Jacky is his name. His Mama calls him that. He's clinging to her leg because she's yelling. She's yelling at Daddy. He doesn't understand what they're yelling about, but they do it a lot more than they used to.
       "I won't!" Mama's thigh tenses under Jacky's cheek and arms. "I won't consent!"
       Daddy leans closer, his hazel eyes flashing as he glares at Mama. "We're the only ones left in the whole building, Sam. Why do you want to be different? Why do you want him to be different from all the other kids?" Jacky hides his face from Daddy's scowl.
       Mama brushes her fingers through Jacky's hair, a gentle gesture that doesn't match her tone. "I won't neuter him," she hisses.
       "Don't call it that!" Daddy's voice rises to a shout. "It's genetic editing, Sam. They're not cutting off his balls!"
       Something glimmers in Jacky's head, catches in his throat. They're talking about him.
       Daddy spits words through a clenched jaw. "He's already bitten one child. Do you know how much that cost?"
       "So pay it," Mama snaps back. "We have the money."
       "What happens next time? And the time after that?"
       Mama's hand tightens on Jacky's shoulder. "Plenty of people haven't been edited. He'll be fine."
       "Fewer left every day, Sam. That money you're so quick to spend is supposed to pay for us. All of us."
       Mama takes a step away, dragging Jacky with her. "I already told you. I won't do it."
       Daddy closes the gap between them, his voice suddenly wheedling, like when he wants Jacky to hold still for the doctor's needles. "Look at us now. Arguing! Angry! We wouldn't do this if we were edited."
       Jacky feels the heat from them both, heat in waves that makes his chest tight. It's how he felt when Toby took the toy hovercar right out of his hands.
       And then Miss Nita took Toby's side, and wouldn't listen, wouldn't understand that Toby started it. The waves kept coming then, at the daycare, until his body shook with it. And Toby gave him such a triumphant look. Jacky didn't even think. He reached across, grabbed Toby's plump little hand, yanked it to his mouth, and sank his teeth right in.
       Mama doesn't say anything back to Daddy. Jacky begins to think maybe the storm has passed, the fighting is done. But then Mama sucks in a breath. "Neutered, you mean."
       Daddy's eyes widen, followed by an even darker scowl. "You don't mean that."
       Mama bends down and scoops Jacky into her arms. She holds him too tightly. He can smell her soap and the lotion she uses that smells like honey. "I've never meant anything more in my life."
       The outrage on Daddy's face matches Toby's when Jacky bit him, and an instant, savage satisfaction rips through Jacky. Daddy thought he had won, but he just lost. Now Daddy knows how it feels to lose, just like Toby felt himself lose when Jacky bit him.
       "That's really how you want it?" Pale spots bloom in the center of the red in Daddy's cheeks, and Jacky senses a cliff ahead, a line that Mama shouldn't cross.
       Mama holds him close and nods.
       Daddy turns on his heel and stalks out of the living room.
       Mama sinks to the couch. She moves him so that he straddles her lap as if they're going to play pat-a-cake. He stares at her, his chin quivering. Daddy bangs around in their bedroom, but when Jacky turns to look, Mama puts her fingers under his chin and keeps him focused on her. "Don't look, baby. It'll be okay. Daddy's going to go away now, but that's okay. He doesn't know, baby. He doesn't know that you're special."
       She looks so young, her hair a redder shade of blonde than he remembered (and this thought feels wrong, grown-up and scary and alien), but even with her bloodshot eyes, the tears barely contained, he sees the steel in her that he always knew--

       "Stop!" Jackson groped for his face, found the edges of the mask, and ripped it off. The lights in the room came on, a soft glow that started at the bottom of the pristine white walls and reached up the sides. He wasn't three-years-old; he was twenty, and in the solitary memory pod in the processing room of a government containment facility.
       A prison.
       A section of the wall developed a seam in the shape of a door and swung open to let in the technician. She wore white teflar scrubs that crinkled when she moved, nearly identical to the scrubs they'd forced him to wear for processing. A white teflar cap covered her tucked-up hair, so that her olive face and arms and the edge of her hairline that suggested dark, thick hair were the only colors in the whole freaking room. White walls, white floor, white clothes, a white egg-shaped pod with its memories that were all too real.
       The technician frowned. "Is something wrong, Mr. Greaves?"
       Jackson wanted to throw the helmet with its mask at her, but it was cabled into the pod. Full sensory memories took a hell of a lot more data than standard VR, apparently. He clenched his jaw. "I've seen enough. I'm done."
       The frown smoothed away, and Jackson could practically see her reading the proscribed response from inside her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Greaves, but the federal penal code requires a full review of all connected events leading to any mandated procedure."
       "You said I would just remember, but I didn't. It's more. I know who I am in there. I--" He snapped his mouth shut over the hurt simmering beneath. He'd seen his mother, healthy and young and fiery. He would not give this piss-ant technician that, how much it hurt to see his mother again. He wouldn't give them that, the faceless government assholes who'd dumped him in this place.
       "Fine," he growled. He fumbled to pull the mask over his head.
       The technician took a hesitant step forward. "I can help--"
       "I've got it," he snapped. The visor came down just slowly enough that he could see her jump at his tone and then scamper out of the room. Serves her right, he thought bitterly.

       Twelve-year-old Jackson sits in a chair, the old kind that doesn't conform to your body. Schools always get the good stuff last. Mom sits next to him, her back stiff, her legs tucked beneath her, crossed at the ankles. And across from them both, Mr. Herbert at his desk, always the silver hair. He must've been born with gray hair--
       Jackson pushes that glimmer away, the strange, alien outside thought because somewhere deep in the murk, he knows those thoughts lead somewhere painful. Somewhere white.
       Not that this situation is any better. His cheek stings, and his right eye is getting puffy. It doesn't hurt to blink, but it feels gritty.
       They're talking about him as if he isn't sitting right there, and just that awareness is enough to take him back to the conversation and away from Mr. Herbert's shitty, battered early-century desk and the frame on the wall behind it that rotates through corny inspirational sayings like, You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow., and Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. That's why we call it the present.
       "Look, I appreciate that you have a perspective on this, Mrs. Greaves, but maybe we should wait for Mr. Greaves before we get into the details?"
       "There is no Mr. Greaves," Mom says flatly.
       Mr. Herbert clears his throat and moves his fingers around on his tab. "Ah. I wasn't aware. I'm sorry for your loss."
       "We're divorced." Mom doesn't elaborate.
       Jackson bites back a bitter smile. No one he knows has divorced parents, like him--no fighting, no divorces, apparently.
       "I never changed my name back." Mom leans forward and taps a finger on Mr. Herbert's desk, gathering his attention. "My son is not a danger to others."
       Mr. Herbert perks up at this, back on familiar territory, Jackson guesses. "Ah, this is where we have a bit of a disagreement, Mrs. Greaves. Your son is, ah, there's no delicate way to put it, he's unedit-"
       "He's natural." She puts such weight on the word that Mr. Herbert leans back in his chair, the horror leaking around his otherwise blank face. Jackson wonders if he knows that Mom is unedited too.
       She points to Jackson's bruised eye, the one slowly swelling as he sits here. "He wasn't the only one violent. He was defending himself."
       Jackson glances at Mr. Herbert to see what he has to say about that. To his surprise, he finds Mr. Herbert looking right back, pity in his eyes.
       "Yes, he was goaded, Mrs. Greaves, the vids make that clear, but I have to point out that the situation never would've happened if he'd just been edited like the others in the first place."
       Mom's gaze hardens, and Jackson feels a stir of pride in her, that he's her son, that she carries her steel and is not afraid to show it. "Editing is not a required procedure to attend school."
       "Yes, not yet." Mr. Herbert sighs heavily. "But you must understand, the insurance we have to carry for Jackson to attend is very substantial, and after today. . ."
       Jackson's neck grows hot. He tries; those kids, some of them are eighth-graders, two grades and a whole head taller than him. Editing "reduces conflict," but it doesn't make it impossible to hurt another person. The leader of that little gang, Ryan Freeman, made that clear with the relentless trips and jabs that finally got Jackson to swing first.
       He squirms in his unmolded chair at the memory. Ryan's jaw, moving in slow motion while the rest of his head held still. The satisfaction, the freedom that came from finally taking all those little jabs, verbal and physical, and giving them back ten-fold.
       Just thinking about it brings the heat back into his chest. He wants to hit something, break something, tear that stupid picture with its stupid words right off the wall.
       He wraps his arms around his torso and takes deep breaths, like Dr. Stevens told him to.
       Mr. Herbert's dark hairy eyebrows ascend into his close-cropped silver hairline. "Are you feeling it now, Jackson?" His voice drops to a whisper. "The anger?" Concern rings there, but something else too. Morbid curiosity, maybe, like someone peeking into a house fire to look for burning bodies.
       "It's not fair!" The words burst from Jackson before he can bite them back. Mr. Herbert flinches away, but Jackson presses on, riding the wave of heat. "Why do they get away with it? Editing doesn't make you less mean--"
       "Jackson." Mom presses her hand over his.
       He crumbles. He's disappointed her. Again. And from the look on Mr. Herbert's face--like a cornered rabbit looking for any way out--they're going to have to find yet another school.
       He heaves a sigh. "I'm sorry, Mom."
       She pats his hand and gives him a sidelong glance. There's a hint of amusement, and he knows it's because Mr. Herbert is about three breaths away from fainting at Jackson's outburst. "Never be sorry for who you are, Jacky. We'll just find a place more appropriate to your needs."
       But he sees her mouth tighten, sees the lines around her eyes, and he knows he just made that even harder.

       The mask opened on its own this time, the lights already on when its covering cleared Jackson's face. The excruciatingly white room again.
       More fights had come, and more schools after that one. Who could set off the freak, that was the game, and he'd played it enough as a kid that he should've been a pro at brushing it off. But there was always a limit, and always the satisfaction that came after he knocked them down. When he saw what it felt like to have your jaw bashed after a lifetime of no one ever raising a hand against you. All his tormenters thought the game was fun until it wasn't.
       But he knew why they had made him relive that memory. They wanted him to see her again. See how he'd made things hard for her. He hadn't seen that at twelve, not as clearly as he saw it now. They wanted him to feel guilty. And it was working.
       The technician coughed, attracting his attention. She hovered close, but outside of arm's reach. Jackson's mouth twitched, but he managed to shut down the sardonic grin. They never knew what someone like him meant until they did. He wondered how many people like him they assigned to her. He wondered how many were left, people like him.
       "You have a mandated break, Mr. Greaves."
       The pod tilted forward to make it easier for him to climb out of it. Jackson held out the mask to her, but she didn't come closer to take it. He drew it back to his lap and took a hesitant breath. "What if I don't want a break? What if I said I accepted the editing, and I wanted to do it now?"
       The technician bit her lip and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Greaves. But as the document you signed indicated, you cannot skip over any part of this process. You're required to review all memories that are essential to your anger. Whether you choose the editing or. . . the other." Her professional façade broke, replaced by an instant of naked fear that made Jackson's insides crawl.
       "If I'm just going to have the memories excised as part of the editing, what difference does it make that I live them again first?" If frustration bled into his voice, she was at least trained enough not to flinch at it.
       She read from her internal script again. "Memories shape you just as much as genetics--the nurture to the nature of your genes. To excise your anger, we must eliminate the neural pathways that lead to anger, which also means the memories that shaped your anger. The mandate requires you to explicitly review those you will lose."
       Jackson sagged into the pod. "These are all memories of my mother."
       "She is essential to your anger. She validated it. Your memories of her are core to accessing the neural pathways that lead to anger."
       "All of them?" Jackson's voice was hoarse. He hated himself for it.
       The technician blinked. "You will keep all of your happy memories."
       Jackson mentally flipped through the things he remembered about his mom. Yeah, it came out about as he expected. "I don't have any happy memories."
       "Oh, Mr. Greaves." She reached out and patted his arm, rather recklessly he thought. "Everyone has happy memories."
       Yeah, not always. Even his best memories were complicated. "How many more of these do I have to review?"
       His voice must've sounded off, because she snatched her hand away and straightened, the professional façade back in place. "Two."
       Unease squeezed its way into his gut. Only two? But he knew exactly which two. "Is my mandated break over yet?"
       She glanced at some readout on the pod outside of his view. She swallowed hard. "Yes, Mr. Greaves, the minimum time has passed."
       He threw himself back into the pod's cushy embrace and jammed the helmet back on. "Fine. Let's get it over with."

       He trudges into his building's lift and reaches around the packed bodies to press sub-floor eight. Two more minutes of travel home before he has to face his mom. She undoubtedly received the notification from the school the minute they actually threw him out. Again.
       He dodges the usual crowd milling outside the lifts and mopes along the hallway to their apartment door. He presses his wrist to the scarred metal access pad and pushes the door open.
       The apartment smells. It smells yellow, like piss and pain and worry. He keeps the ventilation on high, but it's never enough to cover the smell of his mother's illness.
       He steps inside, and every fiber in his being rebels. He does not want to be here. He doesn't want to see her this way. A force at his back, a white force shoves him deeper into the room, to his mom asleep on the couch in the dimly lit living space, and the feeling fades.
       Far too grand to call it a room, with the kitchen just behind the panel opposite the entrance, the shower and laundry tucked in there too, and two sleeping pods off to the right. To the left, the view-wall and the couch that will soon become his mother's deathbed, another panicky, resistive white thought. The shadows deepen the illness that gathers in the hollows of her eyes, in the sag to her cheeks. The auburn glint is gone, the blonde hair limp and thin and shot through with gray.
       He sinks to his knees next to her, his heart heavy. She doesn't wake. He presses his hand onto her shoulder, afraid to shake her. Afraid to break her. "Mom."
       She blinks, confused, until her gaze settles on him. There's enough light left in her to reach her eyes. "Jacky."
       He ducks his head. "C'mon, Mom, you haven't called me that in ages."
       She must not have seen the alert from school, but she sees it now, in whatever clues in his face he hasn't managed to hide. A shallow sigh gusts from her mouth. "You were expelled again."
       The familiar heat settles in his chest, a constant companion these days. "I try, Mom. I really do." Tears prick his eyes, but he won't let her see them. He wishes, for the millionth time, that he possessed her steel. But clearly, he doesn't.
       "Ah, Jackson." She brushes her fingers through the hair over his ear. They tremble, and it's all he can do to stop himself from clapping his hand over hers to give her the strength to stop the tremors she can no longer control. "I know you try."
       "Maybe--" He takes a breath. "Maybe I should just get the editing."
       She looks as if he punched her. "No, Jacky! Don't destroy who you are."
       The heat in his chest swirls, kicks, demands to be set free. It's wrong. It's unfair. And, dammit, someone else needs to feel it just as strongly as he does.
       Her fingers brush through his hair again and then move to cup his cheek. "You and I, we're pure. Unspoiled. Clean." Conviction burns like a fever.
       Jackson makes a helpless gesture with his hands. "I just get so angry, Mom. I can't help it. I feel like I'm angry all the time."
       She pats his knee, a bare flutter of her hand. "You'll figure it out, sweetheart, I know you will."
       "I'm an outcast, Mom."
       She shrugs weakly. "So take the last of your courses online, and work from home. Who cares? At least you'll still be you."
       He heaves a sigh. "Yeah. Okay, Mom."

       Jackson pulled off the mask. His chest heaved, his cheeks were wet. He wanted to vomit, but the curve of the pod made it hard to lean forward. If he barfed, it was just going to come right back at him.
       The pod tilted upright. The technician peered over the side. "Are you all right, Mr. Greaves?"
       He mastered the urge to chuck the mask across the room, cable or not. "I wasn't even angry in that memory!"
       The technician's gaze strayed to the screen outside his view. She took a step away. "You're angry now, aren't you?"
       "I know the next memory." Jackson struggled to sit up. "I know what happens, okay? She dies! She dies, and she leaves me--" He scrambled for the pod's far side, just in time to send a spew of orange vomit over the edge. It hit the floor with a satisfying splat. Take that with your white room. He wiped his mouth with his crinkly teflar sleeve. They deserved that after feeding him cafeteria spaghetti on a sterile white tray before loading him into their stupid egg-shaped torture chamber.
       "Is this the anger that leads to your next memory, Mr. Greaves?" The technician had lost her earlier warmth, her voice clinical. "The one that leads to your arrest?"
       He pressed his hands to his eyes as if he could squeeze the tears off. "She left me. She left me broken and alone! She died when she didn't have to!" It was the thing, the thing that had set him off in the end, the one monstrous thing she'd done that he still couldn't wrap his head around. She'd told him she couldn't be cured, and like the fool he'd been, he'd trusted her. But that was a lie. He still couldn't believe it.
       The door seamed open, and a cleaning bot trundled in. It sucked up his vomit. The technician waited patiently. Jackson watched it clean as if his life depended on it. Anything to avoid the next memory.
       "Do you need a drink before we proceed, Mr. Greaves?"
       He turned his attention back to the technician. She'd set a glass of water and a towel on the ledge of his pod and now stood carefully out of reach. He picked up the glass. The water sloshed. He tightened his grip, forced himself to control the shaking. He gulped it, pausing only to wipe his mouth and sleeve before returning the glass and the towel to the ledge. "What's your name?"
       Her teflar-clad feet whispered against the floor as she shifted her weight. "We're not supposed to discuss personal details."
       Jackson gave a humorless laugh. "You're watching my life laid bare, and I can't even get a first name?"
       She hesitated. "Rasmina." A dusky rose lit her cheeks. It was the beginnings of attraction, of trust too easily given. He'd seen that reaction before. And not just with women. Everyone, somehow, found themselves attracted to the dangerous man. Dangerous men were the ones you dated and had flings with, though, not the ones you brought home to the parents.
       "Can you tell me, Rasmina, how many people choose to serve their sentence, rather than get edited?"
       She blinked. "Mr. Greaves. We have no current inmates. The last inmate here died before I started."
       "Died?" This was news to Jackson. He didn't think many remained, but surely some?
       She looked at her hands. "The ones who chose solitary, they didn't live very long."
       "Because they were old," Jackson prompted.
       She met his gaze, and Jackson saw fear. Not fear of him. Fear for him. "Because they were alone. Humans aren't meant to be solitary animals. It's why we invented editing in the first place, to make it possible for twenty billion people to live together without killing each other." She shrugged, a helpless gesture. "I've never processed a mandate before. I don't even know when the last one came through. Not just here. Anywhere."
       She edged closer, animated by a new light, the "fix it" light. "It's not that bad, you know. We don't really change you like the purity freaks say. All we do is erase your anger." She said it the same way his father had said it, so long ago and so fresh from this morning. Wheedling. Take the easy road.
       And yet. Every memory they wanted to take would be one less memory of his mom. She had believed in him, believed so much she'd died over it.
       You're special, Jackson. Clean.
       He let his head fall back against the pillow of his egg. "One more memory?"
       Rasmina nodded.
       Jackson pulled on the helmet. "Let's get it over with, then." He tightened his gut, waiting for the beating.
       Because that's what it would be.

       He stands at the coffin, head bowed, in a room just wide enough and deep enough to accommodate the coffin and a handful of gatherers. With the government-mandated basic income (because even with a tech degree and working remotely, no one will hire someone unedited), this is all he can afford.
       No one stands behind him. In her quest to keep him in school, Samantha Greaves left friends and family far behind. Jackson doesn't know who to tell, if Grandma is even alive, or, after falling out after Jackson's third expulsion, if she'd care that Mom died. Even the funeral manager has left to take a call.
       She won't stay in the coffin. No one gets buried like that these days, and frankly, the image of rotting in a grave is disgusting. But it's not any less disgusting than thinking about how many dead bodies have occupied this box before being sent off for cremation. Or how many people have stood over this bottom-of-the-price-list rental and touched its shiny simulated mahogany surface and fought back tears, as if that brought them any closer to the person who used to be there.
       You left me, Mom. I can't do this by myself! Jackson wants to throw himself over the coffin, tear her out of it, and shake her, shake her until he shakes the life back into her.
       A hand clasps his shoulder. He turns and finds a distorted, older version of himself. The same mousy brown hair but shot through with gray, same cowlicks that swirl the hair over the ears if you don't keep it short. Same hazel eyes flecked with brown, but packaged into the short, squat side of the funhouse mirror.
       "Jackson?" Disbelief colors the man's voice.
       It's been so long, and the man has been so far gone from Jackson's life that it takes him a long awkward moment before the word comes to his lips. "Dad?"
       The man nods his ears a bright shade of pink. "I guess. Technically." He clears his throat. "Your mom must not have removed me from her emergency contact listings. I got the news yesterday." He nods at the casket.
       A whole range of emotions tries to run through Jackson, but all he can hold onto is shock. Eighteen years since the day he left. No birthday card, no vid call, not even a pre-recorded one, nothing. And now the man shows. For what?
       The man -- Jackson has to dig for the name, Jonathan -- shakes his head. "I can't believe she held out 'til the end."
       Jackson frowns. "Held out?"
       Jonathan cuts a glance in his direction. "The whole 'purity' thing. She stuck with it to the bitter end."
       "What do you mean?" Jackson doesn't intend to put heat behind the words, but apparently he does, because Jonathan starts, as if just now remembering that Jackson was unedited too.
       The older man holds up his hands. "I don't mean anything. Just," he shrugs, "you know, there's no illness that editing can't fix these days. It's one thing to believe in something. It's something else to die for it."
       Jackson's stomach drops. "She could've fixed this? She said they couldn't."
       "She wouldn't fix anything." Jonathan waves in his direction, like shooing a fly. "She wouldn't fix you."
       Jackson's hands clench into fists. "I'm not broken."
       Jonathan pauses, but the warning in Jackson's voice just doesn't register. "Look, whatever. You know, the way I see it, you don't owe her anything. She left you broken when everyone else got fixed and now look at you. No job, no life, no prospects." He delivers it deadpan, a statement of fact. Jackson has seen this before, the lack of empathy from others. When no one gets angry at what you say, why bother censoring yourself?
       Jonathan snorts, heedless of the impact of his words. "With your record, no one will bring you into any office building. You won't be able to keep that slum you two have been living in; she got you in by signing as the responsible adult." He shrugs like that's that. "You're simply a liability."
       Even knowing his one-time father doesn't actually mean to cut him down, the accusations hit Jackson hard in the gut. Yeah, that's his life, no denying it. No one has ever put it that bluntly before, but a few counselors over the years have come close. "So what do you suggest I do, then?"
       Jonathan gives him a sidelong glance. He seems to finally realize he's stirring a dangerous pot in Jackson and takes a step back. "I'm just trying to get you to see that you have a moment to do things differently, you know? She certainly didn't do you any favors. Or herself, for that matter."
       "And you did?" Jackson feels dizzy. He almost lost the most important thing in the rain of hateful words pouring from Jonathan's mouth. His mother could've been fixed? But she didn't?
       Because she believed in her convictions.
       But no one else believes it.
       And now, here is this man, who thinks it's okay to say whatever he feels because he's gotten so used to dealing only with edited people he's forgotten how to be a real human being? Because he trusts in editing so much, he can't read Jackson's growing anger? Because he believes Jackson will not rise to the bait?
       Yeah, he couldn't be more wrong about that.
       "Look, kid," Jonathan slaps Jackson on the back. "I came when I heard she'd passed, and I'm not surprised to find you in this state. Of course, the decisions she made led to this. But you can change all that. I could take you now, it would take no time at all, well, it would take longer; you're older and it's harder for someone with a lot of memories, but you can be fixed in no time, get on with your life, leave all this behind."
       Jackson squints down at the casket. Between the two of them, his father who threw away his humanity for a life lived like everyone else, and his mother who threw away her life to keep her humanity, he suddenly knows which one made the right choice. He's disappointed in himself that he ever doubted it. "She loved me. She loved me enough to die for what she believed in."
       Jonathan laughs. "C'mon, kid, you don't really believe that, do you? She wanted to prove something, and in the end, it killed her. Why would you want to follow in those footsteps?"
       Jackson punches him. In the face. His fist makes a meaty smack as it hits Jonathan dead center in the nose. His one-time father blinks in surprise and stumbles backwards. His feet tangle in one of the visitor chairs, and he falls with a crash.
       Jackson bends over the man, wraps his fist in his shirt and shoves him back against the ground. He cocks his other hand to slam into Jonathan's nose again, the knuckles stinging. "Did you love her at all? Did you ever think of us once after you left us?"
       Jonathan tries to reach around Jackson's arm to pat at his nose. Blood pours in a stream down his chin to his shirt. "By dose! You broke by dose!"
       Jackson shakes him. "Did she mean nothing to you?"
       "She was psychotic!" Jonathan cringes away from Jackson's grip. "Like you!"
       "Yeah?" Jackson has a split second to think about what's right and what's wrong. But he's already over the line, and he feels wild and free, and he doesn't care. He punches the man again, this time swinging to hook Jonathan's cheek. His father's head whips sideways, and he wails like a baby. Jackson lets go. "Half my genes are yours, asshole."
       The door to the grieving room slides open, and two peace officers stand on the threshold. The funeral manager peeks around the corner. The officers hesitate.
       The one on the left, a heavy-set woman who looks like she outgrew her uniform two sizes ago, stares at Jonathan, curled into a ball in the tangle of chairs. Her jaw drops. "You've damaged him."
       "Yeah, I have."
       He expects them to move in, to arrest him. Instead, they stare at him as if he's an alien just in from deep space. The fat woman shifts her weight. "Um. I believe we need to detain you." She grimaces.
       Jackson tilts his head at her, genuinely curious. "What would you do if I just left? Just waltzed right out of here?"
       Her partner's face lights up like a kid who knows the bonus-point answer. "We would call for backup." He's rail-thin and tall, still growing into his frame--earnest and clearly fresh out of peace officer training.
       Jackson eyes the door, his insides careening as if held in the center of a tornado. These two don't know what to do with him. But he can hear the ever-present rumble of humanity behind them, seeping through the hallways, building by building, floor after floor from the deepest sub-level to the highest penthouse. Is it worth it? Where else would he go?
       He holds out his hands for the zip tie cuffs. "I'm turning myself in." He laughs as she zips his hands together and laughs again when she flinches away from him. He's giving up his freedom and yet he has never felt so free. If he could, he'd lean over and punch Jonathan Greaves one more time.

       The mask lifted, and the lights came on. The pod tilted to its full, upright position. Rasmina waited, a new person at her side, a dark-skinned man with a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. He held a tab in one hand, fingers poised over the glass to type.
       Jackson thought he'd feel guilty after that last one. Like all the other times. Guilt that he'd let his mom down. But she was gone. He was on his own now, just that wild freedom still burning in his chest. He hadn't felt it again through the booking, the trial, the processing. . . But now they'd so thoughtfully reminded him.
       Tab Man spoke. "Jackson Greaves. You have reviewed the memories that are tied to your aberrant tendencies. Do you acknowledge?"
       Oh, this was it then. He had to choose between throwing away the life his mother had chosen for him, or wasting away in solitary confinement.
       "Do you acknowledge?"
       Jackson leaned forward in the pod, arms on knees. "Yeah, I acknowledge."
       Tab Man typed on his tab. The door behind him stood open. No sign of any security. Rasmina stared him, breathless as she waited for the big decision. Neither of them was armed -- no one carried weapons any longer, as no one committed any violence any longer.
       Neutered. His mother's voice, disdainful.
       He pushed himself out of the pod.
       Tab Man gave him a cursory glance but then turned his attention back to his tab. "And what, then, do you choose?" Confident. Oblivious.
       Jackson flexed his fists. "Tell me my choices again?"
       "Mandated erasure, or solitary confinement."
       "Yeah, I don't think so."
       "I'm sorry?" Tab Man looked up sharply. "What did you say?"
       Jackson edged around the two of them towards the door. "I think I'm just going to take a walk." He slipped through the door to the hallway.
       "What? No -- where are you--" The man's voice carried faintly along the hall as Jackson left the room behind. "Rasmina! What do we do?"
       "I don't know, sir," came the reply.
       Jackson turned down a few corridors, unchallenged. In fact, it seemed like everyone had left, if they'd been there at all. Doors didn't lock -- why bother when they'd run out of people to secure? It seemed they'd forgotten how. And finally, the last one opened to a sidewalk leading to the street.
       He stepped out into an island of peace and quiet, standing at the threshold of a place no one needed any longer. Hovercraft traffic moved in dense waves overhead, but the street in front of the facility had no takeoffs or landings. Just one hovercar parked and waiting, black with black tinted windows.
       A young woman leaned against the side, arms tucked in her pants pockets. Her skin was a pale brown, her face topped with tawny brown fly-away hair that crowned her head like a halo. She wore a black suit, a black shirt peeking out from under the jacket.
       Jackson stopped. "Who are you?"
       The woman smiled. "Hello, Mr. Greaves. Welcome to your new job." She tapped the car door open and stood aside as if she were holding it for him. Her mouth made a sardonic twist.
       His blood still singing with his newfound freedom, Jackson laughed. "I don't need your job."
       The smile broke into a grin. "I didn't offer you my job." She pointed at the car door, and while the good humor remained, something predatory flashed through her eyes. "But it's the only job offer you're going to get. And while I encourage you to take it, you certainly don't have to. I'd look forward to that too."
       Jackson shook his head. "Who the hell are you?"
       The woman shrugged. "I'm like you, dumbass. There are more like us. More than you think. Society still has a use for us, whether they know it or not." She made an impatient noise. "You getting in, or do I have to make you?"
       Jackson chuckled. The lithe, poised way she stood, he thought she could easily back up the threat with muscle. She looked. . . trained. And that alone was intriguing.
       She tapped her fingers on the door. "Come on, Jackson. We can't all be sheep, now, can we?"
       He got in the car.