My mother, husband and son entered a televised trial to prove they could live my life better than I had, and the entire country cheered when they learned the prize for succeeding was my disappearance. They sat beneath the studio lights like contestants on a game show, certain they understood every failure in my life. None of them looked nearly as confident when the machine announced what would happen if they failed.
Chapter 1
The Life Trial had been legal for only seven days. Congress had never approved it, no court had tested it, and nobody seemed to know who had built the system behind it. Yet every television network carried the same broadcasts because America had become fascinated by its brutal promise: judge another person’s life, enter their exact circumstances, and prove you could have done better.
If you succeeded, the person you judged would be permanently erased from society, and you would receive one million dollars. If you failed to outperform that person under identical conditions, you would die and the person you condemned would receive three million dollars.
No one had volunteered.
Until my family did.
I was forty-seven years old, though strangers often guessed I was closer to sixty. Years of factory shifts, cleaning jobs, pregnancies, bad teeth, little sleep, and inexpensive food had etched themselves into my face. The giant studio screen summarized my life in three merciless phrases: HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION. LOW INCOME. TROUBLED FAMILY.
Underneath appeared my photograph.
Then the pictures of my challengers.
My mother, Vivian Reed, sixty-eight. My husband, Greg, fifty. And my sixteen-year-old son, Leo.
The audience began voting before any of them spoke.
ERASE HER: 61%.
The number climbed.
My mother went first. “I gave Caroline every opportunity I could,” she told the cameras. “She was bright, but she wasted it. She complained studying was too difficult. A stronger person would have made something of herself.”
Applause rolled across the studio.
Greg leaned toward his microphone. He had spent most of his adult life moving between warehouse management jobs and periods of unemployment, yet he spoke with the confidence of a financial adviser.
“My wife never learned how to manage money,” he said. “Any competent adult can build savings if they make intelligent choices. She always acted like everything was happening to her.”
More applause.
Then Leo spoke.
That was the part that hurt.
He looked at me and wrinkled his nose. “People at school think she’s my grandmother. She wears old clothes and drives this embarrassing car. My friends’ moms have careers. She acts like being tired is some kind of accomplishment.”
Several people laughed.
I looked down at my shoes.
They were black flats I had owned for nine years. I had glued the soles twice.
The host, a silver-haired man who had somehow learned to sound cheerful while discussing death, turned toward me.
“Caroline Reed, would you like to respond?”
“No.”
The audience murmured.
The system asked again.
“Do you dispute your challengers’ claims?”
I looked at the three people who knew my life better than anyone else and had still decided I deserved to lose it.
“No,” I said quietly. “I want them to try.”
Something in my voice silenced the room.
The system selected Vivian first.
She chose childhood and education.
“I always said Caroline could have gone to an excellent college,” she announced. “If I’d had her opportunities, I would have.”
“Simulation conditions will reproduce Caroline Reed’s physical health, intellectual ability, financial circumstances, family environment, and social conditions,” the artificial voice said. “Only the challenger’s judgment may differ.”
Vivian laughed.
“Perfect.”
Her chair locked.
The screen behind us came alive.
A little girl appeared on a dirt road outside a dying Pennsylvania mill town. She was six years old and wore shoes two sizes too small.
That girl was me.
Except now my mother was inside her.
The first scene showed something Vivian had apparently forgotten.
There was no preschool.
No books.
No warm bedroom filled with educational toys.
There was a single rented room behind a laundromat, a mattress shared by mother and daughter, and three weeks at a time when the refrigerator contained little besides margarine and powdered drink mix.
At eight years old, the child stood outside an elementary school and watched other children walk through the doors.
“Can I go?” she asked.
My mother’s younger self grabbed her arm.
“School costs money.”
“It’s public school.”
“You think pencils are free? Clothes? Lunch?”
The audience stopped whispering.
Eventually a church volunteer named Mr. Callahan learned I was not attending school. He paid for supplies himself and convinced my mother to enroll me.
On the studio screen, a number appeared.
DONATIONS FOR CHILD: $413.
Then another.
SPENT ON CHILD: $86.
The simulation showed Vivian selling two sets of donated notebooks at a flea market. It showed her accepting grocery cards from the church and trading them for cash. It showed eight-year-old Caroline borrowing pencils from classmates because the supplies supposedly meant for her had disappeared.
My mother’s face twitched in the restraint chair.
“I did what I had to do,” she muttered.
The system continued.
At eleven, I scored first in the district on a standardized exam. Vivian carried the certificate to churches, civic groups, and local businesses and told everyone she was raising a gifted child alone.
Donations increased.
My meals did not.
A teacher gave me used eyeglasses after noticing I could not read the board. Vivian sold them because, as she told a neighbor, “Poor girls don’t need to see perfectly to wash dishes.”
A man in the audience shouted, “My God.”
At thirteen, my body began changing, but there was rarely enough food. I fell asleep in class. My grades dropped.
Vivian’s consciousness tried pushing harder.
She woke the simulated child at four-thirty every morning to study.
The girl stared at equations she could barely see.
“Focus,” Vivian screamed through her younger body.
Subject Caroline vomited from hunger.
“Stop making excuses.”
The audience vote changed.
ERASE CAROLINE: 38%.
Then 25%.
Then 11%.
Greg leaned toward me.
“You never told me it was this bad.”
I turned my head.
“I told you I grew up hungry.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing.”
The high school entrance exam arrived.
Vivian had insisted for years that I failed because I was lazy.
Now she entered the same exam after living inside my malnourished body, with my damaged eyesight, my lack of preparation, my sleepless nights, and my terror of disappointing the woman who controlled every meal.
Her score appeared.
It was fourteen points lower than mine.
The machine chimed.
“Challenger Vivian Reed has failed to outperform Caroline Reed.”
My mother woke with a gasp.
“No.”
Metal restraints closed over her wrists.
Her confidence disappeared so completely that I barely recognized her.
“Caroline.”
I said nothing.
“Baby, tell them I understand now.”
The transparent execution chamber began lowering.
“You’re my daughter.”
“You were my mother,” I said.
She started crying.
“I did my best.”
I looked at the screen where the childhood version of me remained frozen, barefoot and hungry.
“No,” I said. “I did.”
A blue light filled the chamber.
When it lifted, her chair was empty.
The studio screamed.
The scoreboard changed.
CHALLENGER ONE FAILED.
COMPENSATION: $3,000,000.
My phone vibrated inside my purse.
Greg stood abruptly.
“I withdraw.”
Leo jumped up beside him. “Me too.”
The system answered immediately.
“Withdrawal is prohibited after initiation of the first trial.”
Greg went white.
“That’s insane.”
“You signed the agreement,” I said.
He stared at me.
Two black security drones descended from the ceiling.
“Challenger Gregory Reed,” the system announced. “Take your seat.”
And for the first time in twenty-three years of marriage, my husband looked at me exactly the way I had looked at him countless times.
Trapped.
