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DOLLS: $4.99

I had the chance to bring my parents back, and I ruined it. Why? So what if Silas Rog was involved? So what if Beecher’s grandmother would be jailed or indentured, or whatever it was they were planning to do? I didn’t know Mrs. Stokes. Did she even understand what I had done, or how much it had cost me?

The door slid open behind me.

“I’m glad,” Sam yelled, stomping in. He didn’t seem glad. “I hope Silas Rog’s brain explodes. I hope the whole city crumbles to bits because one girl didn’t read her stupid speech! I hope everything falls apart.”

He was pacing, talking fast, because he could afford to say whatever he liked. He didn’t have to think about his words. He could let them fly. He stopped to hug me and then went on.

“Your friends are a bunch of turd muffins, by the way.”

I wanted to say, not all of them, but he knew.

An incoming request showed up on our screen from Dayline Exclusives™. Sam flicked at the screen to refuse the call.

“How is this even a big deal? No one ever did this before? Really? Like tons of people don’t read their stupid speech and then stop talking? The Juarze brothers probably say ten words each a year!”

This was an exaggeration, but only a mild one. I hugged him back in my mind.

Our door slid open again. Saretha came through, followed quickly by the Lawyer in the chartreuse suit.

“Speth,” Saretha said, breathless. “Not too late.”

“Who is that?” Sam asked, pointing at the Lawyer.

The Lawyer waved and bent his head, hands on his knees, as he caught his breath. “Arkansas Holt,” he panted. “Attorney at Law.”

An Ad for a competing Lawyer, Dirk Fronfeld, clicked on our screen, promising better returns. A call came in from his Law Firm. Sam canceled it.

Saretha’s brows pinched upward as she looked at me for some sign I hadn’t lost all my marbles.

Arkansas Holt moved to my side of the room, still breathing hard. Arkansas was the name of a state, I think. He had only a single medal on his chest, proudly proclaiming he had won at least one case, but sadly implying it was his only win.

Sam’s head suddenly snapped toward our room’s only window. “Son of a—” He stormed over. Our window was a milky, flickering mess that was supposed to be something we could adjust, clear to opaque, at our convenience. Instead it was stuck in an ugly, jittery state in between the two. Outside the window, a pair of dropters bobbed up and down, calculating how best to film me.

“Vultures,” Sam grumbled. He pulled open his pullout couch (Saretha and I shared the other) and yanked a blanket off to block their view. We didn’t have curtains. The Patent for the concept of curtains required a $90 monthly payment and we had never thought it was worth it. It usually didn’t matter on the twelfth floor. Now it meant Sam had to hold the fabric up; clipping fabric over a window was Intellectual Property we had no right to use.

“I can help with this!” Attorney Holt raised a finger in the air like he had practiced being dramatic, but hadn’t entirely mastered it. “I can make them vanish.”

He sounded like a cut-rate magician, or an Ad for cleanser, not a Lawyer.

“He can help us,” Saretha said weakly. She held herself tight and rubbed her shoulders like she was cold.

Holt cleared his throat and stood up a little taller, bolstered by Saretha’s apparent confidence in him.

“If you would like to be rid of the media, I can place an injunction against reproduction of your likeness,” he said. “It won’t prevent them broadcasting anything newsworthy such as this morning’s unfortunate events, but it will prohibit them from following you around and hoping for more.”

“Yeah? And how does this help you?” Sam asked Arkansas Holt.

Holt paused. “Pursuant to legal action, I would require a vested interest—control over commercial rights to your sister’s likeness.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “For what?”

Holt began itching at his nose. “I would profit from anything like posters or dolls or such if it were to ever come to that.”

Our buzzer rang. A small inset window on the wall-screen showed the feed from our door. Mrs. Harris was standing outside, fishing through her purse.

I didn’t need this. I needed time to think. There was too much noise and chatter. Too much was happening at once.

“Dolls?” Sam squinted at Holt, disbelieving.

Holt shrugged. “Theoretically, I would be able to sell virtual approximations. She isn’t old enough for anything more revealing than a bikini.”

We knew, from time to time, that Advertisers sold scan data so boys like Phlip and Vitgo could buy a peek at the system’s best approximation of what some girl looked like naked. It had happened to Saretha half a dozen times. I thought it was gross, but Mrs. Harris said she should be flattered. Saretha forced herself not to mind, because she was legally entitled to 10 percent of the profits.

Arkansas went on, “You can’t possibly have a reasonable expectation of privacy at your income level. Anyway, this isn’t likely to be a lucrative trade.” Holt gestured a hand to my apparently uninteresting body. My face went warm and pink.

Outside, Mrs. Harris found what she was looking for and ran her keycard across the door lock. The door opened, and she swept in.

“What in the world were you thinking?” she screeched. Then she caught sight of Holt, drew herself up to impress him, saw his lonely medal and drew herself right down again.

“Speth,” she said, making my name sound like she’d spit it up.

I drew my knees to my mouth. I wanted to put my hands to my ears, but that gesture cost $7.99 per minute.

“Tell them what you told me,” Saretha begged Holt. Mrs. Harris folded her arms. Holt stood tall again and fixed his eyes on me.

“Whereas the terms of your contract with Keene Inc. stipulate you will read what was agreed upon before any other paid speech, and whereas that agreement does not specify a time, date or location, you have not yet broken the terms of said agreement, as you have not yet spoken, and are therefore presently indemnified against suit for breach of said contract, including, but not limited to, trailing and ancillary suits derived thereof.”

Even when it was spoken in my defense, Legalese seemed to cut at me. I tried to focus on what he was saying and not the sound, but it was right up there with face-slapping as a means of communication.

“She’s not in trouble?” Sam asked, stretching his arms high to cover the full window.

“She is in a great deal of trouble,” Mrs. Harris assured him.

“Perhaps,” Holt said, “but that depends on her intention. If her silence were a demonstrable act of protest or antagonism, that could be problematic. But since she has not spoken, how can we know?”

I looked up from my knees.

Mrs. Harris bit her lip.

“All you have to do is read the speech,” Saretha said. She quickly thumbed through her Cuff until she was able to pull up a copy. She flicked it so it would show up on my Cuff. “You can read it and then explain you were traumatized by what happened to Beecher.”

By what happened to him? Beecher killed himself; it didn’t happen to him. I couldn’t let myself think about it. I was confused. I was sad. I was angry. Did that mean I was traumatized?

“She made the sign of the zippered lips,” Mrs. Harris said. “Twice. That is not something a traumatized person does.”

Holt narrowed his eyes at her. “You must beg my forgiveness. I was unaware you are a psychologist qualified to diagnose trauma.”

Mrs. Harris backed away a little.

“Mrs. Hairball falls silent,” Sam said, like he was narrating a Baseball™ game.

Mrs. Harris calmly began tapping out a Lawsuit for being called a hairball. Sam threw down the blanket and grabbed her wrist. “You want to sue us? How about we sue you? Weren’t you in charge of her transition?” He turned to Holt. “Can we sue her?”

Holt made a face that said, maybe?

“Sam,” Saretha said, as if suing Mrs. Harris was a ridiculous thing to suggest. I didn’t think it was ridiculous. I was tired of her. I would have loved to see her sued by us instead of the other way around.

Sam let her go. Mrs. Harris backed up, scowling.

Outside, seven or eight dropters drew in close to the window. Holt moved to that side of the room and turned his back to them.

“Whatever happens,” Holt said, “and I cannot stress this enough.” He waved a hand at me to make sure I was listening and dropped his voice low. “If you choose to speak, or when you are able to speak, now, later or ten years from today, the first words out of your mouth must be these.” He pointed to my Cuff and the speech that sat there, glowing.

I don’t know why this made me cry again. I couldn’t even see the speech. I pushed his hand away. I could do that. I could push people out of my space without charge. I just couldn’t hold them.

Holt moved back, and out of the corner of his mouth, he whispered to Saretha.

“Now, how about my fee?”

ZEBRAS: $5.99

I can still hear my father’s voice. Even though we were poor, he was a talker. When the WiFi would fail, his face would light up. This was his chance. He could say anything, untethered from the system.

I remember one time, he said to us, “I can make you think of zebras.” Sam laughed his playful, cherubic laugh. I listened, delighted.

“All I have to do is say the word: Zebras. The idea goes from me to you. Zebras. See? It’s unavoidable! You’re picturing one now!”

He smiled, knowing he was right. I saw the zebra, with stripes and a bristly mane—a wide-open plain behind it. Words were like magic.

I don’t remember all of it, in part because I was so young, and also because it was hard to concentrate. My mother would go wild during the outages, hugging us without the $2.99 fee, kissing our heads and saying, “I love you,” a hundred times. It was like an animal attack, but a loving one.

I remember my father claimed there used to be places called “liberties” that would let you read any book, and all you’d have to do is show them a card.

“How much did the card cost?” I asked. He smirked. He said it was free. You just had to promise to return the book when you were done.

I loved his stories, even ones that ridiculous. I knew what he described was impossible. How could people who wrote books, or published books, ever make any money if “liberties” just gave them away? It made no sense.

He also said words had once been free. I believed him about that. Laws were made of words, so the words had to come first, right? My father said it took thousands of years for humans to figure out they could control the rights to words. They started by controlling how certain words were used, so that you couldn’t just write a word like Coke™ or Disney™ or Candy™ without fear of getting sued, especially if you had something negative to say. It only got worse from there. He didn’t know when it all started.

“I only wish I knew how to make it all end,” he said.

My mother got upset when he said things like this. She worried about getting flagged, sued or even Indentured.

“Everyone around here gets Indentured eventually,” my father said darkly.

“What if the WiFi came back tethered?” my mother pressed him, like the WiFi was knocking at our door.

My father looked abashed and zipped his lips, as a joke. My mother didn’t find the gesture funny, even in jest, with the WiFi down.

“I hate that,” she said. “They want us remembering how low we are. I don’t want any of you to make that sign, understand?” She looked at the three of us, then at her Cuff, worried the WiFi might have kicked back on when she wasn’t looking.

* * *

Now I had made that very gesture, the one she despised, in front of the entire city—maybe the whole nation. Why had I done it? What was I thinking?

We had to call our parents. We didn’t know if they had seen me on the news. Their company controlled what access they were allowed, and most of their time was spent in the fields. Saretha managed to contact them through the Internment Bureau, and we were able to set up a call. Mrs. Harris insisted on being present. She was still Sam’s Custodian, and she stood behind us, arms crossed, with a disapproving scowl.

“Speth,” my father said, amplified, but distant. “It’s okay.”

His voice was low and calm. He looked tired. His skin was like dusty leather. My mother’s was, too. She sat beside him, her eyes downcast. The room was dark behind them, insufficiently lit by a dirty fluorescent coil. From the worry on their faces, it was clear they had heard plenty.

“Sam,” my father said with a slow nod, meaning Sam should tell them everything.

Mrs. Harris clicked her tongue. She had explained many times that it was bad etiquette to make the youngest do all the talking, just because they did not have to pay. “It’s perverse,” she said in a low aside to Saretha. Saretha pretended Mrs. Harris was not there while Sam explained about Beecher, the speech and what I had done. My body tensed as I waited for a reaction. Sam described the sign of the zippered lips. My mother’s mouth twitched. She closed her eyes.

When Sam was finished, my father nodded again. He looked older than he should have. They both did. They had to drink a liter of Metlatonic™ twice a day just to survive under the brutal sun. I didn’t know if this was because the work made them thirsty, or if the sun burned their skin. I didn’t know if the Metlatonic™ was helping or harming them. The hefty cost of it was deducted against the Indenture.

It still looked like the sun was killing them.

My father took my mother’s hand. She barely moved. The fee for their affection scrolled up the screen. $6.

“I know this must be hard,” my father said. I tried not to cry. I failed. I wiped away the tears, desperate for something in his words to guide me. Below him, on-screen, scrolled the cost of his handful of words, the WiFi tax, the fee from Agropollination™ Inc. for use of their room and equipment and time off from the fields.

I ached to ask them what to do. The silence was killing me. I needed their help, and I hated that everything about this world seemed to conspire to keep their guidance from me. I didn’t even know how far away they were. I’d asked, but my parents, Mrs. Harris and even the teachers at the school couldn’t say how far it was from Vermaine to Carolina. Geography is proprietary information.

Please, I begged them silently in my head, tell me what to do!

“Did you have anything to add?” my father asked my mother slowly.

That was it? I blinked back more tears. Couldn’t they see my face? Couldn’t they read it, even if their eyes were bleary? I had no idea how far they were from me.

My mother looked up, first at him, then at the camera, the screen and me. She looked so beaten. Her eyes were rimmed red. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to take everything back, but then my mother did something I never thought I’d see. She raised her fingers to her mouth and slowly, deliberately, made the sign of the zippered lips, twisting at the end, like a lock. She stared at the camera, straight and clear, and she smiled. Pins and needles shot up my spine. No one seemed to breathe. Mrs. Harris’s mouth hung open. My father nodded, pressed a button and the image of my parents flickered away.

PREY: $6.99

I was an agitator. I was a fool. I was brilliantly devious. I was a mental deficient. I was an unpatriotic threat to the nation. I was a pathetic symptom of a generation with no soul. “Kids never used to be like this,” interviewees said.

But my mother approved.

I was seditious, a word I’d never heard before. It meant I wanted to destroy the government. They said I’d driven the price of the word up to $29.99 this month, but I had nothing to do with it. Rights Holders changed prices each day as much as they could, depending on what the market would tolerate.

One news report claimed I had tricked Beecher into killing himself to cover my tracks. (What tracks? I wondered.) Another report, the most flattering of the bunch, claimed I had a brain tumor that rendered me mute. I was a sad, worthless little girl.

Three networks offered bounties to the first person who made me speak. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that might mean word had gotten out of the city. What did they think of me out there? I knew, at least, what my parents thought, and that made things a little easier to bear.