“What does it say here?” He swiped the competition guidelines to the front of his screen. “A solution for all! Is fifty percent of the pop the same as all? And this one!” Another swipe—this time a submission’s abstract. Looked like extraterrestrial migration. Kasey had rejected several of those herself. Whether the public accepted it or not, all missions to colonize Earth-like planets had failed.
“Have they no regard for the budget?” No, thought Kasey, recalling the proposal that they all travel back in time to a more habitable Earth. “Did the bots even screen?” Yes, but bots weren’t the ones depending on the final solution.
“Any luck with your batch, Kasey?” asked Ekaterina, ignoring Barry.
Yes, she could say. Telling the truth was thankless and tiring and very Kasey, who couldn’t rewire her brain to give the people what they wanted. “No.”
“Why not?” Meridian had whined earlier over their call, when Kasey had also said no to submitting their own solution—theirs, insofar as Kasey had conceived it while still on the school science team with Meridian. “Please, Kasey? College apps are due next week and it’d be great if I could list this. Just imagine: coauthor of proposal under P2C consideration. Legit, am I right?”
Kasey, feeling sleepy and itchy but not one bit legit in her school blazer （the other option was sleepwear）， left that judgment call up to Meridian. “It’s not ready.”
“It was the winning idea!”
“At an eighth-grade competition. It’s not ready for the world.” Never would be. It was missing its final piece, which Kasey couldn’t complete without breaking the very law that’d taken science from her.
Still, she hated denying Meridian. Ask Kasey to throw another party or to dye her hair red, and she’d have gone along. There were few things in this world she was protective about. What to do? SILVERTONGUE suggested changing the topic. To what? Intraface located, her mind volunteered. No. Out of the question. Again: private domain. Long gone were the days when strangers could visit you for tasks as mundane as delivering food. Every job below a three on the Coles Humanness Scale was automated, eliminating resource waste as well as anything Kasey could reasonably impersonate.
She couldn’t go. She couldn’t. She—
“How would you go about accessing someone’s unit?”
“Excuse me?” asked Meridian.
“Someone’s unit,” Kasey repeated.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time, but, uh … why?”
To change the topic. To make Meridian forget about submitting their solution.
Not, most definitely, because Kasey needed any suggestions.
“Hypothetical,” she said, and if she hadn’t picked up on Meridian’s irritation before, now she （well, SILVERTONGUE） did.
“I don’t know,” said Meridian. “Don’t you have, what, official privileges or something?”
Then Meridian had ended the call, leaving Kasey to ponder. Privileges. It was one way of looking at her court-ordered P2C service. The work was painless, granted, and the adults were nice enough, but even they were human, and as two chatted about their teething babies while packing up, Kasey yet again found herself on the fringe of a setting selected for her by someone else. She’d much rather look forward to college, a major in biochem or physics, a career at an innotech firm.
But regret, like guilt, was an unproductive emotion.
“See you tomorrow, Kasey,” said Ekaterina. “Go home, Barry.”
A grunt.
“See you,” Kasey said to Ekaterina, and then, perhaps feeling ever so slightly guilty for not submitting their solution, complete or not: “Do you think we’ll need a decision soon?”
Tremors had been detected off the coast of Territory 4, but pundits had also been predicting the “biggest megaquake yet” for three years running.
“Might happen in our lifetimes, might not,” said Ekaterina. “Best to be prepared. Right, David?”
Sir s greeted Kasey’s dad as he exited his private office. He nodded noncommittally in reply, refilling his mug at the water dispenser before shuffling back.
Kasey followed him, coming to stand under the polyglass doorway as David retook his seat at his desk.
When her mom was still alive, he used to sit in the same exact form, right shoulder hitched higher than the left, glasses fallen low, only it’d be at the foot of his bed, in pajamas instead of a suit, and he’d be hunched over blueprints instead of legislation that, if Kasey had to make an educated guess, concerned HOME. As Genevie’s last initiative, the Human Oasis and Mobility Equality act would have allowed cohorts of territory citizens to immigrate to the eco-cities even if they were unqualified by rank. Ironically, working on HOME often kept David from home, something Celia had resented their dad for. Kasey was more neutral. After Genevie’s death, she accepted that loss changed people. It’d subtracted something from her dad, but was that bad? To be normal? It was worse to be unchanged. Unimpacted. To be fully aware, as Kasey was right now, that she should feel more strongly about her dad’s absence but all she could muster was some half-baked annoyance at having to speak up to be noticed.