An excerpt from Hannah, Altered

“Hey,” I said. “Jordan? Can I ask you something totally random?”

He shrugged, and brought his nose down to his right knee.

“Sure, as long as you don’t mind a totally random answer.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s fair. So… in the Stupid War, were there really people who backed the AIs?”

Jordan looked up from his stretch. He wasn’t smiling.

“It’s for an essay,” I said. “For Modern History. “

“Right,” he said. “Modern History. You know they don’t offer that class to freshies, right?”

In fact, I had not known that. Jordan sat up, rolled his neck around in a slow circle, and stretched down to his left leg.

“So,” he said. “Tara’s been talking smack about Devon Morgan, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. He straightened, and gave me a long, searching look.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “There were. I don’t think any of them made it to the end of the war alive, though. Devon’s family weren’t partisans like the UnAltered or the New Human Army. They just took a lot of shit over some stuff her parents said when NatSec started talking about doing a total network purge. Honestly, her dad came pretty close to getting himself lynched. There were all kinds of rumors—I mean, some folks even said they were harboring. The only thing anybody ever proved, though, was that he wrote an essay on one of the news blogs saying maybe NatSec shouldn’t totally wipe out what was basically a brand-new sentient species just because a few of them did some really bad stuff.”

He pulled one knee up, and twisted around to stretch his lower back.

“Anyway,” he said, “I hung out with Devon at States last spring. Whatever her parents did or didn’t do six years ago, she’s a good kid. I know Tara’s fired up about the meet yesterday, but dredging up that shit…” He looked over a Tara again. “That’s pretty low, even by her standards.”

Doyle called Jordan’s name from across the field. He sighed, and climbed to his feet.

“Look,” he said. “I know that sounded like I was shitting on Tara. I’m not. She’s a good kid too, for the most part. She just…” He looked over at her, then back at me. Doyle called his name again, a little louder. “Right,” he said. “Just watch your back, okay?”