by Rayya Deeb
Chapters
Title Page
Copyright
Website
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
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44
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48
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53
Acknowledgements
Rayya Deeb Bio
RAYYA DEEB
THE SENECA SOCIETY BOOK I
Copyright © 2016 Rayya Deeb
All rights reserved.
RayyaDeeb.com
This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ATM Publishing
299 6th Avenue #4
Brooklyn, NY 11215
AcrossTheMargin.com
ISBN: 978-0-9972417-0-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941031
First Print, First Edition 2016
Cover Design by Miss Anonymous
Explore Seneca
SenecaSociety.com
&
MEDIOLOGY
PRODUCTIONS
For my daughters.
1
MY BOTTOM LIP split straight down the middle from a combination of breathtaking G-force and peppery dry air. It stung like crazy. The skin on my cheeks pressed tight against the bone. I crinkled my nose at the motorized odor of BoomJet fumes, and blinked continuously to try and moisten my eyeballs.
I was a BoomJet virgin. I'd only flown on a regular jet once in my sixteen years, but one time was all it took to know this was far different. The low, monk-ish hum of the BoomJet wasn't like an engine's forceful whirr. It was hollow. Clean. Precise. Like the sound you hear when you press your ear to a conch shell, only amplified. There were no dings to say "buckle-up," no overhead fans or lights. Just a slick, amber ceiling. Dark gray automated belts strapped us into black rubber seats. The only familiar thing from the other, old-fashioned flight I'd taken before was how all the passengers were trying to meditate away their concern.
Nothing assured me that I'd made the right choice, but here I was, being hauled off to what was probably some kind of reform school, so I had to go with it. It was my own fault for thinking I could transfer that money unnoticed. My arms, piled high in retro friendship bracelets– red, purple, gray, black and blue– were plastered against my rib cage. My hands grasped the seat, and even though my palms were hot and clammy, they weren't going to slip. The force was too great. My ears popped. I swallowed, but that only made the throat scratchiness that was a normal part of my daily life in Southern California, worse. Hydration was impossible.
I sat, quiet, staring at a bulletproof mirror that separated us from the BoomJet cockpit, the faces of the other four passengers reflected in it. Just like me, each person moved only his or her eyes.
Mine shifted to look out into the acid-washed sky. The entire siding of the BoomJet was a window, one inch thick and clear as purified ice. Just one inch between me and a thirty thousand foot drop. Every minute, steam was released inside a paper-thin slit that ran through the outermost layer of the window, melting away any freeze before it had the chance to settle. I watched Los Angeles shrink to nothingness below. In an instant, as we rose above the cloak of smog, one of the most populated cities in the country vanished.
I was on my way to a place foreign to me in every way. I shifted my gaze forward again, and found myself staring back at my own reflection. Pale, because I spend less time in the sun than a baby's butt. Full lips chapped raw by thin air and insufficient time to find a Vitamin E melt. Suddenly an electric-blue digital read-out popped up and hovered in the mirror showing a countdown clock: 48:12. In under an hour I would be on the ground in Washington, D.C.
Just forty-eight hours ago I'd been twiddling my thumbs during a calculus exam I couldn't have cared less about. I closed my eyes, recalling those final moments of normalcy. My mind had been far away from that stupid math exam, thoughts bouncing all over the map, from Timbuktu to the shores of the Cayman Islands. Wanting to get home and see if my latest gambling bots were bringing down the house. Wishing I had some prickly pear cacao. Wondering if my dad was really dead. I always thought about my dad– every single day.
He used to take long walks when he wanted to think about things. We couldn't know how long a walk would last– an hour, two, sometimes even three. He never came home from his last one. After a day we got really worried because he had become super depressed about things at work. It had been a roller coaster the week before he vanished. Right before his depression kicked in, he'd been overcome with excitement. I’ve heard that's a sign of being manic, but I just don't think that's what was up with my dad. Either way, my mom and I never felt settled with it. I thought about it all the time. If he was dead, could he see me and was he proud? Or if he was alive, why didn't he ever come back? It didn't make sense that he might still be alive, because then he wouldn't have left us, or at least he'd have told us what was going on. I couldn't accept that he was dead.
My mom, on the other hand, was angry. One day she missed him and the next she cursed the fact that he'd ever existed. His pictures are still up in our house. They should be. He's only been gone three years– three excruciatingly long years. They say time flies, but for my mom and me the weight of it lingers, like the chocolaty aroma of roasted Guatemalan coffee that clings to my hair after five minutes at Café Firenze. It doesn't ever seem to go away.
I didn't miss a beat between each "C" I’d marked off on the math test because, quite honestly, it's absurd. The school administrators think I'm some kind of genius sheep. That my only purpose is to elevate the test scores of a public school on the brink of losing funding from the federal government. The rest of the class, deep in calculus hell, didn't want to hear about me, what a great student I was and how I'd save their advanced math program. All they wanted were tickets to Endless Horizon concerts and to get bent on Mojo Sticks.
Our school was probably the last one in America that still had LCD monitors. We were so far behind the current technology and everything else, too, and the gap grew by the second. In every movie or show I watched, the schools had holographic touch-screens, but not ours. In malls, hospitals and schools across the country, virus and bacteria were eradicated by UV sweeper bee-bots, but not at our school. We just accepted the pungent odor of industrial ammonia. It was there for our own good, according to the administration. My teacher, Mr. Malin, still used a phone. He had been fiddling with it as he always did during exams, but in that moment he’d had his eyes on me.
I had been so done with that exam. Judging by the look on Mr. Malin's face, he was so done with me, too.
"Finished already?"
"Yep." He was a good guy, but there was no way I'd give in to the system.
"A word."
Mr. Malin stepped up and headed out the classroom door. As I followed, I looked for any sign of approval from my peers across the room. I'd rather they see me as a misfit than some teacher's pet, but nobody seemed to notice my calculus test strike. The teachers did everything in their power to keep me on a tight leash. They all hated my anti-authority threads: Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit tank top, cut-off bleached jean shorts and black sneakers marked up with vintage Wite-Out pen art. Three dozen other high school juniors cranked out numbers as best they knew how, but it wasn't good enough for the administration. They expected me to bring up the test score average of the bunch, and I wasn't down with that.
It was just the two of us on the other side of the classroom door, in a drab hallway of empty concrete sockets, remnants of lockers from when kids still carried books to class. Nobody knew what would take their place. Not us, not the teachers, not the people who made the plans to get rid of the obsolete lockers. It didn't matter what the plans were anyhow. There was no money to complete them.
Mr. Malin eyed me with disappointment. The way he tipped his chin down and peered at me over his wire-framed eyeglasses will stick with me forever.
I figured things might go better if I spoke first.
"I know what you're going to say." My voice bounced off the cold, empty wall sockets.
"This isn't you, Campbell."
"If it isn't me, then who is it?"
"You tell me."
I couldn't look Mr. Malin in the eye because I knew that I wasn't being the best Doro Campbell I could be. But I was the Doro who could fight the tyrannical school system and deal with the judgment of all the kids at school. I wasn't a goody-goody. I was Doro Campbell, certifiable badass. At least that was my goal.
"You tell me why the most gifted mathematician I've ever had in my classroom wants to present herself like she's the worst. I just don't get it."
I blanked for an answer.
"The grades speak for themselves, Campbell. I wish I could do something more for you, but I just can't. You should really be in advanced calculus, but at this rate, you're going to end up repeating regular calculus your senior year and your gift will be flushed straight down the toilet into the bowels of the Los Angeles Unified sewer system. Do you know what it's like down there?"
"I don't really give a crap." I grinned, proud of my pun.
Mr. Malin dropped his head. He'd tried to get through to me so many times before. I heard him, but I'd already made up my mind. As much as I respected Mr. Malin and knew he respected me, it was all about the big picture. I wasn't giving in to the bureaucracy of this bunk education system.
Mr. Malin clenched his jaw. I felt bad for him. It was his life's work, seeing to it that his most promising students spread their wings and soared. His face muscles twitched a few times before he finally nodded in resignation and stepped back into class.
I remember thinking that couldn't be it. That it wasn't my destiny in life to be a mindless follower. I was more than ready to split from this place.
***
I was so deep into re-living what had happened two days back, that I missed the BoomJet's initial descent. There was no time to prepare. With uncanny speed we plummeted towards the earth at forty-five degrees, and then made a hard turn, parallel with the off-white concrete runway. A hollow thump and we landed, doing at least two hundred miles-per-hour. I was nearly suffocated by the restraint of the belts. My breath accelerated. We made a fast and abrupt, but considerably smooth, stop. I could breathe again.
Like I said, I was a BoomJet virgin. It kind of hurt, it went by super quick and before I had a chance to really enjoy it, it was over. We'd taken off from Los Angeles and landed on the outskirts of the nation's capital in forty-eight minutes flat. Before I left, my mom said that the last time she'd flown to the east coast, it had taken nearly ten times as long. As I tried to imagine her reaction to the crazy-fast trip I'd just taken, I realized how much I missed her already.
2
A MATTE BLACK SpaceFlex Passenger Flight Vehicle sat on the tarmac. What I wouldn't do for one of those. Ellen Malone stood up and smiled. "That's us."
"Awesome!" I thought, and followed Ellen off of the BoomJet without saying a word. I was dizzy and my legs buckled.
"Are you okay?"
"Amazing." I stood up straight. I didn't want her to see me weak, but that had been some intense G-Force. Ellen was fine, like she'd done this a million times. She straightened a crease in her blazer.
For the past three years the world had been crumbling all around me, but now it seemed someone was championing me. Ellen Malone. Although the jury was still out on her motivation, and the idea of reform school made me wince, I felt elevated here.
Next thing you know I was back in the air– this time, in a flighter amongst the affluent folk of metropolitan Washington, D.C. The airways just above the highways and roads had become transport paths for flighters after the federal government had approved the bill a few years back. Of course, it was made completely unaffordable to ninety-nine percent of the population, and since I didn't have a license and my mom had no idea I was a millionaire, the only time I had experienced flighting was when I’d hot-hacked a flighter with my best friend, Julie.
That had been one seriously ill-fated joyride on a sweltering day back in May. We’d cruised over the 10 Freeway, and I veered off to pull some tricks between a stretch of decrepit, old Mediterranean-style stucco buildings in overpopulated, underprivileged hoods, where no other flighters ever went. We were doing about fifty, level with the roofs. People saw us and were cheering out their windows. Julie was egging me on like crazy. We always instigated each other to push the limits. I dropped us towards the road, just above the first story of the buildings, and then gunned it straight towards one of them. "Waaahoo!" I shouted. No fear. Julie screamed, braced herself in her seat, and just as we almost smashed into the first floor, I pulled back and we jetted straight up the side and into the sky, where we were met by the flighter cops. Busted in a stolen flighter just two weeks before my sixteenth birthday. I did two weeks in juvie, three months of community service and my license was revoked until I turn twenty.
The upside was that while my classmates were inside being lectured on flighter technology, I was outside experiencing it firsthand. I still don't get what's so wrong with that. In any case, my mom did. She was pissed beyond belief. It was just another event in a long series of me getting in trouble. It was so worth it. My school counselor and administrators were convinced I was acting up because I had lost my dad. I maintain that it was because everyone around me was so boring, that I needed to be proactive and inventive in order to have any fun.
But this unpredictable excursion with Ellen Malone, this I would classify as fun. From the moment we touched down in Virginia, I had the feeling that life would never be the same. I’d never been east of The Rockies, let alone to the other side of the country. This was a whole new horizon. For starters, the landscape was a stark contrast to what I was used to. Los Angeles' glory days were long gone. My parents would tell me stories of a top-notch tourist destination that had slipped into an abyss of overpopulation and filth. Broken roads overridden with traffic around the clock. Baywatch waves covered in dudes and babes would be considered folklore if there weren't countless images to prove their existence. From Malibu to Hermosa, the ocean water was just too polluted to swim in now.
Unlike every single metropolis across the globe, the air was clean here in Virginia, the roads paved to perfection. Smooth and black. And as we cruised above the endless river of traffic that carved its way through the tall sea of deep green trees, I saw something we most definitely did not have in LA. An elevated, four-lane roadway built in translucent concrete. Ellen saw that I was fixated on it. "The Smart Road. It runs above Route 66 into downtown Washington, D.C., as well as down Highway 81 to Blacksburg, Virginia, where the technology
was first researched, blueprinted and constructed for many years before stretching thousands of miles across the country," she explained. "Some of the session leaders you’ll be meeting were recruited out of the institutions that developed this sustainable transportation system. If we get a little closer, you'll see the law enforcement vehicles, traffic and weather collection devices, medical units and commercial freight trucks traveling on it in automated, unmanned vehicles."
"I've seen footage of it. In LA we'd be lucky to drive one block without hitting a pothole. It makes no sense. I mean, people in LA pay taxes too. Or at least, they did."
"Taxes have nothing to do with this. It's privatized. We have Flexer Technology Corporation to thank for this."
"Hmm." I pulled my little blue flexer from my ear and twirled it between my fingers, suddenly getting that its role was way more complex than simply providing me with personal computing functions. The Smart Road was fascinating. Optical fibers the size of pins composed the entire roadway, and let us see straight down through it to the road below.
I looked around at the areas beyond the road itself. It was the end of September in Virginia and fall was creeping in. I'd always heard of "seasons" and now I was starting to feel it. Even though I hadn't experienced the infamous hot and humid east coast summer that had just rolled out, I could taste autumn rolling in. A cool, thick dankness lingered in the air, penetrating straight to my bones. Made me want some warm apple cider. I wasn't in Los Angeles anymore.
The flighter exited into a wooded area and landed us in the driveway of an imposing colonial-style mansion. White pillars. Red brick. I was so excited I don't think I blinked. This was a highly secured girls' ambassador house, where tucked away behind a thick grove of leafy trees, I would be staying for my pre-orientation. Ellen and I got out of the flighter.
"Welcome to Great Falls." Ellen was genuinely pleased to see that I was in awe. How could I not be? This place was unbelievable. Pristine, manicured lawns surrounded the estate, engulfing it in unending wooded serenity. Tufts of puffy, water-colored clouds traveled slowly in the pale blue-gray sky. The noise of the 405 was replaced with what I guessed were the soothing tones of crickets and bullfrogs, though I'd never heard those sounds in real life. I'd only seen places like this in pictures and movies. We were less than fifteen miles from the nation's capital but it felt like I was in a dream, floating in a kind of peace I’d only imagined until now.