Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Friday, April 1

Part of me expects that any minute someone is going to shout out "April Fools!" and this whole experience will turn out to be a gigantic prank. The rest of me is sure it's all some weird dream, and I'm going to wake up to Mom's voice any time now. But no one wakes me up, and no one does the big April Fool's Day reveal, so by the time I get seated at breakfast I'm forced to accept this place as my new reality. My siblings don't seem to realize what day it is. No pranks, no jokes, no one even mentions the holiday until I ask Evan about it.

"I don't know, brother," he answers around a mouth full of waffles. "A lot of that kind of thing we just don't do here. I mean, I've heard of it, but mostly from shows. Marc tried a prank, years ago. He decided to get Chad by putting hair dye in his shampoo, but that ended up with him getting a beating from a blue-haired Chad. No one much wanted to try anything like that afterwards."

"Does Chad beat on Marc a lot?" I ask.

"He used to, especially right after we moved into the dorms and lost our nannies. I'd stop him if I was around, but Chad was smart enough to take his shots when no one was looking. He doesn't anymore. He got called to Father's office a couple of years ago after he was careless enough to give Marc a black eye. I don't know what the old man told Chad, but he hasn't laid a hand on him since. Yesterday was pretty close though."

"Yeah, I thought he was going to lay him out." I dip a piece of sausage in the runny egg yolks on my plate and take the bite.

"Naw," Evan says. "He'll threaten him, but he won't hurt him. When we got our implants, Father said he'd take them away if he didn't think we were worthy of them. Chad's a dick, but he's not going to risk losing his cloud. Or worse yet, disappointing Father."

"He's that big of a suck-up, huh?"

"Yeah, that's Chad, a real kiss up, kick down kind of guy."

That tracks with what I've seen of him. I nod and finish breakfast, smiling at the gorgeous young woman in a white apron who comes to wipe the table as we get up. She flashes a quick smile back but quickly looks away to focus on her work. I peel my eyes away from her and walk with Evan over to the Learning Center. According to the tablet's schedule app, I'm supposed to have class in room 164. Evan points me down the right hallway, then heads off to his own class. When I get to my room, I see a slim older woman with immaculately coiffed white hair and a neat navy pantsuit already there, seated at one of the two chairs around a small circular table. I'd guess she's in her mid-seventies.

"Mrs. Jones?" I venture, stepping through the doorway.

"Yes, and you must be Noah," she says, standing to greet me. The smart part of me is relieved to have a teacher that doesn't look like a lot of the staff here. I don't know how much I would be able to concentrate if I had someone trying to teach me who looked like Janet or the cafeteria girls.

My new teacher talks me through the subjects she's going to be covering: literature, history, geography, political science, and ethics. She seems nice, in a no-nonsense kind of way. We spend most of the next couple of hours doing a fast version of world history that condenses the broad strokes of all the history I've ever learned into one sitting. She's good at this. Really good. She uses a tablet like mine to pop reading assignments to me every time I don't know something that she asks me, so by the end of her class I have a dozen books and essays lined up to read. I sigh as I realize I'm never going to have free time again.

Halfway through the morning, a balding man in a rumpled shirt knocks on the open door. "Charles!" says Mrs. Jones, looking up at him. "They called you back in as well?"

He grins at her, revealing a crooked set of teeth. "Yes, Grace. I was trying to stay retired this time, but you know how it is. They make it so hard to refuse."