Wired -Skinned-3 by Robin Wasserman

Author:Robin Wasserman [Wasserman, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Mysteries & Detective Stories, General, Teenage Girls, Social Issues, Science Fiction, Death & Dying, Fantasy & Magic, Friendship, Comics & Graphic Novels, Love & Romance, Manga
ISBN: 9781416974543
Google: sxnOJ0ulvb8C
Amazon: 1416974547
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2010-09-14T07:00:00+00:00

"We're not technology. We're people."

" You're people, yes--but we're not talking about you. How does it hurt you to donate a copy of your brain to a good cause? How does it change anything to know that a copy of some of your synapses is helping protect the nation or heal the sick? How does that do anything to you, except perhaps make you proud?"

"Funny," Riley said softly. "Almost sounds like we volunteered."

"If this is such a wonderful advance for orgs and mechs alike," I said, "then why keep it a secret?"

197

"You see how you've reacted," Ben pointed out. "We needed to ease the way. Help people understand. Once they do--"

"Enough," M. Poulet cut in. "We don't have to defend ourselves to ..." He flicked a hand at us. "These." He stood up and pushed in his chair, as if to say, Meeting's over. "I would think that with popular opinion of you and your kind at such alarmingly low levels, you'd have better things to worry about than trivia like this. I'd suggest you focus on the bigger picture here."

"Trivia like you turning us into war machines?" I said, disgusted.

"Lia, enough," Jude said. "They obviously didn't come here to reason with us, and we didn't come here to reason with them."

"Ah, final y," M. Poulet said. "We get down to it."

Jude stood up too. A beat later Riley and I joined him on our feet. Only Ben stayed seated, looking bewildered about how the meeting had slipped out of his control. "You're going to stop this," Jude said. "Stop abusing the stored copies. Stop experimenting on us like we're animals. And then you're going to give us the means to store our own uploads, and to repair and replace our own bodies. You're going to set us free."

"I assume there's an implied or?" M. Poulet asked dryly.

"Or we go public," Jude said. "And it doesn't matter what you try to do to us here--there are people waiting for my signal. If they don't hear from me in the next hour, they're going to release everything we have on the network. You're done."

198

It was no bluff. Zo was waiting.

" Do to you?" M. Poulet sounded like he was holding back laughter. "What exactly would we do to you?"

"What wouldn't you do?" Jude said.

Now the peals of laughter burst through, cold and hol ow. "I don't know what kind of gangsters you children are used to dealing with, but this is a business. You come in here, wasting our time, making your petty little threats, acting as if we could ever have something to fear from you." As he spoke, the joviality drained from his voice, until al that remained was steel.

"Let me be perfectly clear: We have nothing to fear from you. You're children--not even that: mechanical copies of children. While we are a multinational corporation offering the world a new and exciting technology that wil improve the lives of mil ions. You think anyone's going to repudiate that because we're 'inconveniencing' a few skinners?" He smiled coldly.

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