The Ones We're Meant to Find(17)
“Party was fine,” Kasey said. “Crowded,” she added as girls filled the locker room, clogging the air with chlorine and chatter and enveloping Kasey in déjà vu. If it weren’t for swim class, the easiest way to fulfill the biomonitor’s exercise requirement, she’d have holo-ed to school today. The trip to stratum-22 yesterday had drained her. She’d slept badly, checking her Intraface first thing this morning. Zero messages from Actinium. Cue relief. She wanted answers, but the idea of going through Celia’s memories left her queasy.
And right now, the locker room humidity wasn’t helping.
“That’s it? That’s all I get?” Meridian complained, following Kasey as she made for the exit—only to run into a familiar face.
Déjà vu round two.
“Oh, hey!” Yvone’s hair was blond in person, not blue. Kasey, unfortunately, appeared exactly as she did in holo. Her name and rank were disclosed overhead per school rules, and as luck would have it, she was standing next to none other than the one true LAN, MERIDIAN, rank 18,154. The scene was just begging to be remarked on, and Kasey held her breath as Yvone smiled.
“You know, I can almost see the resemblance.” Then she raised a hand—“See you around”—walked past, and Kasey relaxed, grateful Yvone had left it at that.
Meridian was understandably more baffled. “Uh, racist much?”
To be fair, Meridian and Kasey’s geo-genetic profiles differed by a mere 7%. While cultural identities were preserved within families, the arctic melt had irrevocably reshaped society. Rising sea levels had caused continents to contract into territories, and people from different countries aggregated in whichever eco-city levitated above their general region.
But Kasey couldn’t defend Yvone. She could only play along. “Look at her,” Meridian muttered, and Kasey did, turning as they left the locker room to glance at Yvone’s projected ID, having missed it before. “Strutting around when she just moved here.”
YORKWELL, YVONE
Rank: 67,007
The rank, while low, wasn’t what Kasey focused on. Rather it was the last name, familiar.
Where had she seen it before?
“I heard they applied to eco-city seven but got rejected,” Meridian said as the fourth period bell rang, classroom doors opening and discharging students into the halls. They joined the tide of flesh students coursing to the cafeteria. “Makes you wonder how they got admitted to ours,” Meridian muttered as they picked up their protein cubes. Then, while getting their nutritional IV poles: “Bet they’re plants. What?” she asked as Kasey motioned for her to lower her voice.
“Synths.” It was the proper term for people who’d undergone genetic modification to synthesize their own glucose from carbon and water, a process twice as efficient as intravenous nutrient delivery.
“You’re missing my point,” Meridian grumbled as nursebots inserted the IVs into their arms. “It’s just not fair. My moms were up all last night trying to calm Auntie Ling down. Before you ask: application deferred again. Can you believe it?”
Kasey could. Meridian’s relatives in Territory 4 had been trying to immigrate to the eco-cities for the better part of a year now, but they couldn’t outrun one great-great-grandfather’s legacy in the pesticide industry. No matter how cleanly they lived in the present, the damage to their rank was irreversible. Well, almost. Becoming photosynthetic was one way to boost rank by a factor of ten within a single generation. Kasey would have advised it—would have GMOed herself, in Meridian’s position—except like most of Kasey’s thoughts, it’d probably be taken as insensitive and offensive, so she kept it to herself.
“I’m sorry,” she offered instead, the words useless.
“I mean, not like you can help, right?” said Meridian as they rolled their IV poles to the cafeteria courtyard, open-air—to the extent that it offered a view of the stratum directly overhead. Its underside, or undersky, drifted with clouds today, casting simulated gray light over the tables. As Kasey scanned for open seats, a shout rose.
“Lan! Over here!” A boy waved at them from a table of five.
“Seriously?” said Meridian, rolling over to the group. “Don’t tell me you’re skipping.”
“Dr. Mirasol let us go if we finished early,” said Sid, the one who’d shouted.
“Uh-uh,” said Meridian, skeptical. “A whole lunch block early? Did you even check your work?”
One of the girls snorted. “What do you think?”
“Not my fault I’m a genius,” said Sid.
Meridian rolled her eyes, then turned to Kasey. “Do you mind?”
Kasey quickly shook her head (the only socially acceptable response) and tried to come up with an excuse to remove herself, but Sid was already patting the space next to him, also leaving her no choice in that regard.
“Yo, Mizuhara,” he said as she sat. “How are you these days? Up to anything shady? Kidding, kidding!” he said as Meridian glared at him.
“Fine, thanks,” said Kasey, then nodded at the other faces around the table. Two familiar, two new, all from the science team Kasey was an ex-member of. Outside of the lab, they’d lost touch. Only Meridian had continued to sit at Kasey’s lunch table after the science ban, placing down her tray loudly every day as if she were taking a stand on something controversial. She really didn’t need to do that. Kasey was happy by herself. But word somehow reached Celia—tell me about your new friend—and Kasey reminded herself that having a lunch buddy was a pro, not a con. Social circle size was correlated with life span. She was the outlier, for being happier when the conversation at the table proceeded as if she wasn’t there, topics bouncing from complaints about teachers to competition prep. Meridian shared news of her extended family’s deferral and everyone booed. “Who do I have to kill?” asked Sid, earning himself a smack from Meridian, then a grudging smile. People, Kasey noted, overreacted to signal their care. They cried and laughed and vowed revenge on the ones who hurt them. Finding completion in self-destruction, searching for the nonexistent, hoping and dreading in equal measure—