And then there was Mr. William Winston Cooley, who probably wouldn’t live to see fifty, because he liked keeping the angst-ridden, unbalanced specimen routine going just to prove some point that no one else knew or cared about. Goldsmith’s feelings regarding Cooley were different than those the valedictorian held for the rest of the usual crowd of unbalanced specimens. He and Cooley were both orphans who won full rides to Stansbury; both started out as average boys with sad stories. But the med cycle changed everything. Like a self-contained lab experiment, Cooley and Goldsmith existed side by side in the same environment, but one chose to buy into the system while the other rejected it. And now, twelve years later, the results spoke for themselves. Goldsmith was number one. Cooley was number 350. It didn’t just reinforce the effectiveness of the school’s methods, it confirmed one fundamental premise for Goldsmith: he owed Stansbury everything.
But despite the obvious failure of Cooley as a specimen, Goldsmith was powerless to do anything about it. The administration appointed him valedictorian to enforce the school’s code of conduct, to help them show through example that, unlike the chaos of the outside world, within this tower’s walls there were clear-cut, absolute standards of right and wrong. And yet, when it came to Cooley all bets were off.
Goldsmith spent the majority of his time here in anonymity. He lacked the privileged upbringing of Bunson or Sadie and didn’t have the natural mystique of specimens like Camilla, so he made up for it with a blue-collar work ethic and indomitable will. From his first days at the school, Goldsmith knew if he could keep his grades perfect and eventually end up in that elite group that underwent the Selmer-Dubonnet test, he’d win. It was a mystery environment that discounted all of the socio-economic benefits he never had, and his rivals simply wanted to emerge victorious. Goldsmith needed to.
After he defied the odds and won (he heard afterward that the 3 specimens out of 779 who bet on him in the gambling pool came away with small fortunes), he started his final year at the tower with his legend firmly established. But Cooley had a legend of his own, and it was sealed long before his. Goldsmith remembered the day it happened like it was an hour ago. They all did. One simple word summed it up: Guernica.
Their class was on a field trip to a Picasso retrospective way back during freshman year. Stansbury field trips tended to be few and far between, mainly because those on the outside world had no problems bringing noteworthy exhibits, performances and lectures to the tower, if for nothing else to take the tour and get a glimpse of life inside the walls. But when the San Angeles Metropolitan Museum of Art refused (understandably, perhaps) to lug $200 million worth of Picassos to the desert, the specimens had to go to them.
They went on a warm, muggy Wednesday afternoon in June. After viewing the Picassos, their class was waiting on the street for the fleet of gyrobuses to whisk them back to campus when a group of three rough-looking teenagers decided to cruise the female specimens in their short skirts and knee socks. One of them grabbed Shannon Louise Evans by the arm—the same Shannon who was standing right there in the elevator behind Goldsmith, actually—and yanked her into the street toward their old brown minivan. His buddies got in between her and her fellow specimens, daring someone to stop them. There wasn’t a policeman around: a five-alarm fire on the West Side was blazing and had most of them occupied. It was a surreal sight outside the museum, three dozen larger-than-life guys in blazers standing there calmly, watching these thugs in ripped, baggy jeans gesticulating and swearing, Shannon crying and petrified, looking like a fragile, exotic bird who’d gotten lost and fallen from the skies above, down onto this crumbling, filthy San Angeles street. But despite their years of training in physical defense progressions, nobody was doing anything.
Goldsmith was one of those three dozen frozen male specimens, and he knew the reason why: the med cycle incorporated Tenormen, a beta blocker that slowed down the specimens’ heart rates, thereby making them less excitable and more calm and malleable without sedating them (nervous politicians in the twentieth century often popped Tenormen before delivering speeches to large audiences). Also, Dr. Stansbury tweaked these beta blockers to eliminate psychological urges for violence and the type of anger hot enough to cause a brawl. Goldsmith remembered the sight of big, scary Bunson getting shoved repeatedly by one of the much smaller thugs in the street, passively staring off into the distance the whole time. Despite their skills and physical gifts, the meds had put a pharmaceutical leash on all of them.
And then Cooley swung a fist, smashed the thug’s nose into a red, pulpy mess and sent a knee into the guy’s kidneys before his body hit pavement. Goldsmith himself recognized the technique; it was a fairly standard opening combination of blows the specimens were taught in the “Multiple Assailants: Armed/Unarmed” seminar of eighth grade Phys-D. And Cooley moved fast—too fast. Thought and motion had become one. Unlike everyone else, there was not an ounce of hesitation in his eyes, no careful calculation of the possible consequences of his actions. And hence, no way, Goldsmith knew, that Cooley was following the med cycle. Which meant that he had all the knowledge and training of Stansbury’s Phys-D program without the self-control or maturity to handle it responsibly: he was literally a walking, insubordinate, fourteen-year-old deadly weapon. Cooley’s white dress shirt went untucked as he kicked the thug’s buddy into unconsciousness. The last one remaining finally let go of Miss Evans and came at Cooley with a knife, opening up a gash on his left side before Cooley wrestled him to the ground while everyone else stood around and watched. Cooley choked him out with one hand and took the bloody knife in his other fist, raising it above his head. Goldsmith was sure he was going to kill him. But the blade fell from his hand and clattered to the street. Shannon stopped crying and, as if on cue, the rest of the female specimens started. Professor Smart ran over and pulled Cooley away, stitching him up with the first aid kit on the bus. Stansbury security smoothed things over with the police. Captain Gibson paid off the punks’ families so they wouldn’t press charges. President Lang made sure the newspapers wouldn’t write a word about it. The school erased all traces of the incident, except for the very astute memories of the specimens who witnessed it.
Even now, Goldsmith wished he had the will to somehow override those med cycle beta blockers, that he were the one who jumped in first, or at least joined in the fight right after Cooley did, and he knew for certain the rest of the guys felt the same way. Within two hours of the incident, the whole school had heard the story. Goldsmith figured that enshrining Cooley in the school’s pantheon of unofficial folk heroes was the specimens’ way of repenting. After what was now referred to in Stansbury lore as Guernica, Cooley had won their respect and, perhaps more significant, more or less laissez-faire treatment from the administration. Saving Shannon (who came from a full tuition-paying family and had two younger brothers enrolled as well) seemed to be enough to convince the headmaster and President Lang that the least they could do was allow him to flunk the rest of his classes in peace. Despite his obvious transgressions of school policy, Goldsmith had yet to see Cooley called to the disciplinary level. He almost never saw him waiting in line with everyone else for the regular physical and chemical examinations all the specimens went through. And he never forgot the way Cooley moved, back at Guernica. That speed, that grace, that confidence. After that, Goldsmith and everyone else understood that no other specimen—no matter what his age or size—would stand a chance against him in a fight and accorded him the proper blend of fear and respect.
The flat-screen monitor on the elevator pod’s wall lit up with the seven A.M. broadcast. A news anchor addressed her audience, bright and chipper.
“Good morning to you on this very wet and rainy March 29, 2036…,” she began.
“It’s raining outside,” Cooley said.
“Say it ain’t so,” said Bunson.
“It ain’t so. Every day’s a sunny one inside Stansbury, isn’t that right Tommy Goldsmith?”
“… And now,” continue
d the anchor, “the biggest headline of the year, and perhaps of the generation. Late last night, the federal Food and Drug Administration officially gave its stamp of approval to Panacetix, better known as the antidote to more than ninety-five percent of all the cancerous tumors that afflict mankind.” The monitor cut to a shot of Professor Partridge (Goldsmith’s fifth-hour Biochemical Compounds and Analysis progression instructor). He was working in one of the tower’s 39th floor labs, surrounded by specimens in white lab coats bearing the school’s emblem. You could always tell a specimen when you saw one on television: they had the type of serene poker faces most commonly seen on chess masters thinking three moves ahead of everyone else. The news anchor cut in again:
“Panacetix—a hybrid of engineered proteins and amino acids that selectively target and eradicate the mitochondria of cancerous tissues, effectively destroying the binary fissure and karyokinetic ability of eukaryotic cells—was developed three years ago by Prof. Alan Partridge, a biochemist who works exclusively with the elite students at Stansbury School…” The news broadcast ran the standard Stansbury lead-in graphic. The school’s crest on a flag elegantly blew in the breeze, a young woman’s voice-over breathlessly cooed the expensive, focus-grouped catchphrase: “Stansbury Labs—Because you deserve to live in the future perfect.”
“Go team,” said Oates.
“Like we need any more pressure,” said Sugiyama.
“This is huge,” said Shannon. “Bigger than Hester’s AIDS vaccine back in 2019.”
A series of thin, sickly chemotherapy patients flashed past on the screen. “This … this is just a miracle,” said one. “I thought I had two weeks to live…,” said another.
“The Panacetix approval bodes well not just for these terminally ill patients, but for Stansbury School itself. Soon the United States Senate will be voting on the controversial proposal to allocate one trillion dollars annually to the prep school, so that they may continue their research and studies in fields ranging from pharmaceuticals to national security technology, free from the time-consuming practice of fund-raising from private donors…”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Level 125. The atrium. The specimens in the pod parted ways like the Red Sea, letting Cooley and Sadie out first. That’s the thing about Cooley, thought Goldsmith. Everyone talked up Guernica, that brutal brawl outside the museum, like it was some once-in-a-lifetime moment of truth. But for Cooley it was not. For burnouts like he, Guernica was every day of his sorry life.
5
Sadie, along with Shannon and Katherine Mary Lewis, walked into the girls’ restroom on Level 125 just before the entrance to the atrium. Five or six younger female specimens moved about inside, copying homework at the last minute, gossiping, and applying one final dab of makeup for that special male specimen in their first-hour progression. Sadie entered and, as usual, voices dropped to whispers and the freshmen girls spent just a little less time in the mirror, lest her clique notice and deem the behavior overly vain or, worse, competitive. Sadie, Shannon, and Katherine (“Katie” to those in the clique, the more refined and mature “Kate” to particularly cute boys like Nathan Donald Oates, the monosyllabic and mildly erotic “Kat” to the older boys she met during her rare trips to the outside world) were used to the deferential behavior. They were, after all, widely regarded as the most attractive girls in the entire tower. That is, attractive in the context of the flesh, as opposed to on paper as candidates for admission to top-tier Ivy League universities.
Last winter holiday they were shuttled into San Angeles along with the rest of their peers, so that they could be transferred to airports and train stations and begin their respective trips home for vacation. The girls had just read Breakfast at Tiffany’s for a Twentieth-Century American Literature progression and, on a whim, Sadie, Shannon, and Katie secretly decided to push back their flights twenty-four hours (Sadie didn’t even tell Cooley about this) and paint the town red like Holly Golightly. Since specimens were not permitted to wear anything other than the standard uniforms each day, none of them had the slinky designer armor and expensive high heels that most girls possessed—those girls they would be competing with for attention in the city’s bars and clubs that evening. They had no pocket money to purchase any of these accoutrements. Stansbury gave the specimens’ parents strict orders to provide them with only enough cash for the trip home and a few dollars for “emergencies,” so the girls pooled their meager funds for a budget-rate hotel room and settled on wearing their boring school uniforms for their big night out. It was on that night that Sadie realized the effect that three Stansbury girls who—thanks to a potent combination of good genes and the med cycle—filled out the regulation knee socks, cardigans, and pleated skirts could have not only upon men but on the very fabric of society itself. Gyrocabbies refused their money. Packs of pedestrians in the city streets parted ways for them and stared, openmouthed. Bouncers and doormen standing behind velvet ropes at the most exclusive clubs not only allowed them inside for free, but chased them down the street with promises of immediate and complimentary admission when they saw the girls take note of the immensely long lines down the block and opt to move elsewhere. Although they were initially concerned about the prospect of feminine rivals, it soon became obvious that there was no contest whatsoever. Sadie was shocked by the slouching, sloppy posture of young outsider women in garish metallic shirts that bared far too much skin to leave anything to the imagination. The outsiders’ makeup—she remembered a preponderance of glittery lips and blue eye shadow—looked more like war paint than anything else. These desperate women poured sugary pink drinks down their throats and shouted small talk over the pounding music at men who kept glancing over their bared, artificially tanned shoulders to see if anyone better was available. Sadie, Shannon, and Katie contented themselves with leaning against the bar smoking cigarettes and sipping crystal-clear gin martinis (like Miss Golightly herself), never once raising their crisp, articulate voices above a normal volume, despite the throbbing sound track. Men, they quickly realized, didn’t mind leaning in and tuning out everything else in the world when they were presented with superior—well—specimens.
Sadie fielded no fewer than eight proposals of marriage that evening from complete strangers. Historically shy Shannon befriended a group of wealthy European bankers who seemed to command an endless supply of Champagne. A man old enough to be their father offered $500 in cash to Kat—she had left both Katie and Kate at home that evening and brought out this salacious alter ego for her big city debut—if she provided him with a lap dance right there in the club. And he didn’t even want her to take off her uniform—in fact, he demanded she leave it on in its entirety. Kat, the forward-thinking, liberated specimen readily obliged and it occurred to Sadie that girls lost inhibitions with every vowel and consonant they dropped from their given names. As amusing as it was watching her friends cavort around, flirting (and flirting herself, she privately admitted), she found herself happy that she’d never fall victim to the abbreviations that seemed to steal away Katie’s innocence. After all, the only option for a nickname she had would be paring down Sadie to the somewhat sobering moniker of Sad.
Standing there in the bathroom, Sadie watched as Katie glared at Shannon while Shannon attempted to casually avoid eye contact.
“What are you waiting for?” Katie asked.
“I did it yesterday,” Shannon responded, finally looking at her. “I do it like, all the time.”
“But you said if I got the Camels this month you’d do it one extra time per week. Didn’t she, Sadie?”
“You did, babe,” said Sadie. She pulled out her birth control pills and swallowed one dry, remembering when she was a young specimen and saw the older girls taking them, thinking that the unfamiliar white pills in those strange circular cases were the reason the seniors had the graceful curves to their legs, hips, and chests that she and her friends so clearly lacked. It wasn’t until her mother took her to the doctor years ago that she re
alized the pills were actually solutions to the inevitable problems those curves posed rather than the cause of them.
“They don’t even use those things anymore,” whined Shannon, looking up at the camera lens implant jutting out of a hole in the ceiling above the sinks.
Katie rolled her eyes and cut loose with the kind of specifically feminine guttural growl that communicates annoyance and hopeless frustration. “C’mon. That’s what they want us to think.” She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, deciding to unbutton her white shirt a little more before giving her bosom a decisive shove upward. Satisfied with the additional cleavage effect, she turned back to Shannon. “I’m just telling you what Cooley told me, okay? He says you can’t trust the security detail.”
Shannon responded with a guttural growl of her own, striking the specifically feminine stance of leaning back on one heel while defiantly thrusting up the hip on the same side and crossing the arms across the chest. “Well, maybe I think Cooley’s paranoid.”
“Oooh,” cooed Katie. “Struck a nerve, did I? I shouldn’t have mentioned Cooley. Sorry, sweetie.”
“Bitch,” said Shannon, flushing bright red before looking over at Sadie. Sadie just smiled.
“Don’t be such a bully, Katie,” she said, playing her usual role of restroom diplomat.
“You’re not looking at a bully. You’re looking at a nicotine fiend.” Katie took another quick glance in the mirror. “A nicotine fiend with unbelievable tits, if I do say so myself. And we’ve only got a few minutes before assembly starts. If I have to say that fucking oath without my fix, I’m gonna—”
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