Lock In

by John Scalzi

MY FIRST DAY on the job coincided with the first day of the Haden Walkout, and I’m not going to lie, that was some awkward timing.

“Two body jokes in under a minute,” Vann said. “It’s almost like you’re trying to make a point or something.”

“Just making sure you’re comfortable with me,” I said. “Not everyone knows what to do with a Haden when they meet one.”

“It’s why she’s got this beat,” Davidson said. “She gets you guys in a way the rest of us don’t. No offense, but it’s hard for the rest of us to wrap our brains around what’s going on with you.”

“If you ask me, it means now I have an advantage, because threeps are better than the human body in lots of ways.

Vann was plowing through a plate of carnitas. I was not, but a quick status check at home told me that my body had gotten its noontime supply of nutritional liquid. So I had that going for me.

“I just ulcerate easily. It’s a condition. Entirely unrelated to the Haden’s.

“Yes,” Robinson said. “Maybe it’s a blessing the bodies don’t notice.” “Ah, but that’s not true,” I said. “We’re locked in, not unconscious. Trust me, Ms. Robinson. We notice where our bodies are. We notice it every moment we’re awake.”

Most cars could self-park but there were still people who demanded that they had to be behind the wheel, and took great pride in their dumb cars.

“Making people change because you can’t deal with who they are isn’t how it’s supposed to be done. What needs to be done is for people to pull their heads out of their asses. You say ‘cure.’ I hear ‘you’re not human enough.’

None of us asked to be trapped within our bodies. I know I didn’t.

“But as I went on I began to realize that Haden’s wasn’t some life sentence. It was just another way to live.

“It’s not an effective protest if it’s not pissing people off.”

“When you’re a kid all you want to do is be somewhere else.”

Stupid, drunk young men are a fixture of any urban setting, especially in the evening hours.

Cassandra Bell was one of the very few Hadens who had never not been locked in. Her mother contracted Haden’s while she was pregnant with Cassandra and passed it on to her in the womb.

The Hadens who are walking out this week are making the point that our world is about to be wildly disrupted, and the rest of America doesn’t really seem to give a shit.”

cafés disliked threeps hogging chairs, a small piece of technological bigotry that I didn’t really give a crap about one way or another.

I’m not a slavish follower of gender roles, but that seemed pretty ‘not guy’ to me.