“Not safe to go much past the fence. Mean people live in them houses across the field. At night, they sit out there and drink beer and turn spotlights on us. They call it the neighborhood watch. We call them spotlighters.”

“How long has that gone on?” I ask.

“They’ve come and gone for a long time. But now it’s every night. On the news, Senator Vaughn told his Priders they got to watch us at all times. And it’s even worse since new amps started showing up here. Spotlighters came out and built that fence without asking. Made a lot of people mad, but nobody did nothing about it.”

Together, we stare silently at the shining fence. It looks metallic and alien next to the organic decay of Eden. A grasshopper flitters past and lands on Nick’s arm. He brushes it off, breaks the reverie.

“Look,” he says, “I ain’t trying to get in your business or nothing. But I told you everything about me and Eden, so you’ve got to tell me all about you. Like what you’re doing here. Fair is fair.”

Nick looks up at me, thrusting out his pointed chin, curious and demanding. But mostly demanding.

“I don’t have any other place to go,” I say. “Same as the others. Things are complicated right now. Luckily, there are a lot of people in Eden who are like us because of the Uplift program.”

“You mean the government cheese?” Nick points at the yellowish nub on his temple. “They came and gave these yellow ones to everybody around here and then they got all mad at us for having them. Pretty stupid.”

“I agree.”

Nick stands quietly, watching the distant low houses beyond the brown grass. It might as well be the shoreline of another world.

“So that’s it?” he asks. “You’re hiding, like all the rest?”

“That’s it,” I say, wondering if it’s true.

“I don’t believe you,” he says.

“Really?”

“Nah. I get the feeling you’re here to do something.”

I don’t say anything. I’m a little taken aback by how confident the kid is. Nick’s hands go back to fluttering over the Rubik’s cube in little spurts of speed. He solves it, smirks at it. Starts mixing up the squares again.

“Do you ever wish that you were a regular kid? A reggie?” I ask.

Nick snorts. “I could barely see before I got the retinal. Could barely think without Autofocus. And you’re asking me if I want to have the dumbs? No thanks. I’d rather be weird and know it than be a stupid ass.”

I can’t help but feel like I’m speaking to an adult.

“What about you?” asks Nick.

“Me?”

“Yeah. You want to be a reggie?”

“It would make life a lot easier.”

Nick stops, frowns at me. “Would it?” he asks.

General Biologics to Close US Offices

PITTSBURGH—The General Biologics corporation, makers of the popular Neural Autofocus^® brain implant, announced today that it will be closing the main offices in downtown Pittsburgh as well as satellite offices around the country.

A company spokesman indicated that it was impossible to continue in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, saying, “Recent decisions in the US courts have created an incredibly hostile environment here in the United States—not only for our clients but also for our workers and their families.”

Several weeks ago, an explosion at a Pittsburgh laboratory claimed the life of Dr. David Gray, a General Biologics medical researcher. Despite increased security at other research facilities, the threat of violence has become a day-to-day factor for many employees.

The spokesman said the company will likely be moving the bulk of its in-patient operations and production facilities to an as-yet-undisclosed location in Europe. Approximately five hundred employees, many of them highly skilled factory workers, have been invited to move with the company, although it is unclear how many will accept the offer.

The current product line is due to be phased out over the coming months, and American patients with existing implants will be provided with emergency care only.

When night hits Eden, the close-packed trailers light up with ratty old strings of paper lanterns, citronella candles, and the fleeting streaks of kids playing with flashlights.

I sit with Jim on his dimly lit deck, a crusty folding chair biting into my ass. The old man hands me a cold beer and we watch the nightlife of the park settle into the shadows. He doesn’t speak and by now it doesn’t surprise me.

Jim was right—battle lines are being drawn. Every third trailer or so lurks dark and empty. There are hardly any unmarked temples left in Eden—all the pure humans have packed up and moved on. In their place, harried families of amps have arrived from miles around. Renting the empties. Their gleaming new cars stud the parking lot. Newcomers are coagulating here at random, many of them with nothing in common except those little flecks of metal in their brains.

They’re not here because Eden is safe or even welcoming. They’re here because there’s no other place to go. Nowhere else to rent or go to school or work. No more options. We’re all running for our lives, in one way or another. Being left alone is the best we can ask for.

And we can’t even get that.

I’m startled by how soon I get used to the spotlighters. The winking scrape of their lights over our trailers seems to live in my peripheral vision. Occasional gunfire and hooting laughter come from beyond the fence.

The local amps seem unimpressed. Across the way, a stained slab of concrete sits where some repossessed trailer used to live. A shirtless guy has got a clamp light hanging from a tree branch, the extension cord running to his trailer. It illuminates an old door supported by two sawhorses. Tools and empty beer bottles are scattered around the makeshift workbench. The guy is ignoring the field, busily fixing the knees of a plastic exoskeleton that’s sprawled out like a corpse.

A fiery red dot sizzles across my vision. It’s a teenager in a hoodie, jogging past. He’s carrying a crummy old boom box that amplifies music from a portable player tucked in his pocket. The node on his temple throbs in time to the beat. A neon attachment the kid has made himself. I don’t know if he’s proud of being an amp or just oblivious to the stigma. Either way, the implant is impossible to miss.

All the ephemeral sounds of Eden—the low hum of campfire conversation, kids panting and laughing, the occasional shriek of an air tool, and even the distorted thump of bass lines—combine into a familiar babble. Human lives unfolding. It’s comforting. Somehow, Eden is an honest-to-God functioning community. Pushed out here to the margins of society and huddling together for sanity but operating nonetheless.

Almost normal people living almost normal lives.

“I’m getting tired of the silent treatment, Jim. Why am I being hunted?” I ask. “What is the Zenith?”

Jim hushes me.

“Don’t say that word so loud. Only a handful of people in the world know what it means. If you were smart, you’d wish you weren’t one of them.”

Jim looks around, suspicious. He continues, voice lowered. “It’s an implant like any other. Won’t make you a superhero. Just helps your brain process the world.”

“I need to know more than that, Jim. A lot more.”

“I can’t be responsible for you if you get hurt. I already done enough damage. Look at this place,” says Jim. “And we thought we were helping these people.”

Eden may feel calm right this instant, but tension crackles just beneath every movement. Every sound. It’s a fragile picture of normalcy, wavering in the reflection of a soap bubble.