Glitch by Heather Anastasiu Page B

confusing emotions and could help me understand.
    “Have you ever fallen? In love, I mean?”
    He laughed again but it sounded different, higher pitched than normal. He shifted in his seat. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”
    I nodded. I guessed not even someone who was born outside of the Community could know everything. We were quiet a few moments, but it was a comfortable quiet. Silence usually meant I was glitching, which meant I was separate and all alone, but this was strange—it was a together kind of quiet. I studied Adrien’s profile, his long face and the triangle shadows underneath his sharp cheekbones.
    “Can you tell me more about the Rez?”
    He looked at me, a small smile on his face.
    “I suppose now that you’re here, you’ll probably meet some of them soon. And other Gifteds, like us. Some of us were born out here, outside of the Community, and others escaped. There’s plenty of people out here in hiding, on the run, out on deserted land or in abandoned buildings. Not everyone’s in the Rez. Me and Mom, we were on our own for a while. She didn’t want anything to do with the Rez, not that she’ll tell me why. I think she had some vision of it.” His smile ebbed as he looked in the direction she’d left.
    “Anyway, I got tired of living on the run instead of fighting back. When my Gift started coming in, I dunno.” He shrugged. “For me, it’s like I knew life was supposed to be bigger—that I was supposed to be doing something more. With the things I’ve seen—the drone labor in the mines, not to mention the farms—”
    He shuddered. “I just knew that a Gift like mine meant, I dunno,” he looked up, “it meant that I had a responsibility to use it well.”
    I knew so little about the world he had seen, but his feelings connected with something deep inside me, a sharp pang of recognition.
    “Duty,” I said, nodding slowly. “Duty is important.” It was something we were taught in the Community. A wave of guilt swept through me. Just yesterday I had thought duty meant turning myself in to the Regulators. Now I didn’t know what to think.
    Adrien seemed to sense my confusion.
    “Duty is important when you’re working for something worthwhile,” he amended.
    “But how do you tell the difference?” I frowned. “Good and bad look the same sometimes.”
    He shrugged. “You just gotta keep asking questions to find out more. And then just follow your intuition. Your conscience.”
    “Conscience?”
    “Oh, right.” He sounded surprised, giving a small laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t know. It’s, uh, knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. Your conscience is the part of you that makes you want to do good and help people.”
    I looked at him quizzically. “It’s part of me? Where?”
    He laughed again. It was a warm hearty sound that made my chest curl in happiness. “Sorry, you’d think I’d be better at explaining all of this by now. Usually I have more time to prepare a glitcher for the outside world. And being around you, I just get…”
    His face colored as he looked away. “Anyway, a conscience isn’t like a physical part of you. It’s just there, or it should be there, in everyone. It’s part of what makes us human. Sometimes you can feel it. Right here.” He reached out, hesitating just above my heart monitor, pausing. Then he looked into my eyes and dropped his hand.
    I frowned. “But what about my Gift? Where does that come from?”
    Adrien scooted back in his chair. “The easy answer is evolution. That’s how I always start off explaining it anyway. They started shunting around with our brains and inserting all that cracking hardware. They thought they could get total control over people. But they forgot one of the basics of life on Earth—” His eyes sparkled as he leaned in, grinning conspiratorially. “—organisms adapt!”
    “Old World scientists called it ‘plasticity.’ Basically, the brain can rewire itself even