Gene. Sys. (2 page)

His laughter fades as I rise to the main
floor.
 
The doors open and I step
out. The halls are empty once again. I don’t like it. I can hear every step I
take. I try to silence my feet as I walk. It’s not working. I look around and
the hallway seems to be closing in on me. My heart starts racing and a lump
rises in my throat. I struggle to breathe and know I just have to get to my
room, so I run.
 
I speed down the
hall and when I get to my bedroom I fly in and slam the door behind me. I fall
onto my bed and shut my eyes.

For the first time in the two months I’ve been
alive I feel true and genuine fear. I’ve been scared before, but all those
times there was something tangible that I was able to attach my fear to. Right
now there is nothing. Just fear. Meeting Ev is going to change everything. I’m
not sure how, but I know it will. Resentment begins to accompany the fear. I
don’t want to, but right now I hate her. As strong as those feelings are, it’s
not fair to her that I feel this way because I haven’t met her yet. I pick
myself up and walk into the bathroom. Hopefully a shower will calm me down. The
way the hot water hits my back and neck always seems to get me relaxed.

The shower must have put me in a trance because
I jump when I hear a pounding on the bathroom door. I can tell through the
fogged glass that there are two drones standing in my bedroom. They are here to
take me to Ev. I’m not sure how long I’ve been in the shower but the wrinkles
on my fingers tell me it’s been a while. I shut the water off and towel myself
dry.

“You need to get dressed quickly,” I hear one of
the drones say. “Dr. Anfang is waiting.”

They move to the doorway of my bedroom as I
dress. I don’t say a word to them. It’s not worth it. Their speech is always
short and sounds
well-rehearsed
. You can never tell
them apart anyway because they all look the exact same—black hair, black
eyes and pale skin. If I spoke with one, I would not know which one it was the
next day.

I look down at my bed and see a pair of pants
and a button up shirt. Only the scientists wear these. I have only ever worn
jump suits. Any nerves that I had lost in the shower are now back.

The clothes feel very uncomfortable and
restricting. They are making me feel hot and causing my palms to sweat. I wipe
them on the pants as we walk out of the room and down the hallway.
 
The drones walk on either side of me.
The sound of our footsteps gets to me so I break the silence. “What are your
names?”

“137,” says the one on my left.

“80,” says the other one.

“I’m Atom,” I reply.

“We know,” they respond in unison.

I struggle for conversation. “What do you guys
like to do for fun?”

80
looks
at me as we
walk. A smile graces his face for a brief second. “We like to play Breekbal.”

“We keep that to ourselves, 80.”
137 scolds 80.

My curiosity has definitely gotten the better of
me, “What’s Breekbal?”

80 smiles again, “Calm down, 137. He doesn’t
even know what it is.”

They obviously don’t intend on sharing either. I
try my best to imagine what that would be. It must be some sort of game. For a
few more moments my mind remains preoccupied with Breekbal, then we turn the
corner and I see my dad standing at the end of the hallway.

“Thank you, fellas,” he smiles through his big,
white beard. “You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, Dr. Anfang,” the drones say in
unison as they turn and walk away. I feel naked again standing alone at the end
of the hallway. Dad starts walking towards me. His round body fills the hallway
slightly more than most of the other scientists here. He has definitely been
looking forward to this day and that makes me even more nervous.

He reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder.
“You have no reason to be nervous, Atom.”

Without realizing it, he’s guiding me towards
the door. “What do I say?”

We stop just outside the door. My hands get
sweaty again. She is on the other side of that door. Dad squares me up to him,
“You don’t have to worry about that. Conversation will come. Just be yourself.”

“What if she doesn’t like me?” I mumble into his
shoulder.

“Well then we failed as scientists.” He smiles.
“She’s going to like you, Atom, and you are going to like her. Now get in there
before I have to drag you in.”

He opens the door and walks in. I follow right
behind. I poke my head around from behind him and I see Ev leaning against the
wall farthest from the door. She’s taller than I imagined. Her dark brown hair
falls to either side of her face, ending just at her shoulders. Her pale skin
makes her look porcelain and fragile. I want nothing more than to protect her.
My heart races.

Dad walks to the center of the room. I stay
planted by the door. The ability to run away if I have to brings me comfort.
Dad reaches out to her, “Ev?”

She looks up and I see her eyes for the first
time. They are green like mine but hers seem to transcend all logic.
They don’t look at me
,
they look in me
.
I want nothing more than to be with her but my nerves cause me to look away.
She looks away as well.

Dad walks back over towards me. “Maybe I’ll just
leave you two alone.”

He nudges me towards the center of the room as
he walks out and shuts the door.
 

“What?” is all that comes out of my mouth before
I stop myself in the middle of the
room.
I feel
exposed without the comfort of a wall behind me.

I look everywhere but at her. I’m so nervous
that I haven’t noticed anything else in the room. There is a couch and two
chairs to one side. On the other side is a table with water and protein
pouches. I can feel her watching me. It’s too quiet and I suddenly don’t know
what to do with my hands. I decide to break the silence. “What’s your favorite
flavor?”

I walk towards the table and see movement out of
the corner of my eye. I turn to look at her and before I have time to react she
has me in her arms.

I don’t know what to do. I just stand there. Her
hair feels soft against my skin and it smells like a mix of sour apples and
vanilla. I want nothing more than to pull her closer in but my arms won’t move.
She must sense that I am uncomfortable because she pulls away.

She falls back into the couch. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I reply as I sit in one of the
chairs across from the couch. “You just surprised me.”

She manages to show a little smile. “I feel like
such an idiot. It’s just that … I …
well,
I’ve been
looking forward to this day for a long time. I knew you existed but they never
let me see you. I was just so excited and then nervous.”

Her confession puts me at ease. “You just
described everything I’ve been thinking. That’s why I asked you about the
protein pouch. I was so nervous, I didn’t know what else to talk about.”

“Apple.” She laughs as she leans back on the
couch. It’s intoxicating; I can’t help but join in. The air around us doesn’t
feel heavy anymore. “What’s yours?”

“Anything with vanilla,” I respond. So many
questions rush into my head but before I manage to ask any of them my dad comes
back in. As much as I didn’t want him to leave me alone in here with Ev, now I
want nothing more than for him to be gone.

He smiles. “Looks like you two have hit it off.”

“Not yet, Rene! You haven’t really given us much
of a chance,” Ev sasses back. She calls him Rene? That’s my dad’s first name,
but I would never call him that. In fact, I would never speak to him the way
she just did.

This actually reveals more about him to me than
it does of her; the side of him that I know would never let me talk back to
him. He obviously treats us differently. For the first time it exposes a
duality to my dad and I feel that he is hiding things from me.

“You’ll have plenty of time to get to know each
other. From now on you will be training together and taking classes together.”
He looks at both of us. “Your first class starts now.”

We both stand and walk towards him. He puts his
hand on my shoulder and it feels like a foreign object. He’s still my dad but I
only know a fraction of who he is. I know now that I can no longer be satisfied
with the answers he gives me. I need to seek things out on my own. I need to
know what he and all the scientists are actually doing. I need to find out why
we are confined to this compound. Most importantly, I need to learn what my
true purpose is. Why I was created.

We walk down the hallway to the end with the
classrooms. Dad seems overly happy. I guess he’s been looking forward to this
day longer than we have. Probably since before he created us. “You two are
getting a new teacher today—Brianna Lawson. She’s a handful, but you will
like her.”

“What’s the class?” I ask.

“It’s a very important class,” he responds.
“Recent human history. It’s everything that has happened since 1900.”
      

“It sounds boring.” Ev folds her arms. Her
coarse approach to my dad causes me to laugh.
 
She certainly carries some resentment
towards him.

He doesn’t seem amused. “I promise you it’s not
boring. It starts with the first world war.”

“That does sound fun.” Ev smiles.

My interest is also peaked. “How many world wars
have there been?”

“Four,” my dad says as he stops just outside a
door. “But you will learn more about them from Brianna.”

“Thanks dad,” I say out of habit. Ev walks in
and I follow. He closes the door behind us. The room has windows on one wall
and the other walls are empty. Like every other classroom, this one has around
a dozen giant beanbags arranged in a circle on the floor. I choose the green
one like usual. Ev sits in the beanbag next to mine.

“He lets you call him Dad?” she asks as she
makes herself comfortable in her beanbag.

I can tell this is a sensitive subject for her.
“That’s what he told me to call him. He would never let me call him Rene.”

“I knew he preferred you.” She’s obviously hurt.
“All he does is talk about you and he corrects me if I ever call him dad or
father or anything.”

I don’t really know how to respond, but I try.
“I think it’s because he respects you. He sees you more as an equal. All he
does is coddle me. I just thought that’s how he was.”

“Not at all,” Ev laughs. I really like when she
laughs it makes me feel better.

We both stand when the doors open and Brianna
Lawson walks in. She is much younger than I would have imagined. She couldn’t
be older than 26 or 27. Her deep red hair is pulled back into a ponytail and
the big glasses she wears cover half her face. I can tell though that
underneath those glasses she has a very refined quality about her. She carries
herself well, which might be because of her age. People have probably never
taken her seriously since she is young and pretty.

I must have been in a trance staring at her
because I get bumped in the shoulder by Ev and realize that Brianna has her
hand extended towards me. “It’s nice to meet you, Atom”.

I shake her hand. “The pleasure is mine, Ms.
Lawson. I like your glasses.”

“Thank you. Please, call me Brianna.” She pulls
her hand away and takes a seat on one of the beanbags. I can feel that my
cheeks have turned red because of the heat emanating from them. Ev must have
noticed them too because her eyes are burrowing holes into me. I feel ashamed,
so I avoid making eye contact and sit back down in my beanbag. When Ev sits,
she shuffles her beanbag closer to mine. My heart races as she does so. If she
feels threatened by Brianna, she shouldn’t.

Brianna places a 3D hologram projector on the
floor inside the beanbag circle. “I want you two to recall your world
geography.”

She hits a button on the projector and a giant
image of Earth projects before us. It looks odd. The ice shelves at the North
and South poles are much smaller. She continues, “This hologram of Earth I’m
sure looks different than what you are used to. That’s because this is an image
of what the world looked like in 1914.”

“It’s so different,” Ev mumbles. I look at her
and can tell that she is just as enthralled as I am. Dad was right. This will
be interesting.

“I want you two to just sit back, watch and
listen. This information will be important for your survival.” Brianna taps the
wall behind her and the windows darken, leaving the hologram to light the room.

What does she mean our
survival? What are we going to have to survive?
These questions flood
my mind, but just as quickly as they came, I have to brush them aside. Brianna
has started her lesson.

*****

World War I marked the beginning of
globalization. Prior to 1914, conflicts remained localized to their specific
areas without much outside influence. When America joined the war in 1917 the
world got a lot smaller. Any issues that would arise would now become worldwide
issues. With radio and later television, these issues also became the concern
of any citizen with access. This war ended the German Empire, but gave rise to
two new ones. The Soviet Empire and the American Empire. This also brought us
into the SciTech Age.