have had a face, there was only a bulb of dark glass, like the one on the bot she wasn’t supposed to look at in the dress shop. Above the crush of the crowd’s shocked murmurs, Marlow heard it clearly: the sound of her mother behind her, gasping, “Omigod, look. She’s beautiful.”
* * *
The fog facility was twenty minutes away on foot and hidden by the artificial woods, because the network didn’t like it showing up in any footage. Marlow didn’t mind the walk; she couldn’t sleep after that dream. She went halfway there in almost pitch dark. Finally, just as she reached the forest, an illumidrone picked her up, its long beam turning the ground white in front of her as street gave way to dirt. She passed the matte black brick of a building where the network’s servers were housed, avoiding eye contact with the armed guards who stood along its walls. It was awkward, since the guards were real people. The network took the task of protecting its data seriously. The humans, their long guns, the building’s stealth-bomber paint job—it had all been there since the beginning, meant to convince the people of Constellation that securing their privacy was a priority. Marlow had never really gotten the logic: What did anyone in Constellation have that was private? They had to eat and cry and give birth on camera. But here was a fortress for their data—which, in her estimation, was just another word for boring stuff: how much they spent at the dry cleaner, the combination to their locks at the gym, the messages they composed to each other in their minds. Who was coming after that stuff?
“That’s what we used to think, too,” Floss had said dryly, once, when Marlow made that point.
Then Marlow understood: the fortress must have reassured her parents when they came here. Like the gleaming fitness facilities and the shimmering village swimming pool—there were so few in the state, now, after all the water restrictions—data security must have been an attractive amenity. Constellation was launched at the dawn of the new, government-run, government-supervised internet, when Americans were still too scarred and scared to use it. Marlow’s town was a lure, a way to get them back online. The shtick was irresistible: come watch these beautiful people be on camera all the time. Marlow was old enough now to know her town’s history, to read between the lines: the real talent from back then—Oscar winners and rock stars—wanted nothing to do with Constellation. But the B-listers, like Marlow’s parents, were broke, and heartsick for their old fame, and susceptible to the pitch the network used to recruit them: What you did back then, driving all those people to vulnerable platforms—do you think you had nothing to do with the Spill? Blood is on your hands. So the old reality players and socialites and actors’ dull siblings signed contracts. They moved in and lived. They shared all day and night—proving, with their fearless return to the form, that all-important American refrain: the terrorists had not won.
The sun was rising at Marlow’s back when she reached the fog facility. A slippered man on the other side of the glass stared as she touched her device to the grid on the door. Even this early, the door slid open; she was next of kin.
Floss made a big deal of shuddering when she talked about the facility, but Marlow liked the place. It was the only spot in Constellation, besides anywhere people disrobed, that the cameras didn’t roll. There wasn’t an audience out there for fog-addled people letting their breakfasts fall out of their mouths. Marlow wasn’t afraid of the patients, though. Her father had looked like them for years before she and Floss admitted it was time to move him here. She was accustomed to the blankness in the eyes, the stillness in the faces. The place felt peaceful and weighty to her—almost royal, somehow. These were wealthy people. The men always wore pristine cashmere robes; the women had jewels in their ears. Once, the nurse Marlow liked best, a chubby man named Sean who was as old as her dad, bought her a coffee and introduced her to some of his favorite patients. “I was Twitter-famous,” one of the old men croaked at her, glaring, and Marlow just nodded and smiled, pretending to be impressed. She had never quite understood Twitter, though Floss still talked about it like a dead, beloved friend. Short messages, but