The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles 1)

My world is too complicated. People. Politics. Self. The rules of it all. And trying to understand. It feels like a fugue and my drunken fingers are tangled trying to play it. Play, Jenna. Listen. The senator glistens. I notice his beads of sweat and handkerchief more than his words. Now, my fellow citizens. Now. Before it is too late. I watch Allys more than the senator. She leans forward in her seat. Her head nods. Yes. I turn my head to the right. To Ethan. He slinks back. No. No.

And Dane taps.

Taps.

Does she like me? Would she if she knew?

The senator swipes his forehead. ‘For God’s sake,’ he cries. ‘Do we dare go down that path? My fellow lawmakers. My esteemed senators. Can we take that chance?’

He breathes. A sigh. A period.

There is a roar. An applause. Only a few claps from the senators who are still present and awake. The roar is from Allys. And I am not sure what it is even about because for the last hour I have been consumed with a need that is different from Rae’s or Allys’s or the senator’s, and I am alone in my need, and there is no one who can understand. Being a ‘first’ doesn’t feel so groundbreaking.

‘Magnificent!’

‘Historic!’

‘Boring.’ The last, predictably, from Dane.

‘Twenty-five hours, forty-six minutes!’

I should have paid attention. When someone speaks for over twenty-five hours, it must be important. It must matter. It matters to Allys.

‘Will it make a difference?’ Allys asks Rae.

‘Of course,’ Rae says. ‘Maybe not in ways any of us expect. But it will not be forgotten. Every voice leaves an imprint.’

‘Especially one that has talked for so long,’ Mitch adds.

‘But how will they vote?’ Allys asks.

‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ Rae answers.

‘Vote on what?’ I ask.

Allys frowns. I have not paid attention, and she is hurt that something that matters so much to her has slipped past me. I try to make up for it by focusing on Rae’s explanation.

‘A bill is before Congress,’ Rae explains, ‘and Senator Harris has been trying to persuade his fellow senators to vote against it. By talking for so long, he has hoped that it will give some chance for the opposition to make a stronger case, sway others to their point of view.’

‘What is the bill?’ I ask.

Ethan lays his head down on his desk and closes his eyes as Rae explains.

‘The bill is the Medical Access Act, which will put all medical decisions and choices back into the hands of physician and patient. It will cut the FSEB entirely out of the process.’

‘And he thinks that is bad?’

‘Weren’t you listening, Jenna? Of course it’s bad!’ Allys doesn’t try to hide her disappointment in me. ‘If the FSEB had been in existence fifty years ago, I might not be stuck with all this hardware. My toes might actually feel like toes and not numbed-up sausages! And this isn’t just all about me. Look at the Aureus epidemic and the millions who might not have died. And now Congress is trying to limit its power? Next, they’ll want them out of all the research labs! God help us if that happens!’

‘But,’ Mitch says, ‘the counterargument is that the FSEB is a bureaucratic financial drain that often impedes lifesaving measures.’

‘It’s the tech and pharmaceutical companies who are behind it,’ Allys says, ignoring Mitch’s comment. ‘They’ve been lobbying like crazy. The big ones like Scribtech, MedWay, and especially Fox BioSystems—’ Click. Allys hesitates for the briefest second, her eyes flickering over me, before she finishes her sentence. Probably a millisecond no one else notices. ‘They’ve poured billions into getting this bill passed.’

And with that last sentence, she sits down. She is suddenly done talking about the bill. Rae continues with the lesson, trying to prod us to share our opinions, but an unexpected blanket has come down on us. Mitch leaves. Rae turns off the Net and says we will talk more after lunch. Maybe food will perk us up.

We walk to the market across the street and sit at our usual corner table. I notice Allys’s face is damp, with a dull yellow pallor, while her hands remain a cool, creamy prosthetic peach. When she swallows her pills, they seem to crawl down her throat. She takes another sip of water, trying to coax them down, then another. She stares at me. I stare back. She nibbles at her food, then pushes it away. Ethan looks back and forth between us, his leg jiggling and shaking the table.

‘You’re Jenna Fox, aren’t you?’ she finally says.