Free Regret by Elana Johnson Page A

technology, energy, water purification, protocol enforcement, medicine, and evolutionary development, just to name a few. Each Rise had a Thinker who ran the affairs in that particular area, but only one of them was Assistant to Director Hightower: Thane Myers.
    As I drifted through the Rise-canyons toward the Blocks, I forced the Directors from my mind, focusing instead on something more important: my snack selection. On Mondays, my two options included crackers and cheese or raisins. I chose the crackers every Monday.
    By the time I made it to Block Three, I’d moved on from snacks and spent a more than healthy amount of time fantasizing about Raine. I swept my palm across the panel on my front door and pushed into the living room, where my mom knelt in front of our safe, a slip of microchips in her hand.
    Everything froze, as if the Director had pressed the pause button on my life. Mom stalled with her hand halfway inside the safe. Her face held shock and fear and guilt, all of which I actually felt as my own emotions.
    I stared, my mouth still watering over the promise ofcrackers and cheese.
    Just as fast as we’d paused, life rushed forward again. The safe slammed shut, and Mom stood in front of it. Like that would erase the secret she’d just put inside. Like I wouldn’t be able to see the hulking black box behind her. It’s always been there, and I’d always been involved in the decisions about what we hid inside. Until now.
    “Gunner, you’re home early.”
    “Not really.” I dropped my backpack and hoverboard and headed into the kitchen for that snack. The safe screamed at me to look at it! but I kept my eyes on the floor. “Why are you home?” I called to Mom.
    I pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge and ordered up the crackers from the food-dispenser. Mom didn’t answer and she stayed in the living room, her frustration about my slobbish behavior a thin veil of normalcy over my heavy curtain of anxiety.
    “No reason,” she said when she came into the kitchen. “You’re going flying?”
    “Yeah, be back for dinner.” I ate on the way to the hoverboard track, but the crackers held no taste. The icy air I sliced through at the track felt just as restrictive as the rest of the city. As the rest of my life.
    All I could think about was that blasted sleeve of microchips,what they were, why my mom had hidden them without telling me.
    I flew my regulated hours, returned home at the appointed time. Just like always.
    Bedtime couldn’t come fast enough. At exactly ten o’clock, I plugged my cache into the mandatory transmissions, closed my eyes.
    Like I slept.
    After an hour that felt like forever, I unclipped my transmissions and crept downstairs to the safe. I had four minutes to plug back in, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Like I said, my mom and I didn’t used to keep secrets, so I knew the combination to the safe.
    Three minutes later the sleeve of microchips lay under my pillow and the transmissions reblared in my head.
    I needed time to think. So I lay awake, trying to imagine what I might see.
    I couldn’t.
    I popped the first chip into my wrist-port. My vision-screen filled with my mom’s remembrances. My past birthdays and, as I got older, my performances at the hoverboard flight trials. The second to last one held my victory last year. Mom was hiding her fondest memories of me, almost like she couldn’t hold them in her head anymore. Why would shesecure these without telling me?
    I slid the last chip into the port and nearly choked. Director Hightower sat at his desk; the surface glittered with clouded glass.
    He leaned forward to speak, and while he looked kind and fatherly, his voice came out full of steel and sternness.
    “Hello, Ms. Jameson. Our records indicate that the child we entrusted you with, Gunner, has considerable talent. The Association needs to begin his training as soon as possible. He will be summoned next Saturday, at six thirty a.m., for a personal appointment