Reached

have no time to waste. “I have to go to work,” I say. “But there’s something I need to know.”
    “Of course,” he says. “What is it?” His eyes are sharp and keen.
    “Have you ever,” I ask him, “taken something that didn’t belong to you?”
    He doesn’t answer me. I see a flicker of surprise in his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s surprised at the question or that I know to ask it. Then he nods.
    “From the Society?” I whisper, so quietly I can barely hear myself.
    But he understands. He reads the words on my lips. “Yes,” he says.
    And looking at him, I know that he has more to tell me. But I don’t want to hear it. I’ve heard enough. If he admits even to this, then what they say could be true. His sample could be in danger.
    “I’ll come back later,” I promise, and I turn and run down the path, under the red-bud trees.

    Work is different today. Norah, my usual supervisor, is nowhere to be found, and I don’t recognize many of the people at the sorting center.
    An Official takes charge of the room as soon as we are all in our places. “Today’s sort is slightly different,” he says. “It’s an exponential pairwise sort, using personal data from a subset of the Society.”
    The people from the Arboretum were right. They said this was the kind of sort I’d do today. And they told me more than the Society does now. The woman at the Arboretum said that the data was for the upcoming Match Banquet.
My
Banquet. The Society should not be sorting this close to the Banquet. And the people from the Arboretum said that some of those who should be included in the Matching pool had been left out, on purpose, by the Society. These people’s data exists in the Society’s database, but isn’t going to be in the pool. If I do what the man and woman from the Arboretum ask, I will change that.
    The man and woman said that these other people belong in the pool, that it’s unfair to leave them out. Just as it’s unfair to leave Grandfather out from having his sample preserved.
    I’m doing it for Grandfather, but I’m also doing it for me. I want to have my
real
Match, with
all
the possibilities included.
    When I access the additional data and nothing happens, no alarm sounds, I breathe a tiny inward sigh of relief. For myself, that I am not yet caught, and for whomever it is that I have put back into the pool.
    The data is in numbers, so I don’t know their names or even what the numbers correspond to; I only know what’s ideal, which ones should go with the others, because the Official has told us what to look for. I’m not changing the procedure of the sort itself, just adding to the data pool.
    The Society should have special sorters to do this, in Central. But they’re not using them, they’re using us. I wonder why. I think of the criteria the Arboretum workers said made me perfect for what they wanted me to do. Could the Society have used the same criteria? I’m fast, I’m good, and I’ll . . . forget? What does that mean?
    “Won’t they trace the sort back to me?” I asked the people at the Arboretum.
    “No,” the woman said. “We’ve infiltrated the Matching logs and can reroute your selections so that it will substitute a false identification number instead of yours. If someone decides to investigate later, it will be as if you were never there at all.”
    “But my supervisor will know me,” I protested.
    “Your supervisor will not be present for this sort,” the man told me.
    “And the Officials—”
    The woman interrupted me. “The Officials won’t remember names or faces,” she said. “You’re machines to them. If we substitute a false identification code and a false picture, they won’t remember who was really there.”
    And this, I realized, is why the Society doesn’t trust technology. It can be overridden and manipulated. Like people, whom the Society also does not trust.
    “But the other sorters—” I began.
    “Trust us,” the man said. “They won’t remember.”
    We’ve finished at last.
    I finally look up from the screen. For the first time, my eyes meet those of the other people who have been working on this sort. And I feel nervous. The man and woman from the Arboretum were wrong. Today has been different, out of the ordinary, for all of the sorters in this room. No matter what, I
will
remember the other workers here—that girl’s freckles, that man’s tired eyes. And they’ll remember me.
    I’m going to get