The Dazzling Heights

“You sound eerily like the science-fiction writers of the last century. I’m afraid that your opinion is no longer popular these days, Mr. Bakradi,” she said at last.

Watt swallowed. “I just think the AI Incident of 2093 could have been avoided. The quant in question wasn’t responsible. The security hadn’t been properly set, there was an issue with his core programming …”

Back when quants were still legal, they’d all been given the same piece of fundamental core programming: that the quant could take no action to harm a human being, no matter what later commands were given to it.

“His?” Vivian repeated, and Watt realized belatedly that he’d used a gendered pronoun to describe a computer. He said nothing. After a moment, she sighed. “Well, I have to say, I look forward to personally reviewing your application.”

She stepped through the door and into a waiting hover.

Nadia, what on earth do we do now? he thought, hoping she might have a brilliant solution. She usually picked up on situational details that he had missed.

There’s only one thing you can do,Nadia replied, and that is to write the best damn essay Vivian Marsh has ever seen.

“There you are,” Cynthia breathed, when Watt finally made his way to their locker. Technically, it was Cynthia’s locker: Watt had been assigned one, but it was at the end of the arts hallway, and since he never went that direction, and never carried much stuff anyway, he’d gotten in the habit of using Cynthia’s instead. Derrick, Watt’s best friend, stood there too, worry creasing his forehead.

“Yeah, what happened? Cynthia says you skipped out early?”

“I went to try to talk to the MIT admissions officer, before she left.”

“What did you tell her?” Cynthia asked, while Derrick shook his head, muttering something that sounded like “Should’ve thought of that.”

Watt sighed. “I’m not sure it went well.”

Cynthia glanced at Watt in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, at least if I tank, it’ll increase your chances of getting in,” Watt replied, a little too flippant; but sarcasm had always been his defense mechanism.

Cynthia seemed hurt. “I would never think like that. Honestly, I was hoping that we would both end up at MIT. It could be nice, having a friendly face so far from home …”

“And then I’ll come visit you both, and pester you constantly!” Derrick said, throwing his arms jovially around both their shoulders.

“That would be fun,” Watt said cautiously, with a glance at Cynthia. He hadn’t realized that they shared the same dream. She was right: it would be nice—walking across the leaf-strewn campus together on their way to class, working together in the engineering lab late at night, getting lunch in that enormous arched dining hall Watt had seen on the i-Net.

Then again, what would he and Cynthia do if only one of them got in?

It’ll be fine, he told himself, but he couldn’t help thinking that this was just one more thing in his life that could end in disaster.

He seemed to be collecting a lot of those lately.

RYLIN (#ulink_04d825f6-63cd-5f05-b1ad-a1cf34aca711)

THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Rylin Myers leaned forward on the checkout scanner, counting down the minutes till her shift at ArrowKid was over. She knew she was lucky to have this job—it paid more than her old one at the monorail, and the hours were better—but every moment here still felt like utter torture.

ArrowKid was a mass retailer of children’s clothing in the mid-Manhattan Mall, up on the 500th floor. Until recently, Rylin had never set foot in a store like this. Arrow was the kind of place where midTower parents came in packs: wearing brightly colored exercise pants and dragging toddlers by the arm, strollers bobbing through the air alongside them, pulled by invisible magnetic tethers.

Rylin glanced around the store, which was a dizzying kaleidoscope of sound and color. Jarring pop music played on high volume through the speakers. The entire space smelled overwhelmingly of ArrowKid’s sickly sweet self-cleaning cloth diapers. And crammed on every display were children’s clothes, from pastel-colored baby onesies to dresses in a girls’ size fourteen—all of it covered in arrows. Arrow-stitched baby jeans, arrow-printed T-shirts, even little blankets covered in tiny flashing arrows. It made Rylin’s eyes hurt just to look at it.

“Hey, Ry, can you help out the customer in fitting room twelve? I’ll man checkout for a while.” Rylin’s manager, a twentysomething named Aliah, sauntered over and flipped her close-cut dark hair. There was a bright purple arrow on her shirt, spinning slowly like the hands of a clock. Rylin had to look away to keep from feeling dizzy.

“Of course,” Rylin said, trying not to be irritated that Aliah had started calling her by the nickname she reserved for close friends. She knew her manager just wanted to duck under the counter and ping her new girlfriend when she thought the employees couldn’t see.

She knocked on the door of fitting room twelve. “Just wanted to see how things were going in there,” she said loudly. “Any sizes I can grab for you?”

The door swung open to reveal a tired-looking mom perched on a stool, her eyes glazed over as she probably checked something on her contacts. A pink-cheeked girl with a smattering of freckles stood before the mirror, turning back and forth as she studied her reflection with critical intensity. She was wearing a white dress that read BE DAZZLING and was covered in tiny crystal arrows. Her feet were encased in a pair of arrow-printed boots. They already belonged to the girl; if she’d picked them up today, Rylin would have seen a subtle holographic circle marking them as a new purchase, reminding her to ring them up. She thought of the times she and her best friend, Lux, used to shoplift on the lower floors—nothing big, just a couple of tubes of perfume and paintstick, or once a box of chocolate puffs. You couldn’t get away with that up here.

“What do you think of this?” the girl asked, turning to let Rylin inspect her.

Rylin gave a watery smile. Her eyes darted to the mom—after all, she was the one who would pay—but the older woman seemed content to stay out of her daughter’s shopping habits. “It looks great,” Rylin said weakly.

“Would you wear it?” the little girl asked, her nose wrinkling adorably.

For some reason all Rylin could think of were the clothes she and Chrissa used to wear, some of which had been given by the Andertons, the upper-floor family she’d worked for as a maid. Rylin’s favorite outfit at age six had been a swashbuckling pirate costume, complete with a feathered cap and a gold-hilted sword. She realized with a start that it had probably once belonged to Cord. Or Brice. The knowledge should have made her embarrassed, yet all she felt was a strange sense of loss. She hadn’t spoken to Cord in a month—probably wouldn’t even see him ever again.

It’s for the best, she told herself, the way she always did when she thought of Cord. But it never seemed to work.

“Clearly not,” the girl huffed, pulling the dress back up over her head. “You can go,” she added pointedly, to Rylin.

Rylin realized belatedly that she’d made an error. She tried desperately to backtrack. “I’m sorry, I just lost track of my thoughts for a moment—”

“Forget it,” the girl said in a single breath, slamming the door in Rylin’s face. Moments later she and her mom were walking out of the store, leaving a pile of discarded clothes in the fitting room behind them.

“Ry.” Aliah made a disappointed clucking noise as she walked over. “That girl was an easy sale. What happened?”

Don’t Ry me, Rylin thought with a sudden burst of anger, but she knew better than to say anything; the whole reason she had this job was because of Aliah. She’d been applying for a waitress job at the café next door when she’d seen the shooting arrow display that spelled out HELP WANTED in the holographic window, and stepped inside on a whim. Aliah hadn’t even cared that she had no experience in retail. She’d taken one look at Rylin and let out an excited squeal. “You can totally fit into our junior sizes. Your hips are, like, really narrow. And your feet are even small enough for some of the sandals!”

So here Rylin was, wearing the least offensive merchandise she could find in the store—a tank top and her own black jeans, not an arrow in sight—trying halfheartedly to sell clothes to midTower kids. No wonder she sucked at it.

“I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time,” she promised.

“I hope so. You’ve been here almost a month and yet you’ve barely hit the sales minimum for a single week. I keep making excuses for you, saying it’s a learning curve, but if things don’t change soon …”

Rylin bit back a sigh. She couldn’t afford to be fired, not again. “Got it.”

Aliah’s eyes flicked as she glanced at the time in the corner of her vision. Rylin had been surprised that most girls who worked here could afford to wear contacts, even if it was just the cheaper versions. Then again, this was an after-school job for most of them; they didn’t have younger sisters to support, or a never-ending stack of bills to pay.

“Why don’t you head home, get some rest,” Aliah suggested gently. “I’ll close up. That way you can start fresh tomorrow. ’kay?”

Rylin was too exhausted to argue. “That would be amazing,” she said simply.

“And, Ry, why don’t you take one of those”—Aliah gestured toward a display near the entrance, of printed T-shirts in a bright lemon yellow, covered in purple arrows—“to wear to work tomorrow? It might help you feel a little more … enthusiastic.”

“Those are for ten-year-olds,” Rylin couldn’t help pointing out, eyeing the shirts with trepidation.

“Good thing you’re super skinny,” Aliah replied.

Rylin held her breath as she grabbed the shirt at the top of the stack. “Thanks,” she said, flashing the biggest smile she could manage, but the older girl was already on a ping, her hand to her ear as she whispered something and laughed.

When Rylin waved her ID ring over the touch pad in the door and stepped inside, the comforting smells of batter and warm chocolate rose up to meet her. She felt an immediate stab of regret that Chrissa had beat her home yet again. Ever since Rylin had started working evenings, rather than the crack-of-dawn shift she’d had at the monorail, Chrissa had been handling more of the cooking and grocery shopping. Rylin felt guilty; those had always been her jobs. She wanted to be the one taking care of her fourteen-year-old sister, not the other way around.