"Miss?" the youngest girl repeated. "Where's the interface on this one? I don't see it." How they always managed to make "Miss" sound like an insult was impressive. Perhaps it was bred into them, or perhaps it had been part of the etiquette lessons I'd never had.
One of the middle girls--twins, I thought--answered her sister before I could. "They didn't need an interface, silly. They could just have their james read it for them."
I cleared my throat, drawing their attention away from the glass case and back to myself. "This predates the other exhibits by several generations. "This is a book," I began. "They were popular for many hundred years before the invention of electricity, and for several hundred years even after it was in common use. Books are an inactive media, incapable of reading themselves. At the time books first became popular, writing was the only reliable long-term method of information storage. All of our history and literature that predates jameses were preserved in the form of books."
"What book is this?" the youngest asked.
I leaned over it, read the first few lines. "It's a children's story, a fairy tale your jameses probably told you--Cinderella."
The twins stared at me in fascination. "Did you just read that?"
I stumbled, looking for the best way to answer, but before I could open my mouth, the oldest jumped in.
"Of course not. Only the underclass can read. She just had her james tell her." It looked as though they were preparing to fight, so I jumped in with my prepared lecture.
"Reading wasn't always a lower class activity. It used to be a sign of power and wealth. When this story was first written down, the people who wrote controlled the world."
The girls listened avidly as I spoke, even the oldest betraying some interest in the subject. "For years, the only people who could be in power, in any kind of power, had to know how to read. The working class couldn't afford to spare the money for teachers, or even just the time to learn. Only with the advent of a middle class did literacy catch on." They listened and watched me in awe as I rattled off the same information their james had probably been trying to tell them for the last 20 minutes. I took them on a whirlwind tour of the last fifteen centuries or so, finishing in modern times. They watched me, spellbound, while I was talking, then turned back to re-examine the book. A james can do a lot, but it can't beat a human.
The younger girls were arguing over a minor part of my lecture, and the oldest girl was using her james. She was undoubtedly double-checking my information. Her skepticism pleased me. She wasn't old enough to have learned to be discreet about it, and stood still and staring, her eyes unfocused as she processed what the james was telling her. She'd learn as she got older.
The LED for my james flashed along my left cheekbone. I glanced at it and blinked slowly, and the uniformed default figure I'd never customized maximized itself, seeming to stand a couple of feet away from me in the exhibit hall. I'd long since mastered the ability to multitask, interacting with my james while monitoring the girls.
I blinked at him again, and he reminded me of the schedule for the evening. It was thankfully light--we were only scheduled to eat dinner with Patrick's mother. Some days it was nothing but socializing from the time work finished until midnight or later--Patrick might have grown up in that lifestyle but it was still new to me. After detailing the invitation for me in Janice's words, though thankfully not her voice--"semi-formal, please wear a skirt, dear, not one of those god-awful pants things you wore the last time you came over, you know how Patrick likes you to look pretty, even if it's just for a family meal"--he moved on to my messages. One from my mother-in-law, of course, reminding me of the dinner as though I wasn't capable of telling my james to remind me and one from Patrick. I listened to Patrick's message myself, but I was happy to have hers summarized.
When it was done, I minimized my james again, and turned my attention back to my job, asking the girls if they had any questions. I'd timed my actions well, as they'd just resolved their argument with the mediation of their jameses and were ready to continue on down the gallery.
We stopped at a few other exhibits that caught their interest. The girls were clustered around a display of baby dolls through the ages when I noticed that my james was flashing again. I blinked and brought it up, but the image was faulty--it skipped and jumped like an old hologram. He moved his mouth, but I heard nothing but static. I minimized him, and checked the 'net instead, maximizing that icon. It was down. I had only flickering images in my field of vision. It wasn't the first time this had happened while I worked at the museum, nor would it be the last. The museum's system was old, and frequently lost its connection.
The girls had caught on to the fact that something was wrong, presumably through the same means as I had, though they wouldn't know the details that I did. They seemed to be ready to panic--the Intranet was down, so they couldn't access the map, and didn't know where they were. They were probably convinced that we were lost for good and would die there in the bowels of the museum. I clapped twice, and they were distracted from their self-pity enough to look up.
"The net is fine. The museum link is down, but you'll be fine outside of the museum. If you follow me, we'll be out of here in a couple of minutes."
They huddled together and stared worriedly at me. I turned around and headed for the door. They'd follow or not, but I didn't think they wanted to wait by themselves, alone--truly and completely alone--in the museum. There are maps on every floor, by the stairwells, but I didn't need one to find my way. We were halfway down the stairs when the youngest girl gasped.
"The net. It's up, but it's still broken."
I checked for myself. Our connection was being reestablished, slowly. My james was accessible, but mute and still flickering. Beneath his feet, there were still scrolling messages for the technicians.
"They're still fixing it, but it's coming back up," corrected the oldest. "See the stuff at the bottom? That's writing, like from the book, so the technicians know what they're doing and how to fix it."
"What does it say?"
"Main system online. All system checks clear. Standby to reboot server." I replied without thinking, preoccupied with taking advantage of the window the crash had provided. The virus software would be down and the techs wouldn't bother to do more than verify my tag before installing the program as the server booted back up. The opportunity was tailor-made for me. I snapped back to attention when I realized the girls were staring, slack-jawed.
"You really can read," said the oldest. "How did you get this job if you can read? There are rules about that sort of thing. My james told me so."
"When the only good jobs require you to be illiterate, did you really think that people wouldn't start figuring out ways to fake it? There is no way to prove someone can read. I lied when I applied. Plenty of people do."
They were just children, sophisticated though they tried to act. They were amazed at the idea that the real world didn't always obey the laws. "We'll tell on you!" said one of the twins. "We'll get you fired."
I laughed. "You'd have to prove it first. And if I thought I was at any risk from you, I'd just walk away now, and leave you here to find your own way out. It's not like we're anywhere isolated or complicated, but you can't do it without your james, can you?
"Don't you ever wonder if they lie to you? Your jameses, I mean. Your parents lie, you know they do. And your parents program your james, so you can't even double check and see if it's telling the truth, because you can't do anything by yourself. What would happen if the 'net really was down? It's not here, but what if it was? How would you survive knowing as little as you do now?" My james flickered again, and I brought him up, watching as the bug downloaded, the tutor shifted into place between one flicker and the next, the image stabilizing before anyone else would know anything had changed. "It's fixed. You may find your own way out now. My shift is over. Have a good day."
I turned and went back up the steps, heading for the staff room, ignoring the clamor of their voices behind me.
#
We'd been married three years when the warning first came. We'd been eating breakfast together, catching up on each other's news and plans. I'd just checked email during a lull in the conversation when I got the message.
The easiest way to avoid being caught is to use a cipher the enemy will never break. Jameses were programmed only by us. They'd been taught not to read code so they couldn't accidentally reprogram themselves; therefore the messages from one prolit group to another were passed as code through the most public of arenas. Posters on the street, signs in the subway. I'd seen them on newscasts, from the bus on my commute. This was different, though. This was directed at me and me alone.
At first it just looked like an old movie--poorly lit, shaky and dark--it took me a couple of minutes to see the signs that were being held up in the background. I was so startled, once I realized what it said, that I completely lost track of the story Drew had started telling.
"Stupid, isn't it?" He finished, smiling expectantly at me. I blinked slowly, for a moment completely confused by the two parallel worlds. As comprehension returned, I blinked again, quickly minimizing my james, turning my attention back to Drew.
"I'm sorry, sweetie, I didn't hear what you said."
#
I could tell when the net went down for real, a couple of weeks later. I'd just walked into the house, and was leaning on the door, trying to get the energy to walk into the living room when the power flickered and the LED below my left eye went out. Drew was in the kitchen, making dinner--I heard him drop the pan and curse.
"Callie?" He sounded slightly panicked.
"I'm here. Don't worry, I'll finish dinner."
"I don't care about dinner. What happening?"
"We're being overthrown. Don't let the meat burn. We may not be able to get more for a while."
This stiff formality was my mother's lifestyle, and it weighed heavily on me. I could never grow accustomed to lying. My heritage weighed heavily on me. My father taught me to read the code he as he wrote it. I learned to read. That was the life I was born into.
The first--and only--time my mother came in handy was when we decided to get married. It was the first time I'd even bothered to look her up. She'd known where I was if she'd ever needed me, and I knew where she was--happy and wealthy, with a new husband and new kids. I'd never wanted anything from her, and had never needed her before. Once she had accepted me, the rest of society had to follow suit. Even his mother. Or at least that's what Drew kept telling me.
"You're shaking," he said, folding his large warm hands over my icy small ones.
"I'm scared. I'm terrified, to be honest."
"It's just my mother." He squeezed my hands gently. "You'll be fine."
Just his mother. Just. "I won't be fine." I slipped my hands free of his and turned into the comfort of his arms. "What if she doesn't like me? What if she doesn't approve of me? What will happen then?" I felt like I'd been asking the questions forever, never getting the answers that meant she couldn't hurt us.
He tightened his arms around me. "I'll get a job. A real one, not the joke I've got now. And you can teach me how to read."
I shivered again. "That's an awful lot to give up, just for me," I murmured, burying my face in his suit coat. His faith in me overwhelmed me. I didn't know if I'd ever get used to it. I didn't know if I wanted to get used to it.
His arms tightened around me again. "I would do anything for you. I would give up the world if that's what it took."
#
While we ate dinner--I'd rescued the steaks before they burned, and had Drew make a salad to keep him distracted--I told Drew about the revolution and the virus and the day I talked to my father. Drew wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the meal. I waited him out, let him be mad at me. I was mad at myself. I let him be mad at me as we cleared the table in silence, while I put water on for tea, while I sat in the living room, sipping tea and watching him pace. I kept forgetting, kept trying to call up my james, to check messages.
#
I had known I could never love him from the moment I set eyes on him. I wasn't Cinderella, to be swept off my feet by a prince. And he wasn't a prince. He was a drunken rich boy, slumming with his rich friends, looking for cheap beer and easy women. They'd walked into the bar like they owned it, tall and beautiful and so rich, and every other waitress in the place would have given anything to sleep with them, I don't doubt. They'd been looking for a dive, I think, but they hadn't managed very well.
They took a seat in my section, which I tried to mind but couldn't. Rich boys always tipped too well. They paid for their drinks as I brought them; they didn't look any more likely to get into a fight than the rest of the patrons; and, other than occasional outbursts of drunken hilarity, they were well behaved. At last call, when they all got up to go, Drew turned around and knocked me off my feet and flat onto my back as I tried to bring them the change from their final round.
He came back every night for the next week to apologize.
#
I turned the TV on when I couldn't deal with the silence in the room anymore. The only channels that had anything on them were the security lines, so I sat and watched the automatic cameras focus on nothing. The streets were empty and silent except for the occasional third-shift cleaner passing by. I wondered what the streets would look like in the morning, if the business people would be filling the streets on their way to work as usual, if the net would be back up, but with the blocks in place, if jameses would be running almost as they always had. There should be little to no blood shed in this war. With their jameses disabled, most people were useless, trapped at home, waiting for instruction.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that this was happening, though they would be. It was a mystery to me how they'd gotten away with it as long as they had.
#
I called my father the day after I got the first message. He suggested we meet at the bar as usual.
Ten years before, the revolution would have been my fondest dream. I would have been on the front lines, so to speak. Now, my indecisiveness hurt, left me with a throat too tight to speak, a headache from the pain of not crying in front of Drew. I didn't mind the idea of the upper class having to work for a living in theory, but I wasn't sure about the practice. I wanted change as much as the next prolit, but I was torn. On the one hand was my past; on the other hand, my future. My father; my husband.
I beat him to the bar. The city lines ran on time. The outer lines, not so much. The bar hadn't changed since I'd worked there. The menu on the front board was the same as it had always been, with pictures, greasy and dark with age, still posted alongside the names of the dishes for the illiterate cleaners and slumming rich-boys. My father wasn't there when the waitress showed me to a table, but the bartender was one I'd worked with. After I dropped my bag at the table, I climbed up on the bar for a hug and we told remember-when stories till my father came. I hugged the bartender once more and returned to our table.
Ten years before, the choice would have been between my mother and my father, and there would have been no contest. He'd raised me and loved me: my mother never did. He was a better person than most that I knew, never needed to ask anyone for help, never hesitated to help anyone before they could ask. Some techs didn't like the upper class. My dad didn't like them as a class, sure but he'd liked them as individuals all his life. His father had been an Upper, but society had been more flexible then, with more movement between levels. My father had loved my mother when he'd met her, and he loved Drew because Drew loved me. If anyone would know what to do now, my dad would.
#
The only thing I found surprising about the revolution was that it had taken this long to happen. Drew was surprised though. His parents were undoubtedly surprised. My bosses, the children from the museum, all the rest of the upper class who had been on the top of the world when they'd come home from work would find a much different world when they woke up in the morning. Did they ever know what was happening? Would Drew know it was a revolution if I hadn't told him? Before, when I'd been thinking about it as a theoretical rather than practical issue, it had seemed wrong for a group that was so easy to plot against to remain in power, wrong for it to have ever reached power in the first place. Now that the revolution was happening, I found myself second-guessing decisions that would have been givens even the day before.
I'd wanted my way to work, wanted the worm I'd seeded the museum network to have a chance to take the society down from the inside. How long would it have taken for people to notice that they could read, I wondered. Before they noticed that chains of glyphs resolved themselves into names and places and words, that the very walls they'd set up to separate themselves from the underclasses were dissolving around them, as their children learned to read before their eyes. That was the way I'd wanted to bring them down. That was how I wanted to see it all collapse. Slow-motion, from the inside out. But it wasn't my battle anymore, and others weren't as patient as I was.
Choices were easier when I was younger, before the world started to grey. Everything used to have the same stark contrast of a pen-and-ink sketch. But now it was a charcoal landscape--smudged, with no areas that didn't blend into each other. I wanted a yes/no choice. I wanted a happily-ever-after ending. I wanted my father to tuck me in and tell me everything would be all better in the morning. I wanted Drew to wrap his arms around me and protect me from the world as he had protected me from his family.
#
By the time I met Drew, I'd been living on my own for five years. I made my own money--teching by day, waitressing at night. I was dependent on no one, and I answered to no one. All I had was my dad, and he let me live my own life, even when he didn't agree with my decisions. Drew was still living at home when we met, and had no plans to leave before he was married to a suitable girl, undoubtedly of his family's choosing. He did have a job--one of the usual upper-class sinecures designed to do no more than perpetuate the system--which paid well, but his parents paid most of his bills and he had no idea how to live within his means. He was two years older than me, but sometimes it seemed as though he knew less about life than I'd ever known. When he left my place at night, I would walk him back to the metro. I think he started staying over just so he wouldn't have the embarrassment of knowing that I could kiss him good-bye at the turnstile and walk back to my apartment without a flicker of nervousness about my surroundings.
I had never thought that I would marry, least of all a man so different in so many ways, until I'd met him.
#
He had locked himself in the study after we'd finished eating. My study, really. Probably one of the few that actually got used for their original purpose. I kept my books in there behind the polarized glass cases that everyone else used to store videos and familial debris. I would peek in other people's cases when we'd visit for parties, toggling the glass to clear to see the odds and ends they hid there. Mine were locked opaque to keep people from seeing not just the antique books Drew had bought me but the more modern textbooks I'd brought with me from my father's house.
He'd locked himself in my study, but I overrode the lock after I knocked, and set the cup of tea on the desk. He had the laptop open in front of him, but he snapped it shut as I walked around the desk.
"I'm not ready to talk to you."
I wanted to talk with him, but he was still radiating almost tangible waves of anger.
"I'll be in the living room," I said. "Drink your tea before it gets cold, or you can warm it up again yourself.
#
Every family has a dirty little secret, a skeleton in their closet. My mother's was her first marriage. So it wasn't surprising that Drew's mother considered me her family's dirtiest secret. It's not like I had fooled myself into thinking his parents liked me before we were married. I just didn't realize how much their whole class didn't like mine. Drew had to bring me home early from parties the first year we were married. I'd get migraines from gritting my teeth behind a smile, from nodding politely when they were purposefully rude to me, and from laughing with them when they told jokes that mocked my upbringing. I don't think she liked smiling politely and praising me as an excellent daughter-in-law, but her own feelings were secondary to the demands of the family, so she would exalt me to the stars in public, even if she'd flay me with her tongue the next day for using the wrong fork on the fish.
Drew and I fought about everything that year--loud fights, with yelling and door-slamming. I broke every single one of the plates his mother had given us in the course of that year. I don't know what Drew told her happened to them, but I didn't care. I did care that I had to stand by him in a crowd of people and pretend that their words didn't hurt me, that the hate that poured off of them mixed in the alcohol fumes wasn't directed at me. His mother was a paragon of open-mindedness compared to my maternal grandmother and aunts. I still broke her china with great enjoyment.
I made a table setting for eight, including all the little odds-and-ends--a cow-shaped creamer, a gravy boat like a barfing pig, salt shakers like funeral urns for hamsters--last a whole year. After the first big fight, I planned the destruction of each piece carefully, thinking about the exact way I would destroy it while I smiled politely by Drew's side at the parties.
After the first year Drew told his mother that we couldn't go to near as many events as the previous year, that the demands of his job were too much to allow all the socialization she'd asked us to participate in. She didn't believe him, but she didn't argue with him either. I hadn't thought we were going to make it as a couple after that first year, but I could feel my tension draining away as we spent night after quiet night at home together, just cuddling on the couch and talking
#
When Drew finally talked to me it was late. I was starting to yawn despite the tea, wishing I could go to bed, but too upset to sleep. He was so mad. Even when I hated him for making me go to parties, we'd never fought like this. We'd been loud and violent, not quiet and restrained. Instead I sat in the living room and read, pretending he hadn't locked himself away from me, that it was a just normal night.
When he finally emerged from the study he still wasn't in the mood to talk right away. I set my book aside and curled up in the armchair, watching him pace back and forth across the room, the repetition lulling me towards sleep even faster than the book had been. When I yawned so much that my jaw popped, clearly audible in the quiet, he stopped and turned on me. He paused for a moment, looking at me and then scooped me up and sat us both down on the couch like we'd always sat those first years.
We sat stiffly in silence now, not cuddling and talking about nothings as we'd used to, but it was a less angry silence than before. He'd stopped muttering. His heartbeat beneath my cheek slowed as we sat there, and I felt him relax inch by inch.
When he finally spoke I'd once again nearly drifted off to sleep. His voice was still uneven, but not mad, his tone nearly conversational. "Why didn't you just trust me?"
#
I should have married a tech boy. They were my class, my peers, my equals. I dated them, discussed programming all evening and kissed them on the cheek at the foot of my stairs. I'd never dated anyone who couldn't read before.
Soon after we'd started dating, I tried to teach him to read, just to prove how wrong he was for me. He'd be slow, I told myself, make stupid mistakes, make me pleased that I wasn't really in love, convince me that I couldn't marry someone that stupid.
He wouldn't try. Wouldn't open a book, wouldn't turn off his james and let me to show him how easy it was. It should have pleased me to see how wrong for me he was but it didn't. It drove me crazy to see him wasting his abilities.
"Read to me," he'd say just before I would get really furious with him. "Read me that poem you love. Read me a story from your father's book. Read to me." And I would. I'd calm down like he'd thrown a switch, curl up against him and read, tracing the words with a finger in case he wanted to follow along.
He never did.
One day, back when we were just dating, he brought me a present. A book. A real one, hardbound and antique, not one of the modern flimsies like my textbooks. I don't know how he got it for me, but it sealed my fate in a way that jewelry and flowers never could have. "Read to me." It never bothered him that I could and he couldn't. It was just the way of the world.
When I made the worm, wrote and rewrote the teaching programs to infect the jameses, I never once thought of using him to test it out. I couldn't do that to him without his knowledge.
It was for him that I built the uninstall function in the worm, the codes that let a user remove it with no permanent damage to the system. Others, after me, I knew would remove that safeguard, but my beliefs wouldn't let me remove all the choice, even as I designed the program to thwart the security programs my father had developed all those years before as I sat on his lap.
I'd kept my reputation up to date, even after marriage, kept my name in front of the techs and sysadmins. The worm that carried my name looked like a patch for a james I'd developed. No one blinked when it asked permission to upgrade their servers. No one else would have been able to do this, I thought to myself. Good or bad--who knew how it would work in the end, but I wanted the chance to find out.
#
By the time we'd finished talking it was too late to even bother going to bed.
"I'm starving," Drew said plaintively. I curled up against him and yawned again.
"So am I, but it's much too late to cook anything."
He stretched like a cat, full body without standing up, and I slid off his lap in a heap. "I'll make hot chocolate, since you're a slug and it's the only thing I don't need my james to help with." He stepped over me and left the room.
"There might be cookies in one of the cupboards," I called after him as I climbed back into the chair. "You should definitely check while you're in there."
He rattled pans and drawers and cupboards to sound important, and I dozed off thinking of how to tease him when he finally came back. I woke when something landed in my lap. A book--another old one like the first one he'd brought me so long ago. I turned it over and read the cover.
"This is a first reader--it's not one of mine." I looked up at him curiously. "Where did this come from?"
"I bought it. A while ago. Just in case."
It takes me a couple of minutes to wake up when I nap, and I wasn't making the connections I need to make. "In case of what?"
"This, I guess." He set the cups down on the end table by the chair and scooped me up before sitting and settling me on his lap. "I though, maybe, you could teach me? Seems like it'll be a useful skill to have starting tomorrow."
He handed me my cup and held the book himself. My attention had drifted to the window. Like the TV had shown earlier, the world outside our bay windows was dark and quiet, no visible signs of resistance.
I didn't wonder who would win. I knew the Prolits had already won. We'd won as soon as we started to fight, and that seemed wrong to me. I wanted a compromise that didn't exist in the real world. I wanted a peaceful resolution of the problem. I wanted everyone to kiss and make up, to promise to share, and not to hurt anyone anymore. I knew this wouldn't happen, but I wanted it. I could tell already how it would end, but it was too early yet to know what that would mean in real world terms. I sipped the hot chocolate he'd given me and shifted so we could both see the book.