The Adjusters

by Taylor, Andrew

  “Uh, no, coach.”

  The coach considered him for a moment, and then forced a smile. “Congratulations. You just made the swim team.”

  Henry frowned. “But I got beaten…”

  “In any other school I’ve taught in, that time you did would have put you at the top of the team.”

  “Steve’s better.”

  “Yeah,” the coach admitted. “I’d never seen anything like it until I came to Malcorp High.”

  “He’ll win you gold medals,” Henry said. “Perhaps you should be spending your time on him.”

  The coach smiled. “But that would mean spending time with him.”

  Henry burst out laughing.

  “I probably shouldn’t say that about a kid on the swim team,” the coach added.

  Henry shrugged. “Well, I might be fast, but I’ll bet I’m the slowest swimmer in this school. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Neither do I,” the coach replied. “I took this job six months ago, thinking it would be a nice, quiet gig up to my retirement. The level of sporting and academic achievement at this school surpasses any place I’ve ever worked. And I’ve worked at some good schools. But everyone seems to regard it as normal. They don’t even want to compete in the local leagues. What the hell is with that?”

  “I don’t know, coach.”

  “Not the slightest interest. From the students or the faculty. News kids that do show some competitive edge lose it after a few weeks. Like this place sucks it out of them.” The coach leaned forward and pointed a finger at Henry. “If you swim for me, we’re sending you to a county trial. And you’re gonna win me some medals. Think you can handle that?”

  Henry nodded. “Sure thing, coach.”

  Coach Tyler nodded approvingly and sat back in his chair. “I know one thing: these kids might be good, but there’s no joy in what they do. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. The man had a point. Most of the students he’d met…they were brilliant at everything, but it never seemed a big deal. Just cold, clinical perfection. Blake was the only one who had shown any normal enthusiasm, but thinking back, Henry thought there was something fake about that too. Almost like he’d been going through an act for Henry’s benefit.

  “You’ll do just fine, Henry,” the coach said, finishing his drink and pouring another. “And if you don’t, that’ll be just fine as well.” He took a sip from his mug and pulled a face. “You know what? I’ve got ten kids on the team who come here after school every single day. Never miss. They swim laps so long and so fast they should be on the bottom of the pool with exhaustion. Then they get out of the water, say, Thank you, coach, and go home. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I’m not sure, coach…”

  “At my last school, I think half my time was spent coaching kids in the water. You know what the other half was spent doing? Chewing them out over being late. Giving them pep talks when they wanted to quit. Listening to them blub because some boy or girl broke their heart.” He looked out over the dive pool, where a few kids were still swimming. “But this lot… They never have any problems. No doubts. No distractions. It ought to be a dream job.”

  “But it isn’t?”

  “Half the time I think I needn’t be here at all.”

  Henry considered this. “The other teachers around here don’t seem to mind.”

  The coach shook his head. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call those people teachers, Henry. Most of them have never set foot inside a classroom outside Malcorp High. They’re facilitators, or at least that’s what they call themselves. I’d hate to see how they fared in my old school back in the Bronx.” He thought it over for a moment, remembering some other time, then looked at Henry. “So I want you to do something for me. Show up late for practice once in a while. Forget your kit. Slack off during training so I can ball you out. Can you do that for me?”

  He laughed. “Sure thing, coach.”

  The man smiled at him, then said, “Go on, get outta here. Training is Monday, 5 p.m. sharp. And if I ever catch you fighting in my changing rooms again, I’ll put your ass in a sling.”

  As Henry opened the door, the sound of music began to echo across the pool from speakers set high into the ceiling. Henry listened and heard it playing dully outside as well, as if it was being broadcast across the entire complex. The sound was distorted, but there was something familiar about it. It took him a second or two to realize that the tune was “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

  “Here we go,” the coach said, reaching into his desk for a top-up from his whiskey bottle. “Every Monday morning, every Friday afternoon. Without fail.”

  Around the dive pool, kids had emerged from the water and took position by the side. They stood absolutely still, staring into space as the music played, almost as if they were in a trance. Henry found himself wincing as the music played. There was something discordant about it that he just couldn’t put his finger on. The effect was grating, but the kids around the pool didn’t seem to sense it. If anything, their expressions were serene.

  “Jesus,” the coach said, taking a swig from his mug, “that has got to be the worst version of our national anthem ever.”

  Henry nodded and walked towards the changing rooms, past the kids standing like statues around the edge. He looked at the face of one of the girls as he crossed in front of her. Her eyes were half-closed, but beneath the lids he could see her pupils flickering from left to right.

  Like the eyes of a dreamer in REM sleep…

  Henry had spent a whole week at Malcorp High now and, as much as he’d tried to ignore it, his anxiety had grown from one day to the next. He just couldn’t get the events at the pool out of his head, and it seemed Coach Tyler was no wiser than he was. So if Henry wanted answers, there was only one place to go.

  He hammered on the door of the coffee shop, which was showing the closed sign, even though it was midday on a Saturday. Through the window he’d seen someone moving around in the darkened lower area and he was sure it was Fox.

  He banged his fist on the door again.

  After a moment the girl approached and studied him through the glass.

  “What do you want?” she shouted, an accusatory tone to her voice.

  “You said you had evidence about what’s going on at Malcorp,” Henry replied. “Show it to me.”

  “What brought about this change of heart? Things not going so well at school? You thought we were delusional, remember?”

  Henry looked round. The shopping street was quiet enough, considering it was a Saturday afternoon, but he still didn’t want to have this discussion out in the open. “Can I please come in?”

  Reluctantly, Fox opened the door and allowed him into the cafe. Inside, it was pleasantly cool after the heat of the day and the walk he’d taken from the complex. The smell of yesterday’s coffee lingered in the air.

  “You’re not opening for lunch?” he asked, looking around the interior. The chairs were still on the tables.

  “Business is slow,” Fox said with a shrug as she locked the door. “But if I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.” She walked through to the other side of the counter. “Come on up, I guess.”

  He followed her up the narrow staircase to the apartment above the cafe. In the light of day it looked just as cluttered as the last time he’d been there, but there was something warm and lived-in about the place. It made Henry think of his old apartment in the city. It had been way too small for him and his mom, but he’d begun to miss the old place since he’d been at Malcorp.

  “Take a seat,” Fox said as she moved through to the kitchen. “Something to drink?”

  “Just some water,” Henry said, sitting down on one of the sofas. “I didn’t see you in school this week.”

  The girl poured a glass from the tap and brought it over. “That’s not surprising. I wasn’t there.”

  “You were sick?”

  “I don’t go to school.”


  Henry frowned. “What do you mean? You’ve dropped out?”

  “Malcorp High didn’t agree with me,” she replied. “And since the Newton school closed down, it’s the only option. Anyway, I’ve got the cafe to look after.”

  Henry sipped his drink. “I can see you’re real busy with that.”

  Fox said sharply, “If you just came to be sarcastic—”

  “Okay, sorry. Why didn’t the school agree with you?”

  Fox grinned wryly at him. “Well, I’m sure you can guess yourself. Finding the curriculum a little challenging?”

  Henry put the glass of water down amidst the clutter on the table and sighed. “I’m not stupid… But I just can’t seem to keep up…”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Fox said. “We’ve all been there.”

  “So what is going on?” Henry asked.

  Fox raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure you want to hear this?”

  “Try me.”

  She walked to a bookshelf and pulled out what looked like a thick, leather-bound photo album. Opening it up, she took a seat beside Henry and passed it across to him. He looked over the page she’d opened, which was covered with newspaper clippings and stories printed from the web.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Research,” she replied. “On Malcorp. Just read it.”

  For the best part of an hour, Henry worked his way through the scrapbook.

  There was background information about Malcorp… How John Mallory founded it in the late seventies as a software company. How it had developed an operating system that almost became the industry standard for home and business computers, before Microsoft bought them out for millions in the mid-80s. With the proceeds of that sale, Mallory had diversified his company into the area of bioscience, getting involved in the cutting-edge field of genetically modified foods. One story covered Malcorp’s seed engineering sector, and how it held patents on ninety per cent of the grains used in the United States – this one company could hold the agriculture industry to ransom. If the farmers didn’t buy their GM seeds from Malcorp, they were pretty soon driven out of business.

  Then there were the reports of Malcorp’s other scientific interests, including low-cost IVF (Henry guessed that’s where his mom came in), stem-cell research and the development of next generation prosthetic limbs for troops injured in Afghanistan. Some articles were critical of the company, focusing on several scandals in their biotech labs, where scientists had been accused of breaching safety guidelines in the use of stem cell and cloning technology. Others were gushingly positive. There were plenty of people around who believed that, with its use of science to improve farming and medicine, Malcorp was going to save the world from poverty and hunger. Fox had certainly been thorough in her research and Henry wondered how long it had taken her to collate all of the information.

  One story in particular caught his eye. It was a recent interview with John Mallory that had been grabbed from the Financial Times website. In it he spoke about an education revolution he believed was going to occur during the 21st century. The reference was brief but something about Mallory’s fervent tone stuck in Henry’s mind.

  He looked at Fox. “So Mallory’s interested in education?”

  “Very interested,” Fox replied. “I started at Malcorp High when I was twelve, back when it was just a normal school. Then something began happening. Kids from Newton were offered a part in an accelerated learning course that promised to turn them into geniuses over a few weeks or something. They signed up and were taken out for special classes. And guess what?”

  “It worked?”

  “Only too well,” Fox said bitterly. “Pretty soon everyone was signing up. Getting taken out. And when they came back they were all little Einsteins. After that the classes changed too. If you hadn’t been in the programme, you couldn’t keep up. No way.”

  “So more kids signed up?”

  “Or were signed up by their parents,” Fox added. “I mean, who wouldn’t want a genius for a son or daughter?” She paused, remembering. “But when they came back they weren’t just smart… They were different. I’ve seen kids who’d been friends since kindergarten hardly speak to one another any more. It wasn’t that they’d fallen out – had an argument or something. They’d just gone cold. Like they didn’t have any connection any more, nothing to say. There was something missing.”

  Henry thought back to some of the strange behaviour he’d seen over the past week and understood what she meant. He remembered how the coach had described the students at Malcorp high. That same word. Cold.

  “When new kids come to town they’re given a week or so to realize they’re not going to fit in,” Fox continued, “then they’re handed the sign-up sheet for the special programme. A few, like Christian, hold out, even though their parents soon start begging them to sign. Others try to run away. They’re never seen again…or they come back changed. Gabrielle and me and some others formed a group against the special programme. One by one, we’d watched our friends change since Malcorp arrived. They were still there in the same classes as us, but they may as well have been different people. That wasn’t going to happen to us. We weren’t going to lose each other…or ourselves. So we signed a pact that we wouldn’t sign up, no matter how bad things got at school or how much pressure we were put under.” She sighed. “I’m the only one left.”

  She reached over and produced a photograph from the back of the book. It showed Fox and Gabrielle on the very sofa they were sitting on now. There were two other kids he didn’t recognize, but another he did. It was Blake…and he had his arm around Gabrielle’s shoulder.

  “Blake was Gabrielle’s boyfriend?” Henry asked incredulously. “The one who broke her heart?”

  “You know him?”

  “Mallory’s grandson? Yeah, I’ve met him. I bet the head of Malcorp just loved his grandson hanging out with your little anti-capitalist brigade.”

  “We’re not anti-capitalists,” Fox said, shaking her head. “Blake was a cool guy… Before.”

  “Cool guy.” Henry thought of the kid’s submissive behaviour around his grandfather and his complete loyalty to Malcorp. Now he had heard everything.

  Henry closed the book on his lap and tried to process it all. A few days before, he could have dismissed everything that Fox had told him as crazy. But not after what he’d seen around Malcorp High that week. And if kids like Blake were anything to go by, there was certainly something weird going on. He didn’t know if they were giving them drugs or hypnosis sessions, but Malcorp was doing something to the kids at the high school.

  And Henry was becoming certain of one thing: if he just sat back and did nothing, he’d be next in line for the special education programme. And then what would happen? Would he become excellent at everything he did? Would he be able to swim as fast as Steve…but be cold and detached and lacking in joy?

  “So, what do we do?” he asked.

  “We need to get the story out there,” Fox said. “I’ve made contact with a reporter from the city. A guy called Richardson. He’s coming here to meet with me on Monday morning. I’m going to tell him everything.”

  Henry wondered how that conversation would go – telling a seasoned journalist about a supposed Malcorp plot with nothing more than a scrapbook and a few old photos. “We have no real evidence they’re doing anything strange to these kids…”

  “That’s why we need to get to Gabrielle,” Fox said. Her eyes sparkled with animation and Henry could see the passionate determination behind her cool exterior. “They’re still holding her in that medical centre, I’m sure of it. She’d never sign up for the programme of her own free will. It must have been her parents forcing her into it. If you and Christian can just get in to see her… Get her to talk about what’s been going on—”

  “Wait a minute,” Henry interrupted. “What do you mean me and Christian? You’re not coming with us?”

  Fox gave an embarrassed look. “I’m…uh…kind of
banned from setting foot inside the Malcorp complex.” When Henry looked at her questioningly, she continued, “I staged a little protest outside the main gates a few months ago.”

  “About the medical centre?”

  She shook her head. “Malcorp has been buying up businesses all over Newton for years. Every shop on the high street is owned by them. We’re just about the only independent left and every month they send their suits along, trying to pressure us into selling.” She coughed. “And I might have thrown a balloon filled with red paint at Mallory’s Rolls-Royce.”

  Henry couldn’t stop himself from laughing, imagining the look on Mallory’s face as the paint bomb hit his expensive car.

  “So I’m not exactly welcome in Malcorp any more,” Fox went on. “In fact, I think that fat security guard on the gate has orders to shoot me on sight.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about him,” Henry said. “Hank looks like he spends more time in the doughnut shop than he does at the range.”

  Fox laughed at this and said, “You’re okay, Ward. I formally forgive you for acting like an ass before.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. So, you’ll do it? Christian’s got the key card, but he can’t go by himself.”

  “Why not?”

  Fox shrugged. “He’s scared. Wouldn’t you be?”

  Before Henry could answer, the door to the bedroom opened noisily and a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a dressing gown that had seen better days and her greying hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. She looked at Henry and smiled.

  “I thought I heard company.”

  “Mom!” Fox said, rising from the sofa and going to her. “I thought I told you to call if you needed anything.”

  “I wanted to see the guest!” the woman said, pushing the wheels of her chair so she scooted quickly across the lounge, almost colliding with Henry. “I’m Mary Layton,” she said, extending a hand.

  As Henry took her hand in his, he noticed that her skin was incredibly white and there seemed to be no weight to her. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Layton.”