Free The Proving by Ken Brosky Page A

apples for lunch.
    It was all fun and games until some creepy bug showed up to ruin everything. Cleo could remember being at that park just once. She’d been ten and Reza had been five, wearing Cleo’s old shorts and tripping over them. Cleo remembered hiding behind an apple tree, gripping the rough bark while she waited for little Reza to find her. She felt a tickle on the back of her hand.
    Then she looked down and saw the spider.
    “Someday, we won’t even need trees and plants,” Cleo said. “And then we won’t need spiders. Clan Athens is totally gonna pull it off. Won’t that be something? Won’t it be just totally awesome to get all of our food from a printer?”
    “No. What the heck are you talking about with spiders?”
    She turned to him and smiled. “Totally agree, bro-bro. I was being sarcastic. Kind of. Well, except for the whole spiders thing. You have to learn to pick up on that or kids are going to bust you up when you get to secondary school.”
    “Who cares? I don’t need other kids.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You’ve got your game so what else do you need, right?” Cleo shook her head. She had to fight the urge to shake her little brother and tell him the truth: it gets lonely. Sitting alone in a dark room writing code gets so lonely, and you start talking to yourself, and you start to change, and then you convince yourself that you don’t need other people, and then you get jealous that other people in class are becoming friends. And then you’re left hanging with the students who have been labeled “weirdos.” And they’re not weird, necessarily, but they sure as heck aren’t the most fun to eat lunch with.
    Pretty soon, you’re sitting in your room rebuilding an old bot mainframe while the rest of the city celebrates Carnivale. And the scariest part? You kind of like it.
    The car exited the freeway, entering the commercial district. Even with the morning sun the flashing lights and massive video ads seemed incredibly bright, casting blue and red and yellow glows over the mag-rail expressway, reflecting even more brightly off the silver guidance coils. Flashing text promised the benefits of health drinks, beautiful women modeled expensive clothing with overlong sleeves (sooo last year), and Athenian food companies touted the latest synthetic meats.
    “Maybe getting a little dangerous, fresh, country air will be nice,” Cleo said.
    “What are you, some kind of doo-doo brain?” Reza asked, eyes wide. As if it was a serious, non-hypothetical question. “There’s fresh air everywhere! It’s all fresh air. We’re going to be without our computers for hours. Hours!”
    Cleo smiled and held up her VRacelet. “You might not have a computer, but I do.”
    His wide brown eyes followed her wrist as she waved it side to side. “Did you hack it?”
    “Of course, bro-bro.”
    “Did you put any games on it? Tree Fight or Frantic Ferrets or Wild Aces?”
    “Maybe. I guess you’ll just have to be good to find out.” She reached into one of the small supply packs on her belt, pulling out a stick of Ultra-Fresh gum.
    “Hey! What gives? Do I have gum, too?”
    “Check your belt,” she said absently, watching the commercial district give way to smaller residential buildings. The nice downtown neighborhood, filled with important people and happy families who ate supper together every night.
    He reached in the same pack on his belt, pulling out a ration snack. He sniffed the package. “This smells like poop.”
    Cleo snickered. “Stinks to be you . . . literally!”
    The car pulled over in front of the Parliament building. They stepped outside, onto the pale sidewalk that led up a small hill. The building was broad and squat, dwarfed by a dozen much taller residential towers that kept a respectful distance. The building had a very modern feel to it, shaped like four rolling waves made of tinted glass. Each wave folded over into the other, as if a breeze was scraping across the surface of an