Lena Garrett learned her father had been arrested when the school firewall decided her grief was a security risk.
It happened in third period Civics, which had been rebranded “Collective Responsibility Studies” sometime around fifth grade. She was half-listening to the instructor, Ms. Hemphill, explain the difference between “shallow allyship” and “deep ancestral accountability,” when her desk tablet buzzed with a priority notification.
Citizen Notice: Lineage Event – Garrett (Robert James)
Status: Detained under Ancestral Accountability Act
Case ID: G‑2199‑NJ‑4417
Media Sensitivity: High
Recommended Response: Formal repudiation within 72 hours to maintain optimal Proactive Accountability Score.
For a second, Lena thought it was some kind of glitch. Her dad didn’t get arrested. Her dad got parking tickets. Her dad fell asleep on the couch watching ancient movies and forgot the laundry in the washer. Her dad made bad puns and burned grilled cheese sandwiches and tried to fix the leaky sink with a wrench and a YouTube tutorial from 2075 that was wildly out of date.
Her dad didn’t get arrested.
“Ms. Garrett?” Ms. Hemphill’s voice cut through the rushing in Lena’s ears. “Is there a problem with your terminal?”
Lena realized her hands were shaking. The notification was still hovering on her screen, pulsing gently like a digital heartbeat.
“No,” she said. “I— I have a family alert.”
The class perked up at that. Family alerts were always interesting. They could mean anything from a boosted scholarship opportunity to a catastrophic citizen score drop. Either way, they were better than listening to Hemphill drone about the moral arc of history.
“Would you like to step outside and review it?” the teacher asked. Her tone was solicitous, but her eyes were already flicking toward the classroom dashboard where student metrics lived.
“I can see it from here,” Lena said, before she could stop herself. The words came out sharper than she’d intended.
There was a murmur. Some of the other students leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of her screen. The firewall privacy tint kicked in automatically, darkening her display to everyone but her.
Lena tapped the notification. It expanded, filling the screen with text and a bland headshot of her father pulled from his citizen ID file. He looked vaguely surprised, as if the camera had said something he didn’t agree with.
Under the photo, more lines:
Ancestor Linkage: Garrett, James Michael (Paternal line, G+5)
Offense Summary: Digital Hate Speech, Pattern Harassment, Toxic Cultural Contribution (2019–2026)
Detained Descendant: Garrett, Robert James (Paternal line, G+3)
Public Interest Index: Elevated
Required Action (descendant cohort):
Her chest felt tight. Her hands were slick on the desk surface. The words swam for a second, then snapped back into focus.
Her father was a “detained descendant.”
“Ms. Garrett,” Ms. Hemphill said. “I need you to either mute the alert or step into the hall. You’re disrupting the learning environment.”
Learning environment. As if learning was something that happened here, in this airless room with its inspirational posters and its rubber-stamped narratives where the past was a closed case and the present was just the paperwork.
Lena stood up. The chair scraped loudly. “I’ll go.”
She walked out into the hallway on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. The door closed behind her with a soft click. Out here, the silence was thicker. The school smelled like floor polish and cafeteria food and the faint metallic tang of old wiring.
Her tablet buzzed again. New notification:
Supplemental Guidance: How to Talk About Ancestral Harm
We understand that lineage events can be stressful. Remember: ancestral harm is an opportunity for growth. By acknowledging and repudiating harmful behavior in your family history, you help build a more just future for everyone…
She flicked it away. Another popped up: a templated repudiation statement auto-filled with her name.
*“I, Lena Marie Garrett, acknowledge that my ancestor James Michael Garrett contributed to a culture of harm through his digital actions. I repudiate his words and any benefit my family may have received, and I commit to…”
She closed it with a stabbing motion of her finger.
The hallway cameras watched her with unblinking red eyes. She knew there were sentiment analysis protocols running even out here—monitoring micro-expressions, posture, gait. Somewhere in the school’s admin panel, a little line graph labeled “Lena Garrett – Emotional Stability” was probably wobbling.
She thought about calling her father, but the notice had said “detained.” That meant his comm privileges were restricted, if not cut off entirely.
Her mother would have gotten the alert too. But talking to Mom about this would mean having the same old fight: why did you pick him, why did you stay so long, why do I have his last name, why can’t I just be someone else.
Lena leaned her forehead against the cool wall and closed her eyes.
“Hey.”
The voice came from down the hall. She looked up. Jamal Ortiz was leaning against a locker, one foot propped behind him, giving off his usual air of being mildly amused by the universe.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” Lena said. “Yes. I don’t know.”
He nodded like that made perfect sense. “Lineage event?”
She almost asked how he knew, then remembered. Jamal’s great-grandmother had been one of the first high-profile cases under the Act. A teacher who’d posted something about “kids these days” and “old music” that the system eventually decided was ageist, dismissive, and part of a larger pattern of harm. Jamal’s family had been a civics cautionary tale ever since.
“Yeah,” Lena said. “My dad.”
He winced. “Damn. Sorry.”
“He’s not even the one who—” She cut herself off. The cameras blinked. The walls hummed. “Never mind.”
“They got my cousin last year,” Jamal said. “Said he ‘failed to proactively distance himself’ from our great‑grandma’s posts. He was ten.”
Lena swallowed. “What did they do to him?”
“Mandatory workshop series. Daily reflection journals. Community service.” Jamal shrugged. “Could’ve been worse. They threatened to delay his educational track, but my aunt wrote this whole novella of an apology. Told them she’d personally scrub our family tree if that’s what it took.”
“Did it help?”
“He’s still ten and terrified of saying anything that isn’t on the school-sanctioned script,” Jamal said. “So define ‘help.’”
Lena laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound bounced weirdly off the hallway.
“You going to do it?” Jamal asked.
“Do what?”
“Repudiate.” He said the word like it tasted bad.
The templated statement floated in her mind again, all those carefully chosen phrases about harm and benefit and commitment. If she signed it, her Proactive Accountability Score would stay high. It would help with university placement, job tracking, housing applications. If she refused, the opposite.
“I don’t know,” she said. “If I do, it’s like I’m saying I agree with what they’re doing to him.”
“And if you don’t, they’ll say you agree with what your ancestor did,” Jamal said. “It’s a neat trick, right? Heads they win, tails you lose.”
He pushed off the locker and walked closer. Up close, Lena could see the faint outline of his own citizen monitoring band under his sleeve. Everyone had them by sixteen now. Another rite of passage.
“You want to see something?” he asked.
“Is this going to get me in more trouble?” she asked back.
“Probably,” he said. “But only the good kind.”
He pulled out his own tablet and tapped a sequence too fast for the hallway cams to catch more than a blur. A blank chat window opened, then filled with icons—names she recognized from around school.
At the top, the group name: The Unclean.
Messages scrolled by:
@XiaoM: Just got my ‘congrats on distancing yourself’ badge. Feels like getting a gold star for disowning your grandma.
@RiyaK: New meme draft: “Inherited eyes, not inherited sins” – thoughts?
@SamirL: Careful, they’ll call that genetic privilege minimization.
@JamalO: Got a new potential recruit. Watching her get the alert now. She’s gonna need somewhere off-grid to scream.
“Off-grid” was an exaggeration. Nothing was off-grid anymore. But there were angles, blind spots, places where the monitoring was fuzzier. Kids were good at finding those. They’d been practicing since the first parental control app came out.
“You want in?” Jamal asked.
Lena looked at the scrolling messages. Sarcasm. Anger. Dark humor. People talking about their ancestors without reciting the official catechism.
“Yeah,” she said. “I want in.”
He tapped a few more times. A notification popped up on her tablet:
Invitation: ‘The Unclean’ wants to add you. This group has a history of ironic commentary on accountability topics. Proceed?
The system flagged it as “Potentially Sensitive.” Of course it did.
Lena hit ACCEPT.
“Welcome to the sinners’ club,” Jamal said. “We meet wherever the cameras are glitchy and the Wi‑Fi is strong.”
The bell rang, muffled by the hallway walls. Third period was over. Fourth would start soon. Life went on. Classes, assignments, citizen metrics, the endless, grinding procession of days.
Lena took a breath. Her father’s face was still on her screen. Case ID. Status: Detained.
“He’s not a bad person,” she said quietly.
“I know,” Jamal said.
“His grandfather wasn’t either. Probably. They were just… people.”
“That’s the worst crime,” Jamal said. “Being people.”
They started back toward the classroom. The cameras tracked them. The system noted the new group membership. Somewhere in a server room, a model updated her risk profile.
Lena didn’t know yet what she would do about the repudiation statement. But for the first time since the alert, she felt something besides raw panic.
She felt angry.
| <– Chapter 4 | Chapter 6 –> |