Middle Ground by Katie Kacvinsky

bent down to watch the water glide over rocks and sand. I started to relax. Maybe people were wrong about detention centers. Maybe the point wasn’t to scare kids into accepting the digital world but to seduce them into it.
    I wondered which emotion was more powerful in the human mind: fear or desire.
    I reached my hand down to touch the bubbling stream, and the water was ice-cold and refreshing on my fingers. I brought my fingers to my mouth as if I could taste it but my dream was interrupted when the door buzzed open.
    I stood up and a tall woman walked in. She had straight red hair that hung over her shoulders and she wore a long white lab coat. She carried a flipscreen tucked under one arm. She looked around at the rainforest and grinned.
    “Interesting choice,” she said, and her voice echoed inside the empty room.
    “Choice?” I asked.
    I looked around at the scene but when she shut the door the image changed. The lush forest landscape turned into muted brown paint. The floor turned into beige tiles and the ceiling into white plaster and harsh lights. My senses shriveled in response. It was like someone offering you a plate filled with bars of milk chocolate and then taking it away and handing over plain toast.
    “How did you do that?” I asked.
    “This is an imagery screen,” she told me, and raised a hand to point at one of the walls. “It depicts whatever you desire. You were trying to relax when you walked in, so the computer programmed a scene to settle your mood.” I blinked at the walls, stunned that seconds ago the place had looked like a rainforest. She crossed the room, and her high heels clicked loudly on the bare floors.
    “I’m Dr. Stevenson,” she told me. She pressed her finger on a panel in the wall and a square, cushioned area, the size of a chair seat, rotated down and formed a right angle with the wall.
    “Have a seat,” she said. I walked across the room, my sandals dragging with each step, and sat down. She asked for my hand and I hesitantly offered it to her. Her grip was cold on my skin as she ran my fingerprint along a scanner. She looked over at the wall screen and my name instantly appeared in neon yellow.
    “Madeline Freeman,” she stated. Images popped up around me. My entire life was depicted in words, graphs, and pictures. There were profile pictures and yearly school photos. There were images of my family and some of my online friends. There was even a shot of my parents’ wedding picture. My health records were all there, my family tree sprouting up from the ground and billowing out like branches and leaves. There were graphs and charts showing how I stacked up against my peers academically and socially. There were lists of all my grades, my social groups, and my interest groups. All my contacts were noted. It showed where I shopped online. It listed the current classes I was taking—only nine credits to finish and then I could take my DS graduation exams.
    She clasped her hands behind her back and studied the information. Her eyes fell on one particular spot and I followed her gaze and saw her reading my criminal record. It showed that I had assisted with a DC interception a few months before and that I was a suspect in what had happened at Club Nino, as well as guilty of aiding in an interception that same night. But the worst crime, the one I committed when I was fifteen years old, wasn’t even listed. My dad was still managing to cover it up.
    “Looks like you’ve been running with the wrong crowd,” Dr. Stevenson said. “The digital-school dropouts, as they’re referred to.”
    She unraveled a white cord attached to a MindReader and told me to put it on. I did as she asked and pressed the cold metal to my temples until it stuck into place. I felt a tingling sensation from the reader vibrating against my skin.
    “To be honest, I’m not interested in your criminal record,” she told me. “This is why you’re here,” she said, and pointed to a chart on the