“Starr Manybears. Rise.”

 

The soft voice came from everywhere, words without a source. It startled her into jerking upright. She’d been here so long, locked to this chair, that she’d fallen into a doze.

 

“What do you want?” Her own voice sounded dry and shrill, and it hurt to talk after so much yelling... How long ago?

 

A faint click penetrated the dark visor that kept her blind. Thin bands of pressure at her wrists and ankles abruptly eased.

 

“Starr Manybears. Rise.”

 

This time, she understood that there were speakers next to her ears. The tone that emerged was smooth, calm. An Intelligence rather than a person. Starr felt cold, more than what the stale, temperature-controlled air accounted for.

 

“What is this, a trial? Intelligences don’t pass judgment on humans.”

 

“Incorrect.”

 

She couldn’t see her hands, but felt her fingers tighten into fists. “You have no authority over me. It’s the law!”

 

“Incorrect.”

 

“This is what I hate about you,” she growled. “You’re like a corrupted file, playing the same few notes over and over.”

 

The Intelligence did not respond. A simile could not be classified as correct or incorrect. Starr raised shaky hands to tug at the helmet strapped over her face, but it remained firmly in place.

 

“Get this thing off me!”

 

“Starr Manybears. Rise.”

 

“What for?” she snapped. “I can’t see where I am or where I’m going.”

 

She groped for a buckle or clasp, but her fingers found only slick, featureless plastic.

 

“We will assist you.”

 

“Hey!” Starr’s throat burned as she yelped. Hands coated with plastic foam grabbed both elbows and lifted her to her feet. They only hurt her when she struggled against them. “Put me down! I want a lawyer!”

 

“Irrelevant.”

 

“Hey, a new word.” Her throat tightened with fear. “If I’m on trial, how can lawyers be irrelevant?”

 

“You are not on trial.” There was a split-second hesitation, and what seemed like a different voice spoke.

 

“We have consulted. It has been decided.”

 

“Wha... Decided?” she shrieked. “I knew it!”

 

She fought then, resisting the robot hands that pushed her along. Faint echoes hinted at a limited space. Musty air suggested a route not often traveled.

 

“You’re going to make me disappear, aren’t you? Just like all my friends — Garabedian, Longo, and Wenstrom!”

 

Two voices answered simultaneously. “Incorrect.” “Correct.”

 

Starr barely heard over the roar of blood in her ears as she tried to dig her heels into featureless tile flooring. This was a nightmare come true. Everything they’d fought against. She and her friends, the Free Radicals.

 

They’d made the discovery together, that computer Intelligences had taken over their broken world. Distributing the surviving humans among habitats. Controlling food supplies, industry, politics. Sure, war was fading into memory now. Maybe solar energy had replaced polluting sources and networks of lasers allowed instantaneous communication. But what did that mean if humans weren’t in control of their own destiny?

 

Only the arts seemed beneath notice. The Free Radicals had used that to spread their warning that the Intelligences had silently assumed power. There were signs of progress. Protests, even a labor strike.

 

Until a few weeks ago, when the Free Radicals had begun to disappear one by one. Last night — or, who knew, maybe last week — the robotic patrol had knocked so very politely on her apartment door. She didn’t remember much of the fight.

 

“Well, which is it?” Starr grated as she kicked and yanked, resisting the gentle, implacable hands. “You say you want peace. You say you know what’s right for us. But you get there by killing anyone who stands in your way?”

 

Her sore throat made her cough, so that she nearly missed the muted, “Incorrect.”

 

“Yeah, sure. Incorrect. Well, we won’t disappear! Too many people have heard our music. They understand our message. Maybe they pretend, but they know! They will remember the Free Radicals, and one day they’ll disconnect you and your robot cronies!”

 

“Unlikely.”

 

“We are good helpers.” A different voice, this one plaintive. “We provide equal space for all humans.”

 

More voices joined in.

 

“Clean water and food free of dangerous impurities.”

 

“Safe habitats. Fairness and order.”

 

“Work that is simple and enjoyable.”

 

“Work that’s simple,” Starr mocked, panting as she continued her struggle.

 

“Humans require meaningful tasks,” answered the sadder one.

“Work provides the stimulation of social contact.”

 

“They’re meaningless tasks, and only if we follow like sheep!”

 

Again they spoke over each other. “Incorrect.” “Irrelevant.”

 

The forced progress stopped. Starr stood panting. Movements of the air suggested a large chamber around her. The floor descended gently as muffled humming ran up from her feet.

 

“We are friends to humanity,” the Intelligences persuaded all the while.

 

“We care for the people and seek to restore the world.”

 

“We bring happiness to all. Yet you, Starr Manybears, are not happy.”

 

“Of course I’m not happy!” she raged, then paused to cough again. “My friends are gone. I’ve been abducted and now I’m being dragged along blindfolded. What part of this should make me happy?”

 

“We must bring happiness,” the harsher Intelligence repeated. “Yet you are unhappy. There is only one solution.”

 

“What, you’re going to— “ Starr trailed off. She knew her friends were probably dead, but couldn’t bring herself to say it.

 

“We will give you what you want.”

 

“You... What?”

 

The floor stopped with a muffled clunk. Starr was too surprised to resist as the patrol robots moved her forward several paces.

“You are unhappy. We will give you what you want, so that you can be happy.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

Starr’s mind whirled between fear of death and doubt about this reprieve. It took a moment before she realized the robots had released her. She turned, confused. Rubbed her arms where those soft plastic hands had touched. Quiet humming suggested that the floor was rising.

 

“Tell me what’s happening!” Frantic fingers clawed at the band under her chin. Starr winced as her fingertips, bruised in resisting the patrol robots, found a rounded button. She mashed it with both thumbs, and yanked.

“Finally!” Dark hair, dampened by sweat, curled free of the hated visor. She wanted to fling it away, but ended up with the helmet dangling at her side.

 

The room was oval, softly lit by a cluster of LED bulbs embedded in the ceiling. Walls and floor were otherwise blank. Directly in front of her, two patrol robots rode a platform upward. Already they were beyond her reach.

 

“What is this?” Starr cried. Just like the Intelligences to ignore her, now that she had questions. She answered herself, “Maddening. That’s what it is.”

 

Brighter light from behind made her turn. She shaded her eyes and scowled.

 

The arc of the far wall held three doorways. There were no actual doors, just light flooding in. And had she thought the air was stale? Scents drifted to her, a mingling of sweet dry grass with tangs of salt air and pine.

 

Each doorway showed a different vista. One was a seashore. Pure aqua waves sighed over white sand, while fronds of a palm tree rustled in a breeze she didn’t feel. The middle door revealed a damp forest where ferns grew thick beneath branches draped with moss. Beyond the final door was a broad valley. Pale gold grasses stretched toward distant mountains. A river, startling blue, crossed the foreground.

 

Something about the valley held her eyes. Without looking away, she said, “Tell me, really, what this is.”

 

“It is a choice.”

 

“What?” she bit out.

 

“You sing about lack of freedom. Of having no choice.”

 

“Now you have a choice.”

 

Exasperated, Starr closed her eyes to banish the tantalizing visions. “Can we just pretend for a minute that I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

 

A pause. She fully expected one of the Intelligences to declare her request irrelevant, but they answered patiently.

 

“There are three doorways. Three options.”

“You wish to leave the habitats. You may choose where to go.”

 

“I’d be exiled.” Starr couldn’t keep her eyes shut. She stared at the three doors.

 

“Correct.”

 

“I guess that’s one way to make people disappear,” she muttered.

 

“Correct.”

 

“Shut up!” Her eyes skipped from the misty forest to the tropical beach, and that valley like something out of her family’s history. Choices, indeed. “I’ll bet there’s bison.”

 

No reply. What a blessing! If she’d known it was that easy, she’d have told the Intelligences to shut up long ago.

 

Yet her mind whirled with uncertainty. To go through a doorway into some strange land. When she didn’t know a thing about the animals or the climate or what plants were good to eat.

 

“Are these real places?”

 

“Correct.” The Intelligence sounded relieved to speak again.

 

“It’s a one-way trip, I assume.”

 

“Correct.”

 

“We can send you, but we have no means to retrieve you.”

 

“Wonderful. What if I don’t go through?”

 

It seemed she had surprised them. The calm, neutral voice inquired, “You would choose to remain in your habitat?”

 

“You, Starr Manybears, would accept our benevolent governance and no longer attempt to raise a rebellion?” The harsher voice held a hint of command.

 

“Ummm...”

 

No prefabbed habitat. No weather-sats or GPS. No weapons or even tools. Only some half-remembered stories from Grandma Manybears about how they used to net salmon and tan deer hides back in the ages before.

 

She would be totally alone. Unless— “Did any of the others stay?”

Longo might. He’d always been the timid one. Garabedian and Wenstrom, for sure they’d go.

 

“Negative.”

 

“They all went?”

 

“Correct.”

 

That was... good. Better than selling out to the faceless computer intellects. Still, a hard knot formed in Starr’s stomach. If she could catch up to her friends, it might be possible to survive.

 

“Did they all pick the same?”

 

“Negative.” There was another pause, as of records being filtered. “Tomas Longo selected the Island of Cuba. Gunnheld Wenstrom selected the Black Forest. Manouk Garabedian selected Wyoming.”

 

“Trying to go home,” Starr murmured. “Gunnheld’s ancestors were German, and Tomas’s family came from Brazil. Cuba’s not that much different. I hope.”

 

The Intelligences offered no comment.

 

“Manouk’s ancestors were Armenian. None of these are much like Armenia.”

 

Then her heart leapt. Maybe heredity wasn’t why Manouk had chosen. He’d known Starr’s people were originally from Montana. If she was right, if their bond was as strong as she hoped, he had guessed she would choose Wyoming. He’d gone there to wait for her.

 

Assuming this wasn’t all some sick trap.

 

Well, of course, it was. The Intelligences could send her but not bring her back. That solved the problem as far as they cared.

The mournful Intelligence interrupted her thoughts. “Are you ready to choose?”

           

“Don’t rush me!”

 

Starr meant to sneer, but a quiver took over her voice. Her knees wobbled. Pride and anger fled before this decision. All her confidence, too.

 

She sat down hard, and stared at the doors.