‘I’m leaving to pick up your father. I’ll be back soon,’ Claire calls from the bottom of the stairs.
I hear her leave. The house is empty. Lily has gone to Sunday Mass. I have never been left home alone before. Are they beginning to trust me? I look out the window at the veranda below. The railings have all been replaced and the brick walls repaired. The Cotswold is beginning to look more like a house and less like a ruin. Claire’s magic is working. Day by day, it improves. The upstairs rooms remain empty, but they are at least clean now, the spiderwebs all swiped away.
I’ve been cleaning my own room today. Claire does not employ housekeepers anymore, not like she did in Boston. She does not want prying eyes or ears. When a workman must come inside, she follows him and hovers. Not a minute is given for free wandering.
There is not much to clean. My room is still sparse. ‘It is life near the bone where it is sweetest,’ I say to the walls. I amuse myself with my cleverness. I run a cloth over my desk and chair and I am done.
I pick up my copy of Walden, now uploaded word for word into my biochips, but there is still something different about opening a real book, the scent that emerges, seeing one word at a time and soaking in its shape and nuance. I wonder about things like the sounds and scents that surrounded Thoreau as he wrote each sentence and paragraph.
Turning pages, feeling the paper, I wonder if any of the trees from Thoreau’s forest are still alive and wonder what Thoreau would think today if he could visit my small pond and eucalyptus grove. I wonder if, unlike Thoreau, two hundred years from now I might still be able to visit my pond and forest. When I turn the pages of the book and read the words and the spaces between, I have time to think about these things. Thoughts like these are not written down or uploaded into my Bio Gel. These thoughts are mine alone and no one else’s. They exist nowhere else in the universe but within me.
I’m stopped by this new thought. What if I had never had the chance to collect and build new memories? Before I can think what I am saying, I hear myself whispering ‘thank you’ to the air. I am thankful, grateful, in spite of the cost, to be here. Have I forgotten the hell I traveled, or are these new memories a cushion softening its sharpness?
I return Walden to the center of my desk and take my dust cloth to my closet to drop it in the laundry bin. Claire will probably be home soon. I glance at the corner of my closet. The key. Almost forgotten. I am chilled again, remembering Father’s face when I mentioned it. I bend down and pull back the corner of carpet. It’s still there and I snatch it into my fist like it might disappear. I walk to the top of the stairs and lean over the banister.
‘Claire? Lily?’
Here! Jenna! I startle, almost dropping the key. I freeze on the landing. Listening. But the house is quiet. Was it only a voice I remember?
I grip the key, stepping on the first stair. I already know what is in Mother’s closet. Only computers. But it was dark. Maybe there was something else I didn’t notice. What would Father be afraid for me to see? Something pounds within me, something at my core, but I know it is not a heart. I take another step, and another, until I am standing at Mother’s door.
After the strides we have made, the tender moments we have shared, is this betrayal? I look over my shoulder, back down the long empty hallway. ‘Mother?’ My voice is strung tight. Hearing it deepens the pounding within. The walls of the hallway pulse with the stillness. I push open her door.
The room is bright, airy, nothing to be afraid of. I walk in, hearing the awkward shuffle of my feet on the floor. Jenna. I stop. My breath catches again, and my nails dig into my palm. I step closer to the closet. I remember the worried flash of Father’s eyes again, and I thrust the key into the lock, turning the bolt, throwing the door open.
The table is still there.
And the computers.
And the faint green glow.
This time I find the light switch on the outside wall and I push it on. I walk in. The room is ordinary. The walls plain. I look at the floor, the ceiling, under the table. There is nothing else in here but the three computers. Mine is still in the middle, one of the bolts still loose. I step forward and almost touch it but pull back.
I don’t remember having my own computer in Boston. But I must have had one because my name is clearly marked on the side panel. The computer is large and oddly shaped, not like any I have ever seen, a six-inch square with two ports, both unused. There is no monitor. This has to be it. This is what they don’t want me to see.
I stand there, staring, trying to decide. Trust them. Or trust a whisper inside of me.
If I could get it loose, I could connect it to my Netbook upstairs and see what it contains. I reach down and touch my fingertips to my name. JENNA ANGELINE FOX. My fingers tingle. Why here?
The other two don’t have labels. Maybe they are mine, too? I lay my hand on the first one. Now! Hurry!
I jerk away. My head pounds. I touch the second computer, wondering at its purpose, and then I squat.
There are labels. Faint and hastily scrawled with a pen.
L. JENKINS, and K. MANNING.
What?
My knees buckle and I fall to the floor. What are—How—Why did—My thoughts trip and cut one another off. I stand up and step back, looking at the three oddly shaped boxes. Why would Mother and Father have their computers? I run from the closet down the hallway to the kitchen, where Lily keeps a drawer of basic tools. I rummage through for a screwdriver. There is no question now. I know who to trust. I find a large flat screwdriver and run back across the house to Mother’s room. Mine first. Then the others. I’ll connect them all to my Netbook. I’ll upload the contents and see for myself. I’ll upload—
I stop midway down the hallway. I see Father’s eyes. Mother’s desperate glance. A dark locked closet and hidden key. Upload.
We cracked the code, Jenna.
The screwdriver slips from my fingers.
Nanobots the size of blood cells are injected, sometimes even without a person’s knowledge.