“Don’t forget that Connor is still counting on you,” dead Sonia reminds her. “It’s all up to you and Grace’s good-for-nothing brother. Connor had a plan. Come through for him!”
The ground shakes again. Chandeliers overhead tinkle, threatening to plunge, and suddenly something else in the antique shop comes into focus. The eighty-eight faces of Divan’s dread instrument now loom behind Sonia.
“Something the matter, dear?”
But before Risa can speak, all the eyes open in unison, to stare her down in mute accusation.
She bolts awake unable to catch her breath, finding herself alone in a dark airborne night, rife with turbulence.
• • •
Cam’s dreams, usually more disjointed than the dreams of others, coalesce tonight out of the meaningless memory snippets of his internal community, into something almost tangible. Before him is a marble staircase that seems to have no end. He climbs it until reaching a temple, a gleaming white Parthenon, its pillars evenly spaced and perfectly carved. The whole structure seems to be of one piece, as if it were hewn right out of the stone of the mountain. Inside, larger than life, are golden statues to the gods of Proactive Citizenry, and there, at the far end, is a statue of Roberta.
“Lay yourself on my altar,” she commands. “The blood of many must be spilled, and you, Cam, hold the blood of many.” Her voice is so compelling, Cam doesn’t know how much longer he can resist it.
• • •
Grace dreams that she’s on the diving platform again—the one she refused to leap from as a child. Only this time, it’s so high, she’s at cruising altitude. Argent is down below, urging her to jump, but she can’t because she has a baby in her arms. Someone storked her a baby. Why would someone do that to her? She nears the edge of the platform, and as she does, she realizes it’s not a baby in her arms at all. She’s holding the organ printer.
“Jump, Gracie,” yells Argent, too far away to be seen. “You’re ruining it for everybody.”
And so, holding on to the printer, she leaps toward a pool so far below, it seems the size of a postage stamp.
• • •
Lev’s dream is far simpler than any of the others on this night. He finds himself in the yellowing treetops of an urban park, above the park bench on which he actually sleeps. In his dream, he leaps weightless from limb to limb until there’s nowhere left to go, because the trees give way to an expanse of water. So he holds tightly to the last tree, watching the light of the moon dance on the waters, his eyes drawn to the statue on its own little island in the harbor, knowing that dawn will come all too soon.
57 • Broadcast
“Friends, it is with deep, deep regret that I inform you that the Parental Override bill has just been passed by the House of Representatives, and is now on its way to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass. For those of you living under, hiding beneath, or being smashed in the head by a rock, this means that the Juvenile Authority is one step closer to being able to go into a home—any home—and round up anyone between their thirteenth and seventeenth birthdays, and have them unwound without parental consent. All they’ll need to do is prove ‘incorrigibility,’ by a loose legal definition.
“The good news here—if any of this can be called good news—is that Parental Override is still just a bill. It still needs to pass in the Senate, and be signed into law by the president. But I assure you it will become the law of the land if we don’t do something to stop it.
“Today I don’t speak to the supporters of Parental Override. I don’t speak to its opponents, either. I’m talking to those of you out there who are sitting silently, allowing this to happen. All of you out there who know it’s wrong, but are too terrified of clappers, and the angry kids on your corner, and maybe even your own kids to speak out against it. You think it’s out of your hands, but that’s not true! These things aren’t happening because of some government conspiracy. I mean, sure, big-money interests are trying to push it through, but there’s always big money lobbying for influence in Washington. That’s nothing surprising, and nothing new. No, if this happens, we made it happen. We chose fear over hope. We chose to beat our children into submission. Is that the world you want to live in?
“The bill won’t worm its way to a Senate vote until November, which means we will get a chance to have our say. Now, more than ever, we need to rally. Remember—we meet at dawn on Monday, November first—All Saints’ Day—on the National Mall, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. Whether we have ten in our uprising, or ten thousand, we need to make our voices heard. Or the next time someone hears your voice, it might be in someone else’s throat.”
58 • Jersey Girl
The ferry to Liberty Island has not changed much in a hundred years. Newer boats, perhaps, but even the new ones look like something from a bygone era. There was talk about building a subway line underneath the bay that connected the great lady to the mainland, but, for once, sanity prevailed, the project was killed, and the statue remained accessible only by overcrowded, overpriced ferry. It remained a key rite of the New York tourist experience.
As in all high-profile locations, there are plenty of security measures in place—NYPD officers, Juvey-cops, and various rent-a-cops are all over Battery Park, where the ferries board, as well as on the ferries themselves, and, of course, on Liberty Island—but on the island, the NYPD is replaced by New Jersey police, since Miss Liberty is technically a part of the Garden State. It’s something New Yorkers are in denial about—that Liberty Island is really part of New Jersey. Regardless, there is no shortage of intimidating firepower, because liberty is not protected by tranquilizers. Mostly it’s protected by lethal ceramic bullets, the kind specially designed to kill clappers without blowing them up in the process.