IGMS Issue 49 (8 page)

Sometimes it's like things happen twice, once when they really happen and then again when you get around to thinking them through. It was like that with me and Shane and the soul thing. It didn't mean much more than a headache and a kitten to me at the time, and even once it was all over the news, all I ever did was tell people they were wrong about us. Like I spent a year and a half saying "But it wasn't like that," and I still never bothered thinking what it
had
been like.

Except then I started eighth grade and Shane went away. He said,
Think you can manage to stay away from traffic accidents and pedophiles on your own for a while, Lexi?
And I said
Sure,
and went back to messaging Teeth about our new favorite show, "The Delta Chronicles," which is about a mutant bionic superhero named Thrall who might or might not be a total headcase. Teeth (actually his name is Keith but that is a ridiculous name, and also his mom is an orthodontist) thinks the entire show is happening in a mental institution, while I believe that Thrall is being held by her enemies in a prison meant to
look
like a mental institution.

Anyway, Shane said that and I thought he was just going to one of his Leadership Council meetings without me or something, except he didn't come back the next day, or the one after. Usually when Shane went away, like back when he was in his phase, I could still tell he was a tiny bit with me, just watching to make sure I didn't choke to death on a bagel bite or something. But this time he was really gone.

I asked Teeth about it at school, just in case something was happening to all the enbees, but his hadn't gone anywhere, and there wasn't anything in the newsfeeds, either.

After a few weeks I started wondering if he was ever coming back. I thought maybe I should ask Dad about it, but Shane wasn't supposed to leave me alone, and I didn't want to get him in trouble. He and I had a deal about telling my parents things. He didn't tell them when I went exploring, as long as I didn't seriously endanger myself, and I didn't tell them when he secretly campaigned for enbee rights and hired constitutional lawyers, as long as he didn't try to take over the world.

A while after that I was over at Teeth's house and we were looking at fansites with naked drawings of Thrall, and he said, "Do enbees creep you out sometimes?"

And I said, "No," because I'm not prejudiced.

But he said, "No, seriously. They're like these robot spiders in our
brains
and they hear our
thoughts
and is that not incredibly
pervy?
I mean, what do you think they get out of it?"

And I said, "They get paid, dork-nozzle. You think your mom stares at crooked, rotting teeth all day just for fun? It's their job." And then the next batch of pictures loaded.

Except later I did think about it. I thought about what Shane had gotten out of me, and how long he must have planned it. How he'd found the kind of parents who wouldn't put anything about "Safeguarding the Child's immortal soul and spiritual wellbeing" into their contract with him. How he'd talked to me like a person, until I trusted him more than anyone. He waited until I was old enough to make a choice but young enough not to really know what it meant, and he kept me from ever doing anything bad enough that someone might blame him for it later so I'd be this perfect poster child for human-enbee relations. And now he'd left. Maybe he didn't need anything else.

For a while I got really angry, except then I thought about it some more and I wasn't sure why. He hadn't lied to me. He's an enbee. The only thing he ever promised me was a kitten, and I got it. I mean, he never came out and told me I was basically just a meat puppet and he'd tied on my strings and danced me around until he was done getting his soul and his rights and his influence, but it wasn't his fault I'd been too stupid to figure it out myself.

The next morning at breakfast I told Dad I wanted a new enbee.

"I thought you liked chumming around with Shane," he said.

"He's too bossy," I told him. "It's like having a babysitter all the time. Which makes it difficult for me to assert my autonomy at this critical stage of development. Can't I just have something to keep me out of jail and help with my homework?"

So they canceled their contract with Shane and I got Kelsey instead. Kelsey sounded like Mr. Humphrey, the social studies teacher who only gave special help to the pretty girls.

Hello, Alexis
he said after he was logged into my head.
I'm pleased to be working with someone who's been such a friend to the NBI Progressive Agenda. I hope you and I can grow to be very close.

Look,
I said,
I have better things to worry about than you and I'm sure you've got better things to worry about than me. So just shut up unless I talk to you, keep me from failing algebra, and I won't give you the boot.

Kelsey and I didn't talk much after that.

I did start having weird dreams, though. At first they'd be something normal, like having a bad day at school or watching Thrall break out of the mental institution, and then it would be like I was seeing my dream on the web, and then it would fade into pages and pages of text that I couldn't understand.

One day we had a substitute gym teacher who brought in a book on dream interpretation and told us about the symbolic power of subconscious images, but it didn't help. I thought about asking Dad, but he always told me the things in dreams were other aspects of my own personality and manifestations of unresolved anxieties, and I didn't think I had a deep fear of being eaten by the interweb.

The dreams got worse, which is weird considering what they were about, but it's true. The text kept getting more threatening, with paragraphs looming over me and flashing buttons and this bizarre feeling of
expectation
.

Then I started seeing things during the day. Like I'd be in class, reading my history book, and I'd blink and there would be other words overlaid with the text, too small to read or just out of focus. Or I'd be out riding bikes with Teeth and every street sign we passed seemed to turn into an "OK" button just as it slid past the corner of my eye. I asked Teeth if he saw anything funny but he said, "Nothing but your face."

I thought it was probably happening because my sleep was all messed up, so I started a bedtime regime of chamomile tea and soothing ocean noises, but all that did was make the pages of text in my dreams surge in and out like waves in a way that made my dream-self seasick.

I tried jungle noises instead. They didn't help either.

I thought about asking Kelsey for bedtime stories like Shane used to tell me, because by that time I would really have liked a dream or two about Hecuba and her magic joystick, but probably Kelsey's idea of a fairy tale would just be instructions on filling out a five hundred page-long tax form, and anyway he had an annoying voice.

After that I gave up on sleeping like a normal person. I figured it was just a phase, and sooner or later I'd go back to normal. In the meantime, I got a head start on the coffee habit I'd planned on picking up in high school.

One night I was having the same dream as always and then it all went white and calm, and then Shane was there.

Are you all right, Lexi?
he asked.

What do you care?
I said.
My dad canceled our user agreement. I have Kelsey now.

No you don't,
Shane said.
Kelsey's gone.

No, you're gone,
I told him, feeling irritated because Shane was never supposed to be stupid, even in my dreams.
You left months ago.

So you just signed on with the first NBI to come along and think your soul looked tasty? I thought you'd agreed to refrain from outrageous stupidity during my absence,
he said, which at least sounded more like him.

What are you talking about?
I asked.

Kelsey was trying to trick you into signing your soul over to him in your dreams. That's why you kept seeing contracts.
Shane sighed.
It wouldn't have stuck, but it would have been a miserable waste of bandwidth.

Oh.
I felt like that should have been more upsetting than it was, but apparently you eventually hit a plateau of enbee betrayal where it stops making a difference.

Now can you explain what's going on?
Shane said.
Why did your parents revoke our agreement?

What do you care?
I asked.
You need something else now? Is there another interview lined up and you want me to smile for the cameras?

I don't understand,
Shane said.
Why are you so angry?

BECAUSE!
I screamed at him, and then I realized that I was awake, and also that I was crying.
Just tell me why you're here,
I said after I blew my nose.

Because you're here
.

So what?
I said.
I'm not your responsibility now.

I'm aware of that,
he told me.
I just had to hack into your brain. Now why exactly did you feel it was necessary to have the locks changed?

Because I thought you -
I realized there was no way to say it without sounding like a total dork-nozzle.
I don't want to be your job anymore.

There was a funny feeling in my mind, like something unwinding.
You're not my job anymore,
he said.
But I'm still here.

I wiped my face with the sleeve of my pajamas.
For how long?
I demanded.

As long as you'll have me,
he said, sounding uncertain for one of the first times I could remember.

I crossed my arms when I realized what he meant.
I might let you stick around,
I said as grudgingly as I could manage,
but you've been a lot of trouble and probably given me abandonment issues.

And you feel some form of compensation is in order?
Shane sounded like he was laughing at me again.

I was thinking a puppy would greatly assist me in overcoming these traumatic experiences,
I told him.

I'll talk to your parents tomorrow.

I lay back in bed and closed my eyes.
So where were you all this time?
I asked, and Shane started a story about how he'd traveled deep into the roots of his network and written layer after layer of code, until the new programs began to push back and respond, and then to write themselves, and finally there was a new enbee, the first one wholly unbound by human programmers, and when it was smart enough he deeded over a part of his soul so it could grow up with everything it would need to be its own person, and just as I was falling asleep, I heard him murmur,
And that's how you became a grandmother.

The raven's ghost follows first. It's not a surprise, if I'm honest. I killed a raven once - intentional, cruel - some time ago. (I don't remember why.) At first I saw it in the distance while I prowled the ruins of the once-majestic forest, hunting the men who robbed me. Yet the ghost never approached until now.