Read Clade for Free Online Page B

the room is basically an industrial-strength fun zone where kids are free to do whatever they want.
    As long as no one gets hurt.
    That’s the only rule. Other than that, it’s carte blanche. Freedom of behavior is critical to the success of the playroom. Ideally, the kids who end up there should not feel inhibited in any way. Part of Anthea’s job is to make them feel safe and comfortable, to get them to open up and express themselves without reservation. Most of the time that’s easier said than done. Anthea deals with kids who—as a kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest skill—have discovered the hard way that it’s not in their best interest to trust. Trust is not a favorable adaptive strategy. In fact, trust is a good way to get hurt or killed. It is one of those dangers to be avoided at all costs, no different than a saber-toothed tiger or a falling rock.
    At least Anthea knows what it’s like, has stood in their shoes. The kids can sense that she’s one of them, as if their shared history has a unique smell. That makes it a little easier to connect.
    Of course, more than just simple play goes on here. The toys that a child selects and the
way
the child plays with those toys are carefully observed and recorded. These choices reveal deep psychological inner workings, the orchestrated machination of synapses that give rise to various emotions, attitudes, and conduct. The second part of Anthea’s job is to glean insight into what makes a child tick so that she can make an assessment and write an evaluation. Once an evaluation is made, a specific course of treatment can be determined. Depending on the severity and type of problem—e.g., Did Wooly the Mammoth’s trunk get torn off and used as a surrogate penis to thrash Betty the Butterfly for being an overly affectionate mother?—treatment can be anything from a foster-to-adopt home to a more controlled program of deep psychological counseling or even chemical rewiring.
    Anthea gets to work late, fifteen minutes before her first scheduled session of the day. Malina was late picking up Josué, and so Anthea is running behind schedule as well. Plus, she’s got Rigo in the back of her mind, weighing her down. He was super sweet last night—too sweet. Like he was being extra attentive to her out of guilt. She believes his story about visiting his mother—she could smell the familiar fragrance of incense and candles on him—but not for as long as he said. There was another smell, too. One she couldn’t identify but is pretty sure came from another woman.
    As soon as Anthea walks through the door her supervisor, Tissa, wants her to see a new kid. Which means she has to spend a couple of minutes parsing background material. She barely has time to prepare—put Rigo out of her mind and put on her play face.
    “His name is Ibrahim,” Tissa says, downloading the file to Anthea’s IA. “He was brought in last night.”
    “Where was he found?” The information is in the file, but Anthea likes to discuss preliminaries in advance. For her, the emotional response to a situation contains more information than the raw data that describes it.
    Tissa leads her down the hall, in the direction of the group home section of the building. “He was picked up at a pod transfer station over in Los Gatos, as part of a gang sweep.”
    “Which gang?”
    “The Necrofeels. But he’s not wearing any of their graffitics.”
    No tattoos then, or scarification. “A new member?” Anthea asks.
    Tissa shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not?”
    “You’ll see when you meet with him.”
    “What’s this about clade incompatibilities and antipher treatment?” Anthea asks, scanning the boy’s med file.
    “When he got here he had some minor muscle spasms and loss of gross motor skills. He was given a broad-spectrum antipher. That seemed to help, but we’re still trying to clade him.”
    “Still?”
    “His clade-profile is nonstandard. I mean, some of it’s