"But you're our last hope!" cried Mr. Weathington-Beech, his final layer of expensive psychic armor falling to reveal naked, lower-cla.s.s desperation. "We've tried every decent school in the county!"

"So we're your last choice, are we?"

"You know how it works! If Cotton goes to a sub-par kindergarten, he'll go to a sub-par elementary school. If he goes to a sub-par elementary school, he'll have no choice but a sub-par high school. And if he goes to a sub-par high school..." Mr. Weathington-Beech shuddered.

"Brown," said Mr. Slocombe sympathetically.

"There's always public school," said Mrs. Weathington-Beech, gazing off into the middle distance. This was such a tasteless joke that the men had no choice but to ignore it.

"We've done everything right," moaned Mr. Weathington-Beech. "Sarah stepped down at Berkshire Hathaway to do full-time attachment parenting. I switched consulting firms so we could move to a town with a lower level of mercury in the water. We've already got breeders working on the puppy for Cotton's seventh birthday and the pony for his tenth. Everything. Everything right." He looked up at Mr. Slocombe with haunted eyes.

Mr. Slocombe felt too tired to be diplomatic any longer. "Then how do you explain the shiv in his gut?"

"Well, maybe the machine is wr-" To Mr. Weathington-Beech's credit, he stopped himself. The death machine was never wrong. They'd done tests.

"We shouldn't have named him Cotton," sighed Mrs. Weathington-Beech to no one in particular.

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Slocombe, and he really was. "But this is why we check, you know."

"Have a heart," said Mr. Weathington-Beech, defeated. "Sarah and I both got 'car accident.'That could be tomorrow."

Mr. Slocombe gave him a long, sad look. Deep in his plushly-lined heart, he knew he was liable to succ.u.mb to cheap sentimentality.

Mrs. Weathington-Beech suddenly fluttered back to Planet Earth. "Maybe a donation to the school would help?"

Well. Perhaps not too too cheap. cheap.

Cotton Remington Weathington-Beech did acceptably at Saint Maxwell's. He excelled at music and fingerpainting, and his best friends were Akiva Smythe-b.u.t.ton (prostate cancer), McGregor Rigsdale (chronic lower respiratory disease), and Resolved Stutzman (botched coronary bypa.s.s operation). The four of them went on together to the Tinker Hill School, and then-minus McGregor, whose parents moved to Hawaii for his asthma-to William H. Howland Prep.

Cotton officially learned about the prison knife fight at age twelve, when he came across a copy of his own school records in his father's study, but he'd more or less always known. He'd noticed the special disapproving, pitying, and/or terrified gazes he got from teachers when he acted up in cla.s.s. He'd been pulled aside on the playground by any number of authority figures and warned about roughhousing, even when he was just standing around with a kickball. And his parents insisted on watching The Shawshank Redemption The Shawshank Redemption whenever it was on TV. whenever it was on TV.

His friends knew theirs, too, of course. Akiva's parents had sat down with him over freshly-baked chocolate cake, told him very solemnly while patting his hand, then stiffly hugged him, exactly as the family therapist had suggested. The whole performance had scarred Akiva for life, ensuring years of future business for the therapist-and-Akiva often thought darkly, if illogically-probably causing his prostate to act up. Resolved had heard it from his big sister, who, incidentally, was going to drown, one of those inconveniently vague forecasts that were impossible to prepare for. They hadn't believed Cotton until he'd shown them the certificate, but from that point on they'd had to acknowledge that he was their king.

"How do you think it'll happen?" Resolved whispered one day during free period. "You don't even know how to use a knife, do you?"

"Yeah, well, that's why he dies, right?" said Akiva.

Cotton shrugged. They'd had this discussion before. "They say you shouldn't try to guess. There's basically no way to know until the big day."

Resolved pressed on. "Yeah, but why're you in prison in the first place? Are you going to kill someone? Rob a bank?" A few students at the neighboring tables glanced disapprovingly at them. Raised voices were not encouraged during free period, or in general.

"Maybe I don't do anything," whispered Cotton, warming to the subject despite himself. "Maybe I'm wrongly convicted of a crime I didn't commit." This scenario was one of several current personal favorites, although there were times when the idea of a brutal crime spree held more satisfaction for a growing boy.

"Maybe you're not a prisoner," said Akiva. "Maybe you're a guard who tries to break up the fight. Or one of those guys, you know, who goes in to teach the prisoners how to weave baskets or something."

"Or a priest," suggested Resolved.

"Maybe," said Cotton. They were sixteen, and supposedly their futures still lay shrouded in glowing promise, but Cotton was pretty sure he could make out the dim but unmistakable outline of an upper-echelon position at one of the major accounting firms. He was doing very well in pre-calc and statistics that year. Whether he liked it or not, some things didn't need to be printed out on a magic machine to be inevitable.

"Mine's not so bad, you know," said Resolved, hoping against hope to talk about his own death for once. "Killed on the operating table. I'll just go in my sleep."

"If you think about it, though," said Akiva slowly, "that one's really the worst. I mean, you already know it's going to happen."

"So?"

"So that means one of these days, you're going to go in for a coronary bypa.s.s, and you'll have to let them put you under and everything...knowing that you'll never come out."

Resolved stared, his lips parting silently. He was not an imaginative boy, and he'd never thought too vividly about the final reward that fate and the death machine had reserved for him. Now unpleasantly precise details were suggesting themselves. From the back of his throat emerged a faint whimper.

"Probably still beats prostate cancer," said Cotton brightly, which didn't make anyone feel better.

"I wish we all had prison knife fight," said Resolved. It was a thought they'd all shared many times over the past few years, but this was the first time one of them had come out and said it.

"It'll really hurt, though," said Cotton, in a last-ditch effort to patch things up. "I mean, even before the stab that kills me, I bet I'll get cut pretty badly."

"Yeah," said Akiva, "but at least we'd all be headed for the same place. We've been together since kindergarten, and now you're on your way to prison."

"We'd all go out together," said Resolved dreamily, the rusty gears within his skull grinding slowly to life.

Cotton looked at him. "Stabbing each other?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah," sighed Akiva.

The bell rang. They didn't move. One of the monitors gave them a meaningful look, which they ignored.

"I dunno," said Cotton. "I mean, my parents are probably dying in a car crash together, and they don't seem too happy about it."

Akiva brightened. "Hey, maybe that's what you go to prison for!"

"Huh?"

"Involuntary manslaughter." Unlike Resolved, Akiva had a healthy and active imagination. He'd won creative-writing prizes. "You're drunk behind the wheel, and your parents are in the back seat, and then you drive the car off a bridge and kill them."

Cotton rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and maybe Resolved's sister's riding shotgun and that's how she gets it, too."

"It could happen!"

"What's that about my sister?" said Resolved, the eternal bronze medallist of the trio.

"That's not going to happen," said Cotton, gathering his books. A mood had been shattered.

"How do you..." Akiva frowned. "Don't tell me your parents already thought of it."

Cotton slung his backpack over his shoulder. "They won't get in the car if I'm driving."

College admissions rolled around, and Cotton started getting a lot of thin envelopes and not many fat envelopes. His parents glowered at the world. "It's his medical records," said Mr. Weathington-Beech. "The school pa.s.ses them on."

"Can we discuss this later?" snipped Mrs. Weathington-Beech. "We just had a nice dinner."

"You don't have to talk in code, you know," said Cotton. "I know I'm dying in a prison knife fight."

Both parents shot him poisonous looks. They knew he knew, and he knew they knew he knew. They just would have been happier if he'd done the polite thing and pretended he had no idea what they were talking about. Usually he did. Cotton was vaguely uncomfortable about discussing the death machine with his parents; it was almost as icky as the s.e.x talk, and probably for similar reasons.

"It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, is what it is," muttered Mr. Weathington-Beech.

"Jim..." said Mrs. Weathington-Beech in warning tones. She turned away and started fiercely rearranging the magazines on the coffee table.

Mr. Weathington-Beech slapped down his newspaper. "Well, it's true. They ostracize a boy like that, how do they expect him to end up?"

Cotton gave up on his Latin homework. "Dad, I've gotten three acceptances so far, plus my safety school. It's not like I'm gonna land in the gutter. I'm just not going to Yale."

Mrs. Weathington-Beech stifled a sob.

"We have not," growled Mr. Weathington-Beech, "heard back from Yale."

"Anyway, you don't even know that's what's going on. Maybe my application just wasn't that great. I don't have a lot of extracurriculars."

"I know what's going on," said Mr. Weathington-Beech.

Cotton had to admit he had a point. Even Resolved had managed Cornell.

"So what?" he said. "So I go to one of those little liberal-arts schools. They're still good schools. Probably a lot more fun that the Ivy League anyway. Akiva's brother says Harvard sucks, everybody's stressed out all the time and the freshman cla.s.ses are all taught by TAs in big-"

"The point," said Mr. Weathington-Beech, "is that we sent you to Saint Maxwell's to get you into Tinker Hill. We sent you to Tinker Hill to get you into Howland. And we sent you to Howland to get you into the Big Three, and now the whole d.a.m.n thing with the-the-"

"The PKF," suggested Cotton, who thought it had earned an acronym.

"...this thing thing is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the whole system again."Mr. Weathington-Beech looked suddenly very sad and tired. "We had everything planned out for you, son. We've spent a lot of time and a lot of money. It just doesn't seem fair." is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the whole system again."Mr. Weathington-Beech looked suddenly very sad and tired. "We had everything planned out for you, son. We've spent a lot of time and a lot of money. It just doesn't seem fair."

"Aw, geez. Dad..."

Mrs. Weathington-Beech spun around, moisture sparkling in the corners of her eyes.

"Cotton," she said, "when we're killed, promise you won't seek revenge on the driver."

"Oh, G.o.d." Cotton slammed his Latin book shut. "I'm going out."

Cotton's car was new and expensive. It was fast but there was nowhere to take it, so he drove slowly. Besides, his parents were big on safe driving. He drove out the gates of his neighborhood and past the gates of countless other neighborhoods, all tidy and manicured, all dead at night except for the guards reading magazines in their glowing guardhouses. The scenery repeated itself, like a Flintstones cartoon, for miles. The spring air was moist and sugary.

Maybe there was a party somewhere. Maybe there was a football game. Maybe there were guys drinking down at Akiva's parents' boat shed. It all melted into the same flat, dark quiet.

After a while, Cotton pulled over and sat on the hood of his car. It was as good a place to stop as any. A dozen yards away, a guard leaned out of a gatehouse window to look him up and down. Cotton felt like a criminal. It wasn't so bad.

He leaned back and looked up at the stars. He really hoped Yale was going to say no. Some of those little schools looked really good, and if he didn't go there, he'd do something else. Something better, maybe. Poor Akiva was going to Harvard like his brother, and Resolved...well, to be fair, Resolved probably would've been screwed anywhere. But Cotton was going to go where he wanted and do what he liked. That was the funny thing about the death machine. When it cut your future down to that one steel inevitability, it seemed to open up more possibilities than you ever could have imagined.

Cotton smiled shyly at the stars. He was looking forward to prison.

It was going to be fun to be free.

Story by Shaenon K. Garrity Ill.u.s.tration by Roger Langridge

WHILE TRYING TO SAVE ANOTHER.

101.

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS AGAIN. The eight of them travelled by bus, car, or walked to the church. They left coats on hooks and made their way to the bas.e.m.e.nt where coffee, tea, cookies, and Reverend Shamus Brooker waited for them. The underweight clergyman shook Raymond and Krishna's hands. He hugged Julie. Annabel got a kiss on both cheeks, Hanna a kiss on one cheek. Timothy, Nqobile and Benito were late so they got a nod. The Reverend frowned upon lateness.

"There'll be one more today," he warned them. "I told her to come at half past so we'd be able to talk."

"Couldn't she join another group?" Timothy objected. It had taken him over a year to get comfortable with the people in the room.

"She's Iranian."

"She'll be more than welcome," Krishna said firmly. Of course he did. In a few years he'd be killed by a group of skinheads with knives and baseball bats. Racism was a soft spot to say the least. He gave Timothy a challenging glare.

"I was just asking." Timothy gulped down his coffee and poured a refill.

"Don't be confrontational," the Reverend interrupted. "Discomfort any of us feel with the introduction of a new member should be discussed."

"I don't have a problem," Timothy replied.

"I do," said Julie.

Krishna lashed out at her, a.s.suming her reason was race. She shouted back. Raymond, who had a crush on Julie, joined in. Soon there was lots of yelling and Timothy's mind wandered. He couldn't be a.r.s.ed to join in. He was staring at the doorway thinking about what movie he'd see on the weekend when she arrived. She was head to toe in Goth getup: leather boots with thick soles, a black velvet corset, silver chains, and bracelets dripping off her.

Timothy smiled. "Here comes an awkward silence."

His prediction turned out to be as accurate as any of the Death Machine's. Ten seconds later the others realized they were being watched.

"Isma..." Reverend Shamus Brooker's lips kept moving but no more words came out.

Benito, cla.s.s clown, came to the rescue. "Whatever your old ED group used to do, forget it. We communicate here by insulting each other."

"OK. You're ugly and you smell bad."

Everyone laughed. Some of them were faking. Timothy wasn't.

Isma took some tea and cookies and then the real session began.

"My name is Reverend Shamus Brooker and I have two hundred and seventy days left. I'm going to be hit by a car."

"I am Annabel, cancer, four hundred and ten days."