by Jim Miesner
The man with the white hair pushed a button in front of him and they all disappeared.
Sam couldn’t believe this was happening. Somehow everything that could have gone wrong did. All she had wanted to do was help Jenny and now a boy was in the hospital, and Dr. Tesla was out of a job. Why hadn’t she listened to him? Everything always had to be her way and now people were suffering because of it, because she didn’t know when to stop. She was such a screw-up. She had let everyone down, the Covenant, herself, Jenny, but most of all Dr. Tesla. A deep sense of shame flooded over her, she wondered what he thought about all of this. It would have been better for everyone if Dr. Tesla had never found her.
She was on the verge of tears when the council came back up on the screen, but they did not look at Sam this time and their voices were different now. Some reclined, others leaned forward, the only one that still sat perfectly straight was the woman with amber glasses. The man with white hair shook his head. It was his turn to rub his temple now.
“Does the girl realize anything about her unique gift?” he asked.
“If she does, she hasn’t given us any clues," said an Asian woman.
“What about the young woman, Samantha?" asked a man in his forties, the youngest of them all by at least a decade.
“We don’t believe she knows but even if she did, she’s not much of a threat," said the Asian woman.
“You think it’s a coincidence?” asked the bald man. “Of all the children, she breaks that one out. She has to know something.”
No one said a word, and he shook his head as he grumbled and wrote something down.
“Whether she knows or not doesn’t matter,” said the woman with amber glasses. “We need to deal with it before it becomes an issue. If anyone ever found out what this girl could do-”
“What are you suggesting?” asked the white-haired man. “She’s just a girl.”
“A girl that could destroy everything we have built,” said the woman with dreadlocks.
“You can’t be suggesting what I think you are.”
The woman with amber glasses turned her head side to side as she looked at the other council members. “Is it that unthinkable? You all know what her existence could mean. Especially if they learn of the shortage, too. Everything would come crumbling down. Is one child’s life worth that, is any one life worth that?
The man sighed. “I can’t believe we’re discussing this.”
“What if we kept her locked up? We could keep her hidden away,” the Asian woman said.
“For how long?” asked the woman with amber glasses? “How long before someone finds out and tries to use her against us? What then?”
“None of this matters if we find the other option," said the bald councilman.
Everyone grew silent.
“The woman in the desert?” asked the man in his forties. “I thought we had decided against pursuing that.”
“Some of us had,” the bald man said, and sneered.
Sam swallowed and realized she had been staring at them the whole time. She moved her eyes to the floor and yawned as if she wasn’t seeing this.
“We are not here to discuss that. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss Samantha Lewinson’s punishment. Under the circumstances I suggest we revoke her access to all facilities and put her on probationary status for one year. All the yays,” the white-haired man said as he raised his hand.
Most around the room raised their hands except for the bald man, woman with amber glasses and the woman with salt and pepper dreadlocks. Then the white-haired man’s hand reached forward in front of him as each straightened their posture. He looked around at each of them with his hand hovering in the air, ready to press the button when the woman with amber glasses cleared her throat.
“May I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the white-haired man and pulled his hand away.
The vein in the woman’s temple twitched, and she rubbed it with her fingers again.
“I remember when I was a little girl that this was a place of hope, a place of infinite possibilities. It’s why I joined the council. I remember my father showing me the Shell as a girl. Standing at the top of the central tower and looking out on all the earth beyond it. A place we could never set foot upon without the aid of a suit. He told me someday we would. I still believe in that dream.
“Councilman Card is right. We must consider every option. Even those with choices that are painful to make.”
The white-haired man pounded his fist on the table. “You’re talking about genocide. Plain and simple.”
The woman turned her head very calmly toward him, then looked around the room at others as she spoke, her eyes falling on the oldest woman last. “I’m talking about survival of our people and our way of life. Is that so unthinkable, considering the circumstances?”
The man with white hair winced as he squeezed his neck.
“I will not allow you to undermine this council’s decisions. If you continue, I won’t hesitate to censure you, Saunders. Do you understand?”
She glared at him.
"Do you understand? Saunders?"
She nodded.
He looked around at the others. “It's settled. Samantha Lewinson will receive a one-year probation, and the girl will be detained to a more secure facility in the morning, where we can further study the full extent of her gifts without any more interruptions.”
He pushed a button in front of him again and they disappeared. It was about thirty seconds before they came back. Had they realized she had heard what they had been talking about? If they did, they showed no sign. All of them sat straight as before.
The woman with salt and pepper dreadlocks read from a tablet in her hand. “Samantha Lewinson, your actions led to a boy being hospitalized in serious condition and several people and animals quarantined. Had you been acting on your own, the punishment would have been far more severe.
However, since you were following the orders of your superior, your access to all research facilities is revoked and you will be placed on probationary status for one year. In addition, a misconduct mark will be placed on your record and removed after one year, pending no other violations.
“Moving forward, the council will re-evaluate the security measures in place and determine the future of the Department of Digestive Rehabilitation.”
Sam closed her eyes and breathed in deep. She had to forget everything she heard. She had to push it all out of her mind. What would she have said if she hadn’t? She needed them to believe she hadn’t. Finally, she opened her eyes.
“What about Jenny?” she asked.
No one moved but each of their eyes betrayed them as they looked around the room at each other.
“That is not your concern,” said the white-haired man.
“Is she still a candidate?”
“She almost killed a boy,” said the woman with amber glasses.
“Please. It’s not her fault. The boy is just as much to blame as she is. He threatened her.”
“He threatened her?” the bald councilman said with a wry smile on his face.
“May I remind you who is in the hospital,” said the white-haired man.
“I know but-”
“It’s not your concern,” said the bald man. “You’re free to leave.”
Sam got up and walked toward the bench.
“Please. Don’t do this. Don’t let my mistakes ruin her only chance at a good life. Allow her more time.”
She heard the doors behind her slide open and footsteps approach.
“Please,” said Sam as she felt two plastic covered arms wrap around her shoulders and pull her backward. “Please.”
She tried to shift her weight, but it was no use, pinned behind her back her arms went numb as they lifted her up off her feet. One by one the council members’ heads looked down at their tablets as they dragged her backward.
“Please,” she called out one last time.
She half expected t
he bald man or woman with dreadlocks to watch as they dragged her out, but it was the woman with amber glasses who never looked away. She squinted so hard that her beady eyes almost seemed to disappear into the folds of her skin. Just before the doors slid closed behind her, Sam swore she saw a smile creep across her face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two hours later Sam still felt a burning in her arms as she approached the door of his office. It was open, the name on it already removed. Ancient, forbidden music trickled out of the room, something about finding a thrill on a blueberry hill. It was banned of course, a minor infraction though one that was rarely reported, and now under the circumstances probably wouldn’t matter on top of everything else.
She peeked her head in the door and had never seen it so empty. All the plaques that covered every inch of the walls and shelves, gone. She watched as he tapped his foot on the floor and rocked to the music. At his feet were various garbage cans filled with plaques and awards. A small few were stacked about a foot high next to him on his desk. Even fewer plaques rested inside a plastic box labeled ‘keep’.
He looked at one plaque, chuckled and threw it into an already full garbage can as it bounced off the pile, landed on the floor and cracked. Then he picked up the next and paused longer on it. Contemplating some memory perhaps.
“What is it?” he asked without turning around. “You out of quarantine already?”
Sam hadn’t thought she had signaled her presence but saw his eyes reflected in the plaque as he held it. He had a strange smile on his face like he hadn’t lost his job, like his life’s work hadn’t ended.
“You need to tell them it was me that did this,” she said. “You can still keep your job. Everything you worked for.”
He sighed, shook his head and put the plaque in the box. “It’s not important. I am getting too old for this, anyway. It’s time.”
Sam stepped to his side. “But everything you worked for,” she repeated.
He chuckled. “Everything I worked for? I’m a failure, Samantha.”
“How can you say that? It’s because of you I’m alive and so are hundreds of others. If it wasn’t for you, we would still be out there. In that environment, struggling to survive, most of us probably dead.”
“Maybe we were wrong,” he said. “Maybe the best thing would have been to have left you out there.”
Sam’s jaw hung open. It was one thing for her to think it and quite another for him to say it. She watched as he turned back to his pile of plaques and a few assorted antiques he had kept over the years. A radio, some kind of blue and orange sports pennant, a small tennis shoe with the toes cut out.
She reached for his shoulder, almost touching it before she pulled her hand back.
“I’m sorry I let you down.”
“Just the opposite,” he said.
He looked back down at the box and turned the small tennis shoe over in his hands.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to find a way for us to survive beyond the Shell. We were born into this world. It’s in our blood. We never had a choice. I never intended to be the one to pioneer a new way to bring you kids into this curse, into this fishbowl.”
“Where is this coming from? How can you say this? Famine, rape, depression, suicide, crime, war; I never have to worry about any of those atrocities because of you. Don’t let my stupid mistake destroy your faith in the system.”
He shook his head. “What does it matter? I’m just an old man past his prime.”
“Past your prime? You’re only eighty. You still have another seventy years of service left to the Covenant. Think of all the discoveries you can be a part of. All the great things you can do. Just tell the council the truth. Tell them I took the card.”
He smiled and patted her arm. “I’ve given my life to this cause and more… but I won’t give you. You have a future.”
He put the shoe in the box.
“Trust me. It’s the best thing,” he said.
“I heard something.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I think Jenny is in danger. I heard something I don’t think I was supposed to. They said she was a threat. Then they talked about a shortage and something about a woman in the desert and genocide. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
The color drained from his face and he lifted the needle off the record player.
“Did you tell anyone else this?”
Sam shook her head. “No. That was all. Do you know what it means?”
The doctor closed up the box.
“No.”
She touched his arm.
“What will happen to Jenny?”
“I don’t know.”
He walked to his closet and opened it up as an array of lab coats hung from hooks. Antiques and books sat on shelves over the coats. He took down the coats and put them in another garbage can.
“This isn’t right,” she said. “We can’t just sit back and let this happen.”
“We have to,” he said. “It’s the council’s decision. There is nothing I can say or do that will change that.”
Something sparkled in the corner of his eye, that looked like a tear but when he blinked and turned, the sparkle disappeared.
“Yes, there is. Tell them it was me that took her out of quarantine. That it was my fault. When they reinstate you, you can argue her case. They respect you.”
“You don’t know them like I do. The fact is that whether or not I gave you the card, I am still at fault. I was careless and allowed you to get my card.”
“No, you weren’t-”
“Yes, I was. I would still have to resign, and Jenny would be no better off. The only thing that would change is your punishment.”
He moved back to the closet and took down the books one by one.
“Will you stop packing?” Sam asked.
He brushed past her and lay some books on the bed before opening another box. “If I thought redacting my statement could help anyone, I would do it in a second, but it won’t. I’m sorry.”
He looked up at her and she found the sparkle in the corner of his eye again.
“All it would do is incriminate you and that is something I will not do.”
He picked up the books and placed them in the box. She understood why they were in the closet. They were books that weren’t approved, books like Moby Dick, Slaughterhouse-Five, War and Peace. Every single cover yellowed or bleached by the sun.
“Please,” she said.
He shook his head and continued to place the books in the box.
“Stop packing and listen to me."
He ignored her and Sam shoved the box away. She hadn’t meant to shove it so hard but as he moved to put another book in it, it slid off the edge of the table and tumbled to the floor.
The doctor shook his head. Then knelt down and righted the box as he inspected each book for damage, carefully placing it back in. He stopped and studied the cover of a red book for a moment.
“If we lost anything from those days it was great literature, music and art. We overcame war, disease, famine, illness, but we lost something. We lost our connection to something when we stopped eating. A vulnerability. A reliance on some kind of force. Some used to call it God. They even talked to it before meals and thanked it. Can you believe that?”
“Is this how it goes,” Sam said. “You go off into retirement, read your books, talk philosophy, with Jenny’s life in danger?”
“Samantha. You really believe our own council would hurt her?”
“I don’t know. They called her a threat. They mentioned genocide. What am I supposed to think?”
“Maybe you heard them out of context?”
“No. Something isn’t right. If you don't speak to them, then I will.”
The doctor sighed and shook his head. The tear on the edge of his eye finally rolled down his cheek. He took in a deep breath and let it out.
“If I talk to the council, you have to promise me you’ll let this go. You do
n’t tell anyone else. Do you promise? They can’t know you heard them.”
She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him but she remembered his reaction when she had hugged him once as a child. She had never hugged anyone since. Instead she grabbed the palm of his hand and squeezed it.
“Thank you,” she said and felt a warm tear run down her cheek.
The doctor squeezed her hand back and Sam wiped the tear away.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately,” she said. “Why am I so emotional?”
“It’s been a hard couple of days, that’s all.”
He looked at the lab coats in the trash and then to the box with only a few plaques, and a few antiques. He picked it up and walked to the door, before he turned and looked around the room one last time, and took in one last deep breath.
“Go refresh yourself,” he said. “You need it. I’ll reach out to you in the morning and let you know how it went.”
At his feet was a book he had missed. Sam picked it up and handed it to him. The title said Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.
“It’s a good one,” he said. “Not like any of the crap they put out there today. Stuff actually happens. People suffer.”
“I remember when you read them to me.”
He smiled at her.
“Dr. Tesla,” she said to the man who was the closest thing she ever had to a father.
“Yes.”
“You’re not a failure to me.”
The lines around his eyes wrinkled as he smiled and then he turned and walked out the door of his office for the last time, before Sam walked back down the hall to her quarters.
Her bedroom was sparse, a small white room with a bed, a nightstand, and a clock. She sat down on her bed, took off her shoes and flicked open a small access panel next to her nightstand where she pulled out a neon blue tube.
It was the same ritual every night for as long as she could remember but tonight was different. She paused as she turned the tube over in her hands. One word Tesla had spoken echoed in her ears. Curse.