When they made it to the stairs, the rhythm of their shared steps became burdensome. The doctor pushed him up a step first, and then followed up the stairs beside him. One step at a time. 62 was glad to know the decon station was just inside the double doors at the top of the staircase. He was ready to sit down a while, even if it was to be scrubbed down and tested for radiation by one of those metal wands.
They entered the main lobby and the doctor pulled away from 62 in the middle of the room. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything.” She took off her gloves, dropping them into a red box that had Contaminated scrawled across the front and then went behind the counter and through a small door into an adjoining room. When she came back, she was accompanied by an almost identical looking Woman who appraised him with the same large brown eyes and furrowed brow.
“Are you sure he’s the same kid?” the second doctor asked, hands on hips.
“Yes,” the Woman in casual clothes answered. She turned to 62. “What’s your number?”
62 answered and the lady behind the counter pulled his file from a long metal cabinet. Several sheets of paper were inside, and the two medical staff pored over them and confirmed that he was the unlucky child who couldn’t seem to keep out of the dirt. The doctor on staff directed him toward the decon station, echoing the lady who’d brought him in her instructions to not touch anything. 62 looked over his shoulder before leaving the room.
“But my friends. They’re waiting for me.”
“They’ll have to keep waiting,” the doctors said in unison. 62 looked at one, then the other in bewilderment. The decon procedure was long, and he may have to stay overnight if they couldn’t get him clean enough the first time around. They’d threatened quarantine last time. If he had to go through that again, how would his friends ever know?
The lady who’d brought him in seemed to read his thoughts. “You said they’re at the library?” 62 nodded. “I’m heading back out that way again. I’ll stop in and tell them you’re here.”
“Thank you,” 62 said in earnest. Then, he worried that she’d go poking around and discover N302. He hoped she wouldn’t search too deep in the library for them. He stammered, “If no one’s at the front desk, they’ll be in the cafeteria.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m not going to traipse all around Hanford for you. If the place is empty, you’re on your own.” She started to turn away and then paused. She looked back at him again. “Hey, if I do you this favor, will you do one for me?”
“I can try.”
“Get cleaned up, and then stay the heck out of here.” She gave him a harsh look as she spoke. He squared his shoulders and nodded. They parted ways as she left the office and he walked through the door to be stripped, scrubbed, and probed for the third time.
CHAPTER 43
THE GOOD NEWS WAS, 62’s mask stayed on during his fall so he hadn’t ingested any radioactive dust. His leg wasn’t badly hurt, and it would mend quickly. The bad news was, they’d found radioactive readings in his hair, it coated one pant leg, and somehow, it had made it into one of his pockets. It was too much exposure for him to be cleaned up and released. He was stuck in quarantine.
This time, he didn’t have to jockey for position to look out of the quarantine room’s picture window, though. He had the whole room to himself. “Sleep in a different bed every night, if you want to,” the doctor who brought him here had said, “we have to decontaminate the room after you leave anyway.” 62 looked at the empty beds around him. He missed his brothers.
Thoughts of loneliness, and a strange homesickness when he thought back on the tight, constant monitoring of Adaline, were broken by a tapping sound. 62 looked up and there were Mattie, Blue, and 00 standing at the window. He slid out of bed and trotted over to them with a smile. “Hey, guys!”
Blue’s mask started bobbing as if he were talking and Mattie rolled her eyes at him. 00 raised and dropped his shoulders with one eyebrow raised. 62 couldn’t understand any of it. All that came through the glass was a low, muted sound. He couldn’t make out any of the words. Whatever Blue had said had come through the glass as, “Wah wah waah. Wa-wah.”
“I can’t hear you.” His friends looked at him with expressionless eyes. 62 tapped his ear and shook his head. He raised his voice and repeated his words. The group outside the window shook their heads.
They stared at one another for a minute before 62 had an idea. He held up a finger and mouthed the words, “I’ll be right back.” He wasn’t sure they’d understood but it was the best he could do. He rushed around the room, looking in the drawers of the small bedside tables and cabinets along the walls. When he opened one of the medical cabinets, he found a sheet of paper. On a clipboard in one of the cabinet’s drawers he found a pencil. The paper had hurried notes scrawled on one side. He flipped it over to find the back blank. He slipped the paper under the clipboard’s heavy hinge, gripped the pencil, and returned to the window, writing as he went. He held the clipboard up to the glass. Hi guys.
Everyone waved. 00 said something to Mattie and she pulled the bag slung over her shoulder around so that she could open it up and look inside. The bright colors of her patchwork mask bobbed as if she was talking as she went, but nothing she said made it into the quarantine room. Her hand reached deep into the bottom of the bag and returned with a short pencil, but her eyes were drawn and the pitch of the “Wah wah wah!” seeping through the glass told 62 that she was suddenly very unhappy. She pulled one book, and then another from her bag. The Boys were pointing at the books. Mattie’s forehead was turning red and she shook her head while returning the books to the protection of her bag.
What’s wrong? 62 wrote on his paper and held it up to the glass. Blue snatched the pencil from Mattie and held it up. He pointed at the books in her bag, pretended to write with the pencil in the air and shook his head. She didn’t want to write in her books. 62 understood. He wouldn’t want to either. Do you have paper? His note was met with a trio of heads shaking a unified, “No.”
He gave Mattie an understanding tilt of his head and shrug of the shoulders. Then he wrote, Can you write in the back cover where no one will see it?
The crimson color of her forehead darkened, and she yelled at the glass. “I’ll see it!” The rest of her rant wasn’t quite loud enough to come through, and for this 62 was glad. Blue and 00 were wide eyed and holding their hands up in surrender by the time she was done yelling at the lot of them. Her chest heaved in and out with angry breath and her eyes burned with fury. 00 plucked the pencil from Blue’s raised fingers and handed it gingerly back to Mattie. She snatched it from him and he pulled his hand back protectively like he was afraid of being bit.
Mattie stomped her foot. All three Boys looked at her nervously. Her eyes narrowed. Then she shoved her hand into her bag, picked up one of the books, flipped to the last pages and pressed the pencil to the paper. As angry as she was, she drew the pencil across the page with extreme care. When she held the book up to the window, the words were so lightly written that 62 could barely see them.
You ate dirt again?
62 squinted and his mouth tightened as a flash of frustration shot through him. Mattie turned away from the window and showed 00 and Blue what she’d written. They broke into wild laughter. 62 wrote, I tripped. Even Mattie cracked up at that.
Mattie pointed into the room where 62 stood. She wrote in the book and held it up to the glass. How long?
62 shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He wrote back, Did you talk to Auntie?
All three of them nodded. Mattie’s note said, She gave us a list of questions to ask it.
Have you done it yet? Everyone shook their heads no. I think I know how to get it more power. Get batteries from the outhouses. They shook their heads no again.
Mattie wrote a new note and held it up. Auntie had some. Solar panel, too. For her house.
62’s jaw dropped. The old Woman had electricity but didn’t use it? The shock of his surprise registered with his
friends outside and they each flailed their hands and dropped their heads as if to say they were shocked, too. Mattie wrote down, Blue is installing. Good idea about outhouses. Can use as backup plan.
62 nodded. Now what?
00 said something to Mattie. She was resistant to his words, but eventually he convinced her to pass him the book and pencil. When he held up his own note, the writing was black and large, pressed into the paper with excited force. We’re turning it on. We will come back after. GET MORE PAPER.
CHAPTER 44
62 WAS SPRAWLED ACROSS the bed. His hand moved absently over the page, scribbling over the words written there. That was the problem of writing an entire conversation down. There was suddenly an overabundance of words on paper that he didn’t want anyone else to read. 00 had suggested scribbling over everything, covering up the pencil strokes until they were unrecognizable.
It had taken some persistence to get the medical staff to bring him more paper, a couple of pencils, and a knife to sharpen them. He’d gotten a lecture about how limited the resources were. But when he asked the person who brought him his meals, a Woman named Sarah, if she knew how the paper was made, her face had lit up and she’d told him all about paper making. As it turned out, she made paper herself for fun. She’d been the one to bring him the supplies, and even offered to show him how to press his own paper when he got out if he was interested.
He assured her that he was.
Now he lay on the bed, scribbling over his words on the rough surface of the page. This wasn’t smooth, refined paper like in the books he read. This paper was coarse and uneven. It was a light grey color with darker flecks dispersed throughout. Sarah said she made it from plants that she pressed together. It was beautiful in its ruggedness.
The supplies had come just in the nick of time. He’d filled the first page that he’d found with so many notes that there hadn’t been anywhere left to write on it. 00 and the others had been by each day with more news of the Nurse. The additional power supply from Auntie’s hadn’t been quite enough, so Blue had pulled the backup batteries from six outhouses and borrowed the solar panel from the library privy to bulk up the system. It still hadn’t ended up being enough power to keep the computer running through the night, but it was better than it had been. The Nurse was happy with the results of their efforts.
That was something. 00 said the Nurse felt happy. The Machine had been glad to see them when they’d finally turned it on again. It said it missed the Head Machine in Adaline, but then told them how much it enjoyed their company. And its words had been sincere enough that even Blue began wondering if Machines could have feelings.
They’d found out from the bot that the Head Machine had been deleting files thinking that they’d become corrupt, not that it had known the Nurse’s programming had been modified; or at least that was the bot’s assumption. It’d said that 42 told it that a Boy had appeared in a dream, and that he had a bad feeling that the Boy was going to come get him.
“1124999,” 62 mumbled to himself. He knew the Boy. They’d been best friends back in Adaline, and when Defense had tried to recruit 62 to track down other dreamers, 99 had been the one to convince him to join their cause. 99 had been brainwashed by Defense and was using his dream anomaly to connect with other dreamers. Then, Defense was using his reports to remove them from Adaline. While 62 had been hooked up to their monitoring devices, he’d accidently led them to 71. The teacher was ripped from their shared dream by force and 62 hadn’t been able to connect with him ever since. The thought of it made him shudder.
The bot said that 42 had started disassembling it immediately after the dream. It was impossible to know what happened to the doctor after that without reconnecting the Nurse to the Head Machine, and there was no way to do that from out here in Hanford. 62 knew that even if they could find a way to hook the Nurse up to Adaline’s network, such a connection would put all of the above grounders at risk.
During their last visit, 00 had seemed to be the most excited about the whole adventure with the computer. He’d written that the bot was teaching him how to use the ancient device it’d been installed in, and they’d even opened one of the other programs together. A game called Pyramid. He and the bot were exploring the game together, one line of text at a time. 00 said that he suspected the Nurse knew how to solve the puzzle game, but it was letting him try to figure it out for himself. It’s kind of nice, 00 had written.
62 looked down at the clipboard. The words on the page were blotted out and his pencil was dull again. He pulled the used sheet off the board, flipped the paper over, and affixed it so that the blank back side was ready for their next round of conversation. Now there was nothing to do but wait for them to come back.
A gentle knock on the door drew his attention away from the paper. Dr. Smart came in the room wearing a warm smile and a wrinkled lab coat. He sat down on a rolling chair near the door and then scooted his way across the floor like a little kid might do. He slid to a stop at the foot of 62’s bed. “And so,” he joked, “we meet again.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Dr. Smart chuckled. “We’ve really got to find a way to keep you clean, kid.” He flipped through the pages of the report affixed to a clipboard that was identical to the one 62 was holding. “But, while we haven’t figured out how to make that happen, we did come up with some good news.”
The Man paused, reading over the papers in his hands thoughtfully. 62’s stomach clenched and his skin pricked with nervous energy. He couldn’t help but hold his breath as he waited to hear what the doctor would say next. He leaned forward and tried to read the notes upside-down, but the doctor turned them away from him so he couldn’t see. Finally, the doctor’s eyes rose from the pages.
“You have escaped the dust without any signs of injury, and you don’t appear to be dying from radiation poisoning. Yet.” He flipped the overturned pages down on the clipboard. His face took on a serious gaze as he pointed a finger at 62. “But you’ve got to find a way to keep out of the dust. No running. No jumping. No getting into fights with Girls.”
62 shrank inside of himself. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to recommend your release for tomorrow. Once you’re out, it’s your job to stay as far away from the dirt as possible. Take your shoes off inside. Take three showers a day. Wash your hands before, and after every meal and trip to the outhouse. Do not, under any circumstances, ask to work in the cafeteria or come into contact with unprepared food. Do you understand?”
62 nodded and muttered again, “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Dr. Smart smiled again. “And how are those dreams going?”
“I stopped having them,” 62 lied.
“Excellent,” Dr. Smart nodded. He rose from his chair. “I hope it stays that way. Better for everyone, you know?”
62 slumped against his pillow. “I guess so.”
“I have new clothes coming for you. You can put them on whenever you like. They’re bound to be more comfortable than the gown you’re wearing. We’ll see you again for one last exam in the morning and then send you on your way.”
“Thanks,” 62 said. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
Dr. Smart extended his arm and 62 grasped the open palm. They shook hands in farewell. “I hope I never see you in here again,” the doctor said.
“Me, too,” 62 agreed.
CHAPTER 45
62 WAS SURPRISED TO find Auntie at the library when he arrived the next day. She was sitting at the keyboard, slowly picking her way through a conversation with the Nurse. He cleared his throat from the doorway. She looked up at him with a start, eyes wide. “Oh, hello.”
“What’re you doing?” 62 asked as he crossed the room. Auntie had papers spread on the desk. Maps, books about Hanford, and Anna’s journal.
Auntie gave a sheepish smile. “Curiosity got the better of me, I’m afraid.”
“Mattie said you’d given her a list of questions to ask. Didn’t she ask them?” 62 pulled an overt
urned crate over beside Auntie and sat down.
“Oh, yes. Yes.” Auntie’s head bobbed up and down. “But the answers only gave me more questions. This device is strange. It knows so much about us.”
62 nodded and sat quietly while Auntie proceeded to tell the Nurse that he’d come into the room. The Nurse said hello and Auntie was impressed with the bot’s manners. 62 read through what text was still on the screen from their earlier conversation. Mostly it was about the weather outside; and the outside in general. Nurse302 mentioned that it had been aware of an outside. It’d seen glimpses of it through Adaline’s above-ground security feed. Even before 42 had upgraded the bot to have a rebellious personality, it appeared that he’d used its network to tap into other layers of the computerized system. For better or worse, the Nurse still had those memories.
N302>WE GOT IN A LOT OF TROUBLE TOGETHER. SOMETIMES IT WAS BECAUSE OF 62.
Auntie laughed and asked for an explanation. 62 told her about the time that he’d injured himself on purpose, trying to get out of the training program he was in. 42 and his robotic assistant had tracked him down in the tunnels of Adaline’s rail system. They’d shut down the electricity and the Nurse had witnessed the doctor swap 62’s chip out for one that had been modified to make him seem normal. It felt like it had happened so long ago.
The old Woman chuckled to herself a while once the story was over, and then studied 62 with wizened eyes. The trace of a smile still rested on her lips. She wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something rotten, then pecked away at the keyboard again. She asked the bot what it knew about dreamers.
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