THE CUSTODIAN'S DAUGHTER

She's tall. Or, at least, she appears that way—her fierce reputation adds inches.

"You're keeping our names out of this, right?" she asks.

I assure her I am.

"Good," she says, staring hard at me. "Because I would do anything to protect my family."

Those first few weeks were sort of a blur. You ever been on a Christmas vacation that lasted way too long? That's what it was like. We were all cooped up in my uncle's cabin. Nobody ever leaving the house. It felt like there were only seven people in the whole world—the three of us from my family, plus my uncle, his wife, and his two sons.

We didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had all of our meals taken care of thanks to the rep, obviously. After we started using it to stock up on toilet paper and the like, it sort of became a running joke for us to just use the rep for everything. We woke up one morning and my aunt was making a ton of sausages on the stove. We were all laughing at her, because she'd bothered to cook enough for everyone to eat.

I pointed out that she could've just cooked one really good one and scanned it into the replicator, and she was like, "If I don't at least use up the stuff we've got in the fridge, it'll go to waste!"

That really tickled me. What is waste, when you can have unlimited quantities of anything?

Pretty soon, all of us started adjusting to life with a rep. We threw out the coffee maker because my mom had brewed one particularly good pot, which we scanned into the rep. It was faster to just print copies of it.

The speed of the rep was incredible to me. It still is—just the idea that no matter how big or complicated the object was, they can print it in 30 seconds. That's a weird concept. Like, why would it take the same amount of time to print a cookie and something more complicated like a Nintendo?

That was the first thing the younger one did, by the way. He printed out copies of his handheld Nintendo and all of his games, so we could all play Mario Kart together. That was the greatest possible use for the machine, in his mind.

My aunt and uncle stopped going into work around the beginning of April. They just decided there wasn't much point. They'd built their home themselves, so it was all paid off already. My aunt was actually able to retire from her job at the bank and start collecting her pension. My uncle just called in and resigned over the phone. Said he had some family stuff to take care of for a few months, and that he understood if they didn't want to take him back once he was through. They were nice to him about it, said they wished him the best, but that his job would probably be gone. And that was that.

Why work? Even if you didn't print your own money, you had just about everything you needed. The only bills to worry about were electricity, water, and gas, and they had enough in savings to cover those for a hundred years.

School was different, though. It started back on the 14th, and my aunt insisted that both her boys had to go back. "You can't print an education out of a machine," she said.

Those two put up such a fuss. My younger cousin was especially pissed that I didn't have to go to school with them. My aunt and my older cousin—THE TEEN—kept trying to get him to understand how crucial it was that nobody found out we were there.

He said he got it, but you could tell he felt that some basic injustice was being done.

About three weeks into the school year, he nearly got us into trouble. The principal called up my aunt and uncle and told them their son had been giving away video game cartridges for free to all of his friends. The admins figured he'd somehow gotten a hold of his parents' credit card and gone on a spending spree.

My aunt decided to play along with that story. Said she'd make sure he learned his lesson. And she wasn't kidding. She whooped his ass when he got home that day. Told him if he ever shared anything from the replicator with other people, he was risking our lives.

He was crying so hard, and in between his sobs he said, "It ain't right! My friends can't afford to buy those games, but we can get 'em for free!"

Eventually he came around and said he understood the danger he was putting my family in. So we figured that was the end of it.

His words kind of haunted me, though. He was right. It was sort of a joke that any little kid should have to go to the store and spend their allowance money on something that could be printed for only a few pennies' worth of electricity. It's not like we deserved the replicator more than other people.

But what could we do? If people found out what we had, and they understood what it could do, it wouldn't be ours to keep for very long.

So we kept cool for about another month. Just hanging around the house, printing out whatever we needed, and constantly fearing that the feds were gonna find us.

We were sure that somebody was coming. If not the feds, then the private security force that Alphacorp had threatened us with. But nobody ever showed up.

As soon as we started feeling a little more safe and comfortable, the restlessness kicked in.

We started arguing with each other about ground rules for using the rep. My two cousins—the boy and THE TEEN—wanted to use it to print money, but the rest of us were totally against that. Mostly because we had all our needs met by the rep already. But also because it was just too big of a risk. Even if nobody noticed us using a lot of similar-looking bills, people would definitely get suspicious about us making lots of cash payments. I mean, cash was already on the way out back in '27. Only the boomers refused to give it up. So there was a pretty good chance we'd get taken for counterfeiters.

The other option was jewelry. We didn't have much gold, but my aunt had a very expensive diamond necklace that we could make a few copies of and pawn off if we needed it. But I argued against even that. We had enough cash to get by. To my thinking, doing anything that could draw attention to us would be a mistake.

My two cousins disagreed, but the majority ruled and the vote was carried. The law of the land was no repping money or trading repped valuables for money.

One night, THE TEEN came swaggering into the house with a dumbass-looking grin on his face. He plopped down on the couch, gettin' his dirty shoes all over everything. Just watched TV for a little while. I knew something was up. Sure enough, about half an hour after he got in, he announced that he was gonna go hang out with his friends. My uncle told him he could borrow his car if he wanted. And THE TEEN goes, "Oh, nah, I don't need it. I got my own ride."

We were all like, "Excuse me?" He strutted out the house and hopped up into this big, brand-new lookin' red Chevrolet.

I yelled at him, "Where'd you get the money for that?"

He said, "None of your business."

My uncle started cursing up a storm. Absolutely livid, hollering. "What did you do?"

THE TEEN peeled out of the driveway with his dad running after him. I've never seen my uncle so pissed in his life.

It got worse after I ran over to the rep and looked at its print history log. There it was. Stack after stack of $100 bills. I was enraged, but then I got scared, because I realized what THE TEEN had done.

He'd started out with only one single $100 bill. He'd made two of the same bill, then turned that into four, then eight, then sixteen, and so-on, until he had about fifty grand worth of cash. This little dipshit had printed out over 500 bills with the exact same serial number, "LB 49241797 F," printed in giant font, twice, on the face of each bill. And then he'd taken that stash of obviously counterfeit money and handed it over for a truck.

If the guys who sold that truck had two brain cells to rub together, they'd figure out pretty quick that they'd been paid with counterfeit cash. Very high quality counterfeits, of course, but the serial number thing was a bit of a giveaway. Once they realized that, they'd come looking for my cousin. Or, worse, call the cops to investigate.

I told my dad I needed to go out for some fresh air to calm down, and he let me borrow his own truck.

I drove straight to a military surplus store in town.

I brought a wad of my own repped cash with me—carefully differentiated, of course. Not a single duplicate serial number among the bills.

Because it was Colorado, the guy at the military surplus store didn't even bother to ID me when I got there. Eager to make a sale, you know?

What sort of firearm were you after?

Fuck, I didn't know. I just wanted something deadly that was small enough for me to use.

I described what I was after and the guy guided me over to a sort of compact-looking machine gun. It looked cool to me, so I bought it. Later I learned the name: A Heckler & Koch UMP-9.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, SMG. Thirty round magazine. Full auto and three-round burst modes.

I didn't know what I was getting into. The guy had a range out back. He let me practice with it for a while. I tried shooting it fully auto but it was a disaster. I couldn't hit anything. Once I started playing around with the burst mode, I figured it out pretty quick, though.

After 20 minutes of practice, I was hitting my targets close to dead-center. So I thanked him, bought more ammo, and got out of there.

When I got back to my uncle's house, we had visitors.

The guys who sold your cousin the truck?

Yep. Three of 'em. One smaller guy, and two much bigger friends of his.

My dad and my uncle were out on the porch already, and when I pulled up I could tell that things were tense.

The small guy was yelling about how he knew we had a counterfeiting operation going, and he wanted "real" money. He threw a bunch of the $100 bills my cousin had given him on the ground. Said that unless we paid him in full with legit bills, he was gonna go to the cops.

My dad was like, "No problem, no problem, we'll get you your money. Just give us a couple of days."

The little guy seemed like he was gonna start to calm down, but then one of his buddies started saying something to him under his breath. Got him worked up again. He turned back to my family and said, "Why don't you show me the little operation you've got going, since you're gonna pay me anyway and we're gonna be such good friends?"

That's when I got really scared. I could tell my dad and my uncle were freaking out too. My mom and my aunt were peeking out through one of the upstairs windows. I was sitting frozen in the truck, with my hand on the UMP.

The little guy kept insisting, "Let us inside and see the counterfeiting equipment or we're gonna have to go to the cops." That sort of thing.

My dad said, "I just can't let you do that. But I will get you your money, I swear."

The little guy declared that we were gonna have to pay double the original price of that truck if we wanted to buy his silence.

That's when I realized that we were fucked. If we paid this guy, he'd keep taking advantage of us. Threatening to call the cops on us unless we gave him more money. And if we didn't pay him, he'd probably follow through on that threat, and my dad would end up in jail. Probably my uncle too.

I knew, right then, what I had to do, if I wanted to protect my family.

So I made my mind up to do it.

The three guys started heading back to their ride. Big Humvee. It was parked just a few yards away from me. They took their time getting in. The two big guys were in the front, with the little man in the back.

I rolled down my window and slid the UMP-9 into my lap. Pushed a magazine into the chamber, and flicked off the safety.

When the driver cranked his engine, I slid my dad's truck into reverse and eased backward a few feet. Just slowly rolled in front of them, blocking the road.

Their lights were shining directly into my eyes, through the driver's side window.

I couldn't see the little guy in the back, but I was staring straight into the eyes of the two big guys. I remember one of them looking confused. The other seemed annoyed.

That's when I propped the gun up on my window sill and started spraying.

TAT-TAT-TAT, TAT-TAT-TAT, in quick bursts like that.

Got about 18 bullets out before they knew what was happening.

I knew the two guys up front were dead, but I kept firing until I clicked on empty. Ejected the spent mag and went for another, right as the back door of the truck opened and the little guy came hauling out of there.

He was screaming his ass off.

I think it was him screaming, at least. It was hard to tell, because everything was so loud.

My dad and uncle were yelling. My ears were ringing bad. And the little guy was running for the woods.

I climbed out of the truck, dropped to one knee, and squeezed off three more rounds. Caught him square in the back. He went down.

I walked over, feeling really calm. I can't describe that feeling to you. Like just totally zoned in. I put the gun to the back of his head and put a full burst into his skull. And that was it.

I'll tell you—I've never regretted doing that. It had to be done. Otherwise my family was going to be put in jail, or worse.

THE CUSTODIAN'S DAUGHTER pauses, here. She seems to be willing her emotions back under control. When she resumes speaking, her breathing is jagged.

Sorry. It's not something I try to linger on.

It's okay. Can you tell me what happened afterward?

Yeah. I uh… I walked up into the house and printed myself a fresh pot of coffee. Then I sat down at the kitchen table with a mug.

My dad and my uncle were both stomping around the kitchen, arguing about what to do about the bodies. My dad said he was going to call an old friend of his for advice. Some guy he'd met in jail, back when he did time like 15 years ago.

He stepped out on the porch, pulling at his hair and fumbling with his phone. After a few minutes, he came back in and said help was on the way.

My uncle said, "Help for what?"

Dad said, "Help getting rid of the bodies. This guy knows how to do it."

My aunt piped up then, said, "You could just scan them into the rep."

Everybody stopped and looked at her.

She said, "You know. Cut them up and scan them in piece by piece. That'll erase the evidence. Then we just delete the files."

Everybody groaned. Like, what the fuck, lady? Sure, technically it would work, but we use that thing to print our food.

My mom was like, "Jesus Christ," under her breath. She had pulled up a chair next to me at the table.

I remember making eye contact with her and wondering what she thought of me, after what I'd just done.

She reached out and squeezed my hand. And in a quiet voice that only I could hear, she said, "We're never, ever going to be safe, so long as we're the only ones with this machine."

That shook me.

It wasn't like she was saying some revolutionary idea.

Obviously, the sheer fact that we had the rep was a big risk for us. But the truth of it hit me fully, then, for some reason.

The problem wasn't just that we had this magical machine with all this power. At the very root of it, the real problem was that other people didn't have their own machine just like it.

My mind jumped ahead several steps, and I realized we really only had two choices: We could get rid of the replicator and go into hiding. Or, we could figure out how to make it so that we weren't the only ones with reps.

The plan suddenly formed in my mind. We'd need two reps: one we'd strip down into parts, and another to scan those parts and print out new ones. Then we'd reassemble the new parts into complete reps.

I was never a great math student, but I do understand how exponents work. Within just a couple of days, we could turn two reps into hundreds of reps. And then we could hand them out like candy.

All this was running through my mind while I sat there staring at my coffee. And suddenly I kind of came to the end of that line of thought and snapped out of it.

My dad was looking at me funny, like he knew I was about to say something.

I said, "We need another rep."

He said, "What?"

And I said, "We need to steal another rep."