Swipe

holdover from the late pre-Unity period and flashier than the modest, practical ( boring ) clothes worn these days, but Dane liked how it made him look different from the other students at Spokie Middle. His own quiet rebellion.
    “November for me,” Logan said. “Can’t say I’m very much looking forward to it, though.”
    “Why not?” Dane asked, kicking another kid’s leg.
    “Hey, watch it!” The kid swung around, but his expression immediately brightened when he saw it was Dane. “Dane! How ya been? Find me at lunch, okay?” Logan didn’t know the guy, but it never ceased to amaze him how much everyone liked Dane.
    “You got it,” Dane said. Then he turned back to Logan and continued their conversation as if uninterrupted. “Why wouldn’t you want the Mark?”
    “Well . . . you know . . . my sister,” Logan said, and Dane stopped dead in his tracks.
    “I forgot,” he said sincerely. “I’m sorry.” It was moments like this that made him such a good friend.
    Dane elected to stay in the hall another few minutes, joking around and teasing girls he thought were cute, but Logan was eager to get to class. Even in school he worried about being followed, and in the hallways it was always too crowded to tell for sure who was watching. Logan hated crowds.
    Being the first one in, he had his pick of seats, so as usual, Logan chose a back row desk in the corner. He liked to be able to see the whole room in front of him, with his back to the wall. More comfortable that way. Safer.
    The rest of his classmates arrived in a trickle at first, like a leak from the flood of students outside, but by the time the bell rang, the room was buzzing with the same crowded energy as the halls, and Logan thought of this as a cruel trick of osmosis. He was glad to have no one behind him.
    “Hello, world,” Mr. Arty said, just as Mr. Arty had every morning for twenty years.
    “Hello, Mr. Arty,” the students said in a lackadaisical attempt at unison.
    It was only their first day of school, but all of the kids in Spokie Middle already knew Mr. Arty well, as he’d taught each of them since the first grade. Mr. Arty was famous in Spokie, known well by parents and students as the best computer programming teacher around, and that was in large part because Mr. Arty was a computer program himself.
    Not one to waste time with small talk or tangents, Mr. Arty launched straight into the day’s lesson, appearing in holographic form on everyone’s tablet computers simultaneously, each instance of him discussing with passion the intricacies of how one might go about passing the Turing Test.
    2
    The rest of the morning was a blur. History this year would focus on the period leading up to the States War and the founding of DOME following the success of the Mark Program in Europe. Mrs. Henry began with a speech trying to personalize the subject for her students by asking any who’d gotten the Mark over the summer to raise their hands and share a little bit about their experience.
    “I got a job at the supermarket,” one boy said. “It’s nice to be eligible for work.”
    “I’m looking forward to voting,” a girl admitted, and the teacher nodded.
    “That’s right,” she said. “Parliamentary elections this spring. Certainly couldn’t have come at a more fascinating time in politics. Has anyone here been following the story between General Lamson and Cylis? Would anyone like to share their thoughts about that?”
    Logan raised his hand not once throughout the discussion. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Mrs. Henry much wanted to hear about his family’s experiences with the Mark Program; something about his sister’s story didn’t quite seem to fit with the day’s lesson plan.

    In math, they learned about imaginary numbers. In art, they drew holograms. In English, they analyzed the themes and common symbolism of modern post-Unity literature.
    At lunch, they discussed the new girl.
    It wasn’t often that Spokie got a transfer student from another town—there might have been one new student a year, maybe — and whoever it was invariably became the topic of all September and early October gossip.
    “You met her yet?” Dane asked, taking a bite out of his sandwich before he interrupted himself with a look of mild disgust.
    “What’s the matter?” Logan asked.
    “ Quorn .” He held it out. “I’ll trade you.”
    Logan scrunched his nose and shook his head. He knew full well that meat was hard to come by