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“He’ll find out anyway.” How will I hide my absences from someone I live with?

“Just don’t—travel. Be very strict with yourself.” My mother softened her voice. “For me. For us. Try very hard, okay?”

“Okay.” I don’t feel confident about this, but I will certainly try very hard.

Now we are at the airport—my mother, my father and I. It is unusual for them to venture into public together; there are police in the departures hall, and my parents are nervous. They could be arrested just for being here, but they have come to see me off, to say goodbye. It is brave of them, but I wish they had not come; I am afraid for them. Until today, I felt like a problem they were trying to get rid of—I thought that they didn’t want the extra trouble of a time traveler in the family—but now I understand that they are trying to hide me from the people who threaten them. My parents are extremely famous; they might be recognized by anyone. My mother wears unfashionable big sunglasses and has her long hair rolled up under her pink straw hat. My father has cut his hair short and shaved his mustache. They are dressed like tourists, like country people. They have covered their tattoos and applied bronzer; they look like anybody’s parents, comfortable, a little soft, almost middle-aged. When I still went to school, before my parents were arrested this last time, I used to wish they looked ordinary, not like artist-weirdoes. Today I regret it.

My mother hands me the Xiaomi. It has all the docs I need to get on the plane and go to London, plus a bunch of faked photos of me and my “family,” people I don’t even know; texts with “friends” about things that never happened, games I never played; evidence of a whole life I haven’t lived. I turn it on, and we anxiously review again: my passport, the visa, my ticket; the letter of conditional acceptance from the music school and the letter of financial support from my uncle; my health records (which do not mention time travel); letters from culture ministers here in Shanghai allowing me to leave. (It was easy to obtain these since I cannot play the piano and am not a prodigy: “Why should we care if he leaves?” the Minister of Music asked my mother.) And finally, the all-important Letter of Exception from my doctor that explains why I do not have bioware (somehow without mentioning time travel). My parents agree that everything is there.

We check my backpack and go to stand in the long security queue. Now my parents are so nervous I can see it. My mother’s hands are shaking. My father practices his breathing. “Please,” I say. “Don’t stand here. I can go through on my own. Please.” They hug me and duck under the rope. I watch as they stand near a small snack booth, looking so much like tourists that I lose them every time I have to focus on the line as it moves forward. It is my turn, and I hand the dossier to the officer.

I feel dizzy. I take a long, slow breath and focus on the officer in front of me. He opens my docs. I think about the woman who made my passport. She was someone my mother knew; they had been art students together in Hong Kong, and now this woman was an expensive forger. She had animated tattoos of goldfish on her face and hands. I only saw her once, when she took my biometrics. She said she’d never made a passport for someone who didn’t have bioware, and that she would do it cheaply because she wouldn’t have to reprogram me. The officer looks bored as he flicks through my passport.

“Where are your parents?” he asks. I turn to find them. They wave at me. Then he says, “Oh, I see, they’ve ordered you a minder, that’s all right, then. You must wait for her once you have gone through the barrier.” No one has mentioned this to me. The officer waves me along. I have been coached by my mother, and I thank him and step through the gate. There is a queue at the security machine. I use the time to look at my parents. When will I see them again? They are holding hands; I can’t remember ever seeing them hold hands before. She looks small next to him. My mother usually wears high heels; now in their strange clothes they already seem like strangers. I have never spent a day apart from them.

The line moves forward. There is a family in front of me with little children, it takes them some time to go through. The mother holds the baby, who is too young to have bioware; it takes longer because the machine doesn’t like the baby. A technician is called; she lets the mother and baby go through. I look back at my parents. They wave and smile. I smile, I wave back. Then it is my turn and I step forward.

I hold my phone out, open to the Letter of Exception. I catch the eyes of the technician and say, “Manual scan, please?” She reads the letter and says, “Follow me.” Her voice is not unkind. She leads me to an area with a bench and a holoscanner, with a mini-scanner dangling from its side. She gestures for me to sit on the bench. Another technician comes over.

“Your letter says you have atypical brain anatomy. That isn’t very specific. Do you know what kind of divergence you have?” the second technician asks.

“No . . .” I say softly. I am frightened; my parents haven’t told me what to say. Perhaps they didn’t know I would be asked?

The first technician asks, “How old are you?”

“Thirteen.” At least I can answer something.

“Okay,” she says. “We are going to make a scan of your brain. It won’t hurt.”

“Okay.” What else can I say? The technicians power up the machine. Lights glow. The scanner hums. The second technician passes the mini-scanner over and around my head. I summon the same memory I always use for scans: I think of a woman who used to visit my mother when I was little. We called her Lin Daiyu, but that was not her name. Her face had been scarred in an acid attack. She had a beautiful voice. She stopped visiting when I was six. I think about her voice, which was very soothing and low. One afternoon when I was sick in bed with the flu, Daiyu made me ginger tea and sang to me. It was a song I hadn’t heard before, in a language I didn’t know, but I remember it because it was so unusual (and perhaps because I had a high fever). I listen to the song in my mind’s ear. The machine beeps three times. Then the projector assembles a hologram of my brain in front of me, at the technicians’ eye level.

The hologram is built from the inside out, so it begins with the brain stem, where most people have the bioware connection installed. As the hologram builds my cerebellum and moves through the lobes of my cerebrum, the technicians smile and their guarded expressions soften. I’m not sure what a normal person would feel or say in this situation. These people look at my brain the way my parents look at a beautiful drawing: it pleases them.

They nod at each other. The first technician says, “You’re fine, dear. We can see why they couldn’t install the bioware; you are organized very differently from most people.” I wish I could ask them what they see, but my parents have always told me that I should never prolong any encounter with authority, so I simply thank them. Doctors usually just say I’m atypical or have an anomaly; my parents say don’t worry, and don’t tell anybody. But now I’m standing in an airport with two strangers looking at my brain and it’s more uncomfortable than being naked in public. I feel shame but I’m not sure why. The second technician shuts down the hologram. I wonder if my brain has been archived, but I know I shouldn’t ask.

The first technician escorts me back to the barrier and passes me through. I turn, looking for my parents. They are still in the same place. They wave goodbye—I wave and already I am lonely—my mother calls out but I don’t hear what she says—someone behind me grumbles, “move along”—I take a step and I am surrounded by the crowd on the other side of the barrier. I am lost.

Someone says, “Oliver!” and grabs my arm. Oliver, I remember, is my name now. I turn—my first instinct is to run—but the person attached to the hand on my arm is a smiling young woman.

“I’m Isadora,” she says. “I’m your minder.” She is wearing a black suit; she is almost as tall as my father, her hair is cut short-short like Yu Eun Ha’s (my favorite singer right now), and she has a peacock’s feather embroidered on her handbag. To me she looks more like a business executive than a childminder, but I guess that’s good? Maybe people will think I’m with my mother. She removes her hand and I massage my arm; her grip was quite strong.

“Hello, Isadora,” I say. I stare at her face, wondering if my so-cautious parents actually arranged for this lady to accompany me without ever mentioning it . . . ?

“Your Uncle Stephen sent me,” Isadora says. “I’m going to fly with you to London, to make sure you get there safely.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I didn’t know.” We have been standing slightly out of the flowing crowd in a wide hallway. Isadora turns, and I glimpse the Interstitial tattoo on her neck. Not one of us, then—or perhaps she is Fùfā, a relapsed person?

“This way,” Isadora says. “We have to go through one more barrier.”

I expect to be hand-scanned again, but Isadora seems to have an understanding with the barrier officials, they wave us through without looking at our docs. Isadora is very smiley and relaxed until we are on the other side, and only then do I see that she was nervous. She asks me if I have ever been on an airplane before. I admit that I haven’t. “Come, then, let me spoil you a little bit.”

We turn a corner and are in a huge hall full of shops. One shop is filled with real books! I have never seen anything like it. I have never imagined so many books in one place. “Pick out a few, Oliver.” She smiles to see my hesitation. “Your uncle asked me to buy you something for the flight, please choose what you like.”

“What do you recommend, Isadora?”

Usually, if you ask an Interstitial person to make a recommendation, they will pause-and-consult. Instead Isadora answers immediately, which makes me more curious about her status.

“You should have some books about boys in England, since you are a boy and you are going to England.” Isadora walks around the shop, picking books off of shelves. She hands them to me as we go: Oliver Twist, Peter Pan, About a Boy. “Oh, here, Oliver, this one is about rabbits who must find a new home, you’ll like this.” She hands me a book with a pretty rabbit on the cover: Watership Down.