Parker sat on the worn carpet-tiled floor with his back against the far wall and his knees pulled up to his chest. He was well hidden—tucked in behind a wooden cart that was missing a wheel and surrounded by crates overflowing with tangled cables and broken keyboards. Even if somebody were to walk in, which seemed unlikely given how the room seemed only to serve as a dumping ground for defective equipment, they wouldn’t have seen him. It would have been the perfect place for Parker to forget about the outside world—if only for a moment—had it not been for the persistent vibration in his left arm. Effie could be so annoying. Parker looked down at the two tiny dots of orange light on either side of his wrist. This was Effie—rather, E. F. E., “Ears for Emma,” a device his father had invented not long after Emma was diagnosed as being deaf. Effie translated electrical impulses created by thoughts into audible speech for Parker and his parents to hear through an implanted microphone, and into subtitles that Emma could read using specially designed glasses.
