In my world, or at least in my county, everyone receives their own kit brand new. As for mine, well. When its alarm goes off, instead of chiming it warbles, and the thing inside that’s supposed to make it vibrate produces more of a rattle. In all, at least I can say that all of its pieces are still there, patched together with fragments of tape, but some of the inside wires have permanently wrestled themselves out through its biggest crack. Two words: Third Grade.
From the time you’re in kindergarten the rumors fly about how great the device is. The once-hailed long form of its name, the Particle Adapting Kit Ray Reanimator, made by Minimum Neural Gadgets Industries, quickly evolves into something cool all the kids can say without stuttering. The kit. And when you’re finally in Third Grade, the lady who rewards you five stars for making a stupid macaroni necklace gives you your very own personal kit. When she’s finished handing them all out, she turns to the class, and then confirms to everyone that it’s the best thing since the cell phone. Oh, the neurolink this and the neurolink that. America’s done it again. And it’s only a matter of time before you and all your friends have kits that are abundantly full of extra lives and sun coins and what not.
But, in fact, by fall break, I not only made my first and only best friend, I tried to kill her. With a pink plastic barbie butter knife. Here, it’s a gift for you Charlotte, I’d said. Not. I’d planned it all out. The problem was, so did she. We got over it. Walked away with a few paper cuts. And bruises. And missing hair. Oh, and just the realization that we were the first in our class to figure out — as best any third grader can figure out — what was going on in our county. It was in their eyes. The teacher broke up our skirmish, having lost her patience for our last throws, weak and patty cake-like, and isolated the two of us in the back of the classroom. I thought the cause was obvious, but when I’d wiped my tears and lifted my head, I could see the looks on the rest of the kids’ faces. Confused. Their eyes hollow. Then the teacher snapped her fingers to bring the attention back to the front of the classroom, to her. Once every head had returned front-wise, she glanced back in my direction, at both me and Charlotte, and turned her lips up ever so slightly.
Time passed, and Charlotte and I both noticed that same look in other teachers’ eyes too. By Eighth Grade we were both working and by now we should have been dead. Charlotte may be. I haven’t seen her in two years. Of course, they don’t mention that either. That one day all of your friends will start to disappear the closer you get to today. The day of your very own Game Start Screen.
When I turn the alarm off, I have to hold a specific piece of tape on my kit. The one that connects the main two halves, split just down the middle of the manufacturer’s logo. This split has been one of my kit’s latest developments in its long saga of breaking down. I’d dropped it one day in a rush, increasing an older, smaller splinter that had been there since my fight with Charlotte, into the gash that now threatens to make it two pieces entirely. It’s still holding on, but it took me nearly half an hour the next morning to figure out just the right amount of squeeze on the tape that allows the alarm buttons to work. Must be some wiring, or a loose magnet inside somewhere, I figure. Who knows.
Once the sound is off, I peel myself out of bed and pull up the HUD, or Heads-Up-Display.
ID#: 1.34B.27
Name: Annalise
Pixzel
Currency:
2,168 Copper Coins
Craft System:
1. Student
2. Game Start Screen Contestant
[Status: Locked
MAIN MENU: QUICK SCREENS: Item Inventory School Town Map Home Body Stats Friends
Game Start Screen
[Status: Locked]
*Settings Operating System: Min. Neural OPX
I go straight to the item inventory, then the apparel tab, and select a stock casual attire. Since the last time I dropped my kit, I’ve learned to place it in hover mode as soon as I wake up, so this is what I do now. After a ringed flicker of colorful lights, and the small sound of a few jets of air re-pressurizing, my kit takes flight, at first finding the right pressure to float in front of me without falling, then rising and settling into a spot just a few feet above my head. This is maybe its greatest feature—the ability to fly—and looking back, definitely the main reason I chose this kind. When the government hands out these kits to everyone in Third Grade, you’re given a choice. A hand-kit, arm-kit, leg-kit, or sky-kit, appropriately named for the main manner in which you might want to keep your device on your persons. You’d think everyone would choose the sky-kit, and it is most, but there are still a significant number of people who pick the others. Charlotte and I called these people by their technical name: lame.
Like most mornings, I make my way downstairs to the kitchen while checking my most vital HUD stats. But this isn’t most mornings. This is the day of the Game Start Screen. So instead, I start by checking my followers. I click on the tab labeled Game Start Screen and it pulls up another set of screen options. It never shows who is actually watching, or who has subscribed to you as a follower. We just know that they can watch us, but we can’t watch them. At the bottom, there’s a ticker that simply indicates a number. Right now, there are already hundreds of thousands of people watching me, this early in the morning. Significantly higher than yesterday. And the day before that. Makes sense. It always increases the closer we get to the ceremony. But this change is different. In the past, I’d always been a by-stander in the community when it was other kids’ turn at the Game Start Screen. Even then, on the day of the actual event, I’d notice a few hundred extra followers tapping into my live stream throughout the day, just to randomly peek at what was going on around town. But this year I’m the star of the show, and already at the crack of dawn people are tuned in. It doesn’t take anyone growing up here many ceremonies to learn what they’re anticipating. Trouble. Or rather, your death. A thrilling spectacle of it. I’d heard the rumors, like that one year this really athletic boy down the street had a million followers before he’d even made it out the house, but the actual sudden increase in viewers this morning still feels overwhelming.
Next I check my health in the Body Stats. It’s as can be expected. Rested, with a life value just below seventy percent. Nobody gets above eighty in our town. But my family tries really hard to stay near it. There are days, sometimes weeks, when we’ve had to get by below fifty percent, which is the number we all agreed is official emergency status for our house. I’ve had to do my fair share of unspeakable things to help keep us afloat, and even though we don’t talk about it, I know my father is holding in much more about his life than me. I’m not sure I’d want to know even if he was willing to put it out there.
“Morning sunshine” my father says when I enter the kitchen. He never calls me sunshine. Ever. That’s new. And so is the breakfast spread. I pause, placing a finger on my chin. Is he doing this for the cameras? I think. My family members, or what’s left of us — father, little brother, Petey, me — usually pretend to eat breakfast with my mother. Our forks clinking in silence, the three of us exchanging awkward looks. Many times, or more often times than not, towards the end of the meal, one of us passes the salt to the empty side of the table, as if she’d just asked, or for no other reason than to openly fake like we acknowledged her presence. But as I look across the kitchen this morning, my mother’s chair is pushed in. Her plate and utensils altogether removed. My father spins, humming, and then places a plate of eggs on the table. Petey, noticing me, glances over to my father, then back to me, as if to tell me that it was him.
I almost can’t get it out. “Mhhm—” then a pause. “Morning,” I say to the air. There. I’m irritated, and I know it. But I did it on purpose because he’s done this before. Left my mother out. And in response, I’ve greeted my imaginary mother first out of spite. But since so many people are watching, I just give a normal greeting. I don’t want them to have the satisfaction of a spectacle of anything.
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My father finishes plating Petey some powdered eggs and then joins us. When we close hands, I reach out to touch that empty space on the table, where my mother’s hand would be. My father doesn’t.
“Amen,” we all say.
After lifting his head, he turns to me.
“The mayor says everything should be fine today,” he says, peeking over at me, then goes on over the clinking of forks. But I’m not listening. How he can go on like this is beyond me. My eyes dart to my mother’s chair, to him, and then to the hallway. To the chair, to him, back to the hallway. She’s down there, in their room, somewhere. Semi-conscious probably, drooling, permanently staring at the ceiling or the wall depending on the position he last placed her in. It suddenly dawns on me where he’s going with this. And the whole thing knots in my chest and makes me want to explode. He wants me to sell my mother at the ceremony, when they ask if there is anybody else I’d like to auction in place of me. It’s rare at the ceremonies, as most people don’t have anything or anyone to trade in, in replacement for themselves, but it happens from time to time. But to me, the action of using an injured family member to trade is despicable.
I kick my mother’s chair out, just as my father nears the end of a sentence.
“…And why the whole—“ the screech of the chair’s four legs dragging across the floor brings him up short. After regaining his composure, he turns to look at me. In one moment, the last bit of concentration grows smaller in his eyes, those two round discs, black as ruin beetles, the presence of what he was just saying deteriorating. And like a quick flash, his face holds something new in it, but something familiar, as though he is trying to send me a message.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him look at me this way. Last year, when it was the girl across town’s turn at the Game Start Screen, my father removed my mother’s seat that morning too, as if to hint at something. We’d been pretending to include her at every meal, every day, really since she got injured. Until, for the first time, that one morning when he was trying to make his point. At first, I thought nothing of it. Perhaps he forgot her chair or something. But when we showed up at the ceremony, he had this different look in his eye. And just as the call went out for any auctions, he turned to give me this look. That look he just gave me. It was a look that said, “next year, when it’s your turn, you can do this, and I won’t even say a word.” And then we all watched as the girl whose turn it was, who didn’t have anything to trade, became green, then blue, suddenly darting over to hug her parents, the three of them crying their eyes out, before the guards immediately escorted her out of town. The mayor had to keep reassuring the rest of the assembly with “Everyone calm down, it’s fine, it’s fine.”
Of course, it was not fine. Those parents, yea, they crumbled. Their faces worn down to some kind of eternal nothingness, seen the entire next year walking to and from work with a defeated posture, joining the ranks of the other scattered parents among the town whose seventeen-year-old was here and then suddenly wasn’t. The only ones that get around it, the ones seen walking around town the next year and beyond with their child, happy, or at least content, are the families that auction off another family member in place of their kid. And even still you hear the whispers around town, begin to notice those that approve and those that don’t, the ones that cuts their eyes at you versus the ones that wink. Versus the ones that give you that look.
“Honey,” he says, dragging out the vowels to make the point that he’s really speaking behind his words. “It’s a good thing that chair is so beaten up.” He eyes the chair, and then returns back to me. “No worries. Why don’t you go down to Franco’s Furnishings tomorrow and see if he can’t trade for something more durable?”
I think for a moment before responding, trying to temper myself. We’re literally talking about my mother, as if she is the chair, just in case somebody is listening. A code. “Maybe because I love this chair?” I say. “Because it has sentimental value? You know?” My kit catches my eye, and I notice a sudden increase in the ticker of people watching. Some of them no doubt noticed our conversation. I take a deep breath, then exhale, trying to take some of the edge out of my voice. “I want to see it remedied, maybe get it fixed,” I say as flatly as I can.
“Sweetie,” he says, again with the vowels, this time longer. “I thought we already discussed this. The chair is really in bad shape. There are no remedies for that kind of problem. Besides…” His face becomes flat, and he turns to me, this time taking all of the niceties out of his voice. “You should want something that will last a long time in this house. You should. And you can get that tomorrow if you go down and see Mr. Franco. If you forget that old chair, you can get something that you can sit in, in this house for a long long time. You. Sitting in this house. For a long time.”
I feel the energy of the conversation getting more direct.
“But we may be able to have both. I’ll just buy a chair from Mr. Franco when I— “
My father cuts me off, shifting in his chair.
“Look sunshine, I—.”
“The chair isn’t for sale dad,” I say, loud, because I’ve had enough.
We stare at each other for a moment. He grunts, holding his gaze, but softer.
I can’t help but feel embarrassed. Or at least somewhat wrong, for raising my voice at him. But I mean it. At the same time, I recognize how imperative it is for us, for me, to keep my cool. Already I can hear the notifications going off on my sky-kit, and I can imagine how many more people just began to plug into the live-stream. The comment section is probably full of people going crazy over me and my father getting into this argument, some who may even know what we’re really talking about, and that’s enough to spread the word and get a frenzy going. This is not good. It is no secret in our town what happens to the people who make that kind of spectacle. There was this one year, when a dainty quiet kid, someone nobody expected anything exciting out of, started arguing with a few of his friends when he’d just left the house, and before we knew it, they’d came and got him. Some rogue viewers. A group maybe, or someone by themselves, who couldn’t resist and wanted a piece of the action before the kid even made it to the ceremony. Our town didn’t know exactly who it was, or what happened because the footage mysteriously went missing. The street cams, a local business security camera, even the residential security cameras somehow didn’t pick it up. And of course, we couldn’t recover the feed from his kit. All that was left were the pair of shoes he’d been snatched from. A week later, some middle schoolers tied the shoestrings together and tossed the pair over a power line. A constant reminder of what not to do.
I let out a long breath.
My father and I both lower our eyes and concentrate on our breakfast. When we’re finished, my father tip toes around the table cleaning up. I kneel down next to my little brother, Petey, still sitting in his chair.
“Hey buddy,” I whisper. Petey’s smile, even in the dark, is innocent. It helps to calm me. He doesn’t know any better. His curly red hair is cut like the shape of a bowl. The best I could do for the occasion. He’s also light enough for me to turn his entire chair—with him sitting in it—towards me so his feet dangle in front of my knee. I begin tying one of his light-up shoes, not even bothering to look up.
“You locked and loaded and ready for school?” I ask while completing the first loop.
“Yeah,” he says back, his voice breathy, and I can almost hear him holding in a laugh.
Once I’m finished with his other shoe, and he’s done trying to make it difficult for me by wriggling his little feet, I pretend my hands are spiders and tickle him from his legs up to his stomach.
“Uh-uh, no”, I whisper, placing a finger over my lips, and he holds in a burst of laughter. He takes a moment to regain his composure, and then tries to get out of the chair.
“Nope,” I say. “I didn’t say I was done with you.” I run my spiders up and down his belly until he’s on the edge of another laugh before I have to shush him again. He struggles between laughing and not laughing, then tries to wriggle himself free, before failing.
“I’m not going to stop until you let me see,” I warn him. Finally, with a breathy giggle, he stretches an arm out and lets me see his kit. Right there, displayed in a faint digital blue, are his vitals. Next to the symbols LV, his life value registers seventy-five percent, thanks to breakfast.
I finally let him down, and he turns quickly, his cartoon book bag nearly slapping me in the face. “Oh yea, I almost forgot,” I say, to no one in particular. While using one hand to tug him by his book bag, I pull him back close enough to grab his kit again. Again, the tiny device emits light with the touch of a few keys, and I navigate the heads-up-display until I reach the page for his weapon load out. There are five boxes, four of them empty, and one with a picture of a handheld utility pack with a pocket knife.
Alas, I turn Petey around, and when I do, he’s staring at me with huge eyes.
“Remember, only if necessary,” I say. He nods, but at his age, I doubt he really understands. Still, I run a thumb across his cheek and say, “okay munchkin, grab it and skid-daddle before you miss your bus.”
As Petey stretches his hand towards the kit, the weapons load out boxes expand into a large hologram. He pulls the pocket knife from its box as it materializes, then heads to the door. He opens it, but just before he steps out, he pauses.
“Anna,” he says, loud enough for it to carry across the room. And I know he’s serious because my full name is Annalise and he only shortens it when he’s concerned.
“Yea?” I say.
“Are you going to leave us at the ceremony tonight?”
The ceremony. The term they tell you when you’re younger because you’re not prepared for the truth. Still, even at his age, he’s begun to notice that the older kids who participate in this ceremony don’t come home to their families that night. Even if they make it past breakfast.
What am I supposed to say? To that? How do I tell someone I love, the very center of everything I love right now, that I won’t be coming home tonight? Even if I get a chance to say goodbye before the escorts take me, Petey would surely remember what I told him this morning. And where would that leave him? Scarred? Hurt? Bitter and angry in the years leading up to his own Game Start Screen? This is what this town does to you. Everything, and I mean everything, seeps in through the cameras, and into your walls, reminding you of all of the rules outside, so that you can barely breathe a word to your own family without having to censor yourself in order to fit perfectly in place as a non-player character. And how am I supposed to do that, right here, and right now, with Petey?
I don’t, I think. I take a huge breath, and look him in the eye, trying my best to ignore how many eyes are watching me at this very moment.
I cross the room to get closer to him.
“I’ll always be here with you,” I say, rubbing his cheek again. “I promise.”
Petey smiles, and after turning and walking through the front door, he’s gone.
And I can’t help but think, that if I’m honest, I really don’t know.