Smacking Back (A YA Short Story)



  Smacking Back

  (A Short Story)

  Copyright © 2013 Laura Bradley Rede

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express, written consent of the copyright holder. Smacking Back is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

  Smacking Back originally appeared in a special YA issue of Coyote Wild magazine.

  Smacking Back

  Laura Bradley Rede

  Smacking is a crime like meatspace rape, but people don't see it that way. It's been a crime since back in 2031, Jackson versus Holver. (It looked me up.) Even the name “smacking” comes from that court case – "Scanning the Mind in the Absence of Consent." A person can do meatspace time for that – not just denial of access codes or execution of avatar, real physical confinement. So you can guess that upping or downing on someone without their consent would be at least that bad. Wait. It's looking me up right now. Yep, like five years in prison.

  I look across the cafeteria to where York and Brian and Zan and are sitting at their usual table and I try to think of them as criminals. It's hard to do – hard even for me, and I know what they are capable of. They are just too beautiful to be criminals, and I don't just mean their avatars, because I can see them in meatspace, too. My access rig is really olden, totally external. It's built into a pair of glasses like they used to wear in the time before gen-mod fixed people's vision problems. The brain interface is set in the part that curves behind my ear. The screens are in the lenses. It's a lot more cumbersome than the contacts people have now with their optic nerve access, but my parents are teachers, yep? We haven't got the credit for that. And my olden rig has one big advantage: I can look at the screens and see someone’s avatar, or look over the lenses and see her as she really physically looks.

  In the case of someone like York, the two things are different, but they're both beautiful. Personally I think it’s silly for genetically modified kids to have avatars – it’s a redundancy of beauty, layering the neuronet generated image over their genetically modified bodies. But a lot of the gen-mods still do it. I guess for someone like York, too much is never enough. This week, York's avatar is an angel: big white wings, wide blue eyes, rosebud lips, standard avatar “ten” rating body with its big breasts and nipped-in waist. Her long blond hair is in constant motion, like she’s standing in a breeze.

  The meatspace York is shorter and more athletic looking, the kind of girl who belongs on the top of a cheerleader pyramid. Her hair is a spiky pixie cut but it's just as blond as her avatar’s and her eyes are just as blue.

  Brian looks a lot like his avatar, too. (Frankly, I don't think that he is bright enough to come up with anything too different.) In meatspace, Brian is a football-player. He’s gen mod like York, but his genes have been modified for strength, not beauty. On the neuronet his avatar is a hulking, muscle bound guy with flaming hair in our school’s colors, silver and blue (which, if you ask me, is taking school spirit way too far.)

  Zan is a special case. A few years back he used to be into the whole Imp thing – you know, gen mod kids who decide to reject perfection and embrace Imperfection by mucking up the designer bodies Mommy and Daddy chose for them. They pierce and tattoo and scar like olden "punks." (Let it look you up. It’s pretty mint.) Imps don’t do avatars. They're totally meatspace, very analog, but I guess Zan gave up the Imp thing. His piercings are all healed over and most of the scar patterns on his cheeks have been removed. His hair is back to its natural black and his tattoos must all have been two-year-fades because they're almost completely gone, dulled to gray ghosts under his skin, so you can barely make out the names of the Imp bands he doesn't listen to any more. These days he's into Ray-beat and Crystalline music, so of course his avatar is black with a smooth-shaved head. Nothing like the real Zan of course, but equally brooding, equally intense.

  Zan is extremely handsome.

  But he is still a criminal.

  And of course I will be one, too, if everything goes according to plan.

  I try to block it out. I don't look like a criminal either. My avatar is just a one-off. We couldn't afford anything too different from the “real me," so my avatar is just a slightly airbrushed version of myself: no zits, hair not so stringy, no space between my front teeth, but otherwise the same pale, skinny little me. I could have squirreled my credit and paid for a more “deluxe” model, one with a bra size in the positive numbers, but what good would it do me? Everyone I know has seen what I really look like and I’m not going to be one of those girls who scrape the Net for virtual affection. I know that beggars can't be choosers but the thought of sex in virtual has always freaked me out. Last year, Krystal Karr and her boyfriend D’Shall were called out for having net sex during class and D’Shall was my lab partner. Pretty frail, yep?

  Soon, of course, all this won't matter, because I'm sure I will be caught for what I'm about to do and I'm sure that part of the punishment will be texile: technical exile, kicked off the neuronet, denial of access codes and – yes – execution of my sorrific little avatar. All that is for certain, although I'm not sure how long the texile will last. That info is trying to look me up right now. I can feel the net sending it at me again and again, trying to respond to the question in my mind. But I’m blocking like mad so the info just bounces off my defenses like a flock of sparrows off a picture window. Finally I get fed up and let one in.

  Fifteen years. The texile is fifteen years.

  The thought makes me gasp, which is a big mistake because it gets York's attention. She looks up at me and smiles. I'm looking over the top of my glasses so I get her smile in stereo, both she and her avatar hitting me with a double dose of pretty. She turns to Brian and the two of them get up in unison and start walking towards me, Zan shuffling behind them. Ordinarily, I might try to run, but today I fight the urge and stay planted on the bench of my cafeteria table – my usual spot, where I sit alone.

  "Cassie!" York smiles warmly at me. "What's down?"

  "Nothing," I say, "what's down with you?"

  "Oh, you know." She fiddles with her necklace. It's one of the new kinds, with the tiny colored chaser lights tapped into the net. Hers are pulsing in time to a song I can’t hear, but I'm pretty sure Zan can because his head bobs in perfect time to the flashes. "Life’s pretty mint," says York. "Except I was busy at cheer practice last night, and I never got a chance to crack that file – what was it called? You know, with the bugs?"

  "Lord of the Flies," I say.

  Her face brightens. "Oh!" she says, "so you read it? Then you don't mind if we down it, yep? I mean, I’d gladly just get it off the net, but since Mrs. Hollis is so frail about that sort of shit, since she walled us out of any net sites about the book... You don't mind to you?"

  I can never get over how York can be so polite about raping my brain. She is looking at me expectantly, her blue eyes wide. I want to yell read it yourself! But after the first few times, I learned to not say anything. It doesn't do any good. Better to save my energy for recovering when they’re done.

  But this time is different.

  "No." I say it so quietly that even I can barely hear it, but I know York has heard me because her blue eyes narrow and the blond hair of her avatar begins to blow faster, like a storm is coming in.

  "What did you say?"

  "No." I say it a little louder this time. The boys exchange a look. Brian looks excited, like a dog that smells a steak. Zan just looks nervous.

  "No?" York's voice is quiet and fierce. She leans so close to me that I can smell her cherry lip gloss. “Maybe you didn'
t hear me, Cassie, but I didn't have time to crack the file and the test is today so you are going to let my friends and I down that scam book or you will get Smacked again, you understand? These boys and I are going to hack your head."

  I could give it to them, but it wouldn't help. There's always something more, some last answer they think they need, something they think I'm withholding. They will Smack me no matter what. And today? Today it's part of the plan.

  I don't say anything.

  "Fine," says York. "Let's go."

  Zan and Brian are on either side of me in an instant, half lifting me off the cafeteria bench, propelling me through the bustling lunch room. York walks a little ahead of them chatting about nothing in a loud, happy voice, waving casually at friends as we pass. Everyone is