The Proving (4 page)

It was the way of things, the teacher had explained. Then the teacher had launched into a rant about Parliament and the ridiculous laws against thorough genetic modifications. If people could do more . . . if parents had more choice over gene therapies to enhance their child’s brain, muscles,
eyes
. . . then maybe there would be more natural births.

If nanobots weren’t outlawed . . .

“He’s your brother,” Mom told Tahlia. “We’re a family, and we all love each other.”

“No, we had different parents. Isn’t that right? Right? We’re not related by blood.”

“You grew up together,” Dad said. “We raised you. You’re my daughter, and Ben’s your brother.”

“But we were conceived in a tube. That’s how it happens, right? You pick the sperm and the egg from a list of important people and then the fertilized egg is implanted in Mom’s uterus . . .”

“So what?” Ben asked, annoyed. She was talking like it didn’t matter. Like it was no big deal. So matter-of-fact. Didn’t it bother her? It bothered him. The whole gene bank bothered him. The idea that the three clans — Athens, Sparta and Persia — used the sperm and eggs of people long dead . . . well, it freaked him out just a bit.

It was archaic. Without so many laws, Ben’s parents could have conceived their own children and simply used gene therapy to make each child the best he or she could be. Better.

But then, of course, Benjamin Redcloud wouldn’t have existed.

“It’s just neat,” Tahlia said proudly. “Ben, why are you walking so fast? Ben! Ben!”

She held his name on her tongue even as he reached the little side hallway that led to a pair of restrooms. He pushed open the men’s room door and shut it, locking it with a wave of his hand. He leaned over the toilet, staring into the little pool of water, waiting. His gut was unsure. It didn’t know whether it wanted to expel something or maybe just torture him for a while longer.

“It’s a side-effect,” he croaked, dropping his pleather medical satchel on the ground. “A
common
side-effect. That’s all.”

He looked in the mirror. His face was pale. The black stubble on his chin looked like someone had erased a smudge of graphite, leaving little flecks of black rubber behind. Tahlia’s words echoed in his mind. She didn’t look like him — that was the problem. They didn’t look alike. She had dark skin and curly, thick hair and big, dark green eyes and her front teeth stuck out just a little.

He was already going bald just a little bit at the corners of his forehead and so he kept his hair short, nearly buzzed. His skin burned in the summer. He had a soft build and big feet that everyone commented on once they noticed. When she’d been younger, Tahlia used to pinch his bare toes for fun, just to hear him scream. Then they would laugh together.

They weren’t related. He wished they were. He couldn’t explain why — he just
wished
they were. And he wished his parents were his real parents, too. He wished he had his dad’s strong jawline and his mom’s sharp wit that always made her the lion of social encounters.

But still. He’d picked up some of their nurturing qualities. Their calm demeanor. Their strange, sharp inflection of hard “k” sounds, like in “brake.” His dad’s constant whistling of holo-movie showtunes. His mom’s steady hands when handling the family’s collection of porcelain cups.

He waved his hand in front of the faucet. A stream of water flowed out of the spigot. He filled his cupped hand and splashed the cold water on his face. It felt good.

“You’re panicking. It’s just a side-effect.”

But the side effects should have shown and worn off already. That’s what she’d said, the woman who’d gone through the same medical procedure. The woman who promised him the one thing he really wanted: invulnerability. She’d asked him if he wanted to cheat death. He said yes.

Then she’d injected the illegal nanobots into his bloodstream.

He turned just in time, throwing up in the toilet. Black bile. Oh, to have time to take a sample to the lab. Break it down. Double-check its contents. What was wrong? Why did anything have to be wrong?

Maybe it was just nerves.

He remembered his first Proving. Thirteen years old, lost in a creepy forest, staying close to the Spartan girl named Skye because she had a gun and he didn’t. The eighteen-year-olds were supposed to protect the young ones. The eighteen-year-olds were called the “New Adults.” As if. As if an arbitrary number suddenly made someone become an adult. As if nature itself wasn’t in constant flux, always changing. No other animals had such illogical distinctions. They became adults simply by surviving.

And what had the “New Adults” done? They’d fought. Argued. Gotten hopelessly lost. Not only that, they were walking so fast. Ben remembered reaching out and grabbing the hand of Cleo, the girl from Clan Persia. He’d squeezed her hand, trying to get her to shut up. She was talking so fast about all sorts of nonsense and she didn’t seem to realize just how dangerous it was out there. He’d been so scared. The sun dipped behind the trees, little beams of orange light slipping between the trunks.

And then it was dark. Cleo stopped talking. Ahead, the “New Adults” were still arguing about which direction to go. They were trying to use their smartglasses to pinpoint the vehicle, but something was wrong. The satellite above . . .

It had been damaged by an ice collision inside the Ring, which had caused the Spectral Energy to ignite like a lightning storm. They’d been all alone. And then a terrifying Sebecus Specter had risen from the ground, like a ghost summoned by a necromancer. It opened its crocodile-like mouth and let out a low, teeth-rattling moan. Ben hid behind a tree, watching as Skye stepped forward and aimed her pistol. The camera on Ben’s glasses amplified what little light remained, and he could see her hands shaking just a little bit. The Specter’s claws dug at the ground. Ben remembered feeling his body go numb as adrenaline coursed through his veins. His body was preparing him for a painless death. The Specter . . . it had looked like the ghost of some kind of long-dead dinosaur, twice the size of a man yet distinctly
humanoid
. It could sense him. It wanted to kill him.

Skye fired her pistol. Ben squeezed his eyes shut. Skye fired again and again and again.

When he opened his eyes, the Specter was gone. A few flecks of bright yellow ash fluttered to the ground, dropping between blades of grass like the spent embers of a finished fire.

Skye had saved them.

Ben threw up again, then cupped his hands under the faucet and rinsed the water around his mouth. He spit, then drank a bit. “Everything’s fine,” he whispered to his reflection. “It’ll pass.”

The nanobots inside him seemed to disagree. His stomach lurched again. What if something was really wrong? What if he needed medical help? He would have to confess or the doctors wouldn’t be able to remove them. The nanobots were like little robotic surgeons, so small that they could only be programmed to do a few things. They traveled through the bloodstream, hitching rides with red blood cells, stopping to help wherever needed. Little cheerleaders, encouraging white blood cells to do their thing, discouraging cancer cells from growing, ensuring a healthy microbiome in the gut, “nudging” his body’s natural processes. With more research and encouragement, nanobot technology could do even more.

If he had to go to a hospital . . . if they had to be removed . . . he would be
arrested
.

Ben took a deep breath. “Everything’s OK,” he whispered again. His stomach was calming down. He checked his pulse: a little fast, but no longer racing. The color was returning to his face — was it the nanobots? Were they reassuring his body?

“They shouldn’t even
be
illegal,” he said quietly.

There was no going back now. He’d made his decision. He’d justified it by telling himself that lots of members of Clan Athens did it, even though it was illegal. It was foolish, allowing Parliament to dictate the limits of medical science. The nanobots could usher in a whole new era of technology. They could be a hundred times better, if they could just be studied! The possibilities were endless . . . and it would be foolish to not use them.

He picked up his satchel and opened the door. Mom and Dad and Tahlia were waiting at the end of the hall. Tahlia was wearing a cute frown, arms crossed. She looked so grown up in her gray Ecosuit. The shoulder plates and the wrist guards were lined with a sharp blue stripe, just like on Ben’s. He felt a bit nervous, but something else was replacing it. A soothing serenity. Maybe the nanobots were in his brain, helping his hypothalamus regulate his body’s heart rate and increase the dopamine level.

“You said you didn’t want to be late and then you went and took a swim in the toilet,” Tahlia said.

Ben laughed and reached down, grabbing her soft curly hair. He gave it a gentle tug. “I have the jitters. You’ll know what it’s like when you turn eighteen.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Dad said. He put an arm around Ben. “Just make sure you follow your training. Let the Spartans shoot their fancy guns if anything goes wrong.”

“I know.” He sighed. “It’s just a little overwhelming. I studied everything about the Specters and read through the documents just like you said but I still feel like all of this is coming so fast. There’s a lot of information to analyze.”

“Everything will slow down once you get out of the city,” Dad said. “Then all you need to worry about is finishing your mission. The rest will come naturally.” He leaned in close. “Honestly, the elders who plan these Provings always err on the side of caution.”

“Are you sure you have everything in your medkit?” Mom asked.

Ben grabbed the satchel that was bumping against his thigh. “I double-checked everything, then double-double-checked.”

“What about medigel?” she asked. “It’s good for pimples, too. You’ve got a couple on your forehead.”

He brushed away her hand. “Mom. There’s
not
going to be anyone I need to impress during this thing.”

The next two wall vid-screens were shimmering, blinking in and out as if there was a power surge somewhere inside the building. As they passed the screens, Ben couldn’t help but notice that his parents had moved closer to him and Tahlia. Protective, the way prey animals move in a herd.

“Where did the Specters come from?” Tahlia asked.

“Far away,” Ben answered. He took an unsure breath. His stomach had calmed. He felt normal again. Anxiety level low, at least for the time being. Not gone completely, but
low enough
.

“I know
that
,” Tahlia said. “I was asking a research question, Ben.”

“What does it matter?”

“We should find their home planet,” Tahlia said. “You know, like in that holo-movie about the monsters that look like giant humanoid spiders? Dad? Remember that?”

“I don’t remember that,” Mom murmured, leering at Dad.

“It wasn’t bad,” Ben assured her with a grin. “With all the holographic effects, you hardly noticed the blood at all. And it was pretty fake, too. You could tell those weren’t human guts.”

“How about we not talk about that movie at all?” Dad asked nervously.

“No,” Tahlia said, “Dad, you’re not listening to me! We could set a proton bomb on the Specter homeworld, just like in that movie. Or we could set up a particle accelerator in space and fire a proton beam at the Ring. Boom! Gone.”

“Are you learning this in school?” Mom asked. “Are they seriously teaching string theory to thirteen-year-olds?”

“We’d see the stars again,” Tahlia said. “Without the Ring circling the planet, we’d have starry nights every night. And kids would never have nightmares about ghosts again.”

“The Specters aren’t going to bother you,” Dad said. “All you’re going to do is take a quick trip out beyond the Shield and then you’ll come back. And then we’ll throw a little celebration.”

They walked past two more images of cities. In both, the red Ring loomed in the sky, orbiting Earth. It might have been beautiful, if not for the danger it contained. Specters. Millions of them.
Billions
.

Between two of the images was a food shop that smelled like cooked meat and fried potatoes. Parliamentarians stood in three lines, taking turns punching their orders into the tall gray Self-Serve machines, swiping their payment card, and then sliding open the deposit hatch where their tray of steaming hot food was waiting. The parliamentarians wore casual suits and dresses, nothing too fancy. Modesty was the fashion for elected representatives of the people.

And apparently Diamond Desmond’s Self-Serve was the place to eat. Fabricated chicken meat grown in labs, along with a healthy side of nutrient-rich corn sprinkled with pepper. Ben squinted as he passed, spotting a few cups of beer-battered crickets as well — a delicacy in his own home and one he didn’t enjoy. Those were Tahlia’s favorite dish, not his.

They walked to the end of the corridor, to the open, arcing entrance leading into Karman Park. The sight of it made Ben feel a little better. He put a hand on his sister’s shoulder as they passed underneath the sleek, silver arch. Underground parks were a thing Ben and Tahlia could both enjoy: Tahlia loved the ecology and Ben loved the architecture. And while Karman Park did have the distinction of being the oldest underground park in Neo Berlin, that didn’t diminish its grandeur.

Birds whistled from somewhere inside the canopy of a weeping willow tree, standing tall between two narrow support pillars lined with creeping yellowish vines. At the foot of the tree was a wide green space of carefully manicured grass — genetically modified, of course — with just enough room for two picnic tables. One of the picnic tables was occupied by a family, the other by a park employee eating a Fa-Chicken sandwich. The knees of his gray uniform were stained green and brown from the grass and dirt.

They walked through a small grove of Athenian fruit trees. Tahlia reached up and grabbed an apple, plucking it. Ben looked above the trees, toward the ceiling where a carefully constructed array of silver hexagonal panels were reflecting sunlight onto the reflective ceiling. It was an amazing, ages-old invention. Panels on the surface captured the sunlight and sent it through fiber optic cables to the reflecting panels. The light was strong enough for trees. For flowers and grass. Strong enough even to cast shadows on the seven wooden walkways that ran in figure-eights around the green spaces — .