life, but her memory showed her as an accomplished concert pianist. Now, she’s off studying at the conservatory, all expenses paid.
And earlier this year, Tiana Rae showed up to school with bloodshot eyes when her memory revealed a future career as a teacher instead of a professional singer. Still, we all agreed it was better to find out now that it wasn’t meant to be, rather than spend an entire life trying and failing.
Whatever the possibilities, one thing is clear: I need to be in my own bed tonight, alone with my thoughts. But Jessa won’t notice if I leave ten minutes after she falls asleep. And tomorrow, she won’t remember she asked me to stay.
“Okay.” I cross back to her bed.
“Promise me you won’t leave. Promise you’ll stay forever.”
“I promise.” It’s a lie, but a small one, so white it’s practically translucent. I can’t be concerned. This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for all my life.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
2
Perched on a cliff overlooking a river, the steel and glass building rises out of the forest like a serpent shooting out of the surf, all curved lines and shiny scales.
I swallow hard as I exit the bullet train. The Future Memory Agency. The place where I’ll receive my glimpse of the future. In cities all over North Amerie, there are similar buildings, regional agencies where the area’s inhabitants can go to receive their memory. But since I live in Eden City, the nation’s capitol, this agency is the nicest and biggest.
FuMA doesn’t have the whole building, of course. Down, down in the bowels of the earth, in the basement floors of the structure, the scientists from the Technology Research Agency dissect the brains of their psychic subjects.
My stomach executes a slow back flip, the way it does every time someone even mentions the word “TechRA.” But I’m not going to that part of the building. I’m only here to get my future memory, and the scientists will have no reason to notice me. Or my sister.
At the entrance, I scan the ID embedded in my right wrist. By the end of the afternoon I’ll have a matching chip, containing my future memory, implanted in my left wrist. A bot leads me to a conference room, where twenty or so kids talk to each other in small groups.
No Marisa yet. I press my back to the wall and try to look unconcerned.
My best friend and I have the same birthday. It probably has something to do with the fact that when Logan stopped talking to me, I scooted my chair farther and farther away from him, until I was practically sitting in the next student’s lap. Lucky for me, that student was Marisa. Instead of being offended, she cracked a joke about how our teacher had talons for nails, and we’ve been friends ever since.
I pull my long brown braid onto the shoulder of my silver jumpsuit and fiddle with it. A few minutes later, Marisa saunters into the room, a pair of trapezoid spectacles perched on her nose. She doesn’t actually need the spectacles for seeing, of course. Everyone fixes their eyes with lasers, but the latest fashion is to dress like our ancestors before the Technology Boom. So people wear fake plaster casts on their arms and legs and fake hearing aids as if they’re earrings. I even see a guy across the room who has glued tiny metal strips to his teeth.
“October Twenty-eight!” Marisa swoops down on me. Out of all my friends, she’s the only one who calls me by my school name, probably because we have the same one.
A couple of kids stare, and she shoots them each a salute. “So good to see you, October Twenty-eight. And you, too, October Twenty-eight.”
They avert their eyes, as though she’s gotten their names wrong. She hasn’t, of course. On this Memory Day, everybody in the room has the same name.
Marisa turns back to me and weaves her hand through mine. “Are you ready for this?” she asks, serious for once.
“Scared out of my mind,” I admit.
She grips my hand tighter. We both know how important this day is. It’ll determine the track we’ll enter, the careers we’ll have. It will lay out the parameters for the rest of our lives.
“If only we didn’t have our hearts set on artistic fields,” she says lightly. “Too bad we don’t want to go into bot maintenance. Plenty of job openings there.”
I snicker. My best friend yearns to be a live