Perception (6 page)

Chapter 6

I felt like I’d escaped
a burning building, covered in smoke and ash but basically unscathed. I thought
I’d fooled the naturals, created a character unlike my real self—tough and
fearless—but now looking back, I wasn’t so sure. A frustrated shudder coursed
through me. I hadn’t even met Zack Dexter. Basically, the whole event had been
a waste of time.

At least I hadn’t
been called out. That would’ve been horribly embarrassing. And possibly
dangerous. What would Noah Brody and his motley crew have done if my cover had
been blown? I didn’t want to think about that.

When I finally
entered my house, the scent of fresh baked bread overwhelmed my senses. I
hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I was famished. I made a beeline to the
kitchen, noting the cook was nowhere to be seen, but the loaves of bread sat on
the cutting board on the counter. I placed the bread in the holder and told it
to slice. A laser beam shot across the board and cut a perfectly measured
piece.

I bit into it and
moaned with satisfaction.

“Where have you been?”
Alison stood with hands on her narrow hips. She wore baggy sweat pants, and her
hair stood on end like she hadn’t  showered. Clearly, she was having an off
day. I pointed to my full mouth and feigned a mumble. What should I tell her?

“I’ve been worried
sick. First you take off without telling anyone where you’ve gone, and then you
don’t answer your ComRing? I’m already missing one child, for god’s sake.”

I chewed and
swallowed the last bit of doughy goodness in my mouth. “Um, sorry, Mom. I was
at the beach. Needed to think. You know?”

Alison eyed me
warily. “You wore
that
to the beach?”

Though I’d removed
the wig and contacts in the pod, I still had the unfashionable costume on.

“Um, I need to do
some laundry?”

“I don’t know what
you’re up to Zoe, but you’d better stay out of trouble if you know what’s good
for you.”

 Alison’s face had
grown cherry red, and I worried she might be on the brink of a nervous
breakdown. We had to find Liam and fast. Thankfully, Paul entered the kitchen. I
always felt more comfortable when he was with us.

“Dad? Have you heard
anything?” Though I called my parents by their first names in my mind, I never
called my dad Paul to his face. On occasion I’d call my mother Alison, when I
was in the mood to get her riled up.

Paul pulled out a
chair and sat at the kitchen table. He let out a hard breath.

“Dad?”

His eyes were rimming
red when he looked at me, causing my heart to squeeze tight.

“I think Liam’s in
trouble.”

I felt my knees give,
and I grabbed a chair. “How?”

Paul shook his head. “I
don’t know. The authorities won’t talk. None of Liam’s friends know anything,
and believe me, I’ve been asking. It’s like he’s disappeared off the face of
the earth.”

I heard a loud sob
escape Alison’s lips. For the first time in my life, I wished my mother and I
had the kind of relationship where it would be perfectly normal for one of us
to embrace the other, to reassure and comfort one another. Instead Alison
walked away, leaving me and Paul to stare helplessly at each other.

My heart beat like I'd
been mountain climbing, my ears pulsing like crashing waves. I waited for Paul
to say something to break the rising tenor in my head. Even my dry swallows
resounded in my throat.

“I’m going to my
room,” I whispered, leaving Paul in my wake.

I sat on my bed. Someone
had made it while I was gone—Saundra Brody probably.

“Turn of the century
Arctic,” I said to my DigiWall. A vast whiteness blossomed before me. Snow as
far as the eye could see. I’d never seen real snow before, though it snowed
heavily in the north in the winters.

Climate change hadn’t
eliminated the cold, just made it crazy, screwing with the seasons.

The Arctic ice was
only half the size it had been in my great-grandparents’ day. The polar bear I
now watched strolling grandly over the ice, its yellow-white fur moving over
strong muscular shoulders and its black nose sniffing the air, looking for food,
was a computer image. There weren’t any more polar bears.

A wide white desk sat
against the far wall, and a large, glass computer monitor was imbedded in the
wall above it. I moved to my desk chair and sat, then I told it to find Dr. Matthew
Brody. Immediately a trail of listings appeared on my screen. I touched the
first one.

DR. MATTHEW BRODY,
GENETISIST, co-developer of the extended life gene manipulation process. Dr.
Brody, along with his research partner, Dr. Willliam Vanderveen are credited with
being the first researchers to manipulate the human genome creating the
possibility of doubling the human life-span. The procedure was first performed
in a Petri dish in a lab at the University of California in 2021, and later
performed on select live-human specimens. Ironically, Dr. Matthew Brody was
adamantly opposed to implementing his own discovery. He died of heart disease
in 2032 at the age of 52.

Noah’s grandfather
and my grandfather were research partners? How was it possible that I hadn’t
heard of this before? My parents had never mentioned it which maybe wasn’t such
a big surprise, but how come I’d never learned this in school? Was this why Paul
said
they
weren’t just anybody? Did he feel some kind of responsibility
for Noah’s family?

 I shook my head. I
couldn’t believe Noah’s own grandfather had denied his family the long life we
now enjoyed. Sure it took money, but the Brodys must’ve had money back then.
Didn’t they?

Was it really Dr.
Brody’s moral beliefs that stopped him from providing the procedure to his
family, or was it that he simply couldn’t afford to treat every member? If he’d
had to choose one and not the other, I could understand how that might be
difficult. Or maybe he’d had a moral issue with
anybody
receiving the
procedure.

The second listing
talked about Matthew’s son, David.

Reverend David
Brody led a campaign against the manipulation of the human genome claiming the
procedure artificially extended human life was un-natural, would cause new
social difficulties associated with class division and famously claimed that
God would judge the world for this and other ethically and morally
controversial procedures done in the name of science. He was assassinated on
the steps of the church he presided over on September 18, 2037. He was 40 years
old.

Saundra had started
working for my parents shortly afterwards. I knew her husband had died, but I
didn’t know he’d been assassinated for his beliefs. A picture appeared under
the article. A man with a white religious collar stood on the steps of a
church. I could see the resemblance between this man and his son, Noah. Same
jaw line, same dark eyes. A partial view of the clock tower bled off the left
corner.

That was the church
were Noah’s father had resided as reverend. It was the place his father had
died.

No wonder Noah had
staked a claim to it.

I startled when my ComRing
vibrated. I tapped it and the hologram of Jackson’s face appeared.

“You’re answering
your CR now?”

I nodded. “Yeah,
sorry I had to turn it off for a while.”

“I don’t like it when
I can’t get in touch with you.”

I fought back my
irritation. “I said I was sorry.”

“Fine. We’re on my
yacht at the dock. Why don’t you come?”

“We?”

“Yeah, Josh, Serena,
Isabelle... the gang.”

I pictured my
classmates lounging on Jackson’s yacht, not a trouble in the world. My first
inclination was to decline. How could I relax with my friends when Liam was
still missing?

“Com’on, Zoe. It’ll
be good for you. For us.”

Suddenly, I felt like
I was suffocating, trapped in some kind of cave I hadn’t made. Nothing I’d
done, not even trekking to the outside and impersonating a natural had gotten me
anywhere. Taking some time with my friends couldn’t hurt, could it?

“Yeah, okay. I’ll
come.”

Jackson smiled and
signed out.

I stripped out of my
costume and raked through my summer things until I found a pair of khaki linen
shorts and a green summer blouse. If I’d held the items up to the mirror, a six
inch square computerized version of them would’ve appeared on the corner with
info transmitting from the chip in each item of clothing. The computer would
then tell me if they were a good fashion match and if they suited the weather
outside.

At the moment I
didn’t care what the computer thought; I just put them on, choosing pink
sandals to brighten things up.

After donning
sunglasses, I headed out the patio doors off the living room. An outdoor
kitchen with a state of the art barbeque spread out from the right side and was
decked with enough tables and wicker chairs to feed a dozen or more people. The
pool sparkled in the sunshine on the other side.

I skipped down the
steps to the second tier, across the lawn and down onto the beach. I took my sandals
off and dug my toes in the sand. The wind blew my hair about and I wished I could
just fall back onto the sand and let the rumble of the sea comfort me.

But Jackson would
freak if I didn’t show soon. I was surprised he hadn’t buzzed me already. I
made my way to the docks southward in the distance, shooing away seagulls that
squawked above my head and remembering the last time I’d walked along this
beach with Liam after surfing.

I missed him. A hard
ball of dread formed in my stomach growing larger with each passing hour. I
forced myself to think of other things. School would start back up in a few
weeks, and the reading I had to do to prepare for it. Then my mind drifted to
Noah Brody, and the odd connection between our families.

Before this week,
everything about my life was staid and normal. Though Alison was changing
careers, Paul had always worked for Sleiman Enterprises, not surprising, since
my grandfather Senator (Dr.) William Vanderveen had built the corporation to
the mega industry it was. We’d lived in the same house all my life, and spent a
lot of time on the ocean, either surfing or scuba diving off our own yacht.

I went to school at Sol
City High and, like most of the students there, got straight
A
s. My future,
again like most students, was to attend Sol City University and ultimately
contribute to scientific research that would undoubtedly lead to the next big
discovery.

Life was fairly
simple.

Until now. Liam’s
disappearance had shaken up everything.

The gates to the dock
opened after I held my hand under the scanner. I replaced my sandals and walked
toward Jackson’s yacht near the end.

There were at least a
hundred boat slips at this marina, one of many that lined the west coast. The
Vanderveen’s own yacht was stowed here. I’d been on Jackson’s family’s yacht a
hundred times; I didn’t even have to think to find it. The white bow glowed in
the sun, and an American flag flapped in the breeze. I climbed the metal
walkway that bridged the dock to the yacht and followed the sound of the music
playing past the galley and through the cockpit.

A handful of people
were hanging out on the aft deck. I hesitated when I saw Jackson’s familiar
head, his toned body reclining in a lounging chair, his bare chest facing the
setting sun. He was beautiful. Serena and Isabelle were wearing bikinis and swaying
to the electronic music, their long blond locks flowing down their toned backs.

They were all
beautiful. I knew I was too, and I liked that I was beautiful. Noah Brody could
have his natural life, his ridiculous cause and weird-looking friends. I
skipped across the deck and gave Jackson a big kiss on the lips.

Chapter 7

I had all but given
up on attending Noah Brody’s rally. What could I possibly learn by returning to
the outside?

But when I got home
from the yacht party, I found Alison slumped over an uneaten supper. Her bony
shoulders were slouched forward, and dark circles were under her bloodshot
eyes. I almost gasped aloud. I’d never in my seventeen years seen my mother as
anything but strong, driven and gorgeous.

“Mom?”

Alison, lifted her
head slightly in acknowledgment.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

I wondered if it was
okay to leave her sitting alone like this. “Are you sure?”

“I said, I’m fine!”

I jumped back at the
strength of her words. She obviously didn’t want to be comforted, not that I
had any idea whatsoever on how to go about doing that.

I’d snacked at the
yacht party, so I decided to skip this particular dining experience with my
mother.