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freaking out and you might be ready for real field work.

My “skirt the crowd and keep your eyes on the door” technique seemed to be working. With Shaun and Buffy providing louder, more visible targets, no one was going for me. Besides, I have a well-established—and well- deserved—reputation for being the sort of interviewee who walks away leaving you with nothing you can use as a front-page quote or saleable sound byte. It’s hard to interview someone who refuses to talk to you.

Ten feet to the door. Nine. Eight. Seven…

“—and this is my gorgeous daughter, Georgia, who’s going to be the head of Senator Ryman’s hand-selected blogging team!” Mom’s hand caught my elbow just as the gushing, ebullient tone of her voice caught my ears. Trapped. She swung me around to face the crowd of paparazzi, fingers digging into my arm. More quietly, through gritted teeth, she said, “You owe me this.”

“Got it,” I said, out of the corner of my mouth, and let myself be turned.

Shaun and I figured out early what our purpose was in our parents’ lives. When your classmates aren’t allowed to go to the movies because they might be exposed to unknown individuals, while your parents are constantly proposing wild adventures in the outside world, you get the idea that maybe something’s going on. Shaun was the first to realize how they were using us; it’s about the only place where he grew up before I did. I got over Santa. He got over our parents.

Mom kept an iron grip on my arm as she mugged and preened, re-creating her favorite photo opportunity, version five hundred and eleven: the flamboyant Irwin poses with her stoic daughter, polar opposites united by a passion for the news. I once sat down with the news aggregators and compared a public-image search to the collection of private pictures on the house database. Eighty-two percent of the physical affection I’ve received from my mother has been in public, in careful view of one or more cameras. If that seems cynical, answer this: Why has she reliably, for my entire life, waited to touch me until there was someone with a visible camera in shooting range?

People wonder why I’m not physically affectionate. The number of times I’ve been a rating-boosting photo opportunity for my parents should be sufficient answer. The only person who’s ever hugged me without thinking about the shooting angles and light saturation is my brother, and he’s the only one whose hugs I’ve ever given a damn about.

My glasses filtered camera flashes, although it wasn’t long before I had to close my eyes anyway. Some of the newer cameras have lights on them strong enough to take photographs in total darkness that seem to have been taken at noon, and there’s not an intelligence check associated with buying that sort of equipment. One of those suckers goes off in your face, you know you’ve been photographed. I was going to have a migraine for days thanks to Mom’s forced photo opportunity. There was no way I could have avoided it; it was give in before dinner or spend the entire meal being harangued about my duties as a good daughter, leading to a much longer photo session afterward. I’d rather kiss a zombie raccoon.

Buffy came to my rescue, slinking through the crowd with the sort of grace that only comes from the kind of practice most of our generation has avoided. Reaching out, she caught hold of my other arm and chirped, all dizzy good cheer, “Ms. Mason, Georgia, Mr. Mason says our table’s ready! Only if you don’t come now, they may release it, and then we’ll have to wait at least a half an hour for another table.” She paused before delivering the coup de grace. “An inside table.”

That was the perfect thing to say. Sitting outside added to the family’s mystique, making us look brave and adventurous. Parental opinion, not mine. I think eating outside when you don’t have to makes you look like a suicidal idiot dying to get munched by a zombie deer. Shaun sides with everybody on this one—he’d rather eat outside when we have to eat with the parents in public, since that way there’s the chance a zombie deer will come along and rescue him. He just agrees that it’s a stupid thing to do. Mom doesn’t see the stupidity. If it was a choice between an outdoor table where the photographers could get some decent shots and an indoor table where people might gossip about the fearless Stacy Mason losing her nerve, well… her answer was obvious.

Flashing her award-winning—literally—smile at the crowd, Mom pulled me into an “impulsive” hug and announced, “Well, folks, our table’s ready.” Noises of displeasure greeted her statement. Her smile widened. “But we’ll be back after food, so if you guys want to grab a burger, we might be able to coax a few wise statements out of my girl.” She gave me a squeeze and let go, to the sound of general applause.

I sometimes wonder why none of these news site cluster bombs ever catch the way her smile dies when she’s not facing the cameras. They run solemn pictures of her once in a while, but they’re as posed as the rest; they show her looking mournfully at abandoned playgrounds or locked cemetery gates, and once—when her ratings dipped to an all-time low during the summer Shaun and I turned thirteen and locked ourselves in our rooms—at the school Phillip had attended. That’s our Mom, selling the death of her only biological child for a few points in the ratings game.

Shaun says I shouldn’t judge her so harshly, since we make our living doing the same thing. I say it’s different when we do it. We don’t have kids. The only things we’re selling are ourselves, and I guess we have a right to that.

Dad and Shaun were standing outside the restaurant doors, turned just far enough that none of the microphones capable of withstanding the crowd noise without shorting out would be able to make out what they were saying. As I drew closer, I heard Shaun saying, in an entirely pleasant tone, “… I really don’t care what you consider ‘reasonable.’ You’re not part of our team; you’re not getting any exclusives.”

“Now, Shaun—”

“Dinnertime,” I said, snagging Shaun’s arm as I walked past. He came with me as gratefully as I’d gone with Buffy a few moments before. Shaun, Buffy, and I walked into the restaurant practically arm-in-arm, with our parents trailing behind us, both struggling to conceal their irritation. Tough. If they didn’t want us embarrassing them in public, they shouldn’t have made us go out.

Our table proved to be nice enough to suit Mom’s idea of propriety; it was located in the far corner of the yard, close to both the fence keeping out the woods and the fence isolating us from the street. Several enterprising paparazzi had drifted over to that portion of the sidewalk and were snapping candid shots through the bars. Mom flashed them a dimpled grin. Dad looked knowing and wise. I fought the urge to gag.

My handheld vibrated, signaling an incoming text message. I unclipped it from my belt, tilting it to show the screen.

“Think this’ll die down when we’re on the road?— S”

I smirked, tapping out, “Once the media machine (aka ‘Mom’) has been left here? Absolutely. We’ll be small potatoes next to the main course.”

He tapped back: “I love it when you compare people to food.”

“Practicing for the inevitable.”

Shaun snorted laughter, nearly dropping his phone into the basket of breadsticks. Dad shot him a sharp look, and he put his phone down next to his silverware, saying angelically, “I was checking my ratings.”

Dad’s scowl melted instantly. “How’s it looking?”

“Not bad. The footage the Buffster managed to clean before we hauled her away from her computer is getting a really good download rate.” Shaun flashed a grin at Buffy, who preened. If you want her to like you, compliment her poetry. If you want her to love you, compliment her tech. “I figure once I do the parallel reports and record my commentary, my share’s going to jump another eight points. I may break my own top stats this month.”

“Show-off,” I said, and smacked him on the arm with my fork.

“Slacker,” he replied, still grinning.

“Children,” said Mom, but there was no heat behind it. She loved it when we goofed around. It made us look more like a real family.

“I’m going to have the teriyaki soy burger,” said Buffy. She leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “I heard from a guy who knows a girl whose boyfriend’s best friend is in biotech that he—the best friend, I mean—ate some beef that was cloned in a clean room and didn’t have a viral colony, and it tasted just like teriyaki soy.”

“Would that it were true,” said Dad, with the weird sort of mournfulness reserved for people who grew up before the Rising and were now confronted with something that’s been lost forever. Like red meat.

That’s another nasty side effect of the KA infection that no one thought about until they were forced to deal