Chapter 2
“Welcome to Post Angeles. South District, to the left. North, to the right. Be ready to scan,” a familiar monotone voice crackles
over the speakers. Around me, all of Post Angeles springs up—the steel buildings, the steel-colored sky, our steely uniforms.
The entire world is gray. In my classroom, I’ve been trained to identify so many things that don’t exist anymore. Cobalt.
Azure. Sapphire. A real, blue sky.
Happy eighteenth birthday, Ripley.
A sudden scream builds in my throat and I fight a bizarre instinct to rip the very necessary mask from my face, to take a
gasp of the air like it won’t choke me.
Maybe it’s a joke, I decide, as we turn as one to the light-rail station, and the street widens, dipping into a low decline
that reveals a cityscape beyond.
People used to work and live in the skyscrapers that jut awkwardly against the horizon, but now they house Alba and its massive power banks.
I climb the stairs to the light-rail platform, raising my wrist and letting my Move ID run over the sensor. Beep. For the first time in my life, that noise I’ve heard a million times inspires a thrill of fear in my gut. If someone really
is looking for me, I just flagged my location in the system.
I glance around, half waiting for Hammers in their nondescript black uniforms to cut through the crowd. Ripley Hart! You’re in violation of the Federations’ Streamlining War Conscription Act. Put your hands behind your back.
And they’d cuff me, put me in a van, and I’d disappear. My parents wouldn’t even know what happened to me. If they were lucky,
they’d get a message on their tablets, a little rectangle breaking up their DopaMine feeds. My mom is probably watching The Darkest Wife or The Smallest, Tiny Thing. I wonder if she’d even notice the text.
Happy eighteenth birthday, Ripley.
Just a joke, I tell myself. Hux, probably messing with me after our latest standoff. But he seemed so upset about his friend
Banks. Who else could it be? And why do they think it’s my birthday? I have until September. I have to have until September.
I try to shake off the feeling of dread.
Even though the platform is dotted with people, no one speaks.
The side of the building across the tracks is one giant screen, and two virtual newscasters talk about stock prices, the weather, and an update about a new dog rescue.
It’s all positive, smoothed out like their AI-generated faces.
When they mention the war raging across the sea, it’s medals and smiling faces and parades.
When mention of the book ban comes up, they show stock footage of some German book and another with a pentagram on its cover, then cut to footage of the president signing the bill at his desk, finger looping in broad strokes over the tablet.
President Graves. I feel myself jump when he looks up at the camera and offers his trademark stoic stare.
If I do flinch seeing our president, no one notices. No one is even watching the news. Everyone is on their pocket tablets,
and some are staring at the small screens on their watches. DopaMine—the personalized channel that attunes to each individual
and provides content—unlocks when workers clock out. I look down at my screen as it dings, the typical singsong beep of DopaMine.
A sad face appears, accompanied by the words: Looks like you’ve had a bad day, Ripley! Your streaming has been cut by an hour.
I roll my eyes. Of course—I had forgotten about detention. This day couldn’t get any worse.
I wish I could say I don’t care, that I am the one special person in this sea of tech drones.
But I care a lot. My show, Broken Harts, is one safe thing I can always talk about with Nef.
Hers has another name of course, but our tastes are so similar that the storylines are pretty much identical.
Now we won’t be able to talk about it at lunch tomorrow, and it’s the only thing we can talk about.
It’s not much, but it is usually enough to loosen that knot in my chest.
Now I have nothing to look at on my commute home, while everyone else around me is happily sucked into their screens. I check
my tablet again, pure muscle memory, but of course it’s still locked. The crash-out brews under my collarbone like one of
the tropical storms that batters the coast of Washington. Suddenly, the screen on the side of the building transitions to
the footage I saw with Hux: the town in South London. My heart stops.
But instead of showing the burn marks or the bodies, the camera zooms in on a face that every person on this platform knows.
Callum Graves. The president’s son.
He perches easily on the director’s chair they’ve set up for him in front of a massive aircraft carrier; his dark blond hair
is windswept from a hovercopter departing behind him, glowing golden against his dark green fatigues. A sudden need to straighten
that lock of hair has me clenching my hands into fists until my fingernails bite into my palms.
I didn’t realize he was serving overseas. But of course he is—no one is exempt, not even the president’s son.
“Thanks for sitting down with us,” a woman simpers off camera. “I know you’re busy, but we have a pressing question about international relations only you can answer: you and Amelie Rockwell. Everyone knows you broke up six months ago. Are you still single?”
Callum’s dark blue eyes go tight and cast a glance to the side, to the scorch marks and weapons beside him. When he looks
to the woman, it seems like he’s going to push back—elegantly back out of the question, refocus back onto the war that is
evidenced around him.
But he stops as a soft cheer and whoop sounds from somewhere off camera, and a group of soldiers jogs past, whistling in approval at the question. Callum smiles
at them, his face relaxing.
“Who wants to know?” he asks. When he hinges forward, he bares perfect teeth in a grin.
A woman next to me drops her tablet. When I glance over at the sound, I notice that a small group has turned their faces up
to the screen, hypnotized by the president’s son.
“America wants to know,” the interviewer continues, and it’s not an exaggeration.
“Not you?” Callum teases, and I hear someone next to me make an awww noise like he’s a naughty puppy. My stomach twists at the sound.
The interviewer giggles, so high-pitched it seems unnatural. “You’re too charming, Callum Graves. It would be a waste for
you to be single.”
Then he winks—something I’ve never seen anyone do outside of DopaMine. It makes my heart jump. “Who says I’m single?” Suddenly he stands, tugging up his shirt—revealing the contour of a very muscled belly—and yanks at his microphone wire.
I hadn’t noticed the figures behind him, rushing toward a copter, but Callum is suddenly serious as he swoops the lock of
hair out of his face.
“Callum! Are you dating someone? Callum!” the interviewer begs, but Callum is already focused on the copter. “With your father
finishing his second term . . . we’re going to miss seeing you on the campaign trail—”
“You’ll be seeing me,” Callum says into the camera, offering a devastating grin before he rushes toward the copter, leveraging
himself onboard so smoothly that it looks like he could do it in his sleep.
As he flips the headset on, sliding shiny sunglasses into place, the camera zooms through the copter’s windshield.
You couldn’t pay me enough to have a close-up of my face blown up and plastered across three stories. But Callum was made
for the big screen. His jaw clenches as he toggles the controls and the blades begin to whirl.
I stare up at the screen until the rusted metal train cuts the space between me and the face that I know far too well.
Happy eighteenth birthday, Ripley.
I hold my breath over the threshold, unsure if I’m expecting to come home to a platoon of armored guards or a birthday cake.
Instead, it’s only darkness that greets me.
I stop at the top of the stairs to knock softly on my parents’ door and then slowly open it.
The light of the screen illuminates my mom’s face as she sits in bed.
My dad is in his chair in the corner, also looking at his tablet.
They must have hit their quotas at the data farm today and unlocked access to their DopaMine channels.
I can faintly hear a documentary about different kinds of algae coming from my dad’s speakers.
Judging by the studio laughter, my mom must be watching a comedy. Something with a family.
My mother raises her face to me before her eyes reluctantly follow.
“Ripley, sweetie. How was school?” She phrases it as a question, but her eyes dart back to the screen. She didn’t even pause
her program. I know she doesn’t want the truth.
I look to my dad, who’s half-asleep already. I want to tell them everything—I want to tell them about the text. I want to
ask them if they lied to protect me and if my birthday isn’t actually in September. I want to explain to them about what Hux
and I saw on the news. I want to admit how it felt to see Callum Graves on a big screen, winking and racing off to save the
world.
I want to be like a girl in a DopaMine video and just sit with my mom, have her put her fingers through my hair and give me
advice.
But that isn’t real.
The AI training we do in class is grueling, but it’s nothing compared to the real work that happens in the official data farms. The only outlet for them is their DopaMine channel.
So I say what I’ve been saying for years: “Great. You?”
She gives a soft half smile. “Awesome. Did you eat?”
We’re on script now. “About to. You?”
“We did,” she says. I could almost say her lines for her at this point.
“Well. I’ll get to bed,” I half whisper, lowering my voice to see if she’ll respond out of habit.
Her eyes drop back to the screen. “Great idea, hon. Get some rest. Big day tomorrow!”
I close the door and stand in the dark hallway, my hand still gripping the doorknob.
Big day tomorrow.
She’s been saying that since I started school. It’s never once been true.