Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
“What’s normal?” she whispered back.
The woman, wearing a yellow dress that flared as she walked, hurried past with a quick nod, barely even looking at them. Cass winced and swallowed. The salty taste in her mouth told her that she had been biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood.
The streets grew more crowded as they walked farther into the City. Despite their dirty, ripped clothes that looked nothing like the clean, bright pants and dresses the City people wore, nobody paid them any attention.
“I don’t understand,” said Cass quietly, as they stood hungrily looking through the window at a large room filled with tables where people sat eating. “Is this a prison or not?”
A robot sphere floated into view from around the corner. Cass gasped and prepared to run.
“Start walking,” said Nick, nudging Cass and Kevin gently on the shoulder. “Remember? Be normal.”
A man in front of them opened a door that led into the large cafeteria, and Nick grabbed the door before it closed. They stood and watched as the sphere bobbed closer, passed just a few feet from them, then slowly receded.
“You wanna sit, or just eat there, standing up, blocking my door?”
A woman stood, hands on her hips, smiling at them. She wore a white blouse and an apron over a long green skirt.
“Eat,” said Kevin quickly. “We want to eat.”
Nick frowned at Kevin, but then nodded. “Yes, ma’am, we want to eat, please.”
“Well, all right, then,” the woman said, with a hint of a frown as she looked more closely at the three of them. Cass instinctively smoothed down her matted hair. She looked over at her brothers, flinching at their filthy clothes, their mud-caked boots, their dirty faces and wild greasy hair.
“This way,” the woman said, and led them to a table in the back, near a large window looking out onto the street. She handed each of them a menu. “Sandy will be with you in a minute.”
“Oh my God,” said Kevin, looking through the menu. “You can get anything you want here.”
“Shh,” said Nick.
“Chicken or steak or pizza or hot dogs or French fries …” Kevin went on in a whisper. “I can even get breakfast for dinner. Omelettes, pancakes, cereal.... Remember that stash of cereal Javier scavenged a few years ago? It was stale.... I’m sure this stuff is fresh …”
Cass had stopped listening to Kevin. A few tables over, in a booth, sat two girls. One had black hair, cut short to just above her shoulders. The other had longer blonde hair, tucked back behind one ear, and wore glasses. They were looking at Nick, whispering to each other, and pointing to a small black device one of the girls held in her hand.
The black-haired girl smiled at Nick, then stared openly, not bothering to hide her scrutiny, challenging him to stare back. He quickly looked away. “Damn,” he said. “Damn, damn. Those girls are watching us.”
“They’re watching you, pretty boy,” Cass teased, but she sounded more confident than she felt. What were they looking at on that screen? “Ignore them.”
Kevin started laughing. “Pretty boy!” he said.
“Shut up, Kevin,” said Nick.
A waitress approached their table. She was probably about their mom’s age, with the same color hair—blonde streaked with gray, pulled back into a ponytail. Cass blinked hard a few times, pushing back the tears that surprised her by threatening to well up.
A nametag on the waitress’s blouse said . She filled their coffee cups, set the coffee carafe down on the edge of the table, and pulled a notepad from a pocket. “Hello, kids,” she said. “What’ll it be today?”
SANDY
“Breakfast lover’s special,” blurted Kevin.
“How do you want your eggs?”
“Um … what?”
“Your eggs,” said Sandy. “Scrambled, sunny-side up, over easy …”
“The first one, please.”
“What kind of toast?”
“What kind?”
Sandy raised an eyebrow but didn’t look up from her notepad. “White, wheat, rye, cinnamon raisin, sourdough …”
“The first one,” said Kevin. “Please.”
“I’ll have the same thing,” said Nick.
“And me, too,” said Cass.
“Something to drink?” said Sandy.
“Yes,” said Nick.
Sandy waited, then when nobody spoke, said, “Okay, what would you like to drink?”
“Oh, sorry,” said Nick. “Water. Do you have water? Water for everyone.”
Sandy tucked her notepad back into her pocket. “Yeah, I think we can find some water for you.” She left, shaking her head.
“I still don’t get it,” said Cass quietly, leaning forward. She gestured at the room full of people, eating plates heaped with food, laughing, talking, dressed in clean new clothes, not a robot in sight.
The man at the table next to them stood and set four orange-colored rectangular pieces of paper under his coffee cup, then put his brown, broad-brimmed hat on his head and walked out. Kevin reached over and grabbed the orange paper. The number
10
was printed on each corner of both sides, along with the centered image of two hands, one human flesh, one robot metal, clasped in a firm handshake. The words
PEACE, PROSPERITY, PROTECTION
formed a circle around the gripped hands.
Sandy came over and began clearing the man’s dishes. She paused, frowning, staring at the table. She lifted up the napkin dispenser, set it down, lifted all the paper placemats, then looked underneath the table, moving the chairs out of her way. She clanged the dishes down hard on the table. “Eddie!” she shouted. “Eddie! We’ve got a no-pay at table twenty-five!”
A bald man, big belly pushing against a food-stained white apron, came rushing out from the kitchen. He had a black device in his hands, just like the girls who had been staring at Nick.
“Tall man, by himself,” said Sandy. She now had a device in her hands, too, and was typing furiously on it. Eddie began typing as well. “Brown hat,” she continued. “Mustache, I think. I don’t remember. But he just left.” She paused in her typing to look out the window and pointed excitedly. “He’s right outside, just crossing the street!” The waitress went back to her typing, and a number of nearby diners had devices in their hands and were typing as well.
Outside, the man crossed the street, then paused on the far sidewalk to button his coat. The typing had stopped. The room was silent. Nobody was eating or talking; everyone looked out the window, watching the man.
Cass felt sick. “This is bad,” she whispered. Kevin reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing hard.
The man began walking, and then a sphere bot came flying around the corner and stopped right in front of him. It blinked on and off with a red light. The man stopped, looking confused. “CITIZEN, YOU ARE BEING DETAINED FOR THEFT,” a loud voice boomed out of the robot. The man said something that couldn’t be heard from inside, and he pointed to the diner and held up his wallet. The robot didn’t respond and didn’t move. Suddenly, the man appeared terrified; he took a step back, looking down the street, beyond the sphere.
Two huge robots rolled into view. They were dull gray metal and humanoid, with arms and legs and a head. But they were broader than any man could possibly be, and they rolled forward rather than walked, as if on wheels, although no wheels were visible.
The man took another step backward, then another. “CITIZEN, DO NOT MOVE! YOU ARE BEING DETAINED!” announced the sphere. The man spun around and began to run. Two flashes of blinding white light shot out simultaneously from the soldiers with a crackling boom, striking the man in the back. Cass bit back a scream, remembering that sound. She’d heard it right before Javier’s cry.
The man went down instantly, limp, with no attempt to break his fall. His back was charred blackness, jacket and shirt and skin unrecognizable. Flames licked the edges of the burn hole, and smoke rose up from the body. The robots rolled up to the man, looked down at him for a moment, and then one lifted a leg and slowly lowered it down, once, twice, three times, smothering the fire.
“Idiot, trying to run from two Peteys,” said Sandy. Cass forced herself to turn away from the street. The waitress waved her notepad at the window. She shook her head. “What did he think, he was going to outrun their lases?”
“WE NEED TO GO,” SAID NICK. HE COULDN’T STOP LOOKING AT THE smoking hole in the street where the man lay. The whole thing had taken a fraction of a second.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” agreed Kevin. Cass nodded.
Sandy came out of the kitchen with three plates full of food balanced in her arms and set them on the table. Nick stood up. “I’m sorry, there’s been a mistake. We, um, we have to go, there’s an emergency …” Cass and Kevin began to stand.
“There you are!” said the girl with short black hair who had been staring at Nick. She came over and gave him a hug. Shocked, he held his arms stiffly at his sides. “We didn’t see you guys over here.” Her friend, the blonde, hugged Kevin and then Cass.
“Sit down; we’ll pull up seats,” said the black-haired girl. Nick, Cass, and Kevin all remained standing. “Sit down—what are you, rusted?” she said. Her tone was cheerful but with an edge to it. Nick sat, motioning to Kevin and Cass to do the same, and forced an awkward smile.
Sandy walked away. The two girls pulled over chairs from the next table and sat. Both girls were pretty, Nick couldn’t help noticing. Especially the black-haired girl. He shifted a bit in his chair, moving his bad eye away from her direct view.
“I think there’s been a mistake,” Cass said.
“I’m Lexi,” said the black-haired girl quietly. “And this is my friend Amanda.” The other girl nodded, looking uncomfortable. Lexi dropped her voice down even lower, to a whisper. “The only mistake is you Freeposters coming in here not even knowing how to pay for a meal.”
Nick felt like he had been punched in the stomach.
Idiot,
he thought. He should have left Cass and Kevin in the woods, where they were safe, and scouted the City himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This,” said Lexi, picking up the money Kevin had taken off the other table. “You pay with this. You’ve got forty dollars, probably just enough for your meal with no tip, which is all Sandy deserves. My coffee was cold.” She lowered her voice and smiled. “Only Freeposters would come in looking like they’ve been lumberjacking for a week without sleeping, not knowing what money looks like.”
“Oh, no,” said Kevin. “They killed that man because of the money I took?”
“Nah, he’ll live,” said Lexi. “Peteys probably shooting a sleeper burst, just to put him down, not kill. They’ll take him to the hospital and stick him in a rejuve tank. He’ll be fine. Nasty scar on his back. Detained, and a spot in re-education, but alive.”
“Lexi,” hissed Amanda, “let’s just go. I don’t like this.”
“Wait,” said Lexi. She scooted her seat closer to Nick and put her hand on his shoulder. She leaned closer, as if telling him a secret. Nick could smell her soap and shampoo, slightly flowery, and he thought how he must smell to her, after two weeks in the woods. She looked at him and frowned slightly. He knew she was looking at his scarred, cloudy eye, and he felt a rush of shame, but then she moved even closer, her lips near his ear, and her hand slid to the back of his neck. He tensed and realized he should be doing something, not just sitting there like an idiot, but he didn’t move. She rubbed her fingers at the spot where the spine joined the skull, feeling for something, and then whispered in his ear with warm, tickling breath, “It’s really true. You’re a freeman.”
Nick pushed her away, not roughly, but not gently either. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I have something to show you on my comm,” she said, pulling the device out of her pocket and setting it on the table.
“Lexi, don’t,” said Amanda. “Come on, can we just go?”
Lexi ignored Amanda, concentrating on her comm. She tapped a few times on the screen, typed something, tapped a few more times, then set it back down on the table. “There you are, rock star. The bulletin went out on you last week. You’re a wildman robot-killer. Enemy of the peace.”
Nick, Kevin, and Cass all leaned forward to look. On the small comm screen, blurry to Nick’s good eye, was a 3D video closeup of his face, with a green tree canopy and patches of blue sky in the background. In the vid Nick’s eyes were wide, then he flinched and shielded his face with his hand, and the vid looped back to the beginning and repeated.
Nick watched himself on the screen and felt dizzy. The bots knew his face … “How?” he whispered.
“The scout,” said Kevin. “The red light on your face as you smashed it. Amazing clarity in the video … the 3D is so clear …”
“You’re famous,” said Lexi. “A Revolution 19 renegade. Sooner or later someone’s going to recognize you. We did.”
“We need to go,” Nick said to Kevin and Cass.
Lexi put her hand on Nick’s arm. “Stay. At least eat first and hear me out.”
“I said we need to go.” Nick began to stand, fighting back the panic that was threatening to take over. He scanned the restaurant; had anyone else noticed them?
“Five seconds on my comm,” said Lexi, holding up her device, “and there’ll be five Peteys here to detain you.”
Nick froze, then sat back down. “What do you want?” he said, quietly but with anger. He didn’t like being threatened.
“I’m sorry,” said Lexi. “I shouldn’t have said that. My point is if it’s not me, it’ll be someone else. Look, eat your food. You must be starving.”
Kevin began eating, shoveling the food in. After a moment, Cass joined him, although more slowly. Nick had little appetite now, but he took a bite of his eggs. “All right, Lexi. I’m listening.”`
“Okay, you guys are rock-star freemen, sneaking around the City,” she said. “I don’t know why, but you’ve got your rock-star reasons. Maybe to smash more bots, or rescue some comrades from re-education. Except the tall one with black hair and blue eyes has his face all over the comm news. And even if he didn’t have a famous face, you three are straight out of the woods and will sooner or later, probably sooner, do something stupid because you don’t know better. Like getting on a trans unchipped. Or walking into a red zone CP. Or getting questioned by a neighborhood patrol. You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about, I’m sure.” Lexi paused for a deep breath, then smiled. “You need a guide. You need me.”