UnWholly

37 • Risa

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

“I was a ward of the state about to be unwound, so I went AWOL. That means I shouldn’t be here right now. You might think I’m lucky . . . but because I stayed whole, fourteen-year-old Morena Sandoval, an honor student with a bright future, died because she was denied the liver I would have provided. Jerrin Stein, a father of three, died of a fatal heart attack because my heart wasn’t available when he desperately needed it. And firefighter Davis Macy lost his life to pulmonary asphyxiation because my lungs weren’t there to replace his burned ones.

“I’m alive today because I ran from unwinding, and my selfishness cost these, and many others, their lives. My name is Risa Ward, AWOL Unwind, and now I must live knowing how many i

—Sponsored by Citizens for AWOL Justice

38 • Hayden

Hayden stares at the computer screen, trying to believe Risa’s “public service a

“What do we do now?” Tad asks.

Hayden looks around the ComBom. The eight kids on communications duty all look at him as if he can make the video go away.

“She’s a goddamn traitor!” Esme shouts.

“Shut up!” Hayden yells. “Just shut up, let me think.” He tries to come up with alternate explanations. Maybe it’s not real—just a digital image. Maybe it’s a trick designed to demoralize them . . . but the truth screams louder than any conjecture. Risa is publicly speaking in favor of unwinding. She’s gone to the other side.

“Co

Tad shakes his head doubtfully. “But it’s been on TV, and trending over the net since this morning. It’s not just one, either. She made a whole bunch of public service a

Hayden paces the cramped space of the plane, trying to pull together a coherent thought. “Okay,” he says, forcing himself to calm down. “Okay . . . All the computers with web access are here in the ComBom and the library, right? And the Rec Jet TVs all get their feed directly from here.”

“Yeah . . .”

“So, can we route everything through facial recognition software before it goes out and scramble it every time she turns up? Do we have a program that can do that?”

No one answers for a few seconds; then Jeevan speaks up. “We have tons of old military security programs, there’s got to be facial recognition stuff in there. I’ll bet I can patch something together.”

“Do it, Jeeves.” Then he turns to Tad. “Cut the feeds to the Rec Jet and library until it’s done. No incoming broadcasts or web co

Again total agreement—but Tad isn’t quite ready to let it go. “Hayden, there was something about it I don’t know if you noticed. Did you see how she—”

“No, I didn’t!” says Hayden, shutting him down. “I didn’t see a thing. And neither did you.”

39 • Co

The man with Proactive Citizenry said that unwinding was at the core of the country’s way of life.

It sticks in Co

Could it be that way for an entire society?

Does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can’t remember being well? What if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?

Co

“You’re telling me everything’s down?” he asks Hayden.

Hayden hesitates before answering. “Why? What do you need?” He almost seems suspicious, which is not like him.

“I need to look something up,” Co

“Can it wait?”

“It can, but I can’t.”

Hayden sighs. “Okay, I can get you online in the ComBom—on the condition that you let me do the surfing.”

“What, are you afraid I’ll break the web?”

“Just humor me, okay? We’ve had a lot of computer issues, and I’m very protective of the equipment.”

“Fine, let’s just do this before I get dragged off to deal with someone’s idea of an emergency.”

The kids in the ComBom are noticeably stressed as soon as they see Co

“Take ten,” Hayden tells them, and the kids file out and down the stairs, happy to be freed, at least temporarily, from their stations.

Hayden sits down with Co

Hayden types in “Janson Rheinschild,” but the results are not promising.

“Hmm . . . There’s a Jordan Rheinschild, an accountant in Portland. Jared Rheinschild—looks like he’s a fourth grader who won some art contest in Oklahoma. . . .”

“No Janson?”

“A few J. Rheinschilds,” offers Hayden. He checks them out. One’s a mother with a low-hit blog about her kids; another’s a plumber. Not a single one seems to be the kind of person who would have a bronze statue erected to them, then destroyed.

“So who is he?”

“When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

Hayden swivels his chair to face Co

Then Co

“I want you to look up ‘the terror generation.’ ”

Hayden types it in. “What’s that? A movie?”

But when the results begin popping up, it’s clear that it’s not. There are tons of references. The Admiral was right—all the information is right there for anyone to find, but buried among the billions of web pages on the net. They zero in on a news article.

“Look at the date,” says Hayden. “Isn’t that right around the time of the Heartland War?”

“I don’t know,” Co

Hayden has no answer. Strange, because Co

The first article talks about a spontaneous youth gathering in Washington, DC. Hayden plays a news clip. “Whoa! Are those all people?”

“Kids,” Co

The clip shows what must be hundreds of thousands of teens packing the Washington Mall between the Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial, so dense you can’t even see the grass.

“Is this part of the war?” Hayden asks.

“No, I think it’s something else. . . .”

The reporter calls it “The Teen Terror March,” already putting a negative spin on the rally. “This is by far the largest flash riot anyone has ever seen. Police have been authorized to use the new, controversial tranquilizer bullets to subdue the crowd. . . .”