Unplugged Read online

  DEDICATION

  To the Hofstra Honors College, where I sometimes teach

  Culture & Expression, a course that wakes up my mind

  and makes it fly. This trilogy grew out of our readings and

  lectures and conversations one semester. And to Warren

  Frisina, the dean there, who has always accepted me in all

  of my academic and writerly weirdness and made me a part

  of this wonderful community.

  EPIGRAPH

  I will suppose, then . . . that some malignant dæmon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive me; I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all external things, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity; I will consider myself as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these . . . just as the captive, who, perchance, was enjoying in his dreams an imaginary liberty, when he begins to suspect that it is but a vision, dreads awakening, and conspires with the agreeable illusions that the deception may be prolonged.

  —René Descartes,

  “Of the Things of Which We May Doubt,”

  Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One 1. Everything comes to a halt

  2. Voyeurs

  3. The last children

  4. Top secret

  5. Deal with the devil

  6. Fickle

  7. Research

  8. Masquerade

  9. App World 2.0

  10. Tiny betrayals

  11. Alone in Loner Town

  12. Border crossings

  Interlude 13. Resurrection

  Part Two 14. I am born again

  15. Lost

  16. Suspicious marks

  17. Ready or not

  18. The real world outside

  19. A rare exhibition

  20. Negotiations

  21. Field trip

  22. A body knows

  23. Behind closed doors

  24. Revealing

  25. Glass houses

  26. A dangerous view

  27. The perfect prison

  28. Reunion

  29. Belle of the ball

  30. Scarred for life

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from The Body Market

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Donna Freitas

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  1

  Everything comes to a halt

  I’LL NEVER FORGET the day the news rang through the App World.

  It was early June and I was just another virtual girl, looking forward to unplugging on her seventeenth birthday. I couldn’t wait to see my real family again, and decide if maybe, just maybe, the real me was worth hanging on to. School hadn’t let out yet for summer and the atmosphere was set at a comfortable seventy degrees. I was at my best friend Inara’s house. Her parents, my surrogate family, were there, too. I loved the Sachses’ apartment, with its skyline views of the City, its chandeliers, and its plush white furniture where Inara and I would sprawl while uploading our homework.

  Wispy clouds floated by and the lights of the nearby buildings began to sparkle. I pressed my palm against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows, my eyes on the Empire State Building, then sliding sideways toward the Water Tower. It rose high into the atmosphere, its shimmery blue surface moving like the ocean waves. The Sachses lived in a neighborhood where the architecture was coded with some of the most memorable buildings from the Real World.

  Inara joined me at the window and placed her hand next to mine, the lengths of our fingers eerily similar, our skin color identical, the same shade of Caucasian 4.0 as every other citizen of the City. Her eyes were green and mine were blue, her hair a bright shiny blond and mine an inky black, but we shared the same standard settings for height, weight, and general attractiveness for all sixteens—settings intended to highlight the changes that Apps brought to our appearance. We even shared the same birthday. There were slight differences in age among sixteens, just as there were with fifteens and fourteens, and so on and so forth, but adjusting one’s age to a standard setting was a normal part of virtual living.

  Standard settings helped make the App World a harmonious place. Basic sameness was a right for all citizens. It saved people from enduring the random and often unfair differences that came with being in the real body. Apps provided all the temporary diversity a person could need.

  “I think we should try that Glitter App for Simon’s party next weekend,” Inara said. “I love the idea of being shimmery from head to toe. Then I would definitely get Simon’s attention.”

  “You don’t need to download an App to get his attention,” I told her. “You’re beautiful as is.”

  “Right.” Inara laughed. “I forgot for a second that you were Miss Au Naturel.”

  “I am not,” I protested. But Inara wasn’t far from the truth. I was always wondering what I looked like, and what Inara looked like, too—what we really looked like. What kind of body I was in and whether my real face was at all like the virtual one I was staring at now in the glass. The virtual person was infinitely malleable, but when there weren’t any Apps intermingling with our code, the virtual self supposedly resembled the real one, especially the bone structure of the face. Nobody knew for sure if this was true until they unplugged. A lot of sixteens worried they’d wake up in their bodies and discover they were ugly.

  “Maybe I’ll download the Number One Hit App instead,” Inara went on, still thinking about how to impress Simon, her crush. “Don’t you love that original songs will just come out of your mouth without even having to try?”

  “That could be fun,” I said, trying to be more supportive this time.

  “Come on, girls! Dinner is ready,” Mrs. Sachs called from the next room. She was always downloading from Apps trendy meals by former Real World chefs.

  Inara turned to me and rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to yell into the atmosphere, Mom, we can hear you!” She switched to private chat. I hope tonight’s food is better than last night’s.

  I laughed as these words appeared in my brain. A lot of people left their minds open to everyone, but Inara was the only person I allowed to access mine. I took my hand away from the window. Raised an eyebrow. What, I chatted back, you don’t like it when everything on your plate bursts into vegetable-flavored liquid when it lands on your tongue?

  I feel ill just thinking about it. Inara touched her fingers to her head. When you live virtually, stomachaches are experienced in the mind.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t that bad.

  Stop trying to be polite. My mother seriously needs constructive feedback.

  Yeah, I chatted back. But you’re the daughter, not me. It’s your job to tell her.

  “Skye? Inara?” Mrs. Sachs appeared in the doorway. “How many times do I have to tell you girls no private chatting in this house! It’s rude.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now hurry up. The food is going to get cold.” She spun on her spiky heel.

  Inara started toward the dining room. “At least that means the food is hot,” she called over her shoulder, this time into the atmosphere. Her long hair swayed across her back.

  I followed after her and we took our seats.

  “How was school today?” Mr. Sachs asked. He sat at the head of the table, his tie loosened and his suit jacket draped over the railing behind him. Mr. Sachs was head of Capital Bank, the largest financial institution in the App World.

  Inara stud
ied the quivering brown mass on the plate in front of her, a grimace on her face. “Don’t be so boring, Dad.”

  “It was fine,” I told him. “We had a test in App Sorting. I think I did okay.”

  Mr. Sachs smiled and nodded. “Good, good. App Sorting is an important skill. The market is saturated and it’s only going to get worse. Everyone is trying to make their fortune with the next Big App Thing.”

  Inara poked at the brown square. “Again, Dad, boring.”

  “Stop playing with your food,” Mrs. Sachs said.

  “I’m not sure it’s really food, Mom.”

  Mrs. Sachs glared at her daughter. Her ten-carat diamond earrings gleamed on either side of her head. “You shouldn’t complain. There are people in this City without enough capital to download the latest in Food Apps,” she said, then turned her attention to her own brown quivering mass, looking just as uncertain as Inara.

  “Now there is a fortune waiting to happen,” Mr. Sachs said. “If someone, say, figures out how to make a virtual pizza with the same taste and consistency as real pizza, I’ll be able to live here forever a happy man.”

  “I miss artichokes,” Mrs. Sachs said. “And the crunch of a real apple when you bite into it. How the juice of a just-ripe peach makes your fingers all sticky and sweet.”

  Inara’s hands fell to the table with a thump. “Um, can we please stop acting so disgusting at the dinner table?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Sachs looked at each other wistfully. They wore sappy smiles on their faces.

  “I like hearing about the Real World,” I said, feeling a slight pinch of jealousy. Inara was lucky to have both her parents here. My mother and sister never plugged in, and I didn’t even know who my father was. But sometimes memories of my real life would flash in my brain. Things like my mother’s smile and the sound of my older sister’s voice. Sand squishing between my toes on the beach and the words my mother used to whisper to me before bed. Blue like the ocean and blue like the sky, blue like the sapphire color of your eyes.

  “I’m glad I was a baby when these two weirdos plugged me in,” Inara went on. “Saved me the whole Two Worlds Complex and all that.”

  “We’re not weirdos,” Mr. Sachs said. “We’re your parents.”

  Inara rolled her eyes. “Exactly.”

  Inara picked up her fork, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to eat. “Mom, seriously, what exactly are we about to put into our code?”

  I bit back a smile—I didn’t want to be rude to Mrs. Sachs.

  Right then, the signal for the emergency broadcast popped into the dining room. A hologram of Jonathan Holt, the Prime Minister of the App World, appeared. He hovered over the dinner table.

  Silverware clattered against plates.

  Emergency broadcasts used to be rare, but lately, they were more and more frequent.

  The four of us waited in silence for the Prime Minister to speak.

  “My fellow citizens,” he finally began, “as you know, unrest in the Real World has been growing. There are Keepers who no longer believe in our way of life, who feel that by living virtually we are toying with the very nature of our humanity. There are Keepers unhappy about the high cost required to join us here. But let me reassure you, there are loyal Keepers, too, who are securing the plugs as I speak.”

  Mrs. Sachs reached across the table to grasp Inara’s hand. I waited for her to reach across for mine.

  She didn’t.

  There was a long pause. Jonathan Holt was hesitating.

  Mr. Sachs had one hand on his wife’s shoulder, and in the other he gripped his napkin in a tight fist. “It’s bad enough those Keepers try to conscript our children to unplug for Service.” He glanced at Inara, before turning back to the hologram. “One day they’re going to go a step further and declare war,” he went on. “Our tech specialists need to hurry up with the Cure. Without our bodies to hold us back, the Keepers will have nothing on us.”

  My jaw fell open. I’d never heard Mr. Sachs talk this way.

  “Sam,” Mrs. Sachs hissed through clenched teeth. She grabbed her husband by the wrist. “Remember who’s here.”

  Inara and Mr. and Mrs. Sachs were suddenly eyeing me.

  My mother and sister were Keepers. They’d volunteered to work on the plugs so they could give me a better, virtual life. All people in the Real World were considered Keepers of some sort, but the ones who worked to keep the bodies were the most important of all.

  The hologram sparked and crackled. Jonathan Holt took a breath. “I regret to inform you that the border between worlds has been closed,” he announced, his voice hoarse. “To protect the safety of our children, all future Service has been canceled. From this moment going forward, unplugging is prohibited, as is plugging in.” The hologram of Jonathan Holt flickered in the light of the chandelier. “This decision was not made lightly. As many of you know, my only son is doing his Service now. This means he is never coming back to our world again. He is lost to me and my wife forever.” The Prime Minister cleared his throat. “My family—like so many others—will suffer our shared grief in the coming days.”

  Inara turned to me. There was a bright panic in her eyes. “Skye?”

  I couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come.

  Service was canceled?

  I wouldn’t be allowed to unplug—ever?

  I felt woozy and liquid. My hands were covered in tears, my eyes pouring waterfalls, the sadness overflowing from my brain. When I looked up at the hologram again, something strange happened, something just as shocking as it was confusing.

  Jonathan Holt was staring straight at me.

  When his eyes met mine they flashed with guilt.

  But that was impossible. My imagination playing tricks.

  The Prime Minister hung his head low. “That is all for tonight. Thank you for your attention. I leave you in peace and stability on the Apps,” he said.

  Then the hologram blinked out.

  2

  Voyeurs

  “I REALLY DON’T want to App right now, Inara.”

  Everything about my virtual self felt heavy. Like my code had been laden with stone. I trailed my fingers along the wrought-iron fence that lined the park outside the Sachses’ apartment. I’d needed some fresh atmosphere after the Prime Minister’s announcement, and Inara had insisted on coming with me. Really, I wanted to be alone. But I could never say no to Inara.

  “Look out,” she said.

  I ducked just as a skater whizzed by overhead, his board a neon purple and his long hair a bright blue. His virtual skin was covered in tattoos.

  People were out and about as though the border closing didn’t matter, as though they hadn’t heard Jonathan Holt’s announcement, when of course they had—no one can escape a universal broadcast. The City felt like a carnival at this hour, something I’d always loved about this world. But tonight it felt off.

  Inara kept walking ahead of me, then turning around to see if I was following. She was anxious. We hadn’t Apped in two days. A record for us.

  “I know you’re dying to App,” I told her. “But I can’t. Not after everything.”

  “Come on, Skye. I’m buying.”

  I was finding it difficult to breathe. “You’re always buying.”

  Inara hopped from one foot to the other. “You could use a little fun. It’s the perfect distraction.” Her arms were starting to twitch. “Besides, I’m going to get withdrawal symptoms if I don’t download soon.”

  “You already have them,” I said.

  An icon popped into the atmosphere. Inara immediately reached for it, her code thirsty. A giddy sigh escaped her lips as the download started. A second icon appeared in front of me. Golden wings flapped and waved. It was an Angel App. I ducked under it but it followed me. It buzzed in my ear and I swatted it away. When the icon returned it raced from side to side, blasting through my hair. “Get off me,” I yelled, hands swinging. It finally took the hint and gently came to rest above my left shoulder.

/>   At least it had stopped moving.

  Inara’s download finished and a pair of feathery wings stretched high and wide from her back, shimmering in the evening light. Her skin had a new sheen to it. “Come on, Skye. You love flying. It will get your mind off what happened.” She could barely keep her feet on the ground. “Doesn’t Apping always help us feel better?”

  One of the wings of the icon smacked me in the ear. I glared, raising my arm like I was going to hit it. It cowered and fled to a safer distance. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I mean, I just learned I’m never going to see my family again.”

  Inara grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Her skin had turned ethereal and light, and her fingers floated up toward the heavens, taking mine with them. When her hand was as high as my shoulder she let go. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

  The icon meant for me vanished.

  “I’ll walk with you a while longer,” she went on. “But Simon chatted me to see if I’d meet him at the top of the Sears Tower to go flying and I really want to see him.”

  My eyes sought the sidewalk. “Go now. It’s all right. I don’t want you to be late.”

  “Really?” Inara’s voice floated down from above. “You don’t mind?”

  I looked up at my best friend. Saw how she shined like a silver star in the night sky. Inara was beautiful when she Apped. I felt so dull next to her, in every way. “I’ll be fine.”

  Inara swooped downward and tried to give me a hug. She almost knocked me over with her wings. “Sorry!”

  I tried for a laugh, but it sounded like I was choking. “Go meet Simon before you do any lasting damage. Tell him I said hello.”

  “Okay.” Her feet were already a few inches above the ground. She was about to fly off when she turned toward me one last time, hovering there. “I know you’re upset, Skye, and I am too.” Her eyelashes fluttered and sparkled. “But honestly, I think it’s for the best that no one unplugs for Service. When all of this passes, eventually you’ll agree. I promise,” she finished. Then, quickly, she turned and flew away.