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father had implanted the device into Emma and Parker on the first day of their summer vacation, just a week after Emma had turned six. Parker could remember many things about that day—his picture of a space shuttle framed on the wall of his mother’s office, her white lab coat draped over the back of her tall-backed chair, the smell of antiseptic—but he couldn’t remember the procedure itself. It had been done under local anesthetic administered by his mother, so perhaps the absence of pain had lessened the memory’s impact.
    He did—not surprisingly—recall in vivid detail the moment he had used Effie for the first time. His mother had knelt at his side and shown him how to call Emma by pressing down on the light on the right side of his wrist. In response, Emma’s arm had started to vibrate. She had jumped in surprise, and his father, kneeling next to her, had smiled and, with his hand over hers, had pressed down on the flashing light on her wrist.
    â€œThink of something to say to your sister, Parker. Nothing too complicated, so that she can read it easily.”
    In time, Parker would come to realize the significance of this moment—the first-ever thought-to-thought transmission—and would wish his first words had been more fitting of the occasion. As it was, he had simply relayed the first thing that had come to mind.
    Your glasses are a funny color.
    Emma’s eyes had lit up in amazement as Parker’s thought had been translated into subtitles that had scrolled—imperceptibly to anybody else—across the right lens of her new lime green glasses. There’d been a brief pause as she’d slowly read what Parker had said. She’d looked up at Parker, grinned, and her thought had been translated almost instantaneously into a very slightly robotic voice inside Parker’s head.
    Not as funny as your face, she had replied.
    Parker’s thoughts were interrupted by his wrist vibrating once more. He had tried hanging up the call a few times, but Emma just kept calling back. She wasn’t going to give up. Finally Parker sighed and pressed down quickly on his sister’s light to answer.
    I don’t want to talk, he said. Well, he didn’t say it; he thought it. For Parker and Emma though, thinking via Effie was as natural as it was for others to open their mouths to speak.
    Where are you?
    I’m fine. Don’t worry. I just want to be by myself for a while.
    What happened? Are you okay?
    I said I don’t want to talk about it.
    Just tell me what happened.
    I’m going now.
    But, Parker—
    Parker pressed the light on his wrist and Emma’s voice cut off before she could finish her sentence. There was nothing she could do to help. That was the thing about Emma; she wanted to help everyone. Victims of disasters, starving children, injured animals, and now him. His father said that she was just like their mother. He meant it in a good way. If anybody asked their father about his children, he would tell them (to Parker’s and Emma’s embarrassment) that Parker was going to grow up to be a Nobel Prize–winning scientist, and Emma, well, she was going to save the world. Good for her, thought Parker, but she wasn’t going to start by saving him. Not today. Right now all he wanted to do was hide.
    Parker—his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting—unzipped his backpack and pulled out a bright yellow Walkman that had once belonged to his dad. Emma had found it in the attic of their old house when they’d been packing for their move, and neither she nor Parker had had a clue as to what it was. Their dad had been shocked, and even more so when he’d pulled out a cassette tape with a tangled loop of brown plastic ribbon hanging out and neither of his children had looked any more the wiser. Mumbling something about getting old, their dad had left and returned some time later, triumphantly holding a pencil, a pack of