Anomalies

by Sadie Turner

  And her neck snapped.

  I am nervous.

  After only one week, Mikaela and Radar imprint and leave the group. I’m there when it happens. All the Anomalies are. We are eating breakfast as Claudia Durant enters with a huge smile taking up most of her mannish face.

  “The test results from week one are in. And congratulations are in order.” Claudia Durant never stops smiling. “We have our first match. Mikaela Fleming, your intended partner is … Radar Morton.”

  Mikaela is sitting next to me and she lets out an excited squeal. I then hear her Third buzz and watch as a deep serenity spreads over her face. I quickly grab her hand. On the surface, it appears like I am congratulating my fellow Anomaly, but the reality is I want to feel the vibration. To try to understand what is happening. Sure enough, once my fingers clasp hers, I can feel the energy radiating from her Third down to her fingertips. It’s the same buzz I felt when I was holding Rane’s hand. How does this happen? I understand that our Thirds are used to collect data and to connect to holo transmissions … but I’ve never seen them alter one’s personality. This must be part of the imprinting method. When two people are so connected that they cannot live without each other, their Thirds have a reaction. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Kai has his hand on Radar’s shoulder. Is he conducting his own experiment? I guess I’m not the only one who has noticed the odd behavior. Kai looks at me and I nod, giving him silent credit for also figuring out the strange phenomenon.

  Mikaela and Radar stand up and hug each other, and we all clap half-heartedly for their success, biting back our jealousy. Blue doesn’t even hide her frustration. She simply sits there and sulks. Mikaela and Radar’s match only magnifies the fact that the rest of us are still failures in the new world’s perfect system.

  “Mikaela, you will be reassigned to Bunk 7 Girls, and Radar, you will be reassigned to Bunk 7 Boys. You will have two hours to reunite with your intended partner and explore the camp before continuing on to your assigned bunks.”

  I’m surprised by Claudia Durant’s phrase. They’ve already been “reunited.” They’ve known each other for a week. Why do they need two more hours? I don’t understand. She said the same thing to them as she had to the rest of the campers on day one. No changes. No permutations. The same speech.

  When Claudia finishes reciting her monotone pronouncement, she excuses the new pair. Mikaela and Radar smile giddily, grab hands and leave the dining hall.

  And then there were five.

  Five square pegs trying to fit into round holes. By the end of the second week, Claudia Durant’s lectures are over because there is no need for them anymore. Time is a luxury we no longer have: it is ticking away and more than half of the session is over. We have less than a week to imprint.

  Our days are filled with tests. Max takes us through mental calisthenics that continuously increase in difficulty. I don’t know what is worse, Max’s nearly impossible mental acuity tests or the insanely boring multiple choice questions we fill out every day. They are so lame and monotonous that I practically fall asleep trying to answer them all.

  The simple questions are all formulated to ask me about … me. I’m fifteen years old, how am I supposed to know who I really am? Most of the questions give three choices:

  Are you A. talkative, B. silent, C. a combination of both?

  Are you A. frank, B. secretive, C. a combination of both?

  Are you A. adventurous, B. cautious, C. a combination of both?

  Are you A. sociable, B. reclusive, C. a combination of both?

  I have absolutely no idea so I keep choosing C.

  As simplistic as the multiple question tests are, Max’s mental tests keep getting harder. One day, he tells us to pay attention as he shows us a vid of a group of children playing under a wind turbine. It is a ten-minute vid that starts off innocently enough. It has music that sounds like an old-fashioned carousel, and shows a boy whose friends leave him alone in the desert, where he befriends an inanimate wind turbine. The music then gets darker to show the boy’s fear and confusion. Suddenly, the turbine comes alive and speaks in a robotic voice, giving the boy confidence and encouraging him to enact revenge on his bullying friends. The turbine then uses his energy to kill the boy’s mean friends for abandoning him.

  When the lights come up, I look around. Everyone seems highly disturbed by the vid. What was the point of Max showing it to us? Our instructor hands out tablets on which we are to type five answers. If we answer correctly, the rest of the day is ours to do with as we please. If we answer incorrectly, we will watch another video and the process will be repeated.

  I smile. How hard can the questions be? As disturbing as the vid was, it was fairly ordinary, and I both understood it and paid attention to it. It should be an ordinary comprehension test, yet Max’s questions are anything but ordinary.

  “What color shorts was the lead bully wearing?”

  What kind of question is that? How can I remember the shorts color? It wasn’t part of the story. Still, I put down red for renewable energy as the boys seemed to all be from that community.

  “What time was it on the main boy’s watch when the bullies left him alone?”

  “Wait a minute. How are we supposed to know that?” Burton asks.

  “Because you were supposed to pay attention,” Max barks, before clipping him on the shin with his cane. He doesn’t even wait before asking the next question.

  “How many turbines were in the closing sequence?”

  I want to scream. The closing sequence of the vid must have had over a dozen turbines. The question has nothing to do with the story. Frustrated, I put down “many.”

  When the exercise is over, none of us have gotten all five questions right. All of us got the first one right and Kai and Blue each got three right, Burton got four, and Genesis and I each got two right.

  So, we watch another vid.

  This goes on for close to ten hours. Each vid is progressively more disturbing, and I try to tone out the warped messages, which is usually some variation that one needs a partner to survive in the world. Instead, I concentrate on the minutiae, counting stripes on shirts and paying attention to numbers and colors and details.

  Burton is excused after three videos when he gets a perfect score. Blue is excused after four videos. Kai, Genesis, and I are coming closer and closer, but still not attaining perfect scores.

  “It’s past dinner time,” Genesis finally complains. He rarely speaks up, but he is voicing what we are all thinking. How can we concentrate if we are hungry?

  “One final vid. No, actually, you three seem to be incapable of simple detail recollection, so let’s see how you do with emotional recollection.”

  “What do you mean?” Kai asks. He is tired. We are all tired.

  “Turn your chairs away from each other. Now draw the person in this room who evokes the strongest emotional bond. Couple your heart and your mind to recreate the person. Do not look at each other. You have fifteen minutes to draw your interpretation of the person. If you are successful, you can leave.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we stop drawing on our tablets. We hold them up for Max’s inspection. I have drawn Max, capturing not only his beauty—his tousled hair, his penetrating eyes, his full lips, his high cheekbones … I have also managed to accurately capture his compassionless brutality. His cruelty. His savagery. His evil.

  Both Kai and Genesis have chosen the same person. Thick red hair, light blue eyes, a narrow nose and hundreds of freckles. They have both chosen me. Like my depiction of Max, they have captured something inside of me. Something which they have brought out through their pictures.

  Genesis has captured my beauty, but Kai has captured my strength.

  After scarfing down a cold plate of leftovers in the dining hall, I enter Girls Bunk 20, the designated Anomalies bunk, which now seems even emptier since Mikaela left. The wooden bunk at the end of the lane is sparsely decorated and most of the metal bunk beds are empty. Ther
e are now only two girls in a bunk meant for twenty. I nod to Blue who is painting her nails and I change my clothes next to the wall of shelves. I fold my blue outfit neatly into the assigned cubby and put on my sleep suit. Blue has already changed into a purple lacy nightgown. The girl has the weirdest fashion sense. With all of my blue clothes and all of her purple clothes, the shelf looks like a big bruise.

  “How was the rest of your day?” Blue asks. She seems distracted.

  “Long. Kai, Genesis, and I pretty much failed Max’s attention detail test, so he finally gave up on us. I’m zonked.” But rather than go directly to bed, I take her attempt at conversation for an invitation to chat. When Mikaela was also in the bunk, she was the buffer between me and the usually standoffish Blue. Now, we have to fend for ourselves, and being polite will cause the least amount of conflict. I even join her on her bottom bunk bed. She offers me a bottle of nail polish.

  “But it’s purple,” I say.

  “Look again.” She smiles. I examine the bottle and sure enough it’s an eggshell blue.

  “What are you doing with this?” Like our clothes, we are relegated to accessories in the color of our Community.

  “I have the entire rainbow.” She smiles and pulls out a small, purple polyurethane bag from under her pillow. Every color is there: yellow, red, green, orange It is beautiful.

  “You could get into so much trouble.” I pull out a bottle of bright orange and giggle.

  “I could. But I think we’re both already past the point of no return.” She grabs the orange from me and defiantly paints her pinky. She then grins at me, waving the brush, and with competition in her voice says, “Dare you.”

  I don’t hesitate and I paint my thumb orange. We start laughing and pulling out all the bottles, rebelling in our small way by painting each of our fingers a different color. To anyone observing, we’d look like two teens giggling before bedtime.

  Only we know how precarious our situation has become.

  “We’re not like other people, you know,” Blue says, blowing on her fingers to dry them.

  “I know.” The brief moment of levity has been ruined. Every day I am reminded that I am an Anomaly; I don’t need Blue to reiterate it for me. I concentrate on my maroon ring finger, enjoying the beauty of the rich velvety color. “Yesterday, Annika barely looked up when I passed by. It’s like she’s totally moved on. And she’s my best friend.”

  “Was your best friend,” Blue interjects. “Friendships get redefined when one of them is an Anomaly. So do families. My sister is a bigwig in the palace; she’s going to absolutely freak when she finds out I’m an Anomaly. She could even lose her job. My parents too. This is a huge black mark for my family.”

  This is the first time I’ve seen Blue unguarded. She’s almost likable.

  “What about your friends?” I ask.

  “Just like yours. They’re all brushing me off. I came to Summer Solstice with four kids in my class at secondary school. They’re not my best friends, but they’re friends. Good friends. Kids I’ve known my whole life. I even play in the band with two of them.”

  “You play music?” I realize Monarch Camp is nearly over and I know virtually nothing about Blue.

  “Played music. I don’t think they’ll want me in the band now. I play both acoustic and electric guitar. I’m pretty good, but that doesn’t matter when you’re an Anomaly. The guy who plays keyboards is already snubbing me. When I get back, they all will. I don’t even bother any more. It’s like this camp has created all of these cliques. Your Bunk, your Community, your intended partner’s Community. I suppose it all comes down to two-person cliques, and I’m not a part of any of them.”

  “You’re an elite member of our clique of five,” I joke. But it’s not funny. Blue, Genesis, Kai, Burton, and I are definitely members of a club no one wants to join.

  “What happens to us when camp is over, Keeva? What are our options?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I haven’t thought about it that much. I suppose I haven’t wanted to think about it.”

  “Start thinking,” Blue says as she hands me nail polish remover. She’s already wiped off her rebellious colors. I reluctantly wipe mine off as well, first taking a mental picture of what it looks like to be multicolored. To express my individualism.

  “Did you know your grandparents?” Blue asks.

  “No.” I wonder where she’s going with this. “They died in the Great Technology War. All old people did.”

  “Or did they?” Blue pulls out a worn photograph which is rolled up in one of the nail polish lids. She hands it to me. I see a smiling young man, who looks a lot like Blue.

  “Who is this?”

  “My grandfather.” Blue hesitates.

  “Tell me, what are you hiding? I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  Blue wavers before eventually confiding in me. “My grandfather is alive, Keeva. I don’t know where he is, I think somewhere in the Asias. But he’s alive.” Her eyes are filled with hope.

  “How do you know?”

  “I get … messages from him. I can’t explain it, maybe they’re just feelings. But I’m telling you he is alive. Sobek tried to wipe out our past so that he could create a new future, but in doing so, he wiped out generations of knowledge.”

  I’m in shock, still trying to understand how Blue’s grandfather is still alive. We are only two generations removed from The Great Technology War. Could there be others out there? Survivors?

  “Keeva, focus. There is so much we don’t know, except that we have to be matched with an intended partner to get out of here. We have to survive this.”

  “What do you mean, survive this?”

  Blue looks around, to make sure no one is listening. But the bunk is still silent. She beckons to me and I follow her as she gets down on the floor, wiggles underneath the bed and shines a headlamp on words delicately carved into the wall. Three words of warning carved by a previous tenant of the bunk. A previous Anomaly.

  Conform or die.

  “SHE’S DEAD?” Calix asked in disbelief.

  “And you were the one who killed her,” Sobek said.

  “But I … I … .”

  “What? Didn’t think she deserved it?” Sobek asked cruelly. “You have no idea what people deserve and what they don’t. You’ve built up too much compassion living here.”

  “What are you talking about? Why did you make me do that?”

  “It’s time to make a man of you, Calix. Your mother has coddled you for too long. You have a destiny, and it’s not hiding in your little workroom trying to break into the mainframe.”

  Calix looked at his father in disbelief. “How did you—”

  “What? You think I didn’t know? I know everything. I am right about everything. I am beloved by all. And soon, very soon my son, you will be, too.”

  Calix was fairly sure his father was wrong about that.

  I am changing.

  We now spend more time on mental tests than physical ones. I am beginning to ace Max’s tests. I can spot a lie, recall details, and quickly process situations and problems. When our instructor is finally satisfied by our newfound skill set, he turns us over to Inelia for a daylong hike.

  The area is beautiful and for a short time, I try to forget I am an Anomaly. I attempt to ignore that my life is in an upheaval. I just enjoy the fresh air and beautiful mountains. Even Kai doesn’t annoy me as much as he usually does. We are the most athletic of the bunch and race each other on the trail. The others are far behind mostly because Blue wears sandals instead of sneakers and everyone keeps waiting for her. Everyone except for me and Kai. He’s almost tolerable as he makes me laugh, telling me stories about his six younger brothers back home who are desperate for him to become a Protector so they can have bragging rights.

  “Do you want to be a Protector?” I ask as we wait for the others at the base of the mountain. I hadn’t even considered that option for myself. It could definitely be a way that I could return t
o the Ocean Community. I never really saw myself as one of Sobek’s crème de la crème, but it would certainly allow me to gain back some normalcy. I could live near my ocean. Near Annika and Rane. Near my father. Protectors live among the communities as Sobek’s eyes and ears. They enjoy elite status as bankers, media, governance officials, and politicians.

  “I don’t know,” he says earnestly. “My parents have a lot of mouths to feed and we’re not exactly rolling in money in Renewable Energy. Everyone uses solar power; it’s not such a lucrative field. I never really envisioned myself working in a factory my whole life, making solar panels, and I hate the thought of my younger brothers being stuck indoors. They’re so active and full of life. If I can, I’d like to help them.”

  For the first time, I detect vulnerability in “Mr. Know-It-All.” When Kai lets down his guard, he can be somewhat charming. Even likable.

  “Everything has a price,” I think aloud. “I’m sure being a Protector comes with its own baggage.”

  “Maybe, but at least the Protectors don’t have boundaries. Sure, they report to Sobek … but they have a lot more freedom than the other communities.”

  “I have freedom in the Ocean Community,” I say defiantly.’

  “Do you?” His eyes almost dance when he talks. They are a deep chocolate brown and I suddenly notice small specks of gold in them. “I mean, the ocean is magnificent, but it’s also your prison. You’re tied to it. You can’t go anywhere else. You can’t do anything else.”

  Instead of waiting for my response, Kai starts the climb up the mountain. That’s the kind of boy he is, someone who makes a ridiculous, definitive statement and then leaves me to figure it out. I turn, wondering if we should wait for the rest of the group. We’ve already hiked ten miles, and Inelia told us that we were going to climb to the top of the summit. But we are supposed to climb as a group. As a bonding experience. I sigh. Maybe it’s better not to follow the rules all of the time.