G-157 (23 page)

“So
,
what else do I need to do?”

“Well,” he said, putting the envelope back into the bin. “They want those interested in politics, athletics, community service, fine arts, humanitarian issues. What have you got?”

“Well,” she said, watching as the mayor uncapped his pen and pulled out a notepad. “I starred in the school play freshman year. I was on the varsity soccer
team until last year
when I had my motorcycle accident. I was president of the science club, oh, and over the summer I’m going to get some volunteers to help fix up Doc’s building. That place is a mess.
And he
offered me an apprenticeship
to study to become a doctor
, w
hich I might take on for a bit…
And I think that’s it.”

“That’s quite the list.”

Aire blushed. “Well, there’s not much to do around here so I need something to keep me from getting bored.”

“True.”

“Do you think it’s enough?”

“Hmm.” Jenkins let out an exaggerated exhale as he finished his last note. “I think it’s sufficient.”

“Excellent,” Aire beamed. “So how do I apply? Do I write an essay or something?”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll submit the official paperwork with my letter of recommendation in the out of town mailbox with my other deliveries first thing Monday morning. Which school do you want?”

“Harvard.”

“That was a quick answer.”

“I have a quick eye that knows the best when it sees it.”

Jenkins nodded. “Harvard it is then.”

“Wonderful. How long until we hear back from them?”

“It could take up to six months.”

“Six months!”

Jenkins put his hand up. “You’ve got a little over a year before you graduate. And they may make you wait longer for entrance since you skipped two years of school. Lots of universities are opposed to admitting anyone younger than eighteen.”

“I’ll go insane if I have to wait six months.”

“I’m sure you’ll find other activities to occupy your time.”

Aire sighed and straightened her shoulders. “You’re right. I’ve already waited fifteen years, what’s a few more measly months.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Well,” she said, extending her hand again as she stood up. “Thank you again for all of your help. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jenkins heard her footsteps echo through the hallway, followed by the slam of the heavy door behind her. He sipped his coffee alone in his office, his head nodding to no one.

“I was surprised too,” he said. He placed the mug on the desk and picked up a pen, tapping it against
the letterhead paper he’d been jotting a note on
. His face began to sag again as he nodded, his forehead furrowing into a deep frown. “It seems like such a waste doesn’t it? Hell, half the kids in Arizona can’t even pass the AIMS test, and she blew the SAT out of the water without having a real education. Couldn’t we just-”

Jenkins fel
l silent as
his pen pressed hard onto the
paper
. A blob of blue ink soon began to puddle through onto the desk. He nodded.

“Yes, sir, non-negotiable.” He searched for a tissue to wipe the ink away before it dried.

***

Her elation at her scores and her fear at the events at school created a sickening mix that made her stomach pitch and flutter on her way home. The rich aroma of spices wafting through the front door had the ironic effect of easing the nausea. Her stomach growled as she strode through the living room, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since that morning. Stepping into the kitchen, her appetite faded when she saw that once again only Mitch and her father were at the table eating readymade chicken soup. She poured herself a small bowl and sat down, her gut now lurching at the sight of the preservative packed water, as though angered that it had been tricked into thinking it would be receiving a home cooked meal
and was instead met with soggy cardboard drowning in flavored water
.

“I got good news today,” she said as she stirred the pale yellow noodles.

“What good news?
” Mitch asked as he wiped stray broth from his chin.

“I got an almost perfect score on my SAT test.”

“Cool.”

“And Mayor Jenkins is going to submit my application to a good university on the east coast.”

Her father’s fist slammed against the daisy tablecloth, sending watery broth raining down onto the table
and his children jumping back in their seats
.

“Can’t you just leave it alone? You’re always running around here causing trouble. Why can’t you be a normal person instead of some kind of freak!”

Mitch and Aire’s eyes widened.  They sucked in their breath as they watched a thick vein pulse in their father’s neck through his red flesh. His eyelid twitched, and his face softened as he took hold of himself.

“Oh, Aire, sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he pleaded, reaching for her hand.

She stood up from the table and took the stairs three at a time up to her room. Her breathing ragged, she strained to push her oak desk in front of the door to seal herself in. Collapsing on the bed, she took deep breaths to calm herself. Whatever was happening with the rest of John’s Town was now affecting her father as
well
. Whatever
it
was,
it
was here
, and she was powerless to stop it
. She paced her room, trying to figure out what to do next. The alarm clock next to her bed clicked through the hours as she paced and sat at the bench seat, only to stand up and begin pacing again.

Midnight finally returned. She scurried through her window and went to meet Troy at their secr
et place. She hugged him tight
when she reached the clearing. He stared at her for a while before retrieving the blanket from where they’d hidden it under some dead branches. They laid on their backs in silence looking up into the sky. She was glad to see Orion staring back at her from above, his three star belt an easy mark of guidance in the southern night sky.

“What’s wrong?” Troy asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You seem distant. Did you not do well on your test?”

She turned to her side and propped on her elbow to face him. She frowned and tucked a strand of tangled hair behind her ear.

“I’m really happy about my test.”

“Then what is it? I was expecting you to be
all smiles
.”

“I’m just…I don’t know what I’m most worried about.”

“Is it your mom?”

“Partly, she wasn’t at dinner again tonight,” she said. “It’s this whole place. There’s something really wrong here, but no one seems to think it’s a problem that the whole town is going crazy.”

“Maybe it’s a virus or something, or too much salt in the water.”

“That could be it,” she said. “Too much salt makes people delusional and do weird things. Good idea. I think I’m going to see Dr. Caughlin on Monday about
it
. He’s got to have some type of answer.”

Troy laughed. “Yeah ask him about my little brother too. He’s been bouncing off the walls and laughing like a hyena about everything.”

“My little brother is okay so far, but my dad had a freak out tonight. He flipped out and almost smashed our kitchen table. Scared the crud out of me and Mitch.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it. Come on,” Troy said as he laid back down and stretched out his arms towards her. “Let’s stop worrying and get cozy before my watch beeps. This is our place to forget about John’s Town. No more worries.”

Aire smiled and sank down onto his chest
as his arms squeezed around her
.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “No more worries.”

“No more worries,” he repeated. “Now get some sleep.”

She snuggled closer into the crook of his arm and closed her eyes to listen to the crickets chirp. “Hmm,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“Do you ever wonder why no one sleeps in the same bed? Not even married people?”

“I think,” he said, pulling her on top of him, “it’s because no one but us does this.”

His kiss melted her thoughts away, and his touch took her to another world where there was no worry, no John’s Town, no identity, only their two energies lacing into one.

***

Control Room, tech office near central security systems

Reginald Jackson was one of the lucky few to have an office. It wasn’t much of an office considering he had to close the door and push his desk forward to open his filing cabinet, but it was still an office. The rickety desk was piled in paperwork threatening to consume his computer monitor. Nothing could be seen under the avalanche of graph paper and scatter plots except for a photo of his daughter Sandra. She smiled at him from the frame on an old tree swing in front of their home, wearing the necklace he’d bought her for her sweet sixteen the day before. It was the last picture he had taken of her, and he thanked God for that small amount of foresight. Any photo of her in a drab hospital gown with a bald head and grey tinge to her beautiful ebony skin would have sent him over the edge after the funeral. Thank God he didn’t have any of those photos to look at afterwards as he twirled his pistol and sucked down a bottle of Gin. Thank God.

The monitor beeped at him, pulling his mind away from the darkness and back to the dim light of his office.
His face drooped in defeat at the words on the screen.

ACCESS DENIED

“Damn it,” he said, taking off his glasses to rub his strained eyes. “Still no rodeo.”

The virus
was a slow progresso
r, and it had taken almost two weeks for the monitoring systems to register that anything had been wrong. At first he hadn’t been particularly worried about it. Occasional viruses and malfunctions occurred with the chips, but
he’d been trying to eradicate it for weeks
now and
the fix for this one still eluded
him.
Jackson was beginning to worry.

When signs of the virus first began, he was quickly able to determine it had been planted by an outside source. The coding within it and the way it replicated was an algorithmic anomaly that none of their chips could produce on their own. Whoever had put
it
there had been good, good enough to pad lock and trace code it to levels that could take him months to crack and clean from the system. Months were something they didn’t have, not at the virus’s rate of replication. His next line of business
had been
to find who had put the virus there in the first place, and then make them fix it.

It had been a kid, some damn civil rights left winger kid on the east coast. He was part of the No Mark No Madness religious group that had arisen shortly after
certain companies in
e
a
st Texas began to require the implantation of microchip identifications into the wrists of its employees. He could understand the group
’
s outrage at the new identification
since the religion warned against the “mark of the devil
,
”
but
he couldn’t understand why the psychos
were bombing buildings and killing people by the thousands in the name of God. It was so hypocritically nonsensical it made him sick to his stomach.

Jackson shook his head at the intelligence of the millennial generation.  They were getting smarter, sneakier in their attacks against these corporations. Their guerilla tactic
s
now branched into hacking the government’s top secret projects and setting malfunctions in the software. He hated hackers, but still felt sorry for the kid. They’d never find him
now, not now that Manning’s team had finished with him
.

The phone began to ring. Jackson shuffled through a stack of notes he’d taken on his attempts to find the receiver, which he located after the fourth ring.

“Jack,” a gruff voice on the other end barked. “What’s the status? Are we any closer?”

Jackson’s weary eyes flicked to the monitor beside him.

ACCESS DENIED

“No, sir. We’re not any closer.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Saturday May 1, 2010

Population: 268

She and Troy had gone to the park, hoping a stroll around the water would ease their minds after the fight at school the previous day. The beginning of spring always brought the town to Duck Park to enjoy the new flowers and warm sunshine. Children ran across the grass dragging kites behind them while their mothers sat
smiling on blankets next to picnic baskets
. Fathers could
be seen on the banks of the pond
teaching their sons how to cast a line
,
and beaming with pride when their boys reeled in a catfish. Games of Frisbee, soccer, and basketball were easy to join as the teens their age usually covered the meadow, happy to be out of the house and under the sun.

But t
he park was nearly desolate when they arrived, and only half a dozen people trickled in by the late afternoon. She was sitting atop a boulder playing her guitar and looking over the meadow as Troy skipped rocks across the still black water. She noticed
that
the stray collies and shepherds rolling in the grass and swimming in the
pond
vastly outnumbered their owners. Some of the dogs she recognized, but their owners were nowhere to be found. Aire stopped playing
,
and turned to look at Troy.