Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I look down at my hand, forcing it to stay still as I write this. Now that I’ve had more practice, entering text here is faster and easier than it was with the glove. I can type to the console almost as fast as I can think of the words. Evan says it only took him a few weeks of recording every thought after he got his implant before it just became automatic. I still haven’t mastered doing anything that requires my left hand and writing to the console at the same time, but Evan says that will come with practice too.

Time to create more muscle sensors. My siblings seem to mostly use their hands, but I don’t see any reason my whole body shouldn’t be rigged up.

DIAGNOSTIC MODE

The brain display pops up. I flex my right shoulder back and forth and find the sections of my motor cortex that light up in time with the motion. I tag them with a label and move on to my bicep.

“Hey, Noah. What are you up to?” Marc says as he opens the door and wanders into my room. I don’t mind when Evan just comes in, but I wish Marc would knock. My fault for not locking it. That always slips my mind when I come in, maybe because Mom never let me have a lock on my bedroom door back home.

“Hey, Marc. Knock much?”

He gets a sheepish look on his face and goes back to the door and knocks on it before coming right back in. I sigh. I don’t want to hate him—I know he’s trying to be my friend—but it’s hard not to. I’ve even sort of forgiven him for wrecking my only picture of Mom, but I still don’t want to hang out with him. He’s just so annoying, even when he’s not actively screwing things up.

“Hey, Noah. What are you up to?” he repeats.

“Testing out my new implant,” I answer. “Trying to get my motor sensors mapped. I don’t know why these don’t just come standard.”

Marc laughs like I told a joke. “You can’t tell exactly which neurons match up to which movements until you try it. You can kind of map out general areas, but every brain is different. You don’t understand this stuff at all, do you?”

I really don’t want to hear condescension from the kid who can still barely code.

“This hasn’t all been spoonfed to me since I was born, so no. I don’t have years of training in neuroscience. I’ve been busting my butt playing catch up since I got here.”

I give him my best cold glare. Maybe he’ll take the hint and leave me alone.

“Hey, sorry. Easy, brother,” he says, oblivious. He puts his hand on my arm in what I’m sure he thinks is a comforting gesture. “I’m just trying to help you out.”

I brush his hand away. “Great. I’ll be sure to let you know when I need your super helpful help.”

“So did you get your phone hooked up to a cloud yet?” he continues, still clueless. Does he not get sarcasm? “Or is it just hooked to the implant now?”

He comes over to my desk, picks up my tablet, and starts fiddling with it.

“Just the implant.” I snatch my tablet back. At least he has the good sense this time not to try to hold onto it. Why does he have to touch my stuff? He should have learned his lesson after the picture. “Father said he still needs to gather more sensory feedback data first, whatever that means.”

“Well, let me know when you get your cloud. I can totally share all my code with you.”

He puts his hand on my arm again. I have to restrain myself to keep from breaking a finger or two. Stay cool. I’m the good son. I don’t hit my siblings, though part of me wonders right now if I would have been any better than Chad about beating on Marc if I’d grown up here.

“Marc,” I say as calmly as I can. “Your hand is on my arm. Remember how we talked about personal space?”

He pulls it back. “Oh, yeah, sorry. Hey. Hey, Noah?”

“Yeah, Marc?” I sigh.

“There’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you. When your mom died, did that make you, like, super sad? Like worse than having your nanny leave kind of sad?”

I look at his face. Not even a hint of malice on it. He’s genuinely trying to understand me in his own messed-up way.

“Well, Marc,“ I say slowly, “I’ve never had a nanny, so it’s hard for me to compare. But when my Mom died, it was like I died. Only worse, because I had to keep on living without her. If losing your nanny was like that, then I don’t know, maybe it’s similar.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that when she left. I just missed her a lot, and my new nanny wasn’t the same.”

The weirdness of this place crashes down on me again. “Marc?”

“Yeah, Noah?”

“That’s not the kind of question you should ask people.”

“Really?” he asks. No shame, just surprise. “Cause on Hillside last season, Sam’s dad died, and he had this whole talk about how he felt about it with Marsha, and—”

“Yeah, maybe don’t take your social cues from stupid teen dramas.”

“But it’s not stupid! It’s so good!”

I sigh again. “Sure. Whatever you say.” I’m done with this conversation. “Can I have my room back now?”

“Well, yeah,” Marc answers, his face confused. “It’s always been your room. I mean, except before you were here, then they kept it empty because—.”

“Marc!” I interrupt. “Will you please leave?”

“Sure, yeah,” he says, his head lowering. “I needed to go do some stuff anyway. Really busy today. Really busy.”

“Thanks.”

He leaves. Finally. I lock the door behind him. I shouldn’t hate him. He means well. I know he does. Breathe, calm, breathe.

Instead of getting calm, I feel tears welling up. I thought I was past this, but apparently all it takes is a little prodding and I’m crying about Mom again. The slowly-rotating view of my brain is still open in my overlay and I’m seeing some new activity. I might as well take advantage of this moment. I’m not sure when I’ll see it again. I set up a sensor on the part of my brain in charge of the tear ducts.