Free The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow Page A

they would be pretty hostile to R&D in a place that isn’t supposed to change.”
    “Well, when the whole world is changing all the time, it takes a lot of R&D to respond to it so that you don’t change along with it. Some of them are pretty good. I looked up their bios. They were highly respected before they became wireheads. Mellowing out your emotions shouldn’t interfere with your science anyway.”
    “Are they trying to cure your immortality or replicate it?”
    I turned to look at her. “What do you mean? Cure it, of course.”
    “Really? If they don’t want any change, wouldn’t it make sense to infect everyone with it?”
    “It makes a perverse kind of sense, I suppose. If you were into conspiracy theories, it would be believable. But I know these guys—they don’t have it in them to lie to me, or to make me sad on purpose. That’s the good thing about living here: you can always be sure that the people around you are every bit as nice as they seem. Sincere.”
    “If you say so,” she said. Even though she didn’t have an antenna, I could feel her skepticism. Fine, be skeptical. Wireheads didn’t scheme, they just
did stuff
, that was what it meant to be a wirehead. She nuzzled my neck. I turned my head and we kissed. It was weird with the lights on.
    I broke it off and said, “I’ve got to get to the lab.” The Flea was running in little circles and chiding me, making the point. I pulled on my jumpsuit and zipped it up.
    “Will you be long?”
    I shrugged. “Couple hours,” I said. “Don’t answer the door, OK? I mean, just lay low. Stay here. My neighbors—”
    “I get it,” she said. “Don’t want to get kidnapped and wired up, right?”
    “They won’t kidnap you. Just put the question to you and kick you out if you give the wrong answer.”
    She opened her arms. “Come give me a kiss goodbye, my brave protector,” she said. I leaned in and let her give me a hard hug and a harder kiss. The hug felt like that first night, when it was just the chance to have a human being holding me; the kiss felt like the night before, when we’d done things I’d never given much thought to.
    “Love you, Jimmy,” she whispered fiercely in my ear.
    Dad used to say that a lot. “You too,” I said, because it was what I always said to him.
    - - -
    The sun was high and the day was crisp, the kind of weather that made you forget just how hot it could be in the summer. Drifts of colored leaves rustled around me as the bare trees sighed in the wind. The sun was bright and harsh. I’d been through many of these autumns, but I’d never had a day that felt this
autumnal
, this crisp and real and vivid.
    There were plenty of wireheads out and about. Some of them were driving transports filled with staple crops grown in our fields. Some were chatting with traders, who blew through town every day. Some were just sitting on a bench and smiling and nodding at the passers-by, which might as well be the cult’s national sport.
    They greeted me, one and all. Everyone knew me and no one asked me nosy questions about my . . . condition. Everyone knew enough to know that I was just the kid who wouldn’t grow up, and that I could give them a fine show if they came and knocked on my door.
    Normally that felt good. Today, it loomed over me, oppressing me. They’d all have heard about Lacey by now. They were seeing me walk down the street, so they knew that Lacey must be alone in the Carousel. They’d be thinking together, wondering about her, thinking about going over there to find out when she’d be signing up for her wire. And that was the one thing I
didn’t
want. Lacey had managed to change over the past twenty years, becoming an adult, leaving behind Treehuggerism, having adventures. Turning into a woman. I didn’t want her frozen in time the way we all were. I didn’t want to be frozen in time anymore. Besides, she knew my secret now, that my antenna didn’t work the way everyone else’s did. If