Undivided

“I know it’s here somewhere,” Sonia says as she digs through a pile of obsolete electronics. Co

“Can I help?” Risa asks.

“I’m not an invalid!” Sonia responds.

It’s a dizzying prospect to think that they are about to lay eyes upon the object on which the entire future hinges. The future of unwinding. The future of the Juvenile Authority’s iron grip on kids like him. Then he looks over to Risa, who waits with the same electric anticipation. Our future, he thinks. It’s been hard to consider the concept of tomorrow, when life has been all about surviving today.

Grace Ski

“You’ll see soon enough,” Sonia says.

Co

When Sonia began to tell the tale of her husband, Co

“What if you invented a printer that could build living human organs?” Sonia said, after telling them of the disillusionment that ultimately took her husband’s life. “And what if you sold the patent to the nation’s largest medical manufacturer . . . and what if they took all of that work . . . and buried it? And took the plans and burned them? And took every printer and smashed it, and prevented anyone from ever knowing that the technology existed?”

Sonia trembled with such powerful fury as she spoke, she seemed much larger than her diminutive size—much more powerful than any of them.

“What if,” Sonia said, “they made the solution to unwinding disappear because too many people have too much invested in keeping things exactly . . . the way . . . they are?”

It was Grace—“low-cortical” Grace—who figured out where this was leading.

“And what if there’s still one organ printer left,” she said, “hiding in the corner of an antique shop?”

The idea seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Co

Finally Sonia pulls forth a cardboard box that is about exactly the size of what Co

“You can take it out,” Sonia says to him, a bit out of breath from her efforts.

Co

“That’s it?” says Grace, clearly disappointed. “It’s just a printer.”

“Exactly,” says Sonia, with a smug sort of pride. “Earthshaking technology doesn’t arrive with bells and whistles. Those get added later.”

The organ printer is small but deceptively heavy, packed with electronics tweaked for its peculiar purpose. To the eye, it is gunmetal gray and, as Grace already noted, entirely unremarkable. It looks like an ordinary printer that might have been manufactured before Co

“Like so many things in this world,” Sonia tells them, “what matters is what’s inside.”

“Make it work,” asks Grace, practically bouncing in her chair. “Make it print me out an eye, or something.”

“Can’t. The cartridge needs to be filled with pluripotent stem cells,” Sonia explains. “Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you much more. I’ll be damned if I know how the thing does what it does; my forte was neurobiology, not electronics. Janson built it.”

“We’ll have to reverse engineer it,” Risa says. “So it can be reproduced.”

The small prototype has an output dish large enough to deliver the eye Grace requested—but clearly the technology could be applied to larger machines. The very idea sets Co

Sonia leans back slowly shaking her head. “It won’t happen that way,” Sonia says. “It never does.” She makes sure she looks at each of them as she talks, to make sure she drives the point home.

“There isn’t one single thing that will end unwinding,” she tells them. “It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it’s got a conscience.” Then she gently pats the organ printer. “All these years I was afraid of putting it out there because if they were to destroy this one, there’s no recourse. The technology dies with the machine. But now I think the time is right. Getting it out there won’t solve everything, but it could be the lynchpin that holds together all those other events.”

Then she smacks Co

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Co

“We have to get this device into the right hands,” says Co

“And,” points out Risa, “someone who isn’t so tied to the current system that they’d rather destroy it than put it to use.”

“Some trick that’ll be,” says Grace.

Sonia hobbles into the back room and catches the three of them still staring at the printer. “It’s not a religious relic,” she a

“Well, it is sacred in its own way,” says Risa.

Sonia waves her hand dismissively. “Tools are neither demonic nor divine. It’s all about who wields them.” Then she points her cane to the old trunk, indicating it’s time to descend into the shadows of her basement.

Grace pushes the trunk aside. She grunts as she does it. “What’s in this thing anyway? Lead?”

Risa looks to Co

When the trunk is out of the way, Sonia rolls away the rug beneath it, revealing the trapdoor. Co

“I’m opening my store now,” Sonia tells them. “Like it or not, I gotta make a living, so down you go. You know the drill. Mind the noise, and don’t for once think you’re too smart to be caught.” Then she points to the printer. “And take that with you. I don’t want some nosy-Nellie poking around back here and seeing it on display.”