“I didn’t know her. She grabbed me in the dark and said she’d kill me.”
“That sounds a bit overboard, even when it comes to you.” Mattie looked at the books around her. “So, why’d you come here? That seems like something you should be going to the elders about.”
“I don’t know who did it,” 62 admitted. “I couldn’t see her face. I was hoping you’d be able to help me.”
Mattie sighed and slumped back in her chair. “Despite my annoyance with you, I haven’t made the time to seek out accomplices to make your life miserable. Not sure I’m going to be of much help.”
62 shook his head. He pulled the balled-up paper out of his pocket and did his best to flatten it against his knee. It tore. He handed the two halves of paper over to Mattie and waited. She laid them on the arm of her chair and squinted at the wrinkled scraps. She pressed them together, murmuring to herself as she tried to make out the messy handwriting scrawled across the wrinkles. She read the words aloud as she made them out.
“Talk to Mattie. She knows all about dreams.”
62 looked at her in anticipation. Mattie just stared at the paper, eyes shifting back and forth as she read the words over and over again. “Who wrote this?”
“Dr. Smart,” 62 answered.
Mattie growled and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “That old fish head can’t keep a secret to save his life.”
“He said your mom was a thief,” 62 blurted.
Mattie threw her hands up in the air and shouted, “See what I mean? Why does he have to keep telling people that? I should just paint all my secrets on a big sign and hang it beside the front gate to save him the trouble of having to tell everyone individually.”
“So, it’s true?” 62 gasped.
“Yes. My birth mom tried to burn down the library,” Mattie grumbled.
“No, not that. It’s true that you know about dreams?” 62 whispered.
Mattie stared at 62 a long time, her mouth pressed into a thin line on her disgruntled face. She didn’t say another word. She stood up and walked to a darker part of the library, disappearing out of sight. 62 wanted to chase after her but decided he’d better wait. He could hear her moving around the stacks. He picked up a book from the shelf behind him. It was one of the make-believe books that Mattie seemed fond of. He read the back of the book to see what it was about. “Elves,” he muttered.
When she reemerged, she was holding a short stack of books. “This is where you should start,” she said as she dropped the books beside him. “But you’ve got to read them here. These are all that are left in the collection. They can’t leave the library.”
62 put the book he was holding back on the shelf. He turned the stack that Mattie had brought and craned his neck to read their titles. They were strange. The Oneironaut Within. The Guide to Shared Dreaming. The Oneironaut and the Telepathic Dream. Parapsychological Shifts and Guides. Lucid Dreams and Where to Find Them.
“What kind of books are these?” 62 frowned.
“They’re what I read when I wanted to become a dreamer,” Mattie said firmly. “You can learn how to do just about anything from books.”
“You learned how to dream with these?” 62 pointed down at the spines.
“Yeah.” Mattie shrugged. She looked away, embarrassed. “It scared my mom when she found out that I was doing it, though. She tried to get me to stop, but I didn’t listen to her.”
“I thought your mother died when you were a baby?” 62 asked, confused.
“I don’t mean my birth mom.” Mattie scoffed. “She’d have rolled me up in radioactive dust and left me to rot if she hadn’t died before she had the chance. No, I mean the Woman who raised me. My real mom.”
“Oh,” 62 replied although he didn’t understand. “But why would she be scared of you dreaming? I can dream, too. I know we aren’t supposed to be able to, but it doesn’t hurt anything. It’s just using your imagination.”
Mattie looked around, apprehensive. She bit her lip and leaned forward as if she wanted to tell him something. Her mouth opened but no words came out, then she turned away and shook her head. Mattie reached for some books on the shelves nearby and straightened their spines.
“What is it?” 62 asked quietly. “Mattie, you can tell me.”
“Secrets are dangerous things up here,” she replied in a small voice. “If you told anybody, I’d be sunk.”
62 sighed. “Look, I know we’re barely friends, but if you have something to say, you can tell me. Nobody else up here likes me. They wouldn’t listen to me, no matter what secrets I promised to tell them. And who’d I tell anyway, Blue? 00? Those guys would never tattle on you.”
Mattie set her shoulders and turned back to face him. Quietly, she knelt beside 62. “My dreams aren’t safe,” she whispered. “If anyone outside of The Council of Elders finds out about them, everyone would lose their minds.”
“I’ve just been beaten up because someone’s spreading rumors about me. Believe me, I know how big a problem having a secret can be.” 62 reached over and rested his hand on her shoulder. “But I also know that sharing a secret with a friend can make it a little easier to hold on to.”
Mattie blew the air out of her lungs, nervous. Her whisper came out even quieter than before, “When I started dreaming, I figured out how to dream with people in Adaline. I show them books about the above ground.”
CHAPTER 24
A LOUD GURGLE TORE through 62’s midsection. He looked up at Parker and the teacher nodded, apparently having heard the rumble from where he sat. 62 sprang up from his seat, ran out of the classroom and sprinted down the hall. His mask barely made it onto his face in time for him to race to the makeshift toilet that had been erected just outside the building. Not much learning had taken place since the food experimentation started in earnest. 62 hadn’t been perched on the edge of the toilet very long before he heard the door to the neighboring shed slam shut. It seemed he had company.
The four single stall sheds, affectionately known as “the poop huts” were cold, damp, and unlit. But, they were a blessing. There was no way that 62 or his classmates would be able to make it back to their regular bathrooms across the courtyard. It seemed that as quickly as food went in their mouths, it came out the other end. The obscure parade of input and output made eating real meals seem like madness.
“It’ll balance out, eventually,” is all Parker replied whenever someone complained. He offered no other words of encouragement, just bowls of hot broth, plates of cooked fruit, and the occasional glass of juice.
62 had been so ill, in fact, that he’d had no time to return to the library or to watch over the front gate for Blue’s return. Instead, he spent as much time sleeping as possible – the only escape he could find from the knots in his stomach.
Knowing that Mattie could dream had given 62 a new reason to look forward to sleep though. When he closed his eyes, he let his imagination run free, and even tried to connect his dreams to Mattie’s a couple of times. He had trouble with the connection, and wasn’t sure why. He could imagine her flitting around the library, shelving books and yelling at people who returned books with bent pages, but he couldn’t figure out how to talk to her. It didn’t even seem like she could see him. Whenever he tried to push through whatever was blocking their connection, his stomach would rumble him out of sleep again. He’d wake up with a start and run to the toilet. It was a new symptom of the above ground that he loathed.
But now, sitting in the dark of a thin-walled poop hut, he wondered about Mattie and her dreams. “If she taught herself from books, maybe she does it differently than I do,” he mumbled to himself.
“What?” The voice was muffled by the thin walls, echoing in an odd fashion through the narrow vents above, but he knew where it came from.
“Nothing,” he said as loud and clear as he could manage. He looked at the wall just past his right shoulder where the second poop hut was. “I was just talking to myself.”
“If you were sayi
ng how stupid this food idea is,” said the other kid’s voice, “you’re right. It’s stupid.”
“I don’t know how people live like this,” 62 admitted. None of the above grounders seemed to live their lives on the toilets. “Maybe it’ll stop one day like Parker says.”
“I talked to a Girl in the cafeteria yesterday who says it takes weeks,” his toilet companion groaned. A chorus of gaseous noise followed the statement.
“Weeks?” 62 cried out.
“Weeks,” came the strained reply.
When 62 was done, he bundled himself back up and went outside. There was a hand washing station and although he hated putting his hands in the freezing cold water, Parker had told them that washing hands was an important step in keeping healthy. An ironic fact, considering how sick everyone was. He followed the steps he’d been taught at the wash station then hurried inside. He removed his mask and coat and stood by the fireplace a few moments to warm his frozen hands before returning to his seat.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” Parker was saying, “but historically, meal tabs aren’t the way humans got their nutrition.”
Food, and the discomfort it wrought on the refugees, was all anyone had talked about for the last several days. The few bodies that had managed to stay in class looked pale and weak as they struggled to focus on what their teacher was saying. Parker had drawn a diagram of the human digestive tract and was doing his best to explain what was happening to everyone’s bodies.
“From start to finish, our bodies are designed to process food.” A hand shot up from the back of the class. Parker sighed and answered the question he knew was coming. “Yes, real food. Not meal tabs. See? We have teeth for chewing. Our tongues are a giant muscle that pushes food around until it’s ready to swallow. The pummeled food is pushed down our esophagus into our stomachs where a naturally present acid breaks the food down even further.”
Parker’s finger trailed through another series of organs in a zig-zag shape. “Then the food is pressed through the rest of the gastrointestinal tract until it comes out the other end.”
Parker turned to face his weary students. “Normally, this procedure takes place over the span of several hours or days, depending on what we’ve been eating. But your bodies have never had to do any of this work before. So, while you’re learning about living above ground, your entire body is trying to figure out how to eat, digest, and defecate. It’s a tall order for a system that’s been largely dormant your entire life.”
“But if all this is necessary,” Man 11 complained, “why have we been able to live without it?”
Parker gave his chin a thoughtful scratch. “Technology is an amazing thing. The meal tabs and the nutritional liquid you consumed in Adaline made up all the basic calories and nutrients your bodies needed to function. The people who invented you,” Parker pointed his finger at 11, “wanted to be able to control everything that went inside of you. To make sure you only consumed the exact amount needed to sustain you, they created an industrial meal program. This way, they were able to keep you at peak performance without having to deal with individual taste, appetite, or crop management. A completely sterile, lab-based solution to mankind’s base needs. Beautiful. Simplistic. Flawed.”
“How is it flawed if it works so well?” 62 frowned.
“Because it ignores entire regions of the human body,” Parker said, pointing back toward the diagram. “And in cases where you are thrown into a new environment, where meal tabs aren’t present, your body isn’t able to immediately take up alternate nutrients.”
“Well, we weren’t made to be up here,” 11 grumbled.
Parker studied the faces of his class. The other student who’d been out in the poop hut finally re-entered the room, so tired that he practically fell into his desk. He rested his head in his hands without making the effort to remove his orange mask, and moaned. Parker nodded. “That might be true, but here you are.”
Parker opened a box that had been sitting on a desk at the front of the room. After removing the lid, he pulled out several stacks of plates, each with a small portion of some new food to torture them with. He lined the plates up neatly along the edge of his desk, along with a stack of silverware.
“Today, we’re going to try poached eggs.”
The entire room grimaced. Heads buried themselves in crossed arms, feet locked into place under desks, and the group leached out a feeling of discontent so great that it made the teacher roll his eyes.
“Eggs are a source of protein. We collect them from birds, like chickens and ducks. They can be eaten in many forms, but today’s eggs have been carefully boiled in water to help you digest them more easily. Please come up and retrieve your plate. A spoon will also be necessary.”
One by one, the students rallied enough courage to obey the order. When 62 made his way toward the food, he was greeted by a small pile of glistening white rubber. He couldn’t help but look at it with disgust as his stomach did a quick flip. With trembling hands, he took the plate and a spoon back toward his desk. He sat there a long time, staring at the mound of wobbly egg before he could summon the courage to poke it.
62 was caught by surprise when he finally did press the spoon down into the egg. A bright orange liquid oozed slowly out of the side, spilling onto the plate. He nearly spilled it when he picked it up and tilted it toward Parker. “What the heck is that?”
“The yolk,” Parker said. The answer wasn’t one that anyone understood, and Parker didn’t seem inclined to explain further. “Just eat it.”
62 scooped up a bit of the orange liquid along with the semi-solid white wiggly stuff. He took a few quick breaths, then dumped the spoonful of egg onto his tongue before thinking anymore about it. The egg was lukewarm, squishy, and wet. He swallowed it down as quick as he could, then gulped down the glass of water that sat on the front corner of his desk. He looked up at Parker while his classmates struggled with their own eggs.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” 62 croaked.
Parker rolled his eyes again and pointed toward the door. 62 ran out to the toilet, the rest of the class not far behind.
CHAPTER 25
BLUE SHOOK 62 AWAKE. “Hey there, lazy bones.”
“Oh, hey!” 62 rubbed his eyes and looked outside. It was dark. “When did you get back?”
“A while ago. Before dinner, I guess.” Blue looked exhausted. He’d been through detox and his skin was pink from the furious scrubbing of the bathing procedure. “I decided to stop by before I went to bed.”
“I’m glad you did,” 62 said with a sleepy smile. “How’d it go out there?”
Blue looked down at the floor and scratched the back of his neck. “We got the meal tabs we needed, so that was good.”
A feeling of unease washed over 62. “Is something wrong?”
“I couldn’t find the doc.” Blue didn’t look up. Instead, he seemed to fall in on himself slightly; thinner and frailer than he’d been just a moment ago.
“Did you check his lab?”
Blue’s eyes closed, and he breathed quiet words. “He wasn’t there.”
62 folded his blankets back and pushed his legs out over the edge of the bed. He scooted toward Blue and draped an arm around him. He held his friend tight. “It’s okay. Thanks for looking,” he whispered.
“The whole lab was shut down. Black. Not a single light on,” Blue mumbled. “Like he wasn’t coming back.”
“What?” 62 cried. His eyes welled with tears as they flicked back and forth across the room, searching for answers that weren’t there. “Maybe they moved him. Gave him a new office. He told me that he was repairing fewer and fewer chips. I think he spent most of his time just waiting for something to do.”
“Yeah,” Blue sniffed. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “That’s probably it. He just got moved.”
The pair sat quiet, each lost in their own worries of what had happened to their friend. Neither had any answers. 62 thought back on the time he’d spent with 42,
both in dreams and out of them. If only he could get Mattie to connect their dreams, maybe she could show him how she contacted Adaline. Then he’d be able to find his friend.
62 gasped, “What about his Nurse? He had that bot – the one he modified. Was it there?”
Blue winced, and nodded. “Sort of. It was in pieces. Lumped in a pile. It looked like a bunch of scrap metal when we found it.”
“You don’t think they dismantled it...” 62’s voice trailed off. Blue nodded.
“00 and I convinced the guys to bring back some of the guts,” Blue said. “Just the hardware that we were sure 42 modified. Not all the extra arms and stuff. It took a while to get them to agree to bring bot parts here. Nobody’s real excited about it, to be honest. But finally, Chance agreed it would be best to not leave that kind of stuff in Adaline for just anybody to rummage through.”
62 perked up. He looked down at Blue’s empty hands. “Where are the parts?”
Blue snorted. “The elders didn’t let us keep them, dummy. They got taken away when we came back into town. Not sure what they’ll do with them.”
“We’ve got to find out.” 62 pulled his arm back from around Blue’s shoulders and slammed it down on the bed. “If we can figure out how to talk to the Nurse, maybe it can tell us what happened.”
“Are you crazy?” Blue shifted, staring at 62 in disbelief. “We can’t build a bot here. It’s totally against the law. The people here will freak out if they find out the parts are here. They already barely let us back in this time as it was.”
62’s face dropped into a scowl. “What do you mean?”
“When we got back to town, the guards argued with Chance about letting us back in. They didn’t know about the bot parts, of course. Chance had us hide those in a contamination crate so nobody’d want to get into them. But this time, instead of just letting us head to detox, the guards sat around yelling at us and telling us to go back to where we’d come from. We had to hang around until the shift change for someone half decent to show up and let us in.”
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