“What the hell are you keeping under that shirt, rocks?”
Oh, son of a biscuit, did I just say that out loud?
“I brought you a present,” he says, saving me from myself, and holding out the package. “I figured you might be ready for something to break the monotony.”
Peeling the wrapping away—the fact that he’s gone to the trouble to wrap it makes the gesture extra sweet—I find a slim plate of tempered glass about the size of my palm, edges rounded.
I turn it over in my hands, then hold it up to the light to look through it. “I think I’m going to need an instruction manual,” I admit.
“It’s a uniglass. Portable computer, hooked into the station net,” he says, holding out his hand for it. “I’m going to hold it up to your eye so it can register that you’re its new user.”
He holds it level with my face, and I stare at it as a thin red line travels down its length. A message flashes to life in the same red, rendered on the glass.
Retina scan complete.
The thing lights up like someone dropped a match on a pile of fireworks. Holographic menus are projected to either side of it, data scrolls across the screen, displays spring to life and vanish again. I can see a list of offerings across the bottom of the glass plate.
directory storage network
messenger map schedule
“Happy birthday.” He grins, and heaven help me, those dimples of his should have their own fan sites. “I mean, I know today’s not technically the date you were born, but I figured you deserved a present. Seeing how you’ve missed a few.”
My birthday.
My dad forgot to wish me happy birthday.
That was the last thing I said to him. I basically told him he was the worst and hung up on him.
And now he’s—
But I’m not ready to think about that yet—about what I’ve lost. On top of everything else that’s happened, it’s just too much. So I push the thought away, take the uniglass. I turn the device over to rest on one palm, and the displays flip so they’re still facing me. I try pressing the lit-up section labeled map, because once a cartography nerd, always a cartography nerd.
A detailed holographic display flickers into life above the uniglass, showing several floors above and below me, my own location marked with a blinking red beacon. A little icon says DIRECTIONS?
The detail is amazing, and I’m left gawking. I saw prototypes of stuff like this when I went to trade shows with my father in Shanghai, but compared to this thing, they were tricycles alongside a Harley.
“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”
The glass beeps at me three times, then speaks in a high-pitched, robotic voice. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
I nearly drop it, juggling wildly for a second, then grabbing hold of it with both hands. I only barely resist the urge to say, Did that thing just speak to me?
Auri, you’re an ambassador for your whole century, Captain Hotness probably thinks you’re a complete bumpkin. Get it together.
“This thing might be smarter than I am,” I murmur.
“Aw, don’t feel bad, boss. You’re only human.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I’m top-of-the-line, new-gen uniglass technology, available nowhere outside the academy,” it shoots back. “I’m seventeen times smarter than him. And three times better-looking. You should be talking to me—”
“Silent mode,” Tyler orders.
The uniglass falls quiet, and I look at the boy sitting on the end of my bed.
“It’s my old unit,” he explains with one of those killer smiles. “It only has access to info in the academy archives, but it’s better than nothing.”
“It’s amazing,” I say. “Do they all … talk at you like that?”
“Not like that, exactly. The older models came equipped with a ‘persona’ in the operating matrix. They don’t do that anymore, the techs never got it right. So, fair warning, these models were a little buggy. And sort of … unrelentingly chirpy.”
“I think we’ll get along,” I say. “I—I really appreciate it.”
A kind gesture when you don’t know anybody—it’s water in the desert, I’m realizing. He chews his lip, a little uncertain.
“So, how are you doing with it all?” he asks.
I stare down at my uniglass, at the blinking box that says directions?
“I’m okay,” I say eventually.
I’m deciding to focus on the physical, because I don’t think we know each other well enough to go with I’m scared, alone, and as if I don’t have enough to deal with in reality, my brain’s conjuring up its own