Unplugged (2 page)

I'LL NEVER FORGET
the day the news rang through the App World.

It was early June and I was just another virtual girl, looking forward to unplugging on her seventeenth birthday. I couldn't wait to see my real family again, and decide if maybe, just maybe, the real me was worth hanging on to. School hadn't let out yet for summer and the atmosphere was set at a comfortable seventy degrees. I was at my best friend Inara's house. Her parents, my surrogate family, were there, too. I loved the Sachses' apartment, with its skyline views of the City, its chandeliers, and its plush white furniture where Inara and I would sprawl while uploading our homework.

Wispy clouds floated by and the lights of the nearby buildings began to sparkle. I pressed my palm against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows, my eyes on the Empire State Building, then sliding sideways toward the Water Tower. It rose high into the atmosphere, its shimmery blue surface moving like the ocean waves. The Sachses lived in a neighborhood where the architecture was coded with some of the most memorable buildings from the Real World.

Inara joined me at the window and placed her hand next to mine, the lengths of our fingers eerily similar, our skin color identical, the same shade of Caucasian 4.0 as every other citizen of the City. Her eyes were green and mine were blue, her hair a bright shiny blond and mine an inky black, but we shared the same standard settings for height, weight, and general attractiveness for all sixteens—settings intended to highlight the changes that Apps brought to our appearance. We even shared the same birthday. There were slight differences in age among sixteens, just as there were with fifteens and fourteens, and so on and so forth, but adjusting one's age to a standard setting was a normal part of virtual living.

Standard settings helped make the App World a harmonious place. Basic sameness was a right for all citizens. It saved people from enduring the random and often unfair differences that came with being in the real body.
Apps provided all the temporary diversity a person could need.

“I think we should try that Glitter App for Simon's party next weekend,” Inara said. “I love the idea of being shimmery from head to toe. Then I would definitely get Simon's attention.”

“You don't need to download an App to get his attention,” I told her. “You're beautiful as is.”

“Right.” Inara laughed. “I forgot for a second that you were Miss Au Naturel.”

“I am not,” I protested. But Inara wasn't far from the truth. I was always wondering what I looked like, and what Inara looked like, too—what we
really
looked like. What kind of body I was in and whether my real face was at all like the virtual one I was staring at now in the glass. The virtual person was infinitely malleable, but when there weren't any Apps intermingling with our code, the virtual self supposedly resembled the real one, especially the bone structure of the face. Nobody knew for sure if this was true until they unplugged. A lot of sixteens worried they'd wake up in their bodies and discover they were ugly.

“Maybe I'll download the Number One Hit App instead,” Inara went on, still thinking about how to impress Simon, her crush. “Don't you love that original songs will just come out of your mouth without even having to try?”

“That could be fun,” I said, trying to be more supportive this time.

“Come on, girls! Dinner is ready,” Mrs. Sachs called from the next room. She was always downloading from Apps trendy meals by former Real World chefs.

Inara turned to me and rolled her eyes. “You don't have to yell into the atmosphere, Mom, we can hear you!” She switched to private chat.
I hope tonight's food is better than last night's.

I laughed as these words appeared in my brain. A lot of people left their minds open to everyone, but Inara was the only person I allowed to access mine. I took my hand away from the window. Raised an eyebrow.
What
, I chatted back,
you don't like it when everything on your plate bursts into vegetable-flavored liquid when it lands on your tongue?

I feel ill just thinking about it
. Inara touched her fingers to her head. When you live virtually, stomachaches are experienced in the mind.

I shrugged.
It wasn't
that
bad.

Stop trying to be polite. My mother seriously needs constructive feedback
.

Yeah
, I chatted back.
But you're the daughter, not me. It's your job to tell her
.

“Skye? Inara?” Mrs. Sachs appeared in the doorway. “How many times do I have to tell you girls
no private chatting in this house
! It's rude.” Her eyes narrowed.
“Now hurry up. The food is going to get cold.” She spun on her spiky heel.

Inara started toward the dining room. “At least that means the food is hot,” she called over her shoulder, this time into the atmosphere. Her long hair swayed across her back.

I followed after her and we took our seats.

“How was school today?” Mr. Sachs asked. He sat at the head of the table, his tie loosened and his suit jacket draped over the railing behind him. Mr. Sachs was head of Capital Bank, the largest financial institution in the App World.

Inara studied the quivering brown mass on the plate in front of her, a grimace on her face. “Don't be so boring, Dad.”

“It was fine,” I told him. “We had a test in App Sorting. I think I did okay.”

Mr. Sachs smiled and nodded. “Good, good. App Sorting is an important skill. The market is saturated and it's only going to get worse. Everyone is trying to make their fortune with the next Big App Thing.”

Inara poked at the brown square. “Again, Dad, boring.”

“Stop playing with your food,” Mrs. Sachs said.

“I'm not sure it's really food, Mom.”

Mrs. Sachs glared at her daughter. Her ten-carat diamond earrings gleamed on either side of her head. “You shouldn't complain. There are people in this City without
enough capital to download the latest in Food Apps,” she said, then turned her attention to her own brown quivering mass, looking just as uncertain as Inara.

“Now
there
is a fortune waiting to happen,” Mr. Sachs said. “If someone, say, figures out how to make a virtual pizza with the same taste and consistency as real pizza, I'll be able to live here forever a happy man.”

“I miss artichokes,” Mrs. Sachs said. “And the crunch of a real apple when you bite into it. How the juice of a just-ripe peach makes your fingers all sticky and sweet.”

Inara's hands fell to the table with a thump. “Um, can we please stop acting so disgusting at the dinner table?”

Mr. and Mrs. Sachs looked at each other wistfully. They wore sappy smiles on their faces.

“I like hearing about the Real World,” I said, feeling a slight pinch of jealousy. Inara was lucky to have both her parents here. My mother and sister never plugged in, and I didn't even know who my father was. But sometimes memories of my real life would flash in my brain. Things like my mother's smile and the sound of my older sister's voice. Sand squishing between my toes on the beach and the words my mother used to whisper to me before bed.
Blue like the ocean and blue like the sky, blue like the sapphire color of your eyes
.

“I'm glad I was a baby when these two weirdos plugged me in,” Inara went on. “Saved me the whole Two Worlds Complex and all that.”

“We're not weirdos,” Mr. Sachs said. “We're your parents.”

Inara rolled her eyes. “Exactly.”

Inara picked up her fork, but she couldn't seem to bring herself to eat. “Mom, seriously, what exactly are we about to put into our code?”

I bit back a smile—I didn't want to be rude to Mrs. Sachs.

Right then, the signal for the emergency broadcast popped into the dining room. A hologram of Jonathan Holt, the Prime Minister of the App World, appeared. He hovered over the dinner table.

Silverware clattered against plates.

Emergency broadcasts used to be rare, but lately, they were more and more frequent.

The four of us waited in silence for the Prime Minister to speak.

“My fellow citizens,” he finally began, “as you know, unrest in the Real World has been growing. There are Keepers who no longer believe in our way of life, who feel that by living virtually we are toying with the very nature of our humanity. There are Keepers unhappy about the high cost required to join us here. But let me reassure you, there are loyal Keepers, too, who are securing the plugs as I speak.”

Mrs. Sachs reached across the table to grasp Inara's hand. I waited for her to reach across for mine.

She didn't.

There was a long pause. Jonathan Holt was hesitating.

Mr. Sachs had one hand on his wife's shoulder, and in the other he gripped his napkin in a tight fist. “It's bad enough those Keepers try to conscript our children to unplug for Service.” He glanced at Inara, before turning back to the hologram. “One day they're going to go a step further and declare war,” he went on. “Our tech specialists need to hurry up with the Cure. Without our bodies to hold us back, the Keepers will have nothing on us.”

My jaw fell open. I'd never heard Mr. Sachs talk this way.

“Sam,” Mrs. Sachs hissed through clenched teeth. She grabbed her husband by the wrist. “Remember who's here.”

Inara and Mr. and Mrs. Sachs were suddenly eyeing me.

My mother and sister were Keepers. They'd volunteered to work on the plugs so they could give me a better, virtual life. All people in the Real World were considered Keepers of some sort, but the ones who worked to keep the bodies were the most important of all.

The hologram sparked and crackled. Jonathan Holt took a breath. “I regret to inform you that the border between worlds has been closed,” he announced, his voice hoarse. “To protect the safety of our children, all future Service has been canceled. From this moment going forward, unplugging is prohibited, as is plugging
in.” The hologram of Jonathan Holt flickered in the light of the chandelier. “This decision was not made lightly. As many of you know, my only son is doing his Service now. This means he is never coming back to our world again. He is lost to me and my wife forever.” The Prime Minister cleared his throat. “My family—like so many others—will suffer our shared grief in the coming days.”

Inara turned to me. There was a bright panic in her eyes. “Skye?”

I couldn't speak. The words wouldn't come.

Service was
canceled
?

I wouldn't be allowed to unplug—
ever
?

I felt woozy and liquid. My hands were covered in tears, my eyes pouring waterfalls, the sadness overflowing from my brain. When I looked up at the hologram again, something strange happened, something just as shocking as it was confusing.

Jonathan Holt was staring straight at me.

When his eyes met mine they flashed with guilt.

But that was impossible. My imagination playing tricks.

The Prime Minister hung his head low. “That is all for tonight. Thank you for your attention. I leave you in peace and stability on the Apps,” he said.

Then the hologram blinked out.

“I REALLY DON'T
want to App right now, Inara.”

Everything about my virtual self felt heavy. Like my code had been laden with stone. I trailed my fingers along the wrought-iron fence that lined the park outside the Sachses' apartment. I'd needed some fresh atmosphere after the Prime Minister's announcement, and Inara had insisted on coming with me. Really, I wanted to be alone. But I could never say no to Inara.

“Look out,” she said.

I ducked just as a skater whizzed by overhead, his board a neon purple and his long hair a bright blue. His virtual skin was covered in tattoos.

People were out and about as though the border
closing didn't matter, as though they hadn't heard Jonathan Holt's announcement, when of course they had—no one can escape a universal broadcast. The City felt like a carnival at this hour, something I'd always loved about this world. But tonight it felt off.

Inara kept walking ahead of me, then turning around to see if I was following. She was anxious. We hadn't Apped in two days. A record for us.

“I know you're dying to App,” I told her. “But I can't. Not after everything.”

“Come on, Skye. I'm buying.”

I was finding it difficult to breathe. “You're always buying.”

Inara hopped from one foot to the other. “You could use a little fun. It's the perfect distraction.” Her arms were starting to twitch. “Besides, I'm going to get withdrawal symptoms if I don't download soon.”

“You already have them,” I said.

An icon popped into the atmosphere. Inara immediately reached for it, her code thirsty. A giddy sigh escaped her lips as the download started. A second icon appeared in front of me. Golden wings flapped and waved. It was an Angel App. I ducked under it but it followed me. It buzzed in my ear and I swatted it away. When the icon returned it raced from side to side, blasting through my hair. “Get off me,” I yelled, hands swinging. It finally took the hint and gently came to rest above my left shoulder.

At least it had stopped moving.

Inara's download finished and a pair of feathery wings stretched high and wide from her back, shimmering in the evening light. Her skin had a new sheen to it. “Come on, Skye. You love flying. It will get your mind off what happened.” She could barely keep her feet on the ground. “Doesn't Apping
always
help us feel better?”

One of the wings of the icon smacked me in the ear. I glared, raising my arm like I was going to hit it. It cowered and fled to a safer distance. “I'm sorry, but I can't. I mean, I just learned I'm never going to see my family again.”

Inara grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Her skin had turned ethereal and light, and her fingers floated up toward the heavens, taking mine with them. When her hand was as high as my shoulder she let go. “No, I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to be insensitive.”

The icon meant for me vanished.

“I'll walk with you a while longer,” she went on. “But Simon chatted me to see if I'd meet him at the top of the Sears Tower to go flying and I
really
want to see him.”

My eyes sought the sidewalk. “Go now. It's all right. I don't want you to be late.”

“Really?” Inara's voice floated down from above. “You don't mind?”

I looked up at my best friend. Saw how she shined like a silver star in the night sky. Inara was beautiful when she Apped. I felt so dull next to her, in every way. “I'll be fine.”

Inara swooped downward and tried to give me a hug. She almost knocked me over with her wings. “Sorry!”

I tried for a laugh, but it sounded like I was choking. “Go meet Simon before you do any lasting damage. Tell him I said hello.”

“Okay.” Her feet were already a few inches above the ground. She was about to fly off when she turned toward me one last time, hovering there. “I know you're upset, Skye, and I am too.” Her eyelashes fluttered and sparkled. “But honestly, I think it's for the best that no one unplugs for Service. When all of this passes, eventually you'll agree. I promise,” she finished. Then, quickly, she turned and flew away.

I walked home in a daze. Even the stars couldn't distract me from the thoughts spinning through my mind. Service was
canceled
. Seeing my mother and sister had been
canceled
. Finding out who I was for real had been
canceled.
When I reached Singles Hall, the tall toothpick structure shined with lights in the round windows along its facade. I went inside, my eyes falling across the familiar, brightly colored chairs rising up from the floor like giant bubbles, the great glass dome overhead open to the sky. Normally I found comfort in these things, but all around me was chaos.

Adam Sheridan was making a huge scene in the lounge.

“It isn't fair!” His voice boomed. He must have downloaded an Amplifier App. He seemed bigger, stronger, and taller than normal. Adam was a Single like me, so he was fairly alone in the App World. But I didn't think he had much family left in the Real World to go back to, either. “They can't do this to us! Service is a basic right! They can't prevent the others from plugging back in!”

Some of the other Singles cheered.

But a lot of them were silent.

Adam's skin was turning red. His hands balled into fists, like he was about to hit someone. “Our seventeens must be allowed to cross back! We will not stand for this!”

There were a few weak cheers, and that's when I remembered. Adam had a girlfriend who'd unplugged for Service. Parvda was her name. With the border closed, he'd never see her again. I watched as Adam collapsed into a ball with his head in his hands. Flames shot up from his virtual body and everyone rushed to get out of his way.

It was rare to see so much rage.

I had nearly turned to tears an hour ago, and I wondered how many others would succumb to some similar show. The way our code reacted to intense feeling made us so vulnerable, so naked. I pushed through the circle around Adam, got in front of him, and stuck my hand into the fire, placing it on his back. It burned for a minute but I knew the feeling wouldn't last.

Someone whispered behind me, “Why is she doing that?”

I crouched next to him. “Adam, if you need to talk . . .”

His hands slid from his face. His mouth was an angry red slash. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

I got up, stumbling backward. “I was just trying to help. I . . . I didn't mean . . .” I closed my mouth. Adam was glaring at me. “You know what? Whatever.” I turned away. The crowd of Singles around Adam had already moved on, distracted by something else.

All over the lounge people were downloading footage from the Cloud. Live holograms of the Holts were projected into the room. There was Lady Holt, the Prime Minister's wife, her face streaked with tears. She walked quickly down one of the boulevards in the Loop, the neighborhood where Inara lived, the collar of her coat pulled high around her neck and face. A crowd of voyeurs trailed after her, whispering and pointing.

“Please.” She pulled the collar higher. Her voice cracked. “My son.”

Lady Holt could beg for privacy, but there was no hiding for the famous in the App World. People were always making up new aliases so no one could search for them, but celebrities and government officials could never get away with it. Especially not the Holts.

In a separate hologram, Jonathan Holt was sitting at a restaurant by himself, staring into space, maybe waiting
for his wife to arrive. Other diners shouted angrily about the safety of our bodies on the plugs.

One man shook his fist. “We should have freed ourselves from the Keepers a long time ago!”

“The Race for the Cure needs to be won!” yelled a woman from halfway across the room.

But another man approached the Prime Minister's table and stuck out his hand. “Good job closing the border.”

Jonathan Holt half stood, seeming dazed. He grasped the offered hand.

The man smiled, showing teeth as bright and white as his suit. “We've already got enough poor virtuals looking for handouts. We don't need any more Singles draining the economy.” Another man lined up behind him to say more or less the same thing. He wore a suit too, gray like the kind Mr. Sachs put on to go to the bank. Jonathan Holt didn't smile back at the men. He seemed appalled. But then, he still shook those hands.

I looked around at the other Singles. Most of them were silent as they watched people lining up to congratulate the Prime Minister on his decision, but Cecily Gomez was as red as Adam had been before he turned to flames.

“At least we're honest,” she yelled at the hologram. “More honest than the rich!”

“They act like we're Lawless,” said Jayson Venice
before storming away. The Lawless refused to obey the edicts intended to give our world order and structure. They lived in a part of the City called Loner Town.

“I'm bored,” said a male voice to my left.

I turned and saw a large group of Singles surrounding the hologram of a boy, tall and lanky, dressed in the uniform of the Under Eighteens who go to Founders, the school for the children of the most prestigious families in the App World. His dark hair was messy and fell around his face in waves. He leaned against a wall in the courtyard, slouched in his jacket with its golden crest, hands shoved in his pockets.

It was Rain Holt, the son left on the wrong side of the border.

Rain was the obsession of every girl and guy I knew for as long as I could remember, the dream boyfriend, the star celeb, the crown prince of everyone from the twelves all the way up to the nineteens. There were people who would hand over their last bit of capital for the chance to have five minutes alone with him. Inara was always downloading Apps that promised a girl all she needed to know to capture his attention.

Back when she and I were thirteens and Rain was a fourteen, we were voyeuring along with the rest of his millions of fans. He was at this super-exclusive club called Skydive; its claim to fame that it was so high up in the atmosphere it made you feel like you were partying
on the moon. To get home you had to download an App that allowed you to jump back to earth. It cost a fortune in capital to get in the door, never mind to get back home again later.

“I can't believe he's out with
her
,” Inara had sniffed as we watched.

Rain was on a date with this starlet, Lila, who'd gotten famous by being the first fourteen to open her mind to anyone and everyone—she literally gave people access to every single thing that went through her brain, every observation, every nasty thought she'd ever had about the girls around her. It was because of Lila that Total Access became a trend—that's what people called it when you left your mind transparent. No one else ever managed to get as famous as Lila though. Being first has its rewards in the App World.

Lila and Rain were on the dance floor, not saying much. Just sort of swaying.

Inara was not having it. “All they're doing is posing for voyeurs. She's pathetic.”

Rain never cared enough to make the effort to pose, I thought to myself, but didn't mention this.

The two of us sat there on her family's living room couch, waiting for something interesting to happen. Mrs. Sachs had downloaded us these spheres of molten chocolate, and we were popping them into our mouths one after
the other. Devil's Drops, they were called. I'd started to tune out, but then there came a sharp intake of breath from Inara.

“He's going to kiss her,” she whispered. “I hate that girl. Why does she get to be so lucky?”

The two of us watched as Rain and Lila got closer and closer, until they tilted their heads and their lips met. The lack of gravity was making it hard for them to keep their mouths together, and they kept floating away from each other. Lila actually grabbed Rain's head to stop it from happening. Soon they were making out for all their voyeurs to see.

Inara's sigh was long and heavy. “I wish there was an App to make me stop caring about Rain. Loving him is like, written into my code or something.” She reached out to touch the hologram and it disappeared. “I can't watch anymore. It's too upsetting.”

I didn't know what to say, so I did the only thing I could think of, which was to put my arm around Inara. She rested her head on my shoulder. Eventually we turned our talk to other things, and ate Devil's Drops until there weren't any more left.

My eyes swept across the lounge. A lot of Singles were downloading footage from Rain's life before he unplugged. Holograms of him were popping up everywhere. Rain
walking down the street with a bunch of kids from Founders; Rain at yet another of the hottest clubs in the City; Rain standing there, brushing his hair from his face again and again.

Some of the Singles wept.

Rain was the most searched-for boy in all the Cloud. People would tune in, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would notice them watching. The thing with being a voyeur was that you could see the person you searched, but they could see you as well. With celebrities, so many people watched at a given time it was nearly impossible for them to pick you out from the crowd. But there were these magical stories of some beautiful famous boy or girl suddenly noticing one of their voyeurs.
Really
seeing them. And just like that, this unknown gets plucked from oblivion, chosen to be special. Lots of Under Eighteens fantasized this would happen to them with Rain.

I suppose now it never could.

“I'm bored,” Rain said again as the hologram clip automatically replayed.

I'd seen this particular footage before. It was from nearly a year ago. It had gone viral in minutes because the content was scandalous. This time, I watched alongside everyone else in the lounge.

A crowd of girls surrounded Rain in the school courtyard, their eyes made up to match the abundant, colorful roses climbing trellises and canopies overhead. Their
uniform skirts showed off long, thin legs, and they had the supermodel-high cheekbones that only ran through the codes of the richest of the rich. For that kind of perfection, you needed enough capital to buy Appearance Surgery Apps that only had to download once and the changes stayed forever. A group of guys stood off to Rain's side, watching him with envy, yet trying to pretend they weren't. They, too, slouched along the wall.