The Vault of Dreamers (5 page)

4

THE BLIP RANK BOARD

BY LUNCH, I
was starved, and my anxiety about the cuts was gnawing at my gut. Every time I’d
stolen a chance to check my blip rank, it was hovering around 85. All the other first-year
students were checking their ranks perpetually, too, and some of them looked even
more frazzled than I felt. From a distance, the older students gloated good-naturedly,
as if they’d never gone through this torture.

As I passed along the cafeteria counter once again, I peered into the kitchen for
Linus. He was working at a back sink between mounds of dirty trays, scrubbing in water
so hot it steamed up against his face. His red arms disappeared into yellow gloves,
and his white shirt clung.

A couple of students shifted out of line before me, and I realized the girl ahead
of me was Janice. I couldn’t think how to ask her if she’d also been called to the
infirmary, but I could at least try to get her talking.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re in my Media Convergence class. Janice, right?”

“That’s right,” she said. “DeCoster chewed you out for being late. How did you do
with the synching?”

“It was okay. I didn’t quite finish.”

“Really?” she said. “You always look so badass in that class, like you can’t see anything
but your screen.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding. Me?”

She smiled, and for the first time, I wondered if, in my own way, I was as intimidating
to the other students as they were to me. Janice kept talking about class, and we
went through the line together. Brightly lit stations made French fries glow and green
nubs of broccoli shimmer in their cheesy sauce. I still couldn’t get over how much
food was offered to us every day, and in such a variety.

When we came out of the line, the tables were nearly full, and I scanned for empty
seats. Janice hovered beside me. Above, designer LED lamps dropped down between crisscrossing
beams of wood. I didn’t have to look closely to know the room was riddled with cameras,
little button ones affixed to window frames, booths, and napkin dispensers. The blip
rank board flipped its mini panels in another update, and I could feel how the fluttering
noise fanned the anxiety in the room as students turned to check their ranks. I was
at 87.

Someone called my name. I turned to see Burnham sitting at a round table with a couple
other first-year students. They’d found a sunny place near the windows, and Janice
and I wound our way over to join them.

I set down my tray across from Burnham, and Janice took the place between him and
me. “This is Janice,” I said.

“Burnham Fister,” he said, half rising to offer a hand. He was the first guy I ever
saw who made shaking hands look natural and not weirdly grown up.

“I think we’ve met before. At Camp Pewter,” Janice said. She smoothed her long hair
over her shoulder.

“That’s right,” Burnham said, smiling. “I didn’t think you remembered. Do you know
Paige and Henrik?”

Paige, slouching in a black leotard, said a quick hello. Her eyes were ringed with
black, her dark complexion was flawless, and her lips were a deep, pouty red. Henrik
had close-cropped brown hair and a chin-strap beard, and his thin summer scarf made
me think
Europe
, especially when I picked up a slight accent. He was methodically adding sugar to
the four cups of coffee on his tray.

“You know, Paige, it doesn’t mean you’re any less of a person if you get cut,” Henrik
said. “Viewers watching from home have no way to judge our inner worth.”

“That’s not true,” Paige said. “Our inner worth is directly connected to the behavior
we show on the outside. That’s why it’s going to hurt. It’s the ultimate rejection.”

I glanced doubtfully at the two of them while I spread cream cheese on my everything
bagel. Burnham, I noticed, was chewing the end of a straw.

“But they’ve only been watching us for ten days in this totally bizarre, surreal place,”
Henrik went on. “This isn’t who we really are.”

“No? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been spilling my guts out on the dance floor,”
Paige said. “This
is
who I am. This is
everything
I am.”

“Are you saying a bunch of strangers knows you better than your own family?” Henrik
asked.

“I’m just saying they’re picking their feeds based on what they see, and this is who
I really am,” Paige said. “Whether I make the cuts depends on if they want me or not.
It’s that simple. Why can’t you accept a true meritocracy?”

Henrik leaned over his coffee cups with a red swizzle stick. “If it’s that simple,
everyone who’s rejected tonight will go home and slit their wrists.”

“Holy crap,” Janice said.

Paige smacked her hand on the table. “You have to put everything of yourself out there,”
she said. “That’s the point. That’s art. You can’t hold back.”

“Oh, please,” Henrik said. “Art is not all guts on the dance floor. Can you imagine
the mess?”

I let out a laugh.

Paige glared at me. “What?” she demanded.

“It’s just, guts
would
be sort of slippery,” I said.

Paige leaned back, crossing her arms, and stared at Burnham as if to ask him,
who is this moron?

Burnham smiled around his straw.

“Fine,” Paige said. “Laugh.”

“Come on,” Henrik said, starting on another cup of coffee.

“No, you have to admit Paige has a point,” Burnham said, taking out the straw. “It’s
hard not to feel like our entire worth is wrapped up in our blip ranks. But Henrik’s
right, too. If we exist only for our ranks, we’ll cease to exist once we leave. That
can’t be right, Paige. There has to be something more.”

“Why? Art is already more. That’s what we’re being judged on,” Paige said.

“Your art and your blip rank are connected, but they’re not the same thing,” I said.
“If you say your rank is all that matters, Paige, then you’re saying people with low
ranks or no ranks, like people working in the kitchen, have no worth at all.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Henrik said.

“No, that
is
what I’m saying,” Paige said. She stirred her yogurt. “Why be afraid to admit it?
We’re on the show because we’re better than them. We’re more creative and interesting.
And if we make the cuts, that says we’re worth more than the students who get cut.
We’re intrinsically more valuable people.”

I sat back with my lemonade and stared at her. Paige was crazy mean, but I sort of
admired her elitist guts, the ones she put on the dance floor. I also hoped she’d
get cut.

“You probably think the hyper-rich are intrinsically more valuable, too, just because
they’re rich,” Henrik said.

Paige opened her hand. “Survival of the fittest. They’ve figured out how to rule the
world. Ask Burnham.”

I choked on my drink.

“Can I strangle Paige?” Henrik said.

Burnham’s dark cheeks had taken on a deeper hue, and he looked stiff. “Be my guest,”
he said lightly.

Henrik threw an arm around Paige’s neck and wrestled her into a headlock. She did
something to him under the table that made him let go. “Hey!” he said.

“All’s fair,” Paige said.

“Which is this? Love or war?” Henrik said.

“Take your pick,” Paige said, and took up her sandwich.

From across the dining hall, the big blip rank board fluttered with another update,
and I was surprised that none of my companions glanced over at it. I couldn’t resist.
I was at 83. Janice, Burnham, Henrik, and Paige were all in the top twenty-five. I
caught Burnham watching me, and focused again on my bagel.

“Can I have your swizzle sticks, Henrik?” Janice asked.

Henrik passed them over. “Why?”

“I like them,” Janice said.

“They’ve got a whole can of them over by the coffee,” Henrik said.

“I like them used. That way they’re not wasted,” Janice said, drying them daintily
on a napkin.

“What do you do here?” Henrik asked her.

“I’m an actor,
obviously
,” Janice said, drawling out the word. “Speaking of the cuts,” she added, reverting
to normal, “I heard people can hack into the
Forge Show
database and falsify the blip ranks.”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Backers and advertisers,” Janice said. “Gamblers.”

“Everything’s encrypted,” Burnham said. “The computer security has a ton of layers,
and they change the encryptions regularly so people can’t hack in.”

“How do you know about it?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Have you tried to hack in?” I asked.

His gaze met mine. “I have cameras on me all the time,” he said. “When would I have
the chance to try?”

“You could have tried before you came here,” Paige pointed out.

“That would be highly unethical, wouldn’t it?” he said.

He wasn’t saying it was beyond his abilities, though.

I sucked a dab of cream cheese off my thumb. “If a person wanted to influence the
blip ranks legally, would there be a way to do it?” I asked.

“Sure,” Burnham said. “One way would be a group effort. We have a lot of influence
ourselves, actually. If the five of us made a direct appeal to our viewers and asked
them, point blank, to start following one person, that person would gain a major chunk
of our viewers all at the same time. They’d see a serious spike in their blip rank.”

“Could we try it?” I asked.

They all turned to me, and I felt a knot of apprehension. I was way too uncool.

“Never mind,” I said quickly. “Forget it.”

“No. It’s not a bad idea,” Burnham said slowly. He studied me a moment. “The effect
would be even more conspicuous with a low-ranking student, and, no offense, Rosie’s
rank is low.”

Paige laughed, sitting back. “You want us to endorse little Miss Rosie here?”

“Why not?” Burnham asked.

“I don’t even know her,” Paige said. “Why should I use my influence for her?”

Burnham smiled easily, but there was an edge to his voice. “You may be an elitist
snob, but you’re also interested in a social experiment.”

Paige considered me with her black-rimmed gaze as if I were some seven-legged bug.

“You guys don’t have to,” I said. “Really.”

“Why? Is it mortifying to be a guinea pig?” Paige asked. “Let’s all do it at once.”

“It’s not mortifying, Rosie. It’s just an experiment. Let’s try it!” Janice said.
“What do we do? Hold hands?”

Henrik was shaking his head at Burnham. “Man, you are something.”

“Keep it simple. Just look right at one of the cameras,” Burnham said. “Ask your viewers,
straight up, to check out Rosie’s feed. Ready? On your mark, get set, go.”

The four of them each turned to a different camera button and recited some version
of “Follow Rosie.”

Burnham slid his phone into the center of the tabletop and pulled up my Forge profile.
Everyone hunched over it to see, and correspondingly, my profile showed us all hunching
together. My blip rank put me in 82nd place. Then it jumped to 80, and then 78. It
hovered there a moment. On the wall across the dining room, the big blip rank board
began to flicker again with another update. I turned to watch it, holding my breath,
as the numbers and letters spun, and when they settled, my blip rank was up to 69.

I let out a laugh of disbelief.

“My rank’s up, too,” Henrik said. “So is Paige’s. We all went up.”

Paige was gaping at the big board. “Burnham’s at number nine.” She turned to him.
“Unbelievable.”

He shrugged.

“Does this mean we all just got spikes for helping Rosie?” Janice asked.

“Looks like it,” Henrik said, laughing. “I guess that blows your theory, Paige. Niceness
trumps art.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t last,” Paige said, rising from her seat.

The others laughed and started getting up, too.

“Thanks, you guys,” I said, pushing back my chair. “I mean it.” Despite what Paige
had said, I was beyond thrilled. “You especially, Burnham. Thanks.”

“You never know,” Burnham said. He reached into his back pocket. “Hold on. I’ve got
something for you, if you want it.” He passed over a piece of paper, folded in quarters
to make a kind of booklet, and I opened it to find a picture of Dubbs. He’d printed
off a screenshot from when he’d played with the colors around her face. I held it
up to peer at it closely, loving how cool it was.

“You like it?” he asked.

I hardly knew what to do with such thoughtfulness.

“Are you always this nice to people?” I asked.

“It’s no big deal. Really,” he said, and with a jog of his glasses, he turned and
made his way between the tables.

Janice grabbed my arm to hold me back. “That dude totally likes you,” she said.

“He just met me,” I said.

“Yeah, but still. Do you have any idea how rich he is? I can’t believe he’s even at
this school,” Janice said.

Burnham was kind of cute. I almost said it out loud before I remembered the cameras.
It wasn’t just the viewers stopping me this time. Anything I said could make its way
back to Burnham, and also to anyone else in the school. I glanced back toward the
kitchen.

“I’m supposed to go to the infirmary,” I said.

“How come?”

“I don’t know. The doctor wants to see me,” I said.

Janice obviously hadn’t had the same request to report to Dr. Ash. For a second, I
considered showing her the track mark on my arm to see if she might notice hers, but
then what? I still didn’t want to admit, on camera, that I’d been awake at night.

“It’s probably nothing,” Janice said.

“I hope so.”

We left our trays at the return counter, and I lingered a second, looking back into
the kitchen for Linus. His pile of trays was gone, and he was on to washing a stack
of pots.

“Can I help you?” The chef stepped into my line of vision. “Chef Ted” was embroidered
in blue cursive on his white jacket, and his jowly face was mismatched with a lean,
wiry body. When I scanned his hand for bruising, I saw nothing but hard knuckles.