heart emoji. You want to see which charms Riley has but she’s already moving, eager to beat the late bell.
Into her phone she rattles off a request for the Superintendent to plot out the quickest course between here and the school. After a few minutes of navigating hallways while Riley goes on about how much she hates her math teacher this year (“He’s such a fucking sleaze-ball! He told Ashley, and I quote: ‘with grades like yours you better hope you land a real sugar daddy.’ God! I wanted to crawl out of my skin!”), she eventually goes quiet, letting you take the lead. The one time you glance in her direction she looks away immediately. Facial expression pinched. Can pick up a ghost of the headache she’s feeling if you dare to focus.
Her implant must be acting up again. You can catch a note of frustration leaking through from her and do your best to shut it out. If you try to ask about it, she’ll just snap at you.
It’s been on the fritz for at least the past two years. Sometimes it just randomly decides to short out. Riley says sometimes it’s like a constant low-grade electric shock. Other times the dynamic sound adjuster stops working, turning the entire world into a wall of noise, and it has to get turned off until she can get home and plug in for a hard reset.
No one can figure out if there’s a pattern or what the trigger is, but since it’s still mostly functional Praxis refuses to pay to replace it. And it’s not like her parents can afford to pay out of pocket.
A cutout lined with vending machines across from the main entrance has been claimed by a pair of very bored-looking boys, pointedly smoking in front of a ‘no smoking’ sign. They look down at both of you with bored expressions until you pass, trading a thin black vape between them. The smoke curls around the light fixture in the ceiling. One of them catches you staring and glares back. Dares you to say something.
“Snack for the road?” Riley asks, catching where you’re looking.
Shake your head. No thanks. You avert your eyes, look anywhere else. You recognize pretty much everyone here, even if you can’t keep track of most of their names. Being back is enough to make your palms sweat, but if there’s any sign of someone in the crowd getting ready to jump you, you can’t find it. It’s just like Rivka insisted, though it hasn’t even been a full year yet. No one remembers. Or cares. It’s fine. You’re fine.
“You okay there?” Riley’s caught up, watching your face as she signs.
Whatever expression you must be wearing right now, you do you best to quash it. “I’m fine. Why did you want me to walk you to school?”
She looks at you like you’re an idiot. “Because we’re friends?”
You scratch the back of your wrist as you glance around the open hall. A couple of other kids glance in your direction, but nothing more. It’s way too tempting to try and parse out the static and check if anyone’s recognized you. And if they have, what are they thinking? What do people at school say about you now? You’ve never had the courage to probe hard enough to find out. But if the internet is anything to go by, any combination of words can become a slur given enough determination to get around the censors.
Or maybe you punching out Brayden in public the first day back after the party overruled it all. Would that be better or worse? Way too easy to start obsessing over it. Have to force it out of your mind. It’s not important. You’re not important. Focus on Riley.
You shake your head. “Is anyone still giving you trouble?”
Since November there had been a weekly showing of some fresh vandalism of her locker. That lasted right up until the school decided to revoke her locker designation all together, saying it wasn’t worth the repair costs.
“Please.” Riley makes a show of pounding her fist into her open palm. “If any of these assholes ever tried something with me, they’d never find a body.”
You attempt your most skeptical look.
“How tall are you again?” you sign.
She glares. “I’m serious!”
“So am I.”
“Fuck you!” she signs, sticking out her tongue at you.
“What about the rest of the Sour Grapes?”
After everything that happened around the halloween party – and your very public meltdown at school your first (and last) day back – Riley had been forced to choose between staying friends with them or with you. For reasons completely beyond your understanding, she hadn’t even hesitated over which side to pick.
Riley shrugs, affecting indifference. “What about them? Haven’t talked to anyone in that group in months.”
“Not even Noor?”
“That bitch?” Riley waves off the question. “I’m fine Morgan, I swear. You can stop worrying about me.”
“Uh-huh,” is all you say out loud before adding in sign, “Is murder your plan for getting through your pre-calc exam too?”
That gets a laugh. She punches you in the shoulder. “Asshole!”
You smirk back at her as the two of you approach the door scanners. You hang back, watch as Riley fishes out her ID from her pocket. Her expression sobers up as she glances back at you. The two of you linger in front of the doors long enough to start drawing attention.
“Well… bye. See you after school.”
“Y-yeah.”
You wait to leave until Riley’s through the doors. As you turn, one of the seniors catches your eye with a smirk. Recognize his face but don’t remember his name. Was he at the party? Was his one of the dozens of faces posting ‘jokes’ at your expense online? He pantomimes a very particular back and forth motion with his hand and mouth while staring right at you. A second later his friends start laughing.
Yeah. Okay.
Time to get out of here.
You do your best to act like you never saw it.