Page 11 of The Dream Hotel

T hey reach the summit in the afternoon. While Elias takes pictures, Sara drops her backpack at the foot of the rusty sign marked Hulm Peak and advances, knees weak, toward the railing. Beyond the steep drop-off, the valley is a sea of green, with majestic ponderosa pines stretching for miles in every direction. The sight of three-hundred-year-old trees never fails to bring her clarity; however great they may seem, her fears and joys and regrets and desires are ephemeral in the end. She stretches her arms, rubs the soreness from her back. From the mesh pockets of her backpack, she pulls out a bottle of water and a bag of trail mix. “Want some?”

“Thanks,” Elias says, taking a handful of nuts. Then he turns his gaze on the horizon, where the sunlight has begun to dissolve behind white clouds. “It’s getting late.”

A mosquito hums in Sara’s ear, and she swats at it before sitting down on a boulder nearby. “I told you it was a bad idea to take that detour. It added a couple of hours at least.”

“It was pretty, though, wasn’t it?” He unlaces and relaces one of his hiking boots, tying it off with a double knot. “Anyway, we should head back.”

“But we just got here.” She leans against the rock, runs her hand on a patch of moss, wondering what this type is called. Just the other day she heard a segment on the radio about how there were thousands of species of moss. Perched on a nearby tree, a bluebird is watching her with great curiosity, its head tilted in her direction.

Meanwhile Elias walks the perimeter of the viewpoint, taking a few pictures with his phone camera. Every time they go hiking, he takes dozens of photos; it’s as if he’s afraid of not remembering what the landscape looks like. He tells her again they should head back. “The trail closes at sunset, and we don’t want to get locked in the parking lot.” When she doesn’t respond, he presses. “Sara, we really have to go. Come on, I’ll carry your backpack.”

With a sigh, she gets up and follows. If only he’d listened to her, they could’ve had a leisurely hike, instead of whatever this was. A race to the top? The whole point of a hike is taking the time to enjoy nature. At least they’re going downhill now, though she should be careful not to walk too fast, it will strain her knees.

It is a warm weekday afternoon, and the trail is empty. The drone of mosquitoes, the chirping and clicking of critters in the bushes, the crunching of dirt under their shoes—these keep them company as they get to the river. The water is fast, full of runoff from a recent snowstorm in the Sierras. Elias steps onto the bridge, an old structure made of uneven slats that dates back to the last century, with rope handrails that seem to have been added almost as an afterthought. Pulling out his phone from his pocket, he starts to take pictures again.

“I need a break,” Sara complains from the bank. Her arms are dotted with red bites; she has to reapply bug repellent. She scratches herself, her nails drawing blood.

“Come on,” Elias calls, motioning for her to hurry up. “We gotta go.”

Why is he like this? Can’t he see how miserable she is? It’s too late for bug repellent, she needs the soothing gel that’s in one of the backpacks.

She steps onto the bridge, and now he turns his phone camera on her. “Smile!”

The last thing she wants is a picture; her skin is on fire. “Get that thing off my face,” she says, swatting his hand. The gesture knocks the phone to the ground, and Elias falters to the side. On instinct he reaches for the rope railing, but the two packs on his back unsettle him and in the blink of an eye he falls into the water, thirty feet below.

“Elias!” Sara shouts as she rushes to the railing. “Elias!” The river is loud, muffling her cries, and so fast that it froths like milk around the boulders. There’s no sign of Elias anywhere; it’s as if the water has swallowed him. Fear kicks her in the stomach. Who will believe me now, she thinks, pacing back and forth in a panic. She must dive into the river, even though she has a terrible fear of water, she has to save him. But just as she puts her foot on the rope railing, she is startled by a hand on her shoulder.

“Get up,” Emily tells her. “Hinton’s almost here.”

Sara stirs. The lights are on everywhere; she’s slept right through the bell. She drags herself up just in time for device check, then lies in bed again. The heavy footfalls of women heading out to the showers or to early work shifts tell her she should get up, too, follow her routine, stop her thoughts before they spiral out of control, but instead she pulls the blanket over her head and curls up on her side, wishing she could sleep forever—or at least until her ordeal is over. She wants to go back to the time before, be with her husband and children, do work that is meaningful to her, walk out in the sun whenever she pleases. With her eyes closed, she can still see every detail of that life, from the broken train set on the living room rug to the potted succulents on the windowsill of the bathroom. Lulled by these images, she dozes off again.

The sound of the leaf blower outside rouses her for good. She forces herself out of bed, washes up, then sits down with her notebook, unsure how to write about this dream. The truth is, she would never complain about a detour, or lag behind Elias, or need to have her backpack carried for her—she’s a far more experienced hiker than her husband, having scaled every major mountain in California.

This dream, she writes after a few moments of deliberation, must reflect her anguish that Elias has been saddled with massive burdens since her retention started ten months ago—emotional, financial, familial burdens that are too much for him to bear alone. He has to manage everything by himself, and the slightest occurrence disrupts his fragile balance. But she still wants to help him, doesn’t she, because she tries to dive in after him, even at the risk to her own life. Whatever crime the algorithm foretold she would commit against him, she knows she’s innocent of it.

But despite a request from Adam Abdo, the attorney Elias hired after the first one left the case, the RAA has refused to turn over its predictive equation, arguing that it comes from proprietary sources. Abdo has to make his case with the data Sara makes available to him and with the risk-score report from the RAA. The algorithm in between—that is, the engine that converted raw data into predictions of criminal activity—remains a black box. Abdo can get information corrected if he can prove it is inaccurate, but he cannot challenge how one or another data point is weighed against others in Sara’s file.

Keeping a dream journal has been a comfort these last few months. It has taught her to be in conversation with herself, to pay closer attention to the inner workings of her mind, to notice where imagination draws from emotion or intellect. What it hasn’t shown her is how to discern the future. After months of scrupulously writing down her dreams she is no closer to figuring out what will happen to her or when she will be let out.

Perhaps she lacks that kind of insight because she is a historian, her eye cast on the past in order to explain the present. She must turn her gaze to the future instead, start thinking like a scientist, or better yet like a software engineer. Historians observe the world, and scientists try to explain it, but engineers transform it. Step by step, they’ve replaced village matchmakers with dating apps, town criers with social media, local doctors with diagnostic tools. The time has come for sages, mystics, and prophets to cede to an AI.

In this way, history marches on.

—

“Look who’s finally up,” Emily says as she refills a pan of scrambled eggs at the service station. The hairnet pulls at her face, giving her a frozen look even as her cheeks are flushed from the heat in the kitchen.

“I didn’t hear the bell,” Sara replies. “Thanks for waking me.” The clank of the serving spoon is enough to give her a headache, and the smell of frying oil isn’t helping. Everything about today feels a little off. She faces the camera, waits for the indicator light to turn green, and picks up a tray. This morning a few apples are available as premium items for eight dollars per unit, but after a flash of temptation she decides she can’t afford one.

She moves to the beverage station, where she gets water and herbal tea. (There are no caffeinated beverages at Madison, a deprivation she didn’t notice when she was admitted, but now seems like another needless cruelty.) The light from the windows is gray, adding to the general cheerlessness of the stainless steel tables, the bare walls, the attendant station. Carrying her food through the noisy cafeteria, she looks for her friends, feeling a surge of relief when she sees them at a table by the far wall.

They’re talking about books, a nice break from the gossip that usually animates the table. Alice is raving about an Octavia Butler novel she just finished, declaring it the best book she’s read in ages. Since August, she’s been keeping up with her children’s schoolwork by reading the books their teachers assign to them. She found out about this particular one from her younger son, who is studying it in AP English. “It’s called Kindred. You guys should check it out. It’s sci-fi, but it’s about real people, you know? People like you and me, not kings or princes or cyborgs or chosen ones.”

“I used to live next door to Octavia,” Lucy puts in. This brush with fame draws all eyes to her. She takes a huge bite of toast and smiles like a Cheshire cat.

“For real?” Alice says. “You’re just messing with me.”

“Why would I lie about something like that?”

What a strange thing to say, Sara thinks. There’s a difference between saying someone’s messing with you and calling them a liar. But retention tends to make people paranoid; they hear accusations even when none are intended. “I take it you’re from Pasadena?” Sara asks, picking up her spork. “I grew up there.”

“Yeah, but this was well before your time, I’m sure. My parents moved out when prices started shooting up, and I’ve lived in Crenshaw for the last thirty-five years.”

“But Crenshaw’s expensive, too,” Toya says, shaking her head. “You can’t find anything there anymore. My cousins got priced out, like, twenty years ago. I’m hanging by a thread.”

“What part of Crenshaw?” Lucy asks.

“The black part,” Toya quips. “What part do you think?”

Alice tries to bring the conversation back on track. “So what was Octavia Butler like?”

“Oh, she was very nice,” Lucy says with a nod. “I was in middle school at the time, and she’d always wave when she’d see me riding my bike to school or skipping rope with my sister in the front yard. This was in 1997 or ’98. She was already a big deal, you know. Kindred had been out for a while and the first Parable book, too. But then her mother died and she left town. Another family moved in next door.”

The rehydrated eggs are even blander than usual. Sara takes a sip of water, careful to pace herself to make it last. The chatter around the table moves on to adaptations, with Lucy saying she wishes a virtual reality studio would do a new version of Kindred, because in her opinion the old one was too violent.

Toya snorts. “Too violent?”

Marcela tries to include the new girl in the conversation. “Have you read Kindred ?”

“Nope,” Eisley replies. “I don’t like sci-fi.”

This gets Lucy’s attention. “So what did you say you did for a living?”

Eisley doesn’t answer. She takes a bite of her potatoes, barely suppressing her disgust.

Lucy rests one elbow on the table, watching and waiting. She’s not pestering Eisley this time, allowing the silence to stretch instead.

“I’m a fitness trainer,” Eisley says after a minute.

Sara gazes at the new girl with anthropological curiosity. Her face is tanned, her biceps impressive. She could pass for a volleyball player from Hermosa Beach, one of those people who knows how to make a delicious vitamin smoothie or where to get the best deal on a bike, but has no idea who the mayor is. This initial impression is misleading, though, because her eyes communicate a weary worldliness. “I’m only here for three weeks,” she continues, waving her hand, “and then I’m back at work.”

“Right. Of course.”

“So do you have any famous clients?” Alice asks.

“No, just normal people,” Eisley says with a little smile. After a moment, she adds, almost reluctantly, “I work for FitClient.”

Sara tilts her head in surprise. “And normal people have money for a FitClient trainer?”

“It’s not about money,” Eisley replies, with obvious irritation. She sounds like she’s had to face the same misconception a hundred times and has grown testy about it. “I have clients in different income brackets. It’s about priorities, really. My clients care about their fitness, and if you care enough about something, you’re going to devote time and resources to it. It’s a question of responsibility.”

Toya perks up. “Responsibility? Responsibility’s got nothing to do with it. People can’t get decent insurance without good HF scores from one of the big companies, so there’s a lot more demand for licensed trainers these days.”

“I paid three grand a month for a basic plan,” Alice says, suddenly full of passion. Her voice drops an octave, and she pauses to collect herself and readjust to the proper pitch. “The broker said I couldn’t qualify for a better plan that covers my medications because I didn’t log enough steps per day.”

“See?” Toya says. “Health plans keep you guys afloat.”

“I mean, yeah, okay. We get people who have to improve their Health and Fitness scores for whatever reason, but there’s no downside to exercising. It’s good for you.” Eisley turns to Alice, who’s slumping in her seat. “Take you, for example. You could exercise after work, if you really wanted. Then your HF score would go up, and your premium would go down.”

“I lead convoys of autonomous trucks,” Alice replies, draining the last of her tea. “You want me to do jumping jacks by the side of the freeway at four o’clock in the morning?”

Everyone laughs.

“On the weekend, then.”

“I don’t get weekends, necessarily. And anyway, on my days off I try to get some rest and spend time with my kids.”

“But see, exercise would boost your stamina. And it’s also good for your mental health, so why wouldn’t you do it?”

“Because where’s the fun in that?” Lucy says, her voice rising above its usual whisper out of sheer irritation. “If you have to do something, it’s an obligation, it stops being fun. No one wants to be a hamster on a wheel.”

“Well, actually, hamsters enjoy running on wheels.”

What a chatterbox, Sara thinks. And with such strong opinions about fitness, of all things. Even after Alice complains that her boyfriend had to delay hernia surgery until next year, when he hopes to qualify for better insurance, Eisley counters that correct posture and guided exercise with a professional trainer could have prevented or mitigated his condition. She won’t let it go. Who cares about fitness when they’re all stuck here for the foreseeable future? But petty arguments like these are a form of entertainment at Madison; everyone indulges in them.

While Eisley is talking, Sara’s gaze is drawn across the dining room. Victoria Aguilar, a skinny kid with tattoos all over her arms, is acting out a scene for the others at her table. It’s some kind of mime routine in which she’s running to catch a train. She’s taking stairs two at a time, running down the platform, waving to the conductor when she collides with a pole and falls face-first on the pavement. Carefully she sits up and, eyes crossed, begins to walk in the opposite direction. Her tablemates erupt in laughter. She takes a bow, then returns to her seat.

Sara can’t decide if she’s amazed or horrified. In spite of all that happened, Victoria finds joy in a public performance of her private life, using it as entertainment for her friends. The Guardian cameras on the wall haven’t deterred her from behaving exactly as she would outside these walls, making comedy by exaggerating details of her story. She seems unconcerned about drawing attention to herself or providing the attendants with data that might be used against her. Sara expects Hinton to be watching Victoria’s little performance, but finds him staring at Eisley, who has brought with her some kind of pill, in its individual wrapping, and is preparing to finish off her meal with it.

Hinton has a gift for noticing even the smallest moments; it’s a bit unsettling. This morning, his honey-brown hair is combed to the side, a nod to recent fashion. He takes good care of his appearance, and must find his gray uniform boring, an impediment to sartorial expression. All of a sudden he turns his keen eyes on her, and she drops her gaze, her face hot.

From the busing window comes the metallic clack of trays being stacked. The cafeteria is emptying slowly, with everyone heading to their work assignments. Sara is mopping up the last of the eggs with her toast when Marcela nudges her. “So have you thought about it? Can you help me with that letter?”

“What letter?” Eisley asks.

Sara stuffs the toast in her mouth, giving herself a minute to think. The Safe-X handbook, which she checked late last night, states that a retainee can file any petition she likes, as long as it pertains to her case only. There is some ambiguity in the phrasing, she feels. The rule doesn’t say that helping a fellow retainee is forbidden, only that filing a petition on someone else’s behalf is not allowed. But gray areas like this have caused her trouble in the past, got her written up even when she didn’t know she was breaking a rule. She can’t take that risk.

“You need help writing to your boyfriend?” Lucy asks.

“At least I have a boyfriend,” Marcela snaps.

That’s a little cruel, Sara thinks. After all, Lucy is a widow. Her husband died in a horrific car accident, which also left her badly injured. Eisley Richardson doesn’t know this, though, and on hearing Marcela’s retort she throws her head back and laughs.

“Hey, I was just teasing.” Lucy raises her palms in self-defense. “I didn’t mean anything by it, kiddo.”

“And stop calling me that. I’m not a kid.”

“All right, all right. I’m sorry.”

Sara is taken aback. Lucy and Marcela have never had an argument like this before. What could have caused the sudden animosity? The chatter around the table stops. In a huff, Marcela takes her tray to the busing window and heads out. The bell rings a moment later and the rest of the women clear the table, under the watchful eyes of the cameras.

—

The AC unit is on; the air is chilly. Without a word Ortega points Sara toward her station. She hurries, passing Eisley, who’s squinting at her screen, her lips moving silently while she reads instructions on how to use the software. (So the new girl is smart, she signed up for a job right away!) Sara takes the last seat in the third row, beneath the wall bubbles that appeared after a freak rainstorm last July. She waits for the system to recognize her face, then launches the NovusFilm program.

The silence is monastic. The only movement comes from Ortega, who circumambulates the trailer every hour, though he is careful not to make much noise. If he needs to speak to a retainee for any reason, he taps her on the shoulder, and whispers into her ear. Nothing is to distract the workers from their tasks.

This morning Sara can’t help but think about the last email she received from Elias, more than a month ago. She’s read it so many times already that she knows it almost by heart. As always, the email begins with an update on the children. The twins are making more progress with plosives, he says, distinguishing b s from p s and d s from t s in everyday speech; Mohsin has become a pickier eater than Mona, but he’s still reaching his milestones on the growth chart; both kids are starting to show an interest in insects. Then he shares a few miscellaneous notes. The papers for the second mortgage he took out on the apartment have come through, and he’s been able to pay the lawyer’s bill, including late fees.

Yet something feels odd about the email; it lacks a touch of the quotidian. Elias’s parents take care of the twins four days a week, but they don’t rate a mention, and neither does Sara’s father, even though he must visit from time to time. There are no complaints about the noisy upstairs neighbor, say, or about his co-worker, who’s in the habit of leaving dirty plates in the communal kitchen. It’s as if Elias and the children live apart from everyone else. It could be that he’s trying to limit giving out personal information, since incoming emails are read by Safe-X algorithms before they’re released to retainees, but the details about the twins are almost clinical in their precision, as though Elias were describing strangers rather than his children.

These gaps and silences rankle her; they’re starting to coalesce into a noisy and disturbing realization: Elias is growing apart from her. The last time they spoke there was none of the flow that there should be between partners, only the rancor of two people who find themselves jointly embroiled in a case that has dragged on unnecessarily for months.

Plus, it’s been a while since he’s booked time in the Virtual Conjugal Room. He used to pick fun meet-up places, like a checkered blanket under the shade of an oak tree, or a darkened corner in a busy Parisian café. The cost of these visits is outrageous, but somehow he’s managed to make it work before, so why doesn’t he make the effort any longer?

The old Elias wasn’t so aloof. The old Elias maintained a running conversation with her, texting at random moments of the day to tell her he loved her, or sending her a picture of Mona sleeping on his chest, or calling to remind her to pick up bread on her way home. The old Elias was warm and funny and available, qualities that stood out from the moment they met, the summer after college. She’d moved back in with her parents and started working part-time at the Huntington Gardens gift shop, a job for which she didn’t have much aptitude but that paid just enough to keep her afloat while she figured out what she would do next. Sara’s mother, Faiza, was happy to have some help around the house. She would ask Sara to pick up the dry cleaning or fix the ceiling fan in the bedroom or take Mshisha, the family’s aging cat, to her vet appointment. “Why don’t you ask Baba to do it?” Sara would reply, her voice brimming with irritation.

Faiza’s booming laugh would come from the porch, where she sat smoking Marlboro Lights and reading the newspaper in the afternoons. More often than not, the laughter would turn into a cough—an early symptom of the cancer that would eventually take her life. “Your father is too busy,” she would say.

Sara’s father, Omar, spent the better part of his waking hours thinking about space rockets. Even when he came home from work, his mind was still in his office at Caltech. There was no room for anything—or anyone—else. For years Faiza had shouldered the responsibilities of parenting almost by herself: not just school drop-offs, PTA meetings, or doctor’s appointments, but also volunteering as an assistant soccer coach every summer. So she considered it natural that Sara should help at home now, especially as she was loafing around most afternoons. Beaten down by guilt, Sara would go pick up the dry cleaning or fix the ceiling fan or shuttle Mshisha to her appointment.

One day her mother found a baby picture of Sa?d in the pages of an old book. She told Sara to go to the store for a frame, refusing to order one online, even after Sara pointed out how much cheaper and more convenient it would be. The store no longer carried much of a selection, and the few frames it had were on a low shelf in the back. Sara was on her knees, trying to reach one, when she was hit by a moving cart.

“Oh! I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Sara stood up and rubbed her ankle where the cart hit it, wiping off a small trickle of blood. “I’m fine.”

“I’m so sorry.” The voice belonged to a tall, lanky man with bushy eyebrows and an easy smile. “I didn’t see you.”

“It happens a lot.” She was five foot one, and was used to being overlooked.

“At least let me help you.” He picked up her items, introducing himself as Elias Rosales. When he found out she was running an errand for her mom, he laughed and pointed at his cart, which was stacked high with storage bins his grandfather had sent him to pick up. They kept the conversation going through the checkout line, then in the parking lot, and later on the phone.

The new Elias is different, though. The new Elias has been forced to become sole breadwinner, single parent, and legal advocate. He’s taken on these roles as best as he could over the last ten months: when it became clear that Sara’s retention would last longer than they expected, he cancelled daycare, coaxed his parents into babysitting the twins, and found a paying roommate. But maybe this has left him with little time for Sara. She misses the companionship she gets from his notes, the illusion that she can hear his voice as she reads them. And along with the loss, there’s also the worry, which she can no longer dismiss now that Elias hasn’t been in touch in a month, that he’s cut his losses and moved on from her.

The screen flashes; her response times and click patterns indicate that she hasn’t been paying attention during this set of reels. Does she wish to restart?

Funny how everything at Madison is presented as a choice, even though the correct answer [ Yes ] is already highlighted in green. All she has to do is click.

—

Her roommate asks her if she wouldn’t mind posing; she needs to draw her mutant superhero in a crouching position, waiting to leap on an opponent. A good distraction, Sara thinks, while they wait for the mail to be delivered. There isn’t much room for movement in the space between their cots, but Emily insists on directing Sara, leading her by the arm to a spot under the window, where the light is more natural. “Right here,” she says, positioning Sara’s arms and knees as though she were handling a marionette. Then she returns to her pad and starts drawing, the pencil scratches filling the silence.

“Why did you name your character Rina?” Sara asks after a minute.

“Rina Campoy. It’s an anagram for pyromaniac.”

“But she’s a superhero, right?”

“Fuck superheroes.”

The sudden passion in Emily’s voice intrigues Sara. She rests one hand on the floor, getting some weight off her knees.

“Don’t move.”

“Sorry,” Sara says, resuming her position. “Why don’t you see Rina as a superhero?”

“Because she knows she can’t save everyone or be liked by everyone. What she really wants is to find other people like her, who can help her figure out how to have a normal life. Her superpower is a curse, see. She can’t touch anything without setting fire to it, which means she can’t be with her girlfriend, she can’t hug her mom, she can’t hang out with anyone without running the risk of turning them into barbecue.”

The scent of the medicated cream Emily rubs on her skin reaches Sara. A pleasant, lemony smell. It’s lucky that it’s not a stronger fragrance that triggers Sara’s allergies, or else she would have to ask for a room reassignment, which would go on her record and could be taken as a sign of bad behavior. “How did you get started in comics?” she asks.

“I’ve always read them, ever since I was a kid. I took a drawing class in high school, but the teacher made us draw still lifes and I was too scared to say I wanted to draw something else. It wasn’t until after I started working as a firefighter that I really gave it a try. Clara says I could do this. She says there’s decent money in comics and I wouldn’t have to risk my life all the time.”

The college campuses and art museums where Sara has spent most of her working life haven’t taught her anything about the kind of work that Emily does for a living. She has no idea what her roommate’s training involved, for example, or what licensing it required, but she does know that Emily began her training as a seventeen-year-old inmate in Lassen County, while serving a three-year sentence for assault and battery. Once she came out of jail, she finished high school, got an associate’s degree, and went to work in the private sector, for a Los Angeles–based company called NaarPro. Everything was going well until an OmniCloud facial recognition system spotted her rushing out of a baseball stadium where a riot had broken out, and her risk score went up to 620. The RAA came after her for a recurring dream she had about assaulting her mom.

“You enjoyed being a firefighter, though, right?”

“Sure, at first. It’s a great feeling when you evacuate people safely or save someone’s home. There’s no feeling like it in the world, really. But they keep pushing us on pay, even though we don’t make anywhere as much as the state guys. I mean, why do it at that point? Why risk my life if I’m not even getting paid enough to put food on the table? Clara helped me understand that drawing was more than just a hobby, that I should make it a career.”

“And you can make a living from comics?” Sara asks, careful to keep disbelief out of her voice. The hardship of her early years in academia has made her skeptical of relying on her passions. She loves history—studying it, interpreting it, teaching it—but after college and graduate school, the best position she was able to find was a part-time job at Cal State. She couldn’t afford rent.

“Not at first. But Clara said she’d support me.”

Clara this, Clara that. Does Emily have to drop her girlfriend’s name into every conversation? Not everyone has a partner cheering them on, or visiting them every other week, or writing them all the time. From the framed portrait on the shelf, Clara peers at them, half smiling.

Sara keeps the pose for another minute before standing up. “You got enough to work with, right?”

“For now,” Emily says. “Thanks.”

Sara rests one arm on the wall and waits for the circulation to return to her legs. Outside, the sky is the color of a fresh bruise; it will be dark soon. Beyond the road, the bushes that dot the hill look dry and brittle. It won’t be long before the next fire.

The bell rings. Sara and her roommate step out to join the other retainees for afternoon device check. All along the hallway, Guardian cameras whirr as they adjust to the women’s positions. Wherever they go they are watched from lenses on the ceiling, their behavior scrutinized for the slightest infraction, their conversations monitored for clues of intent. A nod, a whisper, a joke: under the right circumstances, anything can be made into something sinister, to bulk up their files. At night their dreams are collected from their Dreamsavers, offering more evidence of all that is murky and suspicious in their natures.

That they have committed no crime is beside the point. In any case crime is relative, its boundaries shifting in service of the people in power. Once upon a time, adultery and miscegenation used to be crimes; now they aren’t. Burning flags and collecting rainwater were once legal; now they aren’t. A crime isn’t the same as a moral transgression. The law delineates the former, never the latter. I have done nothing wrong, Sara thinks. It’s only that the line of legality has moved, and now I’m on the wrong side of it.

Before her retention, she rarely thought about how much crime evolves, though the evidence was all around her. Elias’s great-grandmother Róisín arrived in Ellis Island, a frightened teenage girl in the fourth-class cabin of a crowded ship from Ireland. The law declared her an immigrant, allowed her to settle in New York, to chase the American dream (that most seductive of fantasies). Twenty years later, Elias’s grandfather Hernán crossed the border in the back of a truck. He was the same age Róisín had been, was fleeing the same circumstances, but in the intervening decades the law had changed. Now he was called a removable alien, a drain on public resources, a carrier of disease, a potential criminal who should be detained and deported without delay.

The law separates the permitted from the forbidden, but it doesn’t require that a crime be committed before the agents acting in its name deploy the full force of their power. Police officers used to patrol neighborhoods they called “rough,” stopping and searching people they thought were suspicious. Now they sift through dreams.

Yee is coming down the hallway, scanning the retainees one after the other. His face is flushed, as though he were embarrassed about something. One of the older women in 217 teases him about it, asks if it’s because he saw her changing; another one says, don’t flatter yourself. Yee shakes his head at their banter, represses a smile. Once the device check is completed he pulls out his PostPal tablet and reads the names of those who have mail.

Aguilar, he begins.

Brown.

Guerrero.

Kamau.

Sara retreats into her room, holding back tears.