“I wanted to make sure our conversation had privacy,” Sweetie explained, both verbally and by typing. Officer Sergeant pulled a lever in the booth and the cup began to rotate around its center, around the center of the ride, and around the other cups. The spin was gentle, but focusing too hard on the movement made Buster dizzy. He kept his eyes on Sweetie once he was sure Tonio had calmed down. “The three of us have reached a compromise—a compromise that Pronto is, perhaps, less happy about, which is why he is not here. I’d like to offer—”
“Is everything all right?” Lasagna interrupted, placing a kind paw on Tonio’s shoulder and then typing the rest. “I’ve never seen a panic attack before. That was scary.”
“I’m okay,” Tonio mumbled. “Thank you.” The cup curled around the edge of the platform, then slingshot its way back toward the center.
Buster glared at the judge. “You made us spend all day in a cage. He’s tired, and scared, and you don’t even care, do you?”
The judge watched him with a sour expression. “That reminds me.” She leaned down below the teacup’s center handle and pulled up a basket with her teeth. “I had someone make chicken salad sandwiches. Humans love chicken salad, don’t they?”
Tonio took the basket at Buster’s signal and opened it up. “Oh, whoa, thank you! I love chicken salad.” He also found a little bag of extra meat and fed the pieces to Buster.
“There’s a water bottle in there as well,” Judge Sweetie added. “And you can take as much time as you’d like.”
The teacups kept spinning. Buster’s stomach, empty aside from Devon’s snacks after a full night of storytelling and a day of curling up in a Ferris wheel, growled loudly at the first smell of chicken. He gobbled up the pieces handed to him, and Tonio ate a sandwich triangle in seconds.
“This is delicious!” Tonio gasped. “Did a dog made this? I—ack—uh—” He reached into his mouth and pulled out a long hair. “Yes. A dog made this. Thank you.”
“Of course.” Judge Sweetie bowed her head. She waited for their munching to slow down, then started again. “Dogkind has never had a situation quite like this one. We’ve had scares before, we’ve had humans learn some of our secrets, but we’ve never had a human see Dog Court for themselves. We’ve also never had a human learn any Underspeak, which your human has done remarkably quickly. Still, our typical solution could work here—we would send you to The Farm, Buster, and assign a watchdog to Tonio, who would make sure he never spoke the truth to anyone else.” She paused a moment to catch up with the typing.
“But because of your specific situation—and because I’m not heartless—I’d like to offer something different in your case, Tonio. I am willing to send you to The Farm as well, with Buster. The Farm is a beautiful place, truly a paradise—where you would be completely separated from the rest of the world. You would be taken care of, and you would have no responsibilities, but you would also have no further contact with anyone else. You would have no impact on the world, but you would be with Buster. And other Bad Dogs, of course.”
“No!” Buster tried to stand but was too wobbly in the spinning cups. He sat back down. “Absolutely not. This is my punishment, not Tonio’s.”
“I’m not offering this as a punishment.” She looked back up to Tonio. “We send dogs there because they can’t handle regular society. Based on what I’ve seen, and what Buster has told me, it seems like you might not be suited to your world, either. So if you want to leave, we can take you. You’ll be safe, and no one will find you. I promise.”
Tonio wiped chicken salad goop off his fingers, using a napkin from the basket. He pushed his bandanna up and thought about what she was saying. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Freedom from worry? If he couldn’t change anything, if he wasn’t around anyone, he couldn’t worry about anything. There was nothing he could do differently, nothing he could do wrong.
So many things about the world were scary. What would he do when he got older? What would he do for a job, or for a life? What would happen if he moved to a different city? What if he spent the rest of his life messing up and hurting people? What if he kept having panic attacks, and they never ended as long as he lived? Someplace like The Farm might make that better. And at least that way, Buster wouldn’t be alone. Right?
Right?
Buster watched Tonio stare at the sky as they circled the platform. He could guess at what the boy was thinking.
“Tonio,” he said, “you can’t do this. I messed up, not you. The world needs you to stick around.”
Tonio wasn’t sure. But he had an idea.
“I think I understand why you do this,” he said, addressing the judge. “Why you even have The Farm, and the Law. It’s because you don’t know what will happen, right? If humans find out that you’re smart. The world will change in a big way, and you don’t know if that would be good or bad. But since it could be very bad, you keep quiet.”
The judge bobbed her head yes.
“I get that,” Tonio assured her. “I do that, too. When I’m worried, or I’m feeling anxious, I sometimes stop doing anything. I try not to do anything good or anything bad, just in case I might accidentally do something really bad. And I could always accidentally do something really bad, so a lot of the time I don’t do anything.”
He took a drink of
