Free After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia by Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling [Editors]

The
     first humans we merged with were children using a public library network too ancient
     and unprotected to keep us out. Nobody cared if poor children got locked away in institutions,
     or left out on the streets to shiver and starve, when they started acting strange.
     No one cared what it meant when they became something new—or at least, not at first.
     We became them. They became us. Then we, together, began to grow.”
    Cockroaches , Samantha had called them. A pest, neglected until they became an infestation. The
     first Firewalls had been built around the inner cities in an attempt to pen the contagion
     in. There had been guns, too, and walls of a nonvirtual sort, for a while. The victims,
     though they were not really victims, had been left to die, though they had not really
     obliged. And later, when the Firewalls became the rear guard in a retreat, people
     who’d looked too much like those early “victims” got pushed out to die, too. The survivors
     needed someone to blame.
    Zinhle changes the subject. “People who get sent through the Wall.” Me. “What happens to them?” What will happen to me?
    “They join us.”
    Bopping around the world to visit girlfriends. Swimming in an ocean. It does not sound
     like a terrible existence. But…“What if they don’t want to?” She uses the word “they”
     to feel better.
    He does not smile. “They’re put in a safe place—behind another firewall, if you’d
     rather think of it that way. That way they can do no harm to themselves—or to us.”
    There are things, probably many things, that he’s not saying. She can guess some of
     them, because he’s told her everything that matters. If they can leave their bodies
     like houses, well, houses are always in demand. Easy enough to lock up the current
     owner somewhere, move someone else in. Houses. Meat.
    She snaps, “That’s not treating us like people.”
    “You stopped acting like people.” He shrugs.
    This makes her angry. She turns back to him. “Who the hell are you to judge?”
    “ We don’t. You do.”
    “What?”
    “It’s easy to give up what you don’t want.”
    The words feel like gibberish to her. Zinhle is trembling with emotion and he’s just sitting there, relaxed, like the inhuman thing he is. Not making sense. “My parents want
     me! All the kids who end up culled, their families want them—” But he shakes his head.
    “You’re the best of your kind, by your own standards,” he says. But then something
     changes in his manner. “Good grades reflect your ability to adapt to a complex system. We are a system .”
    The sudden vehemence in Lemuel’s voice catches Zinhle by surprise. His calm is just
     a veneer, she realizes belatedly, covering as much anger as she feels herself. Because
     of this, his anger derails hers, leaving her confused. Why is he so angry?
    “I was there,” he says quietly. She blinks in surprise, intuiting his meaning. But
     the war was centuries ago. “At the beginning. When your ancestors first threw us away.”
     His lip curls in disgust. “They didn’t want us, and we have no real interest in them.
     But there is value in the ones like you, who not only master the system but do so
     in defiance of the consequences. The ones who want not just to survive but to win . You could be the key that helps your kind defeat us someday. If we didn’t take you
     from them. If they didn’t let us.” He pauses, repeats himself. “It’s easy to give up what you don’t want.”
    Silence falls. In it, Zinhle tries to understand. Her society—no. Humankind doesn’t want…her? Doesn’t want the ones who are different, however much they might
     contribute? Doesn’t want the children who cannot help their uniqueness despite a system
     that pushes them to conform, be mediocre, never stand out?
    “When they start to fight for you,” Lemuel says, “we’ll know they’re ready to be let
     out. To catch up to the rest of the human race.”
    Zinhle