Tell the Machine Goodnight. Katie Williams
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I don’t think about it for long. It’s too shitty to contemplate.”
“Sorry.”
She looks over, surprised. “Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t know. For saying it could be all of them.”
“But you’re right. It could be.”
“It won’t be all of them,” I say, though of course I don’t know that this is true.
“The only thing I’m sure of is it wasn’t you,” Saff says, holding my eye.
“Yeah. It wasn’t me.”
She flashes a smile, fleeting as the jangle of her bracelets. There and gone.
The meeting is about to start, so we go in.
Smitty does us one better than the teachers’ lounge. He actually goes out to sit in his car and (not-so-) secretly smoke. Saff enters the classroom first, while I wait in the hall. It turns out that I’m nervous. My heart is going at about a million. A few months ago, I would’ve had to sit down and put my head between my knees, but now I’m strong enough to keep standing. I guess that’s something anyway. The doctors would say that’s something. To stand when you need to stand. Strength. I count to thirty, then step into the room.
“Rhett!” Linus shouts, and suddenly, it’s a year ago, and I never left them. “My man!” He’s smiling big, his arms stretched wide in welcome. A couple of the girls, Brynn and Lyda, rush over to fuss at me. (“You look so good, so much better.” “Yeah, there’s, like, color in your cheeks.”) These two would make a project out of me if they could. Astrid gives a half wave, and Ellie calls out, “Hey, skinny,” causing a couple of the others to shoot her looks, which she ignores. Josiah doesn’t say anything until I catch his eye. As usual, his bangs are in dire need of a cutting. “Hey, man,” he says so softly I only know what the words are because I can read them on his lips.
The classroom is seminar style, so instead of desks there’s a conference table and swivel chairs. Brynn and Lyda guide me to the head of the table, where the teacher usually sits.
“Are you back?” Linus asks.
And it occurs to me that I could be. I could say yes and, just like that, be back with my class at Seneca Day just in time for my senior year. The school would let me. The doctors would, too. Mom would be overjoyed. But I look around at them, these too-familiar eleven faces, and I just can’t. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s nothing that any of them did, and it’s nothing that I think they would do. I just know that if I came back I’d stop eating again. And, look, I’m not saying I want to eat. But for the first time, I maybe want to want to.
Josiah is staring down at his lap. All the others are watching me. Saff has her lips parted like she’ll step in for me if I can’t answer.
“No. I’m doing a project for school,” I say. “Cyberschool,” I amend. And if there’s any disappointment that I’m not returning to Seneca Day, it’s whisked away by their excitement over the Apricity I set out on the table.
No one resists taking the Apricity. Everyone is willing to be, as Mom would say, swabbed and swiped. The only hint of hesitation comes from Ellie, who announces, “I don’t need to be told what makes me happy,” though she sucks on her cotton swab along with the rest of them. Ten times, I brush the cotton on a computer chip and fit the chip into the side of the machine, just like I’ve seen Mom do. And Saff and I lie to the class a second time, saying that my screen battery just ran out and that I’ll have to take it home to recharge it before I can get their results from the machine.
“So we’ll see you again?” Josiah says, a little stiffly. I can’t tell if this means that he wants to see me again or that he doesn’t.
Before I can answer, Smitty pops his head into the room, making a surprised face at seeing me there. “Rhett! What a surprise! If I’d known you were coming I would’ve baked you …” He trails off, embarrassed.
“A cake?” I finish the sentence for him. “Sorry, Smitty. Not hungry. Haven’t you heard? Never hungry.” And after an awkward pause, everyone laughs. Even me.
CASE NOTES 3/28/35, LATE AFTERNOON
SUSPECT APRICITY RESULTS
Linus: arrange fresh flowers, visit Italy, sing out loud
Josiah: put a warm blanket on your bed, spend time with your sister,
Astrid: take the night bus, drop math class, get a tattoo
Ellie: run ten miles a day, write poetry, don’t listen to your father
“I DON’T SEE ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS,” Saff says. “Do you?”
I shuffle through the results again, reluctant to tell her that I don’t see anything suspicious either. We’re sitting on the floor in my room, Saff with the tube of cookies again. She’s eating so frenetically I’ve lost count.
“I was hoping someone’s might say, Tell the truth, or Apologize to Saff,” she says through a mouthful of crumbs. “Isn’t that stupid?”
“No. That’s actually the kind of thing that happened when the police used Apricity in interrogations, you know, when that was still legal. It’s like the person’s guilt is what’s keeping them from being happy.”
“Well. I guess whoever did it must not feel guilty then,” Saff murmurs. “They must think I deserved it.”
“Yeah, maybe. But then again, whoever did it is pretty fucked up.”
She sighs. “What’d you get?”
“‘Get’?”
“On the Apricity?”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Yeah, but when you have?”
“I’ve never taken it.”
“What? Never? But your mom,” she says. “It’s, like, her job.”
I keep my eyes on the results. “Uh-huh. So?”
“So you’ve never even been curious?”
“I’m just not interested.”
“You’re not interested in happiness?”
“Yeah.” I look up at her. “Exactly.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’d think sad people would be the ones most interested in happiness.”
“I’m not sad.”
“Yeah,” she says, deadpan. “Me neither.”
We look at each other for a minute, but what is there to say? We’re both sad. So what.
“You know what’s funny?” I push our friends’ results at her. “What’s the first thing you think of when you look at this?”
“That I can’t imagine Linus arranging flowers?”
“Okay, but in general, looking at all of them, what do you think?”
She flips through the pages. “I don’t know. They don’t make much sense.”
“That’s what I mean,” I tell her. “Apricity results sound random. They don’t make sense. ‘Take the night bus.’ ‘Arrange fresh flowers.’ ‘Drop math class.’” I pause, then say, “‘Recite French verbs. Shave your eyebrow. Eat a bar of soap.’ The things you did on zom, it’s like someone made you do a reverse Apricity.”
“Oh.” Saff raises her hands to her mouth, and her bracelets clang. “I think