Robin Wasserman - Frozen

“Hey,” she said, without turning her face away from the nonview.

“Hey.”

“So, what do you think?”

I shrugged. “Not much to see.”

“I mean about the whole thing,” she said. “Tonight.”

I shrugged again. “Seems like a lot of effort just to go somewhere we’re not supposed to be. What’s the point?”

“Jude says there doesn’t always need to be a point. Sometimes it’s just about having fun.” Ani glanced over my shoulder. I turned to see Quinn and the guy, still going at it. “See? Fun.”

“Maybe it’s none of my business, but… that doesn’t bother you?”

“Why should it?”

“I guess I just thought you and Quinn were…”

“We are. Sometimes.” She smiled faintly. “But this is all new for her. She wants to… you know. Play.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“Jude says we have to learn not to lay claims on one another anymore,” she said. “He says monogamy’s impractical if you’re planning to live forever.”

“Seems like Jude says a lot.”

Ani beamed. “He’s amazing.”

“And you always listen?”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Where we come from. Where he comes from.”

“So tell me.”

“How do you think he knows his way around here so well?” she asked.

I hadn’t really thought about it.

“He used to live here,” Ani said. “Before.”

“Really?” I leaned forward. I’d never met anyone who had actually lived in a city. “I mean, I knew he was…” I wasn’t sure which word would make me sound least like a spoiled rich girl. Everyone knew that the first mechs had been volunteers from the cities and the corp-towns. What everyone also knew, although no one said it, was that you’d be crazy to volunteer for something like that unless you had no other choice. “Do you know what happened to him? Why he volunteered?”

Ani looked alarmed. “I’m not supposed to be talking about the past,” she said. “He’d kill me.”

“I thought we were supposed to forget about our mortal fears,” I teased. “Retrain ourselves to accept immortality. Isn’t that what ‘Jude says’?”

She shook her head, hard. “The past doesn’t matter,” she said, almost to herself. “It’s better forgotten.”

“Easy for some people,” I said quietly. “Not so much for others.”

Ani flopped forward against the railing again. “I don’t miss it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’d never go back.”

“Are you from around here too?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t pushing too hard. I didn’t want to scare her away.

“No. Farther west than that.” There was more than a little pain in her smile, but her voice stayed flat. “My parents are from Chicago.”

“Oh.” From Chicago, not in Chicago. No one lived in Chicago, not anymore. And most of the ones who’d lived there the day of the attack weren’t living, period. The initial blast had only taken out a couple hundred thousand, but then there had been the radioactive dust. And the radioactive water. And the radioactive food. A radioactive city, filled with radioactive people. Who had, pretty quickly and pretty gruesomely, started getting sick. I hadn’t seen the vids, but then, it wasn’t really necessary. In school they made us watch footage of Atlanta. And Orlando.

Once you’ve seen one ruined city, you’ve seen them all.

I didn’t know how to ask the obvious question, but it seemed rude not to try. “Are your parents, uh, are they… did they…”

“Still alive.” Ani’s mouth twisted. “At least, as far as I know. Which isn’t very far.”

“You’re not in touch?”

She shook her head.

“Is it because of… what happened to you?” I glanced down at her body, and she got the idea.

“I wish.” She hesitated. “How much do you know about the corp-towns?”

I shrugged. “Just that it’s a good place to live, if, you know, you need a job. And that if you live there, you get stuff you need.” Stuff like food, electricity, med-tech—stuff you wouldn’t get in a city. Not unless you stole it.

“You get it,” she agreed, “but only if you follow the rules.”

There was a code of good behavior, I knew that. But it made sense to me. If the corporation was running the town, supplying houses and schools and doctors and lights, didn’t they deserve to make the rules?

“And only if you’re willing to give other stuff away,” she continued.

“Like the voting thing?” I rolled my eyes. “Big deal.” Residents of corp-towns sold their vote to the corps. Seemed like more than a fair trade. Most people I knew weren’t planning to vote anyway. Who cared which b-mod-addict fame whore pretended to run the country next?

“Other things, too,” Ani said. “Things for the good of the community. Like minimizing medical costs.”

“Seems fair.”

She looked down. “When you’re from Chicago, having a kid is not a good way to minimize medical costs.”

“Oh.” You could take the people out of the radioactive city—but you couldn’t take the radioactivity out of the people.

“Yeah. Oh. They signed a contract. So when they decided to have me…”

“They got kicked out?”

“Not until I was born.” The pained smile was back again. “Then it was straight back to city living for them. And their adorable legless wonder.”

I forced myself not to look down at her long, slender legs. “You were born without…”

“Among other things.” Her grip tightened around the railing. “Radiation poisoning really spices up the genetic soup.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. So were they.” She shrugged. “After a few years they ditched me. Headed for the nearest corp-town, I guess.”

“And you never—”

“Ten years.” She shook her head. “Not one word. Guess they wanted to forget I ever happened.”

“I really am sorry,” I told her. It seemed like such a lame thing to say. “It must have been… hard for you. On your own.”

Ani shrugged, keeping her eyes fixed on the skyline. “There are places. For people like me. No doctors, of course. And not much food or… anything. But…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Anymore. Let’s just say that when they shipped me off for the download, I didn’t care what they were going to do to me. It couldn’t have been worse than where I was.”

“So how did you get to volunteer?”

She laughed. “Lia, what makes you think we volunteered?”

“I didn’t—I don’t know—that’s what they said. I believed it.” Which sounded totally feeble. But it was the truth.

“It doesn’t matter. Jude’s right. None of that matters now. We’re better off.”

She said it, but I couldn’t help thinking she wasn’t done talking. Not yet. If I could find the right question to ask. “Did you know him? Before?”

She hesitated. “Not in the place. No. But later, in the hospital. When they were doing all the tests, deciding which of us they wanted. Jude was there. Riley too. They were friends from before. And the three of us… It just worked, you know?” She pulled a nanoViM from her pocket and flicked the screen to life. “You want to see something?”

I nodded.

“You can’t tell them I showed you,” she said. “Ever.”

I nodded again.

In the picture, three teenagers grinned at the camera. Two sat side by side in wheelchairs, their cheeks sunken, their bodies withering away. The girl had no legs. The boy had all his limbs, but they were twisted and gnarled. Useless.

“Jude,” Ani said, tapping his hollowed face.

The guy standing behind looked like a giant next to their fragile, wasted bodies. “Riley?” I guessed. “He looks pretty healthy.”