“Yeah. Without you even turning it on.”

Fear settles in Ify’s stomach. The cyberized girl’s memories: a poison. A virus. Her eyes grow wide with the question that rings between her ears.

How many of those refugee children are cyberized?

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

Paige and Amy take Peter to an artificial lake a brief walk from their cul-de-sac where teenagers wearing waterskates glide and twirl and leap as though they were skating on ice. Amy has Peter in a hoverchair with a blanket over his legs.

Upon his return from the hospital, his arms had been leaden and he’d had to be fed his liquids with a spoon. Paige had felt too nervous to feed him intravenously. He still has a listlessness about him, a lack of reaction to most stimuli. But it is a relief to Ify that he still squints when lights shine too brightly and that he will shrink away at something that might cause him pain. And now with an artificial wind blowing in his face to simulate springtime, the slightest of smiles crawls across his lips.

A pair of white, middle-aged neighbors waves to Amy. Amy lets out a loud squeal and beckons Ify to Peter’s hoverchair. Then Amy and Paige hurry over to join their neighbors and huddle in the mirthful buzz of excited conversation sprinkled throughout with cannon bursts of laughter.

Ify walks slowly to Peter’s side, and for a long time, they watch the kids skating in silence.

“I won’t remember this,” Peter says, at last.

“What?” Ify looks down at him, this unmoving boy who suddenly contains a sadness so unbearable it can’t possibly be false. She wants to believe that every word out of his mouth is an attempt at controlling her, steering her in the direction he wants. But the stillness in his voice, its lack of tremor, rings too true in her chest.

“I don’t remember being a child.” He squints at the kids skating on water. One of them splashes a large wave on a little boy whose hair is the color of wheat grain. “I know that before, I am little, and I am reaching up to take things from kitchen table. And I am standing on my toes to do it. But I am not remembering it.”

Ify wants to tell him this is because he’s a synth and those memories weren’t his to begin with. But she restrains herself. Let him speak. Maybe this is part of his therapy.