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you prove you’re one of us.”
    I tighten my sun robe. Whatever. I wasn’t sticking around long enough for that to ever be a possibility. I stride ahead with purpose. The sooner we cross the border, the better.
    â€œWas it a surprise for you?” Ling asks, keeping pace with me easily. “To see what it’s really like out here?”
    It certainly was. But not the fun birthday kind. More like, hey, the government lies and everyone here is really thirsty. “Sure.”
    â€œYou really had no idea?”
    I shrug again, fishing in the side pocket of my backpack for my water bottle. “How would I? The streams all downplay it.”
    The streams are the way we access all knowledge and entertainment. And the streams are all connected—we call it being on-cycle. If you searched the streams for the Badlands, you’d see holo after holo of smiling, colorfully dressed locals living simply in exotic locales. You would not see kids with xylophone bodies or dead dogs in dry creek beds.
    â€œYou must’ve known the Trust controls the streams,” Ling says. “They censor them. And they change things. Did you know that?”
    I drop a couple of iodine pills into the bottle to make the foul liquid a little less toxic. “That was another part of the surprise,” I admit. It was only from seeing the Badlands firsthand that I understood just how much the Trust manipulated Edenites’ understanding of the place.
    â€œDid you hear about the Valley of Spines massacre?” Ling asks.
    I glance at her sharply.
    â€œApart from Lunalac, that’s all anyone’s been talking about,” she adds.
    Rumors of the massacre had reached my ears too. A Builder killed ten men in a bar in the Valley a few weeks ago. No rhyme or reason. It just slaughtered them all. But substitutes can’t harm humans. Not just because it’s against the law, but because they’re designed that way. No substitute can be programmed to harm a human, let alone kill one. “Don’t believe everything you hear out here.”
    â€œIt spooked me,” Ling says with a shudder. “A substitute killing people like that.” When I don’t say anything back, she adds, “Did you feel the same way? Or is that one of those things that you get used to?”
    â€œLing.” I pull to a sudden stop. “Look. I’ll help you stop Aevum. But I don’t want to . . . Y’know—” I wave my hands at her.
    â€œWhat?”
    I look at her deliberately. “Bond.”
    Her reply is interrupted by yelling. A crowd of Badlanders presses forward into a water bar, craning their necks to see something inside. They seem royally pissed off, heckling loudly.
“Scucha. Dim pasó?”
I ask a woman near me what’s happening.
    Her reply is sour.
“Gyan habla guan yu Lunalac.”
    â€œWhat is it?” Ling asks me, eyes wide.
    â€œGyan’s explaining why they cut off Lunalac.”
    The dimly lit water bar reminds me of Zhukov’s: a low ceiling and packed dirt floor. But unlike Zhukov’s, it’s packed to the rafters with hot, jostling bodies.
    Gyan’s deep voice warbles in and out. His image quivers up from one of the earliest versions of scratch, which is dull brownish-gold and as thick as a rug. “For many years, Eden has been mother to her boisterous child, the Badlands,” he intones. “But now, it is time for our child to grow up. To learn to crawl, walk, and finally run free, as we here in Eden have done. We have created our Arcadia, our utopia. Now it is time for the Badlands to define their Eden for themselves.”
    Ling and I exchange incredulous expressions. I used to think Gyan’s speeches sounded enlightened. Now they sound straight-up insane.
    â€œThis is why we must stay firm in our decision to cut off Moon Lake as a permanent measure.” Gyan’s voice is barely audible above the howls of